raised in Christianity and it's been a while, but from what I recall dismissing the LITERAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS AS WRITTEN IN THE GOSPELS as "pious platitudes" was not the way to get a gold star in Sunday school

ICE now has 3x more funding than the United States Marine Corps. Our hard-earned taxpayer money. Over $170+ billion handed over, and for what?

To rip families apart. To instill fear. To dismantle the very virtues by which this country was built. To help the rich get richer.

1/ Palantir is now poised to combine data gleaned from the DHS, the DOD, HHS, the Social Security Administration & the IRS. And 47's admin also wants access to citizens’ & others’ bank account numbers & medical claims.

In effect, the Supreme Court ruled that only it could decide issues on a national level. And then, with thousands and thousands of people waiting in limbo for resolution of many legally disputed Trump orders, the justices went on summer vacation, not to return until October.

Monstrous:

"They were crying in fear. One of the agents at one point lifted up his shirt, which displayed the gun that he was carrying....The 6-year-old boy was terrified to see the gun. He urinated on himself and wet all his clothing. No one offered him a change of clothing for many hours."

ICE agents in tactical gear chase down and tackle a U.S. citizen in L.A.

After realizing he’s American, they just slink away.

Their only explanation: “Why were you running?”

Probably because two masked men with guns were trying to snatch him.

It’s obvious but worth drawing out what raids of Home Depot’s of all places is about. It’s rounding up people who are really eager for work and for whom there is work, peoples whose labor is in demand. We know this but shows just how far it is from rounding up just the bad guys.

I mean, "rich sexually lecherous explicitly scammy old man arrives to offer faithful community A Deal" is a stable demonic trope in Abrahamic folklore AND YET...

Fear and confusion mounted quickly on Thursday as international students, who make up more than a quarter of Harvard's enrollment, sought clarity or reassurance.

Why are accepting this? Secret police?

NEW: Mahmoud Khalil's attorneys urgently ask Judge Farbiarz to order ICE to permit Khalil to hold his newborn son today "for the most elementary human reasons." ICE has so far denied the request, despite his wife and child having made the 1,500-mile trip. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I hate us

Really hard to square rosy views on democracy with Donald Trump fulfilling a campaign promise to build a foreign gulag for legal immigrants that won him his highest minority vote ever. Americans voted for a telegraphed self-inflicted tariff recession and Democrats get blamed for not going on Rogan.

Being a historian, people ask me if I think the US is living through Germany 1933.

I answer no, analogies are always imperfect but to me it feels more like Russia 1999: a blatant theft of state assets and liberals in a fugue state, refusing to believe the arc of progress is bending against them.

"The days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over."

I've assembled a team of the most horrible perverts and criminals you've ever seen and we're going to fix this country