Saturday, May 03, 2025

Pam Bondi doesn't understand what an Attorney General does

Poor Pam Bondi.  She's so deeply stupid and such a joke.   If I'm not hearing rumors that she's into playing a sex slave in pubic at s&m clubs where her boyfriend leads her around on a leash, I'm having to deal with her very public stupidity. Joshua Wilburn (OK) reports:


Attorney General Pam Bondi was mocked on social media after she spoke at a White House Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, April 30, claiming that President Donald Trump had single-handedly saved "258 million lives."

This statement left many astounded and raised eyebrows regarding both its validity and mathematical possibility.

[. . .]

Several critics flooded social media with post mocking the numbers provided by Bondi and ridiculed the cabinet meeting for being "nothing more then a pat on the back for Trump dooming the country."

One user on X, formerly known as Twitter shared the attorney general's comments and wrote: "What a national disgrace. At this point, they’re not holding a cabinet meeting — it’s a fantasy convention with better lighting."

[. . .]

The U.S. Census reports the population was approximately 331 million as of 2020, and estimates that there will be 340 million projected for 2024.

Saving "258 million lives" translates to a staggering 75.86 percent of the population — a figure that simply doesn’t add up. Bondi didn’t detail how she arrived at that number, but it certainly raised eyebrows.


How bad is it?  Ailia Zehra notes the reactions to Pam Bondi's stupidity:


The Guardian reported Friday that some experts are even describing the DOJ under Bondi as Trump’s “personal law firm”.

Former prosecutor Ty Cobb told the Guardian, “Never in history has DOJ broken so defiantly from respecting, as it’s obligated to do, the decisions of federal courts." Cobb was a counsel in the White House during Trump’s first term.

“This is a war that Trump and Bondi are waging against the rule of law," he said.

Former prosecutors say Bondi and the department’s leading attorneys have halted certain high-profile prosecutions and dismissed or pushed out lawyers who failed to align with Make America Great Again (MAGA) principles. Some were reportedly directed by Trump to probe a significant Democratic fundraising organization.

Another ex-federal prosecutor, Daniel Richman, said: “Outside the immigration area, most of what Bondi has actually done so far, however, has been negative – like dropping the case against Mayor Adams and cases against FCPA defendants and firing prosecutors”.


She doesn't want to work for the American people.  She wants to wear her rumored collar in the White House and hand the leash to Chump. 

"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, May 2, 2025.  Chump Land just got crazier and who thought that was possible?  He's now attacking PBS and NPR, his lies are lies on top of lies -- including that eggs are now costing only 63 cents or so a dozen, all that and so much more including a new Signal screw up.

Let's start with Lawrence O'Donnell from his MSNBC program last night.



That makes sense.  The above makes sense.  Lawrence sticks with facts and logic but now we have to walk through Chump Land and, heads up, nothing's going to make much sense.


Yesterday, JD Wolf (MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK) reported, "According to the White House daily schedule and press guidance issued to the press pool, Trump appears to be once again cutting his work week short, departing Washington on Thursday evening, setting up a long weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago club. After commencement remarks at the University of Alabama Thursday night, Trump will land in Palm Beach just before 11:15 PM—marking yet another early departure from the capital as major domestic and international issues demand attention."

Okay, I'm already confused.

He's tanked the economy.  This week he began blaming his actions on Joe Biden.  Blaming his actions on Joe Biden.  Remember?  Yesterday, Paul Wiseman and Christopher Rugaber (AP)  reported:


When the stock market was climbing in January 2024, Donald Trump knew exactly who deserved credit: He did.

Nearly a year before his return to the White House, he declared on his Truth Social platform that investors were celebrating his lead in the polls against President Joe Biden.

When the stock market fell Wednesday on news that the American economy had gone backward during the first three months of 2025, Trump knew exactly who to blame: Biden.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,’’ he posted, adding that Biden “left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!’’

Trump also said, “Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden 'Overhang.' This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS.”

Yet for economists puzzling out how prices and hiring will change in the coming months, or businesses struggling with a starkly uncertain future, Trump's massive and unpredictable import taxes on almost every country do in fact bear much of the blame. Rarely have a new president's policies had such a sharp, immediate impact on the economy.


Katherine Doyle (NBC NEWS) adds, "President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office have been the worst for the stock market since Richard Nixon's administration, with significant drops following his tariff announcements." Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling (THE NEW REPUBLIC) sums it up this way, "Donald Trump has happily taken credit for the stock market’s success in the past but suddenly can’t explain the market’s current second-quarter downturn, weeks after his roller-coaster tariff proposals rattled the economy."

The economy is in shambles because of him.  His actions did this.  And instead of sitting his fat ass down and doing the job he lied his way into, the job he had his boytoy Alien Musk buy him into, Dumpy Chump is oozing his way back to the golf course.   As Ruth noted earlier this week in "The Convicted Felon spent a quarter of his time golfing," he's already spent 24 out of his first 100 days golfing. 

He's golfing again.  He's fled the White House again.  Sticking taxpayers with the bill again.  Not to mention destroying the environment.  People are talking rightly about the costs of Trump going 'home' to Florida each weekend because he's not paying that bill, we are.  But let's talk about that decision to fly to and from Florida each week and how it stands with all Chump's other actions and executive orders to destroy the planet. 

