Federalization, National Guard, Bullshit Roundup

Posted on by documentingdescent

Gonna do a roundup, since a fair amount of time has passed, and it’s important to catalog this stuff, but it’s so widely reported there will be no chance of it getting memory holed – maybe spun, but not forgotten all together.

Following Trump’s resounding successes in deploying the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles (spot my sarcasm, please), he opted to federalize Washington DC and deploy the National Guard there. So for the past week and change, the National Guard and ICE have been marching all over DC. ICE has asking people for identification and proof of citizenship, harassing folks at Metro stations, and in at least one case, arresting someone for filming them. The NG just got deputized to enforce some law, and are now authorized to be armed starting today.

By all accounts, the people of DC are not terribly enthusiastic about this bullshit.

While technically legal, due to how the NG works, this is still functionally the deployment of a branch of the military into a US city for the express purpose of creating security theater, frightening the populace, and causing a goddamn ruckus for the president’s ego.

What’s more, he’s on the verge of activating and deploying the NG to 19 other states, as well as threatening Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco with deployment as well. All in the name of a nonexistent crime wave; San Francisco had 35 murders in 2024, whereas Memphis had 294. In their first 10 days in DC, they bragged they’d made 400 arrests. This is pretty much exactly in line with arrest rates prior to them showing up at all.

Make no mistake, they are laying the groundwork to enact a military takeover of places that resist Trump. Hilariously, he’s not sending anybody back to LA, probably because we showed how little shits we gave about their authority.

Silver lining: the federal budget for the National Guard deployments may be empty by the end of September, at this rate.

The FBI also raided John Bolton’s house a day after he spoke out against Trump. The charge? Retaining classified documents. You can’t make this shit up, I swear. Like the saying goes, every accusation is an admission. This kind of lawless retribution is exactly what he promised he’d do – an administration based on revenge and retribution. John Bolton is a piece of shit of the highest order, but this is also the act of a tyrant king.

The whole Texas redistricting thing is ongoing. Texas has decided to have a mid-decade redistricting to give Republicans five more seats in the House, despite there being no provision to do so. So California’s opted to do the same and put it on the ballot. Predictably, Republicans are losing their minds about Democrats not playing by the rules and cheating, etc.

Fuck your rules. You don’t play by them. Why should anyone else?

The Supreme Court is set to rule on if ICE can detain and arrest people based on their appearance alone – specifically ‘apparent ethnicity’. I do not have high hopes for this court making any sane decisions, to be honest. But there’s a tiny sliver that thinks they won’t go, “Yeah, being brown is legally grounds for suspicion.”

ICE has also been busy locally – opening fire on a family in their car when the family refused to submit to masked thugs who refused to produce a badge, and just started barking orders. They drove off, and the ICE goons opened up. ICE got the LAPD to go to the family’s home with the charge of ‘attempted murder’ (running over the ICE goons) except… the bodycam footage showed they didn’t try to run anyone over. And LAPD didn’t do shit.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia got picked up by ICE again, despite winning every court case. Now they wanna ship him to Uganda. They tried to get him to plead guilty to some bullshit crimes with the promise they’d ONLY deport him to Costa Rica. So now they wanna put him in Uganda, despite all the shit Judge Xinis said they couldn’t do. Obviously, Abrego Garcia’s main crime has been embarassing the administration. So they’re gonna get him.

Whenever this is over, if any of these ICE goons – especially the people in charge – are still around (assuming it ends within this generation), there will need to be a reckoning.

This is a disease for whom the cure is bullets in the head. I am done pretending otherwise. Trials, with evidence, everything in the open, and for those guilty: death by firing squad.

Reality TV Policing and Operation Excalibur

Posted on by documentingdescent

Time for some local news – highly local, in my case. I’m around MacArthur Park here in Los Angeles every week, due to my day job. I would say that I am somewhere between “highly familiar” and “I know the names of the street vendors” level familiar with that neighborhood, seeing as how outside of COVID I’ve been there several times a week for 6 years now, due to said job.

