Why is Trump’s Secretary of Defense calling for women to lose their right to vote?

The United States Secretary of Defense just promoted a clip calling for women to lose their right to vote.

Pete Hegseth shares a clip saying women shouldn’t have the right to vote, the 19th Amendment should be “repealed,” and women should “submit” to their husbands: “All of Christ for All of Life”

“All of Christ for All of Life,” Hegseth posted on social media, from an account marked with a grey checkmark that says, “This account is verified because it’s an affiliate of @DeptofDefense on X.”

That post accompanied a CNN interview (below) of Pastor Wilson. CNN billed the segment as “The Christian nationalist pastor with ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.”

“Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” Wilson unapologetically told CNN.

“It doesn’t take any talent to simply reproduce biologically,” he continued. “The wife and mother, who is the chief executive of the home, is entrusted with three or four or five eternal souls.”

Wilson also believes women should not have certain leadership roles, and should not be allowed to vote.

https://www.alternet.org/higseth-christian-nationalist/

On Tuesday Donald Trump went on CNBC to explain why the European Union is facing a tariff of “only” 15 percent.

But what he said was simply delusional — and the delusion should be more concerning than the non-existent tariffs.

The Europeans, Trump asserted, had agreed to cough up $600 billion, which he described as a “gift,” not a loan. And he emphasized that this is “$600 billion to invest in anything I want. Anything. I can do anything I want with it.”

So Trump apparently believes that the European Union has agreed to provide him with a personal $600 billion slush fund.

In fact, as several economists pointed out after the “deal” was announced, the EU agreed to no such thing. In fact, it literally couldn’t have made such an agreement. European nations aren’t command economies in which government can tell the private sector where to invest, and in any case the European Commission, which negotiated with Trump, can’t tell the governments of member states what to do.

So think of it as the emperor’s new trade deal: Trump is strutting around, feeling very impressed with himself, but in substantive terms he’s stark naked.

Does it matter?  Yes, it matters because it means he’s lost touch with reality across the board.

He really does seem to think that completely vague and unenforceable promises of “investment” represents a kickback he can use to buy people off and bail people out. The problem is what happens when he figures out that this isn’t true:

What will happen if and when Trump realizes that Europe hasn’t actually promised what he thinks it has — or, as he’s likely to see it, that the EU has gone back on its promise? He’s already given us an answer: He’s going to put the tariff on Europe back up to 35 percent.

He may not be able to carry out that threat. In fact, there’s a very real possibility that the courts will rule many of the tariffs Trump has already imposed illegal (which they surely are) and order the administration to refund the money it has already collected.

But assume that the Supreme Court does its usual thing and decides that the Constitution allows Trump to do whatever he wants. How afraid should Europe be of the possibility that Trump will put the tariffs back up, higher than before?

Well, as far as anyone can tell putting U.S. tariffs up from 15 to 35 percent would do less damage to Europe than many people imagine.

Yes, it would hurt, but not all that much. By making a 15 percent tariff the baseline — what countries pay even if they do make “deals” — Trump has used up a lot of his trade war ammunition, greatly reducing the effectiveness of any further threats.

After all, Europe has never been all that dependent on access to U.S. markets. In 2024 the EU’s exports of goods to the United States were slightly less than 3 percent of its GDP — not a trivial sum, but not enough to make European prosperity dependent on U.S. goodwill.

Trump’s tariffs will make the EU even less dependent on the U.S. market.

The crucial number is what economists call the “Armington elasticity,” which measures how sensitive trade flows are to tariffs, and that a reasonable estimate of that elasticity is 3. If we go with that number, we would expect the 15 percent tariff currently in place to cut EU exports to America by roughly a third, to around 2 percent of GDP.

That’s a palpable hit, but not a huge one. Writing in the Financial Times, Richard Milne tells us that reports from European companies are showing surprising resilience. Furthermore, the loss of U.S. business will be partially offset by higher government expenditure in Europe, with Germany in particular boosting spending on both infrastructure and defense.

That’s with a 15 percent tariff. But what happens if Trump pushes tariffs up to 35 percent? Back-of-the envelope calculations say that this would reduce Europe’s exports to the United States by another 0.7 percent of GDP. That is, the hit to Europe if Trump makes good on his threats would be smaller than the hit he has already imposed with the tariffs he plans to keep in place regardless.

One of the many problems here is that the clowns who are giving Trump his ideas are convinced both(1)  that the United States is being completely ripped off by the rest of the world and (2) that everyone is totally dependent on access to the American market. Neither of these things is true, but the result will be a bunch of random revenge outlashes that will hurt the US more than it hurts other countries.

