A newsletter I'd like others to consider signing up for...Robert Hubbell.
And of course Heather Cox Richardson! Today shows a bit of our international standing with tRumps' speech to the UN General Assembly.
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Showing posts with label Heather Cox Richardson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heather Cox Richardson. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Tuesday, July 7, 2026
The suspension suspension - details on World Cup Soccer and politics
From Heather Cox Richardson, on FIFA and the suspension suspension thanks to tRump...
" Last week, U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team forward Folarin Balogun, the team’s top scorer, received a red card in a World Cup match against Bosnia-Herzegovina, suspending him for today’s game against Belgium. Then, on Sunday, the Disciplinary Committee of the international soccer governing body FIFA made a surprise announcement, saying that Balogun would be allowed a year-long probation, enabling him to play on Monday.
Folarin Balogun
Almost immediately, Sophia Cai of Politico reported that White House FIFA World Cup Task Force executive director Andrew Giuliani, the son of Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, told President Donald J. Trump about the suspension. As officials from the U.S. Soccer Federation prepared and submitted an appeal to FIFA, Giuliani and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick offered White House lawyers and dug into the professional history of the referee who had made the red card call. Then, on Thursday, Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino, with whom he has been friendly for eight years.
On Sunday, FIFA cleared Balogun to play on Monday. The last, and only, time a red card went unpunished before was in 1962.
The suspension of the suspension has created an international outcry although, as the Associated Press pointed out, this is only the latest step in a pattern in which Infantino appears to have been interfering with the independence of FIFA’s judicial and disciplinary bodies.
The Belgian soccer federation is challenging the ruling. “Regardless of the sporting outcome of the match,” it said, it was “deeply concerned by the way these events have unfolded and will continue, in the hours, days and months ahead, to pursue every available avenue to uphold the fundamental principles of ethics, sporting fairness and the interests of football as a whole.”
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has called the decision “incomprehensible and unjustifiable.” “When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” it said. “Football is the most loved sport in the world because it is a beautiful game and is trusted because it is played everywhere with the same laws.”
But a world in which playing fields are level is not the world Trump wants. He wants one in which people in power can ignore the rule of law for their own ends.
Today, at the White House, he told reporters: “So I saw the play. And I’m a person that loves sports and was a good athlete. And I understand sports really well. Really well. And that wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction. That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other…. No, these were two great athletes that got tangled up, and this referee, who— is a little bit suspect— if you check his, if you check his past.”
“[Balogun] didn’t do anything wrong, and he’s our best player or one of our best players, a very— vital player, and he gave him a red card. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t think it meant much. Then I started hearing that that means he can’t play in the next game, at least in the next game. I said, Boy, that’s a big— You know, if it happened to another player, it would have been unfair, but when they take your best player or just about, they have some great players, but, and they say, you can’t play. That’s very unfair. That’s, you know, it’s one thing to penalize somebody for the game. But how do you penalize them for a game that hasn’t been played yet? is very unfair. You can’t do that. So, yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.
“I spoke to a man who’s highly respected, and, by the way, whose level of respect has gone up tenfold, and he was good before this started. But, you know, he really pushed it in this country.” And then, Trump was back to his usual grievances. “I’m the one that got them to do it. It was not Biden. Biden was asleep. I got him to do it. In fact, it was very sad because I got him to do it. And if the progression was normal, I would have been retired. Now, the Democrats are saying, Man, we should have just let him have his way, he would have. We would have had him gone, but I said, you know, the saddest thing is, I got the Olympics, and I got the World Cup.”
The president of the United States pressuring the president of FIFA to change the rules for his favored player perfectly represents the way Trump thinks about the rule of law in the United States. And the rejection of a level playing field shows in the way Trump and the Republicans have skewed the U.S economy so only their team can win.
Almost exactly a year ago, on July 4, 2025, Trump signed into law what he called the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” It passed both the House and the Senate without a single Democratic vote, making it a signature piece of legislation for Trump and his party. As Shannon Pettypiece and Mike Hixenbaugh of NBC News reported on July 1, there was a “seismic shift” at the heart of the new law: it extended about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to corporations and wealthy Americans over ten years while cutting about $1.1 trillion from healthcare and food assistance programs that serve poor and working-class Americans. It also adds about $4.7 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years.
