August 31, 2025 (Sunday)

Almost one hundred and forty-three years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade. The parade almost didn’t happen: there was no band, and no one wanted to start marching without music. Once the Jewelers Union of Newark Two showed up with musicians, the rest of the marchers, eventually numbering between 10,000 and 20,000 men and women, fell in behind them to parade through lower Manhattan. At noon, when they reached the end of the route, the march broke up and the participants listened to speeches, drank beer, and had picnics. Other workers joined them.

Their goal was to emphasize the importance of workers in the industrializing economy and to warn politicians that they could not be ignored. Less than 20 years before, northern men had fought a war to defend a society based on free labor and had, they thought, put in place a government that would support the ability of all hardworking men to rise to prosperity.

By 1882, though, factories and the fortunes they created had swung the government toward men of capital, and workingmen worried they would lose their rights if they didn’t work together. A decade before, the Republican Party, which had formed to protect free labor, had thrown its weight behind Wall Street. By the 1880s, even the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune complained about the links between business and government: “Behind every one of half of the portly and well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation,” it wrote. The Senate, Harper’s Weekly noted, was “a club of rich men.”

The workers marching in New York City carried banners saying: “Labor Built This Republic and Labor Shall Rule It,” “Labor Creates All Wealth,” “No Land Monopoly,” “No Money Monopoly,” “Labor Pays All Taxes,” “The Laborer Must Receive and Enjoy the Full Fruit of His Labor,” ‘Eight Hours for a Legal Day’s Work,” and “The True Remedy Is Organization and the Ballot.”

The New York Times denied that workers were any special class in the United States, saying that “very one who works with his brain, who applies accumulated capital to industry, who directs or facilitates the operations of industry and the exchange of its products, is just as truly a laboring man as he who toils with his hands…and each contributes to the creation of wealth and the payment of taxes and is entitled to a share in the fruits of labor in proportion to the value of his service in the production of net results.”

In other words, the growing inequality in the country was a function of the greater value of bosses than their workers, and the government could not possibly adjust that equation. The New York Daily Tribune scolded the workers for holding a political—even a “demagogical”—event. “It is one thing to organize a large force of…workingmen…when they are led to believe that the demonstration is purely non-partisan; but quite another thing to lead them into a political organization….”

Two years later, workers helped to elect Democrat Grover Cleveland to the White House. A number of Republicans crossed over to support the reformer, afraid that, as he said, “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

In 1888, Cleveland won the popular vote by about 100,000 votes, but his Republican opponent, Benjamin Harrison, won in the Electoral College. Harrison promised that his would be “A BUSINESS MAN’S ADMINISTRATION” and said that “before the close of the present Administration business men will be thoroughly well content with it….”

Businessmen mostly were, but the rest of the country wasn’t. In November 1892 a Democratic landslide put Cleveland back in office, along with the first Democratic Congress since before the Civil War. As soon as the results of the election became apparent, the Republicans declared that the economy would collapse. Harrison’s administration had been “beyond question the best business administration the country has ever seen,” one businessmen’s club insisted, so losing it could only be a calamity. “The Republicans will be passive spectators,” the Chicago Tribune noted. “It will not be their funeral.” People would be thrown out of work, but “erhaps the working classes of the country need such a lesson….”

As investors rushed to take their money out of the U.S. stock market, the economy collapsed a few days before Cleveland took office in early March 1893. Trying to stabilize the economy by enacting the proposals capitalists wanted, Cleveland and the Democratic Congress had to abandon many of the pro-worker policies they had promised, and the Supreme Court struck down the rest (including the income tax).

They could, however, support Labor Day and its indication of workers’ political power. On June 28, 1894, Cleveland signed Congress’s bill making Labor Day a legal holiday.
In Chicago the chair of the House Labor Committee, Lawrence McGann (D-IL), told the crowd gathered for the first official observance: “Let us each Labor day, hold a congress and formulate propositions for the amelioration of the people. Send them to your Representatives with your earnest, intelligent indorsement , and the laws will be changed.”

From her Facebook page…

“I hope everyone had a happy and relaxing Labor Day.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow.”

September 2, 2025 (Tuesday)

In the early hours of Sunday morning, in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, the Trump administration attempted to take children out of government custody and ship them alone to their country of origin, Guatemala.

On Friday, Priscilla Alvarez of CNN broke the story that the administration was planning to move up to 600 children from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where they are held according to law until they can be released to a relative or a guardian living in the U.S. who can take care of them while their case for asylum in the U.S. is being processed.

ORR is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission, according to its website, is to promote the health, well-being, and stability of refugees, unaccompanied alien children, and other eligible individuals and families, through culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and strengths-based services. Our vision is for all new arrivals to be welcomed with equitable, high-quality services and resources so they can maximize their potential.”

Alvarez notes that unaccompanied migrant children are considered a vulnerable population and are covered by the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. That law gives them enhanced protections and care, making sure they are screened to see if they have been trafficked or are afraid of persecution in the country they come from. Congress has specified that such children can be removed from the country only under special circumstances.

Nonetheless, the administration appears to have removed about 76 of these children from the custody of ORR—the only agency with legal authority to hold them—where they were waiting to be released to a relative or guardian, and transferred them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Once they were in ICE custody, the administration planned “to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture,” according to a U.S. court.

At about 1:00 in the morning, Eastern Time, on Sunday, August 31, advocates for the children filed a suit to prevent the administration from removing them. Shortly after 2:30 in the morning, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan got a phone call about the case, and by 4:00 she had issued an emergency order blocking the removal and scheduled a hearing for 3:00 that afternoon. She moved it up to 12:30 when she learned that the administration was already moving some children out of the country.

