I’ll let you all in on a little secret: I love pickles. Yes, let that statement spawn a million jokes in the comments; I don’t care. Pickles are great and the fresher the better. I began gardening specifically so that I could grow cucumbers, garlic, onion, and dill, just so I could make my own at home. And, because I investigate pickle brines the way a sommelier inspects a glass of red zinfandel from a freshly tapped cask, I’ve been to my share of pickle festivals.
So perhaps I’m in a slightly protective posture having come across an article about how one pickle festival in Canada, the Downtown Brandon International Pickle Fest, had to rebrand under threat from Picklefest Canada, which somehow has a trademark on the term “Pickle Fest”.
Aly Wowchuk, who is one of the organizers, said the trademark issue forced a name change — but not a change in spirit.
“It’s the same event, we have the same heart and soul, it just has a different name,” she told the Sun. “We were not sued … we received an email on behalf of Picklefest Canada’s lawyer about the use of ‘Pickle Fest.’ There was a lot of back and forth between lawyers about the use of the name, but ultimately, it was easier for us to move forward and change the name of the Brandon Pickle Fest event.”
This is the outcome of a point we’ve made for years and years: Trademark bullying happens because it generally works. And this is trademark bullying. As in the States, Canadian trademark law does include prohibitions on trademarking descriptive marks. Picklefest Canada is an organization with a trademark on its name and logo and it primarily, you guessed it, puts on pickle festivals. To that end, its trademark rights ought to be extremely limited. Limited, I would say, to its use of the term in overall branding and marketing iconography, as that can be described as original and creative.
But the idea that such a trademark could be wielded to prevent other people, groups, or municipalities from putting on their own pickle fests is plainly at odds with how trademarks are supposed to work. But when a small entity is bullied by a larger one, they often feel they have no choice but to rebrand.
Wowchuk said the new name, Brandon Brine Bash, was chosen in part to stand out in an increasingly crowded field of pickle-themed events.
“With the popularity of pickle festivals across Canada and internationally, almost every variation of ‘pickle party’ or ‘pickle palooza’ has been used,” she said. “We wanted something unique that included Brandon and was easy to find.”
The rebrand also required updates to the festival’s logo, created by local artist Alexander Matheson. While the iconic pickle design has been retained and modernized, references to “Pickle Fest” have been removed.
It’s too bad that a simple festival to celebrate one of man’s greatest inventions has to devolve in overly protective intellectual property bullshit. And it’s equally too bad that nobody has yet stood up to Big Pickle to get this nonsense trademark cancelled.
To the narcotics agents investigating drug smuggling in Puerto Rico prisons, it seemed at first like a typical scheme: associates of an inmate gang sneaking drugs into the prison, gang members distributing them inside and bank records showing the money flowing.
Then the agents discovered something unusual.
Leaders of the prison gang known as Los Tiburones, or the Sharks, were selling drugs to inmates not only for money, but for their votes. Specifically, votes for now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a longtime Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump, investigators found.
To make sure the inmates — many of whom were addicted — complied, the gang’s leaders threatened violence and to withhold drugs, the investigators learned. Corrections employees in on the plan looked the other way as the gang, formally known as Group 31, ran the enterprise.
What at first seemed like a routine drug case had turned into something bigger. Puerto Rico, along with just a couple of U.S. states, allows inmates to vote. Puerto Ricans living in the territory can vote in all contests except federal general elections. It is a felony to willfully offer money or gifts in exchange for support at the polls. A conviction carries fines of as much as $250,000 and imprisonment of up to two years.
Investigators had gathered solid evidence of election fraud implicating both inmates and staff, and they were working toward determining whether González-Colón or her campaign was involved, four people with knowledge of the case told ProPublica. They requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
But as federal prosecutors prepared an indictment against the inmates and staff in November 2024 — just days after Trump won the election and González-Colón clinched the governorship — they received a surprising directive. Their bosses in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico instructed them to exclude the voting-related counts against the inmates and all charges against the prison staff, an investigation by ProPublica found.
