TAKING THE EXPRESS RIDE TO KRAYZEETOWN

There are 75 days until the midterms.

In addition to the suit against Governor Hot Wheels over his failure to extradite an ICE criminal charged with criming in Minnesota, there’s this one: in a separate case in which Minnesota is attempting to prosecute a federal agent for alleged misconduct, the TrumpDOJ has leaped in to muddy the waters on behalf of ICE agent Gregory Morgan, Jr. of Maryland. Morgan, who was charged in April with brandishing his service weapon in a road-rage-style incident, has sought to move the case against him from Minnesota state court to federal court. Under certain circumstances, federal law entitles federal officers to have their state criminal cases heard in federal court, though state prosecutors would still handle the case and it would be tried under Minnesota law. The removal fight in the Morgan case has been bubbling for several weeks. There is a hot dispute between Morgan and Minnesota prosecutors over whether he is entitled to removal to federal court, mostly centered on whether Morgan was acting under color of his office at the time of the Feb. 5 incident in which he was driving in an unmarked rental vehicle back to the Whipple Federal Building with his partner at the end of their shift. Last month, the e TrumpDOJ filed a Statement of Interest of the United States that weighed in on Morgan’s side to urge the removal of his case to federal court. But what really set things on a different course was that in its filing, the TrumpDOJ alleged that the driver at whom Morgan brandished his weapon may have been guilty of criminal conduct for allegedly swerving to prevent Morgan from passing him illegally on the right shoulder of the roadway: “Given the probable cause to believe the driver committed a federal crime and may well have intended to do so again, Officer Morgan was justified in making a show of force.” The prospect of federal criminal prosecution of the driver prompted him and his passenger to assert their Fifth Amendment rights not to testify at the removal hearing without a grant of immunity. That has raised the prospect that the two victims won’t testify at trial either, which would undermine Minnesota’s ability to make its case.

Here’s why Minnesota is pushing so hard to get Governator Hot Wheels to act in the extradition of ICE agent Christian Castro to face criminal charges for the January shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis - From Steve Vladek’s SCOTUS Blog: “The statute that authorizes holding a fugitive for the asylum state governor’s benefit also sets a 90-day deadline for the asylum state governor to act. But the deadline carries no consequence for the governor who blows it. The only consequence falls on the demanding state, which loses its defendant. Thus, delay isn’t a litigation risk for Governor Abbott. Delay is the remedy he almost certainly is seeking.” The 90-day deadline in Castro’s case appears to be next week. Hence Minnesota’s urgency in seeking a separate order preventing the sheriff in Texas’ southernmost county who arrested Castro from releasing him. Vladeck: “Minnesota’s entirely plausible concern appears to be that release from a border town like Brownsville would allow Castro to slip into Mexico - which point no interstate rendition warrant, however belatedly signed, would be worth much of anything.” In its filing, Minnesota presented more than a hypothetical fear that Castro would flee to Mexico. Jailhouse calls reveal that Spanish-fluent Castro has been “in frequent communication” with a woman in Mexico talking about marrying her and buying a house there after he’s released, Minnesota alleged: “On information and belief, law enforcement’s initial review of Castro’s Cameron County jail calls reflects that Castro has substantial ties to Mexico and there is a real risk that he may flee and avoid prosecution if he is released from custody. Castro would be released close to the Mexican border. Castro is fluent in Spanish and has been in frequent communication with a woman in Mexico, including about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released.” What a plot device: an ICE agent might flee across the border to Mexico to escape the U.S. criminal justice system.

From Greg Sargent: It’s time to familiarize yourselves with the names “Operation Puppet Master” and “Operation Keyhole.” If those nefarious phrases evoke to you the U.S. government’s domestic spying on leftist groups in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s for good reason. The terms are from today’s DHS, and they’re associated with a massive, covert surveillance effort that DHS unleashed earlier this year to track anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, where Trump’s violent paramilitary invasion triggered months of intense civil conflict.

