“Many accounts, knowingly or unknowingly, shared images that warped the reality of what was happening on the ground. An X account with 388,000 followers called US Homeland Security News, which is not affiliated with DHS but paid for one of X’s “verified” blue check marks, posted a photo of bricks that it said had been ordered to be “used by Democrat militants against ICE agents and staff!! It’s Civil War!!” The photo actually originated on the website of a Malaysian construction-supply company. The post has nevertheless been viewed more than 800,000 times.”
…
“Some online creators treated the L.A. clashes as a prized opportunity for viral content. On Reddit, accounts with names like LiveNews_24H posted “crazy footage” compilations of the unrest and said it looked like a “war zone.” On YouTube, Damon Heller, who comments on police helicopter footage and scanner calls under the name Smoke N’ Scan, streamed the clashes on Sunday for nearly 12 hours.”
…
“Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said videos can play a uniquely forceful role in shaping people’s reactions to current events because they “encapsulate the emotion of the moment.”
“There’s a heavy dose of misinformation,” he added. “And, you know, people just end up getting angrier and angrier.””
https://www.yahoo.com/news/viral-images-shaping-views-l-133509687.html
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. to appear in court on Friday, more than two months after being deported to a prison in El Salvador, the country of his birth. No matter how the trial shakes out, it’s just the latest example of the Trump administration playing fast and loose with both the facts and the law.”
…
“Xinis “order[ed] that [the administration] return Abrego Garcia to the United States.” The Supreme Court intervened, staying Xinis’ order but otherwise affirming its finding to “facilitate…the return of [Abrego Garcia] to the United States by no later than 11:59 PM on Monday, April 7.”
But the administration refused, illogically claiming it had no right to do so. During an Oval Office meeting in April, both Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele mocked the idea of returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said. In a legal filing that same day, DHS acting general counsel Joseph Mazzarra said the department “does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”
“He is not coming back to our country,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News. “President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story.”
So, the news on Friday that Abrego Garcia was coming back—and at the Department of Justice’s direction, no less—was a bit stunning.”
…
“even though the indictment could very well just be retroactive justification for deporting someone in violation of numerous court orders, it remains the case that a court of law is the ideal place to adjudicate allegations against Abrego Garcia—not unsourced allegations delivered in press conferences and on social media.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/09/doj-brings-kilmar-abrego-garcia-back-to-the-u-s-after-insisting-it-couldnt/
“Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Tuesday she is ready to abandon her country’s traditionally thrifty stance on the EU budget in the face of the threat posed by Russia.
…
“For me, the most important thing is to rearm Europe,” Frederiksen said. “That’s my starting point and that’s my conclusion in all discussions, because if Europe is not able to protect ourselves and to defend ourselves, then it’s game over at some point.”
Europe, she added, is “running out of time because of Russia’s behavior” and needs “a new profile on the budget.””
https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-to-drop-frugal-stance-on-eu-budget-says-pm-frederiksen/
“The EU’s executive told member countries they can repurpose hundreds of billions of euros in Covid-19 relief money to fund defense projects, reflecting a radical shift in priorities since the days of the pandemic.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/change-spending-plans-or-risk-losing-billions-brussels-warns-eu-countries/
“A man posing as a gardener to get close to a group in Boulder holding their weekly demonstration for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza planned to kill them all with Molotov cocktails, authorities said Monday.
But he had second thoughts and only threw two out of the 18 incendiary devices he had into the group of about 20 people, yelling “Free Palestine” and accidentally burning himself, police said. Twelve people were injured in the Sunday attack. He had gas in a backpack sprayer but told investigators he didn’t spray it on anyone but himself “because he had planned on dying.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/02/suspect-in-boulder-attack-said-he-planned-to-kill-all-in-group-he-called-zionist-00381532
Trump’s tariffs are costly, but if Trump takes over the financial power currently held by the Fed, that’s a much more dangerous threat to the prosperity and democracy of the United States. Especially when you combine this with Trump’s other potentially costly actions like limiting science and scientists, Trump’s constellation of bad economic policies could add up to a considerably weaker U.S. economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9xsFhc34o
The best place to find fraud in the U.S. government is to look at Medicare providers cheating Medicare and at the IRS where taxpayers rip off the rest of America by cheating on their taxes.
If Musk is right, and the House and presidency would have been held by the Democrats without him, then that means one man decided the election by spending millions of dollars, including buying a media company and using it to boost certain ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ_w5cAvbLI
“big problem with Donald Trump’s signature plan to create a National Garden of American Heroes. And, for once, it has nothing to do with culture-war bickering about just who should be included in the national statue display.
Instead, artists, curators and critics who have reviewed the recent request for proposals have a more practical worry: America doesn’t have enough quality sculptors or museum-caliber foundries to make this happen on Trump’s speedy timeline.”
We do need a badass national statue garden, but Trump shouldn’t be in charge of it. It should be based on bipartisan agreed upon heroes.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/05/31/trump-sculpture-garden-american-heroes-china-00372297
“Pennsylvania’s 600,000 Latino voters helped send Donald Trump to the White House for a second term, played a key role in electing a GOP majority in the Senate, and kept the House in Republican hands by flipping two districts, including the ancestrally Democratic U.S. House seat that includes Hazleton.
But these voters, after turning sharply right in 2024, are strongly disapproving of the president’s performance several months into office, if recent polls are to be believed. April surveys showed cratering approval ratings among Hispanic voters who had shifted so dramatically, with just 27 percent approving of Trump’s job performance, according to the Pew Research Center. The New York Times/Siena College poll echoed these findings several weeks later, with just 26 percent of Hispanic voters approving of Trump’s tenure.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/03/republican-latino-pennsylvania-realignment-00381336
““It’s been completely destructive to our lives,” Taylor said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine, adding that he and his family have faced increased security threats because of Trump’s order. “I don’t want to go out there and say this order achieved the president’s objective of destroying my personal life, but the reality is that I had to step away from work because I couldn’t do the work that I did anymore with this blacklisting in Washington.””
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/03/anonymous-miles-taylor-trump-treason-interview-00380063