Fetterman echoed calls for Democrats to tone down criticism of the second Trump administration. Many on the right have accused Democrats of contributing to the spread of political violence in the United States that claimed the life of conservative activist [TD] earlier this week. Fetterman urged his party “to turn the temperature down.”
“Don’t ever compare anyone to Hitler, and those kinds of extreme things. Look what happened to Charlie Kirk—a man was shot,” the Senator said. “We can’t compare people to these kinds of figures in history.”
Someone was shot and they died That event happens multiple times a day. And multiple times a day, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders and so many other elected Dems do not feel the need to go before microphones or release statements saying "That's bad. That's wrong."
But there they were showing up in public, wearing hairshirts, self-flagellating as though it was a sexual turn on.
It's murder. We've made it a crime as a nation because we believe it's wrong.
Let's turn to a Chump triumph. We're not even done with Chump's first year in this second term and he's already destroyed our economy. Yes, he's finally won one of his wars -- he's destroyed the American economy. Mary Anthony (MARKET REALIST) reports:
The analysis assumes that incomes from jobs will remain steady despite higher tariffs. It also accounts for government programs, such as Social Security, that adjust payments based on inflation.
Yale
economists say the current U.S. tariff rate is 17.4%, the highest since
1935. The report projects that the average U.S. household will lose
about $2,300 a year because of tariffs.
Tariffs are taxes charged to companies importing products into the United States. The rate varies depending on the country of origin and the type of product.
While some companies tried to absorb the cost of tariffs early in Trump’s presidency, more now say those costs will ultimately be passed on to consumers.
Chump is destroying the economy before our eyes. He's incompetent and he's a fool who went into bankruptcy four times so he certainly should not have been handed control of our economy. He's destroying everything. Brendan Murray (BLOOMBERG NEWS) notes Chump's tarries:
“Unfortunately, small and medium-sized businesses are bearing the brunt of the trade war,” said Adam Lewis, president of Clearit Customs Brokerage. “Unlike larger corporations, they don’t have the same insulation or sophistication to absorb frequent tariff changes, currency swings, and rising costs.”
Almost 60% of respondents said Washington’s policies have weakened the US’s standing as a trading partner, compared with 6% who said it’s been strengthened. Almost a quarter said the impact has been mixed depending on the country and industry, with 5% seeing no meaningful change and 7% saying it’s too soon to draw conclusions, according to Freightos.
Look around the country at the Chump economy. Georgia? Zoe Evans (PENNY WISE) reports, "Five paper mills prepare permanent shutdowns across southeast Georgia through September 2025, according to multiple independent reports. International Paper and Georgia-Pacific caught officials off guard with announcements affecting over 1,700 workers, The Current GA reports, citing international trade barriers and declining wood demand. The shutdowns eliminate millions of tons of annual production capacity while devastating communities dependent on steady industrial employment for generations." This as 744,000 workers have had been laid off from their jobs, the worst numbers since the start of the pandemic. Mike Winters (CNBC) notes the increase in prices including, "Take bananas, for example. Prices climbed 4.9% from April through August -- equivalent to an annualized pace of about 15% -- a notable jump for a category that rarely sees much inflation. Virtually all U.S. supply comes from Central and South America and is now subject to a 10% tariff." Alex Henderson explains:
President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies continue to insist that he inherited a badly broken economy from former President Joe Biden but quickly turned the economy around.
In fact, the U.S. enjoyed record-low unemployment during Biden's years in the White House, but widespread frustration over inflation, according to polls, helped Trump pull off a narrow victory in the 2024 election. And almost eight months into Trump's second administration, the economy remains a source of frustration among many voters.
In an article published on September 13, Politico's Megan Messerly stresses that Trump is having a hard time convincing voters that the economy is performing well under his watch.