Yeah, this is soooooo surprising: The founder and CEO of a Las Vegas-based prisoner reentry program who was pardoned by President Trump in 2020 has been arrested for “sexually based crimes,” police said Tuesday. Jon Donyae Ponder, a three-time felon who led Hope for Prisoners, was arrested for sexual assault-related charges, Las Vegas police said in a statement. “Detectives believe there may be additional victims in the community,” police said. Ponder, who appeared alongside Trump at the 2020 Republican National Convention, was later booked into the Clark County Detention Center on one count of sexual assault, seven counts of unauthorized custodial contact, one count of attempted coercion and 11 gross misdemeanor charges. Ponder launched the Hope for Prisoners reentry organization following his release from prison in 2009 after serving 63 months for a string of bank robberies. Ponder has been barred from Nevada Department of Corrections properties since April amid an investigation that he acted inappropriately toward a female inmate. Ponder’s wife has also recently filed for divorce and primary custody of the couple’s children, alleging domestic violence in a temporary order of protection.

Yeah, there’s always more of these guys to be found in the Party of Family Values: Palm Beach County Clerk of Court Michael Caruso, a former Republican state legislator who previously backed the death penalty for adults convicted of sexually battering children under 12, was arrested Tuesday on five felony child sex abuse charges. The 67-year-old married father of seven who was appointed by Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis faces five felony counts: kidnapping, child molestation, lewd exhibition, luring or enticing a child and child abuse causing mental injury, an arrest affidavit shows. Investigators in Florida say Caruso violated a child—who is a relative—and allege the abuse occurred multiple times from fall 2024 to August 2025, including on a family cruise, a fishing outing and during a Thanksgiving gathering. The child has been receiving therapeutic services since April 2026, according to the police affidavit. “Being in a position of public trust provides no shield from accountability,” state Attorney General James Uthmeier said. “This individual will face the full force of the law.”

Mixed signals from Washington and Tehran are compounding the impact of the Iran war on the Gulf’s economic foundations, further fueling jitters in the region. When Trump declared the Strait of Hormuz “open and operating” while Iran insisted it remains shut, and when ships are struck by unidentified projectiles days after a supposed ceasefire lapsed, the result is the same. Insurers get nervous, shippers reroute, and the cost of buying goods and doing business ticks upwards. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz slowed further on Wednesday, with just six vessels crossing versus a 10-day average of 11. Trump insists Hormuz is open, contradicting Iran. Major Chinese carriers have avoided the route since late July. Iran’s top negotiator has said the Strait of Hormuz stays shut until Washington meets interim-deal conditions, namely lifting its blockade and sanctions and releasing frozen assets. Trump has separately floated declaring Hormuz U.S. territory and threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way”. While few in the region treat this rhetoric as genuine policy, it deepens the sense that no one is steering events.

Trump has vowed to unleash what he called “ECONOMIC D-DAY” on Iran as frustrations mount over lack of progress on reopening the Strait of Hormuz or reaching a deal to end the nearly six-month war. Wednesday evening, Trump said Lies Anti-Social that he would launch a major economic campaign against Iran and any entity that does business with the regime, saying it would be “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!” Trump didn’t say what specifically the U.S. will do in addition to the heavy sanctions already on Tehran. The insane post said: “I am also announcing that ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences. Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies—It all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are.” He then on U.S. allies (are there any left?) to support his effort to isolate Iran. China is Iran’s largest trading partner; it also has economic ties with neighbors, but trade with Europe is small due to years of sanctions and other restrictions. The UAE said late Tuesday it has suspended financial and economic transactions with Iran, hreatening Tehran’s access to a major source of imports and a financial back door to the world. Earlier Wednesday, Trump was asked about what kind of economic tools he had to punish Iran and said he had “new things” the U.S. could sanction. “We have very draconian sanctions and we’ll see what happens. It’ll either be extremely good and oil prices will drop like a rock, or we’ll continue doing exactly what we’re doing.” Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent previewed new measures against Iran aimed at getting back to the negotiating table but didn’t provide details. “Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of the economic isolation of a country,” Bessent said.

“Wake me when this is over. Please.”

CNN reporters contacted five GOP swing-state gubernatorial nominees: Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, Michigan Rep. John James, Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity, Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany, and Georgia health care executive Rick Jackson, to ask who won the 2020 election. All five have lengthy track records of lying about the election, or, in some cases, even trying to overturn the election. But now that they have general elections to win, Tiffany, Garrity, and Jackson have reversed themselves without explanation. Tiffany says “Biden won.” A Jackson spokesperson says Jackson acknowledges “Biden’s win.” Closer to the borderline, Garrity says “Biden was elected.” But none hid behind the standard MAGA weasel words that Biden “was certified” the winner. Nobody’s apologizing for their attempts to destroy democracy and the peaceful transfer of power, but... you know... baby steps and all.

