#tylerrobinson — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #tylerrobinson, aggregated by home.social.
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White House puts trans rights groups in counterterrorism crosshairs
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Damaged bullet and handwritten notes deepen mystery in Charlie Kirk murder case. https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/world/charlie-kirk-case-bullet-twist-handwritten-notes-tyler-robinson-qtnbtont?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #CharlieKirk #TylerRobinson #UtahShooting #ForensicTwist #CrimeNews
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"The 'violent left' and 'antifa' and 'trans shooting epidemic' they blame for a wide number of horrific acts—including Kirk’s assassination—is almost entirely the fabric of their conspiracist fantasies, and they find themselves forever grasping at phantoms.
Not that that ever stopped them. Or the media from swallowing their fantasies whole."
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"He was, in fact, a member of the LDS Church in good standing who was photographed practicing with guns as a teenager, as well as wearing a Trump-themed Halloween costume in 2017. …
This is what has happened consistently whenever the MAGA right has tried to redirect concern about political extremism to its left-wing variant and away from their own overwhelming record of terroristic violence."
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"All of this rage [against 'the left' ehen Charlie Kirk was shot] was founded on the presumption that whoever shot Kirk was someone acting on a 'far left' political motive. But when the shooter was apprehended a day later, that all fell apart, because it turned out that the man—22-year-old Tyler Robinson of St. George, Utah—had no connections to leftist or antifascist organizations."
~ David Neiwert
#CharlieKirk #TylerRobinson #Mormon #LDSChurch #Trump
/1https://davidneiwert.substack.com/p/charlie-kirks-vengeful-maga-defenders
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A Fed gag order on 3,000 people #duet #charliekirk #tylerrobinson #trans #memes #gagorder #maga #YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntx-0yi-sO8
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https://www.fogolf.com/1071121/trump-snubs-kennedy-centers-charlie-kirk-vigil-after-weekend-at-golf-club/ Trump Snubs Kennedy Center’s Charlie Kirk Vigil After Weekend at Golf Club #CharlieKirk #Donald #DonaldTrump #DonaldTrumpGolf #DonaldTrumpGolfing #KarolineLeavitt #Kirk’sDeath #MikeJohnson #trump #TrumpGolf #TrumpGolfing #TylerRobinson #WhiteHouse
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#JonStewart's excellent commentary on the (tone of the) media coverage of shootings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY&
https://piped.video/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
#TheDailyShow #CharlieKirk #CharlieKirkKilling #CharlieKirkMurder #CharlieKirkShot #CharlieKirkAssassination #UtahValleyUniversityShooting #CharlieKirkShooting #MinnesotaShooting #MichiganShooting #MassShootings #TylerRobinson #NorthCarolinaShooting #GrandBlancShooting #GrandBlanc #SouthportShooting #ThomasJacobSanford #uspol #politics
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#JonStewart's excellent commentary on the (tone of the) media coverage of shootings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY&
https://piped.video/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
#TheDailyShow #CharlieKirk #CharlieKirkKilling #CharlieKirkMurder #CharlieKirkShot #CharlieKirkAssassination #UtahValleyUniversityShooting #CharlieKirkShooting #MinnesotaShooting #MichiganShooting #MassShootings #TylerRobinson #NorthCarolinaShooting #GrandBlancShooting #GrandBlanc #SouthportShooting #ThomasJacobSanford #uspol #politics
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#JonStewart's excellent commentary on the (tone of the) media coverage of shootings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY&
https://piped.video/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
#TheDailyShow #CharlieKirk #CharlieKirkKilling #CharlieKirkMurder #CharlieKirkShot #CharlieKirkAssassination #UtahValleyUniversityShooting #CharlieKirkShooting #MinnesotaShooting #MichiganShooting #MassShootings #TylerRobinson #NorthCarolinaShooting #GrandBlancShooting #GrandBlanc #SouthportShooting #ThomasJacobSanford #uspol #politics
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#JonStewart's excellent commentary on the (tone of the) media coverage of shootings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY&
https://piped.video/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
#TheDailyShow #CharlieKirk #CharlieKirkKilling #CharlieKirkMurder #CharlieKirkShot #CharlieKirkAssassination #UtahValleyUniversityShooting #CharlieKirkShooting #MinnesotaShooting #MichiganShooting #MassShootings #TylerRobinson #NorthCarolinaShooting #GrandBlancShooting #GrandBlanc #SouthportShooting #ThomasJacobSanford #uspol #politics
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#JonStewart's excellent commentary on the (tone of the) media coverage of shootings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY&
https://piped.video/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=k8j3N7dEwzY
#TheDailyShow #CharlieKirk #CharlieKirkKilling #CharlieKirkMurder #CharlieKirkShot #CharlieKirkAssassination #UtahValleyUniversityShooting #CharlieKirkShooting #MinnesotaShooting #MichiganShooting #MassShootings #TylerRobinson #NorthCarolinaShooting #GrandBlancShooting #GrandBlanc #SouthportShooting #ThomasJacobSanford #uspol #politics
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The 22-year-old man charged with killing Charlie #Kirk will have a court hearing Monday where he and his newly appointed legal counsel will decide whether they want a preliminary hearing where the judge will determine if there is enough evidence against him to go forward with a trial.
Prosecutors have charged #TylerRobinson with aggravated murder and plan to seek the death penalty.
The #Utah state court system gives people accused of crimes an option to waive their legal right to a preliminary hearing and instead schedule an arraignment where they can enter a plea. -
Scoperto politico italiano di destra che conosceva Charlie Kirk prima del 10 settembre
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Federal investigation in2 assassination of #conservative #activist #CharlieKirk found no connection betwn alleged shooter #TylerRobinson & #leftwing groups on which #Trump et all pledged 2 crack down afr killing. 1 person familiar w federal investigation said “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.” “Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive" https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/no-evidence-charlie-kirk-shooting-left-wing-groups-rcna232513
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#AdamKinzinger was a guest on the show "Have I Got News For You", where, along with host #RoyWoodJr, he explained how #convictedFelon #DonaldTrump violated #freeSpeech laws to get #JimmyKimmel fired for speaking his opinion about #CharlieKirk's murderer, #TylerRobinson.
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so does anyone know if he was leftwing or rightwing yet?
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Lazy Caturday Reads: Another Horrible Week Under the Trump Regime
Good Morning!!
By Leonid Kiparisov
It has been another horrible week under the Trump regime. Almost no one who is paying attention still believes that we still live in a democracy. We retain a few of the trappings–the courts (except the Supreme Court, of course), a few Congresspeople, some courageous journalists, citizens protesting in the streets.
The “president” who would be king is busy slapping gold on the walls of the oval office and talking to architects about his planned $200 million golden ballroom, while Stephen Miller runs the country. Oh, and he’s still signing executive orders prepared by Project 2025 and throwing tantrums when anyone dares to criticize or make fun of him.
Andrew Perez, Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng summarize the latest dictatorish happenings at Rolling Stone: Donald Trump’s Most Authoritarian Week Yet.
It was clear Donald Trump and his allies would ramp up their crackdown against any and all opposition in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — and this week, the president’s second administration unleashed its most authoritarian blitz yet.
The Trump administration got late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show taken off the air by threatening companies’ broadcast licenses if they continued to run his show. Trump and his team threatened to strip the tax-exempt status of liberal nonprofit groups, while the president called for left-wing activists to be jailed for protesting him at dinner. Trump announced he’ll once again try to designate “antifa” — America’s disparate anti-fascist movement — as a terrorist group, with no legitimate basis, clarifying once again where he stands on the whole fascism question.
Meanwhile, the administration worked toward its goal to deport a legal U.S. resident for speaking out against Israel’s relentless assault on Palestine. Reports trickled out that Trump would fire a U.S. attorney for failing to bring charges against one of his enemies, before Trump publicly called for his departure and he quit.
This ugly, authoritarian week didn’t happen in a vacuum. Trump just last month mused about how Americans want a “dictator,” and the administration now appears to be using Kirk’s shocking murder as an excuse to escalate Trump’s ongoing campaign for total power.
The ramp-up began on Monday, as Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast from the White House and huddled with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff and the man responsible for leading his mass vengeance campaign.
“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech. No, no, no,” Vance said, before immediately pledging to go after a network of liberal nonprofits that supposedly “foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.”
During the discussion, Miller repeatedly invoked Kirk’s death to justify the effort to shut down liberal groups.
On the Jimmy Kimmel firing:
…[O]n Wednesday, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Brendan Carr, began issuing explicit threats, demanding that broadcasters take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air.
Speaking with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, Carr pressured broadcasters to tell ABC: “‘Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore, until you straighten this out because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.’”
By Diya Sanat
Carr added, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Within hours, ABC had indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s show and two large broadcast companies, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they wouldn’t run it. (Note: The companies all have regulatory matters before the FCC.) Sources told Rolling Stone that while multiple executives at ABC and its parent company, Disney, did not feel that Kimmel’s comments merited a suspension, they caved to pressure from Carr.
“They were terrified about what the government would do, and did not even think Jimmy had the right to just explain what he said,” a person familiar with the internal situation said on Thursday, calling the decision “cowardly.”
Throughout Trumpland and the federal government, there was a heightened sense of glee over their silencing of Kimmel. Administration officials feel emboldened by the multiple scalps they’ve now collected — first Stephen Colbert, now Kimmel — to the point that they’re confident they have momentum to pressure corporate bosses to get rid of Trump’s late-night nemeses over at other networks.
Trump has gotten so full of himself after this big win that he’s now claiming that criticism of him is illegal.
Luke Broadwater at The New York Times: Trump Says Critical Coverage of Him Is ‘Really Illegal.’
President Trump said Friday that news reporters who cover his administration negatively have broken the law, a significant broadening of his attacks on journalists and their First Amendment right to critique the government.
A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Mr. Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting such reporters were lawbreakers.
“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
He added: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”
Mr. Trump did not cite a specific law he said he believed had been violated. It remained unclear Friday why Mr. Trump believed negative news coverage, which every president has faced and is protected by the Constitution, would be “really illegal.”
Asked for comment, the White House did not cite a specific law Mr. Trump believed was being violated, but a White House official pointed to settlements that media companies, including ABC, have agreed to pay after Mr. Trump’s legal team filed lawsuits against them, and suggested Mr. Trump was attempting to rein in “extreme left-wing bias in television.” [….]
Mr. Trump’s comments on Friday came a day after he suggested that protesters who called him “Hitler” to his face inside a Washington restaurant should be jailed.
The president, who has accused the protesters of being paid agitators and said such people “should be put in jail,” told reporters on Air Force One that he believed the protesters were “very inappropriate” and “a threat.”
Trump got some pushback from a surprising source. NBC News: Ted Cruz rips FCC chair’s Jimmy Kimmel threat as ‘unbelievably dangerous.’
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Friday for threats he made this week related to Jimmy Kimmel’s show, calling the Trump administration official’s actions “dangerous as hell.”
“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said on his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz.”
Girl with Cat – Augusta Oelschig , 1945 American, 1918–2000
“I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy, he’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him, but what he said there is dangerous as hell,”Cruz said.
Cruz is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the FCC. He warned Carr’s actions could have long-term consequences.
“It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, yeah, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it,”Cruz said….
Cruz went on to say Friday: “I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said,” but likened Carr’s comments about Disney taking the easy way or the hard way to a classic mob movie.
“I gotta say, that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,” Cruz said.
Of course Kimmel never said anything critical of Charlie Kirk. What he did do was make fun of Trump blowing of a question about how he was recovering from the loss of his friend to brag about his White House ballroom construction:
Kimmel has also mocked Trump for a specific comment he made in response to being asked by a reporter how he was personally “holding up” after the assassination of Kirk, who he has said was a friend.
Trump had replied saying he was “very good” and then immediately started boasting about the new ballroom he is building at the White House.
Kimmel said after the clip: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
There’s also no evidence of involvement of left wing groups in the Kirk assassination. NBC News:
The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.
One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”
“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.
In addition, two of the people familiar with the probe said it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level for Kirk’s killing, while the third source said there is still an expectation that some kind of federal charge is filed against Robinson.
Factors that have complicated the effort to bring charges at the federal level include that Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state; Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself is not a federal officer or elected official.
Disney (and perhaps even right wing Sinclair) apparently regret the sudden firing of Jimmy Kimmel.
Screen Rant: Disney Is Scrambling After The Backlash To Jimmy Kimmel’s Cancellation Blew Up.
