Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been at the center of some pretty awful news this week.

A woman in Texas who was seeking a protective order against her abusive partner was arrested at the courthouse  after said abusive partner tipped ICE off to her immigrations status.

In Virginia, ICE agents ambushed men leaving a church’s hypothermia shelter. The list goes on and on.

The cruelty of this regime’s raids and detentions are heart wrenching, but let’s not pretend previous administrations were anything but callous either.

Popular vote loser Donald Trump likes to call out media outlets by name—CNN, New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC—attacking them as “fake news” and doing everything he can to tout his own credibility over theirs. Trump’s hardcore base might eat it up, but Trump is the loser in the eyes of most Americans. A new poll from Public Policy Polling tests Trump’s credibility against the individual news outlets he attacked in a tweet last week, and Trump trailed every one of them. 

The poll asked “Who do you think has more credibility, Donald Trump or …

• The New York Times led Trump 52 percent to 40 percent.
• NBC led Trump 51 percent to 40 percent.
• CNN, ABC, and CBS all led Trump 51 percent to 41 percent.

The poll also tested credibility for media outlets without reference to Trump, and again found high credibility for the places Trump has been waging war on, while Trump-friendly media had lower credibility. Fox News was at least above water by 6 points, 46 percent to 40 percent, but the Daily Caller, Infowars, and Breitbart were all underwater by at least 30 points.

Donald Trump put representatives of working people on his big “I’m going to boost manufacturing by meeting with people” initiative just last month. But surprise, surprise! 

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, and Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff for the federation of 55 unions, are on the White House’s list of leaders but didn’t receive invitations for the meeting held Thursday at the White House, according to Carolyn Bobb, a spokeswoman for the labor group. To Bobb’s knowledge, the business-leaders panel has had no interaction with Trumka and Lee so far.

That meeting was for rich people only, it seems:

“This was specifically for people who were hiring people and the impediments they’re having to creating additional jobs,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in response to a question at his daily press briefing. The president still "values their opinion.”

Values their opinion, but doesn’t actually want to know what it is. Certainly doesn’t want a discussion of jobs to include the message that paying people a living wage and offering benefits and allowing them to organize and bargain collectively is an important part of rebuilding American manufacturing as something other than China-lite.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Late Night Snark: One Month Down, [???] To Go

"So here is where we're at right now: Trump can dominate the news merely by referencing something that didn’t happen in Sweden. … Trump dominates the news cycle the way a fart dominates the interior of a Volkswagen Beetle. There is simply no escape from him."

---John Oliver

"The Washington Post has done an analysis of Trump’s first month as president and says that during that time, Trump has made 133 false or misleading statements. … It’s only been 34 days. It feels like he’s halfway into his second term, doesn’t it? This is the first administration where the public is aging faster than the president."

---James Corden

x

We're on hiatus, but there's never a bad time to remind you that everything Trump says about refugees is bullshit. https://t.co/Aa6NJsqM7v

— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) February 22, 2017

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"You played golf six times in one month? Are you the President of the United States or a San Diego dentist?”"

---Seth Meyers

"Trump was touring the Museum of African American History and Culture, and according to witnesses he noticed a stone auction block on which slaves would stand and was moved to say, ‘Boy, that is just not good, that is not good.’ I haven’t heard that kind of eloquent enunciation since the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Dang, That Is Messed Up."

---Stephen Colbert

Trump won’t be flying down to Mar-A-Lago tonight. It’s his one weekend a month to stay in D.C. and wander the halls in his bathrobe scaring the crap out of the White House ghosts. 

Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Let’s face it: since the election of Donald Trump has felt like some demonic, supernatural phenomenon straight out of a horror movie, it may be time for us to forgo convention to do what we can to get rid of him. To that end, our friends in the witch community are heeding the call and preparing to cast a mass spell against the current liar-in-chief. 

A document making its rounds among the witch community is asking people who practice the craft to perform a monthly binding ritual until the president is removed from office.

In order to work, the mass spell must be performed at midnight EST on every waning crescent moon.

The first one is happening on Friday and will be followed by similar spell cast events on March 26, April 24 and May 23 and beyond.

It’s important to know that the spell is not a curse or a hex—nothing intended to cause Trump harm (too bad!)—but is instead a binding spell: something designed to restrain him or prevent him from doing something. And since we know that nearly every piece of legislation proposed from this White House will be pretty damn evil and intended to damage anyone who isn’t a rich, straight, white male, we not only need to thank the witches for trying to bind him—we probably should be joining them as well. 

