The Second Term of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America

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Occupy Democrats​

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BREAKING: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney humiliates Donald Trump inside the Oval Office by telling him to his face that Canada will "never" be "for sale" despite his imperialist fantasies.

This is what an expert diplomat sounds like in action...

"Mr. President you have said that Canada should become the 51st state, any thoughts?" asked a reporter during a meeting between the two leaders.

"No, no, well I still believe that but you know takes two to tango right? But no I do. I mean I believe it would be a massive tax cut for the Canadian citizens, uh, you get free military," said Trump.

"You get tremendous medical cares and other things," he continued. "There would be a lot of, uh, advantages but it would be a massive tax cut and it's also a beautiful... You know as a real estate developer — you know I'm a real estate developer at heart — when you get rid of that artificially drawn line... Somebody drew that line many years ago with a like a ruler, just a straight line right across the top of the country."

"When you look at that beautiful formation when it's together. I'm a very artistic person but when I looked at that— I said that's the way it was meant to be," said Trump. "But you know it, uh, I just do feel it's much better for Canada."

"But we're not going to be discussing that unless somebody wants to discuss it," he rambled on. "I think that there are tremendous benefits to the Canadian citizens, tremendously lower taxes, free military which honestly we give you essentially anyway because we're protecting Canada if you ever had a problem but, uh, you know it's, uh, it would really be a wonderful marriage because it's... It's two places that get along very well, they like each other a lot."

"Well if I may, as you know from real estate there are some places that are never for sale," said Carney.

"That's true," admitted Trump.

"We're sitting in one right now, you know Buckingham Palace you visited as well," said Carney.

"That's true," said Trump again.

"And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign last several months, it's not for sale, won't be for sale ever, but the opportunity is in the partnership and what we can build together," said Carney.

Carney recently won his country's election, in part because widespread backlash against Trump drove voters away from the conservative candidate.

"And we have done that in the past and part of that as the president just said is with respect to our own security and my government is committed for a step change in our investment in Canadian security and our partnership," said Carney.

"And I'll say this as well, that the president has revitalized international security, revitalized NATO, and us playing our full weight in NATO and that will be part of it," he added, flattering Trump's ego to get what he wants.

"I must say, Canada is stepping up the military, uh, participation because, Mark knew, you know, they were low and that's a very important thing but never say never! Never say never," said Trump.

This is how you deal with an egomaniacal ignoramus like Trump: put your foot down hard on the issues that matter, then smooth things over with some meaningless positive affirmations. It's like soothing a toddler who needs to be put to bed.
 
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Occupy Democrats​

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BREAKING: Donald Trump gets crushing news as a second federal judge rules that he exceeded his presidential authority by exploiting the Alien Enemies Act to mass deport people to a "notoriously evil jail" in El Salvador.

This judge really didn't hold back tearing into the fascist MAGA regime...

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York said that the law in question can only be used when there is a declared war or if the United States is actually experiencing an invasion. Despite Trump's bombastic rhetoric, undocumented migration does not meet that criteria.

The so-called evidence proving that "that [Tren de Aragua] has engaged in either a ‘war,’ ‘invasion’ or a ‘predatory incursion’ of the United States, do not exist" wrote the judge.

"There is nothing in the AEA that justifies a finding that refugees migrating from Venezuela, or TdA gangsters who infiltrate the migrants, are engaged in an ‘invasion;’ or ‘predatory incursion,’" he continued.

"They do not seek to occupy territory, to oust American jurisdiction from any territory, or to ravage territory. TdA may well be engaged in narcotics trafficking, but that is a criminal matter, not an invasion or predatory incursion," Hellerstein went on.

"Thus, I find that the Presidential Proclamation exceeds the scope of the AEA," he added.

Hellerstein also sharply criticized the Trump administration for executing its deportations with "no mention [to migrants] of an indefinite detention in a foreign jail hired by the United States" with only "faint hope of process or return."

He pointed to a ruling by the Supreme Court demanding that migrants be given adequate warning before deportation under the AEA.

"The notice is a fleeting affair, for if the alien fails to express an intent to file a petition for habeas relief within a dozen hours of being served … or to actually file a petition within another 24-hour period, ICE ‘may proceed with removal,’" he wrote.

"And even if an alien files for habeas relief, Respondents state that they still may deport him if the court does not grant a temporary restraining order, or takes too long to conduct the proceeding," he continued.

"Respondents’ proposal for notice is insufficient under the AEA, the Supreme Court’s ruling … and Constitutional due process," the judge added.

Not done there, he slammed the conditions at the infamous El Salvadoran prison known as CECOT that's being used to house deportees.

