We Have Reached the End of the Line

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OR: The Trump Noose Tightens on the National Neck

The Trump administration, laced through and through with unqualified and incompetent appointees to positions of great responsibility, mistakenly snatches a man (Kilmar Abrego Garcia) off the street and, in the face of a court order to stop, puts him on a plane for a hellhole prison in El Salvador. The court orders his return. Trump’s Department of “Justice” declines and appeals. The Supreme Court majority eventually votes unanimously to order the administration to “facilitate” the victim’s return. In doing so, however, the Court gratuitously and unnecessarily “advises” the District Court judge to act with due regard for the separation of powers and the President’s supreme authority over foreign affairs.

As was 100 percent predictable, the administration leaps upon that advice and says “no thanks, we’re not going to bring him back. Mr. Garcia, charged with no crime, can rot in El Salvador for all we care and there is nothing you can do about it because this decision is made under the President’s Article II power to control absolutely the foreign affairs of the country, just as the Court suggested.”

Recall that in a prior decision this same Supreme Court held that the President could conspire with the Department of Justice to commit crimes, including the crime of trying to overturn an election he clearly lost, and could not be held accountable for his criminal conduct in office. Further, in carrying out his “executive powers,” the President’s motives could not be questioned.

So, here we are. A man properly in the United States, charged with no crimes, is ripped from his family and employment, hustled onto a plane full of others similarly situated for the most part, and imprisoned in a foreign country. With the apparent approval of the highest court in the land.

Trump then invites the dictator of El Salvador to the White House where that dictator labels as “preposterous” the question of his returning his prisoner to the United States. In a statement that is typical of people who consider themselves unbound by law, the Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele told Trump: “To liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. That’s the way it works.”

The power of courts to hold the federal government in contempt of court and sanction it or its attorneys is far from clear. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11271 That is perhaps why the District Court judge, in whose face the Department of Justice has metaphorically spit, has thus far fumed and fussed over the DOJ’s recalcitrance but has not issued any form of mandatory punishment for its resistance to the court’s mandates. Likely the judge realizes that the Supreme Court, having recently pronounced the unprecedented and astonishing doctrine of presidential immunity for crimes committed in office, will not support mandatory sanctions against DOJ for its disobedience.

And we now hear the President of the United States and people who work for him remarking that the power to snatch people off the streets and imprison them in foreign countries permits the federal government to do this to American citizens as well as people like Mr. Garcia who were properly here under work permits but were not citizens. Many of us have seen the videos of armed men in blackened vans visiting people in their homes for what are ludicrously labeled by the men as “wellness checks.” And some people are literally being assaulted on the streets, arrested and hauled away with no formal charges, no due process, and no opportunity to get counsel. These behaviors are blatant violations of our criminal laws and the Constitution.

We have reached the point of no return. The President has made clear he will stand for no resistance to his wishes. It seems virtually certain therefore that we will soon experience a declaration of martial law and a presidential directive to imprison here or abroad, without trial or other due process, anyone the President or his compliant appointees selects for removal. Or maybe he won’t even bother with a declaration that he likely regards as superfluous.

If allowed to get away with this, the President will have completed his subordination of the Constitution and brought about his dictatorship over the United States. As insane as that future seems, there is little happening now that suggests it is an overblown scenario. Trump has repeatedly made clear that he regards the Constitution as authorizing him to “do whatever I want.” We are there now. He is doing whatever he wants.

It is beyond dispute that if he can with impunity deport and imprison Mr. Garcia, he can do it to anyone, including American citizens who cross him or are merely suspected of being “disloyal.” Anyone who has studied the history of dictators surely knows that is how the process works.

The question then becomes: who will stop him and how? Certainly not the Republican cowards in Congress who value retaining what they fancifully believe is their “power” over their oaths to support the Constitution. It was once believed that the senior military leadership would handle the problem, but Trump has replaced most of those who might have acted decisively to restrain him. The courts lack both the will and the mechanisms for holding the President to account.

Trump’s abuse of power is plain and open. He believes the law does not apply to him and that the Constitution grants him powers that the Founders would never have imagined. Who then will stop him? And when?

Where is the Moral Outrage at Nazis Running the Federal Government?

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OR: Trump Administration is Guilty of Kidnapping, Unlawful Transport & Crimes Against Humanity

The Washington Post reported on Saturday, April 5, that: 1) the Department of Justice that has admitted it mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego García to a prison in El Salvador, and (2) DOJ has argued to an appellate court that the U.S. government is helpless to secure his return. https://tinyurl.com/yzm27mjy

In effect, the U.S. Department of Justice, an element of the Executive Branch of what was, at least prior to Trump’s re-election, the most powerful and influential country in the world, says it has no means of compelling or negotiating for Mr. Garcia’s return. This, even though the United States is paying El Salvador about $6 million to hold the group of deportees of which Mr. Garcia is a member.

In effect, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department is arguing that it (1) deported Mr. Garcia by mistake, (2) violated Mr. Garcia’s civil rights, (3) violated Mr. Garcia’s rights under multiple amendments to the U.S. Constitution, not least of which was due process of law, (4) essentially kidnapped Mr. Garcia and unlawfully transported him to a foreign country where it relinquished control of him to a foreign government over which the United States has zero influence, (5) that the Judicial Branch of the U.S. government effectively has no remedial authority as against a decision of the Executive Branch regarding a foreign national “removal decision.”

In short, the US government is saying “who cares?”

These astonishing arguments reveal a fundamental error that the Trump administration continues to make. It appears to believe that the Executive Branch of the U.S. government is the final word on legal decisions even where, as here, the Executive admits it make a mistake that, in effect, may destroy a man’s family and perhaps forfeit his life.