If you want to participate, the instructions have been made available on Facebook to the wider public. Here’s what you will need:

One of the perennial complaints about Obamacare, coming mostly from old white men, is that maternity coverage one of the essential health benefits the law said has to be included in all insurance plans. They, of course, think that means that they are paying for strange women's pregnancy with their premiums, and there's nothing more horrifying. Never mind that plenty of women have been helping to cover their prostate exams, and none of us spend a lot of time or energy resenting that. But the argument has trickled up the food chain, and trimming essential benefits—including maternity coverage—is on the table.

There are some big hurdles, however. The Affordable Care Act requires that insurers who sell policies for individuals and small businesses cover at a minimum 10 "essential health benefits," including hospitalization, prescription drugs and emergency care, in addition to maternity services. The law also requires that the scope of the services offered be equal to those typically provided in the coverage that businesses offer their employees.

"It has to look like a typical employer plan, and those are still pretty generous," says Timothy Jost, an emeritus professor at Washington and Lee University Law School in Virginia who has studied and written about the health law.

There's one big policy problem with that—by allowing insurance companies to sell plans that don't have mental health treatment, or substance abuse treatment, or hospitalization, or maternity care and offering them as supplemental plans, they'll charge a lot extra for them. As health policy expert Larry Levitt explains, "If benefits are not somewhat standardized, no insurer wants to be the one with the really comprehensive benefits … and all the sick people." Insurers will price those extra benefit plans so high that only those who must have them will buy in.

University of Texas System Chancellor William H. McRaven, a retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral, had a strong reaction to the Donald Trump’s tweet calling the media the enemy of the people and he shared it with a crowd at the University of Texas Thursday night. From the Austin American-Statesman:

UT System Chancellor Bill McRaven on Tuesday night said President Trump’s recent description of the media as “the enemy of the American people” must be challenged and “this sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

He said the media is more important than ever:

He made the comment during the inaugural event of the Communication and Leadership Speaker Series at UT’s Belo Center for New Media. McRaven, who has served as chancellor for two years, is also a UT journalism alumnus. During his lecture, McRaven said the country needs journalists now more than ever before and they must continue to hold others accountable.

No, conservatives really are just dumb, part the whatevereth, CPAC edition.

Donald Ely, 83, a Pennsylvania Republican Party official, had heard the stories of Trump’s travel expenses. But he wasn’t sure he could trust them.

“I resented Obama going to all these places overseas, particularly because his agenda was anti-American,” Ely said. “But the way people make up the stories about the Trumps, I don’t know if I believe it. I don’t think it’s accurate.” [...]

“I believe that the story exists,” Herstein said. “But the facts in it can’t possibly be right. That absolutely can’t be right. How did Trump spend $10 million in one month and Obama spent $11 million in a year? It defies logic.” [...]

“I don’t trust the bookkeepers. I don’t trust the people who say, ‘This president spent X and this president spent Y,’” said Roy Postel, 58, a real estate developer from near Chicago.

That's right: The conservative response to tallies of what Donald Trump's trips to Mar-a-Lago and the expense of Secret Service protection for, sigh, Trump Tower, and the conservative response to putting those numbers up against the documented numbers of what the government spent on similar Obama trips, is to say nuh-uh and go buy another "MAGA" hat.

It's not that they have an explanation for why Trump ought to be allowed to spend more. It's not that they don't believe he's taking the weekend trips. They just think it isn't costing that amount of taxpayer money because it's of course more likely to be a media and government conspiracy to say so, just to make their chosen leader look bad.

All right then. So right about now is when we're going to be exposed to yet another glorious media piece explaining why people just need to listen more to poor Trump voters, because they have economic anxieties and whatnot and they're not really racist or stupid and it hurts their feelings when people say that so stop doing that.

Time and time again, popular vote loser Donald Trump told his rally crowds that he would protect Social Security and Medicare. "You made a deal," he said,  "a long time ago, a long time ago." And everyone knows how Trump feels about deals. Everyone, that is, but congressional Republicans who are pretty darned sure they can work around him and get the big benefit cuts of their longstanding dreams.

Mr. Trump has surrounded himself with traditional small-government conservatives bent on cutting back or eliminating many of the programs he has championed. Many of his aides and cabinet members have expressed views that are fundamentally opposed to those he campaigned on.

Former Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, for example, the new White House budget director, has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and helped engineer a government shutdown to cut spending. As House Budget Committee chairman, Tom Price, the new secretary of health and human services, supported converting Medicaid to strictly capped block grants to the states and turning Medicare into a voucherlike program for future recipients. Ben Carson, the president’s nominee to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has repeatedly said government programs to help the poor lead to dependency.