And I get it, I do.  He needs to flee to Florida because he's not as stupid as we all think he is -- no one can be that stupid.  He's not.  He grasps that he's not liked in DC.  He's the president.  And he's not liked in DC.  There are no good parties at the White House.  No one's dropping by for a fashionable dinner party.  Chum's fat and ugly with a mind that never developed.  No one wants to have fun with him.  Only whores wanting transactional deals are going to show up at the White House.

Joe Biden had a legion of friends in DC.  He worked there his whole life.  Barack Obama was a true celebrity, people wanted to be around him and wanted to attend state dinners and White House functions.

But no one wants to see Chump unless they can get something from him.

And Chump recognizes that.  He grasps it.  It's been the story of his whole life.  He had no friends in school.  He was nursing his abuse from childhood and hoping someone would be his friend.  But no one wanted to.  And it's still true today.  In all of DC, Chump has no real friend.  

And it hurts so that's why he has to flee to Florida every weekend.  That way he's the one leaving and not the one being left alone. The 78 year old oddity flees to Florida and whimpers that he doesn't  care that he's all alone and nobody likes him.  

Alien Musk told a story this week about the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House and ice cream.  The night would be getting late and Chump would turn to Musk with pleading eyes and ask in a whimper if Alien would stay overnight, he could stay in the Lincoln Bedroom!  And he could have ice cream late at night!  

Even with the supreme suck up Alien Musk, Chump knew he had to bribe him in order to have a kid over for the night because without the bribes no one is coming to visit. 


So off he's gone to Florida again this week.  Because the answer for him is not hunker down and do some work.  No, his answer is to again flee the White House -- sticking taxpayers with another huge bill for  his travel -- and play golf.

But don't worry, he has a plan.

To fix things?

Oh, hell no.  He is the personification of The Politics of Destruction.

His plan is to lie.  That's all he's done his whole life.  He destroys something and then he lies.

And he's already prepared his next lie about the economy.  

Kevin Breuninger (CNBC) spotted that, "President Donald Trump on Wednesday blamed former President Joe Biden for the U.S. economy contracting in the first quarter of 2025 — and suggested he will blame Biden again for the second quarter’s results."

That's his plan.  Destroy the economy and blame Joe and run off to Florida because the next quarter report he can blame on Joe as well.

And he can.

He can do that.

No one's going to believe him but he can lie again.

Most people didn't believe him this week when he tried the lie of blaming it on Joe.  



Now this would have made perfect sense had Trump taken office with anything like a normal transition and Day One agenda. He could have eased into another Trump era as the president-elect most swing voters seemed to have wanted: one who would restore the smoothly operating economy and immigration-enforcement procedures the Biden administration had screwed up. That might have extended the public-opinion honeymoon every new president enjoys, giving his appointees and the new Republican trifecta in Congress plenty of runway to carefully plan their first exercises of power, and ensuring that any turbulence could be attributed to the lingering effects of the previous regime’s mis-government. It was really a no-brainer.
But as we now know, that’s not how Trump 2.0 began. The normally placid-if-busy transition period was full of trumpet blasts from Mar-a-Lago indicating incessantly that there was a new sheriff in town, with most Cabinet-level appointees being chosen precisely for their hostility to the status quo mission of the agencies they would run. The wildly disruptive DOGE initiative, almost scientifically engineered to signal that the Biden administration was long gone, began blowing things up the moment Trump took office, taking speed and radicalism as its governing motifs. And the 47th president himself, of course, insisted on an absolute blizzard of executive actions the minute he was inaugurated, most proclaiming a new era in which past inhibitions on presidential power would be instantly and contemptuously put aside. Throughout the Trump administration, official utterances took on a strange new tone of ideological fervor and Orwellian inversions of every conventional wisdom; one of my colleagues observed that “every memorandum or press release sounds like it was composed by Stephen Miller.” Norm-breaking became the norm everywhere you looked.
Rarely if ever, and certainly not since FDR, has a new administration taken office more determined to own the country, its policies, and its overall direction. That was clearly a deliberate choice. It’s fair to speculate as to why that choice was made. Perhaps they wanted the multiplier effect of shock and awe to demoralize federal employees and the new team’s perceived enemies. Plausibly they wanted to get as much done as possible before judicial orders and midterm elections undermined their power. There was also something almost pornographic in Team Trump’s desire to thrill the MAGA base by nihilistically breaking as many things, and hurting as many people, as possible, all at warp speed.
But any way you look at it, the decision to make the first 100 days of Trump 2.0 an extension of his megalomanic personality isn’t compatible with blaming the previous long-gone administration of Joe Biden for anything happening right now. It will become even more ludicrous as mishaps clearly attributable to Trump’s radical change of direction occur down the road. That’s particularly true in economic policy where the “soft landing” of inflation-free growth was within reach and perhaps in hand when the 47th president took office — a placid and benevolent condition of things that Trump blew up as quickly and violently as he could with a trade war nobody but him seemed to want.


Liar.  That's all he is and the thing about a liar is that people stop believing you because you can't stop lying.  Let's go to Ben and MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK for some logic and sanity.



