"The fact that they're holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime..."

"... is such clear evidence that they're weaponizing the immigration system in a matter that is completely unconstitutional, and specifically weaponizing the decision of which country they send him to."

Said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, quoted in "Kilmar Abrego Garcia taken into ICE custody at immigration appointment/Abrego, who was just released from federal custody on Friday, now faces deportation to Uganda" (NBC News).

"It was weird enough that six or seven White, trans people moved into the neighborhood. And now the FBI is raiding their house."

Said a resident of the "predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood here known as The Bottoms."

Quoted in "Suspects in Texas ICE shooting tied to trans, anti-fascist activism/Benjamin Song, an alleged ringleader, is a former Marine Corps reservist who trained left-wing activists for close-quarters combat and large-scale gunfights, associates said" in The Washington Post. 

It's quite long, so I'm giving you a free-access link. I'll quote a few highlights:

The raid... was part of an investigation into a July 4 attack outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, an hour’s drive south.... The Alvarado attack is one of the most violent incidents in a wave of assaults and threats against federal immigration officers.... The Department of Homeland Security recorded 79 assaults on ICE officers between Jan. 21 and June 30....

The topic is the rise of left-wing violence in the Trump era, but WaPo interrupts itself to remind readers that there's even more right-wing violence and it's worse.

"President Trump said on Thursday that he had ordered the Commerce Department to begin work on a new census that excludes undocumented immigrants."

"A new census would be a significant departure for a process stipulated by the Constitution to occur every 10 years. Historically, the census has counted all U.S. residents regardless of their immigration status, a process that helps determine both the allotment of congressional seats and billions of dollars in federal money sent to states. 'People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS,' Mr. Trump wrote in a post on social media.... Mr. Trump tried a similar move in 2020 to keep undocumented immigrants out of the census, but a federal court rejected that attempt, and the Supreme Court declined to intervene...."

The NYT reports.

"Wait, so we ARE relevant?"

Wait, so we ARE relevant?#eatabagofdicks https://t.co/HeQSMU86Da

— South Park (@SouthPark) August 5, 2025

Background: Trump recently posted "This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention." See "'South Park' mocks Trump naked with Satan, White House labels episode 'desperate'" (LiveNowFox).

"On immigration, you better get your act together or you’re not going to have Europe anymore. You got to get your act together."

"You know, last month, we had nobody entering our country. Nobody. Shut it down.... We took out a lot of bad people that got there with Biden. Biden was a total stiff. And what he allowed to happen, but you’re allowing it to happen to your countries. And you got to stop this horrible invasion that’s happening to Europe. Many countries in Europe. Some people, some leaders have not let it happen. And they’re not getting the proper credit they should. I could name them to you right now, but I’m not going to embarrass the other ones. But stop. This immigration is killing Europe." And also: "Stop the windmills. You’re ruining your countries. I really mean it. It’s so sad. You fly over and you see these windmills all over the place, ruining your beautiful fields and valleys and killing your birds. And if they’re stuck in the ocean, ruining your oceans. Stop the windmills."

Said Trump, quoted in "Trump arrives in Scotland to claim immigration is ‘killing Europe’/The US president said there had been ‘a horrible invasion’ of migrants after he landed in Scotland for a four-day visit on Friday evening" (London Times).

"L.A. is ours, this is our city. This is what my morning walk turned into. They’re terrorizing our neighborhood."

Said Mikema Nahmir, who "said he was out for his morning walk at 11 a.m. when he saw two women running down the street yelling that 'la migra' was at MacArthur Park" and who "joined the group of protesters who chased and yelled after the military-style trucks."

Nahmir is quoted in "Heavily armed immigration agents descend on L.A.’s MacArthur Park" (L.A. Times)("Immigration agents in military green surrounded MacArthur Park as the convoy readied for a show of force akin to a Hollywood movie. They came with horses and armored vehicles, carrying rifles and in tactical gear in the middle of what is the heart of immigrant Los Angeles").

The phrase "carrying rifles and in tactical gear..." should be relocated next to the word "They" so that grammar mavens do not get distracted into efforts to craft a Grouchoesque how-he-got-in-my-pajamas joke out of the image of horses (and armored vehicles) carrying rifles and tactical gear. This is not an occasion for cheap linguistic jokes. There was a military show of power in MacArthur Park... like a striped pair of pants.

"The Democrats onstage saw themselves as morally courageous. American voters, it turned out, saw a group of politicians hopelessly out of touch."

"Standing side by side at a primary debate in June 2019, nine of the party’s candidates for president were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Only one of them held still. Six years later, the party remains haunted by that tableau. It stands both as a vivid demonstration of a leftward policy shift on immigration that many prominent Democratic lawmakers and strategists now say they deeply regret, and as a marker of how sharply the country was moving in the other direction."

I'm reading "Can Democrats Find Their Way on Immigration? The party’s leftward shift in the Biden administration arguably laid the groundwork for President Trump’s aggressive approach. Deciding the next move won’t be easy" (NYT)(free-access link).

