James Gleick

Alternate lede:

Tom Homan, the top White House border official, scrambled Sunday to carry out an impulsive order by Trump to use ICE agents at airports “to do security like no one has ever seen,” despite their lack of training for the work currently done by officers of the Transportation Security Administration.

He admitted he had no idea what the ICE agents would actually do.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/ice-airports-homan-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VFA.FktN.oBFmz5LzrhD5&smid=url-share

Do you understand why Trump has lifted the oil sanctions that were punishing Iran, the country he’s bombing, and Russia, the country that’s helping it?

Do you understand why Trump is sending 5,000 Marines to sail through the Strait of Hormuz while complaining that none of our friends and allies will help him reopen it?

Here's the whole explanation.

https://no01.substack.com/p/march-19-21-god-is-a-comedian

Underappreciated story: Trump and Bondi have decided to disregard the constitutional requirement that US Attorneys require Senate confirmation. In state after state they install unqualified apparatchiks, and it's up to the courts to discover that these stooges are serving illegally.

Which the courts have done, again and again. But the Trump regime simply ignores the courts and the law. All the work of these US Attorneys' offices is at risk. (1/2)

Be clear about this outrage: Trump and Republicans are attempting in broad daylight to disenfranchise 21 million American voters.

If they want to require a certain kind of ID for voting, they must first provide all eligible voters with that ID. They are making no attempt to do that. It's a Voter Disenfranchisement bill.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/us/politics/trump-voter-id-bill.html?smid=url-share

The Trump bloodhounds have just won in court against an “Antifa cell” belonging to the “Antifa domestic terrorist organization.” Here are some useful antifa facts:

1. There is no antifa organization. You can’t find it, join it, give it money, or identify any leaders.
2. There are likewise no antifa cells, outside of Pam Bondi’s fever dreams.
3. Even so, if you yourself are not antifascist, what’s the matter with you?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-crackdown-on-terrorist-left-notches-a-victory-in-texas

Today in the Kleptocracy.

This matter-of-fact article describes a shameless and spectacular bribery mill at the Pentagon, enough to bring down any previous administration. Want to line your pockets with taxpayer money? Walk right in.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/us/politics/wall-street-access-pentagon.html?unlocked_article_code=1.S1A.fecq.KhjdhnbvQj2f&smid=url-share

The word is "cover up." The Times has found email proof that Kash Patel's FBI combed the Epstein files to protect Trump and 14 others.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/trump-epstein-files-fbi-doj.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SlA.eZnK.neSkFik4rPMr&smid=url-share

Putin's Russia is supporting Iran and helping it target U.S. forces. Our response? A gift to Putin: remove sanctions and relieve pressure on the Russian economy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/world/middleeast/iran-war-putin-russia-energy-oil-prices.html?smid=url-share

On this day 150 years ago, a young Scotsman, Alexander Graham Bell, living at a boardinghouse in Boston, shouted into a metal cone he had improvised, with a parchment diaphragm, attached to a wire that ran to the next room, “Mr. Watson — come here — I want you.” His even younger colleague, Thomas Watson, heard him and came running.

He had no name for this contraption, but we call it a #telephone.

Did AI kill 175 schoolchildren, aged 6 to 12, with a double-tap precision-guided missile strike?

No, AI didn't commit this war crime. Donald Trump did. Pete Hegseth did.

"The people in charge don’t seem to be pondering this, as it’s all a game to them. You can hear it in the despicable language of the lacquered and grotesque Hegseth and his middle-school braggadocio about ‘warfighting’ and ‘the warrior ethos.’”

Will Bunch, must read. Gift link.

https://share.inquirer.com/HAOS9l

Asked why the U.S. has left hundreds of thousands of its citizens stranded in the Middle East, Donald Trump said the following.

(Warning: it's long. Newspapers don't print his raving in full, so we don't get the full picture of his madness. H/t Heather Cox Richardson.)

Why hasn’t the government been ready, Mr. President? (1/6)

ICE and its agents broke so many laws in Minnesota, including the laws against murder and kidnapping. They think they're immune—but maybe not. Here's a prosecutor doing her job.

(Developments largely being ignored in the US press.)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/03/minnesota-investigation-us-immigration-officers?CMP=share_btn_url

“I sometimes wonder if the young realize how extraordinary a time this is, and one that may not last, when any book one may think of is there to be bought on a near shelf.”

—Doris Lessing (1978)

If you are a noncitizen residing in the United States without a valid visa, are you committing a crime?

[This is not an opinion poll. It is a question of fact, and I already know the answer.]

At the New York Historical Society today.

American citizen. No criminal record. Shot to death in his car by #ICE.

Anyone believe the official version?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/us/ruben-ray-martinez-ice-shooting-texas.html?unlocked_article_code=1.N1A.blv7.9lgcRKBKm8BK&smid=url-share

How often does some automated entity demand that you “Verify you are human”?

This historic court ruling is no longer visible on the Times home page. It should be leading the paper with a banner headline. Constitution crisis? Here it is.

The ruling begins by quoting James Madison to say that the Trump administration's attempted "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ...may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Strong words, but stronger are to come. The administration is committing terror. (1/5)

They have their ups and downs, but they’re still the New York Times:

“The last senior member of the royal family to be arrested in connection with a serious crime was King Charles I, who was executed for treason nearly four centuries ago, on Jan. 30, 1649.”

Grift, self-aggrandizement, and self-dealing. Democrats must rise up and make clear that they will never approve this daylight robbery of taxpayer money.

“Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, tou do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

RE: @newsguyusa@flipboard.social

I think the time has come. Go on, Donald. We’re ready.

How is it possible for the United States to have committed $1 billion to the Trump-branded vanity project called "Board of Peace"? Has Congress appropriated these funds?

Anyone?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/world/middleeast/board-peace-pledges-gaza.html?unlocked_article_code=1.L1A.9CaS.wl5U6SmUv29c&smid=url-share

Just how bad was the cock-up in El Paso?

It was bad. Staggering incompetence compounded by the regime's apparently automatic impulse to lie. James Fallows has receipts:

https://fallows.substack.com/p/what-happened-in-el-paso

Trump’s approval rating is so low that he broke Gallup.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/us/politics/gallup-poll-presidential-approval-ratings-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

“This is a five-alarm fire. Every single American is in jeopardy when federal law enforcement operates outside the rule of law at the beck and call of any president, let alone a deranged mad king like Donald Trump.”

Josh Marshall @tpm_rss_bot@mas.to details the Trump Justice Department’s deterioration into thuggery. Be afraid.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/this-is-what-an-out-of-control-doj-looks-like

Screwup Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport
—
The secretary of transportation invented a lie and said the military had neutralized a drug cartel drone. Actually, two officials said testing of counter-drone technology prompted the closure.

I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.

Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.

“Donald Trump has clearly lost control of his emotions, his contact with reality, and such fidelity to truth as he ever had.

This is a problem for everyone on Earth: That a furious 79-year-old has asserted one-man authority to disrupt the world economy, destroy historic alliances, sell pardons to criminals, and conceivably start a nuclear war.”

James Fallows, keeping track of the many “examples of Trump saying and ordering things that his own people know are insane.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/fallows/p/management-under-a-mad-king-the-courtiers?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

“We have become a country where people are disappeared by a paramilitary force that hunts them down in their apartments, on city streets and country roads.”

"We have become a country where a person can be summarily executed in public for protesting that paramilitary force.”

"We have become a country whose federal government deploys military and paramilitary forces in the streets of its major cities, terrorizing the residents in the guise of protecting them.” (1/2)