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An Impossible Mission

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 15, 2025

Welcome to the Third World

General Ernesto Neyron (Albert Paulsen) from “Mission Impossible: The Bargain” (1968).

If you did not catch Donald Trump’s Oval Office visit with President Nayib Bukele, the Jailer of El Salvador, Digby provided a series of hair-raising clips. Including the one where Bukele tells Trump that “you have 350 million people to liberate. But to liberate 350 million people you have to imprison some.” Reagan was dubbed “the Great Communicator.” Bukele suggests Trump can be the Great Liberator by sending more people, Americans included, and on his say-so to Bukele’s concentration camp.

Trump urged Bukele to build more prisons, in fact. Bukele presented himself like a banana republic dictator from an episode of TV’s “Mission Impossible.” And Trump? He eats it up. Their exchange on why neither has the power to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) where he was disappeared erroneously(?) was as unscripted as an episode of “The Apprentice.”

The Trump administration play-acts as if it is not openly defying the Supreme Court’s instruction to return the prisoner for due process in the U.S., writes Adam Serwer, by “pretending it is complying while refusing to do so.” Trump could get him returned with a word or a phone call. He chooses not to.

Chief propagandist Stephen Miller declared Abrego Garcia a terrorist on his say-so and stood the Supreme Court’s 9-0 order on its head. It was a sweeping decision in the president’s favor, Miller insisted. But the flashing anger Miller displays at anyone challenging Trump’s dictatorial powers is not play-acting. It is psychotic.

Serwer writes:

This rhetorical game the administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while Bukele pretends he doesn’t have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court—and for the rule of law. The administration is maintaining that it has the power to send armed agents of the state to grab someone off the street and then, without a shred of due process, deport them to a Gulag in a foreign country and leave them there forever. The crucial point here is that the administration’s logic means that it could do the same to American citizens—after all, if deporting someone under a protective order to a Gulag without so much as a hearing is a “foreign policy” matter with which no court may interfere, then the citizenship of the condemned person doesn’t matter.

YOUR citizenship doesn’t matter.

“The Roberts Court will now have to decide whether to side with the Constitution or with a lawless president asserting the power to disappear people at will,” Serwer continues. “This is not a power that any person, much less an American president, is meant to have.”

Joyce Vance writes at her substack what the world can (and did) see on Monday:

If there were a map that showed democracy slipping into dictatorship, we would be at the spot marked “You are here.” We shouldn’t sugarcoat the danger. Due process matters to immigrants and Americans alike. When the presidency refuses to honor it, we are all in danger. Donald Trump could snap his fingers and secure Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States. We all know that’s true, no matter what pretense this administration assumes.

We’ve been warned. Our slip into dictatorship has happened, as Hemingway put it, “gradually, then suddenly.” Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to stop Trump and his hatchetmen, and rescue the American republic they’ve declared war on.

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details coming; scroll for local events)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

How Many Of These Charges Apply To Trump?

Published by digby on April 14, 2025

From the Declaration of Independence:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

This Isn’t Hard

Published by digby on April 14, 2025

Harvard draws the line

It’s better late than never that the higher ed community steps up. That it’s Harvard doing it makes a difference:

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities to help pay for work that, along with investments by the universities themselves, has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields. These innovations have made countless people in our country and throughout the world healthier and safer. Over the last several weeks, the federal government has threatened its partnerships with several universities, including Harvard, over accusations of antisemitism on our campuses. These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history. New frontiers beckon us with the prospect of life-changing advances—from treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, quantum science and engineering, and numerous other areas of possibility. For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals, but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.

Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to “maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government.” It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.

I encourage you to read the letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community. They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights.

The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

Our motto—Veritas, or truth—guides us as we navigate the challenging path ahead. Seeking truth is a journey without end. It requires us to be open to new information and different perspectives, to subject our beliefs to ongoing scrutiny, and to be ready to change our minds. It compels us to take up the difficult work of acknowledging our flaws so that we might realize the full promise of the University, especially when that promise is threatened.

