Dear Everybody:
The big news today is the Epstein files:
--If the point of invading Minneapolis and turning it into a war zone, invading Venezuela, and threatening to invade Greenland was to distract attention from the Epstein files, the Trump administration managed to bring it right back to everyone’s attention and they did it themselves.
--The DOJ asked a federal judge to deny a request to appoint a special master to supervise the release of the Epstein files. They said the two Congressmen who filed the request do not have any standing to file the request because they are not parties to the criminal cse that led to Maxwell’s sex trafficking case.
--The DOJ also said that the judge has no standing to consider it. They argued federal courts lack the authority to enforce the Epstein Transparency Act or to grant the request.
--The two Congressmen said the DOJ’s response misconstrued the intent of their request: "We are informing the Court of serious misconduct by the DOJ that requires a remedy, one we believe this Court has the authority to provide, and which victims themselves have requested. Our purpose is to ensure that DOJ complies with its representations to the Court and with its legal obligations under our law."
--Brett Meisalas, when he saw the DOJ’s filing: "Oh, my God!"
--Shawn Ryan: "I’ve never seen a group of people go to such lengths to protect sexual predators."
--Cattardslim: "Hours after posting ‘No one is above the law!’ Pam Bondi says she and the DOJ are above the law and they don’t want an independent monitor seeing what they’re doing with the Epstein files."
--whoisincharge: "You don’t go to these extremes to hide info that’s just ‘damaging.’ This is beyond anything we’ve seen. These files hide something very dark."
In ICE/Gestapo news:
--The big news today was supposed to be a white nationalist march through downtown Minneapolis, but it turned out to be a complete bust. Hundreds of counter-protesters outnumbered the conservatives by a LOT. There were only a handful of the right-wing marchers, and counter-protesters chased them away.
--The counter-protesters chanted, "How do you spell Nazi?" and "Fuck you, Nazis!"
--The hate march was led by right-wing agitator Jake Lang. He walked away in disgust, carrying his bullhorn and saying, when he asked if it turned out the way he wanted to, "No."
--As the hate marchers left, the counter-protesters tore up their banners and stomped on them.
In other ICE news:
--Trump’s DOJ just launched a major investigation into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, accusing them of conspiring to obstruct federal immigration agents. They did not offer any evidence of just how they had obstructed law enforcement of what they were allegedly obstructing."
--(Note: The DOJ is NOT investigating the ICE agent who shot Renee Good.)
--Elie Honig on CNN: "DOJ has lost its damn mind. If you have public officials, as we do here, making political speech...that is simply not obstruction of justice. If they bring an indictment for obstruction, I promise you they will lose."
--Aaron Rupar: "Unvarnished thuggery."
--Palmer Report, on charging Walz and Frey: "It’s about getting the headline. It’s about trying to convince the general public that Trump and ICE are going to get their way no matter what, so the public will just give up now instead of continuing to stand against ICE."
(Note: It’s also about destroying Tim Walz’s chances of running for president. They are doing the same thing with Governor Janet Mills of Maine--Trump announced ICE will be invading Maine next week. This is the oldest trick in the Nixon Ratfucking Playbook--destroy your opponent before they have a chance to run against you. They did it to Thomas Eagleton and Edwin Muskie in 1972 and they’ve been doing it ever since.)
--Deep Throat: "They wanted to run against McGovern. Look who they’re running against."
--Deputy AG Todd Blanche: "Walz and Frey, I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It’s a promise." (Definitely the Mafia because this is in no way the way deputy AG’s normally talk.)
In other ICE atrocities:
--ICE used a battering ram to crash into a house and arrest the Liberian national who lived there.
--ICE grabbed a man at a gas station. They swarmed the vehicle, took the man down, and constrained the airflow to his neck until he became unconscious and went limp. They then threw him in a dark, unmarked van and drove away with him.
--ICE agents swarmed the wrong address and scared the family to death and outraged. Agents broke down the door, raided the house, put the daughter in handcuffs, ripped the Ring camera off the door, put the family’s daughter in handcuffs. The ATF said they could not provide comment due to the "ongoing nature of this operation."
