Big lies move like viruses in the culture

Kos of Daily Kos discussed why the nasty guy, the vice nasty, Musk, and many of their associates are calling for white women to produce more babies. Musk is even using the term “population collapse.” To keep the population steady, the fertility rate needs to be about 2.1 children per woman. But the fertility rate for every ethnic group in America except Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (2.24) ranges from 1.97 for Hispanic to white at 1.57 to Asian at 1.35. There are reasons why a declining population is a problem: A shrinking workforce leads to economic stagnation and a smaller tax base cuts into the needs of an aging population such as Social Security and Medicare. Innovation is done mainly by the young before they get stuck in “It’s always been done this way.” Smaller population lowers rural property values now and will soon affect cities. The population decline could be fixed by immigration – the solution that conservatives hate the most because most immigrants aren’t white. Immigration is also best for the world population that is way too high. Fertility rates are low because of Republican policies that care about babies only before they are born. The policies they oppose include: Day care support. Health care support, including Medicaid. Abortion care. Paid maternity leave. Promoting vaccines. School lunches. Help to pay for college. Livable wages. Kos says liberals oppose a piece too, that being affordable housing, to which liberals say Not In My Back Yard. All of those are reasons why fertile adults choose to have one or no children. Instead of addressing those issues the nasty guy and friends are proposing: Scholarship support for the parents. $5,000 cash “baby bonus” paid to mothers after delivery. Programs to teach women the best time to conceive. A “National Medal of Motherhood” to women with six or more children. They’re not serious about addressing the problem. Oliver Willis of Kos discussed why Republicans love torture. Yes, Willis establishes the premise. Two planeloads of deportees, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, were sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador known for its violence. And Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went there in late March to be photographed in front of prisoners to show what a badass she pretends to be. In 2017 the nasty guy joked to police officers in New York they should abuse people they arrest. Bush II is known for the “enhanced interrogation” in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Willis asks, if torture has been proven to be ineffective in fighting crime and terrorism, why do conservatives still embrace the barbaric techniques? Willis answers:

Conservatism is weak. Problems like immigration, terrorism, and crime are complex. There is no magical button to make the fallout from these issues disappear. These are systemic issues that have to be addressed from multiple angles, which sometimes involves diplomacy, science, study, and reason. Conservatism would rather tell the public that the bad people will go away as long as they act “tough” instead of addressing root causes, which sometimes can indicate that the United States’ actions created the problem or made the problem worse. The right would rather just back torture and abuse—particularly if the subjects in question have brown skin.

Conservatives love to use strong solutions to show liberal weakness, even though the liberal approach has made progress on many big issues

It’s weak to resort to abuse and torture and posing in front of incarcerated people to get clout with the in-crowd. What is stronger is standing up against abuse and championing human rights.

I feel Willis doesn’t get to the real issue. Republicans claim a higher level in the social hierarchy. People who are obsessed with their position in the hierarchy oppress the levels below them. And torture is very useful in that. Getting to a browser tab that’s been there a while. In a pundit roundup for Kos posted on April 1, Chitown Kev quoted Ian Bogost of The Atlantic discussing the ways the nasty guy has cut billions in federal grants to universities. That has prompted universities to cut staff or freeze hiring and cut back on graduate admissions. Deportations have made international students and faculty scared, lowering foreign admissions which tend to pay full price.

Yes, academic freedom is at stake, along with scientific progress. But the government’s attacks also threaten something far more tangible to future college students and their parents. The entire undergraduate experience at residential four-year schools—the brochure-ready college life that you may once have experienced yourself, and to which your children may aspire—is itself at risk of ruination. Few administrators have talked about this risk in public, but they take a different tone in private as they try to figure out how broken budgets can be fixed. I’ve spent the past month discussing the government’s campaign to weaken higher learning with current and former college presidents, provosts, deans, faculty, and staff. And in the course of these informal, sometimes panicked text exchanges, emails, and phone calls, I’ve come to understand that the damage to our educational system could be worse than the public comprehends—and that calamity could arrive sooner than people expect.

Historian David Blight wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times about the executive order demanding the Smithsonian Institution make some changes. I heard about these demands when they were issued and mentioned them in passing. Now I have a way to share a bit more.

The order’s repeated invocation of the Smithsonian Institution echoes now-familiar right-wing goals outlined in Project 2025 and elsewhere: ending the alleged “woke” agendas on race and gender, creating “parents’ rights” and school choices and promoting history aligned with founders’ “values.” According to the president, “objective facts” have been replaced with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology.” And then comes that penetrating epithet, the order’s organizing logic: the desire to end the “revisionist movement” carried out by unnamed historians. [...] The order is nothing less than a declaration of political war on the historians’ profession, our training and integrity, as well as on the freedom — in the form of curious minds — of anyone who seeks to understand our country by visiting museums or historic sites. [...] Big lies move like viruses in the culture, and though we do have evidence, facts and ethics on our side, there are no vaccines. The crude intent of this order is to further break institutions and to silence historians.

That paragraph about “objective facts” being replaced by “distorted narrative driven by ideology” sounds very much like projection – accusing opponents of doing what they are doing. This is a day for pundit roundups. This second one is from last Saturday and is by Greg Dworkin. He quoted EJ Dionne of The New Republic:

The most conspicuous moment of truth has been for Trump’s supporters in big business and other advocates of a loosely regulated free market. They thought they could get what they wanted out of Trump, mainly lower taxes and less regulation, without having to worry about his very explicit campaign promises to impose tariffs, let alone to do so in a madcap way that now threatens their own wealth. They couldn’t imagine that Trump would happily wreak such havoc in the national and global economies or demolish the entire post–World War II economic system. Why did they miss this? The fact that Trump lies regularly and has few fixed principles has, perversely perhaps, been a source of his political strength. Those who rally to him fool themselves into thinking they can have Trump à la carte. They assume he really means his pledges to policies they like and that he’s lying to the masses when he promises policies they don’t like. All the old nonsense about taking Trump “seriously but not literally” was a way for his apologists to assume he couldn’t really mean the more outlandish things he said. His supporters in business and among the wealthy like to view themselves as gimlet-eyed realists, so the ease with which they were bamboozled is quite remarkable—and is easily measured.

A Ukraine peace deal, though stalled, is still in the news. So this tweet by Ruth Deyermond from last Friday is still appropriate:

Trump admin threats to abandon "peace deal" negotiations would be more worrying if they'd ever shown the slightest interest in actually helping to achieve peace in Ukraine, instead of trying to compel a ceasefire on Russia's terms while grabbing Ukrainian assets.

Paul Offit of Beyond the Noise:

RFK Jr. believes many weird things about the causes, treatment, and prevention of infectious diseases. These false beliefs might seem disparate and unrelated, but they’re not. They’re all rooted in a single belief described on pages 285-288 of his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. In short, RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in the germ theory. He believes in something called the miasma theory. The miasma theory is a long-abandoned medical theory that holds that diseases are caused by poisonous vapors (i.e., miasmata) that are generated by rotting organic matter, such as trash sitting out on the street. According to the miasmists, diseases aren’t passed from one person to another; rather, they are the product of poor hygiene and sanitation.

I first heard about the miasma theory way back in November of 2009 when I read and discussed the book The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. It is about how physician John Snow and cleric Henry Whitehead figured out the cause of the 1854 London cholera outbreak. At the time the miasma theory was used to explain disease outbreak. The sleuthing of Snow and Whitehead to trace the source of the outbreak to a water pump contaminated by bacteria was quite remarkable for the day. That prompted London to create an adequate sewer system, though that took about a decade. Dworkin also quoted a tweet by Craig Fuller:

Many truckers I've spoken with don't realize how quickly container volumes have collapsed. Starting in May, port freight out of California will be almost eliminated. Its going to be a bloodbath in dray, followed by intermodal, and then a collapse in I-20 & I-40 trucking.

The pundit roundup for Sunday was assembled by Kev, who quoted Rosemary (Marah) Al-Kire, Clara L. Wilkins, and Michael Pasek writing for The Conversation.

Our 2024 research, as well as other scholars’ work, suggests that people’s beliefs about anti-Christian discrimination are tied with their attitudes about race. These studies suggest that when politicians talk about anti-Christian bias, it does more than signal a concern and commitment to Christians – it can also serve as a signal of white solidarity. Even though they remain the largest religious and racial groups, white Americans and Christian Americans have both declined as a proportion of the U.S. population. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Christian Americans has decreased from 78% to 63%, and the percentage of white Americans has decreased from 69% to 60%. White Christians now account for less than 50% of the country. Many scholars have argued that, at the root, some white and Christian Americans feel threatened by these demographic shifts. Increasing secularization and other cultural changes have added to some white Christians’ sense that their identity is under attack. According to FBI data, however, only 3% of hate crimes over the past five years targeted Christians. In comparison, 14% targeted Jews, Muslims or Sikhs – groups that make up just 3% of the population. The Public Religion Research Institute found that 55% of white Americans believe discrimination against white people is as much of a problem as discrimination against minority groups. Meanwhile, 60% of white evangelicals say that Christians in the U.S. face discrimination.

