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Whew. Last week was...a week. Enraging, astounding, often venomous, with flailing small dicktator energy all around. There were pigs, dogs, bonesaws, pedophiles, tumbling polls, charming Marxists, almost everything he's done declared illegal and defiant Democrats threatened with death for, um, defending the rule of law. Sen. Chris Murphy's message to those still complacent before the growing dangers posed by a cornered, venal, fascist loser: "Maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side."
Over the last bungled weeks of a shambolic presidency that's transmuted America into ugly chaos, the wannabe king has suffered enough losses - electoral, legal, political, economic - some observers argue he's finally losing his mystifying "air of impenetrability," with polls showing him underwater on every issue, including immigration. As U.S. consumer sentiment falls over 7 points to record lows - thanks disastrous tariffs! - he has a lame 26% approval rating on the cost of living, 76% of Fox viewers say the economy is bad, and even cult members shopping for the holidays are reportedly starting to notice the dissonance between his gold ballroom and their unaffordable "groceries," even if he did invent the elegant word. Hell, they might even spot the idiocy of a guy who recently revealed he had an MRI, insisted it had "the best result," but when asked if it was for his brain raved, "I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well."
They've also finally noted his stonewalling on what is evidently, universally unpopular pedophilia, with 80% of voters blasting his handling of his dead bestie predator's files and the "wonderful secret" they shared. Even as Congress voted to release the Epstein files and Trump signed off on it, he continues whining it's "time to move on" from "a Hoax" that just deflects from his "Great Success (with) Affordability (where we are winning BIG!)" and "gaining Trillions of Dollars of Investment" and "stopping Transgender for Everyone." Hmm. A tad suspiciously, he then ordered his Dept. of Justice (sic) to newly investigate any creepy Democrat pedophiles though they already said there'd be no more investigations; asked about that disparity, a robotic Pam Bondi declaimed there is "Information...new information" but not to worry because they will "follow the law" with "maximum transparency," blankly repeating, def not from a script, "follow the law, maximum transparency," "follow the law...."
Finally, desperately cornered into "maximum transparency" after months of dissembling and deflection and lies, Trump has taken in stride his monumental failure to get his way and hide his crimes with the calm compliance of any vaguely responsible adult who knows he's doing the right thing. Just kidding. Because, "Nothing says 'I'm definitely not worried about the Epstein Files' like telling a female reporter, 'Quiet, Piggy,'" that's what he now famously did last week during a press gaggle on Air Force One en route from D.C. to Mar-A-Lago (again). Asked by Catherine Lucey, a senior Bloomberg reporter who's covered national politics for over 20 years, what Epstein meant when he said Trump "knew about the girls" - duh - he said, "I know nothing about that" but insisted on his "very bad relationship" with his longtime bestie. When Lucey began a very sensible follow-up question - "If there's nothing incriminating in the files..." he lost it. "Quiet! Quiet, piggy," he snarled, jabbing his stubby, rancid, little finger in her face.
It was, of course, "one more unforgivable thing in a list of 20,000 unforgivable things." It was the gazillionth loutish, repulsive, misogynist dross issuing from the vile anus mouth that's spewed, "be nice;" "fat pig," "keep your voice down," "not my type," "what a nasty question," "don't be threatening," "that's enough of you," "there was blood coming out of her eyes, out of her wherever," and, "they let you do it." Perhaps because it was more of the same or that no reporter stood up to it, the atrocity drew little mainstream coverage. But for many, revulsion at his aberrant, "aggressive sexism now seemingly uncontrollable by the man himself" took off. Among pols, Gavin Newsom and his take-no-prisoners press team were almost alone to speak up, loudly. Along with legit critiques - tariffs, ballrooms, gold crap, last month's 40,000 layoffs: "Cant. Stop. Winning" - there was the pig-faced builder of ballrooms, the Trump/Epstein "piggies," the "Good Night Little Piggy" and several other grotesqueries.
Speaking of: In the following days, there was also treacherous, sycophantic Press Barbie, aka Washington Rose, excusing the "hostile sexism" widely deemed not just a crass personal offense but "a political weapon (tied) to violence, a war on women that is ultimately part of the war on democracy." First, Karoline Leavitt tried out, "This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues" - with, obviously, zero evidence. When that didn't fly, she turned to calling for us, his lucky minions, to celebrate the mad king's "frankness." We should respect "the president being frank and honest," she said, returning to the "frankness" theme three more times as "one of the many reasons the American people reelected him." Also, "fake news," calling it "like he sees it," and getting "frustrated with reporters when you lie about him" - which we bet is a lot like patriots getting "frustrated" when foul regime flunkies brazenly lie to them about fucking everything.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Lie, twist, embroider, digress, threaten, distort: Has there ever been a less "frank," more hideously two-faced, self-serving band of charlatans, fraudsters and crooks ostensibly running this nation? "Quiet, piggy" has, indeed, been said in various iterations to us all. Words have become hollow and weaponized, cudgels to deceive, subdue, silence enemies" - who, if they dare speak up, are pummeled by the full force of a vengeful regime. And so to six "seditious" Democratic lawmakers, all veterans, who had the chutzpah in this dark lawless time to urge members of the military to, gasp, obey the law. In last week's 90-second video, Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, and Reps Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, Jason Crow reminded service members they don't have to obey orders they believe break the law. "Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend the Constititution," they said. "Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders."
