Criminals or Heroes?

The Republicans are claiming to be the party of law and order in the ICE raids issue. They consider Trump’s policy to arrest and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, by any means possible, to be the law.

Courts that rule against Trump’s policy, declaring for example the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles to be illegal, are denounced as “lawfare”, – unelected judges trying to thwart the policy of the elected president who has a “strong mandate” to deal with “illegal immigrants”. As an aside, recent polls show that the majority of Americans do not support the Trump regime’s handling of immigrants (nor any other issue for that matter) – so much for Trump’s strong mandate”. And people who try to protect immigrants from the illegal raids, including judges, mayors, and members of Congress, are arrested and charged with obstructing justice. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border Czar”, warned that anyone, including judges, who obstructs Trump’s immigration agenda will be prosecuted.

Now what if the tables were turned. Suppose that President Biden had issued an executive order to outlaw the possession of assault rifles. The courts ruled against the order, but that didn’t stop him. He then sent the National Guard into Republican states to raid any home, without a warrant, that they suspected might have such now-illegal weapons. And to seize any such weapons they found and arrest the entire families in the home, sending them to offshore prisons. The courts ruled that this use of the National Guard, and the deporting of citizens, are both illegal but that didn’t stop the president.

Do you suppose that Republican judges, mayors and members of Congress might oppose such actions and perhaps try to protect their people? And loudly protest such actions as “police state” terrorism? Of course they would – and so they should; most if not all Democrats would as well. But now people who obstructed the President’s agenda would be heroes, not criminals, in the eyes of Republicans.

Now, for the record, I don’t believe for a second that Biden would do any of that. When the courts stopped his student loan forgiveness order he backed off and found another, legal, route and did what he could.

So, people who try to obstruct illegal actions are either criminals or heroes, depending on whether you support the policy behind the actions.

Sources:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/noem-the-fbi-and-trump-just-sent-3ee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etgb6Iy6Otg

Minnesota Assassinations

Early Saturday morning, June 15, a lone gunman shot and killed Minnesota State representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home.

The same night Democratic Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were shot in their home but are expected to survive following surgery.

The suspected gunman, Vance Boelter, was arrested late Sunday night, ending the largest manhunt in Minnesota history.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called the shootings an “act of targeted political violence.”

Typically, the initial reaction from Republicans was to deflect blame. Senator Mike Lee posted on X referring to the situation as “Nightmare on Waltz Street” hinting that somehow Governor Tim Walz was responsible. He also posted “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”

It soon came out that the suspect, Vance Boelter, is a strong Trump supporter and a Pro-Life evangelical Christian. A list of possible targets, found in his car, included many other Democratic politicians and Planned Parenthood offices. Doesn’t sound like a Marxist to me!

Condemnation of Mike Lee’s posts came from all directions. Michael Steel, former chair of the Republican National Committee told him to “Grow the hell up”. Senator Richard J. Durbin, D of Illinois called Lee’s posts “beyond dangerous” and that politicizing the shootings was “absolutely unacceptable”. Senator Amy Klobuchar, D of Minnesota, who was close friends with Melissa Hortman, planned to confront Lee in person and tell him “This isn’t funny”.

Later that day, after many outraged responses, Mr. Lee posted to his official Senate account the following:

“These hateful attacks have no place in Utah, Minnesota, or anywhere in America. Please join me in condemning this senseless violence, and praying for the victims and their families.”

But Chris Lee wasn’t the only Republican to take political potshots.

Representative Derrick Van Orden, R Wisconsin, posted the usual condemnations of political violence on his official account while claiming on his personal social media account that Ms. Hortman was targeted because she was not “far Left enough.” He also pointed out that Governor Tim Walz had appointed the suspect to a state economic board.

What about President Trump?

His official statement was brief: “Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place.”

When after 24 hours Trump had still not called Governor Walz, ABC’s Rachel Scott asked him if he would call him about the assassination. Trump’s reply was first, that the attack “was a terrible thing” but couldn’t resist adding that “I think [Tim Walz] is a terrible governor. I think he’s a grossly incompetent person. But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too.”

Unfortunately that is a typical response from Donald Trump.

Remember when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was assaulted with a hammer and nearly killed in 2022? Donald Trump and other Republicans made a joke of it, suggesting first that it was a false flag and then that it was the result of a gay lovers’ quarrel. There was no apology when those ideas were proved completely false.

Following the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump there was unconditional condemnation from President Biden and Democratic lawmakers. There were no jokes, at least not publicly by Democratic politicians, about, for example, the need for marksmanship training in American high schools.

