The Epstein files were redacted by the DOJ to spare billionaires from accountability. Trump says the undocumented in sanctuary cities are illegal. But per Jon Stewart THE REAL SANCTUARY CITY is where billionaires are protected, by money & power, from being accountable for their sex crimes.

Historian Ruth BenGhiat who studies autocratic regimes sees the arrest of independent media producer Don Lemon as typical: When the regime becomes lawless it's important to control the narrative. Independent journalists unlike corporate media exist to tell the truth. They must be silenced.

Basis for Trump's beef the 2020 election was stolen is that election returns heavily favored MAGA early but showed a Democratic surge later on.This was not from falsification of ballots but from the difference in ways of voting: MAGAs tend to vote in person on Election Day; Dems use other methods.

Way to go, Taylor Rehmet! He's the Dem who flipped the TX state senate seat in Fort Worth held the last 30 years by the GOP. That he did so by 14 points has MAGA in panic mode. A harbinger of things to come in November. We're sick of the oligarchy, lawlessness & White Nationalism

Evil incarnate. That's WH Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Never elected by the people he's heading an inhumane deportation program w daily quotas a source of misery for millions. This will go down in history as a stain on the nation's character. The most corrupt admin ever.

Former presidents deported millions more undocumented each than Trump has yet each had ZERO protests & riots. Why? Because they followed the law, thus maintained the trust of communities across America. The gestapo of Stephen Miller/Kristi Noem/Greg Bovino has been a disaster.

Trump 2.0 has no guardrails. No one restrains him anymore. This means the firehose of new forms of corruption each day is impossible to keep up with. Especially rankling is his push to shake down the govt--taking OUR taxpayer money--by suing the IRS for $10B over leaked tax info.

Independent journalist Don Lemon arrested for filming a protest during a church service. Trump claims he was interfering with the right to practice religion under the First Amendment. But if you are trying to consolidate power as an authoritarian you want to silence/intimidate dissident journalists

@hcrichardson.bsky.social Thanks for your account of what it took to desegregate the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro NC--a dramatic loss of profits. That's the same leverage Kimmel fans who canceled Disney streaming accounts exercised. Whatever it takes to get people to do the right thing.

@pbs.org @pbsnews.org What happened to the weekend news program?? Let me guess: With CPB no longer in existence there was a funding shortfall. But for years PBS has offered kid's programming on two of their three subchannels. If you'd eliminate this redundancy the money would be there. 😕

Head of independent media DemocracyDocket Marc Elias interviews Ruth BenGhiat, internationally recognized authority on fascism.She outlines exactly how Trump is out to destroy our democratic tradition to make his dictatorship unassailable. She reminds us, your voice is your vote youtu.be/hAAj7kemCuc

In another harebrained and even dangerous idea, in tribute to INDYCAR Trump announced an auto race through the streets of D.C. as part of the 250th anniversary this summer. If it's a race they're speeding and could crash out, injuring bystanders and/or damaging buildings. WTF??

@hcrichardson.bsky.social Legal analyst Andrew Weissman reviews allegations & evidence against Trump from the latest Epstein files released. It's a stress test whether the rule of law holds up as to incriminatory acts by a president BEFORE in office. (Search @economicwarning page on FB--link to FB ⛔️

Everything Trump touches dies."--Republican strategist Rick Wilson. His administration & lackies in Congress should heed this. Why Lindsey Graham is melting down. He knows if the pro- democracy movement prevails in the midterms, everybody around Trump will eventually go to jail.

TX Gov Greg Abbott is a Trump brownnoser, an utter disgrace to our state, and just could not hand over too quickly to Trump flunkies all our most sensitive private data in citizen voter rolls. DATA TO BE USED TO SUBVERT THE 2026 MIDTERMS. Marc Elias of Democracy Docket doesn't lose these lawsuits.

Donald Trump is so hopelessly narcissistic he gets pissed even when his wife gets extensive media coverage. He's severely unbalanced mentally (dementia), emotionally (narcissistic), physically (lives on McDonalds) and spiritually (pursues retribution in groundless lawsuits).

In a previous post I mentioned how ICE/CBP is trouncing the Bill of Rights even 2nd Amendment right to bear firearms. Others: 1st A (rt to peaceably assemble & protest & NOT just in confined spaces), 4th A (rt to be free from home search if no warrant FROM A JUDGE), 5th & 14th A (rt to due process).

Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis is a disaster because poorly trained federal agents have been trouncing on citizen rights under the Constitution's Bill of Rights: They've even attempted to ban legal licensed firearms--right to carry under 2nd Amendment--alienating the NRA.

Killing Alex Pretti was a summary execution. Democracies with rule of law don't do this. Hennepin Cty is conducting an investigation for a lawsuit. Because it will be tried in a STATE court, once the 2 CPB officers are found guilty Trump can't pardon them. JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED.

Between seizing ballots in Georgia, trying to leverage Minnesota to turn over its sensitive voter data, and political prosecutions, the DOJ is laying the groundwork to subvert the 2026 elections. I created Democracy Docket for times like this. Help it grow by supporting it now. hubs.ly/Q03M8rql0

Fellow pro-democracy advocates: Research on nonviolent protest movements reveals it only takes 3.5% of a nation's population protesting to force changes. For the US that's 12M of us. Last yr WE were up to 7M strong. Donate to Moveon or Indivisible to get the word out. Let's make this happen in 2026!

@hcrichardson.bsky.social Re Trump admin seizure of the Fulton Cty GA 2020 ballots, I understood from your Politics Chat yesterday they wanted to lift the personal data from each ballot. This was to see how people actually voted but also for future use to suppress. They might also alter results?

