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2·2 days agoThat tracks with polls I’ve seen showing low approval rates for the media
Doughty’s sharp criticism of the Trump administration is particularly notable because he issued a series of major decisions in favor of Trump and his allies in recent years, most notably backing conservatives in legal challenges to the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in what it claimed was misinformation on social media platforms about vaccines and certain politically charged topics.
Indeed, some conservatives considered Doughty so likely to be in their camp that they filed lawsuits in his judicial division in order to have a strong chance the cases would be assigned to him.
Even as Doughty made clear that he was disturbed by the government’s actions, in his order Friday the judge seemed to tip his hat to the president, adopting the term “Gulf of America” for the body of water traditionally known as the Gulf of Mexico.
100% fucking coward energy
Born and raised in a rural area of it where redneck assholes bullied me for being a neurodiverse little weirdo, but my parents were super supportive and let me keep to myself (well, after their well meaning efforts to push me into a few extra curriculars went badly for everyone) and just spend hours and hours at my local library where I read every history and sci fi book I could get my hands on. The librarians noticed and recommended more books, showed me how to request things from big city libraries that had way better collections, and let me know that some libraries even carried cassettes, which let me get into punk and folk and alternative music that really opened my eyes to what the world could be outside of my small little town.
So, yeah, anytime I manage to say something cogent or insightful or funny or good in whatever way thank librarians authors musicians and parents who support and protect their kids (even when those kids embarrass them in front of the neighbors by, like, driving the station wagon into the hedges because I was distracted thinking about what a Joe Strummer character would do in the Star Wars expanded universe).
I don’t think it was a single presidential election that did this, the Republican party has been working towards this at least since they ran Goldwater on an anti-civil rights and anti-new deal platform in 1964. Democracy is a pain in the ass for bigots and oligarchs, so the Republican party united them in opposition against it and now their very long game is paying off. Nixon being pardoned for Watergate, Reagan getting zero blame for Iran Contra, the Supreme Court stealing the 2000 election, Bush lying about WMDs to start a bullshit war to win reelection, McConnell refusing to accept Obama’s judicial nominees - all of these attacks on anything that would hold them accountable for their theft of public resources and violence against marginalized people brought us to this point. Trump is just the worst symptom of a disease that’s been festering for decades.
The US federal government just abducted a member of the Wisconsin judiciary who was duly elected by their voters under the normal process that state has used for decades. If we didn’t have this whole Constitution thing binding us together (which, like, do we still have that thing?) everyone would call that an act of war.
Yeah, I mean among other things once ICE kidnapped this guy there was no way she was going to be able to finish holding a proper trial on the charges that actually brought him there, so she just took a series of fully legal steps (i.e. she’s allowed to access that private hallway and grant other people access to it) to protect the judicial process of her trial same as any judge should want to do.
I think in light of this development it’s now perfectly reasonable for judges to just instantly order the arrest of any ICE agents that show up to their court rooms on a charge of attempted justice obstruction. Put them in a jail cell and make them defend their actions and intentions before they do that to you, nothing less is going to be sufficient for protecting the orderly process of trials from ICE’s obstruction.
Yeah, my only takeaway from this is that we really should bring back dueling so Musk and Bezos could settle their dispute in a way that might actually make the world a slightly better place
If someone from the Trump administration says the sky is blue you should look outside to confirm
This is a pretty striking statement.
For starters the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency within the US Department of Transportation Duffy leads, has previously said it will take no part in determining whether people who fly on suborbital flights are astronauts. The agency makes this clear on its human spaceflight page, stating: “The FAA no longer designates anyone as an ‘astronaut.’ In addition, the FAA does not define where space begins.”
To step back just a little bit, the FAA created a commercial “Astronaut Wings” program back in 2004 to recognize the two pilots of SpaceShipOne, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie, who flew the vehicle above 50 statute miles (80 km). After that time, the program recognized private citizens who flew on Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft, Blue Origin’s New Shepard, and SpaceX’s orbital Crew Dragon vehicle. You flew, and you got astronaut wings.
Then, in December 2021, the agency stopped issuing wings. “With the advent of the commercial space tourism era, starting in 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration will now recognize individuals who reach space on its website instead of issuing Commercial Space Astronaut Wings,” the agency said. “Any individual who is on an FAA-licensed or permitted launch and reaches 50 statute miles above the surface of the Earth will be listed on the site.”
Sanchez, Perry, and the others are recognized on this site today.
Aww, poor baby justices had to stay up late working? Well, maybe if you didn’t issue a stupid as hell ruling that tried to have it both ways a week ago and then kicked everything into the 5th circuit you wouldn’t be working at midnight on a Saturday, but here we all are.
It’s one rock breaking loose when we need a landslide, but that’s how landslides always start
The courts at the time said he was formerly in a gang
I don’t think even that’s right, I think ICE claimed he was a member of MS-13 (based off of one bullshit statement from a cop whose not allowed to testify anymore for the state prosecutors because he got caught lying about so much other stuff (arc)), but I don’t think the immigration court ever really addressed that and just left it at “If you wanted asylum you should have asked within one year after getting into the country but you’ve been here 7 years, and that’s reason enough to rule against you”
Besides that, Garcia never said he was a member of a gang. He said his family was threatened by a completely different gang and that they were going to hurt him if he didn’t join them, but he left instead of joining them (arc).
