I haven’t yet weighed in on the Mitch McConnell Mystery. Is he alive, or not? Either is possible, but I’m increasingly leaning toward not. Notwithstanding the handful of people who claim to have talked to him, if he’s conscious and able to communicate I don’t understand why the hospital would not be allowed to release that information. It’s very possible he’s in a coma, but if there is still some brain activity and a chance he could come out of it, again, why wouldn’t the hospital be allowed to say so?
McConnell is/was retiring, and people already were campaigning to replace him in the November general election before his heart attack. But under Kentucky state law, if he dies before August 3 the state has to have a special election to find someone to finish his term. And the rumor is that Trump is terrified that Rep. Thomas Massie could win. You’ll remember that Massie, who was critical of Trump, lost his primary to a Trump endorsee. So it’s now widely expected the Senator will succumb on August 4.
Yesterday morning’s news informed us that Trump had fired the remaining three commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission. It’s not clear to me how much of a threat this is. The EAC mostly distributes funding and provides election security support for states. But I’m still really, really worried about the elections. The Regi8me had already threatened states with a loss of FEMA anti-terrorism support if they didn’t surrender to Trump’s election demands. I believe some states have already declined.
The more I learn about the shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, the more heartbreaking it is. And the government of Mexico says it will file criminal complaints in the United States over the death of Lorenzo Salgado and several other Mexican nationals who have died in ICE custody.
Of course, ICE released it’s standard lie to excuse the shooting.
ICE officials released a statement on Tuesday afternoon, hours after the shooting in the predominantly Latino East End neighborhood. They said they were performing a “targeted enforcement operation” and alleged Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle,” rammed it into an ICE car and attempted to run over an ICE officer, who then shot Salgado Araujo in self-defense, according to ICE.
Last night on All In, Chris Hayes showed a photo of the van he said was taken after the incident. The front of the van, including the grill, were completely undamaged and showed no sign of having impacted anything. Big surprise.
We don’t have the benefit of independent videos of what happened on July 7 when Salgado Araujo was shot. And the ICE agents were not wearing body cams, or at least claimed they weren’t. ICE blamed Democrats and the most recent government shutdown in spite of the billions of dollars Congress has given ICE to fund it.
We do have eyewitnesses. There were three other men in the car, who gave the same story when questioned independently.
The three other men in the van told a lawyer that Salgado Araujo never veered toward federal agents and that a federal officer fired at them almost immediately after exiting his vehicle, the Washington Post reports. Attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra said he met with the three men individually while they were in detention and they separately gave similar accounts. “All of them reiterated that there were never any ICE agents in front of the van,” Balderas-Ibarra told the Post. “They came in and started shooting from the sides.”
ICE immediately pressured the three witnesses to “self-deport,” according to several news stories.
This is from the New York Times:
The federal authorities initially said that ICE agents stopped a vehicle around 6:50 a.m. on Tuesday and tried to arrest Mr. Araujo, whom they described as an “illegal alien.” On Friday, ICE said in a statement that Mr. Araujo had hit an ICE vehicle, had not followed orders and had tried to run over an officer. An ICE agent fired in self-defense, the statement said. Mr. Araujo was shot in the abdomen and taken to a hospital, where he died hours later, according to the Houston Fire Department.
Here’s a heartbreaking detail. Before putting Salgado Araujo into the ambulance, ICE stripped him of his wallet and all identifying information. He was admitted to a hospital as a John Doe. One of his sons saw a news story about the shooting and recognized his father’s van. And he also realized a man shown injured on the ground was his father. The authorities wouldn’t tell him anything. Hospitals had no record of his father. The son didn’t locate his father until after he had died.
And then later ICE confessed that no one in the vehicle had actually been an ICE target; it was a case of mistaken identity. Oops, our bad. And as with Milwaukee, the DoJ is sitting on all the evidence, including the van, and won’t let state or local law enforcement agencies have access to it. In brief, this stinks out loud.
If there’s one thing I’d like to say to ICE agents, it’s that Donald Trump won’t be president forever. Someday, I have to believe, we will have a real president and a federal government that follows the law and works for the people and not Trump. And I believe there is no statute of limitations on murder.
