Judges who don’t hold back: The only vigilant branch weaponizes wit

[The original version of this blog can be found on Substack here.].                                 Feb. 7, 2026

[Updated Feb. 13, 2026] 

Ever since Alexander Hamilton penned Federalist 78 in 1788, “like he was running out of time,” the Judiciary has been thought to “always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution.” Why’d Hamilton believe that? He wrote, “because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.” 

That’s become ironic. 

He explained, “It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL [caps Hamilton’s, not mine or Trump’s], but merely judgment.” That’s become prescient. 

Today, as the separation of powers separates one branch - a hapless, craven legislature divided across aisles of rhetoric and showmanship – from a self-proclaimed unitary executive who’s been granted “presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts” and whose power in international affairs is limited only by his “own morality” – from a Supreme Court majority that has openly coveted partisanship, bias, and corruption. 

It would be understandable to conclude that all three branches of American government are in Trump’s pocket. Checkmate. 

In just over one year, the Trump administration has had its litigious hands full. The Lawfare Institute has documented what it calls The Trials of the Trump Administration. It’s updated daily and it outpaces accountants at tax time. 

Mind the small print. Federalist 78 is about “The Judiciary Department.” There’s more to the Judiciary than the Supreme Court. 

Though we’ve grown accustomed to the Supreme Court planting its big feet on lower court rulings, often without oral arguments or signed opinions, lower court judges know how to think and write. 

Cadres of judges who hail from the Judiciary are not holding back. They’ve transformed the least dangerous branch into the only vigilant branch. They’ve preserved judgment and in lieu of force and will, weaponized wit. 

[Click here for the NYT story.]

The judges don’t mince words. They recognize that words won’t be erased even if the Supreme Court overturns their decisions. 

There’s Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who, the other day, permanently blocked two provisions of a Trump executive order that sought to impose proof-of-citizenship rules on elections. 

She wrote, “Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures.” 

Sometimes, it’s simple. 

Within days of Trump taking the oath of office, Federal Judge John C. Coughenour issued a ruling temporarily blocking President Trump’s executive order that aimed to end birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants in the U.S. temporarily or without legal status. 

He wrote: “I’ve been on the bench for four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is,” Coughenour said, describing Trump’s order as “blatantly unconstitutional.” 

He had more to say: “There are other times in world history where we look back and people of goodwill can say, ‘Where were the judges? Where were the lawyers?’ “ the judge said, according to KUOW News. 

With the Supreme Court securely entrenched, the issue of birthright citizenship may be “blatantly unconstitutional”…for now. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments this coming April Fool’s Day. 

Tis a gift to be simple. Some cases bear other gifts. 

In the high profile detention case the other day of Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R., Federal Judge Fred Biery for the Western District of Texas, described the case this way: 

It has its “genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.” Ouch. Not nearly done. 

“Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence.” Historical ouch. 

“Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were: 1. “He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.” 2. “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.” 3. “For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.” 4. “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.” 

The judge continued, “’We the people are hearing echos of that history.” 

He went on, with pen just warming up. “And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment. From simple to pesky. 

“Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.” 

From pesky through civics all the way to perfidy, lust, cruelty and human indecency. This judge is witty but not kidding. 

“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.” 

Signing off, he wrote: “With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike.” 

Also last week, another federal judge, Ana Reyes, felt the need to hold the Trump administration accountable when she found it claiming one thing to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians and spewing another thing to vilify Haitians in flagrant efforts to talk out of both sides of foul federal mouths. 

She too provided an unsolicited history lesson: “On Dec. 2, 1783, then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington penned: ‘America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions.’ 

“More than two centuries later, Congress reaffirmed President Washington’s vision by establishing the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. It provides humanitarian relief to foreign nationals in the United States who come from disaster-stricken countries. It also brings in substantial revenue, with TPS holders generating $5.2 billion in taxes annually.” 

The judge introduced the five Haitian TPS holders who had filed suit. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said publicly of Haitians that they should not have protective status because they are “killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.” Turns out the five are: a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease, a software engineer at a national bank, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department, a college economics major, and a full-time registered nurse. 

Judge Reyes found that it “seems substantially likely that Noem “preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” DHS sought to terminate protective status because conditions in Haiti are merely “concerning” and that harm to the Haitians if returned is speculative. For some reason, the Trump administration included in its briefs the State Dept’s travel warnings. 

[Click here for the full Haiti travel warnings.]

The judge noted that ‘Do not travel to Haiti for any reason’ “does not exactly scream, as Secretary Noem concluded, suitable for return.” Oops. Caught between a rock and a hard place to survive. 

The judge also questioned the Trump administration’s policy complaints; the strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. The government’s answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight. The complaints of strains to our economy. The answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. The strains to our healthcare system. The answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. 

“This approach is many things,” the judge concluded—”in the public interest is not one of them.” 

Then there’s Federal Judge April M. Perry who addressed the deployment of National Guard troops from Illinois and Texas over the objection of Illinois’ governor. 

