Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 2/4/2025

Boonville Basketballers | Showers | River Rising | Seth Kinman | Laytonville Rain | Five Logs | Bags Needed | Casparado Altercation | Cubbison Costs | Suggestion Box | Graffiti Request | So Obvious | Ed Notes | NZ Sweeney | RV Rebound | Sporting Physiques | Gold Stars | Why Bother | Fire-Safe Meeting | Jack Russells | Full Mooning | Bad Week | Yesterday's Catch | Padilla Questions | Croc Warning | Growing Old | Twin Mommas | Three Killers | Lead Stories | Techno-Feudalism | French Intersection | Smear Machine | All Know | Dictator Don | Crazy Talk | Last Rites | Big Baby | Muzzle Velocity | Toilet Rules | DOGE v NPR/PBS | Good News | Migrant Deal | Two Figures

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RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Yorkville 2.36" - Laytonville 2.00" - Boonville 1.86" - Hopland 1.74" - Ukiah 1.14" - Covelo 1.13"

RAIN RATES HAVE DIMINISHED in the northern half of the CWA [County Warning Area]. Rivers are responding to the past few days of rainfall as stages rise and fall. Cold wintry weather continues as warmer moist air moves on. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Another 1.55" brings our 4 day storm total to 4.15", with more to come. Showers today, fewer showers tomorrow, then more showers Thursday, then fizzling out into the weekend. Dries skies Friday thru next Tuesday is forecast at this point. Drizzle & 47F on the coast this Tuesday morning.

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NAVARRO RIVER, HWY. 128, WEATHER FORECAST

by Nicholas Wilson

Here is the link to the online forecast page for the Navarro River level: https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/nvrc1

The river is not expected to reach flood level this week

For official highway info for Route 128 go to https://roads.dot.ca.gov/?roadnumber=128

My favorite weather forecast is by Wunderground for my location, which is found at https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/ca/little-river/KCALITTL10

The rain is forecast to be done by noon on Friday, with only about 1.4" more rain expected by then, most of it falling tomorrow, Tuesday, 12/4/2025.

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QUICK LAYTONVILLE WEATHER REPORT

by Jim Shields

With the exception of 2 inches of rain in the first week of January, it was double-bone dry until 1.95 in. fell on the month’s final day. The first three days of February produced 7.6 inches of rain for a grand total of 9.55 inches over the last four days.

Fortunately, there have been a few periods of respite from drenching precip that saved Laytonville from serious flooding. Creeks and streams are running high, some within a few inches of jumping their banks.

There’s more serious precip in the forecast, so stay alert, watchful and attentive to your surroundings.

Current total precip is 15.77 in. above historical average for this date.

January
Fri. 31, 1.95" all day rain starts 2am
February
Sat. 1, 1.48" intermittent rain midnight-11pm
Sun. 2, 3.97" all day rain starts 1.30am
Mon. 3, 2.15" rain midnight to 10:30pm
rainfall for week: 9.55 in.
rainfall for season: 55.234 in.
avg. historical rainfall by Feb. 3 : 39.46 in.

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ANOTHER HISTORIC MENDO POSTCARD FROM EBAY (via Marshall Newman)

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FORT BRAGG FOOD BANK HAS URGENT NEED FOR PLASTIC AND PAPER BAGS

Please drop paper and plastic bags asap to Fort Bragg Food Bank.

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CAN THIS LOVE BE SAVED?

On Saturday, February 1, 2025 at approximately 8:23 P.M, Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to a residence in the 24000 block of Casparado Way in Caspar for a reported domestic violence incident. The caller, a 66-year-old male, reported he was involved in a verbal argument with his girlfriend, Lucie Hebert-Myers.

Deputies responded and initiated an investigation into the domestic violence incident. During the investigation, Deputies developed probable cause to believe Hebert-Myers attempted to take property from her boyfriend by force and committed a battery against his person during the altercation.

Hebert-Myers was ultimately placed under arrest and transported to the Mendocino County Jail for Attempted Robbery, and Domestic Battery. Hebert-Myers was released from custody after posting bail listed in the amount of $37,500.

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ELISE COOK, KZYX Reporter:

Sometimes you make a mistake and you wonder, how on earth did I do that? Well, I goofed on my first pass through the [Cubbison financial] documents. Mike Geniella called me this morning and his questions prompted a second look. The Cubbison accounting so far — not including any of the costs born by the District Attorney's office, the Sheriff's office, the CEO's office, and County IT — is $119,000+. This doesn't include the cost of the January prelim.

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PUBLIC’S HELP REQUESTED IN SURGE OF FORT BRAGG GRAFFITI

The City of Fort Bragg has experienced a notable increase in graffiti over the past few weeks. We need the community’s help and request if you live in an area impacted by graffiti, to please review any available surveillance footage you have during the time the graffiti occurred. Submit any suspicious activity via the online community portal.

To utilize the portal, please visit the link below or utilize the attached quick-response code (QR Code). The portal will send a link by either text or email for the reporting party to upload the evidence and allow the person submitting to provide a brief statement about when and where the activity occurred. The portal also accepts anonymous submissions. Simply uncheck “provide my information” and your submission will remain anonymous. Submissions to the portal will be uploaded directly to evidence.com where officers can review them.

Victims of graffiti are encouraged to take advantage of the City of Fort Bragg’s graffiti removal program. The program entitles graffiti victims to reimbursement for items utilized in the removal of graffiti up to ta value of $75.00. To learn more about this please ask the officer taking your report for more information.

Anyone with information on these incidents are encouraged to contact the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707)964-0200 or utilize the anonymous tip line at (707)961-3049.

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ED NOTES

BILL BENNETT was just about the last person I can think of who truly used public position to protect and even advance the public interest. A World War Two B-17 pilot of many combat missions, Bennett became a lawyer who was causing the malefactors of great wealth much trouble long before Ralph Nader appeared. Bennett was best known for his work on the State Board of Equalization where he sat for 25 years without, you could say, ever becoming sedentary. He always refused corporate contributions and publicly criticized colleagues who took them. Your PG&E bill would probably be twice as high as it is now without Bill Bennett. The giants are dead, and all we're left with is, well, look around at election time.

