Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel)

Monday, October 20, 2025

Federal courts aren't playing and won't be played (take a hint John Roberts)

Federal courts aren't playing anymore. Why is that? Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) reports on some possibilities:

A federal appeals court refused to halt a district court order last week against the president's mobilization of the National Guard in Illinois, undercutting his efforts to flood Chicago with troops, and Slate's Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed how lower courts have been setting themselves against a Supreme Court that has largely been shaped by the president.

"We’re looking at judges across the ideological spectrum — Trump judges, Obama judges, Federalist Society judges, young judges, old and distinguished judges — who have never picked up their pen to speak out on political matters," Lithwick said.

"And across the board, they’re in agreement about what is happening. They’re naming it. They’re saying: I refuse to be gaslit today. And they’re calling it unlawful. I guess I’m wondering if it was an unforced error by the U.S. Supreme Court to treat lower courts — their findings of fact, their efforts to do hard doctrinal work under unbelievably challenging circumstances — with hostility or overt contempt."

"I find myself wondering if the court, particularly over the summer, made a lot of enemies by using dismissive rhetoric, and now in a lot of ways emboldening judges to say: Not today, Satan. Don’t lie to me," she added.

Stern agreed, saying that even some conservative lower court judges – such as Trump appointee Amy St. Eve – seem to be crafting their orders as checks against the higher court.

"It seems to me that the Supreme Court has fomented an 'us vs. them' dynamic with the lower courts," Stern said. "It’s presenting itself as the final arbiter of all facts on the ground, ignoring its obligation to defer to what the district court believes is happening in the real world. The Supreme Court has decided: We know everything, we have a crystal ball, we are omnipresent and omnipotent."

Some comments on the article:

Jenna Tules

Just Now

No theyre saying its illegal because it is. Military are not to be used as a police force end of story. You dont get to just claim somewhere is warzone and call in the troops, which is what he is doing. Now he finally gets told no and stomps his foot like a child even thought they have ruled in his favor far more times than not.

Jay Arthur

2 hours ago

?? Sending the National Guard in, when Civil Authority hasn't broken down, isn't a "political" issue, it's a Constitutional one and one a matter of law. And Trump needs to be admonished when he starts a dumpster fire and then claims that a city is "burning down"

Michael Gallagher

1 hour ago

The refusal of the Court to even have proper hearings on many of these matters, and the deliberate failure of the Court to issue real majority opinions on these cases -- because of the majority's rank cowardice -- leave the courts below with no guidance whatsoever for the future. Not only is the Supreme Court majority acting like partisan hacks -- they have abandoned a primary duty to explain to the courts below what the law is in the future. In other words, the minute a Democrat is in power every grant of plenary power they gave the Mango Mussolini will magically "disappear" if a Democratic President attempts anything.

W*******

3 hours ago

The U.S. Supreme Court's "arrogance" is just a tactic that the 6 GOP Traitors on the US Supreme Court use to increase the "free speech" aka bribe money and gift payoffs they get for selling rulings and allowing the violation of the Rule of Law and the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution, especially the 14th Amendment, if the US Supreme Court actually did their jobs and followed The US Constitution Donald Trump would be in Prison and our Constitutional Republic wouldn't have a convicted felon wannabe fascist Dictator instead of a President.

Billy Ed

1 hour ago

The Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States was based on a legal theory known as the "unitary executive", which asserts that the intent of the Constitution's authors was to assign all powers to the Chief Executive not explicitly granted to the other two branches. This is based on an effort by the Court's conservative justices to intuit the "original intent" of the Constitution's authors, as expressed in the language of Article II. The ground for their interpretation is laughable in view of the framer's LIVED EXPERIENCE under the autocratic rule of George III, and is demonstrably oblivious to the fact that our forefathers' reaction to that experience was the impetus for creating the Constitution in the first place. One need only consider the thoughts James Madison expressed in the Federalist papers to guess at what he would have to say about the Court's reasoning behind that decision.

Now, faced with the need to uphold the precedent they set with that fatuous and poorly reasoned ruling, the justices are opting to issue unsigned, unexplained rulings via the "emergency docket", previously reserved for true crises like wartime injunctions and halting imminent executions. In doing so, they are repeatedly kicking the results of the findings and deliberations of the lower courts back into their laps, burdening those judges with the task of finding a way to reconcile their duty to protect the Constitutional rights of America's citizens and institutions in a manner consistent with the facile principle the justices fabricated their ruling.

Unlike our "originalist" justices, many of the lower court judges are still be cognizant of the fact that two of the overriding characteristics that distinguished this nation at its founding were its dedication to the rule of law and the protections of the rights of political minorities embedded in our Constitution; and that the rights of the sizable minority that don't support Donald Trump deserve due consideration.

I'd argue the average American knows the Constitution better than the six crooks on the Supreme Court.

"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Monday, October 20, 2025. Trump's war on immigrants is illegal and hidden but Americans across the country rebuked Chump's attacks on democracy in Saturday protests that the whole world saw.

