A brief update from Alternate America on this busy news morning: On Fox, a man with an ill-fitting cowboy hat is speaking at an ICE press conference about "Operation Dirtbag," which targeted undocumented immigrants who are sex offenders. No word yet on sex offenders who born and raised in Florida.

And you can do it on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which has accounted for $2 billion of the $5 billion the Trumps have made this year for their own cryptocurrency venture. Oh, and thanks to a pardon from Eric's dad, the founder of Binance won't have to serve time in prison.

Busy day for Trump today as the government reopens and Congress roils over whether to release records about his longtime friendship with the world's most notorious pedophile.

A perfect circle is Epstein helping Russia to blackmail Trump with real estate deals and other kompromat ahead of the 2016 election and us finding out about it almost 10 years later as Trump becomes president-for-life.

Trump used executive orders to attack voting machines, mail-in and absentee voting, and has pardoned 77 people involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election. This continues to push election denier ideology to be echoed with state-level compliance. Read more: www.american-doom.com/p/ongoing-th...

Republican efforts to interfere in the next election and cast doubt on Democrat wins in the mid-terms are in full swing. A roundup of much you’ve probably missed at today’s @americandoom.bsky.social: www.american-doom.com/p/ongoing-th...

If you just call it something else, it’s not the thing everyone knows it actually is. Conman 101.

This weekend’s strange (and obviously very anecdotal) evidence of what I’m told by Republicans is a great economy: a single roll of electrical tape cost me more than three dollars. I was shocked!

Even the “straight news” side of Fox is staffed by Trump fans. Baier and his son often golf with Trump. A recent appearance by Baier on Sean Hannity’s radio show makes clear the Fox anchor and the president are quite close.

They’re so close to figuring it out but just can’t get there.

Seems like we should be questioning the cognitive health or at least the eyesight of a guy who struggles to read a teleprompter.

Democrats won by 25 points in races for two spots on Georgia’s public utilities board. Either voters are very into public utilities or they’re so sick of Trump and Republicans they’ll vote for any Democrat on the ticket. Probably a bit of both. Today’s Doom: open.substack.com/pub/justingl...

Until he’s safely out of office — and probably for some time after, God willing — Trump is always on the ballot. That’s the price he pays for making everything about him.

Conservatives 2016-2024: dumb libs think words are violence Conservatives in 2025: mean words are literally violence bsky.app/profile/robe...

Your favorite journalist is barely subsisting (if at all) on UI, side gigs, a struggling newsletter, SNAP, and/or a horrifying freelance rat race before either crashing out spectacularly or barely rebuilding their career while the worst ppl u know are raking in the dough at the top of CBS News

DAILY MEMO: Agents Ziptie Minor and Tear Gas Oxnard Residents While Searching for ‘Anti-Ice’ Protester From Camarillo Raid

And go Blackhawks.

Indiscriminately firing tear gas with no apparent warning (in violation of a federal court order) because they got called out in one of Chicago’s most affluent neighborhoods. Chicago continues to resist and I couldn’t be prouder.

Give it a couple months and “AI or something” will be to blame for widespread election fraud.

I would like Mike Johnson to point to a single member of the American Communist Party.

Republicans haven’t offered even the remotest contrition in the wake of Saturday’s massive No Kings rallies — which would otherwise be a sign of electoral doom. Why? They have no intention of giving up power and will hold onto it by any means necessary. www.american-doom.com/p/a-governme...

Worth noting that Republicans are almost completely aligned in calling the largest single-day protest in American history a gathering of anti-American... Americans. This is not a party that wants to compromise with those it has ideological disagreements with.

An astonishingly large crowd! Chicago

The time has come for aggressive FOIA work and accompanying lawsuits.

“Which is why Trump has turned it into the very war zone he’s always claimed it to be.”

