Donald Dud

Like Trump, I bailed from his birthday parade early. I, however, could turn it off and watch clips later. He had to stay for the whole thing and didn’t look happy about it. Having gone from standing and saluting, grim-faced and look-at-me leading, he ended up slumped, dejected, fighting sleep while those around him looked equally sad. Little Marco failed to suppress a yawn. Hegseth seemed to want to disappear.

Will whoever selected the music lose their job? Was playing Creedence’s “Fortunate Son” a deliberate snark against the draft-dodger in chief, or, like playing a gay anthem at every Trump rally, unintentionally clueless? 

We can be sure Trump fantasized a North Korea-style show of military might and fawning fealty, thousands of troops marching in lockstep precision, turning as one to salute him, amongst wave after wave of mighty weapons of war. Instead, he got impassive soldiers, many looking bored, walking unsynchronized as corporate sponsors were announced. Some saluted, some didn’t. Some turned their faces to him, some didn’t. Smiling to the thin crowds, mechanized troops waved and made heart signs with their hands. That was nice. Hoping instead for menace, Trump thought otherwise.

In the bleachers, empty seats outnumbered the filled. If the event was intended to intimidate our adversaries and portray Trump as a powerful leader, it was a Donald Dud. The flyovers were impressive, though, like Seafair. And the robot dogs were cool. Perhaps the research behind them will survive Trump’s anti-science agenda.

Hewing to their disinformation-spreading business model, counting on audience credulity, Fox “news” spoke of the “energy” and enthusiasm of the parade. Black, they assured us, was white. Down, they insisted, was up. It appears they even added fake cheering to drown out the silence. Trump’s Joseph Goebbels, Steven Cheung, said 250,000 people attended and the country-wide protests were “miniscule.” Such is Trumpworld’s view of their voters’ intelligence.

Did Trump see images of the millions of citizens who turned out in hundreds of cities, including in red states, to protest his “king”dom? Evidently. That night, he took to “Truthless Antisocial” to demand law enforcement redouble their intimidation in blue-state cities, using rhetoric that made undeniable his dictatorial politicization of the DOJ. Or, as he calls it, “running the country.”  That those millions marched peacefully, providing no excuse for violent reprisals, must have been disappointing. There was, however, a favored MAGA tactic, blessed by Ron DeSantis, of attempted vehicular homicide.

The weekend held other horrors: As awful as the murders in Minnesota were, more portentous for our future was the MAGA response, including from sitting US senators, Elon Musk, and, predictably, Foxians. Despite the murderer’s manifesto and hitlist attacking Democrats, despite his roommate’s confirmation that he’s a staunch Trump supporter, right-wingers insisted the man was a liberal, a Marxist, blaming the murder on “the extreme left.” There were even suggestions on Trumpic media that Governor Tim Walz hired the man to off a political enemy. 

We may argue over which party has most lost its mind (though the answer is as obvious as the aforementioned and Mr. Cheung’s lies), but when the divide between them is this unbridgeable, the adherence to truth so unequal, prospects for joining together in commitment to democracy are dim.

Changing subjects again, to the missiles flying between Israel and Iran: In concert with the wishes of the Western world, Israel’s intent is to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons. As the Middle East threatens another conflagration, let’s remember that, if not for Trump, this wouldn’t have happened. Calling it “the worst deal in the world,” reflexively undoing President Barack Obama’s most beneficial initiatives in his first “presidency,” he pulled out of the tough nuclear agreement with Iran that Obama’s team had forged. The deal included regular, expert inspections, with which Iran was complying.

Iranically, the currently disrupted negotiations between the US and Iran would return to the status established by President Obama’s “worst deal.” Bringing things back to how they were before Trump ruined them is also a fair description of the ephemeral trade agreement, supposedly in the works, with China.

Speaking of bad things that happened because Trump was president, he’d have us believe that some world events happened because he wasn’t. Like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which, because of his unmatched leadership skills and plenary power over Putin, he’d be ending the day after he was elected. It follows that if Putin had been afraid to invade while Trump was president, he’d certainly be acceding to Trump’s demands to end hostilities, of which there’ve been many, after every one of which, Putin, playing Trump like a balalaika, escalated his attacks.

Were I to claim my columns prevent Trump from imprisoning everyone who opposes him, no one could prove it false; but I’d put that assertion alongside Trump’s about Russia and Ukraine. And it’d be fair to call me megalomaniacal and nuts.

Protest Is Bravery Now

America’s history is dotted with instances of civil (and uncivil) disobedience that moved public opinion and changed our country for the better. Knowing that, by assembly and by voting, citizens are the ultimate protectors of freedom, the creators of our Constitution placed protection for the right to assemble and speech first in the Bill of Rights. Civil rights, women’s suffrage, voting rights, ending wars, – these markers of American greatness only occurred after massive, nationwide demonstrations. Even more so when the government reacted brutally: the Boston Massacre, the march on Edmund Pettis Bridge, Kent State.

The importance of unsuppressed protest in free, democratic countries can’t be overstated. Which is why it’s so maddening, so outrageous, so antithetical when they turn violent. They destroy the message; they make the violence the only thing people remember. They justify shutting them down. It’s as if the rioting is arranged by governments against which the protests are mounted. As if?

It’s a truism that when Trump or Trumpists accuse someone of doing something dire, it’s they who are doing it. So when Trump suggested the violence in Los Angeles is at the hands of paid protestors, it might prove the rule; also the one that when Trump speaks off-script, nonsense ensues. Why would he want to imply that the violence didn’t come from the protestors but from paid agitators? Back when the DOJ wasn’t in the tank for a corrupt president, we learned that much, if not most of the violence associated with BLM demonstrations came not from Antifa, whatever that is, but from white supremacist groups from all over, intent on discrediting the movement. 

It’s not conspiratorial to recognize the benefit to Trump when legitimate protests of illegitimate government acts turn violent. Thinking Trumpists are behind it might be. Or might not.

The people feeding Trump his thoughts are smart enough to understand history, which is why they’re rewriting or expunging it wherever they can. And they understand the power of the people when organized, which is why they want to suppress it. Using US military personnel to do so required ignoring the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes that use illegal except in the case of insurrection.

