WAR AND PEACE: President Donald Trump’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and potential talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine are in delicate territory as news out of both regions threatens to derail peace progress.
On the ground in Israel: VP JD Vance arrived in Tel Aviv to meet with Israeli officials today as the administration works to ease tensions after Israel and Hamas accused each other of breaking the terms of the truce following a weekend of violence. But Vance said that this weekend’s incidents were not the reason for his visit: “I wanted to just see how things are going,” he said, per NYT’s Tyler Pager.
Amid growing White House concern that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu might be the one to end the deal, Vance embarked on a day of what one U.S. official described to CNN as “Bibisitting.” The VP worked to downplay fears of a ceasefire collapse in his visit.
“What we’ve seen the past week gives me great optimism the ceasefire is going to hold,” Vance said at a news conference. He said he feels “very optimistic,” though he ceded: “Can I say with 100% certainty that it’s going to work? No.”
Vance also warned that a truce between both Hamas and Israel would take a “very, very long time,” urging Israel to extend a “little bit of patience” with Hamas’ pace of returning hostages’ remains, per AP’s Seung Min Kim. As for Hamas laying its weapons down, Vance declined to state a firm timeline: “I don’t think it’s actually advisable to say this has to be done in a week.” Special envoy Steve Witkoff reiterated Vance’s optimism, adding that progress is “exceeding where we thought we would be at this time.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser Jared Kushner told reporters that U.S. and allied countries may begin the reconstruction of Gaza in the parts of the war-torn enclave currently held by Israeli forces. Though Kushner said plans are still in flux, he reiterated that “no reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls,” adding that reconstruction “would give the Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live,” per NYT.
Trump weighs in: “Numerous of our NOW GREAT ALLIES in the Middle East, and areas surrounding the Middle East, have explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity, at my request, to go into GAZA with a heavy force and ‘straighten our Hamas’ if Hamas continues to act badly, in violation of their agreement with us,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post today. “There is still hope that Hamas will do what is right. If they do not, an end to Hamas will be FAST, FURIOUS, & BRUTAL!”
Yeah I’m sure other countries are more than anxious to get militarily involved in this. And Kush doesn’t seem to understand that Trump’s still wanting to put the Palestinians in trailer parks in the Sahara. They should probably get on the same page. (Either that or Grandpa’s glitching too and only remembering his brilliant ethnic cleansing brainstorm.)
Oh, and whatever “progress” Trump was expecting on Ukraine is falling apart too. Rubio and Lavrov spoke on the phone and the upshot was that nobody’s meeting any time soon.
I think Trump’s going to need to find another war or two to “solve” to keep his numbers up. These two aren’t doing what he wants them to do. Maybe he could just stop blowing up fishermen in the Caribbean.
Lol. Mike Johnson actually found a way to blame the left for a pardoned January 6th insurrectionist being arrested for threatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries.
Johnson on pardoned Capitol rioter charged for making threats towards Hakeem Jeffries: I will tell you this, the violence on the left is far more prevalent than the violence on the right.
The rhetoric you saw on display Saturday, we highlighted yesterday, plays into this.… pic.twitter.com/Gw7Mwh2fDQ
I will tell you this, the violence on the left is far more prevalent than the violence on the right. The rhetoric you saw on display Saturday, we highlighted yesterday, plays into this. There are people that get triggered—deranged people in society when they hear elected officials participating in a rally that was paid for by Soros and sponsored by communists.
So the presumption here is that the deranged person saw Jeffries at the rally and decided to kill him because the protest was paid for by Soros and sponsored by Communists? Or was it the inflatable frogs?
Whatever. It’s all so triggering for the poor MAGA cultists.
Benny Johnson is one of the right wing influencers who was revealed to have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Kremlin. Naturally that makes him an insider in the Trump White House. (He frequently travels with the president and Kristi Noem.)
