July 14: DHS defends shooting based on the possibility of bad stuff happening in the future without the shooting … Minnesota cops finally get evidence from feds in murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti … Trump to release bullshit evidence of bullshit foreign election theft to justify his own election theft … Lindsey Graham replaced by Lindsey Graham’s sister to carry on GOP fight against cronyism …
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Soon after the latest murder by federal cops, the parent agency, the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS), released a statement explaining that, oh yeah, this was some murder.
“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”
Fleeing isn’t legal justification for killing people. Fearing for public safety isn’t legal justification for shooting people. If public safety were a legal rationale for shooting people, DHS would be dealing with a lot more attempted presidential assassinations and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller assassinations.
Now, what ought citizens do when a federal law-enforcement agency asserts a right to murder people they’re afraid of? Especially when that agency was created after terrorists terrorized America into creating agencies that would inevitably turn against its people?
That’s right, class, we abolish the fuck out of them.
Murder victim Johan Sebastian Guerrero1, 26, of Biddeford, ME, and originally from Colombia, was a father authorized to work in the U.S. That’s irrelevant to the legality of the shooting.
It doesn’t matter whether he was documented or undocumented; had his papers or was low on toner; was armed, unarmed, or disarmingly charming. Still can’t shoot him.
Much has been made of the fact that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents weren’t looking for Guerrero, that they had a warrant for someone else. Doesn’t matter. Warrant or no warrant, it’s unwarranted murder.
Murdering the right guy, also murder.
The warrant information came first from Sen. Angus King (I-ME), but most media ignored the far more fucked-up thing that King revealed. According to the Associated Press, King said that Story #1 from Homeland (sic) Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was that Guerrero tried to attack ICE agents with his car.
Car-attacks, fictional or otherwise, are also not a justification — legally or brain-havingly — for shooting a driver. Especially when Guerrero was shot through the side window, which is typically on the side.
But also, that story of a car attack was ditched by the time DHS’s official statement gave us Story #2. And, sure enough, video emerged showing that Story #1 was a lie, as is standard oppressing procedure in the event of ICE murder.
Mullin’s still new to the job, but he should know by now that stories aren’t like names: You gotta choose one, Markwayne!
It was just last week that a Politico headline assured us “Mullin’s pledges of a more discreet DHS are becoming reality.” Whose reality, it’s not clear, but not Guerrero’s. And lowering your profile by inviting media on fewer ride-alongs and murder-alongs doesn’t mean you’re not still murdering.
Mullin was confirmed with only two Democratic votes, those of Sens. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and only one Maine vote: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).
Oopsy!
Collins also just voted for $70 billion more for DHS. Without mandating body cameras. Which Guerrero’s murderer didn’t have.
Oopsy-fuckie!
Seems like Collins’s campaign forgot to tell DHS not to kill people in swing states.
And so, on Monday, the protesters came for Collins, just hours after DHS used that sweet Collins money to remove a member of the Biddeford community from Maine and also from this mortal coil.
“This is your fault, Susan,” one protester yelled with unexpected familiarity.
Protesters made their way into Collins’s office in Biddeford, only leaving when police asked them to because, hey, this is still New England, no matter how pissed they are. (h/t)
Reportedly, Guerrero was targeted because he came from a building with an address associated with ICE’s target. That might be enough for a Kavanaugh Stop — Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s instantly famous list of rationales for feds to harass people if they pull crazy shit like waiting for a bus at a Home Depot without a flawless Midwestern accent — but now DHS seems to have innovented the Permanent Kavanaugh Stop.
(Not to be confused with the Old School Kavanaugh Stop, in which harassing people is justified if they’re drunk co-eds.)
And who put Kavanaugh on the bench instead of in time-out? Collins. Double oopsie-fucky with lobster on top.
Collins did put out a statement assuring people that the FBI was on the scene. It wasn’t clear why FBI Director Kash Patel’s crack investigators would assure anyone of anything, especially when they could be helping with the mysterious investigation at the home of non-mysteriously dead Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), where Patel presumably dispatched them to search for Savannah Guthrie’s mom.
MEDIA WATCH Roughly 15 minutes before ICE killed Guerrero, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte published a piece refuting the idea that Mullin is a kinder, less-murdery version of predecessor Kristi Noem.
She cited last week’s ICE murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston. Witnesses of which instantly debunked Story #1.
At this point, “car weaponization” has become such a DHS go-to lie, ICE agents probably carry “drop cars” just in case they need to leave one at the scene of their murders.
MURDER UPDATE Reportedly, Minnesota law enforcement has finally obtained the car of Renee Good, also murdered after not trying to run over an ICE agent, and hard drives relevant to her murder and that of Alex Pretti.