Excepting the January 6 riot, the violent perpetrators of which Trump has pardoned en masse, confirming the hypocrisy of his current actions, protests are not insurrections. Not even when cars are alight and stores are looted by students whose teams win national championships. Nor are protests against unlawful arrests and deportations by masked ICE agents, disappearing people they call moochers looking for work at Home Depot or actually at work. Or protesting raids on elementary school graduations, terrorizing children and their parents.

The silence of MAGA Republicans, who dislike liberals as much as they dislike democracy, voting by mail, science, vaccines, and help for poor people, see Trump’s use of the National Guard and, now, the Marines, and love it like they love autocracy. They’re afraid to dissent, so the less they see it in others, the better they feel. ICE raids, no matter against whom, even US citizens or residents who’ve been here and working for decades, are fine with them, as is knowing that most of the migrants deported to the El Salvador gulag had no criminal records.

California is no stranger to protests. Its leaders haven’t shied away from arresting violent perpetrators. The only reason for Trump’s use of troops, overriding state governors’ wishes, is to intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with him and to fulfill his tough-guy neediness and consolidate his quest for absolute power.

The same is true for the North Korea/China/Russia conjuring military parade he ordered the willing Pete Hegseth to put on for him. If there won’t be goose-stepping and head-turned salutes to him, they’ll be happening in his mind. If you don’t hate this, you don’t love America and everything for which it has always stood. Even more, you should hate Trump’s promise that demonstrations against it will be met with “very heavy force.”

As much freude was schadened by the brief breakup of Trump and Musk, the lesson is how far those two, abetted by our ideological Supreme Court, have brought us toward the end of democracy. Money is speech, they found, buried somewhere in the Constitution, giving people like Musk untold power over elections. A president can do no wrong, they concluded, so Trump is free to do whatever he wants; especially since our Republican-controlled Congress has abandoned its role as a checker and balancer. At the height (or low point) of their feud, Musk threatened Republican Congress-dwellers with financing Democratic challengers. Trump promised “very serious consequences” if he did. Musk, who has billions in government contracts, backed down.

Since before he was ever elected, Trump has expressed his love of dictators and desire to be one. It’s almost here. Protests need to continue. Whoever is behind the violence needs to think thrice about the implications. Meanwhile, everyone should think hard about California Governor Newsom’s response to Trump’s pretensions.

Veritas

 

In the year 50 B.T., I was awarded a seven-year scholarship to Harvard, one given, back then, to only fifty applicants per year. Had I done well enough, it included acceptance to grad school. To my grandmother’s chagrin, I turned it down. It wasn’t because of Ivy League stigma. It was because I was sure they’d made a mistake. Imposter syndrome, I guess. From the right, that stigma is gospel. I attach none to Harvard graduates, though, and not just because I married one.

Notwithstanding MAGAfied asperity, Harvard, like many other storied universities, has contributed immensely to our nation. If successful, Trump’s Id-iotic need to take them down would cloud the future of all of us. Turning away or deporting foreign students who come to partake of American scholarship already has. Whether they stay or return home, those students become positive representations of America, wherever they are. The US and the world need them. Typical of the current administration, shutting them out is short-sighted ignorance.

Trump, who lies about everything, denies being rejected by Harvard. Which means it’s true. Given daddy’s war bucks, a consequential qualification in decades past, that says a lot. In Trump, imposter isn’t a syndrome, it’s a definition. His native-born narcissism compels him to say he knows “more than anyone” about everything, voluminous evidence to the contrary. His birthright insecurity demands he “gets even” with any critic or institution that reveals the truth. That, he doesn’t deny. He’s proud of it. 

From this thin-skinned, partial president, having, as his niece tells us, “absolutely no redeeming qualities,” unchecked vengeance is ominous. Like his embarrassingly false Harvard accusations. Antisemitism is promoted there? From a guy who surrounds himself with de facto Nazis? Whose eponymous “university” scammed people out of millions? That guy wants to dictate how and what to teach in America, and who can do it.

For Stephen Miller and the Project 2025ers skulking around 1600, enfleshing their resentment of “the other” and fear of the educated, Trump’s attacks on universities are a perfect match. Aware that small-ell liberal education is a disinformation repellent, Republicans have pushed anti-intellectualism for decades. But it’s only with Trump that it’s come to reside so openly in the White House. Yet millions of voters observe Trump’s inability to carry an off-script thought to completion and consider it laudable.

The danger to democracy of Trump’s Projectile 2025 attacks on universities and public education can’t be overstated. That includes his whisperers’ desire to control what courses are taught, which words are acceptable, and to expunge books that refer in positive ways to anyone not white and Christian. Even in the Library of Congress. 

MAGA’s un-Christian priorities, manifested in their “Big Beautiful Budget Bill,” make their aims copiously clear. As everyone not sitting to the right of Congressional aisles knows, their tax cuts for wealthy donors, etched in reaganite, are “balanced” by cuts to every program that, for decades, has helped the less fortunate have a shot at dignity and overcoming poverty. Dismissed by Trumpists as moochers. But they’d in-your-face the Ten Commandments, to which none adhere, into all public buildings.

The BBBB not only doesn’t balance the budget, it REALLY doesn’t. insisting it doesn’t increase the national debt, Holy Mike Johnson, whom God has on speed-dial according to Mike, bears false witness. This, despite calculations by the Congressional Budget Office and conservative and liberal economists, all of whom predict increases in the trillions. Surely the Bible-brandishing Speaker knows Revelation 22:15. He must think doing what he considers God’s work excuses all transgressions. That the bill will lead to more hunger and disease, pollution and poverty, he must assume, is included in the absolution. If he were capable of it, he’d be ashamed.

But none of them feel shame. Shame at America’s foundational values and basic decency being discarded like Trump’s first two wives. Shame at defunding vital research, causing scientists to abandon their work, halting nascent discoveries. Shame at ceding intellectual leadership to geopolitical adversaries, at cutting disaster aid and weather warnings, because who cares? Shame at the emergence of a police state, in which ICE agents, enthusiastically cruel, wear masks to hide their identity, like criminals. In which elected members of the opposing party are arrested, their staff zip-tied “for their safety.” Shameless, America-rejecting MAGAs love what they see, incurious about what they don’t.

