Democrats in the 119th Congress have filed over a dozen bills touching on removing qualified immunity from federal officials who violate people’s civil rights under color of law. These would allow Americans — a lot of them, in fact —to personally sue the hell out of CBP and ICE agents for violating victims’ civil rights under the Constitution. My PDF collection is growing (and I may have missed one or two):
In the current GOP-controlled Congress, these are dead on arrival. But in the next? Or the next under a Democratic administration? Still, I’d be inclined to present the stack to any CBP/ICE agent threatening me and ask if he knows what the statute of limitations on civil rights lawsuits is in this state. Any of these bills might come back to bite him and his family in the future. HARD. It’s a bluff, of course, but I’d expect few of these idiots to know that.
Professor Akhil Reed Amar of Yale Law School knows more about that than I. He published a Yale Law Journal article on the topic in 1987. Adam Liptak explains that Amar proposes how to “close an odd gap in federal law” that allows civil rights lawsuits “against state and local officials, like police officers, but not against federal ones, like ICE agents.” Liptak gives “Of Sovereignty and Federalism” some love this morning in The New York Times (gift link):
“It’s an enormous problem that federal officials are in some ways the hardest people to hold accountable for violating people’s constitutional rights, even harder than state and local officials,” said Carolyn Shapiro, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a former solicitor general of Illinois.
The Supreme Court tried to address the gap in 1971 in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, allowing the victim of an unconstitutional search by federal agents to sue them. But the court has essentially abandoned that approach, saying instead that Congress must act if suits against federal officials are to be allowed.
Yes, but, Amar offers. Based on the concepts of federalism and originalism, states might step in where Congress fears to tread:
“This is exactly what the framers imagined: state law protecting us against federal abuses,” Professor Amar said.
Over the years, some states — including California, Maine, Massachusetts and New Jersey — have enacted laws along the lines that Professor Amar proposed, though they are largely untested, and Illinois recently adopted one tailored to address the conduct of ICE agents.
The Illinois law says that lawsuits may be filed “against any person who, while conducting civil immigration enforcement, knowingly engages in conduct that violates the Illinois Constitution or the United States Constitution.”
See: Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, all in blue states that might pass such legislation. As other blue states on Donald Trump’s enemies list might.
The Illinois law is flawed, two legal scholars believe (one is Amar’s brother, Vikram), but the idea behind it is sound. In a 2023 concurring opinion in a case about a protest outside the White House, a federal judge appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Donald Trump cited Amar’s article. Judge Justin Walker concluded, “nothing would stop a state from creating a new cause of action allowing plaintiffs to directly allege federal constitutional violations.”
“In the spirit of federalism,” Vikram Amar, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, explains, “not only can states experiment in this way, but doing so would likely lead Congress to address the problem, because it’s unlikely that Congress would want to leave a patchwork of different state regulations and different remedies.” California, Maine, Massachusetts and New Jersey already have such laws on the books, Liptak notes, “though they are largely untested.”
Given what we have witnessed over the last year of the Trump-Miller ethnic cleansing campaign, there is clearly an appetite on the Democratic side of the aisle for personally suing the hell out of CBP/ICE agents for trampling our rights under the Constitution. The effort itself may violate international law.
For those looking to hold accountable the Trump administration as a whole, I hear there is a Nuremberg in Pennsylvania.
Oestreich published a column at HuffPost last week about what’s happening in Minneapolis from an Iraq veteran’s persepctive. She served with professional soldiers. What she sees on the streets of Minneapolis are government mercenaries:
We have to be clear about what we are witnessing from Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota.
As a combat soldier, I recognize a mission when I see one — not because it’s announced, but because it’s being carried out. In the span of weeks, ICE and Border Patrol operations in Minneapolis have resulted in the deaths of two Minnesotans. In over a year of combat in Iraq, my battalion of 500 soldiers did not kill a single person.
That difference matters.
My unit spent 397 days on the battlefield. We were shot at. We feared for our lives. Snipers fired from crowds. Improvised explosive devices lined the roads we were ordered to clear. And still, we did not return fire unless strict conditions were met: The shooter had to be clearly identified, civilians could not be in the line of fire, and lethal force had to be the last resort.
