Democracy Dies in Darkness 🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊  

Menacing the Midterms:  It’s cold, the Super Bowl is this Sunday, and figure skating has begun at the Milan Olympics, so November’s midterms are probably not in the forefront of your mind.  They should be because they appear to be front and center in what’s left of Trump’s.  Yesterday, while addressing a group dominated by orange idol worshipers at the National Prayer breakfast, the kleptocrat in chief once again went off on a tirade about how he’d won each and every election he’d ever run in, that all those elections, even the ones he actually won, had been riddled with fraud and chock full of alien voters, and that he’d won the popular vote in 2016.  To state the obvious, he lost in 2020 and though he did win the popular vote in 2024, he did not win it in 2016 and aliens don’t vote. Trump’s solution for the election fraud problem involves the nationalization of elections, a process that would allow him to limit, even eliminate early voting except by overweight orange Floridians with cankles, while doing the same to voting by mail, or at the very least the counting of qualified mail-in ballots that arrive after election day especially in California.  Steve Bannon who should be in jail but isn’t, is loudly calling for Trump to send INS troops, those nice guys who’ve been beating up citizens and immigrants mostly in Democratic cities across the country, to “protect” polling places. By the way though around 700 of them have been removed from Minnesota, 2000 remain so don’t be fooled by CAVA bag guy Homan.  As proven over and over again by lots of audits, non-citizens rarely vote, Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger’s audit found only nine alien casted votes in his state in 2020 while a Michigan audit found only twenty in 2024, so there’s no reason to station immigration stormtroopers outside of ballot places unless of course the purpose of doing so is to influence election outcomes through voter intimidation and the rounding up of brown people and the white people who come to their defense. Trump is laying the groundwork for his election nationalization and militarization by relitigating the 2020 Georgia election.  That’s why DNI Tulsi Gabbard spent last week lurking around Fulton County. The Trump team is having trouble getting their story straight about who deployed Tulsi, depending on the hour her probe was either self-initiated, ordered by Trump or AG Pam Bondi, or maybe even by Putin, but the bottom line is that the FBI now has all of Fulton County’s 2020 ballots and related paraphernalia though Fulton officials are suing to get them all back. Although those ballots have been counted multiple times, no one should doubt that someone in Trump’s orbit, maybe the same crew who moved his boxes with the purloined top-secret documents around Mar a Lago would be willing to stuff the requisite 11,000 ballots in among the legitimate ones. Oddly enough, Tulsi has also obtained and “tested” Puerto Rico’s ballot counting machines to see if they had been manipulated by dead or arrested Venezuelan dictators. Despite being US Citizens, Puerto Ricans who reside in Puerto Rico can’t vote in presidential elections but maybe Tulsi, like Trump doesn’t know that and has forgotten the large monetary settlements that some voting machine companies have won to date? The bottom line, Trump’s polls are bad, he fears a Democratic takeover of the House, not to mention the more remote but possible loss of the Senate, so if the nationalization and militarizing of the midterms can keep him in control, he will go that route, or at least he’ll try very hard and with no staff acting as guardrails, who in his orbit will stop him? He keeps telling us his plans, yesterday he even referred to “15 states” that should be taken over, we need to listen and push back hard.  It’s not just “radical” Democrats who are concerned, the WSJ, is taking him seriously too. Today their editors wrote  “Trump’s call to nationalize elections is a mistake for the GOP, since Democrats will be only too eager to try again, on their terms, the nanosecond they regain power. Instead, Democrats should thank their lucky stars for America’s decentralized system. They say Mr. Trump is a budding authoritarian, yet the Constitution gives him little power over the 2026 midterms that could be a Republican wipeout.” Sure, the WSJ writes in Republican-ese and always manages to throw in a barb about what Democrats could do in the future, but their message is clear, leave the elections alone!  As to Tulsi, the story about the whistleblower report that implicates her in something peculiar is still percolating. More to come, well maybe.

More 💩:  Apparently having his name on the soon to be “temporarily” closed Kennedy Center isn’t enough for Trump.  CNN, Politico, Axios and now just about every other media outlet reports that Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he’ll free up the funding he froze for the crucial and already begun rail tunnel between NY and NJ in exchange for Schumer’s support for changing the name of NY’s Pennsylvania Station to Trump Station and the name of Washington Dulles International Airport to Trump airport. The only thing that’s surprising about this extortion attempt is that it didn’t happen sooner.  It’s likely that someone in Schumer’s orbit leaked this story because it had to be leaked.  The Senator’s response was that “There was nothing to trade,” Trump “stopped the funding and he can restart the funding with a snap of his fingers.” On the economic front, Trump with the increasingly elitist sniveling help of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, continues to assert that the economy is doing great but that if it isn’t it’s because of Biden.  Yesterday, citing data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Bloomberg, the media outlet, not former Mayor Mike, reported that US companies announced the largest number of job cuts for any January since the Great Recession of 2009.  They noted an 118% increase from a year earlier.  Year over year hiring intentions slid 13%, marking the weakest total for any January since Challenger started counting.  So, if you or someone you know has been having a hard time finding a job, it’s likely not you, it’s the Trump economy. Naturally, Trump keeps insisting that his tariffs, the amount of which he keeps inflating, are about to come to the rescue.  He cites new manufacturing plants to “prove” his point.  They like his Paris friend Jim are mostly exaggerated and, in many cases, not real. Lastly, Erika Kirk’s Turning Point USA is hosting an alternative Super Bowl half time show featuring Kid Rock for those whose little, tiny egos and other things as well as their bigly biases make it difficult for them to watch Bad Bunny. How sad for her and them.     

