The cost-effectiveness of relying on AI is pretty much beside the point, at least as far as the cops are concerned. This is the wave of the future. Whatever busywork can be pawned off on tireless AI tech will be. It will be up to courts to sort this out, and if a bot can craft “training and expertise” boilerplate, far too many judges will give AI-generated police reports the benefit of the doubt.
The operative theory is that AI will generate factual narratives free of officer bias. The reality is the opposite, for reasons that should always have been apparent. Garbage in, garbage out. When law enforcement controls the inputs, any system — no matter how theoretically advanced — will generate stuff that sounds like the same old cop bullshit.
And it’s not just limited to the boys in blue (who are actually now mostly boys in black bloc/camo) at the local level. The combined forces of the Trump administration’s anti-migrant efforts are asking AI to craft their reports, which has resulted in the expected outcome. The AP caught something in Judge Sara Ellis’s thorough evisceration of Trump’s anti-immigrant forces as they tried to defend the daily constitutional violations they engaged in — many of which directly violated previous court orders from the same judge.
Contained in the 200+ page opinion [PDF] is a small footnote that points to an inanimate co-conspirator to the litany of lies served up by federal law enforcement in defense of its unconstitutional actions:
Tucked in a two-sentence footnote in a voluminous court opinion, a federal judge recently called out immigration agents using artificial intelligence to write use-of-force reports, raising concerns that it could lead to inaccuracies and further erode public confidence in how police have handled the immigration crackdown in the Chicago area and ensuing protests.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis wrote the footnote in a 223-page opinion issued last week, noting that the practice of using ChatGPT to write use-of-force reports undermines agents’ credibility and “may explain the inaccuracy of these reports.” She described what she saw in at least one body camera video, writing that an agent asks ChatGPT to compile a narrative for a report after giving the program a brief description and several images.
The judge noted factual discrepancies between the official narrative about those law enforcement responses and what body camera footage showed.
AI is known to generate hallucinations. It will do this more often when specifically asked to do so, as the next sentence of this report makes clear.
But experts say the use of AI to write a report that depends on an officer’s specific perspective without using an officer’s actual experience is the worst possible use of the technology and raises serious concerns about accuracy and privacy.
There’s a huge difference between asking AI to tell you what it sees in a recording and asking it to summarize with parameters that claim the officer was attacked. The first might make it clear no attack took place. The second is just tech-washing a false narrative to protect the officer feeding these inputs to ChatGPT.
AI — much like any police dog — lives to please. If you tell it what you expect to see, it will do what it can to make sure you see it. Pretending it’s just a neutral party doing a bit of complicated parsing is pure denial. The outcome can be steered by the person handling the request.
While it’s true that most law enforcement officers will write reports that excuse their actions/overreactions, pretending AI can solve this problem does little more than allow officers to spend less time conjuring up excuses for their rights violations. “We can misremember this for you wholesale” shouldn’t be an unofficial selling point for this tech.
And I can guarantee this (nonexistent) standard applies to more than 90% of law enforcement agencies with access to AI-generated report-writing options:
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment, and it was unclear if the agency had guidelines or policies on the use of AI by agents.
“Unclear” means what we all assume it means: there are no guidelines or policies. Those might be enacted at some point in the future following litigation that doesn’t go the government’s way, but for now, it’s safe to assume the government will continue operating without restrictions until forced to do otherwise. And that means people are going to be hallucinated into jail, thanks to AI’s inherent subservience and the willingness of those in power to exploit whatever, whenever until they’ve done so much damage to rights and the public’s trust that it can no longer be ignored.
Trump’s war on Chicago appears destined to end in a whimper. While he kicked off his invasion of Chicago with memes and a call to arrest J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, his out of control federal agents have reportedly begun to leave the area. That suburban ICE facility you’ve heard so much about?
Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Johnson in a hearing Tuesday said there are currently only four people being held at the Broadview facility, a drastic reduction that comes weeks after detainees there testified they had been crammed into rooms filled with more than 100 people for multiple days.
The decline in population comes as federal immigration agents sent to the area as part of the Trump Administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” enforcement efforts have begun leaving Chicago ahead of a possible return in the spring.
Good, get the fuck out of here.
But while the feds were playing war against the domestic enemy of Chicago, they certainly did plenty of damage. Raids disrupted neighborhoods, businesses, and even parade celebrations. The terror in pockets of the city and surrounding area was palpable. Oh, and CBP fucking shot a lady, claiming that she had rammed the cars of federal agents, was armed with a firearm, and boxed agents in putting them in danger. Here is what the DOJ said occurred back in October:
“After striking the agents’ vehicle, the defendants’ vehicles boxed in the agents’ vehicle, the complaint states,” prosecutors said in a statement when charges were announced last month. “The agent was unable to move his vehicle and exited the car, at which point he fired approximately five shots from his service weapon at Martinez, the complaint states.”
Sounds pretty bad. Really bad, even. Certainly not the sort of thing that the DOJ would just want to drop a month or so later, right?
Andrew S. Boutros, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, filed court documents Thursday morning to dismiss the charges.
So, how did we go from prosecutors stating that Martinez rammed federal vehicles with her car, boxed them in alongside other drivers, was armed, and that all of that is what led to a CBP agent shooting her several times in “self defense”? That one is easy, actually: CBP was lying about what happened.
Martinez’s lawyer, Christopher Parente, indicated during proceedings that he saw the bodycam footage from CBP agents and that it clearly shows that the CBP car swerved into Martinez’s vehicle, not the other way around.
“When I watched the video after this agent says, ‘Do something, b—-,’ I see the driver of this vehicle turn the wheel to the left. Which would be consistent with him running into Ms. Martinez’s vehicle, okay,” Parente said. “And then seconds later, he jumps out and just starts shooting.”
