Working-class voters see Democrats as “woke, weak and out-of-touch” and six in 10 have a negative view of the party, concluded a frank internal assessment of the hole the party finds itself in.
My problem is that (unless I missed it) they don’t include a link to the poll itself. Without the data, there is no way to know who the pollsters included in “working class.” We’ll get to that issue in a moment.
The Democratic brand “is suffering,” as working-class voters see the party as “too focused on social issues and not nearly focused enough on the economic issues that impact every one, every day,” the report said.
“We lost people we used to get [in 2024], so why did we lose them? Why don’t we go ask them,” said Mitch Landrieu, co-chair of Democracy Matters and senior adviser to then-President Joe Biden. “They said what they thought about us and it was painful to hear … They feel forgotten, left out, and that their issues are not prioritized by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.”
I can tell you that without a poll after spending 12 straight Friday rush hours holding signs on an overpass. (The side facing the interstate changes each week. The side facing pedestrians is the one above.)
The week I aimed YOUR LIFE SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD at the interstate, the diversity of vehicles that responded with waves, honks, and thumbs-up caught my attention. Sure, there were Subarus (ubiquitous here), plus Hondas and Toyotas, and even one Mercedes. But positive feedback also came from lawn-service pickups, Latinos in a work van, personal pickups, a couple of semis, and aging beaters with hanging body panels and peeling paint. Many are the sorts of voters and non-voters Democrats have lost to despair, disgust, and apathy.
Cynical and frustrated Americans feel unheard and undefended by both parties. They want to feel seen. This message above has won me instant credibility and trust. Pedestrians on the bridge week after week after week — especially those 35 and under, and especially women — look me square in the eye and thank me. Seriously.
A slim, tattooed young woman about 30 read it and said, “Oh, hell yeah,” and shot me a pinky-and-thumb, shaka salute. She asked if she could take a picture. A car full of 20-something women saw the sign, stopped on the bridge and cheered. A woman on a scooter turned around at the end of the bridge and came back to take a photo. A trio of young guys, early 20s, fist-bumped me on Friday.
I’m no messaging expert. I just lucked into this message after speaking with a 20-yr-old summer intern struggling to make any money while paying $1200/mo. for a short-term apartment. (It might have been $1500.)
If I were canvassing, they might be the first six words out of my mouth when the door opens … before I ask what would make their lives better and how Democrats might help.
Yes, the bulk of pedestrians are white, but the bulk of the “working class” are not. That’s why Rebecca Solnit last week offered this perspective after reading a Tressie McMillan Cottom op-ed regarding Graham Platner, the U.S. Senate candidate from Maine. Solnit posted to Facebook:
It’s been infuriating for a long time that “working class” is too often code for white men, fantasy white men from 1934 wearing hard hats and carrying lunch buckets, stingy-hearted white men who imagine their own thriving can only be built atop others’ deprivation, too often fancy rhetoric to justify pandering to the most prejudiced by throwing anyone and everyone else under the bus. Which is not just bad ethics, but bad strategy, since the backbone of the Democratic Party IS everyone else.
And here’s an important point: despite the wording of the headline, this isn’t a thing “the Democrats” do: I can promise you AOC, Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren, and Ilan Omar don’t do. It’s a thing that mostly white guys do in the service of white guys.
Tressie McMillan Cottom writes (in part, but there’s a gift link so you can read the whole thing):
I cannot swear to know the minds of men like Murphy and Sanders. But, were I a betting person, I’d wager someone else’s riches that they know racism and xenophobia are inextricably linked to America’s inchoate understanding of class politics. They know that “working class” has become a powerful political totem of its own — a discursive sleight of hand used to separate out white voters’ concerns as more legitimate, more materially grounded, more important than other voters’ concerns.
These senators are demonstrating a willful blindness that has become endemic in the Democratic Party. Their rhetoric — and the conventional wisdom that flows from it — suggests that we cannot talk about economic solutions without abandoning our commitment to the Black, Latino, gay, transgender and female poor that are the lifeblood of the Democratic Party’s base. The conceit at the heart of that belief is that poor white people are too racist, and too uniquely ignorant of their racism, to vote in their best interests. Therefore, Democrats have to accept a little racism to win the working class.
It is an old argument. History will tell you that negotiating with racism or fascism or authoritarianism never ends well.
It is also a cop-out that can sound like political pragmatism: The idea that we simply must learn to overlook bad behavior as mere human foibles. Who among us, it is implied, has not said or done or etched a hateful symbol of exclusion and oppression into our minds or bodies? If Democrats are to win back the “working class” that they have lost to Trump, they have to look beyond silly things like Nazi iconography or a little casual racism or a soupçon of sexism and anything else that the “woke” left of the party cares about.
I find it hard to imagine that we would be having this conversation at all were Platner anything other than a fit middle-aged white guy who dresses like a stock photo of a “real man.” Our culture is built to eternally forgive men, generally, and white men of means, especially, for their mistakes. Every single time, they were young and immature and it would be a shame to hold them accountable for anything they did wrong. The rest of us just need to be strong-armed into the forgiving and forgetting portion of the program.
That is how you get to the place I found myself this week, reading apologia for a hateful symbol pretending to be sound, hard-nosed political analysis.
Now, I know for a fact that the working class in this country looks more like a Latino woman who cleans houses than it looks like Platner, a former defense contractor turned oyster farmer with some leftist political beliefs.
I also know a lot of actual poor white people. The kind of poor white people who don’t even make enough or have enough to be counted among the working class. The people who rely on SNAP benefits for their meals and emergency rooms for their health care.
Sometimes they subsist on a diet of racist notions to explain why their lives are as hard as they are. Sometimes those poor white people even have racist tattoos. I live in the South. There is no shortage of Confederate flags and “Don’t tread on me” tags on display in hot, humid months.
Once, at a meeting with tenant organizers in the center of white American poverty in Appalachia, a young white guy showed up to a meeting with his Stars and Bars tattoo on display. The poor white rural women and working-class Black women who run those meetings took this guy to task. They told him (colorfully) to get himself together. And the next week they all protested their landlord together.
Their coalition-building wasn’t the kind of kumbaya that Platner apologists are talking about, where a room full of people were expected to swallow their outrage to preserve one man’s feelings. There was accountability. There was education. And there was meaningful action. There was not a college degree or a political donor among them, and yet, somehow, actual poor people figured out how to handle racist iconography without scapegoating minorities or making excuses for a white man’s mistakes.
