The high profile politicized prosecutions — of Jim Comey, Tish James, and John Bolton (and of LaMonica McIver if the press weren’t broken) — are really important tests of Trump’s attempt to turn DOJ into a weapon.
But the relatively anonymous cases — as often as not, defended by Federal Public Defenders — are just important a vindication of rule of law.
Today’s important victory goes to Ashleigh Brown. She was charged in conjunction with a confrontation with Federal Protective Services (not, NOT ICE or CBP) outside Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on August 2.
c. Approximately three [Federal Protective Services] Officers, including FPS Officer Z.C., walked out to remove REDONDO-ROSALES from the path of the government car. As the group of FPS officers approached REDONDO-ROSALES, he moved backwards away from the FPS officers in an apparent attempt to avoid being apprehended. Then, FPS Officer Z.C. approached REDONDO-ROSALES in an effort to detain him, and REDONDO-ROSALES intentionally struck Officer Z.C. in the face with his left hand (at the time, REDONDO-ROSALES had a tan, wide-brimmed hat in his left hand).
d. After FPS officers were able to detain REDONDORO-SALES, Officer Z.C. and approximately four other FPS officers began to escort REDONDO-ROSALES towards the Alameda Street Entrance.
e. As Officer Z.C. walked a few feet in front of the two FPS officers who were escorting REDONDO-ROSALES toward the Alameda Street Entrance, BROWN approached Officer Z.C. and stepped into Officer Z.C.’s path. Officer Z.C. continued past BROWN toward the Alameda Street Entrance, but as he did so, BROWN intentionally hit Officer Z.C. in his left side with her right arm.
The felony charge against Brown was reportedly no-billed by a jury. For whatever reason, Bill Essayli charged her with misdemeanor interference instead, only to succeed in getting her detained after she allegedly violated bail by following an ICE officer home, for which she and two others were charged with conspiracy to dox him.
Though in Brown’s response to a 404(b) notice attempting to present the doxing case to the “assault” jury, her lawyers claimed that, “R.H. got into his personal vehicle and drove to where Ms. Brown was parked. He stopped his vehicle in the driveway, blocking Ms. Brown’s vehicle from leaving.” That is, even on the case that did get indicted, the cop in question arguably instigated the confrontation.
There were a number of things that would have been interesting if this had gone to trial, including Brown’s sealed filings about why she had a claim of self defense, as well as her success, after submitting them, in getting an order to share DHS’ Use of Force guidelines.
But things got interesting today when Brown submitted a motion to disqualify the victim in this case, ZC, from testifying based on DOJ’s failure to tell the defense that he had a (misdemeanor) criminal record, most notably a conviction in a harassment involving physical contact charge just four years ago.
C. Defense Discovers Z.C.’s Criminal History
On October 23, 2025, while preparing for trial in this matter, defense counsel learned that Z.C. has criminal history that includes at least:
Harassment – subjecting a person to physical contact, in violation of Pennsylvania Statute § 18.2709(a)(1), convicted on June 17, 2021;
Disorderly conduct, in violation of Florida Statute § 509.143, arrested on August 31, 2014; and
Driving under the influence, in violation of Florida Statute § 316193(1), convicted on November 4, 2013.
Exhibits H, I, filed under seal.
These records were obtained through independent defense investigation. Of note, the defense does not have access to law enforcement databases and thus cannot confirm whether this is Z.C.’s complete criminal history or whether there is additional relevant information about these or any other arrests or convictions.
D. Defense Contacts the USAO With Its Findings. The USAO States It Was Not Aware of Z.C.’s Assault History.
On October 26, 2025, after further research and internal discussion, defense counsel contacted government counsel regarding its findings. Government counsel requested a few hours to investigate and respond. Later that evening, the parties conferred by telephone. Government counsel indicated that it was not previously aware of Z.C.’s 2021 conviction for assault. The government had asked Z.C. about his prior convictions in interviews. The government was only aware of Z.C.’s 2014 arrest for disorderly conduct and his 2013 conviction for driving under the influence. In addition, government counsel stated that it had not conducted an independent Henthorn review of Z.C., but had relied on the word and responsiveness of another agency (FPS) to conduct a Henthorn review of Z.C.’s personnel file.
The judge in the case, Obama appointee Fernando Olguin, was not only interested in learning more about DOJ’s failure to disclose this detail, but also who, if anyone, knew about ZC’s criminal history, and if so, why they didn’t disclose it.
Having reviewed and considered all the briefing filed with respect to defendant’s Motion to Compel Production of Complete Personnel Files and Motion in Limine to Exclude Testimony of Z.C., (Dkt. 83, “Motion”), the court concludes that it would benefit from full briefing on the issues presented in the Motion. Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED THAT:
1. The government shall file its papers in opposition to the Motion by no later than Tuesday, October 28, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.
2. Together with its opposition, the government must submit a declaration signed by counsel for the government that sets forth the names and titles of the individuals who conducted the Henthorn and/or Brady reviews of the relevant personnel file materials, and the dates on which such reviews were conducted. Counsel for the government is cautioned that failure to provide such a declaration may lead to the imposition of sanctions, including but not limited to the exclusion of evidence and/or witnesses.
Normally, when DOJ has decided they have to abandon false assault charges, they attempt to dismiss without prejudice.
Not so here. They’re filing to dismiss with prejudice (normally DOJ has been trying to dismiss without prejudice).
The United States moves to dismiss its information with prejudice against defendant in the interests of justice under Federal Criminal Rule 48(a), and therefore respectfully requests that the Court grant its motion. Defendant does not oppose dismissal and the parties agree all pending motions should be denied as moot.
Brown’s legal troubles are not done. The doxing case is a felony, and as a conspiracy case, DOJ has broader leeway for introducing evidence against Brown. She remains detained (based on her prior violation of bail) in that case.
But DOJ has been attempting to link these two cases, presumably as a way to salvage the initial assault case.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-28-at-00.50.17.png408410emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2025-10-27 21:21:402025-10-27 21:44:13Bill Essayli Moves to Dismiss Key “Assault” Case before DOJ Has to Explain What It Knew
I start what is sure to be a kaleidoscopic (or some might call disorganized) reflection on the undercurrents of power as Trump attempts to build a new America based on illusion by reminding that the first assault was on USAID. USAID was targeted, among other reasons, because it supported the kind of pro-democracy NGOs that have haunted Viktor Orbán for years, and also because the realities of aid in the field look funny to those pickled in the provincialism of culture war.
But it’s a useful reminder, because the destruction of USAID was both the first great strike against Congress’ power of the purse (because Marco Rubio was refusing to spend on programs Congress had appropriated, including programs with bipartisan support, like PEPFAR), and also the consensual destruction of a great deal of soft power the United States built up going back to the Cold War. Then, during the Cold War, USAID was recognized as a low-cost way to contest another great power and, along the way, to do something good and maybe even create a few new reliable markets for farmers in the heartland. Now, it had become a symbol of a past hegemony that conspiracy theorists, starting with the richest man in the world, had made suspect.
This reflection will focus on how Stephen Miller’s two-faced war on America’s immigrant diversity and Latin America exists in tension with Trump’s attempt to subjugate both the Democrats and China. I’m attempting to capture these intertwined threads to get to a point I’ve raised before. We know what the decline from democracy to authoritarianism looks like. Trump is overtly following Orbán’s path to competitive authoritarianism. But far too few have considered what it means that Trump is pursuing that model while committing hegemonic suicide.
The willful destruction of USAID laid an important foundation for two “negotiations” that are bedeviling Trump’s effort to consolidate power: the trade war Trump picked with China, and a funding fight with Democrats over whether Congress will be Congress anymore.
