“The only threat we face is to our democracy – and it is being led by President Donald Trump,” declared Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek (D), after a federal court issued a restraining order against Donald Trump’s call to deploy 200 National Guard troops to Portland.
Immergut said Trump’s decision to enlist members of Oregon’s National Guard was based on false claims about nightly unrest targeting federal immigration authorities and buildings in Portland. Though Trump described the city as “war-ravaged” and wracked with violence, police said immigration-related protests had been small, manageable and largely peaceful in the days leading up to Trump’s pronouncement.
“These incidents are inexcusable, but they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces,” Immergut wrote.
The president is due a great deal of deference, Immergut writes, “in his determination that he ‘is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.’” But she finds that Trump lacked a “colorable basis” for invoking his authority under federal law. “The president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
Trump’s lizard brain is “simply untethered to” his frontal lobes. It has been suggested that Trump’s image of Portland stems from Fox News using in its recent coverage b-roll footage from George Floyd protests from 2020. But as his recent United Nations speech revealed (unsurprisingly), Trump holds grudges for decades. He criticized the U.N. for not accepting his bid to renovate the complex 20 years ago. He likely resents Portland for not bowing before him five years ago.
Like Chauncey Gardiner, Trump mainly knows what he sees on TV.
Per Elon Musk’s Grok, Trump has never visited the city:
In her ruling, Judge Immergut wrote that she expected a trial court to agree with the state’s contention that the president exceeded his constitutional authority in mobilizing federal troops for local work and likely violated the 10th Amendment.
Constitution? He don’t need no stinking constitution.
I’m sure you’ve heard that the Eye of Sauron is now fixated on the Pacific Northwest:
Images of the mayhem have been pouring in all week:
Sorry…I should have prefaced with a trigger warning for sensitive viewers. My bad.
As a Seattle resident, I’m concerned my city could be next; particularly considering the anarchy permeating the mean streets of the Wallingford neighborhood where I live:
Then again, as evidenced in that hard-hitting report, local law enforcement has the situation in hand. Hopefully, cooler heads in the Trump administration will prevail. Oh, dear:
OK. Sure-that’s tough talk and all, but they are going to at least need a pretext before sending the troops to Seattle, yes? Oh, crap:
There’s such a fine line between the right to bear arms and the right to name bears.
On a more serious note, it is concerning that the Trump administration has been playing so fast and loose with the definition of “domestic terrorism”. In our current political climate, one person’s “activist” is another person’s “terrorist”, and vice-versa. For example, I’m old enough to remember earlier this year, when Attorney General Pam Bondi described Tesla vandalism as “nothing short of domestic terrorism” and vowed to “impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes”. That’s like, her opinion, man…but in my view, vandalizing a Tesla is…vandalism; however, if you purposely plow said Tesla into a crowd, that’s terrorism.
For reasons that hopefully become clear, I’m re-posting my review of the 2011 documentary, If a Tree Falls:
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 23, 2011)
Because you see, that was when I had my personal brush with “eco-terrorism”. I came to work one day, and espied a couple of Redmond’s finest standing outside the store, talking to the manager. Then I noticed interesting new artwork adorning the windows, writ large in dried ketchup and barbecue sauce: MEAT IS MURDER! It was signed “E.L.F.”. Apparently, several other restaurants down the street had also been hit (McDonald’s had had their locks glued shut).
So, as I was scrubbing to remove the graffiti, I wondered “Who is this ‘ELF’ …a disgruntled Keebler employee?” I had never heard of the Earth Liberation Front. I remember the manager saying “How much you want to bet this guy fled the scene in leather Nikes?” “Yeah,” I snickered, whilst contemplating the dried globs of Heinz 57 on my sponge “these suburban anarchists aren’t exactly the Baader-Meinhof Gang, are they?” (I can’t say that I felt “terrorized”).
Flash forward to 2001. I turned on the local news one night, and saw the UW Center for Urban Horticulture engulfed in flames ($7 million in damage). The arson was attributed to the E.L.F. “Hmm,” I pondered, “maybe they are sort of like the Baader-Meinhof Gang, ”
Or are they? According to the FBI, “Eco-terrorism” is defined as:
The use (or threatened use) of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally oriented, sub-national group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.
