Category: 2025

Steven Beschloss: “Home-Growns Are Next”

Donald Trump is not just hungry to kidnap migrants without due process. He said out loud today he’s ready to deport American citizens. We’ve been warned.
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Politico: RFK Jr. says Deep State ‘is real,’ called FDA employees ‘sock puppet’ of industry

The HHS secretary’s remarks shocked staffers at the Food and Drug Administration, prompting some to walk out.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s visit to the FDA Friday was supposed to introduce him as a trusted leader to agency employees. It did anything but.

Over the course of 40 minutes, Kennedy, in largely off-the-cuff remarks, asserted that the “Deep State” is real, referenced past CIA experiments on human mind control and accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate.
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Law Dork: SCOTUS says Trump admin must “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return

The Trump admin fought the order — over a man it sent to a prison in El Salvador in an “administrative error” — and lost at all three levels of federal courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday evening upheld a district court’s order that the Trump administration “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man sent to a prison El Salvador illegally in what the administration called an “administrative error.”

The unsigned opinion for the court did note that the term “effectuate” in U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s initial order would need to be clarified when the case returned to her court, “with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.“
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There were no noted dissents in tonight’s order — an important fact in light of this administration’s actions in its first months.
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Bulwark: The Big Tariff Lie

Trump’s trade-war madness is his election madness all over again

Politifact: Flip flop: Trump said he wasn’t looking at pausing tariffs. Two days later, he did.

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NY Times: For U.S. and China, a Risky Game of Chicken With No Off-Ramp in Sight

Neither side wants to look weak by backing down on tariffs. But if their trade relationship collapses, the global consequences could be profound.

A doubling of American tariffs on Chinese goods. Nationalist Chinese bloggers comparing President Trump’s levies to a declaration of war. China’s Foreign Ministry vowing that Beijing will “fight to the end.”

For years, the world’s two biggest powers have flirted with the idea of an economic decoupling as tensions between them have risen. The acceleration this week, in both actions and words, of their trade relationship’s deterioration has made the prospect of such a divorce seem closer than ever.
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Ken Klippenstein: Pentagon Prepares for Trump to Go Berserk

Unprecedented number of B-2 bombers amassed for Iran strike

In the largest single deployment of stealth bombers in U.S. history, the Pentagon has sent six B-2 “Spirit” aircraft to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The long-range bombers, which are uniquely suited to evade Iranian air defenses and can carry America’s most potent bunker busting weapons, flew in from Missouri last week in a little noticed operation.

The B-2s carry not just bombs, but a message for Iran: “do you see our sword?,” as one retired general told Newsmax this week.
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Steven Beschloss: The Resistance Must Be Loud and Clear

The “Hands Off!” protests on Saturday demonstrated the potential of collective action
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On Saturday, millions of Americans—including many of you—proved we are not about to let a despotic minority of self-serving oligarchs and kleptocrats, miscreants and sycophants determine our future without a fight.
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Of course, we knew the nation’s top vandal was not listening. He was fiddling around on his Florida golf course, amusing himself with Saudi financiers and other golfers, and pocketing millions at Mar-a-Lago fundraisers.
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But the coming phases of mass protest will require being more precise. Elon Musk must be removed, for example.
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Washington Post: Amid anti-DEI push, National Park Service rewrites history of Underground Railroad

Since Trump took office, the park service — an agency charged with preserving American history — has changed how its website describes key moments from slavery to Jim Crow

For years, a National Park Service webpage introduced the Underground Railroad with a large photograph of its most famous “conductor,” Harriet Tubman. “The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage,” the page began.

Tubman’s photograph is now gone. In its place are images of Postal Service stamps that highlight “Black/White cooperation” in the secret network and that feature Tubman among abolitionists of both races.

The introductory sentence is gone, too. It has been replaced by a line that makes no mention of slavery and that describes the Underground Railroad as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement.” The effort “bridged the divides of race,” the page now says.
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