And, I personally believe that it is the most entertaining thing that has happened over the past nine months, that those communists who accused Donald Trump of crimes are guilty of the crimes in which they are accusing Donald Trump. It is the iron law of wokeism. It is actually part of Saul Alinsky’s plan. It is actually part of the Communist Manifesto. Every Bolshevik that has ever lived practiced this. We’re against the bourgeois because they’re gonna genocide us, and then the Bolsheviks go on to genocide half the population. Right? Like, we’re against the capitalists because they’re here to kill you, and then the communist will go and kill half the population. Right? Mao Zedong kills 60 million people. They will accuse you of the crimes of which they are guilty. Now we found this out with Letitia James. Leticia James accused Donald Trump of real estate mortgage crimes, and it turns out that she has now been caught cold committing those exact same crimes, but far worse than Donald Trump ever committed them. She’s been indicted for that. James Comey went after General Flynn, Donald Trump for lying to Congress, for lying under oath, for lying to the federal government and FBI. James Comey indicted for that exact same thing.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Brennan and James Clapper, they’re in very hot water because of what they did launching the Russia collusion hoax, raiding Donald Trump’s house and so on and so forth. It turns out that they’ve hoaxed themselves directly into some real legal trouble. And we hear that that’s going to be heating up quite quickly. Interesting little birdies tell us this.
The last I heard former presidents have immunity but maybe it really only applied to Republicans. I’m sure the Court can find a rationale for that.
The other two? Obviously, fair game. Lock her up and lock him up too.
Seriously, I very much doubt they are going after Obama and Clinton. That’s click bait. But Clapper? Yeah, no doubt.
Since Sept. 1, the United States has been blowing up boats in the Caribbean Sea and killing people on board with apparent impunity. The current known death toll stands at 32. According to President Donald Trump, the dead — and those the Navy continues to target — are Venezuelan “unlawful combatants” and “narco-terrorist” members of the Tren de Aragua gang and are alleged to be transporting drugs bound for America. This amounts to war on drug cartels, Trump has said, allowing the U.S. to act in self-defense.
As Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir has written, this “phony war” is indicative of the twisted pathology of Trump’s worldview. Reporting over the last week has made it clear: The danger of this situation going sideways becomes greater every day. And considering America’s history in the region, such an outcome almost seems pre-ordained.
Last week, Adm. Alvin Holsey, who heads the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees operations in Central and South America, resigned less than one year into his three-year term. Although the Pentagon did not give a reason for his departure, the New York Times reported that he had raised concerns about the boat attacks, as well as the larger drug counter-mission.
Holsey’s is a high-ranking resignation, but he is not the first to resign or be forced out over the strikes against Venezuelan boats. On Oct. 15, CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s destruction of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, with “multiple current and former JAGs telling CNN that the strikes do not appear lawful.” Doubts have also been raised within the defense department’s Office of General Counsel. The Pentagon has denied these reports, saying there is unanimous agreement that the strikes are lawful.
They are not. As Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said on “Meet The Press” on Sunday, “[W]hen you kill someone, if you’re not in a declared war, you really need to know someone’s name at least. You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence. So all of these people have been blown up without any evidence of a crime.”
The president, though, does not seem to feel any moral obligation — or pressure — to produce any evidence, and over the weekend he inadvertently revealed the vacuity of the administration’s arguments. “It was my greatest honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” he said in a social media post. While two were killed, Trump announced that the “two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution.”
Can we see the problem here? He killed two people because they were allegedly unlawful combatant terrorists with whom we are at war. But then he sent their two compatriots back to their home countries for prosecution? How does that make any sense?
On Saturday night, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, went public with an accusation that in September, the U.S. murdered an innocent Colombian fisherman whose boat was in distress. Trump responded that Petro is an “illegal drug dealer” with “a fresh mouth toward America.” He announced that he would immediately halt all counter-narcotics aid payments to Colombia — which seems counterproductive — and, needless to say, he also vowed to raise tariffs.
