Great fun has been had, not least by me, with Trump’s joint press conference with Keir Starmer yesterday.
It started with Trump boasting that he and “the great Prime Minister of the UK” had signed “a document.”
He opened a folder to show a piece of paper with his Sharpie signature. But he fumbled it. Several other papers fell out of the folder. Starmer bent down to shuffle up the papers together, looking like Trump’s attendant. Trump blamed the wind. Starmer joked that it was a “very important document.” Starmer laughed nervously as the two tried to reassemble the prop. The British Prime Minister bent his head, perhaps understanding the optics of what just happened.
And so we have our trade agreement with the European Union. [Starmer’s awkward smile melted.] And it’s a fair deal for both. Gonna produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income. And we have a lot of, many many other ones coming.
“But you see the level of enthusiasm is very good,” the President claimed in a deadpan.
The video went viral because of the old man’s gaffe. The EU is not the UK. The UK is not the EU. Trump makes intentional taunts (like continuing to call various Canadian leaders “Governor”). But this looked like a real mistake, perhaps elicited by the fluttering paper mishap.
The President of the United States can’t keep the UK and the trade union it abandoned, as part of the same political wave that elected Donald the first time, straight.
The presser — staged before Trump jumped on a plane to either escape the G7 or rush to kibbitz the assassination of Ayatollah Khameni, amid Chinese warnings about escalation — ended with a question about the significance of the purported deal with the UK, whether the UK is protected from tariffs.
The UK is very well protected. You know why? Because I like ’em. That’s why.
Then Trump babbled about what a great job Starmer has done.
He wandered off, promising — as his Administration has done for two months — that he had more deals in the works.
A lot of them. A lot of them.
It was all great theater — or would have been, had the President not fumbled his props and his lines. But as Justin Wolfers noted, that document was a prop. The paper was blank, save that Sharpie signature. So, it appears, were all the other papers. [Update: No, the papers were not blank, just overexposed.]
To be sure, in an Executive Order released by the White House, Trump did, in fact, implement the deal. But that implementation was, in every way, an exercise of Trump’s fragile unilateral authority. At least by appearance, Starmer got no piece of paper guaranteeing the deal. The EO actually defers the adoption of the favorable import rates for British steel and aluminum. And Trump based his authority to implement the deal on the same IEEPA powers that the Court of International Trade has thrown out (currently on appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals).
Blank page. Flubbed lines. Fumbled prop. Repeated assurances of deals that never come. All Starmer has to hold onto is Trump’s proclamation that the UK is “very well protected … because I like ’em,” a personalist assurance perhaps valid only so long as Starmer will pick up Trump’s papers for him.
The entire press conference was a testament to the way in which the aging reality star has become little but.
It came amid one of the biggest flip flops in an Administration defined by such.
On Wednesday — as described by a NYT ticktock of the flip flop — Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins warned Trump, again, that Stephen Miller’s deportation gulag was posing great risk to (Trump-supporting) farmers. On Thursday, Trump posted the incoherent rant that conceded that, “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business,” were finding it “almost impossible to replace” the migrants who had long done the job, even while suggesting, “the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy” — by which Trump means, other migrants — “are applying for those jobs.” We have to protect job security for migrants from other migrants, the rant affirmed.
“[T]op White House officials were caught off guard,” NYT reports, but doesn’t mention Stephen Miller until the next sentence. “Many of Mr. Trump’s top aides, particularly Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, have urged a hard-line approach.”
Brooke Rollins managed to bypass Miller (as Scott Bessent bypassed Peter Navarro and Elon Musk at various times, to get his way). And overnight the policy changed. No more arrests of “noncriminal collaterals” in work site enforcement operations.
The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.
“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.
The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any crime.
It didn’t last.
A botched birthday parade and presumably some quality time with his consigliere later, Trump was promising invasions of Chicago and New York, specifically because (Trump continues to make lawsuits easier than they otherwise could be),
These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State,
NYT got the scoop confirming the first change in policy; WaPo got the scoop reporting the flip flop.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.
ICE and HSI field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy Sunday after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal.
Again, WaPo uses a kind of euphemism to convey that when it says, “the White House did not support it,” it means, “Stephen Miller did not.”
Miller, an architect of much of Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, had privately opposed carving out exceptions for certain industries that rely heavily on workers without legal status, according to two people with knowledge of his advocacy in recent days against the measure.
Increasingly, it appears that Miller issues the decisions (or countermands the others), all while handing Trump pieces of paper and a Sharpie to make him feel — and, if he doesn’t fumble his papers or his lines — powerful, and give Miller’s assumption of presidential powers the patina of legitimacy. Trump, the reality TV star, is just there for the press conferences.
The most fervid claims of a Joe Biden autopen scandal pale in comparison.
Trump’s deportation flip flop comes as Wired reported rising numbers of SEC filings describing the business risk from the deportations and WSJ described how Miller’s raids are disrupting businesses; NBC took a closer look at the chaos caused in Omaha during John Ewing’s first week as Mayor when ICE targeted a meat packing plant. Everyone knows this policy is damaging the US but in the face of Miller’s omnipresence and pushback from rabid supporters, Trump is helpless to even selectively protect his buddies.
And it has been simple for foreign leaders to exploit Trump’s increasing feebleness. Before he rushed away from the G-7 yesterday, he served as Vladimir Putin’s propagandist, whining that Russia had been expelled and misrepresenting the reason why. Both before and after that, Trump kept posting away futilely on Truth Social, attempting to look like he had some control — or even influence — over what Bibi Nethanyahu has in store for Iran.
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump boasted on Friday, before taking credit for Israel’s strike. “Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” He went on to claim that Israel was enforcing Trump’s own 60-day deadline (even as the attack preempted Steve Witkoff’s meeting with a now-dead negotiator). “The U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight,” Trump lied in an attempt to warn Iran off retaliating against the US. Trump would negotiate a deal, he whimpered. Iran should have signed the deal (it did — and then Trump reversed it) Trump repeated as he — insanely — called for a city of 10 million to evacuate. Shut up Tucker Carlson, about my reneging on the promise to avoid World War III! Now he’s redefining America First to encompass whatever it is that Israel has in store. “I have not reached out to Iran for “Peace Talks” in any way, shape, or form. This is just more HIGHLY FABRICATED, FAKE NEWS!” tried to disclaim every pursuing a deal, even while his public statements endorse a give-upping from Iran (which may entail the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei) not on the table last week. His most recent post shares a text from Christian Nationalist Mike Huckabee, invoking Harry Truman’s decision to nuke Japan, while promising, “I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s.”
As Trump disavows what Tulsi Gabbard (fresh off releasing a weird propaganda video warning of nuclear annihilation) tells him, he seems to have been persuaded to endorse whatever it is Bibi has planned.
The rest is all an attempt to retcon some appearance of control over what Bibi is doing, an attempt to do so even as his MAGAt base fractures over his participation in this escalating war.
Trump is not alone in being manhandled by Bibi. Joe Biden was equally easy to manipulate — he just made affirmative efforts, with little success, to rein in Bibi’s ambitions. Trump appears to lack even that ability.
And the rest is blank papers waved around to give the illusion of power.
Trump Chose to Hunt Law-Abiding Migrants Rather than Right Wing Terrorists Like Vance Boelter.
It will be some time before we learn whether Vance Boelter, the Trump supporter charged with assassinating Melissa Hortman, could have been stopped if Trump hadn’t dismantled efforts to fight terrorists like Boelter.
But we do know that Trump has done real damage to those efforts.
Start with Kristi Noem’s degradation of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, an office trying to prevent attacks like the one Boelter carried out. Noem’s DHS put a 22-year old with no experience and a day job hunting migrants, Thomas Fugate, in charge of the office designed to fight radicalization.
[T]he 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.
The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security role that was expanded to include the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence.
[snip]
The once-bustling office of around 80 employees now has fewer than 20, former staffers say. Grant work stops, then restarts. One senior civil servant was reassigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency via an email that arrived late on a Saturday.