J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam (PRO PUBLICA) report on how Convicted Felon Donald Chump weaponized immigration to turn ICE into his secret gestapo police:

The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers, investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the public and within DHS ranks, for instance. Egregious conduct was referred to the Justice Department.

The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers. And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for Congress and the public.

The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year 2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended.

The administration has gutted most of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a 29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil rights enforcement.

Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz, the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $50,000.

“Supercharging this law enforcement agency and at the same time you have oversight being eliminated?” said the former DHS official. “This is very scary.”

Michelle Brané, a longtime human rights attorney who directed DHS’ ombudsman office during the Biden administration, said Trump’s adherence to “the authoritarian playbook is not even subtle.”

“ICE, their secret police, is their tool,” Brané said. “Once they have that power, which they have now, there’s nothing stopping them from using it against citizens.”

And they have been using it against citizens, though few have bothered to notice. At THE GUARDIAN, Aaron Glantz notes:

Some of the most decorated military veterans in Congress say they are outraged after a report in the Guardian revealed US military veterans have been arrested or injured amid protests over Donald Trump’s deportation campaign and his push to deploy the national guard to American cities.

“I went to war three times for this country to defend the right of Americans to say things I may not like,” said Representative Jason Crow, a Democrat from Colorado and former army ranger who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in Iraq as a platoon leader with the 82nd airborne division. “Now is the time for every American to speak out.”

Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois who received a Purple Heart after her helicopter was shot down over Iraq, said: “No one – especially those who have already sacrificed so much for this country – should ever be assaulted, detained or thrown in solitary confinement for peacefully protesting government overreach”.

The Guardian has identified eight instances in which military veterans have been prosecuted or sought damages after being detained by federal agents. Two of those individuals were arrested in late September protesting outside a Chicago-area Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility.

One, 70-year-old air force veteran Dana Briggs, was charged with assault after a video of an incident showed Ice agents advancing on the elderly veteran and knocking him over. The other, Afghanistan war veteran John Cerrone, was tackled by a group of Ice agents, another video shows. Cerrone was detained, held for nine hours in solitary confinement and charged with disorderly conduct.

[. . . ]

In Portland, video shows an agent grabbing Afghanistan war veteran Daryn Herzberg by the hair and slamming his face into the ground multiple times while saying, “You’re not talking s**t any more are you?” according to a Federal Tort Claims Act complaint filed by his attorney.

They operate in darkness and there is no oversight. All the American people get -- over and over -- is lies. In "Kristi Noem's perfected her lying strategy" last week, Elaine noted:

Kristi Noem is such a damn liar. C.I. was talking about that last week in the roundtable. How she lies and then lies some more and the press reports her original false claims and by the time they implode, they're having to cover something else. Jordan Green reports:

A dramatic claim by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to have arrested “the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa,” therefore putting the Trump administration in position to “eliminate” the leftwing “network,” was dismissed by both the activist the arrested woman was said to have dated and a leading expert on such leftwing groups.

“I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not now, nor have I ever been, the ‘founder’ of ‘Antifa’ — in Portland [Oregon], the United States, or anywhere else,” said Luis Enrique Marquez, the activist, in a statement on a website promoting a book.

“It’s an absurd claim, no matter how they try to frame it,” Stanislav Vysotsky, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Fraser Valley in British Columbia, told Raw Story.

Nonetheless, Noem’s trumpeting of the arrest of Katherine Vogel, 39, showed the administration’s determination to make headlines as it seeks to paint “antifa” activists as a danger to the American public, and Portland as the supposed base of such groups.

She's a glory hog with no accomplishments so she lies to get attention, it's really that simple.

A liar -- Kristi Noem -- supervisors liars -- ICE agents -- and reports to a liar supreme -- Donald Chump. What you've got is the political equivalent of Kransekake -- the Norwegian almond ring cake -- only instead of the dough circling itself, stacked on top of each layer, it's lies that encircle and stack up. And what ight work in a dessert is a disaster in open government.

Greg Sargent (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:

As President Donald Trump’s consolidation of authoritarian power escalates, he and his allies have been employing undisguised state-sponsored propaganda to a degree unmatched by any president in modern times. This much, one hopes, is broadly understood—even if a startling number of Americans seem unperturbed by it. But here’s something that’s less discussed: This sort of industrial-scale deception would be far more difficult to pull off if Republicans hadn’t wholly crippled Congress’s oversight function on Trump’s behalf.

All this is driven home by an interesting new letter that Senator Chris Murphy sent Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about a horrifying incident that unfolded during Trump’s occupation of Chicago. A federal agent shot a woman multiple times after she allegedly menaced the agents with her car. Marimar Martinez, who didn’t have life-threatening injuries, is a U.S. citizen.

This incident has been subjected to a barrage of state-manufactured misinformation, and it turns out that MAGA influencer Laura Loomer also was involved in that effort. In response, Murphy’s letter calls on Noem to account for all these official deceptions, and to come clean on whether government information was improperly leaked to Loomer to assist in them.

