even though I get some good giggles from them, but so many mostly use them for opinion over fact. However I knew this one needs to be here.
(WP won’t load or paste; it’s a little blue box about the state of existence of the US Congress. It’s shorter than this sentence, and you simply must see it!)
Well, never mind; WordPress doesn’t like it, I guess. I’m reading a substack called The F—–g News, and it’s there. Here’s where to go to read today’s effing news, and see the meme that WordPress doesn’t like. There is lots of news there, as well, both regular (bad,) and good news.
There was little warning. Officers tumbled into the newsroom all at once, guns drawn, shouting into the common spaces. In the kitchen, someone was in the middle of drawing an espresso; overflowing coffee and steam began to drip onto the floor. Then, there was silence as the men took tactical positions in corridors and cubicles, opening closed doors and forcing the occupants of privacy rooms onto the main floor.
They lined up the editors first, zip tying their hands together and leading them into vans downstairs. Then they began to gather the rest of the journalists. Laptops were gathered from desks. The server room, such as it was in the wake of zero trust and enterprise cloud services, had its door kicked in, switches and rack servers ripped out of their frames. One IT support engineer objected and found a gun in his face, the safety off, its owner ready to make them into an example.
The people of color were led into one van; the white journalists into another. All were driven away.
The newsroom’s infrastructure was decommissioned that same day. The website was taken offline. Email accounts and cloud storage were trespassed, their contents downloaded for rapid analysis by the authorities using some central AI system; maybe Palantir, maybe something else.
Ostensibly, there would be a trial. In reality, everyone knew, the point was the intimidation, the unpublishing, the detainment of the people responsible for criticism. There was no time for due process, the administration argued. Across newsrooms, universities, activist organizations, there were too many people. As the newsroom sat chained to their seats, being driven to some incarceration center somewhere, they wondered how long it would be before their families knew. How long before the remote journalists were picked up in similar ways, perhaps in front of their children, their homes trashed.
It didn’t take long for the authorities to gain access to the devices they had taken. They forced journalists to open their phones and laptops at gunpoint; they’d all been trained not to use biometric IDs, that nobody could force them to provide their passwords and PINs, but none of that matters when you have a weapon in your face. The hard drives, though encrypted, were unlocked and accessed, the data on them cloned.
They expected to find source information: the identities of people within the government who had leaked information about detainment sites and immigration enforcement activities.
They found nothing.
The files were all gone. The emails were all redacted. The devices were as good as empty.
And no matter what they did, no matter who they threatened, nobody could restore them. Not a single member of the newsroom gave up their private information.
They couldn’t.
And for all they did to bring the website down, they couldn’t stop the journalism. There was no way to take it offline. Within moments, other newsrooms seemed to have become aware of the raid, and were pointing to the articles. Interest had increased, not decreased.
The newsroom had planned for this.
For months, all its journalism had been mirrored elsewhere. It had always been available under a Creative Commons license for anyone to republish for free — a model pioneered by ProPublica and then followed by The 19th, Grist, The Marshall Project and more, which this newsroom had used for years. But in that model, another outlet needed to choose to republish an individual article.
In contrast, this new active mirroring left nothing to chance. An independent group in Switzerland intentionally syndicated all non-profit journalism onto its servers, located in Switzerland and subject to Swiss law, out of reach by the US administration. The pieces were also, after a time delay to account for post-publishing edits, syndicated to IPFS, the censorship-resistant peer-to-peer content delivery network. Together, these measures meant that it was impossible to fully redact American non-profit journalism in the public interest. The website was gone, but the articles lived on.
The group had another purpose. Beyond mirroring the newsroom’s articles, it had access to its cloud storage, its email accounts, its databases, its infrastructure. It maintained independent offsite backups of the site and every custom application, all in Switzerland. And most importantly, it had a kill switch.
When the newsroom was raided, monitoring systems in Switzerland noticed an anomaly and automatically shut down the newsroom’s systems within seconds. Email accounts and cloud storage were drained, information was locked down. Now, it was fully under their control: no-one in the US could compel them to restore it all.
Instead, two people in Switzerland, employed by a Swiss organization, needed to independently determine that it was safe to restore data. They sat in two separate clean, glass offices. To restore the data and systems, they would need to speak to the employees in the US, monitor the sensors and the security footage from the US offices, and make their own decision. If they did determine that it was safe, they would do so quickly, but it was their choice. They had full, independent authority to keep data from the newsroom until they could make that determination.