Why? Because that was not our mission.
Our mission was to build bases, secure supply routes, and protect civilian life. We were governed by Rules of Engagement, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the War Crimes Act. Violations were not brushed aside. Soldiers are criminally accountable when we break the law. That accountability is what separates professional soldiers from mercenaries.
This isn’t just my experience. It’s the standard.
Oestreich in Nasiriyah, Iraq (2003).
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara stated publicly that, in 2025, the Minneapolis Police Department recovered roughly 900 guns from the street and arrested hundreds of violent offenders — and did not kill a single person.
Let that sit with you.
If the Minneapolis Police Department didn’t kill anyone in a year of active policing, and my combat unit didn’t kill anyone in over a year of war, Minnesotans — and all Americans — are right to ask why ICE and the Border Patrol have killed two people in my state in two weeks.
The answer is uncomfortable but unavoidable. Either this is their mission — or they are operating outside accountability.
Sadly, both can be true. In the same way that deporting undocumented immigrants and violating Americans’ civil rights under the cloak of annonymity and civil immunity are not mutually exclusive.
Minnesota is demanding a full legal investigation into the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, including allegations that lifesaving medical care was delayed or denied. Refusing transparency or investigation is not partisan disagreement. It is a constitutional failure.
When armed agents operate beyond the reach of law, they are no longer public servants. They are something else entirely.
Mercenaries are defined not only by who pays them but by what restrains them. Mercenaries answer to orders, not to law, ethics or public accountability. That is precisely why soldiers and law enforcement officers hold codes of conduct so fiercely. Without those codes, uniforms become disguises instead of safeguards.
See them for what they are. CBP/ICE agents have their orders. We are witnesses.
Chicago, IL — Video shows ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle colliding with the car of Dayanne Figueroa, a U.S. citizen, before exiting with guns drawn and arresting her at gunpoint. Figueroa was detained for several hours and later released without charges, according to reporting… pic.twitter.com/dDW1vU0g54
Empty car sitting at the intersection of 35th and Pillsbury with its flashers on.
There are these ghost cars all over Minneapolis right now from ICE snatching people out of their vehicle in the middle of the street. pic.twitter.com/MV4ivJriEQ
They’re just brutalizing people with this car tactic. It has to stop. Driving up on people because they think they spot an immigrant, stopping them, breaking their windows and dragging them out of cars and violently assaulting them is happening all the time. They even leave the cars running wide open with people’s belongings inside.
They left this woman lying in the street injured and drove off:
A woman who’s a U.S. citizen needed medical help Thursday, Jan. 29, after federal agents pulled her from her car after demanding to see her “papers,” one of the state’s largest unions said Saturday.
Service Employees International Union Local 503 said the woman, a union member, was driving to run errands when four agents stopped her on a Salem street. The agents identified themselves as federal law enforcement, according to the union’s statement.
The woman, identified only as Maria, is a home care worker who had been on her way to pay rent and pick up a cake for her grandson’s birthday, SEIU said. The union declined to give her last name, citing her privacy, and a union spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions for more information Saturday.
Maria feared for her life during the incident, according to union statements, as she has severe asthma and worried about getting tear gassed.
[…]
At around 11 a.m. Thursday, Maria was driving alone to take care of a rent payment and buy a cake for her grandson when she noticed she was being followed for several blocks by an unmarked vehicle that did not have a license plate, SEIU’s statement said.
Maria had been driving around northeast Salem, according to Latinos Unidos Siempre on social media. The vehicle pulled in front of her and stopped, while another parked behind her. Three men and a woman exited the vehicles wearing vests saying “police,” and one “banged on her window, demanding that she show them “papers.” SEIU said.
“When Maria did not immediately respond, the agents shattered her car window, forcibly removed her from the vehicle and threw her to the ground, causing numerous injuries,” the statement said. As she was on the ground, the agents dumped out her purse, found her U.S. passport and left the scene, according to SEIU.
“She had been carrying (her passport) because her daughter had told her to carry her passport everywhere she goes, advice her daughter learned at a Know Your Rights training,” a GoFundMe set up by SEIU for her said. By Sunday morning, 206 donors had contributed nearly $12,00, the fundraising site showed.