--ICE agents ate at a Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis and then came back the same day and arrested the staff who had waited on them. This raid particularly outraged people, with them calling it "disgusting" and "depraved."
--Former RNC chair Michael Steele: "You sat your ass down at their restaurant and ate their food, and then you come back with what?...It’s not just the cruelty is the point. It is just the sheer insanity that they think the rest of us are deaf, dumb, and stupid to what they’re doing!"
--The guy who was shot in the leg told his mother that he was shot while closing his front door after letting in a friend who was being pursued. That’s not the way ICE officials told the story.
--Kristi Neom was asked if she was okay with federal agents violating people’s Fourth Amendment rights by asking Americans for papers without reasonable suspicion. Her answer was of course: “Every single action that our ICE officers take is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years. They are doing everything correctly."
--According to locals, ICE agents have now invaded Jacksonville, Florida.
In good ICE news (I know, that’s an oxymoron):
--The ACLU has filed a class action suit, saying that ICE is guilty of the violation of constitutional rights.
--A federal judge has ordered the Liberian man whose house was broken into with a battering ram to be released. The judge said ICE violated the man’s rights against unlawful search and seizure.
--A federal judge ruled that federal agents can’t arrest peaceful protesters or use pepper spray or other nonlethal munitions on protesters. The order also barred federal law enforcement from stopping or detaining drivers and passengers when there is "no reasonable articulable suspicion" that people driving near protests are forcibly interfering with law enforcement operations and stopping cars that are following them.
--The judge’s order also prohibited them from demanding people’s papers.
--The US House of Representatives introduced a legislative proposal to repeal funding for ICE and give it to health care tax credits.
--Greg Sargent: "ICE brutality is breaking through big-time."
--Trump is now saying he sees no reason right now to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minneapolis, which means he is once again backing down and trying to put a good face on it (although you can’t trust ANYTHING he says.)
One of the problems Trump and his administration have is that they lie constantly:
--They accused the parents in the van (whose baby stopped breathing and had to have CPR) of being "rioters" and endangering their children by purposely bringing them to a riot, but the truth is they were coming home from their son’s basketball game when they got caught in the middle of an incident. The parents said they had never protested before.
--And they make up stuff out of whole cloth. Peaceful protesters were "rioters." The ICE agent who shot Renee Good has "severe internal injuries to the torso." He was taken to the hospital (the newly released report says he was taken to a federal building immediately after the shooting), Good was a "domestic terrorist" who was screaming at the ICE agents, a guy was shot in the leg because he attacked an ICE agent when witness testimony says he was shot running into a house.
--Trump spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin: "Racial animus has no place in DHS and of course it is not used." CNN then plays clip of ICE agents asking a Minneapolis woman where she was born. McLaughlin: "I haven’t seen this clip before. She might’ve been assaulting law enforcement prior to this."
--Tricia McLaughlin several months ago when ICE shot a woman five times: "Law enforcement was assaulted yesterday, our brave law enforcement officers were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars this morning. Agents were unable to move their vehicle and exited the car. One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon. Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fired defensive shots at an armed US citizen who drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds." (Virtually none of this is true, including her driving herself to the hospital. She was found by the side of the road by people who called 911 and got an ambulance to come. Charges against the woman were all dropped when it became clear ICE had lied.)
--Don Moynihan: "There is no scenario where Tricia McLaughlin would not blame the victim, would not allege, with zero evidence, that they have assaulted the DHS agent. It is her default setting."
In Trump’s World Domination Tour news--Greenland edition:
--Trump just slapped 10% additional tariffs on any country that defends Greenland.
--Trump: "This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet! These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable." (The exact same thing could be said about Trump’s invading Greenland.)
--Stephen Miller: "Denmark is a tiny country with a tiny economy and a tiny military. They cannot defend Greenland...Under every understanding of law that has existed about territorial control for 500 years, to control a territory, you have to be able to defend a territory..."
--Ron Filipkowski: "This guy is basically inviting China to take Taiwan" (Not only that, but Hitler could have made this exact same speech--and probably did.)
