A Couple From Clay Jones

Trump-Approved African American History by Clay Jones

Donald Trump wants to make the nation as stupid and racist as he is Read on Substack

On Tuesday, Donald Trump posted on ShitSocial, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.”

That doesn’t sound good. What he’s doing to the universities and the government in his efforts to eliminate “woke” is destroying our institutions, historical culture, and progress in anti-discrimination.

Trump is a champion of discrimination. These edicts he’s sending out daily sound like crap you’d hear from a dictator. Our history is being rewritten by the dumbest kid in the classroom. Even his social media posts prove he’s a moron. Typically, bigots are morons.

Trump is choosing Kennedy Center honorees and trying to influence what universities teach. He’s choosing what information is documented and archived by our military. They’re removing anything that honors gay, Black, Latino, and female. They had a hissy fit over the name “Enola Gay.” They even removed Harvey Milk’s name from a ship.

Trump’s ordering the Smithsonian to get rid of anything that’s “woke.” Naturally, they’re getting rid of whatever they believe is woke because wokeness is a good thing.

(snip-MORE, and it’s very good)

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Heavenly Trump by Clay Jones

Trump’s worried he won’t get into Heaven Read on Substack

I’m not on the talking point that Trump is dying, but he can’t be healthy. We’ve seen photos of Trump with food from McDonald’s, KFC, and even a taco bowl, but when’s the last time you saw a pic of him with a salad? You would think he’d at least do a photo-op with one. I don’t like to wish death on anyone. I think it’s kinda tacky, even for a piece of crap like Trump, and I’m afraid it might bounce back onto me.

A couple of days ago, Trump called into Fox News, because he’s the kind of guy with lots of time on his hands (it’s not like he has an important job or anything), and said his motivation for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, other than a Nobel Peace Prize, is to win a spot in Heaven. There’s a LOT to pack in here.

Trump called and said, “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he explained. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.” (snip-MORE, also great)

PS: Suppose South Park is making Trump nervous, with all the Satan in his bed stuff? Also, repealing the OBBB will help him a lot more than meddling in other countries’s business. -A)

Nat Turner, Prague Spring, Benigno Aquino, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/21

August 21, 1831

Nat Turner, a 30-year-old man legally owned by a child, and six other slaves began a violent insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia.They began by killing the child’s stepfather, Joseph Travis, and his family. Within the next 24 hours, Turner and, ultimately, about 40 followers killed the families who owned adjacent slaveholding properties, nearly 60 whites, while freeing and inciting other slaves to join them.Militia and federal troops were called out, and the uprising was suppressed with 55 African Americans including Turner executed by hanging in Jerusalem, Virginia, and hundreds more killed by white mobs and vigilantes in revenge.
More about Nat Turner
Nat Turner’s confession 
August 21, 1968
The Czechoslovakian people spontaneously and nonviolently resisted invasion of their country of 14 million by hundreds of thousands of troops and 5000+ tanks from the Soviet Union and four other Warsaw Pact countries.The troops were enforcing the overthrow and arrest of Alexander Dubcek and his government. They had been implementing significant democratic reforms known collectively as “socialism with a human face,” or the Prague Spring.
 
Cover of the magazine Kvety, with a photograph of the statue of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square in the center of Prague. Graffiti on the statue reads “Soldiers go home” in Russian and “Dubcek – Svoboda” in Czech.

Hundreds attempted to obstruct invading tanks.
Both Czechs and Slovaks argued with the soldiers and refused all cooperation with the occupying armies while showing broad support for the deposed government and its reform program. Moscow relented and returned Dubcek to office, at least temporarily.
Prague Spring in retrospect
Czech perspective 
August 21, 1971
Two grenades killed and wounded members of the leadership of the Philippines’ Liberal Party during a rally in Manila’s Plaza Miranda. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos accused a leader of the party, Benigno Aquino, of the bombing and arrested him, labeling him a communist. Liberal Party Secretary-General Aquino, an effective young leader and Marcos opponent, was imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, for seven years until allowed exile to the U.S., ostensibly for medical treatment.
August 21, 1976
Approximately 20,000 people, mainly women, from both Protestant and Catholic areas of Belfast, Northern Ireland, attended a Peace People’s rally at Ormeau Park.
August 21, 1983
Exiled popular Philippine political leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated by soldiers of the Aviation Security Command as he crossed the tarmac at Manila International Airport.

