Beware the Narrative Double Dealers

and the shills who make their livings off the marks.

I love stories, but what I'm talking about are made-up narratives created to advance a political agenda by obscuring and replacing the truth. Often these narratives are born as basic lies--noun, verb, adjective--repeated over and over again until they become a story, then the story. They ravage the body politic like tumors growing and metastasizing.

Some are niche, like Pizzagate or "Hillary is sick and falling down." Some are all too familiar: Obama was not born in the U.S.! The election was stolen! Joe Biden is a dictator and a criminal mastermind! Trump is the greatest deal-maker in the history of the world! They're eating the pets!!

There are obviously too many of these weaponized narratives to count, much less list. Most never have gotten much traction in my neighborhood, but they are very popular in some places and they do get a lot of attention. Which is a big part of the point.

Just because my friends and I don't believe the firehose of nonsense, that doesn't mean we don't hear it or that the lies don't work. First, the narratives give true believers confirmation of what they already suspect or believe or want to believe. Second, there may be some people persuaded that the lie is true or possibly true, especially if they hear it often enough from sources they trust. Finally, for people not really paying attention or the people in my neighborhood (who, admittedly, are paying too close attention), listening to incessant lying that doesn't comport with the reality we're living is disgusting and extremely discouraging.

And that, too, is success. The lies work. And they work their very best when picked up and disseminated by media that does get traction in my neighborhood. 

Whenever a Sunday show panel host asks an official to respond to a charge leveled in bad faith (aka "a lie")

"What do you say to that?"

or a news talker reports a claim without providing crucial context

or a reporter mindlessly assigns false equivalence to things that are anything but

or an interviewer fails to hold a liar to account by being unprepared or unwilling to ask the question again

So, are we headed for a recession?

The president is the best dealmaker I've seen in my lifetime.

We're going to have to leave it there and move on.

corporate media releases these poison narratives directly into the atmosphere and makes constructive communication impossible. They act as shills for the con. These narratives have changed the world, and whether we're talking about the liars who actually develop and deal the lies or the media who ropes the marks, they are killing us. 

On March 15, against the orders of Judge James E. Boasberg, Chief Judge of the District Court of DC, the Trump regime took three planeloads of prisoners and smuggled them out of the country in the middle of the night, sending them to torture prison in El Salvador. (Here's a link to the timeline of proceedings in the case so far). The regime hit the ground lying, about the flights, about what they knew, and about what they could or were required to share with the Court, and most especially about the prisoners they had deported. 

One of those prisoners, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has become a victim of both the denial of due process and the general lawlessness of this administration, and of the lying they will do to divert attention and re-set the narrative. Almost immediately the MAGA regime started lying about Abrego Garcia. They lied on teevee. They lied in front of microphones. They lied in court. 

On March 24, Abrego Garcia and members of his family filed a complaint before Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland seeking Abrego Garcia's return. The result was a messy back-and-forth with the Government's lawyers doing everything they could to stall and stonewall. 

They lost, and the case ended up before the Supreme Court (you may have heard) which issued a messy "in part in part" ruling that directed the Government to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's release from torture prison in El Salvador and return to the U.S. The Government continues to lie about the order when not ignoring it entirely. They lie to break reality, to break the world we see around us, to break us.

They lie because they have to. They don't exist separate from the lying. Abrego Garcia was a gang member. He was a terrorist. A human trafficker. He was in the custody of El Salvador and there's nothing the U.S. can do about it. A  convicted criminal and bad father. They dug up old court records and characterized Abrego Garcia as a "wife beater." And the on and on. Now they're lying about something their own lawyers filed. This was yesterday. This was today. 

Those are the official statements by the regime. Of course, the right-wing propaganda machine has been doing its part to promote and amplify the disinformation. Through outlets across platforms, they reinforce the multiverse of conflicting narratives: Kilmar Abrego was deported in "error." Then, "No error! No error!" We actually won the Supreme Court case 9-0! But, the courts have no jurisdiction over this! America is GREAT AGAIN! But we're powerless against El Salvador. Immigrants should come legally. Oh, you are legal? Not anymore! Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a bad guy. Democrats love terrorists. 

They have not stopped lying and they will not stop. It's the way they reshape the world, and that's how they stay alive. 

