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.
————————————————————————————————————–
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.
During the same week as the president’s address to Congress, RepresentWomen held our annual Democracy Solutions Summit (DSS). This solutions-oriented event allowed us to imagine what our democracy could look like with better policies and better representation.
Here, women leaders, elected officials, advocates and experts discussed the problems facing our democracy and uplifted actionable solutions to improve women’s representation and strengthen our democracy overall. This year’s summit addressed the critical need for more women in local, state and federal leadership roles.
The Democracy Solutions Summit clearly contrasts with the uncertainty of Trump’s address to Congress. The DSS is the only democracy summit featuring only women speakers and panelists committed to actionable, data-driven solutions and building coalitions that bolster American democracy at this critical time. Furthermore, our research has found that when multiple structural solutions are combined, we can bolster women’s representation in every level of government.
Complete recordings of the summit are available online, but here is a quick recap of all three days. (snip-More)
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.
March 26, 1966 Over 50,000 marched peacefully in the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade in New York City. They were part of the second International Days of Protest with marches in several cities in North America. Fifth Avenue anti-Vietnam War demonstration photo: Robert Parent Early efforts opposing the war in Vietnam
March 26, 1979 In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed a peace agreement they had worked out with the assistance of President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, the U.S. president’s rural retreat. The agreement ended three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel, establishing diplomatic and commercial ties. The two countries have remained at peace for 40 years. Less than two years earlier, in an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Sadat had traveled to Jerusalem to seek a permanent peace settlement with Egypt’s Jewish neighbor. Coverage by the BBC
March 26, 1986 The Oklahoma Supreme Court (Post v. State of Oklahoma) upheld a ruling that an Oklahoma anti-sodomy law could not be constitutionally applied to private, consensual activity.
March 26, 2003 Over one million students in Spain went on strike in opposition to their government’s support of the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq. The demonstration in Barcelona
(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.”
with lots to read and to think about. Also an interesting video and transcript of an interview with Nate Vance. Have a nice beverage, and take in a longer read/watch.
March 24, 1616 William Leddra was executed by the Charter government of Massachusetts for being a Quaker. He was the fourth and last of his religion to be hanged with the approval of Governor John Endicott. Though the court did not find him “evil,” he had sympathized with the Quakers who were executed before him; he had refused to remove his hat, and he used the words “thee” and “thou,” which, to Quakers, implied the equality of all people. (Check out the way the link works for this. Much better than the terrible transcription I read the other day.-Newsletter author) Contemporaneous letter describing Leddra’s and other Quakers’ persecution (starts p.58) =========================================== March 24, 1918 Native-born Canadian women over 21 (except native, or First Nations, women) won the right to vote in federal elections, but not to run for office for yet another year. Suffrage was not granted to women in Quebec provincial elections until 1940. Read about Thérèse Casgrain =========================================== March 24, 1964 In a sit-down against nuclear weapons at Parliament Square in London, England, 1,172 were arrested. ============================================ March 24, 1965 The first Teach-In on the Vietnam War was held at the University of Michigan a month after President Lyndon Johnson ordered bombing of North Vietnam. The U-M teach-in was among the first of a new form of campus protest that was to spread nationwide, as a means of mobilizing students to examine policies of their government that they previously had taken for granted. About the 1st Teach-In view original leaflets Very few Americans had ever heard of the country in southeast Asia, and the event was intended to educate the participants in the history of Vietnam and foreign aggression there. Young protester in Chicago march, photo Jo Freeman ============================================= March 24, 1967 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led an anti-war march for the first time in Chicago, opposing the Vietnam War by saying: “Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtains down on our national drama . . . Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation The bombs in Vietnam explode at home—they destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America . . . .” Reverend King addresses rally at the end of the Chicago march, photo: Jo Freeman ============================================== March 24, 1980 The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was founded, electing as their first president Olga Madar, a vice president of the United Auto Workers. The convention adopted four goals: organize the unorganized; promote affirmative action; increase women’s participation in their unions; and increase women’s participation in political and legislative activities. CLUW history CLUW today ============================================= March 24, 1980 The archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was assassinated while consecrating the Eucharist during mass. Monseñor Romero had become a well-known critic of violence and injustice and, as such, was perceived in the right-wing civilian and military circles of El Salvador as an enemy, and criticized by the Roman Catholic church. Romero had exhorted the police and soldiers to disobey orders to kill innocent people, refusing to be silenced. Worshippers had interrupted, with ovations, his homilies condemning the terrorism of the state. The ongoing legacy of Monsignor Romero (The Fransiscans have scrubbed him away. Here’s another place to read about him) ============================================== March 24, 1989 The most environmentally damaging oil spill to date began when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, ran aground on Bligh Reef in southern Alaska’s Prince William Sound. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil (257,000 barrels or 38,800 metric tons) eventually leaked into the water.Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil nearly 500 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 1300 miles of coastline. Hundreds of thousands of birds and thousands of sea mammals were lost in the disaster. A dead murrelet, one of the hardest-hit sea birds in the Valdez spill. 25 years after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, read more
Mother Jones, c. 1910, marching in Trinidad, Colo. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # MMS Kerr Archives.