We have made it abundantly clear that we do not take lightly our moral duty to fight antisemitism. Over the past fifteen months, we have taken many steps to address antisemitism on our campus. We plan to do much more. As we defend Harvard, we will continue to:

  • nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry on our campus; develop the tools, skills, and practices needed to engage constructively with one another; and broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community;
  • affirm the rights and responsibilities we share; respect free speech and dissent while also ensuring that protest occurs in a time, place, and manner that does not interfere with teaching, learning, and research; and enhance the consistency and fairness of disciplinary processes; and
  • work together to find ways, consistent with law, to foster and support a vibrant community that exemplifies, respects, and embraces difference. As we do, we will also continue to comply with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for universities to make decisions “on the basis of race.”

These ends will not be achieved by assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate. The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community. Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere. All of us share a stake in safeguarding that freedom. We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity—and with faith in the enduring promise that America’s colleges and universities hold for our country and our world.

Sincerely,
Alan M. Garber

Click through the links in the third paragraph to see just how insane the Trump administration has become.

First They Strip Their Rights…

Published by digby on April 14, 2025

Chris Hayes mentioned this on Bluesky today. I was unaware…

In October 1938, about 17,000 Polish Jews living in Nazi Germany were arrested and expelled. These deportations, termed by the Nazis Polenaktion (“Polish Action”), were ordered by SS officer and head of the Gestapo Reinhard Heydrich. The deported Jews were initially rejected by Poland and therefore had to live in makeshift encampments along the Germany–Poland border.

From 1935 to 1938, Jews living within Germany had been stripped of most of their rights by the Nuremberg Laws, and faced intense persecution from the state. As a result, many Jewish refugees sought rapidly to emigrate out of the Reich. However, most countries, still feeling the effects of a global depression, enacted strict immigration laws and simply would not address the refugee problem. According to a census conducted in 1933, over 57 percent of the foreign Jews living in Germany were Polish. 

Following the German annexation of Austria on 13 March 1938, the Polish government became worried that it would face a large-scale return of Jewish citizens of Poland that had been living in Austria. On 31 March 1938, the parliament approved legislation enabling the revocation of Polish citizenship if the person had been living abroad for more than five years since the establishment of Poland in 1919. The German government, which did not want to be stuck with tens of thousands of stateless Jewish Poles, passed legislation in August that allowed it to deport any foreigner who had lost their citizenship from their home country. Additionally, a confidential directive was issued to not allow any new residence permits to be issued to Jews.

History teaches if we want to learn.

The Worst Press Avail In History

Published by digby on April 14, 2025

Today’s appearance with El Salvadoran president was nightmare fuel

I think it’s worse than the notorious Zelensky appearance.

First off, he fully blamed Zelensky for the war:

So that’s that. His view is that Ukraine should have surrendered their entire country the minute Russia invaded and crawled on their bellies begging Putin for mercy. He hates Ukraine, always has, and believes that Russia has a perfect right to take what he wants because he’s a big powerful manly man. Like him. (By the way, his make-up is so dark today he is pretty much in blackface.)

He’s openly talking about sending American citizens to El Salvador

Before press came in — but while live feed was running on Bukele’s feed — Trump said to him: “home-growns are next. … You’re gonna need to build about 5 more places.”

COLLINS: Can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return Garcia?

BUKELE: How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous

TRUMP: These are sick people (referring to the press)

So, if Trump said, “I’d like to have him back,” Bukele could just send him back legally without smuggling him in. But that’s not what Trump is going to do because his hatchetwoman Bondi and his Heinrich Himmler Stephen Miller said that Abrego Garcia would not be brought back because he is a terrorist and the Supreme Court rules 9-0 in favor of the president’s right to conduct foreign policy unimpeded by … anyone.

COLLINS: You said that if SCOTUS said someone needed to be returned you would abide by that. You said that on Air Force One just a few days ago

TRUMP: Why don’t you just say, ‘isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’ That’s why nobody watches you anymore.

Bukele is a real sweetheart:

I don’t even know what to say about this:

I’m at a total loss for words. There was no direct request from the US in this meeting even asking for him to be returned as the Supremes clearly ordered.

It’s clear that he’s defying the Supreme Court by simply twisting their decision into a 9-0 affirmation of their ability to send anyone they want to the Salvadoran gulag. I guess we’ll have to see if the Supremes object. If I had to guess, I’d say they could very easily decide that he has the right to send Americans to overseas gulags at his discretion but like the immigrants, they’ll need to be granted the right to habeas corpus before rubber stamp MAGA judges in Louisiana and Texas.

By the way:

Trump said those El Salvador videos with the prisoners hunched over: “People eat it up, that’s what people want to see.”