"The destination, El Salvador, a country paid to take our aliens, is neither the country from which the aliens came, nor to which they wish to be removed. But they are taken there, and there to remain, indefinitely, in a notoriously evil jail, unable to communicate with counsel, family or friends," wrote Hellerstein.

"Here, absent a preliminary injunction, Petitioners would be removed from the United States to CECOT, where they would endure abuse and inhumane treatment with no recourse to bring them back. If that is not irreparable harm, what is?" he asked

Just last week, a federal judge in Texas came to a similar conclusion about Trump's unlawful use of the AEA, saying that it could not be exploited to target a gang. At this point, Trump is in open defiance of the courts and should be impeached for his criminal behavior.
 
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Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger Against Trump​

Govin Chittaranjan · toSpdesrno1m24h6c95uhult02lact8226875luuhi0l7gah448uhc1t0h0t ·

The felon and his cronies had planned an ambush for Carney at the White House, but Carney decided to deploy a modern strategy known as “controlled asymmetry” or “diplomatic power framing” strategy that fizzled out the ambush without even a puff of smoke. Carney saw the provocation coming when the felon gave away his intention by couldn’t resist tweeting just minutes before the meeting. That’s why Carney delayed ( a term called “tactical delay” à strategy used to induce a psychological “fear of insult” by not arriving at all) his arrival and let the White House stew while Canada set the tone

Carney used some interesting tools from the negotiations toolbox, tools like:

- Preemptive Reframing – recognizing a provocation before it lands and reshaping the dynamic before it escalates.
- Narrative Disruption – denying the antagonist control over the optics or flow of events.with hand guestures
- Ego Management – using subtle power cues (like lateness, silence, or calm) to deflate the other party’s dominance play

No wonder he was the Governor at Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Special UN envoy etc
 
Shiftless2 said:
"U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York said that the law in question can only be used when there is a declared war or if the United States is actually experiencing an invasion. Despite Trump's bombastic rhetoric, undocumented migration does not meet that criteria." OD #602
Click to expand...
"... does not meet that criteria" as an opinion? Or can Judge Hellerstein cite precedent establishing it in U.S. law?

Shiftless2 said:
"... if the United States is actually experiencing an invasion" OD #602
Click to expand...
At what point is an invasion not an invasion?
- Is it the number of invaders, reportedly now in the millions?
- Or must the invaders promote a consistent ideology? Prosperity?

Presidential over-reach seems obvious here. But care should be taken to not address executive over-reach with judicial over-reach.

Shiftless2 said:

Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger Against Trump #603​

Click to expand...
Get them on the ballot please.

Shiftless2 said:
The felon and his cronies had planned an ambush for Carney at the White House, but ...

Carney used some interesting tools from the negotiations toolbox, tools like:
- Preemptive Reframing – recognizing a provocation before it lands and reshaping the dynamic before it escalates.
- Narrative Disruption – denying the antagonist control over the optics or flow of events.with hand guestures
- Ego Management – using subtle power cues (like lateness, silence, or calm) to deflate the other party’s dominance play
Click to expand...
Any body can stumble into an ambush.

It takes a consummate pro (or a Canadian?) to knowingly enter the ambush, and vanquish the ambushers.

Thank you Mr. Carney and the good People of Canada for so constructively helping US through our self-inflicted crisis.
 
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Sharon Harris-Northcutt​

dSerspntoo71 1 36 39fmAat11m47a21g20f:0t3M40c3ay44u19M831tg ·

No need to add anything to this! For nine straight weeks, CBS’s “60 Minutes” has held the Trump administration’s feet to the fire, refusing to back down despite a barrage of legal threats and presidential tantrums. The most recent episode tackled Trump’s controversial policies on Ukraine—where correspondent Scott Pelley interviewed President Zelenskyy at a bombed site—and Greenland, highlighting local resistance to Trump’s annexation ambitions. These are just the latest in a series of hard-hitting segments: previous weeks have exposed the administration’s dismantling of USAID, the firing of government watchdogs, and the chilling effects of Trump’s executive orders on diversity and equity.

Trump’s response has been as predictable as it is alarming. He’s called “60 Minutes” a “dishonest Political Operative,” demanded the FCC strip CBS of its license, and is pursuing a $20 billion lawsuit over their coverage—especially an interview with Kamala Harris he claims was unfairly edited. He’s even pressed his own FCC appointee to punish CBS and other critical outlets, a move right out of the authoritarian playbook: using government power to silence dissent and intimidate journalists.

