Grudgie the Whale

North Carolina Republicans announced today they’re going to pass a new congressional map to draw a Dem out of Congress; they already did last cycle, going from 7-7 to 10-4. Thus would be 11-3. t.co/XLJIhe8vZn

🚨After being tased and beaten by ICE, a man dies in a Chicago hospital. Date and location in following post. These are the horrors of 2025 and we cannot look away. 1/2

Just because Republicans support Trump’s crimes does not mean they think any of this is legal. They don’t. They support TRUMP doing it, not legalizing the behavior for anyone.

"That is the behavior of a dictator, and Mike Johnson's job is to stand there and tell you that all of it is completely normal."

@saletan.bsky.social has a story today on how Johnson is a flunky who will rationalize Trump's crimes.

www.jsonline.com/story/sports...

The Republicans Justices Are Getting Ready to Finish Off the Voting Rights Act In Louisiana v Callais, John Roberts will have the chance to finish his decades-long war on. voting rights.

New year, new horrific anti-voting Supreme Court case ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/louis...

Where did people get the idea Republicans oppose ACA protections? Was it the 86 times they voted to repeal it?

PSA: It’s okay to be wait-and-see on Gaza and the Israel-Hamas deal. You don’t have to definitively declare what’s going to happen and comment on that, nor take any national leader’s word on what they expect.

Ald. Jessie Fuentes to file lawsuit against ICE agent who handcuffed her in Humboldt Park incident - Windy City Times Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th Ward) is preparing to file a lawsuit against the ICE agent who handcuffed and threatened to arrest her at Humboldt Park Health earlier this month. In an interview with Windy ...

The same ICE agent who handcuffed Ald. Jessie Fuentes has been filmed in at least 3 other violent encounters, including the viral arrest of a woman in Waukegan in front of the mayor.

“He’s obviously a danger to individuals and particularly women," Fuentes said.

Read more at @windycitytimes.com

“The U.S. House is just one vote shy of forcing a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Recently elected Democrat Adelita Grijalva from Arizona would be the needed 218th vote; however, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is being accused of purposely not swearing her in.”

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

ICE has been deployed to *provoke* civilians, not to protect them. They want to throw tear gas canisters and get people on the streets riled up, all to create footage for Fox News and Newsmax, et al., that will be used as a pretext for imposing martial law to lower voting rates in Democratic cities.

politico’s owner must have put in a call to the editors over the weekend, because their top articles on shutdown are comically one-sided against dems after reporting over the weekend that house republicans are starting to crumble

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Here’s last night’s story about Bari Weiss, CBS News, Paramount Skydance, and why the Upper West Side is a lot more than just “Seinfeld territory.” youtu.be/gieTx_P6INQ

CBS News picking up an anti-Mamdani story from The Free Press and...misspelling his name. Oy.

How bad must whatever is in the Epstein Files be, that House Republicans are going to such extraordinary lengths to cover it up?

LOL

"The liberty and security of our fellow citizens is our great object, and not the prompt execution of the laws. Indecision, delay, blunders, nay villainous actions in the administration of government, are trifles compared to legalizing the full exertion of a tyrannical disposition."

That said his 2nd consecutive term would not have been as heinous as this one because he’d have kept some quasi-sane people and not spent 4 years on fantasizing about and planning revenge on the nation.

How can anyone support this?

It’s tempting to suggest we would have been better off if Trump won in 2020 and we’d be done with him now, except:

1) the vaccine rollout would have been a disaster and we’d have double the COVID deaths
2) he wouldn’t have left in 2024 either and we’d be in a different crisis

Unprecedented corruption

Between this, the resegregation of the military, and the retooling of the Department of Justice to focus on (fake) discrimination against white Christians, and eviscerating Civil Rights Act enforcement, they have nearly erased the structural legacy of the Civil Rights Movement.

Combine this with the RFK Jr. antivaxxer stuff and you get a pretty clear and coherent eugenicist policy agenda.

Judging by the headlines I’ve seen just since this went up Saturday, I could rewrite this piece once a week, with a new list of horror stories to lead off with every time.

🚨 CALIFORNIA FRIENDS🚨

BALLOTS ARE OUT
VOTE YES ON PROP 50

PLEASE tell your neighbors and friends

Your Country Thanks You
#VoteYesProp50

To help go to
mobilize.us/cadems

Phonebank, Canvassing, and help get out the vote

When Aaron Fucking Rupar is doing more reporting than CBS News and The NYT

I think this was a plotline on the second season of The Newsroom

Damn! Some of you are dangerously susceptible to propaganda when it confirms your priors, and the people who are making the propaganda know and exploit that in bad faith!

If you tallied up all the other corruption in US history put together you wouldn’t even come close to the Trump Administration

Welp