Will We Soon Be Free Of Elon?

Published by digby on April 14, 2025

When Donald Trump first hooked up with Elon Musk during the campaign last year I think most people thought it was just a rather flashy example of a rich guy with mega billions in government contracts putting his money behind a politician who promised to cut taxes and regulations, which happens every day in American politics. Musk had famously become red-pilled in the last few years and was a very important cultural figure since he bought twitter and made it into a right-leaning free-for-all. But he didn’t seem to have direct political ambitions for himself. He just looked to be having fun performing for the adoring MAGA crowds and Trump obviously enjoyed having the richest man in the world in his entourage.

Musk’s appearances at the rallies were cringe worthy and his speeches were anything but riveting but he put a lot of money into the campaign and launched some provocative tactics such as offering million dollar lotteries for people to sign petitions and register to vote. He apparently believed that he delivered Pennsylvania for Trump and Trump was certainly grateful for the support (although I doubt he believes anyone delivered anything but him.)

I think we all assumed that he’d go back to doing his usual thing, running his mouth on twitter and running his companies once the election was over but instead he became joined at the hip with Trump who didn’t seem to mind. Spending the transition period down in Mar-a-Lago along with businessman and now candidate for Governor of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, he came up with his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) project to cut government spending. It appeared to be just another commission to provide advice on where the cut programs, a Washington perennial that usually goes nowhere. The assumptions in those early days was that the Project 2025 people, led by soon to be Director of Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought, would be doing the dirty work such as implementing Schedule F, the order to make all federal workers into at will employees.

It soon became apparent that Musk was staying on to run this new agency while Ramaswamy was ignominiously dumped right after the inauguration, ostensibly because he wrote a very provocative post on X declaring that we needed foreign workers because America “venerated mediocrity over excellence,” which hit a nerve with the Trumpers. (Also, no one could stand him.) And I think most of us figured that he and Trump would be headed the same way in short shrift. Would Trump really want this guy around much longer, getting too much attention and waving his money around? As it turns out Trump has quite liked having the richest man in the world at his beck and call and he even puts up with his precocious little son X, who likes to tell the president to shut up during press conferences.

Musk had actually been thinking about doing something like DOGE since 2023 when he dreamed of gutting the bureaucracy by getting access to the government computers. (He may have some other motives for that as well.) Trump, who is completely ignorant about computers, gave him the keys and said to have at it and Musk and his people have been taking a chainsaw to the executive branch for three months now, causing tremendous chaos and trauma and essentially destroying much of what the American people count on their government to do.

Whatever his purpose with all this slashing and burning, he’s not getting the job he promised done. The New York Times reports:

[Musk] previously said his powerful budget-cutting team could reduce the next fiscal year’s federal budget by $1 trillion, and do it by Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Instead, in a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Mr. Musk said that he anticipated the group would save about $150 billion, 85 percent less than its objective.Even that figure may be too high, according to a New York Times analysis of DOGE’s claims.

Musk is constantly going on about this tremendous amount of fraud taking place in government programs and while his team is wrecking them quite efficiently, they aren’t actually saving any money because there actually isn’t this massive level of fraud. In fact DOGE is largely fraudulent itself. The Times reports:

 [I]t inflates its progress by including billion-dollar errors, by counting spending that will not happen in the next fiscal year — and by making guesses about spending that might not happen at all. One of the group’s largest claims, in fact, involves canceling a contract that did not exist.

If DOGE’s mission is to cut spending he’s doing a terrible job of it. If its job is to cause misery it’s a rousing success.

Meanwhile, Musk has been watching his personal fortune shrink by the day and his reputation be blown to smithereens like one of his failed starship rockets. The stock in his car company Tesla has been sliding precipitously and not just because his baby, the cybertruck, the worst failure of his career, is dragging down the whole company. (He takes great pride in saying that he did “zero market research whatsoever” and it shows.) He apparently didn’t realize that by becoming a right wing MAGA troll he would alienate the people who buy his cars — there aren’t a whole lot of EV buyers in rural America, the MAGA base.

Two weeks ago Musk found out the hard way that his money can’t buy everything. He pulled out all the stops in Wisconsin, spending tens of millions of dollars in a pivotal state Supreme Court race and lost by ten points, a much bigger loss than expected. The voters were not impressed by his antics, or his reprise of the million dollar lottery gambit.

