Rhys Davis

First public comment due tomorrow!

savingplaces.org/public-comme...

Vinay Prasad, child murderer - Lawyers, Guns & Money The editorial board at the World Socialist Review Wall Street Journal centers the RFK Jr. henchman responsible for destroying many potential life-saving innovations for literally no reason whatsoever ...

"It’s hard to recall a regulator who has done as much damage to medical innovation in as little time as Vinay Prasad"
www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/02/vina...

Opinion | Affordability and the ‘Epstein Class’ Will Define American Politics

“When Citizens United was decided in 2010, billionaires had spent $18 million on the 2000 election, $13M 2004 and $16M in 2008. Then came the deluge. In 2012 it was $231M, and nearly doubled again in next three election cycles —to $682M in 2016, $1.2 billion in 2020 and $2.6 billion in 2024.” Gift:

Hours after Border Patrol agent Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez five times, Gregory Bovino emailed him to ask he continue working past retirement: 

"In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much yet left to do!!" he wrote.

How the Trump administration skirts — and defies — court rulings on ICE detentions A POLITICO review of hundreds of cases brought by ICE detainees shows a pattern of noncompliance that has frustrated judges across the country.

NEW: Federal judges are increasingly furious at what they see as a pattern / playbook of defiance by the Trump administration to court orders in immigration cases — in Minnesota and around the country.

Here’s a look at what they’re seeing: www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

ICE Moved Detainees to Previously Undisclosed Floor of 26 Federal Plaza A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reduce overcrowding and squalid conditions at a Manhattan holding room. Months later, he finds ICE merely shifted floors.

ICE officials, under a judge’s order to clean up overcrowded and squalid conditions inside holding cells at 26 Federal Plaza detained migrants on a separate floor where they decided the the ruling didn't apply. The revelation comes in a hearing today:

www.thecity.nyc/2026/02/09/2...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance. But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain. He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend’s car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again. He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.

ICE told nurses this Minneapolis man “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.”

What actually happened is that they pulled him from a car, beat him so viciously with a steel baton that he had 8 skull fractures, 5 life-threatening brain hemorrhages, and couldn’t remember he had a daughter.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Highlighting the speaker who stood in front of the Surprise mayor and told him to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf must’ve thought before he died by suicide: “He might have thought ‘how is this my fault I had no jurisdiction over this’ maybe he said ‘this site was not subject to local zoning.’”

A UAE investor secretly gave Trump $187 million and his top Middle East envoy $31 million. And then Trump gave that investor access to sensitive defense technology that broke decades of national security precedent.

Brazen, open corruption. And we shouldn't pretend it's normal.

Tear Gas Is Way More Dangerous Than Police Let On In the middle of a respiratory pandemic, law enforcement agencies have used tear gas in especially dangerous ways. The chemical agent also seeps into homes, contaminates food, furniture, skin and surf...

Tear gas is banned in international warfare, yet classified as a “riot control agent” that law enforcement can use for crowd control.

“It just doesn’t work well, and it hits the weakest people the most, and causes the most complications in them,” an anesthesiology professor at Duke University said.

Screenshot of a TikTok video with error message at top saying “your video is under review and can’t be shared right now.”

This morning, I recorded a video on TikTok about why DHS’s arguments for the power to enter homes without judicial warrants in immigration cases are bunk.

Nine hours later, TikTok still says my video is “under review,” and can’t be shared.

Well, here’s a link:

georgetown.box.com/v/Vladeck-IC...

It’s hard to overstate how freakish it is for law enforcement who just shot someone to be shuffled off to other assignments with no investigative period at all.

Dems should introduce legislation now defunding ICE and CBP operations in Minnesota, so they have to leave the state. One sentence bill. Demand an immediate vote. Maybe refuse to vote for cloture on any funding bills (or other bills) until a vote. Make the GOP Congress break w/ Trump or own it all.

They are telling us in unequivocal terms that if you show solidarity with immigrants who are in the literal crosshairs of Trump/MAGA, you're risking a death sentence.

newrepublic.com/article/2055...

Not only has the United States of America abandoned its moral role in confronting evil around the world, Donald Trump's derangement and depravity are swiftly making us the principal planetary force promoting evil.

