If it Can Happen to Mahmoud Khalil, it Can Happen to You

Posted on by documentingdescent

On March 8, 2025, Mahmoud Khalil was taken by ICE agents from his apartment and spirited away to an unknown location. Khalil had been, until December of 2024, a graduate student at Columbia University, and had acted as a liaison between the pro-Palestine demonstrators and university staff. Notably, Khalil was not at Columbia University on a student visa, but is in fact a lawful permanent resident of the United States. That is to say, a Green Card holder.

ICE agents told his 8 months pregnant wife (who is a citizen of the USA) that he had been taken to a holding facility in New Jersey, but this was a lie. Today it was revealed he had been taken to a holding facility in Louisiana. For two days, neither his wife nor lawyer had any means to contact him, and only through extensive searching could they turn up his whereabouts. Any transfer must be reported to the subject’s family and lawyer within 24 hours, but ICE has never exactly played better than ‘fast and loose’ with their legal responsibilities.

All of this comes due to Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming the State Department has the right to revoke Khalil’s residency and deport him. Thing is, though, legally they do not. The Department of Homeland Security does, but they have to meet certain criteria:

  • Fraud or misrepresentation during the application process.
  • The comission of certain crimes.
  • Failure to maintain permanent residence.
  • Failure to notify USCIS of a change of address.
  • Security violations such as membership in a designated terrorist organization or espionage/treason.
  • Engaging in immigration fraud after getting a green card
  • Violation of terms if the green card is conditional (his is not).
  • Becoming inadmissible due to health reasons.

All of these must be proven in a court of law before an immigration judge. In no case can anyone be deported and their residency revoked without due process. Due process has not been followed in any way, here, and Rubio has grossly gone beyond his authority.

“But author,” some say, “this administration doesn’t follow the law! They’ll just ignore it!”

While this administration is lawless as fuck, it’s true, it’s important to make them work for it. Do not simply give in. What’s more Khalil is the canary in the coal mine here: if they are willing to ignore the due process of law, there is nothing preventing them from disappearing citizens as well.

No? Why not. Your citizenship is only as good as the willingness of people to respect your rights, and Khalil has rights just like you do. So it’s very important to ensure a light gets shined on this shit, and we do not simply roll over. If we do, you or your neighbors or both may suddenly be gone one day, with no warning. Khalil is important not just morally, but because our rights evaporate the moment we stop fighting for them. He’s important because the current administration is probably betting nobody wanted to stick their neck out for a pro-Palestine demonstrator. They have painted him as an agent of Hamas – for which there is no evidence, and such association must be proven in a court of law regardless.

The deliberate conflation of pro-Palestine activity, or anti-Israeli genocide activity, with pro-Hamas sentiment, is a pernicious tactic by those in power as a way to silence dissent and rally the racists of the United States to their side. It’s also cynical, and possibly fuelled by ulterior motives when it comes to the university.

Columbia University is culpable, and may have sent ICE to his apartment, as well. Just before his detention, he contacted the university administration asking for assistance, due to fear of threats he’d received. They may have been trying to curry favor with the Trump admin due to their $400 million in grants that were cancelled.

Appeasing bullies like Trump and his crew never works. All it shows is that you’re weak and can be pushed around, and will cave when the chips are down.

Proof that action and noise get results: Khalil is now represented by the ACLU and several other organizations, and an immigration judge has ruled he cannot be deported before he’s had his day in court.

We have to make them work for it and not just give in.

Purge of Military Leadership Has Begun

Posted on by documentingdescent

Trump today fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q Brown Jr. and had him replaced with John D Caine, a retired 3-star Lt. General. Brown is an incredibly decorated and experienced member of the United States Air Force. Caine is a not-so-decorated former member of the CIA whose only Air Force commands were the Special Access Programs Central Office, and the 113th Maintenance Group.

By all accounts, Caine was chosen for donning a red MAGA hat at a rally, and for “making the claim “eradicating” ISIS in 4 weeks during Trump’s first term. I don’t know if they can count or use maps, but ISIS is still getting bombed and shot across Africa. Even with the most charitable reading of “eradicated” possible, Operation Inherent Resolve had been ongoing since before Trump’s inauguration in 2017, and lasted at least until 2019. Which is a hell of a lot more than 4 weeks.

Secretary Hegseth also removed Chief of the Navy Lisa Franchetti, calling her a “DEI hire”, and Vice Chair of the Air Force, James Slife. He also unveiled plans to fire all JAG officers across the armed forces, and was soliciting suggestions for their replacements.

Elon Musk at CPAC: a Study in Being on Drugs

Posted on by documentingdescent

Elon Musk took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) today. It was… an interesting show, by all accounts.