This week, I filled in for Kat at her site with "Due Process matters (C.I. filling in for Kat)."  In there, I noted Chump's lying in the interview ABC NEWS' Terry Moran did with him.  

Here's the exchange where he just can't stop lying:


MORAN: I’m not saying he’s a good guy. It’s about the rule of law. The order from the Supreme Court stands, Sir.

TRUMP: He came into our country illegally.

MORAN. You could get him back. [pointing to Resolute Desk] There’s a phone on this desk.

TRUMP: I could.

MORAN: You could pick it up, and with all the power of the presidency, you could call up the president of El Salvador and say, “Send him back right now.”

TRUMP: And if he were the gentleman you say he is, I would do that.

MORAN: But the court has ordered you to facilitate that– his release.

TRUMP: I’m not the one making this decision. We have lawyers–

MORAN: You’re the president!

TRUMP: –that don’t wanna do this.

MORAN: But the buck stops in this office.

TRUMP: No, no, no, no, no. I follow the law. You want me to follow the law. If I were the president that just wanted to do anything, I’d probably keep him where he is.

MORAN: The Supreme Court says what the law is.

TRUMP: Listen, I was elected to take care of a problem that was– it was a unforced error that was made by a very incompetent man, a man that turned out to be incompetent that you always said was wonderful. A great genius, right? And now you find out, all of the media, they’re saying what a mistake they made.






It’s not often that an interview perfectly encapsulates a politician’s relationship with reality, but Donald Trump’s recent sit-down with ABC News’s Terry Moran gives us exactly that—a window into Trump’s expectation that the press should simply bend to his version of events, regardless of whether they’re true.
During the interview, Trump repeatedly insisted that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador despite a protective order, had “MS-13” tattooed on his knuckles. When Moran correctly pointed out this wasn’t true, Trump became increasingly agitated.

“On his knuckles -- he had MS-13,” Trump insisted.

“He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way,” Moran responded accurately.

Trump doubled down: “It says M-S-one-three.”

When Moran explained that the letters “MS-13” were digitally added to the images Trump was referencing, the former president lost his cool. In perhaps the most revealing moment of the exchange, Trump literally demanded that Moran abandon journalistic integrity and just lie: “Why don’t you just say, ‘Yes, he does,’ and, you know, go on to something else?”

That single line tells us everything we need to know about how Trump views the press’s role: not to report facts or challenge lies but to simply affirm whatever narrative he’s pushing.


Parker is exactly right, Chump does not want a press that reports facts or challenges lies which explains his latest attack on the press.  David Folkenflik  (NPR) explains:

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board of directors to "cease federal funding for NPR and PBS," the nation's primary public broadcasters. Trump contends that news coverage by NPR and PBS contains a left-wing bias. The federal funding for NPR and PBS is appropriated by Congress.

The executive order, like many that have been signed by the president, could be challenged in court.

"Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter," the executive order says. "What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax-paying citizens."


Donald Chump lied this week so many times but for me the big one was that egg prices have come down 87% 

When Chump was sworn in back in January, the average price for a carton of eggs in the US was between $4.80 and $4.95.  

Now I can do money.  My math is something that I need to stop and think about and may still get it wrong.  Unless it's money.  

And I think most people can do money -- probably calculate much better than I do.

He lies on camera to a room full of people that egg prices had dropped.  They haven't.  The lie's even worse because he claimed the price had dropped 87% under him.  

That's about $4.31 -- an 87% drop would be a reduction of four dollars and thirty-one cents --  if we round up and if we use the higher figure of $4.95 for a carton of eggs.

Do you see the problem with lie.  I have a hard time believing no one attending his speech grasped the lie.  Maybe not during it.  Maybe not in the applause that followed.  But maybe that night, as they brushed their teeth, maybe then they grasped that if the price of eggs had dropped 87% from $4.95 that would mean the cost for a carton of eggs, one dozen eggs, would have to be 64 cents.

Where in the United States are you finding stores that are selling a carton of eggs for 64 cents?



The average price of one dozen eggs hit a record high in March, costing a whopping $6.22 and hitting Americans’ wallets every time they go to the grocery store.

The cost of one dozen Grade A eggs has grown a staggering 84 percent since the beginning of 2024, according to the consumer price index. The current price surpassed the previous record set in January 2023, when the average price was $4.82.


Chump needs to kill NPR and PBS and any other real media because real media educates, fact checks and informs.  Chump needs to be able to count on the stupidity bred into his MAGA followers -- excuse me, inbred into his MAGA followers -- and he needs that stupidity to spread like herpes, hence his attacks on the media.


Without the federal funding, some local stations could be forced off the air, especially in rural areas that are Republican strongholds. In many cases “these are the last locally owned broadcasters in these communities,” Ed Ulman, the CEO of Alaska Public Media, told CNN last month.

Earlier this week, the CPB filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after three of its five board members were terminated by email. The three board members who received the emails — Laura G. Ross, Thomas E. Rothman and Diane Kaplan — were appointed by then-President Joe Biden in 2022 (Ross was originally appointed by Trump in 2018 and then reappointed by Biden).

Congress specifically set up the corporation as a private entity “to afford maximum protection from extraneous interference and control,” according to a law passed in 1967. The legislation expressly forbids the government from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting.”     