In an era when too many media organizations shy away from confronting power, “60 Minutes” is showing what real journalism looks like. As Lesley Stahl put it, the show is “fighting for our life” and standing up for the First Amendment. When the stakes are this high—when a sitting president is openly threatening the free press—media courage isn’t just admirable, it’s essential for democracy to survive. repost @other98
 
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Canadians Against Pierre Poilievre​

Joanne Proulx · srtpnodSeo44tftl7ic18l4uga0f1mu038129gctagafala0355lu2516u89 ·

Mr Carney Goes to Washington

A while back now, a friend invited me and my husband over for dinner. Super duper. We’d arrived, were actually sitting in the car in her driveway, gathering up the wine and the salad I’d made, when my phone buzzed. A text from a mutual friend. ‘Sorry’, the text read, which is how most of our correspondence begins up here in Canada. ‘But I just got this message from Margo!’ (Not her real name. ‘Margo’ knows who she is.) The mutual friend forwarded me said message. “So Joanne’s coming for dinner. Sigh. She’s such a taker. I don’t even know why I invited her. She insisted on bringing that goddamn Ceasar salad she’s so proud of. I mean how many cloves of garlic are in there? 100? Also, her kids are such losers. But omg, I’d really love to get her sweet, sweet man upstairs alone.”

WTF right? How insane! How completely inappropriate! What to do in the face of such a betrayal, such an attack? Margo had already spotted us in her driveway. She had her phone in one hand and was waving to us with the other from the bright-lit frame of her thrown-wide-open front door. I was stunned. I was furious. I was hungry. I had a goddamn Ceasar salad on my lap. Our car suddenly reeked of garlic.

Okay, sorry. That was mean. That didn’t actually happen. Let me remind you, I am first and foremost a fiction writer. And all my friends are wonderful. One is an actual angel.

But change a few details, swap a couple of words, and that actually happened to Mark Carney.

Just before our new Prime Minister was meant to arrive at the White House, Old President Spraytan, ever the gracious host, used his nubby little thumbs to type out one, last, fact-free text.

$200 Billion in Subsidies to Canada! America doesn’t need their CARS, their ENERGY, their LUMBER, their lousy CEASAR SALAD. We don’t need ANYTHING they have! But they need EVERYTHING from us! Also, hey, let’s be friends!

Thanks for the warm welcome. I mean, was that absolutely necessary? Weren’t the reams of bullshit tweets and threats and insults you’d already spewed into the world about making Canada your 51st first state and telling us how hopeless we were enough? Is anything ever enough for you, Mad King Donald?

So, anywho, Prime Minister Carney got out of the car. Smiled politely. Shook the son-of-a-bitch’s hand. I’m guessing it was sweaty. What one might describe as slick. In the freshly, gold-plated Vegas version of the Oval Office, the President of the United States blabbed on and on—trains! planes! and automobiles!—took credit for Carney’s win (okay, kind of true), trashed Obama and Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland, pantomimed erasing the border between our two sovereign nations, teased a BIG, upcoming announcement, while Mark—as Donald chose to call him—tried to keep his face from melting off.

It was obvious Carney had been well coached. He didn’t get mad. Even cracked the odd joke. And when he did finally get a chance to speak, he talked to Trump like one might a dim-witted child, offering simple, relatable examples —Buckingham Palace, the Oval office—and doing the requisite amount of ass-kissing—fentanyl, strong borders, a transformational President—to prevent Little Don from throwing a tantrum.

As a writer, I especially appreciated Carney’s choice of the word transformative. Trump is indeed well on his way to transforming America. Bankrupting it, both morally and financially. Isolating it. Banana republicing it. But the word transformational is flexible, so delusional Donald would have puffed up his chest and taken it as a compliment. Well done, Mark. Can I call you Mark?

Carney did his best to be firm. To Trump’s face he told him that he’d spoken to the owners (Nice! He means us fellow, Canadians!) and could confirm Canada would never be for sale. ‘Never say never,’ the sly, old President quipped. Which made me wonder. Is that the line he used when he followed E. Jean Carroll into that dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman way back when? (Okay, I am never, ever going to be allowed into the United States while the Cheeto’s in charge of anything.)

To his credit, Trump tried to be nice. Talked about friendship. Complimented Carney more than once. Honestly it felt like gaslighting, like an abuser trying out a velvet glove. And then Trump upped the ante. He didn’t just wanna be friends. His voice got soft. He clasped his tiny hands. He talked about his grandparents. And then he talked about love.

“Canada loves us and we love Canada.”

But Donald, I’m so sorry, we just don’t. We don’t love you or your sad, sick version of America. Not even a little bit. We love many, many, many of your citizens, what Mark Carney might rightly refer to as the real owners of your country.

As for you loving us? Come on. After that last insulting text, after badmouthing our kids and rejecting our salad, after months of threatening annexation and economic warfare, after publicly belittling our nation and calling us a bunch of pathetic freeloaders, after watching you tear down the United States of America as we know it, we’d be fools to believe in your brand of anything.