The gun that DOJ referenced everywhere but in the actually charging documents? Yeah, Martinez has a handgun for which she is licensed to conceal and carry in Illinois, and that firearm never made it out of her purse in this entire incident. CBP had no idea she was armed until after she’d been shot.
Oh, and the CBP agent gleefully bragged about just how efficiently he put holes in Martinez’s body.
During a Nov. 5 court hearing, CBP Agent Charles Exum, identified as the agent who shot Martinez, was questioned by Parente about text messages he sent to friends and family after the incident in which he appeared to boast about his shooting skills.
“I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys,” one of those messages said.
When pressed by Parente about the text messages during his testimony, Exum said, “I am a firearms instructor and I take pride in my shooting skills.”
Parente then asked, “So you’re bragging that you shot her five times and gets seven holes, five shots? Are you literally bragging about this?”
Exum responded, “I’m just saying five shots, seven holes.”
And I’m just saying that such assholery is obviously part of the reason the government didn’t think it could win this case.
But what this case should do, if nothing else, is serve as exhibit A in every single conversation anyone anywhere has in which someone points to statements by the government as justification for any of the fascistic bullshit the Trump administration is pulling currently. The feds lie. They lie regularly. And while DOJ can do its best to silently slink away from this whole episode, you can be damned sure civil litigation is already being drawn up.
Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino has already made a name for himself during Trump’s second administration. He began making this name by engaging in an unapproved sweep of the area he controlled in California as Trump was still waiting to be sworn in.
Then he was sent to Chicago by a vengeful Trump who wanted to see as many people in the state harmed for no other reason than he didn’t like the politicians running the state and the city. While Trump was prevented from flooding Chicago streets with National Guard troops, Commander Bovino did everything he could to turn federal forces into full-time assailants. And by “everything,” I mean things from lying about being attacked (to justify force deployments) to personally violating court orders limiting the use of force by federal officers.
Judge Sara Ellis has been handling the lawsuit brought against federal agencies since their invasion of the Windy City. (And she’s already seen one of her orders blocked by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court.) What should be a final ruling (pending review by the appellate court, which has also already placed a stay on this order) has been handed down by Judge Ellis. And that order makes it clear the federal government has done nothing but lie since being forced to answer questions in court.
“While Defendants may argue that the Court identifies only minor inconsistencies, every minor inconsistency adds up, and at some point, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost anything that Defendants represent,” Judge Sarah Ellis wrote about the administration in a scathing 233-page ruling.
And scathing it is. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick does a good job hitting a lot of the low points in this long Bluesky thread. We’ll do more of that here, because the amount of lying done here is staggering in both its expansiveness and its implication: that the Trump administration (in all forms) apparently believes no system of checks and balances can hold it back.
Here’s how little the government cared about the lawsuit brought against it, much less the people it harmed on its way to being sued. From the opinion [PDF]:
Plaintiffs submitted a mountain of evidence, providing the Court with over eighty declarations, numerous videos and articles, and other evidence. Defendants did not rebut anything that Plaintiffs set forth in their declarations or testimony, even with BWC footage.
That’s just galling. Most defendants will at least try to defend themselves from accusations. The government — taking the form of multiple federal agencies participating in Trump’s “Midway Blitz” operation — couldn’t even be bothered to do that. Instead, it just kept on being violent, secure in the knowledge that courts can’t actually keep them from violating rights. They can, at best, only slow them down a bit.
What the government did offer in its defense undercut its claims immediately.
Presumably, these portions of the videos would be Defendants’ best evidence to demonstrate that agents acted in line with the Constitution, federal laws, and the agencies’ own policies on use of force when engaging with protesters, the press, and religious practitioners. But a review of them shows the opposite—supporting Plaintiffs’ claims and undermining all of Defendants’ claims that their actions toward protesters, the press, and religious practitioners have been, as Bovino has stated, “more than exemplary.”
Here comes the litany:
For example, Defendants directed the Court to two videos of agents outside the Broadview facility the evening of September 19, 2025. In those videos, agents stand behind a fence preparing to leave the facility’s gates and disperse what Defendants described as an unruly mob. The scene appears quiet as the gate opens, revealing a line of protesters standing in the street holding signs.
Almost immediately and without warning, agents lob flashbang grenades, tear gas, and pepper balls at the protesters, stating, “fuck yea!”, as they do so, and the crowd scatters. This video disproves Defendants’ contentions that protesters were the ones shooting off fireworks, refusing orders, and acting violently so as to justify the agents’ use of force.
More:
On September 26, 2025, video from an agent’s BWC shows a line of agents standing at least thirty feet away from protesters outside the Broadview facility on Harvard Street. Despite this distance, the agents start yelling “move back, move back” to the protesters and then shoot pepper balls and tear gas at them without any apparent justification.
Still more:
Defendants also highlighted an October 3, 2025 video, presumably to show that agents driving the streets faced constant danger from cars ramming them on purpose. But instead of leaving this impression, the video, which almost entirely consists of a view of the back seat of the car and some dialogue about how the agent’s “body cam is on” and he is “still recording,” suggests that the agent drove erratically and brake-checked other motorists in an attempt to force accidents that agents could then use as justifications for deploying force.
This is a 233-page deconstruction of every lie and false assertion made by the government. There’s a lot to see here and it should be seen because every lie told by the government should mean something to anyone who still cares about democracy.
But we’re only nine pages in and already the judge is telling it like it is, ensuring that no one who doesn’t have the patience to go through the entire opinion will come away with the wrong impression after skimming through the first dozen pages or so:
These are not the only inconsistencies and incredible representations in the record. While Defendants may argue that the Court identifies only minor inconsistencies, every minor inconsistency adds up, and at some point, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost anything that Defendants represent.
