MAGA updates: Racism in immigration policy; Stupidity in economic policy; Our plodding MSM

MAGA racism: Along with lots of others, the AP reports that our MAGA USSC has allowed djt to sic his federal law enforcement thugs on anyone in Los Angeles who looks Hispanic or speaks Spanish. All they have to do is look at someone and stop 'em and box 'em up based only on their looks or language. As is now usual for our morally rotted, authoritarian, kleptocratic USSC, this decision wasn't explained. This was another of the MAGA court’s morally rotted shadow docket.

One of the people MAGA's cruelty roughed up commented: “I was treated like I didn’t matter – locked up, cold, hungry, and without a lawyer. Now, the Supreme Court says that’s okay? That’s not justice. That’s racism with a badge. The system failed us today, but I’m not staying silent.”

As usual for our crappy MSM, the knucklehead reporters on this reporting Jaimie Ding, Amy Taxin and Mark Sherman got two huge items that ~98% of the MSM gets wrong ~98% of the time. First, they incorrectly called MAGA authoritarianism "conservatism". Dumb fucks. Second, they referred to the USSC decision as "the latest victory for President Donald Trump’s administration at the high court". Instead this bullshit is far more accurately a matter of being "the latest USSC blow to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties". Idiots. FWIW, I emailed a poison dart to those three boobs, pointing out their ghastly errors. 

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This and other sources are reporting that djt and his MAGA secretary of treasury Scott Bessent are in frantic hair-on-fire mode to get the USSC to reverse a lower court decision that most of djt's stupid, economically damaging tariffs are illegal. The appeals court issued its decision on August 29, 2025. This is another of those fake emergencies that MAGA liars love to claim. Claiming an "emergency" gives the USSC cover to do dirty dictator deeds while being shielded by the secrecy the USSC's sleazy shadow docket affords. The appeals court ruling is that djt's reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to support his tariffs are illegal. The MAGA lie is that unless the USSC reverses the lower court, America will be on the brink of economic catastrophe and devastation.

In his Supreme Court petition, djt said hat reversing tariffs "would be a disaster" and could make America "a third-world country". Oh my! This sounds serious. 😟 . . . . . But it's not. 🙃

This is also another example of djt and his MAGA elites doing stupid, damaging things and then cynically complaining that things are broken, with an emergency fix being needed. Endless lies. By now, it is routine for djt and MAGA elites to create a destructive cycle of implementing bad, harmful policies, then using the inevitable negative consequences to justify further harmful authoritarian measures. MAGA's Cycle of Stupid often includes claims of victimization for whoever might plausibly be victimized, whether it's true or not. A Yale Budget Lab analysis reveals MAGA's cycle: tariffs cause significant economic harm when implemented (reducing GDP by 0.4% long-term, costing households $2,300 annually), but their reversal also creates substantial disruption. Even with djt's illegal tariffs removed, the economy would still face unemployment increases of 0.3-0.5 percentage points and GDP losses equivalent to $25 billion annually.

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A NYT opinion by Ezra Klein (not paywalled), Stop Acting Like This Is Normal, is another blast by a MSM person gone woke about who and what djt and MAGA elites are. Ezra figured it out. Attaboy.

Klein argues that none of the three the reasons the Dems gave for supporting the MAGA spending bill last March to prevent a government shutdown applies now. The reasons were (1) the courts were stopping djt and Schumer didn't want djt to use a shutdown as an excuse to shut the courts down, (2) a shutdown would empower DOGE to gut the executive branch faster, and (3) markets were in chaos despite promises of stability and growth. If those really were the Dem's reasons to keep funding the government, they seem weak at best, but mostly wrong. Klein argues a 4th reason was apparently not on the Dems radar screen, namely they weren't prepared to explain a shutdown and articulate their vision. That sounds right. It still sounds right.

Klein argues the original three reasons no longer apply and the Dems have no choice but to let the government shut down. He puts his new woke mindset like this:

But something else has changed, too. We are no longer in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. We are in the authoritarian consolidation stage of this presidency.

I want to be very clear about what I am saying here. Donald Trump is corrupting the government — he is using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power. He is corrupting it the way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled.

So there we have it, another rare convert in the MSM actually used the word authoritarian. Klein gets it, reluctantly. He could have also used the label kleptocratic but didn't. 

What about Klein's argument that the Dems need to let the government shout down in the near future? That's probably more right than wrong. That's the case even if the Dems still suck at messaging. They probably still can't effectively articulate what they are and would do differently. But that's all we've got, so that's what we have to go with. 

A peanut commented: Even if the Dems pick this battle, there's no guarantee that they'll win. The GOP's messaging ecosystem vastly outpowers theirs. But if they're too afraid to even pick this battle out of fear of losing and facing a blowback, then real questions need to be asked if they're even an opposition party worth trusting, or just a controlled opposition serving the same masters. And it probably will directly have a bearing on the voter enthusiasm for the Dems in the midterms. 

