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Fridays with Nicole Sandler

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Expecting Legislators to Lead the Resistance Is a Category Error

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On podcasts and in this post, I’ve been trying to make a point about how you resist fascism.

Americans have at least three tools to resist fascism: legal, legislative, and via political movement. A great many people have conflated legislative opposition with movement opposition, and based on that conflation, assumed that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries must be leaders of The Opposition.

But that’s a category error.

While there are a lot of things Schumer, especially, could do better, you shouldn’t want either Schumer or Jeffries to be the leader of the resistance. You shouldn’t want that because the goals of the movement and of an opposition party in Congress are not the same. You shouldn’t want that because having a Black guy and a Jew from New York leading your resistance will likely make it harder to do what you need to do, which is (in significant part) to build a political movement big enough to undermine if not overthrow fascism.

I’m sure I’ll need to tweak this illustration and table,  but here’s how I think about it: Democrats in Congress are part of the political movement, but that is different than their legislative role.

Start from the end goal: according to a contested theory from Erica Chenoweth, if a popular nonviolent movement comes to incorporate 3.5% of the population, you can achieve political change. G. Elliott Morris estimates that around 4 to 6 million people participated in the No Kings protests, so about 1.4 to 1.8% of the population (but that’s a one-time protest and you need to sustain such numbers). If you buy this theory, you need to at least double the popular opposition to Trump willing to take to the streets.

While it’s possible you could get rid of Trump via other means (maybe right wingers get sick of him and support impeachment in two years; maybe a Democrat beats him or his chosen successor in 2028; maybe he dies a natural death and JD Vance takes over, with less charisma to get things done), doing so would not be enough to reverse a number of institutional things, starting with the right wing majority on SCOTUS, that serve to protect the trappings of Christian nationalism anyway.

To do a lot of things people rightly believe are necessary — such as holding the ICE goons accountable — you’d need to do far more than just win an election, because unless something more happens, the goons will be protected by qualified immunity.

Now go back to how opposition to Trump’s fascism has grown.

The first things that happened were lawsuits, a flood of them (which continue unabated). While Democratic-led states have brought a number of important lawsuits, members of Congress have little standing to do so. Unions have brought many key lawsuits, as have Democratic groups, as have other members of civil society, including the law firms and universities targeted. I keep noting that some of the key lawsuits challenging tariffs have come from Koch or CATO-aligned non-profits (and the Chamber just filed an amicus), a fact that may get them a more favorable hearing at SCOTUS.

The courts help to buy time. They can provide transparency otherwise unavailable. They force the Trump administration to go on the record, resulting in damaging contradictions. Trump has, thus far, selected his targets very poorly, and so his persecution has and will created some leaders or political martyrs.

But the courts will not save us.

The courts won’t save us because, after some initial pushback on Stephen Miller’s deportation gulag, SCOTUS seems to have fallen into line, repeatedly intervening to allow Trump to proceed with his damaging policies even as challenges continue. The courts won’t save us because we fully expect SCOTUS to bless a lot of what Trump is doing, including firing everyone short of Jerome Powell.

Protests and loud opposition at town halls have been growing since the beginning. But these protests weren’t affiliated with the Democratic Party. That’s useful for several reasons. You’re going to find it a lot quicker and easier to target a well-funded corporate entity like Tesla without such affiliation. And protests will be more likely to attract defectors — former Republican voters or apolitical independents — in the numbers that would be necessary if they’re not branded as Democratic entities.

Plus, movement activities include far more than protests, and there are a number of things being done by people who want no tie to the Democratic Party. Some of the smarter pushback to ICE in Los Angeles, for example, comes from Antifa activists who are far to the left of the Democratic Party and have been doing this work even under Democratic Administrations. Some of the witnessing of abuse of immigrants comes from the Catholic Church, and I would hope other faiths might join in. Some of the political activism is focused on particular interest groups, like Veterans or scientists, which don’t and should not derive their energy from the party.

The political movement is and should remain a big tent because it affords more flexibility and provides more entrance points for people.

And so, even if Jeffries or Schumer were better at messaging, you wouldn’t want them to lead it.