Text: “A friend said those of us who live in Minneapolis should write about what's going on here for folks who live elsewhere. You need to know that whether you're a Republican, Independent or Democrat, the Constitution is being violated by our federal government. This is not about catching criminals, or even deporting people. It is about punishing an entire state, including citizens, for not supporting the president. Everyone in my part of Minneapolis is affected. On our streets, ICE is stopping people of color and demanding their papers. In America. US citizens do not have to prove citizenship to ICE. Yet people are being intimidated, some cases beaten up and detained, for requiring ICE to follow the law. ICE needs a judicial warrant to enter homes. Yet there are documented cases of them ignoring the law - violating a bedrock constitutional principle. Americans of color are staying home, afraid to go to work, school, to grocery shop, or fill their cars with gas. This isn't just "illegals" or immigrants with valid work permits, it is citizens who have had their cars rammed by ICE for merely looking Hispanic. Businesses are closing. Schools are 50 percent full. When they are open, fascists are calling in bomb threats because the president decided to make us a meme. After a daycare teacher with a valid work permit (through 2030) was snatched from her workplace, parents (and grandparents) have had to organize to watch their SCHOOLS, to make sure conditional rights are observed. This is being repeated throughout Minnesota. Imagine trying to do your job or live you life while also taking volunteer shifts to make sure the federal government doesn't act extrajudicially. Because of ICE's documented abuses, neighbors have organized to monitor federal actions. This observation is legal, as long as it doesn't interfere with a valid action. Yet since ICE killed Renee Good, they are increasingly stopping this observation, breaking car windows and …”

People not in Minnesota: please read this excellent summary of what life is like in Minneapolis since the murderous scum ICE swarmed here. And more are on their way. By local reporter / writer / bike dude / legend @dbrauer.net .

One time later in his life my dad came to a @jordanjessego.bsky.social show, and after the show, @abrianstorm.bsky.social brought me the Momentous Occasions card my dad had filled out. He just wrote “Our kids’ kids”

Any Democratic votes to fund DHS later this month as Minneapolis is being terrorized by DHS is going to be a major slap in the face to Americans living here. Demand major reforms or shut the government down.

The Past and Present of Prison Labor: Your Questions Answered A historian answers <i>Bolts</i> readers’ questions on the deep roots of forced labor in U.S. prisons, how it operates today, and efforts to challenge it.

In Alabama, incarcerated workers in a work-release program must take jobs at private companies—but 40% of their wages are docked as a “labor-trafficking fee.” A lawsuit brought by incarcerated people argues this is a modern form of convict leasing.

Sen. Katie Britt: "This is what America voted for"

Emily Heller lives near 33rd and Portland and said she woke up to a commotion outside her home. She said she saw a car blocking traffic on Portland Avenue that appeared to be part of a protest against federal law enforcement operations. Heller said she heard ICE agents telling the driver, a woman, to “get out of here.” “She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in — like, his midriff was on her bumper — and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” Heller said. Heller said it appeared the woman then accelerated and traveled about 100 feet before striking a utility pole and some other vehicles. She could be seen slumped over inside her car.

Absolutely horrific details about an ICE shooting in Minneapolis.

A witness says a woman was trying to drive away from an ICE operation and the ICE agent "reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times."

Bovino was there.

www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Children will die with RFK Jr.'s new vaccine recommendations. We're NOT doing the "experts disagree" game. The US vaccine schedule was painstakingly constructed through a deep & thorough process by experts with unquestionable expertise. This is policy by fiat. It is pre-meditated murder. 1/

With Trump very transparently saying that the invasion of Venezuela was to take their oil, let's dive into oil markets. TL;DR - it's not at all clear to me that Trump or the people around him have any coherent long term strategy.

U.S. Kills 2 in Strike in Pacific, as Trump Pressures Venezuela

Remember, the next time Hegseth says we aren’t able to interdict or arrest the people on the tiny little boats so we just have to kill them…

…that we infiltrated a heavily-guarded home in the middle of the night to make an arrest.

They're murdering people because they can.

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Only 8 states and DC have minimum salaries for teachers that exceed the minimum salary that ICE is offering to agents. Yet, unlike ICE agents, teachers in every state are required to have a bachelor's degree.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

And 1 million Epstein files appeared from thin air

Woman comes to US at age 6. Graduates nursing school. Work permit. No criminal record. Snatched and imprisoned by ICE for 6 months now. About to be forced back to Honduras. A life destroyed and one less nurse. Merry Christmas.

www.nola.com/news/educati...