They will not stop. They can only be stopped.

You know what to do.

You know what to do.

 

Source: 50501

See you there.

Quick follow-up to "Hold my beer."

My bad. 

In my April 10 post "Who will stop them? LAUSD says 'Hold my beer,'" I got so thrown by giving props to Superintendent Carvalho and so into the weeds on LAUSD's history of protecting students on school campuses from ICE that I whiffed on what I now see as the most important point: the actions of administrators and staff on site and in the moment.

Specifically, the principals and front office staff of Russell Elementary School and of Lillian Street Elementary School stood strong and refused to yield when pressured by teams of agents seeking specific students. 

It's one thing to go through trainings. It's one thing to be given a script to follow and/or a list of protocols. Those are important and speak to the institutional imperative to protect students from immigration terrorism.

It is a different thing altogether to implement the training and follow the protocols in the face of these belligerent thugs who have been doing things like this, and this. This took real courage, and the individuals at Russell and Lillian Street who denied these agents entry to their campuses have real courage. Well done, folks. You have set a powerful example for all of us to follow.

Supt. Carvalho identified the schools and alluded to their principals and staffs in a news conference on Thursday (the incidents apparently took place on Monday). He described the encounters in some detail, and you can see it here:

Not Nothing, Again

Going to a rally, even a BIG rally, isn't everything. But it's not nothing. Got together yesterday in downtown L.A. with about 36,000 new friends and it felt good, if a little weird. I was five when Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington. I was twelve when four students were killed and nine wounded on the Kent State University campus. 

I lived in what can charitably be described as the boondocks and spent evenings watching the bad news and the protests on television. By the time I was old enough to travel to where the action had been, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had passed. And the Paris Accords and the fall of Saigon were behind us. As I became a more fully-formed adult, I regretted not having been able to participate in those fights against the war and for civil rights.

When we marched against the depraved war on Iraq, I thought, "There, I did it. I stood up for what was right now, and I would have done it then." It didn't work, but I and hundreds of thousands of others did the right thing. You have to live your life in a way you'll be proud of when it's over.

I didn't imagine that things would get much, much worse. I didn't anticipate that we'd be called to action not just to prevent our government from doing evil things, but to prevent our government from becoming an evil thing, a thing I'd read about as a teenager in my Social Studies classes while the civil rights and the war protests were happening. 

So yes, I largely missed the Big Ones in the sixties (except for the huge fights with my father), but yesterday, as I stood in Gloria Molina Grand Park with 36,000 other people ready to fight for the authentic American Dream, I understood that this was the moment. If, like me, you mostly missed the King speeches and Freedom Riding, if you missed the sit-ins and the burned draft cards, good news: THIS IS OUR TIME. 

This was the view from the cheap seats on Saturday:

 Not saying we'll win. Just that we won't win if we don't fight. And it's the proper way to live your life. Again, coming together to fight back isn't everything, but it's not nothing.

Who will stop them? LAUSD says "Hold my beer."

CBS News Los Angeles (KCAL) is reporting today that "Department of Homeland Security agents were denied entry into two South Los Angeles elementary schools earlier this week, according to a district spokesperson."

Good. Obviously. Parents shouldn't have to send their kids to school wondering if ICE is going to follow their seven-year-old home to rat them out and arrest them. Worse, nobody should have to wonder if their kids are going to be detained by people like these thugs.

Tasty Tidbit: ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, but "DHS agent" just sounded better, I guess. I guess they hoped somebody would let them in by mistake thinking it was a bomb threat?

I have written a lot of things about Alberto Carvalho and said a lot more and none of them have been good. This is a good thing he's doing. It goes beyond simply putting up a "We Are One" resource page on the website. It's the natural next step in a broad campaign to protect students and their families from the kind of immigration terrorism favored by the Trump administration.