Trump’s vengeful attacks on Harvard are crimson lib-stick. Trump’s voters, made unable to look beyond their cultish glee, are blind to the dire implications for America. Which is precisely the point of his pre-dawn bleats and ill-conceived executive orders: feed them the phobic satisfaction they crave, while he enriches himself with paid-for pardons, bitcoin scams, and other shameless corruption. And while his gang of anti-democratic oligarchs, the ones actually in charge, destroy constitutional governance, brick by bricolage.

But why worry? As Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) reminded us, defending her party’s cruelty, “We’re all going to die.” 

China Syndrome

 

I had coffee this week with a friend who, after living in Everett for many years, moved, two years ago, to China. His wife is Chinese and wanted, following tradition, to be able to help her aging parents, back home. He had several interesting things to say about his adopted home, especially how foreigners are treated.

As a retired military lifer, he gets a decent government pension. For the first five years of living in China, that income is not taxed. After five years, he’ll qualify for what amounts to a permanent Green Card, allowing him pretty much all the benefits that citizens enjoy there, like owning a business. He and his wife live in a commodious apartment with an ocean view, for which he pays $400 per month.

But they’ve just bought a brand-new condo, in the process of finishing of which to make it livable they are. It’s in a “small” city, by Chinese standards: 450,000 people. In pictures he showed, the city bursts with development: high-rise buildings everywhere. Cars. Restaurants. Other stuff.

He plans to buy an electric car; the leading Chinese automaker, BYD, makes EVs now considered the best in the world. He intends to get their top model, which sells for $19,000. They’re pushing the envelope in battery technology, too, surpassing Elon’s by far. 

As a foreigner, my friend is allowed his own VPN, whatever that is, providing access to all of the internet that we have, here. Chinese citizens have no such freedom. I suppose his is because the government recognizes that most non-citizens are there doing mutually beneficial business.

My point is not to tout Chinese governance, but it’s apparent that its one-party autocracy is able to get things done there, and much faster than we do. Making efforts to combat climate change, for example, which Trump is deliberately undoing. My friend says his city has more EV charging stations than gas stations. When, if ever, might that happen here?

I have no desire to move to China, though I hear they have good Chinese food. I like living in a two-party, democratic republic. Especially when both parties have the greater good as central to their goals. Since Newt Gingrich and those of his time in power, that stopped being the case for the once-great Republican Party. It’s unpleasant.

As Trump steadily withdraws the US from the world stage, speeding the time when our country will no longer be seen as “indispensable” or a source of generosity and humanitarianism around the world, China acts to fill that void. Unlike Trump, they understand the value of “soft power;” not just for the recipients, but for their national standing, too. Trump’s America pulled its support for the World Health Organization, saver of countless lives. China just donated $500 million to it.

MAGA likes the idea of letting the needy, here and abroad, fend for themselves. Moochers. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...” Emma Lazarus. What a load of liberal crap, even if it’s exactly what Jesus taught. We’re MAGA. We make our own rules.

Our drastic reduction of support for USAID is already costing thousands of lives, according to people who know. Especially in Africa, especially children, from disease and starvation. It’s likely China will step in there, too. And the world will look to them, not us, for leadership. 

It’s depressing to see the US coddling dictators, insulting our allies, isolated, handing the future to other nations. RFK, Jr. just announced that scientists of the NIH will no longer be allowed to publish in such highly respected journals as Britain’s The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine. Because, he said, without evidence, they’re “corrupt.” He should know: in Trump, he sees corruption up close.

But maybe it won’t matter: he’s cutting funding for medical and other scientific research to the point where it may become impossible for those important labs to continue, no matter where they might have shared their results. Happily for humanity, science is still valued in China, in Europe, in Israel. So research will continue, just not here. Unless Trump’s destructive tariffs make them too expensive, the scientific and technological advances in those countries will, presumably, be available to Americans. We’ll just have to wait for them; takers, not makers, dependent on countries with more outward-looking priorities.

As the economist Dani Rodrik wrote, “Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.” 

Meanwhile, Republican-controlled Congress ignores Trump’s increasingly blatant self-enrichment, while crafting a budget that represents the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy, cutting those things that might, you know, MAGA. 

Anyone for dim sum?

86 The 86

 

By now we can all agree we had a leader who, in the latter part of his presidency, was failing mentally. Until it wasn’t, his team was successful in hiding the decline; on more than one occasion, even his wife stepped in to lead him out of a sentence in which he’d become lost. It was as sad as it was shameful.

Nevertheless, history remembers him more for “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” than for the Iran-Contra scandal, the “tax cuts pay for themselves” lie, or “trees cause air pollution.” Or ending all the energy-saving measures his predecessor had put in place, which, had they remained, might have prevented subsequent energy crises. Not to mention addressing climate change when we still had a chance.

So let it be with Biden. May he be remembered more for guiding the country out of the throes of the grossly mishandled pandemic and crashing economy left to him by his predecessor, than for his end-of-term failings. Not for the NOT-wide-open border but for rebuilding infrastructure, bringing down post-pandemic inflation, never as high in the US as elsewhere. Enacting the CHIPS Act, adding millions of jobs. Strengthening NATO. Et several more ceteras. 

If Trump and his coterie of confabulators have any say in it, he won’t be. Last weekend, for example, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, doing the Full Ginsburg, claimed that, under Trump, inflation has come down for the first time in four years. That’s like insisting that Trump made the sun rise in the East for the first time. Not a single show host called him on it. Trump has successfully threatened honest news agencies into avoiding the truth which once, as they say, had the ability to set us free. History may judge his snuffing of the free press to have been even more damaging than stuffing his sidekickery with amoral acolytes willing to carry out his every act of lawless government weaponization.

Hair-triggered, Trump and his outrage-ready cadre pounced on former FBI Director Comey for shelling out a picture containing the numbers 8647. Had he showed up at the White House, armed, in combat gear, they concluded, his intentions wouldn’t have been more clear. That Trumpists sold 86-46 paraphernalia slipped their “minds.” Same with Matt Gaetz bragging he’d “86ed McCarthy, McDaniel, and McConnell.” The term, legend has it, came not from murderer’s row, but from restaurant lingo.