Benigno Aquino
He had spent three years of asylum in the U.S. Upon his return, he intended to lead the political opposition to President Ferdinand Marcos and the martial law he had imposed.
During the plane trip across the Pacific, he had commented to reporters, 
“I suppose there’s a physical danger because you know assassination’s part of public service . . . My feeling is we all have to die sometime and if it’s my fate to die by an assassin’s bullet, so be it.”

Hundreds of thousands demonstrated against Marcos.


Ferdinand Marcos
The Aquino funeral drew millions and gave impetus to the broad-based People’s Power movement which eventually forced Marcos from power.
Read more about Aquino 
August 21, 1991
A coup against Soviet Union President Mikhail S. Gorbachev by hard-line Communist Party members (State Emergency Committee), collapsed in the face of popular opposition. Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, having quit the Party the previous year, had called for a general strike.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev | Boris N.Yelsin
August 21, 1998
Samuel Bowers, the 73-year-old former Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, of ordering a firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer 32 years before. Bowers had also been instrumental in the killing of three other civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi for which he was never charged.
On Vernon Dahmer’s tombstone are the words,
“If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”

Samuel Bowers
32 years to justice

Dahmer’s home after the bombing

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august21

And From Lit Hub, “This Week In Literary History”

(It’s a newsletter I receive, and I don’t have a link for what I’ve copied and am pasting, but there are links within the piece. Enjoy.)

AUGUST 17 — AUGUST 23
Angela Davis debuts on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
In 1969, the legendary author and activist Angela Davis was a newly minted assistant philosophy processor at UCLA. But she was also an avowed Communist, and as a result, then-Governor Ronald Regan tried to have her fired before she’d begun any actual teaching. No luck: Davis’s dismissal didn’t hold up in court, and her first class had to be moved to a bigger classroom to accommodate the 2,000 students who had signed up for it—but she would finally be fired again nine months later, for “inflammatory rhetoric” in public speeches.  Davis was an outspoken supporter of the Black Panthers and was fervently against the Vietnam War, but arguably her most scandalous activist activities at the time were in defense of the Soledad Brothers, three Black inmates imprisoned in Soledad, CA, who were accused of killing a white guard. In 1970, guns registered to Davis were used in an attack on the nearby Marin County Civic Center; the perpetrators hoped to take hostages to bargain for the inmates’ release, but instead left four casualties. Davis, despite not being at the scene, was charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy charges. She couldn’t be found, and so on August 18, 1970, by order of J. Edgar Hoover, Davis became the third woman ever to be included on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Eight weeks later, Davis was finally arrested in a New York motel; the trial that followed catapulted her to international fame—and turned her into a revolutionary icon—as her supporters, who viewed her as a political prisoner, chanted “Free Angela!” across the globe.In 1972, after 16 months in prison, she was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury. “It took a worldwide movement of people to acquit Miss Davis,” noted one of her attorneys, Howard Moore Jr., but it shouldn’t have. “Justice should be the routine of the system,” he added.
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the Future of Radicalism

Angela Davis on International Solidarity and the Impacts of Black Radicalism

Angela Davis on Protest, 1968, andHer Old Teacher, Herbert Marcuse
THIS IS WHY THEY BAN IT:
“Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. ”
–Angela Davis

Clay Jones, Open Windows

Eat Mor Bulshirt by Clay Jones

Trump takes advice from Putin Read on Substack

Taking advice about how to run free, fair, and democratic elections from Vladimir Putin would be like taking advice from Donald Trump on how to make a steak.

“What you want to do is purchase the most beautiful cut of meat possible, preferably from Walmart, but with a “Trump Steak” sticker on it. Then, you’re gonna put that steak on the stove and cook it for about 45 minutes until it’s nice and charred. Then you will want to bury it in ketchup to the point that you can’t even see the steak. Then, have someone else cut it for you, but make sure it’s in tiny pieces so you don’t have to chew so hard. You gotta eat your ketchup steak in tiny bites if you’re like me, and your dentures keep popping out.”