Wholly unsurprising to anyone paying attention, the backlash over the abrupt cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! is only continuing to grow and spread, and Disney is now scrambling to fix a situation quickly spiraling out of its control. After far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, reactions have been intense, but it’s Disney’s knee-jerk reaction that has drawn the most ire.
Carl Wilhelmson, Svarta Katten (Black Cat).
There has been considerable pressure from the right to crack down on anyone saying anything even remotely controversial about Kirk, and media companies have acquiesced to this pressure. Earlier this week, on Wednesday, Disney announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel from the air indefinitely after a monologue in which he didn’t hold back about Trump’s seeming indifference to Kirk’s murder. [See the quote from Kimmel that I posted above.] You can watch the video at the link.
The media is generally framing it as Kimmel being indefinitely suspended for his comments about Charlie Kirk. If you just watched the above, however, and are now wondering why, as Kimmel’s jabs weren’t aimed at Kirk, but Trump, then you’ve hit on precisely why the backlash against Disney’s Jimmy Kimmel decision is growing – and why it’s not likely to stop any time soon.
The fallout from the decision to pull Kimmel off the air was immediate; the Jimmy Kimmel suspension is already so much worse than Stephen Colbert’s cancellation. On Thursday, hundreds of union writers and actors protested Kimmel’s suspension outside Disney’s Burbank studios (via Deadline). On-air and off-air talent have made their anger clear; mega-successful producer Damon Lindelof, for example, has stated he will not work with Disney unless it reinstates Kimmel.
Read more at Screen Rant.
In more First Amendment news, Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times isn’t going well.
This story made my day. Madiba K. Dennie at Balls and Strikes: Federal Judge Strikes Trump Defamation Lawsuit For Being Too Annoying to Read.
On Friday, September 19, a federal district judge in Florida struck President Donald Trump’s complaint in his $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, four Times reporters, and Penguin Random House, describing the complaint as “decidedly improper and impermissible.” Under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a complaint is supposed to include “a short and plain statement” alleging enough facts that, if true, could warrant legal relief. The complaint Trump filed on Monday, by contrast, is 85 pages long and reads more like an anthology of his Truth Social posts, with slightly better punctuation.
By Leonid Kiparisov
Most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not get tossed under Rule 8, but most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not spend dozens of pages recounting, as Trump’s does, the plaintiff’s “singular brilliance” and “history-making media appearances” in programs like Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson. Trump’s complaint is also crowded with boasts about his purported magnificence (for example, “President Trump secured the greatest personal and political achievement in American history”) and snipes about legacy media’s anti-Trump bias (for example, “Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way”).
Friday’s order, in turn, is full of the judge’s unmasked exhaustion. “As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” wrote Steven Merryday, a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. “This complaint stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” Merryday gave Trump 28 days to amend the complaint and come back with something less ridiculous, and not exceeding forty pages. “This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner,” he wrote.
Read the rest at the link.
In immigration news, ICE is ramping up their activities in Chicago.
AP: ICE arrests nearly 550 in Chicago area as part of ‘Midway Blitz.’
PARK RIDGE, Ill. (AP) — Immigration enforcement officials have arrested almost 550 people as part of an operation in the Chicago area that launched a little less than two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The updated figure came hours after a senior immigration official revealed in an interview with The Associated Press that more than 400 people had been arrested in the operation so far. The figures offer an early gauge of what is shaping up as a major enforcement effort that comes after similar operations were launched in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
The figures released by Homeland Security include arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as other federal agencies assisting in the operation.
ICE launched its Chicago area operation dubbed “Midway Blitz” on Sept. 8, drawing concern from activists and immigrant communities who say there’s been a noticeable uptick in immigration enforcement agents. That has deepened dread in communities already fearful of the large-scale arrests or aggressive tactics used in other cities targeted by President Donald Trump ’s hardline immigration policies.
The operation has brought allegations of excessive force and heavy-handed dragnets that have ensnared U.S. citizens, while gratifying Trump supporters who say he is delivering on a promise of mass deportations.
A political candidate was roughed up. The Washington Post: Congressional candidate thrown to ground during protest outside ICE facility.
Federal agents clashed with protesters and threw a congressional candidate to the ground Friday morning during a protest outside a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
The chaotic scene unfolded in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago. Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Democratic candidate running for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District seat, was thrown to the ground by an armed and masked federal agent outside the ICE facility, according to video footage posted on her social media.
Abughazaleh said about 100 demonstrators were at the facility to protest what the Trump administration has labeled “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, a drastic ramp-up of immigration operations and ICE raids that began in early September.
Chic Woman with a Cat, Robert Bereny, 1927
In an interview with The Washington Post, Abughazaleh described arriving to the protest about 4 a.m. as a van was entering or exiting the facility. During one clash, officers pushed protesters back and dragged one individual by the hood of his sweatshirt, she said, before she also was picked up and thrown to the ground.
A later incident, which Abughazaleh described as “more aggressive” and which was captured on video, occurred about 9 a.m., when an officer she described as an ICE agent pulled her away and threw her on the ground again as another ICE vehicle was leaving the facility.
Video depicts what appears to be a mix of ICE agents and Customs and Border Protection officers on the scene….
“They had dragged a protester into the facilities. … They put this person in chains, in a van, and they had the van come out, and ICE tried to drive through us,” Abughazaleh told The Post. “My friend was on the hood of the car. They started shooting pepper balls at us. A man got shot in the face with one, a guy almost fell into the wheel of a car. Then they teargassed us, and the van drove away with the protester in there.”
More violations of the First Amendment, but what else is new?
Trump wants to put more restrictions on legal immigration unless you’re a billionaire. The Washington Post: Trump unveils $100K yearly fee on H-1B visas in clampdown on legal immigration.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced an annual $100,000 fee on successful applicants for a high-skilled worker visa program that is widely used in Silicon Valley, constraining a key path to legal immigration.
The president also signed an executive order that would allow wealthy foreigners to pay $1 million for a “gold card” for U.S. residency and companies to pay $2 million for a “corporate gold card” that would permit them to sponsor one or more employees.
“The main thing is we’re going to have great people coming in and they’re going to be paying,” Trump said. “We’re going to take that money and we’re going to be reducing taxes and we’re going to be reducing debt.”
Self portrait with Cat – Charlotte ‘Sarika’Góth, 1934. Hungarian , 1900 – 1992
Both moves probably will face legal challenges. If upheld, however, they would dramatically tighten legal immigration systems while opening access to the United States for wealthy foreigners. That would deliver a win to outspoken members of Trump’s nationalist base who have argued for years that the H1-B program takes jobs from American workers. Left-leaning critics also have faulted the program, which they say can be used to exploit workers from overseas….
The $100,000 payment for an H-1B visa could be made each year for six years, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an Oval Office ceremony unveiling the actions. Roughly half a million people in the U.S. work through H-1B visas, and most renew their status every three years. A significant number apply for green cards through their employer to receive legal permanent residency but confront significant delays because of backlogs in processing.
“The company needs to decide … is the person valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment to the government, or they should head home, and they should go hire an American,” Lutnick told reporters. “Stop the nonsense of letting people just come into this country on visas that were given away for free. The president is crystal clear: valuable people only for America.”
This will just drive skilled workers to other countries.
Three more stories, before I wrap this up:
Trump murdered three more people in a fishing boat. CNN: Trump announces another lethal strike on alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced another lethal military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters that he said was affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.
In a social media post, Trump said the strike targeted a vessel operating in US Southern Command’s area of responsibility – which includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean – and killed three male “narcoterrorists” onboard….
“On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
“STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA, AND COMMITTING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS!!!,” the president said.
Trump attached a video of the strike to his post.
The third grade “president” has spoken.
The New York Times: U.S. Attorney Investigating Two Trump Foes Departs Amid Pressure From President.
The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey said he had resigned on Friday, hours after President Trump called for his ouster.
Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation. Mr. Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law enforcement officials who pursued him.
By Ruskin Spear, 1911
Mr. Siebert informed prosecutors in his office of his resignation through an email hours after the president, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he wanted him removed because two Democratic senators from Virginia had approved of his nomination.
“When I saw that he got two senators, two gentlemen that are bad news as far as I’m concerned — when I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, pull it, because he can’t be any good,” Mr. Trump said. The president did not mention that he nominated Mr. Siebert only after the two senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, had already written Mr. Trump praising him.
When asked if he would fire Mr. Siebert, Mr. Trump responded, “Yeah, I want him out.”
Ms. James, he told reporters, was “very guilty of something.”
Mr. Trump later disputed that Mr. Siebert had resigned, saying in a late-night social media post, “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”
Mr. Trump’s comments came after a high-stakes internal debate raged on Friday over the fate of Mr. Siebert — with Mr. Trump’s own appointees at the Justice Department and key Republicans on Capitol Hill arguing to retain the veteran prosecutor.
Another childish tantrum. It’s so embarrassing for our country.
The New York Times: Pentagon Expands Its Restrictions on Reporter Access.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories are you following?The Pentagon said Friday it would impose new restrictions on reporters covering the Department of Defense, requiring them to pledge not to gather or use any information that had not been formally authorized for release or risk losing their credentials to cover the military.
The new mandate, described in a memorandum circulated to the press on Friday, was the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to limit the ability of the media to cover the federal government without interference.
The Department of Defense said in the 17-page memo that it “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust.” But it added that “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”
In addition, the document constrains the movements of the media within the Pentagon itself, designating large areas of the building off limits without escorts for the roughly 90 reporters credentialed to cover the agency. Although many offices and meeting rooms in the Pentagon are restricted, the Pentagon press corps had previously been given unescorted access throughout much of the building and its hallways.
The move could drastically restrict the flow of information about the U.S. military to the public. The National Press Club called the policy “a direct assault on independent journalism” and called for it to be immediately rescinded.
#ABC #authoritarianism #BrendanCarr #CharlieKirk #Chicago #dictatorship #Disney #DonaldTrump #ErikSSiebert #extraLegalBoatStrikes #fascism #FCC #firstAmendment #H1BVisas #ICE #immigration #JimmyKimmel #KatAbughazaleh #MidwayBlitz #PentagonReporterRules #TedCruz #TylerRobinson
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Lazy Caturday Reads: Another Horrible Week Under the Trump Regime
Good Morning!!
By Leonid Kiparisov
It has been another horrible week under the Trump regime. Almost no one who is paying attention still believes that we still live in a democracy. We retain a few of the trappings–the courts (except the Supreme Court, of course), a few Congresspeople, some courageous journalists, citizens protesting in the streets.
The “president” who would be king is busy slapping gold on the walls of the oval office and talking to architects about his planned $200 million golden ballroom, while Stephen Miller runs the country. Oh, and he’s still signing executive orders prepared by Project 2025 and throwing tantrums when anyone dares to criticize or make fun of him.
Andrew Perez, Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng summarize the latest dictatorish happenings at Rolling Stone: Donald Trump’s Most Authoritarian Week Yet.
It was clear Donald Trump and his allies would ramp up their crackdown against any and all opposition in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — and this week, the president’s second administration unleashed its most authoritarian blitz yet.
The Trump administration got late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show taken off the air by threatening companies’ broadcast licenses if they continued to run his show. Trump and his team threatened to strip the tax-exempt status of liberal nonprofit groups, while the president called for left-wing activists to be jailed for protesting him at dinner. Trump announced he’ll once again try to designate “antifa” — America’s disparate anti-fascist movement — as a terrorist group, with no legitimate basis, clarifying once again where he stands on the whole fascism question.
Meanwhile, the administration worked toward its goal to deport a legal U.S. resident for speaking out against Israel’s relentless assault on Palestine. Reports trickled out that Trump would fire a U.S. attorney for failing to bring charges against one of his enemies, before Trump publicly called for his departure and he quit.
This ugly, authoritarian week didn’t happen in a vacuum. Trump just last month mused about how Americans want a “dictator,” and the administration now appears to be using Kirk’s shocking murder as an excuse to escalate Trump’s ongoing campaign for total power.
The ramp-up began on Monday, as Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast from the White House and huddled with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff and the man responsible for leading his mass vengeance campaign.
“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech. No, no, no,” Vance said, before immediately pledging to go after a network of liberal nonprofits that supposedly “foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.”
During the discussion, Miller repeatedly invoked Kirk’s death to justify the effort to shut down liberal groups.
On the Jimmy Kimmel firing:
…[O]n Wednesday, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Brendan Carr, began issuing explicit threats, demanding that broadcasters take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air.
