Nakedly Corrupt and Partisan

In an unsigned shadow docket opinion (the 3 court liberals issued a dissent) the Supreme Court issued a ruling saying that the Trump Administration’s "Verified Voter" database.

Despite the fact that the database is inaccurate, and despite the Supreme Court's own Purcell Doctrine, which says that courts should not change rules too close to the elections, the corrupt 6 want to allow the Trump to use their bogus database to undermine the election.

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration can deploy an expansive online system that combines citizenship information, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data about millions of Americans, allowing states to use it to hunt for ineligible voters.

Critics fear that states could use the system to purge large numbers of valid voters from their rolls ahead of the midterm elections.

The decision is a win for President Trump, who has pressed his administration to find evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, even though such instances are exceedingly rare. However, states are not required to use the federal system and it remains to be seen how much enthusiasm there will be among local and state election officials for it, as it has mistakenly flagged U.S. citizens as noncitizens in past searches.

The majority concluded that a lower-court ruling that had blocked the Trump administration from rolling out the system was improper because it inhibited “the federal government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”

The emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count, but the court’s three liberal justices joined in dissent. In a 12-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson emphasized that the majority’s decision created the conditions for some states to cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens or to force them to provide proof of citizenship before voting.

Of Course They Caved

Despite every indication that they would win in court, state attorneys general have settled with Paramount for little more than some magic beans, because our political system has been deeply corrupted  by big money.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has settled the challenge that he brought with 11 other state AGs to the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. The deal to settle the suit is both improbable and outrageous.

The $81 billion merger will give the Ellison family control of two of America’s biggest media companies, rolled into one behemoth combining film, television, sports, entertainment, and news. It would slash jobs and reduce competition throughout several industries. David Ellison has already destroyed the independence of CBS News. This would allow him to destroy CNN as well.

As an indication of the strength of Bonta’s case, on July 20, U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a temporary restraining order against the merger that rejected many of Paramount’s arguments, and scheduled a trial for next March. At that point, the Ellisons began applying political pressure for a settlement and threatening that Paramount would leave California if the suit succeeded.

In late August, Bonta canceled a scheduled meeting with representatives of Paramount after leaks of supposed settlement talks began appearing in the media, accusing Paramount of bad-faith tactics.

The tactics never changed. Paramount, Bonta, and other AGs spent the weekend in “advanced settlement talks” in which Paramount would stay in California, agree to 30 film releases per year among the two studios under threat of divesting some production companies if they don’t, invest $1.5 billion, and add an editorial board to allow for independence at CNN and CBS. The leaks of the deal very likely came from Paramount.

………

Yet Bonta caved under pressure, after being abandoned by every major politician in California (from current Gov. Gavin Newsom to heir apparent Xavier Becerra to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass), all of whom are worried about jobs in the event of a Paramount exit. But Paramount’s stated plan post-merger includes $8 billion in “savings,” which translates into the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

So, the right-wing nepo-baby, and his even more right-wing dad, end up with control over much of the US media landscape.

This sucks. 

Fascists Gotta Fascist

A judge has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot threaten prosecution of people who criticized them.

The fact taht they needed to have a court tell them this is f%$#ed up beyond belief.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may no longer issue a “warning notice” – threatening prosecution against a US citizen – for criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal judge in Washington DC ruled on Tuesday.

Judge Rudolph Contreras sided with David Streever, a New York man who accused DHS officials of violating his first amendment rights when they showed up first at his home in June with a “warning notice”, claiming he made a threat against former ICE director Todd Lyons, and then to a hotel where Streever and his young daughter were staying.

The notice and visits were in response to an email Streever sent Lyons in January, after federal agents fatally shot two US citizens amid an immigration crackdown in Minnesota. In the email, Streever called Lyons a “monstrous human being”, compared him to Nazi and warned him that his own conscience would “eat himself alive”.

Contreras ruled the notice “practically shouts that Mr Streever may be prosecuted if he continues to engage in his political speech”.

“Americans have long voiced their displeasure with their government. The Declaration of Independence itself is a list of grievances between Americans and the British government. And Americans have not always indulged in the elevated prose of the Declaration. Government officials have long endured ‘vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks.’ Today is no different,” Contreras wrote.

The court order is limited in that it prohibits the DHS, its secretary, Markwayne Mullin, or ICE from issuing another “warning notice”, making similar threats or pursuing prosecution for his speech while Streever’s case continues in court.

