Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a "danger to the community" and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization.

Sandoval-Moshenberg said that those charges are false, and that the gang label stems from a 2019 incident when Abrego Garcia and three other men were detained in a Home Depot parking lot by a police detective in Prince George's County, Maryland. During questioning, one of the men told officers that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, but the man offered no proof and police said they didn't believe him, filings show. Police did not identify him as a gang member.

Abrego Garcia was not charged with a crime, but he was handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the arrest to face deportation. In those proceedings, the government claimed that a reliable informant had identified him as a ranking member of MS-13. Abrego Garcia and his family hired an attorney and fought the government's attempt to deport him. He received "withholding of removal" six months later, a protected status.

It is not a path to permanent U.S. residency, but it means the government won't deport him back to his home country, because he's more likely than not to face harm there.

Abrego Garcia has had no contact with any law-enforcement agency since his release, according to his attorney. He works full time as a union sheet-metal apprentice, has complied with requirements to check in annually with ICE, and cares for his 5-year-old son, who has autism and a hearing defect, and is unable to communicate verbally.

Adam Klasfeld
@klasfeldreports.com

A federal judge has denied the U.S. Institute of Peace's request to block the transfer their $500M headquarters to the government at no cost.

The transfer is "done," making the request "moot," she says.

Federal Judge Allows DOGE to Take Over $500 Million Office Building For Free

It's the culmination of a weeks-long standoff between Elon Musk's DOGE team and the United States Institute of Peace.

On Tuesday, US district judge Beryl Howell effectively allowed the transfer of the headquarters building of the United States Institute of Peace to the General Services Administration.

FTA:

What is surprising is how little has been made of the similarities between Trump's efforts and those undertaken by Bill Clinton more than 30 years ago. Clinton appointed his vice president, Al Gore, to undertake a so-called National Performance Review (NPR), aimed at reinventing government. The Gore Commission (as it became known) was also aimed at streamlining and reducing the size of the federal government, but there was more to it. In many ways, what Gore set out to do was even more ambitious than Musk's chainsaw approach.

Like Trump, Clinton and Gore used presidential directives and executive orders to implement many of their downsizing efforts. But unlike the current effort, the cutting didn't start until they had gone through a six-month study process and developed a blueprint of how to best reinvent the federal government. Government agencies were brought into the process to determine the best ways that efficiencies could be realized. In fact, the effort was led by some 250 federal employees that remained on their agency payrolls.

"If the administration is working not to save money but rather to destroy the government, the cuts that threaten the well-being of American citizens make more sense."

Rogue SSA
@alt-ssa.altgov.info

This is so bad. Worse than people can imagine.

When you work in our systems, you're generally working in dozens of separate programs that interact with the COBOL architecture. Every one of those would need to be rebuilt. Even if they succeed in migrating, no one would be able to do their jobs.

Video at link:

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar.com
Mike Lawler on Trump possibly running for a third time: "As a Republican, I and many would not be open to the idea of Barack Obama running for a third term. So I think folks have to be careful here."

Background info on the Tesla protests:

Protests hit Tesla dealerships across the world in challenge to Elon Musk

From Australia to Europe and the US, demonstrators rallied against carmaker's dismantling of US federal government

On Saturday, with more than 200 events planned worldwide, protests kicked off midday in front of Tesla showrooms in Australia and New Zealand and then rippled across Europe in countries including Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK. Each rally was locally organized with original themes. In Ireland, it was "Smash the Fash", and Switzerland had "Down with Doge". Photos posted to Bluesky by Tesla Takedown showed demonstrators in San Jose, California, close to where Tesla was previously headquartered, and Austin, Texas, where its headquarters are now.

FTA:

Over the weekend, thousands of people joined the Tesla Takedown' protest movement at the company's showrooms across the country. At the same time, a much smaller number of Elon Musk supporters turned out at Tesla locations for a counterprotest movement that some participants dubbed Tesla Shield.'

While the protest movement comprises people angered at Elon Musk's role in the dismantling of federal government agencies, the counterprotest movement that showed up this weekend was peopled mostly by MAGA supporters. Among them were an array of far-right extremists, including members of the Proud Boys, armed militias, and at one event in Idaho, a guy dressed as Hitler.

FTA:

Imagine you had pretty much unlimited power over the government and wanted to save taxpayers' money. You could:

Carefully study government operations to understand what works and what doesn't

Make targeted improvements based on data and evidence

Track results to ensure changes actually deliver savings

Or you could do what Elon Musk did with DOGE: declare everything wasteful, start firing people at random, and claim you're saving billions through pure destruction.

