We’re Well Past Alarm Bells
The Trump administration is mocking court orders, laying the groundwork for political retribution, and declaring open war on the rule of law.
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In Federalist No. 51, defending the separation of powers and its pitting of ambition against ambition and its connecting the interest of office-holders with the constitutional rights of the place, James Madison explained:
It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
We’re not angels. And rule by angels isn’t available to us. To avoid anarchy, we need a government that can control our potentially violent passions. And we need the rule of law and its institutional buttresses like the separation of powers to enable us to live in freedom, not despotism.
Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 16, 2025
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Legal commentator Joyce White Vance added that although there will be fights over who did what, when, the case will be headed to the Supreme Court, where Trump will hope for a decision “that says he can do these deportations regardless of other legal issues, because he is the president, and the president has the power to do whatever he deems necessary under Article II of the Constitution.” She adds:” If presidents can do whatever they want, including putting people on a plane and sending them to prisons in a foreign country with no due process whatsoever, then really, who are we?”
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“We are inevitably headed,” Vance wrote, “to a confrontation between a president who has rejected the rule of law and a judge sworn to enforce it. We are in an exceedingly dangerous moment for democracy.”
In Common Sense, when he made the argument against monarchy that would drive the colonists to create their own new form of government, Thomas Paine warned his neighbors that without the rule of law, the country belongs to a king. He urged them to turn away from a world that gave one man such absolute power. “[S]o far as we approve of monarchy,” he wrote, “in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”
Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club held its championship today. He posted tonight that he is proud to have won it again this year.
Deadly Tornado Rips Through Midwest Days After Trump Gutted Key Agency
Donald Trump has kneecapped the country’s ability to forecast extreme weather.
Trump Acknowledges Killer Storms Hours After Golf Boast
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS
Last year, Trump scorched then-President Joe Biden for taking a beach trip as Hurricane Helene killed hundreds.
How to fight the Trump regime’s use of fear and intimidation
The major weapon of the Trump-Vance-Musk regime is fear that causes people to be intimidated into silence and submission.
The regime is using fear — of being deported, job loss, loss of federal contracts, loss of access to sources of news, of arrest and imprisonment — to intimidate potential critics.
This is what all tyrants do, but we are unaccustomed to it in the United States.
I want to share with you three rules for fighting tyrannical fear and intimidation, gleaned from discussions I’ve had with a number of people who have lived in repressive regimes.
- If at all possible, do not give into it
- Join with others who are similarly situated to sue the regime and speak out
- The rest of us must support these efforts
A Lawless President’s Contempt
So 77 million Americans voted for a vengeful convicted felon who’s pursued a life of crime and promised he’d exploit the presidency for retribution. No one should be surprised that this sociopath, provided near-total immunity by the U.S. Supreme Court if elected again, is now acting in an utterly lawless manner.
The evil at your door
The deportation action as regime change
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This deportation was planned as a political spectacle. The deportees were carefully chosen, as was the language used to describe them. The messaging was obviously coordinated in advance. And the entire humiliating procedure was carried out before cameras that were already in place. The videos that are being distributed are not some assemblage of footage caught haphazardly by cell phones. They are the result of fixed cameras, set in place in advance, with camera operators awaiting the action. The result is propaganda film worthy of the 1930s, in which the Leader determines what is true and what is false and who is human and who is not (“monsters”) through a procedure of charismatic violence. If you watch these films, please consider that they are meant to draw you in to a politics of us and them, to a world of lying and hatred beyond law, to a new regime that can come to replace our republic — but only with your assent.
What Now?
What Democrats and other pro-democracy Americans must NOT do is retreat into despondency, paralysis, or resignation. … We fight for the people Musk-Trump target, who are most affected by their cruelty and vile threats. We fight for academic and media freedom, for women’s lives and reproductive health, for President Volodymyr Zelensky and the people of Ukraine (as well as for Europe whole and free), and for a constitutional system that rejects kings.
Undue Process
We’re entering the era of “Legal due process for me but not for thee.” Let’s look at just a few examples from the Trump regime.
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And now with the second Trump administration – despite having benefited himself from due process – we are seeing a pattern of completely ignoring due process at the peril of democracy itself. There are four clear examples of this, and counting.
The Truth Dies with Him
Another voice didn’t toe the Trump line
In another sad-but-true-to-form attempt by Donald Trump to silence the truth, he’s gutted a federal agency that broadcasts news around the world — because it wasn’t pro-Trump news or Fox propaganda, but pro-democracy journalism that provides information to parts of the globe where a free press is threatened or nonexistent.
He signed an executive order on Friday evening that effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for Global Media. It is an umbrella organization for federally funded news outlets like Voice of America, which collectively reach 420 million people, in 100 countries, in 63 languages.
How Trump plans to get away with defying court orders
Easy: He’s going to use John Roberts’ gift of presidential immunity and his power to issue pardons granted by the Constitution.
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None of this is ad hoc. Trump clearly set out to defy the order of this judge, and he will defy any others he disagrees with. White House officials have told reporters that they want this case or another one to end up before the Supreme Court, where they think they will win.
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A Tesla protester targeted by Elon Musk speaks out: ‘I have to protect myself’
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Before Costa could figure out how to respond, Musk fired off another post. This time it was even more personal and inflammatory. It said: “Costa is committing crimes,” with a video clip of her appearing on a podcast.Musk’s post provided no evidence or specific allegations, but the message was clear: Musk was falsely blaming Costa for violence directed at Tesla cars and facilities since President Trump’s inauguration and Musk assumed an influential perch in the White House.
