Saturday Report 6/14/25 — DHS sends out provocative new poster: They want you to turn in your neighbors so they can haul them away...

The Best of the Rest of the News

Fascism Alert! Trump and DHS (who just rolled out this poster) are trying to make us all think of immigrants as “invaders” to support their contention that Trump can suspend civil rights and habeas corpus because the country is being “invaded.” It’s a transparent ploy and the oldest fascist trick in the book, a virtual clone of the way Hitler described Jews in the 1930s. It’s also designed to create terror among brown-skinned people.

— Unless breaking news intervenes, I’ll be a guest on Ali Velshi’s MSNBC program this morning at 11 AM Eastern time, 8 AM Pacific.

— Today is No Kings Day. Stay peaceful and stay safe. As Joyce Vance says, “We’re all in this together.”

— Federal District Judge Charles Breyer (the brother of former SCOTUS Justice Stephen Breyer) just ruled Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to LA illegal. Judge Breyer wrote, in a scathing decision: “His actions were illegal – both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor.” He added: “Regardless of whether Defendants [Trump regime] gave Governor Newsom an opportunity to consult with them or consent to the federalization of California’s National Guard, they did not issue their orders through him.” And Breyer destroyed Trump’s claim that he has the unilateral authority to send the troops into Los Angeles in defiance of the governor and mayor: “That alone threatens serious injury to the constitutional balance of power between the federal and state governments. It sets a dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity. … Plaintiffs and the citizens of Los Angeles face a greater harm from the continued unlawful militarization of their city. It not only inflames tensions with protesters, threatening increased hostilities and loss of life, but deprives the state for two months of its own use of thousands of National Guard members.” Breyer concluded that there was no “invasion” or “emergency” that would legally justify Trump’s deployment. The Trump regime immediately appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where a three-judge panel (2 Trump appointees, one Biden) ruled that they’ll allow Trump to keep the Guard in LA at least until next Tuesday, when they’ll have a full hearing and let both sides make their arguments. Odds are, given the ferocity and thoroughness of Breyer’s ruling, that the Ninth Circuit will also rule against Trump, meaning it’ll immediately go to our bought-off Supreme Court, which will probably also give Trump his troops while they’re deliberating. Keep an eye on this.

— Trump’s border czar says, “We’ll flood liberal cities with ICE raids.” After DHS Secretary, notorious puppy killer, and military cosplayer Kristi Noem told us all that she, the Guard, and ICE were in California to “liberate” Los Angeles from the “socialist” governor and mayor (something that has absolutely nothing to do with federal law or authority), White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations (aka “Border Czar”) Tom Homan has gone totally political. In a testosterone-poisoned rant, he said: “What they’re going to see is an increase in ICE operations especially in sanctuary cities. … We’re going to send massive teams, we are going to flood the zone. … So sanctuary cities are gonna get exactly what they don’t want – more agents in the neighbourhood, more work site enforcement operations.” Trump, Fox “News” propagandists, and Republicans generally have spent years trying to convince Americans that “sanctuary cities” are offering refuge (“sanctuary”) to undocumented immigrants; in fact, people living in so-called sanctuary cities are just as vulnerable to ICE raids as people anywhere else in the country. The only difference between a sanctuary city and a non-sanctuary city is that the former doesn’t let their police to enforce federal immigration law. They do this for two reasons: 1) Immigration violations break federal, not state or local law, so only federal officers have the actual legal authority to arrest, detain, transport, or deport them. 2) The main job of police in our cities is to preserve order and enforce laws against assault, murder, rape, theft, burglary, etc., etc., all state laws. But when people are afraid to contact the police when their homes have been broken into or they’re otherwise the victims of crime, law and order breaks down. So, to encourage undocumented people to report crimes, they don’t ask for immigration status when they interact with them. None of this is about “providing sanctuary” — the entire “sanctuary cities” appellation is unfortunate because it’s misleading and vulnerable to misuse by demagogues like Trump and the billionaire Murdoch family’s grunts.