Some things to preface this:

  • Is MacArthur Park/Westlake a crime-ridden shithole?
    • Yes, it certainly is. But it’s also home to many low income people, where my dentist is, home to Langer’s Deli (best pastrami sandwich in the U.S.A., I don’t care what Katz’s says), a place for kids to play in the park, and full of vibrant local businesses.
    • Yes, that is a conundrum, and it sucks, but it’s been that way for decades. Since the 1980s, at least, if not earlier.
  • Are there a lot of undocumented immigrants in the Westlake neighborhood?
    • Yeah, no doubt about it there are.
  • Isn’t it dangerous?
    • Sure, at like, midnight. I’d say it’s more ‘sketchy’ than dangerous, but that’s because junkies generally don’t wanna start shit with random people. The crazier ones might, but on the whole they’re all nodding off on fentanyl.
    • During the day, there are the aforementioned kids playing in the park, people fishing in the lake, schoolkids walking to/from school – usually they’re students at either Young Oak Kim Academy in Ktown, or Charles White Elementary. People like me – white collar sorts. Gardeners for Parks and Rec. People filming things.
      • Famous things filmed in the area: Drive, Hollywood (miniseries), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, all kinds of ads and small indie films.
  • Can you get fake IDs at MacArthur Park?
    • Yeah, probably. Used to be easier until a few months ago, when Mayor Karen Bass put up these shitty fences to chase the vendors off the street. I’m all for opening up the street from vendors, but the fences take up the same amount of space, so the streets still suck.
    • They also chased my favorite pupusa lady away, too, which sucks.

Anyway. You get the picture. I’m not blind to how shit the area is, but I’m also not gonna tell you it’s a warzone either. I’ve gotten blood on my shoes from an assault and murder that happened by the train station in the past year. I’ve also seen a mom walking her three kids to school there. Like the rest of Los Angeles, it’s a place with problems but it’s people’s homes and businesses too.

So today, ICE and CPB staged a ”show of force’ in MacArthur Park, aided by the California National Guard. The video below isn’t mine, but is spliced together from people on the ground, news choppers, and scrounged video. Hat tip to the r/LosAngeles redditor that put it together.

As you can see, it was pretty much a shitshow. First off, this isn’t gonna get anybody detained by ICE. It’s 100% for cameras and publicity. There was also that asshat with a Gadsden flag and an American flag walking it out to one of the horseback enforcers. How monumentally unaware do you have to be to show up like it’s world war 3 out there in tac gear and with armored trucks and wave the “don’t tread on me” flag? Who’s treading on you, Hauptmann Fritz? Are the oppressors in the room with us right now?

Some people have reported 30-40 people detained and hauled off, but most people on the ground – including my co-workers – say they didn’t see anybody carted off. What’s more, that’s supported by the video footage I’ve seen. MAYBE one or two, but that’s it.

They ostensibly did this to shut down fake ID sales and human trafficking:

“MacArthur park functions as the largest open-air market of fake identification to enable illegal immigration and human trafficking in the Southwest United States. Entire sections of the 35 square acre park host open buying and selling of fake identification and other illegal goods in broad daylight. Federal agents confirmed that these activities continued at MacArthur park within the last week.”

I say again: are the fake IDs in the room with us right now? I walk through here – walk, not drive – multiple times per week. And I assure you, anybody hawking fake IDs is doing so behind closed doors. I know because I have looked due to the rep the neighborhood has. Illegal goods, yeah, that I can point out multiple instances of. Fake IDs? Good fucking luck without a warrant to enter backrooms of the shops.

All they accomplished as chasing kids out of the park and off the soccer field, failing utterly to detain ANYBODY, and terrorized a neighborhood. Which, as it turns out, was exactly the point to begin with.

Ken Klipperstein managed to get ahold of the National Guard briefing documents about this event. Apparently it was called “Operation Excalibur”.

