How American Aid Sites in Gaza are Killing Palestinians

For me this was the hardest to watch. I have had to go without food while others ate. I was hospitalized and suffered clinical death due to malnutrition. At the table if I was allowed the meals could turn quickly for me from possible danger to happening harm. I spent a lot of time diving under the table to doge something thrown at me or in dodging the blows aimed at me. Being kicked under the table was common and if I yelped or complained I was the one punished. I learned to eat without looking at my food always looking around out the sides of my eyes because to look scared brought more violence. I was told I ruined their meals. I often could only choke a few bites out of fear and anxiety. I basically ate one meal a day which was at school and mostly was two hot dogs and a serving of french fries, and when school was out I would take a sandwich and stay away from the house. The only place I could eat freely and in peace was my grandparent’s home I went to on the weekends. What these people are going through is a war crime and a crime against humanity that the government of Israel and the military people must answer for. Never again applies to more than Jewish people. Hugs

Bright Lights In The Dark

I read about this in a few places yesterday, then last night, Joyce Vance’s came in, so here it is. She’s expert and dependable. -A.

No Bill! by Joyce Vance

The Good News You Need Read on Substack

When a grand jury returns an indictment, it’s called a true bill. On those exceedingly rare occasions where they decline to sign off on an indictment prosecutors present to them, it’s called a no bill. In 25 years at DOJ, I never had a grand jury no bill one of my cases. And I can only recall a couple of instances where it happened in the entire district.

Donald Trump’s new U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia can’t say that. Former judge, Fox News host, and defendant in a defamation case where she is accused of spreading false information about voter fraud, Jeanine Pirro, recently received three no bills—all in the same case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office tried to charge Sydney Lori Reid with felony assault on three separate occasions this month, but the grand jury declined to do so. CNN reports that “In one case this month — related to an FBI agent and an immigration officer allegedly scrapping with a detainee — the federal grand jury in Washington voted ‘no’ three times.”

Proceedings inside of the grand jury are conducted in secret, so there is no way of knowing why the grand jury rejected the charge. Typically, if a grand jury expresses some hesitation over a case, prosecutors will bring in additional witnesses or offer counsel about relevant laws to help alleviate their concerns. To fail to indict not once, but three times, indicates a failure of both competence and judgment.

When asked about her failure, Pirro responded, “Sometimes a jury will buy it and sometimes they won’t. So be it, that’s the way the process works.” But that’s not true. The standard for obtaining an indictment is a low one: The prosecution need only persuade the grand jury that probable cause to proceed on the charges exists. That’s a far lower bar than the requirement that the government prove a crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt before a trial jury can convict. Any prosecutor who doesn’t back off of a case where they can’t even convince grand jurors that probable cause exists, knowing that much more will be expected of them at trial, is wasting taxpayer resources. Prosecutors have plenty of cases. Move on and do a righteous one. But apparently, that’s not how the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office operates these days.

Prosecutors, who have 30 days following an arrest like Reid’s to obtain an indictment, told a judge they now plan to bring misdemeanor charges against Reid. Misdemeanor charges can be brought by prosecutors without the need to present them to a grand jury for approval. But we already know at least some of the facts in the case, because a statement of facts was filed in support of the arrest warrant.

The affidavit alleges that Reid assaulted FBI agent Eugenia Bates. Reid was video recording agents outside of the D.C. jail, where at least two individuals were being arrested as “known gang members” and transferred into ICE custody. Reid was directed to step back, and according to the affidavit, she “got in Officer Lang’s face.” He said she smelled of alcohol and tried to interfere with the transfer of custody. According to the government, an officer pushed her against a wall, but she continued to struggle after being told to stop.

Here’s the heart of the allegation against Reid: “Agent Bates came to Office[r] Lang’s assistance in trying to control REID. REID was flailing her arms and kicking and had to be pinned against a cement wall. During the struggle, REID forcefully pushed Agent Bates’s hand against the cement wall. This caused lacerations on the back side of Agent Bates’s left hand.”

To convict on the federal felony assault charge, the government would have to establish that Reid forcibly assaulted a federal agent. A “forcible assault” is an intentional threat or attempt to cause serious bodily injury by a person who has the apparent ability to do so, including any intentional display of force that would cause a reasonable person to expect immediate and serious bodily harm or death. The statement of facts alleges that Reid “intentionally and forcibly obstructed the transfer of suspects into FBI custody and made physical contact with FBI Agent Eugenia Bates and inflicted bodily injury in violation.” The grand jury didn’t buy, despite having three opportunities to do so, that there was probable cause, let alone proof beyond a reasonable doubt, to believe that some or all of that happened.

The lacerations, which were pictured in the statement of facts and presumably shown to the grand jury, seem relatively minor. And it’s difficult to see, at least with this statement of the facts, how a grand jury could conclude, as it must, that Reid was the cause of those “lacerations” or even acting voluntarily when they happened. Assuming they could prove all of that, even small cuts like these could hypertechnically constitute assault. But it’s easy to imagine a grand jury viewing charging it as a felony as overreaching.

Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan will hold a hearing in the matter on Thursday morning at 11:30.

The grand jury process still works as a check and balance on prosecutors, as the Constitution intends. Trump may want you to think he’s all-powerful, but guardrails are still in place. His administration can’t bring felony charges without a grand jury’s approval, an important protection not just for Ms. Reid but for others, as DOJ’s portfolio of revenge investigations continues to grow.

We talked previously about a grand jury in Los Angeles that declined to indict. Now, it’s spread to D.C. And grand juries are only the first layer of guardrails in the criminal justice system, where they are joined by trial juries, judges, and the appellate process.

You’ve heard the line—the one that says prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich, that it’s just that easy. Next stop in D.C., seeing whether they can indict a Subway sandwich. They should think twice after their experience in Ms. Reid’s case with bringing marginal prosecutions to please the president. That’s not justice.

(snip)

We’re in this together,

Joyce

W.E.B. DuBois, & The Peace Torch in Peace & Justice History For 8/27

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august27

‘Gates of Hell’: Chris Smalls Describes Israeli Military’s Brutal, Racist Treatment

IL Gov. JB Pritzker Speaks For Many Of We The People

Kinda thinkin’ of moving to Chicago. I still have some relatives around there; not to live with, but that I know people who know me.

Video is embedded on the page, for those who prefer to watch/listen.

Full text of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s speech at news conference on reported Trump military plan for Chicago

By CBS Chicago Team Updated on: August 26, 2025 / 9:16 AM CDT / CBS Chicago

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker spoke at a news conference Monday afternoon, addressing reports President Trump is planning to send the military to Chicago. Here is the full text of his remarks.

I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.

Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against, and it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.

What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.

No one from the White House or the executive branch has reached out to me or to the mayor. No one has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be helpful to us. Local law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no requests for federal intervention. None.

We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did: We read a story in The Washington Post.

If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police?

Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.

This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.

There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no inter- insurrection. There is no insurrection. Like every major American city in both blue and red states, we deal with crime in Chicago. Indeed, the violent crime rate is worse in red states and red cities.

Here in Chicago, our civilian police force and elected leaders work every day to combat crime and to improve public safety, and it’s working.

Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor can that be said of any major American metro area. But calling the military into a U.S. city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of everyday people is an extraordinary action, and it should require extraordinary justification.

Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Look at this. Go talk to the people of Chicago who are enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in this city. Ask the families buying ice cream on the Riverwalk. Go see the students who are at the beach after school. Talk to the workers that I just met taking the water taxi to get here. Find a family who’s enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator. Ask if they’d like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school.

Crime is a reality we all face in this country. Public safety has been among our highest priorities since taking office. We have hired more police and given them more funding.

We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stocks, and high-capacity magazines. We invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs. We listened to our local communities, to the people who live and work in the places that are most affected by crime and asked them what they needed to help make their neighborhoods safer.

Those strategies have been working. Crime is dropping in Chicago. Murders are down 32% compared to last year and nearly cut in half since 2021.

Shootings are down 37% since last year, and 57% from four years ago. Robberies are down 34% year over year. Burglaries down 21%. Motor vehicle thefts down 26%.

So in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump’s military occupations, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago.

Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.

Memphis, Tennessee; Hattiesburg, Mississippi have higher crime rates than Chicago, and yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there? Ask yourself why.

If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans, would not be cutting over $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally, including cutting $158 million in funding to Illinois for violence prevention programs that deploy trained outreach workers to deescalate conflict on our streets. Cutting $71 million in law enforcement grants to Illinois, direct money for police departments through programs like Project Safe Neighborhoods, the state and local Antiterrorism Training Program, and the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, cutting $137 million in child protection measures in Illinois that protect our kids against abuse and neglect.

Trump is defunding the police.

To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.

This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president’s actions.

Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidence, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.

Look at the people assembled before you today, behind me. This is a full cross-section of Chicago’s leaders from the business world, the faith community, law enforcement, education, community organizations, and more. We sometimes disagree on how to effectively solve the many challenges that our state and our city face on a daily basis. But today, we are standing here united, in public, in front of the cameras, unafraid to tell the president that his proposed actions will make our jobs harder and the lives of our residents worse.

Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, “Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?” Instead, I say, “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.”

You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.

Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever-more-alarming grabs for power.

As a governor, I’ve had to make the decision in the past to call up members of the National Guard into active service, and I think it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on how seriously I take that responsibility, and on the many things that I consider before asking these brave men and women to leave their homes and their communities to serve in any capacity for us.

As I’ve said many times in the past, members of the National Guard are not trained to serve as law enforcement. They are trained for the battlefield, and they’re good at it. They’re not trained to arrest people and read them their Miranda rights. They did not sign up for the National Guard to fight crime. And when we call them into service, we are reaching into local communities and taking people who have jobs and families away from their neighborhoods and the people who rely upon them.

It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the Guard to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.

I know Donald Trump doesn’t care about the well-being of the members of our military, but I do and so do all the people standing here.

