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Improbably, the White-Nationalist-In-Chief still plunges to lower, ranker, more nakedly racist depths as he tries to deflect from his failings, lies, naps and crimes. The fake Peace President’s ugly apogee, topping murders at sea, banning migrants “non-compatible with Western Civilization,” siccing ICE dogs on innocents et al: His vicious invective against Somalis as “garbage” while his Stepford bigots stand silent before it all, complicity unbound. Ferris Bueller's hapless teacher: "Anyone? Anyone?"
Obviously the mild cluelessness of blank students facing Ben Stein's teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off pales before the toxic spectacle of a blithering, execrable fascist stirring up gutter-level hatred as he spews "possibly the most openly racist shit any US president has ever been caught saying." The dissonance of the furious bigotry erupting from an alleged national leader - its vitriol, animus, beyond-the-pale crudeness, the eerie silence into which it falls - also prompts a jarring, queasy sense of, "what the fuck is wrong with this picture?" even as it comes from a ghastly human whose most longstanding, foundational tenet is brutish racism (plus greed), going back to his KKK father, his deadly hatred for the Central Park Five, his snarling claim all Mexicans are criminals and rapists.
In his ongoing "shitification of American politics," there's always, obviously much more. There's blithering, gaslighting, verbal incontinence: "Affordability is a con job, a hoax started by Democrats." Self-serving grandiosity: "The Ukraine war never would have happened if I'd been president." Outlandish fantasy: "They're finding money in our country now they never knew existed. The other day - $30 billion. Where did it come from? I said, 'Why don't you check the tariffs shelf?' They call back: Sir, you're right.'" (America: "Of all the things that didn’t happen, this didn’t happen the most.") Cult worship: The National Park Service has removed MLK Jr. Day and Juneteenth from their free admission days, replacing them with Dear Leader's birthday; he'll be 12 next year.
In further Stalinesque self-glorification - and in the first time a living (sort of) president (ditto) named a building for himself while in office - months after DOGE tried to illegally seize control of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a non-profit think tank for international conflict resolution, the building has re-emerged with massive silver letters as the Donald J. Trump U.S Institute of Peace. A White House spokesbot, lauding straight-faced the what is it now 38? wars he's ended, declared, "Congratulations, world!" The world, noting the Orwellian renaming of an institute created in 1984, helpfully if hopelessly pointed out that Orwell's dark masterwork "was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual," but here we are.
Other atrocities proliferate. The report Trump’s military occupation of U.S. cities has cost over $473 million - from $270 million in D.C and $172 million in L.A. to $13 million in Chicago - even as he cut more than $1 trillion from vital domestic services. The fact that both of the DOJ's wildly unqualified, illegally appointed partisan hacks/pretend acting U.S. attorneys Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan still claim to hold their non-existent positions. The fact that, after boasting about rolling back food stamps and her "gratitude and joy for this work," USDA Sec. Brooke Rollins is still "hellbent on people going hungry" in blue states. Passage of Texas' racist redistricting coup - "Let's talk about cowardice" - and the White House's icky Daddy's Home holidays meme.
And everything "no stupid rules of engagement" dunk-tank clown Pete Hegseth does: The Signalgate report that his massive security leak "risked endangering U.S. military personnel," which he somehow turned into, “Total exoneration." His slimy, shifting narratives - the Pentagon has no idea who's on board vs. they're all on a secret list of military targets - for 48 minutes of murderous video showing "what it looks like when the full force of the United States military is turned on two guys clinging to a tiny piece of wood and about to go under," aka, "a shooting gallery with helpless targets" which is clearly either a war crime or murder - plain and simple,” both impeachable, though Megyn Kelly would've preferred "they lose a limb and bleed out a little."
Still, with sinking polls, rising prices, Epstein lurking, a tragic D.C shooting to open the floodgates and billions for ICE's jackbooted thugs, the splenetic racism from a presidential bully pulpit is paramount, a timeless scapegoating ploy now at "absolutely unique" levels of depravity. "It all started with Barack Hussein Obama," he raved, before attacking Somalis who have "nothing" to do with the shooting or anything else. America will "go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage," "They have destroyed our country," "Ilhan Omar is "garbage," "her friends are garbage," Somalia "is just people walking around killing each other," "they come from hell and do nothing but bitch," "their country stinks," "we don’t want them," "Minnesota is a hellhole right now," ”Let them go back to where they came from." And, evil one, may you too. Oh please.
