Tag Archives: Trump

WAPO, Your Bezos Is Showing

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It didn’t take long for the Washington Post to launch a hysterical attack on the choice of the voters in New York City who, apparently tired of the way things have been run, chose convincingly between the options presented to them by the democratic process there. Zohran Mamdani drops the mask  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/08/zohran-mamdani-class-warfare-new-york-mayor/  I suppose this is not surprising after Jeff Bezos stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. Still, this is the Washington Post, once venerated as one of the leading independent (remember Watergate?) news sources in the country and, indeed, the world.

No more. It’s now apparent that its owner has completely coopted the so-called Editorial Board and revealed his and its acquiescence in the fascist model of government promoted by Donald Trump. Bezos has a lot of money, so he probably doesn’t care much what happens to the paper as it is abandoned by many of its leading thinkers and many also of its subscribers. It is interesting how individuals who amass vast fortunes become indifferent to the needs and wants of the people whose patronage created those fortunes.

Mr. Bezos has aligned himself, and his newspaper, with Donald Trump, a man who has no respect for the Constitution he swore to uphold, no respect for anything that does not serve his personal interests. The Post’s Editorial Board (EB) has now gone full Trump by attacking the choice made by the voters of New York City. The EB apparently no longer believes in democracy. Maybe it’s time for the Post to change its name to reflect what it now represents. The paper’s motto still says, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But the lights are out at the Post now, and it is dark indeed.

Consider what the EB has said about the choice of New York City’s voters.

They opened by calling him “Generalissimo,” a reference typically applied (though not exclusively) to fascists and dictators. Donald Trump loves to call opponents names and the Post’s EB has apparently gone full in on Trump’s approach. The Post’s EB must be terrified. I watched the same acceptance speech that it did. I saw a young man relishing his hard-earned victory (you don’t win in New York politics the easy way but remember the wisdom of Sinatra: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere).

I am not going to waste a good Monday with chapter-and-verse discussion of the Post’s new-found discovery that less government is the solution to New York’s (and presumably everyone’s) problems. Note, however, that whoever watched the acceptance speech at the Post failed to note how often Mamdani smiled, how often he spoke of using the power of government to help the general population of the city. Now, suddenly, the Post’s EB has become the voice of the “small government is the best government” crowd while whining that Mamdani mentioned Donald Trump eight times but didn’t utter “growth” even once. The people at the Heritage Foundation must be ecstatic. And it is a fundamental mistake to believe that Donald Trump is an adherent of “small government.” Trump’s “philosophy” is that of the prototypical dictator: “the government is me.” Size is irrelevant.

It is a fundamental truth that humans often hear what they want to hear. That principle applied to the Post’s EB as it listened to Mamdani’s speech. What seems most clear in all this is that the Post editors are terrified that the people of New York City have chosen someone whom the editors don’t trust because they don’t know him. They apparently have not been paying enough attention and now that the people of New York City have spoken, the EB is panicked.

The ”observers” at the Post apparently missed the part of Mamdani’s acceptance speech in which he spoke eloquently about his election being a victory for those “so often forgotten by the politics of our city.” He spoke the importance of keeping hope alive, a vital tenet at a time when hungry people are being cut off from their daily bread by a hostile president who is now threatening the city and Mamdani personally. Trump threatens to punish NYC over Mamdani. Will he arrest new mayor and block funds? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/08/trump-threat-nyc-mayor-mamdani/87133111007/?utm_source=usatoday-newsalert-strada&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_term=hero&utm_content=usat-mclean-nletter01

Trump’s blather aside, perhaps hope comes first and growth follows.

The only real alternative was former governor Andrew Cuomo. I happen to appreciate some aspects of Cuomo’s service as New York’s governor. I wrote about it here: https://shiningseausa.com/2020/05/01/governor-andrew-cuomo-presents/ but also here: https://shiningseausa.com/2023/06/04/appalling-failure-great-city/ It is also true that I was deeply disappointed to learn of the accusations against him from multiple women whose complaints I fully credit. It’s too bad, but it is what it is. Cuomo created his own trouble and paid the price. If the same principles were applied to Donald Trump, he would be sitting in a prison cell right now.

Mr. Cuomo lost the Democratic primary to Mr. Mamdani, ran against him as an independent, and lost again. The people of New York City made their choice in a free and fair election, something that should be respected. Instead, the Post’s EB chose to suck up to Jeff Bezos and, make no mistake, to Donald Trump whose last-minute endorsement of Cuomo failed badly. What the Post’s EB hopes to achieve from this hatchet job on the voters of New York (Mamdani was their clear choice), I can’t imagine.

Finally, compare the approach taken by the New York Times in an opinion piece more appropriately entitled: 6 Ways Mayor Mamdani Can Improve New York https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/opinion/mayor-mamdani-new-york-election.html

Anyone who has lived in New York City (I did for three glorious years [including the decidedly inglorious pandemic year 2020]) and who was paying attention understands the enormous challenges the city presents to anyone trying to engineer major changes. But change is possible if bold thinking is supported. It won’t be easy, but little worth the effort is easy. Instead of whining about Mamdani’s “class consciousness,” the Washington Post would do well to remove its collective head from Donald Trump’s hindquarters and join the parade that the Democratic victories on November 2 suggested were now within reach.

