It's not okay to keep food which is readily available from reaching people who are hungry. Period.
Yet that is what Budget Tsar Russell Vought is doing in order to try to force Democratic Senators to pass Republicans' big bill which takes money from healthcare and gives it as tax breaks to Donald's billionaire buddies.
Along with other lawlessness, there goes SNAP food aid and some fishermen for desert.
Despite the government shutdown, the SNAP program isn’t out of money. In fact, it has $5 billion in contingency funds, intended as a reserve to be tapped in emergencies. And if the imminent cutoff of crucial food aid for 40 million people isn’t an emergency, what is? ...
He goes on to show a map of where the resulting hunger will be worst; looks to me as if the harm will be most severe in some native tribal areas and in pockets of the deep South that vote for Trump. They are beating up on the most vulnerable people, a lot their own supporters.
This is what MAGA grievance has wrought.
John Della Volpe introduces himself:
For more than two decades, I’ve been embedded in the land of young Americans. First millennials, and now Gen Z with an eye on Gen Alpha. From my perch since 2000 as polling director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, at SocialSphere, and as the dad of a few Zoomers and one Zillennial — I spend most of my time talking with, surveying, and thinking about young Americans.
In the context of New Yorker's mayoral election, he's been talking with young citizens of that city. He reports: After Everything, They Still Want In. You can read it all at the link.
Twelve young New Yorkers — disillusioned with both parties, abandoned by institutions, and living under daily pressure — still believe in something better. ...
All under 30. Some were born there, some were not. All living in the tension between loving New York and questioning whether it loves them back.
“We love it here,” one said. “But it doesn’t always love us back.”
The conversation didn’t spiral. Everyone stayed grounded. They were proud to live in the “greatest city in the world” — but honest about how much it costs them, in every sense.
He covers ten points; I found myself reflecting on this one:
#7: Fear is everywhere. So is numbness.
Almost every participant described feeling physically unsafe at some point in the last month.
“You’re always calculating... Should I step in? Should I run? Am I going to get hurt just trying to help someone?”
“They’re not there to protect people. They’re there to write tickets.”
The problem wasn’t just crime. It was the feeling of being left alone with it.
I tried to think how this was the same and different from what I felt when I lived for awhile, a long time ago, in the great city. So I raised the question to Della Volpe and he responded:
janinsanfran: Can you expand on what the fear is about? I know New Yorkers who feel that NYC feels safer than it ever has.
Lived there myself as a very young person in the 70s -- very sporadically, but not uniformly, seemed unsafe then, in what was then thought a very unsafe area.
These folks feel what they feel and we must honor that -- but that conclusion seems something that could be expanded on.
Della Volpe: You’re right — the fear young New Yorkers describe isn’t the same one older generations remember. It’s not about crime rates; it’s about randomness, isolation, and trust.
They’re afraid that anything can happen anywhere — a shove on the platform, a stranger following them — and no one will step in. It’s the sense of being alone in public that feels new.
And even when they know the data shows record-low crime, they don’t feel it. The fear now is less about danger itself, and more about whether anyone — the police, the city, other people — will show up when it happens.
In that gap between statistics and experience, you can feel how much trust has frayed.
Let's hope the experience of the Mamdani campaign is breaking through this isolation. Effectual campaigns can do that. If Mamdani's mayoral term can deliver on some of its promise, that would help too.
As folks who read this blog may know, my Erudite Partner is a regular contributor to the little lefty opinion syndication service, Tom Dispatch. Today he offers her latest commentary on the condition of our condition is in: Trump is Bad at Running the Country But Sometimes That’s Good for Him.
When Tom releases one of her articles, Tom writes his own introduction. Today's Tom commentary is something I want to offer for itself. Here's Tom:
Honestly, who could believe it, if — that is — we weren’t actually living through it? And maybe even then?
A plea scratched on a bench in immigration court ... Free my Uncle! I mean, once upon a time, Donald Trump would have been unimaginable as president (or do I mean king, emperor, or simply madman?) of the United States. Hey, you know, the guy who can only imagine White South Africans and right-wing (if not absolutely fascistic) Europeans as immigrants to this country and certainly not anyone from “shithole countries”!
