The new normal: Worse; AI antics

The new normal

Things getting worse is the new normal. The open question now is how bad will things get? That is not clear. djt has repeatedly stated that he wants to use the US military to mow peaceful protesters down. He shows constant, intense contempt and hostility toward all major democratic barriers, including the US Constitution, federal separation of powers, church-state separation, the federal courts, due process, voting rights, inconvenient fact and truth, and the rule of law. His lust for vengeance is off the charts. His level of moral rot, mendacity and corruption is even worse.

djt and congressional authoritarian MAGA Repubs want to spend ~$45 billion to build concentration camps to catch, house, mistreat and deport immigrant prisoners, whether they are illegal immigrants or not. That is an insane amount of money for incarceration, abuse & deportation facilities. That level of funding for ICE detention in djt's proposed tax abuse bill is over five times larger than the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons budget of approximately $8.6 billion for FY 2025. The proposed funding represents a huge increase from the current ICE detention budget of ~$8 billion. One source asserts that the proposed ICE budget is increased by $170 billion over its current funding rate of $10 billion. This level of funding makes ICE the single largest federal law enforcement agency in US history. The US is becoming a rogue police state. 

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Various outlets (1, 2) report that federal judge Dale Ho dismissed the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The case was dismissed with prejudice. That means the charges against Adams cannot ever be refiled, assuming that particular rule of law remains intact. So, another white collar criminal gets off the hook. The judge's reasoning exemplifies the horror of the new normal that djt and MAGA elites have inflicted on us. 

The reporting indicates that djt's corrupted and weaponized MAGAfied DoJ requested a dismissal "without prejudice." That would have allowed the case to be reopened in the future. Judge Ho rejected this, because leaving the case open for retrial gave djt political leverage over the mayor. Thus, if djt got mad at Adams for not doing what Trump tells him what to do, he could simply have his politicized DoJ refile the corruption charges. Judge Ho said that was unacceptable. Thus, Ho took away the leverage over Adams that djt had by letting the sleazy criminal Adams completely and forever off the hook. Ho had no choice at all. This level of moral rot is the new normal.

“Ending the case without prejudice would create an unavoidable impression that the Mayor’s liberty is contingent upon his capacity to fulfill the immigration enforcement objectives of the administration. Everything here suggests a bargain: the dismissal of the indictment in exchange for concessions on immigration policy. If in fact D.O.J.’s immigration enforcement rationale amounts to a quid pro quo to extract policy concessions from the Mayor, then it is difficult to imagine a more egregious example of the kind of prosecutorial harassment [that the rule requiring judges to approve criminal dismissals] is intended to guard against.” — Judge Dale Ho

Q: Will the next bit of progress in MAGA authoritarian law be to ignore federal court orders and case decisions, like Ho's decision, with djt ordering his personal attorney, e.g., Pam Bondi, at the DoJ to refile charges that were previously dismissed against any defendant that djt gets mad at and wants revenge against? 

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Pxy, my routine AI source, has a hot new offer! One can buy early access to agentic AI, loaded with all the extras, trimmings and backdoors to Musk's secret operations in Russia!

Sheesh, Max is kinda expensive. And that is only for personal use. I thought Pro was pricey. Presumably the cost for commercial users is higher, maybe ~$5,000/month or something like that. Ouch. The marketing says that Max will save ~10 hours/week per employee with access, so ~$5,000/month would probably would be worth it to a lot of employers. 

Q: Hey! What's that gurgling sound? Employees being flushed out by Max? 

(Well, yeah it is employees being flushed, but also small businesses that cannot afford to buy Max to stay competitive with the big dogs)

MAGA floods the zone with horrors & etc.

It's coming fast and furious and it's mostly very bad and getting worse.

A news station in Los Angeles, KTLA, reports that unknown people kidnapped a woman at night and tried to make her sign self-deportation papers. The woman, Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, known as Juli, is a community leader and mother from Los Angeles. She was reportedly taken by unidentified men and transported directly to the U.S.-Mexico border at San Ysidro without standard immigration processing. When she demanded her right to speak to an attorney, she was taken to a warehouse where she wasn’t given any food, and she was being told that she was going to be kept there until she signed voluntary self-deportation paperwork.” Armed, masked men in unmarked vehicles allegedly took her at gunpoint. The men did not identify themselves as law enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security has categorically denied that Juli Calderon was taken by ICE agents, while her family and attorneys maintain she was abducted by unidentified individuals who may have been operating outside the law. 

Apparently no one knows with certainty if this is a hoax or if Juli was taken by ICE agents, other federal agents, or an outside the law paramilitary group. When Trump said he didn't want to bother with due process, one can reasonably believe that this is what he meant. The problem with the hoax theory is that Trump has shown contempt for due process, the rule of law and inconvenient truth. Maybe ICE is lying. Maybe not.