And now he’s found himself on the other side of Trump in the big tariff debacle that tanked world markets and looks like it could easily lead to recession or worse. He’s on record saying that he tried to talk Trump out of it and was sparring with Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro on X , calling him a “moron” and “dumb as a sack of bricks” perhaps not realizing that Navarro is a made man who went to jail for Trump and is the only person in the world who Trump truly bonds with on this issue. Musk’s entreaties went nowhere.

So, Elon may be on his way out, finally. Polls show that only 45% of Republicans hold a favorable opinion of him. Rolling Stone reports that virtually everyone in the White House finds him irritating, some even questioning if he’s high. (His SpaceX reps deny it.) According to Puck’s Leigh Ann Caldwell, since his Wisconsin faceplant, Republicans on Capitol Hill are no longer in awe (or terrified) of him either.

Musk’s “special employee” status requires him to leave by the end of May although Trump has recently said that he would finish the DOGE mission (God help us) and we know Trump doesn’t care about rules or law so if he wants to stay, he can. But considering recent events it will not be surprising if he bows out next month on schedule. He’s not happy and Daddy Trump is always just a phone call away if he wants to chat. The long awaited Musk departure may be upon us.

Salon

Trump Declares War On Americans

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 14, 2025

Bushies declared Geneva obsolete. Trump thiunks the Constitution irrelevant.

Jonathan Last asks at The Bulwark, “If you were Chris Krebs, would you flee the country?”

Last week Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum. This one instructs the Department of Justice et al. to launch an investigation into Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). His alleged crime? Testifying to the Jan. 6 Select Committee that Republican officials “lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election.” In Trump’s telling, Krebs “falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.” That is, Krebs committed HERESY by thought, heresy by word, heresy by deed, and heresy by action!

I further direct the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and all other relevant agencies to immediately take all action as necessary and consistent with existing law to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at entities associated with Krebs, including SentinelOne, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.

I further direct the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with any other agency head, to take all appropriate action to review Krebs’ activities as a Government employee, including his leadership of CISA.

Blah, blah, blah, hereby, blah.

Another Trumporandum targeted Miles Taylor for “his unethical laundering and release of sensitive Government data to advance his false narratives.” Meaning this NYT op-ed from 2018. (Trump would know from unethical.) Maybe Krebs and Taylor can sit together on the flight.

One might see these as more Trumpish distractions from his disastrous tariff policy. They are that, but let’s not assume Trump cannot play golf and chew gum at the same time. He came into office promising revenge. He wants it all, and he’s doing his best Queen of Hearts to get it.

Matt Ford warns at The New Republic that Trump is musing about sending Americans to a Salvadoran gulag. That would be the joint where cosplaying DHS Secretary Kristi Noem shot her propaganda ad in front of caged, mostly Venezuelan prisoners:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also said it was under serious consideration. “The president has said if it’s legal, right, if there is a legal pathway to do that, he’s not sure,” she told reporters at a press briefing. “We are not sure if there is. It’s an idea that he has simply floated and has discussed very publicly as in the effort of transparency.” She claimed the practice would be reserved for “heinous, violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly.”

“Banishment” or “exile”

Heinous and violent being in the eyes of Trump himself, Krebs and Taylor (or you) ought not see themselves as exempt even from an act “flagrantly illegal and spectacularly unconstitutional.” Trump wipes his ass with the Constitution (many people are saying).

But let’s be clear with our terminology, Ford urges:

First, a word on words: Some commentators have described this potential practice as “deportation.” This is not accurate. That term only applies to the removal of noncitizens from a country or political community to which they do not legally belong. More accurate terms would be “banishment” or “exile.” For clarity’s sake, I’ll use the term banishment for removals from one U.S. state or city to another—more on that later—and the term exile for forcibly removing a U.S. citizen to another country, as Trump is mulling.

Would it be legal? Absolutely not. No law allows a federal court to sentence a defendant to serve their sentence overseas. Nor is there any statute that allows the president to unilaterally remove a U.S. citizen to another country at a whim. In the 1936 case Valentine v. United States, for example, the Supreme Court held that the president has no power to extradite a U.S. citizen to another country except when authorized by a treaty or an act of Congress.

It is insane that Ford even has to examine the case for exile:

The Supreme Court has never directly ruled on whether a U.S. citizen could be exiled to a foreign country because the federal government has never attempted it. However, the courts have operated under the assumption for at least the last 150 years that U.S. citizens cannot be denied reentry into the United States.