Here’s the thing. The Democratic Party has a problem. The party’s leaders think they have a problem with Trump voters. Some polling says white men without college degrees don’t like them, don’t trust them and won’t vote for them, so they think the only logical way forward is to pander. Their polling addiction ignores more complex political instruments telling them that the working class isn’t just white men and that centrism isn’t enough to bring white voters back into the fold.
It is going to take hard politics. The kind that shows up in communities between elections and solves problems that don’t sound glamorous on television talk shows. It looks like facing down the Klan in a trailer park, not complaining about racism while doing far too little to avert it. It means believing that racism is not a natural condition of poverty but a political weapon that rich men use to constrain poor people’s political power. And — most critically — it looks like not wanting, even for a second, to be confused with the people who would do that. You don’t wear a red hat as a joke. You don’t fly the ironic flag of historical hate to get a rise out of people. You don’t wear the cool tattoo for over a decade that maybe, kind of, possibly, probably looks like something horrible and hateful.
That’s why it is annoying not to have the link to the poll to examine the demographics behind it. I get Cottom’s complaint. Solnit is right too. “Working class” is broader than white men of the Rust Belt. “The working class today is much more complex and diverse than the white, male, manufacturing archetype often evoked in popular narratives,” declares Demos. None of my pedestrians look like Platner. But it is not pandering to acknowledge people’s economic struggles whatever they look like, that life in America shouldn’t be this hard. People — not just beefy white men — feel their country and its promise are failing them. And both major political parties. Maybe start with that.
Keith Olbermann’s special report on habeas corpus, as reported on Tuesday, October 10, 2006.
It was already clear weeks ago that Donald John Trump and his Project 2025 co-conspirators — Christian nationalist OMB director Russ Vought and the president’s pet psychopath, Stephen Miller, among them — were on a trajectory to unmake the United States of America, its constitution, and your freedoms. The Heritage Foundation published their plan in 900-plus pages entitled “A Mandate for Leadership” (2023) that looks to the world now like a blueprint for dictatorship. A key element of its implementation was a shock-and-awe strategy, a concept made famous in George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq on false pretenses.
On October 10, 2006, Keith Olbermann (“Countdown”) examined how Bush’s Military Commission’s Act of 2006 impacted the right of habeas corpus, a.k.a. The Great Writ. That foundational right is enshrined in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution. Olbermann built a memorably snarky rant around habeas and other Bush assaults against the Bill of Rights in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Worldwide revulsion against the Bush torture regime, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses, and leak of the 2002 torture memos was by then over two years old.
Given the manifold predations against the Constitution and Bill of Rights by the Trump 2.0 autocracy, it feels timely to dredge up the low-rez Olbermann video for your review. (Transcript here.) Its application to the Trump 2.0 terror campaign against civilians by masked ICE agents dressed as if for invading Fallujah needs no further explanation.
His Imperial Lordship makes no secret of which of your constitutional rights he believes are contingent on his mood. Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut takes notice.
You need to understand that he actually believes it is illegal to criticize him. Why? Because Trump believes he – not the people – decides the law.
This is why we are in the middle of, not on the verge of, a totalitarian takeover. pic.twitter.com/JN9Gy08BJR
Timothy Snyder (“On Tyranny“) spelled out their plan on October 25: “[T]he goal of these people is the end of law, the end of democracy, and the end of a recognizable republic.”
In testimony after the September 11 attacks, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told a congressional hearing that nobody could have predicted that terrorists might use a commercial airplane as a missile. In fact, they’d been warned.
Americans had a quarter of a century of warnings that an autocrat in the White House was a potential threat. They did not take it seriously, even after Trump impeachments, felony convictions, federal indictments, and his brown-nosing of world dictators. Your job now — our job — is to make sure it is not too late.
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’. I can’t believe I’m entering my 20th year contributing to Hullabaloo. Technically, it was 19 years ago that my pal Digby graciously offered me a crayon, a sippy cup and weekly play date on her otherwise grownup site so I can do my little scribbles about pop culture (to be precise, my first review was published November 18, 2006). That’s a lot of sticky floors and buckets of stale popcorn under my belt, so for giggles I thought I’d comb through the archives and pick the top 25 from the (estimated) 600 first-run films I’ve reviewed since 2006. As per usual-not ranked, but presented alphabetically.
Roll film!
Another Earth (2011) – Writer-director Mike Cahill’s auspicious narrative feature debut concerns an M.I.T.-bound young woman (co-scripter Brit Marling) who makes a fateful decision to get behind the wheel after a few belts. The resultant tragedy kills two people, and leaves the life of the survivor, a music composer (William Mapother) in shambles.After serving prison time, the guilt-wracked young woman, determined to do penance, ingratiates herself into the widower’s life (he doesn’t realize who she is). Complications ensue.
Another Earth is a “sci-fi” film mostly in the academic sense; don’t expect to see CGI aliens in 3-D. Orbiting somewhere in proximity of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, its concerns are more metaphysical than astrophysical. And not unlike a Tarkovsky film, it demands your full and undivided attention. Prepare to have your mind blown.
After the Storm (2017) – This elegant family drama from writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda is a wise, quietly observant and at times genuinely witty take on the prodigal son story. All the performances are beautifully nuanced; particularly when star Hiroshi Abe and scene-stealer Kirin Kiki are onscreen. Kudos as well to DP Yutaka Yamazaki’s painterly cinematography, and Hanargumi’s lovely soundtrack. Granted, some could find the proceedings too nuanced and “painterly”, but those with patience will be richly rewarded. Full review
Applause (2009) – Paprika Steen delivers a searing performance in this Danish import, directed and co-written (with Anders Frithiof August) by Martin Zandvliet. Technically, Steen is giving two searing performances; one as an embittered, middle-aged alcoholic stage actress named Thea Barfoed, and another as the embittered, middle-aged alcoholic “Martha”, as in “George and Martha”, the venomous, bickering couple who fuel Edward Albee’s classic play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
As you might guess, the clever theatrical allusions abound throughout, with interwoven vignettes of Thea’s nightly performances as “Martha” serving a Greek Chorus for her concurrent real-life travails. While she continues to wow adoring fans with her stagecraft, the acid-tongued Thea makes a less-than-glowing impression on the people she encounters in her off-stage life (mostly due to the fact that she’s usually half in the bag by lunchtime).