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Regarding ICE, it appears to be a federal agency that may have gone full-blown rogue criminal. At the least, its attitude toward its job is terrifying.

ICE has time to make trash like this,

but not time to see if someone is being held illegally

Snopes

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The AP reports that a former FBI agent who supported djt's 1/6 coup attempt has been hired by the DoJ to work on weaponization of the DoJ.

A former FBI agent who was charged with joining a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol and cheering on rioters is now working as an adviser to the Justice Department official overseeing its “weaponization working group,” which is examining President Donald Trump’s claims of anti-conservative bias inside the department.

The former FBI supervisory agent, Jared Lane Wise, is serving as a counselor to Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin Jr., who also serves as director of the working group, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Attorney General Pam Bondi called for creating the “weaponization” group in February to investigate claims by Trump and Republican allies that the Justice Department unfairly targeted conservatives during President Joe Biden’s administration.

 

Wise, who worked as a special agent or supervisory special agent for the FBI from 2004 through 2017, was arrested in Oregon on Capitol riot-related misdemeanor charges in May 2023.

Wise repeatedly shouted, “Kill ’em!” as he watched rioters assaulting officers outside the Capitol, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. Wise clapped his hands and raised his arms ”in triumph” after he entered the building through the Senate wing door, the affidavit says. He left the building about nine minutes after entering.

Police body camera footage showed Wise berating police officers outside the Capitol and repeatedly shouting, “Shame on you!”

“I’m former law enforcement,” he told them.” You’re disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo. You can’t see it.”

Q1: Who is the disgusting Nazi Gestapo here, lying authoritarians like Pam Bondi, Ed Martin and Jared Wise, or regular police just trying to do their jobs? 

Q2: What is more likely regarding the goal of the DoJ's "weaponization working group", (1) making sure the DoJ is not biased, weaponized or effective against "conservatives" (authoritarians and kleptocrats, especially elites and pro-Trump rioters), or (2) making sure the DoJ is biased, weaponized and highly aggressive against Democrats, political opposition and critics of djt? 

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In her substack, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance comments on various things like the recent USSC recent decision in the Casa case, ICE's alligators and djt's reaction to the concentration camp in the Florida Everglades:

The Roberts Court let Pandora out of the box, and now there seems to be no putting everything back in. First it was criminal immunity and the pass on prosecution given to presidents. Last Friday it was Casa, the birthright citizenship/nationwide injunction case, where Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that just because the president acted unconstitutionally, that didn’t mean the courts could tell him no, in essence taking away the best, quickest, broadest remedy that could be used against a president hell-bent on imposing his own policies on the country, whether or not—and it has been mostly not of late—the Constitution authorizes him to do that.  

The big things are bad. Presidents can’t rewrite amendments to the U.S. Constitution—there is a process for doing that. But in 30 days, birthright citizenship will be gone, unless the Supreme Court, which has just left on vacation after delivering the bad news in Casa, decides to step back in. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along.”

It’s also the small things. Like the official White House account retweeting an absolutely disgusting image, associating Trump with the alligator and swamp-snake guarded prison Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has apparently built to house noncitizens who are being detained by ICE. Perhaps it’s by way of an apology to Trump for having the temerity to attempt a run at him in the primary.

Q: Are we up to our eyeballs in alligators, literally, figuratively or both?

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In light and fluffy news, which we need a lot more of, the NYT reports that Malaysia has just banned all shipments of plastic waste from the United States. That amounted to about 35,000 tons last year. The ban was prompted after some jackass sent more than 100 shipping containers of hazardous materials, improperly labeled as raw materials, from Los Angeles. Also reported is that about 91% of all plastics used in the US are not recycled. Most of it winds up in landfills. 

Well OK, that wasn't very light or fluffy. But it's better than all that DoJ, ICE, alligators and kidnapping stuff.

Regarding high home cost and high homelessness in California

A long NYT article (not paywalled) reports that CA has rolled back its landmark 55 year-old environmental protection law CEQA (SEE-kwa)(California Environmental Quality Act), allegedly because it is the main driver of high housing cost and high homelessness: 

Democrats have long been reluctant to weaken the law, known as CEQA, which they considered an environmental bedrock in a state that has prided itself on reducing pollution and protecting waterways. And environmentalists took them to task for the vote.

But the majority party also recognized that California’s bureaucratic hurdles had made it almost impossible to build enough housing for nearly 40 million residents, resulting in soaring costs and persistent homelessness. In a collision between environmental values and everyday concerns, Democrats chose the latter on Monday.

Discussions about changing the environmental law have repeatedly surfaced at the State Capitol over the past decade, only to be thwarted by opposition from environmentalists and local governments. This year was different.

Mr. Newsom threatened to reject the state budget unless lawmakers rolled back CEQA. Democrats were also aware that voters nationwide had blamed the party last year for rising prices.

