#Cabinet Committee on Security

[defencecapital]

20 Years Of India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Does Delhi Need To Reset Its Nuke Policy With Growing Economic & Military Might

By N. C. Bipindra for EurAsian Times India officially declared itself a nuclear weapons state in May 1998 following the ‘Shakti’ nuclear tests in the Rajasthan desert, popularly called Pokhran-II. But it spelled out its official nuclear doctrine for the first time publicly in January 2003 through a media statement issued by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) after a meeting of the Cabinet…

[merisarkar]

Govt Approves Nuclear Submarines and MQ-9B Drones for Military

Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) clears Nuclear Submarines, MQ-9B drones: New Delhi, India – The Indian government has given the green light for two major defense procurements: the indigenous construction of nuclear-powered attack submarines and the purchase of 31 MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft from the US defence and aerospace giant General Atomics. These acquisitions will significantly…

[defencestar]

India Approves Nuclear Submarines and MQ-9B Drones

India Cabinet clears Nuclear Submarines, MQ-9B drones: New Delhi, India – The Indian government has given the green light for two major defense procurements: the indigenous construction of nuclear-powered attack submarines and the purchase of 31 MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft from the US defence and aerospace giant General Atomics. These acquisitions will significantly bolster the capabilities…

[misfitwashere]

Rejected Cabinet Nominees

Some historical guidance

TIMOTHY SNYDER

JAN 16

Historically, nominees for cabinet positions have been rejected by the Senate or have withdrawn their candidacies in order to prevent that outcome. It is not common, but nor is it abnormal. The power of "advice and consent" granted to the Senate by the Constitution has been exercised in practice. 

A number of Trump's appointments are simply outrageous by historical, ethical, strategic, or any other standards. The ongoing confirmation hearings tend to normalize the bizarre (although Democrats and a couple of Republicans have asked meaningful questions.)

So a few examples of failed nominations might serve as one tool among others to keep the events of the moment in perspective.

Secretary of Defense

John Tower was the first George H.W. Bush nominee for secretary of defense. He has served in the Senate for more than twenty years, and had chaired its Armed Services Committee. He was an author of the Tower Commission report on the Iran-Contra Affair. He was questioned by Senators about his past alcohol use and womanizing.

Pete Hegseth, unlike Tower, has zero knowledge, experience, or qualifications for the of running the Department of Defense. His program, judging from his books, is to ignore foreign enemies, politicize the armed forces, and carry out a "Holy War" against Americans. Pete Hegseth's womanizing and alcohol use, by his own account, far exceed Tower's. Unlike Tower, Hegseth paid off a woman who filed a police report accusing him of sexual assault in circumstances that, by her account, strongly suggest the use of a rape drug. Hegseth had to resign from both of the advocacy groups he ran because of incompetence and drunkenness. He regularly had to be physically carried away from events because he was too drunk to stand. In once case he had to be prevented from joining strippers on a stage. He also displayed total financial and budgetary incompetence. In this connection it is worth mentioning that the Department of Defense has the largest budget of any government in history.

There is a disturbing tendency to forgive Hegseth everything because he is a veteran. This seems unfair to veterans who do not display his failures of character. But it also contains within itself the troubling idea that soldiers can do no wrong: an idea that Hegseth himself seems to hold. That way lies military dictatorship. In any event: Tower served in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War and was in the reserve for decades.

The Senate rejected Tower.

Director of National Intelligence.

This position was created relatively recently and elevated to cabinet rank still more recently. It is meant to oversee the work of all American intelligence agencies. So a relevant historical comparison will be to the position of director of central intelligence.

Anthony Lake was second-term Bill Clinton's nominee for the position of director of central intelligence. Lake was eminently qualified. He is one of the most accomplished American diplomats of the post-1945 period. Among many other positions he was Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under Carter, and National Security Advisor during Clinton's first term. His nomination ran into trouble because of two occasions when his deputies on the National Security Council failed to inform him of discussions with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee about donor access to the White House.

Tulsi Gabbard has no qualifications to be Director of National Intelligence. A very long list of Americans with national security experience regard her as a danger to the safety of Americans. She is known abroad as a supporter of two of the world's most violent dictators, Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin. As a congresswomen she consistently made excuses for Assad, whose regime killed something like half a million people before it was overthrown. She proposed that the Russo-Ukrainian war could be ended "in the spirit of aloha" and repeats Russian propaganda tropes. Russian media refer to Gabbard as "comrade" and "girlfriend" and "our agent."

Under Senate pressure, Lake withdrew his candidacy.

Attorney General

Zoe Baird was nominated by Bill Clinton for attorney general at the beginning of his first term in 1993. She was eminently qualified professionally for the job. She had however hired undocumented immigrants in her household and had not paid Social Security taxes for them.

Pam Bondi is Donald Trump's nominee for the same position. As part of Donald Trump's legal team, she sought to justify his attempt to overturn the results of an election. As Florida attorney general, she accepted luxurious perks from relevant parties in cases she was considering. In that capacity she also failed to pursue a case against Trump University after a political group supporting received a check, an illegal donation, from Trump's foundation signed by Trump. As a lobbyist she represented a Russian money manager convicted in Kuwait and served as a public relations representative for the government of Qatar. She was paid more than $100,000 a month just for that assignment, which she left in order to defend Trump from conviction after his first impeachment. Then she went back to working for Qatar.

Under Senate pressure, Baird withdrew her candidacy.

Succeeding events created the closest thing we have to a historical standard for rejecting cabinet nominees by Republican Senators: the employment of undocumented workers.

