Cruelbak

capt

CRUEL326

provisional node 1219 --> 2nd = fascism, PRIMARY PENDING SADO-POPULISM alligator alcatraz EMERGENCY DECLARATION DESANTIS}:

merri ok

see strict father XIAN NAT’L

see stunt pseudo-event = spectacle

just read somewhere cruelty is the point --> fear intimidation retaLIATION FASCISM

SEE RACISM // nationalism xeno

SEE BABY JAIL ALLIG ALCATRAZ EAT FROM TROUGH HANDS BOUND?

SEE DOGE COUP MUSK PUT AID TO STARVING KIDS THRU THE WOODCHIPPER

OPPOSITE IS EMPATHY COMPASSION = FEMININE

SEE POPE FRANCIS

retaliation/ revenge for greivance loss of white power ~ pseudo-populist story?

see work requirements medicare

aha: en enforcer uses force/leverage/power to punish disobedience, for force compliance

NOTE EMPATHY // IMMIGRATION ~[GREIVANCE// RETALIATION CRUEL STRICT FR ] EXECUTE

SEE WATTERS FOX HYPE VIOLENT RHET ELIM BUT SELF DEFENSE // RETALIATION HE ENJOY CRUEL PAIN

ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ WIKI

:{:{DeSantis invoked a standing 2023 immigration "state of emergency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_emergency)" to seize the county-owned airfield and fast-track construction[33] without the usual environmental reviews or the traditional collaboration with local officials.[34]}:

Both Democratic Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29) and Republican legislators\35] have questioned the use and overreach of emergency powers.[36] Demographers from [Florida State University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_State_University) found that the number of immigrants without legal status in Florida has declined since 2018, concluding "that policies that discourage new arrivals or encourage — or force — migrants to leave could jeopardize Florida's robust economy and the well-being of its population."[37]}:

AN 2 26

Why these 'faith-based voters' are 'recoiling at Trump’s cruelty'

AN 1 26

Although President Donald Trump's overall approval ratings are weak, he continues to poll well among his hardcore MAGA base — including far-right white Christian fundamentalist evangelicals. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her allies in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are using Christian nationalist arguments (https://www.oklahoman.com/story/opinion/letters/2026/01/15/kristi-noem-dhs-ice-misusing-scripture-to-promote-hate/88184195007/) to recruit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, quoting scripture in videos posted on Instagram.

But Never Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) conservative Peter Wehner, in an article published by The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/maga-christians-betray-ethics-ice/685679/) on January 20, argues that the Trump Administration's militarized ICE raids are inconsistent with traditional "Christian values."

To make his point, Wehner references Tobias Cremer — a member of the European Parliament and author of the 2023 book, "The Godless Crusade." (https://www.amazon.com/Godless-Crusade-Religion-Populism-Right-Wing/dp/1009262149/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1HDMMHOUEZNZD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.dC4Tm7wD1iULsOm79xL0X7J3w_8OAU0kEMOMMTO8Giii3qMD8hcvLJsX_QpRKTEK5KInv9TxoLDvx0oyty8ojya6mhfv0aPQCgsU2MZQz_jbxhs-0ShRJYGRuIlVVJHJRt1MFVlHFZ1K74eGTslW63pv_rpouATEPTLsg5QMtrOqBjPfYw52dViGm4avnGGA.fYulyh-ZW1nxyirgvgBclMNo-rJnugEWzFW7qO193jw&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+godless+crusade&qid=1769017843&sprefix=the+godless+crus%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1)

"Right-wing populists don't view Christianity as a faith; rather, Cremer suggests, they use Christianity as a cultural identity marker of the 'pure people' against external 'others,' while in many cases remaining disconnected from Christian values, beliefs, and institutions," Wehner explains. "Many right-wing populists, despite being secular, are successfully recruiting Christians to their cause. And rather than Christians leavening the secular right-wing movements, those movements are prying Christianity further and further away from the ethic and teachings of Jesus."

Wehner continues, "The Trump Administration has gone one step further, inverting authentic Christian faith by selling, in a dozen different ways, cruelty and the will to power in the name of Jesus. It has welcomed Christians into a theological twilight zone, where the beatitudes are invoked on behalf of a political movement with authoritarian tendencies."

The Never Trump conservative notes that Christianity, over the years, has had "glorious moments" as well as "some very dark turns."

"Huge numbers of American fundamentalists and evangelicals — not just cultural Christians, but also, those who faithfully attend church and Bible-study sessions and prayer gatherings — prefer the MAGA Jesus to the real Jesus," Wehner laments. "Few of them would say so explicitly, though, because the cognitive dissonance would be too unsettling. And so, they have worked hard to construct rationalizations. It's rather remarkable, really, to see tens of millions of Christians validate, to themselves and to one another, a political movement led by a malignant narcissist — who is driven by hate and bent on revenge, who mocks the dead, and who delights in inflicting pain on the powerless."

Wehner adds, "The wreckage to the Christian faith is incalculable, yet most evangelicals will never break with him. They have invested too much of themselves and their identity in Trump and what he stands for. This moment, and what it reveals about American Christianity, will be studied for a long time to come."

*Peter Wehner's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/maga-christians-betray-ethics-ice/685679/) (subscription required).

AN 1 26

Russian-American columnist M. Gessen wrote for The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/state-terror-has-arrived.html) on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s ICE operations in Minneapolis have crossed into state terror—not mere repression, but deliberate, arbitrary violence designed to instill pervasive fear in which no one feels safe.

In the past month, ICE agents have shot and killed two US citizens: Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. Neither had a criminal record. Another U.S. citizen was pulled from his home in his underwear by agents who later realized he wasn’t their target.

Gessen argues this is part of a Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) effort “to reduce us all to a state of constant fear — a fear of violence from which some people may at a given moment be spared, but from which no one will ever be truly safe. That is our new national reality. State terror has arrived.”

The randomness is the point, he continues. In Pretti’s case, agents fired 10 rounds into him at point-blank range while he was already subdued (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-federal-agents-video.html). The Department of Homeland Security labeled both Pretti and Good “domestic terrorists” before any investigation.

Gessen posted a blistering list of ICE activities designed to terrorize Americans and the federal government’s swift smearing of victims.

“Either way, we tell ourselves, if we can predict the consequences, we have agency. But that’s not how state terror works,” Gessen wrote.

He recalled Soviet citizens targeted in the 1990s who told him they knew they’d been named by jealous neighbors or pressured colleagues. “How could they come to know so much?” Gessen asked. “They couldn’t. People crafted narratives out of suspicions, rumors, and hints to fill a desperate need for an explanation.”

It later emerged that those officers had quotas — not unlike the numbers now set by Trump’s administration (https://www.axios.com/2025/12/04/trump-ice-immigration-arrests-deportations).

“Fundamentally, the terror was random. That is, in fact, how state terror works,” Gessen wrote. “The randomness is the difference between a regime based on terror and a regime that is plainly repressive.”

The same tactics are part of Trump’s toolbox, Gessen argues: quotas, a “paramilitary force made up of thugs drunk on their own brutality,” and “postmortem vilification of the victims.” Normal brains seek logic, but Gessen says it’s simply state terror.

*Read the full report here. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/state-terror-has-arrived.html)

AN 1 26

The Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) administration provoked horror this week with the suggestion that the United States could be turned into a paradise if over a quarter of the people in the country were deported.

On Wednesday, the official social media account for the Department of Homeland Security posted a piece of artwork depicting a pink late-1960s Cadillac Eldorado parked on a bright, idyllic beach. Over the clear blue sky are the words “America after 100 million deportations.The post was captioned by the agency: “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”

Social media users later discovered (https://x.com/i/birdwatch/n/2006830816836383138) that DHS had, ironically, stolen the image from the Japanese pop artist Hiroshi Nagai (https://pen-online.com/arts/hiroshi-nagais-sun-drenched-pop-paintings-pay-homage-to-california/) without giving credit.

It is hardly the first time the administration has used edgy and inflammatory social media posts to promote its agenda. But DHS has come under particular scrutiny for its style of communication, which often evokes (https://cssh.northeastern.edu/ethics/dhss-neo-nazi-memes-show-the-agency-for-what-it-is/) white nationalist rhetoric and symbolism.

Posts by the agency have cheered (https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/dhs-social-media-accounts-state-department-promote-remigration-a-term-associated-with-ethnic-cleansing/) “remigration,” a term that far-right parties in Europe have often used (https://time.com/7326233/trump-remigrate-homeland-security/) to describe the forced repatriation of nonwhite populations, including citizens. Other posts have referred to President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” campaign as part of an effort to defend American “heritage” (https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1944875154745778525) and “culture.” (https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1952718231455592667)

The agency frequently evokes images of the American frontier and references “Manifest Destiny,” at times explicitly posting artwork glorifying the forced displacement of Native American populations.

An image by the agency, featuring a chiseled Uncle Sam calling on Americans to “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS,” was even directly sourced (https://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-06-12/supremacist-propaganda-at-the-white-house-help-your-country-report-foreign-invaders.html) from an overt neo-Nazi account.

The agency has only continued to double down in the face of criticism this week. On Friday, it posted (https://x.com/DHSgov/status/2006512615732949098) that “2026 will be the year of American Supremacy” over an image of then-Gen. George Washington crossing the Delaware River, which was emblazoned with the words “Return this Land,” a possible reference (https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/inside-return-land-new-group-legalize-segregation/) to a recently-founded “whites-only” town in rural Arkansas known as “Return to the Land.”

But Wednesday’s post calling for “100 million deportations” specifically was perhaps the most direct nod yet to those who believe the United States must be reconstituted as a white nation. As social media users were quick to point out, only about 47 million people living in America are foreign-born, according to the US Census Bureau (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/POP645223#POP645223).

Even if the administration kicked out every single immigrant—including legal residents and naturalized citizens—meeting such a goal would mean deporting 53 million people who were born in the US and are legally entitled to citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

If the use of the phrase “third world” did not make it obvious enough, the specific number—100 million—seems to betray the racial motivation behind the message.

Citing 2020 census data on the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#::text=Population%20growth%20is%20fastest%20among,57.8%25%20of%20the%20country's%20population.) for “Demographics of the United States,” one social media user pointed out that approximately 100 million people in the US identified as nonwhite.

The DHS post drew comparisons (https://x.com/midnucas/status/2006853149232185346) to one made earlier this year by the close Trump ally and unofficial White House operative (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/17/laura-loomers-endless-payback) Laura Loomer, who suggested that thanks to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the massive internment camp in Florida for those arrested by immigration agents, “the alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals,” which referenced (https://www.lemkininstitute.com/statements-new-page/statement-on-laura-loomer%E2%80%99s-6%2F30-remarks) the total number (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2024/hispanic-heritage-month.html) of Hispanic people in the United States.

While it’s almost certainly not possible for the administration to conduct a deportation campaign of such a staggering scale within Trump’s term of office, the administration’s latest post was frightening to many observers, even as they acknowledged (https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/2006727483476131948) that it was a “troll post” meant to rile people up.

It is still reflective of the Trump administration’s ideology with respect to immigration. Leaders of Trump’s deportation effort have acknowledged (https://www.commondreams.org/news/ice-detaining-us-citizens) that they target people based on their appearance, and many nonwhite US citizens have been caught in the dragnet. Meanwhile, its refugee policy has welcomed only white South Africans, as Trump has enacted what he says is a “permanent pause on migration from all Third World Countries.”

During 2026, the administration has said it plans (https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-deporting-naturalized-citizens) to target hundreds of US citizens each month for “denaturalization,” and Trump has called for it to be used against his most prominent critics, including the Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/ilhan-omar) (D-Minn.) and New York’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

“This is absolutely insane Nazi propaganda, posted by the US government,” said Ben Norton (https://x.com/BenjaminNorton/status/2006915188201849299), editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report in response to DHS’s call for“100 million deportations.”

“It makes it clear that the Trump administration’s mass deportation drive is not actually about ‘illegal immigration.’ There are estimated to be 14 million undocumented immigrants in the US. But the fascist DHS wants to deport 100 million people,” Norton continued. “This is a call by the US regime for ethnic cleansing of racial minorities, to create a white-supremacist regime without anyone with ‘third world’ heritage.”

1125 AN

Politico reporter Josh Gerstein writes (https://x.com/joshgerstein/status/1986830606290899277) that former Pam Bondi Chief of Staff and Stephen Miller ally Chad Mizelle wants Congress to declare war on judges who make decisions against President Donald Trump’s policies.

Mizelle, who announced his departure as Department of Justice chief of staff in September, urged congressional Republicans to step up campaigns to impeach federal judges who've blocked Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) policies.

“What’s going to force the Supreme Court to do something is fundamentally political pressure. It’s going to be when Congress starts impeaching judges and saying … ‘You are now encroaching into our territory,’” Mizelle said during (https://youtu.be/VgRBbo__2Z0) at the Federalist Society’s annual lawyers’ meeting in Washington.

“This is a problem of leftist politics,” said Mizelle, arguing that earlier Republican administrations did not face as many decisions blocking their policies. George Bush, he said, had six injunctions against him, while Obama had 12. Trump endured 64 injunctions in his first administration compared to Biden’s 14 — and with 40 issued in the first six months of Trump’s second administration.

“Since 1963 over three quarters of injunctions were issued against Trump,” argued Mizelle, arguing that the Supreme Court has given Trump a “92 percent win rate” for petitions it filed with the Supreme Court, compared to Biden’s win rate of only 50 percent.

But Gerstein reports Mizelle “turned heads” at the conference by calling for Congress to step up efforts to impeach judges who have blocked Trump policies, and his “impeachment battle cry” followed a “cryptic story” he shared that appeared to involve an implicit threat his father once issued to put down a stray cat in the family’s yard.

“What do I think [Trump] should do? He should stand up, and he’s already done this, and say, ‘Judges, I know how to deal with stray cats,’” said Mizelle, who described his father's threat to put down the cat as indicative of having a "father from Mississippi."

MMA

1. ### On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone discusses how right-wing media leaning on “more bloodthirst and more cruelty” in SNAP coverage (https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/msnbc-angelo-carusone-discusses-how-right-wing-media-leaning-more-bloodthirst-and)

10/28/25

October 28, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House

BASIL SMIKLE (GUEST): And the the point I would make in addition to that is if you are looking to punish people, right, they're mostly punishing their supporters. There are more people in this country from red states -- there are more white Americans, particularly Republicans, that are on these programs. So if you want to even use the sort of, you know, that sort of welfare queen trope that a lot of Republicans have historically used, it doesn't even touch that or come close to touching that. So the suggestion -- the point I would think is that they're only just trying to punish Americans using this tactic.

ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): Well, Angelo, to build on the point that Basil just made, I'm sure you've seen the highly partisan framing of the USDA's -- a government agency's communication in a message saying that Democrats are to blame and, quote, "The well is about to run dry." I wonder the extent to which on conservative media that message is being echoed or how they are justifying to Basil's point about the fact that this is a lot of Trump's own supporters who are being impacted by this, how they are explaining that away.

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. I mean, you know, I think the way they look at it is in a few dimensions. One, they never acknowledge the reality, right, that it's going to be a lot of their own supporters. Even though they all kind of know it, they never actually acknowledge that. The predominant right-leaning narrative is what's been that way for 20-plus years going all the way back to Rush Limbaugh, you know, sort of really reinforcing the false notion of a welfare queen or, you know, one of the things he used to say about the WIC program in particular was that it was all just a gigantic fiction because why would you need a program like this if they were able to have babies in the first place? Surely, they weren't that desperate if they were able to have babies. So clearly, it was just sort of a Democratic fiction, and that's been percolating forever.

So it's basically the notion that it's liberals and Black people that are getting this program predominantly. So to some extent, they're happy. There's a lot of schadenfreude and they're leaning into the cruelty that there's a whole bunch of people that don't get it, that they don't like, that are going to be punished.

And on the flip side, some of this soft undercurrent, and you sort of got to that in your messaging, is that, yeah, there are going to be some of their people that are going to suffer from this. And to an extent, they're perfectly fine with that as long as they know that they can convince their people that it's Democrats at fault. Because recognize that a big part of what they want to do here is not only to punish liberals and Democrats, any of their perceived political opponents, but to keep the anger flowing on their side so that they can continue to justify and rationalize the cruelty that they're inflicting on the country and our slide toward authoritarianism. And you sort of need that as the fuel to then justify all the other extreme measures that you're taking. So that's the large framework that's playing out in the right-wing media right now. More bloodthirstY and more cruelty.

AN 10 25

During Donald Trump's first presidency, he bitterly clashed with a long list of traditional conservatives who pushed back against his proposals — from a secretary of state (Rex Tillerson) to a White House chief of staff (John Kelly) to a national security adviser (John Bolton) to two U.S. attorneys general (Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr). Even one of Trump's White House press secretaries (Stephanie Grisham) ended up giving Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris (https://www.rawstory.com/tag/white-house) an enthusiastic endorsement at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

But Trump's second presidency is much different (https://www.alternet.org/trump-cabinet-2674203455/). This time, he has made a point of surrounding himself with unquestioning MAGA loyalists (https://www.alternet.org/trump-states-bulwark/) who are anxious to please him.

In an opinion column published on October 18 (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/opinion/trump-vance-patel-bondi.html), the New York Times' Frank Bruni stresses that desperation to please Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) is one of the things that makes his current group of allies so dangerous.

Bruni specifically points to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.