Legal analyst Anna Bower was on the call for the hearing and reported that Sooknanan said: “I got a call at 2:36 am because the government chose the wee hours of the morning on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend to execute a plan to move these children. That’s why we’re here. And I tried to reach the government. I have been up since then…and didn’t reach anyone from the government until later this morning. And the imminence that the plaintiff claimed proved true, because, in fact, those planes were loaded. One actually took off and was returned. And so, absent action and intervention by the court, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to extremely dangerous situations.”

Some of the children were actually in a plane to be removed while the hearing was underway. Sooknanan required the government to report to her when each child was back in ORR custody. By noon Monday, according to the government’s lawyers, all the children were back in ORR custody.

The rush to deport children in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, in apparent violation of the law, looked a great deal like the administration’s removal of undocumented immigrants from Venezuela to the notorious terrorist CECOT prison in El Salvador in March. At the time, President Donald J. Trump denied that he had signed the order invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act the administration used to justify the rendition of the men to El Salvador. “Other people handled it,” he said, even though his signature is on the document that appears in the Federal Register.

Trump’s apparent distance from that earlier removal comes to mind now because the other big story over Labor Day weekend was Trump’s relative disappearance from public view since last Tuesday. As Garrett Graff of Doomsday Scenario recorded, Trump, who normally talks to the press as often as possible, had no public appearances on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Coming on top of Vice President J.D. Vance’s odd comment in an interview with USA Today last week that he was ready to be president if needed—“I’ve gotten a lot of good on-the-job training over the past 200 days,” he said—rumors flew. Over the weekend, “Is Trump dead?” was one of Google’s top searches.

Although he posted “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE” on social media on Sunday, Trump continued to keep a long distance between himself and the press.

Trump appeared today in the Oval Office—an hour late—to announce he would move Space Force headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, apparently to put the rumors of his ill health to rest.

At the event, Trump referred to the recent court decision declaring many of his tariffs illegal, saying that “if you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country.” In fact, the country’s economy has slowed significantly since Trump instituted his tariffs, and Trump’s agenda continues to take hits.

Yesterday, nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents reaching back to President Jimmy Carter, published an op-ed in the New York Times warning that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “is endangering every American’s health.”

William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle P. Walensky, and Mandy K. Cohen listed their concerns about Kennedy’s policies. He “has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more,” they wrote.

“Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage.”

Kennedy’s firing of CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez last Wednesday, a firing Trump approved, appears to have been the event that spurred the former directors to speak up as a group. They wrote that what Kennedy has done to the CDC and to public health in the U.S. since taking office is “unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.”

The former CDC directors warned that the health of every American is at risk. They urged Congress to exercise its authority over the Department of Health and Human Services, state and local governments and private philanthropy to cover the funding Kennedy has killed, and physicians to support their patients, and they called upon all Americans to “look out for one another.”
A post on Trump’s social media account yesterday morning seemed to try to blame “Drug Companies” for “let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC,” suggesting that administration officials are aware that there is a political backlash brewing over the administration’s assault on public health.

The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, says the administration is deliberately “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” Today, more than 85 scientists released a joint review of the U.S. Department of Energy’s new climate report, saying it was “biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policymaking.”

Trump’s attempt to defend Russian president Vladimir Putin took another hit yesterday when Russia appeared to jam the GPS of an airplane carrying European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to Bulgaria. The European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union, which has stood firm against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and continues to support Ukraine. Russia appears to have been jamming plane GPS in the airspace around the Baltic coast since it invaded Ukraine again in 2022 but denies it is doing so.

A source told the Financial Times that the pilots of the plane carrying von der Leyen had to land using paper maps.

Today, Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegesth, and the Department of Defense acted illegally when they used the Marines and the National Guard in Los Angeles, California. (As legal analyst Bower noted, whether their deployment of the military is legal is a separate case now pending before the Ninth Circuit.)

Judge Breyer noted that Congress had spoken clearly when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878, prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law. “Nevertheless,” the judge wrote, “at Defendants’ orders and contrary to Congress’s explicit instruction, federal troops executed the laws.” Evidence at trial showed that armed soldiers set up protective perimeters and traffic blockages, engaged in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrated a military presence in and around Los Angeles. “In short,” he concluded, the “Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”

Breyer noted that 300 troops still remain in Los Angeles, and he warned that Trump and Hegseth have “stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal service in other cities across the country…thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief.” The judge prohibited the defendants “from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants.” Breyer stayed the order until noon on September 12 to give the administration time to appeal.

Yesterday, Americans turned out across the country to protest Trump and the administration, and popular anger at government overreach may be showing in the legal system as well. Six times now, federal grand juries have declined to indict defendants picked up in connection with Trump’s deployment of troops in Washington, D.C. Although right-wing media is slamming Judge James Boasberg today for releasing Nathalie Rose Jones after she made threats against Trump, a grand jury refused to indict her.

More famously, a grand jury last week refused to indict Sean Dunn, the former Justice Department paralegal who threw a submarine sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer. The government charged Dunn with felony assault, for which he would have faced up to eight years in prison if convicted. Although officers tackled Dunn at the scene, the government later posted a dramatic video of heavily armed law enforcement officers going to Dunn’s apartment to arrest him.

As Liz Oyer, a former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, said: “What’s so extraordinary about this is it shows that we the citizens are the last line of defense for our democracy…and we the citizens are standing strong.”

Neophyte said:

September 2, 2025 (Tuesday)

In the early hours of Sunday morning, in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, the Trump administration attempted to take children out of government custody and ship them alone to their country of origin, Guatemala.

As Liz Oyer, a former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, said: “What’s so extraordinary about this is it shows that we the citizens are the last line of defense for our democracy…and we the citizens are standing strong.”

Very strong anti humanitarian values running through Trump’s Administration.

Profit over lives.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Neophyte said:

September 2, 2025 (Tuesday)

In the early hours of Sunday morning, in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, the Trump administration attempted to take children out of government custody and ship them alone to their country of origin, Guatemala.

