Aug 24, 2026
Today's Daddy State Thing
Another shining example of the GOP's deep and abiding respect for church folk.
Maybe Three Will Be The Charm
Something seems to be amiss. Jeanine Pirro is a bumbling incompetent authoritarian who thinks whatever she says goes, no matter what. But that may not be what's up.
It's possible the guy is guilty as fuck, and maybe somebody "got to" one of the jurors in both trials. But that possibility, while not zero, is pretty negligible.
Occam's Razor says it's very likely that Ms Pirro and her gang of shysters are just bad at what they do.
The Trump administration celebrated the arrival of an alleged MS-13 mastermind on American soil in March 2025.
But it was Moises Rivera-Luna — a man whom the Justice Department says ordered murders in the US from inside a Salvadoran jail cell more than a decade ago — who fell to his knees, stunned and grateful, in a Washington, DC, courtroom this April.
It was the second time in five months the Justice Department had tried him before a federal jury. And for the second time, his jury failed to reach a verdict.
Portrayed as a brutal gang leader known as “Viejo Santos,” or “Old Saint,” Rivera-Luna was squarely among the types of criminal defendants President Donald Trump and, by extension, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, has most sought to convict. But over the past year, the case against Rivera-Luna has run up against two juries in Washington that simply couldn’t agree, ending both rounds of the Justice Department’s efforts in mistrials.
“I’ve done this a long time and haven’t seen one quite like this one,” Judge Royce Lamberth, who’s been on the bench for nearly 40 years, said as the second trial neared its deadlocked end.
It’s unclear exactly what broke down during jury deliberations in both trials.
The arc of this case, though, has become unusually commonplace in the federal court in Washington this year.
Pirro’s office has secured some convictions at trial in federal court, and touted several successful prosecutions of violent crime in Washington’s local Superior Court.
Yet Pirro’s office has a jury problem. An increasingly alarming number of cases have fallen apart this year in DC’s federal court — even when the cases appear to be strong arguments against violent crime, relatively straightforward to prove, and tried by experienced prosecutors.
Before the MS-13 case was re-tried in April, the DC US Attorney’s Office had secured convictions in only four of the eight federal cases tried before Washington juries since January.
Since the MS-13 case’s jury hung in April, the US Attorney’s Office has tried nearly a dozen more criminal cases in DC’s federal court.
In two, the defendants were acquitted. Four of the trials ended in deadlock, with jurors reporting in courtroom notes that they deliberated “hopelessly” and were in complete “impasse.” Mistrials were declared.
That track record for the US Attorney’s Office is essentially unheard of in recent memory, according to over two dozen Washington, DC, investigators, former prosecutors, defense attorneys and other legal experts. Many of the people in the legal community asked not to be named because they practice in the DC federal courthouse or have ties to the US attorney’s office.
Federal juries typically decide to convict defendants in criminal trials nationwide at a rate of about 90%, according to federal judiciary statistics.
Several people in Washington’s legal community who’ve interacted with federal jurors say perhaps the juries are politically unhappy with the Trump administration and, thus, take issue with the Justice Department.
But in cases like MS-13, the jurors simply appear to be more closely scrutinizing the cases presented to them by the Justice Department, many of the legal community sources say.
“This is not a political case. I think this is a failure of proof and a stubbornness born of desperation on the part of the prosecutors’ office,” Robert Feitel, who is one of two lawyers representing one of the MS-13 defendants, told CNN recently.
While each case at trial where Pirro’s office has struggled to convict is different, several of the people in the legal community have called the trend with the DC juries in federal court “embarrassing” or described it as dire. The cases — some being retried weeks or months later — are bogging down a US attorney’s office that has already been stretched thin with Trump-prompted firings and departures and sullied by Pirro’s political missteps in cases the president has wanted.
Many fear how even the office’s most experienced prosecutors might fare in trials set for the coming months. That includes the trial to begin this week for an alleged conspirator in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Old Saint and the ‘eat chicken’ order
At very least, the MS-13 case has become the portrait of the unpredictability of Washington, DC, juries.
