The United States is now facing the greatest threat to our free way of life in our history. Even the US Civil War was not the danger that is Donald Trump. In the Civil War, the South wanted to separate from the rest of the Union. Today, Trump does not want to separate from the US, he seeks to destroy the fundamental functions and purpose of the US. He seeks to destroy the Constitution, replacing the Judiciary and Legislative Branches with puppets of the Executive. Plainly stated, Trump seeks to establish himself as a dictator . . . and as of May 2025, he may succeed.
President Donald Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. But halfway through his first year back in office, he’s not even matching the numbers under former President Barack Obama, let alone fulfilling his own pledge.
New figures obtained by NBC News show that while Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting immigrants at the fastest pace in at least five years, deportations are lagging significantly.
In June, ICE detained around 30,000 people—the highest monthly total since data began being released in late 2020. However, deportations that month barely exceeded 18,000. May showed a similar trend: 24,000 arrests but only about 15,000 deportations.
It’s becoming a hallmark of Trump’s second term: performative crackdowns, legal overreach, and a deportation bottleneck that stalls the scheme—even with him having the full power of federal agencies.
Since February, Trump’s administration has averaged 14,700 deportations per month. That’s less than half of the former Obama administration’s 2013 average—36,000 per month—and only slightly above Biden’s early 2024 pace of around 12,660 per month (including border removals handled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection).
The data supports what immigration advocates have long said: Trump’s goals were unrealistic. There simply aren’t enough eligible people to deport quickly enough to reach that number legally. And when legal barriers arise, Trump seems eager to bypass due process to maintain appearances.
Legal safeguards are slowing things down—thankfully and for good reason. Immigration attorneys told NBC that many detainees are still waiting on asylum decisions or have court orders preventing deportation. These delays are part of the process. But Trump’s team views them as obstacles.
That impatience has already led to serious mistakes. ICE has wrongfully deported at least four immigrants recently, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Jordin Alexander Melgar-Salmeron, who were later ordered to be returned by judges.
Sister RoseAnn Castilleja, center, holds a Rosary and sign as she marches with other immigration advocates as they protest recent detentions by ICE, in San Antonio, Texas, on July 1.
Meanwhile, ICE detention centers are overwhelmed. NBC reports that more than 60,000 people are being detained, far exceeding the 41,500 beds funded by Congress. Overcrowding, poor hygiene, and medical neglect are reportedly widespread, even if Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin dismissed those claims as “categorically false.”
She also claimed ICE is working “diligently” to expand detention capacity.
That expansion may happen soon. Congress recently passed Trump’s vicious budget law, which allocates $45 billion to immigration enforcement and potentially tripling ICE’s detention capacity. Critics argue it won’t improve outcomes—just worsen dysfunction.
But as Trump’s team doubles down on dehumanizing rhetoric, they’re now stuck with a problem of their own making: trying to justify the threat they’ve spent years exaggerating.
After all, if the crisis were truly as severe as Trump and his allies claim, he wouldn’t be struggling to deliver on his biggest campaign promise. Instead, we’re watching his signature policy stumble against legal limits, logistical failures, and cold hard reality.
“What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority. You can’t get the list?…Put on your big boy pants, and let us know who the pedophiles are.” The “black book” is “under direct control of the director of the FBI…Release it all.”
Kash Patel today:
MAKE UP YOUR FEEBLE, DEMENTED MIND, YOU RAVING BULLSHIT ARTIST!!
This is the best way to get people to stop talking about Epstein?!?!?!
Meanwhile, enjoy this photo of a younger Trump with his daughter Ivanka and a pair of parrots copulating. And, NO, THIS IS NOT PHOTOSHOPPED.
Or how about this one — no, not Photoshopped.
Then, there’s always this one from a Trump publicity shoot in the early 1990’s.
The Pentagon has pulled the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly to lead the 7th Fleet following questions from a conservative news outlet about drag shows aboard an aircraft carrier nearly 10 years ago. Donnelly was nominated June 18 by President Donald Trump for promotion to vice admiral and command of 7th Fleet, based at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, and the Navy’s largest overseas force. However, Defense Secretary
Pete Hegseth has rescinded Donnelly’s nomination, an unidentified Pentagon spokesperson said Friday by email to Stars and Stripes. The spokesperson, who declined to identify themselves, would not comment on whether the decision to withdraw Donnelly’s nomination was related to drag shows.