Maria sustained a torn rotator cuff, concussion and bruised ribs during the incident and received medical treatment at a hospital, according to the GoFundMe…
Maria contacted the Salem Police Department about the incident, but was told to contact the FBI since the incident involved federal agents, the union said.
I wouldn’t expect the local police to always be sympathetic. Many of them are Trumpers and are totally on board with the assaults. (I don’t know about Salem but parts of Oregon are very red so it’s possible.)
These tactics are outrageous and while Trump has put out a tweet saying that they aren’t supposed to interact with “agitators” anymore (meaning observers and protesters” unless they’re threatening a federal building) I haven’t heard anything about them being ordered to stop this. They should not be allowed to racially profile drivers, pull them out of their cars and beat them up, immigrant or citizen alike.
In the past, ICE got warrants for known criminals, period. They didn’t roust law abiding immigrants, much less people who are here legally or, worse yet, are citizens. This whole thing is nothing but a form of ethnic cleansing and until people understand that some form of this will go on as long as Stephen Miller is running the country.
And yes, Miller wants to go after their political opposition and that includes white citizens as well. He d=is more than willing to use the full power of the state to do it. Nobody should be sanguine about any of this. It’s just a first step.
The speed, scale, flagrance and persistence of the Trump administration’s deviations from established legal and constitutional norms during his second term have been so dramatic that it bears stepping back and taking stock.
Within hours of his January 2025 inauguration, Donald Trump had pardoned hundreds of people convicted of political violence — a hallmark of aspiring autocratic regimes — and shown tacit support for violent resistance to electoral setbacks. Days later he removed legal protections from civil servants and fired 17 oversight officials charged with tackling fraud and corruption. By March the administration was in open conflict with the courts, summer saw police firing rubber bullets at protesters and the removal of the labour statistics agency chief in the wake of weak jobs numbers, and this month brought the criminal investigation into Fed chair Jay Powell and the shootings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
While US history is hardly free from political violence or maltreatment of disfavoured groups, this blitz on America’s citizens, institutions and — by many estimations — the constitution itself ranks as arguably the most rapid episode of democratic and civil erosion in the recent history of the developed world.
Measured using objective criteria spanning 10 domains including the use of state force against civilians, political prosecution and the independence of the judiciary and civil service, I find that the US slide during Trump’s second term stands out as the most rapid in contemporary history. It outpaces the early stages of backsliding under Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, where similar steps unfolded over several years.
No, it’s not the Onion. Or Andy Bowowitz. But since the website was registered three days ago in Iceland; and since the site resides on a server in Toronto; and since the “Join Us” link does not lead to a signup page; and since real billionaires would spend far more on a slicker website to defend themselves against a 1% wealth tax; call it a snide joke. A joke about California’s proposed billionaire tax ballot initiative.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) supports it. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, “widely seen as a presidential hopeful,” does not. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated “$20 million to a new California political drive weeks after he took steps to leave the state to avoid a possible billionaire tax.”
The Billionaire Tax Act has already pushed the founders of Google to leave the state, taking their economic contributions with them. By taxing unrealized gains and voting shares, the act would make it difficult for founders to retain control of their startups.
Tax law expert, Brian Galle, is the “key architect” behind the measure. “I think capitalism is a great system that probably has, you know, enriched the lives of billions of people,” Galle told Fortune over Zoom recently, “But I’m not sure that our system is a functioning capitalist system right now.”
Critics of the California proposal, including tech billionaire Palmer Luckey, have argued that a wealth tax would force them to liquidate businesses and fire workers to pay the bill. Galle dismissed this, saying, “The idea that they would have to sell a meaningful share of their assets to pay a 1% annual tax is just nonsense.” Galle also rejected the argument that wealth taxes are doomed to fail because they have been repealed in many countries such as France, pointing instead to successful, sustained models in Switzerland and Spain that closed loopholes for privately held businesses.