Public policy scholar Chris Howard noted that the law so dramatically rolls back the modern government constructed during and after the Depression and World War II, from 1933 to 1981, that it amounts to “Robin Hood in reverse.” “It deliberately targets some of the most vulnerable members of society,” he told Pettypiece and Hixenbaugh, “while providing huge windfalls to the richest individuals and to big business.”
And yet in 2026, Trump has taken to saying that those Americans calling for the government to maintain the rule of law to make sure the economic playing field is level, rather than working for corporations and the wealthy, are “communists.”
So he is looking to put a thumb on the scale of the midterm elections as he did in the FIFA match and the economy. Trump is demanding that Congress pass the so-called SAVE America Act, a massive voter suppression bill. Yesterday House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told the Fox News Channel that he will try to get Congress to pass the measure by using the budget reconciliation process. Since such a process cannot be filibustered, Republicans might be able to pass it despite Democratic opposition.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that if the Republicans pass the measure, they won’t lose another election for a hundred years.
“The game tonight’s going to be amazing,” Trump said today about tonight’s match. “We’re going to have a full team and Belgium is going to have a full team. And you know what? If they beat us, then they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us, we’ll say it was— I say it was rigged just like the election was rigged in 2020.”
Tonight, Belgium defeated the USA 4–1 in the World Cup match played in Seattle.
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Yep, I added red type to the relevant part. And I left out the part of her history lesson, though Richardson is a great historian. And Richardson's note on the passage of the "One Big Beautiful Bill" last year by the Repuglicans gives total evidence about the fiction represented by the politicized Social Security letter I talked about yesterday.
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Gavin Newsome (on FaceBook) tongue in cheek...
Family at a World Cup Game
Same evening USA won its game!
There might be more photos from their July 4 visit in Philadelphia! Yes, they were in the cradle of liberty for another World Cup game. They put in for lottery tickets quite early apparently, and got 5!
A bit small and blurry first photo of the family in Philly. They went to the game in 101 degree F heat. When they got home the next evening all they said was "it wasn't a good game." France won, but Paraguay played dirty.
Don't miss my post later this morning about the Suspension Suspension from Heather Cox Richardson.
Duplicate posting of the header photo, for phone readers' benefit.
Monday, May 25, 2026
Memorial Day
A holiday here in the USA.
An original American Flag in a doorway in Old Salem NC
Sometimes I'm so sad when I have to admit that I live here, at this time. We as a nation have certainly had better times, worth remembering. More times when we could be proud of those who gave their all for the freedom, liberty, justice and democracy which the US used to represent.
Tuskegee Airmen in front of their P-40
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I don't think that combat has ever been written about truthfully; it has always been described in terms of bravery and cowardice. I won't even accept these words as terms of human reference any more. And anyway, hell, they don't even apply to what, in actual fact, modern warfare has become.
-James Jones, novelist (1921-1977)
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The Borowitch Report: "Heather Cox Richardson Predicts The End of Trump"
PS, Veterans for Peace posted the following!
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Coach House Daffodils
Sharing with Wordless Wednesday
By ETHEL SPOWERS – SWINGS
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The U.S. military announced on Sunday that three service members were killed in action and five are seriously wounded after a joint strike on Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury. (By Tuesday we know 8 have died.)
KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
From Heather Cox Richardson March 2, 2026 (please read her information about the newest war.)
And her newsletter March 3 gives this info...
"Central Command has reported six American service members killed and eighteen wounded in the operation.
According to U.S. Central Command, which manages U.S. military operations in the Middle East, there are about 50,000 military personnel involved in Operation Epic Fury, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and they are moving more support to the region. Yesterday Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to rule out sending ground troops to Iran."
She goes on to give the cost estimates for this current situation.
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Who do you serve? To whose life can I most effectively contribute? What practice –- meditation, or relaxation practice, or prayer, or time in nature -- whatever brings you peace -– do you follow to build your internal power? Do you allocate enough time or emphasis to that practice? There is a time to give and a time to restore. Restorative time is the basis of all worthwhile creative work, and all work that seeks to contribute to the lives of others. And it gives us patience with our own foibles, and those of others.