Sarah Jeong at The Verge has a transcript of Musk’s time on stage. Highlights include “I am become meme”, waving a chainsaw around after it was gifted to him by Argentine President Javier Milei, loads of bullshit claims such as “In Europe, they put people in jail for memes!” and a 306 year old Social Security recipient (see previous posts – he doesn’t understand the data he’s looking at).

He also never removed his sunglasses, slurred words, couldn’t form a lot of coherent sentences, lost trains of thought and devolved into giggles mid-statement. I’ve been around people on drugs a lot in my day, and this guy was likely high as a fucking kite on a cocktail of things.

Kash Patel Confirmed as FBI Director

Posted on by documentingdescent

In a 48-45 vote in the Senate, Kash Patel has been confirmed as Director of the FBI. Only Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins defected from Republican ranks to vote against his confirmation.

Kash Patel is, to put it mildly, a wildly bad choice for director, and is also a conspiracy theorist. He has openly threatened independent journalists with prosecutions for doing their job, regularly appears on far right conspiracy podcasts and talk shows (often talking about how January 6th was an inside job by the FBI), and supported QAnon madness.

On the subject of his enemies list: “I have no interest, no desire, and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel said. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken… should I be confirmed as the FBI director.” He later said, “It’s not an enemies list – that is a total mischaracterization.”

My man, you called it an enemies list yourself – or near enough as it makes no difference. You referred to your list of 60 people as “government gangsters” and claimed they were the most immoral, unethical people in government.

Hope y’all are ready for some politically motivated bullshit arrests and prosecutions, because buckle up, here they come.

ICE Prosecutor in Dallas Revealed as White Supremacist

Posted on by documentingdescent

ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden of Dallas, Texas, has been revealed to be behind the Twitter/X account “GlomarResponder”, responsible for years of overt white supremacist postings. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s looked into ICE, prosecutors in most places, or Twitter/X at all.

Rodden, under the GlomarResponder handle, was responsible for such scintillating gems as “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fuck”, “I’m not a commie, I’m a fascist – fasicsts solve communist problems. Get your insults right, retard” and “Migrants are all criminals.” He also suggested it was a holy duty to kill migrants, and suggested putting them in tree shredders.

Only the best and brightest for ICE.

Only I Can Interpret the Law

Posted on by documentingdescent

Welp, there we have it. An Executive Order indicating only the President has the authority to interpret laws relating to Executive Branch activities.

I’m sure this is totally fine with all of the people shrieking that Obama and Biden were tyrants, abusing their authority.

I guess we’re gonna see if the Supreme Court values their own power more than they desire to kneel before their king.

Weekend Roundup: Incompetence and Idiocy

Posted on by documentingdescent

My weekend’s been busy, so it’s time for a weekend roundup of all of the dumb stuff that happened while I was busy with my day job and with other things over the weekend. Nothing major that isn’t a continuation of earlier bullshit, but oh what a fucking continuation it’s been.

Nuclear Security No More

One of Musk’s DOGE cadre of hatchetmen – or maybe hatchetchildren – has been feeding names and positions into their AI black box to figure out who to fire. This has been going on since they started, but it’s blatantly obvious that they don’t know what they’re doing, because they keep firing people you really don’t want to fire if you’re interested in national security.

One of the most recent firings has been the staff of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is a rather important department. It was founded in 1999 after the Wen Ho Lee spying scandal. The NNSA maintains security over the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, as well as providing the US Navy with nuclear propulsion, and also responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad.

They fired all but around 50 people from the agency, cutting around 300 jobs, because the responsible individual just didn’t know what the agency did. And now they’re scrambling to re-hire these former employees, but they can’t, because they don’t know how to contact most of them.

The individual responsible is reported to be Luke Farritor, a 23 year old also responsible for a lot of the AI-powered job cuts in the federal government.

Who Needs Air Safety?

Next up on the federal job chopping block is the FAA. Around 400 workers were fired over the weekend from across the FAA – air traffic controllers, maintenance technicians, policy setters, et cetera. Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Secretary of Transportation, has provided DOGE “special access” to the FAA and its systems in order to upgrade the system.

It’s worth noting that the FAA has been complaining about being understaffed for at least a decade, and they’re already overworked. Firing 400 people is manifestly a bad idea for air safety, given this fact. Part of the idiocy of these firings is that they just shoved “probationary” members into the woodchipper, assuming these were new hires. In many cases, they were not – they were people like a 26 year veteran radar maintenance technician, whose current promotion was probationary, despite his long history of service. But they’re too stupid to realize that, so tons of institutional knowledge have been lost. I’m sure they want to replace a lot of the ATC staff with AI, which will only result in more air accidents.

