What's God got to do with it?

Everything for the evangelical, Pentecostal segment of Donald Trump's base which is cheering his extra-Constitutional attack on what he hopes is Iran's nuclear capacity. (Thirty-six hours after, experts aren't so sure he's done the damage he hoped to, but what does expertise matter, anyway, when you are a boy ordering a big bang?)

 

Polling before the strike on Iran showed only 16 percent of us wanted this. This is not like GW Bush's invasion of Iraq which enjoyed majority support for a hot minute in 2003. Now that Trump's done it, YouGov still finds 46 percent opposed, 35 percent in favor of the strikes. And just wait until it all becomes more complicated ...

Diana Butler Bass brings historical perspective to evangelical Christian enthusiasm for the Trump's bombs: 

To his evangelical base, Trump is fulfilling end times prophecies before their eyes. Moving the embassy [to Jerusalem in 2018] was but the first step in reorienting US policy toward prophecy. What is happening right now — with the US joining with Israel in this bombing — is nothing less than God's work, and they believe that they are the recipients of the long-awaited promise of Jesus' return.

... the MAGA "Jesus" and their particular prophecy tradition only dates to the mid-1800s. It was a completely invented theology about 200 years ago.

Yet that theological innovation has been one of the most wildly successful heresies in the history of Christianity in terms of spread and influence — mostly via Pentecostalism, the largest and most sustained global religious movement of the last century.

Modern Pentecostalism began among the poor and dispossessed and was originally influenced by progressive politics. Movements change, however. And partisans often wind up far from where they started.

In the last four decades, Pentecostals fully embraced both prophecy theologies (previously these theologies had been the purview of rather staid evangelicals and fundamentalists — most of whom eschewed Pentecostalism) and nationalist politics. ...

... Trump’s evangelical and Pentecostal supporters — the core of MAGA — are cheering. ... Bombing Iran secures Trump’s status as God’s man, the one sent to fulfill the prophetic promises that lead to the return of Jesus. While the rest of us are trying to discern signs of fascism, many American are discerning the "signs of the times."

We think Hitler. They think Jesus. We think of the innocent suffering. They think of the final judgment. We pray for peace. They believe that the Prince of Peace is returning with a sword. ...

For a deeper dive into this crackpot theology, I recommend Jemar Tisby: Bombs for the Apocalypse? Ted Cruz, Trump, and Evangelical End Times Theology -- How Dispensationalism Drives American Foreign Policy and Military Aggression. This is an accessible easy read, if delving into lunacy can be easy.

A message of shared humanity and a warning

Historian of American Christian religion Diana Butler Bass offers a homily for this moment:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. — Matthew 25: 35–36

... People of faith may, of course, disagree about policies regarding immigration. But we cannot avoid that the call for compassion, safety, and welcome for those who have left their homelands due to starvation, violence, deprivation, persecution, and war.

We humans have always fled and wandered. We have experienced exile and homelessness. Immigration has been central to the human story from its beginning. But the story is taking an evil turn right now, even as the problems associated with the movement of peoples are intensifying. But immigration is not going away ... largely due to climate change.

How we deal with this is a measure of our moral health and our own souls.

It is incumbent upon us to resist the dehumanization and demonization of immigrants and refugees and refuse to participate in unjust deportations and campaigns of state terror against innocent people. We cannot give in to social and political movements that deny the humanity and dignity of immigrants and refugees.

We must not accept the wanton cruelty being perpetrated in our towns and cities right now. And we will not carry out orders from those who flagrantly deny the ethical imperative of Jesus himself.

I was a stranger and you invited me in.

• • •

Journalist and popular historian Garrett Graff studies our past experience to try to discern where we are going. He is not sanguine about the trajectory of the Trump/Miller migrant expulsion regime. 

ICE in just a few weeks has transformed itself into the closest thing that the US has ever had to a “secret police,” with more seemingly culturally in common with the Klan nightriders of Reconstruction than their federal agency brethren like the FBI or ATF.

... what worries me is that what we’re witnessing nationwide are not the actions of an agency that believes it will ever be subject to meaningful oversight or legal authority ever again.

This is not an agency that is treating members of Congress as if it will ever be held to account by the men and women who control its budget.

This is not an agency that believes that any of its actions on the streets will be subject to meaningful review by judicial authorities — or that any of its actions will be litigated in the courts.

This is not an agency that believes that any of its actions will be subject to meaningful review by the DHS inspector general, either for policy violations or criminal use-of-force abuses, nor reviewed by US attorneys or federal prosecutors at any level.

This is not an agency leadership that believes that anyone in government — at the Justice Department, the White House, or DHS — currently cares about public perception, misconduct, or violations of civil rights and civil liberties.

And this is not an agency that believes that Democrats will ever be back in charge.

That’s what should terrify us.

... the [Big Ugly Budget] bill before Congress right now would supercharge ICE and turn this increasingly secret-police-like organization loose on the country in ways that would be explosive. Various versions of the $150 billion proposal to boost immigration enforcement throw around numbers like adding between $8 billion and $30 billion for ICE hiring and operations.

ICE’s entire current annual budget is around $10 billion, so imagine an ICE an order of magnitude larger than it is now.

