NATIONAL NO APOLOGIES DAY PERIOD UPDATES

I Mean, If This Weren't True, Would I Be Writing This?

-Let's be clear: Donald Trump has had a very BAD stretch lately. Truly. On the international front, Ukraine literally created a new chapter of conducting warfare - and they did it specifically by excluding Trump from the intelligence loop to do it. By doing so, Volodymyr Zelenskyy put more pressure on Trump and his relationship with Vladimir Putin - and not in a good way.

-Add to that China literally not picking up Trump's calls to try to stem the MAGAGOPTrump STUPIDSTUPID Tariffs and the continued deserved piling on Israel for its barbaric treatment of Palestinians in Gaza (on Sunday night diverting a ship bringing food to Palestinians in Gaza (along with activist Greta Thunberg), and the overall picture there continues to be Trump as the impotent weak man that he is.

-Domestically, the news is not good either. The Trump-driven Big Bill O'Crap is clearly stalled in the Senate as a number of its hideous provisions are rewritten, meaning it will first still need to pass the Senate without losing more than three more Senators (Rand Paul is a hard NO on the bill along with all the other Democrats) and then need to head back to the MAGA House in a reconciled version knowing the first version passed by one lone vote.

-Further, Mr. Branding continues to smart hard from the Wall-Street-created nickname that is sticking: TACO Trump. The name burns both because of its Mexican heritage and because of what it means to the alleged Alpha Male of All Alpha Males: "Trump Always Chickens Out!" (That nickname, in fact, is likely the direct reason why, when his "deadline" to apply tariffs to aluminum and steel earlier this week, rather than do his folderoo move, he let them take effect, thereby planting seeds for both self-inflicted inflation and another likely rollback in the end ...)

-And personally? OUCH!

-The immolation of his 'relationship' with his 2024 election sugar daddy, Ketamine Man Elon Musk, exploded last week with a social media firefight that featured Musk Going There, claiming Trump was all over the still-secret-because-of-Trump-appointees Jeffrey Epstein files and strongly implying Musk seemed to know where the bodies were buried (along with other secrets including electoral secrets). True, Trump insisted he was over Elon - Trump called into five networks on Friday telling all of them he wasn't talking about or thinking about or wondering about Elon not one bit TALK TO THE HAND - but, even though Musk deleted the Epstein-related posts on social media and has been relatively quiet this weekend, the damage was done and done, again, hard on Trump.

-With all these emotional psycho-social brickbats hammering the perennially soft and spongy (and clearly disturbed and less-capacitated) Trump, it was truly inevitable - especially knowing the moves he would make and things he would say amid similar circumstances in the past - Trump would need to do something before this Saturday's I-DO-TOO-HAVE-A-PENIS military parade to assert himself in a major way, to keep face with his MAGA horde base and his fragile psyche, and that the assertion would likely be loud, showy, outwardly threatening, and even if it was less than a single bean lying on the ground, make Dear Leader feel like a big special boy.

-Enter another man with a damaged psyche, a yearning to lash out to assert dominance, and enough emotional damage to do something without a worry about the Constitution or party politics or any kind of humanity: Trump's right cloven hoof and background architect of the Trump Immigration Policy who has also had a really bad personal stretch lately, Stephen Miller.

-The ongoing attacks on immigrants and people of color by Miller (and aided by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Special Toe-Headed Thug Tom Homan, and Attorney General Pam Bondi) have been ratcheting up in recent weeks, with Miller angrily erupting to officials that being cucked by a white foreign breeding machine made him feel humanesque emotions he registered as "anger" and "humiliation" not enough brown people were being kidnapped and terrorized by ICE officers and more needed to be picked up so he could feel less impotent at least for a moment a day in his sad miserable life. So a "quota" of 3,000 "illegal" "immigrants" per day was set (with Miller reportedly screaming at people to make it happen) (GOD, guys can be SO emotional!), and ICE went out to try to hit their numbers.

-That directive has led to dozens if not hundreds of reports on the streets, often by witnesses recording on cell phones, of what looks too much like a reign of terror on immigrant communities. ICE agents were raiding well-known and loved restaurants, planted themselves outside schools and other places known to have immigrants simply attending, and in a move run in Chicago last weekend, sending immigrants texts requesting they come to courts for registration or legal reasons - only to essentially be entrapped by agents and arrested and taken to local holding facilities. All being done while at least some agents carried no badges, refused to identify themselves, masked themselves to hide their identities, and in some cases, openly harass bystanders and partners and parents who witnessed loved ones "arrested" and taken to unmarked cars and vans to their holding places.