After Baird withdrew, Clinton nominated Kimba Wood. She too was eminently qualified to serve as attorney general. It emerged that she too had hired an undocumented worker as a nanny. Wood did so at a time when this was legal, and she paid the appropriate taxes. Nevertheless, the mere fact that she had employed one undocumented person, entirely legally, stopped her candidacy. in 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Linda Chavez to be secretary of labor. She then withdrew her candidacy after it emerged that she had paid an undocumented person to work in her household.

So one might move beyond the obvious point that Bondi's scandals dwarf Baird's (and Hegseth's those of Tower, and Gabbard's those of Lake) and propose a pragmatic line of questioning that would apply to Trump's other nominees. Have they or their companies employed undocumented workers? It seems a reasonable question to ask, especially of the billionaires. Given the coming administration's oft-declared hard line on illegal immigration, this would seem to be a minimum standard for its cabinet nominees.

The Senate has a constitutional role, and in the past has exercised it. Some of the nominees presented to them this month are wildly inappropriate to the point of risking the integrity of American national security and calling into question basic principles of the rule of law. The history of failed nominations reminds us just how far some of these people fall below any reasonable standard.

[contemplatingoutlander]

The House GOP is a circus. The chaos has one source.

Republicans spent two years sabotaging the U.S. House. Another two years would be ruinous.

Dana Milbank does a masterful job of describing just how dysfunctional the House GOP members have been in the past two years.

This is a gift🎁link for the entire article. Below are some highlights:

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Six weeks after his improbable rise from obscurity to speaker of the House in late 2023, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson decided to break bread with a group of Christian nationalists. [...] “I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here,” Johnson teased the group, unaware that his hosts were streaming video of the event. Johnson informed his audience that God “had been speaking to me” about becoming speaker, communicating “very specifically,” in fact, waking him at night and giving him “plans and procedures.” [...] Today, Johnson’s run looks anything but heaven-sent. In the first 18 months of this Congress, only 70 laws were enacted. Calculations by political scientist Tobin Grant, who tracks congressional output over time, put this Congress on course to be the do-nothingest since 1859-1861 — when the Union was dissolving. But Johnson’s House isn’t merely unproductive; it is positively lunatic. Republicans have filled their committee hearings and their bills with white nationalist attacks on racial diversity and immigrants, attempts to ban abortion and to expand access to the sort of guns used in mass shootings, incessant harassment of LGBTQ Americans, and even routine potshots at the U.S. military. They insulted each other’s private parts, accused each other of sexual and financial crimes, and scuffled with each other in the Capitol basement. They screamed “Bullshit!” at President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address. They stood up for the Confederacy and used their official powers to spread conspiracy theories about the “Deep State.” Some even lent credence to the idea that there has been a century-old Deep State coverup of space aliens, with possible involvement by Mussolini and the Vatican.

The above article was adapted from Dana Milbank's (2024) book: Fools on the HILL: The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House.

[See more below the cut.]

And this is on top of the well-known pratfalls: The 15-ballot marathon to elect a speaker, the 22-day shutdown of the House to find another speaker, the routine threats of government shutdowns and a near-default on the federal debt that hurt the nation’s credit rating. They devoted 18 months to a failed attempt to impeach Biden, which produced nothing but Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly displaying posters of Hunter Biden engaging in sex acts. One “whistleblower” defected to Russia, another worked with Russian intelligence and is under indictment for fabricating his claims, and still another is on the lam, evading charges of being a Chinese agent. As soon as Biden withdrew his candidacy, they promptly forgot their probe of Biden’s “corruption” and rushed to launch a new series of investigations into Kamala Harris (over her record on border security) and Tim Walz (over his military service and “cozy relationship” with China). After a number of failed attempts, they did impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (the first such action against a Cabinet officer since 1876) without identifying any high crimes or misdemeanors he had committed; the Senate dismissed the articles without a trial. House Republicans created a “weaponization committee” under the excitable Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), but it was panned even by right-wing commentators when it produced little more than a list of conspiracy theories from the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. They lapsed repeatedly into fits of censure resolutions, contempt citations and other pointless acts of vengeance. In all of its history, the House had voted to censure one of its own members only seven times; in the two weeks after Johnson became speaker, members of the House tried to censure each other eight times. [...] In lieu of consequential legislating, they passed bills such as the Refrigerator Freedom Act, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards (SUDS) Act. On the House floor, the Republican majority suffered one failure after another, even on routine procedural votes. Seven times (and counting), House Republicans voted down their own leaders’ routine attempts to begin floor debates — something that hadn’t happened once in the previous 20 years.

[dorothylarouge]

What was the galaxy's political landscape like after the Empire lost its dominance - how much sway did it still hold, did a neoliberal New Republic get established etc.?

And did Luke reestablish the Jedi Order, if so what was his version like?

After the Battle of Endor, the Empire fractured, with a number of individual warlords carving out their own petty kingdoms and mini-empires, such as the warlord Zsinj and Treuten Teradoc, who formed the polity known as the Greater Maldroon and attracted Grand General Veers and Grand Admiral Sloane to his service. For a brief time, Mas Amedda ruled what remained of the centralized Imperial government in his capacity as Regent, but he was politically outflanked and removed from power by Ysanne Isard, director of the Imperial Security Bureau. Amedda fled for Byss at the center of the galaxy, where he formed an Imperial Royalist Confederation, which he continues to lead. Isard would continue to lead the rump Empire until its defeat by the Republic at the Battle of Coruscant, at which point what was left of the centralized Empire collapsed and Isard killed herself rather than be captured. Most of the Imperial warlords weeded themselves out, and only a handful of Imperial factions remain. These include the Central Committee of Grand Moffs, who rule Kessel and what was formerly Pyke space, dominating the galactic spice trade, and the Iron Triad, a criminal enterprise led by former Grand Moff Ubrik Adelhard, which became a major player in the galactic underworld after the collapse of the Hutt Cartel.

