Don't Forget the Corruption

In the midst of the Trump regime's political repression and abduction of people from the streets, promotion of disease, climate change, and death on our roads, and their direct murder of people around the world*, it's important not to forget the abject financial corruption they carry out every day.

Economic analyst Steve Rattner, whose charts I share in almost all of my BlueSky round-ups, recently pointed out that Trump and some of his closest pals have raked in about $2 billion on the Trump meme coin. That's at the same time that a couple million of our fellow citizens have lost $4.3 billion.

On the same day, CBS reported on Trump's latest "coin dinner." (What are these terms I am forced to learn? Meme coin? Coin dinner? I hate this.) Heather Cox Richardson put it this way: 

...more than half of the people competing for seats at [the dinner] use cryptocurrency exchanges that bar U.S. customers, meaning they likely belong to people outside the U.S. 

You have to compete for seats at the dinner. Because of course you do. Compete with other foreign nationals for access to the president of the United States. Who, if the previous dinner is any indication, will not actually be present in any meaningful way. 

He's just ripping them off, like the 2 million Americans who bought his coin. 

__

* This includes wars by whatever name they are called, blowing up people in boats, empowering Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, and defunding USAID. And I know I have forgotten too many other things.  

Abolish DHS

There was news today that in the raid on Ilhan Omar's house on Monday, Homeland Security Investigations personnel seized the Congresswoman's cell phone. As if there would be evidence on her phone about documents her late father filed when she was 12 years old. They have also subpoenaed members of her family. I didn't see information on which members, but the only relevant one — if this witch hunt is actually about immigration — is deceased. Can we say fishing expedition?

The raid on Omar's home and her ongoing persecution has additional relevance as we hear about DHS's plans for a new investigative force called ERO ONE, funded to the tune of $100 million of our money, which they got through the gigantic bad bill passed by spineless Republicans last year. 

ERO ONE stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations Overwatch and National Security Enforcement, and it's a domestic surveillance operation that will soon be enacted early next year with bases in 26 cities across the country: Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas, D.C., Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Harlingen (Texas), Houston, Laguna Niguel (California), Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Paul, and Williston (Vermont).

The ACLU's analyst 

noted that immigration officials across agencies have been using an excessive amount of surveillance tools for years, including their “Stingray” cell tower simulators, automatic license plate readers, and tools that track location from cellphones. They use a facial recognition and biometric collection app called Mobile Fortify, a Palantir app called ImmigrationOS to track immigrants’ movements, and buy data from LexisNexis to identify someone’s family and work history. ERO ONE would draw on all of that information, plus an expanded group of sources to reach into the private lives of anyone it wants, intelligence experts said.

We may be paranoid, but they are out to get us.

Indigenous Peoples' Day 2026

Yesterday for Indigenous Peoples' Day, I wanted to say two things before I was so rudely interrupted by the Trump regime and its illegal actions.

One was that it was the 150th anniversary of victory of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho over General George Custer at Little Big Horn. The Black Hills Powwow reenacted Custer's Last Stand (available on YouTube video)... including women veterans of the U.S. army dancing over Custer's battle flag. 

The other was that I did not know how we came to be officially celebrating the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples' Day until I read about it from Ashley Fairbanks, the Anishinaabe storyteller and activist who most recently created the Stand with Minnesota website that helped fund many people, businesses, and organizations during the ICE/DHS invasion of Minnesota (Metro Surge). 

Yesterday Ashley posted this to BlueSky, which told how it happened. 

To summarize: While Berkeley had done it first, replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day in 1992, there was no follow-through elsewhere. 

By 2014, Ashley was working as a policy staffer for a Minneapolis City Council member. She wrote the city policy, saw its approval through the city council, and planned the celebration. And — graphic designer that she is — she made the poster too:


Please read her full post, because the experience was not an unalloyed good. But this was a major part of the outcome:

since mpls passed it, over 220 cities have passed similar ones. 

And now people like me take it for granted because of the work she did.
 

