Feb. 9: No deal in sight on Homeland (sic) Security funding and maybe at this point there’s nothing Republicans could agree to that’s worth funding this shithole shit show … No, that wasn’t Liam Ramos in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show, it was every Liam Ramos … Blizzard of Oz pleas for people to get the measles vaccine … “Melania” in more theaters but with somehow even fewer people …
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It’s okay to disagree on tactics. So I want to let you know where I’m at without you thinking I’m condemning you if you’re still where I was, um, just last week.
Funding for the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS) runs out at midnight Friday (they have a lot in the piggy bank, though). Without a new funding bill, the DHS, America’s lead agency for (doing) domestic terrorism, will ostensibly get no more cash as of Valentine’s Day, a token of love for justice.
Republicans need at least seven votes from the Senate Democratic caucus to pass new DHS funding.
The Democratic plan right now is to oppose funding without changes to DHS. The congressional Republican plan right now is to wait for Democrats to blink. This tends to work when you’re facing a party that closely resembles Mr. Magoo. Or this guy:
For now, most of the reporting suggests that Democrats aren’t budging, if only because no one’s talking. Sen. John “no relation” Kennedy (R-LA) said Sunday, “I don’t think most Democrats would vote for the bill because the Karen wing of the party would punish them.”
First of all, TFN would like to welcome the unfairly maligned name “Karen” back to polite society. It’s good to have you back on the side of good, Karen. No, you may not speak to my manager. But at this point, yes, the Karen wing should punish Democrats for funding DHS.
Last week I laid out the Democratic list of demands. And I understand believing that those victories are worth funding DHS, because that’s what I believed.
Thanks in large part to corporate journalism, I’ve learned more and thought more about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans for human warehouses. Prisons are already an obscenity and national shame. No mas.
In some cases, ICE concentration camps are worse than prisons. Every day brings a new horror story. And since today’s a new day, here’s a new horror story: Attorneys say ICE is storing humans in a Burlington, MA, field office. (h/t)
Some are being held 50 to a cell, including both men and women and apparently no one’s even figured out how to exclude transgender people.
On Friday, a federal court ruled that the government can detain non-citizens, here for decades, with no criminal record, without bond, forever. (h/t) This ruling cost tens of thousands of people their chance at going free.
It was that story that made me write a note to myself on Saturday: “I’ve seen enough. No compromise. Just vote no.”
In story after story, we’re seeing Americans stand up against inhumane human warehousing. People who said they weren’t interested in politics are learning the real meaning of “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” and they’re getting vigilant now, standing up against their hometown concentration camps.
But also, congressional Republicans have diminished the value of what Democrats are pursuing. Because the Democratic demands depend on the government and Republican oversight fulfilling them. Even if Democrats win everything to the letter, the spirit is lacking. Democratic victories won’t be implemented by DHS and Congress won’t hold DHS accountable for that.
But more also, the Democratic demands are aimed at symptoms, the optional features on this administration’s self-driving autocracy. The demands address the results of our collective failure to prevent autocracy, instead of ending autocracy.
Look at how Newtonian politics work in the case of one demand: Masks.
Republicans are balking at taking masks away from the literal secret police of ICE and Customs and Border (sic) Protection (CBP). They don’t want agents getting doxxed. That’s understandable, but why is doxxing an issue?
Because there is no other mechanism for accountability.
When prosecutors tried to start collecting evidence in Renee Good’s murder — including documenting the pattern in which her blood sprayed throughout her SUV — the New York Times reports, FBI Director Kash Patel and other officials ordered them to stop, which is a nice, New York Times-y way of saying Patel and other officials covered up the murder.
Of course, only the amoral morons of Team Trump would try to cover up a murder already viewed by more people than Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, even the part apparently paying tribute to five-year-old ICE kidnapping victim Liam Ramos.
Only the Team Trump twits would block blood-spatter analysis that could give some idea where ICE agent Jonathan Ross was when he fired … after we all saw exactly where he was when he fired.
When government officials lie about what their agents are doing and abandon oversight, of course the people will seek accountability however they can.
And the reason the government’s not prosecuting is that Republicans prioritize order over law. But Republicans didn’t get there by themselves. Democrats for decades have abetted fear-mongering about crime and terrorism, slavish devotion to never-enough policing and ubiquitous surveillance.
See something, say something? How about fuck you?
Order enjoys such vast impunity that doxxing is literally the only valve through which to squeeze any accountability. I mean, what if Democrats win on masks? Then what?
We already know who killed Good and Alex Pretti! It hasn’t led to accountability. So who gives a shit about masks?