Billionaires are value-creators, March for Billionaires argues. Jeff Bezos built an online store, right? Larry Page & Sergey Brin made “the world’s information accessible to everyone, for free.” Taylor Swift fills stadiums worldwide. Hamdi Ulukaya popularized Chobani Greek yogurt!
Judge individuals, not classes
Of course, not all billionaires are good people. Some extract rather than create wealth. Some use their resources to cause serious political harm. These criticisms have merit, but they apply to individuals, not billionaires as a whole.
We believe most have made tremendous contributions to society, directly through their entrepreneurship and secondarily through taxes and philanthropy. That deserves our respect and admiration.
So lace up your Gucci sneakers and march with the 0.001% in defense of 1% of their wealth. Respect them. Admire them. Love them. Worship them.
This is a tactical retreat couched in bully boy bluster. Everyone sees through it. He’s calling off the masked thugs marauding through the streets like a gang of barbarians. It’s not working for him.
By the way, he did not do anything but cause havoc in Los Angeles and the police chief said no such thing. The National Guard and the Marines paraded around for a while and then left. There were no huge protests and the ones that took place in front of the federal building downtown were handled easily by the LAPD. They know how to deal with protests, they happen every day. His threats are all bullshit.
Aside from the large lead for the Democrats (+6 is above average), the Fox News Poll found some striking shifts in issue ownership. Fox finds the Democrats lead on affordability (+14), helping the middle class (+14), and healthcare (+21), while Republicans hold advantages on border security (+15), national security (+12), and immigration (+5) — but their previous edges on taxes, foreign policy, and the deficit have evaporated. Those issues are now essentially tied.
Compared to 2023, the last time Fox asked these questions before Trump became president, support for the GOP is down on immigration by 5 points (10 points since 2022), national security by 8, government spending by 11, foreign policy by 12, taxes by 12, and affordability/prices by 26.
Morris notes that while the GOP still has an edge on immigration despite all that’s happened the trend is moving in the Democrats’ direction.
But second, electorally speaking, what has been a better predictor of election outcomes historically is the percent of voters who say they think the Democratic/Republican party is best at handling each individual’s single most important issue. Per Gallup below, whichever party has led on this question in the past 20 years has won the subsequent presidential election. The results also predict midterms reasonably well if you apply a slight penalty for the party in control of the White House.
Meanwhile, Trump’s standing with independents continues to deteriorate. The Economist/YouGov poll conducted Jan. 23-26 found Trump at -18 net approval overall but -40 among independents. That’s a new record low across both his first and second terms.
And even more stunning is this:
The GOP cannot win without Independents. Neither party can since they make up at least a third of the electorate. That chart is a death knell for the midterms if it holds up.
The generic ballot this far out isn’t predictive of the final result — as I wrote earlier this month, the out-party typically gains about 5 points between now and November. But it does tell us where the race starts. And right now, Democrats are starting from their strongest position in years.
As Tom noted below, last night there was a special election to fill a state Senate seat in the solid red 9th district in Texas. The Democrat won, swinging the vote by over 30 points from 2024. I’m not getting my hopes up but it would be such poetic justice if Texas’ gerrymander came back to bite them in the ass next November. They thought they had a lock on the whole state and could afford to dilute their safe seats to squeeze out a few more. They may have placed the wrong bet.
Another group of kids brutalized by Miller’s gestapo:
Today I saw ICE gas little white kids in the streets of Portland with chemical weapons. Imagine what they're doing to brown and black kids in the detention camps
Can confirm ICE seemingly did this without any real warning at a completely peaceful rally. It was fucking nurses and teachers and their families on a Saturday afternoon…
It's hard to overstate how ell-organized the portland march that got gassed was… organizers made the crowd promise to be peaceful, said the march would slow in front of the ICE building but not stop, that we would stick to one chant (ICE Out). They did absolutely everything right and got gassed.
I got tear gassed too. Totally peaceful protest, largely nurses and teachers. Elderly man near me couldn't open his eyes and a woman near me was comforting her baby. Right now I'm still in the OHSU parking garage nearby wondering why nobody seems able to leave… cars not moving at all.
Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a special election for the Texas state senate on Saturday, flipping a reliably Republican district that Donald Trump won by 17 points when he clinched a second presidency in 2024.