Ilhan Is What Democracy Looks Like

I wanted to write about Indigenous People's Day today, but the news about the DHS raid on Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's Washington, D.C., home makes that impossible. 

So far it sounds like the search warrant was immigration-related, supposedly about documents her now-deceased father filled out when her family emigrated as refugees when she was a child. It could be completely fabricated, or it could be some minor error that she is not responsible for. Who knows. Either way, she didn't do it herself and it's unlikely any evidence of it would be at her home in Washington.

According to several immigration attorneys I've read online, the statute of limitations is past and the fact that it was her parent signing both make it all but impossible that there's a case against her, or that a warrant should even have been approved.

As with the renewed pursuit of Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, though, I have a feeling there will be more trumped up charges and accusations to come. These people are salivating to distract from their own misdeeds and illegalities. There have been years of right-wing conspiracy theories about Omar having married her brother in her first marriage, for instance, and more recently there were attempts to prove financial wrong-doing by her current husband.

They will make every attempt to drag her down, but Minneapolis and the Twin Cities will be with her. 

Art by Sean Lim.
 

Two Hot Days

It has been 90°F both yesterday and today in the Twin Cities, and yes, it's a third of the way through October. So it was a nice on an individual level but a frightening reminder of what's coming in the future. 

We're looking toward El Niño 2.0 in 2027, with probably more drought in this part of the country, and knowing that these will still be some of the cooler years compared to those of the future.
 

How to Make a Promised Livestreamed Execution Even Worse

Yes, the fact that Pete Hegseth and Trump plan to execute a man in a wheelchair by firing squad on livestream is so reprehensible it's not possible to put it into words. It has been denounced by Republicans, intelligence and counter-terrorism experts, and the Pope, as well as the more obvious members of the Democratic party. 

But it's also just another example of how bizarre this Trump timeline is. 

Here's a screenshot of Hegseth's interview where he made the statement about the livestream:


That's Hegseth on the left, a bit hard to recognize because of the hat, and interviewer Jack Posobiec on the right. 

The first piece of bizarro: Am I the only one who thought Posobiec looked like Colin Jost playing Hegseth on Saturday Night Live?


Was he trying to look like Jost looking like Hegseth?

The second piece of bizarro: The fact that our country's Secretary of Defense, so-called, is giving an official interview to someone like Posobiec in the first place should be a scandal all by itself. 

Read the list of twisted lies Posobiec has put out into the world, documented on his Wikipedia page. This is a man who goes out of his way to create anti-truth in ways that even Donald Trump would find hard to follow. I know that's hard to believe, since Trump lies more times per day than any of us can keep up with.

Posobiec's name is not well known outside of semi-professional Right-wing watchers, though it should be. He's part of the rot at the base of the American Right, and until people like him are driven back into their fetid corners, there's no "both sides" or "working across then aisle" possible.

Four Words for Trump

I saw this on Rachel Maddow earlier this week.

In an Economist/YouGov survey of registered voters, taken between September 11 and 14, 2026, people were asked what words they would use to describe Trump.

The top four words, in order, were:

1. Corrupt
2. Dangerous
3. Out-of-touch
4. Cruel

Racist was in a tie for number five with bold... which I guess doesn't have to be seen as positive. Yeah, I can see some people who think he's corrupt, dangerous, and cruel also acknowledging that he's bold. 

Axios has the percentages.

A Bridge Sign

In the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, the signs on the bridge are about voting.

Here's a nice one that one of the bridge people made:

Happy Birthday, Arthur

Today is the 30th anniversary of the first airing of the Arthur children's animated television show. I'm not sure if it first aired only on WGBH in Boston, or if it was immediately on PBS nationwide, but soon afterward, three-year-old Daughter Number Three-Point-One was watching it, and her parents alongside her.

She watched it for years after that, and we read many of the books as well.

I'm not sure if we had read any of them before the show was on or not. At some point we went back to the earliest books, and had a used library copy of the first book, Arthur's Nose. 

