Diana B. Henriques

Pro Soccer Player Who Spent 125 Days At CECOT Gives Chilling Account Of His Time There “Both the physical and mental abuse doled out by the officers made me think sometimes that I would never leave that place,” Jerce Reyes Barrios said.

pro soccer player Jerce Reyes Barrios followed all the rules when he came to the US. His lawyer told took his asylum case bc it seemed like a "slam dunk. Then US officials sent him to CECOT, where he was told he'd spend the rest of his life

w/@mattshuham.bsky.social www.huffpost.com/entry/pro-so...

What evidence does Hassert have that this data WAS propaganda? None.
So why did Trump fire the head of BLS? To cast doubt on the accuracy of numbers that made him look bad.
So should we trust future numbers from people now in fear for their jobs if they displease Trump? Hmmm?

Opinion | The road map to making America a crypto superpower The Trump administration is making America the “crypto capital of the world.”

I didn't think an intelligent person could possibly write about crypto without mentioning "fraud," "conflicts," or "crime." But Scott Bessent, with the help of whoever edited this op-ed at the Post, managed.

The road map to making America a crypto superpower

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Money. That May Make Them Hard to Quit.

Huge holes in this story:
1. These "emergency" tariffs were cast as an urgent step to cut trade deficits by cutting imports. If they actually DO that, they don't produce revenue!
2. Whether they work or not, they are already being credibly challenged as illegal!!

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b...

That feeling when Stephen Miller reveals on TV that you have been lying to a federal judge - or ignoring clear White House goals - or both?

Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook

The litany of his lies is staggering. And we could all add others to this list. When will Congress act? When will the GOP say "ENOUGH"?

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

one of the single best deals in streaming. i've been paying for PBS Passport for years. it rules

Well, I'm pretty familiar with Ponzi schemes but had only a brief encounter with pet rocks. 😉

Crypto as an investment (as opposed to a useful tool for money laundering, tax evasion, and payment for illegal goods and services) is actually more like a pet rock than a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi victim *believes* there's some capital gains being earned.
A pet rock owner? Not so much...

What do you know.
The Smithsonian has decided to accurately reflect actual US presidential impeachment history.
Perhaps there is a line...way down there...that Trumpists found they couldn't get away with crossing?

The murder rate in Tampa, where Benny lives, is nearly triple that of New York City

Trump’s mental decline is undeniable — so what now? hemselves, that there is a problem, just as Biden’s supporters did for him.    Donald Trump is showing all the signs of suffering from dementia. If this were a neighbor, a parent, or a family frien…

"In older people, confabulation is one of the clearest early signs of dementia...Once you have seen that Donald Trump is confabulating, it cannot be unseen — and all sorts of other mildly disturbing incidents suddenly fall into place."
thehill.com/opinion/camp...

If he builds his golden ballroom, how soon can it be torn down?

Indeed, let’s remember many of these heinous acts can be overturned. None of this despicable demolition of our government and values is unchangeable. But it requires ending his lawless regime & returning power to responsible leaders.

I guarantee he will keep repeating this fake math. No one on his staff will tell him he's wrong. They're so afraid of enraging the mad king that, instead, they let him look like he flunked 6th grade.

Lemme just say if President Bernie Sanders had unilaterally imposed, by executive fiat, hundreds of billions of new taxes, personally browbeat executives about job cuts and investments and then fired the head of BLS, the Chamber of Commerce and the business orgs would not be sitting idly by.

NBC News: Ghislaine Maxwell was ineligible to be transferred to a minimum security prison camp — like the one she was transferred to in Texas — because she is a convicted sex offender, according to the Bureau of Prison's own designation policy.

The President seeks to blame someone for unwelcome economic news. The Commissioner does not determine what the numbers are but simply reports on what the data show. The process of obtaining the numbers is decentralized by design to avoid opportunities for interference. The BLS uses the same proven, transparent, reliable process to produce estimates every month. Every month, BLS revises the prior two months' employment estimates to reflect slower-arriving, more-accurate information.

The “Friends of the BLS” which is made up of former BLS Commissioners and economic data experts debunked Trump’s claims about rigged data pretty quickly.

The head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics during Trump’s first admin.

Firing the BLS Commissioner — the wonk in charge of the statisticians who track economic reality — is an authoritarian four alarm fire.

It will also backfire: You can't bend economic reality, but you can break the trust of markets. And biased data yields worse policy.

You may be right. Most corporate leaders seem to have a strong continuation bias and reject the idea of discontinuous change. ("Mr. Buggy-Whip Maker, meet Mr. Ford.")
Still, the market clearly didn't like Trump's antics with tariffs, the Fed & now the BLS.
Wake-up call? At long last?

FINRA (its DNA runs back to the 1938 Maloney Act regulating the OTC market) was supposed to augment SEC efforts through self-regulation and I agree that it has often fallen short. But if the SEC can't get enough money to do its own job, I can't see it getting the funds to do FINRA's job, too.

Yes. If FINRA survives the Alpine Securities lawsuit arguing that it is - lock, stock, and barrel - unconstitutional. After the Jarkesy ruling, I'm making no bets in FINRA's favor...

I recall after the '08 crisis, the SEC tried developing computer tools to alert it to unusually high yields for money market funds, to trigger spot inspections and detect non-compliant investments. That's the kind of thing AI could facilitate.

The silence of corporate America has baffled me, too. I think it's delusional pragmatism, not nihilism. They tell themselves they're serving shareholders by staying out of the line of fire. They just can't see that there's no safe place to do business in a land run by the whims of a tyrant.

"Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him."

-- Plutarch, ≈ 100 A.D.

I tried to squeeze that into a postscript, but ran out of room. The SEC does NOT regulate the economy. It has been the primary MARKET watchdog since 1934, but it's struggling with adverse court rulings and inadequate resources.
If AI can help it do its job better, great.

We've got lots of things to worry about. This doesn't look like one of them. The SEC is looking for ways to use AI - not to regulate it. The underfunded SEC gets oceans of corporate and market data. Maybe AI can speed up trend analysis, spot red flags, and track conflicts. Let's wait and see.

BREAKING:

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES NEXT MONTH'S JOBS REPORT WILL BE WRITTEN WITH A SHARPIE