Speaking with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, Carr pressured broadcasters to tell ABC: “‘Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore, until you straighten this out because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.’”
By Diya Sanat
Carr added, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Within hours, ABC had indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s show and two large broadcast companies, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they wouldn’t run it. (Note: The companies all have regulatory matters before the FCC.) Sources told Rolling Stone that while multiple executives at ABC and its parent company, Disney, did not feel that Kimmel’s comments merited a suspension, they caved to pressure from Carr.
“They were terrified about what the government would do, and did not even think Jimmy had the right to just explain what he said,” a person familiar with the internal situation said on Thursday, calling the decision “cowardly.”
Throughout Trumpland and the federal government, there was a heightened sense of glee over their silencing of Kimmel. Administration officials feel emboldened by the multiple scalps they’ve now collected — first Stephen Colbert, now Kimmel — to the point that they’re confident they have momentum to pressure corporate bosses to get rid of Trump’s late-night nemeses over at other networks.
Trump has gotten so full of himself after this big win that he’s now claiming that criticism of him is illegal.
Luke Broadwater at The New York Times: Trump Says Critical Coverage of Him Is ‘Really Illegal.’
President Trump said Friday that news reporters who cover his administration negatively have broken the law, a significant broadening of his attacks on journalists and their First Amendment right to critique the government.
A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Mr. Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting such reporters were lawbreakers.
“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
He added: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”
Mr. Trump did not cite a specific law he said he believed had been violated. It remained unclear Friday why Mr. Trump believed negative news coverage, which every president has faced and is protected by the Constitution, would be “really illegal.”
Asked for comment, the White House did not cite a specific law Mr. Trump believed was being violated, but a White House official pointed to settlements that media companies, including ABC, have agreed to pay after Mr. Trump’s legal team filed lawsuits against them, and suggested Mr. Trump was attempting to rein in “extreme left-wing bias in television.” [….]
Mr. Trump’s comments on Friday came a day after he suggested that protesters who called him “Hitler” to his face inside a Washington restaurant should be jailed.
The president, who has accused the protesters of being paid agitators and said such people “should be put in jail,” told reporters on Air Force One that he believed the protesters were “very inappropriate” and “a threat.”
Trump got some pushback from a surprising source. NBC News: Ted Cruz rips FCC chair’s Jimmy Kimmel threat as ‘unbelievably dangerous.’
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Friday for threats he made this week related to Jimmy Kimmel’s show, calling the Trump administration official’s actions “dangerous as hell.”
“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said on his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz.”
Girl with Cat – Augusta Oelschig , 1945 American, 1918–2000
“I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy, he’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him, but what he said there is dangerous as hell,”Cruz said.
Cruz is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the FCC. He warned Carr’s actions could have long-term consequences.
“It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, yeah, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it,”Cruz said….
Cruz went on to say Friday: “I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said,” but likened Carr’s comments about Disney taking the easy way or the hard way to a classic mob movie.
“I gotta say, that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,” Cruz said.
Of course Kimmel never said anything critical of Charlie Kirk. What he did do was make fun of Trump blowing of a question about how he was recovering from the loss of his friend to brag about his White House ballroom construction:
Kimmel has also mocked Trump for a specific comment he made in response to being asked by a reporter how he was personally “holding up” after the assassination of Kirk, who he has said was a friend.
Trump had replied saying he was “very good” and then immediately started boasting about the new ballroom he is building at the White House.
Kimmel said after the clip: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
There’s also no evidence of involvement of left wing groups in the Kirk assassination. NBC News:
The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.
One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”
“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.
In addition, two of the people familiar with the probe said it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level for Kirk’s killing, while the third source said there is still an expectation that some kind of federal charge is filed against Robinson.
Factors that have complicated the effort to bring charges at the federal level include that Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state; Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself is not a federal officer or elected official.
Disney (and perhaps even right wing Sinclair) apparently regret the sudden firing of Jimmy Kimmel.
Screen Rant: Disney Is Scrambling After The Backlash To Jimmy Kimmel’s Cancellation Blew Up.
Wholly unsurprising to anyone paying attention, the backlash over the abrupt cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! is only continuing to grow and spread, and Disney is now scrambling to fix a situation quickly spiraling out of its control. After far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, reactions have been intense, but it’s Disney’s knee-jerk reaction that has drawn the most ire.
Carl Wilhelmson, Svarta Katten (Black Cat).
There has been considerable pressure from the right to crack down on anyone saying anything even remotely controversial about Kirk, and media companies have acquiesced to this pressure. Earlier this week, on Wednesday, Disney announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel from the air indefinitely after a monologue in which he didn’t hold back about Trump’s seeming indifference to Kirk’s murder. [See the quote from Kimmel that I posted above.] You can watch the video at the link.
The media is generally framing it as Kimmel being indefinitely suspended for his comments about Charlie Kirk. If you just watched the above, however, and are now wondering why, as Kimmel’s jabs weren’t aimed at Kirk, but Trump, then you’ve hit on precisely why the backlash against Disney’s Jimmy Kimmel decision is growing – and why it’s not likely to stop any time soon.
The fallout from the decision to pull Kimmel off the air was immediate; the Jimmy Kimmel suspension is already so much worse than Stephen Colbert’s cancellation. On Thursday, hundreds of union writers and actors protested Kimmel’s suspension outside Disney’s Burbank studios (via Deadline). On-air and off-air talent have made their anger clear; mega-successful producer Damon Lindelof, for example, has stated he will not work with Disney unless it reinstates Kimmel.
Read more at Screen Rant.
In more First Amendment news, Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times isn’t going well.
This story made my day. Madiba K. Dennie at Balls and Strikes: Federal Judge Strikes Trump Defamation Lawsuit For Being Too Annoying to Read.
On Friday, September 19, a federal district judge in Florida struck President Donald Trump’s complaint in his $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, four Times reporters, and Penguin Random House, describing the complaint as “decidedly improper and impermissible.” Under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a complaint is supposed to include “a short and plain statement” alleging enough facts that, if true, could warrant legal relief. The complaint Trump filed on Monday, by contrast, is 85 pages long and reads more like an anthology of his Truth Social posts, with slightly better punctuation.
By Leonid Kiparisov
Most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not get tossed under Rule 8, but most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not spend dozens of pages recounting, as Trump’s does, the plaintiff’s “singular brilliance” and “history-making media appearances” in programs like Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson. Trump’s complaint is also crowded with boasts about his purported magnificence (for example, “President Trump secured the greatest personal and political achievement in American history”) and snipes about legacy media’s anti-Trump bias (for example, “Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way”).
Friday’s order, in turn, is full of the judge’s unmasked exhaustion. “As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” wrote Steven Merryday, a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. “This complaint stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” Merryday gave Trump 28 days to amend the complaint and come back with something less ridiculous, and not exceeding forty pages. “This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner,” he wrote.
Read the rest at the link.
In immigration news, ICE is ramping up their activities in Chicago.
AP: ICE arrests nearly 550 in Chicago area as part of ‘Midway Blitz.’
PARK RIDGE, Ill. (AP) — Immigration enforcement officials have arrested almost 550 people as part of an operation in the Chicago area that launched a little less than two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The updated figure came hours after a senior immigration official revealed in an interview with The Associated Press that more than 400 people had been arrested in the operation so far. The figures offer an early gauge of what is shaping up as a major enforcement effort that comes after similar operations were launched in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
The figures released by Homeland Security include arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as other federal agencies assisting in the operation.
ICE launched its Chicago area operation dubbed “Midway Blitz” on Sept. 8, drawing concern from activists and immigrant communities who say there’s been a noticeable uptick in immigration enforcement agents. That has deepened dread in communities already fearful of the large-scale arrests or aggressive tactics used in other cities targeted by President Donald Trump ’s hardline immigration policies.
The operation has brought allegations of excessive force and heavy-handed dragnets that have ensnared U.S. citizens, while gratifying Trump supporters who say he is delivering on a promise of mass deportations.
A political candidate was roughed up. The Washington Post: Congressional candidate thrown to ground during protest outside ICE facility.
Federal agents clashed with protesters and threw a congressional candidate to the ground Friday morning during a protest outside a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
The chaotic scene unfolded in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago. Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Democratic candidate running for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District seat, was thrown to the ground by an armed and masked federal agent outside the ICE facility, according to video footage posted on her social media.
Abughazaleh said about 100 demonstrators were at the facility to protest what the Trump administration has labeled “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, a drastic ramp-up of immigration operations and ICE raids that began in early September.
Chic Woman with a Cat, Robert Bereny, 1927
In an interview with The Washington Post, Abughazaleh described arriving to the protest about 4 a.m. as a van was entering or exiting the facility. During one clash, officers pushed protesters back and dragged one individual by the hood of his sweatshirt, she said, before she also was picked up and thrown to the ground.
A later incident, which Abughazaleh described as “more aggressive” and which was captured on video, occurred about 9 a.m., when an officer she described as an ICE agent pulled her away and threw her on the ground again as another ICE vehicle was leaving the facility.
Video depicts what appears to be a mix of ICE agents and Customs and Border Protection officers on the scene….
“They had dragged a protester into the facilities. … They put this person in chains, in a van, and they had the van come out, and ICE tried to drive through us,” Abughazaleh told The Post. “My friend was on the hood of the car. They started shooting pepper balls at us. A man got shot in the face with one, a guy almost fell into the wheel of a car. Then they teargassed us, and the van drove away with the protester in there.”
More violations of the First Amendment, but what else is new?
Trump wants to put more restrictions on legal immigration unless you’re a billionaire. The Washington Post: Trump unveils $100K yearly fee on H-1B visas in clampdown on legal immigration.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced an annual $100,000 fee on successful applicants for a high-skilled worker visa program that is widely used in Silicon Valley, constraining a key path to legal immigration.
The president also signed an executive order that would allow wealthy foreigners to pay $1 million for a “gold card” for U.S. residency and companies to pay $2 million for a “corporate gold card” that would permit them to sponsor one or more employees.
“The main thing is we’re going to have great people coming in and they’re going to be paying,” Trump said. “We’re going to take that money and we’re going to be reducing taxes and we’re going to be reducing debt.”
Self portrait with Cat – Charlotte ‘Sarika’Góth, 1934. Hungarian , 1900 – 1992
Both moves probably will face legal challenges. If upheld, however, they would dramatically tighten legal immigration systems while opening access to the United States for wealthy foreigners. That would deliver a win to outspoken members of Trump’s nationalist base who have argued for years that the H1-B program takes jobs from American workers. Left-leaning critics also have faulted the program, which they say can be used to exploit workers from overseas….
The $100,000 payment for an H-1B visa could be made each year for six years, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an Oval Office ceremony unveiling the actions. Roughly half a million people in the U.S. work through H-1B visas, and most renew their status every three years. A significant number apply for green cards through their employer to receive legal permanent residency but confront significant delays because of backlogs in processing.
“The company needs to decide … is the person valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment to the government, or they should head home, and they should go hire an American,” Lutnick told reporters. “Stop the nonsense of letting people just come into this country on visas that were given away for free. The president is crystal clear: valuable people only for America.”
This will just drive skilled workers to other countries.
Three more stories, before I wrap this up:
Trump murdered three more people in a fishing boat. CNN: Trump announces another lethal strike on alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced another lethal military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters that he said was affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.
In a social media post, Trump said the strike targeted a vessel operating in US Southern Command’s area of responsibility – which includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean – and killed three male “narcoterrorists” onboard….
“On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
“STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA, AND COMMITTING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS!!!,” the president said.
Trump attached a video of the strike to his post.
The third grade “president” has spoken.
The New York Times: U.S. Attorney Investigating Two Trump Foes Departs Amid Pressure From President.
The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey said he had resigned on Friday, hours after President Trump called for his ouster.
Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation. Mr. Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law enforcement officials who pursued him.
By Ruskin Spear, 1911
Mr. Siebert informed prosecutors in his office of his resignation through an email hours after the president, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he wanted him removed because two Democratic senators from Virginia had approved of his nomination.
“When I saw that he got two senators, two gentlemen that are bad news as far as I’m concerned — when I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, pull it, because he can’t be any good,” Mr. Trump said. The president did not mention that he nominated Mr. Siebert only after the two senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, had already written Mr. Trump praising him.
When asked if he would fire Mr. Siebert, Mr. Trump responded, “Yeah, I want him out.”