How Long Before the American Kristallnacht?

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For those not familiar with the term Kristallnacht, it is German and means the Night of Broken Glass, a pogrom against Jews executed by the Nazi Party’s paramilitary forces along with Hitler Youth and some German citizens in November, 1938. As described in the Wikipedia article:

Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed over 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht]

This was in many ways the logical and inevitable step in resolving what Hitler and other Nazis thought of as the “Jewish question.”

In the United States now, we have a related spectacle developing. The stories are multiplying daily of ICE kidnappings and assaults on the streets in various cities. Masked and armed men appear and snatch people walking on the street or at work in various, generally low-level, jobs. The men travel in packs, refuse to identify themselves, and are sometimes aided by local law enforcement. The chain of command, if there is one, is entirely opaque, as are their orders. There is no due process for their victims.

Contrary to the public claims of the Trump administration, the victims are almost never the “hardened and violent criminals” that were supposed to be the targets of the forced deportation program. In fact, there are multiple instances of U.S. citizens being taken, snatched away from children and other dependents, taken to undisclosed locations and detained in extremely harsh conditions sometimes for weeks.

The administration doesn’t care. In fact, I believe it is fair to say that these incidents are the logical and inevitable step in resolving what Trump and other Republicans think of as the “immigrant question.” So what if U.S. citizens are mistakenly swept up in the dragnet? The key is to instill fear in the immigrant population, a goal immeasurably aided by the majority of the Supreme Court that has allowed the deportation to countries from which the deportees have no historical relationship and which in some cases are on “do not travel” lists issued by our own State Department.

There is an internal logic to this type of activity. The longer it is allowed to occur, the more we will see. You get what you tolerate. The history of ethnic cleansing in other countries as well as our own strongly supports the likelihood that the conduct we’re seeing from ICE is only going to get worse. At some point someone is going to react violently to their activity and that will become the pretext for a hyper-violent response. Once it starts, it will not stop by itself.

Democrats making denunciatory speeches in Congress or on podcasts won’t stop it. ICE’s budget under the new Republican budget just passed is many multiples of the budgets of the other federal law enforcement agencies and larger than the funding of the FBI, IRS, Secret Service, DEA, SEC, and ATF combined. ICE is preparing for the time when it has a sufficient excuse to unleash its full force against the country, to eliminate people Trump considers to be either his enemies or who don’t fit his conception of “proper Americans.”

The capper to my prediction is the two-fold cleansing operation reflected in (1) the due-process-free-rapid-arrest-and-deportation to foreign prisons of whomever ICE “decides” should be summarily removed from the United States, and (2) the building of domestic concentration camps like the one publicly relished by Trump/Noem in the Everglades. Add to that the use of the military to assist ICE and otherwise suppress dissent in places like California and you have the perfect storm.

When the United States establishes concentration camps and the federal government celebrates their creation, the country is in the deepest trouble. The problem is compounded by the remarkable behavior of the Supreme Court that is writing both due process and the separation of powers out of the Constitution. The John Roberts Court is doing just what the Republicans want – facilitating the rapid transition of the country to a dictatorship.

So, I ask how long, absent a game-changing intervention, it will be before Trump concludes: “I am no longer restrained by law or the courts, and, as I have said many times before, I can do whatever I want?”

Donald Trump – America’s Mussolini

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I have finished reading a series of books that purport to explain what has been happening in the politics of the United States and the larger world. The books are:

Age of Revolutions: Progress and backlash from 1600 to the present (2024) by Fareed Zakaria

Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy (2020) by Elaine Tyler May

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World (2024) by Anne Applebaum

And, finally, the most recent is one I have just begun: Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (2021) by Ruth Ben-Ghiat. The book was published before Trump fully manifested as the malignant fascist that he has become, but it was after he had been elected the first time and gave his infamous “American Carnage” inaugural speech in 2017 that prompted former Republican President George W. Bush to exclaim: “That’s some weird sh*t.”

The compelling opening of Strongmen lies in the description of one “strongman” in particular, perhaps the model for those that would follow: Benito Mussolini. Ben-Ghiat writes:

The disaffection with conventional politics and politicians after a ruinous war created yearnings for a new kind of leader. The cults that rose up around Mussolini and Hitler in the early 1920s answered anxieties about the decline of male status, the waning of traditional religious authority, and the loss of moral clarity…. Out of the crucible of these years came the cults of victimhood that turned emotions like resentment and humiliation into positive elements of party platforms…. Mussolini prepared the script used by today’s authoritarians that casts the leader as a victim of his domestic enemies and of an international system that has cheated his country.

That is Trump’s and the Republican Party’s 2025 legislative and other agendas in a nutshell.