I have read that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and his wife had lived in the U.S. for 35 years. He had been in the process of regularizing his immigration status, had begun applying for authorization, and did not have a criminal record. See also:
Salgado Araujo and his wife came to America after meeting in their teens in Mexico and deciding they wanted a better life for their future family, Ronaldo Salgado said.
The father of three built houses in the Houston suburbs, started his own business and established his own crew. He had no criminal record, his family said.
Ronaldo Salgado, the oldest son, became a teacher. He said one of his brothers is an engineer and the other is studying engineering in college.
Such a travesty. Such a waste.
The Trojan airplane, the gift that just keeps on taking. No one ever bought the administration's cover story about wanting the troops to see it. Then the real stories started, none of which brought the kind of press the administration wanted. The NYT's reporters got the subpoena treatment as someone needed to be attacked. How can terror reign without a constant downpour of terror.
It is the government's airplane until it isn't anymore. Then it becomes a private plane.
Yet it can't work as the government plane because that might interfere with it when it becomes a private jet. Still tax dollars need to maintain this money pit until then. So, it can't work as a government jet because it has to change to a private jet in the future.
It is like the Senator who resembles Schrodinger's cat, both dead and alive at the same time. We can't know his exact state until the truth is politically expedient. Those he represents have no right to know? How can that be?
Fiction trying to aspire to non-fictional status perhaps. The political party which despised the politically correct now wants it having gospel truth status. Of the gospel they control and change at will of course. How many martyrs will they make before this is over?
I still hold out hope that Trump never gets that plane unless he reimburses taxpayers for all the money that was put into it. It’s such an obvious massive violation of the foreign emoluments clause, which says he can’t accept gifts from foreign countries unless Congress approves it. And Congress never did. Pretending it was really a gift to the Department of Defense that’s supposed to be re-gifted to him after he’s out of office is not fooling anybody.
Bernie, I like the Schrodinger's cat reference. Priceless!!
This retro tune put a smile on my face, and I started tapping my feet – I Just Got Off the Phone with Mitch. I'm glad I grew up with music like this, it's not a totally unfamiliar genre.
The psychics I follow say he's a vegetable, kept alive by machines. Or worse.
They also say the firing of the election commissioners is bad, but the states control the elections. At least the blue states aren't going to put up with pressure from Trump. And that by the time November gets here, people will have had enough – and will move heaven and earth to vote.
It is really tragic about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
It’s very possible he’s in a coma, but if there is still some brain activity and a chance he could come out of it, again, why wouldn’t the hospital be allowed to say so?
Medical privacy laws, according to John Holder. He is quoted here:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/07/raging-stupidity-social-media-edition
Oh, please I know good and well about medical privacy laws. But Mrs. McConnell is back home now, and if Mitch is incapacitated she could choose to release medical information. And if he alive and compos mentis, as the lawyers say, why isn’t he?
I'm not getting any internal memos but it looks to me like there's a shift in the policy of brutality by ICE. It WAS directed at protesters, with two US civilian murders. The backlash was getting messy, do there was the usual change of players with no accountability. ICE began avoiding confrontations with the protesters. They still want the protesters and particularly cameras to go away. I've seen recent videos to that from TX, I think.
But methinks the word is out in ICE not to shoot US protesters, no matter how annoying. They DO seem to have the green light to shoot people from out of the country. The murder of anyone on US streets by ICE needs to be a big deal, from the streets to the halls of Congress. If/when Trump pardons everyone in ICE, the counter-move should be for Congress to "out" every former member of ICE from the Trump era. This should be the case for all public servants. I understand there are legitimate reasons for legitimate police but there are NO legitimate reasons to insulate members of ICE (or former members) when Biff has pardoned them. State prosecutions should happen when we can identify the perps but I want employers to know they will come under protest and boycott if they hire the fascists. I want to keep a blacklist in circulation and make the stench of their deeds a cloud that follows them for decades. (Former Nazis were in hiding for decades, pre-computer. I want ICE to be moving, changing their name(s), getting fired to make protesters outside the employers go away.