Health 💩:  Measles appears to be everywhere including in at least one of the oversized, understaffed, and crowded INS concentration camps. None of that is surprising because once the highly contagious disease starts to spread it’s very hard to stop especially when those at the top of the health pyramid spread the word that vaccinations aren’t safe.  On the subject of pyramids, RFK has jumped on the keto bandwagon, saying that because a recent study suggests that some schizophrenic people might benefit from a keto diet, that all the disease’s sufferers should consider dispensing with their meds altogether, going keto instead. Why is it that RFK wants all vaccines tested and studied repeatedly but he’s good to go with “preliminary evidence” about keto diets and schizophrenia?  What could possibly go wrong if all the people afflicted with schizophrenia stop taking their meds at once?  

Fog:  The on again, off again US-Iran “peace” talks have been moved from Turkey to Oman at Iran’s insistence.  Iran initially said that they would only discuss nukes but nothing else, which sounds awfully familiar and was cited as the biggest failing of the JCPOA nuclear agreement of 2015, but this morning’s NY Times says that they’ve agreed to also talk proxy wars and missiles which IF true would be a good thing.  Last week Trump bragged about getting Putin to agree to stop bombing Ukraine for a few days due to the horrendously cold weather.  Putin said sure, then kept bombing. Ukraine and Putin are talking in the UAE; they’ve agreed to exchange 157 prisoners from both sides but nothing else so far.

The Nancy Guthrie situation is so scary. One of the things I’ve learned from watching too much Dateline is that six days is too long.  Oy. 🙏 🙏

RIP The Washington Post         

 

A Republic if You Can Keep It 🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊  

Menacing the Midterms:  Remember when the conservative party line was that despite all his squawking Trump would gracefully depart the White House after Biden’s 2020 victory but instead, he staged a violent insurrection.  Well, it increasingly looks like he’s going to try to pull a fast one with the midterms and that he won’t stop there. It’s not just his bloated Homeland militia whose recent hires not so coincidentally come from the ranks of the January 6 marauders and his recent raid of Fulton County’s election facilities that are concerning in a five-alarm fire way.  Now, Trump is saying the quiet part out loud, calling for elections to be federalized.  The Constitution says that the responsibility for managing elections falls to the states which not only protects elections from being controlled by wannabee kings but also makes it far more difficult for foreign actors to manipulate databases and results but it’s not like Trump cares much about the Constitution. Trump is also pushing for Congress to pass the SAVE Act which despite its cutesy name would disenfranchise millions of voters by requiring citizens to show documents like passports or birth certificates to vote.  According to the Brennan Center twenty-one million Americans lack ready access to those documents, half of Americans don’t even have a passport, and millions don’t have access to a paper copy of their birth certificate.  The SAVE Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately as would married women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates and frequently aren’t on their passports but the disenfranchisement of those pools of more centrist and left leaning voters are the point. As long as the filibuster remains intact, the SAVE Act would need sixty votes to pass in the Senate which is why Trump is once again pressuring Senate Leader Thune to dispense with it.  At least so far Thune, who says that he doesn’t support federalizing elections or overriding the filibuster, is holding firm, but it’s early and Trump is persistent and knows where Thune and his relatives live so there’s that because Trump’s threats are scarily effective.  Marjorie Taylor Greene said that threats to her family after she came out in support of releasing the Epstein files heavily influenced her decision to leave Congress and this week Trump has once again been attacking Kentucky’s Thomas Massie over his calls to release more of the Epstein files, targeting the widowed Massie’s new wife, calling her a “radical left flamethrower.”  Massie’s wife voted for Trump three times so she’s hardly a leftist, and Massie has supported most of Trump’s agenda, but facts aren’t the issue with Trump who slimes, threatens, and primaries anyone who strays from his camp.

Tulsi, Tulsi, Tulsi:  Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard didn’t just lurk in the background during the Fulton County ballot box escapade, she also spent time on the phone updating Trump on its progress and has been meeting with him regularly. It turns out that though her responsibilities as DNI are not supposed to extend to domestic election oversight, she has been detailed by Trump to “prove” that the 2020 election was stolen which partially explains why she’s been absent from the decision-making surrounding Trump’s international adventures. The other reason for her absence is that she hasn’t been supportive of Trump’s international projects or his efforts at regime change. It’s not just her involvement in proving the unprovable 2020 conspiracy that’s of concern.  Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a whistle blower report about her has been hidden from view for eight months. The purported reason for keeping the report away from the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intel committees is that it involves something so top secret that even they shouldn’t be allowed to see it.  That’s hogwash but the decision about releasing the report falls to the DNI and since Tulsi is the DNI, she’s in control or at least was until the WSJ article appeared. It’s likely that the source for the WSJ scoop was someone in the whistleblower orbit who had grown frustrated by the report being squelched.  In any case, yesterday the report, which Tulsi’s camp insists is a nothing burger, was finally released to senior intel committee members. Its allegations are still a secret at least for now.  Maybe they detail Tulsi’s long rumored “relationship” with Putin, maybe they provide more information about the cult that she and her husband are members of (yes, they really are members of a Hawaii based cult). Maybe we’ll find out, maybe we won’t but whatever happens Trump plans to keep having Tulsi investigate the 2020 election which means she’ll be absconding with election files in other locations in swing states. Notably her Fulton County efforts weren’t abetted by a Georgia US Attorney because the relevant attorney resigned or was pushed out rather than be involved instead it was abetted by a Missouri US Attorney, one who hasn’t been confirmed but who is a known election conspiracist.  What could possibly go wrong?

