First up, Katie Phang.
Back in July, C.I. reviewed Robert W Fieseler's AMERICAN SCARE: FLORIDA'S HIDDEN COLD WAR ON BLACK AND QUEER LIVES. I don't know if Mom or Dad bought it, but they both read it and since I was hear for Christmas, I grabbed it off the shelves and read it too.
It's a great book and I recommend it but I'm noting it now because Chris Bull (LGBTQ NATION) has an interview with the author:
No one can accuse Robert W. Fieseler of taking the easy road.
The journalist and historian’s first book, Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation, chronicled
the horrific mass incineration of gay men at a New Orleans gay bar and
the extraordinary bigotry exhibited by public officials and religious
leaders in the aftermath.
His latest book is no beach read either. In American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives, Fieseler
draws on a treasure trove of previously undisclosed documents to expose
the Johns Committee. This state legislative organization used the cover
of anti-communism to attack political opponents. Spearheaded by Charley
Johns, a multi-term smear artist in a gerrymandered legislature, the
Committee tried to eliminate threats to the hegemony of the state’s
white, conservative regime just as minority groups were starting to
assert power.
Sound familiar? Well, that’s part of the point.
With the publication of American Scare,
Fieseler, who lives in New Orleans with his partner, Ryan, has joined
the ranks of the nation’s top investigative reporters, chronicling our
most tragic episodes while taking home multiple awards. In fact, American Scare in November was named a Kirkus “Best Book of 2025.”
LGBTQ Nation chatted with Fieseler via Zoom to understand
the historical gravity of his work and the parallels to today’s
politics, a time when MAGA employs many of the same strategies of
demonizing and discriminating against marginalized groups to gain and
retain a stranglehold on power.
LGBTQ Nation: Dostoyevski
would have a lot to say about American politics. There are moments in
our history that explain the cycle of queer liberation and backlash,
such as the Florida Johns Committee, the Matthew Shepard murder, the
Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, or the Upstairs Lounge fire
disaster in New Orleans. Both your books cover such tragedies. What do
they reveal about LGBTQ+ life?
Robert W. Fieseler: Especially today, our news cycle continually chases its tail and fails to account for the historical background needed to understand any given headline. We’re in a time now where deep undercurrents are affecting our present moment more than our daily tidal shifts, and that’s why historical context is so important to factor in: It reveals the seeds and sources of contemporary phenomena.
I wrote about the 1973 Upstairs Lounge tragedy – a notoriously unsolved arson fire in New Orleans that claimed 32 lives – for my first book Tinderbox, right around the time of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. I felt disoriented when contemporary news accounts of the Orlando tragedy offered me none of the substantive societal subtext I needed to understand and process the massacre.
That's the opening so use the link to read it in full.
I'm in Boston with my daughter. I spend Christmas here. Elaine stays at C.I.'s because they've spent pretty much every Christmas together since the first year of college. There was one or two years when -- due to pregnancies -- they spent it together via the phone. But outside of that, they are always physically together.
And I come out to Boston and visit my family. It lets Mom see her granddaughter. She has a ton of grandchildren and loves them all but she points out that she gets to see our daughter so little. I feel bad about that. I take her to Boston about three times a year. And Mom can come to C.I.'s anytime she wants out in California or if we're back at our place in Hawaii, Mom can come there. But I know she wants more and don't blame her.
I'm explaining that because a lot of e-mails are wondering if I'm sick and/or complaining about the lack of posts. That's what's going on. It happens each year but more so this year because we're all drained from the convicted felon returning to the White House. We're all trying to give ourselves time when we need it.
And tlaking about Chump or spending time with my folks and my siblings and their children? I'd rather spend time on the family that I don't see as much as I should.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas. And that we all have a great new year. It's been a tough year because of Chump's efforts to destroy our country We accomplished a great deal by standing up to him but a lot of people still suffered. He is pure evil.
Remember that on New Year's Eve, ABC is airing DICK CLARK'S ROCKING NEW YEAR'S EVE and among the guests? Post-Malone (yea!) and the one and only Diana Ross!!! My dad's loved Diana's singing for years -- has everything she's released -- solo or with the Supremes -- and he's getting the word out so let me help him with that.
Let me note this remix of Diana Ross' "The Boss."
Here's C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor asked Jeffrey Epstein’s fixer Ghislaine Maxwell to arrange meetings with “inappropriate friends” while she sought “friendly and discreet and fun” girls on his behalf, the latest documents from the Epstein files appear to show.
The largest release yet of files concerning the financier and convicted child sex offender – which also raise fresh questions for the US president, Donald Trump – include emails in the name of “A” exchanging detailed messages with Maxwell that appeared to identify the author as Andrew.
The emails from 2001 and 2002 appear to give further insights into the relationship between the former prince and Epstein, which has been under scrutiny since it emerged in 2011.
The files also show that the FBI sought to question Mountbatten-Windsor about his links to a second millionaire sex offender, Peter Nygard.