While I’ve seen this story before, it’s been some time since I’ve seen it played with the fierce commitment Steen brings to it. Thea’s shame spiral binges evoke Patty Duke’s Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls at times, but I felt Steen’s overall performance (and the writing and directing ) strongly recallsJohn Cassavetes’ Opening Night. In that 1977 film, Gena Rowlands plays, well, an insecure, middle-aged alcoholic stage actress, who is starring in a play that mirrors her real life angst. And just like the late, great Rowlands, Steen is a force of nature; a joy to watch. She is fearless, compassionate and 100% convincing. After all…she is an actress. (Full review)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – So many films passing themselves off as “sci-fi” these days are needlessly loud and jarringly flash-cut. Not this one. Which is to say that Blade Runner 2049 is leisurely paced. The story is not as deep or complex as the film makers want you to think. The narrative is essentially a 90 minute script (by original Blade Runner co-screenwriter Hampton Fancher and Michael Green), stretched to a 164-minute run time.
So why is it on my list? Well, for one thing, the “language” of film being two-fold (aural and visual), the visual language of Blade Runner 2049 is mesmerizing and immersive. I imagine the most burning question you have about Denis Villeneuve’s film is: “Are the ‘big’ questions that were left dangling at the end of Ridley Scott’s 1982 original answered?” Don’t ask me. I just do eyes. You may not find the answers you seek, but you may find yourself still thinking about this film long after the credits roll. Full review
Certified Copy (2010) – Just when you’re being lulled into thinking this is going to be one of those brainy, talky, yet pleasantly diverting romantic romps where you and your date can amuse yourselves by placing bets on “will they or won’t they-that is, if they can both shut up long enough to get down to business before the credits roll” propositions, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami throws you a curve-ball.
Then again, maybe this film isn’t so much about “thinking”, as it is about “perceiving”. Because if it’s true that a “film” is merely (if I may quote Orson Welles) “a ribbon of dreams”-then Certified Copy, like any true work of art, is simply what you perceive it to be-nothing more, nothing less. Even if it leaves you scratching your head, you get to revel in the luminosity of Juliette Binoche’s amazing performance; there’s pure poetry in every glance, every gesture. (Full review)
Computer Chess (2013) – The most original sci-fi film of 2013 proved you don’t need a $300 million budget and 3-D technology to blow people’s minds. For his retro 80s-style mockumentary, Andrew Bujalski finds verisimilitude via a vintage B&W video camera (which makes it seem as if you’re watching events unfold on a slightly fuzzy closed-circuit TV), and “documents” a tournament where nerdy computer chess programmers from all over North America assemble once a year to match algorithmic prowess. Not unlike a Christopher Guest satire, Bujalski throws idiosyncratic characters into a jar, and then steps back to watch. Just when you think you’ve got the film sussed as a gentle satirical jab at computer geek culture, things get weird…then weirder. Dig that final shot! (Full review)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) – In the interest of upholding my credo to be forthright with my readers (all three of you), I will confess that, with the exception of his engaging 1996 directing debut, Bottle Rocket, and the fitfully amusing Rushmore, I have been somewhat immune to the charms of writer-director Wes Anderson. To me, “a Wes Anderson film” is the cinematic equivalent to Wonder Bread…bland product, whimsically wrapped.
At the risk of making your head explode, I now have a second confession. I kind of enjoyed The Grand Budapest Hotel. I can’t adequately explain what happened. The film is not dissimilar to Anderson’s previous work; in that it is akin to a live action cartoon, drenched in whimsy, expressed in bold primary colors, populated by quirky characters (who would never exist outside of the strange Andersonian universe they live in) caught up in a quirky narrative with quirky twists and turns (I believe the operative word here, is “quirky”). So why did I like it? I cannot really say. My conundrum (if I may paraphrase one of my favorite lines from The Producers) would be this: “Where did he go so right?” (Full review)
The Guilty (2018) – Essentially a chamber piece set in a police station call center, this 2018 thriller is a “one night in the life of…” character study of a Danish cop (Jakob Cedergren) who has been busted down to emergency dispatcher. Demonstratively glum about pulling administrative duties, the tightly wound officer resigns himself to another dull shift manning the phones.
However, if he was hoping for something exciting to break the monotony, he’s about to fulfill the old adage “be careful what you wish for” once he takes a call from a frantic woman who has been kidnapped. Before he gets enough details to pinpoint her location, she hangs up. As he’s no longer authorized to respond in person, he resolves to redeem himself with his superiors by MacGyvering a way to save her as he races a ticking clock.
Considering the “action” is limited to the confines of a police station and largely dependent on a leading man who must find 101 interesting ways to emote while yakking on a phone for 80 minutes, writer-director Gustav Möller and his star perform nothing short of a minor miracle turning this scenario into anything but another dull night at the movies. Packed with nail-biting tension, Rashomon-style twists, and bereft of explosions, CGI effects or elaborate stunts, this terrific thriller renews your faith in the power of a story well-told. I haven’t seen the 2021 U.S. remake…but I don’t see how you could improve on perfection. (Full review)
Happy Go Lucky (2008) – The lead character in British director Mike Leigh’s dramedy appears to exist in a perpetually cheerful state of being. Her name is Poppy, and her improbably infectious giddiness is brought to life in an amazing performance by Sally Hawkins. Poppy is a single and carefree 30 year old primary school teacher. She breezes around London on her bicycle, exuding “young, colorful and kooky” like Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl. She is nothing, if not perky. Some might say she is insufferably perky, but all she really wants is for everybody else to be happy, too.
Now, before you think this is heading in the direction of a whimsical fable, a la Amelie, you have to remember, this is Mike Leigh, and he generally doesn’t do “whimsical”. Through a string of compassionate, astutely observed and beautifully acted films about contemporary British life (High Hopes, Life is Sweet, Career Girls, Naked and Secrets and Lies) Leigh has proven himself a fearless storyteller when it comes to plumbing the well of real, raw human emotion. This “Leigh-ness” comes into play with the introduction of a character that will test the limits of Poppy’s sunny optimism and faith in humanity.
