This week, POLITICO broke the story of a Young Republican group chat that was rife with racism, sexism, and antisemitism: calling Black people “monkeys;” calling rape “epic;” fantasizing about sending political opponents to the gas chambers; literally saying “I love Hitler.”

Vice President JD Vance defended them.

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“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.”

He’s right that a kid’s life shouldn’t be ruined by telling a stupid joke. But the “young boys” in question here are, in fact, adult men, many in positions of power. All members of the Young Republicans are between the ages of 18 and 40. The “I love Hitler” guy (who also called Black people monkeys) is Peter Giunta, a man in his 30s and chief of staff to New York state Assemblymember Mike Reilly. I can’t find the age of Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans, but he was recently touted by his organization as “a veteran GOP strategist from Albany.” Samuel Douglass, a Vermont state senator, joined in a conversation in which Walker mocked a friend who “dated this very obese Indian woman for a period of time;” Douglass added, “she just didn’t bathe very often.” When he noted a procedural error made by a Jewish colleague, his wife Brianna Douglass — who sits on the national committee of the Vermont Young Republicans — chimed in to say, “I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest.”

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Many of the participants in this group chat are older than the recent college grads who staffed up DOGE and dismantled the federal government. Many of them are older and certainly in greater positions of power and influence than the random people making rude comments on social media in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder — but when it came to those people, Vance and the broader right argued they should face serious consequences, from losing their jobs to being expelled from school to being refused visas to the US to being deported.

There are two issue here. One is that the MAGA right has a legitimate Nazi problem. The second is that the MAGA right believes there are two standards: The ultra-permissive one that applies to them and their followers within which there are zero consequences for even the worst behavior, and the far stricter one that applies to liberals or any other perceived political opponents. And they’re willing to use the full force of government to punish their opponents and create maximal permissiveness for themselves.

This goes beyond speech. The most obvious and egregious example at the moment might be Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar who was under FBI investigation for accepting a bag filled with $50,000 in cash in what seemed to be a bribery scheme… until Trump came into power and his FBI suddenly dropped the investigation. In the meantime, the administration has pursued mortgage fraud and other trumped-up cases against Democratic leaders, calling in unqualified ideologues who have never tried a single criminal case because the evidence is so thin the normal attorneys at DOJ won’t try to prosecute.

Trump has accepted an airplane from the Qataris. His entire crypto scheme is little more than blatant pay-to-play. There aren’t even two different standards when it comes to enforcing laws. There is one side that blatantly flouts the law, and then makes up specious criminal accusations against the other.

The same holds true when it comes to ugly speech and the fomenting of political violence. “Hypocrisy” doesn’t even begin to cut it. It is absolutely true that some people on the left have engaged in acts of political violence, and that those acts are ugly, and that some people on social media cheered. That’s all disgusting and shameful.

But right-wing political violence remains more common than left-wing political violence. Conservatives currently claim that calling them “fascists” or “Nazis” promotes actual violence; they have pledged to crack down on that kind of speech, and to investigate what they claim are networks of left-wing organizations that do things like riot at protests. Ted Cruz just introduced legislation targeting the upcoming No Kings protests, which he claims “may well turn into riots” and says are possibly funded by George Soros, the perpetual bogeyman to authoritarian regimes across the globe. Never mind that the Jan. 6 protests claiming the election was stolen from Trump actually did turn into a riot that injured and killed several people, and those who committed acts of serious violence were pardoned by the president and cheered as heroes by his followers. This is not both sides doing the same thing. This is one side acting far more egregiously, and then bringing the full power of the state down on its opponents for doing far less.

It is had to overstate how much Trump and the MAGA movement have coarsened American discourse, gutted American morality, and generally turned our country into an uglier, less decent place. More than anything else, this is an administration of impunity: Personal impunity for Trump and his family, but also impunity for those who support him to behave in the vilest of ways with no consequences — including seeing no consequences for using their positions to target their political enemies, and to kneecap any political opposition to their cause. Young conservatives who support Trump and the MAGA movement do so because of this culture of impunity, not in spite of it. This is a movement that revels in cruelty and glorifies hurting people — in laughing at children who are sobbing because their parents were taken away by ICE, laughing at people who die thanks to USAID cuts. Online, young conservatives now relish how far they can go. The president, after all, invited one of the country’s most notorious white supremacist Holocaust-denying Nazi sympathizers to dinner. He is reportedly considering revamping the refugee resettlement program to give preference to white people.

Being “edgy” by being super racist, misogynist, and antisemitic is standard now among young Republicans. That’s not just because they’re young and dumb. It’s because they’re taking their cues from their elders.

JD Vance seems to think that because identifying as a Nazi is increasingly common among young people in his party, there shouldn’t be consequences for it. A better question might be: Why is the MAGA movement such a draw for people who say they love Nazis and Hitler?

xx Jill

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Thinking that I would write about the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas over Gaza, the working title for this column until a few moments ago was, “Does land matter more than people’s lives, or do lives matter more than the land?” And then I read a story about Hamas coming out of the tunnels after the ceasefire, and the first thing they did, according to the account I read, was hunt down and arrest people whom they had identified as traitors and execute them.

This, of course, followed the attack almost exactly two years ago by Hamas fighters on Israeli settlements and a music festival near the border with Gaza, when they killed more than a thousand Israelis and took over two hundred people hostage and escaped back into Gaza. Then came the two years of war between Israel and Hamas, which consisted, in the main, of Israel bombing Gaza towns nearly flat in an attempt to root out and destroy Hamas, causing the deaths of at least 67,000 Palestinians and the wounding of another 170,000, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Over two years, 80 percent of the buildings that stood in Gaza before the war have been either severely damaged or flattened entirely. Nine out of ten homes have been destroyed. Now that the fighting has stopped, aerial photos show almost unknowable destruction, seemingly nothing left of the place 2.1 million people called home.

While a meeting of international leaders yesterday discussed how the place may be rebuilt, Gazans streamed north from camps in South Gaza, returning to their destroyed homes in towns from which they had been banished. Gaza, largely in rubble, is still their home.

Sitting here in a country that is about to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of its founding, what is to explain the attachment of people to this ancient land that has been fought over for nearly three millennia? Jerusalem, the capital of what is now Israel, was ruled over by a series of ancient civilizations, beginning with the Israelites, more than 1,000 years BC -- Before Christ, as historians have agreed that ancient and modern time is measured. Then came the Assyrians, who ruled for a couple hundred years before being conquered by the Babylonians, followed in quick measure by the Persians. Another couple hundred years would pass before Alexander brought his Greek army to run the Persians out. The Romans were next, followed by the Byzantines, and then several hundred years of Muslim rule before the Crusaders invaded from Europe and controlled things until the Ottomans arrived around 1500 and took over Jerusalem and all of what is now Israel until the 20^th Century brought modern wars and partition by Great Britain, followed by World War II and soon thereafter, Jews displaced the British and a whole lot of Palestinians and established modern Israel.

All of this over a piece of land about the size of New Jersey at the time Israel declared its independence.

I wrote a sentence above about “civilizations” controlling Jerusalem and what is now Israel. Civilization is just a word for the people who went to war against other people and won the right to say they controlled that land. It’s hard reading history or even studying the history of war as I did at West Point, to see what we’re talking about. I was in Israel and Lebanon in 1974-75 to write about terrorism, and during that time, I visited the Old City of Jerusalem and went to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. There was a large plaza that you crossed to reach the Western Wall at that time. To the left of the Wall, an archaeological dig was in progress. You could pass through an opening in a wall and look down into a hole in the ground and see the progress of the dig, lit by electric lights. There was a footpath that crossed another footpath about fifty feet down.

A few years later, I was in Jerusalem on another story and visited the Old City again. This time, they had dug up the plaza in front of the Western Wall and exposed the history of the place. At the bottom of the dig, you could see some of ancient Jerusalem, from the time of the First Temple. Rooms of a house, made of stone and mud, were visible, and a little to the right of those rooms, about 20 feet higher, was the vaulted bedroom of a Roman home. You could clearly see that one civilization – one conquering people – had built their homes on the ruins of the homes occupied by people who predated them by hundreds of years.

Today, the plaza is flat again, but you can visit the rooms of the ancient city underground. They have uncovered a ritual Jewish bath from Herodian times that was supplied with water carried by an ancient aqueduct from Bethlehem, miles away from Jerusalem. The same aqueduct was the primary source of water for Jerusalem until the British Mandate 2,000 years later.

That is how long Jerusalem, and other parts of the Middle East, have been fought over. For centuries and centuries, towns were built and destroyed and rebuilt, just as Jerusalem was. Invaders came in from tribes that lived along the Tigris River in what is now Iraq. They came from the town of Aleppo in what is now Syria – thus, the Assyrians. The people of Ur, south of Babylon, conquered the people of Aleppo, and then they headed south and went through what is now Syria and Lebanon to Jerusalem. They were conquering each other, and enslaving one another, for centuries. It was always the same. One ruler wanted what the other ruler had, so they made armies and went after each other’s land.

Their armies were their people. They spent the lives of their people to take the land of the rulers they considered their enemies. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands died in these wars that went from before the time history was recorded, right on through recorded history, continuing for two thousand years more, with pagan religions being formed and then supplanted by religions with leaders such as Christ and Muhammed, and still in modern times an army calling itself Isis, in attempting a new caliphate, set out to conquer people in Iraq called the Yazidis, who live along a mountain range near the Syrian border, simply because they do not follow the Muslim faith.

It’s still going on, the lusting after land, the willingness to kill people because they occupy land you want, or they follow a different god than you do, or they follow no god at all, or all three.

When I was in Israel and Lebanon in the mid-70’s, I got into discussions with Israelis and Palestinians about the most recent struggle over the land I was visiting. Everyone on one side was right. Everyone on the other side was wrong. There were stories and there were myths and there was history, and no matter who told the stories or believed in the myths or recounted the history of the place, both recent and ancient, the argument, which went back more than 2,000 years, sought to explain who was right and who was wrong.

But it didn’t work. If it worked, there would not be almost three millennia of wars and death over the same pieces of land for which wars are still being fought today. Every once in a while, usually when I was talking to someone from either side who was smart and inquisitive and well read, I would start a sentence with, “Have you ever thought of it this way…” or I would say, “What if they did this, and you did that, and wouldn’t that…”

But it wouldn’t. I heard a word all the time back in the 70’s that I heard this morning on NPR when a guy from the Arab League was being interviewed, but he could have been a guy from the Israeli government, or from an Israeli university, or from a Palestinian faction in Lebanon or he could have been a Sunni or a Shiite or a Christian, because it didn’t really matter who he was. It didn’t matter because the word was the always same for everyone: Conditions. If conditions were understood, or if conditions were met, or if conditions were taken into consideration, or if conditions were different. Always conditions, because conditions are what keeps the whole thing going.

It doesn’t make any more sense if you call it hate or intolerance, because it’s always the same. There are always lands and there are always people and there are always leaders who are willing to sacrifice people for land, to kill their own people so they can take over the other guy’s land. Putin is doing it right now in Ukraine. According to something called the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law, there are more than 100 armed conflicts going on in the world at this moment: 45 in the Middle East and North Africa; 35 in Africa; seven in Europe; 21 in Asia; and six in Latin America. I was scrolling through my newsfeed yesterday when I came across a story about fighting breaking out on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s an argument over whose land on the border is whose, naturally. That’s a new one not even mentioned in the Geneva report.

Nobody wishes for death; nobody in their right mind, anyway. Today here in Milford, we attended the funeral and burial of a good friend’s husband, a veteran of Vietnam who died from complications of being exposed to Agent Orange. The Army sent a two-man team to pay last respects to the veteran of one of our nation’s wars. I would say “one of our nation’s tragic wars,” but they’re all tragic, aren’t they? One of the soldiers blew “Taps,” and then they removed the American flag from the casket at the gravesite and folded it and handed the flag to the widow, our friend.

It was both sad and beautiful. The day was overcast. The Milford Cemetery runs up the side of a small mountain called The Knob that overlooks the town. The cemetery is hilly and crowded with graves and serene. As we stood there listening to the mournful notes of “Taps,” I thought of the body of our friend’s husband who had fought one of our wars and ended up paying for his service with his life, and I thought of his body going into the Pennsylvania ground.

Thousands of years of bodies and millions of graves, marked and unmarked, and all the destruction that lies atop and under the earth, as it does in Jerusalem and all around the world where history has exacted its price in the blood of human beings whose lives were spent in the name of land, anybody’s land, anywhere, it doesn’t matter where, or why, it is always bodies and it is always land and it always means that someone, a lot of someones, must perish.

I’m sure that as a species we are not born with a death wish, but we have lived our lives for thousands of years as if we are, and that characteristic of human beings is a real tragedy.

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The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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As we enter Week Three of the Trump Shutdown, the damage Republicans are inflicting on the country is escalating, and it’s reasonable to ask how this ends. Do they have a plan? Is there a way out for the regime that results in a victory?

Ummmmm…no.

This was a stupid fight to pick, and no matter how it ends, even if Democrats eventually fold (which they REALLY should not), Republicans are going to lose. That’s what happens when you start a war without a plan or any idea what your exit strategy is. The regime was so focused on “owning the libs,” they didn’t consider anything else.

The public is still blaming Republicans more than Democrats. Is it overwhelmingly favoring Democrats? No. But it doesn’t need to. The fact that Republicans aren’t easily winning the messaging battle is a very bad sign for them. The party out of power always loses these fights, and quickly. But the argument is so lopsided towards Democrats, the natural advantage Republicans should be enjoying is gone.

That means the longer this goes on and the more damage the economy suffers, the more the public will sour on the regime. They’ll demand compromise, which is the one thing the regime will not do. Remember, compromise is weakness…

And that brings us to a week or so from now. November 1st, open enrollment for healthcare starts. Shortly before that, tens of millions of people will learn what next year’s prices will be without the expiring government subsidies. These would be the subsidies Democrats are fighting to have restored. The same subsidies Republicans told Democrats to “go fuck yourself” over.

What do you suppose will happen when tens of millions of people discover their healthcare is going to go up by several hundred dollars because Republicans refuse to renew the subsidies? And then connect the dots to the shutdown?

My guess is that social media will be flooded with furious posts, and public polling will shift rather sharply against the regime.

And that’s putting aside all of the economic damage the shutdown is wreaking on the wider economy. Hundreds of thousands of families are missing paychecks. National parks are closing. Contracts are on hold. Construction is slowing down (in addition to the slowdown already in progress)

On top of all of that, the assholes running the country are gleefully (and illegally) using the shutdown to fire government workers. DOGE taking an axe to the government was deeply unpopular. Doing it again and blaming the shutdown won’t work. We’ve all lived through several shutdowns, and no one was ever fired. Treating the public like they’re fucking morons who can’t remember what happened a few years ago is insulting and will simply piss people off.

It doesn’t help that immediately after firing 4,100 people, hundreds had to be rehired. Nothing says “We’re winning!” like rank incompetence and fanatical stupidity.

Did you know the Opinionated Ogre has a weekly podcast? It’s true! New episodes every Thursday! Catch the latest episode here:

The OgPod is the #1 Ogre Podcast!

And, finally, we come to the Epstein Files, one of the main reasons we’ll be in this shutdown for as long as possible. The press does not want to frame it this way, but they’re going to have to talk about it eventually: The Adelita Grijalva problem.

Grijalva crushed her opponent on Sept. 23. At first, Mike Johnson said he had to wait for the official paperwork to be filed, which everyone knew was a lie. Johnsin had previously sworn in both Republicans AND Democrats before the official state paperwork was filed.

Then Johnson said he couldn’t swear Grijalva in until the House was back in session. But that’s also a lie. He could swear her in at any time, regardless of the House being in full session or not.

It’s obvious that Johnson is delaying so his party of terrorists has more time to pressure the handful of Republicans ready to force the Epstein files into the open. But it’s been several weeks now, and Johnson hasn’t been able to beg, bribe, or bully them into submission. Very sad.

So what’s the plan here? Keep the government closed forever? That’s sure to play well with the public. Reopen the House but refuse to seat Grijalva? Maybe, but the courts will have something to say about that. Seat Grijalva after a lengthy delay and then illegally ignore the discharge petition? The courts will have something to say about that, as well.

Johnson may consider every day delayed a victory, but it’s not. The longer he blocks the vote, the more complicit House Republicans look in protecting pedophiles.

Even if Democrats caved tomorrow and ended the shutdown, Johnson will still have to protect Trump, and Republicans still lose. They do not have a plan. They never had a plan. They just scream and stomp their feet and lie and lie and lie and hope everyone stops paying attention. It’s worked before, hasn’t it?

Not this time. The fascists have stepped into a minefield of their own making with no way out. They didn’t have to go to the mat for a pedophile. But they did. They could have easily given Democrats what they asked for and taken the win on all of the other damage they’ve inflicted on the country with their sadistic budget. But they didn’t. No one is forcing the regime to spit in the public’s face during the shutdown, daring anyone to hold them accountable. But they’re doing it anyway.

When it all blows up in their face and the regime screams in outrage, I will personally give a shiny nickel to the first reporter who asks, “Did you actually think this was going to work out for you? Are you fucking stupid or drunk?”

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is on Saturday, October 18th, for No Kings Day across the nation!!

