Coming Home to Roost
There’s an old joke about Grand Juries being so suggestible that they will indict a ham sandwich in a paper bag.
Rarely does a Grand Jury presentation fail. Rarely, that is, when experienced prosecutors look at the evidence and decide a case is worthy of taking to trial, that the evidence supports the charges.
With changes to the Trump Department of Justice, however, grand jury cases are failing. Rules of presentation of evidence are broken. Private conversations with jurists take place. Claims are made which cannot be supported. Two things happen – some of the grand juries fail to bring back an indictment, and those that go forward are whacked in court, to the great embarrassment of those trying to follow Trumps instructions.
But don’t just listen to me – do a little educating yourself. Read the article in today’s New York Times by Alan Feuer called As Trump Politicizes Justice Dept., Prosecutors Struggle With Grand Juries
Politicized Weaponized Justice and Unintended Consequences
I laughed when I read about the end of the Trump IRS case. He was going to lose, so he pulled an appearant agreement with the Department of Justice, where attorneys are fleeing the use of the Department to go after Trump’s enemies. Trump doesn’t care that the evidence does not support a winning case. He wants his “enemies” charged, like he was. He was found guilty, by a jury of his peers.
A very smart attorney, someone say like James Comey, will be able to find a way to use this case, and the funds set aside, to charge the current Department of Injustice with discrimination, that these funds should be widely available to those who believe the Justice Department has gone after them for purposes of vengeance, rather that breaking the law. This gang of dunces have opened a loop of opportunity, just one more tragic comedy in a regime of careless, callous, destructive actions.
This is from the news service 1440:
| Anti-Weaponization Fund’ |
| The Justice Department yesterday announced a $1.776B taxpayer-funded program to compensate individuals who claim the DOJ politically targeted them. The figure appears to be a nod to America’s founding year. Payments would come from the Treasury’s Judgment Fund, an uncapped account used to settle federal cases. The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is part of a settlement resolving President Donald Trump’s $10B lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, along with civil claims tied to the Russia probe and the search of his Mar-a-Lago residence. Trump and his family will receive a formal apology but no monetary damages. The tax case stems from disclosures by a former IRS contractor who was sentenced to prison for leaking high-profile figures’ tax data between 2018 and 2020.A five-member commission, appointed by the attorney general and removable by Trump, will oversee claims through December 2028. The fund is modeled after an Obama-era program that compensated Native American farmers for discrimination in federal lending programs (see DOJ explanation). |
He who accuses, accuses himself.
Robert Reich: Freedom Summer 2026
Robert Reich shares an idea for hope in a shocking season of gerrymandering. Win anyway, by registering voters. Michelle Obama would say “we go high”:
Friends,
Yesterday I spoke with Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, one of the nation’s young Black leaders who’s been a rising star in Tennessee politics, about the Supreme Court’s shameful April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Jones told me that, at Trump’s urging, Tennessee Republicans had prepared a redistricting map even before the Court announced its decision. Then, despite pleas from Black voters and voting rights advocates, the white Republican legislators moved their meeting to another room without allowing the public in to watch, passed the new map out of committee, and enacted it within 24 hours.
The new map has eliminated Tennessee’s one remaining Democratic district around Memphis, a city of about 610,000 people, about two-thirds of whom are Black — by cracking it into three majority-white district, one stretching hundreds of miles. The map has also divided Nashville, another city with a Black majority, into five white-majority districts.
Jones described Tennessee house speaker Cameron Sexton as the “grand wizard in chief,” explaining that “that’s what they want to do. They want to create a process that is unfair and unequal.”
Other Southern states have joined Tennessee’s rush to redistrict.
Louisiana’s governor has ordered that the state’s ongoing congressional election be set aside while state lawmakers redraw maps to eliminate a Democratic-majority – that is, a Black-majority – seat covering Baton Rouge.
At Trump’s request, Alabama Republicans have approved legislation directing the governor to schedule new primary elections this year under a GOP-friendly map that would end districts represented by Black lawmakers, if courts lift an injunction on its redistricting.
The Mississippi legislature will soon convene in a Confederate-era capitol building that it hasn’t used in 100 years, presumably to eliminate the Democratic majority in the one Mississippi district held by a Black representative.
South Carolina’s Republican majority in the statehouse voted Wednesday to extend its legislative calendar, allowing time to consider whether they should eliminate the state’s sole Democratic-majority, Black-majority district, held by long-serving representative James Clyburn.
Florida was already in a special redistricting session when the Supreme Court announced its decision, enacting a congressional map for its 28 districts that packs Black and brown voters into four districts on the south Florida coast and Orlando, eliminating every other Democratic majority.
“We’re going backwards at warp speed,” Jones told me. “In just over a week, we’ve gone from the 1965 Voting Rights Act back to the era of Jim Crow.”
I asked him what he and other Black political leaders in the South were planning to do.
“There’ll be a lot of litigation,” he said, “but we can’t be optimistic with this Supreme Court.”