Art of the Deal guy is conducting a bunch of “negotiations” right now. Many of them involve levying threats, whether threatening to withdraw government funding, launching frivolous lawsuits, imposing draconian tariffs, or even charging people with fabricated crimes, and in response, extorting bribes, like the free work some white shoe law firms decided to give away or payment for the ballroom that will scar the edifice where the East Wing used to be. For most negotiating partners, such threats leave two choices: suing in an attempt to deem the entire extortion attempt unlawful, or attempting to minimize the extracted tribute through flattery.
But for China and the Democrats it is different. The government of China doesn’t do flattery — not of foreigners, anyway. Plus, China has been preparing for this moment since the last time Trump tried it, in his first term, in part by increasing its own capacity, in part by replacing American suppliers with countries China has been wooing with soft power for years.
And while Democrats have been suing and suing and suing, Trump’s ultimate goal for the minority — whose party currently leads most of the net donor states in the US — is nothing less than subjugation. Trump was happier to negotiate with Hamas than negotiate with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Trump intends to make them, all Democrats, give him the adulation they refuse him.
And so Trump’s negotiating “tactics” for both are similar: a serial ratcheting up of demands, based on the belief that the desired end — subjugation — is the means to win the negotiation. In both cases, this obstinance has instead created vulnerabilities. By pushing China to impose an export control regime not dissimilar to those the US uses, Trump gave China leverage over the Rest of World countries with which China will continue to trade even as Trump shrivels inside his manufactured walls, the countries Trump once wished to peel off from China.
But when Trump decided that he had to pay military servicemembers, he directly violated congressional statute. It is “by far the most illegal budgetary action he’s taken as POTUS, potentially setting the stage to break everything,” writes Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress. “The mechanism through which Trump is paying the troops is the most blatant large Antideficiency Act (ADA) violation in US history.”
Trump is taking money from an account specifically earmarked for research, development, testing, and evaluation, and spending it on military pay, which is forbidden by both the Constitution and law (the Antideficiency Act carries a jail sentence of up to two years), and something administration officials publicly promised Congress they would not do. Dave Jamieson reports at HuffPost that Trump is planning a similar process to keep paying ICE and CBP law enforcement.
Even in three votes on paying essential workers, Democrats refused to budge for a bill that ceded any more power to Vought (the end vote was the same as cloture for the continuing resolution has been, but two different Democrats — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock — voting with Republicans instead of Catherine Cortez Masto and Angus King).
Vought becomes a greater liability as he gleefully cuts things cherished by Republicans, too, like the promise of an easier commute into NYC.
Having failed thus far, Trump is going to withhold emergency funding for SNAP starting this week. Either he believes that Democrats have empathy (or courage) that Republicans don’t, or he forgets that poor people across the country rely on government aid. But he believes that starving families will force Democrats to bow.
Donald Trump is destroying not just the village but broad swaths of the country in his bid to humiliate his two adversaries. He is seeking capitulation to his person rather than any benefits for the United States.
Trump has reverted to Cold War means, launching a larger covert war based on dubious legal claims, what his buddies call the “Donroe Doctrine,” a name as stupid as the concept.
Mr. Trump’s new directive appears to envision a different approach, focused on U.S. forces directly capturing or killing people involved in the drug trade.
Labeling the cartels as terrorist groups allows the United States “to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever, to target these groups if we have an opportunity to do it,” Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, said on Thursday in an interview with the Catholic news outlet EWTN. “We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not simply drug dealing organizations.”
The use of Special Forces against alleged drug cartels in other countries rests on the same kind of legal chicanery and nested fabrications that went into Stephen Miller’s unlawful deportation of mostly innocent Venezuelans to Bukele’s concentration camp. And even though the B-1 bombers flying off the coast of Venezuela were readily tracked on commercial apps, Trump explicitly denied them. They’re not hiding, though, that they’re sending the ships that have for decades projected power in the Middle East to take out a two-bit dictator in Venezuela.
But that’s not the only bullshit Trump is selling. For example, Trump’s latest cartel designation — of Cartel de los Soles — is of a cartel that (unlike TdA) may not even exist.
While some of US President Donald Trump’s right-wing led allies in South America — Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay — have echoed his designation of “Soles” as a terrorist organization, many have doubts such a group even exists.
Venezuela itself, and neighbor Colombia, insist there is no such thing as “Cartel de los Soles.”
Some experts agree, saying there is no evidence of the existence of an organized group with a defined hierarchy that goes by that name.
[snip]
“There is no such thing, so Maduro can hardly be its boss,” Phil Gunson, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, told AFP of the so-called “Cartel de los Soles.”
[snip]
According to the InSight Crime think tank, the name was ironically coined by Venezuelan media in 1993 after two generals were nabbed for drug trafficking. The sun is a symbol on the military uniform epaulettes of generals in the South American country.
“Rather than a hierarchical organization with Maduro directing drug trafficking strategies, the Cartel of the Suns is more accurately described as a system of corruption wherein military and political officials profit by working with drug traffickers,” InSight Crime said on its website.
Yet that is the sketchy basis on which Stephen Miller has authorized the murder of one after another boat full of unidentified, first in the Caribbean and now in the Pacific.
The Administration’s thinking — starting from Stephen Miller’s goal of using dead Latinos as a propaganda stunt– is insanely childish.
Then there are the senior officials who see Venezuela as a means to project a tough-guy, defender-of-the-homeland image. Stephen Miller views the air strikes as an opportunity to paint immigrants as a dangerous menace, according to one of the White House officials. Vice President J. D. Vance, though often inclined toward isolationism, has pushed the necessity of defending U.S. borders. And Hegseth, who prefers to be known as the war secretary, is seeking a means of projecting military strength in a region where Defense Department planners hope to reassert American primacy. Finally, there’s Trump himself, who wants to score a foreign-policy victory amid frustrations over his inability to end the war in Ukraine. One close ally of the president’s told us that he was also drawn to the chance to take decisive action, as he did with June’s Iran bombings. “He can give the order and watch it explode. It’s clear-cut and simple, and no American gets hurt,” that ally told us.
This is not the Dulles brothers playing chess. It’s a bunch of insecure boys overturning the checkers board because the rules assign the same number of pieces to both sides. But they’re toppling the board while wielding very big weapons and sketchy — or no — targeting data.
Such buffoonery extends to Miller’s war on Blue cities. For all the untold human damage it has and is causing, it nevertheless continues to shine in its Butt Cracks and Beer Belly squalor, including in its training dropouts who can’t pass an open book test on the Fourth Amendment.
Like the invasion of Latin America, it feigns root in intelligence, as viewed by the invasion of an entire apartment building on Chicago’s South Shore Drive predicated on the alleged presence of one or at most two Tren de Aragua members, looking just like an apartment invasion John Yoo dreamt up 24 years ago.
[I]n execution, a number of aspects of the raid looks just like what the raid Yoo envisioned two decades ago.
The raid took place in the middle of the night; a warranted search would mandate permissible hours — usually after dawn — when the search could be conducted.
The entire raid was predicated on the presence of (initially) two and in retrospect just a single Tren de Aragua member. But virtually every one was detained while law enforcement searched for active warrants, and 37 people were arrested. With the exception of a few apartments, the entire building was searched, and left in a mess.
[snip]
In other words, this raid looks just like what we would expect if Stephen Miller were applying already-dodgy John Yoo opinions targeting terrorists who really did launch a military style attack on the US, and applied it, instead, against a gang that Miller has lied persistently to turn into something greater than it is.
But mostly, like the make-believe cartel just added to the terrorist list, the predicate for invading Blue cities remains make-believe.
Stephen Miller’s justifications for invading Blue cities is no more based in reality than the latest cartel he invaded on which to hang murderboats and Special Operations invasions.
Miller has fed Trump manufactured propaganda about Oregon. And those on the ground have manufactured false claims. Or, in Oregon, the state informed the Ninth Circuit that a key claim a panel used to overturn Trump appointee Karin Immergut’s injunction on Guard deployment — that much of the Federal Protective Services had had to deploy to Portland, was false: “defendants admitted that 115 FPS officers have never been redeployed to Portland.”