In particular, just after the shooting, DHS put out a statement claiming that the agents in question had been “boxed in by 10 cars” and that Martinez’s vehicle “rammed” theirs. The statement also suggests she threatened the agents with a “semi-automatic weapon.” All this “forced” an agent to shoot Martinez, who then “drove herself to the hospital.” DHS added that she’d previously doxed agents online. In short, the shooting was wholly justified: The victim was the one doing the terrorizing—of law enforcement.

Yet these claims are undermined by the criminal complaint against Martinez. It only mentions two cars menacing the agents, not 10. It doesn’t mention her gun, let alone her threatening of the agents with one. It says she was taken to the hospital by ambulance. And as the Chicago Sun-Times reports, Martinez’s lawyer says body-cam footage even contradicts the claim that she directly threatened the officers with her vehicle and shows that the agent said, “Do something, bitch,” before opening fire.

As we've noted repeatedly, there is no oversight. They lie constantly and they get away with it. That's why last week's news out of Chicago is so important. Aaron Parnas (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) explains:

Federal immigration officers in the Chicago area will now be required to wear body cameras following recent confrontations with protesters. The decision came Thursday from U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, who said she was “a little startled” after viewing television footage showing agents using tear gas and other aggressive tactics.

Judge Ellis, who lives in Chicago, expressed frustration about the ongoing clashes. “I live in Chicago if folks haven’t noticed,” she said in court. “And I’m not blind, right?” Her comments reflected deep concern about the images she’s seen of federal agents’ behavior during enforcement actions linked to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Just last week, Ellis issued an order requiring agents to clearly display their badges and prohibiting them from using certain crowd-control measures—such as tear gas and rubber bullets—against peaceful demonstrators and members of the press.

Despite that ruling, Ellis said she’s been troubled by new reports and footage suggesting her directives might not have been followed. “I’m getting images and seeing images on the news, in the paper, reading reports where I’m having concerns about my order being followed,” she said during Thursday’s hearing.

If you're not getting why oversight is so desperately needed, Danny Postel (IN THESE TIMES) provides this overview of recent events in Chicago:

Over the last five weeks in Chicago, federal agents have shot at least two people, killing one (Silverio Villegas González, a father of two who had just dropped one of his children off at school when ICE agents shot him); descended on an apartment building with a Black Hawk helicopter and used flash-bang grenades; tear-gassed protesters and first responders; smoke-bombed a street full of people; reportedly zip-tied children and separated them from their parents for several hours in the middle of the night; shot protesters with rubber bullets; handcuffed a city council member in a hospital; and fired a chemical weapon at a TV reporter as she was driving away, burning her face.

In one of the more shocking moments in this mayhem, on September 19, agents perched on the roof of an ICE detention center in the suburban village of Broadview shot the Rev. David Black, lead pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, in the head and body with pepper-spray projectiles known as pepper balls. Just moments earlier, Black, dressed in his clerical garb, had both arms up in the air and was “praying, verbally, for the ICE officers and those detained inside,” as he later recalled to CNN.

Other protesters were shot with pepper balls during the incident. They were chanting, singing and praying — peacefully, Black stressed. “We could hear [the agents] laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” he told CNN. “It was deeply disturbing.”

Or go with this from KNEWZ, "Presbyterian pastor from Chicago, Rev. David Black, was struck multiple times by chemical pellets fired by federal immigration agents during what witnesses describe as a peaceful protest outside an ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois. Knewz.com has learned that the incident, captured on video, has sparked widespread condemnation and a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which accuses ICE of using 'violent force' against unarmed demonstrators engaged in prayer and civil disobedience." Need another example? Rhian Lubin (INDEPENDENT) reports:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pointed a gun at a family, including a mother holding her 3-month-old baby, as they burst into their Oregon home, footage of the incident showed.

The video recorded by Mari Magana and posted on Facebook showed the moment ICE agents kicked down the bedroom door in the family’s apartment in Gresham, approximately 17 miles outside of Portland, Wednesday evening. The video has been shared across social media.

The baby’s grandmother, Gloria Bautista, told The Independent that her daughter has been left shaken by the ordeal.

Children across the country are being left shaken and destroyed. Alvin Buyinza (MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER) explains:

Fear in the Windy City grew after the Trump administration ramped up “Operation Midway Blitz.” The immigration crackdown, launched against city officials’ wishes, has led to the arrest of more than 800 undocumented immigrants since Sept. 8, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

“It is a departure from everything that young people have understood from our America,” Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, says about the escalating presence and actions of immigration authorities in the city.

Aggressive tactics allegedly used by ICE agents include the use of tear gas near an elementary school, raiding a South Side apartment in a predominantly Black neighborhood, and detaining and zip-tying U.S. citizens and children, including Black folks.

DHS has denied many of these claims and has not responded to Word In Black’s request for comment.

