Week 54
By 
It’s hard to believe that it’s only a week since CBP killed Alex Pretti. Around Wednesday, I became confused whether it had been last Saturday or a week earlier. Donald Trump is throwing a lot of stuff against the wall.
Trump withdrew Nazi cosplayer Greg Bovino from Minnesota and put in Money in a Fast Food Bag Tom Homan instead. Homan’s first action in Minnesota was to say there would be no more murders if everyone cooperates. He wore a business suit.
Liam Conejo Ramos, the adorable little boy in a bunny (conejo) hat, is sick in a concentration camp in Texas. Only the worst of the worst.
Don Lemon and three other journalists who covered the disruption of a church service led by a pastor who doubles as an ICE manager were arrested. The charges had already been thrown out by a couple of (three?) judges.
Minnesotans are staying strong.
Feds took a bunch of stuff from the Fulton County, Georgia, election commission. Tulsi Gabbard was there to help, perhaps to add glamor without the bloodthirstiness of Kristi Noem, who wasn’t called upon in Trump’s cabinet meeting to compliment his perspicacity in killing two people in Minnesota. DNI isn’t the agency that does these things, but I guess Tulsi drew the short straw.
Things happened in Congress regarding the budget. I haven’t followed the blow-by-blow, but it seems like Democrats have managed to go some distance toward defunding ICE or applying some restrictions or something. Please don’t fight about it in the comments. I am so tired of our side fighting. In one way, it’s our strength; we can argue about the best way forward. But in others it weakens us against the Republican hivemind. I don’t have an easy answer for that, but I would counsel listening to folks with a different point of view more than putting your own pov forward.
More Epstein files have been released. One problem with this indiscriminate, unorganized dump of documents is that we have no way of judging whether any of it is true. I am not following it closely, but it looks like Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick spent more time with Epstein than they’ve told us about. The Guardian is covering the story, and Bellingcat is working on preserving the files, with some commentary. Looks like QAnon was right about a pedophile conspiracy, but they voted for the conspirators!
Trump looks like he’s going after Iran again. He’s said both that it’s to raise the protests up again and to force the leaders to agree they will never, ever build nuclear weapons. He had an agreement that guaranteed that, as much as any agreement could, but he ripped it up. His ignorance in what it takes to build an agreement between countries is so profound. It looks like he needs a regular hit of violence, and Iran is next.
Follow the court-watchers for the details of the lawsuits. Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker.
As usual, keep it to things that have actually happened, not hypotheticals. What is actually happening is plenty..
Caring for yourself and loved ones is resistance too. Post your pets.
154 more weeks to go. What are you doing? As Jane Goodall often put it: Do what you can, where you are, when you are able. It’s getting more important to participate.
Previous weeks: Week 10, Week 20, Week 30, Week 40, Week 50, Week 51, Week 52, Week 53