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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

MAGAs Know

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 7, 2026

They really hate being reminded

Sign Guy has seen a noticeable uptick over the last three weeks in middle fingers on the surface streets and overpasses. Since Day 1 of this project, any oblique reminder that Dear Leader is failing to live up to his, um, potential has elicited the bird. The clear winner was last fall when ARE YOUR GROCERIES CHEAPER? drew three different middle fingers out of three windows of one car. At each Sign Guy appearance, there’s always at least one.

But then on Feb. 28, the America First president, the “I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop the wars” president, the peace president, obsessed as he is with winning a Nobel Peace Prize, launched an illegal, unprovoked and costly war against Iran. In part, to distract from his name appearing tens of thousands of times in the still incompletely released Epstein files. With the Strait of Hormuz closed and domestic gas prices soaring above $4/gallon, the MAGAs have become more visibly agitated by any reminder that Dear Leader sold them out. Almost as if the more insane he becomes, the more easily triggered they are.

Last night’s 90-min. rush hour appearance with the sign above drew 11 middle fingers out of nine cars, plus a thumbs-down and someone directing a tactical strobe light at the overpass out the windshield. One of those middle fingers was an oversized cardboard cutout held out the driver’s window. MAGAs really hate bad puns.

TikTok’s Texas Trey, “a reformed Republican” who went from “religious conservative to lefty liberal,” served MAGAs their betrayal straight up over the weekend.

“What you got was conned,” he tells them calmly. “And you’re too fucking embarrassed to admit it.”

@thetexastrey

It’s the truth. Adapted from a meme I saw on Insta. #texastrey #coachtreyspeaks #realtalk #conartist #scam

♬ original sound – Texas Trey

“He’s insane,” says Texas Trey in a Monday video in response to Trump’s threats to utterly destroy Iran. “And I guess the only real question at this point is just how far we’re gonna let him go.”

@thetexastrey

He literally said that in a press conference today when a reporter asked about it, and went on and on about how they want us to do that. #texastrey #coachtreyspeaks #realtalk #iranwar #insane

♬ original sound – Texas Trey

Meanwhile, Democrats on Capitol Hill persist in not publicly and loudly demanding that Trump’s cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him. Yes, Trump’s coterie of sycophants will be painting targets on their backs for MAGA cultists if they do. But in backing Trump’s Iran war, both he and they have painted targets on the backs of U.S. service members. As Trump himself callously told the widow of a slain Special Operations soldier, “knew what he was signing up for.” So did Marco Rubio and the rest. Do. Your. Jobs.

Democrats too. A trio of university students asked me last week what more I want to see from Democrats. Less talk, more action. March down Pennsylvania and hold a sit-in outside the White House gates.

The Legacy Project Priority

Published by digby on April 6, 2026

He was carrying that around the Easter Egg Roll.

It appears that Trump is writing the legal briefs for the White House now. This one,. protesting the halting of his ballroom construction is either written by a MAGA intern or the man himself:

It goes on. You can read the rest of it here if you want to bother. It’s not really worth it. He’s crudely trying to make the case that his stupid ballroom is a matter of national security.

This is truly all he really cares about. The war in Iran is raging, the world economy is in free fall and yesterday, he took what they called a “ceremoniously slow” presidential motorcade tour around Memorial Circle—close to the Arlington Memorial Bridge, where he hopes to build an arch honoring himself, according to pool reports.

Today:

Nope, not kidding:

A group of Vietnam War veterans and a retired architectural historian have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block construction of a proposed monument near Arlington National Cemetery.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges President Trump’s plans for “Independence Arch,” a 250-foot structure proposed for Memorial Circle.

The plaintiffs, represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, call the proposed plan a “vanity project” that would disrupt one of Washington’s most symbolically charged sightlines between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House, a view designed to evoke national unity after the Civil War.

This is the monstrosity:

It is very likely that he’s going to be stopped from building this one. But it’s sadly possible that he’s going to be allowed to build that hideous ballroom if only to cover up the gaping hole he created when he illegally destroyed the East Wing.

