The whole idea that they can work hand in hand with the Dems in some bipartisan way and not be screwed in the end is just stupid at this point. They've shown their colors for the last 8 years. Implement your agenda, just as they did 4 years ago and shut the fuck up about what you're going to do that you never do.
This was too close and I have to rant about Alaska and Murkowski again. Alaska, you have to get rid of that stupid ranked choice voting system that allowed Murkowski to sneak in another term in the Senate.
The problem is simple. She runs against another Republicans and a Democrat. Republicans vote for her opponent first and her second to avoid the chance a Democrat gets into office. But she gets enough 1st place votes to prevent a majority for he Republican opponent so the counting goes into the second round. Now they count second place votes along with 1st place votes. Murkowski gets her first place votes, the second place votes of Republicans AND second place votes of the Democrats who chose her over the MAGA Republican. That's how she wins.
Needless to say, picking the candidate based on 2nd place votes is not Democratic. In a Democracy, the winner must get the majority of votes. If there is no majority you eliminate all be the two highest vote getters and have another election. That's democracy.
I have no idea why Republicans in Alaska put this process in place but I suspect it might have been Murkowski Republicans who did it. It has to change so we can get rid of this Democrat in disguise.
McConnell is already done. Collins is what she is. She can't win running as a conservative so 20% of her votes have to go to the Democrats. It's her or a Democrat. At least as a Republican she counts towards winning the majority so a Republican can at least be the Senate leader.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Mainstream media outlets deemed President Donald Trump unfit for office this week after he was witnessed doing all the things he had promised to do.
I want to see a ton more people like this in the forefront of his administration, lets expand this movement and make a huge dent in people who have been so committed to voting D
Today, I was honored to be sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as the United States Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. It is a privilege to be entrusted by President Trump to carry out this critical mission.
Anyone seen a counter or actual details related to the implications asserted in this article?
I suspect the Tuskegee Airmen are still taught in some capacity within the Air Force but were also part of the DEI program. Since that program is being removed, Tuskegee Airmen teaching obviously goes with it.
Rather than discussing the pros/cons of removing the DEI program, biased parties are choosing to evoke an inflammatory response by acting like TA will now be forgotten/ignored by the USAF because of racism and of course because Trump et al are racist
I suspect the Tuskegee Airmen are still taught in some capacity within the Air Force but were also part of the DEI program. Since that program is being removed, Tuskegee Airmen teaching obviously goes with it.
Rather than discussing the pros/cons of removing the DEI program, biased parties are choosing to evoke an inflammatory response by acting like TA will now be forgotten/ignored by the USAF because of racism and of course because Trump et al are racist
I suspect the Tuskegee Airmen are still taught in some capacity within the Air Force but were also part of the DEI program. Since that program is being removed, Tuskegee Airmen teaching obviously goes with it.
Rather than discussing the pros/cons of removing the DEI program, biased parties are choosing to evoke an inflammatory response by acting like TA will now be forgotten/ignored by the USAF because of racism and of course because Trump et al are racist
I suspect the Tuskegee Airmen are still taught in some capacity within the Air Force but were also part of the DEI program. Since that program is being removed, Tuskegee Airmen teaching obviously goes with it.
Rather than discussing the pros/cons of removing the DEI program, biased parties are choosing to evoke an inflammatory response by acting like TA will now be forgotten/ignored by the USAF because of racism and of course because Trump et al are racist
The Tuskegee Airmen story is interesting and a good lesson in the stupidity of racism in American 80 years ago, but I am not sure in what context this is being taught to Air Force soldiers today.
I don't know that racism in the military is an issue anymore. We had a black Commander-in-Chief.
I suspect DEI today is much more about gender issues than race. Are we planning on creating an all transgender fighter squadron?
It's about anything that will divide and segregate the American people. Every lazy narcissist has a bone to pick and the rest of us have to repent of not honoring their particular character flaw. (See Stank D'Moss in the Like Fun, Only different thread).
January 27, 2025 (Monday)
Yesterday, President Donald Trump began a trade war with Colombia after that country’s president refused to permit two U.S. military airplanes full of deportees to land in Colombia. As Regina Garcia Cano and Astrid Suárez of the Associated Press pointed out, Colombia and the U.S. had an existing agreement for deportations under former president Joe Biden, and it accepted 475 deportation flights from 2020 to 2024, accepting 124 flights in 2024 alone. But the Biden administration used commercial and charter flights, while as national security analyst Juliette Kayyem noted, Trump used a military plane that arrived unannounced.
As Tim Naftali of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs explained: “If a foreign country tries to land its military planes—except in an emergency—without an existing agreement that is an infringement of sovereignty.” Colombia rejected the military planes without prior authorization and offered the use of its presidential plane instead.
