#Letters from an American...

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 5

Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wiredreporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."

The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.

The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”

Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.

Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Mediareported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.

At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”

But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”

When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”

A blizzard of lawsuits has greeted Musk’s campaign and other Trump administration efforts to undermine Congress. Today, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leaders in their respective chambers, announced they were introducing legislation to stop Musk’s unlawful actions in the Treasury’s payment systems and to protect Americans, calling it “Stop the Steal,” a play on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

This evening, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of protesters rallied at the Treasury Department to take a stand against Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. Treasury payment system. “Nobody Elected Elon,” their signs read. “He has access to all our information, our Social Security numbers, the federal payment system,” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said. “What’s going to stop him from stealing taxpayer money?”

Tonight, the Washington Post noted that Musk’s actions “appear to violate federal law.” David Super of Georgetown Law School told journalists Jeff Stein, Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Hannah Natanson, and Jacqueline Alemany: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—“liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.

When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

Now, MAGA Republicans in charge of the government have made it clear they intend to get rid of that government once and for all. Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for dramatically reducing the power of Congress and the United States civil service. Vought has referred to career civil servants as “villains” and called for ending funding for most government programs. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said recently.

In the name of combatting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Trump administration is taking down websites of information paid for with tax dollars, slashing programs that advance health and science, ending investments in infrastructure, trying to end foreign aid, working to eliminate the Department of Education, and so on. Today the administration offered buyouts to all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that anyone who opposes Trump’s policies should leave. Today, Musk’s people entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides daily weather and wind predictions; cutting NOAA and privatizing its services is listed as a priority in Project 2025.

Stunningly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the U.S. has made a deal with El Salvador to send deportees of any nationality—including U.S. citizens, which would be wildly unconstitutional—for imprisonment in that nation’s 40,000-person Terrorism Confinement Center, for a fee that would pay for El Salvador’s prison system.

Tonight the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Pam Bondi as attorney general. Bondi is an election denier who refuses to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. As Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket noted, a coalition of more than 300 civil rights groups urged senators to vote against her confirmation because of her opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and reproductive rights, and her record of anti-voting activities. The vote was along party lines except for Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who crossed over to vote in favor.

Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the logical outcome of the mentality that the government should not enable Americans to create wealth but rather should put cash in the pockets of a few elites. Far from representing a majority, Musk is unelected, and he is slashing through the government programs he opposes. With full control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans could cut those parts themselves, but such cuts would be too unpopular ever to pass. So, instead, Musk is single-handedly slashing through the government Americans have built over the past 90 years.

Now, MAGA voters are about to discover that the wide-ranging cuts he claims to be making to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs skewer them as well as their neighbors. Attracting white voters with racism was always a tool to end the liberal consensus that worked for everyone, and if Musk’s cuts stand, the U.S. is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

In yet another bombshell, after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters tonight that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip,�� and suggested sending troops to make that happen. “We’ll own it,” he said. “We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of.” It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he said.

Reaction has been swift and incredulous. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan “deranged” and “nuts.” Another Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), said he was “speechless,” adding: “That’s insane.” While MAGA representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V and Raquel Coronell Uribe that there were “a few kinks in that slinky,” a reference to a spring toy that fails if it gets bent.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested that Trump was trying to distract people from “the real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”

—

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

SHE CONNECTED THE DOTS BEFORE THE REST OF US EVEN FOUND THE PENCIL

Heather Cox Richardson just handed us the clearest, most unflinching blueprint of how the U.S. government is being dismantled under the second Trump administration—and she backed every word with receipts. Her March 27, 2025 dispatch isn’t analysis. It’s evidence. It’s a field report from the front lines of a soft coup.

The scale of what she wrote felt too outrageous to be real.

Venmo payments with eggplant emojis tied to a Signal chat about bombing the Houthis?

A Department of Government Efficiency that’s already cost the U.S. $500 billion?

The IRS gutted. HHS torched. Social Security collapsing?

Surely this was speculative—some dystopian metaphor.

