Anthony Pignataro
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apignataro.bsky.social
Anthony Pignataro
@apignataro.bsky.social
Current journalist at the co-op @lbwatchdog.bsky.social, former MauiTime editor. My new novel The B Girls and new memoir Remembering Lahaina are now available. He/him.
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
WHOA. Trump says he will pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez, who once said that he wanted to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” He had people killed as part of his narco-trafficking ring, which he at times operated directly out of his presidential office.
November 29, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Even the racist South Africans?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trump administration says it is halting all asylum decisions in wake of National Guard shooting.
November 29, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
I hope the City of Long Beach will start rigorously prioritizing safety and quality of life over parking spaces and traffic flow, regardless of what a few loud voices say. 53 deaths in a year in a city of under half a million people is tragic.
Long Beach police say they’re investigating the death of a pedestrian who was hit by a car in the area of Pacific Coast Highway and Maine Avenue on Nov. 13.

Read more from @apignataro.bsky.social and @brandonrichardson.bsky.social on the Watchdog. lbwatchdog.com/pedestrian-d...
November 27, 2025 at 10:50 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
Here are some ways to make sure that the puppy or kitten in the stocking also gets the gift of a welcoming home.

Read more from @lastwhomstanding.bsky.social on the Watchdog. lbwatchdog.com/no-exchange-...
November 28, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
The president is such a bumbling idiot he thinks tweeting out the word "hereby" a couple times on his white supremacist social media site is the same thing as making an actual law.

The only story here is the one about a mentally diminished, increasingly erratic president who thinks he's a king.
It should go without saying, but the president has no authority to do this, and anyone reporting the story needs to say as such.
November 28, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
If they ever get around to building this thing, it should be bulldozed on Day 1 of a new administration. No messing around, no hemming and hawing about procedure or costs. Order heavy equipment in and start knocking it down immediately, as surely as an overthrown tyrant's statues would be torn down.
November 28, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
Every single congressional Democrat needs to be out there, right now, insisting that Pete Hegseth resign right now and announcing that he will be held accountable for committing war crimes.

If you do not demand accountability here and now, they will only become more emboldened.
Exclusive: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave an order to “kill everybody” in the first strike on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean. After two men survived, the mission commander ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, according to two sources.
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order to kill all crew members in the Sept. 2 strike on a suspected drug boat. Navy SEALs fired a second missile.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 28, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
White House aide Stephen Miller is yelling at the WSJ editorial page because, like the Geneva conventions, they condemn the collective punishment of an ethnic group
November 28, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
There might be no better example of the war coming home than a CIA trained teen death squad recruit getting asylum in the US and then shooting a bunch of soldiers who were deployed to DC for no reason other than Kabuki Security Theater
November 28, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
Hegseth is a cold-blooded murderer. There's no way to dress it up. He's a criminal. And his was precisely the kind of illegal order that those Dem members of Congress urged the military not to follow. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order to kill all crew members in the Sept. 2 strike on a suspected drug boat. Navy SEALs fired a second missile.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 28, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
Worth watching this whole clip. Indistinguishable from Nazi leaders talking about Jews in the 1930s.
TRUMP: If you look at Somalia, they are taking over Minnesota.

REPORTER: What do the Somalians have to do with this Afghan guy who shot the National Guard members?

TRUMP: Ah, nothing. But Somalians have caused a lot of trouble. They're ripping us off.
November 28, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
This is just gutter racism and it’s a standard that would never be applied to say, the descendants of Italian immigrants who fled the lawlessness of Southern italy post unification and now staff this fascist administration bsky.app/profile/publ...
Stephen Miller is now arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization
November 28, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
“Biden Asylum Cases” is NYT’s framing for a story pegged to a man who got asylum 3 months into the Trump administration

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/u...
November 27, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Watching the classics today
two men standing next to each other with the words as god as my witness
Alt: two men standing next to each other with the words “as god as my witness.”
media.tenor.com
November 28, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
"Ah, nothing. I'm just a gutter racist, see."
TRUMP: If you look at Somalia, they are taking over Minnesota.

REPORTER: What do the Somalians have to do with this Afghan guy who shot the National Guard members?

TRUMP: Ah, nothing. But Somalians have caused a lot of trouble. They're ripping us off.
November 28, 2025 at 1:35 AM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
Dude who took health insurance and food stamps from more Americans than any Speaker in US history wants you to know how tough he's got it.
Mike Johnson: “I haven’t had a vacation day in two years. I haven’t been off in two years, literally.”
November 27, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
My special Thanksgiving toon for CALÓ News. Please share, and support CALÓ News at calonews.com/donate and get my 2026 Cartoon Calendar at laloalcaraz.com .
November 27, 2025 at 11:38 PM
I often wonder what this country would be like if cruelty wasn’t hardwired into its culture.

(Article from the Long Beach Sun, Nov. 27, 1930)
November 27, 2025 at 11:33 PM
This is the 53rd traffic fatality reported by the LBPD this year, making it the deadliest year since at least 1990, when the city reported 51 deaths.

1990!
Long Beach police say they’re investigating the death of a pedestrian who was hit by a car in the area of Pacific Coast Highway and Maine Avenue on Nov. 13.

Read more from @apignataro.bsky.social and @brandonrichardson.bsky.social on the Watchdog. lbwatchdog.com/pedestrian-d...
November 27, 2025 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
None of these guys know how to be national leaders. Hegseth, Vance, etc. They constantly say stuff that would be funny or appropriate for a platoon leader or squad leader because that's ALL THEY KNOW HOW TO DO. No idea how to behave like a vice president or cabinet secretary. Totally unqualified.
JD Vance: "How many of you really like turkey?"

Many soldiers raise their hands.

Vance: "You're all full of shit."
November 27, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
Collective, racist punishment.
It didn’t even take 6 hours.
November 27, 2025 at 3:33 AM
Today is the 6th anniversary of the demise of OC Weekly, the little alt weekly that gave me my start in journalism 3 decades ago. There I learned that journalism requires honesty but thrives when it is committed to improving community. My old paper was always tiny, but today its loss really stings.
yep. also really can't overstate how much nuzzi is very much the product of an environment that rewards amoral ambition and frowns on people who sincerely believe anything
November 27, 2025 at 4:39 AM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
yep. also really can't overstate how much nuzzi is very much the product of an environment that rewards amoral ambition and frowns on people who sincerely believe anything
November 27, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
Police arrested a man they said had barricaded himself in a West Village apartment after a domestic violence incident, prompting a SWAT response.

Read more from @apignataro.bsky.social on the Watchdog. lbwatchdog.com/domestic-vio...
November 27, 2025 at 1:40 AM
Reposted by Anthony Pignataro
Seriously everything, EVERYTHING about the RFK/Nuzzi/LIzza moment is an argument for a newsroom where you pitch stories in front of each other and editors who shield you from your own worst impulses.
November 26, 2025 at 11:26 PM