We're ignoring Chump's social media posts.
Yea
I was dictating about one of the posts for this snapshot and we got into the weeds -- specifically outing a Chump supporter who is semi-beloved by those who know his acting. They don't know his life. I'm not opposed to outing him -- and already did earlier this year when he was cozy publicly with Chump. But let's save that for another time. It'll be funnier this way as a mutual friend let's him know that I'm toying with him at present. At present.
A lot of news in the Epstein scandal -- much more than just the fact that Donald was on Epstein's plane much more than had been reported. Sarah Fitzpatrick (THE ATLANTIC) notes:
Nearly two years ago, Donald Trump kicked off the presidential-campaign season with a declaration: “I was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island,” he posted on Truth Social in January 2024. Reports to the contrary, he insisted, were the fault of AI—and of his political rivals: “This is what the Democrats do to their Republican Opponent, who is leading them, by a lot, in the Polls.”
But this week, the documents released by Trump’s own Justice Department—including flight logs and emails—told a different story. Federal prosecutors determined in January 2020 that Trump had been a passenger on the notorious private jet owned by Jeffrey Epstein—who would later be charged with sex trafficking—far more often than they had realized.
His travels on Epstein's plane spanned the time that would likely be covered in any criminal charges against Epstein's co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump was listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, and on at least four of those flights, Maxwell was also there, according to the email.
On one of those eight flights, in 1993, Trump and Epstein were the only two passengers listed in the flight logs. On another flight, the three passengers listed in records are Epstein, Trump, and a redacted individual, who was 20 years old at the time. Two other flights included two women -- whose names were redacted in follow-up emails — identified as potential witnesses in a Maxwell case.
The holidays don't bring a halt to Chump's multiple wars on the people. Guy Trebay (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:
“He is one of those people that make this small town click,” said Nelson Hammell, who runs an antiques shop in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Mr. Hammell was referring to José Gonzalez, the manager and public face of Bice Ristorante, an upscale Italian restaurant in Palm Beach, the winter home to President Trump and some of the world’s wealthiest people.
On Dec. 10, Mr. Gonzalez, 53, was stopped by Florida Highway Patrol while driving a nephew’s pickup truck. The apparent offense was having tinted car windows. Mr. Gonzalez was arrested and turned over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Then, as has happened to thousands of others in Florida, he was taken deep into the Everglades to the state-run immigration detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz.
This is the biggest scam in the world. Chump pretends to protect the country as he attacks innocents. DHS insists that these people are the worst of the worst and have various charges against them but it turns out that th majority do not. It's all smoke and mirrors intended to make Chump look better while people suffer -- innocent people suffer. Treybeh's article notes:
“What I have been hearing from people in the community, most of whom are Trump supporters, is that it went too far,” said Eddie Schmidt, the owner of Table26, a restaurant in West Palm Beach. “When we’re not talking about deporting gang members, drug dealers, pedophiles but members of the community, faces we all know, it’s harder to turn your back.”
The lies were obvious for many from the start. The number of people who can see reality has only increased throughout 2025. If Chump really thinks he can continues these attacks for a four year term, he is rudely mistaken.
It's all spectle and falsehoods which is why Kristi Noem is so perfect to lead the corrupt department. Melissa Gira Grant (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:
Before the 2024 election, the idea that Kristi Noem would someday head the Department of Homeland Security seemed beyond unlikely. But her cruelty once handed this power was foreseeable. If Noem’s name rang any bells for most people before the Senate confirmed her to head DHS this January (to their enduring shame), it was because she shot her 14-month-old dog to death in a gravel pit and included the grisly scene in her election-year memoir. She defended the book, No Going Back, as “a blueprint for America of what citizens can do here to take their country back.” In the past year, she has emerged in what will likely go down in history as her true form: an entity first caught on camera in March 2025 in a torture prison in El Salvador, and now shorthanded as “ICE Barbie.” Heavily made-up, styled in a tight white shirt, $50,000 Rolex watch, and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement ball cap atop long, flowing locks, she stood in front of cells filled with men imprisoned on her orders, and delivered a direct-to-camera threat to immigrants in the United States: “This facility,” she said, “is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”
Under Noem, ICE has become the most lavishly-funded law enforcement agency in the United States. ICE agents have arrested around 220,000 people, between Trump taking office and October 15. (That doesn’t include arrests by Border Patrol agents, a separate DHS agency who often accompany ICE; since January 20, the administration has claimed to have arrested 595,000 immigrants.) On any given day, Noem’s DHS is responsible for holding around 65,000 people in immigration detention—a record high. Breaking another record, ICE has detained at least 600 children this year. The agency claimed to have deported more than 600,000 people since Trump returned to office. Noem has overseen the opening and expansion of several new immigrant detention facilities and camps; two Florida facilities notorious for employing torture techniques borrowed from CIA black sites are now under her purview. Other DHS agencies have indefinitely suspended immigration applications from a growing number of countries Trump has targeted, and abruptly canceled immigration ceremonies. Noem has purchased planes for DHS to use for deportation flights, including two new luxury G700 Gulfstream jets for $200 million, and ten Boeing 737’s from a bankrupt budget airline, each without an engine. DHS press releases are now filled with open taunting of immigrants; their social media accounts are dominated by white nationalist slop. Noem has since admitted she directed the removal—more a mass abduction than deportation—of 261 people to the prison camp in El Salvador in March, in defiance of a court order.