As Liz Oyer, a former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, said: “What’s so extraordinary about this is it shows that we the citizens are the last line of defense for our democracy…and we the citizens are standing strong.”

Very strong anti humanitarian values running through Trump’s Administration.

Profit over lives.

well it’s important we mean if you can’t run a healthy profit then how can you afford to pay for all those lives

September 3, 2025 (Wednesday)

A Wall Street Journal–NORC poll released yesterday found that only 25% of Americans believe they have a good chance of improving their standard of living. Nearly 70% said it was no longer possible to work hard and get ahead. A majority of those polled said the generation before them had an easier time starting a business, buying a home, or staying at home to parent a child.

A different piece in the Wall Street Journal explained that there were 927 American billionaires in 2020 and 1,135 in 2024. Together, they are worth about $5.7 trillion. The 100 richest of the set control more than half of the total at about $3.86 trillion. As the number of billionaires grew, “supply side” economic policies in the U.S., designed to concentrate wealth at the top of the economy among investors rather than on the “demand side” made up of consumers, hollowed out the middle class. From 1975 to 2018, at least $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

Yet another piece in the Wall Street Journal, this one by Katherine Hamilton and Alison Sider, noted that consumer confidence is sliding. While wealthier Americans seem to be doing fine, they write, rising distress about the economy is obvious among the middle class: those making about $53,000 to $161,000 a year. Chief economist at Morning Consult John Leer told the reporters: “There was a period of time, briefly, where the middle-income consumer looked like they were being dragged up by all that was going well in the world. Then things fell off a cliff.”

In an interview with the Financial Times published yesterday, billionaire Ray Dalio, the founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, warned that the U.S. today looks a lot like “what happened around the world in the 1930–1940 period.” Dalio identified the policies of President Donald J. Trump as the sort of “strong autocratic leadership that sprang out of the desire to take control of the financial and economic situation” in the 1930s.

Trump’s rise in 2016 was fueled in part by his promise to defend those left behind in the supply-side economy. But he abandoned his economic promises with his 2017 tax cuts that benefited the wealthy and corporations far more than average Americans, and rallied his supporters with culture-war issues.

In 2024, Trump ran on the argument that Democrat Joe Biden had not adequately addressed inflation—although the U.S. managed the post-pandemic inflation spike better than any other developed economy—promising that he would make prices come down “immediately.” Instead, his tariffs and deportations have sent inflation upward again, and the budget reconciliation bill he forced through Congress is already pushing people off their healthcare insurance and threatening the survival of rural hospitals.

The law Trump and the Republicans dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is profoundly unpopular, with about two thirds of Americans opposed to it. So today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, and Trump political director James Blair met with Republican congress members to tell them that people will come to like the law if “they completely rebrand it and talk about it differently.”

The administration officials told the congress members, who have been hearing from constituents angry about the law’s deep spending cuts, that they should be pushing the idea that the law helps “working families.” Vice President J.D. Vance tried this last week in Wisconsin, and this afternoon, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) appeared to take that advice out for a spin, publicly referring to the law the same way Vance did: as the “working families tax cut act.”

The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that under the law, a family earning less than $50,000 a year would get less than $300 in tax cuts in 2027 while losing access to Medicaid and food assistance, while a filer earning more than $1 million would receive about $90,000 in tax breaks. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 10% of Americans at the bottom of the economy will lose about $1,200 a year.

Trump’s policies are working well for his family, though. Angus Berwick of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Monday launch of their WLFI cryptocurrency netted them about $5 billion on paper. Today Eric Trump launched American Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency mining company; Kyle Khan-Mullins and Dan Alexander of Forbes reported today that he is now worth at least $3.2 billion.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to insist that he must have the powers of a dictator to make the country prosperous again. When a court found his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify his sweeping tariffs was illegal, he said, “If you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country,” although the U.S. was not a third-world country before Trump launched his tariff war in April. He has said he will take the case before the Supreme Court.

If he loses there, as Elisabeth Buchwald wrote for CNN, the U.S. might have to pay back more than $210 billion to the American businesses that have paid the tariffs. On Monday, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo pointed to a story Louise Matsakis and Zoë Schiffer of Wired reported in late July: Wall Street companies, including Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company run by the sons of billionaire commerce secretary Howard Lutnick since Lutnick joined the Trump administration, have been buying up the rights to collect tariff refunds if the tariffs are struck down.

Marshall notes that while making a bet on an uncertain outcome is a huge part of modern finance, the idea that a commerce secretary’s company is making bets on something the commerce secretary has significant authority over is a perfect symbol of the Trump era.

While the Trump family and loyalists cash in on their control of the government, Trump continues to assert that he requires authoritarian powers to “Make America Great Again.”

Trump has relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s defense of his leeway as the nation’s leader in foreign affairs, and after being stymied by the courts for its actions at home, the administration yesterday announced it had blown up a boat in international waters in the Caribbean with eleven people on it, alleging the boat was carrying illegal drugs to the United States from Venezuela. Although U.S. forces could have stopped the boat without destroying it and often do so, shooting at engines, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the boat posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” so the U.S. had the right to destroy it. Perhaps thinking it demonstrated power, the administration circulated a video of the strike.

Legal analyst Ryan Goodman wrote: “I worked at . I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be “murder” or war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable.”

Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell told John Hudson, Samantha Schmidt, and Alex Horton of the Washington Post that the strike violated international law. “When the president decides this is a person who can be killed summarily, there’s no restraint on him,” she told the reporters. “It’s a very dangerous new move,” since he could decide to launch similar strikes within the United States in pursuit of those he calls drug traffickers.