I cannot resolve the conflicting claims as to whether Mr. Garcia was a member of MS-13 that has now been declared a terrorist organization by the Trump administration. However, the admission by the administration that Mr. Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador was mistaken would seem, regardless of anything else, to compel the U.S. government to bend every effort to secure his return. AG Bondi says, “no, we may have erred in deporting him, but we owe him no duties now and are helpless to do anything to rectify our mistake. Let him rot in El Salvador.”

This is a perfect illustration of why we insist on due process in this country. That process, which may be slow and even tedious, helps assure that grotesque mistakes like the Garcia case do not occur. The Trump administration has shown time and again that it has no regard for constitutional protections, and that it will arrogantly disregard any damage it may do in it rush to prove how tough it is on “crime.”

Now, after the government disregarded direct orders from a District Court judge to stop the deportation of Mr. Garcia and to provide him with the due process of law to which every resident is entitled under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has finally, days late, awakened to the inescapable realization that it can’t paper over this outrage. But in doing so, the “moral majority” on the Court seems singularly unmoved by the potential human catastrophe that the incompetent fools running the Trump administration have created.

We have grown accustomed, though hardly accepting, of Justices Alito and Thomas (that one, who takes hugely expensive favors from sponsors with business in the Court without a whimper from the Chief Justice) taking severe umbrage at decisions they consider insufficiently respective of Christian values. Now, when the government has monumentally screwed up a deportation case, putting at risk of death by gang execution, among other risks, a father never accused of a crime here or in El Salvador, all we get are lectures about the proper procedure for bringing the issue before the Court and about the lower court being more respectful of the President’s authority over foreign affairs.

How exactly the Garcia case implicates the President’s foreign affairs powers has not been fully explained. We know the obvious: El Salvador is a sovereign country and to retrieve Mr. Garcia from its clutches may require some negotiating. But it shouldn’t be that hard a problem. The US is paying El Salvador a lot of money to house the people it has snatched off the streets and out of homes — the way a good Gestapo does — and shuttled out of the country as fast as possible without even a nod to due process. It shouldn’t take a negotiating genius, as Trump claims to be, to figure out a way to induce the El Salvadoran establishment to release at least one man that our government admits should never have been sent there in the first place.

Yet our Supreme Court, while nodding to the continued need for due process of law and all the rest seems most concerned with lecturing the District Court judge, the main judicial authority standing up for Mr. Garcia, about not overreaching into the President’s foreign affairs prerogatives.  Is this a hint to Trump to slow-walk the entire business in the hope that Mr. Garcia will be murdered in the hellhole prison in El Salvador thereby solving the US government’s embarrassing problem? Is it a signal to Attorney General Bondi that her abject indifference to Mr. Garcia’s welfare is just fine if the US government just goes through the motions of seeking Mr. Garcia’s safe return?

Compare what has transpired. The District Court judge, closest to the evidence of what occurred here, found that Mr. Garcia’s removal, when the government knew an order was imminent to stop his removal, was a “grievous error” and that the risk to Mr. Garcia “shocks the conscience.” While DOJ claims Mr. Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, the District Court judge found that the government had not proved that claim:

That silence is telling…. As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.

The judge’s ruling against the government was sustained by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Virginia, not exactly a liberal bastion of judicial decision-making.

DOJ, at the behest of the morally vacuous Attorney General appointed by Trump, claimed that the order to return Mr. Garcia was, despite conceded errors in deporting him to the El Salvadoran hellhole prison, “indefensible” because, golly, damn, it “commands Defendants to do something they have no independent authority to do: Make El Salvador release Abrego Garcia, and send him to America.”

“If this precedent stands, other district courts could order the United States to successfully negotiate the return of other removed aliens anywhere in the world by close of business,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. In simpler English, DOJ objects to being compelled to do its job because just imagine the horror of having to return “removed aliens” whose rights we have violated.

I haven’t read all the briefs, but reliable reports note that the “Government lawyers compared the administration’s power to bring Abrego Garcia back to a court ordering the administration to end Russia’s war in Ukraine or return Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.”

Arguments like that should have led the Supreme Court majority to, at a minimum, sanction government counsel for arguments lacking reason, precedent, and common sense. But no, the Court seemed more concerned with being sure no one stepped on the President’s authority in foreign affairs. No sense of moral outrage that the government conceded a terrible, potentially life-threatening and unconscionable error, then argued we should just ignore it and let the chips fall on Mr. Garcia who, after all, is, in the eyes of the Trump administration, a bad person, evil incarnate. The DOJ attitude recalled a segment from the Dragnet TV series of the 1950s. Detective Jack Webb captures a serial killer and asks him “what have you got against people?” The killer answers: “People? I got nothing against people. What do I care about people?”

The Americans arguing that the courts should butt out of this and leave Mr. Garcia to his fate apparently do not understand that if the government can do this to Mr. Garcia, it can do it to anyone. Indeed, there is talk of “removing” US citizens now.

In preparing this post for publication, I read that the government has balked at the timeline established by the District Court to explain what it’s going to do to comply with the court’s orders now reinforced by the Supreme Court. The judge, quite rightly, is having none of it. He should hold the government in contempt and, if necessary to get DOJ to comply, hold weekend hearings. This fiasco has gone on too long already and Mr. Garcia remains at risk.

New York Times Lines Up with Bezos

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Yesterday was a great day in our country. Millions of Americans participated in peaceful protests all over the country, including cities in  Red States and even other countries. Millions. Hopefully, this signals the beginning of the early end of the Trump administration and the clowns he has appointed, with Republican Party complicity, to destroy the government and our international standing.

