Mother Jones illustration; Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/Getty; Photos courtesy Génesis Lozada, Joseph Giardina, Arturo Suárez, and María Alvarado
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On Friday, March 14, Arturo Suárez Trejo called his wife, Nathali Sánchez, from an immigration detention center in Texas. Suárez, a 33-year-old native of Caracas, Venezuela, explained that his deportation flight had been delayed. He told his wife he would be home soon. Suárez did not want to go back to Venezuela. Still, there was at least a silver lining: In December, Sánchez had given birth to their daughter, Nahiara. Suárez would finally have a chance to meet the three-month-old baby girl he had only ever seen on screens.
But, Sánchez told Mother Jones, she has not heard from Suárez since. Instead, last weekend, she found herself zooming in on a photo the government of El Salvador published of Venezuelan men the Trump administration had sent to President Nayib Bukele’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. “I realized that one of them was my husband,” she said. “I recognized him by the tattoo [on his neck], by his ear, and by his chin. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew it was him.” The photo Sánchez examined—and a highly producedpropaganda videopromoted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House—showed Venezuelans shackled in prison uniforms as they were pushed around by guards and had their heads shaved.
The tattoo on Suárez’s neck is of a colibrí, a hummingbird. His wife said it is meant to symbolize “harmony and good energy.” She said his other tattoos, like a palm tree on his hand—an homage to Suárez’s late mother’s use of a Venezuelan expression about God being greater than a coconut tree—were similarly innocuous. Nevertheless, they may be why Suárez has been effectively disappeared by the US government into a Salvadoran mega-prison.
Mother Jones has spoken with friends, family members, and lawyers of ten men sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration based on allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua. All of them say their relatives have tattoos and believe that is why their loved ones were targeted. But they vigorously reject the idea that their sons, brothers, and husbands have anything to do with Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration recently labeled a foreign terrorist organization. The families have substantiated those assertions to Mother Jones, including—in many cases—by providing official documents attesting to their relatives’ lack of criminal histories in Venezuela. Such evidence might have persuaded US judges that the men were not part of any criminal organization had the Trump administration not deliberately deprived them of due process.
On March 14, President Donald Trump quietly signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act—a 1798 law last used during World War II. The order declared that the United States is under invasion by Tren de Aragua. It is the first time in US history that the 18th-century statute, which gives the president extraordinary powers to detain and deport noncitizens, has been used absent a Congressional declaration of war. The administration then employed the wartime authority unlocked by the Alien Enemies Act to quickly load Venezuelans onto deportation flights from Texas to El Salvador.
In response to a class action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Democracy Forward, federal judge James Boasberg almost immediately blocked the Trump White House from using the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport Venezuelans, and directed any planes already in the air to turn around. But in defiance of that order, the administration kept jets flying to El Salvador. Now Suárez and others like him are trapped in the Central American nation with no clear way to contact their relatives or lawyers.
Suárez, whose story has also been reported on by the Venezuelan outlet El Estímulo, is an aspiring pop musician who records under the name SuarezVzla. His older brother, Nelson Suárez, said his sibling’s tattoos were intended to help him “stand out” from the crowd. “As Venezuelans, we can’t be in our own country so we came to a country where there is supposedly freedom of expression, where there are human rights, where there’s the strongest and most robust democracy,” Nelson said. “Yet the government is treating us like criminals based only on our tattoos, or because we’re Venezuelan, without a proper investigation or a prosecutor offering any evidence.” (All interviews with family members for this story were conducted in Spanish.)
“Well, you’re here because of your tattoos,” the ICE agent reportedly said. “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.”
The Justice Department’s website states that Suárez’s immigration case is still pending and that he is due to appear before a judge next Wednesday. Records provided by Nelson Suárez show that Arturo has no criminal record in Venezuela. Nor, according to his family, does Suárez have one in Colombia and Chile, where he lived after leaving Venezuela in 2016. They say he is one of millions of Venezuelans who sought a better life elsewhere after fleeing one of the worst economic collapses in modern history. (Just a few years ago, Secretary Rubio, then a senator from Florida, stressed that failure to protect Venezuelans from deportation “would result in a very real death sentence for countless” people who had “fled their country.”)
The stories shared with Mother Jones suggest that Trump’s immigration officials actively sought out Venezuelan men with tattoos before the Alien Enemies Act was invoked and then removed them to El Salvador within hours of the presidential proclamation taking effect.
“This doesn’t just happen overnight,” said immigration lawyer Joseph Giardina, who represents one of the men now in El Salvador, Frizgeralth de Jesus Cornejo Pulgar. “They don’t get a staged reception in El Salvador and a whole wing for them in a maximum-security prison…It was a planned operation, that was carried out quickly and in violation of the judge’s order. They knew what they were doing.”
Arturo Suárez performing and speaking with his baby daughter from detention.Courtesy Arturo Suárez
The White House has yet to provide evidence that the hundreds of Venezuelans flown to El Salvador—without an opportunity to challenge their labeling as Tren de Aragua members and “terrorists”—had actual ties to the gang. When pressed on the criteria used for their identification, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed to unspecified “intelligence” deployed to arrest the Venezuelans she has referred to as “heinous monsters.” Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has insisted—without providing specific details—that the public should trust ICE to have correctly targeted the Venezuelans based on “criminal investigations,” social media posts, and surveillance.
Robert Cerna, an acting field office director for ICE’s removal operations branch, said the agency “did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone.” But Cerna also acknowledged that many of the Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act had no criminal history in the United States, a fact he twisted into an argument to seemingly justify the summary deportations without due process. “The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” Cerna wrote. “In fact, based upon their association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. It demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
The relatives who talked to Mother Jones painted a vastly different picture from the US government’s description of the men as terrorists or hardened criminals. Many said their loved ones were tricked into thinking they were being sent back to Venezuela, not to a third country. (The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a detailed request for comment asking for any evidence that the Venezuelans named in this articlehave ties to Tren de Aragua.)
Before leaving for the United States in late 2023, Neri Alvarado Borges lived in Yaritagua, a small city in north central Venezuela. His father is a farmer and his mother supports his 15-year-old brother, Nelyerson, who has autism.
Neri Alvarado with his brother Nelyerson in 2023.Courtesy María Alvarado
Alvarado’s older sister, María, stressed in a call from Venezuela that her brother has no connection to Tren de Aragua. She said her brother was deeply devoted to helping Nelyerson—explaining that one of his three tattoos is an autism awareness ribbon with his brother’s name on it and that he used to teach swimming classes for children with developmental disabilities.“Anyone who’s talked to Neri for even an hour can tell you what a great person he is. Truly, as a family, we are completely devastated to see him going through something so unjust—especially knowing that he’s never done anything wrong,” María said. “He’s someone who, as they say, wouldn’t even hurt a fly.”