The largest and most successful Imperial remnant is the Pentastar Alignment, which nominally rules much of the galactic north. It was formed by Ardus Kaine, Grand Moff of Oversector Outer, in the months after Endor, and declared independence from Coruscant about a year after the Emperor's death. Defections from other warlord states caused the Alignment's ranks and territory to swell, and Kaine secured his place as the most powerful remnant leader after his defeat of Zsinj at the Battle of Dathomir. Soon afterward, he began his efforts to consolidate the Alignment as a state and cultivate a cult of personality by circulating the Pentastar Codex, a work of political theory he wrote that outlined the principles and policies of Kainism, a more cosmopolitan form of paternalistic national conservatism which replaced Palpatine's New Order as the Alignment's state ideology. These political efforts, as well as Kaine's marginalization of the Moff Council, rankled hardliners in the military and intelligence service, and in 10 ABY the New Order faction or the integralists, led by Dedra Meero and Gilad Pellaeon, launched attacks on Kainist positions, beginning the Pentastar Civil War, which remains ongoing.

The New Republic, by 10 ABY referred to mostly as simply the Republic, reorganized itself from the Rebel Alliance immediately following the Battle of Endor, and soon after the Senate convened its first session on the temporary capital of Chandrila. Elections were not held until following the Liberation of Coruscant, by which point clear political factions had had time to form in the Senate. From its founding to 8 ABY, the Republic was led by Mon Mothma as Chancellor. However, she was forced from power following a series of politically damaging incidents, including a poorly-conceived amnesty program for former Imperials, and she was succeeded by Leia Organa, who quickly pushed through political reforms to stabilize the Republic, including splitting the position of Chancellor into the offices of Chief of State and Prime Minister, and establishing a formal cabinet.

There are four major political blocs in the Senate, two in government and two in opposition. The largest parties in the Senate mainly began as the result of a split in the Progressive Party, the political arm of the Rebel Alliance. The blocs are:

The Organa Bloc, consisting of the Progressive People's Party, the Liberal Party, and the Federalist Party: center to center-left, with the PPP itself being a social democratic party under Leia's leadership.

The Iblis Bloc, consisting of the People's Union Party, Reform Party, and Libertarian Party: Led by Corellian firebrand Garm Bel Iblis, they are a left-wing to far-left grouping in coalition with the Oragana Bloc.

The Fey'lya Bloc, consisting of the Progressive Conservative Party, the Constitutionalist Party, and the Free Hyperlanes Party: Led by Bothawui Senator Borsk Fey'lya, they are a conservative, center to center-right grouping which serves as the official opposition who are steadily growing in popularity in part due to Fey'lya's populist appeals to alien unity against human hegemony.

The Mothma Bloc, consisting of the Galactic Unity Party, the Core Alliance, and the Anti-Jedi Party: A looser-knit grouping of mainly non-aligned right-wing parties, this group is nominally headed by Leida Mothma, daughter of Mon Mothma, who unlike her mother is a traditionalist conservative. Her party, the GUP, is often considered a successor to the Galactic Integralist Party, which had been the state party under the Empire, and is full of Imperial sympathizers, apologists, and outright former Imperials, and pushes for a normalization of relations with the Imperial successor states. The group also includes the Core Alliance, a group of important Core Worlds joined together to maintain their traditional privileges within the Republic, and Alyx J'onzz's Anti-Jedi Party, a fringe group of conspiracy theorists.

After Endor, Luke Skywalker went on walkabout for several years, exploring various Force traditions, discovering Jedi lore, and connecting with Force-sensitives, including surviving Jedi. He returned a Jedi Master, and formed the Order of the Jedi Knights, or New Jedi Order, in 8 ABY, with his Temple erected on the Jedi homeworld of Tython. The Order now has over a hundred members, and Luke leads the High Council with the title of First Master. Luke has reformed the Jedi in many ways, such as relaxing rules against attachments and distancing it from an official capacity within the Republic. These changes are disquieting to the Old Guard faction within the Jedi, led by Master Oppo Rancisis, who often makes his opposition to Luke's policies known in heated arguments in the Council chamber.

[vague-humanoid]

Britain’s Conservative government has issued notices to the media to suppress reports of the operations of the Special Air Service (SAS) in Gaza.

On Saturday, the Socialist Worker, newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, revealed it had been sent a “D Notice” Saturday morning from the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee requesting it not publish information relating to the operations of the SAS.

D Notices are used by the British state to veto the publication of news damaging to its interests. The slavish collusion of the mainstream media ensures that such notices function as gag orders. A high level branch of the state, the DSMA’s chair is Paul Wyatt, Director General Security Policy at the Ministry of Defence. Other committee members include the Deputy National Security Adviser, Cabinet Office; Director National Security at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; Director National Security at the Home Office; and the Director National Security at the Ministry of Defence.

An article by Socialist Worker editor Charlie Kimber notes, “Specifically this ‘D notice’ concerned British special forces operating in the Middle East.” The e-mail to the media was from the DSMA secretary, Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds, he added.

Dodds states, “Reports have started to appear in some publications claiming that UK Special Forces have deployed to sensitive areas of the Middle East and then linking that deployment to hostage rescue/evacuation operations.

“May I take this opportunity to remind editors that publication of such information contravenes the DSMA notice code. I therefore advise that claims of such deployments should not be published nor broadcast without first seeking Defence and Security Media advice”.

