This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for Tuesday:
The Department of Justice again insisted that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi had no hand in dropping another case against one of her brother Brad Bondi’s clients facing felony wire fraud charges.
ABC News reported that Missouri federal prosecutors this week agreed to voluntarily dismiss an indictment against Sid Chakraverty, a property developer represented by Brad, co-chair of the Investigations and White Collar Defense practice at Paul Hastings.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the DOJ agency that oversees the nation’s immigration courts, announced the change on Wednesday in a final rule scheduled for publication in the Federal Register the following day.
Under the rule, EOIR’s director, with Bondi’s approval, can “designate or select any attorney to serve as a temporary immigration judge” for six-month renewable terms. That means the department can bypass earlier restrictions limiting temporary appointments to former immigration judges, certain administrative law judges, or Justice Department attorneys with at least a decade of immigration law experience.
The department argued those restrictions were “needlessly narrow” and hampered efforts to manage an immigration court backlog that peaked at more than 4 million cases earlier this year.
“Immigration law experience is not always a strong predictor of success as an IJ,” EOIR wrote in the rule, pointing to permanent judges hired without prior immigration law backgrounds who it says went on to become “exemplary” jurists.
The move has alarmed immigration advocates, who warn that it risks turning the courts into political instruments of the Trump administration’s mass deportation push.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a recruitment message on social media this summer saying, “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.”
Setting aside the racist overtones of this messaging, even DHS itself says it’s not true. Border crossings have fallen to an all-time low — DHS’s own website boasts about it. Moreover, federal data shows undocumented people have lower rates of criminal convictions than U.S.-born citizens.
Yet immigration enforcement has dramatically ramped up. Starting this summer, the Trump administration began deploying masked, flak-jacketed men wearing military fatigues sporting the word “Police” against low-income communities of color in immigrant-heavy Southern California and elsewhere.
Some people have exhorted city police to protect people from ICE agents, but evidence abounds of local law enforcement collaborating with ICE. And ICE has routinely posed as local law enforcement in order to gain entry into workplaces and people’s homes.
This is no surprise — ICE agents are essentially federal police officers. The Trump administration has also unleashed police and ICE agents on the nation’s capital, citing high crime rates as justification. But like immigration, violent crime has fallen nationwide, especially in Washington, D.C.
Among ICE’s favored targets in D.C. are delivery drivers — not exactly fitting the profile of dangerous criminals. Police officers have been documented conducting traffic stops while ICE agents check immigration status and then make arrests.
Given all this, it’s disturbing that DHS is offering potential ICE recruits a $50,000 signing bonus — and often hiring people on the spot at job fairs.
Imagine public school teachers, librarians, nurses, or child care workers being offered $50,000 bonuses and on-the-spot hiring. If there’s a bottomless well of taxpayer funds for waging war on people, there ought to be plenty of money to spend in service of them.
Chump and his gestapo police have created a dark day in US history. This is the sort of thing you never live down and that only gets worse each year. Any of you being silent right now better be prepared with a lie for when you're children and grandchildren ask you years from now how you responded while innocent people were targeted, while they were kidnapped off US streets, while families were destroyed. As outrageous as this seems today, it will only be more outrageous in the years to come.
Let's look at some of these 'violent' people being targeted right now.
Patricia Ortiz (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER) notes:
Allison Bustillo Chinchilla, a young nurse from Charlotte currently held at an immigration detention center in Georgia, has been granted relief by an immigration judge that allows her to leave the country voluntarily instead of being deported — a decision that will enable her to return to the United States without facing a 10-year reentry ban.
Allison, 20, has been detained for six months at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. She had nearly given up her legal fight due to health issues and unsanitary conditions at the facility. Then, unexpectedly, she was informed on Tuesday, Aug. 26, that she would have a hearing that same day.
She was arrested on the morning of Feb. 20 at her home in Charlotte while caring for her three younger siblings — the youngest of whom has autism — while her mother was at work.
The chaotic arrest was carried out by ICE agents who forcibly entered the apartment heavily armed, looking for someone else.
A 20 year old nurse! No criinal record! Don't we all feel safer now?
Only the idiots and fools feel safer though the liars will join them in pretending we are.