Federal agents had informed local police in the Chicago suburb that of Broadview that they should prepare for an increase in the use of chemical agents and ICE activity and that it was “going to be a shitshow.” The parties had divergent takes on what was occurring on the ground. The judge tried to tease out the truth. She noted “a troubling trend of Defendants’ declarants equating protests with riots and a lack of appreciation for the wide spectrum that exists between citizens who are observing, questioning, and criticizing their government, and those who are obstructing, assaulting, or doing violence.” 

“The lens through which we view the world changes our perception of the events around us,” she reasoned. Law enforcement officers who go into an event expecting ‘a shitshow’ are much more likely to experience one than those who go into the event prepared to de-escalate it…This indicates to the Court both bias and lack of objectivity.” 

The final straw for the judge was to remind the Trump lawyers who’d repeatedly referred to the idea that protestors who wear gas masks are demonstrating a desire to do physical violence to law enforcement, even when pressed by the Court that masks are protective equipment, not offensive weapons.” 

Presumably, she added, Trump’s lawyers don’t believe that the CBP officers who have engaged in street patrols in and around Chicago are also demonstrating a desire to do physical violence, though they are both wearing masks and carrying weapons. Additionally, the judge noted that despite the claim that protestors are wearing gas masks, most of the photos submitted by agents showed protesters wearing Covid-19 masks. 

Let’s not leave out Federal Judge Robert Gettleman who addressed the conditions in the ICE detention facility in Broadview. He described conditions for detainees as “sleeping shoulder to shoulder next to filthy toilets that are overflowing, surrounded by human waste. It’s just unacceptable.” 

We take you now across the country to Portland, Oregon and Federal Judge Karin J. Immergut who took judicial notice that in Sept. 2025, Trump posted a message on his Truth Social account stating that he was directing Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, to provide troops to protect “War ravaged Portland” from “Antifa, and other domestic terrorists” and authorizing “Full Force, if necessary.” 

She concluded: “This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs…This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of this nation.” 

For now, we’ll give Federal Judge William Young the last words. A good thing too because his opinion ran 161 pages. Ostensibly the case was about the deportation of non-citizen activists at colleges. 

Judge Young wrote that Trump “ignores everything…The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies – all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act.” The judge apparently had been holding it in: “While the President naturally seeks warm cheering and gladsome, welcoming acceptance of his views, in the real world he’ll settle for sullen silence and obedience. What he will not countenance is dissent or disagreement.” 

“From the start of his political career, demonizing immigrants has been Trump’s stock in trade. Since his return to office, he has been unusually aggressive in his campaign to round up, detain and deport people whose citizenship status is questionable, and, in some cases, citizens have been caught up in the dragnet. The administration has repeatedly violated the constitution by targeting people because of how they look or the sound of their accents. It has even singled them out because of what they have said or written.” 

Since I wrote this, yet another case coursed through the courts. 

Federal Judge Richard J. Leon barred Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from enforcing a censure against Kelly over comments that the Arizona Democrat made in a social media video that reminded service members that they can refuse illegal orders. 

“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” Judge Leon wrote in a 29-page opinion. 

He continued, “Rather than trying to shrink the First Amendment liberties of retired service members, Secretary Hegseth and his fellow Defendants might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired servicemembers have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our Nation over the past 250 years. If so, they will more fully appreciate why the Founding Fathers made free speech the first Amendment in the Bill of Rights!” 

The judge threw hypocrisy right back in the faces of Trump and his team by citing remarks from a speech Hegseth gave in 2016: “If you’re doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military said it won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief. … There’s a belief that we are above what so many things that our enemies or others would do.” 

In case you’re curious or conspiratorial, the judges, in order of appearance in this essay, were appointed to the federal bench by…Presidents Clinton, Reagan, Clinton, Biden, Biden, Clinton, Trump, Reagan and George W. Bush. 

The MAGA right likes to invoke “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to call out negative reactions to Trump, his policies and his cronies. Trump likes to say he tells it like it is.

Thankfully, there are still judges who recognize wherein the derangement syndrome lies and who are willing to tell Trump and his team that what they do is tell it like they don’t care what is. What they actually tell is whitewash. They the judges and we the people are all that are left to hold them accountable. 

 #####

Sinners who brandish the torch: Keep an eye on Philly as you keep Minneapolis in your line of vision

         [The original version of this blog can be found on Substack here.]                                                                                                                                                                                                      Jan. 30, 2026 

We watched the movie “Sinners” last week, and as we often do after movies, we consulted reviews and stories on the web. “Sinners” has been nominated for 16 academy awards, the most ever in the history of the Oscars. Its storyline is described as a Southern Gothic horror about twin Black gangsters, returning to the Jim Crow South in the 1930s to open a juke joint in the face of supernatural evil personified by vampires. 

With music and dance as driving elements, it explores themes of race, culture, generational trauma and struggles for Black freedom and identity. It represents survival, resilience, and the adaptation to modern life while honoring one’s roots. 

Not quite the movie I’d expect Trump and MAGAs to promote for Oscars. 

The scene of the exuberant opening night of the juke joint reminded me of the wedding scene in Fiddler on the Roof. In Fiddler, the wedding’s Kabbalistic frenzy is accentuated by the flamboyant Kasotsky dancing of neighborly Russians. Only to be jarringly engulfed by Russian Cossack vigilantes on horseback who torch the venue, ushering in a pogrom. 