Sort of Open:  Yesterday, Trump signed the government funding bill after it passed through the House by a vote of 217 to 214. It wasn’t easy since twenty-one Republicans and 193 Democrats voted against the bill but with some calls (threats?) from Trump, Speaker Johnson was able to cobble together the votes needed to reopen the government.  The bill only funds the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks so trouble lies ahead since Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on what changes, if any, should be made to DHS funding and what types of limitations, if any, should be placed on ICE Barbie’s immigration army. To that end Noem announced that her masked “soldiers” will start wearing body cameras but that’s unlikely to be enough of a concession for Democrats.  Yesterday a number of Noem’s victims testified in front of a joint group from the House and Senate, a joint group of Democrats since no Republican legislators bothered to attend.  Their stories were harrowing. Three US citizens who were manhandled, incarcerated, and in the case of two of them shot before being released without charges detailed their experiences. One, teaching assistant Marimar Martinez, was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent who then bragged about how his five bullets resulted in seven “holes” in her body;  another was Aliyah Rahman, an autistic woman with a brain injury, who was trying to make it through immigration impeded traffic while on her way to a therapy appointment when she was dragged from her car;  the third was Martin Daniel Rascon who was shot while in his car. The only thing that distinguished the three from Alex Pretti and Renee Good is that they survived.  Again, none of them were criminals, they were all citizens, they could have been any one of us. Today’s WSJ has an article about Stephen Miller and how many of the bad things happening right now, most notably the aggressive immigration raids, the responses to the shootings, and even the blowing up of boats, are his ideas. It’s possible that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is the source of some of the material for the article, an effort on her part to deliver a message to Trump about what Miller’s actions are doing to his polls while also shifting the blame for all the bad things to Miller. Miller is clearly a very, very bad dude, but the buck stops with Trump.                

Peeps:  Hillary and Bill Clinton have agreed to testify before Oversight Chair James Comer’s committee about their involvement with Epstein.  Getting them to agree to come in is a victory of sorts for Comer however, Trump, who appears far more often in the Epstein files, seems to understand that their appearance means that if or when elections go their way Democrats will call him in to testify.  That likely explains why his reaction to learning about their scheduled appearance was to say "I think it's a shame, to be honest. I always liked him. Her, she's a very capable woman. She was better at debating than some of the other people, I will tell you that. She was smarter. Smart woman."  In other people news, Ed Martin who when he couldn’t get confirmed as the US Attorney for Washington DC was put in charge of Trump’s DOJ weaponization crew, is expected to leave the government over the next few weeks.  Is anyone surprised to learn that little Nazi wannabee Greg Bovino was caught on tape making anti-Semitic comments about an Orthodox Jewish US Attorney? As to US Attorneys, at last count fourteen have walked out of the Minnesota office because commands to investigate Renee Good’s wife rather than Noem’s thugs was a step too far for them.  Lastly, it appears that CBS is in a quandary about what to do with Peter Attia the so-called longevity expert/podcaster who is one of new news guru Bari Weiss’s recent hires.  Attia is all over the Epstein files.  He says he regrets the really awful things he said but alleges he didn’t do anything illegal because while abandoning his wife and premature newborn for a meeting with Epstein was bad form it wasn’t against the law. Weiss wants to keep him because “she hates cancel culture,” her bosses want him out. A scheduled 60 Minute episode featuring him has been pulled.     

           

 

Against Smoke and Rubber Bullets 🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊  

Weekend Election:  This weekend wasn’t just about the Grammys, Melania’s grifty movie, and the Epstein files, more significantly it also involved two special elections in Texas.  On Saturday, Democrats picked up a House seat while also winning a Texas state Senate seat. That a Democrat won the House election in a race that had been delayed by Texas Governor Abbott isn’t surprising since it involved a runoff between two Democrats for the seat previously held by Democrat Sylvestor Turner who died last March. What’s significant is that as a result of the election, the Republican’s already very slim majority in the House will shrink to 218 to 214 with four vacancies.  That means that at least for now, Speaker Johnson who says that he will swear in winner Christian Menefee this week, can afford to lose only one vote on anything, including the funding package up for a vote this week which needs to pass so that the parts of the government that closed over the weekend can be reopened.  It also means that the already difficult to negotiate and then pass Homeland Security package that was severed from the rest of the funding package by the Senate in response to Democratic uproar over the Minnesota murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti will be that much harder to pass.  The other special election in Texas has Republicans freaked out because the winner was a Democrat who won by a margin of 14 points in a district that Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.  Democrats have overperformed in most of the special elections held since Trump took office, but this outcome was unexpected and the Democratic overperformance was huge. Though Trump claimed over the weekend that he didn’t know much about the race, he did, he had endorsed the Republican candidate and had tweeted about the importance of the race. If this race’s outcome, where Republicans spent ten times as much as Democrats, is a harbinger of things to come in the midterms it could mean that the blue wave really happens; that the Republican’s Texas congressional redistricting will backfire; and that maybe, just maybe Democrats stand a chance of finally winning a Texas Senate seat, the one currently held by John Cornyn, not that either side yet knows who their candiate for that seat will be.  Cornyn is facing an uphill battle against several candidates including MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton. On the Democratic side moderate State Representative James Talarico is competing against firebrand Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. Republicans, most notably Trump, fear that what happened in Texas could happen elsewhere which goes far to explaining why Trump and Ice Barbie are sending intimidating immigration goons to swingy places like Ohio where former Democratic Senate Senator Sherrod Brown stands a chance of beating his Republican opponent JD Vance replacement Jon Husted; why Trump is threatening to invoke the insurrection act; and why Republicans are once again trying to pass vote squelching legislation in the House and Senate. In other Senate race news, over the weekend, Trump endorsed his one time critic, former New Hampshire Governor Sununu, who is running for the seat being vacated by Jeanne Shaheen who isn’t running for reelection and Democrats in Michigan are in the middle of a food fight over who gets to run for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters.  Both those seats matter bigly because the Democrats “pie in the sky” chance of of winning back the Senate doesn’t just rely on picking off states like Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and even Texas, it also relies on holding on to New Hampshire, Michigan, and Georgia.