... I spent years writing about the corruption that followed a similar radical and rapid transformation of the Border Patrol — a decade of corruption during which one agent or officer of CBP was arrested almost every single day for misconduct or criminal activity, a decade during which it rushed new hires out into the field without proper vetting or training. ...

Now we appear to be set to repeat all of those mistakes by pouring gasoline on ICE’s misconduct — hiring thousands of new agents and officers in a rush just as surely problematic, if not worse and bigger, as the one that wrecked CBP for years — and turn it loose on the country’s interior, cities, and small communities in a way that the Border Patrol’s corruption and misconduct for the most part never affected ordinary Americans.  ...

• • •

Seen at No Kings demo, San Francisco

Pacifica will not go quietly

Along Highway One at Mori Point in Pacifica this morning, folks were alerting passing motorists to their anger at the Trump regime. There were plenty of friendly honks.

Mori Point is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area -- like the rest of the National Parks, attractive real estate that Trump would happily sell off to his billionaire buddies for development. Or turn over to mining interests if they want these places.

The MAGA Budget Bill now moving in the Senate would cripple many of our parks. The National Parks Conservation Association is leading the pushback.

Friday cat blogging

 

I am watched. I think it's about the opening of cans. Why don't I get on with it? It's dinner time and we're starving. ...

From the Department of Plain Speaking Politicians

 

A career foreign service officer, Bridget Brink served as US ambassador to Ukraine under Biden. Now she's running for Congress in her home state of Michigan. It seems possible that having been witness up close to a genuinely existential struggle leaves this observer with "no fucks to give" in a political race. 

Over images from the Russian assault on Ukraine, Brink declares: "Appeasing a dictator will never achieve a lasting peace..."

The House district is competitive. There will be other Democratic contestants. I have no idea whether this approach will "work" for Brink, but I find it refreshing.

• • • 

As we watch helplessly while Donald Trump playacts the strongman in the most volatile arena in today's world, it doesn't hurt to be reminded of what war, even a "small" war, looks like.

Juneteenth 2025

Today is the federal holiday of Juneteenth, created by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021. This celebration of freedom, the end of enslavement won in war by the federal Union in 1865, is still a novelty to white America. So it seems worth sharing this short history from people's historian Heather Cox Richardson. 

 

In this country, freedom has always come through struggle.

• • • 

As in all else in our national life, Donald and his MAGA acolytes wish they could erase this memory of freedom won by blood and struggle. Judd Legum reports that big corporations are scurrying to cover up that they ever endorsed and participated in Juneteenth. Notable backsliders:

Amazon, Verizon, and other major corporations have ended or reduced their support for Juneteenth celebrations this year, forcing events in major cities to be significantly scaled back, a Popular Information investigation reveals.

.. Amazon rolled back its DEI programs in December 2024. An internal letter from an Amazon senior human resources executive stated that the company would eliminate “outdated” policies and programs. This included removing language from the company’s website about Amazon’s support for “Equity for Black people.” Amazon also removed all references to DEI from its 2024 annual report and donated $1,000,000 to Trump's inaugural committee. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

• • •

An LA Times political commentator wondered whether Donald Trump can just make the Juneteenth holiday go away. As in so much of American life which MAGA wants killed off, it turns out that is harder then they may understand.

Trump wouldn’t have the power to do that on his own, according to Loyola Marymount University Law School professor Jessica Levinson.

“Federal holidays are created and abolished by Congress,” Levinson explained, adding that presidents can make recommendations and sign and veto bills, but they cannot unilaterally create or cancel laws.

Our current reality seems to consist of an ongoing test of that proposition. The No Kings protests show there are are lot of us who think our system of government ought to mean we still have a say.

Justice for all

Trump/MAGA's substitution of the whims of the Leader for historic American democratic norms and law provokes our resistance from many viewpoints and among many very different people. Why would such a violent tearing of the national fabric not do so?; this a a country of 340 million individuals with very different histories, needs, and life experiences. MAGA desperately wants to erase all that and subjugate where it can't.

 

Many of us recoil from and repudiate MAGA's vision.

 

For some, the energy for that struggle comes from our visceral reaction to the abduction of family and neighbors.

 

For some, it's sheer stubbornness, a defiant sense of self that has kept us going through life's challenges and serves in this moment.

 

For some it's recoil from gratuitous cruelty in the service of a sick cartoon of a god rendered a nasty tribal totem. 

 

And for some, it's allegiance to a reasonably coherent ethical system which repels MAGA's fatuous formulas. The country has many such belief systems, but we are learning that in the past century the country had erected a legal edifice to embody our diverse core beliefs. Trump/MAGA can't stand for that.

Attorney and commentator Liz Dye reports how one federal judge reacted to MAGA in court:

Judge rules that anti-woke is just racism
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a rancid bigot.

 

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Boston explicitly called out the Trump administration for its “palpably clear” discrimination against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ Americans in a case involving canceled grants from the National Institutes of Health....

Judge [William] Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan in 1985, called the terminations “arbitrary and capricious.” But he went further than other judges in the many impoundment suits, calling the administration out for its flagrant animus against racial and sexual minorities.

“I am hesitant to draw this conclusion — but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it — that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” he said, according to Politico. “That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.“

...“You are bearing down on people of color because of their color,” the judge hammered on. “The Constitution will not permit that.”