The office’s mission has changed overnight, with a pivot away from focusing on domestic extremism, especially far-right movements. The “terrorism” category that framed the agency’s work for years was abruptly expanded to include drug cartels, part of what DHS staffers call an overarching message that border security is the only mission that matters. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has largely left terrorism prevention to the states.
ProPublica sent DHS a detailed list of questions about Fugate’s position, his lack of national security experience and the future of the department’s prevention work. A senior agency official replied with a statement saying only that Fugate’s CP3 duties were added to his role as an aide in an Immigration & Border Security office.
“Due to his success, he has been temporarily given additional leadership responsibilities in the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships office,” the official wrote in an email. “This is a credit to his work ethic and success on the job.”
[snip]
But Homeland Security’s budget proposal to Congress for the next fiscal year suggests a bleaker future. The department recommended eliminating the threat-prevention grant program, explaining that it “does not align with DHS priorities.”
The FBI — another agency that has worked to prevent terrorism , too, has focused on law-abiding migrants instead of right wing terrorists.
As NBC has been tracking, Trump has ordered a significant number of FBI agents to help chase down law-abiding migrants, shifting some away from counterterrorism.
One of the memos says the goal is to have 2,000 FBI agents across the country working full time on immigration enforcement at any one time.
Given that FBI resources are finite, current and former officials say, a significant increase in immigration enforcement will draw agents away from what have long been top FBI priorities, including counterterrorism, counterespionage, fraud and violent crime.
That shift has only intensified as Stephen Miller struggles to find enough migrants to deport to fulfill the false claims about their numbers he dangled during the election.
FBI field offices around the country have been ordered to assign significantly more agents to immigration enforcement, a dramatic shift in federal law enforcement priorities that will likely siphon resources away from counterterrorism, counterintelligence and fraud investigations, multiple current and former bureau officials told NBC News.
The orders, given in a series of memos and meetings in FBI offices this week, come at a time when the Trump administration is proposing to cut 5% of the FBI’s budget, and as the Justice Department is deprioritizing investigations of certain types of white-collar and corporate crime, according to a memo obtained by NBC News.
[snip]
One federal law enforcement official estimated that the vast majority of agents were uncomfortable with being a part of the immigration operations, saying ICE doesn’t meticulously plan out arrest operations the way that the bureau does.
“This is not what we do, these are bad ideas,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity citing fear of retaliation. “If this was a Democrat administration, I’d be saying this is bad, we shouldn’t be doing this.”
Even as the manhunt continued for the pro-Trump terrorist, even as Minnesota grieves, Trump posted another Truth Social post adopting the language of Nazis and pitting his ICE goons against “Radical Democrat [sic] Politicians,” stoking yet more violence against them.
Stephen Miller and Donald Trump have made a choice: To hunt law-abiding migrants rather than the Trump supporters gunning down Democrats in their homes.
WSJ Memory Holes Trump’s Near-Assassination of His Vice President
In an 800-word story on the rise of political violence, this what WSJ’s Katy Stech Ferek and Tim Hanrahan wrote about Trump’s incitement of thousands of rabid followers, their attack on cops protecting Congress and their open chants calling for the assassination of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell, Trump’s pardon of most of them (and release of the others), and DOJ’s payment of $5 million to Ashli Babbitt’s estate:
WaPo’s Sarah Ellison and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez said little more in its equivalent piece, ascribing to Trump no role in the January 6 attack and making no mention of his pardon for those who did attack cops and the Capitol.
The January 2021 attack on the Capitol saw a mob of Trump supporters threaten lawmakers gathered to certify the 2020 election.
NYT’s Lisa Lerer, at least, did mention the pardon, but not the things Trump had done to get his mob to chant “hang Mike Pence.”
Mr. Trump has had a hand in that. Since his 2016 candidacy, he has signaled at least his tacit approval of violence against his political opponents. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to “knock the hell” out of protesters, praised a lawmaker who body-slammed a reporter and defended the rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, who clamored to “hang Mike Pence.” One of his first acts in his second term as president was to pardon those rioters.
None of these outlets have the simple journalistic courage to say that Trump nearly got his Vice President assassinated, that Trump incited a brutal attack on a co-equal branch of government, and that his reward for the people who did this has fostered violence against Trump’s adversaries.
Sunday Night WTF: Tankers with a Tantrum
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
Journalists need to validate this information and ask Whiskey Pete Hegseth WTAF is going on that so many tanker aircraft were deployed flying due east of the U.S. on a Sunday night.
Note the timing of each post with newer at the top and older at the bottom; the top two were obtained via Threadreader (time not available but assumed to be later than 21:02 ET), the others via Xitter. There may have been newer posts on Xitter but the platform wouldn’t let me dig any deeper without logging in and that’s not an option for me.
The number of tankers dispatched in the same direction on a Sunday night is quite odd given 40,000 active duty personnel deployed at multiple bases in the Middle East and at least two naval destroyers in the vicinity. The vessels are part of an increasing naval presence in the region over the last several months.
Now note the tantrum Trump had this evening on Truth Social – or a tantrum-like statement mimicking Trump’s habits – in which Trump appears to order stepped up ICE raids in blue cities and states, using DHS as a political weapon. (Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, is this your work?)
Note especially the timing of the tantrum.
What a coincidence that one hour after this tantrum on Trump’s blog there are more than 20 military tanker aircraft in the air. It’s almost as if somebody wants their opposition to be too preoccupied to notice there has been no Authorization for Use Military Force or Declaration of War approved by Congress let alone an attack on the US meriting such authorization/declaration.
You might want to contact your members of Congress about this and ask them WTF.
You might also ask them whether they would consider impeachment and conviction for abuse of office in the form of politicization of an entire cabinet-level function.
“The Answer Is Zero:” When Fragile White Supremacists Discover … They Aren’t
There’s a line in Kerry Howley’s entertaining profile of Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s incompetence that, along with the URL title — “Could these be Pete Hegseth’s last days in the Pentagon?” — made me wonder whether she and her editors rushed to publish it in fear that it was about to be Overtaken By Events.
To illustrate her best quote, describing that Whiskey Pete is only playing at Defense Secretary, Howley used the (apparently paraphrased) hypothetical crisis, Israel bombing Iran, to explain what nearly led a longtime Pentagon employee to cry when contemplating how poorly Whiskey Pete’s Pentagon would function.
“Pete is playing secretary,” a source says. “He’s not being secretary.” In crisis — an unplanned evacuation, Israel bombing Iran, China moving on Taiwan — there will be no one with experience to lead. “For any sustained operations, we’re screwed. There’s nobody in the SecDef’s office at this point that has any … they’re not heavyweights. They don’t have the sophistication. They don’t have the experience.” One source described a longtime Pentagon employee discussing the lack of readiness in the office, “close to tears,” saying “the department is so fucked.”
Having spent months crafting a great story about Trump’s woefully incompetent Defense Secretary (though before she had gotten the full story; for example, she didn’t describe the suspected role of DOGE implant Justin Fulcher in fabricating a claim about NSA intercepts), she published it before it became irrelevant.
And here we are, Israel is bombing Iran and Iran is returning fire, and there are probably people crying at the Pentagon and they’re not alone.
Israel’s attack on Iran is not even the biggest risk of having someone as unhinged as Whiskey Pete in charge: the Los Angeles invasion is.
Indeed, over the course of a long week of disastrous Congressional appearances for Whiskey Pete, it became fairly clear he knows fuckall about the invasion of California he has personally authorized. And that is dangerous — inconceivably dangerous — not least because Whiskey Pete also spent the week facing his own inadequacy.
As things (and not just Whiskey Pete’s things) begin to spiral out of control, it’s time we talk about the problems created when people who believe they — a Christian white man with an addiction problem — are supreme, face the kind of public humiliation that destroys the core of their identity.
Whiskey Pete knows fuckall about the Los Angeles deployment
Let’s start with the risk.
