Funny That

Even using Tesla's own highly suspect numbers, their Robotaxi is three times more likely to crash than a human driver, and this applies even when there is a safety driver behind the wheel.

I would note that Tesla's so-called full self driving would not be any more capable for a passenger car, which makes it, "Unsafe at any speed." 

Tesla’s nascent robotaxi program is off to a rough start. New NHTSA crash data, combined with Tesla’s new disclosure of robotaxi mileage, reveals Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers, and that’s with a safety monitor in every car.

The data

According to NHTSA’s Standing General Order crash reports, Tesla has reported 9 crashes involving its robotaxi fleet in Austin, Texas between July and November 2025: November 2025: Right turn collision

• October 2025: Incident at 18 mph
• September 2025: Hit an animal at 27 mph
• September 2025: Collision with cyclist
• September 2025: Rear collision while backing (6 mph)
• September 2025: Hit a fixed object in parking lot
• July 2025: Collision with SUV in construction zone
• July 2025: Hit fixed object, causing minor injury (8 mph)
• July 2025: Right turn collision with SUV

According to a chart in Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings report showing cumulative robotaxi miles, the fleet has traveled approximately 500,000 miles as of November 2025. That works out to roughly one crash every 55,000 miles.

For comparison, human drivers in the United States average approximately one police-reported crash every 500,000 miles, according to NHTSA data.

That means Tesla’s robotaxis are crashing at a rate 9 times higher than the average human driver.

However, that figure doesn’t include non-police-reported incidents. When adding those, or rather an estimate of those, humans are closer to 200,000 miles between crashes, which is still a lot better than Tesla’s robotaxi in Austin.

I am of the opinion that self-driving cars remain more humbug than anything else, but even by the standards of this reality challenged endeavor, Tesla appears to be particularly bad at its execution as a result of Elon Musk's insistence that it eschew technologies such as radar and lidar, and instead rely entirely on cameras..

Just How Small is Donald Trump's Penis Anyway?

It appears that Donald Trump is so upset that people and performers are avoiding the Kennedy Center like the plague that he has announced plans to "refurbish" the complex which would result in it being closed for 2 years.

To be clear here, he's talking about knocking it down, and erecting another gold plated monstrosity in yet another example of architectural self-aggrandizement and bad taste.

We need to burn down everything that he built when he is gone.

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he plans to close the Kennedy Center for roughly two years for the facility to undergo construction. The proposal comes amid a series of cancellations and internal upheaval since he took over the arts institution and presidential memorial nearly a year ago and remade it in his name and image.

“I have determined that The Trump Kennedy Center, if temporarily closed for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “In other words, if we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good, and the time to completion, because of interruptions with Audiences from the many Events using the Facility, will be much longer.”

Under Trump’s proposal, which he said is subject to board approval, the Kennedy Center could close on July 4, coinciding with America’s 250th anniversary, with construction beginning immediately.

“Financing is completed, and fully in place!,” Trump wrote. “This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center … and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.”

Needless to say, anyone with any connection to the Kennedy Center, including members of the Kennedy family.

It's Monday, Jeffrey Epstein Day

Which is kind of like the worst, "Prince Spaghetti Day," ever.

In the past week, I have saved 19(!) articles for potential discussions.  Some are duplicative, so I will not be using them all. 

The lede here, as it is the most surprising, and perhaps important revelation, was that Trump's nominee to head the Federal Reserve was repeatedly on the list.

The new Jeffrey Epstein files released on Friday include "nauseating" details about President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Federal Reserve, according to one GOP analyst.

Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, wrote in a new Substack essay on Sunday that the January 30 Epstein files dump included details about Kevin Warsh, who Trump recently announced as his pick to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in May. Wilson argued that Warsh's name appeared in the files "like a bad penny."

"It is a bit of timing so on-the-nose it would be rejected by a mediocre political thriller," Wilson wrote. "Warsh, a man whose resume reads like a checklist for the Davos-and-Hamptons set, isn’t just a “Wall Street veteran” or an Estée Lauder heir by marriage; he is now a recurring character in the Epstein ledger."

I'm pretty sure that someone in the White House is looking for another Trump toady to nominate, just in case.

 

Ghislaine Maxwell has filed papers saying that there are at least 29 other co-conspirators that the Department of Justice let walk away.

Ghislaine Maxwell may be locked up in the Club Med version of a Texas prison, but she just lobbed a rhetorical grenade straight into the middle of Washington’s most awkward silence.

Buried in a habeas petition that Maxwell recently filed in court, hoping to void her conviction, the convicted associate of Jeffrey Epstein references four potential “co-conspirators” and “25 men” who allegedly reached “secret settlements” connected to Epstein’s abuse—and were never indicted.

Which immediately raises the question Pam Bondi and her Department of Justice desperately want to avoid answering: Who are these men, and why are they still being protected?

(emphasis original)

The answer here is easy: No one was pursued beyond Epstein ecause, to quote the composer (not the political scientist) Frank Wilhoit, "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

If there is anything in the Trump administration that even remotely approaches a deeply held belief, it is that rich white guys should suffer no consequences, ever.

Did you know that Elon Musk is so pathetic that he  begged for an invite to Epstein Island?

This was years after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes. 

What a miserable excuse for a human being.

Somehow, Elon Musk’s infamous outburst accusing Donald Trump of being in the Epstein files has managed to age both incredibly well and incredibly poorly.

Trump, as you’re probably well aware by now, has featured quite a bit in the DOJ’s ongoing releases of documents from its investigation into the deceased sex criminal and billionaire financier.

But now so does Musk, after the government released a new batch of millions of more files on Friday. They show that Musk had more than a few email exchanges with Epstein, including one correspondence where he asks to visit the convicted sex trafficker’s notorious island, where he allegedly brought dozens of underage girls to be abused.

“Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays,” Musk wrote in an email sent to Epstein in December 2013, referring to the region near Epstein’s Caribbean island. “Is there a good time to visit?”

“Anytime I will be there 28-7th,” Epstein responded the same day, with his characteristically thick layer of typographic errors.

“I will send heli for you,” he later added.

“Thanks,” Musk said.

The exchanges — which took place years after Epstein was first convicted of sex crimes against underage girls in 2008 — clearly contradict Musk’s claims about his relationship with Epstein in the past, which he has spent years downplaying. In 2019, he told Vanity Fair that he visited Epstein’s Manhattan house only on a single occasion, and just for half an hour. And the way he tells it, that was that. “He tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined,” Musk insisted.

Musk has firmly held that line ever since. For that matter, so has his chatbot Grok. But according to the newly released emails, Musk wasn’t declining Epstein’s invitations: he was inviting himself over.

………

Even more damningly in December 2012, Musk sent an email practically begging Epstein for an invitation to some debauchery.

“Do you have any parties planned? I’ve been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose,” Musk wrote. He added that “a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I’m looking for.”