His on-camera racistmania was dutifully lapped up, first by the obsequious (seated) members of his creepy circle jerk, then by the obsequious (standing) minions - blinding white, stiffly smiling, hands clutched, tongues tied - performatively gathered for his "supine authoritarian MAGA messaging...a barely coded cry of 'Everybody into the pool!' for a supporting cast of racist demagogues." One by one, they obeyed. J.D. banged on the table to lay the blame where it belonged: "Why did homes get so unaffordable? Because we had 20 million illegal aliens taking homes that ought by right to go to American citizens." Marco Rubio, in some insane optics - try watching without sound - feverishly genuflected to the peace president, sitting next to him, dozing off.
ICE Barbie thanked him for having "kept the hurricanes away" and "saved hundreds of millions of lives with the cocaine you’ve blown up in the Caribbean"; she urged a travel ban on "every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies" - but not those getting free jets - who "slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch benefits (from) AMERICANS. We don't want them." Whew. She flamboyantly echoes both Stephen Goebbel's Nazi rhetoric and Trump's calls for stripping citizenship, blocking all refugees - except sad white Afrikaners - from a vague list of “third world countries,” aka brown and black, "non-compatible with Western Civilization" - an illegal move that def turns the racism up to 11. Manifesting "cultishness off the charts," Press Barbie celebrated all this as "amazing" and "epic."For Minnesota's Somali community of up to 80,000, the largest in the country, it is "extraordinarily harmful." Already tense in the wake of an alleged $250 million fraud scandal involving federal nutrition aid and two non-profits - both run by white people but involving dozens of Somalis - pressure from the new racist surge feels "inescapable...The volcano has erupted." Though many are U.S. citizens, and Minneapolis' police chief has told officers they'll be fired if they don't stop illegal force by ICE goons, people are afraid to go to work, to school, to Friday prayers, especially in Somali-dense areas like "Little Mogadishu" and the Karmel Mall. "We know authoritarianism," said a Somali city council member, and with it the potency of racism and nativism. After Haitians eating pets, he said, "It's just the next iteration."
Meanwhile, ugly ripples ooze from Trump's rhetoric. ICE thugs keep thugging, though most of their victims have no criminal record and some are U.S. citizens. They've sicced dogs on people, resulting in horrific injuries and reviving MAGA's sick "good old days." They have a cruel new plan dubbed "Operation Irish Goodbye" to arrest those already self-deporting, and they're canceling citizenship ceremonies for people from the "wrong" countries. A 2025 blood-and-soil US National Security Strategy touts great replacement theory, warns Europe it faces "civilizational erasure" by migrants of color, supports their fascist groups, rejects our allies for Russia, imagines a "Crusader-style reconquest (of) Europe by the white right." He just trashed a "decaying" Europe with "weak" leaders, 'cause brown people. A Wisconsin worker was fired and went viral for calling a Somali couple "niggers"; fellow racists raised $100,000 for her, echoing "garbage" slurs.
Despite outrage about his murders at sea, Dunk-tank Pete killed four more brown people, bragged about it, insisted Trump can kill "as he sees fit" and gave a speech with ominous shock-and-awe echoes declariring "narco-terrorists are the al-Qaida of our hemisphere (and) we will keep killing them." Then the most petty, hateful person on the planet - spite-revoking a pardon?! - giddily accepted a hideous, made-up, Happy Meal, savagely mocked FIFA Peace Prize and medal - the “Trump dance! the Village People! - to appease his no-Nobel ego because "if you show up with a tchotchke (and) give it to the three-year-old in the Oval Office, he will (be) happy." Gavin Newsom got the Kennedy Center Peace Prize: “AUDIENCE WAS AMAZING (CHAIRS NOT GREAT)...CROWD WENT WILD."The View gave out medals too: "You get a medal! And you get a medal!" Okay, all medaled up. Now can he go home?

A study published this week about tens of thousands of starving African penguins is highlighting what scientists warn is the planet's sixth mass extinction event, driven by human activity, and efforts to save as many species as possible.
Researchers from the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE), the United Kingdom's University of Exeter, and other institutions examined a pair of breeding colonies north of Cape Town, South Africa, and published their findings Thursday in Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology.
"These two sites are two of the most important breeding colonies historically—holding around 25,000 (Dassen) and around 9,000 (Robben) breeding pairs in the early 2000s. As such, they are also the locations of long-term monitoring programs," said study co-author Azwianewi Makhado from the DFFE in a statement.
As the study explains: "African Penguins moult annually, coming ashore and fasting for 21 days, when they shed and replace all their feathers. Failure to fatten sufficiently to moult, or to regain condition afterwards, results in death."
The team found that "between 2004 and 2011, the sardine stock off west South Africa was consistently below 25% of its peak abundance, and this appears to have caused severe food shortage for African penguins, leading to an estimated loss of about 62,000 breeding individuals," said co-author and Exeter associate professor Richard Sherley.