In December, they filed an indictment charging 34 inmates and associates with crimes including drug distribution resulting in at least four overdose deaths, money laundering and possessing a firearm. And while prosecutors described the drugs-for-votes scheme in the court filing, they did not include a single charge related to it.
Soon after Trump took office, the lead prosecutor, Jorge Matos, was told by a supervisor to take the investigation no further, according to four people familiar with the case.
“Before the election, it was definitely full steam ahead,” said one person familiar with the case. “After the election, that all changed.”
Matos, who left the Justice Department in June 2025, did not respond to phone calls or texts from ProPublica or attempts to reach him on social media.
For those working on the case, the decision to scrap the investigation was especially puzzling given the new president’s agenda; Trump issued executive orders in early 2025 aimed at eradicating drug traffickers and declaring election integrity “fundamental” to maintaining American democracy.
“We invested so much effort to make a difference,” said another person. “We’re frustrated, but there’s nothing we can do.”
People close to the case wondered if politics had played a bigger role than law and order. Trump congratulated González-Colón in a letter shared at her January 2025 inauguration saying, “I am so proud of your resounding victory.” That same month, she pushed to erect a statue of him at the Capitol building in San Juan alongside other presidents who’ve visited the island. “He deserves that,” she said, according to an official post from the Federal Affairs Administration of Puerto Rico on X.
W. Stephen Muldrow, the U.S. attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, was appointed by Trump in 2019 and has served continuously since then. His name appears on the indictment along with those of three assistant U.S. attorneys. Muldrow told ProPublica his office does not comment on open investigations other than in press releases or press conferences. While a couple of the inmates have accepted plea deals, most of the drug and money-laundering cases against the inmates and associates are still making their way through the court system.
In a follow-up email, a spokesperson for the office noted the indictment was filed during the Biden administration and under the previous governor of Puerto Rico.
Charging corrupt public officials “has always been and remains a top priority” of the office, wrote spokesperson Lymarie Llovet-Ayala.
“When sufficient admissible evidence exists to charge persons involved in public corruption, as required by the Justice Manual, the Puerto Rico U.S. Attorney’s Office will aggressively pursue such charges,” she wrote.
In court documents tied to a different case, in October 2025, a magistrate judge mentioned “an unrelated white-collar investigation involving the Governor of Puerto Rico.” Muldrow’s office responded in a filing, stating, “There is no white-collar investigation (or any other investigation) of Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González-Colón.”
González-Colón has not been charged with a crime. The governor declined ProPublica’s repeated requests for an interview and did not respond to written questions sent to her communications team.
Muldrow had a friendly working relationship with former Attorney General Pam Bondi when she was the state attorney general in Florida and he was an assistant U.S. attorney in the middle district of that state, according to people who know him.
A Department of Justice spokesperson said in an email, “Neither Attorney General Bondi nor Acting Attorney General Blanche was involved in any charging or investigative decision in this Biden administration prosecution.”
The attorney general’s office noted in a statement that the indictment mentioned allegations of voting coercion, and said: “This office did not limit the underlying investigation in any way.”
In May 2025, in a move that federal prosecutors and political observers alike said was highly unusual, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seized the voting machines from Puerto Rico over concerns about “vulnerabilities,” according to testimony in March by Director Tulsi Gabbard to Congress.
A spokesperson from the office told ProPublica the seizure was at the request of the U.S. attorney’s office in Puerto Rico and was “not about any election in particular.” The goal was to “assess risk to this critical infrastructure, given similar infrastructure is used throughout the United States,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Muldrow didn’t answer questions from ProPublica about the matter.
Lydia Lizarribar, an attorney for Juan Carlos Ortiz-Vazquez, a Group 31 member who prosecutors named as one of the leaders of the drug operation, declined to comment on the case.
A Party “Stronghold”
The Puerto Rican prison system has a long and well-documented history of overcrowding, inadequate medical care and other human rights violations so egregious that in the late 1970s they prompted federal oversight that continued for decades.
The grim conditions spurred inmates to form advocacy groups like Group 31, which was officially created as a nonprofit to lobby corrections officials and lawmakers to improve inmates’ quality of life. Over time, federal prosecutors say, several of these groups operating in the prisons evolved into violent criminal organizations such as Los Tiburones and Ñetas, with memberships in the thousands.
The poor conditions were also the backdrop for a push in 1980 by the New Progressive Party governor at the time, Carlos Romero Barceló, to codify voting rights for prisoners.
Inmates have been aligned with the party ever since, political analysts said. Political parties in Puerto Rico differ dramatically from those on the mainland. They don’t adhere to a straight divide among Democrats and Republicans. Instead, the two main parties center much of their focus on whether Puerto Rico should become a state and so have Republicans and Democrats within each.
It’s not unheard of for politicians of all parties to court the inmate vote, but the New Progressive Party has made it a “stronghold,” said Fernando Tormos-Aponte, a political scientist with expertise on Puerto Rico and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.
“It’s been a huge advantage for them particularly as elections in Puerto Rico have been decided by small margins,” Tormos-Aponte said of the New Progressive Party. In the 2024 general election for governor, the party won 83% of the inmate vote, according to a ProPublica tally of voter returns on the State Elections Commission’s website.
Inmate votes were especially key in the 2024 gubernatorial primary as González-Colón, a longtime New Progressive Party member, was challenging the incumbent governor of the same party.
She won the primary by fewer than 30,000 votes, according to the State Elections Commission. Local news reports said that an estimated 5,000 prisoners voted territorywide.
In her first months in office, González-Colón signed a law allowing people with criminal records to obtain professional licenses in Puerto Rico.
In July, she signed off on a law expanding inmates’ ability to hold jobs in the private sector, calling it “part of a vision of social justice,” adding “we believe in the second chance, in the value of work and in the capacity for transformation of the human being.”
In March, González-Colón signed a law requiring the parole review board increase the pace at which parole denials are reconsidered. She said in a press release the law is aimed at a “fairer, more transparent system focused on rehabilitation.”
Political analysts said rumors have swirled over the decades about coercive tactics being used to mobilize the prison vote, raising significant questions about the extent to which that support comes in exchange for favors from the ruling party.
This time was different, sources said. They had evidence. Prosecutors had “locked up” the voting-for-drugs scheme among the gang, inmates and staff, and were deep into investigating a potential political connection when Muldrow’s office pulled the plug.
“These are the type of questions you would think an administration that has publicly declared this war on drug trafficking would investigate further,” Tormos-Aponte said of the Trump administration. “You would think it would be a priority.”
For the people familiar with the prison election fraud investigation, it was clear politics were at play in the decision to abandon charges prosecutors were confident they could win. What wasn’t clear, they said, was who was pulling the strings and how. It was “like you’re watching a puppet show but you can’t see the strings,” one person said.
“You know what you’re seeing isn’t telling the whole story,” the person said. “There was some kind of invisible hand.”
Drugs for Votes
Although they excluded drugs-for-votes charges, prosecutors didn’t scrub the Dec. 12, 2024, indictment of how they believed the operation worked.
Outside associates of Los Tiburones, the indictment alleged, primarily used drones to drop drugs on prison grounds. Then staff participating in the scheme helped in the “introduction and distribution” of the drugs inside the prison or acted as lookouts. The employees also allowed the gang members to enforce their own discipline system against those who didn’t do as they asked, including when voting. Punishments included withholding food from inmates or forcing them to sit with their arms folded while they were beaten and kicked. In four cases, the drugs led to overdose deaths, the indictment says.
The indictment also alleged that Los Tiburones made connections with government officials “for the purpose of reducing prison sentences,” and the gang mandated both the prisoners’ political affiliations and “who to vote for in primary and general elections.”
A relative of one of the prisoners told ProPublica that inmates had to show their ballots to gang leaders when they voted to avoid punishment.
Puerto Rico’s Civil Rights Commission, which for decades has sent observers to polls across the territory, reported “serious difficulties” in gaining access to several prisons during the 2024 general election. After being denied entry at multiple locations, the commission successfully sought a court order, but much of the day had already passed by the time the observers were allowed in.
“We strongly condemn the lack of diligence and indifference shown by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in hindering the functions of this Commission on the day of early voting in correctional institutions,” the agency later wrote in a special report on the 2024 elections.
The report said observers witnessed prisoners voting in cramped quarters that didn’t allow for privacy and having to hand their ballots to others to put in the box.
Ever Padilla-Ruiz, the commission’s executive director, told ProPublica that inmates sent written complaints to the office detailing their experiences of being pressured to vote in the primary — some for González-Colón and others for her opponent, Pedro Pierluisi. They did not mention any gangs by name, Padilla-Ruiz said.
He said inmates reported that inmate group leaders were “always sending messages” up until election day, adding that they were too afraid to say much more.
Several people familiar with the case said investigators had evidence that González-Colón had spoken to a Group 31 member, but they had not determined whether she was involved in vote buying.
One of the imprisoned gang leaders had bragged on Facebook about his connection to González-Colón, posting a picture of him talking with her on WhatsApp while the primary campaign for governor was underway, two sources said.
She clearly benefited from the scheme, they said. “There was no doubt about that,” one said, noting that thousands of votes were likely at stake.
The indictment notes that gang members were provided preferential treatment such as relaxed visitation policies and the use of Sony PlayStations, big screen TVs and cellphones, but investigators had not connected the privileges to González-Colón or her campaign.
“Latinos Are Winning”
González-Colón has been a longtime advocate for Puerto Rico statehood and has been engaged in Republican politics for more than 20 years. She was elected chair of the Republican Party of Puerto Rico in 2015 and two years later became resident commissioner, a role similar to a U.S. representative but with limited voting power in Congress.
She’s been an active participant in Latinos for Trump, praising the president over the years as “wise” and in 2019 saying on social media, “Latinos are winning under his leadership.”
As she continues to lobby for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state, González-Colón has also leaned in to her relationships with other members of Trump’s Cabinet, posting well wishes on social media to Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, and congratulating Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security director Trump picked to replace Kristi Noem, calling him “my good friend.”
“I know he will provide strong leadership as he works with President Donald J. Trump to strengthen our nation’s security,” she wrote in a March Facebook post.
Experts on Puerto Rican finance and politics say the relationship between González-Colón and the Trump administration is symbiotic though lopsided.
“I see it more as a situation of unrequited love,” said Alvin Velazquez, an associate law professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law and an expert on Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy in 2017.
The territorial island, whose residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, receives less federal funding than most states. Political leaders in Puerto Rico, González-Colón included, have perpetually lobbied for more support.
Republicans in turn have capitalized on González-Colón’s rise as she helped bolster GOP support among the Puerto Rican diaspora and other Latino voters on the mainland. Now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio endorsed González-Colón in her 2024 gubernatorial election.
Polls specifically isolating Puerto Rican voters show that Trump saw at least a 4 percentage point uptick in votes from Puerto Ricans living in states compared to the 2020 election, garnering 45% of the group’s vote in the 2024 election, according to the nonprofit research center Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University.
And perhaps most importantly, experts say, Trump has counted on González-Colón to support his strategic geopolitical initiatives in the region, including the controversial reopening of long-abandoned naval bases in Puerto Rico. González-Colón welcomed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the island in September and thanked Trump on X for “recognizing the strategic value Puerto Rico has to the national security of the United States and the fight against drug cartels in our hemisphere.”
That’s despite the sentiment among many Puerto Ricans who were angered by Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria in 2017 and a comedian at one of Trump’s 2024 campaign rallies who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” And while Trump has said that González-Colón was “wonderful to deal with and a great representative of the people,” he later called Puerto Rico “one of the most corrupt places on earth.”
Again, I feel like I’m going crazy here, but the obviously extremely partisan Supreme Court has struck again. I will repeat some of the basics, because it’s hard to believe how blatant all of this is. In November, a (Trump-appointed) judge threw out Texas’s new congressional maps, noting that the Texas state government had made it quite clear it was done for racial reasons, making it a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The judge wrote a detailed 160-page ruling showing how the Trump administration itself had essentially locked in the Texas legislature’s need to draw maps based on race, by threatening them with a civil rights complaint if they didn’t.
The Supreme Court, however, blocked that new map in December, saying that because of the upcoming midterm elections (still months away in December), Texas had to use those new maps (which had only been created in August) because (according to Samuel Alito) Texas voters needed “certainty.” Of course, they could have gone right back to the maps Texas had been using up until August — but somehow that would have shaken things up too much.
Then, a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued its Callais decision, effectively wiping out the remaining bits of the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana immediately declared a state of emergency and sought to throw out the map it had already started using for primary season — to redraw it in a much more racist way. And Samuel “the voters need certainty” Alito helped them along by rushing the certification of the Callais decision.
Now, just a few days later, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has also vacated an even more detailed ruling rejecting maps in Alabama for being racist. The conservative majority claims that this is in light of the ruling in Callais:
The judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in that case is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit with instructions to remand to the District Court for further consideration in light of Louisiana v. Callais
Now, that’s already odd for the same reason I raised earlier about the Supreme Court (led by Justice Alito) claiming back in December that they couldn’t overturn Texas’ new map (which has only been announced, and never actually used, months earlier) for the sake of “voter certainty.” Yet here they are issuing a ruling EIGHT DAYS before the Alabama primary.
What the fuck?
It’s bizarre for multiple other reasons as well, including that the Supreme Court already heard a related case regarding the map in Alabama and ruled that it violated the Voting Rights Act (Alito, naturally, dissented). The state went to redraw its map based on that, but the lower court rejected the new maps almost exactly a year ago in an astounding 571-page ruling.
Notably, while that ruling does find that the new maps violate the Voting Rights Act (in multiple ways), it also found that the maps directly violate the Fourteenth Amendment (this discussion is towards the end of that 571-page ruling, so perhaps Alito and the other conservative Justices didn’t read that far?). And, as much as the Court believes it can invalidate the Voting Rights Act, it cannot invalidate the Constitution.
So we have a ridiculously thorough 571-page district court ruling — finding that the maps violate not just the VRA but also the Fourteenth Amendment — and the conservative majority just waves it away. Yet the conservatives on the Supreme Court — the same group who said no last-minute map changes for “voter certainty” — just ordered that clearly discriminatory, unconstitutional map into use, because of how they changed their interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.
But, as Justice Sotomayor points out in her dissent, that would totally ignore the Fourteenth Amendment part!
At the end of that trial, the District Court concluded “with great reluctance and dismay and even greater restraint” that Alabama had not merely spurned the opportunity to remedy past discrimination, but in fact had intentionally violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Given that, the ruling in Callais could only possibly impact the VRA part of the lower court decision. Not the Fourteenth Amendment bit. But the majority on the Supreme Court just ignores that.
Nothing in the District Court’s Fourteenth Amendment analysis is affected by this Court’s opinion in Callais. Most obviously, Callais changed the legal standard for vote-dilution claims under §2. See 608 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 19) (“[W]e must understand exactly what §2 of the Voting Rights Act demands”). It said not a word about the standard for Fourteenth Amendment intentional-discrimination claims like the one that the District Court decided on remand in round two.
Even worse, Sotomayor points out that in Callais itself, the majority had claimed that the earlier 2022 ruling regarding the Alabama maps (where they said it violated the VRA) remains good law. But this new ruling clearly contradicts that claim.
