#joycevance — Public Fediverse posts

Civil Discourse – It’s The Cynicism – Joyce Vance

It’s The Cynicism

By Joyce Vance, Jan 17, 2026

It seems to be everywhere you look, across the political spectrum. Far too many people don’t believe in anything anymore. They’ve lost faith in everything: our institutions, our values, and even each other. We’ve become a country of cynics.

One of the first posts I saw this morning on social media was about a well-documented instance where a Minnesota family’s six children were hospitalized after their minivan filled with smoke and tear gas fired by federal agents. Below the news report, someone had dismissed it in the comments: “I don’t believe it.” That was it. No explanation, nothing that cast doubt on the reporting. Just a rejection.

A little bit further down, someone had written about diminishing confidence in the Justice Department. A commentator wrote, “Did anyone believe in that anyway?”

We have become a nation of skeptics, of cynics. We are jaded. It’s all around us.

In her essay, Truth and Politics, Hannah Arendt wrote, “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.”

The President spews lies so constantly and so casually that it’s easy to understand how people can lose their bearings. It’s an assumption that Trump lies, not something unusual. That’s the President of the United States!

One manifestation of the lies we’ve become so inured to is the destruction of confidence in our elections. Trump has lied for so long about voter fraud, about non-citizens voting (the evidence does not back that claim up), about voting machines, about stolen elections, that it has permeated the national consciousness and even when people see through the lies, a miasma of distrust for the entire process remains. And of course, it’s not just elections.

Who benefits from a loss of faith in our institutions and in our ability to come out on the other end of this national nightmare with an intact republic? It’s not hard to see. It’s the man who enjoys upsetting the balance of power guarded by NATO because he wants to own Greenland. The man who tears down the East Wing. The man who won’t release the Epstein Files.

At this stage, Trump no longer cares if people believe his lies. He just needs the chaos they generate and the absence of shared truths, shared facts, in our country. People who can no longer discern what’s true from what’s false lose their moral compasses, like the agents who are now shooting at the people they took an oath to protect and serve. It all benefits a leader who wants to take authoritarian control of a democracy.

Giving up your belief in how things should be is dangerous.

I’m not suggesting everyone should have blind faith in our institutions, far from it at this point. But we need to be aware of what’s broken and needs mending without getting stuck on it. Instead of succumbing to cynicism, let’s stay focused on what we can do, even the small things.

Be kind, share joy. Register to vote and make sure everyone around you does, too. We know what this is going to take, but we have to stop the spread of cynicism around us. We’ve come too far in the last year to accept Trump’s success as inevitable.

In the coming week, we will mark the one-year anniversary of the second Trump administration. Find your own way to protest it. Donate to a food bank. Help a neighbor out, or help someone you’ve never met but have empathy for. Sign up to work at a polling place, or decide to run for office. There is so much that we can do. What we cannot afford to do is to let a man who thinks of no one but himself win.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: It’s The Cynicism – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

It’s The Cynicism by Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse – The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website

By Joyce Vance, Jan 06, 2026

As I wrote to you last night, five years on from January 6, Donald Trump is trying to rewrite the history of the insurrection. The White House published a new website today, detailing their version of the timeline of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He accuses Democrats, pictured in black and white across the top of the page along with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, of promoting a “gaslighting narrative” of the day’s events.

The new page starts with the claim that, “President Trump took decisive action to pardon January 6 defendants who were unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples. They were not protected by the leaders who failed them. They were punished to cover incompetence.” It goes on to assert that his pardons ended “years of harsh solitary confinement, denied due process, and family separation for exercising their First Amendment rights.” The website fails to acknowledge that these criminal defendants were charged by grand juries, convicted at trial, or in many cases, convicted after they pled guilty, and had full appeal rights.

Trump concludes: “The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection,” which the website says was the certification of the 2020 election that the White House describes as “fraud-ridden” and for allegedly “weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.” The courts resoundingly rejected Trump’s claims of a stolen election, with even the Supreme Court ruling against him.

The website turns to the blame game—trying to foist off responsibility for January 6 on Nancy Pelosi and Democrats—and offers a timeline that emphasizes Trump’s call for peaceful protest.

A video taken by Pelosi’s daughter is included for the stunning proposition that she accepted blame for the attack on the Capitol. It’s selectively edited video and a debunked claim, indeed, an insincere one for the man who ignored pleas for help from members of his own party and watched the chaos unfold on television when he could have put a stop to it. As Pelosi’s office put it at the time, “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th.” But there it is, on the White House’s official website.