This time yesterday the US had a National Security Advisor in the administration.  Not a competent one but they had one.  Now Marco Rubio who is already under water trying to run the US State Dept is also now having to be the National Security Advisor.  No that does not make sense.  

What happened?

BBC NEWS provided a timeline yesterday:

It has been a whirlwind day here in Washington so let's try to catch you up on how it all went down:

  • This morning, we began hearing whispers that Mike Waltz was leaving his position as national security adviser
  • Our reporter asked for clarity but White House press officials declined to comment. President Trump also didn't mention it while he gave remarks at a prayer service in the Rose Garden
  • The president said he would by nominating Waltz as ambassador to the United Nations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio would take over Waltz's national security portfolio in the interim, he said
  • Waltz created the Signal group chat, to which a journalist was inadvertently added last month, where high-ranking officials planned military strikes in Yemen
  • The White House appears to have waited for the dust to settle from that before acting, our correspondent Anthony Zurcher writes
  • After the announcement, Waltz said he was "honoured" to continue to serve Trump
  • To assume the UN ambassador role, Waltz will need to undergo a Senate confirmation hearing, which Democratic opponents of the administration could use to raise questions about Waltz's competence following the Signalgate scandal      

That's one of the items that Lawrence was addressing in the video at the top of this snapshot.  Mike Waltz is out.  After the unsecure Signal chat that Waltz apparently unknowingly brought Jeffrey Goldberg of THE ATLANITC in on, Waltz is out of his job but he gets to fail upward and move over to another job -- if he can get confirmed by the US Senate. 

After letting Goldberg in the chat.  After taking part in a chat on Signal which isn't a secure app.


After being part of this huge security breach where details of an impending strike were discussed in a nonsecure group chat after Waltz had invited a reporter into it.



A day before President Trump removed him from his job as national security adviser, Michael Waltz checked his phone during a White House cabinet meeting — perhaps forgetting that there were cameras in the room.

A photographer for Reuters captured the moment on Wednesday, with Mr. Waltz seen from the side, seated with other suited officials around a table. When zoomed in, the photograph clearly shows what was on his phone screen: a list of his conversations on what appears to be a modified version of the messaging app Signal.

The contents of the screen, first reported by 404 Media on Thursday, indicate that Mr. Waltz had been in conversation with several top Trump administration officials: Vice President JD Vance; Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director; Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East; and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who was announced as Mr. Waltz’s interim replacement on Thursday. Snippets of some messages are visible.


His nomination to be UN Ambassador -- the face saving move Chump was giving him -- should now be over.  In a world where logic ruled, it would be.

If you haven't been following the Pete Hegseth mess, Tom Gerken (BBC NEWS) explained last month:

The messaging app Signal has made headlines after it emerged it had been used to discuss war plans at the highest levels of the US government.

In March, the White House confirmed it was used for a secret group chat about air strikes against the Houthi group in Yemen, to which the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added.

In April, the New York Times and others reported US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information about the same military action in a second private Signal group, which his wife, brother and personal lawyer were members of.

Signal's creator Matthew Rosenfeld - who is better known by the pseudonym Moxie Marlinspike - has joked the "great reasons" to join the platform now include "the opportunity for the vice president of the United States of America to randomly add you to a group chat for coordination of sensitive military operations".

But others are not seeing the funny side, with Democrat Senate leader Chuck Schumer calling it "one of the most stunning" military intelligence leaks in history and calling for an investigation.

But what actually is Signal - and how secure or otherwise were the senior politicians' communications on it?

[. . .]

Data expert Caro Robson, who has worked with the US administration, said it was "very, very unusual" for high ranking security officials to communicate on a messaging platform like Signal.

"Usually you would use a very secure government system that is operated and owned by the government using very high levels of encryption," she said.

She said this would typically mean devices kept in "very secure government controlled locations".

The US government has historically used a sensitive compartmented information facility (Scif - pronounced "skiff") to discuss matters of national security.


He has lost his job because of the March Singal chat.  And he's still using it to communicate -- as are Tusli and JD apparently.  


He is as ass backward as Chump.  He is unable to learn from mistakes.  That makes him an even bigger threat to our security than was earlier suspected.


And what does it say about the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that she's still using this and not a secure government app to communicate with other members of the government?


JD's a moron but he's got one more excuse: he was voted into office.


Tulsi wasn't.  And she shouldn't have been confirmed.  She makes that clear with her continued use of Signal.

Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office.


60 Minutes: U.S. sent 238 migrants to Salvadoran mega-prison; documents indicate most have no apparent criminal records

***WATCH: Senator Murray’s remarks on the Senate Floor***

Washington, D.C. – Today U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, took to the Senate floor to deliver a speech on President Trump’s lawless immigration policy. Senator Murray highlighted the absence of any semblance of due process for—in many cases—legal residents with no criminal record being detained and deported—and even sent to a prison in El Salvador with no outside contact and no end date. She also discussed how Trump’s crackdown has caused confusion for international students, fear among farmworkers, and led to U.S. citizens being detained, having their homes raided, and even to some U.S. citizens who are children being deported with their parents.

