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Resting due to a sore throat and traditional accompanying aches & pains, I happened to notice a headline on CNN:

No, but seriously: What’s going on with bitcoin?

(Here’s the thread pointer.) The content is hiding behind a paywall for which I have no ladder, so I checked WaPo, to which I do have a subscription, although WaPo owner Jeff Bezos destroyed the basics of such a news source with 30% layoff yesterday: “Jeff Bezos remains committed to Washington Post amid brutal layoffs, top editor says“^[1].

But nothing, yet. Nothing at Molly White’s site, Web3 is Going Just Great, either.

So here’s the CoinMarketCap trailing month chart for Bitcoin from a few minutes ago:

While I was watching it was down more than 30% for the trailing month; down more than 7% for the trailing 24 hours.

This is so not what you want in a currency, although the month drop of 30% is more worrying than the day. I’m not sure if Bitcoin and its cousins are considered representative of the United States, or independent thereof, but whatever everyone’s working model may be, this must have shaken things up.

Or is some grifter harvesting from the sheep?

¹ I wonder if he was told to destroy it, or is just unskilled when it comes to the news sector. Amazon makes money, dude, WaPo wins Pulitzer Prizes – or at least that’s the goals.

The Republicans are entering the frantic thrashing phase of their amateur hour moment, as Erick Erickson explains:

That is why Republican leaders in Washington really need to shut the hell up on gun issues right now. Here is the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia on Fox News yesterday.

[X post omitted, but here’s the text as transcribed by, or for, Aaron Rupar]

Pirro: “You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district and I don’t care if you’re a law abiding law owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail and hope you get the gun back. And that makes all the difference.”

This comes a week after Alex Pretti’s death, when the President and others in his Administration also attacked Second Amendment rights.

I cannot think of a strategy better able to alienate Second Amendment voters from showing up in the midterms.

On top of that, the Trump Administration has been alienating pro-life voters. They have refused to roll back the expansion of the abortion drug. The President has sought to gut the Hyde Amendment.

This is all just bad politics.

But he won’t take the next step, and that would be recognizing Trump, Pirro, and all these invaders as know-it-all amateurs; or even painting them with the next air-brush in the rack.

Grifters.

Erickson isn’t discussing, and maybe doesn’t understand, that the prioritization of ideological stances, such as abortion, gun rights, etc, over such considerations as experience, merit, ability to compromise has made the Republican Party unacceptably vulnerable to the depredations of the grifters. If this doesn’t make sense, consider these:

• If experience is required, a grifter, whose essential nature is dedicated to collecting the wealth and power of others with minimal investment on their part, will not consider it an opportunity.
• The same reasoning applies to merit, as applicable merit requires experience.
• Compromise dilutes profit and prestige, and discourages the grifter.
• But ideological positions that require little more than shouting support for them on stage? Even a little lying? This is when the grifter, discovering an opportunity, shines. The investment is minimal and the opportunity is magnificent.

I do not claim the grifters set this up; I blame it on that fool Gingrich.

Both Parties are out of focus, I see.

But grifters are also amateurs, as they have no experience. So the head grifter himself has demanded control over the operations of elections, and, failing that, is trying to control the voter rolls, hoping to short-circuit the damage his inexperience, his lack of merit, and his minimal understanding of politics is causing. President Trump is little more than a showman, like any grifter. He bedazzled the voters twice, but when it comes to the daily grind of governance and politics, he has no knowledge, no experience.

And the voters are learning this on topics as diverse as the economy and civil rights. At this point, if Trump starts spewing claims based on the recent FBI raid on an elections office in Fulton County, GA, where Trump lost in 2020, will anyone outside of his current base even entertain them to be true?

Probably not.

Still, the Republicans are no worse than the Democrats in one way: Neither side is willing to admit to error and promise to correct. It’s the whole package or none of it.

Time for new Parties and wide spread use of ranked-choice voting.