Timothy Snyder writing for his “Thinking About...” Substack on the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

In just three months, the Trump people have made the unthinkable much more likely. They have created the conditions for terrorism, and thus for terror management. This is true at several levels. Most obviously, they have debilitated the services that detect terrorist threats and prevent attacks: [the CIA, FBI, DHS, and NSA]. The Musk-Trump people run national security, intelligence, and law enforcement like a television show. The entire operation of forcible rendition of migrants to a Salvadoran concentration camp was based upon lies. It is not just that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly apprehended. The entire thing was made for television. Its point was the creation of the fascist videos. But this is a media strategy, meant to frighten Americans. And a media strategy does not stop actual terrorists. It summons them. Terrorism is a real risk in the real world. The constant use of the word to denote unreal threats creates unreality. And unreality inside ket (sic) institutions degrades capability. Security agencies that have been trained to follow political instructions about imaginary threats do not investigate actual threats. Fiction is dangerous. Treating the administration’s abduction of a legal permanent resident as a heroic defense against terror is not only mendacious and unconstitutional but also dangerous.

In the comments of Wednesday’s roundup are several more cartoons commemorating the death of Pope Francis. One by Steve Greenberg and posted by paulpro shows a smiling Francis and the words, “Pope Francis was really a DEI hire. Devotion, Empathy, Inclusion.” Also posted by paulpro is a cartoon by Antonio Rodriguez Garcia showing Francis on his way to heaven. In one hand is a soccer ball and the other hand is pulling a carryon bag with the Palestinian and LGBTQ rainbow flags. Way down in the comments Sotto Voce posted a cartoon by B. Smaller that had been printed in the New Yorker. It shows a woman talking to a young man. “Just remember, Mr. Big Fancy Libertarian, no one is a self-made man to their mother.” I’ve been a fan of the amazing videos put out by the band OK GO, though I’m not much of a fan of their music. I discussed their videos five times between 2010 and 2016 (sorry, I didn’t spend time finding the links). Just recently I heard an interview of a new video. And I may have missed one or two in the meantime. The video “Love” has a lot of fun with mirrors, both with robots holding mirrors and bigger mirrors used as big kaleidoscopes. At the end the singer puts on a mirrored suit. As usual, the video is amazing. I watched the video about making the Love music video. They used robots because they wanted the mirrors to be moved and held in precise ways that a human wouldn’t be able to do. And each of those robots had to be precisely programmed. Then they had to fit it all together to shoot in one take, though they needed 39 tries. Tomorrow I’m off to a handbell event, returning home late Saturday. So with a movie on Sunday and bell stuff on Monday and Tuesday I probably won’t post again until Wednesday.

We have the muscle to sustain opposition

My Sunday movie was I Like Movies, a Canadian production. It is the story of Lawrence, a high school senior who just loves movies, so much that he is in a film class and is making films with his best friend Matt. He wants to go to a New York film school. To pay for film school he gets a job in a video rental store. (Remember those? The movie is set in 2002, so it’s OK.) He’s also a teenager, rather self-centered, and has a lot of growing up to do. He lives with his mother and his father committed suicide a few years before. The one most helping him grow up is Alana, the store manager. She wonders if he brings up his dad’s death because he is still grieving or to get attention. Or maybe he says that because he doesn’t want to talk about more recent teenage angst. The acting is quite good, especially Isaiah Lehtinen who plays Lawrence and Romina D’Ugo who plays Alana. I enjoyed it, though this is one of those movies where I sometimes checked the time to see how much longer it would last. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of a deeply conservative Florida district held a town hall meeting. Knowing that previous Republican town halls have been disrupted by angry constituents and hearing that the agitators were from outside the district his staff screened attendees. They made sure attendees lived within the district. He still got booed. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Hamilton Nolan of his “How Things Work” Substack. Nolan wrote about President Ronald Reagan’s firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981, his first year in office. This was a big flashing sign to corporate America that Reagan was on their side. This unshackled the union busting by corporations, leading to a collapse of labor’s strike power. “The bargaining power of workers decreased; union density fell; economic inequality rose.” The nasty guy has exceeded Reagan’s attacks on unions by an order of magnitude. Red state governors will copy his lead with their own public sector workers. Public sector unions could be decimated by the end of the nasty guy’s term. Down in the comments are many fine cartoons commemorating the death of Pope Francis. Robert Kennedy Jr., head of Health and Human Services, is known for pushing the benefits of raw milk. Because it isn’t pasteurized, raw milk may have pathogens and may be quite dangerous. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Kennedy has “decommissioned” the lab that tests the sanitary standard of raw milk and other dairy products. Because of this and budget cuts the Food and Drug Administration can no longer do testing to verify the safety of raw milk. One begins to wonder if he is trying to make us all sick on purpose. Rob Schmitz of NPR discussed the authoritarian rule of Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary. Schmitz is guided by politician Akos Hadhazy. Orban in in his fourth consecutive term. Schmitz said:

In that time, he has dismantled democratic checks and balances, taking control of the country's media, civil society and universities, and consolidated power in himself and his Fidesz party. His step-by-step dismantling of Hungary's democracy is a point of fascination for political scientists around the world, including those advising the Trump administration. But Hadhazy says Orban is an easy read.

Orban isn’t a genius. He’s following the example of Putin. Schmitz then summarized the words of Peter Kreko, political scientist:

Kreko has mapped out the process Orban has taken to dismantle Hungary's democracy. Orban began, he says, by weakening Hungary's courts, filling them with loyalists. He then applied pressure on media companies, either turning them into state propaganda or putting them out of business. Then, says Kreko, Orban took control over universities, appointing leaders loyal to him. Kreko says Orban focused on ridding Hungary of any institution capable of checking his power. And he says he sees similarities to how President Donald Trump is carrying out his second term in office. The difference, says Kreko, is the pace at which Trump is operating.

Kreko added:

I think Trump went further in two months than Orban could in 15 years. The United States, it reminds me of a constitutional coup where everything happens very rapidly.

From my view the nasty guy’s takeover has taken much longer than two months. He captured the Supreme Court in his first term, more than five to eight years ago, and he had plenty of oligarch help to do it. During his first term he was much too inept to capture the government in a meaningful way. After that first term he had four years with lots of help – Project 2025 – to create a plan for his second term and to bend the Republican Party to his will. Parts of the plan have been executed rapidly – turning media companies into state propaganda, taking control of universities and law firms, and installing loyal leaders. But even that work is far from complete. Harvard refused his demands. There are media companies that do not churn out propaganda. Full takeover may be a lot less than Orban’s 15 years, but it has taken and will take much longer than two months. Schmitz said that Orban pushed through a ban on assemblies that “promote homosexuality” to “protect children” (yeah, that old lie). Which means the Budapest Pride Parade, one of Europe’s largest, is banned. This is a step in showing that Orban is taking the power to ban any peaceful protest against himself. Dave Davies, host of Fresh Air on NPR had a long (38 minute) discussion with Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard. A few years ago Levitsky and co-author Daniel Ziblatt published the book How Democracies Die. Levitsky was invited back to Fresh Air to discuss an article titled The Path to American Authoritarianism for the journal Foreign Affairs co authored with Lucan Way. I heard part of the discussion on the way home last night, which prompted me to find the whole thing. Davies begins with a quote from the article:

U.S. democracy will likely break down during the Second Trump administration in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for a liberal democracy - full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties.

Freedom House produces an annual freedom index, rating each country from zero for the most authoritarian to one hundred for the most democratic. The US tended to get a score in the low 90s, on par with other Western democracies. But by 2021 our score slipped to 83 and with the return of the nasty guy will likely go lower. Levitsky says the score dropped because of...

the rise in political violence, political threats, threats against politicians, refusal to accept the results of a democratic election in 2020, an effort to use violence to block a peaceful transfer of power.

Levitsky thinks the US may become what he calls “competitive authoritarianism.” The dictator got into power through a legal election, there is a Constitution, the opposition remains legal, and there are elections, but the opposition faces such big obstacles it can’t win. Gaining power through an election allows the despot to claim he isn’t authoritarian. Most 21st century autocracies – Venezuela, Turkey, and El Salvador – are like this. Levitsky talked about the weaponization of government, using the FBI and Department of Justice to investigate a political enemy. Even if the DOJ can’t prove crimes in court, they can damage the target through needing to spend a lot of money on lawyers, being distracted from or having to leave a job, or simply months to years of anguish and lost sleep. Governments can get private actors, particularly corporations, on their side. Government agencies that are supposed to be independent have a lot of power of businesses through government contracts and concessions, tax status, and anti-monopoly rulings. When these agencies lose their independence they can be used to induce a corporation to cooperate or punish them if they don’t. Key billionaires showed they will cooperate though million dollar gifts to the inauguration. Levitsky doubts the nasty guy can consolidate power in this term. He gives two reasons. The first is nasty guy’s approval rating is near 45%. A despot with an approval rating of 75% to 80% has a much higher chance and more to work with. The second reason is a despot can consolidate power in a country with a small private sector, fragmented opposition, and an underdeveloped civil society. The US has a large, wealthy, and diverse private sector (even with Bezos already giving his fealty). It has many well-organized foundations and civic groups with strong lawyers. The Democratic Party, with all its flaws, is still a potent force. Levitsky discussed the takeover attempt of his employer Harvard University. What the nasty guy wanted was the end of academic freedom. That’s incompatible with a democratic society and no democracy has ever permitted it. Universities are frequently one of the first targets of a despot. Levitsky was part of the campaign to make sure what happened to Columbia didn’t happen to Harvard. And when it happened the refusal offered energy and encouragement to other universities and a civil society waiting for a powerful actor to fight back. Republicans could easily stop a great deal of what the nasty guy is doing. Only a handful of Republicans would be enough to make that happen. But the party has been purged of the Liz Cheneys. Now it almost uniformly backs or acquiesces to an authoritarian figure, and there is no serious debate about the nasty guy’s authoritarianism. They watched him attempt a coup and still gave him the nomination, then fell in line to give him the cabinet he wanted. Levitsky said:

It's astounding to me how far mainstream Republicans are willing to go to avoid a conflict with Trump and how far they're willing to sacrifice democracy in order to preserve their jobs or their social standing.