He added, “This Notice aims to prevent the inadvertent disclosure of classified information about Special Forces and other MOD units engaged in security, intelligence and counter-terrorist operations, including their methods, techniques and activities.”

[gwydionmisha]

Cabinet Committee Hearings 1/21/24

Please contact your senators and ask them to reject dangerous and unqualified cabinet picks. I don't have a lot of hope at this point, but better to fight than roll belly up. If nothing else ask them to resist Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, RFK Jr., Russel Vought, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel.

Usually they just log for or against. If they want a reason, I've listed some below. Use reason for Democrats. For Republicans: Stress military readiness, national security, and the integrity and morale of the military, law and order, etc..

All of these are terrible. Complain about whatever you have energy for (most important bolded):

TUESDAY:

Doug Collins, Veterans Affairs - Very conservative Trump Loyalist. Could be far worse.

Elise Stefanik, U.N. ambassador, entirely self agendaed with zero principles. Could be far worse and gets her out of congress. Will likely sail through like shit through a goose as she has some democratic support. Don't waste your energy.

WEDNESDAY:

Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget, is a Project 2025 person with absolutely disastrous plans. He plans to purge the civil service on political grounds and replace honest non-partisan people with right wing extremists as part of implementing autocracy. he also plans to overthrow Congress' power to allocate funds by illegally preventing the disbursement of Medicare, Social Security, EBT, Housing, Education, etc. funds in order to destroy the social safety net. He will likely get away with it as the SCOTUS are so in the bag for kleptocratic fascist autocracy that they've been declaring black letter parts of the constitution un constitutional and thrown out ideas like precedent and rule of law. This guy is terrifying and he's barely getting any coverage or notice.

"Russ Vought wants to make Congress obsolete:" https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-cabinet-russ-vought-project-2025-rcna187838

THURSDAY:

"What to know about Brooke Rollins, Trump’s pick for agriculture secretary:" https://www.wnct.com/news/politics/ap-what-to-know-about-brooke-rollins-trumps-pick-for-agriculture-secretary/

Have something you want to tell your Congress Critters? If you can't safely contact them in person, here are some other options:

Five Calls to your critters: https://5calls.org/

Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resist.bot/

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from Robert Reich's Substack blog:

At the same time Democrats and progressives are justifiably enraged at Trump’s gonzo Cabinet picks, they’re all but mute about corporate America’s continued siphoning of economic gains to the top.

Yet this siphoning has created the stagnant wages and insecure jobs that helped propel Trump into the presidency and give Republicans control over both chambers of Congress.

Trump at least gave workers an explanation for what’s happened to them — although it was a lie: It isn’t undocumented immigrants or the “deep state” or transgender kids or any other Trump bogeyman.

It’s corporate greed.

The most recent example: On Friday, GM announced it was laying off 1,000 workers. These layoffs followed another round of GM layoffs in August, which saw 1,500 jobs cut. The cuts affected both salaried and hourly staff, including some United Auto Workers members.

Most of the workers being laid off Friday were notified via email early Friday morning. Some had been working for GM for over thirty years.

GM says it has no choice. It must cut costs.

This is what we hear again and again from corporate America. We’ll be hearing even more of this as Artificial Intelligence takes over white-collar as well as blue-collar jobs.

No choice?

GM is on track for making record profits this year, surpassing its 2022 record profit of $14.5 billion. In the third quarter of 2024 alone, GM made $3.4 billion. That’s a $200 million increase from the same period last year.

GM CEO Mary Barra’s compensation for 2024 is $27.8 million. This includes a base salary of $2.1 million, stock awards of $14.6 million, stock option awards valued at $4.9 million, an “incentive plan” compensation (as if she needed more incentive) of $5.3 million, other payment of $997,392, and perks (personal travel, security, financial counseling, company vehicles, and an executive health plan) valued at $389,005.

The ratio of Barra’s compensation to that of the typical GM employee is estimated to be 303-to-1.

In June, GM announced $6 billion in stock buybacks. This means $6 billion of GM’s record profits will be used to purchase its own shares of stock — thereby boosting share prices (and the portion of Barra’s compensation in stock grants and options) simply because fewer shares of GM stock will be in circulation.

Keep in mind that the richest 1 percent of American hold over half of the value of all shares of stock held by Americans, and the richest 10 percent hold 92 percent.

So, in fact, GM’s savings from axing 1,000 jobs will be transferred into the pockets of wealthy Americans (including GM’s CEO).

Why aren’t Democrats up in arms about this? I haven’t heard Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, or any other leading Democrat say a critical word about GM’s latest move.

Why isn’t Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer — who may be in the running for president in 2028 (assuming we have another election) — accusing GM of sacrificing jobs for profits that are siphoned off to big investors?

Why aren’t Democrats, who still control the Senate and presidency, moving more aggressively to outlaw stock buybacks — which were considered illegal stock manipulations before Ronald Reagan’s SEC gave them the green light?

Why aren’t they demanding that capital gains taxes be increased on the super-wealthy, whose stock gains this year alone have made America’s billionaires 30 percent richer?

Why aren’t they moving to increase corporate taxes on corporations whose ratio of CEO pay to their median workers is more than 50 to 1? And impose even higher taxes if the ratio exceeds 100 to 1? (Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse, along with Representatives Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have introduced just such a bill, but no one knows about it. Why isn’t the Democratic leadership loudly pushing this?)

The lesson of the debacle of the 2024 election is that big corporations and the wealthy have shafted average working Americans, whose wages and jobs have gone nowhere for decades and who are understandably frustrated and angry at what they see as a rigged system.