Epstein, Epstein, More:  So as you likely heard, a whole bunch of Epstein files were released on Friday. According to the highly unbelievable Deputy US Attorney Todd Blanche the dump represents all the remaining files though it probably doesn’t.  It’s unlikely that anyone will be prosecuted as a result of the dump but what was released and the shambolic way they were released is very telling. A whole bunch of people on all sides of the aisle, mostly rich men but also a current female Goldman Sachs lawyer who appears to have walked away with a gift of a Hermes bag for her Epstein affinity, continued to interact with Epstein even after his disgusting treatment of young girls had entered the public domain. That group includes Trump, who is mentioned a lot, including by a girl who claimed he’d raped her. The emails also include evidence that despite his claim that he was disgusted by Epstein, Commerce Secretary Lutnick communicated with him about visiting his island as did Elon Musk who appears to have been seeking an invite to a “wild party.” The list goes on and on because apparently lots of icky rich people thought that Eptstein wasn’t all that bad even though they knew he evil.  On the shambolic side, despite the requirement that victim’s names be redacted the accidental or maybe intentionally sloppy DOJ release included names and pictures of victims who hadn’t previously been indentified, even including a copy of one victim’s drivers license, and somehow or other a spreadsheet including references to Trump was posted than deleted and then reposted, maybe in its entirety, maybe not. Trump, is now threatening to sue the Epstein estate and journalist Michael Wolff, asserting that the files prove he did nothing wrong. They don’t prove he’s innocent though sadly there’s probably not enough in them for an indictment or to turn off much of his MAGA base because as he once said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.  As to lawsuits, that’s what Trump does or threatens to do about everything.  Last week he announced plans to sue the IRS for $10 billion over the leak of his tax info that took place during his first term.  To state the obvious, sitting presidents, or even former ones don’t typically sue the government especially over tax information that normal presidents release willingly.  Apparently, the $500 million that the WSJ reported he and his son’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture received from a UAE investment firm headed up by the UAE’s “Spy Sheik” that was not so coincidentally followed by the approval of the purchase by the UAE of advanced AI chips that prior administrations held up over concerns that the chips would fall into the hands of China wasn’t enough enrichment for him.  After all, the Trump kids have to eat, Melania’s stilettos are very expensive, and there’s Barrons tuition, assuming he’s still in college.  By the way, don’t be impressed by the reports that wife Melania’s movie brought in revenue this weekend. It did, but far more was spent marketing it and unlike most documentaries, it’s playing in theaters all over the world so of course some tickets were sold though not at my local theater.😊

Streets of Minneapolis: If you haven’t heard it yet, check out Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis protest song.  It’s on point which is why Trump spent part of his weekend rage posting about it and attacking Bruce (who attacks Bruce???).  As to Minneapolis, via Pro Publica we now know the names of the two immigration officials who shot Alex Pretti.  They both have years of experience rounding up “violent” criminals not protesters which is just one of the reasons they were totally unsuited to be dealing with protestors and rounding up non violent immigrants and their children on the streets of Minneapolis.  The good news is that the cute little five year old boy and his father who’d been seized and taken to an ICE “facility” in Texas were released and flown back to Minneapolis this weekend after a judge issued a scathing decision mandating their release. Among other things the judge suggeted that the INS squad read up on US history and familize themselfves with the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The bad news is that there are many other children, many citizens, being held in similar or worse ICE facilities.  As to the Constitution, Pam Bondi should read her copy too because arresting former CNN host Don Lemon for reporting on and accompanying some protestors into a church where the preacher was also an INS official doesn’t seem kosher. While it’s true that going into a  church during services is a violation of a law more commonly used to protect patients going into abortion clinics, this DOJ has waved charges against people violating that law when it comes to abortion clinics because of course they have.  Moreover, a number of US attorneys refused to seek charges against Lemon because they knew better.  Lemon is now out on his own recognizance and the case against him will probably go nowhere but it is very chilling and another harbinger of things to come because we still have three more years.  Trump announced last night that starting this summer he’s closing the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years to “renovate” it.  Apparently, destroying the Rose Garden and East Wing while trampling on our rights while destroying health care, urging on measles and polio, trashing the environment, etcetera, etcetera isn’t enough for him.