Which brings us to what we should expect from them. A lot of the hostility to both of them derives from the Continuing Resolution in March, in which Jeffries kept all but one (Jared Golden) of his members unified in opposition, but then Schumer flipflopped on whether to oppose cloture. In my experience, the vast majority of people who know they’re supposed to be angry at Schumer for that don’t know what the vote was, don’t know the terms of government shutdown (for example, that Trump would get to decide who was expendable), and can’t distinguish between the cloture vote and the final passage (in which just Angus King and Jeanne Shaheen voted to pass the bill). They sure as hell have not considered whether keeping the government open resulted in things — like the emergency filings that prevented wholesale use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans to CECOT — that really were a net good, to say nothing of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s challenge to his deportation.

The point being, much of the frustration with Jeffries and Schumer comes without a sophisticated understanding of their day job. For example, many people were complaining that Schumer was messaging about the Big Ugly bill when they wanted him to be messaging about immigration, and then, once they understood the import, started complaining that there hasn’t been enough coverage of the healthcare cuts in the Big Ugly (in my opinion both he and lefty journalists should have been focusing on the dragnet funded by it, as both David Dayen and I did, and as other journalists are only belatedly doing). But they often ignored the efforts made to thwart the bill with Byrd Rule exclusions, which in some cases excluded really toxic things from the bill (like restrictions on judicial contempt).

Jeffries and Schumer will continue to disappoint people wanting them to lead the resistance, because to do their day job — to try to win majorities in 2026 so they can do more to hold Trump accountable and, in the interim, to try — however fruitlessly — to coax their Republican colleagues to stop rubber stamping Trump’s authoritarianism, they have to do things like recruit challengers and help them raise money. There’s a lot one can explain — such as why, in the wake of the crypto industry flooding the Sherrod Brown race with funding, too many Democrats would support a bill the crypto industry wants — without endorsing.

But there’s a great deal that Jeffries or Schumer do that doesn’t get seen; each week of the last five, for example, one of the people whining about one or both Minority Leaders non-stop has falsely claimed they hadn’t done or said something they actually had; they were, in fact, whining because what Jeffries and Schumer did wasn’t easy for them to see without their having to work for it. An expert on parliamentary procedure just showed that Dems have made their colleagues work far more hours than in recent memory; Democrats have been using tools to stall, often with no notice, much less anyone mining their public comments for good attack footage.

More importantly, though, there’s a great deal that other legislators are doing that serves both political and legislative opposition. Hearings with Trump’s cabinet members, for example, are astounding, both in terms of content and conflict. While lefties don’t understand the potential use of Congressional letters like right wingers do, some of the ones Democrats have sent lay necessary foundation for ongoing pressure on the Administration, whether on immigration or Epstein or DOD waste. I’ve seen multiple people assume that members of Congress only attempt to do oversight of ICE detention if they get arrested, but far more members have tried; I would like Democrats to have already sued regarding DHS’ serial efforts to change the law on how they do that oversight, but I hope that will happen soon.

There’s a great deal of content for adversarial messaging. The failure — and this is only partly a failure of Congress itself — is in doing that messaging, in using what is out there. If a Minority Leader said something powerful but pundits were too lazy to watch CSPAN, did it really happen?

Therein lies the rub — and the area where the complaints at least identify the correct problem (while often lacking the mirror necessary to identify the cure).

There is broad and growing opposition to Trump’s actions. For privileged white people, at least, most still have courage to step up in both easy and more challenging ways. All around the country Americans are standing up for their migrant neighbors.

Leaders are stepping up to do the most powerful work, the political movement. And Leaders in Congress, as well as rank-and-file members, are doing a lot that’s getting ignored.

What is missing, in my opinion, is the kind of online messaging to make stuff resonate, yoked with an understanding of what Congress can and should do and what activists are better suited to do.

We — and I include myself in that we — are part of the problem.

What is missing is, to a large extent, the same thing that was missing last year, during the election, and was missing before that where Joe Biden’s son was destroyed with no pushback. What is missing is a feedback mechanism that can mobilize shame and accountability, so all the outrage can have some effect, both political and electoral.

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John Thune’s Flopsweat about Funding Stephen Miller’s Gulag

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Amid all the warmongering last week, there was an interesting head fake in the Senate.

On Tuesday, JD Vance went to a Senate lunch (rather than the Situation Room meeting on Iran) at which he told them the deadline for passing was the August recess — starting August 4.

On Wednesday, Susie Wiles went for a very short visit to the Senate to order them to get the whole thing done by July 4.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is encouraging Congress to get the “big, beautiful bill” to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.

Wiles told GOP senators at a closed-door lunch that the Independence Day deadline still holds as far as Trump is concerned, according to a person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting.