It wasn’t. Every detail she cited came from real reporting by real journalists in Wired, The Washington Post, Reuters, NBC News, The New York Times, and more.

Richardson didn’t theorize—she documented. And the result is devastating.

Here’s just a fraction of what she laid out:

• DOGE, Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” has cost $500 billion—10% of all IRS revenue from last year.

• 20,000 IRS employees fired, especially in enforcement. Billionaire audits? Gone.

• HHS cut $12 billion in mental health and disease tracking grants, then laid off 10,000 more workers, including 3,500 from the FDA and 2,400 from the CDC.

• Social Security’s website crashed 4 times in 10 days. New rules require in-person ID checks for people without internet.

• A Tufts student was detained by ICE after writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed.

• The Department of Education is being shut down.

• FEMA is next.

• Columbia University had $400 million withheld until it complied with Trump’s cultural directives.

• Mike Johnson is openly floating the idea of eliminating federal courts.

• Words like “climate crisis,” “diversity,” “segregation,” and even “peanut allergies” are being purged from federal communications.

• And J.D. Vance is now in charge of purging the Smithsonian of what the administration calls “anti-American ideology.”

This isn’t dysfunction. It’s doctrine.

It’s Project 2025, written by Russell Vought, now head of the Office of Management and Budget, and championed by Vance, who once said:

“Unless we overthrow [the current ruling class]… we’re going to keep losing."

and

“We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power.”

Heather Cox Richardson took that ruthlessness seriously. She traced it from the eggplant emoji to the ICE van. From the IRS to the Smithsonian. From the layoffs to the list of banned words.

She didn’t write a warning.

She wrote the truth.

And she deserves our full attention.

[Closer to the Edge]

[Link to the post referred]

[broareweabouttoviberightnow]

tired of not livin in my truth. soda would be enamored with hippies. that fucker would love a volksvan n to dick across the country with the dead heads n the cowboys. he would have taken his dumbass to Woodstock, smoked too much weed, kissed Steve on the mouth n then sworn the stuff off for good. (the weed. not the kissin Steve. he very much enjoys that.) he'd have the most busted up record player known to man. he'd wear flower crowns. he'd doesn't deserve to go to war n come back missin that part of him that fuckin glowed. sodapop curtis would have loved the hippies. n he would have hated that fuckin war for all he was worth.

[yeoldenews]

A mother's word for word transcription of the imaginary phone call her four-year-old made to Santa Claus in 1911.

(source: The Harbor Beach Times, December 22, 1911.)

Through some outrageous case of serendipity I found a recording of another phone call this same child made 60 years later. Though I have to say his choice of conversational partner is a definite downgrade from the first call.

[majestativa]

If I am to have you, I want all of you, body and soul. I don’t mean that I want to possess you. I want you to have your freedom, as an individual, but I would like to believe that you could find this freedom through loving me.

— Henry Miller, Letters from Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller, (1990)

[lauraannegilman]

long-term thinking, short-term chutzpah

Heather Cox Richardson, better known as the author of Letters from an American, the historian who kept us informed and (slightly) hopeful during the Trump regime, and the pandemic, has kept her daily letters going, and they're always worth reading. Today in particular she talked about something, and made a point I had not considered. "on Tuesday, June 4, likely trying to get ahead of the usual summer rise in immigration, and after Senate Republicans once again killed the bipartisan border measure,  Biden issued an executive order permitting him to seal the southern border temporarily when undocumented crossings surge to more than 2,500 a day, a restriction stricter than that negotiated in the Senate measure Trump scuttled. This order looks more like Trump’s effort to curb migration—one that courts blocked—at least in part because without legislation, there is no new funding to provide the additional courts the administration wants in order to move asylum cases faster. " And yeah, Joe took a lot of heat from the left for this. But note the last sentence in the above paragraph. "one that the courts blocked." Dr. Richardson goes on to say: "As predicted, the order is likely to face legal challenges. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who worked with Senator James Lankford (R-OK) on the Senate immigration bill, wrote in a statement: “I am sympathetic to the position the administration is in, but I am skeptical [that] the executive branch has the legal authority to shut down asylum processing between ports of entry on its own. Meaningful asylum reform requires a bipartisan solution in Congress.”  Joe Biden, whatever else we may think of him, is a savvy politician, a long-term thinker, and a survivor in the shark tank that is D.C. Why would he do something that would piss off his base, AND that he knew would get broken by the courts? And here's where Dr. Richardson sets me back on my heels for a moment. "While Trump continues to demagogue immigration issues, the charge that Biden wants “open borders”—which was always disinformation—is now harder to make. " In short, he took one of the poison serpents the GOP was trying to bite him with, and (at least partially) defanged it, knowing that his executive order would not actually be put into action. Jesus, that was ballsy.

