Dear Everybody:
David Corn wrote on Thursday, "The military assault on Venezuela, the shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent, the launch of the White House’s new revisionist website about January 6--these three events convey a powerful and unsettling message from Donald Trump and his crew: Violence is ours to use, at home and abroad, to get what we want." And that exactly sums up what’s been going on.
In Trump’s Napoleon/Hitler World Domination Tour news:
--Trump has spent the weekend threatening both Cuba and Iran. There are rumors that he was hell-bent on attacking Greenland, but generals at the Pentagon refused to do it, saying it would violate international treaties and that Congress would never go for it, so he’s shifted to Cuba and Iran.
--Daily Mail: "Trump ordered special forces commanders to draw up a plan for the invasion of Greenland, but is being resisted by senior military figures" who say it is illegal and would not be supported by Congress." The article said they are trying to distract him by suggesting he intercept Russian ghost ships or strike Iran.
--Trump posted, "Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before!" followed by Marco Rubio posting, "The United States support the brave people of Iran."
--Laura Loomer egged them on: "Perhaps we will see a capture or kill of the Ayatollah. Would be glorious! Death to the Iranian regime!" and then posted, "Looks like it’s about to go down in Iran!" and a bunch of MAGA podcasters are predicting an imminent attack on Iran.
--Trump also threatened Cuba because apparently he has never heard of the Bay of Pigs debacle and/or the Cuban missile crisis: "I strongly suggest they make a deal! BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!"
--Lindsey Graham: "My advice to the commies running Cuba and oppressing its people: Call Maduro and ask him what to do...if you can get through, that is. If I were you, I’d be looking for a new place to live."
--Trump reposted this from billionaire Marc Thiessen: "The Cuban regime has survived every President since Eisenhower. Wouldn’t it be something if that streak ended with Donald Trump?" --Trump also posted an AI photo of him smoking a Cuban cigar, and he reposted a post encouraging him to make Rubio President of Cuba with the caption, ""Sounds good to me."
--(Note: In case you’re wondering what the heck is going on, it’s all about Project 2025. At Peter Thiel’s Hereticon Event in 2024, they presented a paper called "Manifest Destiny: Greenland, Cuba, and the New America" and discussed invading Venezuela, Honduras, and Nigeria.)
And speaking of Venezuela, which Trump seems to have forgotten all about, things appear to be completely falling apart:
--Armed gangs are patrolling the streets and setting up roadblocks, and the State Department issued a statement telling all American citizens to leave the country immediately.
--There are widespread power outages.
--Oil companies don’t want to go into Venezuela when the equipment’s old and rusty and would cost billions to rebuild, when that kind of oil isn’t profitable and would tank US shale oil companies, and when the conditions in the country are unstable.
--Financial Times quoted an oil executive who said, "No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country."
--A shale oil executive: "We’re talking about this administration screwing us over again."
--Ted Lieu: "Dear White House and Rubio: You are doing such a great job running Venezuela that you are now warning Americans to leave Venezuela to escape armed militias. And you want US companies to go to Venezuela? No way they will do that. Your Venezuela operation is a disaster."
--(Note: Trump’s potential invasion of Greenland would definitely be grounds for impeachment because the President of the United States is obliged to honor US treaty obligations.)
In the Minneapolis murder news:
--The ICE agent who shot Renee Good, Jonathan Ross, is in hiding.
--DHS keeps changing their story. Kristi Noem is now claiming that Good was killed because she had been "stalking and impeding Ice agents all day."
--Karoline Leavitt said Good was "part of a larger, sinister, left-0wing movement that has spread across our country, where our brave men and women of federal law enforcement are under regular attack."
--JD Vance is still out there lying about what happened: "He (Jonathan Ross) is allowed to discharge his weapon in self-defense."
--Alan Stedman: "The way Vance has come out swinging tells me that some of them are worried how it’s going to go down."
--Fox News has now cut out not only the ICE agent saying "Fucking Bitch!" after shooting Renee Good from the video they’re showing on Fox, but the sound of the gunshots.