I’d hate to tell my grandfather, who arrived here as a teenager on a ship in the early 1890s with the equivalent of 50 cents in his pocket and, though an impoverished Jewish kid from (now embattled) Lviv, was allowed to stay. ...
Rebecca goes on to explain what she learned in another authoritarian regime and what she is learning accompanying immigrants to their ordeals with Donald Trump's immigration court non-system. Read all about it.
This ad was posted by the Canadian province (that's Canadian for "state") of Ontario. Ontario is Canada's most populous subdivision, the most industrialized, and contains some of the country's most important cities, including Toronto and the national capital, Ottawa.
Not surprisingly, the Orange Toddler threw a hissy fit seeing the Republican icon's free trade convictions thrown back at him.
Ottawa took it down but the point was made, especially for Canadians: the current US incumbent is nuts.
Once upon a time, I sailed my little Sunfish dinghy from Grand Island across the Niagara River to eat a picnic lunch. This was just a normal September outing. Today I imagine the Border Patrol might shoot a missile at me.
 | |
| Peace Bridge between Buffalo. NY and Canada in 2007. Somehow I doubt this image is what that once-tranquil border looks like today. |
... Canadians have been scarce at cultural attractions, sporting events and shopping malls in the area since President Trump threatened Canada with tariffs two weeks into his second administration (following through on those threats March 4), and spoke of adding the country as the 51st state.
But that absence has been deeply felt, said Anthony Sprague, general manager of the Buffalo Bisons baseball club, the top minor-league affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, who are facing off against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Canadians typically comprise a quarter of the club’s fan base at its downtown Buffalo stadium, he said. This season, that share has shrunk to 10 percent.
The team began receiving season ticket cancellations even before the baseball season got underway in March, Mr. Sprague said. “The narrative was all the same: ‘Nothing against you guys, we love you guys, but we need to take a stand by not coming across the border.’”
Tensions aren’t likely to dissipate anytime soon after Mr. Trump declared an immediate end to trade negotiations Thursday. His decision followed an angry post on Truth Social over an ad sponsored by the province of Ontario featuring President Ronald Reagan denouncing the use of tariffs. ...
The linked article is granular and devastating. Maybe both sides will have to rename the historic bridge?
She's not preaching this weekend; it's a week off. But she's got a righteous admonition for the Orange Toddler. The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Kaeton is disgusted and appropriately wroth.
... We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. We are surrounded by destruction on every level, so that the insecurities of one man-boy will be assuaged.
The destruction of the East Wing of the White House stands as a raw, open wound, created by the crass, morally bankrupt, blind arrogance of a narcissist with sociopathic tendencies.It looks like the kind of revenge Osama bin Laden couldn’t even delight in imagining.
It’s the visualization of all of the other signs and symbols of his arrogance: rewriting history, ignoring foundational constitutional rights like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and due process.
... Why is he doing all this? Apparently, because he thinks he can. And, it makes him feel big and strong because he’s getting his “vengeance”.
... What’s to be done? Well, short of getting Chuck Schumer to write another sternly worded letter, the best course of action seems to be exactly what we are doing: Holding the line on decency, morality, and democratic process while we work the judicial system and put them on record to uphold the law and the Constitution.
... The opposite of arrogance is not humility.
The opposite of arrogance is integrity.It’s the ability to tell the truth with honesty and authenticity, even when the temptation is to give in to the pressure to conform to the will of those in power.
It’s the conviction to speak out for what’s right, even when your voice shakes.
... I don’t know how this will all end, if Democracy is finally being tested beyond its limits. I only know that this version of Democracy has lasted longer than any modern despot or dictator. ...
I'd call that preaching for such a time as this.
For the moment, Donald Trump's invasion of San Francisco (and perhaps the rest of the Bay?) is on hold. Our billionaires apparently weighed in.
Joe Eskenazi at Mission Local describes what might better be described as a pause than a Trump stand down.
And, just like that, a daylong crisis and flood-the-zone news cycle across the Bay Area regarding the imminent deployment of border protection agents to the region was quelled. Or not: Oakland mayor Barbara Lee said the president didn’t call her. Lurie and other local leaders are taking the president’s words to mean that the rest of the Bay Area will be spared — but there was no overt pledge regarding that.
It’s great for the people of San Francisco that the president has capriciously decided to unsend the troops he capriciously decided to send. But the real story here is, per the president’s summation of his discussion with Lurie on social media, that the Commander-in-Chief is overtly stating that he is basing a domestic military deployment upon what local “friends of mine” (billionaire CEOs Jensen Huang of NVIDIA and local boy Marc Benioff of Salesforce) lobbied him to do. Trump also noted that Lurie asked him “very nicely” not to establish a military beachhead in San Francisco.
All for the good. But what if Huang and Benioff had been in the mood for a military parade and called for sending in the troops? What if Lurie had been less polite?
If things had gone even slightly differently, it stands to reason that federal immigration agents and/or armed troops could be rolling through the city by now. ...
Though our billionaires and millionaires think they are kings of the city and the world, they do in the end want their enterprises to run with as little friction as possible. To most of us in San Francisco, the tech workers who the sector brings here look like gentrifiers. But they would not warm to a martial law state where neighbors are snatched off the street by anonymous thugs. I think we can trust that. And our billionaires don't want the hassle of their employees being upset. So they have an interest in trying to distract Trump.
What a world!
• • •
This morning some large number of protesters who object to the Trump/ICE-etc. goon squad occupying the Coast Guard facility in Alameda made their presence known on the road outside.
A friend in the area sent along this commentary:
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| Click to enlarge. |
Trump is threatening to send his goons to San Francisco. We won't make their mission of civic destruction easy. If the Supreme Court continues to fail, liberty is up to us.
Busy today -- so I'll pass along some thoughts from the eminent economist and all round decent observer of American follies.
After the No Kings demonstrations, Krugman seeks to understand why these big actions seemed to unhinge MAGA's always loosely ordered psyche.
Civil Resistance Confronts the Autocracy
... to show their fealty to Dear Leader, Republicans must engage in bizarre rhetoric....
... what are we to make of the completely unhinged things Republicans were saying in advance of the protests?
... Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, attacked the whole Democratic base:The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.These claims were all self-evidently absurd. So why make them? CNN says that it was a “weird strategy”: Calling grandmothers Hamas terrorists won’t convince anyone who isn’t already deep in the MAGA tank and will backfire as those not in the tank see the disconnect between this rhetoric and the reality of the protests.But it all makes sense once you realize that what we have been seeing in operation isn’t the Trump administration’s strategy for dealing with its critics. It is, instead, the strategies of individual MAGA apparatchiks for dealing with He Who Must Be Obeyed. ...
Krugman has a label and an explanation for this weird behavior from Trump's circle:
... telling lies ... serves the autocrat’s ego. Call it “mendacity inflation.” Trump insists that he’s overwhelmingly popular and that only a lunatic fringe disapproves of his presidency. Well, to show loyalty his hangers-on must go further, declaring that grandmothers and parents pushing prams down 7th Avenue are illegal aliens and violent criminals. The humiliating absurdity is a feature, not a bug.
Simply lying about demonstrators isn’t enough; to prove their MAGA mettle; people in Trump’s orbit must tell lies that are grotesque and ridiculous.
Again, what’s historically odd about this is that while Trump’s personal depravity may match that of historical autocrats, his power doesn’t. Call him Caligula, if you like, but he can’t order Senators — even Republican Senators — to commit suicide. ...
One is moved to ask "Yet?" Republicans seem pretty far gone ...
• • •
Today, Krugman goes for Trump's insane essence. He's a mad king now.
... it takes the power of the presidency to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. And Trump is doing just that – he is descending into states of delusion that are as he would say, like nothing anyone has seen before (notwithstanding Nixon’s nighttime drunken tirades).
On Sunday, the day after millions of Americans marched in the massive No Kings Day protests, Trump dismissed them:
The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective and the people were whacked out. When you look at those people, those are not representative of the people of our country.Does Trump actually believe that? I suspect that he does. ... There are many, many more examples of Trump’s delusions. He really does seem to believe that Portland is “war-ravaged,” that Chicago is full of “beautiful Black women in MAGA hats” begging him to stop crime, that China is going to cave to his trade demands, that gasoline is $1.99 a gallon, that he will lower drug prices by 500%, and much more.Granted, previous presidents have also been surrounded by flatterers. In the case of George W. Bush, it’s unlikely that we would have been lied into the Iraq War without Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz assuring him that we would be welcomed as liberators. And we know now that Biden’s inner circle hid his increasing physical frailty from the public and even from his own cabinet members.