In “Sinners,” neighborly, but zombie-looking whites preach love as they try to add their music to the festivities. Only to emerge as vampires who literally and figuratively suck the blood from the community before torching the venue. 

The final scene in Fiddler is of Tevye pulling the family pushcart during the exodus from Anatevka. Behind him, a mystical fiddler is prancing along, symbolizing the precarious balance of playing music on a roof or in a diaspora in the generational commitment to maintaining cultural traditions while navigating a rapidly changing, often hostile world.

The final scene in “Sinners” is of Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy who symbolizes the resilience that honoring one’s roots can be the enduring antidote to generational trauma that at best enjoys latency periods. 

Music is a tie that binds Jews, blacks and others whose identities are generationally attacked and smothered. As is legacy and oral history. They are more indelible especially when history itself is being erased and whitewashed by a process of elimination. For fellow Jews who are seduced by the Trumpian horse goose steps against anti-semitism, you might want to keep any eye on Philadelphia as you keep Minneapolis in your line of vision. 

In Philly at the corner of 6th and Market Streets sits the President’s House, a short walk from Independence Hall. They are being prepped for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence later in the year. The outdoor exhibit at the President’s House entitled “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” depicts how Presidents Washington and Adams, and their households, once lived and worked at a house on the site. 

[President’s House at night - Click here to view a gallery of the site] 

Though the house was demolished in 1832, it’s being preserved through videos shared from the perspective of nine enslaved individuals who lived and worked here. That is, until the other day when an intrepid band of marauding federal officials (no relation to ICE or Homeland Security as far as I know) began removing exhibit panels at the behest of yet another Trump Executive Order, ironically entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” 

National Park Service workers removing exhibit panels [Click here for the ABC News story] 

Philly, the city of Brotherly Litigation, filed suit last week to keep the exhibits from being taken down. 

So far, there’s no indication that Trump and his National Park Service erasure teams have torched the exhibits. After all, the park service teams aren’t wearing masks to cloak their identities. Torchings may be the most visually incendiary tools of intimidation and subjugation, but why brandish torches and hide behind masks when a smokescreen of restoration and truth social can get the whitewashing done? 

If all goes according to Trumpian plan, before we know it, there will have been no slavery in the U.S., no Jim Crow, and no nine slaves living and working in the President’s House alongside Presidents Washington and Adams. Anti-semitism will have existed only in the service of extortion, and no immigrants will have soiled the gene pool and polluted the electorate. 

At least then, as Lee Greenwood sings for Trump, I could be proud to be an American.

######

Dept. of Left-Leaning Sanctions (DOLLS) convenes

 

[links added] 

Leaked Minutes from the Nov. 3, 2025 meeting of the Dept. of Left-Leaning Sanctions (DOLLS) 

Chair: As we convene the first meeting of this task force one year before the 2026 elections, it is critical that we clarify publicly the purposes of the task force. It is clear that the radical left is preparing to undermine America’s sacred election process. They already have in place cities filled with dangerous illegal immigrants who are being recruited to vote by mail and to keep lawful citizens from going to the polls. They have conspired to blanket late night television with the support of rich celebrities and Hollywood. Studies show that 97% of the guests and hosts are left wing radicals who are intent on polluting the airwaves with Marxist, trans, gay and anti-family propaganda that mirror decades of attempts to distort public school and college curricula. 

Our agenda today is to flesh out strategies that neutralize the radical left and that are road tested to succeed by building on the ground tactics that are in place. Democracy is at stake. 

We have only one person to thank for the vision to take on this awe inspiring mission and that is our fearless leader, the gilded Donald Trump. He is with us this morning to weave the charge for our task force and the nation. 

 Member 1: You are our great and noble warrior. / Member 2: We honor you as you prepare to contest the Nobel Peace and Pretense Award that will not be presented until Dec. 10. / Member 3: You are a man who has never lost a golf game. Not even close. / Member 4: You are a hunk, I dare say, who gets my juices flowing. / Member 5: On a personal level, you are a thoughtful leader who donated your own money to buy my cat her pajamas. / Member 6: You are a strong, strongman who could have invaded Greenland had he wanted to. / Member 7: You are the only president to have ever had all the nation’s generals in rapt attention. / Member 8: You are a man who can smell a stolen election when it’s cooked up. / Member 9: You are a paragon whose face will finally adorn both the one dollar coin, emblazoned with Fight, Fight, Fight and the $100,000 H1B note, under the motto: In Sanity We Trust / Member 10: You are a humble leader who prefers Generalissimo to the Fuhrer. 

[A collective Amen rings out] 

Click here to go to Politico story 

Trump: Please stand and take your seats. I came up with the idea for the Dept. of Left-Leaning Sanctions out of holy cloth. No one had ever thought of it. I made sure that the acronyism, the abbrevization is something memorable, not like DOGE, your predecessor task force, which was an unqualified success in that almost no one remembers that Elon Musk pledged to reduce federal spending by $2 trillion, and just as few have followed up to check on the 20 million people who’ve received Social Security past age 100 or the $2.7 trillion in improper Medicaid and Medicare payments to people overseas. Data that doesn’t exist shows that more unneeded federal employees were eliminated to save costs than necessary employees were eliminated and then rehired by a ratio of 20:∞. It is also not the case that Musk made more in personal investments from his government work than I did. On the other side of the ledger, I improved on the name to avoid clever comebacks like calling the task force Doggy. To counter that shortfall, this task force shall be named DOLLS for the Dept. of Left-Leaning Sanctions. All those in favor say “Dolls.” 