The nasty guy is defying the Supreme Court in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. But there is enough of a gray area from both sides to claim compliance. If the Supreme Court really is concerned about Abrego Garcia and about compliance John Roberts and the court need to be clearer and more public in their language. The Court doesn’t want the confrontation. Openly undermining the executive branch can weaken the court a great deal (at a time when the legitimacy of the Court is already low). Levitsky did not anticipate Musk and the wreckage he would do. No other former democracies have had anything comparable to this concentration of economic, media, and political power. Amazing our regulations, politics, and checks and balances didn’t prevent the damage and corruption. Musk puzzles Levitsky. What is Musk’s goal? Breaking and downsizing government is going to hurt the MAGA base, which hurts the nasty guy. Is Musk working to install an authoritarian government with Musk as the partner ruler? Levitsky thinks we’ve already crossed the line away from democracy. In a democracy there should be no risk or cost to publicly opposing the government. Through threats to universities, law firms, and the medial we’ve already seen there is. People now must factor in that cost, though still mild, before opposing the regime. That’s in the short term. In the long term, we continue to have the organizational and financial muscle to sustain opposition.

Not a Constitutional crisis but a Supreme Court crisis

I finished the book The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan. Yeah, I read it in about a week. In 1940 at the start of the London Blitz the Bethnal Green Library was hit by a bomb and damaged. The library moved its undamaged books and shelves to the nearby Bethnal Green Underground station and reopened. This was a logical move because the Underground stations were already being used as bomb shelters whenever the civil defense sirens went off. This part of the story is true. All the rest is well researched fiction. The main characters of story are three women. Juliet was engaged to Victor, but he was reported as an army deserter at Dunkirk. Since her parents weren’t all that loving she escapes to London and gets the job as deputy librarian at the Bethnal Green Library. The head librarian isn’t too thrilled to hire a woman (this is 1940) but a lot of men are a part of the war effort. She has ideas for programs at the library. He isn’t interested. The student intern says do them anyway and the boss will pretend he doesn’t see. At the rooming house she meets Sebastian, nephew to the landlady. He was injured and sent home from the front and now works for the war effort. He’s not looking for a life partner (yeah, we know where this is going). That student intern is Katie, about to go to college and able to do that because so many men are at war. Her boyfriend Christopher is at the front and she gets word that he went missing and presumed dead. Shortly after that she realizes she is pregnant (glad she works at a library and can look these things up as sex ed was rather Victorian). At the time an unmarried woman brings shame to herself and her parents. And her parents are desperate to maintain their respectability. The third main character is Sofie. She is Jewish, originally from Berlin, and got to London on a visa to fill a job as a domestic. Her boss is quite demanding. She is trying to find out what happened to her sister, who wasn’t able to flee with her. Some residents of Bethnal Green don’t like her because she has a German accent. Through her story I learned that the Isle of Man was used as a detention center during the war and life there was rather pleasant. As in several of the Underground stations during the Blitz the people who slept in the Bethnal Green station developed into a community. In this station the library went a long way to make that happen. This community becomes important to the story. Another big part of this story is romance. Juliet is torn between Victor and Sebastian. Katie still longs after Christopher. And Sofie has Mac, a fellow Jew whose contacts started the search for Sofie’s sister. Though this story has a wartime setting (spoiler alert) every thread has a happy ending. At times I felt a bit annoyed with all that cheery news. Even so, I enjoyed the book. Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia about the Supreme Court’s somewhat vague decisions on immigration cases and the nasty guy who seems determined to ignore those decisions. The discussion focused on two rulings by the Supreme. The first said that deportees must have due process, but the case went through the wrong forum, so start over. Frost called this ruling “frustrating.” The second case is the one involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The lower court was specific in their language saying the government must get him out of that El Salvador prison and return him to the US. The Supreme Court decision said the same thing but in a weaker manner. And the government is taking advantage of that weak language to do nothing. Kelly said to Frost:

It sounds as though they are issuing rulings that are so carefully worded that they tiptoe up to wishy-washy. ... Listening to you, it sounds like you see this more as a Supreme Court crisis right now than a constitutional crisis.

A constitutional crisis would be the nasty guy openly declaring he would not follow court rulings. But he doesn’t need to say that because the rulings are so weak. He doesn’t need to ignore court rulings when he can get away with this misbehavior. Frost said:

President Trump said, if the Supreme Court orders him returned, I will do it. And then the Supreme Court issues a weak order that I think suggests it's now afraid of the constitutional crisis that would come if the Trump administration were to ignore its rulings.

Frost is suggesting the Supremes water down their ruling to avoid open defiance and a constitutional crisis. Which to me sounds like a democracy crisis – that and their ruling giving the nasty guy immunity for official acts. Every year the US State Department produces a report on the human rights in countries around the world. These reports are carefully read by both authoritarians and activists. Graham Smith of NPR explained a State Department memo demanding significant changes to this year’s report. Congress uses these human rights reports to determine how to spend taxpayer money overseas in security assistance, weapons, or other aid. When Marco Rubio was a Florida senator he praised the report for shining light on failures to respect citizen rights. Now as Secretary of State he is responsible for the reports. The law says the report must document internationally recognized human rights. But the memo instructs editors to delete references to more than 20 rights, to bring the report in line with executive orders.

Gone are violations against the right to peacefully assemble, the right to a fair public trial, to privacy. The directive eliminates everything that's not separately listed in the language of the law.

The report on El Salvador is no longer cited for terrible prison conditions. Sections in reports for other countries no longer mention government corruption. Gone are sections on the sexual exploitation of children and women, the denial of rights of political minorities, and violence and discrimination of LGBTQ people, religions or ethnic groups, Indigenous people, and internally displaced people. I’m sure there are many more things to be deleted. From Paul O'Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA:

What you've just read me out is a list of civil and political rights that are essential. So what this is is a signal that the United States is no longer going to uphold those rights that guarantee civic and political freedoms, the ability to speak, to express yourself, to gather, to protest, to organize. ... Any constraints or pretensions around protecting vulnerable populations writ large seems to be going away.

From Christopher LeMon, who served at State under President Biden:

You can't overstate the value in the real world of the annual State Department human rights reports being credible and impartial. You also can't overstate the damage it will do to that credibility if the Trump administration's edits are seen to diminish not just the scope of what are defined as human rights, but also if those edits are seen to play favorites.

O’Brien is worried that the deletions aren’t just about how the US views rights in other countries, they are also about how the administration views rights in the US. I’ll work through several browser tabs to clear them out before movie night and rehearsal nights and the corresponding days of collecting more stories in browser tabs. I’ve mentioned that many Republicans got a fierce public response when holding town hall meetings with constituents. They were so bad (from the view of the member of Congress) that Republican leadership suggested stop doing them. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa did one anyway. He was met with a lot of jeers, demands he do his job, and to actually act on the oath of office he took.

Grassley continued to act powerless, pointing to the fact that the “only tool” for Congress to discipline the president is impeachment. “And you missed that opportunity in his first administration. You had two opportunities for that. That was probably one of the only reasons we're having this situation now,” the attendee responded.

Alex Samuels of Kos reported that the Associated Press had been banned from White House press briefings because it refused to use the nasty guy’s name for the Gulf of Mexico. A US District Judge ordered the administration to let the AP back in. The AP remains locked out.

This isn’t just petty—it’s calculated. The strategy’s clear: Bully the press into compliance, and if that doesn’t work, slam the door shut. Outlets that hold the line—like the AP—get punished. Ones that cozy up to Trump, like The Washington Post, get a pat on the head and a few flattering social media posts.

The nasty guy has also ranted against CBS News and “60 Minutes” because of stories he didn’t like. He has also ranted against ABC News and NBC News because he claims they gave Harris preferential treatment during last year’s campaign. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that since the administration has sidelined legitimate media organizations from the White House press briefings, those briefings “have turned into a playground for pro-MAGA outlets.” They aren’t interested in providing a clear picture of the administration. Instead, they amplify the conservative falsehoods and bigotry. An article by Sharon Lerner of ProPublica posted on Kos reported the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to stop requiring oil refineries, power plants, coal mines, and companies that make petrochemicals, cement, glass, iron and steel, and other polluters from having to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The data guides policy decisions and is submitted to the international body that tallies global greenhouse gas pollution. The data allows for accountability, to record which region or factory is emitting how much gas. The “government can’t curb the country’s emissions without knowing where they are coming from.” It also makes climate policy more difficult and would be devastating for the world’s ability to limit climate change.

“The bottom line is this is a giveaway to emitters, just letting them off the hook entirely,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Cleetus derided the choice to stop documenting emissions as ostrich-like. “Not tracking the data doesn’t make the climate crisis any less real,” she said. “This is just putting our heads in the sand.”

