When they aren’t murdering US citizens here’s what they’ve been tasked to do:
What in god’s name is happening here? Trump has literally deployed 2000 masked and armed agents to terrorize day care centers. Is there not one Republican other than the usual suspects like the very concerned Susan Collins who will step up here? Not one???
It’s happening at schools too:
He’s always been hostile to NATO at least partially because he still erroneously believes that NATO is a club that requires dues like Mar-a-lago. He can’t grasp that the agreement was for them to spend a certain percentage of their GDP of defense which isn’t the same thing at all.
As for NATO not being there for us, this ignoramus doesn’t seem to know that the only time Article 5 have ever been invoked was after 9/11 when they all sent troops to Afghanistan.
And yes, he does seem to be targeting Norway because they didn’t give him the blow job he thinks he’s entitled to as world emperor. They have a lot of oil there so they’d better watch out. Trump’s decided he can just take it if he feels like it.
Aaaaand then there’s this:
Every bit of that is delusional. I think he’s having a breakdown.
I urge you to read this entire essay about January 6th by TPM’s Hunter Walker who was on the scene at the Capitol that day. An excerpt:
In the immediate aftermath, I found it hard to capture the scope of the thing. As an eyewitness and a journalist, I felt a distinct burden. I had to convey not just how far we’d strayed from any notion of law and order but also the horror of how much more violent it very easily could have been.
That urgency became a dull weight as it quickly began to seem that so much of the country was eager to move on or ignore the harsh truths of the day. The tendency of many to look away and pass into the ultimately interstitial, liminal moment of Joe Biden’s presidency was exacerbated by the fact there was a full-on campaign dedicated to rewriting and reversing the basic facts of what happened. The attack on our government was quickly paired with an assault on our collective memory that painted the day as, alternately, harmless, a set up, or even heroic. The task of these propagandists was made even easier because so much of Official Washington demonstrated an unwillingness to identify and punish the members of Congress, assorted grifters, and dark money groups that formed the political arm of the January 6 movement.
Like so many other investigators, attorneys, and whistleblowers, I swam against this tide for years. Along with other journalists, including here at TPM, I dutifully tried to fact check the most egregious lies, to expose the many direct lines between the rioters on the ground and President Trump, and even to release evidence that the official probes failed to publicly present. On other dark anniversaries, I also tried to counter the blatantly, ridiculously false narrative that this was some kind of peaceful and positive protest by recounting the terror I felt in that crowd. Ultimately, those efforts failed. The narrative, at least for now, has been fully and dramatically rewritten with Trump’s pardon pen.
[…]
January 6 was, for me, the moment we lost the plot. It was a milestone in the erosion of our core values. It left Trump’s violent authoritarian movement emboldened and able to continue onward. The gates were forced open.
Many observers have looked at Trump’s actions in Venezuela and argued they are simply a more blatant version of an age-old American imperialism. They’re not wrong. Yet, somehow, Trump manages to take our country’s worst tendencies and magnify them to an absurd degree.
[…]
Trump and his gilded, misshapen White House are monuments to the fevered night sweats that have shaken us from the American dream. He is our monument — and January 6 is his national holiday.
And now we have thugs marauding through the streets, armed to the teeth threatening and shooting civilians. The re-election and the pardons made it inevitable.
Oh yeah? An ICE agent murdered a 37 year old, white, female U.S. citizen this morning. (The YouTube of the murder is here. It’s not gory or graphic but it is shocking.) Noem said it was an act of domestic terrorism.
The acceleration almost certainly happened because she was dead and her foot fell on the gas.
They escalated in Minneapolis because of Trump’s insane hatred for Ilhan Omar and the Somali population as well as his resentment over the George Floyd protests in his first term. It’s just another stop on the revenge tour. 2000 DHS agents have been sent to the city in the biggest deployment yet.