When all is said and done, I venture to say that Leigh is actually making a somewhat revolutionary political statement for this cynical, post-ironic age of rampant smugness and self-absorption; suggesting that Poppy’s brand of bubbly, unflagging enthusiasm for wishing nothing but happiness unto others defines not just the root of true compassion, but could be the antidote to societal ills like xenophobia, child abuse and homelessness. See it and decide for yourself. (Full review)
In the Loop (2009) – Political satire is not dead; it’s just been sort of resting …at least since Wag the Dog sped in and out of theaters in 1997. Armando Iannucci and co-writers Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Ian Martin and Tony Roche (much of the team responsible for the BBC series The Thick of It) mined the headlines and produced a nugget of satirical gold with In the Loop, recalling the days of Terry Southern and Paddy Chayefsky, whose sharp, barb-tongued screenplays ripped the body politic with savage aplomb.The filmmakers take aim at multiple targets, and hit the bull’s eye nearly every time with creatively honed insults delivered in deliciously profane pentameter by all members of a fine cast that includes Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, David Rasche, Mimi Kennedy, and James Gandolfini. (Full review)
The Irishman (2019) – If I didn’t know better, I’d wager Martin Scorsese’s epic crime drama was partially intended to be a black comedy. That’s because I thought a lot of it was so funny. “Funny” how? It’s funny, y’know, the …the story. OK, the story isn’t “ha-ha” funny; there’s all these mob guys, and there’s a lot of stealing and extorting and shooting and garroting. It’s just, y’know, it’s … the way Scorsese tells the story and everything.
I know this sounds weird, but there’s something oddly reassuring about tucking into a Scorsese film that features some of the most seasoned veterans of his “mob movie repertory” like Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel; akin to putting on your most well-worn pair of comfy slippers. And with the addition of Al Pacino …fuhgeddaboudit! (Full review)
Killer Joe (2012) – This is a blackly funny and deliriously nasty piece of work from veteran director William Friedkin. Jim Thompson meets Sam Shepherd (with a whiff of Tennessee Williams) in this dysfunctional trailer trash-strewn tale of avarice, perversion and murder-for-hire, adapted for the screen by Tracy Letts from his own play.
While the noir tropes in the narrative holds few surprises, the squeamish are forewarned that, even at 76, the late Friedkin still had a formidable ability to startle unsuspecting viewers; proving you’re never too old to earn an NC-17 rating. How startling? The real litmus test occurs during the film’s climactic scene, which is so Grand Guignol that (depending on your sense of humor) you’ll either cringe and cover your eyes…or laugh yourself sick. (Full review)
Love and Mercy (2014) – Paul Dano’s Oscar-worthy performance in this film as the 1960s era Brian Wilson is a revelation, capturing the duality of a troubled genius/sweet man-child to a tee. If this were a conventional biopic, this would be “good enough” as is. But director Bill Pohlad (and screenwriters Oren Moverman and Michael A. Lerner) make this one go to “11”, by interpolating Brian’s peak period with his bleak period…the Dr. Eugene Landy years (early 80s through the early 90s). This “version” of Brian is played by John Cusack, who has rarely been better; this is a real comeback performance for him. There are no bad performances in this film, down to the smallest parts. I usually try to avoid hyperbole, but I’ll say it: This is one of the best rock’n’roll biopics I’ve seen in years. (Full review)
Man on Wire (2008) – Late in the summer of 1974, a diminutive Frenchman named Philippe Petit took a casual morning stroll across a ¾” steel cable, stretched between the two towers of the then-unfinished World Trade Center. On the surface, this may appear to be a straightforward documentary about this eccentric high wire artist who was either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid. In actuality, it is one of the best suspense/heist movies of the decade, although no guns are drawn and nothing gets stolen. It is also very romantic, although it is not a traditional love story. Like Petit’s sky-high walk itself, James Marsh’s film is ultimately an act of pure aesthetic grace, and deeply profound. (Full review)
The Master (2012) – As Inspector Clouseau once ruminated, “Well you know, there are leaders…and there are followers.” At its most rudimentary level, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is a two-character study about a leader and a follower (and metaphorically, all leaders and followers). It’s also a story about a complex surrogate father-son relationship (a recurring theme in the director’s oeuvre). And yes, there are some who feel the film is a thinly disguised take-down of Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. I found it to be a thought-provoking and startlingly original examination of why human beings in general are so prone to kowtow to a burning bush, or an emperor with no clothes; a film that begs repeated viewings. One thing’s for sure- the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix deliver a pair of knockout performances. Like all of Anderson’s films, it’s audacious, sometimes baffling, but never dull. (Full review)
Moonage Daydream (2022) – David Bowie invented the idea of “re-invention”. It’s also possible that he invented a working time machine because he was always ahead of the curve (or leading the herd). He was the poster boy for “postmodern”. Space rock? Meet Major Tom. Glam rock? Meet Ziggy Stardust. Doom rock? Meet the Diamond Dog. Neo soul? Meet the Thin White Duke. Electronica? Ich bin ein Berliner. New Romantic? We all know Major Tom’s a junkie…
Of all his personas, “David Jones” is the most enigmatic; perhaps, as suggested in Brett Morgen’s trippy film, even to Bowie himself. More On the Road than on the records, Morgen’s kaleidoscopic thesis is a globe-trotting odyssey of an artist in search of himself. This is anything but a traditional, linear biography. Morgen doesn’t tell you everything about Bowie’s life, he simply shows you. Even if David Jones remains elusive as credits roll, the journey itself is absorbing and ultimately moving. Think of it as theKoyaanisqatsiof rock docs. (Full review)
Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always (2020) – Writer-director Eliza Hittman’s timely drama centers on 17-year old Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) , a young woman in a quandary over an unwanted pregnancy who has only one real confidant; her cousin, BFF and schoolmate Skylar (Talia Ryder). They both work part-time as grocery clerks in rural Pennsylvania (a state where the parent of a minor must consent before an abortion is provided). After a decidedly unhelpful visit to her local “crisis pregnancy center” and a harrowing failed attempt to self-induce an abortion, Autumn and Skylar scrape together funds and hop a bus to New York City.
Hittman really gets inside the heads of her two main characters; helped immensely by wonderful, naturalistic performances from Flanigan and Ryder. Hittman has made a film that is quietly observant, compassionate, and non-judgmental. She does not proselytize one way or the other about the ever-thorny right-to-life debate. This is not an allegory in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale, because it doesn’t have to be; it is a straightforward and realistic story of one young woman’s personal journey. The reason it works so well on a personal level is because of its universality; it could easily be any young woman’s story in the here and now.(Full review)
No Country for Old Men (2007) – The bodies pile up faster than you can say Blood Simple in Joel and Ethan Coen’s masterfully constructed 2007 neo-noir (which earned them a shared Best Director trophy). The brothers’ Oscar-winning screenplay (adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel) is rich in characterization and thankfully devoid of the self-conscious quirkiness that has left some of their latter-day films teetering on self-parody.