Friday, Reuters reported on the first known temporary detention carried out by Marines deployed to Los Angeles. As the shocking video portrays, there were at one point at least five heavily-armed men engaged in detaining Army veteran Marcus Leao.
Leao, who is brown-skinned, was a veteran on his way to the VA office.
Speaking to reporters after he was released, the civilian identified himself as Marcos Leao, 27. Leao said he was an Army veteran on his way to an office of the Department of Veterans Affairs when he crossed a yellow tape boundary and was asked to stop.
Leao, who gained his U.S. citizenship through military service, said he was treated “very fairly.”
“They’re just doing their job,” said Leao, who is of Angolan and Portuguese descent.
[snip]
The troops are authorized to detain people who pose a threat to federal personnel or property, but only until police can arrest them. Military officials are not allowed to carry out arrests themselves.
There’s no hint of what probable cause they had to detain him, at all.
He was going to the VA office.
Imagine what’s going to happen when the target is actually doing something that an itchy trigger might view as a real threat?
Meanwhile, the Secretary of Defense has repeatedly confessed he doesn’t know what is going on with the deployment.
On June 9, for example, the Secretary of Defense claimed the deployed Marines were coming from Camp Pendleton.
There was, to be fair, some as yet unexplained uncertainty whence DOD was deploying 700 Marines, from Pendleton or Twentynine Palms. But within hours of this tweet, the Marines were deploying from the latter base, not the former (where protests against the deployment had already been staged, which is on the edge of San Diego’s suburbs). The Secretary of Defense’s tweet, posted hours before the deployment, ended up being inexplicably wrong.
The next day, Whiskey Pete appeared before the first of three appropriations hearings this week. Pete Aguilar asked some basic questions: Why were the Guard sent without housing or food? How much will it cost? Where is the money coming from?
Each time, Whiskey Pete answered with bluster rather than facts (the Acting Comptroller, Bryn MacDonnell, did an exceptional job all week, and in in this case revealed the deployment would cost $134 million, mostly TDY costs, which would be paid out of contingency funds).
Then Aguilar asked Hegseth what the legal justification was. Hegseth again blustered.
Aguilar pointed to the statute: 10 USC 12406 — the statute cited in Trump’s Executive Order mandating the deployment, and asked which of the three justifications was triggered.
The Secretary of Defense said he didn’t know.
I don’t know. You just read it yourself. And people can listen themselves. But it sounds like all three to me. If you’ve got millions of illegals and you don’t know where they’re coming from, they’re waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers, that’s a problem. The government of California is unable to execute the laws of the United States. The Governor of the [sic] California has failed to protect his people along with the Mayor of Los Angeles and so President Trump has said he will protect our agents and our Guard and Marines are proud to do it.
And yet days after deploying the Guard, Hegseth confessed that he had no fucking idea which of those three clauses justified the deployment.
Fully 15 pages of Judge Charles Breyer’s opinion enjoining the use of the National Guard addresses this issue and Breyer even scolds DOJ for attempting to retcon their justification, precisely what Hegesth himself tried to do in the hearing.
It is concerning, to say the least, to imagine that the federal executive could unilaterally exercise military force in a domestic context and then be allowed to backfill justifications for doing so, especially considering how wary courts are of after-the-fact justifications even where the stakes are lower.
Hegseth had relied on the law, without any sense of how or why (he claimed) it applied, just as Breyer found DOJ itself had done.
Hegseth had another Appropriations hearing on Wednesday, this time before the Senate. In response to a question from Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed whether the troops would use drones and detain Americans, Hegseth refused to answer.
Since then, the military has indeed deployed drones and (as noted) detained at least one American citizen. Reed was correct: The answer Hegseth refused to give was, yes.
Hegseth also stated that both the Guard and the Marines were on the streets.
Only, the Marines weren’t, yet. They hadn’t finished the scant training they were being given.
Some of these gaffes — announcing the wrong base whence Marines would deploy, claiming they were deployed when they weren’t, yet — may represent confusion or DOD changing its mind, which is interesting enough, given the artificial claim of an emergency. But Hegseth disclaimed even knowing the legal basis on which he had deployed 4,700 service members.
Whiskey Pete’s humiliation snowballs
Meanwhile, even as Hegseth is presiding over an invasion of a blue city, even as Howley’s profile was in the works, even as DOD’s Inspector General finalizes a report expected to rebut Hegseth’s claim that he didn’t share classified information on a Signal chat, on the third day of testimony (the Appropriations hearing with Aguilar was Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations hearing with Reed was Wednesday, he had a hearing before the full House Armed Services Committee on Thursday), things got worse.
Here, Democrats, and several Republicans, were far less interested in appropriations; they were teeing up on Hegseth’s manifest incompetence.
Three key exchanges went straight to Hegseth’s incompetence.
Early in the hearing, as many others did and would, Seth Moulton hammered Hegseth on his Signal scandal. As many others did and would, Moulton asked Hegseth to take some accountability for his actions.
But when Hegseth answered (as he did elsewhere) that it didn’t matter if he shared classified information in a Signal chat, that it didn’t matter because the operation itself was successful, Moulton mocked that claim.
Moulton: You talked about the success of the Houthi operation. About how much did it cost? How much money did you spend on missiles, shooting at the Houthis?
Hegseth: Well, you’d have to compare that with what it cost —
Moulton: I’m just asking how much did it cost?
Hegseth: — to divert our shipping lanes.
Moulton: I’m told it’s several hundred million dollars, maybe close to a billion dollars. How many US-flagged commercial ships have transitted the Red Sea since your so-called successful operation?
Hegseth: Well, thankfully, unlike the previous Admin —
Moulton: The answer is zero.
Hegseth: Military vessels transitt–
Moulton: No I didn’t ask you about military vessels.
Hegseth: Which would be the precursor for —
Moulton: How many commercial vessels? It has been several weeks. How many commercial vessels, US-flagged, have transitted —
Hegseth: Well, would you, Mr. Congressman, put civilian ships–
Moulton: The questions are not to me, Mr. Secretary, they’re to you. The answer is zero.
“The answer is zero.” Hegseth tried to cover up the utter pointlessness of the failed operation kicked off on that Signal chat with boasts that two military vessels had sailed through the Red Sea unscathed. But zero US commercial vehicles have, the very opportunity cost Hegseth had tried to use to dismiss the cost of the operation. That’s what success looks like for a guy like Pete Hegseth.
About halfway through the hearing, it was Mikie Sherrill’s turn, fresh off her win in the NJ gubernatorial primary. She started by observing how Hegseth had been using Fox News tactics to try to cover up his incompetence.
Mr. Secretary, your testimony over the last several days before Congress — I’ve heard you speak about all your supposed accomplishments from your time at the Pentagon. I have to say, your training at Fox News has let you spin months of dangerous dysfunction and incompetence into catchy phrases, like “restoring the warrior ethos” and “increasing lethality,” but the truth is it’s really been chaos at the Pentagon under your leadership. You’ve clearly shown you’re unable to manage the Department of Defense but what I’m most concerned about are three specific areas: Your operational incompetence, your managerial incompetence, and your budgetary incompetence.
She then walked through individual incidents substantiating those three kinds of incompetence:
Operational: How Hegseth mistakenly believed Trump wanted to cut off all aid to Ukraine. Hegseth said it was a fake news headline, a Fox News tactic.
Managerial: Why Hegseth fired CJCS CQ Brown and the Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti without cause — Sherrill said it seemed like it was because Brown is Black and Franchetti is a woman — and when Hegseth would get around to replacing Franchetti. Sherrill asked if qualified Admirals keep turning offers down. Hegseth again claimed it was fake news, but had no answer for why he hadn’t yet replaced Franchetti.
Budgetary: Why Hegseth is blowing money on vanity projects for President Trump — Sherill listed the Qatari plane, the parade, the Houthi campaign, and the Los Angeles invasion — and what priorities he has cut funding for to pay for them. Again, no asnwer.