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the strike was “deeply concerning,” noting that “he administration has not identified the authority under which this action was taken, raising the question of its legality and constitutionality.” Smith added: “The lack of information and transparency from the administration is even more concerning. Does this mean Trump thinks he can use the U.S. military anywhere drugs exist, are sold, or shipped? What is the risk of dragging the United States into yet another military conflict?”

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted that the justification for the strike was dubious enough that even Rubio appeared to want a little distance from it, as he made a point of specifying that the U.S. acted “on the president’s orders.”

Trump has attempted to demonstrate authoritarian power with his military displays in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and yesterday he announced that “we’re going in” to Chicago, although he didn’t offer any specifics. After Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker rejected the idea the president could simply send troops, Trump appeared to back off, saying Pritzker should ask him for help. “When did we become a country where it’s OK for the U.S. president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything—especially something we don’t want?” Pritzker said. “Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation, that we treat this as normal?”

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows just 38% of Americans approve of Trump’s deployment of troops in Washington, D.C.

Trump has reason to be afraid of the American people for another reason, too: they want to see the files from the federal investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, especially now that they know Trump is mentioned in those files. Speaker Johnson dismissed the House early for its August break this year to avoid having to deal with the demands of members for the release of the files, but now Congress is back in session and the demands are right back on the table. Trump has tried to stop Republicans from asking for the files by warning such a demand would be seen as a hostile act against the administration.

Today the administration arranged a military flyover during the visit of President Karol Nawrocki of Poland, in honor of a Polish army pilot killed in a training exercise. The flyover occurred just at the time more than 100 of the women who survived sexual grooming, assault, and rape in their association with Epstein and his associate, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, spoke at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, drowning out their words.

But it did not silence the words of survivor Jess Michaels.

“For 27 years, I thought I was the only one that Jeffrey Epstein raped. I believed I was alone, and I was kept silent by the shame that was inside me and by the fear outside in the world,” she said. “But I wasn’t the only one. None of us were. And what once kept us silent now fuels that fire and the power of our voices. We are not the footnotes in some infamous predator’s tabloid article. We are the experts and the subjects of this story. We are the proof that fear did not break us. And we don’t just speak for ourselves, but for every survivor whose story is still unspoken…. This is what power looks like. Survivors united, voices joined, refusing to be dismissed. Know this: justice and accountability are not favors from the powerful. They are obligations, decades overdue. This moment began with Epstein’s crimes, but it’s going to be remembered for survivors demanding justice, demanding truth, demanding accountability, and we will not stop until survivor voices shape justice, transform culture, and define the future. We are no longer whispers. We are one powerful voice, too loud to ignore, and we will never be silenced again.”

I’d just got that formatted and fortunately I checked before I hit submit – you beat me by a minute!

buffy said:

I’d just got that formatted and fortunately I checked before I hit submit – you beat me by a minute!

:-D

Felt like I was herding cats today.

I got pulled off my regular classes to be with the preps. But, other teachers were away so their classes got split up and extra kids put into every other class, so we ended up with three extras. One of these kids, I was with yesterday, and they were having some behavioural challenges. Today, this kid displayed exemplary behaviour, so much so that I’ve emailed the regular teacher to say how proud she’d be of this kid.

I didn’t feel like I was much help today, but the prep teacher said I did an awesome job. She’s not one for BS.

Divine Angel said:

Felt like I was herding cats today.

I got pulled off my regular classes to be with the preps. But, other teachers were away so their classes got split up and extra kids put into every other class, so we ended up with three extras. One of these kids, I was with yesterday, and they were having some behavioural challenges. Today, this kid displayed exemplary behaviour, so much so that I’ve emailed the regular teacher to say how proud she’d be of this kid.

I didn’t feel like I was much help today, but the prep teacher said I did an awesome job. She’s not one for BS.

so problem kids just need to be split up and put in different classes and boom well behaved kids just like that

September 4, 2025 (Thursday)

Senators challenged the decisions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. as he testified before the Senate Finance Committee for about three hours today. Kennedy has slashed through thousands of advisors and staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who do not share his animosity toward vaccines and has canceled $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccine research. Last week he fired the newly confirmed director of the CDC, Susan Monarez, when she refused to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel Kennedy had stacked with anti-vaccine advocates.

Because of Kennedy’s history of repeating debunked lies and breaking promises he made to the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the highest ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked that the committee swear Kennedy in before he began his testimony. Committee chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) declined. Wyden said: “This committee’s unwillingness to swear this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines.”

During his testimony, Kennedy insisted his purges are designed to restore faith in the CDC after it “failed miserably” during the coronavirus pandemic. He called the CDC “the most corrupt agency at HHS, and maybe the government.” He denied the official tally that more than 1.2 million Americans have died from Covid-19, and denied that new government guidelines for the covid vaccine mean that people cannot get them. He was combative and seemed angry that he was being questioned. He repeatedly suggested Democratic senators were lying when they quoted facts or data that didn’t fit his narrative.

Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who was instrumental in securing Kennedy’s confirmation, noted that pharmacies might not offer covid vaccines after Kennedy said the shots are no longer recommended for healthy adults under 65 or for children. Cassidy said “Effectively, we’re denying people vaccines.” Kennedy retorted: “You’re wrong.”

On Monday, nine former directors of the CDC wrote an op-ed in the New York Times warning that Kennedy is “endangering every American’s health,” and yesterday more than 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services wrote a public letter saying that Kennedy is endangering the health of the nation by spreading inaccurate information. They called for Kennedy to resign or be fired.

Former CDC director Monarez published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today warning that Kennedy and his anti-vaccine colleagues “use a familiar playbook: discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay. Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. That isn’t reform. It is sabotage.”

Egged on by President Donald J. Trump in summer 2020, people involved in the MAGA movement zeroed in on government attempts to combat the coronavirus pandemic as an assault on their freedom. Now Kennedy and adherents of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) branch of MAGA are attacking vaccines in general as a government assault on freedom.