FRIENDS OF THE EEL RIVER (FOER.org) has worked assiduously for many years to end diversions at Potter Valley. Never has happened and probably won't ever happen. The prob here, of course, is that the perversion of the Eel River at Potter Valley is a thousand yard tunnel not much larger in dimension than today's king size fat man that has too many downstream beneficiaries of the powerful type. The diversion tunnel was hand dug by Chinese labor and Jim Armstrong shortly after the dawn of the 20th century to run turbines for the purpose of electrifying Ukiah. From that modest beginning the water-short downstream population has multiplied and slurbed out in all directions, and the diverted water has become crucial to the maintenance of that slurbanization. And crucial to the wine industry, which owns our elected officials. There's no way to stop the diversion, which amounts to the destruction of much of the Eel, short of, short of, well, short of The Anderson Solution which, not to put too fine a felonious point on it, would be to mount a modest load of dynamite onto a smallish raft, float the load into the tunnel from the Eel River end of the diversion, and detonate it. No tunnel, no diversion. For a while anyway. For historical symmetry I would of course insist that the explosive be made in China. In fact, the explosion itself might be coordinated with Chinese New Year as a mid-winter boost to Mendocino County's sagging tourist economy.

A HUMBOLDT commenter wrote the best prospectus for pot tourism: “I was having a moment of visualizaion — ferris wheels with big pot leafs in the middle, boat trips down the rivers with a barker pointing out grows, and growers coming out and shooting at them. Re-enactment of raids with helicopters dropping in on grows. The tourists could choose to either be on the side of law enforcement or the growers and take part in the action. I think you get the picture!”

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MIKE SWEENEY IN NEW ZEALAND

1990 Car Bomber And Former Mendo Trash Czar

Quiet Sky Waiheke members Michael Sweeney, Lindsay Niemann and Mike Poland presented their petition to Councillor Pippa Coom in August asking the council to stop permitting more helipads.

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HOMEOWNERS, VINTNERS IN MENDOCINO'S REDWOOD VALLEY REBUILD AFTER WILDFIRE

Redwood Valley was the hardest-hit area of this North Coast county, with hundreds of homes burned during the late 2017 firestorm. Nine months later, homes and winemaking facilities are going back up.

by Jeff Quackenbush

Compared with m`ore than 5,000 homes lost in Santa Rosa from the October wildfires, the more than 380 destroyed in Mendocino County in a separate but simultaneous firestorm seems small.

Yet it was almost one-quarter of the housing in the rural Redwood and Potter valleys.

More than 36,000 acres of the county burned in the blaze, which started late Oct. 8. Nine months later, 312 of the about 400 burned sites in Mendocino County have been cleared of debris and turned back over the property owners, according to county CEO Carmel Angelo. The rest have been cleared of debris, but county paperwork still needs to be finalized.

So far, 77 rebuild permits have been issued, and another 12 are under review. Of those, 41 are for manufactured homes, and the rest are standard construction.

“That's pretty good that we have that many building permits so far,” she said.

Of the issued permits, six homes have been finished, four of which are manufactured dwellings.

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Return Of A Hard-Hit Neighborhood

One of the Redwood Valley homes in the home stretch of rebuilding belongs to George and Nancy Borecky. They have lived on the Tomki Road property for 43 years and had just finished remodeling their home before the fire.

Early on Oct. 9, the Boreckys were awakened by something they don't recall. They had less than 15 minutes to flee with themselves and their dogs. Blasting the vehicle's air horn to alert their neighbors, they sped through flames and smoke so thick they could barely see the markings on Tomki Road as they headed south.

Theirs was one of 44 lots that burned in the Mountain River Ranch subdivision, which also includes Fisher Lake Drive, where 18 homes were destroyed and two people died.

Like neighbors who have their homes under construction, the Boreckys are living in their motor coach on the property as Cupples & Sons Construction of Ukiah completes the exterior of the home.

One of the four homes on Fisher Lake Drive that started to rise from the ground again is a 1,500-square-foot house for Steve and Katrena Dursteler. It's a totally different floorplan from the 2,300-square-foot house they had lived in for 14 years before the fire. They had revamped their back yard just two weeks before the fire.

“We could not afford to rebuild what we had, because of the cost of materials has increased so much,” Katrena Dursteler said, sitting in their new travel trailer at the property while the air-conditioner strained on the 100-degree day.

Unlike the Boreckys, who had their RV prepped to leave for a planned trip to Oregon the same week of the firestorm, the Durstelers lost dogs and their travel trailer while running from house to house to alert the neighborhood. A neighbor's call at 1 a.m. had rousted them out of sleep.

While their USAA insurance policy paid out to the limits on the structure, the Durstelers said they could only get 75 percent for contents without itemizing what was lost.

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Rebuild Reset: Overexcavation

Work on the Boreckys' lot started in January, first by crews the Army Corps of Engineers hired to clean the site of contaminants left by the incineration of their home. But 127 of the Mendocino County sites in need of cleanup were overexcavated, according to Angelo, the Mendocino County CEO. State officials came in to look at the sites and found 82 were eligible for covering the cost of backfilling the holes where the homes once stood and compacting the new material.

“If we were to do the debris project again, we would have the state and federal governments pay as they did, but it might be better for everyone if it might be possible to have the recovery efforts done locally,” she said.

The Boreckys' home site was among those that needed the most backfill, up to 5 feet deep, at a cost of $15,000 for materials and experts such as their own contractor and soils engineer. The Durstelers said they paid $17,000 to get their property fixed.

The Boreckys had that extra cost covered by their home policy, according to Jared Hull, their Ukiah-based Farmers Insurance agent. The carrier offers 10 percent of the value of the home to cover building-code updates, such as what are required before plans for the original house can be approved for permits.

On hearing the reports of the firestorm damage, Hull said he raced to the office at 6:30 a.m. and started calling clients who lived in Redwood and Potter valleys. He had authorized the wiring of up to $15,000 in living expenses to the Boreckys by the following morning.

The company ended up with 70 total-loss home claims in Redwood Valley. Insurance claims from Mendocino County topped $183 million, according to a Dec. 1 report from the state Department of Insurance.

Hull's office also paid out a number of $500 allowances for evacuees. Within a couple of weeks of the start of the fire, the carrier approved 100 percent coverage of personal property without questions.

“Most don't have as much coverage as they needed,” Hull said. “It made us look good in this small town.”

After the Borecky home site was declared cleaned, it took three weeks to get permits to rebuild. Cupples & Sons started work on the foundation of the couple's new home in April, and the interior wallboards were finished by mid-July. The goal is to get the county certificate of occupancy by mid-September, George Borecky said.

Across Fisher Lake Drive from the Durstelers, Art and Denise Barclay were awaiting Pinnacle Built Construction to resume work on their rebuilt home. The walls are framed, but the roof trusses are on backorder.

“One thing we've heard from our builder is patience,” said Denise Barclay. A shortage of labor is one issue that has been cited, she said.

Construction started in May and is set to be done around the anniversary of the fire. She said it has been a tragic 12 months, first with the fire then with the death of son-in-law Tim Gillaspie in a brazen shooting in Santa Rosa's Rincon Valley neighborhood. And more sadness is coming from neighbors who won't return because of the fires.

“A lot of people have not decided whether they will rebuild,” Denise Barclay said.

Neighbors next door moved to Oregon to live with their daughter. Roy and Irma Bowman, 87 and 88, respectively, died the night of the fire.

The Boreckys have been able to expand their property because of the departures. George, a retired Ukiah city employee, and Nancy, a current real estate agent, purchased an adjacent property and are preparing it for landscaping.

“We do a lot of entertaining,” George Borecky said.

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Ukiah Contractor Lines Up Santa Rosa Rebuilds

The Barclay home is Cupples's third Redwood Valley rebuild, according to foreman Casey Cupples.

“We haven't had a lot of trouble; inspectors have been really fair up there,” he said. “Hardest thing is for owners to get the plan they want approved by the county or a city.”

That's why after the Barclays' house, Cupples & Sons is headed for north Santa Rosa, where the seven-employee business has three rebuilds lined up. One is for an employee at Devincenzi Concrete Construction in Larkfield, and that company is set to get started on the foundation this week. Another is for a friend of that employee's family.

Casey Cupples's father, Rick, started the company in 1977. Originally a homebuilder, it turned to commercial projects in 1998 and has specialized in school projects in recent years. Cupples works with aspects of the project from concrete to electrical and plumbing, stopping short of roofing and duct work. A relative runs Cupples Excavation and can provide site work.

“We got back into homes because of the fires,” Casey Cupples said.

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Homeowners Seek Help With Rebuild Process

While Mendocino County's building and planning departments offer information online and in print about the rebuilding process and resources, several residents of the Mountain River Ranch subdivision who are in the midst of rebuilding said they wished the steps necessary were more clearly defined.

“There is no simple system in place to do things at the county building department,” said Steve Dursteler. “We need one packet that tells us who to contact and when.”

After trying to manage the rebuild in between Katrena Dursteler's work as a local teacher, the couple had help from a good friend who is a construction consultant and had worked for the county of Mendocino and city of Healdsburg.

“He pushed us to get going,” she said. “We were the first to get a permit and get our foundation in.”

Then the Dursteler's rebuild was delayed because their lender called for information after the new foundation was built in March.

The Mendocino County CEO said the Redwood Fire did show that local, state and federal agencies can work cooperate on a monumental task of battling the blaze and revving up the recovery.

“We're so used to criticizing government, but we can work together,” Angelo said. “Though Mendocino County is a fairly small government, I think our planning department has done great at getting people back to rebuild.”

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Rebuild Wrinkle: Water For Fire Sprinklers

One of the remaining rebuild challenges in Redwood Valley is upgrading the diameter of water pipes to satisfy the latest California building codes, which require fire sprinklers on homes in certain wildfire zones, Angelo said. The Redwood Valley County Water District serves 187 homes that were destroyed in the blaze, and the estimated cost of upgrading the lines is $7 million. The recent state budget included $2 million for the replacement, with the rest coming from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

If the plans and funding are approved, phase 1 of the three-year project could start this fall, according to Darcie Antle, a county employee who has been managing the project budget.

The line serving the Borecky property is big enough to supply the sprinklers, part of the home's fire-resistant upgrades that include special vents that keep embers out of the attics and crawlspaces and siding that's difficult to burn, George Borecky said.

However, the lines serving Fisher Lake Drive aren't big enough, the owners said.

“I can't speak to specific details, but there are temporary workarounds for folks in those areas,” Antle said. Those include drilling wells or installing water tanks to supply the sprinklers.

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Vintner Preps For Harvest As New Winery Project Set To Start

One of the two wineries to go up in the Redwood Fire was Frey Vineyards's main property on Tomki Road.

But early rebuild plans for a new winery by this harvest, set to start with chardonnay and pinot noir the second week of September, won't happen, according to Katrina Frey.

“We're putting expensive Band-Aids on the old property to get it up and running,” she said. “We probably will be moved into the new winery by Christmastime.”

Permitting may be done to allow for breaking ground on the new winery next month, Frey said. But what likely will be operational by harvest will be the new winery's BO Filtro worm-based wastewater-treatment system, modeled after a much larger one at Fezter Vineyard's winery in Hopland. R.M. Construction is building the winery, designed by LACO Associates.

While paper files and mementos of yesteryear were lost in the blaze, Frey Vineyards continues to function, thanks to its QuickBooks financial data being cloud-based. A family member also saved a local data backup drive before escaping the flames.

However, the homes of 19 employees didn't survive, and much of the 2017 cabernet sauvignon crop, harvested after the fires started, had to be sold for vinegar because of smoke taint, Frey said.

“It was quite a huge loss,” she said.

(North Bay Business Journal)

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ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

Does anyone else remember that somewhat saccharine but also reluctantly (in my case) heartwarming bit of writing called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? It was the title piece of a collection of essays by Robert Fulghum published in 1986, and the basic gist was to remind us that sharing crayons and other resources is a good idea, and afternoon naps result in a net benefit. The overarching message was, when life gets complicated, go back to the basics.

Personally, I am considering implementing my own grade school throwback strategy to achieve optimal (or just functional?) performance: the gold star chart. At the end of the day, I can dole out shiny 5-pointed hits of dopamine as I tally up my achievements. Put on pants successfully? A gold star! Got to work in one piece? A gold star! Finished the day without stabbing anyone? Two gold stars!

