<President Donald Trump ordered thousands of National Guard troops to help quell violent protests against immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, where helmeted police in riot gear clashed with concrete-hurling protesters who opposed tougher federal actions against undocumented immigrants.

The clash spanning June 6 and 7 marked one of the most serious confrontations yet between agents carrying out Trump’s directives on mass arrests and deportations, and local officials who oppose the stricter enforcement measures.

Some protesters hurled large chunks of broken concrete at officers, slashed tires and defaced buildings, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Police declared an unlawful assembly and responded by firing tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bang concussion rounds toward the crowd.

Trump signed a memo June 7 deploying 2,000 National Guardsmen to address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. The Trump administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their job, she said.

"Left-wing radicals waving foreign flags are viciously attacking ICE and Border Patrol agents and obstructing official law enforcement activities in Los Angeles," Leavitt said in a statement. "The mob violence will be quelled, the criminals responsible will be brought to justice, and operations to arrest illegal aliens will continue unabated."

The clash enflamed an ongoing feud between federal and state officials. Trump said on social media June 7 that federal authorities needed to step in because of the inaction of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

"If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!" Trump said.

Newsom criticized the military deployment on social media, saying local police are available at a moment’s notice.

“That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” Newsom said. “This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.”

The Department of Homeland Security said 118 undocumented immigrants were arrested during the week in Los Angeles, including five alleged gang members and others with criminal records for smuggling, drug trafficking and assault.

Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents were outnumbered June 6 for hours as more than 1,000 rioters surrounded the federal building.

“What took place in Los Angeles yesterday was appalling,” Lyons said in a statement June 7.

Lyons, who vowed to continue the enforcement action, accused Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of taking “the side of chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement.”

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said city policy since 1979 has barred officers from initiating police action based solely on trying to determine a person’s immigration status. He said the department “will not assist or participate in any sort of mass deportations.”

“I’m aware that these activities cause anxiety for many Angelenos, so I want to make it clear: the LAPD is not involved in civil immigration enforcement,” McDonnell said in a statement June 6.

Bass said she was “deeply angered” about the enforcement actions and that she would coordinate with immigrant-rights organizations.

“These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city,” Bass said in a statement June 6. “We will not stand for this.”

"We will," FBI Director Kash Patel replied on social media June 7.

Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks highlighted on social media how a rock pierced the windshield of an agent's vehicle and injured him.

"Imagine if more had followed," Banks said. "This incident is a stark reminder of the real dangers our agents face every day. Thankfully, it wasn’t worse − but it easily could’ve been."....>

<....FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino asked for the public's help in identifying a helmeted protester who threw rocks at police cars.

"And yes, multiple arrests have already been made for obstructing our operations. More are coming," Bongino said on social media. "We are pouring through the videos for more perpetrators. You bring chaos, and we’ll bring handcuffs. Law and order will prevail."

Police officers stand guard as protesters gather around the Los Angeles Federal Building following multiple detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 6, 2025. Union leader arrested, detained by ICE
One of the skirmishes involved the arrest of a union leader, David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union of California, who was injured and detained by ICE at one site.

The union said Huerta was arrested "while exercising his First Amendment right to observe and document law enforcement activity."

"We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice,” Huerta said in a post on social media. “This is injustice."

U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli accused Huerta of deliberately obstructing federal agents at a worksite. Huerta will be arraigned in federal court June 9, Essayli said.

“Let me be clear: I don’t care who you are – if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,” Essayli said in a post on social media. “No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties.”

Federal authorities said they would continue their enforcement actions despite the protests in Los Angeles and across the country.

ICE announced June 6 that nearly 1,500 undocumented immigrants were arrested in Massachusetts during a monthlong Operation Patriot.>

Remember, <pigshit>: you are forever barred from here, so sit on it and rotate.

<The House reconciliation bill - officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act - is extraordinary in how much it robs from the poor to boost the rich. Its tax cuts for the wealthy are financed by cuts to health care coverage (both in Medicaid and Obamacare) that will help Republicans swell the ranks of the uninsured by 16 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But the Big Beautiful Bill is not just an ugly tax bill where society's less fortunate are made to sacrifice for the benefit of the wealthiest. It's also a spending bill that steers hundreds of billions of dollars into new pet projects. This is financed with debt. All in, the BBB will spike deficits by $2.4 trillion over 10 years, according to CBO, likely increasing the national debt by $3 billion when interest payments are included.

The bill's spending has angered budget hawks in the Senate like Rand Paul (R.-Ky.). It has been part of the public split between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who calls the bill a "disgusting abomination" that will squander any supposed savings imposed by DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Conservative budget analysts are sounding the alarm: "This inability to set priorities is going to bring a debt crisis," Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute tells Rolling Stone. In fact, the bill would create so much new debt that it risks triggering a mechanism called "sequestration," which would impose deep, mandatory cuts to Medicare. These cuts to the health care of America's seniors would start next year, and rise to half-a-trillion dollars over ten years.

The BBB's spending provisions have received far less scrutiny than the tax cuts and safety-net slashes. But the bill lards new funds on a range of already-fat-cats - from the military-industrial complex and Big Tech to private prisons and construction concerns.

Below we survey the biggest boondoggles of the Big Beautiful Bill:

Border Wall

The BBB proposes spending nearly $50 billion for construction of Trump's border wall with Mexico. Sen. Paul, in an appearance on Face the Nation last week, accused the administration of waste. He cited an existing Customs and Border Patrol estimate that wall construction should cost only about $6.5 billion over 1,000 miles: "They have inflated the cost of the wall eightfold," said Paul. (After his TV hit, CPB appears to have scrubbed the construction cost estimate Paul quoted from its website.) Paul even questioned the need for more wall, at all, given his view that Trump has "essentially stopped the border flow without new money and without new legislation."

Offering just a small taste of the anticipated building bonanza, the Trump administration awarded a $70 million, 7-mile wall-construction contract to California-based Granite Construction in March.

Detention Camps

The bill includes $45 billion for "Adult Alien Detention Capacity" and "Family Residential Centers." This funding would enable the administration to ramp up its mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants. As the nation has seen from recent high-profile Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at restaurants, this involves ripping productive members out of society and making them wards of the state, at great public cost, until they can be deported.

The money would be a boon to private prison contractors and construction firms. For a taste of where this is headed, consider that the administration has already inked a 15-year, $1 billion deal with GEO Group to house ICE detainees at Delaney Hall, a 1,000 bed facility in Newark, New Jersey. The mayor of the city was arrested by ICE amid a recent protest at the facility.

The private prison company is well connected to the Trump administration. As Rolling Stone has reported, Attorney General Pam Bondi is a former lobbyist for GEO Group, which also made a $500,000 donation to the Trump inaugural committee. A GEO subsidiary donated $1.3 million to a Super PAC that backed Trump's 2024 election.

Golden Dome

The BBB puts up nearly $25 billion for the Golden Dome. The satellite-based missile defense project builds off the branding of Israel's "Iron Dome," a ground-based defensive system that can intercept rockets and missiles launched from local militants or state actors like Iran. "To the extent we match Iron Dome technology, we will be well protected from a missile attack from Canada or Mexico," says Riedl of the Manhattan Institute, sarcastically. "But not necessarily from Russia, North Korea or China."

In reality the Golden Dome appears to be Trump's revival of the Ronald Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI - a hugely expensive, largely ineffective space-based missile-defense system derided in the 1980s as "Star Wars."

"Ultimately this is $25 billion more for SDI" says Riedl. "This is a noble idea - but a lot of spending up until now hasn't brought a lot of success."....>

<....Trump envisions the BBB as a downpayment on a total investment of $175 million. The Golden Dome promises to be a golden goose for defense contractors. SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Trump's billionaire benefactor Elon Musk, who's currently feuding with Trump, is reportedly vying for a contract. So are the Peter Thiel-linked tech firm Palantir and longtime military-industrial heavyweights like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Military-Industrial Absurdity

Including the Golden Dome, the Big Beautiful Bill increases America's Pentagon spending by a colossal $150 billion. "This is a bill from the military-industrial complex advocates who are padding the military budget," according to Paul, who has long criticized the Defense Department for failing to pass every audit to which it's been subjected.

