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.
Yes, they went ahead and held their life-fire artillery show for JD Vance at Camp Pendleton on Saturday, causing the closure of 17 ,miles of the I-5 freeway.
“Gavin Newsom wants people to think this exercise is dangerous,” William Martin, Vance’s communications director, told The New York Times. “The Marine Corps says it’s an established and safe practice. Newsom wants people to think this is an absurd show of force. The Marine Corps says it’s part of routine training at Camp Pendleton.”
Guess what happened:
A U.S. Marine Corps artillery round prematurely detonated over Interstate 5 on Saturday sending metal shrapnel onto a California Highway Patrol (CHP) vehicle during a live-fire training demonstration, according to an internal report released Sunday by the agency. No injuries were reported.
The exercise took place over a section of I-5 near Camp Pendleton, which had been closed to traffic at the direction of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The governor had previously voiced concerns about the safety of firing artillery shells over a freeway used daily by tens of thousands of motorists.
CHP officers were on the scene supporting a traffic break when the round detonated. “This was an unusual and concerning situation,” said CHP Border Division Chief Tony Coronado. “It is highly uncommon for any live-fire or explosive training activity to occur over an active freeway. As a Marine myself, I have tremendous respect for our military partners, but my foremost responsibility is ensuring the safety of the people of California and the officers who protect them.”
According to the report, officers immediately notified the Marine Corps, prompting the cancellation of additional live ordnance over the freeway. The area was then checked for debris and evaluated to ensure public safety.
A 155-millimeter shell fired during a live-fire demonstration for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton on Saturday prematurely detonated, dropping fragments of the shell on a California Highway Patrol vehicle and motorcycle that were part of Vice President JD Vance’s protective detail, according to a patrol report
No word from Vance on this. I’m sure he’ll say it was just the Marines joking around as young boys do.
If something had happened to the VP (or anyone for that matter) it would have been quite something to see them find a way to blame the left. I’m sure they would have done it though.
What a ridiculous situation. Have you heard much about this? I hadn’t. Seems like it should be a story.
In 2013, at just this time of year, the government shut down for 17 days. At the time, it was one of the longest shutdowns. Then, as now, it hinged on the Affordable Care Act, which was slated to come online on Oct. 1. House Republicans, under the influence of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and many conservative outside groups, were determined to stop it. Since funding for the ACA was not a discretionary budget item, it would not be affected, but that didn’t stop Republicans from refusing to pass a budget that didn’t defund — or, at the very least, delay — the new program.
The GOP eventually caved, and in the end, the media scored it as a Democratic win since they not only succeeded in raising the debt ceiling but also staved off the assault on their signature health care legislation. Still, there is no evidence that any of it made much difference politically. In the 2014 midterms, the GOP picked up nine Senate seats and 14 House seats.
During this shutdown, the media inexplicably felt the need to ask reality star and New York real estate developer Donald Trump what he thought about them. In an appearance on the Today Show, he said, “If there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States. He’s the one that has to get people together.” Asked what he would do in such a situation, Trump said, “I would get everybody together and we’d have a budget.” When the host pointed out that Democrats and Republicans had all gotten together to no avail, Trump replied, “Well, that’s because they don’t have the right leader. You don’t have the right leader.”
Trump also called in to “Fox and Friends” and was asked, “Who’s getting fired, who’s going to bear the brunt of the responsibility if indeed there is a shutdown of our government?” He once again took the opportunity to blame Obama. “It always has to be the top. I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top. And the president’s the leader and he’s got to get everybody in a room and he’s got to lead. And he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t like doing that. That’s not his strength.”
Five years later, the shoe was on the other foot. In late 2018, Trump was the president and presided over the longest government shutdown in history. Over the course of 35 days, he refused to sign any bill that didn’t include funding for his border wall, and Democrats were having none of it. On January 25, after short staffing at the Federal Aviation Administration forced many flight cancellations, Congress passed a funding bill with a veto-proof majority, essentially forcing Trump to sign it. He then declared a national emergency, allowing him to pilfer some military appropriations to build his wall. (Sound familiar?) For all his big talk, Trump handled his shutdown worse than any president before him.
Today he’s presiding over yet another standoff, and according to a recent AP-NORC poll, a majority of Americans are laying the blame at the feet of Trump and the GOP. Six in 10 Americans say the president and congressional Republicans bear “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility; 54% blame congressional Democrats. Other polls have produced similar findings. The public isn’t thrilled with any of them at the moment.