And in this case, they could not.
Because the newsroom used cloud services with zero trust, with data shared using the principle of least privilege, the seized laptops and servers contained very little usable information. Where they did contain local data, it was encrypted using keys that were kept in Switzerland and withheld with the rest of the cloud-hosted data. There was almost nothing that the authorities could use.
There were collaborators: people on the inside who provided information. Some did it because they truly believed in the administration’s cause; some simply wished to ingratiate themselves to power. Even they could not provide more access to the data; they could not lead authorities to sources or compromise the investigations of other newsrooms. In the event, they were not spared. They, too, rode in the van.
Word spread quickly. Details of the intrusion were saved to an indelible ledger of newsroom raids, violence against journalists, and other threats that was peered with newsrooms worldwide. Notifications were sent to leaders at partner newsrooms within seconds.
Those partner newsrooms — protected by similar remote kill switch with other, similar Swiss groups — were able to access source information that had been set aside in advance so that stories in progress could continue to be reported. Some of those newsrooms were in the US; some were in other countries, so that if every newsroom in the US was compromised, others would still be able to pick up the stories elsewhere.
The people in the van did not disappear. Their names, identities, and job titles were all recorded and broadcast to other newsrooms. There would be pressure for their release. Some of them were dual nationals or foreign citizens, and their respective governments would add to the pressure. It wasn’t going to be an easy road, but the truth would endure. Their sources remained safe. Their work could continue. And it would not be in vain.
Saturday was shattered by two mass shootings. The first, at Brown University in Rhode Island, happened as students prepared for exams. Two people were killed and nine injured. A “person of interest,” which is a law enforcement term that means someone law enforcement wants to speak with about a crime, but whom they are not yet prepared to charge, is in custody.
Frequently, a person of interest will evolve into a suspect. But tonight, there is news that individual has been released. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha explained that although there was “some degree of evidence” that pointed to a 24-year-old Wisconsin man who was detained Sunday morning, “that evidence needed to be corroborated and confirmed, and over the last 24 hours leading into just very, very recently, that evidence now points in a different direction.”
It’s important to give law enforcement the time it needs to do its job here, to ensure that all threats to the community are fully mitigated, and as much as possible is learned about what prompted the shooting, so victims can have closure.
What seems unimaginable to people who graduated before the epidemic of school shootings is all too real for this generation of students. Today is the anniversary of the deadliest school shooting in our history, at Sandy Hook Elementary school, where the shooter killed 26 people, 20 six- and seven-year-old children and six adults. The shooter killed his mother before he drove to Sandy Hook and took his own life as law enforcement arrived at the school.
This post on threads got it absolutely right:
The second shooting was a terrorist attack launched by two men against Jews celebrating Hanukkah at the beach in Sydney, Australia, another incident in a tide of rising antisemitism. The death toll continues to climb. The shooters took the lives of a beloved rabbi and at least 14 others who were at the event for families. A Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl were also among the victims. It seems impossible that this explanation needs to be offered, but increasingly, it is essential: killing innocent Jews does not help people in Gaza, if, indeed, that was the motivation here.
One point of light in the tragedy was the bravery of a local fruit shop owner, Ahmed El Ahmad, who ran towards the violence and snatched an enormous, long gun from the hands of one of the shooters. Ahmad was shot by the other terrorist and is recovering in hospital.
After this turbulent weekend, we head into a week that promises more chaos.
Judge Hannah Dugan’s Trial Starts Monday
After jury selection began late last week, trial gets underway for Wisconsin state Judge Hannah Dugan, who was indicted by the Justice Department last May for helping a noncitizen try to evade arrest by immigration authorities at the county courthouse where she sits, last April.
Judge Dugan’s capable lawyers will put on a solid defense. She has maintained she was simply trying to keep order in her courtroom and permitted the non-citizen to use one of the doors leading out of her courtroom that was less public, but that didn’t prevent agents and officers from accosting him. The message behind the indictment is clear: If they can arrest judges, no one is safe. And in the months since Duggan’s indictment, the administration has certainly expanded on it, indicting Kilmar Abrego Garcia on stale charges in apparent retaliation for his efforts to insist he was illegally deported and bringing now-failed indictments against a former FBI Director, Jim Comey, and current New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, whom Trump views as political enemies.