Typically, murder investigations try to acquire evidence immediately, which in this case would have been winter. In cases where the suspects are federal agencies, however, evidence often isn’t collected until summer, to prepare for the fall harvest. Of justice, motherfuckers.
Here Comes the Election-Denial Campaign
With Bill Pulte running the office of director of national intelligence, Markwayne Mullin running the Department of Homeland (sic) Security, and Pres. Donald Trump’s personal attorney Todd Blanche now the acting attorney general, the pieces are in place to roll out a full-on return of election denial.
Reportedly, that’s what Trump’s doing with a speech to the annoyed nation on Thursday.
MS NOW’s Jake Traylor posted Monday:
“Trump's Thursday speech is slated to address newly declassified intelligence reports that the White House asserts reveal plans by foreign nations to interfere in the 2020 election…”
That would be this declassified intel, which is expected to be released in the coming weeks with the timing determined by how conveniently it serves Trump’s narrative.
Longtime Newsfuckers know I’m the opposite of an alarmist (too much so, at times). But Trump is clearly laying a factual predicate for a legal justification to interfere, somehow, in the constitutionally mandated state oversight of even federal elections.
And since TFN has doubled in readership this year — Yay! Welcome! Thank you! — it’s worth revisiting my reporting from last year: Namely, that we already know the claims that made it to Trump’s desk. Said claims have also been pre-emptively bullshat.
As I’ve revealed over on my original-reporting Substack, thanks to reader support, a bunch of right-wing intelligence hobbyists — backed by wackadon’t former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne — have been feeding Trump fake intel since before he re-took office.
The intel is more bananas than Carmen Miranda’s hat.
And, as I reported early this year, Mullin was a part of this effort to mainstream conspiracy claims including but amazingly not limited to the following:
A global election-theft conspiracy led by Venezuela, China, Russia, Cuba, Serbia, and other nations tried to rig elections in 72 countries.
The election-theft conspiracy is also a massive drug-trafficking operation.
It’s literally the largest criminal organization in world history. Suck it, SPECTRE.
Venezuelan Pres. Nicolás Maduro deployed thousands of paramilitary criminals to the U.S. to destabilize the country.
Venezuela and its partners had secret allies and spies in the FBI, CIA, Congress, Fox, Newsmax, and obviously George Soros.
As I revealed last year, these are the same people, literally, who brought us “The Kraken,” the 2020 Trump team’s mystery election-theft witness. As I also revealed, there were previously not-revealed political agendas behind getting that witness out of Venezuela.
Even though their intel has been debunked by the intelligence community’s last redoubts of doubters, the Trump administration has already used claims based on that intel to seek extraordinary powers. Deportation powers. Boat-blowing-up powers. Maduro-kidnapping powers.
Congressional Democrats have largely ignored the conspiracy theorists, acting as if Trump is simply making this stuff up. He’s not. He’s outsourced the up-making.
Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) granted clemency to Tina Peters even though, as I revealed, her lawyer’s appeal for a pardon was based on, yep, perfidious foofaraw. Foofaraw to which Polis has now given credence.
And who did these conspiracy cowboys credit with connecting them to Trump’s team? Mullin.
Point being: When Trump rolls this shit out, we don’t have to waste time litigating its credibility. It’s pre-litigated.
By me!
Not just by me, of course … but partly by me! Which is all thanks to you.
0 AND 13 Trump’s efforts to seize state voter information drew their 13th loss on Monday.
Federal Judge Thomas Johnston rejected the Justice Department attempt to claim West Virginia’s voter rolls. The department has sued 30 states to force compliance, the way Trump likes it. They’ve now lost 13 in a row, the way Trump gets it.
Johnston also called out the department for its hidden agenda, writing, “one is left to wonder what the real purpose was.” Is one, though?
It’s the same as it always is with Trump trying to force compliance: People-fucking.
And Johnston wasn’t even Monday’s most Trump-skeptical judge…
Trump Lawyers Sanctioned for Trumping
Remember how Pres. Donald Trump sued the IRS for the illegal leak of some of his tax filings? And how the Justice Department (DOJ) ultimately succumbed to the sheer awesomeness of his case and agreed to create a fund to pay Trump’s Jan. 6 temp workers and also never to prosecute Trump for his tax crimes?
And remember how this was so obviously corrupt that everyone without a law degree dropped their jaws like Leonardo DiCaprio dropping girlfriends the day before their 30th birthdays?
Well, federal Judge Kathleen Williams on Monday not only declared the suit and settlement to be bullshit — Taurus stercus — she sanctioned Trump’s lawyers.
One was referred to the Florida bar for punishment. Another is barred from practicing law in Florida for a year. (Imagine a judge saying you lack the morals to practice law … in Florida.)
