Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for reading today.
You know, the more I think about it, the more I believe putting a bunch of idiots in charge of the country was a bad idea.
I know, I know. It’s a radical thought. After all, who wants to have boring eggheads with brilliant ideas and tons of experience in Washington when you can have a guy you’d “like to have a beer with,” or, even better, a guy who gives you permission to be a sexist, racist imbecile? Am I right?
But before you tell me “Shut up, Piggy,” or call me a nasty woman, hear me out.
Let’s start with ICE, which was created after 9/11 to replace the Department of Immigration and Naturalization, but has slowly morphed into an SS-adjacent secret police force with zero accountability and a dubious understanding of the Constitution. Under Trump, ICE’s sole purpose has been to snatch up and kick out as many Back and brown people as it can get away with. And, of course, you have to have someplace to house all those people while waiting to deport them to Equatorial Guinea or someplace equally far-flung that detainees have no relation whatsoever to.
In furtherance of that goal, ICE paid something like $700 million of taxpayer money to buy up giant warehouses all across the country, because what difference is there, really, between human beings and crates of widgets?
Sadly, ICE has now learned that more Americans than expected care about whether Trump’s private police force violates the US Constitution, and communities began pushing back against ICE establishing concentration camps in their communities. Now, ICE has decided it no longer needs seven of these airplane hangers. Will they flip them for a profit? Hahahahaha…. good Lord, no. That’s not how the Trump administration works.
But in a major turnabout, the agency is planning to offload seven warehouses purchased for more than $700 million by either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.
The decision to sharply scale back the warehouse plan is a rejection of a signature initiative under the previous homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, who pushed the boundaries of what the government can do to aggressively round up potential deportees. The new secretary, Markwayne Mullin, who had privately expressed skepticism about the plan, has said publicly that he wants the agency to be quieter about how it carries out immigration enforcement.
Note that ICE doesn’t plan to alter how they go about deporting immigrants, just how obvious they are about it.
The agency appears to still be moving forward with four of the warehouses purchased for detention purposes, in San Antonio and Socorro, Texas; Surprise, Ariz.; and Hagerstown, Md. However, a federal judge has blocked work on the Maryland facility. It was not immediately clear why the agency decided to proceed with those four spaces for detention. ICE also plans to buy immigrant detention facilities from private prison companies that it already contracts with, according to documents.
But the move to offload most of the warehouses raises questions about the agency’s ability to deport high numbers of immigrants.
I mean…good. Let’s keep it going.
Moving on to the Pentagon, where the frat guy your friends all warn you to stay away from is in charge. Pete Hegseth has done a lot of stupid shit since he took over the Department of Defense, but making vaccines voluntary has been an all-time bonehead move. If you’re looking for our brave folks in uniform, they are probably hanging their heads over a toilet somewhere.
A major flu outbreak has sickened nearly 160 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. troops would no longer be required to be vaccinated for the flu, defense officials said.
The outbreak at the base in San Antonio raced through an Air Force Basic Military Training wing, where new recruits sleep on bunk beds in open bays and share meals at large communal tables.
A trainee in his sixth week of basic training died after falling ill on Friday and being taken to Brooke Army Medical Center, the Air Force said in a news release. It was not immediately clear whether the death of the trainee, Keon McDaniel, was related to the flu outbreak.
Wow. It’s almost like all those public health experts with decades of experience in infectious diseases knew what they were talking about. Weird.
Finally, let’s talk about Trump’s efforts to “renovate” the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, which actually consisted of handing out a cushy, no-bid contract that has gone wildly over budget to a company that paints pools. Over the last two days, we’ve learned that painting the pool a darker color caused the water to absorb more heat, warming it and triggering a massive algae bloom. We’ve also learned that dumping hydrogen peroxide into the algae/water doesn’t do much to change the pea soup green color. Damn, maybe we shouldn’t have fired all those scientists.
Now, it seems that hydrogen peroxide also weakens the adhesive, causing the “American flag blue” coating Trump was so excited about to peel off the Pool, and tourists are snagging it as a memento.
And wait until you see what the guy in charge of the company that mucked it up looks like:
No, that’s not some actor hired to play a mobster on Hill Street Blues in 1985. That’s John J. Cafaro, the leader of a trust that owns Greenwater Services out of Brookfield, OH. I know you’ll be shocked to learn that he’s a longtime Republican donor who was once part of a bribery scandal. To be fair, the “Greenwater” part turned out to be true.
How much dumber will this country get? Who else can Trump engage to further drive us into a real-life version of Myrtle Manor? Stay tuned to find out!
In other news: Is the Iran deal dead already?; France kicks Palantir out of the country; the DOJ runs interference for Elon Musk; and The High Note.
Here we go.
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That was fast
Hey, remember how Trump’s “deal” with Iran, in addition to improving the original deal negotiated by the Obama administration by a factor of zero, failed to bind Israel and Lebanon to a ceasefire in any meaningful way? Yeah, about that.