Or in Chicago, the explanation that Greg Bovino contemptuously violated a retraining more with claims of “commercial artillery shell fireworks.” “The statement is a lie,” lawyers for Illinois stated plainly about the claimed use of commercial artillery shell fireworks.
It’s still very much in question whether appellate courts and SCOTUS will permit Trump to invade Blue cities based entirely on propaganda, as Susan Graber asked in her dissent to her colleagues’ decision to allow Trump to invade Oregon (a dissent that noted the vagueness of the now-debunked FPS claim).
We have come to expect a dose of political theater in the political branches, drama designed to rally the base or to rile or intimidate political opponents. We also may expect there a measure of bending—sometimes breaking—the truth. By design of the Founders, the judicial branch stands apart. We rule on facts, not on supposition or conjecture, and certainly not on fabrication or propaganda. I urge my colleagues on this court to act swiftly to vacate the majority’s order before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur. Above all, I ask those who are watching this case unfold to retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer.
Steve Vladeck lays out the play of all three Blue states — California, Oregon, and Illinois — challenging Trump’s invasion. Joyce Vance has a great update on the Ninth. And Chris Geidner catalogs all the innocent Americans whose rights are being trampled along the way, with three attempts to get Justice Kavanaugh to answer for the Kavanaugh stops he blessed.
Trump is engaging in a kind of magical realism in both Latin America and the United States, inventing the most transparent, outlandish bullshit to justify military invasions by incompetent dolts of both other countries and Blue states.
And for all his dickwagging about power, both of those campaigns make the United States far weaker.
But all that’s happening against the background of Trump’s intransigence — his demand that, while he conducts these invasions, both China and the Democrats (and more recently, Canada) simply bow before him.
This is one reason I’m especially fascinated by Trump’s treatment of Argentina, an attempt to support their peso long enough to stave off a debacle for Javier Milei in this weekend’s legislative elections. That part succeeded: Milei’s party won more than enough seats to sustain his veto power.
President Javier Milei scored a decisive political win Sunday, strengthening his position in Argentina’s Congress and securing a lifeline for his audacious free-market revolution backed by President Trump.
With nearly 92% of votes counted, Milei’s Freedom Advances party won almost 41% of the national vote, putting it on track to more than double its representation in Congress. That means his party and allies should secure at least one-third of the seats in both chambers—the critical threshold that allows Milei to preserve his veto power and defend his sweeping decrees.
The result, stronger than most polls had predicted, gives Milei fresh political momentum after months of unrest over deep spending cuts and a grinding recession last year. It also shores up his standing with Washington and the International Monetary Fund, which have tied future financial support to the survival of his austerity experiment. Market analysts expect Argentine bonds and the peso to rally when trading opens Monday, reflecting relief that Milei still has political traction.
But at what expense?
The only conceivable way to spin this bailout as a benefit for the US — other than for Scott Bessent’s hedge fund buddies and a right wing populist, like Trump, tainted by corruption problems — is to imagine that this bailout, the cost of which soon may rise to $40 billion, helps shore up US allies on a continent increasingly cultivated by China.
That is, in the same year Trump willfully destroyed USAID (yearly budget, $30 billion for the entire world), the best explanation for spending up to $40 billion bailing out a failed economic ideology is that same purpose: soft power.
For just one country.
In a nice touch, the folks in Treasury who’ve implemented Bessent’s bailout of his hedgie buddies have been instructed not to take and disseminate pictures of the wreck Trump has made of the East Wing.
“As construction proceeds on the White House grounds, employees should refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs,” a Treasury official wrote on Monday evening in an email to department employees viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A Treasury Department spokesman said the email was sent to employees because photos could “potentially reveal sensitive items, including security features or confidential structural details.”
But the tone deaf bailout wasn’t enough. Nor was Argentina’s poaching of US soybean markets in China, the final death blow for the US soybean market this year. But in the last week, Trump has signaled he will turn to Argentine beef imports in an attempt to bring sky-high beef prices down.
In an interview with Fox Business on Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said: “Currently, Americans consume 12 million metric tons of beef. 10 million, we produce in this country. 2 million, we import. Out of 12 million, [the Argentine quota] would be 20,000 every quarter. This is not a massive influx in the millions of tons I think that some have thought of beef from Argentina.”
But Christian Lovell, an Illinois cattle farmer and the senior director of programs at Farm Action, a nonpartisan farm organization, said: “If Trump goes through with what he outlined, I do believe it’s a betrayal of the American rancher. It’s a feeling that you’re selling us out to a foreign competitor.”
On Wednesday, Trump reacted to the backlash from cattle ranchers.
“The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil,” Trump wrote on social media.
“It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also!” he added.
In a statement, Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a trade association for beef producers, said the organization and its members “cannot stand behind the President while he undercuts the future of family farmers and ranchers by importing Argentinian beef in an attempt to influence prices.”
Trump got what he wanted in Argentina, propping up his chainsaw puppet for the next little while.
But in doing so, he made the US far weaker, making China’s leverage over the US even greater.
Trump’s attempts to extend his power by force — to replace American hegemony with personalized coercion — are and will continue to backfire, diluting the power of that coercion.
No one knows what happens after that.
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National Guard in DC fighting crime, drugs, and terrorism
Watching the members of the National Guard being deployed in DC has been . . . painful. I’m not talking about the assault on democracy, as bad as that is, but the toll this deployment must be taking on the members of the Guard themselves. As a pastor, I’ve had countless members of the National Guard in my congregations. They’re the modern version of the Minutemen, practicing on the weekends every so often, ready to go at a moment’s notice when the need arises. And when the need passes, they go home.
Now imagine that you are one of these members of the Guard who has been deployed in DC, and you’re about to head back home. Then imagine the conversation you’re going to have with your kid . . .
Kid: Dad, what happened on your deployment?
Dad (looking down at hisfeet): Oh, you know. We went and did our thing, then came home.
Kid: How many terrorists did you shoot?
Dad: It wasn’t that kind of mission.
Kid: Did you blow up somebody’s headquarters?
Dad: Uh, no.
Kid: Then what *did* you do? Is it so secret you can’t tell me? long pause
Dad (leaning in really close, and whispering): If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone. Promise?
Kid (excited): Promise!
Dad (dramatically looking left and right, to see who might belistening): We picked up . . . trash. long pause as the Kid looks at Dad
Kid (grinning): Ok, you got me. Seriously, what did you do?
Dad: I’m serious. We. Picked. Up. Trash.
Kid (grin fades to afrown): Trash? Like you put on a day-glo orange vest over your camo uniforms and scooped up water bottles and french fry cups?
Dad: Yeah. And remember, you promised not to tell anyone about this.
Kid: Don’t worry – no one would believe me. And if they did, they’d all laugh at me all day long if they found out. Your secret is safe with me.
Seriously. This makes Alice’s Restaurant and its Group W bench look like nothing. “Son, are you manly enough and lethal enough to pick up trash?”
Trump did this for the symbolism. He did it to make it look as if he is Strong On . . . something. Whatever it is, he’s Strong, and calling out the National Guard is how he shows it. “Look at me, and how Important and Powerful I am. I, only I, the Greatest President in history, can do this!”
In response, there are all kinds of very serious, very appropriate ways to fight back against this. Mayors and governors are filing lawsuits, and working hard to keep this from happening again. Good. Do it, again and again and again. Pundits are punditing, and historians are describing how unprecedented this all it. Fine. These are necessary parts of a response, but they are not a sufficient response. No, the fullness of a response needs to take Trump on on the battlefield of symbolism, turning his desire to project power into a punch line.
As I’ve pondered this, it suddenly hit me. My friends, it is time to call out the National Gourd. I’m talking pumpkins.
