Maureen Dowd: This is the moment when we find out just how mad a king Donald Trump is

 

 Who's the Mad King Now?:

... As the “No Kings” resistance among Democrats bristles, and as President Trump continues to defy limits on executive power, it is instructive to examine comparisons of President Trump to George III. ...

Atkinson said that the only similarity between the pious monarch and the impious monarch manqué is “the use of the military against their own people to enforce the king’s will. There are incidents, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party.”

He added: “This proclivity for using armed forces for domestic suppression of dissent. That’s a slippery slope in this country. It led to an eight-year war when George did it, and Lord knows where it’s going to lead this time.” ...

“The fact that we’re looking for a monarch to draw parallels to him is telling in and of itself, because that’s not what we do. That’s what the whole shooting match was about in the 1770s.”

It ain't over, but 3 judge panel of Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals votes unanimously to let Trump keep control of California National Guard troops

 Appeals court lets Trump keep control of National Guard troops deployed to Los Angeles

 

 ... In its decision, a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded it was likely Trump lawfully exercised his authority in federalizing control of the guard.

It said that while presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for doing so, citing violent acts by protesters. ...

These guys want to talk about the 802k foreign born who left in April, not about the 1.6m who arrived in January lol

 

Center For Immigration Studies Estimates One Million Illegal Aliens Left U.S. In First Half Of 2025

 

There is nothing remarkable about the recent decline in foreign born population in comparison with the immediate past under Biden, when 945k left in April 2024 and 896k left in June 2023.

 

The numbers are noisy if nothing else, and go back only to January 2007. 

That said, the January surge is probably more about the revisions of the data for the previous year than about anything else. 

 

About 6.1 million foreign born entered the country in 2021 through 2024 in this data, after about 629k left in 2020. In 2025 through May, about 849k have left, but May is notably flat from April.

 

You could just as easily say the May numbers indicate Trump's policies have been a complete failure. 

 

I would be more sanguine about attributing an exodus of foreign born to the new Trump policies if the leavers were much larger in number than recently, but they are not. 

 

In my book, Trump needs to get the foreign born population back down to 43.5 million, his 2019 peak. Anything less is not a victory. 

 

 

 

Mad King Ludwig restarts agricultural deportations, says the real illegal alien problem is the criminal ones in the big cities

 

Trump yanks brief reprieve for immigrants he said are ‘good, long time workers’

The Trump administration has reopened arrests of immigrant workers at hotels, restaurants and agricultural businesses, backtracking on the brief reprieve they got after President Donald Trump stated they were necessary, good, longtime workers whose jobs were almost “impossible” to replace. ... 

The announcement backpedals on Trump’s statement last week on social media that “changes are coming” after farmers and hotel and leisure business employers had complained that “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”

Just six days ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement paused arrests at worksites in agriculture industries, including fisheries and meatpacking plants, restaurants and hotels, according to an internal policy memo obtained by NBC News last Thursday. ...

Asked about the change during a gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from the G7 summit, Trump said: “We’re going to look everywhere. But I think the biggest problem is the inner cities.” ... 

Trump said cities are where “the really bad ones are, the murderers.”

“We’re going to get them out,” Trump said. “There are far more in the inner cities, Democrat-run cities, sadly, and I’m just giving you, there’s far more in there than you have on a farm or someplace.”

Daily Beast reporter demotes Stephen Miller to deputy press secretary, still can't spell feud after correcting story lol

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The White what?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-miller-and-ice-barbie-kristi-noem-in-bitter-west-wing-civil-war-over-round-ups/

Like the soul of the tyrant himself, Trump's administration is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions, including on immigration enforcement, reversing last week's pause on deportations

 All his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles.                       

-- Plato, Republic 

Story. 

TACO Trump chickens out on more than just tariffs, calls off the ICE raids on agriculture, restaurant, and hotel jobs to quell heartland rebellion

Stephen Miller most hurt.

On Wednesday morning, President Trump took a call from Brooke Rollins, his secretary of agriculture, who relayed a growing sense of alarm from the heartland.

Farmers and agriculture groups, she said, were increasingly uneasy about his immigration crackdown. Federal agents had begun to aggressively target work sites in recent weeks, with the goal of sharply bolstering the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants. ... 

 

Inside the West Wing, top White House officials were caught off guard — and furious at Ms. Rollins. ... 

But the decision had been made. Later on Thursday, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tatum King, sent an email to regional leaders at the agency informing them of new guidance. Agents were to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.” ...

More. 

Observe again how quickly Trump is to turn on a dime. The policy changed in less than 48 hours. The last person he talked to can be the most influential, which is not what you want from the leader of the free world. Sometimes he stumbles into the right decision, to be sure, but he can always stumble the wrong way. The tyrant's soul resembles the state which he rules, full of chaos and conflicting desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy.

