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.

Anxiety on the Island

Martha's Vineyard Island seems intent on accepting a state designation as a "Seasonal Community" in the hope of winning help from Massachusetts with providing more housing to the people who live and work here. The population booms about seven fold in the summer, then recedes for the winter.

It's easy to think of this remote bucolic place as just a summer playground, but for the year-round residents, it's simply home. And for this community, the horrors the Trump regime is inflicting on the nation are all too close by. A couple of mental health professionals spelled some of this out in the Martha Vineyard Times. (Yes, we have two little local newspapers!) Charles Silberstein and Laura Roosevelt explain: 

The immigrant community, estimated at 20 percent of the Island’s year-round population, is currently particularly prone to fear and sadness. Many of those I’ve spoken with are U.S. citizens, and still feel relatively safe. But almost all have family and friends who are undocumented and experiencing terror.

Recent rumors that ICE raids on the Island were imminent prompted many immigrants to stay home from work and school; many didn’t show up for appointments at Community Services and doctor’s offices, and generally kept off of the roads. I was told about a child who was so frightened that she stayed up most of the night crying.

One immigrant, a professional who arrived here just after 9/11 in 2001, told me that it was even more frightening then than it is today. ICE set up roadblocks, and if a person were caught, there was a likelihood of being sent immediately to an immigration center. Just seeing a police car or even an animal control vehicle could send his fellow immigrants into a state of panic.

After 14 years in limbo, he is now a citizen. He reminds himself and frightened members of the immigrant community that none of us know what the future will bring. He believes that immigrants need to decide either to return to a country where they feel more comfortable, or just learn to live with the threat without letting it dominate their lives. Living in a constant state of fear he says, is annihilation.

He shared a Portuguese saying with me: “We kill a lion today, and we tie up the bear to worry about tomorrow.” In other words, every day has its own problems, and we don’t need to add to them by worrying about tomorrow. ...

The island has long been a place that absorbed immigrant workers; locals knew what to do when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew a planeload of confused Venezuelans here in a political stunt in 2022. 

Silberstein and Roosevelt offer ideas for how to get by in the current terrifying moment: 

Many Americans are grieving the loss of the country as they knew it, and the collective ideals held in common with fellow Americans. ... [Some concrete suggestions] ...

• Take a deep breath, and then run toward the monster that has no teeth. Or, as the Rev. Cathlin Baker, minister of the First Congregational Church of West Tisbury, has advised congregants, “Do the good that is yours to do.” 

• Spend time with kids and pets. Connect with friends, and accept that you are unable to impact a crisis alone. 

• Remember that throughout human history, governments and political movements come and go. Nothing is permanent. Work on accepting that the future is always uncertain.

• If you are an immigrant, know that much of what you hear may be bluster or misinformation. Consider talking with an immigration lawyer who can gum up the deportation process if need be. Know your legal rights.

We're all in this for the long haul.

"Our brother Kilmar Abrego Garcia"

  

Sean McGarvey from the National Association of Building Trades Unions has a message for the Musk/Trump regime. These are not generally good people to piss off.

Abrego Garcia was a legally-employed sheet metal apprentice before Trump's immigration goons kidnapped him to El Salvador. He was here under a judicial order that forbade the government sending him to that country.

Friday critter blogging

 

A mother and fawn wandered in last night to check out the bird feeder. I doubt the few fallen seeds did much for them, but small green shoots are breaking through on the woodland carpet. It won't be hunting season until next November. For the moment, their only predators are cars.

Thanks to Erudite Partner for the photo.

Is this what really inspires MAGA?

 

When this unprepossessing graph floated by in my media feed, I had an aha-moment. Apparently white American men's fraction of the income pie was highest in 1960 -- and ever since their segment of our economic prosperity has been declining. That doesn't mean white guys are earning or owning less in real terms. Most everybody is doing a lot better than in 1960 in a much larger economy that has seen repeated bouts of goods-inflation (troublesome) and higher wages (all positive). But relative portions taken home by different segments have changed.

