Luis Alberto Castillo, a father of one from Venezuela, entered the United States on Jan. 19, one day before Donald Trump became president for a second term — swept into office on a promise to treat undocumented migrants with a heavy hand.
By Feb. 4, Mr. Castillo was on a plane to a U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, best known for a detention center that has long held terrorism suspects accused of launching the deadliest attack on American soil.
That day, the Department of Homeland Security declared that those who had been transferred to the island represented “the worst of the worst” and were all members of a Venezuelan criminal group, the Tren de Aragua.
But in an interview from her home in Colombia, Mr. Castillo’s sister Yajaira Castillo said her brother was not a gang member to be feared, but rather an everyday Venezuelan who had fled his country because of its economic crisis.
He was targeted because he had a Michael Jordan Tattoo on his back which is apparently something that some gang members have — as well as many non-gang members in Venezuela because basketball is very popular there and Michael Jordan is an icon. I’m not kidding.
The NY Times checked and this man has no criminal record in Venezuela. He didn’t sneak across the border but presented himself and obtained an appointment as the law allowed. He is now in a concentration camp being treated like a terrorist.
The only way the sister found out about it was by happening to see a picture of his shared by Kristi Noem on social media. He’s the one in the lower right above.
Speaking of Noem, get a load of the nasty piece of work they’ve hired as the spokeswoman for DHS:
“This administration abides by the rule of law,” said the spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin. “During further assessment, intelligence officers could not definitively determine whether the individual is or is not a confirmed member of TDA,” or Tren de Aragua. “He may very well be a member of this vicious gang. He may not be.”
In a follow-up message, Ms. McLaughlin said that the department had received new information that Mr. Castillo was a member of the gang. She did not provide evidence.
“TDA is a pathetic gang for human trafficking, drug trafficking and kidnap for ransom among other heinous crimes,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “The New York Times is more interested in writing sob stories about its disgusting members than justice for its victims.”
I’m sure they’re passing this story around the White House today, and high fiving each other over it.
Trump used to say on the campaign trail that the markets were going up and inflation was coming down in anticipation of his arrival to save the country. Guess what?
Inflation heated up more than expected in January, as prices for groceries, housing and energy all picked up for Americans in early 2025, potentially complicating President Donald Trump’s agenda.
A key gauge of inflation — the consumer price index — showed Wednesday morning that prices rose by 3.0 percent in January from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. That’s hotter than the 2.9 percent annual gain reported in December, underscoring economic concerns of Americans who voted out incumbents in federal elections last fall…
Wednesday’s data showed that consumer prices rose 0.5 percent on a monthly basis from December, the biggest increase since August 2023. Shelter costs, which grew 0.4 percent, accounted for nearly 30 percent of the monthly gain.
I’m going to guess that all this talk of tariffs has prices going up in anticipation of whatever daft declaration he’s going to make next. Certainly, calling for 25% tariffs on Canadian lumber and instigating a campaign of terror on the workers who make up most of the housing construction force in the country hasn’t helped either.
Stocks on Wall Street slumped at the start of trading on Wednesday, dragged lower by data that showed consumer prices rose more than expected in January, leaving the Federal Reserve little cause to lower interest rates again soon.
The S&P 500 fell roughly 1 percent as trading got underway. The Nasdaq Composite index, which is chock-full of tech stocks that have come under pressure recently from rising global competition to develop the chips that will power the development of artificial intelligence, also fell around 1 percent.
Oops:
Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, said President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on Mexico and Canada could deal a serious blow to his company and the auto industry. Farley, who was speaking at a conference organized by Wolfe Research in New York on Tuesday, said that while Trump has talked about making the “US auto industry stronger,” the president’s trade policies would hit Ford hard. “So far, what we are seeing is a lot of cost and a lot of chaos,” Farley told conference attendees.
President Trump promised voters that, if elected, he would enact policies that would bring prices down on “Day 1” in office.
But three weeks into his term, Mr. Trump and White House officials have become more measured in how they discuss their efforts to tame inflation. They have begun downplaying the likelihood that consumer costs like groceries will decline anytime soon, reflecting the limited power that presidents have to control prices. Those are largely determined by global economic forces.
It’s all going very well. Eat those omelettes, folks. Nothing to see here.