Imagine the fence around the White House suddenly surrounded by the National Gourd, as the tourists deposit their pumpkins on the sidewalks around Trump’s doorstep.
Imagine the National Gourd appearing along the mansions of Embassy Row.
Imagine the National Gourd filling Lafayette Square, just north of the White House.
Imagine the National Gourd appearing at Blair House, at the US Naval Observatory (home to JD Vance), and on the steps of SCOTUS.
Imagine the National Gourd appearing at the DC Armory, home to the DC National Guard.
Imagine the National Gourd appearing all over DC. Imagine DC businesses putting a member of the National Gourd at their doors and in their windows. Imagine Metro Stations with their own National Gourd presence. Imagine the National Gourd lining The Wall at the Vietnam Memorial. Imagine the National Gourd sitting at the feet of every soldier in the Korean War Memorial. Imagine the National Gourd alongside every figure in the FDR Memorial. Imagine the National Gourd appearing at Dulles Airport and at DC (aka Reagan) National Airport. Imagine the National Gourd appearing at Langley, the Pentagon, and the FBI headquarters.
Imagine the National Gourd showing up at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Trump Tower in New York, and Trump’s Bedminster golf course in New Jersey.
And then imagine the National Gourd showing up at the Great Lakes Naval Station outside of Chicago, to greet the folks Trump is apparently going to send there.
Imagine the National Gourd appearing at federal buildings and offices around the country. Agricultural extension offices, military recruiting centers, federal courthouses, and post offices. Navy bases and Air Force bases and Army bases and Marine bases. National park entrances and IRS buildings and ICE offices. Imagine a member of the National Gourd showing up at every federal facility in the country.
Call out the National Gourd, and make Trump weep.
This past week, a certain coffee chain released their annual chemical pumpkin-based weapon: the pumpkin spice latte. All around the country, pumpkin-based artillery units are holding their annual “Punkin Chunkin” events (see here or here or here or here for examples), where trebuchets, catapults, and other devices launch pumpkins enormous distances (unless the pumpkin explodes in mid-air, known as “pumpkin pie”). [If you want to see more, google “punkin chunkin”] The world championships used to be broadcast on various television stations, but perhaps the powers that be realized that they were disclosing military secrets and the broadcasts have ceased in recent years. Even so, these are the regular training events for the National Gourd.
And then there’s the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival.
In six weeks, the little town of Half Moon Bay, California, population 11,795, will be transformed from a sleepy little coastal village to become the epicenter of Pumpkinism as around 200,000 folks come to town for their annual Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival.
200,000 people line the streets for a grand parade, and it is the pumpkin equivalent of the USSR’s May Day parades in Red Square, where missiles and tanks were paraded before the Soviet Politburo. In Half Moon Bay, the highlight of the parade is the Mother of All Pumpkins, as growers from all over bring their best to Half Moon Bay, hoping to be crowned the biggest and the best. We’re talking pumpkins in excess of 1000 pounds. When I lived in the Bay Area, the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival was an annual pilgrimage.
This is the parade that Trump wanted for his birthday, and never got.
We are approaching peak pumpkin season, and along with all the serious lawsuits and punditry, maybe the National Gourd can help take Trump’s ego down a notch or two. In a publicity contest between the National Guard and the National Gourd, I’ll bet on the Gourd every day and twice on Sundays. Especially in September and October.
Oh, and while we’re chatting . . .
Like many such events, the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival did not happen during COVID. Even so, the festival made their usual contributions to a bunch of local organizations, as if the festival had continued as usual. While this kept those groups afloat, it hurt the finances of the festival hard. Last April, local media reported that their own sustainability was in jeopardy. This is an amazing local festival, and if you are so inclined, you can help them out here.
Seriously. This is an incredible event, and they can use all the help they can get.
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I have a fond memory of dropping my barely school-aged child off with a friend for babysitting. My friend, Simone, took my daughter’s hand and said “You’re going to learn the right way to misuse a roman candle!” I held up my hands, and shouted “ten!” to indicate how many fingers I wanted my child to have when I picked her up. Simone waved me away while she whisked my child off to learn about using small explosives in creative ways.
My child grew up in a community of lovable dorks, weirdos, hackers, and burners. I grew up in the kind of family were we shot beer cans off fences. We did unwise things with cars that got rebuilt in a driveway, which no shock absorber in the universe could hope to cushion. We were very much a ‘hold my beer’ family, and we had the scars to prove it. But more important, we had the stories.
These stories are part of being American; they can even sometimes rise above the violent cut lines of our fractured society. Black, white, native, Afghan, Chinese, whatever, we all bring our stories, we tell them loudly and lovingly to each other, across generations, neighborhoods, and communities. Sometimes we tell them laughing, crying, or both.
Americans love a good story so much we will go out and make them, even if it costs a fingertip, or a bit of foot. It absolutely gets out of hand. We regret it sometimes. You can’t always stop before you’ve gone a bit too far. This is also why so many great American stories are about apologizing.
“Hold my beer” is what you say to your cousin on the raft right before you try shooting the fish that haven’t been taking the bait. It’s what you say right before you try to grab an alligator by the snout, because you saw someone do it on YouTube. It’s what comes right before you cliff jump into a pond, get on an improvised zip line, or try cocaine for the first time.
You can call us stupid, because we definitely are. But nobody denied that Americans were fun. When an American says hold my beer, someone inevitably reaches over to take it, and steps back to observe the mayhem from a safe(r) distance. We may end up with scars, but we’ll get a story to go with them.
But that fun, that’s getting complicated in these, the waning days of the American spirit.
In the last few decades the very American desire to have some fun ran smack-dab into the carceral state, the cost of healthcare, and now, the rise of fascism. It has been all part of a long slow slide into not at all fun things. It’s continuously squeezing the whimsy out of being American. It is starting to hurt, really hurt, and not in a way that’s fun to tell people about later.
Americans were always known to be a little stupid about the rest of the world, but mostly that’s because the world is so far away. It’s a very big country with two very distant borders for most of the people. I now live on a continent where I have gone on a hike and accidentally crossed an international border. The frame of reference is different enough that it’s hard for Americans to understand the lives of others, but equally it’s hard for others to understand the lives of Americans.
There’s not much to tell us when we’re moving the wrong way, we struggle with out a larger frame of reference. Americans can’t imagine a healthcare system that just works, and almost no one else can imagine one that works as terribly as ours does.
I’ve traveled all over this lovely little blue marble, and when I tell people I’m American, they so often say the same thing: We hate the American government. But the Americans themselves? Americans are OK. Some Americans are great, one is even Snoop Dogg! (Everyone loves Snoop.)
When I assure them that I also hate the American government, and I’ve had to deal with it a lot more than they have, we all high five and go get drinks together.
50s style Florida man shows us how it’s done, whatever it is.
Whatever people have thought about the USA, Americans were always considered fun, even when we were still kind of English. We’ve been the good time people since before we were a country. Our reputation for partying was global before globalization.
In the 17th to 19th centuries, whaling ships that sailed out of Boston and other east coast ports would head out for years at a time, running around the world doing what we didn’t know at the time was a very bad deed – killing and harvesting whales. When American ships would pull up to cities anywhere around the world for some shore leave, it was Party Time. We bought the drinks, danced, sang, got in fights, and demanded mainly that everyone have a a good time, often on our shilling, or dollar, or whatever.
In writer and museum educator SJ Costello’s description, “The business of whaleships was welcome in such ports because the economies became so linked to their presence, but the whalers themselves could cause havoc in the few days they occupied the land. This was largely due to the dynamics of the crew and the lifestyle aboard: a bunch of young 18, 19, 20-something year-old men are let loose for a few days liberty after months on an often heavily-disciplined ship. Many of them have the twin goals of get drunk, have sex.”
We were memorable visitors.