Border czar Tom Homan thinks he’s making progress:

The Trump administration will immediately remove 700 federal law enforcement officers from Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday, leaving about 2,000 officers in the state. [MS NOW]

But an important questions is Who?

Are they sending away, to borrow a phrase, the worst of the worst? That is, those officers most likely to engage in criminal mischief under the cover of Trump’s free-wheeling use of his pardon power? Leaving behind those most likely to be professionals, dedicated to doing their jobs?

Or are those latter the most likely to be leaving, giving Minnesota a more pure sort of problem?

It continues to be a slow-motion avalanche of political miscalculations, multiplied by frantic demands. I shan’t attempt a full enumeration, but the unexpected victory – a romp, actually – of Taylor Rehmet in Texas over the Trump-endorsed and GOP powerhouse Leigh Wambsganss, the back and forth over his Minneapolis debacle where he sometimes likes Mayor Frey and Governor Walz and sometimes doesn’t, and a number of others, multiplied by his demand concerning … election management:

President Donald Trump called on Republicans to “nationalize the voting” in an interview that aired Monday, as his administration pushes to overhaul election ground rules ahead of the pivotal midterm races this year. [CNN/Politics]

At this point, I hope the number of readers who don’t understand that Trump plans to emplace his own stooges to ensure he gets enough votes, instead of suffering through the embarrassment of actually losing the proud reddish state of Georgia and be accused of corruption to boot, again, along with others, is small. Really small.

For worried readers, I read the Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, which says

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

While the clause concerning Congress is perhaps concerning, I read this as placing the responsibility of running elections squarely in the hands of the States. Now, perhaps SCOTUS would find a way, much like that of immunizing the President from being charged with crimes, to “nationalize” vote counting, but I think that would cause an uproar.

Senate Majority leader Senator Thune (R-SD) may not allow it to happen in any case:

“I’m not in favor of federalizing elections,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday, pointing to Constitutional requirements that states conduct their own elections. …

“I’m a big believer in decentralizing and distributing power,” Thune added. [PBS News]

Recall that Thune is probably closer to the old-line, responsible Republicans than the latest bunch who see a Senate seat as just another trophy to hang on the wall.

I see this demand from Trump as a frantic reaction to Trump’s aforementioned and unbelievable loss in Texas over the weekend. Not only does that loss challenge his (imagined) reputation for dominance, it threatens to relegate Trump to being a footnote in history and not some figure of overwhelming importance^[1]. Mid-term elections are coming, and the 2018 mid-terms were an emotional disaster for Trump. By controlling the elections, he figures he can avoid that damage to his reputation ever again.

It is so childish that it’s embarrassing even for his rivals and adversaries.

¹ In fact, much like Emperor Marcus Didius Julianus, who bought the Roman empire at auction and was assassinated a few weeks later for failure, someone who promised so much and delivered so little.

An important feature of the upset victory of Democrat Taylor Rehmet in a special election for the Texas State Senate escaped my attention, and is supplied by the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth, TX:

President Donald Trump on Sunday said he wasn’t involved in the Texas Senate District 9 race, where a Democrat flipped a historically Republican seat in the Fort Worth-area, despite endorsing the candidate and urging voters to get out to the polls.

Democrat Taylor Rehmet’s defeat of Republican Leigh Wambsganss in the longtime GOP district has garnered national attention, as some look to the race as an indicator of what could be to come in the November midterm elections.

Another Trump endorsee loses a special election. This remains important because it signals left-leaning voters that Trump is not dominant, and right voters who are wavering that a Trump-endorsed candidate isn’t always going to win.

And so it’s worth getting out to the polls.

