Mostly Monday Reads: “My God, what have we done?”*

Good Afternoon, Sky Dancers

I’m a little late for today.  I had an appointment to get to this morning.  Now, I must catch a breath and a bit of meditative calming before looking at each headline.  We’re seeing more evidence of ICE resembling Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen, which was a specially heinous unit within the SS. I’m waiting for some version of the Night of Long Knives now that #FARTUS has some infamous cabinet appointments. We’re seeing increased purges and attacks on Judges, Former Federal employees, Former Federal Prosecutors, and all kinds of people who would deter his fits of paranoia and dreams of revenge. His deportation pogroms continue to rise to the level of crimes against humanity.  Each day brings new horrors.

This headline from 7News/NYTV in New York has shaken me.  “Saturday statement: school principal wants students back.” We are a country that handcuffs third graders at school and detains them with adults.

SACKETS HARBOR, New York (WWNY) – The school principal where 3 students attended before being taken away by ICE agents wants the children back and will attend Saturday’s rally in the village.

The statement to 7NEWS comes just hours before the event being organized by community members and local democrats.

The rally came about after federal agents went to North Harbor Dairy Farm on County Route 75 in the town of Hounsfield a week ago looking for a criminal suspect. While the feds found that man, they also took 7 other people, who they called illegal aliens, to be processed at the border station on Wellesley Island.

Part of that group is a mother and 3 children.

Jaime Cook, in a statement, says, “Our 3 students who were taken by ICE were doing everything right. They had declared themselves to immigration judges, attended court on their assigned dates, and were following the legal process. They are not criminals.”

Cook continues, “We are in shock, and it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students’ release.”

Cook says the school is in direct communication with the students and says, “Let me be clear: they are not being medically evaluated. They are not being questioned as potential victims. Calling a detention center by another name does not change what it is.”

Cook is referring to a description and interview 7NEWS did with U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan earlier this week. Our 25-minute interview can be seen here: TOM HOMAN – WWNY

There was a rally later. This is the report from Newsweek. “Third Grade Student Arrested by ICE Sparks Mass Protest.”   They actually put underage children in a car with the arrested suspect who is charged the possession of child pornography. They all should be charged with child endangerment.

ICE agents conducted a raid at North Harbor Dairy in Sackets Harbor, targeting an individual charged with possession of child pornography. In addition to apprehending the primary suspect, seven others were detained at a local dairy farm last month, including a mother and her three children enrolled in the local public school.

The demonstration, organized by the Jefferson County Democratic Committee, began with a rally that included a written statement from New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said she was “heartbroken and angry” over the incident.

…

Jefferson County Democratic Committee chair Corey Decillis told NBC News: “We’ve seen it occur right in the last 60 days across the country, but when it happens in your backyard, I think that’s what garners people’s attention.”

Tom Homan said in an interview Thursday on WWNY-TV: “It wasn’t a raid. It was a search warrant execution at a house where a family was found in the country illegally. ICE is doing everything by the book. Once the investigation gets to the point where we don’t have an interest in this family, then a decision will be made on release.”

Principal Jaime Cook said in a statement: “They lived in a house on the same road as a home ICE had a warrant for. The fact that ICE went door to door is unfathomable. The fact that our students were handcuffed and put into the same van as the alleged criminal from down the street is unconscionable. When I think of my third grader’s experience, my stomach twists and it is hard to breathe.”

This country is our backyard.  This should not stand.  And next up on the WTF is THIS SHIT list?  WTF country do we live in? This is from the Daily Beast. “Trump Orders Four Mile Military Parade for His 79th Birthday.” We can’t feed hungry kids but we can do this?

President Donald Trump is making plans for a military parade in Washington, D.C., on his 79th birthday, according to a report.

A source in the capital told the Washington City Paperthat Trump has earmarked June 14—which is the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army—for the event.

The display of military might will march around four miles from the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, to the White House, the D.C. source told the publication.

The report said that local officials are only now hearing of plans for the parade and that no formal request has been made for their assistance.