The story is set among the sagebrush and desert heat of the Tex-Mex border, where the deer and the antelope play. One day, good ol’ boy Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) is shootin’ at some food (the playful antelope) when he encounters a grievously wounded pit bull. The blood trail leads to discovery of the aftermath of a shootout. As this is Coen country…that twisty trail does lead to a twisty tale.
Tommy Lee Jones gives a wonderful low-key performance as an old-school, Gary Cooper-ish lawman who (you guessed it) comes from a long line of lawmen. Jones’ face is a craggy, world-weary road map of someone who has reluctantly borne witness to every inhumanity man is capable of, and is counting down the days to imminent retirement (‘cos it’s becoming no country for old men…).
The cast is outstanding. Javier Bardem picked up a Best Supporting Actor statue for his turn as a psychotic hit man. His performance is understated, yet menacing, made all the more unsettling by his Peter Tork haircut. Kelly McDonald and Woody Harrelson are standouts as well. Curiously, Roger Deakins wasn’t nominated for his cinematography, but his work on this film ranks among his best. (Full review)
The Old Oak (2024) – The bookend of a triptych of working-class dramas set in Northeast England (preceded by I, Daniel Blake in 2016 and Sorry We Missed You! in 2019), The Old Oak marks 87-year-old director Ken Loach’s 28th film.
The story (scripted by Paul Laverty) is set in an economically depressed “pit town” on the Northeast coast of England in 2016 (which was 2 years into the implementation of the UK’s Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme), and centers on TJ (Dave Turner), a former labor organizer barely making ends meet as owner and proprietor of “The Old Oak” pub.
One day, a busload of Syrian refugees appears and disembarks in the center of town. Unfortunately, not all the locals appear willing to roll out the welcome wagon. When xenophobic catcalling escalates into a scuffle that results in a young Syrian woman’s camera getting damaged, TJ intervenes and defuses the situation.
What ensues is rife with Loach’s trademarks; not the least of which is giving his cast plenty of room to breathe. The ensemble (which ranges from first-time film actors to veteran players) delivers uniformly naturalistic performances. Hovering somewhere between Do the Right Thing and Ikuru, The Old Oak is raw, uncompromising, and genuinely moving (rare at the multiplex nowadays), with an uplifting message of hope and reconciliation. If this is indeed its director’s swan song-what a lovely, compassionate note to go out on. (Full review)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) – “Surely (you’re thinking), a film involving the Manson Family and directed by Quentin Tarantino must feature a cathartic orgy of blood and viscera…amirite?” Sir or madam, all I can tell you is that I am unaware of any such activity or operation… nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did in fact exist, sir or madam. What I am prepared to share is this: Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have rarely been better, Margot Robbie is radiant and angelic as Sharon Tate, and 9-year-old moppet Julia Butters nearly steals the film. Los Angeles gives a fabulous and convincing performance as 1969 Los Angeles. Oh, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is now my favorite “grown-up” Quentin Tarantino film (after Jackie Brown). (Full review)
Rampart (2011) – In a published interview, hard-boiled scribe James Ellroy once said of his (typical) protagonists “…I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.” Later in the interview, Ellroy confided that he “…would like to provide ambiguous responses in my readers.” If those were his primary intentions in the screenplay that drives Oren Moverman’s gripping and unsettling 2011 film (co-written with the director), I would say that he has succeeded mightily on both counts.
If you’re seeking car chases, shootouts and a neatly wrapped ending tied with a bow-look elsewhere. Not unlike one of those classic 1970s character studies, this film just sort of…starts, shit happens, and then it sort of…stops. But don’t let that put you off-it’s what’s inside this sandwich that matters, namely the fearless and outstanding performance from a gaunt and haunted Woody Harrelson, so good here as a bad, bad, bad, bad L.A. cop. (Full review)
Samsara (2011) – Whether you see Ron Fricke’s film as a deep treatise on the cyclic nature of the Omniverse, or merely as an assemblage of pretty pictures, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. The man who gave us the similar cinematic tone poems Chronos and Baraka drops a clue early on in his latest film, as we observe a group of Buddhist monks painstakingly creating a sand mandala (it must take days). At the very end of the film, we revisit the artists, who now sit in silent contemplation of their lovely creation. This (literal) Moment of Zen turns out to be the preface to the monks’ next project-the ritualistic de-construction of the painting (which I assume must take an equal amount of time). Yes, it is a very simple metaphor for the transitory nature of beauty, life, the universe and everything. But, as they say, there’s beauty in simplicity. (Full review)
Skyfall (2012) – Assembled with great intelligence and verve by American Beauty director Sam Mendes, this tough, spare and relatively gadget-free 2012 Bond caper harkens back to the gritty, straightforward approach of FromRussia with Love (the best of the early films).
That being said, Mendes hasn’t forgotten his obligation to fulfill the franchise’s tradition of delivering a slam-bang, pull out all the stops opening sequence, which I daresay outdoes all previous. Interestingly, the film’s narrative owes more to Howard Hawks than it does to Ian Fleming; I gleaned a healthy infusion of Rio Bravo in Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan’s screenplay.
Star Daniel Craig finally settled comfortably into the character with this entry; his Bond feels a little more “lived in” than in the previous installments, where he was a little stiff and unsure about where he should be at times.
This is one of the most beautifully photographed Bond films in recent memory, thanks to DP Roger Deakins (one particularly memorable fight scene, staged in a darkened high rise suite and silhouetted against the backdrop of Shanghai’s myriad neon lights, approaches high art). Bond geeks will be pleased; and anyone up for pure popcorn escapism will not be disappointed. Any way you look at it, this is a terrific entertainment. (Full review)
Weathering With You (2020) – It was a marvelously gloomy, stormy Sunday afternoon in late January of 2020 when I ventured out to see Japanese anime master Makato Shinkai’s newest film. Little did I suspect that it would come to hold such a special place in my memory…for reasons outside of the film itself. I’ll admit I had some problems with the narrative, which may bring into question why it’s in my top 25 . That said, I concluded my review thusly:
Still, there’s a lot to like about “Weathering With You”, especially in the visual department. The Tokyo city-scapes are breathtakingly done; overall the animation is state-of-the-art. I could see it again. Besides, there are worse ways to while away a rainy Seattle afternoon.