On Sunday, Hegseth announced yet another boat strike. This time, its three passengers were alleged to be members of yet another gang — the Colombian Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), which has long been a designated foreign terrorist organization. The timing certainly suggests the strike could be another of Trump’s patented paybacks, this time to the Colombian president with the “fresh mouth.” It appears that America has escalated its military mission to include yet another South American nation.
If all of this weren’t enough, last week Trump declared that he had approved covert operations in Venezuela, which certainly challenges the meaning of the word covert. The CIA has a long and checkered history in the region over many years, but I don’t think any president has been dim enough to announce it in advance. American interference in Latin American affairs has almost always led to total disaster. It’s hard to imagine that this crazy scheme won’t end up being the worst of all.
Perhaps the most famous American fiasco in the region was the Bay of Pigs. Conceived under President Dwight Eisenhower and greenlit in the early months of President John F. Kennedy’s administration, the aim was to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. But it was a debacle of epic proportions and massive embarrassment for the U.S. Castro remained in power until 2008.
But the most grotesque of U.S. interference in the region was the government’s complicity in the so-called “dirty wars” of Argentina and Chile in the 1970s. Under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Secretary of State (and Nobel Peace Prize laureate) Henry Kissinger approved the repression of Argentina’s left-wing under the military junta that had overthrown the democratically elected government. At least 10,000 people were disappeared, murdered and tortured. In Chile, the U.S. backed a coup of the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. The result was the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose spy master brought together all the right-wing governments in the region — including Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay — in support of Operation Condor, a campaign of repression against leftist movements and assassinations of individuals throughout the region.
But the apparent template for Trump’s obsession with Venezuela was America’s invasion of Panama in 1989, which removed dictator Manual Noriega from power. According to official numbers, 514 Panamanian soldiers and civilians were killed in the invasion. Local tallies, though, placed the number “close to 1,000. Noriega was eventually arrested and brought to the U.S., where he was convicted on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. Since Noriega was actually a CIA asset, one might have thought the government could have removed him from power without all the fireworks. He was released to France in 2010.
Even “Plan Colombia,” which was ostensibly a human rights oriented strategy conceived in the 1990s under the Clinton administration, had mixed results. Under this program, the U.S. provided economic aid to the country while strengthening the rule of law and supplying military equipment to fight drug cartels. Plan Colombia helped the economy and reduced violence overall, but it also displaced large numbers of people, and the drug eradication program was an environmental disaster.
Presidential administrations have meddled in Latin America and South America for decades. While Trump is clownishly crude in his approach, he certainly isn’t the first president to use a “splendid little war” to prove U.S. dominance. And like all those before him, he’s almost certainly going to create a whole lot of human misery in the process.
When they started singing “This Land Is Your Land,” I lost it.
People for the American Way and the Dolores Huerta Foundation for Community Organizing released a short ad on Monday that urges “Americans to reject the cruelty and denial of due process of the federal ICE raids—and to meet this moment with creative, peaceful non-cooperation.”
This fictionalized account offers an aspirational example of community strength and solidarity, reminding us how, throughout history, vulnerable groups have been indiscriminately rounded up while others stood by in silence.
In “The People, United,” survivors of the Holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II intervene as an ICE agent zip-ties the hands of a grandmother who has lived in the U.S. for forty years. Through visceral narrative storytelling, the film delivers a clear message: we must not repeat the painful mistakes of the past.
Yeah, Donald Trump’s sure to threaten their nonprofit status.
“In our news feeds, we have seen disturbing scenes of ICE agents treating even law-abiding immigrants and their supporters with callous disregard for their humanity and basic civil rights,” said Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way Foundation. “This short narrative film offers an inspiring vision—one where justice prevails because enough of us remember our history and have the courage to show up for our neighbors.”
Share it widely, especially in the land of MAGA where the shadows lie.
We are only beginning to see the back end of No Kings 2. Already the movement is generating songs and videos to meet the moment. No Woody Guthries out there yet, but one may hit.
Here are a couple tunes friends have run across.
This one’s AI, but kinda fun.
There’s a cultural shift coming. I can almost feel it.