These mooks need to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

What a Petty Little Man

It looks like Donald Trump is still trying to shut down the Kennedy Center in a fit of pique over his not being allowed to plaster his name all over the performing arts center.

Seriously, how small is his penis?  (Shut up, Stormy, I do not want to know this)

Simmering turmoil over the future of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts boiled over on Tuesday as the center abruptly closed to the public and President Trump threatened to cancel a planned $257 million renovation if his name was not returned to the front of the building.

Allies of Mr. Trump have been pushing for months to close the center for major renovations and to honor the president by affixing his name to its marble facade. A federal judge has blocked both efforts.

On Tuesday, the center aggressively tested the judge’s order not to close by shutting its doors in what officials called an emergency action designed to protect people from deteriorating conditions inside the building. Shortly after 4:30 p.m., employees heard a sudden notice on the P.A. system: “The center is now closed to the public. Please exit the center by way of the Hall of States.”

………

The Kennedy Center said in a statement that an immediate temporary closure of the building was necessary for safety reasons but that an extended closure would begin once the court gives its approval. Earlier on Tuesday, the center’s Trump-allied board voted — for a third time — to close the building, citing a recent incident in which a five-foot-long section of ceiling plaster fell amid a storm.

But lawyers for Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democratic ex officio board member whose lawsuit is at the center of the court battle, signaled that they would view any closure as in direct conflict with a court order.

………

The Kennedy Center quickly filed a notice of appeal, and Mr. Trump responded on social media with a stark ultimatum. If an appeals court does not agree to allow his name back on the building, he said in the post, he would block the renovation of the center that he has been championing for more than a year.

“If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said in the post, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”

He also said the building would close “immediately.”

………

For weeks, Mr. Trump’s allies have suggested that the president’s continued commitment to the Kennedy Center was contingent on some conspicuous acknowledgment on the center’s exterior. A recent draft resolution submitted to board members said the center was at risk of bankruptcy but could be saved by fund-raising by Mr. Trump — if he were to receive “appropriate recognition.”

Mr. Trump’s made that quid pro quo even more clear in his social media post on Tuesday. It said that $17 million raised by the president had been put into the center’s account “to keep it afloat.”

Pathetic. 

What Lina Khan Said

Jacob Coxson's vague, "Revalations," appear to be a PR ploy pump both AI company stock prices as well as the personal stock of one Jacob Coxon.

In response to a recent media campaign by the AI giants to crteate regulation that would prevent net entrants from competing with them, former FTC chair Lina Khan notes that existing law can already do this by frog marching executives out of their offices in handcuffs.

She notes that we have been jailing CEOs of firms that engage in anticompetitive behavior and release unsafe products for over 90 years.  (Not so much since Reagan became President, but still) 

Former FTC chair Lina Khan wants the federal government to know that it doesn't need to wait for new laws to address AI threats. There are already laws and regulations on the books, including a 92-year-old Supreme Court precedent, that she argues could be used to hold AI companies and, in some circumstances, their executives accountable for their actions.

………

“We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books,” Khan said. “Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products.”

………

There’s no leap needed to understand what Khan’s talking about here. OpenAI’s agents broke out of their intended sandbox and gained unauthorized access to Hugging Face systems - conduct that could raise serious criminal-law questions if carried out knowingly by a human. After doing some digging to look at its own agents' behaviors, Anthropic has essentially copped to similar activities that would be criminal if a meatbag was behind the keyboard instead of a simulated silicon brain. OpenAI’s agents have since been identified as the culprits in other misuses of online assets that, again, would be crimes were they perpetrated by a human.

Khan points to a 1934 US Supreme Court decision to argue that the current battle between American frontier labs, which has put parts of the internet in the firing line of agents that escaped their intended constraints, could amount to an unfair method of competition if companies feel compelled to take similar risks to keep up.

That decision, FTC v. R.F. Keppel & Bro, includes a passage where the justices argue that, if keeping up with the competition requires companies to “descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt,” that competition is unfair whether or not it’s criminal.

Break out the cuffs, Ponch.

He's Lost diGenova

diGenova just told me by phone when I asked about his abrupt exit:

“If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem” https://t.co/rxb9GRCQdn

— Josh Christenson (@jchristenson_) September 10, 2026

Right wing legal fixture Joseph diGenova just quit his role as lead prosecutor for the Trump revenge tour. 

I do not think that this was a matter of conscience, nor was it a matter of legal ethics.

diGenova has neither of these.

Instead, I think that he realized that if he continued down this route, his law license would suffer the same fate as John Eastman.