The Americans would buy a few rounds, and come up with terrible ideas. The sailors of the whaling ships were the good time guys of the 17th to 19th century, and that set a lot of the tone for how people saw America and Americans in the early days of the nation. Partying sailors never impressed the good and great of any nation, but rarely did anyone turn down an American good time. And we never stopped being hold-my-beer crazy.
We eventually stopped whaling, but we didn’t stop the fun. We moved our fun into many things, but maybe most importantly, media and technology.
From the 20th to the 21st century, we made radio big, then TV, and finally Marvel movies. We even accidentally the memes when we made a whole internet. We’re not always the world’s favorite people, but that’s true for us, too. We’ve even made plenty of self-critical media. Take the Fallout franchise — it’s a classic example of the fact that even when we go hard on ourselves, were truly self-critical, we were still fun.
We’ve never really lost our reputation of bringing a good time. We’re adventurous and unguarded. We’re stupid and oblivious. Even when we’re trying to be guarded and sneaky, we just don’t manage it the way a Russian or a Chilean can. Eventually we just say something loud, weird, or funny, and blow our cover. We are the world’s goofy motherfuckers.
But this is changing now. And if we’re honest, it’s been changing for a while.
It’s harder to have some fun. The police seem to be everywhere, news reports about ICE are daily. Be careful, we tell each other. We say this because we care for each other. We say this, even though we know it is giving ground to the enemies of fun; and maybe our freedom, maybe even our human dignity.
The police are increasingly secret. They have gone from faces and badge numbers you could write down to body armor, camo, and masking. Sometimes they bare no markings beyond their air of malice, gaiter covered faces, sunglasses, and of course, their guns. This isn’t to protect them, they’re not really in much danger. It’s to install police in our minds as well as on our streets.
You never know who might be looking these days. You never know who might take your picture and put it online.
The Donut has been secured.
I wanted to believe that authoritarianism is antithetical to the American character, but not because we’re freedom loving. All people love being free, just as all people love their communities and children. All people want to live in a system of justice, peace, and hope.
No, the way in which I hoped we were incompatible with fascism is that I believed that Americans were just too goofy to be ruled that way. We do crazy shit to see what happens. We just aren’t self preserving enough to obey in advance.
We point roman candles at each other, giggling, even though our health insurance sucks. We do things just to see if they hurt. We do things to see how much they hurt. We do things that hurt just so we can tell the story of when we did that thing, and how much it hurt.
But maybe it turned out some things just hurt too much. Or they hurt too deep.
It’s changing now. Sometimes people just disappear. So many of us are obeying in advance, pointing out the vulnerable, telling the police about our neighbors.
And the others, those neighbors, the ones who may be unwanted, they’re hiding. They don’t go out much. Some of them don’t go to work anymore. Some assure their friends they can work at home, so they’ll be OK. Don’t worry, they won’t answer the door. Some of our friends don’t leave the house anymore at all. They’re scared, maybe because they’re vulnerable to ICE raids or because they don’t “look American” enough.
Or sometimes they’re not scared, just realistic. Just adapting to the slow and steady unpersoning of everyone Trump doesn’t like, who isn’t white enough, servile enough.
We might still be up for fighting the po-po in Downtown LA, but can we really keep it up? Will they take us away, one by one, put us in some camp, and no one will ever hear from us again?
Will anyone go looking?
Even the Trump supporters are trapped in their support. They can’t question or criticize anything without risking losing their standing, maybe their livelihood. For the rest of us, it’s worse. What happens if we try to cross the border, in or out? Will we be harassed? Will our devices be taken, our online lives rifled through like an underwear drawer?
Will some social media rant against the Trump administration be put down on a table in front of us by men with guns?
We look at each other differently. Any of these white roughneck men could be police, or their sympathizers.. The police could come from anywhere, and steal my friends, my neighbors, my family, away. We hear about Kilmar Abrego Garcia sometimes, but almost nothing of the hundreds who flew with him to El Salvador, in defiance of a legal court order.
We only hear of the vanished when a court case says they shouldn’t have been sent to South Sudan. How many Americans can find South Sudan on a map? We only carry the weight of these souls in their absence, but they are getting heavier every day. The law is for you, not for the rulers. Not for Trump.
Fascism always burdens the guilt of living for the not yet dead. It carries the fear of joy for anyone outside of the circle of the followers. And what they have is not joy – it’s gleeful cruelty, and it must be maintained at all costs. Don’t doubt. Keep your head down. Your favorite color will always be gray, whatever name they’re giving gray this week.
In a way, the most universal right we’re losing under the Trump regime is the right to be different, to be weird, to be ourselves, to be from somewhere, to not fit in, to be stupid, to make stories about the times we did those crazy things. To hand someone our beer and be a glorious American idiot. Maybe we need to be scared because we’re foreign, or gay, or need help in some way. Nobody can be sure they’re safely inside the circle of the authoritarian’s allowance all the time.
Hold my beer no more, America. We have murdered fun, and we will no longer be foolish and brave. Wondering why your neighbors disappeared isn’t fun. I keep wondering if I write the wrong thing, will someone (possibly even me), get hurt? The fun that binds up all our cares, our stories, our bold hope, we have traded it for a small and guilty existence, full of worry and what will our neighbors think of us? Will they report us?
It becomes a torrent, hard to hold in one’s head. Will we allow it all to happen, and worse, again? And again? The kids in cages, families destroyed by the Trumpian violence. The Salvadorian mega prison, but also all the overloaded prison camps full of who knows who, or even where. Some in southern Florida, Texas, filled and more than filled, waiting on a hurricane season NOAA can’t track like it used to.
Will they ever come home? Will their mothers look for their bones one day? Will the ones that didn’t speak up deny it happened? Just refuse to talk about it?
Will we become timid people?
I wonder who is allowed to have fun in America now. But also, who is required to look like they’re having fun.
Detainees in Texas spelling out “SOS” with their bodies.
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Thus far, Trump’s biggest success on immigration in his second term has been to claim credit — twice! — for things that Sleepy Joe Biden did, in one case years ago.
He threatened sanctions on Colombia, only to agree to let Colombian President Gustavo Petro send planes to fetch deportees, sometimes in Colombian military planes, rather than receive them in US military planes.
He threatened sanctions on Mexico, only to boast after Claudia Sheinbaum committed to put 5,000 fewer Mexican troops on the border than are already there, the same 10,000 that Biden obtained years ago.
He threatened sanctions on Canada, only to boast that Justin Trudeau agreed to the same $1.3 billion in investments to counter fentanyl trafficking he put in place in December.
As for his efforts to round up and deport migrants in the US? Almost two weeks ago, I noted that the quotas ICE introduced to try to boost the deportation numbers fell wildly short of delivering the deportations Trump had promised his rubes, to say nothing of the way those quotas will lead to deportation of non-criminal migrants instead of the violent criminals Trump claims to be targeting. Almost two weeks ago, Trump’s flunkies confessed they would never be able to meet his promises for mass deportation.
The fate of a highly publicized raid in Aurora last week is a spectacular case in point.
On Thursday, shortly after the raid, the Fox News propagandist whose job it is to stoke fear about migration, Bill Melugin, first celebrated the “massive” raid, only later to reveal the raid had resulted in far fewer arrests than promised and just one arrest of a Tren de Aragua member. ICE immediately blamed its failure to detain more people on leaks.
That same day, Tom Homan announced he may have to halt the kind of embed ICE has been all too happy to give Melugin, because of leaks or operational security; he did not say that truthful reports to Fox viewers about his failures gets him in trouble with the boss. Tom Homan can’t afford to have Trump know that this massive raid found only a single Tren de Aragua member.
Both reporting sympathetic to migrants and that of mainstream outlets describes what actually happened, why the raid failed to lead to the number of arrests Trump promised: Heavily armed officers swarmed the building and knocked on every door, but after residents didn’t open up, they finally left. (Update: Elevating this really good account of the raid GinnyRED57 put in comments.)