Budgets are moral documents. And metaphorically people often speak of the tradeoff between "guns and butter" - or programs that defend the public and those that keep the public out of misery.

The guns side of the Big Beautiful Bill is financed entirely by cuts to butter. The bill strips $128 billion in funding to the states for the SNAP food assistance program that keeps American families from going hungry. It also aims to avoid another $92 billion in spending by knocking people out of the program with red tape and work requirements, including for parents of 8-year-olds.

Riedl argues that the Pentagon should be forced to achieve cost efficiencies before it receives any new federal dollars. "One of DOGE's great failures was essentially ignoring the enormous waste and cost overruns inside the Pentagon. There is a reason the Defense Department cannot pass an audit. There is so much waste. It has significant cost overruns - particularly in government contracts and procurement - that absolutely must be addressed before we further increase defense spending," says the Manhattan institute fellow.

The House bill steers new money to more than a dozen weapons systems, including many dogged by cost overruns, construction delays, performance issues, and questions of combat capability.

On the airplane side, this list includes:

$4.5 billion for the B-21 Raider, the Air Force's newest long-range stealth bomber, which cost nearly $700 million per aircraft to produce. The two-person Northrup Gruman-built plane may be poorly suited to modern warfighting, where swarms of unmanned drones are becoming the dominant air threat.

$3.2 billion for the Boeing-built F-15EX. The planes cost $90 million a pop, making them more expensive than the notoriously costly F-35A. Unlike that fighter, the F-15EX is not a stealth aircraft. And production has been snarled by manufacturing problems. A recent federal assessment put it bluntly: "Boeing has experienced increased quality deficiencies."

Ships include:

$4.6 billion for Virginia Class submarines. The nuclear submarine program has a reported cost overrun of $17 billion and has delivered boats massively behind schedule. The contractors are General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries. The Pentagon already has 23 of these submarines.

$2.1 billion for San Antonio Class "amphibious transport docks." This ship was put on production pause in 2023 because of massive cost overruns. The boats are supposed to land Marines into onshore combat, but have been found by DOD testers to only be suitable "in a benign environment" because the ship is "not effective, suitable and not survivable in a combat situation." Huntington Ingalls Industries is the contractor. The Pentagon already has 13 of these boats.>

Here's hoping:

<The tide is turning in this fight against Republican fascism, and if you listen you can hear it. And when you hear it, you can feel it. And by God, if you can feel it, well then let it move you to take action.

After catching punch after punch from the most anti-American administration in our 248-year history, some of our most cherished institutions and artists in this country are finally hitting back, and hitting back hard.

Politicians were never going to be the answer, my friends, because history tells us that when the people lead, the so-called leaders will follow ...

Me? As a Navy veteran, who has had a steady, 42-year professional relationship with the written word, I spit on Trump and his repeated attacks on America. As readers, I know you do too.

This morning, NPR and PBS signaled they, too, have had enough of this loudmouth traitor, and sued him over his order to cut their funding.

So let’s get this part out of the way quickly: Trump has no damn authority here. It is not his money.

In fact, let me repeat that one for emphasis: IT IS NOT HIS MONEY.

It is OURS.

But I’ll let a paragraph from the stations’ lawsuit speak to that:

“The president has no authority under the Constitution to take such actions. On the contrary, the power of the purse is reserved to Congress.”

This one’s cut and dry, but as usual, you can expect the America-attacker and his odious lawyers to kick it up to Chief Justice John Roberts’ bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court. As usual, they could nip all this silliness in the bud, if they actually cared about the rule of law in this country.

It’s worth saying here, too, that neither NPR nor PBS are going away whether they get this subsidy or not. Just 2 percent of NPR’s budget comes from federal monies. PBS’s situation is a bit more tenuous, with 15 percent of their budget coming from those grants.

The bulk of their funding comes from private grants, subscribers, donations, and an increasing amount of advertising.

The government subsidy they receive is used primarily to aid in funding local operations and to create original programming. And, no surprise, rural areas would be hurt worst if these cuts were to pass because the convicted felon, Trump, has never cared who he assaults.

While I was at Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper that serves the troops and their families overseas, we too took a small stipend from the government to help fund our operations. Like PBS and NPR, most of our operating budget came from other sources. In Stripes’ case that was subscriptions, single-copy sales, and advertising dollars.

That didn’t stop Trump from trying to cut that funding during his first disastrous term, until it was pointed out to him that Stripes had the longest, most dangerous circulation route in the world. If he somehow cut that federal funding and doused the troops’ only news source, he, not our enemies, would be responsible for it.

Well, he backed off, and stomped off into his corner to contemplate another attack on America that would commence on January 6, 2021 …

It should also be pointed out that none of these pathetic efforts by Republicans to keep America ignorant and stupid are new. They have pulled this stunt time and again and failed.

I’ll pull from a recent piece in The New York Times to highlight their most epic setback:

The most dramatic showdown between legislators and public media defenders came more than a half-century ago. In 1969, Fred Rogers, the creator of the children’s TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” testified before Congress to protest cuts to public media proposed by the Nixon administration. After his testimony, which underscored the value of helping children manage their emotions, a proposal to cut public media funding by half was waved away by Senator John O. Pastore, a Democrat.

“Looks like you just earned the $20 million,” Mr. Pastore said to Mr. Rogers. It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood … and if guys like Rogers can stand up to this kind of nonsense, it would be about time all these damn universities and corporations along with their “news” networks did the same.

Enter CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley.

Pelley, whose station is also being sued by the serial-lying Trump, started getting some big-time attention today for a commencement address he delivered last week....>

<....Speaking to graduates at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University, the veteran journalist said this:

“In this moment, this morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.”

Here’s some damn fine reporting from the Independent, on Pelley’s important speech:

Delivering his address in theatrical fashion, frequently raising his arms to the heavens like an evangelical pastor, Pelley continued: “Insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes and into our private thoughts.

“The fear to speak ... in America,” he added, stressing the word to emphasize his horror and dismay in the speech on May 19. “Power can rewrite history, with grotesque, false narratives. They can make criminals heroes, and heroes criminals. Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. Diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends. There is nothing new in this.”

I won’t lie, I almost wept when I read this, because there has been so damn little of it coming from people who should know better.

I am so sick and tired of reading the words: “Trump is doing this now … Trump is doing this now … Trump is doing this now …” over and over and over again that I could spit.

What I want to read about is just what in the hell WE are doing about it.

Well, as I noted above the tide seems to finally be changing here, too, and lifting us all up, as patriots like Bruce Springsteen use their influence to enlighten and pushback on this authoritarian punk.

“I've always tried to be a good ambassador for America,” said Springsteen while introducing a performance of “My City of Ruins” in Manchester, England, two weeks ago. “I've spent my life singing about where we have succeeded and where we've come up short in living up to our civic ideals and our dreams. I always just thought that was my job. Things are happening right now in my home that are altering the very nature of our country's democracy and they're simply too important to ignore.”

Perfectly put, Boss …

On Sunday evening Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello jumped to Springsteen’s defense and pressed the attack on the America-hating Trump.

From reporting in Rolling Stone today:

When Rage Against the Machine‘s Tom Morello took the stage at Boston Calling Music Festival on Sunday evening, his solo set featured a pointed message. On the screen behind him, a graphic compiled nearly two dozen buttons that read and spelled out “F*** Trump,” labeled the president a “tyrant,” and referred to him as the “Hater in Chief.” Addressing the crowd, Morello said: “Welcome, brothers and sisters, to the last big event before they throw us all in jail.”

Morello used the performance to join the legion of musicians backing Bruce Springsteen in the musician’s recent standoff with Donald Trump. “Bruce is going after Trump because Bruce, his whole life, he’s been about truth, justice, democracy, equality,” Morello said. “And Trump is mad at him because Bruce draws a bigger audience. F––k that guy.”

Damn straight.

With our corporate media too often failing us, and even submitting to authoritarianism … While phonies like Jake Tapper attack what has passed and ignore the very real and present danger … While the Democratic Party fumbles at the switches to come up with a consistent, unified message … We must look to the arts — our musicians, writers, sculptors, painters, filmmakers — to be truth-tellers during this fascist assault on our nation, and Trump’s grotesque attempt to end us.