On a positive note, it’s supposed to make it to 32 degrees in NYC today. 😊    

Frozen in Time  🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊  

Déjà vu: Trump is still looking for the 11,000 votes that would have moved Georgia into his column in 2020.  On Wednesday, the FBI conducted a surprise raid at the Fulton County election office, leaving with 700 boxes filled with ballots, voter rolls, and other related documents.  The raid was orchestrated and overseen by Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard whose job is supposed to be the coordination of intelligence from the various security agencies included the CIA, DIA, and NSA rather than oversight of elections, but apparently according the WSJ Trump quietly expanded her responsibilities to include uncovering the election “fraud” that didn’t happen in 2020. Last year Gabbard, a known conspiracist who like Trump is enamored of Putin, accused Barack Obama of interfering in the 2020 election by ginning up what Trump calls the Russian hoax, so she is the perfect tool for Trump’s election obsession. Though we don’t know what evidence, real or questionable, was provided to obtain the search warrant that facilitated the raid, it’s possible that there’s an international angle, maybe something related to those Italian lasers or Venezuela’s very dead prior leader Hugo Chavez?  With all the attention focused on Minneapolis it would be easy to have forgotten that during his rambling Davos speech Trump said that people would soon be prosecuted for interfering in the 2020 elections. In hindsight it appears he was referring to Gabbard’s adventure. The Fulton County election results have been examined and recounted multiple times and no fraud or shenanigans have been found, the statute of limitations for 2020 related federal crimes is up, and Fulton County is likely to sue; however, by reopening the investigation, Trump seems to be laying the groundwork to have federal authorities take over Fulton County’s midterm elections. That matters because whoever is in control will make decisions about polling hours, locations, and early voting periods; placing limitations on any of those things would favor Republicans at the expense of Democrats.  Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county, is a Democratic stronghold so limiting voter access there could seriously disadvantage Democratic candidates in statewide elections particularly Senator Jon Ossoff who is up for reelection this November in what had been seen as the Republican’s best chance for a pick-up. With polls turning against Trump and Republicans, Ossoff’s reelection prospects have been looking up. Wresting control of Fulton Country’s election from local officials could reverse that, putting Ossoff’s back into the danger zone. Democrats fear that Fulton County is just Trump’s starting point, he’s looking for excuses to federalize elections in other Democratic areas. While he probably can’t cancel the midterms, perverting their outcomes would work just as well for him, not us. 

Political 💩:  Trump’s Border Czar Tom “CAVA bag” Homan is now running immigration activities in Minneapolis.  He’s making a very public showing of being more rational and less brutal than his predecessor but that’s largely smoke and mirrors because he’s just as much a hardliner as Greg Bovino, the stormtrooper wannabee he replaced. The two immigration agents who murdered Alex Pretti have been put on desk duty, maybe even into witness protection, but have not been publicly identified. Maine Senator Susan Collins who holds one of those Republican seats that Republicans need to maintain in order to hold their Senate majority reported yesterday that the INS and Border goons who’ve appeared in her state will be leaving soon.  If true, that’s likely because as much as Trump hates her and occasionally throws her under the bus, he’s starting to understand that keeping her in place is likely the only way that Republicans hold on in Maine.  The government will probably stay open, or at least only close for one or two days until the House goes back in session, because last night the Senate reached agreement to separate Homeland Security from the funding package needed to keep the government running through the end of the fiscal year.  The plan calls for Homeland to be funded on a stopgap basis for two weeks while reforms on how DHS operates are negotiated. Unfortunately, the Big Ugly Bill that was passed last year has already provided Homeland with scads of money, lots of it from what should have gone to health care, so while those reforms which won’t be easily hammered out are important, Homeland still has far too much money to spend on advanced weaponry, technology, and the hiring of former January Sixers. Worth noting, newly hired INS and Border Control agents are now getting only 47 days of training rather than the usual five months with 47 chosen because Trump is the 47^th president. 

Peeps: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is definitely not running for reelection, but Senator Amy Klobuchar is running for Governor.  She formally announced her run yesterday. It’s unusual for a Senator with as much seniority to leave the Senate but as Klobuchar put it yesterday, these are unusual times, especially in Minnesota. Klobuchar is 65 years old, if she stays on for at least one term, it’s fair to assume that her presidential aspirations will be behind her. This morning Trump announced former Federal Reserve Governor Keith Warsh as his choice to replace current Federal Reserve Chair James Powell whose term as Chair ends in May. Warsh, like Trump, is an advocate for further lowing interest rates something that the Powell led Board did not do this week, opting instead to keep rates constant. We don’t know if Warsh’s views are as extreme as those of Trump, who said that he’s not at all concerned that a dramatic lowering of rates will spur inflation because “he can always deal with that.” Apparently, for Trump dealing with inflation, like developing a health plan and achieving world peace is simple 😱😊. We also don’t know if Powell will stay on as a Governor.  We do know that the very unctuous, Trump toady Kevin Hassett who had been in the running can’t be happy though he will say that he’s ecstatic because he wants to keep his economic advisor position.  Ice Barbie Noem who now admits that her response to the Pretti murder may have been wrong, not the shooting just her response, appears to be holding on for now too, but yesterday she wasn’t allowed to speak at Trump’s televised Cabinet meeting. And while out selling her documentary/payoff Melania said that her husband is all in on unity though it’s not clear that she knows what that word means. 🤷‍♀️     

 Fog: Keep an eye on Iran. Our fleet has been repositioned into the region, and Saudi Arabian and Israeli officials have been in Washington meeting with the administration for talks on what to do about Iran where lots of dissidents have been killed but regime change won’t be easy and probably won’t be achieved simply by launching missiles.  And because one international adventure isn’t enough for the Nobel Peace Prize seeking Trump, he is also ramping up threats on countries who sell oil to Cuba. Typically, when things get tough in Cuba, more Cubans seek our shores, but Trump has also been deporting lots of Cubans, the suffering won’t be pretty.    

