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Month: July 2025

Trump’s Keystone Kops — Friday Edition

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 11, 2025

Is there a pardon in Van Beverhoudt’s future?

If this were Get Smart, I’d say, “That’s the second time this week!“

And it’s not The Onion either, but the Trump DOJ (Wednesday, July 9, 2025):

ATLANTA – Ivan Van Beverhoudt, 45, a former U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, will serve a 20-year prison sentence following his convictions for importing and possessing with intent to distribute over 15 kilograms of cocaine.

“Van Beverhoudt betrayed his badge by committing one of the very crimes he was entrusted to prevent—smuggling dangerous drugs into our country,” said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. “Our office and its agency partners will hold accountable any law enforcement officer who abuses his authority for criminal ends, and Van Beverhoudt’s twenty-year sentence demonstrates that such abuse will be met with severe consequences.”

“This case highlights the severe repercussions for law enforcement officers who abuse their positions of trust,” said Steven N. Schrank, the Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Georgia and Alabama. “Ivan Van Beverhoudt’s attempt to smuggle over 15 kilograms of cocaine into the country was a grave violation, and thanks to the efforts of HSI and our partners, he will spend 20 years behind bars.”

According to U.S. Attorney Hertzberg, the charges, and other information presented in court: On January 10, 2020, Van Beverhoudt, a CBP officer, boarded a commercial flight from St. Thomas to Atlanta with 16 bricks of cocaine in his two carry-on bags. To avoid TSA screening in St. Thomas, Van Beverhoudt traveled in his official capacity with his loaded CBP-issued firearm. Upon arriving at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, a CBP-trained narcotics K-9 officer in the jetway alerted to Van Beverhoudt’s luggage, which led to the discovery of the cocaine. 

On February 24, 2025, following a five-day jury trial, Van Beverhoudt was convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, importation of cocaine into the United States, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine, and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. 

On July 8, 2025, United States District Judge J.P. Boulee sentenced Van Beverhoudt to 20 years in prison to be followed by five years of supervised release. 

Yes, yes, but what everyone wants to know is was Van Beverhoudt’s name on the Jeffrey Epstein list that’s gone missing?

Called Little St. James, Epstein’s 72-acre island included several villas and is about 2 miles off the coast of St. Thomas, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. Epstein had stakes in businesses in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including Hyperion Air.

A boat with the letters LSJ was used to ferry staff members and supplies to Little St. James, a harbor employee told CBS News in 2020.

While Epstein made donations to U.S. Virgin Islands government officials and schools, some said he still did not have the best reputation in the area.

So, is there a Trump pardon in Van Beverhoudt’s future?

Ivan Van Beverhoudt

Guess not.

(h/t VR)

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Incompetence, Inc.

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 11, 2025

The man in charge of Trump’s terrorism prevention office fits the profile

Like night follows day (The Daily Beast):

The 22-year-old Donald Trump superfan put in charge of countering domestic terrorism has faced understandable questions over his experience with law enforcement.

Thomas Fugate’s appointment as director of the DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships has come under intense scrutiny, particularly after the terror alert level was raised because of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran.

The Daily Beast was the first to reveal how Fugate’s résumé includes working as a gardener and grocery store clerk in the past few years.

I’m sure the clearance vetting was above board and legit.

— Bradley P. Moss (@bradmossesq.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T00:42:34.380Z

What could go worng?

He graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio only 12 months ago, worked for the MAGA-aligned Heritage Foundation and volunteered for Trump’s campaign before taking the role, previously held by veterans of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Now, The Daily Beast can disclose that Fugate does have law enforcement experience: He was investigated less than four years ago in connection with a teenage love triangle gone wrong.

The details of the alleged offense appear to be very much those of teenage life, involving love rivalry, high-school teasing, text messages and immature language. But the fact that they took place so recently raises new questions about Fugate’s fitness for his role.

But then voters thought Mr. “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy,” a man with two dozen sexual assault complaints, a civil adjudication of rape, 34 felony convictions, six bankruptcies, and two impeachments had earned another four years in the Oval Office.

The emotionally stunted president must sense a kindred spirit in Fugate.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

Good Trouble Lives On (July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

He’s Fine Perfectly Fine

Published by digby on July 10, 2025

He’s this far from literally saying “I know you are but what am I?”

Then yesterday:

REPORTER: Yesterday you said you were not sure who ordered the munitions ordered to Ukraine. Have you figured it out?

