Jan 11, 2026
Look At Yourself
- When a young girl is raped, and you defend the rapist.
- When a guy shoots and kills a woman on the street, and you defend the shooter.
- When a guy is being totally disrespectful of the women around him, and you say nothing.
- Your cynicism doesn't make you interesting.
- Your smug dismissal of anything that moves normal people to feel sorrow doesn't make you manly.
- Your support for somebody who gets a kick out of pushing people around sure as fuck doesn't make you strong.
Women see and hear your reactions to the shitty things going on all around us - especially when you cheer it on, or you just shrug it off with some stupid epithet that you think is cute.
You're not being clear-eyed and pragmatic - you're being an asshole.
So the "crisis of male loneliness" isn't because there's a problem with women - it's because women are very much aware of what a big fuckin' jerk you are.
Jan 10, 2026
It's A Problem, Mr President
"So throw some money at it."
People tend to see money as the universal problem-solver.
It isn't.
You can pay people to grapple with the problem for you. Money is something you can use to buy tools and hire a mechanic, but money itself don't fix nothin'.
Weirdly - or maybe so weirdly - when you throw as much money at the problem as you think you need, then you get to pretend you solved the problem.
You didn't.
Maybe the people who got paid to do the work solved it for you, but you sure as fuck didn't.
And as likely as not - especially when we're talking Geopolitics - you end up making the problem worse.
Trump is transactioning this joint right over the fuckin' cliff - as he has always done with everything he's ever tried.
BTW, Trump - the great business brain - the all-powerful deal maker - Mr Cost-Containment - has already added more than $2,230,000,000,000 to the national debt.
$2.23 Trillion
Try writing that on a check
Two-trillion, two hundred-twenty-three billion & no/100ths
Jan 9, 2026
Iran
Iran supreme leader signals upcoming crackdown on protesters ‘ruining their own streets’ for Trump
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — European leaders urged Iran late Friday to allow its citizens to demonstrate without reprisal after Tehran signaled security forces would crack down on the protesters whom U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to support.
At least 62 people have been killed in the protests that began in late December over Iran’s ailing economy and have morphed into the most significant challenge to the government in years.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed Trump as having hands “stained with the blood of Iranians” as his supporters shouted “Death to America!” in footage aired by Iranian state television. State media later referred to the demonstrators as “terrorists,” setting the stage for a violent crackdown as in other protests in recent years.
Protesters are “ruining their own streets ... in order to please the president of the United States,” the 86-year-old Khamenei said to a crowd at his compound in Tehran. “Because he said that he would come to their aid. He should pay attention to the state of his own country instead.”
Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei separately vowed that punishment for protesters “will be decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.”
Late Friday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron issued a joint statement condemning reported deadly violence against the protesters, and urged Iran to allow its citizens to express themselves without fear of reprisal. The Associated Press could not independently confirm local media reports that state forces had opened fire on protesters in Tehran on Friday.
There was no immediate response from Washington, though Trump has repeatedly pledged to strike Iran if protesters are killed, a threat that has taken on greater significance after the U.S. military raid that seized Venezuela’s former President Nicolás Maduro.
Internet cut off
Despite Iran’s theocracy cutting off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls, short online videos shared by activists purported to show protesters chanting against Iran’s government around bonfires as debris littered the streets in the capital, Tehran, and other areas into Friday morning.
Iranian state media alleged “terrorist agents” of the U.S. and Israel set fires and sparked violence. It also said there were “casualties,” without elaborating.
The full scope of the demonstrations that began Dec. 28 couldn’t be immediately determined due to the communications blackout.
The protests also represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Pahlavi, who called for the protests Thursday night, similarly has called for demonstrations at 8 p.m. Friday.
Demonstrations have included cries in support of the shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.
So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 62 people while more than 2,300 others have been detained, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
“What turned the tide of the protests was former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s calls for Iranians to take to the streets at 8 p.m. on Thursday and Friday,” said Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Per social media posts, it became clear that Iranians had delivered and were taking the call seriously to protest in order to oust the Islamic Republic.”
“This is exactly why the internet was shut down: to prevent the world from seeing the protests. Unfortunately, it also likely provided cover for security forces to kill protesters.”
Thursday night protests preceded internet shutdown
When the clock struck 8 p.m. Thursday, neighborhoods across Tehran erupted in chanting, witnesses said. The chants included “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” Others praised the shah, shouting: “This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!” Thousands could be seen on the streets before all communication to Iran cut out.