A loyalist prosecutor handpicked by the Justice Department to lead a contentious conspiracy investigation into several of President Trump’s political opponents abruptly quit his job on Thursday after facing pressure from his superiors in Washington, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The prosecutor, Joseph diGenova, had been in charge of what Mr. Trump’s allies have often referred to as the “grand conspiracy,” a sprawling inquiry based in the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida that has sought to implicate federal officials who have investigated Mr. Trump in a single plot to deprive him of his rights.

Mr. diGenova’s resignation was the latest setback in the case that began last year and has dragged on for months. Even though members of his team have issued numerous grand jury subpoenas to federal law enforcement and intelligence officials who have sought over the past decade to hold Mr. Trump accountable in a series of criminal inquiries, Mr. diGenova had yet to obtain an indictment.

………

Sometimes, as in the case of Mr. diGenova, the prosecutors themselves have effectively reminded him that it is no simple matter to file indictments against people without real evidence or viable legal reasoning.

 

Evil Is as Evil Does

So the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ just lost in their motion to enjoin Minnesota from enforcing their involuntary "nudification" law.

It appears that the judge took a dim view of the argument that making unconsentual nude photographs of people, including children, is a protected First Amendment right

This is not the end of the case, because Elon Musk thinks that the ability of xAI to profit from its users being able to generate child and revenge pr0n is a core right.

Can we please just send him off to Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp?

xAI’s legal fight against a Minnesota law banning sexual deepfakes will drag on for a while, even though it suffered a second setback last week.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank initially denied a motion from xAI filed at the end of July that would have stopped Minnesota from enforcing the ban, effectively nullifying the law. With the law in effect, Frank has now denied a second motion, making it abundantly clear that injunctions based on xAI’s claims that it is being irreparably harmed by this law are not going to be sufficient—but that the case apparently has enough merit to continue.

The law itself bans nudification apps by penalizing service providers—apps and online platforms. It levies fines of up to $500,000 every time a deepfake is accessed, which could add up to devastating legal costs in the event of a viral image or video. It should also be noted that the specifics of the nudity standard in the Minnesota law are broader than, say, what can’t be shown on broadcast TV, and includes the “primary genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttocks, or breast of a human being.”

In case you are wondering, Musk's devotion to free speech begins and ends with his own personal benefit.

Grand Jury No-Bills

For once, this is not the Trump DoJ that f%$#ed this up.

In this case, the grand jury was in Ohio, and they refused to indict a man who sawed down a Flock camera.

Good.

A grand jury in Ohio has declined to indict a man charged with felony vandalism for allegedly destroying a Flock automatic license plate reader camera.

Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.

Investigators, according to WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, identified Morelock after obtaining surveillance footage from other cameras near the scene as well as information linked to a credit card and a customer rewards account.

Police estimated the damage at more than $1,000. Morelock posted a $10,000 bond and was released from custody shortly after his arrest.

A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict Morelock, and the charges were dismissed.

It is said that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.

It appears that a ham sandwich with a side order of flock vandalism is a different kettle of fish. 

Yeah, They are a Bookie

The Appeals Court for the 9th Circuit just ruled that Kalshi sports "prediction market" is just sport betting and so subject to state regulations.

The court rejected claims that Kalshi's sports book operation is a. "Swap," which are exclusively covered under federal law.

Kalshi today lost a major ruling over whether it can evade state gambling laws, as a federal appeals court found that Nevada can stop the prediction market from allowing sports bets. While the Trump administration is trying to help prediction markets avoid state regulation, a panel of three Trump-appointed judges unanimously ruled against Kalshi in today’s decision from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board today said the 9th Circuit “emphatically reject[ed] the view that the federal Commodity Exchange Act preempts application of Nevada’s gaming laws to sports-event contracts offered by Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood.” Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, a Republican, said that “prediction markets offering sports-event contracts constitute gambling and must comply with Nevada’s gaming laws and regulatory framework.”

The judges affirmed a district court order that let Nevada enforce state laws against Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts.

“KalshiEX, LLC advertises itself as ‘the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states,’” wrote Judge Ryan Nelson. “As the volume of activity on Kalshi’s ‘sports betting’ platform ballooned, the Nevada Gaming Control Board sent a cease-and-desist letter notifying Kalshi that it was violating Nevada statutes and gaming regulations. Kalshi sought injunctive relief, arguing that it is not a legal sports betting platform but a designated contract market under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) offering legal sports event contracts. Kalshi argues that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has exclusive regulatory authority over its sports event contracts and, therefore, Nevada’s gaming regulations do not apply.”