That certainly covers a lot of ground. One could argue that Johnny Appleseed was an Eco-terrorist. Sure, he’s a legendary conservationist and agrarian icon. However, he was against grafting, which resulted in a fruit more suitable for hard cider than for eating. Hence, the “environmentally-oriented” Appleseed was “responsible” for introducing alcohol to the frontier. And it’s inarguable that much “violence of a criminal nature against people or property” is committed under the influence. OK, that’s a stretch .
Then again, there are a number of “environmentally-oriented” types doing a “a stretch” in the federal pen right now for non-lethal actions that the government considers terrorism, and that others consider heroic. This is not a black and white issue; a point not lost on the directors of If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.
So what type of circumstance can change a nature lover into a freedom fighter? Anyone can make a statement by holding up a sign or throwing on a “Save the Rainforest” t-shirt, but what motivates someone who decides to take it to the next level-throwing on a Ninja outfit and torching a lumber mill in the middle of the night? And what would they hope to achieve? Wouldn’t that just encourage corporations to cut down even more trees to replace lost inventory?
In order to convey a sense of the humanity behind the mug shots, co-directors Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman focus primarily on Earth Liberation Front member Daniel McGowan, who at the time of filming was facing a possible life sentence for his direct involvement in several high-profile “actions” (including the arson of an Oregon lumber mill) that resulted in millions of dollars in property damage. Holed up in his sister’s NYC apartment (and sporting a house arrest anklet for the first third of the film), McGowan candidly opens up about his life and what led him to change his own M.O. for making a statement from “environmental activism” to “domestic terrorism”.
The filmmakers parallel the timeline and details of McGowan’s personal journey with a study about the development of the E.L.F., adding present day interviews with his cohorts and archival footage of some of the group’s early “actions” (which were more in the realm of civil disobedience and passive resistance-like sitting in the path of bulldozers and camping out in old-growth trees marked for cutting). McGowan initially became involved with the environmental movement through “mainstream” activities, like “writing hundreds of letters” of protest and participating in peaceful demonstrations.
McGowan became frustrated with what he perceived to be the ineffectiveness of such actions. He sums it up with a rhetorical question: “When you’re screaming at the top of your lungs, and nobody hears you, what are you supposed to do?”
The tipping point for McGowan came in 1999, when he participated in the WTO protests in Seattle. There, through some of the more radicalized E.L.F. members, he became embedded with the relatively small band of black-clad “anarchists” who were disproportionately responsible for most of the property damage that occurred during the demonstrations (the majority of participants made a point after the fact to disassociate themselves from the anarchists).
From there, it was a relatively small jump to the more extreme acts that would lead to his eventual arrest and prosecution (he agreed to a “non-cooperation” plea deal that saved him from life in prison but still saddled him with 7 years and a “terrorism enhancement”).
The filmmakers give equal screen time to some of the law enforcement officials and prosecutors who made the case against McGowan and his associates. Although no one was ever injured or killed as a result of E.L.F. activity (astounding considering that there were approximately 1,200 “actions” perpetrated by the group during their heyday), there are still victims; and some of them appear on camera as well to offer their perspective.
Were these people “terrorists”? You almost have to get back to defining “what is a terrorist?” Or in this case, who are the real terrorists? One interviewee offers this: “95% of the native American forests have been cut down. Trying to save the remaining 5% is ‘radical’?” That’s a valid question. McGowan himself seems to be arguing (in so many words) that in a post 9-11 world, people have a tendency to make a “rush to judgment” without considering the alternate point of view (he suggests that the word “terrorist” has supplanted “Communist” as the demagogue’s dog whistle of choice).
I wonder if the filmmakers intend McGowan’s story to be a litmus test for the viewer (how far out on the limb would you be willing to go for your personal convictions?) If so, that’s a tough one. Part of me identifies with Daniel McGowan the environmentally-conscious idealist; but I don’t think I can quite get behind Daniel McGowan the criminal arsonist. For now, I’m just content to keep recycling and doing my part to think “glocal”. And in case you’re wondering…I haven’t stepped foot inside a Honeybaked Ham store since I quit working there 14 years ago. Those murderous bastards.
This excerpt from former NATO Secretary Jen Stolberg’s book about dealing with Trump in his first term is something else. You have to read the whole thing. Trump truly is a stupid, puerile bully, which we know, of course, but from the very beginning it was clear that all he really wanted was to have important people bow down and lick his boots with fervor:
“Mr President, you have urged us to spend more, and I agree with you,” Rutte said. “And that is exactly what we are doing. Last year, we spent $33bn more on defence because of your leadership. So this is good news for you.”