For all his blather about Obama’s lack of leadership, Trump is completely checked out of this shutdown. The administration’s work in brokering a ceasefire and pending peace deal in Gaza has blown up his ego to even more gargantuan proportions, and it appears he just can’t be bothered. He is on a massive sugar high right now, standing astride the world like a colossus and taking credit for every positive thing that’s happened around the globe in the last nine months while treating America’s allies and enemies alike as his puppets. Trump has claimed he’s “ended” eight wars, so many he can’t even remember the names of the countries involved.
On Thursday he made a new claim. “I’ve made deals, I know about deals, I do it well,” he said during a press availability in the Oval Office. “I don’t think any president has ever ended a deal and I’ve done eight… Did Bush ever end, do you think Biden ever ended, no — Biden started wars because he was stupid… I ended eight and it’s going to be nine.”
The president’s peacemaking prowess is apparently due in part to his willingness to murder civilians, which he persists in doing in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. And just yesterday, on receiving word that the fragile peace in Gaza is seeing Hamas commit executions against opposition Palestinians, he appeared to indicate he had given his approval — until someone likely reminded him that he’s supposed to be enforcing a peace deal. So he posted his own threat on Truth Social: “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
After all of Trump’s bragging in years past about how a president must “lead” and strutting around like he’s emperor of the world these last few months, he doesn’t seem to realize that his lackadaisical attitude about the shutdown is not a good look — and his own supporters appear to be taking note.
Sophia Cole is a Trump voter from St. Louis who participated in the AP-NORC poll, and she “placed equal blame for the shutdown on Trump and Congress.” The 38-year-old mother said Republicans and Democrats should be able to find a compromise to open the government. But she “believes it is ultimately the Republican president’s responsibility to broker a deal. ‘We’re dependent on him to get the House and everyone to vote the way that he needs them to vote,’ Cole said.”
It’s easy to see why she might be a bit confused. Trump, after all, has conjured an image of himself as not just a dealmaker, but a strong, decisive leader who brings everyone into the room and cracks their heads together until they do what he tells them to do. He supposedly brought Hamas to its knees and wrestled all of Europe to the ground — and now he can’t get Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to bend the knee? What’s going on here?
As the shutdown drags on, it’s possible this realization may percolate up to the MAGA faithful. Everyone’s starting to feel the effects of this shutdown and they’re logically going to start wondering why Daddy Trump can end eight wars around the world but he can’t seem to end a mere congressional standoff. Something doesn’t add up, and even his own people could begin to wonder why he isn’t using his magical prowess to provide for their needs and wants. “What happened to America First?” they might well ask.
If for no other reason, Democrats need to hang tough. The shutdown is exposing the fact that Trump is anything but the strongman he portrays himself to be. Instead, the feeble man behind the curtain is really just a sad, bent, braggart who spends most of his time redecorating the White House and fantasizing that he’s been anointed king of the world. Every day the Democrats hold their ground, Trump looks weaker and weaker.
We had our assortment of inflatables at Asheville’s (pop 95k) No Kings rally on Saturday, attendance estimated at 8,000. Ana Marie Cox saw a bevy(?) of unicorns in New Braunfels, Texas (pop. 90k). There was no protest there back in June, but on Saturday “there were over a hundred people (as well as amphibians, reptiles, and cryptids) lining a long city block.”
She found regretful Republicans among the mix of normies she found:
But around the country, we’re seeing a parallel evolution: whimsy as the logical response to MAGA’s nonsense. What “trans ideology”? Eating the dogs, eating the cats? You’re talking about vicious immigrants, but you curb-stomped the ice cream man. “I don’t even know what antifa is.”
For many of the new protesters, the cleanest response to such wild paranoia (even if those in power use it to justify horrible violence) isn’t a manifesto—it’s a snort-laugh and a unicorn horn. It’s “I don’t know what that means, but I do know you’re full of shit.” This is purposeful illogic in the exurban wild, no less revolutionary for lack of intellectual pedigree. True, the semi-pro situationists will likely never become card-carrying Communists. No room in the wallet, what with the Kohl’s card and the Costco membership.