………

Those were far from the only times the pair made plans. In April 2013, Epstein asked Musk if he’d be around to have “dinner with woody allen and crowd at my house,” referring to the influential filmmaker and actor who’s also been accused of child sex abuse. Musk replied that he “might be in town.”

Epstein also invited Musk to his island in September 2012, recommending he “bring your friend or friends.”

“Sounds good,” Musk wrote, “I will try to make it.”

And at least one email suggests the two had actually gotten together at one point. In September 2014, Epstein asked Elon, “are=you planning to do st barth again for xmas?” (St. Barth is Saint Barthélemy, where Musk has reportedly vacationed in the past.) 

I would be remiss if I did not quote the head in a Gizmodo article, "Don’t You Dare ‘Misinterpret’ Elon Musk’s Epstein Emails. Just the Facts Are Bad Enough."

In addition to the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, we have numerous reports of rich and powerful people who continued to party with Epstein after his conviction, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (former Prince Andrew), Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, NY Giants Owner Steve Tisch, Sergey Brin, white shoe Wall Street Lawyer Brad Karp, private equity mogul Leon Black, recently hired CBS contributor and health influencer Peter Attia, 2028 LA Olympic Chairman Casey Wasserman, NY real estate magnate (and major Andrew Cumo donor) Andrew Farkas 

And of course, literal vampire Peter Thiel plotted with Epstein for various purposes, including his ultimately attempt to extract his revenge on Gawker.

Meanwhile, why the Department of Justice did their best to protect Donald Trump and the rest of the rich white guys, they somehow managed to include the names, and in some cases nude pictures, of Epstein's victims.

The Justice Department published dozens of unredacted nude images on its website, showing young women or possibly teenagers whose photos were contained in files related to the wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

As part of its required disclosure of the Epstein files, the federal government was tasked with redacting both sexually explicit imagery and information that could be used to identify victims.

But in the process of reviewing more than three million pages uploaded to the Justice Department’s website on Friday, The New York Times came across nearly 40 unredacted images that appeared to be part of a personal photo collection, showing both nude bodies and the faces of the people portrayed. 

………

Other victims have expressed outrage that their names and other identifying information have been found in the files. Brittany Henderson, a lawyer for one woman who was identified in the files even though she had not previously been linked publicly to Mr. Epstein, called the redaction failures “abhorrent.” 

……… 

The redactions at times appear haphazard and contradictory, with some files shielding someone’s name and a duplicate file elsewhere making the name public. One email described an “Epstein victim list” but then left dozens of subsequent names exposed, except for one that was redacted. 

I do not believe that this was an accident.  I believe that this was an attempt by the Trump Administration to frighten and silence Epstein's victims. 

I wish that I had the guillotine concession for the lot of them.

Anyone Know of Any Good Recipes for Groundhog?

It's Groundhog Day………

After hearing that pretty much all of the rodent pests predicted a late spring, I want to roast Punxsutawney Phil and the rest of his ilk on a spit.

In other Groundhog Day news, this being of the Harold Ramis/Bill Murray version, I have another Epstein post that I am working on.

It's Groundhog Day………

Oh crap. 

How Scary are the MAGAts?

So scary that it scares sovereign citizen nut-job Ammon Bundy.

Not so long ago, Ammon Bundy was the most famous right-wing militia leader in America. His two armed standoffs with federal agents had made him the face of the Patriot Movement: a loose assemblage of anti-government extremists, Second Amendment maximalists, and more than a few white nationalists. Even some mainstream elements of the Republican Party embraced him as a modern folk hero. But Bundy’s criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown now threatens to make him a pariah within his own community.

In November, Bundy self-published a long essay titled “The Stranger,” in which he labeled the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrants a “moral failure.” “To call such people criminals for lacking official permission” to be in the country, he wrote, “is to forget the moral law of God, the historical truth of our own founding, and the Constitutional ideals that continue to define justice.” On a recent livestream following the killing of Renee Good in Minnesota, Bundy told his audience that ICE’s conduct “clearly looks like tyranny.” If the government threatened his family, he said, he would fight back by whatever means necessary.

I did not have that on my bingo card. 

25% Lower All-Cause Mortality

Get your vaccines.

A new study covering 30 million Frenchmen shows that not only is there no increase in mortality from MRNA Covid vaccines, but mortality is significantly lower.

At a glance

• Among 28 million French adults aged 18–59, those who received an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine were less likely to die in the subsequent four years than those who remained unvaccinated, corresponding to a 25% lower risk of death from all causes.
• Although vaccinated adults were 74% less likely to die from severe COVID-19, the reduced mortality risk persisted after COVID-19 deaths were excluded from the analysis.
• The study found no increase in the risk of deaths from cancer, heart disease, accidental injury or any other major category: in every case, vaccinated individuals had equal or lower rates of death.

For years, a lingering question has shadowed COVID-19 vaccination campaigns: are mRNA vaccines safe in the long run?

While many studies have established that COVID-19 vaccines prevent severe illness and death in the weeks and months after injection, sceptics have continued to ask whether any hidden harms might surface later on.

Now, one of the largest long-term vaccine safety studies ever undertaken – including data from more than 28 million adults aged 18 to 59 – offers the clearest answer yet.

Get your damn vaccine.  Covid f%$#s you up.  MRNA, adjuvant, it does not matter. 

H/t Dr. Eric Ding

We Have Names

The two CBP agents who shot Alex Pretti in the back were Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez.

Spread their names around:

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations.

Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city.

CBP, which employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Good.

Pretti’s killing, and the subsequent secrecy surrounding the agents involved, comes as the country confronts the consequences of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. The sweeps in cities across the country have been marked by scenes of violence, against immigrants and U.S. citizens, by agents allowed to hide their identities with masks — an almost unheard of practice in law enforcement. As a result, the public has been kept from one of the chief ways it has to hold officers involved in such altercations accountable: their identity.

………

Ochoa is a Border Patrol agent who joined CBP in 2018. Gutierrez joined in 2014 and works for CBP’s Office of Field Operations. He is assigned to a special response team, which conducts high-risk operations like those of police SWAT units. Records show both men are from South Texas. 

This information should have been made public by DHS, and ProPublica has done a real public service and some really good journalism.

A Plan So Cunning You Could Put a Tail on It and Call It Weasel

Get in. We're messing up Melania's Amazon search results
byu/mulcahey inesist

The Pitch

The Cover Art

The blurb.

Over on Reddit, someone has made a wonderful suggestion, that we all go to Amazon, and that we all, "Amplify the paranormal erotic thriller novel Melania: Devourer of Men so it ranks higher than her movie," on Amazon.

The eBook is free on kindle, so you can download it, and boost the algorithm, so that when someone searches for, Melania the documentary, they get this book instead.