Heavily armed federal agents raided apartment buildings across metro Denver early Wednesday in a search for Venezuelan gang members and other migrants under the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort targeting major cities.
At least two dozen officers carrying high-powered weapons stormed several complexes before sunrise. In some cases, they were backed by large, military-style vehicles.
The Department of Homeland Security said on social media that it was targeting 100 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua for arrest and detention. It did not say how many people were taken into custody.
The operation included officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; and the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives.
[snip]
At an apartment complex in Denver, a 31-year-old Venezuelan man said that shortly after 5 a.m., ICE agents and other federal officers began yelling and loudly banging on every door.
The man, who asked that his name be withheld because he was afraid of being deported, said residents discreetly peered out their windows as large trucks and unmarked vehicles entered the parking lot.
Several residents said eight people were arrested at the complex.
People “hid with fear,” “didn’t open their doors” and remained “quiet without saying anything,” he said after all the agents had left.
In other words, while ICE had a few specific targets, they had no warrants for the vast majority of residences. They just kept knocking and knocking and knocking. And because the residents knew their rights, they didn’t open up.
It’s probably no surprise that this story from NBC is coming out days after the flopped Aurora raid. Trump is angry that his deportation numbers are falling so far short of what he promised his supporters.
Agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement are under increasing pressure to boost the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants, as President Donald Trump has expressed anger that the amount of people deported in the first weeks of his administration is not higher, according to three sources familiar with the discussions at ICE and the White House.
A source familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president is getting “angry” that more people are not being deported and that the message is being passed along to “border czar” Tom Homan, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello.
“It’s driving him nuts they’re not deporting more people,” said the person familiar with Trump’s thinking.
[snip]
Meanwhile at ICE, Vitello told agents in January to aim to meet a daily quota of 1,200-1,400 arrests. According to numbers ICE has posted on X, the highest single day total since Trump was inaugurated was just 1,100, and the number has fallen since that day. On Tuesday of this week, arrests of immigrants were over 800, according to a source familiar with the numbers. But last weekend, there were only about 300 arrests, another source told NBC News.
In order to fulfill Trump’s Inauguration Day promise of “millions and millions” of deportations, the Trump administration would have to be deporting over 2,700 immigrants every day to reach 1 million in a year.
And, as NBC News has reported, arrests do not always equal immediate detentions, much less deportations. Of the more than 8,000 immigrants arrested in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, 461 were released, according to the White House.
Of course Trump is pissed that his biggest immigration success so far was stolen from Sleepy Joe Biden.
Of course Tom Homan is pissed that he can’t deliver what he promised.
Of course ICE is squirmy because even if they could meet their quotas — even if those migrants in Aurora, CO against whom ICE had no probable cause of a crime willingly opened their doors so ICE could arrest and deport them — the number of deportees would still fall far short of Trump’s goal.
But this all arises from the false expectations set during the election — from the lies Stephen Miller told, over and over and over and over and over, about the number of criminal migrants.
Trump is furious that his thugs can’t fulfill his promises. But those failures arise not through want of trying. Rather, those failures stem from the fact that reality in no way matches the hellhole Miller pitched for Trump, the imaginary hellhole Miller used to get voters afraid enough to vote for Trump.
Trump has redirected virtually all instruments of US national security to chase Stephen Miller’s lies. Not only is it going to lead to ongoing fury from the Boss, because reality will never match the propaganda Miller spun. But by neglecting the things that really do pose much more urgent threats — by destaffing investigations into real terrorists or operations to counter real ransomware attacks — Trump leaves America vulnerable in myriad ways.
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After getting caught boasting last week because ICE was detaining the same number of people as Joe Biden’s Administration, the Administration has now imposed quotas — demanding that ICE arrest up to 1,500 migrants a day, which WaPo may have been the first to report.
Johnny Maga, a far right propagandist who never tires of looking like a stupid idiot, reported that with great excitement. Quotas!!!
Not so Stephen Miller. He got pissy that WaPo described, in both the subhed and in paragraph after paragraph of the report, that this will lead ICE to arrest non-criminals. Here’s how WaPo described the problem.
The orders significantly increase the chance that officers will engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations as they strain to meet quotas, according to current and former ICE officials.
[snip]
Neither ICE nor Homan responded to requests for comment. After an earlier version of this article was published, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an email that, “your story is false,” but did not reply when asked for specifics.
[snip]
But Paul Hunker, a former ICE chief counsel in Dallas, said arresting serious offenders takes time, staff and planning — more time than quotas might allow.
“Quotas will incentivize ICE officers to arrest the easiest people to arrest, rather than the people that are dangerous noncitizens,” said Hunker, who, as the agency’s chief counsel in Dallas, oversaw offices in North Texas and Oklahoma from 2003 through January 2024.
Fox, in its story lifting the WaPo story (with attribution but not a link), instead provided paragraph after paragraph providing excuses.
As CATO reported recently, this is what happened last time: Trump focused so much on asylum seekers, he left criminal aliens to roam free.
Candidate Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda will make the country less safe in two significant ways. First, it would remove a population that is less likely to commit crimes, ultimately making America’s neighborhoods less safe. For instance, Cato’s research has shown that both legal and illegal immigrants are nearly half as likely to commit crimes for which they are incarcerated in the United States. With unique data from Texas, we have found that immigrants—both legal and illegal—are less likely to commit homicides. Numerous studies have also found that immigration is linked to lower crime rates, homicide rates, and drug-related deaths.
The second problem with mass deportation is just as significant: it would shift focus away from the removal of immigrants who do commit crimes. Noncitizens who commit serious crimes should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and deported. Whatever amount the government spends on immigration enforcement, it should spend on detaining and removing this small minority of individuals. Donald Trump claims that he did that, but the facts tell a different story regarding his record on migrant criminals:
On his fourth day in office, Trump signed an executive order rescinding Obama-era policies that prioritized the detention and removal of serious public safety threats;
Within a few months, his administration was secretly separating families, using prosecutorial resources to jail migrant parents and focusing resources on visa overstays, not serious criminals;
During the height of family separation, Trump deprioritized prosecuting migrants with criminal histories to instead spend resources on separating families;
While Trump poured resources into detaining asylum seekers, he also released nearly 58,184 noncitizens with criminal records, including 8,620 violent criminals and 306 murderers;
ICE ended up (re)arresting nearly 11,000 noncitizens who entered under Trump and were convicted of non-immigration crimes, including rape and murder; and
Trump’s policies incentivized migrant criminals to enter, triggering a threefold increase in the number of convicted criminals attempting to cross the border illegally.
Miller predictably is already trying to spin the civil violation of illegal entry into a crime, to say nothing of paying Social Security that you’ll never get in return as a tax crime.
Which is what two experts told Axios would happen: Miller would have to falsely claim a larger pool of migrants are criminals because he falsely told stupid Trump voters there were more criminal aliens during the election.
What they’re saying: “There are not millions of people with criminal records to deport,” Nicole Hallett, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago, tells Axios.
Trump “keeps trying to bullsh-t with the public that there are all these particularly serious so-called criminals. There aren’t enough of those people to exist to be 1 million,” Karen Tumlin, director of the immigrant legal advocacy group Justice Action Center, tells Axios.
Both Hallett and Tumlin expect Trump to begin calling all undocumented immigrants “criminals” in order to say millions of criminals could be deported.
Remember, during the election Trump and Miller falsely claimed there were over 400,000 criminal aliens wandering around, when that stat primarily counts the number of people who are already safely housed in US prisons.
Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically about criminal offenders who entered the US during the Biden-Harris administration; in reality, the figures are about offenders who entered the US over multiple decades, including during the Trump administration. And Trump falsely claimed that the statistics are specifically about people who are now living freely in the US; the figures actually include people who are currently in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences.