... In 1954, [lawyer Joseph] Welch’s “Have you no decency, sir!” marked the beginning of the end for Sen. Joe McCarthy. Public support for his witch hunt collapsed, and he died in disgrace three years later. But decency is in short supply these days, and the White House is digging in.

“It is appalling that a federal judge would use court proceedings to express his political views and preferences,” White House flack Kush Desai sneered. “How is a judge going to deliver an impartial decision when he explicitly stated his biased opinion that the administration’s retraction of illegal DEI funding is racist and anti-LGBTQ?”

A hit dog will holler. And maybe that dog will win a reprieve from the Supreme Court, too. But even so, it still matters when old bulls of the judiciary, particularly conservatives like Judge Young and Judge Royce Lamberth, who enjoined attacks on trans prisoners, call out the Trump regime for turning civil rights laws on their head.

“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Judge Young fumed. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”

Once upon a time, (1782 to be specific) we affirmed a national motto: E Pluribus Unum -- out of many one.  That's in the national DNA and it isn't going away.

The end of the beginning?

Paul Krugman, economist and commentator, offers some useful thoughts on where we've come to in the country's ongoing Trump/MAGA emergency.

While there is a cadre of Trumpist true believers who will obey the Leader under any circumstances, most of those doing the dirty work of undermining democracy and the rule of law are cowards and opportunists. They’re willing to participate in the destruction of America as we know it because they believe that many others will do the same. As a result, they believe that they are unlikely to face any personal consequences for their actions and may even be rewarded for their lawbreaking.

And what of those who oppose Trumpism? While there are heroes willing to take a stand against tyranny whatever the personal cost, most anti-Trumpists are reluctant to stick their necks out unless they believe that they are part of a widespread resistance that will grant them some measure of safety in numbers.

 In other words, the victory or defeat of competitive authoritarianism will depend to a large extent on which side ordinary people believe will win. If Trump looks unstoppable, resistance will wither away and democracy will be lost. On the other hand, if he appears weak and stymied, resistance will grow and — just maybe — American democracy will survive.

So what we saw on Saturday was more than just the juxtaposition of a poorly attended parade that was supposed to glorify the Leader against massive, enthusiastic protests. We also saw a body blow to Trump’s image of invincibility and a demonstration that millions of Americans are willing to stand up for democracy.

... This isn’t the end of the assault on American democracy. It isn’t even the beginning of the end. But it may well be the end of the beginning. Trump spent his first 6 months in office trying to steamroller over all opposition, creating the impression that resistance is futile. Clearly, he hasn’t succeeded.  ...

I think Paul's got this right. The No Kings demonstrations across the nation on Saturday were a milestone. If the people lead, maybe we can get more of our leaders to follow. Let's take deep breaths and go forward together in the struggle for democracy and a better future.

No Kings in San Francisco

Part Two: the people mill about in Civic Center

In this household, we sometimes apply a principle about demonstrations: either the march or the rally. Not both. But Saturday, after recording the start, I took BART down Civic Center to record some of the huge crowd.

City Hall always makes a grandiose back drop.

 

It was a good day to be a Californian. The sound system was inaudible, but who cared? We knew why we were there.

To Trump and Stephen Miller, they are targets of hate. For us -- probably an amazing near 60 percent -- they are simply us.

We depend on each other, not bored military extras conscripted to boost your sick little ego, Mr. Trump.

 Together in the sun. 

 

All kinds, all the time.

Father's Day 2025

There he is, doing his father thing. Perhaps he got me started on my affection for football with that rubber ball he is offering. 1948, I think.

No Kings in San Francisco

Part One: the people assemble in Dolores Park. 

I'm told that by the time the march got underway it took two hours to get everyone into the street and off to Civic Center. From the viewpoint of the not-terribly-mobile photographer, it's easier to interact with folks on the grass perimeter. The San Francisco Chronicle says "tens of thousands" of marchers, whatever that means.

 

Hope in a "moral moment."

These women have something to say.

Here's a gent with some admonitions.

Waiting to get into the scrum.

Sometimes the strongest response to our rulers is mockery. "Oh really?"

And sometimes it is poetry recalled ...

 

Old friends keep on keeping on.

New friends make art.

 

American has a solid political core that loves democracy and has no intention of letting go of it.  

Former United States Attorney Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse

No Kings today

More later.

On occupied Los Angeles and the eve of No Kings

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, many peoples' nomination for NBA basketball's GOAT, and I are the same age. We both came up in California in the 1960s. In this moment of Trump's attempted military coup in our state and nation, he speaks for me. 

... I grew up in a time of massive political unrest that changed the country from a fortress guarding the wealthy and their rules that benefited only them to a country that questioned those rules and the authorities enforcing them. Protests advocating for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and ending the Vietnam War were daily occurrences. That shock to the system of seeing hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to demand change jump-started America into a nation that was more aware of injustice and more committed to addressing it.

Protest is an act of love, not one of anger.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis (1940-2020), civil rights activist

As a human rights activist for 60 years, I’m used to the predictable pattern of protests and the inevitable backlash. People who are outraged by the government’s deliberate and callous acts of injustice march through the streets to raise public awareness and gather enough support to end the injustice. They do this after realizing that they will not be getting any help from most elected politicians, who are too afraid of compromising their jobs to do what’s right.