Rehmet, a labor union leader and veteran, easily defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist, in the Fort Worth-area district. With almost all votes counted, Rehmet had a comfortable lead of more than 14 percentage points.
His victory added to Democrats’ record of overperforming in special elections so far this cycle. Democrats said it was further evidence that voters under the second Trump administration are motivated to reject GOP candidates and their policies.
A huge political earthquake in Texas tonight as Democrats flipped a State Senate seat from red to blue in a district Trump won by 17 points.
Trump personally waded in — endorsing the Republican and personally urging base turnout — and was dealt a massive loss. pic.twitter.com/RwDUP7jhDk
It doesn’t immediately change anything inside what the late Molly Ivins dubbed “the Austin Fun House.” So don’t get overexcited:
Rehmet’s victory allows him to serve only until early January, and he must win the November general election to keep the seat for a full four-year term. The Texas legislature is not set to reconvene until 2027, and the GOP still will have a comfortable majority.
Liam Ramos (Photos courtesy Columbia Heights Public Schools)
Famous at five, Liam Ramos was news at six. The whole world saw the image above of 5-year-old Liam being held as bait by immigration officers. They’d arrested his father, Adrián Alexander Conejo Arias, as he returned home with Liam from preschool on Jan. 20. to lure his mother outside her house:
Erika Ramos, Liam’s mother, told Telemundo in Spanish that she “witnessed the scene from the window and couldn’t do anything. Adrián begged me repeatedly not to go outside because he was afraid they would arrest me too.”
Ramos said the immigration officers noticed her, took Liam out of their car and brought him to the front door so she would open it.
“They knocked and knocked, and my son Liam kept saying, ‘Mommy, open the door.’ I was terrified,” she said while sobbing.
She said she didn’t open the door out of fear she would be arrested and her other child would be left alone.
Never seen a ruling like this: "Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned." https://t.co/qykE0glTVCpic.twitter.com/LD3sliUqEd
A federal judge on Saturday ordered the boy and his father released.
Warm up your coffee and please read in its entirety this sharp rebuke to DHS Secretary Krisiti Noem, U.S. AG Pam Bondi, Todd Lyons, Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and others from U.S. District Judge Fred Biery (3 pages). Note the section I’ve bolded:
OPINION AND ORDER OF THE COURT
Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas 1 corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.
The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.
[1 Ex parte Bollman, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 75 (1807); Sir William W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769); see also Magna Carta, Article 39.]
Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:
“He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.”
“He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”
“For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”
“He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.”
“We the people” are hearing echos of that history.
And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.
U.S. CONST. amend. IV.
Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.
Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.
Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.
Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.
Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: “Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?” “A republic, if you can keep it.”
With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,
It is so ORDERED.
SIGNED this 31st day of February, 2026. [He meant January.]
Below his signature, Biery added the photo and Bible quotes seen in Kyle Cheney’s post above.
Matthew 19:14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
John 11:35 Jesus wept.
In another court decision issued Saturday, federal District Court Judge Kate Menendez punted on a demand from the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to end “Operation Metro Surge” by thousands of DHS agents. Plaintiffs had not shown that the action (on the whole, see Biery decision above) had not crossed 10th Amendment constitutional lines:
“Plaintiffs have provided no metric by which to determine when lawful law enforcement becomes unlawful commandeering, simply arguing that the excesses of Operation Metro Surge are so extreme that the surge exceeds whatever line must exist,” she wrote, referencing a courtroom exchange with a lawyer for the state. “A proclamation that Operation Metro Surge has simply gone ‘so far on the other side of the line’ is a thin reed on which to base a preliminary injunction.”
Judge Menendez denies Minnesota plaintiffs’ request to end Operation Metro Surge because they don’t meet the high bar set by the 10th Amendment, but she also points to what she doesn’t decide, including the legality of what ICE is doing on the ground. pic.twitter.com/dLNAv7Aalr
The Court pauses to observe what it is not deciding. At this stage, the Court makes no final determination on the merits of any claims asserted by Plaintiffs. Nor does the Court offer any opinion about the wisdom of Operation Metro Surge. And the legality of many of the specific actions taken by federal agents during the operation is not before the Court in this case. Instead, the Court only decides whether to grant the extraordinary remedy of a preliminary injunction halting a federal law enforcement operation based upon the Tenth Amendment. In answering this question, the Court must view Plaintiffs’ claims through the lens of the specific legal framework they invoke, and, having done so, finds that Plaintiffs have not met their burden. For the reasons discussed below, the motion is denied.