Pretty much everyone called to testify on behalf of the government lied to some degree in hopes of salvaging some truly insane (and literally incredible) claims:
[W]hen questioned about these instances in his deposition, [ICE Field Office Director] Hott acknowledged that he did not even know if it was a person that caused the damage to the downspout, much less a protester, and that he did not have proof that the agent’s beard was actually ripped off his face.
[…]
Bovino’s and Hewson’s explanations about individuals in maroon hoodies being associated with the Latin Kings and threats strains credulity.
More on Bovino:
Turning to Bovino, the Court specifically finds his testimony not credible. Bovino appeared evasive over the three days of his deposition, either providing “cute” responses to Plaintiffs’ counsel’s questions or outright lying.
[…]
Most tellingly, Bovino admitted in his deposition that he lied multiple times about the events that occurred in Little Village that prompted him to throw tear gas at protesters.
The entire opinion makes it clear federal officers routinely engaged in unprovoked violence and then lied about their actions in court. They were ostensibly led by Gregory Bovino, who provided an example for them to follow by personally engaging in plenty of unprovoked violence himself and who, when called to testify, acted like the whole thing was beneath him and was a suitable target for his open mockery.
Bovino has since been sent elsewhere, not because Trump wants to stop him from generating further negative press or court precedent, but because Trump wants him to engage in the same sort of unconstitutional cruelty for as long as possible before litigation ensues.
Bovino is the perfect front man for Trump’s bigoted attacks on cities and states he doesn’t like. Like Trump himself, Bovino wraps himself in the flag. And just like Trump, the only reason he does is so he can wipe his ass with it, staining everything it’s supposed to stand for.
Well, well, well. If it isn’t the system of checks and balances. We’ve missed you, buddy!
Long story somewhat short: ICE has been terrible for years, but it’s been much worse under Trump. During Trump’s first regime (~2016-2020), ICE got rocked by a court decision that prevented it from engaging in traffic stops just so it could arrest people for looking vaguely Mexican.
That settlement — secured with the assistance of the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) — was enacted in 2022 during the brief period between Trump Oval Office interloping.
Interlopement or not, it’s still the law of the land in Illinois. And that’s not playing well with Trump’s recent federal invasion of the Chicago area — one spearheaded by Nazi cosplayer Gregory Bovino, last seen violating the law much further south as the commander of a California-based Border Patrol unit.
Bovino chose to violate court orders so often during his short stint in Chicago, he’s been sent elsewhere by the Trump administration. It’s definitely not a sign of disapproval. It’s a vote of confidence that says the presidency will keep changing tables every time it loses a hand to the federal courts.
The Nava consent decree that forbids ICE from doing what it’s been doing in Chicago since before Trump re-grooved his ass marks in the chair behind the Resolute Desk.
And that means a lot of stops, arrests, and ensuing detentions are illegal. And because they’re illegal, people must be freed. The administration continues to act like there’s nothing in the law that prevents it from jailing people who present no flight risk or threat to public safety. That’s definitely not the law of the land and it’s definitely not the law in Seventh Circuit, which has already received notice of the administration’s appeal.
For now, however, that means a lot of people rounded up during Trump’s invasion of Chicago and ICE operations in the area preceding the anti-Democratic Party surge d/b/a “immigration enforcement” will no longer be imprisoned.
District Judge Jeffrey Cummings on Wednesday afternoon ordered the release of at least 313 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between June and early October.
[…]
Cummings has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to immediately release 13 detainees held in Texas, Missouri and other states that both the government and plaintiffs agree were detained in violation of the Castañon Nava settlement that prohibits warrantless immigration arrest in Illinois.
The order [PDF] itself doesn’t limit itself to 13 people, much less the 313 people stated by this Axios article. It says the government must take a look at more than twice this number and provide some sort of evidence as to why this other 300+ should continue to be detained.
To this end, by 12:00 p.m. CST on November 14, 2025, with respect to the subset of 615 individuals discussed on the record, defendants shall provide the Court with their names and specify which of the individuals in this group have been identified by defendants as posing a “high public safety risk” if they were released.
That deadline has come and gone. And the only thing the administration has done is file motions asking for this order to be stayed until this case can be heard by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court. It has offered nothing in defense of those arrests and continued detentions of people it’s unlikely to be able to prove must be indefinitely detained despite being arrested in violation of the Nava Agreement (2022). But it’s apparently hoping the court that didn’t feel Gregory Bovino should be forced to respect the law will have much to say about the consent decree violations it engaged in while Bovino was still running the show in Chicago.
Gregory Bovino’s star will continue to rise. Admitting you lied to a court no longer matters when the entire administration does it on a daily basis. All that matters is that you serve the fascist cause. And the Border Patrol commander sent to handle things in Chicago certainly has the right look for the job.
Between the alt-right hairdo and the wave the looks a lot like a Nazi salute, the guy who used to patrol the southern border in California is now the face of Trump’s federal invasion of Chicago, Illinois. The arrival of federal officers and federal troops has been greeted with protests, public statements, and lawsuits.
Bovino hasn’t actually been sued personally, but as the commander of the collective of bigots engaged in hunting down non-whites and removing them from the country, Bovino is definitely the source of the rights violations currently being litigated.
Bovino prides himself on answering to no one and perpetrating as much violence as possible against those who oppose him. He put his face out there willingly and seems to welcome as much press attention as possible, even as he continues to be the worst version of himself.
His actions have already gained the attention of a federal judge. The unprovoked violence engaged in by federal officers has already been hit with a federal injunction. And Bovino himself was one of the first to violate the court order, captured on camera tossing tear gas into a crowd of protesters despite not doing any of things he was supposed to do before throwing around crowd control munitions: issuing dispersal orders, giving people time to disperse, etc. When caught, he claimed someone had hit him in the head with a rock and suggested the presiding judge had no business telling him what to do since she herself hadn’t been hit in the head with a rock.