Yet Trump’s disconnect from reality is uniquely destructive. No previous president has tried to overturn an election, sought to use the military against U.S. citizens, or sought to use the Justice Department as his own personal vendetta machine.
The difference is that he’s the first president to live in an autocratic bubble, surrounded by a cult of personality within which nobody dares to criticize him, tell him uncomfortable truths or refuse to engage in blatantly illegal acts.
Furthermore, Trump is clearly getting worse, growing even more out of touch with each passing week. Regardless of whether it’s advancing age or growing frustration, even Trump, I think, realizes that his efforts to suppress all opposition are running into serious resistance. Putting out an AI video of himself dumping shit on protestors suggests panic, not strength. But his claims about what’s happening in America and the world keep getting stranger and wilder.
And Trump’s denial of reality is already having devastating consequences for America, with more to come. ...
We're in for a wild ride. We don't know how it ends. There remains a fragility to MAGA's grasp on dictatorial power, complicated by its submission to a crazy man and the existence of a massive, probably majority, resistance. Like Krugman, I find it possible that the people will create enough friction so that things will come apart and massive change will happen. To what end? Time will tell.
I'm still living in the backwash of what we did on Saturday. NO KINGS was a fine denunciation of the MAGA regime's atrocities against immigrants, against workers, against truth, against our democracy. But it was also a gushing release of emotions that the Trump emergency constrains. We risk missing out on feeling some of what keeps us human, perhaps because we can't afford to bare or bear those feelings in this awful time.
So on Saturday, some of us expressed emotions which living in Trump's America has repressed.
Libertarian rule-of-law guy Radley Balko is not at all an habitual protester. Often, more a cranky critic. But he found emotional sustenance in Saturday's marches.
What I saw at Saturday’s protest was a celebration of the values that truly make us great, even as we haven’t always lived up to them — the rule of law, constitutionalism, skepticism of power, empathy and compassion, civil liberties, and — yes — diversity. ...
If I had to sum up my own feelings about the protest in Nashville in a word, I’d go with nourishing. It felt good. It felt good to stand with neighbors who understand what we’re up against.
As Erudite Partner has observed, Donald Trump has no sense of humor. Neither does MAGA. It's all about grievance all the way down.
We do have a sense of humor.
And under a bright sun and warm breezes, tens of thousands of us marched down Market Street yesterday, delighting in walking together against the grim destruction being inflicted on our people and country.
A successful big rally generates good news coverage. The San Francisco Chronicle did a good job on No Kings Day around the Bay.
G.Elliott Morris, statistician and data guru at Strength in Numbers, set himself the task of figuring out how many people participated across the country. His headline: Second "No Kings Day" protests likely the largest single-day political demonstration since 1970, with 4.2-7.6 million participants.
I hate the crowd count game, but this one is probably as sound as we'll get. As interesting, in the linked article, is Morris' conclusion that ongoing anti-fascist actions are vastly broader and more widespread than in the first Trump term.
No Kings began to meet the moment. We need to continue to buckle down against MAGA's cruelty and injustice ...
I'll be out today, and I hope you will be too. No Kings is where it is at today.
... Whenever and however Donald Trump exits the stage, there just isn’t anyone who will step into the MAGA movement’s shoes — there are plenty of people who will try, from JD Vance to Marco Rubio to Ron DeSantis to Don Jr. to Ted Cruz, but the thing we’ve seen over and over across the last decade is that no one is Donald Trump. Vice President JD Vance, an incredibly awkward and unfunny Trump-lite who is widely despised by both sides, is most certainly not Donald Trump.
Trump has built in MAGA not a movement but a personality cult — a fragile coalition of anti-government extremists, white nationalists, conspiracists, disaffected people hurt by globalization, and a lot of low-information voters whose brains have been fried by right-wing media and social media algorithms.
Post-Trump, the MAGA cult will likely splinter and fracture into bitter power-hungry factions, many of which will be terrified about their own culpability to criminal, civil, or other public accountability. That fragile coalition is unlikely to survive months past Trump himself — and if and when that collapse happens, the reality of #1 (“there are more of us than of them”), powered by the history and mission of #2 (“the dream of America is a country that gets more just and more free”), will have an important opening and opportunity.