A couple weeks ago Kos of Kos again looked at how the nasty guy could get a third term, in spite of the 22nd Amendment saying “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice.” I highlighted the key word to this possible scheme. One possible route would be to be elected Speaker of the House. The Constitution does not say this has to be a member of the House. Then the people actually elected to president and vice president resign, and the nasty guy steps back in. But how likely are two people, who just went through a grueling national campaign, willingly give up the chance to be president? Especially for him. Other routes are to be appointed President Pro Tempore of the Senate (and three people would have to step aside) or Secretary of State (four people...). There is another route, the one he tried in 2021.

But it does say a lot about Trump that rather than focus on the job at hand, he’s obsessing over a third term. He wants power for the sake of power itself, jealous of despots like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Of course, he’s going to indulge in these sorts of fantasies.

Resistance begins in the everyday

The story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, the man the nasty guy administration is refusing to bring back to the US, continues. Yesterday I reported that Sen. Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador, but was turned away before getting to the prison. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy administration is freaking out over Democrats attempting a rescue. AG Pam Bondi increased the rhetoric that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist (he’s not). Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr threatened Comcast because their subsidiary MSNBC did not air a briefing that was more propaganda than news (I’m not sure who was briefing who). There were also a few more. Willis concluded:

Democrats are pushing to restore due process, and Republicans have responded by being overly defensive and reflexively dishonest—all while losing more and more public trust.

This morning Willis reported that Sen. Van Hollen did get a chance to meet and talk to Abrego Garcia. Willis does not say what Van Hollen had to do to make it happen. Of course, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele turned the meeting into a photo-op for his own purposes, tweeting that Abrego Garcia “miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen.” That’s a bid to claim his notorious prison is actually pretty nice. “The New York Times reported that an aide to Bukele placed margarita glasses on the table before the men in order to stage the photo.” The photos show Van Hollen, Abrego Garcia (in a civilian shirt), and a third guy (the guard? – he’s in a suit) sitting at a restaurant table. The article and all other news source I’ve heard today do not say that Abrego Garcia returned to the US with Van Hollen. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted USA Today:

The meeting appeared to occur at the hotel Van Hollen had been staying at in San Salvador. Van Hollen’s office declined to release additional information and indicated the senator would hold a news briefing on April 18.

I had written about the deals big law firms were making with the nasty guy, agreeing to offer up millions of dollars worth of legal aid. I quoted someone who noted these agreements appear to not be on paper. The New York Times reported they may now wish that paper existed (and I’m surprised that a law firm wouldn't do that as a matter of procedure). Or maybe it is on paper but left in too vague terms.

It is also not clear how hard and how far Mr. Trump will push the notion that those deals now leave many of the nation’s biggest, most prestigious and best-resourced firms at his beck and call. There is no indication yet that he has sought to deploy any of them on a particular issue. But the emerging gap between what the firms initially thought they agreed to and what Mr. Trump says they can be used for shows how the deals did little to insulate them from his whims. Further demands on the firms from Mr. Trump could raise the potential for conflicts with paying clients and could further fuel internal dissension.

The UnPopulist is keeping track of abuses of power by the executive branch:

We've divided presidential abuses of power into five categories: the 5 Ps. Personal Grift Political Corruption Presidential Retribution Power Consolidation Policy Illegality

This Executive Watch is here. Derek Thompson tweeted:

We really did it. We took a growing US manufacturing economy, declared it broken, started a trade war, and ... broke US manufacturing.

Thompson included details and charts. Alex Samuels of Kos reported last Monday:

Harvard University just became the first school to push back against President Donald Trump’s crusade against higher education—and it’s setting up one hell of a showdown. On Monday, Harvard formally rejected the White House’s sweeping demands to ban masks, eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—including for admissions and hiring—and implement ideological screenings for international students, among other things. ... But [Harvard attorneys] made one thing clear: Harvard is not “prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”

In a message to the university Garber wrote:

No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

Part of the nasty guy’s demands were to cut programs that “fuel antisemitic harassment.” I’ve already discussed how phony this is considering how antisemitic the nasty guy is. Samuels says this is about raw power, threatening federal funding to bring Harvard under his control. This dispute is likely headed to the courts. On Tuesday Samuels reported on the nasty guy’s response to Harvard. He froze $2.3 billion in federal funds and is “reviewing” another $7 billion in federal contracts and grants. He threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status because he claims it is now a political entity.

And while the White House keeps claiming this is about antisemitism, the actual demands tell a different story: Trump wants to use the federal purse to control what’s taught on college campuses and who gets to be there. Harvard was told to crack down on student groups, encourage anonymous tip lines, and cooperate with federal law enforcement. And while the Trump administration says the alleged violations are mostly tied to the university, the fallout could hit local hospitals the hardest.

Of course, Republican members of Congress support this attack on universities. The nasty guy won’t get any pushback from them. Universities need to band together to resist. This doesn’t stop at Harvard. In Thursday’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Matthew Tobin of the Harvard Crimson who wrote that while he praised University President Alan Garber for standing up to the nasty guy, Garber didn’t go far enough.

The University was the face of defending affirmative action in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case; it allocated $100 million to the Legacy of Slavery initiative; Harvard’s presidents, including Drew G. Faust and Lawrence S. Bacow, weren’t afraid to stand up to the political powers that be. Harvard was, for a time, higher education’s champion. Basically, DEI was in vogue. [...] Disappointedly, Harvard hasn’t met the bar. Garber’s letter, while undoubtedly brave, also seems to appease Trump in several instances. At no point did Garber defend the value of diversity, equity, or inclusion — except to say that Harvard will expand “intellectual and viewpoint diversity,” in line with Trump’s demands. Furthermore, Garber implicitly acquiesced to the Trump Administration’s interpretation of SFFA v. Harvard, agreeing that the University will not “make decisions ‘on the basis of race.’” Importantly, the interpretation propagated by Trump’s Administration is a dubious extrapolation of the original decision, which concerned only college admissions. Rather than agreeing with this new and larger limitation, Garber could have reiterated that the University’s DEI programs serve all students — the same argument made by the Dean of Students Office. If the University wants to show that it cares about diversity, it needs to do more than just say no to Trump.

Molson Hart of Ars Technica wrote 14 reasons why high tariffs won’t bring back manufacturing to the US. Here’s a bit from reason #3.

Apple knows how to build an iPhone but may not know how to make the individual components. It may seem trivial to make that glass that separates your finger from the electronic engineering that powers your ability to access the Internet, but it’s difficult. ... People trivialize the complexity and difficulty of manufacturing when it’s really hard. And if we don’t know how to make something, it doesn’t matter what the tariff is. It won’t get made in America.

Deborah Brown of Just Security has big concerns of the DOGE idea of collapsing all of the government’s departmental database into one gigantic and centralize database.

A massive centralized government database could easily be used for a range of abusive purposes, like to discriminate against current federal employees and future job applicants on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, or to facilitate the deportation of immigrants. It could result in people forgoing public services out of fear that their data will be weaponized against them by another federal agency. ... Information silos exist for a reason. Personal data should be collected for a determined, specific, and legitimate purpose, and not used for another purpose without notice or justification, according to the key internationally recognized data protection principle, “purpose limitation.” Sharing data seamlessly across federal or even state agencies in the name of an undefined and unmeasurable goal of efficiency is incompatible with this core data protection principle.

Natalia Viana of Agência Pública (courtesy of World Crunch with a translation by Irene Caselli):

For those living there, it’s an exasperating realization — one we incorporated generations ago in Latin America — that an authoritarian regime isn’t upheld only by decisions made at the top, but by how that authoritarianism seeps into the fabric of society. This is how the hunger for power goes to the head of the policeman around the corner, or to the so-called good citizen next door, who under a far-right government, suddenly decide to keep an eye on you. Although the neo-fascists in the White House want the world to believe they wield absolute power — not just over the United States but over the globe — the truth is, politics doesn’t play out solely in palaces. Americans are about to learn that resistance begins in the everyday; that surrendering your liberties out of fear is the first step toward total defeat

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme by Adam Parkhomenko, a Democratic strategist expanding on the idea that if the nasty guy can send immigrants to a prison in El Salvador without due process he can also send citizens without due process.

I guess it’s good to know that the next Democratic president can ship Trump and his cabinet off to a Central American prison without a trial and we won’t ever have to worry about them coming back!

Farther down exlrrp posted another meme: “The man who ran a fake university wants to lecture Harvard. The irony is wearing a MAGA hat.” Jon Ostrove created a cartoon of the vice nasty standing in front of his Yale Law School diploma. He imagines the vice nasty’s words:

There are so many criminals!! Who could possibly expect that every single one of them gets “due process?!” This is nothing but a liberal hand-wringing to slow down our best fascist initiatives with “fake legal process.” And I know all about this stuff. I have a JD from Yale hanging on my wall! I’m so JD they even call me that!”

A footnote says the “fake legal process” is from the Constitution’s Amendments 5 and 14. Emily Singer of Kos wrote that the nasty guy is turning the White House into Mar-a-Lago on the taxpayer’s expense.

Trump has gilded the furniture, affixed gold ornaments to the Oval Office fireplace, added gold sculptures and picture frames, and reportedly installed a gold Trump crest over the doorway into the White House. He even ordered his and Vice President JD Vance’s portraits to be reprinted with a gold border because he wanted the pictures to “catch the light,” the WSJ reported. “It’s the Golden Office for the Golden Age,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the WSJ.

