Congrats to former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is still living in MAGA’s brain rent-free. I’m so jealous.

They say that being attacked by the enemy is a good thing because it shows that you have drawn a clear line of demarcation. If so, then former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot should frame Louisiana Senator John Kennedy’s attack as a civic compliment. It’s the universe’s way of saying she’s rattling exactly the right cages.

Lightfoot was personally attacked during acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing by none other than Sen. Kennedy, who used his questioning time not to probe Blanche’s record, but to turn Lightfoot into a political prop.

Kennedy was reacting to a July 7 letter signed by more than 1,200 former DOJ officials — Lightfoot among them — urging the Senate to reject Blanche’s nomination.

For her part, MLL said it was Kennedy and Blanche who were eroding the criminal justice system by “the weaponizing of law enforcement forces against communities.”

“These comments underscore why Blanche is wholly unqualified to hold the title that he does, let alone to be confirmed as permanent U.S. Attorney General,” she wrote in her statement. “We can see his handiwork in the myriad problems marked by deaths, false arrests, and unconstitutional actions all across the country under this regime.”

As for Kennedy’s cheap shot at her:

“Consider the source: an unrepentant racist remarks on the tenure of a Black female former mayor of the third largest city in the country. What do you think is going to come out of his mouth? A whole lot of ignorance.”

Bingo!

* * *

Testing for Testosterone Poisoning — Start With Hegseth

One day perhaps we’ll see a headline about the defense secretary that doesn’t involve allegations of sexual misconduct or bigotry, claims about past drinking on the job, possible war crimes, Christian nationalism, or his weird fixation on male facial hair. — The Guardian

The Defense Department will test the testosterone levels of service members 30 and older and offer voluntary testosterone replacement therapy to those with low testosterone levels, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced.

The announcement Wednesday raised immediate questions about its impact on female troops and how this new policy would be folded into the Pentagon’s bigger focus on more rigorous fitness standards that critics have said are meant to eliminate women from combat roles.

The Pentagon’s new crusade against “low T” would be a lot more convincing if it didn’t look like a classic case of testosterone poisoning starting at the top. Before Hegseth orders every corporal and cook to line up for hormone screenings, maybe we should run some tests on the Secretary himself. After all, when the man in charge of the War Department starts treating endocrinology like a culture‑war sacrament, you don’t need a lab slip to suspect ultra-elevated levels. The symptoms are textbook: swollen anti-gay rhetoric, aggressive pull-ups posturing, and an irresistible urge to turn basic medical care into a Fox‑friendly masculinity pageant.

All this behind a top-heavy male operation run by his boss, a convicted sexual abuser and Epstein pal, who openly expresses his envy of golfers with large genitals.

Yes, leave the troops alone and begin testing the leadership for testosterone poisoning.

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Donald Trump on Sunday twice told journalists to stop asking him about the status of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran once again closed after the president declared an end to the ceasefire deal between the two countries.

The first instance came during an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker, who pointed to conflicting statements from the Iranian government and US Central Command about the status of the strait.

Trump replied that “it’s open, and I don’t want to talk about it because I want to honor the life” of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Shortly after, during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Trump was again asked whether the strait was still open.

Trump on Tapper’s Show

TAPPER: “Iran says the Strait is closed…”

TRUMP: “Don’t talk about it.”

TAPPER: “Ok.”

ME: “Huh?”

More Quotables

Rep. Ro Khanna

“The IDF is lying. What happened was unprecedented. They had violent settlers detain American citizens including a government official, brandishing M4s, kicking the tires of our van, laughing at us… We were detained for 20 minutes, fearful for our lives.” — Meet the Press

Abdul El-Sayed

Judge me by my work, I funded the system because it needed to be funded,” he said. “Too often the conversation we have is fund or defund. The question that we don’t ask is, what kind of system do we really want? I want us to be investing in the kinds of interventions that actually protect people.” — Fox News

George Conway

“A severely mentally ill man has control of the launch codes for America’s nuclear arsenal, but it doesn’t seem that many people care.” — Media-ite

* * *

Answer to a reader’s question

No Dave. Rumors that some bettors on Kalshi made a killing by betting that Graham would die before McConnell are false. The implication is that some insiders had knowledge of Graham’s sudden demise before it actually happened, and that McConnell wasn’t already dead.

Kalshi is a CFTC‑regulated exchange, meaning it operates under the same federal rules that govern commodities and financial derivatives. Those rules ban markets tied to death, injury, or serious harm to individuals.

So what would the hypothetical odds look like?

According to AI, a realistic prediction‑market pricing (if such markets were legal) would probably resemble:

• McConnell “dies first”: ~70–80%

• Graham “dies first”: ~20–30%

The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi goes so far as to ask: Is Mitch McConnell secretly deceased?

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SOLIDARITY — I hear that Europeans are heat-exhausted. More than 1,000 heat deaths reported so far just in France. Germany is even worse. China is working overtime to ship enough air conditioners to the continent.

It’s 105° in Chicago, and they’re warning us, old experienced folks, not to venture outside. So I’m staying here in my office with the AC going full blast and trying not to think about the next ComEd bill.

How’s this for a segue?

But it’s the Democratic Party leadership that’s doing most of the sweating, especially after they took a beating from left/progressives in Colorado primary elections yesterday.

Melat Kiros’ upset primary win over Rep. Diana DeGette yesterday was part of the same insurgent pattern that has Schumer and Jeffries gasping for air. It’s about younger, left‑wing insurgents knocking off long‑time Democratic AIPAC-backed incumbents in deep‑blue districts. The through‑line is unmistakable: voters in safe Democratic seats are increasingly willing to trade seniority for ideological clarity and movement energy.

Democratic voters also chose Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in the Democratic primary for governor. Weiser defeated Sen. Michael Bennet, who sought to return to Denver after 17 years in the Senate. Weiser’s record as Attorney General — consumer protection, environmental enforcement, opioid litigation, youth mental health — aligns with the party’s policy-progressive wing. He also frequently challenged Trump-era federal actions, which positioned him as a defender of liberal governance.

He’s not a left-wing activist like Kiros, but his win at the state level is definitely a positive.

* * *

Kiros, a 29‑year‑old democratic socialist, defeated 15-term incumbent DeGette by 10 points. Her win mirrors the Mamdani wave in New York primaries last week, where democratic socialists and a progressive toppled establishment‑backed candidates.

Why this matters in the broader Democratic divide

Kiros ran directly against the Democratic Party centrist leadership, arguing that long‑serving incumbents have become “incapable of delivering on their promises.” DeGette, meanwhile, leaned on experience and institutional knowledge, the classic centrist‑establishment argument. But it didn’t land with voters who want generational change.

Kiros’ message was explicit:

“Tonight, Denver voters of all ages, all races, all religions sent a clear message: We will not wait. We will not wait to bring the fight to Donald Trump and the oligarchy,” she said. “We will not wait to demand that Congress abolish ICE and pass Medicare for All. We will not wait to end the politics of the past. To get big money out of our elections. To reject corporate PACs and AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee). And no, we will not wait to end the genocide in Gaza.”

* * *

UAW says no to Israel investment

At their Constitutional Convention in Detroit, United Auto Workers (UAW) delegates voted 321-287 to amend the union’s constitution and ban investments in Israel Bonds. The historic measure, passed in response to the war in Gaza, makes the UAW the first major national U.S. labor union to divest from Israel.