How stupid does the DOJ think we are?? They're releasing 1/2 the Epstein files saying the job is done. Yeah, but what's being covered up in the unreleased 1/2?https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-doj-announces-brazen-new-epstein-files-cover-up/

Trump's making changes to ICE ops in Minneapolis because he doesn't like chaotic situations. Good, but he overlooks the fact that his unpredictability constantly keeps the nation scrambling & stressed out from instability. He only cares when the stock mkt dives.Billionaires care.

Thank you, Bruce Springsteen, for giving such eloquent voice to our shock, disbelief, grief and outrage. This is the chorus from his protest song, "The Streets of Minneapolis." The example of Renee Good & Alex Pretti will live on.

On Jan 6 this year a desperate Trump told GOP lawmakers, "You gotta win the midterms. If we don't win...they'll find a reason to impeach me." Donald, if you had supported the rule of law--didn't think you should be accorded a separate, lax standard--this problem wouldn't exist.

The White House says it's "deeply frustrated" with Noem & Bovino. But they did exactly what the President wanted, smear Good & Pretti. After this backfired with the public including parts of MAGA, Trump is scapegoating Noem & Bovino to absolve the WH of accountability.

Can't help thinking about how life would be if Kamala had been elected: The border bill would have shut off the flow & ICE would proceed w orderly process of deporting those w criminal records just as before. No nonviolent citizens dying. No ruptured NATO. Blessedly chaos free.

Sadly, the US is no longer just unstable, it's dangerous to democracy & peace worldwide. What will we do? The rest of the world--especially our allies--are watching, and history will remember who spoke up and who stayed silent.

Political historian Heather Cox Richardson lives in a fishing village in ME far from the chaos that is the subject of her daily letter to 2.8M readers. She writes about how democracies collapse & endure. Her nightly work feels less like academia & more like meds for anxious souls

Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was commemorated in the US, alarmingly, in a country that presently has masked troops in streets, law abiding neighbors being disappeared, a president othering and dehumanizing entire communities, big mysterious prisons.

Democracy Docket's Marc Elias outlines in detail all the nefarious ways the Trump administration plans to suppress the votes of the opposition in the 2026 midterms. READ AND BE PREPARED OR GET BLINDSIDED youtu.be/7PXQfDHr9Aw

I don't know how many times we will be told by the legacy media that Trump is moderating or backing off only to then see he is worse than ever. He is an authoritarian. He enjoys the cruelty. And the first thing he had Pam Bondi do after the shooting was to try to leverage it to get the voter files.

Be the person your dog thinks you are. 😇

How Dems make Hakeem Jeffries (former Speaker of the House) president after sweeping both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterms: Impeach Vance first, appoint no successor, impeach Trump. Jeffries becomes president, appoints his veep.

@rbreich.bsky.social As you said in a video about the executions by ICE & CBP in Minneapolis,it's hard not to despair because these goon squads are moving on to other sanctuary cities. I remember the Kent State murders in May 1970. By fall the nation was quiet, riot free. How I keep the faith.

About legal rights: We know from the Constitution that Americans can expect, for example, due process (their day in court to be heard). But if a president just chooses to blow this off as Trump does, the right is only worth the paper it was written on. RIGHTS MUST BE ENFORCED.

Trump's version of the pledge of allegiance. Rampant corruption.

We can agree to disagree on things like whether coffee is good or not. But when it comes to othering people unlike us, common decency, human rights, equality under the law--this is not a difference of opinion, it's a difference in morality.

So Reuters reports that a MAGA SuperPAC is out the gate with a $300M campaign financing stockpile. We Dems raised $1B in 100 days in 2024. And besides, remember Elon massively overspent in WI but didn't get his judicial candidate elected. The will of "We the People" will triumph.

White Nationalists making up MAGA have no empathy for parents & kids, of the undocumented/citizens of color/murdered white protestors, ripped apart by federal agents running amok. Dehumanizing people deadens one's conscience. Not to mention heavy karma. Wouldnt wanna be them entering the afterlife.

Why ICE & CBP have taken to harassing & even killing nonviolent CITIZENS: Because Stephen Miller, the incarnation of evil, can't just confine himself to an orderly deportation process of those with criminal records--what Trump campaigned for. He's set a daily roundup quota.

Rita Levi-Montalcini grew up Jewish in fascist Italy which barred the brilliant scientist from research. Undeterred she set up a lab at home from scraps. She made a discovery that changed neuroscience. With ingenuity & determination we outlive life's obstacles. BELIEVE. REFRAME.

Republican politicians who think that Minneapolis is a political problem are missing the point. It is a moral problem. But they are in so deep that they cannot see just how morally bankrupt they have become. They do not understand that we are as revulsed by their complicity as by Trump's cruelty.

"Our greatest threat isn't the outsiders among us, but those among us who never look within. Fear not those without papers, but those without conscience." --Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate

Star Spangled Bummer? Westpiper on IG, following the wave of national sentiment, had the ingenious idea of playing the national anthem in a minor key. What Stephen Miller listens to as he crawls back in his coffin at dawn. 🧛

In the face of terror inflicted by federal agents in MN, the people are even more closely linked in community solidarity than before. So much so that AG Pam Bondi yesterday suggested that there was something nefarious about how well organized they are. No, Pam, they just care.

Reports out of Minnesota say that in the face of the terror inflicted by federal agents, the people are even more closely linked together in community solidarity: patrolling the streets, donating food, delivering groceries, helping with legal services, organizing lookouts.