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Book Review: George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl
Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Friday, and it’s time for another review. Today, I’m sharing my review of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s novel, George’s Marvellous Medicine.
Click the image to find the bookGeorge’s Marvellous Medicine was published in 1981 by Puffin Books and is 96 pages long.
The Plot
George, tired of his grandma’s constant nagging, grumpy mood and mean-spirited comments, decides to make his own medicine to replace the one she takes regularly. His concoction, made from an outrageous blend of household items that range from shampoo to animal pills, sets off a series of fantastical events, transforming Grandma in unexpected and hilarious ways.Characters
George Kranky
George is a resourceful and inventive child who invents a special mixture, or medicine, hoping to teach his mean and grumpy grandma a lesson. Despite his mischievous nature, George has a good heart and only wants to help his family. His determination and quick thinking make him a lovable protagonist that readers will root for throughout the book.Grandma
Grandma is a cantankerous old lady and serves as the book’s antagonist. She has a foul temper and is incredibly demanding, making life difficult for poor George. She is stubborn and ungrateful, constantly belittling him and calling him a liar. However, although her character has no redeeming qualities, she does add humour to the story with her exaggerated behaviour and outrageous reactions to George’s antics.Mr Kranky and Mrs Kranky
Mrs Kranky, at first deeply cares for Grandma, not wanting her to come to harm, but when Grandma finally shrinks away, she feels relieved and that a burden has been lifted from her.Mr Kranky sees a business opportunity in George’s medicine when he witnesses its effects on the farm animals and attempts to recreate it, hoping to sell it to other farmers, while showing no regard for the consequences.
Writing Style
Dahl’s writing style is characteristically playful, vividly descriptive, and effortlessly humorous. His prose is rhythmic, making it especially enjoyable to read aloud. His knack for capturing the imagination of young readers while entertaining adults with subtle satire remains unmatched.His characters, particularly George and Grandma, are painted in bold strokes with clear personalities, allowing readers to easily cheer for the underdog and recoil from the villain.
Illustrations
Quentin Blake’s iconic illustrations are an inseparable part of Dahl’s storytelling. Each illustration complements the text, bringing the characters and their exaggerated mannerisms to life. Blake’s unique, sketch-like style captures the whimsy and chaos of the story perfectly.Final Thoughts
Overall, George’s Marvellous Medicine stands out as a wonderfully entertaining read for children and adults alike, brilliantly showcasing Roald Dahl’s mastery in creating stories that are both captivatingly funny and gently provocative.Whether you’re rereading this classic as an adult or reading it for the first time, it’s impossible not to be captivated by George’s Marvellous Medicine. It’s not just a book—it’s a bottle of laughter, a pinch of chaos, and a spoonful of childhood nostalgia.
Thank you, as ever, for reading my review!
Until next time,
George
© 2026 GLT
#Blake #bookReview #GeorgeSMarvellousMedicine #magic #review #RoaldDahl -
Book Review: George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl
Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Friday, and it’s time for another review. Today, I’m sharing my review of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s novel, George’s Marvellous Medicine.
Click the image to find the bookGeorge’s Marvellous Medicine was published in 1981 by Puffin Books and is 96 pages long.
The Plot
George, tired of his grandma’s constant nagging, grumpy mood and mean-spirited comments, decides to make his own medicine to replace the one she takes regularly. His concoction, made from an outrageous blend of household items that range from shampoo to animal pills, sets off a series of fantastical events, transforming Grandma in unexpected and hilarious ways.Characters
George Kranky
George is a resourceful and inventive child who invents a special mixture, or medicine, hoping to teach his mean and grumpy grandma a lesson. Despite his mischievous nature, George has a good heart and only wants to help his family. His determination and quick thinking make him a lovable protagonist that readers will root for throughout the book.Grandma
Grandma is a cantankerous old lady and serves as the book’s antagonist. She has a foul temper and is incredibly demanding, making life difficult for poor George. She is stubborn and ungrateful, constantly belittling him and calling him a liar. However, although her character has no redeeming qualities, she does add humour to the story with her exaggerated behaviour and outrageous reactions to George’s antics.Mr Kranky and Mrs Kranky
Mrs Kranky, at first deeply cares for Grandma, not wanting her to come to harm, but when Grandma finally shrinks away, she feels relieved and that a burden has been lifted from her.Mr Kranky sees a business opportunity in George’s medicine when he witnesses its effects on the farm animals and attempts to recreate it, hoping to sell it to other farmers, while showing no regard for the consequences.
Writing Style
Dahl’s writing style is characteristically playful, vividly descriptive, and effortlessly humorous. His prose is rhythmic, making it especially enjoyable to read aloud. His knack for capturing the imagination of young readers while entertaining adults with subtle satire remains unmatched.His characters, particularly George and Grandma, are painted in bold strokes with clear personalities, allowing readers to easily cheer for the underdog and recoil from the villain.
Illustrations
Quentin Blake’s iconic illustrations are an inseparable part of Dahl’s storytelling. Each illustration complements the text, bringing the characters and their exaggerated mannerisms to life. Blake’s unique, sketch-like style captures the whimsy and chaos of the story perfectly.Final Thoughts
Overall, George’s Marvellous Medicine stands out as a wonderfully entertaining read for children and adults alike, brilliantly showcasing Roald Dahl’s mastery in creating stories that are both captivatingly funny and gently provocative.Whether you’re rereading this classic as an adult or reading it for the first time, it’s impossible not to be captivated by George’s Marvellous Medicine. It’s not just a book—it’s a bottle of laughter, a pinch of chaos, and a spoonful of childhood nostalgia.
Thank you, as ever, for reading my review!
Until next time,
George
© 2026 GLT
#Blake #bookReview #GeorgeSMarvellousMedicine #magic #review #RoaldDahl -
Book Review: George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl
Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Friday, and it’s time for another review. Today, I’m sharing my review of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s novel, George’s Marvellous Medicine.
Click the image to find the bookGeorge’s Marvellous Medicine was published in 1981 by Puffin Books and is 96 pages long.
The Plot
George, tired of his grandma’s constant nagging, grumpy mood and mean-spirited comments, decides to make his own medicine to replace the one she takes regularly. His concoction, made from an outrageous blend of household items that range from shampoo to animal pills, sets off a series of fantastical events, transforming Grandma in unexpected and hilarious ways.Characters
George Kranky
George is a resourceful and inventive child who invents a special mixture, or medicine, hoping to teach his mean and grumpy grandma a lesson. Despite his mischievous nature, George has a good heart and only wants to help his family. His determination and quick thinking make him a lovable protagonist that readers will root for throughout the book.Grandma
Grandma is a cantankerous old lady and serves as the book’s antagonist. She has a foul temper and is incredibly demanding, making life difficult for poor George. She is stubborn and ungrateful, constantly belittling him and calling him a liar. However, although her character has no redeeming qualities, she does add humour to the story with her exaggerated behaviour and outrageous reactions to George’s antics.Mr Kranky and Mrs Kranky
Mrs Kranky, at first deeply cares for Grandma, not wanting her to come to harm, but when Grandma finally shrinks away, she feels relieved and that a burden has been lifted from her.Mr Kranky sees a business opportunity in George’s medicine when he witnesses its effects on the farm animals and attempts to recreate it, hoping to sell it to other farmers, while showing no regard for the consequences.
Writing Style
Dahl’s writing style is characteristically playful, vividly descriptive, and effortlessly humorous. His prose is rhythmic, making it especially enjoyable to read aloud. His knack for capturing the imagination of young readers while entertaining adults with subtle satire remains unmatched.His characters, particularly George and Grandma, are painted in bold strokes with clear personalities, allowing readers to easily cheer for the underdog and recoil from the villain.
Illustrations
Quentin Blake’s iconic illustrations are an inseparable part of Dahl’s storytelling. Each illustration complements the text, bringing the characters and their exaggerated mannerisms to life. Blake’s unique, sketch-like style captures the whimsy and chaos of the story perfectly.Final Thoughts
Overall, George’s Marvellous Medicine stands out as a wonderfully entertaining read for children and adults alike, brilliantly showcasing Roald Dahl’s mastery in creating stories that are both captivatingly funny and gently provocative.Whether you’re rereading this classic as an adult or reading it for the first time, it’s impossible not to be captivated by George’s Marvellous Medicine. It’s not just a book—it’s a bottle of laughter, a pinch of chaos, and a spoonful of childhood nostalgia.
Thank you, as ever, for reading my review!
Until next time,
George
© 2026 GLT
#Blake #bookReview #GeorgeSMarvellousMedicine #magic #review #RoaldDahl -
Book Review: George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl
Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Friday, and it’s time for another review. Today, I’m sharing my review of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s novel, George’s Marvellous Medicine.
Click the image to find the bookGeorge’s Marvellous Medicine was published in 1981 by Puffin Books and is 96 pages long.
The Plot
George, tired of his grandma’s constant nagging, grumpy mood and mean-spirited comments, decides to make his own medicine to replace the one she takes regularly. His concoction, made from an outrageous blend of household items that range from shampoo to animal pills, sets off a series of fantastical events, transforming Grandma in unexpected and hilarious ways.Characters
George Kranky
George is a resourceful and inventive child who invents a special mixture, or medicine, hoping to teach his mean and grumpy grandma a lesson. Despite his mischievous nature, George has a good heart and only wants to help his family. His determination and quick thinking make him a lovable protagonist that readers will root for throughout the book.Grandma
Grandma is a cantankerous old lady and serves as the book’s antagonist. She has a foul temper and is incredibly demanding, making life difficult for poor George. She is stubborn and ungrateful, constantly belittling him and calling him a liar. However, although her character has no redeeming qualities, she does add humour to the story with her exaggerated behaviour and outrageous reactions to George’s antics.Mr Kranky and Mrs Kranky
Mrs Kranky, at first deeply cares for Grandma, not wanting her to come to harm, but when Grandma finally shrinks away, she feels relieved and that a burden has been lifted from her.Mr Kranky sees a business opportunity in George’s medicine when he witnesses its effects on the farm animals and attempts to recreate it, hoping to sell it to other farmers, while showing no regard for the consequences.
Writing Style
Dahl’s writing style is characteristically playful, vividly descriptive, and effortlessly humorous. His prose is rhythmic, making it especially enjoyable to read aloud. His knack for capturing the imagination of young readers while entertaining adults with subtle satire remains unmatched.His characters, particularly George and Grandma, are painted in bold strokes with clear personalities, allowing readers to easily cheer for the underdog and recoil from the villain.
Illustrations
Quentin Blake’s iconic illustrations are an inseparable part of Dahl’s storytelling. Each illustration complements the text, bringing the characters and their exaggerated mannerisms to life. Blake’s unique, sketch-like style captures the whimsy and chaos of the story perfectly.Final Thoughts
Overall, George’s Marvellous Medicine stands out as a wonderfully entertaining read for children and adults alike, brilliantly showcasing Roald Dahl’s mastery in creating stories that are both captivatingly funny and gently provocative.Whether you’re rereading this classic as an adult or reading it for the first time, it’s impossible not to be captivated by George’s Marvellous Medicine. It’s not just a book—it’s a bottle of laughter, a pinch of chaos, and a spoonful of childhood nostalgia.
Thank you, as ever, for reading my review!
Until next time,
George
© 2026 GLT
#Blake #bookReview #GeorgeSMarvellousMedicine #magic #review #RoaldDahl -
Book Review: George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl
Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Friday, and it’s time for another review. Today, I’m sharing my review of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s novel, George’s Marvellous Medicine.
Click the image to find the bookGeorge’s Marvellous Medicine was published in 1981 by Puffin Books and is 96 pages long.
The Plot
George, tired of his grandma’s constant nagging, grumpy mood and mean-spirited comments, decides to make his own medicine to replace the one she takes regularly. His concoction, made from an outrageous blend of household items that range from shampoo to animal pills, sets off a series of fantastical events, transforming Grandma in unexpected and hilarious ways.Characters
George Kranky
George is a resourceful and inventive child who invents a special mixture, or medicine, hoping to teach his mean and grumpy grandma a lesson. Despite his mischievous nature, George has a good heart and only wants to help his family. His determination and quick thinking make him a lovable protagonist that readers will root for throughout the book.Grandma
Grandma is a cantankerous old lady and serves as the book’s antagonist. She has a foul temper and is incredibly demanding, making life difficult for poor George. She is stubborn and ungrateful, constantly belittling him and calling him a liar. However, although her character has no redeeming qualities, she does add humour to the story with her exaggerated behaviour and outrageous reactions to George’s antics.Mr Kranky and Mrs Kranky
Mrs Kranky, at first deeply cares for Grandma, not wanting her to come to harm, but when Grandma finally shrinks away, she feels relieved and that a burden has been lifted from her.Mr Kranky sees a business opportunity in George’s medicine when he witnesses its effects on the farm animals and attempts to recreate it, hoping to sell it to other farmers, while showing no regard for the consequences.
Writing Style
Dahl’s writing style is characteristically playful, vividly descriptive, and effortlessly humorous. His prose is rhythmic, making it especially enjoyable to read aloud. His knack for capturing the imagination of young readers while entertaining adults with subtle satire remains unmatched.His characters, particularly George and Grandma, are painted in bold strokes with clear personalities, allowing readers to easily cheer for the underdog and recoil from the villain.
Illustrations
Quentin Blake’s iconic illustrations are an inseparable part of Dahl’s storytelling. Each illustration complements the text, bringing the characters and their exaggerated mannerisms to life. Blake’s unique, sketch-like style captures the whimsy and chaos of the story perfectly.Final Thoughts
Overall, George’s Marvellous Medicine stands out as a wonderfully entertaining read for children and adults alike, brilliantly showcasing Roald Dahl’s mastery in creating stories that are both captivatingly funny and gently provocative.Whether you’re rereading this classic as an adult or reading it for the first time, it’s impossible not to be captivated by George’s Marvellous Medicine. It’s not just a book—it’s a bottle of laughter, a pinch of chaos, and a spoonful of childhood nostalgia.
Thank you, as ever, for reading my review!
Until next time,
George
© 2026 GLT
#Blake #bookReview #GeorgeSMarvellousMedicine #magic #review #RoaldDahl -
The Graying of Dave the Red: Taking Megadeth’s Last Stand to the Rodeö By Steel DruhmMegadeth is the obstinate offspring of a legendarily difficult and divisive individual who rarely worked well with others or even himself. You can expend buckets of printer ink applauding Dave Mustaine’s skills as a musician and songwriter and pour out just as much on his shortcomings, mistakes, and disappointments. One thing is indisputable: the man left a sizeable impact on metal over multiple decades while helping to define a whole new genre.
But we didn’t come here to praise Dave or Megadeth, we came to bury them (the latter anyway). Megadeth is allegedly the last album we’ll get from Dave’s passion project, and after 16 full-lengths and a career of loud public living rife with infamously endless beefs, this finale will be both mourned and welcomed depending on where you sit on the spectrum of Megaopinions. Personally, I loved all the early days material, but I’ve run warm and cold on much of what came after Youthanasia. Even though I haven’t spent much time with Megadeth’s post-2000 output, I admit to feeling bittersweet emotions as their career arc finally comes to a close. I’ve even found myself going back through their discography and reminding myself what I loved, what I didn’t, and discovering several of their albums are better than remembered. I suspect I won’t be alone in doing so these next few weeks either.
Though I had planned to cover Megadeth myself, it began to feel like too big a moment in metal history to hoard, so I reluctantly opened things up to a rowdy Rodeö of unwashed opinions from the filthy AMG staffers. Dave deserves his special day, and now it will be spent ringside at this cock and bully show. Brace for the full Mustaine experience: hot takes, bad taste, and tiny kernels of wisdom. Rodeös sell, but who’s buying?
–Steel Druhm
AMG Himself: It just seems so fitting that Dave Mustaine would want to get in the last word before retiring. My impression of the man has always been that of a cantankerous, moody, and ultimately difficult guy blessed with golden picking discipline and riffs coming out the wazoo. The mythology of Megadeth is, in a sense, told by the joke Steel Druhm has been making behind the scenes by referring to the band as Megadave. Yet, my jaundiced eye sees in Megadeth a story made up of the personnel Mustaine has worked with. It’s no surprise that when the band reached its initial peak of global acclaim, Dave was working with a genuine guitar virtuoso. Again, when Endgame exploded unexpectedly onto the scene—resulting in my youthful 4.5 rating—it was Chris Broderick who really made the record shine. Yes, of course, Dave has always had riffs, but Broderick executed with a flex and a grin. So, too, does Megadeth draw its real strength from Teemu Mäntysaari, whose genuine chops have carved him a niche as a professional second fiddle to crabby, unpredictable frontmen. Between Dave’s riffs and Teemu’s execution, Megadeth lands on its feet. With only one song I dislike (“I Don’t Care,” which is truly a stinker), the tone throughout Mustaine’s last dance is mid-paced, strongly melodic, surprisingly hooky, and has just enough swagger to remind you who you’re dealing with. Still, plodders like “Hey God!” and “Another Bad Day” are saved by great solos and interesting countermelodies. And when tracks do peak into thrashy Megadeth fare (“Made to Kill,” or the delightful “Let There Be Shred”), Hevisaurus’ shining light adds brilliance and creativity, raising the level across the board. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but I think, rather, that it’s just fitting.1 Dave gets one last go-round on his own terms—a thing he may well have thought would never happen—and we get to talk about the legacy of this legendary thrash pioneer. That’s a good outcome. – 3.0/5.0
Steel Druhm: Megadeth have been a semi-loyal companion since 1985. Over the decades, I loved, hated, and forgave them more than once. Now, after 41 years and 16 albums, Dave’s winding down his flying circus with the eponymously titled Megadeth. So where does the road end for the band that helped define thrash and gave metal its most mercurial leading man? Megadeth is an entertaining tour through the various eras of the band, with Dave being MegaDave. He’s older and wiser now, though, and smartly sticks to what he does well here. Opener “Tipping Point” is the best Megadeth song in years, with the band rediscovering the beefy thrash sound that’s been missing since Peace Sells. From there, Megadeth takes you through the many faces of Deth, from the annoyingly catchy cheeseball anthems like “I Don’t Care” and “Hey, God,” to the solo-heavy speed bombing of “Let There Be Shred.” There are some really good songs here, with only a few that don’t completely work. The album hits a stride late from “Made to Kill” onward. “Made” approaches vintage thrash levels, evoking a badass, nostalgic energy. “I Am the War” is blunt, burly shit, and closer “The Last Note” delivers Dave’s sneering signoff in grand form. It’s an appropriate exit for a pioneer and legend. Dave’s renewed focus on what he does best pays dividends as he crafts an album’s worth of decent to very good songs with moments that remind me, oddly enough, of classic Metallica. Speaking of which, I even like the bonus cover of “Ride the Lightning” more than expected. The fretboard pyrotechnics between Dave and Wintersun‘s Teemu Mäntysaari are hot and noodly, with scads of smoking riffs and solos in every nook and cranny. As his killing business is shuttered for good, Dave leaves behind a legitimately entertaining album, and it’s nice to see him go out on a high note. Goodbye to Vic Rattlehead and company. Thanks for the memories and the music. I can’t wait for the project with Jason Newsted called Fuck You, Lars!2 3.0/5.0
Saunders: I’m saddling up for this high-profile rodeo special as a rank Megadeth novice. Due to cutting my teeth as a metalhead on other influential old school thrash bands of the era, Megadeth’s blockbuster career largely slipped by me. I gradually developed a strong appreciation of their selected early albums, largely overlooking much of MegaDave’s tumultuous career path of the past couple of decades. Megadeth’s seventeenth and final album, a fittingly self-titled effort, finds Mustaine rallying his troops for one last go-around. Mustaine and his accomplished brigade of hired guns get back to basics, peeling off a warts-and-all, weathered, yet undeniably energetic swansong. Minus the bonus track, Megadeth clocks a refreshingly lean 41 minutes and comes packed with a decent grab bag of catchy anthems, crunchy riffs and often inspired shredding from Mustaine and co-axeman Teemu Mäntysaari. However, expectations should be tempered; this is not exactly a callback to their classic era, but rather a fun romp as feisty geezer thrash and anthemic hard rock collide. Featuring punchy, high-octane thrashers (“Tipping Point,” “Made to Kill”), big dumb fretboard frying jams (“Let there Be Shred,” “Obey the Call”), hooky mid-paced rockers (“Puppet Parade,” “I Am War”), and an unsubtle sentimental farewell (‘The Last Note”), enough fuel burns in the tank to offset the album’s weaker moments and missteps. Dave’s trademark punkish snarl sounds in good form, albeit crippled by simplistic and often hamfisted lyrics, including the worst offenders, “I Don’t Care” and “Another Bad Day.” Regardless, Megadeth could have wound up an overcooked, indulgent mess, rife with questionable ideas and ill-advised risk. Although lyrically, it’s often clunky, leave your brain at the door fare, Mustaine and co. sign off with a respectable collection of infectious, no-frills tunes, providing reasonably satisfying closure for longtime fans. 3.0/5.0.
Holdeneye: As long as I’ve liked metal, I’ve had a soft spot for Dave Mustaine and Megadeth. I mean, can you have a more comic-book-villain-origin-story beginning than this band? Yeah, Dave has routinely proven himself to be a megadick, but maybe it’s his unabashed commitment to being nothing other than himself that brings a smile to my face whenever I see him (it was fun to see him play the role of Max Mayfield in Stranger Things). Megadeth was one of my first deep discography dives when I’d officially sworn my vow of un-silence to metal, and the punky swagger into which Dave dipped his thrash has always hit the spot for me. I consider Endgame to be one of the band’s finest moments, but I’ve been rather disappointed with much of Megadeth’s most recent output. In fact, I don’t think I ever even listened to 2022’s The Sick, The Dying… and the Dead!. So imagine my surprise upon hearing the band’s self-titled swan song for the first time. As soon as the first real thrash riff hit on opener “Tipping Point,” I was sold. There’s not a bad song on Megadeth, and there are even a couple of great ones. I don’t even mind Dave’s version of “Ride the Lightning,” but I wish he’d recorded it 40 years ago—I can only imagine how the piss and vinegar would have flowed! Overall, Megadeth is a worthy sendoff for Megadeth. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to say goodbye to one of metal’s favorite heels, but here I am. Thanks, Dave, for giving us some killer records and for meting out the punishment we’ve all been due. 3.0/5.0
Dolphin Whisperer: I don’t care about Dave writing rock licks. I don’t care about a new guitarist. I don’t care about Megadeth playing old tricks. I don’t care—I just want some thrash hits! That’s been my mantra for a new Megadeth album since I can remember, as I didn’t come of age in the glory days of thrash. Post the release of Endgame, I’ve been wondering, with caution, whether each successive album would bookend in lacking the style of the Megadeth catalog. For better or worse, Megadeth gives about as fitting a farewell as Mustaine can manage at this juncture. Between flaccid-mic spats of straight-to-VHS quality camp (“I Don’t Care,” “Let There Be Shred”), Honest Dave emerges in both an aching humility (“Hey God!”) and tattered bravado (“Puppet Parade,” “The Last Note”). Over forty years, seventeen albums, and an undeniable mark on metal history, it can be hard to view Mustaine as the working-class underdog that he continues to wear across character pieces (“Puppet Parade,” “Another Bad Day”). But at least Megadeth doesn’t hammer heavy any ham-fisted conspiracies or stay in any one place too long. Yet, for every moment that Hevisaurus wunderkind Teemu Mäntysaari saves with an interjecting, slippery neoclassical lead, Mustaine sputters in—no nuance, all withered-face exasperation—about how upset he is, how much he doesn’t care, or how life has worn him down. Much of the riff-base, in similar slogging fashion, feels caught in middling churn of not-quite-thrash but heavier-than-rock pomp of Youthanasia or Cryptic Writings-era works, though an aged punkiness presents itself in refreshing ways, if not always enjoyable (“Tipping Point,” “I Don’t Care,” “Obey the Call”). In his determination to disappear from the limelight, Mustaine’s cobbled comfort sells Megadeth as Megadeth in a manner that will leave fans not upset, not enthralled, but at an expected ease with the curtain drawn to a close. 2.5/5.0.
