We're an unruly and unruled people

After reading at least twenty 100 Days of Trump appraisals of the regime, I think I give my prize for doing the distasteful subject the most justice to historian and opinon writer Jamelle Bouie (gift article).

Trump has wreaked havoc throughout the federal government and destroyed our relationships abroad, but his main goal — the total subordination of American democracy to his will — remains unfulfilled. 

You could even say it is slipping away, as he sabotages his administration with a ruinous trade war, deals with the stiff opposition of a large part of civil society and plummets in his standing with most Americans.

If measured by his ultimate aims, Trump’s first 100 days are a failure....  Even though Trump seems to think he is issuing decrees, the truth is that his directives are provisional and subject to the judgment of the courts as well as future administrations. And if there is a major story to tell about Trump’s second term so far, it is the extent to which many of the president’s most sweeping executive actions have been tied up in the federal judiciary. The White House, while loath to admit it, has even had to back down in the face of hostile rulings. ..

... MAGA propaganda notwithstanding, Trump is not some grand impresario skillfully playing American politics to his precise tune. He may want to bend the nation to his will, but he does not have the capacity to do the kind of work that would make this possible, as well as permanent — or as close to permanent as lawmaking allows. If Roosevelt’s legislative skill was a demonstration of his strength, then Trump’s reliance on executive orders is a sign of his weakness. 

Roosevelt could orchestrate the transformative program of his 100 days because he tied his plan to American government as it existed, even as he worked to remake it. Trump has pursued his by treating the American government as he wants it to be. It is very difficult to close the gap between those two things, and it will become all the more difficult as the bottom falls out of Trump’s standing with the public.

Bouie warns that Trumps' relative failures in his first 100 days are no reason for incautious confidence that we can hold off his attempt, abetted by tech bros, to end our democratic experiment.

Do not take this as succor. Do not think it means that the United States is in the clear. American democracy is still as fragile and as vulnerable as it has ever been, and Trump is still motivated to make his vision a reality. He may even lash out as it becomes clear that he has lost whatever initiative he had to begin with. This makes his first 100 days less a triumph for him than a warning to the rest of us. The unthinkable, an American dictatorship, is possible.

But Trump may not have the skills to effect the permanent transformation of his despotic dreams. Despite the chaos of the moment, it is possible that freedom-loving Americans have gotten the luck of the draw. Our most serious would-be tyrant is also among our least capable presidents, and he has surrounded himself with people as fundamentally flawed as he is.

On Inauguration Day, Donald Trump seemed to be on top of the world. One hundred days later, he’s all but a lame duck. He can rage and he can bluster — and he will do a lot more damage — but the fact of the matter is that he can be beaten. Now the task is to deliver him his defeat.

About ten days ago, I began to sense that people and institutions were pulling themselves together to fight the MAGA authoritarian onslaught. Folks are taking on Tesla, immigration prisons, even the defense of ultra-rich Harvard. We going to be badly damaged in this fight; some people -- as usual those who were always in the most need of support from society -- will not make it to another side. But there is no reason to give up the fight now.

Victorious Canadian leader brings more than sticking it to Trump

I was so glad to pass along that Canada had repudiated Donald Trump in an election in which the American bully had made himself an issue, I didn't do much research on Mark Carney, the guy who led the Liberal Party victory. 

It turns out, according to US environmentalist champion Bill McKibben, Carney is not just some smart, central banker turned politician who grabbed a chance to save his party from electoral purgatory and stick a nationalist finger in Donald Trump's eye: 

... though he was elected a little by accident (albeit after a brilliant campaign) it means something far more: in Carney we now have the world leader who knows more than any of his peers about climate change. And who knows roughly twenty times as much about climate and energy economics as anyone else in power. He may turn out to be a truly crucial figure in the fight to turn the climate tide.

I’ve been watching Carney for a long time. A graduate, of course, of both Harvard and Goldman Sachs, he was governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis and performed admirably enough that the queen asked him over to run the Bank of England.  (It’s probably not quite how that works, but close enough). While in that job, he had the fun of trying to deal with the UK’s Brexit decision, and by all accounts again performed better than one might have expected. So now he gets the task of cleaning up after Trump’s insane tariffs. 

But actually it’s the much bigger mess—the one in the atmosphere—that I suspect has long interested him most. In 2014, at a World Bank panel, he quite forthrightly pointed out that we would need to leave the “vast majority” of fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we were at all serious about holding the increase in the temperature of the planet below two degrees. This was, on the one hand, clearly obvious to anyone who had looked at the physics, but on the other hand not something that most leaders were willing to say at the time, or to this day. Those of us who had recently launched the fossil fuel divestment campaign found it to be a great boost—one of three or four crucial moments that turned this into one of the largest anti-corporate campaigns in history. 

McKibben credits Carney with helping win the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, the high water mark of international recognition of the planet-wide emergency we are living. 

[Carney] now finds himself leading a nation hard hit by climate change: Canada has a front row seat the melt of the Arctic, which is the fastest-heating part of the earth; it has watched its boreal forests burn like never before in recent years. ...

... I’d say that the rest of the world is going to recognize Carney as the most likely person to midwife us through this transition. I think he’s not done playing a world-historical role, and for that if nothing else we can thank Donald Trump.

• • •

Karen Kelly pointed me to this updated version of a Canadian nationalist statement even more appropriate to the moment. Enjoy.

Canada strikes back

The election up north demonstrated that our neighbors aren't having any of the Orange Bully. 

This is old, but I think captures the sentiment:

 

Doing democracy

I've never been very good at the necessary task of agitating my own Congresscritter for more action for better policies. I think I've been on two visits to Congressional offices in the last 35 years  -- of course for me the target has been Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi which gives me a sort of an excuse: for most that period her real constituents were not her local voters but more the recalcitrant members of her fractious Democratic caucus. As constituents, we felt a little beside the point and we were.

But I love reading accounts from people newly inspired to do this work of direct democracy. In the present moment, agitating slow poke Democrats and useless Republicans is part of the necessary struggle.

At my core I’m a storyteller. I love probing the past and the present to learn the “story of us” and how these true-to-life tales might inspire us to become better humans.