Chair: Motion carried. 

Trump: I want you to be the first to know that Congressional leaders and sycophants have agreed that attempts to open up the so-called Epstein files have terminated. As the good contributors at Lays Potato Chips once wisely said, “They tried, but they couldn’t do. Nobody can have just one.” They included me in their commercials back in the late ‘60s. 

To commemorate the occasion, I named this task force DOLLS. The sick Democrats will no longer be able to claim that I once surrounded myself with underage girls. Just look at the DOLLS I surround myself with now. I call them the MAGA cougars. They are the finest cougars. You don’t find cougars like them on late night TV. We have Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, Kristie Noem, Kari Lake, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Katie Britt, Asley Moody, Anna Paulina Luna, Pam Bondi, Jeanine Pirro, Karoline Leavitt, Kimberly Gilfoyle, Vanessa Trump, Lara Trump and Tiffany Trump. We’re so close, some are like family. I added Marjorie Taylor Greene when she agreed to drop the Epstein nonsense. You can call it a harem. I call it a woke-proof catalog. The left can’t touch them. They wouldn’t dare gang up on them. Imply that a woman isn’t qualified because of her looks? Three-D checkmate. Silence is golden. The best part is they fly below the polling radar. Why do you think we won the male youth vote so convincingly? Biden stole the election in 2020, claiming 56% of young men voted for him. In 2024, when the election wasn’t rigged, 56% voted for me. Young white men are horny, as they should be. I was. Fake pollsters are clueless. At least Newsweek is paying attention. 

Just look at the polling on our big beautiful government shutdown. Democrats blame the Republicans. The Republicans blame back. The pollsters made up that the public blamed me. My favorability is sky high. With the government closed, we’re emptying offices, firing dead weight, more of the worst of the worst. We get sued. We lose in one court, lose in another, the court actions are stayed, the cases get up to the Supreme Court. We win. Open and shut cases. Shadow dockets are like ICE in masks. See no evil. Hard to speak evil. 

If evil is spoken, we shut it up quickly. That’s why I love big business. The bigger, the better to leverage what’s needed. To them, millions is chump change and they’re the chumps. Corporate chumps, law firm chumps, university chumps. Media chumps, I love them. 

We’ve done our homework 20-25 times over. 

The Jews love us. Anti-Semitism is MAGA’s gold-plated issue. And we get to replace college curriculums. fund the Presidential library, gild the White House lillies in its name. Bibi does what he wants. I scold him. I sound tough. I am tough. We’re two peas in a knish. He won’t let Palestinians speak in the Middle East, I won’t let them speak here. 

I called in the military to Quantico to feel them out. Can we trust them like we can trust ICE and the Homeland Security Task Forces (HESTAFO) reinforcements? ICE agents make $50,000-$90,000 a year, not counting overtime, benefits and bonuses. Recently hired HESTAFO agents are entitled to hiring bonuses of $50,000 to go with the overtime, benefits and a chance to meet Kristi. No costs or college needed, and we fast track background investigations. 

I trust each and every one of them. They know that because of the government shutdown, they won’t get any of that money unless I know they’ve done the job we ask them to do. That’s why I trust Tom Homan. He knows if he doesn’t do the job we ask him to do, there’s that $50,000 in a cash bag he’ll need to account for. I love employees like Tom. 

But the military - the collection of dudes in dresses, or females who can’t keep up, or the fat generals and admirals. We called them in to prepare them for the war from within, the radical left in the cities. The cities are the training grounds for wars around the world, particularly for now in and around Venezuela. Hear that, Greenland. Sanctuary cities have a bullseye on their churches and schools. I call it the grand Trump invasion. Unprecedented. For the generals and the military too, if they don’t agree with the program, they can resign and give up their rank and security. We are taking over the cities to bring the violence rates down to keep pace with the reductions in violence already happening, to deport animals and to give this department the boost it needs to break out more left-leaning sanctions. 

The fake polls don’t matter. They claim to show problems with the economy when the stock markets are going through the roof. Boo hoo for Americans when 62% of the people own stocks. You don’t have to believe me. Even Gallup says so. You don’t read that in the fake media. 

All fake news reports on is Medicare this and Medicaid that. People don’t know the difference and they don’t care. No matter how much the media calls our policies setbacks, it’s child’s play to paper over it. What Americans care about is gas, food, and money in their pockets. We’re even covered on Social Security. The government shutdown doesn’t stop those checks from rolling in. 

We can ride the tail of AI and hold out for months. Smart families can rake in billions in plain sight. Let the primaries play out, watch the dominoes fall, let the radical left and the Democrats claw at each other and spend money, they have no issues. They’ll keep calling me names and put all their eggs in an economy basket. 