Thyme: Megadeth has been an integral part of my metal upbringing, so to say it was easy gathering my thoughts on their eponymous last album, let alone the band itself, would be a lie. At times insufferable, yet ever unapologetic, Dave Mustaine has always seemed like the Frank Sinatra of heavy metal to me. Why? Because he has always done shit his way. And, as the man prepares to shutter a chapter of his life over four decades in the making, I’m happy to report Megadeth is going out on a high note. Megadeth has a little bit of everything: the straight-up thrashers (“Tipping Point,” “Let There Be Shred,” “Made to Kill”), the bruisers (“Obey the Call”), the melodious (“Puppet Parade”), the introspective (“Hey God!), and the reflective (“The Last Note”), which I’d be lying again if I said that last track didn’t have me a little misty-eyed. Even “Ride the Lightning,” though no “Mechanix,” works well as a bonus track. Further illustrating Dave’s knack for great guitarist collabs, Teemu Mäntysaari (Wintersun) is a breath of fresh air, masterfully shredding and noodling his way across Megadeth’s very digestible forty-seven minutes. I’m a little sad we won’t get more Teemu-deth, to be honest. Verbeuren’s skinwork shines again, while a trio of bassists (LoMenzo, DiGiorgio, and Rakestraw) capably fill the low end of this Mustaine/Rakestraw production, which sounds great, landing sonically between Countdown and Youthanasia. It’s no Peace Sells, but it doesn’t have to be. For a man who’s survived addiction, a potential career-ending injury, and cancer(!), I think Dave’s earned the right to lay down his guitar. Time, as we know, waits for no man. While it will be weird living in a world without Megadeth, I’ll cherish the music and memories. Thanks, Dave. I can’t wait to catch you on the road one… last… time… 3.0/5.0
ClarkKent: After 43 years in the biz, Megadeth is sadly calling it quits, but at least they’re going out with a bang. Megadeth is fresh, energetic, and disciplined in ways the big four haven’t sounded in some time. The thrash cuts “Tipping Point” and “Let There Be Shred” don’t sound like a decades-old band trying to stay relevant. They sound like a vigorous young band carrying a swagger and a chip on their shoulder. Megadeth provides equal measures of pure thrash and melodic heavy metal, but keeps everything to a tight 3-4 minutes (at least until the final two tracks). Dave Mustaine proves a capable storyteller, with lyrics that feel personal and autobiographical. There’s the confessional “Hey God!” turning to his relationship with religion; “Puppet Parade,” my personal favorite, looking back at his struggles with alcoholism; the tongue-in-cheek “Let There Be Shred” building up a heavy metal mythos around Dave; and finally “The Last Note” giving fans a fond farewell. The latter also provides a rather poignant summary of his career: “I came, I saw, now I disappear.” It’s true that not all songs land, such as “I Don’t Care,” with lyrics that sound like a defiant adolescent wrote them, and the middling “Obey the Call,” which lacks any memorable hooks. “Ride the Lightning” also sounds too similar to its source, but at least it provides Dave with closure over his feud with Metallica. As sad as I am to see Dave hang it up, thankfully, he provides one final thrill in the Megadeth discography. 3.5/5.0
Owlswald: As Dave Mustaine closes the book on his legendary career, Megadeth’s swan song makes it clear that Mustaine intends to leave the same way he entered: loud and unmistakably himself. The self-titled record starts hot with “Tipping Point,” a fast, grinding riff assault that recalls Megadeth’s classic openers. “Let There Be Shred” leans into old-school speed metal while “I Don’t Care” delivers its punk-ish energy despite terrible lyrics. New guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari steps seamlessly into the void left by Kiko Loureiro, immediately asserting himself with playful solos, sweeping leads, and fretboard fireworks that stretch his guitar to the limit. Dirk Verbeuren remains rock‑solid, delivering galloping rhythms with sharp tom rolls and double-bass that echo Nick Menza’s punishing style. “Puppet Parade” nods to both Cryptic Writings and Countdown to Extinction, evoking “Almost Honest” in its opening and “Foreclosure of a Dream” in its clean bridge. Mustaine’s gruff, sneering delivery is classic Megadeth here—very “Sweating Bullets”—even though the chorus doesn’t land. The record stumbles temporarily with “Another Bad Day,” a forgettable rocker dragged down by weak songwriting and more bad lyrics, and “I Am War,” which feels generic and overly reliant on thin vocal hooks. But “Obey the Call” and “Made to Kill” fare better, with Mustaine returning to his lower register that fits more naturally within the outstanding instrumental performances. The finale turns somber. “The Last Note” finds Mustaine confronting his legacy and the approaching end of his career, followed by an unnecessary cover of “Ride the Lightning”—a final smirk3at his long history with Metallica. Flawed but unexpectedly solid, Megadeth’s final album plays like an autobiographical reflection from a metal legend. It’s hard to ask for much more at this point and is a worthy send-off. Good.
Grin Reaper: Going out on your own terms is not a decision every band gets to make, and when the news broke that Megadeth would hang up the ol’ guitar strap, the news struck bittersweet. Dave Mustaine and his revolving cast of support have been steady companions through my major milestones, providing a symphony for construction as I assembled my adult life. But what can you expect from Megadeth’s last words? Megadeth is, most of all, a celebration. Seventeen albums over forty years deserve a bit of revelry, especially considering the heights of Megadeth’s career. Though Megadeth doesn’t threaten to dethrone their best material, it’s a major success for latter-day Deth and boasts concise track lengths and carefree fun. Most importantly, the mantra of “Let There Be Shred” isn’t limited to just that song as Dave and Teemu Mäntysaari (Wintersun) trade fiery leads throughout (“Tipping Point,” “Made to Kill”). Dirk Verbeuren once again avails himself behind the kit, effortlessly pummeling with mechanized precision (“Tipping Point”) and snappy punk rolls (“I Don’t Care”). Though I would prefer another technical smorgasbord à la Rust in Peace, there’s a fair offering of mid-paced tracks more in line with the Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings school of radio-friendly jams (“Hey God!,” “Another Bad Day,” “Obey the Call”). Songs like these are among my least favorite on Megadeth, but credit to Dave—they’re short and feel genuine. The honesty of Megadeth’s curtain call is a final triumph, a fist raised in the air signifying that after a career of proving to listeners and himself that he earned his place in the pantheon of metal, Dave Mustaine gets to end his game his way. May he retire in peace—now go rattle your goddamn head! So Far, So Good!
Baguette of Bodom: After the massive disappointment that was The Sick… and the embarrassing hilarity of “I Don’t Care” earning meme status, I was prepared for a real stinker. But it was not meant to be, for Megadeth’s self-titled swan song surprised shockingly. Do not expect a fast-paced thrasher, though; this last hurrah harkens back to various eras of the band, mostly the better ones even! While there’s a bit of Killing… and Rust in Peace in “Made to Kill,” many songs here resemble the simpler but effective ethos of Countdown. Tasty, melodic ’90s lead guitar hooks (“Another Bad Day,” “I Am War”) result in Mustaine occasionally sounding the best he has since Thirteen, and Dirk Verbeuren’s drums deliver plenty of fun fills throughout (“Made to Kill,” “Hey God!”). Teemu Mäntysaari is clearly the star of the show. He complements Dave’s playing with classic ‘Deth tones, and I’m glad his tasteful riff and shred craft have a place to truly shine front and center (“Puppet Parade,” “Let There Be Shred”). Despite a rough opening duo, the record recovers quickly, with the back half being particularly impressive for a band I had largely given up on. Overall, Megadeth is a solid Dystopia-tier album in a tight 41-minute package. It won’t make any respectable year-end lists, but I’m glad this long and mightily uneven career ends on a positive note, except for the tacked-on “Ride the Lightning” bonus. It’s a decent enough rendition of a decent enough song,4 but why hold a grudge over young and stupid egos for 40 years? It’s not even faster or angrier, which used to be the selling point. “Mechanix” made “The Four Horsemen” better; this one makes a great opening riff worse. Take relationship counseling notes from Helloween. – 3.0/5.0
Double Bonus Megaopinions from Infamous Former Staffers:
Doc Fisting: In an era where no band ever truly stops, I approach Megadeth’s impending retirement with an apprehensive sense of closure. If Dave Mustaine feels that this album is his last, he’ll get no argument from me whatsoever. The songwriting is weak throughout Megadeth, often feeling like mismatched parts forced together on some producer’s laptop. The lyrics aren’t much better, ranging from good ideas executed poorly (“Puppet Parade”) to steaming hot garbage (“I Don’t Care,” ”Let There Be Shred”). A few tracks approach classic Megadeth’s speed, if not its quality, but much of the record goes by at a Cryptic Writings-esque midtempo pace. Even compared to Megadeth’s last couple of albums, this one feels especially low-effort and low-energy. Mustaine’s ability to craft memorable guitar parts seems to have departed, as nothing here shows a trace of the creativity or technical skill he was once known for. Time has sandblasted his vocal range down to almost nothing, and he relies heavily on his “hello me, it’s me again” shtick as a result. Closing track “The Last Note” crosses the line into self-parody, closing the band’s career on a low note.* New guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari attempts to patch the holes, delivering ripping solos where riffs or vocal hooks belong. Drummer Dirk Verbueren similarly tries to inject some Gar Samuelson-style energy. Unfortunately, the material here doesn’t give them much to work with. Make no mistake — Dave Mustaine is one of the architects of thrash metal, and deserves credit for it (just ask him). His contributions to the genre from 1983 through 1991 are essential, and nothing can take that away. But Megadeth feels less like a triumphant farewell and more like a necessary one.5 1.5/5.0
Ferrous Beuller: The end is nigh. Time to Ragnarockoutwithyour”Glock”out for that final full stop in the Apocellipsis. After 40-plus years, Megadeth have bowed out with a final self-titled trip down the riff river. What does this mean? It means another release that is indistinguishable from every post-Youthanasia Megadeth album. For decades, Mustaine has released self-derivative records whose highlights might occasionally tickle a playlist. Megadeth does not deviate from this formula. If you’re hoping for a grab bag of sanitised thrash riffs and intangible mid-pacers, then you’re in luck. But make no mistake, this is not Risk. Those particularly fond of albums like Cryptic Warnings or even Th1rt3en will find something to like here. Dave can surely write this kind of material with his eyes closed by now, and it shows. It feels rote because, by this point, that’s exactly what Mustaine’s creativity has become. As just another Megadeth album, this is as redundant as the irrelevant marketing strategy Metallica cover. As a goodbye, Mustaine has always done things his way, so I guess this, too, is by design. Decades of treading tepid water can never change the fact that Megadeth embodies a foundation of metal. This swan song won’t sully that reputation. But, given the finality of it all, I can’t help but wonder what might have been. Well, Megadeth, thanks for the memories. Someday, other bands will know your pain, but few will smile that once-black-toothed grin. May you rust in peace disgracefully. If anyone needs me, I’ll be busy pretending they split after 1994. 2.0/5.0
#2026 #AMGSUnsignedBandRodeo #Jan26 #Megadeth #Review #Reviews #ThrashMetal -
NECROMANIAC – Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable Review
By Tyme
Having toiled and troubled over a bubbling cauldron for the past thirteen years, London, England’s Necromaniac, is finally prepared to cast the spell of its debut album Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable.1 A multi-national coven consisting of musicians from Sweden, Spain, Greece, and Poland, Necromaniac are self-described practitioners of “morbid metal.” After 2015’s promising and well-received demo Morbid Metal dropped, in addition to 2018’s mini-EP Subterranean Death Rising, Invictus Productions signed on in 2024 to release Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable, promising listeners “A truly sinister musical journey containing nine forbidden rites steeped in witchcraft, necromancy and an overall occult and utterly macabre atmosphere.” So I wondered, is this pricking in my thumbs a sign that something wicked this way comes, or is Necromaniac‘s witchery nothing more than parlor tricks?
An elixir of blackened death and thrash, with synth-sprigs of thyme and dashes of doomsbane thrown in for atmospheric effect, the morbidity of Necromaniac‘s metal is steeped mainly in the olde ways. Conjuring strong Hellhammer and Morbid2 vibes, there’s a rawness to the sound of the organic mix that belies the DR score you see below. Ensorcelling ‘guitarmageddon’ is Sadistik Fornicator, who laces the swirling potions of Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable with Toxic Holocaustian riffage (“Daemonomantia”) and guitar passages that sound as if they could have come straight from the cutting room floor of Slayer‘s Show No Mercy sessions (“Teraphim (Skull Sorcery)”). Combine those riffs with the potency of The One’s ‘Basstard Tremblings’ and V. Pestilencia’s ‘Apocalyptic Drumonitions,’ and the thrashily blackened death metal Necromaniac offers up is ruthlessly effective. When things shift toward the more atmospheric, however, cracks start to show and highlight the most significant battle fought within the album’s walls, which pits the strength of its metal against its more melodramatic tendencies.
With nothing to dilute its potency, the metal of Sciomancy, Malediction, & Rites Abominable is razor-sharp and capable of carrying the weight of the entire album. One quaff of the black-‘n-roll draught of riffs from “Grave Mound Oath” will have you bobbing your head and wondering what the hell ever happened to Carpathian Forest. At the same time, the swirling speeds of “Great is the Thirst of the Restless Dead” and the remorseless “Swedenborg’s Skull,” with its ebb and flow of pummeling riff work and atmospherically doomy passages, are a satisfying earworm of harrowing hocus-pocus. Atop all these infernal conflagrations float the vociferous vocalizations of C. Howler, whose grunts, growls, and menacing howls perfectly complement Necromaniac‘s morbidly sharp metal blade. If this were all we had to speak of regarding Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable, the overall perception would have been mostly positive, but there are elements left to address.
Necromaniac‘s firm forays into the strictly atmospheric fall short, cloaking those elements meant to invoke spine-chilling shivers in shrouds of theatrically overwrought melodrama instead. Other than “Caput Draconis,” with its effectively doomy guitar work and King Diamond-esque warbling3 providing an atmospherically eerie opening to the record, other attempts to tap the same vein miss the mark. Supplied by and known here only as A Corpse Without Soul, the guest vocals on “Bring Forth the Shade” and “Conjuration of St. Cyprian” are a mixture of cantankerous chuckles and over-embellished groans, whispers, and wails, combined then with the half-baked doom instrumentation and synths, create an overall effect more cringe than creepy. These tracks, in tandem with the ten-plus minutes of overly-long closer “Necromancess / Cauda Draconis,” full of meandering drawn-out doom work, make Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable feel longer than its near forty-nine-minute runtime should, negatively impacting the flow and momentum this witchy metal seance might otherwise have had.
Necromaniac‘s strength lies in the metal of its sciomantic maledictions and less in the melodrama of its abominable rites. Songs like “Grave Mound Oath,” “Teraphim (Skull Sorcery)” and “Swedenborg’s Skull” prove Necromaniac has the chops to stand tall next to other bands successfully peddling this same form of blackened death metal, but using vehicles that end up conjuring an atmosphere more mawkish than macabre costs Necromaniac most here. And while I can’t fully endorse Sciomancy, Maledictions and Rites Abominable, there’s enough meat on this bone to have me scoping Necromaniac‘s next incantation.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Invictus Productions | The Anja Offensive
Websites: necromaniac.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/necromaniacUK
Releases Worldwide: January 13, 2025#25 #2025 #BlackMetal #DeathMetal #DoomMetal #EnglishMetal #Hellhammer #InvictusProductions #Jan25 #Morbid #Necromaniac #Review #Reviews #SciomancyMaledictionsRitesAbominable #Slayer #TheANJAOffensive #ThrashMetal
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NECROMANIAC – Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable Review
By Tyme
Having toiled and troubled over a bubbling cauldron for the past thirteen years, London, England’s Necromaniac, is finally prepared to cast the spell of its debut album Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable.1 A multi-national coven consisting of musicians from Sweden, Spain, Greece, and Poland, Necromaniac are self-described practitioners of “morbid metal.” After 2015’s promising and well-received demo Morbid Metal dropped, in addition to 2018’s mini-EP Subterranean Death Rising, Invictus Productions signed on in 2024 to release Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable, promising listeners “A truly sinister musical journey containing nine forbidden rites steeped in witchcraft, necromancy and an overall occult and utterly macabre atmosphere.” So I wondered, is this pricking in my thumbs a sign that something wicked this way comes, or is Necromaniac‘s witchery nothing more than parlor tricks?
An elixir of blackened death and thrash, with synth-sprigs of thyme and dashes of doomsbane thrown in for atmospheric effect, the morbidity of Necromaniac‘s metal is steeped mainly in the olde ways. Conjuring strong Hellhammer and Morbid2 vibes, there’s a rawness to the sound of the organic mix that belies the DR score you see below. Ensorcelling ‘guitarmageddon’ is Sadistik Fornicator, who laces the swirling potions of Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable with Toxic Holocaustian riffage (“Daemonomantia”) and guitar passages that sound as if they could have come straight from the cutting room floor of Slayer‘s Show No Mercy sessions (“Teraphim (Skull Sorcery)”). Combine those riffs with the potency of The One’s ‘Basstard Tremblings’ and V. Pestilencia’s ‘Apocalyptic Drumonitions,’ and the thrashily blackened death metal Necromaniac offers up is ruthlessly effective. When things shift toward the more atmospheric, however, cracks start to show and highlight the most significant battle fought within the album’s walls, which pits the strength of its metal against its more melodramatic tendencies.
With nothing to dilute its potency, the metal of Sciomancy, Malediction, & Rites Abominable is razor-sharp and capable of carrying the weight of the entire album. One quaff of the black-‘n-roll draught of riffs from “Grave Mound Oath” will have you bobbing your head and wondering what the hell ever happened to Carpathian Forest. At the same time, the swirling speeds of “Great is the Thirst of the Restless Dead” and the remorseless “Swedenborg’s Skull,” with its ebb and flow of pummeling riff work and atmospherically doomy passages, are a satisfying earworm of harrowing hocus-pocus. Atop all these infernal conflagrations float the vociferous vocalizations of C. Howler, whose grunts, growls, and menacing howls perfectly complement Necromaniac‘s morbidly sharp metal blade. If this were all we had to speak of regarding Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable, the overall perception would have been mostly positive, but there are elements left to address.
Necromaniac‘s firm forays into the strictly atmospheric fall short, cloaking those elements meant to invoke spine-chilling shivers in shrouds of theatrically overwrought melodrama instead. Other than “Caput Draconis,” with its effectively doomy guitar work and King Diamond-esque warbling3 providing an atmospherically eerie opening to the record, other attempts to tap the same vein miss the mark. Supplied by and known here only as A Corpse Without Soul, the guest vocals on “Bring Forth the Shade” and “Conjuration of St. Cyprian” are a mixture of cantankerous chuckles and over-embellished groans, whispers, and wails, combined then with the half-baked doom instrumentation and synths, create an overall effect more cringe than creepy. These tracks, in tandem with the ten-plus minutes of overly-long closer “Necromancess / Cauda Draconis,” full of meandering drawn-out doom work, make Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable feel longer than its near forty-nine-minute runtime should, negatively impacting the flow and momentum this witchy metal seance might otherwise have had.
Necromaniac‘s strength lies in the metal of its sciomantic maledictions and less in the melodrama of its abominable rites. Songs like “Grave Mound Oath,” “Teraphim (Skull Sorcery)” and “Swedenborg’s Skull” prove Necromaniac has the chops to stand tall next to other bands successfully peddling this same form of blackened death metal, but using vehicles that end up conjuring an atmosphere more mawkish than macabre costs Necromaniac most here. And while I can’t fully endorse Sciomancy, Maledictions and Rites Abominable, there’s enough meat on this bone to have me scoping Necromaniac‘s next incantation.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Invictus Productions | The Anja Offensive
Websites: necromaniac.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/necromaniacUK
Releases Worldwide: January 13, 2025#25 #2025 #BlackMetal #DeathMetal #DoomMetal #EnglishMetal #Hellhammer #InvictusProductions #Jan25 #Morbid #Necromaniac #Review #Reviews #SciomancyMaledictionsRitesAbominable #Slayer #TheANJAOffensive #ThrashMetal
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NECROMANIAC – Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable Review
By Tyme
Having toiled and troubled over a bubbling cauldron for the past thirteen years, London, England’s Necromaniac, is finally prepared to cast the spell of its debut album Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable.1 A multi-national coven consisting of musicians from Sweden, Spain, Greece, and Poland, Necromaniac are self-described practitioners of “morbid metal.” After 2015’s promising and well-received demo Morbid Metal dropped, in addition to 2018’s mini-EP Subterranean Death Rising, Invictus Productions signed on in 2024 to release Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable, promising listeners “A truly sinister musical journey containing nine forbidden rites steeped in witchcraft, necromancy and an overall occult and utterly macabre atmosphere.” So I wondered, is this pricking in my thumbs a sign that something wicked this way comes, or is Necromaniac‘s witchery nothing more than parlor tricks?
An elixir of blackened death and thrash, with synth-sprigs of thyme and dashes of doomsbane thrown in for atmospheric effect, the morbidity of Necromaniac‘s metal is steeped mainly in the olde ways. Conjuring strong Hellhammer and Morbid2 vibes, there’s a rawness to the sound of the organic mix that belies the DR score you see below. Ensorcelling ‘guitarmageddon’ is Sadistik Fornicator, who laces the swirling potions of Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable with Toxic Holocaustian riffage (“Daemonomantia”) and guitar passages that sound as if they could have come straight from the cutting room floor of Slayer‘s Show No Mercy sessions (“Teraphim (Skull Sorcery)”). Combine those riffs with the potency of The One’s ‘Basstard Tremblings’ and V. Pestilencia’s ‘Apocalyptic Drumonitions,’ and the thrashily blackened death metal Necromaniac offers up is ruthlessly effective. When things shift toward the more atmospheric, however, cracks start to show and highlight the most significant battle fought within the album’s walls, which pits the strength of its metal against its more melodramatic tendencies.
With nothing to dilute its potency, the metal of Sciomancy, Malediction, & Rites Abominable is razor-sharp and capable of carrying the weight of the entire album. One quaff of the black-‘n-roll draught of riffs from “Grave Mound Oath” will have you bobbing your head and wondering what the hell ever happened to Carpathian Forest. At the same time, the swirling speeds of “Great is the Thirst of the Restless Dead” and the remorseless “Swedenborg’s Skull,” with its ebb and flow of pummeling riff work and atmospherically doomy passages, are a satisfying earworm of harrowing hocus-pocus. Atop all these infernal conflagrations float the vociferous vocalizations of C. Howler, whose grunts, growls, and menacing howls perfectly complement Necromaniac‘s morbidly sharp metal blade. If this were all we had to speak of regarding Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable, the overall perception would have been mostly positive, but there are elements left to address.
Necromaniac‘s firm forays into the strictly atmospheric fall short, cloaking those elements meant to invoke spine-chilling shivers in shrouds of theatrically overwrought melodrama instead. Other than “Caput Draconis,” with its effectively doomy guitar work and King Diamond-esque warbling3 providing an atmospherically eerie opening to the record, other attempts to tap the same vein miss the mark. Supplied by and known here only as A Corpse Without Soul, the guest vocals on “Bring Forth the Shade” and “Conjuration of St. Cyprian” are a mixture of cantankerous chuckles and over-embellished groans, whispers, and wails, combined then with the half-baked doom instrumentation and synths, create an overall effect more cringe than creepy. These tracks, in tandem with the ten-plus minutes of overly-long closer “Necromancess / Cauda Draconis,” full of meandering drawn-out doom work, make Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable feel longer than its near forty-nine-minute runtime should, negatively impacting the flow and momentum this witchy metal seance might otherwise have had.
Necromaniac‘s strength lies in the metal of its sciomantic maledictions and less in the melodrama of its abominable rites. Songs like “Grave Mound Oath,” “Teraphim (Skull Sorcery)” and “Swedenborg’s Skull” prove Necromaniac has the chops to stand tall next to other bands successfully peddling this same form of blackened death metal, but using vehicles that end up conjuring an atmosphere more mawkish than macabre costs Necromaniac most here. And while I can’t fully endorse Sciomancy, Maledictions and Rites Abominable, there’s enough meat on this bone to have me scoping Necromaniac‘s next incantation.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Invictus Productions | The Anja Offensive
Websites: necromaniac.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/necromaniacUK
Releases Worldwide: January 13, 2025#25 #2025 #BlackMetal #DeathMetal #DoomMetal #EnglishMetal #Hellhammer #InvictusProductions #Jan25 #Morbid #Necromaniac #Review #Reviews #SciomancyMaledictionsRitesAbominable #Slayer #TheANJAOffensive #ThrashMetal
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Ingurgitating Oblivion – Ontology of Nought Review
By Dear Hollow
I’ve spent over twenty hours with Ontology of Nought, trying to learn the German Ingurgitating Oblivion’s method in the madness. I’m still lost. I’m still stumbling blindly through the dead ends, the hairpin turns, the ominous spires, and the high walls that enclose its labyrinth, attempting to discover its light but knowing that it will only be by chance if I do. I cannot find a pattern, a clue, or an architectural basis anywhere. It’s blind memorization and utter void of context, and I have never been so baffled and intrigued by something calling itself death metal.
The lack of reference makes Ontology of Nought such a difficult album to score. Laced dissonance, choppy rhythms, blackened death intensity, and technical arpeggios, tied together with spoken word, a haunting atmosphere, and vicious noise, avant-garde veterans Ingurgitating Oblivion1 somehow avoids sounding like the trademarks of any of the bands who use them. Their first album in seven years consists of five tracks spanning nearly an hour and fifteen minutes, the eighteen-minute closer divided into three movements. It shifts patiently, organically, but with the intention and direction of the blind leading the blind. Ingurgitating Oblivion constructs Ontology of Nought not as a collection of highlights and riffs, but as a sonic labyrinth composed of mile-high walls, experimental twists, jagged spires, and brutal nihilism.
Disjointedly, Ingurgitating Oblivion recalls acts like Serocs, Coma Cluster Void, and Flourishing, a fusion of dissonant, blackened, and avant-garde death metal, sprawled together with ambiance and murky songwriting – however, Ontology of Nought is a free jazz expedition a la Sun Ra or Peter Brötzmann at heart. Opener “Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply with Crippled Fingers” sets the tone with a haunting ambiance, interspersed by nearly mathcore-inspired marbled rhythms and manic drumming and featuring wild jazzy solos. The suffocating sprawl of noise and dissonance gives “To Weave the Tapestry of Nought” a dangerous grin atop its cantankerous rhythms, and the crescendos of lush ambiance, cumbersome keys, and clean vocals are downright haunting and strangely infectious. The women’s choir of “Lest I Should Perish with Travel, Effete and Weary, as My Knees Refuse to Bear Me Thither” shines through this tapestry of noise, interspersed by blackened death bomb explosions. Closer “The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, and Shakes and Moans, To Drink Her Children’s Gore” is a tour-de-force of spidery keys, unhinged drumming and sick riffs, epic solos, crawling leads, scathing noise, and crystalline ambiance, an eighteen-minute behemoth with which Ingurgitating Oblivion will test your patience and your sanity in some of the best ways, the patience of prior tracks stricken to the bone.