An appeals court stayed a preliminary injunction Menendez issued in January ordering agents not to retaliate “against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity, including observing the activities of Operation Metro Surge.” The appellate court found her ruling “too broad” and “too vague” to survive appeal.
Trump 2.0 has generated a “deluge” of such court cases leading in recent weeks to judges ordering the release of hundreds of immigrants, The New York Times reports:
In case after case, federal judges have found that the Trump administration has been ignoring longstanding legal interpretations that mandate the release of many people who are taken into immigration custody if they post a bond.
The surge in such cases has dominated the court dockets in some districts, overwhelming government lawyers who have to defend the detentions. And the wave of people who have been set free has upended the Trump administration’s effort to keep detained immigrants locked up indefinitely, even if they do not pose a public safety threat.
But as we’ve seen, the legal pushback has in no way curbed lawless, aggressive violent behavior by armed agents of the Trump-Miller pogrom. Last month they took the lives of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
PBS reports that Pretti’s shooting was “at least the fourth shooting fatality linked to immigration enforcement since Trump returned to the Oval Office. At least eight other shootings have led to injury, according to a PBS News review of news coverage, as well as tallies from The Trace, NBC News and The Washington Post.”
The Guardian adds, “Pretti and Good are just two people out of at least eight who have either been killed by federal agents or who have died while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in 2026 so far.”
Nor has legal pushback stopped an increasingly imperial Trump administration from ignoring judicial rulings or from declaring Trump a law unto himself. The Bill of Rights is no longer operative if the Trump administration finds your constitutional rights inconvenient. Jeff Sharlet’s slow civil war has accelerated since January 20, 2025.
My sign efforts since August were predicated on a simple notion born out of years of greeting harried voters outside polling stations: if people trust you, they will vote with you. Sign Guy (me) is already familiar to 10,000 commuters per week. With trusted messenger status, I might after Labor Day gently persuade more of them to vote. Naive, maybe, but not simply more of the usual thing. But last month’s events have me reconsidering that strategy and timeline. Things are already too dire. This situation requires more boldness on my part and on yours, and now. Democracy can’t wait.
As he villain in Iron Man 3put it, “ever since that big dude with a hammer fell out of the sky, subtlety’s kinda had its day.”
President Merkin Muffley: But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you *build* such a thing?
Ambassador de Sadesky: There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.
President Merkin Muffley: This is preposterous. I’ve never approved of anything like that.
Ambassador de Sadesky: Our source was the New York Times.
— from Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George
Venezuela’s defence minister has accused the United States of using the country as a “weapons laboratory” during the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3.
Vladimir Padrino Lopez said last week that the US had used Venezuela as a testing ground for “advanced military technologies” that rely on artificial intelligence and weaponry never used before, according to the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal.
On Sunday, US President Donald Trump told the New York Post that US forces had indeed used a weapon he referred to as “the discombobulator”.
“I’m not allowed to talk about it,” he said, adding that the weapon “made equipment not work” during the operation.
Details of the US military mission to abduct Maduro have not been made public, but the US has been known to use weapons to disorient soldiers and guards or disable equipment and infrastructure in the past. […]
Days after Maduro’s abduction, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reposted comments that appeared to have been posted on X by a Venezuelan security guard. He wrote that the US had “launched something” during the operation that “was like a very intense sound wave”.
“Suddenly, I felt like my head was exploding from the inside,” the security guard wrote. “We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.”
Al Jazeera has not been able to verify this account.
The “Discombobulator”. Fanciful term. Like …a “Doomsday Machine”?
A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers. Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.
Could you be more …specific?