Little Trumps

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 6, 2026

Authoritarians can’t see when they’re acting like fools

Fairhope, Alabama officer reaches for giant penis.

We stopped through coastal Fairhope, AL on the way home from Netroots-New Orleans last summer to check out the fantasy castles and the hermit house (and to have some right fine coffee at the Kind Cafe; and they mean kind). Fairhope is known as an arts community, but it’s still Alabama. So yesterday, a friend and I had just shared frustrations over Democrats being stuck in policies, framings, and campaign practices from decades past when this story from Fairhope popped up in The Intercept.

At Fairhope’s recent No Kings rally, a grandmother showed up in a 7-foot-tall inflatable penis costume she’d bought at a Halloween costume store. Renea Gamble, 62, an ASL interpreter, was arrested by officer Andrew Babb, a corporal with the Fairhope Police. The arrest is captured on his body cam:

Talking to a colleague over his two-way radio after the encounter, Babb described what happened. Gamble was dressed “like a freakin’ weiner,” he says on the tape, so he ordered her to remove the costume. She refused, invoking her First Amendment rights.

“I said, ‘That’s not freedom of speech,’” Babb continues. “‘This is a family town and being dressed like that is not going to be tolerated.’”

Gamble asks Babb twice if she is being detained. He ignores her and continues his scolding.

“If I’m not being detained, I’m gonna go ahead and leave,” Gamble says. Babb tackles and handcuffs her, etc., etc. Video captures police trying to stuff a handcuffed , 7-foot inflatable penis into a squad car. Virality ensued.

Gamble was jailed briefly for “disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, then released on a $500 bond.”

Now, that’s the sort of charge against a grandmother that might simply be dropped to avoid further embarrassment. But this is Alabama.

Instead, the city of Fairhope doubled down. Rather than dropping the case, the city attorney slapped Gamble with additional charges earlier this year: disturbing the peace and giving a false name to law enforcement. Her trial, first set to take place months ago, has been delayed multiple times. It is now set for April 15.

Let’s go back to people not recognizing how times have changed. One might think that in the age of cell phones and body cameras, that a police officer, indignant or not, might stop and think twice about creating a stooge scene of arresting a costumed grandmother in his upscale tourist town. You know, and avoid making himself and his department the butt of jokes on TikTok or on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” But no.

The Intercept adds:

A progressive Fairhope-based political cartoonist held a caption contest for his rendering of the arrest. In December, a Mobile-based talk radio station held a listener poll to choose its annual Alabamian of the Year, with “Inflatable Fairhope Protest Penis” receiving the most votes.

Lord help us:

At a time when Trump and his allies have escalated attacks on dissent — prosecuting protesters as terrorists and punishing free speech — Gamble’s misdemeanor charges in small-town Alabama seem relatively minor. A conviction would most likely to result in a fine and a suspended sentence, according to her lawyer, David Gespass, a veteran civil rights attorney who has spent decades representing people abused by police — and who called the whole thing “absurd.”

Nonetheless, Gespass did not expect the prosecution to get this far. “One would have thought at some point somebody would have decided to dismiss the case,” he said.

And save Fairhope, nicknamed “Mayberry on the Bay,” further embarrassment and national ridicule. But authoritarians gonna authoritarian.

Meanwhile, the claim that the Fairhope Police Department is the arbiter of family values has been met with a wave of scorn and derision. Babb, a K-9 officer who regularly represents the police force at community events, brought a flood of criticism to the department’s social media accounts after Gamble’s arrest.

Welcome to the 21st century, Officer Babb.

Lies And More Lies

Published by digby on April 6, 2026

You literally cannot believe anything our government says, whether it’s guidance from the CDC, national security, economic numbers or policing. The latest example of their deception and incompetence via the NY Times:

Almost immediately after an immigration agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis this winter, the federal government cast the injured man as an attempted murderer and the agent as the victim of a brutal beating.

That version of events began unraveling when prosecutors dropped felony charges against the injured man, Julio C. Sosa-Celis, and one of his housemates, Alfredo A. Aljorna, who had fled from immigration agents.