The paper notes that "although some adults moulted at a colony to the southeast, where food may have been more plentiful, much of the mortality likely resulted from failure of birds to fatten sufficiently to moult. The fishery exploitation rate of sardines west of Cape Agulhas was consistently above 20% between 2005 and 2010."
Sherley said that "high sardine exploitation rates—that briefly reached 80% in 2006—in a period when sardine was declining because of environmental changes likely worsened penguin mortality."
Humanity's reliance on fossil fuels is warming ocean water and impacting how salty it is. For the penguins' prey, said Sherley, "changes in the temperature and salinity of the spawning areas off the west and south coasts of South Africa made spawning in the historically important west coast spawning areas less successful, and spawning off the south coast more successful."
The researcher also stressed that "these declines are mirrored elsewhere," pointing out that the species' global population has dropped nearly 80% in the last three decades. With fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs left, the African penguin was uplisted to "critically endangered" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species last year.
Sherley told Mongabay at the time that the IUCN update "highlights a much bigger problem with the health of our environment."
"Despite being well-known and studied, these penguins are still facing extinction, showing just how severe the damage to our ecosystems has become," he said. "If a species as iconic as the African penguin is struggling to survive, it raises the question of how many other species are disappearing without us even noticing. We need to act now—not just for penguins, but to protect the broader biodiversity that is crucial for the planet's future."
Looks like the combined effects of climate change and over fishing are key factors in decimating the populations of these penguins.www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
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— Margot Hodson (@margothodson.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 4:46 AM
Fearful that the iconic penguin species could be extinct within a decade, the conservation organizations BirdLife South Africa and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) last year pursued a first-of-its-kind legal battle in the country, resulting in a settlement with the commercial fishing sector and DFFE.
The settlement, reached just days before a planned court hearing this past March, led to no-go zones for the commercial anchovy and sardine fishing vessels around six penguin breeding colonies: Stony Point, as well as Bird, Dassen, Dyer, Robben, and St. Croix islands.
"The threats facing the African penguin are complex and ongoing—and the order itself requires monitoring, enforcement, and continued cooperation from industry and the government processes which monitor and allocate sardine and anchovy populations for commercial purposes," Nicky Stander, head of conservation at SANCCOB, said in March.
The study also acknowledges hopes that "the revised closures—which will operate year-round until at least 2033—will decrease mortality of African penguins and improve their breeding success at the six colonies around which they have been implemented."
"However," it adds, "in the face of the ongoing impact of climate change on the abundance and distribution of their key prey, other interventions are likely to be needed."
Lorien Pichegru, a marine biology professor at South Africa's Nelson Mandela University who was not involved in the study, called the findings "extremely concerning" and warned the Guardian that the low fish numbers require urgent action "not only for African penguins but also for other endemic species depending on these stocks."
President Donald Trump's launch of a nationwide "affordability tour" this week may look to some like an admission that Americans are struggling under the weight of the administration's tariffs and rising utility and grocery costs—but Trump assured one reporter on Tuesday that he would acknowledge no such thing.
"I do want to talk about the economy," said Politico's White House bureau chief, Dasha Burns, in a sit-down interview. "I wonder what grade you would give to your economy."
"A-plus," said the president without hesitating. "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus."
He spoke to Burns the same day he addressed Pennsylvania voters at a rally where he was flanked by large signs reading, "Lower Prices" and "Bigger Paychecks." Burns pointed out that she had spoken to one woman in Pennsylvania who identified herself as a Trump supporter who "loves" the president.
"Here’s what she said about the economy. She said, 'Groceries, utility, insurance, and the basic cost of running [a] small business keep rising faster than wages,'" said Burns. "She also says that not enough is being done. Mr. President, this is one of your supporters."
On social media, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) chimed in, cataloging a number of features of the economy Trump is overseeing, including the rising rate of homelessness and food prices.
"God help us when we have a B-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus economy," said the senator, a frequent critic of Trump and economic inequality.
At the event in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, as in his interview with Burns, Trump said he "inherited a mess" from former President Joe Biden—a frequent claim that economists have vehemently refuted this year as grocery prices and household electricity bills have gone up, the latter fueled partially by the artificial intelligence data centers whose expansion Trump is demanding in communities across the country.
While centering the tour on affordability, Trump also called the concept a "hoax" that's been perpetrated by Democrats like New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who focused heavily on making the city more livable for working people by reducing costs.
"They use the word affordability. And that’s the only word they say. Affordability. And that’s their only word. They say, ‘Affordability.’ And everyone says, ‘Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.’ No. Our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country," the president said.