Now, another point I want to make is that so far, of the air accidents this year, none of them are due to Trump’s administration. Why? Because he’d made no changes at the time of the accidents, or the changes he made would not have affected the outcome. For instance, the Delta flight that rolled over in Toronto is the result of Canadian ATC, and the pilot likely overestimating their abilities to land. The Blackhawk impact in DC was the result of pilot error by the Blackhawk crew. Some of these are due to understaffing at the FAA but that’s a longer running problem than just Trump.

That said, these firings will only result in more accidents and less safe air travel, which is a hell of a thing for the safest national airspace in the world, by number of travelers.

Texas Loves Disease

Measles is running rampant in parts of Texas, because vaccinations are a conspiracy against health.

Great.

Elon Musk Threatens to Imprison 60 Minutes

The thin-skinned emperor has suggested the staff of 60 Minutes be imprisoned for their interview with Kamala Harris. For editing a TV program. Because it’s ‘election interference’. He argues it was deceptive editing, but they released the full transcript, showing nothing untoward and totally normal.

Meanwhile, of course, his electoral activities are totally normal and above reproach.

What a whiny bitch of a Nazi.

DOGE In the IRS, and Their Idiotic Website

There’s no reason for DOGE to have access to tax filings by normal citizens, yet they’re looking for access to all that data to train their AI systems. Or maybe to blackmail ordinary people and frighten them into subervience. Or maybe just mundane surveillance. While they’re claiming it’s about finding waste in how tax dollars are spent, there’s no way they can find that by looking at our personal tax filings. Like always, they’re lying.

These people couldn’t find fraud if it ran up and said “Hey, wanna join a Ponzi scheme?” They published a website with such poor security anyone over the internet could push updates to it. And they expect us to believe they’re capable of securing our data? Give me a fucking break. They have no idea how these systems work, and really don’t have any desire to, either, because the goal is to break government, not improve it.

In response to the mass pushback by citizens against DOGE and their grasping little minions, the White House has announced Elon Musk has no official position and is not a government employee. He’s just a personal advisor, or something. Again, give me a break. DOGE is taking their marching orders from him, he’s giving press conferences in the Oval Office, he’s making threats to government bureaus and announcing what DOGE is doing. This is the kind of bullshit gaslighting that I made this blog to remember, and to be able to show people when they vomit the party line back at us later.

So if he’s not a government employee and he has access to our data – which he most certainly does – time to haul his ass off to ADX Florence for the foreseeable future. Of course, that won’t happen, but it should.

Protecting the Sex Trafficking Influencers

In the latest bullshit loyalty move by the current administration, it seems that Trump’s White House has decided Andrew and Tristan Tate should be allowed out of Romania while their criminal trials and proceedings are ongoing. Which of course means they’d go free because they’d run and never return. The Tates were arrested on charges of sex trafficking, kidnapping, rape (including of minors). They, of course, say that they were arrested because they’re against ‘woke’ politics. Ahh yes, Romania, famous bastion of woke politics.

If Romania caves to this, it will be an incredible stain on them. Keep those shits in prison.

File Under “Not Knowing How Things Work” – 150 Year old SSA recipients

The last big update is the ostensible fraud in the Social Security Administration, namely that Social Security is being paid to 150 year old recipients. This is a prime case of not knowing how things work: the engineering ‘geniuses’ in DOGE don’t have any clue how COBOL works, and are so confident in what they expect to find they never questioned if their methods were faulty. Several retired COBOL engineers have gone on record to correct their assumptions.

The whole issue stems from COBOL not having a date type, so it’s all in reference to 1875 due to an agreement upon creation of the system. So certain birthdays wrap around, showing 150 years of age, because it’s a quirk of the programming language.

When you don’t know how anything works, everything is a conspiracy.

Hope You Liked Vaccines

Posted on by documentingdescent

RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services

RFK Jr. has been confirmed as the head of Health and Human Services. You know, Mr. Drinks Raw Milk, Mr. Vaccines Cause Autism, Mr. Exercise Will Cure Your COVID and probably some other diseases. While he says he’s got no plans to roll back vaccine authorizations or stifle their development, I trust that statement about as much as a rattlesnake on mescaline. One thing that’s been proven time and again with the people in this administration is that they’ll say whatever it takes to get confirmed, and then just do… whatever they intended to do before.

That’s just the truth of what has been proven, time and again, with the people Trump surrounds himself with. It’s not some clairvoyant skill on my part, just past evidence informing me. Also, as one quip put it, RFK Jr. is just as crazy as the rest of them, and is “Alex Jones in a nice suit” when it comes to health and medical decisions. Hope y’all enjoyed not having preventable diseases, because I’m expecting a big spike in them in coming months and years.