He also wants to add a gilded ballroom to the White House and has a plan to pave over the rose garden. Yeah, that much gold is tacky. And while he’s doing that he’s directing departments and agencies to cut services to the poor. It reminds me of touring the estates of German princes, built back before the country was unified and there were some 300 different princely territories. One goal in each of these grand homes is to impress fellow princes – my place is more expensive than yours! Previous presidents had the attitude we’re not kings. We don’t need to and shouldn’t dress up the office to look like a throne room.

Any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped

Yeah, just yesterday I wrote about a book I read. Today’s book has been my “car book.” I keep one in the car to read when I am in a place where I may need to wait, like a doctor’s waiting room. I’ve been reading this one since last August and my trip to Stratford, Ontario. The book is Bad Gays, a Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. There are profiles of fourteen men who showed homosexual activity and also did bad things. In the Introduction the authors discussed Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie. He caused a rupture between the two and Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, sued Wilde for slander. Wilde lost. He was sent to prison that broke his health. We talk about Wilde’s importance to LGBTQ history. Why don’t we talk about Bosie? That’s the question that prompted this book. We should talk about the good and the bad. Some of the people profiled in the book are obviously bad. J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn. Ronnie Kray who, with his twin brother, lived a gangster life in the mid 1900s in London. And the gay men of Germany’s Weimar Republic who promoted the rise of the Nazis. But some of them don’t sound bad. Roger Casement railed against the brutality of King Leopold of Belgium in his treatment of the people of the Congo. And Pietro Aretino, who wrote bawdy poems to criticize the actions of the Pope and Florentine officials in the 1500s and through his writings changed how sex was discussed. Other famous people profiled in the book are Hadrian, James VI and I, Frederick the Great, Lawrence of Arabia, and Margaret Mead. In addition to a profile of the person the authors also discussed how homosexuality was treated in that person’s time period and location. In some times and places men loving men was considered quite foul and illegal, in others it was approved of under certain circumstances. The last profile in the book is of Pym Fortuyn. He was a politician in the Netherlands in the 1990s and some of his rhetoric inspired far right groups around the world, including in America. Fortuyn was openly gay and became the head of his own political party. Muslims had been invited to the Netherlands as guest workers. When the economy was doing well and guest workers were no longer needed these Muslims decided to stay. That caused friction, as we well know here. Fortuyn and his followers were able to claim we are tolerant – so tolerant the head of our party is gay. But those people, the Muslims, are intolerant. We have to do something about them. Yeah, that is tolerance that isn’t. From page 290 of the book:

A new “benevolence” towards gays and lesbians in the public sphere on issues like marriage, [queer theorist Jasbir K Puar in her book Terrorist Assemblages] writes, “is contingent upon ever narrowing parameters” – of whiteness, of class position, and of adherence to gender norms. The married gay subject can then be defended by the state, and set off against supposedly terrifying terrorists who threaten the liberal freedom these subjects embody. This neat trick of reversal, familiar today as a key part of the far-right playbook in debates about the provision of healthcare to transgender children and the supposed scourge of “cancel culture” at universities, was pioneered by Fortuyn.

I enjoyed the book and recommend it. The story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland dad mistakenly deported to El Salvador, generated a lot of news this week. A week ago his case came before the Supreme Court. They ruled all people to be deported must have due process rights respected. They upheld a lower court ruling saying Abrego Garcia must be returned to the US and the nasty guy’s administration must “facilitate” that return. On Monday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s response, which has been refusing to do so.

On the one hand, the Trump folks are too powerful and cannot be told what to do. On the other hand, they’re just widdle guys and cannot tell El Salvador what to do. On the third hand, sure, they made a mistake in removing Abrego Garcia, but it no longer matters because they changed the rules after deporting him. Oh, and on the fourth hand, they can’t tell you anything about the secret agreement to deport people to El Salvador, because it’s secret, duh. And on the fifth hand, they actually are following the order, so there. No matter which explanation is trotted out, they’re all equally disingenuous and unconstitutional.

The nasty guy’s minions also gave various reasons (again, all of them disingenuous) on why the nasty guy, as powerful as he is, just isn’t able to tell El Salvador what to do. Put another way, the administration can’t be bothered to invent a passable explanation. On Monday afternoon Franco Ordoñez and Danielle Kurtzleben of NPR reported that El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele visited the nasty guy in the Oval Office earlier that day. In addition to reviewing the meeting they reported:

During Bukele's Oval Office visit on Monday, Trump and his team said it was up to the Salvadoran government to decide whether to return him. Bukele said he would not do that. ... Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the matter was up to Bukele. "He's a citizen of El Salvador, so it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador, how to handle their own citizens," Miller said.

I see a little detail here that didn’t register at the time and I hadn’t noticed any other news story talk about it until I had NPR on this afternoon. The detail is that Abrego Garcia is indeed a citizen of El Salvador. He came to the US about 15 years ago to escape gang violence and is a legal US resident. And none of the claims the nasty guy and his minions have said against Abrego Garcia are true. Also on Monday afternoon Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the meeting between Bukele and the nasty guy. He titled his piece, “Bukele and Trump pretend they can’t return wrongfully deported man.” I see now he also said Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos exlrrp included a tweet from Will Stancil:

They’ll pressure a NATO ally to release a sex trafficker and racketeer but they won’t pressure a tiny dictatorship to return a man it’s holding on our behalf, who they admit they sent there by accident.

Stancil includes headlines from a story of the nasty guy pressuring Romania to return brothers Tristan and Andrew Tate, charged with sexual misconduct, organized crime, and money laundering. Beside it is a story saying, “The Trump administration contends it has no duty to return illegally deported man to the US.” Hasn’t the nasty guy’s rhetoric included a lot about deporting the people who have committed crimes (or his minions have accused of crimes), yet they wanted actual criminals to be returned to the US? I’ve never considered this logical. A bit further down in the comments Steve Inskeep of NPR has similar sentiments:

If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?

On Sunday Scott Detrow of NPR discussed the case with Harvard Law Emeritus Professor Laurence Tribe, who cowrote a New York Times op-ed about the case and included the line, “we should all be very, very afraid of the implications of this case.” Detrow asked him to explain. Tribe said:

The reason I think was made even clearer by Justice Sotomayor in her concurring statement. She said the government's argument implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, as long as it does so before a court can intervene. Think about what that means. What that means is that literally any of us - whether we are from Venezuela or were born in the United States, whether we are immigrants or not, whether we are citizens or not - any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped by masked agents of the United States government who don't tell us why they're picking us up, perhaps never to be seen again because we are located somewhere in a dungeon, a prison cell, rotting away, whether it's in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world. ... They've taken the position that even if it's clearly illegal and the government admits it, they say too bad, too late, oops. The person is gone, and we cannot get him back. And all nine justices reject the idea that suddenly, the greatest nation on Earth is powerless and its courts are powerless just because someone is outside the country. That's not the law.

The Supremes may have unanimously said what the nasty guy did was against the law, but Tribe says they wrote the opinion in yellow. The Supremes said the lower court should clarify the situation and include the deference towards the executive branch in executing foreign affairs. But this isn’t a foreign policy issue. Also, the courts have demanded the administration explain the steps it’s taking to make the return happen. To that they are saying we haven’t done anything. Tribe:

If he is not released in the next few days, that will be a signal to everyone in the country that they can be detained indefinitely by stalling maneuvers on the part of the Trump administration, or any future presidential administration, unless courts get there before the government can move. It's a very deadly game in which the government is told, if you take people who are perhaps ideological opponents of the administration, immigrants, citizens, what have you - people that the government would like to get rid of the way people have been disappeared to gulags throughout history - if you want to get rid of them, here's how you do it. You just grab them quickly and disappear them. That's where we will be if he's not returned.

That’s true also of citizens. This scenario is based on avoiding due process. Without it the administration can claim the person isn’t a citizen. Due process is to make sure the claims are true. Even if Abrego Garcia is returned soon, the nasty guy is so extreme that unless he says he won’t do it again, there isn’t much solace.

The whole point about a police state isn't that it always acts to silence people or to imprison them or to torture them. It's that the sword of Damocles hangs over all of us all the time. That has an enormous chilling effect. We've seen it with law firms. We've seen it with respect to universities. And sure, it would be good if Mr. Garcia were released, but until the government begins to recognize and act in accord with the recognition that it is bound by the law and not just by its own preferences, we will all be in great danger.

On Monday morning Michel Martin of NPR spoke to Kim Wehle, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Wehle said part of the issue is the Supreme Court ruling that made a distinction between “facilitating” and “effectuating” and seemed to say Abrego Garcia doesn’t need to be returned as long as the nasty guy can cite foreign policy. But, Wehle said, foreign policy does not supersede the core constitutional right to due process. About Lawrence Tribe saying not even citizens are safe... Emily Singer of Kos wrote on Monday:

In yet another disgusting display in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s notoriously violent prison where he's currently sending immigrants without due process and against court orders. During his Monday meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Trump was caught on camera saying that "homegrowns are next" to be sent to CECOT, the Salvadoran prison where people are housed in inhumane conditions, including without mattresses, pillows, proper nutrition, time outside, and access to family or lawyers. "The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough," Trump told Bukele, apparently referring to U.S. citizens who he wants to send to CECOT. When Trump was later asked if he would send U.S. citizens to CECOT, he didn’t hesitate to say yes. "If they are criminals, and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head, if they rape 87-year-old women, yeah. Yeah. That includes them. I'm all for it," he said.