The Trump administration didn't release the November Consumer Price Index as scheduled last month, but previous releases this year have shown price increases for groceries. Democratic lawmakers on the Joint Economic Committee in November found that American households are spending roughly $700 more each month to pay for essential items, and as Common Dreams reported in August, large retailers are using the president's tariffs on countries including Brazil, Mexico, and Canada to pass higher costs onto customers, who are being asked to pay as much as 40% more for some groceries at major stores like Walmart.
Along with dismissing the idea that affordability is an issue for Americans at the event in Pennsylvania, the president sought to blame working people for their perception that tariffs have helped make life too expensive—repeating an earlier suggestion that the US doesn't need to import certain goods.
“You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils... You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter,” Trump said. “Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls. So, we’re doing things right. We’re running this country right well.”
Trump: "You can give up certain products. You could give up pencils. Because under the China policy, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need 1 or 2. They don't need that many. You always need steel. You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. 2 or 3 is nice. So we're doing… pic.twitter.com/aHYTqkg5jy
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 10, 2025
While haranguing families about needing to do without, emphasized Media Matters for America senior fellow Matthew Gertz, the president's own wealth has grown by $3 billion in the past year "thanks to various corrupt schemes" such as his investment in cryptocurrency.
Despite his new focus on affordability, wrote economist Paul Krugman, Trump's set out on the first stop of his tour with the apparent aim of continuing to "gaslight the public" into believing any financial struggles they're having are they're own fault—with some blame to be shared by immigrants and Democratic lawmakers.
"The problem can’t possibly lie with him—so it must lie with you. 'The American people don’t know how good they have it,'" wrote Krugman, quoting a recent speech given by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
But despite the president's deflections, Krugman wrote, the facts don't support the notion that Trump has delivered on his campaign promise to bring down consumer prices starting on "day one" of his second term.
"We’re now 11 months in, prices are still rising, and voters who believed him feel, with reason, that they were lied to," wrote Krugman. "Last night Trump insisted that prices are, in fact, coming way down. Again, 'Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?' is a self-destructive political strategy."
Krugman continued:
Trump would be in much better political shape right now if he had basically continued Biden’s policies, with only a few cosmetic changes. When he took office inflation was on a declining trajectory. Consumer sentiment was relatively favorable at the start of 2025. Americans were still angry about high prices, but the inflation surge of 2021-3 had happened on Biden’s watch and was receding into the past...
Instead, he brought chaos: Massive and massively unpopular tariffs, DOGE disruptions, masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street, saber-rattling and war crimes in the Caribbean. Many swing voters, I believe, supported Trump out of nostalgia for the relative calm that prevailed before Covid struck. They didn’t think they were voting for nonstop political PTSD.
And there’s more to come. Health insurance costs are about to spike, because Republicans refuse to extend Biden-era subsidies. Inflation may pick up in the next few months as retailers, who have so far absorbed much of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, begin passing them on to consumers.
So the “affordability tour” is off to a disastrous start. And it won’t get better, because while Trump insists that the problem is you, it’s actually him. And he isn’t going to change.
While Trump hammers home his claim that the economy is working for Americans, polls continue to show that households are basing their negative outlook on the matter on their lived experience. Nearly half of those polled by Politico and Public First in a survey released Wednesday said they are finding groceries, utilities, healthcare, housing, and transportation difficult to afford, and 55% of respondents said they blame the Trump administration for rising costs.
Twenty-seven percent of people said they have skipped a medical appointment in the last two years due to high costs, and 23% said they had rationed prescription doses to save money. Half of those surveyed are having difficulty paying for food.
Trump's self-described "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus" economy is also forcing people to forgo travel and leisure activities, with 37% of people saying they wouldn't be able to afford tickets to a sports event with family or friends and nearly half saying they couldn't pay for air travel.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that as Americans struggle with the impact of Trump's tariffs and other policies that have prioritized corporate profits over the needs of working families, the president's response was to deliver a speech "full of NOTHING."
"No new policies. No new benefits for families," said Jayapal. "Just telling people that everything is amazing when we can see with our own two eyes that it’s not. It’s a complete betrayal of the American people."
The revelation that Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, is playing a key role in Paramount Skydance's hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery underscores the extent to which the current administration's open corruption "is fundamentally distorting economic and governmental policymaking at the direct expense of the interests of the American people," a watchdog group said Tuesday.
Kushner's private equity firm, Affinity Partner, is listed in a regulatory filing as one of the organizations financing Paramount's $108 billion bid for Warner Bros., which owns CNN. Ethics experts say Kushner's involvement represents another glaring conflict of interest on top of preexisting concerns about the bid, stemming from Trump's relationship with Paramount CEO David Ellison and his billionaire father, GOP megadonor Larry Ellison.