What a bunch of fucking dorks. And I say that as a guy who’s spent his whole life playing tabletop roleplaying games, video games, watching anime and star trek, and all that jazz.

Somebody on Reddit had the best take on this, after reading the Operation Excalibur shit:

This shit is so embarassing dawg. They assigned a threat level of “high” for MacArthur Park at 11am on a Monday.
“Criminal elements, likely including FTO [foreign terrorist organization] MS-13 consider the park their home ‘turf’ and could escalate to lethal violence,” a threat assessment warned.
The people running our government are fucking delusional. Genuinely no longer in contact with objective reality.

The whole thing was all about showing Los Angeles that ICE/CBP can and will go wherever they want, and locals can’t stop them, so… BOHICA, as they’d say in the Navy. Gregory Bovino of CBP commented: “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”

There is something bleakly funny about that, however: right after Bass got off the phone with them, they packed up and left, tails between their legs. And, according to Klipperstein’s sources and doc I linked above, the National Guard was only on-site for 24 minutes. Based on video footage, CBP was barely on site ten minutes longer than that. So they showed up, walked through a park, flexed, and ran away.

Pack of punk ass cowards.

If you don’t know Ken Klipperstein, he’s a real life journalist who does real life journalism, rather than just regurgitating press releases he’s been handed. He’s also got a sense of humor and pranks people like Dinesh D’Souza, so he’s good in my book.

Denaturalization and You!

Posted on by documentingdescent

It would appear the Trump DOJ is gonna go full steam ahead with attempting to denaturalize citizens based not just on having lied on their N-400 application, but now for having politics the Trump admin finds objectionable.

You know. Just like I and many other said they would.

Sure, the memo from Brett Shumate lists the expected (and currently legal) culprits, such as engaging in terrorism against the United States, lying about criminal records on your N-400, et cetera. But the last item on Shumate’s list is “posing a potential danger to national security” – and, as we’ve seen with the political activists jailed by the admin, merely saying something that disagrees with their policies has been ground to be filed as a danger to national security.

I don’t know if this kind of bullshit will survive the courts – despite the doom from certain friends of mine, losses in court have slowed or stopped Trump admin bullshit over the past six months. But regardless, they’re gonna try to push the narrative that they not only have the right but duty to kick people off the citizenship rolls for disagreement.

The Republican megabill that expands ICE’s budget from around 10 billion (all inclusive) to around 100 billion is now in the House for reconciliation with the Senate version. My hopes are not high that anything truly heinous will be removed, but hey, maybe I’ll get surprised.

It’s so fucking tiring to wake up every day and look at the news and ask, “How have the people in power decided to willfully make all of our lives worse today?”

Birthright Citizenship and the Supreme Court

Posted on by documentingdescent

In keeping with their usual standard of dickery, the Supreme Court made a very bizzaro 6-3 ruling today regarding Trump’s EO over birthright citizenship.

They didn’t rule on if it was constitutional or not, but they ruled lower courts can’t stop EOs from being enforced. They specifically stated that universal injunctions pending court decisions exceed the authority granted them in the constitution. So universal injunctions are out. What this means is that in 28 states, people now born in them to non-citizens do not get birthright citizenship, but identical circumstances in the other states mean they are citizens.

This is gonna cause some seriously tangled shit in courts. It’s a cowardly move made by fascist, coward supreme court justices. Ones who do not give a single shit about the kind of mess they’re causing.

Make no mistake: that EO is a lawless order. The Supreme Court didn’t even have the balls to go full fascist, probably because Roberts wants to protect “his legacy”. So instead they just ruled nobody but them can block lawless orders like this. So effectively, it’s legal, because nobody’s allowed to stop it.

I don’t have any linked articles on this, but Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for NYC’s mayoral election, and the right wingers and oligarchs are absolutely losing their shit over him. Demanding Trump de-naturalize him for lying on his permanent residency form, because obviously he wants to topple the United States, rather than just, y’know, improve New York.

