Professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Virginia, Amanda Frost joins the show to discuss her book You Are Not American: Citizen Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers. Live-streamed on September 22, 2025.
Most people know that Harry Houdini was a famous magician. Many people also know that Houdini devoted much of his life to debunking fake mediums during a time when Spiritualism had widespread acceptance.
But did you know that Houdini’s chief investigator was a woman named Rosa Mackenberg? I did not, but thanks to a Skeptoid podcast episode I do now!
Mackenberg began her career working as a private detective at a detective agency in New York. She was introduced to Houdini, who asked her to help expose fake mediums. Mackenberg believed that it was possible to communicate with the dead, but also agreed that mediums could be frauds. She started a partnership with Houdini that would last even after he died (in a sense).
Mackenberg joined Houdini’s team in 1924. Mackenberg would adopt a costume and a backstory and meet with psychics before Houdini came to town. She took notes on their methods and passed them on to Houdini. Then when Houdini came to town, they would discredit the fake psychics publicly.
A newspaper clipping shows some of Mackenberg’s disguises.
Mackenberg testified before Congress hoping to convince them to pass a bill that would outlaw predatory practices among mediums. In the process, she divulged that multiple members of Congress, as well as President Calvin Coolidge, visited mediums in Washington, D.C.
After Houdini died in 1926, she continued her work, investigating fraudulent psychics and giving talks to professional and legal groups as well as the general public on how mediums were able to successfully swindle their victims. (snip)
In her work, she advanced not only the opportunities for women in investigative fields, but also some techniques of scientific investigation that are still used today. (snip-read MORE)
FBI Director Kash Patel on Wednesday fired an agent in training for displaying a gay pride flag on his desk while appointed to a field office in California last year, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The trainee, who previously worked as an FBI support specialist in Los Angeles, received a letter — dated Oct. 1 and signed by Patel — claiming he had displayed an improper “political” message in the workplace during his assignment in California under President Joe Biden, according to a copy of the letter shared with MSNBC.
The letter cited President Donald Trump’s Article II powers under the Constitution to dismiss federal agency career personnel, a justification used in several recent firings at the Department of Justice and FBI. The terminations are currently being challenged in several lawsuits.
“After reviewing the facts and circumstances and considering your probationary status, I have determined that you exercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area during your previous assignment in the Los Angeles Field Office.”
FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL
“You are being summarily dismissed from your position as a New Agent Trainee at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and removed from the federal service,” read the letter, which was sent on the first day of a nationwide government shutdown that created job uncertainty throughout the federal workforce.
“After reviewing the facts and circumstances and considering your probationary status, I have determined that you exercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area during your previous assignment in the Los Angeles Field Office,” Patel wrote, without referencing a flag.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about this story. MSNBC was unable to reach the fired trainee for comment and, therefore, is not identifying him. The termination over the pride flag was first reported by CNN.
Wednesday’s dismissal comes after Trump and Russell Vought, the White House director of the Office of Management and Budget, threatened widespread firings of federal employees in the event of a government shutdown.
The agent trainee, who had most recently been assigned to the FBI Academy in Quantico, won an Attorney General’s Award in 2022 in recognition of his work, according to a Justice Department news release.
News of the trainee’s firing spurred some agents in the FBI’s Washington field office to scour their work stations and social media accounts for signs or comments — anything that could be viewed as offensive to Trump, his top appointees and MAGA supporters, according to one person familiar with the reaction within the government.
FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors warned one another, ahead of Trump’s inauguration, to be careful about displaying information revealing their sexual orientation or support for LGBTQ rights.
When Trump was weeks away from inauguration in January, FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors were warning one another to be careful about displaying information revealing their own sexual orientation or support for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender rights. After the inauguration, one person said, FBI agents warned colleagues that they heard new pro-Trump appointees installed at the FBI were combing through internal employee files to find lists that identified employees as LGBTQ.
DOJ Pride, an LGBTQ employee resource group at the Department of Justice, shut down in late January, less than 10 days after Trump signed an executive order seeking to root out all diversity, equity and inclusion measures from the federal government.
The group “ceased to operate effective immediately,” DOJ Pride’s board wrote in an email sent to members at the time.
“In this time of uncertainty and concern, we have taken the extraordinary measure of ceasing operations of DOJ Pride,” the message said. “We have made this decision in the interest and for the protection of all members.”
The email, which was shared then with NBC News by two DOJ staffers, thanked members for their “understanding during this time” and expressed hope that the group could “rebuild in the future.”
The FBI’s firing of a trainee for displaying a gay pride flag on his desk last year came as more than a dozen federal agency websites trumpeted that the “radical left” had caused the government shutdown.
October 4, 1976 Earl Butz resigned as President Gerald Ford’s agriculture secretary with an apology for what he called the “gross indiscretion” of uttering a racist remark.