"America is devolving into a caricature of crony capitalism," Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement Tuesday. "Factions aiming to shrink media competition are fighting over who can show the greatest fealty to Donald Trump. Paramount seems to have won the prize, bringing in presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner—whose investment vehicle is flush with Saudi funds, deposited only because of his personal relationship with Donald Trump—as a partner."
"A working antitrust policy would block the merger of Warner Bros. Discovery with one of the existing media goliaths. It would never be influenced by personal connections to the president," Weissman added. "This case underscores that the corruption pervading the Trump administration isn’t just about making Trump and his family and hangers-on ever richer. That corruption is fundamentally distorting economic and governmental policy making, at the direct expense of the interests of the American people.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said that "the Warner Bros. merger was already suspect, but now Trump’s family is getting in on the act."
"Paramount already had deep ties to the White House," he added, "now Trump's family will directly profit if they win."
Asked Monday about Kushner's financing role, Trump said he has "never spoken to him about it."
Paramount, which the Trump administration reportedly favored to take over Warner Bros., announced its bid for the company days after the streaming behemoth Netflix and Warner Bros. leadership reached an $83 billion acquisition deal. The president immediately criticized the Netflix agreement and pledged to intervene in the federal review process.
"The blurred line between running the government and the family's business interests is expanding each day," Scott Amey, general counsel with the Project On Government Oversight, told Reuters.
Antitrust experts and advocates have argued that both of the proposed mergers are likely illegal and should be blocked.
Matt Stoller, research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, said Monday that either merger "would further deepen the media consolidation crisis that is eroding our creative economy and freedom of expression."
"Paramount specifically would be well-positioned to manipulate the news to please the president, which David Ellison made clear it intends to do in an interview earlier today," said Stoller. "There is a reason that policymakers and workers in Hollywood have come out against each iteration of this deal. Rather than allowing further consolidation in the industry, policymakers must reregulate the market with prohibitions on vertical integration.”
Despite US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's claim that "no American citizens have been arrested or detained" as part of the Trump administration's violent and widely condemned immigration operations, ProPublica has tracked more than 170 cases, and a Senate report released Tuesday shares the stories of 22 of them.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released Unchecked Authority: Examining the Trump Administration's Extrajudicial Immigration Detentions of US Citizens ahead of a public forum with House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and five Americans unconstitutionally detained by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents.
"While the second Trump administration has been marked by brazen lawlessness in many areas, the daily drumbeat of shocking stories detailing the behavior of federal immigration officials has been particularly chilling," the report states.
"The subcommittee's findings add to a growing body of evidence that the Trump administration is seeking to build a nationwide paramilitary force with vast resources that lawlessly detains citizens based on its own whims—an effort which has a number of unfortunate and obvious historical parallels," the publication continues.
"They couldn't even agree who had authority over me because none of them did. I was never arrested. Never charged. Never given an explanation. Never given an apology."
The report also notes that the testimonies included "represent only a subset of the likely hundreds of American citizens who have been unlawfully detained," and "also do not account for the many green-card holders, visa recipients, and others who have been captured and whose immigration status may cause them to be subject to even more severe treatment and harsher conditions than the appalling experiences of the Americans documented herein."
On June 8, when Cary Lopez Alvarado—a 23-year-old born and raised in Los Angeles County, California—was taking lunch to her husband, who was providing maintenance services on private property, masked immigration agents targeted him and her cousin in a work truck. Lopez Alvarado, who was pregnant, approached and took a video of the scene, where agents tried to pry open the vehicle's doors and threatened to break a window.
According to the report:
Cary tried again to tell the agents to stop, but, before she could finish her sentence, the officer put his hands on her and shoved her into the side of the truck. Two other agents immediately rushed over to further detain her. Cary knelt and clutched her mid-section to shield her baby from the assault. "I wasn't resisting at all," Cary recalled. "I can't fight back; I'm pregnant." The officers yanked her up and placed handcuffs around her wrists, all the while shoving her stomach against the truck. Her cousin attempted to intervene; "Be careful. Don't you see she’s pregnant?" he pleaded. At this point, Cary became dizzy from the altercation. When she regained awareness, she saw three agents on top of her cousin and several more in the process of throwing her husband on the ground. Then, the agents began kicking the back of the unoccupied work truck. A viral photo shows Cary, handcuffed and heavily pregnant, being led by a masked agent into a car.
