1. I bought some purple sweet potato spread at work a couple months ago and hadn't used it yet because I had other toast toppings that needed to get used up first, but I finally tried it today and it's so good!
2. I took four walks today and walked almost ten miles total. It's really nice weather for it. Mostly cool and overcast, and though it was a bit sunnier around lunchtime it still wasn't really hot or glaring.
3. I wanted to walk somewhere for lunch today and go somewhere new, so I was just poking around at the maps app and seeing what was around and remembered this place called Pita House down the street that we'd wanted to try. I took a look at their menu as I was walking down and saw they have cheesy shawarma fries and that locked my decision in lol.
They were amazing. I still have half of them left, as well as a beef kebab and some pita, because the fries were listed as an appetizer so I thought it might be small, but I was wrong. The fries alone would be good for two people and the kebab was overkill. But now I have something to eat tomorrow for lunch as well.
4. I haven't seen the granola bar guy at the farmers market in a few weeks but he was there today. He said he was there a couple weeks ago, but that must have been a week I missed. He's got a new flavor, peanut butter and chocolate, and it's really good. I also got a couple of my favorite coconut macadamia ones.
The world is on fire, but after ICE murdered someone else in Minneapolis this morning, I called both my senators and also Chuck Schumer--I called him a coward and said we needed him to do better, giving my old Manhattan zip code. Apparently enough people made enough calls, and Schumer said an hour ago that Senate Democrats won't provide the votes for a funding bill that includes the Department of Homeland Security.
It seems likely that Alex Pritti's murder mattered to people who were prepared to overlook their murder of Renee Good, because it shows that while ICE is profoundly racist, a white man with a gun permit isn't safe either.
I can't do much for my friends in Minneapolis, but if there's something that would be useful, please ask.
ETA: After posting that, I realized I could afford to donate some money. So, I followed the links on Naomi Kritzer's recent post, donated $50 to Minnesota Rapid Response, and bought a bunch of dental floss to a group that was asking for that.
Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
When Republicans are facing a public backlash, they have a go-to lie they tell.
In an appearance on Fox News on Thursday, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer claimed that protesters opposing abusive behavior by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in his home state of Minnesota were being paid by nefarious unnamed sources.
“The people that you’re seeing in the videos, the vast majority of them, I’m going to tell you, I do not believe, are from Minnesota. These are organized chaos agents. They are agitators that are paid,” Emmerstold the right-wing network.
Emmers argued “the vast majority” of Minnesota residents who have spoken to him about the incursion into the state, where an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old mother Renee Good, “appreciate” the agency’s presence there.
Over the past year, Republicans have hit a similar refrain as part of a campaign to minimize grassroots opposition to Trump and his policies.
After people protested the deployment of federal troops in Los Angeles last June, President Donald Trump falsely labeled them as “paid insurrectionists.” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noeminsisted last Sunday that protesters in Minneapolis were “organized, funded protesters.”
Asked about the federal government declining to investigate Good’s death, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahomatold CNN, “If they’re investigating anything, they need to be investigating the paid protesters.”
Billionaire Elon Musk, a GOP megadonor,even claimed last April that the grassroots protests at Tesla dealerships against his so-called Department of Government Efficiency were “very organized” and “paid for.”
People protesting Elon Musk's actions in the Trump administration hold signs outside a Tesla showroom in Seattle last February.
None of these figures offered up evidence of their smears. But all of them were simply keeping a longstanding tradition on the right: falsely claiming protests are paid for, rather than organic.
During the Civil Rights Movement, racist leaders of towns, cities, and states in the Southfrequently alleged that Black-led protests for equal rights were not a reflection of the community but were being conducted by outside agitators. Often, the racists alleged that these supposed agitators were paid or were agents of the Soviet Union.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who faced this accusation, mocked the sentiment. He compared himself toan agitator in a washing machine and told audiences, “I’m agitating to knock the dirt out of our society—discrimination, Jim Crow, segregation, racism. So they’re right. I am agitating—agitating to clean up our democracy. That’s what all of us need to do—agitate for a better America, a freer America, a fairer America.”