I have since seen it again, twice (I bought the Blu-ray). Like many of Shinkai’s films, it improves with subsequent viewings. Besides, there’s no law against modifying your initial impression of a movie. That’s my modified opinion, and I’m sticking to it. (Full review)
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2018) – In his affable portrait of the publicly sweet, gentle, and compassionate TV host Fred Rogers, director Morgan Neville serves up a mélange of archival footage and present-day comments by friends, family, and colleagues to reveal (wait for it) a privately sweet, gentle, compassionate man. In other words, don’t expect revelations about drunken rages, aberrant behavior, or rap sheets (sorry to disappoint anyone who feels life’s greatest pleasure is speaking ill of the dead).
That is not to deny that Rogers did have a few…eccentricities; some are mentioned, others implied. The bulk of the film focuses on the long-running PBS series, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, which debuted in 1968. With apologies to Howard Beale, I don’t have to tell you things are bad. I think this documentary may be what the doctor ordered, as a reminder people like Fred Rogers once strode the Earth (and hopefully still do). I wasn’t one of your kids, Mr. Rogers, but (pardon my French) we sure as shit could use you now. (Full review)
JP Morgan warned the US government about more than $1bn in transactions linked to Jeffrey Epstein that were possibly related to reports of human trafficking, new documents confirm.
The largest bank in the US filed a suspicious activity report (SAR) in 2019, just weeks after Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell, about transactions linked to the paedophile financier and prominent business figures. It also flagged wire transfers made by Epstein to Russian banks.
JP Morgan’s report said it had flagged about 4,700 transactions, totalling more than $1bn, that were potentially related to reports of human trafficking involving Epstein, the New York Times reported. The report, filed during the last Trump administration, also flagged sensitivities around Epstein’s “relationships with two U.S. presidents”.
The report was included in a release of previously sealed court records that were made public on Thursday after requests from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The documents included other SARs that JPMorgan filed in the years before Epstein’s 2019 arrest about large cash withdrawals, the New York Times reported.
The 2019 report did not detail the nature of the transactions or why they were suspicious. But it identified transactions with Leon Black, the co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management who left the company in 2021; the hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin; the lawyer Alan Dershowitz; and trusts controlled by the retail tycoon Leslie Wexner.
The report identified $65m of wire transfers from the mid-2000s that appeared to move between multiple banks linked to Wexner’s trusts but it did not provide details about the transactions involving Black, Dubin or Dershowitz.
None of the individuals named in the report have been charged with crimes in relation to Epstein.
The money laundering probe adds a new layer to the narrative about how the government conducted its investigation into the notorious sex abuser. It also raises questions about what evidence prosecutors may have gathered, long before the public began demanding a full accounting of his case. If that investigation had continued, prosecutors may have been able to identify other individuals and institutions that facilitated his sex-trafficking operation, said Stefan Cassella, the former deputy chief of the Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section. They might also have recovered more restitution for his victims, Casella said.
The money laundering investigation was opened in February 2007, according to a former law enforcement official familiar with the case who requested anonymity because of the sensitivities surrounding Epstein. At around the same time, prosecutors focused on a pattern of transactions in which Epstein directed some of his employees to withdraw large amounts of cash to disburse to women around the world he was suspected of having victimized. That was used as the basis for a potential charge of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, the former law enforcement official said.
The lead prosecutor on the case, former Assistant US Attorney Marie Villafaña, requested that a grand jury issue subpoenas for “every financial transaction conducted by Epstein and his six businesses” dating to 2003, the emails show. Target letters were sent to three of his assistants alerting them that Epstein was under investigation for money laundering and other financial crimes. Villafaña also dispatched two agents to the houses of two secretaries.
The previously undisclosed details about the existence of a money laundering investigation puts a spotlight on Alex Acosta, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who signed off on Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement.
Last month, Acosta was interviewed by lawmakers from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the Epstein case. He was peppered with questions by Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury about whether his office investigated Epstein for “potential financial crimes.” Acosta said, “I don’t recall a financial aspect,” according to a transcript of his interview the committee released this month. “We were focused on the inappropriate acts that took place in Palm Beach.”
The emails and documents obtained by Bloomberg show that Acosta was copied on correspondence related to the money laundering investigation.
[…]
In May 2007, Villafaña drafted a 53-page indictment and an 82-page prosecution memo, according to a 2020 Justice Department report that examined the integrity of the federal investigation. That report described Villafaña urging her superiors to move swiftly because she believed Epstein was continuing to sexually abuse girls. Instead, the report concluded, she was stonewalled by senior officials at the office who saw her as too aggressive. (The 2020 report does not mention any financial-crime element of the probe.)
The evidence Villafaña collected was serious enough that she wrote in the prosecution memo that Epstein should be charged with money-laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, according to the former law enforcement official. The indictment, a copy of which hasn’t been publicly released, was never filed and remains shrouded in secrecy.
It’s always important to follow the money. Epstein had way more of it than ever made any sense. And while he was certainly sex trafficking to many of his rich friends, there was almost certainly more to it than that.
This is a rich vein that has to be followed up. The Democrats should not let up one bit.
Brian Beutler published what he thinks is the best speech given in recent times by a nation’s leader. It happens to be from French president Emmanuel Macron in Germany:
We are under attack from outside. We are under attack from enemies of democracy. We need to recognize this.… When propagandists from authoritarian regimes attack our public spaces and social networks with disinformation, we are under threat from outside. When authoritarian regimes come to spread their messages, we are threatened from outside. But we would be very naive not to see that from within, we are turning against ourselves….
We have allowed a democratic public space to develop where everyone is hooded and anonymous, where the rule is that you have to insult others if you want to be popular, where you don’t know, in this public space…whether you are dealing with real people or fake people, and where you give equal value to someone who shouts much louder and tells you: ‘This vaccine is not a vaccine. What you are telling me is false and spreads the worst kind of misinformation.’ We live in a public space that looks like this. How can you expect there not to be immense democratic fatigue and people increasingly heading towards nervous breakdowns? I will put it more bluntly. We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies….
Look at the epidemic of mental health issues and eating disorders among our teenagers and young people. It is entirely correlated with the emergence of these social networks. We have allowed public spaces to develop where everything is done to prevent reason, since, ultimately, the order of merit is that emotion is superior to argument and that negative emotion is superior to positive emotion. This is a complete bias towards our democracies going to extremes, towards noise and fury prevailing over reasoned argument, towards music quickly disappearing to make way for shouting, and towards algorithms designed to promote cognitive excitement, overreaction, and the volume of what we like or dislike, again favoring extremes, because at the heart of these models is the monetization of your presence in order to sell it to advertisers.