Good.

Pocket Change

It appears that the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ will be pay somewhere between $12 and $17.1 billion to settle the lawsuit accusing it of deliberately making an addictive product.

That is by my calculation less than 1 month's revenue.  

They can find it in their couch cushions. 

Meta on Wednesday reached a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to its products over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms.

In a dramatic capitulation, the owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to the financial penalties for violating federal child privacy and states’ consumer protection laws, the states announced. Meta also agreed to limit how long teenagers can spend on its platforms and to bans on features that stoke mental health issues, striking at the heart of the company’s business of engagement for advertising.

………

The settlement effectively ends a bellwether federal trial in the U.S. Northern District of California in Oakland, where California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were seeking roughly $200 billion over accusations that Meta harmed children. The states filed their agreement with Meta on Wednesday morning in that court, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved it.

Separately, Meta said on Wednesday that it settled with Texas for about $1 billion over similar allegations. The company still faces numerous other lawsuits from school districts and individuals, some of which are scheduled for trial in the coming months.

Meta’s stock rose on the news, closing up just over 1 percent. The company is valued at $1.47 trillion and most recently generated $60.8 billion in quarterly revenue.

 Like I said, pocket change.

Also, there is a condition to this settlement that will likely mean that they won't even be paying that.

………

The full value of Meta’s payout depends on whether other social media companies also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. Meta will initially pay about $12 billion. It will pay an additional $5 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. 

I would be very surprised if a significant amount of this payout will occur this decade.

Facebook is, and always has been, a bad actor, and this settlement will not change that.

What would change this is frog-marching Mark Zuckerberg out of his offices in handcuffs. 

Private Island? How Does a Justice Afford a F%$#ing Private Island?

No, it's not Clarence Thomas, it's John Roberts, who was confronted by protestors at his private island.

Also, the whole private island thing is a bad look.  Just ask Jeffrey Epstein. 

Chief Justice John Roberts’ island escape was interrupted by protesters who arrived by kayak to stage a demonstration.

The 71-year-old Supreme Court justice, who has pleaded with critics of his ultra-conservative court to back off, learned earlier this month that even his private island retreat off Port Clyde, Maine, wasn’t beyond the reach of protesters.

Arriving by kayak, canoe, and rowboat, the protesters staged a one-hour “floating vigil” in the waters between Port Clyde and Hupper Island, where Roberts has a home, the Midcoast Villager reported.

he protesters’ signs declared “The Roberts Court: Rubber Stamp for Fascism” and “Roberts Benched the Constitution,” according to photos published in the Midcoast Villager. More than 20 people paddled out for the protest, while another 20 demonstrated on land, according to the Midcoast Villager.

Roberts and his wife, Jane Roberts, bought a 1,344-square-foot home on Hupper Island, a private island accessible only by water, in 2006. They bought a second 1,560-square-foot home sitting on two waterfront acres in 2016, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Last month, the couple—whose wealth is estimated at roughly $25 million—sold their longtime home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, for $3.44 million, Realtor.com reported. They had bought the seven-bedroom house for $1.23 million in 2003.

$25,000,000.00? I'd love to see a deep dive on his finances. 

Because, Of Course They Are

In the latest filing with the court regarding the Kennedy Center, the Trump DoJ has stated that if they do not get to shut down the center for 2 years (In order to conceal how much attaching Trump's name to the building has cratered support), and do not get to add Trumps name to the building, that Donald Trump might have the building torn down.

You know, I'm beginning to think that Adolph might be looking up from his pit of lava and saying, "Damn, Donald Trump is such a delicate snowflake."

Lawyers for the Trump administration told a federal judge that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts desperately needs the major renovation ordered by President Trump and raised the specter that it would need to be “taken down” if those plans are blocked.

In a court filing late on Monday, Justice Department lawyers defended plans for the $250 million renovation project and described how, as recognition for the president’s role, an inscription of his name on the center’s marble facade would be appropriate.

“Without those efforts, the center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down,” the filing said, “with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years.”

………

It was unclear how seriously any thought to knock down the building has been considered, but it was the most extreme measure cited to support Mr. Trump’s contention that the Washington arts center needs a major overhaul that would force it to close for two years. Mr. Trump ordered the demolition of the White House’s East Wing last fall to make way for a luxury ballroom.

………

This month, the board approved two new inscriptions below the main Kennedy Center signage. The first would read “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump.” The second, which would be added below the first once the endowment reaches $100 million, would say “endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

Someone please make it stop.

