Late last month, the man’s stepmother, #KimberlySullivan, 57, was arraigned in Waterbury Superior Court. She has been charged w/ #kidnapping, #assault, #cruelty, unlawful #restraint & reckless #endangerment. If convicted of all charges, she could serve the rest of her life in prison.…She pleaded not guilty.
"This rivals the family separation policy of the first Trump administration for sheer inhumanity. But it also harms Americans in very real ways. Who will want to study or come work here in this climate? Just one example, nearly 25% of practicing doctors in the United States are international medical graduates, demonstrates how this harms our own future prospects."
"We can make an educated guess. By February 11, NBC was reporting that Trump, who had promised mass deportations while on the campaign trail, wasn’t happy with the pace of removals. They reported that a person who was 'familiar with Trump’s thinking' said that 'It’s driving him nuts they’re not deporting more people.'”
"Why did ICE arrest a mechanical engineering student at the University of Alabama, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, a recent graduate of Columbia with a green card, a Russian scientist at Harvard Medical School who came here after protesting for Ukraine, and students at Georgetown and Cornell? What prompted Secretary of State Marco Rubio to claim at least 300 student visas had been revoked?"
~ Joyce Vance
"That’s the point, really. The standardization of chaos. The steady insistence that no matter how outlandish, how dangerous, this tilt away from democracy gets, it’s actually nothing to get upset about. Attempt to remake the US government as quickly and radically as possible, because otherwise how will you know how far you can push it?"
~ Brian Barrett
"Sometimes, chaos is the point. Often, cruelty is the point. This week, casting a threatening pall over the country’s long tradition of scholarship and free thought appeared to be the point."
"Much of what the Trump administration has done during the lawless rampage that has been its first two months has felt haphazard, reckless, at times almost random in nature — all of which, of course, is by design. It’s become well understood in the years since the MAGA movement’s takeover of the Republican Party that the cruelty — and, often, the accompanying chaos — is the point."
~ Nicole Lafond
#Musk #Trump #Republicans #chaos #destruction #cruelty
/1
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/the-weekender/a-week-of-cracking-down-on-education-and-free-thought
"The Trump DOJ asserted that the President’s removal power is so all-encompassing that he could fire all female agency heads or those over 40 years old, without recourse. The assertion came in oral arguments at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in a consolidated case on the without-cause firings of members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board."
~ David Kurtz
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #Republicans #cruelty #women #misogyny
/11
https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/p/trump-suffers-series-of-court-setbacks
"[Judge Ana Reyes] characterizes the ban [of Trump's administration on trans soldiers] as 'soaked in animus and dripping with pretext.'”
'Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact,' Reyes writes."
~ S. Baum
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #Republicans #cruelty #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment #fascism #trans #military
/10
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/soaked-in-animus-federal-judges-strikes
"And from there, his 'Trojan horse' gift of using U.S. troops to, say, put down the 'riots' could become his permanent way of ruling through military force instead of by the consent of the governed."
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #Republicans #cruelty #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment #fascism #NationalSecurity #immigrants #deportations
/9
"Next up is a swing at the Insurrection Act to put military forces to use against his domestic enemies, and for that, he will need a very big justification indeed. If he doesn’t get one from the protests against his presidency, he very well may invent one."
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #Republicans #cruelty #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment #fascism #NationalSecurity #immigrants #deportations
/8
"Be prepared for Trump’s own Reichstag fire, particularly if the economy continues to sour and he needs to create an emergency in order to justify an iron rule. He’s already invoked a 'national emergency' over the border to justify tariffs and the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify summary deportations."
~ Jay Kuo
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #Republicans #cruelty #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment #fascism #NationalSecurity #immigrants #deportations
/7
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/trump-musk-bogeymen-trojan-horses
"Every day we need to go through the painful ritual of waking up and reminding ourselves that none of this is normal, that we are living in an America dangerously close to a slide into tyranny. Destroying the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary is always a first step for would-be dictators. Trump is no different."
~ Joyce Vance
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #Republicans #cruelty #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment
/6
"Even as they set about destroying the federal government, they are expanding its power to harass and intimidate their enemies wherever they may be found."
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #Republicans #cruelty #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment
/5
"No Republican alive has felt the kind of intoxicating surge of power they are experiencing right now, not because of the size of their 2024 electoral victory but because they have collectively decided that with sufficient aggression and creativity, they can go after just about every individual or institution that ever pissed them off."
~ Paul Waldman
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #Republicans #cruelty #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment
/4
https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/the-real-goal-of-trumps-war-on-universities
"In general, workers are being fired with no warning, no chance to make plans for the future, and often face insulting (and false) claims that they were poor performers."
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #cruelty #SocialSecurity #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment #seniors
/3
"The cruelty is a feature, not a bug.
After all, gratuitous, seemingly gleeful cruelty has been a hallmark of DOGE’s operations. Even if you think DOGE’s mass layoffs — some quickly reversed when it turned out that critical workers were fired — make sense, think of the way they are being carried out."
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #cruelty #SocialSecurity #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment #seniors
/2
"The Social Security Administration, following orders from Elon Musk’s DOGE, appears set to subject disabled Americans to immense hardship. And everything we know indicates that this act of cruelty is mainly motivated by a combination of ego and spite."
~ Paul Krugman
#Musk #Trump #DOGE #cruelty #SocialSecurity #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment #seniors
/1
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/smears-sadism-and-social-security
"does the plan have to be this #cruel to the most vulnerable #Americans? As I see it, the cruelty is a feature, not a bug.
After all, gratuitous, seemingly gleeful #cruelty has been a hallmark of DOGE’s operations...
We’re mostly talking about poorly socialized young #men suddenly given the power to ruin other people’s lives, taking their cues from a leader who has declared that “the fundamental weakness of Western society is #empathy.”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/smears-sadism-and-social-security