Trump liked this. Thirty-three billion. He nodded.
After a while, he took out the thick black marker he always used, jotted something on a sheet of paper, then handed it to me. His handwriting was neat and rather attractive. The note said: “Secretary general, if you can say the Nato allies have significantly increased their defence spending thanks to me, I think we can agree.”
I finally glimpsed an opportunity to bring the meeting home. I took the floor myself.
“At the press conference after the meeting, I will state that the Nato allies have significantly increased their defence spending thanks to President Trump’s leadership and clear messaging,” I said, practically reading straight from his note…
It’s only gotten worse since then.
The whole piece is worth reading because it just reminds us how incredibly stupid and shallow he was then and how he remains today. He had no idea what NATO was and still doesn’t. Reading this, I think he was actually incapable of understanding it. But it didn’t stop him. As long as he had people bowing down to him, it made no difference what he knew.
As I was doing some research for a future piece, I watched his speech before the generals again today and I have to admit that the man has a power that I will never understand but you cannot deny that he has it. Dumb as a post but full of a dauntless audacity — and in recent days, slurring low energy repetition — he has managed to figure out how to create a new reality simply by asserting it and using the power he has to force everyone to embrace it.
This weekend we have masked armed men roaming the streets of America’s cities, abducting people off the streets, causing havoc, destroying communities because Donald Trump created a crisis out of whole cloth. We did not have any kind of emergency going on that required this response. There weren’t any riots or massive uprisings. But due to his ongoing, narcissistic need to prove his withered manhood — and his henchmen’s opportunistic power grab for the future — we are watching something unfold that would have been unthinkable before he came along.
It’s quite a feat. And it’s being repeated in dozens of different ways across our whole society. Not that Republicans haven’t been authoritarian thugs at heart for decades — their paeans to “freedom and liberty” were always contingent on “the right people” having it and others not so much. But the blatant defiance of reality that Trump has perfected is something only he could have done. I don’t think there’s another politician on the planet who has that particular combination of stupidity and shamelessness that allows him to make the most outrageous claims without realizing how outrageous they are.
Having said that, it’s clear that he’s created a new political paradigm which has emboldened the natural fascists among us. They know the limits of our system and realize how much it has always depended on the good faith of those in power. And they now know how hard it is to stop anyone who is willing to knock over all the boundaries. So if we survive this and Trump finally fades into history, there will be imitators for a very long time to come and unless there are strong reforms there’s a good chance they’ll succeed.
Trump is an absolute refutation of meritocracy, a richie-rich nepo baby who somehow, by simple dint of his ignorant willingness to say anything, became a destroyer of worlds.
Perhaps you wonder what the MAGA people are seeing day in and day out? Here’s a little smattering just from the White House account on X:
Democrats can deny reality, but Portland tells the truth: this isn’t protest – it’s premeditated anarchy. The radical left & Antifa-led chaos ENDS NOW. pic.twitter.com/HOmPZX7H8u
📹 ON CAMERA: This morning, President Trump ordered a strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations headed to America and loaded with enough drugs to kill 25,000 to 50,000 PEOPLE off the Coast of Venezuela.
The illegal immigrant talking point doesn’t seem to have caught on. Even most Republicans aren’t buying it. And that’s because it’s incredibly stupid.
This is mostly partisanship, of course. But the gap between the parties is significant. As I said before, the weight of everything Trump and the Republicans have done over the last few months is finally starting to drag them down. Of course they are the assholes in this crisis. They are the assholes causing a crisis a day and taking pride in it. Why would this be any different?
Maybe you don’t often care about off year elections but this one is important. It may portend whether we survive as a country. Most of them are happening next month so it’s time for us to pay attention even though they may not be in your state.
I happen to have a big one here in California — Prop 50 which will determine whether or not we redistrict and offset Texas’s power grab. But there are many others.
Four contests have come to largely define the 2025 elections: the elections to lead New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City, plus California’s redistricting measure. But there’s so much else on the ballot.
Enter our annual cheat sheet to help you track this busy general election.
We’ve identified more than 180 key elections that will be decided this fall—from mayors and governors to school boards and judges—and explain why they matter.