Remember Donggin Shin also known as John Shin? We noted him in the group post "Stupidity is the common theme of the Chump administration," "Dumb Bondi, Fat Chump and Plastic Surgery Addict Noem," "Pam Bondi inspires Dumb Bondi jokes," "THIS JUST IN! CHUMP, BONDI AND NOEM -- 3 IDIOTS 3!," "The administration has a contest to declare who's the most stupid in their group" and "Immigration is a concept the court of Queen Chump doesn't really understand:"
BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- THE KOOL AID TABLE
CONVICTED FELON DONALD CHUMP SAID HE WOULD DEPORT VIOLENT IMMIGRANTS AND HE MIGHT IF HE WEREN'T SO STUPID. JOHN SHIN IS THE LATEST TESTATMENT TO CHUMP'S STUPIDITY. ICE KIDNAPPED JOHN IN UTAH.
VIOLENT CRIMINAL?
NO.
NOT RECORD OF VIOLENCE.
TURNS OUT HE PLAYS THE VIOLEN.
REACHED FOR COMMENT, AG PAM BIMBO BONDI SAID IT WAS A NATURAL MISTAKE, "VIOLENT? VIOLIN? THEY ARE VERY SIMILAR IN SPELLING AND SOUND."
Chloe Veltman (NPR) reports the violinist continues to be held:
"John Shin is a longtime member of the local Salt Lake City music community," said Utah Symphony spokesperson Meredith Kimball Laing in an email. "His many contributions as a violinist have included some performances with our orchestra through the years, and our hearts go out to him and his family."
Musicians have been staging ongoing performances in protest at the Utah State Capitol and sharing their anger and concern on social media. "I am calling upon all string players in Salt Lake City to unite in support of our fellow musician John Shin, who has been detained by ICE," wrote violist Eugene Dyson on Facebook. "The time has come for us to rally together and fight for our own with unwavering solidarity."
In a Facebook post on Aug. 20, Shin's wife, DaNae Shin, shared the details of the phone call she said she received from Shin on the day of his arrest. " 'Honey, I don't have much time. I've been arrested by ICE and they are sending me to a detainment center. I love you and the kids, I will be okay, please call our attorney,' " DaNae wrote. She added, "John is not a criminal, he is an amazing husband, father, and person, and I will do whatever it takes to bring him back home." DaNae Shin set up a GoFundMe campaign to help cover her husband's legal fees. At the time of writing, it had received more than $72,000 in donations.
Need another example? Ari Snider (MAINE PUBLIC RADIO) reports:
Malunda Destino had stopped at a gas station in Scarborough last week when several ICE agents approached his car, according to a friend who said she later spoke to him from jail.
The friend, Choisie Nyemba, said Destino told her the agents knocked on his car window and told him, in no uncertain terms, to step out of the car.
"Come out or we gonna break the window," was what the agents told Destino, according to Nyemba.
Nyemba said when she and other friends learned of Destino's arrest, they scrambled to locate him, even going to the ICE office in Scarborough, only to find he'd already be taken out of state.
"They were like 'Oh, no, he's not here anymore. They moved him to Massachusetts,'" Nyemba said.
And Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez (KUOW) reports:
A Pakistani native and U.S. military veteran will remain in immigrant detention after a judge said she needs more time to know if her court has jurisdiction to proceed with his request for a bond.
[. . .]
Muhammed Chaudhry served in the National Guard as a mental health specialist in the early 2000s. While he served in the National Guard, his team was later deployed under Operation Iraqi Freedom but he stayed in the states to continue his work and was deployed to different parts of the country, he told Scala. Chaudhry continued to serve in the military until he was medically retired in 2005 after an injury.
Last week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service enacted new policies to increase scrutiny of people in the naturalization process. The new policies include increased scrutiny of anything officials deem “anti-American,” including what officials consider anti-Semitic views, or who are supportive of terrorist organizations. The Chaundrys were vocal about what’s commonly referred to as Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, especially in the Gaza strip.
So he was good enough to be accepted into this country's National Guard twenty years ago but he's been retired from that so he's no longer needed? Is that the thinking?
Here's what the American people are seeing: 4 people, none of them violent criminals. A nurse, a violinist, a soccer player and a veteran of the National Guard all being deported.
The whole thing is a scam.
Under President Donald Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has become the driving force of his sweeping crackdown on migrants, bolstered by record funding and new latitude to conduct raids, but staff are contending with long hours and growing public outrage over the arrests.
Those internal pressures are taking a toll.
Two current and nine former ICE officials told Reuters the agency is grappling with burnout and frustration among personnel as agents struggle to keep pace with the administration’s aggressive enforcement agenda.