Dr. Jemar Tisby is an historian of religious faith focused on racial justice and a prolific writer and preacher. But he'd never done a Congressional visit before this past month: 

People Power

I'll be marinating on my time visiting offices of representatives and senators for a long time.

This was precisely what our government was set up to do--provide an avenue where constituents can let the elected officials who represent them know their concerns and have a reasonable expectation of being heard.

In its most basic sense, democracy means "people power."

That day I felt like a person who at least had the power to express my views to the people empowered to make policies.

The experience made the work of the federal government less opaque and intimidating.

At the end of the day, all the bills, all the laws, all the deliberations are done by people.

Regular human beings.

They are imperfect, they have fears, hopes, and worries.

They can also be influenced.

The most frequent refrain I heard throughout my day on Capitol Hill was, "Your voice matters." ...

... when we speak, we disrupt complacency. We remind officials and politicians that the people still have power.

As I looked back at the marble of the Capitol, I felt it again: this is our building, our Congress, our country. Our democracy. And we must never let them forget it.

If we can possibly stand it, more of us need to do it! Or at least call these reps up, frequently.

• • •

Tisby is author of several books. I've just finished reading one as an audio book and looking over the young adult version of the same material snagged from the wonderful Cape Cod library system.

Both tell stories of individuals central to the US Black experience -- central to "doing democracy" in the context of the long freedom struggle -- that may be unfamiliar to most white readers. Tisby is particularly attentive to the roles and accomplishments of women. Highly recommended.

When the people lead, our leaders will follow

It was great to see that House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Cory Booker held a "sit in" on the Capitol steps this Sunday morning to denounce the Trump regime's budget plans. 

“Republicans in Congress are proposing cuts that will take food from children, health care from the sick, and dignity from those already struggling," Booker said. "It's wrong. To stop it, we all must say so — clearly, courageously, and together. Speaking out and speaking up is how we will convince four Republicans in the House and Senate to do the right thing and vote no.” NorthJersey.com

Senator Chris Murphy reported one phase of Democratic Senators' push back.

Last night in the Senate, something really important happened. Republicans forced us to debate their billionaire bailout budget framework. We started voting at 6 PM because they knew doing it in the dark of night would minimize media coverage. And they do not want the American people to see how blatant their handover of our government to the billionaire class is.

So I want to explain what happened last night and what we did to fight back. The apex of Republicans’ plan to turn over our government to their wealthy cronies is a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. And they plan to pay for it with cuts to programs that working people rely on. Popular and necessary programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, are all being targeted. In order to pass the tax cut, Republicans have to go through a series of procedural steps. Last night, they took the first step which requires them to pass an outline of their plan, but with it, any senator can offer as many amendments as we want. So my Democratic colleagues and I did just that. ...

So what did we propose? We proposed no tax cuts for anyone who makes a billion dollars a year. We made them vote on whether or not Elon Musk and DOGE should have limitless access to Americans’ personal data. We made them vote on whether to protect IVF and require insurers to cover it. Every single amendment Democrats proposed was shot down. On almost every single amendment, Republicans universally opposed it. Every Republican voted against our proposal to prevent more tax cuts for billionaires. The corruption and theft is happening in the open here.

The whole game for Republicans is taking your money and giving it to the wealthiest corporations and billionaires — even if it means kicking your parents out of a nursing home or turning off Medicaid for the poorest children. They know what they are doing is deeply unpopular. They are offering a tax cut to the most wealthy that is 850 times larger than what they are offering working people. Oh and by the way, any tax cuts for working people are going to be washed out by higher costs for basic necessities, like health care and food. It’s a fundamental injustice ....

Dems don't have the votes to completely stop Republican priorities, but they've gotten around to fighting. Angry constituents in town halls and all those phone calls are making a difference.

Senatorial signs of life follow Cory Booker's 25 hour filibuster at the beginning of the month and Senator Chris Van Hollen's trip to El Salvador to check on abducted Marylander Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Several Congressional reps followed after Van Hollen. 

It's notable that Trump doesn't even bother to try implement his wish list by passing laws, instead issuing a blizzard of executive orders. He can't rule with even the pretense of regular process. Republicans have tiny, fractious majorities and couldn't pass most of this stuff. And a multitude of people's lawyers are doing a lot to stymie the executive orders.

Meanwhile Representative Jaime Raskin and Senator Richard Blumenthal are demanding that the big law firms which have capitulated to Trump's threats to their business must reveal what they've promised to our law-breaking president. Legal ethics complaints in the states where they have business could seriously impact their standing; so could the refusal of law students to seek jobs with them. 

Harvard University's vigorous pushback against the Trump regime's attempt to control institution has freed up nearly 500 colleges and universities to affirm their intent to maintain free speech and free inquiry under the First Amendment.

As Josh Marshall has reminded us: All political power is unitary. ... It’s all one thing. Everywhere that Trump/Musk/MAGA meets resistance helps every other form of resistance to tyranny. That's the other side of Republican's "flood the zone with shit" strategy; as the push back grows, they'll find a free people sniping from every side. 

We are doing this. Find a May Day rally near you.

The disappearance of Andry José Hernández Romero

One of the fascinating findings in the slew of polls surfacing reactions to Trump's 100 day bundle of blunders is that people now recognize the name Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The story has broken through of the Maryland sheetmetal worker deported illegally (and in error?) to a Salvadoran torture prison. Kudos to his wife and his lawyer for their continued legal agitation for his return. 

And kudos to Senator Chris Van Hollen who dared to travel to El Salvador to see a person taken from the state he represents. His mission alarmed me; I'm old enough to remember when Congressman Leo Ryan attempted such a mission to the Guyana jungle and was murdered for his pains. 

Following Van Hollen, several other members of Congress have made the trip. They have not been allowed to see the prisoners, but they can help make us all more aware of these kidnapped men.

On of those Congresspeople, Representative Robert Garcia, a gay Democrat from the Long Beach area, is trying particularly to bring light to bear on Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay, 31-year-old Venezuelan makeup. Hernández Romero was classified as a gang member because he has tattoos that say “mom” and “dad” with crowns....

no one ... heard from Hernández Romero, who has been documented to have no history of criminal activity, since March 14.

Jonathan Blitzer, a journalist at The New Yorker, found out a lot about tattoos and young Venezuelans. 

Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who’s reported extensively on criminal groups in Venezuela, published the definitive book on Tren de Aragua. “The truth is that a tattoo identifying Tren de Aragua does not exist,” she told me. “Tren de Aragua does not use any tattoos as a form of gang identification; no Venezuelan gang does.” In Rísquez’s view, tattoos are a completely unreliable indicator of someone’s criminal proclivities; rather, they reflect contemporary fashions and socioeconomic class. “Most young people in Latin America these days have tattoos,” she said. ... Rísquez went on, “People get a tattoo because it means something particular to them.”

Andry’s tattoos have an immediate significance to the people in [the small Venezuelan town of] Capacho. For a hundred and eight years, the town has held a special festival for the celebration of Three Kings Day, replete with elaborate theatrical acts, sets, costumes, and casts of dozens. The holiday is observed widely across Venezuela (and indeed throughout much of the Christian world), but the production in Capacho is legendary in the country and has been awarded distinguished status as a national patrimonio, or heritage. “This work represents for the community of Capacho the greatest cultural expression of street theatre,” Jorge Cárdenas, a leader of the Foundation of Reyes Magos of Capacho, told me earlier this week. “To speak of Capacho is to speak of the Reyes Magos.”

Cárdenas has known Andry since he was a boy, when Andry participated in the festival’s program for children. When we spoke, Cárdenas described Andry’s contributions to local theatre, including all of his roles in the festival itself, before leaving me a series of messages brimming with literary and religious detail. Andry was one of the thirteen main actors in the show, a makeup stylist for the others, and the costume designer for nearly two dozen dancers. One of the principal symbols of Three Kings Day is a crown. “Andry is a great lover of the festival, and the two crowns on his wrists are a tribute to his passion for it,” Cárdenas said.

Nobody has been able to speak to Hernández Romero since ICE secretly flew him away.

Andry’s American lawyers are caught in something of a paradox. They’re vocal about sharing the details of his disappearance, because, if he fades from the news, his situation may grow even more dire. Yet Andry is also an asylum seeker. Disclosing the full identity of someone fleeing persecution is inherently risky. ...

[Lindsay] Toczylowski and her colleagues had debated whether disclosing that Andry was gay would make him a target inside the Salvadoran prison. They decided it was pointless to try to hide it, and that maybe it would make the public more sympathetic to his case. Ordinarily, this would be a conversation they could have had with Andry. Under the circumstances, all they could do was discuss it with his mother. She told them, “Do absolutely everything you can to get him out of there.”

Congressman Garcia, himself an immigrant who came to this country as a child from Peru, gets the level of danger to Hernández Romero. 

“He clearly was scared for his life because he was gay,” Garcia said. “And then we picked him up and sent him to this horrific prison. He hasn’t had any access to his family or legal counsel or really anyone.” ...

...  Garcia said the situation is growing more alarming by the day, particularly in light of the Trump administration’s continued use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove immigrants without hearings — even after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency order blocking further deportations under the statute.

“Right now, Trump is still defying the Supreme Court,” Garcia told The Advocate. “He’s doubling down on the idea that Andry is not coming back when the Supreme Court is saying that he should.”

... “We have to highlight his case and make sure people know.” 

The Trump regime would like nothing more than for its victims to simply disappear. We can't let them get away with this.

Resistance is NOT futile

A new NYTimes poll [gift link] confirms what my spidey sense has been feeling: Trump is sinking in the esteem of the people as he blunders to the 100 day mark of his term. Even FoxNews has noticed he's stuck below recent presidents. That doesn't mean he's no longer dangerous, but there is a shift.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Simon Rosenberg's Hopium Chronicles project can come across as a little hokey. He's an FDR Democrat, forever believing that Democrats will someday push a social welfare state over the finish line. But in the present political situation, he deserves credit for building one community of resistance activists whose intensity is second to none, folks who diligently and strategically push Dems to act as their best selves instead of cowering in confusion. 

He sums up the present moment this way: 

... magical thinking in Trump’s diseased brain about how his “strength” will force the American people and the world to bend the knee is crashing hard against reality. He sees himself as a hero. The nation and the world increasingly sees him as a villain - a foolish, weak, failed, and ridiculous man with his painted face, orange hair and a girdle working overtime. A big blubbery baby man as we like to say here. ...

Like Putin’s delusional miscalculation in underestimating Ukraine’s fight and resolve, Trump has grossly underestimated the resistance he would face here and abroad. It doesn’t mean he won’t keep arresting judges on Trumped-up charges; or deporting an American citizen child with cancer; or keep trying to send people to his Salvadoran Gulag; or unraveling our public health system; or waging war against science, research and learning. All of that may continue and we have to keep fighting it all as hard as he can [fight us]. But this early version of Trump 2.0 has failed.

They are constantly in retreat. They’ve lost the country. Folks are not bending the knee. A majority of the country has come to understand the Emperor has no clothes, and has pulled the curtain back from the Wizard. Without his “strength” what many are seeing now is a desperate, pathetic old man, far more a fool, a fuck up and a lame duck than the strongman he sees in the mirror when he applies his spray tan in the morning.

... So, finally, friends, let us on this Saturday remind ourselves of where are now:
    •    We are stronger, he is weaker
    •    We have to continue to act with great urgency as he is breaking things that will be hard if not impossible to repair
    •    In seeing public opinion break against Trump we are getting confirmation that our work matters, that minds can change, things can be different and even - shall we say it - better?

Let's keep the pressure on from all our very different communities ...

Playing for the USofA: The Trump regime ignores the "L"

It's not just lily-livered libs who are worried. 

Mike Florio, who has written ProFootballTalk (now part of NBCSports) since 2001, took time out from his prep for the NFL Draft to express his distress about the lawless behavior of the Trump regime:

A quick break from football, for something more important

... Our country currently is in a crisis. It’s blossoming in multiple ways, through multiple pieces of litigation. The main issue that has been weighing me down mentally and emotionally in recent days is the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

My concerns are irrelevant to whether he’s a member of MS-13. Or whether he should or shouldn’t be deported. Or whether he is or isn’t a good husband and father. The source of my stress is that his case exposes a basic, fundamental threat to our system of government.

