And if this article is the first you’re hearing Slotkin’s name (like apparently a lot of people in here who are defending this piece of shit for some reason), you should know she’s a massive piece of shit whose whole brand is whining about whatever progressives are doing or saying. If AOC had gone on a “No Kings” tour Slotkin would be saying that she’s alienating people who think the British royal family are cute or whatever.
I don’t think it was a single presidential election that did this, the Republican party has been working towards this at least since they ran Goldwater on an anti-civil rights and anti-new deal platform in 1964. Democracy is a pain in the ass for bigots and oligarchs, so the Republican party united them in opposition against it and now their very long game is paying off. Nixon being pardoned for Watergate, Reagan getting zero blame for Iran Contra, the Supreme Court stealing the 2000 election, Bush lying about WMDs to start a bullshit war to win reelection, McConnell refusing to accept Obama’s judicial nominees - all of these attacks on anything that would hold them accountable for their theft of public resources and violence against marginalized people brought us to this point. Trump is just the worst symptom of a disease that’s been festering for decades.
The US federal government just abducted a member of the Wisconsin judiciary who was duly elected by their voters under the normal process that state has used for decades. If we didn’t have this whole Constitution thing binding us together (which, like, do we still have that thing?) everyone would call that an act of war.
Yeah, I mean among other things once ICE kidnapped this guy there was no way she was going to be able to finish holding a proper trial on the charges that actually brought him there, so she just took a series of fully legal steps (i.e. she’s allowed to access that private hallway and grant other people access to it) to protect the judicial process of her trial same as any judge should want to do.
I think in light of this development it’s now perfectly reasonable for judges to just instantly order the arrest of any ICE agents that show up to their court rooms on a charge of attempted justice obstruction. Put them in a jail cell and make them defend their actions and intentions before they do that to you, nothing less is going to be sufficient for protecting the orderly process of trials from ICE’s obstruction.
Nah, this headline gets it right by ignoring Slotkin’s transparent spin
Slotkin voted for the Laken Reilly act and hasn’t ever said shit about the CIA being held accountable for torturing people, so she doesn’t want to “fucking retake the flag” in any way that isn’t just a new reign of terror for brown people
The negging about the word “oligarchy” (which she was happy to use against wealthy Russian assholes who support Putin up until very recently) is continuing a very long tradition of her being against whatever AOC is doing at the moment. She can’t come right out and say “I don’t like her policies” because those are popular and that would be political suicide, so she’s just focusing on AOC’s rhetoric and playing to Republican talking points about progressives being the out of touch ones.
Slotkin is a toxic divisive piece of shit who’s bad on policy, bad on politics, and drags the whole Democratic party’s image down whenever she wants to advance her own career.
Cash donor checks and subjugate all poor people equally regardless of their race religion gender sexuality or ability status
Yeah, my only takeaway from this is that we really should bring back dueling so Musk and Bezos could settle their dispute in a way that might actually make the world a slightly better place
If someone from the Trump administration says the sky is blue you should look outside to confirm
This is a pretty striking statement.
For starters the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency within the US Department of Transportation Duffy leads, has previously said it will take no part in determining whether people who fly on suborbital flights are astronauts. The agency makes this clear on its human spaceflight page, stating: “The FAA no longer designates anyone as an ‘astronaut.’ In addition, the FAA does not define where space begins.”
To step back just a little bit, the FAA created a commercial “Astronaut Wings” program back in 2004 to recognize the two pilots of SpaceShipOne, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie, who flew the vehicle above 50 statute miles (80 km). After that time, the program recognized private citizens who flew on Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft, Blue Origin’s New Shepard, and SpaceX’s orbital Crew Dragon vehicle. You flew, and you got astronaut wings.
Then, in December 2021, the agency stopped issuing wings. “With the advent of the commercial space tourism era, starting in 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration will now recognize individuals who reach space on its website instead of issuing Commercial Space Astronaut Wings,” the agency said. “Any individual who is on an FAA-licensed or permitted launch and reaches 50 statute miles above the surface of the Earth will be listed on the site.”
Sanchez, Perry, and the others are recognized on this site today.
As California Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled out a lawsuit Wednesday challenging Trump’s sweeping tariffs, he had little to say about the Abrego Garcia case when asked about it.
“This is the distraction of the day. The art of distraction,” Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, said of Trump invoking MS-13 to justify his actions. “And here, we zig and zag. This is the debate they want. This is their 80-20 issue, as they’ve described it.”
While noting that the government needs to abide by court orders and the rule of law, Newsom added, “It’s exactly the debate they want, because they don’t want this debate on the tariffs; they don’t want to be accountable to markets today.”
(archived)
Aww, poor baby justices had to stay up late working? Well, maybe if you didn’t issue a stupid as hell ruling that tried to have it both ways a week ago and then kicked everything into the 5th circuit you wouldn’t be working at midnight on a Saturday, but here we all are.
It’s one rock breaking loose when we need a landslide, but that’s how landslides always start
The courts at the time said he was formerly in a gang
I don’t think even that’s right, I think ICE claimed he was a member of MS-13 (based off of one bullshit statement from a cop whose not allowed to testify anymore for the state prosecutors because he got caught lying about so much other stuff (arc)), but I don’t think the immigration court ever really addressed that and just left it at “If you wanted asylum you should have asked within one year after getting into the country but you’ve been here 7 years, and that’s reason enough to rule against you”
Besides that, Garcia never said he was a member of a gang. He said his family was threatened by a completely different gang and that they were going to hurt him if he didn’t join them, but he left instead of joining them (arc).
Like, his only real connection to a gang is being a victim of it, but the Laken Riley Act supporting assholes of our world will never give a shit about brown people being victimized by criminal gangs because they’re racist hypocritical douchebags (and maybe they understand on some level they’ve got the same kind of symbiotic relationship with MS-13 that George W had with Al Quaeda and Netanyahu has with Hamas).