What happens if Iran gets provoked into hitting Israel back? I’m not sure anyone knows. Keep in mind that almost nothing in this “deal” has been negotiated yet — it’s basically a ceasefire that kicked the can of nuclear weapons and reparations down the road. Meanwhile, Israel is not pleased with the results, as the entire stated reason for the war was to make sure Iran couldn’t bomb anyone.
I’ll leave you with this exchange between the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner and right-wing Israeli news anchor Shimon Riklin, who is cozy with Netanyahu’s regime. Chotiner’s questions are in bold.
How are you feeling about the emerging deal between the United States and Iran?
Totally shook. Totally shook. Unacceptable. Amazing. Nobody understands this. Listen, we have a couple of reasons that Israel and America waged war against Iran. One was to prevent nuclear weapons. One was to prevent the development of missiles that could hit, in the future, not only Israel but also Europe and the United States. What Iran tried to do is encircle Israel with fire, with enemies. So there were a lot of reasons.
But why did we go into the war if this is what Trump was going to give Iran?”
“I don’t have a lot of moments like this. I don’t remember someone in modern history who would go with you and do wonderful things, and then suddenly disappear and go against you. So now I am the bad guy? I supported you! I was the good guy! How did I become the bad guy, and the Ayatollah is the good guy?
This is why I was wondering whether you had ever observed Donald Trump.
“Were you, uh, were you familiar with Donald Trump before you formed this alliance?” Why does anyone agree to be interviewed by Chotiner? It’s like going on The Bachelor looking for love.
France says “au revoir” to Palantir
Why yes, I am looking up France’s requirements for citizenship. I speak the language and some of my distant ancestors lived in Alsace-Lorraine. That should work, right?
France’s domestic intelligence service is to ditch AI data tools from the US tech company Palantir in favour of a domestic provider in an effort to avoid “strategic dependency”, the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has said.
“We must use our own AI models; we cannot accept new strategic dependencies in the digital sphere,” Lecornu posted on social media. “We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. France must have its own tools.”
There is increasing concern among European governments at their reliance on US-controlled technologies. Washington decided last week to restrict foreign nationals’ access to Anthropic’s latest AI model.
Germany has also said it will cease using Palantir products, and Great Britain is currently reviewing its NHS contract with the company. Meanwhile, the US has contracts with Palantir totally something like $3 billion. Why do we always have to be the stupidest NATO country?
Speaking of being a stupid country…
The DOJ is reportedly intervening in a lawsuit brought by the NAACP against Elon Musk over one of his AI data centers.
In a highly unusual move, the US Justice Department has urged a federal court to throw out a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s company xAI for its use of polluting gas turbines — sparking concerns the government is trying to undermine the ability of individuals or communities to sue polluters.
In April, NAACP sued xAi and its subsidiary MZX Tech under the Clean Air Act, claiming the company was operating dozens of gas turbines without air permits or pollution controls in Southaven, Mississippi to power its “Colossus 2” data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
The methane gas turbines, located near homes and schools, are known to produce a cocktail of toxic pollutants. These include nitrogen oxides, a key component of ozone pollution — also called smog — which can cause asthma attacks and chest pain and, in the longer-term, has been linked to decreased lung function and premature death.
And wait until you hear the DOJ’s argument.
The Justice Department has asked the court to dismiss the suit, citing national security considerations. In a memo published Tuesday, it said the data center trains and develops AI models that are “critical” to the economy and to defense and that the lawsuit threatens American energy and innovation.
“The Department of Justice will not sit idly by while private organizations use environmental laws to undermine our national security,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Environment and Natural Resources Division.
“The US will not sit idly by while a highly respected organization tries to keep Trump’s special boy from polluting Black neighborhoods.”
I hate it here.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
In some good news, the World Cup got its first match refereed entirely by women yesterday. Here they are!
Tori Penso, Kathryn Nesbitt, and Brooke Mayo held down the pitch in Czechia’s match against South Africa on Thursday.
The Obama Presidential Center opened in Chicago yesterday, and though artists like Jennifer Hudson, Bono and The Edge, Mark Anthony, Questlove, Stevie Wonder, Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen, and Christina Aguilera all performed, it was Michelle Obama’s speech that stole the show.
“Failing to see the humanity in all people puts us all on a slippery slope. And once that slide starts, there's no telling where it stops. A dangerous precedent that flies in the very face of our faith. And of the founding promise of this democracy that all of us, all of us are created equal, that each of us is a child of God with inherent value.
And no one, and I mean no one, has the right to sit in judgment of who's American enough.
And that's why, folks, we simply don't have the luxury or time to be cynical or complacent, to wring our hands in despair, to wait for someone else to fix the problem.
Y'all, hope is all we have.”
Rebellions are built on hope, after all.
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Have a great weekend!