Instead, the government party in charge wants to demonstrate to its supporters that they are powerful and can protect the status quo against change. As they did in the sixties, they send in cops and troops to force a violent confrontation. This then justifies any action the government takes because now they have news footage of violent protesters. The result of this carefully manipulated photo-op violence is the curated disapproval and scolding by politicians relieved to have an excuse to reject protesters. Thousands of lives are being destroyed, but it only takes one burning car to allow people to justify their lack of involvement.

Lost in all this political theater is the injustice that was being protested.

This government was founded on protest.

Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), first Black Supreme Court justice

No matter how peaceful protesters want to be, it rarely ends up that way. There are too many people who benefit from having it turn violent. First, some infiltrators are the political enemies of the protesters who commit violent acts to discredit the cause. Second, there are hardcore radicals who agree with the principles of the protesters but don’t agree that their non-violent methods produce change fast enough. Third, the police and troops who should be trained in how to de-escalate violence after all these years of facing protests, know that de-escalation is not why they were sent in. Their job is to punish protesters to scare others from protesting. Ironically, they are there to protect a political party’s power, not protect the country.

So, yeah, protests are messy, impure, sloppy, and emotional. For many, it is a last resort born out of frustration, anger, and disappointment for a country that has not lived up to the promise it makes every time it hoists a flag. They see a felon for a president who has been accused of sexual assault more than two dozen times, who has used his office to increase his personal wealth, who dishonors the U.S. Constitution to gain more power, who ignores the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to cleanse the country of immigrants, legal and illegal, who demands law and order, yet pardons horrible criminals who cheated average people out of millions, and others who invaded the Capitol Building. That’s who we picked as our leader and guardian of our values.

When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.

Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), Civil Rights Movement leader

Your rally is here. I'll be there. Will you?

We can still say we don't have kings in America

New York Times opinion writer and historian Jamelle Bouie breaks down the political theory behind the Trump regime -- why they feel confident that they can and should subdue Senator Alex Padilla, the people of Los Angeles, the people of California, and the entire nation. 

... "the president and his various viziers see themselves as the kings of America and the rest of us must obey ...

...  "in traditional American political thought, sovereignty belongs to the people...Trump sees his election as something that embodied him as the will of the people ... he is the people  in some mystical way and whatever he says goes, he's the boss ... he says that protest constitutes some effort to overturn the will of the people... the political theory of the Trump administration made Trump something like the king, ... unquestioned authority. 

... "the Trump government is the closest thing we've ever come to electing the Confederacy... the Confederacy was founded on this fundamental notion that humans were not equal, some were to be high, some were to be low and that's clearly the operating belief system of the administration. ...

... "Kristi Noem is promising a January 6 led by the administration ... they'll storm any capital they need to to make sure that we obey. they don't want to govern us, they want to rule us. "

A king is only a king if we bow down.

We used to say, "be there or be square." That seems right for this weekend's No Kings Day on Saturday.

Indivisible does a good job of explaining why the nationwide demonstration.  

... our friend Reverend William Barber says: A king is only a king if we bow down.

A single mobilization won’t turn this ship around. But it can do a few very important things:

Change the narrative. A massive show of popular opposition everywhere in the country can disrupt Trump’s effort to project strength. It shows that resistance is big, powerful, growing, and everywhere.

Bring in new people. A mobilization of this scale and scope reaches people who aren’t yet engaged, and -- if done right -- helps to draw them into a cycle of action and relationships on the ground.

Foster community. When you show up, you realize that not only are you not alone -- you’re actually part of something enormous. And that helps to build the shared sense of identity we’ll need for the path ahead.

Spread courage. After Hands Off!, we heard from people in positions of power within institutions -- law firms, universities (one big university, in fact), and elsewhere -- who told us they were emboldened by the protests to push back on pressure from the Trump regime. As we often say, courage is contagious.  

Trump’s birthday parade and his attack on LA are all part of the same agenda of fascist theatrics, divide and conquer politics, and the consolidation of power.

Trump wants to look strong. What he doesn’t understand is that true power comes from the people. And on June 14th, we’re going to prove it.

Student of eastern European fascism Timothy Snyder calls for a new birth of freedom:

In the end, and in the beginning, and at all moments of strife, a government of the people, by the people, for the people depends upon the awareness and the actions of all of us. A democracy only exists if a people exist, and a people only exists in individuals' awareness of one another of itself and of their need to act together. This weekend Trump plans a celebration of American military power as a celebration of himself on his birthday -- military dictatorship nonsense. This is a further step towards a different kind of regime. It can be called out, and it can be overwhelmed.

Thousands of Americans across the land, many veterans among them, have worked hard to organize protests this Saturday — against tyranny, for freedom, for government of the people, by the people, for the people. Join them if you can. No Kings Day is June 14th.

Meeting the moment

 

The New Yorker cartoon shares a good spirit for this perilous moment.

 

Also in this perilous moment, Governor Newsom seems to have found his inner statesman. Link goes to a short speech. Even if, like me, you've always found him far less than inspiring, he seems in this to be meeting the occasion. Let the rest of the Dems compete to equal and surpass him in this mode!

We'll see what the day brings. For all his bluster, Trump is weak and a clown ...

Contemporary "slave catchers" at work in LA

The progressive journalist Harold Meyerson has long shared insights into his native Los Angeles even though he has decamped to DC. And leave it to Meyerson to usefully contextualize current events in the California Southland.

WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE.

In the decade preceding the Civil War, the residents of Northern states resisted the efforts of the federal government to compel them to help Southern slave owners capture former slaves who’d escaped to the North. In 1850, the Southern-dominated Congress and a pro-Southern President Millard Fillmore enacted the Fugitive Slave Act, requiring not just Northern police officials but all Northern citizens to aid in the seizure of Blacks who’d successfully escaped chattel slavery.

The North actively resisted these efforts. Boston abolitionists formed the Anti-Man-Hunting League, which hid escaped slaves and sought to impede the slave-hunters and the federal troops whom Fillmore deployed to help them out. But the resistance wasn’t confined to the abolitionist minority.

According to historian H. Robert Baker, there were whole neighborhoods of Milwaukee, Chicago, and Boston that became “no-go zones for slave catchers,” so great was the level of local resistance. As I wrote in these pages seven years ago, “Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, and Wisconsin all enacted ‘personal liberty laws’ forbidding public officials from cooperating with the slave owners or the federal forces sent to back them up, denying the use of their jails to house the captives, and requiring jury trials to decide if the owners could make off with their abductees.”

In the 1850s, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Fugitive Slave Act violated the Constitution's Tenth Amendment, which gave states the power to enact laws not specifically preempted by federal authority. What Trump and his troopers are engaged in now is the same kind of violent enforcement at complete variance with the local, state, and regional sentiment. 

The Tenth Amendment, however, doesn’t reserve immigration issues to the states; they clearly fall under the purview of the federal government, as does the president’s right to declare an emergency enabling him to employ troops domestically—a consummation for which Trump and Miller have long devoutly wished.  

California governor  Gavin Newsom has gone to court to block the federal intervention in Los Angeles, essentially claiming this is no emergency except the one caused by Donald Trump's radical deportation agenda. The case is before Federal Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco. That's a familiar name in this household as Breyer was the judge in our no-fly list lawsuit early in the War on Terror era. We found him a careful, judicious guy.

Free David Huerta

 

Several hundred union members and friends turned out today at the California State Building in San Francisco to demand the federal government release SEIU leader David Huerta who was arrested while protesting an ICE raid Friday near Los Angeles.

 

This was a peaceful gathering of the sort of workers who keep the state going: janitors, teachers, nurses.

In a state where we have an estimated one million immigrant workers without legal status, the Trump/Miller raids are an assault on our friends and neighbors.

 

UPDATE: On his release on bail with absurd felony charges pending, David Huerta said: "What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”

Never forget ...

 

 ... he's a clown show dictator.

 Political activist Simon Rosenberg:

Trump is throwing himself a military parade on his birthday this week and sending in the military to quell a “rebellion” in Los Angeles that the LAPD - no left wing organization - said was peaceful. I know all of this is a dramatic and dangerous escalation, and bad things are going to happen as Miller and Trump act on their authoritarian fantasies. But there is also something so profoundly ridiculous about everything that is happening right now, and we cannot for one moment allow any of this to become normal or acceptable in this great country. Trump is weak not strong; a loser not a winner; a big blubbery baby man, and anything, anything but the “strong man” he so desperately imagines himself to be.

Practice this.

Trump and his Miller ghoul have chosen a target

Dear Angelenos -- I am so sorry about what has happened and what is likely to get worse in your resilient, brave, and polyglot city. Trump's ICE thugs and friends stirred your resistance and he's now bringing in the National Guard. That's what you get for standing up for your neighbors.

This is just what our aspiring monarch wanted, of course -- an excuse to militarize a crisis he incited. 

Way back in April (seems ages ago in Trump-time doesn't it?), Daniel Hunter -- a nonviolence trainer who has worked with ethnic minorities in Burma, pastors in Sierra Leone, and independence activists in northeast India -- offered some thought about how we should respond when this time came. Hunter framed his article in terms of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 which doesn't seem to be quite where we're at. But likely whatever difference remains is not actually a distinction.

Says Hunter:

President Trump loves direct control and so it strikes me that invoking the Insurrection Act is very likely. This occasionally used provision empowers the president, with few legal limitations, to deploy U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops inside the country.

... If Trump’s regime was stacked with brilliant (but ruthless) tacticians, use of the Insurrection Act would be merely a prelude to a greater restriction of freedoms beyond the border, culminating in the use of the military against protesters in blue-state cities.

Violence at protests would be the quickest way for him to get there. This could take the form of protesters engaging in disciplined acts of property destruction, but better for Trump if there were scenes of bloody street fights. If his opponents don’t hand it to him, prepare for him to egg on already twitchy counter-protesters or use agent provocateurs. Violence in the streets feeds Trump’s strongman image.

...Authoritarians love some violence in the street. It allows them to swoop in with crackdowns they claim will protect the population from criminals. In fact, ordinary scared people may even call for crackdowns to “restore peace.” ... petty violence is the spark the administration wants — and how we need a simple message: “We are not violent, Trump is.”

Unfortunately, it serves the MAGA's interests when we respond to their violence with violence. Yet stand up for ourselves and neighbors, we must. What to do?

 

Some thoughts:

• Demand that elected leaders put themselves out in front of the constituents they represent in facing down the assault on the city. Gavin Newsom -- will you walk the front line? How about Mayor Bass?