LAUSD has been advocating for immigration reform for years, with the school board passing the 2013 "Urge Action for Comprehensive Immigration Reform from the 113th Congress resolution" and the 2014 "Keeping LAUSD Families Together resolution." In 2016 the board established schools as "Safe Zones" and included the following provisions: 

Resolved further, The Board declares that any school every site or office of Los Angeles Unified School District site is a safe place for all its students and their families and thatstudents and their families can come to any District school or office to seek help,assistance, information, shelter and safety if faced with fear and anxiety about from any and all non-criminally related immigration enforcement efforts;

and

Any request by ICE for data information or to visit access a school site shall be immediately forwarded to the Superintendent and General Counsel for review and a decision on whether to allow access to the site, and/or the information to ensure District compliance with Plyler and other applicable laws;

With the support of the mayor, the L.A. City Council officially expressed support for the LAUSD school board resolution and adopted it on March 1, 2016:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, with the concurrence of the Mayor, that by the adoption of this Resolution, the City of Los Angeles hereby includes in its 2015 - 2016 State Legislative Program support for the Los Angeles Unified School District Board Resolution (Mr. Zimmer, Dr. Rodriguez, Ms. Garcia) declaring LA Unified Campuses as Safe Zones and Resource Centers for Students and Families Threatened by Immigration Enforcement (Res-032-15/16), as further described in the text of this Resolution.

In 2017, the LAUSD school board passed a resolution reaffirming its "Safe Zones for Families Threatened by Immigration Enforcement" and strengthening its commitment to noncooperation with immigration officials by "District staff, faculty, employees, and campus police."

Last November, the board again reaffirmed the 2017 resolution and extended its concerns to Project 2025's impact on students and schools, declaring in particular

That the policy of Los Angeles Unified School District is the LA Unified 2025 vision, which stands in unity with all of the students, families, and staff in our school communities and embraces Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion throughout the District; 

LAUSD has a commendable history, at least recent history, of protecting our students and their families with respect to immigration status and federal immigration enforcement. In January they started handing out red "Know Your Rights" cards. There's that website. 

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is saying all the right things and doing a very good thing as he and the District continue to meet the moment and support this mission. It's likely to get harder before it gets easier. 

When I was working I never had to face the kind of ICE thuggery my colleagues face today, but it would have been unthinkable to me or the people around me to cooperate in the detention of our students or their families. I hope it still is. 

 Thanks for coming. Speak to you soon.

P.S. It's not only Los Angeles. ICE is testing the limits. Chicago also had its day in January (although federal officials claimed the agents were actually Secret Service. Oh, you must mean a different Homeland Security. Sound familiar?). Can't blame people for being nervous when the officials in charge are saying things like this, from CNN:

Earlier this week, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman announced federal immigration authorities will be permitted to arrest people and carry out enforcement actions in and near places such as churches and schools, marking a departure from long-standing policy to avoid so-called sensitive areas.

“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense,” the statement reads.

and this (also CNN), from the oblivious to irony, champion gaslighter Stephen Miller:

“There’s no sanctuary for criminal aliens in this country, nor is there a sanctuary for child trafficking, for child smuggling or for child endangerment,” Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News Friday in response to reports ICE went to a the elementary school.

They are testing the limits. They are testing us. They will not stop. They must be stopped.

 

There oughta be a law--Despair Edition

Spoiler alert: Doesn't matter anymore. 

As long as the United States Supreme Court is polluted by six rogue "conservatives" with at least five of them insane lawless MAGA maniacs at any one time, all the laws in the universe won't mean a thing. Neither will it matter what the lower courts rule, nor who the U.S. Attorney General is nor the President of the United States, nor will it matter what the Constitution "says." 

They are all meaningless as long as these fucking guys exist in our timeline.

That's all from me. However, THIS is a good piece about some really bad humans and the road they are pushing us down. It focuses on Monday's deportation/AEA ruling but widens the lens to include the more general lawlessness of the unholy alliance between Trump and the Court. It's a really good, if maddening, description of where we are. Apparently.

From Liz Dye, published today in Public Notice, and titled 

"John Roberts will save the judiciary if he has to burn it down." 

I'll just end with a few of her excellent words. Re: the renditions:

The Supreme Court’s ruling gestures at due process for people caught in an inhumane deportation machine, while effectively removing the only convenient avenue for relief. It’s also a bright green light for the Trump administration to continue giving the middle finger to courts, safe in the knowledge that their pals at One First Street will bail them out.

Thanks for coming. Speak to you soon.

Don't Do Nothing

Bernie Sanders dot com                                Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez house dot gov  

         

         

See you there.                  MAP                                                            

These fucking guys

I had just updated "It's the lying" with a Steve Vladeck piece outlining why the mafia government was lying when it claimed there was nothing they could do about the illegal kidnapping and rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. 