“Mr. Bovino and the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he had been hit by a rock in the head before throwing the tear gas, but video evidence disproves this. And he ultimately admitted he was not hit until after he threw the tear gas,” Ellis said Thursday.
The injunction granted by Judge Ellis on Thursday extends temporary restrictions that she issued last month. Judge Ellis ordered federal agents to wear body cameras, give at least two audible warnings before using riot control weapons, and to use those weapons only to “preserve life or prevent catastrophic outcomes.”
She said the restrictions were necessary because immigration agents in Chicago had pointed guns at civilians who were not presenting a physical threat, used pepper spray, deployed tear gas and shot pepper balls.
“I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” Judge Ellis, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, said in a ruling from the bench. She added: “The use of force shocks the conscience.”
Her new order [PDF] says Bovino only part of larger problem — one that takes the form of pretty much every bully and bigot that currently serve as part of Trump’s mass deportation machine:
Plaintiffs have also presented evidence that makes clear that senior officials have encouraged and endorsed federal agents’ targeting of non-violent individuals exercising their First Amendment rights. For example, Defendant Noem has instructed federal agents to “go hard” and “hammer” individuals for “the way they are talking, speaking, who they’re affiliated with.” Defendant Bovino followed this up by informing federal agents that a “free speech zone” outside of the Broadview Detention Center is “now going to be a ‘free arrest zone.’” He later stated in an interview: “If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them. Don’t protest, and don’t trespass.” And during his deposition, he confirmed that he believed federal agents’ uses of force throughout Operation Midway Blitz were “more than exemplary.”
That much makes it clear the administration (in whatever form) will lie about the dangers it faces just so it can continue to amp up its own violence and violent rhetoric. You know who else does that? Bullying children, which is pretty much the entirety of the anti-migrant workforce, as Lisa Needham notes in her rundown of this year’s deportation efforts:
The federal government keeps painting a front-facing, meme-driven picture of ICE, one where they are impossibly tough and skilled, and they get to crack heads because it is so violent out there. But when they are forced to tell the truth in court, their injuries are comically minor, the kind of thing you wouldn’t even go home from work for.
So, which is it? Well, it really is both.
When DHS’s goons are a roving band of masked armed men, they’re tough as hell. And why not? They spend their days arresting schoolteachers and tear-gassing kids from a safe distance away. They’re pretty impervious to harm. That said, they also are little babies, because they don’t believe there should be any consequences for their actions, and even the smallest harm they suffer is an outrage, something they simply can’t comprehend.
And that’s completely expected. It’s an administration filled with some of the most childish people ever to hold high-level government positions. They’ve modeled themselves after Trump’s infantile belligerence and they’ve been rewarded handsomely for prostrating themselves in front of a man who is the embodiment of the phrase “lowest common denominator.” You’d never give a toddler the power to deprive people of their lives or freedoms. And yet, here we are, overrun by toddlers with lots of power and ambition but deliberately unwilling to grow up, even when there’s an entire nation at stake.
CBP commander Gregory Bovino has been given a temporary free pass by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court to continue violating a court order he’s been violating since the lower court first issued it. So, that’s how things continue to go in terms of checks and balances here in the United States. You know, poorly.
Not that we should have expected anything else, now that it’s clear that if things go far enough, the Supreme Court will step in to give Trump whatever he wants and give the country absolutely zero explanation for its actions.
Gregory Bovino is one of those “old school” guys, which means he’s presumably a hot-headed racist who thinks law enforcement should behave more like vigilantes than public servants. That’s why he decided to engage in his own wide-scale anti-migrant effort before Trump was even sworn back into office — an action that had not been cleared by the still-in-office Biden administration.
Trump liked this preemptive bigotry so much he’s given Bovino a leading role in the federal government’s invasion of Chicago. Things are going the way you’d expect, with powerful bigots punching down to inflict misery on anyone who doesn’t look white/MAGA enough to be allowed to remain in the United States.
Bovino, at least, leads from the front. And that’s getting him in trouble. A federal court recently handed down an order restricting the use of crowd control munitions by CBP, ICE, etc. after lots of credible reports surfaced showing federal officers engaging in unprovoked acts of violence, often in direct violation of their own training and use-of-force guidelines.
And it was Bovino who first demonstrated he’s aligned fully with the Trump administration — at least in terms of believing courts don’t actually have any authority over him. He not only stated he only served one person (Donald Trump), but insulted the judge who had issued the order right after he was caught on tape personally violating the court order.
That act of deliberate defiance understandably irritated Judge Sara Ellis. She issued an order demanding Bovino show up in court each day to give her a rundown on use-of-force incidents. It was a reasonable request, given the circumstances. But we’re dealing with an unreasonable person who has the good fortune to be working for an equally unreasonable administration.
As soon as this order was issued, the DOJ and DHS immediately asked for it to be reversed. It hasn’t gotten that yet, but it has obtained a stay from the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court, which means Bovino won’t have to show up in court until there’s a final ruling on this order.
The unsigned opinion from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the request from lawyers from the Trump administration to block U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis’ order that Bovino appear in her courtroom every weekday at 6 p.m. to recap the events of the day and inform her of any use of force.
Ellis’ order “infringes on the separation of powers,” the appeals court ruled.
Ellis’ order “puts the court in the position of an inquisitor rather than that of a neutral adjudicator,” according to the ruling.
It also sets up the court “as a supervisor of Chief Bovino’s activities, intruding into personnel management decisions of the executive branch.”
