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  

         

         

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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.