Ken Klippenstein: What are “Nihilist Violent Extremists”?
The arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home has unified the national security state around a broader threat it sees in the American people.
Inside the government, sources tell us, officials are scrambling to define the moment. They’re exploring if there’s any connection between the attempts on Donald Trump’s life; Luigi Mangione and his sympathizers; Tesla vandalism; and even earlier attacks, like the one on Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
The Trump Justice Department and the domestic terrorism fighters think they have an answer: Nihilist Violent Extremists.
They’ve already got an acronym — NVEs.
The brand new term was invented to replace the Biden administration’s focus on anti-government and “anti-authority” extremism adopted after January 6. It also has the side benefit of appearing to be non-partisan, shifting the attention away from MAGA and white supremacism while pretending not to be focusing on anti-Trump activism.
(Ken Klippenstein more…)
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NY Times: This Isn’t the First Time Trump Has Mistakenly Deported Someone
President Trump says he is powerless to retrieve a man who was deported because of an administrative error. But he has done so before.
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In Mr. Subaihani’s case, the government recognized its error to the federal court, setting off a monthslong odyssey to track down and retrieve a man who never should have been deported in the first place.
(NY Times more…)Politico: Judge launches inquiry into Trump administration’s refusal to seek return of wrongly deported man
“To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said.
(Politico more…)Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 15, 2025
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Xinis noted that “every day Mr. Garcia is detained in CECOT is a day of irreparable harm.”Bower added that the Trump regime is likely drawing this out in part because it permits them to showcase the one part of their agenda that is still polling well. The staged meeting with Bukele enabled officials to get widespread media coverage for the straight-up lie that Abrego Garcia has been found to be a member of the MS-13 gang. As Greg Sargent reported today in the New Republic, this story came from a police officer who, just weeks later, was suspended for “providing information to a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts.”
The Oval Office event also enabled White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller both to lie that the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision against the administration was actually in favor of it, and to rerun the litany of heinous crimes he associates with immigrants. The attention to the case has also gotten Miller airtime on news shows, where he repeats those lies.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Guardian: US senator says El Salvador denied request to meet Kilmar Ábrego García
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Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday with the intention of meeting Ábrego García at the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), where US authorities have said that the Maryland resident is being held along with others deported at Donald Trump’s orders.
The administration needs the immigration issue to play to its base, but it’s actually not clear that Americans like Miller’s approach to immigrants.Irish Star: Flustered Karoline Leavitt has no answer as Trump accused of massive abuse of power
Independent: Angry voters ask Senator Grassley if they can ignore court orders like Trump
Fox News: ‘Cancel vacations’: Judge gives Trump admin two weeks to prove they aren’t in contempt of court
Above the Law: Conservative Judge Doesn’t Pull Punches
Judge Luttig has thoughts on the Abrego Garcia case.
(Above the Law more…)Bulwark: Inside the Mind of an ICE Agent
Is this what she signed up for?
(Bulwark more…)ABC: 6 times the Trump administration has clashed with opponents over court orders
CNN: Boasberg finds ‘probable cause exists’ to hold Trump administration in contempt for violating orders on deportation flights
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Marisa Kabas: It was never about antisemitism
From abducting college students to an attack on a Jewish governor, Trump’s real motivations remain clear.
(Marisa Kabas more…)
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Bulwark: Trump Is Failing to End the War in Ukraine
But is he even trying?
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Dispatch: Do Republican Voters Still Care About Scandal?
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Dispatch: American Soybean Farmers Are Caught in the Trade War Crossfire
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Fast Company: How Trump’s tariffs helped China’s economy grow by 5.4%
Exporters rushing to beat Trump’s tariffs gave China’s economy a boost in the first quarter of the year.
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Dean Blundell: Carney’s Silent Power Move: Labeling Trump’s America a “National Security Threat” Foreshadows Canada’s Possible Next Steps
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Fortune: Americans want more U.S. factory jobs—as long as they don’t have to work them
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Sarah Jones: Government Spending Explodes Under Trump And Destroys GOP’s Waste Cutting Lie
Spending under Trump has already exceeded that of Biden by $154 billion more than in the same period in 2024, yet Republicans are pushing permanent tax cuts for the elite.
