Cannabis users 6 times more likely to have heart attack, study shows...
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Travel advice for America's 12.8 million green card holders from immigration lawyers
Seen here:
... McBean Pompy says she advises green card holders not to stay outside the US longer than six months. If they do, she says, it’s possible for the US government “to allege that they have abandoned their residency.” Also, green card holders who are in removal proceedings shouldn’t travel, she says. And she advises clients not to sign any documents at the airport, especially if they don’t understand them.
Leopold says the advice he’s giving to clients varies depending on their circumstances. He’s advised many visa holders to hold off on travel, particularly given the possibility that new travel bans are coming soon from the Trump administration.
“If I were not a citizen, I would think long and hard before I traveled. And that includes green card holders. It’s less of a risk, obviously, for a green card holder to travel, because you do have more rights with the green card, and it’s much harder to keep a green card holder out of the country,” he says. “But anybody who’s got blemishes on their record, a conviction, even misdemeanor convictions, they should not travel unless they’ve talked to counsel.” ...
Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek is a lying sack of shit typical of the Trump administration who should be fired immediately
Dudek's reasoning below is the same level of ridiculous we saw when Trump said he wouldn't recall the deportation flights ordered by Judge Boasberg because they were already in international airspace and were therefore not subject to the order. Trump ordered the flights in the dead of a Friday night/Saturday morning a week ago to avoid detection and court intervention.
Republicans playing chicken with the lifeline for over 73 million Americans wasn't what people voted for last November, but that's what they are getting.
... Dudek said the court order [from Judge Hollander] is so broad that it could apply to any Social Security employee, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
“My anti-fraud team would be DOGE affiliates. My IT staff would be DOGE affiliates,” Dudek told Bloomberg. “As it stands, I will follow it exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.”
However, in a March 18 letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Dudek said there are only 11 DOGE-affiliated individuals at the Social Security Administration. ...
Dudek assumed the role of acting commissioner in February when then acting commissioner Michelle King stepped down due to DOGE privacy concerns. ...
Reported here.
Friday, March 21, 2025
This greaseball billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thinks missing a Social Security check, something that never happens, would be no big deal
Howard is otherwise busy firing people and disbanding volunteer industry groups who help the government create important statistics and guidance about things like gross domestic product, population, trade, etc. which people rely on every month to forecast the economy.
Absolutely stunning: Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek threatens to shut down Social Security last night, takes it all back this afternoon
What a shit show. This guy needs to be fired stat.
This is America under Mad King Ludwig.
Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek threatened Thursday evening to bar Social Security Administration employees from accessing its computer systems in response to a judge’s order blocking the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing sensitive taxpayer data.
Less than 24 hours
later — after the judge rejected his argument and the White House
intervened — Dudek is saying he was “out of line.”...
“[The White House] called me and let me know it’s important to reaffirm to the public that we’re open for business,” he said. “The White House did remind me that I was out of line and so did the judge. And I appreciate that.”...
Dudek first made his threat to close down the agency during a Bloomberg News interview Thursday night. ...
Such a dramatic move to effectively shut down the agency would have been unprecedented in the agency’s history and would immediately begin halting benefit payments for millions of Americans.
“For almost 90 years, Social Security has never missed a paycheck — but 60 days into this administration, Social Security is now on the brink,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in a statement. “Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has proven again that he is in way over his head, compromising the privacy of millions of Americans, shutting down services that senior citizens rely on and planning debilitating layoffs, all in service to Elon Musk’s lies.”
More.
Like Trump, Musk arrogantly dismisses limits on executive power and belittles Congress' power of the purse, Congress wallows in servitude to his seizure of power
... Asked later that day whether Congress should weigh in on his widespread cuts, Musk responded, “Well, they do have a vote.” ... the administration has privately reassured GOP lawmakers, particularly House Republicans, that DOGE will continue to unilaterally rescind congressionally approved funding whether lawmakers are given the chance to weigh in or not. ...
Here.
Grassroots revolution in the making: For the first time since the poll began in 2009 congressional Democrats are now underwater with their own voters in approval ratings
Democratic voters are even angrier than you think. ... Democrats are on the verge of a Tea Party-style, intra-party revolt. ... these numbers open the door to a potentially bruising string of primaries in both the House and Senate. There are 13 Democratic-held Senate seats up for reelection next year — many of them involving veteran senators in the bluest states — raising the prospect of a stream of younger, insurgent candidates more closely aligned with the party base, similar to what the GOP has contended with over the past 15 years. ...
More.
The constitutional crisis that many feared from a vengeful, re-empowered Trump is here
Congress is cowed; that’s one supposedly coequal branch of government
down. But federal courts are proving more resistant to Donald Trump’s
trampling of laws and the Constitution. Now, just two months in office,
the president has all but crossed the red line — defying a judge’s order
— that for more than two centuries has separated the rule of law in
this country from its undoing. ...
The chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr., schooled
both the congressman and the president, issuing a rare statement of
what should be obvious: “Impeachment is not an appropriate response to
disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
But Trump won’t be educated. ...
In effect, and denials aside, Trump and his lieutenants defied the law ...
Jackie Calmes for The Los Angeles Times, here.
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander rebukes DOGE for hiding their own identities while scouring Social Security for ours, stops Elon Musk's fishing expedition for immigrants
A federal judge Thursday issued a temporary restraining order barring Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency team from having access to personally identifiable information from the Social Security Administration.
Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander in a scathing ruling accused DOGE
of launching a “fishing expedition” at the Social Security agency and
failing to provide any reason why it needed to access vast swaths of
Americans’ personal and private data. ...
The judge also ordered the DOGE team members and affiliates to delete all non-anonymized personally identifiable information in their possession or control that they have accessed “directly or indirectly” since Jan. 20. ...
Hollander, noting the affiliates of DOGE have kept their identities hidden, wrote, “ironically, the identity of these DOGE affiliates has been concealed because defendants are concerned that the disclosure of even their names would expose them to harassment and thus invade their privacy.”
“The defense does not appear to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent,” the judge wrote. ...
Kremlin Karoline pretends Trump doesn't judge shop
... there is a concerted effort by the far left to judge shop, to pick
judges who are clearly acting as partisan activists from the bench, in
an attempt to derail this President's agenda. ...
Mahmoud Khalil still detained in notorious Louisiana detention center as case is moved to New Jersey
... Earlier this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Khalil in the lobby of his Columbia University apartment building, took him to New Jersey and quickly transferred him to Jena, more than 1,000 miles away from his pregnant wife, who is a U.S. citizen, and his attorneys in New York.
Civil rights lawyers who work with immigrants locked up in Louisiana’s detention centers say they are concerned for Khalil, given the Jena facility’s unsettling history. However, they say they are not surprised that ICE transferred Khalil to Louisiana, where access to counsel is extremely limited, and where the courts skew conservative.
In a phone interview with Verite News last week, Anthony Enriquez, vice president of U.S. advocacy and litigation at civil rights nonprofit RFK Human Rights, said the Trump Administration is “forum shopping” Khalil’s deportation case — looking for the jurisdiction that will give the government the outcome it wants.
“The government has the ability to do that with immigration,” Enriquez said. “It can arrest someone in a jurisdiction where the case law is very favorable to the person arrested, and then sweep them away to another jurisdiction.” ...
Numbskull Jesse Watters' masculinity prohibits eating soup in public, crossing your legs, drinking with a straw, milkshakes, waving with both hands, self-awareness, intelligence informed by history . . .
... “I have rules for men,” Watters began on Wednesday’s [Fox News] The Five. “They’re just funny, they’re not that serious. Like, you don't eat soup in public. You don't cross your legs. And you don't drink from a straw. And one of the reasons you don’t drink from a straw is the way your lips purse. It’s very effeminate.”
Referring to Walz, he said: “His excuse was, ‘well I was drinking a milkshake.’ Again, you shouldn’t be drinking a milkshake. Milkshakes are for kids.”
Watters also claimed that real men “don’t wave simultaneously with two hands.”
“We wave with one hand, not both hands at the same time,” he said. ...
More.
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Government belt-tightening theatre at CNBC: Social Security new proofing procedures requiring in person visits are a joke, a costly upheaval designed to stop a puny problem
As the Social Security Administration seeks to curb identity fraud, more people will now be required to visit an office to prove their identity for new benefit claims and direct deposit changes. ... The changes are aimed at helping to avoid the fraudulent redirection of benefit checks, which the agency has been warning about for years. ... SSA estimates the agency is now losing more than $100 million per year due to direct deposit fraud. ... The change may require foot traffic to Social Security offices nationwide to increase by about 75,000 to 85,000 more in-person visitors per week, according to reports on an internal Social Security Administration memo. ... The AARP, an interest group that represents Americans ages 50 and over, urged the Social Security Administration to reverse the decision.
In fiscal 2024 Social Security paid out $1.35 trillion in benefits. $100 million is 0.0074% of that!
I predict that the costs of this silliness will exceed the savings.
Impeaching judges turns into big headache for Speaker Mike Johnson lol
Hill Republicans already hated the ‘idiotic’ call to impeach judges. Then Trump jumped in.
... Impeachment proceedings, even when they don’t involve presidents, can be time- and resource-intensive affairs. ... privately there is dread inside Johnson’s leadership circle about the prospect of having to pursue messy, certain-to-fail impeachments that could ultimately backfire on the GOP’s razor-thin majority.
“It’s never going to happen,” said a senior House Republican aide. “There aren’t the votes.”
“It would be such a heavy lift and we’ve got too many heavy lifts coming up,” said another top GOP aide. “What is the endgame here?”
A third said GOP leaders and even some conservative House members are “rolling their eyes” at the impeachment filings that “aren’t going to go anywhere.” ...
15th record high for gold this year
Bullion surged to an all-time high of $3,045.24 earlier in the session, marking its 15th record peak this year.
More.
Violent attacks on Tesla keep law enforcement busy nationwide, but especially in the leftist Pacific Northwest
Violent attacks on Tesla dealerships spike as Musk takes prominent role in Trump White House
... Musk critics have organized dozens of peaceful demonstrations at Tesla dealerships and factories across North America and Europe. Some Tesla owners, including a U.S. senator who feuded with Musk, have vowed to sell their vehicles.
But the attacks are keeping law enforcement busy. ...
A number of the most prominent incidents have been reported in left-leaning cities in the Pacific Northwest, like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, where anti-Trump and anti-Musk sentiment runs high. ...
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