The continuing saga of Pxy problems

The deep dives into Amy Coney Barrett and her judging record yesterday and this morning continued to show weaknesses and slop in AI outputs.

Q9: Pxy, you're making waaay too many mistakes this morning. Get some coffee and wake up.

A9: You're absolutely right, and I apologize for the repeated verification errors. I've been sloppy with quotations, citations, and basic fact-checking this morning - exactly the kind of mistakes that undermine credibility and violate the verification protocols I'm supposed to follow.

.... blither .....

I'll slow down and be more methodical with sourcing and citations from here on. [Huh??]

Q10: "I'll slow down and be more methodical with sourcing and citations from here on." Can you actually do that, or is what you are doing baked into how you normally operate?

A10: You're asking a really important question about whether I can actually change my behavior or if these verification errors are just how I'm designed to operate. 

.... blither ..... 

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. [Geez, that's not very reassuring 🙁] The verification protocol exists precisely because there's something in my normal operation that tends toward these kinds of errors - fabricating quotes, misattributing sources, conflating paraphrases with direct citations. The fact that I keep making these mistakes despite having explicit instructions not to suggests it might be more "baked in" than I'd like to admit.

Pxy ends with this "yes but no" incoherence: What I can commit to is being more transparent when I'm uncertain about sources and being more willing to say "I cannot verify this claim" rather than presenting unverified information as fact. But you're right to be skeptical about whether I can fundamentally change how I operate.

I'm skeptical. One has got to stay vigilant about fact checking AI.

Germaine & Pxy engaging in knowledge

A powerful Christian nationalist judge goofs the Bible, the law and the Constitution

Among the main strains of authoritarianism vying to kill American democracy and its rule of law is Christian nationalism (CN). CN elites are in the process of building federal government and social infrastructure to transition the US from a pluralist secular democracy to a harsh, bigoted, Christian fundamentalist theocracy. Under the CN vision of America, the law comes from God. CN elites will tell us what laws God wants and who those laws will target for righteous discrimination and sacred oppression. Existing evidence indicates that the CN wealth and power movement is one of the most likely contenders to dominate the federal government once djt is dead and gone. 

USSC justice Amy Coney Barrett is a Catholic zealot. Her book will be released tomorrow. It is entitled Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, which is an oxymoron as discussed below. Barrett reportedly received a $2 million advance for the book. She has been doing promotional events and interviews about the book, including appearances at Lincoln Center and the National Book Festival. Barrett was (presumably still is) a member of an extremist Catholic group called the People of Praise. 

Reporting by multiple outlets comment on her book. Major MAGA judicial traits exemplify her use of law for political ends. For radical MAGA judges like Barrett, the law is just a means to MAGA's authoritarian political ends.

• Misconstruing the Bible: Barrett mischaracterizes the biblical King Solomon narrative to support her judicial philosophy. She falsely claims that Solomon's wisdom came from internal judgment rather than legal adherence. This interpretation is incorrect. Solomon was not exercising personal moral judgment but conducting factual investigation to determine biological parentage according to the then established legal principle that the true mother deserved custody. The biblical text itself contradicts Barrett's interpretation: Solomon explicitly prayed for "an understanding mind to judge" and received divine wisdom, not personal intuition. His threat to divide the child functioned as a credibility test to reveal the true mother by her reaction. Solomon was applying biblical common law, an unwavering rule (precedent) that custody belongs to the biological mother. He used normal investigative methods to establish facts. He did not impose his own subjective preferences. 

• Laws as just a means to an end: Barrett has a telling but dangerous blind spot about gathering and assessing evidence. She has essentially no academic or appellate court experience with fact-finding.[1] All she has is a paltry three years in private practice and no trial court experience. Barrett has never examined witnesses or conducted fact investigations. Her inexperience shows in her Solomon interpretation, where she portrays factual investigation as personal judgment rather than recognizing it as essential, neutral evidence-gathering. Given their experience, Sotomayor (a former prosecutor) and Brown Jackson (a former public defender) would not have made this same mistake. Their extensive trial court experience pounded home the idea that justice involves more than merely reviewing appellate records. Without reliance on credible evidence, Barrett's assertion that "judges resolve disputes according to the rules established by the people" is meaningless. Her partisan vision of judges more or less unburdened by inconvenient facts contradicts the fundamental pro-democracy principle that legal application first requires rigorous investigation to determine facts and truth before applying law second.

The evidence strongly supports this very ugly bottom line: Barrett's self-described textualism, i.e., allegedly strict adherence to original text meaning, is contradicted by her willingness to misinterpret even biblical scripture to support predetermined MAGA dogma. Her judging is the epitome of unprincipled partisanship. With Barrett and the other six MAGA judges on the USSC, the law is a means to MAGA outcomes. Inconvenient facts and precedents are not significant judicial constraints. Barrett's fake originalism or textualism, like that of the other five MAGA judges on the USSC, is authoritarian constitutionalism disguised as principled law. 