Sending citizens to CECOT “should send shivers down the spine of every American.” In the US incarcerated people are still protected by the Constituion’s 8th Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment requiring due process. Singer then detailed how CECOT would definitely be cruel and unusual punishment.

If Trump is refusing to comply with court orders to return immigrants from El Salvador, who’s to say he won’t send journalists or political adversaries there next?

On Tuesday Oliver Willis of Kos reported that several Democratic members of Congress are preparing to go to El Salvador to try to get the release of Abrego Garcia. Willis also reported:

Garcia is a father of three. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has said she is “very scared” for his safety while he is being held in El Salvador. Garcia was granted protected status in 2011 after a U.S. court determined he “could be persecuted by gangs” if he returned to his native country.

The gangs didn’t get their chance to persecute him. Dictator Bukele and his cruel prison did. One of those Democrats wanting to go to El Salvador was Sen. Chris Van Hollen. This afternoon Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Van Hollen who was in El Salvador. He said he got about three miles of the prison when he was stopped by security and told he wasn’t allowed to go any farther. He said this trip was only to check on the health of Abrego Garcia. On Wednesday Singer reported that GOP Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia did go to El Salvador and did get into the notorious CECOT prison. But his trip wasn’t to try to free, or even see, Abrego Garcia. This trip was so that he can appear in photos with prisoners as background. In one photo he even gave two thumbs up. Singer called this “torture porn.” Moore wrote on X, “I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland.” Singer wrote:

According to the Holocaust Museum's definition, CECOT is a concentration camp. A concentration camp, the museum says, “is a site for the detention of civilians whom a regime perceives to be a security risk of some sort. What distinguishes it from a prison (in the modern sense) is that incarceration in a concentration camp is independent of any judicial sentence or even indictment, and is not subject to judicial review.” Indeed, 90% of those sent to CECOT had never been convicted of a crime, while 75% have never even been arrested, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

This nasty guy dictator may not build concentration camps on US soil. Instead, he may pay El Salvador to do it for him. That way the disappeared lose their Constitutional rights – though by then the Constitution will have been shredded.

His every twitch has commanded humanity’s attention

My Sunday movie was Rez Ball. It is described as fictional and based on a true story. The story takes place in Chuska, New Mexico (it’s not in Google Maps, where I’m shown Chuska Mountains so the town must be fictional too). It is part of the Navajo Nation. Nataanii is the captain of the high school basketball team. His best friend is Jimmy, also on the team. Even in their free time they play against each other. Nataanii lost his mother and sister the year before. Even though we think his prospects are bright, he doesn’t. One day he doesn’t show up for a game. After the game the coach tells the team he killed himself. Yeah, suicide on the Rez is high. Though Jimmy is struggling with the lost of his best friend, he is promoted to team captain. He is also struggling against his mother, an alcoholic. She’s not violent, just defeated, saying Natives always find a way to lose. Coach Heather (there are hints she is lesbian) brings in an assistant coach, a man who knows sacred Navajo rituals. Jimmy’s girlfriend begins to teach him the Navajo language, which he doesn’t know, and he pulls it into the game as a way for the team to talk to each other without their opponents understanding. They come up with a style of play they call Rez Ball. I was intrigued by this movie when it came out last September. I put off watching it because I realized it is probably another story of an underdog team going to the championship game. It is that. But the Navajo setting gives the old story a reason to watch. I enjoyed it. One reason for watching Rez Ball was it fits well with the book I finished just after watching. It is The Inconvenient Indian, a Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King. It was published in 2012 and selected for the 2015 English Canada Reads program. I bought it in the Indigenous shop when I visited Stratford, Ontario last August. Canada Reads is put on by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public radio. It is a way to get the whole country to read the same small number of books. King is a Canadian Native, though he has spent considerable time in the US. In the Prologue he explains this is an “account” and not a “history” because first, a history is too scholarly and requires footnotes. Second, a history doesn’t tell a story well and King wanted to tell the story of Native-White interactions across both the United States and Canada. More accurately, it’s the story of Whites oppressing Natives – taking their land, killing or impoverishing them, trying to replace their culture, and generally being mean. Third, people (hopefully) learn more from stories than they do from history and King shows Whites haven’t learned anything in the 500 years since contact. Fourth, a history book would not allow him moments of humor, most of it snarky. Yes, King uses the term “Indian” throughout, mostly because the two countries call their Native peoples by different names. Also, children across the continent play Cowboys and Indians. All kids, even the Indians, want to play the part of the Cowboys (King describes photos of his own childhood) and nobody wants to play the Indians. King discusses many of the treaties the two countries made with their Indians. There were around 400 treaties – all of them broken by Whites. King is asked, “What do Indians want?” He says that’s the wrong question. Each tribe has its own answer. The better question is “What do Whites want?” The answer to that is simple: land. One big theme of the book is the myriad ways in which Whites have taken land away from Indians. The most frequently used is through a treaty, which always favored Whites. If Whites wanted more land the treaty is tossed (by Whites) and a new one written. I learned that when dams were built along the Missouri River every resulting reservoir flooded Indian land, and not White land. Even today some politicians talk about the Indian “problem.” Another big theme is how Indians are portrayed and thought about in both countries. There are Dead Indians, the type of Indians Whites revere. We use Indian images and names on a great number of products (such as Atlanta Braves), including wellness products that sell the idea of living like Indians do (or the promoter thinks they did). There are Live Indians, the ones walking around today. Whites ignore Live Indians because they don’t dress like the traditional Indian Whites recognize. King is frequently asked if he is a “real” Indian because to Whites he doesn’t look like one. So Live Indians are ignored. The third and last category is the Legal Indian. Both countries hate them. These are Indians with legal federal status. Many are the kind that insist on their rights. A third theme is Whites declareing they are culturally superior to Indians. That was behind the effort to assimilate and Christianize the Indians, including the residential school programs. The schools said, “Kill the Indian, save the child.” Considering the abuse, disease, and death in the schools of both countries King said the actual phrase came out to “Kill the Indian” kills the Indian. The book ends with a couple bright spots. In the US in 1972 (I think) and act was passed by Congress to turn over much of the land in Alaska to the Natives. As great as the act is there are still features the benefit Whites over Indians. In 1999 Canada passed the act that created the territory of Nunavut. Again, the Inuit had territory they could manage as they, not Ottawa, saw fit. And again, it wasn’t all it should have been – the funding to teach Inuit children their native language isn’t nearly enough. Though King doesn’t use footnotes and doesn’t document his sources, the book is well researched. I can’t say I enjoyed the book because I got tired of the constant stream of methods Whites came up with to oppress the Indians. However, I strongly recommend it. More Americans (and more Canadians) need to know this history and learn from it. Last Sunday Kos of Daily Kos surveyed the top ten single day stock market drops and noticed something in common. 1. March 12, 2020, 7. March 9, 2020, in response to the handling of the COVID epidemic. 2. Nov. 20, 2008, 4. Nov. 6, 2008, 5. Oct. 15, 2008, 6. Oct 7, 2008, 8. Oct 9, 2008, 9. Oct 10, 2008, 10. October 22, 2008, in response to the mortgage crisis. 3. April 4, 2025, in response to tariffs being imposed needlessly. Numbers 1, 3, and 7 were because of the nasty guy. All the rest were under the watch of Bush II. Other notable crashes: Black Friday, October 1929 under Herbert Hoover, Black Monday, October 1987 under Reagan, and the Post-9/11 crash under Bush II. The something in common: All happened while a Republican was in the Oval Office. Some drops were in direct response to his actions. Good to know Americans are finally giving up on the idea that Republicans are better at the economy. Emily Singer of Kos reported, with the help of NBC News, on the attack of the governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania. The perpetrator said he had a “hatred towards Governor Shapiro,” who is Jewish. The perpetrator broke into the mansion and set fire to the dining room. Shapiro, family, and guests fled in the middle of the night and are safe. The attack happened on the first day of Passover, which the family had begun to celebrate. Singer was much more interested in the response from the nasty guy. He had a lot to say after the attack – about other things. He was silent on what happened to Shapiro. Close to a day after the attack Attorney General Pam Bondi offered mild comment, quite a bit milder than what she had to say about people attacking Tesla properties. When the nasty guy attacks universities, students protesting the treatment of Palestinians, and quite a bit more he says he is doing it to eliminate antisemitism. Yet, a Jewish governor of an American state is attacked and he has no comment. Which sounds antisemitic. And that means that his claim that he is doing things to eliminate antisemitism is a lie. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian:

Last week, it was Trump as gameshow host in the White House Rose Garden, proudly unveiling his Price is Right table of import duties, listing each country alongside the percentage by which it was about to get whacked. He called it “liberation day”. This week, it was the 90-day “pause” – climbdown would be another word – for everywhere except China, which got hit with extra levies. Throughout, people in every ministry and trading floor on the planet held their breath, along with the boardroom of every company that buys or sells overseas, as they watched to see what Trump would do next to the global economy currently held hostage in the Oval Office. With a gun to the temple of the world trading system, Trump’s every twitch has commanded humanity’s attention. And, my, how he loves it. You could see his pleasure as he told a Republican dinner on Tuesday that the world’s nations were “kissing my ass” to negotiate a deal that would spare them tariff pain. For him, the uncertainty is all part of the fun. As the Economist rightly observed, he relishes “being the focus of a planetary guessing game”. Trump used to get his dopamine hit from a mention in the gossip columns of the New York tabloids; now he’s tasted the thrill of commanding an audience in the billions and he’s hooked. But consider the price we are all paying. I don’t (only) mean those trillions of dollars wiped out at a stroke through tumbling stocks, or even the investments put on hold as businesses decide that, amid all this uncertainty, now is not the right time to open that new factory or launch that new product, thereby delaying, perhaps for ever, the jobs or wages that would have found their way to people who need them.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:

Here’s one thing that’s hardly been discussed as far as I can tell. We know about the Trump “deals” with various law firms. We know about the “deal” with Columbia University, which the administration has now violated to the extent it was ever actually a deal. But where are these deals? What are they exactly? I mean, have these agreements been committed to paper? In every one of these that I have seen each side has a general description of what’s been agreed to but there’s no document that you would have in the real world – or the real non-corrupt world – when two parties agree to something.

