The Washington Post editorial board explained why Trump’s travel ban lost in court. If he takes it to the Supreme Court, he will lose there too because his Justice Department argued that his executive order is “unreviewable.” The courts don’t agree.
Trump’s response to losing:: SEE YOU IN CIURT!
A strange response to make to the courts.
Did he ever take a civics class?
This is an astonishing story that flew under the radar. Trump keeps us enraged and entertained with his tweets and offhand comments, and while we are distracted by stories about Ivanka and Melania, Congress abolished a regulation that prevents coal mining companies from dumping waste into streams.
Don’t people in coal country want to fish and swim in the streams? Do they want polluted waters?
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American dissident who writes for the New York Times and the New York Review of Books.
She wrote this article right after the election, on November 10.
This consists of her six rules for surviving an autocracy. Here are a few excerpts:
“Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions….
“Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself….
“Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. Nongovernmental organizations, many of which are reeling at the moment, faced with a transition period in which there is no opening for their input, will grasp at chances to work with the new administration. This will be fruitless—damage cannot be minimized, much less reversed, when mobilization is the goal—but worse, it will be soul-destroying. In an autocracy, politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral. Those who argue for cooperation will make the case, much as President Obama did in his speech, that cooperation is essential for the future. They will be willfully ignoring the corrupting touch of autocracy, from which the future must be protected.
“Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be.”
The editors of the Catholic magazine Commonweal remind us that this new era is not normal.
We must not forget that.
Every day brings new outrages or misdeeds. Any of the stories flitting across our screens might have been enough to dominate the news for days or weeks during previous presidencies: continuing investigations into Russian interference in the election, shameless lies by the White House staff, unhinged statements to the press, saber-rattling tweets, unvetted cabinet nominees, Trump’s continued refusal to release his tax returns, and surreal exchanges with foreign heads of state. Surely one element of Trump’s strategy is to exhaust his critics and divert their attention, making it difficult for ordinary citizens to focus on what really matters or even keep track of what is actually happening.
Terms like “autocrat” and “authoritarian” are being used by thoughtful observers to describe Trump, and not without reason. His executive order banning entry of people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, among other draconian measures, is only the most prominent example. Reliable information on the inner workings of the Trump White House is hard to come by, but there are credible reports that the legal advice of Homeland Security officials was ignored during the executive order’s drafting, and that congressional staffers who had to sign nondisclosure agreements also were involved. When the new policies were abruptly put into effect, chaos ensued at airports around the country, drawing thousands of protesters who expressed solidarity with those stranded and afraid, and sparking criticism worldwide.
The fate of the order is now being fought out in the courts, but its motivation is clear: bigotry and fear-mongering, not empirical evidence. Rudolph Giuliani, a close Trump ally, admitted the president asked him how he could impose a “Muslim ban” legally. Tough vetting procedures established during the Obama presidency were already working; since 9/11, no one in this country has been killed by a terrorist from any of the seven countries on the order’s list. Trump is now attacking a Republican-appointed judge who suspended the ban, describing him as a “so-called judge” and decrying the ability of the courts to thwart his will. Dangerous terrorists could be pouring into the country, Trump warned, suggesting it would be the judge who has blood on his hands if the worst happened. Just weeks into his presidency, Trump is assaulting the independence of the judiciary and chafing against the separation of powers…..
The task ahead is clear: extreme vigilance and, wherever necessary, resistance. As the Russian-American dissident Masha Gessen has warned, in situations like the one now confronting the United States, “politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral.” The “corrupting touch” of autocracy will forever stain the reputations of those who are co-opted by Trumpism. Congressional Democrats must do nothing to enable this administration, and everything they can to minimize the damage that it causes. Trump is showing us exactly who he is, and the disturbing vision he has for the country. Don’t get distracted.
In a closed door meeting with 10 Republican senators on Thursday, Trump derided Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” a term he used often during the campaign. He also claimed that he lost New Hampshire because thousands of Massachusetts residents were bused to New Hampshire to vote illegally.
