Here's C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois blasted recent federal immigration enforcement efforts in Chicago on Sunday, dismissing assertions by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that the city was a “war zone” and blaming federal agents for escalating a sense of conflict.
“The secretary doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” the governor said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that Chicagoans were “booing her on the street.”
Mr. Pritzker singled out a late-night Border Patrol raid last week at an apartment building on Chicago’s South Side, when video taken by bystanders showed residents of the building restrained with zip ties.
These respondents include former attorneys general, solicitors general and their deputies in the Justice Department and White House counsels, as well as former U.S. attorneys and retired federal judges from across the country. (Forty-two people who took the survey last year did so again, and we added eight more to replace those who did not. The group is again evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.) Some of the former officials we surveyed, in both parties, are speaking out against the wrongs they see unfolding despite the professional and personal risks.
But many of them — more so than last year — don’t want to speak on the record. These are people with stature in their world, custodians of the American Bar who have represented clients of all stripes, taught law students, served on professional committees. But now they’re worried about retribution, for their law firms or their family members, if they draw Trump’s ire.
Our new survey channeled their collectively grim state of mind. All but one of the respondents rated Trump’s second term as a greater or much greater threat to the rule of law than his first term. They consistently characterized the president’s abuses of power — wielding the law to justify his wishes — as being far worse than they imagined before his re-election.
And every single one of the 50 respondents believe that Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, have used the Justice Department to go after the president’s political and personal enemies and provide favors to his allies.
A federal judge on Sunday night blocked the Trump administration from deploying hundreds of out-of-state National Guard troops to Oregon, even as President Trump turned to the Texas guard in a widening hunt for military forces to send to Democratic cities.
The Trump administration had tried to send hundreds of California National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., while mustering hundreds more from Texas, despite a stern ruling from Judge Karin Immergut of U.S. District Court in Oregon just Saturday that sought to block military forces.
Judge Immergut, an appointee of President Trump, called an emergency hearing Sunday, then broadened her restraining order to cover “the relocation, federalization or deployment of members of the National Guard of any state or the District of Columbia in the state of Oregon,” telling Justice Department lawyers that the president was ”in direct contravention” of her order.
The blizzard of moves by the Trump administration, from Texas to California, Illinois to Oregon, has left governors and the courts scrambling to keep pace. First, the administration tried to sidestep Judge Immergut by turning to California. Then the president ordered as many as 400 members of the Texas National Guard to deploy for “federal protection missions” in Portland, Chicago and potentially other cities, according to a letter released by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, on Sunday night.
A progressive member of the Chicago City Council was detained Friday after pressing federal agents about the due process rights of a detainee being held in a hospital within her ward.
Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes told reporters she had gone to Humboldt Park Hospital upon hearing that a roughly 37-year-old man—who was being chased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during an operation in the neighborhood—had fallen, broken his leg, and was taken to the hospital by the agents.
The agents, whom she identified as ICE, were not letting the man speak with lawyers, Fuentes said. A video of the incident, which begins amid a back-and-forth between the elected official and two agents, was shared on Fuentes’s Facebook page.
The footage begins with Fuentes stressing that the detained man has constitutional rights, to which one agent replied, “No. No.” The alderperson asked whether the agents had a signed judicial warrant for him.
“You need to leave,” the agent answered, threatening to arrest her. The other agent, a masked man, told Fuentes, “You are going to be placed under arrest—”
Before he could finish, his partner violently yanked Fuentes’s arm with both hands, turned her around, and placed her in handcuffs. A woman behind the camera can be heard saying, “This is an alderperson who is being [placed] under arrest!”
While being handcuffed, Fuentes inquired repeatedly about a warrant for the injured man, and seemingly told the men the handcuffs were hurting her. She emphasized that she had not touched the agents, and the man who handcuffed her said she was “under arrest for impeding.”
“That man has constitutional rights,” Fuentes repeated, before the masked agent brought her to the exit door. “I did not touch you. It is a public space. I am not trespassing. I am asking you: Do you have a signed judicial warrant?”
The masked agent eventually replied that he did not need a warrant.
Yosef said he was holding a microphone and leading chants on a sidewalk when an ISP trooper started pushing protesters out of the way and approached Yosef.
“It was like I had no time to react, and next thing I know I was grabbed, they locked my arms and the other [troopers] came with him and threw me to the ground, pinned me down,” Yosef said about two hours later after he was released.
“All I saw was just the ground, and I saw sideways. I couldn’t see nothing. It was like I was literally trapped,” he said, adding that he was on his stomach as three troopers knelt on his back.
“I couldn’t resist. I was like crushed,” he said.
The city didn't ask them in, the city doesn't want them in. Why don't they take a hint and leave instead of causing all this chaos? ICE needs to get the hell out of Chicago. You're causing the problem. Would ICE work better if Krisit weren't sleeping with her second in command? After THE NEW YORK POST reported on the affair in 2023, that should have prevented a working relationship in this administration. But there's no oversight in this administration, instead everyone gets to be just as crooked as they want.