Aside from the parallels between Trump’s raison d’etre and Mussolini, one other thing caught my eye in the early going in Strongmen:

Two-thirds of dictators were removed by coups between 1950 and 2000.

Not all, of course; several remained in power for decades. Still, I was reminded of the line from Shakespeare’s Henry IV: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”  While the line generally is taken to refer to the burdens of leadership, I have also seen it as a reference to the risks that the leader faces from those who would take his power by force. In that sense, it suggests the leader had best be a light sleeper if he wants to survive.

In Trump’s case, however, I doubt that he is restless out of concern for his health. The fears and anxieties that must ravage his mind every night likely relate more to his insecurities and lust for more money and power.

That aside, the parallels between Mussolini’s messaging and Trump’s are unmistakable. They lend compelling weight to the proposition that Trump is a fascist with a fascist message. Those who seek ways to resist Trump and separate his cultish followers from him might do well to study Mussolini’s rise to power and eventual downfall.

Trump’s Attack on Higher Education-Go on Offense

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I have made a habit through my adult life of, when possible, avoiding talking about my education. When asked where I went to college, I have usually just said, “in the east.” I did this because disclosing that I went to Yale would often lead to uncomfortable statements about things about which the inquirer usually knew little. I was certainly not ashamed of having attended Yale, but I also didn’t want to be seen as bragging about having an Ivy League education and conversations about it were often awkward.

The same was true of my law school experience at Harvard. Truth be told, my attendance at both Yale and Harvard were the product of teachers who cared enough to intervene on my behalf, to encourage me to reach high, to achieve way beyond what I imagined was possible for me. The result was an enriched life beyond anything I ever dreamed of. I became a life-long learner, driven perhaps beyond what was healthy at times, but determined not to fail. Yale, in particular, taught me that working hard, and harder still, was the key to success.

My Yale experience, in the early 1960s, was extraordinary in many ways. I will not detail them here. My purpose is different. The Yale of today is, I think, quite different and more imposing than the school I attended. I am certain that Harvard College has also evolved well beyond what was already back then a world-class education and research institution.

The current Trump administration’s attack on these and other major research and institutions of higher learning reflects a view of the world that is alien to everything these schools represent. I have just read that the President of the University of Virginia has resigned to avoid damaging conflict with the federal government under Trump. While the details of President Ryan’s situation at UVA are perhaps unique (he says he was doing to step down next year anyway), the fact remains that the Trump assault on higher education will have profoundly damaging consequences throughout our society.

Since I know Yale the best, I will focus on it. Yale has produced a website entitled Yale’s Impact on America. https://www.yale.edu/yales-impact-america

Did you know, for example, that “Yale’s large-scale clinical trials – 38,000 patients are currently enrolled in over 2,000 clinical trials – are yielding key discoveries that translate into life-saving therapies.” The health issues involve patients with heart issues, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes among other life-threatening maladies.

Did you know that chemotherapy was developed at Yale and is used to help about one million people each year? And the first insulin pump was developed at Yale as well, now helping 350,000 patients a year. The first U.S. artificial heart pump was also produced at Yale and helps six million people suffering from heart failure. And “Yale research led to the discovery of esketamine as a therapy for major depression, which the FDA approved in 2019 as the first new medication in decades for people suffering from treatment-resistant depression.”

I subscribe to Yale Today, a daily publication of the University. It is a rare day that some remarkable achievement in science, medicine or other discipline is not detailed there. On June 27:

Yale School of the Environment researchers have pioneered a novel method for measuring how urbanization is affecting biodiversity in cities, a tool that will help scientists and officials better manage human-wildlife interactions around the world.

On June 23:

Cutting-edge lab technique hints at new era for neuroscience

In a new study, Yale researchers unveil a more efficient method of simultaneously capturing the electrical activity of large numbers of neurons — an advance that opens doors to understanding and treating neurological diseases.

Yale is not alone in this. Harvard makes similar discoveries through original research constantly, as do the other major research universities. Trump and his goons don’t know and don’t care about the potential loss of these benefits as they attempt to reshape the country into a low-education, all-white society.

Yale needs to wake up to the reality that defensive posturing is not going to solve the real problem Trump poses. Yale, like Harvard, has massive resources, including obviously the law school’s cadre of brilliant lawyers. It needs to make clear to the administration that if it does not back off completely, Yale will lead/join a coalition of universities across the country to litigate the administration to death, including, I suggest, asserting personal liability against the perpetrators of these obviously unlawful actions.

Trump and his drone followers (male and female) have shown that they believe they can act as they wish without consequence to themselves. It is no loss to them personally if they disregard the First and Fifth Amendments and other laws by demanding submission to their will and then lose in court. They’ll just come back with something else as bad or worse. The universities should test that, I think. Make the bastards work hard. Put them on defense.