On Friday, Pahlavi called on Trump to help the protesters, saying Khamenei “wants to use this blackout to murder these young heroes.”
“You have proven and I know you are a man of peace and a man of your word,” he said in a statement. “Please be prepared to intervene to help the people of Iran.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pahlavi’s appeal to Trump.
Pahlavi had said he would offer further plans depending on the response to his call. His support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past — particularly after the 12-day war Israel waged on Iran in June. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some demonstrations, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The internet cut also appears to have taken Iran’s state-run and semiofficial news agencies offline. The state TV acknowledgment at 8 a.m. Friday represented the first official word about the demonstrations.
State TV claimed the protests were violent and caused casualties, but did not offer nationwide figures. It said the protests saw “people’s private cars, motorcycles, public places such as the metro, fire trucks and buses set on fire.” State TV later reported that violence overnight killed six people in Hamedan, some 280 kilometers (175 miles) southwest of Tehran, and two security force members in Qom, 125 kilometers (75 miles) south of the capital.
The European Union and Germany condemned the violence targeting demonstrators as new protests were reported in Zahedan in Iran’s restive southwestern Sistan and Baluchestan province.
Trump renews threat over protester deaths
Iran has faced rounds of nationwide protests in recent years. As sanctions tightened and Iran struggled after the 12-day war, its rial currency collapsed in December, reaching 1.4 million to $1. Protests began soon after, with demonstrators chanting against Iran’s theocracy.
It remains unclear why Iranian officials have yet to crack down harder on the demonstrators. Trump warned last week that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” America “will come to their rescue.”
In an interview with talk show host Hugh Hewitt aired Thursday, Trump reiterated his pledge.
Iran has “been told very strongly, even more strongly than I’m speaking to you right now, that if they do that, they’re going to have to pay hell,” Trump said.
He demurred when asked if he’d meet with Pahlavi.
“I’m not sure that it would be appropriate at this point to do that as president,” Trump said. “I think that we should let everybody go out there, and we see who emerges.”
Speaking in an interview with Sean Hannity aired Thursday night on Fox News, Trump went as far as to suggest Khamenei may want to leave Iran.
“He’s looking to go someplace,” Trump said. “It’s getting very bad.”
Hey, MAGA
- You can choose to own a gun or not to own one.
- You can choose to carry it around, or not to carry it around.
- You can choose to shoot your gun, or not to shoot it.
- You can choose to threaten people with your gun, or not to do that.
So - you're Pro-Choice
Good for you
WTF ICE?
What does it say about the system when a guy says he might get better treatment if he's deported to a place he had to flee in fear for his life?
In recorded calls, reports of overcrowding and lack of food at ICE detention centers
In early May, NPR began receiving desperate messages from family members of detainees in Florida.
It was accompanied by a screenshot of a photo of a man with swollen red eyes, with another screenshot of his full detainee information.
"Please help me. Im desperate."
The woman who sent it, Maria, was texting about her brother at the Krome Detention Center in Miami. She requested their last name be withheld for fear of retaliation against her brother, who has been held in detention for more than two months.
She told NPR he had a fever, a serious eye infection for almost two weeks, and says he was denied medication for both.
"There are a lot of sick people there, and they aren't getting medical attention," she said in a phone interview. "They are sleeping on the floor and sometimes don't get meals."
Florida has pledged to be a national model for state cooperation with President Trump's immigration crackdown. As detention centers here and across the country fill up, NPR has received an outpouring of messages about severe overcrowding and inhumane conditions in immigration facilities across the state.
More than a dozen detainees, family members and lawyers described similar issues as Maria, including detainees underfed and in ill health. Krome, which is run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been dogged for years by allegations of inhumane conditions and investigated by the Department of Justice in 2000 on accusations of sexual abuse. This year alone, there have been two deaths at the facility: Ukrainian immigrant Maksym Chernayak and Genry Ruiz Guillen of Honduras.
This morning, a group of Krome detainees assembled in the patio to form a human "SOS" sign.
In a written statement, ICE told NPR that "a group of detainees at the Krome Service Processing Center (Krome) decided to stage a peaceful sit-in in the center's recreation area. There has been no injuries or use of force of any kind during this demonstration." It added, "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is committed to ensuring that all those in the agency's custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments under appropriate conditions of confinement."