Each time, Hegseth dodged Sherrill’s questions, and she restated the question — the last time, in a sing-song voice like she was speaking to a surly toddler.
On top of the substantive issues, the exchange proved that, yes, Hegseth is treating oversight questions like they’re Fox News games.
Eugene Vindman (Alexander’s brother, and like him ousted after blowing the whistle on Trump), almost the last questioner, chose a different approach to demonstrate Hegseth’s manifest incompetence.
He quizzed him.
He set it up by explaining that,
Many believe you are unqualified — underqualified — for this role. You’ve been Secretary of Defense for four and a half months now, for the sake of the American people and our service members, I hope you’ve done your homework since.
Then, like the questions Tammy Duckworth posed at his confirmation hearing, Vindman asked about topics that demonstrate several American vulnerabilities: China’s growing naval superiority, a key bottleneck that could cut the Baltics off from land reinforcements, and the rise of sight-directed small drones.
What year can the US fight a war with China?
How many ships does China have?
How many ships does the US have?
How many ships will China field by 2030?
What is the name of a corridor central to NATO reinforcements of the Baltic?
What heavily militarized Russian territory, connected to the Suwalki gap, containing nuclear capable missiles, it threatens all of NATO — it’s right there in the middle of Eastern Europe?
What percentage of frontline Ukrainian casualties are caused by FPV drones?
Which US service has written doctrine or standardized procurement of FPV drones?
Hegseth’s attempt to cover up his ignorance about the specifics of these vulnerabilities adopted similar tactics — those Fox News tactics Sherrill had raised — each time.
First, give a pat answer.
Then, falsely claim the answer is classified.
Then, use a political talking point answering a different question.
Then give up.
The one answer he thought he knew — that the Army had a written doctrine on FPVs — was wrong (to be fair, it was a trick question).
That’s when Vindman shifted to the same topic that Moulton had raised: Hegseth’s refusal to take accountability for placing attack information on a Signal chat. Only Vindman had a twist: He conveyed the opinion and request of the mother of one of the men who had piloted that first attack.
She believes that you need to resign. She also had several questions but one thing: she said she would appreciate an apology, an apology for putting classified information — her son couldn’t even tell her where the Truman was going — into the Houthi PC Small Group Signal chat that risked her son’s life and the mission. Mr. Secretary, yes or no, do you think you owe her an apology?
Hours after Moulton demonstrated that the mission accomplished nothing, Hegseth still resorted to the same ploy that failed with Moulton, claiming “it was an incredibly successful mission, and her son did great work, and thankfully the Houthi campaign was successful. … I don’t apologize for success.”
He doesn’t have to exercise any personal accountability because a mission that failed to achieve its stated objective was a great success.
Perhaps because the House Armed Services Committee is so big — the fullhearing went on over seven hours, perhaps because a chunk of Republicans didn’t bother to show up to defend Hegseth (as noted, several joined the fun in thwacking the Secretary), perhaps it was because Whiskey Pete had no answer for his own actions, for DOD’s budget, and still, for how to keep the US safe. But the very process of the hearing showed that there’s no there there, under Hegseth’s non-stop politicization and Fox News answers.
We always knew he was an empty suit. This hearing exposed that.
Turns out you’re not supreme at all!
And that’s what has me worried.
Kerry Howley seems to think Whiskey Pete may be finished, and she’s not alone. The NBC story on the White House difficulties finding Hegseth babysitters — which is, substantively, far more damning than the Howley profile — ends with a prediction that the Inspector General will issue findings adverse to Hegseth. Two days after WSJ dedicated an entire story to that topic, it published a story describing what a failure the Houthi campaign was.
It’s not just Democrats and some Republicans in Congress who have lost patience with Hegseth. It appears most of the Pentagon has, which is why (as both Sherrill and the NBC story point out) people aren’t applying for key jobs. (Some people speculate it’s why some of the soldiers marching in yesterday’s parade couldn’t be fucked to march in lockstep.)
I’m not so sure. Politically, Trump should fire Hegseth, to minimize the surface area of easy attacks on himself, including from Republicans. Operationally, there’s no question that Hegseth’s continued tenure makes the US far less safe (and just as importantly, mucks up the finely tuned bureaucracy of the Pentagon).
Trump could even use the dud of yesterday’s military parade as an excuse. His Fox News hire couldn’t even make Trump’s long-sought military parade into rousing propaganda.
But Trump just invaded California relying on the authority of a guy who couldn’t be bothered to figure out why he was invading.
To carry out his (or Stephen Miller’s) attempt to pursue a reverse Reconstruction, he needs cabinet members like Kristi Noem and Hegseth who don’t care about the legal niceties but are happy to parrot lines about liberating the largest state, and the world’s fourth largest economy, from its elected leaders.
Without that, Trump himself, the entire project, becomes vulnerable.
If I were Hegseth I might resign on my own, to avoid any further public humiliation like I experienced this week. You had Democrats, women, Latinos (Salud Carbajal’s contempt for Hegseth was particularly scathing), Black people, and LGBT people, all looking smarter than Hegseth, hour after hour, a tremendous advertisement for the proposition that diversity is our strength, which Whiskey Pete loathes so much.
Over the course of seven hours, the contrast between the prepared members and Hegseth’s evasions dismantled Hegseth’s claims to Christian white male superiority. And that’s before he had no answer to Jason Crow’s question about what distinguishes the US from al Qaeda or ISIS.
All Hegseth had to fall back on were Fox News evasions.
It will never get better for Pete Hegseth.
Whiskey Pete will never catch up on mastery of these facts. Worse still, a masterful Howley euphemism suggests the stress of trying to do so has allowed his demons to take hold again.
Hegseth was different after Signalgate, according to six people in a position to know. He was more prone to anger and less likely to be clean-shaven in the morning.
This is a man who is failing because he came in without qualifications, quickly proved an easy mark for political infighting, and as a result keeps making decisions that threaten greater and greater catastrophe.
Whiskey Pete Hegseth has become a perfect advertisement for the lie of white supremacy. Couching your decisions in some claimed inherent superiority, over and over, doesn’t work in a bureaucracy like the Pentagon.
More importantly, for the same reasons he can’t accept accountability for Signalgate, I don’t know how Hegseth could, emotionally, quit. He can’t do so because Trump would turn on him (which Trump will eventually do anyway). He can’t do so because it would cause permanent psychic damage.
If he admits Mikie Sherrill is right, it will destroy him, because his assumed superiority is the core of his identity.
Escalation is no off-ramp
It turns out, freed from the guidance of adults counseling his decisions, that Trump is discovering he was wrong, over and over. In the weeks before Israel started what could be a catastrophic escalation, Trump was pitching what was basically the JPCOA he had overturned eight years earlier. In light of Israel’s attack, Voice of America ordered all its Farsi workers to return to work, just months after Trump ordered the entire service disbanded.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media told employees placed on administrative leave to immediately return to their roles providing counter-programming to Iranian state media as the conflict between the two nations escalated Friday, according to an email seen by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.
“Effective immediately, you are recalled from administrative leave,” said the email from USAGM’s human resources department. “You are expected to report to your duty station immediately.”
There are 75 full time employees within VOA’s Persian wing — the language predominantly spoken in Iran — and it’s believed most, if not all, have now been brought back after being put on administrative leave for three months.
In recent days, Trump discovered that Stephen Miller’s immigration jihad is too costly for powerful lobbying interests, so he is reversing course on part of that, too.
In another immigration gulag failure, Kristi Noem thought a smart way to deal with Newark’s concerns about Delaney Hall’s use as an immigration facility was to arrest Newark’s Mayor. Then they changed their mind and charged Congressman LaMonica McIver, instead. In the very same week they indicted McIver, four people (two accused of burglary, the other two accused of more violent crimes) in Delaney Hall escaped through a “drywall with a mesh interior” wall leading into a parking lot after days of unrest because GEO had repurposed the cafeteria to manage detainee movements and so not fed detainees sufficiently. Admittedly, DHS has not yet admitted that they can’t use this facility, but they certainly substantiated Newark’s concerns about its fitness to hold detainees, some of them dangerous.