In a speech this morning at the House GOP retreat, held at the newly renamed “Trump Kennedy Center,” Trump, referring to the speech he gave on the Ellipse five years ago, alleged that “the news never reported the words ‘walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol.’” As far as I recall, those words were widely reported, along with everything else the president said and tweeted at the time, in full context. Trump’s claim that he called for an entirely peaceful protest that day is offset by Jack Smith’s recent testimony that the evidence he compiled established Trump’s complicity. “The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

Read the full transcript of Trump’s speech to the crowd on January 6, 2021, here [https://www.rev.com/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6] and make your own assessment. The full context is important, especially with the president installing a sanitized version on the White House website, a slanted version that includes the word he was doubtless encouraged to insert about peacefulness, for the obvious reason that the speech was one that otherwise exhorted the crowd to take action. “We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” the president told the crowd in the first seconds of his address.

Trump also said:

• “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.”
• “By the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? … There’s never been anything like this. We will not let them silence your voices. We’re not going to let it happen. Not going to let it happen.”
• [The crowd then breaks in, chanting, “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” Trump does not discourage this.]
• “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women … You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections.”
• “Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future. Well, I have to say we have to be a little bit careful. That’s a nice statement, but we have to be a little careful with that statement. If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country, because it’s illegal when the votes are illegal, when the way they got there is illegal, when the States that vote are given false and fraudulent information.”
• “So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give … The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

This morning, Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “We must speak plainly: January 6th was an attempted coup. It was an effort to nullify millions of lawful votes and subvert the will of the American people. But the attack failed because of the courage of public servants who gave proof through the night that our flag was still there by refusing to bend to pressure, threats, or intimidation. On that day, the Constitution held and we kept the Republic.”

Trump is trying to take it away again, this time with a rewrite of history that is worthy of George Orwell’s 1984. Our job as citizens is clear. We have to remain committed and refuse to let that happen. Facts are powerful. If the truth wasn’t so damaging, Trump wouldn’t be going to this much trouble to rewrite it. That he has public resources and a president’s bully pulpit to do it with is shameful and dangerous.

Last night I wrote to you about the Virginia museum curator, Bill Martin, who insisted on exhibits that put on display a shameful history of teaching fourth graders in the state that slavery was a good time with happy slaves, a gross misrepresentation of reality. Mr. Martin stood for the truth and dislodged and exposed that narrative so it could not be reinstated. We have to do that with Trump’s newest effort to rewrite the history of January 6. Trump may temporarily control government websites and museums, but we control the public narrative on the ground—we are everywhere across the country.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website

Civil Discourse – The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website

By Joyce Vance, Jan 06, 2026

As I wrote to you last night, five years on from January 6, Donald Trump is trying to rewrite the history of the insurrection. The White House published a new website today, detailing their version of the timeline of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He accuses Democrats, pictured in black and white across the top of the page along with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, of promoting a “gaslighting narrative” of the day’s events.

The new page starts with the claim that, “President Trump took decisive action to pardon January 6 defendants who were unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples. They were not protected by the leaders who failed them. They were punished to cover incompetence.” It goes on to assert that his pardons ended “years of harsh solitary confinement, denied due process, and family separation for exercising their First Amendment rights.” The website fails to acknowledge that these criminal defendants were charged by grand juries, convicted at trial, or in many cases, convicted after they pled guilty, and had full appeal rights.

Trump concludes: “The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection,” which the website says was the certification of the 2020 election that the White House describes as “fraud-ridden” and for allegedly “weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.” The courts resoundingly rejected Trump’s claims of a stolen election, with even the Supreme Court ruling against him.

The website turns to the blame game—trying to foist off responsibility for January 6 on Nancy Pelosi and Democrats—and offers a timeline that emphasizes Trump’s call for peaceful protest.

A video taken by Pelosi’s daughter is included for the stunning proposition that she accepted blame for the attack on the Capitol. It’s selectively edited video and a debunked claim, indeed, an insincere one for the man who ignored pleas for help from members of his own party and watched the chaos unfold on television when he could have put a stop to it. As Pelosi’s office put it at the time, “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th.” But there it is, on the White House’s official website.

In a speech this morning at the House GOP retreat, held at the newly renamed “Trump Kennedy Center,” Trump, referring to the speech he gave on the Ellipse five years ago, alleged that “the news never reported the words ‘walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol.’” As far as I recall, those words were widely reported, along with everything else the president said and tweeted at the time, in full context. Trump’s claim that he called for an entirely peaceful protest that day is offset by Jack Smith’s recent testimony that the evidence he compiled established Trump’s complicity. “The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

Read the full transcript of Trump’s speech to the crowd on January 6, 2021, here [https://www.rev.com/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6] and make your own assessment. The full context is important, especially with the president installing a sanitized version on the White House website, a slanted version that includes the word he was doubtless encouraged to insert about peacefulness, for the obvious reason that the speech was one that otherwise exhorted the crowd to take action. “We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” the president told the crowd in the first seconds of his address.