"If the administration is working not to save money but rather to destroy the government, the cuts that threaten the well-being of American citizens make more sense."

FTA:

There are so many layers of voter suppression built into the SAVE Act that you could call it the foundational structure.

Voter Suppression Challenge #1: You have to schlepp to whatever agency oversees your state's voting with your documents. This means no more voter drives or online or mail-in registration. It also presents a real-world challenge. More than 60 million rural voters will have to drive an average of 260 miles simply to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Meanwhile, urban voters, who often don't own cars, will be forced to commute upward of two hours on public transportation.

Voter Suppression Challenge #2: You need to possess what the Republicans deem a valid form of ID. Sure, the letter of the act lists five legitimate forms of identification but most forms of government-issued identification don't list your birthplace. Scratch your REAL ID as a form of identification, or your military ID, or your tribal ID. You also can't use your birth certificate unless it is certified with an embossed governmental seal. (This analysis from the Democratic Party explains just how ridiculous their requirements really are.) A passport is one of the few forms of government ID that specifies where a person was born but ... Only half of American citizens have a passport.

Voter Suppression Challenge #3 for the win: If you are using your birth certificate, the name must match your current name. But a recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that 84% of women - as many as 69 million - have changed their last name so it no longer matches their birth certificate. Salon writes:

"This would be a back-door ban on voting for any woman who took her husband's last name and doesn't have a passport ... "

PS I won't be surprised if the DOGE boys end up cutting back or even eliminating the FHA mortgage program that Turner is supposedly making sure illegals don't gain access too.

"How many illegals were getting FHA mortgages?"

Nobody knows; maybe none:

FHA loans offer government-insured mortgages to ensure that lower-income individuals have access to home ownership. While illegal immigrants are technically ineligible to obtain FHA-backed home loans under U.S. law, HUD's announcement will strengthen enforcement mechanisms to ensure that illegal immigrants are not abusing the program in the future. It is unclear how many illegal immigrants have obtained FHA-backed loans."

Call to Action
Vitamin A for Measles
Management in the US
www.nfid.org
#31 | Posted by itchyp

Also from that website:

Measles is making a comeback around the world

Every year, measles is brought into the US by unvaccinated travelers who get infected by the virus while in other countries. Anyone who is not vaccinated is at risk of getting measles. Misinformation continues to circulate about the role that vitamins, specifically vitamin A, plays in managing the disease.

Only the measles vaccine can prevent measles--All children should get 2 doses of MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine to prevent measles

1. Vitamins do NOT prevent measles

Vitamins should NOT be used to prevent measles

Routinely getting an overload of vitamins can actually hurt you--For example, too much vitamin A can cause dizziness, nausea, headache, coma, and even death

2. Giving high doses of vitamins may be dangerous

Due to the danger of overdoses, high-dose vitamin A should only be used in the management of measles under the direct supervision of a healthcare professional once a diagnosis is confirmed

Stay up-to-date with all recommended vaccines, including MMR

Stay healthy by exercising and eating a balanced diet. The best sources of vitamin A include: milk, eggs, cheese, fortified breakfast cereals, leafy green vegetables, orange vegetables, and fish.

"children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage."

Yeah, that's the thing not all vitamins are healthy to take in large amounts. Vitamins that are not water-soluble get stored in the body and can cause liver damage. I know this because I have to take high doses of Vitamin D, and so I have to have the Vitamin D levels in my blood tested periodically to make sure I don't overdose on it:

Water-Soluble vs. Fat-Soluble Vitamins

Cod liver oil is what cured us when we was young. The reason it don't work for these kids is cause they Mexican.
#17 | Posted by fortfisher

Exactly how old are you?!?

Pete Buttigieg
@petebuttigieg.bsky.social

There were howls of protest and denial from the GOP any time we pointed out that Republicans want to cut Social Security.

Now the most powerful official in the White House goes on TV and calls it "the big one to eliminate."

FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social (video at link)

Elon Musk says he wants to "eliminate" programs like Social Security and Medicare: "Entitlements... That's the big one to eliminate"

FTA: "I think it is" time for Schumer to step back, McMorrow said. "There's still this idea that Democrats and Republicans are still abiding by the same rules and still believe in the same norms and systems and structure. There seems to be a lack of recognition that this is no longer the Republican Party. This is a MAGA party. And the same approach is not going to work."

And:

Q: Democrats have been struggling to find their footing since Donald Trump won in November. Is there an ideological shift that needs to take place?