“Kamala should immediately cancel her News Conference because it was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during her three and a half year period as Border Czar,” Trump wrote in one post on Friday, the day Harris visited the southern border in Arizona. Harris “allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country,” Trump wrote in another Friday post. They “roam free to KILL AGAIN,” he wrote, escalating his rhetoric, on Saturday.
Facts First: Trump’s claims are false in two big ways. First, the statistics he was referring to are not specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration. Rather, those statistics are about noncitizens who entered the country under any administration, including Trump’s; were convicted of a crime at some point, usually in the US after their arrival; and are now living in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” — where some have been listed for years, including while Trump was president, because their country of citizenship won’t let the US deport them back there. Second, that ICE “non-detained” list includes people who are still serving jail and prison sentences for their crimes; they are on the list because they are not being held in immigration detention in particular.
The new statistics, released by ICE in a letter to a Republican congressman this week, said there were 425,431 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of July 21, 2024, including 13,099 people with homicide convictions.
Trump lied to his rubes, with the able assistance of his chief racism advisor. And now he’s struggling to assure his supporters he’ll deliver the eye-popping numbers he promised.
Which is why I’m laughing so hard at Johnny Maga.
Because even if Trump meets these quotas — quotas which will end up focusing on the law-abiding migrants rather than the dangerous people Miller has been wailing about — he’ll only deport 547,500 people this year, nowhere close to the mass deportations he sold his rubes.
You all lied. You lied and lied and lied to make voters afraid.
And already on day 8, you’re spinning wildly rather than simply admitting you cynically lied to gin up fear to get Trump elected.
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Kamala Harris’ first couple of stump speeches as Presidential candidate included three parts:
Set up of prosecutor versus felon contrast (“I know his type”)
Tribute to Joe Biden
Lay out promise for the future (“Not going back”)
Last night’s speech (at least until CSPAN’s feed crapped out) swapped the second part — the tribute to Biden — and replaced it with an attack on Trump’s role in tanking the border bill.
That swap came after the Vice President’s campaign released this ad, similarly targeting Trump for his role in killing the bill.
To be sure — this is the same approach Biden has taken: imputing from Trump’s deliberate tanking of the border bill opposition to fixing the border. It was undoubtedly one of the reasons Biden spent so much time negotiating the border bill, only to have Congress tank it.
But when Biden used that approach, he explained it. Harris turned it into an attack on Trump’s selfishness.
These ads will not deflate Republican efforts to turn Harris’ role in working with Central America to try to decrease the flow of migrants, which they’ve spun into being the border czar in charge of the entire border, into fear about her approach to the border. But it succinctly flips the script.
It holds Trump accountable for things he made other Republicans do at his behest.
The same is true of the departure of Paul Dans, the head of Project 2025, from Heritage Foundation.
Trump’s campaign managers — Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles — released a statement crowing after Dans’ departure.
Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.
And Dans booked, then no-showed, an appearance with Kaitlan Collins show.
But ultimately, if you’re making the personnel decisions, as it appears Trump’s campaign did on Dans’ departure, then you own it. It only serves to reaffirm Trump’s role in the project.
And none too soon. Multiple outlets are publishing the forward that JD Vance did for Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, including his adoption of Roberts’ call to “circle the wagons and load the muskets” to take out government.
Vance has deep ties to the Heritage Foundation, and in particular to Kevin Roberts, who has been president of the right-wing think tank since 2021 and is the architect of Project 2025. Vance has praised Roberts for helping to turn the organization “into the de facto institutional home of Trumpism” and has endorsed elements of Project 2025. Vance is also the author of the foreword to Roberts’s upcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light, which The New Republic has obtained in full even though the book’s publisher, HarperCollins’s Broadside Books, has apparently tried to suppress it amid the scrutiny of Project 2025 and Vance’s ties to Roberts.
The subtitle and cover of Roberts’s book were softened as scrutiny of the Trump campaign’s ties to Project 2025 grew. The book was originally announced with the subtitle “Burning Down Washington to Save America” and featured a match on the center of its cover. The subtitle is now “Taking Back Washington to Save America,” and the match is nowhere to be seen. Promotional language invoking conservatives on the “warpath” to “burn down … institutions” like the FBI, the Department of Justice, and universities has also been removed or toned down, though it is still present in some sales pages.
But the inspiration for that extreme language can be found in Vance’s foreword, which ends with a call for followers to “circle the wagons and load the muskets,” and describes Roberts’s ideas as an “essential weapon” in the “fights that lay [sic] ahead.” (The New Republic downloaded Dawn’s Early Light earlier this month from NetGalley, which provides advance copies of books to reviewers and booksellers. Copies were removed from the platform earlier this month.)
Trump might yet replace Vance — though he has only a few weeks before ballot finalization would make that far more difficult.
But he can’t disown the hundreds of top Trump aides associated with this project.
Because of Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party, Kamala Harris is in a sweet spot: She can claim credit for Joe Biden’s successful policies. But she can also treat Trump as a near-incumbent, holding him accountable for all the things Republicans have been doing to help Trump beat Joe Biden for the last two years.
That may turn out to be a serious vulnerability for Trump going forward.
Update: Roger Sollenberger confirms that LaCivita pushed Dans out.
The Trump campaign forced the architect of the ultraconservative Project 2025 manifesto out of his job on Tuesday as it sought political cover from a controversy dogging Republicans, the Daily Beast can report exclusively.
Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita “put the screws” to mastermind Paul Dans in an effort to force him out and shut down the right-wing shop behind Proejct 2025, a sprawling blueprint that sought to overhaul the federal government and implement an array of far-right policies for a potential second Trump administration, a well-placed source told the Daily Beast.
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James Taylor in Concert (h/t photographer Elizabeth Warren. Yes, that Elizabeth Warren)
Last January 5th, I wrote a post about a James Taylor song, “Home By Another Way,” which retells the story of the Magi and their interactions with King Herod. (OK, it wasn’t *only* about old King Herod and the old Magi, but at least as much about their modern heirs.) According to Matthew’s gospel, the wise men first came to King Herod, asking where to find this new king, and Herod tried to turn the wise men into unwitting spies. “Look in Bethlehem,” he told them, “and when you find this new king, let me know so that I can worship him as well.”
Riiiiiight.
The wise men, says Matthew, were warned in a dream about Herod and his deceit, and so they “went home by another way” (thus the title of JT’s song) to avoid going back to Herod.
That’s actually only half of the story, December 28th is the day in the liturgical calendar where the second half of that story gets told. Spoiler alert: it is *not* pretty. From Matthew, with emphasis added:
Now after [the wise men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
Let that sink in for a minute. According to Matthew’s Christmas story, Joseph took Mary and the newborn Jesus and fled their home country out of fear for their lives. In other words, Jesus and his parents were asylum-seeking refugees.
Three buses full of migrants arrived at Vice President Harris’s residence in Washington from Texas on Christmas Eve amid bitingly cold weather,a mutual aid group said, the latest in an influx of newcomers sent to the Northeast by Southern states.
About 110 to 130 men, women and children got off the buses outside the Naval Observatory on Saturday night in 18-degree weather after a two-day journey from South Texas, according to the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network. On the coldest Christmas Eve day on record in the District, some migrants were bundled up in blankets as they were greeted by volunteers who had received word that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) had sent the caravan.
Volunteers scrambled to meet the asylum seekers after the buses, which were scheduled to arrive in New York on Christmas Day, were rerouted due to the winter weather. In a hastily arranged welcoming, a church on Capitol Hill agreed to temporarily shelter the group while one of the mutual aid groups, SAMU First Response, arranged 150 breakfasts, lunches and dinners by the restaurant chain Sardis.
