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Fog Of Bullshit: Racist Clowns, Liars and Psycopaths
The surreal and deadly lurches on. In the last, frantic, script-flipping week, MAGA went from threatening to kill Dems who reminded troops to obey the law to scurrying to parse or ignore the news their macho, bungling Secretary of War Crimes evidently blew apart (at least) two guys in the water for no reason - an action universally deemed either murder or war crime, but def against the law. Now see Kegseth et al thrash, bluster, scapegoat the other guy. Trump doctrine: Deport, raze, blame, kill first; think (sic) later.
Most notably, a flailing presidency of "malevolence tempered by incompetence" - Cue the bonkers holiday greeting, "A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at" - is now embroiled in the detritus of a toxic, slapdash revenge tour targeting perceived, if often outlandish, enemies, both here and abroad. Last week's berserk campaign focused on six, mouthy Democratic lawmakers and veterans who had the chutzpah to post a brief video reminding the military of their oaths to follow the law and if needed disobey orders that don't - a bedrock tenet of the military so vital it's engraved on a plaque at West Point: "Should orders and the law ever conflict, our officers obey the law." Pretty radical.
The measured response from the Mob-Boss-in-Chief: Hysterically charging them with "SEDITION," "TREASON," "MILITARY TRIBUNALS," and calling them "traitorous sons of bitches" who should be "EXECUTED." Even as death threats followed, he was swiftly joined by every MAGA lickspittle, especially the lickspittlest - manly Whiskey Pete, the preening, pig-eyed, fragile creator of the War Department famed for strutting on stage to spout inane bullshit about a "warrior ethos" that demands "more lethality, less (sic) lawyers" 'cause who needs rules and laws? Shrieking the Dems' "screed" was "despicable, reckless, and false," he zeroed in on Sen. Mark Kelly - Macho Twit Goes After Actual Mensch - announcing he'd heard "serious allegations of misconduct” by Kelly, he'd "determine further action," and maybe recall Kelly to active duty so he could court-martial him.
It was a brilliant move by a National Guardsman whose drunken, inept, sexual assaulting career peaked in a Civil Affairs job and a weekend TV host gig until his absurd appointment, savaged as "an affront" to anyone who ever served, especially after he leaked war plans - a move just found to have violated Pentagon policy and put at risk military personnel. Veterans eviscerate him as "an absolute jackass," "an imposter," "a coward," "a blowhard" in makeup, "that officer, a total blue falcon" who screws his comrades. Now pols are too. Sen. and former Marine Ruben Gallego: "This is fucking insane." Kelly, in contrast, is a decades-long, much-decorated Navy pilot who saw 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, an astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions including the mission to recover the Columbia crash victims, a husband who retired to nurse his wife back to health after she was shot in the head, and a respected Senator.
Kelly, who's seen much worse, fought back: "(Hegseth) runs around on stage talking about lethality and the warrior ethos (like) a 12-year-old playing army, and it is ridiculous, embarrassing. This is not a serious person." He noted the "wild" irony of Hegseth attacking him under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is what the six traitors recited: "You can't make this shit up." He also posted an image of his 20-plus medals to illustrate how he'd served and loved this country. In response, Pete sneered to "Captain" Kelly not only did he do "sedition" but his medals "are out of order," and he'd get to that. Alexander Vindman (and half of America): "Ever heard of a picture being mirrored? Good reminder: You’re out of your depth." Shut down, a pouting Pete went after our real enemy, vowing to cut support for a DEI-infected Boy Scouts who've become "genderless" and failed to "cultivate masculine values." Welcome to the Gulf of Fragile Masculinity.
This is what the "Secretary of War" is busy doing. This is who this petty macho arrogant jerk is. This is the guy who, as the Washington Post reported days later, allegedly ordered a SEAL Team on Sept. 2, in the first of nearly two dozen military strikes on fishing boats in the Caribbean that have killed 83 mostly anonymous "narco-terrorists" in extrajudicial assassinations, to "kill everybody" after the smoke from an initial strike cleared and revealed two wounded survivors in the water, clinging to wreckage of the burning boat. "Kill them all," writes JoJoFromJerz. "That was the order, plain, deliberate, and damnable, issued by the booze and bronzer-brined (Hegseth) as if American power were his personal cudgel and human life his disposable currency. The directive slithered down the chain of command like toxic runoff," and in moments the two helpless men were "blown apart in the water."
The murderous "double-tap" strike was needed, the Pentagon argued, to sink the boat and avoid a "navigation hazard” - a claim Rep. and Marine veteran Seth Moulton called "patently absurd," just like Trump's underlying "novel" claim the U.S. is in an "armed conflict" with oil-rich Venezuela' and its drug cartels. Despite American opposition, to date he's threatened ground strikes, hinted at regime change, and unilaterally declared Venezuelan airspace closed along with 83 killings so politically and legally dubious the U.K. has stopped sharing intelligence on traffic in the Caribbean to not be complicit. All this, despite a total lack of evidence the victims are drug traffickers or any accountability for their deaths, and the fact most potentially lethal fentanyl doesn't even come from the Caribbean. One pundit: "So what gave him the idea blowing up small boats in international waters was a thing?" Especially when, per Marcie Wheeler, it took four shots for these killer clowns to do the lawless dirty deed.
