More headlines we’re sure to see Donald Trump is already making America “great again” … for lowlifes. This first gentleman’s demise predates Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons, but he might have received one if he’d still been in jail. Plus, if he’d owned a GMC Denali, it would now be a McKinley, January 4: A man who fired an assault rifle inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant in December 2016 while claiming to investigate the “pizzagate” hoax died this week after being fatally shot by police during a traffic stop in Kannapolis, North Carolina. On the night of Jan. 4, Edgar Welch was a passenger in a 2001 GMC Yukon that was stopped by officers, Kannapolis police said Thursday in a news statement. The traffic stop was conducted after officers linked the vehicle to Welch, who was wanted at the time on an outstanding arrest warrant, police said. When officers recognized Welch and moved to arrest him, he produced a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at one of the officers, police said, and after refusing commands to drop the gun, two officers opened fire on him.
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They told him he would have to switch to a midnight show despite his ratings being the highest on the network in daytime. So he left. This is CNN.
It’s happening: There was some question as to whether student loans would be allowed to continue and from what I can see at the moment that, like everything else in the federal government,that decision is being decided by some flunky political appointee but nobody knows if it’s going to work or not. This situation is developing rapidly so who knows whether this will last past the day. If you look at the memo that went out suggesting that it’s being done because of “Marxist” policies, transgenderism and the green new deal, it’s pretty clear that the memo was written by a moron. So who knows?
Former Ambassador Caroline Kennedy sent a litter to Senators about her cousin Bobby. If they care to listen there is no way they could ever even dream of putting him in charge of anything: He is a sociopath: “he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.” Sadly, I won’t be surprised if that actually cinches it for him. Republicans will love him all the more.
And so it begins After President Petro of Colombia denied entry of two US repatriation flights of Colombian migrants, President Trump has announced these retaliatory measures. Petro said he wouldn’t allow the flights in until Trump establishes a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants. The NY Times reports: The move reflects how Mr. Trump is making an example out of Colombia as countries around the world are grappling with how to prepare for the mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants that he has threatened. […] Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, said earlier Sunday in a series of social media posts that Colombia would not accept military deportation flights from the United States until the Trump administration provided a process to treat Colombian migrants with “dignity and respect.” Mr. Petro also said that Colombia had already turned away military planes carrying Colombian deportees. While other countries in Latin America have raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s sweeping deportation plans, Colombia appears to be among the first to explicitly refuse to cooperate.
This post by attorney Tor Ekeland has been making the rounds on Blue Sky and I think it’s worth sharing: My dad was tortured by the Gestapo for 4 days and thrown in a concentration camp for being in the Norwegian Resistance. Growing up, he would tell me things he learned in the Resistance. I thought, I’m never going to need this stuff. Here’s some of those things #Thread First, you’re never going to win a head on battle with an adversary that’s got you outgunned. That’s not the point of the Resistance. The point is to create friction, make it hard for your adversary to operate, to increase transaction costs. Second, resistance doesn’t have to be a dramatic act. It can be a small act, like losing a sheet of paper, taking your time processing something, not serving someone in a restaurant. Small acts taken by thousands have big effects. Third, use your privilege and access if you’ve got it. He and his buddies stole weapons from the Nazis by driving up with a truck to the weapons depot, speaking German, acting like it was a routine pick up, and driving away.
I wrote about Tate last week a criminal sex-trafficker and alleged good friend of … Barron Trump? I guess it does figure I posted this a year and a half ago, pointing out that Donald Trump was consorting with some truly vile, fringe figures, among them Paul Ingrassia, now working for the White House: Amanda Marcotte has written a fascinating deep dive report on online radicalization for Salon that I highly recommend. I’ll just excerpt this piece of it: The same rabbit-hole phenomenon that can draw social media users deeper into the world of eating disorders or suicidal ideation also appears to be a factor in online radicalization. Lisa Sugiura notes that many of the men she interviewed while researching the “incel” community were first drawn into that world through unrelated or apolitical online material, before the algorithm turned their heads toward darker stuff.
That comment is Elon with his full two months of being a gadfly in Mar-a-Lago wielding influence over a complex health and financial issue he knows nothing about. Yes, the richest man in the world is going to be pushing to take bare subsistence money away from disabled people. We are hearing that Susie Wiles is trying to build some walls between Elon and the Prez and rein in DOGE but who knows? And I don’t know how Trump could mess with SSDI unilaterally but I’m sure they have some ideas. It’s just insane that this idiot has influence on the government in any way. Democrats? Can’t you do something with this? By the way, here’s Elon being cute as always (when he isn’t talking to Nazis and delivering a Sieg Heil at the inauguration:
Was there ever any doubt? From Leigh Ann Caldwell at Puck: Last weekend, before his inauguration, Trump floated in conversations the notion of redirecting funds from the $370 billion Inflation Reduction Act, the massive infrastructure bill with a hilariously disingenuous name, to projects he wants to underwrite. The idea also came up earlier this week when he met with Republican congressional leaders, according to a person who received a rundown of the meeting. Rep. Sam Graves, the new chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told me that’s not an immediate priority, but will happen “later in the year.” Graves said it would be part of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill, which funds highways and, well, surface transportation projects, which will begin to come into focus in the second half of the year. Or, Trump could ignore the Impoundment Act, the law that requires the administration to spend money on what Congress legislated, as his allies have suggested for a host of issues. Someone needs to ask Russ Vought what he plans to do on this. I don’t think it was in any of their plans to be spending money on this stuff.
Pick a fight For all their sky-is-falling rhetoric about Project 2025 last year, Democrats (with exceptions) have settled into business as usual in D.C. They just chose old and busted over new hotness for a top Oversight Committee post. It’s what they know. It’s their comfort zone, well-worn groove, rut [your preferred metaphor here]. Well, the rest of us will be feeling discomfort beyond serving in the congressional minority for the forseeable future. If Democrats have another gear, they’d damned well better find it now. From December 2016 during the first Trump transition: The biggest challenge Democrats face is not Donald Trump, but constitution. Not the one in the National Archives, but their inner constitution. The Democratic Party as an “establishment” organization is conservative by disposition. When shaken or defeated, or when facing the unknown, like now, such organizations by reflex seek safety in the comfortable and familiar. They shy from risk. Democrats fret about what Republicans might say about them at election time. Inner circles across the country worry about fundraising: regular donors might not support untested, young leaders.