Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
Months after the partisan clash that led to the longest shutdown in history, lawmakers have agreed on spending bills that look far different from what the president wanted.
Congress is quietly rejecting almost all of the deepest cuts to federal programs that President Trump requested for this year, turning back his efforts to slash funding for foreign aid, global health programs, scientific research, the arts and more in a bipartisan repudiation of his spending plans. The latest rejection of his budget blueprint came on Wednesday, after the House voted 341 to 79 to pass a pair of bills to fund the State and Treasury Departments, as well as other foreign aid programs, providing money for agencies that Mr. Trump had proposed eliminating entirely.
All told, while lawmakers have agreed to make modest trims to a number of programs that Mr. Trump has wanted to eviscerate — and to zero out some others — the spending bills that they are now moving through Congress reflect the political reality that any funding measure must be bipartisan in order to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and become law.
It is a striking pivot just months after the partisan clash last fall that led to the longest government shutdown in history. Lawmakers are now in the process of negotiating and approving a series of spending bills before a Jan. 30 shutdown deadline. Appropriators in both the House and the Senate have come to bipartisan agreements on eight of the 12 bills that fund the government. The Senate was racing to clear three measures that passed the House last week with money for the Commerce and Justice Departments, as well as for environmental programs.
Even some programs that have long been despised by conservatives are instead set to sustain only modest cuts, including Voice of America, the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Endowment for the Arts. The legislation to fund the State Department and other foreign assistance programs alone provides over $19 billion more than Mr. Trump’s request — though it would constitute a cut of $9 billion below current levels.
Voice of America, the federal news network the Trump administration has sought to dismantle, is set to receive about $653 million, half a billion more than what Mr. Trump requested to “support the orderly shutdown” of the agency. Lawmakers had previously provided $867 million to the broadcaster. “There’s a long history of international aid being viewed as an effective tool on a bipartisan basis, and I think that this bill re-establishes that bipartisan foundation,” said Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, the top Democrat on the subcommittee overseeing funding for the State Department and foreign aid programs.
House and Senate negotiators also rejected a proposal advanced by the White House to cancel $16.5 billion in previously approved funding for the Internal Revenue Service that Democrats included in 2022 in their sprawling climate and domestic policy law. And they endorsed keeping scientific funding levels at the National Science Foundation and at NASA essentially flat, making only slight trims rather than the major cuts the White House had proposed.
In some ways, the spending bills confirm the worst fears of conservatives on Capitol Hill, who have worried that even with a Republican governing trifecta, they would be unable to enact the kind of major spending cuts they have long agitated for.
Some Democrats also are unhappy with the emerging spending package, believing that their party should use the leverage it has in the appropriations process to try to rein in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. That could still emerge as a sticking point to a final agreement; the bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security is among the toughest to negotiate and has yet to be agreed upon.
But overall, the bipartisan consensus around the spending measures is strong. Republican leaders who helped negotiate them championed the trims in the spending bills, arguing that the overall reduction in funding compared with last year’s levels constituted a major win. And they noted that the bills represented a return to the practice of writing and passing individual spending bills, rather than lumping all 12 together into a behemoth package, or enacting an emergency stopgap measure to keep funding flat.
Whether the administration ultimately spends the money that lawmakers appropriate is still an unanswered question. Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, has made clear that he believes the president has the authority to disregard congressional directives in order to spend less money than lawmakers approved.
And members of Congress omitted language they had considered including in the legislation aimed at limiting Mr. Trump’s ability to circumvent them.
“If they’re going to violate the underlying statute, then passing a new statute that says they have to abide by the old one is silliness,” Mr. Schatz said. “I also think that it’s a little harder for them to send rescissions packages, and to do great violence to the agencies, if this is a bill passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by the Republican president.”
Note: Text emphasis in the above report was added.
Exclusive: US is less feared by its traditional adversaries, while its allies feel ever more distant, results show
A year after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a global survey suggests much of the world believes his nation-first, “Make America Great Again” approach is instead helping to make China great again. The 21-country survey for the influential European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank also found that under Trump, the US is less feared by its traditional adversaries, while its allies – particularly in Europe – feel ever more distant.