 

So even though white men in this country, in general, are doing just fine, in the last 60 years changes in society have meant they've had to share their prosperity with white women and everyone else.

 

The chart is from a Medium post by Joe Francis.  Here's some of what he has to say about it, slightly edited:

White men’s position in the class structure has diminished considerably.

According to the census and the American Communities Survey (ACS), the median income of white men aged 18 and above fell from a peak of 264 percent of the national level in 1960 to 143 percent in 2023.

White men’s share of national income has similarly fallen dramatically. Figure 1 shows their share falling from 70 percent in 1960 to 43 percent in 2020, and it fell further to 41 percent in 2023.

There has thus been a historic shift in the income distribution away from white men toward non-white and female Americans. …

Non-college educated white men, meanwhile, are being left behind. ... the era of white male egalitarianism is long a thing of the past.

... inequality has surged for white men, even as the overall level has remained largely unchanged.  ...

As a class, [white men] have seen their privileges diminish due to the prohibition of racism and sexism, although the college-educated have prospered thanks to the greater education premium.

By 2045, even if Trump succeeds in throwing out millions of immigrants, the majority of Americans will not be what we currently describe as "white". (Racial categories can be mutable, subject to income, prejudice, and fashion, but that's another post.) He can't turn back the clock. The era of white America is over. We already live that in California; Texas and Florida do too, but haven't adjusted yet. MAGA diehards will eventually live in reality; Americans have survived such shifts before.

Ran across this paper thanks to Adam Tooze.

Breathing a little easier

Even two decades ago, the gray haze over Kathmandu obscured the magnificent views of the surrounding mountain ranges. The valley is prone to temperature inversions, meaning warmer air at higher altitudes traps airborne pollution. It was hard to breath while trudging about and dodging exhaust-belching mini-buses and trucks even in 2006 when I took this picture out a hotel window.

According to Bill McKibben via The Guardian, Nepal is doing as well as anywhere replacing its fossil fuel fog with less polluting electric vehicles. 

A heartening report from Kathmandu, one of the world’s smokiest cities, shows that the Nepali capital is rapidly cleaning its air as electric minibuses and cars start to dominate the local scence

More than 70% of four-wheeled passenger vehicles – largely cars and minibuses – imported into Nepal last year were electric, one of the highest rates in the world. The figure reflects a remarkable growth in the use of electric vehicles (EVs), which saw the country import more than 13,000 between July 2023 and 2024, up from about 250 in 2020-21.

Nepal’s government has set ambitious targets for wider take-up of EVs, with the aim that 90% of all private-vehicle sales and 60% of all four-wheeled public passenger vehicle sales will be electric by 2030.

Makes sense. Nepal produces abundant, clean, hydroelectric power as water runs off the Himalayas. 

Chinese made BYD vehicles are available to Nepalese buyers. Great to see.

A rising wave

Margaret Sullivan, former in-house critic for the New York Times and the Washington Post back when these media outlets dared to focus resources on improving journalism, wrote yesterday: 

Big protests — but not big news -- Throngs of anti-Trump and anti-Musk protesters gathered in every state. Why was some media coverage so quiet — or almost non-existent?

Apparently much of the remaining print news media pretty much ignored some million(s?) of people in venues across the country speaking up and writing inventive protest signs. Sullivan has some guesses as to why this reporting omission; I have mine. These pubs are timid when bullied, economically precarious, and adrift in the threatening news environment created by the Trump regime's radical drive for dictatorial powers. 

But I'm not at all sure that this partial erasure of millions mattered. 

These days, we don't get our impressions of widespread action by citizens from newspapers or even TV.  We get it from millions of impressions on various social media. Sure, our experiences there are siloed, limited by the platforms to "friends," but that may even enhance the impact of seeing Susie in Peoria out there with her sign. If we turn to "mainstream" sources for information at all on a thing like this, it's for overview. We've already seen the content.

Having lived through a previous period in which "mainstream" media was hesitant to acknowledge a rising tide of citizen protest anger, I'm having deja vu. Been here, lived that. 