Callais also insisted that this Court’s prior decision in Allen remains good law. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 36) (“[W]e have not overruled Allen”). These cases are, of course, Allen. So if Allen is good law anywhere, then it must be good law here. This Court’s finding of racially discriminatory vote dilution is an inextricable, permanent feature of this case, and Alabama’s willful decision to respond by entrenching rather than remedying that dilution is, as the District Court correctly recognized, evidence of discriminatory intent
So, was Alito lying a week and a half ago when he said that Allen was still good law? Or did he just change his mind now, because he’s decided that he needs to proactively strip Black voters of their franchise for the sake of helping Republicans get a few more seats in the House?
And John Roberts wonders why people claim the Supreme Court is “partisan.”
Sotomayor also points out the ridiculousness of doing this a week before the election:
Even if Callais had something to say about the evidence necessary to establish discriminatory intent, it still would not be appropriate to vacate the decision below at this time. That is because Alabama’s congressional primary election is next week, and vacating the District Court’s injunction will immediately replace the current map with Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan until the District Court acts, even though voting has already begun. Vacatur is an equitable remedy, and the Court should not lightly wield it to unleash chaos and to confuse voters.
Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed that she didn’t point to Alito’s “voters need certainty” claim for refusing to block Texas’ new maps back in December.
There is no good-faith reading of these events. Alito said Allen was still good law — then acted as if it wasn’t, twelve days later and eight days before an election. He said voters need “certainty” — then vacated a 571-page ruling finding unconstitutional discrimination with a week to go before Alabama’s primary. And the majority just waved away the Fourteenth Amendment finding entirely, as if they simply didn’t notice it was there.
John Roberts keeps insisting the Court isn’t partisan. At some point, the gap between that claim and what the Court actually does becomes its own kind of answer.
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Let’s make one thing clear before I start digging into the Washington Post firing up its teapot-based Tempest Generator: I do not support the assassination of Donald Trump. I am understandably impatient with the “let nature take its course” progression we’ve observed so far, but I would not encourage anyone to expedite this process in bullet form.
Peyton Vanest was fuming about President Donald Trump when he grabbed his phone and hit record. “Somebody should,” he declared, pausing for dramatic effect. “Somebody should, you know?”
“If somebody knew what needed to be done, that person should probably just do it …” the 27-year-old progressive influencer continued, conspicuously not defining “it.”
[…]
Vanest’s vague plea — posted 18 days before the third apparent attempt on Trump’s life in less than two years — is part of a social media trend that has twisted the idea of a presidential assassination into a morbid joke.
The “vague plea” that opens this (is it an op-ed or what is it exactly?) article by the Washington Post gathered “3.2 million views.” The way these paragraphs flow together invite an inference that cannot plausibly be made: that people fucking around on the internet somehow led to the shooting (mostly of the shooter) at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
So does this paragraph, which does little more than perform a bit of bias confirmation:
Know Your Meme found that interest in the “Somebody should do it” trend spiked after an armed man’s thwarted attack last month at the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington, where Trump was scheduled to speak.
Was it actually a “trend?” Or did it start looking like a trend because interest “spiked” following this attempted attack? The article really wants the cart to proceed the horse but the data says the cart is just where it should be: a trailing interest indicator obviously provoked by the actions of “somebody” who may or may not have intended to “do it.”
Having reached a conclusion, WaPo writers Danielle Paquette and Joseph Woodrow Cox apparently went in search of evidence to support it. There’s no shortage of “experts” willing to state that the internet (or video games or music or phone use or processed sugars) causes violence, even when they’re doing nothing more than observing correlations.
Researchers who study how violence multiplies told The Washington Post they are concerned about the posts’ reach and impact.