He’s giving Ukraine to Vlad as we knew he would. Here’s Hegseth (after he got booed by middle schoolers) today:
I think we all expected this but watching the cable newsers like Dana Bash excitedly announce this as a “historic” moment that will change the world, as if that’s a good thing. But then I suppose they said the same thing when Neville Chamberlain declared “peace in our time” too…
The hypocrisy dials at the West Wing propaganda office are turned up to 11. Donald Trump, our first convicted-felon president, and his Muskovite DOGEes mean to screw Americans while promising to root out corruption and improve “efficiency” they have yet to properly define or document. Look Elon Musk and Trump in the eyes. Have you ever seen men more trustworthy?
What was it Michael Douglas said in Black Rain (1989)? “I usually get kissed before I get fucked.”
Here’s just some of what Musk-Trump’s torching government agencies will cost you without kissing you first.
Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum could cost consumers “an extra $8 billion per year.” That’s just for warm-ups.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Musk-Trump means to close returned to consumers over $21 billion in corporate rip-offs, junk fees, overdraft fees, and credit card late fees over its dozen-year history. It’s a net money-maker for taxpayers, returning far more than it costs. Trump is killing it off to satisfy his billionaire pals.
“Wall Street and now Big Tech don’t hate the CFPB because it’s an ineffective waste of money. They hate it because this relatively small agency punches way above its weight,” Helaine Olen writes, having “proven time and time again the government can be effective on behalf of the welfare of the people. No wonder oligarchs hate it.”
Trump’s shutting down USAID not only weakens U.S. influence worldwide. American farmers who supply food aid are out $2.1 billion in food aid the government purchases from them for the program. Thousands of American jobs will be lost, over 11,000 tracked so far, impacting over 40 states.
And the Muskovites are coming for programs millions of Americans rely on: Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. “Trump claims Elon Musk’s DOGE ‘geniuses’ have found ‘very fraudulent stuff’” declares Forbes. Anything Musk tells Trump, the con-man-in-chief believes:
Speaking en route to the Super Bowl, Trump explained: “The whole country looks like it’s a fraud. It’s fraud, waste, abuse. What Elon and his group of geniuses have found is unbelievable—and that’s just in USAID.
[…]
“Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no [Social Security number] or even a temporary ID number,” Musk posted on Saturday.
“If accurate, this is extremely suspicious,” Musk added, “if accurate” covering a multitude of fuck-ups by people who don’t really know what they’re looking at. With not “even a temporary ID number” sounding suspiciously like the effort by North Carolina Republicans to throw out 60,000+ votes based on data entry errors in the voter registration file.
This may turn into an ongoing series.
American carnage wasn’t a description. It was a vengeful promise.
Even Republicans are trying to tell their representatives something. (Have some pride and dignity fergawdsakes)
Yes, it’s true that members of that 40% may threaten to kill you if you cross Dear Leader but again, have some pride and dignity…
I read yesterday that Hakeem Jeffries and others in the leadership are angry at “the Groups” for rallying their members to call Congress.
“People are pissed,” a senior House Democrat who was at the meeting said of lawmakers’ reaction to the calls. The Democrat said Jeffries himself is “very frustrated” at the groups, who are trying to stir up a more confrontational opposition to Trump.
A Jeffries spokesperson disputed that characterization and noted to Axios that their office regularly engages with dozens of stakeholder groups, including MoveOn and Indivisible, including as recently as Monday
“There were a lot of people who were like, ‘We’ve got to stop the groups from doing this.’ … People are concerned that they’re saying we’re not doing enough, but we’re not in the majority,” said one member. “I reject and resent the implication that congressional Democrats are simply standing by passively,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).
Yeah, no. They should be thrilled that the people are engaging and have their backs when they confront the Republicans over this Constitutional crisis.
My criticism of “The Groups” is that they don’t see always see the bigger picture. When they are mad *because they are observing a constitutional crisis* you have to hand it to them because they are right.
In response to’ the flurry of cases being brought against the Trump administration for its radical attempts to slash and burn all aspects of the federal government without constitutional authority, we’re seeing some arguments from Republicans that lead to the conclusion that there is at least some consideration being given to simply ignoring the courts orders. Some have evoked the likely apocryphal statement attributed to President Andrew Jackson in which he was said to have declared “[Chief Justice] “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it” which raises the question if Trump is planning to abide by Court rulings he doesn’t agree with.
The NY Times described the famous quote as “potent” because it does perfectly illustrate perhaps the most important “norm” in our system of government, the acknowledgement and acceptance of the idea set forth by The Marshall Court in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret the rule.”
Jackson asked the frankly logical question of how such a thing could be practically enforced by the co-equal judicial branch against the executive if it has no coercive power of its own. Obviously, it depends upon the agreed upon norm by all three branches of government as well as the states that the federal judiciary is the ultimate interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.