UAW member Olga Karounos, who organized the vote, said,

“This is going to send a message to — not just the billionaire class — but to politicians and any single person who is not afraid to stand up to genocide, to Netanyahu, to the United States government, and will put the UAW again on the map for standing up for international solidarity.” (Democracy Now)

The UAW’s vote to divest from Israel Bonds isn’t just a labor story. It’s a flare fired directly into the ongoing struggle between the progressive and centrist wings of the Democratic Party. What happened on the convention floor in Detroit is now part of a much larger political realignment, one in which labor, foreign policy, donor networks, and party identity are colliding big time.

The centrists like to portray the progressive left as fringe, activist‑driven, or electorally risky. But when the UAW, with its Midwest footprint and class base, takes a progressive foreign‑policy stance, it disrupts that narrative.

This is no campus protest.

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With the midterms approaching, a desperate and fearful Trump has weaponized his Department of Justice and sicced it on the state of Ohio.

This week, more than 100 federal agents fanned out across Black and Latino neighborhoods in Columbus, Toledo, and other cities, showing up at the homes of voter‑registration canvassers affiliated with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. They questioned people on their porches. They demanded IDs. They asked about voter‑registration drives. And they did it weeks into a major election cycle in a purple state, with no charges filed and no public evidence of wrongdoing.

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is a two-decade-old community activist group that describes itself as “organizing everyday Ohioans, building transformative power organizations for racial, social, and economic justice.” The group registered more than 100,000 Ohioans to vote in the 2024 elections and was active in organizing against Republicans’ 2025 redistricting efforts in the state.

The FBI also executed a court‑authorized search of OOC’s office, a fact the Bureau confirmed. But the home visits, the door knocks, the sudden appearance of federal agents in communities that have lived generations of over‑policing were carried out without warrants.

It’s just a naked display of power aimed at intimidating voters in this battleground state. The DOJ has said nothing publicly about the basis for the investigation.

This is not happening in the abstract. It is happening in states and cities where Black voter turnout has been decisive in past elections. And it’s happening in a political climate where the president and his authoritarian cult have spent years insisting, without evidence, that voter‑registration efforts in communities of color are inherently suspect. And it is happening in a country where the Voting Rights Act has been hollowed out to the point that states and federal agencies can push boundaries with little fear of judicial constraint, and where the president can even threaten to cancel all elections in 2026.

Trump declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that California’s primary election last week was “rigged” and “crooked,” walking out of the interview when host Kristen Welker challenged those assertions. The FBI in February also raided a Georgia elections hub related to the 2020 presidential election, and California prosecutors have said they are looking into claims of voter fraud in the Los Angeles mayor’s race after Trump made unfounded suggestions of fraud.

This is how voter suppression works in 2026. Not with literacy tests. Not with poll taxes. But with federal agents at your door, asking why you’re helping people register to vote. What’s happening in Ohio is not an isolated incident. It’s s a warning shot.

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AlterNet: “The despised Trump is becoming even more despised and weak after his trip to China.”

President Donald Trump made a three-day state visit to China, the first visit by a sitting U.S. President to Beijing since 2017, meeting with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People on May 14.

The trip had a great deal at stake, as evidenced by Trump taking with him the heads of every major US industry he could think of, presumably to reach some kind of historic “grand bargain” with the ascendant sun rising in the East. From this angle, it looks like a big nothing-burger, at least for Trump. His weakness in making a grand bargain with China stems in large part from the U.S. not recognizing the emerging new world order (or disorder, see below) based on multipolarity rather than historic U.S. domination.

Both sides left with a few warm words and some vague commitments, but the summit was widely assessed as producing more atmosphere than architecture. Neither side made it clear about who was producing the gas, but we can guess.

Every concrete “deliverable” — Iran, soybeans, rare earths — appears only in the U.S. version of the meeting. Beijing’s readout does not confirm any of them. Chinese state media does not repeat them. And no independent reporting verifies them.

There were no joint, signed documents and no joint press release from the Trump–Xi summit, according to all available reporting.

Every credible source describing the meeting — including Deseret News and CBS News — emphasizes the same point: there were “few specific commitments and agreements” and “little has been said about any concrete agreements.”

China issued its own unilateral Foreign Ministry statement, and the U.S. offered its own unilateral readout, but there was no jointly negotiated text, no co‑signed communiqué, and no document outlining mutual commitments.

This absence is itself meaningful. Perhaps Xi agreed behind closed doors, not to publicly embarrass D.T.

* * *

Searching for Thucydides.

China’s President Xi, in preparation for his meeting with Trump on Wednesday, said, “The world has come to a new crossroads. Can China and the U.S. overcome the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and create a new paradigm of major country relations?”

Trump’s team immediately went into panic mode and jumped onto Google (as many of us did) to find out who this guy — Thucydides — was.

Thucydides was born around 460 BCE in the Athenian deme of Halimous, fought in the Peloponnesian War, survived the plague, and spent 20 years in exile, during which he wrote his history. It covers the escalating struggle between Athens (a rising naval empire) and Sparta (an established land power) up to 411 BCE.

Thucydides is considered the father of “scientific history” for insisting on eyewitness testimony, cause‑and‑effect analysis, and a rejection of divine explanations. He is also foundational to political realism — the idea that states act from fear, interest, and power, not virtue

It sounds like Sid, and I might have found some common ground.

* * *

However, we don’t need Thucydides to explain the moment we’re in, marked by the growing threat of a new world war. Imperialism itself tells the story of a world completely divided among the big powers. The Thucydides Trap is just the classical‑Greek label for a much older, broader structural law of imperialism: when one great power rises and another declines, the system tends to generate war. President Xi was warning Trump that the contest between the big powers needs to be handled carefully, or else the threat of a third world war will grow even larger than it already is.

Upon first hearing Xi’s comment about a declining superpower, D.T. took it to mean that the U.S. was the one in decline (which it is). Word has it, he got so mad, he threw a shoe against the wall. But after his team of horrified advisors calmed him down, they scripted him the way that they always do: When in trouble, divert to Biden.

So he did:

“When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct.” — abcnews.com

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Trump announced he was pausing the so-called Project Freedom, which was intended to establish U.S. complete control over the Strait of Hormuz and open up the shipping lanes. It did neither. He claims the project has been halted to determine whether an agreement with Tehran to end the war could be reached. But Iran’s continued ability to attack U.S. warships and military bases most likely had a lot to do with this tactical retreat. According to the U.S. military, Iran launched cruise missiles, drones, and small boats at U.S.-protected ships, and a South Korean-operated vessel caught fire.

Hundreds of merchant ships remain bottled up in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. said it had opened a safe shipping lane on Monday and sunk six small Iranian boats that had threatened commercial ships in the strait. But only two merchant ships are known to have passed through the U.S.-guarded route.

Trump may call it a military victory, but…

Today, the Washington Post’s report of 228 damaged or destroyed U.S. military structures blows a crater straight through the Trump‑Hegseth victory narrative, exposing the gulf between what was declared eliminated in Iran and what has been hitting American bases across the region ever since.

The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire [and into hotels] at the start of the war, officials have said.

China pressures for war’s end

More pressure for the war’s end is coming from China, whose foreign minister, Wang Yi, met today in Beijing with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. Trump and President Xi are set to meet in Beijing next week. China

China’s position is clear: Beijing wants an immediate, comprehensive ceasefire and a negotiated end to the war, framed around sovereignty, international law, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. In today’s meeting, China emphasized that Iran has a “legitimate right to peaceful use of nuclear energy.”

Lindsey Graham’s gun-running fantasy

“If I were President Trump and Israel…”

Sen. Lindsey Graham wants to “load the Iranian people up with weapons” and let them take the streets — what he calls a “Second Amendment solution” to imperialism’s regime-change problem.