"The next move" = it's a game. You can't win the confidence of the people if they can see it's a game. 

What can you do to demonstrate/fake sincerity? The old plan was to denounce Trump as a racist, and there are still prominent Democrats like Ayanna Pressley, who's quoted saying: "Democrats have to stop talking about the issue of immigration within a Republican frame. This has nothing to do with law and order. This is about power, control, terror, and it is about racism and xenophobia. Donald Trump wants to make America Jim Crow again, and then some."

"It remains unclear whether South Sudan’s government in Juba has detained the men, or what their ultimate fate might be."

"The 13-year-old country is on the brink of a civil war; the State Department has warned against travel there because of the risk of 'crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.' In court on Friday, a Justice Department lawyer read from a diplomatic note that said South Sudan would give the men immigration status to allow them to remain there at least temporarily.... Before coming to the United States, the men came from Vietnam, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan, a violence-plagued country. All had been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, though many had either finished or were about to finish serving their sentences.... The migrants’ lawyers have contended that if they are sent to South Sudan, they will probably be subjected to torture. The U.S. government has said in its own filings that the South Sudanese government has given diplomatic assurances that this will not happen.... The eight migrants now heading to South Sudan are part of a class-action lawsuit... about the legality of deporting migrants to so-called third countries.... The lawsuit is still continuing...."

From "U.S. Turns Eight Migrants Over to South Sudan, Ending Weeks of Legal Limbo/Courts blocked the handover after lawyers raised concerns of torture. Then the Supreme Court intervened to allow the Trump administration’s plan to move forward" (NYT).

"I don't give a shit whether the upper middle class and Beverly Hills in Bel Air have got to pay actual American citizens to do their lawn or, you know, clean their gutters."

"And people say, oh, we'll never get American citizens to do it. Well, hey, if you have to pay a decent wage in a competitive market because you don't have millions of illegal aliens that are prepared to work for slave... look, we can't have a country that's based upon servitude. That's what this is."

Said Steve Bannon, quoted in "Steve Bannon’s Battle for the Soul of MAGA," today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily" (audio and transcript at Podscribe).

"The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their own, pausing a federal judge’s ruling..."

"... that they must first be given a chance to show that they would face the risk of torture and letting the administration send men held at an American military base in Djibouti on to South Sudan. The court’s brief order gave no reasons and said the judge’s ruling would remain paused while the government pursues an appeal and, after that, until the Supreme Court acts. The court’s three liberal members issued a lengthy dissent."

The NYT reports.

"Kilmar Abrego Garcia will likely be placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody due to an immigration detainer the government has on him, despite a Tennessee judge on Sunday ordering his release in his criminal case..."

"While U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes' on Sunday denied the government's motion to detain Abrego Garcia, she acknowledged that if released, 'there is no suggestion that the action taken by the government will be anything other than detaining him in ICE custody pending further removal proceedings.' In her 51-page order, Judge Holmes said the government failed to prove there is a 'serious risk' that Abrego Garcia will flee or that he will obstruct justice in the case. Holmes also said the government's evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 'consists of general statements, all double hearsay' from cooperating witnesses. Holmes said Abrego Garcia 'has no criminal history' of any kind and said that his 'reputed gang membership' is contradicted by the government's own evidence that was presented during a hearing two weeks ago.... 'Even without discounting the weight of the testimony of the first and second male cooperators for the multiple layers of hearsay, their testimony and statements defy common sense,' Holmes said...."

ABC News reports.

The ABC headline seems designed to cause a hasty reader to think ICE would be violating the judge's order: "ICE will likely detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia despite judge's motion to have him released."

The judge didn't make a motion. The judge denied the government's motion but, as you see above, said "there is no suggestion that the action taken by the government will be anything other than detaining him in ICE custody pending further removal proceedings."

And weren't there also earlier versions of this story that made people think the judge was requiring the government to set Abrego Garcia free? Yes, here.

How is Gavin Newsom in debates?

I wondered, reading this quote from Newsom: "Since you’re so eager to talk about me, how about saying it to my face. Let’s debate. Time and place?"

He wrote that on X, and I'm reading it this morning in "Vance Blames L.A. Violence on California Democrats and Disparages Padilla/Vice President JD Vance said during a Los Angeles stop that Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass had encouraged protesters to engage in violence. He also criticized Senator Alex Padilla and called him by the wrong name" (NYT).

Maybe Vance should take Newsom up on that offer. It would focus attention on the administration's arguments. It's not as if the Vice President would have to go on to other debates with other other opponents on all sorts of issues. This is the Governor of California, and immigration enforcement and opposition to it are centered in California. This could be a unique debate.

How would the debate go? I asked Grok to compare the debating skill of the 2 men and to predict the outcome: here. (NOTE: bad link is fixed).