And Williams sent her ruling to the New York State bar, which is already looking at Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for ringmastering Trump’s shit circus.
Williams wrote, “this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.”
Williams pointed out that the administration argued before the Supreme Court that the president has to control everything, but argued in this case that, gawrsh, he’d never just tell the Justice Department how to justice!
“Plaintiffs [Trump] improperly employed this lawsuit to justify a particular award in this matter—access to taxpayer funds and exemption from audits and other investigations—which was accomplished by leveraging control over Defendants [Trump’s DOJ].“
(I yoinked these quotes from Chris Geidner at Law Dork and his whole thing’s a good read, for dorks and non-dorks alike.)
South Carolina’s New Senator (R-Deep State)
Pres. Donald Trump on Monday publicly told Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) to appoint Darline Graham (aka Darlene Graham, aka Darline Graham Nordone) to keep her dead brother Lindsey’s seat warm until January. So I tried to nail down what the hell experience she had, let alone where she had worked. Came up blank.
Until Monday’s announcement from McMaster (who claims it was his idea).
Turns out, Nordone’s made a career of working for … the state government. That’s right, she’s a deep-state state bureaucrat! Even worse, she was paid by South Carolina’s sacred taxpayers to help perfectly able-bodied adults find jobs. Okay, disabled-bodied adults, but still!
In fact, Nordone is commissioner of the state’s Commission for the Blind, which helps blind people find jobs. Because eyeball socialism.
She’s expected to be sworn in to the Senate on Wednesday. Her tenure as South Carolina’s first woman senator will last half a year before Republicans replace her on the ballot with a dude.
The primary is Aug. 11. The Democratic candidate is Dr. Annie Andrews, whose campaign website is here.
Taking Action
Notice the Justice Department not exactly cracking down on ICE murders? And DHS expanding the legal rationale for murder? And ICE carrying “drop cars” to give them alibis for their murders?
The Justice Department is currently being led, and misled, by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Want to see your senators ask him about DHS murders? Or the source of Trump’s election “intel”?
The hearings for confirming Blanche to the position permanently — or Trump-permanently, anyway — start Wednesday and TFN will be newsfucking this fucker’s record. But you don’t have to wait til then to call your senator (see link at the top of today’s TFN) or send a statement telling them fuck no to Blanche. Politely, of course!
TCB
NEWSFUCKING IN THE WILD The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) on Monday announced the addition, for the first time, of a journalist to the organization’s advisory board. Newsfuckers, ‘twas I:
To answer your questions, yes, that picture’s from 1932. And, yes, there are an army of potential conflicts of interest here, given how often I cover the MRFF and church/state issues. But establishment journalism firewalls don’t do Jack Blitzer to incentivize journalism that fights for the people, so more of us, I think, are willing to be active in areas that matter to us.
Causes we believe in already motivate us! And both MRFF President and Founder Mikey Weinstein and I have committed to being transparent about my dual roles if I report on MRFF stuff. At any time he can kick me off the board and I can bolt. And since we’re letting everyone know about it, the whole world can keep us honest, as well, by flagging any issues they see.
This is a new experience for me, personally, and as a journalist. But the MRFF’s work is vital and I’d rather take the chance of screwing something up along the way than sit safely on the sidelines. You can read the MRFF announcement here and, as always, give me shit if you’re so inclined in the TFN comments or chat.
SUPPORTING TFN The future of journalism is readers supporting the journalists they turn to for the news or, in TFN’s case, the fucking thereof. TFN continues to grow, but the number of paid subscribers is actually shrinking.
Some of that is American Express not processing automatic renewals because they don’t like “The Fucking News”’s middle name. Some of it’s natural attrition.
Either way, if you can afford it, upgrading to a paid TFN subscription is one of the few things you can do these days that you will know is making a material difference in the world. If you’ve come to rely on TFN, I hope TFN can rely on you, too.
Thank you to everyone who makes TFN possible. E pluribus fuckem.
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Go get ‘em, kids! Especially you, Soros!
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Early reporting spelled his name as “Joan,” but I’ve changed it to “Johan” to reflect subsequent reporting. Sorry for any confusion.
The political news today is a continuous nightmare, unlike anything I've seen or imagined before -- and I taught college American government courses for 43 years. But I have faith that the time will come when we will not only abolish ICE, but bring to justice all those who have committed murder under the protection of the Department of Justice, and that includes all the Trump henchmen who have extended that protection. Thank you, Jonathan, for helping keep my hope alive!
Thanks for the reminder and links to your reporting on the bonkers election denial stuff. Thanks for the reminder and links to contact our senators about voting no on the bonkers Blanche appointment. (My senators, alas, are Fetterman and McCormick but that didn't stop me from calling them!) Thanks for keeping me from going bonkers!