Life under the Trump 2 Dictatorship

[mcsluggo]

Canada talks tough.

Then bends the knee to Trump.

these drive-by snot-rockets are so helpful, thank you.

it is true that Canada's economy is less than 10% of the US and has been structured to be integrated with what had always been their closest ally in a relationship that has been hugely beneficial to both countries for many decades, and had been sealed by treaty. (a treaty that Trump had ALREADY violated in his first term, and then forced a renegotiation--- demonstrating that the US under Trump does not follow treaty obligations, or any other aspect of the rule-of-law--- the treaty that Trump is violating NOW is the treaty that Trump himself signed in his last administration -- further demonstrating that Trump not only doesn't follow the rule of law, he also always reneges on his own deals, and cheats his business partners. always. ) Anyway, yes, it would cause great economic harm to Canada to be forced to decouple instantly from its major trading partner and former closest ally. congratulations.... Canada is clearly harmed by this Trump temper tamper (and proportionately more than the US is harmed, but both are harmed significantly.

But, since you came in to share your wisdom and insight... the real question is, what does the US gain from tearing down the economic relationship with its closest trading partner? (and in this case, also closest ally). What does the US gain from Trump tearing down the world trade network that was the primary cornerstone of "Pax Americana" and the Washington Consensus--- the apex of what we used to claim made America special and a beacon to the world?

you do your sniveling imbecilic drive-by soundbite from OAN... but would you care to actually put some thought and substance into a follow-up?

What is the benefit to the US from this????

[China]

Meet the new national police force

The agency of mask-wearing officers who aren’t afraid to smash windows, detain lawmakers and pluck nonviolent undocumented immigrants off the street is about to become the best-funded federal police force.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already been acting with impunity during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Video of agents on horseback and in armored personnel vehicles in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles is striking both for its demonstration of militarized power and for the total inability of the city’s Mayor Karen Bass to do anything about it.

“They need to leave and they need to leave right now,” she told reporters on the scene Monday.

But Trump administration officials feel no need to listen to local authorities in a city like Los Angeles.

“Better get used to us now, because this going to be normal very soon,” El Centro Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told Fox News on Monday, responding to Bass.

That new normal may come as a shock to Americans unused to a federal national police force operating inside the country.

The megabill Trump signed last week will elevate ICE in the American consciousness and on American streets.

ICE will have more funding in the coming years than any other federal law enforcement agency, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at pro-immigrant American Immigration Council.

The new law allocates $75 billion for ICE through 2029 to order as many as 10,000 new agents and to build detention facilities for more than 100,000 additional people.

“It makes ICE a higher-funded law enforcement agency than the entire FBI, ATF, DEA, US Marshals Service and Bureau of Prisons combined,” Reichlin-Melnick explained, after averaging that $75 billion across the next four years, more than doubling ICE’s budget in each of those years.

With all that money and the OK to hire new agents, ICE will become even more visible.

“Most people in the United States are going to experience immigration enforcement for the first time in their lives,” predicted David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

The future Bier foresees looks like this:

“US citizens being interrogated on the streets about their citizenships; ICE agents in apartment buildings knocking down doors; National Guard troops on the streets blocking traffic. At your workplace, your home, your neighborhood, your park, in a very visible way and intentionally so,” he said.

Making raids and actions as visible as possible may be designed to scare immigrants out of the country and deter anyone who might otherwise come.

Bier also anticipates a “mad dash to spend all of this money in the next three years,” before the next presidential election.

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Texas Republicans Move to Rig District Maps Before 2026 Midterms At Trump’s Request

At the request of Donald Trump, Texas Republicans are preparing to redraw the state’s congressional map in a clear attempt to lock in GOP power ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the legislature will take up redistricting in a special session—a rare move outside of the usual once-a-decade process tied to the U.S. Census. The push came directly from Trump’s political team, which is urging Republican-led states to redraw maps now in order to squeeze out more GOP seats.

Texas already has one of the most lopsided congressional delegations in the country. Republicans hold 25 of the state’s 38 U.S. House seats. But to try and gain more, they’ll likely need to shift voters between districts—a strategy experts say could break apart competitive areas and dilute voters of color.

“This is about locking in power before voters even cast a ballot,” said political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. “Redistricting gives them the clearest opportunity to increase their strength and numbers.”

The strategy is already being tested in Tarrant County, where a controversial redistricting plan was forced through last month by Republican county officials.