I read that when he had meetings with his campaign people during the 2016 race, he’d serve hot dogs. The anonymous source said that Trump eats like an 8-year-old. He will serve his guests a scoop of ice cream while he gets two, so they know who the big boy is. I bet that bastard puts ketchup on his hot dogs, that sonofabitch.

Trump is taking Putin’s side again. Not just in the war that Putin started against Ukraine, but in the war he started against American democracy. On Monday morning, Trump posted on ShitSocial that he’s getting rid of mail-in voting and voting machines. Disclaimer: I haven’t read his entire post because…damn. (snip-MORE. Seriously, go see it, it’s worth the click!)

=====

The wannabe Dictator by Ann Telnaes

It’s a Trump show Read on Substack

Trump sees himself as an emperor summoning his kingdoms to flatter him and bring gifts.

First Enslaved Africans Arrive in VA, & The Equal Opportunity Act Is Signed, In Peace & Justice History for 8/20

August 20, 1619
The first enslaved Africans brought to North America arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship.
August 20, 1964
A nearly $1 billion (about $5 billion in current dollars) anti-poverty measure, the Economic Opportunity Act, which created Head Start, VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), and other programs that became part of the “War on Poverty,” was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.


Sargent Shriver & LBJ
Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, drafted the legislation and became director of the Office of Equal Opportunity which implemented the new law.
The “Great Society” 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august20

Talking Points Memo Reports:

A good place to pick up important info quickly; all linked/cited for sourcing.

Ed Martin Confirms Ed Martin’s Witch Hunt Against Elected Democrats by TPM

INSIDE: Pam Bondi … Adam Schiff … Letitia James Read on Substack

A Classic Example of Political Corruption

Ed Martin had no prior experience as a prosecutor when he became acting D.C. U.S. attorney earlier this year. And it shows.

Since his nomination to the permanent position was aborted because of lack of Senate GOP support, Martin has been triple-hatting at Main Justice as (i) U.S. pardon attorney; (ii) the chief of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “Weaponization Working Group” — the unintentionally revealing name of the outfit that’s charged with politicizing the Justice Department; and (iii) most recently as Bondi’s “special attorney” overseeing the politically motivated mortgage fraud investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

It was in that third role that Martin was apparently serving when he went on Fox News and admitted that he’s using the pretext of the clearly bogus mortgage fraud probes to conduct an open-ended witch hunt into Schiff and James. “We’re also gonna look at everything else they’ve been doing,” Martin said on air:

https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/app.bsky.feed.post/3lwm6otyddp2f?id=6254561201210245

Most legal experts think the mortgage fraud claims don’t amount to anything on the facts or on the law. But don’t underestimate the potency of ongoing criminal investigations hanging over anyone, especially elected officials, particularly when the investigations are used as justification for a wide-ranging probe of unspecified other wrongdoing.

Even if charges never come, this is a classic example of political corruption — and of authoritarian capture of the independence of federal prosecutors. Martin has embarked on a fishing expedition and he’ll keep it going for as long as it’s useful to the White House.

Speaking of Letitia James …

New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $500 million civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump has been held up on appeal for nearly a year, apparently because of deep divisions and three dueling written opinions on the five-justice appeals court panel, the WSJ reports.

Thread of the Day

With a new series of edicts, FBI Director Kash Patel is further degrading the bureau and converting into something akin to a national police department (which is NOT what the FBI has historically been):

WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES – 2025/08/17: Activist Nadine Seiler holds a sign that reads “What Trump order won’t you obey” stands in front of a National Guard vehicle as protesters gather at Columbus Circle following President Donald Trump’s announcement to place the D.C. Metropolitan Police under federal control. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)

A Recipe for Disaster

Red states are jumping on the bandwagon to send their national guards to the nation’s capital and show plurality Black D.C. who’s boss. West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina (still smarting from the last time it tried to overthrow D.C.) are first in line to engage in performative strong-arming of Democratic cities.

But the most alarming news to come out over a generally alarming weekend is that the national guardsmen may be armed, a reversal of an earlier decision that deployed the D.C. National Guard on the streets without weaponry on their persons or in the vehicles.