Trump also said:

• “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.”
• “By the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? … There’s never been anything like this. We will not let them silence your voices. We’re not going to let it happen. Not going to let it happen.”
• [The crowd then breaks in, chanting, “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” Trump does not discourage this.]
• “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women … You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections.”
• “Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future. Well, I have to say we have to be a little bit careful. That’s a nice statement, but we have to be a little careful with that statement. If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country, because it’s illegal when the votes are illegal, when the way they got there is illegal, when the States that vote are given false and fraudulent information.”
• “So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give … The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

This morning, Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “We must speak plainly: January 6th was an attempted coup. It was an effort to nullify millions of lawful votes and subvert the will of the American people. But the attack failed because of the courage of public servants who gave proof through the night that our flag was still there by refusing to bend to pressure, threats, or intimidation. On that day, the Constitution held and we kept the Republic.”

Trump is trying to take it away again, this time with a rewrite of history that is worthy of George Orwell’s 1984. Our job as citizens is clear. We have to remain committed and refuse to let that happen. Facts are powerful. If the truth wasn’t so damaging, Trump wouldn’t be going to this much trouble to rewrite it. That he has public resources and a president’s bully pulpit to do it with is shameful and dangerous.

Last night I wrote to you about the Virginia museum curator, Bill Martin, who insisted on exhibits that put on display a shameful history of teaching fourth graders in the state that slavery was a good time with happy slaves, a gross misrepresentation of reality. Mr. Martin stood for the truth and dislodged and exposed that narrative so it could not be reinstated. We have to do that with Trump’s newest effort to rewrite the history of January 6. Trump may temporarily control government websites and museums, but we control the public narrative on the ground—we are everywhere across the country.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website

Civil Discourse – The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website

By Joyce Vance, Jan 06, 2026

As I wrote to you last night, five years on from January 6, Donald Trump is trying to rewrite the history of the insurrection. The White House published a new website today, detailing their version of the timeline of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He accuses Democrats, pictured in black and white across the top of the page along with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, of promoting a “gaslighting narrative” of the day’s events.

The new page starts with the claim that, “President Trump took decisive action to pardon January 6 defendants who were unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples. They were not protected by the leaders who failed them. They were punished to cover incompetence.” It goes on to assert that his pardons ended “years of harsh solitary confinement, denied due process, and family separation for exercising their First Amendment rights.” The website fails to acknowledge that these criminal defendants were charged by grand juries, convicted at trial, or in many cases, convicted after they pled guilty, and had full appeal rights.

Trump concludes: “The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection,” which the website says was the certification of the 2020 election that the White House describes as “fraud-ridden” and for allegedly “weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.” The courts resoundingly rejected Trump’s claims of a stolen election, with even the Supreme Court ruling against him.

The website turns to the blame game—trying to foist off responsibility for January 6 on Nancy Pelosi and Democrats—and offers a timeline that emphasizes Trump’s call for peaceful protest.

A video taken by Pelosi’s daughter is included for the stunning proposition that she accepted blame for the attack on the Capitol. It’s selectively edited video and a debunked claim, indeed, an insincere one for the man who ignored pleas for help from members of his own party and watched the chaos unfold on television when he could have put a stop to it. As Pelosi’s office put it at the time, “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th.” But there it is, on the White House’s official website.

In a speech this morning at the House GOP retreat, held at the newly renamed “Trump Kennedy Center,” Trump, referring to the speech he gave on the Ellipse five years ago, alleged that “the news never reported the words ‘walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol.’” As far as I recall, those words were widely reported, along with everything else the president said and tweeted at the time, in full context. Trump’s claim that he called for an entirely peaceful protest that day is offset by Jack Smith’s recent testimony that the evidence he compiled established Trump’s complicity. “The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

Read the full transcript of Trump’s speech to the crowd on January 6, 2021, here [https://www.rev.com/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6] and make your own assessment. The full context is important, especially with the president installing a sanitized version on the White House website, a slanted version that includes the word he was doubtless encouraged to insert about peacefulness, for the obvious reason that the speech was one that otherwise exhorted the crowd to take action. “We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” the president told the crowd in the first seconds of his address.

Trump also said:

• “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.”
• “By the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? … There’s never been anything like this. We will not let them silence your voices. We’re not going to let it happen. Not going to let it happen.”
• [The crowd then breaks in, chanting, “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” Trump does not discourage this.]
• “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women … You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections.”
• “Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future. Well, I have to say we have to be a little bit careful. That’s a nice statement, but we have to be a little careful with that statement. If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country, because it’s illegal when the votes are illegal, when the way they got there is illegal, when the States that vote are given false and fraudulent information.”
• “So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give … The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

This morning, Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “We must speak plainly: January 6th was an attempted coup. It was an effort to nullify millions of lawful votes and subvert the will of the American people. But the attack failed because of the courage of public servants who gave proof through the night that our flag was still there by refusing to bend to pressure, threats, or intimidation. On that day, the Constitution held and we kept the Republic.”

Trump is trying to take it away again, this time with a rewrite of history that is worthy of George Orwell’s 1984. Our job as citizens is clear. We have to remain committed and refuse to let that happen. Facts are powerful. If the truth wasn’t so damaging, Trump wouldn’t be going to this much trouble to rewrite it. That he has public resources and a president’s bully pulpit to do it with is shameful and dangerous.