In a letter issued to the states today, the Department of Health and Human Services reiterated that states “must respect state religious and conscience exemptions from vaccine mandates.” It reiterated Kennedy’s position that American freedom dictates the removal of the government’s power to require Americans to get vaccines. “States have the authority to balance public health goals with individual freedom,” the letter quotes Kennedy as saying. “Protecting both public health and personal liberty is how we restore faith in our institutions and Make America Healthy Again.”

Yesterday, Florida became the first state to move to eliminate all vaccine requirements for public school students. If the state legislature agrees, the move would end Florida’s previously required vaccinations for polio, tetanus, chicken pox, hepatitis B, and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). No state mandates the covid vaccine.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said that every government vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” He added: “People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your god. I don’t have that right. Government does not have that right.” After Florida’s announcement, CNN’s Aaron Blake noted, top Trump health advisor Mehmet Oz appeared to agree with it, saying on the Fox News Channel: “I would definitely not have mandates for vaccinations.”

For decades, the Republican Party has called for the dismantling of government regulations with the argument that such regulations were destroying American freedom. As Ronald Reagan put it in 1964 in his speech supporting Barry Goldwater for president, on the one hand there was “individual freedom consistent with law and order,” and on the other hand was “the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

But the fight over vaccines illustrates the difference between freedom from government overreach and freedom to build a life that is not cramped by preventable obstacles. The CDC estimates that between 1994 and 2003, childhood vaccinations prevented 32 million hospitalizations and 1,129,000 deaths among children, and saved at least $540 billion. Removing those vaccines removes the individual freedom to determine one’s future.

While they might not articulate these two very different forms of freedom, Americans certainly seem aware of them and appear eager to preserve the concept that the government has a role to play in protecting individuals’ freedom to build a life free of preventable obstacles. A KFF poll released today shows that 81% of American parents support public school requirements that students be vaccinated for measles and polio. In Florida, that number is 82%.

Even as Kennedy and Florida reject vaccines as government overreach that restricts freedom, Democratic states are embracing them as protecting Americans’ freedom to live without the threat of illness or death from preventable diseases. Yesterday, California, Oregon, and Washington announced a “West Coast Health Alliance” to coordinate information about vaccines and public health based in science rather than ideology. Nine states in the Northeast are forming a similar “Northeast Public Health Collaboration.”

Today Massachusetts governor Maura Healey announced measures to make sure vaccines continue to be available to all Massachusetts residents, despite the restrictions set out by Trump and Kennedy. “We won’t let Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy get between patients and their doctors,” Healey said. “When the federal government fails to protect public health, Massachusetts will step up. The actions we are announcing today will make sure people can continue to get the vaccines they need and want in Massachusetts.”

At the turn of the last century, when wealthy industrialists controlled Congress and the Supreme Court and prevented federal laws from addressing the abuses of industrialization and the concentration of wealth, certain state governments stepped in to figure out how to use government power to protect their citizens. Under Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Wisconsin led the way, bringing together researchers, lawmakers, and state officials to craft policies that would end corruption, promote education and social welfare, and create a strong and fair economy.

The “Wisconsin Idea” made that state “literally a laboratory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole,” Republican president Theodore Roosevelt wrote. “All through the Union we need to learn the Wisconsin lesson.” His presidency launched the idea that the government must defend Americans’ right to live free of economic coercion, industrial pollution, and laws that privilege corporations.

Aside from using the idea of freedom from government overreach to get rid of vaccine mandates, the Trump administration appears generally to have jettisoned that Republican position. Instead, it is using the power of the government to attack those it perceives as political enemies, the same charge made by the House of Representatives against President Richard M. Nixon as it considered impeachment proceedings in 1974.

Today the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into Lisa Cook, a governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve, for allegedly committing mortgage fraud by claiming two separate properties as her primary residence. Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of Pro Publica reported today that three of Trump’s own Cabinet members—Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin—have all done the same.

A video released today by right-wing activist James O’Keefe—who often edits his material to mislead viewers—showed the Department of Justice’s acting deputy chief of special operations, Joseph Schnitt, saying that Jeffrey Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison camp because the government is “offering her something to keep her mouth shut.” He also told an undercover journalist that both that the Epstein files exist and that before their release, the government will “redact every Republican and conservative person in those files and leave all the liberal, Democratic people.”

Tonight the Department of Justice published what appears to be an apology of sorts that confirms the material in the video. In an apparent screenshot of an email, Schnitt says he was talking to a woman he had met on a dating app and that his comments were “my own personal comments on what I’ve learned in the media and not from anything I’ve done or learned via work.”

Even more dramatic a government assault on freedom is the administration’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and its threat to deploy troops in Chicago and other cities. Now it has gone so far as to assert the government’s power to order the military to kill individuals Trump declares are gang members smuggling drugs, as it did by apparently killing 11 people on what they claimed was a drug boat.

With Trump and his loyalists abandoning the avowed Republican commitment to freedom from government overreach except when it serves their political interests—by attacking vaccines, for example—Americans determined to prevent the dismantling of our modern government are beginning to speak up to defend government protection of our freedom to live without unwarranted outside interference.

Recently, the 18 universities that make up the Big Ten Conference announced they will be running an ad during sporting events that “focuses on how Big Ten universities make America healthier, safer and more prosperous through everything from discovering new medical treatments to developing healthier foods to driving economic growth.”

Pushing back on the Trump administration’s attacks against universities and scientific research, they intend to highlight the importance of their work for the public good.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr N.

:)

September 5, 2025 (Friday)

Today President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, although the 1947 abandonment of the Department of War name was not simply a matter of substituting a new name for the original one. In 1947, to bring order and efficiency to U.S. military forces, Congress renamed the Department of War as the Department of the Army, then brought it, together with the Department of the Navy and a new Department of the Air Force, into a newly established “National Military Establishment” overseen by the secretary of defense.

