John Sheppard

A girl in high heels, pink satin shorts and a black and white top is walking along Figueroa Street at night. She is crossing a side street toward a car stopped at the corner. A headline reads: "Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of L.A.'s Figueroa Street?" Photo by Katy Grannan for The New York Times

Los Angeles is home to one of the most notorious sex-trafficking corridors in the U.S. Our reporter embedded with investigators and interviewed dozens of victims, experts, aid workers and officials to understand the crisis. nyti.ms/47GDB3I

Amazing wirh that kind of witty banter they can canceled his show.

RFK Jr. threatens to bar government scientists from publishing in leading medical journals The health secretary said the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet are in bed with pharma.

reputable medical journals keep saying that RFK and his pro-disease friends are full of shit and so naturally they must be shunned www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

Will he take us back?

France is stepping into the places the USA would traditionally fill but are left empty by the current administration. It would be pretty ironic if in 20 years French replaces English as the international language.

Trump’s “Golden Dome” Won’t Work—but It’ll Make Elon Musk Richer For 40 years, missile defense has never been about keeping America safe. It’s all about the contracts.

National missile defense is the longest-running scam in the history of the Department of Defense. Musk didn’t invent it, but he’s about to get a whole lot richer by perpetuating it.

https://trib.al/XcrRiI8

The DOGE mindset, perfectly encapsulated in one tweet. Destroy incredible public assets for a short term sugar high that would not come remotely close to ending the national debt

MYSTERY SOLVED... I COVER MY FACE BECAUSE I DOIN'T WANT MY MOM AND KIDS SEE WHAT I DO TO OTHER MOMS AND KIDS. Cartoon by Pedro X. Molina COUNTERPOINT.COM Shows a gun carrying ICE agent with a covered face, shades and wearing a red cap.

💯 Shame. On. Them.
Credit @pxmolina.bsky.social

When I was writing about these pronatalist people this week I came across this anecdote from the Guardian about the guy In the CNN clip.

THEY HAVE DEPORTED A TWO YEAR OLD CHILD BIRTHRIGHT CITIZEN

This is why I have no patience anymore for people playing games with this stuff.

My god

Incredible scoop! Career officials inside the Trump administration first viewed the case of Mr. Abrego like any normal case of a wrongful deportation — they began looking for ways to bring him back, as happens normally when ICE makes mistakes.

Then the White House got involved, and blew it up.

NEW: In a SCATHING decision, Judge Briones of the Western District of Texas absolutely SAVAGED the government over this case, tearing to shreds ICE’s hearsay “evidence” that this husband and wife were in Tren de Aragua as “completely and wholly unsubstantiated” — and ordered their immediate release!

I have nothing against rich folks space tourism, but this has real Marie Antoinette overtones.

One political prediction in which I’m pretty confident is that by 2028 there will basically no one in Washington with a lower approval rating than this guy. Unique in his ability to incur a different kind of vitriol and scorn from just about every demographic. Pariah in waiting for four years.

From 2010 to 2016 (latest data I have ), NIH research contributed to EVERY drug approved by the FDA

Just another example of traitor and coward betraying our country and its brave fighting women and men

I’d like to spend one weekend not thinking about law, lawyers, law firms, lawlessness, and their derivatives.

Thanks.

We have arrived at the point where Iran’s supreme leader is critical of the Trump Admin’s record on civil liberties and human rights.

Seniors won't complain if they miss a Social Security check, Lutnick says More than 70 million Americans get a Social Security benefit every month, and for many, those checks are their only income.

Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick suggested this week that only "fraudsters" would complain about missing a monthly Social Security check, and that most people wouldn't mind if the government simply skipped a payment.

Hopefully they'll just lose them all.

So Steelers to go 7-9 next year. Congrats.

Judge VanDyke gun meme

When counsel wants to file a surreply

Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk are not your friends Gavin Newsom's new podcast demonstrates a failed way of engaging with MAGA extremists.

New in PN: Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk are not your friends

"Amplifying the views of people who want to torch our democracy — and are actually doing so right now! — is an incredibly irresponsible exercise."

Law Firm Bends in Face of Trump Demands Paul, Weiss — one of three law firms targeted by President Trump as part of his retribution campaign — said it resolved the conflict by agreeing to a range of commitments.

This is one of the saddest capitulations I have ever seen. A law firm honored for its bravery has more than bent the knee and kissed the ring: it has paid the ransom demanded by Trump.
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/u...

I think this was from Chapter 4 of Mein Kampf.

No kidding. That's kinda legal research 101

I will fearlessly and unapologetically continue to stand up for democracy, no matter what the president says about me.

Democracy Docket will do the same: www.democracydocket.com/member-me/

Videos of Shackled Venezuelan Migrants Have History in El Salvador A video showing rough treatment of deportees over the weekend was an extraordinary depiction by U.S. standards, but not by El Salvador’s.

Humiliation as Propaganda: Videos of Shackled Detainees Have History in El Salvador www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/w...