Private Bonespurs, the abuser-in-chief in charge of words as weapons, went ballistic. "Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL," he thundered. "Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.” For moral support, he added 16 MAGA comments; one called for hanging the perps. Still fuming, he kept raging. Soon, "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??" Then, just going for it, "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also re-posted another MAGA stable genius: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” Ok. So the leader of the free speech, anti-cancel-culture party, whose frenzied campaign against potentially violent political speech after the shooting of angelic Charlie Kirk led to many hundreds of people losing their jobs for accurately critiquing Kirk's incendiary words, now accuses his opponents for encouraging political violence. Got it.
The Democratic veterans stood firm. "The president considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law," they said. "But this isn’t about any one of us. This is about who we are as Americans. This is a time for moral clarity." Sen.Chris Murphy concurred. "The President just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed...If you're a person of influence in this country (who) hasn't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side." On social media, people were aghast at the spectacle of a weak strongman spiraling down, like a cornered animal. "Good fucking Christ, what an absolute buffoon," said one. Also, "'Just following orders' is not a valid defense, and never will be." Heather Cox Richardson noted that, before 1866 midterms, Andrew Johnson called for his rivals to be hanged as traitors: "Voters were so profoundly moved by his words they gave his opponents a supermajority in Congress, and the nation got the 14th Amendment.”
Republicans, with their usual backbone, stayed silent. Reptilian Mike Johnson said Dear Leader was "just defining the crime of sedition" and any Democrat "behav(ing) in that kind of talk is to me just beyond the pale," MAGA-ese for, "You talkin' to me?" Press Barbie again defended her mob boss, shrieking Dems "conspired together" to urge the military to "defy the president's lawful (sic) orders" and we should be talking about them inciting violence. But the backlash shut her up. A day later, asked, "Does the president want to execute members of Congress?” she answered, "No." Headlines befitting the surreal timeline then dutifully reported, "Trump Does Not Want to Execute Members of Congress, White House Says." The same day, a judge declared National Guard deployment to DC an unlawful order, just like in Chicago and Portland; another, in a 233-page roast, said ICE use of force was also illegal, blasting mini-perp Greg Bovino as "evasive, violent and outright lying."
At the next "veritable Comicon for serial killers," the White House rolled out a blood-red carpet for Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Bonesaw as a giddy Trump proclaimed, "We’re more than meeting. We're honoring Saudi Arabia." Never mind his own first-term CIA found they ordered the grisly murder of WaPo writer Jamal Khashoggi: Cue a weird, gleeful, blindingly gold Oval Office meeting, a state dinner with Jewish or gay CEOs who'd be stoned or jailed by Saudis, a swap of U.S fighter jets for Saudi investment. It was jolly until ABC News' Mary Bruce rightly asked about the Saudis' role in 9/11, Khashoggi's murder, Trump's blood-soaked business deals. At her impudence, the mob boss who gets to decide who says what scowled. He smeared Khashoggi, cleared Bonesaw, inanely decreed "things happen," and went after Bruce. She was "insubordinate," "a terrible reporter" who shouldn't "embarrass our guest by asking him a terrible question.” Essentially, he told Bruce, "Quiet, piggy."
@thedailyshow Trump’s playdate with Mohammed bin Salman took a handsy turn #DailyShow #Trump #MohammedbinSalman
It's unclear how productive the meeting will prove. At their last visit, the Saudis blithely played the idiot narcissist - SAD - with a mobile McDonald's truck; this time, headlines posited Bonesaw "got almost everything he wanted" from Trump, and pundits gravely noted, "We're still kind of waiting to see what all this actually means." Meanwhile, can-do House Republicans continue tackling vital issues of the day. After 10 months of mostly being on vacation and accomplishing virtually nothing but an Epstein vote they were forced into - and before breaking until December - they just passed a resolution, 285-98, denouncing the horrors of socialism. In a truly WTF move, they were helped by the votes of 86 cowardly Dems who evidently agreed with sponsor and Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar that, "The Mamdani socialist agenda is seeping into our country like poison," aka we can't let them make our children live under Sharia law and count in Arabic numbers and let's all panic.
