What Are They Doing When No One is Looking?
A quick reminder that it was just two weeks ago that the world was worried that we might invade Greenland. And somehow it just got crazier.
But let’s try to catch-up:
Split screen: In the wake of the Epstein file dump, Prince Andrew gets booted out of the Royal Lodge. Donald Trump remains in the White House.
Pete Hegseth targets another domestic enemy: “Pentagon warns Scouts to make ‘core value reforms’ or lose military support.”
The border czar pulls back (a bit): “Trump admin to withdraw 700 federal officers from Minnesota.” [But that leaves about 2000 agents and, as I will explain in more detail tomorrow, things are still going to get worse. Much worse.]
Warrants? Warrants? ICE don’t need no stinking warrants. “Homeland Security is targeting Americans with administrative subpoenas”
“My own government attempted to execute me.” Victims of ICE and CBP brutality testify before Congress.
And, after days sucking the Trump Admin’s hind-teet, Jeff Bezos wants the world to know that he is no Katherine Graham by gutting the paper she built: “Washington Post announces widespread layoffs, gutting numerous parts of its newsroom. --CNN/ “Washington Post Begins Laying Off More Than 300 Journalists” - The New York Times
Happy Wednesday.
What can we do? How do we fight while remaining sane? I know that there are a lot of claims on your time and your wallet, but this should be on your list:
Support the voices that are supporting democracy, the rule of law, free speech, and fundamental decency. Because it matters. And it works.
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Can we just call this evil?
Via the Daily Illini: “‘Fell the enemies:’ Illini Republicans support ICE amid killings”
Actually, it’s worse than that. Not just “amid killings. — the College GOP group celebrated the murders themselves.
“In a post that included a stylized graphic matching a clip of a federal agent shooting and killing Alex Pretti, Illini Republicans stated that they “stand with ICE” amid the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Pretti in Minnesota.”
As of Sunday, we are told, the group had removed the gruesome graphic, “but kept the larger post, which garnered more than a thousand comments on their Instagram account.”
“The extremity simply mirrors how much we stand with ICE,” the group wrote in response to a question about why they would post something so extreme. “We support ICE in its mission to deport people who are not legally supposed to be in the country.”
We could speculate about the mindset that created such a sick graphic; or the Stephen-Millerish cesspool that made theses college students think that this was “edgy.” But really, no comment is necessary, except to note that the “kids” may be the future of the Republican Party.
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Freeing Liam
The symbolism seems a bit on-the-nose-don’t you think? Trump names the Kennedy Center after himself — and then shuts it down.
In Our Name?
We’ve all seen the videos from Minneapolis and elsewhere. Mothers ripped from their cars by masked ICE agents; children used as “bait”; unarmed protesters shot and killed.
But what is happening out of sight?
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What if There Were No Cameras?
“On January 23, 2016, Donald Trump notoriously declared, ‘I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.’ That statement was understood at the time as a metaphorical expression of the depth of Republican voters’ commitment to him. Ten years and one day later, his administration’s agents shot a disarmed ma…
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If this is the way that the agents of Trump’s Government behave in broad daylight, with cameras rolling, what are they doing when no one is looking? When there are no cameras? No witnesses?
More specifically, what is happening in the camps and warehouses where tens of thousands of detainees are being held? What will the history of our time say about what the United States of America is doing to human beings?
We won’t be able to say that we didn’t know: Via MPR News: “Rep. Kelly Morrison describes 'horrifying' conditions inside Whipple building.”
[Minnesota’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison] described what she saw inside as “horrifying and heartbreaking,” citing cold temperatures, a lack of beds, blankets and sufficient food, and people held in leg shackles.
“They’re in small rooms, and I’m not sure where they would run to, but it’s just a very dehumanizing thing to do to someone,” Morrison said.
As a physician, she said she was alarmed to learn there are no formal medical protocols at Whipple because it is considered a holding site rather than a detention center. She was told a nurse is present only occasionally and that no doctors are on site…. She described the atmosphere inside Whipple as chaotic, disorganized and unsafe, with visible desperation, confusion and anguish.
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“There were people in leg shackles. There were cold cement floors, no beds, no blankets; they did have showers, but told me no one had ever taken a shower,” Morrison said.
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But the brutality is the point. In November a class-action lawsuit against ICE noted that detainees at the Mojave Desert Detention Center referred to it as a “torture chamber” and “hell on Earth.” Conditions are so horrible that “detainees are resigning themselves to self-deportation, instead of pursuing asylum and other immigration cases, and that ‘people are also trying to take their own lives.’
