Oh, solidarity!

So Wednesday morning, news spread like wildfire (well, like text and other social media) that ICE (or associated masked men) at the San Francisco downtown immigration offices had disappeared a protester on Wednesday who was impeding their removal of their latest immigrant captive. 

The first call on Thursday was to join the crowd outside the immigation offices, but then the San Francisco Labor Council moved the call to the old federal building on Golden Gate with a half hour to rally time. 

Who was going to get there amid changes like that?

Within an hour about 50 people gathered, just in time to learn that ICE's catch (a citizen!) had been released on bond.

Solidarity means showing up and having each others' backs.

• • •

Mission Local has the story: 

A protester arrested by federal agents outside the San Francisco immigration court on Wednesday has been charged with two federal misdemeanors: destruction of property and assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer. 

Bay Area attorneys say this is the first time they can remember such charges filed against a citizen arrested by Department of Homeland Security authorities in San Francisco. While protesters have been charged by federal agents in Los Angeles, moving the practice north is a sign of “escalation,” said Angela Chan, the city’s assistant chief public defender. 

The protester, a U.S. citizen who asked to be identified by her first name, Angélica, was arrested around 10 a.m. yesterday during a chaotic street scene: Video showed ICE agents tackling several protesters to the ground after a crowd tried to stop ICE from transporting an asylum-seeker whom agents had arrested that morning. 

Angélica, a trans woman from an immigrant family, was one of those filmed being zip-tied and led away, her head wrapped in a keffiyeh and held down by officers. Angélica was brought into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters at 630 Sansome St. without a cellphone, her partner Renee said. A day passed before her family heard from Angélica again. 

Holding a citizen at an ICE building is “unheard of,” Chan said. Earlier this month, ICE agents detained two protesters in downtown San Francisco for the first time in recent memory. ...

Thursday morning whichever feds were responsible for Angélica's abduction produced her for arraignment. The crowd a mile away at the federal building cheered the news of her release.

Angélica comes from a union family: her mother is in SEIU Local 1021, her father belongs to UFCW Local 8, a brother is a Teamster. On this occasion, unions and workers proved they knew what to do.

Not an endorsement. Just an observation.

 

Rather than getting all prissy about Gavin Newsom trolling Donald Trump. Dan Pfeiffer, Obams's former flack, points out we can simply enjoy the show:

Humor Is Good 

Yes, these are deadly serious times, but politics doesn’t have to be drudgery. It can be fun. Humor is allowed—and should be encouraged. Too many people are missing the joke here. ...

Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. The online Trump flunkies and White House staff are completely humorless, which helps explain why Greg Gutfeld is their patron saint of comedy. Newsom isn’t imitating Trump—he’s satirizing him. The whole point of the posts [on X] is to show how absurd Trump’s social media really is. The fact that the Right is freaking out about Newsom while applauding Trump says it all.

Trump is a shit show -- and a crumbling joke. We should remember that.

Gerrymandering for resistance?

All Californians are being offered a chance to participate in resistance to Trump's effort to eradicate even feeble opposition. Lucky us to have a role, I guess. All Americans don't get such a relatively frictionless opportunity. But we do: on November 4 we'll get to vote on a state redistricting plan that should yield 4 or 5 new Democratic Congresscritters.

It's kind of nauseating to overthrow our own anti-gerrymandering initiative -- but we have to fight and at least this is, not yet, a violent measure unless you are a GOP Congress-member losing your safe seat. 

And it's being led by our very flawed Governor who hopes to ride it to the White House. Sigh. 

Pretty boy puff piece from the Nob Hill Gazette, 2020

I'm a longtime San Franciscan. I know Newsom is a very mixed blessing. Sure, he advanced the cause of gay marriage back in the day. But in the same mayoral season he kicked homeless people for applause lines. Kind of like what he did last spring with trans people. As with all our recent mayors, beginning with Willie Brown, the overriding thrust of his term was to tame this formerly flamboyant city into a sterile corporate headquarters and real estate magnates' paradise.

On the other hand, having Newsom out trying to lead the charge against Trump is a net win. This is how our system is supposed to work: let our pols compete to show they can be the best at enacting their constituents' gut desires.  

Grumpy columnist George Skelton of the LATimes gets it:

“It is really a calculated power grab that dismantles the very safeguards voters put in place,” California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin said in a statement last week, echoing other party members. “This is Gavin the Gaslighter overturning the will of the voters and telling you it’s for your own good.”