Do I seem vindictive? They are ruining as many lives as they can as fast as they can regardless of the law, or ethics because they have been promised immunity. I want them to find out there is no immunity from the scarlet letter "F" that will follow the fascists to their stinking graves.
Sudden and brief illnesses do happen to 71-year-old people but none of them come readily to mind. Acute health problems happen much more frequently. That is how it is reported though and Lindsey Graham has died. At least we have a known live or dead state known for this federal representative. Of late that has become quite the issue for some of them.
It may have been some kind of cardiac episode. He'd just gotten back from a long plane trip, which are notorious for causing blood clots. There also are lots of rumors that Putin had him poisoned.
Now they report an aortic tear. I'd call that an acute health problem. It makes sense that way. The way it was written gave the impression he caught a rapid acting case of Ebola or worse.
No wonder rumors developed.
Well, to be fair, they probably had to do an autopsy to find out what killed Miz Lindsey. As I understand these things — and never take medical advice from me if you know what’s good for you — he may have felt perfectly normal until the aorta ruptured, and then that could have killed him quickly.
"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it."
"Trump is a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot."
"I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
"The most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party."
"You’re the gold standard in the Republican world. The most consequential endorsement I think in the history of politics"
"Mr. President, you’re not far behind God, but we’re going to start with him".
I am the Trump guy" and vowed to be his "strongest ally in the Senate".
Oh Lindsey you'll always be remembered as a "man" with the spine of a nightcrawler!
My observation about Miss Lindsey is that he always sought the spotlight, always claimed to know the direction the country should take. I don't have the stats for his appearance on the Sunday talk shows but he was more regular on the talk show circuit than some priests are at Mass. Lindsey was consistent in his vitriolic contempt for liberals, but his convictions within conservatism were malleable. I think Lindsey was aware of his lack of conviction and sought a person of real conviction to marry, for lack of a better word. This defined Graham's friendship with John McCain. I don't agree with most of the political positions McCain had, but I can't dispute his integrity.
Two examples of what McCain was made of: John McCain's father was an admiral in the US Navy when John McCain was captured in the Vietnam War. Daddy secured an offer for John McCain's early release from a POW camp, which John turned down until it was his turn. Second – in the presidential campaign against Obama, in a town-hall setting, a woman railed against Obama for being a secret Muslim and was continuing to maligning Obama's family. John took the mike away and politely defined Obama as a 'good man' , not a secret Muslim, and an American with different views than John was campaigning on. These are examples of the character McCain had and Graham wished he had.
Nothing defined Lindsey Graham's lack of character as much as his alliance with Trump after John McCain died. Trump is a brighter star (for all the wrong reasons) than McCain ever was, but it's the intensity of the light, not its purity that drew Graham. As Trump did everything he could to dishonor John McCain , Graham never rejected Trump.
Trump's praise will be Graham's epitaph in history. Trump will go down in history as the worst president in US history, which will seal Graham's place as the toadie of a villain. It was the choice Miss Lindsey made.
Not sure where, maybe here on the mahablog, maybe maha but someone once had the perfect analogy to what Lindsey was, he was a fucking lousy pilot fish;
Pilot fish swim with sharks to get free protection from predators and an easy food supply, by swimming alongside one of the ocean's apex predators, pilot fish are shielded from other larger predators that would otherwise hunt them in the open ocean.
Mitch (?), now Miss Lindsey … they say these things happen in threes!
There’s proof of life for Mitch now. He’s issued a statement that he’s getting better and included a photo of him and his wife, Elaine Chao.
OT, two trad wives, 19 years old and 37 years old, brilliant cross-editing. You almost never see videos of the older ones.
I'm not convinced Mitch is really alive. There's a lot of incentive for the Rs to keep up the pretense as long as they can, at least until it's too late for the special election that would replace him.
This is Kentucky, so the odds a Democrat would win the special election are on the long side (although not impossible). If Mitch’s seat is empty the rest of the term that presents a problem for Republicans, too, considering how slim their majority is.