According to Politico, there was an embarrassed silence as Trump went into his rant about voter fraud.
Anyone who expects Trump to “pivot” and act “presidential” should abandon that dream.
Time to contribute to the ACLU, People for the American Way, immigrant rights groups, and any other groups protecting civil liberties. And of course, the Network for Public Education, which fights against the privatization of public schools.
A Mexican woman with two American-born children, who had lived in this country for two decades, was deported immediately when she checked in with immigration offices for her annual visit. This is the result of Trump’s executive order to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed a crime. The crime in this case was that she once used a fake social security card. We can all rest easier tonight knowing that Ms. Garcia de Rayos no longer threatens our nation’s security.
In the area where I live on Long Island, there are many farms and vineyards. If the Immigration Service deports all undocumented immigrants, the local economy will crash. Perhaps Trump will persuade coal miners in West Virginia to come to the North Fork to tend the vineyards at minimum wage.
“In a matter of days, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos has gone from being one of about 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States to a poster child for critics of Donald Trump’s hard line on immigration and his promise to increase deportations.
“Garcia de Rayos, 35, emerged from her seemingly ordinary life after a yearly check-in Wednesday at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Phoenix.
“It was her eighth visit since her 2008 arrest and conviction for using a fake Social Security number. After each meeting, she was released and returned to her family in Mesa.
“This time, Garcia de Rayos was detained and deported to Mexico within 24 hours in what her attorney claims is a direct result of Trump’s crackdown.
“ICE officials insist there was nothing special about her situation: She had committed a crime and was ordered deported.
“Now the case has become a flashpoint in the heated national dispute over Trump’s executive order that says any undocumented immigrant convicted or charged with a crime that hasn’t been adjudicated could be deported.”
The New York Times gives more details. Her husband is also undocumented.
“PHOENIX — For eight years, Guadalupe García de Rayos had checked in at the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement office here, a requirement since she was caught using a fake Social Security number during a raid in 2008 at a water park where she worked.
“Every year since then, she has walked in and out of the meetings after a brief review of her case and some questions.
“But not this year.
“On Wednesday, immigration agents arrested Ms. Rayos, 35. Despite efforts by her family and others who tried to block, legally and physically, her removal from the United States, she was deported Thursday to Nogales, Mexico, the same city where she crossed into the United States 21 years ago.
“Immigration agents “said she’s a threat, but my wife isn’t a threat,” her husband said in an interview.
“As one of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, Ms. Rayos was always a candidate for deportation, but as a matter of practicality, the Obama administration had focused its finite resources on removing the most serious criminals. The government even won a deportation order against Ms. Rayos in 2013, but had not carried it out, instead merely requiring her to check in periodically.
“That all changed under President Trump, who ran on a pledge of being tougher on illegal immigration. Among the 18 executive orders that he has issued since taking office on Jan. 20 is one stipulating that undocumented immigrants convicted of any criminal offense — and even those who have not been charged but are believed to have committed “acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense” — have become a priority for deportation.”
Trump has made a series of statements about crime and violence in America that are demonstrably false, starting with his reference to “American carnage” in his inaugural speech. Stirring up fear about crime is a tactic to pour resources into policing and into “get tough” policies that make Americans fearful and afraid to venture out at night, if they believe our national fabulist.
Just for the record–and I know it is an anecdote–I have lived in New York City since 1960. I have never felt safer than I do today. I walk my dog at night, usually between 11 pm and 1 am–and I have never seen a crime or felt afraid.
But don’t take it from me. Here are the data about Trump’s campaign to spread fear. Despite what Trump claimed, the murder rate is the lowest it has been in 47 years, despite a slight uptick in the past year.
Is he laying the groundwork to declare martial law? Does he plan to divert money from education and healthcare to law enforcement?
One of the hallmarks of authoritarians is that they promote fear. They scapegoat. They want control so they can restore order. Trump generates chaos, then expects us to believe he can dial it back. He can’t and he won’t. Chaos serves his purposes.