It’s hard to type those words without regarding them as over the top. I wish they were. They aren’t. At the core of all of the rhetoric and rambling and ad hominem attacks and both-sides, “what-about?” bullshit resides a core question of whether the executive, legislative, and judicial branches will continue to be co-equal. As the founders intended. And as the country has operated, for nearly 250 years.

... I worked in the legal profession for 18 years. When you win, you win. When you lose, you lose. You may not like losing, but you’ve lost. You deal with it, and you move on.

Not this executive branch. When this executive branch loses, the judges are vaguely threatened with impeachment. They are attacked as impeding the will of the government. And their orders are ignored.

Yes, they’re appealed. And appealed. At some point, the appeals have been exhausted and the “L” must be taken and respected.

... In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — and in other cases — that’s not happening. The executive branch is openly refusing to honor the orders of the judicial branch....

He cites one of the judges who have tried to get the Trump regime to play by the rules.

... “We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos,” [conservative US Circuit Court] Judge [J. Harvie] Wilkinson wrote. “This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”

The language is beautiful and poignant. The message is dire. Unless and until the executive branch commits to respecting all decisions of the judicial branch, our system will begin to disintegrate. And the executive branch will become a monarchy, an authoritarian regime, a dictatorship.

I know it sounds hyperbolic. In this case, it’s true.

Again, it’s not about the facts of any one case. It’s about the outcome of a process that has been in place since the birth of the republic to resolve disputes. In every case that is resolved by the courts, someone wins and someone loses. In the Abrego Garcia case and others like it, the executive branch has realized that a win remains possible, in the form of ignoring that it has lost....

... We’re playing for the United States of America. And if the current executive branch refuses to acknowledge the basic truth that it is, or should be, playing for the United States of America, the system has necessarily commenced its collapse.

Judge Wilkinson clings to the hope that the executive branch will abandon its current course. All Americans who truly love this country should have that hope. And we all should pray that it comes to fruition.

We might have known this was how Trump would treat the courts and the law. After all, he lost the 2020 election fair and square yet still tried to use a mob of dupes to overturn it. 

The NYTimes reports today that the ACLU is trying mightily to get the courts to curb Trump's lawless attempt to apply the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to a situation that is not a war, nor in any rational understanding "an invasion." Sheet metal workers and make-up artists are not enemy soldiers. 

Trump is flailing

Today's polling tells a story of the Trump regime's growing vulnerability and instability. Some morsels via Newsweek:

In a Pew Research Center poll,  

Trump has an overall approval rating of 40 percent compared to a disapproval rating of 59 percent. The survey shows that 44 percent of men approve of the job the president is doing compared to 55 percent who disapprove.

Trump fares worse with women, as 37 percent approve of the job he's doing compared to 62 percent who disapprove.

The president's approval rating is underwater with white, Hispanic and Asian Americans but none more glaring than his approval rating with Black U.S. adults. The survey shows that only 14 percent of Black Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as commander in chief, versus 82 percent who disapprove.

The survey was taken from April 7 through April 13 among 3,589 respondents. The poll has a margin of error of 1.8 percent.

The poll also details Trump's approval rating among age groups. Again, Trump is in the negatives with every group. Among those ages 18 to 29, 36 percent approve of the job Trump is doing compared to 63 percent who disapprove.

That's brutal for the mad king. And it serves all of us well to never let him forget it. 

• • •

Henry Farrell teaches international politics at Johns Hopkins University, so presumably he's at least adjacent to the experience of the Trumpian threat in research institutions. He has some useful thoughts on strategy for the growing resistance.

The Trump regime does not impress him as being especially competent at the domination game. 

... authoritarian rulers devote a lot of time to preventing unrest from breaking out. Their best strategy for survival is to actually be popular. But that is hard to keep up. Acceptable substitutes include preventing people from discovering how unpopular the regime is, controlling media (to prevent coordination), and deploying the threat of physical violence to intimidate.

... The authoritarian who wants to build a ruling coalition needs not only to make their success seem like a fait accompli. [Farrell uses a female generic pronoun in this piece; I find it more annoying than enlightening in this context, but here goes.] She also needs to persuade others that they will prosper rather than suffer from joining. The aspiring authoritarian needs to persuade allies that she (and they) will predate on outgroups, and that she will not predate on the allies themselves.

... That process of persuasion becomes more difficult, the more unbounded the ambitions of the wannabe authoritarian are .... The more powerful and unruly the authoritarian becomes, the more readily they can make promises or threats. Equally, the less credible those promises or threats become, both to allies and to enemies. Absolute power implies absolute impunity: if I enjoy such power, I have no incentive to behave trustworthily to anyone.

For just the same reason, no-one has any incentive to trust me. You will not believe my promises, and you may fear that if you give in to my threats, you will only open yourself to further abuse. Thus - as I, as an aspiring authoritarian move closer to unbounded control, I need to artfully balance the benefits that my power can bring to my allies with the fear those allies may reasonably have over what happens should that power be turned against them.

... Trump’s strategy has been much less effective than it might have been. Trump has shown he is unwilling to stick by deals. ...The good news is that the Trump administration is playing its hand very badly. If Trump had been more willing to accept defectors into his camp, by sticking to deals that gave them something worth having, he would be in a much stronger situation than he is at the moment. Furthermore, and somewhat less obviously, this may also disrupt his own existing coalition. Wall Street, for example, may worry that it is next for the chopping block. Silicon Valley the same.

That is, nothing about Trump's behavior in asserting his (illegitimate) power should impress his targets as proving he is offering a viable side to play on. He's not. Institutions tempted to try to cooperate with him realize quickly that there is no reliable there there.

But Farrell points out that people building opposition also face challenges. The good news is we're all over the map; the less good news is that we don't necessarily know each other (yet) and that we don't (yet) act in concert.

The bad news is that the opposition is much more disorganized than it ought to be. Coordination is bolstered by shared knowledge that others will coordinate too. We don’t have that, in part because of lack of leadership, in part because of a media landscape that makes it difficult to generate such shared knowledge... 