-More and more, though, the arrival of ICE agents has also sparked peaceful counterprotests that have sometimes been successful (a group of neighbors and patrons shooing away ICE agents looking to arrest most workers of a popular San Diego restaurant), sometimes not (similar witnesses arriving at the bait-and-switch sites in Chicago were met with physical contact including shoving new Alderman Anthony Quesada to the ground), and more agita in the heart of Tom Homan (cosplaying on the Sunday talk shows wearing a camo cap as if he was some kind of warrior). The fear started to build: would Trump and/or Miller keep building these confrontations into a bona-fide political Viagra political crisis?

-... please. The only questions were when and where. The "when" is this past weekend, the "now" is Los Angeles, and that, in one Substacker's humble opinion, is vital context that is important in thinking about what is happening in L.A.

-As in other (BLUE) cities, ICE agents began heading to several areas, including a Mexican neighborhood and its local businesses and, critically, a local Home Depot which (as in many, many communities) can be places where immigrants and others can pick up work as day laborers. In response, the community and others who don't like what Trump is doing with immigrants (and, no question, many other reasons they don't like Trump) began emerging on the streets to stop, slow down, slag, and scream at ICE to stop them if they could and video the actions. All overwhelmingly NON-violent.

-In fact, and counter (obviously) to coverage on Fox and other hard-MAGA outlets, confrontations - including verbal confrontations, blocking of traffic, and use of smoke bombs and tear gas - the confrontations and vitriol tended to be coming from ICE. Protestors were arrested. The President of California's powerful SEIU union, David Huerta, was arrested after being injured and hospitalized by ICE (he is out of the hospital but still in custody). The rhetoric coming from Miller, Homan, and Noem, was hard and heated, attempting to paint Los Angeles under a siege that made the Rodney King riots look like a day on the Santa Monica Pier.

-That all set the table for Trump, who - fed by the angry Miller and aggrieved himself - decided now was the time to try to flex his fascist groove thang. On Saturday night, Trump posted that he was ready to federalize the California National Guard to take power away from one of his main antagonists, Governor Gavin Newsom (along with threatening to cut off California from any federal help - a move far more suicidal to the U.S. writ large given that the CA economy generates $80 BILLION in taxes more than it uses in state) - a clear-cut violation of the Constitution for those still paying attention to such things.

-Even more egregiously, Trump then tried to pawn off the Presidential power to move troops into a state to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth - a move that is both insanely illegal and profoundly lazy (remember, Trump never actually fired anybody on THE APPRENTICE - that was scripted and he read the script), who on Sunday then 'deputized' 2,000 National Guardsmen and 500 Marines to "quell" what Trump and Miller called an "insurrection" (and yes, use of that word is undoubtedly calculated).

-The problem is that there was, and still is not, anything CLOSE to city-wide riots in L.A. The focus on Saturday was in the town of Paramount, 20 miles south of downtown L.A. near Compton. There were no large levels of city-wide violence - certainly not against humans, arguably more so against police vehicles and other cars. (In the weirdest part of the weekend, protesters managed to call most if not all of a fleet of driverless electric vehicles called Waymos to the area where the protests were happening, then torched each of them) (and it has to be said, when driverless electric cars go boom, it’s kind of a visual!).

-And by the time the National Guard had unpacked their duffel bags early Sunday morning, the protest from Saturday had long been completed (which led to Trump taking credit for it and the Los Angeles Police Department pushing back on the credit-taking) and the early part of Sunday had Guardsmen patrol empty streets.

-Things got a bit more intense through Sunday. Local television in Los Angeles watched as protestors on an overpass that was shut down by protestors throwing everything from chunks of concrete (which they took thanks to hammers they brought with them) to motorized scooters on to L.A.P.D. police cruisers below, damaging several in the process. And, heading from Sunday night to Monday morning, downtown Los Angeles became a centerpiece of small fires and looting, leading the LAPD (NOT the National Guard, NOT the Marines, NOT Trump or any of his minions) declaring the area an "unlawful assembly area" to manage the unrest.

-The protests, until Sunday night and Monday morning, have generally been safe and peaceful - and even the Sunday/Monday unrest has been attacks on cars and property, NOT people. In fact, local LAPD and CA Highway Patrol officers have kept the unrest to discrete areas of the city, and the most egregious moment was an Australian reporter getting hit with a rubber bullet fired by a Policeman who clearly and calmly aimed and fired while she was giving her report.

-This is the point Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have been making, with Newsom going so far as to dare Homan to arrest him - and to demand Trump and his minions stand down on federalizing forces. Trump, via social media, of course continues to paint a picture of flames being fanned higher than the January fire storms created solely by illegal aliens and Democrats (no word from Trump on how Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton found Molotov cocktails, but that may be coming).

-No question, these are bad developments. The urge by Trump to go beyond L.A. and try to create enough stinks in blue states with multiethnic cities, combined with Miller smarting over all his personal issues, makes a fear of Trump at least trying to federalize forces to aid in the reboot of Operation Wetback from the 1950s very, very real - particularly with the No Kings rallies set to go this Saturday.