"There’s no team of rivals around Trump, no constructive dissent, no battle of ideas from which the best one emerges," Bruni warns. "There’s just flattery and more flattery. Tribute upon tribute. Hyperbole atop hyperbole. Of course, telling bosses how effective, charismatic and visionary they are is a tried-and-true route to advancement…. But the sort of fanboy fan dances that Vance and Patel routinely perform? That's extreme. As was Attorney General Pam Bondi's pathetic effort, during a Senate hearing in which she was fielding questions, to make Democrats on the panel answer for their supposed crimes against Trump. How, she wondered, could they be so mean to him? How, I wondered, does she keep a straight face?"

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Bondi, Patel and Hegseth, according to Bruni, are dangerous not only because of their extreme rhetoric, but because they are willing to back it up with actions.

"If that lip service were merely the ceremonial price that Trump's aides paid to be able to attend to the rest of their jobs in a serious manner," Bruni argues, "it would be little more than embarrassing. But it's part of a broader servility, a more profound humiliation. Their deeds must match their diction. So Bondi has either encouraged or indulged nuisance investigations and malicious prosecutions of Trump's enemies, including (former FBI Director) James Comey and (New York State Attorney General) Letitia James. Patel expanded polygraph tests at the FBI — to prevent pejorative portrayals of the administration from leaking out."

Bruni continues, "Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth channeled Trump's contempt for independent journalists and emulated Trump's attacks on the media by laying down new rules that essentially forced self-respecting reporters to hand in their Pentagon press credentials. The president was pleased: He wondered aloud about doing something similar at the White House. Maybe Patel and Hegseth were always this paranoid and petulant, but Bondi seems to have grown crueler and coarser in direct relation to her time with Trump. And Vance's cartoonish sycophancy is the convenient inverse of his past statements that Trump was 'America's Hitler' and an 'idiot.'"

*Frank Bruni's full New York Times column is available at this link (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/opinion/trump-vance-patel-bondi.html) (subscription required).

MMA

Right-wing media said Chicago ICE raid yielded numerous gang members' arrests. New reporting shows hardly any arrests related to Tren de Aragua.

Written by Gideon Taaffe (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/gideon-taaffe) & Sage Hodil (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/sage-hodil)

Published 10/16/25

Right-wing media have cheered Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s September 30 raid on a Chicago apartment, saying they arrested a dozen or dozens of “suspected Tren de Aragua gang members” in an apartment complex “seized by TdA gang members.”

However, the Department of Homeland Security told CNN that just two of the 37 arrested are believed to be gang members. And later DHS told MSNBC it has “verified” one Tren de Aragua member from the raid.

The Trump administration claims that its arrests in Chicago have targeted criminals, but there is little evidence many of the 1,000 people detained by ICE in the city have any criminal convictions. Right-wing media have previously carried water for the Trump administration’s mass deportations that allegedly focus on the “worst of the worst” even though the majority of ICE detainees have no criminal convictions.

ICE's raid on a Chicago apartment building led to dozens of arrests and four children taken into custody. New reporting shows that few if any arrested in that raid or others in Chicago have criminal or gang ties.

CNN reported shortly after the raid that DHS said only two people arrested were believed to be a Tren de Aragua member, and MSNBC reported later that DHS said it had “verified” just one. The September 30 raid at a South Side apartment building that ICE said was “frequented by Tren de Aragua members” saw 37 people arrested but CNN reported that just two of them “are believed to be members of the Venezuelan criminal gang, according to DHS.” According to MSNBC, DHS said one person is a “verified” member of Tren de Aragua but did not say “how it had verified that gang affiliation.” CNN, \10/3/25 (https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/03/us/chicago-apartment-ice-raid); MSNBC, [10/13/25 (https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/trump-immigrants-violent-crime-chicago-illinois-ice-rcna237272)]

Of the 1,000 migrants arrested in Chicago and its suburbs, the Department of Homeland Security has released details showing a criminal background for only “about 1%” of those detainees, according to MSNBC. DHS claims ICE is arresting “the worst of the worst pedophiles, child abusers, kidnappers, gang members, and armed robbers,” but MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff said the people they are targeting “are not the worst of the worst. And I cannot say that more unequivocally and clearly enough.” Soboroff also said ICE agents are “indiscriminately rounding people up, grabbing people off the street. And I'm saying this as a reporter who has seen this with my own eyes, not the worst of the worst on the street.” MSNBC, \10/13/25 (https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/trump-immigrants-violent-crime-chicago-illinois-ice-rcna237272); MSNBC, The Briefing with Jen Psaki, 10/7/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4034010); MSNBC, Katy Tur Reports, [10/8/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4034011)]

Detentions at the Chicago apartment raid included “four children who are US citizens with undocumented parents,” according to CNN.One tenant of the building described the raid, saying, “The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other.” One resident who was initially detained told CNN, “Anyone with an outstanding warrant, even if it was unrelated to immigration, would not be released.” CNN, [10/3/25 (https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/03/us/chicago-apartment-ice-raid)]

Previous attempts to arrest people associated with Tren de Aragua based on their tattoos have led to deportations of people with no criminal records.The administration sent numerous alleged gang members to El Salvador but then acknowledged that “many” of them had no criminal records, according to CBS News. Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, told CBS, “Expert after expert tells us tattoos are not a reliable indicator of whether you're part of this particular gang.” CBS, [4/8/25 (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-tattoos-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-gang/)]

Right-wing media bolstered suggestions that the Chicago apartment raided by ICE was full of Tren de Aragua members

Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner claimed the building was “taken over by members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang.” Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, [10/2/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4033993)]

Fox News host Jesse Watters asserted that “dozens of Tren de Aragua members are getting Kilmared,” referencing deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, before cutting to reporting on the September 30 raid.Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, [9/30/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4033994)]

Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher said the operation led to “the arrest of more than a dozen suspected Tren de Aragua gang members.”Fox News,Fox News @ Night, [10/1/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4033998)]

Fox News host Laura Ingraham claimed “Trump is fixing the criminal mess” in Chicago, saying that “TdA gang members in Chicago got a surprise this week” when ICE conducted an “unexpected drop-in that involved a Black Hawk helicopter and hundreds of federal agents.”Fox News reporter Mike Tobin reported, “More than a dozen were detained. At least one has a tattoo commonly associated with the Tren de Aragua gang.” Fox News,The Ingraham Angle, [10/1/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4033996)]

In an interview with acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Newsmax host Emma Rechenberg claimed the apartment had been “seized by TdA gang members.”Lyons also pushed the claim, stating the building was “taken over by Tren de Aragua gang members.” Newsmax, The National Report, [10/8/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4033995)]

While displaying a chyron that read “Tren de Arrested,” Fox News anchor Dana Perino said ICE agents were “targeting suspected Tren de Aragua members” in the raid and “netted 37 illegal aliens, including those associated with the bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang.”Fox News, The Five, [10/1/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4033997)]

The Daily Wire’s Jennie Taer wrote that the building was “teeming with suspected Tren de Aragua gang members.” The Daily Wire, [10/1/25 (https://www.dailywire.com/news/dhs-arrests-800-illegal-immigrants-in-illinois-raids-as-trumps-deportations-continue-amid-shutdown)]

Fox & Friendsco-host Lawrence Jones complained that people are “more concerned about the children being temporarily detained, not the fact that they were around, and the same apartment complex, of Tren de Aragua, a known terrorist organization.” Jones’ comment came after Lyons claimed Tren de Aragua “took over” the building and that pictures of zip-tied children were “AI fake photos.” Fox News, Fox & Friends, [10/6/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4033991)]

Trump and right-wing media have claimed that ICE is targeting “the worst of the worst,” but data shows otherwise

Earlier this year Trump claimed ICE was targeting the “worst of the worst,” yet ICE data revealed 84% of those detained at ICE facilities “were not given a threat level.” Only 5% of detainees were given the highest threat level by ICE. According to TRAC Reports, an oversight group that provides data on government operations, as of September 21, 71.5% of ICE detainees had no criminal conviction. TRAC additionally noted, “Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.” The Associated Press, \7/12/25 (https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trump-immigration-crime-ice-criminal-dangerous-violent-99557d9d68642004193a9f4b7668162e); TRAC Reports, accessed [10/15/25 (https://tracreports.org/immigration/quickfacts/)]

Right-wing media have heralded the Trump administration’s campaign promise to focus deportations on the “worst” criminals while denying the reality of the mass deportations.Fox personalities have claimed ICE is not targeting “abuelitas” or “housekeepers” but “the worst of the worst” and “hardened criminals and gang members.” Media Matters, [4/9/25 (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/fox-flails-defend-trumps-mass-deportations-lack-due-process)]

//

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MMA

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10/03/25

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AH AN 9 25

Liberal Georgia-based journalist Zaid Jilani, who was raised Muslim, has a long history of criticizing the Religious Right. Jilani, back in the 1990s and 2000s, often argued that while there's nothing wrong with faith and religion, "theocracy" has no place in a constitutional democratic republic like the United States.

But in an op-ed published by the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/opinion/christian-right-conservatives-erika-kirk.html) on September 26, Jilani lays out some reasons why he finds 2025's MAGA Christian nationalists much more troubling than the fundamentalist evangelicals he criticized in the past.

"As the George W. Bush years rolled on," Jilani recalls, "I joined my fellow liberal activists in watching documentaries like 'Jesus Camp,' which warned of an impending Christian theocracy. I argued vigorously for separation of church and state, and I waited on pins and needles for the end of a movement I viewed as stifling freedom of religion and freedom of expression. But I'm starting to miss the Christian conservatives I grew up with. Unlike the Christian Right of my childhood, today's variations — some of which see President Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) as a religious figure — seem incapable of being compassionate toward outgroups like mine."

Jilani recalls that after al-Qaeda's 9/11 terrorist attacks, then-President George W. Bush was careful to make a distinction between jihadist and non-jihadist Muslims. Bush described Islam as a "great religion," making it clear that he didn't blame all Muslims for 9/11.

"I think back to the days right after September 11, when Mr. Bush — the politician most closely associated with the 21st-Century Christian Right — visited a mosque in Washington, D.C., to emphasize that Muslims were just as American as anyone else," Jilani explains. "It's easy to laugh this off, given what happened afterward — he set off a bungling war on terrorism that included an unnecessary war in Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Yet Mr. Bush set the tone for the millions of devout Christians who voted for him."

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MAGA's "Christian nationalism," Jilani laments, "can be distinguished more by cruelty than kindness."

"These new Christian conservatives are represented by people like Matt Walsh, a popular right-wing Catholic commentator," the Georgia-based journalist warns. "Conservatives spent years working across the aisle on criminal justice reform. Mr. Walsh has floated the return of whipping and amputations as punishments and said that by resisting Mr. Trump's militarization of law enforcement in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson had committed treason and should be 'given the requisite punishment for a capital offense'…. There is no issue where the current crop of Christian Right politicians departs more from the old than immigration."

Zilani, who is Pakistani-American, adds, "Christians like Mr. Bush condemned nativism. These new activists embrace it."

projection rubber then 180?!

rww

Jesse Kelly And Steve Deace Hypocritically Decry The Left's 'Political Sadism'

09/17/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla (https://www.peoplefor.org/post_author/kyle-mantyla)

In the wake of the assassination (https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/charlie-kirk-shot-utah-turning-point-usa/) of Charlie Kirk, the entire right-wing movement has, after years (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1966190953284382850) of likening their political opponents to Hitler and the Nazis, suddenly declared that such language is unacceptable and dangerous when it is used by the left.

Predictably, those decrying this sort of language have used it (https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/jackson-lahmeyer-blames-kirks-death-right-wing-watch-msnbc-cnn-abc-and-left-wing) repeatedly themselves (https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/shock-and-awe-maga-troll-brenden-dilley-urges-trump-impose-martial-law) and are even openly calling for violence (https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/ali-alexander-calls-trump-arrest-and-possibly-kill-500000-people-response-charlie) in response to Kirk's murder.

This hypocrisy was on full display during a recent episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEEFf1ZxWeQ) of "I'm Right with Jesse Kelly."

Kelly, himself a far-right broadcaster (https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-kelly/iheartradios-jesse-kelly-pushes-conspiracy-theory-related-attack-paul-pelosi) who has likened (https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-kelly/right-wing-radio-host-likens-climate-change-activists-nazis) his opponents to Nazis and declared (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1565391760213569537) that he wants to see a "monster" unleash authoritarianism against communists, blamed Democrats for Kirk's murder.

"The people who are mentally shattered, the people who don't value human life, they hear Democrat after Democrat, media person after media person talk about, 'We're at war with Hitler—Nazi, Hitler, Nazi, Hitler'—and they hear orders," Kelly said. "Democrats are terrified right now. American communists are terrified right now. They are terrified because one of their pets took things too far, killed somebody who was beloved, and now the right is filled with a righteous anger, and we want communism snuffed out completely in this country, and the communists know it."

"They know that was probably too far; uh-oh, oopsie, we look bad, everyone knows we're demons," Kelly added. "Now is the time to purge them from our shores."

Kelly then fumed about Republicans like Sen. Katie Britt for calling for unity in the aftermath of Kirk's murder.

"No," Kelly said. "No peace with demons."

Video URL

IFrame Content (https://www.peoplefor.org/media/oembed?url=https%3A//vimeo.com/1119510933&max_width=0&max_height=0&hash=0NofqNX45MxDjPmbC8U98WbN3z0XFSwkZpAZ-I9XWyk)

Seemingly unaware that calling your opponents communists and demons who must be snuffed out and purged from the country sounds a lot like the sort of dangerous rhetoric that he was supposedly decrying, Kelly then brought far-right broadcaster Steve Deace onto the program to further discuss the dangers of left-wing rhetoric.

This was particularly absurd given that Deace himself wrote a book about the COVID-19 pandemic called "Rise of the Fourth Reich (https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fourth-Reich-Confronting-Nuremberg/dp/163758752X/)" and once openly proclaimed (https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/post/steve-deace-wants-to-see-trump-hang-some-antifa-members) that he wants to see anti-fascism activists "hanging from gallows in Trump ties."

Deace nevertheless had the gall to fume (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1968373954881503393) that the left is driven by "political sadism" and a fetish for the physical suffering of their opponents, which is acutely ironic given that, in 2022, Deace appeared on (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1567569247294947329) Kelley's program where he declared that Anthony Fauci is "America's Mengele" and therefore deserving of "Nuremberg-like punishments."

"I've got a fetish, Jesse, and it's for punishment!" Deace said then. "That's the fetish I have right now. When we send the kids to grandma's for date night, the wife sends me texts about punishing the people that did this for the last 29 months to put me in the mood.":

MMA

2. Laura Loomer wants ICE to livestream arrests for entertainment: “Make it exciting and show ICE agents tackling Juan and Jesus” (https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-loomer/laura-loomer-wants-ice-livestream-arrests-entertainment-make-it-exciting-show-ice)

:{:{08/22/25}:

MMA 8 25

Inside the alliance between right-wing media and Trump “Border Czar” Tom Homan

As the public recoils from “Alligator Alcatraz” and Trump’s mass deportation agenda, conservative outlets work overtime to help Homan mislead their audiences

Written by John Knefel (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/john-knefel)

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/tyler-monroe)

Published 08/07/25

When Harris Faulkner concluded a recent interview (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031950) with Tom Homan — President Donald Trump’s “border czar” tasked with carrying out the administration’s mass deportation (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/trump-administration-planning-deporting-millions-and-millions-immigrants-fox-news) operations — she did so with a benediction.

“God bless you, Tom Homan, for keeping us safe,” the Fox News anchor said solemnly.

Fox host Jesse Watters took a different, more threatening approach when he demanded (https://x.com/Acyn/status/1952852940206768504) that Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), who is Guatemalan American (https://newrepublic.com/post/198824/dhs-attacks-democratic-lawmaker-delia-ramirez-spanish), “acknowledge” that “no other country is as great as the United States,” and “if she doesn't, I'm calling Homan — she's going home.”

The devotion that Faulkner and Watters show to Homan is hardly unique in right-wing media. More than any other figure in Trump’s inner circle save perhaps deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Homan is the person conservative outlets turn to when they need someone in Trump-world to champion the administration’s increasingly (https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/20/politics/cnn-poll-trump-deportations) unpopular (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-trump-deportation-program-prices/) immigration policies.

According to a Media Matters review, Homan has appeared on Fox News 78 times this year and an additional 20 times on Fox Business, making him the most frequent Trump administration guest on the Fox networks since Trump's inauguration. But his reach in conservative media extends far beyond those appearances.

Over the month of July, right-wing media fawned over Homan in interviews, aiding him in manufacturing false (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/debunking-myth-migrant-crime-wave) narratives about widespread migrant crime and encouraging him to threaten so-called sanctuary cities with increased raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Conservative interviewers also ignored or downplayed horrific conditions at a Florida immigrant detention camp known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” including allegations that detainees had been subjected (https://apnews.com/article/alligator-alcatraz-immigration-detainees-florida-cc2fb9e34e760a50e97f13fe59cbf075) to overflowing toilets, food filled with worms, and had been chained to the ground. (https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-07-22/alligator-alcatraz-detainee-punishments) A whistleblower just came forward describing (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alligator-alcatraz-former-officer-inhumane-conditions-rcna223355?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma&taid=68937006698d6b0001e70949&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter) “inhumane conditions” at the facility. These interviewers simultaneously offered Homan a platform to wildly inflate the number of so-called criminals and “national security threats” that ICE had arrested.

