HUFFPUFF WE MADE IT TO THE END OF WEEK 32

Here we are at the end of Week 32, with 390 days left to get this shit straightened out. There was another important Corporate surrender this morning, when - after intense pressure from Maladministration II, Apple removed ICE tracking apps from its app store, including ICEBlock.

Please do me a favor and think good positive thoughts for Roscoe today. I’ve been trying - and getting delayed by catching COVID again over the weekend, to get my Sweet Little Guy into a vet, because he’s become really sick. Going to the vet on a walk-in today.

The government shutdown is hindering the work of the White House in one of its most vital and time-consuming areas: childish trolling. Not only are hundreds of thousands of federal workers being furloughed because of a lapse in congressional funding—which the ruling GOP is insisting is the fault of the Democrats—the shutdown also seems to be impeding the White House press team’s ability to fire off edgelord memes and try-hard clapbacks to the media. “Due to staff shortages resulting from the Democrat Shutdown, the typical 24/7 monitoring of this press inbox may experience delays. We ask for your patience as our staff work to field your requests promptly,” reads an automatic response to the White House press email address. “As you await a response, please remember this could have been avoided if the Democrats voted for the clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government open. The press office also cannot accommodate waves requests or escorts at this time.” Fuck you motherfuckers in your faces.

Thursday, the DOJ asked U.S. District Judge Michael Simon - the judge assigned to oversee the challenge to President Trump’s National Guard deployment in Portland, Ore. - to step aside because he is married to Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), who represents a district that stretches from Portland’s western suburbs to the coastline, who opposes the invasion. The recusal motion landed a day before the judge will hold a hearing on Oregon’s request to temporarily block the deployment. “It’s absurd that Trump is spending an expected $3.8 million to deploy the National Guard to Portland, especially during a government shutdown and when families are struggling to pay for health care, housing, and groceries,” Bonamici wrote on Bluesky.

The guy everyone would like to stuff in a seabag and throw off the Santa Monica Pier in a winter storm (they’re coming!) demonstrated once again why rabid dogs are shot: Trump henchman Stephen Miller issued a shocking directive to police officials in a fiery speech in Memphis, where he joined Pistol Pete Kegstand and Pammikins Bondi on Wednesday to promote the so-called “Memphis Safe Task Force.”In a rant aimed at motivating the law enforcement agencies involved in the invasion, Miller told Memphis PD officers: “I see the guns and badges in this room. You are unleashed. The handcuffs you’re carrying, they’re not on you anymore, they’re on the criminals. And whatever you need to get it done, we’re gonna get it done. We are sending in real cops with guns and badges to go out with you on the street every single night, making arrests. These are people who have taken down drug cartel kingpins, the worst criminal offenders in the United States, standing with you, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder.” Miller promised to “liberate this city from the criminal element that has plagued it for generations. “Every resource we have, federal, state, and local, we are going to use to dismantle their criminal networks without apology and without mercy. Everything we have, we are going to bulldoze the criminal element of this city and liberate all the law-abiding citizens in this city. This is Memphis, this is the United States of America, and all that bullshit is done! It’s over, it’s finished. The gangbangers that you deal with, they think that they’re ruthless, they have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they’re tough, they have no idea how tough we are. They think that they’re hardcore, we are so much more hardcore than they are, and we have the entire weight of the United States government behind us. What do they have? They have nothing behind them. So we are gonna win, they’re gonna lose.” He then bowed to Dear Leader: “President Trump had decided this is a priority, and when President Trump makes a decision, this team behind me today executes.” (FACT CHECK for the little putz: Memphis Police this month reported stated that overall crime is at a 25-year low, with murder at a 6-year low and sexual assault at a 20-year low.)

Pistol Pete thanked the assembled officers for working in dangerous places “where politicians spend a lot of time second-guessing... the impossible decisions that you have to make that they will never understand.” (The places he and every Republican are terrified of) “We’re not here to second-guess you. We’re here to have your back, to unleash you to do your job, so you come home safely. Our department is here to enable you, law enforcement, to do your job, to help protect your facilities, help protect your people, so that you, your hands can be untied, to secure your city.”