Most Europeans no longer see the US as a reliable ally and are increasingly supportive of rearmament, it found, while Russians now see the EU as more of an enemy than the US, and Ukrainians are looking more to Brussels than to Washington for support. The poll, of nearly 26,000 respondents in 13 European countries, the US, China, India, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea, found majorities in almost every territory surveyed expected China’s global influence to grow over the next decade.
These ranged from 83% in South Africa, 72% in Brazil and 63% in Turkey through 54% in the US, 53% in 10 EU states and 51% in India to 50% in the UK. Most EU citizens expected China to soon lead the world in electric vehicles and renewable energies. Moreover, few seemed concerned about it. The polling found that only in Ukraine and South Korea did majorities view China as a rival or an adversary, while more people in South Africa, India and Brazil saw China as an ally than they did two years ago. In South Africa (85%), Russia (86%), and Brazil (73%), majorities view China either as a necessary partner or as an ally. The EU view was unchanged: 45% see China as a necessary partner. Many countries expect their relationship with China to strengthen.
At the same time, while many believe the US will remain influential, outside Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey there was no majority – including in the US itself – for the view that American influence was likely to grow any further. Amid increasingly favourable views of China, the status of the US as an ally has declined across almost all the countries surveyed, with India the only one where a majority still feels the US is an ally, sharing the country’s values and interests.
As other polls have also shown, the change in perceptions of the US among EU citizens is marked: only 16% now consider the US as an ally, with a striking 20% seeing it as either a rival or an enemy. Elsewhere, perceptions of America are in decline. In most countries, too, the survey showed expectations of Trump himself had fallen, sometimes dramatically. Fewer people felt the US president’s re-election was good for US citizens, their own countries or for peace in the world than 12 months ago.
The survey, the fourth in a series, was carried out with Oxford University’s Europe in a Changing World project. It suggests that with the world’s balance of power shifting, people’s perceptions of Europe are changing too – most notably in Russia. With the war in Ukraine set to enter its fifth year in February, respondents in Russia are now more likely (51%) to see Europe as an adversary than last year (41%), and less likely (37%) to consider the US as such than they were 12 months ago (48%).
Ukrainians, on the other hand, are more likely to see Europe as an ally (39%) than the US (18%, down from 27% last year). Views of Europe are also changing in China, where 61% of respondents see the US as a threat, but only 19% think the same of the EU. The report’s authors, Ivan Krastev of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Mark Leonard of the ECFR and the historian and Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash, said this did not appear to be because Chinese citizens did not take the EU seriously.
In fact, the survey showed that, unlike in many countries, a majority (59%) in China considered the EU to be a great power, with 46% also seeing the bloc as mostly a partner – a view shared, despite Trump’s anti-EU rhetoric, by 40% of Americans. Optimism about the EU, however, is not shared by many Europeans. Most (46%) do not believe the EU is a power able to deal on equal terms with the US or China, a sentiment that has increased over the past year (up from 42% in 2024). Many Europeans also doubt the future will bring any good for their countries (49%) or the world (51%), worrying about Russian aggression against their country (40%) and a major European war (55%). More than half (52%) support increasing defence spending.
The authors said the poll revealed “a world in which US actions were boosting China”, adding that Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and territorial ambitions in Greenland suggested “he has decided it is better for a great power to be feared than to be loved”. “Europe could end up squeezed or simply ignored,” they said, adding: “Political leaders in Europe should no longer ask themselves whether their own citizens grasp the radical nature of the current geopolitical changes. They do.” Europeans see the old order is over, they said. European leaders must now be “realistic and daring at the same time”, finding “new ways not just to manage in a multipolar world, but to become a pole in that world – or disappear among the others”.
My experience on food inflation is munch higher than 3.1%; more like 30% in 2025 ! That is from comparing grocery store receipts from a year ago and today prices.
Over Christmas holiday, we experience restaurants and lodging also went up double digits. So we cut out shopping at Amazon by 90%, and limited our holidays spending by 50%. We spent time to called our friends and family, and visit them if they are nearby. Consumers do have choices.
Yes, they do. And those choices will ultimately hurt business profits and economic growth. Right now outsized government and AI spending may be obscuring that.
Am I wrong or when this thread started could be called the gold old days? Last June we had no idea what kind of shit was about to go down. Horrible news happened almost daily, not hourly, and the evilness of his intent was not yet clear. Even to this pessimist last June I never thought it could get this sick this quickly.