The article then goes on to quote a single researcher — Tim Weninger of Notre Dame — who says he’s “never seen” anything quite like this. It follows that up with comments from six internet randos, all but one of which said they don’t seriously want anyone to kill Trump, even if they did post something akin to “someone should do it.” (Several paragraphs later, it adds another researcher, who only expresses a broader concern about the public’s embrace of Luigi Mangione and some “celebrations” of Charlie Kirk’s murder.)
As ridiculous as this whole article is, it’s nothing compared to wet-brained word salad delivered by a Trump administration spokesperson:
“Anyone who engages in or endorses political violence or assassination culture must be condemned in the harshest terms possible,” said White House spokesman Davis Ingle. “They should also immediately seek psychiatric help to treat their severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has warped their brains and made them sick in the head.”
A. The party engaging in the most political violence is the Trump administration. Trump uses a lot of violent rhetoric. So do his political appointees. And let’s not forget that Trump supporters are, to date, the only people to express their disagreement with presidential election results by violently invading the US Capitol building for the sole purpose of preventing the election results from being certified. During this insurrection attempt, law enforcement officers were assaulted and people were killed. That’s reality. What’s happening on the internet is nothing compared to this violent assault on the very concept of democracy.
B. GTFO with this “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Psychiatrists can’t help people work their way through a stupid phrase the GOP has been using for the past few years because they can’t actually produce a coherent counterargument.
C. So what. We’re looking at a few viral posts made by people whose online reach far exceeds their ability to make anything happen. Compare that with actual politicians with an enormous amount of power and an army of MAGA faithful at their disposal:
U.S. elected officials have waded as well into the digital muck. Then–Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Arizona) was censured for posting an animated video in November 2021 that depicted him appearing to kill Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and swinging two swords at Joe Biden. (“Everyone needs to relax,” Gosar’s then-digital director, Jessica Lycos, said at the time in a statement defending the post.) Trump shared a video in March 2024 that featured an illustration of then-President Joe Biden with his hands and feet tied. (“That picture was on the back of a pickup truck that was traveling down the highway,” Steven Cheung, now a White House spokesman, told The Post back then, adding that Democrats and “crazed lunatics” have called for “despicable violence” against Trump.)
Fuck off with that “as well” shit. Officials never need to “wade into the muck.” These Republicans do it because they want to. And they do it to provoke exactly the reactions they get when they do it. Yeah, they’re also doing it for the clicks, but they have the force and power of the government behind them, which makes these a bit less easy to laugh off as just some off-target meme-making by people who aren’t quite the digital natives they imagine themselves to be.
At the end of it all, here’s what this “someone should do it” posting actually represents: the feeling that nothing works the way it’s supposed to because this administration has chosen to destroy pretty much everything that actually makes America great.
“Are you advocating that someone should take a gun and shoot this person in the head? ‘No’ is the answer to that question,” Mark said. “But at the same time, we’re going to joke about this, and we’re going to say this stuff, because we’re all feeling the most desperate and desolate that we ever have.”
That’s the ugly truth. This nation is being run by thugs and bullies. Violence is the only language they know. To get through to them, sometimes you have to speak their language. Not many people are capable of doing that. Sooner or later, though, “someone” will.
ABC/Disney, like most major media companies, has spent much of its time during America’s bout with authoritarianism being a feckless wimp. The company was quick to ditch its already fleeting embrace of civil rights to please our dim, racist president, and were just as quick to pay Trump a $15 million bribe to settle a baseless Trump lawsuit they could have easily won.
But as Trump’s health and power becomes more shaky, ABC appears to be showing the faint outline of a backbone.
ABC/Disney execs are now more directly accusing the Trump administration of violating the First Amendment with its endless threats to pull the company’s broadcast licenses if it platforms journalists, comedians, or talk show hosts who refuse to kiss the administration’s ass.
Quick background: we’ve noted repeatedly how Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has been abusing the FCC’s dated “equal opportunity” (or “equal time”) rule to try and threaten daytime and late night talk shows with government retribution if they refuse to enthusiastically coddle Republicans.