Friday, US House Rep Ro Khann's office issued the following:

Washington, D.C.–– Today, Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17), introduced the ICE Oversight and Reform Resolution to call on immigration enforcement operations to be transparent, accountable, and consistent with constitutional protections for all people in the United States.

Recent actions from ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) federal agents, including conducting raids in unmarked vehicles,

denying members of Congress access to ICE facilities

, and more, have raised serious questions about the protections of due process and civil liberties.

“These tactics are about avoiding accountability and transparency. We need standards of conduct for ICE agents and to ensure agents cannot trample on civil and human rights. I’m proud to put forth this common sense defense of American values that we should all support,” said Rep. Ro Khanna.

“We have had enough of ICE abusing their powers and pushing the limits to continue terrorizing our communities. The ICE Oversight and Reform Resolution affirms the bare minimum expectations for our immigration enforcement officers. This resolution builds upon legislation like my own, the CLEAR ID Act, to further demand ICE officers disclose their identity, wear body cameras, get trained to de-escalate situations all to ensure safer interactions during immigration enforcement operations,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Read the full text of the bill here.

The Oversight and Reform Resolution includes:

DHS will require ICE and CBP personnel to wear body cameras during enforcement operations, preserving footage for oversight.
Enforcement personnel cannot conceal their identities, except when an immediate threat to safety exists.
Officers must visibly display their name, badge number, and agency affiliation during all public operations.
DHS will establish independent civilian oversight boards to review enforcement actions and recommend reforms.
All ICE and CBP personnel will be required to undergo mandatory de-escalation training.
The Department of Justice will enhance oversight of ICE to strengthen civil rights protections.

Cosponsors: Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Rep. Jonathan Jackson (IL-01), and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (TX-30).

The resolution has been endorsed by: Hindus for Human Rights, Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, and Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF)

Remember, ICE is one lie circling another. THE INTERCEPT's Akela Lacy reports:

In addition to deploying tens of thousands of federal agents from across the federal government to carry out his deportation agenda, President Donald Trump is rapidly expanding the network of state and local police going after immigrants through partnerships with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

The aggressive, nationwide law enforcement regime, all taking place under orders from the White House, amounts to what scholars, attorneys, and now a federal judge say are steps toward the creation of a national police force. And the ranks of ICE partners won’t be filled with just local cops: In at least three states, the administration is joining forces with agencies typically tasked with environmental and marine protection, lottery control, and gaming to target immigrants.

“This is quite a common tactic,” said Charis Kubrin, a professor at the University of California, Irvine who studies immigration and crime. ”There’s this idea that we’re going to get local, not just police officers, but nurses and teachers and other public officials involved in enforcing immigration laws.”

It started largely with immigration, using federal agents and a little-remarked-upon program known as 287(g) to funnel funding to local law enforcement for partnerships. The widespread ICE incursions and local police partnerships, however, have also been justified by the myth of an immigrant crime wave.

“There is this moral panic now about migrant crime. This is rhetoric that is at odds generally with what we know about immigration and crime,” Kubrin said. “The research is pretty unequivocal that these policies have no impact on public safety whatsoever.”

“We didn’t really need this increased cooperation,” she said. “The foundational assumption of this widespread immigrant criminality upon which all of these policies and practices are based, is patently not true.”

Saturday, NO KINGS protests took place across the US, in over 2700 locations, with over 7 million people participating -- which is over twice as many people who turned out for Donald Chump's January 2017 inauguration and Chump's January 2025 inauguration combined. Ouch, that as to hurt the tiny Chump who's always been such a size queen.

In that night's post ("The meaning of today's NO KINGS protests"), where there was massive turnout -- true in most states -- but in a state that had gone for Chump back in November 2024:

That's Boerne, Austin, Beaumont, Houston, San Antonio, Athens, Lufkin, Tyler, Longview, Jacksonville, Palestine, Mineola, Fort-Worth and Nacogdoches. I'm sure there are many, many more. Houston, Dallas and San Antonio are in the top ten for most populated cities in the United States.

The reason we focused on Texas is because the state went from Chump. The November election had 6.3 million people voting for Chump and 4.8 million people voting for Kamala Harris -- 56.14% for Chump, 42.46% voting for Kamala Harris.

But Texas turned out. Texas' turnout today is very bad news for Chump. San Francisco? We turned out. But that shouldn't be surprising.

We delivered 323,719 votes for Kamala and only 62,594 for Chump -- that's 80.33% of us voted for Harris in San Francisco and only 15.53% voted for Chump. So, yeah, San Francisco turned out and good for us.

But so did Texas. And that's got to really worry Chump -- as it should. The people have turned against Chump. He was headed for lame duck status after the mid-terms anyway. But today demonstrates that the people have turned against him.

This is the pushback and he has been put on notice.

Of course with a demented person like him, it may not matter that he's been put on notice. But Republicans in the House better grasp that it matters since they'll be up for re-election in a year -- and those Republican senators up for re-election better grasp it as well.