This is especially funny because it implies he was some kind of radical when he filled out his permanent residency forms. You know. When he was seven fucking years old.

Mid June Roundup

Posted on by documentingdescent

At long last, my tremendous overtime has ended. For reference, I was working 70-75 hour weeks for a while there. Not the most fun. In the meantime, a lot of other not the most fun things have been happening, as well. So I’ll try and do a roundup of everything I recall over the past while.

First off, Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been returned to the United States! After hemming and hawing and saying it couldn’t be done, and it was beyond the powers of the President, and Bukele snickering up his sleeve that we were all whiners… he’s been returned to the United States.

Of course, now the DoJ is prosecuting him for human trafficking, because we can’t have a guy embarrass us without trying to ruin his life a second time. I don’t believe these charges for a second, because of who’s issued them and the timing surrounding them… But even if he is guilty, the man was and is entitled to due process.

Plenty of other political targets remain in limbo, like Mahmoud Khalil. And DHS continues to play stupid three card monte with the people it’s nabbing in these cases, shuffling them off to other states and claiming “Oh, your injunction is invalid because you filed it 30 minutes after they left the state and no we’re not telling you where we took them”, ad nauseam. Same shit they pulled with Rümeysa Öztürk.

Edit: My comment on Mahmoud Khalil is now incorrect. As of 30 minutes ago – about 6 hours after I initially posted this – they freed Khalil.

When asked if he would obey an order to deploy the army and fire on protestors, Pete Hegseth laughed at the Senator asking him the question. Piece of shit. He also said he wouldn’t obey any court order that didn’t come from the Supreme Court. Presumably this is because he knows the federal government will appeal any injunction against him, but even so… sorry, guy, it doesn’t work that way. Sure, he may factually be able to get away with it, but hopefully people will remember it when it comes time to nail his scrotum to a board, if we ever get to that point.

The big big news of late, at least for me: protests in Los Angeles. And yes, hundreds of other cities, thousands if you count towns. The No Kings day protests.

The lead up to the Saturday was spicy – lots of gatherings at Pershing Square, and lots of cops. Including riot suppression squads literally outside my front door, since I live downtown. In typical LAPD fashion, overreaction to show the plebians who’s boss. But the day itself?

I’ve been to a lot of protests over the years, and this was easily one of the most peaceful I’ve ever seen. No shouting of angry statements, no bullhorns, no demands. Just a peaceful set of marches. Hell, we even had groups of people playing music while marching – like a couple of trumpets, two saxaphones, some drums, etc. It was a very party atmosphere. Same all over Los Angeles – Santa Monica, Long Beach, Culver City, Hollywood. Everything went well. There were Mexican dancers on City Hall’s steps, stuff like that.

Up until the LAPD and LASD decided to play cowboy and break up two groups of protestors because they just couldn’t leave well enough alone. It turned into an absolute shitshow that escalated very rapidly. Why it escalated is indicative of the quality policing we have come to expect here in the City of Angels. Reporter Chad Loder – and confirmed by me independently via police scanner recordings – the LAPD were going to start breaking up the protest. So they fired tear gas. Well, the LASD hadn’t masked up against gas, so they opened fire on the LAPD with less-lethal rounds. Who then predictably fired back. And then everything turned against the civilians.

I can verify this escalating quickly from absolutely zero violence on the part of protestors, because I drove through it right when shit kicked off. No shit. I was on my way back from El Super in Boyle Heights, but had to take surface streets because the cops still hadn’t opened up the freeway on and off ramps, and ran smack dab into the middle of shit right as it went sideways, on Temple Street.

Kind of a pucker moment. All I wanted to do was get home with my groceries.

Other than that, though, and the overreaction by LAPD earlier in the week, there were no riots. Nothing burning down. Anyone who tells you Los Angeles had to have the Nation Guard brought in or it’d have burned down is lying to you. Full stop. Lying. The only people escalating shit to the level of a riot were the LAPD, and they only did it twice, in very limited circumstances.