This dynamic illustrates the symbiotic relationship between Homan, who had his own lucrative career as a conservative pundit (https://www.mediamatters.org/tom-homan/how-border-cop-pundit-pipeline-fuels-anti-immigrant-coverage) and consultant (https://accountable.us/more-conflicts-trump-border-czar-runs-firm-helping-secure-federal-contracts-for-homeland-security-clients/), and the right-wing media ecosystem — where each party has an incentive to demonize immigrants, ignore critical reporting, and create narratives about social disorder that they attribute to immigrant communities, all in the service of Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

“God bless you, Tom Homan”: Right-wing media’s month of softball interviews with Trump’s border czar

On July 1, a day before officials at Alligator Alcatraz began (https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/first-immigration-detainees-arrive-at-florida-center-in-the-everglades/) concentrating people in the encampment, Homan appeared (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031932) on Charlie Kirk’s influential podcast.

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From the July 1, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

“Tell us about the significance of Alligator Alcatraz,” Kirk began. “What is it and what will it be used for?”

After Homan offered his standard anti-immigrant boilerplate to plead on behalf of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-funding-big-beautiful-bill-trump-deportations/), Kirk responded: “You’re doing a wonderful job.”

“We have your back, Tom Homan,” Kirk said at the conclusion (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031933) of the interview, calling for “10 million deportations” after Homan promised to “flood the zone with sanctuary cities,” declared “zero tolerance” for those who impede ICE operations, and defended ICE personnel (“They’re not Nazis”).

Appearing (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031852) on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom on July 7, anchor Bill Hemmer asked Homan about the new facility in southern Florida and whether other states might be willing to open similar sites. Homan took aim at people who opposed the administration’s approach, complaining that blue states are “too busy attacking ICE and they’re too busy attacking Trump’s policies,” referring to a shooting (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/10-arrested-in-connection-with-texas-detention-center-shooting-that-was-planned-ambush-u-s-attorney-says) at an immigrant detention facility in Texas on July 4. Hemmer responded: “On that point, could this get ugly?” It was his only follow-up question.

Homan had a busy following day. Fox News’ Martha MacCallum interviewed (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031935) him and didn’t ask about Alligator Alcatraz. Neither did Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, though the host found (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031937) the time to shower Homan with praise, saying “you guys are on fire,” and “nobody knows the law better than you.” (Kelly also incorrectly stated (https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-kelly/newsmaxs-greg-kelly-habeas-corpus-great-i-dont-think-it-applies-illegal-alien), “Habeas corpus is great, but I don't think it applies to an illegal alien,” echoing (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-pushes-habeas-corpus-showdown-supreme-court-end-june) a larger right-wing media campaign to suspend due process protections for immigrants.) Fox Business host and former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow introduced (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031886) Homan by calling him “one of my great heroes.” Kudlow also didn’t bring up Alligator Alcatraz.

Homan has appeared on Fox News 78 times this year and an additional 20 times on Fox Business, making him the most frequent Trump administration guest on Fox by far

On July 10, Fox anchor John Roberts asked (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031884) Homan three questions, all about sensational but unrepresentative (https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/immigrants-do-not-commit-more-crimes-in-the-us-despite-fearmongering/) examples of immigrants committing acts of violence. “There could be more, and that’s truly frightening,” Roberts said to conclude the segment.

:{:{Kirk hosted Homan for a VID]}:

lengthy, in-person (https://youtu.be/i52huiICZJc) at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit on July 12. “The great Tom Homan,” Kirk said by way of introduction. “The legendary Tom Homan.” During their interview, Kirk declared that “we need to get rid of birthright citizenship” and claimed that “the legal Hispanics” support mass deportation. (A Gallup poll (https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigration-abated.aspx) from July 11 found 91% of Hispanic Americans support a pathway to citizenship, and only 23% support deporting all immigrants without legal status.)}:

Alligator Alcatraz didn’t come up during a July 11 interview (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031939) on Fox & Friends or a July 16 interview (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031887) on Hannity. Newsmax host Rob Schmitt also failed to bring up the facility in his interview (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4032152) with Homan, though he began the segment by accusing the administration’s opponents of throwing “every possible sob story at you guys.”

On July 18, Fox Business guest host Cheryl Casone began her interview (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031889) with Homan by asking about the administration’s stated goal of reopening Alcatraz prison in San Francisco as a migrant detention center before shifting her focus to its namesake in southern Florida, suggesting it might serve as a template for other states.

“What do you make of this idea of these other states that could do something similar to what they’ve done in Florida, which is Alligator Alcatraz,” Casone said. “I mean, this facility was created very quickly, and many lawmakers have been down there. They said that it is safe. You know, all of these Democrats yelling and saying it was going to be dangerous — it’s not.”

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From the July 18, 2025, edition of Fox Business' Mornings With Maria Bartiromo

That was the same day that Fox News’ Faulkner blessed (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031950) Homan at the end of her interview. Alligator Alcatraz went unmentioned.

Homan was back (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031890) on Hannity on July 21, during which the eponymous host asked him three questions, all of which centered on — and inflated — the risk of so-called migrant crime. Two days later, Homan was on another Fox prime-time show, this time The Ingraham Angle, appearing over a chyron that read: “Illegals’ reign of terror.”

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From the July 23, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

The next afternoon on America Reports, Roberts’ questions again (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031897) gave Homan a chance to criticize sanctuary city policies. The anchor concluded the segment by reminding his audience that Homan had “vowed to flood the zone there in New York City” with ICE agents.

On July 29, Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones framed (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4031921) Homan and ICE as dispassionately following the law. “There’s laws on the books you guys have to enforce,” Jones said, adding later, “You don’t get to selectively enforce when a judge has signed an order, right?” (The Washington Post found (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/21/trump-court-orders-defy-noncompliance-marshals-judges/) that the second Trump administration has defied more than 1 in 3 judicial rulings, including in high-profile cases regarding immigration and deportation.)

Homan uses right-wing media to spread false talking point that 70% of ICE arrestees are criminals, the rest are “national security threats”

A closer look at one of Homan’s latest talking points helps illustrate how the right-wing media ecosystem seeks to bolster support for Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.

In the July 29 Fox & Friends interview, Homan claimed that “70% of the people we are arresting are criminals. Hard stop: 70%.”

“Who are the other 30%?” Homan continued. “The other 30% are national security threats.”

He reiterated later: “We’re arresting 70% criminals, and the rest are national security threats and those with final orders.”

Homan didn’t offer a citation for those figures, and Jones didn’t ask for one. Neither did NewsNation anchor Markie Martin, who interviewed (https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/border-czar-ice-arrests-criminals-threats/) Homan the same morning.

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From the July 29, 2025, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

“Seventy percent of everybody we arrest is a criminal,” Homan repeated (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4032014) later that day on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime. “Who is the other 30%? National security threats, final orders of deportation, gang members.”

Note the rhetorical slippage, as Homan moves from an unequivocal statement that 30% of people detained by ICE are national security threats to squishier phrasing that also includes immigrants with an order of deportation.

Over the next 48 hours, Homan made nearly identical versions of the claim on Newsmax’s The National Report (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4032011), Fox Business’ Varney & Co. (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4032036), and OAN’s Real America with Dan Ball (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4032040). None of these programs offered even mild pushback, much less the full debunking the claim deserves.

Homan’s first claim that 70% of ICE arrestees are criminals appears to have first been used in a Department of Homeland Security press release from June 26 (https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/06/26/dhs-arrests-worst-worst-criminal-illegal-aliens-los-angeles-including-pedophiles), which quoted DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin as saying: “Under the Trump Administration 70% of illegal aliens arrested have been convicted or charged with a crime beyond illegally entering our country.” The figure has been included (https://www.dhs.gov/news-releases/press-releases?combine=70%25&created=&field_taxonomy_topics_target_id=All&items_per_page=10) in at least seven subsequent releases.

Even granting Homan the benefit of the doubt in his failure to distinguish between a criminal conviction and a charge, the DHS stat appears to be incorrect, according to media reports and other independent sources that cite ICE’s own data.

On June 24, CBS News reported (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-record-59000-immigrant-detainees-half-no-criminal-record/) that “federal statistics show nearly half — or 47% — of those currently detained by ICE lack a criminal record and fewer than 30% have been convicted of crimes.”

The Associated Press, citing ICE data, reported (https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trump-immigration-crime-ice-criminal-dangerous-violent-99557d9d68642004193a9f4b7668162e) that “as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, 41,495 — 71.7% — of whom had no criminal convictions.” Of that subset, 14,318 people had pending criminal charges, meaning that about 53% of arrestees either had a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges.

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (https://tracreports.org/immigration/detentionstats/pop_agen_table.html), which collects government data, 24% of ICE detainees were facing criminal charges as of July 13 and 28% had a criminal conviction, though TRAC adds (https://tracreports.org/immigration/quickfacts/detention.html#detention_nocrim): “Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”

Even the scant evidence in the public record that purports to bolster Homan’s claim undercuts the Trump administration’s larger argument that it’s targeting the so-called worst of the worst.

On July 16, CBS News reported (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-ice-data-shows-less-than-1-of-deportees-had-murder-convictions/) that “of the estimated 100,000 people who were deported between January 1 and June 24 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 70,583 were convicted criminals, according to an ICE document” obtained by the network — though “most of the documented infractions were traffic or immigration offenses.” (It’s not clear what accounts for the discrepancy between the CBS News report and other publicly available data.)

As to Homan’s second claim that the remaining 30% of ICE arrestees are “national security threats,” it appears to be the product of the Trump border czar’s own imagination. The statistic doesn’t appear in any DHS press releases from this year, and doesn’t seem to exist in the public domain beyond Homan’s own claim. Although Homan occasionally tempers his talking point by including people with removal orders, the message to conservative audiences is clear, as illustrated by the NewsNation headline: “Border czar says ICE arrests include 70% criminals, 30% threats.”

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From an article (https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/border-czar-ice-arrests-criminals-threats/) published on NewsNation on 7/29/25

Using TRAC’s most recent numbers, ICE is holding 56,816 people — meaning that by Homan’s reasoning, more than 17,000 are national security threats. By contrast, the July 16 CBS News report (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-ice-data-shows-less-than-1-of-deportees-had-murder-convictions/) found that “3,256 of the more than 100,000 people removed were known or suspected gang members or terrorists,” which is roughly 3%. (Databases that purport to list terrorists (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/oversight-boards-terrorist-watchlist-report-underscores-need-major#::text=It's%20hardly%20the%20first%20time,could%20help%20mitigate%20this%20issue.) and “gang members (https://theintercept.com/2025/07/22/ice-gang-database-trump-deportations/)” are also notoriously inaccurate and filled with false positives and other errors.)

Homan’s baseless assertion that 30% of ICE arrestees are national security threats — including people who simply have an order of removal — functions as a rhetorical sleight-of-hand that won’t be challenged in right-wing media. The Trump administration has absurdly claimed (https://www.justsecurity.org/106953/invasion-executive-order-implications/) that unauthorized migration amounts to an “invasion.” Working backwards from there, Homan apparently concludes that any person in the United States without legal status is therefore a matter of national security.

This hall of mirrors, where regular people going about their lives are transformed (https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-vowed-deport-worst-worst-new-data-shows/story?id=123287810) into violent threats to community safety, inverts the actual dynamics at play. Right-wing outlets that serve as platforms for Homan to demonize immigrants are actually putting communities at risk (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/04/latino-festivals-cancelled-ice-immigration-raids), and now their coverage has helped lay the foundations for ICE and the Florida Division of Emergency Management to open a remote detention camp in southern Florida rife with abuse.

Cascading reports of horrific conditions at “Alligator Alcatraz”

Right-wing media have amplified Homan’s fearmongering even as they have largely ignored or downplayed the harms ICE is causing throughout the country, as embodied most viscerally at Alligator Alcatraz. That campaign of ignorance notwithstanding, the public has had access to horror stories from the southern Florida facility virtually from its first hours of operation.

Officials began (https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/first-immigration-detainees-arrive-at-florida-center-in-the-everglades/) holding people at the facility on July 2, and by July 4 reports of harsh living conditions were already starting to emerge. NBC 6 Miami reported (https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/harsh-conditions-at-alligator-alcatraz-heat-rain-mosquitoes-everywhere/3651896/) the encampment faced swarms of mosquitos, heavy downpours, and high temperatures, all of which were standard fare for the remote area of southern Florida. The outlet later spoke (https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/detainee-being-held-at-alligator-alcatraz-describes-conditions-at-everglades-facility/3653144/) with a detained man who said there was “no water here to bathe,” that the fluorescent lights were always on, and that the food, which detainees were given once a day, “has worms in it.” Another person held there had been denied his medication.

On July 9, The Miami Herald published (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article310130645.html) a lengthy investigation into Alligator Alcatraz, reporting that detainees had no access to showers or water with which to flush the toilets, that giant bugs had breached the tent walls, and that temperatures whipsawed between freezing cold and swelteringly hot. Many of those details were subsequently confirmed by The Associated Press, which added (https://apnews.com/article/alligator-alcatraz-immigration-detainees-florida-cc2fb9e34e760a50e97f13fe59cbf075) that there were “flooding floors with fecal waste,” and The Washington Post, which reported (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/07/16/alligator-alcatraz-conditions/) that some detainees had been “shackled to a bench.”

Conditions only deteriorated from there. On July 22, NBC News reported (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alligator-alcatraz-florida-detainees-conditions-fungus-mosquitoes-rcna220205) a man held at the facility had developed fungus on his feet from the standing water and overall poor sanitation. The same day, The Guardian cited (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/22/florida-alligator-alcatraz-mexico) immigration advocates who claimed at least six people sent to the facility had been hospitalized. WLRN Public Media spoke (https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-07-22/alligator-alcatraz-detainee-punishments) on the phone to a migrant in the camp, who said guards “chained me to the ground,” forced him to stand in the sun without water from 1-7 p.m., and “called him the n-word.”

Lawyers and immigration advocates for the detainees have sued (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article311473837.html?taid=68858a7d0cf9700001d64ab1&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter) in federal court, alleging that the Trump administration and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have created a legal black hole (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/there-is-an-information-blackout-at-floridas-alligator-alcatraz-migrant-detention-camp) where the ultimate jurisdiction for the facility is deliberately opaque (https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1949871304565252496). “This is an unprecedented situation where hundreds of detainees are held incommunicado, with no ability to access the courts, under legal authority that has never been explained and may not exist,” the plaintiffs argued. Detainees there have reportedly (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/alligator-alcatraz-hunger-strike-detainees-protest-conditions-rcna222554) gone on hunger strike, though DHS denies (https://www.gulfcoastnewsnow.com/article/detainees-alligator-alcatraz-hunger-strike-protest/65590414) the claim. Videos show (https://x.com/tomaskenn/status/1952152176169734630) ambulances entering and leaving the facility repeatedly over the course of several days.

In short, Alligator Allcatraz is operating as an extrajudicial concentration camp designed to disappear and punish immigrants largely outside formal legal processes. If Tom Homan and his MAGA media allies have their way, it won’t be the last. DeSantis has already suggested (https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/camp-blanding-florida-preps-new-immigration-detention-facility-23754705) his state will soon unveil a second detention camp, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alligator-alcatraz-model-kristi-noem-homeland-security/) the government is looking to open similar facilities in Arizona, Nebraska, and Louisiana. On August 5, Noem announced (https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/05/kristi-noem-dubs-indiana-miami-correctional-as-speedway-slammers-immigration-alligator-alcatraz/85532322007/) a second camp would be opened in Indiana, dubbed the “Speedway Slammer.”

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President Donald Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) toured (https://apnews.com/article/trump-everglades-immigrant-detention-facility-visit-5dc5568ec15534947c29c9149b773d1d) “Alligator Alcatraz” on Tuesday, the federal immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades that boasts alligators as part of a natural escape barrier. Now, Trump is vowing to renovate the original Alcatraz, just off the coast of California, a former federal maximum security prison that he claims is, or will be, “surrounded by sharks.”

Before jetting off to Florida, Trump joked with reporters (video below) about detainees facing deportation who would have to navigate around the alligators in the Everglades should they try to escape.

Later in the day, Trump posted to his social media website about his new inspiration.

“Because of the Violence and Criminality I have seen due to the Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden, in particular allowing millions of people into our Country who shouldn’t be here, I wanted something representative to show how we fight back, and then, it happened,” the President wrote.

READ MORE: ‘This Is Fascism’: Trump Sparks Fury After Calling to Deport U.S. Citizens (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/07/this-is-fascism-trump-sparks-fury-after-calling-to-deport-u-s-citizens/)

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“I saw a picture of ALCATRAZ looking so foreboding, and I said, ‘We’re going to look into renovating and rebuilding the famous ALCATRAZ Prison sitting high on the Bay, surrounded by sharks. What a symbol it is, and will be!’ Conceptual work started six months ago, and various prison development firms are looking at doing it with us. Still a little early, but lots of promise!”

CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere remarked (https://x.com/IsaacDovere/status/1940121636289880268), “the president says he’s looking into spending federal money, in part, to put sharks into the San Francisco Bay.”

If Trump actually wants Alcatraz to be surrounded by truly dangerous sharks, as Dovere notes he may have to bring them there. The ones currently surrounding the tiny island reportedly may not be especially dangerous, according to the Pacific Open Water Swim Co. (https://www.pacificswim.co/sharks-in-san-francisco-bay-what-swimmers-need-to-know/)

Other critics blasted Trump’s remarks.

Investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze remarked (https://x.com/odinikaeze/status/1940123187489939511), “So we’re rebuilding Alcatraz based on… a vibe?”