All in all, 32 states are represented.
Three seats are at play on Pennsylvania’s supreme court, and two on Georgia’s utility commission—all in statewide races. Democrats are defending chambers in New Jersey and Virginia, but legislative seats could also flip in Minnesota, Mississippi, and Washington.
Dozens of cities are holding intriguing mayoral races, starting with Albuquerque, Detroit, Jersey City, Minneapolis, and Seattle. City councils are also at play, from Aurora to Spokane.
Ballot measures could reshape how people vote in Maine and New York. Voters will directly weigh in on criminal justice via sheriff and prosecutor races, such as in Philly and Seattle. They’ll set the course for education policy as conservatives vie to take over or retain school boards in Pennsylvania and Texas. And across the country, referendums could unlock billions in bonds and spending for parks, schools, and transit.
Scroll down to explore the races and themes that interest you below. Or simply search for key terms, like your state’s name, on your browser.
Do you have questions about the elections happening this fall? Share them with us on this page, and we will answer as many as possible before Election Day!
This guide is not an exhaustive list of everything that’s on the ballot; it’s our selection of key races to monitor. (That said, it does contain every race for a statewide office.) In fact, voters will fill thousands of other offices all around the country; check your city or county’s local election office for more information.
I would suggest you bookmark the page. Elections remain our one main tools to fight this battle (for now) so they’ve never been more important.
I would not have been in favor of such a thing at the time but now I think it was probably a mistake not to. He certainly didn’t appreciate it. Look what his goons are doing now:
The FBI is considering carrying out a “showy” arrest and perp walk of the agency’s now-indicted ex-Director James Comey, and has suspended an agent who refused to participate in the plan, three sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.
Comey was charged last week with lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding, an unprecedented move that came after President Trump publicly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into his longtime adversary. A grand jury voted to indict him on Sept. 25 and hours later, Comey was issued a summons directing him to appear in federal court in northern Virginia for an Oct. 9 arraignment. His lawyers agreed to bring him to his arraignment, two sources said.
But on the same day as his indictment, FBI leadership discussed hauling Comey in instead of waiting for the ex-FBI chief to report to court on his own, a source knowledgeable about the conversations told CBS News.
The source told CBS News that leadership asked for “large, beefy” agents to conduct an arrest of Comey “in full kit,” including Kevlar vests and exterior wear emblazoned with the FBI logo. It was suggested that a supervisory special agent in the violent crimes division of the FBI’s Washington Field Office would be able to put together the kinds of agents who fit the bill, the source said.
The agent, however, refused to participate in this plan, believing it would be inappropriate and highly unusual for a white-collar defendant like Comey, according to the source. He was then suspended for insubordination.
The FBI is now actively working to put together a team to arrest Comey between now and his court appearance on Thursday, but other FBI supervisors have also refused to cooperate, said a source knowledgeable about the conversations and a law enforcement source familiar with the situation. The expectation is that the FBI will eventually find somebody.
Look, it’s not a huge deal. Perp walks are common, even for white collar criminals and they are stupid. If someone is willing to turn themselves in that should be done. But cops love a perp walk and now that we’re in a certifiable police state, it’s highly unlikely that the practice will end.
I would guess that members of the FBI are balking here because Comey is a former long time federal prosecutor and FBI Director, one of them, who is charged with something insanely stupid. They just don’t want to be part of it. But it will happen. And it will arouse all the MAGA faithful who watch Fox news on a loop.
I suspect it will not go down well with anyone else who sees it, but who knows?
Weekend Reading offers some, well, weekend reading from Anat Shenker-Osorio on the slow learners atop the Democratic Party, something I wrote about back in February. Her particular gripe this morning is pollingism. That is, the idea that their party wins office and governs by what tests well in polling, and that what polls well actually predicts real-world voting behavior. Because voters are rational actors, dontcha know? This framework continues to fail yet is never reexamined.
The trouble with this is that data aren’t conjured but rather solicited and analyzed according to the assumptions of data collectors. In other words, you only get answers to the questions you ask. And you only get reactions to the ads you produce. And you only assess impacts in the artificial environments you construct. And you only apply findings according to your theory of how humans come to judgments.
An alternate framework she calls magnetism. It’s related to something she wrote eight years ago, “Democrats rely on polling to take the temperature; Republicans use polling to change it.”