There is an upside to noticing what’s wrong — it gives us the opportunity to devise and implement a better way to do a thing, ideally resulting in improved outcomes. But the downside is we only pay attention to the cracks, the lack, and the broken. Let’s take a moment to notice what’s right — the whole, the abundant, and the delightful.

Like most new habits, the key is to start small. Let your heart lift at a freshly baked pastry, a blooming wildflower, or the sound of the rain while you are snug inside your home (I warned you this would get saccharine!). Spend time with folks you love who have the good sense to love you back. Once you start, you’ll discover there’s a lot going right, right where you are.

See you out there ~

Torrey & the team at Word of Mouth Magazine

wordofmouthmendo.com

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BE PREPARED, PA

Feb. Fire Safe Point Arena Meeting

Wednesday, Feb., 5th, 4:45 p.m.

Coast Community Library

Radio check-in will be at 4:00, on repeater channel 2

Agenda

• Discuss organizing a series of gatherings to complete FEMA's Emergency Financial First Aid Kit - Strengthen your financial preparedness for disasters and emergencies
• Pass “net control” to next radio operator
• GMRS repeater update
• Spend time reacquainting ourselves with our radios
• Cargo container update
• Hubs and Routes update
• Any updates or new information from members…

Keep your radios charged. With all of this rain and wind we might lose power. If we do lose power, turn on your radio at the top of the hour; leave it on for 15 minutes. If you need to communicate with folks, you'll know when it's most likely that people will be on air. By turning off our radios periodically, we can keep in communication with each other and not run the power down on our radios - for those of us without generators.

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FULL MOON FESTIVITIES

Full Moon Circle in Ashlesha Nakshatra

The Shal, February 10th, 5:30 PM

Join us for a sacred evening of gentle yoga, sound healing, and astrological insights under the powerful Full Moon in Ashlesha Nakshatra—a time for deep transformation, shedding old patterns, and embracing emotional wisdom.

What to Expect: Gentle Yoga — Ground your body & mind in lunar energy Sound Bath — Immerse in healing vibrations to release stored emotions Astro Alignments — Explore the cosmic influence of Ashlesha

Ashlesha Nakshatra Energy: This nakshatra, ruled by Mercury and the Serpent Spirit, invites deep introspection, emotional detox, and spiritual renewal. It’s a time to honor your intuition and embrace personal transformation.

Bring: A journal, an open heart, and anything you’d like to charge under the moonlight.

RSVP Now & Step Into Lunar Magic

Learn more: https://justinelemos.com/events-39a3V/new-moon-circle-ex6d8-8ymrp

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, February 4, 2025

SHANNON ARNOLD, 45, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, vandalism, resisting.

NICHOLAS CAMPBELL, 41, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

CHRISTOPHER GARCIA, 43, Ukiah. Parole violation.

ADAM KESTER, 38, Willits. Failure to appear.

ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ, 42, Ukiah. Vehicle theft with prior.

JALAHN TRAVIS, 25, Ukiah. Indecent exposure, paraphernalia, probation violation. (Frequent flyer.)

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SENATOR PADILLA DEMANDS ANSWERS AFTER ARMY CORPS ORDERS CENTRAL VALLEY DAMS OPEN TO FLOOD LEVELS

by Dan Bacher

The recklessness of the Trump Administration was demonstrated once again when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Jan. 30 directed unscheduled water releases from Lake Kaweah and Success Lake in Tulare County, raising concerns about flooding on the same farms that Trump said he is trying to “help.”

This was done “purportedly to assist in fighting Los Angeles County fires that are already almost fully contained,” according to a press release from Senator Alex Padilla’s Office. On Jan. 31, Padilla questioned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after the order was issued.…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/2/2300631/-Senator-Padilla-Demands-Answers-After-Army-Corps-Orders-Central-Valley-Dams-Open-to-Flood-Levels

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GROWING OLD IN AMERICAN CITIES

by Jonah Raskin

The old men and women in Stacy Torres’s new book, At Home in the Big City: Growing Old in Urban America, (UC Press; $29.95), are not like the original members of the Grey Panthers, the organization founded by Maggie Kuhn in 1970, when Black Panthers defied racism and injustice and created role models for both the young and the old. Torres’ old folks, all of them New Yorkers, don’t stage dramatic protests against ageism and don’t lobby elected officials to protect social security.

But in their own quiet ways they’re fiercely committed to destigmatize the word and the concept of “old” and to expand the notion of what it means to be 65+ in the US today with a tattered safety net and a housing market unfriendly to anyone on a fixed income.

Torres herself isn’t old but she has been drawn, she says, to feisty old people and old places for most of her adult life. A professor of sociology and nursing at the University of California in San Francisco and a first-generation college graduate, she takes to heart the plight of the old people she meets, observes, listens to, watches carefully and befriends. Torres does not use the real names of the old people she meets, though many are no longer alive. From a legal perspective, the publication of names would not be an invasion of privacy, though Torres seems to be thinking more about the arc of human dignity than laws on the books.

To gather material for her book, she spent years in New York City at a bakery, a sandwich shop and a McDonald’s where old people gathered to create communities and to make nurturing connections. Not surprisingly, they aimed to maintain their own independence and preserve their autonomy even as they hungered for a sense of belonging.

At Home in the City probably isn’t a book for the kinds of old people that Torres profiles. Her target audience is likely college teachers and college students, social workers and “policy wonks” who might address the needs of the old. Still, her book will likely make the reading public aware that there is no stereotype of the “old person,” and that no one size fits all.

Torres shows that there are only individuals who struggle with infirmities, disabilities, memory loss and more and who want to survive and thrive with a sense of dignity. “The complexity of their social ties far exceeded sitcom simplicity,” Torres writes of her cohort. Anyone who reads At Home In the City and who watches the new sitcom, A Man on the Inside, is bound to find the Netflix characters, especially the protagonist, Charles Nieuwendyk (a white-haired Ted Danson), one-dimensional. Indeed, Nieuwendyk is rather unintentionally absurd in his role as an amateur private eye sleuthing in a senior living facility.

The characters who inhabit Netflix’s fictional “Pacific View Retirement Center” in San Francisco bear little resemblance to the real people who appear in the pages of At Home in the City. They also bear little resemblance to my own friends and neighbors in The Carlisle, a senior living facility in Japantown in San Francisco, which has been my home for the past five months and where the community has eroded the sense of isolation and loneliness that hit me when I moved from rural northern California to “The City,” as San Franciscans call it.