The ingredients could be in place for a cocktail of violence: federal agents and national guardsmen with little to no training in street policing being sent with guns into a peaceful urban area (that many of them are not even from) and expected to stir up trouble. It puts everyone — D.C. residents, local police, guardsmen, and federal agents — in an impossible situation.

One glimmer of good news was that the Trump administration was hauled into court Friday over its attempt to take over the D.C. police department and, under pressure from a federal judge, backed off its maximalist position.

ICYMI

Religion Dispatches: Latest ICE Recruitment Materials Include Overt Neo-Nazi Reference and Nazi-Nazi Script

Sign of the Times: The New Fascism Comes With Merch

The Florida GOP scrubbed its online store of a new line of merchandise touting the state’s new “Deportation Depot” after Home Depot complained it was an unapproved use of its branding.

Texas Dems Expected Back This Week

With California Democrats proceeding with their own mid-decade redistricting, Texas Democrats are expected to return to the state today, giving Republicans a quorum in the legislature to push through their redistricting plan. Texas Democrats succeeded in blocking the redistricting push in the first special session of the legislature. But when it ended, Friday Gov. Greg Abbott (R) immediately called a second special session, setting the stage for passing a new, more GOP friendly congressional district map to help national Republicans hold their House majority in next year’s midterms.

Quote of the Day

“Trump has completely ceded narrative control to Putin. What Ukraine is just basically getting as a concession is for the Russians to stop fighting. And this is Putin’s way all the way through the 25 years of his presidency, which is: ‘I’m going to beat you up and my concession is that I stopped beating you up.’”–former Trump I National Security Council official Fiona Hill

D’oh!

Guests at a hotel in Anchorage found sensitive documents from the Trump-Putin summit on a public printer, NPR reports.

Trump’s D.C. Circuit Appointees Strike Again: CFPB Edition

D.C. Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, Trump appointees who have had out-sized influence in the first months of the Trump II presidency, cleared the way Friday for the Trump administration to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee dissented.

“The notion that courts are powerless to prevent the President from abolishing the agencies of the federal government that he was elected to lead cannot be reconciled with either the constitutional separation of powers or our nation’s commitment to a government of laws,” Pillard wrote.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

TPM’s Layla A. Jones: The Trump Administration Is Laying the Groundwork for a Full Takeover of Federal Data

Judge Blocks FTC Probe of Media Matters

U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of D.C. sided with Media Matters in blocking a politically motived Federal Trade Commission investigation of the liberal watchdog group.

“This case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation,” Sooknanan ruled.

Media Matters has been struggling financially under the weight of bogus right-wing investigations into whether its reporting on antisemitic content on X/Twitter amounted to anticompetitive conduct. It also faces related serial lawsuits by Elon Musk.

“It should alarm all Americans when the government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate,” Sooknanan wrote. “And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”

A Rare Example of Organized Left-Wing Violence?

The purported attack at an ICE detention center in Texas last month caught my eye as an possible example of organized left-wing violence, a relative rarity since the 1970s. When I say “organized,” I don’t necessarily mean well-organized. The ragtag group’s alleged attack seemed especially hapless, even according to the official law enforcement account of the incident. Adding to the weirdness, the alleged perpetrators — among them two transgender women activists — appeared to be from in and around Dallas, which wouldn’t be my first choice for hotbeds of anti-fascism.

The WaPo’s Robert Klemko has dug a bit more into the “secretive network of Dallas anti-fascists” who “initially united around trans and queer identity issues.” He did a jailhouse interview with the group’s alleged ringleader, a former Marine Corps reservist of mixed Japanese and Korean descent who trained “very young, naive leftists,” as one witness put it, in close-quarters combat and large-scale gunfights at his mother’s taekwondo studio in suburban Dallas.