Anti-democratic airhead DHS Secretary ICE Barbie says Feds are in LA to liberate it from duly elected governor and mayor

 

 We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have imposed.

 

Imagine if the Democrats interfered like this in Wyoming or West Virginia. Republicans would throw a fit like they're doing in LA. 

Charles Breyer, Senior US District Judge of the Northern District of California, rules Trump acted illegally in federalizing the California National Guard

 ... At one point, the judge said, “We live in response to a monarchy,” noting that there is a difference between the president and King George III, the British monarch on the throne at the time of the American Revolution.

“At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions. He did not,” Breyer wrote in his order.

“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the judge wrote. “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”

Breyer said that none of the three conditions required for Trump’s federalization of the Guard under a certain federal statute existed, namely the U.S. having been invaded or in danger of being invaded; a “rebellion” against the federal government; or the president being unable to execute U.S. laws.

“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’ ” Breyer wrote.

And he said that “regardless” of the outcome of California’s lawsuit against the administration, Trump’s federalizing of the Guard without the consent of Newsom “alone threatens serious injury to the constitutional balance of power between the federal and state governments.”

“And it sets a dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity,” Breyer added. ...

More. 

What brainless idiot decided to send ICE into LA County at 9AM on a Friday morning in armoured vehicles when you lost it last November by 33 points?

The White House's Stephen Miller attacks libertarians for opposing the reconciliation bill's immigration enforcement spending

 ... the White House deputy chief of staff — and chief architect of Trump’s immigration agenda — is taking a sledgehammer to what remains of the libertarian-conservative fusionism that was prominent in the party pre-Trump.

“The libertarians in the House and Senate trying to take down this bill — they’re not stupid. They just don’t care,” Miller said in an interview with conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk last week.

“Immigration has never mattered to them; it will never matter to them. Deportations have never mattered to them; it will never matter to them. You will never live a day in your life where a libertarian cares as much about immigration and sovereignty as they do about the Congressional Budget Office.” ...

Miller’s aversion to libertarians, though, seems to go deeper than opportunistic messaging for the bill. He posted in 2022 that the uprising of the ideology in the House GOP is “how we ended up with open borders globalist [Paul] Ryan.” He blamed libertarian candidates for siphoning votes away from failed Trump-endorsed candidates in 2022 — Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire.

“Another example of how libertarians ruin everything,” Miller said in one post responding to a 2022 Georgia Senate poll. ...

More.

The CBS Poll referenced in the story indicates 55% like Trump's deportation goals but 56% dislike his approach.

Polling on the reconciliation bill indicates most think it will help the wealthy and hurt poor and middle class people, with a third admitting they have no idea what's in the bill. Well, neither did many in the US House who voted for the damn thing.

This points up the political danger of these Christmas Tree bills adorned with something for everyone. They're too complicated to understand and therefore capture little enthusiasm. But Stephen Miller fancifully thinks otherwise:

“By including the immigration language with the tax cuts with the welfare reform, it creates a coalition. Politics is all about coalitions,” Miller said in the interview with Kirk — also praising Trump in the interview as “able to create a winning formula for populist, nationalist, conservative government.”          

But not libertarian government.

 

 

 

Mad King Ludwig, who is quite clearly nuts, says LA would have been completely obliterated had he not sent in the California National Guard, proves it by sending in more, and 700 US Marines

 

“We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California,” he said in a post on Truth Social.

“If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated,” said Trump.

Trump called Newsom “incompetent,” and said the governor and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass should be thanking him, saying “YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.”

More.

Different parties, same dopium: The Trump administration might get less blow back from these immigration raids if they tried just a little bit to appear less like Joe Biden's fascist police state

Acquitted pro-life activist Mark Houck reveals details of ‘reckless’ FBI raid; will press charges

... There were “at least 10, 15 marked and unmarked units right in front of me. Surrounding the side of my house, I have 100 yards to the street, cars lined all the way up to the street, long guns pointed at me, heavily armored vests, ballistic helmets, ballistic shields, a battering ram,” he said.

He said his daughter “took note” of an FBI agent in the back of the house, and there were at least five federal agents on his porch “with M-16s pointed at me and now my wife as she entered the opening of the door.” ...

 

 Agents Use Military-Style Force Against Protesters at L.A. Immigration Raid

... The raid at the clothing wholesaler began about 9:15 a.m. in the Fashion District, less than two miles from Los Angeles City Hall.

It was an extraordinary show of force. Dozens of federal agents wearing helmets and green camouflage arrived in two hulking armored trucks and other unmarked vehicles, and were soon approached by a crowd of immigrant activists and supporters. Some agents carried riot shields and others held rifles, as well as shotguns that appeared to be loaded with less-than-lethal ammunition. ...