In reviewing the remarkably clever signs created by protesters around the country and marveling at the size of many of the crowds, I turned to the New York Times online, expecting to see the top headline and at least a photo from the huge turnout in New York City, despite bad weather. But, lo, what did my eyes behold but a photo of Donald Trump and, well, see for yourself:

If you skip the dog story and the “Analysis” whose title suggests everything is going to be ok, scroll down a screen, you see this:

A presidential seal and another photo of Trump dominate the page. In the lower left corner, you finally  reach the report about the nationwide protests over Trump’s attempt to destroy the federal government.

Do the editors of the New York Times now thing a story about dogs in the workplace and talking about women’s cleavage there is more important? This presentation reminded me of how CNN had promoted Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, showing constant pictures of podiums while waiting for Trump to appear. This is a Washington Post type presentation in the post-Bezos-ownership era.

The Times owes the world an explanation.

OR ….

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It just hit me tonight … suppose the real reason Trump’s military “planners” for the attack on the Houthis did their talking in a Signal space that was vulnerable to spying by Russia was not a mistake. Suppose instead it was done that way at Trump’s direction because he made a deal with Putin that Putin and/or Putin’s people would be “in” on the conversation or at least be able to hear it. Maybe that’s why Trump didn’t fire Hegseth and Gabbard and the others who “should have known better.” It was because Trump had directed them to make the planning “visible to Russia and if Trump had then fired them when the disclosure was made public, they might have disclosed that Trump directed them to proceed that way. Maybe one or more of them have the receipts. Speculation, I admit, but ….

If You Want To Destroy A Country ….

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Or … 2025 is our 1984

There are several ways to destroy a generally well-functioning country. One is invasion. Vladimir Putin is trying that in Ukraine, cheered on by Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard and other Republican sycophants. Invasions are self-evidently messy. Lives are lost by the thousands, property is destroyed, and the psychological impact on all sides of the conflict can last for generations.

One can imagine that Trump’s stated desire to “own” Canada and Greenland (he would prefer the term “merge” no doubt, being a captain of industry and all) would, if anyone in his White House staff had the temerity to suggest this is a really bad idea, lead to Trump throwing himself on the floor, kicking his feet and screaming like the man-child he is: “I want it, I want it! I want it! Why can’t I have it?!! I’m now the king of the United States. Just ask the Supreme Court. I want it! Waaahhh!!”

But, of course, that’s not what’s happening. Despite being the largest collection of incompetents ever assembled, Trump’s “team” has discovered other ways to bring the country to its knees.

Most everyone has heard of, and many have read, the novel, 1984, by George Orwell. Wikipedia does a creditable job of summarizing the central idea:

The story takes place in an imagined future. The current year is uncertain, but believed to be 1984. Much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party’s Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance and, through the Ministry of Truth, historical negationism and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking.

I don’t recall that the book explains how the world reached that state, but it’s not too hard to imagine when one recalls a little history. You know, Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, to name a few.

We have Donald Trump. Many people thought Hitler was insane. Many people also think Trump is insane. He was elected to a second term in office despite grotesque failures of leadership in his first term, resulting in, among other things, the avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Trump revealed himself fully between 2016 and 2021. His opponent in 2024 was an intelligent, accomplished person who has served as Vice President of the United States for four years, so she was also experienced in the highest echelons of government. BUT she was a woman, and she was of Asian heritage, and she was Black. Case closed. The American electorate chose to put the loon back in power.

And what did we get? Exactly what could be, and was, expected. Examples will follow in roughly reverse chronological order in the next post.

As an aside, first, I note that I am no wide-eyed dreamer. I have been around a long time, started my career as a federal employee in fact. The government of the United States, like all governments, has many “issues.” There are inefficiencies. One of the core driving principles of the government is “don’t make obvious mistakes.” A prime example is the rulemaking process. This is what often happens.

Congress adopts legislation. Even the most detailed laws are often the products of compromises that create ambiguities or simply leave major implementation details to later-developed regulations. The country prefers that approach to simply saying, “let the bureaucrats figure it out as they wish from time to time.” We have developed an astonishingly complex process to govern “rulemaking,” with the result that regulations can take years, literally, to produce after the enabling legislation has passed.

The process involves examination of the relationship of the law in question to many other laws having to do with economic impact, environmental impact and many others. This approach, long and tedious as it may be, is preferred to subjecting ourselves to the random, arbitrary decisions of people who may or may not know what they are doing and don’t want to take the time and effort to learn. Slow and steady wins the race in our system.

However, this approach has several strong advantages:

    1. All interested parties get to express their views and offer their evidence to the decision-maker(s);
    2. The process is designed to assure that the decision-making agency has all relevant information before it when it decides what regulations, if any, should be adopted;
    3. The process governed by the Administrative Procedure Act is very demanding, taking much time and effort by many federal employees, many of whom are highly experienced experts in the subjects being regulated;
    4. Court review is available to assure agencies adhere to the governing legal principles, assuring fairness to affected parties and that the process is properly executed;
    5. All the foregoing takes much time and effort, especially given that most federal agencies are working multiple rulemakings simultaneously, in addition to enforcement actions and other statutory responsibilities.

I will now describe in horrifying detail an actual rulemaking of the Department of Transportation. I participated in on behalf of my then-employer, the American Society of Travel Advisors. Try your best to get through it. The “FR” references are to the Federal Register which is a triple-column “book” published every workday in 7-point type (a bit over half the size of the print in this blog) and including proposed and final regulations by all federal agencies. You can get a feel for its scale from the page numbers. I included them in case you want to see the actual documents.

