Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at jeffdanziger.com.
Even hosts at the conservative Fox News Channel aren't convinced that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem's take on Wednesday's fatal shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota is accurate.
The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that several primetime Fox News hosts cast doubt on Noem's version of events. The DHS secretary initially stated that 37 year-old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good was attempting to run over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents when she was fatally shot. She added that Good was committing an "act of domestic terrorism."
Noem later doubled down on her initial claims in a Wednesday press conference, saying that Good had "weaponized" her car against ICE agents who were stuck in the snow and that federal agents fired shots out of self-defense. But Fox News host John Roberts said that the DHS secretary's version of events didn't jibe with video evidence.
"I’ve seen the video several times as well — kind of gone through it frame by frame. I don’t want to describe it because you can’t see the entire scene play out," Roberts said.
"There is an area in front of the vehicle that is obscured by the vehicle itself, so we don’t know 100 percent what happened during that incident, but what I saw of it does counteract the narrative that they were trying to push their car out of the snow," he continued. "... That vehicle was clearly in the middle of the street, as it was approached by a couple of federal agents before it sped off."
Fox host Jessica Tarlov — who is a liberal panelist on the show The Five — claimed "ICE just killed that woman" in response to the video. And while conservative panelist Harold Ford Jr. didn't use Tarlov's words, he also doubted Noem's account of events after viewing the video of the shooting.
"I couldn’t understand when she said it was an act of ‘domestic terrorism’ and she said the car was stuck in snow, and the officers—I think her characterization, maybe she got bad information, because her characterization seemed inconsistent with what we are seeing here," Ford said.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet
The government shutdown has not stopped President Donald Trump and his henchmen from spending cash on vanity projects, such as White House renovations and private planes.
About 1.4 million federal workers are not receiving paychecks because of the shutdown, and many have become Uber drivers and DoorDash deliverers to make ends meet.
“I’m driving Uber at night so I can feed my 15-year-old son,” Daniel Scharpenburg, a longtime IRS employee, told a federal worker roundtable in Kansas.
Scharpenburg shared his story days before bulldozers began demolishing portions of the White House to make way for a rococo ballroom that will cost an estimated $200 million. Trump has publicly fantasized about building such a structure since before he was president.
The demolition work signals another broken promise by Trump, who said in July that the new ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building.”
The ballroom is allegedly being funded by Trump himself and a cadre of corporate donors, like R.J. Reynolds and weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Because the project involves a national monument, these donors will receive a federal tax write-off for their contributions.
“We are 20 days into the Republican Shutdown,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote on X. “Health care costs are skyrocketing and federal workers aren’t getting paid. What is Trump doing? Building his gold plated ballroom.”
Thousands of dollars have also been spent on gold adornments for the Oval Office and enormous banners featuring Trump’s face that now hang from some federal buildings.
Trump isn’t the only one benefitting from government largesse during the shutdown. It was reported last week that the Coast Guard spent $172 million on two Gulfstream private jets for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The Coast Guard insists the jets are part of a necessary upgrade, but it has not explained why it spent more than double its initial estimate of $50 million to procure them. It is also not clear where the funding for the jets came from.
Noem has already been scrutinized for using government planes for personal travel and living rent-free in a residence typically reserved for the Coast Guard’s commandant. Noem maintains these measures are necessary to ensure her personal safety.
“We are deeply concerned about your judgment, leadership priorities, and responsibility as a steward of taxpayer dollars,” Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee wrote in a letter to Noem, requesting more details on the private jet expenditure.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also spent $51 million of taxpayer funds on a series of television ads this year thanking Trump for “securing the border” and defending ICE’s brutal deportation campaign.
Eyebrows were also raised by an announcement that the U.S. government would spend $20 billion on a currency swap with Argentina to help the nation’s fledgling economy.
This could all become a problem for Republicans. Many Americans, not just federal workers, are struggling with the rising costs of groceries and housing. Lavish spending by the White House risks making them look out of touch with those concerns.