• Demand that community leaders, especially clergy, get out there as well. This is how they earn their legitimacy.

• Find ways to use mockery and humor in protest. Come on -- LA is where The Industry that entertains the world invents itself. Here's Hunter again:

... Humor is key for morale and exposing the vulnerability of the strongman image. When Russia effectively banned protests, activists in the Siberian city of Barnaul organized a “toy protest.” Lego characters and tiny figurines took to the streets. (The humor only grew as the police clumsily “arrested” all the figurines.)

After Milošević [in Serbia] accused the nonviolent movement Otpor! of terrorism, they organized “terrorist fashion shows” — where regular folks stood up in their casual every-day wear. (“Clearly a terrorist — look at his glasses! He must be a reader.”)...

The image we want to raise is one that contrasts law-abiding undocumented folks woven into our community versus the lawless cabal of mostly white men that Trump lifts up as heroes. This is the contrast that helps build public outrage. 

• • •

 Josh Marshall assessed the new moment wisely:

The President has triggered this crisis and is now using it to exercise military authority within a state against the wishes of the state’s civilian elected leaders – Mayor, Governor, congressional representatives, etc. This is 100% Trump. He’s created the situation and now he’s exploiting it.

We’re very clearly entering a moment of grave danger. My main thought about this is to remember – as we’ve said in other contexts – that the fight to preserve the American republic remains fundamentally one over public opinion. The President has a lot of power here for violence and mischief. But he’s not in charge of what people think about it, whether they think his actions are legitimate, wise, anything they support. You can dismiss whether public opinion matters in a case like this. I disagree. It’s fundamentally what it’s all about, what will eventually decide all of this.

We've got a president who forces us to find new ways to describe his egocentric malignant antics. That's our burden.

#TeslaTakedown: still kicking Elon to the curb

 

After two months away from any chance to chip away at the drug-addled clown prince's business, it was nice to get out with the takedown today. Folks outside the San Francisco showroom are still drawing enthusiastic honks from passing drivers.

Maybe not a huge crew, but solid turnout on a typical frigid, foggy San Francisco summer day.

One offense against sense and human decency follows another under the Trump regime.

Elon and Donald have made themselves some enemies -- people who can get things done.

Let's all get together on No Kings Day, June 14!

Warmer winters: afflicted by ticks

Winter ain't what it used to on Martha's Vineyard island off Massachusetts. Our warming world means fewer truly cold days. And islanders connect those warmer days with an increasing infestation with disease bearing ticks, both long present Lyme disease carriers and the new Lone Star variety that brings the Alpha-gal allergy syndrome. 

An islander created this chart showing the frequency of freezing winter temperatures:

Click to enlarge.

With all the recent posts about the tick population on the island, and a body of entomology research indicating that warmer winter temperatures lead to less seasonal tick die off, I thought I would look at the trends in the number of cold days seen here each winter over the past few decades. This plot shows the number of days when the minimum temperature at MVY [airport] falls below various levels. Data are shown since 1970 and are from the official weather observing station at the airport. This shows that winters are not as cold as they used to be, with the number of days below freezing now about 15 fewer than 1970, and the number of days below 15F about half as many days as we saw back then.

The ticks are thriving on the rodents that carry them through the warmer winters. From the rats, they move on to the deer population in the spring. One consequence of the increasing tick population is that a great many of the hunters who used to thin the deer herd during hunting season have become allergic to meat following Lone Star tick bites -- leading to less hunting.

Ah, climate change. Can humans adjust?

Friday cat blogging

Janeway and Mio bask in a sunbeam, calmly watching the world go by. You would not know, they could have been roughhousing the minute before. Or demanding of us to be fed. All is peaceful here.

Trying to shove reality down a memory hole

We took down their monuments to the Confederacy, to the Rebellion as my Union ancestors would have said. We repudiate their slave drivers and "Indian killers." 

They try to erase our heroes, a different kind of hero.

According to Military.com, 

the Navy is also considering renaming other John Lewis-class oilers including the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and USNS Harriet Tubman.

Push-up boy Hegseth is putting the ultimate American culture war front and center: is this a country for blundering drunken white men or for all its people?

No quantity of racist laws and immigration restrictions can change the reality that in 15 years, this will be a country where the majority will be "non-white." Sorry dudes -- you are on the wrong side of history and evolution. (And you don't like that either.)

Score one for the donkey party

It's not election season, but in this country, there's almost always an election somewhere. And you can look at all the polling you want -- but there's no poll as meaningful as an actual election contest. 

So enjoy this report from a South Carolina legislative house district which was having a special contest on Tuesday:

Democrat Keishan Scott, a 24-year-old minister and local elected official, won the vote by a 71-29 margin. ... The win makes Scott one of the youngest state lawmakers in the nation.

According to The Downballot: 

Scott's 41-point victory over Republican Bill Oden represented a huge improvement on Kamala Harris' narrow 51-46 margin in the 50th District, a largely rural constituency based in the Midlands in the central part of the state.... 

What's more, the contest was the first legislative special election this year to take place in a district with a large Black population: According to Dave's Redistricting App, 51% of the voting-age population is African American, while 44% is white. [Both candidates are Black.]