The document also details the experience of Dayanne Figueroa, a first-generation Mexican American and working mom to a 6-year-old in Chicago, Illinois. When she was driving down a residential street to work on the morning of October 10, an unmarked, silver Dodge Durango SUV with blacked-out windows rammed into the side of her car. She reached for her phone to call local police, "but within seconds, two masked men in camouflage leapt out of the Durango and ran over to Dayanne's black Mercedes-Benz; one raised a gun in Dayanne's direction, and the other had an assault rifle strapped around his shoulder," the report says.
"Moments later, a third armed and masked agent appeared. Two of the men ripped open Dayanne's car door and grabbed her," the report continues, noting that bystanders recorded videos. "Two agents forcibly dragged her out of her car by her legs, ripping both shoes off, slamming her to the concrete, and digging their knees into her body to restrain her, directly over the site of her recent surgery. The agents flipped over Dayanne—who stands at 4 feet 11 inches and weighs 120 pounds—and put her in handcuffs, cinching them so tight that Dayanne has since suffered nerve damage to her wrists. Three agents carried Dayanne to an unmarked, red SUV and threw her inside, while a fourth agent reached into her car and grabbed her laptop, purse, and cellphone."
They initially took her to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Broadview, where federal agents have violently responded to protesters and held immigrants in "horrific and inhumane conditions." She was then brought to a Federal Bureau of Investigation facility in another Chicago suburb, Lombard, where she started urinating blood. That afternoon, she was eventually released to paramedics. Figueroa recalled that "they couldn't even agree who had authority over me because none of them did. I was never arrested. Never charged. Never given an explanation. Never given an apology."
UPDATE: Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chair Sen. Blumenthal releases "Unchecked Authority" report with firsthand accounts from 22 US citizens "who were physically assaulted, pepper sprayed, denied medical treatment, and detained—sometimes for days—by federal immigration agents"
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— Tyler McBrien (@tylermcbrien.com) December 9, 2025 at 8:57 AM
While Figueroa's young child was not part of her encounter with federal agents, the report stresses that when children are involved in ICE and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents' interactions, "they are treated with reckless disregard."
For example, a now-6-year-old Massachusetts girl on the autism spectrum, called M. in the report, "was separated from her parents by ICE agents in an apparent attempt to lure her parents to leave private property so they could be apprehended" in September.
"M. was violently ill upon being returned to her family and had to be treated in the emergency room, miss school for a week, and has continued to struggle with nightmares," according to the document. It also notes that "her father has a pending asylum case and her mother has a pending request to obtain a legal status."
In a Tuesday statement announcing the report, Blumenthal said that "Americans should have a hard time recognizing our great nation in these stomach-turning, heartbreaking stories of brutal assaults on our fellow citizens."
"Masked ICE and CPB agents chillingly seizing Americans isn't the nation we know and cherish," he added. "Totalitarian tactics have no place in our democracy. I hope that elevating stories of abhorrent abuse will reinforce our resolve to preserve democratic rights."
Tuesday's public forum at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC featured testimony from American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Figueroa, and four other citizens who have encountered immigration agents, including Wilmer Chavarria, a school superintendent from Vermont, and Javier Ramirez, a Californian who was assaulted by DHS and denied adequate treatment for diabetes while being held for four days.
The other two participants are also from California: George Retes is a US Army veteran who missed his daughter's birthday after being violently arrested and detained during a raid at his job site, and Andrea Velez was falsely charged with assaulting an officer during an immigration raid she encountered on her way to work in Los Angeles.
"I served my country. I wore the uniform," Retes has warned. "If it can happen to me, it can happen to any one of us."
This article was updated after the hearing to include a video of the event and links to the witnesses' written testimonies.
President Donald Trump said in an interview published Tuesday that a US land attack on Venezuela is coming and signaled that he is open to launching similar military action against Colombia and Mexico.
“We’re gonna hit ’em on land very soon, too,” Trump told Politico's Dasha Burns, citing the pretext of stopping fentanyl from entering the United States.
Trump repeated his baseless claim that during the administration of his predecessor, the "very stupid" former President Joe Biden, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro "sent us millions of people, many from prisons, many drug dealers, drug lords," and "people in mental institutions."
Burns then noted that most of the illicit fentanyl sold in the United States "is actually produced in Mexico," which along with Colombia is "even more responsible" for trafficking the potent synthetic opioid into the US. She asked Trump if he would "consider doing something similar" to those countries.
"I would," Trump replied. "Sure, I would."
Pressed on his contradictory pardon of convicted narco-trafficking former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández while threatening war against Venezuela, Trump feigned ignorance, claiming that "I don't know him" and asserting that "he was set up."