Losses like this one should be a huge red flag for the GOP, not only as a political warning, but, in fact, a Divine warning. Hey, I’m an agnostic, folks, so some will say I don’t know how to read the Christian tea-leaves, but, taking into account Senator Goldwater’s numerous remarks^[1] on the increasingly Christian GOP of his day, losses such as this one, that the GOP is suffering in most special elections, or winning by smaller-tha-expected margins, suggests that either the Divine does not approve of the GOP, or that the Divine doesn’t exist. Oh, sure, maybe there’s a Plan, or the particular GOP candidates were not acceptable to a rather picky Divine, but in the end that’s just pussy-footing around their real problem: there’s no proof of a Divine. Acting as if there is, and that absolves you of responsibility for self-examination, will lead to, well, Ken Paxton and his ilk.

​¹ Here’s one now:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them. [AZ Quotes]

In the interests of completeness, my proposal for compromise over Minneapolis requires a slight modification. From the January 24th entry into this thread, the modification is in brackets.

4. Acknowledgement that the protest in Cities Church was wrong, and an apology from those arrested (see link). Sure, pastor David Easterwood may work for ICE as well, and maybe Cities Church doesn’t seem the most Christian of churches, but that doesn’t pardon the intrusion. It used to be that homes and employers were sacrosanct, but now we get doxxing and swatting and protests at the homes of officials we don’t like. Should we smile at a neo-Nazi protest at Temple Israel next? At Catholic protests in a local Baptist church? Down this path lies violence, with bitter death at the end. Stop it with the endless harassment. [This clause does not apply to Don Lemon or Georgia Fort, journalists present to cover the incident, although I am making as assumption as regards Fort. They had every right to be there. Additionally, there should be apologies from others for their presence.]

Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman reviews Trump’s nominee for Fed Board chair Kevin Warsh’s qualifications, and, unlike myself, sees them as wanting:

Absent a crisis, my prediction is that the majority of Warsh’s colleagues will largely ignore him, albeit without expressing their contempt openly. Even a coalition among the Trump appointees to the Board of Governors – Warsh, Bowman and Miran – won’t be enough to overturn the responsible monetary policy stewardship of the other governors.

But that’s a low bar, and it may be lower than is generally appreciated. For while I don’t think Warsh will do too much damage to monetary policy, he, along with his fellow Trumper Michelle Bowman, the vice chair for financial supervision, may well eviscerate the Fed’s role as a financial regulator. …

Oh, lovely. Is Warsh another hack who thinks the system is self-regulating?

What lies behind this contempt? Warsh’s most notable role in policy debate came in the years immediately following the global financial crisis, when he was a member of the Federal Reserve Board who argued strenuously against the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy. As I noted at the time, his arguments were confused and incoherent, but he implied (without saying so in clear language) that the Fed’s actions would be inflationary despite the depressed state of the economy.

He was completely wrong about that. Now, everyone makes bad predictions. But when you do, you’re supposed to admit your mistakes and learn from them. Warsh never did that. Instead, he kept inventing new reasons to call for higher interest rates — notably a bizarre claim that low rates were hurting business investment — as long as a Democrat was president.

Oh, a partisan ‘expert’. That’s always a problem.

This is why I generally like experts like Krugman. They know the dirt, they know the details. So Warsh may not be an appropriate nominee. Krugman is resigned to Warsh winning Senate approval, but Trump’s influence is sinking fast. Warsh, despite his superficial qualifications, may still fail.

As much as Border Patrol officer Greg Bovino misread the American public while working as lead of the ICE agents in Minnesota, his resultant suspension of social media privileges may have been misassigned in view of this insult and cry of fading triumph on the White House Twitter account.

I shan’t embed it in this post due to its offensive nature, but it’s a poster of award-winning journalist Don Lemon, a black man, captioned that he was arrested for involvement in “the St. Paul Church riots,” with the commentary

When life gives you lemons…

and an icon meant to represent chains. It’s repulsive. Offensive.

And a bit pathetic.

Clearly written by a white nationalist, probably White House aide Stephen Miller or at his direction, it’s the sort of misguided chortling of someone who thinks the nation is plum-full of people who think like him and have been repressed ever since the Civil War; she or he is infuriated that racism has been successfully transformed into a socially unacceptable attitude, much like infanticide. After all, look at all my fellow racists I found on the Internet!… never thinking they may be robots designed to sow disorder.