Our presumptions about what other people think can play an extraordinarily powerful role in shaping how we ourselves think, and what we are prepared to do. And in a country where such presumptions can be grossly skewed, it can be very hard to generate coordinated action. Finally, exactly because the opposition is disorganized, and because humans are human, it faces its own collective version of Trump’s temptation to humiliate and subjugate defectors from the other side, rather than welcoming them in.

Farrell has suggestions that he considers obvious:

•  ... Figure out how to generate common knowledge that will enable coordination. Protests - especially if they are widespread, and especially if they happen in unusual places, or involve surprising coalitions can help generate information cascades. But getting media coverage and broader conversation is important.

• ... Welcome in the strayed sheep, and work on widening the cracks in the other coalition. Leopard-face-eating memes may feel personally satisfying, but they usually do not ease the process of converting disillusioned opponents into active allies.

• ... Help build your coalition as far as it can go. Do everything you can to minimize defections from it, and to maximize defections from the other side. Take advantage of the opposition’s vulnerabilities and mistakes - especially the trust problems that are likely to flourish in a coalition around an actor who aspires to untrammeled power and is deeply untrustworthy 

•... And do what you can now; things are likely to get much harder, very quickly, if the opposition’s victory becomes a self-confirming expectation.

Good stuff this. Thoughts: 

• we're all going to have to generate common knowledge under the mainstream radar until the usual suspects realize we're a force and good for business. Think what Brad Newsham has managed with his beach protests!

 • we haven't got time or space for excluding past irritants and even enemies in the big tent we need. Yes, that means I sometimes have to read David Brooks (barf!).

•  Let's keep working!

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy

According to CNN Business, Elon Musk has been having a bad season in his Tesla business:

The automaker reported its revenue fell 9%, with auto revenue falling 20%. Adjusted income tumbled 39%. Those drops were bigger than forecast. It’s net income, the strictest definition of its profitability, plunged 71% compared to a year earlier.

Tesla warned investors in early April that it had suffered its biggest drop in sales in its history during the first quarter, delivering 50,000 fewer vehicles compared to the first three months of last year. The sales plunge meant that Tesla recorded its lowest sales in nearly three years.

The decline is stunning for a company that until recently was reporting year-over-year sales growth of between 20% and 100% virtually every quarter, which was largely responsible for its lofty stock price that made it worth more than any other automaker in the world.

Europe doesn't want his cars; neither does China which makes better, cheaper electric vehicles. The Cybertruck is a complete bust with eight recalls in 2024 and 2025. Trump's tariffs will screw up the US market. 

Meanwhile #Tesladtakedown protests give ordinary Americans a target on which to take out their disgust with the Trump regime. 

Elon's having a well deserved bad moment.

Rendition returns

Erudite Partner points out: 

Trump Harvests Autocratic Powers Planted by Bush and Cheney

... It’s tempting to think of Donald Trump’s second term as a sui generis reign of lawlessness. But sadly, the federal government’s willingness to violate federal and international law with impunity didn’t begin with Trump. If anything, the present incumbent is harvesting a crop of autocratic powers from seeds planted by President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney in those war on terror years following the attacks of September 11, 2001.  

... In those days of “enhanced interrogation,” I was already arguing that accepting such lawless behavior could well become an American habit. We might gradually learn, I suggested, to put up with any government measures as long as they theoretically kept us safe. And that indeed was the Bush administration’s promise: Let us do whatever we need to, over there on the “dark side,” and in return we promise to always keep you safe. In essence, the message was: there will be no more terrorist attacks if you allow us to torture people.

... One difference between the Bush-Cheney years and the Trump ones is that the attacks of September 11, 2001, represented a genuine and horrific emergency. Trump’s version of such an emergency, on the other hand, is entirely Trumped-up. He posits nothing short of an immigration “invasion” — in effect, a permanent 9/11 — that “has caused widespread chaos and suffering in our country over the last 4 years.” Or so his executive order “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States” insists. To justify illegally deporting alleged members of Tren de Aragua and, in the future (if he has his way), many others, he has invented a totally imaginary war so that he can invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which was last used during World War II to justify the otherwise unjustifiable internment of another group of dehumanized people in this country: Japanese-Americans.

Donald Trump has his very own “black site” now...

Remembering the recent origins of this country's embrace of security theater and rendition to law-free torture as foreign policy should also remind us of the disasters that followed. After 9/11, the US fought two wars in other people's countries; killed massive numbers of Iraqis, Afghans, and US and allied military; and eventually was driven away and lost any enduring influence in those places for its pains. 

Trump is another disaster; we have chosen this one when we could have been expected to have our eyes open. When will we learn better? It's going to be a tough patch for America.

The Patriots who moved the story forward in the US Northeast

Message at Martha's Vineyard rally on April 19

Today is observed as a holiday in Massachusetts -- Patriots Day -- commemorating the battles at Lexington and Concord where revolting American colonials routed occupying imperial British troops in 1775.

The historian Heather Cox Richardson told their story, speaking in Boston's Old North Church at the 250 year celebration of American revolt.

... On Easter Sunday, after the secret watchers had noticed the troop movement, [Paul] Revere traveled to Lexington to visit [Patriot leaders Samuel] Adams and [John] Hancock. On the way home through Charlestown, he had told friends “that if the British went out by Water, we would shew two Lanthorns in the North Church Steeple; & if by Land, one, as a Signal.” Armed with that knowledge, messengers could avoid the troops and raise the alarm along the roads to Lexington and Concord.

The plan was dangerous. The Old North Church was Anglican, Church of England, and about a third of the people who worshipped there were Loyalists. General Thomas Gage himself worshiped there. But so did Revere’s childhood friend John Pulling Jr., who had become a wealthy sea captain and was a vestryman, responsible for the church’s finances. Like Revere, Pulling was a Son of Liberty. So was the church’s relatively poor caretaker, or sexton, Robert Newman. They would help.

Dr. Joseph Warren lived just up the hill from Revere. He was a Son of Liberty and a leader in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. On the night of April 18, he dashed off a quick note to Revere urging him to set off for Lexington to warn Adams and Hancock that the troops were on the way. By the time Revere got Warren’s house, the doctor had already sent another man, William Dawes, to Lexington by way of Boston Neck. Warren told Revere the troops were leaving Boston by water. Revere left Warren’s house, found his friend John Pulling, and gave him the information that would enable him to raise the signal for those waiting in Charlestown. Then Revere rowed across the harbor to Charleston to ride to Lexington himself. The night was clear with a rising moon, and Revere muffled his oars and swung out of his way to avoid the British ship standing guard.