This act is generally called, "Google Bombing," though in this case, it would be Amazon bombing.

Classic examples of Google bombing, are sucessful efforts to make the search for "Miserable failure," giving the result of George W. Bush, and the word, "Santorum," giving the result, "The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." 

Surely we can do the same to Melania. 

With Great Sadness, I Must Announce

 The end of, "Say Fuck January."

I'm sorry, but we have eleven months of, "f%$#," and "sh%$," ahead of us.

I feel like I'm f%$#ing losing the ability to speak. 

Horrible Pun of the Day

Donald Trump has announced his choice for the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, whose meager qualifications appears to be that he is the son-in-law of cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder and that he has no integrity at all.

Paul Krugman calls this, "A Bad Heir Day at the Fed."

Heh.

So Kevin Warsh will be the next Fed chair. The silver lining to his appointment is that he shouldn’t be able to do much damage, although with one big caveat (see below). The Fed is a republic, not a dictatorship; key decisions are made by a committee in which the chairperson has only one vote. Fed chairs can only drive policy through persuasion — and Warsh lacks the intellectual and moral credibility to be effective on that score. But God help us if we enter a crisis that requires decisive Fed leadership, the kind Fed chair Ben Bernanke showed during the financial crisis, or Jay Powell is now showing against Trump’s attacks.

Absent a crisis, my prediction is that the majority of Warsh’s colleagues will largely ignore him, albeit without expressing their contempt openly. Even a coalition among the Trump appointees to the Board of Governors – Warsh, Bowman and Miran – won’t be enough to overturn the responsible monetary policy stewardship of the other governors.

But that’s a low bar, and it may be lower than is generally appreciated. For while I don’t think Warsh will do too much damage to monetary policy, he, along with his fellow Trumper Michelle Bowman, the vice chair for financial supervision, may well eviscerate the Fed’s role as a financial regulator.

………

What lies behind this contempt? Warsh’s most notable role in policy debate came in the years immediately following the global financial crisis, when he was a member of the Federal Reserve Board who argued strenuously against the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy. As I noted at the time, his arguments were confused and incoherent, but he implied (without saying so in clear language) that the Fed’s actions would be inflationary despite the depressed state of the economy.

He was completely wrong about that. Now, everyone makes bad predictions. But when you do, you’re supposed to admit your mistakes and learn from them. Warsh never did that. Instead, he kept inventing new reasons to call for higher interest rates — notably a bizarre claim that low rates were hurting business investment — as long as a Democrat was president.

So how does someone with that record end up in what is normally the most important economic post in the world (although I suspect that Warsh will be one of the least influential Fed chairs in history)? I would list five reasons, in no particular order.

First, Warsh married into great wealth. Specifically, he married the daughter of Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics billionaire — who, bizarrely, is a key figure behind Donald Trump’s obsession with Greenland.

Second, he has always been very good at ingratiating himself with influential people.

Third, he’s an effective bullshitter. Sorry for the technical language, but I can’t find another way to say it. Listen to Warsh on economic policy, and he throws around a lot of big words that presumably sound impressive to people who don’t know anything about the subject. But there’s no coherent argument behind the verbiage.

Fourth, he’s a Republican loyalist, who always wants to slam the economic brakes when Democrats are in power and step on the gas when Republicans rule.

There are some interesting facts about Mr. Warsh, but I will save this from Epstein Monday.

This Is the Worst Idea Since

Rather unsurprisingly, it does not come from the Trump administration.

It comes from one Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, who advocates that the Nordic countries should develop a nuclear arsenal.

This is unbelievably fucking stupid.

Despite the withdrawal of Donald Trump’s military and economic threats against Greenland and EU members, the US government’s willingness to publicly contemplate territorial expansion at the expense of a Nordic NATO member raises profound questions for this region, which already borders Russia.

Partly shielded from full retaliation by its existing nuclear arsenal, Russia has launched a predatory war against its non-nuclear neighbour, Ukraine. Such behaviour by the existing nuclear monopolists fundamentally undermines the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) framework and it is now imperative that stable, responsible and capable Nordic democracies make clear – not least to the US Congress – what challenging the US security and nuclear guarantee in NATO could lead to, namely, reluctant nuclear proliferation in the Nordic region.

Nordic countries are wealthy, well-functioning democratic societies: They hence have a lot to protect and lose, which brings the accompanying political responsibility to publicly discuss also “nuclear what-ifs”. Nordic governments must have the courage for this public debate precisely because they can afford to develop and maintain the independent nuclear deterrence needed in today’s world in a manner threatening only to would-be aggressors. No one would seriously consider the Nordic region using a nuclear bomb capacity for anything other than deterrence purposes.

Yes, the descendants of the fucking Vikings are to fucking peace loving to fucking use fucking nuclear weapons as an instrument of geopolitical influence.

Just like the French, British, Chinese, Indians, and Pakistanis? 

……… 

Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden should similarly and immediately announce their intention to withdraw from the NPT, which must instead be replaced by a new international nuclear framework facilitating responsible self-insurance by transparent democracies. Here, the Nordic region should take the lead.  

This guy is too stupid for the Trump administration.

BTW, this is his biography:

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel and a on-resident Senior Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). He has also worked with the Danish Ministry of Defence, the United Nations in Iraq, and in the private financial sector.

I would suggest that my readers be extremely skeptical of anything that comes from either Bruegel or  the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

They employ this guy. 

My House Was Broken Into Last Night

Nothing was taken.

What was left were 4 tickets to the Melania documentary and a letter of apology.

It's not my joke, but I cannot figure out who said this first. 

Maybe It's Because You Are Evil Assholes?

People cannot wait to to put a boot in Comcast's ass.

It has abused their customers so badly for so long that they have no reservoir of good will to fall back on in the face of the cord cutting trend.

This is a company who made their brand so toxic that their consumer branch had to be changed to Xfinity.

In April 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh bemoaned that the company’s cable broadband division was “not winning in the marketplace” amid increased competition from fiber and fixed wireless Internet service providers.

Cavanagh identified some problems that had been obvious to Comcast customers for many years: Its prices aren’t transparent enough and rise too frequently, and dealing with the company is too difficult. Comcast sought to fix the problems with a five-year price guarantee, one year of free Xfinity Mobile service for home Internet customers, and plans with unlimited data instead of punitive data caps. But the company is still losing broadband customers at a higher-than-expected rate.

In Q4 2025 earnings announced today, Comcast reported a net loss of 181,000 residential and business broadband customers in the US. The loss consists of 178,000 residential Internet customers and 3,000 business customers.

………

Armstrong said that average revenue per user grew 1.1 percent, “consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines.” Armstrong expects average revenue per user to continue growing slowly “for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of a rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing.”

The only thing that Comcast has is the fact that Charter is just as widely loathed.

I hope that the markets burn both of them to the ground. 