The next day, Trump met with Mamdani. It was not the expected fiery confrontation; rather, a savvy, charming Mamdani wrapped a star-struck Trump around his Democratic Socialist finger in a surreal scene that made MAGA heads - especially, presumably, Goebbels' bald one and J.D.s groveling one - explode. The newly gracious,Trump, a hollow, insecure, image-obsessed shell of a human ineluctably "drawn to the shine of respect in others' eyes" who "agrees with whoever's standing within 10 feet of him," pronounced Mamdani "a very rational person," a winner who will make "a great New York City mayor." Mamdani smiled. "What the hell is going on?" asked many. Also: "Trump having a man crush on Zohran was not on my Bingo card," "You can tell Mamdani spent a lot of time ferrying loose aunties around because I don't know how else you get that kind of composure," and, "We did the same thing to our dog - insult him but with a smile and friendly voice. He would wag his tail."
In a memorable moment, one far-right dreg of the White House press corps asked Mamdani if he still thinks Trump is a fascist. Carefully starting to answer, he's interrupted by Trump mildly saying, "That's okay, you can just say yes...I don't mind." "Okay, yes," said Mamdani, still smiling; Trump pats his arm. In all, argues Bruce Fanger, it's a case study in what happens when a bully can’t rely on fear, and a principled politician refuses the role of victim. Trump, argues Fanger, needs an emotional response to his abuse - fear, flattery, even anger. "Mamdani gave him nothing," he writes of "the calm of someone who refuses to let the other person set the emotional tempo." He speaks plainly, in a "civic language," about issues. Trump, awash in grievance, ego, delusion, nostalgia, "can't decode it...They aren’t having the same conversation, (or) even on the same continent." The lesson: "Trump is only powerful when the room fears him. Mamdani didn’t. Trump folded."
At least in that moment. Then he sprang back to vitriol, bluster, lies. At length, he blasted "THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS," raved about "prices sharply down," bragged about "THE HIGHEST NUMBERS OF MY 'POLITICAL CAREER.'" More numbers: Racking up thousands of conflicts of interest, often on lavish pointless trips abroad, he's spent $71 million on 99 fucking trips to his fucking properties and many millions more on a fucking marble bathroom and Gatsby party and cheesy patio and Oval Brothel and tacky ballroom to come, all amidst kidnappings of brown people, extrajudicial murders, endless abuses of power, vast obstruction of justice and rabidly working to strip food stamps as four of ten kids in the U.S. go to bed hungry. Now, after a fucking aerial tour of Joint Base Andrews' fucking three 18-hole golf courses, three putting greens, two private practice areas and driving range, he's decided to do "some fix-up" on them: "We’re going to do some work." A fucking shameless piggy. May he fall quiet soon.
Environmentalists are sounding the alarm about a slate of new proposals from the Trump administration to weaken the Endangered Species Act, which they say will put more imperiled species in danger to line the pockets of the wealthy.
On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it would once again roll back several key provisions of the ESA. Many had been in place for decades before they were slashed during President Donald Trump's first term. They were then restored under former President Joe Biden.
"These revisions end years of legal confusion and regulatory overreach, delivering certainty to states, tribes, landowners, and businesses while ensuring conservation efforts remain grounded in sound science and common sense," said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a billionaire ally of the fossil fuel industry.
But some of the nation's leading environmental groups say the proposals will allow the government to flout science and approve new projects that will destroy the habitats of vulnerable creatures and accelerate the already worsening extinction crisis.
“The ESA is one of the world’s most powerful laws for conservation and is responsible for keeping 99% of listed species from extinction,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife.
The group said the changes "could accelerate the extinction crisis we face today." According to a 2023 investigation by the Montana Free Press, the ESA has prevented 291 species from going extinct since it was passed in 1973. At that point, around 40% of all animals and 34% of plants were considered at risk of extinction according to NatureServe, a nonprofit that collects conservation data.
“The ESA is only as effective as the regulations that implement it," Davenport said. “Rolling back these regulations risks reversing the ESA’s historic success and threatens the well-being of plant and animal species that pollinate our crops, generate medicine, keep our waterways clean, and support local economies.”
One of the rules being rolled back requires species to receive "blanket" protections when they are added to the list of threatened species. Instead of those blanket protections—which protect these newly-added species from killing, trapping, and other forms of harm—the FWS will instead create individual designations for each species.
According to Jackson Chiappinelli, a spokesperson for Earthjustice, some of the species that would lose protection under this rule would be the Florida manatee, California spotted owl, greater sage grouse, and monarch butterfly, which it said could remain unprotected for years after being listed.