Senate Republicans blocked an effort to curb the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela, a victory for the president who was incensed that some Republicans tried to tie his hands on a key foreign policy.
If we want to understand how this could be allowed to happen, just turn your eyes to the spineless elected officials on the Hill in DC. Devoid of a soul, they enable a dictator.
James Rodden, an ICE lawyer in Dallas, was exposed for running a white-supremacist X account praising Adolf Hitler, was pulled from court schedules. Now he is back, badge on, no explanation given. ICE refuses to comment.
The Texas Observer conducted an investigation which identified James Rodden—an ICE prosecutor— as the operator of a racist X account.
"ICE responded in a letter last March to Congressman Marc Veasey, who represents part of Dallas, stating that the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) 'understands the seriousness of the allegations and will ensure the allegations are addressed appropriately, fairly, and expeditiously' and that typically 'OPR administrative investigations are completed within 120 days.' ICE has not provided any further information since."
"'I will not let this go unnoticed,' said Veasey in a statement to the Observer. 'White supremacists should not hold positions of authority in our justice system, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that Rodden is held accountable.'"
-Filling positions of authority with White Supremacists. -Weakening us against or enemies and adversaries. -Pushing prices ever higher. -imposing a massive tax on imported goods. -Destroying 70,000 manufacturing jobs since April 2025. -Assaulting people for exercising their First Amendment RIGHTS. -Directing the DOJ to persecute detractors, including decorated veterans.
"When Trump won the 2024 election, I feared — rightly — that our democracy would soon be in great peril. Between gerrymandering, a corrupt Supreme Court, a compliant Republican Party, and a tsunami of political donations from the tech broligarchy, I thought American democracy might soon perish.
But I thought the process of losing our democracy would be a slow, ineluctable descent as institutions and people resigned themselves to the seemingly inevitable. I expected the process to be akin to what happened in Hungary, where ordinary people’s lives remained mostly normal amid Viktor Orban’s authoritarian takeover. There, independent media have been suppressed, business has been co-opted by crony capitalism, the judicial and electoral systems have been rigged. But Orban didn’t employ armed thugs to brutalize, maim and murder people in the streets. Rather, Hungary’s democracy fell to a quiet, creeping coup.
My early fears weren’t completely off base. Everything that transpired in the first few months of Trump 47 suggests that if our own home-grown fascists had been as patient as Orban, a de facto dictatorship would have been established here with relative ease. Our vaunted institutions, our system of checks and balances, either capitulated quickly or were overrun by Trump’s onslaught. Big business quickly bent the knee, immediately directing its focus to how to make money through Trump trades. The Supreme Court and the Republican Congress abetted and even encouraged every fascist move.
Yet the US has not replicated Hungary’s measured slide into authoritarianism. For Trump and his minions aren’t patient. They want retribution and subjugation. Threats and dominance displays are how they operate. They burn with racism, misogyny, and performative cruelty.
So now we have Minneapolis, America’s laboratory of democratic destruction, where ICE agents have gone full Sturmabteilung, terrorizing and even killing not only people with brown skin, but anyone who protests or gets in their way. And the irony is that this may be for the better.
For a gradual destruction of democracy would have been hard to resist. After all, who wants to rock the boat when there’s money to be made, jobs to keep, perks to be had, convenient bothsideism to be upheld, if you will just be silent and keep your head down?
Instead, however, the assault on freedom and civil liberties is open, lurid, and impossible to deny. While our institutions and our elites have failed us, ordinary Americans are rising to the occasion. If Minneapolis is a laboratory of democratic destruction, it has also become a laboratory of civil resistance — organized civil resistance, of a kind we haven’t seen since the civil rights movement. When ICE is on the rampage, crowds of brave Americans, summoned by texts and whistles, quickly gather to stand against the masked men with guns. As the outrage grows, people of common decency — like the federal prosecutors in Minnesota who chose to resign rather than pervert justice by going after Renee Nicole Good’s wife — are taking a stand.
So what’s happening now is both horrifying and inspiring. How will it all end? I don’t know, but maybe, just maybe, our democracy isn’t being destroyed — it’s being forged anew in the hands of the American people."
Today, Democratic senator Mark Kelly of Arizona sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Defense Department, Navy Secretary John Phelan, and the Navy Department for violating his First Amendment rights, the Speech and Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the separation of powers, due process, the law that establishes ranks for retired commissioned officers (10 USC 1370), and the Administrative Procedure Act that establishes the ways in which agencies can make regulations.
While this sounds complicated, at its heart it’s about the attempt of the Donald J. Trump administration to trample Congress and create a military loyal to Trump alone.
Defense Secretary Hegseth came to his position from his job as a weekend host on the Fox News Channel. Before that, he served in the Army Reserve and the National Guard but, as Kelly and Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) noted in a Military Times op-ed questioning Hegseth’s fitness for the position, he never rose to a command position and his “track record falls short of military standards.” He is the least-experienced defense secretary in U.S. history.
His attack on Kelly, who is a retired Navy officer and astronaut, began after Kelly and five other Democrats in Congress—Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), and Representatives Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Jason Crow (D-CO)—all of whom are veterans, released a video on November 18, 2025, in which they warned members of the military and the intelligence community that the administration was “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”
“Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution,” the video continued. “Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders; you must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant. But whether you’re serving in the CIA, the Army, our Navy, the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”
The lawmakers concluded: “Know that we have your back, because now, more than ever, the American people need you. We need you to stand up for our laws, our Constitution, and who we are as Americans.”
The video simply reiterated the law, but White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller promptly posted on social media, “Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection,” and by the next day, Trump was reposting comments that called for the lawmakers to be arrested, “thrown out of their offices,” “frog marched out of their homes at 3:00 AM with FOX News cameras filming the whole thing,” and “charged with sedition.” He reposted “Insurrection. TREASON!” and a message from a user who wrote: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”
On November 24, the “Department of War” posted on social media that it was investigating Kelly, after “serious allegations of misconduct.” It suggested that Kelly could be recalled to active duty “for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.”
Over a photograph of the medals on his uniform, Kelly responded on social media: “When I was 22 years old, I commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy and swore an oath to the Constitution. I upheld that oath through flight school, multiple deployments on the USS Midway, 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, test pilot school, four space shuttle flights at NASA, and every day since I retired—which I did after my wife Gabby was shot in the head while serving her constituents.
“In combat, I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets. At NASA, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died on Columbia. I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much.
“Secretary Hegseth’s tweet is the first I heard of this. I also saw the President’s posts saying I should be arrested, hanged, and put to death.
“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”
Comment: An administration led by a person who deliberately evaded military service has the outrageous insolence to prosecute a man of this stature. The current "president" of the United States and his carrion assistants are beneath contempt.
• Send thug squads to shoot at American civilians, nobody thinks about Epstein. • Sic DOJ goons to prosecute the Fed president, nobody thinks about Epstein. • Invade Venezuela, nobody thinks about Epstein. • Threaten to invade Greenland, nobody thinks about Epstein.
• A Ford worker does remember; Trump presidentially shouts "Fuck You" and flips him the finger; the worker gets suspended (fired?).
@Old_Joe. I may be the only one with this opinion but I think that Epstein would be THE distraction to cover up crimes of historical significance against the United States . The Epstein case is a horrible crime of previously unheard of magnitude but does not shake our democracy to its core. If the citizens were strictly focused on Epstein they would be missing much. Maybe after the football season the masses will wake up. But I doubt it. After the last two weeks there should be millions of citizens in the streets.
From Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American newsletter dated Jan. 15.
"You know what Americans aren’t talking about very much today after Trump’s threat to detonate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) this week and his threat this morning to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota?"
"They aren’t talking a lot about the fact that the Department of Justice has released less than 1% of the Epstein files despite the law, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Congress passed requiring the release of those files in full no later than December 19. Trump loyalists are trying to shift public anger at Trump over the files back to former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom QAnon conspiracy theorists believed were at the heart of a child sex trafficking scheme."
"Representative James Comer (R-KY) has threatened to hold former president Clinton in contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for a closed-door deposition about Epstein. But in a scathing four-page public letter to Comer, the Clintons called the subpoenas invalid and noted that Comer had subpoenaed eight people in addition to the Clintons and had then dismissed seven of them without testimony."
"They also noted that Comer had done nothing to force the Department of Justice to release all the Epstein files as required by law, including all the material relating to them, as Bill Clinton has publicly called for. They said, 'There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics.'"
From Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American newsletter dated Jan. 15.
"While Trump and administration officials insist they have had to crack down violently on undocumented immigrants because an organized arm of the Tren de Aragua gang has invaded the United States, Dell Cameron and Ryan Shapiro of Wired reported yesterday that they had obtained hundreds of records showing that U.S. intelligence described Tren de Aragua not as a terrorist threat, but as a source of fragmented, low-level crime. Although Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that Tren de Aragua 'is a highly structured terrorist organization that put down roots in our country during the prior administration,' U.S. officials in 2025 doubted whether the gang even operated in the U.S."
From Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American newsletter dated Jan. 15.
"The images coming out of Minnesota have been compared to those of Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor ordering police officers and firefighters to use fire hoses against the children marching during the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, or of law enforcement officers beating civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama. A family with six children in a van caught in the clash last night were hit with tear gas and air bags detonated by a flash-bang grenade. Three of the children, including a six-month-old infant, were taken to a hospital by ambulance for treatment. 'My kids were innocent. I was innocent. My husband was innocent. This shouldn’t have happened,' the mother told Kilat Fitzgerald of Fox9 in Minneapolis. 'We were just trying to go home.'"
From Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American newsletter dated Jan. 15.
"Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters today that federal agents will ask Americans to 'validate their identity' by showing proof of citizenship if they are near someone federal agents allege has committed a crime. As CNN’s Kaanity Iyer reported, today, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig explained that it is unconstitutional for an officer to ask someone to show proof of citizenship 'without some other basis to make a stop.'"
Comments: The Trump administration is once again refusing to uphold the Constitution.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
“The Cabinet secretaries and, ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment,” U.S. District Judge William Young declared.
A federal judge Thursday decried what he said were “breathtaking” constitutional violations by senior Trump administration officials and called the president an “authoritarian” who expects everyone in the executive branch to “toe the line absolutely.” In remarks laced with outrage and disbelief, U.S. District Judge William Young said Donald Trump and top officials have a “fearful approach” to freedom of speech that would seek to “exclude from participation everyone who doesn’t agree with them.”
Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, leveled the searing critique during a hearing in Boston to determine the appropriate remedies for the administration’s detentions of pro-Palestinian students last year. The judge had ruled in September that senior administration officials engaged in an illegal effort to arrest and deport noncitizen students based on their activism.
On Thursday, he again denounced the administration’s conduct in unusually stark terms. “Talking straight here,” he said. “The big problem in this case is that the Cabinet secretaries and, ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio engaged in an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to deprive people of their rights, Young said. “The secretary of state,” he said, his voice full of incredulity, “the senior Cabinet officer in our history, involved in this.
On Thursday evening, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said via email that “it’s bizarre that this judge is broadcasting his intent to engage in left-wing activism against the democratically-elected President of the United States.” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said in an email that “there is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers.” A spokesperson for Rubio did not respond to a request for comment.
The plaintiffs in the case are the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. The groups of scholars accused the administration of having an unconstitutional policy of deporting people based on their political views, a policy intended to chill the free-speech rights of their members. The trial last summer focused on the targeting of five noncitizen students and scholars.
All but one who obtained a restraining order before ICE could find her were arrested. The other four were released on the orders of federal judges, but the Trump administration is still trying to deport them. On Thursday, an appellate court in Philadelphia overturned a lower-court ruling in one case on jurisdictional grounds, raising the possibility that he could be rearrested.
While Young condemned the administration’s actions Thursday, he indicated that he would not grant the sweeping relief proposed by the plaintiffs, who had sought an injunction barring such conduct and a variety of monitoring and reporting requirements. Young said he expected to issue a more narrowly tailored order next Thursday, one that would protect the noncitizen members of the plaintiff groups from changes to their immigration status except in certain defined circumstances.
The 2025 trial revealed the machinery behind the Trump administration’s campus crackdown. Senior administration officials directed personnel at DHS who normally analyze transnational criminal networks to instead produce reports on students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, one official testified. The analysts relied heavily on thousands of profiles generated by Canary Mission, an opaque pro-Israel group that says it documents individuals who “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews” on college campuses. Working largely from Canary Mission’s list, Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, generated between 100 and 200 reports on student protesters, the official testified.
DHS then referred dozens of such reports to the State Department, recommending that it revoke the visas and green cards of those students and scholars, paving the way for their removal. Within weeks, some were arrested by masked agents in plainclothes and flown to detention facilities in Louisiana and Texas.
Officials and agents from Homeland Security Investigations testified that they had never been asked to compile reports on student protesters before 2025, nor to arrest noncitizen students because their immigration status had changed.
Note: Text emphasis in the above report was added.
Comment: Trump Cabinet secretaries conspired to violate Constitution! Shocking... I would never have guessed that they would be doing anything like that.
Comments
as the operator of a racist X account.
"ICE responded in a letter last March to Congressman Marc Veasey, who represents part of Dallas,
stating that the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) 'understands the seriousness of the allegations
and will ensure the allegations are addressed appropriately, fairly, and expeditiously'
and that typically 'OPR administrative investigations are completed within 120 days.'
ICE has not provided any further information since."
"'I will not let this go unnoticed,' said Veasey in a statement to the Observer.
'White supremacists should not hold positions of authority in our justice system,
and I will do everything in my power to ensure that Rodden is held accountable.'"
https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-racist-account-back-at-immigration-court/
-Weakening us against or enemies and adversaries.
-Pushing prices ever higher.
-imposing a massive tax on imported goods.
-Destroying 70,000 manufacturing jobs since April 2025.
-Assaulting people for exercising their First Amendment RIGHTS.
-Directing the DOJ to persecute detractors, including decorated veterans.
Been a busy year!
EPSTEIN???
"You know what Americans aren’t talking about very much today after Trump’s threat
to detonate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) this week
and his threat this morning to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota?"
"They aren’t talking a lot about the fact that the Department of Justice has released less than 1%
of the Epstein files despite the law, the Epstein Files Transparency Act,
Congress passed requiring the release of those files in full no later than December 19.
Trump loyalists are trying to shift public anger at Trump over the files back to former president
Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom QAnon conspiracy theorists
believed were at the heart of a child sex trafficking scheme."
"Representative James Comer (R-KY) has threatened to hold former president Clinton in contempt
of Congress for refusing to appear for a closed-door deposition about Epstein.
But in a scathing four-page public letter to Comer, the Clintons called the subpoenas invalid
and noted that Comer had subpoenaed eight people in addition to the Clintons
and had then dismissed seven of them without testimony."
"They also noted that Comer had done nothing to force the Department of Justice
to release all the Epstein files as required by law, including all the material relating to them,
as Bill Clinton has publicly called for. They said,
'There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics.'"
"While Trump and administration officials insist they have had to crack down violently
on undocumented immigrants because an organized arm of the Tren de Aragua gang
has invaded the United States, Dell Cameron and Ryan Shapiro of Wired reported yesterday
that they had obtained hundreds of records showing that U.S. intelligence described
Tren de Aragua not as a terrorist threat, but as a source of fragmented, low-level crime.
Although Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that Tren de Aragua 'is a highly structured
terrorist organization that put down roots in our country during the prior administration,'
U.S. officials in 2025 doubted whether the gang even operated in the U.S."
"The images coming out of Minnesota have been compared to those of Public Safety Commissioner
Bull Connor ordering police officers and firefighters to use fire hoses against the children marching
during the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, or of law enforcement officers
beating civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama.
A family with six children in a van caught in the clash last night were hit with tear gas
and air bags detonated by a flash-bang grenade. Three of the children, including a six-month-old infant,
were taken to a hospital by ambulance for treatment. 'My kids were innocent. I was innocent.
My husband was innocent. This shouldn’t have happened,' the mother told Kilat Fitzgerald
of Fox9 in Minneapolis. 'We were just trying to go home.'"
"Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters today that federal agents will ask Americans
to 'validate their identity' by showing proof of citizenship if they are near someone federal agents
allege has committed a crime. As CNN’s Kaanity Iyer reported, today, CNN legal analyst
Elie Honig explained that it is unconstitutional for an officer to ask someone
to show proof of citizenship 'without some other basis to make a stop.'"
Comments: The Trump administration is once again refusing to uphold the Constitution.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,
and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
— Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution