Yeah, my only takeaway from this is that we really should bring back dueling so Musk and Bezos could settle their dispute in a way that might actually make the world a slightly better place

If someone from the Trump administration says the sky is blue you should look outside to confirm

This is a pretty striking statement.

For starters the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency within the US Department of Transportation Duffy leads, has previously said it will take no part in determining whether people who fly on suborbital flights are astronauts. The agency makes this clear on its human spaceflight page, stating: “The FAA no longer designates anyone as an ‘astronaut.’ In addition, the FAA does not define where space begins.”

To step back just a little bit, the FAA created a commercial “Astronaut Wings” program back in 2004 to recognize the two pilots of SpaceShipOne, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie, who flew the vehicle above 50 statute miles (80 km). After that time, the program recognized private citizens who flew on Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft, Blue Origin’s New Shepard, and SpaceX’s orbital Crew Dragon vehicle. You flew, and you got astronaut wings.

Then, in December 2021, the agency stopped issuing wings. “With the advent of the commercial space tourism era, starting in 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration will now recognize individuals who reach space on its website instead of issuing Commercial Space Astronaut Wings,” the agency said. “Any individual who is on an FAA-licensed or permitted launch and reaches 50 statute miles above the surface of the Earth will be listed on the site.”

Sanchez, Perry, and the others are recognized on this site today.

Good

As California Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled out a lawsuit Wednesday challenging Trump’s sweeping tariffs, he had little to say about the Abrego Garcia case when asked about it.

“This is the distraction of the day. The art of distraction,” Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, said of Trump invoking MS-13 to justify his actions. “And here, we zig and zag. This is the debate they want. This is their 80-20 issue, as they’ve described it.”

While noting that the government needs to abide by court orders and the rule of law, Newsom added, “It’s exactly the debate they want, because they don’t want this debate on the tariffs; they don’t want to be accountable to markets today.”

(archived)

Aww, poor baby justices had to stay up late working? Well, maybe if you didn’t issue a stupid as hell ruling that tried to have it both ways a week ago and then kicked everything into the 5th circuit you wouldn’t be working at midnight on a Saturday, but here we all are.

It’s one rock breaking loose when we need a landslide, but that’s how landslides always start

The courts at the time said he was formerly in a gang

I don’t think even that’s right, I think ICE claimed he was a member of MS-13 (based off of one bullshit statement from a cop whose not allowed to testify anymore for the state prosecutors because he got caught lying about so much other stuff (arc)), but I don’t think the immigration court ever really addressed that and just left it at “If you wanted asylum you should have asked within one year after getting into the country but you’ve been here 7 years, and that’s reason enough to rule against you”

Besides that, Garcia never said he was a member of a gang. He said his family was threatened by a completely different gang and that they were going to hurt him if he didn’t join them, but he left instead of joining them (arc).

Like, his only real connection to a gang is being a victim of it, but the Laken Riley Act supporting assholes of our world will never give a shit about brown people being victimized by criminal gangs because they’re racist hypocritical douchebags (and maybe they understand on some level they’ve got the same kind of symbiotic relationship with MS-13 that George W had with Al Quaeda and Netanyahu has with Hamas).

Van Hollen shouldn’t have publicized those pictures at all, everything from the setting to the clothes they gave Garcia was a misrepresentation of what he’s going through

If they spend weeks convincing you that you should do it, give you money or other resources to do it, or so on, then it can be entrapment.

Things like that should theoretically help you make an argument for entrapment, but it’s no sure thing

I don’t understand your aggressive tone

I can understand people being furious about seeing the progress fascism is making in our country. I think the aggression is a bit misdirected in this particular case, but I get it.

You’re calling the kettle black in the middle of the cookware aisle here, we’re all “keyboard warriors,” you just don’t like this one’s opinion

If he’d tried to forcibly secure Garcia’s release that would very likely set off an insane chain of consequences we haven’t made adequate preparations for. Like, if nothing else, Van Hollen would be a fugitive from the American government at that point because there’s no way any American court would let a Senator start doing commander in chief stuff like that.

Want to see a politician that really goes the extra fucking mile and stays the fuck there until they leave with him

I tend to agree, but we need all the votes in the US Senate we can get right now, so I think Van Hollen’s a bad person to do this. A quick online search tells me there’s a decent margin in the Maryland state Senate though, so one of those lawmakers could camp down there and keep pushing this.

Every single photo and video from CECOT is staged

So if Van Hollen couldn’t have taken any photos or videos without the prison guards’ interference that’s all the more reason not to make and share sanctioned propaganda for them like these photos were.

Doubters would be asking for real proof

Again, for reasons already discussed these pictures are not proof of anything and if anything only serve to make Van Hollen’s statements seem less credible and make any doubters seem more reasonable. I think I still believe him, but the gullibility displayed here by sharing this misinformation is incredible.

If he was talking to a stuffed corpse, once he leaves El Salvador, there’s nothing stopping Sen. Van Hollen to say so

I guess I’m less cynical than you are, I’m willing to assume Van Hollen’s statements from El Salvador weren’t pure bullshit and provide proof that these photos don’t, but if people are arguing that his statement was coerced somehow then we really didn’t get anything at all from this trip other than a propaganda win for the fascists who are going to use these pictures to argue that CECOT isn’t that bad.

I don’t know what you would want from the Senator

I want him to not be duped into sharing fascists’ propaganda. Going to El Salvador and meeting with Garcia and sharing a statement about that meeting and what he observed during it was good (actually, in spite of the harm he did by sharing those misleading photos I’m still grateful to the Senator just for giving Garcia a friendly face to talk to), but sharing staged photographs and not realizing that those pictures are going to be used by fascists to dispute his statements and drown out all the long boring detailed reports from human rights NGOs about conditions at this prison that the average American never reads was bad.

I think his heart was in the right place here, he just did a boneheaded thing accidentally at a time when we really need everyone to be on their A game.

e; One other thing I want from the next person who’s able to secure a visit with Garcia - bring his lawyer and spouse with you so they can meet with him as well

Ugh, the fact that people are referring to these pre-planned and staged pictures as proof of anything shows the damage this did.

These pictures don’t prove anything, Garcia could be dead in those pictures and they could have taken him to a goddamn taxidermist and posed him. The fact that a US lawmaker who seems to not be a fascist moron says he met with Garcia and Garcia is alive is proof, but those photos are pure bullshit that don’t tell us anything and should not have been shared.

Ok, so Republicans tried to defeat her but Alaska’s election system stopped them. Seems like she’s in a uniquely secure position to be doing more.

What the fuck was that picture Van Hollen sent out? Like, if you only saw the photo of Garcia talking with Van Hollen at that table you would think he’s totally fine and just on a vacation down there. Where was Garcia’s prison uniform, the cell he was staying in, his cellmates, the armed guards escorting him, the shackles etc., any kind of stuff that might tell us how his day to day life has actually been down there? Letting the guards clean up what they’ve been doing to him, stick him in civilian clothes, and bring him to a fancy hotel to meet with Van Hollen was all propaganda bullshit and this senator signal boosted it.

I’m really grateful he went down there and got this meeting, but posting that misleading picture was dumb.

The problem is these are Republicans were dealing with. Unless somebody on this site has a few million dollars to throw at them there’s nothing tangible we can offer them personally, and we wouldn’t have gotten here in the first place if they had any basic sense of right and wrong we could appeal to.

However, the good news is that we can honestly point out the very simple situation they’re obviously in, and if enough of us do that often enough reality might finally break through to them. The situation is that Donald Trump has a list of people he wants to hurt and they’re all definitely on it because they could threaten his power. Being nice to him might move their name down the list but it won’t get them off of it. The only way they can protect themselves is by taking Donald Trump’s power from him before he gets to them.

We don’t need Republicans to be good people to deal with this situation (which is good because they absolutely are not and haven’t been for decades and decades), we just need them to be slightly less stupid than they’re currently being.

Didn’t they already try to do that with Murkowski and she won as a write in?

Is the rest of the Salvadorian society ok with this?

If they make too much trouble for Bukele he will just throw them in there too

Many arrests appear to be based on the appearance or social background of detainees or on anonymous calls, and Salvadoran and international human rights groups have documented detentions of hundreds of people with no connections to gangs. Detainees include union and community leaders as well as environmental human rights defenders.

I know the guy is incredibly popular there,

Imprisoning or killing people who disagree with you will make it appear that way

I bet it would show up very quickly because they’ll realize the same thing could happen to anyone of them whenever Trump wants to do it and that they need to take him out before he takes them out

Trump could throw a thousand immigrants into a woodchipper right in front of Congress and it would just be furrowed brows all around, but if a hair on a lawmakers’ head ever gets touched by an official action I think they’d impeach him

I don’t think that’s right, fancy restaurants and other private establishments can enforce dress codes and things like that. Generally speaking, any private organization is allowed to exclude whoever they want from their events so long as they don’t do so for a forbidden reason. Kicking someone out because you don’t like their haircut is fine, but kicking someone out because (for example) they’re Muslim is not.