Inept Warrior Pete is on it anyway, damn near swooning from blood lust, with his ridiculous renaming stunt - "WAR.GOV/JOINTHEFIGHT - rabid calls for "lethality," firing of military Judge Advocate Generals who act as legal guardrails against possible future illegal commands (hmm), and queasy, chest-thumping zeal for the fight: "Trump ordered action - and the Department of War is delivering! Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR defends our Homeland!" The WaPo story of his verbal command to "kill everybody" shouldn't surprise anyone; it's part of the long, sordid, bellicose narrative arc of a laws-are-bullshit buffoon who only feels big if he makes others small, or per Trump, "like, dead," and can then brag about it. A wildly unqualified, uber-macho cartoon version of a weak man willing to do anything to prove he isn't, he fits right in with all the other flame-throwing hacks and sycophants now inexplicably handed the terrifying reins of power.
Meanwhile, the consensus of virtually every military expert or lawyer asked is that Hegseth is, by his actions, either a war criminal or a murderer. The legal bottom line: "There is no basis in law for the maritime attacks. Period. Full stop." Even if there were, international and US law render the targeting of defenseless persons - showing them "no quarter" - "patently illegal." They add, "Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options." And anyone who issues or follows those orders should be prosecuted. Many cite for reference a "textbook war crime," as in, "If we were at war, Hegseth committed one. If not, it's outright murder." Laurence Tribe, who taught law at Harvard for 50 years, helpfully adds that the DOD Law of War Manual, Sec. 18.3.2.1 includes the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders. Their example? "Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."
Also, in case anyone ever believed Trump's "war" was about drugs: Last week he pardoned former Honduran president and cocaine kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year in a US court to 45 years in prison for conspiring to traffic over 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.; with his brother, he also helped turn Honduras into a major producing hub and transit point for cocaine heading to the US, and once said he wanted to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos." Trump's brazen flaunting of his "charade" of a drug war may be why even Newsmax (sadly) argues the strikes are war crimes, and Repubs on House and Senate Armed Services Committees say they may even do some oversight of this one crime among so many by their mad king; it remains unclear how many are willing to "fall on their swords" for the grossly incompetent, unsavory Hegseth.
South Park's latest, savage skewering of "fucking douchebag Pete Hegseth" may help them decide, or not. Trump sends him to town to free Peter Thiel; armed with his selfie stick but thrown out by the "woke" police chief, he teargasses the annual, Saudi-sponsored 5K Turkey Trot, mistaking the race for an Antifa mob; then he bickers with ICE Barbie - who shoots another dog livestreaming and yelling, "Like and subscribe, guys! The Department of War will not be intimidated!" Possibly confusing art with life, Hegseth tried Friday to sneeringly meme his way from the outrage by trashing "fake news," doubling down with, "We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists," and posting a grotesque, quickly blasted, parody of kids' icon Franklin the Turtle firing rockets at small boats. Up next: "Franklin Goes to the Hague For War Crimes" and "Franklin On Trial at the ICC."
The White House, meanwhile, feverishly tried to quiet the uproar. Press Barbie babbled the second strike was "in self-defense to protect Americans in vital United States interests" (sic) and insisted "presidentially-designated Narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting." Also, they suddenly found a scapegoat, Admiral Frank Bradley: "Bus, meet Admiral Bradley. Admiral Bradley, meet bus." Hegseth "authorized Adm Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. (He) worked well within his authority and the law to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated," said Barbie, a renowned scholar of maritime law. Pete's stupid, rank deceit reportedly set off "furious backlash" at the Pentagon. "He is selling out Bradley and sending chills down the spines of his chain of command," said Sen. Chris Murphy. "A case study in how not to lead."
The morning after the Sept. 3 attack, Hegseth told Fox News he tracked the strike in real time: "I watched it live." At Tuesday's Cabinet circle jerk, Trump dozed from his night's hypomanic episode of rage-posting160 times, and Pete's story slimily shifted. As the big boy leader, he said, of course "you want to own that responsibility." So he saw the first strike, but "at the Dept.of War we got alotta things to do," and he had, umm, a thing, so he didn’t stay for "the hour and two hours or whatever where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs" yada yada. Huh. Hours later, he learned "the commander had made the - which he had the complete authority to do" whoosh under the bus and "we have his back." Asked if he saw survivors, he lost it: "The thing was on fire. This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don’t understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices, plant fake stories, nit pick, kill everybody, not based on anything, American heroes, I wrote a book, yada yada, go war fighters!
Wait. "The fog of war"? You mean the fog of bullshit? You mean the cloud of smoke you see in your own air-conditioned office far away as drones on a screen incinerate small boats and the poor souls in them, also the rare survivor who desperately hangs on in the flames and water until you flick a blithe switch to kill him too? That fog of "war"? Fuck you, you gutless vapid self-serving ghoul, whining and snarling you're all doing "what is necessary, dark and difficult things (on) behalf of the American people." Right. On Tuesday, the Columbian family of one victim filed the first court petition charging their husband and father, Alejandro Carranza Medina, 42, was illegally killed in a 2nd US strike on Sept. 15. They said he was a fisher who often set out for marlin and tuna; they named Trump and Hegseth as his killers. Trump had bragged that day of "a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and terrorists." He said they were "from Venezuela."
Update: Good news from The Borowitz Report for the Manchild King: The Hague has invited him to receive an award. "They said it was in response to things I've done as president," he boasted, before nodding off.