“It’s just the wheels of justice rolling along,” Christopher Davis, the defense attorney of a cooperating witness in the MS-13 case, told CNN during the April trial.
“DC juries tend to lean left, and they’re highly educated,” Davis said. “They take their job seriously. They overturn every stone.”
The MS-13 case grappled with severe violence in the community, putting on trial five murders or assaults the Justice Department says were prompted by the orders of gang leaders years ago. The top defendant was Rivera-Luna, a stone-faced alleged mastermind who wore glasses every day in court and politely interacted with his lawyer in Spanish. Guatemalan authorities had apprehended him, sending him to the US in custody last year.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Prosecutors say Rivera-Luna was at the top of the gang hierarchy when MS-13 members carried out several shootings and stabbings of their peers in the DC area who breached the organization’s codes from 2008 to 2010.
One of the victims had shifted a knife he had between his pockets at a gang meeting, breaking a rule of the brotherhood, at a park just outside DC. A few days later the man had been lured into the woods, shot and left to die. Another riding a bicycle while wearing a red bandana was perceived as a rival and gunned down by MS-13 members, prosecutors say.
Rivera-Luna was recorded on phone calls in those years speaking to a man in the DC area — whom years later has become one of the trial witnesses against him — from inside a Latin American prison.
Both juries at the two trials heard the audio of Rivera-Luna telling the MS-13 contact, in Spanish, “You have 13 days to eat chicken,” the prosecutor said.
“He was giving me 13 days to kill someone,” the witness testified later about that call.
Rivera-Luna’s trial co-defendant, Tokiro Rodas Ramirez, had been picked up by authorities in Honduras’ capital city during a soccer game in 2022. Now in the US in custody, the latter defendant is tall and broad-shouldered, and expressive in the courtroom, smiling regularly at jurors and others watching the case. His nickname within MS-13, according to court records, was “Perverso,” and he had been a local leader of the gang in the DC region when the assaults took place, prosecutors alleged.
Lamberth, who has presided over the conspiracy case since 2013, ushered the two men over the past year swiftly toward a first trial in December 2025.
The case’s longtime lead prosecutor Nihar Mohanty and others from the DC US Attorney’s Office had previously won jury convictions of co-conspirators at trial in 2013. The Justice Department also secured a string of guilty pleas and cooperation from others.
“These cases come with a playbook,” the witness’ attorney Davis, who has tried nearly a dozen similar MS-13 conspiracy cases, said. “It’s hard to screw up these cases” from the government’s perspective.
December deliberations
The December trial jury began deliberations after nine trial days and hearing from 22 witnesses called by the Justice Department. Initially, the December jury told Lamberth in a note they were close to unanimity on at least one of the three charges.
Then another morning of deliberation passed. Another note to the judge arrived. Any consensus had fallen apart, the jury said, indicating one juror refused to be impartial and continue deliberating with the others.
Lamberth drew out from that juror that he believed the deliberations had broken down into bullying.
“I feel like I have made my point that I have come to a final decision many times,” the holdout juror, who has not been identified publicly, told the judge, according to a court transcript. “And then it just seems like it’s an organized attack of over and over and over the same questions.”
The man said he had broken down crying in the jury room.
Pirro, when asked by CNN about how the trial in December resulted in a hung jury, matter-of-factly said Mohanty and other prosecutors would just need to try the case again.
“We’ll do whatever it takes within the bounds of the law to bring the guilty to justice. Whatever it takes,” Pirro said. “And you know what? I have great prosecutors on that case, and I think that that (jury) note speaks for itself.”
A second trial
By April, Mohanty and another prosecutor had the defendants Rivera-Luna and Rodas Ramirez back in front of a new jury pool in Lamberth’s courtroom.
Mohanty delivered a nearly identical opening statement to this second jury in April as he did at the December trial.
One rule of the gang, Mohanty explained in his opening, was “kill rival gang members at every opportunity” and “greenlight,” or kill, MS-13 members that didn’t follow the gang’s rules.
The defense lawyers insisted to the jury that their client’s affiliation with MS-13 or their gang tattoos weren’t proof of criminality.