Therefore, this concept that the judiciary is the final arbiter has always been built on a somewhat shaky premise that really comes down to “somebody’s got to be the one to decide” and I assume the idea is that the Court was considered to be the most insulated from crude political concerns so it was the most likely to make a dispassionate decision. We know that’s a very dicey assumption but continue to hope that they will, at least, have an eye on the bigger picture when it comes to momentous Constitutional crises. We may be about to find out if that’s true.
This concept has been contested, particularly by the states, even as recently as the 1950s and 1960s. For instance, when Arkansas refused to desegregate the public schools under order of the Supreme Court in Brown vs Board of Education President Eisenhower had to order federal troops to enforce it. But what if it had been a decision that required the President himself to act against his understanding of his own powers under the Constitution? It happened in 1974 when the Supreme Court ordered Richard Nixon to turn over the tapes of his conversations to the U.S. Congress during the Watergate Scandal. Had he refused, there was no way for the Court to have enforced it but Nixon acquiesced and the rest is history. (He also knew he was on thin ice with the Congress which also had a stake in the outcome. If he had a supine Congress such as the one we have today, I suspect he would have told the Court to pound sand.)
Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt Both questioned the idea of “judicial supremacy” and took actions which arguably ignored judicial rulings by continuing to pursue them through the courts and attempted to change them through legislation during grave national crises. But there was never an outright dare to the Court to force them to acquiesce.
The Vice President is the most high profile official to advance the notion that the president isn’t required to adhere to judicial orders. Over the weekend, in response to the various judicial actions requiring the Trump administration to pause much of its program to destroy the federal government and he tweeted:
If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.
If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal.
Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.
As the Times noted, this issue was addressed by Chief Justice John Roberts in his year-end report:
“Every administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s.”
“Within the past few years, however,” the chief justice went on, “elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”
He added, “the role of the judicial branch is to say what the law is,” but “judicial independence is undermined unless the other branches are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees.”
Good luck with that. Any thought that this Congress will act to restrain Trump or have the Court’s back is fantasy. The GOP majority has turned over its Constitutional prerogatives to Trump and Musk and is slinking away like a pack of beaten dogs.
Constitutional lawyer and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, pretty much turned over his gavel to Elon Musk and his teen-age Dogeboys:
When asked by CNN’s Manu Raju, Speaker Mike Johnson said he agrees with JD Vance’s tweet suggesting the Trump administration should defy court orders.
Or, take for example the comment from Thom Tillis, the allegedly moderate GOP Senator from North Carolina saying that what Trump is doing “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense” but “nobody should bellyache about that.”
Even Elon Musk’s own platform X says the courts decide what the law is in response to an ignorant comment from Trump’s personal lawyer and counsellor to the President Alina Habba:
Alina Habba: "There's a separation of powers for a reason. The executive branch is the ultimate authority on federal issues." pic.twitter.com/fzCb0bxu9K
But an interesting thing happened on Tuesday afternoon that made me think there’s a possibility that all isn’t as it seems with this strategy. Trump held one of his Executive Order pageants in the Oval Office and he was joined by a bizarrely attired Elon Musk and his little toddler son X. He asked Musk to take some questions which he did as his son crawled all over him as Trump looked on, visibly annoyed. It was very strange.
We know that Trump often degrades and insults judges who rule in ways he doesn’t like. (Musk has suggested that they need to be impeached.) So when Trump was asked if he planned to comply with court orders I assumed that he would rant and rave about crooked judges and rigged cases as he usually does. But he didn’t.
“I always abide by the courts and then I’ll have to appeal it. But then what he’s done is he’s slowed down momentum. And it gives crooked people more time to cover up the books. The answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them. And we’ll appeal. But appeals take a long time.”
He went on to say that he didn’t think any court would tell him that they aren’t allowed to audit the agencies and look for fraud. But nobody’s saying the president doesn’t have the right to do that. This is about whether the Executive branch has the authority to usurp the power of Congress to appropriate and spend money, create or end agencies and fire people with civil service protections without cause (among other things.) It’s about whether they are required to follow the law and procedures that govern how the executive branch operates under the Constitution.
The answer was very unlike him and it occurred to me after watching him look on as Musk was bizarrely attempting to justify his radical actions that Trump isn’t really on board with all this. Does he want the courts to slow everything down? Is he hoping that the Supreme Court will rule against this Musk and Project 2025 dumpster fire?
I wonder. He ran against the “deep state” to wreak revenge on the DOJ and the Intelligence Community for pursuing his criminal behavior. But I never got the idea that he was hellbent on destroying the federal government. He doesn’t care about deficits, that’s for sure, repeatedly assuring the voters that tariffs and “growth” were going to eliminate them. This isn’t really his agenda.
