Recap of this week in the revolution: Released CECOT prisoners tell all. Trump withholds fentanyl funds and fires BLS commissioner in temper tantrum. ICE brutality is out of control. Johnson shuts down House to avoid voting on Epstein files.
The good...
Cosplay Kristi Noem visiting men deported from the United States to the Salvadoran prison CECOT without due process.
Last month, 230 Venezuelan men who were deported from the United States and sentenced to lifelong imprisonment at a Salvadoran prison known for torturing inmates were freed from that prison and sent back to Venezuela in exchange for returning 10 American prisoners in Venezuela to the United States.
Now that they are free, these men are telling the world about their time in the prison. They were tortured, humiliated, shamed, and degraded along with other inmates. What did they do to deserve this treatment? Nobody knows for sure. While the Trump regime has consistently called these men "monsters," "savages," and "the worst of the worst," the facts simply don't support these labels. Most had no criminal record at all. They were in the United States without documentation, which is a crime, but not one that justifies a lifelong prison sentence or torture. According to United States law, the maximum legal penalty for such a crime is a fine of $50-$500 and 6 months to 2 years in prison.
"The country with the Statue of Liberty deprived us of our liberty without any kind of evidence," said Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, one of the freed detainees. Several of the men have pointed out that their release was proof that the U.S. never had any reason to imprison them in El Salvador.
The bad...
3D model of the fentanyl molecule.
The Trump regime has delayed and is threatening to cancel $140 million in grant funding for fentanyl overdose response efforts. Just announcing these delays could cause the CDC to reduce staff working on appropriate responses to fentanyl overdose, even if the money is eventually released. Workers at the CDC and public health departments warn that these delays and potential cuts will cost lives, and could be catastrophic to efforts to develop effective treatments.
The research that has been done with these funds in the past contributed to a massive decline in overdose deaths since 2023, but those numbers could easily soar again if the funding gets cut now. The Trump regime has already cut funding for research used to track drug use that provides vital information about what's in the drugs people are using so public health departments know how to respond.
The spending bill passed earlier this month includes additional cuts to Medicaid programs that fund most alcohol and drug addiction treatment programs. Combined, these cuts put 150,000 people in the United States at increased risk of death from opioid overdose.
Erika McEntarfer, former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Trump throws a temper tantrum over weaker-than-expected data from the latest jobs report and fires the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for publishing the report. Erika McEntarfer has been a public servant for 20 years, and has led the BLS since 2023.
In one social media rant, Trump claimed that McEntarfer personally faked the jobs numbers, and in another he claimed, "today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad [sic]." This overreaction by the thin-skinned baby-man pretending to run this country is pathetic and cowardly. But it's worse than that, according to former US Treasure Secretary Larry Summers: "Firing the head of a key government agency because you don't like the numbers they report, which comes from surveys using long-established procedures, is what happens in authoritarian countries, not democratic ones."
The ugly...
Image by Daniel Arauz from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
"He can either give us a license or we'll smash the f#*@ing window out and drag him out," one ICE official told a TV reporter last month. Smashing windows is quickly becoming a popular tactic for ICE/Gestapo agents seeking to terrorize their victims. Scans of social media posts and local news reports will quickly reveal dozens of such actions documented over the past several months, compared to just 8 such instances recorded over the past decade.
The increase in brutality comes with the Trump regime's full approval and encouragement. ICE agents are pushed to fill arrest quotas, and are using the tactic to speed up the process by instilling fear in their targets, hastening compliance. Instead of being disciplined for use of excessive force, agents using these tactics are being promoted.
This article from ProPublica shows examples of these horrifying acts of brutality. The brutality isn't limited to breaking the glass. The victims are typically dragged through the broken glass and further beaten by agents until they are bundled off into an unmarked car and disappeared. Warning: The videos included in this article depict acts of brutality that will cause emotional distress to any decent human being.
When questioned about the brutality of their actions, Trump bootlicker and Deputy Minister of Propaganda Abigail Jackson said, "ICE officers are heroically getting these violent illegal aliens off of American streets with the utmost professionalism." If you can watch these videos and walk away calling these thugs "heroes" and their behavior "professional," you are truly deplorable and inhuman.
Keeping you informed...
Image by bookdragon from Pixabay.
At its simplest level, the job of our Congress is to pass or repeal laws. This week, the House passed 6 bills, but they were scheduled to vote on 26: 21 with bipartisan support and 5 bills deemed to be a priority for Republicans.
What happened to the other 20 bills scheduled to be voted on? House Speaker Mike Johnson chose to shut down the House early for its August recess. He stopped the House of Representatives from doing its job. And the reason he did this is because many Republicans are demanding that the release of the Epstein files, which Trump is trying to avoid because they reveal something about him. So, faced with a choice of either pleasing the president or allowing the House to perform its essential duties, Johnson chose loyalty to the president. The hope is that the demand for the release of the Epstein files will die out by the time the House returns from its recess.
This is important: The Speaker of the House is making the statement that the principal function of the House of Representatives of the United States of America is to please the president, and not to represent the people of this country.
On the lighter side...