— The FBI took down Senator Padilla when he tried to ask a question of Cosplay Kristi, but the FBI had escorted him into the room with her in the first place. Which raises the question, WTF?!??? As Senator Padilla told MSNBC: “We’re, the whole time, being escorted in this federal building by somebody from the National Guard, somebody from the FBI. I’ve gone through screening. This is a federal building. They escort me over to that room. And I’m sitting in the back of the room, behind the cameras, behind the reporters, listening, listening. And at one point, it was just too much to take.” That, of course, was in response to Noem saying, “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor [Newsom] and that this mayor [Bass] have placed on this country.” So, if the FBI escorted Padilla into the room, why the hell did they drag him out into the hall, slam him to the floor, and handcuff him, pretending they didn’t know who he was? Inquiring minds want to know (and want to know why our national press isn’t asking the same damn question).

— Speaking of the press, it appears that police in LA are intentionally targeting reporters with “non-lethal” rounds that can cause severe and permanent damage. The Associated Press reports that over 30 reporters have been targeted by law enforcement, some severely injured when they were shot with these rounds that can do real damage. The Committee to Protect Journalists, the First Amendment Coalition, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation demanded answers from Cosplay Kristi, noting that, “federal officers appear to have deliberately targeted journalists who were doing nothing more than their job covering the news.” White supremacists and neofascists have long both targeted and infiltrated police departments all across the country, and Los Angeles is no exception. Combine that with the appeal of policing to authoritarian personalities and you have a dangerous mix, particularly when oversight of police isn’t strong but their unions are. I’m a graduate of the Georgie Police Academy (back in the 1980s I wrote six terrible novels about a private detective), and a friend who was a private detective and former small-town Georgia police chief, DeWitt, got me into the Academy and one afternoon I was sitting in the Academy’s dining area with DeWitt watching a class of soon-to-be state police officers doing military-style drills. I asked how much they made and when DeWitt told me, I said I thought it was way too little. He replied, “Half of these guys, you give them a gun and a stick and tell them they can beat the crap out of anybody they want without repercussions and, hell, they’ll pay you!”

— Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman reports on the new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) evaluation of the GOP’s “Big Beautiful” tax cut for billionaires and it’s shocking. The CBO, a non-partisan agency of Congress that evaluates the economic impact of legislation, noted that the bottom tenth of Americans will suffer about a 4 percent decline in their standard of living as a result of this bill; Krugman adds that when you also consider the impact on low-income Americans of Trump’s tariffs, it rises into the 6.5% range. Meanwhile, the top 10 percent — and only the top 10 percent — are going to make out like bandits. Krugman notes: “The OBBBA [One Big Beautiful Bill Act] is, in fact, so terrible that we need to ask how any party in a democracy imagines that it could get away with taking money away from 80% of the American public.” He concludes it’s the result of the GOP no longer having any respect for our democracy; I’d add that this is the natural and predictable result of five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalizing political bribery with their disgusting Citizens United decision so Republicans are now more loyal to their donors than their voters. Paul Krugman is a true patriot; the last time I saw him in person was when I debated him about free trade while on an Air America cruise a decade or so ago. He’s one of my heroes, even though I disagreed with his take (at that time) on neoliberalism.

— California Governor Gavin Newsom takes down Trump. Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Trump’s slogan seems to be, “Yell loudly and have a military parade so people won’t discuss your small stick.” Governor Newsom certainly has his number, calling out the pathetic weakness Trump is now displaying (as most dictators eventually do; remember Saddam’s military parades?). “It’s a vulgar display of weakness,” Newsom said Thursday evening. “It’s the kind of thing you see, Kim Jong Un, you see Putin, you see with dictators around the world that are weak and just want to demonstrate strength; weakness, masquerading as strength. What an embarrassment. Honestly, that’s about as small as it gets. How weak. How weak do you have to be to commandeer the military to fete you on your birthday in a vulgar display of weakness? That’s Donald Trump.” Amen! Newsom is rapidly climbing the list of potential 2028 presidential nominees…

— Hegseth has apparently come up with a plan to invade Greenland. He says it’s only “if necessary,” but we’ve heard that before from Trump’s goons. When asked repeatedly in a congressional hearing this week if he had drawn up plans to invade or conquer Greenland, “Kegger” Hegseth refused to give a direct answer. In response to that and Kegger’s insecure Signal chats, California Democratic Rep. Salud Carbajal said: “You’re an embarrassment to this country. You’re unfit to lead. You should just get the hell out.” Gee, ya think?