If civil society and good people, like the millions who will march this weekend at the No Kings protests, can stay strong, vocal, and active in the months and years ahead, there’s plenty of reason to believe that the United States — or at least parts of the United States — can begin to repair the damage done by Trumpism and continue to advance our national, collective 250-year-old dream of a multiracial democracy more just, more equal, and more free.
The damage that Trump has already done to our government, our institutions, and our civic national fabric will be real and lasting. We will never be the country we were before Donald Trump corruptly won the election in 2016 with Russia’s help, but someday — across years and decades, and maybe not even during my lifetime but perhaps during my childrens’ lifetime — we can strive to work together to ensure that the country we hand off to future generations is better than the one we’ve inherited.
We are the people we've been waiting for ...
It's almost a throwaway line in a post by European political scientist Thomas Zimmer, a post mostly calling out the failings of the New York Times. But I think it's critically important for understanding much of the behavior of much of MAGA:
Key to understanding [Office of Budget and Management director Russell] Vought’s worldview is the idea that the constitutional order - and with it the “natural” order itself - has been destroyed: The revolution has already happened, “the Left” won. Therefore, conservatives categorically err when they try to preserve what is no more.Vought is correct, to a substantial extent. Twentieth century America undermined, eroded, and finally largely tore down the unchallenged power of white supremacy and patriarchy (of which homophobia and gender absolutism are features.) Much of MAGA hates the America the majority of us have made. So they call us "the Left." Some of us may identify with some "Left"; but most of us are just ordinary Americans who have moved on from habitual white supremacy and woman hatred. The country is not perfected, but it has moved on from MAGA's cultural grievances.
And Trumpism is wildly unpopular and getting more so with every price increase and raid on Black and brown neighbors.
... Rather than acknowledging that the US is in danger of being permanently overtaken by China’s technological and economic prowess, the Trump administration is slashing support for scientific research and attacking education. In the name of defeating the bogeymen of “wokeness” and the “deep state”, this administration is actively opposing progress in critical sectors while giving grifters like the crypto industry everything that they want. ... A powerful faction in America has become deeply hostile to science and to expertise in general. ...
... Does this mean that the U.S. is losing the race with China for global leadership? No, I think that race is essentially over.Historian of fascism John Ganz calls out MAGA as embodying the nationalism of losers.
... MAGA’s base of support comes from those parts of the country and those social classes and regions that actually did lose out or never gained from the international system. Its bourgeoisie is mostly from the heartland, not from the coasts.
Its intellectual class, or clerisy, is drawn from those who could not achieve the first rank under the old “meritocratic” system, who couldn’t fully enter the cosmopolitan elite, or decided to defect from its ranks opportunistically to gain pride of place in the new movement. ...
This fear, hatred, and envy of the cosmopolitan elite, this anti-Atlanticist, anti-globalist current, sometimes called “isolationism,” but more correctly called sovereigntism or even just nationalism, is a longstanding constellation of ideas in American politics ...Dorothy Thompson recognized these second-raters in her classic 1941 essay, Who Goes Nazi?
For that matter, so did my mother, who, though a Republican housewife, recognized and participated in warning against European fascism during its rise in the mid-1930s.
This country has always attracted the world's desperate who hoped to become winners. Are we going to let the MAGA losers kill off that hope? NO KINGS!
Yesterday I participated in an interesting canvassing experiment sponsored by Indivisible. I was sent online a list of 10 near (like almost next door!) neighbors which their data nerds thought should be turned out to support Prop. 50. I found 3 clear YES voters, talked to one probable NO voter -- didn't find the others. I left explanatory leaflets I had printed out where I could.
Not bad.
The list wasn't as clear or useful as it might have been; whoever created it listed each door as "LastName:Household" (for example "Vasquez household") -- not particularly useful in a place where many of my neighbors are Spanish speaking couples who use different last names. And others live in group apartments with multiple residents and multiple last names.
Still, this is a promising canvass plan when there are lots of volunteers who can be organized online to do small chunks of work.
I was pleased to notice this sign on one of these households. Somehow, I'd missed it previously. That can happen when you get to know your neighbors.