Headline of the Day

The Legal Academy’s Leading Originalists Remain Breathtakingly Full of Shit

—Balls and Strikes, commenting on what has been obvious since the Powell Memo, that Origanalism is just an excuse to put a stamp of approval on bigotry and greed.

It should be noted that the above is the title on the web page. The one in the metadata is, "The Originalists Are Getting the Birthright Citizenship Case Spectacularly Wrong."

In this case, we see their venal hypocrisy in the birthright citizenship case, which requires that one ignore the text of the 14th Amendment, as well as every bit of speech and debate in Congress and the various state legislatures in the process of its approval. 

Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear oral argument in Trump v. Barbara, a case that challenges the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order purporting to redefine birthright citizenship. Although the Court has not yet put the case on the calendar, it will likely do so during this term, and issue an opinion before the justices adjourn for the summer.

The Fourteenth Amendment, which Congress adopted in the years following the Civil War, extended citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Yet Trump declared last January that going forward, persons born in the United States would not be citizens unless at least one parent is a citizen or a lawful permanent resident. If the Court allows the executive order to take effect, it would deny citizenship to hundreds of thousands of newborn babies every year, and recreate an antebellum caste system in which social disadvantage is passed down by law from parent to child.

So far, every federal court to assess the order’s legality has recognized it as flagrantly unconstitutional. A federal district court in Maryland, for instance, concluded that the order “flouts the plain language” of the Fourteenth Amendment and “runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.” A federal district court in New Hampshire found that the order “contradicts the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the century-old untouched precedent that interprets it.” A federal district court in Washington called the Trump administration’s view of the Fourteenth Amendment “untenable,” and criticized the government for rehashing “losing arguments from over a century ago.” 

………

Nevertheless, several Trump allies recently filed amicus briefs in Trump v. Barbara arguing that the order actually restores the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, for example, characterizes over 150 years of settled constitutional understanding as “longstanding and mistaken assumptions.” The conservative law professor Ilan Wurman contends that the historical rule of birthright citizenship “almost certainly excluded the children born to unlawfully present aliens,” and is “at best unsettled” with respect to the children of “temporary visitors.”

The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, submitted an amicus brief that positions its work at “the forefront of the scholarly research” which demonstrates that birthright citizenship was not originally understood to include children whose parents “owed allegiance to a foreign power,” and were in the United States “only temporarily or illegally.” Claremont’s brief is authored by John Eastman, who is most famous for orchestrating Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election. The State Bar of California recommended that Eastman be disbarred and banned him from practicing law in the state, but apparently he’s still welcome to file briefs at the Supreme Court.

What these authors have in common is their professed adherence to some form of originalism, the idea that the Constitution’s meaning was set in stone when its provisions were enacted. Meese, for example, made it the policy of President Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department to “resurrect the original meaning of constitutional provisions and statutes as the only reliable guide for judgment.” In a speech before the American Bar Association in 1985, Meese gave away the game a little, presenting originalism as a principled way to ensure that the Court did not “drift back toward the radical egalitarianism and expansive civil libertarianism” of the Civil Rights Movement.

Yeah, that's Ed Meese, saying, "We want to keep the n*****s down, and originalism can help with this.

Fuck them all with Cheney's dead dick. 

I Like Bruce Springsteen, and I Like Bob Dylan

But I am profoundly unimpressed by Springsteen's latest, a protest song about ICE, where he seems to trying to sound as much like Bob Dylan as possible. 

I appreciate the sentiment, but Bruce Springsteen can do a protest song in his own voice and absolutely kill it.

Hell, Bruce Springsteen could do a song from his shopping list in his own voice and absolutely kill it.

Another Promise Kept

New York Mayor Zorhan Mamdani has promised to disband the NYPD's notorious Strategic Response Group (SCG), which has been repeatedly called out, and successfully sued, for its outrageous behavior and brutality directed toward peaceful protestors.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday he’s committed to disbanding an NYPD unit that responds to protests in the city – a day after officers from the unit arrested anti-ICE demonstrators for occupying a Manhattan hotel lobby.

In a statement, a Mamdani spokesperson said the mayor was pleased with the NYPD’s response to the protest. Nevertheless, on Wednesday, he renewed a campaign promise to disband the department's Strategic Response Group.

The SRG, which was established in 2015, responds to a number of emergency calls across the city, including protests. Their response to demonstrations has been widely criticized for years, including by elected officials, who have accused officers in the unit of racial bias and violence against protesters. When the city settled claims brought by Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, the NYPD agreed to limit how the officers could respond to demonstrations.

“We don't believe that there should be a unit that has both counterterrorism responsibilities and responsibilities to responding to protests,” Mamdani said of the SRG at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday.

Mamdani’s statement comes as demonstrators have repeatedly taken to the streets in the city in recent weeks to protest President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. On Wednesday, he said he’s had conversations with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch on how best to disband the unit.

This is a very good thing. 

 

54°40' or Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Seriously, the fact that senior members of the Trump administration are having secret conversations with representatives of radical Albertan separatist organizations, with the quite obvious goal of creating civil disorder in Canada is a complete mind-fuck.

I guess that Trump was serious about wanting Canada, or at least the oil rich parts of it. 

The Trump administration has held covert meetings with fringe separatists from Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta as a rift deepens between Washington and Ottawa.

Leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group of far-right separatists who want the western province to become independent, met US state department officials in Washington three times since April last year, according to people familiar with the talks.

They are seeking another meeting next month with state and Treasury officials to ask for a $500bn credit facility to help bankroll the province if an independence referendum — yet to be called — is passed.

“The US is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta,” Jeff Rath, APP legal counsel, who attended the meetings, told the FT.

He claimed he had a “much stronger relationship” with the Trump administration than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

………

British Columbia premier David Eby described the FT’s report of the meeting as alarming because Trump is “not particularly respectful to Canada’s sovereignty”.

“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that. And that word is treason,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Thursday.

Seriously, these jamokes make the Bay of Pigs invasion look like an episode of Mission Impossible.

Today in Weird

A man claiming to be an FBI agent and wielding a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter attempted to bust Luigi Mangione out of jail.

To refresh your memory, Mr. Mangione is accused of  

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know." 

A man claiming to be an FBI agent showed up at a Brooklyn jail with a barbecue fork and pizza cutter and tried to free Luigi Mangione on Wednesday night, according to a law enforcement official and a federal criminal complaint.

Prosecutors said Mark Anderson, 36, told employees at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center that he worked for the FBI and said he had a court order to release a detainee. A law enforcement source who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to share the information publicly said that the detainee was Luigi Mangione.

When jail staff asked Anderson to provide his credentials, prosecutors said, he gave them a Minnesota driver’s license.

He threw several documents at them related to filing claims against the U.S. Department of Justice, the criminal complaint said. He also told officials that he had weapons in his bag, and a search turned up the barbecue fork and a circular steel blade, according to the complaint.