I started to write a long post (piggybacking on this one) about how the various timelines — the legal responses to Trump’s abuses and the economic impact of his disastrous policy choices — might make it harder to codify key parts of his abuses in law with the Big Ugly reconciliation bill. I was going to lay out how recent developments (this was so long ago I surmised that Trump’s Iran warmongering might cause him some political headaches and now … here we are, Trump talking regime change in the wake of an inconclusive illegal strike) might exacerbate the way his legislative agenda might be Overtaken By Events.

That post got Overtaken By Events.

The punch line of my original post was going to be an argument that Wiles was pushing the Senate to hurry up not because impending financial doom might make passing the Big Ugly harder, nor because the debt ceiling is approaching.

Rather, Kristi Noem is burning through cash.

President Trump’s immigration crackdown is burning through cash so quickly that the agency charged with arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out of money next month.

Why it matters: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is already $1 billionover budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year. That’s alarmed lawmakers in both parties — and raised the possibility of Trump clawing funds from agencies to feed ICE.

  • Lawmakers say ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is at risk of violating U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.
  • That’s added urgency to calls for Congress to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which could direct an extra $75 billion or so to ICE over the next five years.
  • It’s also led some lawmakers to accuse DHS and ICE of wasting money. “Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the DHS appropriations subcommittee.

Zoom in: ICE’s funding crisis is being fueled by Trump’s team demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace ICE is still trying to reach.

This creates the possibility for a slew of legal challenges to Stephen Miller’s dragnet, both from those targeted in it challenging the legality of spending money to target them in the first place, but also from opponents who can start suing Trump for breaking the law by spending money that was not appropriated.

The dragnet is at somewhat-imminent risk of becoming an illegal use of funds.

And that comes as a few Republicans — most loudly, Rand Paul, who was bypassed as Chair for the Senate language on homeland security funding — start raising questions about why we need to blow so much money if Miller has already shut down the border.

Sen. Rand Paul is a frequent thorn in GOP leadership’s side. But his recent break over border security funding in President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” has top Republicans pushing the bounds of institutional norms to rein him in.

Senior Republicans have sidelined the Kentucky Republican, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in their talks with the White House over policies under the panel’s purview.

Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told POLITICO he has taken over as the lead negotiator around how to shepherd through tens of billions of dollars for border wall construction and related infrastructure in the GOP megabill. Meanwhile, a Senate Republican aide said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) — who heads the relevant Homeland Security subcommittee — will be the point person for negotiating the bill’s government affairs provisions.

With every other committee chair helping manage negotiations for their panels’ portions of the massive tax and spending package, cutting Paul out is unprecedented. But Paul proposed funding border security at a fraction of what the administration requested and the House passed in its bill.

I’ve long been tracking conflict among Republicans over the financial parts of the Big Ugly. But even as Trump’s polling turns south on Miller’s gulag, the huge funding package for it is creating some headaches for the must-pass reconciliation bill.

In an op-ed in Fox News today (accompanied by live Fox News pressure), John Thune gives up the game.

He argues that Republicans have to get the bill done by July 4 — Susie Wiles’ deadline, not JD’s. And his argument focuses primarily on the immigration funding (but also Golden Dome, which Mark Kelly recently exposed as an impossible boondoggle).

In large part, this bill is the culmination of President Trump’s campaign promises and the promises that Republican senators have made to our voters. Chief among them is keeping the American people safe through strong border security and a military strong enough to deter threats and conflicts around the world before they begin.

President Trump has achieved remarkable success in ending the Biden border crisis and removing the criminal illegal aliens that President Biden let walk into our country – but it hasn’t been cheap, and the administration has told us that resources are running out. This bill will fully fund the border wall and President Trump’s successful policies for the entirety of his presidency, removing any possibility that Democrats will hold those resources hostage to try to increase other government spending.

This same principle also applies to defense funding. Recent conflicts around the world should make clear the need to have a modern and lethal fighting force that can keep the American people safe. This means smart, generational investments like President Trump’s Golden Dome for America to defend against advanced drones, missiles, and hypersonics, as well as prioritizing building new ships and unmanned vehicles.

A nation cannot prosper unless it is secure, and with our borders and defense capabilities bolstered, the next key pillar of this bill is creating prosperity in America.

[snip]

Senators have worked to develop this bill for well over a year now. Now it is time to act. Border resources are drying up. National security needs have never been more apparent. And with each passing day, we move closer to reaching both our nation’s debt limit and the largest-ever tax increase on the American people.