... across the country, Democratic candidates have been turning in exceptionally strong showings in special elections this year ... As a result, across 23 such races tracked by The Downballot, Democrats are now running more than 16 points ahead of the top of the ticket on average in 2025. And even without Sutton's outlier win, that figure stands at more than 13 points. By comparison, leading up to Donald Trump's first midterms in 2018, Democrats had outperformed in special elections by an average of 10.6 points.

Broad wins like this for the party out of power don't always promise similar success in regular elections. But they certainly show which voters are paying attention and something about how they are feeling. South Carolina Democrats must be fired up, most likely about the ongoing horror show in Washington. The job for all of us is to meet this popular dissatisfaction with organizing for future victories when we have more of a chance to regain a sliver a democratic power in 2026 and beyond.

MAGA is both ignorant and nuts

Often the utterances and actions of MAGA Republicans incite horror and rage. But sometimes consternation seems the appropriate response. 

For example, Trump seems to have appointed a director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency who "said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season ...." His tenure is likely to get interesting fast.

Via Sarah Longwell @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social‬

 

 

Meanwhile Republican US Senator from Iowa Joni Ernst offered a novel GOP defense of their Big Ugly Budget Bill which funds lower taxes for billionaires with cuts to Medicaid. Ernst doubled down on this thought in a condescending, sarcastic "apology" video. It's hard to imagine who'd find dying for lack of affordable healthcare appealing.

Elon Musk ought to be in jail.

The drug-addled engineer, space cadet, and failing auto magnate is apparently on a PR tour trying to exonerate himself for the crimes he's done for the Trump regime. And the legacy media seem inclined to let him off the hook with puff pieces that treat his DOGE rampage as well-meaning.

I'm not that forgiving. The guy is a sociopath with money, not actually an uncommon type in this this country. Think anti-union industrialist Henry Clay Frick or anti-semitic car maker Henry Ford.

Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times (gift link) makes an overwhelming moral case against the guy: 

Elon Musk’s Legacy Is Disease, Starvation and Death ... Musk, with the help of his minions, achieved his goals. He did indeed shred the United States Agency for International Development. Though a rump operation is operating inside the State Department, the administration says that it has terminated more than 80 percent of U.S.A.I.D. grants. Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them of children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year. That is what Musk’s foray into politics accomplished.

... Musk apparently did not anticipate that it would be bad P.R. for the world’s richest man to take food and medicine from the world’s poorest children. The Post reported that he hadn’t foreseen “the intensity of the blowback to his role in politics over the past year.”

...If there were justice in the world, Musk would never be able to repair his reputation, at least not without devoting the bulk of his fortune to easing the misery he’s engendered. Musk’s sojourn in government has revealed severe flaws in his character — a blithe, dehumanizing cruelty and a deadly incuriosity. This should shape how he’s seen for the rest of his public life.

Public policy professor Donald Moynihan evaluates Musk's rampage from the perspective of a student of government: 

Presidents shouldn't put people with drug problems in charge of our government ... Musk has real achievements in running large organizations. Thats the case for Musk being given a big role in government. The case against handing Musk control of government was also pretty strong however. The Twitter model of downsizing that Musk promised to bring to government was always doomed to fail, reflecting ignorance of how federal spending actually works.

If we are just learning the extent of Musk’s drug use, his addiction to social media and the damage that it has done has been plain for years. ...

... Musk’s drug and social media consumption disconnect him from reality, feeding what appears to be an underlying tendency towards paranoia and conspiracy theories. The interaction effect between the two appear to be deeply unhealthy for him. But they are also deeply bad for everyone else since he is making literal life-or-death decisions.

For example, the most persuasive reason why Musk decided to eliminate USAID appears to be that he believed social media conspiracy theories that it was full of criminals. And so now USAID no longer exists, and credible estimates suggest that 300,000 people have died as a result, two-thirds of them children.

This man had no business in government; we suffer from having elected a chief executive who may be even less a responsible actor than Musk himself. And now Trump finds Musk a liability in opinion polls.

Musk is not a rational actor, and rationality is a pretty basic value for managing public services. I don’t know how much of this is the drugs, the media bubble he has created, or underlying personality issues, but it is clear a) it has gotten worse, and b) he has no business making decisions that affect the lives of others....

Musk has been enabled. ... Musk is a source of money and power for his friends, and a threat to his enemies. He was Trump’s biggest funder, and turned X into a Republican propaganda machine. ...

Media sycophancy doesn't help:

... I am glad he is out of government, to be sure. But spare me the fawning profiles of his business genius at this moment. Some of the coverage notes that DOGE was less than successful, and did not achieve its goals, but rarely focuses on the harm caused.

If you are unable to bring accountability to the richest man in the world fucking up our government, then you are a PR flack, not a journalist.

Now the whole Elon withdrawal from the White House thing may just be a feint, covering the ongoing theft of our data by his incel groupies spread out inside the government. But there's no question Elon is feeling a sad over being branded the smartest moron around. (Except perhaps Trump?)

Meanwhile, the good people of the Teslatakedown are doing our best to give Elon Musk a tiny bit of his deserts. Make that car company toxic! If there were justice, he'd have a lot of reparations to make.

Never again is now. .. Justice takes sides.