Women Have Had The Right To Vote For 105 Out Of 249 Years & More, in Peace & Justice History for 8/18

August 18, 1914
In another step in the ethnic intimidation that led ultimately to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, looting was reported in Sivas, Diyarbekir, and other provinces. Under the guise of collecting war contributions (WWI had just begun), stores owned by Armenian and Greek merchants were vandalized. 1,080 shops and stalls owned by Armenians were burned at the Diyarbekir bazaar.
Chronology of the Armenian Genocide 
August 18, 1920
Women throughout the U.S. won the right to vote when the Tennessee legislature approved the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the last of 36 states then required to approve it). An amendment for universal suffrage was first introduced in Congress in 1878, and Wyoming had granted suffrage in state law by 1890.

This amendment to enfranchise all American women had been introduced annually for 41 years without passage; it had gotten two-thirds of both houses of Congress to approve it just the year before.
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
In the Tennessee House, 24-year-old Representative Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification.  At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy” and “vote for suffrage.”

Teaching With Documents: Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment (National Archives) (It is still there; I checked.)
August 18, 1963
 
James Meredith
James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, became the first to graduate. His enrollment at “Ole Miss” a year earlier had been met with deadly riots, forcing him to attend class escorted by heavily armed guards.

James Meredith being escorted to his classes by U.S. marshals and the military. 
Who was James Meredith
August 18, 1964
South Africa was banned from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo due to the country’s refusal to reform its racially separatist apartheid system.
Read more 
August 18, 1977
Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement resisting apartheid, was arrested at a roadblock outside King William’s Town. He died while in custody from abuse during the weeks of interrogation that followed.

Steve Biko
“So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.”
“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” – Biko speech in Cape Town, 1971
More about Biko

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august18

From Joyce Vance

Moving The Window by Joyce Vance
Read on Substack

The Overton Window is a model that describes the range of policies considered acceptable at a given time by the public and policymakers. It’s the spectrum of ideas that are legitimate, feasible choices, and anything that falls outside of the window is considered too extreme for serious consideration. For instance, the idea of deploying the National Guard, or even the military, on American streets to control the local population is something we would have considered far outside of the Window for decades.

Think of what Donald Trump is doing in the District of Columbia in these terms. He’s made up a crisis—a wave of crime that doesn’t exist. The law in the District is different from how it is elsewhere because of limited home rule and a law that was drafted, at least arguably, to give the president alone the ability to declare an emergency that would permit control of local law enforcement. Trump tried it in Los Angeles, but ran into issues, like the Governor’s objection and the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents direct law enforcement by the Guard and the military. But in the District of Columbia, Trump has asserted the ability to seize control of the Metropolitan Police for at least thirty days and longstanding DOJ interpretation of the law says Posse Comitatus doesn’t apply in D.C.

Trump is using the quasi-federal status of the District to socialize the idea that he can:

  • make up an emergency and no one can challenge his thinking
  • seize control of local law enforcement
  • use the National Guard for direct law enforcement purpose

For the casual observer of American politics, he’s creating a new normal and shifting the Overton Window to include a presidential takeover of American cities.

Next stop, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland, New York and Chicago, all cities Trump said were “bad, very bad,” without explanation. All cities where the law is less friendly to a Trump takeover than it is in the nation’s capital. But Trump has been more than willing to brazen it out in court and live to fight in the Supreme Court, where he hopes for, and has frequently been rewarded with, a decision that hands over more power to the unitary executive. To be able to last out the appeal, Trump needs to make sure that the public isn’t so outraged that he has to pull back. Hence, the need to move the Overton Window.

A potential pitfall for Trump is that outside D.C., he’ll need to convince courts, where his moves will certainly be challenged, that his determination of an emergency or other condition necessary to allow him to interfere with state and local control is not reviewable. Since his first day in office, when he declared an emergency at the border, Trump has been relying on that notion, that contrary to the checks and balances the Founding Fathers set up, any decision he makes that there is a national emergency can’t be challenged in the courts. Then, he declared an emergency that permitted him to make the (false) claim that the Venezuelan drug cartel Tren de Aragua was invading the United States, which set up his inhumane deportations of people to CECOT prison in El Salvador without due process. Most recently, it has been tariffs, predicated on the claim that “foreign trade and economic practices” have led to a “national emergency.” In each instance, Trump has faked an emergency, while pushing the courts to say that they cannot review his decisions. So far, the lower federal courts seem to be skeptical. At some point, that issue will make its way to the Supreme Court. If SCOTUS lets him get away with that, our position becomes that much more precarious.

