#how old is pam bondi

[sohan121]

3 takeaways from Pam Bondi’s confirmation hearing Reed More

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

The Elon Musk versus Donald Trump war is bringing me and others an inappropriate amount of joy. Their pain is our gain! But apart from that fun, there is one very substantive issue raised in this war. That is Musk’s repeated demands to release the files of Trump’s long-time friend and serial rapist of underage girls, Jeffrey Epstein. On Thursday, while battling with Trump, Musk dropped what he dubbed a “bomb” writing on Twitter, “Time to drop the really big bomb:@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!" On Friday night, Musk doubled down in his demand for these files, writing on Twitter that “I will apologize profusely as soon as there is a full dump of the Epstein files.” (Musk later deleted that post.) You don’t need to be the remarkable Inspector Poirot—of Agatha Christie fame—to get that Trump does not want the Epstein files released. Common sense tells us that Trump’s lies surrounding his relationship with the notorious rapist of children and the refusal of his Attorney General Pam Bondi to release the complete Epstein records—despite even MAGA influencers clamoring for it—tells us that these files are bad for him. So in a very lawyer like, non-political spin manner, let me lay out the facts about Trump and Epstein’s relationship and Trump’s lies. It is undisputed that Trump and Epstein between the 1980’s to the 2000’s, socialized together among the rich and somewhat famous crowd of Palm Beach, Florida and New York City. As The Washington Post detailed-and photos back up—we saw "Epstein and longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump and his then-girlfriend, Melania Knauss, double dating at a celebrity tennis tournament at Mar-a-Lago. Partying with Britain’s Prince Andrew. Hanging out with National Football League cheerleaders. Dancing, laughing, palling around at a party Trump threw to celebrate his “freedom” after he divorced his second wife, Marla Maples.”

[...] It was in 2005 that Epstein was first criminally investigated after reports that a 14-year-old girl was molested at his mansion. A grand jury indicted Epstein in 2006 on a single count of prostitution and he was arrested. From there Epstein would receive sweetheart deals from prosecutors over the years allowing him to continue with his crimes. But in 2019, the Miami Herald detailed how Epstein had molested in area of 50 underage girls in a massive sex trafficking ring that he and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell had engaged in. That reporting triggered a federal investigation that resulted in Epstein being indicted in July 2019. The US Attorney in New York, Geofrey Berman, at the time explained, “The indictment unsealed today alleges that, between 2002 through 2005, Epstein sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls by enticing them to engage in sex acts with him in exchange for money.” Berman continued, “Epstein allegedly worked with several employees and associates to ensure that he had a steady supply of minor victims to abuse and paid several of those victims themselves to recruit other underage girls to engage in similar sex acts for money. And as alleged in the indictment, Epstein committed these offenses in locations including New York, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida. That means Trump and Epstein were still very close for at least the first two years of the Epstein’s sex trafficking —2002 to 2004--with underage girls. FYI the indictment alleged that Epstein’s crimes begin “at least in” 2002 meaning Epstein could’ve been committing crimes before that. As The Washington Post reported, “When Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book of phone numbers appeared in a court file a few years ago, it contained 14 numbers for Trump; his wife, Melania; and others in Trump’s inner circle.” After the 2019 federal indictment, Trump said he was "not a fan" of Epstein. Trump also denied that he had ever flown on Epstein’s private jet dubbed by the media as “the Lolita Express” because of it being used to transport underage girls. That was a lie. We now know Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least seven times according to fight logs released as evidence in the trial of Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. And in that 2021 trial, Epstein's former pilot, Lawrence Visoski Jr, testified that Trump flew aboard Epstein's private plane on various occasions.

Dean Obeidallah is correct. The Epstein Files must be released, and if AG Pam Bondi refuses, then she should face impeachment. #ImpeachBondi #EpsteinFiles

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

John Buss

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 9, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 09, 2025

On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order “protecting Second Amendment rights.” The order calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine all gun regulations in the U.S. to make sure they don’t infringe on any citizen’s right to bear arms. The executive order says that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.”

In fact, it is the right to vote for the lawmakers who make up our government that is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.

The United States Constitution that establishes the framework for our democratic government sets out how the American people will write the laws that govern us. We elect members to a Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That congress of our representatives holds “all legislative powers”; that is, Congress alone has the right to make laws. It alone has the power to levy taxes on the American people, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, declare war, “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper.”

After Congress writes, debates, and passes a measure, the Constitution establishes that it goes to the president, who is also elected, through “electors,” by the people. The president can either sign a measure into law or veto it, returning it to Congress where members can either repass it over his veto or rewrite it. But once a law is on the books, the president must enforce it. The men who framed the Constitution wrote that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” When President Richard Nixon tried to alter laws passed by Congress by withholding the funding Congress had appropriated to put them into effect, Congress shut that down quickly, passing a law explicitly making such “impoundment” illegal.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the federal courts have taken on the duty of “judicial review,” the process of determining whether a law falls within the rules of the Constitution.

Right now, the Republicans hold control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. They have the power to change any laws they want to change according to the formula Americans have used since 1789 when the Constitution went into effect.

But they are not doing that. Instead, officials in the Trump administration, as well as billionaire Elon Musk— who put $290 million into electing Trump and Republicans, and whose actual role in the government remains unclear— are making unilateral changes to programs established by Congress. Through executive orders and announcements from Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” they have sidelined Congress, and Republicans are largely mum about the seizure of their power.

Now MAGA Republicans are trying to neuter the judiciary.

After yet another federal judge stopped the Musk/Trump onslaught by temporarily blocking Musk and his team from accessing Americans’ records from Treasury Department computers, MAGA Republicans attacked judges. “Outrageous,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted, spreading the lie that the judge barred the Secretary of the Treasury from accessing the information, although in fact he temporarily barred Treasury Secretary Bessent from granting access to others. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said the decision had “the feel of…a judicial” coup. Right-wing legal scholar Adrian Vermeule called it “[j]udicial interference with legitimate acts of state.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who would take over the office of the presidency if the 78-year-old Trump can no longer perform the duties of the office, posted: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

As legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted: “Just to say the quiet part out loud, the point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that *whether* acts of state are ‘legitimate’ can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them. Vermeule knows this, of course. So does Vance.” Of Vance’s statement, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice added: “this is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders.”

The Republicans have the power to make the changes they want through the exercise of their constitutional power, but they are not doing so. This seems in part because Trump and his MAGA supporters want to establish the idea that the president cannot be checked. And this dovetails with the fact they are fully aware that most Americans oppose their plans. Voters were so opposed to the plan outlined in Project 2025—the plan now in operation—that Trump ran from it during the campaign. Popular support for Musk’s participation in the government has plummeted as well. A poll from The Economist/YouGov released February 5 says that only 13% of adult Americans want him to have “a lot” of influence, while 96% of respondents said that jobs and the economy were important to them and 41% said they thought the economy was getting worse.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans know they cannot get the extreme changes they wanted through Congress, so they are, instead, dictating them. And Musk began his focus at the Treasury, establishing control over the payment system that manages the money American taxpayers pay to our government.

Musk and MAGA officials claim they are combating waste and fraud, but in fact, when Judge Carl Nichols stopped Trump from shutting down USAID, he specifically said that government lawyers had offered no support for that argument in court. Indeed, the U.S. government already has the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, nonpartisan agency that audits, evaluates and investigates government programs for Congress. In 2023 the GAO returned about $84 for every $1 invested in it, in addition to suggesting improvements across the government.