Like, his only real connection to a gang is being a victim of it, but the Laken Riley Act supporting assholes of our world will never give a shit about brown people being victimized by criminal gangs because they’re racist hypocritical douchebags (and maybe they understand on some level they’ve got the same kind of symbiotic relationship with MS-13 that George W had with Al Quaeda and Netanyahu has with Hamas).
111·10 days agoSnopes says her methods are legit
Rubin says she is certified on a device known as a handheld XRF, or X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Such a machine is used extensively in a variety of scientific disciplines and can provide a basic assessment of the chemical composition of an object by exciting the object’s molecules with X-rays and seeing what secondary X-rays are emitted, according to Thermo Fisher:
XRF analyzers determine the chemistry of a sample by measuring the fluorescent (or secondary) X-ray emitted from a sample when it is excited by a primary X-ray source. Each of the elements present in a sample produces a set of characteristic fluorescent X-rays (“a fingerprint”) that is unique for that specific element, which is why XRF spectroscopy is an excellent technology for qualitative and quantitative analysis of material composition.
Experts agree that this method is a valid first approach for the detection of lead in a sample. A 2013 study performed by researchers at the California Department of Public Health Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch suggests that XRF “is an effective screening method for food and similar items with lead content > or = 10 ppm [parts per million], provided the operator is trained to identify lead spectra.”
We reached out to an expert via email: Howard Mielke, a professor of Pharmacology at Tulane’s School of Medicine, who heads a research unit into lead contamination and once served alongside Rubin as a board member for Lead Safe America. We asked him if XRF was a valid method for Rubin’s purposes, and he told us that it was, but only as a first step. The second and more expensive step involves seeing how much if any of that lead is capable of being transferred to a child: “The use of the XRF is suitable as a first step in determining lead in an object. The second step involves evaluating whether or not the lead is readily picked up on hands or ingestible through the use of the object. The second step is the expensive step but it provides information critical to understanding the possibility of lead poisoning from the object.”
Note that the story here says the toothpastes have lead in them, not that they’re necessarily causing lead poisoning, so it seems entirely accurate.
Shame on the Guardian
They’re not the only ones reporting this,
https://fortune.com/well/article/toothpaste-brands-toxic-metals-lead-arsenic-mercury-cadmium/
611·10 days agoVan Hollen shouldn’t have publicized those pictures at all, everything from the setting to the clothes they gave Garcia was a misrepresentation of what he’s going through
8·10 days agoIf they spend weeks convincing you that you should do it, give you money or other resources to do it, or so on, then it can be entrapment.
Things like that should theoretically help you make an argument for entrapment, but it’s no sure thing
Ok, so Republicans tried to defeat her but Alaska’s election system stopped them. Seems like she’s in a uniquely secure position to be doing more.
The problem is these are Republicans were dealing with. Unless somebody on this site has a few million dollars to throw at them there’s nothing tangible we can offer them personally, and we wouldn’t have gotten here in the first place if they had any basic sense of right and wrong we could appeal to.
However, the good news is that we can honestly point out the very simple situation they’re obviously in, and if enough of us do that often enough reality might finally break through to them. The situation is that Donald Trump has a list of people he wants to hurt and they’re all definitely on it because they could threaten his power. Being nice to him might move their name down the list but it won’t get them off of it. The only way they can protect themselves is by taking Donald Trump’s power from him before he gets to them.
We don’t need Republicans to be good people to deal with this situation (which is good because they absolutely are not and haven’t been for decades and decades), we just need them to be slightly less stupid than they’re currently being.
Didn’t they already try to do that with Murkowski and she won as a write in?
Is the rest of the Salvadorian society ok with this?
If they make too much trouble for Bukele he will just throw them in there too
Many arrests appear to be based on the appearance or social background of detainees or on anonymous calls, and Salvadoran and international human rights groups have documented detentions of hundreds of people with no connections to gangs. Detainees include union and community leaders as well as environmental human rights defenders.
I know the guy is incredibly popular there,
Imprisoning or killing people who disagree with you will make it appear that way
I bet it would show up very quickly because they’ll realize the same thing could happen to anyone of them whenever Trump wants to do it and that they need to take him out before he takes them out
Trump could throw a thousand immigrants into a woodchipper right in front of Congress and it would just be furrowed brows all around, but if a hair on a lawmakers’ head ever gets touched by an official action I think they’d impeach him
If I had a nickel for every poll that came out on April 25 2025 showing this same basic pattern I’d have three nickels, which isn’t a lot but it is weird that we have a fascist president
https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/abc-news-washington-post-ipsos-april-2025 (arc)
https://apnorc.org/projects/immigration-remains-one-of-trumps-strongest-issues/ (arc)