Another major change would let the government consider "economic impacts" when deciding which habitats are required to be protected. In 1982, Congress modified the ESA to clarify that the secretary of the interior must make decisions "solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available," an amendment specifically intended to prevent economic factors from overawing environmental concerns.
The Interior Department said "the revised framework provides transparency and predictability for landowners and project proponents while maintaining the service’s authority to ensure that exclusions will not result in species extinction."
But Chiappinelli contends that the change would "violate the letter of the law" and warns that "the federal government could decide against protecting an endangered species after considering lost revenue from prohibiting a golf course or hotel development to be built where the species lives."
"If finalized, the rules would bias listing decisions with unreliable economic analyses, obstruct the ability to list new protected species, and make it easier to remove those now on the federal endangered or threatened list," said Ian Brickey, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club.
The proposed rules would also reduce the requirements for other federal agencies to consult with wildlife agencies to determine whether their actions could harm critical habitats. It also eliminates the requirement for agencies to "offset" habitat damage when approving new projects, such as logging or drilling, that harm protected species.
“Without rigorous consultations,” Davenport said, “projects could push species like the northern spotted owl and Cook Inlet beluga whale closer to extinction.”
The new proposals follow several efforts by the Trump administration to weaken protections for endangered species. Earlier this year, it proposed weakening the half-century-old definition of what counts as "harm" to endangered species to exclude habitat destruction.
The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has proposed rescinding the 2001 "Roadless Rule," which has shielded nearly 45 million acres of protected national forest from logging, oil and gas drilling, and road construction.
Amid the government shutdown, the administration announced its intent to lay off more than 2,000 Interior Department employees, including 143 from the FWS, though a federal judge blocked those layoffs.
It also attempted to sneak a provision into July's One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have mandated the sale of millions of acres of public lands, but it was stripped out in the Senate following fierce backlash.
"The Trump administration is stopping at nothing in its quest to put corporate polluters over people, wildlife and the environment," said Loren Blackford, the Sierra Club's executive director. "These regulations attempt to undermine the implementation of one of America’s bedrock environmental laws, and they could seal the fate of animals that, without these protections, would disappear from the Earth."
Amid President Donald Trump's efforts to conceal the harmful consequences of his economic policies by hiding key data and replacing economists who tell harsh truths with partisan yes-people, a leading US think tank on Monday announced a new digital dashboard "to provide an accountability check" against attempts to manipulate and mislead the public.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) says its new data accountability dashboard "serves as a one-stop shop" for economic data as federal statistic agencies (FSAs), once the "gold standard" for information, "face historically unprecedented threats from the Trump administration to their capacity and even their independence."
"This raises the specter of a future where FSA data cannot be relied upon to honestly report whether the US economy is experiencing dysfunction," EPI said.
In a bid to circumvent this, the EPI dashboard "displays a range of data not collected or disseminated by FSAs to shed some light on the economy during the pause in government data collection during the shutdown and—even more importantly—to provide an accountability check against efforts to manipulate FSA data in the future."
The federal statistical agencies (FSAs) that produce the gold standard economic data employers/investors/job seekers/workers/policymakers rely on to assess the health of the U.S. economy face unprecedented threats.We've pulled next-best data from non-FSA sources to help keep an eye on things. 1/
[image or embed]
— Economic Policy Institute (@epi.org) November 18, 2025 at 7:19 AM
As EPI senior economist Elise Gould explained in a statement: “The data collected by the federal statistical agencies are an incredibly valuable public good. While there would never be a good time to squander it, the absolute worst time to degrade data quality is when the economy is facing policy shocks that threaten to cause either a recession or an uptick of inflation."
"Given this urgency, we’re collecting all data we can to assess the economy’s health in this time when the gold standard data are under attack,” she added.
Trump's attempts to hide unfavorable economic data date back to his first administration, when he blocked or delayed economic analyses on the projected impacts of his tariffs. For example, half a dozen economists at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) quit en masse in April 2019, claiming they suffered retaliation for publishing reports that shed negative light on the president's trade and taxation policies.
In a related move that year, the USDA abruptly relocated its Economic Research Service main office from Washington, DC to Kansas City, Missouri, prompting another wave of resignations. ERS publications—including reports on farm income, rural economies, and trade impacts—dropped sharply, with key analyses delayed or blocked. Critics, including former agency officials, argued that the move to Kansas City was intended to conceal negative impacts of Trump's trade policies from the public.
During Trump's second administration, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC), a key body that worked under the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis to ensure that the federal government produces accurate data on economic indicators.
Trump also gutted the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Technical Advisory Committee, which had advised the Department of Labor about how economic changes can impact data collection. In August, Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, baselessly accusing her of manipulating economic data to harm him politically by publishing a jobs report showing weak employment growth.