Still, Alvarado was detained by ICE outside his apartment in early February and brought in for questioning, Juan Enrique Hernández, the owner of two Venezuelan bakeries in the Dallas area and Alvarado’s boss, told Mother Jones. One day later, Hernández went to see him in detention and asked him to explain what had happened. Alvarado told Hernández that an ICE agent had asked him if he knew why he had been picked up; Alvarado said that he did not. “Well, you’re here because of your tattoos,” the ICE agent replied, according to Hernández. “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.”
The agent then asked Alvarado to explain his tattoos and for permission to review his phone for any evidence of gang activity. “You’re clean,” the ICE officer told Alvarado after he complied, according to both Hernández and María Alvarado. “I’m going to put down here that you have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.”
For reasons that remain unclear, Hernández said that another official in ICE’s Dallas field office decided to keep Alvarado detained. María Alvarado said her brother told her the same story at the time.
Hernández spoke to Alvarado shortly before he was sent to El Salvador. “There are 90 of us here. We all have tattoos. We were all detained for the same reasons,” he recalled Alvarado telling him. “From what they told me, we are going to be deported.” Both assumed that meant being sent back to Venezuela.
Hernández, a US citizen who moved to the United States from Venezuela nearly three decades ago, searched desperately for Alvarado when he didn’t show up in his home country that weekend. He was nearly certain that Alvarado was in El Salvador when he first spoke to Mother Jones on Thursday. “I have very few friends,” he said. “Very few friends and I have been in this country for 27 years. I let Neri into my house because he is a stand-up guy…Because you can tell when someone is good or bad.” Later that day, on Alvarado’s 25th birthday, Hernández got confirmation that his friend was in El Salvador when CBS News published a list of the 238 people now at CECOT.
A centerpiece of Bukele’s brutal anti-gang crackdown, CECOT is known for due process violations and extreme confinement conditions. Last year, CNN obtained rare access to the remote prison, which can hold up to 40,000 people. The network found prisoners living in crowded cells with metal beds that had no mattresses or sheets, an open toilet, and a cement basin. Visitation and time outdoors are not allowed. A photographer who was allowed into the prison as the Venezuelans arrived earlier this month wrote for Time magazine that he witnessed them being beaten, humiliated, and stripped naked.
The Trump administration has indicated in court records that the El Salvador operation was weeks, if not months, in the making. In a declaration, a State Department official said arrangements with the Salvadoran and Venezuelan governments for the countries to take back US deportees allegedly associated with Tren de Aragua had been made after weeks of talks “at the highest levels”—including ones involving Secretary of State Rubio—and “were the result of intensive and delicate negotiations.”
As part of the deal, the US government will pay El Salvador $6 million to hold the Venezuelan men for at least one year. Calling the agreements a “foreign policy matter,” Rubio has claimed the outsourcing of deportees’ detention to Bukele’s “excellent prison system” is saving money for US taxpayers.
It is unclear if, or when, anyone sent to CECOT will be able to return to Venezuela. A Human Rights Watch program director noted in a declaration that the organization “is not aware of any detainees who have been released from that prison.” During an appeals court hearing on March 24, the ACLU’s lead counsel Lee Gelernt said, “We’re looking at people now who may be in a Salvadoran prison the rest of their lives.”
Neri Alvarado working at the bakery and the autism awareness tattoo with his brother’s name.Courtesy María Alvarado
Joseph Giardina’s client Frizgeralth de Jesus Cornejo Pulgar thought he was set to return to Venezuela on a deportation flight. Carlos, Frizgeralth’s older sibling, said his 26-year-old brother called their sister, who lives in Tennessee, from the El Valle detention center in Texas. He said Frizgeralth told her he was going to be deported to Venezuela later that day. “He was happy that he was going to be here with us,” Carlos said from Caracas in a video call with Mother Jones.
But Frizgeralth never arrived. Eventually, the family heard from the girlfriend of another Venezuelan set to be deported on the same flight as Carlos. She had identified him in videos shared on social media of the men who had been sent to the prison in El Salvador. On March 19, Carlos started scouring the internet and spotted his brother in a TikTok video. In it, Frizgeralth has his freshly shaved head pressed down, a rose tattoo on his neck peeking out from under a white t-shirt.
“We felt very powerless and in a lot of pain,” Carlos said. “To see how they mistreat a person who doesn’t deserve any of that. It’s not fair.”
“I never imagined being imprisoned just for getting a tattoo.”
Frizgeralth arrived in the United States in June 2024 after crossing the Darién Gap and waiting several months in Mexico for a CBP One appointment. The Biden-era program, which the Trump administration has since terminated, allowed migrants to schedule a date to present lawfully at a US port of entry. Carlos said Border patrol agents let Frizgeralth’s girlfriend and their other brother, as well as two friends, through but they held Frizgeralth back. He ended up detained at Winn Correctional Center, an ICE facility in Louisiana.
In messages to his family from detention, Frizgeralth expressed concern he was being investigated because of his tattoos. He explained that none of the 20 or so images—including one on his chest of an angel holding a gun—he has tattooed on his body have any connection to gang activity. He also described feeling discouraged from hearing stories in detention of Venezuelans who had recently been redetained and said ICE agents picked them up over suspicions about their tattoos.
Frizgeralth even had a declaration from his tattoo artist confirming the harmless nature of the artwork. “I never imagined being imprisoned just for getting a tattoo,” Frizgeralth, who owns a streetwear clothing brand with Carlos, wrote. “I never imagined being separated from my family. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, not even my worst enemy if I had one. It’s horrible, it’s mental torture every day.”
Like Suárez and Alvarado, Frizgeralth had no criminal record in Venezuela, documents show. Giardina said his client also had no known criminal history in the United States. Nor did he have a final deportation order. During his preliminary court hearings, the US government never claimed or presented evidence that Frizgeralth had ties to Tren de Aragua. “He was doing everything he was supposed to do,” Giardina said. “He got vetted and checked when he came into the country. He was in detention the entire time. It’s insanity.” If anything, Giardina said, his client had a strong claim for asylum based on political persecution. He said Frizgeralth was being targeted by the colectivos, paramilitary groups linked to the Maduro regime.