Magnetism is the notion that if you want people to come to your cause, you mustbe attractive. This, of course, requires having a cause to which to draw people. And, like any magnet, it also means having a polarity that distinguishes you from your opposition. For Magnetism to work, you meet people at the place of their broadly shared values, not their podcast-promoted prejudices, and bring them with you toward your desired policies and the candidates who will enact them.
People are social creatures, not calculators. Pollingism misses that.
“Politics is a shouting match, not a soliloquy.” The crew with the loudest choir wins (in a free and fair election anyway). Democrats moderate their message down to one their base won’t sing. “While Democrats are brandishing thermometers, Republicans power up flamethrowers.”
It is indeed a long piece, weekend reading. For those of you who are not slow learners and thank God you are not.
Just to reprise:
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Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:
In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.
The president’s digital accounts have issued a burst of AI garbage this week that are, of course, well beyond Donald Trump’s digital abilities. And by the way, where is he while this is going on?
Although President Donald J. Trump has not appeared in public since Tuesday, his social media account has been posting up a storm. Just three weeks ago, administration officials were insisting that Democrats were responsible for hateful political speech. Trump’s account last night posted images of prominent Democrats, including former President Joe Biden, with the heading “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.” It went on to say: “The Democratic Party is Dead! They have no leadership! [N]o message! [N]o hope! [T]heir only message for America is to hate Trump!”
Steve Benen of Maddowblog asks, “What is it that the president wants people to do when he pushes such a message?”
This is the second time Trump has disappeared from public view in last six weeks without an explanation.
Then there is the “Don’t Fear the Reaper” clip you’ve likely seen featuring OMB Director Russell Vought as the Grim Reaper coming for your jobs, etc.
HCR continues:
Veterans of the U.S. national security community posting as The Steady State noted that “a president posting a video depicting his opponents as prey for the Grim Reaper and zombies outside the ‘unemployment office’ is the opposite of what we expect in a healthy democracy.”
Russell Vought is not an elected official. He is best known for his contributions to Project 2025, a plan for gutting the U.S. government and installing a theocratic dictatorship. Project 2025 was so unpopular when it came to light last summer—only 4% of voters who knew about it wanted to see it enacted—that Trump insisted he had nothing to do with it. Trolling the American people with the idea that Congress has no power and Russell Vought is running the government to destroy it is an odd choice for a president who is already deeply unpopular.
This assumes that the video was Trump’s choice. After Trump’s performance in Quantico on Monday, he’s not been seen in public in days. So it’s a fair question who is running the Trump Show. Especially considering that Trump is more interested in golfing, strutting like a banty rooster, and in self-aggrandizing spectacle than in actually doing the work of governing.
It’s seemed for some time that ideologues like Vought and Stephen Miller are really running the show with help from the Trump White House comms team.
“The Treasury Department is considering producing a one-dollar coin featuring President Donald Trump to commemorate the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence next year,” Politico reports.
“The draft design of the coin, which was overseen by the Office of the U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach, features Trump’s profile on one side of the coin. The opposite side depicts Trump with a clenched fist in front of an American flag alongside the words ‘FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT.’”
Hmmm. By law, that honor only goes to a deceased person.
"Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities." 31 USC 5114(b)
A friend asks if the Treasury Department knows something we don’t.
Has anyone seen Kevin Kline lately?
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Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:
In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.
Sleepy-eyed and snug in her cosy blue blanket, Kipekee is ready to take on the day!
We think she enjoys these rare moments of peace and quiet — it won’t be long before ‘big sisters’ Kamili, Muridjo, Nyambeni, Mzinga, and Kerrio converge around her in all their wonderful,… pic.twitter.com/gEkCPrjRdS
— Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (@SheldrickTrust) October 2, 2025
Sleepy-eyed and snug in her cosy blue blanket, Kipekee is ready to take on the day! We think she enjoys these rare moments of peace and quiet — it won’t be long before ‘big sisters’ Kamili, Muridjo, Nyambeni, Mzinga, and Kerrio converge around her in all their wonderful, overbearing glory.
Kipekee is the latest addition to our foster program. Rescued in June, this tiny orphan lost her mother to human-wildlife conflict.
She arrived at the Nursery in poor condition, and it’s taken round-the-clock care to nurse her back to health. It has only been three months, but she has already made enormous progress!