[agmagazinescans]

Letters From You & Credits

American Girl Magazine, September/October 1995

[Ko-Fi Donations]

[short-wooloo]

OK, George Lucas ain't subtle, it's pretty obvious what he was going for calling one side the confederacy and the other the "Grand Army of the Republic", one of these two is unambiguously the bad guy, the morally incorrect one

Now with that out of the way, I figured something out

Mina bonteri and the "true believer" separatists, are like those real life confederates (originals, apologists, or neos) who really do believe the Civil War is about "States Raghts!"

Meanwhile Dooku, Grievous, the wealthy elites, and military leaders are the real life confederates who know, understand, and are very open about how this is about slavery

[liriostigre]

‎ 💭 🛌🏻

[samantha-and-nellie]

and for our other most-adorable moment from samantha's wedding memories...

gard and cornelia!!! <3

[misfitwashere]

Letters from an American

July 19, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Jul 20, 2024

Today a Russian court sentenced 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in a high-security penal colony after convicting him of espionage in a secret three-day trial. The U.S. government considers Gershkovich “wrongly detained,” a rare designation signifying that he is being held as a political bargaining chip. 

Today, President Joe Biden said that Gershkovich was “targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American. We are pushing hard for Evan’s release and will continue to do so.” He added: “Journalism is not a crime. We will continue to stand strong for press freedom in Russia and worldwide, and stand against all those who seek to attack the press or target journalists.”

Last night, a faulty update of software from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike crashed computer systems all over the world. Banks and hospitals were locked out of their own programs, and government services shut down. In the U.S., more than 2,600 flights were canceled and 9,000 were delayed. Bloomberg’s David Rovella quoted Australian security consultant Troy Hunt: “I don’t think it’s too early to call it,” Hunt said. “This will be the largest IT outage in history.”

Also making history last night was the final night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the night on which former president Donald J. Trump accepted the party’s presidential nomination. Coming as it did just days after a would-be assassin took a shot at Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one attendee and badly wounding two others, the convention was billed by Republican operatives as a way for Trump to rebrand himself as a candidate of “unity.” 

This was certainly the way many major newspapers billed Trump’s acceptance speech this morning, in stories that, as media journalist Parker Molloy noted, were probably based on prepared remarks delivered to news agencies in advance of the speech. But it was not how the evening played out.

Since Saturday’s shooting, it has been notable that there has not been a medical review of Trump’s injuries, although he has said he was injured by a bullet that ripped through his ear. This matters not only because of the extent of his injuries, but also because Trump has made the story part of his identity without any fact check, and the media appears simply to be letting it go on Trump’s say-so, something that adds to the sense that media outlets are treating Trump and Biden differently.

Last night, Trump perhaps tried to address this lack by recounting last Saturday’s shooting. Interestingly, he did not say he was hit by a bullet, but that when he felt the injury he thought, “it can only be a bullet.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo today noted a report from local Pennsylvania television station WPXI that four motorcycle officers standing within feet of Trump suffered minor injuries from flying debris. Trump has likely cut off further discussion of the topic by saying it is too painful to tell the story again. 

With that story behind him, Trump hit the theme of unity, saying he would bring the country together. “The discord and division in our society must be healed, we must heal it quickly. We are bound together by a single fate, a single destiny,” he said. “We rise together. Or we fall apart…. I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America. So tonight, with faith and devotion, I proudly accept your nomination for president of the United States.”