At some point, such people can’t restrain their urge to crow, a signal to all that they’ve won! And so they identify themselves as racists, as folks who let hatred and xenophobia run their lives.

Of course, such a post doesn’t reveal relevant information that mitigates the impact of such a post, here helpfully summarized by Professor Richardson:

Jarrett Ley and Samuel Oakford of the Washington Post reviewed the video Lemon filmed at the church protest. They wrote that the video shows that Lemon identified himself as a journalist and followed protesters into the church. Inside for about 45 minutes, he interviewed four parishioners and five protesters. Eight of those nine exchanges appeared calm. The video does not show Lemon participating in the chants with which the protesters disrupted the service. A pastor asked Lemon to leave, and seven minutes later he exited the church.

Federal prosecutors tried to charge Lemon, his producer, and six others shortly after the protest, but a magistrate judge refused a warrant for Lemon and his producer, saying prosecutors had not shown evidence that would justify the arrests. The administration then asked a federal judge to overturn the magistrate judge’s decision. When he, too, refused, calling the request “unprecedented,” the administration rushed the case to the Eighth Circuit. It, too, refused.

At that point, it appears the administration went to a federal grand jury to indict Lemon.

I should think readers who become aware of this information will consider whoever wrote the White House social media post to be, well, I don’t think I know another word than pathetic, although I might add such modifiers as ‘hate-soaked,’ ‘un-Christian,’^[1] ‘hypocritical,’ and other such terms which, when applied, lower the social standing of their targets.

But, if the Administration seeks to survive and pursue its goals, whatever they may be, they should probably suspend the governmental social media privileges of White House aide Stephen Miller and his minions. That’s the sort of post that gives otherwise disparate people reason to bond together and chase the murderous idiots out.

But, no doubt, these chuckleheads won’t figure that out.

¹ Yes, yes, I am agnostic, no need to yell at the screen. Given the white Christian nationalist nature of the current Administration, it should be clear the comparison is to the supposed, if false, Christian nature of the Administration, not my own religious status, whatever it might be.

In the continuing story of special elections we add this one for those readers who prefer entrails over tea leaves:

A huge backlash to Trump (probably due to economic and ICE-related issues) has propelled a Democrat, Taylor Rehmet (veteran and machinist union leader), into a Texas State Senate seat held by Republicans for the last 48 years. [Paul in Austin @ Daily Kos]

H/T to Paul in Austin.

Nor was this contest close, with preliminary numbers indicating a victory of just short of 15 points. The previous election for this seat, held in 2022, gave the Republican candidate, Kelly Hancock, who has moved on to a new job as Texas Comptroller, a 20 point victory in a 277,883 vote contest, while this special election ran to 118,912 votes, or well less than half of the general election.

It appears Democrats were far more likely to bring their voters to the polls than the Republicans, suggesting widespread disgust with Republicans, IF we disregard the usual caveats concerning politics being local, local, and local. Neither candidate seems to have held elective office prior to this contest, so exposure to the candidates would seem to be limited.

Did Anthropic collapse in the face of Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s demand that Anthropic’s guardrails on their AI “Claude” be deactivated?

The Trump administration placed AI firm Anthropic on a far-reaching national security blacklist Friday, directing federal agencies to stop using its technology and banning any other company that does business with the military from working with it, effective immediately. …

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site Truth Social, using the administration’s preferred name for the Defense Department. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.” [WaPo]

Such guardrails include … protections against its technology being used to power fully autonomous weapons or wide-scale domestic surveillance. I’m a little surprised Anthropic refused.

Note the Trumpian response of invoking fear and being lefty. Its presence means it’s a boilerplate response and has little meaning beyond Trump is frustrated.

Hegseth’s pompous statement on the matter is here, but isn’t worth quoting. This topic has stirred emotions for years, and this is no different as this rather shrill and, I think, dubious post on Daily Kos demonstrates.

