[Sarcastic, not so naive, actually critical of most sanctions as a tactic the U.S. has used, but frustrated as fuck at the lack of… agency, principles, justice.] So now, finally, this is the part where the U.S. gets sanctioned, right?
DC
I’m listening to the Supreme Court and those arguing before it debate the color and size of the cups in the shell game of campaign finance. The most hilarious claim is that there is no quid pro quo bribery.
Gardens vs. giveaways
So much more vision than in D.C.
A relatively low-effort, certainly less expensive, high-impact community-centric and green way to re-use a stadium site. Certainly better than what D.C. is actually going for now.
Moot now, anyway, as the old RFK stadium was being taken down before the options going forward were finalized and the Commanders deal reached. There was an option for the site without a publicly subsidized NFL stadium.
Instead, I guess we have RFK Jr. (or Trump!?) stadium to look forward to… and compromised, commercialized environment around it.
By A. Litteri in Union Market
The best way we can honor service members is to send the National Guard home
There isn’t an obvious public link to this specific message, sent out on Free DC’s list, though their site has plenty of their digital campaign materials about this and other issues they advocate for. I thought it was excellent though. Once again, I think of my passed grandfather, Battle of the Bulge veteran, Republican, who I know would find this use of the military offensive.
I’ve reproduced the core of the email I received, including their emphasis and links (minus ActionNetwork’s redirects):
Armed soldiers don’t belong in our communities. The National Guard isn’t supposed to police American civilians. They are not supposed to chase down children, intimidate people on the street, harass residents for simply being outside, or be used as props in Shake Shack photo-ops.
Trump is trying to make the National Guard do all these things here in DC as well as in Chicago, Memphis, Los Angeles, and Portland. Guard members themselves are increasingly fed up with it.
Yesterday we learned that National Guard members are increasingly questioning their role in Trump’s agenda of occupation and deportation.
“This is just not what any of us signed up for, and it’s so out of the scope of normal operations,” said J, a member of the Ohio National Guard who spoke on condition of anonymity. "[Y]ou want me to go pick up trash and dissuade homeless people in D.C. at gunpoint. Like, no dude."
J isn’t alone. In September, leaked documents revealed that the Guard knows its occupation of American cities is “leveraging fear,” driving a “wedge between citizens and the military,” and promoting a sense of “shame” among some troops and veterans. That’s not what service members deserve.
This Veterans Day, the best way we can honor service members is to send the National Guard home. These deployments are unsafe, unlawful, inappropriate, and a waste of public funds. Our demand remains: National Guard Out Now.
A couple of photos from the No Kings rally in DC
I appreciate the ecumenical critiques. Not to “both-sides” it: there are significant differences and fairly one-sided undemocratic reasons for the complete deadlock, but the clippy sign could very well stand the test of time. I had my ear out for process and not just content critiques from the stage.
I took Metro this morning. Got on a Silver Line train in the direction of Ashburn. Operator pronounced it ASSburn.
Yeah, we’re all on the train to ass burn these days.
Paul Clement pretty much said it out loud
This morning I’ve been listening to SCOTUS arguments (rather than public radio pledge drive pleas) and heard conservative lawyer (and former Solicitor General under the end of the Bush II administration) Paul Clement admit Republicans have a hard time finding voters who want to join Republicans in court to have standing to support Republican complaints about (what in my mind amounts to) voter enfranchisement. This was all as an aside in the arguments being made this morning in Bost v. IL Bd. of Elections.
"Snake in the grass"
Bruce Schneier on Digital Threat Modeling Under Authoritarianism
It might be uncomfortable to think about. I remember in the past, it was a bit of a no-go to even bring up whether we saw our government as a potential threat in our threat model at a past job. And getting an answer? Well, that was even less fun, given the sensitivity of certain data and the tension of priorities. (I didn’t get one!)
Journalism should have already be on board and well ahead on the idea, especially for certain stories and topics. But the Pentagon’s push this week should really make that clear. Nevermind the major networks recently being directly targeted and their general capitulation. Or maybe the State Department’s proclivity to kick out journalists who ask pesky questions?
I do not think this is a question anymore.
Just some curious bullshit
What appeared to be RFK Jr’s old 2024 presidential campaign bus was parked (illegally) outside the Pierce School condominiums in northeast DC on September 16. This location is also known for hosting a crypto party aligned with Trump’s inauguration and being a place Musk and other DOGE figures early in the administration.
I have no other context, but found it weird to see. I found it vaguely notable that it happened between RFK Jr’s grilling before the Senate Finance Committee last week and his fired CDC director’s testimony before the Senate HELP Committee yesterday. That’s probably a coincidence.
If RFK Jr. hadn’t bought a multimillion dollar home in Georgetown upon his appointment, I’d say it would fit that he’d be living in the old campaign bus (down by the river?) when in DC.