--Trump is facing opposition from Republicans on this. Lisa Murkowski and James Lankford are co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill with Jean Shaheen that prohibits use of Defense Department funds to blockade, occupy, annex, or conduct military operations against Greenland or any sovereign territory of a NATO member state.
--Former GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell issued a searing rebuke to Trump’s threat to seize control of Greenland.
--DoctorStrange: "You know what Americans are going to love? Getting into an actual war with our allies over Greenland. ???? I’d ask if Trump is this stupid, but yeah, his mind is long gone."
In Trump dementia/madness news:
--Trump says he’s going to keep Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize medal. When he was asked by a reporter why he accepted Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize, Trump said, "Well, she offered it to me. I thought it was very nice." And "Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect!"
--Sarah Longwell: "Imagine being so pathetic and needy you take someone else’s Nobel Prize.:
--Patriot Takes: "Illegal second-hand Nobel Peace Prize."
--Bebecca: "Remember when he took that soldier’s Purple Heart? He is the most pathetic and shameless person on the planet."
--A section of Southern Boulevard in Palm Beach County was ceremonially renamed "President Donald J. Trump Boulevard" with a dedication event held Friday at Mar-a-lago. In his acceptance speech, Trump said, "Starting on Day One, we fully secured our Southern Boulevard."
--Vince Wilson: "Trump’s dementia showing for the millionth time."
--Political commentator Corbin Joseph: "Dementia Don back at it."
--Sharon S Brown: "He’s thinking of himself in Sunset Boulevard." (Weirdly, that’s his favorite movie, though who knows what he thinks it’s about.)
--Both oil executives and people at the Ford auto plant Trump visited this week talked about Trump’s terrible smell.
In historical news:
--Today is Ben Franklin’s birthday. Franklin was not only one of the most important figures in the founding of the United States--he served on the committee to write the Declaration of Independence, was one of its signers, was an ardent abolitionist, and after the war served as America’s first ambassador to Great Britain--but he was a scientist (proving that lightning was made of electricity, discovering the major weather patterns of the United States), an inventor (the Franklin stove, the lightning rod, bifocals), the founder of the first lending library and fire department in the country, set up the country’s first postal system, and a sage.
--He was also a sage, with many of his sayings still famous today, like "A penny saved is a penny earned," and "Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle."
--And he was a brave member of the Resistance of that day, famously saying, "It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority," and "If we do not hang together, we shall assuredly hang separately." (And that wasn’t just a pun. If the Revolution had failed he would have almost certainly been hanged as a traitor.)
In Resistance news:
--A Minneapolis minister posted: "You’ve probably seen the videos of agents saying to protesters and legal observers, ‘You saw what happened? Didn’t you learn your lesson?’ The only lesson learned is the love for our neighbors is growing three sizes each and every day."
--Texas Linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair wore nose tape with "STOP THE GENOCIDE" written on it at his last football game.
--A Starbucks employee in Los Angeles handed a cup of coffee to a deputy with a hand-drawn pig on the cup.
In other news:
--Trump just installed a bunch of his cronies to the US Commission of Fine Arts, packing the commission right before they are scheduled to approve his ballroom project.
--Peter Elkind of ProPublica: "Rigged?"
--The legendary Martha Graham Dance Company pulled out of its Kennedy Center Centennial Tour performance.
--Trump is underwater on every single issue, from the economy to immigration. Jamelle Bouie: "A year in and Trump is in free fall with the public across every conceivable issue."
In good news:
--Virginia’s Democratic-controlled Senate approved a constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would permit lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional lines, potentially netting Democrats up to 4 US House of Representatives seats.
--CNN’s pollster Harry Enten says Trump has "fallen off a cliff" when it comes to Gen Z. In February of 2025, Trump was at +10 with Gen Zers. He is now at minus 32, a drop of 42 points.
--A new poll shows Trump underwater by double digits on every major issue.
--Alaskan Dem Mary Peltola has announced her candidacy for US Senate. This gives Democrats a chance at taking the Senate back.
Best comment of the day, from Ben Franklin: "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech."
Best fragment of poetry, from Langston Hughes: "Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis