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The Moderate Voice | The Reporters

MUSK FLOPS IN WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT RACE: LIBERAL JUDGE ELECTED BY LARGE MARGIN

And they say Disney’s live action remake of Snow White is a flop.

Elon Musk’s full-court press to defeat a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court judge bombed — bigtime — and now it’s the Democrats who are singing “Whistle While You Work.”

The polarizing billionaire turned a vote for a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice into a referendum on him and President Donald Trump. But for once nationalization of a local election wasn’t soley focused on President Donald Trump. Musk spent more than $25 million to try and defeat liberal Susan Crawford and elect Brad Schimel, a former Republican Attorney general and County circuit judge. Musk held a big ra;;u Sunday night. He proclaimed the future of civilization was at stake in the vote. He Musk handed out two $1 million checks to two people connected with Republican causes in a kind of lottery. .

Musk was accused of trying to bribe voters and buy a Supreme Court just as many believe he bought himself the White House and an unprecedented position of power in the Trump administration. Democrats turned his exceedingly high profile and increasing unpopularity into their mantra and the vote became about Musk. Could his money and people he brought in to canvass voters pay off?

It didn’t. NBC News:

Susan Crawford has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, NBC News projects, allowing liberals to maintain their narrow majority on the battleground state’s highest court — and defying Elon Musk after he spent millions of dollars to oppose her.

Crawford, a Dane County circuit judge who was backed by Democrats, secured a 10-year term on the court over Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit judge and a former Republican attorney general. As the first major battleground state election of President Donald Trump’s second term, the technically nonpartisan contest drew national attention and became the most expensive state Supreme Court race in U.S. history.

The outcome is a setback for Trump and his billionaire adviser, Musk. Trump endorsed Schimel in the final stretch of the race, while Musk injected himself into the center of it, spending huge sums of money, visiting Wisconsin days out from Election Day and frequently posting about the race on his X feed. In turn, Democrats and progressive groups made Musk their primary villain, attacking his influence on the race and his efforts to slash federal jobs and the government through the Department of Government Efficiency.

“As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin,” Crawford told supporters Tuesday night. “And we won.”

In a brief concession speech, Schimel said, “I knew I had to put my all in,” but that “you gotta accept the results.”

And:

Crawford’s victory also means liberals will maintain a 4-3 advantage on the court for at least another year heading into a term when it could decide cases about abortion rights, unions and collective bargaining rights, and congressional maps and redistricting.

Despite the more than $15 million that Musk and groups affiliated with him dropped into the race, Democrats overall held a narrow ad spending advantage, according to AdImpact.

Democratic-aligned groups spent millions of dollars blasting Musk as “trying to buy” Schimel and the election, while Crawford herself repeatedly used Musk as a foil at her campaign events. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin launched a town-hall tour dubbed “People v. Musk,” on which surrogates including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz further bashed Musk and DOGE.

Some also pointed out that Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, sued in Wisconsin this year challenging a state law banning carmakers from owning dealerships. The case could end up before the state Supreme Court.

Democrats also attacked Musk’s offer of $100 to Wisconsin voters to sign a petition to oppose “activist judges.” The Democratic state attorney general, Josh Kaul, also unsuccessfully tried to block Musk from giving $1 million to people to be “spokesmen” for the petition at a rally Sunday.

Conversely, groups on the left largely stayed away from making the race about Trump, who narrowly carried the state in two of the past three presidential elections.

The anti-Musk playbook is one that Democrats could seek to replicate in other elections this year and in the 2026 midterms.

Two key questions:
**Does this mean Trump will begin to reign Musk in and not be joined at the political hip?
**Will such a dramatic failure of Musk’s clout, persuasiveness and money embolden GOP members of Congress who are unhappy with his role?

ID 73215064 ©
Sebast1an | Dreamstime.com

The post MUSK FLOPS IN WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT RACE: LIBERAL JUDGE ELECTED BY LARGE MARGIN appeared first on The Moderate Voice .

New modelling reveals full impact of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs — with the US hit hardest

Getty Images

Niven Winchester , Auckland University of Technology

We now have a clearer picture of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and how they will affect other trading nations , including the United States itself.

The US administration claims these tariffs on imports will reduce the US trade deficit and address what it views as unfair and non-reciprocal trade practices. Trump said this would

forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed.

The “reciprocal” tariffs are designed to impose charges on other countries equivalent to half the costs they supposedly inflict on US exporters through tariffs, currency manipulation and non-tariff barriers levied on US goods.

Each nation received a tariff number that will apply to most goods. Notable sectors exempt include steel, aluminium and motor vehicles, which are already subject to new tariffs.

The minimum baseline tariff for each country is 10%. But many countries received higher numbers, including Vietnam (46%), Thailand (36%), China (34%), Indonesia (32%), Taiwan (32%) and Switzerland (31%).

The tariff number for China is in addition to an existing 20% tariff, so the total tariff applied to Chinese imports is 54%. Countries assigned 10% tariffs include Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Canada and Mexico are exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, for now, but goods from those nations are subject to a 25% tariff under a separate executive order.

Although some countries do charge higher tariffs on US goods than the US imposes on their exports, and the “Liberation Day” tariffs are allegedly only half the full reciprocal rate, the calculations behind them are open to challenge.

For example, non-tariff measures are notoriously difficult to estimate and “subject to much uncertainty”, according to one recent study .

GDP impacts with retaliation

Other countries are now likely to respond with retaliatory tariffs on US imports. Canada (the largest destination for US exports), the EU and China have all said they will respond in kind.

To estimate the impacts of this tit-for-tat trade standoff, I use a global model of the production, trade and consumption of goods and services. Similar simulation tools – known as “computable general equilibrium models” – are widely used by governments, academics and consultancies to evaluate policy changes.

The first model simulates a scenario in which the US imposes reciprocal and other new tariffs, and other countries respond with equivalent tariffs on US goods. Estimated changes in GDP due to US reciprocal tariffs and retaliatory tariffs by other nations are shown in the table below.



The tariffs decrease US GDP by US$438.4 billion (1.45%). Divided among the nation’s 126 million households, GDP per household decreases by $3,487 per year. That is larger than the corresponding decreases in any other country. (All figures are in US dollars.)

Proportional GDP decreases are largest in Mexico (2.24%) and Canada (1.65%) as these nations ship more than 75% of their exports to the US. Mexican households are worse off by $1,192 per year and Canadian households by $2,467.

Other nations that experience relatively large decreases in GDP include Vietnam (0.99%) and Switzerland (0.32%).

Some nations gain from the trade war. Typically, these face relatively low US tariffs (and consequently also impose relatively low tariffs on US goods). New Zealand (0.29%) and Brazil (0.28%) experience the largest increases in GDP. New Zealand households are better off by $397 per year.

Aggregate GDP for the rest of the world (all nations except the US) decreases by $62 billion.

At the global level, GDP decreases by $500 billion (0.43%). This result confirms the well-known rule that trade wars shrink the global economy.

GDP impacts without retaliation

In the second scenario, the modelling depicts what happens if other nations do not react to the US tariffs. The changes in the GDP of selected countries are presented in the table below.



Countries that face relatively high US tariffs and ship a large proportion of their exports to the US experience the largest proportional decreases in GDP. These include Canada, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, Switzerland, South Korea and China.

Countries that face relatively low new tariffs gain, with the UK experiencing the largest GDP increase.

The tariffs decrease US GDP by $149 billion (0.49%) because the tariffs increase production costs and consumer prices in the US.

Aggregate GDP for the rest of the world decreases by $155 billion, more than twice the corresponding decrease when there was retaliation. This indicates that the rest of the world can reduce losses by retaliating. At the same time, retaliation leads to a worse outcome for the US.

Previous tariff announcements by the Trump administration dropped sand into the cogs of international trade. The reciprocal tariffs throw a spanner into the works. Ultimately, the US may face the largest damages.The Conversation

Niven Winchester , Professor of Economics, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

The post New modelling reveals full impact of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs — with the US hit hardest appeared first on The Moderate Voice .

Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time”

Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time”

by McKenzie Funk

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Reporting Highlights

  • Unexpected Role: Flight attendants were told they would fly rock bands, sports teams and sun-seekers. Then Global Crossing Airlines started expanding into federal deportation flights.
  • Human Struggles: Some flight attendants said they ignored orders not to interact with detainees. “I’d say ‘hola’ back,” said one flight attendant. “We’re not jerks.”
  • Safety Concerns: Flight attendants received training in how to evacuate passengers but said they weren’t told how to usher out detainees whose hands and legs were bound by shackles.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

The deportation flight was in the air over Mexico when chaos erupted in the back of the plane, the flight attendant recalled. A little girl had collapsed. She had a high fever and was taking ragged, frantic breaths.