On March 22, 1914, Mary “Mother” Jones was arrested on a train in southern Colorado for her work in fighting for the coal miners on strike that area. This was her second arrest in this conflict, as she had previously been detained by the state militia in Trinidad and then sent to Denver. Upon release in Denver, she immediately went back to the coal fields, daring the mine owners and their bought police forces to arrest her again. Her work here was typical of the sacrifices this iconic organizer made in the second half of her life as she fought for the miners so badly exploited in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America.
Mother Jones is one of the most fascinating characters in American history. An Irish housewife who had little connection to political activism for much of her adult life, she emerged in middle age as a fiery agitator after her husband and all four of her children died of yellow fever in Memphis and her dress shop burned in the Chicago fire of 1871. She quickly became the voice of the mineworkers, especially in the coal country of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. She bridged generations of activism, being extremely close friends with Terence Powderly while also hailing the rise of the United Mine Workers and radical activists that Powderly could barely understand at his peak in the 1880s. She said she was much older than she actually was, which had both rhetorical powers and helped cement her in our historical memory, as she claimed to be 100 years old the year she died when in fact she was probably 93.
By 1897, she was known as Mother Jones, wearing out of style Victorian black dresses and using the mantle of motherhood as central to her organizing prowess. Calling her “mother” both established her as a maternal figure among the miners but also centered her emphasis on childhood and motherhood in organizing. For instance, she opposed women’s suffrage and ultimately believed that women should be taking care of their children rather than getting involved in politics. Her own life story made this stance not hypocritical. She also used children in her organizing, including the 1903 Children’s Crusade, a march of miners’ children from Pennsylvania to Theodore Roosevelt’s home in Oyster Bay, New York, where the children carried signs reading, “We want to go to School and not the mines.” Roosevelt refused to meet with them. She worked for the UMWA but attended the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 and worked as an organizer for the Socialist Party in the late 1900s, returning to the UMWA as a paid organizer in 1911.
Though all of these actions, Mother Jones became known as “the most dangerous woman in America,” a title given to her by a district attorney in West Virginia named Reese Blizzard. During a 1902 trial where she was charged with ignoring injunctions against miners holding union meetings (First Amendment in the coal fields indeed!), Blizzard pointed at her, saying, “There sits the most dangerous woman in America. She comes into a state where peace and prosperity reign … crooks her finger [and] twenty thousand contented men lay down their tools and walk out.” That wasn’t true and served the interests of the owners to say that their employees were actually good people but stupid and easily led astray by outside agitators, instead of admitting their employees had a bloody good reason to go on strike. Anyway, the nickname stuck and this attitude from employers was something Jones reveled in.
In the fall of 1913, Mother Jones traveled to Colorado to participate in mineworkers’ organizing in the coal fields in the southern part of that state. Conditions in the coal fields were all too typical of the time: complete industry control over a workforce that was polyglot and desperate. Working conditions were horribly dangerous. Between 1884 and 1912, 1,708 workers died in Colorado coal mines (over 42,000 nationwide). Companies controlled not only the mines but housing, stores, and education. Union organizing was met with brutality and murder. Effectively, the coal companies controlled workers’ lives in Colorado as they did in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. These were Mother Jones’s people.
The companies did not welcome Jones’s presence. She was thrown off company property several times. She was arrested twice. After the first arrest, she was placed in a comfortable hospital for a month. After all, she was an elderly woman and a bit harder to crack the whip on than the miners themselves. But on March 22, 1914, she was arrested again. This time, the companies were less kind. They threw her into the Huerfano County jail in Walsenburg. This was no nice hospital. She spent 23 days in the jail.
The United Mine Workers tried to capitalize on Jones’s arrest. They issued a pamphlet describing (and perhaps exaggerating a bit) the conditions this old woman had to suffer through as she lived her faith of defending the miners. The pamphlet discussed the filth, the rats in the cell, the snow pouring in a broken window, a guard jabbing her with a bayonet. On the other hand, the mine owners and their friends accused Mother Jones of having been a prostitute in a Denver brothel in 1904 and said her support for Coxey’s Army had consisted of procuring women for sex. On both sides, Mother Jones elicited strong opinions.
After her second release, Mother Jones went to Washington DC to testify on the conditions in the coal country. A few days later, the Colorado coal wars would see their most violent incident, with the Ludlow Massacre. Between Ludlow and the aftermath when enraged miners went on a rampage against anyone associated with the coal companies, up to 200 people died in this strike, possibly the most deadly in American history. John D. Rockefeller Jr. agreed to meet with her about the conditions of the miners as part of his public relations effort when he was savagely attacked for his role at Ludlow.
Mary Jones died in 1930. Earlier that year, on the day she supposedly turned 100, Mother Jones was filmed with sound about workers’ rights.
FURTHER READING:
Elliott Gorn’s The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
Thomas Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.
Scottie's Playtime 