Trump’s Assault on the First Amendment

The lead-up to the Planned Insurrection 2.0:
"Take over ALL the Capitol Hill Police so that there will be NO resistance the second time around."

Welcome to the new Washington Trump-Police™ State. This is why he chose Washington.

https://apnews.com/article/washington-trump-homeless-national-guard-police-a0d326fcd3731c564c2c566893385674

#RemoveTrump #Corruption #Insurrection #News #Law #USPol #USPolitics #Dictatorship #USDictatorship #NoKings

Wednesday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

Trump shouts to reporters from White House roof.

Yesterday, Trump wandered around on the White House roof, and shouted inanities at reporters on the ground, including a joke about nuclear weapons. He is such an embarrassment.

ABC News: Trump takes unusual stroll on White House roof.

President Donald Trump made a surprise appearance on the White House roof above the briefing room in an apparent effort to inspect future construction.

The press, which had been pushed significantly down the driveway, attempted to figure out what was going on.

“Mr. President, what are you doing up there?”

“Just taking a little walk,” he shouted back.

“What are you building?”

“It goes with the ballroom, which is on the other side,” he said.

Pressed again by reporters, Trump said “Something beautiful,” while pantomiming with his hands.

Great. So he’s planning to wreck both the East and West wings?

The president was accompanied by a small group of aides and Secret Service. The group included architect Jim McCrery, who has been commissioned to add Trump’s ballroom to the White House. The two men appeared engaged in intense conversation as they surveyed the grounds with lots of animated pointing….

“What are you trying to build?” one reporter shouted.

“Missiles,” Trump responded, presumably joking. “Nuclear missiles,” he repeated while making the gesture of a rocket launching.

Q: Sir, what are you trying to build?TRUMP: Missiles. Nuclear missiles

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-08-05T16:00:05.466Z

Monica Charen at The Bulwark (Charen worked as Nancy Reagan’s speechwriter): Trump’s White House Renovation Is Awful—and Fitting.

Americans who haven’t visited the White House for a guided tour probably can’t picture the East Wing. There’s no TV show about it. It has no famous office to rival the Oval. There are relatively few photos of it in its current form.

As someone who worked there for six months (I moved to the West Wing after the 1984 election), allow me to sing its praises: The East Wing was built in 1902 as a visitors’ entrance and then expanded in 1942 to house the First Lady’s offices. Its style echoes the West Wing in design and footprint, which gives the White House complex a rough symmetry. Like the West Wing, it’s smaller than Hollywood imagines. It conveys stability and authority without ostentation. Unlike the West Wing, it’s flooded with sunlight and, at least when Nancy Reagan held court, adorned with fresh flowers. The two-story structure melds seamlessly into the surrounding gardens. You can hardly see it from the street.

Rendering of planned White House ballroom

Now President Trump has announced that he will “modernize” (which must mean demolish) the East Wing and replace it with a huge, gaudy ballroom. At 90,000 square feet, the ballroom will dwarf the West Wing and even the residence. Naturally it will be adorned in white and gold (to get a flavor, have a look at the way Trump has decorated the Oval Office). This permanent disfigurement will solve a problem that doesn’t exist. When the president entertains more people than can comfortably fit in the East Room (about 200), tents are erected on the lawn complete with floors and walls. But Trump is dissatisfied with the historic building that was good enough for Lincoln and Eisenhower and Reagan. Ladies’ high heels sink into the grass, he says, explaining why he has also paved over the Rose Garden.

But rather than rail against this desecration of a key national symbol, perhaps it’s better to welcome it. The presidency will never be the same post-Trump, so why not the White House? Why not make concrete and visible the destruction of centuries-old norms and values? This president has just elevated to a Court of Appeals a lawyer who presided over a purge of FBI agents who investigated Trump for January 6th and instructed his underlings at the Justice Department to “F— the courts.” He has opened a criminal investigation into former Special Counsel Jack Smith on the specious charge of violating the Hatch Act. His attorney general has opened a disciplinary investigation of Judge James Boasberg because Boasberg privately expressed concerns that the Trump administration might, to borrow a phrase, “F— the courts.”

Read the rest at the Bulwark.