 

Rearranging Deck Chairs 🧊 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊  

ICE 🧊 and Mirrors:  Don’t be fooled.  Trump’s concern about the executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis is all about optics, polling, and the midterms. Despite achieving his promise to shut down the southern border, a recent Reuters/IPSOS poll has his overall approval at 38% with 59% believing that his ICE tactics have gone too far.  Trump hasn’t ended or even ratcheted down the Homeland Security invasion of Minneapolis, rather he’s trying to deescalate, as in change the tone of the press coverage that he doesn’t like.  Rounding up anyone and anyone who, based chiefly on color or language rather than criminality, appears to be an undesirable foreigner remains his priority, he’s just rearranged his deck chairs.  Gregory Bovino, who as US Border Patrol Commander at large, had been running the ill-fated Minneapolis adventure in ugliness,  has been sent back to his previous post in California. He hasn’t been fired and an administration mouthpiece denies The Atlantic’s report that he will soon “retire.” Bovino has been replaced by Border Czar Tom Homan. Homan, who is best known these days for the $50,000 of payola he allegedly stashed in a CAVA bag.  Homan, who is more presentable than Bovino mostly because Bovino gives off icky Nazi/Miller vibes, has 30 years of experience serving in various border control roles. During the Obama administration his plan to separate children from their parents as a deterrent was rejected as a step too far.  That plan was subsequently embraced by the Trump team until all those pictures of kids in cages went viral.  Despite calls from a crowd, that now includes several Republican Senators including Tillis and Murkowski, for her to step down, Ice Barbie Kristi Noem and her illegitimate puppet master, Corey Lewandowski are still in place as is Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s do whatever it takes, even if that involves deporting citizens and kids, as long as you make your daily quota strategy. Everyone’s blaming Bovino, a convenient scapegoat because he really did engage in violent overreach and brag about doing so on his social media account which has now been temporarily frozen by his overlords.  Noem is also blaming Miller for crafting the talking points that she says he told to say in the aftermath of the Pretti shooting. According to Axios, those lies included calling VA nurse Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who "tried to assassinate” federal law enforcement which came on top of Bovino’s remarks that Pretti, who apparently was shot by two rather than just one of Bovino’s thugs, was out to do maximum damage. For his part Miller is blaming Bovino’s CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) for providing him with misinformation about the shooting.  While heading out to Iowa for another one of his “the economy is great even though its not” speeches, Trump who had temporarily backed off calling out Pretti, once again badmouthed him harping on the fact that he was carrying a gun though he’s softened on Good because her father voted for him. All of this would be funny to watch, including Trump pissing off all his Second Amendment supporters and pleading with people to go to see Melania’s documentary, were it not that two people are dead, many others including children have had and will likely continue to have their lives uprooted, and Trump is only one year into a four-year term.               

Temperatures Rising (Metaphorically only):  Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Chris Madel, a Minneapolis attorney who provided legal support to the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good, ended his campaign to be the state’s Republican candidate. He called the recent immigration enforcement operation in his state an "unmitigated disaster" while also criticizing the rounding up of people based on their color and said that he couldn’t look his daughters in the eyes if he continued running.  Senator Amy Klobuchar who has filed preliminary paperwork to be the Democratic candidate, has put her announcement on hold given current events, which makes me wonder if there is still a path for Governor Walz to run again given that he’s looking better every day compared to the Republicans trying to unseat him 🤷‍♀️.  A man threw an unknown but stinky liquid at Minneapolis Congresswoman Ilhan Omar during a townhall last night, he’s been apprehended as has the man who punched Florida’s Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost in the fact while calling for him to be deported at an event in Park City, Utah. Meantime, Trump who last night asserted that Omar must have orchestrated the assault, says the DOJ is investigating her over her increase in net worth, kind of the pot calling the kettle black. Omar attributes her new wealth to her newish husband’s business ventures.  The Biden administration had previously looked into her, but nothing came of that investigation.   Alexander Vindman, not to be confused with his twin brother Virginia Congressman Eugene Vindman, is running for the Florida Senate seat currently occupied by Ashley Moody who was appointed to replace Marco Rubio when he was appointed Secretary of State and lots of other things.   

More 💩:  We are once again barreling to a partial closedown.  Senate Democrats want funding for Homeland Security removed from the funding package that the House has already passed and say, or at the least, are threatening to hold up the whole package if it isn’t.  The off ramp, if there is one, could involve putting some restrictions on how Homeland Security operates however, Democrats don’t believe that those restrictions will accomplish anything given Trump thinks and acts like he is king. Any changes in the funding legislation would require House sign off but Speaker Mike Johnson, who appears to have entered witness protection to avoid commenting on the events in Minneapolis, and his crew are on recess and wouldn’t be available for a re-vote before the January 30 deadline. LI Democrat Tom Suozzi who voted for the package now says he regrets his vote and Laura Gillen, who also voted for it and who is also from swingy Long Island, has joined the majority of Democrats calling for Noem’s impeachment.  In other funding news, major cuts to FEMA were scheduled to go into place before last weekend’s storms but were temporarily put on hold because cutting emergency services going into a storm was a bad look even for ICE Barbie.  Notably, Noem has been sitting on funding relief due to a number of states, those owed the most include red states Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, so even without FEMA cuts, disaster areas are suffering.  Health and Human Services is also doing the now you see it, now you don’t dance.  Last week, after notifying thousands of organizations across the country that their substance use recovery and mental health grants were being terminated, the cuts were rescinded.  At least until after the midterms, because polls.

