THE START OF CRAZY WEEK FOUR

The civil war in Minneapolis continues: Police arrested several demonstrators on Saturday outside a the Whipple federal building, breaking up a protest marking the one-month anniversary of the death of Renee Good, killed on January 7 as she was driving away from immigration officers in a Minneapolis neighborhood. Her death and the killing of another Minneapolis resident, Alex Pretti, just weeks later have stoked outrage nationwide over Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Scores of protesters gathered across the street from the Bishop Henry Whipple federal building around midday, throwing bottles and sex toys at a line of police guarding the property. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that officers arrested a handful of protesters after the crowd starting throwing chunks of ice. Police declared the gathering unlawful and ordered protesters to leave. Many complied, the Star Tribune reported, but about 100 remained in a standoff with deputies, state troopers and state conservation officers. Video circulating on social media shows several protesters being forced to the ground and taken into custody. One person, as they appear to be placed in handcuffs, says: “I was here delivering pizza for the protesters. I had no idea that this was happening. I moved to the side of the curb when they started rushing everyone and now they’re arresting me. I am a peaceful protester delivering pizza and they’re arresting me.” No one from the sheriff’s office responded to email, voicemail and text messages from the Associated Press on Saturday afternoon requesting a copy of the statement and inquiring about how many people were arrested, whether anyone was injured and what led up to the arrests.

Meanwhile on Saturday, hundreds of people gathered on a snow-covered field in a Minneapolis park to honor Good and Pretti. Event organizers echoed recent criticisms of the immigration crackdown across Minnesota, characterizing it as a federal occupation. A Lakota spiritual leader, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, led a ceremony at the front of the crowd filled with people holding signs and American flags. Others shared music and poetry to honor the two people who have become central figures in the polarizing immigration debate in recent weeks.

The decision by Trump that the United States would not pay dues to the United Nations, has created a situation where the UN may have to shut down operations by this summer if the payments are not resumed. Currently the US is in arrears a total $4.5 billion in unpaid dues for regular, peacekeeping and tribunal budgets, as follows: $2.196 billion for the regular budget; $1.9 billion for peacekeeping; 43.6 million for tribunals like the ICC. The US payment for regular coperations covers 95% of that total budget. Although the Bib Ugly Bill includes funds for the UN, Maladministration II id currently refusing to bring their delinquent accounts current. Trump has never believed in the UN - or any other international organization the US is involved with - and this is likely his decision as to how to kill an organization whose goals are dedicated to everything the goddamned motherfucking traitor is opposed to. Waiting till 2029 in this situation for the opportunity to change U.S. policy will likely mean there is no UN to resuscitate then. Annual dues are mandatory under the UN Treaty and are based on each country’s GDP.

Surprise surprise (Not!): Trump’s latest scam - “TrumpRx” - turns out to be complete bullshit. Launched Thursday, Trump touted the program as “one of the most transformative health care initiatives of all time. This launch represents the largest reduction in prescription drug prices in history by many, many times.” Every time you hear the man whose every statement since was born has been a lie use the “best ever nothing like it” lie, you know that what follows is bullshit and this is no diffeent. Health policy experts and consumer advocates are skeptical about how many people will benefit, and how significant the deals are. The platform features coupons for 43 drugs, ranging from 33 to 93 percent off the list price and treating conditions for obesity, respiratory illnesses, infertility, bladder issues and menopause. The advertised prices achievable with the coupons are higher than what one might pay with insurance coverage. Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Program on Medicare Policy at KFF, said: “If you have insurance, your out-of-pocket costs are probably going to be less than the discounted list price that’s being advertised on TrumpRX. For people who are looking at this website and maybe they recognize a drug that they take, they really need to understand how their out-of-pocket cost under insurance would compare to the TrumpRx price. It’s a valuable effort for some medications, for some people, and I think especially people who don’t have good coverage of some of these medications.” However, what’s offered on TrumpRx are all branded versions of the drugs sold directly by drugmakers who’ve entered “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing agreements with Maladministration II. Most of the medications listed on the website have generic alternatives available on the market at significantly lower prices, with or without insurance. Yeah, it’s another Trumpscam.

Bad Bunny ruled the Superbowl so thoroughly that people who dodn’t speak Spanish and (like Dilbert) “didn’t underand a word he said” still ‘got it’ and loved what they got, according to myraid posters on various platforms. The show was so thoroughly “pro-America” that even self-identified MAGAts liked it with its presentation of “American values” and “Family values” - 135 million Americans watched the show, making it the most successful Superbowl Halftime Show ever. The MAGAts got a lip-synched performance by the most talentless piece of shit in entertainment, who was remembered by the rest of the net for his pedophile-approving song about how much he wanted to fuck underage girls. The TPUSA audience was a rounding error. MAGA’s idea there is a culture war is now proven as wrong as every other goddamn thing they have in their pea brains.