It’s easy to draw comparisons to Midnight Odyssey or Swallow the Sun in Ontology of Nought’s challenging runtime, but at least those atmoblack and melodeath/doom legends have shreds of consistency. Ingurgitating Oblivion shifts dramatically across each song’s ten-to-nineteen-minute track-lengths in ways that rob distinctiveness in favor of an ever-changing amorphousness, leaving memorability by the wayside. Most damning is centerpiece “The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart,” which lacks the oomph or highlight to stand out amid the crushing sea of experimentalisms and jarring shifts, compared to the haunting “To Weave…” and the actualized clarity of “Lest I Should Perish…” It’s ultimately small potatoes, however, because despite the myriad spins, I still cannot seem to wrap my head around Ontology’s shifting sands of jarring tonal and musical changes. This makes Ingurgitating Oblivion almost entirely inaccessible, requiring an obscene amount of concentration – in an inherently difficult style – for an asinine amount of time. In the spirit of free jazz, Ontology of Nought feels nearly entirely improvised, so it’s difficult to tell if its insanity is a puzzle worth solving or an empty pretentious pursuit.
When I started listening to Ingurgitating Oblivion, I was reading “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges – and the comparisons fit. While the short story about infinite numbers of identically structured hexagons and books clashes with the insane apparent randomness coursing through Ontology of Nought, the lesson remains the same: the choice of purpose in the minute or despair in the infinite. How each listener approaches this album will differ, as the experimentalism is maddening and the runtime is extravagant. The sounds contained herein are unlike any others, with intensity, experimentalism, and organicity playing an infinite sonic game of chess worthy of both shudder and intrigue. Listen to it once – replay mileage will vary.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Willowtip Records
Websites: ingurgitatingoblivion1.bandcamp.com | ingurgitating-oblivion.de | facebook.com/IngurgitatingOblivionOfficial
Releases Worldwide: September 27th, 2024#2024 #35 #AtmosphericDeathMetal #AvantGardeDeathMetal #AvantGardeMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #ComaClusterVoid #DeathMetal #DefeatedSanity #DissonantDeathMetal #Flourishing #Fountainhead #FreeJazz #GermanMetal #IngurgitatingOblivion #Jazz #MentallyDefiled #MidnightOdyssey #OntologyOfNought #PeterBrötzmann #Review #Reviews #Sep24 #Serocs #SunRa #SwallowTheSun #TechnicalDeathMetal #WillowtipRecords
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Ingurgitating Oblivion – Ontology of Nought Review
By Dear Hollow
I’ve spent over twenty hours with Ontology of Nought, trying to learn the German Ingurgitating Oblivion’s method in the madness. I’m still lost. I’m still stumbling blindly through the dead ends, the hairpin turns, the ominous spires, and the high walls that enclose its labyrinth, attempting to discover its light but knowing that it will only be by chance if I do. I cannot find a pattern, a clue, or an architectural basis anywhere. It’s blind memorization and utter void of context, and I have never been so baffled and intrigued by something calling itself death metal.
The lack of reference makes Ontology of Nought such a difficult album to score. Laced dissonance, choppy rhythms, blackened death intensity, and technical arpeggios, tied together with spoken word, a haunting atmosphere, and vicious noise, avant-garde veterans Ingurgitating Oblivion1 somehow avoids sounding like the trademarks of any of the bands who use them. Their first album in seven years consists of five tracks spanning nearly an hour and fifteen minutes, the eighteen-minute closer divided into three movements. It shifts patiently, organically, but with the intention and direction of the blind leading the blind. Ingurgitating Oblivion constructs Ontology of Nought not as a collection of highlights and riffs, but as a sonic labyrinth composed of mile-high walls, experimental twists, jagged spires, and brutal nihilism.
Disjointedly, Ingurgitating Oblivion recalls acts like Serocs, Coma Cluster Void, and Flourishing, a fusion of dissonant, blackened, and avant-garde death metal, sprawled together with ambiance and murky songwriting – however, Ontology of Nought is a free jazz expedition a la Sun Ra or Peter Brötzmann at heart. Opener “Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply with Crippled Fingers” sets the tone with a haunting ambiance, interspersed by nearly mathcore-inspired marbled rhythms and manic drumming and featuring wild jazzy solos. The suffocating sprawl of noise and dissonance gives “To Weave the Tapestry of Nought” a dangerous grin atop its cantankerous rhythms, and the crescendos of lush ambiance, cumbersome keys, and clean vocals are downright haunting and strangely infectious. The women’s choir of “Lest I Should Perish with Travel, Effete and Weary, as My Knees Refuse to Bear Me Thither” shines through this tapestry of noise, interspersed by blackened death bomb explosions. Closer “The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, and Shakes and Moans, To Drink Her Children’s Gore” is a tour-de-force of spidery keys, unhinged drumming and sick riffs, epic solos, crawling leads, scathing noise, and crystalline ambiance, an eighteen-minute behemoth with which Ingurgitating Oblivion will test your patience and your sanity in some of the best ways, the patience of prior tracks stricken to the bone.
It’s easy to draw comparisons to Midnight Odyssey or Swallow the Sun in Ontology of Nought’s challenging runtime, but at least those atmoblack and melodeath/doom legends have shreds of consistency. Ingurgitating Oblivion shifts dramatically across each song’s ten-to-nineteen-minute track-lengths in ways that rob distinctiveness in favor of an ever-changing amorphousness, leaving memorability by the wayside. Most damning is centerpiece “The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart,” which lacks the oomph or highlight to stand out amid the crushing sea of experimentalisms and jarring shifts, compared to the haunting “To Weave…” and the actualized clarity of “Lest I Should Perish…” It’s ultimately small potatoes, however, because despite the myriad spins, I still cannot seem to wrap my head around Ontology’s shifting sands of jarring tonal and musical changes. This makes Ingurgitating Oblivion almost entirely inaccessible, requiring an obscene amount of concentration – in an inherently difficult style – for an asinine amount of time. In the spirit of free jazz, Ontology of Nought feels nearly entirely improvised, so it’s difficult to tell if its insanity is a puzzle worth solving or an empty pretentious pursuit.
When I started listening to Ingurgitating Oblivion, I was reading “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges – and the comparisons fit. While the short story about infinite numbers of identically structured hexagons and books clashes with the insane apparent randomness coursing through Ontology of Nought, the lesson remains the same: the choice of purpose in the minute or despair in the infinite. How each listener approaches this album will differ, as the experimentalism is maddening and the runtime is extravagant. The sounds contained herein are unlike any others, with intensity, experimentalism, and organicity playing an infinite sonic game of chess worthy of both shudder and intrigue. Listen to it once – replay mileage will vary.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Willowtip Records
Websites: ingurgitatingoblivion1.bandcamp.com | ingurgitating-oblivion.de | facebook.com/IngurgitatingOblivionOfficial
Releases Worldwide: September 27th, 2024#2024 #35 #AtmosphericDeathMetal #AvantGardeDeathMetal #AvantGardeMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #ComaClusterVoid #DeathMetal #DefeatedSanity #DissonantDeathMetal #Flourishing #Fountainhead #FreeJazz #GermanMetal #IngurgitatingOblivion #Jazz #MentallyDefiled #MidnightOdyssey #OntologyOfNought #PeterBrötzmann #Review #Reviews #Sep24 #Serocs #SunRa #SwallowTheSun #TechnicalDeathMetal #WillowtipRecords
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Ingurgitating Oblivion – Ontology of Nought Review
By Dear Hollow
I’ve spent over twenty hours with Ontology of Nought, trying to learn the German Ingurgitating Oblivion’s method in the madness. I’m still lost. I’m still stumbling blindly through the dead ends, the hairpin turns, the ominous spires, and the high walls that enclose its labyrinth, attempting to discover its light but knowing that it will only be by chance if I do. I cannot find a pattern, a clue, or an architectural basis anywhere. It’s blind memorization and utter void of context, and I have never been so baffled and intrigued by something calling itself death metal.
The lack of reference makes Ontology of Nought such a difficult album to score. Laced dissonance, choppy rhythms, blackened death intensity, and technical arpeggios, tied together with spoken word, a haunting atmosphere, and vicious noise, avant-garde veterans Ingurgitating Oblivion1 somehow avoids sounding like the trademarks of any of the bands who use them. Their first album in seven years consists of five tracks spanning nearly an hour and fifteen minutes, the eighteen-minute closer divided into three movements. It shifts patiently, organically, but with the intention and direction of the blind leading the blind. Ingurgitating Oblivion constructs Ontology of Nought not as a collection of highlights and riffs, but as a sonic labyrinth composed of mile-high walls, experimental twists, jagged spires, and brutal nihilism.
Disjointedly, Ingurgitating Oblivion recalls acts like Serocs, Coma Cluster Void, and Flourishing, a fusion of dissonant, blackened, and avant-garde death metal, sprawled together with ambiance and murky songwriting – however, Ontology of Nought is a free jazz expedition a la Sun Ra or Peter Brötzmann at heart. Opener “Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply with Crippled Fingers” sets the tone with a haunting ambiance, interspersed by nearly mathcore-inspired marbled rhythms and manic drumming and featuring wild jazzy solos. The suffocating sprawl of noise and dissonance gives “To Weave the Tapestry of Nought” a dangerous grin atop its cantankerous rhythms, and the crescendos of lush ambiance, cumbersome keys, and clean vocals are downright haunting and strangely infectious. The women’s choir of “Lest I Should Perish with Travel, Effete and Weary, as My Knees Refuse to Bear Me Thither” shines through this tapestry of noise, interspersed by blackened death bomb explosions. Closer “The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, and Shakes and Moans, To Drink Her Children’s Gore” is a tour-de-force of spidery keys, unhinged drumming and sick riffs, epic solos, crawling leads, scathing noise, and crystalline ambiance, an eighteen-minute behemoth with which Ingurgitating Oblivion will test your patience and your sanity in some of the best ways, the patience of prior tracks stricken to the bone.
It’s easy to draw comparisons to Midnight Odyssey or Swallow the Sun in Ontology of Nought’s challenging runtime, but at least those atmoblack and melodeath/doom legends have shreds of consistency. Ingurgitating Oblivion shifts dramatically across each song’s ten-to-nineteen-minute track-lengths in ways that rob distinctiveness in favor of an ever-changing amorphousness, leaving memorability by the wayside. Most damning is centerpiece “The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart,” which lacks the oomph or highlight to stand out amid the crushing sea of experimentalisms and jarring shifts, compared to the haunting “To Weave…” and the actualized clarity of “Lest I Should Perish…” It’s ultimately small potatoes, however, because despite the myriad spins, I still cannot seem to wrap my head around Ontology’s shifting sands of jarring tonal and musical changes. This makes Ingurgitating Oblivion almost entirely inaccessible, requiring an obscene amount of concentration – in an inherently difficult style – for an asinine amount of time. In the spirit of free jazz, Ontology of Nought feels nearly entirely improvised, so it’s difficult to tell if its insanity is a puzzle worth solving or an empty pretentious pursuit.
When I started listening to Ingurgitating Oblivion, I was reading “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges – and the comparisons fit. While the short story about infinite numbers of identically structured hexagons and books clashes with the insane apparent randomness coursing through Ontology of Nought, the lesson remains the same: the choice of purpose in the minute or despair in the infinite. How each listener approaches this album will differ, as the experimentalism is maddening and the runtime is extravagant. The sounds contained herein are unlike any others, with intensity, experimentalism, and organicity playing an infinite sonic game of chess worthy of both shudder and intrigue. Listen to it once – replay mileage will vary.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Willowtip Records
Websites: ingurgitatingoblivion1.bandcamp.com | ingurgitating-oblivion.de | facebook.com/IngurgitatingOblivionOfficial
Releases Worldwide: September 27th, 2024#2024 #35 #AtmosphericDeathMetal #AvantGardeDeathMetal #AvantGardeMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #ComaClusterVoid #DeathMetal #DefeatedSanity #DissonantDeathMetal #Flourishing #Fountainhead #FreeJazz #GermanMetal #IngurgitatingOblivion #Jazz #MentallyDefiled #MidnightOdyssey #OntologyOfNought #PeterBrötzmann #Review #Reviews #Sep24 #Serocs #SunRa #SwallowTheSun #TechnicalDeathMetal #WillowtipRecords
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Spill the Tea #2: Whispers of Fate, Blood River, and so much more
November was a bit of a struggle, personally and drama-wise. Personally, I ended up dealing with a medical issue. Drama-wise, I’m still recovering from the masterpiece that was Fated Hearts, and finding a drama to fill that void has been tougher than expected. But I did attempt a few shows, as you can see below!
This month is the battle of the male-led dramas: Blood River, Whispers of Fate, Fight for Love and Sword and Beloved. Who will come out tops?
PS: Each time I do these issues, I realise that I watch a hella lot of CDramas a month. How do I do it? That’s a mystery!
The Four Big Boys
Whispers of Fate
I’ll be the first to admit I can be shallow, but the styling in this drama is just… a lot. I find myself completely fixated on the male actors’ hairstyles, all the bits and bobs hanging off their robes, the dangly pieces in their hair, the gauzy clothes that flutter as they move. It all feels very pretentious and self-aware.
It’s not that the story is bad. In fact, the more I learn about the story, the more intrigued I am by the plot’s potential. But the over-the-top storytelling and directing style make it incredibly difficult for me to buy into this universe. My brain just keeps wondering how many hours they must spend in the makeup chair!
I’m also a bit wary of the central conflict. The entire drama seems to hinge on a single misunderstanding that could be solved if they were just locked in a room and forced to talk. (Though, to be fair, I’ve heard the other person wasn’t willing to listen.) I’m not a huge fan of plots driven solely by a lack of communication.
In the end, after following the plot via social media posts and recaps, I realized it just wasn’t for me.
Read why I dropped Whispers of Fate after 8 episodes.
Fight for Love
With the limited time I have, it was impossible to catch all the “big boys”. Interestingly, while I found Fight For Love had the best potential story of the lot, it seemed to have fared the poorest, with Douban releasing its scores three days early (!) at a dismal 5.3!
How does a Cdrama get scored when it had barely started its run? Something weird is going on here.
Like I said, I found the premise the most interesting of the “male lead dramas” I watched this month, but I just do not have the time (nor the mood) to watch a drama that is about devastating wars, betrayals, political battles and such. However, I will most certainly make the time for it in the future, as I found some of the side stories rather sweet and interesting.
Sword and Beloved
This is another C-drama that didn’t even entice me to watch, however it seems to be fairly popular. When it comes to xianxia, I need something that breaks the mould to really capture my attention. Sword and the Beloved feels like a very typical xianxia/xuanhuan: a powerful, ice-cold male lead meets a bubbly, pixie female lead who brings light to his dark world. I was bored just reading the summary. I’m sure it will captivate some viewers, but for me, it was just too generic.
The third in the big-budget trilogy which began with Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red Moon Pact, word is this drama started out very well but derailed significantly midway to the point of no return. Alas, what a sad state of affairs for a drama so hyped up and highly anticipated.
Verdict: Didn’t start
Blood River
This was my attempt to move on from Fated Hearts. While it’s interesting enough to keep me watching, Blood River doesn’t come close to the rich, sweeping storytelling of my previous obsession.
The first six episodes were overwhelming, throwing a slew of battles and a dozen characters at me in quick succession. I nearly gave up! There was one episode where almost 20 characters appeared, and I was completely lost. Fortunately, it improved a lot after episode 9, and I ended up smoothly watching up to episode 30.
What drew me in was the character of Su Mu Yu, the assassin with the 18-blade umbrella (this is a prequel/spin-off of The Blood of Youth). The main actor, Gong Jun, was a concern at first. He was a bit stiff, but since his character is meant to be stoic, he grew on me after episode eight or so. He’s not terrible, and when he doesn’t express emotions, you can still feel it.
Blood River ended up being the most well-regarded of the male-led dramas of November, scoring a 7.2 at Douban to date.
Just aired…
Blemish Flaw
Started watching this because youtuber Avenue X mentioned that this was the same team behind the highly-praised Heroes. Watched up to six episodes, and I can say that it’s a thrilling psychological twister of a drama. Lots of potential with this one, because you’re just not sure whose version of the story is the correct one.
Why Is He Still Single?
You will know the answer to this question after 10 minutes of watching the show!
Ah, Wallace Huo! My crush from a decade ago! This time he returns as the cantankerous Mr. Yu who gives the impression that he’d much rather deal with the AI versions of his clients and the people around him. I found myself laughing out loud at some scenes, which is what I totally needed in November.
Catching up with…
Dramas that aired a while back…
Love in the Clouds
I was initially curious about this one because it had a solid Douban score of 7, which usually signals a good watch. However, I couldn’t even get past the first episode. The female lead’s peppy, zesty personality was a bit grating for me, and it didn’t align with the narrative that she’s a seven-time tournament-winning warrior.
There’s an intriguing enemies-to-lovers storyline somewhere beneath the surface, but the comedy didn’t land for me at all. In the end, I looked up what happens in future episodes, and I’m kind of glad I dropped it. It seems to be full of “noble idiocy,” back-and-forth, and miscommunication—a classic Xianxia trope that I find very tedious. It might be your cup of tea, but it just wasn’t for me.
Verdict: Dropped after 2 episodes 😛
When Destiny Meets the Demon
Who knew that I’d end up watching 15 episodes of a saccharine, transmigration drama? Is it the magnetic aura of Arthur Chen or his many kisses? To be honest, I found the story pretty typical and not extraordinary, but I’m still watching for some reason. The most annoying thing about this drama are the one-dimensional villains (sect leaders, as usual!).
Controversy Derails Lady Liberty
The career-defining drama for Tangyan was unexpectedly derailed by a scandal! This is such a bummer as I’ve been waiting forever to watch Lady Liberty. Who would’ve thought that it would end up being derailed by its scriptwriter, who supposedly bribed someone to make the police release her after an offence?
This is such a messy affair, and as this involves a major crime by China’s standards, there are huge doubts that it’ll ever air. I’m absolutely heartbroken—for Tangyan, and for the hardworking folks behind the drama.
-
Spill the Tea #2: Whispers of Fate, Blood River, and so much more
November was a bit of a struggle, personally and drama-wise. Personally, I ended up dealing with a medical issue. Drama-wise, I’m still recovering from the masterpiece that was Fated Hearts, and finding a drama to fill that void has been tougher than expected. But I did attempt a few shows, as you can see below!
This month is the battle of the male-led dramas: Blood River, Whispers of Fate, Fight for Love and Sword and Beloved. Who will come out tops?
PS: Each time I do these issues, I realise that I watch a hella lot of CDramas a month. How do I do it? That’s a mystery!
The Four Big Boys
Whispers of Fate
I’ll be the first to admit I can be shallow, but the styling in this drama is just… a lot. I find myself completely fixated on the male actors’ hairstyles, all the bits and bobs hanging off their robes, the dangly pieces in their hair, the gauzy clothes that flutter as they move. It all feels very pretentious and self-aware.
It’s not that the story is bad. In fact, the more I learn about the story, the more intrigued I am by the plot’s potential. But the over-the-top storytelling and directing style make it incredibly difficult for me to buy into this universe. My brain just keeps wondering how many hours they must spend in the makeup chair!
I’m also a bit wary of the central conflict. The entire drama seems to hinge on a single misunderstanding that could be solved if they were just locked in a room and forced to talk. (Though, to be fair, I’ve heard the other person wasn’t willing to listen.) I’m not a huge fan of plots driven solely by a lack of communication.
In the end, after following the plot via social media posts and recaps, I realized it just wasn’t for me.
Read why I dropped Whispers of Fate after 8 episodes.
Fight for Love
With the limited time I have, it was impossible to catch all the “big boys”. Interestingly, while I found Fight For Love had the best potential story of the lot, it seemed to have fared the poorest, with Douban releasing its scores three days early (!) at a dismal 5.3!
How does a Cdrama get scored when it had barely started its run? Something weird is going on here.
Like I said, I found the premise the most interesting of the “male lead dramas” I watched this month, but I just do not have the time (nor the mood) to watch a drama that is about devastating wars, betrayals, political battles and such. However, I will most certainly make the time for it in the future, as I found some of the side stories rather sweet and interesting.
Sword and Beloved
This is another C-drama that didn’t even entice me to watch, however it seems to be fairly popular. When it comes to xianxia, I need something that breaks the mould to really capture my attention. Sword and the Beloved feels like a very typical xianxia/xuanhuan: a powerful, ice-cold male lead meets a bubbly, pixie female lead who brings light to his dark world. I was bored just reading the summary. I’m sure it will captivate some viewers, but for me, it was just too generic.
The third in the big-budget trilogy which began with Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red Moon Pact, word is this drama started out very well but derailed significantly midway to the point of no return. Alas, what a sad state of affairs for a drama so hyped up and highly anticipated.
Verdict: Didn’t start
Blood River
This was my attempt to move on from Fated Hearts. While it’s interesting enough to keep me watching, Blood River doesn’t come close to the rich, sweeping storytelling of my previous obsession.
The first six episodes were overwhelming, throwing a slew of battles and a dozen characters at me in quick succession. I nearly gave up! There was one episode where almost 20 characters appeared, and I was completely lost. Fortunately, it improved a lot after episode 9, and I ended up smoothly watching up to episode 30.
What drew me in was the character of Su Mu Yu, the assassin with the 18-blade umbrella (this is a prequel/spin-off of The Blood of Youth). The main actor, Gong Jun, was a concern at first. He was a bit stiff, but since his character is meant to be stoic, he grew on me after episode eight or so. He’s not terrible, and when he doesn’t express emotions, you can still feel it.
Blood River ended up being the most well-regarded of the male-led dramas of November, scoring a 7.2 at Douban to date.
Just aired…
Blemish Flaw
Started watching this because youtuber Avenue X mentioned that this was the same team behind the highly-praised Heroes. Watched up to six episodes, and I can say that it’s a thrilling psychological twister of a drama. Lots of potential with this one, because you’re just not sure whose version of the story is the correct one.
Why Is He Still Single?
You will know the answer to this question after 10 minutes of watching the show!
Ah, Wallace Huo! My crush from a decade ago! This time he returns as the cantankerous Mr. Yu who gives the impression that he’d much rather deal with the AI versions of his clients and the people around him. I found myself laughing out loud at some scenes, which is what I totally needed in November.
Catching up with…
Dramas that aired a while back…
Love in the Clouds
I was initially curious about this one because it had a solid Douban score of 7, which usually signals a good watch. However, I couldn’t even get past the first episode. The female lead’s peppy, zesty personality was a bit grating for me, and it didn’t align with the narrative that she’s a seven-time tournament-winning warrior.
There’s an intriguing enemies-to-lovers storyline somewhere beneath the surface, but the comedy didn’t land for me at all. In the end, I looked up what happens in future episodes, and I’m kind of glad I dropped it. It seems to be full of “noble idiocy,” back-and-forth, and miscommunication—a classic Xianxia trope that I find very tedious. It might be your cup of tea, but it just wasn’t for me.
Verdict: Dropped after 2 episodes 😛
When Destiny Meets the Demon
Who knew that I’d end up watching 15 episodes of a saccharine, transmigration drama? Is it the magnetic aura of Arthur Chen or his many kisses? To be honest, I found the story pretty typical and not extraordinary, but I’m still watching for some reason. The most annoying thing about this drama are the one-dimensional villains (sect leaders, as usual!).
Controversy Derails Lady Liberty
The career-defining drama for Tangyan was unexpectedly derailed by a scandal! This is such a bummer as I’ve been waiting forever to watch Lady Liberty. Who would’ve thought that it would end up being derailed by its scriptwriter, who supposedly bribed someone to make the police release her after an offence?
This is such a messy affair, and as this involves a major crime by China’s standards, there are huge doubts that it’ll ever air. I’m absolutely heartbroken—for Tangyan, and for the hardworking folks behind the drama.
-
Spill the Tea #2: Whispers of Fate, Blood River, and so much more
November was a bit of a struggle, personally and drama-wise. Personally, I ended up dealing with a medical issue. Drama-wise, I’m still recovering from the masterpiece that was Fated Hearts, and finding a drama to fill that void has been tougher than expected. But I did attempt a few shows, as you can see below!
This month is the battle of the male-led dramas: Blood River, Whispers of Fate, Fight for Love and Sword and Beloved. Who will come out tops?
PS: Each time I do these issues, I realise that I watch a hella lot of CDramas a month. How do I do it? That’s a mystery!
The Four Big Boys
Whispers of Fate
I’ll be the first to admit I can be shallow, but the styling in this drama is just… a lot. I find myself completely fixated on the male actors’ hairstyles, all the bits and bobs hanging off their robes, the dangly pieces in their hair, the gauzy clothes that flutter as they move. It all feels very pretentious and self-aware.
It’s not that the story is bad. In fact, the more I learn about the story, the more intrigued I am by the plot’s potential. But the over-the-top storytelling and directing style make it incredibly difficult for me to buy into this universe. My brain just keeps wondering how many hours they must spend in the makeup chair!
I’m also a bit wary of the central conflict. The entire drama seems to hinge on a single misunderstanding that could be solved if they were just locked in a room and forced to talk. (Though, to be fair, I’ve heard the other person wasn’t willing to listen.) I’m not a huge fan of plots driven solely by a lack of communication.
In the end, after following the plot via social media posts and recaps, I realized it just wasn’t for me.
Read why I dropped Whispers of Fate after 8 episodes.
Fight for Love
With the limited time I have, it was impossible to catch all the “big boys”. Interestingly, while I found Fight For Love had the best potential story of the lot, it seemed to have fared the poorest, with Douban releasing its scores three days early (!) at a dismal 5.3!
How does a Cdrama get scored when it had barely started its run? Something weird is going on here.
Like I said, I found the premise the most interesting of the “male lead dramas” I watched this month, but I just do not have the time (nor the mood) to watch a drama that is about devastating wars, betrayals, political battles and such. However, I will most certainly make the time for it in the future, as I found some of the side stories rather sweet and interesting.