“Trump saw a moody picture of a defunct prison and decided that’s the future of immigration policy, locking up desperate families on a shark-surrounded island like a Bond villain with zoning permits,” he added. “This cruel and reckless governance is nothing but a cinematic cosplay with real human lives at stake.”

READ MORE: Trump Pushes Census Do-Over to Exclude Non-Citizens — and to Immediately Redistrict House (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/07/trump-pushes-census-do-over-to-exclude-non-citizens-and-to-immediately-redistrict-house/)

Another social media user wrote (https://x.com/4HumanUnity/status/1940122103623426078): “Trump wants to bring back Alcatraz. Not to house mob bosses or war criminals, but to make a ‘symbol’ out of locking up desperate migrants. Sharks and spectacle. This isn’t immigration policy. It’s a twisted cruelty straight out of a 1930s Germany. You don’t rebuild a prison for the camera unless cruelty is the point. That’s not ‘fighting back’, that’s feeding fear and hatred to your base and calling it leadership. History already wrote this playbook, and it ends in concentration camps, not justice. We are better than this, no?”

Watch the video below or at this link (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/07/surrounded-by-sharks-after-touring-alligator-alcatraz-trump-vows-to-renovate-original/).

AN 6 25

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) continues to draw scathing criticism (https://www.alternet.org/joni-ernst-2672307565/) from countless Democrats — as well as from some Never Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) conservatives, including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough (https://www.alternet.org/ernst-scarborough-trump-medicaid/) — for comments making light of the effects that the draconian Medicaid cuts proposed in President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" will have if it passes in the U.S. Senate.

When a voter at a town hall in Iowa warned that "people will die" if they lose access to health insurance, Ernst replied, in a flip way, "Well, we are all going to die." Subsequently, she made a video in what appeared to be a cemetery in which she doubled down, mocked her critics' concerns (https://www.alternet.org/joni-ernst-2672247429/), and said, "I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth…. I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I'd encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ."

According to analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), up to 16 million Americans (https://rollcall.com/2025/06/04/16-million-lose-insurance-under-budget-bill-other-policies-cbo/) could lose their health insurance if Trump's megabill, in its current form, passes in the Senate.

READ MORE: Karoline Leavitt disappears 'weird Pinocchio cross' after Jon Stewart bashing: report (https://www.alternet.org/karoline-leavitt-cross/)

In a scathing column published by the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/opinion/ernst-apology-christianity-evangelicals.html) on June 5, Never Trump conservative David French points to Ernst's comments as a glaring example of "tying your cruelty to the Christian cross."

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"The fact that a sitting United States senator was that callous — and then tried to twist her cruelty into a bizarro version of the Christian gospel — is worth highlighting on its own as another instance of the pervasive 'own the libs' ethos of the Republican Party," French argues. "But Ernst’s fake apology was something different — and worse — than simple trolling. It exemplified the contortions of American Christianity in the Trump era…. Trumpists think it's good to be bad. But why bring Jesus into it?"

French laments that pro-Trump evangelicals, including Paula White — a major proponent of the Prosperity Gospel — are celebrating "sheer selfishness."

"Consider also the evangelical turn against empathy," French writes. "There are now Christian writers and theologians who are mounting a frontal attack against the very value that allows us to understand our neighbors, that places us in their shoes and asks what we would want and need if we were in their place. But Christianity is a cross-shaped faith. The vertical relationship creates horizontal obligations."

READ MORE:Trump taps into a sense of persecution felt by his conservative Christian base (https://www.alternet.org/trump-taps-into-a-sense-of-persecution-felt-by-his-conservative-christian-base/)

French continues, "While Christians can certainly differ, for example, on the best way to provide health care to our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, it’s hard to see how we can disagree on the need to care for the poor. Put another way, when the sick and lame approached Jesus, he did not say, 'Depart from me, for thou shalt die anyway.' He healed the sick and fed the hungry and told his followers to do the same."

READ MORE:Revealed: The 'Big Beautiful Bill' contains an ugly favor for one of Florida’s top industries (https://www.alternet.org/florida-big-sugar/)

*David French's full New York Times column is available at this link (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/opinion/ernst-apology-christianity-evangelicals.html) (subscription required).

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Ideological differences within Christianity can be enormous. Members of the Episcopal Church had a booth at Philadelphia's gay pride festival on Sunday, June 1, as did a Lutheran group — and both made it clear that they welcome LGBTQ Christians in their denominations. Many far-right Christian nationalists (https://www.alternet.org/sandifer-christian-nationalists/), in contrast, think that Pridefest events should be illegal.

The Religious Right gained a great deal of influence in the Republican Party (https://www.alternet.org/public-schools-red-states/) during Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, much to the chagrin of the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona). Goldwater was a scathing critic of the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.'s Moral Majority (https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/this-1980-report-christian-nationalist) and the Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, and he believed the Religious Right was terrible for the GOP and terrible for the conservative movement. But far-right evangelicals maintained a stranglehold on Goldwater's party, and they became even more militant with the rise of Donald Trump's MAGA movement in 2016.

Robert P. Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and author of the book "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," discussed the alliance between Christian nationalists and the second Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) Administration during an early June interview with Salon's Chauncey DeVega (https://www.salon.com/2025/06/03/prris-robert-p-jones-donald-sees-himself-as-the-king-of-kings/). And he warned that "evangelical" Christian nationalists and MAGA aren't growing any less "authoritarian."

READ MORE:'Stop the foolishness': Susan Collins in the hot seat as she navigates Trump's second term (https://www.alternet.org/susan-collins-trump-2672254282/)

Jones told DeVega, "I was prepared for Trump's return to the presidency to be ugly and disastrous. But seeing the reality of it — especially up close here in Washington, DC, where so many patriotic public servants' lives have been decimated by Trump's attacks on our government institutions — has been very upsetting. I love my country, and it is painful to watch it being dismantled and destroyed by Trump and his MAGA forces."

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Jones warned that Trump's second administration represents a mixture of religious fanaticism and "white supremacy."

"Now, it is more common to hear white Christians instead claiming that he is a tool of God and prophecy," Jones told DeVega. "Ultimately, white conservative Christians are trying to find a theological justification for what is really a political transaction that gives them the power they want in American society — and Trump is making it increasingly clear that much of that power is oriented around the preservation of white supremacy…. Now, their appeals are about how 'Trump is going to protect our way of life' and 'Trump is going to protect our religion.'"

Jones continued, "Only the thinnest veil of Christian morality is pulled over the MAGA movement today — it is transactional and about power. Even the cruelest policies, such as Trump's illegal renditions of immigrants to hellhole prisons in other countries without due process guaranteed to all by the Constitution, evoke little protest. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that, if we take this support seriously, such cruelty is in fact a reflection of the values of these voters."

READ MORE:'Beyond the pale': Scarborough rips 'childish' Joni Ernst for 'mocking her constituents' (https://www.alternet.org/ernst-scarborough-trump-medicaid/)

*Chauncey DeVega's full interview with Robert P. Jones for Salon is available at this link (https://www.salon.com/2025/06/03/prris-robert-p-jones-donald-sees-himself-as-the-king-of-kings/).

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Salon Senior writer Amanda Marcotte says President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement adores a “bimbo."

“In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty,” Marcotte writes (https://www.salon.com/2025/05/23/kristi-noems-proud-maga-bimbo-act-builds-on-the-legacy-of-sarah-palin/). “Book learning, in MAGA-land, is for lesbians and cat ladies. Intelligence gets in the way of the true duties of MAGA womanhood: keeping up your highly artificial appearance and, crucially, defending the man you serve with your whole heart and soul.”

As example, Marcotte said look to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem proudly proclaiming ignorance of the meaning behind habeas corpus. “‘Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to,’ Noem said through her unnervingly Botox-inflated lips (https://www.salon.com/2025/03/24/from-mar-a-lago-face-to-uncanny-ai-art-magas-love-of-ugliness-is-submission-to/).”

READ MORE:Republicans have 'no idea' what's coming: Dems delighted as they await budget backlash (https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/2026-midterms/)

Was Noem, who got a college degree through online courses (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-graduate-rep-kristi-noem-r-sd-gets-her-college-degree/), has taken the “role of the proud MAGA bimbo, in the grand tradition of figures like Sarah Palin (https://www.salon.com/topic/sarah_palin)," Marcotte writes. "The MAGA bimbo isn't just ignorant. She's contemptuous of people who actually know what they're talking about, especially if those facts-laden human beings are fellow women.”

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Where the 20th-century version of the "bimbo" is a dim and mostly good-hearted woman, the MAGA movement makes the bimbo a nasty figure, “as cruel as she is dumb.” The modern right-wing man wants an attack dog, “someone who will charge in to fight your battles, unconstrained by intellectual concerns.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” said Marcotte, “at least for bigots.”

The origins of this bimbo devolution lies in reality TV like ‘The Apprentice,’ and ‘Real Housewives’, “where petty and cruel behavior is rewarded over human decency.”

READ MORE: 'Evil and depraved': Kristi Noem buried over 'embarrassing' social media post (https://www.alternet.org/kristi-noem-courts/)

Noem shapes herself around the stereotype of the wine-throwing real housewife, pairing “expensive clothes and plastic surgery with displays of breathtaking sadism, all performed as if she is literally too stupid to know better.”

“That's how we get pictures of Noem in full makeup with a $60,000 Rolex parading around in front of half-naked men in a torture prison, like she's a real-life "Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071650/)" Or wearing various uniforms with full makeup and a blowout to conduct raids, earning the nickname 'ICE Barbie.'"

“The bimbo can only act on impulse, never information. In this MAGA narrative, it's liberals who are the meanies for asking more of a woman viewed as mentally incapable of handling it,” Marcotte wrote.

Read the full Salon analysis here (https://www.salon.com/2025/05/23/kristi-noems-proud-maga-bimbo-act-builds-on-the-legacy-of-sarah-palin/).

REF

Does Kristi Noem (http://salon.com/topic/kristi_noem) know what habeas corpus is? One thing we know for certain: She would very much like Americans to believe she does not. On Tuesday, the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used a Senate hearing to insist the legal term means the opposite of its actual definition (https://www.salon.com/2025/05/20/its-the-right-to-remove-people-noem-whiffs-when-congress-asks-her-to-define-habeas-corpus/). "Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to," Noem said through her unnervingly Botox-inflated lips (https://www.salon.com/2025/03/24/from-mar-a-lago-face-to-uncanny-ai-art-magas-love-of-ugliness-is-submission-to/). She was interrupted by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who explained to a smug-looking Noem that, no, habeas corpus "requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people" and is the reason it's illegal for Donald Trump to round up immigrants and imprison them in foreign gulags without offering a legal reason why.

In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty.

Was Noem legitimately confused? Jonathan Chait of the Atlantic thinks so, writing that Noem's "ignorance appears to be utterly genuine. (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/05/kristi-noem-habeas-corpus/682859/)" After all, "habeas corpus" is a Latin term used by lawyers but not much by laypeople, especially those, like Noem, who got a college degree through online courses (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-graduate-rep-kristi-noem-r-sd-gets-her-college-degree/) at age 40. But I'm not so sure that Noem, who has been neck-deep in this debate about basic human rights for months, is as dumb as she seemed in that moment. Those who keep watching will notice that Noem doesn't act embarrassed when she's corrected, like normal people do when they get something so terribly wrong. Instead, she insists that "the President of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not." In this lie, Noem admitted that Trump is trying to suspend habeas corpus, not uphold it. It suggests that she knows full well what the actual legal battle is about.

There was much mockery of Noem for being so dumb in mainstream and left-leaning media, but notably, neither Noem nor her allies have shown any shame or defensiveness about her alleged mistake. Whether Noem comes by her confusion honestly or she was just play-acting, she's there to play the role of the proud MAGA bimbo, in the grand tradition of figures like Sarah Palin (https://www.salon.com/topic/sarah_palin). The MAGA bimbo isn't just ignorant. She's contemptuous of people who actually know what they're talking about, especially if those facts-laden human beings are fellow women.

*Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only (https://www.salon.com/newsletter).

In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty. Book learning, in MAGA-land, is for lesbians and cat ladies. Intelligence gets in the way of the true duties of MAGA womanhood: keeping up your highly artificial appearance and, crucially, defending the man you serve with your whole heart and soul. Especially if said man, in this case Donald Trump, is himself dumber than a box of rocks. It's so much easier to be a yes-woman for such a man if you turn your own brain off completely.

For decades in pop culture, the figure of the bimbo has boosted the egos of men who need women to be dumb to feel smart. Being dim means she's not threatening, which makes the bimbo sexy. The allegiance of the bimbo is assured. She has to be loyal to her man because she cannot survive without him. But the bimbo was always more fantasy than reality. Marilyn Monroe could get laughs with her dumb bunny act. Yet, offscreen, she was an avid reader (https://www.biblio.com/blog/2022/05/marilyn-monroes-reading-list-a-genuine-book-lover/) with strongly held leftist political views (https://time.com/4346542/radical-politics-marilyn-monroe/), who chose divorce when her husbands tried to limit her (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240119-arthur-miller-on-his-divorce-from-marilyn-monroe-everything-was-coming-together-in-an-explosion) professional ambitions.

The 20th-century version of the "bimbo" was dim, but almost always good-hearted, exhibiting a childlike generosity to others. The innovation of the MAGA movement, however, is to make the bimbo a nasty figure, as cruel as she is dumb. In the past, what men wanted from a bimbo was someone with dog-like loyalty. For the right-wing man of our time, the craving is more for an attack dog, someone who will charge in to fight your battles, unconstrained by intellectual concerns about whether doing so makes sense.

Palin set the standard in 2008, when she was plucked out of obscurity as the governor of Alaska to serve as the presidential running mate to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. We can be more assured that Palin came by her empty-headedness naturally. During her infamous interview with Katie Couric (https://www.salon.com/2018/10/08/katie-couric-reminisces-on-how-sarah-palin-led-to-the-rise-of-donald-trump/), Palin seemed uneasy about her inability to answer basic questions about the news or civics. Soon, however, her shame turned to defiance, as crowds of base GOP voters — the kind of people we now understand to be MAGA — cheered lustily for Palin. Her fatuousness became a source of strength with that crowd because it fueled what they really loved: her ability to demonize anyone she didn't consider a "real" American. Even as she turned on McCain, Palin morphed into the fantasy attack dog the voters wanted. Ignorance is bliss, at least for bigots.

Related

From "Mar-a-Lago face" to uncanny AI art: MAGA loves ugly in submission to Trump (https://www.salon.com/2025/03/24/from-mar-a-lago-face-to-uncanny-ai-art-magas-love-of-ugliness-is-submission-to/)

The mean-spirited bimbo isn't just a right-wing political project. It draws on another 21st-century innovation: the rise of shrill reality TV like "The Apprentice." There is, of course, plenty of good-natured reality TV like "Great British Bake-Off" or "Queer Eye." But MAGA's aesthetic is closer to the "Real Housewives"-style shows, where petty and cruel behavior is rewarded over human decency. It's in reality TV where the bimbo morphed from the sweet-but-stupid image portrayed by Monroe to the vindictive trophy wife who takes out her pointless grievances by throwing glasses of wine. Noem drove this home Thursday night by tweeting "Suck it" in response to a small court victory in her campaign toillegally detain and imprison immigrants (https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/1925698710295466453).

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The vision of the wine-throwing real housewife is the stereotype that Noem has shaped herself around, pairing her expensive clothes and plastic surgery with displays of breathtaking sadism, all performed as if she is literally too stupid to know better. That's how we get pictures of Noem in full makeup with a $60,000 Rolex parading around in front of half-naked men in a torture prison, like she's a real-life "Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071650/)" Or wearing various uniforms with full makeup and a blowout to conduct raids, earning the nickname "ICE Barbie."

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Is she smart enough to know better? Is it all an act? Is she really this brainless?

It's hard to say, but in a sense, it doesn't matter. During her Senate hearing, Noem was perfectly clear on one issue: Trump has an absolute right to rule like a dictator, and lock up whoever he wants without regard for laws, evidence and especially human rights. Being — or at least acting — too dumb to understand what she's saying helps her. It works like a shield, deflecting serious questions about her sociopathic behavior into a discussion about her IQ. After all, no one expects higher moral reasoning from someone too stupid to learn what "habeas corpus" means before testifying publicly about it. Her intelligence, as portrayed, falls below the threshold of moral accountability. The bimbo can only act on impulse, never information. In this MAGA narrative, it's liberals who are the meanies for asking more of a woman viewed as mentally incapable of handling it.

AN 5 25

When Boris Yeltsin was serving as Russia's first post-Soviet Union, post-communist president during the 1990s, optimists were hoping that Russia would become a full-fledged liberal democracy. But it didn't work out that way, and Russia moved in an increasingly authoritarian direction under his successor, Vladimir Putin.

In an opinion column published on May 28 (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/opinion/trump-danger-normalization-shock.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Kk8.v3bf.P5Z2aqnSqyV7&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare), the New York Times' M. Gessen makes a comparison between Putin's presidency in Russia and Donald Trump's second presidency in the United States — and explains why Russia's post-communist history serves as a warning for Americans.

"Living in and reporting on Russia when Vladimir Putin took and consolidated power," Gessen explains, "I was shocked many times. I couldn't sleep in September 2004, after tanks shelled a school in which terrorists were holding hundreds of children hostage, and I was shocked when Putin used this terrorist attack as a pretext to eliminate elected governorships. I was shaken when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. My world changed when three very young women were sentenced to jail time for a protest performance in a church in 2012 — the first time Russian citizens were imprisoned for peaceful action."