We don’t need Democrats to take DHS masks off. We need Democrats to put on their armor and take a stand against fear. Fear of crime when it’s at historic lows. Fear of terrorism when the real terrorists get presidential pardons. Fear of immigrants who make us safer and more prosperous.
Until Democrats start dismantling the Play-Doh Fear Factory they helped build, it’s pointless to squabble over which shape of goo to extrude.
And, no, it’s no excuse to say, but we have to keep funding DHS or else it’ll shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Secret Service (um, SS1) and the Coast Guard (SOS). (Although, honestly, hasn’t the Secret Service earned a well-deserved break? What’s the worst that could happen?)
As I’ve been saying, and the New York Times finally mentioned (at the article’s bottom) on Sunday, Democrats can write a separate bill funding just the less-tyrannical parts of DHS. This is literally the last paragraph:
Some Democrats have suggested funding those agencies separately while they continue to negotiate limits on federal immigration agencies, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Some Democrats. And this here Newsfucker.
WHAT DEMOCRATS WOULD DEFUND What does America’s military-industrial-concentration-camp complex do with all the taxpayer money it gets from ICE to provide and misrun its concentration camps? The profits these companies make don’t just go to their reprehensible owners and executives.
The Intercept reports that these companies are also using our money to lobby our elected representatives to vote against our wishes. Specifically, they’re lobbying Congress to ban banks from refusing to lend to them. Luckily, banks are lobbying against this, because they don’t want to be boycotted over helping to finance concentration camps.
Still, it’d be nice if we the people weren’t bystanders in this legislative pissing match. The people should be directing the stream.
MATH IS HARD In case any congressional Democrats need visual aids to understand why we don’t need to fund DHS, here’s the Cato Institute’s pie chart of federal spending for the 2025 fiscal year on law enforcement. The blue chunk is just part of DHS. The rest of DHS funding is labeled, um, DHS.
SHOCKER: U.S. Health Official Recommends Taking a Vaccine
If anyone’s looking for symptoms of how badly Pres. Donald Trump is ailing politically, one of his top health officials is now stooping to recommend a vaccine.
While America’s understandably freaking out about ICE killing people in the streets and also off the streets, and no one’s forgotten that everything’s still getting more expensive, and everyone’s read about someone rich and famous in The Epstein Files™, I guarantee you very few families with kids aren’t also thinking about Trump’s history-making resurrection of measles.
On Sunday, Dr. Mehmet Oz — the TV star and medical marketer unqualified to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that he now runs — said that even if you don’t like vaccines, please get the measles one. “Take the vaccine, please,” Oz said, because some people insanely don’t get it for them or their homeschooled kids.
There have been 733 new cases of measles this year alone, thanks to something I’ve found a lot of people don’t remember: Robert fuckwit Kennedy, Jr., ran for president in 2024 on an anti-vax platform. Trump feared that those baseless claims would draw from his base. So, because Trump values himself more than other people, he got Kennedy out of the race by offering to let Kennedy run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
And then Trump actually did that thing. Trump made good on one thing, the thing America would have loved Trump for lying about. And Senate Republicans actually confirmed Kennedy as HHS secretary.
So now we have so many measles that the Trump administration is begging people to get vaccines.
Unifying Power of Prayer Triggers War Between Prayer Breakfasts
EXCLUSIVE There are many reasons elected U.S. officials should not take part in prayer breakfasts that carry even a whiff of official imprimatur along with the whiff of coffee and hot syrup. One under-appreciated reason is that the argument for prayer breakfasts is a lie.
The argument is that prayer is a unifying force. Which is easy to believe if you live in a world without history books or an internet.
But if there were any doubt that prayer’s unifying power is just as equine and fecal as any other religious horseshit, I humbly submit this exclusive story I posted Sunday on my original-reporting Substack.
For reasons you can read in the story, America’s National Prayer Breakfast underwent mitosis a few years ago, so now we have two. And it took less than two years for them to go to war with each other.
Hilariously, they’re fighting over the name “National Prayer Breakfast,” instead of over serious issues such as having stars upon thars. It matters because what I found in their trademark filings (spoiler: how I spend my weekends) is shedding some potentially disinfecting light on their inner workings.
It’s not an essential, everyone-should-read-this journey, but if I’ve made you curious about the breakfast(s) over the years, you might enjoy the ride.
BUFFETED BUFFET The Capitol Hill version of the prayer breakfast, the sanitized one, looked and felt a lot smaller in its third solo outing on Thursday. I did a deeper dive into that, and the big, messy, lobby-y, breakfast downhill at the Washington Hilton, than the corporate media did in their coverage.