Graham traveled to Israel several times in the weeks leading up to the joint U.S.–Israeli attacks on Iran, meeting with Israeli intelligence officials and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Graham’s ties to Israel are unusually deep for a U.S. senator: frequent trips, direct coordination with Israeli intelligence, and a long‑running personal relationship with Netanyahu. He is the #4 recipient of AIPAC money.

Graham imagines himself stepping into the role of co‑commander of a joint Trump‑Israel liberation project, distributing guns to 90 million Iranians like party favors. The Iranian people appear only as extras — millions of them — waiting to be “loaded up” with weapons.

Trump has admitted the U.S. already tried a smaller version of Graham’s idea. Tons of weapons were shipped with the expectation they’d end up in the hands of protesters inside Iran. Instead, the weapons disappeared. Trump says he doesn’t know where they are. He also accused the Kurds of stealing them, which is a bad way to treat the only regional partners who still take Washington’s calls.

Before Graham’s grand arms deal leads to a rerun of Trump’s failed pilot program, let’s again review how it went. The weapons vanished. The Iranian pre-war regime got propaganda ammunition. Protesters got branded as foreign agents. And the rest of the world got one more reason to hate the CIA.

* * *

A reminder: the U.S. is already the world’s largest arms merchant by a mile. This country accounts for roughly 40% of all global weapons exports, more than the next four countries combined. If democracy could be delivered by crate, we’d be living in a golden age of flourishing republics, including this one.

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I never set out to turn this column into a megaphone for the regime’s lie machine. It sure doesn’t need my help. But every so often, Trump drops a line so nakedly revealing, the kind of thing his defense attorney would beg him not to say, that leaving it on the cutting‑room floor feels like malpractice.

Mehdi Hasan

The only good thing about Trump - only thing! - Is that he sometimes says what we all know to be true but don’t expect an American president to say, admit, out loud. — X

Vijay Prashad

The United States and Israel are pirate nations. — Substack

Trump vs. Trump

In the morning, Trump called the U.S. blockade near the Strait of Hormuz “genius” and “100% bulletproof”. By night, he described a mission to “guide ships safely” through the same waters. One policy stops all ships; the other escorts them. Both were announced within twelve hours.

Donald Trump, when asked about Iran’s 14‑point peace proposal

“They told me about the concept of the deal. They did not give me the exact wording.”

He rejected the proposal without ever reading it. The White House did not explain why the president was unable to read the 14 points. — NBC News

Todd Blanche, Trump’s Acting Attorney General

“Every time you walk into a restaurant, you have to show ID. How about you have to show your idea to vote on it? That’s not anything that’s crazy.” — Meet the Press

ME: Never once.

Kevin Hassett admits he doesn’t know what the word war means.

He’s the Director of the White House National Economic Council.

BRENNAN: A blockade is an act of war. Are we at war with Iran?

HASSETT: Uhm. You know, I don’t know what the definition of war is. — Face the Nation

Bernard Guetta, French MEP from the Renew Europe group

As an ally of America, we feel a deep sense of humiliation. The global economy is on the verge of collapse due to the incompetence of Donald Trump, an irresponsible clown. — Global Insight

Osita Nwanevu

Democrats are counting on Trump’s unpopularity to save them. Yes, Trump might carry them to victory in the midterms. But he can’t carry them much longer, especially not in the 2028 elections. — Guardian

Trump gives war criminal Netanyahu a key to the White House.

Here’s Friday’s Hitting Left show with my guest, Ivan Weiss — journalist, union organizer, and small farmer in Washington — and the son of one of the Philadelphia SMITH ACT defendants during the McCarthy period.

We dig into how that history carried Ivan into newsrooms and labor fights, and why those Cold War prosecutions still echo in today’s political climate.

Friday’s Music

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Was it staged? Probably not. They’re not that good.

At a neighbor’s get-together yesterday, everyone was asking each other, “Was it staged or not staged?” My response was and is: If it were really staged, it wouldn’t have looked that staged.

Here are six good reasons (I could easily provide 10 more) why so many people felt the event was staged — even though it likely wasn’t.

1. The gunman’s implausibly easy access.

   People immediately compared it to other high‑security breaches — including the well‑publicized incident where an armed individual walked into Mar‑a‑Lago. When we see a supposedly “secure” perimeter fail in a way that feels too simple, we fill the gap with suspicion.

2. The footage had the low‑budget flatness of real violence.

   Low‑angle, low‑resolution, single‑camera footage often looks too clean or too choreographed because it lacks the cinematic chaos people expect. That mismatch between expectation and reality is a major driver of “this looks staged” reactions.

3. The political response was oddly casual and self‑promotional.

   Trump, giving instant analysis minutes after being rushed off the stage to compare himself to Lincoln, and recall historical martyrdom, felt unusually polished for the moment. When self-promoting rhetoric arrives faster than verified facts, people assume narrative engineering.

4. The rapid pivot to branding and ballroom promotion.

   Trump claimed last night’s shooting would “never have happened” if a “large, safe and secure ballroom” had been built on the grounds of the White House.

5. The eerie timing of Karoline Leavitt’s pre-dinner, “There will be some shots fired” comment.

6. Trump’s long‑standing public image as a media manipulator.

   His strategy is to create or escalate crises to justify policy moves, shift media focus, or rally supporters. That pattern primes people to assume intentionality behind chaotic events.

Weekend Quotables

Donald Trump in the aftermath of the shooting

Journalist — Why do such attacks keep happening to you?

Trump — The people who make the biggest impacts, like Abraham Lincoln, are the ones they go after. I hate to say it, but I’m honored to be one. — Post shooting

* * *

“It cannot be built fast enough,” he said in a statement on Truth Social. “While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is, plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and it is inside the gates of the most secure building in the world, the White House.” — Truth Social

It comes after a judge halted the construction of Trump’s White House ballroom earlier this month.

Stephen Miller, Trump red-baiting White House Advisor

“The Democrats are the party of communists, radical leftists, crazy lunatics, and America haters.” — Fox

MK: There’s no ambiguity, no metaphor, no policy dispute hiding underneath Miller’s remark. It’s a categorical statement from a Trump appointee, about tens of millions of Americans — including elected officials, voters, and anyone who falls under the label “Democrat.” And it’s coming from one of the most influential advisers in the White House at a time of growing division and political violence.

Richard Haass, longtime president of the Council on Foreign Relations

Haass says the clock is ticking harder and louder for the U.S. than Iran amid the blockade and closure of Hormuz, and in a larger “strategic sense,” the U.S. is “losing the war.” — ABC, This Week

Correspondent Simon Tisdall

Iran didn’t have a nuclear weapon before this war. But you can see why it would develop one now. — Guardian

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz

An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership. At the moment, I don’t see what exit strategy the Americans are choosing. The Iranians are “obviously negotiating very skillfully” and “clearly stronger than one thought.” — Al Jazeera

Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the world in targeted killings of foreign leaders.

There is no place for violence—not against political leaders and not against anyone. — Clash
Report

Last one…

From his “60 Minutes” interview last night:

O’DONNELL: In his manifesto, he wrote that ‘I’m no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.’ What’s your reaction?

TRUMP: I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody. I’m not a pedophile. Excuse me. You read that crap from a sick person. I was totally exonerated. You should be ashamed of yourself for reading that. You’re a disgrace.

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Maybe before calling other places ‘shithole countries,’ we should take a look around. We’ve got a quarter‑billion gallons of raw sewage pouring into the Potomac, and the Navy’s most advanced carrier can’t keep its toilets working for 4,600 sailors.

Trench Warfare at Sea

Multiple reports describe regular breakdowns of the Gerald H. Ford aircraft carrier’s toilet system. The ship has nearly 650 toilets, yet sailors are experiencing daily failures across the system. They have to wait up to 45 minutes in line for a toilet and hours mopping up poop from the floors.