Sword and Beloved
This is another C-drama that didn’t even entice me to watch, however it seems to be fairly popular. When it comes to xianxia, I need something that breaks the mould to really capture my attention. Sword and the Beloved feels like a very typical xianxia/xuanhuan: a powerful, ice-cold male lead meets a bubbly, pixie female lead who brings light to his dark world. I was bored just reading the summary. I’m sure it will captivate some viewers, but for me, it was just too generic.
The third in the big-budget trilogy which began with Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red Moon Pact, word is this drama started out very well but derailed significantly midway to the point of no return. Alas, what a sad state of affairs for a drama so hyped up and highly anticipated.
Verdict: Didn’t start
Blood River
This was my attempt to move on from Fated Hearts. While it’s interesting enough to keep me watching, Blood River doesn’t come close to the rich, sweeping storytelling of my previous obsession.
The first six episodes were overwhelming, throwing a slew of battles and a dozen characters at me in quick succession. I nearly gave up! There was one episode where almost 20 characters appeared, and I was completely lost. Fortunately, it improved a lot after episode 9, and I ended up smoothly watching up to episode 30.
What drew me in was the character of Su Mu Yu, the assassin with the 18-blade umbrella (this is a prequel/spin-off of The Blood of Youth). The main actor, Gong Jun, was a concern at first. He was a bit stiff, but since his character is meant to be stoic, he grew on me after episode eight or so. He’s not terrible, and when he doesn’t express emotions, you can still feel it.
Blood River ended up being the most well-regarded of the male-led dramas of November, scoring a 7.2 at Douban to date.
Just aired…
Blemish Flaw
Started watching this because youtuber Avenue X mentioned that this was the same team behind the highly-praised Heroes. Watched up to six episodes, and I can say that it’s a thrilling psychological twister of a drama. Lots of potential with this one, because you’re just not sure whose version of the story is the correct one.
Why Is He Still Single?
You will know the answer to this question after 10 minutes of watching the show!
Ah, Wallace Huo! My crush from a decade ago! This time he returns as the cantankerous Mr. Yu who gives the impression that he’d much rather deal with the AI versions of his clients and the people around him. I found myself laughing out loud at some scenes, which is what I totally needed in November.
Catching up with…
Dramas that aired a while back…
Love in the Clouds
I was initially curious about this one because it had a solid Douban score of 7, which usually signals a good watch. However, I couldn’t even get past the first episode. The female lead’s peppy, zesty personality was a bit grating for me, and it didn’t align with the narrative that she’s a seven-time tournament-winning warrior.
There’s an intriguing enemies-to-lovers storyline somewhere beneath the surface, but the comedy didn’t land for me at all. In the end, I looked up what happens in future episodes, and I’m kind of glad I dropped it. It seems to be full of “noble idiocy,” back-and-forth, and miscommunication—a classic Xianxia trope that I find very tedious. It might be your cup of tea, but it just wasn’t for me.
Verdict: Dropped after 2 episodes 😛
When Destiny Meets the Demon
Who knew that I’d end up watching 15 episodes of a saccharine, transmigration drama? Is it the magnetic aura of Arthur Chen or his many kisses? To be honest, I found the story pretty typical and not extraordinary, but I’m still watching for some reason. The most annoying thing about this drama are the one-dimensional villains (sect leaders, as usual!).
Controversy Derails Lady Liberty
The career-defining drama for Tangyan was unexpectedly derailed by a scandal! This is such a bummer as I’ve been waiting forever to watch Lady Liberty. Who would’ve thought that it would end up being derailed by its scriptwriter, who supposedly bribed someone to make the police release her after an offence?
This is such a messy affair, and as this involves a major crime by China’s standards, there are huge doubts that it’ll ever air. I’m absolutely heartbroken—for Tangyan, and for the hardworking folks behind the drama.
-
Spill the Tea #2: Whispers of Fate, Blood River, and so much more
November was a bit of a struggle, personally and drama-wise. Personally, I ended up dealing with a medical issue. Drama-wise, I’m still recovering from the masterpiece that was Fated Hearts, and finding a drama to fill that void has been tougher than expected. But I did attempt a few shows, as you can see below!
This month is the battle of the male-led dramas: Blood River, Whispers of Fate, Fight for Love and Sword and Beloved. Who will come out tops?
PS: Each time I do these issues, I realise that I watch a hella lot of CDramas a month. How do I do it? That’s a mystery!
The Four Big Boys
Whispers of Fate
I’ll be the first to admit I can be shallow, but the styling in this drama is just… a lot. I find myself completely fixated on the male actors’ hairstyles, all the bits and bobs hanging off their robes, the dangly pieces in their hair, the gauzy clothes that flutter as they move. It all feels very pretentious and self-aware.
It’s not that the story is bad. In fact, the more I learn about the story, the more intrigued I am by the plot’s potential. But the over-the-top storytelling and directing style make it incredibly difficult for me to buy into this universe. My brain just keeps wondering how many hours they must spend in the makeup chair!
I’m also a bit wary of the central conflict. The entire drama seems to hinge on a single misunderstanding that could be solved if they were just locked in a room and forced to talk. (Though, to be fair, I’ve heard the other person wasn’t willing to listen.) I’m not a huge fan of plots driven solely by a lack of communication.
In the end, after following the plot via social media posts and recaps, I realized it just wasn’t for me.
Read why I dropped Whispers of Fate after 8 episodes.
Fight for Love
With the limited time I have, it was impossible to catch all the “big boys”. Interestingly, while I found Fight For Love had the best potential story of the lot, it seemed to have fared the poorest, with Douban releasing its scores three days early (!) at a dismal 5.3!
How does a Cdrama get scored when it had barely started its run? Something weird is going on here.
Like I said, I found the premise the most interesting of the “male lead dramas” I watched this month, but I just do not have the time (nor the mood) to watch a drama that is about devastating wars, betrayals, political battles and such. However, I will most certainly make the time for it in the future, as I found some of the side stories rather sweet and interesting.
Sword and Beloved
This is another C-drama that didn’t even entice me to watch, however it seems to be fairly popular. When it comes to xianxia, I need something that breaks the mould to really capture my attention. Sword and the Beloved feels like a very typical xianxia/xuanhuan: a powerful, ice-cold male lead meets a bubbly, pixie female lead who brings light to his dark world. I was bored just reading the summary. I’m sure it will captivate some viewers, but for me, it was just too generic.
The third in the big-budget trilogy which began with Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red Moon Pact, word is this drama started out very well but derailed significantly midway to the point of no return. Alas, what a sad state of affairs for a drama so hyped up and highly anticipated.
Verdict: Didn’t start
Blood River
This was my attempt to move on from Fated Hearts. While it’s interesting enough to keep me watching, Blood River doesn’t come close to the rich, sweeping storytelling of my previous obsession.
The first six episodes were overwhelming, throwing a slew of battles and a dozen characters at me in quick succession. I nearly gave up! There was one episode where almost 20 characters appeared, and I was completely lost. Fortunately, it improved a lot after episode 9, and I ended up smoothly watching up to episode 30.
What drew me in was the character of Su Mu Yu, the assassin with the 18-blade umbrella (this is a prequel/spin-off of The Blood of Youth). The main actor, Gong Jun, was a concern at first. He was a bit stiff, but since his character is meant to be stoic, he grew on me after episode eight or so. He’s not terrible, and when he doesn’t express emotions, you can still feel it.
Blood River ended up being the most well-regarded of the male-led dramas of November, scoring a 7.2 at Douban to date.
Just aired…
Blemish Flaw
Started watching this because youtuber Avenue X mentioned that this was the same team behind the highly-praised Heroes. Watched up to six episodes, and I can say that it’s a thrilling psychological twister of a drama. Lots of potential with this one, because you’re just not sure whose version of the story is the correct one.
Why Is He Still Single?
You will know the answer to this question after 10 minutes of watching the show!
Ah, Wallace Huo! My crush from a decade ago! This time he returns as the cantankerous Mr. Yu who gives the impression that he’d much rather deal with the AI versions of his clients and the people around him. I found myself laughing out loud at some scenes, which is what I totally needed in November.
Catching up with…
Dramas that aired a while back…
Love in the Clouds
I was initially curious about this one because it had a solid Douban score of 7, which usually signals a good watch. However, I couldn’t even get past the first episode. The female lead’s peppy, zesty personality was a bit grating for me, and it didn’t align with the narrative that she’s a seven-time tournament-winning warrior.
There’s an intriguing enemies-to-lovers storyline somewhere beneath the surface, but the comedy didn’t land for me at all. In the end, I looked up what happens in future episodes, and I’m kind of glad I dropped it. It seems to be full of “noble idiocy,” back-and-forth, and miscommunication—a classic Xianxia trope that I find very tedious. It might be your cup of tea, but it just wasn’t for me.
Verdict: Dropped after 2 episodes 😛
When Destiny Meets the Demon
Who knew that I’d end up watching 15 episodes of a saccharine, transmigration drama? Is it the magnetic aura of Arthur Chen or his many kisses? To be honest, I found the story pretty typical and not extraordinary, but I’m still watching for some reason. The most annoying thing about this drama are the one-dimensional villains (sect leaders, as usual!).
Controversy Derails Lady Liberty
The career-defining drama for Tangyan was unexpectedly derailed by a scandal! This is such a bummer as I’ve been waiting forever to watch Lady Liberty. Who would’ve thought that it would end up being derailed by its scriptwriter, who supposedly bribed someone to make the police release her after an offence?
This is such a messy affair, and as this involves a major crime by China’s standards, there are huge doubts that it’ll ever air. I’m absolutely heartbroken—for Tangyan, and for the hardworking folks behind the drama.
-
Spill the Tea #2: Whispers of Fate, Blood River, and so much more
November was a bit of a struggle, personally and drama-wise. Personally, I ended up dealing with a medical issue. Drama-wise, I’m still recovering from the masterpiece that was Fated Hearts, and finding a drama to fill that void has been tougher than expected. But I did attempt a few shows, as you can see below!
This month is the battle of the male-led dramas: Blood River, Whispers of Fate, Fight for Love and Sword and Beloved. Who will come out tops?
PS: Each time I do these issues, I realise that I watch a hella lot of CDramas a month. How do I do it? That’s a mystery!
The Four Big Boys
Whispers of Fate
I’ll be the first to admit I can be shallow, but the styling in this drama is just… a lot. I find myself completely fixated on the male actors’ hairstyles, all the bits and bobs hanging off their robes, the dangly pieces in their hair, the gauzy clothes that flutter as they move. It all feels very pretentious and self-aware.
It’s not that the story is bad. In fact, the more I learn about the story, the more intrigued I am by the plot’s potential. But the over-the-top storytelling and directing style make it incredibly difficult for me to buy into this universe. My brain just keeps wondering how many hours they must spend in the makeup chair!
I’m also a bit wary of the central conflict. The entire drama seems to hinge on a single misunderstanding that could be solved if they were just locked in a room and forced to talk. (Though, to be fair, I’ve heard the other person wasn’t willing to listen.) I’m not a huge fan of plots driven solely by a lack of communication.
In the end, after following the plot via social media posts and recaps, I realized it just wasn’t for me.
Read why I dropped Whispers of Fate after 8 episodes.
Fight for Love
With the limited time I have, it was impossible to catch all the “big boys”. Interestingly, while I found Fight For Love had the best potential story of the lot, it seemed to have fared the poorest, with Douban releasing its scores three days early (!) at a dismal 5.3!
How does a Cdrama get scored when it had barely started its run? Something weird is going on here.
Like I said, I found the premise the most interesting of the “male lead dramas” I watched this month, but I just do not have the time (nor the mood) to watch a drama that is about devastating wars, betrayals, political battles and such. However, I will most certainly make the time for it in the future, as I found some of the side stories rather sweet and interesting.
Sword and Beloved
This is another C-drama that didn’t even entice me to watch, however it seems to be fairly popular. When it comes to xianxia, I need something that breaks the mould to really capture my attention. Sword and the Beloved feels like a very typical xianxia/xuanhuan: a powerful, ice-cold male lead meets a bubbly, pixie female lead who brings light to his dark world. I was bored just reading the summary. I’m sure it will captivate some viewers, but for me, it was just too generic.
The third in the big-budget trilogy which began with Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red Moon Pact, word is this drama started out very well but derailed significantly midway to the point of no return. Alas, what a sad state of affairs for a drama so hyped up and highly anticipated.
Verdict: Didn’t start
Blood River
This was my attempt to move on from Fated Hearts. While it’s interesting enough to keep me watching, Blood River doesn’t come close to the rich, sweeping storytelling of my previous obsession.
The first six episodes were overwhelming, throwing a slew of battles and a dozen characters at me in quick succession. I nearly gave up! There was one episode where almost 20 characters appeared, and I was completely lost. Fortunately, it improved a lot after episode 9, and I ended up smoothly watching up to episode 30.
What drew me in was the character of Su Mu Yu, the assassin with the 18-blade umbrella (this is a prequel/spin-off of The Blood of Youth). The main actor, Gong Jun, was a concern at first. He was a bit stiff, but since his character is meant to be stoic, he grew on me after episode eight or so. He’s not terrible, and when he doesn’t express emotions, you can still feel it.
Blood River ended up being the most well-regarded of the male-led dramas of November, scoring a 7.2 at Douban to date.
Just aired…
Blemish Flaw
Started watching this because youtuber Avenue X mentioned that this was the same team behind the highly-praised Heroes. Watched up to six episodes, and I can say that it’s a thrilling psychological twister of a drama. Lots of potential with this one, because you’re just not sure whose version of the story is the correct one.
Why Is He Still Single?
You will know the answer to this question after 10 minutes of watching the show!
Ah, Wallace Huo! My crush from a decade ago! This time he returns as the cantankerous Mr. Yu who gives the impression that he’d much rather deal with the AI versions of his clients and the people around him. I found myself laughing out loud at some scenes, which is what I totally needed in November.
Catching up with…
Dramas that aired a while back…
Love in the Clouds
I was initially curious about this one because it had a solid Douban score of 7, which usually signals a good watch. However, I couldn’t even get past the first episode. The female lead’s peppy, zesty personality was a bit grating for me, and it didn’t align with the narrative that she’s a seven-time tournament-winning warrior.
There’s an intriguing enemies-to-lovers storyline somewhere beneath the surface, but the comedy didn’t land for me at all. In the end, I looked up what happens in future episodes, and I’m kind of glad I dropped it. It seems to be full of “noble idiocy,” back-and-forth, and miscommunication—a classic Xianxia trope that I find very tedious. It might be your cup of tea, but it just wasn’t for me.
Verdict: Dropped after 2 episodes 😛
When Destiny Meets the Demon
Who knew that I’d end up watching 15 episodes of a saccharine, transmigration drama? Is it the magnetic aura of Arthur Chen or his many kisses? To be honest, I found the story pretty typical and not extraordinary, but I’m still watching for some reason. The most annoying thing about this drama are the one-dimensional villains (sect leaders, as usual!).
Controversy Derails Lady Liberty
The career-defining drama for Tangyan was unexpectedly derailed by a scandal! This is such a bummer as I’ve been waiting forever to watch Lady Liberty. Who would’ve thought that it would end up being derailed by its scriptwriter, who supposedly bribed someone to make the police release her after an offence?
This is such a messy affair, and as this involves a major crime by China’s standards, there are huge doubts that it’ll ever air. I’m absolutely heartbroken—for Tangyan, and for the hardworking folks behind the drama.
-
The General Who Defied a President
Perhaps no period characterized chaos about the future of the Republic than the years 1866-1868. And perhaps no one individual did so much to save it in those years as the man who had labored so hard to preserve it from 1861-1865: Ulysses S. Grant.
Pres. Andrew Johnson (LoC)One would think that having put down a rebellion, the United States would be on a path to recovery and strength. Enter President Andrew Johnson. President by virtue of Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson was the worst man at the worst place at the worst time (oh, for an alternate universe where Lincoln kept amiable Mainer Hannibal Hamlin as VP in 1864). As a pro-Union Southerner, Johnson was not only conciliatory to the former self-declared Confederacy but downright magnanimous. And less than enthused about the prospect of abolition, to put it lightly. A dedicated enthusiast of the White race’s dominance in the U.S., Johnson would stand in the way of any civil rights legislation.
Scarcely had the guns stopped firing on the battlefield than Johnson began to show warning signs that the victory won on the field was about to be lost politically. Johnson welcomed former Southern congressmen back to the House – many of whom had just taken off their Confederate Army officer uniforms. As northern and Unionist congressmen watched their recent antagonists resume the seats in the government they had just tried to restore, their tempers exploded. In a simple act of bureaucratic procedure, the clerk of the House refused to read in the names of the Southern congressmen during roll call opening the 39th session of Congress in December 1865. The House remained solidly Unionist and abolitionist.
However, Johnson would not be de-fanged so easily. Even with a solid block of loyal Republicans in Congress, Johnson wielded his veto to try to strike down any civil rights legislation and any bills that would protect Southern Blacks from the “rebellious spirit” of Southern Whites, as George Armstrong Custer (of all people) called it. 1 He also attempted to withdraw U.S. troops from the South, the line of defense for freed people against terrorism, kidnapping, and brutality. Congress halted the withdrawal of U.S. Army troops in January of 1866. The Army was now very definitely in politics. And so was its general-in-chief.
Defender of the Republic (Again)
Ulysses S. Grant would not have described himself as a politician, but as General of the Army, he played a significantly political role. And for the first time, Grant found himself taking an opposite position from the president he was supposed to support and advise. Releasing General Orders No. 3, Grant directed the Army to protect loyal citizens and Blacks in the Southern states not just from physical violence, but from political violence – quietly letting commanders know that they were to obey orders coming from him, not the executive branch. The order directed commanders to protect African Americans from unfair prosecution by state and local courts. Unwilling to publicly challenge the popular general, Johnson let this slide. For now. But he marked that Grant had sided with Congress.
The summer of 1866 was marked by violence: physical, from Whites against Blacks in the South; and political, between the president and congress. As White mobs committed murders, rapes, and atrocities in towns and cities across the South, Congress pushed through the 14th Amendment and extended Federal judicial protection for freed people – all over Johnson’s attempts to veto. As Grant watched the president fight so hard against everything the war had been fought over, he became, as an aide said, “more & more radical.” Most of all, he would not allow the Army to become a “party machine.”2
For his part, Johnson realized that he would not get anywhere until Grant was out of the way. To test the General-in-Chief’s loyalty, Johnson had Grant accompany him on an August political tour of Northern states. Grant grew so disgusted at Johnson’s ranting against the 14th Amendment that he claimed illness and went home early, writing to his wife Julia that he looked upon the president as “a national disgrace.” Johnson openly wondered about using the military to purge his enemies from Congress, asking Grant which side the Army would take in such a trial. Grant sidestepped this by replying whichever side the law was on, while quietly ordering weapons moved out of arsenals in the South. Writing to his old friend and fellow Ohioan Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan, Grant confided his worst fears: “we are fast approaching the point where he [Johnson] will want to declare the body [Congress] illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary.”3
The Banishment to Mexico
William Tecumseh Sherman (LoC)Johnson resolved to get Grant out of the way before the autumnal elections. Governor Thomas Swann of Maryland requested federal troops to oust Republican voting registrars from Baltimore, where the city had just defeated a bill that would have granted voting rights to ex-Confederates. Grant had resisted this request, so Johnson resorted to the age-old method of removing a troublesome subordinate: appoint them to a diplomatic mission and get them out of the country. In this case, Mexico. Johnson directed William Tecumseh Sherman to come east to replace Grant, believing that Sherman would fall into line. Sherman came east, but refused to have anything to do with Johnson. Johnson even promised him the position of secretary of war. Nothing doing. As Sherman is said to have stated about Grant, “Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.” Once again, he stuck with Grant. Finally, Johnson ordered Grant to Mexico. But there was a problem. Grant refused.
Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman once said of Grant, ““[Grant] habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.” To say he was stubborn is an understatement. Claiming that he lacked the diplomatic skills for such a mission and that the president would be better served with someone from the State Department, Grant dodged the assignment. Johnson ordered him to do so in a cabinet meeting, which caused Grant to answer, “I am an American citizen, and eligible to any office to which any American is eligible. I am an officer of the Army, and bound to obey your military orders. But this is a civil office, a purely diplomatic duty that you offer me, and I cannot be compelled to undertake it. … No power on Earth can compel me to do it.” Annoyed, Johnson sent Sherman to Mexico and asked Grant for troops in Maryland to “intervene on the governor’s side to prevent violence.” “This,” Grant observed, “would produce the very result intended to be averted.” He refused to send troops but did issue G.O. No. 44., ordering U.S. Army officers to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Johnson and Grant were now in their own conflict.4
Reduction by Promotion
The fall 1866 elections brought another veto-proof Republican majority back to Congress which began to execute Congressional Reconstruction, returning the South to military districts until each state met conditions of equality and adherence to the 13th and 14th Amendments. Congress also passed a rider in the military appropriations bill which removed presidential authority to give direct orders to the Army: all orders would have to go through, or come from, Grant. When in 1867 Johnson’s attorney general tried to reduce the authority of U.S. Army officers; Grant told district commanders that since the opinion did not come through military channels, they were free to use their own judgement.5
Gen. U.S. Grant (LoC)When Congress recessed for the summer, Johnson decided one more time to get rid of this troublesome general who kept interfering in his plans. This time, he would get Grant out of the way by suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (another Ohioan who gave Johnson constant headaches via stubborn resistance) and replacing him with Grant ad interim. A reluctant Grant acceded, possibly to keep another more compliant person from occupying the position.
But the fall 1867 elections brought more Democrats into office and a surge of terrorist groups in the South, such as the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson moved swiftly to consolidate power, firing generals heading military departments. Notably, he fired Sheridan, further alienating Grant and inflaming the situation in the South where violence levels grew. As Maj. Gen. John Pope left command of the district encompassing Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, he noted to his replacement, Maj. Gen. George Meade, “the Rebellion is as active & so far as the people of this Dist. are concerned, nearly as powerful as during the War.”6
Congress entered the fray in January of 1868, setting the stage for Grant’s last battle with the president he served. Congress ordered Stanton’s immediate reinstatement. Johnson refused. Grant, then, was left with the thorny choice of disobeying the Senate and violating the Tenure of Office Act, or directly opposing his president. It probably comes as no surprise that Granted handed over the keys to the War Department to Stanton. This utterly enraged Johnson, who went off on Grant in a cabinet meeting. Johnson then tried Sherman again, offering him command of a special division to be headquartered in D.C. – a thinly veiled threat to Congress. A disgusted Sherman headed west. Johnson then gave the same offer to Virginian Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. He should have known better than to try to coopt a man who broke from his family and state to stay loyal to the Union in 1861. Thomas turned him down. An infuriated Johnson then fired Stanton, but that cantankerous cabinet member locked himself in his office and refused to come out. This was the last straw, and after three days of Stanton confinement, the House impeached Johnson.7
Conclusion
Civilian control of the military is a bedrock of American democracy, repeatedly enforced by Washington during the Revolution and embodied in law thereafter. Could any general other than Grant have gotten away with this resistance, and could Grant have done it if it had been any president other than Johnson? We will probably never know. Grant was a national hero and Johnson was vilified by half the country. The era was one of repeated constitutional crises, so gray areas were more common. What we do know is that Grant’s steadfast devotion to civil rights and stubborn commitment brought him to national political attention, and he was on the ballot as the Republican candidate for president in 1868. His nemesis, Johnson, did not even get the nod from his own party and did not appear on the ballot.
Yet another opponent who lost to Grant.
Sources:
- Robert Wooster, The U.S. Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903 (University of Kansas, 2021), 204. ↩︎
- Wooster, 210. ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/general-grant-refuses-president-johnson-s-diplomatic-request.htm; David O. Stewart, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (Simon & Schuster, 2010). Ivan Perkins, Vanishing Coup: The Pattern of World History since 1310 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request; Wooster, 212. David Priess, “How a Difficult, Racist, Stubborn President Was Removed From Power—If Not From Office,” Politico (Nov. 13, 2018), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/13/andrew-johnson-undermined-congress-cabinet-david-priess-book-222413/ ↩︎
- Wooster, 215. Priess. ↩︎
- Wooster, 215-217. ↩︎
- Ulysses S Grant National Historic Site, Ulysses S. Grant is Appointed Secretary of War Ad Interim, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-as-appointed-secretary-of-war-ad-interim.htm; Wooster, 217-219. ↩︎
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-
The General Who Defied a President
Perhaps no period characterized chaos about the future of the Republic than the years 1866-1868. And perhaps no one individual did so much to save it in those years as the man who had labored so hard to preserve it from 1861-1865: Ulysses S. Grant.
Pres. Andrew Johnson (LoC)One would think that having put down a rebellion, the United States would be on a path to recovery and strength. Enter President Andrew Johnson. President by virtue of Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson was the worst man at the worst place at the worst time (oh, for an alternate universe where Lincoln kept amiable Mainer Hannibal Hamlin as VP in 1864). As a pro-Union Southerner, Johnson was not only conciliatory to the former self-declared Confederacy but downright magnanimous. And less than enthused about the prospect of abolition, to put it lightly. A dedicated enthusiast of the White race’s dominance in the U.S., Johnson would stand in the way of any civil rights legislation.
Scarcely had the guns stopped firing on the battlefield than Johnson began to show warning signs that the victory won on the field was about to be lost politically. Johnson welcomed former Southern congressmen back to the House – many of whom had just taken off their Confederate Army officer uniforms. As northern and Unionist congressmen watched their recent antagonists resume the seats in the government they had just tried to restore, their tempers exploded. In a simple act of bureaucratic procedure, the clerk of the House refused to read in the names of the Southern congressmen during roll call opening the 39th session of Congress in December 1865. The House remained solidly Unionist and abolitionist.