Two weeks later, the president nominated EJ Antoni, a senior economist at the Heritage Foundation described as a "partisan bomb thrower" who helped write Project 2025, a blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government, to replace McEntarfer. Antoni stunned critics with suggestions including eliminating federal monthly jobs reports, and with his overall lack of data management experience. His nomination was later withdrawn amid mounting controversy.
Additionally, the Trump administration has summarily fired dozens of independent agency leaders, required every federal agency to have a White House liaison, and required ostensibly independent agencies to submit draft regulations to the Office of Management and Budget—headed by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought—for review before publication.
As Common Dreams reported, an analysis published in September by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities detailed how the Trump administration's politicization of data, combined with funding cuts, is making it more difficult for experts to determine how the president's policies are impacting US households.
From ending tracking of the impacts of climate-driven extreme weather, to removing a study from the Department of Justice website that showed violent attacks by far-right extremists outpaced those committed by the left, to removing questions about gender identity from key crime surveys, the Trump administration's attacks on information transcend economic data.
"The assault on data, research, and facts is fundamental to Trump and his authoritarian regime," Liza Featherstone, a contributing editor at The New Republic, recently wrote. "He seems to understand that data provides the basis for arguments, and he does not want any arguments. He also understands that facts and knowledge can only be nourished and sustained by institutions and experts, so he is destroying those institutions and pink-slipping those experts."
"We must appreciate their importance and their stakes as well as he does, and remain as committed to the institutions, the data, the facts, and the experts as Trump is to their eradication," Featherstone added. "He has brought sincere zeal to their destruction, and we must bring an even greater passion to their restoration and renaissance. We will need it, as ours is the harder job."
A yearlong investigation published Friday by the Washington Post examines how a small number of billionaires, now richer than ever, have exploited openings provided by the US Supreme Court, lawmakers, and sleepwalking regulatory agencies to flood the American political system with cash and advance their ideological—and financial—interests.
The Post analysis reveals that the nation's top 20 billionaire donors pumped close to $5 billion combined into the US political system between 2015 and 2024, attempting to exert influence over both state-level and national elections.
In 2024, the newspaper found, over 80% of federal campaign spending by the 100 richest Americans flowed to Republicans, who delivered once again for rich benefactors by enacting yet another round of highly regressive tax cuts this past summer.
Topping the list of billionaire donors is Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon, who have spent $621 million on federal races and $37 million on state races over the past decade, mostly backing Republican campaigns—including that of President Donald Trump.
Others on the list include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, shipping magnates Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and investor George Soros.
"In three landmark decisions, starting with 2010’s Citizens United vs. FEC, federal courts gutted post-Watergate campaign finance restrictions, clearing the way for donors to contribute unlimited money to elections," the Post observed. "As a result, US politicians are more dependent on the largesse of the billionaire class than ever before, giving one-four-hundredth of 1% of Americans extraordinary influence over which politicians and policies succeed."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called Citizens United, which spawned the super PACs that many billionaires now use as vehicles for unrestrained election spending, "the original sin."
"Five Supreme Court Republican appointees, many helped onto the Court by right-wing billionaires, open the floodgates for unlimited political spending," Whitehouse wrote in a social media post on Friday. "Then they refuse to police anonymous political spending they know is corrupting. This is the result."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has long decried the corrupting influence of billionaire and corporate money on American politics, said the Post investigation underscores why "we must overturn Citizens United and move to the public funding of elections."
"A majority of Americans agree: If democracy is to survive, billionaires cannot be allowed to buy elections," Sanders added.
As part of its probe, the Post conducted a survey aimed at determining how the US public feels about billionaires using a fraction of their immense fortunes—now at a record $8 trillion—to sway elections.
The survey of 2,500 Americans, conducted in September, found that 58% have a negative view of billionaires spending more money on elections. Forty-three percent of Americans, including 62% of Democrats and 21% of Republicans, believe billionaires have a negative impact on society overall.
“I don’t believe there is an ethical way for billionaires to even exist in this country,” Leah Welde, a 29-year-old Democrat and graduate school student in Philadelphia, told the Post. "To be sitting on that amount of money while citizens in this country are unhoused, hungry, and without medical care is abhorrent. I believe in spreading wealth."
Federal prosecutors on Thursday moved to drop criminal charges against Marimar Martinez, a woman who was shot multiple times by a US Border Patrol agent last month in Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood.
As reported by local news station WTTW, prosecutors filed a one-page motion asking the court to dismiss the indictment against both Martinez and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, who had been accused of assaulting a federal immigration officer by intentionally ramming their vehicle into the officer's car.
The US attorneys who filed the motion to dismiss offered no further explanation for their decision to drop the case.