On May 23, 2014, DOT published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to “enhance protections for air travelers and to improve the air travel environment, including a proposal to clarify and codify the Department’s interpretation of the statutory definition of ‘‘ticket agent.’’” [79 FR 29970] The NPRM also proposed, among other things, “to require airlines and ticket agents to disclose at all points of sale the fees for certain basic ancillary services associated with the air transportation consumers are buying or considering buying.”

The NPRM consumed 32 pages of the Federal Register.  Comments were due by August 21, 2014.

Comments by interested parties were plentiful. And typically, they ran the gamut: the proposal is too broad, too expensive, not broad enough; you got this wrong, you got this right; the proposals are impractical and unnecessary; the proposals don’t go far enough … and many, many more.

On January 19, 2017, DOT issued a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to expand the scope of the original proposal:

In light of the comments on this issue, the Department is issuing this SNPRM, which focuses solely on the issue of transparency of certain ancillary service fees. The other issues in the 2014 NPRM are being addressed separately. [82 FR 7536]

The SNPRM consumed 24 Federal Register pages. Comments were due by March 20, 2017.

The Department withdrew the SNPRM on December 14, 2017:

In the notice of withdrawal of proposed rulemaking, 82 FR 58778 (Dec. 14, 2017), the Department stated that its existing requirements provide consumers information regarding fees for ancillary services and noted that the withdrawal was consistent with Executive Order (E.O.) 13771, ‘‘Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,’’ [issued by Donald Trump] which has since been revoked.

But,

On July 9, 2021, the President [now Joe Biden] issued E.O. 14036, ‘‘Promoting Competition in the American Economy,’’ which launched a whole-of-government approach to strengthen competition.

… section 5, paragraph(m)(i)(F) of E.O. 14036 states that ‘‘[t]he Secretary of Transportation shall: . . . not later than 90 days after the date of this order, consider initiating a rulemaking to ensure that consumers have ancillary fee information, including ‘‘baggage fees,’’ ‘‘change fees,’’ and ‘‘cancellation fees,’’ at the time of ticket purchase.’’

Thus, the changes of presidential administrations first killed, then revived the proposed rules that occupied most of 20 Federal Register pages, seven years into the mission. DOT published the new NPRM on October 20, 2022, more than eight years into the mission. Comments were now due by December 19, 2022.

But, alas, parties on both sides of the issues sought more time. DOT granted those requests, extending the comment deadline to January 23, 2023 [87 FR 77765]. Another request for extension was denied on January 26, 2023, although, typically, “late-filed comments will be considered to the extent practicable.”

On March 3, 2023, DOT took the extraordinary step of announcing a virtual public hearing on certain issues in the rulemaking, the hearing to be held on March 16, 2023, with further comments due by March 23, 2023. [88 FR 13389]

Finally, on April 30, 2024, DOT published the final regulations in 89 FR 34620, consuming 57 Federal Register pages.

The rulemaking process had taken more than 10 years. In truth much more, because before the first publication in 2014, much legal, economic and other work had been put into creating the first set of proposed rules.

But, alas, it’s not over until it’s over. At the behest of the airlines, the regulation was “stayed” in 2024 by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and on January 28, 2025, the court remanded the rules to DOT for further proceedings. The decision was based on what the court held was a fatal mistake that violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the law whose requirements ultimately lead to all the process surrounding federal rulemaking: the court found, DOT had “justified the Rule using cost-benefit data … that was not available during the notice-and-comment period.”

Whether these rules will ever be finalized is an open question, given the Trump administration’s hostility to consumer interests and regulation of business in general.

To repeat: the alternatives to this long and often painful process would allow members of government to make arbitrary and capricious decisions driven by conflicts of interest, personal bias, and other inappropriate considerations. THAT is why the government seems “inefficient.” It is inefficient by design so that other critical values are protected.

Could the process be made more efficient? Perhaps. But opening the government process to oversight and interference by people who know nothing about the governing law and little or nothing about the underlying issues and problems being addressed every day is not better government. It is tyranny.

For better or worse, for richer or poorer, we are married to this process. The courts get very upset, and rightly so, when an agency fails to follow the process correctly. That results in “remands for further proceedings,” which can mean more years of delay in reaching final rules.

Government under a system of “laws not men” is probably one of the most complex and difficult endeavors that mankind has ever undertaken. Add to that the fact that the continental United States occupies roughly 3,706,269 square miles with 161,000 square miles of that being water. The contiguous United States has an area of about 3,119,884 square miles and the State of Alaska alone embraces 586,412square miles. There are 50 states, the District of Columbia, plus more than a dozen territories under US ownership, management or sovereignty.” 

The land mass is astonishingly diverse. Some bodies of water (Lake Superior) are larger than some states (South Carolina thus also Rhode Island, etc.). Together the Great Lakes occupy more than 94,000 square miles and collectively are larger than the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire combined. The State of Hawaii is about 2,400 miles from the US west coast and consists of 137 islands! We have mountains, deserts, forests, plains … everything.

Add to that the fact that the population of the United States numbers some 340 million people.

Legislating for this diverse aggregation of people, land, water and much else is complicated. It may be a general principle of the universe that a large, diverse country requires a large, complex government, especially if that government is to have a major role in promoting the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” of the population.

The lesson is ended. I may have bored you beyond repair. Sorry, not sorry. I will return to the headline topic, If You Want To Destroy A Country …., in another post shortly. Rest up. It’s going to get worse, much worse. Donald Trump means to have his revenge on the country he believes treated him badly. And the Republican Party is happy to go along to get along. The fate of our democracy, our economy, and our very lives is on the line. Trump’s goons, dressed in black, masked, with no visible identification, are snatching people off the streets and disappearing them. The United States is now the new Russia.

Worst Case Scenarios & Warning to MAGAs

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Think of this as a kind of law school exam.