TRUMP: I haven’t though about it

REPORTER: What does it say that such a decision could be made without you knowing?

TRUMP: I would know. If a decision was made I will know.

He was sharper in his first term, able to parry something like this with a quick lie or misdirection. This is just sloppy. He’s tired.

Someone should alert Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper.

Even The Weather Is A Conspiracy

Published by digby on July 10, 2025

Marge Greene and her followers think that nefarious people are creating natural disasters in order to — well, I don’t know what. But they’re doing it:

The flash floods that killed over 100 people, including at least 27 campers and counselors at a summer camp for young girls, have become fodder for online conspiracies and harassment that are being fomented by online trolls, right-wing influencers, and even Republican lawmakers. 

As she has in the wake of past natural disasters, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Fla.) suggested that the floods were the result of human-engineered weather modification — a baseless conspiracy that claims processes like cloud seeding can produce catastrophic weather events.

Greene wrote on X that she would be introducing legislation “that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense.” 

“We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering,” she added.  

It’s not the first time Greene has claimed that weather modification was the cause of a deadly natural disaster in the United States. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene — which carved a path of destruction through Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee and killed over 250 people — the congresswoman claimed that a shadowy entity could “control the weather.” Greene also suggested that the hurricane could have been deployed to affect the outcome of the 2024 election. 

She’s a real expert. Don’t forget this one:

There weren’t any clouds to seed, Marge. It was a hurricane of fire — explain how the government engineered that one. Oh right, we didn’t turn on the big valve that would have let allo the water come down from Canada to stop it. I forgot.

She’s not the only one:

Retired Gen. Michael Flynn — Trump’s former national security adviser turned QAnon influencer — also promoted conspiracy theories suggesting that the floods were the result of cloud seeding.

“We have to place a bigger spotlight on this,” Flynn wrote on X, “and anyone who calls this out as a conspiracy theory can go F themselves. Ask any Vietnam Vet who was sprayed with agent orange if the [U.S. Government] sprays stuff from above!”

And of course:

According to a Tuesday report from Wired, the cloud seeding company Rainmaker has been caught in a wave of threats, and one Oklahoma weather radar station was vandalized and damaged, allegedly by a right-wing vigilante group that had bought into the conspiracies. 

I’m with this guy:

You know where this is coming from right? I mean, other than the fact that these are all addled-brained morons. It’s because it’s becoming very obvious that we are having way more catastrophic weather events than before but since they have planted their flags in climate change denialism they have come up with this daft nonsense.

We are one small step away from these folks starting to sacrifice virgins to the weather gods. They’ll do anything to avoid admitting that they are wrong.

Update —

Oh my god. This is the director of the Environmental Protection Agency:

Trump’s EPA Chief Lee Zeldin just blew the lid off a long-whispered bombshell.

He’s ordering the full public release of everything the EPA knows about geoengineering, contrails, and solar manipulation. “Instead of dismissing these concerns as conspiracies, we’re meeting them head on… I want the public to know everything I know.”

That means: — Chemtrails? — Sun-dimming projects? — Climate manipulation by governments or private actors?

All of it. On the record. For the public.

Totally Humiliating — For The United States

Published by digby on July 10, 2025

What a cretinous moron.

We Are A Vassal State

Published by digby on July 10, 2025

I cannot tell you how fucking infuriated this makes me:

For months, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has pressed the GOP-led Congress to free up $40 billion in federal relief for swaths of Los Angeles consumed by devastating wildfires.

President Donald Trump and other Republicans have so far withheld the funds, with many arguing that Newsom and other Democrats in the deep-blue state have mishandled the fires and should be forced to rescind liberal policies in exchange for aid.

But now deadly floods have struck ruby-red Texas — and the Republican response is much different, with Trump and others promising unfettered and prompt federal support in the months and years to come.

The contrast underscores the extent to which the Trump administration treats blue and red states differently, whether in disaster response or in targeting liberal areas for aggressive immigration enforcement.

“In Texas, they have very different points of view than we do in California on policy, but I would never imagine conditioning or arguing that our congressional delegation condition aid to Texas until they changed some policy on an ancillary issue,” Newsom said during an appearance in South Carolina this week.

The tone of Newsom’s comments, tame in contrast to the barbs that often fly between him and Trump, reflect the efforts of politicians on both sides to avoid being seen as politicizing the catastrophe in Texas, where at least 117 people — nearly a quarter of them children — were killed during holiday weekend flash floods

Trump and the Republicans had no problem “politicizing” the firestorm in L.A in January. But that’s fine. Californians are just here to send our money — and it’s a boatload — to the red states. Other than that, we are nothing more than a photo op for sadistic Gestapo agents to put on a show for Republican voters to demonstrate that we have no rights, no state sovereignty, no freedom.