Private prisons and local jails are ramping up as ICE detention exceeds capacity
"I had a client who was at Krome," says Miami based lawyer Jeff Botelho, who adds the client recently told him that "they had been sleeping on the floor for a week or two. For food, he said they were given a cup of rice and a glass of water a day. It was very concerning."
Lawyers, advocates and experts are warning that overcrowding is the new normal across the country. The federal government is holding more than 48,000 people in immigration detention, about a 20% increase since January. But deportations are not keeping pace. Experts say that's largely what's driving the overcrowding in detention centers.
"There's incredible pressure to ramp up arrests inside the interior of the United States," says Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group. He estimates that ICE is at 125% detention capacity. "And so far, there has been, if anything, just a slight increase in the capacity to actually deport people."
ICE told NPR that "some ICE facilities are experiencing temporary overcrowding due to recent increases in detention populations. We are actively implementing measures to manage capacity while maintaining compliance with federal standards and our commitment to humane treatment. The reality is that these accusations do not reflect ICE's policies or practices."
What do the detention and deportation numbers say?
The increase to nearly 50,000 detainees marks a sharp increase from the number of detentions during the Biden administration, which climbed to 39,703 in January 2025.
Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher, who tracks immigration statistics, notes that immigration arrest numbers are simply not made available by local or federal officials.
ICE did not respond to NPR's questions about Florida's detention numbers so far this year.
Deportation numbers are even trickier to come by. The government says it has deported 139,000 people as of April 2025. Some experts are skeptical that those figures are accurate.
"Up until about three weeks ago or so, things were pretty consistent with what they were in terms of the end of the Biden Administration," says Tom Cartwright, who has been tracking deportation flights for years. "Typically four to five deportation flights per day."
But Cartwright says that number has increased in the last few weeks to six to seven flights a day, mostly to Central America. And while he has no way of knowing how many people are in each airplane, he calculates each plane has the capacity to carry between 120 and 150 people.
At most, that's an estimated 1,050 people being deported every day out of the 50,000 or so who are detained.
Overcrowding, illness and hunger reported in detention facilities
"They're serving rotten food. People are getting sick. My spouse is not eating," J. told NPR in May. His loved one was being held at Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, Fla. He asked that we refer to him by his first initial because he fears retaliation against his loved one.
J. is one of the many family members of detainees who called NPR to report their loved ones not receiving meals or getting rotten food. Detainees who NPR spoke to over the phone confirmed this, and many said they'd had to sleep on the floor for weeks.
The situation at Krome Detention Center is believed to have gotten so dire, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida paid a surprise visit there last week. She told NPR that in the intake area, two to three dozen men are "crammed into the perimeter of a very tiny room for up to 48 hours. They defecate in front of each other, they eat, they sleep on stone floors. It's really inhumane."
Advocates say this situation is playing out nationally.
"We have seen a rapid deterioration over the last few months," says Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at the nonprofit advocacy group Detention Watch Network. "We're hearing reports … that there isn't enough food." She says she's increasingly been hearing accounts from people in detention going hungry. "I've heard people use the word 'starving.' "
There have been nine deaths in ICE detention since January, which is on track to be the deadliest year since 2020. At least three of those deaths have been in Florida.
Major expansion of detention facilities coming
The Trump administration is promising to increase the rate of arrests of immigrants to 3,000 people a day. "President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day," White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told Fox News last week.
Miller was discussing the sweeping budget bill passed by the House and now before the Senate. It would provide $75 billion over the next couple of years in additional funding for ICE, including $45 billion for detention facilities and $14.4 billion for removal operations.
"We can have, permanently, the safest, strongest, most secure system in American history," Miller told the network.
But immigrant advocates warn the measure will expand mass detention and surveillance.
"I think that it is not designed to increase the removals of people who are not legally allowed to be here," says Deborah Fleischaker, former acting chief of staff for ICE during the Biden administration. "It is designed to hold more people for longer."
Fleischaker believes ICE has historically been underfunded. But she says the bill as written "is so significant and so extreme. What they're trying to enable … I don't think it is within the imagination of the American people when they voted for Donald Trump."
Isacson of WOLA adds that the actions occurring now will multiply. "Plainclothes people using rough tactics and covering their faces to take people off the streets and sort of muscle them into vehicles," he says. "This is going to be common. And it's going to become much more common to see that all around the country military bases may have detention facilities."