In 1949, Congress replaced the National Military Establishment name, whose initials sounded unfortunately like “enemy,” with Department of Defense. The new name emphasized that the Allied Powers of World War II would join together to focus on deterring wars by standing against offensive wars launched by big countries against their smaller neighbors. Although Trump told West Point graduates this year that “he military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime, and any place,” in fact, the stated mission of the Department of Defense is “to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”

As Amanda Castro and Hannah Parry of Newsweek note, in August, Trump said he wanted the change because “Defense is too defensive…we want to be offensive too if we have to be.” By law, Congress must approve the change, which Politico estimates will cost billions of dollars, although Trump said: “I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don’t think we even need that.” By this evening, nameplates and signage bearing the new name had gone up in government offices and the URL for the Defense Department website had been changed to war gov.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has pushed the change because he sees it as part of his campaign to spread a “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon. Today he said the name change was part of “restoring intentionality to the use of force…. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this War Department, Mr. President, just like America, is back.”

In 1947, when the country dropped the “War Department” name, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army—the highest-ranking officer on active duty—was five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is unusual for anyone to suggest that Eisenhower, who led the Allied troops in World War II, was insufficiently committed to military strength. Indeed, the men who changed the name to “Defense Department” and tried to create a rules-based international order did so precisely because war was not a game to them. Having seen the carnage of war not just on the battlefield but among civilians who faced firebombing, death camps, homelessness, starvation, and the obscenity of atomic weapons, they hoped to find a way to make sure insecure, power-hungry men could not start another war easily.

The Movement Conservatives who took over the Republican Party in the 1980s leaned heavily on a mythologized image of the American cowboy as a strong, independent individual who wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone. That image supported decades of attacks on the modern government as “socialism,” and it has now metastasized in the MAGA movement to suggest that the men in charge of the government should be able to do whatever they want.

Just what that looks like was made clear on Wednesday when the Trump administration launched a strike on a boat carrying 11 civilians it claimed were smuggling drugs. Covering the story, the New York Times reported that “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

Today, David Philipps and Matthew Cole reported another military strike approved by Trump in his first term that was previously undisclosed. In the New York Times, they reported that in early 2019, Trump okayed a Navy SEAL mission to plant an electronic device in North Korea. The plan went awry when their activity near the shore attracted a civilian fishing boat with two or three men diving for shellfish. The SEALs killed the men on the boat, punctured their lungs with knives so the bodies would sink, abandoned the mission, and returned to base.

The administration never notified the Gang of Eight, the eight leaders of Congress who must be briefed on intelligence activities unless the president thinks it is essential to limit access to information about a covert operation. The Gang of Eight is made up of the leaders of both parties in each chamber of Congress, as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the intelligence committee of each chamber.

Military officials appear concerned that Trump might continue to send personnel into precarious missions. Those who were involved in or knew about the North Korea mission said they were speaking up now because they are worried that such failures are often hidden and that if the public only hears about successful operations, “they may underestimate the extreme risks American forces undertake.”

Trump’s promise that his demonstrations of strength would make the U.S. a leader on the international stage is also falling apart. Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios reported that in a conversation yesterday with European Union leaders, Trump backed away from his promises to increase pressure on Russia to stop its war against Ukraine and instead told the leaders they must do it themselves.

Also yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the administration will no longer help to fund military training and infrastructure in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, Baltic nations vulnerable to Russian incursions. National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “I am adamant about people not falling prey to conspiracy theories about Trump and the Russians, but this is a classic moment where it’s understandable to ask: If the Russians owned him, how would his actions be any different?”

The administration has not briefed Congress on the change.

Earlier this week, on September 3, leaders Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus met in Beijing to celebrate the anniversary of the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. The day before, Putin described Xi as a dear friend and said the ties between the two leaders are at an “unprecedented level.”

Trump did not appear to take the meeting well. He posted at Xi, reminding him of “the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that the United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader” and adding: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

India’s president, Narendra Modi, also met with Xi this week as Beijing continued to push the idea that it is now the head of a new world order. Trump responded: “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!”

Reality is also intruding on the Republicans’ insistence that only they know how to run the economy.

Although Trump inherited a booming economy, he insisted that it was actually in terrible shape and that his tariffs would bring back manufacturing and make life better for those left behind by 40 years of economic policy that concentrated wealth at the top of society.

In fact, data released Tuesday show that U.S. manufacturing has contracted for six straight months. Economic journalist Catherine Rampell noted that the U.S. has fewer manufacturing jobs today than it had before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The country has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs this year. Seventy-two percent of Texas manufacturers say the tariffs are hurting their businesses. Only 3.7% think the tariffs are helping them.

Yesterday’s immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor battery plant in Georgia is unlikely to send a reassuring message to manufacturers. U.S. agents arrested 475 individuals, more than 300 of whom were South Korean nationals. Included in the sweep were business travelers. In August, Hyundai said it would invest $26 billion in the U.S. through 2028.

Today’s new jobs report, the first since Trump fired the previous director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after accusing her of rigging the numbers for political reasons, was poor. It showed that the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, far below the expected 75,000, while the jobs numbers for June and July were revised downward by 21,000 jobs. The numbers show that the economy is faltering.

Just before the report was due to be released, the BLS website went down, an unfortunate reminder that the bureau is in turmoil. Today Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN confirmed and expanded an August story by David Gilbert of Wired revealing what appears to be an old Twitter account belonging to E.J. Antoni, Trump’s pick to run the BLS. The account posted conspiracy theories and sexist, racist, and homophobic attacks, and parrotted Trump’s talking points.,

Last night, when asked if he would trust today’s job numbers, Trump answered: “Well, we’re going to have to see what the numbers, I don’t know, they come out tomorrow. But the real numbers that I’m talking about are going to be whatever it is. But, uh, will be in a year from now when these monstrous huge beautiful places they’re palaces of genius and when they start opening up. You’re seeing, I think you’ll see job numbers that are absolutely incredible. Right now it’s a lot of construction numbers, but you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before.”