Donald Trump has asked MAGA acolytes in red states to redraw congressional district maps mid-decade to help fend off losing control of the U.S. House in 2026.
Democrats from around North Carolina are headed in busses to Raleigh this morning. They mean to protest the Republican effort to wring another Republican congressional seat from the state’s current 10R-4D delegation. The new map aims to make NC-1, an eastern district now held by Rep. Don Davis, more winnable by a Republican without threatening Republican Rep. Greg Murphy next door in NC-03. Trump is pleased.
Donald Trump won North Carolina’s electoral votes in 2024 by 50.9% to 47.7% for Kamala Harris. NC-3 went uncontested by Democrats last year. Still, Democrats won 45.4% of the statewide congressional vote. Republicans won 54.6% but garnered 71.4% of seats. They’re gunning for 78.6% with the new map.
North Carolina has had multiple congressional maps since 2020. A court-ordered map redraw to restore a fair balance yielded a split of 7D-7R after the 2022 midterms. Then decisions by SCOTUS and a newly Republican state Supreme Court landed us where we were last November: 10R-4D.
The newest map (redrawn in a back room somewhere) advanced in the legislature on Monday. Democracy Docket reports:
President Donald Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 election spread to another GOP-controlled state Monday as North Carolina lawmakers advanced a gerrymandered map, clearing the way for a floor vote.
Ahead of the vote, North Carolina voters were escorted out of the hearing after reportedly chanting: “Racist maps make racist reps.”
The Senate Elections Committee approved a new map released last week by state legislative leaders — the first official legislative approval in a multi-step process that is expected to give North Carolina Republicans another seat in Congress. The approval came as protesters accused Republican lawmakers of racism; the changes are expected to oust one of the state’s three Black members of Congress, by carving up an area of eastern North Carolina with a large Black population.
Chip Roy: "The truth is the marxist, radicals, and Islamists the Democratic Party promoted this weekend, they cannot handle the truth. The truth is that there is a king and that king is Jesus. And the president has been willing to say it, and Charlie Kirk was willing to say it… pic.twitter.com/cE95iEjzhs
Chip Roy: “The truth is the marxist, radicals, and Islamists the Democratic Party promoted this weekend, they cannot handle the truth. The truth is that there is a king and that king is Jesus. And the president has been willing to say it, and Charlie Kirk was willing to say it and he got killed for it.”
FFS…
He sounds like a Charles the First Royalist who believes in the absolute power of the monarchy but just as they did, he and his accomplices propagandize it as a religious question to rile the rubes.
Ian Millhiser details all the ICE atrocities we’re seeing all over the country, including the assaults on elected officials, and points out that it has largely been enabled by the partisan Supreme Court:
The Supreme Court — or, at least, its six Republicans — appears to be entirely on board with these tactics. In September, the Republican justices voted to block a lower court order that, among other things, forbade ICE from targeting suspected undocumented immigrants solely because of their race. That case is known as Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo.
The Republican justices rarely explain their decisions when they rule in Trump’s favor, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh did write a concurring opinion explaining why he voted the way he did. His assertion that someone targeted by ICE’s “apparent ethnicity” was “relevant” to law enforcement deciding whom to stop has received the most attention, as Kavanaugh seemed to blow off fears that federal law enforcement is targeting Latinos because of their race. But Kavanaugh also strongly implied that no one victimized by ICE may seek an injunction prohibiting ICE from engaging in illegal tactics in the future. (In the wake of this decision, many commentators are now referring to ICE’s tactics as “Kavanaugh stops.”)
So are there any legal avenues left to challenge abusive tactics by ICE, or by other law enforcement agencies controlled by Trump? The short answer is that a few narrow pathways still exist, but they are unlikely to provide a meaningful check on ICE’s behavior.
Broadly speaking, there are five ways that the law could constrain federal law enforcement:
A federal court might issue an injunction against a law enforcement agency, barring it from continuing to engage in a particular illegal practice. Kavanaugh’s opinion in Vasquez Perdomo, however, suggests that this Supreme Court will not allow such an injunction to stand.