Things are getting very uncomfortable for the GOP and it's only going to get worse.

Here's some video coverage of the protests.

The following sites updated:

Saturday, October 18, 2025

Another science post

I hope you took part in a rally today. I did and was thrilled to see the turnout and all the love for this country that we have. We're not the haters. Clearly, the haters are Chump and his minions. To take part today was to have hope for democracy.

Let me note two science stories. First up: What's in the water! Simran Kumari (GREEN MATTERS) reports:

Discovering new species of animals, birds, and even plants is one of the most thrilling moments in the scientific world. Whether it’s a marine animal found in the deep sea or a tiny insect in a rainforest, each discovery expands our understanding of life on Earth. In one such remarkable moment, scientists recently explored the waters off Western Australia and discovered two previously unknown marine species, including a luminous lanternshark and a delicate porcelain crab. These discoveries offer a fascinating glimpse into the extraordinary biodiversity that lies in the depths of our oceans.

The newly identified shark species, called Etmopterus westraliensis, gets its name from the Western Australian waters where it was first discovered. Found nearly 2,000 feet under the ocean surface, this species is nothing like any other underwater predator. Instead of a massive, menacing creature, scientists found it to be a small, bioluminescent species that barely grows 1.3 feet in length, as reported by Popular Science. Like many other deep-sea creatures, E. westraliensis has also adapted perfectly to life in the dark. It has large eyes and a thin body with small dorsal fins and a sharp spine. The details about this exceptional species were revealed in the Journal of Fish Biology.

Dr. Will White, one of the authors of the study and an ichthyologist with the CSIRO Australian National Fish Collection, played a key role in identifying and describing the lanternshark. He said, "Lanternsharks are an amazing group of sharks, and this new species was found at depths to 610 meters during biodiversity surveys for Parks Australia in the Gascoyne Marine Park area off Western Australia." As reported by Science Daily, White added, "Lanternsharks are bioluminescent, with light produced by photophores located on their belly and flanks, which is where their common name comes from."

That's what's going on in the ocean. What's up above? Joshua Shavit (THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF NEWS) notes:

More than a decade of satellite monitoring has mapped Earth’s magnetic field as it subtly altered between 2014 and 2025 — and what scientists have learned is remarkable. The South Atlantic Anomaly, a weak region, is expanding, the north magnetic pole is moving towards Siberia, and the unseen shield that protects life against solar and cosmic radiation is evolving at a rate never recorded before.

The Earth’s magnetic field is similar to a huge, constantly changing bubble that shields the planet by deflecting charged particles and radiation from the Sun. It’s created far below our feet in a sea of molten iron that churns around in the outer core some 1,800 miles down. When the liquid metal moves, electric currents result, which produce the magnetic field.

Since 2013, the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission — a trio of satellites known by the nicknames Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie — has been tracking this hidden force with greater precision than ever before. Each of the three spacecraft tracks both direction and magnitude of the magnetic field enveloping the planet, helping scientists to break down signals that reach not only from the core but also from the crust, oceans, ionosphere, and magnetosphere.

The magnetic poles. That is very interesting.

"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, October 17, 2025. The Young Republican group chat was not children, it was adults speaking and their racist remarks are reflected in Donald Chump's policies.

This week, disturbing news regarding a Telegram chat carried out by adults in the Young Republicans was reported on by POLITICO's Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo:

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.

“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.

The story remains in the news for several reasons including the fact that Vice President JD Vance thought this was another time he could lie. He's insisted that 'young boys' do things like this -- he's apparently unaware that women were involved as well -- and that this is going to impact his own sons because he's going to have to tell them not to put any statement like that ever on a digital exchange. He's not going to tell them don't say it, he's just going to say keep it off any digital exchange. We'll come back to him. David W. Chen and Megan Mineiro (NEW YORK TIMES) note:

The emergence of the texts and the disparate reactions to them among Republicans revealed not only a split in the party but also, for some, a comfort with rhetoric that once would have been routinely denounced. On the far right, some suggested that any condemnation of the racist, sexist and homophobic discourse was a betrayal of the conservative cause.

And JD can't leave it alone. Diana Nerozzi, Irie Sentner and Dasha Burns (POLITICO) notes:

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday continued to downplay the bigoted messages in a Young Republicans group chat,

[. . .]

Vance’s Thursday post marked the third time in two days that the vice president has waded into the firestorm over the trove of texts obtained by POLITICO and shows how the Trump administration’s strategy, articulated in the Art of the Deal, to never apologize and always hit back, extends well beyond the White House walls.

Vance has not defended the posts, which contained more than 250 racist, homophobic and antisemitic slurs, though he did refer to them as “edgy, offensive jokes.” The vice president has called the response to the posts “pearl clutching” and said “kids do stupid things, especially young boys” even though the chat group included men in their 20s and early 30s who hold local, state and federal government posts.

Right there is another reason it remains a news story. The administration refuses to call out the speech. It tries to distract and divert.