I honestly don’t see any other way to look at this.

Emperor Trump Has Spoken

Published by digby on July 10, 2025

Who does he think he is?

God Emperor Trump Statue Wiki

Can you believe this?

First, President Trump said that he planned to impose a 50 percent tariff on all Brazilian imports, partly in retaliation for what he sees as a “witch hunt” against his political ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for attempting a coup.

In a letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Mr. Trump wrote that the new tariffs would take effect on Aug. 1. “The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace.”

He’s just threatening countries left and right for things that are none of his business. Not only is he attempting to dominate all the cities and states of America, he apparently thinks he can order other countries around too. The only sovereign on this earth is Donald Trump.

Brazil’s president isn’t having it:

A few hours later, Mr. Lula said that Brazil would reciprocate against the tariffs. “Brazil is a sovereign country with independent institutions that will not accept being abused by anyone,” he said in a statement. He added that the case against Mr. Bolsonaro “is the sole responsibility of the Brazilian Judiciary.”

The quickly escalating dispute has the potential for major economic and political repercussions, especially in Brazil. The United States is Brazil’s second largest trading partner after China, and Mr. Trump appears to be demanding an end to Mr. Bolsonaro’s prosecution to lift the steep tariffs.

This is completely outrageous. And look at the absurd language. Do they have 6th graders writing these things?

In his letter, Mr. Trump said the 50 percent tariff was needed to “have the Level Playing Field we must have with your Country” and “to rectify the grave injustices of the current regime.”

He is also completely full of shit on the trade relationship with Brazil.

Mr. Trump also incorrectly said the United States had a trade deficit with Brazil. For years, the United States has generally maintained a trade surplus with Brazil. The two countries had about $92 billion in trade together last year, with the United States enjoying a $7.4 billion surplus in the relationship. The top products traded are aircraft, oil, machinery and iron.

He also threw in that he’s issuing the tariffs because Brazil isn’t allowing tech companies to spew lies like they do here, which may be a concern but it has zero to do with trade. Lula said that Brazil’s courts are enforcing Brazilian law, apparently t=not realizing that the only law on this planet is Emperor Trump’s edicts.

Needless to say, it’s really all about him:

Mr. Trump publicly criticized the criminal case against Mr. Bolsonaro, which focuses on the former president’s attempts to hold on to power after losing Brazil’s 2022 election. He drew comparisons to his own criminal charges after losing the 2020 election. “It happened to me, times 10,” Mr. Trump wrote online on Monday. “I’ll be watching the WITCH HUNT of Jair Bolsonaro, his family, and thousands of his supporters, very closely.”

Mr. Lula quickly fired back. “I think it’s very wrong and very irresponsible for a president to be threatening others on social media,” the Brazilian president told reporters on Monday. “He needs to know that the world has changed. We don’t want an emperor.”

Emperor Trump doesn’t care what they want.

He really believes that these tariffs are a license to rule the whole world. Since he doesn’t understand them or the ramifications of his actions it appears that no one is taking him seriously but you have to wonder if that’s going to hold true. He’s getting worse by the day and you have to wonder when this little game is finally going to explode.

Poor little ICEmen

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 10, 2025

For little men, it’s always about size

Still from leaked ICE training film.

Stephen Miller’s masked shock troops in camo are not happy with “arresting gardeners” off the street:

Having insisted for years that capturing criminals is its priority, ICE is now shelving major criminal investigations to prioritize civil immigration arrests, grabbing asylum seekers at their courthouse hearings, handcuffing mothers as their U.S.-citizen children cry, chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As angry onlookers attempt to shame ICE officers with obscenities, and activists try to dox them, officers are retreating further behind masks and tactical gear.

“It’s miserable,” one career ICE official told me. He called the job “mission impossible.”

Nick Miroff writes in The Atlantic that Miller’s demand that ICE arrest four times as many undocumented immigrants to meet his demand of 1 million deportations annually has morale “is in the crapper,” per one of a dozen current and former ICE agents and officers.

Attorney Adam Boyd resigned last month. He tells Miroff that some ICE attorneys “are only waiting until their student loans are forgiven, and then they’re leaving.”