The official statistics contained in the DHS document reporting on the progress of Trump’s immigration termination plan - which had not been previously reported publicly - provide the most detailed look yet into who ICE has arrested during Maladministration II’s far-reaching deportation operations across the U.S. The internal DHS figures undermine frequent assertions by Maladministration II that its crackdown on illegal immigration is primarily targeting dangerous and violent criminals living in the U.S. illegally, people Trump and his lieutenants have regularly called the “worst of the worst.” Less than 14% of those detained since his second illegal occupation of the White House had any criminal activity in their records.

The big weekend news came late Friday when a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a key element of the Trump administration’s policy of mass detention of migrants. While the ruling from the uber-conservative appeals court wasn’t unexpected and is surely headed to the Supreme Court for final resolution, what this involved is Maladministration II’s re-interpretion of a 1996 law to allow it to detain migrants anywhere in the country without a bond hearing. Previous administrations had only applied one section of the law in that way at the immediate border. Everywhere else, under a different section of the law, undocumented immigrants were allowed to be released and were entitled to a bond hearing before deportation. Despite 254 U/\.S. Distrcit Judges rejecting this formula, two Trump-appointed “judges” on the ubser-conservative 5th Circuit accepted the administration’s new interpretation; its decision applies within Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to “every undocumented immigrant who originally entered across the border, no matter how many decades in the past.” Chris Geidner wrote: “The ruling is nonsensical and wrong, but it is also particularly horrifying in this moment. The consequences are all the more alarming, building, as it would, on the Supreme Court’s shadow docket order that unleashed Kavanaugh stops, ultimately, across the nation.” The ability to detain anyone without a bond hearing not only accelerated detentions, but it effectively allowed the administration to give up on targeted operations and detain anyone based on skin color, accent, and other blunt and outright racist outward indications of being an immigrant. The 5th Circuit decision is going to buttress the administration’s legal approach and fuel even more of the growing chaos of the past several weeks.

Participants in this year’s field test of the 2030 census may be asked about their U.S. citizenship status, the Trump administration revealed Thursday. The proposal, which is part of a regulatory filing for the test, comes months after Trump put out a call on social media for a “new” census that would, for the first time in U.S. history, exclude millions of people living in the country without legal status. In Congress, a growing number of Republican lawmakers are backing similar controversial proposals to leave out some or all non-U.S. citizens from a set of census numbers used to determine each state’s share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes.

According to the 14th Amendment, those census apportionment counts must include the “whole number of persons in each state.”

Anti-abortion protesters who travelled to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life ended up at a measles super spreader-event, according to health officials.Thousands of pro-lifers came for the Jan. 23 march and concert at the National Mall and now the D.C. Department of Health has reported multiple cases of the potentially fatal disease reported in the weeks after, The New Republic reported. “The march is a big event for religious conservatives, this year attracting politicians such as Vice President JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Republican Representative Chris Smith,” according to The New Republic. “Many on the right oppose vaccination, with some citing religious reasons, making the march a possible hotbed of measles infections.” Too bad measl;es isn’t fatal. Several thousand dead Trumpscum would be a good start on Making America Really Great Again.

U.S. District Judge William Young of Boston ruled on Friday that tThe Energy Department violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 when Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin cited the bogus Energy Department report to justify a plan to repeal his agency’s landmark scientific determination - the endangerment finding - that greenhouse gases endanger public health, which serves as the legal foundation for federal regulation of climate pollution.

Jeff Bezos pushed his bribe, er, I mean “documentary” about Melanoma into 300 more theaters on Superbowl weekend - the one weekend of th year Hollywood puts nothing into theaters - and on a total 2,000 screens... the piece of dreck declined 67% in ticket sales from its first weekend, with only $2.4 million in sales. “Baghdad Kevin” Wilson, head of domestic distribution for Amazon Studios, said the movie’s box-office performance “is a critical first moment that validates our wholistic distribution strategy, building awareness, engagement, and provides momentum ahead of the film’s eventual debut on Prime Video.” That is some primo Hollywood Bullshit, believe me. I’ve never heard delusions like this before. There are reports of bulk ticket buying, where tickets were sold but people didn’t show up. It is a similar tactic to how the best seller lists are rigged through bulk buying, especially on the right, to land conservative books on the best seller list.

The ritual sacrifice/murder of the Post is a stark reminder of the importance of independent journalism. No billionaires. No oligarchs. No corporate media. No dark money PACS. None of us can do it alone. You are not the crazy ones. These are truly the times that try men’s and women’s souls. This is the fight of our lifetimes, and the challenge of our generation. I realize times are getting harder, which is why some readers understandably didn’t renew their subscriptions. There are several free subscribers who read TAFM daily according to the site stats. If you folks happen to be in a position to help make up the gap, please consider joining the other paid subscribers here at That’s Another Fine Mess to keep things going. Across Substack, authors like me are losing to the Big Names who come here to say the same things they said in corporate media. We need your help! It’s only 21 cents a day. I am deeply thankful to those who have done so.

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