Which should be considered more threatening? Comey’s beach photography or Trump saying, of Liz Cheney, “... Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

But weaponized outrage points only leftward. Recall the Foxian apoplexy when President Barack Obama, thankfully not wearing that shockingly disrespectful tan suit, bent slightly at the waist when meeting Saudi Arabia’s murderous Mohammed bin Salman? What, other than groveling, shall we call Trump’s words to him? "He's your greatest representative, greatest representative. And if I didn't like him, I'd get out of here so fast. You know that, don't you? He knows me well. I do -- I like him a lot. I like him too much. That's why we give so much, you know? Too much. I like you too much." While MBS sat grinning like the cat who trapped the canary, fattened it up, toyed with it for a while, then ate it. Was there silence from the right? Is the Pope American?

Nor was there a peep about the worshipful, Kim-Jong-Il-mimicking, larger-than-life poster of tough-scowling Trump hanging from a government building, meant for public adoration and submission. 

The cult of Trump approves his every normative transgression. Like the lib-sticking, white-supremacist-coddling importation of white South African non-victims of non-existent “white genocide of farmers.” Not only might they not be farmers, at least one appears to be an antisemite worse than the college students (anti-Israel ≠ antisemite) Trump has been deporting for formerly protected speech. 

We’re living in the Upside Down, where intelligence analysts are fired for truths that disprove Trumpic lies. Where, if not fired, they’re pressured to change their conclusions. Where, when corporations like Walmart announce price hikes due to tariffs, Trump demands they “eat” the costs, confirming his lie that China pays. Like so many other institutions that are money strong but democracy weak, they’ll probably cave, too.

Trump’s unrelenting attacks on every Constitutional creation intended to secure and protect democracy are working. Their success depends on dictatorial threats, willingness of his crew of unconscionables to enact them, and, most of all, the cowardice and greed of those given the power to stop it. Without evident irony, Holy Mike Johnson says that since Trump’s corruption is unhidden, it’s okay.

Trump wants us to become so inured to it that it becomes ignorable. For much of the country, it already is. Even arresting legislators, former government officials, students, and legal immigrants. And petty, thin-skinned threats toward pop stars who speak out against him.

Corruption? What Corruption?

 

If people charged with oversight look away, does corruption exist? If deporting migrants is all MAGAs care about, is Trump selling his “presidency” to the highest bidder not happening? If a crime falls in Trump’s forest, does it make a sound?

So sure is Trump of the hypovertebral cowardice of Republican Congressfolk and the yes-boss, how-high sycophancy of his appointees that he’s not bothering to hide the corruption, greed, and grift that, were it anyone else, would have led to bipartisan impeachment and removal. What Trump is doing makes the alleged transgressions of the “Biden crime family” seem like kids selling lemonade without a license.

Nevertheless, Republicans conducted years of made-for-Fox “hearings” about it; all up with which they came were crimes to which Hunter Biden had already confessed. Now? With unprecedented corruption screaming for investigation? Butkis. (sp?)

Had Joe Biden, right before taking office, created eponymous cryptocurrencies for himself and his wife and encouraged foreign governments to purchase them, had offered White House tours and private dinners to individuals who purchased the most, Republican outrage would be at eleven and he’d be removed from office in the blink of an “aye.”

For comprehensive explication of the trail-blazing conflicts of interest in Trump’s crypto-kleptocracy, read this. And this. Then this. I could hotlink this Trumpery till the cowed come home and still not cover it all.

And that’s before mentioning the influence-peddling his sons are pushing around the world: Twenty Trump-branded building projects in nine countries, all of which will be in position to seek presidential favors. And, as history shows, receive them. But Hunter made bank because of his surname, causing Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) jugular-ballooning apoplexy. These potatoes, they are small.

According to MAGAs, proof that Trump “loves America” is that he donated his salary to the US Treasury last time around. That love now operates a government-underwritten cash machine. It’s estimated that his family members have increased their wealth by $3 billion since the election and his entry into the crypto game. Ever tried to wrap around how much a billion is? This should help.

Trump’s enforcers and acolytes don’t simply ignore it. They bend over backwards to justify it. Attorney General Pam Bondi, America’s bulwark against liberalism’s lawlessness, argues that accepting a $400 million plane from Qatar, a country that may have had a hand in 9/1, finances Hamas and the anti-US campus protestors that Trump arrests for speaking freely, isn’t a Constitution-defined emolument. Because he’ll only use it till he’s out of office, at which point he’ll keep using it. Or something. He’s gotta have it, though: it’s gold-plated. 

No matter that accepting a 250-foot-long, three-story plane from a shady government is risky. Other than disassembling everything, including its toilets, fold-flat seats, gilded staircase, and wiring, how could we be certain it doesn’t include spyware? Whether or not the gift-grift happens, Trump loves the idea and Republicans far and wide-bodied are all for it, too; falling in line like Boy Scouts for his every whim, even his Alcatrazific impossibility. 

None of this will make the tiniest crack in the enlightenment-proof wall surrounding Trump voters. The divide between those who live in that world and people inhabiting the one that exists is getting wider every day. Consider the “deals” Trump recently announced with the UK and, later, China. To MAGA, they confirm the brilliance of the artiste o’ the deal; the pendulumistic backs and forths, markets ricocheting like pinballs, ports, including Seattle’s, empty of cargo; all part of a grand plan working out perfectly. Which was to isolate and break China. Then not. Which was that tariffs would erase our national debt and eliminate taxes. Then canceled. Every U-turn, every message reversal accepted as if from Mount Sinai.

Reality-based observers have noted that when Trump’s tariffs on China were announced, it responded in kind, immediately stopped selling stuff to the US while opening new markets everywhere else. Their brilliance, as opposed to Trump’s dimness, meant that while shelves empty here and prices creep up, while Trump shamed Americans for wanting toys for their kids, China, selling elsewhere, flourished. Outflanked, Trump caved. His nonsensical tariffs on China were an ego trip over which, in full planetary view, he tripped.

It must be obvious to world leaders that, facing pushback, he backs down. Spin it his mouthers might, but spin ain’t spinach.