About a week prior to his deportation, they moved Frizgeralth to Texas. His next hearing, which is scheduled for April 10, still appears on the immigration court’s online system. “To detain them in this maximum security prison with no access to lawyers, no charges, just because you’re saying they’re terrorists…,” Giardina said. “I mean, what the hell?”
Génesis Lozada Sánchez said she and her younger brother Wuilliam are from a rural Venezuelan “cattle town” called Coloncito near Colombia. Following Venezuela’s economic collapse, both she and Wuilliam lived in Bogota, where her brother saved up for the journey to the United States by making pants at a clothing factory. After he reached the border last January, Wuilliam was detained for more than a year, Génesis said.
On Friday, March 14, he called a cousin in the United States to say that he was about to be deported to Venezuela. “But to everyone’s surprise, that’s not what happened. They were kidnapped,” Génesis said. “Why do I say kidnapped? These people have no ties to El Salvador. They haven’t committed any crimes there. And they’re not even Salvadoran. They don’t even cross into El Salvador after going through the Darién Gap on their way to the United States. So, it’s a kidnapping. They tricked these guys into signing papers by telling them they were being sent to Venezuela.”
Like other men sent to El Salvador, Wuilliam has tattoos. But Génesis said that they have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua and that her brother has no criminal record. His goal had been to make enough money in the United States to help support their parents and to save up enough to hopefully open a clothing factory back home.
Other reporting and court briefs further support the families’ suspicions that their loved ones were primarily targeted for deportation because of their tattoos. In one instance, a professional soccer player, whose attorney said had fled Venezuela after protesting against the Maduro regime and being tortured, was accused of gang membership based on a tattoo similar to the logo of his favorite team, Real Madrid.
John Dutton, a Houston-based immigration attorney, said that he started noticing ICE officers detaining Venezuelans during check-ins due to their tattoos earlier this year. “If they notice they have a tattoo, they’re just taking them into custody,” he explained. “No more questions to ask.” Dutton estimated he now has about a dozen clients who have been arrested because of tattoos.
One of his clients, Henrry Albornoz Quintero, was due in court for a bond hearing last Wednesday after being taken into detention at a routine ICE check-in. “I show up. The judge asked me where my client is,” the Houston lawyer said. “I asked the same question to the DHS attorney. She looked at her notes, shuffled papers around as if she’s gonna find the answer in there, looks up, and said, ‘Judge, I don’t know.’”
Dutton told the judge that his client might be in El Salvador; his relatives had recognized him in one of the images of people at CECOT. The judge then decided not to hear the case on the grounds that he no longer had jurisdiction. “You could tell he wanted to help me,” Dutton added. “He just couldn’t. There’s nothing he could do.”
The next day, Albornoz’s name appeared on the list of people imprisoned in El Salvador. So far, Albornoz is the only one of Dutton’s clients to be sent there. His wife is nine months pregnant with their first child.
“They didn’t just deport these people and then set them free,” says Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University. “They sent them to El Salvador, where that country, at the behest of the United States, is incarcerating them for at least a year in their prison system.This is not just deportation without due process. This is imprisonment without due process in a foreign prison system that has terrible conditions. That’s a pretty blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, which says that you can’t take away people’s life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
Until Thursday, March 20, Barbara Alexandra Manzo still wasn’t sure if her brother Lainerke Daniel Manzo Lovera was among those sent to El Salvador and transferred to CECOT. The family hadn’t heard from him since that Saturday, when he called from El Paso, Texas, to say they were deporting him to Venezuela or Mexico. Her confirmation also came when she saw his name on the CBS News list.
Barbara Alexandra told Mother Jones that Lainerke didn’t even have a tattoo before he left Venezuela in December 2023. He got one—a clock on his arm—while living and working in Mexico, waiting for a CBP One appointment. It was a gift from a roommate who had been given a date before he did. Last October, Lainerke showed up at the border and was sent to ICE detention; first in San Diego, then briefly in Arizona. He had a court hearing scheduled for March 26.
“My son went to look for a better future, the American Dream,” his mother Eglee Xiomara said in a video. “And it didn’t come true. That was the worst trip he has ever made in his life.”
Lainerke has yet to meet his six-month-old daughter, who was born in the United States. “He’s never been in prison,” Barbara Alexandra said. “[We’re wondering] if he’s ok or if something is happening to him. And we’ll never know because we have no recourse.”
Nelson Suárez fears that he, too, could meet the same fate as his brother Arturo, the Venezuelan musician. Even during the first Trump administration, the fact that Nelson has Temporary Protected Status and a pending asylum case would have been enough to protect him from deportation. But there are no guarantees that it will be now. If Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order is lifted or overturned, he could be immediately deported to Venezuela, or sent to El Salvador, without due process. He doesn’t know if he will walk out of a scheduled check-in with ICE in May free or in chains.
“I’m really scared,” he said last week. “My three daughters are here with me. My wife is here. My kids are in school. I don’t know what could happen. Since this happened to my brother, I really haven’t been able to sleep. I have no peace, no sense of calm. I’m afraid to go out on the street. But at the same time, we have to go out to work and get things done.”
Hi hi, what’s this about, with the hoodies and the masked thugs?
More on Rumeysa Ozturk. She seems to have been kidnapped to ICE prison in Louisiana, whether before or after a judge said NOT TO FUCKING MOVE HER is unknown. (Zeteo)
So fucking jealous of Brazil right now. (Guardian)
Sure yes good:
In Lubbock, Texas, public health officials have received orders to stop work supported by three grants that helped fund the response to the widening measles outbreak there, according to Katherine Wells, the city’sdirector of public health.
Billions in health funds for infectious diseases and drug treatment being clawed back after they were already given out, and “Some predicted the loss of as much as 90 percent of staff from some infectious disease teams.” (Gift link New York Times)
Vance and Usha backing down from Greenland visit (she was supposed to go with Mike Waltz, but he got real busy this week); instead of going and flaunting themselves around Greenland, they’re going only to a US base, and Greenland is stoked. (CNN)
Alito and Thomas on the wrong end of a 7-2 vote as Supreme Court says the JACKBOOTED THUGS can FORCE YOU to … put serial numbers on your ghost guns. THE HUMANITY!!!!!! (Decision) Don’t wanna read 63 pages? It was Gorsuch, in the library, with a coherent decision. (Lawyers Guns & Money)
This new US Attorney for upstate New York said Joe Biden should be tried for treason and Barack Obama should be deported, so that’s just a very stable kind of guy to be a top Trump prosecutor. (Syracuse)
Pam Bondi, the attorney general of the United States, is spending all her time going on TV to yell at Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is supremely unperturbed by it. (Our Liz at Public Notice)
Oh thank god! Now the gay whales won’t get windmill cancer! (Heatmap, reg req)
“It’s like a Tea Party rally for people who believe the 14th Amendment is real.” With Bernie and AOC in Tempe and Tucson. (Mother Jones)
Oh huh, real wages (after accounting for inflation) were up 14 percent for the lowest-paid working people under Joe Biden? And 11 percent for the next decile? And still up but not as much for the richer people? I am sorry, I will NEVER get over how we kept having to apologize for Joe Biden’s economy every time it was mentioned.