In a packed meeting on June 3, local leaders voted 3-2 to approve a new map that moves many people of color out of a swing district and into a safer GOP one. Critics from both parties showed up in large numbers to oppose the plan, calling it blatant gerrymandering.

“It’s purely partisan,” County Judge Tim O’Hare admitted on local TV. “At the end of the day, I’m doing it to put another Republican on the commissioners court, period, the end.”

Dozens of residents spoke out against the plan before the vote. Some were even removed from the meeting by O’Hare.

“Your constituents are telling you that they do not want these maps,” one woman said before being escorted out.

After the vote, the Trump camp quickly praised the effort—and called for more counties and state lawmakers to follow suit. A new legislative session this month is expected to push more redistricting efforts forward.

Bob Stein, a redistricting expert at Rice University, said Republicans are moving aggressively now because they see trouble on the horizon.

Click on the link for the full article

[Emir of Schmoe]

[C.Crack]

Full on cult

[China]

White House accuses Powell of mismanaging Federal Reserve, citing headquarters renovation

President Donald Trump’s budget chief on Thursday said that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell “has grossly mismanaged the Fed” and suggested he had misled Congress about a pricey and “ostentatious” renovation of the central bank’s headquarters.

The broadside by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought opened up a new front in Trump’s war of words against Powell.

Trump has repeatedly called on the Fed chairman to cut interest rates, without success. He reportedly has considered firing Powell and, more recently, publicly naming the chairman’s replacement months earlier than the end of Powell’s term next spring.

Vought’s letter raises the question of whether Trump will seek to remove Powell for cause, at least ostensibly.

But the Supreme Court in a recent decision strongly suggested that Federal Reserve board members have special protection from being fired by a president.

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Stephen Miller must be pissed:

Trump Announces He's Working on Mass Amnesty Plan for Illegal Aliens After Passing 'Big Beautiful Bill'

In his first speech after the House passed his "Big Beautiful Bill," President Trump on Thursday announced he's working on a mass amnesty for potentially millions of illegal aliens working in farm, hotel and leisure industries which "radical right people" won't be happy about.

"You probably saw I got myself into a little trouble because I said, I don't want to take people away from the farmers and we're going to do something I think that's going to be good," Trump told a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa.

Referring to illegal aliens, Trump said: "If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way, Kristi [Noem], I think we're gonna have to just say that's going to be good, right? You know, we're gonna be- we're gonna be good with it because we don't want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms."

"We're working on legislation right now," he said.

"I think that that's going to make a lot of people happy," Trump said. "Now, serious radical right people, who I also happen to like a lot, they may not be quite as happy but they'll understand, won't they?"

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

This belongs here. Fuck these maga sobs. Fuck what's become of the GOP. It's always had huge piles of evil, ignorant, humans in its membership (not that the Dems haven't always been full of serious flaws as a party too) but now it's just a total sewer pipe, effectively.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/opin ... s-nws.html

These MAGA people are idiots who believe random conspiracy theories rather than the truth that about what really happened:

Far-right conspiracy theories spread online in aftermath of the Texas floods

Disasters and tragedies have long been the source of American conspiracy theories, old and new. So when devastating flash floods hit Texas over the Fourth of July weekend, and as the death toll continues to rise, far-right conspiracists online saw their opportunity to come out in full force, blurring the lines of what’s true and untrue.

Some people, emerging from the same vectors associated with the longstanding QAnon conspiracy theory, which essentially holds that a shadowy “deep state” is acting against Donald Trump, spread on X that the devastating weather was being controlled by the government.

“I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS,” posted Pete Chambers, a former special forces commander and frequent fixture on the far right who once organized an armed convoy to the Texas border, along with documents he claimed to show government weather operations. “WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?”

The same chain of posts on the social media platform X singled out a California-based “precipitation enhancement” company as a potential culprit.

It didn’t take long for one of the most integral figures in the QAnon movement to repost Chambers, which received millions of views on the Elon Musk-owned app.

“Anyone able to answer this?” wrote retired general Mike Flynn, a former national security adviser in the Trump administration and who helped legitimize QAnon after pledging allegiance to the movement in 2020, reposting Chambers.

Conspiracists and grifters on other platforms joined in. One YouTuber with hundreds of thousands of subscribers posted breathless coverage of what he called “The TRUTH of WEATHER MANIPULATION” in a segment which earned him close to 200,000 views alone.

The halls of Congress echoed the sentiment, as Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – a vaccine skeptic and GOP hardliner who has espoused Jeffrey Epstein conspiracies – didn’t waste the moment to say she was introducing a bill of her own after the floods.