Trump's latest threat against Venezuela comes amid his deployment of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of the oil-rich South American nation, his approval of covert CIA action against Maduro's government, and more than 20 airstrikes on boats his administration claims without evidence were smuggling drugs in the southern Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The Trump administration's targeting of Venezuela evokes the long history of US "gunboat diplomacy" in Latin America and continues more than a century of Washington's meddling in Venezuelan affairs. It also marks a historic escalation of aggression, as the US has never attacked Venezuelan territory.
Officials in Venezuela and Colombia, as well as relatives of men killed in the boat bombings, contend that at least some of the victims were fishermen who were not involved in drug trafficking.
The strikes have killed at least 87 people since early September, according to administration figures—including shipwrecked survivors slain in a so-called double-tap bombing. Legal experts and some former US military officials contend that the strikes are a violation of international law, murders, war crimes, or all of these.
Critics also assert that the boat strikes violate the War Powers Act, which requires the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours and mandates that lawmakers must approve troop deployments after 60 days. The Trump administration argues that it is not bound by the War Powers Resolution, citing as precedent the Obama administration's highly questionable claim of immunity from the law when the US attacked Libya in 2011.
A bipartisan bid to block the boat bombings on the grounds that they run afoul of the War Powers Act failed to muster enough votes in the Senate in October.
"Note that it’s now taken as a given—as an unremarkable and baked-in fact about our politics—that Trump is mulling a ground invasion of Venezuela and a dramatic expansion in his bombing campaign with no congressional authorization," New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent observed Tuesday in response to the president's remarks to Politico.
"What emerges from this interview," he added, "is that Trump is pulling all of this—the substantive case for these bombings, the legal justification for them, the rationale for mulling a massive military escalation in the Western Hemisphere—out of his rear end."
"How dare she sit there and talk about 'threats to our homeland' when she's the one using OUR tax dollars to terrorize our communities," said another protester.
A protester dressed as a priest confronted US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the Trump administration's violent crackdown on immigrants during a Thursday hearing held by the House of Representatives' Committee on Homeland Security.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief has often spoken about her Christian faith—she said just two days ago on a government social media account that "I have relied on God and placed my faith in Him throughout my career in public service."
During the Republican-led committee's hearing on "Worldwide Threats to the Homeland," a man in black and red religious attire began shouting about recent raids and other actions by DHS, including two department agencies: Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"Stop ICE raids! The power of Christ compels you!" the man shouted. "End deportations! The power of Christ compels you! Love thy neighbor! The power of Christ compels you!"
As police removed that man from the room, another protester stood and shouted similar messages: "Stop ICE! Get ICE off our streets! Stop terrorizing our communities!"
The second man—who displayed a sign that read, "No ICE, No Troops," and noted an affiliation with the peace group CodePink—was also swiftly forced from the room by police.
In a statement from CodePink, Bita Iuliano, another activist who attended the hearing, took aim at Noem: "How dare she sit there and talk about 'threats to our homeland' when she's the one using OUR tax dollars to terrorize our communities. If she really wants to protect our homeland, which by the way is stolen land, she should stop asking for more and more of our tax dollars for a department that is making our neighbors afraid to leave their homes."
"ICE should be abolished, and that money should be used to fund what our communities actually need—healthcare, schools, housing, the fight against climate change, to name a few," Iuliano argued, also calling out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
"Noem, along with Hegseth, Rubio, and the rest of the war criminal crew, are the ones terrorizing our communities, from our streets here to Palestine, Venezuela, and all over the world," she said. "They are the ones making it unsafe, and they're using our dollars to do it. All we have are our voices, and we're going to make sure we're heard."
Various faith leaders have also spoken out against the Trump administration's attacks on immigrants, including Pope Leo XIV, whose hometown of Chicago has been a key target of DHS action since President Donald Trump returned to power in January.
Pointing to Christian scripture, the first-ever American pontiff said in early November: "How did you receive the foreigner, did you receive him and welcome him, or not? I think there is a deep reflection that needs to be made about what is happening."
Pope Leo also advocated for allowing religious leaders to access people who have been detained, saying that "many times they've been separated from their families. No one knows what's happening, but their own spiritual needs should be attended to."
Shortly after that, more than 200 US Catholic bishops released a rare joint statement last month stressing that "human dignity and national security are not in conflict" and calling for "meaningful reform of our nation's immigration laws and procedures."
The pope then urged "all people in the United States to listen" to the bishops and said that while "every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter," the way immigrants are being treated in the US "is extremely disrespectful."
Judge Paula Xinis found that the Trump administration redetained the Salvadoran father of three "without lawful authority."