The problem is, even as Trump is — with his actions — proving that the experts, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris were right after all, he cannot admit they were right, because his entire political identity is based on a claim that they’re wrong or (in the case of Black politicians) inferior.
At least in Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s case, being confronted with his incompetence only caused him to double down.
The only sign of this disastrous seven-hour hearing on Whiskey Pete’s Xitter timeline, below his pinned “Never back down” tweet, and now sandwiched among the inaccurate claim he was deploying Marines from Pendleton, an RT of a DOD Rapid Response attack showing his refusal to respond to Pete Aguilar, both a DOD Rapid Response and a Rapid Response 47 celebration of his contempt in response to questions from Ranking Appropriations member Betty McCollum about the LA deployment, eight [!!!] posts from the politicized rally at Fort Bragg (about which, Hegseth would claim in the HASC hearing, not to know DOD had imposed political litmus tests on the attendees), various false claims about Los Angeles, various false claims about US involvement in Iran, and various claims to a recruiting bonanza partly debunked in this WaPo article, the only sign of the seven hours of Whiskey Pete’s life when he was publicly and repeatedly exposed as an incompetent hack was this DOD Rapid Response attack on Sara Jacobs’ questioning of him, edited to focus on Hegseth’s response.
The full exchange is rather instructive.
Jacobs starts by noting that she represents the largest military community in the country and noting it was National Women’s Veterans Day. She sandbagged him, getting him to first reiterate his prior statements hailing the service of women. “With your focus on and emphasis on merit, standards, I wanted to tell you about three incredible women.” She then described the most recent performance evaluation of three women described as exceptional. (She didn’t name them, but they might be Erica Vandal, Emily Shilling, and Kate Cole.)
Jacobs: Given their stellar qualifications and accomplishments, and their record of surpassing standards, I assume that you agree that the Pentagon and the Services should do everything they can to retain women like these, correct?
Hegseth: I would commend the Major, the Aviator, and the Instructor for their service.
Jacobs: Great. I’m glad you agree because I also believe we should be recruiting and retaining the very best and brightest to serve in the military. And yet, you’re actually kicking out these three highly qualified solely because of their identity. These are trans women. And you are using the very same arguments used against desegregating the military or allowing women to serve or allowing gay people to serve. And in all those cases, those arguments were wrong. So I think it’s clear that this is actually not about standards or — I’m quoting you again — “an equal, unwavering, gender-neutral merit-based system,” because if it were you would be keeping these women in. Instead, you’re the one injecting culture wars into the military. And it’s at the detriment of our readiness and national security.
What DOD’s Rapid Response thought made Whiskey Pete look good was where he interrupted Jacobs’ next question, to label these women as, “Men who think they’re women.” Hegseth’s own propagandists had to censor the part where Jacobs described the excellence of trans women that Hegseth has ejected from the military, claiming they pose a threat to national security.
It was just another feeble Fox talking point, one that affirmatively buried the actual facts.
The problem with exposing the inadequacy of someone like Hegseth is the logical response — his suppression of the proof of excellence in favor of his forceful Fox redefinition of what excellence among trans servicemembers really is.
The same thing is happening with his Los Angeles invasion. Not only did Hegseth himself tweet false claims about the extent of the violence in Los Angeles, but as Gavin Newsom’s press team exposed, his Rapid Response account has started posting disinformation — old riot footage — as part of its campaign to support the Los Angeles invasion.
Pete Hegseth’s DOD is disseminating Russian-style disinformation to justify their invasion of Los Angeles (as Newsom’s staff noted, DHS has started doing the same).
Whiskey Pete’s response to being exposed as incompetent, DOD’s response to launching an invasion with no basis, has been the same: To double down on the lies, to double down on the dehumanization.
Sure, Whiskey Pete may soon be gone. Blaming him for the failed birthday party would be the easy way to do it.
But he remains particularly dangerous unless and until then, not least because he has ordered the military to be something they are not, and to do so based on his transparently false claims about what America is.
Because Pete Hegseth cannot admit who he is — and more importantly, what he is not — he is demanding that the men and women who serve under him be something they are not.
No Kings Rally After Action Report
I went to the No Kings Rally at the Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago today, with friends and family. The weather was pleasant, temperatures in the upper 60s and hazy, turning mostly sunny. My younger grandchild lasted nearly an hour, in large part because a kind person handed him a red, white, and blue pinwheel. Most of our party left at this point, except my daughter.
We couldn’t hear the speeches, the chanting was too loud. Eventually the crowd started marching. Apparently a large part went north several blocks to the Chicago River where they saluted the Trump Tower with shouts and hand signals. They eventually turned down Michigan Avenue.
We went with another enormous group headed south for several blocks before turning back towards the Lake and then north. At this point, I was slowing down, and my daughter saved me from myself. We walked to Michigan Avenue, where we saw the lead marchers moving south. So we ate lunch outdoors and watched for 40 minutes as the group moved south, chanting and whooping.
When we finished lunch they were going strong, so we went back to the march and did another eight blocks before it petered out. The Red Line was jammed to the doors. As we exited the station, a guy asked if the march was peaceful. It sure was. Huge and peaceful.
Shout-out to the police, who did a good job of coping with what I think was a much larger crowd than they or the organizers expected. Another shout-out to all the people inconvenienced by the enormous crowd, many whom honked and shouted their support, and not one of whom offered suggestions about my life choices.
Lots of great signs. One I liked: No Kings Only Prince with a photo of the musical genius. Another great thing, after we got back, we watched Trump morosely watching his wretched parade in wretched weather.
As I noted the other day, Alina Habba rushed to announce the indictment of LaMonica McIver, which names Ras Baraka as Individual-1, at 6:56PM on Tuesday night, an hour before polls closed in the election in which Baraka won the second-most votes. But it took most of a day before the indictment was docketed, meaning most coverage of the indictment relied on Habba’s press release. As a result, that coverage didn’t point out some of the gaping holes and contradictions in the story AUSA Mark McCarren, which Habba’s presser identified as part of a “Special Prosecutions Division,” told to get a grand jury to approve the charges (NPR addressed a few of the issues on Wednesday).
The facts of this case will prove was I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation. This indictment is no more justified than the original charges, and is an effort by Trump’s administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused and scare me out of doing the work I was elected to do. But it won’t work–I will not be intimidated. The facts are on our side, I’ll be entering a plea of not guilty, I’m grateful for the support of my community, and I look forward to my day in court.
The holes in the indictment — about permitting concerns raised by Newark, about GEO Group’s ownership of Delaney Hall, about the property lines at the facility, about McIver’s completion of an inspection after she allegedly assaulted several cops — obscure the complexity about who had authority to do what at the facility.
The ways in which DOJ has changed its story about key events will undermine key witnesses, starting with alleged victim Ricky Patel and extending to a guard whose story appears to have changed three times.
And the key disputed facts, about where Mayor Ras Baraka was, when — whom DOJ treats like he is Schrödinger’s cat — may blow this entire case out of the water.
The government has told more than six versions of the story about what happened at Delaney Hall on May 9:
Start with several key details that do not appear in the McIver indictment — and so may not have been shared with the grand jury.
Unlike the complaint Victim-1 Ricky Patel swore out against Ras Baraka, neither the complaint nor the indictment charging LaMonica McIver mention that GEO owns Delaney Hall, the site of the confrontation (see the pink boxes). In the criminal complaint against Baraka, that relationship was a necessary part of claiming that Baraka trespassed on a federal facility, without which DOJ would not and likely does not have jurisdiction.
The Delaney Hall Facility currently operates as a federal immigration facility pursuant to a contract between the GEO Group, Inc., the entity that owns the Delaney Hall Facility, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). As a result of this contract, the Delaney Hall Facility has been acquired for the use of the United States and is under the jurisdiction of the United States.