Last night I wrote to you about the Virginia museum curator, Bill Martin, who insisted on exhibits that put on display a shameful history of teaching fourth graders in the state that slavery was a good time with happy slaves, a gross misrepresentation of reality. Mr. Martin stood for the truth and dislodged and exposed that narrative so it could not be reinstated. We have to do that with Trump’s newest effort to rewrite the history of January 6. Trump may temporarily control government websites and museums, but we control the public narrative on the ground—we are everywhere across the country.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website

Civil Discourse – The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website

By Joyce Vance, Jan 06, 2026

As I wrote to you last night, five years on from January 6, Donald Trump is trying to rewrite the history of the insurrection. The White House published a new website today, detailing their version of the timeline of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He accuses Democrats, pictured in black and white across the top of the page along with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, of promoting a “gaslighting narrative” of the day’s events.

The new page starts with the claim that, “President Trump took decisive action to pardon January 6 defendants who were unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples. They were not protected by the leaders who failed them. They were punished to cover incompetence.” It goes on to assert that his pardons ended “years of harsh solitary confinement, denied due process, and family separation for exercising their First Amendment rights.” The website fails to acknowledge that these criminal defendants were charged by grand juries, convicted at trial, or in many cases, convicted after they pled guilty, and had full appeal rights.

Trump concludes: “The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection,” which the website says was the certification of the 2020 election that the White House describes as “fraud-ridden” and for allegedly “weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.” The courts resoundingly rejected Trump’s claims of a stolen election, with even the Supreme Court ruling against him.

The website turns to the blame game—trying to foist off responsibility for January 6 on Nancy Pelosi and Democrats—and offers a timeline that emphasizes Trump’s call for peaceful protest.

A video taken by Pelosi’s daughter is included for the stunning proposition that she accepted blame for the attack on the Capitol. It’s selectively edited video and a debunked claim, indeed, an insincere one for the man who ignored pleas for help from members of his own party and watched the chaos unfold on television when he could have put a stop to it. As Pelosi’s office put it at the time, “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th.” But there it is, on the White House’s official website.

In a speech this morning at the House GOP retreat, held at the newly renamed “Trump Kennedy Center,” Trump, referring to the speech he gave on the Ellipse five years ago, alleged that “the news never reported the words ‘walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol.’” As far as I recall, those words were widely reported, along with everything else the president said and tweeted at the time, in full context. Trump’s claim that he called for an entirely peaceful protest that day is offset by Jack Smith’s recent testimony that the evidence he compiled established Trump’s complicity. “The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

Read the full transcript of Trump’s speech to the crowd on January 6, 2021, here [https://www.rev.com/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6] and make your own assessment. The full context is important, especially with the president installing a sanitized version on the White House website, a slanted version that includes the word he was doubtless encouraged to insert about peacefulness, for the obvious reason that the speech was one that otherwise exhorted the crowd to take action. “We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” the president told the crowd in the first seconds of his address.

Trump also said:

• “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.”
• “By the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? … There’s never been anything like this. We will not let them silence your voices. We’re not going to let it happen. Not going to let it happen.”
• [The crowd then breaks in, chanting, “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” Trump does not discourage this.]
• “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women … You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections.”
• “Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future. Well, I have to say we have to be a little bit careful. That’s a nice statement, but we have to be a little careful with that statement. If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country, because it’s illegal when the votes are illegal, when the way they got there is illegal, when the States that vote are given false and fraudulent information.”
• “So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give … The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

This morning, Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “We must speak plainly: January 6th was an attempted coup. It was an effort to nullify millions of lawful votes and subvert the will of the American people. But the attack failed because of the courage of public servants who gave proof through the night that our flag was still there by refusing to bend to pressure, threats, or intimidation. On that day, the Constitution held and we kept the Republic.”

Trump is trying to take it away again, this time with a rewrite of history that is worthy of George Orwell’s 1984. Our job as citizens is clear. We have to remain committed and refuse to let that happen. Facts are powerful. If the truth wasn’t so damaging, Trump wouldn’t be going to this much trouble to rewrite it. That he has public resources and a president’s bully pulpit to do it with is shameful and dangerous.

Last night I wrote to you about the Virginia museum curator, Bill Martin, who insisted on exhibits that put on display a shameful history of teaching fourth graders in the state that slavery was a good time with happy slaves, a gross misrepresentation of reality. Mr. Martin stood for the truth and dislodged and exposed that narrative so it could not be reinstated. We have to do that with Trump’s newest effort to rewrite the history of January 6. Trump may temporarily control government websites and museums, but we control the public narrative on the ground—we are everywhere across the country.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Dangerous Revision Of Jan 6 History On The Official WH Website

Civil Discourse – The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

By Joyce Vance, Nov 29, 2025

“You must refuse illegal orders.” That’s what was said in the video made by six Democratic members of Congress. Trump accused them of seditious behavior. The FBI launched an investigation.