Whatever the actual story, DC has enough Dear Leader banners of Trump being hung off of Heritage Foundation, Agriculture and Labor buildings, we don’t need an outdated totem of failure emblazoned with our other narcissist-in-residence rolling around town.
If you told me 30 years ago that an adult me, not a lawyer, would listen to Supreme Court oral arguments “for fun,” I’d have spit my Mountain Dew in your face.
Did a filibuster happen if no one being opposed had to bat an eyelid?
Some thoughts on Senator Cory Booker’s filibuster effort overnight and into this morning
The Signal chat seems to be evidence of a war crime, right?
Given the lack of urgency and predictable civilian deaths, does the Signal chat not constitute a war crime!? Does this leaked conversation provide the proof?
We’re getting snowed but I don’t mean the weather.
Tuesday’s rally outside the Treasury Department building, along 15th Street NW between F and G.
Yesterday outside the Department of Labor
The blowback is going to come in all forms
A neighbor, whose org is largely funded by USAID, shared that they laid-off 70% of their staff and they who remain are there to close-up shop. The web site is reduced to a splash page. They helped farmers farm better and more sustainably, adopting new technology and adapting to new environments, enabled locally-controlled economic development and community banking, implemented clean water and sanitation programs, and facilitated medical services capacity building.
They worked in different places around the world, but I was aware of their work supporting efforts in Latin America — places this administration vilifies and slanders and does not to want people to migrate from to here.
I’m not without a lefty critique of empire, soft power, and a suspicious jaundiced eye of the origins of USAID and what else perhaps hid or hides in the folds of its efforts. But if I were, so implausibly given Musk’s opportunity (his seemed fairly implausible until now), I would be listening and my first move would not be to blow real things real people need out of the water.
And the blowback? I already alluded this is obviously counterintuitive to the wish to mitigate migration (however you come to hoping for that). Our agricultural assistance through US aid involves buying American commodities and distributing them elsewhere acts as a price stabilizer here (there are critiques on this too, but just dropping this and not doing a better thing or fixing subsidies here, of which I hear nothing from, well… anybody). Our capacity for tracking, preventing, building resistance to disease is being wounded by freezes at NIH, CDC, pulling out of WHO, and shutting down USAID. That will hurt, and presumably kill, many. And maybe us.
And, cam anyone expect the ripple effects of pulling out these and other rugs so suddenly to not result in radicalizing some people in a way that no nation state can prevent and which has compounded the violence in the world, and our own security?
USAID shutdown reportedly styming anti-human trafficking direct service efforts
I worked for nearly a decade with the organization that currently runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline. I do not know the current specific details, but I believe it and am saddened by this news. I and my team supported some efforts to engage with some of the international partners alluded to if not mentioned in this reporting. I have all kinds of feelings about the space (and Polaris's unfortunate support for some very flawed legislation in the US), and I do not have an uncritical view of USAID, but it pains me to understand the many ways people just trying to help people are being crippled, seized-up and disrupted... and now, in this case, to maybe even _know_ some of the people. (Never mind the disruptions to refugee and immigration support separate from the USAID developments, where there are some more close-to-my-old-'home' hits.)
From Wired:
The funding cuts and pauses have immediately made it harder for people to safely escape scam compounds, according to half a dozen sources working to combat scams and trafficking. The cuts have also shrunk services that house and care for human trafficking victims and are limiting investigatory work into criminal groups. After just days of funding disruptions, sources say that the cuts have caused “chaos” for staff working to help survivors on a daily basis. Some organizations have already gone dark, and relief workers add that the withdrawal of services could embolden the criminal groups behind the fraud.
I’ve kind of been at a loss, frozen and watching the horror show. Keeping a link log of the wretched developments but not publishing it. So far there are just my trite-and-sometimes cathartic reactions on social spaces. Not sure I have anything useful to add. Girding myself.
Snow day!
Alternative Capitol Hill sledding location at Eastern High School with the U.S. Capitol locked-down for election certification.
I hear the ghost of Ed Sullivan: “We have a very big shew today!”
50F
This is the first 50f morning for me this year that sustained long enough for me to be awake, not have immediate intervening responsibilities, such that I can meet it on the stoop with coffee in hand.
If I controlled the global thermostat every morning should be 50f, but… never mind seasons—2 decades of notable climate shifts means there will be many fewer of these in my life at this latitude than I’d have assumed. Except maybe if the AMOC collapses, I gather? Not hoping for that.
The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts can suck it. The vertical playground at Swampoodle is one of The Childe’s favorite places to play.
It is near several places we make regular errand runs to and, in addition to climbing fun, it provides him a vantage point to observe the train traffic coming in and out of Union Station (The Childe is a trainspotter, although he does not yet know this term).
Like many park areas with something interesting for different groups, it is a small oasis in the city. We need more such things for all of us. (We also need the city to keep the drinking fountains in clean, working order in all the parks. I did just put in a 3-1-1 request with regards to Swampoodle’s drinking fountain.)