Karen Macbeth

sociologist, brain injury advocate, climate warrior, working on my Global Health Masters Degree, f-ing sick of the repressive, misogynistic, racist patriarchy

[Sandi Bachom 📹 @sandibachom]

ICE agents killed a man in cold blood at a traffic stop in Houston who had been in this country for 35 years. His son heard about it on a Facebook post and recognized his father’s voice, pleading for help as they left him to bleed out on the street.

If you don’t think ice are the American Gestapo listen to my friend, Werner Reich who was taken by the Nazis when he was 14 years old and put in three different death camps. He was in Auschwitz the year I was born 1944.

I have filmed Holocaust survivors for many years. Their stories have never been more important. #neveragainisnow

[NoelCaslerComedy @caslernoel]

Whenever ICE says someone tried to use their vehicle as a weapon they are lying to cover up the murder of innocents. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was in this country for 35 years, contributing to this land & he was killed by thugs and goons. I hope every Trump official rots in hell.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Nichols: It’s almost like we have a relative in the room, and there’s something deeply wrong with him. And we’ve all agreed not to talk about it. But there is something deeply wrong with him.

His friends know it, his critics know it. His staff, I’m sure, knows it. The world knows it. World leaders know it. And most importantly, our enemies know it, which is why they don’t take him seriously.

Nobody hangs on his words. They kind of do, but mostly out of freakish curiosity to see what kind of wild thing he’s going to say next, not because his words have any inherent meaning or reflect policy.

You know, I spent years teaching students that when the president speaks, it’s policy, and you must pay attention when the president speaks because nobody can contradict him.

Now, you know, are we really cutting off all trade with Spain? Who knows? Maybe. Maybe not. It might have just been a stray electron, you know, careening around inside his brainpan. Who knows?

But this is really dangerous because in the middle of all this stuff—and we can laugh about, you know, the Islamic Republic of Japan and all of that—but he made several statements about an ongoing war that the United States is losing. And no one’s even trying to pretend that they can make any sense of it.

And I’ll just add one last thing that you just brought up.

If this were any other president, this would be a national crisis. I mean, Joe Biden got somebody’s name wrong, and it was headlines. The president gets all kinds of things wrong, completely, you know, is out to lunch at an important NATO summit, and, you know, it’s Wednesday.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is a great piece by two ex-White House ethics lawyers, one Republican and one Democrat. It should alarm every American.

Trump and his family are profiting from the very industries he regulates.

Nearly a million everyday investors lost a combined $3.8 billion on his meme coin while Trump pocketed $636 million.

Then there is all the foreign money. The founders wrote the emoluments clause into our Constitution to stop exactly this. Foreign cash flowing to a sitting president was their nightmare, and we are living it.

Congress has the power to end this. We can ban officials from trading stocks and holding assets that overlap with their duties. We can investigate who paid, who benefited, and whether policy was bought.

Trump’s allies stay quiet because they fear his money and his threats. But we must fight back. Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.
https://t.co/7Kx0kAL9MQ

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

$2.5 million. That’s what a convicted fraudster told fellow inmates he’d arranged to pay to get out of prison early. Not through an appeal, not through a judge, but through a phone call to the president. 

David Gentile defrauded 10,000 investors out of $1.6 billion and was sentenced to seven years. Less than two weeks later, Trump commuted his entire sentence. When federal prosecutors started investigating how that happened, a DOJ official called the U.S. Attorney running the case, and the investigation was shut down within months. 

Not because they ran out of evidence. Because someone in Washington decided they shouldn’t keep looking. 

Welcome to Episode 9 of The Pardon Papers.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Six months, and DOJ never opened a criminal probe into Good's death at all. Dhillon looked into investigating Good's widow instead. Six federal prosecutors quit over it. An FBI agent quit over it.

Minnesota is doing the job Washington refuses to do, and doing it without the evidence Washington is required to hand over. Good's car is still in an FBI warehouse. Pretti's phone is still withheld. A judge in an unrelated assault case had to order records released before anyone outside DHS could see them.

Hennepin County calling this "unprecedented in American history" is not rhetoric. It is a description.

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

Mohammad Paktiawal died in ICE custody. He fought with our troops in Afghanistan. He was not here illegally or a criminal. He worked & had a family. There was no reason for his detention. This ongoing inhumanity is a national shame. Powerful @BillKristol:
https://t.co/vsjELCxUNk

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

More corruption in plain sight.

The government committed $1.6 billion to a company called USA Rare Earth. The private fundraising tied to that deal was led by Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ran for 30 years before handing it to his sons.

His family’s firm was in the financing, and he will not answer a single question about it.

This is the third major critical-minerals deal to follow the same pattern, and two of them run straight through the president’s own family.

Don Jr.’s fund took a stake in Vulcan Elements before the company landed a $620 million Pentagon loan that sent its valuation soaring. Don Jr. and Eric Trump grabbed a 20% stake in a Kazakhstan tungsten project just before it was announced.