Rod MacIver in Heron Dance
Sunday, January 25, 2026
Alex Jeffrey Pretti murdered by ICE
On Sunday morning (Jan. 25) Jenifer Rubin of The Contrarian sums up Minneapolis' Friday and Saturday's activities thus:
The contrast between, on one hand, federal shock troops’ brutal, unjustified execution in Minneapolis on Saturday of Alex Pretti, a thirty-seven-year-old ICU nurse for the VA, and, on the other, Friday’s closures and a massive, peaceful demonstration and rally, where “Tens of thousands gather[ed] in downtown Minneapolis for ‘ICE Out’ day” (reportedly the largest union action in state history) — attended by union members, business people, clergy, and community activists in -20 degree weather — sums up the battle between tyranny and democracy.
The struggle between facts we all see and regime lies we all know to be preposterous plays out as well. As is their standard knee-jerk response, Donald Trump and his regime lied about the victim and the circumstances of the killing, despite the tragedy being captured on video from multiple angles.
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These are posts from FaceBook which I'm documenting, because the news is so skewed and I want to be sure to have accurate information archived. The photos are interspersed, but not published by those authors.
From Occupy Democrats: Jan 24, 1:30 pm
BREAKING: The man brutally murdered by ICE in Minneapolis today FOR NO REASON has been identified as 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and American CITIZEN Alex Jeffrey Pretti.Alex was a registered nurse with NO CRIMINAL RECORD and only a few parking tickets to his name. He was an athlete and avid outdoorsman. He was a brother and a son. He worked for the VA, where he cared for veterans' health. He was an ICE observer who was legally filming the ICE agents’ actions when he was stopped, detained, DISARMED, and THEN shot several times by ICE agents.Alex had a legal permit to carry a firearm and multiple videos of the killing clearly show that he did not draw his weapon or brandish it at ICE agents. Apparently, the Second Amendment only applies to Republicans.He was ONLY filming when they approached him, and was ONLY holding his camera.ICE agents had taken his weapon from its holster BEFORE they shot him.He was being pinned down and brutally beaten by a mob of ICE agents when they shot him FOR NO REASON.It was MURDER.It's worth highlighting the fact that Pretti is a legal citizen and has an address listed in South Minneapolis. The Trump administration has flooded our streets with undertrained, overweight, bloodthirsty, masked enforcers under the pretext of rounding up violent undocumented migrants. In practice, they're targeting and executing innocent Americans.It's absolutely paramount that we spread the truth about Pretti far and wide because Homeland Security is already rushing to falsely smear him as an attempted mass shooter. The official DHS account on X wrote that he "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." They're absolutely shameless with their lies. We won't fall for it.Rest in power, Alex.Please like and share to spread the word!
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AND:
The killing of Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis looks less like law enforcement and more like an execution carried out in broad daylight on a city street. Multiple videos show the 37 year old nurse with his phone out, stepping toward a chaotic ICE arrest where agents had slammed a woman to the pavement and were pinning her as she screamed. What you see is not a threat advancing on officers, but a neighbor trying to document and de escalate a scene that already looked ugly.
In the footage, agents shove Pretti, pepper spray him and drag him to the sidewalk, where several officers pile on while he is on the ground. One appears to strike his head with a hard object as he is already restrained, and then, with his body pinned and the danger clearly moving in only one direction, agents fire a rapid volley of about ten shots. Officials immediately leaned on the familiar script that he was armed and that the shots were “defensive,” even as the videos show his phone in his hand and his movements focused on the battered woman beside him.Pretti did, in fact, legally own a handgun, and Minnesota law allows open carry with a permit, which Minneapolis police have already confirmed he had. By every public account so far, the gun stayed holstered and never appears in his hands before or during the shooting. What the evidence does show is a licensed nurse with minor traffic tickets on his record stepping in to shield a stranger from an immigration dragnet that has already left multiple people dead in the same city this month, and paying for it with his life.
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And from Heather Cox Richardson:
January 24, 2026 (Saturday)
This morning, on a street in Minneapolis, at least seven federal agents tackled and then shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse for the local VA hospital.