Senators return to Washington today and we will remain here until this bill is passed. We know that Democrats will fearmonger and misrepresent our efforts, and we expect them to drag this debate long into the night with unrelated issues. However, I am confident we will get this bill across the finish line. [my emphasis]

It may not be just the burn rate of Noem’s spending spree.

That is, Noem is blowing through cash and the result of it is horrible images of American citizens being assaulted by masked goons. Noem is blowing through cash and businessmen in all sorts of industries are discovering that their businesses will suffer. Noem is blowing through cash and everyone is talking about how terrible the consequences of Miller’s demand for 3,000 bodies a day is.

Noem is blowing through cash and the issue of immigration is becoming a liability, not Trump’s biggest advantage.

And so Thune will attempt to do Susie Wiles’ bidding to get the dragnet funded before it’s too late.

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What WSJ Said about Stephen Miller at 9PM on a Friday

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WSJ published a curious profile of Stephen Miller at 9PM on Friday night.

Bylined by accomplished Trump-whisperer Josh Dawsey, first, and accomplished journalist Rebecca Balhaus, second, it runs over 1800-words — a considerable journalistic investment.

It tells us a number of things we already know. “Stephen Miller wanted to keep the planes in the air—and that is where they stayed,” the lede implies, but does not confirm, that Miller was the one who ordered DHS to defy Judge Boasberg’s order not to deport migrants to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act, a topic currently being contested in discovery in that lawsuit.

“He has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed,” it notes, without commenting on the typos and fabrications that permeate the orders. He’s the guy — again, we already knew this — who launched jihads against institutions that an extremist like him would view as liberal. “He has been responsible for the administration’s broadsides against universities, law firms and even museums.”

The article doesn’t include Miller’s native California in that particular sentence, though over 30 paragraphs later, it describes him claiming to know what is good for — what WSJ seemingly paraphrases as — California’s own “citizens,” always a loaded word when you’re discussing Stephen Miller.

Miller, who grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., said large swaths of Los Angeles were engaged in a “rebellion,” according to people present.

Los Angeles had become like Cancún, he said—it was fine to visit, but not good for its own citizens. To conclude the event, Leavitt told the crowd that Miller needed to return to his work of deportations.

WSJ’s description of his possibly unlawful role in invading his home state appears just five paragraphs after confirming he was the guy who targeted universities and law firms, linking to the WSJ story that remains the best report on Miller’s demands for more bodies, though neither of the journalists bylined on this story had a byline on the other one.

His orders to increase arrests regardless of migrants’ criminal histories set off days of protests in Los Angeles. Miller coordinated the federal government’s response, giving orders to agencies including the Pentagon, when Trump sent in the Marines and the National Guard, according to officials familiar with the matter.

And that paragraph fingering Miller for the invasion of California immediately follows a paragraph that describes that he “suggested” using the Alien Enemies Act but stops short of confirming that he’s the guy who made the declaration, even though Trump himself disclaimed doing so.

Miller, who isn’t a lawyer, is the official who first suggested using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, which the Justice Department pursued. He also privately, then publicly, floated suspending habeas corpus, or the right for prisoners to challenge their detention in court, which the administration hasn’t tried. That prompted pushback from other senior White House and Justice Department officials.

WSJ includes the observation that Miller’s call to suspend habeas corpus “prompted pushback from other senior White House and Justice Department officials” and that “the administration hasn’t tried” that legal move in a different paragraph than one that claims, “There are some limits to his influence.” The paragraph that purports to describe the limits to his influence includes just one thing he didn’t get (an effort to kill the Meta antitrust case) but also includes one thing he did, at least so far (a reversal of the decision to limit deportations).

There are some limits to his influence. He was supportive of Meta’s push to settle its antitrust case, which fell flat. Trump last week signaled concerns that the administration’s deportation policies were too aggressive, calling for a pause in some deportations that he has since rolled back. Trump, asked how Miller’s directives on deportations squared with his own, declined to put distance between the two of them. “We have a great understanding,” Trump said.

There are few hints as to how Miller wields power. His office is steps from the Oval Office — again, we knew that — and “some posts at cabinet agencies have been described by administration officials as reporting directly to Miller, effectively bypassing cabinet secretaries,” that must include Homeland Security, which would be pertinent to mention given that one of the dishiest tidbits in the whole article is that in Trump’s first term, Trump refused to give Miller a leadership role at Homeland Security. “Trump declined, according to a former administration official, telling aides he thought Miller wasn’t leader material.”