Emphasizing the complete lack of transparency from the Trump administration on why the people sent to El Salvador are being detained and what is being done to bring them home, Senator Murray demanded more information from the Trump administration about its recent actions—from the full details of the secret agreement with El Salvador, to the names of all the individuals sent to El Salvador, their current status, what sort of evidence and process has been afforded them, and what sort of contact they can make with lawyers and family. She also pressed for a good faith effort to follow Supreme Court orders, to return everyone wrongly sent to El Salvador, and to establish lines of communication for individuals to speak with their lawyers and families.

“I heard from one of my Republican colleagues say last week ‘I don’t see any pattern here.’ Well, I ask him now—I ask everyone now—to pay attention to the full picture. Because of course you won’t see the pattern if you just look at one case and you ignore the many, many others,” said Senator Murray. “There is the case of Andry Hernandez Romero, he’s a barber who came here legally, he has no criminal record. There is the case of Arturo Suárez Trejo, he’s a musician, he came here legally, he has no criminal record. There is the case of Merwil Gutiérrez, who—you guessed it—came here legally, no criminal record. In fact, he was apparently grabbed by mistake. One officer reportedly said ‘No, he’s not the one,’ and another said, ‘Take him anyway.’ Trump sent them all to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador—with no trial. Disappeared. They have no contact with their lawyer. No contact with family. We do not know if they are alive, and they don’t know if anyone is even advocating for them. How hopeless that must feel. How dark. So, is that enough of a pattern for my Republican colleagues? Do you still need more?”

Senator Murray has championed comprehensive and humane immigration reform throughout her Senate career, repeatedly pushing for legislative solutions that would offer a fair pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America, including Dreamers, farmworkers, and those with Temporary Protected Status. During Trump’s first administration, Senator Murray helped lead the charge in pushing back against Trump’s appalling treatment of migrant children and families at the southern border— cosponsoring the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act, which would require unaccompanied children and vulnerable individuals to be provided with legal assistance during immigration court proceedings, the Stop Cruelty to Migrant Children Act to end family separations at the border, and legislation to prevent the separation of families at sensitive locations such as schools, religious institutions, and hospitals, among many other efforts.

Senator Murray’s remarks, as delivered, are below, and video is HERE:

“Thank you, M. President.

“Over the past month we have seen a wave of righteous outrage across the country in response to President Trump’s completely lawless move to disappear hundreds of people to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, without even the barest semblance of due process.

“And as I join my colleagues in calling for the Trump Administration to abide by the Supreme Court ruling, and facilitate the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a man they said, in court, was sent to El Salvador by mistake—I have to emphasize, his case is one of many where Trump has completely shredded our norms and laws. In addition to Garcia, Trump sent off some two hundred people—including innocent people who were in our country legally—to a foreign prison without any due process whatsoever.

“And they did it all on the basis of some arrangement negotiated in secret and paid for with millions of taxpayer dollars. What we do know, is that many of these people were sent there without any criminal conviction—the Administration actually admitted that! In their own court filing the Trump Administration acknowledged that many of these people have no criminal records in the U.S. And yet, all of these people have now been imprisoned in a foreign country with no end date in sight—unconstitutional doesn’t even begin to cover that.

“There are so many questions, basic questions, about this that we all should be demanding answers to. At the barest, smallest, slimmest minimum, and I mean as a starting point, the Administration must release more details about this secret agreement where it is paying El Salvador with our taxpayer dollars to imprison people without a trial. Details like: who all is being imprisoned, how long is El Salvador holding these people with  Trump’s orders, how many people is El Salvador going to imprison under this agreement, what outside contact is possible for those people, and how do we learn their status and condition—are they alive, are they healthy? What are those details?

“Most of these details we do have are from reporting—and news reports say the deal was only for El Salvador to take convicted criminals—so why did Trump send people with no criminal record? And importantly: where in the world is this money coming from? Does anyone here remember voting to pass a single dollar in appropriations to fund a torture prison in El Salvador? Because I sure don’t! And last I checked Congress has the power of the purse.

“You know what else we don’t know? We still don’t know the names of everyone they did this to. Think about that. We don’t even have their names! That information should be released immediately. Today. Because there are families who still have no confirmation where their loved ones are, and the only list we have right now was not even released by the Administration! It was reported by the press.

“Some families only learned their son was gone, their husband was gone, their father was gone, through photos of them being marched into a torture prison. This is the first, last, and only update we have on just about all of those people. We don’t know if they are alive. We don’t know if they are being treated decently. We don’t even know if they have been moved. Even their lawyers can’t reach them.

“Here’s what we do know: there are many names on the El Salvador list of people who were here legally, who had no criminal record. That seems to be getting lost in the debate for some of my Republican colleagues. This is not about any one case, or any one person, it is about a lawless system for the President to deny due process. And when you cut out due process, you put innocent people in harm’s way.

“I heard from one of my Republican colleagues say last week ‘I don’t see any pattern here.’ Well, I ask him now—I ask everyone now—to pay attention to the full picture. Because of course you won’t see the pattern if you just look at one case and you ignore the many, many others.

“There is the case of Andry Hernandez Romero, he’s a barber who came here legally, he has no criminal record.

“There is the case of Arturo Suárez Trejo, he’s a musician, he came here legally, he has no criminal record.