  • Assume Donald Trump is still alive as the 2028 presidential election process begins in 2027;
  • Assume further that Trump during his second presidency has subverted the military, civilian law enforcement and the courts. In short, he and Elon Musk are in complete charge of the federal government without meaningful legal restraint.

Assume further that either:

  • civil war broke out but was brutally and quickly suppressed by the combined forces mentioned in Assumption (2) above, OR
  •  the people of the United States succumbed without a meaningful fight to the fascist regime established by the Trump/Musk/Vance administration.

Assume further that either:

  •  Russia has decided to work through Trump & team rather than physically occupying the United States, OR
  • Russia has defeated the NATO alliance (or what remained of it after the US withdrew), and has occupied the US without meaningful resistance,

AND in any case, assume that

  • The United States, or whatever it is called by then, has no meaningful international relationships or allies.

Before addressing the questions below, state any additional assumptions necessary to explain the probable relationships between the federal government, state governments and other countries after the presidency of Donald Trump is substantially completed in 2027. Include in those additional assumptions any relevant information about the degree of freedom exercised by the people of the United States (referencing, in particular, women (females), Black people, non-citizen residents (if any), the condition of the economy, employment and any other facts you consider significant to what the United States will look like in late 2027.

Exam Questions:

  • Is it plausible to believe that Trump will simply step down voluntarily and allow someone else (Vance? Someone not Vance?) to seek the presidency — explain; OR
  • Is it more likely that Trump will declare the term limits in the Constitution invalid and seek a third term? — explain, AND
  • If Trump seeks a third term, is it plausible to believe that he will allow a free and fair election to occur or is it more plausible to believe that he will simply declare himself the popular choice and remain in office for a third term? Explain

Open your red books and discuss. Take your time but bear in mind that time is rapidly running out.

For extra credit for MAGAs only, Google this question: “how many jews were killed in the holocaust?” You will see estimates of 6 million plus another 5 million non-Jews, including prisoners of war) in the various reports there.

Then Google: “how many Russians were murdered by Stalin’s regime?” Mussolini?

Then, answer the question: WHO were the people killed by the Germans and by Stalin and by Mussolini?

Finally, for double extra credit, MAGAs only: how likely is it that a dictator Donald Trump will behave differently than Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and all the other dictators through the vastness of time that have wantonly and randomly slaughtered “enemies” and “friends” and “supporters” who were merely suspected of becoming possible enemies or resisters even as they professed their undying loyalty to the regime? How many were murdered after being reported by neighbors? By friends? By family members?

Do you understand that a major part of the dictator’s view of the world is that everyone is a potential enemy, that spreading distrust throughout the population is essential to protecting the dictator, and that random killing ensures fear and compliance in advance from those still alive? How sure are you that an American dictator will not follow in the footsteps of all the other dictators through history?

You may leave when you turn in your red book. We assure you that your answers will be kept confidential ….

We assure you.

Is Trump Setting the United States Up for Surrender?

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A report in the New York Times today indicates that Trump is threatening to force Canada out of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement that also includes Britain, Australia and New Zealand AND that he is reviewing military cooperation between the two countries, particularly the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

For anyone not familiar with NORAD:

North American Aerospace Defense Command

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is a United States and Canada bi-national organization charged with the missions of aerospace warning, aerospace control and maritime warning for North America. Aerospace warning includes the detection, validation, and warning of attack against North America whether by aircraft, missiles, or space vehicles, through mutual support arrangements with other commands.

Aerospace control includes ensuring air sovereignty and air defense of the airspace of Canada and the United States. The renewal of the NORAD Agreement in May 2006 added a maritime warning mission, which entails a shared awareness and understanding of the activities conducted in U.S. and Canadian maritime approaches, maritime areas and internal waterways. [https://www.norad.mil/About-NORAD/]

NORAD has been an essential element of joint US-Canadian defense against Russian (and other) aggression for decades.

Trump has no strategic military experience or expertise. Steadfastly refusing to read or be briefed about complex intelligence developments, normally a daily function of the presidency, Trump’s ignorance threatens the safety of both countries. While he claims to think that Canada should be merged into the United States as the 51st state, he just as likely has other motives in relation to his lunatic claims about the U.S.-Canada relationship.

My suspicion is that Trump wants to weaken the northern defense perimeter that has existed with Canada’s involvement for decades to help prepare the United States for surrender to Russia without a fight.

I know that may sound crazy but in the context of Trump’s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin and his appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, it seems not beyond the pale that Trump’s long-term goal is to so weaken U.S. defenses that we can no longer stand up to Russian domination.

I leave it to others more versed in this to evaluate the risks, but Trump’s smash-the-dishes approach to international relations should give every loyal American pause to consider what is really going on here. Trump clearly wants to abandon Ukraine to Russian aggression and possibly withdraw from NATO as well. America First then becomes America Alone, a position of weakness we have not experienced in many decades.

Trump & Vance Must Be Removed from Office

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I am starting to see suggestions in various social media sites that it is time to remove Trump from the presidency. I believe it is well past that time and this is why. I will be uncharacteristically brief.

If you were, say, an efficiency expert called in to evaluate how a company’s various employees were performing, you would initially conduct an investigation: Who are the people in question? What functions do they perform in the company? How can what they do be measured in terms of efficiency and perhaps other identified values?

Then and only then would you recommend to top management whether and which ones of those employees should be removed or have their functions changed. It would take time, yes. But if the true goal were to improve the efficiency of the company’s business, that is the process you would undertake.

Donald Trump has done the opposite. He brought in someone who knows little or nothing about how the federal government works. That person is very wealthy and apparently believes he is invulnerable. He and a bunch of uninformed people he hired were set loose on the government and have made a complete hash of the process of evaluating ways to, allegedly, save money.