Until Trump fired 18 of them when he took office, major departments also had their own independent inspectors general, charged with preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government and promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government operations and programs.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also investigates corruption, including that committed by healthcare providers.

According to Musk’s own Grok artificial intelligence tool on X, the investigative departments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as USAID, have all launched investigations into the practices and violations of Elon Musk’s companies.

But Trump has been gutting congressional oversight, apparently wanting to make sure that no one can oversee the president. Rather than rooting out waste and corruption in the government, Musk and his ilk have launched a hostile takeover to turn the United States of America into a business that will return huge profits to those leaders who, in the process of moving fast and breaking things, are placing themselves at the center of the lives of 332 million people. Breaking into the U.S. Treasury payment system puts Musk and his DOGE team at the head of the country’s nerve center.

The vision they are enacting rips predictability, as well as economic security, away from farmers, who are already protesting the loss of their markets with the attempted destruction of USAID. It hurts the states—especially Republican-dominated states—that depend on funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education. Their vision excludes consumers, who are set to lose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as protections put in place by President Joe Biden. Their vision takes away protections for racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, as well as from women, and kills funding for the programs that protect all of us, such as cancer research and hospitals.

Musk and Trump appear to be concentrating the extraordinary wealth of the American people, along with the power that wealth brings, into their own hands, for their own ends. Trump has championed further tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while Musk seems to want to make sure his companies, especially SpaceX, win as many government contracts as possible to fund his plan to colonize Mars.

But the mission of the United States of America is not, and has never been, to return huge profits to a few leaders.

The mission of the United States of America is stated in the Constitution. It is a government designed by “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Far from being designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a single man, it was formed to do the opposite: spread wealth and power throughout the country’s citizenry and enable them to protect their rights by voting for those who would represent them in Congress and the presidency, then holding them accountable at the ballot box.

The people who think that bearing arms is central to maintaining American rights are the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by storming the United States Capitol because they do not command the votes to put their policies in place through the exercise of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mugiwara-lucy]

You libtards stopped a Kennedy from even running in the primary, denied him secret service protection and told Big Tech to censor and ban him when all he ever wanted was healthier food and safer medicine but don't you worry Pam Bondi will set you all straight and help get revenge on everyone who ever wronged him :) MAHA! Oh and I hope you like Vance because after 2029 Vance will be President for eight years and then once he's done Barron Trump will be your president :)

Fuck Pam Bondi. That bitch is a corrupt witch like the rest of MAGAs who helped cover up fraud at Shitbreak's university.

And yeah how dare people get pissed over an Anti-Vaccine quack that got 80+children killed with his Anti-Vax bullshit as well as saying black people need to be "resilient" to racism (while ignoring white people being racist) and opposed Confederate soldiers' statues coming down.

Fuck this insane old quack and he needs to put better make up on his face 😂

And fuck that creepy potential future rapist. Shitbreak's approval rating is dying DAILY and people don't really like his dumb ass children.

[coochiequeens]

Vance said the following at the anti-abortion March for Life in January: “I want more babies in the United States of America. I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.”

Is Vance willing to help the economy so young people can be eager to start a family? Or is he going to be OK with. Or more money being spent of foster care because the potential adoptive parents from even 10 years ago are now sinking their hopes (and money) into IVF and surrogacy to have biological offspring

By Susan Rinkunas  |  March 4, 2025 |

It’s no secret that conservatives want to ban abortion pills or make them so much harder to obtain that they’re effectively banned. It’s also no secret that a number of freaks currently running our country are obsessed with everyone popping out babies. What we don’t know at this point is which tactics they’ll use to push their anti-abortion, pro-natalist agenda or how they’ll rationalize further limits on abortion access.

One tool Republicans could use would be misapplying the 19th-century Comstock Act to prevent sending the medications mifepristone and misoprostol in the mail. (Nearly two-thirds of all reported abortions in 2023 were done with abortion pills.) In a January letter, activists urged the Department of Justice to begin enforcing the zombie anti-obscenity law that bans sending abortion drugs or devices in the mail. (The Biden administration said the dusty old law shouldn’t be applied to legal abortions, but they’re not in office anymore.) In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi raised alarm bells when she told a Louisiana prosecutor she “would love to work with [him]” on a criminal case against a New York doctor who allegedly mailed abortion pills to a woman and her teen daughter. Bondi could be signaling that she’s open to prosecuting the physician under Comstock, but we have to wait to find out.

This week, one anti-abortion activist implored Bondi to enforce Comstock and gave two rationalizations: One, it could possibly bankrupt abortion providers and, two, it could maybe help with the country’s declining birth rate. 

Rev. Jim Harden, the CEO of a crisis pregnancy center chain called CompassCare, said in a Monday interview with an apparent right-wing outlet called Just the News that Planned Parenthood is the single largest provider of abortions and gets millions of dollars from the government from programs like Medicaid. “It’s the biggest abortion business, probably on the planet,” Harden said. “If they shut down, it’s going to be good for women. There’s so many fantastic pro-life pregnancy centers.”

Harden then not-so-subtly hinted that Bondi could achieve the GOP goal of “defunding” Planned Parenthood by hitting them with Comstock prosecutions for actions that occurred even before Trump took office a second time.

“If Pam Bondi decides that she wants to enforce the Comstock Act, which basically says it’s illegal to ship chemical abortion drugs across state lines—and by the way, that’s 60% of all abortions in America right now is chemical abortion—the Comstock Act would essentially bankrupt the abortion industry in a very short period of time, because one violation is [up to] a $250,000 fine with a five-year statute of limitations, plus racketing charges,” he said.

But it got worse. He then claimed that abortion was “decimating minority communities” and that conservatives needed to focus more on women and children, specifically, making the former produce more of the latter. “Our country is facing a baby shortage,” Harden said. “We have a fertility problem in this country, not because women can’t have babies but because abortion is decimating the population.”

This sounds like a dog whistle tuned precisely for the pro-natalist creep ears of shadow president Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance. Musk has 14 children that we know of, and Vance said the following at the anti-abortion March for Life in January: “I want more babies in the United States of America. I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.”

Few people make this birthrate argument against abortion pills, but the ones that do sound extremely weird. The Attorneys General of Kansas, Idaho, and Missouri claim in a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration that easier access to medication abortion is lowering teen birth rates in their states, which could reduce their population and lead to losing seats in Congress and federal funds. (In June, the Supreme Court said the original plaintiffs in this case weren’t harmed by the FDA’s actions and thereby didn’t have legal standing to sue, but the state AGs marched into a notorious anti-abortion judge’s courtroom and he said they can continue the litigation.)

Abortion is not the reason the birthrate is falling. That would be unchecked capitalism where working people don’t make enough money to feed and clothe children, let alone afford housing big enough for families, and aren’t guaranteed paid leave to recover from birth. Plus, the proliferation of abortion bans has led to more people choosing permanent sterilization rather than risk being forced to carry pregnancies that could kill or disable them and then parent children they don’t want. Food for thought, Pam!

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 10

On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order “protecting Second Amendment rights.” The order calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine all gun regulations in the U.S. to make sure they don’t infringe on any citizen’s right to bear arms. The executive order says that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.”