Ms. James, he told reporters, was “very guilty of something.”
Mr. Trump later disputed that Mr. Siebert had resigned, saying in a late-night social media post, “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”
Mr. Trump’s comments came after a high-stakes internal debate raged on Friday over the fate of Mr. Siebert — with Mr. Trump’s own appointees at the Justice Department and key Republicans on Capitol Hill arguing to retain the veteran prosecutor.
Another childish tantrum. It’s so embarrassing for our country.
The New York Times: Pentagon Expands Its Restrictions on Reporter Access.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories are you following?The Pentagon said Friday it would impose new restrictions on reporters covering the Department of Defense, requiring them to pledge not to gather or use any information that had not been formally authorized for release or risk losing their credentials to cover the military.
The new mandate, described in a memorandum circulated to the press on Friday, was the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to limit the ability of the media to cover the federal government without interference.
The Department of Defense said in the 17-page memo that it “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust.” But it added that “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”
In addition, the document constrains the movements of the media within the Pentagon itself, designating large areas of the building off limits without escorts for the roughly 90 reporters credentialed to cover the agency. Although many offices and meeting rooms in the Pentagon are restricted, the Pentagon press corps had previously been given unescorted access throughout much of the building and its hallways.
The move could drastically restrict the flow of information about the U.S. military to the public. The National Press Club called the policy “a direct assault on independent journalism” and called for it to be immediately rescinded.
#ABC #authoritarianism #BrendanCarr #CharlieKirk #Chicago #dictatorship #Disney #DonaldTrump #ErikSSiebert #extraLegalBoatStrikes #fascism #FCC #firstAmendment #H1BVisas #ICE #immigration #JimmyKimmel #KatAbughazaleh #MidwayBlitz #PentagonReporterRules #TedCruz #TylerRobinson
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Lazy Caturday Reads: Another Horrible Week Under the Trump Regime
Good Morning!!
By Leonid Kiparisov
It has been another horrible week under the Trump regime. Almost no one who is paying attention still believes that we still live in a democracy. We retain a few of the trappings–the courts (except the Supreme Court, of course), a few Congresspeople, some courageous journalists, citizens protesting in the streets.
The “president” who would be king is busy slapping gold on the walls of the oval office and talking to architects about his planned $200 million golden ballroom, while Stephen Miller runs the country. Oh, and he’s still signing executive orders prepared by Project 2025 and throwing tantrums when anyone dares to criticize or make fun of him.
Andrew Perez, Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng summarize the latest dictatorish happenings at Rolling Stone: Donald Trump’s Most Authoritarian Week Yet.
It was clear Donald Trump and his allies would ramp up their crackdown against any and all opposition in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — and this week, the president’s second administration unleashed its most authoritarian blitz yet.
The Trump administration got late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show taken off the air by threatening companies’ broadcast licenses if they continued to run his show. Trump and his team threatened to strip the tax-exempt status of liberal nonprofit groups, while the president called for left-wing activists to be jailed for protesting him at dinner. Trump announced he’ll once again try to designate “antifa” — America’s disparate anti-fascist movement — as a terrorist group, with no legitimate basis, clarifying once again where he stands on the whole fascism question.
Meanwhile, the administration worked toward its goal to deport a legal U.S. resident for speaking out against Israel’s relentless assault on Palestine. Reports trickled out that Trump would fire a U.S. attorney for failing to bring charges against one of his enemies, before Trump publicly called for his departure and he quit.
This ugly, authoritarian week didn’t happen in a vacuum. Trump just last month mused about how Americans want a “dictator,” and the administration now appears to be using Kirk’s shocking murder as an excuse to escalate Trump’s ongoing campaign for total power.
The ramp-up began on Monday, as Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast from the White House and huddled with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff and the man responsible for leading his mass vengeance campaign.
“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech. No, no, no,” Vance said, before immediately pledging to go after a network of liberal nonprofits that supposedly “foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.”
During the discussion, Miller repeatedly invoked Kirk’s death to justify the effort to shut down liberal groups.
On the Jimmy Kimmel firing:
…[O]n Wednesday, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Brendan Carr, began issuing explicit threats, demanding that broadcasters take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air.
Speaking with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, Carr pressured broadcasters to tell ABC: “‘Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore, until you straighten this out because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.’”
By Diya Sanat
Carr added, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Within hours, ABC had indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s show and two large broadcast companies, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they wouldn’t run it. (Note: The companies all have regulatory matters before the FCC.) Sources told Rolling Stone that while multiple executives at ABC and its parent company, Disney, did not feel that Kimmel’s comments merited a suspension, they caved to pressure from Carr.
“They were terrified about what the government would do, and did not even think Jimmy had the right to just explain what he said,” a person familiar with the internal situation said on Thursday, calling the decision “cowardly.”
Throughout Trumpland and the federal government, there was a heightened sense of glee over their silencing of Kimmel. Administration officials feel emboldened by the multiple scalps they’ve now collected — first Stephen Colbert, now Kimmel — to the point that they’re confident they have momentum to pressure corporate bosses to get rid of Trump’s late-night nemeses over at other networks.
Trump has gotten so full of himself after this big win that he’s now claiming that criticism of him is illegal.
Luke Broadwater at The New York Times: Trump Says Critical Coverage of Him Is ‘Really Illegal.’
President Trump said Friday that news reporters who cover his administration negatively have broken the law, a significant broadening of his attacks on journalists and their First Amendment right to critique the government.
A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Mr. Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting such reporters were lawbreakers.
“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
He added: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”
Mr. Trump did not cite a specific law he said he believed had been violated. It remained unclear Friday why Mr. Trump believed negative news coverage, which every president has faced and is protected by the Constitution, would be “really illegal.”
Asked for comment, the White House did not cite a specific law Mr. Trump believed was being violated, but a White House official pointed to settlements that media companies, including ABC, have agreed to pay after Mr. Trump’s legal team filed lawsuits against them, and suggested Mr. Trump was attempting to rein in “extreme left-wing bias in television.” [….]
Mr. Trump’s comments on Friday came a day after he suggested that protesters who called him “Hitler” to his face inside a Washington restaurant should be jailed.
The president, who has accused the protesters of being paid agitators and said such people “should be put in jail,” told reporters on Air Force One that he believed the protesters were “very inappropriate” and “a threat.”
Trump got some pushback from a surprising source. NBC News: Ted Cruz rips FCC chair’s Jimmy Kimmel threat as ‘unbelievably dangerous.’
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Friday for threats he made this week related to Jimmy Kimmel’s show, calling the Trump administration official’s actions “dangerous as hell.”
“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said on his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz.”
Girl with Cat – Augusta Oelschig , 1945 American, 1918–2000
“I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy, he’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him, but what he said there is dangerous as hell,”Cruz said.
Cruz is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the FCC. He warned Carr’s actions could have long-term consequences.
“It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, yeah, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it,”Cruz said….
Cruz went on to say Friday: “I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said,” but likened Carr’s comments about Disney taking the easy way or the hard way to a classic mob movie.
“I gotta say, that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,” Cruz said.
Of course Kimmel never said anything critical of Charlie Kirk. What he did do was make fun of Trump blowing of a question about how he was recovering from the loss of his friend to brag about his White House ballroom construction:
Kimmel has also mocked Trump for a specific comment he made in response to being asked by a reporter how he was personally “holding up” after the assassination of Kirk, who he has said was a friend.
Trump had replied saying he was “very good” and then immediately started boasting about the new ballroom he is building at the White House.
Kimmel said after the clip: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
There’s also no evidence of involvement of left wing groups in the Kirk assassination. NBC News:
The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.
One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”
“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.
In addition, two of the people familiar with the probe said it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level for Kirk’s killing, while the third source said there is still an expectation that some kind of federal charge is filed against Robinson.
Factors that have complicated the effort to bring charges at the federal level include that Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state; Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself is not a federal officer or elected official.
Disney (and perhaps even right wing Sinclair) apparently regret the sudden firing of Jimmy Kimmel.
Screen Rant: Disney Is Scrambling After The Backlash To Jimmy Kimmel’s Cancellation Blew Up.
Wholly unsurprising to anyone paying attention, the backlash over the abrupt cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! is only continuing to grow and spread, and Disney is now scrambling to fix a situation quickly spiraling out of its control. After far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, reactions have been intense, but it’s Disney’s knee-jerk reaction that has drawn the most ire.
Carl Wilhelmson, Svarta Katten (Black Cat).
There has been considerable pressure from the right to crack down on anyone saying anything even remotely controversial about Kirk, and media companies have acquiesced to this pressure. Earlier this week, on Wednesday, Disney announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel from the air indefinitely after a monologue in which he didn’t hold back about Trump’s seeming indifference to Kirk’s murder. [See the quote from Kimmel that I posted above.] You can watch the video at the link.
The media is generally framing it as Kimmel being indefinitely suspended for his comments about Charlie Kirk. If you just watched the above, however, and are now wondering why, as Kimmel’s jabs weren’t aimed at Kirk, but Trump, then you’ve hit on precisely why the backlash against Disney’s Jimmy Kimmel decision is growing – and why it’s not likely to stop any time soon.
The fallout from the decision to pull Kimmel off the air was immediate; the Jimmy Kimmel suspension is already so much worse than Stephen Colbert’s cancellation. On Thursday, hundreds of union writers and actors protested Kimmel’s suspension outside Disney’s Burbank studios (via Deadline). On-air and off-air talent have made their anger clear; mega-successful producer Damon Lindelof, for example, has stated he will not work with Disney unless it reinstates Kimmel.
Read more at Screen Rant.
In more First Amendment news, Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times isn’t going well.
This story made my day. Madiba K. Dennie at Balls and Strikes: Federal Judge Strikes Trump Defamation Lawsuit For Being Too Annoying to Read.
On Friday, September 19, a federal district judge in Florida struck President Donald Trump’s complaint in his $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, four Times reporters, and Penguin Random House, describing the complaint as “decidedly improper and impermissible.” Under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a complaint is supposed to include “a short and plain statement” alleging enough facts that, if true, could warrant legal relief. The complaint Trump filed on Monday, by contrast, is 85 pages long and reads more like an anthology of his Truth Social posts, with slightly better punctuation.
By Leonid Kiparisov
Most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not get tossed under Rule 8, but most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not spend dozens of pages recounting, as Trump’s does, the plaintiff’s “singular brilliance” and “history-making media appearances” in programs like Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson. Trump’s complaint is also crowded with boasts about his purported magnificence (for example, “President Trump secured the greatest personal and political achievement in American history”) and snipes about legacy media’s anti-Trump bias (for example, “Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way”).
Friday’s order, in turn, is full of the judge’s unmasked exhaustion. “As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” wrote Steven Merryday, a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. “This complaint stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” Merryday gave Trump 28 days to amend the complaint and come back with something less ridiculous, and not exceeding forty pages. “This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner,” he wrote.
Read the rest at the link.
In immigration news, ICE is ramping up their activities in Chicago.
AP: ICE arrests nearly 550 in Chicago area as part of ‘Midway Blitz.’
PARK RIDGE, Ill. (AP) — Immigration enforcement officials have arrested almost 550 people as part of an operation in the Chicago area that launched a little less than two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The updated figure came hours after a senior immigration official revealed in an interview with The Associated Press that more than 400 people had been arrested in the operation so far. The figures offer an early gauge of what is shaping up as a major enforcement effort that comes after similar operations were launched in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
The figures released by Homeland Security include arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as other federal agencies assisting in the operation.
ICE launched its Chicago area operation dubbed “Midway Blitz” on Sept. 8, drawing concern from activists and immigrant communities who say there’s been a noticeable uptick in immigration enforcement agents. That has deepened dread in communities already fearful of the large-scale arrests or aggressive tactics used in other cities targeted by President Donald Trump ’s hardline immigration policies.
The operation has brought allegations of excessive force and heavy-handed dragnets that have ensnared U.S. citizens, while gratifying Trump supporters who say he is delivering on a promise of mass deportations.
A political candidate was roughed up. The Washington Post: Congressional candidate thrown to ground during protest outside ICE facility.
Federal agents clashed with protesters and threw a congressional candidate to the ground Friday morning during a protest outside a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
The chaotic scene unfolded in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago. Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Democratic candidate running for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District seat, was thrown to the ground by an armed and masked federal agent outside the ICE facility, according to video footage posted on her social media.
Abughazaleh said about 100 demonstrators were at the facility to protest what the Trump administration has labeled “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, a drastic ramp-up of immigration operations and ICE raids that began in early September.