While DHS anti-immigration agents may hide their faces in balaclavas, Noem is front-and-center promoting the agency and Trump’s promised mass deportations. ICE Barbie is somewhere between the enabler and the cover for the agency’s campaign of “assault and kidnapping”—the words used by one woman who was grabbed by masked, armed agents on her commute in Chicago. Tens of thousands of people have been taken by masked and armed men working for DHS on the streets of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Charlotte, and others. Thousands of people across the country have been vigilant in identifying and tracking these agents as they terrorize their neighbors. In the last few weeks alone, federal immigration agents loosed an attack dog on a Washington state resident, according to his senator; chased a Louisiana woman (a U.S. citizen) while she was walking home from the corner store; unleashed pepper spray on residents in a Somali neighborhood in Minneapolis; violently yanked a Key Largo woman from her car on her way to work, still wearing her hospital scrubs; and chased a man out of a Home Depot parking lot and into the street, where he was reportedly hit by a car.
If you celebrated Christmas today, how did you celebrate it? Shared time with loved ones? Well there's no love in Kristi's faux heart so she celebrated it with a shooting. Sarah Fortinsky (THE HILL) reports ICE admits to shooting a man in a car in Baltimore.
Sarah does some strong work. This isn't strong work. This is pathetic. It's a betrayal of journalism. Maybe she was on the clock and didn't want to be? I don't know. I don't care. I had announced last night, "In 2026, we're going to start putting a real spotlight on those journalists who repeat Homeland Security's lies without (a) noting they're claims and not factual proven statements and that (b) Homeland Security lied non-stop in 2025 and so they aren't to be believed."
Yea! I don't have too. This morning, MEIDASTOUCH announced that they're going to do that.
Yea! They'll do it better and I'll use it as an excuse to focus on something else. My plate is full and, like Vanessa, I got work to do.
Back to the lies of Homeland Secuirty, that is how it works and that is why you're told not to lie. If you are caught lying -- and Homeland Security has been caught lying repeatedly in 2025 -- no one has to believe you. It's a truism that the courts are beginning to enforce. It's a shame that journalists -- who are supposed to traffic in the truth -- are so slow to note a habitual liar when were talking about the government.
Meanwhile, Melissa Cooney (NBC CONNECTICUT) reports:
A Meriden 16-year-old is back in Connecticut after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for six months.
With the help of three law firms in Connecticut, one in Texas, and a senator, Maloney High School graduate Kevin is released from one of the federal government's ICE detention facilities in Texas.
"I’m happy, very happy,” Kevin said. “Thank you all,” he said in Spanish.
You might remember Kevin’s story. He was detained at a scheduled, non-criminal immigration hearing in Hartford in June with his father. It happened days before his high school graduation, sparking outrage in the community from his classmates, teachers, and city officials, who held a march in his honor and left his seat open at the graduation ceremony.
“ICE took Kevin in the middle of the night with his father to deport him in secret. The agent told him he could make one last call, and he called me. While other kids might have called their family or friends, he made a call to his lawyer at 3 a.m.,” said Meagan Faitsch, one of Kevin’s attorneys.
16 years old, kidnapped and imprisoned. What a proud moment for Kristi and Chump.
Still on Texas, Berenice Garcia (TEXAS TRIBUNE) reports:
One morning in mid-November, Mario Guerrero, the executive director of the South Texas Builders Association, was checking a group chat when a video of federal agents detaining people from a construction site popped up.
He watched the video of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining workers who were pouring cement in front of a home in an idyllic neighborhood here in the Rio Grande Valley.
For nearly a year, Guerrero had seen similar videos or read news reports of arrests and raids. This was the last straw.
The raids and the specter of more to come have struck fear in construction workers, causing many to stay home. ICE agents have arrested more than 9,100 people in South Texas — nearly one-fifth of all such arrests in the entire state since Trump took office, according to government data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request to the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Texas Tribune.
Without enough workers, construction has slowed, sending a ripple effect throughout the economy. Economists suggest that this will drive housing costs up — even as Texas officials focus on bringing such costs down.
December 18, 2025
Happy Holidays from BC
We are in our winter hiatus
The next issue
will be Published Jan 8
Our email address is BlackCommentator@gmail.com
Our voicemail number is 856.823.1739
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STILLER & MEARA: NOTHING IS LOST7 hours ago
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President Chump and his message of hate8 hours ago
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What the heck is AM GEM?8 hours ago
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The continued downfall of Katy Perry8 hours ago
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