Recently, the Carr FCC took the unprecedented step of demanding that ABC-owned Houston affiliate KTRK file a petition for declaratory ruling to the FCC, explaining to the agency why it didn’t file the appropriate paperwork for a February 2nd appearance by Democrat James Talarico on The View (the traction Talarico is making among Christians clearly seems to worry the administration).
So KTRK last week filed their petition for declaratory ruling. And it shows slightly more backbone that we’ve become used to, directly stating that the Trump FCC’s actions violate the First Amendment and are having a “chilling effect” on free speech. While the petition is technically on behalf of KTRK, it was signed by Paul Clement, a former Bush-era solicitor general and very experienced Supreme Court litigator.
Talk shows have historically been exempt from the dated, golden-era-of-television rules, which required that any airing of a political candidate on “publicly owned” airwaves is countered with the appearance from a candidate from the opposing party. But Carr isn’t interested in equilibrium; he’s interested abusing FCC authority to try and silence critics of Donald Trump and his increasingly unpopular policies.
ABC’s notice to the FCC notes that the target of the administration’s censorial rage, The View, was clearly granted a Bona Fide Exemption to the rule back in 2002. Most talk shows have broadly been viewed as exempt since 1984 or so (and increasingly so, as the Internet challenged TV’s supremacy). From the ABC filing:
“The View has been broadcasting under a bona fide news exemption granted to it more than twenty years ago, consistent with longstanding Commission interpretations designed to minimize the serious First Amendment problems inherent in the equal time regime. The View’s exemption remains valid and the constitutional infirmities in the equal time doctrine are even more pronounced today, when the broadcast airwaves account for a slice of the numerous media options through which Americans get their political information.”
Carr’s FCC has also been threatening to pull ABC’s broadcast licenses in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel making fun of the president’s wife; but as we’ve previously reported, ABC only holds eight broadcast licenses in total; most in reality are owned by right wing affiliate companies already loyal to Trumpism.
Here’s an interesting bit of note: It appears that the Carr FCC staged things in advance with the help of those affiliates to make ABC-owned KTRK seem like it was doing something wrong.
First, the FCC tried to tell ABC and KTRK that The View being widely viewed as exempt is “not a position uniformly held by broadcasters that air the program” (it is).
But on pages 3-4 of ABC’s filing, they note that not only did those other affiliates not originally file the paperwork for the appearance (because there’s no need to given their exemption), the FCC personally reached out to a number of non-ABC owned affiliates to have them file paperwork late so it would appear that the ABC-owned KTRK was an outlier that did something wrong. From ABC’s filing:
“The Bureau neglected to note, however, that while certain ABC affiliates documented Talarico’s appearance in their online public inspection files, the filings were made more than two weeks after Talarico’s appearance and apparently at the request of the FCC, which reportedly promised to eschew enforcement for the late filing. KTRK Television received no such request and no such offer, despite the Bureau specifically contacting it about the Talarico appearance less than 10 days after it occurred.”
So again, the FCC accused ABC and its directly owned affiliate of something false, then told non-ABC owned affiliates to file paperwork they never would have otherwise planned to if they wanted merger approval to make it seem like KTRK did something wrong. And since a lot of these affiliates are already very Trump-friendly propaganda mills, the FCC likely didn’t have to apply much pressure.
While it’s always possible the Trump-stocked Supreme Court makes an insane ruling in Trump’s favor, these threats to pull broadcast licenses are not fights the Trump FCC wants to actually litigate. They’re designed to simply be a form of harassment that makes life so costly and difficult for companies that threat targets — and everybody else — just pre-emptively bows to pressure to censor.
Trump and Carr expect companies to pre-emptively quiver and not put up a costly fight. And while these threats have worked for a while (because our corporate media is broadly opportunistic and pathetic), Trump’s abysmal poll numbers in the wake of the Iran war and soaring gas prices are likely instilling new confidence even among the most weak-kneed companies.