-Miller, too, appears to be close to being out of control of his emotions himself, as a post by ABC News' Terry Moran describing Miller as "a world-class hater" and adding "It's not brains. It's bile" made Miller's fee-fees so butthurt that he got Spokesliar Katherine Leavitt to cry about it - and that ABC to bend their hips to Trump again and suspended Moran for the post.

-And while Trump has, at least for the moment, appeared to again feel like an alpha (going so far as to attend a UFC title match and being "gifted" with a championship belt for his wee tiny hands to grab and throw over his shoulder like a Big Boy!), we were again reminded that he is a feeble nearly 79-year-old creaky old man when, moments before another belligerent post directed at "Gavin Newscum" and Bass (a black woman, Trump's least favorite), he boarded Air Force One and tripped, forcing himself to grab the railing and keep himself from falling forward with a violent stumble and a face photographed like he was taking a painful dump at that moment. (Which ...)

-They are also profoundly dangerous. They so want to bust some heads and (as Trump wanted to do in 2020 during the George Floyd unrest) shoot protestors - and if they could do it as they continue to shove the Big Bill O'Crap through Congress by using such unrest politically, all the better - that, as we hit the streets, we do so NONVIOLENTLY. Remember the Erica Chenoweth research that says when 3.5% of a population protests against a despot with nonviolent protest it will generally lead to the ouster of the despot and a rebuild of democratic institutions. That's 11 million. Staying cool while rallying people will allow the country to test that theory sooner rather than later - and, perhaps, a concrete demand to severely limit the powers of ICE may be a good unifying demand this weekend.

-And, as we remember from the start of this Update, Trump is not doing this because he's strong. Far, FAR from it ...

-THIS JUST IN: As I was doing a final read-through to post, news has come down that over 300 employees of the National Institutes of Health have signed a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH Chair Dr. Jay Bhattacharya demanding a stop to the draconian cuts in funding and personnel the pair have attempted. The letter is called "The Betheseda Declaration," in part as a callback/response to a 2020 letter written by Dr. Bhattacharya he called "The Great Barrington Declaration" calling for the U.S. to adopt a herd immunity policy in response to COVID - a letter pilloried by researchers across the globe - and comes a day before the pair will testify before Congress about the Trumpification of health research led by Dr. Bhattacharya and the whale-beheading raw-milk-guzzling roided-up worm-brained jagoff running HHS.

-OK, on to the trivia of the date ...

-NEWS ON THIS DATE: In 1789, James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights to the U.S. House. In 1856, members of the Mormon Church left to settle at Salt Lake City, UT. In 1954, Senator Joseph Welch asked colleague Joseph McCarthy "Have you no sense of decency?" (The answer: no.) In 1969, Mickey Mantle had his number 9 retired. In 1970, the National Football League and American Football League merged. In 1973, Secretariat won the Triple Crown by a still-record 31 lengths.

-DEBUTS ON THIS DATE: Donald Duck (1934), CARMINA BURANA (1937), 1984 (1949), "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (1968), CALIFORNICATION (1999), World Oceans Day (2009).

-HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Robert Schumann, Frank Lloyd Wright, Byron White, Robert Preston, LeRoy Neiman, Lyn Nofziger, Eddie Gaedel, Jerry Stiller, Joan Rivers, Bernie Casey, Herb Adderley, Nancy Sinatra, Boz Scaggs, Mark Belanger, Sara Peretsky, Bonnie Tyler, Griffin Dunne, Greg Ginn, Jon King, Tim Berners-Lee, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Mick Hucknall, Nick Rhodes, Rob Pilatus, Julianna Margulies, Gabby Giffords, Troy Vincent, Lindsay Davenport, Derek Trucks, and Kim Clijsters.

-REST IN PEACE/POWER: Thomas Paine, Cochise, Abraham Maslow, Satchel Paige, Jeff MacNelly, Frank Cady, Anthony Bourdain, Danny Kirwan, Bonnie Pointer, and Chet Walker.

-FEED THE WORMS: Indonesian strongman dictator Suharto, war criminal William Calley, Jr., Trumper cartoonist Scott Adams, and Kanye West entered Earth on this date. Andrew Jackson and Pat Robertson bought it on this date.

-Barbara Bush was born on this date. You decide if she gets a Happy Birthday or if she Feeds the Worms.

-CULTURE ON THIS DATE: The Number One Single in the United States on this date ... in 2025, "Ordinary" by Alex Warren ... in 2015, "Bad Blood" by Taylor Swift featuring Kendrick Lamar ... in 2005, "We Belong Together" by Mariah Carey ... in 1995, "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" by Bryan Adams ... in 1985, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears ... and in 1975, "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" by John Denver.

-TODAY'S MUSIC INTERLUDE: Premiering on this date in 1984!