In the indictment, prosecutors alleged that Martinez and Ruiz were part of a larger group of people in cars that was trailing immigration officers' vehicles as they conducted operations in Brighton Park.
Prosecutors said that the Border Patrol agent who shot Martinez had been acting in self-defense, and that he had only opened fire after Martinez's car collided with his vehicle.
However, recently uncovered text messages showed the Border Patrol agent apparently bragging about shooting Martinez, as he boasted that he "fired five rounds and she had seven holes" in a message sent to fellow agents.
An attorney representing Martinez claimed last month that he had seen body camera footage that directly undermined the US Department of Homeland Security's claims about how the shooting unfolded.
Gregory Pratt, an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune, said the dismissal of the case was yet more evidence that the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement operations appear to be backfiring.
"This follows several dropped prosecutions against protesters," he wrote on Bluesky. "To say the immigration raids have been all around mess is an understatement."
A speechwriter for prominent Democrats including former President Barack Obama and presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Kerry faced widespread outrage this week after video emerged of her blaming Holocaust education for young Jews' empathy for Palestinians in Gaza and revulsion at Israel's genocidal war there.
Earlier this week, Sarah Hurwitz—who was also a senior speechwriter for former First Lady Michelle Obama and other Democrats—spoke at the opening plenary of this year's Jewish Federations of North America general assembly in Washington, DC. The event featured speakers including Free Press staff writer Olivia Reingold, who implicitly attempted to absolve Israel from blame for the Gaza famine by noting that 12 of the at least 463 Palestinians who starved to death had preexisting health conditions.
"There have been huge shifts in America on how people think about Jews and Israel, and I think that is especially true of young people," Hurwitz said during the panel discussion, noting the rise of social media as a primary source of news and information.
"Today, we have social media," she added "Its algorithms are shaped by billions of people worldwide who don't really love Jews."
Hurwitz continued:
It's also this increasingly post-literate media. Less and less text, more and more videos, so you have TikTok just smashing our young peoples' brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. And this is why so many of us can't have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I wanna give data and information and facts and arguments and they are just seeing in their minds carnage, and I sound obscene.
"I think, unfortunately, the very smart... bet we made on Holocaust education to serve as antisemitism education, in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit, because Holocaust education is absolutely essential," Hurwitz asserted.
"But I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews," she added, "...so when on TikTok all day long they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it's not surprising that they think, 'Oh, I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel, you fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.'"
Reaction to Hurwitz' remarks ranged from incredulity to anger.
"I am almost literally speechless," American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee nation legal director Jenin Younes said on X. "She's decrying the fact that kids' takeaway from Holocaust education has been that we must protect helpless people from powerful people killing them. The real lesson from the Holocaust, it seems, is that Israel must be able to commit genocide if it wants to."
Argentinian economist Maia Mindel also took to X, writing that it is "extremely grim that a substantial number of very influential people seem to think that the lesson from the Holocaust isn't 'mass murder of civilians based on their ancestry so your nation can take their land is wrong' but rather, 'Fuck you, got mine.'"
Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart wrote on X that "the level of condescension" in Hurwitz's commentary "is quite remarkable."
Writer Bryce Greene lamented: "We're at the point where Israels supporters are now claiming that the Holocaust was not bad because it was the powerful attacking the weak."
"No, that would be the wrong lesson from the Holocaust," he added. "According to them it was only bad because Jews were the victims. Real sick shit."
Independent journalist Ahmed Eldin said on X that "Zionism is so morally bankrupt it sees empathy as a design flaw."
Eldin wrote Wednesday on his Substack that "Hurwitz didn’t slip up—she said the quiet part out loud and exposed the Zionist project for exactly what it is."
"She even admitted that, amidst the carnage, she sounds 'obscene,'" he noted. "That admission, said almost accidentally, is the closest thing to honesty her worldview will allow: The problem is not the violence of Zionism itself, but the visibility of it. Zionism, as she inadvertently revealed, depends not on morality but on opacity. The ideology requires not less brutality, but simply fewer witnesses."
Moving on to Holocaust education, Eldin wrote:
According to Hurwitz, Holocaust curricula have “backfired” because they taught young people that “you fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.” In her telling, this universal ethical principle—this most basic moral intuition—is the problem.
The implication is staggering: the “correct” lesson of the Holocaust, she seems to believe, is not “never again for anyone,” but “never question Israel.” What outrages her is not the suffering of Palestinians but the possibility that young people are recognizing it as suffering.
"A world that is witnessing and seeing Palestinians as human is a world in which Zionism cannot function," Eldin concluded. "A world that sees the violence cannot romanticize the ideology producing it. Once people witness the truth, the mythology cannot be resuscitated and the propaganda cannot be rehabilitated."