The disparity between Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and his appointments has cheered many Republicans and left Democrats fearing that he will not only renege on his promises to protect the government’s largest entitlement programs but that he will also slash programs he did not mention on the campaign trail that offer food, housing and child care support for the poor.

Republicans reportedly think that Mulvaney, Price and the other deficit peacocks surrounding Trump will be able to talk him out of his promises. They're even reinterpreting those promises with their own talking points, saying that what he really meant by those promises was that he would save the programs for current retirees, but slash them for future generations. "It was really about making sure that those people who are getting benefits or about to get benefits are protected," said Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Freedom Caucus maniac. "If we do nothing, he will not save Medicare and Social Security."

All these Republicans need to take a look at what's happening around them right now, an uprising that even the Wall Street Journal says is "organic" and "grass roots" and "a warning sign for the Republican Party." If the people are reacting this way to Obamacare repeal and Trump's other actions, imagine what will happen when they go after Social Security.

Those seven countries included in popular vote loser Donald Trump's Muslim ban (rejected by numerous federal courts) do not pose a security threat to the United States, contra Trump's rationale for the ban. That's according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security.

A draft document obtained by The Associated Press concludes that citizenship is an "unlikely indicator" of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria's civil war started in 2011.

Trump cited terrorism concerns as the primary reason he signed the sweeping temporary travel ban in late January, which also halted the U.S. refugee program. A federal judge in Washington state blocked the government from carrying out the order earlier this month. Trump said Friday a new edict would be announced soon. The administration has been working on a new version that could withstand legal challenges.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen on Friday did not dispute the report's authenticity, but said it was not a final comprehensive review of the government's intelligence. […]

The three-page report challenges Trump's core claims. It said that of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack in the United States, just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States. The others were from 26 countries, led by Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Of these, only Somalia and Iraq were among the seven nations included in the ban.

This is a preliminary draft from "a single" intelligence source that doesn't include "data from other intelligence community sources," Christensen said. Actually, though, it’s not just one source. It's drawn from "Justice Department press releases on terrorism-related convictions and attackers killed in the act, State Department visa statistics, the 2016 Worldwide Threat Assessment from the U.S. intelligence community and the State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2015." So that counts as several sources as far as most people are concerned.

The draft was compiled by civil service staff in DHS, not Trump appointees. We already know that the Trump team is on the case, trying cook the books. They’ll undoubtedly manufacture some attacks, like Bowling Green or all that stuff happening in Sweden.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) tells us we're on the right track.

"I'll tell you, Toni, there are a, in my opinion, a significant number of congressmen who are being impacted by these kinds of protests and their spine is a little bit weak," the Alabama congressman said in an interview on "The Morning Show with Toni & Gary" on WBHP 800 Alabama radio. "And I don't know if we're going to be able to repeal Obamacare now because these folks who support Obamacare are very active, they're putting pressure on congressman and there's not a counter-effort to steal the spine of some of these congressmen in tossup districts around the country."

Brooks continued, "And you may not even see a vote to repeal Obamacare, you might see something where they call it a repeal but really it's an amendment. You and I have talked about this before. We need an outright repeal of Obamacare and then whatever's gonna come after it, fine, let's have that discussion. But this monstrosity needs to be repealed and right now, in my judgment, we don't have the votes in Congress to pass a repeal bill, in part because of what these people are doing."

That's maybe a better excuse than former House Speaker John Boehner's summation for why Republicans won't be able to repeal—because Republicans will never figure out a way to get everyone on board with it.

"In the 25 years that I served in the United States Congress, Republicans never, ever, one time agreed on what a health care proposal should look like. Not once,” Boehner said. “And all this happy talk that went on in November and December and January about repeal, repeal, repeal—yeah, we'll do replace, replace—I started laughing, because if you pass repeal without replace, first, anything that happens is your fault. You broke it.” […]

"And secondly, as I told some of the Republican leaders when they asked, I said, if you pass repeal without replace you'll never pass replace, because they will never ever agree on what the bill should be. Perfect always becomes the enemy of the good,” Boehner said.

Casting failure as "being responsive to the people" would save them some face, as opposed to just being too incompetent and fractured. Regardless, we've got our marching orders. Keep resisting!

Are you ready to raise hell against Congress for enabling Trump? Members are back in their districts on February recess, and it's time to turn out at rallies and town hall events to hold them accountable.

Look at this amazing trolling that happened at CPAC before Trump’s speech. Someone tricked the eager and overly zealous audience into taking tiny Russian flags emblazoned with “TRUMP” in gold, all-caps letters. They seemed pretty happy about it, too!