Then, on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”

That’s what the special operations commander overseeing the attack did. After the initial hit, live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The commander “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions … The two men were blown apart in the water.” The video Trump released later that day did not include the second strike.

The Post quoted Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who had advised special operations on the illegality of the order: “Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

My colleague Ryan Goodman, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and the founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, an online forum focused on U.S. national security law and policy, will join us Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. EST for an in-depth Substack live discussion of the issues raised here. Mark your calendars now and make sure you have the Substack App downloaded so you can join us for cutting edge legal analysis on this most important of issues. Ryan has been tracking these strikes and their legal implications since they first began. After the story broke in the Washington Post, he tweeted, “Textbook war crime/extrajudicial killing.”

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that Britain had stopped sharing intelligence on Caribbean drug running with the United States “amid concerns information supplied may be used to engage in lethal military strikes by American forces.” They specified that the cooperation was “paused shortly after the US began a campaign of lethal strikes in September,” but there was no explicit mention of the order Hegseth issued as the cause.

Friday evening at 5:42 p.m., Hegseth tweeted:

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.

The Biden administration preferred the kid gloves approach, allowing millions of people — including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans — to flood our communities with drugs and violence. The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.

Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.

Our warriors in SOUTHCOM put their lives on the line every day to protect the Homeland from narco-terrorists — and I will ALWAYS have their back.”

Hegseth did not deny that two defenseless people were killed. We still do not know what, if anything, they were guilty of. Certainly, as they clung to the wreckage of a boat in the ocean, they did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. The lawful thing to do would have been to rescue and prosecute the men. Instead, per Hegseth’s instruction, they were executed.

Hegseth doubled down a few moments later, tweeting, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

The Pentagon Spokesman, Seth Parnell, tweeted, “We told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday. These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake News is the enemy of the people.”

But shortly after the story ran in The Post, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, issued a joint statement with the Committee’s top Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, vowing “vigorous oversight” of Hegseth’s “kill them all” order. They wrote, “The Committee has directed inquires to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to the circumstances.”

By Saturday night, there was a growing call for, if not accountability, investigation, including by both House and Senate Republicans. The Washington Post wrote, “In a rare split with the Trump administration, GOP-led panels in the House and Senate say they want a full accounting in the September military attack.” Saturday night, Democratic Senator Ed Markey tweeted, “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and should be fired immediately.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

#killEverybody #caribbean #civilDiscourse #democraticCongressMembers #edMarkley #joyceVance #moment #narcoTerrorists #peteHegseth #pickASide #senateArmedServiceCommittee #senatorWicker #theWashingtonPost #unlawfulKilling

Civil Discourse – The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

By Joyce Vance, Nov 29, 2025

“You must refuse illegal orders.” That’s what was said in the video made by six Democratic members of Congress. Trump accused them of seditious behavior. The FBI launched an investigation.

Then, on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”

That’s what the special operations commander overseeing the attack did. After the initial hit, live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The commander “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions … The two men were blown apart in the water.” The video Trump released later that day did not include the second strike.

The Post quoted Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who had advised special operations on the illegality of the order: “Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

My colleague Ryan Goodman, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and the founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, an online forum focused on U.S. national security law and policy, will join us Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. EST for an in-depth Substack live discussion of the issues raised here. Mark your calendars now and make sure you have the Substack App downloaded so you can join us for cutting edge legal analysis on this most important of issues. Ryan has been tracking these strikes and their legal implications since they first began. After the story broke in the Washington Post, he tweeted, “Textbook war crime/extrajudicial killing.”

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that Britain had stopped sharing intelligence on Caribbean drug running with the United States “amid concerns information supplied may be used to engage in lethal military strikes by American forces.” They specified that the cooperation was “paused shortly after the US began a campaign of lethal strikes in September,” but there was no explicit mention of the order Hegseth issued as the cause.

Friday evening at 5:42 p.m., Hegseth tweeted:

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.

The Biden administration preferred the kid gloves approach, allowing millions of people — including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans — to flood our communities with drugs and violence. The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.

Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.

Our warriors in SOUTHCOM put their lives on the line every day to protect the Homeland from narco-terrorists — and I will ALWAYS have their back.”

Hegseth did not deny that two defenseless people were killed. We still do not know what, if anything, they were guilty of. Certainly, as they clung to the wreckage of a boat in the ocean, they did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. The lawful thing to do would have been to rescue and prosecute the men. Instead, per Hegseth’s instruction, they were executed.

Hegseth doubled down a few moments later, tweeting, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

The Pentagon Spokesman, Seth Parnell, tweeted, “We told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday. These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake News is the enemy of the people.”