Later yesterday, Trump further made an ass of himself at an event about to the Olympics. The Los Angeles Times: Trump names himself chair of L.A. Olympics task force, sees role for military during Games.

In past Olympic Games held on American soil, sitting presidents have served in passive, ceremonial roles. President Trump may have other plans.

An executive order signed by Trump on Tuesday names him chair of a White House task force on the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, viewed by the president as “a premier opportunity to showcase American exceptionalism,” according to a White House statement. Trump, the administration said, “is taking every opportunity to showcase American greatness on the world stage.”

At the White House, speaking in front of banners adding the presidential seal to the logo for LA28, Trump said he would send the military back to Los Angeles if he so chose in order to protect the Games. In June, Trump sent the National Guard and U.S. Marines to the city amid widespread immigration enforcement actions, despite widespread condemnation from Mayor Karen Bass and other local officials.

“We’ll do anything necessary to keep the Olympics safe, including using our National Guard or military, OK?” he said. “I will use the National Guard or the military. This is going to be so safe. If we have to.”

Trump’s executive order establishes a task force led by him and Vice President JD Vance to steer federal coordination for the Games. The task force will work with federal, state and local partners on security and transportation, according to the White House.

Those roles have been fairly standard for the federal government in past U.S.-hosted Olympic Games. But Trump’s news conference could present questions about whether a president with a penchant for showmanship might assume an unusually active role in planning the Olympics, set to take place in the twilight of his final term.

There is ample precedent for military and National Guard forces providing security support during U.S.-hosted Olympic Games. But coming on the heels of the recent military deployment to Los Angeles, Trump’s comments may prove contentious.

Anyone who thinks Trump is planning to leave the White House at the end of his term is living in a fantasy world. He’s turning the White House into Mar-a-Lago North, and he doesn’t plan to leave. Next, he’ll build a golf course on White House grounds. Rachel Maddow said it out loud on Monday night.

The Wrap: Rachel Maddow Warns the US Isn’t Headed for Dictatorship: ‘We Are There.’

Rachel Maddow did not sugarcoat it for viewers: The MSNBC anchor warned viewers that the United States is not headed towards an authoritarian state under President Donald Trump: “We are there. It is here.”

“Life in the United States is profoundly changing and is profoundly different than it was even six months ago,” the anchor said Monday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” “Because we do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge, we have a consolidating dictatorship in our country.”

Maddow went on to paint the picture of what she called a caricature of an authoritarian state. She mentioned secret police, prison camps and individuals fired for speaking a truth that does not please their authoritarian leader.

“We’re beyond waiting and seeing now. It is clear what’s going on,” she said. “We have crossed a line. We are in a place we did not want to be, but we are there.”

She pointed to immigration raids happening nationwide, comparing ICE agents with masked secret police, even referring to immigrants as “the scapegoated enemy on whom all things must be blamed and against whom all things are justified.” Another element she raised was that Trump has turned military force inward on the American people.

In addition to acts of violence against Americans, Maddow noted that under this authoritarian rule protests must be criminalized and media must be intimidated into saying and doing what the leader wants. She added that top universities and law firms are also subject to funding cuts if they do not bow to the president.

And if you release facts to the contrary of the president, be careful.

“Because he said it, then it must be true, and if you say otherwise then you will be fired,” Maddow said.

Also during the Olympics event, Grandpa Trump repeated, for he umpteenth time, his insane ideas about California’s supposed mismanagement of water and forest fires.

oh my goodness — get a load of Trump's incoherent rant about water management in California (this is an event about the Olympics!)

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-08-05T21:00:44.957Z

In Epstein scandal news, Trump and Vance will meet with other top officials, including the Attorney General and Assistant Attorney General and the head of the FBI to discuss how to control the fallout from the highly unusual meeting of Assistant AG Todd Blanche with Ghislaine Maxwell and her subsequent transfer to a minimum security prison. Remember the days when the Department of Justice remained scrupulously independent of the president?

CNN: Top Trump officials will discuss Epstein strategy at Wednesday dinner hosted by Vance.