Canadians aren’t fools. You know that. You just met our new Prime Minister. Fact: The United States has a trade deficit in goods and services with Canada of $30 billion. If we stopped selling crude oil to American refineries at a discount vis a vis world markets, the deficit would turn to a $100 billion trade surplus in America’s favour. Stop lying. Tell the American people that they’re going to pay every last penny of your stupid tariffs. If you’re even the least bit curious about looking up the real trade number before you waste any other foreign leader's time, go to the website of The Office of the United States Trade Representative/Executive Office of the President. The numbers are all there in black and white.
In closing, and with all due respect Mr. President, you dare speak to Canada of love, but you wouldn’t know love if it walked up and spit in your eye.

xoxo Joanne
 
Found this on a Cdn FB page - it applies equally to the US and Canada

Insight into why it’s so difficult to change the political scene -anywhere. Think Canada’s recent electoral outcome and upcoming by-election.

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Oliver Kornetzke​

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I come from a small, rural town in Wisconsin—the kind of place where the high school mascot is sacred, the churches outnumber the stoplights, and the local diner still offers political commentary with your scrambled eggs, all filtered through a Reagan-era lens of rugged individualism and bootstrap theology. It’s a town that raised me, yes—but also one

I outgrew, not out of arrogance, but out of an insatiable curiosity that was simply not compatible with fences and familiar last names.

My childhood was an oddity in that place. While most of my peers stayed anchored in the gravitational pull of local norms and traditions, my parents handed me a passport and pointed outward. Road trips across the US turned into train rides through Eastern Europe. I was the kid who collected fossils and insects instead of baseball cards, who could name capitals but not quarterbacks. Later, I moved abroad. I pursued higher education. I immersed myself in history, science, philosophy, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge and understanding, trying to understand not just the world, but why people move through it the way they do.

And then, like some tragic protagonist in a novel about the perils of nostalgia, I came back.

If distance grants perspective, then returning to the town of my youth was less like coming home and more like stepping into a diorama. The streets hadn’t changed, but I had.

What once seemed wholesome now felt performative. The patriotism wasn’t pride—it was ritual. The friendliness wasn’t openness—it was surveillance. And beneath it all ran a silent, suffocating current of fear: fear of change, fear of the other, fear of being left behind.

This divide isn’t just geographical. It’s evolutionary.

For 95% of our species’ existence, we lived in small, kin-based bands where survival was contingent on cohesion, predictability, and suspicion of outsiders. Tribalism wasn’t a flaw—it was a feature. It kept us alive. To be skeptical of the unfamiliar, to prioritize the known over the unknown, was adaptive. But we don’t live on the savannah anymore. The threats we face are no longer predators or rival clans, but climate collapse, income inequality, and information warfare. Still, the reptilian brain lingers. And it does not care about nuance. It cares about belonging.

Rural America, in many ways, remains a living museum of this tribal wiring. In places where diversity is minimal and ideas circulate slowly, identity calcifies. Community becomes echo chamber. It’s not that people don’t think critically—it’s that critical thinking is punished. Conformity is rewarded. Outsiders—literal or ideological—are threats to the fragile cohesion of a community whose worldview has not been tested by difference but merely reinforced by repetition.

This is the root of the urban-rural divide—not intelligence, not morality, but exposure. In cities, survival demands adaptation: to new cultures, new technologies, new ways of seeing. In rural communities, survival demands continuity. And so when the firehose of modernity blasts through cable news and social media, it’s not processed as information—it’s processed as attack.

And the right wing has weaponized this brilliantly.

They’ve learned that fear is easier to manufacture than hope, and far more profitable. That a brain wired for tribal survival will always choose the strong lie over the complicated truth. That it’s easier to sell paranoia than policy. In my town, like so many others, they claim to be patriots who love their country, but they’ll vote for the man who promises to burn it down. They don’t believe in climate change, but their crops are drowning and their wells are poisoned. They don’t want to be ruled, but they’re desperate to be led—by someone who speaks in absolutes, who confirms their suspicions, who reflects their anger back to them like a funhouse mirror.

And this is the part that stings the most: these are not all bad people. They are people trapped in a feedback loop that exploits the very instincts evolution gave them to survive.

They have been trained to confuse subjugation with strength, cruelty with conviction. To them, surrendering their rights to a strongman is not cowardice—it is tribal loyalty. It is faith.

So when I walk those old streets of my youth now, it feels less like homecoming and more like fieldwork. I see not just neighbors but a case study in inherited fear. A once-hopeful people turned against themselves by a machine that knows them better than they know themselves. A culture that clings to its myths not out of ignorance, but out of necessity—because without them, the whole house of cards collapses.