In fact, it is the right to vote for the lawmakers who make up our government that is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.

The United States Constitution that establishes the framework for our democratic government sets out how the American people will write the laws that govern us. We elect members to a Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That congress of our representatives holds “all legislative powers”; that is, Congress alone has the right to make laws. It alone has the power to levy taxes on the American people, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, declare war, “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper.”

After Congress writes, debates, and passes a measure, the Constitution establishes that it goes to the president, who is also elected, through “electors,” by the people. The president can either sign a measure into law or veto it, returning it to Congress where members can either repass it over his veto or rewrite it. But once a law is on the books, the president must enforce it. The men who framed the Constitution wrote that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” When President Richard Nixon tried to alter laws passed by Congress by withholding the funding Congress had appropriated to put them into effect, Congress shut that down quickly, passing a law explicitly making such “impoundment” illegal.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the federal courts have taken on the duty of “judicial review,” the process of determining whether a law falls within the rules of the Constitution.

Right now, the Republicans hold control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. They have the power to change any laws they want to change according to the formula Americans have used since 1789 when the Constitution went into effect.

But they are not doing that. Instead, officials in the Trump administration, as well as billionaire Elon Musk— who put $290 million into electing Trump and Republicans, and whose actual role in the government remains unclear— are making unilateral changes to programs established by Congress. Through executive orders and announcements from Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” they have sidelined Congress, and Republicans are largely mum about the seizure of their power.

Now MAGA Republicans are trying to neuter the judiciary.

After yet another federal judge stopped the Musk/Trump onslaught by temporarily blocking Musk and his team from accessing Americans’ records from Treasury Department computers, MAGA Republicans attacked judges. “Outrageous,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted, spreading the lie that the judge barred the Secretary of the Treasury from accessing the information, although in fact he temporarily barred Treasury Secretary Bessent from granting access to others. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said the decision had “the feel of…a judicial” coup. Right-wing legal scholar Adrian Vermeule called it “[j]udicial interference with legitimate acts of state.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who would take over the office of the presidency if the 78-year-old Trump can no longer perform the duties of the office, posted: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

As legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted: “Just to say the quiet part out loud, the point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that *whether* acts of state are ‘legitimate’ can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them. Vermeule knows this, of course. So does Vance.” Of Vance’s statement, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice added: “this is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders.”

The Republicans have the power to make the changes they want through the exercise of their constitutional power, but they are not doing so. This seems in part because Trump and his MAGA supporters want to establish the idea that the president cannot be checked. And this dovetails with the fact they are fully aware that most Americans oppose their plans. Voters were so opposed to the plan outlined in Project 2025—the plan now in operation—that Trump ran from it during the campaign. Popular support for Musk’s participation in the government has plummeted as well. A poll from The Economist/YouGov released February 5 says that only 13% of adult Americans want him to have “a lot” of influence, while 96% of respondents said that jobs and the economy were important to them and 41% said they thought the economy was getting worse.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans know they cannot get the extreme changes they wanted through Congress, so they are, instead, dictating them. And Musk began his focus at the Treasury, establishing control over the payment system that manages the money American taxpayers pay to our government.

Musk and MAGA officials claim they are combating waste and fraud, but in fact, when Judge Carl Nichols stopped Trump from shutting down USAID, he specifically said that government lawyers had offered no support for that argument in court. Indeed, the U.S. government already has the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, nonpartisan agency that audits, evaluates and investigates government programs for Congress. In 2023 the GAO returned about $84 for every $1 invested in it, in addition to suggesting improvements across the government.

Until Trump fired 18 of them when he took office, major departments also had their own independent inspectors general, charged with preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government and promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government operations and programs.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also investigates corruption, including that committed by healthcare providers.

According to Musk’s own Grok artificial intelligence tool on X, the investigative departments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as USAID, have all launched investigations into the practices and violations of Elon Musk’s companies.

But Trump has been gutting congressional oversight, apparently wanting to make sure that no one can oversee the president. Rather than rooting out waste and corruption in the government, Musk and his ilk have launched a hostile takeover to turn the United States of America into a business that will return huge profits to those leaders who, in the process of moving fast and breaking things, are placing themselves at the center of the lives of 332 million people. Breaking into the U.S. Treasury payment system puts Musk and his DOGE team at the head of the country’s nerve center.

The vision they are enacting rips predictability, as well as economic security, away from farmers, who are already protesting the loss of their markets with the attempted destruction of USAID. It hurts the states—especially Republican-dominated states—that depend on funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education. Their vision excludes consumers, who are set to lose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as protections put in place by President Joe Biden. Their vision takes away protections for racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, as well as from women, and kills funding for the programs that protect all of us, such as cancer research and hospitals.

Musk and Trump appear to be concentrating the extraordinary wealth of the American people, along with the power that wealth brings, into their own hands, for their own ends. Trump has championed further tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while Musk seems to want to make sure his companies, especially SpaceX, win as many government contracts as possible to fund his plan to colonize Mars.

But the mission of the United States of America is not, and has never been, to return huge profits to a few leaders.

The mission of the United States of America is stated in the Constitution. It is a government designed by “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Far from being designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a single man, it was formed to do the opposite: spread wealth and power throughout the country’s citizenry and enable them to protect their rights by voting for those who would represent them in Congress and the presidency, then holding them accountable at the ballot box.

The people who think that bearing arms is central to maintaining American rights are the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by storming the United States Capitol because they do not command the votes to put their policies in place through the exercise of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

—

[gwydionmisha]

Cabinet Nominee Senate Hearing Action Items: Week of 1/27/25 - 1/31/25

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 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 in red):

WEDNESDAY:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Heath and Human Services. He murdered hundreds of children in Samoa and plans to scale that up in the US, buy completely outlawing vaccines and dismantling our entire infectious desease response infrastructure. I beg of you, fight this one. Plenty of Republicans are old enough to remember how bad polio was. McConnell is a polio survivor. We have a chance here. Push hard.

"How would RFK Jr. handle bird flu? His record on vaccines has experts on edge:" https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/16/nx-s1-5254733/rfk-vaccine-bird-flu-trump-cabinet-picks

(RFK Jr, has a second hearing later in the week.)

Kelly Loeffler, Small Business Administration nominee, is wildly corrupt.

This is from December, but I'm putting it up as a refresher:

"Kelly Loeffler’s Conflict of Interest Is Even Worse Than Reported: The senator had power over regulators whose work directly affected her own financial interests.:" https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/kelly-loefflers-conflict-of-interest-is-even-worse-than-reported/

THURSDAY:

Kash Patel, FBI. He published an enemies list and has promised to purge all the honest people with ethics out of the FBI, replacing them with Trump loyalists, so he can weaponize the FBI to persecute anyone Trump doesn't like. No innocent person will be safe.

Tulsi Gabbard, Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She is in the bag for Russia and has ties to Bashar al-Assad. She is generally considered a major intelligence threat. None of our secret intelligence or that of any allies foolish enough to share information with us will be safe. I beg of you fight this one.