“In year-to-year visits, Target saw a decline in nearly 5 million shoppers during a four-week period that ended Feb. 9. For Costco, the big-box store corporation saw an increase of 7.7 million visits.” And that’s why you don’t shit on “DEI” (Black and gay people existing). (Black Enterprise)
Hey it’s your right to make your 14-year-olds work past 11 p.m. on a school night. Florida says so! (Tallahassee Democrat)
Single women are driving the housing market. Couldn’t even get a mortgage until 1974. (Detroit Free Press)
My goodness Vanity Fair used to pay all the money in the world. (Yale Review)
I was not going to post again tonight, and in fact had thought to place some videos in a scheduled post for tomorrow. But this is FAR TOO IMPORTANT TO WAIT! When I told Ron about this, he remembered the Portland protests where tRump had security from prisons in unmarked vans and blacked out uniforms snatch people from the street. Is this them. Or as Ron asked me, is this just his brown shirt thugs trying to enforce his positions on the street? How to know because he sent them after drag queens and drag queen story hours. How far down the authoritarian road have we traveled already? How much farther before we can’t come back. Want to know her crime. She is a legal student here from Turkey and she wrote a pro-Palestinian op-ed. For that she got black bagged and sent to a location no one can contact her as even her lawyer says he has heard nothing and has no way to contact her. Even after a judge told ICE / tRump not to do this, they did it. Oh and why are they snatching these students and others then sending them to Louisiana? The appeals court for that area is notoriously right wing. They want as much good press and legal writing as they can get before it hits the SCOTUS. Even if a judge in the proper district tells them to do something they don’t want they just ignore it trying to force the judge to sanction tRump and his administration for using his core power which the SCOTUS tRump seems to feel has made him immune from any consequences of even an illegal act. We will soon see if he is correct. Seems Justice Sotomayor was correct. Hugs. Hugs
Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.
Video of the international student at Tufts being arrested by "federal authorities" in Massachusetts has been released and it's terrifying. They're not even uniformed officers. Just secret police thugs in hoodies and masks. From WCVB: youtu.be/PuFIs7OkzYY
A longer version of the Tufts announcement about the abduction of an international graduate student by federal authorities, circulating on Twitter and Reddit.
"An emergency rally has been called for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Powder House Square in Somerville to protest a Tufts international graduate student being taken into custody Tuesday by federal authorities."
I want to thank Allison Gill for this report. I got it from her daily beans podcast that I listen to while I brush my teeth, shower, and if she goes long while I dress. Her podcasts are very informative with three different segments of news and what is happening. Often I write down what I can remember to talk about. Then I realized she gives a transcript of each show, and that transcripts with links is bringing you this post. She has a substack which I also follow where she reports the news giving tips on how to get involved. https://www.muellershewrote.com. What follows is horrifying and triggered me because the abuse these people went through was some of what I did. But remember most of the people on these flights are not gang members. This all comes from a slum lord not wanting to deal with a protest on his apartment complex that was getting really dangerous for the people living there. He went to the news claiming a gang called … had taken over and was shaking down him and residents. Yes they did go to a few residences and demand the money, the money promised to help fund their fight against the landlord. Many right wing outlets selectively edited the videos to make the protesting people seem very sinister. TYT also pushed the scenario hard. As you will read the people in this foreign prison for at least a year held in commutation black out are not gang members, many came to the US in legal ways, some had green cards. They can not access lawyers, can’t call friends or family, they are held for a year in horrific conditions like in a Russian gulag because tRump and crew don’t care about the constitution or the people. All they want is all non-white people removed from the US. Some of those deported by the way, luckily not to this place are US citizens that are fighting for their rights. Hence the sending them to El Salvador that has no laws of rights and agreed for a huge price per detainee to keep them from accessing any outside person. They could kill them tomorrow and no one would know. The tRump people are grabbing anyone they can and sending them there knowing they can not get any help. Sadly I just watched a clip on Tim Pool a low info moron who clearly thinks this is great no matter how many innocent people get caught up in it. It doesn’t matter they broke no laws, and entering the US illegally to ask for asylum is not a criminal offense despite what the white supremacist say it is a protected right under US laws and the treaties, That makes it legal. Again not that tRump and crew care. By any definition that torture is against the US Constitution. An impeachable offense. Hugs
Holsinger is an American photojournalist based out of Nashville, Tenn.
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On the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process. I was there to document their arrival.
For more than a year, I have been embedded throughout El Salvador’s society, working on a book chronicling the country’s transformation. From the huts of remote island fishermen to the desk of the President, from elite homicide detective units to elementary school classrooms, I have interviewed government officials and everyday people, collecting stories that would shock Stephen King. I’ve stood in classrooms full of happy students which not long ago were empty, because children here once learned early that schools were places to be raped or recruited. I’ve interviewed killers in prison and sat with them face-to-face.
As I stood on the tarmac, an agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ICE Special Response Team told me that some of the Venezuelans had weakly attempted to take over their plane upon landing. It wasn’t unusual for detainees to try to make a last stand, the agent said, guarding the doorway to the plane at the top of the gangway stairs. “They began to try to organize to overthrow the plane by screaming for everyone to stand up and fight. But not everyone was on board,” the agent said, cautioning me to be careful because some of the Venezuelans would fight once they were offloaded
Philip Holsinger
PHILIP HOLSINGER
Philip Holsinger
Even if not fighting, almost all the detainees came to the door of the plane with angry, defiant faces. It was their faces that grabbed me, because within a few hours those faces would completely transform.
The Venezuelans emerging from their plane were not in prison clothes, but in designer jeans and branded tracksuits. Their faces were the faces of guys who in no way expected what they first saw—an ocean of soldiers and police, an entire army assembled to apprehend them.