The article describes Miller’s success pushing for a travel ban in the first Administration and notes he expanded the list to twelve this time around. But it doesn’t mention that a leaked cable disclosing that Trump is considering expanding that list to 36 countries, including most of Africa, a leak that has been broadly replicated in a way that indicates real pushback.

The article alludes to “Several White House staffers” who observe that Miller always adopts the most extreme legal posture and, in the same sentence, describes that that extreme posture has led even SCOTUS to rebuke the Administration. But the only person described — quoted even! — as drawing the obvious conclusion, that Miller fucked up, is a Trump opponent. “‘I think the administration has miscalculated and overstepped,’ said Skye Perryman, who leads Democracy Forward, an organization that has repeatedly sued Trump.”

That’s one of just a few direct quotes in the 1800-word piece (the others are from Trump, from Karoline Leavitt, and from Miller himself). Indeed, everything about this article couches where it comes from. It chooses not to list how many Republicans contributed to the story. In some cases, passive constructions like, “have been described by administration officials,” obscures whether WSJ learned what it reports directly from those administration officials, or heard them second-hand.

A different article might have noted that if Miller really is issuing some of these orders, such as to deploy Marines to invade Los Angeles, it means entire operations are wildly unconstitutional. He’s not the President. Only the President can invoke the Alien Enemies Act or usurp California’s National Guard, even if Miller typed up the error-riddled Executive Orders that effected the commands. Amid Trump’s squawks about a Joe Biden autopen scandal, even Trump has confessed he doesn’t understand what he has signed.

A different article might have described how Miller used Trump’s vulnerability in the wake of being shot at to make racism the central plank of the campaign and now the Administration (though it does describe how Miller overrode Tony Fabrizio’s advice to do so).

A different article might have called Miller something besides an “immigration hawk.”

This is not that article, however.

This is an article published by a Murdoch rag at 9PM on a Friday night — the sweet spot where you publish news someone wants to bury — recording some uncertain number of Republicans who, in the face of declining poll numbers on immigration (but even in an article that described “concerns that the administration’s deportation policies were too aggressive,” saying nothing about the damage Miller’s jihad is doing to the economy, much less that entire states are on the verge of losing their harvests) have ever so delicately started to blame Miller: for the court losses, for the backlash, for the unsolicited calls likened to, “a grandmother who wouldn’t stop talking and said his calls were akin to listening to a podcast.”

The first real break in the cowered omertà about Stephen Miller’s role and plans was that Washington Examiner piece fleshing out Axios’ scoop about Miller’s demands for 3,000 bodies a day, which was followed by NBC, then the aforementioned superb WSJ story. Right wingers want to talk about Stephen Miller’s responsibility for the chaos (and economic destruction) in California and elsewhere. And while there have been far more useful profiles explaining how he accrued power and where his pathologies come from, this profile of hushed complaints seems like something else. A test to see whether opposition to Miller can succeed.

It may even be something more. NYT reports that, even as it scored several court victories, Harvard sought a meeting to negotiate detente with the Trump White House, one about which both Linda McMahon and Trump have been more optimistic than Harvard. NYT doesn’t mention that Trump needs a deal with higher ed, in part, because Trump needs a deal with China, and protection for Chinese students would be part of any deal.

Meanwhile, we’re 11 days short of DOJ’s deadline to appeal the first order reversing Miller’s attack on law firms, and there’s no sign yet they will appeal. That effort only succeeded in driving key lawyers away from firms that buckled to Trump.

And yesterday, again, Trump hinted that he’s struggling to find some way out of the damage Miller’s immigration jihad has done.

Miller’s jihads have, increasingly, created problems to solve. Which may explain why wary sources are happy to unpack old stories about how Trump once recognized Miller is not leader material.

I’m not complaining that WSJ dedicated 1800-words to describing the centrality of Stephen Miller to the biggest abuses of the Trump second term (and many of the first). It is of acute import to understand how the man’s pathologies endanger the country and the world.

I’m simply observing that this profile, published at 9PM on a Friday night, says as much in how it is told as in anything that it tells.