Files detail bid to contain fallout from Tulsi Gabbard meetings with Assad

[mariacallous]

The first thing I ever said to Donald Trump was about Air Force One. When we met for an interview, in the spring of 2021, in the lobby of his Mar-a-Lago club, the only visible sign of his time in office was sitting on the coffee table in front of us—a model of his proposed new Presidential plane, complete with a revamped, navy-blue-and-red color scheme in place of the distinctive baby-blue exterior featured on the aircraft since J.F.K.’s era. It was a strange, oddly public setting for an interview, with club members strolling by and gawking on their way to drinks or dinner, but that’s how Trump liked it. He was an unwilling exile in Florida, only a few months removed from his failed attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat, and he had replaced the daily spectacle of the White House with this far more modest show for his paying customers. After I noted the model airplane, Trump launched into a fond and factually questionable recollection of how he had bargained Boeing down from $5.7 billion for a two-plane deal to provide an updated ride befitting America’s Commander-in-Chief. “I said, ‘It has to have a three on the front,’ ” Trump recalled of the negotiations. “ ‘It has to have a three.’ ” The final agreed-upon price with Boeing, which the Pentagon signed off on in 2018, was $3.9 billion.

But why, I wondered, did he feel so strongly about the upgrade? The answer, it turned out, was simple, and it had nothing to do with national security: Trump had a bad case of plane envy. “Air Force One is now thirty-one years old,” he said. “People come in from, especially the Middle East countries, with brand-new 747-800s, the brand-new super-duper-new one, and we have planes that are thirty-one years old.” He recalled going to global summits and looking out his window at the airport tarmac: “I would say, ‘Whose plane is that?’ ‘That’s Saudi Arabia’s plane.’ ‘That’s U.A.E.’s plane.’ And you’d see a brand-new 747, and I’d say, ‘Well, the United States should be properly represented.’ ”

This wasn’t just a passing twinge of jealousy. By now, everyone knows about this obsession of Trump’s. Boeing has yet to deliver the planes that Trump negotiated for—they were due in 2024, but are now running years late and billions of dollars behind schedule. Trump’s response to this, revealed by ABC News this week, was to accept the gift of a four-hundred-million-dollar Boeing 747-8—a “palace in the sky”—from the government of Qatar. The idea is for the jet to serve as a new Air Force One and, apparently, for Trump to keep it after he leaves office. This, not surprisingly, has generated perhaps the Trumpiest Trump scandal ever, made worse by the timing, on the eve of the first major Presidential trip of his second term, to Qatar and two other Middle Eastern countries. Back in Washington, even a few Republicans have complained, a rarity in this age of egregious Trump excess, and it now seems that the free airplane could cost U.S. taxpayers a billion dollars and take years to upgrade with the security features required to protect an American leader. Trump has dismissed the criticism as “stupid.”

The grift is, of course, unmistakable. It was, after all, Trump’s Attorney General and former personal lawyer, Pam Bondi, previously a registered lobbyist for the government of Qatar, who signed off on the legal opinion saying that it was totally fine for him to accept what’s likely the largest foreign gift to America in history. So are the optics—Trump, our most shallow, status-obsessed President, covets the plane because it is the showiest possible proof of wealth and power. Why shouldn’t he have a plane as nice as those of the sheikhs, whose gaudy aesthetic and unconstrained powers he so admires? But it’s more than that, too. I’ve been thinking all week of that conversation years ago in Mar-a-Lago: Getting a new Air Force One is not merely a sign of Trump’s greed, hubris, and indifference to even the most basic ethical norms; for him, it’s also a symbol of what he tried and failed to do in his first term. In Trump’s do-over Presidency, what matters most is getting done what he could not the first time around, whether it’s eliminating “deep-state” enemies in the federal bureaucracy or cutting a peace deal to finally earn him a Nobel Peace Prize. Which enemies? Which peace deal? I’m not sure it matters all that much to him, just that it should be some enemies and some peace deal. As for the plane, look at the pictures of Trump’s redone Oval Office: after he returned to the White House in January, a model exactly like the one he brought with him to Mar-a-Lago returned to a place of honor on his Presidential coffee table. Notice had been served.

Even Trump’s itinerary for his trip to the Gulf Arab states has been a rerun, a second-time-around replay of the inaugural foreign trip of his first term, when he shocked the democratic world by choosing to go to one of the most unfree monarchies of the Middle East before making an initial visit to our friendly neighbors in Canada or Mexico, as the past few recent U.S. Presidents had done. The world is harder to shock now, but Trump keeps trying.

When he showed up in Saudi Arabia, in May of 2017, for an Arab summit, Trump famously participated in a bizarre photo op with the Saudi king, in which they placed their hands on a glowing orb as the First Lady looked on. Trump claimed that the trip was a dealmaking bonanza for the United States resulting in four hundred and fifty billion dollars in investments, though, despite the President’s puffery, one analysis found that the U.S. ended up exporting no more than ninety-two billion dollars to Saudi Arabia in the entirety of his first term. What endured from the visit was the insight into Trump’s radical shift in American foreign policy: No more, he promised his hosts, would he offer them patronizing speeches about human rights. “We are not here to lecture,” he said, offering instead a partnership “based on shared interests and values.”

Passages of his speech this week in Riyadh were so similar that they could have been cut and pasted from the original. Once again, he vowed the end of “giving you lectures on how to live” and pledged to support the people of the Middle East to chart “your own destinies in your own way.” His grievance, as Trump made clear, was more with the errors of his American predecessors than with any tyrannical policies or barbaric practices by rulers who have been known to order dissidents carved up with a bone saw or executed for same-sex sexual activity. “In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” Trump said, in a thinly veiled reference to the previous Republican President, George W. Bush, and his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

While still in Saudi Arabia, Trump met with the new leader of Syria, who, not so long ago, had been designated an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist by the U.S. government, before flying on to Qatar, where he underscored that he’s perfectly fine taking a plane from a country he once accused of funding terrorism. In Doha on Thursday morning, before flying off to Dubai, he said that he was close to making a nuclear deal with Iran, the reported terms for which sound much like the one that Trump pulled out of in 2018, when he called the signature foreign-policy agreement of Barack Obama’s Administration “a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” But no matter. Even the uproar among his many hard-line Iran-skeptical Republican supporters on Capitol Hill has not deterred him. At least not yet. Nor has the obvious rift that his diplomatic overtures have created with Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. I’m not surprised in the least. For Trump, a new and improved Iran deal was always the plan, even in his first term; he just never quite managed it.

What a revealing week this has been: Trump, as far as I’m concerned, is never more fully himself than when he’s in the gilded safe spaces of the Middle East—admiring the “perfecto” marble in a royal palace, basking in the judgment-free approval of fellow-billionaires, commingling his family’s and the nation’s business to a remarkable degree. His foreign-policy doctrine is not Kissingerian or Charles Lindberghian; it is not a doctrine at all, in fact, but a way of life, defined by extreme transactionalism and self-interest above all else. The cursed airplane from Qatar is not just a symbol of Trumpism but also its substance. 

[arcticbunn]

The retreads keep reappearing in the new administration …

Having failed to twist GOP arms hard enough to get Matt (Breathalyzer Boy) Gaetz into the Attorney General job, don-OLD trump has turned to a Golden Oldie for the job: Pam Bondi, former Attorney General for Florida. Bondi reached national notoriety for being in the position to join a lawsuit against Trump University for grifting citizens out of their hard-earned money to learn how to invest in real estate. Associating with this “university” (if by “university” you mean a non-accredited fake school run by a group of people interested in getting money out of students) would cost prospective land barons $1,495 for seminars up to a $35,000 "Gold Elite" program. When confronted with this suit against the Republican candidate for president, Ms. Bondi decided that the $25,000 offered by the future crook-in-chief would soothe the conflict between her job as the attorney of the people and not ruffling the feathers of the leader of her party.