Donald Chump is supposed to be the leader of the United States. If he can't condemn racism -- and he can't -- that's a new story -- especially with all ov his other racist activites.

It's also news because it signals -- yet again -- that JD Vance does not love his children or his wife. Indians were degraded in these texts. And JD is married to a woman whose family traces back to India. JD converted to Catholicism late in life to please his sugar daddy Peter Thiel. He did so despite having children and a wife who were not Catholic and who have not converted. What kind of a father, what kind of a husband does that? One who doesn't really love them.

That's reality and no one wants to say it because of they're afraid of being the first. It's Chump's orange skin all over again where, throughout his first term, the media pretended like he might have some medical condition. No, he just had women's make up.

When I looked at him the first time with that orange crap on his face, I thought of Bette Davis. She was nominated for an Academy Award for playing Baby Jane Hudson in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? and the look she came up with for the role was based on observations early in her career of extras who got painted up for a film and they wouldn't wash their faces. Each day, they'd apply more make up over it. They often didn't like the way they had looked prior but they thought the make up made them look better. So they'd just pile on more. Kind of like Chump who, in a rather well known incident on THE APPRENTICE, looked in the mirror and declared himself "pretty" after hair and make up finished with him. No, he wasn't "pretty," but that set him down the road he's on where he became the first US president to wear make up off camera repeatedly.

As for JD's eye liner, I have no idea on that. Firuge that out on your own. But JD's attitude towards his own family is an embarrassment.

His children are Indian-American, his wife is Indian-American and in yet another incident where racists attack people from India, he is found defending those racists and not defending his children and his wife.

Everything is odd in Chump World but maybe TIME magazine can provide a little perspective. In a piece entitled "Top 10 Memorable Debate Moments," they include this:

Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis didn't exactly charm his way into voters' hearts during the 1988 debates with his response about whether he would support the death penalty should his wife, Kitty, be raped and murdered. A longtime opponent of the death penalty, Dukakis responded to the startling question from CNN's Bernard Shaw, "No, I don't, Bernard, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime." While some criticized the fairness of the question, to viewers the answer seemed both dispassionate and dismissive. Years later, Dukakis would recall his response, saying, "I have to tell you, and maybe I'm just still missing it ... I didn't think it was that bad."

He gave a very calm response. And it didn't go over with Americans because we expect people to react when they're children and/or spouse are threatened.

JD refuses to protect them. And so wonder what that says about the nature of his soul. At THE NEW REPUBLIC, Alex Shephard offers:

This wasn’t a college group chat. Its members were leaders in the Young Republican National Federation, which includes members up to the age of 40. William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used variations of the n-word. Peter Giunta, who was chief of staff for a New York assemblyman until he was fired on Tuesday, joked about murdering his opponents. Hendrix is 25. Giunta is 31. Vance, for what it’s worth, is 41. Before being tapped as Donald Trump’s running mate last year, he was also known to hang out in group chats with other young Republicans, some younger even than Hendrix. Is 41 too old to face consequences for your actions?

Vance’s repeated insistence that young adults should never be held accountable for using racial slurs is notable in and of itself. But his larger refusal to condemn depraved allies or even to distance himself from them is part of a larger trend. Most political norms—and the laws of political gravity that helped keep them in place—are long gone, replaced by an intense tribal loyalty that turns any scandal into an opportunity for whataboutism. This, it seems, is an early preview of Trump’s lasting political legacy: Republicans are no longer apologizing, nor are they pushing out racist, bigoted allies when they inevitably find themselves embroiled in controversy.

The vile contents of this leaked group chat are, as many have pointed out, not especially different from a great deal of what passes for discourse on the MAGA right. What is most notable about it, as Andrew Egger wrote in The Bulwark, is that the people involved are the product of a post-Trump culture that rewards “the most amoral and psychotic political strivers, and has held them up as a professional ideal for the young people coming up behind them to copy and emulate. This is what they know as the ticket to power.”

We might be giving Trump too much credit, however. The radicalization of young Republicans predates his political rise in 2015. The racist, pro-Nazi far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 that left one young woman dead was full of young Republican leaders, many of whom had taken official positions before the start of Trump’s presidential campaign. As my former colleague Alex Pareene wrote in an extremely perceptive piece shortly after the Charlottesville rally, “Racial resentment has been a driving force behind College Republican recruitment for years, but at this point it’s really all they have left to offer.” Trump was a catalyst of the Republican Party’s transformation, but his rise was also a symptom of its radicalization and turn toward resentment, in other words. But young Republicans’ Nazi turn started long before his fateful trip down the Trump Tower escalator in June 2015.

Where Trump was different—and one reason why he is so uniquely beloved on the right—is that he provided a permission structure for Republicans to be publicly cruel and hateful. His rise came in no small part because he refused to be cowed or, for that matter, to ever apologize. In 2016, he was openly misogynistic to Megyn Kelly (now a staunch supporter), racist toward Blacks and Latinos, and contemptuous of anyone who opposed him (including war hero and former Republican presidential nominee John McCain). The controversy this generated was a virtuous cycle for Trump. He would say something inflammatory, pundits and politicians would criticize him, and he would not only refuse to back down but mock them as well—a media circus that sucked out all the oxygen from rivals and competitors.