Yet video footage of the shooting, newly obtained by The New York Times, raises questions about why it took weeks for the government’s case to fall apart.

The video contradicts the agent’s claim that three assailants had beaten him with a shovel and broom for roughly three minutes before he opened fire. Instead, the confrontation depicted in the video lasts about 12 seconds and shows two men struggling with the agent. It shows no sustained attack with a shovel.

The federal government had access to that video within hours of the shooting on Jan. 14, the Minneapolis police chief said. Yet prosecutors did not watch the footage, an official said, until nearly three weeks after they filed charges against the two men.

They just lie, relentlessly and aggressively, and don’t even really try to hide it.

In this case they did eventually drop the charges, no doubt because they knew that two agents had lied and would be run out of court if they tried to press them. The victims await word if they might qualify for a program that would grant them a visa to stay in the country because they have cooperated with a law enforcement investigation. Somehow, I doubt that’s very likely.

This was a famous incident that got national attention. But there have been thousands of similar altercations that didn’t involve deadly force, just beatings and torture, which have gone unreported. And it isn’t over. ICE is still rampaging through the streets but they’ve calmed down just enough to evoke boredom by the press as it chased the newest atrocity. The beat goes on.

Nightmare Fuel

Published by digby on April 6, 2026

Timothy Snyder:

Is this likely? I kind of doubt it, to be honest. They aren’t that good. But could it happen? Sure. At this point, I think anything could.

Read the whole thing. He outlines all the historical parallels, none of which are perfectly represented in our current situation but which all have familiar elements. He concludes:

Trump is weak, but weakness only matters if it is treated as vulnerability and pushed towards defeat. He will try to make his weak position strong, which will expose further vulnerabilities that have to be seen and exploited. All of his policies make him vulnerable; the war in particular makes him vulnerable; and any gambit to exploit that war should make him and his party easy to defeat and discredit his authoritarian movement forever.

A coup attempt is not at all unthinkable; Trump has done it before, and he makes it very clear that he is thinking about it now. When we think about it now, about how it might take shape, we make it less likely; indeed, we deter it. Knowledge of history can change the future. If we remember what history shows us is possible, we can prevent a coup from succeeding — and turn any such attempt against its instigator.

For The Children

Published by digby on April 6, 2026

At the White House Easter Egg Roll today:

Trump: “We are obliterating their country, and they just don’t want to say ‘uncle.’ But they will. And if they don’t, they’ll have no bridges, no power plants, no anything. I won’t go further because there are other things that are worse than those two, and we might have — well, if I had my choice, what would I like to do? Take the oil. Unfortunately, the American people would like to see us come home.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Harry said, ‘100% support'”

That’s the most pathetic thing he says these days. Clinging to that ridiculous poll that said his cult still loves him. But at this point it’s all he’s got.

He said that we sent guns to the opposition in Iran but the wrong people got them.

I am so tired…

So Much Winning

Published by digby on April 6, 2026

Trump’s “victory timeline” claims.

Mar 3: “We won the war.”
Mar 7: “We defeated Iran.”
Mar 9: “We must attack Iran.”
Mar 9: “The war is ending almost completely, and very beautifully.”
Mar 11: “You never like to say too ⁠early you won. We won. In ​the first hour it was over.”
Mar 12: “We did win, but we haven’t won completely yet.”
Mar 13: “We won the war.”
Mar 14: “Please help us.”
Mar 15: “If you don’t help us, I will certainly remember it.”
Mar 16: “Actually, we don’t need any help at all.”
Mar 16: “I was just testing to see who’s listening to me.”
Mar 16: “If NATO doesn’t help, they will suffer something very bad.”
Mar 17: “We neither need nor want NATO’s help.”
Mar 17: “I don’t need Congressional approval to withdraw from NATO.”
Mar 18: “Our allies must cooperate in reopening the Strait of Hormuz.”
Mar 19: “US allies need to get a grip – step up and help open the Strait of Hormuz.”
Mar 20: “NATO are cowards.”
Mar 21: “The Strait of Hormuz must be protected by the countries that use it. We don’t use it, we don’t need to open it.”
Mar 22: “This is the last time. I will give Iran 48 hours. Open the strait”
Mar 22: “Iran is Dead”
Mar 23: “We had very good and productive talks with Iran.”
Mar 24: “We’re making progress.”
Mar 25: “They gave us a present and the present arrived today. And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.”
Mar 26: “Make a deal, or we’ll just keep blowing them away.”
Mar 27: “We don’t have to be there for NATO.”
Mar 28: No major quote
Mar 29: Claimed talks were progressing
Mar 30: “Open the Strait of Hormuz immediately, or face devastating consequences.”
Mar 31: Claimed a deal was “very close” and that Iran would “do the right thing”
Apr 1: “We’ll see what happens very soon.”
Apr 2: Repeated that a deal was likely, while warning of continued strikes if not
Apr 3: “Something big is going to happen.”
Apr 4: Said Iran must comply “immediately” or face further consequences.
Apr 5: “Open the fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