“I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity,” she wrote on X as the aftermath of the floods continued. “It will be a felony offense.”

Click on the link for the full article

Just to follow up on this:

ANTI-GOVERNMENT MILITIA GROUP CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR VANDALISM TO NEWS 9 RADAR

An anti-government militia group claims to be responsible for vandalizing News 9’s radar.

News 9 security cameras captured Anthony Mitchell destroying the power supply to News 9’s NextGen Live radar in northeast Oklahoma City. Mitchell was arrested Tuesday for an unrelated crime. Following his arrest, Veterans On Patrol, an anti-government militia group, claimed responsibility for the vandalism. While it’s unknown if Mitchell has ties to the group, its founder, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, admitted to encouraging the destruction of weather radars and to targeting another weather radar in Oklahoma earlier this month. The group believes the military is using radars to alter the weather.

"When the military plays God with the weather, they're mocking our Heavenly Father,” said Veterans on Patrol founder, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer.

Meyer claims there are no laws that can prevent them from destroying weather radars and describes the methodical process.

“Destroying the back-up supply, the cooling network, those items need to be reordered and installed; they will cost a lot of money and time,” said Meyer.

Meyer claimed his group was watching Oklahoma radars closely.

“We have these towers on observation, we’ve seen the security increases they are making to protect them,” said Meyer.

He said beefed-up security to protect the radars would not deter the group’s work.

“Our goal is to take out 15 energy weapons in this state, and we want to do it simultaneously,” said Meyer.

Click on the link for the rest

[China]

Dear God, we're living in the era of idiocracy:

Trump EPA Honcho Comes to Defense of Americans With ‘Questions’ About Chemtrails

President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin launched two new resources to deliver “total transparency” for Americans curious about “geoengineering and contrails,” whom he said had been unfairly “vilified” for years for questions asked in “good faith.”

Taking to X on Thursday Zeldin promised that the days of being stonewalled on this particular issue were over.

The message was also shared by the official EPA account.

An hour later Zeldin shared a video and a link to a new page on the EPA website that he said “delves into the current state of science and research surrounding geoengineering.” The page will also detail work done by the agency to “identify and track private actors potentially engaged in such activities.”

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Canceled grants get the spotlight at a Capitol Hill 'science fair'

Sumit Chanda, a professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research who focuses on pandemics, has made a career out of preparing for disaster.

But Chanda faced a disaster of a different kind this year, when the future of his research was thrown into doubt by the Trump administration's cuts to science funding.

On Tuesday, Chanda stood alongside roughly two dozen other scientists in the lobby of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill for what resembled a science fair — but with a twist. Instead of students presenting class projects, the event featured leading researchers from across the country standing in front of posters outlining their work — and the federal cuts that now threaten it.

Attendees said the event, which was organized by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, was meant to showcase the kind of future advancements in science and medicine that may be lost because of the cuts.

"These discoveries may not just save our own lives, but the lives of people we love," Adam Riess, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2011, said at the event.

"Nearly every innovation that defines our era, every breakthrough from my field and from those of my colleagues, traces back to basic science research," he added.

NPR sought comment from the White House and the Republican chair of the House committee, Rep. Brian Babin, but did not receive immediate replies.

Chanda leads one of nine pandemic response centers once funded by the National Institutes of Health that have been summarily defunded. They were part of a plan to develop broad-spectrum antiviral drugs targeting the types of pathogens most likely to trigger future pandemics and forward-deploy them around the world to be ready the moment a dangerous outbreak is detected.

"When the next pandemic happens, we rush drugs to, say, Wuhan. We contain that epidemic. So it doesn't become a pandemic," he explains.

He's not even sure exactly why his NIH grant was cut. He got an email saying essentially "now that the pandemic is over, these funds are no longer needed," without further explanation, he says.

Chanda isn't alone. Several of the scientists NPR talked to, such as Kimiko Krieger, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Bloomberg School for Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, didn't get a clear explanation as to why their funding had been pulled.

Click on the link for the full article

And Noem's response?

Trump DHS Chief Noem Rages At CNN ‘Lies’ On Fox News Even As Her Agency Confirms FEMA Delay In Texas Flood Disaster

Trump Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem lashed out at CNN in a Fox News interview, accusing them of “lies” even as DHS confirmed the reported FEMA delay she was complaining about.

Click on the link for the full article

So the problem is the reporting, not Noem and FEMA's inability to act swiftly. Got it.