READ MORE:'Zombie apocalypse': Morning Joe panel rips 'affirmative action for conservatives' (https://www.alternet.org/scarborough-trump-harvard/)

Gessen continues, "I couldn't breathe when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. And when the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was poisoned in 2020, arrested in 2021 and almost certainly killed in prison in 2024. And when Russia again invaded Ukraine in 2022."

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The Times columnist goes on to compare Trump's first four months back in the White House to events he saw in Russia.

"The United States in the last four months has felt like an unremitting series of shocks: executive orders gutting civil rights and constitutional protections; a man with a chainsaw trying to gut the federal government; deliberately brutal deportations; people snatched off the streets and disappeared in unmarked cars; legal attacks on universities and law firms," Gessen observes. "Unlike the Russian autocratic breakthrough — or, for that matter, the Hungarian one, which has apparently provided some of Donald Trump’s playbook — the transformation of American government and society hasn’t been spread out over decades or even years. It’s been everything everywhere all at once."

Gessen warns that extremism in the U.S. is becoming normalized.

READ MORE:'Soft underbelly': Investigative reporterd detail 'biggest area of corruption for the Trump family' (https://www.alternet.org/trump-corruption-2672222248/)

"In this country, too, fewer and fewer things can surprise us," the columnist laments. "Once you've absorbed the shock of deportations to El Salvador, plans to deport people to South Sudan aren't that remarkable. Once you've wrapped your mind around the Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) Administration's revoking the legal status of individual international students, a blanket ban on international enrollment at Harvard isn't entirely unexpected." normalization chris ahyes ANCHOR SET #

Gessen continues, "Once you've realized that the (Trump) Administration is intent on driving thousands of trans people out of the U.S. military, a ban on Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care, which could have devastating effects for hundreds of thousands, just becomes more of the same. As in a country at war, reports of human tragedy and extreme cruelty have become routine — not news."

READ MORE:'Threat to glory of the dictator': Fascism expert explains why Trump wants to 'smash' US 'crown jewel' (https://www.alternet.org/trump-jason-stanley-cabrera/)

*M. Gessen's full New York Times column is available at this link (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/opinion/trump-danger-normalization-shock.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Kk8.v3bf.P5Z2aqnSqyV7&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare) (subscription required).

an 5 25

:{:{During the House’s marathon markup of President Donald Trump’s historic budget bill, the Chairwoman of the powerful Rules Committee lashed out at Democrats for plainly describing the legislation’s sweeping consequences (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-house-passed-trumps-big-beautiful-bill-heres-how-it-affects-taxpayers-and-businesses-110041500.html). Officially dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” the measure narrowly passed in the early hours of Thursday by a 215–214 vote (https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/house-republicans-pass-trump-agenda-megabill-rcna208389). }:

It removes $800 billion in funding from Medicaid, would lead to $535 billion in cuts to Medicare (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/05/its-a-nightmare-trumps-beautiful-bill-slashes-500b-from-medicare-dems-warn/), and is projected to cause an estimated 8.6 to 13.7 million Americans (https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/issue-brief/how-will-the-2025-reconciliation-bill-affect-the-uninsured-rate-in-each-state-allocating-cbos-partial-estimates-of-coverage-loss/) to lose their health care. It will also add $3 trillion to the federal deficit—fueled by tax breaks heavily tilted toward the wealthy and the nation’s first-ever $1 trillion defense budget (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/05/leavitts-deficit-denial-and-the-first-ever-trillion-dollar-defense-budget-built-on-it/).}:

“I am concerned about what has been said about this bill and what it’s going to do,” Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) told the members of her committee Wednesday night. “The extreme comments that have been made about it, and how I believe that it is scaring people out there in the country unnecessarily.”

“The words I’ve heard, particularly today, are ‘cut,’ ‘rip,’ ‘gut,’ ‘kill,’ ‘cruel,’ ‘stealing food,’ ‘losing coverage,’ ‘jammed through,’ ‘biggest transfer of wealth from vulnerable to wealthy people,’ ‘irresponsible’.”

“That is not the way we ought to be talking about this bill.”

READ MORE: ‘Sovereignly Appointed’: Trump Praised in Pentagon Prayer Event Led by Hegseth and Pastor (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/05/sovereignly-appointed-trump-praised-in-pentagon-prayer-event-led-by-hegseth-and-pastor/)

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Many appear to disagree.

MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen, just after the bill passed Thursday morning, wrote (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/republican-house-bill-medicaid-snap-cuts-tax-cut-trump-rcna208380): “What we do know about the legislation the GOP is calling the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ is genuinely terrifying.”

“What makes this situation even worse is that Republicans, from the president on down, are consistently lying about what the bill would do,” Cohen charged.

“The House Republican budget plan would eviscerate Medicaid and food assistance and shift resources toward the wealthiest Americans,” the Center for American Progress (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-house-republicans-budget-bill-guts-basic-needs-programs-for-the-most-vulnerable-americans-to-give-tax-breaks-to-the-rich/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKcF2FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETF4emtqSkhqSk1GejlWYW1LAR558WbCapFJyQwEwNmLhqzA9FcjWOJ77tlKGP-J3V5t9aY4BOZYeIeT7oDXjw_aem_1SeLj8v2ZYcQzcJ5i2yYKw) (CAP) warned ten days ago, adding that it “would implement the largest cuts to both Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history—kicking millions of Americans off their health insurance and taking food away from hungry children.”

“It would raise household electricity costs while trapping most middle-class and poor students in greater student loan debt to afford a higher education,” CAP’s Bobby Kogan, Senior Director for Federal Budget Policy wrote. “And it would make all these changes as a means to partially offset tax breaks that disproportionately go to the richest Americans, giving households in the top 0.1 percent a multihundred-thousand-dollar tax break on average while increasing deficits by trillions of dollars. Taken as a whole, the bill would add trillions of dollars to structural deficits despite these enormous cuts to critical services.”

“If enacted,” Kogan warned, “this would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history.”

READ MORE: ‘Get Out of Here’: Trump Erupts, Calls for NBC Probe After Reporter Asks About Qatari Jet (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/05/get-out-of-here-trump-erupts-calls-for-nbc-probe-after-reporter-asks-about-qatari-jet/)

“Taken as a whole, this bill would harm Americans—particularly the most vulnerable people—and leave the country worse off. It would lead to preventable deaths by taking health care away from millions of people. It would worsen food insecurity by taking food away from the hungry, particularly kids.”

“Budgets showcase our morality because they force governments to decide how to prioritize limited resources. The House Republican budget plan would shift funding away from the sick and hungry and, instead, toward the wealthiest Americans.”

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) responded (https://x.com/RepEscobar/status/1925360654422061342) to Foxx, saying, “In other words, ‘please don’t call this bill what it is or say what it does’.”

Watch the video below or at this link. (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/05/cut-rip-gut-kill-cruel-top-republican-lashes-out-over-dems-using-these-words/)

NO LNX

A new low even for MAGA – but they're about to go lower

Sabrina Haake, Raw Story May 05, 2025

Last week, Trump held a campaign-style rally on the campus of Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan. To the delight of his MAGA fans, he trotted out the same personal grievances he’s been serving up since 2015.

Despite achieving fewer legislative accomplishments during his first 100 days than any president since the 1950s, Trump told his adoring crowd that he had “accomplished more in three months than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years.”

If aiding the enemy, defying court orders, and taking a chainsaw to federal services are “accomplishments,” then Trump is accomplished indeed.

MAGA delights in Trump’s cruelty

After his usual braggadocio, Trump pivoted to video recordings of abject cruelty. Behind the podium, Trump displayed large screen videos of the inhumane treatment of helpless migrants he deported to El Salvador's notorious gulag, CECOT. He brayed, still without evidence, “The worst of the worst are being sent to a no-nonsense prison in El Salvador… watch this!”

“This” was a series of video clips showing hundreds of men he has imprisoned without due process, without a hearing, and without credible evidence that they committed any crime. “This” was a video showing men brutally bent over, having their heads shaved bare, and forcibly shoved into concentration camp-style cages that sleep 75 to 80. “This” was Trump priming his already violence-prone base into a bloodthirsty frenzy, as they exploded in raucous approval of his inhumanity, thundering, "USA! USA! USA!"

According to an affidavit from the Human Rights Watch, prisoners held in CECOT are denied communication with the outside, and only appear before courts in online hearings, often in groups of several hundred detainees at the same time. The Salvadoran government calls them “terrorists” who “will never leave” the prison.

El Salvador, governed by a man who controls the media and calls himself a “cool” dictator, denies human rights groups access to its prisons, and allows journalists to visit only under highly staged circumstances. In videos produced during these visits, prison authorities brag about men held in completely dark solitary confinement cells.

Trump’s stochastic violence against judges

Trump also used the rally to showcase his continued attack on judges, whom he called “communist radical left judges,” claiming they are trying to ‘seize his power.’ Nodding to the courts’ inability to enforce their own orders, Trump warned the world: “Nothing will stop me.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio concurs. At least week’s cabinet meeting, to which Trump invited the media, each cabinet member tried to out-flatter the next person by praising Trump. Seated to Trump’s right, Rubio announced that questions regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man sent in error to El Salvador — specifically, what steps the White House was taking to facilitate his return — were off limits to the media. “I’ll never tell you that, and you know who else I’ll never tell?” Rubio jeered.

“A judge,” he answered himself, “because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States.”

Due process is not a matter of foreign policy

Vice President J.D. Vance also describes the rule of law with sarcastic bombast. He has slammed critics, including federal judges, for “weeping over the lack of due process.”

The Fifth Amendment protects all persons, not just US citizens. It guarantees that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law;” it does not say, ‘no citizens.’ Trump, Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Vance act as if they’ve never heard of it, despite its storied American history. Trying to assume the role of the courts in deciding what the law is, they keep declaring, falsely, that their abuse of immigrants is about “foreign policy.” It isn’t. It’s about the US Constitution, the lynchpin of democracy, without which we don’t have one.

After the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Trump must facilitate Garcia’s return from El Salvador, Trump took to social media to turn a legal block into a PR strategy. He wrote that he is “being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court…which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela… If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer.”

Revealing his complete ignorance of how legal immigration works, he added, “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do…MAGA!”

It’s as if, despite tanking last year’s border bill just so he could campaign on it, he’s never actually considered that processing immigrants requires paperwork.

VP Vance, who knows better, says it’s up to Trump—and himself— to decide what due process is, and what it requires. “To say the administration must observe “due process” is to beg the question: what process is due is a function of our resources, the public interest, the status of the accused, the proposed punishment, and so many other factors.” No. It isn’t. It’s not up to Vance and Trump’s discretion because the Fifth and 14th Amendments, and well established precedent, mapped out what due process requires — notice, a hearing, and an opportunity to be heard — decades ago.

Trump is a symptom, not a cause

It’s a sick disease of the mind, this urge to oppress others for power, but Trump didn’t invent it. Neither did Hitler, Mao Zedong, or Stalin. It’s been there since we stopped living in tune with the earth, and started living in our heads. It’s our collective fall from grace, a phenomenon worsened exponentially by social media.

Watching our experiment stumble brings deep personal anguish, like watching someone you love destroy themselves. You’d give your own life to help, but they have to save themselves.

A minority of Americans- 23%- approve of what Trump is doing and would loudly cheer “USA!!” at videos of human suffering. These are the same people who used to applaud public lynchings; before that, they salivated at public stonings, witch burnings and Caligula’s public displays of torture. It seems they will always be with us; the only positive is that there are far more of us than there are of them.

ALSO READ: Trump is a troll – but this 'ugly' selfie demands a damning response

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are or have been published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

sparked by, tho does not really make the cut:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-some-alabama-county-sheriffs-force-their-inmates-into-medical-debt

no lnx

How some Alabama county sheriffs force their inmates into medical debt

Written by ProPublica December 26, 2019

This article was produced in partnership with AL.com, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

In Alabama, the county in which you’re arrested could be the deciding factor in who will be financially responsible for your medical bills behind bars.

In Baldwin County, known for its white-sand Gulf Coast beaches and waterfront communities, the sheriff’s office ensures that inmates in the county jail do not have to pay anything more than a $15 copayment for medical care.

“Inmates are not billed for the full cost of any medical care either inside or outside” the jail, Sheriff Hoss Mack said in an email. “Alabama Code Title 14 assigns financial responsibility of inmates’ medical treatment to the department where they are being held.”

Just across the bay in Mobile County, home to one of the busiest ports in the U.S. and the eponymous city of nearly 200,000 people built around it, Sheriff Sam Cochran takes a different tack: Some of his inmates are personally on the hook for the full cost of medically necessary care they receive from outside doctors while incarcerated, even if they are awaiting trial.

The difference between the two sheriffs’ approaches demonstrates the unique power Alabama sheriffs have to set their own rules and answer only to voters.Legal experts and civil rights advocates say sheriffs like Cochran are likely violating both state law and the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment and excessive fines.

....

NO LNX

Time's up for the GOP

Thom Hartmann April 25, 2025

We’ve spent years watching Donald Trump attack our democratic institutions, inflame divisions, and corrupt the public discourse.

But focusing solely on Trump misses the larger, more disturbing reality: Trump isn’t acting alone. He’s a dangerous pathogen that found the perfect host in today’s Republican Party, an organism already compromised and eager to be infected.

The evidence of this dangerous symbiosis is alarming and immediate. Just days ago, America crossed a threshold that should chill every citizen who still believes in the rule of law.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a young man living peacefully in Maryland with no criminal record, was ripped from his home and deported to El Salvador — not by rogue agents, not by mistake, but in deliberate defiance of multiple federal court orders.

A judge had explicitly ordered that Garcia not be deported. The U.S. Supreme Court had intervened. And still, the Trump-controlled Department of Justice — under Attorney General Pam Bondi — refused to comply.

Garcia vanished from U.S. soil like a political dissident in a dictatorship. Senator Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador to find him yesterday, only to be denied access. The Salvadoran government wouldn’t even confirm his location. Garcia now sits detained, alone in a foreign country, denied lawyers, family, or recourse.

He’s not a criminal — he’s a political hostage. His only crime was existing under an administration that believes it is above the law.

This isn’t abstract. This is what the death of democracy feels like. A court order ignored. A life uprooted. A senator stonewalled.

And it’s a precedent set: if the executive branch can disappear a legal US resident despite Supreme Court orders, democracy is already bleeding out right in front of our eyes.

To fully comprehend the gravity of our situation, we must recognize that Trump is both a symptom and a disease. Like any opportunistic virus, he didn’t invent the weakness — he exploited it. The Republican Party, drifting toward authoritarianism since Nixon, became the perfect host.

From the backlash to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, to Nixon's Southern Strategy, to the Tea Party’s billionaire-funded anti-government rage against our first Black president, the GOP built a party on grievance and fear. It corroded democratic norms for decades. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, union busting, judicial stacking, demonizing immigrants and queer people, rightwing propaganda media — all laid the groundwork.

Trump didn’t create this environment. He walked into it, flipped the switches, and set it ablaze. He didn’t poison the well. He found it already poisoned and drank deeply.

What’s particularly chilling is how methodical Trump’s attack on democracy has been.

He’s spent years convincing millions that elections are fraudulent — despite no credible evidence. This isn’t just the tantrum of a defeated candidate. It’s a calculated attempt to destroy the one institution that makes a republic function: trust in the vote. When citizens no longer believe their ballots count, democracy dies.

That was the goal. Undermine faith in the system so completely that only Trump — and those who pledge loyalty to him — are seen as legitimate.

His authoritarian instincts were never hidden. He praised dictators like Putin, Orbán, MBS, and Kim Jong Un. He demanded personal loyalty from government officials, attacked the judiciary, and labeled the free press “the enemy of the people.” Every move was pulled straight from the autocrat’s playbook, designed to erode checks on his power.

The insurrection on January 6 was not an outlier, but rather the inevitable outcome of years of lies, hate, and democratic erosion. Trump didn’t just incite a mob; he sat and watched — gleefully — as it ransacked the Capitol, hunted lawmakers, and shattered windows in the temple of democracy. He delayed help. He wanted it to succeed.

And the Republican Party? It shrugged. Which is the key to both understanding and stopping Trump.

None of this destruction would be possible without the Republican Party’s active complicity. They are not passive bystanders; they are eager enablers. Leaders who once called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” now parrot his lies and excuse his crimes.

Why? Because they’ve traded principle for power. The “party of family values” excused porn star hush money because it helped rig the 2016 election. The “party of fiscal responsibility” celebrated massive tax cuts for billionaires that exploded our nation’s deficit. The “party of national security” turned a blind eye as Trump aligned with America's adversaries and vilified NATO.

They sold their souls. And for what? Judges? Tax cuts? A fleeting grip on power?

At the core of this transformation is the deliberate cultivation of cruelty as political strategy. Trump’s policies were never just misguided: they were purposefully cruel.

The separation of children at the border wasn’t a failure; it was a feature. Designed to cause pain. Designed to deter. Designed to send a message that America no longer welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, at least when their skin is not white.

His refusal to return Kilmar Garcia to his family and community (and over 200 others) is not an outlier. It’s the same cruelty repackaged. The same contempt for legal restraint. The same hunger for domination. And if he’s not stopped by Republicans on the Supreme Court or Republicans in Congress, history and his own words tell us he’ll be coming for you and me next.

Beyond policy, Trump has waged a relentless war on truth itself. He didn’t just lie; he declared war on the very idea of truth. He called climate change a hoax. He politicized a deadly pandemic. He turned science into a partisan enemy and transformed medical expertise into a battleground.