But shortly after the story ran in The Post, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, issued a joint statement with the Committee’s top Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, vowing “vigorous oversight” of Hegseth’s “kill them all” order. They wrote, “The Committee has directed inquires to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to the circumstances.”

By Saturday night, there was a growing call for, if not accountability, investigation, including by both House and Senate Republicans. The Washington Post wrote, “In a rare split with the Trump administration, GOP-led panels in the House and Senate say they want a full accounting in the September military attack.” Saturday night, Democratic Senator Ed Markey tweeted, “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and should be fired immediately.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

#killEverybody #caribbean #civilDiscourse #democraticCongressMembers #edMarkley #joyceVance #moment #narcoTerrorists #peteHegseth #pickASide #senateArmedServiceCommittee #senatorWicker #theWashingtonPost #unlawfulKilling

Civil Discourse – The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

By Joyce Vance, Nov 29, 2025

“You must refuse illegal orders.” That’s what was said in the video made by six Democratic members of Congress. Trump accused them of seditious behavior. The FBI launched an investigation.

Then, on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”

That’s what the special operations commander overseeing the attack did. After the initial hit, live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The commander “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions … The two men were blown apart in the water.” The video Trump released later that day did not include the second strike.

The Post quoted Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who had advised special operations on the illegality of the order: “Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

My colleague Ryan Goodman, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and the founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, an online forum focused on U.S. national security law and policy, will join us Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. EST for an in-depth Substack live discussion of the issues raised here. Mark your calendars now and make sure you have the Substack App downloaded so you can join us for cutting edge legal analysis on this most important of issues. Ryan has been tracking these strikes and their legal implications since they first began. After the story broke in the Washington Post, he tweeted, “Textbook war crime/extrajudicial killing.”

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that Britain had stopped sharing intelligence on Caribbean drug running with the United States “amid concerns information supplied may be used to engage in lethal military strikes by American forces.” They specified that the cooperation was “paused shortly after the US began a campaign of lethal strikes in September,” but there was no explicit mention of the order Hegseth issued as the cause.

Friday evening at 5:42 p.m., Hegseth tweeted:

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.

The Biden administration preferred the kid gloves approach, allowing millions of people — including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans — to flood our communities with drugs and violence. The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.

Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.

Our warriors in SOUTHCOM put their lives on the line every day to protect the Homeland from narco-terrorists — and I will ALWAYS have their back.”

Hegseth did not deny that two defenseless people were killed. We still do not know what, if anything, they were guilty of. Certainly, as they clung to the wreckage of a boat in the ocean, they did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. The lawful thing to do would have been to rescue and prosecute the men. Instead, per Hegseth’s instruction, they were executed.

Hegseth doubled down a few moments later, tweeting, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

The Pentagon Spokesman, Seth Parnell, tweeted, “We told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday. These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake News is the enemy of the people.”

But shortly after the story ran in The Post, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, issued a joint statement with the Committee’s top Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, vowing “vigorous oversight” of Hegseth’s “kill them all” order. They wrote, “The Committee has directed inquires to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to the circumstances.”

By Saturday night, there was a growing call for, if not accountability, investigation, including by both House and Senate Republicans. The Washington Post wrote, “In a rare split with the Trump administration, GOP-led panels in the House and Senate say they want a full accounting in the September military attack.” Saturday night, Democratic Senator Ed Markey tweeted, “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and should be fired immediately.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

#killEverybody #caribbean #civilDiscourse #democraticCongressMembers #edMarkley #joyceVance #moment #narcoTerrorists #peteHegseth #pickASide #senateArmedServiceCommittee #senatorWicker #theWashingtonPost #unlawfulKilling

Civil Discourse – The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

By Joyce Vance, Nov 29, 2025

“You must refuse illegal orders.” That’s what was said in the video made by six Democratic members of Congress. Trump accused them of seditious behavior. The FBI launched an investigation.

Then, on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”

That’s what the special operations commander overseeing the attack did. After the initial hit, live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The commander “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions … The two men were blown apart in the water.” The video Trump released later that day did not include the second strike.

The Post quoted Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who had advised special operations on the illegality of the order: “Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

My colleague Ryan Goodman, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and the founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, an online forum focused on U.S. national security law and policy, will join us Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. EST for an in-depth Substack live discussion of the issues raised here. Mark your calendars now and make sure you have the Substack App downloaded so you can join us for cutting edge legal analysis on this most important of issues. Ryan has been tracking these strikes and their legal implications since they first began. After the story broke in the Washington Post, he tweeted, “Textbook war crime/extrajudicial killing.”

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that Britain had stopped sharing intelligence on Caribbean drug running with the United States “amid concerns information supplied may be used to engage in lethal military strikes by American forces.” They specified that the cooperation was “paused shortly after the US began a campaign of lethal strikes in September,” but there was no explicit mention of the order Hegseth issued as the cause.

Friday evening at 5:42 p.m., Hegseth tweeted:

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.

The Biden administration preferred the kid gloves approach, allowing millions of people — including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans — to flood our communities with drugs and violence. The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.

Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.

Our warriors in SOUTHCOM put their lives on the line every day to protect the Homeland from narco-terrorists — and I will ALWAYS have their back.”

Hegseth did not deny that two defenseless people were killed. We still do not know what, if anything, they were guilty of. Certainly, as they clung to the wreckage of a boat in the ocean, they did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. The lawful thing to do would have been to rescue and prosecute the men. Instead, per Hegseth’s instruction, they were executed.

Hegseth doubled down a few moments later, tweeting, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

The Pentagon Spokesman, Seth Parnell, tweeted, “We told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday. These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake News is the enemy of the people.”

But shortly after the story ran in The Post, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, issued a joint statement with the Committee’s top Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, vowing “vigorous oversight” of Hegseth’s “kill them all” order. They wrote, “The Committee has directed inquires to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to the circumstances.”

By Saturday night, there was a growing call for, if not accountability, investigation, including by both House and Senate Republicans. The Washington Post wrote, “In a rare split with the Trump administration, GOP-led panels in the House and Senate say they want a full accounting in the September military attack.” Saturday night, Democratic Senator Ed Markey tweeted, “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and should be fired immediately.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

#KillEverybody #Caribbean #CivilDiscourse #DemocraticCongressMembers #EdMarkley #JoyceVance #Moment #NarcoTerrorists #PeteHegseth #PickASide #SenateArmedServiceCommittee #SenatorWicker #TheWashingtonPost #UnlawfulKilling

Civil Discourse – The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

By Joyce Vance, Nov 29, 2025

“You must refuse illegal orders.” That’s what was said in the video made by six Democratic members of Congress. Trump accused them of seditious behavior. The FBI launched an investigation.

Then, on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”

That’s what the special operations commander overseeing the attack did. After the initial hit, live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The commander “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions … The two men were blown apart in the water.” The video Trump released later that day did not include the second strike.

The Post quoted Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who had advised special operations on the illegality of the order: “Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

My colleague Ryan Goodman, Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and the founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, an online forum focused on U.S. national security law and policy, will join us Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. EST for an in-depth Substack live discussion of the issues raised here. Mark your calendars now and make sure you have the Substack App downloaded so you can join us for cutting edge legal analysis on this most important of issues. Ryan has been tracking these strikes and their legal implications since they first began. After the story broke in the Washington Post, he tweeted, “Textbook war crime/extrajudicial killing.”

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that Britain had stopped sharing intelligence on Caribbean drug running with the United States “amid concerns information supplied may be used to engage in lethal military strikes by American forces.” They specified that the cooperation was “paused shortly after the US began a campaign of lethal strikes in September,” but there was no explicit mention of the order Hegseth issued as the cause.

Friday evening at 5:42 p.m., Hegseth tweeted:

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.

The Biden administration preferred the kid gloves approach, allowing millions of people — including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans — to flood our communities with drugs and violence. The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.

Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.

Our warriors in SOUTHCOM put their lives on the line every day to protect the Homeland from narco-terrorists — and I will ALWAYS have their back.”

Hegseth did not deny that two defenseless people were killed. We still do not know what, if anything, they were guilty of. Certainly, as they clung to the wreckage of a boat in the ocean, they did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. The lawful thing to do would have been to rescue and prosecute the men. Instead, per Hegseth’s instruction, they were executed.

Hegseth doubled down a few moments later, tweeting, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

The Pentagon Spokesman, Seth Parnell, tweeted, “We told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday. These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake News is the enemy of the people.”

But shortly after the story ran in The Post, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, issued a joint statement with the Committee’s top Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, vowing “vigorous oversight” of Hegseth’s “kill them all” order. They wrote, “The Committee has directed inquires to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to the circumstances.”

By Saturday night, there was a growing call for, if not accountability, investigation, including by both House and Senate Republicans. The Washington Post wrote, “In a rare split with the Trump administration, GOP-led panels in the House and Senate say they want a full accounting in the September military attack.” Saturday night, Democratic Senator Ed Markey tweeted, “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and should be fired immediately.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

#KillEverybody #Caribbean #CivilDiscourse #DemocraticCongressMembers #EdMarkley #JoyceVance #Moment #NarcoTerrorists #PeteHegseth #PickASide #SenateArmedServiceCommittee #SenatorWicker #TheWashingtonPost #UnlawfulKilling

Civil Discourse – Are We the Nazis Now? -Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Are We the Nazis Now?

How do we meet this moment?

By Joyce Vance, Oct 13, 2025

It’s hard to watch. People being treated like they are less than human because of their perceived immigration status. Like this six-year-old girl.

In early October, federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI, and ATF arrested 37 people in a raid on a Chicago apartment building at 7500 S. South Shore Drive. They banged on residents’ doors overnight, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times, “pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said.” A witness said she saw “agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans,” and that “kids were separated from their mothers.” DHS claimed the neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but offered no evidence in support and didn’t confirm that any of those arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang.