And then the five MAGA justices on the United States Supreme Court did THIS: 

"We grant the application and vacate the TROs." 

Translation: The government can continue invoking the Alien Enemies Act and resume deporting whoever it wants--as long as the kidnap victims get a day in court first and that court is in the jurisdiction of the U.S. prison where they are being held and they can find a lawyer while they are locked up. 

What about the prisoners in El Salvador? What about Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia who was sent there by mistake? What about the 237 other Venezuelans, 75% of whom have no criminal record but who were renditioned (more mistakes?) to a torture prison in El Salvador in defiance of an order from Chief Judge James Boasburg of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia?

The majority doesn't have much to offer on those questions. They dodge the issue of whether or not this mafia government is acting legally re: the Alien Enemies Act ("But we do not reach those arguments.") and they pretend everything's just routine, as if the government hasn't just spent three weeks thwarting the judicial process and ignoring court orders. And though there haven't been further midnight planes reported (but how can we know for sure?), people continue to be kidnapped and disappeared to U.S. "facilities." Nevertheless, the majority reduces the crisis to a matter of procedure, of proper venue.

However, the dissent from Justice Sotomayor does not, and it is definitely worth reading, as is the separate, additional dissent from Justice Jackson. These dissents reflect what we are all really living through. They are compelling, sane responses to the ridiculous and corrupt and deliberately obtuse majority whose only objective seems to be to protect Donald Trump and advance his authoritarian agenda. 

I'm going to stop there, except to quote from Justice Sotomayor's opinion (emphasis mine):

What if the Government later determines that it sent one of these detainees to CECOT in error? Or a court eventually decides that the President lacked authority under the Alien Enemies Act to declare that Tren de Aragua is perpetrating or attempting an “invasion” against the territory of the United States? The Government takes the position that, even when it makes a mistake, it cannot retrieve individuals from the Salvadoran prisons to which it has sent them. See Defendant’s Memorandum of Law in Opposition in Abrego Garcia v. Noem, No. 25–cv–951 (D Md., Mar. 31, 2025), ECF Doc. 11, at 7–9. The implication of the Government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this Nation’s system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.

It is only a matter of time before the leader of a march or the writer of a substack, before a journalist or a member of the House of Representatives, is arrested and detained. If we're lucky, we'll read about it:

"Plaintiffs allege that, on [insert date], [insert name] was stopped by ICE officers, who informed him that his citizenship status had changed. He was detained, questioned, and transferred to a detention center in an undisclosed location."

Sorry I went on so long. Please don't let that stop you from reading these two excellent sources for analysis of the opinion:

One First
140. "The Disturbing Myopia of Trump v. J.G.G." by Steve Vladeck

Mark Joseph Stern's "The Supreme Court’s New 5–4 Bailout for Trump Couldn’t Be More Ominous" in Slate.

It's the lying. with an update

Our mafia government with its narcissistic sociopath-in-chief does not care about Social Security. It doesn't care about jobs or other nations' sovereignty or court orders telling it that it can't do some illegal thing it wants to do. It doesn't care about guilt or innocence or "due process." It cares only about power and expressions of power. It believes it has the right to decide who gets treated lawfully and who doesn't simply because it has the power to do it. It wants to demonstrate that. And it wants to lie about everything.

Trump can run for a third term.
Tariffs are paid by the other guy.
Trump really won in 2020.
Ivermectin! Bleach! Very Powerful Light!

The list goes on forever. 

A lot has been written, of course, about the use of lying and propaganda in politics and their function as a means of control. Hannah Arendt, George Orwell (Eric Blair) helped create the language that allows us to understand what's being done to us. 

Why all the lying?

1. To demonstrate power over subordinates

2. To compromise and implicate associates

    "In a gang or the Mafia, your first kill makes you trustworthy, because you’re now dependent on the group to keep your secrets, and can’t credibly claim to be superior to them."

 3. To erase the distinction between what is true and what is false. But why?

        In The Yale Review of International Studies in 2021, Liam Will put it this way:

Modern propagandists, however, have given up on this old model and invented something newer and far more effective. Rather than seeking to create a grand meta-narrative that can explain everything, modern authoritarians seek to destroy the concept of truth itself, making it impossible to explain anything, and possible to deny everything.

Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny, in a 2016 Facebook post reminded us, "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so."

And, from "Truth and Politics," Hannah Arendt has this for us:

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.

Why all the lying? To destroy "the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world..." To destabilize reality and replace objective facts with the authority of the Leader, in this case Donald Trump, and by extension his minions. It's a familiar strategy dressed up in a ball cap and a big red tie.

Right now, as far as we know, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, having been kidnapped on March 12th from an IKEA parking lot "with his 5-year-old son in the car," is being tortured in a Salvadoran prison infamous for doing just that. The government admits his rendition was a mistake but claims it is powerless to effect his release and return. They are lying. There is a hearing tomorrow where, undoubtedly, the government will shrug and lie again, about what they did, about what they knew and when, most of all they will lie about Abrego Garcia. It's what they do.

(Update: This excellent "One First" piece from Steve Vladeck is a first-rate explainer for how and why the administration's claim that there's nothing they can do and you can't make me is a bunch of bunk.)

Vance lied about Abrego Garcia's being "a convicted MS-13 gang member" when, in fact, back in 2019 when Abrego Garcia actually did get his day in court, not only was ICE unable to make the gang charges stick, the judge instead granted Abrego Garcia protected status. 

More from Greg Sargent's piece:

Let us gently suggest that these facts don’t matter to Vance in the least. This is not meant glibly: For Vance, that is the case as a matter of principle. He is nakedly asserting the power to decree Abrego Garcia a criminal subject to expulsion, even if—or especially if—the facts show the contrary. The administration is doing this on many fronts, from this case to the efforts to remove foreign students to the deportations of Venezuelans to a Salvadoran prison.

Let me gently suggest that facts DO matter, to Vance, to Trump, to their evil gang of thugs, and to all the bowers and scrapers vying to be lickspittle of the month. Facts are the target and they establish what "contrary" means. Facts matter because they must be battered by lies while those who remember them are viciously attacked. Facts matter because by destroying them or overwhelming them, the Leader demonstrates dominance over them. His (in this case) story becomes the only legitimate story. They lie because they have to, and...

They continue to lie. Pay special attention to the reference to secret evidence.

They lie to break reality, to break the world we see around us, to break us. They lie for power. The truth has power, too. But it doesn't speak for itself.

"Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." 

 nineteen eighty-four, George Orwell

Not Nothing.

 Los Angeles, yesterday.

                                  

Yes. Enough is enough.

Thanks to everyone who showed up. It's not the whole thing, but it's not nothing. And it's only the beginning. We need to live these next few months and years in a way we can be proud of when it's over.

Speak to you soon.

Why is everything so fucked up?

                      The answer to all your questions is: Money.

According to teevee host and former sportswriter Tony Kornheiser, television producer and network big shot Don Ohlmeyer once told him, "The answer to all your questions is: Money."

When we try and figure out how we got into this mess, I'm sure many of us can point to our own favorite incident, policy, condition, cause, or villain, as the reason things are so fucked up. When it comes up among friends, individual lists grow and merge into a gigantic trail of crimes and outrages and, of course, they and we are all correct. I don't even have to open my mouth anymore. When it's my turn everyone just shouts "Reagan!" before I can open my mouth. 

Turns out I may have a case, of sorts. 

A working paper from RAND released in February examines income inequality among U.S. workers. It builds upon an earlier study, and RAND describes it this way: "This short analysis extends the results from a prior study about the gap between what the majority of workers earned from 1975 to 2018 and what they would have earned with more evenly distributed income growth (Price and Edwards, 2020)." It's a short, clear, easy read and I encourage you to take a look at it here, but the money shot is as follows (emphasis mine):

These values are intended to provide an indication of the scale of rising inequality and its durability over the last nearly five decades. Looking at the net effects of these trends, if we had the income distribution from 1975, the majority of workers (the bottom 90 percent by income) would have made an additional $3.9 trillion dollars in 2023. Cumulatively, the gap between what workers from 1975 to 2023 earned and what they would have earned with the counterfactual income distribution amounts to $79 trillion (in 2023 dollars). Compared to the $47 trillion from the 2020 study, the additional $32 trillion dollars comes from extending the time-period by five years, inflating from 2018 to 2023, and additional growth in inequality.