"President Donald Trump, this week, insisted Americans are experiencing the 'best economy we've ever had," Messerly explains. "Privately, White House officials acknowledge people just aren't feeling it…. Polls show Americans remain anxious about high prices, and there are signs the economy's resilience is starting to fray, making it harder for the (Trump) Administration to close the delta between how the economy looks on paper and how people feel."
Messerly adds, "The Congressional Budget Office also said Friday, (September 12) that (Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill) will have little effect on economic growth before the 2028 election, its gains blunted by the president’s tariffs and immigration crackdown."
Ian Gordon (MOTHER JONES) noted over the weekend:
When it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in June, Congress handed nearly $75 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some $30 billion of that money will be spent on enforcement and deportation—hiring spree incoming—and another $45 billion will go toward new detention centers, including 50 by the end of the year.
The OBBB immediately supercharged President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which already had been terrorizing immigrant communities and sending asylum seekers to a hellish prison in El Salvador. But an important part of the detention state ramp-up has flown under the radar: ICE’s increased cooperation with local law enforcement agencies.
On Friday, ICE hit a new milestone: The agency has now signed more than 1,000 so-called 287(g) agreements nationwide. These agreements, which deputize local police and jails to perform certain immigration enforcement functions, have exploded under Trump. At the end of the Biden presidency, ICE had just 135 287(g) deals in place; now there are 1,001—a 641 percent increase.
About half of these agreements are what ICE calls task force agreements, which allow state and local cops to essentially act as immigration agents while fulfilling their regular police duties. If these sound familiar—and familiarly problematic—it’s because they were discontinued in 2012, following a Department of Justice investigation the year before that found widespread racial profiling by Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, then led by the notorious Joe Arpaio. The Trump administration brought task forces back this year, and ICE has signed more than 500 of these particular agreements across 33 states.
It takes millions to ramp up mass abuse. Shame on the Congress. Shame on them for failing to protect us -- that's Democrats and Republicans and independents and Socialists in Congress. Dems should have been holding hearings right now -- yes, they can do that without the GOP. You do that by holding what's known as a shadow hearing.
B-b-b-but what's the point. It probably won't get media attention!!!!
What's the point? The point is getting it on the record. The point is showing the people that you're willing to fight. You hold the hearing and you get it on the record. Media? Invited podcasters to the hearing if you're that worried. Invite names to speak, celebrities.
Or did we all miss this:
America Ferrera got emotional while reacting to the recent Supreme Court decision on immigration stops while appearing on Thursday’s episode of The View.
On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a restraining order from a judge that had restricted immigration agents from stopping people around L.A. solely based on their race, language, job or location. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was quick to criticize the decision and argued it could lead to officials targeting “anyone who looks Latino.”
When The View panelist Sara Haines asked Ferrera her reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision, the Barbie actress responded, “First of all, thank God for Justice Sotomayor.”
Ferrera, who is an activist for immigration rights, went on to say she was grateful for “people who still speak with a voice of reason and the values we recognize as American values” amid the decision.
“As an American, I’m angered and terrified to watch our constitutional rights be eroded by the Supreme Court. Everyone should be angered and terrified by it,” she said. “If any American can get pulled over because of the language they speak or the color of their skin or because they work in a low-wage job, who’s safe? So, as an American, I’m pissed off.”
Good for America, but she's hardly the only one speaking out.
When Jessica Lange, for example, spoke at hearings on the farming crisis, she didn't go into those hearings thinking, "I'm the biggest expert in the country on this whole issue." She went to speak in defense of American farmers because she knew her doing so would attract some cameras and some coverage.
So this has just been a very upsetting week and it's been a very disappointing week.
A
gestapo force goes around kidnapping people and disappearing them into
gulags and Democrats and Socialists and other lefties spend too much
time glorifying a racist. Fortunately, those not in Congress or writing
nonsense are much smarter.
Chase Woodruff (COLORADO NEWSLINE) reported:
A crowd of more than 100 people stood outside the gates of an empty prison in Hudson on Saturday, protesting reported plans by the Trump administration to turn it into Colorado’s newest immigrant detention facility.