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the immediate release of Kilmar Ábrego García—who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration earlier this year—from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
"Since Ábrego García's return from wrongful detention in El Salvador, he has been redetained, again without lawful authority,” US District Judge Paula Xinis wrote in her ruling. “For this reason, the court will grant Ábrego García's petition for immediate release from ICE custody.”
In early April, Xinis—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Ábrego García's return to the United States after he was deported in March to the abuse-plagued Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) maximum security prison in El Salvador. This, after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) admitted in a court filing that Ábrego García was wrongfully deported due to what it called an "administrative error."
The US Supreme Court also weighed in on the case in favor of Xinis' ruling. However, the Trump administration refused to comply with the judge's order, arguing that it had no legal obligation to return Ábrego García to the US and could not force El Salvador's government to free him.
The DOJ dubiously contended that Ábrego García—a 30-year-old Salvadoran father of three who entered the US without authorization when he was a teenager—was a member of the gang MS-13, an allegation based on a statement from an anonymous police informant. The Trump administration deported him despite a judge's 2019 ruling that he could not be removed to El Salvador because he could be tortured there.
An attorney representing Ábrego García said at the time that his client suffered beatings and "psychological torture" while imprisoned at CECOT.
Ábrego García was transferred to a lower security Salvadoran prison before being sent back to the US on June 6 to face DOJ charges for allegedly transporting undocumented immigrants, to which he pleaded not guilty. He was immediately taken into custody and sent to an immigration detention facility in Tennessee.
On July 23, federal Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Tennessee ruled that Ábrego García must be released from custody pending his trial. That same day, Xinis issued a simultaneous ruling in Ábrego García's wrongful deportation case blocking ICE from immediately seizing him once released in Tennessee and ordering the government to provide at least 72 hours' notice before attempting to deport him to any third country.
As Ábrego García was released on August 22, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) informed him that he could be deported to Uganda—one of several nations to which the administration has sought to send him. A bid by Ábrego García to reopen a previous bid for asylum in the US was denied in early October by an immigration judge.
Ábrego García is currently being held in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania. Responding to Xinis' latest ruling, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Thursday that "this is naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge."
"This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts," she added.
Advocates for Ábrego García welcomed Thursday's ruling.
"For months, the Trump administration has sought to deny Kilmar Ábrego García his rights to due process and fair treatment by our justice system," US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)—who met with Ábrego García in El Salvador in April—said on social media.
"Today’s ruling by Judge Xinis—requiring the government to immediately release him—is a forceful stand for our Constitution and all of our rights," he added.
Lydia Walther-Rodríguez, chief of organizing and leadership at CASA, hailed what she called "a moment of joy and relief."
“Kilmar finally gets to return home to his family, where he belongs," she said. "No one should be separated from their loved ones while fighting for justice.”
"They’re gutting healthcare and food assistance to pay for bombs and weapons. It’s a sick vicious cycle," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
"Imagine if our government funded our communities like they fund war."
That was Rep. Rashida Tlaib's (D-Mich.) response to the House's bipartisan passage Wednesday of legislation that authorizes nearly $901 billion in military spending for the coming fiscal year, as tens of millions of Americans face soaring health insurance premiums and struggle to afford basic necessities amid the nation's worsening cost-of-living crisis.
Tlaib, who voted against the military policy bill, had harsh words for her colleagues who "drool at the opportunity to fund war and genocide, but when it comes to universal healthcare, affordable housing, and food assistance, they suddenly argue that we simply can’t afford it."
"Congress just authorized nearly a trillion dollars for death and destruction but cut a trillion dollars from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act," said Tlaib, referring to the budget reconciliation package that Republicans and President Donald Trump enacted over the summer.
"They’re gutting healthcare and food assistance to pay for bombs and weapons. It’s a sick vicious cycle," Tlaib continued. "Another record-breaking military budget is impossible to justify when Americans are sleeping on the streets, unable to afford groceries to feed their children, and racking up massive amounts of medical debt just for getting sick."
House passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) came as Republicans in both chambers of Congress pushed healthcare proposals that would not extend enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year, resulting in massive premium hikes for millions.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that a Senate Democratic plan to extend the ACA subsidies for three years would cost around $85 billion—a fraction of the military spending that House lawmakers just authorized.
The NDAA, which is expected to clear the Senate next week, approves $8 billion more in military spending than the Trump White House asked for in its annual budget request.
According to the National Priorities Project, that $8 billion "would be more than enough" to restore federal nutrition assistance to the millions expected to lose it due to expanded work requirements included in the Trump-GOP budget law.
"Our priorities are disgustingly misplaced," Tlaib said Wednesday.