That property relationship underlies several key other aspects of the confrontation that don’t show up in either of the McIver charging documents. First, Newark claims that Delaney Hall is not certified for its current use, over which Newark has actually sued the facility. Once you have even a dispute over the certification of the facility, than the Mayor of Newark has official business at the facility.
The fact that GEO, and not ICE, owns the property goes to whether Baraka was even trespassing at all. In the complaint against Baraka, Patel relied exclusively on the normal restrictions on entry — the chainlink fence, the No Trespassing signs, and the guard — to claim Baraka was trespassing. The problem with that is that at one point, a guard employed by GEO invited Baraka in.
The testimony of the guard (yellow boxes) is wildly inconsistent, as follows:
McIver complaint: Baraka was originally told he could not enter but was subsequently admitted because “the guard was under the impression that the Mayor was part of the Congressional delegation”
McIver indictment: Baraka was originally denied entry when he claimed he was part of the Congressional delegation, but then was let in because the guard was concerned for Baraka’s safety
Baraka lawsuit: The guard told Baraka he let him in to “calm the crowd”
That inconsistent testimony is important, because according to Baraka, when Patel told him to leave, Baraka told Patel he was invited on to the property, which the government now concedes but which, in real time, Patel disputed. This is, undoubtedly, a big part of the reason why Habba dismissed the complaint against Baraka. Not only is it not clear she had federal jurisdiction over a private facility in Baraka’s city, but when Patel filed the complaint, he at least knew that Baraka claimed to have been invited onto the property by a representative of GEO, and he may well have known that Baraka was right when he charged Baraka.
In other words, Victim-1 in the McIver indictment, Patel, left out key details in his sworn complaint, if not outright lied to a judge when claiming that Baraka was trespassing at all.
And that — the good faith understanding from both Baraka and the members of Congress that Baraka was not trespassing — is important background to the biggest discrepancy between the claims Baraka has made, what WaPo shows, and what Special Prosecutions Division AUSA Mark McCarren appears to have told the grand jury.
In the McIver charging documents (which include no timeline), Patel ordered Baraka to leave, he told him to place his hands behind his back, the members of Congress came out and started to make a stink, Baraka somehow exited out the gate, which is where the key confrontation took place.
Even in that story, there are two key discrepancies. The McIver charging documents call the land outside the gate, vaguely, “the unsecured area of the facility” or “just outside the security gate for the facility.” That is, the McIver documents imply that GEO (though they don’t mention GEO) owns the property both inside and immediately outside the gate. But Baraka calls that area, “public Newark property.” DOJ says GEO owns the land where the confrontation took place. The Mayor of Newark says it’s the city’s public land.
Perhaps the craziest discrepancy — and the reason I’m treating this as Schrödinger’s Baraka — is the description of how Baraka came to leave (green text).
Baraka complaint: He never left!
McIver complaint: “the Mayor was then moved outside the gate”
Habba presser: “the Mayor was escorted outside the secured gate” (in context, suggesting HSI did it)
McIver indictment: he “was escorted by his security detail”
Both Baraka’s lawsuit and the WaPo describe something totally different: he walked out, “arm-in-arm” with Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (Baraka’s lawsuit mentions that first he retrieved her phone from one of her staffers), by all accounts a successful effort by members of Congress to deescalate the situation.
In none of these scenarios was Baraka moved outside the gate by HSI. He left, whether arm-in-arm with Watson Coleman or escorted by his detail, of his own accord.
And then he was arrested.
He was ordered to leave, he left (even though he believed he had been invited by the property owner), and then he was arrested for trespassing.
Those discrepancies would be bad enough. But there’s a far bigger one. As the McIver charging documents tell it, the attempted arrest, Baraka’s departure, and then the successful arrest were one continuous event: Ricky Patel orders Ras Baraka to leave, attempts to arrest him, is thwarted by McIver, then proceeds outside the gate immediately to conclude the arrest. The effort by members of Congress to deescalate is instead portrayed as the beginning of an effort to thwart the arrest.
WaPo (and Baraka’s lawsuit) say it happened in two phases. First HSI ordered Baraka to leave, the members came out from the GEO waiting room, attempted to de-escalate, he left, then the members returned inside only to hear HSI premeditating a plan to arrest him even though he had already left the facility, after which they re-joined Baraka, this time in that area that DOJ claims is the unsecured property of GEO (only they don’t tell you it is GEO) and that the Mayor of Newark claims is public property.
For nearly 45 minutes, Baraka remained just inside the secured area, occasionally chatting with members of his security detail, according to time-stamped videos. Then, at around 2:33 p.m., Homeland Security agents exited the building and confronted Baraka. In snippets of the conversation captured in video, agents told Baraka he had to leave because he was not a member of Congress. The three members of Congress joined the discussion as it grew tense.
Minutes later, video shows, an agent took a step toward Baraka, and Watson Coleman can be heard urging calm.
Referencing that moment, the Justice Department’s complaint said a Homeland Security agent ordered the mayor to “put his hands behind his back and displayed his handcuffs.”
McIver grew animated, calling the agent’s intervention “unnecessary” and “ugly.” One of the agents can be heard in videos saying: “All right, then. Walk out.”
At 2:39 p.m., within moments of that remark, and six minutes after agents first confronted Baraka, he turned and walked away, arm-in-arm with Watson Coleman. The guard reopened the gate, and Baraka exited to an area in front of the facility, recessed from the sidewalk.
With concerns about Baraka’s presence seemingly resolved, the three House members returned to the building for a tour, according to interviews with congressional staffers. The mayor remained outside the gate, speaking with reporters and protesters. Inside the building, congressional staffers said, lawmakers saw agents huddled and overheard them discussing plans to arrest the mayor.
Menendez then quickly exited the building and approached the gate, videos show. He spoke to Baraka through the chain-link fence, warning that agents were going to arrest him.
According to Baraka’s timeline, five minutes elapsed between the time he left, HSI plotted his arrest, and then everyone came out and had that confrontation. And the members of Congress knew (this detail doesn’t make any DOJ documents and it’s likely they don’t have testimony from any of them) that HSI planned Baraka’s arrest even though he had already left. Or at least left the secured property, whatever the property status of the land outside the gate.
Here I am 1,700 words into this post, and I haven’t even gotten to several other key discrepancies in the documents.
The McIver charging documents mention that McIver was at Delaney Hall “allegedly to conduct a congressional oversight investigation,” but they don’t provide much detail, aside from Patel’s comments distinguishing Baraka from the members, about the legal protection for such things. They certainly don’t mention how long DHS kept the members waiting, which Baraka alleges (and WaPo backs) was over an hour. They claim that the Democrats planned a protest, but Baraka says that, instead, McIver invited Baraka for a press conference after the members toured the facility, which would have happened just before 2PM, over 40 minutes before the alleged assaults, if DHS hadn’t kept the members waiting.
That is, the McIver charging documents totally obscure her right to be on the premises.
Crazier still, even though both the complaint and indictment claim that McIver was “allegedly” there to conduct an inspection, neither explains that she did, in fact, conduct that inspection, nor do they explain that she did so — she was allowed back inside Delaney Hall — after she allegedly assaulted two different officers outside it.
This is how DOJ describes the second alleged assault: “McIVER pushed past V-2 while using each of her forearms to forcibly strike V-2 as she returned inside the secured area of Delaney Hall.” But then the story just ends. It appears that Special Prosecutions Division AUSA Mark McCarren didn’t bother to tell the grand jury that she didn’t just allegedly show up for an inspection, she did in fact conduct that inspection, with the victims’ permission, after she allegedly assaulted them.
Maybe I’m skeptical of cops who lie, but if I were in the jury, I’d acquit on all charges in less time than DHS left the members of Congress waiting that day.
Meanwhile, there’s unrest in Delaney Hall because — detainees say — they’re getting fed shitty food at irregular hours, precisely the kind of problem that oversight from Congress and Newark might have avoided.