Which leads to this change in the political weather...

It’s very interesting to note how a manufactured MAGA freakout is being reported in the MSM as a... manufactured MAGA freakout. Ever since last Friday, every MAGA loyalist with an X account has spent the days pretending to be outraged at Jon Ossoff, who said the following at a Friday campaign event: “While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings, he golfs, and trades stocks. He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.” Tellingly, the MAGAts don’t take issue with Ossoff’s characterization of Trump’s conduct in office: that he’s drained our munitions and oil reserves for a fruitless war of choice, that he sleeps through his meetings, golfs, and trades stocks. That he’s obsessed with his ballroom and the bribery plane he accepted from Qatari royals. Apparently, they stipulate to all that. But they really want you to believe they’re mad that Ossoff would air innuendo about Trump’s relationship with his “binkie,” 35-year-old Natalie Harp. In doing what he did, Ossoff demonstrated his party’s wallflower approach to politics has ceded narrative-setting dominance to Republicans. What’s reallyu revealing is that the fake-outrage pageant hasn’t worked. The GOP crisis actors want us to believe Ossoff hurt himself, that MAGA has scruples, that this has awakened a sleeping right-wing giant in Georgia. What they want is another media-driven struggle session about “civility” like the ones that erupted duroing Maladministration I - when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant, and a comedian told some jokes about her. However, the headlines aren’t being their gullible selves; the stories aren’t about GOP anger, or whether Ossoff broke rules of comity that somehow only apply to Democrats. Nooo - they’re about why Trump and the White House were so sensitive to the attack. They’re about Harp, herself, whose relationship with Trump is… unusual. They’re the ones now defending themselves. Yes! The worm has indeed turned. Even the otherwise-unemployables of the Press Corpse are starting to get it.

Former Democratic congressman-turned-pundit Max Rose has said he is sure Trump wasn’t having an affair. Rose was asked by CNN host Erin Burnett whether those comments may “catapult Jon Ossoff to being something that people didn’t really expect of him?” Rose answered, “Sure, absolutely. I mean, I think that the only thing any other Democrat should say is that Ossoff is wrong for physical reasons. Donald Trump probably couldn’t have an affair with anyone right now. That’s the line that these things should be going in. For so long, we have faced this Republican Party, which not only flaunts any rule, right, but does so almost with pride, right, and says the American people just don’t care. What people are looking at the Democrats to do now is to show that they have the guts to not leave any tool on the table in terms of their effort to beat this. That’s not a bad thing.” (As I’ve been saying, she couldn’t find his widdle mushwoom with a search party. Laughing at Trump’s ability to “be a man” should drive him totally around the bend.) Remember, she worked for him in the White House for a year without a security clearance. This collection of Putzes (Putz: yiddish for “a penis that thinks it’s a person”) can’t even organize a wet dream.

Trump made an impromptu foray into nuclear-deterrence issues yesterday when a reporter asked whether he was again exchanging letters with Kim Jong Un. He responded, “I can’t tell you that. But I get along with him. And you know what? The fact that I get along with him, that’s a good thing. Not a bad thing.” The size of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is a tightly held secret; U.S. experts working from open sources have made various guesses, usually in the range of roughly 60 thermonuclear weapons. Trump blurted out an exact tally. “He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons.” The intelligence community almost never issues such precise figures, instead offering ranges of plausible guesses. Trump may be making it up out of nowhere, or perhaps talking about some subset of Pyongyang’s arsenal, or he’s garbling something he saw in a classified setting and didn’t understand. Arms control analyst Jeffrey Lewis responded, “Trump is trying to tell us a secret he heard, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it means.” Trump has gotten briefed on the North Korean nuclear inventory, but seems strangely unconcerned. Even at its current estimated size, North Korea can kill tens of millions of people in Asia, and soon may be able to reach the U.S. with nuclear-armed long-range missiles. Trump said about North Korea, Should have never allowed it to happen. They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn’t have allowed it. But he’s got ’em. I get along with him very well. I can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. And I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he’s gonna be fine. As long as we have a smart president, he’s going to be fine. If we have a dumb president, then he’s probably not gonna be so fine.” (When Trump says “smart,” he means “me,” and when he says “dumb” he means “not me.”) What he seems to imply is that although North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is very dangerous, he has no intention of messing with the bombs or the regime and that future presidents would be fools to do otherwise. Is the reason because the North Koreans - who are fighting alongside Russia in Ukraine, sharing missile technology with U.S. enemies, and running giant crypto scams - are somehow less dangerous than Iran? Most likely, he feels he can live with Kim’s nuclear ambitions because the two took nice walks during a meeting that sated his ego with lots of saluting and pageantry. Trump regards nuclear weapons as a sign of status, which sent a crystal-clear message to Iran: Nuclear deterrence, even with only a few bombs, works. Get a nuclear weapon as soon as you can if you want to be safe and treated with the kind of deference America shows to North Korea. Trump has shown the world that even a tiny nuclear arsenal deters America from taking military action. Forgo those weapons (as Iran has done until now) and the result is destruction, attempts at regime change, and demands for unconditional surrender.