So, the NYT posits this as choosing human needs over the environment. Is it really that simple? Probably not. But one needs to look deeper than the barely surface-scratched reporting the NYT gives. Pxy was tasked with identifying and ranking the main factors that cause high home costs in CA. The public Pxy link is here. 

 

So, that analysis indicates that CEQA contributes about 5% of the reason for high home cost. It is the least important of the six factors that Pxy identified.

High land and construction costs (35%) is the dominant factor. That assertion is supported by data showing California construction labor costs are approximately 20% higher than the national average 2 4. Construction materials and government development fees also contribute significantly to this burden 4.

Restrictive zoning laws and community resistance, i.e., NIMBYism, (25%) is the 2nd largest cost factor. Research shows that over 56% of California jurisdictions identified neighborhood opposition as playing a notable role in constraining housing production 5. Additionally, restrictive zoning practices significantly contribute to the housing affordability crisis, with 70% of residential areas in major cities restricting or banning apartments 6.

Lack of federal and state investment in affordable housing is 3rd (15%). This reflects the substantial funding gap. Despite California doubling affordable housing production in recent years, the state is only funding 12% of what is needed to meet its goals 8. The national housing shortage includes approximately 2.1 million units for extremely low-income households 9.

Proposition 13 Tax structure impacts rank 4th (12%). Research demonstrates that Proposition 13's introduction led to a 15% increase in house prices and a 3.3% decrease in moving rates 10. The "lock-in effect" reduces housing turnover, limiting supply for new buyers 11.

Local opposition to affordable housing development is 5th (8%). This factor is a distinct but related factor from general NIMBYism, specifically targeting affordable housing projects with additional delays and cost burdens 7 12.

CEQA's impact is 6th (5%), is notably smaller than commonly perceived. Survey data from the Association of Environmental Professionals found that CEQA review was selected only 4 times out of 112 responses for market-rate housing constraints and just 2 times out of 124 selections for affordable housing constraints 13. Only 6% of housing projects require full Environmental Impact Reports 1.

MAGA vs. Public Opinion: MAGA wins

Just for the halibut, this is regarding MAGA's Transfer of Wealth and Power to Elites bill that Senate MAGA Repubs are ramming through. Pxy:

Q: Summarize this and related reporting https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-data-guru-harry-enten-reveals-unprecedented-hatred-for-president-donald-trumps-big-beautiful-bill/. Fact check your sources if possible.

A: Multiple independent polls and analyses indicate that President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" faces historically unprecedented public opposition. The legislation, which proposes significant tax cuts for high-income households alongside reductions in Medicaid and healthcare funding, has consistently recorded net approval ratings between -19% and -29% across five major polls 1 2. This level of disapproval is described by CNN data analyst Harry Enten as evidence that the American public "hates, hates, HATES" the bill, with no comparable legislative disapproval found in historical records 1 2.

Key Polling Evidence
Cross-partisan opposition:
Fox News: 59% oppose vs. 38% support 5 6
Quinnipiac University: 53% oppose vs. 27% support 5
KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation): 64% unfavorable vs. 35% favorable 7 8

Demographic consistency: Opposition spans age, income, and partisan groups, including:
73% of independents (Fox) 5
66% of non-MAGA Republicans (KFF) 8
55% of Republicans anticipating family harm (Newsweek)

Policy Critiques Driving Opposition
Healthcare impacts:
Projected to increase uninsured population by 10–15 million 4 7
Cuts $700–$800 billion from Medicaid 7 8
Reduces funding for rural hospitals 4 7

Tax equity concerns:
Prioritizes "$270,000 tax breaks for wealthiest families" (Sen. Chris Murphy) 4
Viewed as "largest wealth transfer from poor/middle-class to affluent" in U.S. history 4

Fact-Checking Key Claims
"Unprecedented hatred" (Enten): Supported by polling consistency across June 2025, with no rebound despite extended debate 1 2 5.

"Same disapproval since early June" (Quinnipiac): Verified via identical -26% net rating in Quinnipiac's June 1–26 tracking12.

Opposition intensifies with details: KFF experiments show bill favorability drops to 21% after exposure to healthcare consequences 7 8.

Contextual Analysis
The bill's unpopularity persists despite Republican advocacy, with even GOP senators like Thom Tillis (NC) citing Medicaid concerns as a reason for opposition 4. Polls suggest the legislation could become a midterm liability, mirroring the political fallout from the Affordable Care Act debates 4 5.

Peanut 1: In the past, Mitch McConnell has literally used the words "ram through" to describe what Democrats were doing. What's really funny is I literally just tried to call his office in Washington, D.C., and there was no option for voicemail. Just said they were open and taking calls and then disconnected. 

Peanut 2: Fascists don't care what the public thinks. (ooh, that peanut is feisty!)

Peanut 3: Republicans are bad for people, bad for the economy, bad for international relationships, bad for stopping crime, bad for science, but good at propaganda. And they are very good for bad people.