Donnelly, currently the head of the Chief of Naval Operations’ air warfare division, was commander of the Ronald Reagan from 2016 to 2017. He also led Carrier Strike Group 5 and Task Force 70 at Yokosuka Naval Base from 2021 to 2023. While Donnelly was skipper of the Reagan, then-Petty Officer 3rd Class Joshua Kelley occasionally performed drag shows aboard the carrier under the stage name “Harpy Daniels.” Kelley also managed to win second place and a $1,000 Navy Exchange gift card in a lip-sync competition aboard the carrier, the Military Times reported in August 2018.
Let’s see if I understand this: SECDEF Hogsbreath can have a makeup room that he uses before appearing in public but drag shows on aircraft carriers are verboten? SECDEF Hogsbreath can get shit-faced, knee-walking, commode-hugging drunk and climb on stage and try to fuck a stripper, but . . . .
ICE Said They Were Being Flown to Louisiana. Their Flight Landed in Africa.
When eight men in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement boarded a plane in May, officials told them that they were being sent on a short trip from Texas to another ICE facility in Louisiana.
Many hours later, the plane landed in Djibouti. The men were held in shipping containers for weeks, shackles on their legs. This past weekend, they were expelled to the violence-plagued nation of South Sudan.
This deception, revealed by an Intercept investigation, highlights the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to further its anti-immigrant agenda and deport people to so-called third countries to which they have no connections.
Lawyers for three of the men said that their clients were told, after resisting deportation to Africa, that they were instead being transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana. ICE then hustled them onto a plane, in the wee hours of the morning, and flew them out of the country without their knowledge or consent. This account was further corroborated by the wife of one of those same men who was told about ICE’s tactics in real time.
“This underscores just how abysmal and reprehensible the government’s treatment of these men has been from the very beginning, and the fact that the government made no genuine attempt to comply with the district court injunction in place prior to shipping them out of the United States,” said Glenda Aldana Madrid, a staff attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project who is representing one of the men, Tuan Thanh Phan.
South Sudan is subject to a U.N. warning about the potential for full-scale civil war. South Sudan is also under a U.S. State Department “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory and the department advises those who choose to go there to draft a will, establish a proof of life protocol with family members, and leave DNA samples with one’s medical provider.
A community’s rapid response to a heavily militarized raid targeting undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles’ diverse MacArthur Park neighborhood helped stave off authorities.
Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park was strangely desolate on a summery Monday morning until the ground began to rumble.
Then, the convoy arrived: The eight-wheel diesel-powered U.S. Army tactical trucks, Humvees and armored vehicles — with roof hatches. They accompanied white, unmarked passenger vans and black SUVs, not to mention a large trailer containing numerous horses.
Federal agents use an armored truck to block off Wilshire Boulevard and Alvarado Street, the eastern road through MacArthur Park.
The Humvees blocked traffic on Wilshire Boulevard, which bisects the 35-acre park at the heart of this densely populated and famously Central American neighborhood west of Downtown Los Angeles, leaving diesel exhaust in their wake.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrived, along with its support, including U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback. Those agents wore black padded armor, helmets and, beneath them, masks that made them virtually unidentifiable.
Dozens of other masked agents, dressed in camouflage and tactical vests and heavily armed, emerged from armored cars and unmarked vans. Their faces too were hidden — beneath reflective glasses, military-style helmets and more masks. (Their U.S. Border Patrol patches were visible on their uniforms.) A black Department of Homeland Security helicopter circled overhead.
Meanwhile, the normal daily life of MacArthur Park had come to a halt. There were no children hanging from its jungle gyms, swinging from its bars or just running around on the playground. The parents who typically lounge about on the nearby benches, keeping an eye on their children, were gone, as though by some magic spell. The ambulant vendors who sell candy, fruit, juices, soft drinks and cheap plastic toys were nowhere to be seen. No one kicked a soccer ball.
Border Patrol agents atop horses equipped with protective armor march across an empty soccer pitch in MacArthur Park.
Other typical sounds of the park, like people speaking Spanish or the ancient Quiché Maya indigenous language from Central America, were gone. There was no music — no cumbias, merengue and reggaeton blasting from visitors’ handheld speakers — and no evangelical preachers quoting Bible verse to warn listeners of the End of Days on mobile speakers.
The previous day, warnings appeared — single sheets of paper taped to light poles, trees and fences around the park — warning locals to stay away. They cited rumors of possible ICE raids at MacArthur Park. Word also spread on Instagram, as well as other social media apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp.
A federal agent looks at a flyer taped to an electric box warning residents of rumored ICE raids that morning at MacArthur Park.
Ad hoc community defense groups that have formed in recent weeks to protect locals and document raids in many parts of Los Angeles played a substantial role in spreading the warnings in online discussion threads. Such efforts succeeded in essentially emptying the vast park of its habitual patrons.