YOU, my friends, must be truth-tellers, and get out there and spread words that you know to be true and righteous to everybody — whether they want to hear them or not.

WE must be the change, because while we didn’t ask for this fight, we damn sure better win it.>

<Did you count those up one-by-one Sally? How many times has "Spawn of Satan" been used? Biden? Trump?>

By you?

Let's try 'Biden':

Search Kibitzing

Closing in on 200 times, a most impressive number given that practically none of them come in the Rogovian miasma.

Then we have your hero:

Search Kibitzing

Not nearly so often, but, given your visceral hatred of Biden, this is not at all surprising.

<...I did see a recent short video of Magnus Carlsen admitting that he could not defeat a chess software opponent at its highest setting on his smart phone....>

<On Tuesday, preliminary reports emerged that a small group of people who were not legally in this country were being deported to Sudan. But none of them came from that country. Early reports suggested a Burmese man and a Vietnamese man were included in the group that was being summarily deported. The facts were confused. Lawyers went to court quickly.

They asked U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston to prevent the government from transferring the men into the custody of Sudanese authorities. They said that at least some of the men were denied the due process the court had previously ordered they must receive before they could be deported.

In other words, this wasn’t the government’s first outing involving these individuals in the case in front of Judge Murphy. He had previously entered an order that the government appeared to be in clear violation of. The case is a class action filed on behalf of people who are deportable—people who the government has obtained final orders to remove—but whose home countries either won’t accept them or are places they have credible or reasonable fear of being persecuted, tortured, or killed if they are returned to them.

Prior to this, DHS always gave people in this status notice before they were removed, so they had the opportunity to raise their concerns if they were to be sent to a third country. But in mid-February, the government abruptly changed that practice, reasoning that if a final order of removal existed, they could immediately send the person in question to any country they could get to take them, with no warning involved.

The Boston case was originally filed on March 23 to challenge that new policy, long before the prospect of deportations to Sudan emerged. As with many of the other deportation cases, the plaintiffs are identified only by their initials. The lead plaintiff in this case is D.V.D. After the case was filed, Judge Murphy entered a temporary restraining order preventing deportations to third-party countries without notice. Although the government asked the First Circuit to countermand his order, they declined to.

What happened next is deeply disturbing. Despite the court order, DHS removed four people in the class to Guantanamo, where the Department of Defense supposedly took over, flying them to a third country. The government argued it hadn’t violated the court’s order, since the Defense Department wasn’t a defendant in the case and the court’s order didn’t apply to them. In other words, a level of sophistry the government—the non-Trump government at least—doesn’t use in its dealings with the courts. There was an utter absence of good faith.

The merits of the case are still being litigated, but on April 18, Judge Murphy stayed the government’s hand from deporting any of these people without 15 days of notice of the country the person will be sent to delivered in a language that the person being deported understands. They must also have an opportunity to raise a fear claim in connection with the third-party country they would be deported to.

In early May, there were reports that the administration planned to send the men to Libya. The attorneys asked Judge Murphy for a temporary restraining order prohibiting that. Judge Murphy declined to enter a new order, but only because of the existing one. He ruled that there was no need to, because sending the men to Libya without notice and an opportunity to be heard “would clearly violate this Court’s Order.”

That brings us to the events of the last 48 hours. Judge Murphy held an emergency hearing Tuesday night. He ordered the government to keep the men in its custody until he could resolve the matter and continued on Wednesday. The government lawyer argued that at least some of the people on the flight had been convicted of serious crimes, including murder and sex crimes against children. That’s important to know because it helps us understand what kind of due process they are entitled to. It doesn’t mean they don’t get any.

These men fall under legal provisions for people who have both committed serious crimes and are not lawful permanent residents. They may well be deportable. But only if they receive due process first. In this case, that will involve what is called “reasonable fear” proceedings conducted by DHS, and that could get interesting since none of the men are from war-torn South Sudan, the country our government wants to deport them to—despite the fact that it is a highly dangerous place, so dangerous that the State Department has designated it “Do Not Travel” for Americans.

Wednesday night, the Judge entered his order on the plaintiffs’ requests for injunctions to keep the government from deporting them while the litigation is underway....>

<....The Judge styled his order as a “Remedy For Violation Of Preliminary Injunctions.” That is tantamount to saying the government was in contempt of his order. It is perhaps nicer and softer and less confrontational, but that is, essentially, what it is.

There are good reasons for the soft approach. The courts have tried to handle the deportation cases skillfully and have succeeded in getting the government to walk back from the edge of confrontation repeatedly, just short of open contempt of court order. Even now, the Judge is giving the government the opportunity to comply and avoid an outright confrontation. That should be everyone’s first choice. But ultimately, you can’t avoid a collision with someone who wants one. This may be the case the government has chosen for the head-on collision, and if so, the Judge will have done everything he can to make that clear when the case goes on appeal to the Supreme Court, as it inevitably will if that happens.

Based on his finding that the government defendants “violated the Court’s Preliminary Injunction,” Judge Murphy ordered the following remedies:

“Each of the six individuals must be given a reasonable fear interview in private, with the opportunity for the individual to have counsel of their choosing present during the interview, either in-person or remotely, at the individual’s choosing.” Under the relevant statutory provision, INA § 238(b), Aliens who are not lawful permanent residents and who have been convicted of aggravated felonies are subject to “expedited removal” from the U.S.; however, if they express a fear of persecution or torture, they are put in what is called “reasonable fear proceedings.” That’s what the Judge is ordering here.

Each individual must have the same access to a lawyer they would have if these proceedings were happening in the U.S. before their deportation.

Each individual gets access to the highly skilled lawyers representing the entire group of people whom they are similarly situated to, including access to a phone, interpreter, and technology for the confidential transfer of documents. This is what they would be entitled to if they were still in the U.S.

Each individual, along with class counsel, is entitled to have 72-hours’ notice before each reasonable fear interview.

Should any individual raise a fear with respect to deportation to the third country that DHS determines falls short of “reasonable fear,” the individual must be provided meaningful opportunity, and a minimum of 15 days, to seek to move to reopen immigration proceedings to challenge the potential third-country removal.

During that 15-day period, the individual must remain within the custody or control of DHS and must be afforded access to counsel that is commensurate with the access they would be afforded if they were seeking to move to reopen from within the United States’ borders.

The government has to provide status reports every seven days as to all six individuals.

DHS has the option of bringing the men back to the U.S. or keeping them abroad, so long as they remain in DHS custody and are held in conditions that are consistent with how they would be held in the U.S. In other words, no terrorist prisons.

The order is thorough. The Judge has clearly gone to school on some of the ways the government has tried to avoid courts’ dictates in this and other cases in order to prevent repetition here. For instance, he ordered that DHS retain custody of these people and that it not transfer them to some other country or federal agency, so the government cannot argue that another agency took custody of the individuals and the order didn’t apply to that agency, like the government did earlier in the case when it claimed people were put into the Defense Department’s custody....>

<....But there is only so much he can do. Absent a finding of reasonable fear, these men are deportable. And that finding is largely in the hands of DHS. When an alien expresses a fear of persecution or torture to a DHS official, he is interviewed by an asylum officer who evaluates whether the alien has "A reasonable fear of persecution or torture” under 8 C.F.R. § 1208.31. Reasonable fear means that there is a reasonable possibility that the person would be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or a reasonable possibility that they would be tortured if the U.S. government sent them to the country it planned to.

Those DHS officials all work for Kristi Noem and Donald Trump, so it’s reasonable, given the rush to deport all aliens, to believe that any official who finds in favor of a deportable person alleging reasonable fear won’t have a job much longer. If the DHS official finds against the person being deported, they are entitled to have an immigration judge review the finding. They get the last word; their decision is final regarding whether deportation should be withheld because the person has a reasonable fear.

Immigration judges are not independent Article III federal judges; they are administrative judges who work for the executive branch. Historically, they have shown great independence. In February, Trump began firing them, with more following in April. Currently, there are cases pending before the Merit Systems Protection Board challenging the firings. But suffice it to say, the entire process going forward will bear careful watching. Given the warnings the State Department has issued, it’s hard to say, even without any additional individualized evidence, that these people don’t have a reasonable fear for their safety if they are sent to Sudan.>

Get this far, <fredremf>? Piss up a rope!