Top Trump administration officials will gather at the vice president’s residence Wednesday evening as they continue to weigh whether to publish an audio recording and transcript of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent conversation with Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

The administration’s handling of the Epstein case, as well as the need to craft a unified response, is expected to be a main focus of the dinner, three sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. The meeting will include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Blanche.

Officials who will meet to discuss Epstein strategy

With the exception of Vance, the White House considers those officials the leaders of the administration’s ongoing strategy regarding the Epstein files, two of the sources said.

The meeting comes as Trump’s administration is considering releasing the contents of Blanche’s interview last month with Maxwell. Two officials told CNN that the materials could be made public as early as this week.

There have also been internal discussions about Blanche holding a press conference or doing a high-profile interview, possibly with popular podcaster Joe Rogan, according to three people familiar with the discussions, though those conversations are preliminary. Rogan, who endorsed Trump on the eve of last fall’s election, has been highly critical of the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case and previously called their refusal release more information about Epstein a “line in the sand.”

Meanwhile, CNN previously reported that the Justice Department has been digitizing, transcribing and redacting the interview materials as they weigh if and when to publicly release the information from the Maxwell interview. There is over 10 hours of audio, a senior Trump administration official said. Portions of the transcript that could reveal sensitive details like victim names would also have to be redacted, one of the officials said.

One official told CNN that some of the conversation within the White House has focused on whether making the details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back to the surface. Many officials close to Trump believe the story has largely died down.

Really? I don’t think so.

Meanwhile, in his supposed investigation of the Epstein files, GOP Rep. James Comer has issued subpoenas to a bizarre list of people. Politico: Comer issues subpoenas for DOJ’s Epstein files, depositions with former officials.

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday issued subpoenas for Department of Justice records on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, as well as for interviews with a slate of former government officials in connection to the case.

Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) announced that he was summoning nearly a dozen former officials to appear for depositions on the Epstein investigation — a list that includes former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Former U.S. Attorneys General William Barr, Alberto Gonzales, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder and Merrick Garland, as well as former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey were also tapped to give testimony in connection to the case.

The move is the latest in a broader battle over the Epstein files, which took the Trump administration by storm last month as anger boiled over from within MAGA circles about the administration’s handling of the case.

The committee’s subpoena of Bill Clinton in particular seems more symbolic than substantive. No former president has ever testified to Congress under the compulsion of a subpoena — and lawmakers have tried only twice before: once in 1953, when the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed Harry Truman, and once in 2022, when the Jan. 6 select committee subpoenaed Donald Trump.

Neither president testified in those instances, and the Justice Department has long cited Truman’s example — though not backed by any legal precedent — to suggest that it is improper for Congress to compel even former presidents to testify, given separation of powers concerns.

Yesterday The New York Times published photos from inside Jeffrey Epstein’s New York townhouse. The article also included the full text of a letter from Woody Allen on Epstein’s 63 birthday. (gift link): A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair.

As a gift for Jeffrey Epstein’s 63rd birthday, friends sent letters in tribute to the wealthy financier and convicted sex offender. Several shared a common theme: recounting the dinner gatherings that Mr. Epstein regularly hosted at his palatial townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel, and his wife noted the great diversity of guests. “There is no limit to your curiosity,” they wrote in their message, which was compiled with others in January 2016. “You are like a closed book to many of them but you know everything about everyone.”

A sculpture of a bride clinging to a rope dangled in a central atrium of Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion.

The media mogul Mortimer Zuckerman suggested ingredients for a meal that would reflect the culture of the mansion: a simple salad and whatever else “would enhance Jeffrey’s sexual performance.”

And the director Woody Allen described how the dinners reminded him of Dracula’s castle, “where Lugosi has three young female vampires who service the place.” [….]

But Mr. Epstein’s prized property was no gloomy Transylvanian fortress. He had spent years turning the seven-story, 21,000-square-foot townhouse into a place where he could flaunt — and deepen — his connections to the rich and powerful, even as hints of his dark side lurked within, according to previously undisclosed photos and documents showing how he lived in his later years.

Since Mr. Epstein’s death in federal custody in 2019, which was ruled a suicide, many mysteries about his life have remained unsolved. How did he amass a nine-figure fortune? And why did so many powerful men continue to fraternize with him long after he became a registered sex offender?