Click here for more Trump gifs

Then around Easter egg time, as Americans are thinking about their income taxes, and we ratchet up America 250, we’ll drop a big beautiful rebate on people, carefully selected for optimal election return. If that doesn’t move the numbers and silence any remaining critics, you at DOLLS can dig in and go into voter integrity mode. Have a good meeting. 

Chair: Thank you, Mr. President. We know you have your work cut out for you over the next month to contest The Noble Prize elections. You know the drill. 

                                                                             #####

My revelation about ICE and their masks: Is ICE Today’s Klan?

I have been associating ICE and their growing posse of Homeland Security Task Forces (HESTAFO) reinforcements with the GESTAPO in Nazi Germany and Poland, where my grandparents and two of their children were rounded up, transported and executed. They were considered animals, dangerous and illegal by Nazi law. 

Yesterday I had a revelation that at first made me deeply embarrassed that my understandable association apparently blinded me to a parallel, more obvious and closer to my American home. The epiphany came when I heard the powerful dirge Is ICE Today’s Klan? sung by Louise, whom I don’t know, as part of the regular podcast Thom Hartmann’s Daily Take. 

The parallel to the Klan was even more chilling in that the Gestapo didn’t wear masks when they did their armed roundups with governmental impunity and societal acquiescence. ICE and the Hestafo do. So did the Klan. Why? As Republicans have maintained and Fox News drives home, because their identities need to be concealed and their personal safety needs to be protected, especially in this era of social media and doxxing. But how are those arrested, harassed and rounded up supposed to know if the masked, armed, unidentified folk are authorized federal agents or marauders? After all, as Trump keeps saying and Fox News reinforces, the cities are violent, lawless, “burning hell holes,” plagued by non-stop violent crime and homelessness. Odd. Have gang bangers and drug dealers turned to using tear gas, kidnapping and disappearing community people. Maybe they get even surlier when the community chants USA, USA. At this point in Trump’s invasions, communities no longer confuse federal agents with violent gang members or drug dealers. The fear of violence in the cities is of the agents. 

It is tricky, though. How are communities and their locally elected officials to document when masked or unidentified federal agents act beyond their authorization to physically abuse people or spew profanities and racist barkings? Trump and federal agents are disinclined to welcome protesting to get points across. Cameras and videos help, even in an era of deepfakes and fabricated images. Hard to tell who the domestic terrorists are. Kristi Noem has even said: “Violence is anything that threatens [agents] and their safety, so it is doxxing them, it’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations, encouraging other people to come and to throw things, rocks, bottles.” No wonder there’s violence in America’s cities with masked, armed agents skulking about. 

This is not the first time Chicago has been invaded by federal troops following orders. In 1850, in the aftermath of congressional passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, compelling cities to help capture and return Black people fleeing slavery, the federal government deputized local officials to enforce slavery. The City Council denounced the law as “cruel and unjust,” ordering police not to assist in its enforcement, as noted by Claudia Fegan and Linda Rae Murray in the Oct. 13 Chicago Sun-Times. As they put it, “Chicago made a choice. It chose justice over compliance. It chose to defend the humanity of those the federal government deemed ‘fugitives.’ Today, that moral tradition is being called upon again.” And the Trump administration is treating it as violence. 

The Hartmann report is eye opening and includes historical analogs to the Ku Klu Klan. “Both [ICE and the KKK] used legal or quasi-legal authority, masked identities, and violent or coercive tactics to carry out their missions, all without individual accountability while targeting vulnerable minorities and subverting legal norms to do so.” To this day, the masked anonymity of the KKK has kept the identities of all but a few KKK leaders hidden, with no accountability. The masks are perpetual care shields. 

The societal result was that almost 20 states made it a crime for a law enforcement officer or anybody else to appear disguised and armed. Many of the laws are still on the books. Interestingly, in 1999, the Indiana law was overturned by a federal court which found that forcing Klan members to remove their hoods could subject them to harassment and impinge on their “right to anonymity when past harassment makes it likely that disclosing the members’ [identities] would impact the group’s ability to pursue its collective efforts at advocacy.” 

In California, Gov. Newsom signed a bill into law recently that bans state and federal law enforcement from wearing masks on the job. Trump’s response? “We don’t need to abide by this garbage,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said on social media, according to Fox News. Seems consistent with the administration party line and attitude. In her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Pam Bondi told the committee that she was hearing for the first time about reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during roundups. 

All this registered with me, and was reinforced when I listened to the haunting dirge that the report included at the end. Can’t get it out of my head. 

Click here to go to Louise’s substack site 

“They knock on the doors where the weary hearts hide and the wind carries whispers of those who have cried”… 

 “The say it’s the law but whose law is it now? The same law that once wore a hood and a vow. 

'Is ICE today’s Klan? Beneath a new command. They hide behind badges, they hide behind claims. If justice is blind, then who leads her hand?”… 

'They say it’s protection they say it’s the law. But mercy’s the first thing they ever withdraw”… 

 

'They say you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, but the masked men are coming and they’re already here”… 

'The mask never lifts, it just learned how to plan.” 

                                                                            ######

Yiddish dictionary redefines chutzpah: Nobel Peace Prize goes to Venezuelan

The most authoritative source on Yiddish has revised its classic definition of chutzpah. 