The good people of Wisconsin seem to understand this threat. They have been protesting even since the Judge was first detained.
We will follow the trial’s progress this week. Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. Central, we’ll be joined by legal reporter Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News, who will be in the courtroom this week and will join us to share what’s transpiring. Make sure you mark your calendars.
Friday, DOJ is required to release the Epstein Files
On the heels of House Democrats’ release of photographs from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate last week, the Justice Department has a deadline on Friday. This is the result of the law Congress overwhelmingly passed in mid-November to force the DOJ to release its files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Whether DOJ will comply is an entirely different matter. Trump demanded that his attorney general open an investigation into only Democrats whose names have surfaced. Bondi may well try to use that new investigation to block demands for release. We’ve already lived through a government shutdown, which seemed to be contrived at least partially to prevent the passage of the law requiring this disclosure and the record-breaking 50-day delay in swearing in newly elected Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva of Arizona. So it’s clear the administration is determined to protect the president from further disclosures like Friday’s photo of “Trump Condoms.”
Survivors deserve justice and the public demand for it is what’s driving the process here. Keep demanding.
But ultimately, if DOJ balks, that could require intervention in the courts and delay matters. Democrats, who are in the minority in both the Senate and the House, lack the ability to issue subpoenas to obtain further information from Epstein’s estate, information that could provide the source of and context for photos that were released last week and additional information like financial records and testimony from witnesses. A process like this is essential if there is going to be accountability for Epstein’s operation and the people who participated in it, benefited from it, and helped to conceal it. So it’s worth noting that Republicans currently hold a very slender majority in the House, which will narrow further with the departure of Marjorie Taylor Greene and perhaps others, even before the midterm election.
Control of the House likely determines whether the full files ever get released.
SCOTUS
The Court is done hearing oral arguments until it picks back up with them on January 12. But that doesn’t mean we might not hear from them in the form of decisions off of the shadow docket as we head into the holidays, with National Guard cases, among other issues, developing in multiple states.
Trump Excesses
This afternoon, Trump posted “Get Your TRUMP CARD today!” on Truth Social. It’s an advertisement for the so-called Trump Card, a golden ticket for those wealthy (and presumably white) enough to buy immigration status in the U.S.
Trump even helpfully added a link to where people could go to apply—on what’s being billed as “an official website of the U.S.” at trumpcard.gov
There are two options:
The Gold Card “For a $15,000 DHS processing fee* and, after background approval, a contribution of $1 million, receive U.S. residency in record time with the Trump Gold Card.”
The Platinum Card, billed as coming soon. “Foreign nationals can sign up now and secure their places on the waiting list for the Trump Platinum Card. When launched, and upon receipt of a $15,000 DHS processing fee and $5 million contribution, they will have the ability to spend up to 270 days in the United States without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income.”
The ick factor is high here. It reduces the presidency and this president to the position of a cheap huckster, hawking U.S. residency to the highest bidder while violently deporting hardworking people, and in some cases, getting it wrong and grabbing American citizens and military veterans.
On September 19, Trump signed Executive Order 14351, which authorized the creation of the Gold Card program, claiming that he was “prioritizing the admission of aliens who will affirmatively benefit the Nation, including successful entrepreneurs, investors, and businessmen and women.”
There are obvious questions about the legality of this pay-for-play spectacle and the decision-making process for who qualifies. Potential immigrants make their million-dollar payments, which are referred to as a “gift.” The Executive Order says that suffices as evidence of “exceptional business ability” and “national benefit,” which is sufficient for the person paying the money, regardless of where they got it from, to receive a waiver that permits entry under the statute titled “Allocation of immigrant visas.”
A group of 20 state Attorneys General filed a lawsuit last week challenging the program.
California and Massachusetts are the lead plaintiffs in the case, which alleges that the plan violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the separation of powers and asks the court to enter a ruling that the policy is unlawful and that no action can be taken under Trump’s Executive Order and the Proclamation seeking to implement it. The plaintiffs are also asking the court to enter an injunction that would prohibit the federal government from moving forward with the plan.
It’s going to be another interesting week.
Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse and staying informed about what’s happening to our democracy. If you value access to the information and analysis you receive here, I hope you’ll consider getting a paid subscription if you don’t already have one.
Supreme Court rejects long-shot effort to overturn same-sex marriage ruling
The court turned away an appeal filed by Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who was sued after refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a long-shot attempt to overturn the landmark 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Without comment, the justices rejected an appeal brought by Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who was sued in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses because of her opposition to same-sex marriage based on her religious beliefs.
Her latest appeal in the case, brought a decade later, had attracted considerable attention amid fears that the court could overturn the 2015 same-sex marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, in the aftermath of the 2022 ruling that overturned the landmark abortion rights decision, Roe v. Wade. (snip-MORE, with video on the page)
Once more, remember Josh Johnson is hosting The Daily Show tonight through Thursday. If you receive Comedy Central, there you are. They have a YouTube channel, (just click that;) and they stream on Paramount +. Don’t forget! 🌞
There’s only one rational answer to this question. It’s the Super Bowl. Nothing else comes close. Not in size or grandeur or symbolism or global resonance.
This past February, for the first time, as many Americans watched Super Bowl LIX as those who watched the Apollo moon landing in 1969, long considered the biggest live audience draw in U.S. broadcast television history.
Neil Armstrong walking on the lunar surface was once indisputably the most-watched live event by Americans. This year, it officially had competition for that title. By 2030, it may not even crack the top five.
What will the top five otherwise be by then? All Super Bowl broadcasts. Right now, if you exclude the moon landing, the top ten live American television broadcasts are all Super Bowls, and the top three are all from the past three years.
Maybe you’re not into sportsball. Maybe you can’t stand the NFL. Maybe you have fond memories of watching the live series finales of M*A*S*H or Cheers or Seinfeld or Johnny Carson’s final Tonight Show appearance, and you’ll recall that it felt as though the entire country were watching those, too, at the same time you and your family were glued to the tube.
But those days are long gone. Network television has been cannibalized by satellite and streaming over the years. If a scripted network series draws ten million viewers for any given episode, it’s more than enough to take the crown over its competitors.
The Oscars draws 20 million. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade does better at 30 million. Trump’s inauguration in January had 25 million viewers, nearly ten million fewer than Pres. Biden’s in 2021.
There is no American cultural event that comes within shouting distance—much less spitting distance—of the Super Bowl. When you walk around today, wherever you are—at work or a café or a park or your kid’s school—keep in mind that, on average, at least a third of the adults around you were all watching the Super Bowl at the same time this year.
Consider the global audience: the Super Bowl is the most-watched live annual television event around the world. The Men’s World Cup Final draws as many as 1.5 billion live viewers, but that’s every four years. The Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony is capable of drawing half that, but it’s also every four years. The Super Bowl draws 200M live viewers globally every year.
No annual live television event in the world is bigger than the Super Bowl, and no other country can lay claim to having a live broadcast of this size that is so inextricably bound with a celebration of its culture.
The Super Bowl is a distillation of all things America: sports and celebrity and military pageantry and unabashed patriotism and unapologetic commercialism all being slammed together, and in terms of annual events, more human beings on this planet watch it live, together, than anything else.
And it’s because of all those elements that most American conservatives perceive it as a showcase of American exceptionalism. It’s not that it’s inherently conservative or that non-conservatives don’t watch it; it’s that the sheer scope of the Super Bowl combined with all the patriotic bits make it a crown jewel in their argument for American cultural hegemony.
That’s why when Apple Music and the NFL announced last night that Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny—Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—is headlining Super Bowl LX this upcoming February, my jaw dropped.
For those unfamiliar, Bad Bunny is one of the biggest entertainers in the world. Were you to remove Taylor Swift and Beyoncé from the metrics conversation, he’s easily the biggest. He led global streaming charts from 2020-2022, and he’s still among the top three even now. His Un Verano Sin Ti world tour in 2022 dominated that year, and only Taylor Swift has surpassed his touring numbers since.
Based on both merit and marketing, Bad Bunny is an obvious choice to headline the Super Bowl.
But he’s also an outspoken LGBTQ ally, particularly on trans rights. He has been consistently critical of Trump, especially in regards to immigration. Earlier this month, he announced he would not include any U.S. dates for his 2025-2026 Debí Tirar Más Fotos world tour out of fear for his fans given the fascistic crackdown by ICE. He notably endorsed Vice President Harris last year after Puerto Rico was mocked at Trump’s infamous Madison Square Garden campaign rally.
