Saturday Morning Covfefe: Escalation Mode

War overseas. Control at home. The pattern isn’t subtle.

I took a double shot of espresso this morning because that’s apparently what it takes to process a 2:30 a.m. ET spur-of-the-moment war announcement from a bone-spur president who just declared we are now at war with Iran.

He previewed the escalation at the State of the Union, and last night, rhetoric turned into strikes. The president framed it as defending America, and, in the same breath, encouraged Iranians to overthrow their government once the bombs stop falling. A regime change pep talk before sunrise. While I am certainly no fan of the Iranian regime, U.S. intelligence assessments have not corroborated claims of an imminent Iranian strike on the United States. The president himself acknowledged American service members could be lost—all the more reason Congress should have been involved. War powers carry constitutional weight and human cost.

While we’re here, anyone remember the 2024 Presidential campaign?

"Trump = Peace." Claims that Democrats would drag us into World War III.

Trump has officially become the very "neocon" warmonger he’s spent his entire public life ridiculing. It’s amazing how quickly campaign slogans evaporate at 2:30 in the morning.

Alright. Buckle up. The week didn’t stop there.

1. Emergency Powers…For Elections?

Pro-Trump lawyers are pushing the president to declare a national emergency ahead of the midterms, using recycled claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election as the justification.

Yes. 2020. Again.

A 17-page draft executive order would invoke emergency authorities to give the president unprecedented power over federal elections including: mandating voter ID, restricting or banning mail-in ballots, and potentially reshaping how votes are counted. To be clear, the Constitution gives the states and Congress authority over elections. Not the president. Furthermore, U.S. intelligence assessments declassified in 2021 concluded that while China considered influence efforts in 2020, it did not deploy operations to change the outcome.

The pattern is simple: build a foreign threat narrative, declare an emergency, expand executive power.

You can debate voter ID. You can debate mail ballots. But you cannot use emergency powers as a workaround when legislation stalls. National emergencies are meant for crises that threaten the country’s survival, not for policy disputes over election rules. This would test the constitutional limits of executive authority.

This should not leave our radar. Because once emergency powers touch elections, you’re no longer debating policy, you’re debating who controls the vote…

🗳️ National Emergency… For Voting?: The Independent

2. We Don’t Recognize Our Country Anymore

From my hometown of El Paso, Texas.

Two legal leaders visited the Camp East Montana ICE detention facility in El Paso, now the largest immigrant detention center in U.S. history.

Their conclusion? "We don’t recognize our country anymore."

This is a $1.2 billion facility built on an Army base. It can hold 5,000 people and it is run by a private contractor. According to their firsthand account, there are 5 toilets for 72 detainees. Spoiled food. Medical neglect. Missed court dates because guards don’t take people and detainees are "disappearing" from the ICE locator system. Three people have died there in the past two months. One ruled a homicide. These weren’t hardened cartel operatives. They were working people. Paying taxes. Living in Miami. Chicago. Richmond. New York. Taken in workplace raids. Picked up at courthouses and transported thousands of miles away from their families and attorneys. That’s not border security. That’s strategic isolation.

I’ve spoken with people on the ground in El Paso who are familiar with this facility. They say this account tracks. We are spending billions to warehouse people while basic standards reportedly go unmet.

You can have a serious debate about immigration policy. But you cannot normalize disappearance. This is mass detention as performance, and taxpayers are paying for it. This doesn’t end here. Warehouses across the country are being eyed for the same purpose.

🚨 Inside the Largest U.S. Detention Facility: El Paso Matters

3. They Left Ace of Spades Cards Behind

ICE officers in Colorado reportedly detained immigrants during traffic stops, left their cars idling on the side of the road, and placed customized ace-of-spades cards labeled "ICE Denver Field Office" at the scene.

Not paperwork. Not a standard notice. A calling card. If you know your history, that symbolism isn’t random.

During the Vietnam War, U.S. troops notoriously used ace-of-spades cards— sometimes standard, sometimes customized—placing them on or in the mouths of dead Vietnamese as a psychological tactic. It was intimidation, meant to send a message. Now, decades later, families in Colorado arrive to find loved ones gone, and that same symbol left behind.

Colorado’s congressional delegation called the symbol what it has long been known as: a "death card," associated not only with wartime brutality but later with extremist intimidation.

This isn’t standard enforcement. It’s messaging. When federal agents adopt symbolism historically linked to psychological warfare and extremist intimidation, that’s not an optics problem.

Law enforcement has procedures for a reason. Professionalism matters. Neutrality matters. Symbols matter. You can debate immigration enforcement policy. But when enforcement starts borrowing the aesthetics of intimidation campaigns, something deeper is shifting.

And if that doesn’t alarm you, it should.

♠️ The Return of the “Death Card” Symbol: The Nation

4. When Agencies Start Firing at Each Other

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the FAA shutting down airspace over El Paso under a “national defense” designation. I said: watch the response, not just the object.

It’s happened again.

The military fired a high-energy laser at what it believed was a threatening drone. The drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection. Yes. One federal agency fired at another federal agency’s aircraft. The FAA wasn’t informed. It didn’t authorize the system. So it shut down airspace, again.

Behind the “we’re working together” statements, reporting shows open tension between the Pentagon, DHS, and the FAA over who has authority to deploy military-grade counter-drone weapons in civilian airspace.

That’s safety versus security, without coordination.

When high-energy lasers and commercial airspace share the same sky, the margin for error is razor-thin. We were told this was about protecting the border. It’s starting to look like agencies protecting turf, while the public absorbs the risk.

✈️⚡ Military Lasers. Civilian Airspace. Again.:NY Times

5. Speeding Up the Most Dangerous Job in America

This one has received almost no attention.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) just proposed allowing slaughterhouses to speed up kill lines across the country.

Chickens: from 140 birds per minute to 175.
Turkeys: from 55 per minute to 60.
Pigs: currently capped at 1,106 per hour—now potentially no limit at all.

The proposal would also eliminate the requirement that plants publish annual worker safety reports. So faster lines. Less transparency. Fewer guardrails.

Slaughterhouse work is already one of the most dangerous jobs in America: high injury rates, repetitive stress trauma, amputations, and chemical exposure. Speed is directly tied to injury. When lines move faster, workers cut faster. When workers cut faster, mistakes happen.

My uncle worked in a meatpacking plant. I’ve heard the stories. The pace was relentless even before proposals like this. It’s physical. It’s punishing. And when something goes wrong, it doesn’t go a little wrong.

This isn’t abstract deregulation. It shows up in broken bodies. When we talk about "policy," this is what it looks like in real life: on factory floors most Americans will never see. You can call it "efficiency." You can call it "streamlining." But when you remove speed limits and reporting requirements simultaneously, you’re not modernizing. You’re gambling with workers’ hands, and calling it policy.

⚙️🐓 Faster Kill Lines. Fewer Safeguards: Vox

🐾 One Thing for Your Soul

An 89-year-old man slipped on the ice, couldn’t get up, and forgot he had his emergency button. So he yelled.

Next door, a rescue dog named Rosa heard him. She barked persistently until her owner put on her boots and followed her outside. That’s when she heard the calls for help. Neighbors came. An ambulance followed. Stitches, but no tragedy. Rosa had been rescued from Mexico just last year. Now she’s the rescuer.

After a week of heavy headlines, here’s your reminder: There are still neighbors who show up. There are still instincts that run toward danger, not away from it.

Sometimes hope doesn’t trend. Sometimes it just barks until someone listens.

🐶 The Neighbor Who Showed Up: CTV News

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Until next time,

Olivia