My favorite actual conservative, - George Conway - said Wednesday night in an appearance on Chris Hayes’ show that the indictment of James Comey is “invalid” due to the absence of a required signature. Lindsey Halligan, interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, was assigned to oversee the case and originally signed the indictment documents; Conway says the law doesn’t allow for her to retroactively bring charges against Comey. “I mean, there’s another method by which they could put in an acting U.S. attorney, but that person has to be already Senate-confirmed and already in the Justice Department. And Lindsey Halligan was neither. She was working as a hack in the White House. So, she has basically no authority. She’s not the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, and no one else. We saw her signature on that indictment. No one else signed that indictment, which means that it is invalid.” Conway said because no other “valid” attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia’s U.S. attorney’s office signed the indictment, and the statute of limitations has expired, “this case is over.” “So Comey’s home free. This case should be done.”

Hee’s what Mr. Conway is talking about: A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the top federal prosecutor in Nevada is disqualified from handling cases, a rebuke to the Trump administration’s effort to sidestep the traditional methods of installing U.S. attorneys. U.S. District Judge David Campbell wrote in a 32-page opinion that Sigal Chattah “is not validly serving as Acting U.S. Attorney” and therefore her involvement in prosecutions “would be unlawful.” Chattah is the second U.S. attorney installed by the Trump administration to see her authority stripped by a federal judge in recent months. In August, a federal judge disqualified Alina Habba as acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey, though that ruling is on pause pending appeal. In Chattah’s case, four defendants indicted in Nevada moved to dismiss their indictments, arguing that she was not validly serving in the job. Campbell, an Arizona judge appointed by George W. Bush, was assigned to the matter after the Nevada district judges recused themselves. Campbell declined to dismiss the indictments, but disqualified Chattah from supervising their cases “or any attorneys in the handling of these cases.” And he ordered the prosecutors working on the cases to file statements within one week stating that they are not being supervised by Chattah in those cases.

Chattah was installed as interim U.S. attorney in April after running as the Republican nominee for Nevada attorney general in 2022. Like Habba, she was seen as unconfirmable by the Senate, and in fact Trump never nominated Chattah to take the job permanently. In the final days of her 120-day appointment as interim U.S. attorney, a group of more than 100 retired federal and state judges wrote to the chief federal district judge in Nevada to object to voting to install Chattah after her appointment expired. The group said her history of “racially charged, violence-tinged, and inflammatory public statements” disqualified her. Instead of waiting for the judicial vote, the Trump administration named her the acting U.S. attorney.

On the same day that a judge ruled that Chattah was invalidly appointed, Reuters reported she asked the FBI to investigate debunked GOP claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election. Reuters’ bombshell report relies on a government document it obtained that allegedly shows: (i) Chattah wants to remove “illegal aliens” from voter rolls possibly leading to a “reallocation of census numbers” that would affect the race for Nevada’s 4th congressional district seat, currently held by a Democrat. (ii) Chattah wants to exonerate the six Republicans who were prosecuted for Trump’s fake electors scheme in Nevada in 2020 even though she represented one of the defendants and has deep conflicts of interest. (iii) Chattah hopes to demonstrate an ongoing conspiracy between the Biden White House and state attorneys general. (iv) Chattah wants a takedown of unions and non-profits that operate voter registration drives and a probe into the financing of these “illegal acts” by the Democratic political action committee ActBlue.

It’s the kind of politicization one imagines the most cravenly loyal Trump prosecutors to engage in, but you don’t expect it to be put in writing for an international news agency report on it.

The FBI announced Wednesday it is severing its partnership with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), with K$H issuing an unusual attack against the group that battles antisemitism. K$H blasted former FBI Director James Comey, referencing a speech he gave to the group in 2014, which he called a “love letter to the ADL” when he again addressed the group in 2017. “James Comey wrote ‘love letters’ to the ADL,” Patel wrote Wednesday, adding that Comey “embedded FBI agents with them.” “That era is OVER. This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.” The announcement came the day after the ADL abruptly ended its Glossary of Extremism, saying: “With over 1,000 entries written over many years, the ADL Glossary of Extremism has served as a source of high-level information on a wide range of topics for years. At the same time, an increasing number of entries in the Glossary were outdated. We also saw a number of entries intentionally misrepresented and misused.” Though not addressed by K$H, the glossary includeed references to Turning Point USA.