Understood this way, what’s happening this weekend in the District of Columbia is a matter that should concern all of us. We cannot afford to let the Overton Window move. Our conversations with the people around us matter and it’s a moment where we need to make real the spectre of armed and masked troops marching through our streets—not just those in other people’s neighborhoods.

Last week, we discussed how small of a force the D.C. National Guard is. There are reports that early this week, National Guard troops from other states, Trump-friendly red states like West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina, will arrive to assist in whatever it is that Trump thinks he’s doing—surely not fighting crime, since these troops aren’t trained to do that. If Trump wanted to help reduce crime, he’d be funding data-driven best practices that are shown to work and that have, in fact, been bringing down crime in the District, as then-interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin announced Trump had done during his first 100 days in office. Make sure you point out the incredible hypocrisy by Trump when he justifies his actions by claiming crime is out of control.

The most important news is that Americans are not giving way to Trump. As the pictures sent to me by protestors show, people were out in the District of Columbia today, refusing to be intimidated by a president who wants to convince us that sending out masked law enforcement agents and armed troops on the streets of the nation’s capital, and any other city for that matter, is within his power. It is not. We will not tolerate his creeping totalitarianism. We are not obligated to accept his power play or make any of this easy for him, as he takes a well-worn page from every authoritarian’s playbook. We are not that country and he is not a king—nor a dictator.

On Friday, Judge Ana Cecilia Reyes, born in Uruguay and appointed to the district court in D.C. by Joe Biden in 2023, wasted no time in scheduling a hearing after the District filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s attempt to exceed the power granted by the home rule law in his attempt to take over the Metropolitan Police. The previous night, Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to replace the D.C. Chief with the head of the DEA.

You have to like a judge who has this picture of herself with her pup on Wikipedia and reportedly brings her dog to work. Such a breath of fresh air during an administration where the president has no pets and the Secretary of DHS admitted that she shot hers.

Judge Reyes began the hearing by clarifying that she was not holding an evidentiary hearing and would not get into issues that would require development of the facts, like whether there was actually an emergency or a legitimate federal purpose behind Trump’s takeover. For purposes of the hearing, she assumed that Trump was correct on those points, saying she would go into them this coming week if necessary, before delving into the legal issues surrounding Trump’s order.

In the end, Attorney General Pam Bondi backed down, agreeing to let Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith continue to run the Department’s day-to-day operations under Mayor Muriel Bowser’s orders. She wrenched a concession from the district, directing Bowser to order the police department to assist in federal immigration enforcement. There is likely another legal confrontation coming where that process may conflict with laws passed by the District, which is a sanctuary city.

And as for Trump’s claim that he was worried about crime? Chief Smith wrote in an affidavit accompanying the District’s lawsuit that, “If effectuated, the Bondi Order would upend the command structure of MPD, endangering the safety of the public and law enforcement officers alike.” Imagine your local police department being run by the attorney general or his designee instead of the people who know your city and its needs the best. We’ve come full circle to where we started: Trump is making up the need for any of this. It’s about moving the Overton Window to give him the opportunity to seize more power, in more places, in a distinctly un-American fashion.

We shouldn’t forget about what was on the front pages before Trump started all of this and his embarrassing knee-bending exercise with Putin in Alaska on Friday. Trump has something to hide. And, apparently, he’s willing to take some hits to try and knock it off the public’s radar screen. Let’s not let anyone forget about it: Trump could release the Epstein files tomorrow.

(snip)

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Reblog From Annieasksyou

Snippet:

“You can make the argument that you are supporting these institutions, not undercutting them...

Newsom observed that “Donald Trump will represent this nation on our 250th anniversary, and he’s up to this?”

Richardson’s response was “We’re going to represent the nation. The most important office is that of citizen. ‘We the people’ is foundational.”

Newsom quickly seized that assessment“You’re reminding Americans they do have agency,” he said. “It’s not what happens to us; it’s how we respond to what happens to us. He [Trump] can’t take it away from us if we don’t allow it.”

Right Now; Right Now!

– Ellen Mitchell
Read on Substack

The Majority Report videos show how ICE is racially profiling and disregarding civil rights.