Back in Boston, Pulling made his way past the soldiers on the streets to find Newman. Newman lived in his family home, where the tightening economy after the British occupation had forced his mother to board British officers. Newman was waiting for Pulling, and quietly slipped out of the house to meet him.

The two men walked past the soldiers to the church. As caretaker, Newman had a key.

The two men crept through the dark church, climbed the stairs and then the ladders to the steeple holding lanterns—a tricky business, but one that a caretaker and a mariner could manage—very briefly flashed the lanterns they carried to send the signal, and then climbed back down.

Messengers in Charlestown saw the signal, but so did British soldiers. Legend has it that Newman escaped from the church by climbing out a window. He made his way back home, but since he was one of the few people in town who had keys to the church, soldiers arrested him the next day for participating in rebellious activities. He told them that he had given his keys to Pulling, who as a vestryman could give him orders. When soldiers went to find Pulling, he had skipped town, likely heading to Nantucket.

While Newman and Pulling made their way through the streets back to their homes, the race to beat the soldiers to Lexington and Concord was on. Dawes crossed the Boston Neck just before soldiers closed the city. Revere rowed to Charlestown, borrowed a horse, and headed out. Eluding waiting officers, he headed on the road through Medford and what is now Arlington. ...

Paul Revere was captured on the way and Dawes didn't make it to Concord either, but another man carried their message to the Massachusetts militias. Those militias were ready for the approaching British soldiers and harried the red-coated troops all the way back to Boston.

By that evening, more than three hundred British soldiers and colonists lay dead or wounded.

Richardson concluded:

Someone asked me once if the men who hung the lanterns in the tower knew what they were doing. She meant, did they know that by that act they would begin the steps to a war that would create a new nation and change the world.

The answer is no. None of us knows what the future will deliver.

Paul Revere didn’t wake up on the morning of April 18, 1775, and decide to change the world. That morning began like many of the other tense days of the past year, and there was little reason to think the next two days would end as they did. Like his neighbors, Revere simply offered what he could to the cause: engraving skills, information, knowledge of a church steeple, longstanding friendships that helped to create a network. And on April 18, he and his friends set out to protect the men who were leading the fight to establish a representative government.

The work of Newman and Pulling to light the lanterns exactly 250 years ago tonight sounds even less heroic. They agreed to cross through town to light two lanterns in a church steeple. It sounds like such a very little thing to do, and yet by doing it, they risked imprisonment or even death. It was such a little thing…but it was everything. And what they did, as with so many of the little steps that lead to profound change, was largely forgotten until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used their story to inspire a later generation to work to stop tyranny in his own time.

What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing, even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew. And that is all anyone can do as we work to preserve the concept of human self-determination. In that heroic struggle, most of us will be lost to history, but we will, nonetheless, move the story forward, even if just a little bit.

And once in a great while, someone will light a lantern—or even two—that will shine forth for democratic principles that are under siege, and set the world ablaze.

Easter 2025

The light of Christ. Thanks be to God.

 Grace Church, Vineyard Haven, Mass.

No place here for any monarch

The legal observation of Patriots Day -- commemorating American colonists' rejection of British rule at skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Mass. -- isn't until Monday. But folks protesting Donald Trump's assault on our freedoms and Constitution were out in force Saturday on Martha's Vineyard.

Islanders seem just as allergic to kings now as they were then. 

That would refer to laws they made themselves through a democratic process, not some edict (like the Stamp Act) from a distant king and his parliament.

There are still feisty folks on this island outpost.

Holy Land 2019

 

Themba Khumalo (South African, born 1987) 

Via Adam Tooze

Good Friday 2025

 

What was known is askew... is all lost?

Warning: Trump is doing his best to get Ukrainians killed

The Trump administration has accomplished something I didn't think would be where I'd dwell any longer -- thrown me back into my lifelong, all too familiar, posture of opposing a US imperial adventure. I was always a peacenik because our wars seemed so manifestly unjust -- until I saw a little country fighting for its very life against a relentless bully. I knew if I were a Ukrainian, I'd know which side I was on. And, I hope I'd be willing to take risks for my choices.

With the change of regime in this country, the United States is making itself a party to Putin's imperial war against Ukraine's freedom aspirations. 

Phillips P. O'Brien is a Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a close observer of the Ukraine war. He writes:

Our Lady of Kiev

Trump Is Helping Putin Kill Ukrainians. The USA Is Running Down Ukrainian Air Defense in Coordination With Russia.

... Just in the last few days we have incontrovertible proof of how Trump is helping Putin kill Ukrainians—both some now and many more in the future. Its the combination of what the US will not sell Ukraine (even though Ukraine has the money to buy them), the Russian missile campaign against Ukrainian civilians, and how the two come together ...

... Ukraine is desperate to purchase Patriot anti-air missiles, as the Ukrainians are running out of this vital system. These were provided (too late) by the Biden Administration in 2023. From the moment they appeared, however, they revealed themselves to be the most effective air-defense weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal.

... Having Patriots allowed the Ukrainians to keep the power on during the Russian Winter attacks in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. ... In sum, these are a very effective but expensive system. They have made Ukraine much safer than it would be otherwise. ...

... And the very effectiveness of the Patriots has provided Trump with a weapon to help kill Ukrainians. Even being sparing in their usage, Ukraine is running out. Patriots are an American system and the USA has been the source of most of the missiles. Right now there is no new US aid on its way to Ukraine. ...

... Trump, however, working hand in hand with Putin, is refusing to sell them—even though that would benefit US workers and help the US economy. Indeed, in the last few days he has started boasting about the fact that Ukraine is desperate to buy more Patriots, and he is refusing to make a deal.

... The USA (Trump is the duly elected president with the support of Congress—so this is the official position of the US government) is now working together with the Russian government to see more Ukrainians killed. The USA is encouraging a Russian missile campaign against Ukrainian civilians by letting the Russians know that the US will deprive Ukraine of the means to defend those civilians and no longer provide Ukrainian Patriots.