Unlike the residents of The Carlisle, many of whom, like me, are retired professionals with pensions and savings, Torres’ old people seem to be mostly retired blue collar and pink collar workers, though she doesn’t provide nearly enough information about their careers, jobs, education and training when they were young and middle aged. They live at home and want to “age in place.”

They’re far closer to the edge than the folk at The Carlisle, who can eat three meals a day in the dining room on the ground floor of a 12-story building, take part in group activities— yoga, bridge, scrabble, Mahjong, Bingo and more— and watch films (a different one every day) in a small movie theater with comfortable seats and popcorn. Political discussion is the life blood of The Carlisle, where most of the residents detest Trump and his cronies. If it was up to them he would not be in thr White House now creating havoc. For some of them life seems to begin at 90.

Torres’ old people can be snarkier than The Carlyle residents. One woman describes the group to which she belongs as “the dementia club.” Another interviewee insists that “the stress of others’ problems interfered with caring for themselves.” Those sentiments might be found at The Carlisle, though I have not heard them; as the editor of The Carlisle newsletter I keep my eyes and ears wide open, watching and listening for crucial bits of information. No one complains about aches, pains, and infirmities. There’s no point. Everyone is in the same boat

Torres says that the members of her cohort tended to “gossip,” and that “talking about others served as a counterintuitive form of connection.” At The Carlisle, residents talk about themselves and one another, but I wouldn’t call it “gossip” or “small talk,” a phrase that Torres also uses to describe the conversations that take place. To label it “gossip” demeans the exchange of information and opinion that takes place, though so-called “gossip” can convey more genuine news than “the news.”

Yes, The Carlisle residents differ significantly from the old people in At Home in the City, but like them they “juggle arthritis, diabetes, and high blood pressure.” They also struggle with “problems with hearing and eyesight.” As a friend on the ninth floor tells me and as others echo, “Getting old isn’t for sissies.”

Torres suggests that “urban areas may have distinct opportunities to assuage loneliness.” That may be so, though she offers no direct evidence or data to support that notion. What is certain is that loneliness doesn’t leave old people alone; indeed they share loneliness, which has reached epidemic proportions, with others of all ages.

At the end of her book Torres writes honestly about herself. From old people, she says, she learned “how to make a home in the world wherever I go.” She also says that she is “planning for a home where I can grow old and accommodate increasing disability, securing a pension and building retirement savings, accessing preventive health care, and advocating for myself in health-care settings.”

Planning helps, but aging has a way of knocking the elderly off course, sending them into hospitals and ending their lives before they’re ready to exit this world. At Home in the World offers practical suggestions about aging and reminds readers that old age like youth is a “social construction.” Make of it what you will and as Dylan Thomas exclaimed, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

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THE MOTE & THE BEAM

Editor,

The Dems are in full throated outrage about President Trump's Executive Orders. Perhaps they should consider Matthew 7, verse 3: “And why beholdest thou this mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerist not the beam than is in thine own eye”. Let them turn their eyes to the ironclad support of Genocide Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the slaughters in Gaza, the West Bank, Ukraine and Russia. Unfortunately, Nobel Peace Prize aspirant President Trump shows little sign of changing course.

To the Hague with the three killers, quickly, while Ole Joe still has a speck of comprehension.

Joan Vivaldo

San Francisco

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LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT

China Swiftly Counters Trump’s Tariffs With a Flurry of Trade Curbs

Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Since we do not have any viable opposition to the Trump-Musk alliance, I suppose we have rule by 2 people plus all the muscle they've hired. While I love seeing DEI, the trans agenda, CRT, and open immigration get the axe, I also am concerned about what seems to be shaping up as a technocracy, or techno-feudalism, as many of us have been warning about for years.

The Dem party was never a good party, although perhaps the 2 party system somewhat balanced each other out. But not since the 1960s in any effective manner that I can detect. It just got more and more “uniparty.”

So… the future ought to be interesting.

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AMERICA'S SMEAR MACHINE PUT ON TRIAL

A week of heated confirmation hearings served as a referendum on America's Reputational Death Star

by Matt Taibbi

The confirmation hearings of Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr showed we’re still trapped in an endless fight between Defenders of the Great Russia Conspiracy, and everyone in their way.

Gabbard, Patel, and Kennedy faced questioning that was similar in tone to hearings of the House Un-American Affairs Committee (HUAC), which many forget was a feature of American life for 31 years, from 1938 to 1969. It feels like we’re just starting down a similar long road. All three nominees shared a connection (see below), having been smeared by the same actors, some of whom just resurfaced as accusers. The story goes back at least eight years.

In late January, 2018, reporters like NBC’s Ken Dilanian began publishing claims that Russia was advancing Patel’s work. The accusations were made by Democrats like Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal and California’s Adam Schiff and Dianne Feinstein, but also Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The central claim was that Russian bots were driving enthusiasm for the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag, which called for publication of a classified report into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe by House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes. The so-called “Nunes memo” was based on Patel’s investigation. Donald Trump’s own Justice Department shrieked that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release the memo, while Schiff said the memo’s release would “politicize the intelligence process.”

Nearly a year later, December 16, 2018, news broke that a Senate-commissioned study on Russian meddling in the 2016 election had been completed. Titled “The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency,” the report was commissioned by Virginia Senator Mark Warner’s Intelligence Committee. It described “comprehensive anti-Hillary Clinton operations” by Russian Internet accounts expressing “pro-Bernie Sanders and pro-Jill Stein sentiments,” whose tactics “overlapped with the pro-Trump portion of the operation.” Breathless coverage ensued, from NPR to the Washington Post to the New York Times, with Stein and Donald Trump roundly denounced for accepting support of “Russian troll farms.”

Two weeks after that, on February 2nd, 2019, NBC launched a third campaign, timed to coincide with the launch of then-Democrat Gabbard’s presidential campaign. The report said that “Russia’s propaganda machine” had discovered Gabbard, and was now “promoting the presidential aspirations of a controversial Hawaii Democrat.” The campaign would continue throughout her run. Hillary Clinton in October of that year claimed Gabbard was a Russian “asset.” In November, Dilanian essentially re-wrote NBC’s February story, claiming Gabbard was “popular with Russian propagandists.”