Philip Holsinger
Philip Holsinger
One of the alleged organizers of the attempted overthrow fought the U.S. agents on the plane, cursing the Americans, the Salvadorans, President Nayib Bukele himself. El Salvador’s Minister of Defense, René Merino, who had been standing on the tarmac at the bottom of the gangway, rushed aboard, dragged the guy to the gangway himself, and flung him into the waiting hands of black-masked guards.
Philip Holsinger
The transfer from the plane to the buses that would carry them to prison was rapid, yet it might as well have been the crossing of an ancient continent. I felt the detainees’ fear as they marched through a gauntlet of black-clad guards, guns raised like the spears of some terrible tribe. I walked the line of buses waiting to depart, photographing faces. A guard noticed one of the detainees turned toward the window and wrenched his head back down into his chest.
Philip Holsinger
Around 2 a.m., the convoy of 22 buses, flanked by armored vehicles and police, moved out of the airport. Soldiers and police lined the 25-mile route to the prison, with thick patrols at every bridge and intersection. For the few Salvadorans, it was a familiar landscape. But for a Venezuelan plucked from America, it must have appeared dystopian—police and soldiers for miles and miles in woodland darkness.
The Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT, sits in an old farm field at the foot of an ancient volcano, brightly lit against the night sky. I’ve spent considerable time there and know the place intimately. As we entered the intake yard, the head of prisons was giving orders to an assembly of hundreds of guards. He told them the Venezuelans had tried to overthrow their plane, so the guards must be extremely vigilant. He told them plainly: Show them they are not in control.
Philip Holsinger
The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster.
The men were pulled from the buses so fast the guards couldn’t keep pace. Chained at their ankles and wrists, they stumbled and fell, some guards falling to the ground with them. With each fall came a kick, a slap, a shove. The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear.
Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.
Philip Holsinger
After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair.
They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts.
My question is who decides if a hair cut conforms to gender stereotypes / norms. I somehow doubt the 1970s /1980s long shoulder length but parted and swept back blow dried hairstyles for guys would pass the test if religious conservatives get to say what is acceptable? What about women with cancer who are taking treatments for that cancer and lost their hair or are growing it back? Can the doctor be sued who prescribed the treatments? It is like trans people using the bathrooms of gender identity, who decides if that woman is feminine enough for the girl’s bathroom or that man manly enough for the boy’s bathroom? I have told everyone while the hell spawn could have any hair they wanted including long hair I was required to have a crew cut or nearly bald hairstyle as punishment for even existing in a time when everyone was wearing their hair long. What about parents rights? You know the reason all media with LGBTQ+ content must be removed from schools and all libraries, because some parents complain their kids might see it? Do the progressives or the former hippies get to allow their boy children to have long hair or their girls short hair? See how this can’t work, can’t be allowed. People lose all autonomy and individual rights to express themselves as they want to. It is again an attempt to return to the straight cis white Christian male dominated society of the 1950s. Women were subservient to men and needed their permission for most things outside the home. Raping your wife, forcing her to have sex against her will was legal as she had to perform her wifely duties. Non-white people knew their place and stayed there. The entire LGBTQ+ were hidden in their closets too frighted to be found out to demand their equality and rights. That is the world they want and are trying to create using the cover of trans people are harming the children. It is why they attacked drag queens so violently, they violate that 1950s norms. They are desperate to enforce a nearly religious observance of their preferred way to live based mostly on religion. Look at the bios of nearly every one of the republicans pushing these things and you see they are from a fundamentalist conservative religious faith that wants to control how other people live. Not to bring others closer to their godlike Rev Ed Trevors does, but to make themselves feel better about things and the idea that if they make all the people they don’t like, all the acts they don’t like to go away their god will praise them, give them an afterlife life, and their god will be so please with them he will come back right away to get them. Their god is a god of anger and smiting. He is not a loving god who loves people as they are or want to be. Hugs
Republicans in the Arkansas state legislature have introduced legislation that would make it effectively illegal for hairdressers to give gender-based haircuts to people of the opposite gender. The bill would allow the hairdressers to be sued if the haircut given does not conform with the gender assigned to a person at birth. This is reminiscent of the government-approved haircuts in North Korea, and equally as oppressive. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.
The first mistake was giving classified information to Pete HegsethRead on Substack
If only someone could have foreseen that being a host on Fox & Friends doesn’t make one qualified to be the Secretary of Defense.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was sitting in his car in a Safeway parking lot when he received a message about an upcoming military strike in Yemen. The message was part of a group chat in Signal, a messaging app, sent from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic, “I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.”
The world found out on March 15 at 2 p.m. Eastern time that the United States had bombed Houthi targets in Yemen, but Goldberg knew at 11:44 a.m. The message included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
Note that Goldberg didn’t expose this intel fiasco until yesterday, ten days after the strike. My question is: Did any of the group chat participants notice Goldberg was in the chat before yesterday?
After the National Security Council confirmed the legitimacy of the chat, Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard claimed there was no classified information in the chat. The White House also claimed no classified information or war plans were shared. Then, Pete Hegseth made the same claim, saying, “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
Except, that wasn’t all he had to say about “that,” as he also said Goldberg is “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.” Keep in mind that this guy who used to work for Fox News now works for Donald Trump, the king of discredited lies and conspiracy theories.
While interviewing Goldberg on CNN Monday night, Caitlin Collins said to Goldberg, “I want to start by getting your reaction to what we heard from Secretary Hegseth there, saying that ‘Nobody was texting war plans.’ Given you were privy to this group chat, is that how you saw it?”
Goldberg replied, “No, that’s a lie. He was texting war plans. He was texting attack plans. When targets were going to be targeted; how they were going to be targeted; who was at the targets; when the next sequence of attacks was happening.”
The only way the Trump administration can cover their ass on this is to lie.
In a quickly-called Senate hearing this morning, Gabbard refused to even admit she was part of the chat, saying she didn’t want to get into “specifics.” Senator Mark Warner asked, “Why aren’t you gonna get into the specifics? Is this—is it because it’s all classified?
Gabbard said she couldn’t get into specifics about the chat she claimed didn’t contain classified intel, and said she couldn’t “because this is currently under review by the National Security Council.”
That prompted Warner to ask, “Because it’s all classified? If it’s not classified, share the texts now.”
Gabbard, Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe lacked the basic due diligence to check the group chat participants before spouting off about war plans. These people chosen by Trump are amateurs when it comes to their jobs and securing classified intelligence.