(Sarah Jones more…)WSJ: See How Government Spending Is Up Even as Musk Touts Savings
Bulwark: Trump’s Science Cuts Will Be Felt for Generations
Mindless slashing at NSF won’t just harm the scientific enterprise today—it will damage discovery and innovation for years to come.
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Popular Information: Truth Social launches scheme to profit from Trump’s tariff policies
A jaw-dropping conflict of interest.
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Moving forward, Trump can boost or depress the price of virtually any stock through the creation or elimination of tariffs. On Tuesday, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), best known as the parent company of the social media platform Truth Social, announced it was launching a series of actively managed investment accounts. TMTG is marketing these “Truth Social-branded Separately Managed Accounts” as a way to invest in companies that benefit from Trump’s political agenda. Trump remains the majority shareholder of TMTG.
(Popular Information more…)
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Daily Beast: Trump Leads MAGA Meltdown Over Joe Biden’s First Post-Prez Speech
‘TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE’
Trump posted a 14-second clip of Biden’s speech that had MAGAworld fuming.
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“I’d never seen—hardly any Black people in Scranton at the time and I was only going in fourth grade,” Biden said in a clip where he recalls growing up in Delaware. “I remember seeing the kids going by—at the time called ‘colored kids’—on a bus going by.”What Trump omitted, however, was the full context of Biden’s comments on the matter, where the former president claimed the image–which “sparked his outrage”–inspired him to get into politics.
(Daily Beast more…)
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Noah Berlatsky: Democrats Need To Forget the Lessons of the 2024 Election
Things are very different now.
- There’s a different incumbent now
- Not just election results
- Think about Kamala 2025
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TNR: AOC Rakes In Millions From Small Donors as She Stands Up to Trump
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has hit a record fundraising haul. Democrats, take note.
(TNR more…)
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Dean Blundell: Tasers Fly at Greene’s Town Hall—MAGA’s Violent New Normal Hits Trump’s America
From mockery to mayhem, Greene’s Acworth event saw cops crush dissenters, previewing a brutal new reality under Trump’s reign.
Trump’s vision for America unfolded at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s town hall in Acworth, Georgia, last night. It’s almost laughable how fast it spiraled from “submit your questions in writing” to “fry the dissenters with 50,000 volts,” but here we are: a so-called public servant dodging accountability, smirking at her constituents’ pain, and watching cops turn a Q&A into a blood-and-sparks melee. Disbelief? Sure. Surprised? Nah, not even close.
(Dean Blundell more…)
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TNR: Elon Musk’s DOGE Isn’t Stopping Fraud. It’s Making It Easier.
A scathing whistleblower report suggests that DOGE coders may have pilfered troves of personal data that would be extremely valuable to business leaders.
(TNR more…)Washington Post: Inside DOGE’s push to defy a court order and access Social Security data
Thom Hartmann: The Department of Government Efficiency Is a Lie — And It Might Destroy Us All
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Register: Trump derails Chinese H20 GPU sales, forcing Nvidia to eat $5.5B this quarter
WSJ: Tech Stocks Fall After U.S. Tightens Curbs on Nvidia’s China Exports
Register: First Nvidia, now AMD: Trump trade turmoil threatens $800M in China chip sales
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Hollywood Reporter: How a Little-Known Movie About Trump’s Football Fiasco Explains His Tariff Tantrums
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Register: Uncle Sam abruptly turns off funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE program
US government funding for the world’s CVE program – the centralized Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database of product security flaws – ends Wednesday.
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CNN: Hong Kong suspends postal service to the US after Trump’s tariff hikes
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AP: Judge temporarily blocks Trump from retaliating against firm that sued Fox News for election lies
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Decoding Fox News: Fox News: Oops! We Almost Had Another Depression
A condensed overview of 17 hours of Fox News for the week ending 4/13/25
Last week on Fox News every talking head was dedicated to distracting its viewers from the catastrophe of Trump’s chaotic tariff policies.
Sean Hannity dedicated an entire episode to radical Democrats, Jesse Watters decided that men with office jobs turn into women, Judge Jeanine Pirro was screaming about the lack of Cadillacs in Europe while Jessica Tarlov and occasionally Steve Doocy were sending off distress signals.
The same network that claimed Biden’s economy was destroying the country downplayed the threat of a full-blown depression due to a madman’s half-baked ideas on global trade.
(Decoding Fox News more…)