The Blue Wave has begun, and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 20 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

A Small Illinois Newspaper Breaks a National Story About Killing Local Government Autonomy and DEI.

Citizen Journalism Alert! At the end of this article, you’ll find out how you can help us investigate this latest power grab at federal control and adherence to Trump policies.

The power-mad Trump administration has begun planting language in federal grant contracts that would give it control over how local governments deal with immigration raids, block public services that may benefit those Trump wants to deport, and ban policies promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

A small daily newspaper in Urbana, a town of 38,000 two hours outside of Chicago that is rich with academics and scientists , broke the news on Wednesday.

Accepting the Trump administration grant would mean the City of Urbana must close ‘any program that benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration.’

Deep in a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)  grant to the Urbana Fire Department is language requiring that the Illinois city cooperate with ICE as a condition of accepting $69,000.

Among grant conditions which have nothing to do with firefighting:

• No restrictions on sharing  information about any  individual’s citizenship or immigration status.
• Complying with prohibitions on encouraging illegal immigration and “harboring, concealing or shielding from detection illegal aliens.”
• Honoring requests for cooperation.
• Not publicizing “the existence of an immigration-enforcement operation.”

In addition, accepting the Trump administration grant would mean the City of Urbana must close “any program that benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration.”  This provision could make the city government vulnerable to a Trump administration lawsuit over any program, say free admission to a city-sponsored concert or youth sports programs, if a single undocumented person participated.

Anti-DEI clause

The city would also have to agree not to “operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.”

This bowing to the Trump administration would be in return for a sum equal to less than a tenth of one percent of the city’s $125 million annual budget.

Accepting the grant terms would mean selling out the principles articulated by several Urbana alderpersons—and for a lot less, relatively, than Judas Iscariot’s 30 pieces of silver. (Alderperson is Illinois-speak for city council member.)

Is this contract provision giving up local autonomy unique to Urbana? Unlikely.

Reporter Jana Wiersema has concisely told a story about this grant that should prompt deep dives by other news organizations. And digging out the facts will be easy in this case. That’s where you can help, as we explain below.

Revealing Documents

Many grant contracts are available online. For paper-only contracts, just stop by City Hall, county offices, and other local government agencies. You could also ask your city council or other representative to email you documents.

Thanks to digital technology, searching grant contracts is easy: Control F for keywords such as immigration, DEI, inclusion, and other terms that trigger Trump and his minister of hate, Stephen Miller. Digital sleuthing would quickly reveal the types of levers the Trump administration seeks to use over local governments and their agencies through grants like this one to the Urbana Fire Department.

Urbana alderpersons have, for the moment, tabled acceptance of the grant. One of them seems hopeful that the grant terms can be renegotiated to remove the command-and-control language the Trump Administration wrote into the contract.

Fat chance. Grants are optional. Grants typically are offered in the way companies provide you similar “contracts of adhesion,” meaning they are one-sided with nonnegotiable terms. Think of the contract you sign when renting a car – take it or leave it.

But how often does a grant contract get the scrutiny that a local official applied to this grant from Washington?

Our prominent national news organizations should follow up on this.

You can do something to get the news out, DCReport readers. Email and call your local news organizations and urge them to investigate conditions on Trump administration grants to your local governments.  Send them the link to this DCReport column. PLUS, read the Action Box below to find out how YOU can use your local lens to help us expose a much bigger national story.

Photo at top: Collage from Africa Images (puppet master), aliftyaku from Solvers (cash), and Andika Setiawan from Dikas Studio

“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.

The post Trump Using Small Grants to Force Deportation Compliance appeared first on DCReport.org.

David Cay Johnston Provides Another Reality Check!

DAVID’S VIDEO COMMENTARY IS BELOW. David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and DCReport co-founder, highlights a powerful new column by former DCReport contributor, Max Taves, in the San Jose Mercury News. Read Max’s piece HERE.

Taves reveals that leading tech CEOs — from Intel to Meta — are staying silent out of fear of Donald Trump’s retaliation. He also exposes a buried clause in a recent federal “investment” in Intel that could allow Trump to act as an owner, dictating what the company can and cannot do.

This unprecedented intertwining of government control and private enterprise mirrors authoritarian systems abroad — and it’s unfolding in the U.S.

Read the column (outside the paywall), reflect on what this means for innovation, free markets, and democracy, and help spread awareness.

“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.

The post Silicon Valley Bends the Knee appeared first on DCReport.org.