President Musk’s Press Conference

I don’t think I’ve seen many federal spectacles as pathetic and telling as the press conference in the Oval Office the other day, run by Elon Musk, talking about DOGE. Musk, standing, giving a press conference while Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, occasionally throwing in a comment here and there. All the while, Musk’s 4 year old son picked his nose (wiping it on the desk), climbed Musk, and told Trump “You’re not the President, you need to go away.” I’m not 100% sold that he said that, because I hear “Mr. President, you need to go away.” Either way the message is “Daddy is talking and you’re not important enough to be here.” He also told Trump “I want you to shush your mouth” at another point in the briefing.

Talk about a goddamn embarrassment.

Let’s be clear about a few things:

  • The Oval Office is for the office of the President, not somebody he hired, to give briefings in. At worst, it’s for the VP if the President is incapacitated.
  • Four year old children should not be in national briefings, even if the President is giving them.
  • The President was not giving this briefing. Musk was.

The contents of the briefing isn’t really important – it was Musk touting DOGE’s successes and how much fraud they’ve uncovered, with absolutely no proof other than “trust me, bro”, and repeating absolute bullshit about shit he doesn’t understand. Mike Masnick of TechDirt had some pretty good thoughts on it. But the presence of Musk’s son, as well as Musk’s level of formality in his clothing, suggests two things. One is that Musk is devoted to trying to humanize his image and make himself seem like a relatable family man. This seems to have worked somewhat, as today there are headlines from CNN and other outlets suggesting exactly that.

The second message is: “I can do whatever I want, and nobody can stop me.”

Armored Cybertrucks

The State Department is set to spend $400 million dollars on “armored Tesla Cybertrucks”, in a move that should surprise no one that understands the adage one hand washes the other. Or, more commonly, tit-for-tat. They walked this back to $400 million for ‘armored electric vehicles’, but we all know they’ll be Teslas. Nobody has pushed back on why there’s a need for this, or why Cybertrucks (in the initial procurement order) rather than just about any, more practical electric vehicle.

It’s worth noting that time and again, it’s been proven that despite Tesla’s claims to the contrary, they do store and collate all of the camera and audio data from Tesla vehicles. Meaning Musk will have a direct line to review footage and audio from all of these State Department vehicles, without oversight. So essentially all of them are bugged, and answerable to a non-governmental individual.

Edit: The State Department put out a press release today noting that they have not, in fact, awarded Tesla a contract for $400 million for armored vehicles. In this context, awarded is doing some very heavy lifting. Yes, of course they haven’t awarded it. It doesn’t change the fact that their own released budgetary info was soliciting a desire for these vehicles yesterday.

“Now Let Them Enforce It”

Posted on by documentingdescent

In a move that should surprise no one who has even once paid attention to Donald Trump’s modus operandi, U.S. District Judge John McConnell has found that the White House is in violation of a court order requiring them to restore funding to federal departments and agencies. Currently locked out due to the White House’s funding freeze, units like the National Institute of Health can’t pay for obligations that are already on the books.

In a nutshell, the judge ordered them to unfreeze the funds, and they just haven’t complied. JD Vance, in tweets during the Superbowl on Sunday, suggested courts don’t have the authority to tell the President what to do. Other than the years they spent demanding Biden adhere to court orders, this is farcical on the face of it. If the courts don’t have the authority to dictate law in terms of the Executive Branch, then there is absolutely no reason to listen to anything the Supreme Court says whatsoever when it comes to the Executive.

The problem is, of course, that there is no mechanism for the courts to enforce this sort of thing in terms of physical people who will arrive and force it, aside from possibly the US Marshals.

This is, of course, on purpose. The phrase “constitutional crisis” may seem overused these days, but in this case it’s pretty valid. Should Trump decide not to listen to the court order, we’ll be ramming head first into a wall at Mach 1. And Chief Justice Roberts will no doubt wring his hands and go, “Well shit.” Well, Roberts, you set this shit up. We’re ALL on the ride now.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. In 1832, in Worcester v. Georgia, President Andrew Jackson apocryphally said “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” He did express similar sentiments, however.

The Office of Religious Fuckery

Posted on by documentingdescent

Oh yeah. One more thing that happened this week. This shit.

The executive order for “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias”.

The legal framework is there, based on previous protected classes, and anti-semitic bullshit pulled by nazis. But it’s being applied in such an ass backwards way it’s offensive. Just a drop in the bucket for this week, but worth noting for future bullshit references.