Trump DOJ Sides With Roundup Manufacturer Over Cancer Victims in Supreme Court Case
The Trump administration is pushing for the US Supreme Court to shield the manufacturer of Roundup from thousands of state lawsuits alleging that its widely used herbicide product causes cancer.
On Monday, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer recommended that the high court agree to hear a challenge to a Missouri jury's verdict in 2023 that awarded $1.25 million to a man named John Durnell, who claimed that the product caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Bayer, the agribusiness giant that purchased the manufacturer of Roundup, the agribusiness giant Monsanto, in 2018, immediately challenged the verdict.
In 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as "probably carcinogenic to humans" based on "limited evidence."
That evidence became less limited in 2019, when a prominent meta-analysis by a team of environmental health researchers found that people exposed to glyphosate at the highest levels had a 41% higher risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma than those who weren't.
There are nearly 4,500 Roundup claims currently pending in federal court, and at least 24 cases have gone to trial since October 2023. They make up just a fraction of the more than 170,000 claims filed.
According to Bloomberg, Bayer has already been forced to pay out more than $10 billion in verdicts and settlements over the product, which has caused a massive drain on the company's stock price.
In what it said was an effort to “manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns,” Bayer removed glyphosate-based herbicides from the residential market in 2023, switching to formulas that “rely on alternative active ingredients.”
That didn't stop the lawsuits from coming. Durnell's victory was the first successful case brought against Bayer outside California, the only state that labels the product as carcinogenic. That in Missouri opened the floodgates in other states, and plaintiffs subsequently won sizable payouts in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
But now the Trump administration is trying to help the company skirt further accountability. Sauer, who is tasked with arguing for the government in nearly every Supreme Court case, filed a 24-page brief stating that there is a lack of clarity on whether states have the authority to determine whether Bayer and Monsanto violated the law by failing to warn customers about potential cancer risks from Roundup.
Bayer argues that these cases are preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which forbids states from enacting labeling requirements more stringent than those recommended by the federal government.
Sauer agreed with Bayer, stating in the brief that the US Environmental Protection Agency "has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved Roundup labels that did not contain cancer warnings."
In 2016 and again in 2020, the EPA indeed classified glyphosate as "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans" following agency assessments. However, in 2022, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals voided this assessment, finding that the agency applied “inconsistent reasoning” in its review of the science.
Among the justifications for the ruling were that the EPA relied heavily on unpublished, non-peer-reviewed studies submitted to regulators by Monsanto and other companies that manufacture glyphosate. The agency also largely disregarded findings from animal studies included by the IARC, which showed a strong link between glyphosate and cancer.
"The World Health Organization has recognized glyphosate as a probable carcinogen while the EPA continues to twist itself into pretzels to come to the opposite conclusion," Lori Ann Burd, a staff attorney and director of the Center for Biological Diversity's environmental health program, told Common Dreams.
Notably, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. built his national profile campaigning against the dangers of pesticides and railing against regulatory capture by big business.
Kennedy served as an attorney for Dewayne Johnson, the first plaintiff to win damages against Monsanto in 2018, where a jury determined that Roundup had contributed to his cancer.
"If my life were a Superman comic, Monsanto would be my Lex Luthor," Kennedy said in a 2020 Facebook post. "I've seen this company as the enemy of every admirable American value."
During Kennedy's 2024 presidential run, he pledged to "ban the worst agricultural chemicals already banned in other countries."
But after he was sworn in as President Donald Trump's HHS Secretary, he began to sing a different tune. As Investigate Midwest noted, his "Make America Healthy Again" commission's introductory report made no mention of glyphosate.
Meanwhile, he reassured the pesticide industry that it had nothing to worry about: "There’s a million farmers who rely on glyphosate. 100% of corn in this country relies on glyphosate. We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model," he said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.
The Trump EPA has deregulated toxic chemicals across the board over the past year. It rolled back protections against per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often referred to as "forever chemicals," in drinking water, which have many documented health risks. It has also declined to ban the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
Elizabeth Kucinich, the former director of policy at the Center for Food Safety, described the US Department of Justice's effort to shield Bayer as another "betrayal of MAHA health promises." Her husband, the two-time Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, worked as the campaign manager for RFK Jr.'s 2024 presidential bid.
“This is regulatory capture, not public protection,” she said. “This action shields chemical manufacturers from accountability by elevating a captured federal regulatory process over the lived harm of real people. That is anti-life, and it is exactly what millions of MAHA voters believed they were voting against.”
Food & Water Watch staff attorney Dani Replogle said the DOJ filing "encourages the Supreme Court to slam judiciary doors in the faces of cancer patients across the country."
"No political posturing can undo the clear message this brief sends to sick Americans harmed by toxic pesticides," she continued. "Trump has Bayer’s back, not theirs."
Trump Admin Threatens Blue State SNAP Funds Unless They Turn Over Recipient Data
The Trump administration is threatening to strip away funds used to provide food assistance to poor Americans in Democrat-led states beginning next week, unless they provide information identifying who receives benefits.
At a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said states would be denied the ability to access billions of dollars that Congress has appropriated to administer the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), unless they provide the federal government with personal information—including names, Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, and immigration status—of aid recipients.