Chic Woman with a Cat, Robert Bereny, 1927
In an interview with The Washington Post, Abughazaleh described arriving to the protest about 4 a.m. as a van was entering or exiting the facility. During one clash, officers pushed protesters back and dragged one individual by the hood of his sweatshirt, she said, before she also was picked up and thrown to the ground.
A later incident, which Abughazaleh described as “more aggressive” and which was captured on video, occurred about 9 a.m., when an officer she described as an ICE agent pulled her away and threw her on the ground again as another ICE vehicle was leaving the facility.
Video depicts what appears to be a mix of ICE agents and Customs and Border Protection officers on the scene….
“They had dragged a protester into the facilities. … They put this person in chains, in a van, and they had the van come out, and ICE tried to drive through us,” Abughazaleh told The Post. “My friend was on the hood of the car. They started shooting pepper balls at us. A man got shot in the face with one, a guy almost fell into the wheel of a car. Then they teargassed us, and the van drove away with the protester in there.”
More violations of the First Amendment, but what else is new?
Trump wants to put more restrictions on legal immigration unless you’re a billionaire. The Washington Post: Trump unveils $100K yearly fee on H-1B visas in clampdown on legal immigration.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced an annual $100,000 fee on successful applicants for a high-skilled worker visa program that is widely used in Silicon Valley, constraining a key path to legal immigration.
The president also signed an executive order that would allow wealthy foreigners to pay $1 million for a “gold card” for U.S. residency and companies to pay $2 million for a “corporate gold card” that would permit them to sponsor one or more employees.
“The main thing is we’re going to have great people coming in and they’re going to be paying,” Trump said. “We’re going to take that money and we’re going to be reducing taxes and we’re going to be reducing debt.”
Self portrait with Cat – Charlotte ‘Sarika’Góth, 1934. Hungarian , 1900 – 1992
Both moves probably will face legal challenges. If upheld, however, they would dramatically tighten legal immigration systems while opening access to the United States for wealthy foreigners. That would deliver a win to outspoken members of Trump’s nationalist base who have argued for years that the H1-B program takes jobs from American workers. Left-leaning critics also have faulted the program, which they say can be used to exploit workers from overseas….
The $100,000 payment for an H-1B visa could be made each year for six years, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an Oval Office ceremony unveiling the actions. Roughly half a million people in the U.S. work through H-1B visas, and most renew their status every three years. A significant number apply for green cards through their employer to receive legal permanent residency but confront significant delays because of backlogs in processing.
“The company needs to decide … is the person valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment to the government, or they should head home, and they should go hire an American,” Lutnick told reporters. “Stop the nonsense of letting people just come into this country on visas that were given away for free. The president is crystal clear: valuable people only for America.”
This will just drive skilled workers to other countries.
Three more stories, before I wrap this up:
Trump murdered three more people in a fishing boat. CNN: Trump announces another lethal strike on alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced another lethal military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters that he said was affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.
In a social media post, Trump said the strike targeted a vessel operating in US Southern Command’s area of responsibility – which includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean – and killed three male “narcoterrorists” onboard….
“On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
“STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA, AND COMMITTING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS!!!,” the president said.
Trump attached a video of the strike to his post.
The third grade “president” has spoken.
The New York Times: U.S. Attorney Investigating Two Trump Foes Departs Amid Pressure From President.
The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey said he had resigned on Friday, hours after President Trump called for his ouster.
Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation. Mr. Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law enforcement officials who pursued him.
By Ruskin Spear, 1911
Mr. Siebert informed prosecutors in his office of his resignation through an email hours after the president, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he wanted him removed because two Democratic senators from Virginia had approved of his nomination.
“When I saw that he got two senators, two gentlemen that are bad news as far as I’m concerned — when I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, pull it, because he can’t be any good,” Mr. Trump said. The president did not mention that he nominated Mr. Siebert only after the two senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, had already written Mr. Trump praising him.
When asked if he would fire Mr. Siebert, Mr. Trump responded, “Yeah, I want him out.”
Ms. James, he told reporters, was “very guilty of something.”
Mr. Trump later disputed that Mr. Siebert had resigned, saying in a late-night social media post, “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”
Mr. Trump’s comments came after a high-stakes internal debate raged on Friday over the fate of Mr. Siebert — with Mr. Trump’s own appointees at the Justice Department and key Republicans on Capitol Hill arguing to retain the veteran prosecutor.
Another childish tantrum. It’s so embarrassing for our country.
The New York Times: Pentagon Expands Its Restrictions on Reporter Access.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories are you following?The Pentagon said Friday it would impose new restrictions on reporters covering the Department of Defense, requiring them to pledge not to gather or use any information that had not been formally authorized for release or risk losing their credentials to cover the military.
The new mandate, described in a memorandum circulated to the press on Friday, was the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to limit the ability of the media to cover the federal government without interference.
The Department of Defense said in the 17-page memo that it “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust.” But it added that “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”
In addition, the document constrains the movements of the media within the Pentagon itself, designating large areas of the building off limits without escorts for the roughly 90 reporters credentialed to cover the agency. Although many offices and meeting rooms in the Pentagon are restricted, the Pentagon press corps had previously been given unescorted access throughout much of the building and its hallways.
The move could drastically restrict the flow of information about the U.S. military to the public. The National Press Club called the policy “a direct assault on independent journalism” and called for it to be immediately rescinded.
#ABC #authoritarianism #BrendanCarr #CharlieKirk #Chicago #dictatorship #Disney #DonaldTrump #ErikSSiebert #extraLegalBoatStrikes #fascism #FCC #firstAmendment #H1BVisas #ICE #immigration #JimmyKimmel #KatAbughazaleh #MidwayBlitz #PentagonReporterRules #TedCruz #TylerRobinson
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Lazy Caturday Reads: Another Horrible Week Under the Trump Regime
Good Morning!!
By Leonid Kiparisov
It has been another horrible week under the Trump regime. Almost no one who is paying attention still believes that we still live in a democracy. We retain a few of the trappings–the courts (except the Supreme Court, of course), a few Congresspeople, some courageous journalists, citizens protesting in the streets.
The “president” who would be king is busy slapping gold on the walls of the oval office and talking to architects about his planned $200 million golden ballroom, while Stephen Miller runs the country. Oh, and he’s still signing executive orders prepared by Project 2025 and throwing tantrums when anyone dares to criticize or make fun of him.
Andrew Perez, Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng summarize the latest dictatorish happenings at Rolling Stone: Donald Trump’s Most Authoritarian Week Yet.
It was clear Donald Trump and his allies would ramp up their crackdown against any and all opposition in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — and this week, the president’s second administration unleashed its most authoritarian blitz yet.
The Trump administration got late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show taken off the air by threatening companies’ broadcast licenses if they continued to run his show. Trump and his team threatened to strip the tax-exempt status of liberal nonprofit groups, while the president called for left-wing activists to be jailed for protesting him at dinner. Trump announced he’ll once again try to designate “antifa” — America’s disparate anti-fascist movement — as a terrorist group, with no legitimate basis, clarifying once again where he stands on the whole fascism question.
Meanwhile, the administration worked toward its goal to deport a legal U.S. resident for speaking out against Israel’s relentless assault on Palestine. Reports trickled out that Trump would fire a U.S. attorney for failing to bring charges against one of his enemies, before Trump publicly called for his departure and he quit.
This ugly, authoritarian week didn’t happen in a vacuum. Trump just last month mused about how Americans want a “dictator,” and the administration now appears to be using Kirk’s shocking murder as an excuse to escalate Trump’s ongoing campaign for total power.
The ramp-up began on Monday, as Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast from the White House and huddled with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff and the man responsible for leading his mass vengeance campaign.
“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech. No, no, no,” Vance said, before immediately pledging to go after a network of liberal nonprofits that supposedly “foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.”
During the discussion, Miller repeatedly invoked Kirk’s death to justify the effort to shut down liberal groups.
On the Jimmy Kimmel firing:
…[O]n Wednesday, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Brendan Carr, began issuing explicit threats, demanding that broadcasters take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air.
Speaking with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, Carr pressured broadcasters to tell ABC: “‘Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore, until you straighten this out because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.’”
By Diya Sanat
Carr added, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Within hours, ABC had indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s show and two large broadcast companies, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they wouldn’t run it. (Note: The companies all have regulatory matters before the FCC.) Sources told Rolling Stone that while multiple executives at ABC and its parent company, Disney, did not feel that Kimmel’s comments merited a suspension, they caved to pressure from Carr.
“They were terrified about what the government would do, and did not even think Jimmy had the right to just explain what he said,” a person familiar with the internal situation said on Thursday, calling the decision “cowardly.”
Throughout Trumpland and the federal government, there was a heightened sense of glee over their silencing of Kimmel. Administration officials feel emboldened by the multiple scalps they’ve now collected — first Stephen Colbert, now Kimmel — to the point that they’re confident they have momentum to pressure corporate bosses to get rid of Trump’s late-night nemeses over at other networks.
Trump has gotten so full of himself after this big win that he’s now claiming that criticism of him is illegal.
Luke Broadwater at The New York Times: Trump Says Critical Coverage of Him Is ‘Really Illegal.’
President Trump said Friday that news reporters who cover his administration negatively have broken the law, a significant broadening of his attacks on journalists and their First Amendment right to critique the government.
A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Mr. Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting such reporters were lawbreakers.
“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
He added: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”
Mr. Trump did not cite a specific law he said he believed had been violated. It remained unclear Friday why Mr. Trump believed negative news coverage, which every president has faced and is protected by the Constitution, would be “really illegal.”
Asked for comment, the White House did not cite a specific law Mr. Trump believed was being violated, but a White House official pointed to settlements that media companies, including ABC, have agreed to pay after Mr. Trump’s legal team filed lawsuits against them, and suggested Mr. Trump was attempting to rein in “extreme left-wing bias in television.” [….]
Mr. Trump’s comments on Friday came a day after he suggested that protesters who called him “Hitler” to his face inside a Washington restaurant should be jailed.
The president, who has accused the protesters of being paid agitators and said such people “should be put in jail,” told reporters on Air Force One that he believed the protesters were “very inappropriate” and “a threat.”
Trump got some pushback from a surprising source. NBC News: Ted Cruz rips FCC chair’s Jimmy Kimmel threat as ‘unbelievably dangerous.’
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Friday for threats he made this week related to Jimmy Kimmel’s show, calling the Trump administration official’s actions “dangerous as hell.”
“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said on his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz.”
Girl with Cat – Augusta Oelschig , 1945 American, 1918–2000
“I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy, he’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him, but what he said there is dangerous as hell,”Cruz said.
Cruz is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the FCC. He warned Carr’s actions could have long-term consequences.
“It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, yeah, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it,”Cruz said….
Cruz went on to say Friday: “I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said,” but likened Carr’s comments about Disney taking the easy way or the hard way to a classic mob movie.
“I gotta say, that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,” Cruz said.
Of course Kimmel never said anything critical of Charlie Kirk. What he did do was make fun of Trump blowing of a question about how he was recovering from the loss of his friend to brag about his White House ballroom construction:
Kimmel has also mocked Trump for a specific comment he made in response to being asked by a reporter how he was personally “holding up” after the assassination of Kirk, who he has said was a friend.
Trump had replied saying he was “very good” and then immediately started boasting about the new ballroom he is building at the White House.
Kimmel said after the clip: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
There’s also no evidence of involvement of left wing groups in the Kirk assassination. NBC News:
The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.
One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”
“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.
In addition, two of the people familiar with the probe said it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level for Kirk’s killing, while the third source said there is still an expectation that some kind of federal charge is filed against Robinson.
Factors that have complicated the effort to bring charges at the federal level include that Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state; Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself is not a federal officer or elected official.
Disney (and perhaps even right wing Sinclair) apparently regret the sudden firing of Jimmy Kimmel.
Screen Rant: Disney Is Scrambling After The Backlash To Jimmy Kimmel’s Cancellation Blew Up.
Wholly unsurprising to anyone paying attention, the backlash over the abrupt cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! is only continuing to grow and spread, and Disney is now scrambling to fix a situation quickly spiraling out of its control. After far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, reactions have been intense, but it’s Disney’s knee-jerk reaction that has drawn the most ire.
Carl Wilhelmson, Svarta Katten (Black Cat).