So, when the agents on horseback and others swept through the park, they encountered little more than empty playgrounds, fields and benches. The agents, for the most part, advanced quickly. But the area wasn’t empty. Local Spanish-language television crews were ready to broadcast from their branded vans. Photographers representing the New York Times, the Associated Press, Agencia Press, the Los Angeles Times and other news organizations were present near the park’s amphitheater and beyond.
Dozens of anti-ICE rapid response team organizers, as well as legal observers in bright yellow t-shirts, stayed close, some speaking into megaphones to tell residents to stay away. One man rolled a mobile P.A. system that played a pre-recorded message in English and Spanish laying out people’s rights — to remain silent; to speak to an attorney; to ask for a signed warrant; and to not sign documents.
The cacophony of their announcements drew people out of surrounding businesses, medical offices and apartments, even as more reporters arrived to document the scale of the “raid,” as well as its lack of any apparent success in detaining people without papers.
A federal agent wears a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian scarf.
By the time agents walked from the west end of the park to the eastern edge, the rapid response teams and people in the neighborhood — collectively numbering in the hundreds — began to surround the agents and their cars, in some cases cutting them off from their own route out of the area. Some yelled, “ICE out of L.A!” Many recorded the confrontation on their phones, live streaming it onto Instagram and other social media platforms.
On the northeastern corner of the park, beyond the intersection of Sixth and Alvarado, a pair of dark SUVs attempted to drive into a traffic blockage where federal agents had shut down the intersection. The window of one of the vehicles, which had police sirens blaring, rolled down, revealing the head of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who peered out. Recognizing their mayor, people moved toward the vehicle, yelling at her to protect the city — before the vehicles made their way through traffic and onto Wilshire Boulevard. In a subsequent news conference, Mayor Bass described the Customs and Border Protection action at MacArthur Park as “outrageous and un-American.”
Federal agents gather on Wilshire Boulevard, empty of traffic because of federal vehicles blocking the road.
Soon after, the mounted officers retreated back to the horse trailers, and the armed agents returned to their vehicles.
A separate group of people followed armed agents back to another collection of parked vehicles. Agents gathered around a black armored car with a decal of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A gold stencil on the vehicle read “Special Response Team Police Rescue.” Atop the vehicle was a tripod-mounted rifle. Below, a rifleman peaked out of the roof hatch, looking east through the gun’s scope while aiming his weapon.
An agent in green camouflage with a police patch on his chest climbed into an SUV while one of his comrades moved a silver canister back and forth in his hands, his fingers playing with the pin as onlookers yelled, “Just go! Just go!” He eventually followed his colleagues into the car.
A rifleman with a tripod stands atop an armored truck on Wilshire Boulevard while another peers out of the roof hatch.
Slowly, the SUVs and white passenger vans drove onto Wilshire Boulevard as dozens of people walked alongside their vehicles, chanting: “ICE out of L.A.!”
The rifleman in the armored ICE truck — still hanging out of the roof hatch where the tripod was set up — put his fingers in the shape of a V to signal peace to the crowd as they drove away.
A flyer taped to a pole targets active military deployed in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, on the northwestern edge of the park, a crowd gathered near a social services building where the police officers, who had been present before ICE arrived, remained.
In front of someone recording a video, a man shouted at the officers: “What about them kidnapping us! You fucking pigs, fucking collaborators, motherfuckers!”
According to the Department of Homeland Security, 1,618 immigrants were detained for deportation in Los Angeles and surrounding regions of Southern California between June 6 and June 22.
Less than an hour after arriving, the Border Patrol and ICE agents were gone from MacArthur Park, along with the rest of their military convoy. It is unclear whether authorities detained anyone there on Monday.
After they departed, local vendors began to slowly return to the park, ringing their bells to attract customers as they did.
A vendor passed a sign taped to a pole nearby:
Military Members Is this what you signed up for?
Will you feel proud about what you’re being ordered to do when you look back on it?
If you have concerns about mobilizing against civilians, you’re not alone.
Leaked Emails Expose Trump’s DOJ Plot to Frame Abrego Garcia with Fake Evidence
I am neither shocked or surprised.
Newly released emails reveal that top officials in the Trump administration went to great lengths to falsely label Kilmar Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 gang leader. This effort unfolded even as the administration faced mounting pressure to return Garcia to the U.S. after wrongly deporting him to El Salvador.
The emails, handed over to Congress by a whistleblower from the Justice Department, shed new light on the administration’s desperate attempts to create a case against Garcia, despite a lack of evidence. These emails expose how the Trump team was determined to brand Garcia as a dangerous criminal, even though they knew the claim was baseless.