Francisco Castillo, a Dominican immigrant who has been held at Delaney Hall since last week, said in a phone interview from the detention center on Tuesday that the facility was so overcrowded when he arrived that some detainees had to sleep on the floor. He said on Tuesday that the crowding issue had been recently resolved.
But he said detainees were being served dismal meals at irregular hours, an issue that was particularly affecting detainees who are diabetic and need to eat at regular times to control their blood sugar levels. He said detainees were often served small cartons of expired milk for breakfast. Dinners were sometimes not served until around 11 p.m., he said.
The living conditions grew so bad, he said, that a group of about 30 detainees had begun drafting a petition detailing the conditions that they could get to the public through their relatives and lawyers.
“Every day is a disaster with the food here,” Mr. Castillo, 36, who was detained by ICE at an immigration courthouse in New York City on June 4, said in Spanish.
At about 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, a woman who lives in Elizabeth, N.J., said she got a call from her partner, who has been detained at Delaney Hall since early last month. He was crying, she said, and described rising tension within the facility linked to frustration over food.
To her great credit, McIver remains on the case, issuing the following statement about the rising unrest at the facility.
I am carefully monitoring the situation unfolding at Delaney Hall, and am in contact with local and state law enforcement and officials. I have serious concerns about the reports of abusive circumstances at the facility. Even now, as we are hearing reports from news organizations and advocates on the ground about a lack of food and basic rights for those inside, the administration appears to be stonewalling efforts to learn the truth. My office has reached out to ICE for answers. ICE has not yet provided them.
This case is dogshit, and it looks likely that Mark McCarren only succeeded in getting his indictment by keeping key details from the grand jury. But it may not even survive to trial, because when laid out side by side, there’s far more evidence of DHS lying to judges than there is of crimes by Democrats trying to fulfill their jobs as Mayor and Members of Congress.
Update: This was just beginning to be reported when I first posted this post. But four detainees at Delaney Hall escaped through an external drywall wall.
Three Data Points from the Padilla Assault
I want to call out three data points regarding the assault of Senator Alex Padilla yesterday.
First, in media appearances and on this video, Senator Padilla explained that he was in the Federal building for a scheduled briefing on the Federal response in Los Angeles. There was a delay so he asked to go to the presser. As he describes it, a Guard and an FBI Agent escorted him to the presser.
While I was waiting for the briefing, I learned that just down the hall from where I was, Secretary Noem from the Department of Homeland Security was having a press conference, Now Secretary Noem and the Department — we have been calling on and we have been sending letters to since the beginning of the year requesting more information as to what and why they are doing, with little to no response. And so I thought let me go over there, listen in on the press conference, maybe they’re sharing some important information. And while I did that, escorted over there by a National Guardsman and an FBI agent, …
This makes Dan Bongino’s description of the event entirely deceptive.
If the FBI brought him to the presser, it doesn’t matter whether he had his Senate pin. The FBI knew his identity. And yet an FBI agent was involved in the assault on Padilla regardless.
Secondly, in a presser, Gavin Newsom returned to comments about his call, last Friday night, with Donald Trump.
Oh, I would love to share the readout but I revere the office of presidency so I’ll keep it in confidence. He has quite literally made up components of that conversation. Um, he’s been a stone cold liar about what he said we talked about. He never discussed the National Guard, period, full stop. I would love to share with you what we actually talked about. That would send shivers up your spine.
[snip]
We discussed for a nanosecond Los Angeles and he immediately zigged and zagged to seven or eight other topics. Some extraordinarily familiar. And some extraordinarily remarkable considering the world we’re living in.
Again, after a hearing before Charles Breyer on the lawsuit, at which the substance of that call — whether Trump actually raised the Guard — was an issue, Newsom accused Trump of making up components of the conversation and then said the actual content of the call “would send shivers up your spine” but he wasn’t sharing it because “I revere the office of the presidency.”
I don’t doubt that some deference to the Office of the President is one reason Newsom hasn’t told us what Trump said. After all, he no doubt still harbors ambitions to one day occupy that office. The tenor of the lawsuit challenging Trump adopts a sober legal approach, avoiding some things — like Whiskey Pete’s apparent ignorance of basic facts about the deployment (such as whether the Marines would come from Camp Pendleton or, as is the case, Twentynine Palms and when they finished training for the deployment) — that would be great politically but shift the focus away from Trump and onto Hegseth’s incompetence. In the lawsuit (as distinct from his public messaging, including this presser) Newsom has been making a constitutional argument, not a political one.
The government seems to understand it is vulnerable to Newsom’s claim that Trump fabricated parts of the conversation. As I noted, in their response to the lawsuit they relied on an erroneous Fox News report on the timing of the call, not the readout of the call that the White House presumably has.
At approximately 10:23pm PT that night, President Trump called Governor Newsom. The President informed Governor Newsom of the dangers that federal personnel and property were being subjected to and directed him to take action to stop the violence.4
4
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-brings-receipts-he-called-newsom-amid-la-riots-california-gov-claims-wasnt-even-voicemail.amp; see also https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/06/09/watch-governor-newsom-discusses-donald-trumps-mess-inlos-angeles/ (Governor Newsom concurring that the call took place)
They do not include any other source to substantiate the claim that “the President informed Governor Newsom,” and in the hearing yesterday DOJ did not back the specific claims Trump and Steve Cheung made to Fox (though Brett Shumate did claim that something about the call led Trump to conclude the laws were not being executed, one basis DOJ relied on to claim the usurpation was legal).
And so, Newsom hinted at more, but claimed he couldn’t share it — as if threatening to share the real content of the call would damage Trump (or make his depravity clear).
I mean, it’s clear Trump said something. After all, before the call, Trump threatened to cut off all funding to CA (a threat that has not yet manifested, even though it was presented as imminent). After the call, Newsom came out with two messages: Trump is a “Stone cold liar” and “there’s no working with the President. There’s only working for him. And I will never work for Donald Trump.”
I suspect Newsom is daring Trump to make him share the content of the call (and, likely, testing to see what kind of records Trump is willing to show). I suspect Newsom that call is important not just because of what Trump didn’t say, about the Guard deployment, but what he did say before he invaded California.
I suspect Trump tried to make a deal. Trump tried to get Newsom to work for him. And when Newsom refused, Trump invaded.
Which brings me to the last data point. In one clip of the NBC footage from the Padilla assault — which, of course, came just as Kristi Noem claimed she was going to liberate Los Angeles from government by their duly elected Governor and Mayor — Peter Hamby spied Corey Lewandowski overseeing the aftermath of the assault.
Lewandowski, of course, has a history of assaulting people as he removed them from Trump events.
What gets made of the Padilla assault remains very much contested. Right wing propagandists — from Noem and her staffers to Bongino to members of Congress — are trying to claim that a Latino man obviously couldn’t be assumed to be a Senator elected by 6.6 million Californians, not even if an FBI agent escorted him into that room. That response gives up the game, of course: this was Trump’s racist Administration treating one of the most powerful Latino’s in the country just like they’re treating the day laborers and farmworkers they’re chasing down fields.
But it comes amid a larger context — the context in which Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump are directly combatting whether Trump may be king.
Update: Corrected the timing of Newsom’s comment. It happened after Breyer issued his ruling.
Update: NYT quotes Padilla claiming Lewandowski came running down the hall telling people to let him go.
On the videos, Mr. Padilla appeared stunned but repeatedly said he was a U.S. senator. In an interview hours later, Mr. Padilla said that he had demanded to know why he had been detained and where he was being escorted “when of all people, Corey Lewandowski” — a combative former Trump campaign aide and adviser to Ms. Noem — “comes running down the hall and he starts yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”
Update: In response to James Comer and Clay Higgins’ excitement about targeting Newsom and Karen Bass for investigation, Newsom’s office promises, “some highly unusual communications from the White House” and then, in the next tweet, highlighs Newsom’s comment.
So, yeah, he was hoping someone would force him to turn this over and two of the dumbest members of Congress complied.