Jemar Tisby, an historian of the justice struggle in Black America, reports from a pilgrimage to Manzanar National Historic Site with the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary. The Seminary is an evangelical Christian institution which aims to work broadly to encourage awareness of global human diversity. That is, these are ordinary Americans, not Bible-thumping Republican Christian Nationalists.

Tisby's little film (12 minutes) is a fine introduction to the last occasion on which an American government disappeared citizens using the Alien Enemies Act.

Trump sh_t show comes to Martha's Vineyard

Last Tuesday, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) descended on Martha's Vineyard island, the place Erudite Partner and I sporadically call home. (No, we weren't there.)

This island off Cape Cod is a complicated place. In winter a tough population of about 20,000 -- white New Englanders, members of the indigenous Wampanoag tribe, Black descendants of slavery, Brazilian/Azorean migrants, and so many others -- work to scratch out a living and prepare for the summer influx of 100,000 beach-seeking tourists. It's not an easy place, though it offers a residence to many well-off people, such the Obamas, to give one famous example.

It's no surprise that ICE assumed they could find some out-status migrants in the construction and hospitality workforce. In this, Martha's Vineyard is simply normal for contemporary America.

The MVTimes reports that the ICE raid did not seem particularly targeted. Agents stopped work vans seemingly randomly.

Thiago Alves, owner of Rhode Island–based L&R Electrical Services, said his workers were stopped by ICE on Tuesday morning on the Vineyard, but were sent on their way after they showed their paperwork. 

Alves said that agents were stopping all work trucks, and that his business did not appear to be singled out: “It’s nothing against us.” 

Local immigration advocates responded:

The immigrant community on the Island has been reeling from the recent detentions, many calling out of work. There have been reports of empty lumberyards and construction sites, as well as housecleaners calling out.

“Everybody is so scared,” said Meiroka Nunes, a community organizer from Brazil who has lived on the Island for more than two decades. She has heard from one Brazilian whose husband was detained on Tuesday, and whose wife has not been able to reach him.

Nunes said that she worries about the mental health of Island immigrants who fear they or their family members will be deported. She noted that it’s especially scary on the Vineyard, because there is nowhere to run.

Meanwhile, some Islanders pushed back during the raid:  

One West Tisbury resident personally confronted federal agents in the field, demanding answers while recording a video that has gone viral.

Charlie Giordano, 58, used his phone to document the presence of the federal agents arresting people — some of whom live and work among us — to stand up for what Giordano believes is right at a time when legitimate fear can paralyze some from speaking out. 

“I don’t care for injustice. I don’t care for bullies. I think words are who you want to be, and actions are who you are,” Giordano said in an interview with The MV Times. “Everyone says they would’ve stood up to the Nazis back in the day. This is your chance. We have to safeguard democracy and prevent tyranny.

• • •

As with so much of Trump regime immigration enforcement, ordinary Americans were horrified by the thuggish masks and get-ups worn by the immigration police. This is not what they expect of their cops who are also their neighbors.

• • • 

The Martha's Vineyard raid set off a vigorous back and forth on island social media. The Trump regime does have defenders among the islanders, though these were swamped in the last election.

One writer offered a reminder to most all:

To all my island neighbors making sure our due process rights are protected—thank you.

To all my other neighbors who think due process doesn’t exist because of someone’s immigration status, I’d like to remind you: unless you’re a member of the Wampanoag Tribe, we’re all wash-ashores—I don’t care how many generations you’ve been here.

• • •

It was heartening to read the responses of the Reverend Stephen Harding, Rector at Grace Episcopal Church. as recorded in the MVTimes. This is our church on the island.

“We cannot be silent. If we are silent, we are complicit,” he said, noting that he was only speaking for himself and not others that signed [a religious leaders'] letter. He said that he was disturbed over how the federal agency conducted the arrests, particularly agents that covered their faces. “To do this, in this manner, is shameful. There is no honor. This masked, undercover stuff — they look like bums to me,” Harding said. “If you are going to pull someone out of their car to arrest them, have the integrity to show your face. There is no honor at all in being a bully.”

Harding also said that it didn’t appear that the agents had probable cause to make these arrests.

“It seems there is no probable cause except that they weren’t white,” Harding said. “The idea that anyone can be stopped, pulled over and detained. That is not good. I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but I don’t think that’s legal.”

 • • •

Attorney Jay Kuo has offered an insightful discussion of why Trump's minions wear those masks: 

Asked by CNN why officers have opted to use masks when detaining students, a DHS spokesman said this:

“When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as police while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by known and suspected terrorist sympathizers.”

In other words, they don‘t want to be doxxed.

Traditionally, agents have donned facial coverings only when the arrest is of some major kingpin or mob boss, where violent retaliation is a real danger. DHS has now taken that same logic and extended it to every official action, on the grounds that the “woke mob” will seek revenge.

 ... The sort of folks who affirmatively want to become ICE and CBP agents, especially under the leadership of ghouls like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, are nowadays often not true patriots wishing to protect the country.

Far-right militia groups share one thing in common with the DHS agents who are fanning out to detain immigrants: They love to wear face coverings...

The reason fascist zealots don face coverings is so that they can continue to exist anonymously in civil society and not get “canceled” (for example, fired from their jobs or have their businesses boycotted) for their white nationalist hate.

Part of fighting back against the Trump fascists will be to outlaw masks on legitimate law enforcement officers except in very limited circumstances.