“When one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful person in the world is saying you’ve committed a crime, it doesn’t matter what the truth is,” Costa said.
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DOGE’s Cuts at the USDA Could Cause US Grocery Prices to Rise and Invasive Species to Spread
Thousands of US Department of Agriculture employees, including food inspectors and disease-sniffing-dog trainers, remain out of work, leaving food to rot in ports and pests to proliferate.
Before he was abruptly fired last month, Derek Copeland worked as a trainer at the US Department of Agriculture’s National Dog Detection Training Center, preparing beagles and Labrador retrievers to sniff out plants and animals that are invasive or vectors for zoonotic diseases, like swine fever. Copeland estimates the NDDTC lost about a fifth of its trainers and a number of other support staff when 6,000 employees were let go at the USDA in February as part of a government-wide purge orchestrated by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
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GOP Pushes To Classify ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ As Mental Illness
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EXCLUSIVE: Memo details Trump plan to sabotage the Social Security Administration
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Norovirus, Covid-19 variant, measles, WV food dye ban, and USDA Local Food cuts
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Trump Administration Aims to Eliminate E.P.A.’s Scientific Research Arm
More than 1,000 chemists, biologists and other scientists could be laid off under a plan to dismantle the Office of Research and Development.
Why we must defend science, social science and medicine from attacks on diversity
How Diversity Strengthens Science
- Improved Creativity and Innovation
- Enhanced Problem-Solving Ability
- Better Representation of global challenges and possible solutions
- Diversity in Research Design
Equity and Inclusion in Science: rebalancing the playing field
- Reducing Bias and Discrimination
- Equitable Access to Funding and Resources
- Workplace Flexibility and Support Systems
- Increasing trust in science
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Hegseth Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About Houthi Strikes
The United Nations estimates at least 370,000 people have died in Yemen as either a direct or indirect result of the country’s brutal, decade-long civil war.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense has made clear that his concerns about the grinding conflict that has engulfed Yemen for more than a decade only extend as far as U.S. shipping interests in the region.“I don’t… we don’t care what happens in the Yemeni civil war,” Hegseth said in this weekend’s appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.
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Is the American Electric Car Already Dead?
Trump is cutting power to the EV industry. It’s unclear if it can recover.
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CFPB workers are reinstated after a court order, but many still can’t work
Some employees have been placed on administrative leave and don’t even have their laptops back yet.
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Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto project says it sold $550 million in tokens
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Big Oil’s Last Ditch Effort: Immunity for Climate Destruction
Big Oil is lobbying hard to pass legislation giving itself immunity for all the climate destruction it has caused—here’s how you can help ensure they’re held accountable
Most Americans don’t realize that scientists who worked for Big Oil companies like ExxonMobil warned more than half a century ago that continued exploitation of fossil fuels will cause climate catastrophe.
Big Oil knew this to be true, but lied anyway. But it gets even worse. And if we don’t act now, we’ll suffer the continued consequences of Big Oil’s climate destruction.
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Trump Is Now at War With Iran
Let’s call this what it is
Without the American press even noticing, Donald Trump has started a war with Iran.On February 28, the U.S. military announced that two B-52 heavy bombers flying from an “undisclosed location” in the Middle East (which I can report is the country of Qatar) dropped bombs on another “undisclosed location” (Iraq). The message wasn’t lost on neighboring Iran, whose state media warned that the B-52s are “nuclear-capable bombers” carrying a message whose recipient “was clear as day; The Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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MAGA BACKFIRE: Instead of owning the Libs, they are being owned by Trump/Musk cuts.
Trump, Musk, & MAGA are intent on owning the Libs. Unfortunately, most of the cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, & SNAP will affect MAGA, rural America, & their employment more than the Libs
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The MAGA movement, driven by its obsession with “owning the libs,” is backfiring spectacularly. Instead of harming progressives, Trump and Musk’s cuts to essential government agencies like NOAA and FEMA are disproportionately hurting their own voters in red states. From slashing disaster preparedness to undermining Medicaid and imposing job-killing tariffs, their policies have left rural America more vulnerable. While Trump and his allies claim to fight for working-class conservatives, their actions prove that their real priority is dismantling government at any cost—even if it devastates their own supporters.
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Trump White House Tests Supreme Court Loyalty With Increasingly Crackpot Legal Arguments
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Whatever you might think about the idea of outsourcing convicts to countries where human rights are advisory, the people sent to El Salvador were “alleged” gang members. While the administration talks up getting rid of “the bad guys,” they did not export adjudicated bad guys but rather planeloads of innocent until proven guilty migrants that the government accuses of being bad guys.But here’s the problem with sending people to the Gulags based on “allegations” from ImmDef:
To sidestep the criminal justice process that might require the DOJ to present “evidence,” the White House’s new legal gambit invokes the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to cover members of criminal gangs who hail from Venezuela. While the law was probably unconstitutional as a justification for sending Japanese-Americans to prison camps after Pearl Harbor, it is definitely unconstitutional as a justification for rounding up people from countries the U.S. isn’t even at war with.SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government…
Not to get all textualist or anything, but note that there’s no declared war and gang members are not a foreign government.