In another roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Noah Berlatsky of Public Notice discussing the incessant lying of the nasty guy and MAGA.

These lies are effective because they leverage anti-government sentiment and prejudice. They also work because opposition politicians struggle to recognize and call out fascist bad faith. If Democrats are going to defend Social Security, the social safety net, and even cancer research, though, we need to get accustomed to saying unequivocally that lies are lies, and comfortable recognizing them as a deliberate effort to confuse and demoralize people.

Paul Krugman discussed why Democrats should not support tariffs.

But shouldn’t we be trying to restore U.S. manufacturing? Let me make three points: 1. Trump’s tariffs will hurt, not help, manufacturing 2. If you want to promote manufacturing, you should use industrial policy, not tariffs 3. Good jobs don’t have to be in manufacturing, and manufacturing jobs aren’t necessarily good Trump’s tariffs will hurt U.S. manufacturing Trump’s tariffs will reduce, not increase, the number of manufacturing jobs in America.

Trump Hater Dan tweeted a cartoon showing Linus of the Peanuts gang in school saying to Peppermint Patty, “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.” That’s why the nasty guy is attacking universities. AJ Duden tweeted:

You put your tariff on You take your tariff off You put your tariff on and you make 'em scream and shout You do the market hustle and you turn it upside down That's what it's all about

The world now knows that Trump is weak and erratic

Alex Samuels of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy’s administration has come up with a new way to convince undocumented workers to self-deport – tell Social Security they died, though they remain very much alive. This will make their Social Security number unusable. That means they lose employment, bank accounts, and basic services. Samuels calls this “hitting a new low.” Of course, the rollout has been sloppy. The first batch of 6,300 immigrants flagged eight minors and people whose “crimes” might be getting a federal student loan or using Medicaid. Of course, no evidence has been presented to link these people with actual crimes or terrorism. It also violates federal privacy laws. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that the nasty guy has changed his mind on some undocumented workers. He’ll let farm and hotel workers “stay in for a while.” Perhaps the nasty guy got an earful from farmers and hotel companies. About 40% of farm workers are undocumented immigrants. Undocumented farm workers are still afraid to come to work, knowing how aggressive ICE has become and how brutal prisons in Guantanamo and El Salvador are. The aggression is being shown through images of deportees in shackles and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem going to El Salvador and posing in front of prisoners. The nasty guy may have announce that ICE won’t raid farms. This may be better for undocumented workers, but it isn’t great. Undocumented workers are almost always exploited – working long hours in harsh conditions for little pay and little recourse. Tying their employment to a lower chance of deportation means they have a higher chance of being exploited. A boss can say do as I demand or I will fire you and call ICE. An article by McKenzie Funk for ProPublica posted on Kos discussed the impossible situation of flight attendants on deportation flights. Airline GlobalX started out as a charter carrier for VIP musicians and sports teams. That’s when most of the flight attendants were hired. But as the airline grew they accepted contracts from ICE to carry deportees in chains. The attendants were livid. The FAA says the attendants are in charge of the cabin. Passengers are to do what the attendants say. They enforce the rules to keep people safe. In addition to caring for passengers the attendants are responsible for evacuating the plane in an emergency. The FAA set a requirement that a plane must be evacuated in 90 seconds. But the onboard ICE officer and private security guards said, no we’re in charge. The FAA may require you to be on the flight but you’re not to do anything. Don’t feed, talk to, or make eye contact with the passengers. If an emergency happens (and it has) we’ll get the deportees off the plane. That annoyed the attendants because they enjoy caring for the passengers and here they cannot. They certainly want those in their care treated humanely. Yup, emergencies have happened. The guards were not able to evacuate deportees in shackles in the required 90 seconds. One incident took seven minutes. “Most of the flight attendants who spoke with ProPublica are now gone from GlobalX.” Walter Einenkel of Kos reported:

The Financial Times reports that, among the many federal firings perpetrated by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency outfit, around 30 workers from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration were let go. A significant number of these workers were from the “office of vehicle automation safety” which assesses safety for self-driving cars. The NHTSA has eight active investigations into Tesla’s operations, particularly focusing on its self-driving software. These investigations stem from numerous high-profile crashes and more than 10,000 public complaints. Recently, the NHTSA began investigating over 2.5 million Teslas following multiple reports of crashes connected to a feature allowing owners to control cars remotely. Additionally, 363,000 Teslas were recalled in February due to unsafe behaviors in the “Full Self-Driving” software. ... Eliminating the people responsible for evaluating the safety of Tesla’s faulty self-driving software is just the latest example of the neon bright conflict of interest posed by Trump’s top donor.

That is happening as Tesla’s stock has been falling and the company has seen historically poor sales. And while many in the nasty guy administration have become Tesla cheerleaders, including the nasty guy. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Krugman:

Anyone sounding the all-clear on tariffs, or Trump economic policy in general, should be kept away from sharp objects and banned from operating heavy machinery. We’re in a hardly better place than we were before Donald Trump announced a tariff pause (in a Truth Social post, of course.) In fact, we may be in a worse place. Let me make four points about Trump’s post-pause tariff regime. 1. Even the post-pause tariff rates represent a huge protectionist shock 2. Destructive uncertainty about future policy has increased 3. We’re still at risk of a major financial crisis 4. The world now knows that Trump is weak as well as erratic

Steve Chapman of The UnPopulist wrote:

Trump’s focus on restricting foreign goods isn’t merely economically suspect—it also advances his alarming authoritarian agenda. The greater his involvement in setting the terms of trade with other countries, the more weapons he has to reward pals, enrich his family, and punish those who don’t obediently fall into line. Waivers from his tariffs can be used to get what he wants from companies that import. Bloomberg reported the following finding from a recent study: “Public companies whose executives donated to Republican candidates had a higher chance of winning exclusions from President-elect Donald Trump’s first-term tariffs on China, while those that gave to Democrats saw their odds fall.” No wonder that hedge fund tycoon Ken Griffin has said, “I am gravely concerned that the rise of tariffs puts us on a slippery slope towards crony capitalism.”

At the top of the comments Dennis Goris posted a cartoon of ICE agents arresting a guy, who shouts, “I identify as a Tesla!” In a second roundup Dworkin quoted JV Last of The Bulwark:

You know what can’t be bullied, deceived, or manipulated? The bond market. Yesterday we talked about how the bond market is a device that measures risk. If the financial order is safe, bond rates are low. When risk enters the system, bond rates increase. Well after a full day of Trump’s tariff “pause,” bonds reacted by pushing rates higher.

I’ve heard other sources explain this by saying when the institution offering the bonds is seen as more risky those buying the bonds demand a higher interest rate. Brian Beutler of Off Message:

Trump’s tariffs, his erratic conduct, and his faithless abuse of trading partners, frankly threaten to transform the U.S. into a wasting backwater; the only cure for this disease is removing Trump from office; but Democrats are scared to utter the word, let alone to lay out the logic in a way that clarifies the stakes of this crisis, and why sidelining or impeaching him is so essential.

Max Burns of Rolling Stone:

Trump’s popularity has plummeted in recent weeks as the cost of his incoherent policies starts to bite into Americans’ savings. That might tempt some Democrats to mistake Trump’s tanking popularity with a rise in their own support, but nothing could be further from the truth. Democrats can’t take Trump’s momentary unpopularity as an excuse to avoid being the party their voters want them to be. Democrats have struggled with a credibility crisis, of varying degrees, since it became clear that White House officials had misled the party and the American people about former President Joe Biden’s fitness for a second term. But that alone didn’t slap Democrats with political pariah status. Voters are so frustrated because Democratic leaders — especially Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — seem to lack the fighting spirit this moment demands.

The nasty guy put a pause on most of his tariffs about mid afternoon. That morning he put out a tweet saying “This is a great time to buy!!!” Several rich people and others connected to him took the hint. When the Dow rocketed up 3,000 points in response to the pause these people made a lot of money. This is known as insider trading. There are now calls for investigations, most of the calls from Democrats. That also brought out a lot of jokes and memes. And exlrrp posted a couple of them. In the comments of this post a meme shows President Bill Clinton saying, “Call me crazy... But I think insider trading should be investigated as thoroughly as blow-job!” And in the comments of the previous post a meme shows Martha Stewart, who spent time in jail for insider trading, saying, “For all the Republicans now insisting that insider trading is ‘not a big deal,’ I know a woman that would like to disembowel you and make a festive holiday centerpiece with your entrails.”