Whether or not Patel, Gabbard, and Kennedy are confirmed as FBI Director, Director of National Intelligence, and Secretary of Health and Human Services will depend significantly on how committed both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate continue to be to defending those three stories. It’s the chief subtext to the hearings. Key figures on all sides of the confirmation drama, from the nominees to Senate questioners like Republicans Susan Collins and James Lankford and Democrats Schiff to Blumenthal have links to those three P.R. campaigns.

All three came from the same now-discredited source…

https://www.racket.news/p/americas-smear-machine-put-on-trial

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UNDERSTANDING AMERICANS: A COMING PLUNGE OF DICTATOR DONALD

by Ralph Nader

Convicted felon Donald Trump has declared war on Americans. In less than two weeks, he has become the dictator, a role he celebrated in his campaign. He is using illegal executive orders as poisoned spears against just about every program the federal government administers to advance the health, safety, and economic well-being of all Americans.

Until temporarily enjoined by a federal court, Trump pushed to cut all monies that fund schools, housing, nutrition programs, and health care—especially Medicaid for over 80 million children, women, and men and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). Essentially, he and his minions are going berserk, smashing the law, tearing up our Constitution, and inviting lawsuits which they can delay, with your tax dollars, until they reach Trump’s handpicked corrupt U.S. Supreme Court cronies.

The media can scarcely keep up with just listing the vicious cruelty of Der Fuhrer driven by vengeance and greed arising out of his deeply unstable egomania. Trump’s abuses of power can be divided into three categories: 1) Driving to destroy the historic safety net leads to a collective homicide. Yes, without food, health care and safety initiatives, Americans will die or get sick, whether they voted for Trump or not; 2) Omnicide coming from directly shutting down federal agencies and their cooperation with other nations (quitting the Paris Climate Accords) from continuing the fight against climate violence and the accelerating intensity of wildfires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, extreme heat waves and rising sea levels, and subordinating renewable energy to greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. Trump also quit the World Health Organization and froze federal programs working to foresee and forestall deadly pandemics (3) Genocide by continuing Biden’s co-belligerency with mass killer Netanyahu and adding support for the expulsion of the remaining survivors in Gaza to their death in the desert. Add these criminal mayhems to the censorship or persecution of anyone who opposes Trump.

With his fascistic henchmen (assured of Trump’s pardons for any criminal actions) to head the FBI and other crackdown agencies, he is unleashing a police state the likes of which American history has not seen since the days of slavery. The Trumpsters are also enabling expansion of private corporate prisons to incarcerate his enemies.

Together with Elon Musk, the Trump administration is moving to turn the civil service back into the spoils system. Musk is also going berserk, offering out-of-nowhere two million federal employees buyouts with pay until September. This is totally crazy, illegal and dictated by a private mega-billionaire. You may remember the former Musk who warned about global warming and lethally out of control robots (A.I.).

These moves are part of a purge of experienced public servants, who serve people every day, to be replaced by the tribunes and agents of the corporate state or the final takeover of our government, by big business, with Trump at its head.

Right now, Trump, the failed gambling czar in the White House, and his minions think they are invincible. The GOP in Congress is cowed. The courts are Trump’s at the top level, and if they balk, he issues pardons. Who’s going to stop him and the rampaging Trumpsters?

In a word, The People. Already his polls are dropping. Under direct threat by Trump, the mass media is not all going to turn into Fox News. The stories of the pain, deprivation, and chaotic sadism imposed on totally innocent American families and workers will generate spontaneous resistance that translates into lower consumer buying amidst higher inflation and the instability that small businesses dread. Even Chambers of Commerce will recoil at yet more tax dollars being unavailable for public infrastructure and instead going for more weapons of mass destruction to enlarge the military state.

All of this is to say that the demented Trump is deeply un-American as he touts America seizing the Panama Canal and Greenland, together with his designs on Canada.

Unless he changes course, he will be brought down by corruption throughout his ranks, plunging polls, resistance by many states and their Attorneys General and finally by a Congressional GOP realizing that it is their political skin or Trump’s. They will choose their own political survival.

Remember, during the Watergate scandal in 1974, a delegation of Republican Senators went to the White House and told Richard Nixon that his time was up and that he had to resign for far, far fewer transgressions.

Trump knows no boundaries, no self-restraint and has often declared that he will do whatever he wants, meaning operating in massive violation of the laws of our land. He is now ruling by dictates that are getting more sweeping and penetrating by the day. He should read a history book.

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LAST RITES

by James Kunstler

“In private meetings and at public events, elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided. They disagree over how often and how stridently to oppose Mr. Trump. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.” — The New York Times

Maybe that’s because the four years of “Joe Biden” was little more than a vaudeville show in front of the curtain, distracting you from what was going on backstage — the world’s biggest political racketeering operation as conducted by a vast bureaucracy gone wild and mad: the blob in florid, mature efflorescence, doing its blob-thing to the max, looting and punking the nation. Now it is all being uncovered, disclosed, unmasked.

Think of the Democratic Party as the entertainment arm of the overall operation. Its aim has basically been to induce you to doubt your sanity. You were asked to swallow one fabulous absurdity after another — lockdowns, vaccines that don’t prevent illness, mostly-peaceful arson, US soldiers in puppy masks, pronoun police, shoplifting-is-reparations, the wide-open border — an epic acting-out of manifold mental illness in living color. The climax was drag-queens in the primary schools, obese men in fright-wigs presenting nightmare varieties of Mom-as-monster, often with some exposure of their male junk as part of the act. Suburban mothers watched approvingly, insisting on video that this was all wholesome, edifying fun for the kiddies (while some of the more insane moms went even further at home, coaxing their little kids toward medical “transitioning”).

Can you grok how insane all this was? So, if you were a Democratic Party strategist, perhaps the first thing you’d consider these days is to stop being insane. Second, at this particular juncture, you might consider apologizing to the people of this land for your heinous antics of recent years — like an alcoholic parent who has acted very badly against the family — and promise to make the effort to get your shit together. This is obviously the part that Democrats are struggling with now, and it explains why they pretend to be at such a loss to make course corrections. Of course, any further failure to come to grips with all this will lead to the death of the Democratic Party. Never in history has a political faction gone out in such pathetic ignominy.