Power grab? Sure. Overturning the voters’ will? Hardly.

Newsom is asking voters to express a new will–seeking permission to fight back against Trump’s underhanded attempt to redraw congressional districts in Texas and other red states so Republicans can retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.

First of all, that anti-gerrymandering vote creating the citizens’ commission was 15 years ago. It was a wise decision and badly needed, and still a wonderful concept in the abstract. But that was then, this is now....

... Second, that 2010 electorate no longer exists. Today’s electorate is substantially different. And it shouldn’t necessarily be tied to the past. ...

So we have to vote for this thing ... maybe even work for it. Now that's a tiresome reality. Newsom is not my leader, but resisting fascism is my cause and this is one bit of what we can do.

Good neighbors in Redwood City

 

A loud and cheerful little posse of anti-ICE protesters offered "a swig of community action" on the streets of downtown Redwood City Tuesday evening. There can be joy while speaking truth.

ICE is a masked, undemocratic secret police force that gives due process the finger and answers only to Donald Trump.

We will not stand by and do nothing while they disappear our community members, leaving nothing but trauma and despair behind. Let's show everyone in Redwood City and San Mateo County that we stand with our immigrant brothers and sisters in their time of need and we will resist ICE with everything we have.

They'll be back next Tuesday.

The questions come back, over and over again

Erudite Partner is up with a new essay, syndicated by TomDispatch, and appearing among other places at the LA Progressive. 

This one is an exercise in reflection on a long life of struggle for more peace, more justice, and basic sanity. It meets our strange, terrifying moment.

On Seeing the Future Too Clearly

... [On living through the Vietnam war...] We may not have foreseen it all — the assassinations, carpet bombings, tiger cages, and the Phoenix Program (the CIA’s first mass torture scheme) — but we were hardly surprised when it all finally came out. Today, there’s a consensus in this country that the Vietnam War was more than a mistake; it was a decade-long exercise in overreach and overkill.

... I sometimes think it’s the fate of many progressives for once in our lives to be right — over and over. This isn’t because we’re particularly good people, although some of my heroes are indeed good people. It’s at least in part because we are people with good luck. 

It’s been our good luck that, at some time in our lives, somebody offered us a place to stand, a viewpoint, an ethical way of grasping the world. ...

The advent of Trump/MAGA fascism demands of us, again, that we ask ourselves, where do we stand and why? 

The Supremes gone rogue

Leah Litman, University of Michigan law prof and former Supreme Court clerk, doesn't mess around. In Lawless, she argues, persuasively and with piercing humor that "the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes." Any pretense of deep legal reasoning from the Roberts court's major decisions is just insubstantial smoke covering BS. 

It's a pleasure to get the straight story, even if it is appropriately terrifying.

... the Supreme Court is extremely powerful. It is also poorly understood. The combination makes the Court pretty dangerous. It's easier for the Court to get away with, say, letting aspiring insurrectionists off the hook if people aren't paying attention, or if people think they must have misunderstood what is happening because it couldn't possibly be that ridiculous. 

Except ... it is that ridiculous. ...

It's been a (bad) process getting here. News consumers will recognize some landmarks along the way. 

The country has changed over the last several decades, with more diverse demographics and more inclusive median political views. The changes trend against the Republican Party's view on feminism (or as some Republicans like to call it, the "childless cat ladies") race ("Oh my God, Karen, you can't just ask [African] people why they are white?"), democracy (which some Republicans think is overrated, and maybe unconstitutional), corporate power (which some Republicans think should be virtually unlimited), government itself (which some Republicans think shouldn't exist), and more. Republicans have come to believe the dwindling support for their increasingly fringe views wrongs them. ... 

Since the early 2000s (with roots older than that), the Supreme Court has translated conservative grievance and other bad vibes into bad law. ... It is a little too coincidental that at the very moment Republicans gained a supermajority on the Supreme Court in 2020, the Court suddenly realized that the Constitution required the country to adopt the Republican Party's platform on abortion, voting rights, industry regulation, campaign finance, and a bunch of other stuff, too.

Litman urges us not to confused by mystification around the high court. 