By the third week of April, the new jury had fully heard the case. Yet the jury’s work appeared to be going haywire, again, within a day of deliberations.
The jury said in a note they couldn’t agree to two of three criminal counts.
By that Thursday, the second day of deliberations, another afternoon note showed they had unraveled further:
“We are not in agreement and some jurors have expressed they are firm in their votes … We are unsure of how to move forward. We have confirmed that even after further review and continued discussion these jurors are adamant this will not change their vote.”
Lamberth, beginning to show his frustration, refused to call a mistrial.
The jurors returned Friday morning, April 17, to continue deliberations. They said nothing from the jury room to the judge nearly all day.
At 4 p.m., Lamberth’s deputy called the prosecutors and the two defendants’ defense lawyers back into the courtroom to see printouts of a new and more confusing note from the jury.
“We have reached a verdict on one count; however, discussions have once again stalled. We have one juror who has repeatedly stated they are firm on their decisions. This particular juror also stated on the first day that they are comfortable not reaching a consensus,” the jury foreperson wrote. “We are unsure how to move forward, as it does not appear we will reach a consensus.”
Rivera-Luna’s lawyer, Alfred Guillaume, a typically dapper and relaxed attorney with a pocket square, read it over several times. Rodas Ramirez’s attorney Feitel, more prone to fidgeting, paced around the courtroom, popping mints in his mouth.
The defense lawyers asked Lamberth to accept a partial verdict. That would likely bring to an end the 15-year-old case.
“Denied,” Lamberth snapped.
The defense lawyers huddled in the corner of the court room, trying to plot what to do next.
Mohanty, sitting at the top of the prosecutors’ table, hung his head in his hand, rubbing his temples.
The court would need more time to decide what to do and Lamberth sent the jurors and the lawyers home for the weekend.
To try again
A cheer erupted from the jury room when the final of the 12 jurors arrived late Monday morning, April 20, to try again with deliberations.
They sent a note, however, 15 minutes later. A courtroom deputy read the jury’s message aloud to the lawyers in the courtroom: “We discussed as a jury and no longer have consensus on the count we had previously reached a verdict on.”
“This is the case that will never die,” Guillaume responded.
“I suppose the good news is I’ll get to see you again, Your Honor,” Mohanty, the prosecutor, said.
After Lamberth declared the mistrial, the prosecutors and defense attorneys went to talk with the jurors about what happened.
All 12 jurors from the April trial declined to speak to CNN as they exited. But those in touch with them reported they appeared to be genuinely unable to reach a conclusion, even after having sketched out extensive notes in the jury room on white boards. They had appeared to gel as a group, with some bringing tulips and cupcakes to court on the final day.
“I was encouraged by how seriously they took their job,” Guillaume said as he was leaving the courthouse.
But would he want to try this case again, I asked. “It’s my job. I gotta try this case,” he said, clearly frustrated and shaking his head.
The case against the two alleged MS-13 leaders is set to be retried again, for a third time, beginning in mid-September.
Aug 23, 2026
The Fear
Maybe it's their kink - they get off on being scared and scaring each other.
Or maybe they're just a buncha whiny-butt pussies.
Or maybe they've decided to emulate their "leaders" and help propagate the nonsense - proximity to power and all that shit.
Any way it shakes out, it's really fuckin' annoying.
Calling All Recalls
Breaking the government is the point. And punishing people is meant to rally them to the cause.
Lettuce. Blueberries. Eggs. Jalapeños. Why are there so many food-safety scares this summer?
Bill Marler's business is booming — and that's not great for the rest of us.
Marler is a food safety lawyer, defending people who've been sickened by foodborne illness. He has been doing this for 33 years, with such high-profile wins that he's become a towering figure in the food safety world.
This year, he's so slammed with foodborne-illness cases that, for the first time in years, he's expanding his team — hiring another lawyer and a couple of paralegals. "We just have too much shit to do," Marler said.