We did not design our democracies for this. We are a long way from the democratic agora of antiquity. And so, if we Europeans do not wake up and say, ‘We want to take back control of our democracies,’ I can tell you this: within 10 years, all those who are playing on or with this [digital] infrastructure will have won. And we will be a continent, like many others, of conspiracy theorists, extremists, noise and fury. If we believe in democratic order, let us put science and knowledge back at the heart of things, let us put scientific authority back at the heart of things, let us put culture, education and learning back at the heart of things, let us protect our teenagers and young people from these social networks, let us give these social networks rules so that they have, in a way, the same rules as those of the democratic space, meaning that there are no hidden people, meaning that there are no fake accounts creating false excitement. And let us enforce the same rules. When you have a newspaper, you are responsible for what is published in it. When you have a social network, you must be responsible for what is published on it. Otherwise, racism, anti-Semitism and hatred of others will triumph on our continent. We have the means to rebuild a 21st-century democracy. We just need to take that leap. It’s up to us to do it.
He’s not wrong.
Beutler notes that one other leader who has come close and it will surprise you:
The closest contender would be Joe Biden, who echoed Dwight Eisenhower in his own farewell address: “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead…. President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us then about, and I quote, ‘the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power….’ Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.”
Last night Elon Musk was back at Mar-a-lago partying at Trump’s table.
Trump is holding a Great Gatsby/Roaring 20s-themed party at his private club in Palm Beach tonight as he tries to withhold SNAP and health care subsidies from millions of Americans. pic.twitter.com/2hxQKpJLTi
“Don’t let them make you break the law,” read new digital billboards on expressways near U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Doral, Florida, where the U.S. military’s ongoing operations in the Caribbean Sea are being overseen
The billboards were put up in response to the ongoing military strikes ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration, in what the White House and Pentagon have described as a concerted campaign against “narcoterrorists.”
The strikes are illegal and immoral. They aren’t even war crimes because there is no war. They’re just straight up mass murder.
Defense Department officials do not know precisely who they have killed in multiple military strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean that have claimed the lives of at least 57 people, according to Democratic lawmakers who attended a classified House briefing on the issue Thursday.
The meeting with members of the House Armed Services Committee — which comes amid bipartisan requests from members of Congress for more legal justification for the deadly strikes — was conducted by department policy officials but no military lawyers, who were pulled from the briefing shortly before it started.
Lawmakers at the briefing said they were not given an explanation for the change and were left frustrated over the lack of clarity on the justifications for the military actions.
“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to a designated terrorist organization or affiliate,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”
Democrats who attended the briefing said Republicans also pressed the administration officials for more information, which suggests there is some bipartisan momentum for more oversight.
They don’t know who they are murdering and they don’t care. And now we know that they’re killing them on the basis of some “connection” to a “terrorist organization or affiliate.” We have no idea how they define any of that. What’s a connection? What’s an affiliate? And what fucking authority allows them to kill people based on any of this???
I’ve seen the government use the U.S. military to do some heinous things in my time, but this may be the most blatantly illegal without even the fig leaf of a believable rationale.
Politico interviewed an expert on international law who has recently published a book about the efforts to bring war criminal Augusto Pinochet to justice. He explains that as a head of state Pinochet had immunity but was arrested in the UK anyway and their high court ruled in a landmark case that he could be extradited to Spain under a warrant. It was found for the first time that where international crimes are concerned immunity is not absolute.
Anyway:
According to Philippe Sands, who frequently argues before international tribunals, the administration’s actions are “contrary to the basic precepts of international law.” The question, of course, is what that means as a practical matter and whether foreign governments — including the countries whose citizens have been killed in the attacks — might try to do anything about it…
The concern is, of course, that an American president could be said to have been given a greenlight to commit torture, to disappear people, to murder people — even to commit genocide, if it’s on that kind of scale — or other crimes against humanity.
Now I’m not sure that’s what the majority intended to do, but it’s an issue that is going to have to be watched very closely going forward. That’s largely because, in many respects, the U.S. led the world in 1945 in creating this new order. And the concern is, if the U.S. leaves the table, who’s left to pick up the pieces?
[…]
Just to be clear, my own position is that for a serving president, obviously, immunity on criminal process has got to be pretty watertight. And you can imagine that you don’t want frivolous cases brought under criminal process, in relation to a former president or former head of state, but in my view the Supreme Court offered no evidence of such cases.
But I went back to speak to one of the Law Lords — the UK justices who dealt with the Pinochet case — to ask him what he thought about the center of gravity of the reasoning — which seems to be that an American president should not be concerned, in taking important actions, that at some point in the future they might be subject to criminal process.
And David Hope, Lord Hope, told me it was a “ridiculous” argument. I think that captures the views of a lot of people
He says this is indicative of an overall rejection of international law by the United States. (He doesn’t specifically name the American right wing, but that’s who’s doing it.)
What is striking about the Supreme Court judgment is that it seems to be motivated by a similar instinct.
I mean, these are smart and savvy people. They will have known this will be read not just in the United States, but around the world. It’s a way of signaling that this stuff that was done in 1945 at Nuremberg and later in respect to Rwanda and in Yugoslavia — and the emergence of the International Criminal Court and these indictments that take place now — we have grave concerns about them.
We don’t need any laws when we have Emperor Orange Julius Caesar running the world. He will simply tell people to do the right thing and they will. So, case closed.
Obviously, the idea that the Supreme Court of the United States actually seems bought in on that idea is simply stunning. It’s right out of Idiocracy.
He goes on to point out that for the past 80 years the U.N/ charter has been very clear that a military response can only be legal in the case of an armed attack. (And yes, I know that the United States has danced on the head of a pin many times attempting to rationalize their decisions, but this is way beyond any precedent.)
But this is the kicker:
It’s not only that, but once you start saying that entities which basically exist not to destroy the United States, but to make money from the people in the United States — that’s essentially what they’re motivated by — if you start saying that people are combatants, that they are the enemy, that they are warriors who can be destroyed by the use of force, why can’t others make the same argument in relation to other categories of people?
They can make that argument against Americans right here in our own country! It’s exactly what Rodrigo Duterte did in the Philippines ( he is now awaiting trial for that in the Hague) and which Donald Trump complimented him for doing. If anyone can be called an “affiliate” of terrorism by having a connection to a drug cartel in some obscure, undefined way, Trump believes he has the legal right to murder them.
He certainly believes he has the right to murder anyone he chooses around the world on that basis. Why wouldn’t he? As he says every single day”I’m allowed to do it. I’m allowed to do anything I want.”