There has been considerable pressure from the right to crack down on anyone saying anything even remotely controversial about Kirk, and media companies have acquiesced to this pressure. Earlier this week, on Wednesday, Disney announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel from the air indefinitely after a monologue in which he didn’t hold back about Trump’s seeming indifference to Kirk’s murder. [See the quote from Kimmel that I posted above.] You can watch the video at the link.
The media is generally framing it as Kimmel being indefinitely suspended for his comments about Charlie Kirk. If you just watched the above, however, and are now wondering why, as Kimmel’s jabs weren’t aimed at Kirk, but Trump, then you’ve hit on precisely why the backlash against Disney’s Jimmy Kimmel decision is growing – and why it’s not likely to stop any time soon.
The fallout from the decision to pull Kimmel off the air was immediate; the Jimmy Kimmel suspension is already so much worse than Stephen Colbert’s cancellation. On Thursday, hundreds of union writers and actors protested Kimmel’s suspension outside Disney’s Burbank studios (via Deadline). On-air and off-air talent have made their anger clear; mega-successful producer Damon Lindelof, for example, has stated he will not work with Disney unless it reinstates Kimmel.
Read more at Screen Rant.
In more First Amendment news, Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times isn’t going well.
This story made my day. Madiba K. Dennie at Balls and Strikes: Federal Judge Strikes Trump Defamation Lawsuit For Being Too Annoying to Read.
On Friday, September 19, a federal district judge in Florida struck President Donald Trump’s complaint in his $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, four Times reporters, and Penguin Random House, describing the complaint as “decidedly improper and impermissible.” Under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a complaint is supposed to include “a short and plain statement” alleging enough facts that, if true, could warrant legal relief. The complaint Trump filed on Monday, by contrast, is 85 pages long and reads more like an anthology of his Truth Social posts, with slightly better punctuation.
By Leonid Kiparisov
Most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not get tossed under Rule 8, but most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not spend dozens of pages recounting, as Trump’s does, the plaintiff’s “singular brilliance” and “history-making media appearances” in programs like Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson. Trump’s complaint is also crowded with boasts about his purported magnificence (for example, “President Trump secured the greatest personal and political achievement in American history”) and snipes about legacy media’s anti-Trump bias (for example, “Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way”).
Friday’s order, in turn, is full of the judge’s unmasked exhaustion. “As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” wrote Steven Merryday, a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. “This complaint stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” Merryday gave Trump 28 days to amend the complaint and come back with something less ridiculous, and not exceeding forty pages. “This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner,” he wrote.
Read the rest at the link.
In immigration news, ICE is ramping up their activities in Chicago.
AP: ICE arrests nearly 550 in Chicago area as part of ‘Midway Blitz.’
PARK RIDGE, Ill. (AP) — Immigration enforcement officials have arrested almost 550 people as part of an operation in the Chicago area that launched a little less than two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
The updated figure came hours after a senior immigration official revealed in an interview with The Associated Press that more than 400 people had been arrested in the operation so far. The figures offer an early gauge of what is shaping up as a major enforcement effort that comes after similar operations were launched in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
The figures released by Homeland Security include arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as other federal agencies assisting in the operation.
ICE launched its Chicago area operation dubbed “Midway Blitz” on Sept. 8, drawing concern from activists and immigrant communities who say there’s been a noticeable uptick in immigration enforcement agents. That has deepened dread in communities already fearful of the large-scale arrests or aggressive tactics used in other cities targeted by President Donald Trump ’s hardline immigration policies.
The operation has brought allegations of excessive force and heavy-handed dragnets that have ensnared U.S. citizens, while gratifying Trump supporters who say he is delivering on a promise of mass deportations.
A political candidate was roughed up. The Washington Post: Congressional candidate thrown to ground during protest outside ICE facility.
Federal agents clashed with protesters and threw a congressional candidate to the ground Friday morning during a protest outside a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
The chaotic scene unfolded in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago. Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Democratic candidate running for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District seat, was thrown to the ground by an armed and masked federal agent outside the ICE facility, according to video footage posted on her social media.
Abughazaleh said about 100 demonstrators were at the facility to protest what the Trump administration has labeled “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, a drastic ramp-up of immigration operations and ICE raids that began in early September.
Chic Woman with a Cat, Robert Bereny, 1927
In an interview with The Washington Post, Abughazaleh described arriving to the protest about 4 a.m. as a van was entering or exiting the facility. During one clash, officers pushed protesters back and dragged one individual by the hood of his sweatshirt, she said, before she also was picked up and thrown to the ground.
A later incident, which Abughazaleh described as “more aggressive” and which was captured on video, occurred about 9 a.m., when an officer she described as an ICE agent pulled her away and threw her on the ground again as another ICE vehicle was leaving the facility.
Video depicts what appears to be a mix of ICE agents and Customs and Border Protection officers on the scene….
“They had dragged a protester into the facilities. … They put this person in chains, in a van, and they had the van come out, and ICE tried to drive through us,” Abughazaleh told The Post. “My friend was on the hood of the car. They started shooting pepper balls at us. A man got shot in the face with one, a guy almost fell into the wheel of a car. Then they teargassed us, and the van drove away with the protester in there.”
More violations of the First Amendment, but what else is new?
Trump wants to put more restrictions on legal immigration unless you’re a billionaire. The Washington Post: Trump unveils $100K yearly fee on H-1B visas in clampdown on legal immigration.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced an annual $100,000 fee on successful applicants for a high-skilled worker visa program that is widely used in Silicon Valley, constraining a key path to legal immigration.
The president also signed an executive order that would allow wealthy foreigners to pay $1 million for a “gold card” for U.S. residency and companies to pay $2 million for a “corporate gold card” that would permit them to sponsor one or more employees.
“The main thing is we’re going to have great people coming in and they’re going to be paying,” Trump said. “We’re going to take that money and we’re going to be reducing taxes and we’re going to be reducing debt.”
Self portrait with Cat – Charlotte ‘Sarika’Góth, 1934. Hungarian , 1900 – 1992
Both moves probably will face legal challenges. If upheld, however, they would dramatically tighten legal immigration systems while opening access to the United States for wealthy foreigners. That would deliver a win to outspoken members of Trump’s nationalist base who have argued for years that the H1-B program takes jobs from American workers. Left-leaning critics also have faulted the program, which they say can be used to exploit workers from overseas….
The $100,000 payment for an H-1B visa could be made each year for six years, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an Oval Office ceremony unveiling the actions. Roughly half a million people in the U.S. work through H-1B visas, and most renew their status every three years. A significant number apply for green cards through their employer to receive legal permanent residency but confront significant delays because of backlogs in processing.
“The company needs to decide … is the person valuable enough to have a $100,000-a-year payment to the government, or they should head home, and they should go hire an American,” Lutnick told reporters. “Stop the nonsense of letting people just come into this country on visas that were given away for free. The president is crystal clear: valuable people only for America.”
This will just drive skilled workers to other countries.
Three more stories, before I wrap this up:
Trump murdered three more people in a fishing boat. CNN: Trump announces another lethal strike on alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced another lethal military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking vessel in international waters that he said was affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.
In a social media post, Trump said the strike targeted a vessel operating in US Southern Command’s area of responsibility – which includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean – and killed three male “narcoterrorists” onboard….
“On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
“STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA, AND COMMITTING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS!!!,” the president said.
Trump attached a video of the strike to his post.
The third grade “president” has spoken.
The New York Times: U.S. Attorney Investigating Two Trump Foes Departs Amid Pressure From President.
The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey said he had resigned on Friday, hours after President Trump called for his ouster.
Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation. Mr. Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law enforcement officials who pursued him.
By Ruskin Spear, 1911
Mr. Siebert informed prosecutors in his office of his resignation through an email hours after the president, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he wanted him removed because two Democratic senators from Virginia had approved of his nomination.
“When I saw that he got two senators, two gentlemen that are bad news as far as I’m concerned — when I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, pull it, because he can’t be any good,” Mr. Trump said. The president did not mention that he nominated Mr. Siebert only after the two senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, had already written Mr. Trump praising him.
When asked if he would fire Mr. Siebert, Mr. Trump responded, “Yeah, I want him out.”
Ms. James, he told reporters, was “very guilty of something.”
Mr. Trump later disputed that Mr. Siebert had resigned, saying in a late-night social media post, “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”
Mr. Trump’s comments came after a high-stakes internal debate raged on Friday over the fate of Mr. Siebert — with Mr. Trump’s own appointees at the Justice Department and key Republicans on Capitol Hill arguing to retain the veteran prosecutor.
Another childish tantrum. It’s so embarrassing for our country.
The New York Times: Pentagon Expands Its Restrictions on Reporter Access.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories are you following?The Pentagon said Friday it would impose new restrictions on reporters covering the Department of Defense, requiring them to pledge not to gather or use any information that had not been formally authorized for release or risk losing their credentials to cover the military.
The new mandate, described in a memorandum circulated to the press on Friday, was the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to limit the ability of the media to cover the federal government without interference.
The Department of Defense said in the 17-page memo that it “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust.” But it added that “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”
In addition, the document constrains the movements of the media within the Pentagon itself, designating large areas of the building off limits without escorts for the roughly 90 reporters credentialed to cover the agency. Although many offices and meeting rooms in the Pentagon are restricted, the Pentagon press corps had previously been given unescorted access throughout much of the building and its hallways.
The move could drastically restrict the flow of information about the U.S. military to the public. The National Press Club called the policy “a direct assault on independent journalism” and called for it to be immediately rescinded.
#ABC #authoritarianism #BrendanCarr #CharlieKirk #Chicago #dictatorship #Disney #DonaldTrump #ErikSSiebert #extraLegalBoatStrikes #fascism #FCC #firstAmendment #H1BVisas #ICE #immigration #JimmyKimmel #KatAbughazaleh #MidwayBlitz #PentagonReporterRules #TedCruz #TylerRobinson
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Yanking #jimmykimmel off the air sure has distracted people from #EpsteinFiles and #TylerRobinson . Just saying.
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BREAKING: The #FBI has announced that #TylerRobinson has committed #suicide in his cell next week, while the security cameras were mysteriously turned off 👀
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After reading through the text messages the FBI cooked up, this YouTube comment said it best:
“Thy hideth thy grandfather’s rifle in the shrubbery. Thy hopeth they doth not findeth.
—Tyler Robinson”
Using ChatGPT/Grok to write these messages, just shows how stupid the Trump admin thinks the public is.
Makes me wonder if someone has asked ChatGPT to create a prompt to produce those “text messages”.
This is as believable as Epstein committing suicide.
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Maga Can't Get Their Charlie Kirk Story Straight
#charliekirk1776 #charliekirk #tylerrobinson #translives #translivesmatter
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Of course they want Charlie Kirk’s killer dead. The interviews that would eventually surface of what radicalised him would bring out everything about how he was raised, and they don’t want to be known.
If he’s conveniently dead, nobody can ever hear any other version of the story.
#deathpenalty is not just wrong, it’s a disservice to human progress.
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Besides the obvious, #TylerRobinson was charged with committing these crimes in the presence of children—which begs the question: Why were children even allowed at an event of a political propagandist who turns people into killers?
#uspol #politics #CharlieKirkKilling #CharlieKirkMurder #CharlieKirkShot #CharlieKirkAssassination #UtahValleyUniversityShooting #MAGA #CharlieKirkShooting
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There's one thing about the media coverage of #TylerRobinson, #CharlieKirk's shooter, that I don't get. Maybe one of you can shed some light on that: Some sources claim that Tyler is bisexual—by what is that claim supported? Or is that just some people not understanding that having a trans partner doesn't make you bi?
#uspol #politics #CharlieKirkKilling #CharlieKirkMurder #CharlieKirkShot #CharlieKirkAssassination #UtahValleyUniversityShooting #MAGA #CharlieKirkShooting
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"Kirk’s murder, whatever else comes of it, has revealed to the broader normie world a schism in MAGA. That schism has implications for America’s future—and suggests that the country’s ideological divisions are increasingly nonbinary."
#charliekirk #TylerRobinson #groypers
https://newrepublic.com/article/200451/charlie-kirk-fuentes-groyper-wars
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CW: uspol | Charlie Kirk killing
Also, wondering where #TylerRobinson got the rifle from … seriously, you don't need an imaginary trans underground for that when you can buy these freaking things at every street corner. Go figure.