And the tragedy is this: the world they’re fighting to preserve no longer exists. The 1950s never really happened—not the way they remember them. What they mourn is not the loss of a country, but the loss of an illusion. And in their desperation to reclaim it, they have become foot soldiers in a war against their own future.
But still, I hope. Because if evolution has taught us anything, it’s that adaptation is possible. That fear does not have to rule us. That our tribal instincts, while ancient, are not immutable. That exposure, education, and empathy—slow, hard, and human—can expand the circle of who we call us.

I don’t know if my hometown will ever change. But I know I have. I know that what we choose to do with our understanding—how we wield it, how we share it, how we live it—matters more now than ever.

Because history doesn’t just happen to us. We are it. In every conversation. Every vote. Every time we choose truth over comfort, connection over fear.

That’s the long arc. That’s the work. That’s the hope.
 
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It’s Contrary to Everything We Stand For.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how the US was strong-arming the UK in trade negotiations.

‘…now being led by the charismatic, couch-humper JD Vance, the US has made it a condition of any trade deal that UK hate speech laws protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ humans must be repealed.’ Starmer Must Not Bend the Knee - you can read the article over on my Substack @joannevproulx.

Now the US is demanding that America’s anti-DEI bullshit be taken up by Sweden. Specifically that no companies with DEI initiative be contracted to work on the American embassy in Stockholm. This simply isn’t going to fly.

“Stockholm Vice Mayor for City Planning Jan Valeskog called the anti-DEI demand “bizarre” and “completely absurd,” and said Stockholm will never agree to it.

“It’s contrary to everything we stand for,” said Valeskog, the Sweden Herald reported. “They should withdraw these peculiarities.”

Honest to god, people. Trump and his stooges have a bloated sense of their own reach and power. They are coming off as lunatic, dictating to sovereign nations, trying to spread their mean, regressive policies far and wide. They simply don’t want anyone who isn’t white, male and old-timey Christian, to be able to hold a job. Anywhere.

Sweden says bizarre. Sweden says absurd. Sweden says never. Like the Canadians, the Swede’s are polite when they tell America to fuck off.
 
Shiftless2 said:
"Tribalism wasn’t a flaw—it was a feature. It kept us alive." #607
Click to expand...
Tribalism isn't gone.
Gangs are but one example, perhaps MAGA another.
Apart from artificial breeding, biological evolution lacks deliberate innovation.

Society can evolve when any group or individual demonstrates a better idea.

The panacea of our post-industrial modernity is division of labor, specialization. Jungle hut dwelling nomadic hunter / gatherers didn't have computer systems analysts.

We can adjust society at behavioral level. But the innate, primitive instinctive approach to encountering a stranger is more deeply rooted. A millennium is a finger-snap in biological evolution.
 
Excellent News !

Trump admin proposes brand new air traffic control system to enhance safety, 'unlock the future of air travel'​

The three-year framework proposes updates that Transportation Secretary Duffy says are an 'economic and national security necessity'​

By Brooke Singman Fox News / May 8, 2025
The Trump administration Thursday rolled out its three-year plan to build a brand-new, "state-of-the-art" air traffic control system to address critical safety needs — replacing core infrastructure and telecommunications networks to "unlock the future of air travel."
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled the proposal Thursday, which would replace the current, antiquated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system and "enhance safety in the sky, reduce delays and unlock the future of air travel."
www.foxnews.com

Trump touts 'rebuilding and modernization' of US air traffic control, blasts Buttigieg for having 'no clue'

President Donald Trump touted his administration's efforts to rebuild and modernize U.S. air traffic control, as the Department of Transportation rolled out its three-year plan to build a brand-new, "state-of-the-art" system to address critical safety needs, while blasting former Transportation...
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com

"The Devil's in the details."

If superbly executed this could revolutionize air-travel.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration/s have proved big on promises, and short on delivery.

"You're going to have such great healthcare at a tiny fraction of the cost." candidate Trump 16/10/25 from campaign podium
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"It will be repeal & replace. It will be essentially simultaneously. It will be various segments you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week.” President Elect Trump at his only post election victory news conference in New York 17/01/11 / FNS
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“Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.” President Trump
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BUT !
Though Trump failed to deliver on healthcare, we've long known we're overdue for an air traffic safety upgrade. Let us hope Trump doesn't tear down the current system before the replacement is installed, fully debugged, & fully operational.
 
Posted by an Australian friend ....

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Ava Kennedy​

stpnSooredl0292hf0tgt8f4i7u7hf4mhh8ift5c642al9t6cuuu10922c11 ·

Secretary Noem testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. Ranking Member Senator Chris Murphy gave his opening remarks, which were so powerful and informative, I decided to post them here.