Even more ironic about conservatives’ accusation is that their own movement has a much more extensive and documented history of paid protesting, agitation, and faux civic engagement.
The tea party movement’s protests against the policies of former President Barack Obama were often organized and significantly funded by right-wing pressure groups like Freedomworks as well as the billionaire Koch family.
Protesters march near the White House on the anniversary of President Donald Trump's first year of his second term in office, on Jan. 20.
Groups opposing quarantine policies at the height of the COVID-19 pandemicwere also put together by a network of conservative donors and activist groups, while they were portrayed as a grassroots uprising against an oppressive government.
In one of the more infamous moments in phony organizing, when Trump first announced that he was running for president in 2015,his campaign paid supporters to cheer for him at Trump Tower in New York.
What conservatives don’t want to contend with is the reality that Trump’s policies and the ideas put into place by congressional Republicans are unpopular. Anti-immigration violence and cost-increasing tariffs generate genuine opposition.
Republicans would love a world where they can disregard protesters as a paid distraction. But they are very real, no matter how furiously the right tries to spin the reality being witnessed by millions.
Fandom: Star Trek Pairings/Characters: Kirk/Spock Rating: Teen and Up Length: 4188 words over 2 stories Creator Links:almondrose at ao3 Theme: Crack Treated Seriously
Summary: "an AU where the enterprise is a VSA ship filled with vulcans"
Reccer's Notes: This short series (two stories, "logical" and "illogical") is one of my favorite pick-me-ups. Captain Skirk of the VSA's exasperation with his CMO's insistence that Spock is human slays me, as does said CMO's reaction to encountering his alternate-universe human self.
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Saturday to midnight on Sunday (8pm Eastern Time).
Recently Finished The Grapples of Wrath New book in the Grave Expectation series! I had no idea this was coming out until very recently so it was a nice surprise. Still enjoying the series.
Blackmail, My Love Stand-alone mystery set in the early '50s with a queer woman investigating the disappearance of her (also queer) brother. I enjoyed this but didn't love it. Kind of slow-paced for a lot of it.
A High Five for Glenn Burke Sweet middle-grade book about a boy who does a report in class about Glenn Burke, the baseball player who invented the high five, but is afraid that people will find out the other reason he likes Burke so much: that he was gay just like the MC.
Banned Book Club Graphic novel about college student activists in South Korea in the '80s. This is not a period I had any background knowledge of so it was really interesting. I'm definitely interested in learning more.
The Great British Bump Off:-Kill or Be Quilt New John Allison comic! I had no idea about this but it suddenly showed up on Hoopla. Although it shares the title with a previous comic from a couple years ago, it's not connected at all except by the main character (who is also a character from his Bad Machinery series). I love pretty much everything by him, and this was no exception. Very silly and cute.
Sakura, Saku vol. 9 I don't think I would have followed this series to the end of it hadn't been on Viz Manga, which I already subscribe to. It's cute enough, but started to feel annoying with the hurdles introduced. This was a decent ending to the series, though.
This post has been brewing for a while, and I guess I'm finally going to just write it down, even though it doesn't feel "complete" or fully processed or anything of the sort. But it probably never will be. So, this is as coherent as it's going to get.
As a child,Michelle Serrano would take trips to Boca Chica with her grandmother. From her home in Brownsville, the drive ran east through Texas wetlands and countryside before landing on miles of beach, stretching far down the Gulf Coast just above the U.S.-Mexico border. They’d spend the day there, swimming, laying out — which didn’t cost anything, unlike at South Padre Island to the north. For them, it was the peoples’ beach.