6/
#uspol #politics #CharlieKirk #CharlieKirk #CharlieKirkKilling #CharlieKirkMurder #CharlieKirkShot #CharlieKirkAssassination #UtahValleyUniversityShooting #MAGA #CharlieKirkShooting #GunControl #GunLawReform #GunRegulation #GunControlNow
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Great scoop by Newsweek! So the guy who shot #CharlieKirk grew up in a conservative home.
His parents were #Trump loving #MAGA #Republicans (I assume the same is true for his siblings & grandparents), but the shooter was involved in a relationship with someone from the #LGBT community.
The shooter was upset about Kirk’s rhetoric (I assume regarding the LGBT community‽), & killed Kirk.
👉🏾 #TylerRobinson's Full Text Exchange With Roommate #LanceTwiggs Revealed https://www.newsweek.com/tyler-robinson-roommate-lance-twiggs-charlie-kirk-texts-2130798
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I wouldn't say it's the truth yet, but it's getting closer maybe?
I suppose today's case-theory on the shooter is that the right should be avoiding upsetting closeted Republican gay men - So keep your eye on Lindsay Graham there, folks!
(I joke, but I bet that Patel is checking every access to Grindr from any government building now)
As ever, who knows whether any of this is true yet, but it's interesting to watch the new changing hard-evidence disputing all of the former hard-evidence; which never happens in real cases outside of detective novels and apparently the newly talentless FBI.
Investigators will make a case-theory (law enforcement tend to use "Investigative hypothesis") as their current picture of what likely happened, and then use evidence to prove or disprove parts of the case. Once something is disproven by evidence then the disproven hypothesis is thrown away and a new one created.
Investigations teams don't publish disproven hypothesis. Case theories change based on evidence, and the one at the start of an investigation may be completely different from the one 5 days later, which may be completely different to the final one presented as the formal case to take to the suspect in interrogation, which may again be changed as a result of that, before being taken to a court.
We are seeing a politically gutted FBI trying to take over a news cycle (release the Epstein Files... Oh, there's a war in Europe now? The economy is crashing?) to distract from other events and break all the rules of anything outside of Penny Dreadfuls or British Tabloids.But this tactic of releasing conflicting information causing arguments, mistrust, and covering up the basic details with external noise is "entertaining" (in that it gets shared, makes revenue, causes conversation etc) and also deliberately frustrating. It is causing people to be literally lynched, and it is riling up the hard MAGA base, many of whom were conveniently released from prison by their glorious leader, to start terror campaigns and to try to start a real civil war - Which is why they are doing it.
[For those who don't know me too well professionally, I am a highly certified investigations manager with nearly 40 years of case experience, including in counter-terrorism. This is one thing where I at least hope I know what I am talking about.]
I just saw a story over there --> that Megyn Kelly is blaming Obama for the shooting now. Robinson is 22 and the last time Obama was President was 2017, so Robinson would have been around 12 or 13 - That's some effective radicalisation there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP1YaqiB7-c
#CharlieKirk #TylerRobinson #USA #Violence #Terrorism #Fascism #FBI #Investigation #Grindr #Obama #YouTube #AdamMockler #CivilWar #Misinformation #Disinformation #Propaganda #KashPatel #LindsayGraham
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#TylerRobinson
Ist der mutmaßliche #Kirk - #Attentäter wirklich ein #Linker?Für Utahs Gouverneur und #US - Präsident #Trump ist klar: »Linke #Ideologie« ist verantwortlich für die Ermordung von #CharlieKirk. Die Fakten lassen dieses schnelle, simple Fazit äußerst zweifelhaft erscheinen. #Utah https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/attentat-auf-charlie-kirk-zweifel-an-linker-ideologie-von-tyler-robinson-als-motiv-a-2da6fe8d-9060-4fcd-b621-1a609189ba86
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The Daily Mail repeated the allegations, but at least had the integrity to say that the Fox report was their only source.
They also interviewed the roommate's family and neighbors; no one thought anyone in that apartment was trans. The woman who lived next door said directly that she didn't think they were.
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The reports that Charlie Kirk's (alleged) killer is in a relationship with a trans roommate? Completely unfounded.
The source is
1) Fox News reporter Brooke Singman quoting
2) "senior-level FBI officials". That means Kash Patel or Dan Bongino, whose previous job was writing Trump's tweets.The fact that Utah's governor Cox repeats the allegation does not make it credible. He previously said that bullet casings had "trans messages" on them and was wrong then too.
But it's enough for mainstream media to quote it, bizarrely without asking what the evidence is. And their stories seem more real.
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel) has the receipts. https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/14/the-white-house-bid-to-turn-the-charlie-kirk-murder-into-their-anti-trans-jihad/
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https://www.fogolf.com/1055614/trump-skips-kennedy-center-prayer-vigil-for-charlie-kirk-to-golf-report/ Trump skips Kennedy Center prayer vigil for Charlie Kirk to golf: report #CharlieKirk #Donald #DonaldTrump #DonaldTrumpGolf #DonaldTrumpGolfing #PrayerVigil #trump #TrumpGolf #TrumpGolfing #TrumpNationalGolfClub #TylerRobinson #WhiteHousePressSecretary
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Chaladura estadounidense: Charlie Kirk, Nick Fuentes, Tyler Robinson y los groyper.
#CharlieKirk #TylerRobinson #GroyperArmy #AltRight #violenciapolitica
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Reconocen al sospechoso del asesinato de Charlie Kirk | #RollingStoneES
https://es.rollingstone.com/reconocen-al-sospechoso-del-asesinato-de-charlie-kirk/
#actualidad #charliekirk #donaldtrump #estadosunidos #noticia #política #sospechoso #trump #tylerrobinson #utah
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Reconocen al sospechoso del asesinato de Charlie Kirk | #RollingStoneES
https://es.rollingstone.com/reconocen-al-sospechoso-del-asesinato-de-charlie-kirk/
#actualidad #charliekirk #donaldtrump #estadosunidos #noticia #política #sospechoso #trump #tylerrobinson #utah
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#Canadian analyst @daviddoel.bsky.social discusses his (for now) final video on this topic. Discussing the 2 clear elements that drove #TylerRobinson, including some #ancillary stories around the topic. Including a classmate who warned of kids being constantly online 🇨🇦 youtu.be/ANE3G5khxzA?...
Meme'd To Death: The Brainrot ... -
#Canadian analyst @daviddoel.bsky.social discusses his (for now) final video on this topic. Discussing the 2 clear elements that drove #TylerRobinson, including some #ancillary stories around the topic. Including a classmate who warned of kids being constantly online 🇨🇦 youtu.be/ANE3G5khxzA?...
Meme'd To Death: The Brainrot ... -
Lazy Caturday Reads: Who Is Tyler Robinson?
Good Afternoon!!
By Natália Elizete Franco Pedroso
It has been a terrible week in the news, and it has also been a difficult week for me personally. I’m having trouble thinking clearly today. It all seems like a bad dream. Today I’m going to focus on Tyler Robinson and why he might have hated Charlie Kirk. I know there’s plenty of other news, but I’m still trying to understand this awful event and its aftermath.
Since it’s Caturday, and since we all likely could use some comfort, I’m going to begin with this article about people and cats by neuroscientist Laura Elin Pigott: The Conversation: What owning a cat does to your brain (and theirs).
Cats may have a reputation for independence, but emerging research suggests we share a unique connection with them – fuelled by brain chemistry.
The main chemical involved is oxytocin, often called the love hormone. It’s the same neurochemical that surges when a mother cradles her baby or when friends hug, fostering trust and affection. And now studies are showing oxytocin is important for cat-human bonding too.
Oxytocin plays a central role in social bonding, trust and stress regulation in many animals, including humans. One 2005 experiment showed that oxytocin made human volunteers significantly more willing to trust others in financial games.
Oxytocin also has calming effects in humans and animals, as it suppresses the stress hormone cortisol and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest system) to help the body relax.
Scientists have long known that friendly interactions trigger oxytocin release in both dogs and their owners, creating a mutual feedback loop of bonding. Until recently, though, not much was known about its effect in cats.
Cats are more subtle in showing affection. Yet their owners often report the same warm feelings of companionship and stress relief that dog owners do – and studies are increasingly backing these reports up. Researchers in Japan, for example, reported in 2021 that brief petting sessions with their cats boosted oxytocin levels in many owners.
In that study, women interacted with their cats for a few minutes while scientists measured the owners’ hormone levels. The results suggested that friendly contact (stroking the cat, talking in a gentle tone) was linked to elevated oxytocin in the humans’ saliva, compared with a quiet resting period without their cat.
Many people find petting a purring cat is soothing, and research indicates it’s not just because of the soft fur. The act of petting and even the sound of purring can trigger oxytocin release in our brains. One 2002 study found this oxytocin rush from gentle cat contact helps lower cortisol (our stress hormone), which in turn can reduce blood pressure and even pain.
Click on the link to read more about oxytocin’s effect on the human-cat relationship.
Yesterday, we learned that the man who murdered Charlie Kirk on Wednesday is the product of a gun-owning, Republican family who for the past couple of years spent most of his time on-line. There are suggestions that he may have been a follower of Nicholas Fuentes, who hated Kirk because he wasn’t far right enough. Fuentes followers call themselves “groypers.” Regardless of whether that hypothesis pans out, Robinson clearly was not a “far left lunatic,” as Trump claimed the murderer must be. We can’t be sure of Robinson’s motives, because he is not talking to investigators.
What we know about Tyler Robinson
The New York Times (gift link): From Scholarship Winner to Wanted Man: The Path of the Kirk Shooting Suspect.
In the conservative southern Utah city where Tyler Robinson grew up, neighbors and classmates described him as a reserved, intelligent young man raised in a Republican family who was deeply interested in video games, comic books and current events.
On Friday afternoon, people who knew Mr. Robinson struggled to reconcile their memories of him and his seemingly ordinary suburban upbringing with his notorious new image: the latest face of political violence, accused of fatally shooting the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus earlier this week in what the authorities have called a political assassination.
By Irina Babichenko
“It’s really sad that someone with his mind put it to that sort of use,” said Keaton Brooksby, 22, a former high school classmate of Mr. Robinson’s.
Mr. Robinson had recently spoken with a family member about the fact that Mr. Kirk was going to hold an event in Utah, according to a police affidavit, and he and his relative discussed “why they didn’t like him and the viewpoints he had.”
But as elements of the nation’s political left and right scrambled for motives, the image that has initially emerged of Mr. Robinson is not at all clear. Neither is his trajectory from a scholarship-winning high school student to an apprentice electrician to a suspect.
Mr. Brooksby said that Mr. Robinson was generally considered a quiet pupil when they were growing up in the conservative St. George area, but one day in high school, the topic of the 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, came up during lunch. Few there knew exactly what had happened, but Mr. Robinson was sure of himself.
“He gave us a whole spiel on what happened,” Mr. Brooksby said. “I just remember thinking, he’s got a lot of information on this for someone who’s 14.”
A bit more info:
Mr. Robinson is registered to vote in Utah, but he is not affiliated with a political party and had never voted in an election, according to the Washington County Clerk. His parents are registered Republicans, both with active hunting licenses in a part of the country known for its outdoor life, near Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks.
Social media photos posted by his family over the years show Mr. Robinson and his two younger brothers shooting and posing with guns….
Adrian Rivera, 22, who had been in a high school woodworking class with him, said that Mr. Robinson would often hang around the area designated for the Junior R.O.T.C., or Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, with other students who were interested in the military program. It was unclear whether Mr. Robinson had actually been a member of the corps.
Mr. Rivera said that Mr. Robinson was a “massive Halo guy,” referring to the popular science fiction game, and that he also liked to play Call of Duty, and other shooter games.
Sam New, 23, remembered a different video game, Minecraft, which Mr. Robinson, an introvert from a conservative family, played obsessively.
Use the gift link to read more, if you’re interested.
The Wall Street Journal: Tyler Robinson’s Descent From Promising Student to Murder Suspect.
Tyler Robinson was the pride of his Utah family. He was a 4.0 high-school student who won a prestigious college scholarship, according to social-media posts.
“His options are endless,” his mother wrote on Facebook.
Four years later, authorities say the 22-year-old Robinson used an old bolt-action rifle to fire a single shot that killed Charlie Kirk while the conservative activist spoke Wednesday at Utah Valley University. He allegedly had ammunition etched with phrases borrowed from internet and gaming culture like “Hey, fascist! Catch!” and “If you read this, you are gay, lmao.”