“There is the case of Merwil Gutiérrez, who—you guessed it—came here legally, no criminal record. In fact, he was apparently grabbed by mistake. One officer reportedly said ‘No, he’s not the one,’ and another said, ‘Take him anyway.’

“Trump sent them all to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador—with no trial. Disappeared. They have no contact with their lawyer. No contact with family. We do not know if they are alive, and they don’t know if anyone is even advocating for them. How hopeless that must feel. How dark. 

“So, is that enough of a pattern for my Republican colleagues? Do you still need more?

“Because there’s also Jerce Reyes Barrios, he’s a soccer player, he came here legally. Again—no criminal record.

“There’s Gustavo Aguilera, a food delivery driver. Legally here. No criminal record.

“Or Anyelo Sarabia. Here legally. No criminal record.

“I mean, how many more before my colleagues can actually admit this is a pattern? How many people have to be disappeared with no due process before it becomes a problem? Because for me—one is too many. And the pattern isn’t even over yet. Trump was reportedly ready to disappear even more people to El Salvador—before the Supreme Court put its foot down. In this latest round, the Trump Administration was preparing to disappear a man who came here legally, had no record, except traffic violations!

“Another was a young man accused of being a gang member because of a photo with a toy water gun. That is the level of so-called ‘evidence’ that gets you locked away in a foreign torture prison under President Trump. And I will keep saying it Mr. President, most of the people they disappeared have no criminal records, and many were even here legally. They came here for a better life, and Trump disappeared them based on nothing more than tattoos that say ‘mom’ and ‘dad,’ or that they celebrate soccer teams, or a daughter’s birth, or autism awareness.

“And Mr. President, I realize, I keep hammering home that—many of these people are not criminals—and many of these people came here legally. But I do want to remind my colleagues, this question is not whether someone who was vanished to El Salvador without a trace is good or bad, the question is whether everyone in this country—including American citizens—have the rights they were promised in our Constitution.

“At the end of the day, this is not about who these people are, it is about who we are—whether we are a country of due process, or not. A country of laws, or not.

“Trump has said where he stands. He literally said ‘We don’t have time’ to give them due process. If the Trump Administration think’s someone is a criminal, if they are really bad and dangerous, prove it in court. Prove it! Just simply prove it! It shouldn’t be hard. That is how this works. Everyone in this country understands that.


“You can’t just say ‘criminals don’t get due process’—when due process is how you determine who is a criminal in the first place! I mean, in the case of one person they sent to El Salvador, not only did the government’s file against him show no criminal record, it also got his name wrong several times, and used two different identification numbers! Those are pretty major errors to make when you are locking someone away. The kind of errors that due process helps to avoid.

“That’s not some theory—we are seeing that happen in another case right now. There is a couple that Trump is saying are part of a gang, but instead of just disappearing them with no trial to speak of, the Administration was forced to prove it, to prove it in court. And you know what happened? The government failed. The judge found the government’s claims, ‘completely and wholly unsubstantiated’ and ordered the couple to be released.

“That just goes to show, if we ignore our laws, if we tear down the guardrails that saved that couple, it’s not criminals who pay the price, it is innocent people. Because due process protects them too! Due process allows us to confirm whether people are lawfully present. Due process lets us confirm whether Trump is about to send them to a foreign prison. Due process lets us confirm whether people are guilty—instead of going off how they look, or what tattoo they have.

“And at the end of the day, due process means they get an actual determination of guilt or innocence, instead of getting disappeared with a question mark. But no one here was told they are facing ‘X’ years in a foreign prison.

“There is no end date in El Salvador! Because there was no sentence! Because there was no trial! There was just Trump, ignoring our laws, ignoring our courts, and sending people to gulags to rot, to die, to never be heard from again. How can anyone ignore that outrageous breach of our laws—of our values!

“And M. President—as a co-equal branch of this government, I want to impress upon my colleagues: It is not just due process that is getting trampled here, it is basic checks and balances. Trump is imprisoning these people under the Alien Enemies Act. He is using a war power. We are not at war! Everyone here should know that. After all, Congress, we, have to vote to declare war. I remember every war vote we have taken in my time here in Congress—and I can tell you—there has never been a vote on this so-called war Trump declared all on his own.

“As if that weren’t enough, earlier this month the National Intelligence Council, the National Intelligence Council, determined that Venezuela is not directing an ‘invasion’ by gangs. That directly undercuts what Trump claimed when he announced his illegal end run around Congress. Here’s a simple question for everyone, there is no invasion, there is no war, so why is Trump invoking a wartime authority?

“But add on top of that—that Trump has reached some secret, multi-million-dollar deal to pay El Salvador to imprison these people without a trial. I’m Vice Chair of the Appropriations Committee—I can tell you, we did not include a single cent—not one penny!—for running torture prisons in El Salvador in our last funding bill.

“Congress has the power of the purse, but Trump is picking our pockets to fund his own personal gulag. And by the way, while we talk about checks and balances, let’s not forget how the Trump Administration is arresting judges, his allies and advisors are attacking judges publicly and calling to impeach those who disagree with him, and of course, Trump is blatantly ignoring the courts. And worse than that, the White House is in open defiance of the Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court wrote the Administration must facilitate Mr. Garcia’s release. The White House wrote that he is never coming back.