I should resist the impulse to post this, but I won't.
Do these clones have any idea how stupid they look?
I hope this YouTube message from Zohran Mamdami is everywhere on the internet. Mamdami is the Democratic Party-endorsed candidate for mayor of New York if you've been distracted and had not heard. He's ahead in the November contest.
Just in case you missed it, here Mamdami takes a stand for his potential transgender constituents.
And he proves he is not afraid to go where so many pols are afraid to tred.
The ad, set to transgender artist SOPHIE’s “It’s OK to Cry,” opens with the story of Sylvia Rivera, a trailblazing activist who helped lead the Stonewall uprising and lay the foundation for the first Pride. It then traces landmarks of New York’s queer history ...
The ad serves as a masterclass for Democrats on how to talk about transgender people with empathy and conviction. Many of Mamdani’s own supporters may not know the history he highlights, and so it serves the purpose to educate his supporters in how to humanely talk about transgender people. Through this framing, he grounds his stance in moral clarity rather than political expedience—a rare trait in modern campaigns.
For voters on the fence, the ad demonstrates that his support for transgender rights isn’t a focus-grouped calculation; it’s a reflection of his core values. In doing so, Mamdani not only strengthens trust among progressives but also draws in those who may have felt ambivalent, offering them something increasingly scarce in politics today: authenticity.
Dems need to learn that when Republicans try to make you squirm because some of your supporters are their targets for hatred, you can either prove you are chickenshit or step up and stand up for the human dignity of all people. No alternative works. Dodging only makes you look unbelievable and untrustworthy to everyone.
The Donald thinks he can rewrite what happened in the past. He can't. When we choose not to enable this fascist project, that, too, is resistance.
... Estimates of the number of Native people living in North America and South America in 1490 vary widely, but there were at least as many as 50 million, and possibly as many as 100 million. In the next 200 years, displacement, enslavement, war, and especially disease would kill about 90% of those native peoples. Most historians see the destruction of America’s Indigenous peoples as the brutal triumph of European white men over those they perceived to be inferior.
Historians are not denigrating historical actors or the nation when they uncover sordid parts of our past. Historians study how and why societies change. As we dig into the past, we see patterns that never entirely foreshadow the present but that give us ideas about how people in the past have dealt with circumstances that look similar to circumstances today.
If we are going to get an accurate picture of how a society works, historians must examine it honestly, seeing the bad as well as the good. With luck, seeing those patterns will help us make better decisions about our own lives, our communities, and our nation in the present.
History is different from commemoration. History is about what happened in the past, while commemoration is about the present. We put up statues and celebrate holidays to honor figures from the past who embody some quality we admire.
Because Richardson is a real historian, she points out that the origin of today's Columbus holiday was as a response in the 1920s to the Ku Klux Klan trying to erase southern and eastern European immigrants. Those were the days when the Knights of Columbus functioned as a resistance organization!
As society changes, the values we want to commemorate shift. In the 1920s, Columbus mattered to Americans who opposed the Ku Klux Klan because celebrating an Italian defended a multicultural society. Now, though, he represents the devastation of America’s Indigenous people at the hands of European colonists who brought to North America and South America germs and a fever for gold and God. It is not “left-wing arson” to want to commemorate a different set of values than the country held in the 1920s.
What is arson, though, is the attempt to skew history to serve a modern-day political narrative. Rejecting an honest account of the past makes it impossible to see accurate patterns. The lessons we learn about how society changes will be false, and the decisions we make based on those false patterns will not be grounded in reality.
And a society grounded in fiction, rather than reality, cannot function.
I'm with her.
Photo by way of Dave Zirin from occupied DC.
What's so striking about George Retes' story of false arrest and abuse by ICE and/or other unidentified federal agents in Southern California is that he is absolutely clear that he's a person with rights. He's suing the federal government because he trusts he should expect accountability for what was done to him.
Civil rights in America have always been about one thing: holding power accountable when it strips people of their dignity and freedom. They are not privileges that government agents get to decide whether to honor. What happened to me wasn’t just a mistake—it was a violation of the very protections that our Constitution guarantees.