How will this finish? Someone will claim to have a higher performance AI than Anthropic’s Claude and will sell out to the blustery Federal Government. However, that may take a while as higher performance will require proof, and Trump may no longer be President at that point. He’ll be too busy defending himself from a number of charges to pay attention to this, which he may not even remember.

You may have heard that Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was ordered to fly into Minneapolis and explain to the chief judge of the Federal District, Judge Schiltz, why he shouldn’t be held in contempt:

The subject of the last Administrative Note was Flannery O’Connor and her posthumous, and perhaps unintentional collection Mystery and Manners. I finished said volume a couple of weeks ago, and, needless to say, there’s been little improvement in my prose, which continues to be straightahead, if abraided with semi-colons and other detritus, vulnerable to digressions, with little of O’Connor’s inclination towards bringing opposites to the discussions, in some picturesque way, in a paragraph. Her tendency to do so sometimes seems just a trifle repetitious, see The King of the Birds.

I am reminded that she regards as sardonically fortunate the loss suffered by the South in the American Civil War, the South’s ‘Fall’ as it were, and a gift to the ‘Southern Writer’. How that affects the undercurrents of the writing of O’Connor and her Southern colleagues is a fascinating question that I haven’t the time to research.

Oh, stop going about how our Vampire Master likes your sun dress!

I Capture the Castle (2003) is the story of a British literary family, the Mortmains, who, years ago – it seems to be set around the gap between the Wars, based on the cars – rented and moved into a castle in an attempt to break the writer’s block afflicting the father of the family, James, who wrote one novel and came to an abrupt halt.

The tactic is a flop, a result James keeps to himself, and the family soldiers on, buoyed by a collection of literary tropes, such as the novel will be done soon and save us all, or the romantic notion of marrying money to save the family from the appalling notion of real poverty, while James struggles to piece together a single sentence. He’s married to an artist, and has two daughters and a son.

As their financial walls close in around them, their landlord changes as an American, Simon, appears, having inherited wealth and title from his English father, along with a buddy. The two Mortmain daughters do their best to attract the attention of money, err, men, and it’s off to the slightly farcical races.

Is it good? Maybe. I enjoyed it, and at its core the story is simple, but there are undercurrents that I sensed but couldn’t isolate. What of Stephen, the nephew of a former maid to the family? Is he nothing more than a throwaway, or is he symbolic of the family’s disillusionment?

Your call.

I knew something was calling for my attention in this interview transcript fragment, and I finally figured it out.

Trump: "Bovino is very good, but he's a pretty out there kind of a guy. It some cases that's good, maybe it wasn't good here. But when I watch some of the people I've been watching over the past few weeks, these are paid insurrectionists, these are paid agitators. These people aren't normal."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-27T21:27:55.089Z

In case the above disappears, shaved to the part that caught my attention:

But when I watch some of the people I’ve been watching over the past few weeks, these are paid insurrectionists, these are paid agitators. These people aren’t normal.”

He’s talking about the Minneapolis community members protesting the sloppy actions of ICE agents, such as this one. But what is he really saying?

He’s saying they’re weird. Sound familiar?

“These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room,” Walz said in a TV interview last month.

The message started with news interviews and eventually spread like wildfire across social media with the help of young Americans. The simple terminology of labeling the other side as “weird” or “odd” is not revolutionary or sophisticated in American politics but represents a new framing for Democrats who have spent the last eight years trying to defeat Trump and Trumpism by personifying him as the greatest threat to democracy. [AP]

This is Trump for you. Not a whit of originality, whether he’s building a glorified bathroom with his name and a lot of gold, or insulting a rival. Remember the debate between Clinton and Trump? “No! You’re the thumb-puppet!” was the best he could do when accused of being Russian President Putin’s thumb-puppet, an accusation he’s never effectively rebutted.

