The Top Stories You Missed This Week
This week's recap, sharing an important call to action, plus a new Dad Joke
One of the most common questions I receive from readers are to ask how they can be more involved and more informed? Well, before diving into our weekly recap of Let’s Address This — a quick call to action to do just that.
Call to Action
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This Week’s Articles and Podcast
Now let’s Dive Into Our Recap of Let’s Address This, as we covered a lot this week:
Why I Publish Daily, Or Sometimes More (A deeply personal note to my readers)
Qasim Rashid Show Episode 171 (Women’s health, Eugenics, MOVE, & fascism)
The Cruelty of Medicaid Cuts (What $800B in cuts mean & how to stop them)
Malcolm X Turns 100 & the History of Black Muslim Activists (Substack Live!)
Republicans Gut Medicaid and Medicare (Remember Luigi Mangione?)
Israeli Military Opens Fire at Dozens of Diplomats (Where are the UN sanctions?)
Trump Keeps Losing In Court (Let’s take a moment to celebrate the wins)
Dad Joke of the Week
I regret to share that I’ve given up horse riding after dark as it gives me night mares. #DadJokes :D
Qasim: just wanted to say how much I value reading your articles/posts. I have learned so much from you in such a short amount of time - everytime one drops into my email, I am a-buzz with what I will learn today!
A note of appreciation for your hard work
And for "teaching an old dog new tricks"!
Autocracy Part 2
Time marches on and the evidence grows. We be in an autocracy! To wit:
• Local judge in Wisconsin is arrested, “cuffed shackled” and lead away by the FBI for not going along with an ICE the point being to intimidate other judges.
• Legal resident of the US “kidnapped” right off the street in Somerville near Boston by masked men in dark unmarked SUVs and flown to a prison in Louisianna for coauthoring a piece supporting the people in Gaza and criticizing the school’s administration. She has been released after several weeks.)
• Federal agents literally breaking into a home in Oklahoma City an night weapons drawn terrifying a mother and her three daughters forcing them outside in their underwear and in the rain while they ransacked the house confiscating their electronic devices and all the money (about $3000) they had in the house. The family was relocating from the East Coast and the $3000 was all they had to live on until their husband and father would arrive after finishing a job in the East. BTW, they were all born in America citizens.
Note: It was most likely a mistake, but unlimited power tends to make people sloppy.
• The Mayor of Newark, NJ arrested by ICE for, apparently, not trespassing on a “for profit prison” run by ICE which he was checking on because they had not allowed city inspectors to inspect significant changes that had been made to the building.
• Albrego Garcia admittedly picked up by mistake and sent to an El Salvadore prison and the government refuses to bring him home in spite of Supreme Court orders to do so.
• The 230 or so ALEDGED Venezuelan gang members shipped to the same El Salvadore prison without arrest warrants or judicial hearing and against a federal judge’s explicit instructions.
• The President’s family crypto currency business where big time buyers will gain access to the President. Grift out in the open does not absolve it from being grift.
• The President’s enthusiastic supporters sending threats to judges and some Republican congress people to “keep them in line. ‘
• Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil arrested without a warrant or judicial hearing and shipped to a Louisiana prison for protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. Note: Israeli leaders including Benjamin Netanhahi have warrants issued against them by the International Court of Justice over their actions in Gaza.
• Research Universities threatened with losing funding if they don’t toe the administration’s various lines.
• Georgetown University Law School threatened that their students will not be accepted at government agencies if they do not cease and desist their DEI programs.
• Major law firms were threatened, and they acquiesced.
• The pardoning of all convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists, over a thousand of whom pleaded guilty. Note: Although many, perhaps most were just caught up in the spirit of the moment, one doesn’t go to a political rally with “zip tie handcuffs”, body armor, bear spray and a well-constructed gallows unless something more had been planned
• Ice agents wear masks and have no visible ID as normal police do. Why is that?
• The firing of prosecutors and agents who were involved in the arrest and prosecution of Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
• The appointment of obviously unqualified (but loyal to the president) people to positions of extreme importance. Think Pete Hegseth, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Kristy Noem, Linda McMahon to name a few.
• Fired the Librarian of Congress who was a bona fide librarian and replaced her with a lawyer and former federal prosecutor.
• The monarch of Qatar has given our President a $400,000,000 “palace in the sky” Boing 747. This is what princes do, give lavish gifts to one another and to others in power in order to ingratiate the recipient. Pam Bondi, our Attorney General, signs off on this as OK. Can you guess which foreign government Ms Bondi represented when she was in private practice? If you guessed Qatar, you would be correct.
This lack of due process doesn’t just happen to Brown or Black people or people with funny foreign sounding names. But don’t believe me, check out the following:
• Google Fabian Schmidt a nice White German engineer was arrested without any due process, incarcerated treated badly and held for nearly two months due to “a bureaucratic error”. (Again, unlimited power can make you sloppy.)
• Or Google Jasmine Mooney a nice White Canadian citizen, actress and Canadian business woman was arrested without warrant, held under terrible conditions for two weeks. Check out the “Gardian” article
And there are more!!! You can’t make this up!! Autocracy is on the march.
Can you imagine this happening in any other presidency than Trump’s?
The phrase that came to me this morning as I was waking up (May 18, 2025) was “depraved indifference”. It is a legal term but describes so well many of the above listed actions. Living, breathing, sentient human beings are treated with depraved indifference to their humanity. Derek Chauvin, the man who killed George Floyd did not intend or plan to kill George Floyd but acted with “depraved indifference” to him as a human being. Elon Musk and his crew of ill-informed happy computer wizzes have showed depraved indifference for the government workers they got fired as well as the recipients of the necessary services provided by those government workers.
Please, check these out and correct me if I am wrong. Paul R Nevergold
Does this qualify as a "dad joke"?
Time flies like an arrow!
Fruit flies like a banana!