The agency has launched a recruitment drive to relieve the stress by hiring thousands of new officers as quickly as possible, but that probably will take months or years to play out.
The burnout will continue. At least for the lucky ones. It'll force them out of a job that is a crime, one that will leave workers attempting suicide and/or self-medicating with drink and drugs in the near future in order to cope with what they've done, the lives that they have destroyed, the families that they have harmed.
As parades and other events celebrating the contributions of workers in the U.S. are held Monday for the Labor Day holiday, experts say President Donald Trump's stepped-up immigration policies are affecting the nation's labor force.
More than 1.2 million immigrants disappeared from the labor force from January through the end of July, according to preliminary Census Bureau data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. That includes people who are in the country illegally as well as legal residents.
Immigrants make up almost 20% of the U.S. workforce and that data shows 45% of workers in farming, fishing and forestry are immigrants, according to Pew senior researcher Stephanie Kramer. About 30% of all construction workers are immigrants and 24% of service workers are immigrants, she added.
A San Diego restaurant owner who serves many immigrant customers has seen business plummet. A cleaning woman avoids bringing tools to work to avoid drawing attention to herself. Her husband, a construction worker, has been unemployed for over a month. A California farm had to hire an attorney to protect workers with approved visas from deportation.
California—and other states across the country—rely heavily on the labor of immigrants. Many of those workers are living in fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, making it harder to do their jobs. Experts say this fear is restricting the rights of all workers and hurting the state’s broader economy.
Capital & Main spoke to workers and an employer in California about how President Donald Trump’s campaign against immigrants is affecting their ability to work. All of them requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the federal government.
The restaurant owner said traffic to his business dropped immediately after ICE officials targeted another restaurant, Buona Forchetta, in a highly visible operation that drew community protest and a violent response from ICE.
Chump always makes time to destroy the economy. Alex Henderson notes:
President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick continue to insist that his steep new tariffs will ultimately lead to a manufacturing renaissance in the United States. But countless economists, both left and right, are warning that the tariffs will hurt both businesses and consumers by making a wide range of goods much more expensive — from coffee to electronics to construction materials.
In an op-ed published by the Washington Post on August 29, Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Sachin Shivaram (chief executive of the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry) details the negative effects that Trump's tariffs are having on the blue-collar workers he employs. Those workers, according to Shivaram, "overwhelmingly" voted for Trump in 2024 and are now being hurt by his economic policies.
"It’s a hard truth that some kinds of manufacturing are never going to come back in the United States, and no amount of protective tariffs will change that," the aluminum exec argues. "This truth is ignored at great peril for American workers. American manufacturing workers don't ask for much: a fair wage, steady work and the dignity of knowing their job matters. At the aluminum foundry in Wisconsin where I am chief executive, those jobs start at $27 an hour with a pension, a child care stipend and the security of long-term employment. Many of our people have built careers here, sending kids to college, buying homes and retiring with pride. They are exactly the kind of workers President Donald Trump says he wants to help. On that, we agree."
Prices have gone up under Chump. He can lie all he wants but anyone shopping in a grocery store is fully aware of how much prices have increased. Things are only expected to get worse economically over the next few months. Will Kenton (MONEYWISE) notes:
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, raised concerns about the U.S. economy following the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest report on August 1st.
In a post on X, he warned, “the economy is on the precipice of recession. That’s the clear takeaway from last week’s economic data dump. Consumer spending has flatlined, construction and manufacturing are contracting, and employment is set to fall. And with inflation on the rise, it is tough for the Fed to come to the rescue.”
Just days earlier, Zandi had observed that employment was the “remaining firewall between the weakening economy and recession.”
Prices are expected to go up this year as many companies signal plans to raise them in response to President Donald Trump's slew of tariffs.
While firms raise prices for many reasons, some were blaming price hikes on tariffs long before Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" on April 2. That's when he announced a 10% baseline tariff on imports from most countries, except Canada and Mexico, and a host of "reciprocal" tariffs on top of that.
The situation is fluid, as various countries continue to negotiate potential trade deals with the US.
Some economists have said that Trump's tariffs — and the uncertainty with his overall trade policy — could lead companies to raise prices on the goods they produce.
Here are the companies that have implemented or warned of price increases in recent months.
Adidas
Adidas said it will raise prices in the US because of a double-digit million euro hit from tariffs in the second quarter and a further predicted 200 million euro, about $218 million, cost from levies in the second half of the year.
