Posts on Friday, July 4, 2025

"Kilmar Abrego Garcia suffered psychological and physical torture in El Salvador prison, attorneys say" reads the headline from NBC. "Abrego Garcia says he was severely beaten in Salvadoran prison," says NPR's headline. "Kilmar Abrego Garcia says he was beaten and subjected to psychological torture in El Salvador jail," reports the Associated Press. You get the idea. This all stems from the fact that attorneys for "Maryland Dad" — and alleged MS-13 member, human smuggler, and domestic abuser — Kilmar Abrego Garcia claim that he was "subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival" at El Salvador's Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, aka CECOT, "including but not limited to severe beatings,

The conversation about how divided we are here in the United States of America is a never ending one now. Twenty or thirty years ago, talk about "two Americas" was about economic status. Now it is about the great Red/Blue divide. It's a bit much when people blather on about us being more divided than ever before, but that's what you get when public schools stop teaching real American history. A lot of participants in this conversation bring up the specter of a new civil war breaking out here in the Republic. I am not a big fan of throwing around "civil war" like that, but it is being

Last week I visited New York City, a place that for generations has represented the magnificence of the American experiment. The economic dynamism of Wall Street, the fine arts of Broadway, and the sports sanctuaries of Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium have all made the city exceptional. My early-morning walks downtown along the Hudson River, with the Statue of Liberty in sight, reminded me why America is a beacon of opportunity for people from every corner of the world — including my grandparents, who came to escape religious persecution in Eastern Europe. But as I returned home to Auburn, Ala., I learned New York Democrats had chosen Zohran Mamdani,

One year from now, you will not be able to turn around without receiving notice of America’s semiquincentennial jubilee. The jollity of the occasion will not change the fact that it will be seven years premature. The historical significance assigned to July 4, 1776, the date the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress, is befuddling. Without victory in the Revolutionary War, which began over a year earlier, any declarations regarding American independence made during the summer of 1776 would have the same significance today as the “declarations of independence” made by the 11 Confederate States in 1860-61.

Republicans muscled President Donald Trump’s tax and spending cut bill through the House on Thursday, the final step necessary to get the bill to his desk by the GOP’s self-imposed deadline of July 4th. At nearly 900 pages, the legislation is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations. Democrats united against the legislation, but were powerless to stop it as long as Republicans stayed united. The Senate passed the bill, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. The House passed an earlier iteration of the bill in May with just one vote to spare.

U.S. immigration officials have arrested famous Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. — days after his high-profile fight with Jake Paul — for overstaying his visa and lying on a green card application, officials said Thursday. Chávez was detained in front of his home on Wednesday and will be deported to Mexico, where he faces organized crime charges, authorities said. Here’s what to know about this arrest: The 39-year-old boxer is a former middleweight champion hails from Mexico. His father, Julio César Chávez, is one of the most beloved athletes in Mexican history and a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of prisoners might be at risk of executions." — Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Organization, June 26, 2025. Iran... has reportedly executed 1,700 people in 2025 alone -- and it is not even August. US President Donald J. Trump deserves every credit for bombing the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan uranium enrichment plants. However, forcing Israel to terminate its "Operation Rising Lion," just as it was finally giving the Iranian people a glimpse of hope for freedom in the course of destroying Iran's nuclear program and its key institutions of oppression, was a terrible move.

President Trump is finally getting his “big, beautiful” bill. The GOP-led House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in a 218-214 vote Thursday following 29 hours of arm-twisting and deliberation that included the longest floor speech and longest procedural vote in the body’s 236-year history. (snip) “With this bill, every major promise I made to the people of Iowa in 2024 became a promise kept,” Trump said. “We had a national decline. We were a laughing stock all over the world. We had a man as president who shouldn’t have been there,” he said.

Last September, in the waning months of the election, the NY Times published a story titled "How the False Story of a Gang ‘Takeover’ in Colorado Reached Trump." Mike Coffman, the conservative Republican mayor of Aurora, Colo., said he was at home on Tuesday night watching the presidential debate and bracing for the worst... “They’re taking over buildings,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re going in violently.” Mr. Coffman was contrite on Thursday as he told that story. After all, he had helped create the tall tale now sullying his city’s reputation.