This summer alone, Americans have been warned about a massive Cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce — 10,930 confirmed illnesses, 454 hospitalizations, and two deaths — plus Salmonella in jalapeños and eggs and E. coli in frozen blueberries. Then there are the recalls: bread that may contain metal fragments, fruit bars that may contain glass, and foods pulled for possible bacterial contamination or undeclared allergens.
By August, the FDA's 2026 public health advisories had covered what felt like everything, from cheese to infant formula.
"As a consumer, you're looking at this like, well, what the hell's safe to eat?" Marler said.
America is having a headline-grabbing food-safety summer. Some of that is perception: We're better at finding outbreaks, and recall counts can be misleading.
But long-standing vulnerabilities in our food system — compounded by cuts to the public health infrastructure designed to catch problems — are also at play. Whether it represents something more significant is harder to say.
"It's real, and it looks bad," Marler said.
Recall counts can be misleading
This summer looks more exceptional than it actually is, said Craig Hedberg, a professor and foodborne-disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.
"Certainly the magnitude of the cyclospora outbreak is unprecedented, but in terms of all of the things that are going on with food, it's not all that unusual," Hedberg said.
Summer is typically a busy season for foodborne illness, he said, and outbreaks involving foods like sprouts, berries, and produce recur year after year. What's truly extraordinary in 2026 is cyclospora — "an order of magnitude bigger than anything we've seen in previous years."
Recall counts can also exaggerate the number of distinct problems. Jennifer McEntire, founder of Food Safety Strategy, a consulting firm that works with industry groups, pointed out that when a single contaminated ingredient is used in many foods, each finished product may trigger its own recall.
"This makes the recall numbers look high, even though the number of 'root causes' may be much lower," McEntire said.
Take California Dairies, which recalled certain bulk batches of powdered milk and buttermilk in April due to potential Salmonella contamination. These products had been sold to wholesale distributors and manufacturers, triggering downstream recalls.
That meant the recall rippled across the sector, with over a dozen products pulled from shelves — from potato chips to ranch seasoning.
We're finding issues we couldn't find before
There's another reason today's food-safety problems may be more visible: We're better at finding them.
"We clearly have better tools and are using them more effectively to identify outbreaks," Hedberg said.
In the last five to 10 years, public health laboratories have increasingly used whole-genome sequencing to link seemingly isolated Salmonella or E. coli cases by their genetic fingerprints.
That means some of what appears to be an increase in foodborne illness is actually better surveillance. "We're finding ones that may have been missed previously," said Melanie Firestone, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, who studies foodborne-disease surveillance.
Those tools, however, aren't as readily available for Cyclospora, in part because the parasite can't be grown in a lab; investigators rely more heavily on finding common exposures among sick people.
Our food system has changed — and one mistake can go a very long way
The food system itself has also transformed. Americans can now buy fresh produce year-round, including fruits and vegetables.
"Foods don't go out of season. We just go to the season where they're being produced, and we bring them in," Hedberg said.
Still, a food system optimized for year-round availability, convenience, long supply chains, and massive distribution networks can also amplify failures.
Marler points to the massive 2006 E. coli outbreak linked to bagged spinach, a crisis so consequential that he said the leafy-greens industry came to refer to it as its "9/11."
Investigators traced the spinach to a single 20-acre farm that had a wild-pig invasion. Not every crop was infected, but harvesting and processing allowed it to spread. The bags were then shipped around the country, turning what Marler argued might once have been scattered illnesses into a national outbreak.
Ultimately, when something does go wrong, the modern food system can make it go spectacularly wrong.
"The reality is that with a lot of our fresh produce, once contamination occurs, we have limited ability to decontaminate the produce items," Hedberg said.
Parts of our safety net weakened
One explanation for the increased number of headlines about food safety has loomed particularly large this summer: the Trump administration's DOGE cuts.
In 2025, the administration cut thousands of jobs across federal health agencies and billions of dollars in grants to state and local health departments.
Those cuts landed on a public-health system that was already stretched. "Our public health systems have been chronically underfunded for a long time, and we're seeing that worsen," Firestone said.