For years, Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish defined chutzpah as “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ‘guts,’ presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to.” In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and condemnation. 

The definition now simply says Donald Trump, followed by the fuller definition, a photo, and the following examples: 

• People, usually male, who assume they deserve an award for showing up, no matter what they do when they do. 
• People who campaign for awards as if they’re a movie studio hawking for an Oscar, boasting repeatedly of settling 5, 6, 7, 8 wars, in case a prize committee has lost count. “Nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months. And I’ve stopped eight wars. That’s never happened before.” 

• People who fill the airwaves with sycophantic pretty boys who do their bidding for them. 

• People who’ve mastered self-serving hyperbole. In its opinion piece, The Daily Beast wrote: “His biblical comparison for the Middle East peace deal proves he can’t quiet his own Trump-et blast. Nearly 3,000 years ago, the Old Testament predicted the coming of the ‘Prince of Peace.’ (Isaiah 9:6). And on the 9th day of October 2025, President Donald J. Trump came close to suggesting he might have been who Isaiah had in mind. The whole world has come together, but the Middle East has come together for the first time in 3,000 years…. “When he says to anybody who will listen that he is bringing peace to the Middle East after 3,000 years, he is more histrionic than historical.” 
• People who put their face on a coin in violation of federal law that prohibits the image on both sides of the coin and provides that only the deceased can appear on U.S. currency. No such provision exists for Nobel Prize commemorative coins.

Doctored photo of a mythical Nobel Prize commemorative coin
with Maria Corina Machado on it 

• A person who orders the “lethal kinetic strikes” of presumed drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, killing multiple people on board, according to Fox News, demonstrating that there are apparent alternative paths to a peace prize rather than one for “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” 
• People who order invasions of cities, like Portland and Chicago, in their own country. 
• A person who changes the name of a cabinet department from the Defense Department to the War Department and stakes out a claim for a peace prize. 
• The 1992 book by Alan Dershowitz that had the chutzpah to be named Chutzpah opens with “American Jews need more chutzpah.” American Jews know where they can find it; in the author, his confidant and client Joseph Epstein, and Trump, all who share the secrets of a sex pedophile scandal. 
• One of chutzpah’s most ardent practitioners, Texas Senator Ted Cruz who knows whereof he speaks and at whom to point the finger, uses the term frequently. 
• A person who is touted for a Nobel Peace Prize by a leader who is accused by the International Criminal Court of the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare, of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population, and of the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. 
• A man whose advisers complain of not winning an award because the awards committee “placed politics over peace,” using those very words, as if scripted. Roll call - White House communications director Steven Cheung; Katie Miller, the former White House staffer and wife of deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller; Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump; and Vladimir Putin. “No one deserves it more than President Trump. But we know these people who establish who wins the Nobel Peace Prize hate Donald Trump. They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. And in our hearts, he will be winning the Nobel Peace Prize. We know that for sure,” Lara Trump said. 

To go to the story, click here 

Someone taught GOP Congressman Richard Hudson’s staff how to use AI and they went to town and placed bootlicking over both politics and peace. 

In public, Trump, flashing the characteristic humility of a self-proclaimed runner up, did not complain about not getting the prize. He said that the person who received the award called him to thank him and tell him she’s accepting the award in honor of him because he really deserved it. “I didn’t say ‘then give it to me,’” he joked, adding that he’s been helping her along the way. Forever the jokester. 

Postscript: In response to the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, the recipient, Maria Corina Machado, in hiding from the Venezuelan government, tweeted her appreciation to the Venezuelan people and to Trump:

In response to the White House’s complaints that Trump did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize Committee stated, “The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of the population are not unique in the world…We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation.” 

On its official website, the Nobel Prize wrote, “It was a choice of ballots over bullets”. 

And as I wrote in another post the other day, the award won’t be presented until Dec. 10. Trump has plenty of time to mobilize his people to contest the award in ways only he knows how. 

Click here to go to the story 

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I’m confused about child sex trafficking: Happy birthday, Jeffrey

[The original version of this blog can be found here.]

ICE and the Hestafo seem intent on going after child sex traffickers and their kind. Sensible. 

I check out the ICE twitter site regularly and receive updates from Homeland Security’s Office of Public Affairs. Child sex traffickers are at the core of the “Worst of the Worst,” just the types of immigrants whose arrests are ballyhooed, sometimes with Kristi Noem on horseback, to take attention off the wholesale roundups of immigrants, lawful permanent residents and visa overstayers. 

Last week, for instance, the headline for one of Homeland Security’s updates read: “Pedophiles, Abusers, Rapists, and Other Violent Thugs Arrested in Operation Midway Blitz.” I paid particular attention because Operation Midway Blitz is the code name for the infiltration of the sanctuary city of Chicago, my hometown. 

Among the worst of the worst who were arrested are Carlos a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, arrested for aggravated sexual assault of a child family member; Hector, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, arrested for domestic battery; Bernardino, a criminal illegal alien and registered sex offender from Mexico, convicted of aggravated sexual assault victim 13-17, and a sex offender registration violation; Bolotbek, a criminal illegal alien from Kyrgyzstan, previously charged with domestic battery/bodily harm; Juan, a 41-year-old sexual predator from Mexico, convicted of criminal sexual abuse of a child; and Jose, a 39-year-old criminal alien from Guatemala, who has pending charges for domestic violence. Again sensible. 