Last year started with a glimmer of hope in regard to nuclear risks, as incoming US President Donald Trump made efforts to halt the Russia-Ukraine war and even suggested that major powers pursue “denuclearization.” Over the course of 2025, however, negative trends—old and new—intensified, with three regional conflicts involving nuclear powers all threatening to escalate. The Russia–Ukraine war has featured novel and potentially destabilizing military tactics and Russian allusions to nuclear weapons use. Conflict between India and Pakistan erupted in May, leading to cross-border drone and missile attacks amid nuclear brinkmanship. In June, Israel and the United States launched aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of supporting the country’s nuclear weapons ambitions. It remains unclear whether the attacks constrained those efforts—or if they instead persuaded the country to pursue nuclear weapons covertly.
Anyway, feel free to read the entire statement; it goes on to discuss additional factors like climate change, developments in artificial intelligence, the proliferation of autocratic regimes, and there’s something about a magic ring and the end of the world, yadda-yadda-yadda. Don’t panic. These science types tend to be alarmists; I doubt if we’re in any immediate danger.
President Trump’s “massive armada” of warships and fighter planes near Iran mirrors the military buildup of assets in the Caribbean as the president weighs greenlighting strikes against the Islamic Republic.
The military buildup, bolstered with the recent arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group in the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) area, has swelled with additional destroyers approaching Iran, expanding Trump’s attack and defensive options in the region.
The administration dispatched dozens of warships and stationed about 15,000 U.S. service members in the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) area, which culminated in an early January operation in which Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife were snatched by U.S. Special Forces.
Similarly to Venezuela, the U.S. has at least 10 warships near Iran, and the administration has sent additional fighter jets, air defense systems and drones to the region.
Just like Maduro, Iranian officials are not acquiescing to Trump’s demands. He has called on Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium, place limits on its ballistic missile program and end ties with terror proxy groups. […]
Washington has also sent additional F-15s and cargo planes to the region, expanding the president’s strike options, according to flight-tracking data.
Trump said Friday that he gave Iran a deadline and reiterated that Tehran wants to strike a deal with the U.S. When asked by a reporter if the president has a timeline for potentially pulling back the U.S. presence near Iran, he said, “No, we’ll see how it all works out.”
“You know, they have to float someplace, so they might as well float near Iran. But it’s a rough situation going on,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
OK …I wasn’t saying that we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.
Again, I’m not trying to be Chicken Little here…but if you’ve never had a chance to see the aforementioned Dr. Strangelove, this might be a good time to check it off your bucket list.
Here’s a piece I wrote [checks notes] on the cusp of the first Trump regime:
Plus ca change: Criterion reissues Dr. Strangelove
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 16, 2016)
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb…The *Bomb*, Dmitri… The *hydrogen* bomb!…Well now, what happened is… ahm…one of our base commanders, he had a sort of…well, he went a little funny in the head… you know…just a little…funny. And, ah…he went and did a silly thing…Well, I’ll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes…to attack your country…
–from Dr. Strangelove (1964)
That’s POTUS Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers), making “the call” to the Russian premier from the War Room, regarding an unfortunate chain of events that may very well signal the end of civilization as we know it. It’s a nightmare scenario, precipitated by a perfect storm of political paranoia, bureaucratic bungling and ideological demagoguery that enables the actions of a lone nutcase to trigger global thermonuclear war. Sound familiar?
“Mein fuehrer! I can walk!” Although we have yet (knock on wood) to experience the global thermonuclear annihilation that ensues following the wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove’s joyous (if short-lived) epiphany, so many other depictions in Stanley Kubrick’s seriocomic 1964 masterpiece about the tendency for people in power to eventually rise to their own level of incompetence have since come to pass, that you wonder why Kubrick and company bothered to make it all up.
In case you skipped the quote at the top of this piece, it’s the movie about an American military base commander who goes a little funny in the head (you know…”funny”) and sort of launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Hilarity (and oblivion) ensues.
You rarely see a cast like this: Peter Sellers (playing three characters), George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, James Earl Jones and Peter Bull (who can be seen breaking character as the Russian ambassador and cracking up as Strangelove’s prosthetic arm seems to take on a mind of its own).
There are so many great lines, that you might as well bracket the entire screenplay (by Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George) with quotation marks.