It’s not good enough to talk or call Senators. Even if victorious today politically, Trump will be back tomorrow with another outrage. Having been attacked as Harvard has and as have all the others with tax increases on their endowments, the universities need to recognize this is not a one-off situation. Trump is coming for them. Prepare for the end game and go on offense. Trump and gang are not doing normal politics, and the defense must not be based on the premise that they are.

Democrats and others who believe in preserving democracy must wake up and fight the fight that’s in front of them, not some policy-based game of old-fashioned politics. Those days are over probably forever. Just look at the contents of the bill the House just passed by one vote. One of the two political parties is off the range. and we must fight the fight that is staring at us with dead eyes before it’s too late.

Take the offense and use the considerable communications resources of the universities to inform the public of what they stand to lose if Trump’s no-nothings succeed in suppressing the vital work that the universities perform in addition to teaching some of our best and brightest future leaders. Time is short.

A Legal Primer – It’s Not Complicated

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There has been much coverage of the arrest and immediate deportation of alleged “criminals” and “illegals” by the Trump administration. These actions are apparently part of the Republican plan to “make America white,” although in recent days Trump has pulled back the aggression as to certain workers. Why? Because he has realized that his shoot-first-think-later approach to domination may be offending some of his supporters whose businesses depend on immigrant labor. But from day-to-day Trump’s erratic approach to governance, largely made up on the fly, can change radically.

This primer is not, however, about our national immigration policy. It is instead about elementary constitutional and legal processes that are an essential part of our legal system. These principles apply to immigrants as well as citizens, and one day they might apply to you, as when Trump’s masked and armed men who refuse of identify themselves pull your car over or visit you at home or work.

First, the Constitution itself.

Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Fifth Amendment:

….  nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. 

To keep this manageable, we’re going to focus on the text that I have bolded. But first we must include the function of magistrates. Virginia law is typical:

A principal function of a magistrate is to provide an independent, unbiased review of complaints of criminal conduct brought by law enforcement …. Magistrate duties include issuing various types of processes such as arrest warrants, summonses, search warrants, emergency protective orders, emergency custody orders, and certain civil warrants. Magistrates also conduct bail hearings in instances in which an individual is arrested to determine under what conditions the arrestee should be released from custody prior to trial.

Finally, there is the Supreme Court decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) that applied the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the arrest phase of a criminal case. The Court held that any person in custody must, before being interrogated, be informed of the right to remain silent and the right to assistance of an attorney.

One other thing –no evidence has been produced that the armed masked men working for ICE and conducting what amount to kidnappings for the government have any meaningful training in the legal principles that govern what they are doing.

Now, the facts: let’s say you’re in a park with your two young children. An unmarked van pulls up and several masked men jump out. They are heavily armed. They tell you that you are under arrest for violating you immigration status, and that you must come with them. Or maybe they don’t tell you anything except to get the van, NOW!

You protest that you are an American citizen. You demand they explain the basis for the charges and that they identify themselves. They refuse. You are then handcuffed and forced into the van. You protest that your children are with you and have no one to care for them because your spouse is away on business. The men ignore you.

The next thing you know, you are on an airplane headed to an unknown destination but that soon becomes clear is not in the United States.

In my hypothetical case, you are in fact an American citizen and the men are wrong about who you are. They have been misinformed by someone in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Your rights have been violated in multiple ways. No warrant for your arrest has been issued, you are not given your Miranda warnings, and you are not taken before a magistrate who determines whether your arrest is proper. You are given no opportunity to consult counsel who can present your defense that you are a U.S. citizen and not subject to deportation. Your right to a trial has been ignored. And you have been prevented from caring for your children who have been left in the hands of, hopefully, kind strangers.

This scenario has happened many times under the Trump administration’s “deport the criminal immigrants” policy. It is not complicated. The Constitution’s due process requirements refer to “persons,” not to “citizens.” It means what it says.

The reasons for the various “rules” and “principles” are straightforward and obvious when you think about it. The legal process, while slow, is designed to prevent mistakes. It is designed to assure that every person accused of a crime has a fair chance to understand the charges, to seek professional help, and to avoid mistakes that could impose criminal penalties on the wrong person. While Trump has complained by providing due process may require thousands of trials, that does not negate the rights of individuals to the protections of the Constitution.

The Trump administration’s unleashing of masked men who refuse to identify themselves and whose approach creates strong possibilities for mistaken arrests, and which imposes extreme penalties (removal to other states or, worse, deportation to foreign countries) with no opportunity to consult counsel, or to understand the charges, is certain to deny constitutional protections to the accused.

The idea that persons in the United States may be removed from the street or their home or a job, without notice, by unidentified armed men, transferred to other states and then removed from the country to a foreign prison without any opportunity to consult counsel, without any opportunity to protect family members including small children dependent on them, is unconstitutional, unlawful, and un-American. It is almost certainly a human rights violation and is unacceptable in the U.S. system of law.

And under the Trump administration it is happening every day.