We don’t know who the sociopath who fired the shots is but it won’t be surprising if he’s one of the new agents they’ve been using sophisticated targeting tools to recruit from gun shows, NASCAR races and UFC fights as well as listeners of “patriotic” podcasts. Or maybe he’s just another MAGA incel.
It seems unlikely that anything will happen to this guy. The FBI is doing the investigation so… But it’s clear from the video that he was in no danger and he shot her in the face a point blank range. They have been given a license to kill and they’re using it.
And by the way, look at the fucking stupid hat Noem is wearing for no apparent reason. She should be impeached for that alone. What an evil clown show.
Update:
Oh my God
He is delusional. The officer was not run over as we can all see in the video, nor is he in the hospital. This is a shocking lie. He should immediately be evaluated for a mental breakdown.
There’s a new MAGA conspiracy theory afoot and it’s a doozy.:
There’s been no shortage of reasons why President Donald Trump captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro over the weekend. But election deniers think the operation will finally expose a 2020 election plot involving rigged voting machines.
Dumb as it may be, the conspiracy theory stretches way back to the days after the 2020 election, when prominent Trump figures like Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell falsely claimed that voting machine vendors Dominion and Smartmatic were secretly Venezuelan companies.
Since Maduro’s capture, prominent right-wing figures like Alex Jones and Benny Johnson, as well as the Trump administration official Ed Martin, have been excitedly predicting that Maduro, desperate to please Trump, will confirm the conspiracy. Trump himself has posted videos on social media promoting false claims about Dominion voting machines since Maduro’s capture.
It actually goes deeper than this. They think that Trump may have already cleverly cut the deal with Maduro in advance which explains why there was little resistance to his abduction. No word on why Maduro would have agreed although there has been some speculation that money was exchanged. This is all seen as yet more evidence of Trump’s brilliance.
You will no doubt recall that Fox News was forced to pay almost a billion dollars to Dominion for spreading this disinformation. This one should be good.
Meanwhile, back in the states…
The blue collar billionaire seems to be more billionaire than blue collar in this second term:
The causes of this blue-collar downturn are multifaceted—manufacturing remains in structural decline amidst the slowdown in demand for durable goods and consumer electronics. The early-COVID homebuilding boom has ended as builders finish work on the large number of projects that began in 2021/2022. Employment in oil & gas extraction continues to drop as crude prices sink to the lowest level since 2021. Transportation and warehousing jobs are declining as the trucking sector struggles.
Yet recent federal policy moves have been counterproductive. Tariffs are hurting blue-collar employment by raising the costs of manufacturing inputs. Immigration raids are disproportionately hurting the construction sector. Cuts to industrial policy subsidies have helped push factory construction down more than 8% over the last year. The administration’s desired “blue-collar boom” is not happening; quite the opposite.
But at least the price of eggs has leveled off. That’s really all that matters.
Mona Charen warns that under Trump 2.0 we’ve become the bad guys, the rogue state, the lawless, imperialist bullies. With a maniacal grin, Trump’s slavering White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, declares it proudly.
Rights? Rule of law? We don’t need no stinking rule of law. Or any rules-based international order.
Sure, our American record is hardly spotless. We are sinners. But we still look to the ideals in our Declaration and to the flawed Constitution we’ve worked to perfect for 250 years as a guide to who we as a nation aspire to be. Or we did before Trumpism, a gangsterish shakedown racket self-parodying as a nation of laws, not men.
Charen laments:
… Trump and his people don’t leave any doubt that they are in the business of intimidation and possible conquest. Marco Rubio warned other leaders not to “F around” lest they find out what a bad hombre the president is. There were direct, bald threats against Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and of course, Greenland.
Trump’s understanding of the world arrested its development in the late 1970s to early 1980s, as I’ve noted. Trump believes any country he dislikes is emptying its prisons and asylums and dumping them on our shores. Charen traces that Trumpish fixation to Castro’s 1980 Mariel Boatlift. So, yes.