"What are the chances my deportation flight will make a wrong turn?"
"I am anguished. I have not heard anything about my son."
Late in May, NPR began receiving messages from Vivian Ortega, a mother in Venezuela, regarding her son, Jhonkleiver Ortega.
Jhonkleiver Ortega came to the U.S. three years ago and was working in construction. He was picked up while driving in November 2024 for not having a license, which under Florida state law is not available to immigrants without legal status. She told us she had sold her house in Venezuela to pay for his $7,000 bond in January. When he went to his next court hearing in February, he was detained.
Vivian had heard from him infrequently, and she was terrified "he was barely eating in there."
Data trackers and policy experts say the Trump administration's goal of deporting one million migrants a year is so high that encouraging self-deportation is paramount. "The fact that [detention] is often so unsafe and unhealthy leads me to believe that there's also a desire to wear people down," says Isacson.
High-profile flights — with migrants sent to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and to El Salvador's notorious detention center CECOT and, more recently, a flight headed to South Sudan — have sent a strong message. For Vivian, the possibility was a source of constant anguish.
On June 3, NPR was able to locate Jhonkleiver Ortega at Glades Detention Center in Florida. He had been to immigration court the day before. NPR was given permission by the family to record his conversation with his mother.
"They told me they had to review my asylum case," Ortega told his mother. "They told me I have to send proof that I was tortured in Venezuela. And in four months they would give me an answer. And I said I can't anymore. It's been months of this. They barely feed us here. I can't anymore. I asked to be deported. This week or next I will be on a flight to Venezuela. If they give me a call from Louisiana I'll call you before the flight."
"What?" his mother asks.
"I asked the judge what are the chances that my flight will get lost and accidentally end up in another country? And she said if that happens you call the deporter. Or email me."
Today's Amanda
Amanda Nelson has been on fire lately.
The regime keeps doubling down. It's what they do because authoritarian assholes have nothing else in the toolbox.
So it seems we'll see things getting worse for a while - not because passive disobedience and social pressure aren't working, but because that's what does work. That's what is working.
What that inflamed human hemorrhoid did to Renee Good in Minneapolis was appalling and unforgivable, and we need to burn him for that. And we will. We just have to keep in mind that if we're out here fighting for justice, we have to follow our own rules.
Stay mad, and push back hard, but stay focused and contained. We have to show the world we're not the ones losing their shit.
Jan 8, 2026
It's Not Race
I'm not discounting the unbelievably shitty treatment people of color have been subjected to by white devils who look like me.
I do know now that I've gotten something of a pass that has obscured my understanding - the understanding that this is a fight between classes - about account balances and investment portfolios - and not about some arbitrary crap like "race", which was invented by white people as part of a divide-n-conquer strategy 300 years ago.
The point is that elites don't like me either. They let me pretend that I was playing in their sandbox for a dozen years or so, but that was it. I was "limited" so I was out.
I've finally realized that I stand with all my brothers and sisters and distant cousins no matter if they look like me or not.
And I'm too old to worry about meaningless differences like the color of somebody's skin, or the way they pray, or who they love, or whatever.
So I say this loud and proud to the "elites":
Here I am, assholes - come and get me.
Overheard
Down the road, we'll hear the glad tidings that Trump is dead and gone, that this fledgling plutocracy will have been beaten back into the shadows, and we'll enjoy an occasional slow-news day again, while every MAGA prick will be telling us they were against all this shit the whole time.
And The Good News Is ...
... two days ago, when some of the Jan6 mob gathered again on the National Mall to celebrate having tried to totally fuck our democracy five years ago, they were outnumbered by the cops and counter-protesters.
We have to deal with asshole ICE "agents" (eg) who get caught up in their own daddy issues - or whatever drives their pathetic existence - but we should also keep in mind just how small the various factions are that make up the gang they think is huge and powerful and impossible to resist.
What's really at work is the large network of shit-slingers and bots that blast the nonsense that fuel these idiots' fantasies of dominance and conquest.
We should continue to believe them when they tell us what raving assholes they are, but we also have to see them for the scared little men we know them to be when they're out in the open, and exposed to the disinfectant properties of either literal or figurative sunshine.
when you turn on the kitchen light
you'll see the cockroaches scuttle back
to their safe space under the dishwasher
She Was A Mom
History will not be kind to the assholes perpetrating these horrors,
nor to the rest of us if all we do is watch and say nothing.