October 4, 1997 Demonstrations across the country occurred protesting the scheduled launch of the space probe Cassini because its power source was three plutonium-fueled Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators.The probe carried 72.3 pounds of plutonium, the most ever put on a device to be launched into space. The concern was for an accidental release in the event of a launch mishap. Plutonium is the most toxic substance known. “It is so toxic,” says Helen Caldicott, president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, “that less than one-millionth of a gram is a carcinogenic dose. One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on Earth.” The Risk of Cassini Probe Plutonium An interview with Dr. Caldicott
Hi, there. I bet everyone who reads and writes here, is unhappy and at least a little apprehensive about the state of the USA. Everywhere we turn, there is another story of an illegal and outrageous action that our current administration has ordered our government to perform. So, I’m also certain I’m not the only one who feels the USA is in living nightmare territory. And then, we being who we are, we are also informed as to how the entire planet is undergoing increasing violence to itself and to people everywhere. Meanwhile, all that could be dissonant with our immediate surroundings, which increases the anxiety and/or whichever symptom/s we may have going.
For instance, while Ollie and I were outside playing this evening, we heard a great deal of “show-offy” driving in our area. Tonight’s high school game is Homecoming, which is celebrated by the town for a couple of days prior to the game, then the students get their celebration during half-time and after the game. Some of those students I had when they were kindergarteners and up, in the after-schools where I worked. Also, many alumnae have their reunions over Homecoming weekend. Fall Fest happens tomorrow and Sunday morning. Among other things, there are apple cider slushies at Fall Fest! So there is more traffic, and the younger people drive as if they’re Masters of the Universe (some of the old guys, if they have a muscle car to show off, drive just like that, too!) A person can almost forget about everything negative except hoping that no one is injured in the game, and that no one drives impaired tonight. A nice, relaxing evening, going into the night.
Then the other reality comes that some of the people who are here will not have a job to work on Monday, or a student won’t have a para, a nurse’s aide will be overworked and underpaid, and so on. Some of it due to the federal shutdown, or shutdown “related” cuts, some due to cuts that have been ongoing since January. Prices are still high; my own city has not cut services but has not replaced personnel who have moved on, so services are affected negatively for people who live here; more cities than not have done the same. It’s always something, everywhere. It’s a lot, and it’s overwhelming. And there are still the good and nice things happening within miles of us, or next door, or our own homes, too. It’s enough to explode a head!
So I thought I’d write in. None of us is alone. Everyone is at least stressed, so first, I want to check on people, see how you’re doing, see if you want to vent in comments, or ask questions, or share whatever you care to share. I know it’s a little late, at least on the East coast, but, well, this’ll be here all weekend.
I’ll share a little bit of a way to maybe work with/around what’s happening in everyone’s world. There is a saying: “Do small things with great love.” It may sound too easy, but it’s really not-it’s exactly what we all need: to show love and show how to show love so that everyone catches a ripple and does it, too. Most of us can do little if anything about the world-wide violence, but waving at our neighbor, offering a hello at the store or someplace, and simply smiling at people while looking at them will make a difference. And doing these things is actually being part of the resistance. Love is the ultimate resistance!
Finally, interestingly, when we do small things with great love, it’s almost as if someone did that for us, too, even if they really didn’t! It’s amazing how it works, but it does.
So, I hope everyone rests easily tonight, and gets some early sunshine when we get up. Enjoy the view at a local river side, and some chalk art I did during the pandemic.
I just read how Pete Hegseth has decided that the best military in the world is “too woke and not male enough to have the warrior ethos”. He wants a military modeled off the 1940 model with all male white straight cis people. A few women in the offices are OK but none of that integrated military that Eisenhower did, whites and blacks serve in different military units and of course now being Christian is going to be a new requirement. I don’t know if Hegseth is paid by Russians or if his Christian nationalism is causing him to idealize the very Russian military propaganda of a male only hyper aggressive military … the same military that has been getting its ass kicked in the Russian war against Ukraine. We are witnessing the dismantling of 80 plus years of integration and what made the US military so powerful. Think of how warfare is done today. With drones and weapons that reach targets over the horizons. You don’t need to be a Rambo for those tasks. I worked in a satellite intel unit. We were not really soldiers. When I was in the Navy we did not have the requirements for PT that the Army did, but we were still as deadly or even more so. This fixation of purging the military of the LGBTQ+ and female members is destroying what makes our military so great. Ask countries that have those people in their military like Israel! Their LGBTQ+ and female members are just effective as the men. But it doesn’t fit with the Christian Nationalist identity that Hegseth and his ilk are trying to push the US into.