The justices are not pulling Jedi mind tricks that people simply do and cannot understand. It's not like these guys (and Amy) are among the Nine Greatest Legal Minds in the Country. Heck, some of them are just nepo babies [she means Neil Gorsuch, remember him?] . ... These are exactly the kind of people you might expect to be appointed under a rigged system that is controlled by some out-of-touch weirdos. The minority-ruling party that gave the justices their jobs is currently gripped by some kind of antidemocratic fever dream, unconcerned with such things as law, facts, and will of the American people. 

Okay -- this book is not just denunciation of the limited qualifications of the Republicans on the current court. Litman carefully dissects the Court's rulings in five vital spheres in which they are working on enshrining reactionary legal theories. These are the chapters: on women's freedom -- The Ken-Surrection of the Courts; on LGBT rights -- "You Can't Sit with Us!"; on voting rights -- Winter Is Coming; on enabling oligarchs -- There's Always Money in America; toward dismantling the state as we know it -- The American Psychos of the Supreme Court.

Litman is not optimistic, but she remains hopeful that if the people are able to understand that the Court has gone bonkers, we'll figure out how to fix it. We really don't want to be ruled by cranks in black robes.

Okay, that got bleak. In my defense, this is a nonfiction book about the Supreme Court, and the Court is broken and is going to take an awful lot to fix. ... The world is not going to get better because we want it to and big changes will obviously take time ... So let's get started.

Imagine yourself at the beginning of the end of one of the great legal dramas of our time, when the law professor says to Elle, "If you are going to let one stupid prick ruin your life, you're not the girl I thought you were." 

Only now she's saying, "If you're going to let one stupid Court ruin your democracy, you're not the girl (or boy, or nonbinary reader) I thought you were." 

... They've stolen a Court and they are practically daring anyone to challenge them. It's time to call their bluff. 

I found this book a surprisingly enjoyable romp through the wilds of Republican legal malfeasance. The details were not new to me; I follow this stuff. But I love Litman's attitude; we could all use more of it.

• • •

You can follow a wealth of writing and writers who unpack legal developments for untutored citizens. Some of my current favorites include Jay Kuo, Chris Geidner at Law Dork, and Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse. We don't have to be mystified by law; we've got a right to demand that whatever law we live under should be "of the people, by the people, and for the people" in President Lincoln's words.

Fight the Trump Takeover: Sausalito, Marin County, California

Marin County locals turned out on Bridgeway in Sausalito on Saturday to give the Orange Man a piece of their minds. Many signs were quite militant.

Indivisible Marin called for the demonstration as part the local manifestation of what they call national "Fight the Trump Takeover" protests: 

"The state of Texas is attempting to redistrict to steal five Democrat-held congressional districts to rig the 2026 midterms. It’s all being done at the behest of Trump. He knows he can't win any other way. And Trump isn’t stopping in Texas. He’s targeting Missouri, Ohio, Florida, and every state he can twist to help him steal Congress next year. This is about the future of our democracy and the time to fight this power grab is NOW."

These Marinites get it. Their signs speak less to particular Trumpian issues, injustices and crimes, but more to a general feeling of disgust.

 

Trump can, and does, try to "flood the zone with shit" and distract us through the sheer volume of his outrages against our country and historic democracy. But instead of overwhelming us, these little protests -- again and again -- seem to bring out new people activated by new depravity. These folks aren't giving up.

A practical guide to clearing the Trump-induced fog

At The Status Kuo, rights activist Jay Kuo offers a useful framework for rejecting the onslaught of BS that defines the Trump era.

Preparing mental defenses for a world of alternative realities

Trump’s lies are so legion, and his attacks upon our institutions and norms so widespread, that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The media, when it is doing its job, at best fact-checks the fake stories and reports. 

But missing from all of this is a solid way to bucket the lies and build resilience to them.Today I want to talk about four strategies to diminish the effect of Trump’s manipulations and lies. These aren’t exhaustive, but they can be helpful to keep us all from being washed away in the flood.

First, recognize gaslighting. A steady stream of lies can make anyone begin to question reality. As an abusive bully, Trump gaslights instinctively as a way to dominate. He wants us all to feel like we’re the crazy ones, not him. A way to defeat this, quite simply, is to reassert the truth publicly.

For example, Trump regularly claims that Ukraine is responsible for the war. He has repeated that lie so many times that his followers have bought into it. The indisputable truth, which we all experienced in real time in February of 2022, is that Russia invaded Ukraine. We shouldn’t have to keep repeating this, but it is necessary in the face of Trump’s stream of lies, and it helps the people of Ukraine feel a little less crazy from hearing the upside down version all the time.