[mariacallous]

Dr. Phil filming a ride-along with ICE agents, interviewing apparent migrants, and making it look like an episode of Cops feels like something I’d dream up after taking a little too much melatonin and scrolling TikTok before bed.

But instead, the “contentification” of President Donald Trump’s policy is indeed the logical next step for a team that won the election with the help of influencers and content creators. Following suit, Trump’s cabinet has basically created the White House’s own cinematic universe.

Only a few days after her confirmation, Kristi Noem, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security secretary, was filmed alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducting an operation. “I’m here in New York City,” Noem told the camera in a vertical video, wearing a bulletproof vest and with a fresh blowout. “We’re getting these dirtbags off these streets.”

Back in December, I wrote that we should not only expect the government to continue its work with influencers but also to become influencers themselves. This week it became clear that this is what the Trump administration has been planning to do with its cabinet leaders all along. They’re not just leading the government, they’re making content while doing it.

Look at who Trump nominated for cabinet positions. Nearly across the board, these nominees have experience playing it up for the camera. Noem is a MAGA media veteran, often appearing on networks like Newsmax to discuss topics of the day. Linda McMahon, wife to former WWE CEO Vince McMahon, has gotten in the wrestling ring a time or two herself. Over the course of his presidential campaign, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. couldn’t get enough of the media, appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast and anywhere else that would have him. And of course, Pete Hegseth is a former Fox News host. On Tuesday, CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter wrote that these ICE raids were crafted with television and the internet in mind.

Before his first week in office, Trump had played casting director. Now, we’re getting the pilot episodes.

Still, it’s not like all that much has changed in terms of digital infrastructure at these agencies. It might just be that the GOP is doing it better—and giving their audience what it wants. Even under the Biden administration, DHS and ICE organized ride-alongs with the media, especially with MAGA-friendly broadcasters like Fox News. The agencies would often post photos of enforcement officers cuffing alleged migrants on platforms like X as well. Most of the multimedia staffers are career employees with few slots for political appointees, according to a source familiar with DHS’s public affairs office.

But as Stelter wrote yesterday, the tone of the content is different. And that’s likely a result of the onscreen talent. You’re going to get an entirely different product when working with media veterans like Dr. Phil and Noem. The only Biden cabinet secretary that could rival those two was Pete Buttigieg.

While all of this is happening, the Democrats are waiting to elect a new director before they can even think about casting. On Saturday, Democrats will be voting on their next party chair. There are nearly a dozen people running to fill the spot, but the election is mainly seen as a two-man race between Wisconsin party chair Ben Wikler and Ken Martin, a DNC vice chair.

Wikler, Martin, and many other candidates appeared on a virtual forum Tuesday night specifically focused on the DNC’s future in tech and media. For about an hour, they were asked how they would revamp the party’s data infrastructure and tackle new media. Many of them appeared anxious to take it on.

When I first started covering this beat, Wikler was constantly pitched to me as an example of a Democratic party official who was doing digital the right way. I spoke with him in December, where he reinforced that Democrats needed to respond to the changing media environment quickly if they planned to win elections in the near future. On Tuesday night, Wikler went on to suggest that the DNC create its own innovation lab focused on keeping up with their opposition.

“You need to build a culture of curiosity, innovation, experimentation, and iteration, knowing that many things won’t work,” Wikler said Tuesday night. “So you need to try even more things.”

Martin wants to do something similar by building an “Information War Room” more focused on fighting misinformation.

“That Information War Room will become the hub for better, ongoing, constant digital communications with real-time analytics and also with social listening, so we understand where the misinformation and disinformation is being pumped out, and as part of that, we need to recruit trusted messengers, influencers, creators, and their networks to communicate over the long haul,” Martin said.

That war room already exists on the right. The Trump campaign hosted influencers for special debate war rooms, and the same person who ran the Trump campaign’s war room has now been appointed “war room director” for the White House.

Faiz Shakir, a former Bernie Sanders adviser and the executive director of More Perfect Union, is also running for DNC chair, and he sees things differently. Instead of simply partnering with creators, he envisions a DNC that acts as its own media network. “You don't just sprinkle fairy dust on a Mobilize link or YouTube link,” he said. “We should be raising money right now for the national Meals on Wheels Association, Head Start for America, just raise money for them and build engagement. Do actions on the ground with people, send videographers. This is what I'm doing right now at More Perfect Union.”

On Saturday, Democrats will choose who they want leading the party and taking on what will likely be a massive digital rebrand. During Tuesday’s forum, many of the candidates promised to move past the “boom-and-bust” periods of investing in digital and then stripping programs down to the bones between election cycles.

But it’s hard to imagine they’ll be able to keep up. Republicans have invested in this for years, and Trump has clearly brought it all to the White House. Plus, season two has just begun.

[nials-stuff]

pt.1

Story about a Hero getting abducted by a Villain who seemingly has no clear ulterior motive other than just having the Hero around. The predicament is so odd and mind boggling for the Hero that it leads him to become a villain himself.

Previously in pt.3: Hero arrived at Villain's manor and is looking for ways to escape while also thinking through the situation.

Trigger Warning: violence, mentionof death, whump

Pt.4

Ok so i gotta mention that while I do have a general idea of where the story goes from here, it is in fragments after this part. Also, don’t want to spend forever writing this ;-; Soooo I'm going to tell it a bit more choppily :0 as well as do some explanations and stuff.