If you have watched the reports of what this group has done, and in some cases immediately undone, you can see that this is not about cost cutting. Many of their actions are going to end up costing much more national treasure, and other costs including environmental degradation, than were being incurred before they showed up with, in most cases, unlawful claims of authority to fire federal workers at will. This is not about efficiency or lowering taxes, at least not for most people. It is a hatchet job designed to eviscerate the federal government.

Since at least the end of World War II, the United States has had the world’s strongest defense. It costs a lot of treasure, and there is always a reason to examine whether it can be done more efficiently. But it has helped, likely been essential, to the maintenance of world peace, on the whole, for decades.

Donald Trump has aligned himself with Russia against Ukraine, against NATO, against allies around the world. He has, as usual, lied openly about which country was the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine war. WHY? Theories and speculations abound.

The overall picture is that Trump has, as he did throughout his first term, blatantly disregarded our law, the Constitution he swore to uphold, has violated the separation of powers and generally made clear he intends to operate as a dictator.

This isn’t going to change. It’s going to get worse. Trump is weakening the nation’s defenses. He is undermining the social safety net and threatening to do much more. The people he has nominated and that the Republican Senate has confirmed have, for the most part, no qualifications for the responsibilities they have undertaken and are hostile to missions they have sworn to perform. Trump knows little about how the government does its job and doesn’t care. He admires dictators and aspires to be one.

The wreckage continues to spread each day, undermining essential government services and weakening our capacity to resist aggression. Top military leadership has been removed.  Cybersecurity defenses are being eliminated.

The country does not have to accept this.

It is past time, to remove Trump, and his sycophant Vice President, from office before he weakens our defenses beyond the point of no return and Vladimir Putin decides he can safely move against us even more aggressively than he already is.

Trump’s arrogance knows no bounds. I expect tonight’s address to Congress will be a long diatribe about his brilliance, packed with lies and deflections. I have written elsewhere that I believe the Democrats should wait until Trump reaches the podium to speak, then rise as a group and walk out, leaving one member behind, ideally seated at the back in the shadows. There is no reason to continue normalizing Trump’s incompetence and treachery. Do whatever it takes to bring this catastrophe to an end before it’s too late.

Kennedy Center

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Last night my wife and I ventured out in the cold to the Kennedy Center to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company, one of our favorites that we saw several times during our sojourn in New York City between late 2017 and late 2020. They never disappoint. I believe their performances tend more toward balletic movement than, for example, those of Alvin Ailey but I have no expertise in this – I just know what I like.

We were a bit concerned about what me would find in the wake of Donald Trump’s mind-boggling and culture-destroying decision to assume management of the Center. Everything seemed normal until we entered the great hall that leads to the performance auditoriums. Arrayed in the center of the hall, at both ends, were four airport-style magnetometers with “guards” in uniforms to check bags, including placing cell phones and keys in trays for separate examination.

It was a bit unnerving and I, having a big mouth (lies, all lies) asked one of the guards whether this was the product of Trump’s “leadership.” She responded testily that it was to “protect the performers,” a statement that made no sense until we realized that the China-based Shen Yun was performing in the Opera House adjacent to our show in the Eisenhower Theater. Much of the large crowd milling around was apparently there to see Shen Yun who we then assumed was responsible for the security.

Once through that minor but irritating inconvenience we joined what seemed a sell-out crowd for the Paul Taylor performance. The program explained it this way:

The Paul Taylor Dance Company makes a triumphant return to the Kennedy Center as the company commemorates 70 years of extraordinary dance. Paul Taylor emerged as a cutting-edge choreographer in the 1950s. Over six decades, he crafted 147 company works that provoke social issues and spotlight theatrical modern dance. Taylor’s astonishing legacy continues today under the leadership of Michael Novak, a company member appointed to the role of Artistic Director by Taylor before his passing in 2018.

The company ushers in a new era with the world premiere of How Love Sounds by Hope Boykin (Artistic Advisor for Dance Education at the Kennedy Center). Nine dancers perform boundary-pushing movement, all set to Boykin’s favorite songs that “sound like love.” You’ll hear the joyful timbre of Stevie Wonder, the shimmering pulse of Donna Summer, the heartbroken twang of Patsy Cline, and even the stirring music of Antonín Dvořák. Commissioned by the Kennedy Center, the work was developed as part of the Social Impact Office Hours residency program.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company will also perform two classics by Paul Taylor. In Arden Court, dancers move playfully in a romantic scene inspired by Shakespeare, performing to symphonic excerpts by baroque composer William Boyce. Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025, Esplanade transforms the idea of pedestrian movement into a riveting performance, set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

As we expected, the performances were stunning, defying our understanding of human stamina in the presence of extraordinary, coordinated movements. We could not help but wonder what kind of humans these were that could keep up that pace for so long without a slip or falter at any point.

I am posting this mainly for two reasons, first to express our gratitude that, notwithstanding the surprise of facing the security gauntlet inside, the rest of the experience was what we have always had at the Kennedy Center. So far, at least, Trump has not managed to ruin it.

The other reason is to thank the Paul Taylor Dance Company for not canceling. We would have understood if they had, but our lives are all the richer for having spent some time in their presence. Their gifts are beyond what words can convey. The work they put in to do what they do is superhuman and a true joy to watch.

Treason in Plain Sight

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“…. and soon the school feels to Werner like a grenade with its pin pulled.”

As I reread this morning Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See (2014), I reached the chapter entitled Everything Poisoned where that partial sentence appears. How astonishing that I would arrive at those remarkable words and the idea they capture as I was struggling to finish the post that follows below. Doerr’s observation about the young German Werner, one of the major characters in the story, captured perfectly how I, and millions of others here and around the world, felt watching the President of the United States, working in synchrony with his Vice President and his Secretary of State, ambush the popular, war-battered President of Ukraine at a press event called for that very purpose.