--And there’s more and more evidence that the release of the video was a BIG mistake. Ron Filipkowski: "Vance and MAGA decided to push all their chips into the middle of the table and put a big bet down on the actions of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, thinking that the public was going to side with him that Renee Good put his life in danger and he merely acted in self defense. Dumb move."
Lisa: "And they thought this video would change people’s opinion? Exonerate Ross? No, it just made it a million times worse."
--Chris Geidner: "The response to the ICE killing of Renee Good is not what the White House was expecting. Like in their hiding of the Epstein files, part of the fundamental problem they are facing is that the stories the Trump administration has built their movement on are being shown for their emptiness." (And flat-out lies.)
--There have been more incidents of ICE and Border Patrol agents threatening people in cars and pointing guns at them since the murder. The Border Patrol threatened a woman in a car, saying, "Don’t make a bad decision today," and an ICE agent said to a woman filming, "Have you not learned yet? What the actual fuck is this?" and slapped the phone out of her hand.
--David Stone: "It’s becoming clear that after their emergency huddle following the Minnesota shooting, they decided on ‘double down’ as their strategy. Get more brutal, more in your face with bystanders, more intimidation. It’s exactly what they’re now demonstrating."
--ICE is pushing the idea now that filming ICE agents or alerting neighbors to their presence is illegal and grounds for arrest. That is NOT true.
--The Wall Street Journal reported there have been 13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles since July, leaving eight people shot and 2 confirmed dead. At least 5 of the people were US citizens. Only one was armed, and they had a concealed weapon which was never drawn.
--Be ready for more killings, even by accident. A video going viral this morning showed two agents slipping and falling down on an icy sidewalk--and one of their guns going off by accident BECAUSE THE AGENT DIDN’T HAVE THE SAFETY ON. You can see the video here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ICE_Raids/comments/1q8nmlq/ice_agents_slipping_on_actual_ice/
--ICE also failed to secure the brake on the car of a person they detained, and it rolled away down a major street into traffic.
--A Black man, Keith Porter, was killed New Year’s Eve by an off-duty ICE agent.
--The Atlantic: "What is now overt, in a way that it hadn’t been...is that these agents are at war with the public, and have been for a long time."
In Resistance news:
--There were protests all over the country in response to the shooting of Renee Good, not only in Minneapolis but in California, New York, Washington, D.C., Oregon, North Carolina, New Jersey, Boston, etc. There were six separate demonstrations in the Seattle area alone, and even one here in very conservative Greeley, Colorado. The turnout was even more amazing because in many places they showed up in pouring winter rain and/or snow and bitter cold. (It’s common wisdom that you can’t have protests in the winter because of the weather.)`
--Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: "Today I saw easily 100 people standing on bridges over the Beltway in the cold and pouring rain, all there to protest ICE."
--Protesters shouted, "Murderer! Murderer!" and held signs saying, "ICE Kills!" and "Shame!" and "Murder!" and "We ALL Saw the Video."
--The ACLU’s Deirdre Schifeling: "The shootings in Minneapolis and Portland were not the beginning of ICE’s cruelty, but they need to be the end. These tragedies are simply proof of one fact: the Trump administration and its federal agents are out of control, endangering our neighborhoods and trampling on our rights and freedom. This weekend, Americans all across the country are demanding that they stop."
--The story is definitely breaking through. NBA coaches and players have been talking about the murder in post-game press conferences, celebrities have been posting about it, and the internet says people are talking about it in beauty parlors and grocery stores. Duran Duran dedicated their song, "Ordinary World," to Renee Good.
--The Pentagon’s talking about it, too. A Pentagon source told journalist Brian J. Karem, "We afford civilians in combat zones more respect than we gave Renee Good."
--According to the Daily Beast, the White House isn’t happy with how Kristi Noem has messed this up: "Noem’s handling upset Trump insiders, stokes American distrust in ICE," but the report said the administration officials weren’t upset about ICE having murdered Renee Good, but because they realized Noem’s lies about the murder were so poorly crafted that people weren’t going to believe all the other lies the administration tells the public.