Arlington County Board Chair Takis Karantonis told the City Paper that the White House had given the county a “heads up” about the parade on Friday, with only 10 weeks until the event.

He said “the parade’s scope ” was ” unclear” and that no firm details were disclosed.

Other unnamed officials told the paper that a big military parade will require a huge amount of coordination between the six branches of the armed forces, along with several federal agencies and regional officials.

This headline from the Washington Post just about had me gagging on my morning cuppa.  This follows up on the fuck up that was supposed to be a grand production of sending a lot of hapless men to an infamous El Salvadorian Prison.  “Trump asks Supreme Court to block order returning deportee from El Salvador.  Judge Paula Xinis gave the Trump administration until midnight Monday to return Kilmar Abrego García, who was deported despite a court order forbidding it.”  How far will those Republican Supremes shove themselves up that FARTUS ass this time around?  This story was reported by Justin Jouvenal and Maria Sacchetti.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a lower court’s order requiring officials to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

The emergency motion came after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis gave the administration until 11:59 p.m. Monday to return Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant who is married to a U.S. citizen.

Abrego García has been detained at a mega-prison in El Salvador since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him last month, despite a court order forbidding it because he had fled death threats from gang members in his home country.

Trump officials have argued that they have no power to return Abrego García because he is now in the custody of El Salvador.

Xinis forcefully pushed back on that assertion Sunday, writing that the federal government certainly does have the authority to return Abrego García and that while Trump officials have also alleged he is a gang member, they have offered “no evidence” to prove that.

The judge noted that the Trump administration is paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to detain Abrego García and other deportees. An agreement between the two countries states that U.S. officials will decide what happens to the detainees in the future.

I suggest we offer them Trump in exchange for holding a new election.  Then, there’s just the rest of us.  I was excited that my social security check hit my account this morning.  That was good news.  But this still tells us we shouldn’t take too much for granted. This is again from the Washington Post, which I try not to use gratuitously. “Social Security website keeps crashing, as DOGE demands cuts to IT staff. The worsening problems come as Elon Musk’s DOGE team pushes for more cuts at the agency, including in the department that oversees the website.”  I still wonder which of our press and prestigious law firms are supporting the constitutional version of their businesses.

Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with theagency online.

The website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in.

The problems come as the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, led by Elon Musk, has imposed a downsizing that’s led to7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees at an agency that serves 73 million Americans. The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology divisionresponsible for the website and other electronic access.

Many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team, current and former officials said. The technology staff did not test the new software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, these officials said.

The technology issues have been particularly alarming for some of the most vulnerable Social Security customers. For almost two days last week, for example,many of the 7.4 million adults and children receiving monthly benefits under the anti-poverty program known as Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, confronted a jarring message that claimed they were “currently not receiving payments,” agency officials acknowledged in an internal email to staff.

Why do Republicans love fertilized eggs and hate children?

Okay, so this one kills me because I know too much about the subject area.  But it’s another Black Monday on Wall Street. This is from Bloomberg News’ Timothy O’Brien. “Trump Created an Economic Sinkhole. He Doesn’t Care. There is no strategy behind the tariff chaos — it’s all about personal grievances and settling scores.”

Trump had routinely called for steep tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners during his presidential campaign, and analysts who took his threats seriously produced research indicating that his policies would reduce economic growth and personal incomes. But a tariff regime built on a war-footing seemed so extreme to some observers and Trump allies that they looked for other explanations. His chaotic policy approach — he initially would set a deadline for new tariffs and then suddenly back off — meant that he wasn’t really committed to his own agenda. Tariff Ping-Pong was just a Great Dealmaker ploy meant to get other nations to capitulate, his enablers argued.

Well, times have changed. Trump announced a massive new round of global tariffs last week and over the next two days $5.4 trillion of value was shredded as equity markets cratered. Some Wall Streeters see Trump’s tariffs plans and the future more clearly now.