Oh, and he performs solely in Spanish. That’s right: he does not rap or sing in any language other than Spanish. He does speak English, but he’s not a “crossover” Latin artist as an intentional choice. He has made it clear that he wants Spanish-language music to be normalized in the global marketplace, and so, he only produces work in Spanish.
He is an avatar of Latin excellence in a moment when the U.S. government is violently hostile toward Latin people.
The biggest American cultural event—with massive global influence—is about to be headlined by an unapologetically proud Latin trans ally who can’t stand Trump and performs solely in Spanish.
Based on all this, the NFL selecting him to headline the Super Bowl is pretty damn surprising and may indicate no small measure of intended protest by those involved in the process.
What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall during the discussions that took place between the NFL and Apple and Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation—which advises the league on entertainment—in choosing Bad Bunny for the greatest entertainment gig in the world.
I suppose I’ll have to settle for Bad Bunny’s instantly iconic hint posted on social media just prior to the announcement last night:
“I’ve been thinking about it these days, and after discussing it with my team, I think I’ll do just one date in the United States.”
Goddamn. I love this guy.
Now the questions become: what does Trump do? Is there an online meltdown incoming? Will he attempt to pressure the NFL to cancel Bad Bunny? If he does, how will the NFL respond?
Trump may not want this fight. This may be one of those rare moments he wisely chooses to avoid controversy. His poll numbers are terrible, the Midterms are next year, and his party will need every vote they can get. Alienating young and Latin voters would be a massive, unforced error.
I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, we’re about to be treated to a hell of a show. (snip)
It’s Thursday. There are 404 days until the midterm elections. Disinformation from Dallas, Kimmel’s big ratings and making us defend Jim Comey. Read on Substack
Note: Well, Sexy Patriots, we went from the Tylenol meltdown to the UN pants-shittening to a total goddamn presidential freakout over a broken fucking escalator. We assume for today that Trump will be walking around with both of his feet and his head stuck in buckets of some kind. Despite all the dumb, we actually have some good news. One of the creepiest goddamn weirdos of all time will no longer be in a position to fuck with kids…
Na-na-na-na. Na-na-na-na. Hey Hey Hey. Goodbye! We’ve been kinda sorta paying attention to this freakshow’s tenure as superintendent and we have wondered for a while just how dumb the kids in Oklahoma must be by now. The poor little morons have been forced to eat Trump Bibles for months, half of them think Be Best is good grammar and the rest think 2 + 2 = Bigly. Plus, doesn’t this dude put off all the vibes of someone whose hard drive would get them sent away for life? That moustache definitely used to hang out on Epstein’s island. Dude is out here looking like Jim Dangle from Reno 911.
Anyway, congratulations to the children of Oklahoma who would be bursting out in song today if their music programs hadn’t been cut in favor of Trump Appreciation Class. As for Ryan, well, he can kiss our asses, eat shit and fuck all the way off. Goddamn weirdo. Y’all have a blessed day.
Note two: This has nothing to do with anything, but remember those switchblade combs? Those were cool. We want to bring those back in style. Also, we did a therapy session yesterday and you can catch it here if you missed it live.
Note three: We’re getting closer to a government shutdown, and the White House’s big threat is that they would use a shutdown to fire federal workers. Someone should tell these assholes they already did that and they’re currently busy trying to rehire them all. Idiots. More: NBC News
Note four: We have got to hand it to the Onion. They made an Epstein documentary. Wired describes it as “absolutely unhinged.” It’s called “Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile.” It says a lot about where we are as a country that we rely on the Onion for this stuff instead of CNN. More: Wired
Note five: We wish we were kidding about our dumbshit president totally freaking out about a stopped escalator. He’s calling for investigations and Fox News has his back. It reminds us of the line from Ace Ventura — “Had I been drinking from the toilet, I could’ve been killed.” For a big tough guy, Trump sure is a whiny little bitch.
Note six: Senate Democrats are out with a report about what Elon Leon’s DOGE d-bags were really up to and it is infuriating. We can’t wait for a Democratic administration to lock these little shits up. More: Wired
Note seven: The French sentenced Sarkozy to five years. How the hell does every other country know how to do this except ours? More: NBC News
Note eight: Gross Stephen Miller’s gross wife is talking about having gross sex with him. Here’s a link, but we don’t recommend clicking on it. More: HuffPost
Note nine: Trump is upset that people are upset about his friendship with Epstein and the ensuing cover-up. He says Palm Beach in the 90s was a “different time.” Motherfucker child rape was still bad in the 1990s. More: Mediaite
Note 10: After a couple weeks off, South Park returned last night and Kyle’s mom (who is Jewish) went off on Bibi Netanyahu.