I say this with seriousness and respect, but your department is out of control. You’re spending like you don’t have a budget. You are running out of money for this fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee. You are ignoring the immigration laws of this nation, implementing a brand new immigration system that you have invented that has little relation to the statutes that you are required to follow as spelled out in your oath of office. You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, they have constitutional and statutory rights when they reside in the United States. Your agency acts as if laws don’t matter, as if the election gave you some mandate to violate the Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress. It did not give you that mandate. You act as if your disagreement with the law, or even the public’s disagreement with the law, is relevant and gives you the ability to create your own law. It does not give you that ability.

Let’s start with your spending. You are on track to trigger the anti-deficiency act. That means you are on track to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over 2 months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has allotted enough money to ICE, but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you have been given or to invent money.

This obsession with spending at the border has left the country unprotected elsewhere. The security threats to national security are higher, not lower, since Trump came to office.

To fund the border you have illegally gutted spending to cybersecurity. As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are having a field day attacking our nation. You have withdrawn funds for disaster prevention. Storms are going to kill more people because of your illegal withholding of these funds. Your myopia about the border fueled by President Trump’s prejudice against people who speak a different language have shattered most of this country’s most important defenses.

Now let’s talk about the impoundments. When Congress appropriates funds for a specific purpose the administration has no discretion whether or not to spend that money unless you go through a specific process with this committee.

Let me give you two of many instances of this illegal impoundment. The first is a shelter and services program. Senator Britt may want to zero that account out, but that account is funded in a bipartisan way. You may not like the program. Your policy is to treat migrants badly. I think that’s abhorrent, but it doesn’t matter that you don’t like the program. You cannot cancel spending in this program, and you cannot use the funds, as you have, to fund other things, like ICE.

You have also cancelled citizenship and integration grants, which help lawful permanent residents become citizens, helping them take the citizenship test. I know your goal is to try to make life as hard as possible for immigrants, but that goal is not broadly shared by the American public. That’s why Congress, in a bipartisan way, for decades has funded this program to help immigrants become citizens.

Now let’s talk about why encounters at the southern border are down so much. This is clearly going to be your primary talking point today. You will tell us that it represents as success. But the prime reason why encounters are down is because you are brazenly violating the law every hour of every day. You are refusing to allow people showing up at the southern border to apply for asylum. I acknowledge that you don’t believe that people should be allowed to apply for asylum, but the White House doesn’t get to choose that. The law requires you to process people who are showing up at the border to apply for asylum. Why? Because our asylum law is a bipartisan commitment, an effort to correct for our nation’s unconscionable decision to deny entry to Jews to this country who were being hunted and killed by the Nazis. Our nation, Republicans and Democrats, decided, wrote it into law, that we would not repeat that horror ever again, and thus we would allow for people who were fleeing terror and torture to come here, arrive at the border, and make a case for asylum.

Finally let’s talk about these disappearances. In an autocratic society, people who the regime does not like or who are protesting the regime are often picked up off the street, and spirited away, often to open-ended detention. Sometimes they’re never seen again. What you are doing, both to individuals who have legal rights to stay here, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or students who are just protesting Trump’s policies, is immoral and, to follow the theme, it is illegal. You have no right to deport a student visa holder with no due process simply because they have spoken in a way that offends the President. You can’t remove migrants who a court has given humanitarian protection from removal.

Now, reports suggest that you are planning to remove immigrants with no due process and send them to prisons in Libya. Libya is in the middle of a civil war. It is subject to a level 4 travel advisory, meaning we tell American citizens never to travel to Libya. We don’t have an embassy there because it is not safe for our diplomats. Sending migrants with pending asylum claims into a war zone, just because it’s cruel, is so deeply disturbing.

Listen, I understand that my Republican colleagues on this committee don’t view the policy as I do, don’t share my level of concern for the way the government treats immigrants, but what I don’t understand is why we don’t have consensus in the Senate and on this committee on the decision by this Administration to impound the spending that we have decided together to allocate in defense of this nation. We as an appropriations committee worked interminable hours to write and pass this budget, and so we make ourselves irrelevant when we allow the administration to ignore what we have decided. And then when we look the other way when the administration rounds up immigrants who are here illegally and have committed no offenses worthy of detainment, we also do potential irreversible damage to the Constitution. These should not be partisan concerns—destroying the power of Congress, eroding individuals’ Constitutional rights. This should matter to both parties.
 
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Roadsteamer MEME Warriors​

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“When Nazis Are Quoted from the Bench: MAGA’s March Toward Tyranny”
By Tony Pentimalli

It happened in America. In 2025. In the halls of Congress.