The Socialist Equality Party notes:
Over the weekend, the Trump administration escalated its war against the American people, launching coordinated military operations in Portland and Chicago.
In Portland, Trump has ordered an extraordinary and unconstitutional invasion, sending hundreds of California National Guard troops, previously federalized for deployment in Los Angeles, into Oregon’s largest city.
More than 100 California soldiers arrived in Portland Saturday night, and the remainder were in transit Sunday. The Democratic governors of both states, Tina Kotek of Oregon and Gavin Newsom of California, have opposed Trump’s action.
Newsom, in a social media post Sunday night, declared the sending of California National Guard to Portland a “breathtaking abuse of the law and power by the President of the United States. America is on the brink of martial law.”
Governor Kotek had opposed the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops by filing suit in the federal district court in Portland. Judge Karin Immergut, appointed by Trump during his first term, handed down a 31-page order barring the action, ruling that the state of Oregon had sovereign rights under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.
In remarkably scathing language, the judge wrote that Trump’s attempt to federalize the Oregon National Guard with the claim that Portland was under siege by left-wing Antifa terrorists was “simply untethered to the facts.” She added, “This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs. This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”
Late Sunday night, Immergut issued an order against California or other troops being brought to Portland, calling it in “direct contravention” to her previous ruling.
A parallel invasion is taking place in Chicago. On Sunday night, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, with the support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, ordered the mobilization of 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployment to Illinois, as well as “Oregon, and other locations throughout the United States.” Trump has already federalized 300 soldiers of the Illinois National Guard, ostensibly to protect the ICE detention center in the suburb of Broadview, just outside the city.
On Saturday morning, ICE agents opened fire on demonstrators which it claims were seeking to block access to the Broadview facility with their cars, wounding one woman, a US citizen, who was then arrested by the FBI. As with every statement by Trump, Miller, Noem and ICE, this account of the Chicago incident is undoubtedly a pack of lies. The DHS claimed that she had been in possession of a firearm, though the criminal charges filed by the government made no such assertion.
The White House is speaking the language of civil war. White House adviser Stephen Miller—one of the chief architects of the administration’s fascistic program—responded to Immergut’s ruling by declaring it “legal insurrection.” He added, “The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge.” Following the Nazi principle of the “Big Lie,” Miller wrote, “Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life.”
Mike Johnson absolutely does not want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein in relation to the government shutdown.
“It’s totally absurd!” the House Speaker proclaimed during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “This has nothing to do with that. It’s another red herring.”
Critics of the MAGA administration have accused Donald Trump of using the ongoing shutdown to stave off further scrutiny of his relationship with the late pedophile. Johnson rebukes that.
[. . .]
Johnson was responding to host Kirsten Welker’s observation that the shutdown precludes new documents on Epstein’s crimes being released to the public—and not just because it marks a hiatus to the House Oversight Committee’s ongoing review of the Justice Department’s handling of the case.
“[Democrats] say the House is not in session because you don’t want to swear in this newly elected member, the Congresswoman, Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona, who would be a critical vote to releasing the Epstein files,” Welker said to Johnson.
Peter Wade (ROLLING STONE) fact checks Johnson:
We went to the Speaker's site, which links to the Democratic proposal. The specific section Johnson mentioned - section 2141 on page 57 - repeals the changes to Medicaid made by Trump and the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which Johnson admitted.
"It's a compelling talking point to say that Democrats want to provide health care to undocumented immigrants, but it's just not true in terms of the cuts they're trying to reverse," Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a nonprofit and nonpartisan health policy information organization, told the Associated Press.
It's important to note that undocumented immigrants broadly do not qualify for Medicaid, Affordable Care Act subsidies, or other federally-funded health care coverage.
"Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally-funded health coverage," Drishti Pillai, director of Immigrant Health Policy at KFF, wrote. "The GOP's Big Beautiful Bill didn't change that. Overturning the health care provisions in the law won't either."
[. . .]
Johnson on NBC accused Democrats of wanting to "to claw back $50 billion that we put in for rural hospitals to prop them up," but that funding only offsets approximately one-third of the federal Medicaid funding that rural hospitals lost due to the OBBBA. Fully restoring Medicaid funding to rural hospitals would do more for them than the GOP's five-year temporary rural health fund.
Democrats are also insisting on extending federal subsidies for people who purchase coverage through the ACA marketplace. If Republicans get their way, and those subsidies are lost, then ACA premiums could more than double. An estimated 10 million Americans, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, could lose their health insurance between the GOP's Medicaid cuts and the loss of subsidies.
As the shut down over these issues approaches its second week, according to a Washington Post poll, nearly half of Americans blame Trump and the Republicans for the government shut down - with 47 percent blaming the GOP and president - while less than a third (30 percent) believe congressional Democrats are responsible for it.