A new report has revealed the embarrassing reason Pete Hegseth’s wife is always with him. Jennifer Hegseth - his former producer at Fux Snooze - is ever-present because SecDrunk counts on her to keep him out of trouble, the NYT reported Wednesday. According to 20 current and former administration officials and sources, Jennifer has been serving as Kegstand’s most influential adviser, prepping him for appearances, sitting in on his meetings with journalists, interviewing potential staff members, and even helping brainstorm ideas for Defense Department videos (you know - all the things a producer does for the on-air talent). One source said Hegseth likes having Jennifer around to keep him on the straight and narrow. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell described Jennifer as “an accomplished leader in her own right and a devoted military spouse. The Defense Department not only welcomes her current leadership but actively plans to involve her even more deeply in the future.” Don’t you feel safe, knowing that two people whose time together started as an affair while married to other people are running security for all of us? Fux Snooze - large and in charge.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports an especially disturbing episode of how the Trumpkins run their immigration war, revealed in an order signed yesterday by U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell of Ft. Myers, Florida, who granted a petition for a writ of habeas corpus by a Colombian national whose case was repeatedly botched by an immigration judge. Her order reveals a tale straight out of Kafka that began April 9, when Jorge Eliecer Madera Reyes was arrested by Orlando police for … opening a beer inside a convenience store … in violation of a local ordinance. His arrest brought Madera Reyes to the attention of ICE, which detained him on April 11. Madera Reyes, who had no prior criminal history, has been in the United States since 2019, when he overstayed his visa. Since then, as Judge Polster Chappell describes it: “He has not departed the country since his 2019 arrival, and he has applied for asylum, obtained work authorization and steady employment, filed income tax returns, and developed family and community ties.” (These are relevant facts) When Madera Reyes sought to be released from ICE custody on bond, Immigration Judge Stuart Siegel denied his request in a flawed May 19 order that wildly misstated the facts: “The Court finds that Respondent has not met his burden in meeting that he is a suitable bail rist based on the fact that Respondent is a recent arrival, Respondent has no pennding relief pending before the court (this guy passed the LSAT to go to law school?), and Respondent has already departed the United States curing a previous stay in the United States. The Court finds that Respondent is a heightened flight risk. Consequently, no material change in circumstances established to warrant the Court’s previous order.” “There is no dispute that each of the three stated reasons for denying bond are factually incorrect,” Judge Polster Chappell wrote in her order. It now gets worse: When Madera Reyes appealed, the immigration judge rejected it and “reiterated the incorrect factual basis for denying bond,” Judge Polster Chappell wrote. Madera Reyes later managed to establish the DHS allegations against him were incorrect, and DHS amended its charges against him. At that point, Madera Reyes renewed his request for release on bond. No matter. The immigration judge denied bond for Madera Reyes on July 16 “without conducting a hearing and based on the same mistaken understanding of the facts,” wrote Judge Polster Chappell. Finding that Madera Reyes had made a prima facie case that his Fifth Amendment rights had been violated, Judge Polster Chappell ordered him released within 24 hours.

Remember, you are not the crazy ones, and we were made for these times. Regardless of what you may feel right now, act as if you believe that and redouble your efforts.

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” - Abraham Lincoln

“Yes - wake me when it’s over.”

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