Today, decades later, it’s hard for Serrano to believe those memories. It’s early December at Boca Chica Beach. A thick fog has settled over the sand dunes as Serrano pulls up the hood of her jacket to block the coastal wind. Already, she had seen four U.S. Border Patrol trucks driving along the sand — trucks she knows will slow down as the drivers stare at her with suspicion.
Two rocket launch pads loom behind her, actively under construction for Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starbase. There, more Border Patrol units sit.
“I’ve never seen this many Border Patrol trucks before,” Serrano said. “I mean, who would go out here now? We’d just be watched, suspected. It’s sad. It’s sad because this isn’t our beach anymore.”
Over the last few years, Serrano and other residents living at the southernmost tip of Texas have seen a dramatic shift in their environment. The Rio Grande Valley, which has for decades been home to border security, is now a land of increased militarization and border wall construction that has ramped up since President Donald Trump returned to office last January, includingwaiving a long listof national, state and local laws designed to protect the environment, wildlife and public access. Alarmed, critics have expressed deep concern about the escalating impact this effort has on the local ecology and waterways, and the growing limitations on those who once frequented public beaches, parks and the Rio Grande.
Michelle Serrano walks along Boca Chica Beach.
Experts warned that Trump’s second term in office would be worse for the environment than his last term, and now point to the Trump administration’s actions last year. The administration signednumerous waiversto bypass environmental, Indigenous rights and endangered species laws along the border to expedite border wall construction, including waiving allprocurement and contract lawsfor the entire 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Themost recent waiverfor the Rio Grande Valley was signed Dec. 9, bypassing nearly all environmental laws along the 100 mile stretch from Brownsville to Rio Grande City. Of the 61 waivers for the border signed since 2005, the Trump Administration signed 27 of them, all in 2025.
TheOne Big Beautiful Billallocated $170 billion for immigration and border enforcement, including $46.5 billion for border wall construction, over four years andexpanded the national defense areathrough 250 miles of the Rio Grande Valley, giving the Department of Defense jurisdiction over the land.
For Serrano and other residents, this means there’s even more reason to avoid the border. Serrano can barely remember a time that she spent at the Rio Grande without the presence of border security. And now, it would be impossible to get near it without drawing the attention of the roving Border Patrol units.
“It’s not really a river anymore. It’s like it’s lost its identity,” Serrano said. “Now all it is a border between us.”
Bypassing Environmental Law
Since the George W. Bush administration adopted thefirst border waiverthrough the 2005Real ID Act, environmentalists and ecologists have expressed concerns over the militarization along the border and the impact that the increased personnel, installations and wall would have on the local habitat, wildlife and the Rio Grande itself.
Today, these waivers give Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem the authority to waive all legal requirements for the construction of the border wall, which will stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
Most recently, the rate of waiver implementation has increased in frequency and force, according to Dinah Bear, a lawyer specializing in environmental policy.
Michelle Serrano looks through the border wall in Brownsville, Texas.
In October, theTrump administrationadopted contract and procurement waivers that cover the full border, meaning the entire $46.5 billion border wall construction project no longer has to abide by laws meant to increase contract transparency, foster competition and limit fraud or bribery.
Typically, the government would take bids from numerous contenders for a federal project, sort through them and choose an awardee. Then a contract would be drawn up complete with rules, regulations and limitations in mind.
“Waivers are usually set for a specific area, such as a section of the Rio Grande Valley, but this time they did the entire border with the procurement waivers,” Bear said. “They [the government] can kind of do whatever they want within $46 billion.”
The Trump administration also recently signeda waiverfor a little more than 100 miles of border along the Rio Grande Valley, noting that it would bypass numerous environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and many others.
The environmental waivers are particularly concerning for ecologists and environmentalists.
“Animals are crossing for food, water and mates, crossing this arbitrary line,” said Kate Ostrom, a researcher in Latin American literature and environmental humanities at the University of Michigan. “We see the line, but you know wildlife is not thinking about that. They’re moving through these connected (vertical) habitats.”