“I see people from all walks of life here today, and that’s truly, truly beautiful,” said Julian Camera, an organizer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. “We’re going to overcome this. We’re going to keep fighting.”
The dormant Hudson Correctional Facility is owned by a real estate investment trust and was formerly leased to private-prison company The GEO Group, which operated the prison for a span of just five years after its 2009 opening, during which the facility housed inmates from Alaska. The prison has a capacity of about 1,200 beds — only slightly less than the population of the town of Hudson, about 30 miles northeast of Denver on Interstate 76.
[. . .]
Protesters at Saturday’s demonstration carried signs that likened ICE detention centers to concentration camps. Speakers especially objected to the opening of a new facility in a remote rural area, where detainees’ families and legal aid groups would find it more difficult to visit.
There are people doing actual work. As the protesters above demonstrate. And there's history -- that we all should have learned -- that tells us how shameful what's taking place was before and indicates how shameful it will be in the near future.
Victoria Namkung (GUARDIAN) notes:
Mass expulsion, babies born behind barbed wire, intrusive medical exams for newcomers, families torn apart: these aren’t scenes from Donald Trump’s promised second-term immigration crackdown, but from the US’s extensive history of xenophobic immigration policy.
While so many Americans watched in horror at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s military-like raids across Los Angeles this summer, US cruelty and violence towards immigrants is nothing new, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the mass deportation of Mexican Americans during the Great Depression. As the Trump administration escalates its attacks on immigrants – or those perceived to be immigrants – survivors of previous eras of xenophobia say it’s more important than ever to remember the past. The harms done to them and their families have lasted generations, and what’s happening now threatens to do the same.
The Guardian spoke with four Californians who have lived through, or whose parents lived through, some of these dark moments in US history. They shared how these episodes shaped their lives, what it’s like to see these chapters of history repeat themselves today – and what gives them hope.
When Christine Valenciana, 75, watched footage of armed, masked Ice agents in unmarked vehicles snatching people off the streets across southern California this summer, rounding up gardeners, car wash workers, veterans and US citizens, it recalled a familiar time in her own family’s history.
In the 1930s, under the economic pressures of the Great Depression, nearly 2 million Mexican Americans – more than half US citizens – were forced out of their homes and unconstitutionally deported to free up jobs for “real Americans”. Valenciana’s mother’s family was among them.
“The raids that took place at the time were not unlike now,” said Valenciana, 75.
Mexican “repatriation”, which Valenciana prefers to call “expulsion”, consisted of military-style raids, mass deportations, scare tactics and public pressure that terrorized Mexican communities and broke up countless families. For American children like Valenciana’s mother, who was born in 1926 in Los Angeles’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, the trauma was layered: leaving their home and country, adjusting to a new culture in Mexico and eventually returning to the US years later.
Emilia Castañeda, Valenciana’s mother, was seven when her own mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died less than a year later on the day of Emilia’s first communion. “She told me what bothered her the most about having to leave was that she wouldn’t be able to visit her mother’s grave,” remembered Valenciana, now an associate professor emeritus at the department of elementary and bilingual education at California State University, Fullerton. “They went to the train station and she and other people were crying.”
She told Valenciana that the girls in her school in Mexico referred to her as “repatriada”, which was meant as a put-down. “My mom was pretty miserable,” said Valenciana. By age 12, Emilia worked as a live-in babysitter, but at times she was not paid or given a decent bed or blanket, according to her daughter. Emilia was desperate to come back to Los Angeles once the repatriation period ended. During the second world war, she made the journey alone by train right before her 18th birthday with the help of her godmother, who gave her a place to live.
Along with Valenciana’s husband, Francisco Balderrama, who co-authored a seminal book on Mexican repatriation, Emilia eventually went on to become an advocate for others to learn about this previously hidden chapter in US history. In her 70s, she helped pass legislation that led to a formal apology from the state of California in 2005 and a monument in downtown Los Angeles in 2012. Emilia passed away in 2020 at age 94.