And that is another reason this is a news story. The party of Abraham Lincoln now has a huge amount of members who live and breathe racism. They can't get through a day without expressing it and they can't see a future where racism isn't a major component. Harold Meyerson (THE AMERICAN PROSPECT) noted this week:

Today’s MAGA movement is nothing if not the ideological heir to those Redeemers, as determined to reverse every last vestige of the Second Reconstruction—the civil rights laws and values of the 1960s—as the Redeemers were to extirpate the First.

Yesterday, the Republican justices on the Supreme Court made clear their desire to redistrict Southern states in a way that would eliminate the districts, and the possibility of districts, that send, and could send, Black representatives to Congress. As my colleague David Dayen has pointed out, the more immediate impulse behind the justices’ determination to effectively revoke what remains of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is to ensure that Republicans will pick up a dozen or more House seats through the redistricting the Court will order. They clearly understand, however, that that will mean effectively disfranchising Southern Black citizens. To the extent that Chief Justice John Roberts has adduced a reason for this epochal reversal, it’s that the white racism that the Act’s supporters were combating in 1965 is now, 60 years later, a thing of the past.

But the actually existing Republican Party that the justices mean to keep in power is a veritable storehouse of white racism, reviving and initiating policies for which white racial bigotry is the only plausible explanation. The Trump administration has already made that clear by stipulating that the only foreign refugees it welcomes to our shores are a subset of South African whites, concerned that that nation’s elected leaders (predominantly Black) may use eminent domain powers to repurpose some land for public purposes. By contrast, refugees fleeing for their lives from the Taliban, the ayatollahs, or Central American gangs have had, and will have, America’s doors slammed in their face.

Yesterday, the Times reported that the Departments of State and Homeland Security had sent proposals to the White House for new refugee rules that would favor Europeans seeking to leave their homelands because they’d been “targeted for peaceful expression of views online such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties.” In other words, reducing our refugee policy exclusively to an ingathering of white Europe’s far-right and neo-fascists.

Trump’s administration and the Court’s Republicans still occasionally cling to the contention that they are simply reverting to policies of racial neutrality by striking down DEI and affirmative action policies. Trump’s actions, however, belie that argument with each passing day. He has fired, or tried to fire, Black, and female, leaders of prominent institutions—the armed services, regulatory agencies, the Federal Reserve—on either the slimmest pretexts or for no stated reason at all, while populating his administration with very disproportionately white male appointees, as if matching the demographic composition of the Eisenhower administration was his desired goal.

The Telegram chat was not some abhorrent diversion, it was a manifestation of what has become the heart of today's Republican Party. At TALKING POINTS MEMO yesterday, Josh Marshall noted:

I read a group email from Capitol Hill yesterday essentially predicting the extinction of the Democratic Party after what is predicted to be a decision from the Supreme Court overturning what remains of the Voting Rights Act. A less apocalyptic but still daunting version of this argument appeared in an evening piece published by Nate Cohn in the Times. Before getting to the partisan and vote count implications, let’s first discuss what this means, which is essentially ending African-American political representation in the states of the old Confederacy. Most if not all majority-minority districts disappear and Republican state legislatures are free to draw up districts which spread/dilute African-American voters into safely Republican districts. Cohn thinks it’s plausible that Democrats could permanently lose (as much as anything can ever be permanent) 12 House seats. And this is on top of the strong-arm restricting happening in a number of states across the country. The overall scenario is one in which the House becomes an even bigger electoral challenge than the Senate, one that is possible to win but only in a generational wave style election.

Racism is not a manufacturing flaw for today's Republican Party, it's a built-in feature, planned, intended, installed.

Now not all. Mike noted last night how Senator Markwayne Mullin (a Republican) has denounced the Telegram exchange. But Mullin's common sense approach does not represent all of the Republican Party and certainly not the majority of them on social media.

Chris Walker (TRUTHOUT) notes:

Explicitly racist language and symbolism is becoming increasingly common in Republican spaces.

Just this week, an image of an American flag with a Nazi swastika embedded in the stripes was spotted during a Zoom call behind Angelo Elia, the legislative correspondent to Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio). Congressman Taylor claims he asked Capitol Police to investigate how the flag was placed in his office, but given the placement of the symbol, it’s unlikely that Taylor or his staffers wouldn’t have noticed it before the Zoom call.

Notably, President Donald Trump’s own rhetoric has frequently included racist dog whistles and explicit bigotry. Trump has also borrowed rhetoric from Nazi officials, including publicly claiming that immigrants are “poisoning” the blood of the country, and calling his political opponents “vermin.”