………

In Brooklyn federal court on Thursday, defense attorney Michael Weil asked Magistrate Judge Taryn Merkl to release Anderson to a hospital for an evaluation instead of holding him in jail. He said claiming to be an FBI agent without a badge was “not a serious attempt to spring a federal inmate.”

“It seems like a case representing something else going on,” Weil said.

Gee, ya think? 

 

 

Too Toxic for Other Republicans

A candidate for the Republican nomination for Minnesota Governor has dropped out of the race, basically saying that the party has become too toxic for him to even bother.

A top Republican candidate for Minnesota governor has dropped out of the race, sharply criticizing what he called a “federal retribution on the citizens of our state” amid the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement operations – which sparked public outrage after US agents’ killings ofAlex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

On Monday, the Minneapolis-based attorney Chris Madel made his announcement, saying in a video online: “I cannot support the … stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

………

Madel had launched his gubernatorial bid in December and provided legal counsel to the ICE agent Jonathan Ross after he shot Good to death on 7 January while she drove away from an encounter with him.

His withdrawal comes as some Republicans in Minnesota and Washington have begun to distance themselves from the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Madel said ICE’s Operation Metro Surge would hurt Republicans statewide after large street protests met the killings of Pretti and Good, along with widespread criticism beyond Minneapolis.

“National Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota,” he said.

Note what he is saying here.  Heis main point is not that it's wrong, it is complaining that it makes getting a Republican elected in Minnesota almost impossible. 

Another Right Wing Terrorist Attack

Some mook sprayed Representative Ilhan Omar with an unknown substance at her town hall last night. 

It is now believed to be apple cider vinegar.  I am surprised.  I would thought that he would have used Brawndo. (It's got what plants crave)

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unidentified substance by a man with a syringe on Tuesday as she gave her first in-person town hall of the year in Minneapolis, during which she called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be abolished “for good” and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kristi Noem, to resign.

Omar had only been speaking for a few minutes when a man in the audience got up and began to shout while spraying her with the liquid. People at the meeting said the liquid had an acidic smell.

Omar walked toward the man after the alleged assault, but he was then swiftly tackled to the ground by a security guard. People inside the north Minneapolis community center gasped as the scene unfolded.

Some, such as the Minneapolis council member LaTrisha Vetaw, pleaded with Omar to end the town hall early to get examined, due to concerns for her safety because of the unidentified liquid. Omar refused to stop. “Ten minutes, I beg you … please don’t let them have the show,” she told the security team.

After the alleged attacker was subdued, there was applause from the room as he was escorted out. “Here is the reality that people like this ugly man don’t understand, is that we are Minnesota strong,” the congresswoman said.

“I learned at a young age that you don’t give in to threats.”

Pretty epic response from Omar. 

BTW, the guy's social media postings show him to be a major MAGAt. 

Snark of the Day

Finally, someone has an ICE reeducation program that might work.

As my reader(s) are aware, I'm generally not in favor of training to change organizational culture, but this suggestion seems to be to be eminently reasonable while also having a good chance of success.

………

I propose a sort of long-term residential program for everyone who remains with ICE and CBP after this week, along with more or less everyone hired since the start of the second Trump administration. This would have to be a mandatory program, reflecting the seriousness with which we ought to take proper law enforcement training in this country.

Obviously, ICE agents will not be able to continue working while they are undergoing this rigorous new training program. And in order for retraining to be effective, it will take a long time—perhaps even years. Because we can’t accept one-size-fits-all solutions, we should expect this mandatory residential retraining program to be somewhat open-ended. I would recommend we place these agents on an indefinite leave of absence from their jobs while they are retraining, and have their essential duties taken over by other agencies, preferably outside the Department of Homeland Security (which will have a lot of its agents undergoing this long-term residential training).

This will not be a cheap program, admittedly. Fortunately the immigration enforcement agencies are currently funded at extremely high levels, and Democrats have already shown a reluctance to clawing back that money, out of fear of being labeled soft on crime. But what could be more pro-law enforcement than additional training? And as the Trump administration has decisively shown, using appropriated money for its official purpose is more of a “suggestion” than a requirement of our constitutional system, so a future administration can repurpose that funding for this new mandatory long-term residential training program.

(emphasis mine)

I think that this recommendation is is worthy of comparison to the proposals of Jonathan Swift back in the day.

H/t Atrios 

Busy Day in Economics for a Wednesday

First, we had the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee holding their benchmark interest rate, which is not a surprise. for a couple of reasons, first, the numbers that they care about, and GDP both remain relatively strong, and second, they HAD to do this to show their independence from Donald Trump.

The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates on hold for the first time since July, as chair Jay Powell said the US central bank was in no rush to cut them despite Donald Trump’s relentless campaign to drastically lower borrowing costs.

The Fed on Wednesday left its main interest rate at a range of 3.5 to 3.75 per cent, following three straight quarter-point reductions. The decision matched Wall Street’s expectations.

Powell said after the meeting that with the economy growing at a robust rate, and the jobs market steadying in recent months, rates did not appear to be in “significantly restrictive” territory.

………

Official statistics released last week showed annualised GDP growth of 4.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2025. The Atlanta Fed has said that could jump as high as 5.4 per cent in the fourth quarter.

Rather unsurprisingly, the Trump toadies dissented, despite inflation being higher than what the Fed Targets.

However, governor Christopher Waller, one of four candidates left in the race to replace Powell as chair when his term ends in May, dissented, calling for a quarter-point cut. Stephen Miran, a staunch Trump ally who was appointed a governor last year, also called for a quarter-point cut.

The objections came as central bankers attempt to balance their dual mandate of price stability and full employment. The Fed’s preferred personal consumption expenditures inflation gauge registered 2.8 per cent in November, well above its 2 per cent target.

I'll not go into the Fed Kremlinology any more deeply here, you can find that from a variety of public sources, but I do want to note that US consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since May 2014, which ain't good.

US consumer confidence has collapsed to its weakest level in more than a decade, outstripping its pandemic lows and fuelling concerns about the health of the world’s biggest economy.

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell to 84.5 in January, well below market expectations and the lowest since May 2014.

“Confidence collapsed in January, as consumer concerns about both the present situation and expectations for the future deepened,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board, a think-tank.

The bleak consumer mood despite recent bumper GDP growth and strong spending data will stoke concerns that the spoils of America’s economic gains are not being evenly distributed.

Rather unsurprisingly, the obscenely wealthy have a better view of the economy than the rest of us. 

Now there's a shock. 