But that was just in the first ten minutes. Then Trump ignored the teleprompter and things veered far off course, reflecting the candidate that has stayed in the safe spaces of Mar-a-Lago and rallies of his loyalists for years. Trump rambled for more than 90 minutes, making it the longest acceptance speech in U.S. history and outlasting the interest of the audience, some of whom fell asleep. 

He went on to recite his usual litany of lies: that Democrats cheated in the 2020 presidential election (they did not), that crime is going up (it’s plummeting), that inflation is the worst we’ve ever had (it’s around 3%; the worst was around 23%), that Democrats want to quadruple people’s taxes (CNN fact checker Daniel Dale calls this “imaginary”), and so on. Dale called it “a remarkably dishonest acceptance speech.” 

Journalist James Fallows posted: “Of the maybe 10,000 political speeches I've heard over the years, this was overall the worst.” Statistician Nate Silver’s judgment was harsher, in a way: he began with “It’s a weird but a pretty good speech,” then posted “Semi-retract this tweet, this speech is boring AF, but there are worse things politically speaking than being boring.” Shortly after, came: “Fully RETRACT and RESCIND, sometimes it seems like both parties are trying to throw this election.” 

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes watched the unhinged speech and concluded: "This is not a colossus, this is not the big bad wolf, this is not a vigorous and incredibly deft political communicator. This is an old man in decline who's been doing the same schtick for a very long time and it's really wearing thin."

The point, though, as Trump meandered through attacks on immigrants and a diatribe about the fictional character cannibal Hannibal Lecter—who he might think was real—as it always has been, was to present a picture of the U.S. under siege by enemies who are persecuting him because he represents true Americans and that he must be returned to office because only he can vanquish those enemies. Greg Sargent of The New Republic noted that Trump cannot offer a “unity” message because “Trump himself knows the MAGA masses will not be satiated without expansive displays of rage, cruelty and sadism directed at hated out groups and designated enemies of MAGA.”

For years, observers have noted that Trump’s approach to politics is patterned on the “kayfabe” at the heart of professional wrestling. Kayfabe is the performance aspect of professional wrestling, in which the actors play out relationships and scenes in which there are good and evil, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal. According to journalist Abraham Josephine Reisman, in old-school kayfabe the actors never let their masks slip, and while the audience knew what they were seeing must be fake, they played along with the illusion.

But in the 1990s, the barrier between reality and illusion blurred as wrestlers and promoters tried to increase the viability of the fading industry by tossing reality into the performances: real-life insults—the more outrageous the better—and real-life events. Decoding what was real and what was not drove engagement until in 1999, an estimated 18% of Americans, about 50 million people, called themselves fans. This “neokayfabe,” Reisman wrote in the New York Times in 2023, “rests on a slippery, ever-wobbling jumble of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods, all delivered with the utmost passion and commitment.” 

Neokayfabe, Reisman wrote, “turns the world into a hall of mirrors from which it is nearly impossible to escape. It rots the mind and eats the soul.”

Trump participated in a storyline in this neokayfabe with World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon in 2007, in part billed as a battle over hair. Eventually he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, and many observers have made the link between neokayfabe and his approach to politics. Indeed, he even blended the two explicitly when he chose McMahon’s wife, Linda, to head the U.S. Small Business Administration during his presidency.  

Neokayfabe and politics came together again last night at the Republican National Convention, as Linda McMahon, wrestler Hulk Hogan, and musician Kid Rock, whose music has been featured at wrestling events and who is also a member of the WWE Hall of Fame, all participated. 

“So all you criminals, all you lowlifes, all you scumbags…. Whatcha gonna do when Donald Trump and all the Trumpamaniacs run wild on you, brother?!" Hogan yelled to wild applause after ripping off his shirt to show a Trump-Vance shirt. Like the other performers at the convention, he painted a portrait of Trump’s presidency, and of the United States since Trump left office, that was a fantasy of good and evil. Hogan reinforced that there was no way Trump was going to reach toward unity in Milwaukee. His approach to the world cannot be moderated. It depends on the idea that there are two teams in the performance and one must vanquish the other.