You knew this was coming. There will be more, and this isn’t good news for us: Air Force Global Strike Command commander, Gen. Thomas Bussiere, announced his retirement Tuesday for “personal and family reasons.” And the way this is worded is proof the action was not voluntary: “After much reflection and with a full heart, Barb and I have made a difficult decision to request retirement from the United States Air Force for personal and family reasons. While I’m stepping away from active duty, my commitment to service remains. I look forward to finding new ways to support our Air Force, our national defense and the incredible people who make it all possible.” Bussiere, who has served as GSC commander since December 2022, was nominated by Maladministration II to be Air Force vice chief of staff in July, but Aviation Week reported in early September that the nomination was withdrawn. The former Air Force vice chief of staff, Gen. James Slife, was fired in February in Dear Leader’s purge of anyone in the military worthy of respect. the Air Force announced Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin would retire in November after serving two years of his four-year term. He’s being replaced by Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach (known to be part of the USAF’s Fundamentalist Christian commandos). Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink (another MAGAt Fundamentalist) said of Wilsbach, “I have full confidence that he will make sure Airmen embody a warrior ethos and are ready to defend our nation and maintain our dominance against all adversaries.” I’m sure the ghost of Curtis LeMay is licking its chops over this news. What these events demonstrte is the accuracy of David Kurtz’s statement, “What is feasible is is to begin to erode the military culture. To emphasize loyalty over merit. To prize fealty over competence. To punish truth-telling and reward convenient fictions.”

Kilmar Ábrego García’s asylum bid was denied by a Baltimore immigration judge on Thursday. Abrego Garcia now has 30 days to appeal the decision with the Board of Immigration Appeals, which falls under the DOJ. His lawyers have filed motions with a Tennessee federal judge, requesting a gag order on top officials, out of fear that their comments may prevent Ábrego from getting a fair trial. It is unclear whether the judge’s authority can extend to DHS, which posted on X on Wednesday that he “is not going to be able to remain” in the U.S. This story is truly “Kafkaesque” - it is all about the government refusing to admit that they made a mistake. Dear Leader, as we know, never has admitted making the many mistakes he makes every day, all his life.

In another genius move, Dear Leader - after shutting the government down - declared that construction on the White House whorehouse, er, I mean ballroom, is “essential” and therefore must continue, showing once again that he is the master of bad messaging.

The bible-banging, god-bothering, hay-shaking, shitkickers have their knicker in a knot now. On Tuesday, the FDA approved a new generic form of the abortion pill mifepristone, sending a letter to Evita Solutions, informing the company that its abbreviated new drug application met the necessary requirements and was approved. “We have determined your Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg to be bioequivalent and therapeutically equivalent to the reference listed drug (RLD), Mifeprex (mifepristone) tablets, 200 mg, of Danco Laboratories.” The Fundiescum are now apoplectic. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called the decision “unconscionable.” “These dangerous drugs take the lives of unborn children, place women and underage girls at serious risk, empower abusers, and trample the pro-life laws enacted by states across the nation.” Stanford University’s greatest embarrassment - Josh Hawley - wrote on Xitter: “This is shocking. FDA has just approved ANOTHER chemical abortion drug, when the evidence shows chemical abortion drugs are dangerous and even deadly for the mother. And of course 100% lethal to the child.”

Maladministration II has offered nine universities - Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia - to join a “Compact for Higher Education” in which they surrender to Maladministratuion II higher education policies in return for additional funding opportunities. To join, universities would need to make the following changes: hiring and admissions practices, adopting institutional neutrality and the exclusion of transgender women from women’s locker rooms and sports teams. Maladministration II also wants schools to commit to reforms for a “vibrant marketplace of ideas,” freeze tuition rates for five years and limit foreign student enrollment to 15%. Any school that signs the 10-point memo would receive preferential treatment in federal funding for grants. Within an hour of the Compact being announced, Governor Newsom responded: “IF ANY CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY SIGNS THIS RADICAL AGREEMENT, THEY’LL LOSE BILLIONS IN STATE FUNDING — INCLUDING CAL GRANTS — INSTANTLY. CALIFORNIA WILL NOT BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS, PROFESSORS, RESEARCHERS, AND SURRENDER ACADEMIC FREEDOM.” Newsom’s pushback comes as Dear Leader has decided to use federal funding as a lever to force universities to adopt Maladministration II’s desired reforms.

TPM’s David Kurtz gets today’s last word: “Trump has checked off the list of independent sources of political power that authoritarians typically target: the courts, law enforcement, the press, universities, and civil society organizations, among others. The military remains a key holdout. But none of these institutions can resist alone, and even together they can’t resist forever without broad-based cultural support for them. That is going to be the real test of our time.”

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