Recently the heritage foundation pushed the idea of a trans terrorist idealization that was behind the public shootings and they used faked data that they created to prove their point. It is all to further the push of theirs to make the US a Christian Theocracy where only the biblical pairings they consider hole to be accepted. But in truth the bible allows for a male to have as many sexual partners as he wishes and only constrains the females from having sex with anyone but their husbands or their owners. The entire Christian teachings these people push is constriction for females and complete freedom for males on the issue of sex and marriage. Hugs
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly preparing to categorize transgender people as “violent extremists,” a categorization supported by organizations affiliated with Project 2025.
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According to a September 18 report by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, two anonymous national security officials said that the Bureau is discussing treating trans subjects as a subset of its new threat category, “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” (NVEs), which was created earlier this year. The Bureau defines “Nihilistic Violent Extremism” as “criminal conduct… in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos.”
Officials said that such a classification would give the Trump administration “political (and media) cover” as they escalate their anti-trans campaign in the aftermath of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk’s death.
“They are cynically targeting trans people because the shooter’s lover was trans,” an unnamed senior intelligence official told Klippenstein. “The administration has convinced itself that the Charlie Kirk murder exposes some dark conspiracy.”
Last week, the false claim that there were “transgender” engravings on the bullets that suspect Tyler Robinson allegedly used to shoot Kirk began circulating widely, boosted by anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives like Rep. Nancy Mace and Steven Crowder. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox later confirmed that there was “no indication that the ammunition included transgender references.” On Sunday, Cox told Meet the Press that Robinson was allegedly in a romantic relationship with a roommate who is trans, providing no additional public corroborating data or information of the roommate’s gender. The authorities have stipulated the roommate has been cooperating with the investigation and was not aware of the shooting prior to its occurrence.
Despite no evidence linking an alleged trans roommate to Robinson’s motivation for shooting Kirk, right-wingers are nevertheless attempting to use this detail to push an anti-trans agenda. In a petition launched on Thursday, the Heritage Foundation — the far-right think tank behind the derided and controversial Project 2025 — and its spin-off group, the Oversight Project, asked the FBI to designate “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” (TIVE) as a domestic terrorism threat category.
The group defines “TIVE” as “the belief that violence is justified against people who oppose [the trans community],” as well as the belief that opposing trans rights “itself constitutes a form of violence towards people who identify as [trans or gender nonconforming]… or poses an imminent threat to such persons’ emotional, psychological, or physical safety, including through self-harm or suicide.”
As The Independent noted, if such a category is adopted by the FBI, it could be applied to rhetoric used by activists, writers, and allies speaking out against anti-trans policies and rhetoric.
At least a dozen hoaxes have claimed trans people were responsible for mass shootings and other incidents since 2012.In reality, there is no evidence suggesting significant patterns of violence committed by trans people. In 2024, The Gun Violence Archive’s Executive Director, Mark Bryant, said that out of 5,000 mass shootings tracked by the archive, the number of trans or LGBTQ+ suspects is in “the single digit numbers.”
This is what the culture hate warriors want here in the US. They saw what Putin did in Russia and what Victor Orbán did in Hungary. They used the idea of protecting children to limit representation of LGBTQ+ people in society, then they moved it up the war against that community to erase it based on it was an attack on families. The question you need to ask why is family threatened by including same-sex couples as a family? What makes that family unit an attack on families? In their mind it is twofold, one in their mind it doesn’t produce its own offspring and also it offends tradition / religious tradition. We must never change what was done in the past forever in the minds of those who preach the way to live from a book written centuries ago as they read it on their new smartphone. We must find a way to stop this big money steam rolling over personal civil rights to install fundamental religious dictates on how everyone lives in the US. There are those who believe just admitting and allowing LGBTQ+ people to exist is promoting it. Is admitting and showing red hair people exist promoting red hair? Hugs
The council claimed the content “promotes homosexuality,” “disregards family values,” and “conflicts with the shared values of society.”
A scene from “Cobalt Blue”
Turkey’s media regulator has imposed fines on five international streaming platforms and ordered the removal of several films and series, citing violations of “national and moral values.”
The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) announced the penalties following inspections conducted under the government’s “Year of the Family” initiative. According to the regulator, the inspections aimed to “protect children from harmful content” and “combat productions that threaten the Turkish family structure and shared societal values.”
RTÜK fined the platforms the maximum penalty allowed, amounting to 3% of their annual revenues in Turkey. The decision affects Disney+, Prime Video, Netflix, HBO Max, and MUBI.
Among the targeted content are All of Us Strangers on Disney+, Those About To Die on Prime Video, Cobalt Blue on Netflix, Looking: The Movie on HBO Max, and Benedetta on MUBI.
The council claimed the content “promotes homosexuality,” “disregards family values,” and “conflicts with the shared values of society.” It did not elaborate on the specific scenes or themes that led to the sanctions.
Under Article 32 of Law No. 6112, RTÜK is authorized to impose several administrative measures on broadcasting entities. These include warnings, suspension of programming, and fines. The council can also enforce temporary broadcast bans and revoke broadcasting licenses. (HA/VK)
Scottie's Playtime 