However, Johnson would not be de-fanged so easily. Even with a solid block of loyal Republicans in Congress, Johnson wielded his veto to try to strike down any civil rights legislation and any bills that would protect Southern Blacks from the “rebellious spirit” of Southern Whites, as George Armstrong Custer (of all people) called it. 1 He also attempted to withdraw U.S. troops from the South, the line of defense for freed people against terrorism, kidnapping, and brutality. Congress halted the withdrawal of U.S. Army troops in January of 1866. The Army was now very definitely in politics. And so was its general-in-chief.
Defender of the Republic (Again)
Ulysses S. Grant would not have described himself as a politician, but as General of the Army, he played a significantly political role. And for the first time, Grant found himself taking an opposite position from the president he was supposed to support and advise. Releasing General Orders No. 3, Grant directed the Army to protect loyal citizens and Blacks in the Southern states not just from physical violence, but from political violence – quietly letting commanders know that they were to obey orders coming from him, not the executive branch. The order directed commanders to protect African Americans from unfair prosecution by state and local courts. Unwilling to publicly challenge the popular general, Johnson let this slide. For now. But he marked that Grant had sided with Congress.
The summer of 1866 was marked by violence: physical, from Whites against Blacks in the South; and political, between the president and congress. As White mobs committed murders, rapes, and atrocities in towns and cities across the South, Congress pushed through the 14th Amendment and extended Federal judicial protection for freed people – all over Johnson’s attempts to veto. As Grant watched the president fight so hard against everything the war had been fought over, he became, as an aide said, “more & more radical.” Most of all, he would not allow the Army to become a “party machine.”2
For his part, Johnson realized that he would not get anywhere until Grant was out of the way. To test the General-in-Chief’s loyalty, Johnson had Grant accompany him on an August political tour of Northern states. Grant grew so disgusted at Johnson’s ranting against the 14th Amendment that he claimed illness and went home early, writing to his wife Julia that he looked upon the president as “a national disgrace.” Johnson openly wondered about using the military to purge his enemies from Congress, asking Grant which side the Army would take in such a trial. Grant sidestepped this by replying whichever side the law was on, while quietly ordering weapons moved out of arsenals in the South. Writing to his old friend and fellow Ohioan Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan, Grant confided his worst fears: “we are fast approaching the point where he [Johnson] will want to declare the body [Congress] illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary.”3
The Banishment to Mexico
William Tecumseh Sherman (LoC)Johnson resolved to get Grant out of the way before the autumnal elections. Governor Thomas Swann of Maryland requested federal troops to oust Republican voting registrars from Baltimore, where the city had just defeated a bill that would have granted voting rights to ex-Confederates. Grant had resisted this request, so Johnson resorted to the age-old method of removing a troublesome subordinate: appoint them to a diplomatic mission and get them out of the country. In this case, Mexico. Johnson directed William Tecumseh Sherman to come east to replace Grant, believing that Sherman would fall into line. Sherman came east, but refused to have anything to do with Johnson. Johnson even promised him the position of secretary of war. Nothing doing. As Sherman is said to have stated about Grant, “Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.” Once again, he stuck with Grant. Finally, Johnson ordered Grant to Mexico. But there was a problem. Grant refused.
Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman once said of Grant, ““[Grant] habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.” To say he was stubborn is an understatement. Claiming that he lacked the diplomatic skills for such a mission and that the president would be better served with someone from the State Department, Grant dodged the assignment. Johnson ordered him to do so in a cabinet meeting, which caused Grant to answer, “I am an American citizen, and eligible to any office to which any American is eligible. I am an officer of the Army, and bound to obey your military orders. But this is a civil office, a purely diplomatic duty that you offer me, and I cannot be compelled to undertake it. … No power on Earth can compel me to do it.” Annoyed, Johnson sent Sherman to Mexico and asked Grant for troops in Maryland to “intervene on the governor’s side to prevent violence.” “This,” Grant observed, “would produce the very result intended to be averted.” He refused to send troops but did issue G.O. No. 44., ordering U.S. Army officers to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Johnson and Grant were now in their own conflict.4
Reduction by Promotion
The fall 1866 elections brought another veto-proof Republican majority back to Congress which began to execute Congressional Reconstruction, returning the South to military districts until each state met conditions of equality and adherence to the 13th and 14th Amendments. Congress also passed a rider in the military appropriations bill which removed presidential authority to give direct orders to the Army: all orders would have to go through, or come from, Grant. When in 1867 Johnson’s attorney general tried to reduce the authority of U.S. Army officers; Grant told district commanders that since the opinion did not come through military channels, they were free to use their own judgement.5
Gen. U.S. Grant (LoC)When Congress recessed for the summer, Johnson decided one more time to get rid of this troublesome general who kept interfering in his plans. This time, he would get Grant out of the way by suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (another Ohioan who gave Johnson constant headaches via stubborn resistance) and replacing him with Grant ad interim. A reluctant Grant acceded, possibly to keep another more compliant person from occupying the position.
But the fall 1867 elections brought more Democrats into office and a surge of terrorist groups in the South, such as the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson moved swiftly to consolidate power, firing generals heading military departments. Notably, he fired Sheridan, further alienating Grant and inflaming the situation in the South where violence levels grew. As Maj. Gen. John Pope left command of the district encompassing Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, he noted to his replacement, Maj. Gen. George Meade, “the Rebellion is as active & so far as the people of this Dist. are concerned, nearly as powerful as during the War.”6
Congress entered the fray in January of 1868, setting the stage for Grant’s last battle with the president he served. Congress ordered Stanton’s immediate reinstatement. Johnson refused. Grant, then, was left with the thorny choice of disobeying the Senate and violating the Tenure of Office Act, or directly opposing his president. It probably comes as no surprise that Granted handed over the keys to the War Department to Stanton. This utterly enraged Johnson, who went off on Grant in a cabinet meeting. Johnson then tried Sherman again, offering him command of a special division to be headquartered in D.C. – a thinly veiled threat to Congress. A disgusted Sherman headed west. Johnson then gave the same offer to Virginian Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. He should have known better than to try to coopt a man who broke from his family and state to stay loyal to the Union in 1861. Thomas turned him down. An infuriated Johnson then fired Stanton, but that cantankerous cabinet member locked himself in his office and refused to come out. This was the last straw, and after three days of Stanton confinement, the House impeached Johnson.7
Conclusion
Civilian control of the military is a bedrock of American democracy, repeatedly enforced by Washington during the Revolution and embodied in law thereafter. Could any general other than Grant have gotten away with this resistance, and could Grant have done it if it had been any president other than Johnson? We will probably never know. Grant was a national hero and Johnson was vilified by half the country. The era was one of repeated constitutional crises, so gray areas were more common. What we do know is that Grant’s steadfast devotion to civil rights and stubborn commitment brought him to national political attention, and he was on the ballot as the Republican candidate for president in 1868. His nemesis, Johnson, did not even get the nod from his own party and did not appear on the ballot.
Yet another opponent who lost to Grant.
Sources:
- Robert Wooster, The U.S. Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903 (University of Kansas, 2021), 204. ↩︎
- Wooster, 210. ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/general-grant-refuses-president-johnson-s-diplomatic-request.htm; David O. Stewart, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (Simon & Schuster, 2010). Ivan Perkins, Vanishing Coup: The Pattern of World History since 1310 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request; Wooster, 212. David Priess, “How a Difficult, Racist, Stubborn President Was Removed From Power—If Not From Office,” Politico (Nov. 13, 2018), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/13/andrew-johnson-undermined-congress-cabinet-david-priess-book-222413/ ↩︎
- Wooster, 215. Priess. ↩︎
- Wooster, 215-217. ↩︎
- Ulysses S Grant National Historic Site, Ulysses S. Grant is Appointed Secretary of War Ad Interim, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-as-appointed-secretary-of-war-ad-interim.htm; Wooster, 217-219. ↩︎
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The opinions represented here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.
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-
The General Who Defied a President
Perhaps no period characterized chaos about the future of the Republic than the years 1866-1868. And perhaps no one individual did so much to save it in those years as the man who had labored so hard to preserve it from 1861-1865: Ulysses S. Grant.
Pres. Andrew Johnson (LoC)One would think that having put down a rebellion, the United States would be on a path to recovery and strength. Enter President Andrew Johnson. President by virtue of Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson was the worst man at the worst place at the worst time (oh, for an alternate universe where Lincoln kept amiable Mainer Hannibal Hamlin as VP in 1864). As a pro-Union Southerner, Johnson was not only conciliatory to the former self-declared Confederacy but downright magnanimous. And less than enthused about the prospect of abolition, to put it lightly. A dedicated enthusiast of the White race’s dominance in the U.S., Johnson would stand in the way of any civil rights legislation.
Scarcely had the guns stopped firing on the battlefield than Johnson began to show warning signs that the victory won on the field was about to be lost politically. Johnson welcomed former Southern congressmen back to the House – many of whom had just taken off their Confederate Army officer uniforms. As northern and Unionist congressmen watched their recent antagonists resume the seats in the government they had just tried to restore, their tempers exploded. In a simple act of bureaucratic procedure, the clerk of the House refused to read in the names of the Southern congressmen during roll call opening the 39th session of Congress in December 1865. The House remained solidly Unionist and abolitionist.
However, Johnson would not be de-fanged so easily. Even with a solid block of loyal Republicans in Congress, Johnson wielded his veto to try to strike down any civil rights legislation and any bills that would protect Southern Blacks from the “rebellious spirit” of Southern Whites, as George Armstrong Custer (of all people) called it. 1 He also attempted to withdraw U.S. troops from the South, the line of defense for freed people against terrorism, kidnapping, and brutality. Congress halted the withdrawal of U.S. Army troops in January of 1866. The Army was now very definitely in politics. And so was its general-in-chief.
Defender of the Republic (Again)
Ulysses S. Grant would not have described himself as a politician, but as General of the Army, he played a significantly political role. And for the first time, Grant found himself taking an opposite position from the president he was supposed to support and advise. Releasing General Orders No. 3, Grant directed the Army to protect loyal citizens and Blacks in the Southern states not just from physical violence, but from political violence – quietly letting commanders know that they were to obey orders coming from him, not the executive branch. The order directed commanders to protect African Americans from unfair prosecution by state and local courts. Unwilling to publicly challenge the popular general, Johnson let this slide. For now. But he marked that Grant had sided with Congress.
The summer of 1866 was marked by violence: physical, from Whites against Blacks in the South; and political, between the president and congress. As White mobs committed murders, rapes, and atrocities in towns and cities across the South, Congress pushed through the 14th Amendment and extended Federal judicial protection for freed people – all over Johnson’s attempts to veto. As Grant watched the president fight so hard against everything the war had been fought over, he became, as an aide said, “more & more radical.” Most of all, he would not allow the Army to become a “party machine.”2
For his part, Johnson realized that he would not get anywhere until Grant was out of the way. To test the General-in-Chief’s loyalty, Johnson had Grant accompany him on an August political tour of Northern states. Grant grew so disgusted at Johnson’s ranting against the 14th Amendment that he claimed illness and went home early, writing to his wife Julia that he looked upon the president as “a national disgrace.” Johnson openly wondered about using the military to purge his enemies from Congress, asking Grant which side the Army would take in such a trial. Grant sidestepped this by replying whichever side the law was on, while quietly ordering weapons moved out of arsenals in the South. Writing to his old friend and fellow Ohioan Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan, Grant confided his worst fears: “we are fast approaching the point where he [Johnson] will want to declare the body [Congress] illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary.”3
The Banishment to Mexico
William Tecumseh Sherman (LoC)Johnson resolved to get Grant out of the way before the autumnal elections. Governor Thomas Swann of Maryland requested federal troops to oust Republican voting registrars from Baltimore, where the city had just defeated a bill that would have granted voting rights to ex-Confederates. Grant had resisted this request, so Johnson resorted to the age-old method of removing a troublesome subordinate: appoint them to a diplomatic mission and get them out of the country. In this case, Mexico. Johnson directed William Tecumseh Sherman to come east to replace Grant, believing that Sherman would fall into line. Sherman came east, but refused to have anything to do with Johnson. Johnson even promised him the position of secretary of war. Nothing doing. As Sherman is said to have stated about Grant, “Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.” Once again, he stuck with Grant. Finally, Johnson ordered Grant to Mexico. But there was a problem. Grant refused.
Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman once said of Grant, ““[Grant] habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.” To say he was stubborn is an understatement. Claiming that he lacked the diplomatic skills for such a mission and that the president would be better served with someone from the State Department, Grant dodged the assignment. Johnson ordered him to do so in a cabinet meeting, which caused Grant to answer, “I am an American citizen, and eligible to any office to which any American is eligible. I am an officer of the Army, and bound to obey your military orders. But this is a civil office, a purely diplomatic duty that you offer me, and I cannot be compelled to undertake it. … No power on Earth can compel me to do it.” Annoyed, Johnson sent Sherman to Mexico and asked Grant for troops in Maryland to “intervene on the governor’s side to prevent violence.” “This,” Grant observed, “would produce the very result intended to be averted.” He refused to send troops but did issue G.O. No. 44., ordering U.S. Army officers to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Johnson and Grant were now in their own conflict.4
Reduction by Promotion
The fall 1866 elections brought another veto-proof Republican majority back to Congress which began to execute Congressional Reconstruction, returning the South to military districts until each state met conditions of equality and adherence to the 13th and 14th Amendments. Congress also passed a rider in the military appropriations bill which removed presidential authority to give direct orders to the Army: all orders would have to go through, or come from, Grant. When in 1867 Johnson’s attorney general tried to reduce the authority of U.S. Army officers; Grant told district commanders that since the opinion did not come through military channels, they were free to use their own judgement.5
Gen. U.S. Grant (LoC)When Congress recessed for the summer, Johnson decided one more time to get rid of this troublesome general who kept interfering in his plans. This time, he would get Grant out of the way by suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (another Ohioan who gave Johnson constant headaches via stubborn resistance) and replacing him with Grant ad interim. A reluctant Grant acceded, possibly to keep another more compliant person from occupying the position.
But the fall 1867 elections brought more Democrats into office and a surge of terrorist groups in the South, such as the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson moved swiftly to consolidate power, firing generals heading military departments. Notably, he fired Sheridan, further alienating Grant and inflaming the situation in the South where violence levels grew. As Maj. Gen. John Pope left command of the district encompassing Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, he noted to his replacement, Maj. Gen. George Meade, “the Rebellion is as active & so far as the people of this Dist. are concerned, nearly as powerful as during the War.”6
Congress entered the fray in January of 1868, setting the stage for Grant’s last battle with the president he served. Congress ordered Stanton’s immediate reinstatement. Johnson refused. Grant, then, was left with the thorny choice of disobeying the Senate and violating the Tenure of Office Act, or directly opposing his president. It probably comes as no surprise that Granted handed over the keys to the War Department to Stanton. This utterly enraged Johnson, who went off on Grant in a cabinet meeting. Johnson then tried Sherman again, offering him command of a special division to be headquartered in D.C. – a thinly veiled threat to Congress. A disgusted Sherman headed west. Johnson then gave the same offer to Virginian Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. He should have known better than to try to coopt a man who broke from his family and state to stay loyal to the Union in 1861. Thomas turned him down. An infuriated Johnson then fired Stanton, but that cantankerous cabinet member locked himself in his office and refused to come out. This was the last straw, and after three days of Stanton confinement, the House impeached Johnson.7
Conclusion
Civilian control of the military is a bedrock of American democracy, repeatedly enforced by Washington during the Revolution and embodied in law thereafter. Could any general other than Grant have gotten away with this resistance, and could Grant have done it if it had been any president other than Johnson? We will probably never know. Grant was a national hero and Johnson was vilified by half the country. The era was one of repeated constitutional crises, so gray areas were more common. What we do know is that Grant’s steadfast devotion to civil rights and stubborn commitment brought him to national political attention, and he was on the ballot as the Republican candidate for president in 1868. His nemesis, Johnson, did not even get the nod from his own party and did not appear on the ballot.
Yet another opponent who lost to Grant.
Sources:
- Robert Wooster, The U.S. Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903 (University of Kansas, 2021), 204. ↩︎
- Wooster, 210. ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/general-grant-refuses-president-johnson-s-diplomatic-request.htm; David O. Stewart, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (Simon & Schuster, 2010). Ivan Perkins, Vanishing Coup: The Pattern of World History since 1310 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request; Wooster, 212. David Priess, “How a Difficult, Racist, Stubborn President Was Removed From Power—If Not From Office,” Politico (Nov. 13, 2018), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/13/andrew-johnson-undermined-congress-cabinet-david-priess-book-222413/ ↩︎
- Wooster, 215. Priess. ↩︎
- Wooster, 215-217. ↩︎
- Ulysses S Grant National Historic Site, Ulysses S. Grant is Appointed Secretary of War Ad Interim, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-as-appointed-secretary-of-war-ad-interim.htm; Wooster, 217-219. ↩︎
Enjoy what you just read? Please share using the buttons below.
The opinions represented here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.
Rate this:
#AndrewJohnson #History #Military #Politics #Reconstruction #theGeneralWhoDefiedAPresident #USArmy #USGrant #UlyssesSGrant
-
The General Who Defied a President
Perhaps no period characterized chaos about the future of the Republic than the years 1866-1868. And perhaps no one individual did so much to save it in those years as the man who had labored so hard to preserve it from 1861-1865: Ulysses S. Grant.
Pres. Andrew Johnson (LoC)One would think that having put down a rebellion, the United States would be on a path to recovery and strength. Enter President Andrew Johnson. President by virtue of Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson was the worst man at the worst place at the worst time (oh, for an alternate universe where Lincoln kept amiable Mainer Hannibal Hamlin as VP in 1864). As a pro-Union Southerner, Johnson was not only conciliatory to the former self-declared Confederacy but downright magnanimous. And less than enthused about the prospect of abolition, to put it lightly. A dedicated enthusiast of the White race’s dominance in the U.S., Johnson would stand in the way of any civil rights legislation.
Scarcely had the guns stopped firing on the battlefield than Johnson began to show warning signs that the victory won on the field was about to be lost politically. Johnson welcomed former Southern congressmen back to the House – many of whom had just taken off their Confederate Army officer uniforms. As northern and Unionist congressmen watched their recent antagonists resume the seats in the government they had just tried to restore, their tempers exploded. In a simple act of bureaucratic procedure, the clerk of the House refused to read in the names of the Southern congressmen during roll call opening the 39th session of Congress in December 1865. The House remained solidly Unionist and abolitionist.
However, Johnson would not be de-fanged so easily. Even with a solid block of loyal Republicans in Congress, Johnson wielded his veto to try to strike down any civil rights legislation and any bills that would protect Southern Blacks from the “rebellious spirit” of Southern Whites, as George Armstrong Custer (of all people) called it. 1 He also attempted to withdraw U.S. troops from the South, the line of defense for freed people against terrorism, kidnapping, and brutality. Congress halted the withdrawal of U.S. Army troops in January of 1866. The Army was now very definitely in politics. And so was its general-in-chief.
Defender of the Republic (Again)
Ulysses S. Grant would not have described himself as a politician, but as General of the Army, he played a significantly political role. And for the first time, Grant found himself taking an opposite position from the president he was supposed to support and advise. Releasing General Orders No. 3, Grant directed the Army to protect loyal citizens and Blacks in the Southern states not just from physical violence, but from political violence – quietly letting commanders know that they were to obey orders coming from him, not the executive branch. The order directed commanders to protect African Americans from unfair prosecution by state and local courts. Unwilling to publicly challenge the popular general, Johnson let this slide. For now. But he marked that Grant had sided with Congress.
The summer of 1866 was marked by violence: physical, from Whites against Blacks in the South; and political, between the president and congress. As White mobs committed murders, rapes, and atrocities in towns and cities across the South, Congress pushed through the 14th Amendment and extended Federal judicial protection for freed people – all over Johnson’s attempts to veto. As Grant watched the president fight so hard against everything the war had been fought over, he became, as an aide said, “more & more radical.” Most of all, he would not allow the Army to become a “party machine.”2
For his part, Johnson realized that he would not get anywhere until Grant was out of the way. To test the General-in-Chief’s loyalty, Johnson had Grant accompany him on an August political tour of Northern states. Grant grew so disgusted at Johnson’s ranting against the 14th Amendment that he claimed illness and went home early, writing to his wife Julia that he looked upon the president as “a national disgrace.” Johnson openly wondered about using the military to purge his enemies from Congress, asking Grant which side the Army would take in such a trial. Grant sidestepped this by replying whichever side the law was on, while quietly ordering weapons moved out of arsenals in the South. Writing to his old friend and fellow Ohioan Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan, Grant confided his worst fears: “we are fast approaching the point where he [Johnson] will want to declare the body [Congress] illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary.”3
The Banishment to Mexico
William Tecumseh Sherman (LoC)Johnson resolved to get Grant out of the way before the autumnal elections. Governor Thomas Swann of Maryland requested federal troops to oust Republican voting registrars from Baltimore, where the city had just defeated a bill that would have granted voting rights to ex-Confederates. Grant had resisted this request, so Johnson resorted to the age-old method of removing a troublesome subordinate: appoint them to a diplomatic mission and get them out of the country. In this case, Mexico. Johnson directed William Tecumseh Sherman to come east to replace Grant, believing that Sherman would fall into line. Sherman came east, but refused to have anything to do with Johnson. Johnson even promised him the position of secretary of war. Nothing doing. As Sherman is said to have stated about Grant, “Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.” Once again, he stuck with Grant. Finally, Johnson ordered Grant to Mexico. But there was a problem. Grant refused.
Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman once said of Grant, ““[Grant] habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.” To say he was stubborn is an understatement. Claiming that he lacked the diplomatic skills for such a mission and that the president would be better served with someone from the State Department, Grant dodged the assignment. Johnson ordered him to do so in a cabinet meeting, which caused Grant to answer, “I am an American citizen, and eligible to any office to which any American is eligible. I am an officer of the Army, and bound to obey your military orders. But this is a civil office, a purely diplomatic duty that you offer me, and I cannot be compelled to undertake it. … No power on Earth can compel me to do it.” Annoyed, Johnson sent Sherman to Mexico and asked Grant for troops in Maryland to “intervene on the governor’s side to prevent violence.” “This,” Grant observed, “would produce the very result intended to be averted.” He refused to send troops but did issue G.O. No. 44., ordering U.S. Army officers to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Johnson and Grant were now in their own conflict.4
Reduction by Promotion
The fall 1866 elections brought another veto-proof Republican majority back to Congress which began to execute Congressional Reconstruction, returning the South to military districts until each state met conditions of equality and adherence to the 13th and 14th Amendments. Congress also passed a rider in the military appropriations bill which removed presidential authority to give direct orders to the Army: all orders would have to go through, or come from, Grant. When in 1867 Johnson’s attorney general tried to reduce the authority of U.S. Army officers; Grant told district commanders that since the opinion did not come through military channels, they were free to use their own judgement.5
Gen. U.S. Grant (LoC)When Congress recessed for the summer, Johnson decided one more time to get rid of this troublesome general who kept interfering in his plans. This time, he would get Grant out of the way by suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (another Ohioan who gave Johnson constant headaches via stubborn resistance) and replacing him with Grant ad interim. A reluctant Grant acceded, possibly to keep another more compliant person from occupying the position.
But the fall 1867 elections brought more Democrats into office and a surge of terrorist groups in the South, such as the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson moved swiftly to consolidate power, firing generals heading military departments. Notably, he fired Sheridan, further alienating Grant and inflaming the situation in the South where violence levels grew. As Maj. Gen. John Pope left command of the district encompassing Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, he noted to his replacement, Maj. Gen. George Meade, “the Rebellion is as active & so far as the people of this Dist. are concerned, nearly as powerful as during the War.”6
Congress entered the fray in January of 1868, setting the stage for Grant’s last battle with the president he served. Congress ordered Stanton’s immediate reinstatement. Johnson refused. Grant, then, was left with the thorny choice of disobeying the Senate and violating the Tenure of Office Act, or directly opposing his president. It probably comes as no surprise that Granted handed over the keys to the War Department to Stanton. This utterly enraged Johnson, who went off on Grant in a cabinet meeting. Johnson then tried Sherman again, offering him command of a special division to be headquartered in D.C. – a thinly veiled threat to Congress. A disgusted Sherman headed west. Johnson then gave the same offer to Virginian Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. He should have known better than to try to coopt a man who broke from his family and state to stay loyal to the Union in 1861. Thomas turned him down. An infuriated Johnson then fired Stanton, but that cantankerous cabinet member locked himself in his office and refused to come out. This was the last straw, and after three days of Stanton confinement, the House impeached Johnson.7
Conclusion
Civilian control of the military is a bedrock of American democracy, repeatedly enforced by Washington during the Revolution and embodied in law thereafter. Could any general other than Grant have gotten away with this resistance, and could Grant have done it if it had been any president other than Johnson? We will probably never know. Grant was a national hero and Johnson was vilified by half the country. The era was one of repeated constitutional crises, so gray areas were more common. What we do know is that Grant’s steadfast devotion to civil rights and stubborn commitment brought him to national political attention, and he was on the ballot as the Republican candidate for president in 1868. His nemesis, Johnson, did not even get the nod from his own party and did not appear on the ballot.
Yet another opponent who lost to Grant.