Video from the scene shows Pretti directing traffic on a street out of an area with agents around, then trying to help another person get up after she had been pushed to the ground by the agents. The agents then surround Pretti and shoot pepper spray into his face, then pull him to the ground from behind and hit him as he appears to be trying to keep his head off the ground. An agent appears to take a gun out of Pretti’s waistband during the struggle, then turns and leaves with it. A shot then stops Pretti’s movements, appearing to kill him, before nine more shots ring out, apparently as agents continued to fire into his body.
It looked like an execution.
After he was dead, the agents walked away, apparently making no effort to preserve the crime scene, which people on the street later tried to secure by walling it off with trash bins.
As journalist Philip Bump noted, administration officials didn’t even pretend to wait for more information before jumping straight to “the opponent of the state deserved it.”
Mitch Smith of the New York Times reported that federal agents have blocked state investigators from the scene. Drew Evans of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a statewide investigations team that specializes in police shootings, told reporters his agency had obtained a search warrant—a rare step—but the federal government still refused them access.
Tonight, in a lawsuit against Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials, Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison asked a judge for a temporary restraining order to prevent DHS agents from destroying evidence related to the shooting. The suit noted the “astonishing” departure from normal investigations, seemingly trying not to preserve evidence but to destroy it. A judge, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, immediately granted the restraining order, barring the administration from "destroying or altering evidence" concerning the killing.
Ernesto Londoño of the New York Times reported that federal officials also “have refused to disclose the identities of federal agents involved in Saturday’s shooting, as well as the names of federal agents who have shot people in recent days.”
Minnesota police have refused to obey the federal officers, though. Local law enforcement has been talking to witnesses and finding videos of the shooting. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference: "Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity, and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands. We urge everyone to remain peaceful."
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that it, rather than the FBI, will investigate the shooting. But, as Alex Witt of MS NOW noted, DHS had already issued a statement about the shooting, which falsely asserted that Pretti had “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and that he “violently resisted” as “officers attempted to disarm” him. The statement continued that “an agent fired defensive shots” and added that Pretti “also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."
“So,” Witt noted, “they're gonna be investigating that which they’ve already issued a summary about…. It would seem that it’s a closed book?”
After repeatedly being exposed as liars over previous accusations against those they have shot, the Department of Homeland Security has so little credibility that Witt is not the only journalist calling out the federal agents for lying. Devon Lum of the New York Times wrote: “Videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times contradict the Department of Homeland Security's account of the fatal shooting of a man by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.
“The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and they tried to disarm him. But footage from the scene shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him.”
But lying to the American people is the only option for the administration when we can, once again, all see what happened with our own eyes. Pretti did have a permit for a concealed handgun and appeared to have carried the gun with him, although witnesses say he never reached for it. Tonight Noem doubled down on the lie, saying again: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”
When the Democratic Party’s social media account posted: “ICE agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis this morning. Get ICE out of Minnesota NOW,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller replied: “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.” The Democrats’ social media account responded: “You’re a f*cking liar with blood on your hands.”
Miller continued to bang that drum. When Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that “ICE must leave Minneapolis” and that “Congress should not fund this version of ICE—this is seeking confirmation, chaos, and dystopia,” Miller responded: “An assassin tried to murder federal agents and this is your response.” When Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar similarly decried the killing, Miller responded: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response? You and the state’s entire Democrat leadership team have been flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country.”
Miller is a white nationalist, who has recommended others read a dystopian novel in which people of color “invade” Europe and destroy “Western civilization.” Those who support immigration are, in the book’s telling, enemies who are abetting an “invasion”—a word Miller relies on—that is destroying the culture of white countries. They are working for the “enemy.”
In the wake of Pretti’s shooting, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota governor Tim Walz to suggest he could “bring back law and order to Minnesota” if he handed over the state’s voter rolls to the Department of Justice. As Jacob Knutson of Democracy Docket noted, she explicitly tied the administration’s violence in the state to its determination to get its hands on voters’ personal data before the 2026 election. Minnesota has voted for the Democratic candidate running against Trump in the past three presidential elections, but he insists that he really has won the state each time.