Charen concludes:
The United States under Trump is an outlaw nation, threatening excellent neighbors like Canada with economic devastation, blasting people in fast boats to pieces, withdrawing from international agreements, bullying friends and foes alike, and now kidnapping foreign leaders (however evil). We are becoming the kind of nation against which America used to defend others.
The Western Hemisphere had better prepare for a taste of this.
Full text:
This video is terrifying, and it’s exactly why “just comply” does not protect you from ICE/Border Patrol agents, even as U.S. citizens, and why you always film them.
In North Carolina, ICE/Border Patrol agents illegally stopped two U.S. citizens. They questioned them without legal cause, took their licenses, and admitted on camera that the men were allowed to record.
And they were still attacked.
In the video, one man asks if he can film for his safety. The agent says yes, saying that he’ll “have to put his mask on.” The agents take their licenses, ask where they’re from, where they live, what they’re doing in the area, all without legal authority. The men cooperate anyway.
Then the situation turns dangerous.
Another agent suddenly tells the driver, “Turn off your video. You are being detained, so you are not free to record.”
That is false. Recording law enforcement in public is legal, including during detention.
The driver calmly refuses, keeps one hand on the steering wheel as instructed, and holds his phone in the other.
That’s when the agent lunges for the phone.
The agent throws himself into the car, trying to grab the device. When the driver moves it away, the agent assaults him.
The agent then illegally opens the car door, something the driver correctly points out they are not allowed to do.
The agents keep demanding the filming stop, as multiple agents keep reaching for the phone.
Then they escalate again.
They threaten arrest, grab the driver, and start hitting him and trying to drag him out of the car, even though he keeps saying, “We haven’t done anything wrong.” When they fail to pull him out, they back away, visibly angry.
They turn on the passenger next.
An agent grabs him, threatens handcuffs, and assaults him trying to force him out of the vehicle. When that doesn’t work, they start yelling conflicting commands, claiming the men are “interfering with an investigation.”
An investigation into what?
Their own illegal stop.At one point, an agent shouts that the men can’t interfere, while another tries… again… to grab the phone, almost certainly to stop or erase the recording.
Only after all of this do the agents finally release them.
Because they are U.S. citizens.
Because the stop was illegal.
And because the camera was still rolling.This is why you film ICE.
This is why compliance doesn’t save you.
This is why they hate cameras.If this hadn’t been recorded, this would be another lie in a report, another “resisting” accusation, another abuse buried and denied.
Film them. Always.
Here’s another:
Full text:
BREAKING: ICE/Border Patrol agents are once again illegally arresting U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
In the video, you can hear the agent ask for ID AFTER he assaulted, tackled and handcuffed the man.
When the man asks why he’s being detained, the agent claims it’s because the car is registered to an undocumented immigrant. The man responds, “What? I’m a U.S. citizen.” Despite this, the agent grabs his wallet and drags him toward an unmarked van… still without verifying his identity.
This isn’t law enforcement. This is reckless abuse of power.
If ICE can assault, arrest, and transport a U.S. citizen without confirming their identity, then no one is “safe” under this system.
This is what happens when agencies operate with impunity… and it’s exactly why these abuses must be documented, challenged, and stopped.
The courts are barely holding the line. Congress is asleep at the switch.
January 6 insurrectionists pardoned on the first day of Donald Trump’s second term took a “victory lap” in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, the fifth anniversary of their violent attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. A few hundred Proud Boys, insurrectionists and supporters prayed outside the U.S. Capitol they defiled.
Not standing with them was Brian Cole Jr. , the man accused after a five-year manhunt of planting pipe bombs at the headquarters of both the nearby RNC and DNC the night before the Capitol riot. He remains in jail awaiting trial.
Maybe (Politico):
But there may be a serious problem on the horizon: Trump may have pardoned Cole last year as part of the sweeping clemency that he gave to Jan. 6 offenders on his first day back in office.
The White House has brushed off questions on the subject, but Justice Department prosecutors should be worried about this, and there were suggestions based off their briefs and statements in court last week that they already are. (The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.)