Renee Nicole Good
Murdered by her government
January 7, 2026
Jan 7, 2026
A Refresher
Don't ever forget what a smarmy fuckin' slug Trump is.
Since the 1970s, at least 28 women have accused Donald Trump of various acts of sexual misconduct, including rape, and kissing and groping without consent; looking under women's skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. Trump has denied all of the allegations. He has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to the media and on social media, and has made lewd comments about women, disparaged their physical appearance, and referred to them using derogatory epithets.
In October 2016, two days before the second presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, a 2005 "hot mic" recording surfaced in which Trump was heard saying that "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy." The incident's widespread media exposure led to Trump's first public apology during the campaign,[7] and caused outrage across the political spectrum.
In 2025, Trump's past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein received significant media attention following his administration's refusal to release files relating to Epstein, despite Trump's 2024 election campaign promises to do so.
Overview
Donald Trump has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, including non-consensual kissing or groping, by at least 25 women since the 1970s.
In June 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll alleged in New York magazine that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996. Two friends of Carroll stated that Carroll had previously confided in them about the incident. In November 2019, Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump. Trump called the allegation fiction and denied ever meeting Carroll, despite a photo showing them together at a party in 1987 being published by the magazine.
In November 2022, Carroll filed a suit against Trump for battery under the Adult Survivors Act. On May 9, 2023, a New York jury in a civil case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll, but found him not liable for rape. They awarded Carroll US $5 million in damages. In July 2023, Judge Kaplan stated that the jury had found that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word as they had ruled that Trump had forcibly and nonconsensually penetrated Carroll's vagina with his fingers. New York state's definition at the time defined rape as solely nonconsensual penetration of the vagina by a penis. A September 2023 partial summary judgment again found Trump liable for defaming Carroll. On January 26, 2024, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages.
Other litigation includes his then-wife Ivana's rape claim during their 1990 divorce (she later recanted); businesswoman Jill Harth's 1997 lawsuit alleging breach of contract and sexual harassment (she settled the former claim and forfeited the latter); and former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos's claim of sexual misconduct, followed by a 2017 defamation lawsuit after Trump accused her of lying (she withdrew her defamation case in 2021).
The allegations by Ivana Trump and Jill Harth became public before Trump's presidential candidacy with the rest going public after the 2005 Access Hollywood tape was leaked during the 2016 presidential campaign in which Trump was recorded bragging that a celebrity like himself "can do anything" to women, including "just start kissing them ... I don't even wait" and "grab 'em by the pussy". Trump denied behaving that way toward women and apologized for the crude language. Many of his accusers stated that Trump's denials provoked them into going public.
Several former Miss USA and Miss Teen USA contestants accused Trump of entering the dressing rooms of beauty pageant contestants while contestants were in various stages of undress. Trump had already referred to this practice during a 2005 interview on The Howard Stern Show, saying he could "get away with things like that" because he owned the Miss Universe franchise. In October 2019, the book All the President's Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator[b] contained 43 additional allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump.
Trump has denied all the allegations against him, saying he has been the victim of media bias, conspiracies, and a political smear campaign. In October 2016, Trump publicly vowed to sue all the women who have made allegations of sexual misconduct against him, as well as The New York Times for publishing the allegations.
- more -
Ivana Trump (1989)
Jill Harth (1992)
Katie Johnson/Jane Doe (1994)
E. Jean Carroll (1996)
Summer Zervos (2007)
Alva Johnson (2016)
Jessica Leeds (1980s)
Kristin Anderson (1990s)
Stacey Williams (1993)
Lisa Boyne (1996)
Cathy Heller (1997)
Temple Taggart McDowell (1997)
Amy Dorris (1997)
Karena Virginia (1998)
Karen Johnson (early 2000s)
Mindy McGillivray (2003)
Rachel Crooks (2005)
Natasha Stoynoff (2005)
Juliet Huddy (2005 or 2006)
Jessica Drake (2006)
Ninni Laaksonen (2006)
Cassandra Searles (2013)
Miss Teen USA contestants (1997)
Bridget Sullivan (2000)
Tasha Dixon (2001)
Unnamed contestants (2001)
Samantha Holvey (2006)
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