The flight attendant, a young woman who went by the nickname Lala, said she grabbed the plane’s emergency oxygen bottle and rushed past rows of migrants chained at the wrists and ankles to reach the girl and her parents.

By then, Lala was accustomed to the hard realities of working charter flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She’d learned to obey instructions not to look the passengers in the eyes, not to greet them or ask about their well-being. But until the girl collapsed, Lala had managed to escape an emergency.

Lala worked for Global Crossing Airlines, the dominant player in the loose network of deportation contractors known as ICE Air. GlobalX, as the charter company is also called, is lately in the news. Two weeks ago, it helped the Trump administration fly hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador despite a federal court order blocking the deportations, triggering a showdown that experts fear could become a full-blown constitutional crisis.

In interviews with ProPublica, Lala and six other current and former GlobalX flight attendants provided a window into a part of the deportation process that is rarely seen and little understood. For migrants who have spent months or years trying to reach this country and live here, it is the last act, the final bit of America they may experience.

All but one of the flight attendants requested anonymity or asked that only a nickname be used, fearing retribution or black marks as they looked for new jobs in an insular industry.

Because ICE, GlobalX and other charter carriers did not respond to questions after being provided with detailed lists of this story’s findings, the flight attendants’ individual accounts are hard to verify. But their stories are consistent with one another. They are also generally consistent with what has been said about ICE Air in legal filings , news accounts , academic research and publicly released copies of the ICE Air Operations Handbook .

That morning over Mexico, Lala said, the girl’s oxygen saturation level was 70% — perilously low compared with a healthy person’s 95% or higher. Her temperature was 102.3 degrees. The flight had a nurse on contract who worked alongside its security guards. But beyond giving the girl Tylenol, the nurse left the situation in Lala’s hands, she recalled.

Lala broke the rule about talking to detainees. The parents told Lala their daughter had a history of asthma. The mom, who Lala said had epilepsy, seemed on the verge of her own medical crisis.

Lala placed the oxygen mask on the girl’s face. The nurse removed her socks to keep her from further overheating. Lala counted down the minutes, praying for the girl to keep breathing.

The stories shared by ICE Air flight attendants paint a different picture of deportations from the one presented to the public, especially under President Donald Trump. On social media, the White House has depicted a military operation carried out with ruthless efficiency, using Air Force C-17s, ICE agents in tactical vests and soldiers in camo.

The reality is that 85% of the administration’s “removal” flights — 254 flights as of March 21, according to the advocacy group Witness at the Border — have been on charter planes. Military flights have now all but ceased . While there are ICE officers and hired security guards on the charters, the crew members on board are civilians, ordinary people swept up in something most didn’t knowingly sign up for.

When the flight attendants joined GlobalX, it was a startup with big plans. It sold investors and new hires alike on a vision of VIP clients, including musicians and sports teams, and luxury destinations, especially in the Caribbean. “You can’t beat the eXperience,” read a company tagline.

But as the airline grew, more and more of its planes were filled with migrants in chains. Some flight attendants were livid about it.

Last year, an anonymous GlobalX employee sent an all-caps, all-staff screed that ricocheted around the startup. “WHERE IS THE COMPANY GOING?” the email asked. “YOU SIGNED A 5 YEAR CONTRACT WITH ICE? … WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS BECOMING A PRESTIGE CHARTER AIRLINE?”

One flight attendant said he kept waiting for the sports teams his new bosses had talked about as he flew deportation routes. “You know, the NFL charters, the NBA charters, whatever the hockey one is …” he said.

A second said his planes’ air conditioning kept breaking — an experience consistent with at least two publicly reported onboard incidents — and their lavatories kept breaking, something another flight attendant reported as well. But the planes kept flying. “They made us flush with water bottles,” he said.

But the flight attendants were most concerned about their inability to treat their passengers humanely — and to keep them safe. (In 2021, an ICE spokesperson told the publication Capital & Main that the agency “follows best practices when it comes to the security, safety and welfare of the individuals returned to their countries of origin.”)

They worried about what would happen in an emergency. Could they really get over a hundred chained passengers off the plane in time?

“They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights,” one said. “They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”

“We have never gotten a clear answer on what we do in an ICE Air evacuation,” another said. “They will not give us an answer.”

“It’s only a matter of time,” a third said, before a deportation flight ends in disaster.

Lala didn’t think she had a chance at a flight attendant job. She hadn’t, in truth, remembered applying to GlobalX until a recruiter called to say the startup was coming to her city. “But I guess I did apply through LinkedIn?” she said. She’d been working an office job — long hours, little flexibility — and was looking for something new.

The job interviews were held at a resort hotel. The room was packed with dozens of aspirants when Lala showed up. After the first round, only about 20 were asked to stay. She couldn’t believe she was one of them. After the second round came a job offer: $26 an hour plus a daily expense allowance. Soon Lala got a uniform: a blue cardigan, a white polo shirt and an eye-catching scarf in cyan and light green.

For part of her Federal Aviation Administration-mandated four-week training, her class stayed in a motel with a pool at the edge of Miami International Airport. Just across the street, on the fourth floor of a concrete-clad office building ringed by palm trees, was GlobalX’s headquarters.

“In the beginning, we were told that because it’s a charter, it’s only gonna be elites, celebrities,” Lala said. “Everybody was really excited.”

But flying was not going to be all glitz. The real reason for having flight attendants is safety. GlobalX was certified by the FAA as a Part 121 scheduled air carrier, the same as United or Delta, and it and its crew members were subject to the same strict standards.

“We’re there to evacuate you,” one recruit told ProPublica. “Yes, we make good drinks, but we evacuate you.”

Lala’s class practiced water landings in the pool at the nearby Pan Am Flight Academy. They practiced door drills — yelling out commands, shoving open heavy exit doors — in a replica Airbus A320 cabin. They learned CPR and how to put out fires. They took written and physical tests, and if they didn’t score at least 90%, they had to retake them.

They were reminded, over and over, that their job was a vocation, one with a professional code: No matter who the passengers were, flight attendants were in charge of the cabin, responsible for safety in the air.

Lala’s official “airman” certificate arrived from the FAA a few weeks after training was done. She was cleared to fly, ready to see the world.

But what she would see wasn’t what she signed up for. The company was growing beyond glamorous charters. GlobalX was moving into the deportation business.

Her bosses delivered the news casually, she recalled: “It was like, ‘Oh yeah, we got a government contract.’”

The new graduates were offered a single posting: Harlingen, Texas. Deportation flights were five days a week, sometimes late into the night. Lala went to Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and, for refueling, Panama.

A standard flight had more than a dozen private security guards — contractors working for the firm Akima — along with a single ICE officer, two nurses, and a hundred or more detainees. (Akima did not respond to a request for comment.) The guards were in charge of delivering food and water to the detainees and taking them to the lavatories. This left the flight attendants, whose presence was required by the FAA, with little to do.

“Arm and disarm doors, that was our duty,” Lala said.

The flights had their own set of rules, which the crew members said they learned from a company policy manual or from chief flight attendants. Don’t talk to the detainees. Don’t feed them. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t walk down the aisles without a guard escorting you. Don’t sit in aisle seats, where detainees could get close to you. Don’t wear your company-issued scarf because of “safety concerns that a detainee might grab it and use it against us,” Lala said.

“You don’t do nothing,” said a member of another GlobalX class. “Just sit down in your seats and be quiet.” If a detainee looked at him, he was supposed to look out the window.

A rare public statement from the company about life aboard ICE Air came in a 2023 earnings call with GlobalX founder and then-CEO Ed Wegel, when he discussed the company’s work for federal agencies like ICE. GlobalX employees “essentially don’t do much on the airplane,” Wegel said. “Our flight attendants are there in case of an emergency. The passengers are monitored by guards that are placed on board the airplane by one of those agencies.”

Fielding a question about how GlobalX ensures passengers are treated humanely, Wegel continued: “There have been threats made to our crew members, and they’re especially trained to deal with those. But we haven’t seen any mistreatment at all.”

Flight attendants said they had little to do but sit in their jumpseats after delivering the preflight safety briefing in English to the mostly Spanish-speaking passengers. Above 10,000 feet, the two in the rear usually moved to passenger rows near the cockpit, then sat again. Some did crosswords. Others took photos out the window. On a deportation to Guatemala, one saw his first erupting volcano.