Watching the look on his face as Musk held court, I couldn’t help but think that Trump is rueing the day that he hooked up with this weirdo. He doesn’t really understand what he’s doing and he doesn’t know how to stop him. Maybe his pals on the Supreme Court will do him another solid and stop Musk for him.
“North Carolina will be the first and only state where elections oversight is within the state auditor’s office,” explains Ren Larson at The Assembly. Why is that and how did it happen? Therein lies a tale.
Let’s skip the odd bio of Dave Boliek, North Carolina’s newly elected Republican state auditor, and review the subhead, “Eight Years, Six Tries.” It started when Republicans lost the governor’s mansion in 2016 to Democrat Roy Cooper. The Republican-controlled legislature in a lame-duck session attempted a brazen power-grab aimed at transferring to the legislature some of Cooper’s appointment powers, including over the state Board of Elections:
In January 2018, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state legislature’s transfer of appointment powers from the executive branch to the legislature was unconstitutional.
Yet again Republican legislators struck back, passing a bill in June 2018 to allow voters to decide whether to amend the constitution and allow the legislature to make all eight appointments. Voters rejected it.
Like déjà vu, Republicans in the legislature again stripped the governor of appointment powers in 2023 and expanded the board to eight members appointed by the legislature. This time, four votes went to legislative leaders of each party. A three-judge panel blocked the change, granting an injunction. (The case is still in superior court.)
In another lame duck session after losing the governor’s race again in November 2024, the GOP legislature went around the separation of powers stumblingblock by assigning control of elections oversight to the newly elected Republican state auditor, Boliek, a devout Trump supplicant elected to the executive branch.
By now you’ve seen Tuesday’s bizarre press event in the Oval Office. The leader of the free world expounded at length on rooting out fraud and waste in the U.S. government while Donald Trump, his lieutenant, sat inert behind a large desk.
REPORTER: If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and the president is directing you to look into the DoD, does that present a conflicts of interest?
I don’t know what they teach in journalism schools these days, but insisting that political figures back up wild claims with checkable data and facts seems to have fallen out of the curriculum. After their shoddy work recently, headline writers at The New York Times this morning seem to have found a little backbone with Appearing With Trump, Musk Makes Broad Claims of Federal Fraud Without Proof:
The billionaire Elon Musk said in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance on Tuesday that he was providing maximum transparency in his government cost-cutting initiative, but offered no evidence for his sweeping claims that the federal bureaucracy had been corrupted by cheats and officials who had approved money for “fraudsters.”
[…]
Among Mr. Musk’s claims, which he offered without providing evidence, was that some officials at the now-gutted U.S. Agency for International Development had been taking “kickbacks.” He said that “quite a few people” in the bureaucracy somehow had “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” without explaining how he had made that assessment. He later claimed that some recipients of Social Security checks were as old as 150.
As if those assertions were not fact-free enough, Musk claimed without evidence that he and his Muskovites are being “maximally transparent.”
In reality, Mr. Musk’s team is operating in deep secrecy: surprising federal employees by descending upon agencies and gaining access to sensitive data systems. Mr. Musk himself is a “special government employee,” which, the White House has said, means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.
Musk and his DOGE team mean to “restore democracy” (whatever that means) and strangle bureaucracy in the bathtub (or something). Critics say he’s operating with unchecked power; dozens of lawsuits have been filed to stop him; judges have ordered halts to his activities; etc.
But what’s also unchecked for years now are political figures assassinating opponents by innuendo while reporters take dictation. Wild claim after wild claim unsupported by evidence. Whether it’s voter fraud or “stolen” elections or, in this case, allegations of “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse” and “widespread corruption” uncovered, not by skilled forensic accountants, but by Muskovite coders, the claims go unchallenged by the Fourth Estate when the time to challenge them is when they are being made.
Make them put up or shut up. Demand proof that is proof, not simply innuendo piled upon innuendo. Even the Trump health care “plan” the White House delivered to “60 Minutes” anchor Lesley Stahl in 2020 was eyewash, a thick binder “filled with executive orders and congressional initiatives, but no comprehensive healthcare plan.”
President Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, gave us a heavy book that she described as the president’s health care plan. It was filled with executive orders and congressional initiatives, but no comprehensive healthcare plan. https://t.co/Mn6HRAOwHLpic.twitter.com/WmsoRQP2WJ
In August 2023, Trump insisted he’d assembled “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia” but never showed his cards.