As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers wrote: Republicans could stop this at any time they wanted to.
“All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dem[ocrat]s to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump—3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.”
Morris also pointed out that in December, Trump’s approval rating was negative in 40 states, including 10 he won in 2024. That covers 30 seats currently held by Republicans. Pretti’s shooting will likely erode Trump’s support further. Tonight, even right-wing podcaster Tim Pool reacted to Pretti’s killing by noting that it looked as if the agent had disarmed Pretti before the other agents shot him. “I don’t see Trump winning this one,” Pool commented.
The funding bill for DHS is effectively dead in the Senate, as Democrats have said they will not support any more funding for DHS. Tonight, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters: “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” But the July law the Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured nearly $191 billion into DHS through September 30, 2029, with almost $75 billion going to ICE and $67 billion going to Customs and Border Protection (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got just $2.9 billion).
Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) had more to say: “What we just saw this morning on the streets of Minneapolis is another outright murder by federal officials. And let me just be clear, those federal ICE officers are absolute cowards. I am a Marine veteran standing here telling you to your face they are unprofessional, pathetic cowards. Because if a Marine, an 18 year old Marine, did that in Iraq in the middle of a war zone, he would be court martialed because it is murder. And you pathetic little cowards who have to wear face masks because you're so damn scared, couldn't even effectively wrestle a guy [to] the ground, so you needed to shoot him? This is why ICE needs to be prosecuted. Yeah, I voted to defund it, but ICE, you need to be prosecuted, and Director [Todd] Lyons, who's running ICE right now, I hope you're hearing this from this Marine to you. You guys are criminal thugs. You need to be held accountable to law if you think you can enforce it, and you need to be prosecuted right now.”
Just hours after the killing of Alex Pretti, agents pinned U.S. citizen Matthew James Allen to the street while he screamed: “I have done nothing at all. My name is Matthew James…Allen. I’m a United States citizen…. You’re gonna kill me! Is that what you want? You want to kill me? You want to kill me on the street? You’re going to have to f*cking kill me! I have done nothing wrong.” Nearby, his sobbing wife screamed: “Stop please! Stop!! Please!! We were just running away from the gas. That’s all we were doing.”
“We all know the poem,” Blue Missouri executive director Jess Piper wrote, “and there is no shade of white that will save you from this murderous regime.”
Tonight, Susan and Michael Pretti, the parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, issued a statement:
“We are heartbroken but also very angry,” they said.
“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.
“I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.
“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
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And just so you get to read both side of this story,
here's Debi Burk Scott's FB version on Jan 24, 5 pm:
While the media is rushing to humanize Alex Jeffrey Pretti by highlighting his nursing license and college background, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is making one thing clear: A resume is not a license to attack federal agents.The narrative of the "peaceful nurse" is quickly falling apart in the face of forensic evidence and official statements from the front lines of Operation Metro Surge.DHS has released a photo of the SIG Sauer Emperor Scorpion 9mm handgun recovered at the scene—the same weapon Pretti brandished when he approached agents during a targeted operation.Pretti wasn't just carrying a gun; he had two loaded magazines and was operating without any form of identification.Despite his professional background, federal agents report that Pretti "violently resisted" efforts to disarm him, forcing an 8-year veteran agent to fire defensive shots to protect his team.White House advisors have stated that Pretti’s actions suggest he was acting as a domestic extremist attempting to "assassinate federal law enforcement."
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Occupy Democrats Jan 24, 2:30 pm said:
BREAKING: The footage of federal agents murdering Alex Jeffrey Pretti CLEARLY shows that they disarmed him before executing him on the ground.On the left is a photograph of Pretti's firearm shared by the Department of Homeland Security account on X. Next to it you see a still image from a video of the killing. It shows an agent running away with Pretti's gun BEFORE the agents opened fire.You can see the silver-colored slide, silver grip, and black metal receiver. The Sig Sauer sights mounted on top of the pistol are identical.The order of events is clear here. Agents disarmed Pretti despite him having a legal permit to carry the gun. Once they had taken his gun and he was helpless, the agents fired multiple bullets into him.This is cold-blooded murder.Please share to spread the truth!
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