On July 10, I was on my way to work when ICE agents engulfed my car in tear gas, smashed my driver-side window, and pepper-sprayed my face. They dragged me out, threw me to the ground, and even while I was complying, one agent kneeled on my neck and another kneeled on my back as others stood by and watched.
I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney. I was placed on suicide watch and missed my daughter’s third birthday. No explanation. No charges. No apology. One day, I was just told, “you’re free to go.”...
... [The Department of Homeland Security has] stated that US citizens are not being “wrongfully” arrested by ICE, that their enforcement operations are highly targeted, and that their personnel conduct due diligence to know who they are targeting. DHS also framed criticisms of the operation as “smears” against ICE officers, alleging such claims have contributed to an increase in assaults on law enforcement.
... DHS’s statement ignores reality and is designed to demonize and villainize people who don’t let the government trample over their rights, and aren’t afraid to speak the truth. ... The truth is that I am a US citizen and a veteran, and I will continue to pursue accountability for the rights that were violated that day.
This fight is not just about my case—it’s about ensuring that there is recourse when people are silenced, detained, or dehumanized by the very government meant to protect us. ...
Retes gave a detailed YouTube interview to Tim Miller of the Bulwark which you can watch or listen to. In his own words:
... I was just trying to get to work. Like I'm clearly not going to get there. So I'm just going to leave. Um, and so I get back in my car and they just surround my car, uh, I have agents on my left, my driver's side, my passenger side, agents behind my car, agents in front, just all yelling at me to do different things. The agents on the side are pulling on my door handles, banging on my windows, telling me to get out. Agents in the front of my car are telling me to reverse, to leave.
... like they're telling me to leave, telling me to get out and doing like contradicting each other. And I'm just there like coughing, trying to catch myself and just eventually my driver's side window shatters. And so ... , an agent sticks his arm through and pepper sprays me in the face.
[Miller] they just didn't ask you for ID, nothing?
... glass flew everywhere. I had glass in my leg. Uh, they pulled, they dragged me out of the car. Uh, threw me on the ground.
Uh, and I kind of just went with it. Like I wasn't fighting, like there was no point. I'm not stupid. Like I'm not going to fight 20 agents at once. Like that's stupid. Uh, so I kind of just go through with like, you just got to take it. ...
As much as it sucks, as much as this is stupid and this is shitty, it sucks. But you got to take it. ...
And so they dragged me out. They throw me on the ground. And I'm just trying to comply with them, letting them do whatever. And even though I'm complying and just letting them do whatever, an agent comes and he kneels on my neck and another agent kneels on my back.
Retes' account makes clear that immigration agents who hauled him away from this scrum didn't have any real idea why he'd been arrested. They were pretty soon able to verify his U.S. citizen status and that he worked as security at the farm where they held him. They didn't seem to know what to do with him, so they had him taken to Los Angeles' Metropolitan Detention Center. Authorities there also didn't seem to know what to do with him. Still covered with pepper spray, he was put on "suicide watch."
That Friday morning, they, they put me on suicide watch and, uh, they put me in this, uh, they put me in the cell. I'm naked, uh, in like a hospital dress and just a concrete bed with like a mattress, like a thin mattress. And, uh, they leave the light on 24 seven. Uh, there's a glass door and officers just always standing, like sitting out there, um, The psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day.
And so from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon when I'm released, I'm literally in that cell, naked, just in that room. What the fuck? With a light on 24-7. ...
... eventually another officer comes up and he takes me downstairs. He gives me back my clothes.
They make me sign for my phone, my piercings, my watch and stuff. And that was it ... all they just told me like all the charges on you were dropped uh you're free to go uh and that was it ...
... After being in the military, after doing all that, through that entire process, I knew to just be calm. I've been through the mud. I've been through the fucking shit before, if I'm being honest with you. I know how to keep my cool. I know how to stay calm under pressure and all that really helped me. And just when I got released, ... I was really thankful if I'm being honest with you, like who knows what else could have happened ...
Retes was thrilled to be back to his home and his kids -- and he's still trying to figure out what it means that his own government could do this to him.
[Miller] ... What are you going to do?
Honestly, just... figuring out my life. Honestly, doing all this is a big responsibility as well. Just sharing my story, keeping it alive, letting it be known. ... Like some people just like this stuff happens to and they just want to forget about it or they just are scared that the government might retaliate. ... I'm not, I'm not afraid. I mean, I know I did nothing wrong. ... I know the facts for sure. And I'm a hundred percent confident in my, in my story.