While Valenciana sees parallels between the 1930s and today, there’s one big difference, she says: “There’s much more support for people who are being kidnapped and tortured today as opposed to the 1930s where people either didn’t know or care.” She says she better understands what her mother and others like her experienced when she sees members of her community leaving the US voluntarily or living in hiding, fearful of going to church or the market because of Ice.
“I’m not just heartbroken,” she said. “I’m sad and angry. Racism is deeply rooted in this country.”
People are allowing Chump to trash our country, to trash our image, to trash our reputation. But, don't worry, last week was all about those who should be standing up for this country instead attempting to Whitewash a racist. Kevin Reed (WSWS) reports:
Silverio Villegas González, a 42-year-old Mexican immigrant and father of three, was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Franklin Park, Illinois, late on Wednesday afternoon.
According to authorities, González was initially stopped by ICE agents who claimed that his vehicle matched the description of one purportedly involved in a prior immigration-related investigation.
Friends and family contested this account, emphasizing that González’s only offense was a minor traffic infraction—an expired license plate sticker—in the quiet suburb just west of Chicago.
The shooting of González took place within days of President Trump’s immigration crackdown campaign launched in the Chicago area. Although Cook County officials did not identify him, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Mexican consulate in Chicago identified the ICE victim as Silverio Villegas González.
Eyewitness accounts taken down and reported by WBEZ Chicago said events escalated rapidly after ICE agents approached González, whose fear and panic were clearly visible to everyone nearby.
The WBEZ quoted several people who were on the scene. Maria Martinez, a neighbor, told reporters, “He was just sitting in his car when two men came up out of nowhere, shouting at him in English. Silverio looked scared—he didn’t understand everything they were saying. We heard them yelling, then, all of a sudden, I heard gunshots.”
Another onlooker, Samuel Ramos, recalled: “After the first shot, Silverio tried to get out of the car, but he stumbled into the street. The officers kept shouting at him—telling him to ‘stay put’—but he was holding his hands up, trying to talk. People started gathering, screaming for help, but we were pushed back by the officers.”
The WBEZ account describes confusion and fear among local residents, many of whom did not realize the men in plain clothes were federal agents until after the incident. María Santiago, who resides across the street, said: “Nobody knew they were ICE. They didn’t identify themselves clearly. It looked like a robbery at first, but then they started dragging Silverio away and blocking anyone from getting close.”
As in every act of police brutality that workers are all too familiar with in American cities, ICE released a statement Thursday morning, claiming González “failed to comply with lawful orders” and “acted in a manner that posed a threat to officers.”
And they claim threats by shoving people around -- shoving them into ICE agents so they can then claim the person assaulted an ICE agent. It's been captured on camera.
Let's drop back to Thursday's snapshot:
Democrats need to call for hearings -- and make them shadow hearings if they have to -- in order to determine the training the ICE gestapo is receiving and the accountability and oversight that's being carried out. Maybe we'll get it? If so, it'll be because politicians from Illinois aren't 'performative,' they really pursue justice, not just make videos on YOUTUBE:
Gov. JB Pritzker issued a statement on the incident as well, shared below:
"I am aware of the troubling incident that has unfolded in Franklin Park. This is a developing situation and the people of Illinois deserve a full, factual accounting of what’s happened today to ensure transparency and accountability," Gov. Pritzker said.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth said she is "deeply disturbed" by what unfolded in Franklin Park:
"I am deeply disturbed by and closely monitoring the truly awful incident that occurred in Franklin Park today. As the situation develops, our community deserves the full, unvarnished details of what happened," Sen. Duckworth said.
"I am calling for a full investigation of what led to this fatal shooting. I want, I want I'm calling for all of the videotapes and all of the evidence that exists to be released and for all the facts to be made public," Representative Jesús "Chuy" García said.