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Gavin Newsom’s Troll Wars as a Check against “Usurpation or Wanton Tyranny”

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The Ninth Circuit — a panel of two Trump judges, Mark Bennett and Eric Miller, and one Biden one, Jennifer Sung — has unanimously overturned Judge Charles Breyer’s order enjoining Trump from using the National Guard to protect Federal personnel and property from anti-ICE protests. The decision affirms the court’s jurisdiction to review Trump’s decision (and holds out the possibility that things may change — for example, in how Trump is using the military or the urgency with which California needs its firefighting Guardsmen — that could change the outcome). But for now, Trump continues his invasion of California with the blessing of the Circuit Court.

The judges had all, including Sung, telegraphed at the hearing earlier this week that they would do so . Moreover, the decision itself is unsurprising; a number of legal commentators warned that Governor Newsom was likely to lose this case.

That’s partly because of an 1827 case, Martin v. Mott, that said even if the President abused such decision, the remedy was political. Here’s how the Ninth invoked it for to hold that it must give Trump deference on this decision.

[W]e are not writing on a blank slate. The history of Congress’s statutory delegations of its calling forth power, and a line of cases beginning with Martin v. Mott, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 19 (1827), interpreting those delegations,strongly suggest that our review of the President’s determinations in this context is especially deferential.

[snip]

The Court further explained that although the power delegated to the President under the Milita Act is “susceptible of abuse,” the “remedy for this” is political: “in addition to the high qualities which the Executive must be presumed to possess, of public virtue, and honest devotion to the public interests,” it is “the frequency of elections, and the watchfulness of the representatives of the nation” that “carry with them all the checks which can be useful to guard against usurpation or wanton tyranny.”

Jack Goldsmith has been pointing to the import of that passage all week.

This won’t be the end of things. In its assessment of the harm, the court noted that violations of the Posse Comitatus Act were not before it (the state is now arguing it in their motion for a preliminary injunction), nor was an emergency (like a wildfire) for which California could claim it had immediate need of the Guardsmen. Having affirmed its authority to rule, Newsom might fare better at such a time. And in any case the state has added a slew of new facts below in its motion for a preliminary injunction.

But in the meantime, we would do well to take that lesson from Martin to heart: Politics remains a remedy. Not just a remedy, a necessary part of winning on this issue and on defeating fascism more generally.

And, increasingly, it’s a winning issue. Polls show — even a Fox News poll that has Trump screaming — that Trump is losing the battle to make this dragnet popular.

Certainly Newsom has been focused on that.

There’s been so much else going on, I’ve seen no focused commentary on the media campaign Newsom has been pursuing, even as he attempted to block the invasion in courts. Newsom has been conducting the kind of media campaign that the most realistic assessments of last year’s election loss say Democrats need to learn to do (admittedly, Newsom already took steps in this direction when he started a podcast).

Newsom’s prime time speech last week — widely applauded by those whining about so much else — has drawn a lot of attention.

 

Newsom repeated much of that same content in a column published at Fox, taking his argument to Trump’s base.

Over the past two weeks, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids around Southern California. They jumped out of unmarked vans, indiscriminately grabbing people off the street, chasing people in agricultural fields. A woman, 9 months pregnant, was arrested in LA; she had to be hospitalized after being released. A family with three children, including a three-year-old, was held for two days in an office basement without sufficient food or water.

Several people taken in the raids were deported the same day they were arrested, raising serious due process concerns. U.S. citizens have been harassed and detained. And we know that ICE is increasingly detaining thousands of people with no other criminal charges or convictions: Those arrested with no other criminal charges or convictions rose from about 860 in January to 7,800 this month – a more than 800% increase. Meanwhile, those arrested and detained with criminal charges or convictions rose at the much lower rate of 91%. Trump is lying about focusing on “the worst of the worst.”

While California is no stranger to immigration enforcement, what we’re seeing is a dangerous ploy for headlines by an administration that believes in cruelty and intimidation. Instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and border security – a strategy both parties have long supported – the Trump administration is pushing mass deportations, targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk, in order to meet quotas.

He started a Substack the other day, describing it as an effort to “flood the zone and continue to cut through the right wing disinformation machine.”

He has done interviews with (best as I can tall, all male) influencers in his emergency response room over and over.

But the response by which I’ve been most fascinated is his trolling on Xitter — the import of which I discussed with LOLGOP earlier this week.

Between his personal account and a press account, Newsom has been supplementing more serious messaging with both  important political points and trolling.