First it was “rapists, drug dealers, and murderers.”
Now it’s become anyone with brown skin that they can grab.
Next it will be anyone who disagrees with Trump.
They’re going to come for all of us
The narrative of the Trump administration’s deportation policy stated with “violent criminals”, the worst of the worst. Then it was just “criminals”, and yes, if you were undocumented, you were a criminal. Never mind that this was all bullshit, that ICE was snatching anybody, including citizens, this was the narrative.
Then the administration has decided to step into another narrative, ending birthright citizenship, because, I don’t know, brown anchor babies or some such crap.
I keep tabs on these people, forewarned is forearmsed, etc. The other day I ran across a couple of articles in The Federalist that set alarm bells to ringing.
“Not Everyone With U.S. Citizenship Is Actually An American”
“Liberals today — and not a few self-described conservatives — would decry much of this as racist and bigoted. The entire idea of an American identity has been rejected in favor of the flimsy notion that America is merely an idea. Anyone from any part of the world, goes the thinking, can become an American so long as he assents to a set of abstract propositions about individual rights and goes through a neutral administrative process.
According to this attenuated view of American identity, being an American doesn’t mean loyalty to this country, gratitude for its glorious history, reverence for its founders and heroes, or love for its people and land. It certainly doesn’t mean adherence to a common morality, language, or way of life. It simply means securing a set of documents that confer citizenship, or even just legal status. For such people, it doesn’t really matter what you love or where your loyalties lie; all that matters is that you have sufficiently engaged the relevant bureaucracies.
This of course is how you destroy a nation. As Aristotle explained at the beginning of his Politics, the nation comes into being through the civic comity and natural affection that arise from a common language, morality, and culture, which he calls philia. From this arises telos, which is the natural end or purpose of a thing. In American political terms, we might say that our national telos is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — understanding that last phrase, “pursuit of happiness,” to mean what the founders meant: not a relativistic seeking after pleasure or fulfillment, but the acquisition of moral virtue.” https://thefederalist.com/2025/07/02/not-everyone-with-u-s-citizenship-is-actually-an-american/
“It Should Be Obvious By Now That Not Everyone Can Become An American”
“I wrote last week that in America today not everyone with citizenship is actually an American. To some, this might sound incendiary or extreme. Certainly it violates the tenets of multiculturalism that have been ascendent in America for decades now. But it’s actually just a straightforward observation of reality — so long as we understand that being an American means something more than merely securing legal documents or going through a neutral administrative process. Doing so might confer citizenship, but it will not make someone an American.”
snip
“But beyond immigration, Vance is touching on something essential about America that has been largely lost, suppressed really, for more than a generation: America is not just a “propositional nation,” not just an idea but a people. That’s why you cannot export the Constitution to some random country and expect the same kind of government or suddenly import millions of people from foreign lands and expect America to survive. We are not a set of abstract propositions to which anyone from any part of the world can assent and suddenly become an American. We are a people with a common language, culture, history, customs, and so on.
About 20 years ago, Pat Buchanan had a more pugnacious version of what Vance said: “It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no ‘proposition nation’ can erase.”
This is an important point, and it has to be asserted even at the risk of being falsely accused of racism or xenophobia. A nation requires a certain amount of cultural cohesion — common language, customs, morality, and way of life. That means some cultures and creeds are simply not compatible with American civilization. Multiculturalism, in other words, is a dangerous delusion that, combined with mass immigration, is a nation-destroyer.” https://thefederalist.com/2025/07/11/it-should-be-obvious-by-now-that-not-everyone-can-become-an-american/
I find this attitude chilling, it is essentially, and not so subtly, saying that if you don’t believe in America as a God fearing, conservative, straight, white, christian nation, you don’t belong here, whether you’re a citizen or not, whether you were just naturalized or your family goes back generations, you are not a “real” American, and you need to be, at the least, kicked out of the country.
This is why they’re pushing so hard for ending birthright citizenship, for the ability to denaturalize citizens. They want the capability to kick out anyone who doesn’t fit their definition of a real citizen.
Expect more propaganda like this, softening up both their supporters and the public at large. Expect even worse than this, for once you make your fellow human being an “other” or “not a real” whatever, you open the door to all kind of atrocities.
Forewarned, forearmed, etc. This is coming.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
— Martin Niemöller
After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Niemöller became an outspoken critic of Hitler’s interference in the Protestant Church. He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule, from 1937 to 1945, in Nazi prisons and concentration camps.