Sources:
- Robert Wooster, The U.S. Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903 (University of Kansas, 2021), 204. ↩︎
- Wooster, 210. ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/general-grant-refuses-president-johnson-s-diplomatic-request.htm; David O. Stewart, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (Simon & Schuster, 2010). Ivan Perkins, Vanishing Coup: The Pattern of World History since 1310 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request; Wooster, 212. David Priess, “How a Difficult, Racist, Stubborn President Was Removed From Power—If Not From Office,” Politico (Nov. 13, 2018), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/13/andrew-johnson-undermined-congress-cabinet-david-priess-book-222413/ ↩︎
- Wooster, 215. Priess. ↩︎
- Wooster, 215-217. ↩︎
- Ulysses S Grant National Historic Site, Ulysses S. Grant is Appointed Secretary of War Ad Interim, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-as-appointed-secretary-of-war-ad-interim.htm; Wooster, 217-219. ↩︎
Enjoy what you just read? Please share using the buttons below.
The opinions represented here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.
Rate this:
#AndrewJohnson #History #Military #Politics #Reconstruction #theGeneralWhoDefiedAPresident #USArmy #USGrant #UlyssesSGrant
-
The General Who Defied a President
Perhaps no period characterized chaos about the future of the Republic than the years 1866-1868. And perhaps no one individual did so much to save it in those years as the man who had labored so hard to preserve it from 1861-1865: Ulysses S. Grant.
Pres. Andrew Johnson (LoC)One would think that having put down a rebellion, the United States would be on a path to recovery and strength. Enter President Andrew Johnson. President by virtue of Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson was the worst man at the worst place at the worst time (oh, for an alternate universe where Lincoln kept amiable Mainer Hannibal Hamlin as VP in 1864). As a pro-Union Southerner, Johnson was not only conciliatory to the former self-declared Confederacy but downright magnanimous. And less than enthused about the prospect of abolition, to put it lightly. A dedicated enthusiast of the White race’s dominance in the U.S., Johnson would stand in the way of any civil rights legislation.
Scarcely had the guns stopped firing on the battlefield than Johnson began to show warning signs that the victory won on the field was about to be lost politically. Johnson welcomed former Southern congressmen back to the House – many of whom had just taken off their Confederate Army officer uniforms. As northern and Unionist congressmen watched their recent antagonists resume the seats in the government they had just tried to restore, their tempers exploded. In a simple act of bureaucratic procedure, the clerk of the House refused to read in the names of the Southern congressmen during roll call opening the 39th session of Congress in December 1865. The House remained solidly Unionist and abolitionist.
However, Johnson would not be de-fanged so easily. Even with a solid block of loyal Republicans in Congress, Johnson wielded his veto to try to strike down any civil rights legislation and any bills that would protect Southern Blacks from the “rebellious spirit” of Southern Whites, as George Armstrong Custer (of all people) called it. 1 He also attempted to withdraw U.S. troops from the South, the line of defense for freed people against terrorism, kidnapping, and brutality. Congress halted the withdrawal of U.S. Army troops in January of 1866. The Army was now very definitely in politics. And so was its general-in-chief.
Defender of the Republic (Again)
Ulysses S. Grant would not have described himself as a politician, but as General of the Army, he played a significantly political role. And for the first time, Grant found himself taking an opposite position from the president he was supposed to support and advise. Releasing General Orders No. 3, Grant directed the Army to protect loyal citizens and Blacks in the Southern states not just from physical violence, but from political violence – quietly letting commanders know that they were to obey orders coming from him, not the executive branch. The order directed commanders to protect African Americans from unfair prosecution by state and local courts. Unwilling to publicly challenge the popular general, Johnson let this slide. For now. But he marked that Grant had sided with Congress.
The summer of 1866 was marked by violence: physical, from Whites against Blacks in the South; and political, between the president and congress. As White mobs committed murders, rapes, and atrocities in towns and cities across the South, Congress pushed through the 14th Amendment and extended Federal judicial protection for freed people – all over Johnson’s attempts to veto. As Grant watched the president fight so hard against everything the war had been fought over, he became, as an aide said, “more & more radical.” Most of all, he would not allow the Army to become a “party machine.”2
For his part, Johnson realized that he would not get anywhere until Grant was out of the way. To test the General-in-Chief’s loyalty, Johnson had Grant accompany him on an August political tour of Northern states. Grant grew so disgusted at Johnson’s ranting against the 14th Amendment that he claimed illness and went home early, writing to his wife Julia that he looked upon the president as “a national disgrace.” Johnson openly wondered about using the military to purge his enemies from Congress, asking Grant which side the Army would take in such a trial. Grant sidestepped this by replying whichever side the law was on, while quietly ordering weapons moved out of arsenals in the South. Writing to his old friend and fellow Ohioan Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan, Grant confided his worst fears: “we are fast approaching the point where he [Johnson] will want to declare the body [Congress] illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary.”3
The Banishment to Mexico
William Tecumseh Sherman (LoC)Johnson resolved to get Grant out of the way before the autumnal elections. Governor Thomas Swann of Maryland requested federal troops to oust Republican voting registrars from Baltimore, where the city had just defeated a bill that would have granted voting rights to ex-Confederates. Grant had resisted this request, so Johnson resorted to the age-old method of removing a troublesome subordinate: appoint them to a diplomatic mission and get them out of the country. In this case, Mexico. Johnson directed William Tecumseh Sherman to come east to replace Grant, believing that Sherman would fall into line. Sherman came east, but refused to have anything to do with Johnson. Johnson even promised him the position of secretary of war. Nothing doing. As Sherman is said to have stated about Grant, “Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.” Once again, he stuck with Grant. Finally, Johnson ordered Grant to Mexico. But there was a problem. Grant refused.
Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman once said of Grant, ““[Grant] habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.” To say he was stubborn is an understatement. Claiming that he lacked the diplomatic skills for such a mission and that the president would be better served with someone from the State Department, Grant dodged the assignment. Johnson ordered him to do so in a cabinet meeting, which caused Grant to answer, “I am an American citizen, and eligible to any office to which any American is eligible. I am an officer of the Army, and bound to obey your military orders. But this is a civil office, a purely diplomatic duty that you offer me, and I cannot be compelled to undertake it. … No power on Earth can compel me to do it.” Annoyed, Johnson sent Sherman to Mexico and asked Grant for troops in Maryland to “intervene on the governor’s side to prevent violence.” “This,” Grant observed, “would produce the very result intended to be averted.” He refused to send troops but did issue G.O. No. 44., ordering U.S. Army officers to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Johnson and Grant were now in their own conflict.4
Reduction by Promotion
The fall 1866 elections brought another veto-proof Republican majority back to Congress which began to execute Congressional Reconstruction, returning the South to military districts until each state met conditions of equality and adherence to the 13th and 14th Amendments. Congress also passed a rider in the military appropriations bill which removed presidential authority to give direct orders to the Army: all orders would have to go through, or come from, Grant. When in 1867 Johnson’s attorney general tried to reduce the authority of U.S. Army officers; Grant told district commanders that since the opinion did not come through military channels, they were free to use their own judgement.5
Gen. U.S. Grant (LoC)When Congress recessed for the summer, Johnson decided one more time to get rid of this troublesome general who kept interfering in his plans. This time, he would get Grant out of the way by suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (another Ohioan who gave Johnson constant headaches via stubborn resistance) and replacing him with Grant ad interim. A reluctant Grant acceded, possibly to keep another more compliant person from occupying the position.
But the fall 1867 elections brought more Democrats into office and a surge of terrorist groups in the South, such as the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson moved swiftly to consolidate power, firing generals heading military departments. Notably, he fired Sheridan, further alienating Grant and inflaming the situation in the South where violence levels grew. As Maj. Gen. John Pope left command of the district encompassing Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, he noted to his replacement, Maj. Gen. George Meade, “the Rebellion is as active & so far as the people of this Dist. are concerned, nearly as powerful as during the War.”6
Congress entered the fray in January of 1868, setting the stage for Grant’s last battle with the president he served. Congress ordered Stanton’s immediate reinstatement. Johnson refused. Grant, then, was left with the thorny choice of disobeying the Senate and violating the Tenure of Office Act, or directly opposing his president. It probably comes as no surprise that Granted handed over the keys to the War Department to Stanton. This utterly enraged Johnson, who went off on Grant in a cabinet meeting. Johnson then tried Sherman again, offering him command of a special division to be headquartered in D.C. – a thinly veiled threat to Congress. A disgusted Sherman headed west. Johnson then gave the same offer to Virginian Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. He should have known better than to try to coopt a man who broke from his family and state to stay loyal to the Union in 1861. Thomas turned him down. An infuriated Johnson then fired Stanton, but that cantankerous cabinet member locked himself in his office and refused to come out. This was the last straw, and after three days of Stanton confinement, the House impeached Johnson.7
Conclusion
Civilian control of the military is a bedrock of American democracy, repeatedly enforced by Washington during the Revolution and embodied in law thereafter. Could any general other than Grant have gotten away with this resistance, and could Grant have done it if it had been any president other than Johnson? We will probably never know. Grant was a national hero and Johnson was vilified by half the country. The era was one of repeated constitutional crises, so gray areas were more common. What we do know is that Grant’s steadfast devotion to civil rights and stubborn commitment brought him to national political attention, and he was on the ballot as the Republican candidate for president in 1868. His nemesis, Johnson, did not even get the nod from his own party and did not appear on the ballot.
Yet another opponent who lost to Grant.
Sources:
- Robert Wooster, The U.S. Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903 (University of Kansas, 2021), 204. ↩︎
- Wooster, 210. ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/general-grant-refuses-president-johnson-s-diplomatic-request.htm; David O. Stewart, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (Simon & Schuster, 2010). Ivan Perkins, Vanishing Coup: The Pattern of World History since 1310 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). ↩︎
- Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, General Grant Refuses President Johnson’s Diplomatic Request; Wooster, 212. David Priess, “How a Difficult, Racist, Stubborn President Was Removed From Power—If Not From Office,” Politico (Nov. 13, 2018), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/13/andrew-johnson-undermined-congress-cabinet-david-priess-book-222413/ ↩︎
- Wooster, 215. Priess. ↩︎
- Wooster, 215-217. ↩︎
- Ulysses S Grant National Historic Site, Ulysses S. Grant is Appointed Secretary of War Ad Interim, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-as-appointed-secretary-of-war-ad-interim.htm; Wooster, 217-219. ↩︎
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An alleyway of hope towards community healing
Sadly in the United States, racism and bigotry are hardly a new thing. No matter how much we want to deny it, this country was largely born of racism and far too many of our fellow citizens continue to practice it on a daily basis.
Alley before – Source: patronicity.com Ohki Alley now Source: patronicity.comThat’s why it was so refreshing and rewarding to recently stumble upon a revitalized alleyway in small Indiana town that is attempting to right a terrible past wrong, while also adding walkable placemaking feature for the community.
Source: indianahistory.orgThe Ohki Alley in downtown Columbia City, Indiana is located directly across from the Whitley County Courthouse. This narrow alley honors Shinzo Ohki, a Japanese immigrant to the area who built a thriving soy sauce business (Show-You Sauce), but who also felt the sting of bigotry during World War II (see below).
“A Kind and Gentle Man”
“I first met Shinzo Ohki in the early summer of 1942. My family had moved to 203 Brownwood Avenue in Columbia City and the Ohki’s were neighbors. I was about 9 years old at the time.
My brother, Harrison, and I developed a neighborhood business of mowing lawns, doing yard work and general odd jobs as needed. We had a good summer business of about eight or nine customers for walk and driveway snow shoveling, plus stacking wood. In those days, many home owners burned wood in the dwelling heating system. The truck from Morsches Lumber Company would dump a load of wood at the curb and it was the property owners responsibility to handle it. Our job was to toss the wood, one piece at a time, in the basement window and then stack it neatly near the furnace. It was hard work but also steady work and good exercise.
As I became better acquainted with Mr. Ohki, I also got to know his wife and daughter. They were all soft spoken and gentle people. They also were very interested in you and your welfare.
Mr. Ohki’s daughter, Grace, was in college at the time and a talented musician and world-class clarinet player. I remember her as Paid Advertisement
a beautiful young lady who was always asking me about school and any plans I had.Here we must remember the time frame. It was the early 1940s and World War II was just getting going.
My brother and I were very much enjoying our relationship with the Ohki family. Shinzo always talked with us and always overpaid us.
One summer day, after we had finished our work, Mr. Ohki came and paid us $10.00 each the usual amount for the weekly job was about $1.00 a piece. He was very soft-spoken, as usual, but not so cheerful that day. He said “You boys won’t be able to work for me anymore. It will be bad for you and your family if you do. I want you to tell your mother and dad everything I say and they will explain it.” He turned and quietly and quickly left. I think he was crying.
We started to cry as we walked home, thinking we had been fired from our job. We did as Shinzo had asked and told our folks everything he had said. They explained that others in our small town might bring grief to us for associating with a Japanese family a mystery to me at the time but well understood in later years.
True to his nature, Mr. Ohki was more concerned for our welfare than for his own.
My memory of him has not changed or dimmed over these past almost eighty years. He was indeed a kind and gentle man.”
The alley is adorned with tables and chairs, flowers, lighting, murals, and several historic markers about Mr. Ohki’s life. There is even a tiny ice cream shop (Alley Scoops) tucked into a doorway pocket along the corridor. The alley revitalization project was completed in 2020.
In today’s cantankerous environment, this little alleyway of hope is a charming breath of fresh air, both as a symbol of how to heal past sins, but also as a method for knitting the community back together physically with a wonderful placemaking featuring in the heart of downtown. And whenever you can successfully achieve two goals with a single project, that’s certainly a win-win situation. Kudos to a job well done, Columbia City.
Peace!
p.s. On this 80 anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan (today), this post about healing seems particularly appropriate. May humanity find lasting peace so that such brutal consequences of war never happen again.
#alley #cities #ColumbiaCity #food #fun #history #iceCream #Indiana #Japan #landUse #OhkiAlley #planning #preservation #revitalization #ThirdPlaces #tourism #travel
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An alleyway of hope towards community healing
Sadly in the United States, racism and bigotry are hardly a new thing. No matter how much we want to deny it, this country was largely born of racism and far too many of our fellow citizens continue to practice it on a daily basis.
Alley before – Source: patronicity.com Ohki Alley now Source: patronicity.comThat’s why it was so refreshing and rewarding to recently stumble upon a revitalized alleyway in small Indiana town that is attempting to right a terrible past wrong, while also adding walkable placemaking feature for the community.
Source: indianahistory.orgThe Ohki Alley in downtown Columbia City, Indiana is located directly across from the Whitley County Courthouse. This narrow alley honors Shinzo Ohki, a Japanese immigrant to the area who built a thriving soy sauce business (Show-You Sauce), but who also felt the sting of bigotry during World War II (see below).
“A Kind and Gentle Man”
“I first met Shinzo Ohki in the early summer of 1942. My family had moved to 203 Brownwood Avenue in Columbia City and the Ohki’s were neighbors. I was about 9 years old at the time.
My brother, Harrison, and I developed a neighborhood business of mowing lawns, doing yard work and general odd jobs as needed. We had a good summer business of about eight or nine customers for walk and driveway snow shoveling, plus stacking wood. In those days, many home owners burned wood in the dwelling heating system. The truck from Morsches Lumber Company would dump a load of wood at the curb and it was the property owners responsibility to handle it. Our job was to toss the wood, one piece at a time, in the basement window and then stack it neatly near the furnace. It was hard work but also steady work and good exercise.
As I became better acquainted with Mr. Ohki, I also got to know his wife and daughter. They were all soft spoken and gentle people. They also were very interested in you and your welfare.
Mr. Ohki’s daughter, Grace, was in college at the time and a talented musician and world-class clarinet player. I remember her as Paid Advertisement
a beautiful young lady who was always asking me about school and any plans I had.Here we must remember the time frame. It was the early 1940s and World War II was just getting going.
My brother and I were very much enjoying our relationship with the Ohki family. Shinzo always talked with us and always overpaid us.
One summer day, after we had finished our work, Mr. Ohki came and paid us $10.00 each the usual amount for the weekly job was about $1.00 a piece. He was very soft-spoken, as usual, but not so cheerful that day. He said “You boys won’t be able to work for me anymore. It will be bad for you and your family if you do. I want you to tell your mother and dad everything I say and they will explain it.” He turned and quietly and quickly left. I think he was crying.
We started to cry as we walked home, thinking we had been fired from our job. We did as Shinzo had asked and told our folks everything he had said. They explained that others in our small town might bring grief to us for associating with a Japanese family a mystery to me at the time but well understood in later years.
True to his nature, Mr. Ohki was more concerned for our welfare than for his own.
My memory of him has not changed or dimmed over these past almost eighty years. He was indeed a kind and gentle man.”
The alley is adorned with tables and chairs, flowers, lighting, murals, and several historic markers about Mr. Ohki’s life. There is even a tiny ice cream shop (Alley Scoops) tucked into a doorway pocket along the corridor. The alley revitalization project was completed in 2020.
In today’s cantankerous environment, this little alleyway of hope is a charming breath of fresh air, both as a symbol of how to heal past sins, but also as a method for knitting the community back together physically with a wonderful placemaking featuring in the heart of downtown. And whenever you can successfully achieve two goals with a single project, that’s certainly a win-win situation. Kudos to a job well done, Columbia City.
Peace!
p.s. On this 80 anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan (today), this post about healing seems particularly appropriate. May humanity find lasting peace so that such brutal consequences of war never happen again.
#alley #cities #ColumbiaCity #food #fun #history #iceCream #Indiana #Japan #landUse #OhkiAlley #planning #preservation #revitalization #ThirdPlaces #tourism #travel
-
An alleyway of hope towards community healing
Sadly in the United States, racism and bigotry are hardly a new thing. No matter how much we want to deny it, this country was largely born of racism and far too many of our fellow citizens continue to practice it on a daily basis.
Alley before – Source: patronicity.com Ohki Alley now Source: patronicity.comThat’s why it was so refreshing and rewarding to recently stumble upon a revitalized alleyway in small Indiana town that is attempting to right a terrible past wrong, while also adding walkable placemaking feature for the community.
Source: indianahistory.orgThe Ohki Alley in downtown Columbia City, Indiana is located directly across from the Whitley County Courthouse. This narrow alley honors Shinzo Ohki, a Japanese immigrant to the area who built a thriving soy sauce business (Show-You Sauce), but who also felt the sting of bigotry during World War II (see below).
“A Kind and Gentle Man”
“I first met Shinzo Ohki in the early summer of 1942. My family had moved to 203 Brownwood Avenue in Columbia City and the Ohki’s were neighbors. I was about 9 years old at the time.
My brother, Harrison, and I developed a neighborhood business of mowing lawns, doing yard work and general odd jobs as needed. We had a good summer business of about eight or nine customers for walk and driveway snow shoveling, plus stacking wood. In those days, many home owners burned wood in the dwelling heating system. The truck from Morsches Lumber Company would dump a load of wood at the curb and it was the property owners responsibility to handle it. Our job was to toss the wood, one piece at a time, in the basement window and then stack it neatly near the furnace. It was hard work but also steady work and good exercise.
As I became better acquainted with Mr. Ohki, I also got to know his wife and daughter. They were all soft spoken and gentle people. They also were very interested in you and your welfare.
Mr. Ohki’s daughter, Grace, was in college at the time and a talented musician and world-class clarinet player. I remember her as Paid Advertisement
a beautiful young lady who was always asking me about school and any plans I had.Here we must remember the time frame. It was the early 1940s and World War II was just getting going.
My brother and I were very much enjoying our relationship with the Ohki family. Shinzo always talked with us and always overpaid us.
One summer day, after we had finished our work, Mr. Ohki came and paid us $10.00 each the usual amount for the weekly job was about $1.00 a piece. He was very soft-spoken, as usual, but not so cheerful that day. He said “You boys won’t be able to work for me anymore. It will be bad for you and your family if you do. I want you to tell your mother and dad everything I say and they will explain it.” He turned and quietly and quickly left. I think he was crying.
We started to cry as we walked home, thinking we had been fired from our job. We did as Shinzo had asked and told our folks everything he had said. They explained that others in our small town might bring grief to us for associating with a Japanese family a mystery to me at the time but well understood in later years.
True to his nature, Mr. Ohki was more concerned for our welfare than for his own.
My memory of him has not changed or dimmed over these past almost eighty years. He was indeed a kind and gentle man.”
The alley is adorned with tables and chairs, flowers, lighting, murals, and several historic markers about Mr. Ohki’s life. There is even a tiny ice cream shop (Alley Scoops) tucked into a doorway pocket along the corridor. The alley revitalization project was completed in 2020.
In today’s cantankerous environment, this little alleyway of hope is a charming breath of fresh air, both as a symbol of how to heal past sins, but also as a method for knitting the community back together physically with a wonderful placemaking featuring in the heart of downtown. And whenever you can successfully achieve two goals with a single project, that’s certainly a win-win situation. Kudos to a job well done, Columbia City.
Peace!
p.s. On this 80 anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan (today), this post about healing seems particularly appropriate. May humanity find lasting peace so that such brutal consequences of war never happen again.
#alley #cities #ColumbiaCity #food #fun #history #iceCream #Indiana #Japan #landUse #OhkiAlley #planning #preservation #revitalization #ThirdPlaces #tourism #travel
-
An alleyway of hope towards community healing
Sadly in the United States, racism and bigotry are hardly a new thing. No matter how much we want to deny it, this country was largely born of racism and far too many of our fellow citizens continue to practice it on a daily basis.
Alley before – Source: patronicity.com Ohki Alley now Source: patronicity.comThat’s why it was so refreshing and rewarding to recently stumble upon a revitalized alleyway in small Indiana town that is attempting to right a terrible past wrong, while also adding walkable placemaking feature for the community.
Source: indianahistory.orgThe Ohki Alley in downtown Columbia City, Indiana is located directly across from the Whitley County Courthouse. This narrow alley honors Shinzo Ohki, a Japanese immigrant to the area who built a thriving soy sauce business (Show-You Sauce), but who also felt the sting of bigotry during World War II (see below).
“A Kind and Gentle Man”
“I first met Shinzo Ohki in the early summer of 1942. My family had moved to 203 Brownwood Avenue in Columbia City and the Ohki’s were neighbors. I was about 9 years old at the time.
My brother, Harrison, and I developed a neighborhood business of mowing lawns, doing yard work and general odd jobs as needed. We had a good summer business of about eight or nine customers for walk and driveway snow shoveling, plus stacking wood. In those days, many home owners burned wood in the dwelling heating system. The truck from Morsches Lumber Company would dump a load of wood at the curb and it was the property owners responsibility to handle it. Our job was to toss the wood, one piece at a time, in the basement window and then stack it neatly near the furnace. It was hard work but also steady work and good exercise.
As I became better acquainted with Mr. Ohki, I also got to know his wife and daughter. They were all soft spoken and gentle people. They also were very interested in you and your welfare.
Mr. Ohki’s daughter, Grace, was in college at the time and a talented musician and world-class clarinet player. I remember her as Paid Advertisement
a beautiful young lady who was always asking me about school and any plans I had.Here we must remember the time frame. It was the early 1940s and World War II was just getting going.
My brother and I were very much enjoying our relationship with the Ohki family. Shinzo always talked with us and always overpaid us.
One summer day, after we had finished our work, Mr. Ohki came and paid us $10.00 each the usual amount for the weekly job was about $1.00 a piece. He was very soft-spoken, as usual, but not so cheerful that day. He said “You boys won’t be able to work for me anymore. It will be bad for you and your family if you do. I want you to tell your mother and dad everything I say and they will explain it.” He turned and quietly and quickly left. I think he was crying.
We started to cry as we walked home, thinking we had been fired from our job. We did as Shinzo had asked and told our folks everything he had said. They explained that others in our small town might bring grief to us for associating with a Japanese family a mystery to me at the time but well understood in later years.
True to his nature, Mr. Ohki was more concerned for our welfare than for his own.
My memory of him has not changed or dimmed over these past almost eighty years. He was indeed a kind and gentle man.”
The alley is adorned with tables and chairs, flowers, lighting, murals, and several historic markers about Mr. Ohki’s life. There is even a tiny ice cream shop (Alley Scoops) tucked into a doorway pocket along the corridor. The alley revitalization project was completed in 2020.
In today’s cantankerous environment, this little alleyway of hope is a charming breath of fresh air, both as a symbol of how to heal past sins, but also as a method for knitting the community back together physically with a wonderful placemaking featuring in the heart of downtown. And whenever you can successfully achieve two goals with a single project, that’s certainly a win-win situation. Kudos to a job well done, Columbia City.
Peace!
p.s. On this 80 anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan (today), this post about healing seems particularly appropriate. May humanity find lasting peace so that such brutal consequences of war never happen again.
#alley #cities #ColumbiaCity #food #fun #history #iceCream #Indiana #Japan #landUse #OhkiAlley #planning #preservation #revitalization #ThirdPlaces #tourism #travel
-
An alleyway of hope towards community healing
Sadly in the United States, racism and bigotry are hardly a new thing. No matter how much we want to deny it, this country was largely born of racism and far too many of our fellow citizens continue to practice it on a daily basis.
Alley before – Source: patronicity.com Ohki Alley now Source: patronicity.comThat’s why it was so refreshing and rewarding to recently stumble upon a revitalized alleyway in small Indiana town that is attempting to right a terrible past wrong, while also adding walkable placemaking feature for the community.
Source: indianahistory.orgThe Ohki Alley in downtown Columbia City, Indiana is located directly across from the Whitley County Courthouse. This narrow alley honors Shinzo Ohki, a Japanese immigrant to the area who built a thriving soy sauce business (Show-You Sauce), but who also felt the sting of bigotry during World War II (see below).
“A Kind and Gentle Man”
“I first met Shinzo Ohki in the early summer of 1942. My family had moved to 203 Brownwood Avenue in Columbia City and the Ohki’s were neighbors. I was about 9 years old at the time.