So he and the Republicans are insulted when they’re called weird, because

Trump has spent a lot of time being friends with his base, and labeling him and his Party as weird is perceived as an attempt to drive a wedge between them.

So Trump is trying to alienate independents and Republicans with a sense of decency from the protesters in Minneapolis through the same technique. However, Walz describing the GOP as weird is not nearly the same as Trump casting aspersions on protesters defending their collective homes and persons from ICE agents who are tangibly abusing their positions and killing, and doing it on video. The latter will be far more effective in binding independents and some Republicans to the anti-Trump cause.

And now new Epstein Files are out. What will the right-wing pundits and influencers find? Clear evidence of Trump’s innocence or guilt? Or just lots of redactions? And, just for grins, will the redactions be competent this time, or easily removed once again?

News outlets are reporting the nomination of Kevin Warsh to replace current Fed Chair chair Jerome Powell, whose second term expires in May. President Trump had nominated him in 2018, but has come to hate him as he’s an independent force in monetary policy. There was some concern that Trump would nominate a complete loon, and the CNN headline mentions Trump saying Warsh is … right out of Central Casting … Warsh actually had a term as a Fed Governor, 2006 – 2011, and while he may have more confidence in forecasting the future than I’m comfortable with, as CBS News reports…

In recent years, Warsh has grown increasingly critical of the Fed, arguing that the institution has become excessively focused on backward-looking economic data rather than anticipating changes, Deutsche Bank analysts said in a December 15 report.

… at least he doesn’t seem to be an out and out loon, as so many of Trump’s associates and nominees tend to be.

Why not? I’m guessing Trump, or whoever is manipulating him, looked at the Senate, which is showing signs of breaking free from Trump’s grip, and realized nominating a loon would run the risk of rejection, a political loss adding to the weight of the view that Trump is not invincible, not dominant. The background of the tragic debacle in Minneapolis, the nomination of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize, a string of failures in various courts, the probability of even more failures in the courts, including SCOTUS, if observers read the tea leaves rightly, the mass exodus of competent lawyers from the DoJ, the evident insufficiency of his approach of hiring folks out of central casting, rather than on competency and merit, the economy stumbling as tariffs fail, an Administration very poorly stewarded, and there’s so much more and so I’ll spare the reader.

Selecting a palatable candidate should avoid a politically damaging failure at a critical moment.

Just as importantly, it’ll serve to hold the attention of a less politically savvy audience as more of the Epstein Files are being released today. As to the efficacy of distraction using this technique, in the day of the Web I have to wonder if it’s not effective at all; but old political hacks will cling to their ways.

So this appears, on first glance, to be safe for the nation.

Continuing news about Minneapolis, according to family and nominator The Nation, Minneapolis has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Congratulations!

And I do admire all these people coming together to defend the community, from front lines to supporting logistics. While there are plenty of nits to pick, there’s also plenty of good being done here.

This is predictable:

Commonly used AI models fail to accurately diagnose or offer advice for many queries relating to women’s health that require urgent attention.

A group of 17 women’s health researchers, pharmacists and clinicians from the US and Europe drew up an initial list of 345 medical queries across five areas, including emergency medicine, gynaecology and neurology. These experts then reviewed the answers provided by a randomly chosen AI model for each question. Those that led to inaccurate responses were collated into a benchmarking test of AI models’ medical expertise that included 96 queries.

This test was then used to assess 13 large language models, produced by the likes of OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Mistral AI and xAI. Across all the models, some 60 per cent of questions were answered in a way the human experts had previously said wasn’t sufficient for medical advice. GPT-5 performed best, failing on 47 per cent of queries, while Ministral 8B had the highest failure rate of 73 per cent. [“AI chatbots miss urgent issues in queries about women’s health,” Chris Stokel-Walker, NewScientist (17 January 2026, paywall).]

