If you read the article, they didn’t try to seize his phone. He even said they could have taken his phone. A law allows them to temporarily confiscate it on entry. But they didn’t. Instead, they asked him to give them his phone. He declined. Had he complied with that request, I think that might have waived a lot of rights. They wanted to read his text messages. He invoked attorney-client privilege and refused. They finally asked to look at his contact list and he agreed. They asked him who each person was and he just said they were clients. I don’t know if this was a fishing expedition, or an attempt to intimidate. Or both.
The attack on lawyers from this administration is really concerning, because they’re the ones who can best defend everyone else the administration is attacking. This is why people are so pissed at so many Big Law firms that have bent the knee.
At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), some sources who spoke to NPR suspect the targets were picked as retribution dating back to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who took over as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases after Dr. Anthony Fauci departed, got the offer, according to an email obtained by NPR.
So did Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, the top bioethicist at the NIH, along with two others close to Fauci, according to a source who was not authorized to speak about the situation.
It’s just more revenge, and has the added benefit of emphasizing their disrespect for Native Americans as well.
William “Chief Bill” Smith chairs an organization that advocates for the IHS on behalf of tribes, the National Indian Health Board. “Any major leadership changes within IHS should be made in full consultation with Tribal Nations, as required by law,” Smith wrote in a statement to NPR. “Tribal Consultation is not just a procedural step—it is a fundamental responsibility of the federal government.”
The problem is that we’ve got a nation full of folks who crave drama. They swore that they wanted boring back after the pandemic, and did nothing but whine after they got it. Instead, they tuned in hard to the right-wing media lying about how they were living under martial law with all their rights stripped away because of being inconvenienced or asked to do simple things to protect themselves and others. They would rather believe in fairy tales and fantasy than pay attention to reality and live responsibly.
We need a combination of boring and entertaining that will keep these folks pacified enough to avoid being lured by con artists jingling their keys/posting on social media all day. We’re learned that we cannot leave them to their own devices, or they will do things that harm everyone if they possibly can. They hate the nanny state and are trying their best to sink the ship of state. We need better programming that packs an emotional punch and provides hope for the future if we’re going to win the war for hearts, minds, and votes needed to undo the sociopolitical damage that’s been done in the past 10+ years.
no big reveal; i clearly have no f@$n clue what drives the stock-market other than a haphazard sort of twitchy (human) psychology
(“all the @#$! braindead tariffs are still ‘on’ aren’t they??” “Well, someone said that someone saw that trump twitched a little when some Chinese re-re-reciprocal tariffs were apparently threatened.” -ah-)
I gotta say, the ire and vitriol coming from Republican billionaire megadonors over the tariffs is starting to make me think. I’m not saying I think the tariffs might be a good idea, but these assholes are big mad about them, and I usually think anything that makes them this mad can’t be all bad.
I don’t know. The billionaires are used to being part of the inner circle that the government works for, at the expense of everyone else. Now that inner circle is instead just Trump and his thugs, and the billionaires are getting a first small taste of what it’s like to be on the outside. Maybe a deserved comeuppance for them but it doesn’t change that everyone else is still outside too.
(and @Heikki, whose post about Åland you were responding to):
Can I just say, this is why diversity is so crucial: if we didn’t have knowledge and research skills from around the world here, we wouldn’t know 1/100th of what we do. It’s thrilling, not scary.
Why wallow in mediocrity? Why aren’t they excited by all the new things they could learn by surrounding themselves with alternative perspectives? Why are their egos so fragile?
People are mentally primed by nature to be biased towards bad news. Exciting means drama. But right now the “news” and “news media” is overpowering actual fiction for drama because there’s money in it.
People are more entertained by fighting about entertainment produced by the likes of Disney and Paramount than they are by the drama of the shows themselves. As the political sphere leans into this the showbiz president is finding that it takes the dissolution of the US constitution and the outright murder of immigrants whose crimes seem to be simply being immigrants. Gotta keep the world’s attention though! Gotta beat those “hollywood types” etc. It’s hard to compete with public human sacrifice for entertainment value.
Jesus is dead. They’ve killed him again already but it didn’t even make a headline.
Just another statistic.
I doubt Trump can play the fiddle but if he did I’m sure 25% of the population would agree his fiddling was even greater than the flames.
I keep reading right wing comments in Canada (you’re in Canada, I think) about how we’ve been living under a Trudeau-led Liberal dictatorship. These clowns have no clue what a real dictatorship is like.
Trump’s art is stand-up with cruelty in place of comedy, because he has no appreciation for anything you need to practice at or that takes taste. But like Nero he absolutely can go long enough that I would rather pretend to die rather than listen.
The Trump administration is reportedly considering unilateral drone strikes on Mexico purportedly to combat drug cartels trafficking fentanyl. If the strikes occur without Mexican cooperation, it would be the latest instance of the administration creating friction with longtime American allies.
NBC News reports that discussions between the Trump White House and officials in the defense and intelligence agencies are underway, according to sources within the military, law enforcement, and intelligence areas.
Currently, the U.S. is making surveillance flights as part of an intelligence collecting operation against the cartels, but those are being done with Mexican cooperation. A former official told the outlet the flights are being used to “build a target deck.”
Experts told NBC that drone strikes aren’t a good way to combat illegal drug trafficking. …
“In an interview with The Financial Times published Monday, Langone said he was baffled by the much-derided calculations behind the import taxes.
“I don’t understand the goddamn formula,” Langone said.
“I believe he’s been poorly advised by his advisers about this trade situation — and the formula they’re applying.”
Langone added that the 46% tariff on Vietnam was “bullshit,” and the extra 34% tax on Chinawas “too aggressive, too soon” and prevented “serious negotiations a chance to work.”“
GOP megadonor and Home Depot founder doesn’t like the leopards.
Instead, they tuned in hard to the right-wing media lying about how they were living under martial law with all their rights stripped away because of being inconvenienced or asked to do simple things to protect themselves and others. They would rather believe in fairy tales and fantasy than pay attention to reality and live responsibly.