My brother, Harrison, and I developed a neighborhood business of mowing lawns, doing yard work and general odd jobs as needed. We had a good summer business of about eight or nine customers for walk and driveway snow shoveling, plus stacking wood. In those days, many home owners burned wood in the dwelling heating system. The truck from Morsches Lumber Company would dump a load of wood at the curb and it was the property owners responsibility to handle it. Our job was to toss the wood, one piece at a time, in the basement window and then stack it neatly near the furnace. It was hard work but also steady work and good exercise.
As I became better acquainted with Mr. Ohki, I also got to know his wife and daughter. They were all soft spoken and gentle people. They also were very interested in you and your welfare.
Mr. Ohki’s daughter, Grace, was in college at the time and a talented musician and world-class clarinet player. I remember her as Paid Advertisement
a beautiful young lady who was always asking me about school and any plans I had.Here we must remember the time frame. It was the early 1940s and World War II was just getting going.
My brother and I were very much enjoying our relationship with the Ohki family. Shinzo always talked with us and always overpaid us.
One summer day, after we had finished our work, Mr. Ohki came and paid us $10.00 each the usual amount for the weekly job was about $1.00 a piece. He was very soft-spoken, as usual, but not so cheerful that day. He said “You boys won’t be able to work for me anymore. It will be bad for you and your family if you do. I want you to tell your mother and dad everything I say and they will explain it.” He turned and quietly and quickly left. I think he was crying.
We started to cry as we walked home, thinking we had been fired from our job. We did as Shinzo had asked and told our folks everything he had said. They explained that others in our small town might bring grief to us for associating with a Japanese family a mystery to me at the time but well understood in later years.
True to his nature, Mr. Ohki was more concerned for our welfare than for his own.
My memory of him has not changed or dimmed over these past almost eighty years. He was indeed a kind and gentle man.”
The alley is adorned with tables and chairs, flowers, lighting, murals, and several historic markers about Mr. Ohki’s life. There is even a tiny ice cream shop (Alley Scoops) tucked into a doorway pocket along the corridor. The alley revitalization project was completed in 2020.
In today’s cantankerous environment, this little alleyway of hope is a charming breath of fresh air, both as a symbol of how to heal past sins, but also as a method for knitting the community back together physically with a wonderful placemaking featuring in the heart of downtown. And whenever you can successfully achieve two goals with a single project, that’s certainly a win-win situation. Kudos to a job well done, Columbia City.
Peace!
p.s. On this 80 anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan (today), this post about healing seems particularly appropriate. May humanity find lasting peace so that such brutal consequences of war never happen again.
#alley #cities #ColumbiaCity #food #fun #history #iceCream #Indiana #Japan #landUse #OhkiAlley #planning #preservation #revitalization #ThirdPlaces #tourism #travel
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Lazy Caturday Reads
By Brian Laing
Good Morning!!
After Daknikat’s comprehensive post yesterday, it’s hard to imagine there could be any more news to report on today, but I’ve found a few things.
There were two notable deaths yesterday, pioneering blogger Kevin Drum and former Senator Alan Simpson, half of Simpson-Bowles, who created what came to be known as the “Cat Food Commission.”
The New York Times: Kevin Drum, Influential Early Political Blogger, Dies at 66.
Kevin Drum, who gave up his day job in software marketing to write online about politics, policy and his cats, quickly becoming a key figure in the vanguard of center-left bloggers during the genre’s heyday in the early 2000s, died on March 7. He was 66.
His wife, Marian Drum, announced the death on his website but did not say where he died or cite a cause.
Mr. Drum, who lived in Irvine, Calif., had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and had recently developed pneumonia. He blogged about those personal challenges openly and with the same insight that he brought to issues like health care policy and urban planning.
He spent most of his life in Orange County, Calif., which distinguished him from the majority of early big-name bloggers, many of whom hailed from the Washington-Boston corridor or from academic enclaves.
Mr. Drum began blogging in 2002 and quickly developed a large nationwide following. He helped shape what became known as the liberal blogosphere, populated by a broad amalgam of left-of-center thinkers who emphasized policy debates over political horse races.
His curiosity was broad, and he wrote on a variety of subjects from a variety of perspectives — sometimes casually observational, sometimes rigorously analytical — in a way that set him apart from the assorted camps that defined the blogosphere, including academics, politicos and ideologues.
Four years after that, Mr. Drum moved to Mother Jones, where he wrote not just blog posts but also extensive reported pieces for the magazine.
Most notable was a deep dive in 2013 into the theory that the crime wave of the late 20th century was driven in large part by childhood exposure to lead in gasoline and paint, a key factor in the development of behavioral problems and, in turn, delinquency. As lead was phased out, health outcomes improved and crime rates dropped.
“He was just able to unpack very complicated — particularly economically complicated — stories in an immensely readable way,” said Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of Mother Jones.
The New York Times: Alan K. Simpson, a Folksy Republican Force in the Senate, Dies at 93.
Alan K. Simpson, a plain-spoken former Republican senator from Wyoming who championed immigration reforms and conservative candidates for the Supreme Court while fighting running battles with women’s groups, environmentalists and the press, died on Friday in hospice in Cody, Wyo. He was 93.
He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of a case of frostbite to his left foot that he endured about five years ago and that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.
By Matt Cauley
Folksy, irreverent and sometimes cantankerous, a gaunt, 6-foot-7 beanpole with a ranch hand’s soft drawl, Mr. Simpson was a three-term senator, from 1979 to 1997, whom school children and tourists in the gallery sometimes took for a Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington oddball, especially during his occasional rants against “bug-eyed zealots” and “super-greenies,” as he liked to call environmental lobbyists.
The son of a former Wyoming governor and United States senator, Mr. Simpson had been a hell-raiser as a teenager. He and some friends shot up mailboxes, killed a cow with rifles and set fire to an abandoned federal property. He punched a police officer who arrested him. While no one had been seriously hurt, he faced prison. But he was put on probation for two years and paid restitution….
Mr. Simpson had love-hate relationships with the press. Many journalists liked his earthy humor and easy accessibility. But his language could be coarse and his tone contemptuous when he attacked the news media, sometimes singling out reporters by name. He crossed a line when he accused Peter Arnett of CNN of being an enemy “sympathizer” for his reporting from Iraq during the Persian Gulf war, and wrongly accused him of bias in the Vietnam War because he had married a Vietnamese woman.
His political positions sometimes seemed contradictory, or perhaps personal. He supported abortion rights and right-wing nominees to the United States Supreme Court who might overturn Roe v. Wade. And partly out of a friendship forged when he was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, he called on the nation to apologize to Japanese Americans who were interned as potential security risks during World War II.
Read more at the NYT if you’re interested. Frankly, I thought he was a horrible person, but what do I know?
Daknikat covered the Republicans’ horrific continuing resolution yesterday. Of course it pass with Democratic help.
HuffPost: Here Are The Democrats Who Advanced A GOP Bill To Avoid A Government Shutdown.
In the end, nine senators who caucus with Democrats joined with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in voting to advance legislation to avoid a government shutdown, essentially giving up Democratic leverage over President Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.
Their support meant the bill was able to break the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster, 62-38….
“The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” Schumer told The New York Times earlier on Friday, arguing a shutdown would be far too unpredictable.
Internal party critics have said Schumer gave up a rare moment of leverage far too easily, misplaying his hand after an often-fractious House Republican Caucus passed a party-line spending bill with Trump’s blessing.Schumer suggested he was willing to face withering criticism from moderate House members to angry progressive activists: “I’ll take some of the bullets.”
These nine senators are likely to share in Schumer’s political suffering, though none of them are an obvious target for an immediate primary challenge.
- Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.): The party’s leading contrarian at the moment, Fetterman has repeatedly said he will never vote for a government shutdown under any circumstances. He’s not up for reelection until 2028.
- Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.): Cortez Masto said her vote was not an “easy decision,” but she was refusing to “hand [Trump and Musk] a shutdown where they would have free reign to cause more chaos and harm.” She’s not up for reelection until 2028.
- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the party’s Senate leadership, is up for reelection in 2026 but is widely expected to retire.
- Sen. Angus King (I-Maine): King’s state is heavily reliant on government funds, and he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page giving Musk and Trump power would be a “significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.” King is not up for reelection until 2030.
- Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii): Schatz is known to have leadership ambitions, and taking this vote may show he’s willing to take a political hit for the rest of the caucus. Hawaii is also heavily reliant on federal employees. “Given the number of federal workers in Hawai‘i, mass furloughs would be deeply painful for people across the state,” he said in a statement. Schatz is up for reelection in 2028.
- Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): The Granite State duo are both moderates, and Shaheen is set to retire rather than run for reelection in 2026. Hassan is up for reelection in 2028. “Allowing the federal government to shut down with this President in charge is too dangerous to risk,” Hassan said in a statement.
- Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.): Peters has already announced his plan to retire in 2026. He said a shutdown under Trump would be “catastrophic”
- Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): A close ally of her fellow New Yorker, Gillibrand is also the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle. She’s not up for reelection until 2030.
I thought Schumer had some good arguments; but when we are facing a takeover by a dictator, it seems to me the Democrats should fight tooth and nail.
The Daily Beast: Dem Civil War Erupts With ‘Screaming’ and Primary Threats Behind Closed Doors.
Schumer’s politically dicey decision—ahead of a midnight Friday shutdown deadline—has infuriated Democrats to the point some are suggesting he step aside as leader. He explained on the Senate floor late Friday afternoon that his decision was “a Hobson’s choice,” conjuring images of a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk.
”I believe that allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he said. “The shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and DOGE the keys to the city, the state and the country. And that is a far worse alternative.”
Vintage Lady with White Cat, by Sharyn Bursic
“Next question,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries answered Friday afternoon when a reporter asked if it was time for new leadership in the Senate. Jeffries said House Democrats are “strongly opposed to the partisan funding bill” that Schumer says he now supports.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi repudiated Schumer’s choice earlier in the day, saying, “I salute Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his courageous rejection of this false choice, and I am proud of my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their overwhelming vote against this bill.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Schumer’s “unthinkable” acquiesce was a “betrayal,” adding she was “texting, calling, sending carrier pigeons” to Senate Democrats to beg them to not follow suit.
Democratic lawmakers are so “infuriated” with Schumer that some have spoken to Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, about running against him in a Senate primary race, according to CNN, which noted even “centrists” are “so mad” at Schumer they are “ready to write checks for AOC for Senate” come 2028 when he is up for re-election.
Daknikat wrote quite a bit about the Democrats’ anger yesterday. They were even angrier, if possible, after the bill passed. Schumer should retire anyway. We have to get rid of these old fossils.
Remember the days when the Bush administration was disappearing people they decided were terrorists? It looks like Trump is going to follow a similar playbook. I just hope it doesn’t involve torture. The Trump gang are coming down hard on Columbia and other elite universities about protests against the Israel war on Gaza. As you know, they have basically disappeared former Columbia student and protest leader Mahmood Kahlil.
ABC News: White House allegedly asked for updates on arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil, his attorney says.
Mahmoud Khalil — the pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week — said he overheard federal agents say that the White House was asking for an update on his detention, his attorneys said.
“He was surrounded by many DHS agents, or people he believed to be DHS agents, and he believes that he saw or heard, during a call, one of them say that the White House wants an update on what’s going on,” Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing Khalil, said at a press conference Friday.
“We have every reason to believe, as we allege in the petition, that many people within the executive branch of the government were involved, including the White House,” Sisay said.
Khalil took part in student protests at Columbia University calling for the institution to divest and cut ties with Israel, and he participated in negotiations with university administration.
“His one and only goal was to get Columbia University to divest from its complicity with Israeli government crimes in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Ramzi Kassem, the director of CLEAR, a group representing Khalil….
The Trump administration has claimed that Khalil distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” without providing evidence.
The First Amendment is dead, apparently.
AP: The Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University hid students sought by the US.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University concealed “illegal aliens” on its campus, one of its top officials said Friday, as the Trump administration intensified its campaign to deport foreigners who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school last year.
Agents with the Department of Homeland Security searched two university residences with a warrant Thursday evening. No one was arrested and it was unclear whom the authorities were searching for, but by Friday afternoon U.S. officials had announced developments related to two people they had pursued in connection with the demonstrations.
A Columbia doctoral student from India whose visa was revoked by the Trump administration fled the U.S. on an airliner. And a Palestinian woman who had been arrested during the protests at the university last April was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Newark, New Jersey, on charges that she overstayed an expired visa.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the Justice Department, said it was all part of the president’s “mission to end antisemitism in this country.”
What a bunch of bullshit.
“Just last night, we worked with the Department of Homeland Security to execute search warrants from an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus,” Blanche said. “That investigation is ongoing, and we are also looking at whether Columbia’s handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.”
Blanche didn’t say what evidence agents had of wrongdoing by the university. It was unclear whether he was accusing the school itself of “terrorism crimes” or saying that people involved in the protests had committed such crimes.
Girl with a Cat, by Zakir Ahmedov
The Boston Globe has a scary immigration story today: R.I. doctor prevented from returning to US after visiting her parents in Lebanon.
A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
This is a creepy story from The Guardian: Pro-Israel group says it has ‘deportation list’ and has sent ‘thousands’ of names to Trump officials.
A far-right group that claimed credit for the arrest of a Palestinian activist and permanent US resident who the Trump administration is seeking to deport claims it has submitted “thousands of names” for similar treatment.
Betar US is one of a number of rightwing, pro-Israel groups that are supporting the administration’s efforts to deport international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests, an effort that escalated this week with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who recently completed his graduate studies at Columbia University.
This week, Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was just “the first of many to come”. Betar US quickly claimed credit on social media for providing Khalil’s name to the government.
Betar, which has been labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, said on Monday that it had “been working on deportations and will continue to do so”, and warned that the effort would extend beyond immigrants. “Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month,” the group’s post on X read. (It is very difficult to revoke US citizenship, though Trump has indicated an intention to try.)
The group has compiled a so-called “deportation list” naming individuals it believes are in the US on visas and have participated in pro-Palestinian protests, claiming these individuals “terrorize America”.
A Betar spokesperson, Daniel Levy, said in a statement to the Guardian that Betar submitted “thousands of names” of students and faculty they believe to be on visas from institutions like Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, Syracuse University and others to representatives of the Trump administration.
By Martin Pierce
Here’s another immigration horror story from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee-area woman deported to Laos though she’s never been there, doesn’t speak the language.
A Hmong American woman who has lived in the Milwaukee area since she was 8 months old was deported last week to Laos, a country she has never visited, and says she is stranded in a rooming house surrounded by military guards.
Ma Yang, 37, a mother of five, said she does not speak the Lao language, has no family or friends in the country and that the military is holding all her documents. She was born in Thailand, the daughter of Hmong refugees after the Vietnam War, and she was a legal permanent U.S. resident until she pleaded guilty to taking part in a marijuana trafficking operation.
“The United States sent me back to die,” she said. “I don’t even know where to go. I don’t even know what to do.”
As President Donald Trump pushes the mass deportation of immigrants, Yang believes she is one of the first Hmong Americans to be deported to Laos in recent years. As of November, the U.S. considered Laos an “uncooperative” country that accepted few, if any, deportees. Zero people were deported to Laos in the last fiscal year, according to federal data.
Once she arrived in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on March 6, she said she was questioned by military authorities then sent to a rooming house, where guards did not allow her to leave or contact anyone for five days. She paced in circles around the compound and ate food the guards gave her.
A few days ago, she was taken to buy a cellphone and withdraw cash. She could finally reach out to her partner of 16 years, Michael Bub of South Milwaukee, a U.S. citizen. The military official in charge of her situation — she does not know his rank or title — then said she could leave if she wanted. But she is scared to venture out.
Trump is apparently planning a new travel ban. The New York Times: Draft List for New Travel Ban Proposes Trump Target 43 Countries.
The Trump administration is considering targeting the citizens of as many as 43 countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States that would be broader than the restrictions imposed during President Trump’s first term, according to officials familiar with the matter.
A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said….
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.
Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.
See the full draft list of countries at the link. I can’t reproduce it here.
This is getting too long, but I need to touch on Trump’s speech at the “justice department” yesterday. The speech was supposed to be about fentanyl.
Mary Sauer, Figure with Black Cat
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump vents fury about his criminal cases in extraordinary speech at DoJ.
Taking over the justice department headquarters for what amounted to a political event, Donald Trump railed against the criminal cases he defeated by virtue of returning to the presidency in an extraordinary victory lap the department has perhaps never before seen.
The event was billed as a policy address for the administration to tout its focus on combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but the majority of the president’s freewheeling remarks focused instead on his personal grievances with the department.
Trump spoke from a specially constructed stage in the great hall of the main justice building, backed with blue velvet curtains that underscored the theatrics and symbolism of Trump cementing his control over the justice department, which had tried and failed to hold him to account.
The choice of venue carried additional resonance about how Trump has fully implemented his agenda at the justice department, doing away with the longstanding tradition of independence from partisan politics and instead turning it into an extension of the White House.
The great hall has historically been used for major law enforcement announcements by the justice department and its senior leaders, and when presidents have delivered speeches at the building, the remarks have been of a national security or non-political stripe.
In Trump’s hourlong speech, he repeatedly strayed from his prepared remarks to assail the criminal cases against him, various lawyers and former prosecutors by name and accused the Biden administration of trying to destroy him, declaring Joe Biden the head of a crime family.
“The case against me was bullshit,” Trump said with fury, in the building where the charges were approved.
But he heaped praise on his defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he elevated to in effect run the justice department as the deputy attorney general and the principal associate deputy attorney general respectively, as well as the department’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle….
Trump offered notable praise for the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed his criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents, over decades of legal precedent. Trump claimed criticism of her made her angry, although he also said he had never spoken to her.
“She was brilliant,” Trump said of Cannon, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.”
Liam Reilly at CNN: Trump baselessly accuses news media of ‘illegal’ behavior and corruption in DOJ speech.
President Donald Trump launched some of his harshest attacks yet on the media on Friday, using a speech at the Department of Justice to baselessly accuse outlets including CNN of illegal and corrupt behavior.
In his Friday speech, Trump praised Florida district court Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed in 2020 and who sided with him in January, blocking the DOJ from sharing a report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with members of Congress.
But Trump claimed news publishers had gone after Cannon because of the January ruling, alleging “they do it all the time with judges” and that they “will write whatever these people say,” without offering proof.
“The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and MSDNC, and the fake news, CNN and ABC, CBS and NBC, they’ll write whatever they say,” Trump said. “And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump.”
“It’s totally illegal what they do,” Trump continued, addressing DOJ employees. “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”
While Trump did not immediately clarify who “they” are, he later claimed that CNN and MSNBC are “political arms of the Democrat Party.”
“In my opinion, they’re really corrupt,” Trump said.
He’s doing everything in the dictator’s playbook, folks.
That’s it for me. What’s on your mind today?
#AlanSimpson #ColumbiaUniversity #DonaldTrump #governmentShutdown #HouseContinuingResolution2025 #immigration #JusticeDepartment #KevinDrum #MaYang #MahmoudKhalil #RashaAlawieh #travelBan
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Lazy Caturday Reads
By Brian Laing
Good Morning!!
After Daknikat’s comprehensive post yesterday, it’s hard to imagine there could be any more news to report on today, but I’ve found a few things.
There were two notable deaths yesterday, pioneering blogger Kevin Drum and former Senator Alan Simpson, half of Simpson-Bowles, who created what came to be known as the “Cat Food Commission.”
The New York Times: Kevin Drum, Influential Early Political Blogger, Dies at 66.
Kevin Drum, who gave up his day job in software marketing to write online about politics, policy and his cats, quickly becoming a key figure in the vanguard of center-left bloggers during the genre’s heyday in the early 2000s, died on March 7. He was 66.
His wife, Marian Drum, announced the death on his website but did not say where he died or cite a cause.
Mr. Drum, who lived in Irvine, Calif., had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and had recently developed pneumonia. He blogged about those personal challenges openly and with the same insight that he brought to issues like health care policy and urban planning.
He spent most of his life in Orange County, Calif., which distinguished him from the majority of early big-name bloggers, many of whom hailed from the Washington-Boston corridor or from academic enclaves.
Mr. Drum began blogging in 2002 and quickly developed a large nationwide following. He helped shape what became known as the liberal blogosphere, populated by a broad amalgam of left-of-center thinkers who emphasized policy debates over political horse races.
His curiosity was broad, and he wrote on a variety of subjects from a variety of perspectives — sometimes casually observational, sometimes rigorously analytical — in a way that set him apart from the assorted camps that defined the blogosphere, including academics, politicos and ideologues.
Four years after that, Mr. Drum moved to Mother Jones, where he wrote not just blog posts but also extensive reported pieces for the magazine.
Most notable was a deep dive in 2013 into the theory that the crime wave of the late 20th century was driven in large part by childhood exposure to lead in gasoline and paint, a key factor in the development of behavioral problems and, in turn, delinquency. As lead was phased out, health outcomes improved and crime rates dropped.
“He was just able to unpack very complicated — particularly economically complicated — stories in an immensely readable way,” said Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of Mother Jones.
The New York Times: Alan K. Simpson, a Folksy Republican Force in the Senate, Dies at 93.
Alan K. Simpson, a plain-spoken former Republican senator from Wyoming who championed immigration reforms and conservative candidates for the Supreme Court while fighting running battles with women’s groups, environmentalists and the press, died on Friday in hospice in Cody, Wyo. He was 93.
He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of a case of frostbite to his left foot that he endured about five years ago and that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.
By Matt Cauley
Folksy, irreverent and sometimes cantankerous, a gaunt, 6-foot-7 beanpole with a ranch hand’s soft drawl, Mr. Simpson was a three-term senator, from 1979 to 1997, whom school children and tourists in the gallery sometimes took for a Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington oddball, especially during his occasional rants against “bug-eyed zealots” and “super-greenies,” as he liked to call environmental lobbyists.
The son of a former Wyoming governor and United States senator, Mr. Simpson had been a hell-raiser as a teenager. He and some friends shot up mailboxes, killed a cow with rifles and set fire to an abandoned federal property. He punched a police officer who arrested him. While no one had been seriously hurt, he faced prison. But he was put on probation for two years and paid restitution….
Mr. Simpson had love-hate relationships with the press. Many journalists liked his earthy humor and easy accessibility. But his language could be coarse and his tone contemptuous when he attacked the news media, sometimes singling out reporters by name. He crossed a line when he accused Peter Arnett of CNN of being an enemy “sympathizer” for his reporting from Iraq during the Persian Gulf war, and wrongly accused him of bias in the Vietnam War because he had married a Vietnamese woman.
His political positions sometimes seemed contradictory, or perhaps personal. He supported abortion rights and right-wing nominees to the United States Supreme Court who might overturn Roe v. Wade. And partly out of a friendship forged when he was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, he called on the nation to apologize to Japanese Americans who were interned as potential security risks during World War II.
Read more at the NYT if you’re interested. Frankly, I thought he was a horrible person, but what do I know?
Daknikat covered the Republicans’ horrific continuing resolution yesterday. Of course it pass with Democratic help.
HuffPost: Here Are The Democrats Who Advanced A GOP Bill To Avoid A Government Shutdown.
In the end, nine senators who caucus with Democrats joined with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in voting to advance legislation to avoid a government shutdown, essentially giving up Democratic leverage over President Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.
Their support meant the bill was able to break the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster, 62-38….
“The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” Schumer told The New York Times earlier on Friday, arguing a shutdown would be far too unpredictable.
Internal party critics have said Schumer gave up a rare moment of leverage far too easily, misplaying his hand after an often-fractious House Republican Caucus passed a party-line spending bill with Trump’s blessing.Schumer suggested he was willing to face withering criticism from moderate House members to angry progressive activists: “I’ll take some of the bullets.”
These nine senators are likely to share in Schumer’s political suffering, though none of them are an obvious target for an immediate primary challenge.
- Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.): The party’s leading contrarian at the moment, Fetterman has repeatedly said he will never vote for a government shutdown under any circumstances. He’s not up for reelection until 2028.
- Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.): Cortez Masto said her vote was not an “easy decision,” but she was refusing to “hand [Trump and Musk] a shutdown where they would have free reign to cause more chaos and harm.” She’s not up for reelection until 2028.
- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the party’s Senate leadership, is up for reelection in 2026 but is widely expected to retire.
- Sen. Angus King (I-Maine): King’s state is heavily reliant on government funds, and he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page giving Musk and Trump power would be a “significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.” King is not up for reelection until 2030.
- Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii): Schatz is known to have leadership ambitions, and taking this vote may show he’s willing to take a political hit for the rest of the caucus. Hawaii is also heavily reliant on federal employees. “Given the number of federal workers in Hawai‘i, mass furloughs would be deeply painful for people across the state,” he said in a statement. Schatz is up for reelection in 2028.
- Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): The Granite State duo are both moderates, and Shaheen is set to retire rather than run for reelection in 2026. Hassan is up for reelection in 2028. “Allowing the federal government to shut down with this President in charge is too dangerous to risk,” Hassan said in a statement.
- Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.): Peters has already announced his plan to retire in 2026. He said a shutdown under Trump would be “catastrophic”
- Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): A close ally of her fellow New Yorker, Gillibrand is also the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle. She’s not up for reelection until 2030.
I thought Schumer had some good arguments; but when we are facing a takeover by a dictator, it seems to me the Democrats should fight tooth and nail.
The Daily Beast: Dem Civil War Erupts With ‘Screaming’ and Primary Threats Behind Closed Doors.
Schumer’s politically dicey decision—ahead of a midnight Friday shutdown deadline—has infuriated Democrats to the point some are suggesting he step aside as leader. He explained on the Senate floor late Friday afternoon that his decision was “a Hobson’s choice,” conjuring images of a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk.