Arthur looked quite a bit different in that book:

According to this NPR story about the anniversary, when Arthur's creator, Marc Brown, began his second Arthur book, Arthur's Eyes, which is about Arthur getting glasses, he needed to show the character facing the viewer and the long nose made it impossible to see Arthur's mouth. So he shortened the nose a bit:

Even with altered, that face was still quite a way from the oval shape of television's Arthur, who really looks nothing like an aardvark. (On the other hand, the Arthur of Arthur's Eyes looks like a boomer dad more than a third grader.)

The Arthur show ended up running for 25 seasons and holds a special place in the hearts of many millennials and Gen Zers. And their parents, if I'm any measure.

Five Hundred Kavanaugh Stops, or More

Instead of saving the image of this ICE challenge coin about hunting humans for the October BlueSky round-up...

...I'm using it today with this from ProPublica:

The government *still* isn’t tracking how often immigration agents detain U.S. citizens. We are.

500+ Americans have been handcuffed, held at gunpoint or held against their will in Trump’s second term. Our tally is almost certainly an undercount.

 Federal agents have detained at least 70 children and teens who are American citizens. Some were handcuffed or zip-tied.

In one instance, a 15-year-old with disabilities was handcuffed outside a school in Los Angeles when agents mistook him for an alleged gang member. 

100+ Americans have been held after agents questioned their citizenship. Nearly all of them were people of color. They say they were profiled — detained because of their skin color, accents or jobs.

“ICE isn’t looking for criminals. They’re looking for Latinos,” one said. 

Fernando Vasquez, an 18-year-old citizen, was on break from work when agents chased and handcuffed him, then put him in their truck. After realizing their mistake, the agents left the teen alone in the woods, with no way to get home.  Then they threw his ID out of the truck.

Hundreds of Americans were also held while they were engaging in their First Amendment rights. 60+ were held while they were filming. 

Others were arrested while trying to protect colleagues. Quentin Williams, a staffer at Minneapolis' Roosevelt High, was trying to help a teacher when he was shoved by Greg Bovino and tackled by agents. He was charged with assault, but like others, his case was dismissed. [Williams has filed a claim against the federal government.]

Among the most jarring trends we found: 36 U.S. citizens were not allowed to contact their family or a lawyer. 

We spent months compiling every case we could find of immigration agents detaining Americans. We did it because the government hasn't. 

And now, we're sharing every one of those cases with you. Explore our database. 

Collectively, these cases show that as the administration has relentlessly pursued immigrants, federal agents have run roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens too. Read our investigation.  

The lying liars at DHS, who created the puerile challenge coin about hunting humans, denied to ProPublica that they racially profile people or zip-tie children, despite all the evidence to the contrary. 

Label? No Label

I've mentioned cartoonist Mike Lukovich a number of times on here, and I may have shown his work in my social media round-ups at other times as well. 

Here's one of his cartoons from the past week:

I think he's captured both the topic he's addressing and the likenesses of his subjects. 

So much so that I think the cartoon is undermined by the fact that there's a "Trump family" label on Eric Trump's shoulder.

With apologies to Lukovich, isn't the cartoon better without it?

I imagine he considered it that way. I wonder how it was decided that a label needed to be included. Was it because of an editor, maybe?

Sigh.

Are there really people at this point (at least ones who look at political cartoons) who wouldn't recognize the Trump gang?
 

Why the Russian People Are Poor

I don't pay that much attention to international economic lists, believe it or not, so I was a bit surprised to learn that Russia has a smaller GDP than the U.K. 

Or Canada, for that matter (on the UN's list, at least).

Russia has 146 million people, while the U.K. has just under 70 million and Canada has just under 42 million, to share in that bounty.

For comparison, the U.S. has about 2.3 times as many people as Russia, but 13.5 times the GDP. 

Despite Russia's relatively low GDP, it supports a larger military than either Canada or the U.K., and of course is fighting a significant war in Ukraine. Plus it carries out intelligence operations of varying types internally and around the world that cost who knows how much. 

Combined with its oligarchy and corruption, wasting even more money, its people live in misery and are embittered about the very idea of government.

That is its #1 export, which the Trump regime is doing its best to bring to the United States.