Note 11: The New York Times was very worried that a Trump official might get booed during one of their ass-kissing sessions. To that, we say BOOOOOOOOO!!!!! More: Mediaite
Note 12: The Tylenol thing was such a fucking disaster that Trump’s own allies are walking it back. Can you imagine the coverage if Biden… More: Independent
Note 13: Please don’t forget we have some big elections coming up in New Jersey, Virginia, California and Pennsylvania! Please get involved however you can. Those candidates need some Sexy Patriot energy. More: Pix11
Note 14: It’s honestly wild how much of a disconnect there is between Democratic leadership in D.C. and Democrats in the states. And it’s not hard to see which one is actually in touch with what voters are demanding. More: NBC News
Note 15: Just a reminder that before Kimmel was put through the ringer, plenty of corporate media outlets fired Black women with little to no public outrage. Thank you to Karen Attiah, formerly of the Washington Post, for firing back. And thanks to our friend Katie Phang for helping her.
Note 16: Two things to look forward to — Taylor Swift has a new album out next week, and the second part of Wicked will be out soon. Also, we don’t know about y’all, but we can’t freaking wait to see that new Paul Thomas Anderson movie. It seems pretty timely. More: USA Today
Note 17: It is fucking wild how hard the White House and the Republican Party are working to keep the Epstein files hidden. It’s even wilder how the people who used to want to see them don’t seem to give a shit anymore. More: CNN
Note 18: We’re starting to have a little hope that our country isn’t as dumb as it seems. The brain worm guy’s polling numbers are in the shitter. Which means he’ll probably swim in them. More: CNN, WSAV
Note 19: For today’s Happy Ending, we’re going back to South Park. If we’ve learned anything this week, it’s that comedy is leading the resistance while other institutions bend the knee and kiss the ass. We picked this clip because the Don Jr. impression had us fucking howling…
Note 20: And on that note, let’s go do some news! We sure hope y’all are having a great week. Except Ryan Walters. That dude and his creepy stache can smooch our taints. Love y’all! (snip-MORE news on the page)
Democrats on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations yesterday released a jaw-dropping report attempting to document the scope and scale of financial waste, personnel upheaval, and human suffering caused by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk’s giddily uninformed strike force of Peter Thiel acolytes. In all, the Democrats, led by Richard Blumenthal (CT), estimated DOGE cost the government $21.7 billion.
“DOGE-generated waste could also have easily funded monthly food assistance for the 5.3 million families losing an average of $146 in monthly food security assistance ($9.3 billion per year) under the new budget; or it could have been used more broadly to support the 40 percent of taxpayers that will see a net increase to their taxes as a direct result of the Trump tax plan,” the report contends.
Major newscoverage focused on the cost of the government paying over 150,000 federal workers who accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation incentives, under which they had to stop working but are continuing to be paid through September or even December. The minority’s report, which estimated that 200,000 workers took these buyouts, calculated that paying workers for not working cost the government $14.8 billion.
Neither the buyouts nor paying workers while on administrative leave (costing an additional $6.1 billion) increased government efficiency, as was always obvious and predictable. The report details many other costs, from the petty and pointless (millions of hours of wasted employee time writing the Musk-required email listing their weekly accomplishments) to the catastrophic (the elimination of the United States Agency for International Development, “projected to cause millions of additional deaths globally while simultaneously endangering domestic public health by reducing essential medical staff and programs.”)
As it rampaged through the government, DOGE destroyed valuable assets, wasting money already set aside to be spent, or depriving the government of income-generating programs. Product spoilage of USAID supplies of food and medicines cost the government nearly $10 million. DOGE’s elimination of the Internal Revenue Service’s Direct File program, the report estimates, wasted a more than $33 million investment in it, not to mention that taxpayers no longer have a free electronic filing option. DOGE caused the loss of more than $263 million of interest and fee income by shutting down Department of Energy loans from a program to modernize the electricity grid. The actual cost of the mass cancellations of medical research grants at the National Institutes of Health has yet to be fully calculated.