NPR reports design flaws causing “regular failures” and widespread frustration among the crew. Pictures released by the mother of a sailor serving on USS Gerald R. Ford show backed-up toilets and waste spilt onto the floor. “At least once a month (during the crew’s first deployment) they would wake up to poop on the floor and have to mop it up,” she said.

* * *

Shit Storm #2 (no pun intended)

There is also a sewage crisis in the Potomac River in the Washington, DC, area from a massive sewage spill. A 72‑inch sewer main (the Potomac Interceptor) collapsed on January 19, triggering a cascading failure in the region’s wastewater system. As a result, an estimated 243 million gallons of raw sewage are floating downstream. EPA officials have called it an “ecological crisis of historic proportions.”

Residents have been warned to avoid contact with the river. E. coli levels skyrocketed, with dangerous concentrations detected miles downstream.

The spill has become a political shitstorm, with federal and local officials trading blame. “This one will trickle down over time, and I’m very worried about the contamination as it goes,” Sen. Richard Stuart, R-King George, said in an interview Friday.

* * *

#3

As President Trump prepares to address the nation Tuesday evening, his poll numbers are in the toilet according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

Trump’s approval rating stands at 39 percent positive and 60 percent negative, including 47 percent who say they strongly disapprove. The last time Trump’s disapproval touched 60 percent was shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Among registered voters, Trump’s approval is 41 percent, and his disapproval is 58 percent.

Weekend Quotables

“Netanyahu has been warning that Iran is ‘weeks from a bomb’ longer than you’ve been promising to clean the garage.” —Anon

Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman

The Pentagon’s top general has cautioned President Trump from an attack on Iran, saying that shortfalls in critical munitions and a lack of support from allies will add significant risk to the operation and to U.S. personnel. — Washington Post

The Deranged One

“I am allowed to cut off any and all trade…I can destroy the trade, I can destroy the country, I’m even allowed to impose a foreign country- destroying embargo…I can do anything I want to do to them…I’m allowed to destroy the country, but I can’t charge a little fee?” — TNR

Top Dem officials

…who worked on the party’s still-secret autopsy of the 2024 election concluded that Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza. — Axios

Lori Lightfoot, former Chicago Mayor

The Rev. Jackson was our public conscience, not allowing anyone, particularly not the high and the mighty, to look away from the suffering of masses of people here and abroad who desperately needed the advocate he became. — Chicago Tribune

Lori Lightfoot will be my guest on Hitting Left, Friday 11-Noon cst on WLPN 105.5 FM in Chicago and streaming live at lumpenradio.com.

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Italian dockworkers launched a coordinated nationwide strike this month, targeting ports in Genoa, Trieste, and other cities. Organized by unions like USB, the action aimed to block alleged military cargo shipments to Israel in solidarity with Palestine, causing significant logistical disruptions across major Mediterranean hubs.

The most recent updates have workers from over 20 Mediterranean ports staging synchronized strikes to block vessels suspected of carrying weapons to Israel, including the Israeli-owned Zim Virginia.

These actions featured mass demonstrations, Palestinian flags, and red flares, with no major clashes reported. They mark the broadest regional coordination yet, extending beyond Italy to Greece, Turkey, Morocco, and Spain.

Genoa dockworkers helped ignite a wave of pro‑Palestinian mobilization in late 2025 by calling for a halt to shipments linked to Israel. Their actions were tied to the Global Sumud Flotilla, a 50‑boat aid convoy challenging Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Dockers framed the flotilla as a “tripwire” for escalating labor action, including a potential total block on trade with Israel.

* * *

Watching Italian dockworkers shut down ports to block arms bound for Israel, I’m reminded of another war and another coastline. In 1968, when we were organizing against the war in Vietnam, we stood together with ILWU longshore workers who quietly slowed, refused, and disrupted the military cargo moving through West Coast docks.

We were part of something that rarely gets remembered in the mainstream histories. The anti‑war movement not only supported the ILWU, but we also actively learned from and strategically coordinated with West Coast longshore workers. And that mattered, because the ports were one of the few places where the war machine could actually be slowed down in material terms.

Students and clergy would form “community picket lines” that longshore workers could legally honor under the contract. This was a crucial tactic: it gave ILWU members a way to refuse to load military cargo without triggering Taft–Hartley penalties.

* * *

One figure that stands out in my memory of that time was Archie Brown (1911-1990). Archie was an ILWU organizer. He was also one of the most visible anti‑war, anti‑fascist, and anti‑McCarthyite leaders on the San Francisco waterfront. He was a Communist and a Spanish Civil War vet — an original Antifa — who fought against Franco’s fascists and participated in the Battle of the Bulge during WWII. Archie was prosecuted under the Landrum-Griffin Act, which barred Communists from serving as elected union officials, and won a Supreme Court decision in 1965 that overturned this legislation.

What I learned from Archie Brown and the San Francisco dockworkers was that when workers refuse to load or unload cargo, they can materially disrupt the war machine in ways we student protesters couldn’t. That reality led to a strategic turn for our movement. More on that in future posts.

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Let me start off by admitting that I am an outlier: An 82-year-old white male who loves both football and Bad Bunny. I enjoyed last night’s game, even though I had no horse in the race and there was little either team did on offense that got me excited — except, of course, for the brilliant running of game MVP, Kenneth Walker III. But I love to watch great defensive players, and the Seahawks were stacked with them, which is why they won.

But this was one of the few years I didn’t head for the kitchen during the eternal half-time break. I stayed put to watch Bunny celebrate the culture of his homeland, Puerto Rico.

Super Bowl Notes:

The Super Bowl is a cultural event, not just a sports broadcast. Since Trump’s first shot was fired at Colin Kaepernick’s knee in 2016, the NFL has also become a political battlefield in Trump-inspired culture wars.

The irony is that the NFL has always been political—military flyovers, patriotic branding partnerships, and the league’s long relationship with the Department of Defense didn’t suddenly appear in 2017. What changed this year was Trump’s assault on and mass round-up of immigrants and political critics, as part of ICE’s invasion of Democrat-led Sanctuary Cities, which has drawn mass protests around the world.

Why is Trump so glum today?

The Super Bowl’s cultural weight has made it an irresistible symbolic arena. Advertisers started calibrating their messaging around the political temperature of the moment, with the heat turning up on Trump and the halftime show becoming a referendum on who gets to define American spectacle. And the clear winner was the brilliant, talented Bad Bunny (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) with his message of love, joy, freedom, and solidarity. Did anybody doubt what the outcome would be?

* * *

There are just over 40 Latino players among the 1,695 active players on NFL rosters at the start of the 2025 season. Dave Canales (Carolina Panthers) is the only Latino head coach in the league in recent seasons.

Sunday’s game was seen as a massive cultural and advertising event, with audience numbers far exceeding those of any other live U.S. television program.

The game drew approximately 135 million viewers, according to early estimates, following last year’s record-setting viewership. The final figures aren’t in yet, but are assumed to maintain the upward trend of the most-watched television program in U.S. history, driven by combined television, streaming, and out-of-home audiences. Spanish‑language networks Telemundo and Fox Deportes drew a combined 1.9 million viewers for the 2025 Super Bowl. This number reflects only U.S.-based Spanish-language viewers, not viewers in Latin America, and this year’s numbers were obviously higher.

The MAGA halftime show

The MAGA “All‑American Halftime Show” went forward exactly as Turning Point USA intended, as a political counter‑program, not a true cultural competitor, and the reporting makes the outcome unmistakable. Watching some of the videos, I would generously compare the show unfavorably to New England’s offense and Kid Rock’s performance unfavorably to that of Patriots QB Drake Maye’s. Rolling Stone called it a “half-assed lip-synch.”