Earlier this month, at West Loop Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, ICE was forced to release two sisters it pulled out of their car at a school pick up, because they have legal status under DACA. But that didn’t stop the masked agents, captured on video by a quick-thinking teacher, from surrounding the car and smashing its windows before dragging the two out. One of the sisters cried out her name and where she lived to bystanders, an apparent effort to prevent being “disappeared” into ICE custody.

Are We the Nazis Now? by Joyce Vance

How do we meet this moment?

Read on Substack

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Are We the Nazis Now? – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #AnneFrank #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #ImmigrantChildren #ImmigrationAndCustomsEnforcementICE_ #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Nazis #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #TreatmentByICE #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Civil Discourse – Are We the Nazis Now? -Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Are We the Nazis Now?

How do we meet this moment?

By Joyce Vance, Oct 13, 2025

It’s hard to watch. People being treated like they are less than human because of their perceived immigration status. Like this six-year-old girl.

In early October, federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI, and ATF arrested 37 people in a raid on a Chicago apartment building at 7500 S. South Shore Drive. They banged on residents’ doors overnight, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times, “pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said.” A witness said she saw “agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans,” and that “kids were separated from their mothers.” DHS claimed the neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but offered no evidence in support and didn’t confirm that any of those arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang.

Earlier this month, at West Loop Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, ICE was forced to release two sisters it pulled out of their car at a school pick up, because they have legal status under DACA. But that didn’t stop the masked agents, captured on video by a quick-thinking teacher, from surrounding the car and smashing its windows before dragging the two out. One of the sisters cried out her name and where she lived to bystanders, an apparent effort to prevent being “disappeared” into ICE custody.

Are We the Nazis Now? by Joyce Vance

How do we meet this moment?

Read on Substack

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Are We the Nazis Now? – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #AnneFrank #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #ImmigrantChildren #ImmigrationAndCustomsEnforcementICE_ #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Nazis #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #TreatmentByICE #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Civil Discourse – Are We the Nazis Now? -Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Are We the Nazis Now?

How do we meet this moment?

By Joyce Vance, Oct 13, 2025

It’s hard to watch. People being treated like they are less than human because of their perceived immigration status. Like this six-year-old girl.

In early October, federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI, and ATF arrested 37 people in a raid on a Chicago apartment building at 7500 S. South Shore Drive. They banged on residents’ doors overnight, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times, “pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said.” A witness said she saw “agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans,” and that “kids were separated from their mothers.” DHS claimed the neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but offered no evidence in support and didn’t confirm that any of those arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang.

Earlier this month, at West Loop Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, ICE was forced to release two sisters it pulled out of their car at a school pick up, because they have legal status under DACA. But that didn’t stop the masked agents, captured on video by a quick-thinking teacher, from surrounding the car and smashing its windows before dragging the two out. One of the sisters cried out her name and where she lived to bystanders, an apparent effort to prevent being “disappeared” into ICE custody.

Are We the Nazis Now? by Joyce Vance

How do we meet this moment?

Read on Substack

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Are We the Nazis Now? – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #AnneFrank #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #ImmigrantChildren #ImmigrationAndCustomsEnforcementICE_ #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Nazis #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #TreatmentByICE #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Civil Discourse – Are We the Nazis Now? -Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Are We the Nazis Now?

How do we meet this moment?

By Joyce Vance, Oct 13, 2025

It’s hard to watch. People being treated like they are less than human because of their perceived immigration status. Like this six-year-old girl.

In early October, federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI, and ATF arrested 37 people in a raid on a Chicago apartment building at 7500 S. South Shore Drive. They banged on residents’ doors overnight, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times, “pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said.” A witness said she saw “agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans,” and that “kids were separated from their mothers.” DHS claimed the neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but offered no evidence in support and didn’t confirm that any of those arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang.

Earlier this month, at West Loop Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, ICE was forced to release two sisters it pulled out of their car at a school pick up, because they have legal status under DACA. But that didn’t stop the masked agents, captured on video by a quick-thinking teacher, from surrounding the car and smashing its windows before dragging the two out. One of the sisters cried out her name and where she lived to bystanders, an apparent effort to prevent being “disappeared” into ICE custody.

Are We the Nazis Now? by Joyce Vance

How do we meet this moment?

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Continue/Read Original Article Here: Are We the Nazis Now? – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

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#Politics #Impoundment #Fascism #joycevance
The outcome of that hearing will turn on whether the plaintiff groups challenging the Trump administration’s plans can show that they will be irremediably harmed by the measure.That leaves us with the question, can a president unilaterally substitute their own funding decisions for those of Congress? The answer is, they can’t The only way Trump can proceed with impoundment is if the Act is unconstitutional and Train is reversed
https://open.substack.com/pub/joycevance/p/impoundment?r=ymxmu&utm_medium=ios