“So, what’s the strategy?”
“We need the biggest voter turnout in history this fall. Every Black person, every Brown person, every Democrat, everyone who cares about the moral soul of this nation has to vote for equal voting rights. Take over Congress. Increase our power in state legislatures. This is the only way to respond.”
“I’m with you,” I said, “but I really wonder whether that’s possible.”
“How about a new Freedom Summer?” Jones responded, with a smile. “A multi-racial force of young people fanning out across the South, registering voters, getting them to the polls, just like they did in 1964.”
“I remember. I lost a dear friend in Mississippi Freedom Summer.”
“I have no direct memory, of course,” Jones said. “I was born in 1995, thirty-one years after Freedom Summer. But the South is almost back to where it was then. So, yes, it’s possible. It’s got to be possible.”
I told him I’d share his idea with you, and ask you for your responses.
Stretching the Point
Anyone who has ever served in the military knows the term 86. We used it all the time, mostly for pieces of valueless paper. 86 meant throw it in the trash can. A translation of the above would be commonly translated as “Dump Trump”.
Dump Trump is an increasingly common sentiment in the United States. It does not have violent connotations. It means, vote out this cheap fraud, lover of gilt and self-adulation, and his entire cheap entourage, pigs at the trough. Use your vote.
If you want to see truly violent inciting rhetoric, check out 45/47. He is the master of crude incitations to violent behavior. He will tell you he will bomb you back into the dark ages, and he has the record to prove it.
I applaud you, James Comey, for your balanced and fearless response. The courts have supported your case before; they will again. Thinking a photo of seashells urging the dumping of a corrupt regime is no where near an incitation to violence.
We have freedom of speech. We are allowed to say Dump Trump.
For Those Who Fall Victim to the Forces of Evil
Almighty God, our Refuge and our Rock, your loving care knows no bounds and embraces all the peoples of the earth: Defend and protect those who fall victim to the forces of evil, and as we remember this day those who endured depredation and death because of who they were, not because of what they had done or failed to do, give us the courage to stand against hatred and oppression, and to seek the dignity and well-being of all for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, in whom you have reconciled the world to yourself; and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Today our Lectionary remembers the Armenian genocide:
GENOCIDE REMEMBRANCE
Genocide Remembrance Day is observed by Armenians in dispersed communities around the world on April 24. It is held annually to commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide from 1915 to 1923.
The date 24 April commemorates the Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital in 1915, of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, most of whom would be executed, which was a precursor to the ensuing events.
— more at Wikipedia
Although this date is specifically a remembrance of the Armenian genocide, it is clear from the collects that it is intended here to cover all genocides: the killing or harming of people simply because of which ethnic, religious, or national group to which they happen to belong.
My Problem With ICE
I have a long history with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I’ve been in and out of the USA since I was a little girl. We have filled out countless forms for passports, and many times more those forms telling what we are bringing back into the country. The only time I ever had a problem with ICE was on returning from one of our African trips when I was bringing in wildebeest jerky from South Africa. I laugh now, it was me and a lot of African nationals shunted off. They were opening suitcases full of vegetables they were bringing back for family, and I was told my package of jerky was illegal in the United States. AdventureMan was annoyed with me, and I was ashamed I didn’t know. But they let me off with a mild scolding about infecting disease free animal life in the USA. I’ve never forgotten.
I’ve never minded the tiresome lines for immigration, always manned by sturdy, polite young people wanting to know where we’ve been and how did we like our trip; they were doing their job and they had been trained how to deal with people. In all my times going through those lines, I never saw any kind of incident.
They had a mission.
With the new administration, that mission changed, enlarged. They were given different, even SECRET orders, orders that encouraged them to commit the sorts of acts we saw in Minnesota. It always looked to me like those acts, committed on US Citizens, committed on resident citizens, smacked of incitement to violence. Why else would these customs and immigration officers be asked to violate the US Constitution in pursuing their mission?
I applaud those stoic and humor-filled Minnesotans who protested with restraint, who did not invite violent responses. Even if the Department of Justice will not cooperate in the investigations you are conducting into the murders of Minneapolis citizens, you are gathering witness from street cameras and witnesses against the illegal actions, and the lies and accusations, unjust, of the ICE officials and the Department of Justice. I applaud the restraint that forestalled any illusion of reason for a “national emergency” and activation of a military presence. The militaristic costumes of the immigration and customs officials did not fool nor intimadate you. Your patient, evidence based investigations will be embarrassment enough to those who thought to prevail by intimidation and brutality.
So we have to look at why the ICE men and women sent by our leader to Democratic states felt so empowered to misbehave?
Many ICE hirees have law enforcement backgrounds. Many of them have served in the armed forces. They know the basics. They know the law. They must have had second thoughts, many of them, while conducting these unrestrained acts of violence characterized as arrests of “rapists, thieves and the mentally ill,” as they arrested family men, women – and children, with no criminal records.
