Episode Notes

1) Derek Chauvin seeks a new trial for murdering George Floyd

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/12/03/derek-chauvin-seeks-to-overturn-george-floyd-murder-conviction-and-get-new-trial

The police hold the power to deprive anyone at any time of their life and liberty. They should be held to a higher standard of behavior and responsibility and if they don’t like it then maybe they are in the wrong business. If George Floyd was breaking the law, he should have been arrested, Mirandized and given his day in court instead of being murdered on the street by a police officer who was entrusted to keep the public safe. George Floyd was a member of that very public.

2) A grand jury declined to indict New York State Attorney General Letitia James

https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/04/politics/grand-jury-declines-to-indict-letitia-james-again

With every subsequent attempt to indict Attorney General James, the stack of evidence that this is a selective and vindictive prosecution grows. It was never going to be the guardrails we thought existed in government that will keep the worst impulses of this administration in check, it was never going to be a press that turned out to be too afraid of Trump to challenge him or outright owned by Trump lackeys who would hold him to account…it was always going to be we the people.

3) The Supreme Court upheld the gerrymandered Texas map despite the stated fact that it was a racial gerrymander

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/04/nx-s1-5619692/supreme-court-texas-redistricting-map

In the meantime, Republicans in California are challenging the new maps passed by the voters and it will likely end up at the Supreme Court. Will the rogue justices strike down California’s democratically-decided gerrymander even after upholding the Texas gerrymander, which was achieved through political fiat, bypassing the democratic process? And what does this portend for the upcoming decision as to whether or not to finally wipe away the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act?

4) What is Narcoterrorism?

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/political-science/narcoterrorism

This is a term that the Trump administration is using to blow small boats in the Caribbean to smithereens and justify an invasion of Venezuela. They began mass deportations of Venezuelans on the pretext that they are members of the gang Tren De Aragua, without providing any evidence, to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to justify the roundups. This act assumes we are at war with a country before invoking it, so Trump is trying to create this justification on an ex post facto basis. Terrorism is defined as the use of violence to advance a political end. If anyone could be called a terrorist, it would be the Trump Administration, which is using extreme violence to achieve Stephen Miller’s seeming political aim of emptying the country of black and brown people.

5) What is ethnic cleansing?

https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethnic-cleansing

The Trump administration is promoting the idea of “remigration”, which is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-threatening-naturalized-american-citizens

6) If It’s about drugs, why did Trump just pardon an epic narcotrafficker?

https://www.factcheck.org/2025/12/examining-trumps-pardon-of-former-honduran-president-convicted-of-trafficking-drugs-to-u-s/

7) Are you ignorant or just a liar?

https://www.axios.com/2025/07/04/trump-shylock-antisemitic-slur

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/opinion-trump-admits-he-doesn-t-know-who-he-pardoned/ar-AA1PNV1e?apiversion=v2&domshim=1&noservercache=1&noservertelemetry=1&batchservertelemetry=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1

Regarding the second strike on that boat in September:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pESVEu8w22E

First the administration said the second strike never happened, then they said that they did happen, adding that they always intended the strikes to be lethal, but that Secretary Hegseth never ordered the second strike and never said to “kill everybody”, and then they laid responsibility at the feet of Admiral Bradley, upon they heap effusive praise even as they throw him under the bus.

This is a pattern we have seen over and over again with the Trump administration. He has lambasted Biden’s supposed use of the autopen to sign executive orders and pardons, a practice that goes back decades, while at the same time feigning ignorance of truly horrible people whom he has pardoned. We see this in Republican lawmakers every time Trump does or says something egregious, they claim that they haven’t heard it or seen it. I am waiting for one, just one reporter to ask the question…”Are you ignorant, or are you just a liar?” “Are you incompetent, or are you just a liar?” Every reporter needs to ask this question over and over, ignoring the increasing barrage of abuse hurled at them as a distraction to stop the question from being answered. Trump deflects responsibility for his words and actions with abuse.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-calls-female-reporters-ugly-piggy/

He may talk with reporters more than Biden did, but it is increasingly to a small handpicked cadre of far-right alternative media figures and influencers and anyone who asks him a question any responsible and professional journalist might ask, it immediately triggers the abuse.

We are a nation in the middle of a domestic abuse situation. There is no shelter. There is no one coming to save us. We have to save ourselves. Remember, at a fundamental level, bullies are weak and pathetic people. They have to resort to violence to maintain control, violence they often employ others to carry out. Most have glass jaws. There is no way out of this unless we choose to make our way out of this. Remember, he has tens of millions of followers who not only have no problem with his rampant abuse, lawlessness and chaos, they embrace it, they deify him for it. But there are more of us than there are of them. Eventually we will find ourselves out the other side of it and it will be up to us to rebuild what has been destroyed by this self-serving narcissistic sociopath and his merry band of self-serving sycophants and those who have used him as a useful idiot to infect our country with their dystopian view of what our society should become.

Email to: [email protected]