Neophyte said:

September 5, 2025 (Friday)

Today President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, although the 1947 abandonment of the Department of War name was not simply a matter of substituting a new name for the original one. In 1947, to bring order and efficiency to U.S. military forces, Congress renamed the Department of War as the Department of the Army, then brought it, together with the Department of the Navy and a new Department of the Air Force, into a newly established “National Military Establishment” overseen by the secretary of defense.

In 1949, Congress replaced the National Military Establishment name, whose initials sounded unfortunately like “enemy,” with Department of Defense. The new name emphasized that the Allied Powers of World War II would join together to focus on deterring wars by standing against offensive wars launched by big countries against their smaller neighbors. Although Trump told West Point graduates this year that “he military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime, and any place,” in fact, the stated mission of the Department of Defense is “to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”

As Amanda Castro and Hannah Parry of Newsweek note, in August, Trump said he wanted the change because “Defense is too defensive…we want to be offensive too if we have to be.” By law, Congress must approve the change, which Politico estimates will cost billions of dollars, although Trump said: “I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don’t think we even need that.” By this evening, nameplates and signage bearing the new name had gone up in government offices and the URL for the Defense Department website had been changed to war gov.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has pushed the change because he sees it as part of his campaign to spread a “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon. Today he said the name change was part of “restoring intentionality to the use of force…. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this War Department, Mr. President, just like America, is back.”

In 1947, when the country dropped the “War Department” name, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army—the highest-ranking officer on active duty—was five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is unusual for anyone to suggest that Eisenhower, who led the Allied troops in World War II, was insufficiently committed to military strength. Indeed, the men who changed the name to “Defense Department” and tried to create a rules-based international order did so precisely because war was not a game to them. Having seen the carnage of war not just on the battlefield but among civilians who faced firebombing, death camps, homelessness, starvation, and the obscenity of atomic weapons, they hoped to find a way to make sure insecure, power-hungry men could not start another war easily.

The Movement Conservatives who took over the Republican Party in the 1980s leaned heavily on a mythologized image of the American cowboy as a strong, independent individual who wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone. That image supported decades of attacks on the modern government as “socialism,” and it has now metastasized in the MAGA movement to suggest that the men in charge of the government should be able to do whatever they want.

Just what that looks like was made clear on Wednesday when the Trump administration launched a strike on a boat carrying 11 civilians it claimed were smuggling drugs. Covering the story, the New York Times reported that “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

Today, David Philipps and Matthew Cole reported another military strike approved by Trump in his first term that was previously undisclosed. In the New York Times, they reported that in early 2019, Trump okayed a Navy SEAL mission to plant an electronic device in North Korea. The plan went awry when their activity near the shore attracted a civilian fishing boat with two or three men diving for shellfish. The SEALs killed the men on the boat, punctured their lungs with knives so the bodies would sink, abandoned the mission, and returned to base.

The administration never notified the Gang of Eight, the eight leaders of Congress who must be briefed on intelligence activities unless the president thinks it is essential to limit access to information about a covert operation. The Gang of Eight is made up of the leaders of both parties in each chamber of Congress, as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the intelligence committee of each chamber.

Military officials appear concerned that Trump might continue to send personnel into precarious missions. Those who were involved in or knew about the North Korea mission said they were speaking up now because they are worried that such failures are often hidden and that if the public only hears about successful operations, “they may underestimate the extreme risks American forces undertake.”

Trump’s promise that his demonstrations of strength would make the U.S. a leader on the international stage is also falling apart. Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios reported that in a conversation yesterday with European Union leaders, Trump backed away from his promises to increase pressure on Russia to stop its war against Ukraine and instead told the leaders they must do it themselves.

Also yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the administration will no longer help to fund military training and infrastructure in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, Baltic nations vulnerable to Russian incursions. National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “I am adamant about people not falling prey to conspiracy theories about Trump and the Russians, but this is a classic moment where it’s understandable to ask: If the Russians owned him, how would his actions be any different?”

The administration has not briefed Congress on the change.

Earlier this week, on September 3, leaders Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus met in Beijing to celebrate the anniversary of the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. The day before, Putin described Xi as a dear friend and said the ties between the two leaders are at an “unprecedented level.”

Trump did not appear to take the meeting well. He posted at Xi, reminding him of “the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that the United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader” and adding: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

India’s president, Narendra Modi, also met with Xi this week as Beijing continued to push the idea that it is now the head of a new world order. Trump responded: “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!”

Reality is also intruding on the Republicans’ insistence that only they know how to run the economy.

Although Trump inherited a booming economy, he insisted that it was actually in terrible shape and that his tariffs would bring back manufacturing and make life better for those left behind by 40 years of economic policy that concentrated wealth at the top of society.

In fact, data released Tuesday show that U.S. manufacturing has contracted for six straight months. Economic journalist Catherine Rampell noted that the U.S. has fewer manufacturing jobs today than it had before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The country has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs this year. Seventy-two percent of Texas manufacturers say the tariffs are hurting their businesses. Only 3.7% think the tariffs are helping them.

Yesterday’s immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor battery plant in Georgia is unlikely to send a reassuring message to manufacturers. U.S. agents arrested 475 individuals, more than 300 of whom were South Korean nationals. Included in the sweep were business travelers. In August, Hyundai said it would invest $26 billion in the U.S. through 2028.

Today’s new jobs report, the first since Trump fired the previous director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after accusing her of rigging the numbers for political reasons, was poor. It showed that the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, far below the expected 75,000, while the jobs numbers for June and July were revised downward by 21,000 jobs. The numbers show that the economy is faltering.