SNAP provides Americans with incomes below 130% of the federal poverty line with roughly $6 per day on average to pay for food. Roughly 1 in 8 Americans—over 42 million—rely on the program. Rollins originally ordered states to provide this information to the government in May in what she said was an effort to verify the eligibility of those receiving benefits.
“As of next week, we have begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states until they comply and they tell us and allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud and to protect the American taxpayer,” Rollins said Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, 29 states had provided the information, but many Democratic ones, including New York and California, had not. Rollins claimed that those states were choosing to "protect illegals, criminals, and bad actors over the American taxpayer.”
While the benefits paid to individuals would not be cut, states that don't comply stand to lose millions of dollars that they use to administer the program, which could delay benefits and force them to push some recipients off the program.
In its efforts to enact sweeping cuts to social safety net programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies, the Trump administration has often fallen back on false claims that the services are being abused by ineligible people, including undocumented immigrants.
"Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive federal benefits under [SNAP]," explained Melissa Cruz of the American Immigration Council in November. "However, SNAP benefits are provided to households rather than individuals. If, for example, the head of a household is undocumented, they may still apply for SNAP benefits for their U.S. citizen children. But benefits are calculated based on the number of eligible people in the household, so the assistance would only cover the US citizen children—not the entire household.”
Rollins has elsewhere claimed that 186,000 deceased individuals receive benefits, while 500,000 individuals receive duplicate benefits, citing it as evidence of fraud. But as the current US Department of Agriculture website explains, these are the result of administrative efforts—such as states being slow to update eligibility rolls when recipients die or move to a new state. The USDA says that over the past 15 years, it has reduced the prevalence of illegal benefit trafficking in SNAP from 4% to 1%.
The USDA's order comes on the heels of the largest cut to SNAP in the program's history. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by Trump in July, cut funding to the program by roughly 20%.
Like with other programs, Rollins suggested on Tuesday that the goal of USDA's order was not simply to root out "fraud," but to further slash Americans' benefits: “As [former President] Joe Biden was working to buy an election a year ago, he increased food stamp program funding by 40%, so now... we continue to roll that back,” she said.
Rollins' 40% claim is also an exaggeration; according to an estimate by the Cato Institute last month, the spending increase was actually about 21%.
Like President Donald Trump's previous efforts to deny SNAP benefits to states during this fall's government shutdown, the USDA's order has run into legal hurdles.
After 22 states sued, a federal judge in San Francisco, Maxine Chesney, issued a preliminary injunction in October blocking the administration from demanding the data.
Chesney found that these actions likely violated the SNAP Act, which says that states are only allowed to release data related to administering the program. She also found that states would likely succeed in their argument that the administration might illegally share the data with other agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, to aid mass deportation efforts.
Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director at the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center, told the Washington Post that the USDA's demands for this data were likely illegal.
“The federal law restricts USDA access to this,” Plata-Nino said. “The agency has always relied on anonymized data or small samples to perform oversight… Them saying, ‘We’re going to go ahead and remove this funding,’ it’s just so unprecedented.”
The Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee accused Trump and Rollins of "illegally threatening to withhold federal dollars."
"SNAP has one of the lowest fraud rates of any government program, but Trump continues to weaponize hunger," they said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), whose state had nearly 3 million food stamp recipients as of 2024, asked why Trump was again threatening to strip the state of SNAP funding after his previous attack on the program during the shutdown.
"Genuine question: Why is the Trump administration so hellbent on people going hungry?” Hochul asked.
Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst who focuses on SNAP and other antipoverty programs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that while cutting funds, Trump has also scrapped the nation's most comprehensive food insecurity survey, the Household Food Security Report, which would measure the effects of those cuts on Americans.
“The Trump administration’s approach,” Bergh said, “has been enacting the deepest cuts to food assistance in history, needlessly disrupting SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, and terminating the most reliable measure of food insecurity to hide the consequences of those decisions.”
'MAGA Power Grab': US Supreme Court OKs 2026 Map That Texas GOP Rigged for Trump
The US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority on Thursday gave Texas Republicans a green light to use a political map redrawn at the request of President Donald Trump to help the GOP retain control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
Since Texas lawmakers passed and GOP Gov. Greg Abbott signed the gerrymandering bill in August, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his constituents have responded with updated congressional districts to benefit Democrats, while Republican legislators in Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina—under pressure from the president—have pursued new maps for their states.
With Texas' candidate filing period set to close next week, a majority of justices on Thursday blocked a previous decision from two of three US district court judges who had ruled against the state map. The decision means that, at least for now, the state can move ahead with the new map, which could ultimately net Republicans five more seats, for its March primary elections.
"Texas is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the district court committed at least two serious errors," the Supreme Court's majority wrote. "First, the district court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the Legislature."
"Second, the district court failed to draw a dispositive or near-dispositive adverse inference against respondents even though they did not produce a viable alternative map that met the state's avowedly partisan goals," the majority continued. "The district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections."
Texas clearly did a racial gerrymander, which is illegal.A district court found that Texas did a racial gerrymander, rejecting the new map because it is illegal.But the Supreme Court reversed it.Because? Must assume the gerrymanderers were acting in good faith (despite the evidence otherwise).
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— Nicholas Grossman (@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social) December 4, 2025 at 6:18 PM
The court's three liberals—Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented. Contrasting the three-month process that led to the map initially being struck down and the majority's move to reverse "that judgment based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend, of a cold paper record," Kagan wrote for the trio that "we are a higher court than the district court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision."