Please think it through before taking my poll:

Should Vance take up Newsom's challenge and debate?

Yes

No

 

pollcode.com free polls

"I know of one landscaper that lost the whole crew he had, and he is just totally out of business, all of a sudden."

That quote is featured at the beginning of yesterday's NYT "Daily" podcast, An Interview With Trump’s Border Czar, Tom Homan."

The quote is presented in a context that feels intended to generate empathy for those who've been affected by the "increasingly aggressive raids." But that "landscaper" — that is, person in the landscaping business — was, apparently, competing unfairly with anyone in that business who is dutifully following federal law and not hiring those in the country illegally.

We have to get a long way into that interview with Tom Homan before we hear the perspective of the ethical businessperson, but it is in there:

"The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants..."

"... according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.... The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses.... On Thursday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that the crackdown might be alienating industries he wanted to keep on his side. 'Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,' he said on social media.... Mr. Trump has for decades owned luxury hotels, an industry with a strong immigrant labor force.... The guidance did not appear to rule out raids at work sites in other industries, like the one at a garment factory in Los Angeles that sparked the protests...."

From "Trump Shifts Deportation Focus, Pausing Raids on Farms, Hotels and Eateries/The abrupt pivot on an issue at the heart of Mr. Trump’s presidency suggested his broad immigration crackdown was hurting industries and constituencies he does not want to lose" (NYT).

"These are horrific crimes"/"They're horrific crimes that are committed on your watch."

Elise Stefanik versus Kathy Hochul:

Transcript: "Stefanik Exposes Kathy Hochul on Sanctuary State Policies, Kathy Hochul Heartlessly Does Not Even Know Illegals Who Burned Alive, Raped, Molested New Yorkers."

Why did Hochul not take the precaution of committing these names and stories to memory? She knew the subject matter of the hearing. She chose to look out of touch. Perhaps it was a rational choice. If she'd said she knew, she'd have been forced to recite the details and pressed about any detail she omitted. 

"My party loses the moral high ground...."

I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that.

This is anarchy and true chaos.

My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/pPYbvP6xR0

— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) June 10, 2025

What did John Fetterman say about the riots in the summer of 2020?

"Shortly after President Trump praised the National Guard for their work in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass reminded residents that the troops had not arrived."

"'Just to be clear, the National Guard has not been deployed in the City of Los Angeles,' she said on social media."

Written in the NYT, 3 hours ago.

More detail, again from the NYT, published 3 hours ago:

National Guard troops will arrive in Los Angeles County within the next 24 hours, the Trump administration’s top law enforcement official in Southern California said, to quell protests over immigration enforcement that are “out of control.”

Bilal A. “Bill” Essayli, the interim U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in an interview on Saturday night that the 2,000 troops were needed to keep the peace in the sprawling region.... "They threw rocks at the officers,” Mr. Essayli said. “We had Molotov cocktails thrown. We had all kinds of assaults on agents. The state has an obligation to maintain order and maintain public safety, and they’re unable to do that right now in Los Angeles. So the federal government will send in resources to regain order.”...

Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the president’s order, calling it “purposefully inflammatory.” Mr. Trump had federalized the National Guard “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle,” Mr. Newsom said.

“The governor doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said Mr. Essayli, a former Republican state legislator who before his federal appointment in April was a frequent critic of Mr. Newsom, a Democrat.

"The Colorado Terrorist attack suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country."

Said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, quoted in The NYT reports.

She added that he had filed for asylum in September 2022, but gave no additional details....

Witnesses said a man threw an incendiary device into a group of people who were taking part in a peaceful weekly demonstration to draw attention to hostages taken in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The man yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack, which left patches of grass burning in front of the county courthouse as people tried to put out flames with pieces of clothing....

Trump used the moment to once again criticize his predecessor’s immigration agenda. He has a long history of using crimes like this to build support for his restrictionist immigration policies....

Using crimes.... 

A terrorist also uses crime to build support for policies he favors.

"Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration, for Now, to End Biden-Era Migrant Program."

The NYT reports.

Subheadline: "The Trump administration had asked the court to allow it to end deportation protections for more than 500,000 people facing dire humanitarian crises in their home countries."

The court’s order was unsigned and provided no reasoning, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, saying the majority had not given enough consideration to “the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”... 

In an emergency application to the Supreme Court on May 8, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that... the lower court had “needlessly” upended “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry” and had undone “democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election,” Mr. Sauer argued.

ADDED: "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented..." Not only didn't the Chief Justice join the dissenters, Justice Kagan went with the majority. The middle has spoken. I'm picturing many Trump victories to come in these "injunctivitis" cases.

AND: Here's Jackson's opinion. Excerpt:

First, he just exclaims "HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!" but then he thinks again, and by "thinks again," I don't mean he questioned whether "HAPPY" is the right word.

I mean he decided it would be better to say "HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM....":

I especially like the all caps and the "21,000,000 MILLION." That's 21 trillion.