These adults in the chat demonized others and that's what Chump does. To destroy special education? You have to demonize. To destroy healthcare? You have to demonize. Every policy he's for is built around the premise that someone unworthy is getting something and you're not. It's grudge f**k politics and that's all these professional victims in MAGA can do, pretend that they're wronged and others are in a line that's moving while they're being left behind.

As we did in yesterday's snapshot, we're noting some video coverage of this issue with the hope that any drive-by reader (as opposed to a community member) who might not get what's going on will better understand it coming from someone other than me.

In other news, this morning at THE NEW REPUBLIC, Daniel Boguslaw reports:

Fifteen minutes east of Senator Bernie Sanders’s headquarters in Burlington, Vermont, sit the nerve centers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s national efforts to target immigrants for deportation. Two of ICE’s three main targeting facilities, in addition to its tip line, are located in the hamlet of Williston, which has seen mounting protests in recent weeks over plans to hire round-the-clock analysts to aid the Trump administration’s deportation goals.

The targeting centers are fueling an unprecedented immigration crackdown across the country, one that has drawn widespread condemnation from politicians and citizens alike. Harrowing videos have captured masked ICE officers arresting U.S. citizens, shooting at clergy, and threatening first responders with lethal force. And while ICE has abandoned some of its focused targeting practices in favor of broad sweeps, the targeting that remains is driven by two offices in Williston.

One of these facilities is the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, or NCATC, which serves as the nexus for intelligence that is sent to ICE’s 25 enforcement and removal operations, or ERO, field offices across the country. The intelligence packaged by the NCATC for ERO “door kickers” includes biographical information, criminal history, immigration history, custody data, immigration benefit information, naturalization information, and vehicle and insurance data. Thanks to a memorandum of understanding signed in April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, it now also includes IRS data, the legality of which is being contested in court.

Chump's war on immigrants continues across the United States but especially in Illinois. Too bad for him, Governor JD Pritzker is not intimidated by Chump.

.'

ICE needs to get out of Chicago. They are neither wanted nor needed. Danny Postel (IN THESE TIMES) explains:

If there’s one thing President Donald Trump and the people of Chicago might agree on, it’s that America’s third-largest city is currently a “war zone.”

But for most Chicagoans, it’s the Trump administration that has made it so, with its military-style “Operation Midway Blitz,” led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and “Operation At Large,” which Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched in Los Angeles and brought to the Windy City in September.

“I have lived here for 28 years and I have never felt so profoundly unsafe until this week,” one resident recently posted on social media. “And it’s not because of gangs or crime or unhoused people or drug users or migrants. I feel unsafe because there are militarized units with loaded guns in the school parking lots of my district, kidnapping my neighbors.”

The statement echoes a citywide sentiment. Over the last five weeks in Chicago, federal agents have shot at least two people, killing one (Silverio Villegas González, a father of two who had just dropped one of his children off at school when ICE agents shot him); descended on an apartment building with a Black Hawk helicopter and used flash-bang grenades; tear-gassed protesters and first responders; smoke-bombed a street full of people; reportedly zip-tied children and separated them from their parents for several hours in the middle of the night; shot protesters with rubber bullets; handcuffed a city council member in a hospital; and fired a chemical weapon at a TV reporter as she was driving away, burning her face.

Meanwhile, self-deluded MAGA types keep telling themselves that Chump's only targeting violent criminals -- you know, people like Radule Bojovic. Who? One of the latest targeted by ICE. A police officer. Luke Barr and Meredith Deliso (ABC NEWS) report:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a suburban Chicago police officer who is accused of being in the country illegally, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Radule Bojovic, a native of Montenegro, was working as a sworn officer for the Hanover Park Police Department, according to DHS.

He was "encountered during a targeted enforcement action" as part of "Operation Midway Blitz," a surge of immigration enforcement in Illinois that began last month, DHS said in a press release Thursday announcing the arrest.

[. . .]

The Village of Hanover Park said its police department hired Bojovic in January "in full compliance with federal and state law" and that the village "confirmed that he was legally authorized by the federal government to work in the United States."

In other disturbing news, Maanvi Singh (GUARDIAN) reports:

Queer and trans immigrants at a detention facility in south Louisiana have alleged that they faced sexual harassment and abuse, medical neglect and coerced labor by staff at the facility, and that they were repeatedly ignored or faced retaliation for speaking out.

In multiple legal complaints, immigrants detained at the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center (SLIPC) in Basile, Louisiana, said they were recruited into an unsanctioned work program that forced them to perform hard manual labor for as little as $1 per day. Detainees also alleged that queer people were targeted by an assistant warden who stalked, harassed and sexually assaulted them.

Three current and former detainees who spoke to the Guardian said that, between 2023 and 2025, they endured months of abuse from an assistant warden named Manuel Reyes and his associates. In their complaints to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the detainees also said that they faced retaliation for reporting the abuse to authorities, alleging that Reyes and other staff beat them and denied them medical treatment.

Let's wind down with this from THE BLACK COMMENTATOR.

The Black Commentator

Issue #1059

is now Online

October 16, 2025