--An administration told Politico: "I don’t know how we recover from this."
--Cooljen: ‘The ground swell is GROWING with each shooting, with each abusive video being posted, with each court case bordering on contempt."
--Ben Person: "It feels like maybe we’re hitting a tipping point."
In They’re All Perverts news--January 6 Insurrectionists Edition:z
--Another one of the January 6 insurrections Trump pardoned has been arrested on kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault charges, stemming from an incident in Utah in 2018 in which he lured a woman to a party at his residence and then when she got there, held her there and physically and sexually assaulted her over a period of 12 hours. DNA evidence linked him to the assault.
--A total of six of the insurrectionists who Trump pardoned have been re-arrested on child sexual crime charges.
In They’re All Perverts news--Elon Musk edition:
--Elon Musk’s AI Grok on Twitter has now introduced a new feature called "edit image" whereby people can ask it to alter online photos. It allows them to modify any image on the platform. Of course, people immediately used it to order Grok to undress women, girls, and children and generate pornographic content. (Who could have possibly seen that coming?)
--Users ordered "take her dress off," "put her in a thong," "spread her legs," etc.
--European Union digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier: "Grok is now offering a ‘spicy mode’ showing explicit sexual content with some output generated with child-like images. This is not spice. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting."
--In one instance, a user ordered Grok to take the dress off a photo of a 4-year-old girl, put her in a bikini, and then add semen to the photo.
--In another, Grok took the shirt off a photo of a 12-year-old girl with a brain tumor and made her look topless.
--Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Musk’s children, posted: "Grok is now undressing photos of me as a child. This is objectively horrifying, illegal."
--This isn’t the first time Grok has done this. Kat Tenbarge: "In June...Grok also spawned a trend of sexual harassment, specifically to make it look like women who posted selfies on X had semen on their faces. The following month Grok was weaponized to publish violent rape fantasies about a specific user....They’ve (X and Musk) knowbn about this happening the entire time and they made it even easier to inflict on victims. They are not investing in solutions. They are investing in making the problem worse."
--When reached for comment, Grok replied: "Legacy Media Lies."
--50% of Grok’s output is now stripping women. By one estimate, Grok generated one non-consensual sexual image every minute in a roughly 24-hour stretch.
--This means Grok is producing Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM,) which is a crime, and it is aiding people in creating CSAM, which is also a crime, and violates US and international laws.
--Note: This is not a feature of other AIs, like ChatGPT, so Musk can’t claim it’s an inevitable byproduct of AI. According to the Financial Times, "Grok has been intentionally designed to have fewer content guardrails than competitors, with Musk calling the model ‘maximally truth-seeking.’"
--Kat Tenbarge: "To start the new year off, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has yet again become a conduit for sexual violence, sparking another wave of backlash."
In historical news:
--Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the Marshal of the Royal Air Force and military legend of World War II: "The Nazis entered this war in the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody and nobody was going to bomb them."
In other news:
--The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery scrubbed the caption under Trump’s photograph, deleting the information about his two impeachments. (They left the impeachment stuff under Clinton’s picture.)
--Kristi Noem signed an order barring Congressional visits to ICE facilities without a week’s notice, and three Dem reps in Minneapolis were then denied entrance to the detention facility there.
--Richard Grinell, the head of the Kennedy Center, is now trying to claim that the Washington National Opera didn’t quit. He threw them out.
In good news:
--A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump from ending parole status for 10,000 immigrants allowed in for "family reunification."
--A federal judge blocked an effort by Trump to pull election funding for states that refuse to include "documentary proof of citizenship" requirements on their election ballots.
--30,000 animals were rescued from illegal captivity in the largest wildlife trafficking raid in history.
--Michaela Benthaus, a 33-year-old German aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, became the first wheelchair user to float in space.
Best comment of the day, from Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign: "Donald Trump intends to use the US military against American citizens who simply disagree with him."
Today’s bit of poetry, from Dylan Thomas: "Light breaks where no sun shines; where no sea runs, the waters of the heart push in their tides..."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis