DCUM Weblog

In another demonstration of the autocratic practices that have marked the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, has announced that she will criminally charge a sitting member of the U.S. Congress. The charges arise from an attempt by three Members of Congress to inspect a recently reopened Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Newark, New Jersey. During the visit, ICE agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. The three Representatives, LaMonica McIver — who represents the district in which the detention center is located — Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Rob Menendez, attempted to prevent Baraka's arrest. This resulted in a fracas involving pushing and shoving. Habba has announced charges against McIver for assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement.

During the presidential campaign, inflation and the cost of everyday goods — especially eggs — were a major campaign issue. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump made repeated promises to bring down costs. The fact that this commitment directly conflicted with another major campaign promise — to apply widespread tariffs that would increase the cost of imports — never seemed to bother Trump, his supporters, or most of the media. The fact of the matter was that when Americans went to the grocery store, they encountered increased prices. This provided an opening that the Trump campaign was eager to exploit.

So eager was the campaign to stress the cost of food that J. D. Vance once conducted a photo-op in a grocery store complaining that the price of eggs was $4. Unfortunately for Vance, he was standing in front of an egg display where the $2.99 price tag was clearly visible. Bumbling photo-ops were sort of a Vance specialty, especially where food was concerned. He had an unnecessarily difficult time ordering donuts in a shop in Georgia while an employee repeatedly told him she didn't want to be photographed. In one of his first campaign appearances, Vance attempted to prove his Appalachian bone fides by saying, "I had a diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today". If anything, that remark (especially mentioning that it was "diet") made Vance seem out-of-touch rather than true to his family roots. Both Trump and Vance — one a billionaire and the other a multi-millionaire — wanted to relate to voters and show that they understood the challenges normal people were facing. Generally, however, these attempts had the opposite effect.

"We’re being eliminated now." This was tweeted last night by Motasem Dalloul, a Palestinian journalist reporting from Gaza for international news outlets. At the time Dalloul sent this tweet, Israel was in the midst of a wave of over 150 air attacks across Gaza and was expanding ground operations in parts of the Palestinian territory. The reality of life in Gaza these days makes it impossible to tell whether Dalloul was referring to the elimination of journalists or the entire Palestinian population of Gaza. Given Israeli words and actions in recent days, either interpretation could be valid. Israel has been systematically killing journalists. For instance, Hassan Aslih first suffered severe burns when Israel bombed a tent encampment sheltering displaced persons. Aslih was ultimately killed when Israeli jets bombed the burn unit of the Nasser Medical Complex where he was being treated. There was a time when Israel vehemently denied that it attacked hospitals or killed journalists. Now the country proudly takes credit for both. But journalists are far from the only victims of Israel's aggression. Overnight, at least 85 Palestinians were killed by the Israelis. In several cases, entire families were murdered. This has become the daily toll recently and things are likely to get worse.

Today I would like to speak to the Democratic establishment. I know that none of them are likely to read this, and if by chance one of them did, they would ignore it. After all, I'm nobody. I wouldn't pay attention to me either. But I really have a need to get this off my chest.

For the past two days, my social media feeds have been dominated by discussion about whether or not there was a cover-up of former President Joe Biden's mental state. The few posts that filtered through that mess were about an upcoming Democratic National Committee election aimed at getting rid of David Hogg. Let me be clear. None of that matters. Our democracy is very much in danger. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump has deployed masked goons to kidnap people off the street and hide them away without charges in hellish detention centers. He has sent, and hopes to continue sending, individuals who have not been charged with a single crime to a foreign gulag from which they may never be released. Shadow President Elon Musk has embedded a cadre of loyalists throughout the government who have seized control of the government's most sensitive data. Who knows what he plans to do with that? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in the process of dismantling our healthcare system and destroying our ability to conduct medical research. We are essentially in a building engulfed in a four-alarm fire, and you folks are devoting your time to debating the fitness of a retired fire chief. If you are not interested in putting out the fire, move out of the way and make room for someone who is.

Today I am going to provide updates on some of the immigration cases about which I have previously written. I tend to fixate on immigration because I see it as the leading indicator of where our political system is going. As I have written before, authoritarianism is frequently introduced through the "boiling frog" method in which it happens gradually and is not immediately obvious. In the case of the United States, steps against migrants — a marginalized community that often has little support — can often be taken with limited resistance. Once the authoritarian methods used against immigrants are normalized, they can be expanded to be used against American citizens. Even before that step is reached, there is the chance that U.S. citizens will be caught up in the anti-immigrant measures. The administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's opposition to due process means that an American citizen might not have the opportunity to prove citizenship. Indeed, there have already been cases of U.S. citizens jailed after they were wrongly identified as non-citizens. Therefore, I consider immigration topics to be a barometer for the state of our political system

The Gulf state of Qatar is in the news these days for a number of reasons. One is that cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump is about to visit the country. Another is that Qatar offered to provide Trump with a free luxury Boeing 747 valued at around $400 million. Beyond that, Qatar has recently become something of a public enemy number 1 in Israel. Given the multiple controversies surrounding the country, I thought it might be useful to take a closer look at it.

