2025 Archives

Kristi Noem's shutdown blame-game video could cost them fines and their livelihood... Airport managers need to wake up fast. With only a handful of exceptions, people running airports across America are risking serious fines and being barred from government work for up to five years by broadcasting political messaging on behalf of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Federal law — the Hatch Act — makes it a crime, punishable by fines and loss of current and future employment, to use government facilities or taxpayer money for partisan political purposes. Yet Noem, who has earned her national reputation as a puppy-killer and by cosplaying "tough cop" with her alleged boyfriend (they're both married to other people), has pushed out a video to airports across the country blaming Democrats for the current shutdown.

Pay attention to this professional liar: "I'm the only president in modern history who left office with a smaller national debt than when I came into office." That's quite a whopper. Fact check: "During Trump's presidency, the national debt actually increased by $7.8 trillion, nearly 40 percent and more than any president in history." The fact check is courtesy of Thom Hartmann. Indeed, Hartmann's new book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party and a World on the Brink, is one giant fact check on the Whopper-in-Chief, and much more — a disturbing dive into the roiling miasma of self-aggrandizing, self-deluding, psychologically shattered, wailing man-child who is Commander-in-Chief.

How the Insurrection Act could become the 21st-century Enabling Act, with six justices and the GOP standing by… The endgame for Trump, Vance, Noem, and Bondi is coming into clearer focus, and it's nearly a one-for-one, step-by-step implementation of Nazi jurist/philosopher Carl Schmitt's ideas that created and sustained the early Third Reich. Vance has even gone so far as to directly quote Schmitt. The concepts aren't particularly complicated, and it's easy to see how Trump and his enablers are implementing them

Conservatives call Anderson's film "irresponsible" because it dares to show what happens when power turns its guns on the powerless... This week has felt like one battle after another. We all watched video after video of ICE agents dropping from helicopters onto a Chicago apartment, kicking in doors and terrorizing Black and Hispanic American and immigrant families, then trashing and stealing their possessions without ever presenting a warrant signed by a judge. The GOP pushed the country to the brink again with another government shutdown threat while right-wing legislatures redrew districts to erase the votes of millions. We heard more talk of arresting journalists for doing their jobs, and watched as the military rolled through American cities as if people here are the enemy. Each day has felt like a slow-motion assault on democracy itself. Louise and I went to see Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie One Battle After Another last weekend, and I was stunned. It's a film of rare courage and artistry. From the first scene to the last, Paul Thomas Anderson reminds us that cinema can still tell the truth about power and conscience. It's a film that demands attention, not permission.