Indeed, the evidence for large-scale inhumanity has been mounting for months, especially as the number of disappeared has exploded.
The number of people held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention rose nearly 75 percent in 2025, climbing from roughly 40,000 at the start of the year to 66,000 by the start of December, the highest level ever recorded. And with Congress authorizing $45 billion dollars in new detention funding, the report warns that the system could more than triple in size over the next four years.
There are few videos of what is happening on our watch. But the stories continue to trickle out: “Detained Immigrants Detail Physical Abuse and Inhumane Conditions at Largest Immigration Detention Center in the U.S.” Consider the alarming reports about conditions at Fort Bliss:
The site has already racked up 60 violations of federal detention standards within its first 50 days of operation.
Each pod holds 60–70 people who report chronic food shortages, with meals sufficient for only about 50 individuals.
People are forced to ration food, skip meals, or take turns eating — and when food is available, it is often spoiled or partially frozen, causing widespread vomiting, diarrhea, and rapid weight loss.
Basic hygiene supplies are scarce: pods receive only a handful of rolls of toilet paper, and people go days without soap, clean clothing, or access to functioning showers. Detainees describe tents and bathrooms flooded with foul water mixed with urine and feces, creating squalid and unsafe living conditions.
Access to medical care is equally alarming. Individuals with serious conditions report going days or weeks without prescribed medication or having medical requests ignored until someone collapses
TOMORROW: Why ICE/CBP can’t be fixed by tinkering at the edges.
Nota Bene
Tina Brown: “Sex, Lies, and the Epstein Files”
Other than making the rictus smiles of their wives and exes tauter than usual, pawing through these emails serves only to reinforce what we already know: that mega-wealth so often erodes a moral compass. Epstein’s appeal was an insidious gift of permission. Girls, tax evasion, private places to play. An underground railway of upper-echelon decadence.
Alas, the fact that we are all writing about this yet again shows how successful the latest Epstein email release has been for Donald Trump. He’s found another way to turn danger to himself into danger to others. Hunting for revelations about the occupant of the Oval Office in this email blizzard is a fool’s errand. Trump’s name attached to anything incriminating is redacted. Of the 5,300 files with 38,000 references to Trump, Melania, or Mar-a-Lago, none are direct communications between Trump and Epstein. Deputy AG Todd Blanche has already said that the second half of the tranche—another two-and-a-half million pages—will never see the light of day.
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Don Moynihan: “Donald Trump Has Built a Clicktatorship” - The Atlantic
Getting silenced on X is, and I realize how absurd it sounds, the worst professional fate a Trump official can face. It signals that Bovino is no longer a player in an administration that has, from top to bottom, merged a social-media-first worldview with authoritarian tendencies. I like to call it the clicktatorship.
Political appointees in the clicktatorship are not just using online platforms as a mode of communication. Their judgment and decision making are hyper-responsive to what’s happening on the far-right internet. They view everything as content.
No one better exemplifies the clicktatorship than the president himself. Trump routinely makes policy announcements via social media. Consider when, in August, he attempted to fire the Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook on Truth Social. When a government lawyer was questioned by the Supreme Court on the lack of an appeals option for Cook, he suggested that Cook could simply have made her case on Truth Social. In the clicktatorship, due process is reduced to the right to post.
What I told the Brits…
Wednesday dogs
Our buddy Leo just turned 13! Naturally, he and his sister, Fern, had cake.
Charlie: "But really, no comment is necessary, except to note that the “kids” may be the future of the Republican Party."
Probably. It's also true that these "kids" are as mentally tough as a sneaker full of dog shit. These kids have no idea what will happen if the rule of law totally falls apart and someone comes **for them**. It's all fun and games until they have to dodge bullets and fend off six guys who want to beat the crap out of them. For now, the best thing to do is to find who is responsible for publishing that image and make them famous.
Why has there not been any media reporting and access to the Whipple building? ( besides the cameras rolling outside the building focusing on protesters) I have not seen a thing on this. There has only been the description of Rep Morrison. Obviously there is access. This has been an utter failure of Media that Steve Schmidt often describes. This also points to a failure of Democratic Senators as far as confronting this. There could have been a few high ranking Senators demanding access to Whipple with cameras rolling. They probably would have been denied, but it would provide publicity and messaging.