As well as knowing the law, and the legal use of power, those who are Christian would know Christ’s admonition to love our neighbor as ourself. Those who are Jewish would know the Old Testament verses about welcoming the stranger. Those who were raised without religion might be familiar with Spiderman, who teaches us that with great power comes great responsibility.
These $50K hires are as expendable as Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem. Once they have served their purpose, they can be scapegoated for excessive zeal in pursuit of the mission, or charged with murder while their superiors, who put the secret policies into effect, escape blame and punishment.
Again, I applaud the Minnesotans, who with restraint, humor, and humanity, protected the weakest, the families and children, while EFFECTIVELY resisting the provocation they faced. Well done, Minnesota!
And lets take a minute to grieve the effects of the violence upon those who inflicted it, mere pawns in a greater game of thrones.
Expendables: Illegal and Unconstitutional
I believe the sentiments of most American people towards Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi are that their firings are no great loss.
To give credit where credit is due, before becoming national public figures, both women had achieved notoriety in their own states. Like it or not, they are accomplished women, women achieving competently in the world of politics, Noem as governor and Bondi as attorney general.
Both are transactional types. Again, like it or not, each did her bounden duty to serve the will of the President, even when his demands were illegal and unconstitutional. Each, I believe, hoped for higher offices to come, in reward for executing acts and processes to eliminate the leaders “enemies,” whether enemy aliens or political opponents. Each stretched constitutional and societal mores beyond their limits in efforts to appease the endless greed of their leader, failing only because they wouldn’t go far enough. They broke laws. It wasn’t enough. They lied for the leader, they served his means.
I’m glad they are gone, and I feel sorry for them. They did everything the leader asked. They sacrificed personal integrity. They lied. They issued unconstitutional orders.
It didn’t pay. In the end, they took attention away from the man of endless genius they served. He found them to be expendable. They did what he wanted, but were not successful and exposed his means to public scorn. That was unforgivable. They’re pretty enough (and that matters to the leader) but just women.
“Off with their heads!” exclaims the Red Queen.
The one good thing, for them, that may come out of all this is to have escaped a morality-impaired regime before it collapses in ruins. This is just the beginning. Those who will not accept accountability must have scapegoats to carry the blame.
Slight of Hand and Wires and Mirrors; No Accountability
Our leader announced a speech to the nation, which turned out to be nothing but repeats of “Truth” social posts and comments previously made. A boring, disjointed 19 minutes of nothing credible. Credibility is stating a mission and following through. Chaos is changing the mission and its achievements every ten minutes or so. If you don’t believe me, watch the stock market.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain, The Great Oz and his handlers are changing how our democracy operates. The failed military officer, Pete Hegseth is examining and removing African Americans, females, and especially African American Females from promotion lists. He is firing the top general who questions his judgement in toying with a time honored system where the military chooses its leaders based on performance and leadership abilities, not their gender nor their color.
Does Hegseth understand demographics? Does he understand that military recruitment is problematic these days days, that the pool of recruits has shrunk dramatically? Does he understand that brawn no longer wins wars, but fighter planes, drones, new ideas and weapon development are fighting a new kind of war, where every gender and color contributes the the nuances of creative strategies available to a commander in chief who genuinely understands how to function in the fog of war?
Today Heather Cox Richardson alerts us to another slight of hand, the kind of small change the controllers hope will go unnoticed: The challenge of ACCOUNTABILITY and how it impedes a sitting President. She quotes the following, and it quite takes my breath away:
Yesterday Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, of the Office of Legal Counsel, published an opinion for the White House that claims the Presidential Records Act, which requires that presidents keep records of their official business and turn them over at the end of their term, is unconstitutional. Gaiser clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
“The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II. The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose,” the memo reads. “For these reasons, the PRA is unconstitutional, and the President need not further comply with its dictates.”
(taking a moment to catch my breath)
We burden our elected president with the requirement that we know what he does and why he is doing it?
How can anyone believe this lunacy? Any person in a position of responsibility has to answer to his polity! Elected politicians all the more. He answers to us, the voters.
Our leader has a lot to answer for. We can’t trust anything he says, from minute to minute. Our treasury has been declared insolvent. He is sending our children off to war with unclear orders and insufficient leadership.
He has hired a confederacy of ignorant, greedy sycophants. He has gutted our diplomatic service. He has gutted Consumer Oversight. He has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. He has corrupted the Department of Education.
He is terrified he cannot win and is attempting to take over national elections. Meanwhile, he is bankrupting our country with garish monuments and wars we never agreed to fight.
He is subjecting women to outdated standards and taken away their rights to make decisions for their own bodies.
He is corrupting our social system, taking medical care away from those who need it most, and callously neglecting the veterans who have served our country so loyally.
He has made agreements with other countries that we only learn about by accidental comments.
This can’t go on. Give us Accountability. Oversight. Congressional Approval. Fair and Free Elections. Constitutional Restraints!
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