Trump ICE arrests: 100k in 20 weeks

 At this rate Trump will arrest just over 1 million illegals in four years, that's it.

If ICE could sustain 2,000 arrests a day from here on out, 2.6 million would be the total, out of many millions more claimed to be in the country illegally.

As with DOGE, campaign promises are easier to make than they are to keep.

ICE arrests under Trump top 100,000 as officials expand aggressive efforts to detain migrants

 Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Trump's second term topped 100,000 this week, as federal agents intensified efforts to detain unauthorized immigrants in courthouses, worksites and communities across the U.S., internal government data obtained by CBS News shows.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, ICE recorded more than 2,000 arrests each day, a dramatic increase from the daily average of 660 arrests reported by the agency during Mr. Trump's first 100 days back at the White House, the federal statistics show. During President Biden's last year in office, ICE averaged roughly 300 daily arrests, according to agency data.

The latest numbers show ICE is getting closer to meeting the far-reaching demands of top administration officials like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner who has forcefully pushed the agency to conduct "a minimum" of 3,000 arrests each day. 

On Thursday morning, ICE was holding around 54,000 immigrant detainees in detention facilities across the country, according to the data. The Trump administration is asking Congress to give ICE billions of dollars in extra funds to hire thousands of additional deportation officers and expand detention capacity to hold 100,000 individuals at any given point. Officials are also looking at converting facilities inside military bases into immigration detention centers. ...

Trump's DOJ brings Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador to face a slew of criminal charges it has cooked up against him in the interim since the Supremes ordered him returned in April

 

Watch out, Elon, you may be next.

 Kilmar Abrego Garcia returns to face immigrant smuggling charges after wrongful deportation

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face criminal charges involving an alleged undocumented immigrant smuggling ring Friday, months after the Maryland resident was wrongfully deported to a prison in his native El Salvador. ...

The indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia and others from 2016 through 2025 “conspired to bring undocumented aliens to the United States from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere, ultimately passing through Mexico before crossing into Texas.”

The grand jury that issued the indictment found that he made more than 100 trips smuggling thousands of immigrants. ...

In a post on X on Friday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele wrote, “As I said in the Oval Office:1. I would never smuggle a terrorist into the United States. 2. ⁠I would never release a gang member onto the streets of El Salvador.”

“That said, we work with the Trump administration, and if they request the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we wouldn’t refuse,” Bukele wrote. ...

 

 

 

Tulsi Gabbard has fired intelligence officials who concluded Venezuela wasn't directing gang activities in the United States

 Another disappointing performance by Tulsi Gabbard.

Tulsi, former leftist, keeps proving she can turn with the wind with the best of them.

And I had such high hopes for her. 🤷 

 

Trump's police state goons continue Biden era practice of wearing masks so that they can't be identified, arrest mayor of Newark outside the gate of controversial ICE facility

 

Newark mayor arrested for alleged trespass at New Jersey ICE detention facility

 

 

Words have a meaning, and a Biden invitation to come was not an invasion

I don't care how wrong Biden was, and neither should the courts.

The Supremes have already ruled the illegals have habeas rights, and this would be a desperate attempt to get around that.

Are they daring the Supremes to rule against them yet again?

 

Trump administration ‘looking at’ suspending habeas corpus, Stephen Miller says

 

... Miller’s use of the word “invasion” reflects the Trump administration’s argument that the U.S. faces an “invasion” of undocumented migrants. ...

Don't hatchet your AfD before you count, Friedrich

 Germany’s Merz fails to be elected chancellor in shock first-round parliamentary vote

... “Friedrich Merz became the first chancellor candidate failing to be elected in the first round of voting in the Bundestag. However, he remains likely to win sufficient support eventually,” Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at Teneo, said. 

Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg, described the situation as a “bad surprise.” He echoed comments suggesting Merz would still become chancellor eventually, but “the unprecedented failure to be elected in the first round would still be a bad start for him.” ...

AfD ‘extremist’ label sets up political high-wire act for Friedrich Merz

... Merz’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, has been torn over how to deal with the AfD. Merz tacitly cooperated with the party earlier this year – despite insisting he would not – to push migration policies through parliament. And on the local level, his party and the AfD have cooperated on issues such as a ruling that the German flag should be hoisted in schools. ...

Impeach him a hundred times if we have to: Trump lies that jury trials are needed for immigration cases

 Trump, asked if he has to 'uphold the Constitution,' says, 'I don't know': Trump said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he’s following lawyers’ advice as he tries to execute rapid deportations, arguing that giving immigrants due process is time-consuming

 

... "We’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials", he said. ... That would not require full trials, as Trump suggested. ...

This is the same slow-walking of the law and trying an end run around the law and fundamental disrespect for the law that we see all too often and increasingly from presidents from both political parties.

 

We are either a nation of laws or we are no longer America.

 

Sick of this bullshit.