<Texas Governor Greg Abbott has announced the Texas National Guard will be deployed across the state to enforce "peace and order" ahead of expected protests.

"Peaceful protest is legal," Abbott wrote in a post on X. "Harming a person or property is illegal & will lead to arrest."

Newsweek has contacted Governor Abbott's office and the San Antonio Police Department for comment.

Mass protests are erupting across the United States in response to President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration. The White House has said anyone living in the country illegally is a "criminal." The administration is facing increasing resistance over its mass deportation policy.

Protests broke out on Friday in reaction to numerous ICE raids throughout Los Angeles. Amid the ongoing tumult, city officials, including Mayor Karen Bass, implemented a curfew for portions of downtown, from 8 p.m. Tuesday to 6 a.m. Wednesday, and it could continue throughout the coming days if warranted.

Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom and President Trump remain embroiled in a bitter war of words over the administration's response to the protests. Trump deployed the National Guard to quell what he called a "rebellion." Newsom has vehemently opposed this move, saying that it infringes upon California's sovereignty and is unconstitutional. He filed a lawsuit challenging the federalization of the National Guard, asserting that the deployment was both unlawful and politically charged.

Abbott has said state officials will "use every tool and strategy" to help law enforcement keep the peace.

"Peaceful protests are part of the fabric of our nation, but Texas will not tolerate the lawlessness we have seen in Los Angeles," Abbott's press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said Tuesday night.

"Anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property will be swiftly held accountable to the full extent of the law."

A protest is scheduled to take place on Saturday in downtown San Antonio. The action is being organized by the 50501 Movement in collaboration with the Bexar County Democratic Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Indivisible, and Women's March.

The demonstration will begin at Travis Park and is expected to "culminate in an act of peaceful resistance," the release stated.

City officials have scheduled a news conference for Wednesday morning to address preparations for protests planned in downtown San Antonio on Wednesday and Saturday evening.

The Texas National Guard is the largest organization of its kind in the United States, comprising 22,000 soldiers and airmen.

More than a dozen protesters were arrested during demonstrations opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Austin, Abbott said Tuesday.

On Monday, officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) arrested six men in Austin during what the department described as a "planned and well-publicized protest" near the State Capitol. The individuals face charges including felony criminal mischief, resisting arrest, and additional offenses.

"Texas is a law-and-order state, and the department has zero tolerance for individuals disrupting public order or endangering law enforcement officers," DPS said in a press release.

On Monday night, DPS troopers deployed tear gas to disperse protesters outside the J.J. Pickle Federal Building, which is currently being used as an ICE processing facility.

Some activists appeared to throw paint at the building and vandalized doors and windows, according to CBS Austin.

50501 said in a statement: "50501 stands in opposition to billionaire influence in government and advocates for the rights and empowerment of the working class."

DPS said in a statement: "Make no mistake: Texas is a law-and-order state."

Further protests are expected to take place in Texas, California and other states across the country.>

Abbott is a worthless twat.

<Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently signed Senate Bill 2 into law, turning Texas into the latest testing ground for a dangerous experiment that has already failed elsewhere and now threatens the future of public education, not just here, but across the nation.

Senate Bill (SB) 2 creates a statewide school voucher program in Texas that uses taxpayer dollars to help cover tuition at private and religious schools. Scheduled to launch in the 2026–27 school year, the program allocates varying amounts of money per student in public funds. But these dollars can be used at institutions that are not required to follow the same academic standards, financial transparency, or nondiscrimination protections that public schools are held to.

SB 2's voucher scheme is an assault on our public education system. It siphons money away from neighborhood schools and hands it to private institutions that are unaccountable to the public and often unqualified to serve students equitably. In effect, the state is subsidizing schools that can reject students based on religion, disability, gender identity, and more, all while draining critical resources from public classrooms.

These schools operate in the shadows, free to discriminate, free from oversight, and free to shape their admissions and curricula around exclusion, not inclusion.

For over 30 years, Texans have opposed vouchers. Parents, teachers, students—and even local conservative leaders—have joined in vocal, bipartisan opposition to these schemes. But Texas Governor Abbott ignored them and instead sided with billionaires to replace state leadership that wouldn't vote his way on school vouchers, choosing instead to appease wealthy donors and fringe political ideologues. In their crusade for power and profit, they made Texas kids the collateral damage.

We've seen how this ends. In Arizona, the nation's largest voucher expansion has blown past budget projections and left public schools reeling, while families face long waitlists and additional costs in the fine print, leaving them to foot the bill. In Wisconsin, a decades-old voucher system has deepened racial and economic segregation and siphoned hundreds of millions from public education, all while failing to deliver tangible results for kids and families. And in Florida, a chaotic and bloated voucher expansion has led to unregulated private schools, some without certified teachers or accredited curricula, while public schools in areas like Miami-Dade face steep budget shortfalls.

Texas lawmakers had every opportunity to learn from these failures. They chose not to. Because SB 2 was never about helping kids. It's about dismantling our public education system and funneling public dollars into private hands—quietly, permanently, and without public consent.

During debate, 44 amendments were introduced—many of them aimed at adding transparency, accountability, and protections for students. Not one passed. In a particularly telling moment, State Representative James Talarico proposed an amendment to let voters decide on vouchers directly. The House tabled it without a second thought.

This is not just a Texas story. This is a national strategy. Texas has long been the proving ground for extremist policy experiments—from abortion bans to book bans, to now school privatization. The fact that national political figures, including the president, are now weighing in on a state-level education bill should set off alarms for every American. SB 2 is a blueprint for how public goods are quietly defunded and handed over to private interests under the guise of "choice."

Texas Freedom Network (TFN) will not back down. Neither should Texas families. Public education is the backbone of our democracy. It's where children learn how to live and thrive in a diverse, dynamic society. Undermining that system undermines our future. It erodes equality. It erases opportunity. And it abandons the constitutional promise Texas has made to every child.

TFN and our allies are committed to fighting this for every student, regardless of their race, zip code, income level, faith, or LGBTQ identity. Texans deserve schools that serve all students, not political agendas. We will not forget who turned their backs on our kids. Neither will voters, and if you're in another state, know who you're electing at the ballot box. Ask yourself if they're bringing the next voucher scheme to your doorstep or if they're willing to fight for public education, our country's great equalizer and the foundation of our democracy.>

P.S. You're sooo boring, perhidious. Of course, if you'd kept your big vermin mouth shut, FTB would not have had provocation to entertain everyone at your expense.>

Ever the victim as you peddle your catalogue of lies, <fredpigshit>.

<The Trump administration is preparing to cancel a large swath of federal funding for California, an effort that could begin as soon as Friday, according to multiple sources.

Agencies are being told to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from California. Sources said the administration is specifically considering a full termination of federal grant funding for the University of California and California State University systems.

“No taxpayer should be forced to fund the demise of our country,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement Friday afternoon, criticizing California for its energy, immigration and other policies. “No final decisions, however, on any potential future action by the Administration have been made, and any discussion suggesting otherwise should be considered pure speculation.”

Singling out one state for massive cuts would be an unusual move, but President Donald Trump has long made Democratic-led California a target.

Just last month, he threatened to withhold federal funding from California over a transgender athlete’s participation in a sporting event — the latest example of the president trying to use funding as leverage to enact his agenda. The administration recently cut $126.4 million in flood prevention funding projects, and Trump repeatedly went after the state’s handling of devastating wildfires earlier this year. The president and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have also publicly feuded for years.

Two sources said that the administration is targeting California universities over alleged antisemitism on campus, an issue the schools have made efforts to address over the past year. The administration has already taken steps to punish Harvard and Columbia universities for similar reasons.

The UC system is the state’s third largest employer, and both systems are major engines of research in the biotechnology and medical fields, among others.

It is unclear how the school systems plan to fight back, though it is possible they could be represented by the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, a Democrat.

CNN has reached out to Bonta’s office, the UC system and the CSU system for comment.