The body of Ran Gvili, the last remaining Israeli hostage is now back in Israel. May his memory be a blessing. 

 

 
Nero Vibes 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 🧊 🔫 

While Minnesota Burns:  On Saturday United States border patrol agents shot and killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. They shot him ten times, with most of those bullets hitting him after he was already incapacitated and bleeding out.  Video shows that Pretti’s “crime” was holding a cell phone while coming to the aid of another Minneapolis resident who had been forcibly shoved to the ground by the agents. Pretti was lawfully carrying a gun, however, despite assertions made by ICE Barbie Noem, pipsqueak strongman Greg Bovino, and Deputy US AG/Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, videos show that Pretti’s weapon had been taken from him by the agents before they shot him. The Trump goon squad is making as much as they can of that gun, alleging that it proves that Pretti was a domestic terrorist, incredibly ironic given the number of January six insurrectionists who were armed. I am not one for guns, but the Trump administration is all in on gun rights at least for Trump supporting Kyle Rittenhouse types, rather than liberal ICU nurses. The Trump team’s claims about Pretti are so insane that they’ve even managed to offend the NRA which at least is consistent in the belief that the Constitution allows all of us, even libs, to carry guns everywhere.  Last week, an FBI Supervising agent in the Minneapolis field office resigned once it became clear that the investigation into Renee Good’s shooting was focused on digging up dirt on Good and her family rather than on the officer who shot her so it should come as no surprise that the plans for the Pretti investigation are following a similar trajectory.  The DOJ says it intends to leave the investigation in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. Noem investigating her own goons, what could possibly be wrong about that? A handful of Republicans legislators are speaking up, a little, including Senator Lisa Murkowski who frequently speaks out but rarely does much, retiring Senator Thom Tillis, and about to be forcibly retired Senator Bill Cassidy. If they really cared, they’d start caucusing with the Democrats to put an end to this 💩 show, but they won’t. On the House side Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino says he will seek testimony from ICE and Border Patrol officials.  Republican Garbarino’s sudden concern most likely reflects his fear that his right leaning Long Island district could swing blue if the killings of innocent citizens continue. With another government shutdown looming on January 30, Senate Democrats are threatening to vote against any funding bill that includes DHS funding.  They should. ICE, or at minimum ICE in its current expanded form, needs to go as does Kristi Noem and her “interim” but really permanent chief of staff Corey Lewandowki who is reported to be pulling her strings. 

Trump Fiddles:  While Minneapolis was experiencing fire and ICE, Trump spent part of his weekend hosting a showing of current wife Melania’s grift (divorce settlement?), the Amazon funded documentary that is officially described as offering an “intimate, behind-the-scenes look at First Lady Melania Trump during the 20 days leading up to the 2025 Presidential Inauguration.”  The soon to be flop coming to theaters everywhere was directed by Brett Ratner who very fittingly for Trump-land has been accused of multiple cases of sexual “misconduct.”  The film represents Jeff Bezos’ $75 million bribe ($40 million plus $35 million for distribution and marketing) to get more rocket funding.  That $75 million could be coming from the Washington Post’s budget. Over the weekend the paper canceled plans to send reporters to the upcoming Milan Olympics and rumor is that the paper’s international coverage is about to experience a similar fate.  While Trump was fiddling, he had Kristi Noem send Minnesota Governor Walz an offer to withdraw ICE from Minnesota in exchange for the state turning over its voter roll and Medicaid data.  That’s part of Trump’s continuing effort to gain access to voter data in order to "take over elections in swing states." With his polls sinking and more and more independents, including those key swingy Hispanic voters, jumping the Trump ship, the orange, wannabee king is very fearful of what the midterms, or at least fairly held midterms could bring so using ICE raids and extrajudicial killings to get control of voter rolls, as farfetched as that once sounded, could be key to his survival.   

Other 💩:  As if going after Greenland wasn’t enough, going into the weekend Trump further offended our erstwhile NATO allies by asserting that they were a bunch of wimps who’d never done anything for the US.  Trump’s faux ankle spurs kept him out of the army during the Viet Nam war but those not so wimpy allies, including the Brits and the Danes, fought side by side with US soldiers in Afghanistan, in many cases suffering more losses as a percent of their population than the US did. His remarks led to such withering pushbacks that Trump kind of retracted his remark, but mostly only when it came to the Brits possibly because pressure is building for King Charles to cancel his planned April visit and we know how much Trump loves to hobnob and be photographed with royalty. Here at home, RFK Jr, a member of what was once considered our royal family, is moving forward with his plan to destroy our collective health, and I don’t mean just his recommendation that we gorge on meat and whole milk. Dr. Kirk Milhoan, the new head of the once respected Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), said a person’s right to refuse a vaccine outweighed concerns about illness or death from infectious diseases. To be clear, that means that your child getting polio would be okay with him if it meant that his or her schoolmate was allowed to opt out of getting a polio vaccine. The good news is that negative pressure iron lung machines have been replaced by positive pressure ventilators, the bad news is that being on a ventilator of any kind for life is still a 💩ty thing.

 

RIP Alex Pretti and Renee Good.  May their memories be a blessing.

