Bethany Herrera

🚨IT’S NOW OFFICIAL: Gov. JB Pritzker just made Illinois the FIRST state to let people SUE ICE agents for violating their rights. Federal immunity is blown to hell. This is the blueprint. Every state needs to wake the hell up and follow.

CAMPAIGN TRUMP: “Child care is child care. You have to have it. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. America first.” PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We can’t take care of daycare. Just military.” 🤔 🤷🏼 #StopTheWar

Actually, we don’t have to.

This is terrible for Americans and also hurts national security. Increasing the military budget won’t defeat Iran. What is actually called for — under a sane government — would be a systematic defense review with an eye to less expensive systems that are suited to modern war. Our military budget should actually be much smaller, not just because we should be able to fund what Americans need, but also because the endless unconditional upward appropriations — DoD has never passed an audit — encourage monopolies in the private sector and outdated military doctrine. We create a situation where we pay nationally disabling amounts of money so as not to be ready for actual war. Our security suffers in every sense. There is moral blackmail involved here (“support the troops”) and it has to be faced down. We don’t support the troops by taking health care from their families. And we don’t support them by mindlessly giving ever more money to ever fewer defense contractors without thinking about what war means and how it is fought in the 2020s.

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades. George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks. The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order. No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide. A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute. The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no. The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

In 1943, two German POWs at Latimer House boasted about outsmarting British interrogators, unaware their cell was bugged by MI6. This is the story of how these German POWs spilled Nazi rocket secrets: (a short thread🧵)

Every word of this ❤️

🚨BREAKING: ICE agents, working with state police, pulled over a vehicle, in Ogden, Utah… and smashed their car window because he wouldn’t roll it down all the way. Watch the shift… because this is where it goes from aggressive to completely out of control. The driver already has the window partially open. The ICE agent is yelling, giving a countdown, threatening to break the window… while another officer is trying to open the door from the other side. No explanation, or clear threat… Just escalation. Then, someone inside says, “I’m a U.S. citizen… you pointed a gun at me.” And that’s the moment everything changes. Instead of pulling back… instead of correcting… instead of even acknowledging it… The ICE agent snaps. “I don’t give a shit who you are, I don’t know you.” And then he immediately escalates further… raises the metal bar… and starts hitting the window… doubling down on force. A person says you pointed a gun at them… and your response is not to de-escalate… It’s to get MORE aggressive. That’s retaliation. They call them “non-compliant”… and within seconds, the window is smashed and the driver is dragged out. And it doesn’t stop there. The passenger… who is recording… gets told to “stay there” while the officer puts his hand on his gun. He responds, “I’m recording for my safety.” The officer shuts the door on him anyway. When he opens it again and steps out… and then the officer physically shoves him back into the car. This is what needs to be understood… The escalation didn’t come from a threat. It came the second someone spoke up… the second someone said, “you pointed a gun at me”… The second someone started documenting it. That’s when it got worse. That’s when it turned physical. That’s when the window broke. And that’s what should alarm people… because that’s not about safety anymore. That’s about being challenged… and responding with more force.

If Trump signs an unconstitutional Executive Order to take over voting, we will sue. I don't bluff and I usually win.

Working the stock market with lies while also satisfying his blood lust and demeaning our nation, amazing.

@funder @TERRYONEMORETI1 And Musk was able to shut down multiple agencies and departments that were investigating Musk and his businesses. This was one of the biggest reasons Musk paid ¼ billion to get trump elected right behind saving hundreds of millions in tax cuts. latimes.com/business/story…

@funder @dhaywood99 When are we gonna make their boss answer questions?

Today is Holy Monday - the day Jesus threw the merchants and money changers out of the temple. He was incensed at them for commercialising a house of prayer. What would Jesus think of those on this site who see religion as a way to spread hatred and make money?

Have you had a town hall somewhere, Bill? Or are you just meeting with handpicked voters and donors? Why did you vote against TSA funding? Why do you support this unpopular war?

RFK Jr saying "none of the 72 vaccines given to children have been tested against placebo " The reality : - Children are not given 72 vaccines - The ones they are given have been tested against placebo This serial liar is your HHS Secretary.

Marine veteran and Senate candidate Brian McGinnis shows the surgical scars from injuries he sustained after being forcibly removed from a Senate hearing by Sen. Tim Sheehy

@mass_ave This lovely girl has an extravagant wave that drapes over the side of her face, too. Our Veronica Lake is 6 years old and still laying, another star. 🤩

Veronica Lake of course

The guy who was gonna save the govt trillions of dollars, but saved jack shit, is now advising on a war that had cost $30 billion in a month. Trump 2.0 in a nutsoshell.

It’s midnight. And, we’re here at the capital after House Republicans REFUSED to call up a unanimous Senate bill that would have funded TSA, FEMA, and Coast Guard, ended the shutdown, and paid our federal workers. But, instead, they chose to keep it shut down! Here’s the latest—along with some very, very good news amidst the chaos! @RepSalinas

Incredible. His argument boils down to "they were going to kill tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza anyway, so there was no point in not providing them with American arms to do that"