Seventy-nine trillion dollars is a lot of money. A lot of child care and college educations and homes that could have been passed down to help create generational wealth. Instead, "the bottom 90 percent" did not fully participate in the growth of the American economy they helped produce. You know who did? You know who reaped their own benefits and a giant share of everybody else's? Sure you do. 

And not for nothing, there's this from the RAND paper:

For three decades following the Second World War, incomes for workers across the income distribution grew at the same pace as the broader economy. This changed in the late 1970s, when earnings growth began disproportionately flowing to those with the highest incomes leading to four decades of rising inequality.

Here it is graphically, from the Economic Policy Institute:

The late 1970's. Arthur Laffer. Jack Kemp. William Roth. Voodoo supply-side trickle down "economics." And do you know who endorsed this nonsense, who ran on it and was elected in 1980? Sure you do. 

That is a huge part of how we went from thirteen U.S. billionaires in 1980 to over 900 today (+ around 7000 percent). Since geographical distinctions are not what they used to be, it's also instructive to note that Forbes reports its own count as rising from 140 billionaires worldwide in 1987 to 3,028 today. Up 2162% give or take. It's been a good run if you're a billionaire and/or heir to one. For the rest of us, not so great. 

And that is a big reason why everything is so fucked up.

Thanks for reading. Speak to you soon. 

Don't Do Nothing.

                                     

So many people have written or said it that I can't find a clear original source, but it's too true not to use. If anyone knows, please share its origin. Goes like this:

"If you ever wonder what you would have done in Nazi Germany, take a look at yourself. You're doing it right now."

I'll be at the rally tomorrow in downtown Los Angeles. Where will you be?

Free Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia

 and all the rest of them, too.

This isn't about crimes or "very bad people" (except those in our mafia government h/t Sarah Kendzior) or tattoos. It's about due process. Jeffrey Dahmer got due process. Timothy McVeigh got due process. Nazis got the Nuremberg Trials. The people being disappeared right now--from Abrego Garcia to college students to "the worst of the worst of the worst"--DESERVE DUE PROCESS. 

As Greg Sargent wrote yesterday in The New Republic:

It should go without saying that even if we ultimately learn terrible things about all these defendants, they are still entitled to due process. That’s how due process works: It’s afforded to everyone regardless of their eventual guilt or innocence. Indeed, this is precisely how we can be confident in the final decision that they are guilty or innocent under our laws.

Except it doesn't go without saying. The truth doesn't speak for itself; it has to be spoken by someone. And the truth is that this administration, our mafia government, doesn't care about guilt or innocence. It cares only about power and expressions of power. It believes it has the right to decide who gets treated lawfully and who doesn't simply because it has the power to do it and it wants to demonstrate that. 

It simply cannot be that one vicious racketeer with his evil band of thugs gets to decide who lives and who dies. We cannot allow it. 

Every detainee, and every deportee, and every one of us deserves to face our accusers and have our charges tried in front of judges and lawyers and the people who write it all down. We deserve it because it's right there in the American Bible everyone pretends to care so much about (emphasis mine):

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Persons have a RIGHT TO DUE PROCESS. It's what prevents Abrego Garcia--or you, or me--from ending up in a torture prison in El Salvador or Cuba--or Louisiana--by mistake with the mafia government shrugging that there's nothing they can do.

We are all Abrego Garcia. 

U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey

What Senator Booker is doing is historic. And important. Oher Democrats have joined in. www.c-span.org/event/us-sen...

— Joy-Ann Reid (@joyannreid.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 9:32 AM

Cory Booker has taken the Senate floor and plans to filibuster as long as he’s physically able to protest the complete disregard for the rule of law by Trump and Musk. Watch here: www.c-span.org/event/us-sen...

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— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm.bsky.social) March 31, 2025 at 4:27 PM

 

Social studies teachers: Are you showing/discussing Cory Booker's speech on the Senate floor in opposition to the Trump agenda. Will he break Strom Thurmond's record (24 hour 18 minute) filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act? AP live feed linked here. #sschat #edusky apnews.com/article/cory...

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— Christopher Martell (@chrismartell.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 9:30 AM