Which brings us back to my post below on nervousness about being able to get back into the country after leaving it. Ford cites one case from 1922 about an effort to deport Chinese Americans and other efforts from the 1960s to strip citizenship from draft-dodgers and others targeted by the government.

“We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to, and does, protect every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship, whatever his creed, color, or race,” wrote Justice Hugo Black in 1967. “Our holding does no more than to give to this citizen that which is his own, a constitutional right to remain a citizen in a free country unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship.”

From these cases, Ford overoptimistically believes, “we can divine a few principles. U.S. citizenship is constitutionally sacrosanct, and U.S. citizens cannot be involuntarily deprived of it.”

But those cases were based on the very same Fourteenth Amendment that Trump wants reinterpreted by a MAGA-friendly Roberts court to deny birthright citizenship to “anchor babies.” This isn’t the 20th century anymore. The Roberts court is not the Warren court. Roberts oversees the court that overturned 50 years of precedent with its Dobbs decision.

And Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details coming; scroll for local events)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Do You Look “American” Enough?

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 14, 2025

Congress asks Trump administration why it’s detaining Americans

Author Anand Giridharadas appearing April 8 on The Agenda with Steve Paikin of TVO (Ontario Ministry of Education).

To repeat from Sunday:

It should be lost on no one that Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer in East Germany, is a big influence on Donald John Trump, convicted felon and corrupt businessman. The Trump administration’s crackdown started with allegedly violent undocumented immigrants. It expanded to visa-holders, work-visa-holders, and green card holders. He’s moved on to American citizens like night follows day.

ProPublica has a report again this morning about that last category:

At least a dozen members of Congress, all Democrats, have written to the Trump administration with pointed questions about constituents and other citizens whom immigration agents have questioned, detained and even held at gunpoint. In one letter, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded a list of every citizen detained during the new administration.

None has received an answer.

Of course not. Even to reply and deny would draw attention to the issue and acknowledge that Congress has oversight authority.

Last month, ProPublica reported:

The government does not release figures on citizens who have been held by immigration authorities. Neither Customs and Border Protection nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles interior immigration enforcement, would provide numbers to ProPublica on how many Americans have been mistakenly detained.

Experts and advocates say that what is clear to them is that Trump’s aggressive immigration policies — such as arrest quotas for enforcement agents — make it likely that more citizens will get caught up in immigration sweeps.

“It’s really everyone — not just noncitizens or undocumented people — who are in danger of having their liberty violated in this kind of mass deportation machinery,” said Cody Wofsy, the deputy director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

[…]

Spanning both Obama administrations, an NPR investigation found, immigration authorities asked local authorities to detain about 700 Americans. Meanwhile, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that immigration authorities asked to hold roughly 600 likely citizens during Trump’s first term. The GAO also found that Trump actually deported about 70 likely citizens.

The cases ProPublica recounts involve, essentially, American citizens detained for not looking “American” in the eyes of ICE: Puerto Ricans, a Mexican-American Trump voter, a Mescalero Apache, and in 2018 a man from Philadelphia thought to be Jamaican. ICE held that last man, Peter Sean Brown, for three weeks.

“As a citizen, you don’t think it is really possible, because that’s everything against what we are raised to believe that our country stands for,” Brown told the press outside a Miami federal courthouse last year. The Southern Poverty Law Center was filing a lawsuit.

Be watchful for Americans being detained at Customs when returning from a trip abroad. With this administration, one might leave for a Caribberan vacation under one set of “rules” only to find that they’ve changed (and not in a good way) by the time you return.

One of my oldest friends looks Latino. He’s not. He’s got some southern Italian in his family history. His father was on the U.S. Olympic teams in 1936 and 1948. But his look has sometimes attracted police attention since his teens. He doesn’t look “American” enough.

From December:

A friend with an Arabic name and look lives in Vermont. Someone asked him once if he ever felt threatened there. Not really, he said. Okay, now and then some a-hole will shout “Go back to where you came from!” His shrugging response is, “You want me to go back to North Dakota?”

Or in the case of Anand Girdharadas, Cleveland.

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details coming; scroll for local events)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Welcome To North Korea

Published by digby on April 13, 2025

And tens of millions of people agree with this…’

sigh