Yet it is not just this feckless party that needs to expiate its shame, it is also America’s thinking class as a whole, its “experts,” its managers, its educated elites, its doctors and lawyers, its curators of “news” and opinion, and most of the denizens of showbiz. For the moment, they are all cowering and shuddering before the juggernaut of Mr. Trump, who they so grievously underestimated.

They know — they can see in plain view — that he is coming for them, and many might find themselves called to account in a rebalanced justice system. Many of them committed crimes against the nation and its citizens. The raft of lawyers fired out of the DC federal district this weekend for cause —namely, for conducing overtly malicious prosecutions under dubious predication — are an early sign. Ditto, the warning issued to Chuck Schumer concerning his 2020 incitement of violence against Supreme Court justices. Imagine, too, how many officials in the public health agencies need to answer for their roles in Covid-19 — the creation of it in their labs, the worthless vaccines, and the deadly treatment protocols they insisted on.

Now, the fate of the blob itself is a thing somewhat apart from the fate of this evil vaudevillian Democratic Party fronting for it. A purge of the blob is pretty clearly underway. USAID was shot dead like a rabid dog over the weekend. The agency had gone completely rogue, serving (Mike Benz explains) as the pivot between every nefarious operation coming out of the CIA, the DOD, and the State Department’s many black box units. The billions of dollars laundered out of USAID went to support hundreds of NGOs, many of them dedicated to harming the life of this nation, such as the orgs that handed out money to illegal aliens and advice on evading detection in-country. And these many NGOs represented an employment racket for the “elite overproduction” of grads coming out of universities with useless degrees and Maoist political training. There was, of course, a giant revolving door between these NGOs and the activist ranks of the Democratic Party.

The country needs a functioning, sane, opposition party to whomever is in power, since power inevitably corrupts. Like any other powerful office-holder, Mr. Trump needs a governor and guard-rails on his actions. Something will have to take the Democratic Party’s place, maybe even a group that uses the same name for convenience and the sake of tradition. But it will have to jettison just about everything the party stands for in its current incarnation, its insane ideas and policies. It might also consider the value of not lying about everything it does.

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DON’T BELIEVE HIM

Look closely at the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s second term and you’ll see something very different from what he wants you to see.

by Ezra Klein

If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. …

All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to —

Michael Kirk: What was the word?

Bannon: Muzzle velocity.

Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-trump-column-read.html

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DOGE GOES TO WAR ON NPR & PBS BY THREATENING TO CUT GOVERNMENT FUNDING

by Emma Richter

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) subcommittee announced that it is going to war with National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

In two letters sent to the CEOs of the outlets - Katherine Maher and Paula Kerger – Marjorie Taylore-Greene, the DOGE subcommittee chair, called on them to testify on Capitol Hill to defend the government funding they use to share 'systematically biased content.'

Greene said that the department plans to address its concerns about the station's 'blatantly ideological and partisan coverage' at the hearing, scheduled for either the week of March 3 or March 24.

In each letter, the subcommittee gave examples of 'bias' reporting done by both NPR and PBS against Elon Musk - the head of DOGE - and cited NPR's decision to not report on Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal.

In the one sent to Kerger, the subcommittee said: 'Recently PBS implied that Mr. Elon Musk made a fascist salute while addressing an inaugural celebration hours after President Donald Trump was sworn into office,' referring to the Tesla CEO's hand gesture that's sparked a major controversy online.

'The characterization was clearly false,' it continued, turning to a statement made by the Anti-Defamation League that said Musk 'made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.'

The letter sent to Maher cited NPR's decision to not report on a laptop belonging to the former president's son, which contained data critics claim implicates members of the Biden family in a corruption scandal.

The subcommittee then cited a statement made by NPR in October 2020 in regard to the laptop, stating: 'We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.'

The subcommittee also cited a scathing essay penned by Uri Berliner, former senior business editor for NPR.

Berliner worked for the outlet from 1999 until April 2024, as he blasted NPR for its far-left political bias, while also referring to the outlet as 'an assembly line.'

'There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed,' Berliner wrote at the time.

'It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.'

DOGE also noted a statement Maher made in 2022 at a TED Talk, when she was the CEO of Wikipedia.

At the time she said that 'our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground.'

In each letter, the subcommittee said that its goal for calling the CEO's to testify is so the department can 'better understand' their practices while 'providing Americans with accurate information.'

'As stewards of tax dollars, NPR and PBS must provide objective and accurate coverage that serves all Americans,' the Oversight Committee said in a post to X announcing the department's decision.

PBS told DailyMail.com they are 'grateful to have bipartisan support in Congress, and our country.'

'We’ve earned this support from decades of noncommercial and nonpartisan work in local communities: providing all Americans with content they trust; offering a broad range of stories and programs that help citizens understand our past and shape our future; and helping children and families open up worlds of possibilities through educational programming.

'We appreciate the opportunity to present to the committee how now, more than ever, the service PBS provides matters for our nation.'

NPR told DailyMail.com that the outlet 'welcomes the opportunity' to testify.

'Since its inception, NPR has collaborated with local nonprofit public media organizations to fill critical needs for news and information in America’s communities, NPR continued.

'We constantly strive to hold ourselves to the highest standards of journalism, as evidenced by our publicly available standards and ethics guidelines, the presence of a Public Editor – a position relinquished by all other major news organizations – that allows the public to inquire directly about NPR’s journalism, and strong editorial processes that provide oversight of the entire newsgathering process, including a final review of the nearly 2,000 pieces of journalism aired or published by our newsroom every month.

'Today our President and CEO Katherine Maher received a request to testify before the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency in March. We welcome the opportunity to discuss the critical role of public media in delivering impartial, fact-based news and reporting to the American public.'

This is just one of the many moves that have been made under Trump's administration and under DOGE.

On Monday, staffers who work for the Agency for International Development (USAID) were instructed to stay out of the agency's DC headquarters after Musk announced that the president had agreed with him to shut it down.

The billionaire 'first buddy,' who is leading a civilian review of the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has claimed the agency is a 'criminal organization.'

'It became apparent that it's not an apple with a worm in it,' Musk said in a live session on X Spaces early Monday. 'What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.'

'We’re shutting it down.'