"Today's order disrespects the work of a district court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge—that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right," Kagan asserted. "And today's order disserves the millions of Texans whom the district court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race."
"This court's stay guarantees that Texas' new map, with all its enhanced partisan advantage, will govern next year's elections for the House of Representatives. And this court's stay ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race," she warned. "And that result, as this court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the Constitution."
Simply amazing that the Supreme Court declared an end to legal race discrimination in the affirmative action case two years ago and now allows overt racism in both immigration arrests and redistricting.Using race to help minorities? Bad. Using it to discriminate against them? Very, very good.
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) December 4, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Top Democrats in the state and country swiftly condemned the court's majority. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin called it "wrong—both morally and legally," and argued that "once again, the Supreme Court gave Trump exactly what he wanted: a rigged map to help Republicans avoid accountability in the midterms for turning their backs on the American people."
"But it will backfire," Martin predicted. "Texas Democrats fought every step of the way against these unlawful, rigged congressional maps and sparked a national movement. Democrats are fighting back, responding in kind to even the playing field across the country. Republicans are about to be taught one valuable lesson: Don't mess with Texas voters."
Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu (D-137) declared that "the Supreme Court failed Texas voters today, and they failed American democracy. This is what the end of the Voting Rights Act looks like: courts that won't protect minority communities even when the evidence is staring them in the face."
"I'm angry about this ruling. Every Texan who testified against these maps should be angry. Every community that fought for generations to build political power and watched Republicans try to gerrymander it away should be angry. But anger without action is just noise, and Democrats are taking action to fight back," he continued, pointing to California's passage of Proposition 50 and organizing in other states, including Illinois, New York, and Virginia. "A nationwide movement is being built that says if Republicans want to play this game, Democrats will play it better."
SCOTUS conservative justices upholding Texas gerrymander is yet another example of how Roberts court has greenlit the many undemocratic schemes of Trump and his partyThey’ve now ruled for Trump and his allies in 90 percent of shadow docket opinions www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
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— Ari Berman (@ariberman.bsky.social) December 4, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said in a statement that "the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court just handed Republicans five new seats in Congress, rubber-stamping Texas Republicans' MAGA power grab. Make no mistake: This isn't about fair representation for Texans. It is about sidelining voters of color and helping Trump and Republican politicians dodge accountability for their unpopular agenda."
"In America, voters get to choose their representatives, not the other way around," she stressed. "But this captured court undermines this basic democratic principle at every turn. We deserve a Supreme Court that protects the freedom to vote and strengthens democracy instead of enabling partisan politics. It's time for Democrats in Congress to get serious about plans for Supreme Court reform once Trump leaves office, including term limits, an enforceable code of ethics, and expanding the court."
Various journalists and political observers also suggested that, despite Thursday's decision in favor of politically motivated mid-decade redistricting, the high court's right-wing majority may ultimately rule against the California map—which, if allowed to stand, could cancel out the impact of Texas gerrymandering by likely erasing five Republican districts.
As AI Data Centers Disrupt US Cities, Wisconsin Woman Violently Arrested After Speaking Out
Public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers—and the push by corporations and officials to move forward with their construction anyway—were vividly illustrated in a viral video this week of a woman who was arrested after speaking out against a proposed data center in her community in Wisconsin.
Christine Le Jeune, a member of Great Lakes Neighbors United in Port Washington, spoke at a Common Council meeting in the town on Tuesday evening. The meeting was not focused on the recently approved $15 million "Lighthouse" data center set to be built a mile from downtown Port Washington—part of a project developed by Vantage Data Centers for OpenAI and Oracle—but the first 30 minutes were taken up by members of the public who spoke out against the project.
As CNBC reported last month, more than 1,000 people signed a petition calling on Port Washington officials to obtain voter approval before entering into the deal, but the Common Council and a review board went ahead with creating a Tax Incremental District for the project without public input. The data center still requires other approvals to officially move forward.
"We will not continue to be silenced and ignored while our beautiful and pristine city is taken away from us and handed over to a corporation intent on extracting as many resources as they can regardless of the impact on the people who live here," said Le Jeune. "Most leaders would have tabled the issue after receiving public input and providing sufficient notice. But you did nothing, and you laughed about it."
Le Jeune spoke for her allotted three minutes and went slightly over the time limit. She then chanted, "Recall, recall, recall!" at members of the Common Council as other community members applauded.
Police Chief Kevin Hingiss then approached Le Jeune while she was sitting in her seat, listening to the next speaker, and asked her to leave.
She refused, and another officer approached her before a chaotic scene broke out.
Last night, the Port Washington Police Department used excessive force to arrest a woman for speaking up against the Vantage data center.
We are thankful that this local advocate is safe, and we condemn the Port Washington PD’s actions in the strongest possible terms. SHAME! pic.twitter.com/35dhEKvojL
— Our Wisconsin Revolution (@OurWisconsinRev) December 3, 2025
City officials had told attendees not to speak out of order during the meeting, and Le Jeune acknowledged that she and others had spoken out of turn at times.
But she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she had been surprised by the police officers' demand that she leave, and by the eventual violence of the incident, with officers physically removing her from her seat and dragging her and two other people across the floor.
The two other residents had approached Le Jeune to protest the officers' actions.
