Chuck Grassley Complicit in Sending Dozens of Innocent Men to a Concentration Camp
As I laid out the other day, Chuck Grassley made a bunch of transparent excuses so he could cover up how Emil Bove gave advice to DHS that resulted in them defying an order from Judge James Boasberg.
It’s not me saying it. It is senior DOJ official Yaakov Roth saying it.
On March 16, he told Erez Reuveni and others that Bove was the one who — falsely — told DHS they could deplane flights that Boasberg had ordered be turned around without violating the court’s order.
On March 14, Bove said you might have to tell a judge “fuck you” to ensure Stephen Miller could use the Alien Enemies Act to deport people with no oversight. On March 15, Bove provided affirmatively false information to DHS, resulting in them defying Boasberg’s order — and with their actions, stranding hundreds of men, some completely innocent, in a brutal concentration camp in El Salvador.
Grassley must have recognized his arguments were transparent bullshit. Because in today’s hearing on Bove’s nominate, Grassley broke parliamentary rules to prevent Cory Booker, the home Senator on this nomination, from arguing against it.
As Sheldon Whitehouse notes, there are two parliamentary arguments that Bove’s nomination was not properly advanced. First, that Grassley blew off Booker’s point of order, then that there was a quorum to vote through the nomination.
HuffPo has more.
Chuck Grassley broke the rules to try to rush through Emil Bove’s lifetime appointment before — as Whitehouse noted — his conduct is investigated as criminal contempt.
He is protecting a guy who unloaded dozens of innocent men into a concentration camp. Worse, he is breaking the rules to promote Emil Bove to a lifetime appointment to reward him for stranding innocent men in a concentration camp.
It keeps getting worse, and that’s the trajectory we’re on: there’s no question that we have yet to plumb the depth of their depravities.
I keep thinking about The Emporer’s New Clothes parable. Surely there must be a tipping point for the willingly gullible masses. If I were still an evangelical Christian, I’d hope that I’d be calling Trump the actual, obvious Anitchrist.
Protest tonight!
I suspect the MAGAts know, but see Convict-1 as the Beast of Revelations. Remember with that crowd, the so-called Rapture needs to be hustled along.
Will the full Senate vote for Bove? Good question, and will Schumer channel his inner Harry Reid (if he still has one) and break out the legislative brass knuckles? I see another 50-50 tie broken by Vance, but perhaps there will be a bridge too far for Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, et al. We need 4. Also, this needs to be rammed down every Senator that votes for Bove at election time.
1) Thank you for dropping the “/Krasnov”.
2) As to “Convict-1,” Trump was not sentenced or sanctioned. Perhaps he SHOULD be a convict, but presently, he’s not.
He was convicted of 34 felonies and was in fact sentenced to a no jail time sentence on 10 JAN 2025. He’s appealing it which would not be needed without the unconditional discharge sentence by Judge Merchan.
Judge Merchan worked hard to preserve the conviction itself, after Trump won in 2024.
Nice question is whether Trump is eligible to vote in Florida in 2026.
Trump IS a 34-count convicted felon. That is not something to discount.
It appears that the reason Merchan imposed the unconditional discharge was to hinder any attempt to appeal the verdict because there was no penalty except to Convict-1’s good name (stop laughing). However, the ongoing attempts to drag this to the federal system and/or pursue NYS appeals tells me that was enough to get under his thin skin.
I did! Here’s a photo of the Good Trouble protest tonight in front of Torrance city hall in southern California this evening. Surprisingly large turnout for a Thursday evening, est. 700-800 people with speakers from local immigrant-rights activist groups and pastors from various local churches.
https://www.truby.com/xzq/goodtrouble.jpg
Attendance was sparse here in midcoast ME, dozens rather than hundreds like NoKings. A weekday nationwide rally doesn’t make sense. A higher percentage of attendees, than at NoKings, at the local ones were retired, and even some of the retired regulars didn’t show up because it was 7-9pm (to accommodate working folks, I assume) in Rockland.
I hope 50501 takes the lesson from it. One good thing: it made me come up with a sign idea: photo of Trump being prayed-over in the Oval Office by the Christian Nationalists, with the caption:
above the pic: “The Actual Antichrist???”
below the pic: “D’uh!”