 

Desperate for warm bodies to help carry out President Donald Trump’s evil deportation agenda, the Department of Homeland Security this week has announced it is lowering the standards for applicants to serve as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said on Wednesday that there are no longer age limits to serve as an ICE agent, as the agency seeks to staff up after being injected with billions in funding from Republicans’ unpopular “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

“We are ENDING the age cap for ICE law enforcement. Qualified candidates can now apply with no age limit,” Noem wrote in a post on X.

A day earlier, Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin declared that no undergraduate degrees are necessary to work at ICE. All uneducated racists are welcome!

“Serve your country! Defend your culture! No undergraduate degree required!” the official DHS account wrote in a post on X, using blatantly white supremacist rhetoric to say that the administration is deporting mostly Latino immigrants in order to preserve American—i.e. white—culture.

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It was one of a number of vile DHS posts seeking ICE applicants, including multiple that use the iconic World War II Uncle Sam poster.

“​​America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out,” reads one post that includes the Uncle Sam image.

Yes, this is an actual DHS recruiting poster.

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ICE is desperate to beef up its staff to meet the arbitrary 3,000-per-day arrest quota set by bigoted hobgoblin Stephen Miller. Indeed, ICE arrests have actually dropped by 20% in July—which is likely the reason DHS is so desperate to hire more ICE agents.

Not only does the agency not have enough staff to arrest that many people, but it’s causing ICE agents with modicums of a soul to quit or consider quitting, saying they are being forced to stop going after actual criminals to instead arrest day laborers and farm workers who are the engine of the American economy.

“Even those that are gung ho about the mission aren’t happy with how they are asking to execute it—the quotas and the shift to the low-hanging fruit to make the numbers,” one ICE agent told the New Republic in July.

Indeed, TRAC reported 71% of people in ICE custody have no criminal convictions. Those that do have convictions are for minor offenses, such as traffic violations.

In order to entice people to sign up as an ICE goon, the agency has been offering as much as $50,000 in bonuses and student loan forgiveness to get retired agents to rejoin Trump’s deportation force. Apparently there are some student loans Trump and his goons think are worth forgiving.

But apparently even that’s not doing the job to get enough warm bodies, as it’s now lowering age and education standards. But relaxing standards for ICE agent hires is dangerous.

History shows that doing this could increase misconduct in the agency—which is already abducting citizens off streets and holding them in detention facilities without charges. Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen in California, was abducted off the street by ICE agents and detained. She was later charged with assaulting an ICE officer, even though video footage shows she was grabbed off the street by masked agents and forced into a vehicle in a situation that she said felt like a kidnapping. Charges were later dropped.

“Any time you have massive political pressure to beef up overnight, it never turns out well,” T.J. Bonner, former president of the Border Patrol agents union, told the Associated Press. “Too many corners have to be cut. Then when things go wrong, the fingers get pointed.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The enemy is not Hamas, nor is it the military wing of Hamas, every child in Gaza is the enemy. We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, and not a single Gazan child will be left there. There is no other victory,”

-Moshe Feiglin

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moshe-feiglin-every-baby-in-gaza-is-an-enemy-ex-israeli-lawmakers-shocking-remarks-8477020

Moshe Feiglin’s appalling call for the extermination of Gazan children is not just a window into a genocidal worldview—it shatters any claim to moral credibility he or his defenders might assert. This isn’t politics. It’s an open endorsement of war crimes and a chilling invocation of ethnic cleansing, reminiscent of humanity’s darkest eras. To label infants as enemies and dress up mass murder as “victory” is not an act of strength—it’s the deranged rhetoric of people utterly severed from basic human decency. If the international community had any resolve, Feiglin’s name would already stand alongside the architects of genocide. Instead, we witness a deafening silence from global leaders, as the children he vilifies continue to suffer and die. Let it be clear: this is not self-defense. This is a call to annihilate. And history will remember who stood against it, and who said nothing.

Anyone defending this isn’t defending democracy or Israel, they’re defending genocide, the murder of innocents, and fascism.

“Moshe Zalman Feiglin (Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה זַלְמָן פֶייגְּלִין; born 31 July 1962) is a right libertarian-leaning Israeli politician and activist, and the leader of libertarian Zionist party Zehut. As a member of Likud, he headed the Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) faction within the party, and represented Likud in the Knesset between 2013 and 2015”

Every day, Americans are bombarded with the bad news of Trump 2.0: concentration camps; cruel ICE raids targeting law-abiding residents; health insurance being yanked from millions; elite universities, media companies, and law firms yielding to mob-like extortion; crypto deals and other brazen grifting tied to a corrupt White House; rampant abuses of governmental power and threats of sham criminal prosecutions against the administration’s critics and political foes; drastic cuts in food assistance; assaults on women’s rights; the withholding of disaster relief; the reckless shutdowns and eviscerations of crucial government services and agencies that will result in hardship (and, in some cases, death) for Americans and people overseas.