The result? Hundreds of thousands of unnecessary Covid (and now measles) deaths. A public so divided they couldn’t agree on masks or medicine. That wasn’t an accident. It was the point: destroy our shared reality, and you can then more easily destroy democracy.

Perhaps most destructive of all, Trump didn’t merely inherit America’s divisions: he weaponized them. He didn’t unify urban and rural, rich and poor, Black and white: he pitted them against each other for personal gain. Rage was his currency. Fear his strategy. When people are busy hating each other, he knows, they don’t notice who’s robbing them blind.

What we now face is no longer a political party but a vicious, cruel cult of personality. Today’s GOP isn’t defined by principles or policies: Disagree and you’re exiled — just ask Liz Cheney. Ask Adam Kinzinger. Ask Mitt Romney.

Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t represent a fringe any longer; she is the mainstream now. Her recent town hall — where dissenters were tased — wasn’t an aberration. It’s the new GOP, where violence is celebrated as a tool, not a last resort, and elected officials revel in their own cruelty, brutality, and ability to ignore the needs of their constituents while taking millions from their donors.

She’s the perfect reflection of Trump: His pathological narcissism drives much of his destructive behavior. A man who cannot tolerate criticism, admit fault, or share the spotlight will burn down democracy itself to protect his fragile ego.

When faced with a choice between national interest and personal gratification, Trump invariably chooses the latter. His demand for absolute loyalty — to him personally, not to the nation or the Constitution — reveals a man who sees America not as a nation to serve but as a stage for his own aggrandizement.

There’s also method in Trump’s chaos. By keeping the country in a constant state of outrage and crisis, he prevents organized resistance and meaningful accountability. The chaos isn’t accidental; it’s strategic, designed to exhaust opponents and normalize previously unthinkable behavior. Each new outrage makes the previous one seem quaint by comparison, creating a downward spiral of degraded expectations.

Trump has weaponized division for political gain. He doesn’t simply observe American divisions; he actively creates and exploits them. By turning Americans against each other — urban versus rural, white versus non-white, native-born versus immigrant — he creates tribal loyalties that override ethical concerns or policy considerations. A divided America is easier to manipulate and control than a united one.

What’s most terrifying about this transformation is that Trump has created a blueprint for future authoritarians. He’s shown how to destroy a developed, advanced democracy from within — legally, slowly, under the guise of patriotism.

And the Republican Party? It’s not just following the map. It’s paving the road.

The critical question before us isn’t whether Trump has damaged America. He has. The question is whether that damage is reversible.

— Can we still rebuild?

— Can Republican elders return to principle?

— Can billionaire donors withdraw their support and allow democratic values to reassert themselves?

— Will it take a second Republican Great Depression to shock the party awake?

Americans don’t yet know any of the answers here, but we do know this: inaction is surrender.

Our democratic survival depends on recognizing that Trump is the virus, but the Republican Party is the host. And if we don’t treat the host, the next authoritarian will be worse. Smarter. More effective. More dangerous.

What happened to Kilmar Garcia could happen again. It will happen again, in fact, if we let it. Our democratic immune system — the press, the courts, business and the legal profession, the voters — must fight back. Because we are running out of time.

Rebuilding what they’ve destroyed will require more than simply removing Trump from power; it will demand a fundamental recommitment to democratic values and institutions by the GOP.

Republicans: Wake up!

You are the last firewall. This is your reckoning. Your move.

NOW READ: Farmers in deep-red state spell trouble for Trump as he mocks the Constitution

SAME DAY?!

NO LNX

Will we let this orange-faced death-cult leader finish the job he started?

Thom Hartmann April 25, 2025

The Trump administration just gutted Meals on Wheels. Seriously. Meals on Wheels!

Donald Trump didn’t just “disrupt” America; he detonated it. Like a political Chernobyl, he poisoned the very soil of our democratic republic, leaving behind a toxic cloud of cruelty, corruption, and chaos that will radiate through generations if we don’t contain it now.

He didn’t merely bring darkness; he cultivated it. He made it fashionable. He turned cruelty into currency and made ignorance a political virtue.

This man, a grotesque cocktail of malignant narcissism and petty vengeance, ripped the mask off American decency and showed the world our ugliest face. He caged children. Caged. Children. He laughed off their cries while his ghoulish acolytes used “Where are the children?” as a punchline for their next QAnon rally.

He welcomed white supremacists with winks and dog whistles, calling them “very fine people,” while spitting venom at Black athletes who dared kneel in peaceful protest.

He invited fascism to dinner and served it on gold-plated Trump steaks. He made lying the lingua franca of the right, burning truth to the ground like a carnival barker selling snake oil from a flaming soapbox.

And let’s not forget the blood on his hands: 1,193,165 dead from COVID by the time he left office, 400,000 of them unnecessarily, dismissed as nothing more than “a flu,” while he admitted — on tape — that he knew it was airborne and knew it was lethal. His apathy was homicidal, his incompetence catastrophic.

He tried to overthrow a fair election. He summoned a violent mob. He watched them beat cops with American flags and screamed “Fight like hell!” while cowering in the White House, delighting in the destruction like Nero fiddling as Rome burned.

And now, like some grotesque twist on historical fascism, Trump’s regime is quietly disappearing even legal U.S. residents — snatched off the streets by ICE and dumped into El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, a dystopian nightmare of concrete and cruelty.

One such man, Kilmar Ábrego García, had legal status and a home in Maryland. But Trump’s agents defied a federal court order and deported him anyway, vanishing him into a foreign hellhole so brutal it defies comprehension.

This isn’t policy: it’s a purge. A test run for authoritarian exile. And if Trump’s not stopped by Congress, the courts, or We The People in the streets, it won’t end there.

But somehow, he’s still here, waddling across the political stage like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of authoritarianism, bloated with power, empty of soul, and reeking of spray tan and sulfur.

Donald Trump didn’t just bring darkness: he’s a goddamn black hole, a gravity-well of cruelty sucking the light out of everything he touches.

This is a man who desecrates everything good.

Empathy? He mocks it. Truth? He slanders it. Democracy? He’d bulldoze it for a golf course.

And if we let him continue, he won’t just end democracy — he’ll make damn sure it never rises again.

So the question is: are we awake yet?

Or will we let this orange-faced death-cult leader finish the job he started, grinning over the corpse of the America we once believed in?

Now is not the time to kneel: it’s the time to rise. Stay loud, stay vigilant, and show up. Every protest, every march, every call to DC, every raised voice chips away at the darkness.

Democracy isn’t a spectator sport: it’s a fight, and we damn well better show up for it.

NOW READ: Time's up for the GOP

an 4 25

It’s been another grueling week.

Several of you have asked me how to live in a nation whose leader has embraced cruelty as public policy. How do we inhabit Trump’s America without becoming complicit in this cruelty?

Molly watched Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) sign the executive order initiating criminal investigations of Miles Taylor (who wrote an anonymous 2018 New York Times op-ed describing internal resistance to Trump in his first term) and Christopher Krebs (who played a major role in undercutting Trump’s false claims about 2020 election fraud).

Molly asks: Is this America?

No, Molly, it is not — at least not the America we have known and loved.

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Others of you are thunderstruck by Trump’s cruelty toward refugees who fled violence and have been living in the United States legally but are now being forced to return to their home countries and face more violence.

And the Trump regime’s cruelty toward people here on temporary visas who are deported arbitrarily, without a hearing — some sent to a gruesome prison in El Salvador even after the regime has admitted error in sending them.

And children in poor countries who are in desperate need of vaccines but are now doing without them because Trump has ended USAID.

The cruelty toward vulnerable people in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in Yemen who are being bombed, wounded, or killed because the Trump regime is doing nothing to stop these bloodbaths or is contributing to them.

Cruelty toward tens of thousands of public servants who are suddenly and without warning fired — some just months away from retirement and a pension.

Revoking security protection for Biden’s son and daughter. And for General Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Revoking security protection for other former members of his first administration despite warnings of ongoing threats from Iran because of actions they took on Trump’s behalf.

Firing more than a dozen prosecutors who worked for the special counsel Jack Smith on criminal investigations of Trump.

Revoking security clearances of 51 people who merely signed a letter suggesting that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation.

Targeting law firms that employ or have employed lawyers who worked on investigations into Trump or on causes Trump objects to.

Targeting universities that have allowed international students freedom of speech.

And on it goes, day after day — the Trump regime’s abject cruelty, viciousness, heartlessness, brutality.

How does a moral person live with this? How do we not become complicit?

The answer, I think, is to do whatever we can to protect those who are vulnerable to this cruelty.

We speak out against Trump’s use of criminal investigations to punish public servants who helped expose his venality.

We make our communities into sanctuaries that limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

We urge our universities to protect free speech and expression of everyone, at whatever the cost.

To the extent we can, we fund groups that are helping poor families around the world get the medical assistance they need.

We call our senators and members of Congress to tell them to retrieve their constitutional authority over government spending.

We tell them to stop the brutality in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, and everywhere else America is either encouraging it or failing to discourage it.

We tell them to stop Trump’s criminal investigations of opponents.

We protest. We organize. We mobilize. We do what we can to put good people into office and keep them there, and we help regain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

In other words, we become organized activists againstTrump’s organized cruelty.

We try to make this country an America we can love again.

Years from now, when our children and grandchildren ask what we did during Trump’s reign of terror, we can tell them that we worked tirelessly to curb his cruelty — and we did it with our compassion.

cosplay ice ride along noem 4 25 with a badge boyfriend cory lew

big gun pted at aGENT

selfie in el salv gulag cecot

AN 2 25

'Less expensive to do': Arizona Republicans advance firing squad execution proposal

AN 2 25

Two already vulnerable groups, transgender people and undocumented immigrants, are feeling increased fear since Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) took office. Both groups face increasing discrimination and are changing their day-to-day behaviors. Trump has signed multiple executive orders targeting the groups as well.

“Regardless of how President Trump's executive orders shake out in the courts, experts say the widespread fear and micro and macro changes to daily life will have lasting implications for these groups,” Erica Pandey writes at Axios (https://www.axios.com/2025/02/20/trump-executive-orders-trans-rights-immigration). "Life is already changing for members of both communities, in ways big and small — with bigger changes likely coming."

For many undocumented immigrants, fear of ICE raids has meant staying home, avoiding work and school. Trump’s presidency has affected documented immigrants as well, some of whom have begun carrying their papers with them.

READ MORE:'Not just blood that they’re after': Expert says Christian Nationalists 'want a show' (https://www.alternet.org/trump-christian-nationalist-author/)

An immigration lawyer in Albany, N.Y., L.J. D'Arrigo, told Axios his "phone has been ringing off the hook."

Transgender people are losing access to crucial gender-affirming care and protections in the workplace.

"The messaging is, 'It's okay to discriminate against transgender people,' Corinne Goodwin, the executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Trans Equity Project, told Axios. "The cruelty is the point."

Trump signed at least four executive orders (https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/trump-executive-order-ban-trans-women-sports-rcna190767) slashing trans rights. He banned trans people from women’s sports, signed an order saying there are two sexes and they are “not changeable,” barred trans people from the military and restricted access to gender-affirming care for people under 19.

READ MORE:'A lot of MAGA': 20 million Americans could lose health coverage under new GOP bill (https://www.alternet.org/medicaid-cuts-2671187457/)

“The barriers and actual impacts are already coming hard and fast” for trans Americans, said Erin Reed, a trans rights activist and writer.

"For transgender youth, if your government is telling that they don’t want you, if your society is telling you that they don’t want you, how does that make you feel?" she said. "And the message to cisgender youth is that this is an acceptable group of people to hate and that this is an acceptable group to bully."

Trump’s executive orders have targeted immigrants as well. On Wednesday, the president signed an executive order (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/us/politics/trump-executive-order-migrant-benefits.html) to end federal benefits for undocumented people. Earlier in his presidency, he signed a controversial order banning birthright citizenship, which is being tried in court.

The consequences of Trump’s actions are felt strongly across the country. In Texas, an 11-year-old died by suicide (https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/us/jocelynn-rojo-carranza-gainesville-texas-death/index.html) after classmates bullied her by claiming her family was in the country illegally.

READ MORE:'A lot of disinformation': GOP lawmakers reach the breaking point with Trump (https://www.alternet.org/trump-zelensky-putin-gop-lawmakers/)

“This week, the White House's X account shareda video (https://x.com/whitehouse/status/1891922058415603980?s=46) of people in shackles preparing to board a deportation flight and called it ‘ASMR (https://www.vox.com/2015/7/15/8965393/asmr-video-youtube-autonomous-sensory-meridian-response),’ referring to an online trend of posting videos with pleasant, gentle sounds,” Pandey writes.

an 2 25 --> fear

'Shatter the consecrated space': Trump administration sued over raids in churches (https://www.alternet.org/trump-immigration-raids-churches/)

:{:{===}:

AN 11 24

ov. Kristi Noem's assent from admitted dog killer (https://www.rawstory.com/kristi-noem-dog/) to national watchdog is spurring howls of rage and disbelief on social media.

President-elect Donald Trump's selection of Noem, the South Dakota Republican who boasted of shooting a pet dog to death, as secretary of Homeland Security on Tuesday stunned political spectators.

"Trump (https://www.rawstory.com/trump-news/) wants the dog-shooter to be his Secretary of Homeland Security," author Stephen King (https://x.com/StephenKing/status/1856325597825241435) told his followers. "We're sure not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

News broke in April that Noem's memoir "No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward" included an anecdote about shooting a 14-month-old dog named Cricket in a gravel pit because she "hated that dog."

ALSO READ:What Trump's win really means for America (https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/what-trump-s-win-really-means-for-america/)

"The puppy-killer will be in charge of homeland security," SiriusXM radio host Michelangelo Signorile (https://x.com/MSignorile/status/1856319991601119659) wrote on X, "making critical decisions over people's lives."

Noem will head a sprawling agency that oversees U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Secret Service, two sources told CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/kristi-noem-homeland-security-secretary/index.html) Tuesday.

"She was willing to shoot her own dog," responded USA Today columnist Michael J. Stern (https://x.com/MichaelJStern1/status/1856265086471467443) on X. "Imagine what she'll do to immigrants crossing the border."

The non-partisan advocacy group Veterans for Responsible Leadership (https://www.vfrl.org/) argued Noem's decision to share the anecdote suggested she catered her message toward Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) loyalists alone.

"Noem never cared that we were disgusted with her dog murder," the group wrote (https://x.com/VetsForRL/status/1856296910149070892). "We weren’t the audience."

Political analyst Russell Drew was one of many commentators to suggest Trump granted Noem the powerful position in gratitude for her support.

"With Kristi Noem head of Homeland Security, not only will people not be safe, but neither will their dogs!" wrote Drew (https://x.com/RussOnPolitics/status/1856308600307679353). "Talk about being completely unqualified for a job."

"Noem, it will be recalled, scuttled her bid to become Trump’s vice presidential nominee when she published an account of how she gunned down the family pet," added John Nichols (https://x.com/NicholsUprising/status/1856327413765980299), national affairs correspondent for The Nation. "But she remained absolutely loyal to Trump and has now been tapped to keep America 'safe.'”

CNN (https://www.rawstory.com/tag/cnn) analyst Jeff Storobinsky resorted to dark humor, writing (https://x.com/jeffstorobinsky/status/1856219853645881750), "All dogs, please, this is not a drill, please seek shelter immediately."

Cartoonist Adam Zyglis joined in by sharing a cartoon that depicts Noem and Trump, both toting smoking guns, next to the corpses of a dog and Lady Justice.

It is entitled "MAGA Meet-Cute."'

:{:{May 13, 2024 rww}:

Frederick Clarkson @ Religion Dispatches (https://religiondispatches.org/wheres-wallnau-a-nar-apostle-takes-aim-at-swing-counties-in-the-battle-for-the-mountain-of-government/): Where’s Wallnau? A NAR Apostle Takes Aim at Swing Counties in ‘The Battle for the Mountain of Government’

Just as they prophesied Trump’s victory and collaborated in the 2020 attempted coup, the Trump wing of the New Apostolic Reformation is on the offensive once again, waging a campaign in counties they think will swing the 2024 presidential election.

Khaya Himmelman @ Talking Points Memo (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/far-right-group-recruits-followers-to-overwhelm-election-offices-with-voter-roll-challenges): Far-Right Group Recruits Followers To Overwhelm Election Offices With Voter Roll Challenges

True the Vote is enlisting private citizens to help it overwhelm under-staffed and under-resourced election offices with voter roll challenges ahead of election day.

Peter Green @ The Bucks County Beacon (https://buckscountybeacon.com/2024/05/republican-pennsylvania-state-representative-with-ties-to-the-new-apostolic-reformation-wants-chaplains-in-public-schools/): Republican Pennsylvania State Representative with Ties to the New Apostolic Reformation Wants Chaplains in Public Schools

Rep. David Zimmerman’s bill is the latest carefully spun attempt to inject a right-wing brand of Christianity into schools in hopes of bringing more children to Jesus. It has already happened in Texas and Florida.

Riley Rogerson @ The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/mike-collins-is-the-hardest-working-troll-in-congress): Mike Collins Is the Hardest-Working Troll in Congress

The freshman member from Georgia doesn’t have much of a legislative record, but he sure can stir up trouble online.

Martin Pengelly @ The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/13/johnny-mcentee-tiktok-video-fake-money): Outrage after ex-Trump aide claims he gave unhoused people fake money

Johnny McEntee, the former White House Trump aide closely linked to plans for radical federal government reform should Donald Trump win re-election, stoked outrage with a TikTok video in which he claimed to give unhoused people fake money, thereby to ensure their arrest.

Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog (https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/latest-flub-trump-praises-late-great-hannibal-lecter-rcna151973): In his latest flub, Trump touts ‘the late, great Hannibal Lecter’

As Donald Trump remarks on “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” perhaps the former president ought to just give up on pop culture references altogether.

badash 1 24 an

noted conservative author and former professor of national security affairs is laying waste to the media narrative that Donald Trump’s MAGA followers are America’s “forgotten” people, concluding instead that they, just like their leader, are in it for revenge.

“Trump wants payback,” writes The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols (https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/01/trump-wants-revengeand-so-does-his-base/677147/), “so do millions of voters who have no one to blame for their sense of humiliation but themselves.”

“Trump and his right-wing media courtiers—who tend to the anger of the older, white middle class the way florists lovingly raise orchids—fed the GOP base a continual stream of rage, especially as Trump started to pile up electoral defeats,” writes Nichols, who has a PhD from Georgetown and taught for 25 years at the U.S. Naval War College. “These voters now want to get even with their fellow citizens not for what’s been done to Trump but for what they feel has been done to them. They were certain that 2016 would finally bring them the recognition and respect they craved. Instead, Trump set them up for a steady diet of ego-bruising rebukes from other voters.”

Nichols also points to a piece by another writer at The Atlantic, McKay Coppins, who “attended a Trump rally (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/01/trump-rally-iowa-2024-election/677119/) in Iowa earlier this month, where he spoke with a nice lady named Kris.”

READ MORE: Trump Complains It Was ‘Ridiculous’ He Had ‘Follow the Laws’ and Leave Office (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/01/trump-complains-it-was-ridiculous-he-had-follow-the-laws-and-leave-office/)

Kris is “a 71-year-old retired nurse in orthopedic sneakers,” Coppins wrote. She “was smiley and spoke in a sweet, grandmotherly voice as she told me how she’d watched dozens of Trump rallies, streaming them on Rumble or FrankSpeech, a platform launched by the right-wing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.”

Asked if Trump should still be president, Kris told Coppins, “By all means.”

“And I think behind the scenes he maybe is doing a little more than what we know about,” Kris said.

Asked, “What do you mean?” Kris said, “Military-wise.”

“The military is supposed to be for the people, against tyrannical governments,” she explained. “I hope he’s guiding the military to be able to step in and do what they need to do. Because right now, I’d say government’s very tyrannical.”

Coppins added: “If the Democrats try to steal the election again in 2024, she told me, the Trump-sympathetic elements of the military might need to seize control.”

Nichols asks, “What can turn an ordinary person—a father, the pleasant older lady who lives down the street—into the family powder keg, or even a deluded seditionist who hopes the U.S. military will seize control of the country?”

He says, the “usual answer, when Trump ran the first time, was that these were ‘forgotten’ voters (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-speech-at-republican-national-convention-trump-to-paint-dire-picture-of-america/2016/07/21/418f9ae6-4fad-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html), people ‘left behind’ by globalization and a leftist political culture, who were hurling out a giant primal yawp of opposition.”

Nichols blames the media and politicians for that false narrative that has driven so much of American politics since Trump came down the escalator in June of 2015.

“These were never empirically sustainable explanations, but empathetic reporters and deeply concerned politicians went on listening tours to diners and gas stations anyway. When ordinary Americans would say shocking, indecent, and un-American things, their flummoxed interlocutors remained steadfast in the belief that more listening and more empathetic nodding would put things right in a few years.”

READ MORE: Brown Bags and Ballots: Viral Videos Capture Chaotic Iowa Caucus System (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/01/brown-bags-and-ballots-viral-videos-capture-chaotic-iowa-caucus-system/)

He also chastises MAGA voters for the “alternate reality” they’ve constructed to explain the strings of losses they’ve had to endure, “including the 2018 Democratic-wave election, Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and the ‘red wave’ that never happened in 2022.”

Antiracism educator Tim Wise responded to Nichol’s piece, writing (https://twitter.com/timjacobwise/status/1747401939040534529): “Exactly correct. The media refuses to admit it but the MAGA faithful are mean, vengeful people. Not decent, misunderstood, and ‘left behind’ people, but folks who are not decent.”

Condé Nast Legal Affairs Editor Luke Zaleski, unrelated to Nichol’s piece in The Atlantic, on Wednesday delivered a (possibly tongue-in-cheek) take on MAGA’s alternate reality.

“This is the actual story republicans are going with,” Zaleski wrote (https://twitter.com/ZaleskiLuke/status/1747559981602189751). “Trump built the wall and gave us world peace and then Democrats and China (Trump’s pal Xi) made up a phony virus that doesn’t make you sick—and trump caught it and made a beautiful vaccine that kills you and he saved us—before Joe stole the election and trump had to start an insurrection that didn’t happen that Nancy did just so they could make it look like trump did it even though he told the attackers he loved them and would pardon them and Obama secretly runs everything and the CIA and FBI do too and George soros and they started the war Putin started and are behind the Hamas attack as well and trump will stop it all in 24 hours.”

Read Nichols’ entire piece here (https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/01/trump-wants-revengeand-so-does-his-base/677147/).

READ MORE: DeSantis Frames Same-Sex Marriage Supporters as Threat ‘Against Our Religious Institutions’ (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/01/desantis-frames-same-sex-marriage-supporters-as-threat-against-our-religious-institutions/)

no lnx an 8 23

twenty-two House Republicans have signed on to a motion filed in federal court requesting to be allowed to join Governor Greg Abbott in defending the Texas Republican against a federal government lawsuit alleging his 1000 feet of razor wire and floating buoys constructed of circular saw blades, designed to prevent migrants from crossing into the United States from Texas, are illegal.

They have invoked the Bible’s Book of Genesis, including Noah’s Ark, to make their case.

“In a motion filed on behalf of U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, and other GOP members, lawyers for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundationhave asked to be part of the case and targeted how a key law is interpreted in it,” the Houston Chronicle reports.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is the right-wing organization The New York Times last year profiled as “The Texas Group Waging a National Crusade Against Climate Action.”

RELATED: Supreme Court in Hand, Far Right Wing Prepares to ‘Take the Reins of Government’

The buoys, deployed on the Rio Grande river, may have led to the deaths of two migrants, possibly including a child.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas called the buoys “barbaric,” and in video showed they are constructed of circular saw blades. In that video Congressman Castro also points to Governor Abbott’s razor wire fences.

Sawyer Hackett, a senior advisor to former Obama Cabinet Secretary Julián Castro, referred to the floating fences as “razor wire death trap buoys.”

“A key point to the Arrington group’s defense is whether the 1,900-mile Rio Grande should be defined as a navigable waterway despite being used by thousands of boats every year,” The Chronicle explains. “They point to a court case from 1870 that suggested that the term navigable waterway is intended to mean moving commerce from one state to another or to a different country and not just one where any small boat occasionally uses the river.”

READ MORE: Critics Blast Top US Conservative Think Tank President for Applauding Italy’s Election of ‘Neo-Fascist’ Prime Minister

That’s where the Bible and Noah’s Ark come in.

“Indeed, if one takes the Book of Genesis literally, then the entire world was once navigable by boats large enough to carry significant amounts of livestock,” the proposed amicus brief reads. “Under the federal government’s theory, these anecdotes would render any structure built anywhere in Texas an obstruction to navigation subject to federal regulation.”

Governor Abbott has had a long partnership with theTexas Public Policy Foundation.

In 2016, as NCRM reported, Abbott while at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, unveiled a major policy plan toalter the U.S. Constitution, adding nine amendments,the result of which could have lead to same-sex marriage bans and anend of LGBTQ protections.

According to Congressman Arrington, the list of signatories to his amicus brief include: Rep. Jodey Arrington, Dr. Michael Burgess, Rep. August Pfluger, Rep. Brian Babin, Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. Roger Williams, Rep. Lance Gooden, Rep. Beth Van Duyne, Rep. Jake Ellzey, Rep. Vern Buchanan, Rep.Chip Roy, Rep. Nathaniel Moran, Rep. David Rouzer, Rep. Pete Sessions,Rep. Ronny Jackson, Rep. Sam Graves,Rep. Clay Higgins, Rep. Michael Cloud,Rep. Keith Self, Rep. John Carter, Rep. Jeff Duncan, Rep. Kat Cammack.

Watch the video above or at this link.

'Very scary': Former RNC staffer dishes on the more terrifying members of GOP's right-wing

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Ex-GOP congressman blasts Republicans for embracing 'being a bully, being a jerk' ›

Greg Abbott implicates 'the government' in Saturday’s mass shooting ›

Author of 'clearly fake' story shared by Greg Abbott calls TX gov 'one of the dumbest people in the country' ›

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https://www.alternet.org/greg-abbott-migrants-christmas-dc/

trumpistas wounded by gop neo-con BS corp sellout offshore jobs, so must punish someone?

--> cruelty, zealously protect whatever share of pie/priviledge they have left?

aha threat used to be Koch CFG tea partiers freedom caucus, with the odd talk show jock but now soc med qanon wackos gohmert a kind to bridge to Anglo-saxon qnaon caucus??

yikes omg sys ampl fdbk? lack of diversity? not possible w/o SOC MED

an 10 21

Ron Watkins, the guy most QAnon experts (https://www.salon.com/2021/10/14/ron-watkins-many-say-is-qanon-may-be-running-for-congress-in-arizona/) believe is on half of the duo — with his father Jim Watkins — to be the infamous Q of QAnon (He denies it) is now running for Congress. Watkins has relocated to Arizona from Japan, where he was believed by most QAnon researchers to have written the "Q drops" — along with his father — by pretending to be a high-placed D.C. official in the Donald Trump administration. He's planning to run as a Republican against Democratic incumbent Rep. Tom O'Halleran.

Watkins didn't pick Arizona's 1st district out of any real connection to the area, or even the state. The district has become a hot commodity because, after a robust bout of gerrymanderingby the GOP-controlled state legislature, it's believed that that the congressional seat will likely turn over to a Republican.Subsequently, the race is a magnet for a lot of Republicans with congressional dreams and a better base of donors than the denies-he-is-Q guy.

GOP political consultants are quick to downplay the possibility that Watkins could win. Arizona Republican political consultant Stan Barnes told Will Sommer of the Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-celeb-tries-to-leave-q-behind-to-run-for-congress-in-arizona) that a guy "who's allegedly related to the QAnon phenomenon has no chance of winning." But as Sommer pointed out, "QAnon connections haven't proved disqualifying" for Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia (https://www.salon.com/2021/10/19/says-colleagues-scared-to-be-replaced-by-somebody-like-a-marjorie-taylor-greene/) and Lauren Boebert of Colorado (https://www.salon.com/2021/09/10/lauren-boebert-allows-8-year-old-to-play-alone-next-to-possibly-loaded-firearm/).Indeed, Donald Trump incited an insurrection on the Capitol that was manned heavily by QAnoners, and he is the current favorite to win the 2024 election. Watkins is squirrelly, will likely be outspent, and his sleazy history includes giving an interview in a brothel — so I wouldn't bet in his favor. Still, he's not crazy to think that he's got a shot.

Blame gerrymandering.

Across the country, Republicans — who already control the majority of state legislatures — are working swiftly to redraw election maps to marginalize Democratic voters and create as many non-competitive Republican seats as possible (https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38025908/texas-redistricting-gerrymandering-black-voters/). Most of the political coverage of this, for understandable reasons, is focused on how this will further enshrine the Republican power, giving them what could very well be permanent control of the federal government, despite the fact that most voters actually cast their ballots for Democrats.

But another, less intended consequence of gerrymandering is that it will speed up the Republican race to the bottom.

GOP gerrymandering empowers an ever-larger cast of idiots, conspiracy theorists, con artists, and open white nationalists to win national office. The situation is bad now, with Congress home to characters like Taylor Green, Boebert and Florida's Rep. Matt Gaetz, currently under federal investigation for sex trafficking of minors (https://www.salon.com/2021/06/24/matt-gaetz-deletes-tweet-about-defunding-fbi-amid-ongoing-agency-sex-trafficking-probe/).But it's about to get much worse. Very soon the clown car will unload its passengers into primary campaigns for all of these newly safe Republican seats created by gerrymandering.

Here's how it happens: In districts with safe seats for one party or another, the election that counts is not the general, but the dominant party's primary election. This lack of general election competition creates all sorts of problems (https://www.salon.com/2017/11/30/gop-congressman-demands-competitive-districts-i-guarantee-you-things-would-change-here_partner/), but it's less of an issue in Democratic districts, where the diversity of the coalition at least creates real ideological debate in primaries. For Republican candidates, however, the incentives are completely skewed.

The kinds of people who vote in Republican primaries are ... well, not America's best. Without having to worry about running candidates who have to compete against Democrats for moderate voters, GOP primary voters can just go with whatever candidate excites them the most. And what speaks to Republican primary voters is sadism, racism, and a deep commitment to wild conspiracy theories. Gerrymandering makes it so that America's worst voters also happen to be the only voters who count at all in an increasing number of districts.

This is how we got Gaetz, who won with nearly 65% of the vote in his staunchly Republican district (https://ballotpedia.org/Florida%27s_1st_Congressional_District), Taylor Green, who drew nearly 75% of the vote (https://ballotpedia.org/Georgia%27s_14th_Congressional_District), and Rep. Paul Gosar (https://www.salon.com/2021/03/13/rep-paul-gosars-siblings-say-hes-a-white-supremacist--but-his-gop-colleagues-stay-silent/), who flaunts his white nationalist yearnings (https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona%27s_4th_Congressional_District) and got nearly 70% of the vote in his deeply conservative Arizona district. Having a heavily Republican district is an open invitation for the worst people to run, secure in the knowledge that as long as they can win over the Newsmax-addled, Facebook-meme-sharing hard right nuts that vote in GOP primaries. After that, it's a red carpet straight to national office.

Gerrymandering is not just a problem on the district level, either.

We can see from statewide offices what happens when Republicans don't feel they need to compete with Democrats in general elections. In both Florida and Texas, the incumbent Republican governors — Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbot, respectively – are running on what can be fairly described as a pro-COVID-19 platform. Both have waged all-out war (https://www.salon.com/2021/10/12/republicans-on-vaccines-pushes-strategy-to-prolong-the/) on any effort to stymie the virus's ability (https://www.salon.com/2021/10/12/how-ron-desantis-bans-could-get-harry-styles-tripped-up/) to spread to as many bodies as possible (https://www.salon.com/2021/08/18/ron-desantis-and-regeneron-is-a-gop-donor-the-reason-why-floridas-governor-wont-promote-vaccines/), with a doggedness that is indistinguishable from what they'd do if they were trying to get their own constituents killed.

They aren't doing this to win any popularity contests in their states. On the contrary, polling shows repeatedly (https://www.salon.com/2021/10/19/governors-see-approval-ratings-plummet-after-fight-against-vaccine-requirements_partner/)that the majority of Americans want leaders to fight the virus, not help it spread. In fact, their actions are causing Abbott and DeSantis to see big dips in their approval numbers. But neither of them cares because both states passed draconian voter suppression laws that shield Republican politicians from having to answer to the majority of their state residents. Having secured what they likely see as an easy GOP win through voter suppression, both Abbott and DeSantis are focused instead on pleasing Republican primary voters. Doing that means maximizing the sadism and the plain old nuttiness. As Adam Serwer wrote in the Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/greg-abbott-texas-covid-fox/620402/), Abbott is "too afraid of his own base to act responsibly."

Such fear-based governance will only become more and more the norm as Republicans shut Democrats out of the ability to compete in general elections, meaning that Republican primaries loom ever larger as the only elections that count. The only way to win in many Republican primaries is to show you can out-crazy the other candidate.

So it's no wonder the guy who is alleged to be Q is running for office in Arizona. When all the political incentives favor a race to the bottom, the people who are already living in the sewer have a strong advantage.

strict fr pathological strain?

1021 an

So much depends on respectable white people. Those are white people who care about appearing respectable to other white people, who themselves care about appearing respectable to other white people. They are the great globular middle of American politics that determines electoral outcomes in this country.

For the longest time, they sided with the Republican Party on account of tax cuts and other goodies. My hope is that, for the foreseeable future, they will side with the Democrats on account of tax cuts and other goodies being a banner for hiding the fact that sadism is the GOP's point.

Sadism isn't only about sex, though it can be, obviously. When I say "sadism," I mean the pleasure derived from seeing other people suffer. The Republicans have no policy goals. Their only goal is creating legal and political conditions in which the in-group is protected while the out-group is punished. But it doesn't end with punishment. It can't.

When the out-group gains power, the in-group feels powerless. When the in-group feels powerless, the in-group feels oppressed. When the in-group feels oppressed, it cries out for freedom. But in order to feel free, the in-group must do more than merely punish the out-group. It must derive pleasure from seeing pain and suffering. This is what I want respectable white people to understand. When they vote for tax cuts and other goodies, they are doing far more. They are helping the GOP's authoritarian base feel a freedom that depends on suffering.

When white police officers pulled a Black paraplegic man (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/10/09/ohio-police-drag-man-who-says-he-paraplegic-car-video/6070830001/?utm_source=usatoday-Daily%20Briefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=narrative&utm_term=article_body&utm_content=8872UT-E-NLETTER02-Weekday) out of his vehicle by his hair last month in Dayton, Ohio, on illegal drug suspicion, that might appear to be another case of police brutality. (Body cam footage of the incident was released Friday. An investigation by the police department is underway.) But to the authoritarian base of the Republican Party, what the Dayton cops did was the goal itself. Seeing the man's pain produced pleasure. It made them feel free.