California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the top Democrat on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, said, “Trump is a bully. We’ve now heard from sources that he may be intending to cut grants to California because we didn’t vote for him and we’re Democratically inclined. … I will fight back on this. This will be immediately challenged in court.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, another California Democrat, said: “Whatever cruel crusade the President may announce against California, we will fight back.”

California’s state legislature appropriated $25 million in its budget for efforts to fight Trump administration policies and has spent only approximately $5 million of that so far, a source said.

GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who said he was unaware of the imminent grant cancellations, told CNN he recently met with university representatives who were concerned about the future of their funding.

“Every university, every research organization, pretty much I saw them passing through here the last two days,” Issa said.

Issa told CNN his message to the fearful university representatives was, “We’re going to advocate for essentials, but I sent them back and said come to me with specifics. Come to me with the grant and the justification, and I’ll advocate for that. But I’m not going to advocate for no cuts; you just get more money every year. That’s how we got in this problem.”>

Darrell Issa is a contemptible whore.

<Malcontents? You mean East and West Coast seasiders who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows and working-class income belongs to welfare recipients, illegal immigrants and repeat thug offenders? ? Against that type, always go for either side of the Ruy Lopez -- they have no patience for the main lines. Be ready for those uncommon third moves of the C60s, like Bird's or Brentano's Defense. It might even be a Gunderam or McConnell Defense, that C40 stuff.

FTB thinks a few certain higher ups think such is new age progress -- 7-10x the number of political opinion posts/insults repeated, repeated, repeated by the same deadbeat repeaters ;-{ as compared to fresh chess posts on a chess website. In this greedy world, some believe that negative attention is better than no attention, not understanding that negative entrenchment drives away the positive chessers who would interest other positive chessers.

Maybe FOX will let MSNBC bring back Malcolm in the Middle re-runs to appease some, but FTB doubts it. Who has broadcast rights to The Brady Bunch? That should be popular up in the Northeast at least. (They probably have been watching that Bunch for years and the rest of the country has been spared.) Lefties might like that sitcom Gidget starring Sally Field, but that age range of viewers seems limited.

Me? I'm more of a Table of Contents bear. If I were playing against me, I'd always eat at the table but nothing munchy crunchy to avoid complaints. FTB is undefeated against doughnuts, cookies and Chinese take-out, but I did lose to a subway sandwich eater not long ago. He pinned me with the frilled toothpick after I traded him a pawn for the pickle. And there have been some burrito draws back when. Pizza? Those are eizz "W"s in the column at long time controls. Gotta use up your clock and let the sluggish effects kick in.

Oh, and here's a playing tip. If things get tight against a kid, give 'em a bag of skittles, best if super glued at both ends. (The kid will eventually tear it open in the middle and those suckers will go bouncing everywhere and the kid will be looking around to pick 'em all up one by one. Might even bring a second bag to toss a few down there yourself.) Skittles are a sure-fire distraction. The kid is ready to resign five minutes later. A little investment saves you 64 rating points.>

No doubt who happens to be the pain in the fundament heah....

<At long last, the United States has reached a trade agreement with China.

Again.

After a testy war of words that escalated into a tit-for-tat restriction on key exports, American and Chinese officials this week met in the United Kingdom with a singular goal: Find a way to agree to what they had agreed to a month earlier in Geneva.

It appears the countries’ top trade negotiators have accomplished that. On Tuesday night, both Chinese and Trump officials said they had agreed to a framework to implement the consensus they reached in May, and the trade truce would be sent to their respective leaders for their approval.

Businesses, consumers and Wall Street investors will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief: Burdensome tariffs have raised significant anxiety, and easing trade barriers between the world’s two largest economies should lower costs and help inject some much-needed certainty into an economy that has been demonstrating some signs of strain.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said in a Truth Social post that a “deal” with China has been completed.

“Our deal with China is done,” Trump said in his all-caps social media post.

Trump said both countries agreed to ease export restrictions, per the prior arrangement agreed upon in Geneva in May. The president also confirmed on Wednesday in his post that the deal included “full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China.”

But in reality, the trade truce – if that’s really what was accomplished this time around – is mostly just a return to the already-tense state of affairs from before April 2. Tariff rates from both countries remain historically high, and significant export restrictions remain in place. The United States has not opened its doors to China’s autos, nor is it going to sell its high-end AI chips anytime soon. And, in Trump’s parlance, China isn’t treating America much more “fairly” after this agreement than it did before.

A much-needed détente

Without a doubt, a trade agreement was much needed. After Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” announcements, tensions ran so high that trade between the United States and China came to an effective halt. A 145% tariff on most Chinese imports made the math impossible for US businesses to buy virtually anything from China, America’s second-largest trading partner.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, America’s chief negotiator in both trade talks with China, said previous tariff levels were “unsustainable.”

On May 12, delegates from China and the United States announced they would significantly roll back their historically high tariffs on one another. Economists pared back their recession forecasts, and moribund consumer confidence rebounded.

But Trump and his administration in recent weeks grew increasingly hostile toward China, accusing the country of breaking the promises it made in mid-May. China similarly said the United States failed to live up to its obligations under the Geneva agreement.

The Trump administration had expected China to lift restrictions on rare-earth materials that are critical components for a wide range of electronics, but China has only very slowly allowed them to return to the open market, causing intense displeasure inside the Trump administration and prompting a series of export restrictions on US goods to China, three administration officials told CNN last month.

China has a virtual monopoly on rare earths, without which cars, jet engines, contrast dye used in MRI machines and some cancer drugs cannot be manufactured. Trump told reporters Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping had agreed to allow exports of rare earth minerals products to begin, but industry analysts said the crucial materials had not been flowing to the United States as they once had.

If both countries satisfy the terms of the agreement this time around, the de-escalation should prevent the direst warnings about the trade war, including potential pandemic-level shortages.....>

<....Back to reality

Despite the good vibes, the United States and China remain in an economic standoff.

The Trump administration – and the Biden administration before it – have maintained that Chinese companies are more than happy to sell inexpensive products to the US market but that China places significant restrictions on US businesses operating in the country and encourages Chinese companies to steal American intellectual property. China has long disputed those claims.

Trump, in his first term, raised tariffs on China based on national security concerns. Biden maintained many of those tariffs and doubled down on some.

But the second Trump administration has taken trade barriers to an unprecedented level. It has placed a 10% universal tariff on virtually all goods coming into the United States. It put in place an additional 20% tariff on Chinese goods in an effort to get China to take action to reduce the flow of fentanyl over the US border. Both of those extraordinary tariffs remain in place on most Chinese goods, with the exception of some products like electronics.

In addition, the White House closed the so-called de minimis exemption that allowed packages with a value of under $800 to come into the United States tariff-free. Hefty new tariffs remain in place on small packages, undermining the business models of Chinese ecommerce giants Shein and Temu.

The compounding tariffs create significant trade barriers with America’s second-largest trading partner, raising prices for American businesses and consumers with no easy fixes or clear market alternatives. Some gigantic companies, such as Apple, have complex supply chains that can withstand some of the price pressures. But even Apple, which has said it would ship most US iPhones from India as Chinese tariffs rise, said it would face a $900 million quarterly cost increase because of tariffs – at their current levels, not at the sky-high 145% rate.

Other businesses, such as Boeing, have been completely shut out of China’s market. Even without any tariffs or other formal barriers by China on purchases of US aircraft, Boeing has made virtually no sales in China, the world’s largest for aircraft purchases, since 2019.

But Trump sounded a hopeful note about the path forward.

“President XI and I are going to work closely together to open up China to American Trade,” Trump said in a post Wednesday morning. “This would be a great WIN for both countries!!!”

A trade truce may be better than the alternative – if it lasts this time. But if the deal leads to reduced trade barriers, that could boost both economies.>

<With President Donald Trump sending more troops into Los Angeles amid protests there, a remarkable image has gone viral on social media. It shows members of the National Guard crowded into a sterile-looking office, sleeping on a hard floor, in evident discomfort, all dressed in full military gear.

The image doesn’t just reveal awful planning for this dispatching of troops. It also captures the deeper absurdity of this entire operation: These members of the military were supposedly needed to quell an urgent emergency, but as it has turned out, they were simply not needed for this purpose at all.