No Kings

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Two by two, ones, groups of all sizes, young, old, Black, white, whatever, the full diversity of American life – they came to Market Square in Old Town Alexandria to answer the call to rally against Donald Trump’s ambition to be a dictator, a latter-day king of the United States. Alexandria’s City Hall was built in 1871-74. Market Square was built in the 1960s. For the unfamiliar, the center of the Square is a large water feature. Whatever its other benefits, it has the effect of confining attending rally-goes to the seats around the edge and elsewhere in the Square.

The mob overwhelmed the capacity of the Square, and when we made our way out after an hour, the streets leading to the Square were still packed with people carrying their homemade signs and moving toward the Square. Regrettably, the city has not expended enough money to equip the Square with an adequate sound system, so the speeches could only be heard by the people in front who must have arrived an hour before the addresses began.

In any case, the attendance was huge and enthusiastic. Many carried signs or flags and shouted slogans in sync with the people in front. The mood was boisterous but also serious. The people want no kings in this country.

Trump, like the dictators and autocrats after whom he has styled his presidency, pays no real attention to the people who assemble in Alexandria and the millions who participated in No Kings Day rallies across the country. He believes he is above the law, based in part on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision and in part on his belief that he is politically and constitutionally immune from any accountability.

The question will be called, apparently, during the 2026 midterms, assuming there are elections at that time. If, on the other hand, Trump tries to suspend those elections, I predict Trump’s presidency will be ended. I hope it does not come to that. It would be better if the will of the people continues to be expressed by voting and the President honors the results. There are reasons in the recent past to question whether Trump will honor the result, but one can hope that the people around him will insist. There are reasons to question that too.

In any case, the massive No Kings rallies are a strong and clear indication that the will of the people is fundamentally inconsistent with the way Trump has conducted his second presidency. He would make a grave mistake by ignoring that reality.

Pardon Me ….

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I have had a belly full of “journalists,” “pundits” and “opinion writers” whining about Joe Biden’s pardoning of family members in the closing hours of his presidential administration. I have not read Jake Tapper’s book and never will. But every time I see a reference to Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 insurrectionists he directed to attack the Capitol in pursuit of a false narrative about the 2020 election, I see a reference to Biden’s pardon and how “history” will judge him poorly for doing it. Virtually everyone who addresses the pardon issue (Trump has now pardoned over 1,500 people, I have read, and more are in the pipeline as the payoffs keep coming) seems to feel they have to compare Biden’s family pardons to what Trump is doing.

What did they expect Biden to do? It was a no-win situation. He knew that Trump had vowed revenge against him and his family for the investigations that Trump still whines about. Should Biden have left his family to their fate at the hands of a lunatic bent on revenge and any form of pay-back he could produce? I think not. If Biden had abandoned his family to Trump’s revenge, what would the pundits have said then?

And we see this playing out as could be expected. Reuters reports “Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, wrote in an email seen by Reuters that the investigation involves whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-justice-department-examining-pardons-issued-by-biden-2025-06-02/ This will ultimately be a futile quest to exact revenge on Biden and his family, but that has never stopped Trump from trying. Trump sees the Department of Justice as his personal law firm. The Supreme Court has essentially ratified that idea in its immunity decision.

It’s clear to me at least that Biden foresaw correctly what Trump was likely to do. Rather than leave his family at the mercy of a revenge-obsessed Trump who is still rage-tweeting his claims to have won the 2020 election, Biden chose to protect his family. I see no fault in this. He had a difficult choice to make and made it. Surely the pundits can find something else to whine about.

 

Everything You Need to Know About Trump

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In an April 29, 2025, interview with Terry Morgan of ABC News, that can be seen here: https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1917381376111960380 Donald Trump, in his capacity as President of the United States, claimed that Abrego Garcia had the initials, MS 13, tattooed on his knuckles. On April 18, Trump had held up a photo purporting to show that Garcia’s knuckles bore those symbols. Since multiple other clear photos of Garcia’s knuckles showed other symbols but not the “MS 13,” fact checkers concluded, rightly, that the April 18 photo had been doctored. Trump had to know that.

When Trump brought up the subject with Morgan, the interviewer tried multiple times to move away from the subject, at one point noting in a kind of under-breath remark that Trump’s prior “photo” had been Photoshopped, Trump wasn’t having it. He persisted in his flagrant lie, attacked Morgan and refused to let the discussion move on. Trump knew he had lied but insisted that Morgan agree otherwise. To his credit, Morgan wasn’t going to do that and continued to try to move the conversation to another subject, ignoring the personal attacks from the President.

This incident as well as any other tells you everything you need to know about Trump. He is fully prepared to lie, insist the lie is “true” and refuse to move on until everyone agrees with him. It is not fanciful to imagine that this occurs all the time in the Cabinet meetings and elsewhere. Trump completely lacks a moral component and is thus able to make obviously false statements, demand that everyone agree that they are true, and refuse to permit the conversation to move on until they do.

This is the man that holds the highest political office in the country, dishonest to the core. Everything about him is driven by his lack of interest in and likely his inability to tell or even recognize the truth. For Trump the truth is whatever he wants it to be. In combination with his wealth, this practice has served him well in the one sense that it has supported his quest to accumulate more wealth and to live in a fantasy world of his own creation that also supports his quest for power.