The former focuses on the stature of California’s economy, the role migrants play in it, and the likely risk of Trump stealing California’s full-time Guard firefighters. In the likely event something will go catastrophically wrong — whether via economic collapse or natural disaster — thanks to Trump’s jihad against migrants, Newsom has made the case that Trump is responsible, in advance.

Some of that includes building pressure against Republicans applauding Trump’s invasion.

Newsom has long called out the higher crime rates under right wingers. He has called out Mike Johnson, Jason Smith, Tommy Tuberville, Markwayne Mullin, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders for their states’ higher murder rate than California.

The trolling mocks Trump’s aides, including Kristi Noem, Pete Hegeseth, Steven Cheung, and Karoline Leavitt, as when he contrasted how the Guard were left without a place to stay when while Whiskey Pete boasted about going to a ballgame.

But Newsom has focused his closest attention Stephen Miller.

Newsom has been mocking Stephen Miller’s total control over the Administration.

Relentlessly.

That builds on a number of personal spats with Miller directly, as when Newsom raised Trump’s pardon of Jan6ers to debunk claims anyone but him supports insurrectionists.

And when he called out how Miller is undermining efforts to disrupt fentanyl trafficking.

The personal focus on Miller extends to Newsom’s Press Office account, which has been calling out Miller’s bullshit.

Correcting Miller on the legal posture of sanctuary cities.

Pushing back on Miller’s complaints about Sanctuary cities.

Newsom’s Press Office has pushed other peoples’ memes.

And pushing a TikTok video of Miller’s early racism.

But the trolling from the Press Office itself gets more creative. I’ve already mentioned the sustained play on Star Wars.

And pop culture references, like Lord of the Rings.

The Press Office has found many ways to call Miller Voldemort.

Amid Trump’s flip flops on whether to exclude farmworkers from the raids, the Press Office account has adopted right wing styled memes.

And as Newsom also is, the Press Office account is mocking Trump’s capitulation to Miller on targeting farmworkers.

Also tracking Miller’s ability to override Donny.

As I discussed with LOLGOP, this trolling is structured in a productive way. Not only does it play on Trump’s own weakness (in recent days, rebranding Trump’s MAGA with that weakness), but it sets Miller up as the easy fall guy when shit starts hitting the fan. It does a lot of fact-checking, but frames this battle as much about ego and dick-wagging — the currency of the far right — as rational persuasion.

Stephen Miller’s gulag is not even backed by everyone in the Trump Administration. And that’s before the full effects of it — in higher housing costs, empty produce sections, and restaurant closures — are being felt. And Newsom has been making this about him, an easy target in the same way Musk is.

There are two ways to get the Guard restored to California: A legal win. Or making it a big enough political liability that Trump relents. Newsom is actually pursuing both.

There are problems with Newsom’s efforts. As mentioned, his outreach has been a veritable sausage fest, with a focus almost exclusively on outreach to male influencers. Sure. Trump won with the young male vote and young men are the ones pushing the disinformation. But there has to be a role for outreach to women.

I really wish Newsom had picked some other platform than Substack, which platforms Nazis.

And obviously, Newsom needs to replicate some of this on Bluesky, which Newsom has ignored since he got a personal account; his official account is staid. Newsom just got a Bluesky Press account, which replicates some of the trolling from Xitter, but thus far the trolling of Miller — which would be most important to go viral — has not shown up there.

But everyone needs to approach these battles using all three tools we have: legal, legislative, and political.

You don’t have to like Newsom to recognize that this trolling attempts the kind of messaging Democrats need to do more of. Indeed, his dickish personality and the long-standing bad blood with Trump may make this more effective.

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Trump’s Blank Page

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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,

Miller’s utilitarian gulag was back on!

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.

Miller is not just the architect of Trump’s gulag. He’s the guy with a stack of pieces of paper, sometimes blank pages, for Trump to sign, on all manner of policy topic. He is almost certainly the guy who made a number of decisions — like invoking the Alien Enemies Act that Miller had been craving to use for years — that Trump publicly disavowed. He appears to have provided the authority — his interpretation of Trump’s fee fees — for an ill-conceived Houthi attack that accomplished nothing and wasted resources.

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.

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Trump Chose to Hunt Law-Abiding Migrants Rather than Right Wing Terrorists Like Vance Boelter.

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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.