Second, understand his true targets. Punishing people who tell the truth doesn’t just impact those people negatively; it spreads a chill making others less willing to step forward. Trump knows that he only has to strike out against a handful of universities (or banks, law firms, media companies, you name it) and the ones he didn’t hit will think twice about crossing him. 

At least that is Trump’s hope. This is why Prof. Timothy’s Snyder’s first rule for resisting fascism is to not capitulate in advance. It’s one thing to fold your hand if Trump actually targets you. Few can withstand the full force of the government. But it’s entirely another to give up without a fight. Within our communities, professional associations, schools and social networks, we need to be on the lookout for capitulation and to call it out.

Third, watch for “alternative facts.” Kellyanne Conway was roundly mocked during Trump’s first term for coining the term, but this is a real and dangerous threat today. Examples range from what we saw this week from Trump’s Heritage Foundation economist presenting bogus and improbable “household income” gains to RFK Jr.’s ideologically motivated quest to link vaccines to autism.

The first sign that alternative facts are coming is that they will get rid of official science or fact-based reporting, just as they have done with the BLS Commissioner and her findings. This opens the door to subjective reports that are more favorable to the Trump regime. When you see them purging scientists, data analysts and statisticians, understand that they are paving the way for alternative facts. We must identify these publicly and call for all to reject them.

Fourth, listen for dogwhistles. We have witnessed Trump’s nonstop attacks on academic and scientific institutions, DEI and any critiques of our history. Most understand that this is red meat for his MAGA base. But the reason these attacks are effective often goes unsaid.

Trump has riled up uneducated voters and pumped them full of grievances, identifying “elites,” “illegal immigrants” and “DEI” as the cause of their economic problems, rather than the corporations and uber wealthy who are robbing them blind and actively destroying their remaining social safety nets. He has even managed to convince some liberals that the reason universities must be punished is because they allowed antisemitism to spread unchecked.

The fact is, Trump doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism, or the plight of the working poor, or women athletes. He’s using these wedges to advance his own attacks upon the parts of civil society most likely to oppose him effectively.

It sure looks as if we're all going to get better and better at this as the Trump show ages and decays. 

Friday cat blogging

You may be asking: "don't you feed that cat?" Of course we do. But regular supplies of cat food and cat treats don't discourage her from chasing her favorite flavor: plastic! My watch band is often at risk of those teeth also. Here, the EP is trying to gently recapture the remote. 

On the birthday of Social Security

 

Historian Heather Cox Richardson explains what the people of these United States won 90 years ago.

On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. ... The Social Security Act established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. It was a sweeping reworking of the relationship between the government and its citizens, using the power of taxation to pool funds to provide a basic social safety net. 

The current Trump regime is out to destroy the system, of course. More for their billionaire buddies, less for the people. They are also striving to reduce the workforce that keeps our safety net, such as it is, functioning.

So some of the people turned out at the Federal Building in San Francisco to say "no"!

Solidarity mattered in 1935 and it matters today.

Resistance rises

Experts agree: millions of Americans are showing up in the streets, non-violently, in response to the second Trump regime.

The best known scholar of contemporary popular protest in the United States is probably Erica Chenoweth from the Harvard Kennedy School. Along with co-authors Soha Hammam, Jeremy Pressman, and Christopher Wiley Shay, they report:

New data shows No Kings was one of the largest days of protest in US history 

The historic number of [June 14] No Kings Day protesters and their expansive geographic spread are signs of a growing and durable pro-democracy movement. 

... While media attention is often focused on actors acquiescing to Trump’s demands, in the streets the popular protest movement continues to push back against the administration with notable persistence over time. Consistent with our past reporting, 2025 so far has seen far more protests than were recorded at this time in 2017 — a trend that continues through at least the end of July.

... In addition to the number of protests taking place, there are, of course, other indicators of the growing commitment of protesters to participate in a durable pro-democracy movement. One indicator is the willingness to participate in peaceful protests despite the threat of political violence. Tens of thousands turned out in Saint Paul despite the killing and attempted killing of several Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses the morning of the No Kings protests on June 14, followed by a warning of potential targeting of protesters by the at-large gunman. One peaceful marcher was killed in Salt Lake City by an armed volunteer who fired shots at a nearby armed man, who was also wounded. Counter-protesters in several locations around the country brandished weapons at No Kings protesters. However, those incidents of violence were exceptions — over 99.5 percent of reported protests had no injuries or property damage, with the latter reported in only 10 locations (just under 0.5 percent). 