We still have ICE or ICE bounty hunters (verdict is out on which we’re dealing with at any given time) masked up and refusing to identify, snatching people off the streets. Including citizens. Including arresting city officials in New York for assaulting them. Of course, he was released later that day because video clearly shows him NOT assaulting them, and audio includes them colluding to arrest him just because. So shit isn’t all good out there. It’s still totally fucked. But at least the people of Los Angeles can get together to say “Hell no!” without turning it into a shitshow by themselves.

And, as far as I can tell, the National Guard and Marines that Trump’s deployed to the city are essentially sitting on their asses with no real orders other than to defend federal buildings.

And now they’re talking about maybe dropping a nuke on Iran.

Fucking wonderful.

Overdue and Overtime

Posted on by documentingdescent
I’m overdue for an update, I know, but I’ve been working a lot of overtime. Too busy to keep up with the bullshit, and a lot of it is continuations of stuff I’ve already been talking about like Mahmoud Khalil, or Abrego-Garcia, or stuff like that.

I’m still here, though!

You Say You Want a Constitution, Well, You Know…

Posted on by documentingdescent

All apologies to the Beatles.

It’s been two weeks since “liberation day”. I can’t talk about the tariffs, the stock market, the strength of the dollar as a reserve currency, or anything like that. Anything I say will become obsolete a day later. Sometimes even later in the same day. There is no predictability to be had, if you’re trying to ascertain the state of the United States economy. Or how anything is being decided. It’s incompetence and vibes, all the way down.

So instead, let’s take a look at the state of our constitutional crisis. It’s here!

On the subject of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, Judge Paula Xinis told the DOJ on no uncertain terms they had to facilitate his return to the United States, and out of CECOT in El Salvador. The DOJ kicked it up to the Supreme Court, who decided 9-0 that the Trump Administration did have to do so. The DOJ’s response this week has been: “No, we don’t care what you say.” Their argument is that the SCOTUS decision is unconstitutional because nobody can compel the White House to engage or not engage in any kind of diplomacy. This comes after all kinds of spurious bullshit like, “We can’t possibly put any pressure on any country, especially a Latin American one, because of our long and rich history in not intervening in the affairs of other nations.”

Sure, buddy.

The DOJ’s incompetence has been on display front and center as well – while this rebuttal was due last week, they’ve had some problems. Filings made by people not part of the case, incorrect filing procedures, the presumption that SCOTUS would side with them delaying their reply, etc. Abrego-Garcia’s own lawyer suggests that maybe some people need to be held in contempt and arrested for them to start listening. I am inclined to agree – until there’s some kind of consequence for flipping the courts the bird, there’s no reason to assume they’ll change their ways. In fact, one of the court filings from yesterday indicated as much: it advised judges not to assume good faith in DOJ court filings, including an admonition not to believe them without external proof. I cannot stress how insane it is to tell the courts: “Hey, the Department of Justice is probably just always gonna be full of shit for the foreseeable future.”

So where does this leave Abrego-Garcia? Well, courts can deputize their own marshals to enforce the law, if the DOJ refuses to adhere to commands. Obviously, this hasn’t happened a whole lot in the history of the United States, but it’s something they can do. I’m not sure if they will, however.

Senator Chris Van Hollen has announced he’s going to go to El Salvador to try and secure Abrego-Garcia’s release, and he’ll be joined by several other lawmakers. I suppose it’s something, but I’d like to see some DOJ, ICE, and DHS people thrown in jail for being a bunch of smug assholes ignoring the courts.

I don’t think it’ll have much of an effect, since President Trump met with President Bukele yesterday and flat out both said Abrego-Garcia isn’t coming home. What’s more, Trump told Bukele to build five more CECOT type installations so that the United States can start shipping out “homegrown” folks.

You know, citizens.