Linkage

• Florida deregulated nursing schools. Scam colleges and failing students followed (Orlando Sentinel) Self regulation is to regulation as self importance is to importance.
• Prisoners of Fortune (How Things Work) In interesting meditation on how wealth owns the billionaires rather than the other way around.
• AI insiders seek to poison the data that feeds them (The Register) They are fragging their superior officers, as enlisted men did in Vietnam.
• Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows • The Register If you cannot read and understand this script, or do not know someone who can, I recommend that you do not run it.   Still, it's sweet.
• Microsoft CEO Laments Criticism Of “AI Slop,” Causing The Whole Internet To Double Down On Criticism Of “Microslop” (Techdirt) Sucks to be him.
• Love dark chocolate? 6 tips for choosing the healthiest type. (Washington Post) Theobromine is good for you according to a new study.  Expect a study debunking this in 2 weeks.
• Manual Transmission Thwarts Thieves' Attempt To Steal A Woman's (Kia) Soul (Jalopnik) I'm very disappointed in you.  I haven't driven a standard shift in decades, but I I know how to do this.
• Cybertruck Sales Show Stomach-Churning Drop (Fufurism) It appears that if you design a fragile vehicle that does not do what you promised it would do, people will not buy it.

What I do all day:

History Rhyming

While the market collapse of 2008-2009 came as a surprise to me, in retrospect, the signs were there.

They weren't big things, but an increasing number of little things.

Over the past few weeks, we have: 

• A stealth bailout of Wall Street by the Federal Reserve: Basically, they are shoveling money out the door using the Fed's repo (repurchase agreement) facility.  Basically selling assets overnight and buying them back in the morning for quick cash.
• Private Repo is skyrocketing as well: Meaning that there is a multi-Trillion game of musical chairs without any chairs.  Waiting for the music to stop.
• Home sellers are yanking their homes off of the market at an unprecedented rate, with listings falling to a 30 year low.
• Home buyers are walking away from signed deals at an unprecedented rate. ⅙ of all signed contracts were walked away from in December.

I cannot predict when, but we are careening toward a Lehman moment. 

It will appear that nothing is happening, and then it will happen all at once. 

Investment Advice

It appears that there is a way to make money on the Polymarket "Futures Market" (Casino) by monetizing stupidity.

If when Elon Musk makes a pronouncement you bet against it, you always find a pathetic Musk fanboi willing to take the other side of the bet.

It's kind of like Jim Kramer.  If you bet against him, you win.

Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk has long garnered a reputation for being massively wrong in his promises and predictions about the future.

In 2024, for instance, he said that AI would become “smarter than the smartest human” by 2025. He said his company’s SpaceX Starship rocket, which is still exploding during test flights, will land on Mars this year. Like clockwork, he’s predicted that self-driving cars will become a reality “next year” every year for well over a decade now. He promised robotaxis without human safety monitors by mid-2025, which the company still has yet to accomplish.

We could go on and on. In short, it’d be far easier to count the occasions on which he’s been right than when he’s been wrong.

Now, as NBC News reports, users on online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are making big bucks off of Musk’s astonishing track record for being wrong about the future. Case in point, Polymarket user David Bensoussan made a ten percent return after betting $10,000 that Musk wouldn’t follow through on his threat of forming a new political party following his falling out with president Donald Trump.

He also successfully bet against Musk’s prediction that Tesla would launch an “unsupervised” version of its erroneously-named “Full Self-Driving” software by the end of 2025.

To Bensoussan, it’s a matter of principle.

“He does have a solid fan base, and so if I can help separate them from some of their money, I’m always happy to do that,” he told NBC. “He has a habit of exaggerating timelines, and of saying he’s going to do these amazing things and attaching more immediacy than what his intent may necessarily be.”

I don't do these sort of markets, but betting that the lying liar will lie does seem to me to be a winning strategy. 

 

A Bad Day at the Office

It appears that one of NASA's WB-57 high altitude Camberra research aircraft had a spot of trouble with its landing gear.

There were no injuries, but the plane might be a write off. (It's more than 50 years old)

I'll Take 8 Inches

No, not that.

I'm referring to the snowfall, which was about 8 inches in my area over the weekend.

Given that the predictions were for as much as 16 inches. I'd say that we dodged a bullet. 

Love working from home right now. 

Snark of the Day

The pogroms are starting. https://t.co/XZx17qwu8V

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) January 25, 2026

Stoller is, of course, making a joke here.

Helping someone dig their car out of the snow does not qualify as a pogrom, regardless of the religion of the car driver or the shovel wielder. 

If you value your sanity, you may not want to look at the comments, where a number of truly dense people or organizations missed the humor entirely. 

Well, That was Quick

Less than a week after Oracle Executive Chariman (and serial workplace sexual predator)  Larry Ellison took over TikTok, it looks like he is already suppressing anti-Trump views.

Now there is a surprise.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday said he is launching an investigation into whether TikTok has censored videos critical of President Donald Trump, and whether its actions constitute a violation of California law.

Newsom weighed in late Monday after a growing swarm of users — including two San Francisco candidates for Congress — reported that their videos regarding the administration and were being suppressed or kept from viewers entirely.

“It’s time to investigate,” Newsom posted X, alongside screenshot from a user who claimed TikTok would not allow them to mention the word “Epstein.”

Over the last year, Newsom has utilized various social media channels to aggressively criticize Trump and his policies.

………

Influencers and celebrities with large followings have logged similar complaints, following posts they made about the shooting death of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minnesota over the weekend. A Border Patrol agent shot and killed Pretti, an ICU nurse, on Saturday. It was Minneapolis’ second fatal shooting death by a federal agent this month as President Donald Trump’s ongoing immigration crackdown in the city continues. 

This is not a surprise.  Given that Oracle needs government subsidies, specifically IP protections and extensive government contracts, to survive, and given his history of sucking up to Trump, this is a feature, not a bug.

TACO Once Again

Song by Scared Ketchup

We have a report from The Atlantic that Greg Bovino has been removed from his post as "Commander at Large" for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  (Update: This has been confirmed by other sources)

Trump's spokes-Barbie Karoline Leavitt appears to be throwing both Noem and her boyfriend assistant Corey Lewandowski under the bus as well.

We are profoundly lucky that the bad guys are so stupid and so arrogant.

With a little bit more competence, we would be on our way to the next Reichstag fire.

Gregory Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol “commander at large” and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon, according to a DHS official and two people with knowledge of the change.

Bovino’s sudden demotion is the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration is reconsidering its most aggressive tactics after the killing Saturday of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents under Bovino’s command.

Earlier today, President Trump appeared to signal in a series of social-media posts a tactical shift in the administration’s mass-deportation campaign. Trump wrote that he spoke with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—whom the White House has blamed for inciting violence—and the two men are now on “a similar wavelength.” Tom Homan, the former ICE chief whom Trump has designated “border czar,” will head to Minnesota to assume command of the federal mobilization there, Trump said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her close adviser Corey Lewandowski, who were Bovino’s biggest backers at DHS, are also at risk of losing their jobs, two of the people told me.