Vodka. That’s what they drink, isn’t it? Never water? On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason. Water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this earth’s surface is water. Why, do you realize that 70 percent of you is water? And as human beings, you need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. Are you beginning to understand? –Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), from Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (its full title) did not necessarily spring from a, you know, “funny” place. Indeed, Red Alert, ex-RAF officer Peter George’s 1958 source novel, was anything but; and did not even include the character of Dr. Strangelove, the ex-Nazi scientist who emerges from the shadows of the war room just in time to contextualize all that inspired madness of the film’s third act. “He” was the invention of Kubrick and screenwriter Terry Southern.
In a 1994 Grand Street article called “Notes from the War Room”, Southern recounts Kubrick’s epiphany:
[Kubrick] told me he was going to make a film about “our failure to understand the dangers on nuclear war.” He said that he had thought of the story as a “straightforward melodrama” until this morning when he “woke up and realized that nuclear war was too outrageous, too fantastic to be treated in any conventional manner.” He said he could only see it now as “some kind of hideous joke.”
Kubrick had approached Southern as a collaborator on the basis of having read his social satire The MagicChristian (which was itself adapted for the screen in 1969). You have to keep in mind that while Kubrick’s film was in production, the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was still fresh in the minds of a nervous public.
This was the height of the Cold War; few people found nuclear annihilation to be, you, know, “funny”…least of all studio suits. When Sellers backed out of the role of Major Kong (to Kubrick’s chagrin), it was first offered to Bonanza star Dan Blocker. Southern recalls (from the same article):
[Kubrick] made arrangements for a script to be delivered to Blocker that afternoon, but a cabled response from Blocker’s agent arrived in quick order: “Thanks a lot, but the material is too pinko for Dan. Or anyone else we know, for that matter. Regards, Leibman, CMA.”
As I recall, this was the first hint that this sort of political interpretation of our work in progress might exist. Stanley seemed genuinely surprised and disappointed.
But it worked out in the end. Could you imagine anyone but Slim Pickens as Maj. Kong?
Survival kit contents check. In them you’ll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days’ concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. –Major Kong prepping his B-52 crew
It was in the interest of possible “political interpretation” that a critical revision had to be made to that memorable monolog in post-production. In an eerie bit of kismet, Kubrick had scheduled the first test screening of Dr. Strangelove for November 22, 1963…the day of JFK’s assassination; in view of that zeitgeist-shattering event, the film’s originally slated December premiere was postponed until late January of 1964.
But that wasn’t the spookiest part. Originally, the last line of the bit was: “Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff.” Pickens had to be recruited to re-loop the line as we now know it. If you listen carefully during the scene, you can pick up on the edit.
However it did manage to fall together is really moot; the final product stands the test of time as a satire that will never lose relevancy (one could say that about any Kubrick film, as each ultimately points to the absurdity of all these self-important hominids, scurrying about blissfully oblivious to their insignificance within a vast, randomly cruel cosmos).
Hell, Mr. President…I could do a 2,000 word dissertation on the Freudian subtext alone; from the opening montage of aircraft engaging in (decidedly coital) airborne re-fueling maneuvers, to General Ripper firing the .50 caliber machine gun from his crotch, not to mention his cigar and his monolog about why he denies women his “essence”, to the character’s names (Dr. Strangelove, President Muffley, Buck Turgidson, Mr. Staines), and of course all of that phallic weaponry, and montage of nuclear explosions at the end.
But I won’t.
“Oh…and uh, shug? Don’t forget to say your prayers!”
Fans of the film will be glad to hear that Dr. Strangelove has been given the Criterion treatment, with the release of their Blu-ray edition. The restored 4k transfer is gorgeous; the best print I’ve seen of the film on home video (this is the third digital version I’ve owned…it’s a sickness, I know).
They’ve really piled on the extras; there’s a plethora of archival interviews, as well as featurettes produced exclusively for this edition, like audio essays by film scholars and interviews with Kubrick collaborators and archivists. So fans can immerse themselves in the Strangelovian universe…if that doesn’t seem redundant.
Oh, when November rolls around…don’t forget to say your prayers.