I suspect this is what happens in Russia when Vladimir Putin says something that is blatantly false. Anyone who dares challenge him knows that Putin will not hesitate to order that person’s death and that there are plenty of fearful aides who will carry out such orders rather than put themselves at risk.

So far as we know, Trump has not ordered anyone killed, at least not directly. He is, of course, behind the federal government’s determination to deploy a force of armed men in masks and unmarked vehicles to arrest and deport to prisons in foreign countries, without opportunity to consult counsel or communicate with families, people of all ages and conditions who are “suspected” of certain crimes or merely affiliations. To support him in this quest, Trump has at his disposal a large gang of men, many suspected of being affiliated with the Proud Boys and other racist organizations, and a Press Secretary who is skilled, like Trump, at talking over anyone who questions her about the government’s practices.

Very little separates Trump from Putin. The Supreme Court has held that the President of the United States may commit crimes in office without punishment in the course of his “official duties” under Article II. Trump is keenly aware of this “freedom.” How long before he executes its ultimate logic? Who in his gang of sycophants will stop him?

Everyone is familiar with the famous quote: “”power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” When checking in Safari to confirm my recall of its origin, the Apple AI program produced this “overview:”

    • Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton):

The quote is widely attributed to him, an English historian and politician, who wrote it in 1887.

    • The Core Idea:

The saying posits that the exercise of power, regardless of the individual’s initial intentions, can lead to a decline in moral standards and a tendency to prioritize self-interest over the public good.

    • Absolute Power:

The phrase emphasizes that unchecked, absolute power amplifies this corrupting influence, potentially leading to complete moral decay.

    • Historical Context:

The quote has been used to analyze various historical figures and political systems, highlighting the potential for corruption in positions of power.

    • Relevance to Modern Politics:

The saying remains relevant in contemporary politics, where concerns about the abuse of power, unchecked authority, and the potential for corruption are ongoing.

Everything you need to know.

Words to Survive By

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The following are excerpts from recent speeches by Governor Jay Pritzker of Illinois. He is a Democrat. He has balanced the budget (Republicans, take note of what used to be an article of faith for you). He is intelligent. He is articulate. He is terrified at what is happening to his country. And, yes, he is rich.

In reading them, recall that while the Democratic presidential ticket carried the state comfortably in 2024 (54.37% for Harris/Walz), there was a 6-point shift toward Republicans compared to Biden’s 2020 result.

For perspective, Governor Pritzker notes that “Our [Illinois] economy is over $1.1 trillion and growing – the fifth largest in the United States and the 18th largest in the world.” I had no idea.

State of the State and Budget Address — February 19, 2025 – end of the speech
[Watch on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGTFzW4Oj4J/?igsh=MWd2Ym13aW5hN3BndA%3D%3D]

 “As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and as a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next?

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor …. according to the best of my ability.”

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So, gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Thank you.”

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Later, on April 28, 2025, Governor Pritzker spoke at a Democratic fundraiser in New Hampshire. The video can be seen here if that is your thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMndfvxVeRo Transcript excerpts follow [the transcript was AI-produced; I have fixed typos when possible]:

“… we need to knock off the rust of poll-tested language and decades of stale decorum. It’s obscured our better instincts. We have to abandon the culture of incrementalism that has led us to swallow the cruelty and the callousness with barely a cowardly croak.

It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once.

Let’s start with something that should be easy to say: it’s wrong to snatch a person off the street and ship them to a foreign gulag with no chance to defend themselves in a court of law. I want to be clear this is not an argument about immigration. This is an argument about the Constitution.

Remember Trump just last week arrested and deported three children under 8 years old, all US citizens, all of them, one of them a four-year old with Stage 4 cancer. Let that sink in. This country was founded on the idea of habeas corpus. It’s a fancy legal term that in plain words means no government has a right to arbitrarily take your freedom away from you. Preserving habeas corpus is not some fever dream of the left-wing echo chamber. It’s a fundamental concept of justice that people have fought and died for dating back to the Middle Ages. It was in the Magna Carta. It was considered by our nation’s founders to be so vital to our liberty that they wrote it right into the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson called it the essential principle of government. Benjamin Franklin opined that those who would give up habeas corpus for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security, and Alexander Hamilton wrote that the practice of arbitrary imprisonments has been in all the ages the favorite and most formidable instrument of tyranny.

Franklin, Jefferson, and Hamilton standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process is arguably the most effective campaign slogan in history. What do we think that Colonel Stark was talking about if not this when he said, “live free or die?” Today it’s an immigrant with a tattoo. Tomorrow it’s a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Donald Trump.