When Villain closed the door, he didn’t lock it. Part of this is because he wanted to instill the fear that Hero couldn’t leave even if he had nothing restricting him. (kind of like that video of fleas who stay in the shape of a jar even when the jar is gone.) It worked for a bit but humans aren’t fleas. Hero does eventually decide to walk out again, who knows maybe like weeks later. When he does, he notices how strange the manor is. He sees these maid ladies who walk around but never seem to notice him. Several times and he’s gotten a bit of the layout figured out. He can’t find an exit tho. He does however find this one room. A long office with one desk at the end. 

About the manor→ Villain is wealthy rich extensively rich. So rich he’s basically made his footsteps in the villain world invisible. I find this kind of funny because when he took Hero from the government prison, it was in an old rusty, used car. Old as in it still had those cranking windows.

He investigates it and finds one of the cabinets has a bunch of files in it. He reads and is horrified to find information on every hero which was captured. He sees everything from their civilian identity, to their idk social security number?wild stuff. There were probably files on people he didn’t know, but there is one on his ex-girlfriend too. His file though… wasn’t there. It was on the cabinet above :D and there was so much more information on it that it needed its own cabinet. Understandably, Hero is spooked. He is seeing childhood photos, information on all the jobs he’s worked at, information on his late parents. Not fun to see.

He ends up leaving and a couple days later Villain shows up talking about “I got a job for you”. He takes Hero right back to that office room, ties his legs to the office chair, and gives him a pile of paperwork to “sort”. So during that time, someone set the manor on fire… And Hero almost gets burned in the office before someone enters and gets him out. So now Hero is on his way to the next place: villain base. (villains burned the manor) Which is gonna be the worst one for him because they really torture him. They try to extract his ability from him which is a really awfully painful thing to do. Villain eventually shows up again and has a meeting with that villain committee about Hero. 

This scene happens around a big round table with all these evil dudes. Hero is really broken at this point, he is slumped and bandaged (like a mummy) slouching in a chair. He looks really tiny sitting there. In this meeting he learns that Villain arranged the spy to give the heroes false info about the raid. He captured all the heroes, handed them to this villain group, and then shortly after, broke them all out again. This villain committee is furious, yes VIllain is not a part of their group, but he is causing them problems. Like what do you mean you brought us all the heroes and then just ..let them go. Basically, they are demanding he leave Hero with them (he is a technically powerful hero after all, they can get some use out of him)

Villain says no. He takes Hero and leaves. Not easily though, they put up a fight.

So basically after this, Villain notices that Hero is on the verge of death. One idea I had was that maybe he takes him to the heroes: they have a healer that could fix him. I like this because it gives the heroes a chance to see what happened to him. The other idea is that Villain nurses him back to health himself. 

So Hero is still trying to place a finger on Villain’s motives. Villain does start pushing him into some villainous acts while also messing with his mentality. He has Hero feeling like society really shoved him away. 

At some point, he couldn’t even be called a Hero anymore, even his power has never been hero-like.

RIght before the tipping point for “Hero”, Villain dies (dunno how bruh, he did leave all his riches in Hero’s name so that’s crazy). “Hero” is now just. There. “Hero” does the only thing he can think of doing. He goes to find ex-girlfriend. He just wants closure. somewhere. Anywhere.

So what was ex-girlfriend doing this whole time anyway? Believe it or not. She regretted what she did. When she really thinks about it, Hero had never been evil towards her. He had done all he could for her given his circumstances. She even became really worried after she heard that the “hero prison” was breached. The government had gone to her to ask if she had any information about where he could have gone or who freed him.

So when “Hero” shows up at her doorstep, she lets him in. The man is just a fraction of what he was. She helps him out. The thing is, when Villain handed her that phone saying “Do what you want with this”, he basically put his fate in her hands. I don’t think anybody would know that, but if Hero had had anybody to support him in that moment, Villain would have let him be. 

She helped him out, cooked for him, and gave him a warm bath. She brushed his hair and got him some comfortable clothes. She gave him tea for sleep and let him take her bed. 

But good things can’t last forever :/ . see “Hero” had committed some villainous act before Villain died. (not sure what ) it was on the news and ex-girlfriend sees it on the tv. She could barely see him, but there he was, a so-called “Hero”.

Hero doesn’t get to have a good ending… I might as well call him Villain now.

Once again she abandons him, this time he knows there is no doubt. Society hates him, that villain was right. 

I mentioned he was powerful, I mean powerful. He never got the chance to use his power to its full potential, well now he can. He can let those wings rise. 

He became a feared villain, planet wide. 

Years down the road, he walked along the side of a busy highway. It was stormy, windy, rainy, and people had been advised to stay indoors. He notices a car that had swerved on the side, hitting the railing. He approached and saw the damaged front part. The driver and passenger were lost but he saw something in the back seat. There was a little baby, screeching and crying its poor eyes out. He scraped the door off the car and gently picked up the child. Maybe he just needed someone to depend on and depend on him. He named the little girl and raised her. He wouldn’t let this child up like he did.

The last part is a little wishy washy but it’s basically just something that leads to him adopting this girl. ( (the girl’s a character of mine and I wanted to give his father a backstory so :0 ) (it’s basically that trope of an innocent little girl adopted by an evil villain) ) The Villain’s motives are kind of ..nonexistent? It could be obsession but I find the idea of never understanding why to be really horrifying. In short, every bad thing that happened to Hero? It was Villain without a doubt. Where were Hero’s parents? Villain probably did something. I will say there could have been even worse landings for him though. Ending up under the villain group's custody permanently would have led to his death for sure. The government agency wouldn’t have been terrible although they would have kept him on a leash. Best scenario would have been the girlfriend being understanding, he quit being a hero, and they start a happy family. Oh what could have been. Anyway thoughts? :D

back to pt.1?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 15, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 16, 2024

Three years ago today, President Joe Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, more popularly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. That law called for approximately $1.2 trillion in spending, about $550 billion newly authorized spending on top of regular expenditures. As Biden noted today, it was “the largest investment in our nation’s infrastructure in a generation.” 