"I never expected something like that to happen in a meeting. It was very strange," she told the Journal Sentinel. "Suddenly this police chief showed up in front of me, and all I was thinking was: 'Wait, what is going on? Why is he interrupting her speech? ... It felt like [police] were kind of primed tonight to pounce."
State Sen. Chris Larson (D-7) said that "police should not be allowed to violently detain a person who is nonviolently exercising their free speech. This used to be something all Americans agreed on."
William Walter, executive director of Our Wisconsin Revolution, filmed the arrest and told ABC News affiliate WISN, "I've never seen a response like that in my life."
"What I did see was a lot of members of the Port Washington community who are really frustrated that they're being ignored and they're being dismissed by their elected officials," he said.
AI data centers, he added, "will impact you. They'll impact your friends, your family, your neighbors, your parents, your children. These are the kinds of things that are going to be dictating the future of Wisconsin, not just for the next couple of years but for the next decade, the next 50 years."
After Le Jeune's arrest, another resident, Dawn Stacey, denounced the Common Council members for allowing the aggressive arrest.
"We have so many people who have these concerns about this data center," said Stacey. “Are we being heard by the Common Council? No we’re not. Instead of being heard we have people being dragged out of the room.”
“For democracy to thrive, we need to have respect between public servants and the people who they serve," she added.
Vantage has distributed flyers in Port Washington, which has a population of 17,000, promising residents 330 full-time jobs after construction. But as CNBC reported, "Data centers don’t tend to create a lot of long-lasting jobs."
Another project in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin hired 3,000 construction workers and foresees 500 employees, while McKinsey said a data center it is planning would need 1,500 people for construction but only around 50 for "steady-state operations."
Residents in Port Washington have also raised concerns about the data center's impact on the environment, including through its water use, the potential for exploding utility prices for residents, and the overall purpose of advancing AI.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the development of data centers has caused a rapid surge in consumers' electricity bills, with costs rising more than 250% in just five years. Vantage has claimed its center will run on 70% renewable energy, but more than half of the electricity used to power data center campuses so far has come from fossil fuels, raising concerns that the expansion of the facilities will worsen the climate emergency.
A recent Morning Consult poll found that a rapidly growing number of Americans support a ban on AI data centers in their surrounding areas—41% said they would support a ban in the survey taken in late November, compared to 37% in October.
'One of the Worst Awards Someone Could Possibly Get': FIFA Blasted for Giving Trump Made-Up 'Peace Prize'
President Donald Trump, whose administration is engaged in a boat-bombing campaign in the Caribbean that human rights organizations and legal experts consider a murder spree, has finally been given a peace prize.
Although Trump tried unsuccessfully this year to get the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award him its prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, he was given something of a consolation gift on Friday when FIFA, the official governing body behind the World Cup, gave him its first-ever FIFA Peace Prize.
After being given the award, Trump called it "truly one of the great honors of my life," and suggested he deserved it for supposedly "saving millions and millions of lives."
A Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health study released last month estimated that Trump's decision to shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already caused hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, and a study published this summer by medical journal The Lancet projected that the end of USAID will lead to up to 14 million preventable deaths over the next five years.
According to the New York Times, the announcement awarding Trump the prize was "so hastily arranged that it surprised several of the body’s most senior officials, including board members and vice presidents."
The paper also noted that the prize was just the latest effort by FIFA president Gianni Infantino to shower Trump with flattery whenever possible.
"Mr. Infantino has lauded Mr. Trump at almost every opportunity, attending events that have little to do with soccer, handing over major FIFA trophies to Mr. Trump, and presiding over FIFA’s rental of office space in Trump Tower in New York two years after the organization opened a gleaming North American hub in Miami," the Times reported.
Human Rights Watch was quick to blast FIFA for giving Trump any sort of peace prize given what it described as the administration's "appalling" human rights record.
Jamil Dakwar, human rights director at the ACLU, also said that Trump was undeserving of the award, and he noted the administration "has aggressively pursued a systematic anti-human rights campaign to target, detain, and disappear immigrants in communities across the US—including the deployment of the National Guard in cities where the World Cup will take place."
Dakwar also called on FIFA "to honor its human rights commitments, not capitulate to Trump’s authoritarianism."
Daniel Noroña, Americas advocacy director for Amnesty International USA, also warned FIFA that many soccer fans could end up being targeted by federal immigration officials for trying to attend World Cup games in US cities next year.
"The threat of excessive policing, including immigration enforcement, at World Cup venues is deeply troubling, and FIFA cannot be silent," he said. "FIFA must obtain binding guarantees from US authorities that the tournament will be a safe space for all, regardless of political stance, opinion, or immigration status."
Anti-war group CodePink protested against Trump's award of the FIFA prize in Washington, DC, and argued that the president is "escalating war on Venezuela, protecting Israel’s continued attacks on Palestine, and terrorizing our communities with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the National Guard," and thus should not receive any honors for his supposed peacemaking efforts.
Other critics, however, argued that FIFA was the perfect organization to give the president a made-up peace prize given its long history of corruption and bribery scandals.
@EiFSoccer, an account on X primarily dedicated to soccer news, said that "the FIFA Peace Prize is unironically one of the worst awards someone could possibly get," given that it was being handed out by "one of the most corrupt sporting institutions of all time."
"Winning the FIFA Peace Prize is like winning the Dahmer Culinary Award," joked journalist Mark Jacob on Bluesky.