Part of that storyline requires rewriting not just the recent past, but our history. At the convention last night, Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, said: “It is no wonder that the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy and faced down communism sadly say they don’t recognize our country anymore.” But the Allied soldiers in World War II were not fighting communism. They were fighting fascism. The three great Allied powers were Great Britain, the United States, and the communist Soviet Union. 

It might be that Guilfoyle misspoke, or that she doesn’t know even the most basic facts of our history. Or it might be that by rewriting that history to put America on the side of the fascists, people like Guilfoyle hope to make that alliance more palatable to MAGA followers today.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

June 9, 2025 (Monday)

At 10:19 last night, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media: “Stand with ICE. Pass the B[ig] B[eautiful] B[ill].”

And there it is. The Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is the MAGA regime’s attempt to replace the American government we’ve had since the 1930s with one that reflects the antidemocratic values of Project 2025. The measure is unpopular. According to a new CBS News/YouGov poll, 60% of Americans think the bill will help wealthy people, while 54% think it will hurt poor people. Forty-seven percent think it will hurt the middle class, while only 31% think it will help the middle class. As Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted, it’s “[s]tunning how badly Trump and the Rs have lost the debate on what their reconciliation bill will do.”

The measure changes the nature of the American government by extending tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and adding significantly more money to immigration enforcement and defense spending. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure will add as much as $2.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years; with interest costs of that new debt, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded the measure would increase the debt by nearly $3 trillion.

At the same time that it moves money upward and into the white nationalist project of expelling immigrants, the measure guts federal policies and agencies that serve the American people, apparently with the goal of pushing such policies and agencies to the states. The CBO estimates that as many as 13.7 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage if the measure passes, and cuts of nearly $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will mean cuts of about 30% to the programs on which millions of Americans depend.

Miller’s post underscores the administration’s need to change the conversation around the measure, whose 1,000-plus pages lay out the MAGA vision for the United States. “Don’t kid yourself,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) posted. “[T]hey know they are absolutely getting cooked politically w[ith] their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine. It’s time for the mainstream media to describe this authoritarian madness accurately.”

Maanvi Singh of The Guardian put the right lens on events in Los Angeles today, noting “Trump’s dramatic escalation” and his vow “to crush opposition to his immigration raids.” Singh identified the administration’s escalation as the trigger for “a roaring backlash.”

Singh noted federal agents carried out arrests in L.A. without judicial warrants and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been holding families in the basements of federal buildings, refusing them access to lawyers and family members. Agents in riot gear attacked protesters with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, turning peaceful protests into clashes.

Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the protests an “insurrection,” and last night Trump activated at least 2,000 members of California’s National Guard over the protests of California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass. Just after midnight this morning, Trump posted: “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”

Administration officials are continuing their emphasis on spectacle and performance to try to bring popular opinion back their way. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported today that television personality Dr. Phil McGraw and his camera crew were embedded with ICE during the raids.

According to Dr. Phil’s right-wing TV channel, he was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations.” He also had “exclusive” access to Tom Homan, the man known as Trump’s “border czar,” and recorded interviews with him before and after the L.A. sweeps.

But that, too, is spectacle. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, Homan and Miller are the public face of border enforcement and anti-immigrant policies. But Homan is not part of ICE. He is a White House advisor, working in a civilian capacity. And yet, as Marshall records, he has taken to showing up before the cameras “in either faux military uniforms or, in most cases, civilian garb clearly meant to appear like military-style fatigues along with a ever-changing run of camo or olive drab baseball caps.”

Trump seems happy to let these White House officials take the lead in the immigration performance. On Saturday, Homan threatened to arrest anyone who obstructed immigration enforcement, refusing to exempt L.A. mayor Bass or California governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom responded: “What the hell is this guy? Come after me, arrest me. Let’s just get it over with. Tough guy. You know? I don’t give a damn, but I care about my community. I care about this community. The hell are they doing? These guys need to grow up, they need to stop, and we need to push back, and I’m sorry to be so clear, but—that kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”

As he arrived back at the White House this morning after spending the weekend at Camp David, Trump told reporters: “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great…. I think it would be a great thing. He’s done a terrible job.” Homan does not have the authority to arrest anyone. Using him to threaten to arrest a governor enables Trump to make the threat while also being able to deny that he made it.