Lala had been scared before her first deportation flight, worried that violence might break out. But fear soon gave way to discomfort at how detainees were treated. “Not being able to serve them, not being able to look at them, I didn’t think that was right,” she said.

Some flight attendants, drawn to the profession because they liked taking care of people, couldn’t help but break protocol with passengers. “If they said ‘hola’ or something,” one said, “I’d say ‘hola’ back. We’re not jerks.”

Another recalled taking a planeload of children and their escorts on a domestic transfer from the southern border to an airport in New York. He tried to slip snacks to the kids. “Even the chaperones were like, ‘Don’t give them any food,’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Where is your humanity?’” (A second flight attendant said that children on a New York flight were fed by their escorts.)

While flight attendants were allowed to interact with the guards, the dynamic was uncomfortable. It came down to a question of who was in charge — and which agency, ICE or the FAA, ultimately held sway. (The FAA declined to comment on this story and directed questions to ICE.)

The guards often asked flight attendants to heat up the food they brought from home. They asked for drinks, for ice. “They treated us like we were their maids,” said Akilah Sisk, a former flight attendant from Texas.

“In their eyes, the detainees are not the passengers,” another flight attendant said. “The passengers are the guards. And we’re there for the guards.”

Some guards thumbed their noses at the FAA safety rules that flight attendants were supposed to enforce while airborne, multiple flight attendants recalled. “One reported me because I asked him to sit down in the last 10 minutes,” Sisk said. “But you’re still on a freaking plane. You gotta listen to our words.”

Flight attendants said that if they told guards to fasten seatbelts during takeoff or stow carry-ons under a seat, they risked getting reported to their bosses at GlobalX, who they said wanted to keep ICE happy. The guards would complain to the in-flight supervisor, Sisk said, and eventually it would get back to the flight attendant.

“We’d get an email from somebody in management: ‘Why are you guys causing problems?’” another flight attendant recalled. “They were more worried about losing the contract than about anything else.”

Nothing bothered flight attendants more than the fact that most of their passengers were in chains. What would happen if a flight had to be evacuated?

Most of the migrants crowding the back seats of ICE Air’s planes have not been, historically , convicted criminals. ICE makes restraints mandatory nonetheless. “Detainees transported by ICE Air aircraft will be fully restrained by the use of handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons,“ reads an unredacted version of the 2015 ICE Air Operations Handbook, which was obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group.

The handbook allows for other equipment “in special circumstances, i.e., spit masks, mittens, leg braces, cargo straps, humane restraint blanket, etc.” Multiple lawsuits on behalf of African asylum-seekers concern the use of one such item, known as the Wrap , a cross between a straitjacket and a sleeping bag. A flight attendant said detainees restrained in the device are strapped upright in their seats or, if less compliant, lengthwise across a row of seats. Getting “burritoed, I call it,” the person said.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties investigated the asylum-seekers’ complaints and found ICE lacked “sufficient policies” on the Wrap, but how the immigration agency addressed the finding is not publicly known. ICE responded to one lawsuit by saying detainees were not abused; it said another should be dismissed, in part because it was filed in the wrong place. The cases are pending.

Use of the Wrap continues. A video from Seattle’s Boeing Field taken in February shows officers and guards carrying a wrapped migrant into the cabin of a deportation plane.

Neither the ICE Air handbook, nor FAA regulations, nor flight attendant training in Miami explained how to empty a plane full of people whose movements were, by design, so severely hampered. Shackled detainees didn’t even qualify as “able-bodied” enough to sit in exit rows.

To flight attendants, the restraints seemed at odds with the FAA’s “90-second rule,” a decades-old manufacturing standard that says an aircraft must be built for full evacuation in 90 seconds even with half the exits blocked.

Lala and others said no one told them how to evacuate passengers in chains. “Honestly, I don’t know what we would do,” she said.

The flight attendants are not alone in voicing concerns.

In an interview with ProPublica, Bobby Laurie, an airline safety expert and former flight attendant, called the arrangement on ICE Air flights “disturbing.”

“Part of flight attendant training is locating those passengers who can help you in an evacuation,” Laurie told ProPublica. That would have to be the guards. “But if they have to help you,” who is helping the detainees, Laurie wondered.