The fruits of Republicans’ attacks on critical thinking are seen as MAGAs are as happy over the flip as they were over the flop. Ensuring a steady supply of such easy marks, harbinger Oklahoma, already at the bottom rung of American education, will now teach their youth that Trump’s stolen election lies are truth, removing all the rungs above those unfortunate kids. Like the MAGAfied, they never had a chance. 

No, Man. It's An Island

 

San Francisco is where I learned the art and craft, the calling and commitment to life as a surgeon. Except for a detour to Southeast Asia arranged by my draft board, we lived there for seven years. Time for fun was scant, but we did manage, thanks to a couple of surgery professors and their heavy-keeled sailboats, a couple of exhilarating sailings on the Bay. We got close to Alcatraz Island, the occupation of which by American Indians was still going on, but the first time we took a tour was many years later, when, on a return visit, our young son announced he wanted to.

It was impressive. Among other niceties was a self-guided audio tour, voiced by prisoners and guards who’d been there. “Now go down ‘Broadway’ and stop in front of cell 120... Me and Mugsy was in here when we wasn’t in solitary.” Stuff like that. Sounds of yelling and taunting, clatter of silverware. Eerie, but impactful.

As part of the National Park Service, Alcatraz brings in over sixty million tourism dollars a year. With characteristic brilliance aforethought, His Majesty has revealed plans to resurrect it as a prison. Because, doncha know, he’s tough on crime. (Not his and his family’s, but there’s only so much crime a guy can tough on.)

A recent retrofitting of the dock cost around thirty-six million. Refurbishing and modernizing the buildings to current prison standards would be huge. Not to mention future operating costs for an island accessible only by boat, three times that of other prisons, which was among the reasons for shutting it down. Might that money be better spent reinstating Trump’s reckless funding cuts to life-saving medical research, or consumer protections, or Medicaid? But, as always, his reasons were succinct and thoughtful. 

That’s Donald “I can do whatever I want” Trump for you. Like announcing 100% tariffs on movies made outside the US. Out of which (or whose) orifice did he pull that one? How it’ll work, he didn’t reveal. Movies, he may not know, don’t come through ports to be unloaded by cranes. Add a buck to each ticket, maybe. What’s next? Getting Mexico to pay for walls around hurricanes?

But it’s no joke. With our Republican-controlled Congress, formerly eager to investigate government corruption but now strangely silent, producing no legislation at all while ignoring Trump’s usurpful, authoritarian acts, everything that’s happened since he took office has been by executive order. While not all are illegal, most amount to vindictive punishment of the vulnerable or those he perceives as enemies. Or sad ego-trips, like taking over the Kennedy Center, replacing the board of the Holocaust Museum, or renaming bodies of water, geological formations, and holidays. Plus lustful leers at Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal.

The authority for Trump’s nasty orders was available to preceding presidents, too, though none were granted immunity for the illegal ones, as the wise men of our Supreme Court did for him. (The women are wiser.) But, until Trump, everyone who’s held that office, even, for some of his time, Richard Nixon, had enough respect for the presidency and the law to recall the oath to which they swore.

Not Trump. As stated last weekend on Meet The Press, he isn’t sure he’s obligated to abide by our Constitution at all, assuming he knows what’s in it. “I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.” It’s up to “his” lawyers to tell him, he said. Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, sycophantically prostrate protectors of the law. Who made a nauseating show of braggadocio after arresting a judge in her courtroom, intended to intimidate all judges into ignoring his lawbreaking, assuming what the judge did was, in fact, illegal. One minute it’s, “I run the world,” next minute he’s a helpless tabula rasa who knows nothing.

Nor will he get pushback from Republicans in Congress, who’ve said only this. Scores of judges from both parties have spoken up, forcefully, though. Not that Team Trump cares. Probably loving it.

Megalomaniac. Sociopath. Narcissist. Pathological liar. Based on direct observation, all of those terms have been applied to the person who, when he’s not golfing, occupies the Oval Office long enough to display yet another executive order, showily adorned with his ventricular-tachycardia-mimicking signature, offering nothing for anyone but himself. Plus, as he plans drastic cuts to military leadership and intelligence services, Vladimir Putin and all who wish us ill.

If Trump cared about country over self, which he doesn’t, instead of focusing on prisons foreign and domestic, movies, forcedly reverential parades, and honoring convicted seditionists, he’d attend to problems his mindless firings have created; like the fiasco at Newark’s airport, a major hub for access to New York City. We used it a couple of months ago. Not again. Not till Trump lays down his Sharpie and does something beneficial or thought-out for a change.

Making It White

 

In Trumpworld, the disconnect between rhetoric and reality, verbiage and common sense is so vast, the output so voluminous, that it risks becoming background noise; even in the face of the constant cozening, as Trump and his mouthies tell us, unflinching, that down is up, dark is light. “The greatest first hundred days of any presidency, ever,” Trump claimed, standing amidst the ashes of the economy, consumer confidence, gutted necessary government agencies, trust in America’s world leadership, but dripping with grifted coin by the truckload.

Under a blinding gaslight, fingers surely crossed behind his back, Treasury Secretary Bessent assures us that it’s “strategic uncertainty,” referring to the crashes and mini-recoveries and crashes again of markets, ignoring vacant ports and emptying shelves. Because there’s nothing business owners find more strategic than uncertainty. Consumers, too.

Even with the consistent inconsistency stumbling out of the Oval Office, this latest Trumpy thing called “pronatalism” is something special. Birth rates are dropping, is the worry. Unspoken but obvious, the concern is the end of America’s dominance by white people. Patriotic women, formerly and futurely doing business only as vessels of man’s seed, must submit to the duty knocking (up) at their door. The photo above, complete with Jesus and a bald eagle, is clarifying.

J.D. Vance is pushing it. So, too, is the right-wing media cartel. Elon Musk is making babies faster than he’s producing Swasticars. To them, it’s about incubating future voters. To capitalism, it’s about buyers. To Social Security, it’s payers-in. To Earth, though, it’s about continuing destruction of life-giving biomes, depletion of resources, and, eventually, making the planet uninhabitable for mammals like us. So, whereas there are non-political arguments on both sides of the population issue, from the political right it’s cynicism wrapped in racism tied with a red ribbon of hypocrisy.