Although members of Congress have legal authority to enter ICE detention facilities to conduct oversight, Jesus Jiménez, Chelsia Rose Marcius, and Nate Schweber of the New York Times reported that over the weekend, five members said officials barred them from doing so. New York Democratic representatives Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez say they were prevented from checking on the well-being of those detained in New York. In California, Democratic representatives Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez, and Norma Torres were turned away from the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.

Waters said she was trying to see David Huerta, the popular president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was injured when officers threw him to the ground and arrested him on Friday. Huerta’s arrest has mobilized union workers to protest the immigration sweeps, and today the Department of Justice announced it was charging him with felony conspiracy to impede an officer, which carries a maximum penalty of six years in federal prison. Crowds gathered in Washington, D.C., as well as in L.A. to call for Huerta’s release, and this evening he was released from custody on a $50,000 bond.

In a statement following his arrest, Huerta said: "What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”

Today Mayor Bass reminded protesters that “LA has a proud history of peaceful protests for immigrants rights.” She called for them to “continue that legacy—don’t fall into the Trump Administration’s trap. Protest peacefully. Looting and vandalism will not be tolerated.” She added: “Trump didn’t inherit a crisis—he created one. To those stoking the fire of lawlessness and chaos alongside him—LA will hold you accountable.” Observers today said the L.A. protests, most of which take place within a five-block radius, are overwhelmingly peaceful, characterized by Tejano music and celebrations of local culture.

This afternoon, a government official told Reuters that it is deploying about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until Wednesday. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on in Los Angeles. The state and city have the means to control the protests. Donald Trump is getting involved to intentionally make the situation more violent. And potentially to create a pretext for some sort of martial law.”

David Dayen of The American Prospect posted: “The correct way to connect the authoritarian presence in LA and the Big Beautiful Bill is that the bill gives the government the resources to do this in dozens of cities at once. So if you don't like what's happening in LA, it's coming to your town if the bill passes.”

Today, California attorney general Rob Bonta and Governor Newsom sued Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for their order to federalize the California National Guard without authorization from the governor and against the wishes of local law enforcement, calling it “an inflammatory escalation unsupported by conditions on the ground.” They have asked the court to set aside the order, calling it unlawful.

In addition to being unlawful, it appears the deployment was not terribly well thought through. Matthias Gafni of the San Francisco Chronicle reported tonight that the National Guard troops sent by Trump to Los Angeles received no federal funding for food, water, fuel, equipment, or lodging. Gafni shows a photo of “wildly underprepared” troops sleeping in their clothes on a cement floor. Nonetheless, Trump called another 2,000 California National Guard troops into federal service today “to support ICE.”

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times looked around at events and wrote: “what i see is a white house whose ambitions outstrip its resources, who did not count on facing mass resistance, and which is scrambling to escalate the situation in hopes that a display of force will make people shut up.”

This evening, Trump posted on social media a photograph of what appeared to be border patrol and ICE agents with the caption: “THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL Boosts Border Patrol and ICE Agents on the Frontlines with the Largest Border Security Investment in History.”

Governor Newsom said: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country—defending democracy. They are not political pawns. The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend. It’s a blatant abuse of power. We will sue to stop this. The courts and Congress must act. Checks and balances are crumbling. This is a red line—and they’re crossing it. WAKE UP!”

Also tonight, about 400 people turned out in Dallas, Texas, against ICE in solidarity with Los Angeles. At about 9:40 p.m. Dallas police said the protest was an unlawful assembly. At 10:15, officers moved in with pepper spray and smoke to disperse the crowd.