“The Supreme Court wrote people being targeted under the Alien Enemies Act must have a reasonable opportunity to file for habeas corpus. The Trump Administration said, ‘no—we will give them 12 hours.’

“Foreign policy is not an end run around the courts or the constitution. The President cannot just be given unilateral authority to cut completely unethical deals with foreign nations. What happens when a President negotiates in secret to have his political rivals detained abroad? Is that allowed? Can he argue the courts can’t require him to call such a deal off? Or maybe he just denies it and says any agreements are state secrets? Does that work?

“If President Trump said he would pay El Salvador $6 million to assassinate his rivals—I think we would all agree that is blatantly unconstitutional. And if the court said he had to facilitate a reversal of that deal, and he said ‘well.. it’s a sovereign nation… I can’t stop them from assassinating anyone,’—I think we all would have a huge problem with that. So, do we want to say that is wrong now—or are we going to have to wait until he tries it?


“What are we waiting for? We cannot just all stand by silent as the President pries open a pandora’s box that is all together unprecedented—and that poses a direct threat to our Republic. And let’s cut through this BS where Trump and El Salvador are both trying to pretend there is no way to facilitate the return of people sent there wrongly.

“Cause here’s the thing: El Salvador has already sent back people that Trump tried to disappear. El Salvador immediately sent back a Nicaraguan individual. And they sent back women—yeah, Trump tried to disappear women to their all-male torture prison in El Salvador. If anyone wants to try and pretend this was some careful vetting process, pleaseexplain that to me. So it’s not like El Salvador can’t send people back—they have already done that.

“The Administration should be making clear—one: that these people were wrongly sent, and two: that, as with others wrongly sent, they need to be returned. Though, I want to keep in mind of course, that ‘wrongly sent’ is still an enormous understatement. The reality is these people were completely denied due process. The reality is President Trump is not just disappearing these people to El Salvador, he is disappearing our most basic constitutional rights, and he is doing it in plain sight.

“Not just in El Salvador either! Right here, in America, his immigration crackdown is upturning lives, and overturning some of our most basic values, like freedom of speech. We have people who are here legally—who are being detained and threatened with deportation. Not for any crime, not for any violence, but for speech, for protest, for things as simple and fundamental as writing an op-ed the Administration disagreed with.

“In America, the land of the free and the land of free speech, is dissent the bar for deportation now? Is that what this country has come to? What next? How far does Trump’s new standard apply? Can you get deported for saying we shouldn’t invade Canada? Can you get detained for an op-ed saying Greenland is not going to be a state? Are you going to have legal status revoked for admitting Biden won the 2020 election?

“Because that may seem outrageous—but it also seems perfectly in line with Trump’s new policy which amounts to—disagree with the President and your rights are gone. That is fundamentally un-American.

“And beyond people who are being targeted for protest, there are thousands of students in this country, that Trump is trying to push out over minor issues; fishing citations, jay walking, speeding tickets, even charges that were dismissed. So far, some 1,800 foreign students are having their visa revoked with little to no explanation, to say nothing of due process.

“That includes students in Washington state, my homes state, at the UW, at Gonzaga, at Shoreline Community College—where I once worked—my alma mater WSU, and more! It’s not clear whether these students have done anything wrong, and it’s not clear in some cases—what exactly they are supposed to do next. Because when the Administration can’t revoke visas—it has been trying to remove students’ records—something courts have already ruled against.

“One of the judges really put it best. And I want to read this and quote it to you. This is a judge. ‘I’ve got two experienced immigration lawyers on behalf of a client who is months away from graduation, who has done nothing wrong, who has been terminated from a system that you all keep telling me has no effect on his immigration status, although that clearly is BS. And now, his two very experienced lawyers can’t even tell him whether or not he’s here legally, because the court can’t tell him whether or not he’s here legally, because the government’s counsel can’t tell him if he’s here legally.’

“M. President, the point seems to be, if we can’t deport you, we can scare and confuse you. And to add even more confusion, DOJ announced they were reversing course on some of this, only to then say they are still working on a plan to push out all these students. And by the way, we are only still scratching the surface of just how inhumane Trump’s immigration crackdown has become.

“Trump is slashing funds to ensure 26,000 migrant kids have legal assistance—meaning more four-year-olds are being marched in front of immigration judges, expected to make their own legal case with a plushy toy. Trump is also trying to mass cancel protected status for people who came here who were fleeing harsh conditions and dictators. Trump is sending Christian refugees and women back to live under the Taliban—where they will face near certain persecution. Trump is sending ICE officials to elementary schools, where they have tried to gain access by lying about having permission from parents to speak with their kids.

“ICE officials are arresting people with maximum violence and lawlessness—showing up without a judicial warrant, since the Trump Administration says it is fine to storm into someone’s house without one, showing up in masks, grabbing people off the streets without any badge or identification to distinguish them from a kidnapper, whisking people away in unmarked cars, and even smashing in windshields.