... Popular mobilization through protest is neither the entirety of the opposition to the Trump administration nor sufficient in and of itself to compel change. But historically, the mass public — in tandem with other societal actors like opposition politicians, lawyers, labor unions and courts — is likely to continue to play a crucial role in the U.S. and elsewhere in standing for the rule of law and democratic norms. 

And we don't quit.

* In three national mass trainings since mid-July under the banner One Million Rising, hundreds of thousands of people have been introduced via zoom to the basics of organizing opposition to the Trump regime. Participation has been huge:

• 250,000+ people have been skilled up and are ready to take action.
• 1300+ subsequent in person gatherings have taken place.
• 400+ more gatherings are scheduled.

There's always room for more people to get involved; visit One Million Rising, view the trainings. (If you are an old time agitator like me, and already embedded in a community of resistance, you might able to skip to Session 3 which offers three specific action options. )

* Now Trump has directly sent his personal secret police (ICE, SS, FBI, etc.) and troops into DC. But the people of the capital are not giving up. Check out Free DC for the latest. Note especially the call to allies across the country.

* And let's not forget that the brave people of Los Angeles have gotten themselves together to resist Trump's first experiment with occupying a blue city. Our media have been neglecting this story, but we can all learn from Michelle Goldberg's tale of resistance: They Saw Their Neighbors Taken Away by ICE. Then They Made a Plan. 

We can do this; in fact, we are doing it!

She knows what to do with bars ...

  

When the Orange Man militarized DC on Monday, Erica Berg took her protest straight to the White House.

 

Seems like this is a moment to find a local protest this weekend - and apparently every weekend for the foreseeable future. 

Release the files!

From where I sit -- both lesbian and old -- Jeffrey Epstein seems such an obvious predatory creep (as does the Donald) that it is hard to imagine that he was able to pull off his sex capers with "voluntary" cooperation of even the most young, confused, and materially desperate girls. Their survival instincts should have said "run, don't walk, out of here." But Epstein did his business. He was slime -- as was and is his buddy-in-crime who has gone on to broader scale infamies.

(If you want to understand how Epstein, Maxwell, and Co. ever pulled off their schemes,  I'd recommend Peggy Orenstein's Girls and Sex which describes well how the culture makes girls vulnerable to predators.)

So now we are living in the backwash of Epstein and the sprawling conspiracy theories his crimes have become a part of. 

Irish observer Fintan O'Toole takes a swing at the meaning of the Epstein moment and the difficulties it makes for the Donald: 

For Trump, the great problem of the Jeffrey Epstein story is that it is the point at which paranoid fantasy melds into grotesque reality. ...

... As [James] Ball, [investigator of the QAnon conspiracy] puts it, Trump serves in the QAnon worldview as “the genius mastermind orchestrating an equally complicated counter-movement” against the satanic cabal. The Epstein files are not just records of a criminal investigation, they are an updating of the Book of Revelation. To reveal them is to open the Seventh Seal and release God’s judgment onto the earth. How can the savior simply shrug and murmur that there is no seventh seal? 

It says a great deal about contemporary America that Trump’s breach of faith with this apocalyptic narrative is, for much of his political base, a far bigger betrayal than taking away its health care or failing to bring down food prices.

On August 5 the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for several witnesses to appear at planning hearings into Epstein’s crimes, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. But he also served the Justice Department a subpoena demanding that it produce its Epstein-related files by August 19. 

If Trump orders the department not to comply, he becomes part of the great conspiracy. This would become a satisfyingly shocking twist in this paranoid story: the good guy was actually the archvillain all along. 

If he allows it to comply, he feeds the beast he is trying to kill. We know that the release of documents never stops the search for the ultimate exposure of the plot. It gives the searchers a vast new terrain of clues and anomalies to explore, a giant new web of connections to map. 

And if Trump tries a middle course, releasing the documents with references to himself redacted, he merely proves that he has something to hide.

Will this bring him down? Almost certainly not. But it may deprive him of his greatest asset: his immunity from scandal. It is a force field that, once breached, ceases to function. 

If he loses his power to decree that all evidence of his misdeeds is a hoax, the rest of his term will be soundtracked not by the sweet melancholy of “Memory” but by the more agonized strains of “Suspicious Minds.”

Release the files now!