Guess who knows this disconnect is a problem? Trump does.

“If I didn’t ‘SEND IN THE TROOPS’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump raged on Truth Social, adding that Governor Gavin Newsom is “incompetent.” This came after another incendiary Trump missive, which vaguely suggested that “Gavin Newscum” is inspiring protesters to “spit” on National Guardsmen, and after Trump called for Newsom’s arrest based on nothing. In a subsequent speech to service members, Trump also absurdly described L.A. as nothing but a “trash heap,” presumably meaning he’s its savior, and goaded his audience into booing Newsom.

All of this is supposed to seem fearsome and strong, and the dispatching of the military is unquestionably a serious abuse of power that must be strenuously resisted. But it’s also worth seeing it as a display of a certain form of political weakness. The buffoonery of Trump’s claims about the need for the Guard and his wildly uncontrollable rage at Newsom—combined with new revelations about the genesis of this crisis—point to a real vulnerability that sits at the core of this whole spectacle.

Those revelations come in this report in The Wall Street Journal, which says that in May, top Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials that Trump was displeased with lagging deportation numbers. Miller told ICE officials that they are not merely supposed to target gang members and violent criminals, and instead must “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens”:

He directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.

“Who here thinks they can do it?” Miller said, asking for a show of hands.

It’s this order that inspired the ICE sweep at a Home Depot in Los Angeles that led to where we are right now, reports the Journal. And this is highly instructive.

Here’s why: MAGA, like other iterations of authoritarian and fascist politics, thrives on the invocation of a vast and implacable enemy within that requires the dramatic exercise of emergency authorities and extraordinary measures to defeat it. But executing that invocation in the first place requires what’s technically known as “making s*** up.”

Thus it is that Miller and Trump spent the 2024 campaign depicting all migrants as dangerous criminals in order to sell mass deportations to the voters. Now, however, because there aren’t enough dangerous criminal migrants around, two-bit fascist Miller is frantically urging ICE officials to head to the nearest Home Depot and scoop up as many migrants as possible, to make those deportation numbers pleasing to the raging Audience of One.

The absurdity of this is plain. As Josh Marshall notes, by definition this entails targeting day laborers—that is, going after people who want to work and whose labor is in demand, meaning it inherently constitutes the opposite of hunting for dangerous criminals. Worse, Trump and Miller are not just neglecting serious criminal migrants to target more noncriminals; to do so, they’re also actively shifting law enforcement resources away from other serious crimes, from drug trafficking to child exploitation.

The Trump-Miller answer to the political problem here has been to deport as many people as possible, then label them all criminals after the fact. But that’s also not going well. The courts are standing robustly in the way. And polling data shows that while generalized deportations sometimes poll well, majorities do not support removals of longtime residents, noncriminals, and people with jobs. Voters want a law-based, orderly immigration system, but they don’t harbor Trump-Miller’s deep ideological hostility to the mere presence of undocumented immigrants, which MAGA views as itself posing a national emergency....>

<....That brings us to Los Angeles. There is zero indication that Trump’s sending in of the Guard has prevented widespread civil collapse from breaking out, as his rage-tweet claimed. Though any violence is to be condemned, the unrest has been limited to extremely contained localities in the massive land area known as Greater Los Angeles, as David Dayen’s reporting shows.

Indeed, Newsom’s office tells me that according to National Guard officials it’s in touch with, most of the 2,000 National Guard troops originally sent by Trump are not even being deployed right now. “Our understanding is that there are about 1,600 soldiers waiting for orders at local armories,” a Newsom spokesperson emails.

If this is true, then Trump’s claim that his dispatching of troops kept L.A. from burning down looks even more absurd. So does Trump’s decision to dispatch another 2,000 guardsmen. By the way, now that Trump has announced that he’s sending in 700 Marines as well, the L.A. Police Department has declared that this could create “an additional logistical and operational challenge” for those “safeguarding the city.” Trump is making things worse.

It’s often said that making things worse is what Trump wants out of this situation. But journalists haven’t spun out the real political significance of this. Many news organizations are credulously reporting, with zero independent scrutiny, that the White House views this as a political winner: Axios says this episode provides Trump an “opportunity to fuse power, politics and spectacle,” suggesting this lets Trump fight on immigration as his “home turf.” NBC News uncritically reports that the White House sees this as a “winning issue.”

But that’s garbage analysis. By unthinkingly amplifying the White House’s spin that this is good political strategy, it wraps lawless and authoritarian abuses of power in the aura of conventional politics. What’s more, polling doesn’t even support the idea: Only small minorities support the sending in of the National Guard or the Marines, while pluralities oppose it. And why even assume that people will see troops descending on cities amid largely peaceful protests primarily as an immigration issue?

MAGA politics has a built-in structural problem here: It thrives on invocations of endlessly sinister, inchoate enemies and fantasies about using emergency authorities and awesome firepower to crush them. Just as Trump and Miller needed to paint all migrants as criminals but now are reduced to scouring Home Depot parking lots, so too must they wildly inflate the violence in L.A.—and put on garish paramilitary displays in response—to keep the MAGA Media Complex happy. But many voters in the middle do not thrill to the same enemies or lust after the same emergencies that MAGA does.

None of this diminishes the real danger this situation poses. Trump’s troops really could be the prelude to invoking the Insurrection Act and worse. But to reflexively assume that voters will robotically side with Trump here is to assume that imagery of violence, disorder, and paramilitary gear will automatically turn off their brains.

True, this debate is not fully settled yet. In fact, as Brian Beutler says, this is why Democrats must engage it forcefully. But that entails refraining from assuming that voters will believe Trump when he declares that his military displays are necessary to establish civil order in Los Angeles. Trump is raging at Newsom—and demanding our applause for putting down this “rebellion”—not because he’s fearsome and strong but because his watch-me-play-fascist-on-TV routine is self-evident overkill, voters suspect the military is not needed here, and it’s all making him appear simultaneously tyrannical and incompetent. Democrats: Proceed accordingly.>

<Just after President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, the Serbian government decided that a bombed-out former government building was no longer a "culturally protected asset." But when members of the state-run Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments cried foul, one leader got an ominous threat.

The building was "an icon to Serbians’ suffering during a 1999 conflict," the New York Times described. But the Trump family wanted it for a project.

"President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has a deal with the Serbian government to build a half-billion-dollar hotel and apartment complex in the center of the capital, Belgrade. The project also involves the Trump Organization, run by the president’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., as the luxury hotel will bear the Trump brand," the report said.

Estela Radonjic Zivkov, who was working as the deputy director of the institute, said, “From the beginning, we knew it was a political decision."

The institute, which comprises "dozens [of] architects and cultural historians," took issue with the new deal. Zivkov said that's when state intelligence officers pressured her not to challenge the case, because political leaders had an "intense interest in the project." But she ignored their warning.

There were two calls after that. "They 'strongly advised' her to back off," the Times reported.

"Undaunted, she sent off the letter — signed, she said, by every one of the institute’s 50-some experts — to the government and the Ministry of Culture," the report said. The letter told them that the government couldn't revoke the designation of the building as a cultural site unless their experts agreed to it.

Now, the report said, it has become the biggest scandal in Serbia, reaching all the way to the presidency.

The Times called it a "glaring example of just how far a foreign government was willing to go to further the financial interests of Mr. Trump’s family. And it underscores recurring concerns that the family’s business dealings have become harder to separate from Mr. Trump’s official decisions."

Zivkov’s boss, Goran Vasic, the director of the cultural institute, is now being hauled into court by the state's organized crime prosecutor. Prosecutors said he confessed to "falsifying a document to justify stripping the site of its protected status." Prosecutors have identified 34 other individuals they still wish to question regarding the matter.

Now, there are questions about whether Serbia's finance minister, Sinisa Mali, "pressured cultural heritage officials to either back the project or resign," the report stated. Mali has close ties to the White House through Trump ally Ric Grenell.

Mass protests have broken out against what the Times called "strongman president," Aleksandar Vucic, claiming that the development is an example of the government's corruption.

“Even the appearance that U.S. foreign policy might be getting harnessed for the president’s personal financial benefit flies in the face of how we have always understood public service,” Daniel I. Weiner, a government expert with the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, told the Times in an interview.