“This is unambiguously stupid,” Jay Hatfield, the CEO of Infrastructure Capital Advisors, told Bloomberg News over the weekend. He labeled the tariffs poster Trump trotted out in his Rose Garden press conference last week as the “chart of death” and invoked disaster. “It’s a five-alarm fire,” he said. “There’s no argument for creating a trade war whatsoever.”

Anyone hoping that Trump will soon see the light and reverse course might want to reconsider the force of nature that they’re dealing with. He has been insulated from the consequences of his own actions his entire life and appears to care very little about the economic sinkhole he just created. He shared a video of himself golfing over the weekend and one White House insider told the Washington Post that the president, only about three months into his second term, carries the burdens of a notoriously burdensome job rather lightly.

“He’s at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,” the official noted. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f—. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

The Post also reported that it was Trump himself who selected the tragicomic “formula” that his administration used to calculate tariff penalties. That’s the formula that somehow positioned Cambodia and Thailand at the top of the heap of countries posing major economic threats to the US and also caused tariffs to be imposed on uninhabited islands near Antarctica. The Post said Trump didn’t finalize his plans until about three hours before he shared them with the world last week.

Trump has likened his much-maligned tariffs salvo as necessary medicine the world needs to swallow.

“THE OPERATION IS OVER! THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING,” he allowed in a post to his social media platform. “THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Given Trump’s worldview, pondering “strategy” is a fool’s errand and asking “What is the administration trying to accomplish?” is the wrong question. There isn’t a strategy. Trump operates in strategy-free zones. But he has overt and longstanding goals.

His primary aim is to address his grievances with the world, not to craft substantive or even rational public policy. An inordinate number of his goals involve self-aggrandizement or self-preservation. Many others are performative and unhinged. A meaningful number of his ambitions involve seeking revenge on people, institutions, and organizations that he believes have taken advantage of him, the country or his supporters. He has a long history of labeling America’s trading partners, some of whom are the US’s closest allies, as pickpockets and he’s now in a position to do something about it.

Well, at least I know where that stupid formula came from.  But, since this is hitting everyone’s pocketbook, will it finally wake some of the little MAGA guys up? Noah Berlatsky, writing at Public Notice, says yes. “Trump’s tariffs insanity begins to fracture the MAGA cult. Republican resistance is helpful. But more of it is needed.”

Trump’s decision to single-handedly hobble the world economy and immiserate tens of millions of Americans has presented his fellow Republicans with a stark choice. Do they continue to kiss his orange butt and slavishly nod along to every nonsensical whim of their idiot Golfer King as he leads them into a recession and almost certain electoral apocalypse? Or do they defy him, splitting the party and opening themselves to a primary challenge … and possible electoral apocalypse?

The good news is that some GOP senators and members of Congress are actually disturbed enough by the prospect of their voters starving in the street that they have taken steps to push back against this grotesquely self-destructive trade policy. The not so good news is that the pushback is hesitant and half-hearted — and the majority of the party remains ready to torture and impoverish their constituents for the greater glory of Trump.

The tariffs, and the quick slide into economic calamity, have sparked real resistance. They’ve also demonstrated just how craven and/or hypnotized the GOP has become, and the extent to which most Republicans would do anything — literally anything — rather than point out that the emperor is wearing a grotesque meat suit made of the skin of his constituents.

As they are wont to do, many Republicans have gotten on their bellies to grovel and spout the usual Trump-flattering balderdash, either because they are desperate to propitiate their master or because they are genuinely fools.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been leading the charge of the sycophants. In interviews he’s blathered that Trump’s trade policy would force other countries to “stop picking on us” and bleated, “Let Donald Trump run the global economy. He knows what he’s doing.”

The only explanation I can come up with for a leader that obliterates not only his best allies but also his own country is that #FARTUS is patently insane.  He’s gone nuclear on nearly everyone, including penguins.

So I am very tired, and I still have to teach tonight.  I’ll let you share any of the things you find interesting.  At least with this post, we have identified several Secretaries who must be charged with crimes against humanity, all with FARTUS.

 What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

“My God, what have we done?” – Bob Lewis, copilot #shorts #history #hiroshima #historyuncovered