That this “opinion” is unsigned really signifies nothing. It isn’t actually an opinion. It’s just a stay, which means the Seventh doesn’t actually have to explain its actions in any detail.
A partial list of what Bovino does not have to tell a federal judge happened today:*An agent pushed a City Council member in Albany Park*Agents deployed pepper spray in Albany Park & Evanston*Agents were involved in a car crash in Evanston*An agent pointed a gun at a woman in Evanston
A partial list of what Bovino does not have to tell a federal judge happened today:
*An agent pushed a City Council member in Albany Park *Agents deployed pepper spray in Albany Park & Evanston *Agents were involved in a car crash in Evanston *An agent pointed a gun at a woman in Evanston
There it is. The gloves will stay off, assuming Bovino even considered figuratively putting them on. The legality will remain “unsettled,” which in this legal climate just tends to mean the nation’s higher courts haven’t figured out exactly how they’re going to let this administration keep getting away with it. And Bovino will remain the lawless asshole he’s always been, to the detriment of Chicago and the nation beyond.
60 Minutes is under new management and things are getting stupid faster than you might expect. Last night’s episode featured President Trump, which is currently being described as “nuts.” There are all sorts of crazy moments to call out, but let’s start with the recursively meta nonsense.
60 Minutes edited out a segment where Donald Trump tells them to edit out a segment in which he brags about getting CBS to pay him because of them editing out part of an answer by Kamala Harris, and he notes that CBS clearly did the wrong thing in editing Harris in the same fucking sentence he tells them to edit out what he’s saying.
It is so fucking stupid.
As you’ll no doubt recall, last year, Trump sued CBS over the show. Right before last year’s election, 60 Minutes had interviewed Kamala Harris. As every such news show does, it had edited the interview down to make it fit into the TV time slot. MAGA culture warriors, desperate for anything to culture war about, started screaming that 60 Minutes had edited Harris to sound more coherent. This was nonsense.
What had happened was that in one question, Harris had given a long answer. CBS broadcast part of the answer on 60 Minutes. But it had broadcast a different part of that answer during the CBS Sunday morning show, Face the Nation. This… happens all the time. The full answer was too long. They edited it down to a shorter bit. The two different broadcasts chose different parts. That’s basic, fundamental, editorial discretion.
Given how often Trump is edited to make him sound more coherent, he should appreciate this. But Trump will never, ever care about how much leeway he is given and will always seek to gain whatever advantage he can. So he sued, claiming it was “election interference,” which it wasn’t. And even if it was (it wasn’t) he still won the election.
But Trump’s censor in chief Brendan Carr made it clear that the only way he’d approve Paramount’s (owner of CBS) sale to Skydance was if they first bribed Trump by agreeing to settle this frivolous case. So they paid a $16 million bribe just to get the case settled, while agreeing to install a Trump lackey as an internal censor at the network.
Trump’s full interview was 73 minutes long, but 60 Minutes only aired 28 minutes of it. They then did release the longer interview online along with a transcript, which caused people to look at what was edited. And that included this segment:
TRUMP: And actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not– you have a great– I think you have a great, new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great– from what I know.
I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person. But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me– a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening. I see–
NORAH O’DONNELL: Mr. President–
TRUMP: –I see good things happening in the news. I really do. And I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership, CBS and new ownership. I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.
Again, I feel the need to repeat this because it is so incredibly stupid. Literally in the same sentence where he says CBS had to pay him “a lotta money” because it edited a 60 Minutes interview, he tells them to edit the interview not to air that section. Then he claims “you can’t have fake news.” Even though what he’s claiming is literally fake news. They didn’t pay him because they changed the answer. They paid him to get their merger done. Everyone knows it.
And, yes, I’m sure some people will try to defend this, but come on. There’s no defense. The President views everything in simple terms: “if it helps me, it’s good, if it doesn’t, it should be illegal.” It’s a narcissistic simpleton’s understanding of the world. And he’s in charge. It’s fucking crazy.
Speaking of fucking crazy, there were so many other crazy bits in the interview, but let’s just call out two. After all, the request to edit the section of the interview, while hypocritical, is nothing compared to the blatant corruption he admits to, or his desire to unleash the American war machine on American people.
Let’s start with this: just last week, MAGA loyalist Rep. James Comer released what may be the least self-aware report ever, screaming about how White House aides covered up Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline and because of that he didn’t know who he was pardoning, meaning those pardons should be null and void.
This comes the same week that people are raising serious questions about White House aides covering up the true nature of Trump’s physical and mental decline. And, now he’s admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning—the very thing the Comer report claims means the pardons are void.
Two weeks ago, Trump (or whoever within the White House) pardoned CZ, the founder of Binance, who had pleaded guilty to money laundering. Though, when asked about it that day, Trump appeared to have no idea who CZ was, even though he had also (just coincidentally) given billions to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business.
And even though he’d flubbed that question when he was asked about it right after the pardon was announced, when 60 Minutes asked him about it, he doubled down—seemingly proud of his ignorance. Which is bold, considering his administration’s entire argument against Biden’s pardons rests on the claim that Biden didn’t know who he was pardoning:
O'DONNELL: Why did you pardon Changpeng Zhao?TRUMP: Are you ready? I don't know who he isO'DONNELL: His crypto exchange Binance helped facilitate a $2b purchase of World Liberty Financial's stablecoin. And they you pardoned him.TRUMP: Here's the thing — I know nothing about it
From the full (unedited) transcript, which is way worse than that short clip above:
NORAH O’DONNELL: This is a question about pardons. The Trump family is now perhaps more associated with cryptocurrency than real estate. You and your son– your sons, Don Jr. and Eric, have formed World Liberty Financial with the Witkoff family.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Helping to make your family millions of dollars. It’s in that context that I do wanna ask you about crypto’s richest man, a billionaire known as C.Z. He pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Looked at this, the government at the time said that C.Z. had caused “significant harm to U.S. national security”, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, are you ready?I don’t know who he is.