The disconcerting disconnect is this: even as they push for more pregnancies, they’re legislating to make life miserable or even impossible for the newly born. Especially for economically disadvantaged ones, who, for the most part, won’t become their voters. But if those children do grow up healthy enough to vote, Republicans are making sure public education won’t prepare them to think critically, making it more likely they’ll vote their way.

Pronatalism is about inciting women to become pregnant, repeatedly. Especially, if they could make it so, white women. In the US, birthrates among whites are significantly lower than among Blacks and Hispanics. Thus the panic: “We’re losing to... them.” And, because MAGA is MAGA, pronatalism is also about shaming women who don’t buy in.

Making America great again includes returning to when making babies was womankind’s sole purpose. And, now, their duty. To Trump. Because, by his own words, he runs the world. 

Pronatalism shares space with the push for public funding of religious and home schooling: when the kids are ready, get them indoctrinated in far-right Christian nationalism and “conservative” values. Kill empathy in the crib. Produce children who’ve become unable to resist the idiocy, like this gob-smacker, for only one example.

To be pronatalist ought to mean being against the anti-life measures forced by today’s Republican Party. Instead, they’re all in. The list is long, broad, and far-reaching. For example, the DOJ has canceled grants for gun violence and addiction prevention, darkening the future for children of all colors and beliefs. Under Trump, because it’s what he does, HHS plans to end suicide hotlines for LGBTQ youth, which get over two thousand calls a day. That’s pro-death, not pro-life. And that’s far from all. A ProPublica report makes it clear:

“The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely. The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.”

Pronatalism’s children will be increasingly unsafe: cuts to research on childhood cancer and other diseases. Closing of vaccination centers, ending protections for minorities, unhealthier schools. Worsening climate change, uninspected food. Don’t worry, though, says Trump’s MAGAfied party. If you’re rich enough to protect yourselves from the consequences of our anti-life policies, go forth and multiply. Create voters for us. If not, you’re on your own.

Thoughts and prayers and all that.

Clowns To The Right Of Me

 

In fairness, no one could have seen it coming. No reasons to predict that appointing, to oversee Earth’s most powerful military, an alcohol-abusing, inexperienced, unqualified, sexually profligate (allegedly), threateningly-tattooed, weekend talk-show host on a network known for its troubled relationship with truth would be problematic. After all, America put into even higher office a convicted felon, sexual predator, and bankrupted businessman who got there by lying, cheating, threatening, and/or suing everyone in his way. Who, as promised, ended the Ukraine war on day one and cured inflation. 

No clues. No warnings for fifty members of a party once self-reported as partial to law and order and meritocracy to have voted against confirmation in hopes of being presented with someone only half-terrible. Plus, there’s the matter of consistency: the same slack-back body approved someone to run America’s most powerful law-enforcement agency who’d shown fawning deference to that failed businessman by refusing to prosecute him for one of his many life-destroying scams. And accepted donations in return.

Nor did they have the self-respect to refuse to put in charge of America’s health a brain-bitten, conspiracy-believing, steroid-pumping man with no background in healthcare other than promoting vaccine choices that led to dozens of deaths in Samoa, who couldn’t differentiate a credible scientific study from the morning line on a horse race.

Same with a director of the FBI who conspiratorially disparaged the agency, believing fantasies, who spends more time away from the office than in it, posing for pictures. And yet another picture-poser, playing pistol-packin’ dress-up, in charge of Homeland Security, who had her purse containing $3,000, her passport, driver’s license, and DHS ID badge stolen from under her nose. Plus another TV star and pusher of quackery in charge of administering Medicare and Medicaid. All approved with obsequious rapidity by “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose mother’s relationship to my surgical practice HIPAA prefers I don’t detail (nor shall I discuss my surgical relationship with former Senator Dianne Feinstein’s family), bravely – and why should it require bravery? – voted against some, but not all, of those incompetents. She has since stated the obvious: that colleagues in her party are afraid of Trump; too concerned about primaries and power, future and fortune, to consider their duty to country. Which is exactly how Trump wants them. Exactly how dictators bulldoze and bully bodies theoretically empowered to hold them in check.

But, hey: if good people are being fired from the Pentagon, at least military cadets will no longer be reading Maya Angelou in their libraries, or around 800 other books containing scary words and liberal ideas ripped straight from the Sermon on the Mount. It’s unclear if the words of General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded operations in Afghanistan under Trump, are available in military academies, but, speaking of congressional cowardice, they’re worth hearing:

"When our leaders abandon character ... it tells people that principles are optional, that decency is weakness, that rules are for fools. It fosters a culture of fear, where hesitation replaces confidence, cynicism replaces trust, and self-preservation replaces the courage to stand for what is right. When those at the top abandon the standards that hold society together, the rest of us, knowingly or not, follow suit. And when enough people do, the foundation doesn’t just erode. It crumbles. We cannot afford to let this stand."

The General’s words describe exactly where we are. They apply not only to Republicans in power but to every remaining supporter of Trump. The sort that considers Maryland Senator Chris van Hollen a traitor for calling attention to the dangers of abandoning the rule of law, even for criminals or alleged criminals. The sort who no longer have the ability to tell right from wrong, truth from fiction; who, by following suit, are actively hacking at the foundations of society. Knowingly or not.

Seeing SecDef’s disastrous mismanagement and its deleterious effects in the Pentagon, one might wonder if any of the senators who voted for him have come to regret it. The question answers itself: of course not. Had they the inborn ability and insight to rethink decisions, to hold themselves accountable for their mistakes, they’d not have voted for him in the first place. Every day, they reveal themselves to be the opposite.

So, as others have said, a clown was placed in office and the circus came to town. Talk show hosts talking trash. Lib-stickers in lipstick. An “economist” who quotes himself in made-up names. An Education Secretary into the A1 sauce. A “border czar” who brags about flouting the law. There’s no one to blame but everyone who put them there. 

Finally: Pope Francis was a good, kind man whose life, unlike that of the fake Christians surrounding the fakest of them all, fully embodied the teachings of Jesus. And, therefore, not a MAGA favorite.

He’ll live on in the acts of goodness he performed and in the hearts of those who cherish his memory.