“I had to make a moral decision,” he told me. “We still need good attorneys at ICE. There are drug traffickers and national-security threats and human-rights violators in our country who need to be dealt with. But we are now focusing on numbers over all else.”

Some ICE officers see the loosening of restrictions under Trump as liberating.

Other ICE veterans, who long insisted that their agency was misunderstood and unfairly maligned by activists as a goon squad, have been disturbed by video clips of officers smashing suspects’ car windows and appearing to round up people indiscriminately. They worry that ICE is morphing into its own caricature.

“What we’re seeing now is what, for many years, we were accused of being, and could always safely say, ‘We don’t do that,’” another former ICE official told me.

Meanwhile, national-security and public-safety threats are taking a back seat to random roundups and intimidating the public with pointless shows of force.

Leaked ICE training film.

One former ICE official told me that the Biden administration treated the agency’s workers with more basic decency and appreciation, even as their caseload grew.

“Giving people leave, recognizing them for small stuff, that kind of thing. It went a long way,” the official said. “Now I think you have an issue where the administration has come in very aggressive and people are really not happy, because of the perception that the administration doesn’t give a shit about them.”

Some, at least, know they are being used and don’t like it.

What I want to know is where is ICE getting the irregulars in plain clothes? Craigslist? What sort of training do they receive before being armed and sent out in masks to smash car windows and snatch people out of immigration and medical appointments, or just off the streets? If the director of Trump’s White House Office of Presidential Personnel is Russian-born and got the job without a security clearance, god knows what vetting, if any, thousands of freshly minted ICE Snatchers receive.

Miller is a psychopath. Trump is an addled and delusional wannabe dictator. We know what his game is:

Trump bypasses any reluctance from Pentagon professionals about deploying troops against civilians. Since DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has tricked out ICE as soldiers, it’s like deploying soldiers without that bothersome Uniform Code of Military Justice or the restrictions of Posse Comitatus.

He just wants his dictator reality show to get good ratings.

Update:

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Evil And Megalomaniacal

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 10, 2025

Now Trump wants to be king of the world

Donald Trump said he was running for a second presidential term to lower the price of eggs, etc. He actually ran for a second term for three reasons: to stay out of jail, to seek revenge against opponents, and to get richer quicker. It is quite clear his focus since taking office is the latter three.

He is so focused on staying out of jail himself that he’s putting in rare effort to keep another autocrat out of jail. Trump sent a letter to Brazil threatening to impose a 50 percent tariff on its products unless they back off prosecuting former President Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a coup to stay in office after losing his last election.

Calling Trump’s bullying “evil and megalomaniacal,” Paul Krugman published a rare second post late Wednesday on the matter:

Now, this wouldn’t be the first time America has used tariff policy for a political purpose. On the contrary, the international trading system we set up after World War II was in part motivated by the belief of U.S. officials that trade, in addition to being economically beneficial, was a force for peace and would strengthen democracy around the world. They were probably right, and in any case it was a noble goal.

Now Trump is trying to use tariffs to help another wannabe dictator. If you still thought America was one of the world’s good guys, this should tell you whose side we’re on these days.

Marcy Wheeler reminds emptywheel readers that Trump launched his trade war to address a purported emergency in U.S. trade deficits (goods, not services). In fact, the U.S. enjoys a trade surplus with Brazil. No, Trump is trying to punish Brazil for daring to hold Bolsonaro to account for the same crime Trump committed:

This is not a trade emergency.

It’s a democracy emergency.

A sovereignty emergency.

A coup accountability emergency.

Krugman sees it. He asks:

Does Trump really imagine that he can use tariffs to bully a huge nation, which isn’t even very dependent on the U.S. market, into abandoning democracy?

So as I said, evil and megalomaniacal. If we still had a functioning democracy, this Brazil gambit would by itself be grounds for impeachment. Of course, it would have to wait in line behind all the other grounds.

Does Trump think he’s king of the world? Why, yes. Yes, he does.

He’s also desperate to see the Jeffrey Epstein list “coverup” brouhaha disappear.

Me, entering every barbecue this summer….

— LOLGOP (@thefarce.org) 2025-07-10T11:07:45.120Z

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. You’re asking. We have Texas, we have this. We have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable,” Trump said. He berated a reporter for wasting his time in a meeting during which Trump spent 15 minutes talking about decorating the Cabinet Room and musing about applying gold leaf to the crown molding.

Crimes he’s committed against the republic are not the only ones he’s eager to disappear down the memory hole.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

Good Trouble Lives On (July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
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