Sands continues:
I think most reasonable people across the political spectrum have concluded that this is a matter of international law. Using military force to take out drug couriers, drug carriers, narco-traffickers, and so on and so forth is contrary to the basic precepts of international law. Those precepts provide that action is to be governed by criminal law, not the law of armed conflict.
Read the whole thing. It’s obvious as a matter of domestic law, international law and common sense that Trump and his henchmen are murdering people on the high seas and they’re doing it under the presumption that the president is immune from all accountability and his pardon power protects everyone who carries out his murderous orders. They certainly aren’t concerned about international law — and frankly, they aren’t the first. After all, the U.S. has never signed on to the International Criminal Court.
Here’s a pertinent quote that just shows you how low we have sunk:
Chief prosecutor (and U.S. Supreme Court Justice on leave from the court) Robert Jackson:
“There will be no immunity in the Nuremberg tribunal for former leaders, because that is an obsolete relic. And in any event, it’s not what we do in the United States.”
The Nazis were meticulous about their record-keeping. Not so Donald Trump. He famously absconded with hundreds of classified government records and stored them in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. He demolished the East Wing of the White House without so much as a “by your leave” from officials entrusted with caretaking our national historic landmarks. Dotting i’s and crossing t’s is not exactly Trump’s idiom. Neither is professional law enforcement.
Secretary Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and her Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons are nothing like professional law enforcement. From the bad-faith criminal indictment of Democratic officials in Chicago; to the indiscriminate firing of tear gas and pepper bullets into crowds; to the arresting of anyone agents spot with brown skin (including U.S. citizens); to arrest threats against Americans legally monitoring ICE in their neighborhoods; to tricking out masked ICE agents in green camouflage and military tactical gear instead of DHS uniforms; law enforcement is not the point of DHS actions. Nor is obeying the law they purport to uphold. Terrorizing the civilian population is.
ICE disappeared woman from Utah airport—a mother of 4 legally in U.S. with work permit."I have my papers!" she cries out. "Help me please, my papers!"Other travelers just stand by watching agents drag her away—despite the kidnappers not wearing uniforms or ID of any kind.Salt Lake City, Utah
Federal immigration officers are using chemical irritants to disperse protesters in ways that violate American policing norms and are testing the boundaries of use-of-force laws, video footage from Chicago shows, in some cases hitting demonstrators directly with the munitions.
Since September,
… federal officers have thrown chemical agents out of vehicles on city streets, creating a hazard for motorists. They have thrown tear-gas canisters near stores and schools, exposing children, pregnant women and older people to the noxious gas. And on numerous occasions federal officers have fired pepper balls directly at protesters — in one case, striking a pastor in the head.
The use of tear gas has persisted in recent days despite a court order forbidding officers from using chemical agents against demonstrators and journalists unless they pose a safety threat. Last week, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official leading the Chicago operation, was videotaped throwing a tear-gas canister into a crowd. In another incident, immigration officers deployed tear gas as families were walking to a Halloween parade.
The big-numbers-obsessed Donald Trump and white nationalist, deportation tsar Stephen Miller are more interested in sweeping up and out as many warm, brown bodies as possible as quickly as possible. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights be damned. Splitting up families and traumatizing children be damned. Humane treatment be damned. Professional law enforcement norms (and proper vetting and training) be damned.
The through line here is an intimidation campaign being carried out in front of our kids, or even targeting our kids. Maybe you missed it in the crush of other horrific headlines, but earlier this week, after federal authorities released tear gas just before a parade on the city’s Northwest Side, a U.S. district court had to declare to our federal government that children should not be tear-gassed for the crime of showing up to holiday celebrations: “Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, a man who hates Halloween for children but loves to cosplay for work every day, in a hearing Tuesday. “You can’t use riot-control weapons against them,” she continued. “These kids, you can imagine their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday. And it’s going to take a long time for that to come back, if ever.”
This post by David Bier of the Cato Institute grabbed me by the throat this week.
At some point recently, there must have been an order issued to threaten witnesses with arrest for recording DHS activities. There are a number of nearly identical instances of this exact threat that I've seen, delivered in the same way, in just the last month. pic.twitter.com/jxxfihnyDU
The agent makes sure to cite 18 USC 111 not once but twice as intimidation. He’s counting on the woman to not know what it says. That code section requires that an offender must have “forcibly” impeded, intimidated, or interfered with the federal agent. “Forcibly” is the first word in subsection 1. The DOJ’s Criminal Resource Manual on 18 USC 111 emphasizes that “the element of force” or “a threat of force” is “an essential element of the crime.” Or there is no crime. The agents above are making an empty threat to get her to stop filming them.
Here’s another example.
DHS agent tells a woman tailing them to stop impeding their operations or she will be arrested. pic.twitter.com/ZY6exw0LQu
These are not uniformed law enforcement professionals as much as unqualified, undertrained administration thugs preparing Americans for seeing troops in the street as soon as Trump can concoct a semi-plausible excuse for invoking the Insurrection Act and putting active duty troops in the streets. (See update below.)
When someone suggests that this is what Americans voted for last November, show them these.
THIS is what republicans have done to our peaceful Illinois communities (taken this morning in River Forest IL)!! WHY exactly are they doing this ? Happy Halloween everyone – be safe! #FridayVibespic.twitter.com/VNF1XGwpek
ICE jumps out of car while still in motion—points gun directly at 2 unarmed women volunteers. Agent pulls gun from his pants front belt loop—not a government issued holster. This particular agent is well known to put tape over his license plate numbers to avoid detection.
Here’s a different angle of the video from Evanston of a federal agent hitting a man on the ground shared with the Tribune from a different source pic.twitter.com/QyuMtlkIHu
By far the most disturbing ICE video I’ve seen from Evanston, IL today.
An ICE agent points his gun at unarmed citizens. Twice.
Then, he goes around the SUV, drops to his knees, and presses his full weight onto a man’s back. Moments later, that same man’s head is beaten into… pic.twitter.com/2TkiaP3R48
ICE detain mother taking daughter to elementary school—one agent alone dressed in plain clothes."The man had no uniform and didn't show ID," said family. "Of course she tried to run away from being kidnapped."Surveillance cameras caught the violent arrest in Houston, Texas.
I've given my new Senator a lot of shit on here. But I don't think anyone with power has laid out the stakes of what we're facing as clearly as she does right here. And if she's saying this, it's because she feels she must.