Trump’s own administration is claiming Biden’s pardons are invalid because he didn’t know who he was pardoning. And Trump just proudly announced, on camera, that he has no idea who CZ is.
Then he admits that his sons basically told him to do this for their crypto business:
My sons are involved in crypto much more than I– me. I– I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry. And if we’re not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%. This man was, in my opinion, from what I was told, this is, you know, a four-month sentence.
But this man was treated really badly by the Biden administration. And he was given a jail term. He’s highly respected. He’s a very successful guy. They sent him to jail and they really set him up. That’s my opinion. I was told about it.
By who? Who told you about it? A good reporter would have stepped in and asked that question, but this is the new Bari Weiss 60 Minutes where you won’t see follow-ups like that. Or if you did, they’d be edited out.
He continues:
I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.
Again, “who told you this?” is the next question any reporter should be asking. O’Donnell did not. Though she at least did point out that he pleaded guilty to allowing terrorist groups to engage in money laundering, which seems notable for a guy who keeps talking about fighting crime.
NORAH O’DONNELL: The government had accused him of “significant harm to U.S. national security”–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That’s the Biden government.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Okay. Allowing U.S. terrorist groups to, you know, essentially move millions of dollars around. He pled guilty to anti-money laundering laws. That was in 2023. Then in 2025 his crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. And then you pardoned C.Z. How do you address the appearance of pay for play?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, here’s the thing,I know nothing about it because I’m too busydoing the other–
Um. Isn’t that exactly why your administration is claiming Biden’s pardons don’t count?
NORAH O’DONNELL: But he got a pardon–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can only tell you that–
NORAH O’DONNELL: He got a pardon–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Norah, I can only tell you this.My sons are into it. I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good. You know, they’re running a business, they’re not in government. And they’re good– my one son is a number one bestseller now.
So here Trump admits (1) he doesn’t know who CZ is, then (2) admits that basically his sons are the ones into cryptocurrency and “not in government,” and effectively admits that (3) he pardoned CZ on the advice of his sons, who directly profit from the pardon through their cryptocurrency business, while claiming ignorance of the entire arrangement.
This isn’t just yet another example of the most corrupt pay-for-play administration in the history of the United States but one that literally does everything it falsely accuses past administrations of doing, but way worse. Just as they’re claiming that Biden’s pardons weren’t valid, Trump is effectively admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning, but he’s doing it to help his corrupt sons.
And I won’t even get into the frenzy MAGA continues to go through about Hunter Biden supposedly enriching himself by using his father’s name. Remember all those stories claiming payoffs to the “Biden family”? Funny how those folks are all silent about the Trump family (1) actually doing what they falsely accused Biden of doing and (2) doing it way, way, way worse.
Speaking of crime, another part of the interview involves the President falsely claiming that immigration enforcement is targeting criminals (leaving aside that he keeps pardoning criminals).
When O’Donnell asks about CBP’s tactics in Chicago—tear-gassing residential neighborhoods, smashing car windows—Trump’s response is to call for more violence:
O'DONNELL: Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?TRUMP: No. I think they haven't gone far enough.
NORAH O’DONNELL: More recently, Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the– by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama. We’ve been held–
NORAH O’DONNELL: You’re okay with those tactics?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, because you have to get the people out. You know, you have to look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown outta their countries because they were, you know, criminals. Many of them are people from jails and prisons. Many of them are people from frankly mental institutions. I feel badly about that, but they’re released from insane asylums. You know why? Because they’re killers.
Note the question: she’s asking him about ICE (actually CBP) tear gassing residential neighborhoods and smashing car windows. And he says “they haven’t gone far enough.” He literally thinks he should be able to have the military attack Americans.
And he’s completely full of shit about targeting “criminals and murderers.” The vast, vast majority of them are not. Over 90% of those being grabbed have never been convicted of a violent crime. We already know that Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller has told immigration officials to just grab anyone they can and to ignore any efforts to target actual criminals (because Miller knows there just aren’t that many in reality—it was all a myth they fed Fox News to get Trump elected).
But Trump is so disconnected from reality he doesn’t know that.
And speaking of disconnected from reality: he still thinks migrants “seeking asylum” means they’re literally from mental institutions. He’s been making this claim for years. No one has corrected him. No reporter has asked him to clarify. The President of the United States genuinely appears to believe that foreign governments are emptying psych wards and shipping patients to America because they’re “seeking asylum.”
So let’s recap: in a single interview, the President (1) suggests CBS edit out his complaints about CBS editing while simultaneously claiming CBS’s past editing was corrupt enough to sue over, (2) admits he pardoned someone he’s never met on the advice of unnamed people who are most likely his sons who profit directly from that pardon—the exact scenario his own party claims invalidates Biden’s pardons, and (3) endorses escalating violence against American citizens in residential neighborhoods while lying about who’s being targeted and seemingly unable to comprehend who the violence is actually being used against.
We have a President so catastrophically disconnected from reality that he’ll pardon anyone his sons tell him to, endorse any level of violence his advisors suggest, and contradict himself in the same sentence without noticing. The people around him—his kids, his advisors, his handlers—do the things they’ve spent years accusing others of doing (except way worse), and Trump happily goes along with it because he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care. They get away with it, and they do it again, more brazenly.
The media that’s supposed to be holding him accountable has instead hired a Trump-approved censor to monitor their coverage and installed an inexperienced right-wing propagandist to run their newsroom. So when Trump sits down for an interview and admits on camera that he’s doing exactly what he’s claiming others should be jailed for… they don’t follow up or ask any tough questions.