Colombia also asked the U.S. to provide notice and decent treatment for its people, an issue that had been raised and resolved in 2023 after migrants arrived in hand and foot cuffs. Colombian president Gustavo Petro noted that the U.S. had committed that it would guarantee dignified conditions for the repatriation of migrants. The plane of migrants landed in Honduras, where Colombia sent its presidential plane to pick them up.
Trump announced that Colombia’s “denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States,” and slapped a 25% tariff on products from Colombia, which include about $6 billion of crude petroleum, $1.8 billion of coffee, and $1.6 billion of cut flowers. In addition, he said, the U.S. would revoke the visas of all Colombian “Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.” He promptly deported Colombian staff members of the World Bank who were working for international diplomatic organizations in the U.S., and canceled visa appointments at Colombia’s U.S. Embassy.
Rather than backing down, President Petro threatened to levy a retaliatory tariff on U.S. products. Colombia imports 96.7% of the corn it feeds its livestock from the U.S., putting Colombia in the top five export markets for U.S. corn. According to a letter written by a bipartisan group of lawmakers eager to protect that trade, led by Senator Todd Young (R-IN), in 2023 the U.S. exported more than 4 million metric tons of corn to Colombia, which translated to $1.14 billion in sales. “American farmers cannot afford to lose such a vital export market,” the lawmakers wrote, “especially when access to the top U.S. corn export market, Mexico, is already at risk.”
By this morning the economic crisis appeared to be over, although U.S. visa restrictions apparently remain. With prior authorization and better treatment of migrants, Colombia is willing to accept the migrant flights. The White House declared victory, saying: “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation's sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.”
The administration’s handling of the situation with Colombia reveals that their power depends on convincing people to ignore reality and instead to believe in the fantasy world Trump dictates.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced yesterday morning that “[d]eportation flights have begun.” In fact, nothing is “beginning.” In 2024, Colombia accepted on average more than two U.S. flights of migrants a week. And, as immigration scholar Austin Kocher noted, “everyone on this deportation flight was arrested and detained by the Biden administration.”
Over the past four years, Trump and MAGA Republicans repeatedly insisted that Biden had maintained “open borders,” while in fact, what the administration did was to try to address a situation made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.
As Katie Tobin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains, before the coronavirus pandemic, Venezuela, where the economy was particularly bad under rising authoritarian Nicolás Maduro, sent migrants abroad. By June 2022, 6 million Venezuelans had fled their country; by September 2024, that number was 7.7 million. South American governments welcomed the Venezuelan migrants and others, including Haitians fleeing their country’s political chaos.
But as economies collapsed after the coronavirus crisis, Tobin explains, migrant populations that had settled in South American countries were forced out. From 2019 to 2021, Colombia’s per capita gross domestic product fell 4.6%; Peru’s, 5.3%; Ecuador’s, 2.8%; Brazil’s, 11.7%; and Venezuela’s, 20%. As the U.S. economy grew by 8.38%, Canada’s grew by 13.1%, and Mexico’s dropped only by 0.7%, migrants headed north. In September 2021, when 15,000 Haitians who had originally migrated to Brazil arrived at the U.S. border with Mexico, countries throughout the hemisphere realized that they needed a new regional approach to migration.
After nine months of negotiations, 21 countries announced that they had created a new migration pact for the Western Hemisphere. It provided economic support for Latin American countries that were original destinations for migrants, expanded formal pathways for immigration, and increased border security across the region.
Canada and Mexico were the first countries to buy into the new agreement. The U.S. turned next to strong ally Colombia, which agreed in March 2022, after which Vice President Kamala Harris brought on board Caribbean countries. By June 10, when the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection was announced, twenty-one nations had signed on. U.N. observers were present to demonstrate their support.
The Biden administration insisted that countries begin immediate action, and they did. Tobin notes that Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru have made sweeping new offers of legal status to hundreds of thousands of migrants already living in their countries, while Colombia has offered legal status to 2 million Venezuelans and Brazil has welcomed more than 500,000. Mexico and Guatemala have offered legal pathways to workers.
Canada, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Spain, and the U.S. launched a virtual platform to enable migrants to apply for admission remotely. When Mexico agreed to accept Venezuelans who had crossed into the U.S. unlawfully and at the same time the U.S. announced a legal pathway for 24,000 Venezuelans, border crossings dropped 90% within a week. Biden and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador expanded that initiative to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.
By 2023, border arrests had fallen by about half. Although Congress failed to pass a strong bipartisan measure to increase border security and fund immigration courts, arrests fell by half again after Biden in June 2024 issued a proclamation that barred migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deemed the border was overwhelmed. By the end of Biden’s term, unlawful border crossings had plummeted to lows that hadn’t been seen since June 2020.