Yeah, I think Indivisible was the main organizer with other grassroots groups working under their umbrella. I thinking making hay of the 5th anniversary of John Lewis’ death was a bit of a scheduling stretch rather than making it on the weekend where certainly more people would have showed up. It was also a 7-9 pm timeslot over here too. NoKings last month at the same venue was about 5000 folks with an 11 am – 1 pm timeslot. Nevertheless the size of the crowd that did show up yesterday exceeded my lowered expectations…
The videos I’ve seen of those Lewis rallies around the country definitely skew old.
We had a lovely evening just outside Tweed Airport in New Haven. Not a huge crowd, but a nice mix of folks which–okay–skewed “old” but that’s a lot of who’s been turning up for all the local protests. Worth remembering: Trump won the 65+ demographic hugely, so the more he loses the better.
This one benefited from the John Lewis focus and the intense anti-Avelo sentiment. Over time the issues that started out in April as many and varied have really coalesced into a very sustained focus on immigration. Musk having benched himself helps in that area. But I miss the anti-oligarch signs.
Fall-back is that the Judicial Conference can investigate judges whose conduct brings the judiciary into disrepute. They whiffed on Kavanaugh when he became a Supreme, citing a lack of jurisdiction. However, the threat of the Conference’s investigation made Trump’s sister resign from the Second Circuit.
Judicial Council also refused to consider Clarence Thomas’ congential inability to fill out financial disclosure forms correctly last summer. From what I’ve read, they have grave doubts about their responsibilities under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act and have rendered themselves toothless, thus making the Supremes above and beyond the law.
WRT in-Circuit housekeeping, the Chief Judge runs that show. In the Third, he’s a Bush II appointee who’s only 63 yo, and is a FedSoc darling (gave their Keynote speech last year).
I think all these shocking acts are part of a strategy, in that the public gets pummeled and assaulted with the defiance of norms and laws early on, when it isn’t expected. But by the time it rolls around to do anything about it (like 2026 elections), they will have backed off (some) and the crisis seems to be averted – leaving a shell shocked public to hesitate to “vote the bums out” because things (sort of) got better (or at least less turbulent) and aren’t so bad after all, really, are they? Chocolate rations are being increased. And do we need any MORE change and turmoil?
I think I need to dust off my copy of “The Shock Doctrine” and see how well it applies…
I’m not sure the playbook for this era has really been written, but those behind the Project 2025 scenes have been working towards this for a long time.
There is another level of frightening to all of this beyond the crap we’ve always seen. Grassley’s grandson could very easily be in the House or even the Senate one day. He already has a career in local politics. Does Grassley the Elder really want to create a future where the Dems literally prevent Grassley the Younger from performing his Congressional duty in defiance of parliamentarian rules centuries old?
Or has he been assured that if he does his part he never has to worry about that happening?
Sorry, mild OT:
If venous = a blend of venal and heinous then there is certainly no insufficiency.
No insufficiency for a normal human. But maybe insufficient levels for Trump.
The Artery of the Deal may be clogged.
Because he’s so vein, he probably thinks …
…he probably thinks this sangue is about him.
@ Savage Librarian: Zing! (sangue)
Punaise and Savage Librarian, you really nailed the harmonies on that one.
Vascular “Long COVID”: A New Vessel Disease? [PubMed Central@NIH]
“Abstract: Vascular sequelae following (SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus disease) (COVID)-19 infection are
considered as “Long Covid (LC)” disease, when occurring 12 weeks after the original infection. …
In order to implement appropriate treatment, physicians need to consider vascular pathologies
observed after SARS-Cov-2 infections as possible “LC” disease. …”
Of course, His covid infection shouldn’t have happened,
since Kevin Hassett used an Excel spreadsheet function to predict that the pandemic
would be over by May, 2020, and He didn’t have it until October (after which He told
`Americans “to get out there” and not fear COVID-19 and remove[d] his white surgical mask
to pose for pictures.’ )
Sad.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9895315/
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/americas/timeline-history-of-trumps-covid-19-illness-idUSKBN26U298/
You don’t even have to get Covid to experience these sequelae–you can take a shortcut by getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine like I did, before it got pulled from distribution for being linked to all manner of bad things, most of them vascular.
Some who got the J&J shot developed “vascular pathologies” very similar to those seen in long Covid.
There is a condition called vascular dementia so I wonder if Trump’s vascular problems might also have struck a little higher than his legs. It’s possible too that he’s been on blood pressure medication for a while, which can cause a certain amount of dizziness, hence perhaps his inability on occasion to navigate stairs and ramps or properly raise a glass to his lips.