Republican Congressman Keith Self, during a House hearing on censorship and public discourse, looked into the camera and quoted Joseph Goebbels — Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda — as if he were citing a respected authority on governance. “It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.” Let those words sink in.

This wasn’t an academic comparison. This wasn’t a history lesson. It was a quote from the architect of the Nazi propaganda machine, spoken aloud by a sitting U.S. Congressman in defense of state control over speech.

There is no context in which quoting Goebbels is appropriate. Ever. But in Trump’s America — where the line between fascism and patriotism has been deliberately blurred — it’s not just tolerated. It’s a signal.

Make no mistake: MAGA’s flirtation with fascism is over. They’ve moved in, redecorated the place, and made it their home.

We are no longer watching the slow creep of authoritarianism. We are watching the sprint. And Donald Trump, now back in the Oval Office after the most disgraceful and dangerous comeback in American political history, is not merely condoning it — he’s fueling it.

When Trump praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, it’s not hyperbole or entertainment. It’s aspiration. When he declares immigrants “poisoning the blood of our nation,” he’s not echoing Ronald Reagan — he’s echoing Adolf Hitler. And now, with Project 2025 well underway, his loyalists are pushing a roadmap that reads like a dystopian instruction manual: purge the federal government of dissenters, dismantle checks and balances, roll back civil rights, and crush independent thought.

But quoting Goebbels? That’s a new low — even for MAGA.

Let’s call this what it is: a brazen embrace of Nazi ideology. Goebbels was not a mere commentator on propaganda. He was its master, responsible for brainwashing a nation, silencing truth, and greasing the rails to Auschwitz with lies and hate. When a U.S. Congressman lifts his words to justify government control of speech, we are staring fascism dead in the eyes.

And don’t for one second believe it was a slip.

Keith Self sits on the same ideological team that celebrated January 6th as “patriotic,” that wants to erase uncomfortable truths from our children’s textbooks, that has outlawed books, banned history, and turned “wokeness” into a slur. These are not conservative values. These are authoritarian tactics. And they are working.

They’ve already dismantled reproductive rights. They’ve gutted voting protections. They’ve weaponized the courts — including a Supreme Court so compromised it shrinks from defending democracy and instead shields billionaires, guns, and bigotry. Trump’s allies now wear the language of fascism like a badge of honor: “retribution,” “domination,” “the enemy of the people.”

And we? We are told to be civil. To see “both sides.” To pretend that quoting Nazis from the House dais is just a political misstep and not a five-alarm fire.

This is not a drill. This is not about taxes or inflation or even the usual push and pull of partisanship. This is about whether America remains a democracy — or descends into something far darker. MAGA isn’t offering policy. It’s offering control. It’s offering submission. It’s offering a future where dissent is treason, where truth is decided by decree, and where quoting Hitler’s inner circle is not only allowed — but cheered.

The danger here isn’t abstract. It’s personal. If you’re Black, brown, LGBTQ+, Muslim, Jewish, disabled, poor, female, or an immigrant — you are the target. If you’re a teacher who believes in science, a librarian who stocks Beloved, a journalist who tells uncomfortable truths — you are the threat. If you believe that America is strongest when it defends liberty and not stomps on it — you are in the way.

And if we don’t stop this now, quoting Goebbels in Congress won’t be a scandal. It will be the standard.

History is screaming at us. The same tools used by fascists of the past — fear, propaganda, scapegoating, and the slow normalization of hate — are being sharpened by men like Trump and wielded by cowards like Keith Self.

We cannot wait for it to get worse. It already has.

This is the moment to speak, to act, to resist. Because when they start quoting Nazis without shame, the only thing left is whether we have the courage to say: Never again.
And mean it.

*Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques.*
 

Canadians Against Pierre Poilievre​


By MELISSA KOENIG
https://www.facebook.com/groups/407...6XKahwnnrzgfH1xHu9w5aha0yoP&__tn__=<<,P-y-R-R

Greg Meadows​

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An MSNBC host floated the outlandish possibility that the US could be fighting a military war with Canada in a matter of days.

Katy Tur was speaking on Tuesday with Canadian journalist Stephen Marche - whose article in The Atlantic evokes the chance of an armed conflict with the US's neighbor to the North.'Stephen, let me ask you about the article you wrote for The Atlantic - and I sent this around to my friends,' Tur began.

'Just the very fact that it was published, I think is surprising - that we can have a conversation that is serious about what a war with Canada would look like. Explain why it's no longer unthinkable,' she pressed the journalist on her show, Katy Tur Reports.

Marche replied by blaming the rhetoric of President Trump for egging on a potential military battle between the longstanding allies.