Fashion commentator Derek Guy, meanwhile, wondered "WTF is a FIFA Peace Prize" and then equated it to "being an NFL laureate in physics."
Watchdog Denounces Trump AI Order Seen as Giveaway to Big Tech Billionaire Buddies Like David Sacks
"David Sacks and Big Tech want free rein to use our children as lab rats for AI experiments and President Trump keeps trying to give it to them."
President Donald Trump is drawing swift criticism after announcing he would be signing an executive order aimed at clamping down on state governments' powers to regulate the artificial intelligence industry.
In a Monday morning Truth Social post, Trump said that the order was needed to prevent a fragmented regulatory landscape for AI companies.
"We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS," the president wrote. "THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS! AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY! I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week. You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something."
Although specifics on the Trump AI executive order are not yet known, a draft order that has been circulating in recent weeks would instruct the US Department of Justice to file lawsuits against states that pass AI-related regulations with the ultimate goal of overturning them.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, policy director at watchdog Demand Progress, slammed Trump over the looming AI order, which she said was a giveaway to big tech industry billionaire backers such as David Sacks, a major Trump donor who currently serves as the administration's czar on AI and cryptocurrency.
"David Sacks and Big Tech want free rein to use our children as lab rats for AI experiments and President Trump keeps trying to give it to them," she said. "Right now, state laws are our best defense against AI chatbots that have sexual conversations with kids and even encourage them to harm themselves, deepfake revenge porn, and half-baked algorithms that make decisions about our employment and health care."
Peterson-Cassin went on to say that blocking state-level regulations of AI "only makes sense if the president’s goal is to please the Big Tech elites who helped pay for his campaign, his inauguration and his ballroom."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) also accused Trump of selling out Americans to do the bidding of Silicon Valley oligarchs.
"This is a direct ask from Big Tech lobbyists (who also donated millions to Trump’s campaign and ballroom) who only care about their own profits, not our safety," Jayapal wrote in a social media post. "States must be able to regulate AI to protect Americans."
Some critics of the Trump AI order questioned whether it had any legal weight behind it. Travis Hall, the director for state engagement at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the New York Times that Trump's order should not hinder state governments from passing and enforcing AI industry regulations going forward.
“The president cannot pre-empt state laws through an executive order, full stop,” Hall argued. “Pre-emption is a question for Congress, which they have considered and rejected, and should continue to reject.”
Matthew Stoller, an antitrust advocate and researcher at the American Economic Liberties Project, also expressed doubt that Trump's order would be effective at blocking state AI regulations.
"Trump can issue an executive order mandating it rain today, it doesn't really matter though," said Stoller.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) predicted the Trump order would be repeatedly struck down in courts.
"Trump’s one rule executive order on AI will fail," Lieu posted on social media. "Executive orders cannot create law. Only Congress can do so. That’s why Trump tried twice (and failed) to put AI preemption into law. Courts will rule against the EO because it will largely be based on a bill that failed."
EU Ministers Ripped for 'Legitimizing Offshore Prisons, Racial Profiling, and Child Detention'
"Ministers' position on the return regulation reveals the EU's dogged and misguided insistence on ramping up deportations, raids, surveillance, and detention at any cost," said an Amnesty International campaigner.
Advocacy organizations on Monday renewed sharp criticism of European Union policymakers' plans for new rules targeting undocumented immigrants after the Council of the EU finalized its "return regulation" proposal at a meeting in Brussels.
Building on the EU's Pact on Migration and Asylum—set to take effect next June despite being denounced as a "bow to right-wing extremists and fascists"—the European Commission this past March proposed common rules for expelling migrants. The council's deal on Monday established its position on the proposal for negotiations with the European Parliament on the final text.
Despite serious pressure from civil society, including joint statements in September and last week, the Council of the EU—made up of national ministers from the bloc's 27 member states—agreed to support "strict obligations on returnees," such as limiting certain benefits, refusing or withdrawing work permits, and imposing criminal sanctions, including imprisonment.
The council also backed the creation of "return hubs" outside of the European Union, putting in place "special measures for people who pose a security risk," mutual recognition of bloc members' deportation decisions, and a form that will be filled out and added to the EU's information-sharing system for security and border management.
The EU Council’s recent Returns Regulation deal goes against key demands from about 70 civil society organisations.🔊The main demand: A rights-based approach focused on voluntary, dignified return, strict detention limits, and full compliance with EU and international law.
— ECRE (@theecre.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 8:44 AM
"EU ministers' position on the return regulation reveals the EU's dogged and misguided insistence on ramping up deportations, raids, surveillance, and detention at any cost," declared Olivia Sundberg Diez, Amnesty International's EU advocate on migration and asylum, in a statement. "These punitive measures amount to an unprecedented stripping of rights based on migration status and will leave more people in precarious situations and legal limbo."
"In addition, EU member states continue to push for cruel and unworkable 'return hubs,' or offshore deportation centers outside of the EU—forcibly transferring people to countries where they have no connection and may be detained for long periods, violating protections in international law," she continued. "This approach mirrors the harrowing, dehumanizing, and unlawful mass arrests, detention, and deportations in the US, which are tearing families apart and devastating communities."
US President Donald Trump returned to office in January, having campaigned on a promise of mass deportations despite facing global condemnation for his first-term immigration policies, particularly family separation. His second term has featured masked federal agents prowling the streets; engaging violently with undocumented immigrants, US citizens of color, and protesters, including Democratic politicians; and detaining migrants—most of whom lack criminal convictions—in inhumane conditions.
