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.