According to formal ICE Air incident reports reviewed by Capital & Main , the deportation network had at least six accidents requiring evacuations between 2014 and 2019. In at least two cases, both on a carrier called World Atlantic, the evacuations were led not by flight attendants but by untrained guards. Both took longer than 90 seconds, though not by much: two-and-a-half minutes for the first, “less than 2 minutes” for the next. But in a third case, it took seven minutes for 115 shackled detainees to escape a smoke-filled jet.

In one of the World Atlantic incidents, part of the landing gear broke, a wing caught fire and the smell of burning rubber seeped in, according to investigative records obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. In an email to ICE Air officials, an agency employee aboard the plane later wrote that flight attendants made no emergency announcements for passengers. The flight attendants simply got themselves out.

The ICE officer, guards and nurse were “confused on what to do and in which direction to exit during distress,” the officer wrote. He said that other than the flight crew, “no one has received any training on emergency evacuation situations.”

The University of Washington’s collection does not include findings or recommendations from ICE based on what happened, and ICE did not say what they were when asked by ProPublica. The National Transportation Safety Board said that after the accident, World Atlantic launched a campaign to reinspect landing gear, gave employees and contractors further training, and revised its procedures for inspections. The airline did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

Other reports obtained by the University of Washington mention fuel spills, loss of cabin air pressure and a “large altercation” on ICE Air after 2019 but no more evacuations, at least as of June 2022. More recent incidents that have been mentioned in the press include an engine fire last summer on World Atlantic and a failed GlobalX air conditioning unit that sent 11 detainees to the hospital with “heat-related injuries.”

The rare guidance some flight attendants said they received on carrying out ICE Air evacuations came during briefings from pilots. What they heard, they said, was chilling and went against their training.

“Just get up and leave,” one recalled a GlobalX pilot telling him. “That’s it. … Save your life first.”

He understood the instructions to mean that evacuating detainees was not a priority, or even the flight attendants’ responsibility. The detainees were in other people’s hands, or in no one’s.

When asked if they got similar guidance from pilots, three flight attendants said they did not, and one did not answer. Two more, like the first, said pilots gave them instructions that they took to mean they shouldn’t help detainees after opening the exit doors.

“That was the normal briefing,” said a flight attendant from Lala’s class. “‘If a fire occurs in the cabin, if we land on water, don’t check on the immigrants. Just make sure that you and the guards and the people that work for the government get off.’”

“It was as if the detainees’ lives were worthless,” said the other.

The day the girl collapsed on Lala’s flight, the pilot turned the plane around and they crossed back into the United States.

The flight landed in Arizona. Paramedics rushed on board and connected the girl to their own oxygen bottle. They began shuttling her off the plane. Her parents tried to join. But the guards stopped the father.

Shocked, Lala approached the ICE officer in charge. “This is not OK!” she yelled. The mom had seizures. The family needed to stay together.

But the officer said it was impossible. Only one parent could go to the hospital. The other, as Lala understood it, “was going to get deported.”

Most of the flight attendants who spoke with ProPublica are now gone from GlobalX. Some left because they found other jobs. Some left even though they hadn’t. Some left because the charter company, as it focused more and more on deportations, shut down the hub in their city.

Lala eventually left because of the little girl and her family, because she couldn’t do the deportation flights anymore. Her GlobalX uniform hung in her closet for a time, a reminder of her career as a flight attendant. Recently, she said, she threw it away.

She never learned whether the little girl lived or died. Lala just watched her mom follow her off the plane, then watched the dad return to his seat.

“I cried after that,” she said. She bought her own ticket home.

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CHEESEHEAD (CARTOON AND COLUMN)

I never thought Democrats had a chance in Florida.

Two special elections for Congress were held in Florida, both being strong Republican seats. One was the seat vacated by Michael Waltz who left to join the Trump administration where he could leak classified information on Signal group chats with other morons.

Democrats thought the seat was competitive, but Republican Randy Fines won last night by 14 points.

In the other district, vacated by Matt Giggity Gaetz, Democrats outspent Republican Jimmy Patronis yet still lost by 14.6 points. What were they thinking running a candidate named Gay in Florida, in Matt Gaetz’s old district, nonetheless?

This gives Republicans and Trump a House advantage of 220 to 213.