He noted that if foreign leaders think they can bribe Trump by "lining his family's pockets," U.S. foreign policy decisions could become completely distorted.

Zivkov is still working at the cultural institute, now as a principal conservator.

Mali refused to comment on the matter. Kushner's company claims that the project is still under review. President Vucic swears "there was not any kind of forgery.">

<In what may be one of the year's most ironic moments, President Donald Trump will spend Wednesday night attending the opening of the musical “Les Misérables” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. No, this isn’t some presidential obligation that Trump is reluctantly fulfilling. Rather, as he told Fox News Digital last week: “I love the songs, I love the play. I think it’s great.”

For once, Trump seems to be telling the truth. True, none of the numbers from "Les Mis" appeared on his official playlist for his 2024 campaign, unlike other Broadway musicals like “Cats” or “Phantom of the Opera.” (His love of Andrew Lloyd Webber is well-known and deeply telling in its own way.) But I’d forgotten until today that during the announcement of his third presidential run in 2022, he walked onstage immediately following the strains of “Do You Hear the People Sing?”

In fact, he’s used the song multiple times at events over the years, almost always prompting similar bouts of confusion from people who understand “Les Misérables.” Which brings us to the other half of his statement to Fox News Digital: that he thinks the show is "great." It’s entirely unclear to me whether there’s anything about the show’s characters, plot, themes, or general vibe that would speak to Trump on any deeper level.

For starters, “Do You Hear the People Sing?” is a wild choice of anthem for someone like Trump who has only known wealth and power. The song calls for a revolutionary uprising against the reestablished monarchy in favor of republican ideals and uplifting the poor and downtrodden. The students who belt the number then build a barricade on the streets before the army crushes their insurrection and dreams of a brighter future for France along with it.

Given his eagerness this week to deploy Marines onto the streets of Los Angeles, and attacks on protests on college campuses, I have a hard time picturing Trump either sympathizing with the students' cause or mourning their deaths.

Further, am I supposed to believe that the “law and order president” identifies at all with former convict Jean Valjean’s story of the cruelty of the law toward the poor and needy? Or that he feels moved by Inspector Javert hurling himself into the Seine when he realizes that mercy can be more just than the law as written? I wouldn’t put it past him to describe Gavroche, the young street urchin shot down mid-song as he aids the rebels, as "no angel."

Granted, as The Washington Post noted, there are Trump supporters out there who see the MAGA movement as following in the footsteps of the Friends of the ABC in fighting tyranny. But I’m less convinced that Trump feels similarly. My money is on him being more captivated by the way the sweeping, booming, overwhelming score sounds than any moral that the show might be trying to bestow on the audience. C’est la vie.>

<On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with a warning about President Donald Trump’s behind-the-scenes strategy to subvert the 2026 midterm elections, by creating chaos to justify his use of extreme executive power. David also discusses how Trump’s feud with Elon Musk reveals a deeper truth about power in the postdemocracy Republican Party.

Then David is joined by Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego to discuss how Democrats can win the votes of young men, the importance of free trade and patriotism in today’s Democratic Party, and how Gallego has been so successful with Latino voters at a time when Latino men are trending so strongly Republican.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

David Frum: Hello, and welcome to another episode of The David Frum Show. I’m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week is Senator Ruben Gallego from Arizona, one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party.

I recorded my interview with Senator Gallego on June 5, and at that time, I also recorded a monologue talking about the White House farce, tragedy, conflict between Elon Musk and Donald Trump—Elon Musk being the richest man in the world, the biggest contributor to the Trump campaign, the de facto chief of staff and vice president to Donald Trump; and Donald Trump, the president of the United States.

But one of the lessons of the Trump years is: It never pays to do things early. You always want to leave things to the last minute because however outrageous the big story on Thursday is, there may be something that happens on the weekend that is even bigger. And so it is. So we’re topping that topper with another topper.

Over the weekend, there was an outbreak of unruly protest, disorderly protest, and even violent protest in Los Angeles against immigration raids by the Trump administration. I’m at some distance; I wasn’t an eyewitness. I’m relying on news reports, and there’s some uncertainty about exactly what happened, but it looks like rocks were thrown at ICE vehicles. Protesters tried to impede ICE officers doing their duty. Fireworks were shot off. A car seems to have been set on fire.

Now, all of this is illegal, disorderly, and must, of course, be met by the force of law. Fortunately, there are nearly 9,000 officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, uniformed officers with the right to arrest. And the state of California—in cities and counties and at the state level—deploys, altogether, more than 75,000 uniformed officers with arrest powers. So given the state of the situation, there looked to be nothing that the state of California couldn’t cope with on its own.

Mercifully, at the time I record today, there were no reports of any injury to any law-enforcement personnel, which, if correct, gives you some idea of the disorderly and upsetting, but genuinely limited, nature of the lawbreaking on hand.

Nevertheless, President Trump announced an intent to federalize California’s National Guard and send 2,000 military personnel into the state, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth chimed in with an offer of sending actual Marines from bases in California. Now, this is being reported as, in some ways, an immigration story, but it’s really much, much more than that. By the way, as it happened, it looks like the National Guard was never sent (or certainly wasn’t sent in time), and the Marines also weren’t sent.

I think a way to think about what happened in California this weekend is as a trial run, a test, a practice for things that Donald Trump has in mind in 2026. Observers of the Trump administration have noted a strange paradox. On the one hand, Donald Trump is doing one after another outrageous act of seeming violation of rules, seeming illegality, selling billions of dollars of coins to persons unknown, accepting foreign jets—things that, if he loses the protection of control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2026, portend a world of trouble and even legal jeopardy for him in the second two years of his administration.

And yet, facing that danger, Donald Trump has blithely done one thing after another that seems guaranteed to lose him at least the House, and maybe both House and Senate, in 2026: the tariffs, this tax bill that offers very little to ordinary people, the economy slowly being ground into recession under the burden of all of his restrictive actions. I mean, to do tariffs and an immigration crackdown at the same time is really asking for an economic slowdown....>

<....So how do you make sense of this? Does Donald Trump not know that the elections are coming? Does he not sense the danger that he’s in, of what will happen to him, of what could happen to him should his party lose its ability to protect him in House and Senate? Well, I think the answer is: Donald Trump does know, and he does have a scheme to protect himself, but it’s not doing popular things to keep his majorities in Congress. It’s looking for ways to subvert the 2026 elections to prevent them from happening, or at least to control them so they don’t threaten him at all.

Now, we have had some inklings of Donald Trump’s thinking along these lines. We saw them in 2020, when people close to Donald Trump—like his former national security adviser Michael Flynn—advised him to use the military to suppress the 2020 vote. But Flynn’s advice in 2020 came too late. The election had already happened. Flynn was looking to overturn an election in the past, not to prevent an election in the future. And that’s a big thing to do, especially when court after court after court has ruled that the president and his supporters’ claims against the 2020 election were utterly meritless.

Also, Donald Trump in 2020 had a military around him that was not likely to obey illegal orders. Under Secretary of Defense [Mark] Esper and under chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, the Defense Department had said, Look—we will follow any lawful order of the president. But when the president suggests shooting protesters—as he did during the George Floyd riots—we’re going say, “Mr. President, are you quite sure? I’m not gonna take a hint here. I need an order, and I need it maybe in writing, so that when I am court-martialed, I can show, ‘The president told me to shoot those people.’” And Donald Trump always backed down because he couldn’t rely on Esper and Milley to take the hint about what he wanted done.

But here’s how his mind worked. We saw this in 2018. In October 2018, as Donald Trump was heading toward midterm elections that would cost him his majority in the House of Representatives, he began to get very upset about an immigration caravan that was supposedly—a so-called caravan that was—heading toward the border. And he began talking in October 2018 about needing a state of emergency to do something about this, to freeze the border, to militarize the southern states.

Now, that didn’t go very far. In the first term, Trump’s talk was often much more radical than Trump’s actions. But you could see the way his mind was going. The president has very broad and quite messy emergency powers. He can do a lot of different things by invoking a state of emergency. He thought about it in 2018. He thought about it in 2020. He wasn’t able to do it either time.