In the past three years, the Biden administration launched more than 66,000 projects across the country, repairing 196,000 miles of roads and 11,400 bridges, as well as replacing 367,000 lead pipes and modernizing ports and airports. Today the administration announced an additional $1.5 billion in funding for railroads along the Northeast Corridor, which carries five times more passengers a day than all the flights between Washington, D.C., and New York City. 

In his first term, Trump had promised a bill to address the country’s long-neglected infrastructure, but his inability to get that done made “infrastructure week” a joke. Biden got a major bill passed, but while the administration nicknamed the law the “Big Deal,” Biden got very little credit for it politically. Republicans who had voted against the measure took credit for the projects it funded, and voters seemed not to factor in the jobs and improvements it brought when they went to the polls last week. 

This lack of credit has implications beyond the Biden administration. As economist Mark Zandi told Joel Rose of NPR, “We need better infrastructure. We should continue to invest. But that's going to be hard to do politically because lawmakers are seeing what's happening here and they’re not getting credit for it.”

Meanwhile, President-elect Trump has been rapidly naming people he intends to nominate for his cabinet, and it is not going well. As Brian Tyler Cohen wrote on Bluesky: “The same people who’ve spent the last several years decrying ‘unqualified DEI hires’ are now shoehorning through Cabinet nominations who can’t even pass a basic background test.”

Cohen was not joking; Evan Perez, Zachary Cohen, Holmes Lybrand, and Kristen Holmes of CNN reported today that Trump’s transition team is skipping background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, claiming that they are slow and intrusive.

But that lack of background checks has already mired Trump’s picks in controversy. 

Trump has said he would nominate Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran and co-host on the weekend edition of Fox & Friends, to become the secretary of defense. Since that announcement, news has broken that a fellow service member who was the unit’s security guard and on an anti-terrorism team flagged Hegseth to their unit’s leadership because one of his tattoos is used by white supremacists. Extremist tattoos are prohibited by army regulations.

News broke today that a woman accused Hegseth of sexually assaulting her after a Republican conference in Monterey, California, in 2017. According to Michael Kranish, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O’Connell, Dan Lamothe, and John Hudson of the Washington Post, the woman who made the allegation said the alleged victim had signed a nondisclosure agreement with Hegseth. 

Now the transition team fears more revelations. “There’s a lot of frustration around this,” a member of the transition team told the Washington Post reporters. “He hadn’t been properly vetted.”

Causing even more headaches today for the transition team was Trump’s appointment of former Florida representative Matt Gaetz to become the United States attorney general. Immediately after Trump said he would nominate Gaetz, the representative resigned his congressional seat, forestalling the release of a House Ethics Committee report concerning allegations of drug use and that Gaetz had taken a minor across state lines for sex.

It is reported that the victim, who was a seventeen-year-old high-schooler at the time, testified before the committee. 

After spending an evening with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that publishing the report would be “terrible” and that he would “strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report because that’s not the way we do things in the House.” 

This, despite the fact that, as historian Kevin Kruse noted, “[f]or years now, the right has been accusing Democrats of running a shadowy conspiracy to protect politicians who are sex predators.” And, in fact, the House Ethics Committee did release a report on Representative William Boner (D-TN) in 1987 for allegations of corruption after he had already resigned the office to become mayor of Nashville.  

And then there is Trump’s tapping of former Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence (DNI). Gabbard’s ties to America’s adversaries, including Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, have raised serious questions about her loyalty. Making her the country’s DNI would almost certainly collapse ongoing U.S. participation in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance in which the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have shared intelligence since World War II. 

As former Illinois representative Joe Walsh wrote: “Donald Trump just picked someone to oversee our intelligence who, herself, couldn’t pass a security clearance check. She couldn’t get security clearance. She couldn’t get a job in our intelligence community. Because she’s too compromised by Russia. Yet Trump picked her to run the whole thing.”

Trump appears eager to demonstrate his control of Republicans in the Senate by ramming through appointments that will collapse the rule of law at home (Gaetz) and the international rules-based order globally (Hegseth and Gabbard). When Texas senator John Cornyn said he would like to see the Gaetz report, Trump loyalist Steve Bannon said: “You either get with the program, brother, or you're going to finish third in your primary.” A member of Trump’s transition team said that Trump wants to bend Republican senators to his will “until they snap in half.”

Despite the fact the Republicans will hold a majority in the Senate when Trump takes office, Trump’s picks are so deeply flawed and dangerous that Trump and his team knew they would not get confirmed. So they demanded that Republicans in the Senate give up their constitutional power of advising the president on high-level appointments and consenting to his picks: the “advice and consent” requirement of the Constitution. 

Trump demanded that the Senate recess in order for him to push through his choices as recess appointments. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board came out against this scheme, calling it “anti-constitutional” and noting that it would “eliminate one of the basic checks on power that the Founders built into the American system of government.”

Now, in order to bring senators to heel, the Trump team is threatening to start its own super PAC to undermine the existing Senate Leadership Fund, whose leaders they insist are not loyal enough to Trump. A person close to Trump said that Senate Republican leaders “should reflect current leadership and the future, not the past.” “It doesn’t make sense,” one Republican operative told Politico’s Natalie Allison, Ally Mutnick, and Adam Wren. “Trump just had this massive win and now they are bringing in this Never Trumper.” 