When I was an uppity college student in the early 1960s, there was a media pattern. In those days, newspapers had night and morning editions. (How quaint.) The junior reporter tasked to quickly describe some student protest would file from the field and the night edition would seem to us relatively accurate and even sympathetic to the participants. We'd gather around a copy and applaud. Then we'd see the morning edition and our story would have been rewritten to minimize and obscure our message. Happened every time -- early, direct coverage was not terrible; later interpretation comforted the powerful (that would have been Governor Reagan who was no saint to us.) 

This worked to minimize the rising tide of outrage about civil rights, Vietnam, and more -- until it didn't and our demand for change engulfed a decade and beyond. 

Our current rulers want to turn back the clock. 

Public protest witnesses to a rising wave that will have none of it. We won't go back. This is a movement building popular pressure that is still looking to find its footing and its opportunities. (Do note the Tesla takedown.) Most Americans don't want to live in conformity, ignorance and fear. We will be heard. We will find a way or make one.

What might the Hands Off! protests mean?

 

G. Elliot Morris decodes statistical information. After working as a data journalist for The Economist from 2018 to 2023, he took over the election information site FiveThirtyEight during the moment when it was an appendage of ABC News. Perhaps as part of ABC paying off Trump for protection, the network dumped his site. He now writes a Substack called Strength in Numbers.

 

Today Morris unpacked what he learned from the breadth and passion of the nation-spanning Hands Off! demonstrations on Saturday. His observations are thoughtful:

It’s this intersection between political discontent and the physical world that may matter most for modern politics. In an era where much of politics is mediated through screens, the mass mobilization of people serves as a kind of anchoring point: proof that opposition isn’t just statistical, but structural, social, and spatial. Protests against the unpopular policies of an imperial presidency underscore the validity of polling data that can be used to reign leaders in.

 

As the 2026 midterm campaign cycle kicks off over the next six months, and begins in earnest with elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia this November, it’s the mental image of protests around the country that will transform abstract dissatisfaction into something more concrete — especially for voters who may not follow politics closely but are swayed by momentum, emotion, and community. It is one thing for the Democrats to be campaigning with public opinion on their side. It’s another for them to be doing it with the public literally and visibly on their side, too.

And time may yet exacerbate the incumbent party’s troubles, not soften them. If Trump continues to pursue a punishing and nonsensical trade policy, consequences from a further sinking stock market to economic recession are possible, perhaps even probable. And with a battle over the federal budget on the horizon, concerns about cutting funding for health care and Social Security as well as Elon Musk’s controversial role in “efficiency” would likely become more salient, not less.

Hands Off! put the wind at the back of our opposition to the Trump-Musk-Vaught destruction of the American project. Let's keep it up -- on screens, but also in person wherever possible.

The lunacy of King Donald

I like charts. I learn well from informative visualizations of data. And therefore, I appreciate the work of Washington Post journalist Philip Bump.

Bump knows what he thinks about Donald Trump's tariffs:

This will almost certainly prove to be bad for the economy, but it has been pretty good for data visualization. For example:

We've gone back to the late 1800s.

 

 

Add a tariff on washing machines, raise the price. Remove the tax and price falls.

 ... tariffs will instead mean surges in the prices Americans pay.

 

How uncertain is the country’s economic future? As the Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch put it, it is “equivalent to a global pandemic” uncertain.

At least we get some nice charts out of the deal.

Unfortunately the Canadian cartoon with which I led this post gives an incomplete picture. Presumably King Donald intends to get plenty out of his tariffs, knowing he can shakedown particular businesses and whole favored sectors of the economy for a personal payoff after which he'll make an exemption from his taxes.

If we want this set of impositions to blow back on King Donald, we the people will have to make it so. Along with Canadians, we're the fan.

HANDS OFF! – Vineyard Haven, Mass.

 

It was good to be part of an enthusiast crowd today at Five Corners.

 

Despite threatening skies and cold temps, the veterans came.