There are plenty of people in this country who hold opinions that I find abhorrent, but my faith and our Constitution dictate that I fight for their freedoms as loudly as I defend my own. As a Ukrainian-American Jew who built a Holocaust museum, whose family immigrated here as refugees from the Russian pogroms, let me say this to Donald Trump: stop tearing down the Constitution in the name of my ancestors. Do not claim that your authoritarian power grabs are about combating antisemitism. When you destroy social justice, you are disparaging the very foundation of Judaism.

When the pendulum swings back, and it always does, you will have contributed to the climate of retribution that will inevitably follow, so let’s dispel another myth from the MAGA Republicans: that we Democrats believe that undocumented people who are convicted of violent crimes shouldn’t be allowed to stay in this country. We want public safety just as much as Republicans do and when we get back in control of Congress, and we will, and when we get the White House back, and we will, Democrats need to make it a priority to pass real sensible immigration reform. We need to secure our border. We need to keep and attract hardworking taxpaying law-abiding people and give them a path to citizenship. Immigration with all its struggles and its complexities is part of the secret sauce that makes American great always. Immigrants strengthen our communities, enrich our neighborhoods, renew our passion for America’s greatness, enliven our music and our culture, and enhance understanding of the world. The success of our economy depends upon immigrants. In fact, 46% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.

The return on investment for America’s 250-year commitment to immigration is incalculable, but because of Donald Trump’s xenophobia, we’ve seen foreign students already choosing not to attend our universities and being told to leave. Businesses from overseas are afraid to invest their money here and to bring their executives to our shores. Scientists are choosing to innovate in European laboratories instead of American ones already in just 100 days. If the best and the brightest around the world no longer flock to this shining city on a hill, then the US economy is likely to fail.

But failure is starting to look like that’s the point of all this, doesn’t it? We have a Secretary of Education who hates teachers and schools. We have a Secretary of Transportation who hates public transit. We have an Attorney General who hates the Constitution. We have a Secretary of State, the son of naturalized citizens and a family of refugees. on a crusade to expel both from our country. We have a head of the Department of Government Efficiency, an immigrant granted the privilege of living and working here, a man who has made hundreds of billions of dollars after the government rescued his business for him, who is looking to destroy the American middle class to fund tax cuts for himself.

And we have a president who claims to love America, but who hates our military so much that he calls them losers and suckers, and who can’t be bothered to delay his golf game to greet the bodies of four fallen U.S. soldiers. And we have a Grand Old Party  founded by one of our nation’s bravest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, who today would be a Democrat I might add, a Grand Old Party so afraid of the felon and the fraud that they put into the White House that they would sooner watch him destroy our country than lift a hand to save it.

Democrats, we may have to fix our messaging and our strategy, but our values are exactly where they ought to be, and we will never join so many Republicans in the special place in Hell reserved for quislings and cowards. It’s time for us to be done with optimism about their motives or their objectives, time to stop wondering if you can trust the nuclear codes to people who don’t know how to organize a group chat. It’s time to stop ignoring the hypocrisy wearing a big gold cross while announcing the defunding of children’s cancer research, and time to stop thinking we can reason or negotiate with a madman. Time to stop apologizing when we were not wrong. Time to stop surrendering when we need to fight.

Our small businesses don’t deserve to be bankrupted by unsustainable tariffs. Our retirees don’t deserve to be left destitute by a Social Security Administration decimated by Elon Musk. Our citizens don’t’ deserve to lose health care coverage because Republicans want to hand a tax cut to billionaires. Our federal workers don’t deserve to have a 19-year-old Doge bro called Big Balls destroy their careers. Autistic kids and adults who are loving contributors to our society don’t deserve to be stigmatized by a weird Nepo baby who once stashed a dead bear in the backset of his car, Our military service members don’t deserve to be told by a washed-up Fox TV commentator who drank too much and committed sexual assault before being appointed Secretary of Defense that they can’t serve their country simply because they’re Black or gay or a woman.

If it sounds like I’m becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people he has elevated, it’s because I am. You should be too. They’re an afront to every value this country was founded upon.

But there’s a way out of this mess. I know because I’ve been to this movie before. When I was elected Governor in 2018, it was after four years of a very destructive Republican chief executive. He had run on the idea of shaking things up as Governor, and he promptly started defunding key government agencies, slashing state benefits, and refusing to pass a state budget. Illinois’s credit rating took a dive. Companies fled. State social service agencies closed, and government services that the poor and elderly and sick relied upon vanished.

Does that sound familiar? Illinoisans hated it, even the ones who voted for the guy. They hated it so much that four years later they elected me.

Here’s the lesson that I learned. When we emerge from this, and we will emerge from this. our democratic agenda must be bold and our ideas fearless. We must be willing to slay sacred cows and allow the courage of our actions to match the immediacy of our words. We must deliver on that agenda for working families and for the real people who truly make America great.

I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now, but despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford. In the times upon which history turns never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I am now.

These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact, because we have no alternative but to do just that, we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors. And when the courage of our civic leaders waivers, when they fail to stand up for our country in its moment of greatest need, then we should remind them that cowardice always comes at a cost in the world’s most successful republic.