If he says it enough he believes he can manifest it to be true.

He cannot.

Americans Desperately Seeking Medical Care

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 6, 2026

“60 Minutes” returns to Remote Area Medical

One of my RAM clinic photos from 2016. RAM asks photographers not to photograph patients’ faces without their premisssion.

Time has dulled the memory of my first visit to a Remote Area Medical (RAM) clinic in Wise, Virginia in 2009. I drove up after seeing insurance industry whistleblower, Wendell Potter, discuss his visit to Wise with Bill Moyers. I wrote about my visit for Huffington Post. I wrote here about my last visit in 2016. Even with Obamacare, these Americans get left behind. The poor, mostly, and the working poor. Out of work. Laid off. Or unemployable.

Until the “60 Minutes” segment on Sunday night, I had not considered that the Republican move to eliminate Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies as of January 1st might drive up demand for care at RAM’s free medical clinics. Neither “60 Minutes” nor RAM spokespersons address that. But when I displayed the sign below to commuters that first week of January, drivers held up fingers: three, five, six. And those were people who’d had ACA insurance and might lose it after losing the subsidies.

Scott Pelley and company write that what Potter and I saw years ago hasn’t let up. Demand has increased almost eight-fold:

About one third of Americans say they have skipped meals, borrowed money, or cut back on utilities to pay for health care. That’s in a Gallup poll released in March. The Trump administration has lowered prices on more than 50 drugs. But it also let premiums rise — even double — in the Affordable Care marketplace and made the biggest cuts ever to Medicaid. Already, 3 million have lost insurance and it’s estimated it’ll be 10 million in three years. All of this reminded us of our story in 2008, about a charity called Remote Area Medical. RAM started out parachuting doctors into South American jungles. But in the 1990s, it turned to another isolated people: Americans cut off from health care by the cost. Recently, we returned to RAM at one of its free, pop-up clinics. For Americans long on pain and short on hope, RAM is a ray of mercy in the darkness. 

The parking lot in Knoxville, Tennessee began to fill early. In a frigid February, many drove hundreds of miles in desperation. Nearby, Remote Area Medical would open a clinic inside an empty exhibit hall. But RAM can take only so many patients on a weekend, so they join the line days before. We met Sandra Tallent at 5 a.m. 

What RAM founder Stan Brock told me years ago about red tape keeping physicians and dentists from donating their services across state lines has improved. Just not enough. What the U.S. needs, one dentist tells “60 Minutes,” is a domestic law that allows Doctors Without Borders. But for the medical lobby, we might one.

Here’s the Wendell Potter segment with Bill Moyers that first sent me to Virginia.

An End Run Around Citizens United

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 6, 2026

Montana is taking on the billionaires

A good friend flagged this news last night. After this weekend, maybe you need some light at the end of the tunnel as well.

A proposed ballot initiative in Montana aims to “limit corporate spending in Montana elections.” Naturally, the Big Money Boyz challenged it in court. And lost last week in a unanimous decision from the Montana Supreme Court (The Daily Montanan):

In a unanimous decision, the court said reviewing the constitutionality of an initiative is “disfavored” because Montanans have a right to go through the initiative process. 