If only someone had pointed to these people’s lack of qualifications for their jobs. Oh, wait. We did.
Other members of the chat were National Security Advisor Mike Walz Veep JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, National Counterterrorism Center Director Nominee Joe Kent, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff. Not one of these idiots noticed Goldberg’s name in the chat and asked, “Who’s that guy?”
Gabbard said there was a difference between the “inadvertent release” and “malicious leaks” of classified information before restating that there was no classified material in the chat, trying to have it both ways.
Unless the administration came out before the strike and said, “We’re going to start dropping bombs on Houthi rebels in Yemen at 2 p.m. on March 15, the information in the chat was classified.
This leak wasn’t malicious or inadvertent. It was inept. You would think if all the participants of this classified chat were competent, at least one of them would have spotted that one of the participants was a journalist, a journalist who did a better job of retaining the classified information better than the Secretary of Defense, Director of National Security, the FBI Director and the CIA Director.
Warner said Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Walz didn’t “conduct hygiene 101” in making sure the classified chat was secure.
Warner said, “If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired” and “This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one-off or a first-time error.”
If you don’t remember this happening in the Biden administration, it’s because it never did. Biden hired competent and qualified people, not the Gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
Later, he called for the resignations of Hegseth and Walz, but I think everyone in that chat should resign, including the vice president (sic). Didn’t they all want Hillary Clinton “locked up” for risking the exposure of classified information?
The Trump administration talks a lot of shit about our national security, as though they take it seriously. If they really took it seriously, they wouldn’t hire jackasses like Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Walz, Kash Patel, and John Ratcliffe. Hell, if Republicans took our nation seriously, they wouldn’t have nominated that racist idiot Donald Trump.
Mark Warner said, “When the stakes are this high, incompetence is not an option.”
Creative note: I had something else planned for today, but this story threw that out the window last night. I had more than one reader message me, “Can’t wait to see your Hegseth cartoon.” Fortunately, those messages weren’t classified.
Music note: I listened to everything on this cafe’s sound system. Unfortunately, it included a lot of John Mayer. I hate John Mayer.
(Because it’s the only way I can bear it. Also, blue language within, though not gratuitous.)
LIVE: Are The Worldwide Threats In The Room With Us Right Now? A Tulsi Gabbard Hearing! by Rebecca Schoenkopf
And a John Ratcliffe hearing. And a Kash Patel hearing.Read on Substack
Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel and John Ratcliffe, probably.
For once, Kash Patel might not even be the biggest shitshow in the room today when he and other Trump agency heads sit before the Senate Intelligence Committee for the annual Worldwide Threats hearing! You know, unless he thinks the greatest “worldwide threats” are somehow his enemies list. That would be sad and pathetic.
But yeah, that hearing is today, because the universe has a sense of humor. Tulsi Gabbard (DNI) and John Ratcliffe (CIA) were on that funny little text thread where JD Vance was like “Donald Trump is wrong about bombing Yemen, and Europe is stinky and I hate it!” (slight paraphrase) and Secretary Shitfaced was like [vomits extremely detailed bombing plans into text thread on Signal, which is not where classified war plans go] and Mike Waltz (National Security Advisor) was like “LMAO let me accidentally invite the editor of the Atlantic to read all this”!
Oh yeah, and John Ratcliffe reportedly blabbed an active intelligence officer’s name on that text chat. You know, because he’s good at his job and a serious man.
Will we even have time to hear Tulsi Gabbard share her EXPERTISE on what the greatest worldwide threats are, and why none of them are her buddies in Moscow? Will Kash Patel read from his children’s books and explain to us why the true greatest worldwide threat is “Hillary Queenton”?
Or are we just gonna talk about these dumbass clownfucking fools and their group chats all day? Let’s find out!
10:00: Yeah, though, it really is on the nose that this is the Worldwide Threats Hearing, starring Tulsi Gabbard. Ha ha! Good morning.
10:05: One thing you might not know about our current hell is that Tom Cotton is now the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. You know, in case you thought there might be a Republican in there who actually cares about national security, ha ha, you were wrong.
10:08: Tom Cotton leads off with Communist China being very bad. Hey, he should ask about that billionaire South African apartheid creep currently terrorizing the government, who ALSO happens to be all the way up China’s ass.
Tom Cotton just said Yemen, drink ‘em if you got ‘em! And if you don’t got ‘em, ask the secretary of Defense if he’s got an extra!
10:13: Cotton refers to the Trump intel team as “impressive,” hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Now vice-chair Mark Warner is discussing how several on the panel today were part of the big group chat full of classified information and the name of at least one intelligence officer and all the war plans and whatever drinking games MAGA Republicans like to do to celebrate bombing Yemen on unsecured channels.
Mark Warner will now talk about some other times the Trump administration has fucked off when it comes to national security.
Canceled all foreign assistance. He’s explaining how that relates for slow learners/traitor Republicans.
Fired some of the best and brightest FBI agents, like the people who led the counterterrorism division and the heads of offices who work every day to keep America safe and who work to counteract threats on the homeland.
Firing thousands of people at the CDC and NIH, who protect America from disease.
Firing hundreds of intelligence officers, who you can’t just rehire or replace with some pig you found on the street.
Every time they show the panel, they literally look like a bunch of dumbass children who just got caught being absolute fucking morons again.
Not right out of central casting, Donald Trump!
10:25: LOL, Tom Cotton is such a pissy little baby. Just told the whole room he’s going to encourage the US attorney (this dork, presumably) to THROW THE BOOK at anybody who disrupts the hearing. Okeydoke, Senator Dachschund McPomeranian from Dardanelle, Arkansas. You’re real tough.
Anyway, Tulsi Gabbard is giving her opening statement. Hasn’t said anything in Russian yet, is talking about cartels, sounds like she binged “Narcos” this weekend, very impressive, very prepared.
10:31: Gabbard is reading whatever was prepared for her, it’s very “This is my book report on being DNI.” (Remember how she didn’t really know what the DNI did when she was nominated.)
Gabbard says Russia is a “formidable competitor” and fawns over their nuclear weapons. Says Russia does some bad cyber things too. Bet she hates reading this part. You know how Trump hates it when you say hurtful things about, UH OH! RUSSIA PART OVER!
Moved on to Iran. Well, that was fast.
The NBC feed keeps showing senators looking bored.
10:39: Wow, if Gabbard is going to keep talking about dictators like Kim Jong-un and bad guys like Russia, she should probably say something about all the world leaders they have in their pockets, like her boss.