A court might order an individual law enforcement officer to compensate the victim of that officer’s illegal action. The Republican justices, however, have largely cut off this avenue in two decisions handed down in the past five years.
A victim of illegal behavior by a federal law enforcement officer might sue the United States and seek compensation. The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Millbrook v. United States (2013) suggests that this avenue remains open — although it is unlikely that either Trump or any individual officer will change their behavior because they fear that the US Treasury may have to pay out some money at some future date.
A law enforcement officer, or perhaps a senior law enforcement official, might be criminally prosecuted. Such a prosecution would depend on whether an existing criminal law already prohibits the officer’s activity (or potentially, whether it prohibits an order to an officer given by a senior official). And it is unlikely that any such prosecutions will happen for as long as Trump controls the Justice Department.
Finally, until recently, Trump himself could potentially have been prosecuted if he gave an order that violates federal criminal law. But the Republican justices gave Trump sweeping immunity from prosecution in Trump v. United States (2024).
Thin gruel. I have absolutely no confidence that they will do anything but enable Trump even more. I hope I’m wrong. But it’s quite clear that the 6 wingnuts are all infected to one degree or another by Fox News Brain Rot and I don’t think there’s much chance that they will have any compunction about giving these thugs all the room they need to brutalize immigrants and citizens alike.
Read the whole piece for the details. It’s profoundly depressing but I think we have to be realistic about this Court. Today, they took up the burning question of whether drug users should be allowed to have guns. They certainly have their fingers on the pulse of American society and its most pressing concerns. They aren’t coming to save us.
Bartiromo: Did you get any sense from Putin that he would be willing or open to ending this war without taking significant property from Ukraine?
Trump: Well, he's going to take something. They fought and he has a lot of property. I mean, yeah, he's won certain property. We're… pic.twitter.com/9qJTJ9YyhQ
Bartiromo: Did you get any sense from Putin that he would be willing or open to ending this war without taking significant property from Ukraine?
Trump: Well, he’s going to take something. They fought and he has a lot of property. I mean, yeah, he’s won certain property. We’re the only nation that goes in and wins a war and leaves, you know? Like we did under President Bush in the Middle East
That trope about Trump always doing what the last person he talked to says to do is never more true than when he talks to his BFF Vlad:
Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Russia’s terms for ending its war in a volatile White House meeting on Friday, warning that Vladimir Putin had said he would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.
The meeting between the US and Ukrainian presidents descended many times into a “shouting match”, with Trump “cursing all the time”, people familiar with the matter said.
They added that the US president tossed aside maps of the frontline in Ukraine, insisted Zelenskyy surrender the entire Donbas region to Putin, and repeatedly echoed talking points the Russian leader had made in their call a day earlier.
Though Trump later endorsed a freeze of the current front lines, the acrimonious meeting appeared to reflect the capricious nature of the US president’s position on the war and his willingness to endorse Putin’s maximalist demands.
Trump needs to take credit for “solving” the Ukraine war and Vlad has convinced him the only way he can do that is to force Ukraine to surrender.
Trump on No Kings: "I think it's a joke. I looked at the people. They are not representative of this country. And I looked at all the brand new signs I guess paid for by Soros and other radical left lunatics. It's looks like it was. We're checking it out. The demonstrations were… pic.twitter.com/o8F9DenojG
Trump on No Kings: “I think it’s a joke. I looked at the people. They are not representative of this country. And I looked at all the brand new signs I guess paid for by Soros and other radical left lunatics. It’s looks like it was. We’re checking it out. The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective. And the people were whacked out.”
Since tens of millions of people believe Trump’s plethora of lies, even the Big One in 2020, I have no doubt they’ll believe this too. And those who pay little attention to what’s happening in the world will think it’s debatable.
But anyone who thinks that seven million white middle aged and older Americans carrying clever hand made signs is a small, unrepresentative group of radical wackos being paid by a 95 year old Hungarian billionaire, they’re living in another dimension. Sadly, we know a whole lot of people just love it there.