The White House had pledged to release details about the federal investigations into Mr. Epstein and his associates. But this summer the Trump administration backpedaled. The ensuing right-wing outrage has threatened to splinter the Make America Great Again movement — for whom Mr. Epstein is a central figure in conspiracy theories — and has put Mr. Trump on the defensive like few other issues….

At least one other MAGA luminary also visited the townhouse: Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump and an online media personality, who has said that he videotaped hours of interviews in the mansion with Mr. Epstein in 2019. Framed photos of Mr. Bannon — including a mirror selfie snapped by Mr. Epstein — were kept in at least two rooms in the mansion.

Use the gift link to read the rest if you’re interested.

The Guardian: Epstein scandal broadens as trove of letters from famous figures published.

The long-running scandal surrounding the disgraced late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein broadened on Tuesday after the New York Times published a trove ofpreviously unseen letters to Epstein from numerous powerful figures as well as unseen photographs from inside his Manhattan mansion.

The letters, written to Epstein by a number of high-profile individuals, were reportedly compiled as a birthday gift for Epstein’s 63rd birthday in 2016. Their publication comes amid intense speculation around Donald Trump’s ties to Epstein, who was found dead in a New York jail in 2019 and had long cultivated a celebrity social circle of the rich and powerful.

In one letter, former prime minister of Israel Ehud Barak and his wife wrote “there is no limit to your curiosity.”

“You are like a closed book to many of them but you know everything about everyone,” they wrote, describing Epstein as “A COLLECTOR OF PEOPLE”.

They continued: “May you enjoy long and healthy life and may all of us, your friends, enjoy your table for many more years to come.”

In a letter from film-maker Woody Allen, Allen reminisced about Epstein’s dinner parties at his Upper East Side townhouse and described the gatherings as “always interesting”. He noted that the parties included “politicians, scientists, teachers, magicians, comedians, intellectuals, journalists” and “even royalty”.

Allen also described the dinners as “well served”: “I say well served – often it’s by some professional houseman and just as often by several young women” who he said reminded him of “Castle Dracula where Lugosi has three young female vampires who service the place.”

Other letter writers reportedly included billionaire media mogulMortimer Zuckerman;Noam Chomsky and his wife; Joichi Ito, the former head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab; physicist Lawrence M Krauss; and Harvard biologist and mathematician Martin Nowak.

A few more insane stories:

BBC News: RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines for diseases like Covid.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses that cause diseases such as the flu and Covid-19.

That will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said.

Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, announced he was pulling the funding over claims that “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses”.

Doctors and health experts have criticised Kennedy’s longstanding questioning of the safety and efficacy of vaccines and his views on health policies.

The development of mRNA vaccines to target Covid-19 was critical in helping slow down the pandemic and saving millions of lives, said Peter Lurie, a former US Food and Drug Administration official.

He told the BBC that the change was the US “turning its back on one of the most promising tools to fight the next pandemic”.

In a statement, Kennedy said his team had “reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted”. “[T]he data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu,” he said.

He said the department was shifting the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”.

Kennedy also claimed that mRNA vaccines can help “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine”.

Health experts have said that viruses mutate regardless of whether vaccines exist for them.

NPR: Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose.

The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere.

The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions. The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that “the data are of exceptionally high quality” and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years.

Both missions, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe. They use identical measurement devices, but one device is attached to a stand-alone satellite while the other is attached to the International Space Station. The standalone satellite would burn up in the atmosphere if NASA pursued plans to terminate the mission.

NASA employees who work on the two missions are making what the agency calls Phase F plans for both carbon-monitoring missions, according to David Crisp, a longtime NASA scientist who designed the instruments and managed the missions until he retired in 2022. Phase F plans lay out options for terminating NASA missions.

Crisp says NASA employees making those termination plans have reached out to him for his technical expertise. “What I have heard is direct communications from people who were making those plans, who weren’t allowed to tell me that that’s what they were told to do. But they were allowed to ask me questions,” Crisp says. “They were asking me very sharp questions. The only thing that would have motivated those questions was [that] somebody told them to come up with a termination plan.”

Joseph Cirincione, vice-chair of the Center for International Policy Board of Directors at MSNBC: We don’t need nuclear reactors on the moon.