So, if we have someone who can be bribed so easily in a position where bribery can be made, what other decisions will Ms. Bondi overlook – or perhaps look too hard – to increase her personal wealth?

But there is a more humorous aspect to Bondi being in Washington, D.C.: her former main squeeze, Rick Scott, serves as senator for Florida. Back when Bondi and Scott were in Tallahassee, there were strong rumors of the two canoodling on the sly, ending only as both moved on from state governance. Indeed, we have this picture of Scott leering at Bondi:

What a smooth operator.

It’s bad enough that we have shady people filling positions in this new administration, including someone willing to take bribes (not to mention rapists), but we should consider passing a law that prospective lawmakers prove that they were born on this planet, to avoid aliens like Rick Scott from getting elected:

[marta-bee]

News of he Day 4/14/25: Political Violence

Original source.

Without paywall.

I was going to have fun with some stories about how Elon's Tesla stock was plummeting even before the tariffs, or how Donny's latest poll numbers on the economy are similarly in free-fall. I'll get to that. But these stories are serious and need to be talked about first.

Story #1, the PA governor's mansion was set on fire last night by a Harrisburg man. Police haven't identified a political motive, but his actions were described as methodical, and he was carrying homemade incendiary devices. He's also got a history of saying Biden should be killed in social media posts (X). If you don't know the name, Gov. Shapiro's a sort of rising star among Democrats and people are already asking if he'll run in 2028.

Story #2, a 17-year-old teen murdered his parents to get the financial resources to assassinate Trump. He was involved with a neo-Nazi group, had immigrated from Moldova (one of the old USSR satellite republics), and apparently was working with someone in Russia to overthrow the US government. (X) According to court documents he was trying to spark a revolution to "'save the white races’ from ‘Jewish controlled’ politicians.’" He also said he wanted to cause chaos by assassinating the president, and make assassinations more acceptable.

At first I thought the second one was a leftist. It could have been, which is scary. Political violence is obviously wrong whoever carries it out, but practically speaking it's just not just a wrinkle we can afford in our message these days. I promise you: our best weapons are still our stories, public outrage, and everything else that makes possible.

Besides, public opinion in America is shifting a bit lately. Not enough, not quickly enough, of course. But there's still a definie shift. More stories about Elon's Tesla woes, Donald's freefalling polls, and all the people making good trouble below the cut.

Elon Musk and Tesla

Elon Musk Faces Billion-Dollar EU Fine for Failing to Curb Disinformation on X (X)

Tesla reports 336,000 vehicle deliveries in first quarter, 13% drop from a year ago (X)

Musk calls Trump’s looming NASA cuts ‘troubling’ (X)

From Tesla to SpaceX to xAI, Elon Musk’s sprawling global business empire will be slammed by Trump’s tariffs regime. (X)

Elon Musk rumored to be eyeing the White House exits, but can he save Tesla? (X)

Maggie Haberman Reveals How Trump Advisers Really Feel About Elon Musk (X)

Musk Denies Report That He and Trump Are Headed for a Breakup. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the billionaire would stay in Washington until DOGE's work is finished (X)

Asked about the intensifying feud between Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, the White House said, "Boys will be boys." It's not nearly that simple. (X)

NY lawmakers take aim at Musk: Bill could claw back Tesla incentives (X)

Democrats beg Elon Musk: Campaign for our GOP opponents (X)

And, sadly, some Musk-related things to still be concerned about:

Former head of rural broadband program calls Trump admin's handout to Musk-owned Starlink is a betrayal of rural residents relying on the program. (X)

Elon Musk ‘pressured’ Reddit CEO to remove DOGE posts (X)

Inside Elon Musk’s Gleeful Destruction of the Government. The world’s richest man has blazed a staggering trail of destruction as Trump’s DOGE chief, firing tens of thousands of workers while cashing in (X)

Pam Bondi says the DOJ is seeking 20 years in prison for a man accused of throwing a firebomb at a Tesla dealership (X)

Social Security plans to stop issuing communications through normal channels like press releases and will instead make statements exclusively on X. (X)

Elon Musk to “fix” Community Notes after they contradict Trump (X)

Increased Push-back over Tariffs and Other Unpopular Nonsense

Ted Cruz Flatly Rejects Larry Kudlow’s Defense of Trump’s Tariffs on Fox: It’s ‘A Tax On Consumers’ (X)

Hard-line conservatives concerned about the deficit are among President Trump’s most stalwart supporters in Congress. But they say they cannot in good conscience back the budget plan he has endorsed. (X)

Top Trump Official So Freaked Out by Tariffs, He Wants to Quit (X)

The Campaign Against Mike Waltz from Within MAGA (X)

Law students say they want to work for the firms standing up to Trump (X)

Obama calls on citizens, colleges and law firms to resist Trump agenda. (X) In a campus speech, the former president said universities should be prepared to lose federal funds to defend academic freedom, rather than be “intimidated.”

Democrats' 'Tea Party' Can't Repeat the GOP's Mistakes (X)

Trump has 90 days to do 150 trade deals. Financial markets aren’t buying it. (X)

With GOP support, Senate votes to halt Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports (X) The House has since voted against it, but it’s an interesting show of resistance.

Powell sees tariffs raising inflation and says Fed will wait before further rate moves (X) Basically, the Fed isn't giving Trump what he wants.

(House Minority Leader) Jeffries says Dems will probe possible manipulation, insider trading after Trump’s tariff pause

And of course, on Cory Booker's historic speech:

Cory Booker Condemns Trump’s Policies in Longest Senate Speech on Record. The New Jersey senator spent much of his speech, which ended after more than 25 hours, assailing the Trump administration. He eclipsed Strom Thurmond’s filibuster of a civil rights bill in 1957. (X)

'History!' Internet explodes as Booker takes segregationist senator 'off the record books' (X)

What happens to your body when you deliver a 25-hour speech without any breaks? (X)

Word of the Week: The swashbuckling origins and evolution of 'filibuster'

Booker didn’t “accomplish” anything. He was a voice of one crying in the wilderness. And that’s how you build a dissident movement: with simple acts of witness.) (X)

[darkmaga-returns]

Trump bans travel from 12 countries. Trump orders investigation into Biden health cover-up. Trump speaks to Putin. Khamenei dismisses US proposal. Carney supports 'decarbonized' oil.

Lioness of Judah Ministry

Jun 05, 2025

Trump bans travel from a dozen countries, including Iran, citing national security concerns

President Donald Trump banned all travel from a dozen countries to the United States, citing national security concerns.

In a Wednesday night proclamation, Trump banned travel from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The proclamation provided a detailed breakdown of the reasoning for each. Trump said the 12 countries were selected as part of a detailed joint vetting process performed by State Secretary Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

BREAKING: Biden Judge Blocks Trump From Deporting Family of Egyptian Terrorist Charged with Fire-Bombing Jews in Colorado

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Trump from deporting the family of the Egyptian terrorist who firebombed Jews in Boulder, Colorado.