Time To Take A Stand

 

As it is axiomatic that there can be no followers of Jesus’ teachings who support Trump, so it is that there are no conservatives. And whereas there are plenty of Trumpists claiming to be one or the other or both, it’s no more true than if they professed to live on Mars.

Americans of every background and belief – excepting those who have no beliefs other than self-pity and selfishness and the certainty that they’re safe forever from Trump’s tidal wave of tyranny – ought to be sickened by what we’re witnessing from him and his cadre of sycophantic, Constitution-ignoring oppressors. Not just sickened: Taking to the streets. Figuratively, if not literally. Writing a column into the wind, even.

What Christian who accepts what Jesus actually said can countenance the spectacle we just saw in the Oval Office, where two despots congratulated each other for their lawless cruelty? Laughed and joked over the fate of an illegally deported man, incarcerated in a Salvadorian torture chamber. Only an unreachable Foxophile would believe that, had Trump told Bekele to bring the man back, he wouldn’t.

What conservative can accept scooping up people by masked goons and, ignoring due process, the most foundational American law, sending them to a brutal, foreign prison, forever? Or enjoy seeing the gloating pictures of the cruelty the White House produces? 

What law-respecting American, anywhere, would not be outraged by Trump’s plans to send “homegrown” – i.e., American citizens -- to the gulag, without (or despite) adjudication? With only Trump’s or Bondi’s or Patel’s or Rubio’s attestation to their criminality, all of whom lie prolifically in the face of all evidence to the contrary. 

It’s deliberate state-sponsored terror, meant to frighten potential critics into silence. In the US. By the US. It should be unconscionable to every American. For unrepentant MAGAs, it’s an existential disconnect.

If Trump and his confederates can decide who’s a criminal and who isn’t, no American should feel safe. Not Chris Krebs, who, for the crime of telling the truth about a non-stolen election, is subjected to Trump’s weaponized order for a DOJ “investigation.” Under Trump, truth is treason. About another retributive target, he said exactly that. To literal deathly silence from the wrong right.

Remember when “weaponization” was House Republicans’ favorite word? Evidently, it no longer applies, even as Trump attacks Democrats in Congress who’ve stood for justice? Suddenly, as Trump peels away Constitutional protections from us all, House Republicans are three-monkeyed. 

Nor can we yet ignore Trump’s idiotic tariffs. The ones, you know, based on the brilliance of King Arthur of the Deal; permanent not permanent, economy-growing destroying, paused by a genius chess-master as planned all along because people got “yippy” which was planned all along.

Remember the old saw of someone peeing on your leg and claiming it’s raining? It’s what Trump and his excusers have been doing since day zero. Not just about the price of eggs or shower-flow. Or “beautiful, clean coal.” For anthropomoistened lower extremities, nothing beats Marco Rubio, once considered within a standard deviation of reasonable, who offloaded this: “The alliance between POTUS and President Bukele has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.” Then he stood and removed his knee pads.

Trump’s abrogation of the First Amendment, facing no resistance from Republican leaders and their enabling media, makes those tariffs seem almost trivial. They’re only about money and food and livelihoods and the ability to retire. Trump’s flouting of the Constitution threatens the persistence of America as the Land of the Free. It hasn’t been the Home of the Brave for a decade: Cowardice has become the unifying characteristic of Congressional Republicans. Among Trump’s voters, though, it’s less about cowardice than the inability to process information in a way that leads to wisdom. Which is the nicest way it can be put.

“Big Law continues to bend the knee to President Trump because they know they were wrong,” announced Trump’s pressbot Karoline Leavitt. About what? Providing constitutionally-protected counsel to people resisting a lawless government? What’s wrong is that, like several media organizations, those lawyers agreed to government bribery, which Pam Bondi will never prosecute.

Addressing Trump’s tariffs, but equally applicable to the mindset of relentless Trumpists, conservative writer David Brooks wrote, “... Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence...” 

Here, it doesn’t much matter how MAGAs vote. But they might have friends or relatives where it does. Or children or grandchildren who, as they seek to survive the wreckage of what once was, will wonder why their progenitors did nothing. They should internalize Sun Tzu’s warning, presaging Trump, "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes." Then, recognizing their complicity in this evil and remembering what it means to be American, do something.

Not So Tariffic

 

For those paying attention, it’s old news: Trump’s devastating tariffs, like everything else he’s ever said or done, are based on lies. That they were allowed reflects the cowering fecklessness of Congressional Republicans, who, as in all things Trump, kneel before him (or is it behind?)

Our constitution gives tariffs to Congress, except, per a fairly recent law, in cases of national economic emergency. Which Trump declared. When the US was outpacing all other countries in a period of steady economic growth beginning when Joe Biden ran him out of office. The biggest lie, of course, is that tariffed countries pay.

His calculations for the amount of tariff applied have been greeted with laughter. Touting a formula leaving heads scratched and jaws dropped, later festooning it with symbols that changed nothing, he equated trade deficits to tariffs. But, whereas some countries have tariffs on American imports (Switzerland’s is about two percent, e.g.), that’s not the whole story.

Trade deficits exist because other countries make products Americans want at prices they like, while America makes fewer, reciprocally. Deficit is a misnomer. It’s commerce. Nor is it, as Trump says, a rip-off. They give us goods, we give them dollars. Should we not avail ourselves of better TVs?

Trump’s Commerce Secretary foresees tariffs allowing Americans to be the ones screwing tiny screws into iPhones. What other tiny delights await?  

There was no emergency. Trump has been fixated on deficits and tariffs since he was bankrupting casinos and scamming suckers. It’s his bumper-sticker understanding of economics and his desire to abuse power for its own sake. “Look what I did,” he must be saying, surveying the detritus of the world’s economies. “Trump. I did that!”

One thing he got right: White House toadies and Congressional weaklings immediately fell in line, even though most had previously decried tariffs, rightly, as dangerous and inflationary, causing expensive trade wars. Which, Trump hallucinated, are “easy to win.” Now, it’s “We need to suffer to make things right.” Well, not so much “we” as “you.” Millionaires and billionaires all, are they suffering? Perhaps we’ll learn, someday, how many sold their stocks before “Liberation Day.” 