Trump’s proclamation commuted the sentences of 14 individuals and also granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” This immediately covered roughly 1,500 people, including hundreds of defendants who were charged with assaulting or resisting law enforcement officers.
The wording of Trump’s original pardon comes into play, as does the Department of Justice’s prior extension of Trump’s broad pardon to people whose cases were merely pending at the time he signed it.
It gets better.
Moreover, the substantive scope of Trump’s pardon language is very broad, as the Justice Department’s own lawyers have maintained in other cases. If Cole is convicted, it is very possible that the presiding judge could ultimately rule (however begrudgingly) that his crimes were, in the language of Trump’s pardon, “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Last week, the Justice Department went out of its way during the court hearing to avoid using any phrases that might immediately connect Cole’s alleged crimes to Jan. 6, but prosecutors’ efforts were so obvious, that they had the effect of drawing more attention to it. The government’s pre-hearing brief also appears to have been designed to skirt this issue and put the most Trump-friendly spin on Cole’s motive for his alleged crimes — though ultimately not very convincingly.
This is the same Pamela Jo Bondi-run DOJ that last fall unlawfully appointed former Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan as lead federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. An insurance lawyer described as “a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience,” Halligan signed off on charges Trump demanded against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie in November agreed with Comey’s lawyer that the charges must be dismissed (NBC News):
“Because Ms. Halligan had no lawful authority to present the indictment, I will grant Mr. Comey’s motion and dismiss the indictment,” Currie wrote in finding that Halligan lacked the authority to present a case to a grand jury.
“All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey’s indictment, were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside,” the judge wrote, describing the insurance lawyer as “a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience.”
She issued a separate, similar ruling dismissing the James case.
The statute of limitations on bringing the same charges expired in the interim.
Halligan is once again in the news (Daily Beast):
More than six weeks after a judge threw out Halligan’s indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York state Attorney General Letitia James on the grounds that she was illegally serving as interim U.S. Attorney, Halligan is still signing indictments as the office’s lead prosecutor, according to a bombshell court filing.
Federal Judge David Novak, who was appointed by Trump, issued an order Tuesday demanding that Halligan “explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement.”
Novak wrote that although the government had appealed the ruling that nullified Halligan’s appointment, the appeals court had not issued a stay in the case, meaning the original decision remained “binding precedent in this district” while the appeals process played out.
The Richmond-area judge also noted that he had issued the order of his own initiative, as opposed to at the request of a defense counsel, and gave Halligan seven days to respond.
These people expect to rule the entire Western Hemisphere.
Just watch this on mute:
You might have thought Trump would speak seriously about the big plan for Venezuela when he met with the House Republicans this morning. No such luck. (He doesn’t have one.) He spent 90 minutes just doing the usual. He did spend some time pleasuring himself with the tale of the mighty US military killing a bunch of people so that’s good.
Atrupar at Bluesky has all the highlights. I just don’t have the stomach for it today.
As many in Washington were easing into the new year, there was a flurry of activity last week in the prosecution of Brian Cole Jr. — the man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the DNC and RNC headquarters the night before Jan. 6, 2021. The Justice Department obtained an indictment from a grand jury and, following a court hearing, persuaded a judge to keep Cole detained pending trial.
But there may be a serious problem on the horizon: Trump may have pardoned Cole last year as part of the sweeping clemency that he gave to Jan. 6 offenders on his first day back in office.
And they know it:
Last week, the Justice Department went out of its way during the court hearing to avoid using any phrases that might immediately connect Cole’s alleged crimes to Jan. 6, but prosecutors’ efforts were so obvious, that they had the effect of drawing more attention to it. The government’s pre-hearing brief also appears to have been designed to skirt this issue and put the most Trump-friendly spin on Cole’s motive for his alleged crimes — though ultimately not very convincingly.
I won’t be surprised to see Trump just go with this. Cole said that he was upset about the “stolen” election. That makes him someone who believed Trump and that’s all that matters.