On the face of it, Qatar seems like a fairly quiet, unassuming country about which most people probably rarely hear anything. I doubt that even 1% of Americans can correctly name the country's ruler (full disclosure, while I knew the Emir's last name, I had to look up his first name). Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, Al Udeid Air Base, which serves as the forward command post for the U.S. Central Command. Qatar also has oil and gas. A lot of it. As a result, it boasts the fourth highest GDP per capita in the world. The country also hosts the Al Jazeera Media Network, which has been hugely influential in the Middle East and beyond.

I have written two earlier posts about cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's erratic Middle East policies. Following Trump's Middle East pronouncements is like watching a drunk driver careen down the road, swinging wildly from one lane to the other. One day Trump suggests that he wants to empty Gaza of its Palestinian residents and turn it into a Trump resort, the next day he says that "Nobody’s expelling any Palestinians." While Secretary of Deportations Marco Rubio does the bidding of Canary Mission and attempts to deport college and university students that the shadowy organization has identified as critics of Israel, de facto Secretary of State Steve Witkoff ignores Israel and cuts deals directly with Israel's enemies. As a result, Trump is one of the most pro-Israel U.S. presidents in terms of crushing freedom of speech within the U.S. to prevent criticism of Israel, while simultaneously acting with the most independence from Israel of any U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. This week, things are likely to get even more unpredictable.

So much happens with the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump that I can't keep up with everything. There are topics about which I plan to write, but from which I get distracted by other topics. In some cases, the missed topics are overtaken by events and, at other times, they just fall out of the news. I want to go back to one topic that is no longer in the headlines, but still deserves some discussion. That is the use of the Signal messaging application by Trump administration officials.

Signal is a messaging program developed by the non-profit Signal Foundation. The program is open source, which means that anyone can download and modify the source code. Signal is best known for its use of end-to-end encryption, which means that eavesdroppers should not be able to intercept conversations held using the application. Signal received significant publicity when former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Waltz used it to arrange a chat involving high-level members of the Trump administration, including Vice President J. D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The chat group was arranged to discuss the pending U.S. bombing of the Houthis in Yemen, but Waltz inadvertently included the editor of "The Atlantic", Jeffrey Goldberg, in the chat. Subsequently, Goldberg revealed a transcript of the conversation, including detailed war plans posted by Hegseth.

Today I am going to return to a topic about which I wrote back in March. That is, cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's erratic and contradictory policies related to the Middle East. The Trump administration has a Jekyll and Hyde approach to Middle East issues, providing unconditional support for Israel in some cases and plotting a more independent course in other situations. The result is a bizarre mishmash of policies that make predicting the administration's next step nearly impossible. This results in our being at a very dangerous point with regard to a possible war with Iran. Trump could easily go one way or the other when it comes to an attack on Iran.

I think Trump's policies towards the Middle East can be best understood if you picture Trump sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. On one of his shoulders is perched a miniature Marco Rubio, and on his other sits a small J. D. Vance. The shrunken Rubio and Vance each make their arguments, Rubio generally arguing strongly in support of Israel, and Vance normally taking an approach more narrowly focused on America's interests. For the most part, Trump has no interest in either of the figures and would simply like to get back to selecting more gold fixtures for the office. But, forced to deal with the competing personalities on his shoulders, he occasionally agrees with one and at other times the other. Another key figure is anti-Arab bigot Laura Loomer, though it is not exactly clear where she is perched.

Yesterday I wrote about how cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump has established a funnel for bribery utilizing cryptocurrency ventures, specifically the $TRUMP meme coin and the USD1 stablecoin. Trump's corruption has been so brazen that it has simply become impossible for Congress to ignore. Republicans, of course, are unwilling to do much more than utter a few meek words of concern — and most are not even willing to do that — but Democrats see an opportunity to push back on the President. The most important impact, however, has been to potentially delay Congressional legislation regarding stablecoins.

First, some background. As I said yesterday, cryptocurrencies, especially meme coins, are created out of nothing. They have no intrinsic value. Nevertheless, the popularity of cryptocurrencies has created several opportunities for profit. For instance, crypto exchanges benefit from transaction fees. Initial investors in new cryptocurrencies can benefit when the prices of their currencies increase. The result is that some companies and individuals have made immense amounts of money from crypto initiatives. In many cases, some of this money has been used to influence politics.