And make no mistake, while there may be no written script for the event we’ll ever see, I and many others are certain beyond any doubt that the attack was planned. The phony umbrage of JD Vance was calculated to unleash Trump’s angry denunciation of President Zelensky while Marco Rubio sat, hands folded, seemingly hoping no one would notice him. Everyone played their part to perfection at a public event that had no apparent purpose except to sabotage the mineral rights deal that Trump purported to want but only, it turns out, if Ukraine essentially surrendered to Putin’s Russia.

Zelensky wasn’t having it. Trump knew or should have known would be true and thus played out the end-game for the day: kill the deal while acting outraged that a visiting head of state engaged in an existential fight for the very survival of his country would have the temerity to disagree with the great and powerful Donald Trump making multiple demonstrably false claims about the war.

Why do this? Because Trump knew that Putin, the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine war, did not want the United States to support Ukraine. Putin does not want peace. He wants conquest. Nothing could be clearer.

But, as he did during his first term with the COVID pandemic and the attempt to blackmail Zelensky into undermining Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, Trump miscalculated both Zelensky’s character and the worldwide support for the survival of Ukraine as an independent democracy. The Republican sycophants who support Trump will proclaim their usual wonderment at how Trump “stood up” for the United States, but the reality is that he stood up for Putin’s Russia and sold out the United States once again.

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny among others, promptly posted a video on Substack entitled Five Failures in the Oval Office in which he outlines how Trump failed the country at the Zelensky lynching. https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/five-failures-in-the-oval-office?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email The video takes less than six minutes and should be watched.

I am going to go a step beyond Professor Snyder. This post was originally intended to address only Trump’s directive that the United States vote twice with Russia against Ukraine on United Nations resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I will return to that but first ….

I make no claim to expertise in the subject of how the Constitution defines “treason.” But I have the Supreme Court to help, along with other credible sources.

Important background:

As the Library of Congress’s Constitution Annotated notes, the Framers were wary of vesting the power to declare and punish treason in Congress. Having just won their independence from Great Britain, the Framers had seen how the English kings and British Parliament had escalated “ordinary partisan disputes into capital charges of treason.” In other words, the ruling class used the crime of treason to eliminate their political dissidents.https://constitution.findlaw.com/article3/annotation24.html

Perhaps because of the limiting history of the constitutional definitions, there is almost no precedent in case law. There is a statute on the books, however:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. [18 US Code § 2381 (1948)]

And there is Haupt v. United States, 330 U.S. 631 (1947) wherein the Supreme Court went to some lengths to spell out what is required to establish “treason” and which remains, as far as I can tell, as the last word on the subject.

The charges against Mr. Haupt related to aid and comfort he provided to his son with knowledge of the son’s mission to aid Germany in its war with the United States. After his arrest, Haupt volunteered information to FBI agents including that he had been present when the son told the complete story of his travel outside the U.S., his return by German submarine with large sums of money and plans to be a saboteur. During his confinement in the Cook County jail, Haupt also talked with two fellow prisoners concerning his case; they testified as to damaging admissions made to them.

Ultimately twelve overt acts in three categories asserted to be treasonous were submitted to the jury: (1) Haupt accompanied his son to assist him in obtaining employment in a plant engaged in manufacturing a bomb sight; (2) he harbored and sheltered his son; and (3) he accompanied his son to an automobile sales agency, arranging, making payment for, and purchasing an automobile for the son. Each of these was alleged to be in aid of the son’s known purpose of sabotage. The Supreme Court was faced with Haupt’s argument that his motives were merely those of a loving father supporting a son.

Key findings:

  • … the minimum function of the overt act in a treason prosecution is that it show action by the accused which really was aid and comfort to the enemy. Cramer v. United States,325 U.S. 1 (1945); This is a separate inquiry from that as to whether the acts were done because of adherence to the enemy, for acts helpful to the enemy may nevertheless be innocent of treasonable character;
  • Cramer’s caseheld that what must be proved by the testimony of two witnesses is a “sufficient” overt act.
  • … there can be no question that sheltering, or helping to buy a car, or helping to get employment is helpful to an enemy agent, that they were of aid and comfort to Herbert Haupt in his mission of sabotage. They have the unmistakable quality which was found lacking in the Cramercase of forwarding the saboteur in his mission.
  • We hold, therefore, that the overt acts laid in the indictment and submitted to the jury do perform the functions assigned to overt acts in treason cases, and are sufficient to support the indictment and to sustain the convictions if they were proved with the exactitude required by the Constitution.
  •  The Constitution requires that “No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act . . . .” Art. III, § 3.
  • And while two witnesses must testify to the same act, it is not required that their testimony be identical. Most overt acts are not single, separable acts, but are combinations of acts or courses of conduct made up of several elements. It is not easy to set by metes and bounds the permissible latitude between the testimony of the two required witnesses. It is perhaps easier to say on which side of the line a given case belongs than to draw a line that will separate all permissible disparities from forbidden ones….and it is not required that testimony be so minute as to exclude every fantastic hypothesis that can be suggested.
  • The law of treason makes, and properly makes, conviction difficult, but not impossible…. [Haupt’s] mission was frustrated, but defendant did his best to make it succeed. His overt acts were proved in compliance with the hard test of the Constitution, are hardly denied, and the proof leaves no reasonable doubt of the guilt.

The judgment is Affirmed.

The Court thus found that, given the incriminating testimony of the required two witnesses, it was for the jury to decide between “treason” and “just a father helping his son get along.”