10:42: We guess the other morons won’t be giving opening statements, because Cotton has already started prancing around about all the immigrants that have been arrested in Arkansas.
Now Code Pink protesters doing their Code Pink protesting, which is always so effective. Prods Cotton to peacock around about “Communist China.” It’s all very productive.
Anyway, back to Kash Patel talking about the threat of Mexicans in Arkansas, which is what Tom Cotton wants to know about.
10:45: Kash Patel has personally arrested 10 million Mexicans in Arkansas, and now the crime in Arkansas is over!
10:46: Tom Cotton notes that China is a “techno-totalitarian police state,” which is hilarious because what is Elon Musk doing right now?Carole Cadwalladr’s Substack is a good place to read to get a better understanding of that.
Here comes Mark Warner. Let’s talk about the fucking text chat, y’all!
10:49: Why won’t Tulsi Gabbard talk about what happened in the group chat? Is it because it was CLASSIFIED? If it wasn’t CLASSIFIED can you show us all the texts?
And John Ratcliffe? What about you?
John Ratcliffe says they put Signal on his computer, and everybody uses it! They can totally use it, as long as they also record what they do there on normal channels! (They were literally sharing war plans, reportedly, or at least Hegseth was.)
Gabbard just claimed that there was no classified information shared in the chat. Warner is like fuck off, you can’t have it both ways. If it wasn’t classified, share it all.
WARNER: If a rank-and-file intel officer did this shit, what would you do with them?
GABBARD: No classified! No classified! You are classified!
WARNER: Is Edward Snowden a traitor? You’re an idiot.
Lotta people bringing up this tweet right now:
10:55: Now Republican John Cornyn seems to be forcing Tulsi Gabbard to agree with him that Russia does horrible things all over the world, specifically he’s talking about in Europe. Also about how Russia views its unprovoked war against Ukraine.
10:56: John Cornyn wants to make sure Tulsi Gabbard and the others understand the consequences of European insecurity. He’s having Jeffrey Kruse — director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a Biden appointee! — explain what happens if nuclear weapons proliferate throughout Europe. Also the arrangement called the Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine gave up its weapons “for the protection of others.”
That’s how John Cornyn spent his time. Huh. Interesting.
Now Ron Wyden. He says Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth need to fucking resign now.
WYDEN: Gabbard and Ratcliffe, how many classified group chats have you done?
GABBARD/RATCLIFFE: No classified! No classified! Ron Wyden is classified!
RATCLIFFE: I like using Signal!
11:01: WYDEN: Hey Gabbard, you think it was kinda fucked, that whole thing about how Pete Hegseth was gonna show Elon Musk all our secret China war plans?
GABBARD: Hegseth and Trump denied it! End of story, obviously!
11:03: James Lankford thanks these people for their “service,” on behalf of “Oklahoma.”
11:06: Kash Patel is a fucking dweeb.
“I’m the FBI director! I’m learning how to FBI real good!”
11:09: Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, asks Ratcliffe who precisely determined there was no classified info on that Signal group chat?
Ratcliffe either doesn’t understand or is pretending he doesn’t understand the question. (Remember, he is legitimately stupid.)
And continues to insist that Signal is OK and fine!
Heinrich asks for confirmation of whether this conversation included extremely specific military plans about weapons and timing and so forth. Jeffrey Goldberg says sure the fuck did. Ratcliffe and Gabbard are like DEF NOT! and “defer to Pentagon.” So that’s two different answers, respectively.
Heinrich now trolling Gabbard asking why the intelligence community doesn’t list the Canadian border as one of the prime drivers of fentanyl trafficking into the United States, considering how Trump is always lying and saying that’s why he has to tariff them.
Gabbard does not have the specifics on that answer. Heinrich does. It’s less than one percent of the fentanyl we interdict.
Time for a very dumb Republican senator, Ted Budd from North Carolina.
11:18: Now talking about Section 702 (FISA) Courts. Tulsi Gabbard says 702 is one of the most important tools we have. Kash Patel has a much weirder history with FISA beacuse, you know, he got MAGA famous by being Devin Nunes’s little lapdog on the House Intelligence Committee when they were trying to cover up Donald Trump’s Russia scandals.
11:21: Senator Angus King is confused as to how if Pete Hegseth put the whole battle plan in the group text, before it happened, how was that not classified?
GABBARD: No classified! Also again defer to Pete Hegseth!
KING: You’re the head of the intelligence community. You’re supposed to know about classifications, I think?
King asks why this year’s Worldwide Threats Assessment report doesn’t include global climate change. “Has it been solved?”
Gabbard says she is aware of “occurrences within the environment” and how they might affect operations. Tulsi Gabbard is not an Occurrences Within The Environment denier!
King wants to know directly who decided to leave climate change out of the report, when it’s been in the last 11.
11:25: King wants to know what kind of policy reason there would be to weaken CISA, which protects American elections and cyber infrastructure, which Trump is of course gutting. Tulsi Gabbard has no real answer.
Republican Senator Mike Rounds will not be talking about the group chat in the open session. (They will be going into closed session after this.)
Makes us wonder if a couple of these Republican senators are about to ream some asses as soon as the cameras are off.
11:29: LOL LMAO Mike Rounds just said something weird about how there are things Kash Patel did in his “previous life” that are so heroic, but we can’t talk about them. Was he Kash Patel, Super Spy? Does he have superhuman athletic spying abilities?
Don’t tell us it’s classified, ain’t none of these fuckwits give a shit about that.
11:31: Michael Bennet from Colorado always seems like a puppy dog, but then in some of these hearings he starts kicking people in the dick. Let’s see!
BENNET: Does CIA have rules for handling classified intel?
RATCLIFFE: Yes.
BENNET: Secretary Shitfaced’s response to this was to attack Jeffrey Goldberg. Are you also mad at Jeff Goldberg? Do you think he is a hoaxer? Deceitful?
RATCLIFFE: I don’t know him!
BENNET: You are the director of the CIA. Did he do a hoax to get on your group chat? Answer the question, dippy.
RATCLIFFE: I don’t know how he got there!
BENNET: Would it be cool to have a deceitful hoax reporter on a Signal group chat? Why would you add somebody like that? YOU’RE THE CIA DIRECTOR. How did you not notice who was on it?
RATCLIFFE: Maybe you don’t use Signal and don’t understand it.
BENNET: I do! Not for classified shit, obviously.
RATCLIFFE: Me neithers!
BENNET: Kind of fucking weird that Jeff Goldberg was reading your war plans before they happened in the parking lot of a grocery store. What kind of fucking CIA are you running?