Get Ready for Citizen Deportations

Posted on by documentingdescent

What did I tell you? Didn’t I say the Trump admin wouldn’t stop at visa holders or green card holders? That they’d come for citizens of the United States of America? I did, in fact, say just that, talking about Mahmoud Khalil.

Trump talked wanting to deport citizens just today. He said he’d love to send citizens to El Salvador if it was legal, and Bukele would love to accept them. He even said the following:

“I don’t know what the law says on that, but I can’t imagine the law would say anything different. If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I’m all for it, but I would only do according to the law.”

Note this phrasing: he’s already priming his goons to believe that the law would be okay with this, by saying he ‘can’t imagine’ the law saying anything different. Of course he would only follow the law, but we’ve all seen exactly how much he respects the law – not just as a president, but as a human being.

Sure, buddy.

Karoline Leavitt also decided to chime in on how totally normal it would be to deport citizens to El Salvador, and that it would only be used on “the worst people”. Sure, lady. I absolutely believe this line of bullshit as much as every other line of bullshit you’ve spouted in your position. May you be hounded for the rest of your days by wrathful people with hate in their heart. I don’t generally like embedding social media into posts, but WordPress doesn’t seem to like embedded MP4s.

Karoline Leavitt confirms the Trump Administration wants to deport AMERICAN CITIZENS to El Salvador.

[image or embed]

— David Leavitt 🔜 #PaxEast (@davidleavitt.bsky.social) April 8, 2025 at 11:56 AM

Let’s be clear here on two issues.

One, it is not deportation when someone is moved to a country they are not a citizen of. It is kidnapping or rendition. Deportation explicitly means moving people to their country of origin or a country they have citizenship in, if they have multiple citizenships.

Two, United States law expressly forbids removing citizens of the USA to other countries. Citizens cannot be denied entry into the United States or removed from it against their will. Naturally, Trump does not give two shits about this, but it bears mentioning.

I guess we’ll see how far down the madness hole people are willing to let this admin go.

Liberation Day

Posted on by documentingdescent

So today is Liberation Day, as Trump calls it. The Terrible Day of the Tariff. No PDF links to articles about this because it’s happening in real time and most publications are either just announcing the tariffs or they’re doing minute by minute updates I won’t keep up with because when do I stop and post this? I’ll have to add some stuff later if it’s pertinent.

Trump’s tariffed the fuck out of pretty much everybody in the most idiotic way possible: he’s looked at the percentage trade deficit with any given nation, halved that percentage, and announced that’s a new tariff. For countries like Canada, China, Mexico, this is on top of other tariffs already levied.

This is not an intelligent way to add tariffs. Not that they’re too smart to begin with. For instance, he tariffed the Indian Ocean and Associated Territories (or whatever it’s called). The only thing there that’s inhabited and has contact with the outside world (the Andaman Island natives, for instance, do not have contact) is Diego Garcia Island. Home to a joint US/UK military base.

We tariffed our own fucking military base, because Trump and his cabinet are fundamentally unserious people.

It is hard to overstate how much this is gonna fuck the average consumer in the USA. Certain businesses – board games, for instance – may be rendered entirely unable to make a profit for the forseeable future, for instance; one designer estimated their board game would have to sell for $225 to make the same profit as before, due to being printed in China.

The Senate Democrats managed to convince four republicans – Collins, Murkowski, Paul, and McConnell – to break with their party and vote to repeal Trump’s emergency powers to levy tariffs. It’ll still need to be voted on in the House, so good luck there. Democrats are going to try to force a vote, but if they can’t, we likely won’t see an end to this bullshit before 2026.

Why? Well, on March 17 or 18, the House Republicans decided to have a vote to say a “calendar day” is not a real day that passes for purposes of expiring Trump’s “national emergencies” that grant him tariff power. They did this explicitly, by their own admission, to prevent such a vote.

Good job, jackasses.

In better news, Musk failed to get Schimel elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, despite his $20 million in donations to sway voting. Good job, Wisconsin!