In a statement, the FDA said that "frontline FDA investigators are critical to the FDA's mission and were exempt from past workforce reductions."
The agency said that while there are more foodborne illness clusters in 2026 than in previous years, it is "constantly working to improve laboratory detection of foodborne illness," such as Cyclospora. "Still, Cyclospora remains a challenging agent and epidemiology, and traceback are key elements of an outbreak investigation."
Food safety cuts predate the Trump administration. In 2012, under the Obama administration, the USDA's Microbiological Data Program ended after its funding was eliminated. The program had sampled and tested selected fruits and vegetables for foodborne pathogens, reporting its findings to federal and state public health agencies — proactive surveillance, rather than waiting for reports of infections to crop up.
Some food-safety hazards, Hedberg said, are well understood and "just require constant attention on the part of producers to be able to prevent."
So, should I be scared of my groceries?
Hedberg doesn't think this summer should change the way Americans eat. "Most of the food moving through the system is free of contamination," he said.
Fresh produce remains an important part of a healthy diet, and he cautioned against allowing a single enormous outbreak to distort our sense of risk.
That doesn't mean accepting outbreaks as inevitable.
Thirty years ago, hamburgers kept Marler incredibly busy: more than 90% of his E. coli cases involved them. Today, he said, it's practically zero. "That's because of government intervention and industry stepping up."
After the deadly 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak, regulators and the meat industry introduced new rules, testing, and other safeguards that made hamburger substantially safer.
So, is this summer unusually riskier? The Cyclospora outbreak is. Beyond that, many of the problems are familiar ones. And the hamburger example shows that which foods pose the biggest risks can change substantially over time.
"See? The government's all fucked up. And there's no fixing it, but you can stop your suffering by supporting us as we replace it with a corporate plutocracy."
OK, so it's not quite as bad as all that - not yet anyway - but I think it's healthy to maintain my very low confidence in this MAGA gang. IMO, it's more than justified, and it's likely to get worse before we have a real chance to make it better.
Bill Marler's business is booming — and that's not great for the rest of us.
Marler is a food safety lawyer, defending people who've been sickened by foodborne illness. He has been doing this for 33 years, with such high-profile wins that he's become a towering figure in the food safety world.
This year, he's so slammed with foodborne-illness cases that, for the first time in years, he's expanding his team — hiring another lawyer and a couple of paralegals. "We just have too much shit to do," Marler said.
This summer alone, Americans have been warned about a massive Cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce — 10,930 confirmed illnesses, 454 hospitalizations, and two deaths — plus Salmonella in jalapeños and eggs and E. coli in frozen blueberries. Then there are the recalls: bread that may contain metal fragments, fruit bars that may contain glass, and foods pulled for possible bacterial contamination or undeclared allergens.
By August, the FDA's 2026 public health advisories had covered what felt like everything, from cheese to infant formula.
"As a consumer, you're looking at this like, well, what the hell's safe to eat?" Marler said.
America is having a headline-grabbing food-safety summer. Some of that is perception: We're better at finding outbreaks, and recall counts can be misleading.
But long-standing vulnerabilities in our food system — compounded by cuts to the public health infrastructure designed to catch problems — are also at play. Whether it represents something more significant is harder to say.
"It's real, and it looks bad," Marler said.
Recall counts can be misleading
This summer looks more exceptional than it actually is, said Craig Hedberg, a professor and foodborne-disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.
"Certainly the magnitude of the cyclospora outbreak is unprecedented, but in terms of all of the things that are going on with food, it's not all that unusual," Hedberg said.
Summer is typically a busy season for foodborne illness, he said, and outbreaks involving foods like sprouts, berries, and produce recur year after year. What's truly extraordinary in 2026 is cyclospora — "an order of magnitude bigger than anything we've seen in previous years."
Recall counts can also exaggerate the number of distinct problems. Jennifer McEntire, founder of Food Safety Strategy, a consulting firm that works with industry groups, pointed out that when a single contaminated ingredient is used in many foods, each finished product may trigger its own recall.
"This makes the recall numbers look high, even though the number of 'root causes' may be much lower," McEntire said.