There are new challenges to managing migration as wars, climate change, and economic pressures push migrants out of various parts of Africa and out of China. Many of those migrants are finding their way to Latin America and from there to the U.S. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates that 117 million people were displaced by the end of 2023.
Trump won election in part by vowing to shut down immigration, and as soon as he took office he canceled the CBP One app, the virtual platform that allowed migrants to apply for asylum. During the campaign, he vowed to deport those migrants he claimed were criminals, which many interpreted to mean he would only remove those who had committed violent crimes (which the U.S. has always done). But in his first term, Trump’s people considered anyone who entered the U.S. outside of immigration law to be a criminal, and this appears to be the definition his people are using now.
Daily deportation raids in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested a few hundred people in sweeps began almost as soon as Trump took office. Josh Campbell, Andy Rose, and Nick Valencia of CNN reported that the federal government has flooded the media with video and photos of agents in tactical gear, their vests bearing the words “Police ICE” and “Homeland Security” as they lead individuals in handcuffs. The journalists report that this is not an accident: agents were told to have their agency names clearly displayed for the press.
The presence of television talk show host Dr. Phil (McGraw) with an ICE team in Chicago reinforces the sense that these arrests are designed for the cameras. So does yesterday’s report by Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post that Trump is disappointed with the sweeps so far and has directed officials to ramp up arrests aggressively, providing quotas for ICE field offices. Today, new secretary of defense Pete Hegseth said the department will “shift” to “the defense of the territorial integrity of the United States of America at the southern border.”
Yesterday’s spat with Colombia’s president enabled Trump to declare victory, but Colombia has been the top U.S. ally in Latin America, a close partner in combating drug trafficking and managing migration. That relationship, which has taken years of careful cultivation, is now threatened.
Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy, posted: “I can’t think of many *worse* strategic blunders for the U.S., as it competes w/ China, than going nuclear against its oldest strategic ally & last big country in S. America where it enjoys a trade advantage…. Trump certainly expects that b[ecause] 1/3 of Colombian exports go to the U.S. Petro will be forced to back down. But Petro seems to welcome the fight & has already signaled wishes to deepen ties w/ China. Colombia will lose partnership on security it badly needs. Only China stands to gain from this.”
Indeed, China’s ambassador to Colombia promptly noted that “we are at the best moment of our diplomatic relations between China and Colombia, which are now 45 years old.”
Meanwhile, according to former ambassador Luis G. Moreno, the Trump administration has shut down 2,100 courses in the premier training facility for State Department foreign service officers, ostensibly because they are too associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Moreno adds: “Dismantling of a professional diplomatic corps is underway.”
Wednesday, Jan 29, 2025
9:00 AM – SH-216 Judiciary
Business meeting to consider the nomination of Pamela Bondi, of Florida, to be Attorney General, Department of Justice.
Wednesday, Jan 29, 2025
10:00 AM – SD-G50 Finance
Hearings to examine the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of California, to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Wednesday, Jan 29, 2025
10:00 AM – SR-253 Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Business meeting to consider committee rules for the 119th Congress; to be immediately followed by a hearing to examine the nomination of Howard Lutnick, of New York, to be Secretary of Commerce.
Wednesday, Jan 29, 2025
3:30 PM – SR-428A Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Hearings to examine the nomination of Kelly Loeffler, of Georgia, to be Administrator of the Small Business Administration.
Thursday, Jan 30, 2025
9:30 AM – SD-G50 Armed Services
Hearings to examine the nomination of Daniel Driscoll, of North Carolina, to be Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense.
Thursday, Jan 30, 2025
9:30 AM – SH-216 Judiciary
Hearings to examine the nomination of Kash Patel, of Nevada, to be Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice.
Thursday, Jan 30, 2025
10:00 AM – SD-106 Intelligence
Hearings to examine the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii, to be Director of National Intelligence; to be immediately followed by a closed hearing in SH-219.
Thursday, Jan 30, 2025
10:00 AM – SD-562 Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Hearings to examine the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of California, to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Thursday, Jan 30, 2025
10:25 AM – SD-419 Foreign Relations
Business meeting to consider the nominations of Elise Stefanik, of New York, to be the Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, with the rank and status of Ambassador, and the Representative of the United States of America in the Security Council of the United Nations, and to be Representative of the United States of America to the Sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations during her tenure of service as Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations.
Thursday, Jan 30, 2025
Time to be announced. – S-216 Budget
Business meeting to consider the nomination of Russell Vought, of Virginia, to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
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....They got bitch slapped.