We begin today with Lucy Campbell of The Guardian reporting on new ICE actions in the city of New Orleans.
Masked agents patrolled a heavily Latino suburb in marked and unmarked vehicles, and a resident told the Associated Press he watched agents arresting men outside a home improvement store in New Orleans – a familiar scene that has played out in several major cities in recent months.
Gregory Bovino, the border patrol chief and frequent Fox News guest who has become the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts,
was filmed leading a group of masked agents through the historic French quarter. One woman heckled the agents as they marched along Poydras Street,
shouting “we hate you” from her car, and “fucking losers”. [...]
It is unclear how long the crackdown would last –
one report suggested it could continue into January – but roughly 250 agents are reportedly targeting 5,000 arrests. The Democrat-led city has been bracing for weeks for the arrival of federal agents, with rumors swirling of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) crackdown led by border patrol initially referred to as “Swamp Sweep”.
Border patrol agents began making arrests on Wednesday, including in the parking lots of Lowe’s hardware stores on Elysian Fields and in Metairie, as well as at Home Depot locations in LaPlace, about 30 minutes outside of New Orleans, and Gretna.
Zachary Cohen and Jake Tapper report a CNN exclusive about a pretty damning Inspector General’s report In defense Secretary Pete Hegseth use of a Signal chat group to share classified information that could have endangered field operations and lives.
The repercussions of Hegseth’s action, two sources told CNN, are less clear since the IG concluded that the defense secretary has the authority to declassify information and Hegseth asserted he made an operational decision in the moment to share that information, though there is no documentation of such a decision.
An unclassified version of the report is set to be publicly released Thursday. The classified report was sent to Congress on Tuesday night.
Messages sent from Hegseth’s Signal account to the group chat, the contents of which sources previously confirmed to CNN included material from documents marked classified at the time they were sent, offered specific, real-time updates about planned military strikes. They were so specific that one even read: “This is DEFINITELY when the first bombs will drop.” [...]
Hegseth refused to sit for an interview with the inspector general and submitted his version of events in writing, sources told CNN.
The IG’s findings are memorialized in a broader report produced after its months-long investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal.
Methinks that Hegseth should probably be more worried more about the fog of alcoholism rather than the “fog of war”.
Yes, I know that’s a cheap shot especially coming from me...moving right along...
Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times looks at some of the many ways that the tacky shoe salesman is abusing the pardon power.
To be clear, Trump is not the first president to issue problematic pardons — far from it. George H.W. Bush pardoned Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger and several others for their roles in the Iran-contra scandal under Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger Clinton, for a 1985 conviction for drug trafficking and cocaine possession, as well as Marc Rich, a prominent financier with connections to the Democratic Party who had fled the United States while being prosecuted for tax evasion. George W. Bush commuted the sentence of his assistant I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who had been convicted of perjury in connection with the public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert C.I.A. officer. And Joe Biden broke a promise of impartiality to issue a pardon to his son Hunter, who had been convicted on charges related to illegal gun possession — which included clemency for any “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.”
These were objectionable pardons. And yet they pale in comparison with the growing number of outrageous pardons issued by Trump, beginning with his blanket pardon of the rioters involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, along with a pardon for the former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and a commutation for Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers.
This is the exact kind of pardon the antifederalists feared would happen under a tyrannical executive. The rioters, working on behalf of Trump, tried to overthrow constitutional government in the United States. And Trump, with gratitude, has freed them to try again.
In addition to his co-conspirators in the effort to “stop the steal,” Trump has pardoned a number of white-collar criminals. In March he pardoned the founders of a crypto exchange after they had pleaded guilty to money laundering. In April he pardoned a nursing home chief executive, Paul Walczak, whose mother is a major Republican donor, and in October, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a billionaire with connections to the Trump family’s crypto investments.
Olivia M.Bridges/ of Roll Call reports that the USDA is prepared to cutoff SNAP assistance for “blue states” in defiance of a federal court order.
The USDA requested states in February to turn over data about benefit recipients under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that serves nearly 42 million people.
Rollins said at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday the withholding move would aid the department’s efforts to root out fraud, adding that 29 “red states” complied with the order.
“But 21 states including California, New York and Minnesota — the blue states — continue to say ‘no,’ so as of next week we have begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds into those states until they comply and they tell us and allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud and protect the American taxpayer,” Rollins said.
The move would put the USDA at odds with a federal court order.
Award-winning Venezuelan journalist Boris Muñoz writes a long article about aspects of the U.S. conflict with Venezuela for El País in English. In this excerpt, Muñoz answers the criticisms of those Venezuelans who read into Anglo-American coverage a pro-Mauro bias.
Coverage by media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Guardian has generated harsh criticism among Venezuelans, who accuse them of “manufacturing a consensus” in favor of Maduro. Although no such campaign exists, there may be anti-Trump biases of varying intensity.
Venezuelans’ frustration is understandable, because this perspective narrows the understanding of the country’s reality: it produces narratives framed from Washington rather than from events on the ground. But it should be recognized rather that we Venezuelans are an interested party, which influences our perception of bias in reports by the mainstream media.
These articles reflect the perspectives of experts and academics who dominate analysis on Venezuela. They reflect professional inertia and editorial agendas geared toward what interests the American professional class, without capturing how Venezuelan society is being strangled by the regime. This reporting overlooks the depth of Chavista corruption and repression, the complicity between its inner circle (Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, Vladimir Padrino López) and criminal networks, Colombian narco-guerrillas, and groups like Hezbollah. This fuels misunderstandings and frustration among opposition members and citizens who yearn for real change.
The last person that I would champion in this conflict is the man who blatantly stole the previous presidential election in Venezuela. But I don’t want my government to commit war crimes in order to bully Maduro out of power, either. Nor do I want my government to commit military resources to fighting without allowing American citizens to see at least some of the evidence (fat little good that did in 2003 in Iraq...).
Finally today, (and speaking of war) Nicholas S. Rohatyn writes for The New York Times about one way to get those free bus rides in New York City.
New York City has had nine mayors in my lifetime (since I was born in 1960), soon to be 10; none, until now, has suggested making bus rides free citywide. It’s a big idea that would be transformative not only for riders, but for the ecosystem of the city as a whole in terms of clean air, less congestion and easier foot traffic. [...]
The good news is that the city already owns an asset worth at least that much every single year, which we simply give away. We walk past it every day: the curb. [...]
There are roughly three million on-street parking spaces in New York, according to city estimates. Only about 80,000 are metered. The rest are free. These vehicles occupy public land and yet they pay nothing. They sit for days, even weeks, while most New Yorkers, who don’t own cars, pay to move.
If the city simply managed this space rationally — using meters where demand is high and affordable residential permits where it’s not — it could generate more than a billion dollars a year, enough to fund free buses and improve sidewalks. The smartest way to fix New York’s parking giveaway is to start in Manhattan, where demand is highest, and then extend a fair permit system to the other boroughs. Using publicly available data from the city and state, as well as other organizations that have examined these issues, I have done my own back-of-the-envelope calculations about how Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani can pay for his plan to offer free buses, one of the cornerstones of his campaign.
Metered parking spaces?
I’ve made a couple of Chicagoans aware of this NYT oped and they laughed, guffawed, and slowly they turned…
In fact, I would advise that if NYC does go this route, training for the meter police handing out tickets needs to be held on Chicago streets (and a few of its tonier ‘burbs, if I’m honest) to manufacture considerable revenue even far beyond Mr. Rohatyn’s “back-of-the-envelope” estimates.
Decent discussion in the NYT comments section, though
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