Musk is simply the latest huckster to get away with this sort of carnival act, a Washington version of P.T. Barnum’s Fiji mermaid. If there’s something that needs stopping, it’s allowing these con men to spoon-feed the public BS unchallenged.
A close friend used to have this joke he did where when someone made vaporous, unsupported statements like Trump’s, his stock response was, “Oh, yeah? Name five.”
Update: The $400 Billion Dollar Man is in “just asking questions” mode, kicking down.
REPORTER: If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and the president is directing you to look into the DoD, does that present a conflicts of interest?
Elon Musk: "There's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork. You look at this picture of this mine, this mine looks like something out of the '50s because it was started in 1955. It's like a time warp. And then the limiting factor is the speed at which the… pic.twitter.com/4CGQcSKk9y
Reporters: But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you’ve received billions of dollars in federal contracts.. Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?
Musk: If you see anything you say like, wait a second, Elon, that seems like maybe that’s, you know, there’s a conflict there. They’ll say it immediately.
That was one of the most surreal events I’ve ever seen. Trump was like an old, withered potted plant sitting next to him.
I would guess that we’re all in pretty much the same boat with that question right now. I don’t have any answers except to say that this is a serious crisis and it’s hard to see a way out. It’s overwhelming mostly because the entire Republican Party has signed on and they hold all the institutional power. (We’re about to find out if they at completely willing to castrate the judiciary as thoroughly as they castrated themselves.)
Josh Marshall addresses a couple of the big questions in his piece today. The first that’s commonly asked is whether or not this strategy of holding up the budget and/or the debt ceiling really makes any sense in light of the fact that the Republicans and the White House are all liars and we can almost bet on them reneging on any deal that’s made and not even attempt to make it look legitimate. Might makes right, right?
Marshall says the key is for Democrats to remember that it’s Trump who needs a deal not them. He offers a few ideas, such as very short term CRs to keep the issue on the front burner but makes it clear that they simply must not take ownership of this problem (a problem Trump does understand is his because, as you’ll recall, he begged the Congress to raise the debt ceiling before the inauguration.)
The second question he gets all the time is why “The Resistance” doesn’t seem to have materialized. He points out quite rightly that what really tripped Trump up in his first term was the quiet resistance groups that grew up all over the country even as the big demonstrations took most of the attention. And those groups are actually quite active right now. He notes:
[W]hile it hasn’t yet percolated up to DC journalists, something very dramatic started happening among rank and file Democrats roughly two weeks ago. It only started registering with elected Democrats in DC mid-last-week.
There is no doubt about it. People are alarmed and they are getting organized.
He also explains, quite astutely I think, that the dynamic was very different in 2017 because everyone, including Trump and the Republicans, thought his election was a fluke. Nobody expected him to win, they weren’t prepared and people thought that he could possibly be forced to resign or the law would take him out. Now, after two impeachment acquittals, an insurrection, a successful Big Lie, numerous failed prosecutions and a restoration it’s pretty clear that it’s not that easy. He writes:
The 2024 election was very, very different. It’s wrong to say that people voted for every last thing that is happening now or whatever he happened to say at one point or another on the campaign trail. That’s not how voting works. At least a quarter of the electorate votes with only the vaguest sense of what each candidate is proposing. But it is certainly true that almost everyone had a general sense of what kind of person Trump was and what kind of president he’d be. He’d already been President, after all. What’s more the entire campaign had been run with the clear understanding that Trump winning was a very real possibility. So people couldn’t vote for him thinking it was a throwaway vote with no consequence. He didn’t just slip through. It was a very close election. But he won a plurality if not a majority of the vote and he reclaimed the industrial midwest.
This led not only to a profound demoralization that Democrats are only now emerging from. It also made his presidency seem far less fragile than it had seemed when it was perceived (and to some degree was) an accident eight years ago. The logic of mass demonstrations and other kinds of performative resistance just doesn’t play the same way. People are also in the midst, very much the targets of a far-ranging shock and awe campaign from which they are only now after a couple weeks recovering their wits. So some of the difference people are noting isn’t just demoralization or giving up. It’s a rational response to a different set of circumstances. A few big hits won’t end this. This is for the long haul.
It’s depressing but it’s also just realistic. Trump is no longer the accidental president he was in the first term. He’s the undisputed head of the Republican party and all the near misses have given him the reputation of a Strongman who cannot be stopped. It’s going to take some different strategies and a commitment to sticking with the fight to thwart his worst impulses and end this assault on our values and principles. The opposition just has to put its head down, take one step at a time in as many different directions as possible and just not give up. What choice do we have?