Mr. Justice Douglas wrote a concurring opinion, noting “…. As the Cramer case makes plain, the overt act and the intent with which it is done are separate and distinct elements of the crime. Intent need not be proved by two witnesses, but may be inferred from all the circumstances surrounding the overt act …. The requirement of an overt act is to make certain a treasonable project has moved from the realm of thought into the realm of action.”

Mr. Justice Murphy dissented in an opinion that suggested it was for the courts rather than the jury to decide whether “reasonable doubt” existed as to the true nature of the acts in dispute. Happily, that was not and is not the law.

The foregoing, I believe, fairly summarizes the law governing sustainable findings of treason.

Before turning to why I believe Donald Trump, among others, is plainly guilty of treason, you should also be aware of some facts set out in Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Run the World (2024) by Anne Applebaum, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Gulag, A History of the Soviet Camps (2004) and author of Twilight of Democracy, among others:

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine, the first full-scale kinetic battle in the struggle between Autocracy, Inc. and what might loosely be described as the democratic world. Russia plays a special role in the autocratic network, both as the inventor of the modern marriage of kleptocracy and dictatorship and as the country now most aggressively seeking to upend the status quo. The invasion was planned in that spirit. Putin hoped not only to acquire territory, but also to show the world that the old rules of international behavior no longer hold.

From the very first days of the war, Putin and the Russian security elite ostentatiously demonstrated their disdain for the language of human rights, their disregard for the laws of war, their scorn for international law and for treaties they themselves had signed. They arrested public officials and civic leaders: mayors, police officers, civil servant, school directors, journalists, artists, museum curators. They built torture chambers for civilians …. They kidnapped thousands of children, ripping some away from their families, removing others from orphanages, gave them new “Russian” identities and prevented them from return home to Ukraine. [Autocracy, Inc. at 13]

And more. And more. Those facts are not disputable by anyone with a functioning mind and the ability to disassociate from the penumbra of subordination cast by Donald Trump on his followers.

The conclusion from that and much other evidence, all well-known, is that Russia under Putin is the enemy of the United States. To anyone observing Putin and his statements and behavior, he has made it clear beyond any doubt that he regards American democracy and our constitutional freedoms as anathema. Multiple investigations here have shown beyond doubt extensive Russian interference in our elections and more.

It is also clear beyond doubt that there are more than two witnesses to Trump’s issuing of instructions to the interim U.S. representative to the U.N to vote with Russia and against Ukraine. There is no possibility she would have just done this on her own without instructions from the highest level. Speaking in Trumpish, “America’s acting envoy to the UN, Dorothy Camille Shea, described the US resolution as a “simple historic statement… that looks forward, not backwards. A resolution focused on one simple idea: ending the war”. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7435pnle0go

Now add the sickening spectacle of Trump and Vance aligning with Putin’s Russia against Zelensky’s Ukraine and you have the perfect description of multiple acts of giving “aid and comfort” to an avowed enemy of the United States.

Trump has abandoned the western alliance formed after WWII and aligned himself and now the U.S. government with Russian aggression against a free and independent democracy on its border. Given the bizarre collection of appointments Trump has made to positions high in our defense, security and intelligence apparatus, it is not farfetched to believe that he is preparing to gift Ukraine to Russia and likely a lot more.

Recall that Trump is the same person who removed highly confidential documents from the White House when he left in 2021 and that he refused to return them, lied about what he had and engaged in overt acts to hide what he had from authorities seeking their protection and return. The FBI under Trump’s new appointed leadership has just returned those documents to Trump!

So now, etched in our memories forever, is the pathetic spectacle of Trump and his henchman JD Vance, with the silent acquiescence of Marco Rubio, attacking and berating Volodymyr Zelensky in an almost certainly staged event for that very purpose. Trump, self-satisfied that he had accomplished his mission, freely noted at the end that it would “make great television.” In this pathetic demonstration of anti-American animus, Trump gave further aid and comfort to a declared enemy of the United States he took an oath to defend. You can read a reasonably accurate account of the episode here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/trump-zelensky-us-ukraine-russia.html

This was a first in American diplomatic history and, I believe, an obvious effort to sabotage Zelensky and Ukraine in front of the American people. Trump set up the press event and, with VP Vance chiming in with a personal attack near the end, erupted when Zelensky tried to explain the true situation Ukraine faces with Russian aggression. Vance and Trump acted like Zelensky had forced his way into the White House, called the press event himself and then outrageously used it to stand up for the freedom of his country that is under existential attack designed to eliminate the very existence of the country.

Trump, as usual had spent the first two-thirds of the press event talking about himself, what a great negotiator he is, how he only wants the best for the United States, how he was persecuted, how terrible Presidents Obama and Biden were, on and on and on, the same old mindless lies and blather.

In my opinion, the entire nightmarish scene was planned to undermine Ukraine and Zelensky. Trump knows Putin does not want peace; he wants conquest. And it won’t stop with Ukraine if he’s successful. Trump had no intention of making a deal with Zelensky unless it involved the total surrender of Ukraine to Russia.

I have no idea what leverage Putin has on Trump – you have no doubt read many of the same stories and speculations as I have – but whatever it is, it must be very strong to produce such overt appeasement that rivals or exceeds anything ever seen in world relations. Russian media ate it up, of course, just as one would expect. Peter Baker, White House reporter, wrote that

Never has an American president lectured the leader of an ally in public like this, much less the leader of a country that is fighting off invaders.

I have covered the White House since 1996. There has never been an Oval Office meeting in front of cameras like this in all that time.

The damage Trump/Vance did to United States standing in the world is immeasurable and unforgivable. It was, I believe, pure and simple treason.