Authorities, friends and even his own family were trying to understand how Robinson went from a top student raised by parents who were registered Republicans in a Mormon stronghold in southwest Utah to a suspected assassin who authorities said targeted one of the country’s most popular conservative youth leaders. Robinson was in the past registered as nonpartisan….
As everyone knows by now, Robinson’s family turned him in to authorities after he confessed to his father.
Robinson was from the small city of Washington, nestled in southwest Utah between red-rock canyons and snow-capped mountains. Striking national parks like Zion and Bryce Canyon aren’t far.
Like many boys in this area, Robinson grew up hunting and was well-versed in the use of firearms, according to law-enforcement officials. Photos shared on social media show the family shooting rifles.
State records show his parents own a custom-countertop business, and his mother is a licensed clinical social worker. The family lives on a suburban street that a neighbor described as quiet with many households attending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Robinson, who has two brothers, was a stellar student, according to his mother’s posts on her Facebook account. He had a perfect GPA and scored a 34 out of a possible 36 on his ACT….
Robinson’s mother hoped he would stay close for college, and in the fall of 2021, she posted pictures of him in his dorm room at Utah State, a 5-hour drive north of the family home in Washington. He arrived with a scholarship worth $32,000 over four years.
But he wasn’t there long. Utah State said he attended the school for just one semester. More recently he has been enrolled in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College, where he is a third-year student, according to the Utah Board of Higher Education.
On the speculation about Robinson’s political leanings:
One thing is apparent about Robinson: He lived much of life on the internet. By age 15, he had developed enough of an online presence that he dressed up as “some guy from a meme” for Halloween, according to his mother. Writings on the bullet casings found by police appeared to reference various memes and online culture.
One unfired casing was inscribed with lyrics from “Bella Ciao,” an Italian song dedicated to those who fought against fascism during World War II that has been revived on TikTok.
“It’s very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” Cox said in an interview with the Journal.
Online, however, X users have noted that a version of the song also appears on a Spotify playlist for Groypers, the name for followers of Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist personality who has criticized Kirk, including for his support of Israel. Fuentes has publicly condemned the shooting of Kirk and posted on X that “my followers and I are currently being framed” for Kirk’s killing “based on literally zero evidence.”
The Daily Beast: Charlie Kirk Suspect’s Grandma Says Family Is All MAGA.
Tyler Robinson, 22, the man arrested in connection with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, comes from a MAGA family, his grandmother has revealed.
Yoga with my cat, Sharyn Bursic
Although MAGA figureheads have been quick to point fingers at the left for Kirk’s death, Tyler’s grandmother, Debbie Robinson, 69, insisted that they come from a family of Trump supporters.
She spoke with the Daily Mail on Friday after news of Robinson’s arrest broke. “My son, his dad, is a Republican for Trump,” Debbie told the outlet. “Most of my family members are Republican. I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat.”
According to the outlet, Robinson’s father, Matt, 48, was the one to turn Tyler into the authorities after he confessed to the grisly crime. Debbie has not been able to get in touch with her son since news of her grandson’s arrest went public.
“I’m just so confused,” Debbie said of her grandson’s arrest. “[Tyler] is the shyest person,” she said. “He has never, ever spoke politics to me at all.”
Extreme right groups, Charlie Kirk, and Tyler Robinson
It ideologies of far right groups are more complex than us “normies” generally realize.
David Gilbert at Wired: Extremist Groups Hated Charlie Kirk. They’re Using His Death to Radicalize Others.
For years, extremist groups, white nationalists, and militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers saw Charlie Kirk not as their ally, but as their enemy.
Though Kirk denigrated trans people, Muslims, unmarried women, and many minorities and advocated for an America with Christianity at the center of every aspect of life, he was, in their view, a moderate. For some, his staunch support of Israel’s government made Kirk a target rather than a friend.
But in the immediate aftermath of Kirk being fatally shot while speaking at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, these same groups were quick to frame the incident as an attack on one of their own, portraying Kirk’s death as part of what they see as an ongoing war against white, Christian men. The same groups were relatively quiet on Friday after police announced they had arrested a 22-year-old from Utah for the killing who had no obvious ties to the left.
By Giuseppe Mariotti
These groups, many of which have been relatively dormant since the mass arrests surrounding the January 6 attack on the Capitol, have used the outpouring of grief around Kirk’s death as a lightning rod, a signal that they need to mobilize and take action. Many of them, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, have used Kirk’s death as a recruitment and radicalizing tool to convince his supporters to take a more extreme worldview.
“Nothing can stop what is coming,” Ryan Sánchez, the leader of the far-right National Network, who was caught on video giving a Nazi salute during last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, wrote on his Telegram channel. “We are mobilizing young Nationalists to defend our communities against the Radical Left—we need your help!”
The appeals appear to be at least somewhat working: Sánchez’s post was accompanied by a screenshot showing a $1,000 donation he received on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo.
“This is the beginning of a movement that may define our nation,” the donor wrote on the site. “Use it for good and purge the country of these insane ideologies.”
Read more at Wired.
Also from Wired: Bullets Found After the Charlie Kirk Shooting Carried Messages. Here’s What They Mean.
On Friday, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah native, was identified by federal law enforcement as a suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk. During Friday’s press conference, officials said that several bullet casings recovered from a hunting rifle found near the crime scene had messages inscribed on them.
During the press conference, officials appeared to take the inscriptions literally, to the extent they ascribed meaning to them at all. But the four messages apparently written by the alleged shooter instead seem to invoke a variety of memes and video game references.
One of the casings was said to be engraved with the phrase “Hey Fascist! Catch!” followed by an up arrow, a right arrow, and three downward-facing arrows. That sequence is an apparent reference to the “Eagle 500kg bomb” in the popular third-person-shooter game Helldivers 2. The bomb has become a meme in the Helldivers community for being comically excessive.
By Elias-Mollineaux-Bancroft
Arrowhead Game Studios, the developers of Helldivers 2, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. Launched in 2024, the game has grown a cult following for its Starship Troopers–like storyline. The cooperative shooter allows teams of up to four players, called “Helldivers,” to spread “freedom” across a fictional universe—fighting bugs, robots, and squid-like aliens rather than other humans. Their form of managed democracy is “basically fascism,” says independent extremism researcher Harry Batchelor, who works with the Extremism and Gaming Research Network.
Helldivers 2 is satire, and the vast majority of players are in on it. The game, says Batchelor, “takes “the whole ‘pretending to be democracy while actually being a fascist government’ so seriously, it’s obviously a joke.” The community around the game has generally maintained a positive reputation, even working together to combat “review bombing”—coordinated negative reviews intended to hurt a game’s chance of success.
The arrows that activate the Eagle 500kg bomb have been used in other memes to show that a user is “going to do a big, violent action,” Don Caldwell, editor in chief of Know Your Meme, tells WIRED. “That’s maybe a cheeky way of expressing it on the casing.”
More bullet engravings and their meanings:
One of the other alleged memes on the casings says, “If you read this you are gay LMAO,” which seems to be more of a common online insult than a specific reference. “I believe this person is genuinely just always online,” Batchelor says.
“They knew that they’d be discovered and posted about,” says Caldwell of the decision to include meme references on the casings. “People understand that memes are very powerful and get a lot of attention. As soon as people read them, they’re going to desperately try to figure out what the reference means. It makes it more interesting.”
At Vanity Fair, Joshua Rivera write about the on-line culture that Robinson may have tapped into: Groypers, Helldivers 2, Furries: What Do the Messages Left by Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Killer.
As of yet, little is known about Robinson’s alleged motivations or ideology. But the few details surrounding the 22-year old point toward a troubling trend: young shooter suspects who communicate primarily via obtuse memes and digitally inflected irony.
All sorts of young adults are familiar with the culture of video games, Twitch streamers, and YouTube, speaking a language completely foreign to those who do not spend as much time online. Is that language inherently sinister? No more than, say “Skibidi Toilet,” a series of crude animated shorts about toilets from which talking heads emerge. (There’s a movie in the works.) None of the phrases Robinson allegedly wrote are known code words for anything nefarious; they signal little beyond a connection to a contextless internet, where memes take on a life of their own and are used by the benign and malignant alike.
By Tatyana Ornisana
Some memes, however, aren’t so neutral. The young men who admired, and still admire, Charlie Kirk tend to be extremely online—which doesn’t necessarily mean that they all share exactly the same ideology. Internecine conflict between conservative factions is common, both on social media and at events for young conservatives. The most notable of these are the “Groyper Wars” of 2019. “Groypers” are fans of white nationalist agitator Nick Fuentes who like to hide their racism behind ironic jokes; when Kirk began making an effort to mainstream his ultra-right-wing Turning Point USA movement, Fuentes instructed them to publicly troll Kirk.
A Facebook photo in which Robinson appears to reference a Groyper meme has led to early speculation that Kirk’s killing may have been an outgrowth of these intra-far-right skirmishes. But another feature of the modern far-right is an embrace of the post-truth huckster. In these circles, it’s always possible that someone is playing a character—or will claim to be doing so, muddying the waters so no one can accuse them of having a sincere belief beyond the desire to rile up their targets. For people like this, the whole world is a forum board, where lewd public comments and real-world violence are becoming increasingly interchangeable. (Consider the messages left behind by the deceased shooter of Annunciation Catholic School, which were full of references to both other shooters and innocuous memes.)
I think Rivera’s last paragraph is important:
In every respect, the circumstances surrounding Kirk’s murder are alarming for those with the understandable impulse to make some kind of sense out of terrifying events. It is true that real-life violence is the end result of our cultural coarsening. It is also important to remember that Robinson’s generation is entering public life with frames of reference that are totally foreign to its elders, regardless of individual ideology. We cannot properly comprehend the harm of bad actors or the concerns of the innocent until we have taken the time to learn their language—and sometimes, even then we won’t understand.
I’ve tried to gather the latest speculation about Tyler Robinson’s possible motives and ideology. We’ll likely learn more in the coming days, especially if he begins talking to investigators. We are dealing with a right wing culture that is very dangerous.
Related stories to check out if you’re interested
Justin Glawe at Public Notice: Kash Patel’s FBI is a total mess.
The New York Times: Hasan Piker on Charlie Kirk.
Mother Jones: Streaming Star Hasan Piker Was Set to Debate Charlie Kirk. Now He’s Warning of a “Reichstag Fire Moment.”
Zeteo: Charlie Kirk in His Own Words.
NBC News: Pete Hegseth tells Pentagon staff to hunt for negative Charlie Kirk posts by service members.
USA Today: ‘No idea what you have unleashed’: Charlie Kirk’s wife delivers first public address.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope your weekend is a peaceful one.
#bulletEngravings #catArt #cats #caturday #CharlieKirk #Groypers #Helldivers2 #internetMemes #murderOfCharlieKirk #NickFuentes #oxytocin #TylerRobinson
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CW: #CharlieKirk #FailedState #MAGA #Politik #TylerRobinson #USA #uspol
#thedailybeast:
"
Charlie Kirk Suspect’s Grandma Says Family Is All MAGA
"
https://www.thedailybeast.com/charlie-kirk-suspects-grandma-says-family-is-all-maga/12./13.9.2025
#CharlieKirk #FailedState #MAGA #Politik #TylerRobinson #USA #uspol
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#TylerRobinson wrote “Hey, #fascist ! Catch!” on an unused bullet in the rifle used to kill #CharlieKirk.
#FBI Director #KashPatel ended a press conference about the case, said “To my friend Charlie Kirk. Rest now, brother. We have the watch. And I’ll see you in Valhalla.” #Valhalla is where the afterlife is in Norse mythology, which German #Nazis adopted. https://www.thedailybeast.com/keystone-kash-pays-baffling-tribute-to-kirk-see-you-in-valhalla/
So #MAGA religion is NOT #Christian. This makes more sense, since there is NOTHING Christ-like about the #cult. ✅
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Charlie Kirk Legacy of Hate and Division Human Watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToLFekeT4-g
#humanrights #charliekirkassassin #antihuman #prohuman #equalrights #charliekirk #charliekirkrip #MAGA #charliekirkdead #charliekirkisdead #RightWingViolence #tylerrobinson #epsteinfiles #donaldtrump -
Charlie Kirk Legacy of Hate and Division Human Watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToLFekeT4-g
#humanrights #charliekirkassassin #antihuman #prohuman #equalrights #charliekirk #charliekirkrip #MAGA #charliekirkdead #charliekirkisdead #RightWingViolence #tylerrobinson #epsteinfiles #donaldtrump