Take California Dairies, which recalled certain bulk batches of powdered milk and buttermilk in April due to potential Salmonella contamination. These products had been sold to wholesale distributors and manufacturers, triggering downstream recalls.
That meant the recall rippled across the sector, with over a dozen products pulled from shelves — from potato chips to ranch seasoning.
We're finding issues we couldn't find before
There's another reason today's food-safety problems may be more visible: We're better at finding them.
"We clearly have better tools and are using them more effectively to identify outbreaks," Hedberg said.
In the last five to 10 years, public health laboratories have increasingly used whole-genome sequencing to link seemingly isolated Salmonella or E. coli cases by their genetic fingerprints.
That means some of what appears to be an increase in foodborne illness is actually better surveillance. "We're finding ones that may have been missed previously," said Melanie Firestone, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, who studies foodborne-disease surveillance.
Those tools, however, aren't as readily available for Cyclospora, in part because the parasite can't be grown in a lab; investigators rely more heavily on finding common exposures among sick people.
Our food system has changed — and one mistake can go a very long way
The food system itself has also transformed. Americans can now buy fresh produce year-round, including fruits and vegetables.
"Foods don't go out of season. We just go to the season where they're being produced, and we bring them in," Hedberg said.
Still, a food system optimized for year-round availability, convenience, long supply chains, and massive distribution networks can also amplify failures.
Marler points to the massive 2006 E. coli outbreak linked to bagged spinach, a crisis so consequential that he said the leafy-greens industry came to refer to it as its "9/11."
Investigators traced the spinach to a single 20-acre farm that had a wild-pig invasion. Not every crop was infected, but harvesting and processing allowed it to spread. The bags were then shipped around the country, turning what Marler argued might once have been scattered illnesses into a national outbreak.
Ultimately, when something does go wrong, the modern food system can make it go spectacularly wrong.
"The reality is that with a lot of our fresh produce, once contamination occurs, we have limited ability to decontaminate the produce items," Hedberg said.
Parts of our safety net weakened
One explanation for the increased number of headlines about food safety has loomed particularly large this summer: the Trump administration's DOGE cuts.
In 2025, the administration cut thousands of jobs across federal health agencies and billions of dollars in grants to state and local health departments.
Those cuts landed on a public-health system that was already stretched. "Our public health systems have been chronically underfunded for a long time, and we're seeing that worsen," Firestone said.
In a statement, the FDA said that "frontline FDA investigators are critical to the FDA's mission and were exempt from past workforce reductions."
The agency said that while there are more foodborne illness clusters in 2026 than in previous years, it is "constantly working to improve laboratory detection of foodborne illness," such as Cyclospora. "Still, Cyclospora remains a challenging agent and epidemiology, and traceback are key elements of an outbreak investigation."
Food safety cuts predate the Trump administration. In 2012, under the Obama administration, the USDA's Microbiological Data Program ended after its funding was eliminated. The program had sampled and tested selected fruits and vegetables for foodborne pathogens, reporting its findings to federal and state public health agencies — proactive surveillance, rather than waiting for reports of infections to crop up.
Some food-safety hazards, Hedberg said, are well understood and "just require constant attention on the part of producers to be able to prevent."
So, should I be scared of my groceries?
Hedberg doesn't think this summer should change the way Americans eat. "Most of the food moving through the system is free of contamination," he said.
Fresh produce remains an important part of a healthy diet, and he cautioned against allowing a single enormous outbreak to distort our sense of risk.
That doesn't mean accepting outbreaks as inevitable.
Thirty years ago, hamburgers kept Marler incredibly busy: more than 90% of his E. coli cases involved them. Today, he said, it's practically zero. "That's because of government intervention and industry stepping up."
After the deadly 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak, regulators and the meat industry introduced new rules, testing, and other safeguards that made hamburger substantially safer.
So, is this summer unusually riskier? The Cyclospora outbreak is. Beyond that, many of the problems are familiar ones. And the hamburger example shows that which foods pose the biggest risks can change substantially over time.
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