Saturday Report 2/21/26 — The Dick-Tatorship Hangs a Banner

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— “I can destroy the country…” says Trump, as he continues destroying the country (and Ukraine, both on behalf of Putin). Six of the justices on the Supreme Court affirmed the Founders’ and Framers’ conviction that power must be distributed among the three branches and that the Constitution says clearly that the power to tax lies exclusively with Congress. (Brett Kavanaugh of “Kavanaugh Stops” fame — who Epstein was sympathizing with in emails about the difficulty of being accused of rape — predictably wrote a passionate defense of Dear Leader Donald.) Trump had been using an emergency provision of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to rationalize the tariffs he’s been using to threaten countries that won’t give him a new hotel, hand billions off to his kids or Steve Witkoff’s son, or lavish him with a free jet airplane, and the justices said, “No, you can’t use that particular law to do this.” In response, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker sent Trump an invoice demanding the feds pay the state around $9 billion — $1,700 for each citizen of the state — as a refund for the illegal tariffs the Treasury had been collecting, saying, “Compensation is owed to the people of Illinois, and if you do not comply we will pursue further action.”
Trump, of course, had one of his classic child-like meltdowns, dropping F-bombs at a governor’s meeting and then going on TV to whine about how the Court is restraining him. He’s now shifting to using another old law to rationalize charging “the entire world” a 10% tariff that must be paid by American importers, although this law gives him only 150 days before congressional approval kicks in: Republicans in the House are already talking about putting forward legislation to backstop Trump, but it’ll be a big lift and face a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. As a result, Trump may try to weasel some other way to collect money from American importers, which will trigger a whole new round of lawsuits. And it’ll take another year for those lawsuits to get it before the Court again. Nobody should be expecting a refund check, or for Trump to change his behavior. There are, after all, still countries to threaten and companies to extort (and gifts to receive like the 24 carat gold bar he got from Apple’s Tim Cook in apparent exchange for cutting tariffs on Apple’s products) to further damage America’s economy and reputation around the world while he and his sons walk off with more billions. This is, after all, the most corrupt administration in the history of America.

— Why won’t the FCC go after Fox “News” or Sinclair for partisan programming? Trump lickspittle Brendan Carr allegedly threatened Stephen Colbert’s network, CBS, with punishment if Colbert had Texas Democratic senate candidate James Talarico on as a guest because his appearance wouldn’t be balanced by a Republican guest. The rationale was that The Late Show wasn’t news but entertainment, and thus could be regulated per the Equal Time Rule. But when Fox “News” was sued by the voting machine company and coughed up over $700 million for lying to its viewers on the air, they tried to get out of the lawsuit by claiming that they aren’t a news operation but are only entertainment and no “reasonable viewer” would take their hosts’ opinions as news. The Equal Time Rule hasn’t been enforced in decades because after Reagan killed off the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, all three big TV networks moved their News divisions under the oversight of their vice presidents for Entertainment and went from losing money on quality news programming to making their news operations new profit centers. (Under the Fairness Doctrine, having real news was required to satisfy the Doctrine’s “programming in the public interest” requirement. When that died, so did the news. It’s time to bring back that aspect of the Fairness Doctrine!

— As the DOJ hails authoritarian Trump with a banner only dick-tators would love, Trump just green-lit removing legal brown-skinned refugees from America. Hitler loved to hang banners with his face on them on buildings across Germany, as did Saddam in Iraq and Stalin in Russia, so, of course, Donald has to have the same treatment. This week the Department of Justice — whose building sports a statue of Lady Justice wearing a blindfold to symbolize impartial justice under the law — hung a massive banner out front with Trump’s face on it. Meanwhile, our wannabe dictator has a new diktat: all brown-skinned refugees who our government has investigated, vetted, and given permission to stay in America as they try for a green card and then citizenship, must be kicked out. This will be a death sentence to many and their families, but Trump and the other white supremacist racists in his regime and his cabinet don’t give a good goddamn; if anything, they’re delighting in the brutality of it all. The cruelty is the point, and MAGA celebrates it.

— Four FBI interviews of an underage girl who said Trump sexually assaulted her and then beat her were removed from the DOJ documents Congress has access to, as Trump claims he is “totally exonerated.” The girl, who was between 13 and 15 at the time, told the FBI under oath that when Trump forced her to perform oral sex on him she bit his penis; in response, he beat her up and threw her out of the limousine they were traveling in. And while there’s a reference to the FBI interviews in the most recent document dump, the interviews themselves have “mysteriously” vanished under Kash Patel’s and Pam Bondi’s supervision. The story even made the top of the Drudge Report, suggesting that conservatives are as sickened by Trump’s depravity as is the rest of America. Meanwhile, following reports in the 3-million-file release that two women were killed during kinky sex at Epstein’s New Mexico Zorro Ranch (now owned by a big Trump donor), that state’s authorities have opened an investigation and are beginning a search for bodies. If dead girls are found there, it’ll catapult this entire scandal into a whole new level of media frenzy. Stay tuned…

— Here comes the Trump Recession. New economic numbers show the nation’s GDP expanded at a pathetic 1.4% in the final quarter of last year, and inflation has shot up to 3% and was still rising in December, well above what Biden left to Trump. Erratic tariffs that cost consumers and American businesses billions, turning the rest of the world against us so they stop visiting and buying our products (both tourism and exports are down significantly), and gutting our soft power by killing off USAID are screwing average Americans and weakening our nation. Just like Putin wanted.

— Bob Kennedy, who won a lawsuit proving Roundup™ causes cancer, now celebrates Trump’s executive order demanding that more of its main chemical be produced in America and then used on our crops. As Common Dreams reported, “Less than a decade ago, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. helped win a landmark $289 million verdict against Monsanto, which was found to have distributed a weedkiller containing the carcinogenic chemical glyphosate.” Rightwing MAHA health enthusiasts are horrified at Kennedy’s about-face; Roundup™ (glyphosate) has, correctly, been one of their big bugbears for decades. Just in time for the midterms, this sub-faction of the MAGA movement is very, very disenchanted as outrage echoes all around the internet. But Bob Kennedy doesn’t seem concerned; he’s probably too busy snorting cocaine off toilet seats…

— Trump is pissed off that Obama scooped him on saying aliens are real. Last week former President Obama was on a podcast and when asked if aliens were real he said that they were; the context was that the universe is so large that it’s mathematically impossible that we’re the only intelligent life to be found. But Trump was outraged that Obama got the headlines, which he probably figured would be a great way to distract us all from his involvement with a child sex ring, and so has ordered the release of whatever UFO files can be found lying around the Pentagon or elsewhere. With Trump, the scams never end…