A: I don't know that it's ideological, more just the approach. I think that what is very clear--was clear in 2024 throughout the election cycle, and even still now--is there are a lot of people who don't know what Democrats stand for, and what Democrats can and will do for them in a way that gives them a vision of something that they want to vote for. That transcends political ideology, but it's just back to basics. How do you approach this moment? How do you respond to a Trump presidency, and the fact that Elon Musk has access to basically all of the government, and they are very comfortable rapidly tearing it down?

I think it's less ideological and more: Are you willing to fight for a future, and what is that future? And can you clearly articulate that to people?

Q: The operative axis, you're saying, revolves less around whether Democrats should move left or right, but around whether they should fight or accommodate?

A: Right. It's fighting. Because right now, what people see is Donald Trump and Elon Musk and everybody who's in there right now are more than comfortable paring down the government piece by piece. The checks and balances no longer exist. So you either fight for a future or you don't. And that isn't about whether a party moves left or right or center. It's just, is there a future or not, and how do you fight for it?

Compare this reporting from the Washington Post with a report put out yesterday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on the dangers DOGE poses for Social Security, emphasis mine:

The Administration, Musk, and DOGE have engaged in four types of activities that each present a clear danger to Social Security but together create the potential for significant damage to the program:

Launching rhetorical attacks on Social Security programs, including false claims of massive fraud--providing a pretext for actions that could undermine eligible beneficiaries' access to benefits.

Engaging in deep cuts to staffing, new restrictions on phone-based services for the public, and "agency-wide . . . restructuring" and "massive reorganizations" of SSA that are neither well thought-out nor wise " all of which threaten SSA's ability to serve seniors and people with disabilities effectively while providing a potential excuse for privatizing key services.

Jeopardizing the reliability of SSA's systems, including through the sharp reduction of staff with technical expertise of systems that serve some 73 million people, or 1 in 5 people in the United States, each month.

Threatening the security of people's personal information by giving untrained DOGE political appointees unprecedented access to sensitive SSA data.

These four dangers (see Figure 1) compound one another--rather than making improvements that would help Social Security beneficiaries now or in the future. Social Security is highly accurate and efficient--with a payment accuracy rate of 99.7 percent and administrative costs of only 0.5 percent--and has successfully paid benefits for over 85 years. After years of underfunding, SSA needs more staff--not fewer--to give the nation's retirees and people with disabilities the service they deserve.

Oh no! They released the entire text conversation, now we all have access to those "Top Secret War Planz". Which turn out to be nothing more than a conversation on the pros and cons. About as secret as the Sunday news programs. Goldberg is again found out to be a liar and the Democrats are the boys who cried "Trump"! 4D Chess it is.
#93 | Posted by visitor_

I repeat: Did you actually read the texts? No one who read them could honestly come to that conclusion.

Oh no! They released the entire text conversation, now we all have access to those "Top Secret War Planz". Which turn out to be nothing more than a conversation on the pros and cons. Goldberg is again found out to be a liar and the Democrats are the boys who cried "Trump"! 4D Chess it is.
#57 | Posted by visitor_

Did you actually read the texts? No one who read them could honestly come to that conclusion.

When you've lost the National Review:

This episode is a product of this administration's flippancy. Its casual unseriousness is what produced a text message in the first place. So, too, did that outlook license the way in which the administration's principles disclosed its internal disputes, which are of inestimable value to our enemies, to say nothing of our capabilities. That same unseriousness produced this unsatisfying cleanup operation, which fails to marshal a persuasive argument and relies instead on the assumed partisanship of the intended audience. We have seen this sort of thing a lot from Republicans in the second Trump era. . . .

Maybe it's better that Trump 2.0 has dispensed with Biden's mock solemnity even if it has retained his insouciance. Still, the degree to which this administration seems comfortable discussing matters both grave and trivial as online gamers would in a Discord forum is as puerile as it is reckless.

The work of government is serious business. The American public deserves serious people at the helm. So far, and for elusive reasons, this presidency seems to believe that voters will disregard its mistakes if its officials act as though anyone who notices and objects to them are picayune obsessives and cranks. This strategy, such as it is, is not working.

Acyn
@acyn.bsky.social
CNN put together a collection of clips of various Trump officials who were on the signal chat criticizing Hillary Clinton's email server

Maybe RCade is on vacation or sick or dealing with a personal problem. I hope he's on vacation. . . .

Angry
@angrystaffer.bsky.social

Goldberg said the level of detail in the targeting package that he received via Signal was down to the *names of individuals* to be killed.

That's the good stuff that includes all kinds of sources and methods and never should have been outside a SCIF.

I'd be in prison if I ------ up that bad.

The Democrats in Congress need to get on this story and publicize it far and wide. I trust AOC and Bernie will.