Bovino’s fall comes two days after Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis fatally shot Pretti, an intensive-care nurse who worked with veterans. Hours after the shooting, Bovino appeared at a press conference and echoed statements by the Department of Homeland Security alleging Pretti sought to “massacre” the federal agents. Bovino repeatedly claimed that Border Patrol agents, not Pretti, were the victims.

Videos of the encounter showed no evidence for his claims. Pretti, who was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, did not draw a firearm or attack the agents. The videos show one agent disarming Pretti in the moments just before another agent shot him in the back.

 Trump Always Chickens Out. (TACO)

 

Lies the Media Tells Us

Notwithstanding the media reports, the 2025 murder rate fell significantly.

The headlines of 2025 painted a portrait of America in chaos, driven by the financial logic of America’s media ecosystem. It’s number one product isn’t news, but fear.

“NYC youth crime doubled since controversial state Raise the Age Law kicked in,” exclaims one hysterical New York Post headline from September. “Business owners express frustration over crime surge in Federal Hill,” reads a banner from FOX45 News, a local outlet in Baltimore. “Office shooter’s rampage shows terrifying rise of motive-free violence, experts warn,” goes a Fox News heading from August.

The scary headlines were all underscored by inflammatory rhetoric from the Trump administration, which continued to insist that America’s cities are crime-ridden hell holes well into the new year.

Selective media coverage of crime certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, though it’s worth revisiting — especially because new data suggests 2025 was actually one of the least violent years for the US in over a century.

According to fresh Council on Criminal Justice crime statistics, Axios reports, murder rates fell 21 percent last year across the 35 largest cities in the US. It’s the single largest one-year-drop ever, the publication reports, and possibly the lowest homicide rates we’ve seen as a nation since the year 1900 — when the last generation of frontier outlaws were still robbing train cars.

Homicide wasn’t the only crime that fell in 2025. Out of 13 crimes tracked by the Council on Criminal Justice, 11 of them were lower last year than in 2024. Aggravated assaults, for example, fell by 9 percent across the 35 cities, while gun assaults and robberies dropped off by 22 and 23 percent, respectively. (The only category that increased was drug crimes, up 7 percent — and which are nonviolent.)

This a toxic combination of the, "If it bleeds, it leads," ethos of local news and the oligopolistic nature of news, particularly broadcast news/

They are selling a lie. 

Of Course He Is

Have you heard the one about the conservative influencer who got impregnated by Elon Musk, who largely ignored the kid?

Well, she had a change of heart and apologized for her previous anti-trans statements, so the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is trying to take her child away from her.

He really is a vile and petty man.

Ashley St. Clair is having a very bad month.

The conservative influencer built her brand on anti-trans rhetoric and owning the libs. Now she’s locked in a custody battle with Elon Musk, the father of her one-year-old son Romulus. Musk, who according to St. Clair’s court filings has seen the child just a handful of times since his birth, announced on X Monday that he would be “filing for full custody today, given her statements implying she might transition a one-year-old boy.”

St. Clair said no such thing. What she actually said, in response to a user asking her to address her past transphobia, was this: “I feel immense guilt for my role. And even more guilt that things I have said in the past may have caused my son’s sister more pain.”

………

Elon Musk is seeking full custody of a child he’s allegedly seen three times, based on the false claim that the child’s mother wants to “transition” a one-year-old.

This is the same Elon Musk who refused to publicly acknowledge he was Romulus’s father after the child was born in September 2024. St. Clair kept the pregnancy and birth secret for five months, only going public in February 2025 because tabloids were about to break the story anyway. According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk offered her $15 million plus $100,000 per month in child support if she would sign an NDA and never reveal his paternity. She turned it down, telling Musk’s fixer Jared Birchall, “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret.”

Musk responded by slashing her support. When St. Clair’s attorney accused him of “financially retaliating against his own child,” Musk posted on X that he’d given her $2.5 million and was sending $500,000 a year, adding that he didn’t “know for sure” if the child was even his. St. Clair fired back that Musk had “refused” to take a paternity test, writing, “Elon, we asked you to confirm paternity through a test before our child (who you named) was even born.”

So to recap: Musk named the kid, wouldn’t acknowledge him publicly, tried to buy St. Clair’s silence, cut her support when she wouldn’t comply, pretended he wasn’t sure the baby was his, and is now seeking full custody because she apologized to trans people.

He runs a platform that generated child sexual abuse material using the mother’s image, then punished her for complaining about it. He’s the world’s richest man, and he’s using his wealth and his platform to destroy a woman whose crime is expressing empathy for his estranged daughter.

This is the guy who thinks he should be making decisions about a toddler’s welfare.

This asshole should have been drowned at birth.

I'll Believe it When I See It

Chuck Schumer, the chief Democratic Party spelunker in the Senate has announced that the Democratic Party Senate Caucus will block any funding bill that includes funding for ICE.

They won't.  They will cave somehow, because they ALWAYS find some way to cave.

In the wake of another fatal shooting of a US citizen in Minnesota by a federal officer, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said his party would block a funding package next week if it includes money for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The announcement, which dramatically escalates the potential for another partial government shutdown, comes as anger towards homeland security, which oversees ICE, intensifies among the party after a group of federal agents violently restrained and then fatally shot 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling – and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer, a New York senator, said in a statement. “Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no.”

“Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included,” he added.

The craven gerontocracy that is the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate must be broken. 

State Sponsored Terrorism

 

ICE murdered someone else in Minneapolis, 39 year old ICU nurse Alex Pretti. 

There are multiple videos out there, but I will not be posting them here.  I am writing opinions, and not news, and as such, I don't want to post this sort of media.- 

He was attempting to help someone up who had been knocked to the ground by ICE agents.

He was then tackled, and his (legally carried and never removed from his holster) gun was removed, and while on the ground he was shot 10 times.

Two witnesses to the killing of Alex Pretti have said in sworn testimony that the 37-year-old intensive care nurse was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, contradicting a claim made by Trump administration officials as they sought to cast the shooting of a prone man as an act of self-defense.

Their accounts came in sworn affidavits that were filed in federal court in Minnesota late Saturday, just hours after Pretti’s killing, as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Minneapolis protesters against Kristi Noem and other homeland security officials directing the immigration crackdown in the city.

One witness is a woman who filmed the clearest video of the fatal shooting; the other is a physician who lives nearby and said they were initially prevented by federal officers from rendering medical aid to the gunshot victim.

Not allowing medical aid to arrive seems to be a theme for these thugs.

DHS and the Trump administration have stated that the mere fact that he was carrying a weapon, even if it never left its holster, justified his killing.  Various ammosexual groups have taken profound exception to these statements.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has joined other gun lobbying and advocacy groups that are typically aligned with Donald Trump in calling for the Republican president’s administration to conduct a “full investigation” into the killing of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old nurse who was shot dead by federal immigration officials in Minneapolis on Saturday.