Reviews describe the show as jingoistic, religiously charged, and awkwardly staged, with a small, imported in‑person audience on a rented soundstage rather than a real venue. Some outlets called it “boring” and “a failed bid for relevance,” emphasizing how thin the crowd was.

If you just started reading this post — no, I’m not talking about this week’s audience for the Melania movie.

WeekendQuotables

Trump: “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” — Anti-Social Lies

Kacey Musgraves, Grammy-winning country artist.

Benito put on a show that “made me feel more proudly American than anything Kid Rock has ever done.” — Guardian

Marimar Martinez, who was shot five times by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Chicago

“I am Renee Good. I am Alex Pretti. I am Silverio Villegas González. I am Keith Porter. This needs to stop now. How many more lives must be lost before meaningful action is taken?” — Chicago Tribune

U.S. employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January — the worst start to a year since 2009, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Dana Bash asks Dr. Oz if the measles outbreak is linked to the administration’s undermining of vaccines.

Dr. Oz: “I don’t believe so. Secretary Kennedy supports measles vaccines.”

Bash: “Oh, come on.” — CNN

Statement from Valéria Chomsky

“Noam’s overly trusting nature, in this specific case, led to severe poor judgment on both our parts... we express our unrestricted solidarity with the victims.” — Aaron Mate

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When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon would sever all military training, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard beginning in the 2026–27 academic year, it sounded to me like a historical echo. The break Washington is now imposing from above is the same one we student activists called for more than half a century ago.

Harvard has been a recurring target in the administration’s narrative about elite institutions: too woke, too autonomous, and wealthy enough to resist federal control. The Pentagon’s withdrawal functions as a warning shot to others. Cooperation is conditional, and dissent has a price.

Study War No More

By spring 1969, Harvard students were demanding that the university sever all ties with ROTC and, by extension, the Pentagon. The push didn’t begin that year. The sentiment was already building as anti‑Vietnam War and anti-draft organizing intensified. U.S. college students launched widespread, often radicalized protests against university complicity in the Vietnam War, targeting institutions' military research, ROTC programs, and war-related investments. Fueled by the draft, the Civil Rights Movement, and the need for student empowerment, these actions saw campus occupations, strikes, and clashes with authorities.

You could rightfully say that Harvard was the Pentagon’s finishing school. Here are just a few of its products: Robert McNamara, Harvard Business School faculty, Secretary of Defense, and architect of Vietnam escalation; James Schlesinger — Harvard BA, MA, PhD; later faculty; Secretary of Defense and CIA Director; Cold War hard‑liner, Caspar Weinberger, Harvard College and Harvard Law, Reagan’s Secretary of Defense; champion of the 1980s military buildup; and Henry Kissinger, Harvard PhD, 17 years on the faculty; central Cold War strategist.

It wasn’t just Harvard

A review of all the big, militant student protests against the university/Pentagon connection would fill up a book. Several have already been written, so I’ll just list a few.

By 1968–69, Berkeley students were no longer fighting for speech rights alone. They launched strikes against military recruiting, against the draft, against university complicity in Pentagon research, and against the broader logic of what Clark Kerr — Berkeley’s own president, had proudly called the “multiversity.” Kerr’s term was meant to describe a modern, diversified research institution; students heard it as an admission that the university had become a service station for the Cold War state and corporate America. The Berkeley strike made that critique explicit. The university was not neutral, and its entanglement with the war machine was a political choice.

* * *

Before the Vietnam War, Columbia University had a long and mostly cordial rapport with the military. Dwight Eisenhower once served as its president, and crucial research for the Manhattan Project was conducted in Pupin Hall. Columbia provided more young officers during World War II than the Naval Academy did.

But the 1968 Columbia University protests changed all that, as students seized buildings over the university’s ties to the Institute for Defense Analysis and local community issues. By the time the students launched their strike and occupied Hamilton Hall, the relationship had become politically toxic. The War made the university’s military ties look like complicity in state violence.

A proposed gym in Morningside Park symbolized Columbia’s willingness to impose its power on Black communities — a domestic echo of the war’s imperial logic. ROTC and defense research became lightning rods for a generation that no longer trusted the national‑security state. The administration’s decision to call in the NYPD, resulting in hundreds of injuries, shattered the illusion that the university and its students shared a common purpose.

* * *

The University of Chicago, despite its reputation for political conservatism and administrative rigidity, saw a major student strike in 1969. This was the university where the Manhattan Project’s first sustained nuclear chain reaction was achieved in 1942, under Stagg Field. The birthplace of the bomb became, a generation later, a site of student rebellion against the very architecture of state power it had helped build.

The campus revolt exposed the fragility of the entire Cold War compact between universities and the Pentagon.

* * *

My own alma mater, San Fernando Valley State College — now Cal State Northridge — sat in the middle of the most militarized civilian landscape in the country. The Valley was ringed by aerospace giants, missile contractors, and electronics firms feeding the Vietnam War: Lockheed in Burbank, Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, Litton in Woodland Hills, Hughes in El Segundo. Students didn’t need a political education to understand the war machine; they could see it on their commute. That proximity made Valley State a combustible site for anti‑war organizing. By 1968–69, the campus had become a flashpoint, with protests against military recruiters, draft boards, and the local aerospace pipeline that funneled graduates directly into defense work. Valley State showed that the revolt against the Vietnam War wasn’t confined to elite campuses; it erupted even in the places most structurally tied to the Pentagon’s supply chain.

By spring ’69, more than 100 campuses had active campaigns to abolish ROTC or sever ties to the Pentagon, and our organization, SDS, had swelled to more than 100,000 members and more than 300 chapters, ranging from tiny groups of a dozen students to large chapters with hundreds of members.

ROTC was one visible symbol, but the target was the entire war machine. Universities were hosting military recruiters, granting academic credit to Pentagon‑run programs, and conducting research that fed directly into the Vietnam War. Students understood that the university wasn’t neutral; it was an institution woven into the state’s military infrastructure. Our fight was to expose the system and force a break.

The draft‑resistance movement is the missing pillar in this whole imperialist architecture. It’s the force that turned campus resistance from scattered protest into a mass, existential confrontation with the war machine.

* * *

What’s striking in 2026 is not the fact of the rupture, but the direction of it. In the late ’60s, students demanded that universities cut ties with the Pentagon. Today, the Pentagon is cutting ties with the university. The logic flips, but the underlying relationship, the long, uneasy marriage between education and the war machine, is once again under strain.

The relationship between Harvard and the Pentagon wasn’t just “close.” For most of the 20th century, it was deep and structural. Each institution supplied something the other needed, and together they formed one of the most powerful talent pipelines in American public life. That’s what makes the current break so symbolically charged. The symbiosis that once defined the relationship has cracked.

Half a century later, the Pentagon is the one walking away, not because it has embraced the students’ critique, but because the strategic landscape has shifted. The military no longer needs Harvard to reproduce its authority. The university no longer offers the insulation, legitimacy, or talent pipeline it once did. The partnership is dissolving not through protest but through obsolescence.

The Pentagon no longer needs Harvard because its talent and research base has already migrated elsewhere — into the engineering‑heavy universities that never wavered in their defense partnerships, into the federally funded research labs that operate far from public scrutiny, and most of all into the private tech sector, which now supplies the AI, cyber, and dual‑use innovation the military depends on. What Harvard once provided—prestige, expertise, and a steady stream of national‑security managers—is now distributed across MIT, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, the service academies, the FFRDCs, and the defense‑tech ecosystem that has become the primary engine of Pentagon modernization. The Ivy‑centric model of national‑security expertise has already been replaced; the 2026 rupture simply makes it official.

