"Sanctuary State"

When Washington state refused Texas's subpoena for the records of trans children and the records of women from Texas... it was to protect the identities of medical patients.

When Texas refused an extradition order, it was for a criminal assault where a person beat shot [updated] another person and then lied about it. That person was an ICE agent.

PBS News reported that;

Castro is accused of firing gun through door of home

Castro is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, shooting Sosa-Celis in the leg. Prosecutors say Castro also falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.

But while this back-and-forth in the legal system plays out...

 ICE officer’s release from Texas jail opens a new front in the escalating fight over extradition

AP News

By  MICHAEL GONZALEZ, VALERIE GONZALEZ and SUDHIN THANAWALA

August 27, 2026

The release of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer from a Texas jail on Thursday despite Minnesota’s request for his return could set a dangerous precedent, increasing friction between states and helping criminal defendants avoid justice, legal experts said.

Christian Castro was released from a detention center in Brownsville after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declined to immediately sign his extradition warrant. A federal judge also declined to block Castro’s release or order Abbott to sign the warrant.

Minnesota officials say they believe Castro could flee to Mexico to avoid prosecution on charges he shot a man and lied about it during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis in January. Extradition from Mexico would require action by the Trump administration, which opened an investigation into Castro’s actions but also has argued ICE agents have “absolute immunity” for their actions on duty.

But now it has escalated to another level:

Trump’s DOJ Blocked Serious ICE Shooting Charge Over Federal Prosecutor’s “Strongest Possible” Objections

A prosecutor planned to file civil rights charges — similar to those brought against the officers who killed George Floyd — against an ICE agent. In an email we exclusively obtained, he reveals that Trump officials quashed those plans.

Propublica

by Megan Rose and Andy Mannix

September 2, 2026

Over the “strongest possible” objections from the federal prosecutor handling the case, leaders at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., quashed plans to bring civil rights charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant and then lying about it. 

The agent, 52-year-old Christian Castro, allegedly shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg in Minneapolis this January during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s immigration blitz that sent thousands of federal agents into the state. The incident was one of three shootings by immigration agents in the city, the other two of which were fatal. 

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota had been preparing to charge Castro with deprivation of rights under color of law for the shooting of Sosa-Celis, according to several people familiar with the case. Those charges are similar to the ones leveled against Minneapolis police officers accused in George Floyd’s killing and can carry hefty prison sentences. 

Late on Tuesday, Matthew Evans, the assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota in charge of the case, told lawyers for Sosa-Celis and other victims to prepare for Castro to be charged “only with False Statements,” according to an email that was reviewed by ProPublica. 

You know what that behavior and being above the law reminds me of? The KGB, NKVD, Stasi, Cheka... the whole alphabet soup of Cold War secret police.

The Hill reports that;

U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., an appointee of President Trump who oversees the case, will consider Minnesota’s bid at a Tuesday afternoon hearing in his Brownsville, Texas, courtroom.

It has become a major legal clash between Abbott and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who requested Castro’s extradition as state authorities charged the ICE officer with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

The officer stands accused of injuring a Venezuelan man in the leg by firing a gun at the front door of an occupied Minneapolis home on Jan. 14 amid an immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities. Castro had allegedly told investigators he opened fire in self-defense after being hit with a shovel and a broom, only for video footage to undercut the officer’s claim. 

Abbott has refused to sign a rendition warrant that would pave the way for the officer to return to Minnesota for trial.

This is a whole new level of political interference in our legal systems. Think about this for a moment: The governor and the judge are saying that for the shooting, Castro can't be charged, only for the misdemeanor.

This doesn't make sense... for the serious crimes of shooting an individual, they say he can't be charged because it was justified. While he used a lie to justify it! Duh! What circular logic. Has Texas become a "sanctuary state" for all the ICE agents who cross the line?

Tell Me What's The Difference?

What is the difference between...

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Different Needs.

[Editorial]

We are victims of our generations… Boomers, Gen X, Millennials (Gen Y), etc.

Oh man… Lawrence Welk. The old folks are watching Lawrence Welk!

Now the new generations are seeing us go to a Rolling Stones concert or watching PBS with all the old groups from the sixties and seventies, alongside old clips from the fifties.

I grew up with the PC and dial-up, and now the kids are cursing gigabyte internet for being slow.

A couple of days ago, I asked whether crossdressing was going the way of the dinosaur. But in reality, we are all aging out! The Rolling Stones are our generation’s Lawrence Welk. What we grew up with, we hid in closets; we were in steamy mob dives that the police raided regularly during elections. You’d see us in the papers with our faces covered by our hands, and newspapers would even print our names. They held congressional hearings on us!

