Tag: News
Weekly Skews With Trae
It’s Saturday & I’m Cleaning My Inbox
Have some George Carlin, along with The Smothers Brothers, and Father Guido. The more things change …
And here’s one from another guy I’ve posted here before, after MDavis intro’d him elsewhere. This one’s simply fun. And the guy has a Grinch smile!
Open Windows & Clay Jones
Foiled Again
Trump got caught stealing
When Texas redistricted last year to give Republicans more congressional seats as Donald Trump demanded, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham called it a “total win for Texas.” After Virginia voters approved a referendum to give Democrats more congressional seats, in response to the shenanigans in Texas, Laura called it a “total travesty.”
After last night’s win for Democrats, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to post, “A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” Just as he failed to do in claiming the 2020 election was stolen, Trump did not offer any evidence. (snip-MORE, and it’s hot!)
Amy Goodman documentary
Steal This Story, Please!
If you’re in the Seattle area this Thursday, there’s a must-see screening of “Steal This Story, Please” at the SIFF Cinema Uptown. Like most people, I’m familiar with the intrepid “Democracy Now!” journalist Amy Goodman, but after seeing this documentary my admiration and respect has only grown.
After the 7pm screening on Thursday, April 23rd I’ll be participating in a group Q&A with Amy and producer Carl Deal. For my Substack readers here’s a discount code to use when buying tickets: TELNAES
Hope to see you there!
Kash Krash
Kash is about to drink himself out of his job, and I’ll drink to that
I knew that I would be one of the last cartoonists to do a cartoon about Kash Patel and The Atlantic article because I devoted yesterday to drawing on Virginia’s referendum on redistricting. But I don’t feel bad about being one of the last cartoonists to draw on this issue because, with the exception of one, and just one, every cartoon I have seen on this issue has only made the point that Kash drinks a lot. I knew that if I made any other point that wasn’t saying Kash Patel has a drinking problem, then my cartoon would stand out.
There’s nothing wrong with those cartoons that only point out Patel’s drinking problem. If I had written a cartoon that I believed was hilarious, and it was just a drunk Patel joke, I would’ve gone with it. I’m not riding a high horse here. (snip-MORE)
An Abundance Of News
I was especially interested in the Justice Clarence Thomas comments, which I read, then became disinterested for reasons you’ll get if you read them. Lots of news of the day here.
Hegseth to Reporters: Whose Side Are You On?
INSIDE: Sonia Sotomayor … John Eastman … Bitcoin Jesus
Compares Press to the Pharisees
A thin-skinned and prickly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went off on journalists in his press conference this morning, resorting to the classic “attack the messenger” defense to a unpopular war going poorly.
It’s not the first time Hegseth has succumbed to blaming a lack of patriotism among reporters for unfavorable headlines and critical reporting on a Middle East conflict ignited by the Trump administration. But today’s screed was striking for how it mixed the old worn-out reflexive questioning of the loyalty of reporters with biblical references that reflect Hegseth’s personal Christian nationalism:
“Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” Hegseth said. “It’s incredibly unpatriotic.”
In the decades since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon had haltingly moved away from the defensive crouch it often took in the face of criticism toward a more transparent and self-reflective public response to bad news. It was not always consistent and the backsliding was dramatic during periods of sustained setbacks, like in Iraq during the aughts, but the general trajectory was away from the kind of knee-jerk circle-the-wagons approach that Hegseth rolled out this morning.
Questioning the loyalty of journalists — or any regime critics — harkens to earlier dark eras of America history and to authoritarian regimes worldwide. But Hegseth’s diatribe came with a strong Christian twist, as he compared journalists to the Pharisees who rejected Jesus in the Bible:
“The Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to record, but their hearts were hardened, even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter,” Hegseth said.
“They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him,” he continued.
“I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees, not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press, your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he added.
Hegseth — callow, reactive, driven by a warped theology of nationalism, and poorly grounded in history — personally represents a dramatic break from decades of training, education, and refining of a professional officers corps. In 15 months in office, Hegseth has done more to politicize the military than any secretary of defense in at least the last half century.
Third Boat Strike in Three Days
The accelerated pace of unlawful strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats continued in the eastern Pacific, with the third such strike in the last three days. Three people were killed in the 51st strike of the U.S. campaign, bringing the death toll to at least 177 people.
What Trump Foreign Policy Looks Like
- USA Today: Pentagon ramps up planning for possible military ops in Cuba
- WSJ: Pentagon Approaches Automakers, Manufacturers to Boost Weapons Production
- WaPo: Trump administration pushes nations to sign ‘trade over aid’ declaration
SCOTUS Watch
- Justice Sonia Sotomayor apologized privately to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and followed up with a public apology released by the Supreme Court for remarks last week that, without naming him, attributed his defense of what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops” to his posh upbringing.
- In a public appearance at Yale Law School, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the Roberts Court’s handling of its emergency docket.
- In unusually pointed remarks carried live by CSPAN, Justice Clarence Thomas launched a broadside at progressivism.
Jan. 6 Never Ends
- Trump lawyer and coup plotter John Eastman was officially disbarred in California after the state Supreme Court declined to take up his appeal.
- Trump I White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is seeking reimbursement from the Trump DOJ of his legal fees incurred as a witness in both of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations.
Must Read
Heather Cox Richardson draws a straight line from Lincoln’s assassination to Jan. 6 and the events of this week.
Do as We Say Not as We Do
NBC News: “Anti-abortion advocates met with Justice Department officials Wednesday, just hours after the Trump administration fired prosecutors it accused of coordinating too closely with abortion-rights advocacy groups during the Biden administration.”
Election-Year Islamophobia
When all else fails and their election prospects look dire, Republicans fall back on various forms of racist appeals to solidify their base and wrong-foot Democrats. This year, top Texas Republicans have landed on Islamophobia as the racist appeal of choice. TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on the ground from Grapevine, Texas, where he talks to right-wing activists who are back again to warning about Sharia law and portraying Muslims as an external threat to “real” Americans.
Too often, gullible national media outlets treat these racist effusions like an organic upwelling of nativism, rather than a calculated election year strategy. TPM, I’m proud to say, has never been suckered in.
Thread of the Day
The Corruption: Bitcoin Jesus Edition
ProPublica offers a casebook study in the erosion of white-collar crime prosecutions under Trump II that includes the intervention of DOJ political appointees and the retention of a former Trump criminal defense attorney to outright kill one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency tax fraud cases.
Creepy Text of the Day
“Hearing u/r in town. Wishing you would let me know. I could have made some excuses to get out and show u around. Please keep this private.”—Richard Chavez, father of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, in a text to a young female staff member working for his daughter
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here. (snip)
“Never Forget!
I’m not normally big on memes,
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.
Fascism Now More Expensive Than Eggs
Congressional Democrats have said their focus is on the cost of living, but now the cost of living under fascism is soaring
Jonathan Larsen Jan 20, 2026
https://thefuckingnews.substack.com/p/fascism-now-more-expensive-than-eggs
The Zurich Protocol
The Zurich protocol
They came for the newsroom. It was ready.
Ben Werdmuller 13 Jan 2026 — 5 min read
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.
News For The Upcoming Week:
SCOTUS works, mass shootings, Judge Hannah Dugan’s case, and more this week, from Joyce Vance.
The Week Ahead
Joyce Vance Dec 14, 2025
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.
If you want to review the facts and the background, we discussed this situation when the Judge was first arrested and again when she was indicted.
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.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
We’ve Probably Already Heard It,
but just in case, some decent news:
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)
Scottie's Playtime 