Several people have speculated that Trump’s pardon of the January 6 rioters has sent a clear message that violence committed for Trump is acceptable and that he will have your back if you get caught.

Senator Chris Murphy pointed out that while people of all political persuasions commit violence, no Democratic leader encourages violence as a political norm the way Trump and MAGA have done, citing “a straight line from Jan 6 to the pardons to the assault on Sen. Padilla to Minnesota.”

In contrast to the messages from some Republicans, every House Representative and Senator from Minnesota, Democratic and Republican, issued a joint statement.

“Today we speak with one voice to express our outrage, grief, and condemnation of this horrible attack on public servants. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated violence. We are praying for John and Yvette’s recovery and we grieve the loss of Melissa and Mark with their family, colleagues, and Minnesotans across the state. We are grateful for law enforcement’s swift response to the situation and continued efforts.”

This is the appropriate response.

 

Sources:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-15-2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/us/politics/mike-lee-minnesota-assassination-democrats.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-minnesota-tim-walz-shootings-b2771012.html

Assault on Senator Padilla

On Thursday June 12 Senator Alex Padilla was assaulted by security guards at a press conference in Los Angeles.

Padilla later explained what happened:

“I'm here in Los Angeles today, and I was here in the federal building in the conference room, awaiting a scheduled briefing from federal officials as part of my responsibility as a senator to provide oversight and accountability. While I was waiting for the briefing…, I learned that Secretary Noem was having a press conference a couple of doors down the hall. Since the beginning of the year, but especially…over the course of recent weeks, I—several of my colleagues—have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions. And we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries.

“And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information…. At one point, I had a question. And so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed. I was not arrested. I was not detained.

“I will say this. If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country. We will hold this administration accountable.”

 Immediately after the event Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said to reporters outside the building: “I will say that people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at people” and accused him of engaging in “disrespectful political theatre.”

This is obviously untrue. In the videos we can plainly hear Padilla identify himself as a Senator. He was escorted to the press conference by FBI and National Guard agents who had been with him in another room. They certainly knew who he was. He also did not “lunge” toward anyone – he resisted being roughed up by the security guards and called out “Sir! Sir! Hands off! I am Senator Alex Padilla”. 

The only excuse the security staff have is Padilla was not wearing his senate security pin. That and his parents are Mexican immigrants, so he looks like the people they are hunting down to deport.

Noem wasn’t the only Republican to blame Padilla for the incident. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that the Senate should censure Padilla for “wildly inappropriate behavior”. Meanwhile some Democrats have called for Noem’s resignation. [Fat chance for that – MAGAts have no shame]

Of more significance than the assault is what Noem was saying that prompted Padilla to ask a question:

 "We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."

She actually admitted that the purpose of the ICE raids in California was not just to remove undocumented criminals from the country. No, it is to overthrow the legitimate democratically elected governments of the city of Los Angeles and the State of California, because – they are not Republican.

Thom Hartmann commented on Noem’s proclamation:

For the record, the job of the federal government is not to “liberate” cities from the leaders they themselves have elected. That’s what Putin did when he forced all the elected governors of the Russian states (oblasts) to resign and replaced them with men he had appointed. Even suggesting it is deeply and profoundly unAmerican.

 

 

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/us/politics/senator-alex-padilla-handcuffed.html

 https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-12-2025

https://hartmannreport.com/p/noem-the-fbi-and-trump-just-sent-3ee

Waste Fraud & Abuse

 

This post is an excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson's substack post from June 4, 2025. It was too good not to share. Edited for brevity.

Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought ... appears to have determined the direction of the [DOGE] cuts, which did not save money so much as decimate the parts of the government that the authors of Project 2025 wanted to destroy.

Vought was a key author of Project 2025, whose aim is to disrupt and destroy the United States government in order to center a Christian, heteronormative, male-dominated family as the primary element of society. To do so, the plan calls for destroying the administrative state, withdrawing the United States from global affairs, and ending environmental and business regulations.

Vought appeared today before the House Appropriations Committee, where … he claimed that under Biden “... every agency became a tool of the Left.”

Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) told Vought:

“Be honest, this is never about government efficiency. In fact, an efficient government, a government that capably serves the American people and proves good government is achievable is what you fear the most. You want a government so broken, so dysfunctional, so starved of resources, so full of incompetent political lackeys and bereft of experts and professionals that its departments and agencies cannot feasibly achieve the goals and the missions to which they are lawfully directed. Your goal is privatization, for the biggest companies to have unchecked power, for an economy that does not work for the middle class, for working and vulnerable families. You want the American people to have no one to turn to, but to the billionaires and the corporations this administration has put in charge. Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of this administration. They are your primary objectives.” [emphasis mine - Stan]

Source: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-4-2025

                    https://www.facebook.com/reel/684880354345311

One Big Beautiful Bill

Early this morning the House passed Trump’s budget which he calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill”. It was close vote, 215 to 214, and passed despite opposition from two Republican factions – one opposed because it cuts too much from Medicaid; the other because it doesn’t cut enough. It now goes to the Senate where it may not be as easy.

This is the continuation of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts which he made a major campaign promise. It is partially balanced with cuts to government services including (despite Trump's assurances that it would not) to Medicare and Medicaid. There are many things wrong about this bill:

·         It adds several $ trillion to the national debt

·        The tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy

·        It cuts Medicare by $500 billion

·        More than 8 million Americans will lose Medicaid benefit

    ·        It cuts $300 billion from SNAP (food stamps) program

    ·        It slows the switch to renewable energy by eliminating subsidies

But these aren’t the worst part of the bill. Hidden inside is a harmless looking clause that will make Trump’s administration untouchable.

“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.”

It looks benign but what it means is that the courts lose their only power to enforce their rulings. U C Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote May 19 in Just Security: “[This] provision in the proposed spending bill would restrict the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders. Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.”

Cherimensky was the first to warn about this clause in the budget bill on Monday. Thom Hartmann picked up on it Tuesday (where I first saw it) and on Wednesday Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Reich wrote about it in their substacks.

As I mentioned above, the bill passed the House with this clause intact early this morning. It remains to be seen whether the Senate will do anything about it. They could rule that this clause is not about spending so does not belong in this bill. If The Senate does not strike the clause and it becomes law, Chemerinsky writes “the courts should declare it unconstitutional as violating separation of powers.”

Good luck with that!

So what’s the deal about security? The rule in question requires judges in certain circumstances to set a bond. Chemerinksy writes:

Rule 65(c) says that judges may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order “only if the movant gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.” But federal courts understandably rarely require that a bond be posted by those who are restraining unconstitutional federal, state, or local government actions.

Courts can set the bond at zero or a small manageable sum. That might work for future court rulings but the wording of the clause in this bill refers to enforcement and applies to all existing judicial orders, making them essentially unenforceable.

For anyone following the news, there is no mystery of why the Republicans would like this to become law. Much of what Trump and his regime have been doing is not only illegal but unconstitutional. As a result they have been losing most of the court cases trying to prevent their worst abuses. The regime’s evading and stalling tactics have been eroding the patience of the judges, several of whom are very close to charging government officials with contempt. This clause would protect them from such contempt charges and allow them to continue their destruction of America with impunity.

Sources

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-is

https://www.justsecurity.org/113529/terrible-idea-contempt-court/

https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-final-checkmate-republicans-move-7a2

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-21-2025

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-hidden-provision-in-the-big-ugly

Air Safety and the Blame Game

On top of a string of airplane collisions which we hadn’t seen in decades, a concerning event occurred at the Newark airport on April 28. Air Traffic controllers lost all communications for 30-90 seconds. Then it happened again on May 9. And one source reported that blackouts had occurred at least two times previously.

For that job, 90 seconds is a long time! One Newark controller said “It’s just dangerous, period, f you lose your radar! Every second the airspace changes because planes are constantly moving.”

When asked about these incidents, Sean Duffy, Secretary for Transportation explained, then blamed. “We have really old infrastructure in America, it hasn’t been updated in the last 30, 40 years. This should have been dealt with in the last administration and they did nothing.”

The previous Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg responded to Duffy’s accusations.

“I hated the technology that we inherited because it did need to be upgraded. Look, these problems have built up over a long time. I didn’t sit around saying who can we blame for this. We launched a contract to modernize the infrastructure, take what’s basically a copper wire system and transform it for the internet era, get fiber [optics] going there. That’s not something that can be done overnight. When you leave an office like that, you hand over the keys and it’s up to the next guy to take it to the next level.”

The following points are noteworthy: 

·        The number of air traffic controllers declined each year of Trump’s first term; Biden’s term saw a slow rebuild of numbers.

·        Duffy voted against FAA funding which included money for hiring more air traffic controllers and upgrading technology.

·        Under Duffy the non-partisan Aviation Security Advisory Committee, responsible for reviewing FAA air traffic control management since 1988, was (illegally) disbanded.