But it would be naive to treat the Pentagon’s decision as purely administrative. This is also a political message and a warning to other universities. It’s a way of disciplining an institution that has, in the eyes of the administration, become too willing to resist pressure, too willing to assert its own authority, and too willing to treat White House directives as negotiable.

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A significant special election in N.J. is too close to call, but it’s already a win for progressives and a blow to AIPAC and Dem Party leadership. No matter who wins the primary, Analilia Mejia’s strong showing indicates diminishing returns for high‑dollar campaigns and a sign that change is coming.

Mejia, a longtime Democratic activist, solidified the progressive lane with an endorsement from independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, having served as political director on Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. She said she was drawn to enter the race after Democrats ended last year’s government shutdown without securing an extension of the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax subsidies.

Either candidate’s success would be a blow to the pro-Israel lobby. While Malinowski previously had AIPAC’s support, Mejia has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war in Gaza and the organization’s political spending.

* * *

Another pile of horse poop for farmers

Trump is now telling audiences that “the farmers are doing very well” because “we just handed ’em $12 billion out of tariff money. They don’t even want it. They just want to be treated fairly.”

To put it bluntly, that’s all a big pile of manure. It’s a neat little story: tariffs generate cash, farmers get a bonus, and the whole thing supposedly proves the brilliance of the policy. But none of it is true.

The $12 billion wasn’t a reward for prosperity. It’s a temporary fix for a “policy-created crisis” that favors corporate monopolies over family farms. It was a massive Bailout, mainly targeting row-crop producers like corn and soy, framed as protection against “Chinese trade disruptions.”

Farmers were losing export markets, income, and, in many cases, the ability to service their loans. But it was all because of Trump’s tariff madness, not China.

According to Kucinich, the former Director of Policy at the Center for Food Safety, the bailout funnels money to the largest commodity producers—those growing corn and soy—while leaving small, independent operations behind. She described the current subsidy system as a “pass-through” for the chemical, seed, and fertilizer cartels that exert pricing control over the industry.

The program sends direct payments to individual farmers through their local USDA Farm Service Agency offices. These weren’t block grants or infrastructure investments. They were checks, compensation for the losses farmers incurred when foreign buyers retaliated against U.S. tariffs by canceling or reducing purchases of soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton, and other commodities.

Trump says it’s “tariff money,” but tariffs don’t sit in a special pot waiting to be redistributed. The bailout was financed through the CCC, which is backed by general federal funds. In other words: taxpayers. The administration created the program because farmers were facing real financial harm. The idea that they “didn’t want it” is political theater.

"American agriculture cannot survive on bailouts alone," Kucinich said. "It needs fairness, freedom, and a system that serves farmers instead of corporations."

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Trump’s panic is visible now because his political clock is ticking. The surprise Democratic win in a deep‑red Texas district that Republicans had treated as safely locked down has shattered the illusion that demographic and turnout trends would indefinitely favor MAGA candidates.

Remember, there’s more at stake here than just the midterm elections. Trump’s very political life hangs in the balance. MAGA’s holding power by any means necessary is the only thing standing between him and possible life in a federal prison.

That’s why the extreme rhetoric has escalated so quickly. The militarized ICE raids on Democratic cities, the threatened State of Emergency, and now the call to “take over” elections in Democratic jurisdictions all read differently when layered over a growing fear that time is running out on Trump. When a movement built on invincibility starts to feel vulnerable, it senses the ground shifting beneath it.

BTW, this call for centralizing national elections must be quite a leap for the few remaining traditional conservatives in the party, who have made “states’ rights” their rationale for racial segregation for more than a century.

* * *

And now the Speaker of the House is saying the quiet part out loud. On Newsmax today, Mike Johnson defended Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections by claiming that three Republican candidates “were ahead on election day” and that “every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost.” Then he added the tell: “It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No.”

That single admission — I can’t prove it, but I’m saying it anyway — is the whole project in miniature. It’s the construction of a world in which any Democratic vote counted after midnight is inherently suspect, any shift in totals is “magic,” and any loss is fraud “on the face of it.” It gives Trump the validation he needs to turn a cult conspiracy theory into a fascist governing strategy.

* * *

The rhetoric is no longer confined to Trump’s rallies or Johnson’s Newsmax appearances. It’s already being put in place. State legislatures in key battlegrounds are advancing bills to tighten MAGA control over election boards, restrict local discretion in ballot counting, and give legislatures more leverage to challenge or override certification. Conservative legal networks are quietly drafting memos that reinterpret “irregularities” as grounds for intervention, and party lawyers are building pre‑election litigation strategies.

None of this requires a formal declaration of emergency. It only requires a shared premise that free elections are a threat to MAGA power.

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Reliable sources inform me that those of you who are bound for hell (You know who you are) will be condemned to spend eternity reading the 3 million pages of the Epstein files while watching the Melania movie over and over and over. Good luck.

Quotables

Philly D.A. Larry Krasner actually said this on Tuesday, but I still think it’s worth a Weekend Quotable.

“This is a small bunch of wannabe Nazis, that’s what they are, in a country of 350 million. We outnumber them.”

“If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities, we will find you, we will achieve justice.” — At City Hall “ICE OUT” event

* * *

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to President Donald Trump’s Thursday executive order declaring a national emergency, imposing tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.

“Applying tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba could trigger a far-reaching humanitarian crisis, directly affecting hospitals, food, and other basic services for the Cuban people, a situation that must be avoided,” she said Friday. “We will seek a way, without putting Mexico at risk, of course, but always seeking solidarity with the Cuban people.” — In her Friday press conference

* * *

Trump’s announcement (my version)

“Out of an abundance of caution, I am shutting down the Trump Kennedy Center for two years to prevent China from infiltrating the orchestra pit. They’ve been trying to get in through the bassoon section for decades.” — Announcement

More Weekend Quotables

Kristi Noem

Noem went on Fox News this morning and urged the country to “move on” from Minnesota while dismissing the protesters as “violent monsters.” — Fox

Michele Tafoya (R) Senate candidate

Where’s my check???

Author and journalist Garrett Graff

“Today, we’re creating something even more dangerous to our country, a masked monster of a law enforcement agency, one uniquely unsuited for its new power, authority, reach, and funding levels.” — Testimony at Gov. Pritzker’s Commission

Jane Fonda

“I know Don Lemon. My husband created CNN. And I will fight for their right to speak… they arrested the wrong Don. This is how autocrats act. We can’t fall for it.” — Deadline

At the Grammys

Bad Bunny

“Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say, ‘ICE out,’” said Bad Bunny, fuelling even more interest (and fears from MAGAs) over his upcoming Super Bowl appearance. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens, we are humans, and we are Americans.”

Billie Eilish

“No one is illegal on stolen land. We need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting.” — Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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What stood out in Trump’s response to the attack on Rep. Omar wasn’t just the cruelty; it was the incoherence. Asked a simple, factual question about a violent assault on a sitting member of Congress, he veered into a wild, self-denigrating conspiracy theory, claiming Omar “probably had herself sprayed.”

This is a deranged man increasingly unable to process basic reality, defaulting to whatever grievance‑shaped fragment floats to the surface. He has spent years singling out Somali‑Americans, especially in Minnesota, as political targets. He has described Somali refugees as a “disaster,” accused them of “destroying” Minneapolis, and repeatedly cast them as an alien presence rather than part of the pure, white civic fabric.