Snopes says her methods are legit
Rubin says she is certified on a device known as a handheld XRF, or X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Such a machine is used extensively in a variety of scientific disciplines and can provide a basic assessment of the chemical composition of an object by exciting the object’s molecules with X-rays and seeing what secondary X-rays are emitted, according to Thermo Fisher:
XRF analyzers determine the chemistry of a sample by measuring the fluorescent (or secondary) X-ray emitted from a sample when it is excited by a primary X-ray source. Each of the elements present in a sample produces a set of characteristic fluorescent X-rays (“a fingerprint”) that is unique for that specific element, which is why XRF spectroscopy is an excellent technology for qualitative and quantitative analysis of material composition.
Experts agree that this method is a valid first approach for the detection of lead in a sample. A 2013 study performed by researchers at the California Department of Public Health Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch suggests that XRF “is an effective screening method for food and similar items with lead content > or = 10 ppm [parts per million], provided the operator is trained to identify lead spectra.”
We reached out to an expert via email: Howard Mielke, a professor of Pharmacology at Tulane’s School of Medicine, who heads a research unit into lead contamination and once served alongside Rubin as a board member for Lead Safe America. We asked him if XRF was a valid method for Rubin’s purposes, and he told us that it was, but only as a first step. The second and more expensive step involves seeing how much if any of that lead is capable of being transferred to a child: “The use of the XRF is suitable as a first step in determining lead in an object. The second step involves evaluating whether or not the lead is readily picked up on hands or ingestible through the use of the object. The second step is the expensive step but it provides information critical to understanding the possibility of lead poisoning from the object.”
Note that the story here says the toothpastes have lead in them, not that they’re necessarily causing lead poisoning, so it seems entirely accurate.
Shame on the Guardian
They’re not the only ones reporting this,
https://fortune.com/well/article/toothpaste-brands-toxic-metals-lead-arsenic-mercury-cadmium/
Van Hollen shouldn’t have publicized those pictures at all, everything from the setting to the clothes they gave Garcia was a misrepresentation of what he’s going through
If they spend weeks convincing you that you should do it, give you money or other resources to do it, or so on, then it can be entrapment.
Things like that should theoretically help you make an argument for entrapment, but it’s no sure thing
I don’t understand your aggressive tone
I can understand people being furious about seeing the progress fascism is making in our country. I think the aggression is a bit misdirected in this particular case, but I get it.
You’re calling the kettle black in the middle of the cookware aisle here, we’re all “keyboard warriors,” you just don’t like this one’s opinion
If he’d tried to forcibly secure Garcia’s release that would very likely set off an insane chain of consequences we haven’t made adequate preparations for. Like, if nothing else, Van Hollen would be a fugitive from the American government at that point because there’s no way any American court would let a Senator start doing commander in chief stuff like that.
Want to see a politician that really goes the extra fucking mile and stays the fuck there until they leave with him
I tend to agree, but we need all the votes in the US Senate we can get right now, so I think Van Hollen’s a bad person to do this. A quick online search tells me there’s a decent margin in the Maryland state Senate though, so one of those lawmakers could camp down there and keep pushing this.
Every single photo and video from CECOT is staged
So if Van Hollen couldn’t have taken any photos or videos without the prison guards’ interference that’s all the more reason not to make and share sanctioned propaganda for them like these photos were.
Doubters would be asking for real proof
Again, for reasons already discussed these pictures are not proof of anything and if anything only serve to make Van Hollen’s statements seem less credible and make any doubters seem more reasonable. I think I still believe him, but the gullibility displayed here by sharing this misinformation is incredible.
If he was talking to a stuffed corpse, once he leaves El Salvador, there’s nothing stopping Sen. Van Hollen to say so
I guess I’m less cynical than you are, I’m willing to assume Van Hollen’s statements from El Salvador weren’t pure bullshit and provide proof that these photos don’t, but if people are arguing that his statement was coerced somehow then we really didn’t get anything at all from this trip other than a propaganda win for the fascists who are going to use these pictures to argue that CECOT isn’t that bad.
I don’t know what you would want from the Senator
I want him to not be duped into sharing fascists’ propaganda. Going to El Salvador and meeting with Garcia and sharing a statement about that meeting and what he observed during it was good (actually, in spite of the harm he did by sharing those misleading photos I’m still grateful to the Senator just for giving Garcia a friendly face to talk to), but sharing staged photographs and not realizing that those pictures are going to be used by fascists to dispute his statements and drown out all the long boring detailed reports from human rights NGOs about conditions at this prison that the average American never reads was bad.
I think his heart was in the right place here, he just did a boneheaded thing accidentally at a time when we really need everyone to be on their A game.
e; One other thing I want from the next person who’s able to secure a visit with Garcia - bring his lawyer and spouse with you so they can meet with him as well
Off the top of my head - she said she’s more than “just an AOC,” said Rashida Tlaib was supporting terrorism when Tlaib asked the Biden administration to stop funding Israel, said multiple times in interviews that the Green New Deal could never pass because it had controversial ideas like universal healthcare, said multiple times in interviews in 2020 during the height of the George Floyd protests that she would never ever support defunding the police, and on and on. She constantly signal boosts Republican talking points about progressive lawmakers and progressive policy ideas to tear them down and only then turns around and says “Hey Michigan, if you don’t want to deal with a Republican party that went completely insane around 2020* I guess you’re stuck with me!”
*I forget the exact details, but MAGAts purged their party’s leadership for some “say the quiet parts through megaphones” types and then there was some sort of scandal with their finances, so MIGOP has been a barely functional shell of itself for a few years now