Pretti was reportedly legally permitted to carry a gun and is a citizen of the US, where it is a constitutional right to bear arms. Widely circulated video of his shooting death does not depict him ever holding a gun. It does show an officer reaching to Pretti’s lower back and stepping away with what appeared to be a pistol – and Pretti being subsequently shot to death.

The NRA waded into the national dialogue over Pretti’s killing after Bill Essayli – who was appointed by Trump to temporarily serve as a US attorney in California in 2025 – posted on social media: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

In response, the NRA posted: “This sentiment … is dangerous and wrong. Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

Gun Owners of America, a non-profit lobbying organization, also criticized that claim from Essayli – who is now an acting first assistant US attorney for California’s central federal district court.

“Federal agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm,” the group posted. It added that the US constitution’s second amendment “protects Americans’ right to bear arms while protesting – a right the federal government must not infringe upon.”

California governor Gavin Newsom’s press office responded to the NRA’s criticism of Essayli, saying on social media, “Wow. Even the NRA thinks Trump’s [justice department] stooge in California has gone too far for claiming federal agents were ‘legally justified’ to kill Alex Pretti.”

Newsom’s press office added: “Your position is truly horrible when even the NRA calls you out.”

Not only is the White House lying about what is going on, but Attorney General Pam Bondi is saying that she will pull ICE out of Minnesota if the state turns over their voter rolls in their entirety, so that the Trump administration can use this data to suppress votes from areas that they think will go Democratic Party.

Just hours after federal immigration officers shot and killed a man in Minneapolis, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi seized upon the incident to demand access to Minnesota’s voter rolls, directly tying the Trump administration’s quest for voters’ unredacted personal data to its aggressive immigration raids across the state.

In a letter to Gov. Tim Walz (D) Saturday, Bondi blamed state and local leaders for the unrest ignited by the Trump administration’s expansive immigration enforcement operations. She claimed that Walz could “restore the rule of law” by complying with a list of demands, including giving the Department of Justice (DOJ) the state’s voter registration records.

“Allow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960,” Bondi said in the letter, which was first obtained by Fox News.

The letter adds the state’s unwillingness to share voting data to a litany of grievances the Trump administration has leveled against Minnesota, which range from the local Democratic leaders’ rejection of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) actions to a longstanding welfare fraud scandal.

Bondi’s other demands included sharing Minnesota’s data on Medicaid and supplementary food assistance with the federal government, ending “sanctuary policies” and supporting and collaborating with ICE. This would allow the government to investigate fraud and curb “crime and violence” in the state, the attorney general claimed.

In sum, Bondi’s letter represents a major assault on Minnesota’s sovereignty, demanding that it forfeit its ability to make and enforce its own laws and maintain its voter rolls without oversight from the executive branch, which does not have authority over elections. 

This is blackmail, pure and simple.

Meanwhile, in an update to the Renee Good murder, at least 10 lawyers for the DoJ, 6 in Minnesota and 4 in Washington, DC, resigned over the government's refusal to investigate the shooting, as did the an FBI supervisor in Minneapolis.

Finally, and this may be the most important bit, is that extensive files on ICE incidents and personnel have been leaked.

Sensitive details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees—including almost 2,000 agents working in frontline enforcement—have allegedly been released by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower following last week’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good.

The Jan. 7 killing of the mother by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has sparked nationwide protests and worldwide outrage, including among some DHS employees.

The alleged leak to ICE List, a self-styled “accountability initiative,” is believed to be the largest ever breach of DHS staff data. It appears to include names, work emails, telephone numbers, roles, and some resumé data, including previous jobs of federal immigration staff. 

I have not found a full downloadable version of this database.   ICE List is a Wikipedia style database, so the entire 

If any of my reader(s) know how to download the full database, do so, and post in the comments how to do so.

Elon Lie? Say it Ain't So!

Elon said that it had removed safety monitors from its, "Robotaxis."

What he did not say was that these monitors were simply moved to a chase car that closely followed the "autonomous" taxis.

Earlier today, [ed: 2 days ago] Elon Musk announced on X that Tesla had “just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car.” Tesla’s stock immediately jumped over 4% on the news. Headlines across the financial press celebrated the milestone.

There’s just one problem: it appears to be another game of smoke and mirrors. The Robotaxi cars spotted without “safety monitor” were all being followed by a trailing black Tesla supervising the “driverless” Robotaxi.

It means Tesla didn’t “remove the safety monitor”, it just moved them to a vehicle behind them.

………

When Musk says there’s “no safety monitor in the car,” he’s technically telling the truth, the monitor is in a different car, following right behind. But the implication that Tesla has achieved true unsupervised autonomy is misleading at best.

True unsupervised autonomy means the vehicle can operate safely without any human backup ready to intervene. That’s what Waymo does, their vehicles operate genuinely alone, without chase cars, across multiple cities. They’ve accumulated over 100 million fully driverless miles.

Now, there’s still some remote teleoperation when the vehicle gets into trouble, but it’s clear that Tesla is not even there yet.

This is fraud, period, full stop.

Of Course They Did

It has been revealed that Elon Musk's DOGE was illegally transferring personal data from the Social Security (SSA) database to right wing vote suppression groups. 

After months of denials, the Trump administration has admitted that staffers affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) misused Social Security Administration (SSA) data. In an extraordinary court filing, “NOTICE OF CORRECTIONS TO THE RECORD,” government lawyers representing the SSA revealed that in March 2025, a DOGE staffer signed an agreement to share the private data of Americans with a “political advocacy group” seeking to “overturn election results in certain States.”

SSA determined in its recent review that in March 2025, a political advocacy group contacted two members of SSA’s DOGE Team with a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired. The advocacy group’s stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States. In connection with these communications, one of the DOGE team members signed a “Voter Data Agreement,” in his capacity as an SSA employee, with the advocacy group. He sent the executed agreement to the advocacy group on March 24, 2025.

The filing says that emails “suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls.”

The use of government data for political purposes is unlawful. The Hatch Act prohibits a federal employee from using “his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” In the filing, government lawyers say the DOGE employees involved were referred to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for possible Hatch Act violations.

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While the court filing does not name the “political advocacy group” coordinating with DOGE, there is evidence pointing to True the Vote, a right-wing group with a history of pushing false claims of election fraud. True the Vote published “An Appeal to DOGE” in March 2025, the same month that the DOGE staffer signed an agreement with the political group. In the open letter, published on the group’s website on March 5, True the Vote encouraged DOGE to investigate the country’s voter registration system. At the top of the letter, Democracy Docket notes, True the Vote Founder Catherine Engelbrecht wrote, “We’ve received word that this message is being carried forward.”

At the earliest opportunity, Elon and his DOGE thugs need to be arrested put in the dock.