Once Trump opened the barn door, his faithful cultists and ethic cleansers rushed out and parroted their boss. As expected, it was Rep. Randy Fine, who was first in line. Fine said he “blames Ilhan Omar for what happened.” Trump’s muse, Laura Loomer, who needs no cues, called the attack a “Somali False Flag Scam” and told Omar to “go back to Somalia.”

My point here isn’t to diagnose Trump or his followers’ obvious derangement. It’s to recognize that his reaction to the attack on Omar reveals a president, who at the same time, is the leader of a fascist cult, who encourages and cheers on political violence with conspiratorial improvisation and long‑standing racial grievances.

* * *

My message to Trump, the ‘extinguisher.’

Trump: “So this has been, I think -- and a lot of people say it -- the most successful year of any administration in American history. We extinguished eight wars.” — Cabinet Meeting

If I were at Trump’s cabinet meeting — which I obviously wasn’t — I would’ve said (reading from my well-crafted, prepared notes):

“Forget about it, DT. No one is buying your bullshit. You didn’t ‘extinguish eight wars,’ and you know it. All you did was recite a shifting list of ceasefires, pauses, and disputes that either didn’t hold, didn’t involve the United States, or weren’t wars to begin with.”

* * *

Rubio: War? What war?

One way to “extinguish” wars is to deny that the wars you started were really wars. If that sounds confusing, it does to me as well. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what Sec. of State Marco Rubio did. He claimed that the US military attack on Venezuela wasn’t an act of war, but rather, “an operation.”

Most Democrats and a few Republicans, including those who have condemned the attack on another sovereign state as illegal or unauthorized, have stopped short of calling it a “war,” instead using terms like “military action,” “strike,” or “use of force.”

Both the New York Times and Washington Post have repeatedly referred to the attack as an “operation”, adopting Rubio’s language.

Rand Paul says ‘own it.’

PBS NewsHour coverage shows Republican Sen. Rand Paul pressing Rubio directly on why the attack and the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, shouldn’t be considered an act of war. (PBS)

“If a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed our president, and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war?”

“We just don’t believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war,” Rubio said, defending the Trump administration’s argument to not define the operation, which lasted a few hours, as an act of war.

“But would it be an act of war if someone did that to us?” the Republican senator shot back. “Of course it would be an act of war.”

“I think we need to at least acknowledge this is a one-way argument,” Paul added. “We do what we do because we have the force, we have the might.”

Paul’s argument could be summed up this way: Yes, we’re imperialists. Own it.

Bruce Springsteen dedicated his new song to the people of Minneapolis, bashing Trump’s ongoing immigration enforcement operations in the city.

The lyrics of “Streets of Minneapolis,” released Wednesday, describe how “a city aflame fought fire and ice ’neath an occupier’s boots,” which Springsteen calls “King Trump’s private army.”

I’ll be playing Streets of Minneapolis on Hitting Left tomorrow while I interview my guest, David Stovall, professor of Black Studies and Criminology, Law & Justice at UIC, and one of the sharpest voices on the intersections of race, education, and the carceral state.

Tune in Friday from 11 a.m.–noon CST on WLPN 105.5 FM in Chicago or stream live at lumpenradio.com.

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Critical voices, including Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez and Keith Olbermann, had publicly urged Walz or Senate Democrats to “activate the National Guard” to stop ICE or even “arrest the ICE agents.” But under U.S. law, a governor cannot direct the National Guard to confront, detain, or arrest federal agents acting under the cover of federal authority, even if those agents are causing chaos, using excessive force, or creating a public‑safety crisis. If they did, President Trump could instantly place the Minnesota Guard under federal command, nullifying Walz’s orders.

Only State and local police can legally investigate and charge ICE agents for crimes committed outside the scope of their duties, and there’s no evidence that the MPD is willing or able.

* * *

Governor Tim Walz has activated the National Guard. Once the shooting of Alex Pretti occurred, Walz’s posture shifted from readiness to full activation and deployment. This activation is framed around public safety, crowd control, and stabilizing the city—not resisting ICE.

Walz issued the following statement in response to ICE’s execution-style shooting of Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and registered nurse who treated veterans:

“The federal occupation of Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. It is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state. And today, that campaign claimed yet another life. As I told the White House in no uncertain terms this morning, the federal government cannot be trusted to lead this investigation. The state will handle it. Period.

* * *

Just hours after federal agents shot and killed Pretti, Trump administration officials called him a “would-be assassin” and blamed Democrats for siding with “terrorists.” “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement, and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists,” deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote on X Saturday.

* * *

The NRA has forgotten all about the 2nd Amendment. Now they won’t say anything critical about big government gunning down legal gun owner, Alex Pretti, because doing so would require contradicting the hand that feeds them. Instead, they’re blaming Walz. Great irony here, especially because the NRA defended right-wing killer Kyle Rittenhouse. The National Rifle Association tweeted text from the Second Amendment, and the Gun Owners of America (GOA) called him a “warrior for gun owners.”

Pretti’s handgun was discovered only after he was taken to the ground: It was strapped to his back on his waist. His hands were on the ground. He did not appear to reach for the firearm. He was shot after he was disarmed: An agent removed Pretti’s gun. One of the officers yelled, “Gun!” Pretti was then shot to death by federal agent(s).

Weekend Quotables

AOC

“Americans are being killed in the street by their government. Our Constitution is being shredded, and our rights are dissolving. Resist,” she wrote. “Senate Dems should block ICE funding this week. Activate the National Guard. We can and must stop this.” — @AOC

Keith Olbermann

“Governor, you have the Minnesota National Guard troops. Deploy them. Arrest the ICE agents. Enforce the laws and defend your people against Trump’s Terrorists,” wrote Olbermann in response to Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz, Saturday. — @KeithOlbermann

The Pretti Family

“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand, and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed,” the family statement said. “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.” — Statement

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson

"We cannot allow Trump's militarized masked police force to continue to kill innocent people with impunity," Johnson wrote. "Chicago stands in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis confronting this tyranny. We need ICE and CBP out of our cities now." — Statement

MN Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar

Rep. Omar focused her anger on ICE, posting on social media: “This appears to be an execution by immigration enforcement. I am absolutely heartbroken, horrified, and appalled that federal agents murdered another member of our community.” — X

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara

“People have had enough. This is the third shooting in less than 3 weeks. The MPD went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone ... this is not sustainable.” — Face the Nation

I was glad to hear Chief O’Hara draw a line between MPD and the ICE killers. But he fails to mention the sordid, violent history of his own MPD and the killing of George Floyd. I guess he means to say, “you can’t pin this one on us.”

Greg Bovino (Col. Lockjaw)

We will never tell you which agents killed Alex Pretti— and they will keep working the streets. — Bovino’s on‑camera remarks to reporters

Jonathan Rauch at The Atlantic

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Mayor Jacob Frey

Today, we lost another Minneapolis neighbor after multiple ICE agents pummeled him and shot him to death. How many more people need to die or get shot before this ends? — @MayorFrey

ICE gunmen were told they had “absolute immunity.”

Minneapolis woke up today to the same, no longer shocking news: Another neighbor killed by masked, gun-toting ICE thugs operating on city streets. Mayor Jacob Frey put it plainly—“multiple ICE agents pummeled him and shot him to death.” A U.S. citizen. A lawful gun owner. A man whose final moments were spent under a pile of federal agents before they opened fire at close range.

The shooting happened amid widespread daily protests in the Twin Cities since the Jan. 7 ICE killing of 37-year-old Renee Good, and amid yesterday’s Minnesota one‑day, statewide general strike protesting the federal ICE surge. Thousands were in the streets, and hundreds of businesses closed

The official story coming out of DHS—channeled, once again, through Greg Bovino—is that the victim, 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was a “terrorist” intent on massacring as many ICE agents as he could. But the horrifying video footage shows something completely different. It shows Pretti helping a woman up who had just been maced point-blank in the face and was slipping on the ice. He was then thrown to the ground, beaten, and shot some 14 times while already collapsing under the weight of several ICE thugs.

