As the debate continues to rage over ICE agent Jonathan Ross’ killing of Renee Good, serial liar, cosplayer and dog killer Kristi Noem has ordered an increased deployment of DHS agents to Minneapolis and Minnesota in a show of force. Minnesota is not amused, and the attorney general has sued to stop DHS, arguing that this federal invasion is unconstitutional.

The Tenth Amendment gives the State of Minnesota and its subdivisions, including the Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, inviolable sovereign authority to protect the health and wellbeing of all those who reside, work, or visit within their borders. The people of Minnesota are entitled to basic safety and dignity in their communities. They have the right to move about their daily lives confident that their constitutional rights and civil liberties will remain intact and will not be infringed. They have the right to go to work, take their children to school, and move through public and private spaces free from fear of violence against themselves or their loved ones by their federal government. They are entitled to access city services and use city facilities without being harassed by federal agents in parking lots. They expect that law enforcement, whether federal, state, or local, will follow the law, avoid creating dangerous and chaotic circumstances, and conduct itself in a manner that distinguishes officers from masked criminals. Indeed, being free from unlawful seizures, excessive force and retaliation are not a list of aspirations Minnesotans deserve; these are rights enshrined within state and federal laws.

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Trump says he knows nothing about it, which may well be true. After all, it’s not as if he’s a detail kinda guy, and it’s hardly surprising that minions act upon his whims with only cursory consideration of the nuts and bolts. And Jeanine Pirro, now the United States Attorney for Washington, D.C., which evokes a sad chuckle from anyone who worked in the criminal courts in Westchester County, New York, is nothing if not Trump’s minion. Or, of course, Trump knows all about it and is just lying.

For quite a while now, Trump has demanded that the Federal Reserve Bank lower interest rates under the misguided grasp of economics that if they just lower rates to make cheap credit, it will make people happy and have no collateral consequences. Imagine a mortgage at a rate of 0.9%. How cool would that be, right? Continue reading →

There’s a FIFA World Cup trophy in the Oval Office. Trump has it, but he didn’t win it. He was given the FIFA Peace Prize, a prize for which there were no rules or conditions, no other potential recipients, and invented solely to stroke Trump’s wounded ego for not having been given the Nobel Peace Prize, which he has made clear he wants desperately.

The 2025 Prize was given to Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado, who didn’t refuse the prize in favor of Trump. According to people within Trump’s White House, this is why Machado isn’t president of Venezuela after Trump removed Maduro. But Machado is coming to the United States and wants to meet with Trump. Trump wants to meet with her too, because she has something he wants. And she can give it to him the easy way or the hard way. Continue reading →

In Driftwood County, Alabama, there’s a veterinary medicine practice led by the legendary Ol’ Doc Butler, who once delivered a baby calf and spayed a barn cat for a Thanksgiving turkey and sides. This is the private file of his office manager, who just so happens to be named Karen.—CLS

NOVEMBER 12

About two or three days a month Doc Butler fires up his old Camper van and does a vaccine clinic in Driftwood County. Doc’s big on giving back to the neighbors and not so hot on technology so we send a tech with him that schedules all the vaccine appointments.

The tech’s pretty smart. She came up with this system where everything’s done via text messages. I stuck my nose up at this until I found out it created a hell of a paper trail for resolving disputes. Oh you wanted a rabies AND a bordetella shot? Where’s it say so on the text message chain we’ve had for a week over this? Add in payment links so people can pay with their stupid phones and it’s genius. Continue reading →

Given that the president and his minions have already concluded that the shoot was good, the outcome of Ka$h Patel’s investigation of the ICE killing of Renee Good seems like a foregone conclusion. What are the chances that the FBI will tell Trump he’s full of shit wrong? Not good. Not good at all. And when Patel reversed course and decided to freeze out the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from the investigation into the killing, denying access to evidence, to witnesses, to the killer, there was little expectation that it would end with anything other than an endorsement of self-defense when he was “run over,” as Trump proclaimed.

But the shame of Yale Law School, J.D. Vance, wasn’t satisfied with that and felt compelled to take it further.

Speaking at the White House, Vance appeared to try to stymie any efforts by Minnesota prosecutors to pursue a criminal case against the agent. Continue reading →

Different people see the video of the unnamed ICE agent who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good differently. Some see it as murder. Others as an agent defending himself from her Honda Pilot, even though his weapon was drawn before the car may have brushed against him and he fired into the driver’s side of the SUV as she was turning to leave and presented no threat. Others still care nothing about such nuance, and stop at FAFO. Had she complied, she wouldn’t have been killed, unconcerned that death isn’t the punishment for noncompliance.

But the official reactions, starting with DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, and moving to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, up to the president, reflect the Trump narrative that demonstrates no concern about facts or reality.

First came Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. Continue reading →

Venezuela? Cuba? Columbia? Greenland, for crying out loud? So many outrages happening at the same time that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the laws in the process of being violated. No, it’s not about a plaque to remind people how little Trump cares about the Capitol Police beaten by his Day of Love pardonees, but about the second prong of the Epstein Files disclosure law.

There’s a second prong, you ask? Indeed, there is.

Looking to update the court on their progress, they told Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York that the 12,285 documents the department has already released contain roughly 125,575 pages. Continue reading →

Five years ago, this was expected to be a day that would live in infamy. On January 7, 2021, I called it an insurrection. Since then, Trump has called it a “day of love.” Certain of the Senators and Representatives who condemned the insurrection at the time have since pretended it never happened to appease Trump. Trump has pardoned those charged and convicted for their actions that day.

Trump has fired the federal agents and prosecutors who did their jobs by investigating and prosecuting those involved. The special counsel, Jack Smith, dismissed the indictment against Trump and has himself become the target of a House investigation. The law requiring a plaque to honor the police involved to be permanently installed on the western front of the Capitol has been ignored and no one knows what became of the plaque. Continue reading →

Forgetting, for the moment, that nobody is talking about the Epstein Files at the moment, Trump announced that he’s now “in charge” of Venezuela, under his new flavor of the Monroe Doctrine, which he’s decided to call the Donroe Doctrine because there are few things he loves more than his name attached to things.

For background, the Monroe Doctrine was that the western hemisphere, the Americas, should no longer be subject to European rule, but should be independent of their colonial overlords. There was the Roosevelt Corollary, in which President Theodore Roosevelt decided to build the Panama Canal, legal niceties notwithstanding,* and the banana republics which were literally for the sake of bananas. Continue reading →

The easy response from the unduly passionate Magats is that anyone who isn’t praising Trump’s exercise of presidential fiat by invading Venezuela and seizing its illegitimate dictator must love Maduro. These are not deep thinkers. Outside of the few nations with whom Trump holds dear feelings, nobody doesn’t think Maduro was a monster whose removal from power isn’t a good thing. That, however, doesn’t mean engaging in an unlawful invasion of a sovereign nation without authority is magically a good thing.

Ilya Somin sums it up well.

Maduro is getting what he deserves, even if for the wrong reasons. But the US attack is illegal, and it is far from clear whether it will really lead to a beneficial regime change in Venezuela. Continue reading →