Just before the report was due to be released, the BLS website went down, an unfortunate reminder that the bureau is in turmoil. Today Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN confirmed and expanded an August story by David Gilbert of Wired revealing what appears to be an old Twitter account belonging to E.J. Antoni, Trump’s pick to run the BLS. The account posted conspiracy theories and sexist, racist, and homophobic attacks, and parrotted Trump’s talking points.,

Last night, when asked if he would trust today’s job numbers, Trump answered: “Well, we’re going to have to see what the numbers, I don’t know, they come out tomorrow. But the real numbers that I’m talking about are going to be whatever it is. But, uh, will be in a year from now when these monstrous huge beautiful places they’re palaces of genius and when they start opening up. You’re seeing, I think you’ll see job numbers that are absolutely incredible. Right now it’s a lot of construction numbers, but you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before.”

FMD.

“ you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before”

Not since the 1930s, anyway.

Divine Angel said:

“ you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before”

Not since the 1930s, anyway.

Job 3:14

Divine Angel said:

“ you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before”

Not since the 1930s, anyway.

:)))

ruby said:

Divine Angel said:

“ you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before”

Not since the 1930s, anyway.

:)))

do you mean (((:)))

September 6, 2025 (Saturday)

Today the social media account of President Donald J. Trump posted an AI-generated image of Trump as if he were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in front of the Chicago skyline with military helicopters and flames and the caption “Chipocalypse Now.” Kilgore loved the war in Vietnam in which he was engaged; his most famous line was “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Over the image, Trump’s social media post read: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The words were followed by three helicopter emojis, symbols the right wing uses to represent former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s goons’ disappearing political opponents by pushing them out of helicopters.

Although it has become trite to speculate about what Republicans would say if a Democratic president engaged in the behavior Trump exhibits daily, this open attack of the president on an American city is a new level of unhinged. Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo wrote: “The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents.” He added, accurately: “In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker called attention to the gravity of Trump’s post: “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Under the words “Know your rights, Illinois,” and “Stay safe and stay informed,” the governor’s social media account posted information about Americans’ rights in both English and Spanish.

Trump’s threats against American citizens are outrageous, but they also feel desperate. Trump’s popularity is tanking, the economy is faltering, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing a chorus of calls to resign or be fired, and the American people are taking to the streets. Thousands of people turned out today in Washington, D.C., for the “We Are All D.C.” march to protest the presence of troops in the city, and in Chicago for the “Chicago Says No Trump No Troops” protest. The protests are notable for the seas of signs the peaceful protesters carry.

And then, with Congress back in session, there is the resurgence of the issue of Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. Last week, the White House warned Republicans that voting to release the Epstein files “would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.” Yesterday, Trump reiterated his claim that the agitation for the release of the files is a “Democrat HOAX…in order to deflect and distract from the great success of a Republican President.”

Also yesterday, lawyers for the Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep the names of two associates who received large payments from Epstein in 2018 secret. Days before the payments, the Miami Herald had started to examine the sweetheart deal Epstein got in 2008. One associate received a payment of $100,000, and the second received $250,000. As part of his plea deal, Tom Winter of NBC News reports, Epstein got a guarantee that the associates would not be prosecuted.

Last night, Trump hosted the inaugural dinner of what the White House is calling the “Rose Garden Club” in the newly-paved White House Rose Garden, telling those assembled that they were there because they are loyal to the president. “You’re the ones that I never had to call at 4:00 in the morning,” Trump told them. “You are the ones that have been my friends, and you know what I’m talking about.”

Yesterday, talking to reporters about the Epstein files, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Trump was “an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.” The idea that Trump was secretly working to bring Epstein down is common fare among conspiracy theorists, but as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests, Johnson’s embrace of it might well be an attempt to spin material in the files before it becomes public.

Marshall notes that journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed Epstein at length during Trump’s first presidency, says that Epstein suspected it was Trump who told the authorities about his systemic sexual assault of girls. But if so, Marshall explains, this is damning rather than exonerating.

It’s pretty well known that Trump and Epstein had a falling out in 2004 after Trump went behind Epstein’s back to buy an estate in South Florida that Epstein wanted. But at the time, Trump was headed toward bankruptcy, and it was not clear where he was getting the money to buy the estate.

Marshall calls attention to a recent interview in which Wolff said that Epstein suspected Trump was laundering money for a Russian oligarch—and indeed, Trump did flip the property to a Russian oligarch for a profit of more than $50 million a few years after buying it—and threatened to sue Trump, bringing the money laundering to light. At that point, the Epstein investigation began.

According to Wolff, Epstein believed Trump had notified the police about what was going on at Epstein’s house, which he knew because he was a frequent visitor. Marshall speculates that Johnson mentioned that Trump was an informant because that information could well be in the files the Department of Justice has, and they’re trying to spin it ahead of time to make it sound like Trump was a hero.

But both Wolff and Marshall note that if indeed Trump turned the FBI onto Epstein, it shows he knew what was taking place at Epstein’s properties.

Johnson’s claim that Trump was an FBI informant suggests Trump’s team is worried that as more and more people get access to the files, it will be increasingly difficult to hide what’s in them. Trump’s demand for Republicans’ loyalty suggests that at least some of them are starting to recalculate it. And that, in turn, might have something to do with why he is putting troops in the streets.

Hollywood writers couldn’t come up with this.

Is there a guest list for the rose bush loyalty club?

Divine Angel said:

Hollywood writers couldn’t come up with this.

Is there a guest list for the rose bush loyalty club?

At any time any one of them could join the Under The Bus Club.

Thanks.

I didn’t know what the 3 helicopters referred to in Trump’s post. Until I read Heather Cox Richardson’s latest. Yikes.
She really brings things into sharp focus and I’m grateful for everything she is documenting.