As I said, I didn’t believe Democrats had a shot in Florida. One indicator was that Elon Musk didn’t campaign and drop millions of dollars into those races…like he did in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is supposed to be non-partisan, so it’s not Democrats versus Republicans. It’s Liberal versus Conservative. The court had a 4-3 Liberal majority last night, and today, it’s still a 4-3 liberal majority.

This race was the most expensive judicial contest in US history, with $90 million invested in the race, with $25 million of that coming from Elon Musk alone. That’s probably just claw machine money for him, but he still didn’t get to snatch a state supreme court seat and probably spent $25 million to catch a plushie saying, “Keep on truckin’.”

Liberal Susan Crawford defeated Conservative Brad Schimel by ten points last night. It wasn’t even close. How did Elon in a cheesy cheesehead not work?

Why is the Democratic win in Wisconsin significant and the GOP win in Florida not?

The two districts in Florida were already Republican, and one of them is the most conservative fucknut district in the nation. How are Democrats supposed to win where voters are racist and stupid enough to send Matt Gaetz to Congress five times? They might be more racist and stupid than Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert’s voters. If anything, Democrats can take comfort in that the Republicans’ margins of victories were 15 percent lower in those districts than last November.

This is bad news for Republicans in the midterms because when Trump isn’t on the ballot, fewer MAGAts vote. Republicans should enjoy that 220-213 House majority while it lasts because it won’t. We’re not going to talk about the Senate today.

Wisconsin is significantly different. Trump won the state last November…barely. The friends I made last July in Milwaukee told me they were afraid he’d win the state, and he did by less than one percent.

Special elections usually have lower voter turnout, and last night’s in Wisconsin was predicted to be tight. That was another failed prediction because the Liberal won 55-45. That’s a 10-point Democratic win in a state that has been decided by less than one point in each of the past three presidential races.

When I heard Elon was spending big money in Wisconsin on a state supreme court race, I knew Republicans were scared. And when I heard Elon was going to personally campaign in Wisconsin for a state supreme court race, I knew Republicans were stupid. Has no one shown Elon his polls?

A new Harvard/Harris poll shows that 49 percent hate Elon while 39 like him. But maybe Elon didn’t see the poll and only listened to Trump, who posted to Shit Social after the poll results were released, “Wow!!! People are loving Elon, a GREAT PATRIOT. Nice to see!!! DJT.”

If that’s what convinced Elon to go to Wisconsin to take a giant dump, thank you, DJT, you shit-fire smoldering dumbass. Speaking of the walking orange turd, his polls are down too. In fact, the only newly elected president to have polls worse than Trump’s is Donald Trump.

The only president worse than Trump is Trump. We didn’t need a second Trump administration to remind us how fucking horrible and rancid the first one was. Seriously, America, what’s wrong with you?

The good news here is that none of this bodes well for Trump winning a third term if he’s somehow able to destroy the Constitution first. The other good news is, he’s going to lose the House in 2026. The bad news for us is that he’s still going to “legislate” through executive orders for the next four years.

I can’t make predictions about the 2028 presidential election because I’m not confident we’ll have an election or at least a fair one in 2028. Do you think Trump is going to serve his term without engaging in fuckery with the elections? He has already issued an illegal executive order changing rules on national elections. Since when can a president single-handedly change election laws?

Our future elections will have the same integrity as the elections in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. By the way, I predict that over the next four years, some government structure or land will be named after Donald Trump. He may do it himself with an EO. They may create a monument identical to the Washington Monument and name it the Trump Monument, except it’ll have to be a lot smaller.

GO HERE TO READ THE REST.
Visit Clay Jones’ website and email him at clayjonz@gmail.com.

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‘Find Your Fight:’ Activist’s Manual for Changemaking is a Rallying Cry and Wake-Up Call

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D.

Find Your Fight by Jay Ruderman isn’t just a book—I found it to be a rallying cry. A deeply personal, straight-to-the-heart call to action for anyone who feels that pull to create real, lasting change in the world. Ruderman, a lifelong champion of social justice and inclusion, doesn’t deal in vague ideals or abstract encouragement—he hands you the blueprint. This is about turning conviction into movement, passion into impact. It speaks clearly and is highly motivating.

What makes this newly released book stand out isn’t just its message—it’s the way Ruderman delivers it. He doesn’t just talk about the fight; he lives it. We need more of this. He brings the reader into his own journey, sharing both his victories and the roadblocks along the way. And that’s what makes it land so powerfully—his honesty, his experience, his unwavering belief that change isn’t reserved for the powerful or the well-connected. It’s for anyone willing to step up and claim their fight.