Ahead of No Kings Day, the King’s Nobles are Getting Nervous
WHEREAS, our citizens have the right to peacefully assemble and protest, and the State of Missouri is committed to protecting the lawful exercise of the citizens’ constitutional rights; and
WHEREAS, the events that are occurring or could occur in the cities of Kansas City, Springfield, St. Louis, and other affected communities, in the State of Missouri, have created or may create conditions of distress and hazards to the safety, welfare, and property of the citizens and visitors of the communities beyond the capacities of local jurisdictions and other established agencies; and
WHEREAS, the rule of law must be maintained in the cities of Kansas City, Springfield, St. Louis, and other affected communities, in the State of Missouri, for the protection, safety, welfare, and property of the citizens, visitors, and businesses of those communities; and
WHEREAS, additional resources of the State of Missouri are or may be needed to help relieve the conditions of distress and hazard to the safety and welfare of the citizens of the cities of Kansas City, Springfield, St. Louis, and other affected communities; and
WHEREAS, the conditions necessary to declare the existence of an emergency pursuant to Chapter 44, RSMo, are found to exist due to the potential of civil unrest; and
WHEREAS, an invocation of the provisions of sections 44.010 through 44.130, RSMo, is necessary to ensure the safety and welfare of the citizens of the State of Missouri; and
WHEREAS, in consultation with community leaders, public safety officials, and emergency preparedness officials, I have determined that the following actions are necessary and appropriate to provide for the safety and welfare of Missouri’s citizens, visitors, private property, and businesses.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, MIKE KEHOE, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the Laws of the State of Missouri, including Sections 44.010 through 44.130, RSMo, do hereby declare that a State of Emergency exists in the State of Missouri due to civil unrest.
I further order, pursuant to Sections 41.480 and 41.690, RSMo, the Adjutant General of the State of Missouri, or his designee, to forthwith call and order into active service such portions of the organized militia as he deems necessary to aid the executive officials of Missouri, to protect life and property, and it is further ordered and directed that the Adjutant General or his designee, and through him, the commanding officer of any unit or other organization of such organized militia so called into active service take such action and employ such equipment as may be necessary in support of civilian authorities, and provide such assistance as may be authorized and directed by the Governor of this State.
This order shall terminate on June 30, 2025, unless extended in whole or in part.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused to be affixed the Great Seal of the State of Missouri, in the City of Jefferson, on this 12th day of June, 2025.
I can’t help but note some interesting language in this proclamation – phrases like “or could occur” and “or may create” in the second “whereas,” the phrase “or may be needed” in the fourth “whereas,” and especially “the potential of” in the fifth “whereas.”
Somehow, Kehoe manages to take all this subjunctive language about possible future situations as justification for his big THEREFORE: “I, Mike Kehoe . . . do hereby declare that a State of Emergency exists in the State of Missouri due to civil unrest.” I think he left “the possibility of” out of that last sentence, as that sentence probably ought to end with “the possibility of civil unrest.”
There have been plenty of protests across the state of Missouri over the last few months, in large blue cities and smaller red towns, and no reports of violence against people or property. None. Nada. Zip. The protests have targeted Musk and the DOGE cuts, RFK Jr’s dismantling of the nation’s public health infrastructure, the ICE crackdowns, and more, with the number of protests growing and spreading. This weekend, the planned No Kings protests have been gaining more and more attention, with more and more people getting more and more upset about what it being done in their names.
So the King’s Nobles are apparently pushing back.
First it was Texas and Greg Abbott, and now Mike Kehoe here in Missouri is trying to catch up. Some of this is surely a desire to show the King that they are following his example. The Nobles are also jostling with one another, as each seeks to shove him- or herself ahead of the others. That’s what the King’s Nobles do: they presume, they posture, they pretend, they position, and they pose, all so they can be seen by the King and gain the King’s approval.
The protest in Missouri I am wondering about this weekend is down in Springfield MO, in the southwest corner of the state. Broadly speaking, that’s a very conservative region (home to the Ashcroft clan and the Assemblies of God), though the city of Springfield itself has been represented in the state legislature by a Democrat. I was not surprised to see Kehoe mention St. Louis and Kansas City as hotbeds of (possible) discontent, violence, and mayhem. But Springfield? How did Springfield end up in this executive order?
Then I saw the Springfield television station KY3’s story about this weekend’s planned protests and it all became clear. “Ozarks Pridefest and Springfield’s No Kings protest will happen on Saturday in downtown Springfield” said the headline. It’s one thing for a bunch of lefty political agitators to march around with their signs, shouting their slogans, but quite another if you add the gays and their creativity to the mix. “Gov. Kehoe, let us show you how to pose . . .”
I can see it now . . .
Coming down the street as a unit are dozens of buff men in nothing but flip flops and red speedos, preceded by a banner that reads “Call out the National (Life)Guard!” They are marching in formation with pool noodles held out in front of them, mirroring the scenes in LA with lines of baton-wielding ICE and LAPD folks in their masks and top to bottom black uniforms. The unit’s leader carries a ring buoy, and he holds it high as his voice calls out like a grizzled drill sergeant: “Lifeguaaaaards . . . HALT!” and the formation stops in unison. “Shoulderrrrr . . . NOODLES!” he calls, and they put their pool noodles on their shoulders like rifles. The leader’s voice rings out again, “Sing out, Lifeguards! . . . I like my state like I like my scotch!” says the leader, and the the crew calls back “NEAT! (pause) NO ICE!”
Again the leader repeats the call, and now the crowds of people on the sidewalks start to join in on that “NEAT! (pause) NO ICE!” refrain. Again and again the leader calls, and again and again the crowd replies, getting louder and louder each time.
Then the leader stops. “Lifeguaaaards, Face OUT!” he shouts, and the formation splits in two down the middle, with each half turning to face the sidewalk on either side of the street. “To the currrrbbbb, MARCH!” and they step off in unison, stopping at the edge of the street. “Abouuuut FACE!” and they turn 180 degrees to face each other again.
He blows his whistle with three sharp tweets, waves his bouy back down the street, and every eye turns to see what’s coming. Two elegant queens are carrying a sign identifying the group following the (Life)Guards: “Call out the National Bard!” A second banner follows, announcing “National Bard Unit One: The E Street Chorus”, with leather-and-denim clad men, singing in full voice. They pass through the (Life) Guard lining the curb, and then chorus splits in half, and moves to the curbs as well.
Next comes a banner with “National Bard Unit Two: The Chicks” with a crew of lesbians singing something about Earl, and they too move to the curb to add themselves to the parade units lining the street.
National Bard Unit Three comes after them, the Guthries, singing about the Group W Bench, a restaurant, Thanksgiving, and the draft, and they get in line on each side of the streets next to The Chicks unit.
Finally, bringing up the rear, is National Bard Unit Four. There is no unit name on the banner, but everyone knows who this crew of singers are in their bright red and sumptuously bedazzled gowns, playing their banjos and fiddles. As they begin to sing, it is obvious that the (Life) Guard, the E Street Chorus, the Chicks, and the Guthries are their honor guard, and as the banjo-strumming, fiddle-playing, gown-wearing singers pass, the honor guard joins in the song of the Swifties unit:
‘Cause all you are is mean And a liar, and pathetic And alone in life, and mean And mean, and mean, and mean
All you’re *ever* gonna be is mean.
OK, maybe this is just a Boomer’s imagination of what Springfield will look like on Saturday, but still.
Donald Trump is afraid, and so is Mike Kehoe. That’s why they called out the National Guard.
What Trump fears isn’t loud voices spouting off against black-clad police. What Trump fears isn’t media pundits soberly pontificating about Rule of Law and whether The King can send the Marines to LA. What Trump fears is not sternly worded letters from Democrats as Susan Collins clutches her pearls.
What The King and all The King’s Nobles and all The King’s Men fear is mockery.
I can’t help but hope that the combination of Ozarks Pride and the No Kings protesters gives them exactly that, with Harvey Milk and John Lewis smiling down from heaven and watching folks making all kinds of Good Trouble.