"The blood that was spilled today will be a stain on the history of our nation, a stain on our Constitution, which protects us and says that we have rights, that we have the right to be in front of a judge, and that we are innocent until proven guilty," State Sen. Karina Villa said.
Chump's gestapo thinks there are no checks on them. Sarah Lazare and Ari Bloomekatz (IN THESE TIMES) note:
Willian Gimenez, a day laborer, was reportedly abducted outside of a barbershop in Little Village, a neighborhood in southwest Chicago, by ICE agents on Friday. The Latino Union of Chicago and Raise the Floor Alliance organized a news conference with immigration rights advocates, public officials and labor groups there in solidarity like Arise Chicago, the Chicago Workers Collaborative and Workers Center for Racial Justice, who all gathered with Gimenez’s friends and family outside of an ICE facility in Broadview to demand his release.
Gimenez, who is in his late 30s and is from Venezuela, is one of five migrant day laborers involved in a federal lawsuit claiming that, among many other things, they “endured physical violence at the hands of off-duty Chicago Police Department officers” who were working as security officers for Home Depot, according to the complaint. The lawsuit also alleges “a conspiracy to criminalize day laborers’ attempts to find work in Chicago.”
Speakers at a Saturday morning news conference organized by workers’ advocates said they believe he was intentionally targeted because he is a plaintiff in that suit. (An ICE spokesperson, after In These Times and Workday requested comments about the abduction, defended the arrest but would not say where Gimenez was taken or being held.)
It was unclear if Gimenez was being held at the Broadview facility or elsewhere. No one at the news conference, where the mood was somber, appeared to know where he is. His disappearance also came on the same day an ICE officer shot and killed an undocumented man in the Chicagoland suburb of Franklin Park.
AP quotes US House Rep Chuy Garcia stating at the news conference, "These incidents make us all ask, if ICE can kill one of our neighbors in broad daylight … if they can arrest someone for joining a lawsuit or simply for being Latino, what's to stop them from getting any one of us?"
What to stop them period? What is protecting anyone?
Nicole Chang (AMERICAN COMMUNITY MEDIA via ASAMNEWS) reports:
A joint report released by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center and the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge found that in the first week of June 2025 alone, arrests of Asians were nearly nine times higher than during the same period a year earlier — a clear sign that ICE enforcement has intensified to unprecedented levels.
The report comes on the heels of the largest ever raid conducted by ICE on a Hyundai plant in Georgia, where agents arrested more than 300 Korean nationals on September 4. The operation has stoked anger in South Korea and has strained relations between the two countries.
Signs of increased enforcement are also evident in the Korean American community in Los Angeles. On the morning of June 3, ICE agents raided a Korean-owned car wash on Olympic Boulevard in Koreatown. Without a warrant, they searched the premises, checked workers’ immigration status, and reportedly detained about five employees.
[. . .]
According to the report, Asian arrests, which numbered about 700 in 2024, jumped to more than 2,000 in just one year. By state, California accounted for 19% of arrests, followed by New York and Texas with 11% each, then Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma. Together, the top five states represented half of all arrests.
Again, this extra-legal gestapo force is conducting attacks with no oversight. Matthew Cunningham -Cook and Arn Pearson (THE AMERICAN PROSPECT) attempt to reassure us:
On Wednesday, a federal district court judge in Los Angeles issued a sweeping preliminary injunction barring Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers from “dispersing, threatening, or assaulting” journalists or legal observers, or using crowd control weapons on or shooting projectiles at anyone who doesn’t “pose a threat of imminent harm.”
The Los Angeles area has been rocked by protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids since June 6, when the Trump administration first targeted it for a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
DHS officers have “unleashed crowd control weapons indiscriminately and with surprising savagery” in “retaliation” for those “constitutionally protected” protests and the related activities of journalists and observers, Judge Hernán Vera, a Biden appointee, stated in his ruling.