The Trump administration aims to boost a far-right movement already on the rise in Europe, claiming in a "national security strategy" document released last Thursday that the continent faces the "stark prospect of civilizational erasure" due to mass migration and the United States must take steps to help "correct its current trajectory."
As Agence France-Presse reported:
A decline in irregular entries to Europe—down by around 20% so far in 2025 compared to last year—has not eased the pressure to act on the hot-button issue.
"We have to speed up," said EU migration commissioner Magnus Brunner, "to give the people the feeling that we have control over what is happening."
...Under the impetus of Denmark, which holds the EU's rotating presidency and has long advocated for stricter migration rules, member states are moving forward at a rapid pace.
On Monday, as Sundberg Diez put it, the Council of the EU took "an already deeply flawed and restrictive commission proposal and opted to introduce new punitive measures, dismantling safeguards and weakening rights further, rather than advancing policies that promote dignity, safety, and health for all."
"They will inflict deep harm on migrants and the communities that welcome them," the campaigner added. "Amnesty International urges the European Parliament, which is yet to adopt its final position on the proposal, to reverse this approach and place human rights firmly at the center of upcoming negotiations."
The Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM)—which, like Amnesty, was among over 250 groups that signed the September statement—also urged the European Parliament to reject the council's policies, taking aim at plans for home raids; expansion of detention, including of children; deportation hubs outside the EU; 20-year entry bans; and more.
"This so-called 'return regulation' ushers in a deportation regime that entrenches punishment, violence, and discrimination," said PICUM advocacy officer Silvia Carta. "Instead of investing in safety, protection, and inclusion, the EU is choosing policies that will push more people into danger and legal limbo. The council's position goes against basic humanity and EU values. Now it is up to the European Parliament to reject this approach. Migration governance must be rooted in dignity and rights—not fear, racism, or exclusion."
Sarah Chander, director at the Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice, was similarly critical, arguing that with the proposal, "the EU is legitimizing offshore prisons, racial profiling, and child detention in ways we have never seen. Instead of finding ways to ensure safety and protection for everybody, the EU is pushing a punishment regime for migrants, which will help no one."
Alkistis Agrafioti Chatzigianni, an advocacy officer and lawyer at the Greek Council for Refugees, noted that "Greece has become one of the EU's starkest experiments in detaining asylum applicants—marked by prison-like conditions, a lack of effective monitoring mechanisms, and repeated findings of rights violations."
The return regulation, the expert warned, "threatens to replicate and entrench this model across Europe. Instead of learning from the profound failures of detention-based approaches, the EU is choosing to scale them up, turning border zones into sites of coercion and trauma for people seeking protection. This is a dangerous step backwards. A humane migration system must be built on dignity, transparency, and the right to seek safety."
Records Shows That Trump, By His Own Definition, Is Guilty of Mortgage Fraud
“Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” said one mortgage law expert.
As US President Donald Trump targets political opponents with dubious allegations of mortgage fraud, an investigation published Monday revealed the Republican leader once did the same thing as a senior official he is trying to fire.
In an August letter, Trump announced his termination of Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook—an appointee of former President Joe Biden—for alleged fraud, accusing her of signing two primary residence mortgages within weeks of each other.
Cook, who denies any wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime and has filed a lawsuit challenging Trump's attempt to fire her. In October, the US Supreme Court declined to immediately remove Cook and agreed to hear oral arguments on the case in January.
Trump called Cook's actions "deceitful and potentially criminal." However, ProPublica reviewed records showing that Trump "did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of."
Trump committed mortgage fraud, according to Trump.Somehow I doubt his DOJ will go after him the way he instructed his DOJ to go after his political enemies over this.Every Republican accusation is a confession.
[image or embed]
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 5:47 AM
According to the publication:
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.
In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent—exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud...
Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But Trump’s two loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud.
"Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” Kathleen Engel, a Suffolk University law professor and leading expert on mortgage finance, told ProPublica. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, responded to ProPublica's analysis in a statement slamming "Trump's mortgage fraud witch hunt."
"The cruel and lawless hypocrisy of Donald Trump using the levers of government to dig up so-called mortgage fraud on his perceived political opponents, while doing the very same, is blatant," Gilbert said in a statement.
A federal judge recently dismissed the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) criminal case against Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was charged with bank fraud and false statements regarding a property in Virginia. Critics called the charges against James—who successfully prosecuted Trump for financial crimes—baseless and politically motivated. A federal grand jury subsequently rejected another administration attempt to indict James.
“The administration has used the idea of claiming a home as your primary residence without residing there to justify DOJ takedowns of Lisa Cook, Tish James, and more," Gilbert added. "If this is how they really feel, and the ProPublica reporting is accurate, then Donald Trump should be next in the DOJ crosshairs.”
ProPublica said that Trump hung up on one of its reporters who asked about similarities between his Florida mortgages and those of people targeted by his administration.
“President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender," a White House spokesperson subsequently told the outlet. "There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.”
“President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law," the spokesperson falsely added.
Trump has accused other political foes, including US Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell—both California Democrats who played key roles in both of the president's House impeachments—of similar fraud. Swalwell is currently under formal criminal investigation. Both lawmakers deny the allegations.