The New York Times recently identified at least 14 companies with financial ties to the Trump family or Cantor Fitzgerald that were pursuing critical-minerals projects involving the federal government.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress refuse to lift a finger.

They have oversight power and they are choosing not to use it, because the trail leads to their own president. They are part of a cover-up by inaction.

Every one of these deals demands scrutiny, under oath, with the documents on the table. The American people funded all of it, and they have an absolute right to know whether their government was working for them or quietly enriching Trump, Lutnick, and their families.

https://t.co/JqrbwSbc37

[NoelCaslerComedy @caslernoel]

“POTUS is a man without boundaries, morals or any sense of ethical decorum. Whether in politics or his personal life, the same instincts that allowed him to walk into the dressing rooms of teenage beauty pageant contestants on ‘Miss Teen USA’ are the same defects of character driving his assault on our Constitution and his prodigious grifting.

He has made over 2.2 billion dollars in the first year and a half of his second term.

This staggering number extends to well beyond 6 billion when you add in the haul that his children and extended family are raking in by trading in on their proximity to power.

A nation that has never been a stranger to folks helping themselves to more than their fair share still has no idea what they are really up against when it comes to the Trump clan.

Their avarice and corruption will be a plague upon our country for decades. They will make this land poorer in every way while they enrich themselves.

The Trumps are a people bred for grifting - they take to greed like a duck takes to water.

Trump is using all of the levers of his political power and governmental institutions to enrich himself - and SCOTUS just gave him a green light to fire anyone who stands in his way or seeks to reign in the unethical behavior of his Cabinet.”https://t.co/Ez4vvXwIg7

[Victor Shi @Victorshi2020]

Worth watching this chilling account from Amb. Samantha Power about Elon Musk & Trump ignoring evidence in plain sight that destroying USAID would lead to deaths around the world: “There was no regard for human lives at stake.”

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Last week, the Trump administration spent $1.5 billion of your taxpayer money to buy two immigration detention centers in California from a private prison company called CoreCivic. The deal closed on July 2.

The government now owns the Otay Mesa facility in San Diego County and the California City facility in Kern County. CoreCivic still runs both places under its existing ICE contracts. This sale demands many questions about what it means for immigration enforcement in Southern California, and I’ll be asking them.

As part of the deal, CoreCivic walks away with an estimated $1.1 billion in profit.

Here’s the corrupt part.

President Trump’s own 2025 financial disclosure lists CoreCivic among the stocks he holds. His administration decides how many billions of dollars flow to CoreCivic. When CoreCivic’s stock rises on a government decision, the president personally benefits.

A president should never be able to enrich himself through a choice his own government makes. That is the entire reason conflict of interest rules exist in the first place. Every modern president before this one either sold off their holdings or used a real blind trust to put a wall between the Oval Office and their portfolio. Trump did neither, and holds stakes in dozens of companies that carry federal contracts, from defense firms to detention operators, and his administration keeps directing public money toward them.

Republicans in Congress need to wake up and open a full and public investigation. Not into one company, but into the entire web. Who across this administration holds a financial stake in the contractors their own agencies pay? Who profited, and by how much, from decisions they had the power to shape?

The American people funded these deals.

They have every right to know who else was cashing in.

https://t.co/7LfTca8og1

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of Palantir, called Pope Leo “a Chinese communist agent” for writing that AI must be used to “truly benefit the common good, and is not just used to accumulate wealth and power in the hands of a few.”

Who do you trust? Pope Leo or Mr. Thiel?

[Jared Ryan Sears @JaredRyanSears]

What corporations and billionaires understand is that the government is an investment. Whoever invests the most into it gets the most out of it.

Starting in the 1970s, corporations and wealthy donors dramatically expanded their spending in politics through lobbying and campaign contributions.

That was only the beginning.

To get everything they wanted, they needed to shape the courts and define the public narrative. Think tanks, legal groups, and media influence campaigns were built to reshape public policy.

The Federalist Society was created, setting off a decades-long campaign to dramatically reshape the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Think tanks like The Heritage Foundation designed presidential platforms for the Reagan and Trump administrations.

Slogans were used to sell corporate policies as if they were good for working people.

“Trickle-down economics.”

“Right to work.”

“At-will employment.”

“Deregulation.”

“Free market solutions.”

"School choice."

Corporate-backed ideas were wrapped in the language of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity. The results for working people were anything but.

Weaker unions. Eroded workers' rights. Lower pay. Bigger monopolies. Exploding CEO compensation. Greater corporate profits. Less accountability. And a middle class that was hollowed out while the richest people in the country stockpiled an ever-increasing share of the nation’s wealth.

The top 1% now hold as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

Citizens' United created a political system where corporations and billionaires can spend their fortunes influencing elections, while we're fed the narrative that our problems are caused by immigrants, poor people, teachers, and unions – anyone who can be blamed to distract from those who are rigging the system.

So how do we fix it?

We invest. We invest our time, attention, energy, money, votes, and voices.

We invest by talking to our friends and neighbors. Going door to door. Sharing facts to defeat the lies. Supporting independent media. Backing candidates who refuse corporate money. Pushing better ideas into the public conversation.

Most important of all, we vote.

If you are angry about what this government has become, sitting out will not fix it. Letting corporations be the loudest voice politicians hear will only make it worse.

They have the money, but we have the numbers. We, the people, have the power to take our government back.

But only if we use it.

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

This is communism by the way.

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

Nearly a million people lost BILLIONS on Trump’s crypto scheme while a handful of insiders made a fortune.

This is corruption on a scale our country has never seen.

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

"Every one of these children had a name. They had dreams, loves, and futures. Their lives were as valuable and special as your child’s or mine. They were loved, and somewhere, their families grieve for them."
https://t.co/ieKhd1eArA

[NoelCaslerComedy @caslernoel]

“DJT is a man who likes to break stuff, whether its the lives of teenage girls who resemble his favorite daughter, or the folks who stood up to his unethical business practices, POTUS has even turned against members of his own party, who helped him ascend to his golden throne before falling out of favor and becoming victims of his wrath.

Has such a ridiculous and unsubstantial man ever inspired so much obsequiousness in American life? The Republican Party has been hollowed out of any courage or morality over many decades. John McCain was perhaps the last decent member, but it has mostly been made up of the sort of feckless followers who want to manipulate their base and line their own pockets.

The current GOP will use any measure of Christofascist dogma and plastic patriotism to appeal to the kind of folks who can’t turn down a t-shirt with a flag on it and a pickup truck that makes a lot of noise. Our job is to change this narrative and undermine their false culture with real facts.

We have to save our fellow Americans from themselves, guide them back to reality. In recovery parlance this is called a moment of clarity - many of our fellow citizens are in desperate need of one.

We have become a caricature of what a real country looks like, an oligarchy masquerading as a bastion of freedom. Of course this is not all of us, but it is enough of us to have poisoned the well and allowed a spiritual dis-ease to fester.

Trump appeals to the broken bits in the American personality; he offers a sort of Disneyland for the disinformed.” https://t.co/Ez4vvXwIg7

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

This should be on the front page of every newspaper in America.  

Trump’s DOJ shut down a federal investigation into a coal company owned by one of his closest Senate allies, after it racked up tens of thousands of alleged violations for dumping toxic chemicals into our waterways. 

Welcome to Episode 20 of The Corruption Chronicles.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Gavin Newsom goes off on the Trump Family corruption:

Newsom: And I’m not talking about the $100,000 watches. I’m not talking about the guitars that he’s selling that you didn’t even know about, or the Bibles, or the sneakers. I’m not talking about all that.

I’m talking about what’s happening substantively with these kids and these investments, and the Pentagon contracts they’re receiving on rare earth minerals and drone companies, and all the stuff that’s happening with the Kushner family, the Witkoff family, the “Board of Peace,” which is about getting a piece of the Middle East.

Let’s talk about the UAE and high-value chips, where they’re getting a piece of our national security, where the Biden administration held off. But as long as you can get a deal done with the UAE on the private family businesses, then all of a sudden national security becomes less of an important talking point.

Or how about the tariff relief in places like Vietnam for the golf courses and the development deals, and the dozen other countries that he’s doing business in? How about all the corruption as it relates to the self-dealing with his resorts and all of his assets that the Secret Service and taxpayers are subsidizing? Or directing G7 investments? Or the emoluments issues across the spectrum every day? Or just the day trading literally behind the Oval Office desk, or showing up on your calendar at a company that you just invested in because you know that stock’s going to pop because you’re going to promote it the next day?

All of this happening—this open sewage system. You talk about draining the swamp. He gave it a presidential suite with gold leaf.

And you’re seeing this gross corruption at a scale and scope never before seen in modern American history. This is stuff I don’t even imagine exists at this scale in a year and a half, even in Putin’s Russia or Kim Jong-un’s North Korea.

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

The situation with the Kennedy Center has gone off the rails. It has officially reached levels of pettiness I didn’t think were possible, but Trump is once again defying the odds.   

A court ordered his name removed from the building. He lost, fair and square. So, what does he do? He throws a tarp over the sign that says “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” and just leaves it there.   

Not for a day, not for a week, but for WEEKS. 

A federal judge is demanding answers, because apparently we live in a country where a sitting president has to be hauled into court to explain why he’s hiding a building from the American public. 

A president with a real legacy doesn’t need to paste his name onto someone else’s. And he definitely doesn’t need to hide a sign because a court told him no. 

A weak man with a bruised ego would. And that’s exactly what’s happening here. 

It’s petty, it’s absurd, and frankly, it’s embarrassing.