DHS does not have “carte blanche to unleash near-lethal force on crowds of third parties in the vicinity. Indeed, under the guise of protecting the public, federal agents have endangered large numbers of peaceful protestors, legal observers, and journalists—as well as the public that relies on them to hold their government accountable,” Judge Vera wrote. “The First Amendment demands better.”
The judge concluded that “federal agents’ indiscriminate use of force … will undoubtedly chill the media’s efforts to cover these public events and protestors seeking to express peacefully their views on national policies.”
Applause for the federal court and its decision but let's cut the b.s. It doesn't mean a damn thing. Not when the Supreme Court continues to overturn legal and accurate rulings by the federal courts in order to cover for convicted felon Donald Chump.
It you're just not getting it, refer to Gabriel Buelna and Enrique M. Buelna's "Supreme Court Gives ICE License To Hunt Mexicans" (LA TACO) in which they note:
On Monday, Sept. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court did the unthinkable: it gave the Trump administration the power to use race as a “relevant factor” in stopping and detaining people in Los Angeles. To be clear, as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh likes to say, ethnicity—especially of the “Mexico and Central America” variety—is fair game for roundups, detentions, brutal takedowns, and arrests. But no need to worry, the good justice assures us: ICE is legally bound to target only the “bad guys.” If you are legal, everything is fine. But this pie-in-the-sky assurance couldn’t be farther from the truth.
For years, conservatives on the court have claimed to be “colorblind.” They struck down affirmative action, insisting that race has no place in education or public policy. Yet when it comes to criminalizing our communities, suddenly race matters. This is the contradiction at the heart of the Roberts Court: no race in college admissions, but race is admissible in immigration stops.
The real problem in this Sept. 8 decision is that the Supreme Court justices are now saying the quiet part aloud: Brown skin is a problem to be policed. And that leaves us with a dangerous question—can a country built on such contradictions hold together when its highest court openly sanctions racism against millions of its own people?
We write this from Los Angeles, a city where nearly half the population is Mexican, Chicano or Central American. That means almost every family here has someone—citizen or not—who could now be targeted under this ruling. Families who could be harmed physically, emotionally, and financially. We know what it means to be pulled over because you “look like” someone who does not belong. And now the Roberts Court has made that legal again.
As Chicanos working in law and academia, we know the score. This decision ignores both history and plain facts on the ground. Selective amnesia seems to be the illness of choice. Native-Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Mexicans have all felt the sting of second-class status. And our memories are quite intact. Think of Plessy v. Ferguson, every broken treaty and legislative act denying Native Americans citizenship, Japanese internment, Chinese exclusion, and the failed promises of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. And this is just the tip of the historic iceberg. The story is always the same: the law used as a weapon to keep communities in their place. And now again, the Supreme Court has done it again.
This decision is galling in its scope and dangerously disconnected from the sheer terror that such a scheme will unleash. Kavanaugh’s concurrence
stands as the centerpiece of the ruling. He writes that ICE officers
may take into account the fact that many immigrants in Los Angeles
gather at bus stops, day-labor corners, and car washes; that they work
in landscaping, agriculture, or construction; that they speak Spanish or
accented English; and that they come from Mexico or Central America.
But, careful to burnish his civil-rights credentials, he adds: “To be
clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion…” At
first glance, he sounds like a reasonable man. Yet just eight words
later, he reveals his true colors: “however, it can be a
‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.” The doublespeak is thick; his arrogance unmistakable.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s only Latina ever, issued a fiery dissent: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job.” She warned that this ruling makes all Latinos “fair game” for detention. But even her powerful words did not go far enough. What the majority embraced was not only a deep-seated anti-immigrant sentiment—it was a reaffirmation of this nation’s long history of anti-Mexicanism. In practical terms, it means anyone who is Brown carries a target on their back, just as it was in the so-called good old days.
It's an important article and it's a shame the media -- including MSNBC -- made last week wall-to-wall canonization of a dead racist instead of standing up for real issues. No wonder Chump thinks he can get away with anything -- he watches so many on the left and 'left' act like idiots and wimps.