This is, of course, a partial list. And it is exhausting to keep track of and absorb each new outrage. That is the clear intent. The Trump transgressions come so fast they distract from each other. Public attention rarely remains focused on any one atrocity. We’re bludgeoned by the never-ending stream of misdeeds and affronts—which each day come wrapped in propaganda extolling a new Golden Age and assorted false glories of Dear Leader. When one is caught in the crossfire, it is hard to see, let alone address, the big picture.

That is to Donald Trump’s advantage. For a long time, commentators have noted that he relishes generating chaos and believes he can exploit disorder for political advantage. It’s an escape route for him. The dizzying whirlwind he creates places critics and opponents off-balance. And perhaps best of all for him and his crew, it hides their overall plan and inhibits the development and promotion of an overarching counternarrative. Their foes are stuck decrying the individual acts of villainy, one at a time, without doing what is most necessary in American politics: telling a story.

Trump and his gang are deconstructing America. This is their purposeful goal and an obvious one, if you look past the daily barrage of absurdity, indecency, corruption, wrongdoing, and abuses of power. It is the story that must be conveyed to the citizenry.

The State Department is launching a pilot program wherein it will require travelers entering the United States on tourism and business visas to pay a hefty bond as a guarantee they will not stay in the United States.

In a cable sent to State Department employees Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the department will implement a 12-month pilot of a “visa bond” program designed to target travelers from countries whose nationals have a high rate of overstaying their visas. That bond could total up to $15,000 per person, but the cable says consular officers will be expected to require a $10,000 bond per adult and $5,000 per child, according to two State Department officials familiar with the cable. The officials were granted anonymity to discuss the internal document without fear of reprisal.

The bonds will be collected by the Treasury Department, per the cable, and travelers will recoup their money if they exit the United States within the timespan of the visa and use specific ports of entry to enter and depart. Travelers affected must also enter the United States within 30 days of the visa being issued.

American Democracy Ended This Weekend

The Constitutional Crisis You’re Not Hearing About
We just witnessed the formal end of American democracy and most people don’t realize it yet.

What Happened This Weekend
Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state police to arrest 57 Democratic legislators who fled the state to block Trump’s redistricting plan. This is the first time since Reconstruction that a governor has ordered arrests of opposition legislators for political resistance.
Civil arrest warrants were issued yesterday. We have crossed the constitutional Rubicon.
The Pattern Most People Are Missing
While everyone sees fragments (executive orders, court rulings, military changes), what’s actually happening is systematic institutional capture following the authoritarian playbook used in Hungary, Turkey, and Russia.
The evidence shows all three branches have been captured simultaneously:

1. Courts: Supreme Court eliminated nationwide injunctions; federal judge arrested; administration openly defying court orders
2. Elections: Multi-state redistricting rigging 2026; Democratic counter-measures structurally impossible
3. Military: Leadership purged; domestic deployment; personal loyalty tests for generals
4. DOJ: Weaponized against 100+ opponents; career prosecutors fired; “transformed into Trump’s personal law firm”

This Wasn’t Accidental
Trump has implemented 44% of Project 2025’s 920-page authoritarian blueprint in 7 months. The 171 executive orders literally break the historical chart. Every major action serves Putin’s strategic objectives to destroy American democracy from within.

The Math on 2026
Republicans could gain 9-12 House seats through coordinated redistricting, creating a supermajority that would be mathematically impossible for Democrats to overcome even in a wave election.
Timeline: Texas must finish by December, Ohio by November 30. Other states following quickly.
Why This Time Is Different
Previous constitutional crises involved conflicts between branches of government. Now all three branches are captured or compliant. Combined with international authoritarian coordination and information warfare destroying shared reality, democratic recovery through normal means is no longer possible.
The Historical Parallel
August 2025 = America’s March 1933 moment – when Germany’s democracy formally surrendered to authoritarianism through legal means. The difference: Germany’s collapse took months. America’s took 7 months.

This isn’t politics as usual. This is documented competitive authoritarian consolidation. The choice is no longer between political parties. It’s between accepting that the constitutional system has failed or… well, that’s the question facing Americans right now.

President Donald J. Trump’s firing of the commissioner of labor statistics on Friday for announcing that job growth has slowed dramatically has drawn a level of attention to Trump’s assault on democracy that other firings have not. Famously, authoritarian governments make up statistics to claim their policies are working well, even when they quite obviously are not.

Yesterday former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told George Stephanopoulos of This Week on ABC News: “This is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism…. [F]iring statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers. It goes with launching assaults on universities. It goes with launching assaults on law firms that defend clients that the elected boss finds uncongenial. This is really scary stuff.” In The Bulwark, Bill Kristol called out the open assault “on the truth, on the rule of law, on a free society” as “part of the broader pattern of the transformation of government information into pure propaganda.”