Ostrom studies the ecological losses in borderscapes such as the U.S.-Mexico border. In one case, along the Texas border, the black bear’s southernmost habitat is in northern Mexico. However, the border wall and increased militarization prevents the bear from crossing into Mexico — meaning that Mexico could eventually lose its entire black bear population, Ostrom said.
“At the same time we’re seeing this militarizing physical borders, we’re seeing an increase in drought or hurricanes or natural disasters making it harder for not only humans to flee, but wildlife as well,” Ostrom said. “Some animals are shifting north and it’s harder to cross.”
For example, according to areport publishedby the U.S. Geological Survey in 2024, the climate niche for lizards and snakes is shifting due to climate change and warming temperatures. Eventually, the environments these animals need to survive will no longer exist and the reptiles will need to move elsewhere, the report notes.
“It might not just be difficult for them to cross, it may be impossible,” Ostrom said. “So in their circumstance, they would just die anyway because they aren’t living in the area they’re supposed to live in.”
A woman walks her dog along the border wall in McAllen, Texas.
The border wall also prevents border animals from crossing during a natural disaster. In Hidalgo County at the border, the border wall is being built directly in the leveescreated to prevent floodingin the community from the Rio Grande, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission.
This is a concern for border wall critics like Scott Nicol, an art professor at South Texas College, just a few miles north of the Rio Grande. Nicol has been following the border wall implementation since the first Trump administration. At the border wall in Hidalgo County, he said he can see the clear difference between a levee with a wall and a levee without one.
“In the past, animals who were escaping flood waters would run up over the levee to safety,” Nicol said. “Now the smaller animals will get trapped between the concrete, which is several feet high, and drown.”
As the border wall construction continues, these negative effects will grow with time, he predicted.
“The levees work with the landscape,” Nicol said. “The wall does not.”
Relationship With the River
In Brownsville, Serrano is alarmed by the increase in security at Boca Chica, and it’s not just the Border Patrol presence. Buoys and other obstacles placed in the river to prevent people from crossing are growing in number. She said that the place she grew up is no longer as accessible as it once was.
Serrano has dedicated much of her life to the border, only having left the area briefly for Houston and Austin. She earned her masters degree in nonprofit management and now is co-director of the immigration and environmental nonprofitVoces Unidas RGV. Recently, the organization hosted a Dia de los Muertos event near the border wall to honor migrant lives and connect with the land in the Rio Grande Valley.
The Department of Homeland Security is “cutting off some of the most beautiful places we’ve seen, that we have access to,” Serrano said. “Some people [in the Rio Grande Valley] were here before this area was even Texas. We lived on this land and now we’ve been losing the connection.”
The waivers signed in 2025 include the waterborne project, which places obstacles such as buoys in the water between Texas and Mexico. In July, the administration signeda waiverto construct a 17-mile waterborne barrier in Brownsville, including stretches along the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The buoy system has been calleda massive humanitarian riskby activists, officials and human rights organizations, leading the U.S. Department of Justice tofile a lawsuit against the state of Texasin 2023 for using the buoys in the Rio Grande.
The administration plans to extend the buoy systemall the wayto Boca Chica Beach, where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico — about 25 miles east of Brownsville.
“All of this just eliminates litigation for the government, for the Department of Homeland Security,” Bear said. “With the waivers, states and local authorities can’t do anything to prevent it. I mean they’ve waived everything they can, but who says they won’t go for other laws in the future too?”
Residents in Brownsville and McAllen no longer interact with the river in any recreational way, said Ricky Garza, an immigration and civil rights lawyer based in McAllen, a border town about 60 miles west of Brownsville.
Garza grew up in the Valley, and his family has roots here as far back as the 1800s.
“There was a time when there were lots of restaurants and bars along the river,” Garza said. “Now, there is just one. It’s also the only place you can get a boat tour of the Rio Grande.”