'Well, because Donald Trump makes us think it, right?' he said.

'I mean, he talks about annexing us on a regular basis. I mean somewhere around two percent of the American population actually wants to do this, but you know at this point in history, you know, the American people can obviously be convinced of anything right?' he argued.

'And already, you see numbers of Republicans who consider Canada an enemy to be growing...

'And you know, I think when countries are in constitutional crisis and when their legal systems start to fall apart, violence against neighboring countries is a very common - to me,
it's very intimately tied with this talk about being a third-term president,' Marche said.

'That's exactly, that's out of the playbook of authoritarian governments around the world.

The discussion came as Trump met with the new Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, inside the White House.

'And so Canada really does need to think about protecting ourselves from the United States and making sure that we're not just a snack,' he argued.

Marche made similar arguments in his piece for The Atlantic, which was published over the weekend - just ahead of Trump's meeting with the new Canadian Prime Minister.

'Donald Trump's pointless and malicious trade war has been, by his own account, a prelude to softening up Canada economically so that it can be appropriated as the 51st state,' the journalist wrote. 'He has brought up his plans for incorporating Canada into the union with Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney in private calls.

'Canada could no longer comfortably sit within the American military sphere,' Marche declared. 'In this stark moment, our nation has abruptly become an adversary of the most powerful country in the world.'

He goes on to argue that Canada would not be seized easily, and weighs the possibility of an armed conflict.

Ultimately, Marche concludes: 'If Trump decides to run again, a manufactured emergency over Canada would be a convenient excuse for overturning the constitutional barriers.

'Nobody wants to believe that a continental conflict could happen,' he continues, noting, 'Very few Ukrainians, right up to the point of Russia's 2022 invasion, believed their malignant neighbor would invade.

'Canada cannot afford complacency,' Marche wrote.

The discussion came as Trump met with the new Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, inside the White House on Tuesday.

During their conversation, Trump once again brought up his idea to make the northern nation the United States' '51st state.'

He claimed that the U.S.-Canada border was an 'artificially drawn line' and if they joined together it would be a 'wonderful marriage.' He added: 'But it takes two to tango, right?'

Carney appeared to squirm in his seat and fired back that Canada was 'not for sale.'
 
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Claudia Scholand​

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Jack Schlossberg- JFK grandson: This is what he said when he learned Trump unclassified his grandfather's assassination. This is pretty powerful!

A.) "President Trump is obsessed with my grandfather — but not in his life or what he achieved in it. No, just like @robertfkennedyjr @realdonaldtrump is only interested in JFK’s carcass."

B.) "JFK drafted the civil rights act — Trump made DEI illegal. JFK stared down Russia and did not blink — Trump is Russia’s closest ally. JFK sent a man to the moon — Trump gave Elon the keys to Air Force One. JFK created USAID — Trump eliminated it."

C."JFK fought fascism and Communism. Trump is selling us out to tech warlords, at home and abroad. JFK stood behind unions and labor, demanding healthcare, higher pay. Trump is stripping working families from lifesaving care , financial support."

D.)"These men are stealing history from present and future generations — by appropriating the past for their criminal agenda, they normalize themselves in the minds of those without living memory."
 
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100 Days of GovBrief

What started as me behaving like an old man yelling at a cloud has turned into a necessary chronicle of this administration's chaos: arresting mayors, threatening Congress members, detaining students and professors. Today we learned that Trump is conducting global diplomacy like a bad improv scene with no prep, no depth, no knowledge, just bluster.

In three months, this project has hit millions of social media feeds, signed up over 1,600 email subscribers, and drawn tens of thousands of website visitors. It’s clear: tracking this unraveling has become a cottage industry.

But we shouldn’t have to do this. Fire me from this side gig by making it obsolete. Get out there. Get loud. Demand better from your elected officials.

It’s getting worse. This isn’t just noise. It's a church bell echoing through every town and calling us to action while we can still act. Sign up for the free, daily, and private newsletter at GovBrief.today. No names, no phone numbers or addresses, just truth. Use a burner if you want, but don’t leave your awareness to chance.

1. https://go.govbrief.today/inda-pakistan-ceasefire

2. https://go.govbrief.today/us-china-talks

3. https://go.govbrief.today/columbia-suspends-65

4. https://go.govbrief.today/social-cost-carbon

5. https://go.govbrief.today/reps-face-arrest

6. https://go.govbrief.today/ice-tennessee-arrests

7. https://go.govbrief.today/dhs-officers-20k

8. https://go.govbrief.today/ozturk-arrives-massachusetts

9. https://go.govbrief.today/copyright-official-fire

10. https://go.govbrief.today/trump-12-briefings

11. https://go.govbrief.today/quakers-march-immigration
 
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