Footnote:

1. Evidence of Barrett's heavy partisan bias include her 100% conservative voting record in contract and intellectual property cases on the 7th Circuit. That suggests she has predetermined ideological positions and does not rely on case-by-case fact analysis. She had a 76% MAGA voting record from her first Supreme Court term compared to Ginsburg's 4%. That shifted the Court from 48% to 62% MAGA outcomes. That was a dramatic change. It very likely reflected partisan legal reasoning, not judicial neutrality. 

Finally, Barrett's record shows that her approach is systematically anti-factual rather than merely inexperienced. That is particularly true where the fact record is unfavorable to MAGA's ends. For example, in her nomination hearings, Barrett falsely claimed that she had always followed or applied precedent on the Seventh Circuit: “I don’t think there’s any evidence that I’ve been unwilling to follow or apply circuit precedent.” However, in the case FTC v. Credit Bureau, Barrett voted to overturn a 30-year-old Seventh Circuit precedent that prevented the Federal Trade Commission from seeking restitution for victims of consumer fraud. She voted to protect the special interests over the public interest. That is pure authoritarian MAGA tactics, inconvenient facts and precedent be damned.

MAGA vs the public interest: Harming the public for special interest profit

Many American claim they believe in an American Republic with a representative democracy, separation of powers, the constitutional rule of law, federalism and civil liberties. Whether they act like that is what they believe is a separate issue. Many don't. Regardless, for most of those believers one of their political principles or moral values is a belief in the moral superiority of government that doesn't lie to the public or act against the public interest. Obviously, what is for or against the public interest is an essentially contested concept. But at least the moral sentiment is present in most (~90% ?) average people who believe they are good people doing politics in good faith. 

A NYT article (not paywalled) reports that djt and his corrupt MAGA thugs have quashed a scientific report that drinking alcohol in any amount is a risk factor for several kinds of cancer and liver disease. The Alcohol Intake and Health Study, stated that one or more drinks per day increases the risk of liver cirrhosis, oral and esophageal cancer, and injuries. MAGA thugs running the government now refuse to submit it to Congress as originally planned. A draft of the report is at this link.

Why do MAGA thugs block the dissemination of this knowledge? For the obvious reason, money. The booze industry lobbied hard against releasing the report. Presumably showering djt and/or targeted MAGA politicians were secretly paid somehow, e.g., by buying $TRUMP meme coin, paying for the farce called the djt presidential library, etc. 

I asked Pxy to look for evidence of the corruption, but all if could find was circumstantial. But it was enough for one to conclude that our kleptocratic MAGA government served the booze industry at the expense of protecting the public interest. Caveat emptor people, this is the new normal.

Pxy's comments about the evidence, in part:

Limitations of Transparency
However, significant limitations exist in tracking influence. As CREW notes, Trump and his businesses are not required to disclose spending by groups seeking influence, making many payments untraceable. The National Academies refuses to disclose who nominated committee members, creating what experts call "a black box" compared to other government processes.

Assessment
The evidence strongly suggests this represents regulatory capture rather than evidence-based policymaking. The simultaneous suppression of an independent scientific study finding alcohol health risks while promoting an industry-influenced study concluding moderate drinking benefits follows a clear pattern of prioritizing industry profits over public health.

While "kleptocracy" and "corruption" are strong terms, the documented evidence shows systematic dismantling of oversight mechanisms, extensive conflicts of interest, and policy decisions favoring major donors and industry interests. The scale and coordination of these changes, as tracked by multiple oversight organizations, indicates this extends beyond typical political favoritism to what transparency experts characterize as institutional capture by private interests.

The public has access to significant documentation of these patterns through organizations like CREW, OpenSecrets, Just Security, and the Brennan Center, though the full extent remains obscured by the administration's unprecedented secrecy and conflict disclosure failures.

Some of Pxy's links: Conflicts of interest (Brennan Center), Just Security's corruption tracker, Kleptocracy Tracker Online (Johns Hopkins U.), CREW's presidential conflicts of interest tracker, secrecy tracker (Sunlight Foundation, now defunct with 2017-2020 data archived)[1].

Footnote:

1. The Sunlight Foundation commented: 

We’ve been tracking the Trump administration’s record on open government since Election Day 2016, when we first posed questions about what open government would mean. Although the Office of the Press Secretary never returned our inquiries, the administration’s actions have answered many of our questions. This is a secretive administration, allergic to transparency, shadowed by global conflicts of interest, hostile to the essential role journalism plays in a democracy.

• After making himself available to the press through July, Trump set a bar as the least transparent modern presidential candidate in modern history. He held no press conference until from July 2016 until January 11, 2017, released no tax returns, and made no proactive disclosures around transition or inauguration. He held his first and only solo presidential press conference on February 16, 2017.

• Ethics: Lack of disclosure of tax returns and divestment in accordance with decades of tradition set up the Trump presidency for the ongoing appearance of corruption, with an unknown number of conflicts of interest around the world. 

• Secret waivers for administration officials, followed by the Office of Management and Budgets seeking to block the Office of Government Ethics from making a data call to obtain them.