But for all the spin, the political calculation for Republican senators is not as clear as the Trump team is trying to project. At 78, Trump is not exactly the face of the party’s future. Nor did he deliver a “massive win.” He won less than 50% of the popular vote with many voters apparently unaware of his policies, and while the Republicans did retake the Senate majority, they did so with very little help—financial or otherwise—from him. Republicans will have as bad a map in the 2026 midterm elections as the Democrats had in 2024, and Trump’s voters tend to be loyal to him and no one else, generally not turning out in midterms.

It is also possible that, aside from political calculations, enough Senate Republicans take seriously their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” as well as the Senate’s role in the constitutional system of checks and balances that they will judge Trump’s antics with that in mind. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[racefortheironthrone]

I can get why it was created, but why does Department of Homeland Security still exist?

A combination of bureaucratic inertia and lack of political will. For the former, a lot of civil servants’ careers and influence depends on the existence of DHS as a Cabinet department. Even if the major functions of DHS would continue just as they have always done (the dirty secret of DHS is that the coordination and information-sharing that was the rationale for creating the department in the wake of 9/11 never actually happened and that most DHS agencies do their own thing like they did before the reorganization), a lot of high-up and middle managers would be at risk of losing their jobs or their power measured in terms of budget and manpower - so those folks are going to fight any attempt to de-establish the department with everything in their power.

Likewise, over on the political side, there’s a strong incentive to do nothing. Not only would a vote to reorganize DHS be controversial just in terms of generating lots of winners and losers, but it’s also a vote that could be easily characterized as “soft on national security,” and a lot of politicians would have to answer difficult questions about why they had voted to reauthorize or approve DHS funding in the past. Politicians don’t like having to admit to mistakes, and it’s easy to characterize a change of mind as “flip-flopping.” Finally, politicians also stand to lose power in this scenario - no DHS means no Homeland Security committee positions, means no DHS contracts and lobbyists to raise money off of. And so it goes.

[tieflingkisser]

Al Jazeera office raided as Israel takes channel off air

Israel's government has moved to shut down the operations of the Al Jazeera television network in the country, branding it a mouthpiece for Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cabinet agreed to the closure while the war in Gaza is ongoing. Police raided the Qatari broadcaster's office at the Ambassador hotel in Jerusalem on Sunday. Al Jazeera called claims it was a threat to Israeli security a "dangerous and ridiculous lie". The channel said it reserved the right to "pursue every legal step". Israel's Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said equipment had been taken in the raid. A video posted by the minister on X shows police officers and inspectors from the ministry entering a hotel room. A BBC team visited the scene, but was prevented from filming or going into the hotel by police.

[...]

The shut down of Al Jazeera in Israel has been criticised by a number of human rights and press groups. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said they had filed a request to the country's Supreme Court to issue an interim order to overturn the ban. The group said that claims that the broadcaster was a propaganda tool for Hamas were "unfounded", and that Sunday's ban was less about security concerns and more to "serve a more politically motivated agenda, aimed at silencing critical voices and targeting Arab media". The Foreign Press Association (FPA) urged the Israeli government to reconsider its decision, saying the shut down of Al Jazeera in the country should be "a cause for concern for all supporters of a free press". The FPA said in a statement that Israel now joins "a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station", and warned that Mr Netanyahu has the authority to target other foreign outlets that he considers to be "acting against the state". The Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna echoed the same concerns, saying: "The Israeli cabinet must allow Al Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime." The UN's Human Rights office also called the Israeli government to reverse the ban, posting on X: "A free & independent media is essential to ensuring transparency & accountability. Now, even more so given tight restrictions on reporting from Gaza." Foreign journalists are banned from entering Gaza, and Al Jazeera staff there have been some of the only reporters on the ground.

[darkmaga-returns]

Jude Russo

Nov 14, 2024

There’s been a goodly amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth in my corner of the world about some of President-elect Donald Trump’s recently announced appointments. Particular dismay has attended those of Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) to the position of national security advisor and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to the State Department. Both men have voiced hawkish—sometimes very hawkish—sentiments in the past, and the collective feeling among those who feel the United States is overexposed abroad is that these two appointments signify the triumph of zombie Bushism and the War Party.

Maybe. I remain unpersuaded. First, a bare political reality has gone unmentioned in these conversations: Rubio and Waltz both backed the once and future president early in the nomination race against Ron DeSantis, the popular governor of their own state. Rubio especially, as a focus of anti-Trump yearning in the ’16 race, could have added heft to the DeSantis insurgency; while I doubt this would have changed the outcome, it could very well have made the journey longer, more expensive, and more acrimonious, leaving the party weaker and less well-funded for the general election. Both men might reasonably expect favors in return. There are a limited number of jobs that are a promotion from a safe Senate seat and influential committee positions. The flip side is that able men who were not loyalists—to take the most prominent example, Elbridge Colby, who was associated with the DeSantis camp—have been shut out. This is just how politics works. 

Second, Rubio has shown himself adaptable to the Trump-era line on a variety of policies. (You can read him on a variety of his evolved positions in this excellent little magazine, The American Conservative—well worth a subscription!) I tend to subscribe to the theory that it is in fact the president, Donald Trump, who will be calling the tune and his cabinet that will be dancing; I do not think Rubio will be doing much moonlighting as a warlord, nor do I think he is especially inclined to do so. The thrust of the campaign and early transition has been toward avoiding the establishmentarian frustration of the second-term agenda, as happened in the first term. In the words of the greatest political sage of the 19th century, Humpty-Dumpty, “The question is, which is to be master—that’s all.” I tend to think the master is Trump, not Rubio or Waltz, and that they have been selected in part because they will toe the line.