It is sadism. It is not cruelty. Cruelty is not the point. Sadism is. You can be cruel without meaning to. You can be cruel without taking pleasure in pain. You can be cruel because you can't help it (on account of repeating past traumas, for instance). But sadism takes intention. It takes the desire to set aside priorities, like tax cuts and other goodies. It is its own cause. It is its own effect. This is another thing I want respectable white people to understand. Sadism isn't an unintended consequence. It's the point. When you vote for the Republican Party, when you give money to Republican candidates, you are joining a concerted effort to bring more suffering to more people, and you are complicit in the derivation of pleasure from suffering. You have become a sadist.

This sounds extreme. That's because sadism cancels equality. If the Republicans had some degree of commitment to equality, they might seek conditions in which the in-group feels free regardless of whether the out-group feels pain. But there is no equality. Therefore, there is no equal protection under law. Therefore, there is a one-to-one relationship between in-group freedom and out-group pain. Put another way, it's quite impossible for the in-group to feel free when the out-group does not feel pain. Sadism is the GOP's vital link.

Given the reality of this one-to-one relationship, you can see they don't mean freedom when they say freedom. They don't mean the presence of choice. They don't mean the absence of coercion. They don't mean freedom in any conventional sense. What they mean is the pleasure of seeing other people's pain, because their freedom can't exist without their suffering. Respectable white people need to understand this. Cries for freedom are in fact cries for sadism.

Just as they don't mean freedom when they say freedom, they don't mean borders when they say borders. Ten Republican governors went to the southern border to pressure the president to do more about immigrants coming in. Most of them were from non-border states. And that's the tell. The border they are defending isn't the border. It is the border between us and them, between the GOP's authoritarian base that can't feel free unless someone suffers, like immigrants, and everyone else who can feel free as they share power with others.

This is the last thing I want respectable white people to understand. There is no middle way. There is no neutral position. "Every state is now a border state," said (https://www.wsaw.com/2021/04/08/rep-tiffany-tours-southern-border-every-state-is-now-a-border-state/) Wisconsin Congressman Tom Tiffany last week while visiting the border. Every state is a border state. Every issue is a border issue. Every person is a border person who must choose a side. Are you with us or against us. Sadism is the point.

1220 lame duck

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/ice-expelled-group-of-children-under-stephen-miller-policy-just-minutes-after-judge-blocked-it/ (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/ice-expelled-group-of-children-under-stephen-miller-policy-just-minutes-after-judge-blocked-it/)

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/president-trump-is-the-child-trafficker-in-chief/

President Donald Trump thinks of himself as a champion against human trafficking. He addressed a White House Summit (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-white-house-summit-human-trafficking-20th-anniversary-trafficking-victims-protection-act-2000/) on the issue in January claiming there was a “humanitarian crisis (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-fighting-prevent-human-trafficking-southern-border/)” at the border fomented by criminal organizations and that “traffickers victimize countless women and children.” He signed an executive order (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/anti-human-trafficking-groups-boycotting-ivanka-trumps-white/story?id=68615924) and diverted $400 million in funding to combat the issue, boasting in his usual manner that “we have signed more legislation on human trafficking than any other administration has ever even thought about.” But in recent months, the administration has been found to be flouting the United States’ own anti-trafficking laws by deporting thousands of children and families seeking asylum, practically delivering them into the hands of traffickers across the border in Mexico.

Dr. Amy Cohen, executive director of Every Last One (https://www.everylastone.org/), explained to me in an interview (https://www.risingupwithsonali.com/2020/08/18/how-trump-continues-to-brutalize-immigrant-children/) that under the Trump administration’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” program, “the United States has been essentially feeding vulnerable migrant children and families to cartel traffickers in Mexico continuously.” The program, officially known by the Orwellian-sounding title of “Migrant Protection Protocols (https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/29/qa-trump-administrations-remain-mexico-program)” (MPP), sends immigrants seeking entry into the United States across the border to Mexico to await the adjudication of their cases. While the Department of Homeland Security claimed (https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/24/migrant-protection-protocols) that MPP would “decrease the… ability of smugglers and traffickers to prey on vulnerable populations,” in fact it does the opposite.

Cohen elaborated on this horrific phenomenon, saying, “migrants are dropped off with nothing on the other side of the border, with no shelter, with no protection, with no food, with no money. And within minutes, they are picked up by cartel gangs that are waiting.” As a child and family psychiatrist who works closely with traumatized migrant children, she did not mince words, saying that families are, “kidnapped and used for extortion, which is a form of trafficking. Sometimes they are tortured. Sometimes they are raped. Children are compelled to watch. Sometimes children themselves are raped.”

The only way to view the outcome of this policy is that the United States is actively participating in a trafficking operation. The Trump administration cannot claim ignorance of the outcome of MPP. According to Cohen, “This is happening in cities literally all along the border. This is not a secret; this is widespread.” So extensive is the abuse that according to her, “The vast majority of asylum seekers who we’ve placed into the MPP program have at one time or another experienced at least one, sometimes multiple, episodes of what I would consider trafficking, of kidnapping, and some form of psychological or physical torture."

because of the extreme danger that the Trump administration has put families in, according to Cohen it has “forced many parents into a decision” about whether to keep their children with them or send them unaccompanied across the U.S. border.

But under cover of the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government has accelerated the expulsion of even unaccompanied children to Mexico and Central America—in violation of federal law. The Associated Press (https://apnews.com/1144b498194cd6b6818acd04d7880e05) explained that “More than 2,000 unaccompanied children have been expelled since March under an emergency declaration enacted by the Trump administration, which has cited the coronavirus in refusing to provide them protections under federal anti-trafficking and asylum laws.”

Now reports have emerged of the government hiring a private security and transportation firm to move immigrant families and children into hotels in the United States before expelling them. According to the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/us/migrant-children-hotels-coronavirus.html), which broke the story, the Trump administration has created “a largely unregulated shadow system of detention and swift expulsions without the safeguards that are intended to protect the most vulnerable migrants.” Children, some as young as one year old, are being cared for in hotels like Best Western and Hampton Inn by private security personnel who have no childcare training.

Cohen says advocates like her believe that “this has been a way for the United States to try to hide a number of these children who they are deporting.” Those children held in government facilities have to be registered as having entered the United States, which then triggers legal protections for them. But by holding children in hotels, effectively off the books and out of public view, “government attorneys are denying that they are actually in the custody” of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, says Cohen. Bizarrely, they are claiming that the children are in the custody of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/10/border-patrol-rejects-migrant-children-cdc-rule-amid-covid-19/5333392002/) (CDC) over concerns of COVID-19, and thereby flouting the legal mandate known as the Flores Settlement to maintain the safety, care, and oversight of the children.

Where the children end up once they are removed from the U.S. is not known, and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency will not say. According to Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children/children-rapidly-deported-from-the-united-states-strain-guatemalan-shelters-idUSKCN2521V8), “Between April and June, U.S. officials arrested more than 3,300 unaccompanied children on the southwest border, but CBP has declined to say how many have been expelled under the new process or give a breakdown of arrests by nationality for that time period.” During that same time frame, out of the thousands of children apprehended, only about 160 remain in U.S. custody.

It is ironic, to say the least, that some of Trump’s most loyal followers are conspiracy theorists who label themselves QAnon (https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html) claiming that the president is facing off against a “cabal of Democratic pedophiles.” So mainstream is this movement that one of its followers just won a GOP congressional primary (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/us/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-qanon-georgia-primary.html) in Georgia. QAnon is now appropriating the social media hashtag #SaveTheChildren (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/technology/qanon-save-the-children-trafficking.html) and promoting fantastical claims of a widespread child sex trafficking ring. Its followers have even joined the anti-trafficking movement in the United States. But they have entirely ignored the very real trafficking and exploitation of children at the U.S. border that their president has unleashed.

More than two years ago, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions (https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-sessions-delivers-remarks-discussing-immigration-enforcement-actions) claimed that the government cared about children when he officially announced Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, saying, “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” It was a thinly veiled attempt to punish those fleeing poverty and violence for a better life in America. And while mass public outrage forced Trump to back off (he signed an executive order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/affording-congress-opportunity-address-family-separation/) in June 2018 to end what his own discretionary policy initiated), in truth the torture and trauma facing immigrant families did not end. It was simply moved out of our view across the border into even more dangerous conditions.

As America hurtles toward November 3 with a desperation unlike any we’ve felt for previous presidential elections, the issue of how President Trump has treated immigrant families and children has been largely off the radar. But if we care about children and about protecting them from horrific torture and abuse, Trump’s role as Child-Trafficker-in-Chief ought to be central to our election discourse.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-and-white-evangelical-christians-are-bonded-by-sadism/

john s eb

there’s still too much confusion over the president’s bond with white evangelical Protestants (WEPs). I suppose there will always be as long as outsiders presume that Donald Trump’s strongest supporters believe in loving thy neighbor as thyself. Once you see that WEPs do not apply the Golden Rule universally and unconditionally, things become clearer. Once this Christian concept is removed from the discussion, “paradoxes” melt into the air. What’s left is a natural alignment of political interests.

How do I know WEPs don’t truly believe in the Golden Rule? From life experience. I know what I’m talking about. All you have to do is listen carefully, however, and know what to listen for. Elizabeth Dias wrote a big piece in the Times last weektrying to clear up the “contradiction” of WEPs standing by Trump “when he shut out Muslim refugees. When he separated children from their parents at the border. When he issued brash insults over social media. When he uttered falsehoods as if they were true. When he was impeached.” A source explains helpfully that there’s no contradiction at all.

“The years of the Obama presidency were confusing to her,” Dias wrote of her source. “She said she heard talk of giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups. But to her it felt like her freedoms were being taken away. And that she was turning into the minority.” The source: “I do not love Trump. I think Trump is good for America as a country. I think Trump is going to restore our freedoms, where we spent eight years, if not more, with our freedoms slowly being taken away under the guise of giving freedoms to all. Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority. Rapidly.”

This makes no sense to outsiders. Freedom for “gay people and members of minority groups” is not taking anything away from anybody. This makes no sense, because outsiders do not generally accept a worldview in which power is ordered. First God, then man, then woman, then child. White over nonwhite. Heterosexual over LGBTQ. Christian over non-Christian. When you believe with your whole being that power is ordered according to God’s will, “giving freedoms to gay people and members of minority groups” is not political equality, as outsiders would often see it. It’s knocking you out of the order of power. It’s taking something away. Equality is literally theft

when political equality is theft, you cannot apply the Golden Rule universally and unconditionally. If you did, you’d be complicit in a crime. The Golden Rule demands white people share power with nonwhite people. It demands husbands share power with their wives. Neither can ever be done.A wife, according to the same source in Dias’ reporting, must “submit” to her husband in accordance with God’s law. If she does not, she’s trying “to rule over him.” Same for whites and nonwhites. If white people are not at the top of the order, they are being ruled over. This is why Dias’ source says that, “Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority. Rapidly.” The more for “them,” the less for “us.”They believe Trump prevents that from happening.

They believe Trump is “restoring their freedom.” Utter nonsense. What they are really saying is that the president will prevent people lower down the order of power from achieving more freedom and equality, “violating” their “freedom.” He must do that by any means, even if he confiscates kids from their mothers, bans a world religion, or commits treason. None of that matters as much as maintaining the supremacy of a religious identity built on sand. And make no mistake: this is a religious identity. These are very real anti-democratic Christians hostile to critical thinking, modernity, pluralism, and all forms of equality. “It’s almost like it is a reverse intolerance,” a WEP source told Dias. “If you have somebody that’s maybe on the liberal side, they say that we are intolerant of them. But it is inverse intolerant if we can’t live out our faith.”[ // reverse discrimination]

If WEPs believed in the Golden Rule, they’d never tolerate other people’s pain. They do tolerate it, however. Indeed, they like it. It feels good to see the president “restoring their freedom.” When WEPs say they want to “live out our faith,” what they mean is sadism is and should be a natural consequence of the natural order of things in which God’s people are chosen to rule in God’s name. “Evangelicals did not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is,” Dias wrote. “They supported him because of who he is, and because of who they are.” That’s correct, but take that to its logical conclusion. His enemies are their enemies. His pleasures, their pleasures. Their bond is far from a contradiction. It’s an alignment of political interests in which sadism is the point.

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3/17/20  pompeo ups sanctions on iran?!release americans, fund terror; 2 am soldiers kia rocket attack, bombed suspected militia

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deported to death: US sent 138 Salvadorans home to be killed (https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/deported-to-death-us-sent-138-salvadorans-home-to-be-killed/)

The Conversation (https://www.alternet.org/author/the-conversation/)

by Mneesha Gellman, Emerson College At least 138 people deported from the United States to El Salvador since 2013 have been killed, according to a new report by Human Right

no lnx

Deported to death: US sent 138 Salvadorans home to be killed

President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, at the InterContinental New York Barclay in New York City. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by The Conversation February 7, 2020

by Mneesha Gellman, Emerson College

At least 138 people deported from the United States to El Salvador since 2013 have been killed, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, which investigates human rights abuses worldwide.

The 117-page report also says researchers identified at least 70 deportees who were sexually assaulted, tortured or kidnapped. Many victims were asylum-seekers attacked or killed by the gangs they originally fled.

The findings show that “the U.S. is repeatedly violating its obligations to protect Salvadorans from return to serious risk of harm,” Human Rights Watch says.

The group used court records, police reports, interviews with victims and their families and news articles to document the fates of deportees. It is the first systematic effort to find out what happened to Salvadorans whose asylum claims were rejected in U.S. immigration courts because they failed to demonstrate “credible fear” of violence in El Salvador.

International asylum laws created after the Holocaust require countries to take in people who are persecuted for their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

El Salvador has one of the world’s highest homicide rates. It is one of the main sources of migration to the U.S.

As part of its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration in September signed an agreement with El Salvador requiring the Central American country to keep asylum seekers there while they await the results of their asylum claims.

But the murders of 138 deportees belie any notion that El Salvador can protect citizens who are under threat.

Roots of impunity

Roughly the size of New Jersey, El Salvador is densely populated and highly connected by cellphone service and social media. The vulnerable groups protected under international asylum law cannot easily go under the radar or relocate if targeted by gangs, corrupt police or domestic abusers.

Hundreds of Salvadorans are killed every month. Murders, disappearances and tortures almost always go unsolved in El Salvador. Criminals, especially those with access to power, are rarely punished for their wrongdoing.

I have documented this culture of impunity across Central America and Mexico, focusing on the indigenous people, women and political dissidents who are so often victims of political violence.

This violence dates back centuries, to Spain’s bloody conquest of the Americas. As in the U.S., colonial-era brutality has lasting impacts on the region’s race, class and gender divisions.

In 1932, the massacre of indigenous Salvadorans and leftists who rebelled against dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez left between 10,000 and 30,000 dead.

Communist Party member Farabundo Martí, who led Salvadoran peasant farmers in their revolt against political corruption and unjust resource allocation, was assassinated after the massacre. But the struggle continued.

By the 1970s, dissident factions again organized against state oppression. United as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, these groups eventually waged war on the ruling ARENA party, which they blamed for oppressing the Salvadoran working class.

The subsequent Salvadoran civil war killed 75,000 people. In 1992, with intensive military support from the United States, ARENA defeated the rebels.

The 1992 El Salvador peace accords, overseen by the United Nations, were meant to bring national reconciliation. A truth commission documented widespread human rights abuses committed by state and paramilitary forces during the war. But days after the report was released, in 1993, El Salvador’s ARENA-controlled congress passed an amnesty law that excused most government and military officials.

As a result, the root causes of El Salvador’s conflict – particularly, unequal access to insufficient resources – still plague society. So does the very weak rule of law that allowed civil war criminals to go unpunished.

Neither the rightist or leftist governments that have held power since have managed to change this.

El Salvador’s defense minister recently assessed that there are more gang members than soldiers in his country. Police in El Salvador are extremely aggressive in pursuing them, and civilians can get caught in the crossfire, Human Rights Watch finds.

The resulting dangerous disarray sent 46,800 residents to seek asylum in the U.S. last year. Risking the unknown violence of migration over guaranteed violence at home is, for many Salvadorans, a logical decision.

Human security

Crime and violence in El Salvador has declined since President Nayib Bukele took office in June 2019, according to the government.

The president credits his tough-on-gangs policing with improving security in the country. But some crime analysts say the apparent drop in homicides is actually a manipulation of crime data. The government recently changed how it counts murders, eliminating deaths that result from confrontation with security forces – police killings – from the homicide category.

In any case, levels of violence in El Salvador are still among the world’s highest.

Police regularly turn a blind eye to violence by gang members, including both MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs, either due to corruption or concern for their own safety. As a result, Salvadoran police frequently fail to meaningfully protect people from gang violence.

In these circumstances, deporting Salvadoran asylum-seekers may violate an international law called “non-refoulement.”

According to the 1954 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees, which both the U.S. and El Salvador signed, states cannot expel refugees to a territory “where his life or freedom would be threatened.”

Migrants know El Salvador can’t protect them. That, of course, is why they flee. Now the United States government has to know that, too.

This story has been modified to more accurately characterize the methodology used by Human Rights Watch. It is an updated version of an article originally published Oct. 10, 2019.The Conversation

Mneesha Gellman, Associate Professor of Political Science, Emerson College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.