As of this moment, the National Guard is indefinitely prevented from deploying within the Chicagoland area. The court order was issued pending the Supreme Court’s decision to rule on the matter. And because this administration is a walking, talking clown show, the information that SCOTUS is getting on the matter is hilariously stratified depending on who they’re talking to.
President Donald Trump‘s administration has told the U.S. Supreme Court he needs to deploy National Guard troops to the Chicago area in part because local police have failed to respond to what the Justice Department described as mob violence by people protesting his aggressive immigration enforcement.
Those law enforcement agencies have given the nine justices a starkly different account of protests they called limited in scale, detailing in court filings how they have responded on specific dates and explaining how a unified command they set up to coordinate efforts dealt effectively with the demonstrations.
In other words, the Trump administration is pleading the court to let it send armed troops into the third largest city in the country to protect the very people who are essentially telling the court, “Meh, we’re fine.”
That won’t stop Trump, obviously, because this was never really about safety in cities or protecting federal agents. This is purely about pushing to see just how much this administration can get away with and, to go tinfoil hat on you for a moment, to begin putting the chess pieces on the right parts of the board come election time. Major city after major city will see the attempted deployment of armed forces. Trump recently stated that he will send “more than the National Guard” if needed. I’ve seen Independence Day. I know how this works.
So, what protects us from whatever Trump’s version of “checkmate” is? Multiple things, to be sure. Popular uprising. Overcoming whatever obstacles he constructs in the midterm elections. Organizational efforts to undermine his lawless activity wherever possible.
Two Illinois National Guard members told CBS News they would refuse to obey federal orders to deploy in Chicago as part of President Trump’s controversial immigration enforcement mission — a rare act of open defiance from within the military ranks.
“It’s disheartening to be forced to go against your community members and your neighbors,” said Staff Sgt. Demi Palecek, a Latina guardswoman and state legislative candidate from Illinois’s 13th District. “It feels illegal. This is not what we signed up to do.”
Both Palecek and Capt. Dylan Blaha, who is running for Congress in the same district, described growing unease among Guard members after the White House federalized 500 troops – including members of the Illinois and Texas National Guard – to secure federal immigration facilities and personnel in the Chicago area.
“I signed up to defend the American people and protect the Constitution,” Blaha said. “When we have somebody in power who’s actively dismantling our rights — free speech, due process, freedom of the press — it’s really hard to be a soldier right now.”
Some of this isn’t new. In other cities, we’ve had National Guard members displeased with their use as political pawns in mission-less deployments to patrol peaceful cities. But I’m unaware thus far of any instances of them actually refusing orders. Such a refusal, should the order be ultimately deemed lawful, would be grounds for discharge, imprisonment, and so on. It’s a big freaking deal and would generate a ton of attention.
Which is precisely why it needs to happen.
Asked if she would refuse a direct order to deploy to Chicago, Palecek didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. I would definitely say no,” she said. “I’m not going to go against my community members, my family and my culture. I believe this is the time to be on the right side of history.”
“Look at 1930s, 1940s Germany,” Blaha said. “There is a point where if you didn’t stand up to the Gestapo, are you just actively one of them now?”
It’s worse than that. Nazi Germany didn’t have social media, cell phone cameras, or the internet by which all of this chaos can be shared in real time. Whatever sins the German people committed by failing to stop Hitler’s party when they could, and they very much did commit those sins, it’s still true that the average German wasn’t nearly as informed as to what the Nazis were doing compared with the access to information that the American people have today. No soldier can claim ignorance. If they participate, they are knowingly complicit, full stop.
The scary part is how unfortunately rare this sort of bravery is in the military. In fact, it seems many in the military are fully embracing Trump’s fascistic tendencies.
Both Blaha and Palecek said they’ve faced retaliation for speaking publicly. Blaha disclosed that his security clearance was suspended by the Defense Department after posting a viral video urging soldiers to disobey unlawful orders. “They twisted my words,” he said. “I have about 30 days in order to provide them with a written response.”
Retribution, Palecek added, is “real.” She’s received death threats since denouncing the deployments and launching her political campaign. “It weighs on you mentally after a while,” she said.
Still, both say silence is not an option. “We were trained to stand up for what we believe in and stand up for the American people,” Blaha said.
And stand up for the Constitution, too.
Look, it must be very difficult to be a good person in the National Guard right now. You just never know when you’re going to be asked to do battle with your fellow Americans. But an oath is an oath and we should all expect, not just hope, our soldiers to behave like patriots.
Stitt is standing alone, facing a Republican party that only represents itself — a collection of cowards who are hoping to leverage their subservience to Trump with their constant catering to the most bigoted members of their voting bloc into lengthy careers in the field that used to be known as “public service.”
Mr. Stitt on Thursday said, “We believe in the federalist system — that’s states’ rights,” adding, “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”
Mr. Stitt stressed that he supported President Trump’s efforts to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and ensure “law and order” in cities like Chicago and Portland, Ore. But he worried about the precedent that was being set by the guard deployment and how it could be used by a president from another party.
As has been noted here before (repeatedly), the Trump administration is all for federalism when it applies to states rejecting federal laws Trump doesn’t agree with. When it comes to “blue” states, however, Trump doesn’t believe they’re allowed to fight for their own rights, even when the law says otherwise.
The Trump administration is hoping to dodge injunctions blocking his martial law plans for “Democrat” cities like Portland and Chicago by mobilizing National Guard units from other states — often with the explicit permission of the Republicans governing those states. We knew it was a lie the moment the words fell out of her mouth, but Trump’s actions in recent days make it clear that only “liberal” cities will be targeted by martial law-esque deployments of military troops. First, it was Los Angeles. Now, it’s both Portland, Oregon and Chicago, Illinois.