It’s much the same in other areas along the border, such as El Paso. Vianey Rueda, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan focused on water rights and the Rio Grande Valley, said the interactions that locals have with the river have changed.
Rueda sees an incongruity between the environmental concerns over the Colorado River compared to the Rio Grande. While drought and the water crisis in the Colorado River are constant topics of conversation, with the Rio Grande, despite a very similar water crisis, the focus is on the military at the border and the wall construction.
She grew up in a small community just outside El Paso called San Elizario, and never once has she been able to access the river there because of the border wall. Citizens are allowed to go beyond the wall since it’s still U.S. territory, but people avoid doing that, said Rueda.
“When I visited Boca Chica, it was my first time actually touching the river, and I realized not only are these barriers impacting ecology through dividing nature, but it’s also altering the minds of people that live there,” Rueda said.
Rueda’s mother in San Elizario remembers the river as a place where she swam and had picnics; now her mother almost forgets there is a river at all.
“I’m having conversations with people, like my mom, and it’s like not just something they miss, but it’s something they forgot that they missed,” she said. “Now they all just think about it as a border and the immigration and the law, not a river.”
For Garza, no one wants to get close to the border, especially if they feel particularly targeted by Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In one case, Garza was walking along one of the border parks with his wife when Border Patrol agents came up to them to ask why they were so close to the border.
They said they were going on a walk in the park, and the agents responded “that they better be careful because they were searching for some bodies in the area.”
“And by bodies he meant immigrants who crossed over,” Garza said. “Why would anyone want to come to the park if you could have an interaction like that?”
The man that Border Patrol murdered today in Minneapolis was filming immigration agents, as he’s allowed to do, and was killed for helping a woman being pepper-sprayed by the mad king’s private goon militia.
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He was murdered by ICE for protecting a woman from being pepper sprayed. He never pulled a gun. This was an execution. [ANGLE IS FROM WOMAN FILMING BEHIND THE VICTIM GIVES WAY MORE CLUES]. FUCK DHS. FUCK ICE. pic.twitter.com/g3fVWcr4oW
This undated photo provided by Michael Pretti shows Alex J. Pretti, the man who was shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
Homeland Security shills claimed he had a gun. He did. He never drew it. He had a license for it. Video shows the immigration goons retrieved it. Then they executed him.
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Third angle of today’s shooting of a 37-year-old male by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, clearly shows one of the agents running away from the scuffle before the shooting carrying the victim's handgun, a Sig P320. pic.twitter.com/97atyCozQP
Thank god for Minneapolis police, who aren’t playing.
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They tried to cover it up immediately and the Minneapolis police chief refused. Witnesses have been taken to police headquarters and all available off duty police have been called to work. ICE cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Congress must act now. The Courts must stop the… pic.twitter.com/IAiGbtkJpp
And of course, MAGA is now claiming the execution was justified because Pretti had a legally permitted gun. They were never about owning guns to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. They want guns in order to impose tyranny, and protect that tyranny from the people.
BREAKING: Head of Gestapo ICE Greg Bovino spews lies about the execution of an American protester, and legally permitted gun owner, by his thug forces.
Those were not defensive shots. They shot him 14 TIMES!
And this is just the latest of a never-ending stream of outrages. Just another day in Trump’s America.
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This is a cruel disgrace. ICE agents in Minneapolis chase, tackle, and handcuff a child in the freezing cold and snow while he yells “I’m legal! I’m legal!” How does this make us safer? How does this target “the worst of the worst?” Horrifying and shameful. pic.twitter.com/PDHr6m82Oy
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
This week, we say goodbye to supposed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, which is great, but we also say hello to Judge Aileen Cannon, which is very not great. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also inadvertently reminds us that the only role of the current federal government is to execute President Donald Trump’s personal demands.
Lol, Lindsey Halligan. Lol.