A final note: While the oxygen in the country was taken up by the administration's escalations, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today got rid of all 17 of the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy, who has taken a public stand against vaccines, told the Senate in his confirmation hearings that he would not change existing vaccine approval systems. But in an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal, he said “a clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”

Laura Unger and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press report that Kennedy intends to replace the fired committee members with his own picks.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[coffeenuts]

“This bill is a farce,” said Senator Angus King (I-ME). “Imagine a bunch of guys sitting around a table, saying, ‘I've got a great idea. Let's give $32,000 worth of tax breaks to a millionaire and we’ll pay for it by taking health insurance away from lower-income and middle-income people. And to top it off, how about we cut food stamps, we cut SNAP, we cut food aid to people?’... I've been in this business of public policy now for 20 years, eight years as governor, 12 years in the United States Senate. I have never seen a bill this bad. I have never seen a bill that is this irresponsible, regressive, and downright cruel.”

[anza-redstar]

Previously from the P.G. Wodehouse archives, there was comedy about Sherlock Holmes returning and comedy about characters from classic literature talking like Americans. I am now more delighted than I can say to bring you comedy about Sherlock Holmes returning and talking like an American:

THE PRODIGAL. Punch, September 23, 1903 [It is rumoured that Sherlock Holmes, when he reappears, will figure in a series of stories of American origin.] I met him in the Strand. It was really the most extraordinary likeness. Had I not known that he lay at the bottom of a dem’d moist unpleasant waterfall, I should have said that it was Sherlock Holmes himself who stood before me. I had almost made up my mind to speak to him, when he spoke to me. “Pardon me, stranger,” he said, “can you tell where I get a car for Victoria?” I told him. “Do you know,” I said, “You are astonishingly like an old friend of mine. A Mr. Sherlock Holmes.” “My name,” he said coolly. I staggered back, nearly upsetting a policeman. Then I seized him by the arm, dragged him into an A.B.C. shop, and sat him down at a table. “You are Sherlock Holmes!” I cried. “Correct. Sherlock P. Holmes of Neh Yark City, U.S.A. That’s me every time, I guess.” “Holmes!” I clutched him fervently to my bosom. “Don’t you remember me? You must remember me.” “Name of——?” he queried. “Watson. Dr. Watson.” “Wal, darn my skin if I didn’t surmise I’d seen you before somewhere. Watson! Crimes, so it is. Oh, this is slick. Yes, Sir. This is my shout. Liquor up at my ex-pense, if you please. What’s your poison?” I said I would have a small milk. “Why, the last I saw of you, Holmes——” I began. “Guess you didn’t see the last of me, sirree.” “But you did fall down the waterfall?” “Why, yes.” “Then how did you escape?” “Why, I fell over with Moriarty. The cuss was weightier than me some, so he fell underneath. If two humans fall over a precipice, I calkilate it’s the one with the most avoir-du-pois that falls underneath. Conse-quently I was only con-siderable shaken, while Moriarty handed in his checks.” “Then you weren’t killed?” “My dear Watson, how——? No. Guess I sur-vived. But, say, how are all the old folks at home? How’s Sir Henry Baskerville?” “Very well. He has introduced base-ball into the West Country.” “And the hound? Ah, but I remember, we shot him.” “No. He wasn’t really dead. He recovered, turned over a new leaf, and is now doing capitally out Battersea way.” Just then a look of anxiety passed over my friend’s face. I asked the reason. “It’s like this,” he said; “I’ve been in the U-nited States so long now, tracking down the toughs there, that I reckon I’ve ac-quired the Amurrican accent some. Say, do you think the public will object?” “Holmes,” I said, “it wouldn’t matter if you talked Czech or Chinese. You’ve come back. That’s all we care about.” “It’s a perfect cinch,” said Holmes, with a happy smile.

[majestativa]

I play the clown or the angel or the man of wisdom, whatever suits the occasion best. And inside me I am weeping.

— Henry Miller, Letters from Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller, (1990)

[wrong-answers-only-polls]

wait, American football is all of America right guys!?!

pst, down here! I know there arent any capybaras in Chile its intentional ok?! dont go thinking I dont know my capybara facts! also im sorry if you dont see your country I cant put an “other” option, lest people try to chose a right anwser