·        Transportation Inspector General Eric Soskin, who was calling for aviation safety improvements, was fired in the first week of Trump’s second term.

·      In February Trump fired hundreds of FAA  employees including workers responsible for maintenance of the radar, landing and navigational aid systems.

·        The vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board was fired by Duffy with no reason given (coincidentally he is Black).

·        The FAA is now negotiating to replace a $2.4b contract with Verizon with a Starlink system which is owned by Elon Musk.

This blaming everyone except me is developing into a pattern. Remember Trump immediately blaming DEI for the January 26 collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet in Washington DC, before an investigation had even begun?

Donald Trump actually said out loud what has been obvious to anyone paying attention - that he takes credit for anything "good" and blames Biden (or someone else) for anything "bad". Here in his own words is Trump's response to a question by NBC's Kristen Welker in a May 4 interview "When does it become the Trump economy?"

“It partially is right now. And, I really mean this, I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy.”

Sources

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-not-me-trump-administrations

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/radar-screens-go-dark-newark-airport-rcna205839

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-begins-firings-of-faa-air-traffic-control-employees-weeks-after-fatal-dc-plane-crash

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trumps-racist-rants-conceal-the-rights-air-safety-failures/

https://viewfromsaskatchewan.blogspot.com/2025/02/washington-plane-crash.html

An Assault on the Press

On Thursday May 1 the Department of Justice amended DOJ regulations to allow federal prosecutors to force journalists to reveal their sources or hand over their notes especially of leaked government information. It overturned a previous policy put in place by Merrick Garland in July 2019 that protected their sources.

Garland’s policy was made to protect journalists from increasingly aggressive prosecution of leaks under both parties during the first two decades of the 21 Century. At the time Garland argued that the protection was necessary “to allow journalists to perform the crucial work of informing the public without fear of legal consequences.”

Last week AG Pam Bondi paved the way for Thursday’s regulation by writing in a memo that the DOJ “will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people.”

TCinLA called Bondi’s new regulation “an assault on the freedom of the press.” He noted that the reason given was not national security but the President’s policies, and wondered “since when did exposing wrongdoing by our government become a crime against “the American people”?

Thom Hartmann called Bondi’s memo “a declaration of war against the very foundation of press freedom in America.” Hartmann asked the same questions of Bondi’s previous memo: “Since when did the President’s policies become sacred and beyond scrutiny? Since when did exposing wrongdoing by our government become a crime against “the American people”?

I would add: and what if it’s the President’s policies that are victimizing government agencies and causing harm to the American people? Brave people who expose government wrongdoing should be treated like heroes not criminals.

Hartmann goes on to say:

History shows that when presidents attack whistleblowers and the press, they’re usually trying to hide their own misdeeds. And it sure feels like that’s exactly what Bondi and Trump are now up to. What we’re witnessing is step one in the dictator’s playbook: silence those who tell the truth about your regime.

He added:

Throughout our history, ethical government officials who leaked information to the press have been essential to maintaining our democracy. They’ve exposed corruption, illegal wars, and unconstitutional surveillance, and in many cases they’ve paid a heavy price for their courage.

Hartmann then gave as an example Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers exposing “evidence of a quarter century of aggression, broken treaties, deceptions, stolen elections, lies and murder” about the Vietnam war.

Hartmann argues that a free press is essential for democracy to function:

The Founders understood that a democracy cannot function without an informed citizenry, and citizens cannot be informed without a free press that can hold the powerful accountable. That’s why they enshrined press freedom in the First Amendment …

Attorney General Bondi has hinted that she would like to prosecute leakers, and the journalists who report on their revelations, for treason, a crime which can carry the death penalty. Hartmann finds this extraordinarily alarming, that:

the Attorney General of the United States believes that journalists doing their constitutionally protected job could be subject to execution. … to be very clear: This is not normal. This is not just another partisan policy dispute. This is an existential threat to our constitutional system of government.

Hartmann concludes

We stand at a crossroads in American history... Pam Bondi and Donald Trump have shown their true colors. They’ve revealed their contempt for the Constitution and their fear of the truth. They’re trying to create a country where no one can challenge their power or expose their corruption… where “truth” is whatever the leader says it is, and those who disagree face persecution or worse.

We cannot – we must not – let them succeed.

 Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/attorney-general-ban-subpoenae-reporter-notes.html

https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/poking-around-on-day-107

https://hartmannreport.com/p/theyre-coming-for-the-truth-tellers-08f