“M. President, back in my home state of Washington—I have heard from folks who saw that firsthand. Last month, ICE aggressively detained Lelo, a farmworker in my state—and it appears he may have even been targeted because of his advocacy for better working conditions for his fellow farmworkers. They are still denying him bond—despite no criminal charges. I spoke with his wife last week—who watched in horror as they arrested her husband shortly after he dropped her off at work. She told me through tears about how officers broke his window and pushed him against the car. And how, Lelo wants to be free so he can take care of his brothers and sisters and work so they can study. He wants to continue doing his work in the community and with the union. And they are working right now to try and get bond—something I strongly support. This is not someone M. President, with a dangerous record—it is someone with a record of hard work, and of trying to make his community better.

“Skagit County is known for its agricultural industry—and that industry doesn’t survive without the immigrant farmworkers who help power that local economy. Period.

“More than that, we are talking about many families who have been here for decades. They are part of our community—they’re not just the people who feed this country. These people work hard, they follow the law. They should not be terrorized as if they were violent criminals. Last week, I met with farmworkers there who told me there have been days they have been afraid to go to work, because an unmarked vehicle was seen in their neighborhood. They are absolutely terrified of being grabbed off the street by ICE and locked up with no semblance of due process, regardless of their legal status.


“And this situation is not unique to Skagit County or even to my state. It’s happening across the country. Let’s not forget, Trump is trying to deport a cancer researcher to Russia where she fears retaliation for protesting the war in Ukraine. Sending her away would both put her in danger and completely upend groundbreaking cancer research—her colleagues say her role is irreplaceable.

“But it’s not just cancer research, Trump also deported a little girl, a U.S. citizen, who was on her way to get cancer treatment! She was with her mother, an undocumented immigrant—who was forced to choose between being separated from her 10-year-old daughter or being sent away together. What an unthinkable choice to force on a mother. What an unthinkable thing to do to a child, a citizen, a citizen who is fighting cancer.

“And Trump has done that twice. That’s right twice, he has deported a mother—along with a kid who is fighting cancer—a kid who is an American citizen. And he is doing that without giving these parents any meaningful time to talk to a lawyer, or a spouse, to figure out what is best for their child. We know that because Trump deported another U.S. citizen last week—that’s right another one. Trump deported a two-year-old, an American citizen. They refused to tell this kids’ father where his wife and kid were being held. They refused to let him talk to his wife for more than a minute. They even forced him to hang up the phone when he tried to give his wife their lawyer’s number. And then, as the judge put it, they seem to have ‘deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.’

“And now we are hearing about a family in Oklahoma—U.S. citizens who recently moved in who had their home raided by ICE. A mom and her daughters—forced out of their house, in the rain, in underwear. ICE agents seized phones, laptops, even their full life savings—and didn’t leave so much as a number they could call to get their stuff back. That happened to U.S. citizens, who did nothing but move into a new house.


“These horror stories underscore something important—Trump’s cruel war on immigrants is hurting American citizens too. U.S. citizens are having their spouses ripped away, even servicemembers are seeing their families targeted. They are having their parents ripped away. They are having their lives turned upside down.

“And—let’s not forget—U.S. citizens are even being detained by this administration. We have several instances now—where American citizens have been caught up in Trump’s immigration crackdown. American citizens have been detained and wrongly locked up—even after someone showed them their birth certificates. Even for days! And let’s keep in mind—if you are a citizen who is mistakenly detained, and you are being denied due process, and you can’t reach someone to show your birth certificate, how are you supposed to get released? What if you are put on the next plane to El Salvador before you get the chance to set the record straight? And let’s not pretend that’s far-fetched.

“Not when citizens havealready been mistakenly detained. Not when the government hasalready admitted it sent some people to El Salvador by mistake. Now when Trump has already disappeared some people who were here legally, and many people who had no criminal record—with no due process. And not when Trump hasalreadysaid he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador prisons. He was caught on mic telling the President of El Salvador he needs to build more jails, telling him the ‘homegrowns’ are next. What happens when you get sent there, and you can’t contact a lawyer? These are serious questions—what happens? Because if there is nothing we can do for the people there now, what precedent does that set for the people that are sent there next?

“M. President—I’ve been speaking for a while now and I’ve posed a lot of questions, and I hope my colleagues think about this carefully. So, I am going to wrap it up, but I will end now with just one more.

“Where will Republicans draw the line? Because we are well past the bounds of law—and we are well past the bounds of basic humanity. So, I hope more of my colleagues will join me in saying enough is enough. And in demanding transparency, accountability, and justice from the Trump Administration. That starts with some very basic things.

“First—accurate, up-to-date information on the names of people who are being detained in, and deported from, ICE facilities across the country—including by the way, the Northwest ICE Detention Center in Tacoma, so that their loved ones and community members can at least know where they are!

“And we need a clear list of every person who was disappeared to El Salvador, along with what evidence—if any—the government has. As well as the full terms of whatever agreement the Trump administration has negotiated with El Salvador’s dictator.

“But it doesn’t stop there. We need to see clear, good faith efforts to abide by court orders, and to bring back everyone wrongfully, unjustly sent to a foreign prison. We need to have lines of communication so these people can talk to their lawyers, or talk to their loved ones, and let us know if they are okay.

“And we need due process—with evidence, with judges, and a meaningful opportunity for people to present a defense. Let’s be clear we are not saying everyone is innocent. We are saying no more than what the constitution says, no more than what the courts have said time and again: Everyone, in the United States of America, gets due process.

“Thank you.”

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