No generation of Americans has escaped our true inheritance, the test that we are given that asks how hard we are willing to fight to keep our society free. It was selfish to think that ours would be the first but the fact that we are still here debating the question tells me our predecessors never failed this test in the past. Often in situations just as dire as the one in front of us cowardice can be contagious, but so too can courage. Courage born during times when complacency beckons like a siren call is the most important kind of all. Just as the hope that we hold on to in the darkness shines with its own special light these days, I cling to the courage and the hope demonstrated by Andy and Gavin and Lucy. Courage and hope that risks limbs and livelihoods to go to the most visible place possible to wave a sign or to post an upside-down flag and remind everyone that what we do and what we don’t do matters.

So, tonight, I’m telling you what I’m willing to do and that’s fight for our democracy, for our liberty, for the opportunity for all of our people to live lives that are meaningful and free. I see around me tonight a room full of people who are ready to do the same. So, I have one question for all of you Granite Staters. Are you ready for the fight for real? Granite Staters, are you ready for the fight? Good night, New Hampshire. God bless you, and God bless these United States.”

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Harvard, Tell the Clown Prince to F*ck Off

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Late yesterday, reports stated that the Department of Homeland Security, headed by dog-killer Kristi Noem, acting on instructions from Donald Trump, purported to revoke Harvard University’s certification of admit foreign students who account for more than one-quarter of the enrolled student body.

The pretext for this latest violation of law, the Constitution, and common sense, and without evidence, was that Harvard was allowing:

anti-American, pro-terrorist” foreigners “to harass and physically assault individuals … and obstruct its once-venerable learning environment.” The secretary also accused the university of working with the Chinese Communist Party by hosting and training members of its paramilitary group.

 As reported by the Washington Post,

The decision means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing international students at Harvard must transfer or lose their legal status, Noem said.

Noem gave the school 72 hours to turn over a list of records on international students to regain its certification before the upcoming academic year. DHS is seeking disciplinary records as well as electronic records, video and audio footage of international students who engaged in illegal activity, violence, threats to personnel or students, or protest activity on or off campus over the past five years.

Since neither Trump nor Noem appears to have any awareness of what goes on at our most important institutions of higher learning, we can perhaps see in Noem’s hostility the underlying resentment of what they neither know nor appreciate:

It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.

And there is this:

“Harvard has turned their once-great institution into a hotbed of anti-American, antisemitic, pro-terrorist agitators,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson on Thursday. “They have repeatedly failed to take action to address the widespread problems negatively impacting American students, and now they must face the consequences of their actions.”

Evidence? Compliance with procedures? The Clown Prince cannot be bothered.

There you have it. The federal government now claims the right to decide what the “right thing” is for universities it regards as unaligned with its agenda.

This hubris, based on no evidence and not in compliance with legal procedures for decertification, is likely inspired by the worst-in-legal-history Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision in which it created the doctrine that the president can commit crimes in office within the scope of his official duties under Article II and that his motives may not be questioned, all without criminal accountability.

It goes without saying, though I’ll say it anyway, that Noem’s message has instilled uncertainty and fear among Harvard’s 6,793 international students. But it’s worse than that.

More than 1 million international students attend colleges in the United States every year, contributing nearly $44 billion to the national economy, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

They play an outsize role in the economics of higher education, in that many international students pay full tuition …. and by creating a critical mass of students to support certain departments, such as computer science and engineering.

It’s time to call the question. Donald Trump and the sycophants that do his bidding believe they are above the law. The Supreme Court indicated as much and, given an inch, Trump always takes the proverbial mile.

So, Harvard, stand your ground. You’ve done it before in the face of gross government overreach, and you have the resources, including one of the world’s great law schools (disclosure: my law school) to mount a compelling defense against this grotesque overreach by the federal government.

It’s interesting that the political party that for decades decried the growing power of the federal government at the expense of the states now applauds anything that Clown Price Trump says he wants. Trump is a fraud, a cheat, a fool, and is intent on destroying not only the greatest American institutions but on removing the authority of the United States from the world arena, leaving it to the likes of Vladimir Putin. One of the many losses resulting from the Trump administration’s embrace of universal ignorance is the loss of opportunity to spread the message of democracy to the world through the voices of international students who learn about and experience it here.

It’s time to call the question and Harvard, your number has been called. Stand up to this petty wanna-be dictator and let’s get down to the core question whether our Constitution will be obeyed or not. If not, then the question will be put squarely before the people as to whether they want a democracy or not.

Finally, in case Trump is considering calling up the military to take control of Harvard and compel its submission, all military personnel should re-familiarize themselves with the principles of Nuremberg. You have no immunity for complying with unlawful orders. Think before you act.

Update: Harvard has sued to stop the administration’s unlawful overreach, citing violations of the First Amendment, the Due Process clause of the Constitution, and the Administration Procedures Act. Good. Meanwhile, Harvard, press your response in the media. Don’t give Trump the advantage of sole occupation of the public space. You have  the horsepower so use it!