Organizers behind the Transparent Election Initiative were cleared to begin gathering signatures last month to put I-194, or Ballot Issue 10, on the ballot in November. 

The statutory initiative, dubbed “The Montana Plan,” would create a new Montana law to prohibit corporations — known in law as “artificial persons” — from spending money on political candidates or ballot issues. The Montana Plan is a direct challenge to the federal Citizens United ruling wherein the U.S. Supreme Court said that the power to spend money in elections is tantamount to free speech. 

Well then, the Montana Mining Association, the Montana Chamber of Commerce, Montana Stockgrowers Association, Montana Petroleum Association, Montana Trucking Association, Montana Contractors Association, Treasure State Resource Association, and the chambers of commerce in Billings and Kalispell got all up in the grill of the initiative’s backers. They’ve grown accustomed to throwing their weight (and their money) around and want to keep doing it.

Corporate campaign spending is not about the voice of the people or free speech. It’s an investment with potential for a high ROI.

The Transparent Election Initiative’s website declares, “The Montana Plan is a breakthrough legal strategy to beat Citizens United and take back our politics. Montana can do it, and your state can too.” How?

“The Montana Plan uses the State’s authority to define what powers corporations get, effectively bypassing Citizens United by removing the power to spend before the question of rights even arises.” The Harvard Law School’s Forum on Corporate Governance explained last summer:

The constitutional initiative under development in Montana would revoke all previously granted corporate powers and then regrant them in a positive, carefully defined way, with political spending powers omitted.

This structure draws upon two centuries of Supreme Court jurisprudence regarding corporate powers. The Court has held that states may define, limit, or revoke corporate powers for any reason, or for no reason at all. “That body need give no reason for its action in the matter,” the Court held in Greenwood v. Freight Co. (105 U.S. 13, 17 (1882)). “The validity of such action does not depend on the necessity for it, or on the soundness of the reasons which prompted it.”

This doctrine applies with equal force to “foreign corporations,” those chartered out of state but doing business within Montana. As the Court held in Paul v. Virginia (75 U.S. (8 Wall.) 168, 181 (1869)), a corporation “can have no legal existence beyond the limits of the sovereignty where created,” and any other state may decline to grant it powers that are “prejudicial to their interests or repugnant to their policy.”

Or to their polity. I don’t see where Sen. Elizabeth Warren has weighed in on this, but she’d likely be all in. With gusto.

The Daily Montanan again:

According to a national YouGov Survey from last fall, 79% of respondents, including 74% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats, agree that “large independent expenditures by wealthy donors and corporations in elections give rise to corruption, or the appearance of corruption.” 

On Wednesday, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who served under President Bill Clinton, released videos across social media drawing attention to the issue, saying “a very unlikely state is leading the way first-of-its kind plan,” which would “effectively neuter Citizens United.”

Robert Reich explains:

KTVH reported in March that a constitutional amendment in Montana “would require 60,241 signatures and a minimum number in 40 districts.” That means a substantially higher number of signatures will be needed to withstand the inevitable challenges by the business interests. Backers might have as little as twelve weeks to gather as many as 100,000 signatures in heavily rural Montana. That’s roughly one in 10 Montanans, or one in four residents of its seven largest cities (with only Billings over 100,000 in population). The effort must also include at least 10% of voters in at least 40 legislative House districts. So no small lift.

TEI is accepting donations. Consider your ROI when making one to undercut Citizens United. I just did.

(h/t BF)

“You Can Just Do Stuff”

Published by digby on April 5, 2026

Remember this?

The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.

That famous quote did not come from Trump or one of his minions. That came from a Bushie, long presumed to be Karl Rove. This imperial megalomania infected the American right wing long before Trump came along.

MAGA is not quite as articulate of course. They’re barely literate. They have a different expression: “you can just do stuff.” In other words, do whatever you want and let the other side just see if they can do anything about it. Most of the time you can get away with anything.

This is the mentality of the unprincipled, amoral, sociopath and it perfectly captures their ethos. Until it’s demonstrated that there are consequences for their actions they will keep doing … stuff.