Summers shot down Trump’s claim that the commissioner had rigged the numbers in the jobs report to make him look bad. “These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals,” he said. “There’s no conceivable way that the head of the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] could have manipulated this number.”

Kathryn Anne Edwards at Bloomberg explained the implications of Trump’s determination to control economic statistics: “The peril…isn’t a potential recession; it’s losing highly reliable, accurate and transparent data on the health of the world’s largest economy.” As Ben Casselman pointed out in the New York Times, officials at the Federal Reserve, for example, need reliable statistics on inflation and unemployment to inform decisions about interest rates, which in turn affect how much Americans pay for car loans and mortgages.

Economist Paul Krugman noted that Trump lashed out against the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because most economists warned that Trump’s economic policies would hurt the economy, and the official data is starting to confirm that he was wrong and they were right. Krugman suggested that those numbers will continue to get worse as Trump’s tariffs and deportations start to show up in inflation.

An Associated Press/ NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released today shows that 86% of American adults report that the cost of groceries is a source of stress, with 53% saying it causes “major” stress. Only 14% of adults say the cost of groceries is not a source of stress for them.

On all his key issues Trump is currently underwater—meaning that more people disapprove of his handling of them than approve—and reports that he is abandoning his campaign promise to require healthcare insurance companies to pay for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, will not endear him to those voters, either. Krugman notes that as Trump’s popularity is disintegrating, he appears to be ramping up his attempts to destroy American democracy.

At the same time, the administration continues to reel under pressure over the files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s inability to let the issue drop is keeping it very much alive. On Sunday the president railed against radio host Charlamagne Tha God for saying that the administration’s poor handling of the Epstein issue created an opportunity for traditional Republicans to take their party back.

As more information emerges about Trump’s association with Epstein, Trump and his loyalists are trying hard to push stories suggesting that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton or former president Barack Obama or other Democrats are the real criminals.

On July 24, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed that officials in the administration of Barack Obama ”manufactured” evidence in 2016 to suggest that Trump’s campaign was connected to Russian operatives. This was ridiculous on its face, but then the administration declassified documents it claimed proved their allegations. But another set of documents released on August 1 said the two emails that purportedly proved such a plan were instead, as Charlie Savage of the New York Times put it, “most likely manufactured by Russian spies.”

After Gabbard made her claims, media outlets reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi was surprised as well as annoyed by Gabbard’s explosive accusations and, already in trouble for botching the Epstein issue, scrambled to support them.

Today Sadie Gurman, Josh Dawsey, and Brett Forrest of the Wall Street Journal reported that, according to an official at the Department of Justice, Bondi has signed an order directing a U.S. attorney to present evidence concerning the matter to a grand jury. This is a major escalation in their crusade to convince voters that the real story in the news should be that Trump is a victim.

The Wall Street Journal reporters note that the administration’s claims “come as the Trump administration has faced intense bipartisan criticism over its refusal to provide more information about the FBI investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”

Another aspect of the Epstein issue is also in the news today. After the Wall Street Journal published the story by Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo reporting that Trump contributed a bawdy birthday letter to an album Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell compiled for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday in 2003, Trump sued the Wall Street Journal’s parent company Dow Jones and owner Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion. But the lawsuit read as if it were written primarily to rile up Trump’s base. The Wall Street Journal stood firm on the accuracy of its reporting, and the defendants moved to dismiss the lawsuit.

Then Trump asked a federal judge in Miami to force Murdoch to answer questions under oath within 15 days, and that, too, sounded like an attempt to display dominance. The request stressed Murdoch’s age and ill health as a reason for the request. “Murdoch is 94 years old, has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life, is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares, and is presumed to live in New York, New York,” all making him unlikely to be able to testify at a trial, the filing read.

Today Trump quietly backed away from his demand for Murdoch’s deposition, and both sides put off discovery—the process of disclosing information and evidence to the other party—at least until after the motion to dismiss has been decided.

Trump’s former lawyer Todd Blanche, now deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice, has met twice with Maxwell, who says she will “testify openly and honestly” before Congress about Epstein if she gets a pardon. She is currently serving a twenty-year sentence for sex trafficking and other charges. Today Alexander Bolton of The Hill said Republican senators are warning Trump and Bondi that they should consider very carefully whether it would be a good idea to grant Maxwell a pardon.

Also today, Casey Gannon of CNN reported that two of Epstein’s victims have filed letters with the court expressing outrage at the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files, suggesting that the department was protecting wealthy men at the expense of the victims.

 

“She’s become a star,” Trump told Newsmax on Friday. “It’s that face. It’s that brain. It’s those lips, the way they move. They move like she’s a machine gun.”