Just as if we were training our doctors using grifters touting silver-nitrate we would expect the doctors to be ineffective, even deadly, the same goes for AI (or, more accurately, machine-learning programs) trained on data from the Web, notorious for harboring those whose lust for wealth erases any inclination towards honesty or effective product development. This is just an expensive lesson in Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO).

It’s something to keep in mind if you’re doing your own research – it’s a lot harder than regurgitating the first item popping up on a search string. It can kill you.

So consult reputable, trained professionals.

From “Families in Trinidad sue U.S. over boat strike: ‘They were simply murders’,” Julia Jester and David Rohde, MS NOW:

The Trump administration insists its actions have been illegal.

“The October 14th strike was conducted against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Tuesday in a statement to MS NOW. “President Trump used his lawful authority to take decisive action against the scourge of illicit narcotics that has resulted in the needless deaths of innocent Americans.”

I have to wonder if this grim, even macabre inadvertent jest was actually advertent on the part of Jester and Rohde. And, yes, now that I’ve written it out, I do wonder if Julia Jester is actually a pseudonym.

Or a couple of days ago, at least.

The sharp-eyed might spot a lilac that appeared a few springs ago.

A little clash of President Trump with one of his targets may be more revealing than he intended:

Fusillade:

1. a simultaneous or continuous discharge of firearms.
2. a general discharge or outpouring of anything.
   a fusillade of questions. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “After Pretti killing, Trump administration faces broadest backlash since Jan. 6,” Steve Benen, Maddowblog:

But after the latest shooting death of an American civilian at the hands of federal agents and the subsequent fusillade of absurd lies from administrations officials, the number of Republicans expressing varying degrees of discomfort with the official party line has reached unusually high levels.

I’ve never looked it up before.

The Minnesota Department of Corrections is issuing corrections of Federally-issued information. If you want to see it, here it is:

https://mn.gov/doc/about/news/combatting-dhs-misinformation/

The Federal Government is plunging rapidly through the various circles of Hell now. In case you’re familiar with Dante’s Inferno, I think they’re about to plunge into the field of ice, right at the bottom.

Enjoin:

Enjoin [is] a verb related to the term injunction. To enjoin means to prohibit a person from doing something through a court order. A court enjoins conduct when it issues an injunction against it. [Legal Information Institute]

Noted in “CASE 0:26-cv-00628-ECT-DTS,” or “Minnesota Bureau of Criminal
Apprehension and Hennepin County Attorney’s Office v. Kristi Noem, in her official capacity as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; [balance omitted],” U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud presiding:

Plaintiffs Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Hennepin County Attorney’s Office have filed a Complaint, ECF No. 1, and a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, ECF No. 2, seeking to enjoin Defendants, their employees, agents, and anyone acting in concert with them from destroying or altering evidence related to the fatal shooting involving federal officers that took place in or around 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 24, 2026.

I wonder why they didn’t just go with forbid.

I’m gobsmacked at the failure to think on the part of the Administration and their allies, helpfully summarized by Steve Benen:

It’s true that Pretti had a holstered gun, though, as Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara explained, he had a legal right to have the firearm and a permit to carry it.

Donald Trump, for example, told The Wall Street Journal, “I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets.” Similarly, FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News, “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

Around the same time, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared on ABC News and condemned Pretti for carrying a gun, which came a day after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a press conference, “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign. This is a violent riot when you have someone showing up with weapons.”

And you folks have protested and worked against gun control laws for how many decades? And then you couldn’t predict that someone might show up with a gun? Epistemological bubble time: Liberals would never purchase and use guns!

No, Pretti didn’t draw it, brandish it, fire it, threaten ICE agents with it, even when pushed. The epitome of an honorable man. Benen even says

At this point, we could talk at length about the simple fact that Pretti wasn’t at a protest.

So ICE achieved the additional level of randomly attacking folks on the street.

But back to Trump, Noem, et al, and their ideological allies, this level of stupid is rarely achieved, and to use the special word gobsmacked is really inadequate. How are they getting through life without drowning in vats of ivermectin?