A whole pile of invaluable trust just went up in smoke

A bit of tariff war news, then on to something else. After a rebound yesterday the stock markets dropped today. The nasty guy had hit China with tariffs of 125%, China responded to that so the nasty guy boosted tariffs on them again. I think they’re up to 145%. In today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Annie Lowrey of The Atlantic:

Step one: Start a pointless, globe-encompassing trade war, rationalized solely by your own boneheaded innumeracy. Step two: Tank the markets. Step three: Pare the war back to a hot conflict with one of the United States’ most important trading partners and a warm conflict with every other country on Earth. Step four: Watch the market rebound and declare victory. That’s the art of the deal, when it comes to President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade policies. This afternoon, Trump announced that the U.S. will pause the imposition of its “Liberation Day” tariff rates for 90 days. The markets surged in response; the president’s supporters cheered. But there’s no victory here, whatever the Dow Jones does and the Trump administration claims. The White House has risked everything, ruined plenty, and gotten nothing. The country’s economy is weakening, and the possibility of a recession remains.

Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times:

Trump won’t back off on these tariffs because — take your choice — he needs them to keep fentanyl from killing our kids, he needs them to raise revenue to pay for future tax cuts, and he needs them to pressure the world to buy more stuff from us. And he couldn’t care less what his rich pals on Wall Street say about their stock market losses. After creating havoc in the markets standing on these steadfast “principles” — undoubtedly prompting many Americans to sell low out of fear — Trump reversed much of it on Wednesday, announcing a 90-day pause on certain tariffs to most countries, excluding China. Message to the world — and to the Chinese: “I couldn’t take the heat.” If it were a book it would be called “The Art of the Squeal.” But don’t think for a second that all that’s been lost is money. A whole pile of invaluable trust just went up in smoke as well. In the last few weeks, we have told our closest friends in the world — countries that stood shoulder to shoulder with us after Sept. 11, in Iraq and in Afghanistan — that none of them were any different from China or Russia. They were all going to get tariffed under the same formula — no friends-and-family discounts allowed.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme by Tristan Snell, former New York Assistant Attorney General:

Why did Trump just cave? Because when the U.S. borrows money it does so by selling Treasury bonds. Mostly to China, Japan, Europe. Overnight there was a sudden spike in holders dumping their bonds. Trump picked a fight with our creditors, and or creditors won!

In Wednesday’s roundup, this one by Greg Dworkin, quotes Matthew Yglesias of Slow Boring:

A distinguishing characteristic of the policy course Trump has set us on is that people in his orbit keep offering justifications for it that are not only distinct but mutually contradictory, and then getting peeved if critics don’t accept their account of the real strategy.

In the comments is a cartoon by Joe Heller. A couple are in a bar. Behind them the nasty guy is on TV and the caption says “Pain and uncertainty ahead.” The couple react as the bartender looks elsewhere.

Man: Sure, it’s going to be inconvenient and hard... But in the long run this sacrifice will benefit everyone! Woman: Oh, please! That argument couldn’t even get you to wear a mask five years ago!

LJ Slater posted a meme:

Help the penguins pay their tariff. Send your fish to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

In Tuesday’s roundup Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing for his own Substack:

But less-engaged voters weren’t the only people who missed the warning signs and supported Donald Trump. Trump also had a number of ultra-wealthy backers, both on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, who are now shocked, shocked to discover that he is who he always was. [...] To be honest, I’m actually glad that Trump II is proving to be such a disaster for the economy. If he had exercised some restraint, if he had simply claimed credit for the very good economy Joe Biden left him, many wealthy people would have cheered him on while he destroyed democracy. Now they may turn on him.

Way down in the comments Flood Zone posted a comic showing Robert Kennedy Jr. at an exercise gym sitting backwards on an exercise bike. Geier (I don’t know who this is) stops to talk to him.

Geier: RFK JR, you know you’re riding the bike backwards, right? RFK: Yeah, Geier, (puff, puff) about to recommend people get the MMR vaccine. The bike: Your back pedaling is looking great, sir! Keep up the endurance for when the raw milk retraction comes up!

Paulpro posted a cartoon by Chelo showing the nasty guy and Melania ready to eat while the pot burns in the kitchen. Outside the window ICE is arresting the chef, server, and maid. Last Sunday the NPR show Freakonomics, hosted by Stephen Dubner, talked to Jessica Riedl. She is transgender but that has nothing to do with the topic of the episode. The topic is the political dishonesty about the national debt and taxes. The episode is dated April 4, 2025. However, there is a link to a Freakonomics podcast dated March 14, 2025, which has the transcript. I’ll get back to the broadcast episode later for some of the comments. Riedl is a senior fellow in budget, tax, and economic policy at the Manhattan Institute. She says she is center-right, though politicians of both parties don’t want to hear what she has to say. She recently stirred a hornets nest in a pair of op-eds in the Boston Globe, one titled “What Conservatives Get Wrong About Taxes” and the other “What Liberals…” She didn’t like Biden because he “added $4 trillion in new spending, enacted some tariffs, pushed up budget deficits, and overheated the economy to inflation.” She thinks less of the nasty guy because of his $8 trillion in new spending and tax cuts in the first term with likely much more in the second. She listens to the chatter around Washington and in social media and mutters that what she hears is just not true. So before the Globe articles she wrote Correcting the Top Ten Tax Myths. The myths (the transcript has the discussion to disprove them): 1. Tax cuts pay for themselves. 2. Tax cuts starve the beast and cut spending. 3. The middle class pays a higher tax rate than the rich. 4. The 91% tax rates of the 1950s produced all the revenue. 5. Europe taxes the rich more. 6. Tax cuts for the rich are why we have huge budget deficits. 7. Taxing the rich more can eliminate the deficit. 8. Most of the 2017 tax cuts went to the wealthy. Myths 9 and 10 to me look like duplicates. The national debt is now so high the interest paid on the debt has tripled since 2021, from $350 billion to nearly $1 trillion and will be up to $2 trillion in a decade. That cost has passed Medicaid, defense, and Medicare. Before 2000 a politician could talk about fiscal responsibility and get elected. Now politicians believe they can’t get elected without promising tax cuts and spending increases. They hope the consequences fall to their successor. DOGE is focused on symbolic things like DEI and culture war things. They say they’re doing it to save money, but that will be “not even a rounding error.” The national debt is “projected to rise from about $30 trillion today to $200 trillion in 30 years” (a link provided). Yet, politicians are locked into making promises that are bad for the country but get them elected. Changing that is not easy. I want to hear how that fiscal responsibility was sabotaged, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. Medicare and Social Security do not pay for themselves in taxes, and the belief they can’t run deficits is false. Riedl says the two will run a cash deficit of $124 trillion (another link provided). The rest of the budget is balanced during that time. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system and there aren’t enough taxpayers to cover all the retirees. Seniors said they paid into the system and want their money, but overall they’re getting triple what they paid in. I get the impression that those who get more than they put in are the wealthy whose payroll taxes are capped much lower than the maximum benefit they get. And, as millionaires, why do they need Social Security at all? Yes, that is means-testing, which is now a toxic topic in Washington. But if benefits are to be cut isn’t it better to cut the benefits to the rich rather than to the poor? Social Security is supposed to be a poverty-prevention program, not a universal, get-rich benefit. But changing that would be electoral suicide, because the public doesn’t understand how the system works. This can be solved – as long as both parties are equally involved so it doesn’t look like a partisan effort to hurt opponents and the negotiations are done privately. But it has to be everything, not the budget, Social Security, and Medicare in isolation. Riedl says such meeting are happening, but she can’t give names. The participants are scared of going public. Riedl computed that if we seized the entire wealth of every American billionaire it would pay for eight months of government spending and do it only once. In contrast she says the middle class is undertaxed. I read through the comments of both the podcast and radio episode. Some of them say Riedl’s center-right viewpoint is showing and fact-checking should have been stronger. A couple commenters say that the money taken from the rich should not be compared to total government spending, but to the budget deficit – and that their wealth could cover that for a couple decades. Another calls her a “good capitalist propagandist.” In the comments for the radio episode Robert Bristow-Johnson has suggestions to make the tax system and federal budget more fair. Tax capital gains the same as earned income. Apply Social Security and Medicare taxes to all income, not just earned income. Prevent the rich from living off loans against their wealth (to be repaid when they die) by taxing the loan as income. Tax inherited estates over $1 million. Remove the limit of how much income is taxed for Social Security. Lower the maximum Social Security benefit to a comfortable middle class income and don’t bother means-testing. In exchange for these reforms, lower the taxes on Type C corporations (I don’t know the definition of this type). And give us single-payer health care. While listening to Riedl and her comments that billionaires are taxed enough and the middle class should be taxed more, I got to thinking about another aspect of taxes. Since the Reagan tax cuts in 1981: The number of billionaires has increased by quite a bit to the point they have enough money to significantly meddle in politics. The pay of the lower levels of workers has stagnated because the rich could keep the money for themselves rather than pay their workers more. Income inequality has increased tremendously. I think we would do better taxing the rich more, not because it would do much about the federal deficit, but because we would do better as a society with fewer billionaires and wealth more evenly distributed.