"Israel may be able to flatten Gaza’s buildings, but it cannot rebuild the ignorance it once relied upon," he added. "The truth is already out, the narrative collapse well underway, the mask irretrievably gone."
"This decision, fueled by harmful misinformation campaigns that we believe have external political motives, will tear families apart and send individuals to a country they have not known for over 20 years," one campaigner said.
President Donald Trump's Friday announcement that he was ending Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants in Minnesota prompted outrage and fear from Minnesota Somalis and their allies over the weekend.
In a Truth Social Post, Trump said that he was terminating the TPS program for Somalis in Minnesota "effective immediately," citing concerns about money laundering and gang activity.
“We are deeply disappointed that the administration has chosen to end the Somali TPS program in Minnesota, a legal lifeline for families who have built their lives here for decades," Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Minnesota, said in response. "This decision, fueled by harmful misinformation campaigns that we believe have external political motives, will tear families apart and send individuals to a country they have not known for over 20 years."
"This is not just a bureaucratic change; it is a political attack on the Somali and Muslim community driven by Islamophobic and hateful rhetoric. We strongly urge President Trump to reverse this misguided decision," Hussein continued.
"In a typical move, Donald Trump attacks our Somali community because he can’t think of anything else to do on a Friday night."
Minnesota has the nation's largest Somali population at over 26,000. Many have become citizens or are permanent residents, and only around 430 are in the Minnesota TPS program. Further, immigration law experts say that it would be difficult legally to revoke protections before they are already set to expire in March of next year.
"There is literally no legal means by which he can do this. It’s not a presidential power," wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council advocacy group, on social media. "TPS by law cannot be terminated early. Somali TPS is not set to expire until March 17, 2026."
He added that while the Department of Homeland Security "may make an attempt to do this... it would be immediately struck down."
Further, TPS would have to be revoked nationally, and not for a single state.
“There’s no legal mechanism that allows the president to terminate protected status for a particular community or state that he has beef with,” Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the Associated Press.
“This is Trump doing what he always does: demagoguing immigrants without justification or evidence and using that demagoguery in an attempt to take away important life-saving protections,” she said.
Despite this, the remarks sent many in the community into a "panic," local immigration attorney Abdiqani Jabane told the Minnesota Star Tribune.
People “are afraid that ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents may start rounding up Somalis. These are people who have lived and worked in the community for more than 20 years," Jabane said.
Somalis were first granted TPS status in the US in 1991 when civil war broke out following the removal of leader Said Barre. Since then, it has been renewed 27 times. Today, the militant group al-Shabab still controls parts of the country.
“Sending anyone back to Somalia today is unsafe because al-Shabab remains active, terrorist attacks continue, and the [Somali] government today is unable to protect anyone,” Jabane said.
Minnesota leaders took to social media to speak out against Trump's edict and stand up for the state's Somali community.
"It’s not surprising that the President has chosen to broadly target an entire community. This is what he does to change the subject, wrote Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) wrote: "In a typical move, Donald Trump attacks our Somali community because he can’t think of anything else to do on a Friday night. That’s who he is, but it’s not who we are."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who is Somali herself, pushed back against people who used Trump's announcement to call for her deportation.
"I am a citizen and so are [a] majority of Somalis in America. Good luck celebrating a policy change that really doesn’t have much impact on the Somalis you love to hate. We are here to stay," she wrote.
"The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths," one expert said.
The Department of Government Efficiency—Elon Musk's much-heralded attempt to take a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy—has quietly disbanded eight months before its official expiration date, Reuters reported on Sunday.
The news agency received confirmation of DOGE's demise from Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor earlier this month.
"That doesn't exist," Kupor told Reuters, adding that it was "no longer a centralized agency."
Kupor also said that a government hiring freeze implemented by DOGE had ended.
" DOGE is fading away like bank robbery gangs fade away after the robberies are done."
When President Donald Trump first signed the executive order creating DOGE, he said that it would last until July 4, 2026. However, following a public feud with Musk in late spring, Trump and his team had indicated the department was no longer active, often speaking of DOGE in the past tense.
Musk originally set out to save $1 trillion in federal expenditures by cutting what he claimed to be waste. According to the DOGE website, the department has only saved $214 billion of that aim. However, even that number is in dispute, with one Senate report finding the agency wasted over $21 billion.
At the same time, DOGE sowed chaos in the federal government by mass firing workers, hobbling consumer watchdog agencies, and gutting the US Agency for International Development (USAID)—a move that could lead to more than 14 million deaths worldwide by 2030. At the same time, DOGE employees' attempts to gain access to sensitive government data have made the data of millions of Americans less secure. One whistleblower report said the department uploaded Social Security data to a cloud server at risk from hacking.
Several experts reacted to Reuters' report by reflecting on DOGE's destructive legacy.