Vietnam, which accounted for 27% of the German retailer's total volume in 2024, will face a 20% tariff from August 1. Indonesia made 19% of Adidas' products and will face a 19% tariff.
AutoZone
Philip Daniele, the CEO of the auto-parts company AutoZone, told analysts on a September earnings call that tariff policies had "ebbed and flowed over the years," and if Trump implemented more tariffs, "we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer."
"We generally raise prices ahead of that," Daniele said, adding that prices would gradually settle over time. "So, that's historically what we've done," he said.
A 25% tariff on car imports is expected to increase manufacturing costs by anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000.
Best Buy
Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said during the company's March earnings call that Trump's tariff plans are likely to increase prices.
"Trade is critically important to our business and industry. The consumer electronic supply chain is highly global, technical, and complex," Barry said. "We expect our vendors across our entire assortment will pass along some level of tariff costs to retailers, making price increases for American consumers highly likely."
Use the link to read the article in full. It's a long list of companies. A court verdict may help ease some of the expected financial pain. Adam Gabbatt and Dominic Rushe (GUARDIAN) report:
Donald Trump suffered the biggest defeat yet to his tariff policies on Friday, as a federal appeals court ruled he had overstepped his presidential powers when he enacted punitive financial measures against almost every country in the world.
In a 7-4 ruling, the Washington DC court said that while US law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency”, none of those actions allow for the imposition of tariffs or taxes.
It means the ultimate ruling on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, which were famously based on spurious economic science and rocked the global economy when he announced them in April, will probably be made by the US supreme court.
Friday night on ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES, US House Rep Robert Garcia joined Chris and discussed Chump's ongoing Epstein scandal. Jeffrey Epstein is the convicted pedophile and sex trafficker who was also Donald Chump's bestie dating back to the late 80s. During Chump's first term, Epstein was convicted, went to prison and died there in what was ruled a suicide. His partner in crime Ghislaine Maxwell went on the run to evade an arrest warrant and was eventually discovered hiding in her Bradford, New Hampshire mansion (one of several she owns, according to court records). She was found guilty in court and sentenced to twenty years. However, in what may be an attempt to buy her silence, Donald Chump had her moved to a cushy prison -- that's not supposed to accept sex offenders -- and has floated a pardon for her in public.
Chris notes that US Speaker of the Closet Mike Johnson shut down the session in Congress in the hopes that when they returned in September everyone would have forgotten about Chump's Epstein & Maxwell connections. Did it work? Robert says no.
"This upcoming week," Garcia informed, "we have actually many of the victims of Epstein coming to Capitol Hill. We're meeting with them. They're talking to lawmakers. We're going to highlight their stories. We've got to center these victims I'll just say, one other piece of news -- that actually just developed in the last couple hours 00 is we finally got word from the Epstein estate. They're going to be providing the actual Epstein book, that famous book with that note that Donald Trump drew and doodled to Jeffrey Epstein, his so-called best friend of 10 to 15 years. The estate is actually going to actually now get us that book and a bunch of other documents that they have that's actually not been reported yet. Reporting here for the first time. We're gonna get those documents, as we understand it now, on September the 8th. And so that will continue our investigation. And again, we ask the question, where are the rest of the documents? What is Pam Bondi hiding? What is Donald Trump hiding? End the cover-up. Let’s get to the truth."
In other Epstein scandal news, OK reports:
An inmate at Ghislaine Maxwell's "cushy" new prison has found herself abruptly transferred to a high-security facility after criticizing the convicted s-- trafficker in an interview.
Julie Howell, currently serving a one-year sentence for theft, faced the consequences for calling Maxwell "disgusting" in her comments to a British newspaper earlier this month, according to a report.
Howell was removed from Federal Prison Camp, Bryan in Texas, where conditions are considerably better, after voicing her opinion.
Howell's lawyer, Patrick McClain, disclosed that prison warden Dr. Tanisha Hall summoned the 44-year-old Texas native into her office, sparking the swift transfer. "You've ruined my weekend," Hall reportedly stated, expressing frustration about her phone being inundated with calls over the controversy.
The transfer happened so quickly that Howell did not have time to grab her medication or glasses. She now resides in the Federal Detention Center in Houston, known for its violent inmates and far harsher conditions.
Howell's outspokenness stems from personal experience; a family member is a victim of s-- trafficking, the very crime for which Maxwell received a 20-year sentence.
- Idiot of the week3 days ago