This is not an isolated tragedy. It’s the third federal shooting in Minneapolis in a matter of weeks, part of a pattern of aggressive, unaccountable operations that local officials didn’t authorize and residents didn’t ask for. And it’s happening under the direction of a federal commander whose credibility has already been shredded in court, where a judge found he lied about his agents’ use of force at protests.

What happened on 26th and Nicollet isn’t just another “incident.” It’s a warning about what happens when empowered paramilitary federal forces operate without transparency, repeatedly abusing and killing citizens. When senior federal officials publicly assert that agents have “absolute immunity,” even though the law does not grant that, they are sending a frightening message: You are above the law.

Bovino’s Death Squad Wannabees

The death squads in the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte are one of the clearest modern examples of a state sliding into normalized, extrajudicial killing under the banner of “law enforcement.” Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken positively about Duterte and his drug‑war tactics, which resulted in the deaths of some 8,000 Filipinos.

* * *

Shout out to Former DC Police Officer Michael Fanone

I became an instant fan of Michael Fanone’s after I saw the video of him facing off with MAGA Ivan Raiklin at the Jack Smith hearing. Fanone, who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, has accused Raiklin of threatening his family.

Raiklin has become a fixture at Jan. 6–related hearings. He’s a self‑styled election‑denial activist who inserts himself into the frame, films aggressively, and tries to provoke reactions. Coverage repeatedly describes him as a “right‑wing operative,” “2020 election conspiracy theorist,” and “repeat hearing disruptor.”

Fanone can be heard saying, “You threatened to rape my children. You sick b*stard.” I also loved that he was wearing a Dropkick Murphys tee.

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Davos, a cathedral of failed globalization

Davos isn’t officially an oligarchs’ summit, but it sure as hell looks and feels like one. The World Economic Forum brands itself as a space where “stakeholders” collaborate on global challenges. Judging from the more than 1,000 private jets that arrived for the WEF, poor and working people, especially from the Global South, aren’t considered stakeholders. No used Renaults in the parking lot. The optics were more coherent than the diplomacy: Matching black parkas and tactical boots created a visual unity that the forum’s politics couldn’t.

In practice, it’s an invitation-only gathering of heads of state, central bankers, billionaires, corporate chiefs, and select intellectuals — a self-selected elite with disproportionate influence over global policy reflecting today’s wider-than-ever wealth gap.

This year, however, Davos could well be the preliminary battlefield between the U.S. and the Europeans over Trump’s bid to annex Greenland and his weaponized use of tariffs.

Trump’s Speech: He forgot which country he wants to buy. Then he folds on Greenland tariffs.

Trump was hours late for his Davos speech because his Air Force One jet had to return to Andrews late Tuesday after experiencing a “minor electrical issue.” DT then had to fly to Davos on a back-up plane, usually used for domestic flights.

What an embarrassment. The Saudi delegation must have been snickering.

You might be wondering why he didn’t just jump on that gold-plated jet that was gifted to him by Qatar in May? It turns out that one has to be retrofitted for later use, not a ready-for-primetime presidential transport. Like every other luxury item Trump’s ever been handed, shiny and expensive, but useless.

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He repeatedly said “Iceland” while clearly referring to Greenland, even attributing yesterday’s U.S. market crash to the wrong country.

“Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland,” the president said, referring to market shifts related to his repeated threats to seize Greenland. “So Iceland’s already cost us a lot of money.”

Trump also mistook the two countries a day earlier, while speaking to reporters at the White House. He has threatened hefty tariffs on European countries standing between him and his quest for control of Greenland. “As an example,” he told reporters before traveling to Switzerland, “Iceland, without tariffs, they wouldn’t even be talking to us about it.”

In one overflow room, attendees laughed and gasped throughout his speech. Guffaws when Trump talked about wind farms killing birds. Nervous laughs when he said he was asking for “a piece of ice”, meaning Greenland. Others gasped, “Oh no,” when he said, “Canada lives because of the United States.”

And howls when he again insisted: “All the US is asking for is a place called Greenland.”

“I would say he’s gone from neocon to neo-imperial,” one attendee whispered.

An hour into Trump’s rambling speech, people started to leave the overflow rooms. “He’s a nutcase,” one said on the way out.

After practically being laughed off the stage, Trump announced that he was scrapping his planned tariffs on eight European nations in an effort to force U.S. control over Greenland, pulling a dramatic reversal shortly after insisting he wanted to get the island “including right, title, and ownership.”

Proving once again that if you stand up to a bully, they will fold.

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It would be pretty weird if Hegseth (who hangs on every word from Trump’s mouth as if it were coming straight from Jesus himself) heard the demented one’s speech and began shipping battle-ready Marines to Iceland. Could World War III have just started with an invasion of the wrong country?

Here’s one scenario: Trump, speaking confidently at a global summit, announces decisive action against a nation he believes has wronged the United States. Unfortunately, he means Greenland but repeatedly says Iceland, and the markets react to the wrong island.

NATO convenes an emergency meeting to determine which country is being invaded.

Diplomats scramble to clarify, but the correction email autocorrects “Greenland” to “Greenfield,” and now Indiana is issuing a statement.

What’s striking is how this slip lands in the middle of a much larger geopolitical crisis. His Greenland campaign has already triggered market volatility, tariff threats, and diplomatic backlash, so the Iceland/Greenland mix‑up becomes more than a malaprop. It’s the kind of moment that crystallizes the surreal logic of the whole imperial project.

Lutnick heckled and jeered

“Prior to Donald Trump taking the helm of the United States of America, the world was taking the piss out of us.”

When Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick used bar-banter grievance language to discuss global economics, it signaled how far the U.S. has fallen on the world stage and how isolated it had become. Lutnick pegged the entire rest of the world as the enemy, with Trump leading a mission of revenge.

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Lutnick was heckled ‍at a dinner hosted by BlackRock’s Larry Fink on Tuesday night, ‌the Financial ‌Times reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

There was uproar following ​combative remarks from Lutnick, with widespread ‍jeering, guests ​exiting, and appeals ​for calm from Fink, ‍the report added, without going into details on Lutnick’s comments or what the ‍hecklers said.

Canadian P.M. Mark Carney’s speech at Davos

Carney’s Davos speech was remarkable not because it diagnoses the potential collapse of the U.S./European Cold War alliance, but because it comes with an unsolicited confession.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. — Global News

French President Macron’s speech

Macron accused the Trump administration of policies that “openly aim to weaken and subordinate Europe,” framing the tariff fight as an assault on European sovereignty.

He opened with a joke about Trump’s boasts, calling this “a time of peace, stability, and predictability” — a line delivered with deliberate irony. — Mediaite

And followed up with:

• A warning about a world drifting away from rules: Macron argued that the international system is shifting “towards a world without rules,” where international law is increasingly ignored and “the law of the strongest” dominates.

• A veiled critique of Trump’s Greenland fixation: Macron’s line “we prefer respect to bullies” was widely read as a jab at Trump’s renewed push to assert control over Greenland and his tariff threats. — Economic Times

Trump left Davos having achieved nothing except proving how little power the spectacle now holds. The Greenland/tariffs gambit went nowhere; the Europeans didn’t blink. NATO remained destined for the trash bin of history, and Ukraine stayed trapped in a war the forum couldn’t meaningfully address. In the end, the only thing Davos clarified was the U.S.’s isolation

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