 

Green Eggs and Spam 😱🤡 ✡️🌻😱🤪 👿 

Greenland TACO: So, we’re not invading Greenland.  Trump backed off, claiming that he had achieved a monumental victory in the form of some awesome new concessions from NATO.  Putting aside that NATO doesn’t control either Denmark or Greenland, those claimed concessions return the US’s deal with Greenland, or Iceland as Trump called it four times in his rambling incoherent Davos speech, to where it was before he acted out. There are no details in writing, we’ll have to wait the usual two weeks 😊 for them, but it sounds like the deal should it ever be put down on paper will look just like the treaty that President Truman negotiated, the US: will have control over its bases; will get to reopen the closed ones it previously had: and will have a right of first refusal on the valuable minerals that are so embedded in Greenland’s ice that they can’t be economically extracted with today’s technology.  Trump’s Greenland posturing did achieve two notable things:  first, he pissed off our NATO allies most of whom rightfully no longer believe that we are a dependable ally and second, he managed to temporarily redirect attention away from more pressing domestic issues like affordability, health insurance, the violent and also evil actions of his immigration militia who’ve been separating five years olds from their parents while “accidentally” rounding up citizens while tossing pepper grenades, and that only 1% of the Epstein files have been released despite the passage of a law mandating that most of what’s in them immediately see light of day.  One more thing for the embarrassment file, Trump told Davo’s Swiss audience that if it wasn’t for the US, they’d be speaking German.  German is one of Switzerland’s official languages. That wasn’t ignoramus Trump’s first language gaffe, a while back he complimented Liberia’s president for his English skills. English is the official language of Liberia.   

Polls and Lawsuits:  Despite all of Trump’s efforts, polls indicate that the Greenland episode has done little to deflect attention away from his poor performance. He is very freaked out by yesterday’s NY Times Siena poll which indicated how much people have soured on the way he’s handling just about everything.  His response to the poll: expanding his defamation lawsuit against the NY Times to hold them “fully responsible for all their Radical left lies and wrongdoing!”  Trump is currently sporting a larger than usual dark bruise on his left hand which he said was the result of bumping into his desk. Query: does freaking out and punching the walls after seeing poll results count as an “accidental” bump or was that bruise caused by another transfusion of his monthly drug cocktail?  By the way, the litigious one isn’t just ramping up his NY Times lawsuit.  Yesterday he announced that he is initiating one against JP Morgan and its leader Jamie Dimon for debanking him in response to his urging on the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6. As to the insurrection and Trump’s other crimes including his squirreling away of secret documents at Mar a Lago, yesterday former Special Counsel Jack Smith finally got to testify in public.  He confirmed what those of us who aren’t delusional have long known, that Trump committed lots of crimes and was the driving force behind the insurrection. Smith also said that he expects to be pursued by Trump’s DOJ goons for doing his job. Sadly, though Smith coherently spoke truth, Trump’s base and most of the Republican members of Congress are still camp Trump and some of those January Sixers, they’re now INS agents.

Peace Board:  Trump’s Board of Peace looks a lot more like a piece of 💩 than a genuine effort to rebuild Gaza in a peace sustaining manner. It’s members, or at least many of the countries who’ve agreed to sign on so far, only 18 of the 60 who’ve been invited, includes a who’s who of anti-democracy autocrats and dictators.  Putin is all in, assuming he’s allowed to use some of his frozen assets to pay his $1 billion initiation fee, something that Trump appears amenable to allow.  Norway, Sweden, and France have declined their invitations, and Canada’s invitation has been withdrawn by Trump, punishment for Prime Minister Mark Carney impressively speaking truth to power.  It’s not clear where the $1 billion “lifetime” initiation fees are going, Trump’s Mar a Lago coffers perhaps?  Even more disturbing, Trump chairmanship’s is a lifetime appointment that will extend past the end of his presidential term, it provides him with the authority to veto decisions, approve agendas, invite and remove members, and to designate his successor.  This whole fiasco gives new meaning to grift as if Trump and his for-sale pardons, a list that keeps growing and now also includes a few repeat offenders, needs an expanded definition.

More 💩:  The House, including all Republicans and Democrats Maxwell Frost, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Summer Lee, Stephen Lynch, Ayanna Pressley, Emily Randall, Lateefah Simon, Melanie Stansbury and Rashida Tlaib, voted to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt for refusing to honor a subpoena to answer questions about Jeffrey Epstein. The Bill and Hillary imbroglio is an attempt to deflect from Trump whose Epstein opacity continues to be abetted by the DOJ’s sitting on the Epstein files.  Also, regardless of what you think about Bill Clinton, who Chief of Staff Wiles said spent less time with Epstein than Trump did, there’s no reason to go after Hillary unless of course the objective is to finally “lock her up.” Notably Republican Representatives Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy all refused subpoenas from the January 6^th Select Committee and haven’t suffered any penalties. Then there’s former Representative Matt Gaetz.  He has suffered a bit.  Though he hasn’t gone to jail he did leave the House in an effort to see the ethics report into his sex crimes squashed.  Alas for him, that report was released this week and it turns out that the one-time Trump nominee to serve as Attorney General did the things he was accused of doing, including having sex with a minor.  So far Gaetz remains an OANN host with one of those coveted Pentagon Pete press passes that were stripped from mainstream journalists. As to Pete, there are scurrilous, unconfirmed reports on Twitter that his wife has been caught in a compromising position with someone not named Pete.  Probably just gossipy spam given its source is Twitter whose Grok AI chatbot now permits users to “nudify” images, including those of women and minors. Musk has been getting some pushback from a few countries and is now limiting the “undress” privilege to paid subscribers.  Crickets from our administration because Musk is back to making contributions to Republican candidates and spreading kiddie porn is only a problem when committed by Democrats in pizza parlors.