At the same time, on the evening news, Black Americans were sitting at lunch counters getting their heads bashed in or walking across a bridge being attacked by dogs.

People said, "Enough! Enough!" and passed non-discrimination laws, saying, "Let's get together right now and end this hate!" The haters crawled back into the swamps to stew and foment their anger.

New generations grew up, the alphabet continued through Gens X, Y, and Z, and they forgot.

Oh, they remembered Stonewall, but to them, it became an excuse to party.

Meanwhile, in the swamps, a brew was fermenting: “I believe it is my constitutional right to discriminate!" "Oh, we aren’t gerrymandering because of race… just politics… oh, that’s all right then.” The courts are whittling away at the protections of the 2000s.

We've seen this in the seventies, in the fifties, and in Europe in the thirties—pick on a minority and make them your scapegoats. And now the swamp creatures have become emboldened.

Now it is time for the new generations to pick up the torch. What we have learned is to go to the core… yes, immigration rights matter, our rights matter, but what we learned from Saul Alinsky, the focus has to be on the elections—not just our rights, no matter how hard or exhausting that seems. We need to overthrow the Republican grip; we have to free up the pendulum to swing back.

[/Editorial]

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"

Who remembers who uttered those words and why?

 

It was President Bill Clinton. During his grand jury testimony on August 17, 1998 about his affair in the White House with Monica Lewinsky. Now fast forward to Natalie Harp.
 

The Daily Beast writes,

 Melania Trump is locked in a secret power struggle with Donald Trump’s 35-year-old assistant, according to the president’s biographer.

White House aide Natalie Harp has become seemingly inseparable from President Donald Trump, and her near-constant presence is made all the more striking by Melania’s conspicuous absence.

 

[...]

 

 Melania is steering clear of her 80-year-old husband because she has little interest in sharing his side with Harp, according to Trump biographer Michael Wolff.

In a new post on his Substack newsletter Howl, Wolff wrote that Harp’s “central presence” in Trump’s life helped explain why Melania rarely appeared alongside him on the 2024 campaign trail.

Um... so where is the Republican Congress's rage? 

 

Life On A Sandbar

It’s different. The birds are different. They are more subdued. Oh, I can see them up in the treetops, but they’re not calling to one another. It’s almost like they sense the rain coming.

Most days, there are all types of birds, from flocks of grackles to the pounding of a woodpecker. As long as it’s not raining, I usually lay out on the back deck, listening to an audiobook. I lean back in the chaise lounge with a lemonade or a soda and listen to my books. There is always some distraction—an airplane overhead, the birds, or just an ant zeroing in on my lemonade.

But today, it’s overcast, and the clouds are leaking raindrops. So today, I decided to heed the ways of the birds and hunker down.

Wink, Wink, Nod, Nod

He didn’t come out and say it but he threw out hints to his MAGA base.

Donald Trump says transgender people will “end” if GOP keeps Congress in midterms
The Fox host he was talking to didn’t push him to explain what he meant.
LGBTQ Nation
Alex Bollinger
August 31, 2026

Donald Trump said in an interview yesterday that voters should treat the 2026 midterms as if he is on the ballot, while bringing up how he is going to make “transgender… end.”

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who is now a Fox News host, asked Trump on his show yesterday about the upcoming midterms, in which it seems likely that Republicans will lose ground in Congress.

“I think we’re gonna do very well,” Trump said. “I’m gonna take a lot of time, and I’m going to help people get elected, if I can.”

[…]

“We’ve done a great job; we’re the most respected country right now in the world; we’re more respected than we ever were, and I think people wanna keep it that way, so I think we’re gonna win.”

What has he been smoking “the most respected country right now in the world”?

 

Is this Trump’s “Final Solution?” The elimination of the trans community?

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Updated: 3:30PM

The Pink News reported that,

It remains unclear what Trump specifically meant by saying “transgender” will “end”, but transgender people themselves are obviously not going anywhere. Trans people have existed throughout history and across cultures, and there is no evidence that political repression or efforts to force people to suppress their identities can eliminate being transgender.

For Trump, however, the issue is clearly still part of his pitch to Republican voters. His message to them is essentially that the fight over transgender people’s rights should be treated as a reason to turn out for the GOP in November.

And with the midterms approaching, Trump appears to be making an agenda around trans people and trans issues a huge part of the case for keeping Republicans in power.

“For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”

That is what is written in stone over the entrance of the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

But what no one can see is the little asterisk that Trump stuck there… *Unless there is a profit to be made.

Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer

The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.

NOTUS

By Anna Kramer

August 28, 2026

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.  