Not all were ready to retire.

 

The friends I was with nominated this for the best sign. 

They thought perhaps 500 people -- a lot for a seasonal population of 20,000 on the Island. I noted the wide age distribution. A good day and the rain held off until the very end.

Friday cat blogging

I wonder if this Greenland cat scared off JD Vance? Don't think I'd want to invade its space.

Dumb and dumber

I remember kind of enjoying the 1994 movie. Those dumb boys were sort of funny, in a stupid way.

Donald Trump's dopey tariffs aren't so funny. Even though he revealed himself to be trying to tariff penguins. Any number of economists -- left, right, and center -- agree he's thrown us into a trade war in which ordinary Americans only lose. Their estimates vary between $3000 and $5000 per household in increased costs as a consequence of Trump's trade idiocy.

So why this madness? There seem to be two elements that Trump thinks serve his interests:

1) The tariffs give Trump the legal ability to exempt particular sectors and countries. How many millions or even billions will he be demanding from companies to enjoy these exemptions? We've never seen such straightforward opportunities for presidential corruption. And the moral rot of such a system spreads. Will every individual who holds a tiny smidgen of power over others expect to be personally paid off in the Trumpy future US economy? That's how it works in much of the world.

2) Domestic importers will pay the tariffs if they continue to engage in trade in our deeply interlinked world. They'll try, and mostly succeed, in defending their bottom line by passing their increased costs on the US consumers. Trump will claim he's found a magic source of cash that will replace any need to try to tax our oligarchs. After all, there's all this cash coming in from the tariffs. Let's cut taxes some more for millionaires and billionaires! 

It's all sick and sad.

Let's fight back, starting with the Hands Off rallies tomorrow. Find an event near you here.

A Canadian envisions world domination

The morning after our idiot President did his best to murder the international and domestic economy, it would be easy to rave. But I think sometimes it is better to laugh.

When not trying, in a very different world, to ape late 19th century economic foolishness, Trump also claims to want to repeat President William McKinley's experiment in American imperialism (think the Philippines, Cuba) by demanding that Canada be made the 51st state. Canadians aren't having it.

John Manley was Deputy Canadian Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government in 2002-3. He's written a letter to Donald Trump which I reproduce here in full:

• • •

Dear Donald Trump,

My mentor and former boss, prime minister Jean Chrétien, has dismissed your suggestion that Canada and the U.S. merge.

Do not despair. My point of view differs somewhat from his (sorry, Boss). I think we may be able to make this work if Canadians fully understand your proposal. 

Imagine what the “United States of Canada” could be. We would marry American ingenuity and entrepreneurship to Canada’s natural resources, underdog toughness and culture of self-effacing politeness to create a powerful, world-dominating country.

Pointers for starters...

☆ We would be the largest land mass in the world.
☆ We would be self-reliant in every respect (food, energy, minerals, water).
☆ We would attract the world’s most talented people.
☆ We would truly be “the best country in the world,” to use Mr. Chrétien’s words.
☆ We would dominate international hockey competitions.

Your idea is truly brilliant.

As you know from your corporate experience, for any successful merger, the devil is in the details, but I have some suggestions.

(1). Canada could never simply be the 51st state. You see Canada consists of 10 states (we call them “provinces”) and three territories.

Each of our provinces exists for historical reasons and citizens feel a deep loyalty to their province. So we would need to be the 51st to 60th states. With two senators for each state, of course. 

Therefore, our 20 senators will no doubt bring fresh ideas to the institution that will help make the United States of Canada truly great!

(2). Some issues that cause division and frustration in your country are considered settled by political parties of all stripes in Canada, so I suggest adopting Canadian consensus in the interest of making this deal work.

☆ For example, there is no argument in Canada over women’s reproductive rights. There! That hot-button issue is resolved for you! (You can thank me later.)

☆ All Canadian politicians support our single-payer health care system because no one is refused treatment for their inability to pay and no one goes broke because they suffer a catastrophic illness. In effect, all of our citizens have lifetime critical illness insurance provided by the government. And while it’s expensive, our system costs considerably less than yours, with 100 per cent of the population covered! Your citizens will love it, I promise.