It is likely to get worse when tax credits that help 22 million Americans afford health insurance plans expire at the end of this month. In Georgia, home to one of next year’s most competitive Senate races, some health care premiums are expected to quadruple as a result.
Democrats have made extending these subsidies a condition of reopening the government.
Reprinted with permission from American Journal News
Latino support for President Donald Trump and his policies is cratering, which is no surprise given that he has turned the entire federal government into a brutal nativist deportation regime aimed largely at Hispanic and Latino people. But Republicans need those votes, so they’re doing what the right wing always does: launching a dark money campaign.
What? You thought the solution would be for the administration to change the policies that are designed to terrorize Latino people specifically? Come on.
In advance of the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding, the cool geniuses at Americans for Prosperity, a Koch Brothers creation, are working with LIBRE, another Koch Brothers creation, to engage Latino voters about the “founding policies” of America.
A quick glance at the LIBRE website shows just how generic and astroturf-y this group is. They want “worker freedom”—aka no unions. They want “school choice”—aka undermining public schools. They love Trump’s tax bill.
Sure, this is vaguely linked to the interests of Latino voters. But honestly, you could just Ctrl-F every mention of “Latino” and replace it with any other ethnic group. It would be the same thing: a hollow exhortation that real freedom is a complete lack of government programs or any semblance of a safety net.This feeble, generic nonsense is the basis for a seven-figure campaign, One Small Step, that will include paid media, civics classes, and community events.
Let’s all take a quick moment to imagine what, exactly, a civics class targeted at Latino voters would look like in this day and age. Will they tell them how it is super great that Trump is trying to erase birthright citizenship? What does worker freedom mean when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are arresting and deporting day laborers looking for work?
Or maybe they can explain how it is cool and good and totally reflective of America’s founding policies to detain migrants while they are on church grounds?
Oh wait! Perhaps they will share the good news about how the administration raced to the Supreme Court to beg to be allowed to racially profile Latinos? And how the court’s conservatives happily obliged, saying it was fine to detain people if they were brown, speaking Spanish, and working at certain low-wage jobs like car washes. Probable cause is for suckers, right?
Surely Latino voters will thrill to hear about how ICE is ticketing and fining legal residents if they fail to carry their papers at all times. Nothing says freedom like “papers, please.” Or perhaps the Koch folks can share the heartwarming stories of legal Latino residents being detained by ICE just for being brown.
Maybe LIBRE will reprint Trump’s very touching announcement about Hispanic Heritage Month. Sure, he didn’t get around to making a statement until a week had elapsed, at which point he produced a nothingburger that was mostly about how great he, Donald Trump, is.“Every day, my Administration is working tirelessly to bring opportunity, prosperity, and success to citizens of every background,” he crowed. Happy Hispanic Heritage Month, indeed.
Right-wingers are so comprehensively steeped in racism and anti-Latino bias that they had an absolute meltdown over the selection of Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime performer. Some of the dimmest, most vicious commentators, like Tomi Lahren, had to be reminded that, as a Puerto Rican citizen, Bad Bunny is actually an American.
Nevertheless, they’re furious that he will be singing in Spanish.
The Trump administration is so transparently racist that merely the selection of a Latino performer led to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem screaming about how ICE will be “all over” the Super Bowl. Her paramour, Corey Lewandowski, went even further, saying, “We will find you, we will apprehend you, we will put you in a detention facility, and we will deport you.”
So weird that Latinos aren’t coming out in droves to support this, right?Trump was pretty psyched to increase his share of the Latino vote in 2024, but these days his numbers among that group are suffering, so it makes sense that the right wing is resorting to dark-money-fueled astroturf efforts to try to shore up his support.
Good luck, babe. It’s going to be pretty tough to pull this off when the news is an unending stream of federal agents committing violence against Latinos across the country. No amount of the Koch brothers’ money can paper over that.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
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