So, the next time a Russian missile lands in a Ukrainian city and bodies litter the streets, realize this is an act that is being encouraged and supported by the USA. The USA is no longer a defender of democracy in Europe, it is an enabler of dictatorship and death.

Phillips' post is much more detailed and unlocked. Take a look.

It's time for religious leaders to emulate Oscar Romero

Bishop Evelio Menjivar, a Salvadoran-born priest, is an auxiliary bishop of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, DC. He is the first Central American to serve in such a role in the US Roman Church. 

His Holy Week sermon takes up the theme of Trump's rendition of Kilmer Abrego Garcia and other migrants to a Salvadoran torture prison.

The Church remembers Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus in a spiritual and sacramental way during Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, but some people actually experience the Passion in a tangible and personal way in their very lives. Among them are members of the immigrant and refugee communities today.

... while redemptive suffering is a grace, it would be better still if these injustices and infamies did not happen at all. ... It seems that no one is safe now from arbitrary nullification of his or her protected status, visa, or green card. This has left many terrified that they or their loved ones might be seized and disappear without warning.

... For example, the protected status of refugees and others granted asylum has been arbitrarily terminated without any wrongdoing on their part. Visa-holders and permanent residents have had their legal authorizations revoked and then been grabbed off the street by masked government agents, held incommunicado without access to their attorneys, and imprisoned pending deportation. University scholars and others have also been refused entry or detained at the border after traveling abroad. Even U.S. citizens are viewed with suspicion or subjected to ethnic profiling based entirely on how they look or speak. Those who are naturalized citizens might be wondering if they will be targeted next, whether some pretext might be contrived for secret revocation of their naturalization.

More than a few natural-born Americans are saying they do not recognize their country anymore, but many of us from other lands recognize all too well the terror of people being snatched by secret police and disappeared. We left our former countries precisely to get away from it. Yet, too many people are still remaining silent, perhaps out of fear, forgetting that the Holy Spirit gives us the grace of fortitude to boldly speak out for good. ...

El Salvador gave the America's Archbishop Óscar Romero, the 20th century bishop murdered for speaking up for the poor and marginalized. Bishop Menjivar continued: 

When I was growing up in El Salvador, there was a man who was not afraid to speak out. His name was Óscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador. It seems to me that we need more Óscar Romeros today. We need everyone of good will to follow his lead and demand that the government respect human dignity.

In his last Sunday homily on the day before he was killed, Saint Óscar Romero made a special appeal to government agents: “It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience and to obey your conscience rather than the command to sin,” he said. “We want the government to understand well that the reforms are worth nothing if they are stained with so much blood. In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise up each day more tumultuously toward heaven, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression!”

I urge government officers and support staff in the present situation to heed these words which echo through history. It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience. What you are doing is worth nothing if it is stained with unjust cruelty. That is not what America stands for. You too can and should speak out against this terror and infliction of suffering on people. You can refuse to be involved in oppression and these grievous assaults on human rights and dignity.

True, if you do, there may be adverse personal consequences. Saint Óscar certainly paid a price for speaking against the state of siege in his country. It might even mean leaving your job, but that is better than being complicit with evil, and it will lead to something even greater. As this holy man said in his last words before his martyrdom, “If we have imbued our work with a sense of great faith, love of God, and hope for humanity, then all our endeavors will lead to the splendid crown that is the sure reward for the work of sowing truth, justice, love, and goodness on earth.”

The One Part of the Body report (download at link) on the impact of the Trump regime's migrant deportation policies gives some numbers about how many are now at risk of being thrown out of the country:

We estimate that, as of the end of 2024, there were more than 10 million Christian immigrants present in the United States who are vulnerable to deportation, including those with no legal status, as well as those with a temporary status or protections that could be withdrawn.

Furthermore, because many of these individuals live in households with U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents, or others who are generally not subject to deportation, the impact on American Christian households goes well beyond those directly at risk of deportation. We find that nearly 7 million U.S.-citizen Christians live within the same households of those at risk of deportation. Most of these U.S. citizens are spouses or minor children of the immigrant at risk of deportation.

... 80 percent of all of those at risk of deportation are Christians. Sixty-one percent of those at risk of deportation are Catholic, 13 percent are evangelical and 7 percent are adherents to other Christian traditions.

And then there are all the others (non-Christians) and their families who might find themselves victimized by the Trump dragnet.

It is good to see religious authorities speaking out. And they are. Religious institutions are somewhat less vulnerable to threats to their mission than secular institutions. They can't sit the Trump regime out.

There's a cure!

People struggling with TRS are usually self-diagnosed, and without our help they may suffer in silence. But there are effective treatments, including selling your Tesla and Tesla stock, de-badging or putting a bumper sticker on your vehicle, and joining local #TeslaTakedown actions.

Trump's coup against law is not popular

Trump and his merry band of dictator's dupes think the American people share his hatred of migrants. We don't.

G. Elliott Morris is a data nerd. After a stint writing for The Economist, he ran the 538 poll aggregating site for ABC News -- until ABC bent the knee to Trump after the 2024 election. These days, like so many others, he writes a substack, Strength in Numbers, where he does what he has long done: try to understand opinion data.

And he is convinced that Trump and the mainstream media are misinterpreting what we the people feel about immigration.

Trump is popular on "handling immigration," but not specifics

 ... there is a dramatic amount of nuance being washed over with the binary yes-no framing and use of such broad topics.  ...

You might take away from this, for instance, that Americans approve of Trump's actions to deport Abrego Garcia and refuse to bring him home. That would be wrong though, as the same Reuters/Ipsos poll even goes on to show.

The vast majority — 82% — of Americans believe Trump should obey court orders even if he disagrees with them, and 56% think he should stop "deporting people" ...

Click to enlarge

The only policy Americans really favor is deporting unlawful immigrants who have been accused of violent crimes.

If people opposed to Trump's policies speak out, including especially Democratic Party leaders, Morris believes they'll be expressing the public's opinion.

... Trump's critics have an easy opportunity to fight the president in the court of public opinion. Americans do not approve of abducting fathers who have been in America for decades and sending them to torture camps in the jungle; And, contra Trump's wishes, they also oppose the extrajudicial transfer of U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to foreign jails.