☆ I would also observe that Canadians have long preferred to live with many fewer firearms than are tolerated in the United States. The result is a drastically lower rate of deaths and injuries caused by gun violence in Canada. Our gun laws would make the country safer than it is, and safer is definitely greater!

☆ We have some other innovations that you may wish to consider. Our Canada Pension Plan, equivalent to your Social Security, is fully funded and actuarially sound. This requires higher contributions but it pays off with solvency. I believe your Social Security runs out of money in the near future. (That’s not great, is it?)

☆ Lower personal income taxes paid in the U.S. are a great attraction.

☆ But our programs to support both seniors and young families to reduce the worst cases of poverty among them help make society more cohesive and fair. That’s one of the reasons our taxes have been higher.

☆ Oh, and we must consider how we fund government expenses. We’re struggling to bring our deficit back down, but it wasn’t that long ago (2015) that our budget was effectively balanced. In fact, for more than a decade prior to the global financial crisis, Canada ran surplus budgets. In addition to spending discipline, our national value-added tax, the GST, was key. You definitely want to adopt that! In fact, you will love it! (Canadians don’t love it, but their governments do. And it beats borrowing money from the Chinese.) There are many smaller details that I am sure we can work out.

☆ You will enjoy the simplicity of the metric system for weights and measures, for example. Oh, but we’re not crazy, you can keep yards for football! And you will love that sport even more when you play it on a bigger field with only three downs.

I am so excited about this, Mr. Trump. You are truly a visionary leader to have come up with this idea.

I can already see the 60 little maple leaves on the flag with 13 stripes!

I am ready to throw myself into this great project of making the United States of Canada great again! (Oh, that’s too long. Let’s just call our new country “Canada.”)

Respectfully, as I dislodge my tongue from my cheek,

John Manley

Once again, what's wrong with these people?

This morning we begin to get reports of the shitshow MAGA and RFK Jr are making of the American health complex. It's bad. It will be a few days before the newsmedia suss out the full catastrophe.

But this morning we get The Bulwark's new healthcare writer Jonathan Cohn taking up what those of us who live in the reality-based universe frequently find ourselves reverting to these day: why are these lunatics tearing down the country we have known? What motivates them? I found this summary helpful:

THE WRECKAGE FROM TUESDAY’S CUTS ONCE MORE raised the question of why, instead of undertaking a more carefully calibrated set of staff reductions, the Trump administration cut so crudely and destructively.

Most likely, multiple motives are at work, coming from different parts of the Trump coalition. For ideologues like Russ Vought, the Project 2025 participant who now leads the Office of Management and Budget, this is a chance to cut the federal government down to their preferred size—and to wipe out all the supposedly left-wing activists they believe have burrowed into the bureaucracy.

For Elon Musk and the DOGE team, quite possibly, there’s an element of techno-arrogance at work. And for Trump himself, the cuts would seem to fit in neatly with his agenda of attacking the “deep state” he believes thwarted him during his first term.

That leaves Kennedy, the secretary, who if so inclined could have pushed back on these reductions or at least demanded they proceed in a more deliberate way. There are no signs that happened. Instead, the one hallmark of Kennedy’s tenure so far has been a disregard—some would say disdain—for the department’s veterans and the way they do things.

You can see it in the expertise that the Trump administration cavalierly dispatched on Tuesday. You can see it, also, in how RFK Jr. is dealing with real-world challenges the department currently faces.

Right now the United States is confronting two serious threats that fall under HHS jurisdiction: the measles outbreak that started in Texas and has now spread to three other states, and the strands of avian flu decimating poultry flocks. ...

Photo from 2009. Will these Unitarian Universalists have to come back to the fray?

Jonathan Cohn is long time student of our health care morass who was one of my go-tos during the Obamacare passage wars.  Definitely someone worth following as MAGA tries to unravel decades of health accomplishments.