Halligan has held on as long as humanly possible, swanning around the Eastern District of Virginia and signing indictments as the U.S. attorney despite a court telling her she was not the U.S. attorney. Earlier this month, a judge ordered Halligan to explain why she thought she could do this, resulting in a filing that the judge in the case, Trump appointee David Novak, said “contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this Court, particularly the Department of Justice.”
With that, you will likely not be surprised that Novak ruled this past Tuesday that no, really, the court did not stutter: Halligan cannot keep passing herself off as the U.S. attorney.
Lindsey Halligan, shown last August.
Somehow, Novak was not swayed by Halligan’s argument that even though a judge ruled she wasn’t legally in her job and never had been, that somehow applied only to the prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Nor did he buy her whining that, since former special counsel Jack Smith may have continued to sign things as special counsel after Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the classified documents case against Trump, she gets to cosplay as the U.S. attorney. Also a nope: the usual Justice Department argument that the court has no authority to do anything Trump doesn’t like.
The DOJ also told Novak that he was impinging on the executive branch's authority by reminding Halligan of her ethical obligations as a lawyer, and that the court could take action when ethical rules were violated. Novak didn’t like that one either, pointing out that being employed by the DOJ isn't some magical shield that protects attorneys from the ethical rules everyone else has to follow.
Novak’s opinion dropped on Jan. 20, the same day that a different judge in the district published a vacancy notice, soliciting applicants for the interim U.S. attorney gig. Since Halligan is out, the judges in the U.S. attorney’s office can choose their own person for the role.
That very same day, Halligan finally announced she would be stepping down, which is an odd thing to announce about a job she never actually had. But if Halligan’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney had been valid, it would have expired on Jan. 20—120 days after she was fake-appointed.
Halligan’s attempt to do the “You can’t fire me because I quit” move is equal parts pathetic and hilarious. Regardless, we won’t have her to kick around any longer.
Maybe. Possibly.
Okay, probably not. Halligan is an extremely bad penny, and she’s bound to turn up somewhere else.
Thanks, Aileen Cannon
Judge Aileen Cannon is clutch when it comes to coming through for Trump. She has been protecting him for over a year now, keeping part two of Jack Smith’s special counsel investigation secret because Trump wants it that way.
Evidence seized by the FBI during its search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 20, 2022.
Cannon has been presiding over a case by oversight and journalism watchdogs seeking to force the release of Smith’s report documenting his investigation into Trump’s illegal retention of classified documents, which he stashed at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Cannon helpfully enjoined its release, saying she couldn’t release it while Trump’s co-defendants were still litigating their criminal charges, but the DOJ dismissed those cases ages ago.
Cannon dragged her feet so long that in early November, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ordered her to rule on whether to release the report within 60 days, which came and went earlier this month. Instead, Cannon let Trump intervene in the lawsuit to explain how it would be unfair and make him very sad.
Now, Cannon has a motion from Trump explaining that since she voided the prosecution by inventing some new rule that special counsels were basically illegal, the underlying report can never be released. It’s a perfect opportunity for one of Trump’s pet judges to display her fealty by protecting him yet again.
The New York Times grows a spine
The New York Times is pushing back against the comically broad discovery demand issued by Trump in one of his numerous private lawsuits. This is the one where he wants $15 billion from the Times, alleging they defamed him by writing about him, essentially. How dare they.
The New York Times building in New York City.
This is the case where the court threw out Trump’s original complaint, an 85-page whine about all his grievances, including how he didn’t get enough credit for “The Apprentice.” Trump refiled a shorter complaint, one that the Times has moved to dismiss, pointing out that the new complaint still doesn’t meet the basic requirements of a defamation claim: identifying specific false statements of fact and why they are untrue. The Times also asked that, if the court won’t dismiss the case, it be transferred out of the Middle District of Florida because the allegations all relate to conduct that occurred in New York, where The New York Times is based.
While the motions to dismiss are pending, Trump is desperately trying to keep the case in Florida, demanding that the Times cough up information on readership metrics, printing, warehousing, and more. Trump seems to think that if the Times sold enough newspapers in Florida, he gets to keep the case there.