... They can lie all they want. They can make all the tweets they want. They could try to live in their own reality, but the truth is out there. And when it, like, if they want to take it to court, I'm like a hundred percent in and I'm a hundred percent ready. ...
... Like I still love this country and a hundred percent love the army and I love that experience. I love the brotherhood and just the family I made and just the experience. It made me a better person.
It helped me grow. It taught me a lot. ... I know that just what's happening right now just doesn't define America. What's happening right now just doesn't define the flag that I wore, the flag that like we stand for...
... I have no problem still standing by the flag and standing by and believing in the constitution. ... it's really important. ... I think it's everyone's job to speak about it, to get involved because it's not just my rights that were violated. It could happen to you. Nothing's really stopping them really ... I think it's really important to speak out and just tackle this head on. For the government, it's like what they're doing is completely wrong, and I don't agree with them at all. It doesn't matter if you're left, you're right ... like it affects us all. ...
George Retes did not volunteer to be made a test case about whether federal agents can be held accountable for abuses done while carrying out the Homan/Miller/Trump immigrant deportation agenda. But here he finds himself. We all owe him for his courage to stand up for the freedoms he believes in.
According to her bio on the New York Times website, Kate Andrias is a professor of constitutional law and labor law at Columbia Law School, who studies the role of social movements in changing law. She seems very much the woman for the moment!
Andrias writes [gift link]:
The Constitution Doesn’t Belong to Trump or the Supreme Court
In case after case over the past eight months, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court have acquiesced to President Trump’s lawless and authoritarian actions, often without offering any explanation. The court has allowed the administration to summarily deport migrants to countries where they have no connection. It has condoned racial profiling by federal immigration officers. And it has suggested that it will jettison 90 years of precedent by holding that the president can fire, without cause, the heads of independent agencies. ...
... For the past two decades, Americans have watched the Roberts court dismantle constitutional rights and disable government from regulating in the public interest: overruling Roe v. Wade; invalidating limits on corporate campaign spending; striking down reasonable gun restrictions; and rolling back environmental safeguards.
But since the country’s founding, constitutional meaning has never emerged solely from an elite cadre of justices. Nor has judicial supremacy — what some call “juristocracy”— ever been the reality on the ground. When enough people have organized around a constitutional vision, they have managed to prevail even against a hostile Supreme Court.
Consider the fight for labor rights. During the early 20th century, the court repeatedly invalidated laws protecting unions; judges even jailed labor leaders who led strikes. When Congress, during the Great Depression, passed the National Labor Relations Act enshrining the rights to organize, bargain and strike, most observers believed the Supreme Court would deem the law unconstitutional. But workers organized to defend their rights, articulating a bold constitutional vision rooted in the First Amendment’s rights of free expression and association, the 13th Amendment’s promise of free labor and Congress’s regulatory authority. In the face of huge protests and strikes, and a threat from President Franklin Roosevelt to pack the court with more justices, the Supreme Court relented and upheld the statute. ...
Read it all for an introduction to another era in which the people had to overwhelm, democratically, another Supreme Court majority which tried to uphold an outmoded, cramped, and repressive former era of legal interpretation of American freedoms.
• • •
Meet a federal judge who is giving the Trump regime fits in DC.
• • •
Meanwhile the New Republic's legal commentator Matt Ford sees a truly dire precedent for the current moment.
Trump Is Following in the Footsteps of a Failed English King
Our Founders’ designs were studiously informed by the mistakes of King Charles I. Our president seems to want to repeat them. ...
...[Trump] would likely find a kindred spirit in Charles I, the seventeenth-century English king whose own taxation policies and preference for absolute rule led to civil war. Charles’s downfall during the English Civil War helped transition England from the divine right of kings to parliamentary supremacy. It also inspired the Founders as they built a republican government around rights and liberties on these shores. ...
Trump should probably note that the consequence to Charles I was loss of his head under an executioner's ax.
Free people don't take well to oligarchy and aspiring kings, though it may take us awhile to assert ourselves. Let us do so, firmly, without violence, knowing our forebears have shown the way.