The courts aren’t exactly helping here. While federal courts have found reason to block Trump’s takeover of local National Guard units, the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court (which covers both California and Oregon) seems inclined to rule in favor of the president and the apparently unlimited extent of executive power. If the case in Chicago generates a circuit split, we’re no better off. In the past, this sort of thing might have provoked a lengthy discussion by the Supreme Court. These days — under Trump 2.0 — the Supreme Court is more likely to give Trump what he wants without bothering to explain to the millions of Americans affected why it chose to do so.
Governor Stitt’s dissent could have been a bit more powerful, too. While he raises good points about how apoplectic the GOP would have been if Biden had pulled this shit, he also thinks it’s not generally a bad idea to engage in martial law, so long as you force the local troops to go to war with the fellow state residents.
Instead, Mr. Stitt said, Mr. Trump should have moved to federalize the troops in Illinois first.
Stitt’s attempt to hedge this mild (but still surprising!) criticism of Trump’s National Guard deployments probably won’t save him from the wrath of a wholly subservient GOP. He should expect to be pilloried, then primaried, for even suggesting there might be a better way to engage in martial law. Still, it says something about how far Trump has strayed over the line of acceptable executive behavior that even people who know they’ll be punished for speaking out are doing so and, better yet, making it clear the GOP would have gone nuclear if any Democratic leader attempted to do things Trump is doing on a daily basis.
Almost every time people protest the government, the government decides to get on the wrong side of the law. This is something every administration is guilty of, but under Trump, attacking protesters and journalists has become the rule, rather than the exception.
Plenty of litigation has arisen from the protests greeting Trump’s uber-aggressive pursuit of migrants. Under Trump, the expected disregard for protected First Amendment activity (protesting, journalism) has expanded to include a disregard for multiple other constitutional amendments, including the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
The Trump administration treats any dissent as an act of war against the United States. And his federal agencies treat documentation of government actions as acts of terrorism. On top of all of this is this administration’s blessing of federal agents concealing their identities, which has encouraged them to violate rights more frequently — and more violently — because they know they can’t be easily identified.
Chicago (specifically) and Illinois (more generally) are the new war zones for the Trump administration. Protests prompted by unprovoked violent acts by federal officers have proven to be all the excuse the administration needs to engage in more violence and an expansion of executive power.
Tim Geigner covered a lot of this last week, discussing restraining orders issued against federal officers and the constitutional end-around being performed by the Trump administration with its use of Texas National Guard troops to perform its invasion of Chicago.
But here’s how everything got to that point. And I feel it’s worth looking at more closely because it so clearly demonstrates the cruelty we’re dealing with. The first thing this incarnation of the federal government does is pick a fight. Then it responds (violently) to the reaction it has deliberately provoked.
Body-camera video of a Border Patrol agent involved in the shooting of a woman who was allegedly chasing agents in Brighton Park over the weekend shows an officer saying, “Do something, b—-,” before pulling over and shooting the woman five times, the woman’s attorney said in federal court Monday.
The video appears to contradict the government’s allegation that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire on her late Saturday morning on Kedzie Avenue near 39th Street, her attorney, Christopher Parente, said at a detention hearing at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.
Whenever a major news agency uses the phrase “appears to contradict” in reference to federal government claims, I’m inclined to believe said footage directly contradicts those claims. On top of that, there’s security cam footage that absolutely refutes federal officers’ claims that they were pursued by a “convoy” of “ten” allegedly hostile vehicles.
This attack has understandably resulted in protests and news coverage. Just as predictably, this has resulted in more unprovoked aggression from federal officers, which includes one officer’s decision to fire a whole bunch of pepper balls at peaceful protesters, despite being in a position even violent protesters would be unable to reach.
Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide. Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray.
“I invited them to repentance,” Black, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), said in an interview. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”
But when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire.
CW: protester being struck in the head by a pepper ballFootage I took earlier of the moment Reverend David Black, a regular protester outside of the Broadview Detention Center, was shot in the head with a pepper ball by ICE agents on the roof of the facility.
Black is one of the plaintiffs engaged in a lawsuit against federal officers and their tactics. And now — ahead of the expected deployment of [checks notes] Texas National Guard troops to Chicago — the government is restrained (judicially, but probably not in actuality) from doing more of the stuff observed in the video posted above.
The restraining order [PDF] says all sorts of things federal officers already likely know to be true, but have chosen to ignore because most of them are bullies who’ve found an outlet for their aggression that includes health care benefits and a decent pension. You know, things like not beating, pepper spraying, or arresting journalists, peaceful protesters, and — more directly — peaceful members of the clergy. It also limits the use of riot control weaponry to when it’s truly justified, rather than just whenever officers feel like firing off a magazine full of pepper balls.
But there’s little reason to believe this will actually change anything. ICE will continue to act as though it’s above the law because… well… it’s backed by an administration that spends each and every day above the law. While that’s horrific on its own level, it can often feel abstracted. And that’s why it’s necessary to see what this all looks like on the ground. It’s something that personifies the cruelty of this administration. It’s officers yelling “Do something, bitch!” before filling a person full of bullets. And it’s federal officers standing on a roof purposely firing pepper spray rounds at someone on the ground just because they’re pretty sure they’ll get away with it. On top of all of this is an administration that honestly wants to kill people who disagree with it. If it didn’t have this ultimate desire, it wouldn’t be sending the military into cities that are not experiencing anything close to the violent unrest that has justified National Guard deployments in the past.
It’s Dirty Harry politics — thuggery masquerading as law and order that wanders around provoking confrontations in hopes of eliciting any reaction it can, however implausibly, use to justify deadly force. Don’t let them get away with it.
