SC®OTUS does not up operate in good faith.

He is so fucking pissed he wasn’t born in this country.

A small toolkit that didn’t get yeeted around the car when you had your accident.

One of his “defending” him, lol.

I thought of that, but he really wants it on the Mall itself.

I think Trump is shutting it down to prevent more stories of how quickly he’s ruined this institution for the arts.

Well, there’s that. Plus he fucking hates the OG Kennedys and how revered they are. Plus now he gets to destroy the building and grift the rebuilding. He sees it as all wins.

Per Wikipedia:

Authorized by the National Cultural Center Act of 1958, which requires that its programming be sustained through private funds, the center represents a public–private partnership.

So it sounds like the government pays for building maintenance, and donors pay for programming.

I remember reading a ?WaPo article saying that attendance was down to about 57%, with almost half the seats unfilled. And that was just from Trump taking control of the board, before the renaming. And that attendance was that low, despite staff having access to an unprecedented number of free tickets for family and friends and other giveaways. The article said that staff would close off the upper levels and relocate people to disguise half-filled houses, and that attendees were repeatedly encouraged to move closer to the stage.

And of course, since he stuck his name on it, things have only gotten worse, with many artists cancelling their performances. I suspect the closure is petty retaliation for all the artist cancellations.

Having read the announcement, it also sounds like he’s planning on tearing down the entire thing, and putting something hideous in it’s place. I’ve been there and the Kennedy Center has a quiet elegance; I have no doubt that anytime this uncultured bore makes will be tasteless, flashy, and built to the cheapest possible standards.

one doesn’t have to be a physician to conclude that a person can’t get skull fractures on both the right and left sides of their head and from front to back by running themselves into a wall

I … kinda like it? It tastes fine to me. I mean, I wouldn’t drink a glass of it, but a bit, yeah certainly

The thing I keep coming back to is that everyone said that it smelled really bad. I wonder if it’s a higher than normal concentrate of ACV.

orders U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers only to target immigrants who have criminal charges[1] or convictions[2].

[1] They were also supposed to leave people alone who were only charged with crimes - let the legal system (creaky as it is) decide guilt or innocence first, have the guilty serve their time, and then deport them.

[2] They were supposed to be targeting only those with felony convictions, not someone who bounced a check forty years ago.

All of this chaos is at least partially driven by the quotas the regime has imposed on ICE. I mean, if an immigrant is a murderer who has successfully hidden from ICE for a couple decades, they’re not going to be easy to find, and ICE will find one or two of them a week.

You know who is easy to find? People checking into their flights at the airport. People turning up for their mandatory immigration status meeting. People showing up for court dates. People going to work in a sector with a lot of immigrants. Etc.

And the thing is, the people in charge knew this would happen, they expected and encouraged it to happen, they wanted it to happen this way. But by putting in quotas, it allows them distance and deniability from the actual implementation and chaos that ensues. They can go on Faux and say both, “We’re going after these people with everything we have” and “Well, there was a misunderstanding about [what | how] they were supposed to do things on the ground”.

Alternatively, if they [allow California’s new map to stand], it will remove any doubt that this Court is trying to rig the game to benefit the Republican Party.

I don’t think that statement holds up, as one decision favoring California doesn’t offset the multiple questionable decisions they’ve already made that strongly favor the Republicans. But thanks for the laugh!

I’m not sure the current court has the integrity to understand that

He’s already issued a pardon to a woman in Colorado who was convicted [only at the state level] of crimes in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Her lawyer is trying that exact argument.

A) he could be pardoned right now, before anything else happens. Except

B) he’s been charged with crimes at the state level, so Walz isn’t going to pardon him and a pardon from the federal level would have no effect

So Miller is blaming CBP (they “may not have been following […] protocol”, "The initial [lying] statement from DHS was based on reports from CBP on the ground.”)

Noem is blaming the White House (“Trump had been privately defending [the killer]”, “Noem was given guidance from multiple White House officials on how she should talk about the shooting”).

And trump is distancing himself from both of them, as well as Bovino.

Threat briefings are now fixated on alleged “retaliatory” plots against ICE and Border Patrol after the deaths of Pretti and Good. “Lots of people are freaking out,” one officer told Klippenstein, saying agents are “getting seriously paranoid, afraid of being targeted by ‘retaliators,’” and talk as if “we are fighting insurgents,” turning Minneapolis into a domestic Baghdad.

What’s that Battlestar Galactica quote about the people becoming the enemy of the state?

The result, officers say, is an overstretched and physically and emotionally shattered force. Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) teams are “being squeezed heavily” to police protests rather than tracking down immigration targets. This, they say, leaves “lots of guys totally exhausted out there with a lot of pressure on them” to conduct non-immigration missions, one officer said.

Poor babies. You can always quit.

Another warned that the FBI is now “reluctant to participate” in any Minneapolis task forces.

Interesting.

One senior ICE agent summed up his reaction to Pretti’s killing in two words: “F–k this.”

Fuck ICE.

They only get their 50k bonus if they stay for five years, and they have to pay off all those macho pickups they bought …

He’s ?56?. Mandatory retirement age is 57, so he was headed out anyway.

It’s a distraction, to lower the resistance and the heat while they continue to lay siege.