So let me speak to all Illinoisans and to all Chicagoans right now. Hopefully the president will reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city’s sovereignty. Hopefully rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days. If not, we are going to face an unprecedented and difficult time ahead.

But I know you Chicago, and I know you are up to it. When you protest, do it peacefully. Be sure to continue Chicago’s long tradition of nonviolent resistance. Remember that the members of the military and the National Guard who will be asked to walk these streets are, for the most part, here unwillingly. And remember that they can be court martialed and their lives ruined if they resist deployment. Look to the members of the faith community standing behind me today for guidance on how to mobilize.

To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your National Guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people, you would be failing your constituents and your country. Cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.

The State of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever at our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.

Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names.

This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.

You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.

As Dr. King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Humbly I would add, it doesn’t bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.

Trump’s Epstein Coverup On Full Display During Maxwell Interview

Israel’s Latest War Crime Caught On Camera

ICE’s Homan Spews Nonstop Lies And Baseless Accusations

Women’s Equality Day, Samantha Smith, & So Very Much More, in Peace & Justice History for 8/26

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august26

Catching Up With Clay Jones

Cracker Cancel Culture by Clay Jones

What will MAGA World be upset about next? Read on Substack

Cracker Barrel, the restaurant that does to down-home southern cooking what Olive Garden does to Italian food, has changed its logo from one boring image to a new boring image…and White people are upset. Seriously, they’re upset.

It’s like that time Sexy M&M ditched her Go-Go boots and Tucker Carlson had to find something new to envision while spending “quality time” with himself. Or, it’s like that time Aunt Jemima was removed from syrup bottles and old White conservatives had to find something else to get sticky with. That reminds me, do you put syrup in the fridge after you open it? I saw that on the TV show Mom (Alison Janney is the shit) last night, and I was like, “whaaaaaaa?” I always thought putting syrup in the fridge made it all stiffy. OK, I’ll get off this gross roll here and continue writing about these wankers. (snip-MORE and it is good)

Cheat To Win by Clay Jones

Republicans cheat Read on Substack

The New York Times reported that the Democratic Party is losing voters, and lost over 2.1 million between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states and Washington, DC that allow voters to register by party. Republicans, on the other han,d picked up over 2.4 million. There are still more Democrats registered nationwide, but the gap between the two parties is shrinking.

This is a fact. Don’t say it’s a fake poll like a MAGA would, because denying it isn’t how you fix it. And yeah, I get it. It’s as confusing as why anyone would choose Trump over Kamala Harris.

The truth is, too many people in this nation don’t care. (snip-MORE)

New Schools and Bathroom Rules by Clay Jones

Linda McMahon wants to see your bathroom Read on Substack

This cartoon was drawn for the FXBG Advance.

The Advance wrote this to go with today’s cartoon: Fredericksburg City Schools had a tough summer (well, the School Board did, anyway), but there were some good things this year, like the opening of two new schools. What could possibly go wrong? Well, when the new U.S. Education Secretary’s experience for the job is being able to distinguish a Camel Clutch from a Cobra Clutch, and her idea of a towering academic intellectual is Hulk Hogan, a lot. Yes, the Trump Administration specializes in hiring — how should I put this kindly — less-than-smart people to lead federal agencies. So rather than ‘rassling’ with serious education issues, we spend our time banning every book with a black face on it and having freak-outs about bathrooms. Yeah, that’s gonna make America great. Just ask Clay Jones.

Linda McMahon and the Education Department are going after five schools in Northern Virginia over bathrooms. (snip-MORE)

Newsom Nuisance by Clay Jones

Gavin Newsom is trolling Trump Read on Substack

California Governor Gavin Newsom has been trolling Donald Trump, or at least his press office has. It’s being done in the style of Trump. The tweets coming from Newsom’s account are mimicking Trump’s style, as in stupid, praising himself, belittling in a juvenile way, full of narcissism, and often in all caps.

Here’s one tweeted out after Trump’s press conference with Putin:

TRUMP JUST FLED THE PODIUM WITH PUTIN — NO QUESTIONS, NOTHING! TOTAL LOW ENERGY. THE MAN LOOKED LIKE HE’D JUST EATEN 3 BUCKETS OF KFC WITH VLAD. IS HE AFRAID THE PRESS WILL ASK ABOUT ME??? (AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR) AND THE FACT I “STOLE THE CAMERAS” THIS WEEK WITH “THE MAPS”? MANY PEOPLE ARE SAYING HE BEGGED PUTIN TO HOLD HIS HANDS (TINY) ON THE WAY OUT. ADMIT IT, DONNIE J… YOU’RE TERRIFIED BECAUSE THIS WAS THE WORST WEEK OF YOUR LIFE BECAUSE OF ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM. “THE MAPS” WILL END YOUR PRESIDENCY, RETAKE CONGRESS FOR THE PEOPLE, AND EXPOSE YOUR RIGGED “LITTLE GAME.”

Now that’s funny, and it’s very effective. Proof of that is Fox News host Dana Perino’s reaction, saying, “Stop it with the Twitter thing! I don’t know where his wife is. (snip-MORE)