The coming insurrection "We are getting closer to the president invoking the Insurrection Act. The military will face an impossible choice." by @justinglawe.bsky.social

ICE/Border Patrol held a weapon on a guy who was demanding they show him their face in Rogers Park today

JD Vance went on TV this morning and claimed — off the top of his head — that police departments around the nation are underfunded to the point that they can’t keep proper statistics on crime levels. Therefore, you can’t believe that crime is down. If the regime doesn’t say it, it ain’t true.

“Parliament had turned over its constitutional authority to Hitler and thereby committed suicide, though its body lingered on in an embalmed state.” Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (p. 331)

Of particular note: Trump admin repeats claims about the woman who ICE shot that conflict with bodycam footage from the incident. Gov’t also demands the court to act under the presumption that Trump is acting in good faith which, of course not lol

The original story was that she threw something at DHS vehicle, which is most definitely a crime. Being released with no charges gives more credence to that story being a complete fabrication.

Just a reminder that the on-the-ground face of DHS’ terror campaign, Greg Bovino, has been found by multiple judges to have lied in court about attacks on immigration agents in California.

They did this on purpose to flout the judge’s order. It’s another example of the executive branch daring the judiciary to stop them, full stop.

Chicago, the tough Midwest city that famously puts up with bullshit and enjoys people coming from elsewhere to tell us what to do.

by @justinglawe.bsky.social "Trump’s confusion isn’t just darkly comical (and a troubling reminder of the president’s growing senility) — it’s also a stark illustration of the whiplash-inducing disconnect between his rhetoric and the reality on the ground in cities like Portland and Chicago"

Did I hear Tom Emmer correctly that Republicans are upset that federal workers aren’t getting paid during the shutdown? The same party that had Elon Musk and his gang of miscreants gut the federal government and fire thousands? Seems insincere.

By contrast, JB Pritzker told me that people should flood the No Kings protests precisely in order to let the American people know that something is deeply amiss. More Dems should be doing this, to send the message widely that we are in real trouble right now. newrepublic.com/article/2016...

Today at @atrupar.com’s PN: Trump’s rationale for invading Portland is even dumber than you think. www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-port... At Doom, the government argues in court for no limits to Trump’s power. www.american-doom.com/p/the-coming...

Last I checked: Ingrassia was a 29-year-old former law firm staffer who had never passed the bar.

Just re-reading Heather's incredible thread from this afternoon's hearing in Illinois vs. Trump. At least twice, the DOJ attorneys demand that the court "defer" to the president's decision-making in deploying the National Guard. Truly unprecedented stuff with huge implications for executive power.

Just want to point out something important from today's hearings in Oregon in Illinois: In both cases, Justice Department lawyers argued on behalf of Trump that no one — cities, states, courts — should be able to question his legal rationale for deploying troops wherever he likes.

Please be kind when journalists forget to include a link or misspell a word or name. There is a lot going on right now, everyone is exhausted, and many independent reporters and freelancers are doing this for free or very little money.

The "somebody showed me a TikTok" era of American government is going pretty much exactly how you'd expect.

Full-on SCOTUS audition today by Nelson: do you admit that it was "ill advised" by the city of Portland to order the boards be taken off the ICE building? His whole thesis is: we don't know what Trump is seeing behind the scenes, so how could we possibly question his judgment in sending in troops?

Judge Nelson in Oregon is making a similar argument regarding the third prong of Sec. 12406: of the President says he can’t enforce the laws and therefore must send in the Guard, we have to believe him.

So far this sounds very much like a 2–1 panel decision in favor of Trump having the right to deploy the NG to Portland, Oregon. This is despite TROs usually not being appealable and DOJ appealing Judge Immergut's first TRO but not the second one. (Though the full court might rehear en banc.)

Possible direction violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which a judge in CA already determined occurred in LA in June.

We are rolling in the Ninth Circuit, where a three-judge panel is hearing arguments from the Justice Department and Oregon Attorney General regarding the deployment of the National Guard to Portland.

We have reached the point in our constitutional crisis where former high-ranking military leaders are warning against domestic deployment of the National Guard in federal court.

I give it 36 hours or less.