RATCLIFFE: I don’t like the way you’re talking about my stupid actions!
BENNET: Hey bitch, did you know that Trump’s Kremlin/Middle East adviser boy was literally in Moscow while you were doing this group chat that he was part of? You’re an embarrassment, you need to DO BETTER.
SO THAT WAS FUN.
11:42: Todd Young very concerned about North Korea stealing his cryptos! They can’t talk about it right here, though!
Young also referred to Gabbard and Ratcliffe and Patel as “a bunch of spies.” LOL yeah buddy, definitely our best and brightest “spies.”
Mark Kelly now.
11:43: KELLY: Did your group chat mention targets?
GABBARD: I don’t think we talked about targets?
KELLY: What about general targets?
GABBARD: I think we talked about targets.
KELLY: What about weapons?
GABBARD: I don’t remember anybody saying any specific weapon names!
KELLY: What about timing?
GABBARD: No specific timing!
KELLY: John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, any mention of specific military units?
GABBARD, RATCLIFFE: No unit! No unit! You are the specific military unit!
KELLY: Gabbard, does the IC have a policy against discussing Controlled Unclassified Information?
GABBARD: Yes.
KELLY: Was everything you talked about on Signal something you would approve for public release.
GABBARD: HgeeeeeeghncnchnchffGH!
KELLY: What about you, Mr. CIA super-spy?
RATCLIFFE: HgeeeeeghncnchnchffGH!
KELLY: Is it probably classified to discuss your literal actual war plans for strikes you’re going to do?
GABBARD: Maybe, maybe not!
RATCLIFFE: Yes.
TOM COTTON: Aw piss! John Ratcliffe just confessed on accident! Yain’t supposed to confess on accident! Tom Cotton gonna try to clean it up now by saying the secretary of Defense IS THE ONLY ONE ALLOWED TO SAY what’s classified with military strikes! Aw piss! Fiddlesticks! Pissfiddle!
(Dramatic interpretation of what just happened. Tom Cotton did not admit out loud that he felt the need to interject because John Ratcliffe had just accidentally told the truth.)
Mark Warner interjects to say it’s kind of fucking weird and stunning that none of these dipshits can even admit there was a fuckup.
11:55: Republican Jerry Moran wants to know what kinds of threats to America would arise if Russia got everything it wanted out of a Ukraine/Russia “peace agreement.”
Even Ratcliffe is saying out loud that people have been underestimating Ukraine for years now, would “fight with their bare hands” if they had to.
It remains very strange how, with a possible remainder of Tulsi Gabbard, nobody seems to share the devotion to Russia that Trump has.
11:58: Ratcliffe and Gabbard are trying to change their testimony midstream here, from earlier swearing that there was NO CLASSIFIED INFORMATION on that group chat, to now insisting that nothing was unclassified on their end, while insisting that original declassification authority for military matters rests with Hegseth. In other words, DRUNKY’S FAULT!
So Jack Reed would like to know if Pete Hegseth declassified all the classified information he talked about in that group chat.
REED: Tulsi Gabbard, were you overseas during your bullshit group chat?
GABBARD: Yes.
REED: Did you do this on your private phone or public phone?
GABBARD: I cannot say that out loud! I won’t! I shan’t!
12:02: REED: If you are just pretty sure nothing you did on the group chat was classified, would it be cool for Jeff Goldberg to release all the transcripts?
RATCLIFFE: I think he released all the things about me!
REED: Nope. Not what the article says.
RATCLIFFE: All the me parts are fine, definitely!
REED: So he can release it?
PATEL: I can’t prejudge that! Ask Pam Bondi!
Now we have Jon Ossoff.
12:04: OSSOFF: On your sexxxy group chat, JD Vance talked about how he disagreed with Donald Trump on the Yemen strike.
RATCLIFFE: I don’t recall!
OSSOFF: [reads it]
RATCLIFFE: I don’t recall!
OSSOFF: You don’t recall anything about the group chat you were on, which all the news is about? You don’t recall all the things that were said? You don’t recall how Pete Hegseth also disagreed with Trump? How Hegseth shared all these battle plans? Etc.?
RATCLIFFE: I’m a real dummy!
OSSOFF: Don’t you think foreign intel services would be interested in literally everything about this group chat?
RATCLIFFE: I reckon!
It’s funny, Ratcliffe keeps saying “I don’t know that,” and Ossoff keeps replying, “You do know that.”
OSSOFF: This was a HUGE mistake, yes?
RATCLIFFE: No!
OSSOFF: Jesus Christ, the fuck it wasn’t. This was hugely embarrassing, it was an absolute fuckup, we are going to get the full text of this group chat, and we’ll measure your testimony against that.
Mark Warner is going to end this up by continuing to call these people dumb fucking pieces of shit.
Warner ends by saying that these idiots’ inability to admit what a “colossal screwup” this was “speaks volumes.”
Susan Collins was not in attendance because she is under the weather, but she is concerned.
March 25, 1965 Their numbers having swelled to 25,000, the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers arrived at the Alabama state capitol. “Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. (Yes, sir) We are on the move now. The burning of our churches will not deter us. (Yes, sir) The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. (Yes, sir) We are on the move now. (Yes, sir) The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us. We are on the move now.” Read all of Rev. King’s speech Martin Luther King Jr. and wife Coretta lead march into Montgomery, Alabama.
March 25, 1965 Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a housewife and mother from Detroit, driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery, was shot and killed by Klansmen in a passing car. She had driven down to Alabama to join the march after seeing on television the Bloody Sunday attacks at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge earlier in the month. It was later learned that riding with the Klansmen was an FBI informant. read more about Viola Liuzzo Anthony & Viola Liuzzo
March 25, 1969 The newly wed John Lennon and Yoko Ono-Lennon began their seven-day “bed-in for peace” against the Vietnam War at the Amsterdam Hilton in New York City. read more about their bed-ins for peace bed-in photo album “Yoko and I are quite willing to be the world’s clowns, if by so doing it will do some good.”
Not happy with his official one in the Colorado state capitol Read on Substack
It’s one thing to be unhappy with how other people see your appearance, it’s another to publicly whine and obsess over it.
This is not an important issue in the many horrible actions of the first two months of the Trump administration but only to reinforce his narcissism and what he spends his time on as president. One a much more important subject, I have a graphic essay in the works about how Trump attacked the free press in his first administration to what he’s doing now.
Scottie's Playtime 