The *Lies*. Tabs, Thurs., April 24, 2025

Morning news roundup and things to read!

Tabs gif by your friend Martini Glambassador!

What are we learning about this morning? Some things!

Please get Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize ready, he’s got a peace plan for Russia and Ukraine! Oh. (Axios)

I do not understand putative Democrats saying fighting for the men we’ve illegally shipped to prison-slavery in El Salvador is “a distraction,” but Reps. Maxwell Frost, Yassamin Ansari, Maxine Dexter, and Robert Garcia are in El Salvador demanding proof of life for Andry Hernandez Romero. (The Bulwark)

DHS posted Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s address, so his wife and children have had to go into hiding. What the fuck even with these people. (The New Republic)

Unidentified “law” “enforcement” coming to a Texas lawyer’s house, cutting off his wifi and Ring doorbell, and demanding to know what he’d told undocumented people. And he feels guilty! (Radley Balko)

The lies about the US citizen they had in ICE lockup for 10 days. The lies. (Popular Info)

Yes of course ICE raids at courthouses. And not just for the guilty neither. (Daily Progress)

Pope Francis was immigrants’ greatest friend.

Pope Francis’ first trip outside of Vatican City following his election to the papacy in March 2013 was to visit the small Italian island of Lampedusa, where he threw a wreath into the Mediterranean Sea to commemorate the thousands of migrants and refugees who had tragically drowned – and continue to drown – in its waters while seeking out new lives for themselves and their families. In a speech during that visit, Pope Francis lambasted “the globalization of indifference” to the suffering of our fellow human beings.

“Has any one of us grieved for the death of these brothers and sisters?” he asked. “Has any one of us wept for these persons who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who were looking for a means of supporting their families? We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion – ‘suffering with’ others: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep.”

(Americas Voice)

Good for the CBS News anchors. So say we all.

Studying ovarian cancer is “DEI,” discriminates against men without ovaries. Thank God Elon’s here to cut off the largest study of women’s health going back to the ‘90s. (Science)

You don’t need your milk tested, right? The FDA didn’t think so. (Reuters)

You didn’t need to know how many kids die from what, right, or how many women die in childbirth? Elon doesn’t think so either. (Pro Publica)

You don’t need Americorps kids helping rebuild western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, right? Trump didn’t think so too more. (Yahoo)

It’s the American Red Cross, not the UNAmerican Red Cross, and that’s why Trump’s considering making it illegal for American nonprofits to send any money to help anyone overseas. (Also: THAT’S NOT LEGAL.) (New York Post)

Durbin out. He was a good, mostly progressive senator. He wasn’t really made to meet this moment. (AP) And Jan Schakowsky is planning a retirement announcement too. She’s an excellent congresswoman, and she’s also 80. This isn’t a bad time for her to go. Buona fortuna, Ma’am! (Politico) And for the Illinois trifecta, JB Pritzker gonna boycott El Salvador! (HuffPost)

Our Liz with the hottest of takes: Defense Secretary Pete Kegsbreath is doing just what he’s there for. (Public Notice)

The ozone hole is healing. Because we fucking did something about it. (Earth Observatory)

Years and years ago, so many years ago, we were on our way to New Hampshire for the primaries with baby Donna Rose in Wonkebago I, when we realized it was a Sunday, and the places to buy propane were all closed, and we were out, and an ice storm and gale force winds were a-comin’, and IT WAS BAD. Also, it was Super Bowl Sunday. Who was even going to be home?! I got in my email and started looking up everybody who’d ever sent us money from the state of Massachusetts, to see who wanted us to plug in in their driveway. And then came a miracle: Somebody whose name is lost to time but it might have been James Dowd responded and said he’d checked with his boss at the Whale Snot Institute in Gloucester, and to come on over! He’d meet us there! And down the tiny windy road in the wind we went, and he met us and plugged us in, and we had a couple of belts and he was SO FUNNY AND GREAT and we howled with laughter all night long. In the morning his lovely boss took us on a tour and told us to come back anytime. (We really really need to go back. Go back up and click on that link!) But our original host, NAME and/or JAMES DOWD, who’d told us the hilarious stories, they all ended in the punchline: “THE FISH AHHHN’T COMIN’ BACK, MA!” Which Shy and I still say to each other when we are being hilarious. Well. About that! (Reasons to Be Cheerful)

And here’s the beauty where we stayed. Shy, gas up Wonkebago II!

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