Still, I’m confused. In a speech last week at the Religious Liberty Commission’s meeting at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., President Trump downplayed the severity of domestic violence crimes, saying that were it not for “things that take place in the home they call crime,” the deployment of National Guard troop in DC would have resulted in a bigger statistical reduction in crime. 

“They said, ‘Crime’s down 87 percent.’ I said, no, no, no — it’s more than 87 percent, virtually nothing. And much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime. You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. See? So now I can’t claim 100 percent, but we are. We are a safe city,” Trump said. 

 Click here to go to story 

I can’t tell if I should take child sex trafficking, sex with minors, and domestic violence seriously or not. 

Most of us recall the Access Hollywood video, with transcript, of Trump bragging to TV host Billy Bush about trying to have sex with a woman, whom he moved on “like a bitch.” It was leaked right before the 2016 election. 

“I couldn't get there and she was married. Then all-of-a-sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look. 

“When you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." 

That was different. The woman wasn’t an underage girl and he apologized for what he and others, including his wife Melania, called “locker room talk" or boy talk. 

“No one has more respect for women than I do,” said Trump. 

Jeffrey Epstein is a sex-trafficker of a different color. 

In July 2019, he was arrested in New York and charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. That was more than 10 years after he pleaded guilty and was convicted in Florida for procuring a child for prostitution. His plea deal allowed him to be released after 13 months in custody, with extensive work release. He never went to trial in NY. He died in his jail cell a month after his arrest. Medical examiner’s conclusion: suicide by hanging. Almost three minutes of cell block footage of the time of death is missing. 

On the other hand, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, his long-time associate, who recruited young girls for him, did go to trial. She was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping him procure girls, for child sexual abuse and prostitution. She’s served about three years of a 20-year federal prison sentence and is counting on Trump to do something about it. 

In 2003, before Epstein served any time, when he was living the high life, with a net worth at about $300 million, he turned 50. He celebrated. Many luminaries celebrated with him and conveyed their wishes. The wishes were compiled by Maxwell in a 238-page birthday book that is now in the possession of Epstein’s estate. The book is replete with photos, poems and doodles. Much has been redacted, in particular, but not only, to protect the identities of underage girls. 

Epstein's birthday book, pages 94, 96, 112, 208, 216 & 217

 

 

Page 165 is Trump’s page. It is not redacted. It comes right after some guy named Stuey’s page of limericks: “Jeffrey at half a century, with credentials plenipotentiary, Though up to no good whenever he could has avoided the penitentiary.” Locker room humor. 

Trump’s page, signed at the bottom of a creative doodle of a woman’s body, frames a pretend transcribed exchange between Epstein and Trump. It is more locker room humor, with a wink: 

They agree there’s more to life than having everything. Trump offers that “enigmas never age,” that a pal is a wonderful thing, and “may every day be another wonderful secret.” 

Epstein’s dead, so your secret’s safe with him. 

Trump has protested that it’s not his signature. Handwriting experts beg to differ. So too does a recent Fox News panel. Trump’s also said he doesn’t doodle. That’s odd. In one of his books, he’s quoted as saying: “It takes me a few minutes to draw something. In my case, it’s usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers, and then I sign my name.” 

Old pal, you sell yourself short. Before you spent your loose time on social media post ranting, you doodled. 

Click here to go to website 

In the face of the many photos of Epstein and Trump together, Trump has conceded they once were friends but that Trump broke off the relationship. The reasons for and timing of the fallout are somewhat fluid, according to Poynter’s Politifact in July 2025: 

• He barred Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for poaching spa staffers. 
• In 2020, Miami Herald and The Wall Street Journal reporters reported that the rift dated to late 2007, when Trump told reporters he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after Epstein behaved inappropriately toward a club member’s teenage daughter. 
• A 2019 Washington Post article cites a 2004 bidding war between Trump and Epstein over a Palm Beach oceanfront mansion as driving a wedge in their relationship. 

It is understandable that any mention of Epstein in relation to Trump angers Trump. His MAGA base has never turned on him before. He characterized the Epstein hubbub as a hoax started by Democrats and called the MAGA base that falls for it “stupid people” and “weaklings” whose support he doesn’t want anymore. 

 Trump's July 16 post on Social Truth 

Stalwarts in the MAGA base and Democrats have zeroed in on Epstein and the release of the Epstein files as the holy grail, presumably to access the scourge of child sex trafficking in high places. The almost singular obsession with the documents, though, has allowed Trump and Senate Republicans to thwart disclosure and buy time. With time, Trump can claim through his Attorney General that almost everything’s been released, Ghislaine Maxwell can cleanse her testimony and erase her memory in exchange for lenient treatment and a pardon (which she’s already done), the sex trafficking victims can be intimidated, Trump can come up with endless distractions, like blowing up one or two Venezuelan ships, to divert attention from the annoyances of the women and girls he respects so much, and the documents can be converted into redactive art pieces. 

 Redactive art-Epstein's birthday book-p. 96 

In dismissing Britain's ambassador to the U.S. the other day, The Brits seem to have enough information to turn their indignation into action. 