So if you want the gory details, you can check out which members of Congress went to which, and who did what, in my story from Saturday.
“REPENT, CHARLATAN,” SAID THE SUBSTACK MAN2 Almost totally overlooked Thursday among all the prayer breakfasting was the National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance, which is a damned shame.
Co-founded by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), it featured all kinds of fables about Jesus and America. But the theocracy fest also featured both Republican co-chairs of the supposedly innocuous prayer breakfasts and a ton of other elected Republicans testifying to their love for theocracy.
I also wrote about that on Saturday, if you want a better idea of the other theocratic jamboree the corporate media didn’t cover.
Election Watch
I dunno if electoral incontinence is a thing, but America is so hostile to Republicans now, that every time a poll closes, a Republican gets a new skid mark.
LOUISIANA The latest stunning Democratic victory came in a special election to fill a state House seat in this largely Republican-controlled state. Chastity Martinez has, like, a normal job in sales, but has also been active in her community. And on Saturday, the Downballot’s David Nir reports, Martinez not only whomped her Republican opponent 62%-38%, she outperformed the 2024 Democratic presidential vote in that district by 37 points.
According to Nir, Martinez ran on “affordability and public education” and the economic struggle of people who she said, “live off of the basin; they make ends meet like that—that is their livelihood, crawfishing, fishing.”
TEXAS Leander, TX, an Austin suburb, just elected City Council Member Na’Cole Thompson as its new mayor, according to Bolts Magazine. The Democrat got more than her two Republican opponents combined, 57% to their combined 43%.
Trump is estimated to have won Leander in 2024 by a four-point margin that is now gone.
Three Quickies
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is all over The Epstein Files™ like Donald Trump is automatically all over beautiful women like a magnet and doesn’t wait for consent, let alone mutual attraction. And Lutnick lied about cutting off his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s former best friend. Lutnick was in business with Epstein. Lutnick did philanthropic work with Epstein. Lutnick partnered on community initiatives with Epstein. Lutnick went for drinks with Epstein and Woody Allen with Epstein. Lutnick took his family to Epstein’s island with Epstein. Lutnick went to Epstein’s house with Epstein and “forgot” his phone there so maybe he had to go back and get something else with Epstein. Anyway, now he’s Trump’s Commerce secretary.
In its second weekend of wide release, “Melania” added 300 more screens and dropped 67% in ticket sales due to strong word of mouth recommending strongly not seeing it. The movie made just $2.4 million at the box office this weekend, for a total haul so far of $13 million, making it even more valuable to Jeff Bezos — who shelled out $70 million to distribute and market the thing — because the less money it makes, the bigger a gift it is to Pres. Donald Trump. Basically, it’s “The Producers” in real life, with springtime just a month away!
America’s Olympic athletes who worked hard and sacrificed so much — or in some cases came from families that could afford to support their dreams — are bummed that the country they’re representing now represents so much shitty stuff. Wait til they realize they can just bully the winners into giving them their gold medals.
TCB
Welcome, new Newsfuckers! As of this weekend, there are more than 40,000 of you. That’s more than the entire city of Philadelphia. (In 1776.)
SUPPORTING TFN Every day, TFN is here for all 40,000 of you, for free, because every day a handful of Newsfuckers upgrade to a paid subscription. If that’s you today, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.
NEWSFUCKING IN THE WILD My original-reporting Substack is getting mentioned in a bunch of different media outlets due to my exclusive story about U.S. military commanders pressuring service members to participate in the cruel and degrading hazing ritual of attending a showing of “Melania.”
I wish I could say it’s because so many corporate media read me, but I suspect the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), my source for the story, spread my article around. Either way, if you found me through that story, welcome to the ranks of Newsfuckers, cadet!
(Wait, I just saw that Wonkette actually did pick it up from me, so maybe that’s where it came from? Either way, my reporting has more credibility because so many of you spread the word and sing my praises to the world at large. Thank you, Newsfuckers.)
And join me on The Nicole Sandler Show today and every Monday at 3:30pm eastern at NicoleSandler.com.
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Go get ‘em, kids! And don’t lose sight of everything you’re already accomplishing. In Texas and Louisiana, even!
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.
Just kidding, it’s USSS.
Let me know in the comments if you get this insanely obscure reference. If no one does, I’ll post the explanation there eventually.
"But at this point, yes, the Karen wing should punish Democrats for funding DHS."
And I, for one, intend to do just that.
Repent, Harlequin! Said the ticktock man.
Ellison is obscure now? I cry great waterfalls of tears.