But this book isn’t just about his journey. Ruderman shines a light on other changemakers, proving that activism takes many shapes and forms. Whether your passion is disability rights, mental health, or any other social justice cause, this book doesn’t just inspire—it equips. It moves you from *caring* to *doing,” so essential today when many are on the sidelines of life. It’s time to do, not simply “stand with,” and Ruderman makes this case as clearly as can be.

Find Your Fight isn’t here to coddle you. It’s here to wake you up. To shake you out of waiting for the “perfect moment” and remind you that the time to act is now. If you’ve ever felt the urge to stand up for something bigger than yourself but didn’t know where to begin, this book hands you the map.

And Ruderman doesn’t stop at motivation—he offers a playbook. Some standout takeaways:

1. Choosing Your Cause with Heart: Passion is the fuel of activism. Ruderman drives home the point that when you fight for something you genuinely believe in, your conviction becomes contagious. Others feel it. Others join in.

2. The Power of Relentless Persistence: Ruderman echoes President Calvin Coolidge’s wisdom: “Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” Change doesn’t happen overnight—it happens because people refuse to quit.

3. Becoming an Expert:
If you’re going to advocate for something, *know your stuff*. Ruderman stresses that deep knowledge isn’t just an asset—it’s a necessity. Expertise earns credibility, influence, and, ultimately, results.

4. Finding Your People: No one fights alone. Ruderman highlights the power of collaboration—of bringing together people whose strengths complement your own, amplifying your impact through collective effort.

5. Not Being Afraid to Stir the Pot:
Change is disruptive by nature. Ruderman reminds us that controversy isn’t something to fear—it’s often a sign you’re pushing society forward. The discomfort is part of the process.

Through personal passion and strategic action, Find Your Fight offers more than inspiration—it provides the tools to turn conviction into real-world change.

At its core, this book is part memoir, part manual—an unfiltered, hard-earned guide to activism straight from someone who’s been in the trenches. Ruderman lays it all out—the struggles, the wins, the lessons learned—so that you don’t just walk away thinking about change. You walk away creating it.

Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. is a San Diego-based retired psychologist, best-selling author, international speaker, and a highly sought after cognitive behavioral coach whose actionable, valuable, and practical work has been featured on Fox News, ABC-TV, NBC-TV, CBS-TV, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post.

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Even Penguins Are Plundering America

(It is very challenging to satirize a monumental political blunder – a trade war that is rapidly escalating and could devastate the world’s economy – but here it goes.)

Among the countries and territories affected by President Trump’s Liberation Day-announced expansive new tariffs are the Antarctic Heard Island and McDonald Islands, located more than 2,000 miles southwest of Perth, Western Australia, some of the most remote places on the planet.

Trump slapped a baseline 10% tariff on imports from those islands.

The mainstream media is having a field day mocking the tariffs solely because the islands are uninhabited, except for large populations of penguins, seals, albatrosses and other marine birds.

In 1987, the islands were designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and are described in the CIA World Factbook as “80% ice-covered” and “bleak.”

And, indeed, Trump’s announcement of tariffs on these islands received an icy reception.

However, it is a well-known fact that — paraphrasing the President — “for decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by penguins near and far.”

He specifically pointed to the 10% tariff imposed by the self-anointed Emperor Penguin on krill, squid and fish generously flown to the islands daily from U.S. waters, in addition to other shady “currency manipulation and trade barriers” perpetrated by the Penguin regime to rip off American taxpayers.

The president had no other choice but to impose a 10% reciprocal tariff on all penguin-crafted, decorative ice cubes imported from the islands, as the lack of reciprocity constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.

The president warned, “Should the Heard Island and McDonald Islands penguins retaliate against the United States in response to this action, I will fly all the penguins to an undisclosed, tropical location for intensive re-education.” And, he added, “they can forget about any swimming, walking or toboggan activities.”

They could soon be joined there by other tariff-abusing creatures from Svalbard and Jan Mayen, from Norfolk Island, from the Christmas and Cocos Keeling islands and, let us not forget, from the collection of islands making up the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

Hopefully, US military personnel at the Diego Garcia base would be exempted from such relocation.

Also curiously exempted is Russia.

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