If Transportation Secretary and acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy wanted to do his part to help provide a distraction from the Trump administration’s Jeffrey Epstein files scandal, his announcement of a plan to put nuclear reactors on the moon was a partial success. In the 24 hours after his announcement on Monday, he was briefly trending on social media, just behind Ghislaine Maxwell.

If he intended this to be a serious proposal for human occupation of the moon, he failed. For the near future, nuclear reactors on the moon are impractical, expensive and dangerous.

Duffy may not understand this. He has no experience in space or nuclear technology. He is a former Fox News host who became interim director in June when President Donald Trump pulled the nomination of Elon Musk’s choice, billionaire Jared Isaacman, after Trump’s breakup with Musk.

Space exploration has used nuclear materials for power for many decades. This is overwhelmingly in the form of radioisotope thermoelectric generators. These use plutonium-238, which gives off heat used to generate electric power for small probes, including some of the rovers on Mars. This typically involves 20 or 30 pounds of material. In fact, several of the Apollo missions left some behind on the moon were powered by such radioactive means.

But a nuclear reactor is another matter altogether. This would involve potentially hundreds of pounds of low-enriched uranium in yet-undeveloped small reactors delivered by space launchers that don’t exist.

Read more at the link. Also see this article from BBC News: Nasa to put nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030 – US media.

That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?

#2028Olympics #DonaldTrump #GhislaineMaxwell #greenhouseGasesData #JeffreyEpsteinNYTownhouse #JeffreyEpsteinScandal #mNRAVaccines #NASASatellites #NuclearReactorOnMoon #RepJamesComer #RFKJr #SeanDuffy #USDictatorship #WhiteHouseBallroomPlans

In true dictator form, DT is erasing his felonies & impeachments from the history books, by pressuring museums and other record archives with the threat of funding cuts if they don't comply.

https://apnews.com/article/smithsonian-trump-history-impeachment-b2b60d952d92df1a4a5233e0d60ecaa6

#RemoveTrump #USDictatorship #News #HumanRights #Law #History

Which is it DT? You either want Tomatoes or you don't.. If you DO, then stop illegally kidnapping the people who f*cking grow them in the US, simple!

https://apnews.com/article/mexico-tomatoes-duty-commerce-e1b113bfb9458d2443d5bb999795375c

#Idiocy #USDictatorship #RemoveTrump #News #HumanRights #USPol #Food #NoKings

'Democratic lawmakers condemned Florida's new Everglades concentration camp after visiting Saturday, describing it as crowded, unsanitary & bug-infested. Republicans on the same tour said they saw nothing of the sort at the remote facility'

Republicans see nothing wrong with illegally imprisoning men women & kids & trapping them in literal metal cages in a swamp, have a think about that for a minute or two.

#USDictatorship #RemoveTrump #ConcentrationCamps #HumanRights #News #USPol

"The Pentagon is reportedly considering adding extra costs and conditions to the AUKUS deal, including demanding Australia's nuclear submarines support the US in a conflict with China."

DUMP AUKUS __NOW!!__

https://www.9news.com.au/national/aukus-us-review-australia-could-be-asked-to-pay-more-reports/a4866bdd-2c01-40c6-b966-c8baeefe1567?ref=BP_RSS_ninenews_5_push-for-major-changes-to-aukus-in-us--report_090725

#Aukus #Corruption #USDictatorship #News #AusPol

DT's Pam Bondi abruptly fires 3 prosecutors involved in Jan. 6 criminal cases because they were "Upholding the Law" and not giving MAGA insurrectionists a free pass

https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-prosecutions-capitol-riot-trump-bondi-1107441a68cef171dfff4e680e438452

#USDictatorship #RemoveTrump #Fascism #News #HumanRights #Corruption #USPol #Insurrection

'Extra Extra' '..The guy who bombed a country in an unprovoked attack says "Time, Ceasefire, you can't shoot back at us now.."..'

The Sheer Arrogance..

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jun/24/israel-iran-war-live-updates-trump-declares-ceasefire-tehran-attack-us-base-qatar

#USDictatorship #USPol #WarMonger #WarCriminal #News #HumanRights #War