Trump’s economic slaughter of the western world is exactly the quid to their quo that Russia expected from him, making well-spent their investments in his two elections. On Russian TV, they’re giddy. 

Back in the USSA, senseless, vindictive cutting continues. The National Weather Service will end its translations of weather warnings. Because who cares if “those” people are harmed? Not MAGAs. Trump (because, theoretically, Musk works for him, as opposed to reality) even fired the doctor at NIH who provided the unreleased Covid-19 treatment that saved his life when he was deathly ill. Gone, too, are cancer researchers, vaccine experts, and other medical leaders.

Trump’s impeachment backstop, J.D. Vance is lying Trumpically about their next target, Social Security. He's a liar among equals.

Announcing the end of American greatness, The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last ended with this: “We have a deeply stupid government . . . But also, we have the government we deserve. The American age is over. And it ended because the American people were no longer worthy of it.” 

Is he wrong? Maybe. Though far too few, half a million Americans gathered in cities across America to protest his trumpling of the Constitution, the cruelty, the flagitious destruction amok in Kingdom Trump. When big enough, protests still matter in what’s left of our democracy. After it was revealed that Trump’s vindictive, bicep-flexing DEI purge included removing Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad from the Parks Service website, the outrage led to reinstatement. But much of our important and teachable history remains gone. The not-white parts.

Outrage? How about the DOJ no longer investigating cryptocurrency fraud, now that Trump et ux have their own brand. Coincidence or contemptible corruption? Same with cuts to the IRS and the DOJ tax division. Live free and donate, prosperous tax-cheats.

Trump has expressed his shoot-‘em dislike of protestors, but, like all dictators, he loves military parades in his honor. Reportedly, he’s planning one for his birthday. A friend and I exchange topical limericks. Here’s mine on that subject:

 

“It’ll stretch out for over a mile, 

Some in bunches and some single file. 

The question they'll ask 

While marching on past 

Is “When’s the required Sieg Heil”?

First, The Lawyers

 

“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It’s safe to assume Trump is as unfamiliar with Shakespeare as he is with the Bible, but he’s taken that proposition to heart. His Mafia-style extortion of protection money from some of America’s largest and, until a few days ago, most respected law firms has been of a single purpose: to rob people who oppose him of legal representation. It’s working.

And it’s part of a larger plan to block all avenues of escape from his authoritarian takeover of America. Nor is it just lawyers: It’s the entire justice system. Through Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, he already controls the DOJ. Panegyric Pam refuses to investigate the perpetrators of that security breach by Trump’s unqualified and incompetent clowns at the DOD. And she just ended an ongoing lawsuit filed under President Biden that sought to overturn a Georgia voting restriction deemed specifically targeting Black voters. She called the lawsuit, not the law, “an attempt to divide us.” And Trump just fired career prosecutors who’d been looking into his or his friends’ crimes.

It doesn’t stop there, of course. Trump wants to be rid of all judges who rule against him; true to form, Holy Mike Johnson, who loves everything about America except for everything about it, proposed getting rid of courts altogether – the ones who stand for the law. JD Vance and Elon Musk have been calling for judicial impeachments since before Vance embarrassed his way to Greenland and Tesla stock tanked.

As to that Hegseth-inspired security breach, well, according to Trump’s congressional henchfolk, it wasn’t a breach at all. Trump’s MAGA-speak communication director, Steven Cheung, combined spin, gaslighting, and outright lying in his defense of it.

We’re witnessing not just the word-for-word implementation of every regressive goal of Christian nationalists’ Project 2025 – that thing that Trump has never heard of, the goal of which is to blow up government and keep the leftovers for themselves – but total rejection of the rule of law, domestic and international. KKKristi Noem’s photo-op in front of Venezuelan alleged criminals violated standards dictated by the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is (so far) party: “Prisoners may not be publicly exploited for purposes of propaganda.” But seeing those people, most of whom were already imprisoned here, shackled and sent off to a horrifying El Salvadorean gulag is too much enjoyed by MAGAmericans to ignore. So the White House produces videos of it.

Describing the asymmetric advantage held by authoritarians, Bill Kristol, former Republican operative and Chief of Staff for Dan Quayle (I know; but still...) wrote: “The authoritarians break the rules, and the liberals restore the rules. The authoritarians cheat, and the liberals try to play fair. The authoritarians enjoy their ill-gotten gains, and the liberals try to restore a level playing field for all.” As should be obvious to anyone not Foxomagafied, that’s what’s happening. (Lest conservatives take offense, Kristol’s use of “liberals” refers to the “ism,” not the party. People who oppose authoritarianism. Americans of old, which used to include Republicans.)

Among my “conservative” friends who love what’s going on, one is a professor at a prominent East Coast university who feels his career has been held back because he’s a white male. He’s glad that people he considers unfairly privileged whiners get their due from Trump, especially trans people, for some reason. Another is a retired Marine with whom I get along well as long as we don’t discuss politics. He loves seeing stuck-to libs, and, like Trump, who “couldn’t care less,” he finds the economy-crushing effects of Trump’s tariffs and tax cuts a reasonable price to pay for the pleasure.

For phony Christians like Holy Mike, it’s about ideology and a hall pass to Heaven. For Trump, who has no values, it’s about power for its own sake. And revenge against critics. Because he neither understands nor cares about American history, forcing the Smithsonian to rid itself of “anti-American ideology” (i.e., our history) is the perfect example. (tinyurl.com/by2smith)

Same with threats to universities for what he claims are weak protections against antisemitism, about which he cares even less. It’s power over “elitists” who never accepted him. For the same reason, he allowed President Musk to fire the FDA’s top vaccine scientist and to make drastic cuts to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. To Trump, the hurt he causes is irrelevant. Only his narcissistic psychopathology is.

In Trump’s America, people whose only crimes are expressing opinions, or who are falsely accused, are abducted off streets by masked government men, jailed or disappeared, without the due process our laws require, against judicial orders, and lied about. A government that does that, without resistance, will feel free to do it to anyone it chooses. People unafraid to speak out are accused of defending terrorists. It’s North Korea. It’s Tiananmen Square. If any Republicans care, they’re keeping it to themselves.