In a blockbuster series last week, the New York Times documented how JPMorgan enabled Epstein’s crimes by “supporting — and profiting from — the notorious sex offender, ignoring red flags, suspicious activity and concerned executives.” 

At Epstein’s behest, JPMorgan set up accounts — into which he routinely transferred huge sums — for young women who turned out to be victims of his sex-trafficking operations. In his 50th birthday year, “Epstein withdrew more than $175,000 in cash from his JPMorgan accounts — a huge haul, even for someone with millions at the bank. Outside investigators later found that Epstein paid almost that exact amount to women that year,” the story reported. Epstein’s huge cash withdrawals continued — a total of more than $1.7 million in 2004 and 2005, much of which, according to the NYT, were used to procure girls and young women. 

A spokesman for JPMorgan told the NYT in a statement that the bank’s relationship with Epstein “was a mistake and in hindsight we regret it, but we did not help him commit his heinous crimes.” He added: “We would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was engaged in an ongoing sex trafficking operation.” Of course not. Who would? 

To my knowledge, no one at JPMorgan has suffered a similar indignity to Britain’s US ambassador. 

Also the other day, an appeals court decision affirmed an $83 million award to writer E. Jean Carroll that reinforced court findings that Trump in fact sexually abused her during a brief encounter with him in a department store dressing room in the 1990s and that he lied by saying he’d never met her, according to Fox News. To date, Carroll has not received any payment. No doubt, Trump is appealing to his Supreme Court. 

So, in some ways, the specter of sexual abuse and sex trafficking in high places is very much alive. In other ways, the consequences of sex trafficking are dormant except for the sustained commitment against immigrants by ICE, the Hestafo, and now Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace who’s introducing legislation - “No More Missing Children Act,” which she says is designed to protect underage minors from trafficking, kidnapping and exploitation. 

She blames the Biden Administration for reckless negligence that left minors “to roam a lawless system, preyed upon by traffickers, predators, and cartels,” Mace said in a statement. She adds that the bill builds on Trump’s mission to rescue missing children and “takes the fight to the criminals exploiting our immigration system,” according to the Daily Caller, the right-wing news and opinion site founded by Tucker Carlson. 

For her part, Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an unflinching Trump defender and open supporter of QAnon, is having none of it (make that some of it). As reported in The Hill, she recently complained to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the GOP’s old boys club. “They want women just to go along with whatever they’re doing and basically to stand there, smile and clap with approval, whereas they just have their good old boys. 

Along with others in the MAGA base, she’s found herself in Trump’s crosshairs for supporting a discharge petition to release more of the Epstein files. Hedging her bets, she said she doesn’t think Trump is personally involved in the pushback. She’s suggested she's willing to take advantage of the constitutional speech or debate clause to reveal on the House floor sex offenders from Epstein's trafficking ring. 

For Trump’s part, he was deep into the underage girl racket long before Epstein’s 50th birthday. By Trump’s accounts, he got to know Epstein in the late 1980s. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” 

In 2020, the British daily, The Guardian, published a revealing story with plenty of unredacted photos: Teen models, powerful men and private dinners: when Trump hosted Look of the Year. It recalled Trump’s life in the 1990s when he judged the world’s biggest modelling competition. 

The story includes an account by a young reporter for a magazine in Tel Aviv, who covered Elite’s Look of the Year competition and its after-parties in 1991 and 1992. He remembered seeing girls drinking alcohol, and at one particularly debauched party: “I saw girls sitting on guys’ laps, and I remember one guy putting his hand down a girl’s top. I remember thinking they were younger than me, and I was 17 going on 18.” 

In 1991, as detailed in The Guardian, Trump was a headline sponsor for Look of the Year, throwing open the Plaza, his lavish, chateau-style hotel overlooking Central Park, transforming it into the main venue and accommodating the young models. In 1992, Trump hosted the competition again. 

One of the girls on one of the chartered boats was Shawna Lee, then a 14-year-old from a small town outside Toronto. She recalled how the contestants were encouraged to parade downstairs, one by one, and dance for Trump and others. Lee, an introverted teenager who loved to draw but hated school, was in New York for the first time. “A woman at the agency was pushing me,” she recalled. “I said to her, ‘I don’t see why me going down the stairs and dancing” in front of the men has anything to do with me becoming a model. The agency woman said, ‘No, you look great, take off your blazer and go and do it.’ So I walked down the stairs. I didn’t dance – I blew a kiss at them, spun around and walked away.” 

 Donald Trump with contestants in
1991’s Elite Look of the Year 

A still photo from previously unseen footage
of the 1991 Look of the Year finale 

To take ICE’s p-r campaign at its words, as I’ve written before, instead of using government resources to round up immigrants, lawful permanent residents and visa overstayers, and paying outsized bonuses to attract Hestafo forces, why not zero in on THE WORST OF THE WORST? 

Not hard to find or round up. The evidence of child sex trafficking is in plain sight. Don’t even need more Epstein files. 

Or they can return to reeling in the big fish like Lucino, a 44-year-old sexual predator from Mexico, who’s been convicted of assault with intent to sexually abuse a child in Franklin County, Iowa. 

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