USAID, whose website vanished Saturday without explanation, administers billions of dollars in humanitarian, development and security programs in about 120 countries.

It was established in 1961 under president John F Kennedy to 'lead US efforts to alleviate poverty, disease, and humanitarian need, and assists U.S. commercial interests by supporting developing countries’ economic growth and building countries’ capacity to participate in world trade,' according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The aid agency, which managed over $40million in 2023, employs over 10,000 people - with approximately two-thirds serving overseas.

The countries who received the most USAID-managed funds in 2023 were Ukraine, Ethiopia, Jordan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Syria.

USAID's biggest funding sectors have been related to health since the 1990s, with the agency donating billions to combat HIV/AIDS around the world.

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TICKET TO HELL

US Strikes ‘Extraordinary’ Migrant Deal With El Salvador To Accept Deportees From Any Country, Including Dangerous Criminals

(AP & Nikke Schwab)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says El Salvador's president has offered to accept deportees from the U.S. of all nationalities as well as violent criminals now imprisoned in the United States.

President Nayib Bukele 'has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,' Rubio said.

'He's also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentence in the United States even though they're U.S. citizens or legal residents.'

Rubio was visiting El Salvador on Monday to press a friendly government to do more to meet Trump administration demands for a major crackdown on immigration amid turmoil in Washington over the status of the government's main foreign development agency.

'President Bukele agreed to take back all Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States unlawfully. He also promised to accept and incarcerate violent illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but also criminal illegal migrants from any country,' State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

'And in an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents,' Bruce added.

Bruce called it a 'tremendously successful meeting that will make both countries stronger, safer, and more prosperous.'

Rubio arrived in San Salvador shortly after watching a U.S.-funded deportation flight with 43 migrants leave from Panama for Colombia.

That came a day after Rubio delivered a warning to Panama that unless the government moved immediately to reduce or eliminate China’s presence at the Panama Canal, the U.S. would act to do so.

Migration, though, was the main issue of the day as it will be for the next stops on his five-nation Central American tour of Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic after Panama and El Salvador.

President Donald Trump's administration prioritizes stopping people from making the journey to the United States and has worked with regional countries to boost immigration enforcement on their borders as well as to accept deportees from the United States.

One idea that was floated was to negotiate what Rubio announced Monday night — a so-called 'safe third country' agreement with El Salvador that would allow for non-Salvadorean migrants in the U.S. to be deporated to the nation.

Officials have suggested this might be an option for Venezuelan gang members convicted of crimes in the United States should Venezuela refuse to accept them.

Ahead of Rubio's announcement, Bukele said it was a broad agreement 'that does not have precedent in the history of the relationship, not just of the United States with El Salvador but rather I think in Latin America.'

Human rights activists have warned, however, that El Salvador lacks a consistent policy for the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees and that such an agreement might not be limited to violent criminals.

Manuel Flores, the secretary general of the leftist opposition party Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, criticized any such plan, saying it would signal that the region is Washington's 'backyard to dump the garbage.'

The deportation flight Rubio watched being loaded in Panama City was carrying migrants detained by Panamanian authorities after illegally crossing the Darien Gap from Colombia.

The State Department says such deportations send a message of deterrence.

The U.S. has provided Panama with financial assistance to the tune of almost $2.7 million in flights and tickets since an agreement was signed to fund them.

Rubio was on the tarmac for the departure of the flight, which was taking 32 men and 11 women back to Colombia.

It's unusual for a secretary of state to personally witness such a law enforcement operation, especially in front of cameras.

'Mass migration is one of the great tragedies in the modern era,' Rubio said, speaking afterward in a nearby building. 'It impacts countries throughout the world. We recognize that many of the people who seek mass migration are often victims and victimized along the way, and it´s not good for anyone.'

Monday's deportation flight came as Trump has been threatening action against nations that will not accept flights of their nationals from the United States, and he briefly hit Colombia with penalties last week for initially refusing to accept two flights.

Panama has been more cooperative and has allowed flights of third-country deportees to land and sent migrants back before they reach the United States.

'This is an effective way to stem the flow of illegal migration, of mass migration, which is destructive and destabilizing,' Rubio said. 'And it would have been impossible to do without the strong partnership we have here with our friends and allies in Panama. And we're going to continue to do it.'

His trip comes amid a sweeping freeze in US foreign assistance and stop-work orders that have shut down U.S.-funded programs targeting illegal migration and crime in Central American countries.

The State Department said Sunday that Rubio had approved waivers for certain critical programs in countries he is visiting, but details of those were not immediately available.

While Rubio was out of the country, staffers of the US Agency for International Development were instructed on Monday to stay out of the agency's Washington headquarters after billionaire Elon Musk announced Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.

Thousands of USAID employees already had been laid off and programs shut down.

Rubio told reporters in San Salvador that he was now the acting administrator of USAID but had delegated that authority so he would not be running its day-to-day operations.

The change means that USAID is no longer an independent government agency as it had been for decades - although its new status will likely be challenged in court - and will be run out of the State Department by department officials.

In his remarks, Rubio stressed that some and perhaps many USAID programs would continue in the new configuration but that the switch was necessary because the agency had become unaccountable to the executive branch and Congress.

On his weekend discussion with Panama's president on the Panama Canal, Rubio said he was hopeful that the Panamanians would heed his and Trump's warnings on China.

Panamanians have bristled at Trump's insistence on retaking control of the American-built canal, which the U.S. turned over in 1999, although they have agreed to pull out of a Chinese infrastructure and development initiative.

'I understand that it´s a delicate issue in Panama,' Rubio told reporters in San Salvador. 'We don´t want to have a hostile and negative relationship with Panama,' he said. 'I don´t believe we do. And we had a frank and respectful conversation, and I hope it´ll yield fruits and result in the days to come.'

But back in Washington, Trump was less diplomatic, saying 'China's involved with the Panama Canal. They won´t be for long and that´s the way it has to be.'

'We either want it back, or we´re going to get something very strong, or we´re going to take it back,' Trump told reporters at the White House. 'And China will be dealt with.'

As he has in the past, Trump again criticized the Carter administration for having signed a 1970s treaty to cede control of the canal to Panama and said it was a pact that Panama has since 'totally violated.'

'They've agreed to certain things, but I´m not happy with it,' Trump said.

(DailyMail.uk)

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