The Times wants discovery stayed while the court rules on the motions to dismiss so that they’re not jammed up, providing burdensome reams of irrelevant sales material for a case that will get thrown out or moved to the correct venue.
The mere fact that Trump has tried to push these onerous discovery demands while those motions are pending makes it pretty clear that this is designed to harass the Times, which is all these broadsides against the media are really about. Well, that and getting those media companies to give him millions of dollars to “settle” these spurious claims.
Is it good when a judge says your arguments are ‘futile’?
Because that’s what a federal judge just told the Trump administration about its attempt to keep recycling the same arguments about why it can withhold billions from sanctuary cities.
The administration has been fighting this tooth and nail since last February, arguing not just that his administration can defund sanctuary cities but can also punish local officials in sanctuary jurisdictions for obstructing justice. And the plaintiffs have won again and again, so much so that the judge on the case, William H. Orrick, sounds a wee bit exasperated that the administration keeps trotting out arguments it has already rejected.
The administration sought to get the case dismissed by arguing that a court can’t actually rule on its attempts to yank money from sanctuary jurisdictions, a move that very much did not work.
Now, the plaintiffs can proceed with their lawsuit—well, until the next time the Department of Justice throws a monkey wrench in everything.
The whole administration works for Donald Trump, private citizen
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, shown in December.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had a revealing slip of the tongue when issuing a straight-up threat to CBS from her official government perch.
After CBS taped a 13-minute interview with Trump as part of their overall efforts to suck up to him, Leavitt relayed to “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil that Trump said, “Make sure you guys don’t cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full.” When Dokoupil said CBS was already planning to do that, Leavitt upped the ante: “He said, ‘If it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.”
In short, Leavitt used her official role to threaten a major network into bowing to Trump, or else get sued.
Trump, of course, has already sued CBS over a similar complaint about the network editing an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris rather than running it in its entirety. CBS gave Trump a cool $16 million bribe to “settle” this with Trump, the private citizen.
Leavitt’s remarks are a new frontier in lawlessness, however. She's either saying that the government itself will take official action against CBS if Trump doesn’t get his way, or she’s saying there is no real daylight between official Trump and private Trump, so his personal lawsuits are blessed by the administration. Both of these are very bad!
After a year of ongoing measles outbreaks that have sickened more than2,400 people, the United States is poised to lose its status as a measles-free country. However, the newly appointed principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ralph Abraham, said he was unbothered by the prospect at a briefing for journalists this week.
“It’s just the cost of doing business with our borders being somewhat porous for global and international travel,” Abraham said. “We have these communities that choose to be unvaccinated. That’s their personal freedom.”
Infections from other countries, however, accounted for onlyabout 10%of measles cases detected since Jan. 20, 2025, the official start of the deadly measles outbreak in West Texas, which spread to other states and Mexico. The rest were acquired domestically. This marks a change since the U.S. eliminated measles in 2000. Measles occasionally popped up in the U.S. from people infected abroad, but the cases rarely sparked outbreaks, because of extremely high rates of vaccination. Two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine strongly prevent infection and halt the virus’s spread.
To maintain its measles elimination status, the U.S. must prove that the virus has not circulated continuously in the nation for a year, between Jan. 20, 2025, and Jan. 20, 2026. To answer the question,scientists are examiningwhether the major outbreaks in South Carolina, Utah, Arizona, and Texas were linked.
Health officials confirmed that the main measles virus strain in each of these outbreaks is D8-9171. But because this strain also occurs in Canada and Mexico, CDC scientists are now analyzing the entire genomes of measles viruses — about 16,000 genetic letters long — to see whether those in the United States are more closely related to one another than to those in other countries.