I’m on similar meds – high cholesterol and high BP – and haven’t noticed those problems. Yet. (I will say that adding exetimibe to the statin has dropped the serum lipids down to about where they were when I was a kid.)
It’s not just statins and blood pressure meds which may be in play. Trump’s probably on anticoagulants that may cause bruising of his extremities. The flesh-colored stuff on his hand may be masking such a bruise.
My FIL who died last year of congestive heart failure had frequent bruising from his meds and edema that caused several trips to the ER his last year of life.
My most-senior-aunt died from congestive heart failure. She was still going at 101…with ER trips also. (Breathing, I think.)
The good news here is venous insufficiency can be a sign of an underlying heart condition, like congestive heart failure, where the heart isn’t pumping efficiently.
Give it time…
The memorandum by Trump’s physician, published on the WH’s website, admits Trump is on aspirin, listing it as “part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.”
However, taking aspirin as ‘primary prevention’ has been removed as a standard practice years ago. The only patients taking aspirin for prevention are those doing so as part of ‘secondary prevention.’
Secondary prevention implies known cardiovascular disease– either as a prior heart attack or visible signs of heart disease on scans.
So is Trump’s physician declaring Trump has cardiovascular heart disease? Or do Presidents of the USA not follow current aspirin prevention guidelines?
“Additionally, recent photos of the President have shown minor bruising on the back of his hand. This is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen. This is a well-known and benign side effect of aspirin therapy.”
(I should clarify that there may be some people who still initiate low dose aspirin as part of primary prevention, but they tend to be younger –under the age of 60–and with high risk of cardiovascular disease. Even then, the benefits of taking aspirin remain low until they acquire a diagnosis of cardiovascular disease, in which case the aspirin is for secondary prevention)
Grassley breaking the rules to benefit Trump using bully tactics to cover up Bove’s unethical behavior? If Bove is qualified with no discreditable past, then nothing to hide, openly debate.
Grassley knows better. He knows the rules. He wouldn’t make eye contract with Senator Booker while being called out. Senate Republicans have rolled over for Herr Führer who is a felon. They have no shame.
Chuck Grassley is also a disposable tool. He’s 93 and ain’t running again.
But no Democrat should have needed reminding that when running the Senate, Republicans do not follow the rules. They follow their lord and master.
Kyrsten Sinema may be gone, but her legacy casts a long shadow. Just had to preserve the old filibuster because “Senate norms.” She and Joe Manchin have plenty to answer for, still.
I have to quit thinking trump is “lord and master”. Of course, he had the audacity & blackmail to offer himself up as the ideal leader for this iteration of American fascism. Whether his addled mind knows it or not, he was anointed by the real powerbrokers on the right & will soon be fully expendable. The clear-eyed manipulators behind the curtain, who are they? Who do the disciples, like Susan Wiles, McConnell & the 6 SCOTUS Justices, actual work for? Will the manipulators even need another human figurehead?
I’ve never thought of Donald Trump as “lord and master.” That his followers do is the problem.
As to protests (comment above from matt B. at 2:22 am)
Law360 reports that a Massachusetts federal judge overseeing a free speech trial over deportation actions targeting pro-Palestinian students and faculty said Thursday that “criticism of the state of Israel is not antisemitism,” and that even the most “vile” statements, absent threats or violence, are protected by the First Amendment.
“Antisemitism is not illegal — it may be repulsive, but it is not illegal,” U.S. District Judge William G. Young said. “It is protected under the First Amendment.”
Judge Young added that while he has not made a final decision on whether noncitizens have the same free speech rights as citizens, “My own research leads me to think that probably, they do.”
The comments came at the conclusion of the eighth day of testimony in a closely watched bench proceeding that is one of the first trials challenging the federal government’s immigration priorities during President Donald Trump’s second term. And they hinted at Judge Young’s thinking as to where the line between free speech and U.S. national security and foreign policy interests rests — a central issue in the case.
Judge Young said he wanted to provide some “definitions” as guidance ahead of closing arguments, expected on Monday, adding that lawyers in the case are free to challenge him then.
“Criticism of the state of Israel is political speech,” the judge said, specifying that he meant even accusations of genocide and war crimes. “It does not constitute pro-Hamas support. Pro-Hamas support has to be something more than that.
The case is American Association of University Professors et al v. Rubio et al, Case Number 1:25-cv-10685, in Massachusetts.
It’s a start, I think.
I think the judge is correct. And about to become a target.
Every time Grassley smiles that big, he pisses his pants.
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