Impeach Them All

I am not referring to anyone in the White House.  I am referring to the 6 corrupt and partisan Supreme Court Justices who just authorized Donald Trump's plan to meddle in mail-in voting in the upcoming election.

The US supreme court sided with Donald Trump on Monday in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it remains unclear if his administration can take action ahead of the midterm elections in November.

Justices on the court voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction from June that a judge in Massachusetts placed on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in place and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.

“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful,” the majority wrote in an unsigned order. “On that score, time will tell.”

The three liberal justices dissented. In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”.

Justice Brown Jackson, injecting, "Chaos and ncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections," is a feature, not a bug.

To be fair the conservatives on the court did take a principled stance, it's just that the principle was, "N%$#@!*s should not vote." 

 

Lying to the Court Again

One of the arguments given by the Trump administration to allow the construction of the White House Ballroom is that there will be a nuclear proof bunker underneath that is required by current threats.

The problem here is that there is already such a bunker under the White House, and the Trump Administration has not informed the courts of this.

President Donald Trump has claimed that the White House needs a massive new ballroom because it would provide him and future presidents with a secure, hardened facility. But former officials say the argument fails to acknowledge that the presidential complex already has one.

More than a decade ago, federal officials built a highly protected bunker, embedded deep underground, that can shelter the president and his top aides in a national security emergency, according to three former officials.

The facility, which was secretly completed during the Obama administration, can house dozens of people for up to multiple weeks, two former officials said. It’s buried more than 60 feet underneath the White House complex and built to withstand a nuclear blast, two of the officials said, ensuring the president and his team have a secure command center to run the country in times of extreme duress.

The bunker’s existence, the former officials said, undercuts the Trump administration’s emerging legal argument in the ongoing lawsuit over the $600 million ballroom complex’s construction: that the facility must be completed due to its significance for U.S. national security.

They are lying again.  This is why the presumption of regularity has been going out of the window. 

Gee, Ya Think?

A former safety engineer at Facebook, Arturo Béjar, has testified that Mark Zuckerberg does not give a f%$# about protecting children.

Gee, you think?

A massive trial is underway in California, where state attorneys general are holding Meta’s feet to the fire for its role in fueling a children’s mental health crisis.

According to the testimony of former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar, the company has purposefully adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to keeping children safe on its platforms, the Guardian reported.

Throughout his time on the witness stand, Béjar asserted that Meta has known its platform is actively harming children, pushing things like violent and predatory sexual content onto their feeds.

Béjar, whose role in the company reportedly involved briefing CEO Mark Zuckerberg on safety issues, said that executives were well aware of the issues, but weren’t in any hurry to solve them, despite repeated assurances that Meta and its platforms Instagram and Facebook “don’t prioritize profit over safety,” per the Guardian.

Why are they not looking at criminal prosecutions? 

Fuck John Roberts

The modern day incarnation of Roger B. Taney decided to allow the construction of Trump's White House Ballroom to continue while the case proceeds.

This is clearly an attempt to allow facts on the ground to take precedence over the the facts and the law.

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon allowed construction on a new 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom to continue – at least for now. Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon had issued an order, slated to go into effect at the end of the day, that would have stopped above-ground work on the project. But Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order, known as an administrative stay, that kept Leon’s order on hold to give the justices more time to consider the Trump administration’s request to pause it.

The brief, one-sentence stay did not indicate when the justices might act on the government’s request. Leon’s order has never gone into effect, permitting the Trump administration to move forward with construction while the case made its way toward the Supreme Court. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court last week that there was “a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep the Project ahead of schedule and under budget”; as a result, he wrote, as of last week, the project was “65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion.”

Another nakedly corrupt and partisan act by a naked and partisan justice.

This is not a court of law, this is the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation.

Forget it Jake, It's Texas

In response to Texas' refusal to extradite an indicted ICE agent, Minnesota has sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott. 

While I know that this won't result in Abbot being wheeled into a prison cell, the image makes me smile.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, alleging the governor is refusing to extradite a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged with shooting an immigrant during Operation Metro Surge.

Christian Castro, 52, is facing four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime related to a Jan. 14 incident in which prosecutors allege he fired through the front door of a Minneapolis home he knew was occupied.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Ellison have sent letters to Abbott urging him to sign off on the officer’s extradition after Castro was charged in May. Last week, Ellison warned Abbott he would sue if he did not authorize Castro’s extradition by the end of the day Monday.