”I believe that allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he said. “The shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and DOGE the keys to the city, the state and the country. And that is a far worse alternative.”
Vintage Lady with White Cat, by Sharyn Bursic
“Next question,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries answered Friday afternoon when a reporter asked if it was time for new leadership in the Senate. Jeffries said House Democrats are “strongly opposed to the partisan funding bill” that Schumer says he now supports.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi repudiated Schumer’s choice earlier in the day, saying, “I salute Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his courageous rejection of this false choice, and I am proud of my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their overwhelming vote against this bill.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Schumer’s “unthinkable” acquiesce was a “betrayal,” adding she was “texting, calling, sending carrier pigeons” to Senate Democrats to beg them to not follow suit.
Democratic lawmakers are so “infuriated” with Schumer that some have spoken to Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, about running against him in a Senate primary race, according to CNN, which noted even “centrists” are “so mad” at Schumer they are “ready to write checks for AOC for Senate” come 2028 when he is up for re-election.
Daknikat wrote quite a bit about the Democrats’ anger yesterday. They were even angrier, if possible, after the bill passed. Schumer should retire anyway. We have to get rid of these old fossils.
Remember the days when the Bush administration was disappearing people they decided were terrorists? It looks like Trump is going to follow a similar playbook. I just hope it doesn’t involve torture. The Trump gang are coming down hard on Columbia and other elite universities about protests against the Israel war on Gaza. As you know, they have basically disappeared former Columbia student and protest leader Mahmood Kahlil.
ABC News: White House allegedly asked for updates on arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil, his attorney says.
Mahmoud Khalil — the pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week — said he overheard federal agents say that the White House was asking for an update on his detention, his attorneys said.
“He was surrounded by many DHS agents, or people he believed to be DHS agents, and he believes that he saw or heard, during a call, one of them say that the White House wants an update on what’s going on,” Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing Khalil, said at a press conference Friday.
“We have every reason to believe, as we allege in the petition, that many people within the executive branch of the government were involved, including the White House,” Sisay said.
Khalil took part in student protests at Columbia University calling for the institution to divest and cut ties with Israel, and he participated in negotiations with university administration.
“His one and only goal was to get Columbia University to divest from its complicity with Israeli government crimes in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Ramzi Kassem, the director of CLEAR, a group representing Khalil….
The Trump administration has claimed that Khalil distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” without providing evidence.
The First Amendment is dead, apparently.
AP: The Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University hid students sought by the US.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University concealed “illegal aliens” on its campus, one of its top officials said Friday, as the Trump administration intensified its campaign to deport foreigners who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school last year.
Agents with the Department of Homeland Security searched two university residences with a warrant Thursday evening. No one was arrested and it was unclear whom the authorities were searching for, but by Friday afternoon U.S. officials had announced developments related to two people they had pursued in connection with the demonstrations.
A Columbia doctoral student from India whose visa was revoked by the Trump administration fled the U.S. on an airliner. And a Palestinian woman who had been arrested during the protests at the university last April was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Newark, New Jersey, on charges that she overstayed an expired visa.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the Justice Department, said it was all part of the president’s “mission to end antisemitism in this country.”
What a bunch of bullshit.
“Just last night, we worked with the Department of Homeland Security to execute search warrants from an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus,” Blanche said. “That investigation is ongoing, and we are also looking at whether Columbia’s handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.”
Blanche didn’t say what evidence agents had of wrongdoing by the university. It was unclear whether he was accusing the school itself of “terrorism crimes” or saying that people involved in the protests had committed such crimes.
Girl with a Cat, by Zakir Ahmedov
The Boston Globe has a scary immigration story today: R.I. doctor prevented from returning to US after visiting her parents in Lebanon.
A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
This is a creepy story from The Guardian: Pro-Israel group says it has ‘deportation list’ and has sent ‘thousands’ of names to Trump officials.
A far-right group that claimed credit for the arrest of a Palestinian activist and permanent US resident who the Trump administration is seeking to deport claims it has submitted “thousands of names” for similar treatment.
Betar US is one of a number of rightwing, pro-Israel groups that are supporting the administration’s efforts to deport international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests, an effort that escalated this week with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who recently completed his graduate studies at Columbia University.
This week, Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was just “the first of many to come”. Betar US quickly claimed credit on social media for providing Khalil’s name to the government.
Betar, which has been labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, said on Monday that it had “been working on deportations and will continue to do so”, and warned that the effort would extend beyond immigrants. “Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month,” the group’s post on X read. (It is very difficult to revoke US citizenship, though Trump has indicated an intention to try.)
The group has compiled a so-called “deportation list” naming individuals it believes are in the US on visas and have participated in pro-Palestinian protests, claiming these individuals “terrorize America”.
A Betar spokesperson, Daniel Levy, said in a statement to the Guardian that Betar submitted “thousands of names” of students and faculty they believe to be on visas from institutions like Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, Syracuse University and others to representatives of the Trump administration.
By Martin Pierce
Here’s another immigration horror story from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee-area woman deported to Laos though she’s never been there, doesn’t speak the language.
A Hmong American woman who has lived in the Milwaukee area since she was 8 months old was deported last week to Laos, a country she has never visited, and says she is stranded in a rooming house surrounded by military guards.
Ma Yang, 37, a mother of five, said she does not speak the Lao language, has no family or friends in the country and that the military is holding all her documents. She was born in Thailand, the daughter of Hmong refugees after the Vietnam War, and she was a legal permanent U.S. resident until she pleaded guilty to taking part in a marijuana trafficking operation.
“The United States sent me back to die,” she said. “I don’t even know where to go. I don’t even know what to do.”
As President Donald Trump pushes the mass deportation of immigrants, Yang believes she is one of the first Hmong Americans to be deported to Laos in recent years. As of November, the U.S. considered Laos an “uncooperative” country that accepted few, if any, deportees. Zero people were deported to Laos in the last fiscal year, according to federal data.
Once she arrived in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on March 6, she said she was questioned by military authorities then sent to a rooming house, where guards did not allow her to leave or contact anyone for five days. She paced in circles around the compound and ate food the guards gave her.
A few days ago, she was taken to buy a cellphone and withdraw cash. She could finally reach out to her partner of 16 years, Michael Bub of South Milwaukee, a U.S. citizen. The military official in charge of her situation — she does not know his rank or title — then said she could leave if she wanted. But she is scared to venture out.
Trump is apparently planning a new travel ban. The New York Times: Draft List for New Travel Ban Proposes Trump Target 43 Countries.
The Trump administration is considering targeting the citizens of as many as 43 countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States that would be broader than the restrictions imposed during President Trump’s first term, according to officials familiar with the matter.
A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said….
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.
Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.
See the full draft list of countries at the link. I can’t reproduce it here.
This is getting too long, but I need to touch on Trump’s speech at the “justice department” yesterday. The speech was supposed to be about fentanyl.
Mary Sauer, Figure with Black Cat
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump vents fury about his criminal cases in extraordinary speech at DoJ.
Taking over the justice department headquarters for what amounted to a political event, Donald Trump railed against the criminal cases he defeated by virtue of returning to the presidency in an extraordinary victory lap the department has perhaps never before seen.
The event was billed as a policy address for the administration to tout its focus on combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but the majority of the president’s freewheeling remarks focused instead on his personal grievances with the department.
Trump spoke from a specially constructed stage in the great hall of the main justice building, backed with blue velvet curtains that underscored the theatrics and symbolism of Trump cementing his control over the justice department, which had tried and failed to hold him to account.
The choice of venue carried additional resonance about how Trump has fully implemented his agenda at the justice department, doing away with the longstanding tradition of independence from partisan politics and instead turning it into an extension of the White House.
The great hall has historically been used for major law enforcement announcements by the justice department and its senior leaders, and when presidents have delivered speeches at the building, the remarks have been of a national security or non-political stripe.
In Trump’s hourlong speech, he repeatedly strayed from his prepared remarks to assail the criminal cases against him, various lawyers and former prosecutors by name and accused the Biden administration of trying to destroy him, declaring Joe Biden the head of a crime family.
“The case against me was bullshit,” Trump said with fury, in the building where the charges were approved.
But he heaped praise on his defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he elevated to in effect run the justice department as the deputy attorney general and the principal associate deputy attorney general respectively, as well as the department’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle….
Trump offered notable praise for the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed his criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents, over decades of legal precedent. Trump claimed criticism of her made her angry, although he also said he had never spoken to her.
“She was brilliant,” Trump said of Cannon, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.”
Liam Reilly at CNN: Trump baselessly accuses news media of ‘illegal’ behavior and corruption in DOJ speech.
President Donald Trump launched some of his harshest attacks yet on the media on Friday, using a speech at the Department of Justice to baselessly accuse outlets including CNN of illegal and corrupt behavior.
In his Friday speech, Trump praised Florida district court Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed in 2020 and who sided with him in January, blocking the DOJ from sharing a report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with members of Congress.
But Trump claimed news publishers had gone after Cannon because of the January ruling, alleging “they do it all the time with judges” and that they “will write whatever these people say,” without offering proof.
“The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and MSDNC, and the fake news, CNN and ABC, CBS and NBC, they’ll write whatever they say,” Trump said. “And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump.”
“It’s totally illegal what they do,” Trump continued, addressing DOJ employees. “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”
While Trump did not immediately clarify who “they” are, he later claimed that CNN and MSNBC are “political arms of the Democrat Party.”
“In my opinion, they’re really corrupt,” Trump said.
He’s doing everything in the dictator’s playbook, folks.
That’s it for me. What’s on your mind today?
#AlanSimpson #ColumbiaUniversity #DonaldTrump #governmentShutdown #HouseContinuingResolution2025 #immigration #JusticeDepartment #KevinDrum #MaYang #MahmoudKhalil #RashaAlawieh #travelBan
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Lazy Caturday Reads
By Brian Laing
Good Morning!!
After Daknikat’s comprehensive post yesterday, it’s hard to imagine there could be any more news to report on today, but I’ve found a few things.
There were two notable deaths yesterday, pioneering blogger Kevin Drum and former Senator Alan Simpson, half of Simpson-Bowles, who created what came to be known as the “Cat Food Commission.”
The New York Times: Kevin Drum, Influential Early Political Blogger, Dies at 66.
Kevin Drum, who gave up his day job in software marketing to write online about politics, policy and his cats, quickly becoming a key figure in the vanguard of center-left bloggers during the genre’s heyday in the early 2000s, died on March 7. He was 66.
His wife, Marian Drum, announced the death on his website but did not say where he died or cite a cause.
Mr. Drum, who lived in Irvine, Calif., had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and had recently developed pneumonia. He blogged about those personal challenges openly and with the same insight that he brought to issues like health care policy and urban planning.
He spent most of his life in Orange County, Calif., which distinguished him from the majority of early big-name bloggers, many of whom hailed from the Washington-Boston corridor or from academic enclaves.
Mr. Drum began blogging in 2002 and quickly developed a large nationwide following. He helped shape what became known as the liberal blogosphere, populated by a broad amalgam of left-of-center thinkers who emphasized policy debates over political horse races.
His curiosity was broad, and he wrote on a variety of subjects from a variety of perspectives — sometimes casually observational, sometimes rigorously analytical — in a way that set him apart from the assorted camps that defined the blogosphere, including academics, politicos and ideologues.
Four years after that, Mr. Drum moved to Mother Jones, where he wrote not just blog posts but also extensive reported pieces for the magazine.
Most notable was a deep dive in 2013 into the theory that the crime wave of the late 20th century was driven in large part by childhood exposure to lead in gasoline and paint, a key factor in the development of behavioral problems and, in turn, delinquency. As lead was phased out, health outcomes improved and crime rates dropped.
“He was just able to unpack very complicated — particularly economically complicated — stories in an immensely readable way,” said Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of Mother Jones.
The New York Times: Alan K. Simpson, a Folksy Republican Force in the Senate, Dies at 93.
Alan K. Simpson, a plain-spoken former Republican senator from Wyoming who championed immigration reforms and conservative candidates for the Supreme Court while fighting running battles with women’s groups, environmentalists and the press, died on Friday in hospice in Cody, Wyo. He was 93.
He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of a case of frostbite to his left foot that he endured about five years ago and that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.
By Matt Cauley
Folksy, irreverent and sometimes cantankerous, a gaunt, 6-foot-7 beanpole with a ranch hand’s soft drawl, Mr. Simpson was a three-term senator, from 1979 to 1997, whom school children and tourists in the gallery sometimes took for a Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington oddball, especially during his occasional rants against “bug-eyed zealots” and “super-greenies,” as he liked to call environmental lobbyists.
The son of a former Wyoming governor and United States senator, Mr. Simpson had been a hell-raiser as a teenager. He and some friends shot up mailboxes, killed a cow with rifles and set fire to an abandoned federal property. He punched a police officer who arrested him. While no one had been seriously hurt, he faced prison. But he was put on probation for two years and paid restitution….
Mr. Simpson had love-hate relationships with the press. Many journalists liked his earthy humor and easy accessibility. But his language could be coarse and his tone contemptuous when he attacked the news media, sometimes singling out reporters by name. He crossed a line when he accused Peter Arnett of CNN of being an enemy “sympathizer” for his reporting from Iraq during the Persian Gulf war, and wrongly accused him of bias in the Vietnam War because he had married a Vietnamese woman.
His political positions sometimes seemed contradictory, or perhaps personal. He supported abortion rights and right-wing nominees to the United States Supreme Court who might overturn Roe v. Wade. And partly out of a friendship forged when he was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, he called on the nation to apologize to Japanese Americans who were interned as potential security risks during World War II.
Read more at the NYT if you’re interested. Frankly, I thought he was a horrible person, but what do I know?
Daknikat covered the Republicans’ horrific continuing resolution yesterday. Of course it pass with Democratic help.
HuffPost: Here Are The Democrats Who Advanced A GOP Bill To Avoid A Government Shutdown.
In the end, nine senators who caucus with Democrats joined with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in voting to advance legislation to avoid a government shutdown, essentially giving up Democratic leverage over President Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.
Their support meant the bill was able to break the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster, 62-38….
“The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” Schumer told The New York Times earlier on Friday, arguing a shutdown would be far too unpredictable.
Internal party critics have said Schumer gave up a rare moment of leverage far too easily, misplaying his hand after an often-fractious House Republican Caucus passed a party-line spending bill with Trump’s blessing.Schumer suggested he was willing to face withering criticism from moderate House members to angry progressive activists: “I’ll take some of the bullets.”
These nine senators are likely to share in Schumer’s political suffering, though none of them are an obvious target for an immediate primary challenge.
- Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.): The party’s leading contrarian at the moment, Fetterman has repeatedly said he will never vote for a government shutdown under any circumstances. He’s not up for reelection until 2028.
- Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.): Cortez Masto said her vote was not an “easy decision,” but she was refusing to “hand [Trump and Musk] a shutdown where they would have free reign to cause more chaos and harm.” She’s not up for reelection until 2028.
- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the party’s Senate leadership, is up for reelection in 2026 but is widely expected to retire.
- Sen. Angus King (I-Maine): King’s state is heavily reliant on government funds, and he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page giving Musk and Trump power would be a “significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.” King is not up for reelection until 2030.
- Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii): Schatz is known to have leadership ambitions, and taking this vote may show he’s willing to take a political hit for the rest of the caucus. Hawaii is also heavily reliant on federal employees. “Given the number of federal workers in Hawai‘i, mass furloughs would be deeply painful for people across the state,” he said in a statement. Schatz is up for reelection in 2028.
- Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): The Granite State duo are both moderates, and Shaheen is set to retire rather than run for reelection in 2026. Hassan is up for reelection in 2028. “Allowing the federal government to shut down with this President in charge is too dangerous to risk,” Hassan said in a statement.
- Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.): Peters has already announced his plan to retire in 2026. He said a shutdown under Trump would be “catastrophic”
- Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): A close ally of her fellow New Yorker, Gillibrand is also the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle. She’s not up for reelection until 2030.
I thought Schumer had some good arguments; but when we are facing a takeover by a dictator, it seems to me the Democrats should fight tooth and nail.
The Daily Beast: Dem Civil War Erupts With ‘Screaming’ and Primary Threats Behind Closed Doors.
Schumer’s politically dicey decision—ahead of a midnight Friday shutdown deadline—has infuriated Democrats to the point some are suggesting he step aside as leader. He explained on the Senate floor late Friday afternoon that his decision was “a Hobson’s choice,” conjuring images of a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk.
”I believe that allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he said. “The shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and DOGE the keys to the city, the state and the country. And that is a far worse alternative.”
Vintage Lady with White Cat, by Sharyn Bursic
“Next question,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries answered Friday afternoon when a reporter asked if it was time for new leadership in the Senate. Jeffries said House Democrats are “strongly opposed to the partisan funding bill” that Schumer says he now supports.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi repudiated Schumer’s choice earlier in the day, saying, “I salute Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his courageous rejection of this false choice, and I am proud of my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their overwhelming vote against this bill.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Schumer’s “unthinkable” acquiesce was a “betrayal,” adding she was “texting, calling, sending carrier pigeons” to Senate Democrats to beg them to not follow suit.
Democratic lawmakers are so “infuriated” with Schumer that some have spoken to Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, about running against him in a Senate primary race, according to CNN, which noted even “centrists” are “so mad” at Schumer they are “ready to write checks for AOC for Senate” come 2028 when he is up for re-election.
Daknikat wrote quite a bit about the Democrats’ anger yesterday. They were even angrier, if possible, after the bill passed. Schumer should retire anyway. We have to get rid of these old fossils.
Remember the days when the Bush administration was disappearing people they decided were terrorists? It looks like Trump is going to follow a similar playbook. I just hope it doesn’t involve torture. The Trump gang are coming down hard on Columbia and other elite universities about protests against the Israel war on Gaza. As you know, they have basically disappeared former Columbia student and protest leader Mahmood Kahlil.
ABC News: White House allegedly asked for updates on arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil, his attorney says.
Mahmoud Khalil — the pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week — said he overheard federal agents say that the White House was asking for an update on his detention, his attorneys said.
“He was surrounded by many DHS agents, or people he believed to be DHS agents, and he believes that he saw or heard, during a call, one of them say that the White House wants an update on what’s going on,” Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing Khalil, said at a press conference Friday.
“We have every reason to believe, as we allege in the petition, that many people within the executive branch of the government were involved, including the White House,” Sisay said.
Khalil took part in student protests at Columbia University calling for the institution to divest and cut ties with Israel, and he participated in negotiations with university administration.
“His one and only goal was to get Columbia University to divest from its complicity with Israeli government crimes in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Ramzi Kassem, the director of CLEAR, a group representing Khalil….
The Trump administration has claimed that Khalil distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” without providing evidence.
The First Amendment is dead, apparently.
AP: The Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University hid students sought by the US.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University concealed “illegal aliens” on its campus, one of its top officials said Friday, as the Trump administration intensified its campaign to deport foreigners who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school last year.
Agents with the Department of Homeland Security searched two university residences with a warrant Thursday evening. No one was arrested and it was unclear whom the authorities were searching for, but by Friday afternoon U.S. officials had announced developments related to two people they had pursued in connection with the demonstrations.
A Columbia doctoral student from India whose visa was revoked by the Trump administration fled the U.S. on an airliner. And a Palestinian woman who had been arrested during the protests at the university last April was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Newark, New Jersey, on charges that she overstayed an expired visa.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the Justice Department, said it was all part of the president’s “mission to end antisemitism in this country.”
What a bunch of bullshit.
“Just last night, we worked with the Department of Homeland Security to execute search warrants from an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus,” Blanche said. “That investigation is ongoing, and we are also looking at whether Columbia’s handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.”
Blanche didn’t say what evidence agents had of wrongdoing by the university. It was unclear whether he was accusing the school itself of “terrorism crimes” or saying that people involved in the protests had committed such crimes.
Girl with a Cat, by Zakir Ahmedov
The Boston Globe has a scary immigration story today: R.I. doctor prevented from returning to US after visiting her parents in Lebanon.
A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
This is a creepy story from The Guardian: Pro-Israel group says it has ‘deportation list’ and has sent ‘thousands’ of names to Trump officials.
A far-right group that claimed credit for the arrest of a Palestinian activist and permanent US resident who the Trump administration is seeking to deport claims it has submitted “thousands of names” for similar treatment.
Betar US is one of a number of rightwing, pro-Israel groups that are supporting the administration’s efforts to deport international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests, an effort that escalated this week with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who recently completed his graduate studies at Columbia University.
This week, Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was just “the first of many to come”. Betar US quickly claimed credit on social media for providing Khalil’s name to the government.
Betar, which has been labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, said on Monday that it had “been working on deportations and will continue to do so”, and warned that the effort would extend beyond immigrants. “Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month,” the group’s post on X read. (It is very difficult to revoke US citizenship, though Trump has indicated an intention to try.)
The group has compiled a so-called “deportation list” naming individuals it believes are in the US on visas and have participated in pro-Palestinian protests, claiming these individuals “terrorize America”.
A Betar spokesperson, Daniel Levy, said in a statement to the Guardian that Betar submitted “thousands of names” of students and faculty they believe to be on visas from institutions like Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, Syracuse University and others to representatives of the Trump administration.
By Martin Pierce
Here’s another immigration horror story from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee-area woman deported to Laos though she’s never been there, doesn’t speak the language.
A Hmong American woman who has lived in the Milwaukee area since she was 8 months old was deported last week to Laos, a country she has never visited, and says she is stranded in a rooming house surrounded by military guards.
Ma Yang, 37, a mother of five, said she does not speak the Lao language, has no family or friends in the country and that the military is holding all her documents. She was born in Thailand, the daughter of Hmong refugees after the Vietnam War, and she was a legal permanent U.S. resident until she pleaded guilty to taking part in a marijuana trafficking operation.
“The United States sent me back to die,” she said. “I don’t even know where to go. I don’t even know what to do.”
As President Donald Trump pushes the mass deportation of immigrants, Yang believes she is one of the first Hmong Americans to be deported to Laos in recent years. As of November, the U.S. considered Laos an “uncooperative” country that accepted few, if any, deportees. Zero people were deported to Laos in the last fiscal year, according to federal data.
Once she arrived in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on March 6, she said she was questioned by military authorities then sent to a rooming house, where guards did not allow her to leave or contact anyone for five days. She paced in circles around the compound and ate food the guards gave her.
A few days ago, she was taken to buy a cellphone and withdraw cash. She could finally reach out to her partner of 16 years, Michael Bub of South Milwaukee, a U.S. citizen. The military official in charge of her situation — she does not know his rank or title — then said she could leave if she wanted. But she is scared to venture out.
Trump is apparently planning a new travel ban. The New York Times: Draft List for New Travel Ban Proposes Trump Target 43 Countries.
The Trump administration is considering targeting the citizens of as many as 43 countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States that would be broader than the restrictions imposed during President Trump’s first term, according to officials familiar with the matter.
A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said….
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.
Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.
See the full draft list of countries at the link. I can’t reproduce it here.
This is getting too long, but I need to touch on Trump’s speech at the “justice department” yesterday. The speech was supposed to be about fentanyl.
Mary Sauer, Figure with Black Cat
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump vents fury about his criminal cases in extraordinary speech at DoJ.
Taking over the justice department headquarters for what amounted to a political event, Donald Trump railed against the criminal cases he defeated by virtue of returning to the presidency in an extraordinary victory lap the department has perhaps never before seen.
The event was billed as a policy address for the administration to tout its focus on combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but the majority of the president’s freewheeling remarks focused instead on his personal grievances with the department.
Trump spoke from a specially constructed stage in the great hall of the main justice building, backed with blue velvet curtains that underscored the theatrics and symbolism of Trump cementing his control over the justice department, which had tried and failed to hold him to account.
The choice of venue carried additional resonance about how Trump has fully implemented his agenda at the justice department, doing away with the longstanding tradition of independence from partisan politics and instead turning it into an extension of the White House.
The great hall has historically been used for major law enforcement announcements by the justice department and its senior leaders, and when presidents have delivered speeches at the building, the remarks have been of a national security or non-political stripe.
In Trump’s hourlong speech, he repeatedly strayed from his prepared remarks to assail the criminal cases against him, various lawyers and former prosecutors by name and accused the Biden administration of trying to destroy him, declaring Joe Biden the head of a crime family.
“The case against me was bullshit,” Trump said with fury, in the building where the charges were approved.
But he heaped praise on his defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he elevated to in effect run the justice department as the deputy attorney general and the principal associate deputy attorney general respectively, as well as the department’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle….
Trump offered notable praise for the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed his criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents, over decades of legal precedent. Trump claimed criticism of her made her angry, although he also said he had never spoken to her.
“She was brilliant,” Trump said of Cannon, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.”
Liam Reilly at CNN: Trump baselessly accuses news media of ‘illegal’ behavior and corruption in DOJ speech.
President Donald Trump launched some of his harshest attacks yet on the media on Friday, using a speech at the Department of Justice to baselessly accuse outlets including CNN of illegal and corrupt behavior.
In his Friday speech, Trump praised Florida district court Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed in 2020 and who sided with him in January, blocking the DOJ from sharing a report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with members of Congress.
But Trump claimed news publishers had gone after Cannon because of the January ruling, alleging “they do it all the time with judges” and that they “will write whatever these people say,” without offering proof.
“The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and MSDNC, and the fake news, CNN and ABC, CBS and NBC, they’ll write whatever they say,” Trump said. “And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump.”
“It’s totally illegal what they do,” Trump continued, addressing DOJ employees. “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”
While Trump did not immediately clarify who “they” are, he later claimed that CNN and MSNBC are “political arms of the Democrat Party.”
“In my opinion, they’re really corrupt,” Trump said.
He’s doing everything in the dictator’s playbook, folks.
That’s it for me. What’s on your mind today?
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