Greg Abbott takes refugees fleeing for their lives and ships them into the teeth of a horrible winter storm, without warning, without proper clothing, and without any plans for what happens when they arrive. On Christmas Eve, of all times. “Look how tough I am!”
Thank God Greg Abbott wasn’t ruling in Egypt when Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were fleeing for their lives.
On the liturgical calendar, December 28th is called “The Slaughter of the Innocents,” to which JT’s song gives a nod:
Steer clear of royal welcomes
Avoid a big to-do
A king who would slaughter the innocents
Will not cut a deal for you
He really, really wants those presents
He’ll comb your camel’s fur
Until his boys announce
They’ve found trace amounts
Of your frankincense, gold and myrrh.
To be clear: these asylum-seekers were fleeing from the very real King Herods in various Central American countries, who posed very real threats to their own lives. But when they reached Texas, Florida, and Arizona, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and Doug Ducey acted like little Herods themselves, rather than following the example of the unnamed Egyptian leader in Matthew’s story. They really, really want that oval office, and they’ll do whatever they think will preserve their political power now and put them on a path to accumulating more power down the road. Who cares how many people have to die, right?
Once upon a time, the GOP was a party that billed itself as Christian. Today, apparently, not so much.
If you’d like a different vision of how Christians respond to refugees, let me direct you to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (emphasis in the original):
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is the largest faith-based nonprofit dedicated to serving vulnerable immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees in the U.S. Simply put, we resettle refugees, reunite children and parents, and rekindle the American Dream.
For more than 80 years, LIRS has been a champion for migrants and refugees from around the globe. Our legacy of compassionate service has made a difference in the lives of more than 500,000 people who have sought safety and hope in America’s communities. Our history reflects our own deep immigrant roots and passionate commitment to welcoming newcomers, especially those who are most in need.
Three words for today, and — spoiler alert — one of these voices is not like the others:
“When I was a stranger, you welcomed me.” Rooted in faith, LIRS believes that we are called to welcome those fleeing persecution and seeking refuge in the United States.
Given the migration crisis at our nation’s capital, SAMU First Response is delivering humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers arriving from Texas and Arizona. We are providing respite care to the children, women and men arriving to Washington, DC. Our support to these migrants aims to reinstate a sense of security and dignity so they can continue their journey.
Greg Abbott: What do you mean by “welcome” and “humanitarian”?
Happy Slaughter of the Innocents Day, sponsored this year by the Office of the Governor of Texas. In his honor, might I suggest donations be made to LIRS and SAMU First Response?
Sing it again, Brother James!
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Woke up to see that one of our favorite commenters, Eureka, noted Marcy’s retweet of MirriamZary from late last night. There are so many new folks here, and such a hurricane of strife, in the four and a half years since Trump set the first Muslim Travel ban that I thought a little backstory would be good about now. So, here we go.
@MirriamZary is her Twitter handle, but her real name is Mirriam Seddiq, and she is totally kick ass. I’ve twitter known her forever, there are a certain group of criminal defense attorneys that have long known and interacted with each other, on and off of twitter, and she has very long been one.
The day Trump instituted the Muslim ban in 2017, Mirriam, her partner at Seddiq Law, Justin Eisele, and some local attorney colleagues founded Dulles Justice and camped out at Dulles airport protesting the way Muslims were being detained and denied legal immigration assistance. They gave advice to families concerned, and laid a lot of the initial basis that soon got the Muslim ban set aside. Also inspired similar efforts in international airports all over the country, including here.
It was so inspiring that, after getting some tips from her work, I got off my butt and went and joined some other friends at our local Sky Harbor airport to do the same. That occurred all over the country. Thankfully, it was not that much of a legal problem here, and most of our time went into protesting (and it was a pretty big one) for news cameras and reporters, and not into having to address legal issues and problems. Soon the travel ban was set aside, and a lot of the impetus on the ground started with Mirriam and Dulles Justice. She is a hero, and is clearly now back at it. By necessity, yet again.
So, that is the back story of MirriamZary. Updates will likely be necessary as events are unfolding quite fast. How the Afghan evacuees are treated in the US, and elsewhere, will be an ongoing story and concern for quite some time.
As a coda, for now anyway, I’d like to point out how awesome women criminal defense attorneys are. You may remember me mentioning it here at EW. I took after Kathleen Walsh almost immediately on Twitter because I was so outraged and disgusted by her demeaning article. That was just the start, I kept on for a bit, because Walsh deserved it. Another one of the evil criminal defense attorneys, my pal Scott Greenfield, did a fantastic post on Walsh’s uninformed nonsense. What Kathleen Walsh doesn’t understand is what defense attorneys, and women are a core part of them, really do. They kick ass and take names, and Mirriam Seddiq is a prime example of that.
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The NYT has a story–on which Michael Shear, who is home in quarantine with his spouse after catching COVID in the White House’s superspreader cluster, has the lead byline–on DOJ’s complicit role in separating children from their parents.
It describes how five border-state US Attorneys tried to avoid imposing the draconian policies masterminded by Stephen Miller (who, like Shear, got infected in Trump’s super-spreader event). But those US Attorneys were overruled by Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein. Those findings appear in a draft DOJ IG Report, which has been sent to DOJ for comment, but not yet published.
The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare.
But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy.
“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”
Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.
“Those two cases should not have been declined,” John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, wrote to his staff immediately after the call. Mr. Bash had declined the cases, but Mr. Rosenstein “instructed that, per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.”
[snip]
In a briefing two days after Christmas in 2017, top Justice Department officials asked Mr. Bash for statistics from the pilot program, conducted by his predecessor, that could be used to develop “nationwide prosecution guidelines.” Mr. Bash, a former White House adviser, did not receive a follow-up request for the information. Thinking that the idea had been abandoned, he did not provide it.
And there’s at least one other prosecutor quoted — revealing that the no-tolerance policy targeting children let some far more serious criminals go free — who could be him.
Border Patrol officers missed serious felony cases because they were stretched too thin by the zero-tolerance policy requiring them to detain and prosecute all of the misdemeanor illegal entry cases. One Texas prosecutor warned top Justice Department officials in 2018 that “sex offenders were released” as a result.
The article itself is based off a draft copy of the report and interviews with three anonymous officials.
This article is based on a review of the 86-page draft report and interviews with three government officials who read it in recent months and described its conclusions and many of the details in it.
Bash should not have had access to this entire report to review his own role in it. Past practice would have suggested he get just those passages that pertain to him directly (though this report appears to cover his time both at Main DOJ and as a US Attorney). But he would have access to the passages that quote him directly.
The article is most amusing, however, for the response from DOJ, which complains about an inaccurate DOJ IG Report and improper leaks.
Alexa Vance, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, disputed the draft report and said the Homeland Security Department referred cases for prosecution.
“The draft report relied on for this article contains numerous factual errors and inaccuracies,” she said. “While D.O.J. is responsible for the prosecutions of defendants, it had no role in tracking or providing custodial care to the children of defendants. Finally, both the timing and misleading content of this leak raise troubling questions about the motivations of those responsible for it.”
As I have laid out, the DOJ IG Report on Carter Page has numerous factual errors, just some of which they’ve corrected. The central complaint in the parallel Lisa Page and Peter Strzok Privacy Act lawsuits about the release of their texts is that those were released improperly, both as to timing and legality, and led to misleading interpretations of what the texts mean. Both of those lawsuits implicate a sworn declaration made by Rod Rosenstein (who is badly implicated by this report and who issued a statement to the NYT, suggesting he could be one of the anonymous sources as well). The Rosenstein statement in the Page and Strzok lawsuits will test how credible his claims are about his own actions in response to illegal requests from the President.
In other words, the entire article is thick with irony and revenge. And it will surely focus more scrutiny on the denials that DOJ issues once it is released after the election.
But none of that helps the infants who got separated from their parents.
Imagine a bunch of tourists marching east from 
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