This summary represents a fraction of the entire report, and much is still not even known about the scope of the DOGE destruction. Yesterday, Blumenthal wrote to the inspectors general at 27 agencies, requesting they “initiate a comprehensive review of DOGE’s activities within your agency in order to determine the full scope of costs that DOGE’s careless actions have imposed,” particularly “the financial impact of the reorganization of federal agencies through mass layoffs, the canceling of grants, contracts, and other projects for partisan reasons, and the stifling of income-generating activities.”
Is MAGA Turning on Trump over Israel?
I spotted two stories this week in the inside-the-Beltway press, one in Politico and the other in Axios, suggesting MAGA is turning on Trump because of his continued support of the Netanyahu regime and its assault on Gaza that even Israeli human rights organizations have called a genocide. The Axios piece even suggests a “GOP realignment” on the issue may be underway. The Politico piece is more measured on that possibility, but neither piece mentions the critical role of Christian Zionists — that is, evangelicals who vigorously support Israel’s far right, like Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — in the Trump coalition.
It is hard to know now this possible coalitional split will play out. In the meantime, can we talk about how the MAGA figures turning against Israel are saying things that have gotten foreign students detained and universities’ funding cut off?
The Haitian Bridge Alliance filed a bench memorandum and supporting affidavit in Clark County Municipal Court on Tuesday, asking local authorities to charge former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance with multiple criminal offenses related to claims they made about Springfield’s Haitian community.
The memorandum was filed by Guerline Jozef on behalf of the national nonprofit the Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), asking a Municipal Court judge to charge Vance and Trump with disrupting public services, making false alarms, two counts of complicity, two counts of telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing.
The filing asks that the court find probable cause for the charges and issue arrest warrants for Trump and Vance.
Under Ohio law, a private citizen seeking to “cause an arrest or prosecution” can file an affidavit with “a reviewing official” — a judge, prosecuting attorney or magistrate — to have them review the facts and decide if a complaint should be filed.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said Tuesday afternoon that while the city recognizes the serious nature of the allegations, “it is important to allow the legal process to unfold.” He said it is “critical that we’re sensitive to these issues like immigration” and are grounded in facts.
“Springfield remains dedicated to fostering constructive dialogue and addressing concerns with integrity,” Rue said. “Springfield’s priority continues to be the wellbeing of our residents, including the Haitian immigrant community. Any actions that disrupt public services or spread false alarms are taken seriously and we’ll continue to uphold our commitment to protect public order.”
This bench memorandum and affidavit comes through The Chandra Law Firm in Cleveland, and according to its website, Jozef, the HBA’s co-founder and executive director, is seeking Trump and Vance’s immediate arrest for:
Disrupting public service “by causing widespread bomb and other threats that resulted in massive disruptions to the public services;”
Making false alarms “by knowingly causing alarm in the Springfield community by continuing to repeat lies that state and local officials have said were false;”
Telecommunications harassment “by spreading claims they know to be false during the presidential debate, campaign rallies, nationally televised interviews, and social media;”
Aggravated menacing “by knowingly making intimidating statements with the intent to abuse, threaten, or harass the recipients, including Trump’s threat to deport immigrants who are here legally to Venezuela, a land they have never known” and “by knowingly causing others to falsely believe that members of Springfield’s Haitian community would cause serious physical harm to the person or property of others in Springfield;”
Complicity “by conspiring with one another and spreading vicious lies that caused innocent parties to be parties to their various crimes.”
“Because the prosecuting attorney has not yet acted to protect the community and hold Trump and Vance accountable for what they have instigated, Ms. Jozef asks the court to find probable cause based on the facts presented and issue arrest warrants for both Trump and Vance,” the law firm stated. “The prosecuting attorney then must make a public decision about whether that office stands for the rule of law — or whether it will further coddle Trump and Vance with complete inaction.”
Subodh Chandra, Jozef’s lead counsel, said in a statement that the Haitian community is “suffering in fear” due to Trump and Vance’s “relentless, irresponsible, false alarms, and public services have been disrupted.” Chandra said the two politicians “must be held accountable to the rule of law,” claiming that others who “have wreaked havoc” would have been arrested already.
“They think they’re above the law. They’re not,” Chandra said.
Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung didn’t comment directly on the court filing, but said that Trump is “rightfully highlighting the failed immigration system that Kamala Harris has overseen, bringing thousands of illegal immigrants pouring into communities like Springfield and many others across the country.” (snip-More)
Scottie's Playtime 