And while I generally try not to engage in partisan cheerleading here, the reality is that Republicans are united in support of Trump, and since we have a two-party system, Democrats are the only options for recourse on civil rights and the rule of law. This issue really isn’t about Trump or immigration at all anymore, it’s about the Constitution itself.

The Trump administration so far has gotten away with denying Abrego Garcia and other legal residents of the U.S. their constitutional rights of habeas corpus. Now, the Executive is asserting that it can violate court orders with impunity and that it wants to do the same for trouble-making U.S. citizens. If you stand for the constitution, the rule of law, majoritarianism, and just generally treating citizens with dignity, there is really only one option for you, even if you try to approach politics from an unbiased perspective, as we do here at Strength In Numbers.

So not only does the party currently have public opinion on its side, I think Democrats also have an obligation to speak out on moral and constitutional grounds. And, given the data, they have a clear opportunity to take bold action.

... Fighting is what democracy is for, after all. And if nobody is willing to fight for the Constitution, we don’t have a democracy anymore anyway.

 As an early and famous Patriot once wrote: "These are times that try [our] souls ... Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

It's the week of Passover too

It's the week of Passover too ... to which I have to say ... DUH! 

The Christian story of Jesus' repudiation of and triumph over empire is embedded in the Jewish observance of the people's escape from slavery by the agency of God -- the Passover. 

My friend Emily Simon needed a good old-fashioned Seder meal and gathering this Passover season. She shared a reflection on Facebook which I reproduce here -- this speaks to where many of us are.

These are very hard and painful times in which to be any kind of human, but I have struggled even more than usual with what it means to be a Jew.

It’s Passover, America is being dismantled, and our supposed Holy Land of milk and honey is being run by a monstrous totalitarian right-wing autocrat whose regime gleefully murders other people’s babies in the name of our defense, and we must oppose him with our full chests while standing firm that Palestinians have the right to live freely in peace. Thousands of Israelis routinely take to the streets to say the same thing.

But if you’re Jewish in radical leftist spaces right now and you take to the streets in America, there is a strong chance that the person next to you will open their face like the sun and say “oh I’m so glad you’re one of us, and you accept Khazar theory and agree that Israel should not exist and that the Jews are diabolical white colonizers who have historically and repeatedly brought all violence upon themselves, and really the only way to end all of this is for you guys stop trying to be Jewish while living anywhere at all!”

And then you have to rearrange YOUR face and come up with a plausible excuse to go home.

Meanwhile OUR monstrous wanna-be totalitarian right-wing autocrat claims to be fighting antisemitism, which is a repulsive transparent joke. None of these guys are on the side of our safety and liberation, ever.

Project Esther is an insult to Esther, to any Judaism I’ve ever known, and anything any worship-worthy God could possibly want. It casts most modern Jews as “enemies of the Jews”, which just helps us all keep having to run from country to country and getting killed anyway.

And, also…antisemitism is ancient and violent and virulent and flaring and spreading, and most people who harbor it would absolute swear they don’t WHILE saying antisemitic things to your face, that’s how embedded and insidious this prejudice is, and when Jews talk to each other we often talk about how terrifying this moment is for us, and how that terror complicates the necessary work of getting us all free.

This year I found myself yearning to be at a good old-fashioned radical leftist social-justice-focused Passover seder, so I could stand in the tradition of Jewishness that I honor and treasure. Tikkun Olam. Until we are all free, we are none of us free.

No one was inviting me to one, so I threw it myself.

Twenty of Nathan’s and Milo’s and my wonderful goyishe Minnesota sober lefty friends packed my little Saint Paul house (to be clear, 25 people do NOT fit in my house for a sit-down dinner) and I ran them through a 10-minute Haggadah I wrote, stealing from a bunch of sources I’ve been reading to help me find my way.

I asked my spiritual family to show up, and they did.

We celebrated our shared values and commitment, and we ate chopped liver and gefilte fish and matzoh ball soup and a gorgeous brisket one of my friends made. I got to use my mother’s and grandmother’s china and silver, lovingly sent to me last spring by my beautiful cousin.

Why was this night different from all other nights?

Because I did not feel ambivalent and compromised and complicit. I didn’t feel hopeless and discouraged and despairing. I felt firm in my own soul and strengthened by the community of my fellows, full in heart and mind and belly. I was so grateful for every single bit of it, and so freshly determined not to waste the privilege of my own freedom, however it looks, however long it lasts.

I’m putting this here to remind myself that I have a huge, living network of strong-hearted like-minded hard-working fellows, across the world and from all eras of my life, and that so many of you are here right now in this weird digital place.

Next year, who knows where.

In the meantime, thank you.

I hope we keep coming together, in the kitchens and the streets.

The link in Emily's text is my addition -- I didn't have to know what sits behind it. Now I must. The picture is also my addition.

An impassioned sermon for the start of the Christian Holy Week

Nate and Jenny Bacon serve as missionaries with InnerChange (an ecumenical Christian Order among the Poor) in Central America, living in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

Nate with family

Nate looked on at developments in his native country this past week and posted this on Facebook:

There is an illuminating window into deeper realities provided by the recent draconian measure of not only cancelling the legal social security cards of immigrants in the US, who are under Temporary Protected Status, but also adding their names to the “DEATH MASTER FILE” previously reserved for…well…dead people. It sends a clear message,

“You are as good as dead to us”.

Jesus said that even if we call our neighbor “Raca” (“empty-head”), we are guilty of committing murder. How much more, when we literally label our immigrant sisters and brothers as “DEAD”?

If we look carefully, we can see that it is the spirit of DEATH that is at work in and through all of this, to turn us against our own flesh and blood, created in the same image and likeness of God.

It is the slippery slope to genocide, and helps explain why we so easily shrug at the dehumanization of our fellow human beings, and even at genocide itself.

Do we want DEATH to be our MASTER?

When we are silent in the face of these acts, or even celebrate them, we enlist ourselves into a group that could be called by the same name: “DEATH MASTER FILE”. Because we have opted for DEATH as our MASTER.

As for me and my family, we choose LIFE, and the AUTHOR of LIFE, and refuse to submit to Death.

And YOU?

Let the most sacred week of the Christian annual cycle begin.