This post was written by a retired teacher of history who taught in Pennsylvania.
He reminds us about the clown car as an apt metaphor for what is happening now.
Not sure if you remember going to the Ringling Brother’s Circus attraction (too bad they are folding their tents). There was one scene where a small car, later a VW comes to center ring and stops. Out come a couple of clowns and then many more clowns come out of the car. It was always a hilarious thing to youngsters.
Well, the scene is still pretty much the same. As more appointees appear to be part of the current administration, more seem like clowns, but not regular clowns more like Pennywise the clown in Stephen King’s “It.” These are not the normal kinds of appointees with some semblance of experience in the area of appointment, but no experience even near the field.
So each appointee goes before a committee and is asked a bunch of embarrassing questions by Democrats and softball questions by Republicans. All of them have passed so far, even one whose qualifications are zero for her new job. It takes a tie breaker by the Vice President to get her approved.
All of these appointees will be approved. Even those with obvious conflicts of interest will sail through. Interesting that many opposed to the President and his administration are touting the high road in condemnation of what they are doing. It does not seem to be working at all.
Those who supported the new administration are not those who respect the high road or even the moderate road. They are happy with the fact that a brash pt. personality and con man could beat down the elite, college going, establishment (including the media).
Giving factual information to condemn what this administration is doing has no effect on the President’s supporters. Hirer is one example. My wife’s cousin, who is a Californian and a virulent supporter of the new administration, has said that there was violence and tumult at the Women’s March in Washington DC. In actuality, there were no arrests made at the march. Responding to him with a fact like that does not affect him at all. We are all saying and quoting fake news.
So, how does one combat the flying monkeys and the Pennywise clowns? There are groups of people who are calling themselves, “Indivisibles.” They are now around the country. They are thoughtful folks with a purpose. They are realistic and determined. They are not “holier than thou,” folks. They will speak out and work at a local level to take back our country. I am impressed with their determination and skill.
We will take back our country. Period.
Alexandra Petri is a gifted humorist who writes for the Washington Post. She has a talent for seizing the zeitgeist and turning it into belly laughs.
In this post, she explains that the Trump administration is right about everything, in their alternative universe.
It begins like this, but you must read the whole thing. It is pitch perfect.
“We are being too uncharitable to the Trump administration. We have probably made Sean Spicer cry, and that is not what anyone set out to do.
“There is a much simpler explanation for the list of Secret Media Terrorism Coverups and the Bowling Green Massacre and the “alternative facts” than this idea that somehow, the Trump administration is making up facts or misleading the American people. Nonsense. They are doing the best they can with the facts they have. They simply have come here from an alternative universe.
“ It is not their fault that their facts appear to be quite different from what is happening in the universe where most people live. They did not ask to come here. Something went wrong with the timeline, is all. Somebody stepped on a butterfly, and here we are.
“When we look at their recently provided list of times when the media failed to cover Horrible Acts Of Terrorism, what we see is a long series of misspellings in which, often, zero people died. When they look at it, do they see millions of lives cut short, enough to justify a massive travel ban? It is unclear. What is clear is that they exist in a universe where no one reported adequately on the Paris attacks, whereas we live in a universe where all 130 victims were profiled. This discrepancy is nobody’s fault. There, the media really did cover up dozens of very serious attacks in which I, personally, was killed. ”
Please read on, so you can share Alexandra’s deep reasoning.
More alternate facts from Trump. He accused the media of not reporting terror attacks. To support his claim, the White House released a list of terror attacks that allegedly had been ignored or under-reported.
The New York Times responded by fact-checking the White House list.
What was interesting was that the White House list did not include terrorist attacks on Muslims. Nor did it include terrorist attacks by white supremacists, like the Charleston Massacre of nine African Americans by Dylan Roof.
Another ironic angle to this story: the Times recalled that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had criticized the media for paying attention to terrorists, thereby giving them the publicity they sought.