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The Big Ugly: Stephen Miller Uses His War on Home Depot to Invade California

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Yesterday, Trump used the opportunity of a protest against brutal ICE action staged out of Paramount, CA (close to a Home Depot location) to federalize 2,000 California National Guard for force protection — a step towards, but still short of, invoking the Insurrection Act (see Steve Vladeck for a description of what Trump, legally, did; update: and an even more detailed description from Lawfare). Pete Hegseth has also floated sending the Marines to an American city, a suggestion Gavin Newsom called, “deranged.”

It’s all a transparent confrontation used to invade a blue city.

All this comes comes as the hours longshormen at LA ports work have dropped in half due to Trump’s trade war, and some of the workplaces ICE targeted were in the garment district, where actual manufacturing still occurs. In addition, Trump has promised to start cutting Federal grants to California, which led Gavin Newsom to point out that CA is a net donor to Federal taxes.

This was a natural escalation stemming directly from Stephen Miller’s shrill tantrums demanding that ICE focus more on law-abiding undocumented people rather than the criminal aliens he lied about during the election. The escalation comes in the wake of Elon Musk’s meltdown, which might otherwise make passage of Trump’s reconciliation bill funding a massive expansion of Miller’s gulag. It comes as a few libertarians — Tom Massie called for “Realistic border funding” and “No bloat for military industrial complex” in his pitch for a new “skinny” bill — focus on the huge funding for the gulag.

This inital use of federal troops in a blue city should be understood as an effort to build pressure to help pass the bill. It should also be used as an example of the danger of passing the bill — the kind of authoritarianism that Miller intends to wield if the bill does pass.

As Washington Examiner was the first to report (a testament to the kind of people who were pissed about this tantrum), two weeks ago Miller called senior ICE officials to a meeting in DC to berate them that they’re not meeting his impossible quotas for arrests, 3,000 people a day. During the meltdown he had at the meeting, Miller specifically ordered ICE to start staging arrests at Home Depot and 7-Eleven. Miller specifically berated ICE officials because they were focusing on the criminal aliens around which Miller built Trump’s re-election campaign.

ICE’s top 50 field officials were given roughly a week’s notice of an emergency meeting in Washington.

ICE’s 25 Enforcement Removal Operations, or ERO, field office directors and 25 Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, special agents in charge flew into Washington and descended on the agency’s Washington headquarters last Tuesday, May 20. There, they were met by Miller, ICE confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.

One of the ERO officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

“Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest. ‘That’s what Tom Homan says every time he’s on TV: ‘We’re going after criminals,’” the ICE official told Miller, according to the first official.

The protests started in response to two things: Raids on work places and also the detention of a growing number of people without food in the basement of a federal building — the latter of which Representative Jimmy Gomez was protesting most of the day. At an early tiny peaceful protest, ICE assaulted and then arrested SEIU California President, David Huerta, injuring him badly enough to require hospital treatment, during their assault. He remains in custody. The assault-and-arrest bears similarities to the staged confrontation at Delaney Hall and ICE’s invasion of Jerry Nadler’s office in recent weeks.

Huerta’s treatment drew condemnation from Democratic leaders across the country, including LA Mayor Karen Bass.

Multiple Trump authoritarians, including Miller, responded to Bass’ condemnation of the violence ICE was wielding by insisting that “Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.”

From there, the protests against ICE grew, many of them mocking ICE. But ICE and LA Sheriffs (the LAPD deployed, but said it saw no violence) escalated. Nevertheless, protests remain localized (around the ICE facility and at the Federal building).

Numerous Administration keyboard warriors, including Miller, are tying the protest in Los Angeles to his Big Ugly bill, using the very same eliminationist language Trump’s used to kick off an assault on the Capitol.

The through-line here is crystal clear.

Ratchet up raids on peaceful people to hit impossible quotas (ICE came close, but did not meet, Miller’s 3,000 arrest quota on two days last week).

Use protests against that draconian invasion to arrest Democratic leaders and invade a blue city.

Point to the chaos created by Miller’s draconian ICE raids to demand passage of the Big Ugly bill, which will codify and expand precisely that kind of draconian ICE raid.

Create chaos, and then use that chaos to try to codify authoritarian power.

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Trump Muskmageddon Open Thread

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The year of our lord 2025 started with a rabid Musk-Trump supporter self-immolating himself in a Cybertruck parked in front of a Trump casino, trying to send us all a message.

The most interesting development in the burgeoning Civil War between two historical narcissists is that Elon unfollowed both Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk (the latter whom drooled a bit about how wonderful it was Elon decided to platform Nazis after he bought Twitter).

But that’s just one girl’s opinion. Feel free to share yours below!

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