National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.

The courts once turned them down... but now they are trying a different route: a swap.

Because the ranch is basically landlocked, it takes around 90 minutes to drive around to the park entrance, which is why the previous owner's requests failed. But this new land-exchange tactic changes everything, turning a 90-minute detour into a matter of minutes.

The Sierra News Online writes,

Opponents Warn About Precedent

Critics of the current proposal say the issue extends well beyond the amount of acreage involved.

California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff have objected to the potential exchange, while conservation organizations and former park officials have raised concerns about allowing national park property to facilitate private development.

Among those speaking out is John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center.

Buckley told NOTUS there is no current residential population at Hazel Green requiring access to Yosemite and argued that the primary reason for the proposed connection is to make new development of the property more feasible.

Critics have also raised concerns about additional traffic, wildfire risk, impacts on natural resources and the precedent that could be created if Yosemite land were exchanged to facilitate private development along the park boundary.

The Yosemite local of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents park employees, has also opposed the proposal, saying employees are concerned about potential effects on park resources, visitor safety and an already strained workforce.

Kingsbarn argues that the exchange should be viewed differently.

The company says Hazel Green is already privately owned and can be developed independently of Yosemite. Its position is that providing a shorter route to the park would reduce miles driven over existing roads and that an equal-value land exchange would leave Yosemite with no net loss of acreage.

Then there is that phrase: “... an equal-value land exchange would leave Yosemite with no net loss of acreage.”

The debate is over what “an equal-value land exchange” means. Proponents see it as X acres for X acres, but conservationists see it differently. They see it as thousands of acres of wilderness that will now have a road through it, and you cannot place a price tag on that.

The Guardian reported that,

And while the threat to sell off part of Yosemite National Park is about a quarter-mile parcel on the park’s edge, Yosemite is a crown jewel in the national park system and, arguably, the world’s first national park.

To let any bit of it be sold off for the benefit of a corporation’s planned development on the park’s western border would compromise the inviolability of national parks and sacrifice public good for the sake of private profit. This is of course the ongoing agenda of the Trump administration.

Then there is the fact that it is a National Park… that Congress has set aside for the people of the United States. And this will turn the public land into private land.

Public lands belong to all of us, a gift from the past because people worked hard to protect these forests, mountains, canyons, and a trust for the future, because the public should include everyone in this country alive now and everyone yet to come.

The Trump administration’s ruthless efforts to turn over public lands for mining and logging and fossil fuel exploitation while it also dismantles the Forest Service and Park Service is about turning long-term well-being for the many, human and more-than-human, into short-term profit for an elite.

And here is the kicker… it will be a private road. That means only the billionaires can drive on it to their million-dollar condos, benefiting just a small number of the nobility.

Do You Have A Warm Fuzzy Feeling?

I don't... this is from Axios,

 Two key reasons led to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll's resignation, announced Monday: the feeling that his modernization initiatives were being blocked, and the chaos created by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's firing of senior generals.

Why it matters: Driscoll's wartime resignation, on top of Hegseth's firing of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George this spring, leaves the military's largest service without Senate-confirmed leadership, civilian or uniformed.

The last sentence is what got my attention. With this administration in the middle of a war... it is now all Hegseth's cronies and that doesn't sit well with me. Especially with a critical election coming up and all the threats Trump made about the election and using the military. No... this doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

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Updated: 9/2 @ 5:00AM  

CBS New just published a list of fired officers and civilians.

Here are the military and civilian leaders who've been fired, forced out or resigned since Hegseth became defense secretary

By Eleanor Watson

September 1, 2026 / 9:43 PM EDT / CBS News

At least 20 generals, admirals and civilian defense leaders have been fired or have departed their jobs since Pete Hegseth became defense secretary at the beginning of the second Trump administration. 

Some of the military's most decorated leaders have either been fired by Hegseth and President Trump or have retired with little explanation, including the Army, Navy and Air Force's highest-ranking officers and the leaders of key units. The Army and Navy's top civilian leaders have also either been forced out or resigned.

Before becoming defense secretary, Hegseth had criticized military officers, accusing them of being too focused on diversity initiatives and insufficiently supportive of frontline service members. Before he was nominated, he said on a podcast that "any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever — that was involved in any of the DEI woke s*** has got to go."  

The Trump administration has pushed out top female and Black officers, and Black and female officers have been disproportionately removed from promotion lists, a source familiar with the lists told CBS News. There are currently no active four-star women generals or admirals in the military. Many of those who failed to secure promotions have left the military.

My worries are that the "new" generals are loyal to Hegseth and not the Consitution