The CDC expects to complete its studies within a couple of months and make the data public. Then the Pan American Health Organization, which oversees the Americas in partnership with the World Health Organization, will decide whether the U.S. will lose its measles elimination status. And that would mean thatcostly,potentially deadly, and preventable measles outbreaks could become common again.
“When you hear somebody like Abraham say ‘the cost of doing business,’ how can you be more callous,” said pediatrician and vaccine specialist Paul Offit, in anonline discussionhosted by the health blogInside Medicineon Jan. 20. “Three people died of measles last year in this country,” Offit added. “We eliminated this virus in the year 2000 — eliminated it. Eliminated circulation of the most contagious human infection. That was something to be proud of.”
Donald Trump shakes Ralph Abraham’s hand at a Trump campaign rally in Lake Charles, La., in Oct. 2019.
Abraham said vaccination remains the most effective way to prevent measles but that parents must have the freedom to decide whether to vaccinate their children. Several states have loosened school vaccine requirements since 2020, and vaccine rateshave dropped. A record rate of kindergartners, representing about138,000 children,obtained vaccine exemptions for the 2024-25 school year.
Information on vaccines has been muddied by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who previously founded an anti-vaccine organization. He has undermined vaccines throughout his tenure. On national television, he has repeated scientifically debunked rumors that vaccines may causeautism,brain swelling, and death.
Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, disparaged the Trump administration’s focus on finding genetic technicalities that may spare the country’s measles-free status. “This is the wrong thing to pay attention to. Our attention has to be on stopping the outbreaks,” she said.
“If we keep our status, it should be because we have stopped the spread of measles,” she said. “It’s like they’re trying to be graded on a curve.”
The Trump administrationimpeded the CDC’s abilityto assist West Texas during the first critical weeks of its outbreak andslowed the releaseof federal emergency funds, according to KFF Health News investigations. However, the agency stepped up its activity last year, providing local health departments with measles vaccines, communication materials, and testing. Abraham said HHS would give South Carolina $1.5 million to respond to its outbreak, which began nearly four months ago and had reached 646 cases as of Jan. 20.
If the CDC’s genomic analyses show that last year’s outbreaks resulted from separate introductions from abroad, political appointees will probably credit Kennedy for saving the country’s status, said Demetre Daskalakis, a former director of the CDC’s national immunization center, who resigned in protest of Kennedy’s actions in August.
And if studies suggest the outbreaks are linked, Daskalakis predicted, the administration will cast doubt on the findings and downplay the reversal of the country’s status: “They’ll say, who cares.”
Indeed, at the briefing, Abraham told areporter from Statthat a reversal in the nation’s status would not be significant: “Losing elimination status does not mean that the measles would be widespread.”
Data shows otherwise. Case counts last year were the highest since 1991, before the government enacted vaccine policies to ensure that all children could be protected with measles immunization.
Most of the week’s news came out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where President Donald Trump embarrassed himself and the country.
There’s a good chance that decades from now, in classrooms around the world, children will be learning about how a man, unable to string together a single coherent sentence, was president of the United States—marking the end of our time as a respected world superpower.
Trump'slargely incoherent speech at the World Economic Forum is unlikely to quell the growing questions about his mental fitness after he flubbed the name of the arctic territory hewants to conquer.
Anders Vistisen, a Danish member of the European Parliament,shared his opinion of Trump’sGreenland aggressions during a debate Monday, making his stance very clear.
Mainstream media outlets on Wednesday once again reported on a strange, rambling speech by Trump as if it were a normal presentation, continuing the tradition of “sanewashing” his rhetoric and misinforming their audiences.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited “The View” on Tuesday, where hereiterated his staunch opposition to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, saying it is an “entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist.”
Former D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone—who was seriously injured while defending the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection—told GOP Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas to “go fuck yourself” during a House committee hearing featuring former special counsel Jack Smith.
Trump marked the one-year anniversary of his return to the White House with a press conference Tuesday. But instead of addressing the issues on which his administration is failing, he rambled and ranted about a host of other topics.
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