The event had the feeling of a band fundraiser or church picnic. Passing drivers honked, flashed thumbs-up and pumped fists. And an occasional middle finger. (I got flipped off by a Ferrari while propoting our event from an overpass on Friday. NEXT LEVEL ACHIEVED.)
What Cox found I found. I spent much of our event marveling that I saw so few of the usual suspects at the protest. In part because of the size (about 8,000). But in part because, as Cox found, “it’s the folks in cargo shorts and polos who make the unicorns stand out.”
I didn’t have an inflatable. But this rig (photo recycled from Oct. 2) had one woman doubled over with laughter and others howling and asking for photos. Laughter is good medicine and cathartic. Mock the MFers.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. — Upton Sinclair
Miles Bruner has left the Republican Party after more than a decade in the pay of the campaign industrial complex. That system exists on both sides of our political duopoly.
For ten years, the GOP has waged an unrelenting war on our civic institutions, the separation of powers, the foundation of the rule of law, and the very nature of truth itself. While Trump and his supporters in Congress have been the driving force behind the right’s descent into despotism, it would not have been possible without the thousands of consultants, aides, and politicos working behind the scenes to fully execute their systematic dismantling of American democratic norms.
However idealistic they may have started, many — and by no means all — whose ambitions tempt them to acclimate, to learn the swamp’s rhythms, to be seduced by power’s soothing burble, slowly become the kind of politicians people love to hate.
The process of learning to compartmentalize what you do from where your paycheck comes from Upton Sinclair described rather memorably in 1934. It is a caution people have still to heed.
From his beginnings in Orange County, Bruner thought Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was a joke until it wasn’t. He stayed on. He rationalized. He was replused by the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally and Trump’s response. Yet he stayed on. He took a professional fundraising job in D.C.
Then came the Trump insurrection of January 6, 2021. But the systems guardrails held, so he stayed on.
“I was treated to conventions in exotic locales and was invited to D.C. parties,” Bruner explains. “I got promoted and received a sizable pay raise. At a superficial level and putting my ethics aside, I was living the life I had imagined having as a teenager.”
He started a family. Or he and his wife tried. Their first pregnancy in 2023 failed. That’s when the GOP’s dragging the Supreme Court to the far right and the Dobbs decision finally hit home. When it hit home. Suddenly being pro-life wasn’t as black-and-white as he’d always believed:
To a degree, I understood the selfishness of my reaction. I had been willing to work in a system and for a party that had allowed rulings like these to take hold—that had celebrated them, in fact—only to find it unbearable when I felt personally attacked. It is not to excuse my actions that I note that sometimes a personal experience is what it takes for an awakening like this to occur.
There is an empathy gap among conservatives. Many cannot or will not walk a mile in others’ shoes until forced into them. It is not like having a child murdered that makes one a lifelong gun control advocate, or having cancer shift one’s focus to cancer prevention for others. For many on the right, it is an ideology-driven blindness to others’ plights only overcome by personal experience.
And still Bruner stayed on. But he began looking for a way out. Today, finally, is the day. He’s not looking for absolution. Seeing masked, federal thugs and soldiers on our streets reminds him every day of the small part he’s played in bringing our country to this.
At every mile marker, I’ve rationalized, compartmentalized, and found every excuse to stay. I stayed past Trump’s migrants-are-‘rapists’ tirade. The January 6th insurrection wasn’t enough for me to leave. His lack of leadership during the COVID pandemic contributed to the deaths of over a million Americans, yet I still went into the office.
Wingnut welfare is seductive. The campaign industrial complex is seductive, even on the left.
Over the course of the last 20-plus years, I’ve had a couple of temporary, low-paying, part-time campaign jobs that I paused my better-paying engineering work to take on. I know idealistic young people working professionally on the Democratic side who may never lose themselves, just as Sen. Bernie Sanders never did. But some will.
As Bruner’s experience proves once again, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
![Gavin Newsom’s objections to the exercise were foolish:](http://<img src="https://www.chp.ca.gov/contentassets/f0b409596bfd430ebaaebf6411c07d05/p2.jpeg" alt="CHP PRODUCES INCIDENT REPORT AFTER ARTILLERY ROUND FROM CAMP PENDLETON PREMATURELY DETONATED MIDFLIGHT WITH DEBRIS STRIKING PATROL VEHICLE"/>){kind=link}