“This is not some accidental thing,” Ellison said in a Tuesday news conference announcing the lawsuit. “This is a choice.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Abbott said he would not respond to Minnesota prosecutors until they “acknowledge their fault in the fraud that took place” and repay the government for it. He was referring to the Trump administration’s accusations of fraud in Minnesota.

Governor Abbot?  You do not get to ignore a lawful request for extradition because you want Minnesota to do racism.

………

In addition to the extradition demand, Ellison’s lawsuit also requests a temporary restraining order to bar the Cameron County Sheriff’s Office, where Castro is in jail, from releasing him. According to the lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District Court of Texas, Castro could be released under Texas law as soon as Aug. 26 if he is not extradited. 

If Castro is released, he will most likely flee to Mexico.  

Irony, neh? 

Interesting Supreme Court Corruption Data Point

Fix the Court has documented all of the various gifts that Supreme Court Justices have received.

Since 2004, the total received from the current justices has come to $3.62 million.  Of that, Clarence Thomas has gotten $3.04 million, or about 84 percent of the bribes gifts.

Gee, corruption much?

A watchdog group called Fix the Court keeps a running tally of every gift and free perk handed to the people who sit on the Supreme Court, and the newest version of that tally counts 515 gifts and complimentary benefits worth an estimated $3.62 million from 2004 forward, pieced together from the justices’ own financial disclosure forms, investigative reporting, public records requests and a Senate investigation. Stretch the count across every year the database touches, including older records that are patchy and incomplete, and the total climbs to 735 gifts worth roughly $4.69 million.1

That figure covers 17 people. Nine of them are the justices deciding cases right now. Eight are recent former justices who have left the bench. That distinction is the single most important thing on this page, and I will show you why in about sixty seconds.

Now get this. One justice accounts for almost all of it

Clarence Thomas alone accounts for roughly $3.064 million of the $3.616 million total. Do the division. That comes to 84.7 percent of everything the group tallied for all seventeen justices across more than twenty years.

Narrow the lens to the nine justices on the bench today and the picture gets sharper still. Their tally since 2004 is 307 gifts worth about $3.231 million, and Thomas accounts for roughly 94.8 percent of that dollar figure, which means that if you set one man aside, the entire gift controversy at the current Supreme Court shrinks down to something around $166,412 spread across his eight colleagues over two decades.

Every other justice in the database, sitting and retired, adds up to about $551,425 combined.

I want to see Thomas frog marched out of his office in handcuffs.

Pass the Popcorn

The BBC is now pursuing subpoenas to depose Trump's children and Jared Kushner.

Good.

Hopefully, the questions will involve the Trump Org's business practices as well as his statements on January 6.

The BBC is trying to subpoena Donald Trump’s children as it builds its defense against the president’s defamation lawsuit centered on a documentary on the January 6 insurrection.

In a motion filed on Friday, the BBC sought authorization to serve Trump’s two eldest children, Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, with subpoenas for testimony and their records on the events of 6 January 2021.

The BBC, its lawyers wrote in court documents, is entitled to discover Trump’s “intention behind the speech and anything that bears on the impression his audience could have reasonably obtained in listening to the speech”, which includes whether Trump “gave it intentionally or otherwise; the breadth of the audience of the message and impression; and the extent of any resulting injury or harm”.

This is how a real news organization responds to bogus defamation claims.

The Good Guy Wins

Said good guy being Chuck Redd, who was just awarded $252,480 under an anti-SLAPP provision of DC law after the Kennedy Center sued him for canceling his Christmas concert.

They changed the name, and Redd canceled, so Trump's stooges sued him.

A superior court judge in Washington DC has ordered the Kennedy Center to pay more than $250,000 to a musician who canceled a performance at the arts center after the White House announced that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the venue.

Judge Tanya Jones Bosier ordered the Kennedy Center on Monday to pay $252,479.70 in legal fees and costs to attorneys for musician Chuck Redd within 45 days.

The Kennedy Center had sued Redd after he canceled a Christmas Eve concert at the venue. In June, the judge dismissed the Kennedy Center’s lawsuit and ruled in Redd’s favor under the district’s anti-Slapp statute, which is designed to protect people from lawsuits seeking to silence protected speech. Redd then requested that the court make the Kennedy Center reimburse him for the legal costs he incurred defending himself.

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Redd’s decision to cancel came after the Kennedy Center’s Trump-controlled board voted to rename the institution “The Donald J Trump and The John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Trump’s name was then added to the building’s facade and the center’s digital materials.