But in 2026, he’s going to have a very different kind of administration around him. He’s got a former talk-show host as a secretary of defense, one with a long list of allegations of heavy drinking and allegations of sexual abuse against him, who’s completely beholden to Donald Trump. There are similarly beholden people running the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. There’s a striking lack of independent voices of people with substantial reputations and long-proven integrity—and, for that matter, proven loyalty to the law of the United States. He’s got the administration of his dreams, and he’s got the problem of a lifetime: the risk of losing the House of Representatives. So what’s the plan? The state of emergency. And that was tested in California.

Now, how would this work? Theoretically, of course. We don’t know any of this. I’m just telling you how a criminally minded person might advise the president. The president doesn’t have a button he can press to stop elections. Elections are administered by the states. But what the president can do is put pressure on certain states, or delay or stop elections in certain states in order to convene the House of Representatives, which will be full of newly elected people from his states and vacancies from the other states.

There’s some precedent for this. In 2018, the island of Saipan, which is a U.S. territory, was hit by a devastating typhoon, and the governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands issued a series of emergency declarations—he’s acting under federal executive power; it’s not a state—including ordering postponing elections that were to be held in the territory for two weeks, including an election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where the Northern Marianas have a nonvoting delegate.

No one questioned this. It’s a genuine typhoon, and things really were terribly, terribly disrupted. And two weeks is not so long to wait for the right to vote in the face of a genuine emergency. But that was a proof of the power to delay an election that could be wielded by a functionary of the executive branch....>

<....Back during Reconstruction, the Grant administration often sent federal troops into areas where there was Ku Klux Klan activity to postpone elections, reorganize elections, redo elections. Again, that was Reconstruction; they were facing terroristic violence that was threatening the rights of, in South Carolina, half the population of the state. But there are precedents here.

Now, imagine this in 2026. President Trump provokes some kind of outbreak in California or in some other blue state. He declares a state of emergency. He sends the National Guard. And he says elections have to be postponed until order is restored. That may be weeks; it may be months. In the meantime, there are no representatives from California in the U.S. House of Representatives. With missing blue-state representatives, the red-state people will continue their majority, even though they would likely lose it in a free and fair election in 2026. I’m not saying this is something that will happen, but it’s something that could happen, and I think it was something we just saw tested.

So I think as President Trump’s mind wanders into places where no president’s mind has ever wandered before, it’s going to fall upon all of us to let our minds follow afterwards—to listen to the hints, to listen to things that sound crazy, to listen to people who sound crazy, because they may be the prophets of what’s to come.

And now some thoughts on the Elon Musk–Donald Trump dispute, and then my interview with Senator Ruben Gallego.

Frum: Everyone’s talking about this. It’s hard to think of anything additional to say beyond what’s been said. But there’s a point that I’d like to flag that I think has not gone discussed enough, which is: It’s kind of insulting and kind of dangerous that American citizens have to care about this kind of personal dispute at the highest levels of government.

The question of whose side you’re on in this kind of personality spat is not something you expect to see in a rule-of-law government. In an authoritarian regime, for sure. Presidents and secret-police chiefs fall out, and one will assassinate the other, send the other to prison. There will be coups and countercoups. But in a democratic rule-of-law system of government, personality is supposed to count not for nothing, but for a lot less. These are all functionaries. These are all servants of the people, highly replaceable. And when they dispute, historically, we expect their disputes to reflect something other than their mere selfish-ego needs.

For example, at the beginning of the Biden administration, there was a big dispute between former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, one of the most important outside advisers of the Biden administration, and many of the economic insiders in the Biden administration. Summers warned that the spending plans of the Biden administration were probably too big for the needs of the economy and were likely to generate inflation. As it happened, he was right, but that’s not the point.

Others in the Biden administration said, No, we made a mistake in the Obama administration, not spending enough before we were out of the woods. And anyway, this is an opportunity to get done a lot of things that we and the Democratic Party think are important. So we want to proceed with these spending plans, even at the risk of inflation.

And there was a big dispute about that. As I said, Summers was right, but that was hard to know in advance. The other people were certainly motivated by sincere concerns for their vision of the public good. And sometimes it got a little testy, and some personality issues did flare up, and people made ad hominem arguments, as they will. But what everyone understood was: This is not an argument about Summers trying to dominate the insiders, and the insiders trying to dominate Summers.

They were talking about something important to the public well-being: How big should the Biden post-COVID recovery plans be? How much money should be spent? How much debt should be incurred? This was something that honest and intelligent people could have meaningful, impersonal disagreements about, even if, as I said, ego gets attached, tempers flare, and the unfortunate things are said. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

And you can find examples of this in many other administrations. Hawks during the Cold War days—there were always disputes between the hawks and the doves, between those who wanted to have a more forward policy toward the Soviet Union and those who wanted to try harder on detente, those who were more optimistic about China and those who were less optimistic. And always the question of: Where does the government spend its money? How? On what?>

<....All of these things cause tensions and disputes. And you’ll find them in back issues of old periodicals about the events of the day. But the theory was, and the practice usually was, that the issues drove the personalities, not the personalities drove the issues. It was not a question of personalities in dispute looking for reasons, looking for weapons to use against each other in the form of issues. It was a dispute about real issues: Should the government spend more after COVID? Should it spend less? How real is the risk of inflation in 2021, versus how real is the risk of persistent long-term unemployment? That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

What’s going on between Trump and Elon Musk is like something out of (you’d read it in the pages of) Tacitus in the Roman empire, something out of postcolonial states, something you’d see in the Soviet Union when the secret police would dispute with the army. This is about egos and imperatives, about two people who see themselves as independent of anybody else and as principals, not as servants of the public. It’s a question of personalist government.

I mean, think how weird and anomalous and really sinister the position of Elon Musk was. Elon Musk was the head of a government department. Now, formally, other people were named as the head of this DOGE—whatever, the Department of Government Efficiency—but Musk was given status as a special government employee. Everyone could see he was in charge. He hired other outside people and brought them in.

All of this at the same time as he was one of the government’s largest contractors, and at the same time as he was an independent businessman who had not divested any of his companies. Normally, if you’re a business leader and you go into government, you have to sever yourself from your business interests to avoid conflict-of-interest rules, which are not just opinions in the government but are actually backed by the force of law, or used to be—that if someone in government employ uses his power or her power to do something that advantages his business interests or hers, or to disadvantage a competitor or hers, that’s against the law. And there are a variety of statutes that can catch you up.

Musk every day was ignoring all of those practices and rules and legislation, some of them backed by the force of criminal sanction. And the people who he brought into government, again, they often had outside interests or had past concerns that would’ve subjected them to conflict-of-interest rules. All of that, ignored. They imposed big cuts in important areas of government—not just the tragedy of cutting the HIV program in Africa, PEPFAR, that saved tens of millions of lives since it was initiated by President George W. Bush, but Securities and Exchange Commission, Internal Revenue Service. Agencies that directly bore on the active business interests of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, these were shut down by Elon Musk.

And maybe all those IRS employees who were in charge of auditing high-income individuals, maybe those SEC people who were dealing with allegations of SEC issues involving Musk, maybe they were all irrelevant and unnecessary and redundant and overstaffed. Or maybe they were just in the way, and somebody used personal power to get rid of them—personal power that was converted into state power to get rid of them.

Now, Musk is not activated just by self-interest. He does have these weird ideological ticks that seem to be getting weirder. And those have been part of what has driven the United States government too. The United States is turning away refugees from everywhere, including people who serve the United States and Afghanistan, and it’s rolling out a red carpet for white Afrikaner farmers.

I don’t know—maybe they’ve got a claim. I’m not hostile to the white Afrikaner farmers. But it is strange that there’s a locked door for everybody else and a red carpet for the people with whom Elon Musk identifies, as his family originally comes from South Africa. Again, this is a question of using state power for personal ends.

Look—the statement that is supposed to define the United States government is that it’s a government of laws, not men. The rules and regulations, the government is always supposed to be more powerful, more enduring, more important than the people who work in it. And the people there are there to serve. But that idea really does seem to be jettisoned—not just abandoned, but actively jettisoned, repudiated—in the Trump years. And this dispute exemplifies it....>