US District Judge, Gordon Gallagher, a Biden appointee temporarily blocked the deportation of Mohamed Sabry Soliman’s wife and five children. A Colorado federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump admin. from deporting the family of the man charged with fire-bombing 12 people at an event in support of Israeli hostages — wife and children were taken into custody by immigration authorities

Trump orders vast investigation into Biden health cover-up and who ran the White House

President Donald Trump has ordered an unprecedented investigation into former President Joe Biden‘s administration amid concerns his predecessor and his aides covered up his cognitive decline.

“In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,” Trump wrote in a presidential memorandum signed on Wednesday. “This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history.”

Elon Musk Says to ‘Kill’ Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill After EV Tax Credit Conflict Exposed

Elon Musk has launched an all-out attack against the Republicans’ reconciliation budget, instructing his followers to lobby their representatives to “KILL the BILL” in a social media post.

In a series of posts on X, which he owns, the former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader, who announced the end of his time as a “special government employee” of the Trump administration on May 28, has ramped up his public opposition to the “big beautiful bill” touted by the president: “Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL,” the billionaire tech mogul wrote Wednesday.

Chuck Schumer Says if the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Passes WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE (VIDEO)

Democrat drama queen Chuck Schumer is warning that if the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ passes, we’re all going to die. Why are Democrat leaders such ridiculous and unserious people?

Remember when Net Neutrality was going to kill us all? How about when we were told that we only have a few years left before we all die from climate change? It’s always the same old story. This is why the Democrats are about as popular as pond scum at the moment, even with their own voters.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Maya Yang at The Guardian:

Kilmar Ábrego García, the man whom the Donald Trump administration mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador in March, returned to the US on Friday to face criminal charges. In a press briefing on Friday, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that a federal grand jury in Tennessee had indicted Ábrego García on counts of illegally smuggling undocumented people as well as of conspiracy to commit that crime. “Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country,” Bondi said of Ábrego García. She thanked the Salvadorian president, Nayib Bukele, “for agreeing to return him to our country to face these very serious charges”. “This is what American justice looks like upon completion of his sentence,” Bondi added. Ábrego García – a 29-year-old Salvadorian whose wife and young child in Maryland are US citizens – appeared in federal court in Nashville on Friday evening. His arraignment was set for 13 June, when he will enter a plea, according to local media reports. Until then, he will remain in federal custody.

In a statement to the Hill on Friday, Ábrego García’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg accused the Trump administration of having “disappeared” his client “to a foreign prison in violation of a court order”.

“Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they’re bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him,” he added. Sandoval-Moshenberg also said: “This shows that they were playing games with the court all along. Due process means the chance to defend yourself before you’re punished – not after.” Sandoval-Moshenberg said the White House’s treatment of his client was “an abuse of power, not justice”. He called on Ábrego García to face the same immigration judge who had previously granted him a federal protection order against deportation to El Salvador “to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent” there. That, Sandoval-Moshenberg argued, “is the ordinary manner of doing things” – and he said that is what the US supreme court had ordered in April. Bondi on Friday maintained that federal grand jurors found that Ábrego García “has played a significant role” in an abusive smuggling ring that had operated for nearly a decade. The attorney general added that if convicted, Ábrego García would be deported to El Salvador after completing his sentence in the US. Officials on Friday portrayed the indictment of Ábrego García by a grand jury in Tennessee as vindication of their approach to immigration enforcement.

“The man has a horrible past and I could see a decision being made, bring him back, show everybody how horrible this guy is,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that it had been the justice department that decided to bring Ábrego García back. According to the indictment, Ábrego García worked with at least five co-conspirators to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, and then transported them from the US-Mexico border to other destinations in the country.

Ábrego García often picked up immigrants in Houston, and made more than 100 trips between Texas and Maryland from 2016 to 2025, the indictment says. The indictment also alleges Ábrego García transported firearms and drugs. According to the indictment, one of his co-conspirators belonging to the same ring was involved in the transportation of immigrants whose tractor-trailer overturned in Mexico in 2021, resulting in 50 deaths.

[...] Ábrego García also had no criminal record in the US before the indictment announced on Friday, according to court documents.

Kilmar Ábrego García has rightly been returned to the USA from El Salvador, only to face bogus trumped-up charges upon his arrival.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Pam Bondi announces bogus criminal charges against Kilmar Ábrego García

HuffPost: Kilmar Ábrego García Has Returned To The United States

[free-luigi-mangione]

Another factor I have not seen brought up wrt Luigi’s pending federal indictment is that the current administration is going absolutely crazy. This is levels of fascism previously unseen by almost everyone who is still alive in the United States.

A few weeks ago, the new AG Pam Bondi made it clear that the administration would be pursuing the death penalty in cases of heinous crimes committed by illegal immigrants and anyone attacking law enforcement. A lot of erroneous headlines actually correlated it to Luigi’s case and made it seem like Bondi was referring to him and thank heavens that’s not true. Other than Trump’s initial statement condemning Luigi and Musk’s deranged throwaway comments about him, they actually haven’t been focussing much on him and that is a big blessing.

The administration is paying El Salvador millions a year to house what on paper should only be illegal immigrants belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Unfortunately, with Trump being Trump, this has actually resulted in people even remotely suspicious being deported without due process. Like, they’re sending immigrants from other countries to El Salvador. It’s insane. The place is called CECOT and it makes Rikers look like a Swiss spa. Do not look it up if you have a weak stomach.

KFA is vocally anti Trump and has spent more time witnessing politics up close than Luigi has been alive. She knows it’s absolutely in his benefit if the DOJ is ignoring his case right now and dragging their heels. Republicans are currently as trigger happy as they’ve ever been in recent memory and it’s not like the opposition can be counted on to do anything useful. Hell, half the DOJ officials who took bribes to pursue federal charges against Luigi are Democrats.

Karen knows it could get a lot worse for him and she’s 100% in the right not to piss anyone off right now. Human rights violations are being committed at unprecedented rates even against orders from judges, and poor Karen is stuck with shit judges in the first place. Luigi having to wear handcuffs all the time is much better than him getting carted off to a foreign torture camp. If 10 years ago you’d told me an American citizen awaiting trial was in danger of being disappeared this blatantly, I would’ve laughed my ass off. But in 2025 anything goes.

I’m actually not that old (I guess), I turn 29 soon. But the crowd here does seem a lot younger so I definitely feel a difference - 💚

as far as i'm aware, didn't Trump bring back the pursuance of death penalty for all cases where it's eligible when he came back to power?? so how exactly does this new thing affect cases like Luigi's??? (specifically Luigi's tho because he's kind of in a very differently tough spot compared to others)

also i looked up CECOT, i saw it has a capacity for 40,000 inmates and i cut it out quick, i was like forty fucking thousand??? this is it, i've seen enough, i'm out (i don't want to know more about that place if it's supposed to keep 40,000 people imprisoned, that place must be hell on earth for anybody stuck there)

KFA is so anti Trump (and good for her, somebody needs to speak out against that orange fascist) that i sometimes worry about whether that can make Luigi's case be handled worsely just because she's defending him. i don't know if it's a worry from nowhere because i at least see the current administration as highly problematic and dangerous but i hope it is an unfounded worry and it stays that way.

also the fact that the Dems are so useless currently and that even before going away they shilled for the 1% so hard and made Luigi's cases so much worse than what usually happens in such cases is so infuriating. also uhh d'you mean to say he's in danger of getting Epsteined some other way??? if not the direct Epstein Epstein way because of the kind of person Epstein was??