"Difficult to overstate how profound a failure DOGE was," Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote on social media. "Spending in FY2025 was not only than in FY2024—but higher than it was projected to be when Trump first took office.* The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths."
Rachel Khan wrote for the New Republic:
DOGE’s legacy is both very stupid and very sad: It decimated the federal workforce, including Social Security personnel at local offices, and made it easier for hackers to access your data. The agency tore apart USAID, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives lost globally. And all this for projected savings—numbers which grew smaller and less ambitious every time Musk mentioned them.
While DOGE may fade away into a fever dream of Trump’s first 100 days, its effects—and the suffering it inflicted—will be felt for a long time.
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, joked, "DOGE seems to be out of business, I guess Elon put our $5k dividend checks in the mail," referring to a promise Musk had made to redistribute DOGE's savings to taxpayers.
However, other commenters argued that DOGE had not failed, but had rather succeeded at its unstated aims.
Georgia State University political scientist Jeff Lazarus wrote that Musk "donated $277 million to Trump so he could steal the federal government’s data, dismantle the nation’s infrastructure, and stop foreign aid from going to nonwhite people. It’s a quid pro quo breathtaking in scope, corruption, and damage, & completely unprecedented in American history."
Bluesky user En Buen Ora wrote: "DOGE did not fail in any way to accomplish its goals. Its goals were never efficiency or saving money. Its goals were to destroy as much of government as possible forever, and to steal data for the Space Nazi. DOGE is fading away like bank robbery gangs fade away after the robberies are done."
While DOGE as an entity may not longer be working, Reuters noted that several of its employees had moved on to other government positions:
ProPublica has compiled a running list of every DOGE staffer it could verify, which now totals 114.
Author Tyler King wrote on social media that “‘DOGE doesn’t exist anymore' is a misleading premise because more than 100 former DOGErs have become deeply embedded in federal agencies to generally fuck around with our data and arbitrarily disrupt budgets."
Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro was taken into custody over concerns he might attempt to flee the country after he tampered with his ankle monitor.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing ally of US President Donald Trump, was arrested in Brazil early Saturday morning following concerns he might flee the country.
Bolsonaro was under house arrest awaiting the result of his appeal after he was tried and sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup and the assassination of current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other officials.
“Brazil just succeeded where America failed. Bringing a former president who assaulted democracy to justice,” filmmaker Petra Costa wrote on social media, as The Guardian reported.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the arrest after discovering Bolsonaro's ankle monitor had been tampered with at 12:08 am local time Saturday. Bolsonaro's lawyers said that this was not the case, but Bolsonaro later admitted to taking a soldering iron to the device "out of curiosity" in a video released by the Supreme Court.
"This isn't curiosity, it's a crime," said State Deputy to the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro Renata da Silva Souza, on social media. "Bolsonaro is not a victim: He is convicted, ineligible, and is IMPRISONED. Turning this absurdity into a justification is a mockery of Brazilian democracy."
The ex-president's arrest also came the same day that his son Flávio Bolsonaro had planned a protest outside the Brasilia condo where Bolsonaro has been living.
De Moraes said Bolsonaro's tampering with his monitor fed his suspicions that he would attempt to flee the country in “the confusion that would be caused by a demonstration organized by his son," according to The Associated Press.
“He is located about 13 kilometers (8 miles) away from where the United States of America embassy lies, in a distance that can be covered in a 15-minute drive," de Moraes added.
Trump, who has sanctioned de Moraes and supports Bolsonaro, reacted to news of the arrest by saying it was "too bad."
Bolsonaro was arrested around 6:00 am local time and is now detained in an approximately 130-square-foot room in the federal police headquarters in Brasilia, according to Reuters. The entire five-judge panel that originally sentenced Bolsonaro will review his detention on Monday.
Institutional Relations Minister Gleisi Hoffmann was the highest-ranking member of the current government to comment on the detention, according to Reuters.
Hoffmann wrote on social media:
The pretrial detention of Jair Bolsonaro strictly follows the rites of due process of law, overseen by the Federal Supreme Court and the Attorney General's Office in each stage of the criminal action against the attempted coup d'état in Brazil. The decision by Minister Alexandre de Moraes is grounded in the real risks of flight by the leader of the coup organization, as well as the imminent finality of his conviction for the serving of his sentence. It also rightly takes into account the background of a process marked by violent attempts to coerce the Judiciary, such as the tarifaço and the Magnitsky sanctions. In a democracy, justice must be upheld.
Ordinary Brazilians also celebrated the news of Bolsonaro's arrest, with some uncorking champagne bottles outside police headquarters.
"The message to Brazil, and to the world, is that crime doesn’t pay," Reimont Otoni, a Workers’ Party congressman, said.