Meanwhile, Epstein and Maxwell aren't the only sexual predators Chump hangs out with. JD Wolf (MTN) reports:
Robert Morris, the founder of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, was a prominent evangelical pastor who served as a spiritual advisor to Donald Trump, counseling him during his presidency and boosting his profile within conservative Christian circles.
A GOP candidate who was caught following a nonbinary adult performer online dropped out of the race for Wisconsin governor on Friday, about a week after a local paper reported on his online activity.
“As a result of our politics today, I cannot focus on the issues I know will turn Wisconsin around. I have come to the conclusion I do not have a path to the nomination,” business owner Bill Berrien said in a statement, which attacked the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for reporting the story.
“It was a major attack piece and we confirmed opposition research started in January of this year, if not earlier,” he said. “And for what? For reading! Nothing illegal, nothing unethical, and nothing immoral. Just reading. Wouldn’t you want your political and business leaders (and all of society, frankly) to be widely read and thoughtful and aware of different perspectives and ideas? Yet, when a supposedly major metropolitan newspaper condemns someone for reading, we have ourselves a problem.”
The Journal-Sentinel reported earlier this month that Berrien followed nonbinary, queer adult performer Jiz Lee on the blogging platform Medium, as well as several other sex- and polyamory-positive accounts. Some of the articles that he “clapped for” – i.e., liked – on the platform included “My Husband Loves Watching Me Flirt with Another Man” and “‘Ethical Porn’ Starts When We Pay for It.”
But on the campaign trail, he attacked LGBTQ+ rights.
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), along with U.S. Senator Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) and U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood (D-IL-14), today reintroduced legislation that would improve Veterans’ access to contraception and increase efficiency and cost-effectiveness for contraceptive products at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The Access to Contraception Expansion for Veterans (ACE Veterans) Act would allow Veterans to request a full-year supply of contraceptive products from the VA—the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States—and require VA providers to inform patients of their option to request a full year of contraception at the time of the prescription being issued.
“Our women Veterans who wore the uniform and made daily sacrifices to help keep us safe should never have to worry about their access to contraception,” said Duckworth. “By allowing Veterans to request a full-year supply of contraceptives, our legislation would help protect our heroes’ right to decide if and when they choose to have a child and keep them in control of their own bodies, careers and futures. I’m proud to reignite this effort with Senator Hirono and Congresswoman Underwood to help Veterans get the basic care they need while also saving taxpayer dollars and reducing unintended pregnancies.”
“As the Trump Administration and Republicans across the country work to limit or ban access to contraception, legislation like the ACE Veterans Act is more important than ever,” said Senator Hirono. “Our veterans shouldn’t have to face barriers to accessing contraception or experience gaps between prescription refills. I’m proud to join my colleagues in reintroducing this bill to help ensure the people who bravely served our country can access the critical preventive care they need.”
“Many veterans, especially younger women veterans, rely on the Veterans Health Administration for contraceptive care, but are unable to get the reliable and uninterrupted access to contraception that many civilians receive—an essential piece of reproductive health care,” said Underwood. “The ACE Veterans Act guarantees veterans the option to receive a full-year supply of contraceptives through VHA, rather than being limited to a 3-month supply—a critical step that will improve health outcomes for women, and lower costs for the VA.”
Missing more than two consecutive contraceptive pills can increase a woman’s chance of contraceptive failure and the potential for unintended pregnancy, which has been linked to adverse health effects including maternal depression, intimate partner violence, low birth weight, preterm birth and infant mortality. In 2022, the VA expanded the amount of oral contraceptives patients can receive to a 12-month supply—this marked important progress, but the policy still allows for more restrictive dispensing limitations, depending on the type of contraceptive.
The VA’s current policy also doesn’t require its providers to inform patients they have the option to receive a 12-month supply of certain contraceptives at the time the prescription is issued. By addressing these two weaknesses in the current VA policy, the ACE Veterans Act would help women Veterans get the contraceptive care they need and reduce their rate of unintended pregnancies—improving the reliability of our heroes’ health care and saving a substantial amount of taxpayer dollars.
Along with Duckworth and Hirono, the legislation is cosponsored in the Senate by U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), John Fetterman (D-PA), Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).
The legislation is endorsed by AMVETS, Service Womens Action Network, Women Veterans Interactive and the National Women’s Law Center.
Full text of the legislation is available on Senator Duckworth’s website.
Duckworth has been a fierce leader and advocate for improving our Veterans’ and servicemembers’ access to the care they need. Earlier this month, she sent a letter to VA Secretary Collins demanding he block ICE from stealing VA resources at Hines VA Hospital in Chicago. Last month, Duckworth joined U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in reintroducing legislation to help make it easier for our Veterans who struggle with infertility to build their families. Earlier this year, Duckworth railed against the Trump Administration for indiscriminately firing Veterans Crisis Line workers and introduced her Protect Veteran Jobs Act with U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) to reinstate the thousands of Veterans who were fired in Trump’s mass layoffs—an effort Republicans shamefully blocked in March.
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