[beardedmrbean]

Trump administration officials directed law enforcement nationwide to pursue suspected gang members into their homes, in some cases without any sort of warrant, according to a copy of the directive exclusively obtained by USA TODAY.

The directive, issued March 14 by Attorney General Pam Bondi, provides the first public view of the specific implementation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invoked to deport migrants accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

The memo was provided to USA TODAY by the open government group, Property of the People, which they obtained through a records request.

Legal experts examined the document that reveals the following: 

It provides directives to front-line officers apprehending suspected Tren de Aragua members, suggesting officers obtain a warrant of apprehension and removal “as much as practicable.” Those administrative warrants are signed by immigration officers, not judges like criminal warrants.

Due to a “dynamic nature of law enforcement procedures” officers are free to "apprehend aliens" based on their “reasonable belief” they meet the definitions, the memo states.

It purports to grant authority for police to enter a suspected "Alien Enemy’s residence" if “circumstances render it impracticable” to first obtain a warrant.

The memo told law enforcement that immigrants deemed "Alien Enemies" are “not entitled to a hearing, appeal or judicial review.” _________________________

Looks like they're taking advantage of existing laws and provisions, some of which are over 200 years old, to do all of this. Which would be why the legal experts are dancing around the words illegal and unconstitutional currently.

Wonder how many of the people angry about this have done the 'if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear' argument on people when the civil liberties of people they didn't like were being threatened.

Personally I don't like this, not as I read it at least,

[mugiwara-lucy]

Threatening President Trump again? I'm sure Pam Bondi would like to hear your threats of a very beloved President being told some TDS fool online saying no one will miss him when he dies when he has a loving family who follows and supports him through to the end. You see all the children in the room are gone and it's up to the adults to save the country after Sleepy Joe ran it into the ground. This is what's called "Peace Through Strength" and President Trump is tired of the greatest country on Earth being taken advantage of by third world shit hole countries.

1.) Fuck that dumb airheaded blonde bitch. The fact you idiots still rally even though she PLAYED you all with those Epstein files just shows how much of a CULT you lot are in.

2.) The Trump Family with the exception of his niece and nephew are all pieces of shit. FUCK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. And yes that includes his creepy ass youngest son Barron.

3.) Saying when he dies (because he's old and unhealthy) no one will miss him isn't a threat. It's a fact. I wonder if there'll be a national holiday. I know people will celebrate even HARDER than when he lost back in 2020.

4.) America is NOT the greatest country on Earth. It's a country built on Genocide and Racism.

5.) Peace through Strength even though he gives rim jobs to world dictators like the old BITCH he is.

[dankusner]

2 Minn. legislators shot; gunman sought

2 Minn. legislators shot; gunman sought

BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. — Hundreds of law enforcement officers fanned out across this Minneapolis suburb on Saturday in pursuit of a man who authorities say posed as a police officer and fatally shot a Democratic state lawmaker in her home, in what Gov. Tim Walz called “a politically motivated assassination.”

Authorities said the same suspect also shot and wounded a second lawmaker and was believed to be trying to flee the area.

Former House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband, Mark, were killed in their Brooklyn Park home.

Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were injured at their home in Champlin, 9 miles away.

Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said at an afternoon news conference that authorities were looking for 57-year-old Vance Boelter.

Authorities displayed a photo taken Saturday of Boelter wearing a tan cowboy hat, and they asked the public to report sightings.

Evans said investigators have obtained video as well.

He did not give details on a possible motive.

Boelter is a former political appointee who served on the same state workforce development board as Hoffman, state records show, though it wasn’t clear if or how well they knew each other.

The early morning attacks targeting lawmakers in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis prompted warnings to other elected officials around the state and the cancellation of planned “No Kings” demonstrations against President Donald Trump.

Authorities say the suspect had “No Kings” flyers in his car and writings mentioning the names of the victims as well as other lawmakers and officials, though they could not say if he had other specific targets.

The shootings happened at a time when political leaders nationwide have been attacked, harassed and intimidated during a time of deep political divisions.

“We must all, in Minnesota and across the country, stand against all forms of political violence,” Walz, a Democrat, said at a news conference.

“Those responsible for this will be held accountable.”

Law enforcement has recovered several AK-style firearms from the suspect’s vehicle, and he’s believed to still be armed with a pistol, a person familiar with the matter said.

Police responded to reports of gunfire at the Hoffmans’ home shortly after 2 a.m., Champlin police said, and found the lawmaker and his wife with multiple gunshot wounds.

After seeing who the victims were, police sent officers to check on Hortman’s home, where they encountered what appeared to be a police vehicle and a man dressed as an officer at the door, leaving the house.

“When officers confronted him, the individual immediately fired upon the officers who exchanged gunfire, and the suspect retreated back into the home” and escaped, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said.

At Hoffman’s home, multiple bullet holes could be seen in the front door.

Trump said in a White House statement that the FBI would join in the investigation.

“Our Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and the FBI, are investigating the situation, and they will be prosecuting anyone involved to the fullest extent of the law. Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!”

Targeted lawmakers

Hortman, 55, had been the top Democratic leader in the state House since 2017.

She led House Democrats in a three-week walkout at the beginning of this year’s session in a power struggle with Republicans.

Under a power-sharing agreement, she turned the gavel over to the top Republican, Rep. Lisa Demuth, and assumed the title of speaker emerita.

Walz described her as a “formidable public servant, a fixture and a giant in Minnesota every day, determined to make this state a better place.”

“She is irreplaceable,” he said.

Hortman and her husband had two adult children.

Hoffman, 60, was first elected in 2012 and played a key role as chair of the Senate Human Services Committee, which oversees one of the biggest parts of the state budget. He and his wife have one daughter.

State Patrol Col. Christina Bogojevic asked people “out of an abundance of caution” not to attend any of the “No Kings” protests that were scheduled across the state on Saturday.

Bogojevic said authorities didn’t have any direct evidence that the protests would be targeted but said that the suspect had some “No Kings” flyers in his car.

Organizers announced that all of the protests across the state were canceled.

The suspect

Boelter was appointed to the workforce development board by then-Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton in 2016 and then reappointed in 2019 by Walz to a four-year term that expired in 2023, state records show.

State corporate records show that Boelter’s wife filed to create a company called Praetorian Guard Security Services, with the same Green Isle, Minn., mailing address listed for the couple.

https://www.praetorianguardservices.com/dallas-tx/

On a website for the business, Boelter’s wife is listed as the president and CEO, while he is listed as the director of security patrols.

The company’s homepage says it provides armed security for property and events, and the page features a photo of an SUV painted in a two-tone black-and-silver pattern similar to a police vehicle, with a light bar across the roof and “Praetorian” painted across the doors.

Another photo shows a man in black tactical gear with a military-style helmet and a ballistic vest with the company’s name across the front.

An online resume says Boelter is a security contractor who has worked oversees in the Middle East and Africa, in addition to past managerial roles at companies in Minnesota.

MINNESOTA LAWMAKER SHOOTINGS

Authorities capture suspected gunman

After suspect’s capture, targets past, present call for end to violence

The man suspected of shooting two Minnesota lawmakers, killing one of them, was taken into custody, authorities said Sunday.

Vance Boelter was arrested Sunday evening.

The arrest was confirmed to The Associated Press.

Former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed in their Brooklyn Park home early Saturday in the northern Minneapolis suburbs.

Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were injured during a separate shooting at their Champlin home, about 9 miles away.

Earlier Sunday, Drew Evans, superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said at a news conference a nationwide warrant was out for the suspect’s arrest.

Evans said authorities found a car early Sunday they believed Boelter was using, a few miles from his home in Green Isle, in the farm country about an hour west of Minneapolis.

He also said they found evidence in the car that was relevant to the investigation, but did not provide details.

Authorities named Boelter, 57, as a suspect, saying he wore a mask as he posed as a police officer, even allegedly altering a vehicle to make it look like a police car.

Evens confirmed that investigators found a cowboy hat near the vehicle and believe it belonged to Boelter.

The superintendent also said authorities interviewed Boelter’s wife and other family members in connection with Saturday’s shootings.

He said they were cooperative and were not in custody.

Saturday’s shooting struck close to home for Daniel Hernandez, whose life has been shaped by violence directed at politicians.

He woke up Saturday morning to missed calls and messages from loved ones who had seen the news that two state legislators had been shot in Minnesota and immediately worried about his safety.

Hernandez, a former Democratic state lawmaker who is running in a special election to represent Arizona’s 7th Congressional District, began his political career as an intern for former Rep. Gabby Giffords and was credited with helping to save her from a mass shooter in 2011.

Last week, a bullet struck a car window of one of his campaign staffers outside his family home, which doubles as his campaign headquarters.

His mother and staffers were inside, he said.

More than a year ago, Hernandez began staying with his sister, Democratic Arizona state Rep. Alma Hernandez, because he worried for her safety after she faced threats over her support for Israel.

“It’s not the first time we’ve dealt with threats — it’s been years,” said Alma Hernandez, through tears. “I don’t think people realize the trauma that this triggers. … People on both sides tend not to call out this horrible rhetoric that both sides truly tend to spread a lot.”

The Anti-Defamation League found that all 61 of the political killings in the United States during the period of 2022-24 were committed by right-wing extremists.

That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police.

And the violence in Minnesota revealed that America’s political fractures have now penetrated into the most intimate spaces of democratic life: the homes where elected officials sleep.

Radicalized

Nearly a quarter of Americans, 23%, believe that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” according to a 2023 poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute with the Brookings Institution.

That number was 15% in 2021.

The polling showed that one-third of Republicans support violence as a means of saving the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats. The numbers paint a portrait of a democracy where citizens espouse ideas traditionally seen as radical and are primed to commit violence.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks extremism, identified 58 U.S.-based violent events and alleged plots in 2024 that involved 61 individuals with confirmed or assessed connections to violent extremist ideologies or online radicalization, said its director of threat analysis and prevention, Katherine Keneally, whose background is in law enforcement analysis. Politicians and government facilities were targeted in seven incidents, she said.

Lawmakers react

Lawmakers voiced condolences and outrage. Several had been victims or targets themselves.

Notably, Giffords, who was severely wounded at a campaign event, posted that she was “devastated.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose home was set on fire by an arsonist this spring, forcing his family to flee, urged leaders to speak out. “This is unacceptable — we all have a responsibility to stand up and work to defeat the political violence that is tearing through our country,” he wrote.

Nancy Pelosi, whose husband, Paul, was attacked with a hammer at their San Francisco home by a man who had planned to hold her hostage, condemned “a shocking and abhorrent manifestation of political violence in our country.”

President Donald Trump said “such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America.”

He survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., in July.

In September, the Secret Service thwarted a potential assassin near Trump on his golf course in Florida.

Hunt for lawmakers’ shooter leads to abandoned vehicle

BELLE PLAINE, Minn.. — Authorities searched a vehicle Sunday on a rural road outside Minneapolis that they believe had been used by the man wanted in the shootings of two Democratic lawmakers, as a state on edge struggled to make sense of the brazen political violence that left one leader dead.

Former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed in their Brooklyn Park home early Saturday.

Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were injured at their Champlin home, about 9 miles away.

Authorities named 57-year-old Vance Boelter as a suspect, saying he wore a mask as he posed as a police officer, even allegedly altering a vehicle to make it look like a police car.

More than 24 hours after authorities first confronted him outside Hortman’s home, Boelter was still on the loose after fleeing on foot.

The FBI issued a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

They circulated a photo taken Saturday of Boelter wearing a tan cowboy hat and asked the public to report sightings.

Investigators found a cowboy hat near the vehicle and were working to determine whether it belonged to Boelter.

Law enforcement officers were searching the area, including nearby homes.

The officials could not discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The search was happening in rural Sibley County, roughly 50 miles southwest of Minneapolis, where Boelter had a home with his wife and five children.

Residents in the area received an emergency alert about the located vehicle that warned them to lock their doors and cars.

‘In the vicinity’

Officers were seen congregated on a dirt road near an abandoned dark sedan believed to have been used by Boelter.

Doors on both sides of the car were splayed open, with discarded items scattered near the vehicle.

Some officers broke off and walked into a wooded area off the road.

“We believe he’s somewhere in the vicinity and that they are going to find him,” U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“But right now, everyone’s on edge here, because we know that this man will kill at a second.”

The shootings come as political leaders nationwide have been attacked, harassed and intimidated amid deep political divisions.

Lawmakers said they were disturbed by the attacks as Twin Cities residents mourned.

Brightly colored flowers and small American flags were placed Sunday on the gray marbled stone of the Minnesota State Capitol along with a photo of the Hortmans.

People scrawled messages on small notes including, “You were our leader through the hardest of times. Rest in Power.”

The Hoffmans were recovering from surgery, according to their nephew, Mat Ollig.

Authorities have not yet given details on a motive.

A list of about 70 names was found in writings recovered from the fake police vehicle that was left at the crime scene, the officials said.

The writings and list of names included prominent state and federal lawmakers and community leaders, along with abortion rights advocates and information about health care facilities, according to the officials.

A Minnesota official told the AP that lawmakers who had been outspoken in favor of abortion rights were on the list.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

Protests go ahead

The attacks prompted warnings to other state elected officials and the cancellation of planned “No Kings” demonstrations against President Donald Trump, though some went ahead anyway, including one that drew tens of thousands to the state Capitol in St. Paul. Authorities said the suspect had “No Kings” flyers in his car.

Law enforcement agents recovered several AK-style firearms from the suspect’s vehicle, and he was believed to still be armed with a pistol, a person familiar with the matter told AP.

The person could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Boelter is a former political appointee who served on the same state workforce development board as Hoffman, records show.

Around 6 a.m. Saturday, Boelter texted friends to apologize for his actions, though he didn’t say what he had done.

“I’m going to be gone for a while. May be dead shortly, so I just want to let you know I love you guys both and I wish it hadn’t gone this way. … I’m sorry for all the trouble this has caused,” he wrote in messages viewed by the AP.

Police first responded to reports of gunfire at the Hoffmans’ home shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday and found the couple with multiple gunshot wounds.

Local police from Brooklyn Park were assisting with the call and decided to proactively check on Hortman’s home nearby, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said Saturday.

There, they encountered what appeared to be a police vehicle and a man dressed as an officer leaving the house.

Officers confronted him, he fired at them and officers returned fire. The suspect then retreated back into the home and fled on foot, Bruley said.

He left behind the vehicle designed to look like a police car where authorities later found writings.