Dems in Disarray!

Democrats are weak! Feckless! Disorganized! The most durable of political narratives, a familiar story that's easy to tell, "Dems in Disarray" scratches that corporate itch, satisfies the need for normal, and puts everyone back in their proper places. When corporate mainstream media--greedy and scared from top to bottom line--face the prospect of disorder, dissent, and threats to the quarterly earnings, they will crumble and escape to their safe spaces as they default to shilling for the Boss. Shills gotta shill, and it's especially effortless when they support the liars and their mission.

Thus, we get this from the Wall Street Journal on Sunday:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s leading voices. But some worry she will turn off the centrist voters needed to win competitive races.

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— The Wall Street Journal (@wsj.com) May 11, 2025 at 9:30 AM

"Dems in Disarray!" was the title of a David Leonhardt New York Times column in May of 2018. In it, he attributes the birth of this trope to a 2005 episode of The West Wing. Leonhardt then fast forwards to a March 2006 New Yorker piece by Hendrik Hertzberg. In between I found this in PrawfsBlawg, posted by Daniel Solove on July 16, 2005. 

However it started, it has become a potent cudgel as right-wing "sources," thirsty staffers, and hedging pols trying to save their corner offices feed talking points to a hungry press. And the "disarray" has become an article of faith for the compliant media, a convenient narrative for lazy journalists to snark up whenever Democrats disagree with one another (a shocking phenomenon unimaginable in the Republican Party of Marching Penguins). Now, every time the Natural Order of Things gets a little warped, a little out of alignment, the media fires up the machine and runs it at Democrats hoping to get a laugh at the dopes tripping over their shoelaces. And things right now are warped.

Just when it looked like things might go sideways for Mad King Donald and his merry basket of deplorables (Don't get me started on hate-troll Stephen Miller, and what the hell happened to Elon Musk???), just when the story of people being kidnapped and shipped illegally to a torture prison in another country might be a story with legs, just when it began to look like everything might not go to shit quite as fast as we thought, 

• on April 15 we get this gift from Politico: 

In unprecedented move, DNC official to spend big to take down fellow Democrats

Leaders We Deserve, which Hogg co-founded in 2023, announced plans on Tuesday to spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against sitting House members by supporting younger opponents.     

• That was followed on April 16 when California governor and attention junkie Gavin Newsom honked up this phlegm ball, as reported by NBC News from April 18:

         Abrego Garcia's deportation case exposes a rift among Democrats over how to take            on Trump

As California Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled out a lawsuit Wednesday challenging Trump’s sweeping tariffs, he had little to say about the Abrego Garcia case when asked about it.

 "This is the distraction of the day. The art of distraction,” Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, said of Trump invoking MS-13 to justify his actions. “And here, we zig and zag. This is the debate they want. This is their 80-20 issue, as they’ve described it.”

• On April 18, NBC even found a way to stir in a little David Hogg, reporting:

"THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED MORE OF," Hogg wrote on X Thursday night. "We have to show people how we are fighting back and are here to protect the American people from [Trump's] reckless agenda."

The "Dems in Disarray" army got to work, aaaand they're off!  

• Daily Kos put it this way, also April 18:Wrongful deportation highlights Democratic split on how to fight Trump 

• Also April 18, Axios felt the need to remind us that "Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg's plan to spend $20 million to primary older Democratic incumbents in Congress has sparked intense anger from some lawmakers" under the headline "House Democrats fume at David Hogg's plan to oust lawmakers."

• and on April 21, PBS was still reporting the deportation story this way: Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on Democrats split over how to oppose Trump’s agenda

Turns out, Newsom may not even have said that, exactly. The quote came in answer to a question from Sacramento Bee reporter Lia Russell, who wrote about it on April 22. You can read the article and decide for yourself if the clean-up is any better than the spill. 

What is indisputable is that it was reported this way, and paired with the David Hogg reporting, the rift is the story. As usual.

Meanwhile, Trump remains vulnerable:

• April 24 Courts punch Trump in the nose on elections/voter registration, 
• May 2 Trump has to retreat over trans athletes in Maine (How 'bout that Governor Janet Mills!)
• Trump fake trade deals.
• May 11 Trump gets hammered over his shiny new plane.
• May 12 Trump waves his magic wand and lowers drug prices. Details are... scarce.

He appears increasingly unhinged:

REPORTER: Has Qatar asked for anything in exchange for that $400 million luxury jumbo jet, & how can the American people be so sure that they will not in the future? TRUMP: I think what happens with the plane is that we're very disappointed that it's taking Boeing so long to build a new Air Force 1

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 12, 2025 at 7:41 AM

And he's lost the Pope:

"Trump claims he’s making America stronger; he insists no one can defy him. But here are people defying him, and they seem better off for it, not worse. It makes him look weak — and people are a lot more comfortable defying a president who seems weak than one who seems strong."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 12, 2025 at 8:50 AM

That means the Disarray drumbeat must go on. 

There's this April 26 article by Kayla Epstein from BBC News. It represents disagreements among Democrats in a typical zero-sum fashion: "But the Fighting Oligarchy tour is only one theory about how the Democratic Party should evolve," and "New guard or old guard?" and "Some Democrats accused their party of falling out of step with more conservative Americans on subjects like transgender rights, or failing to accommodate diverse viewpoints within the party's ideological spectrum." As if you can't be anti-oligarchy and anti-discrimination at the same time. Some Democrats.

Sidebar: I think some Democrats, maybe because of unfamiliarity or embarrassment or prejudice or fear, refuse to address transgender rights from the correct stance. The Republicans have dominated the narrative by focusing on transgender as a scare word and offering slogans and dubious anecdotes to shape opinion. Many Democrats simply shy away from the fight, and it makes them look weak, or complicit. Rather than offer a counterclaim, they leave the field entirely. 

In my opinion, the focus should always be on rights. This is not about sports or bathrooms, and it's clearly not about science. Focus on rights. Human rights are human rights, full stop. Fairly easy to understand and very popular, not to mention having a long, albeit imperfect, history of being the reason we're even a country. 

Republicans will always try to turn it inside out to protect the rights of people who are not transgender, but if Democrats are committed, that rhetorical jiujitsu can be met with a simple example: Did the freedom of enslaved people impair the rights of white slave owners? Yes, it eliminated their right to enslave people. The right to deprive others of their rights is always illegitimate. If Dems can't say that, they should take themselves out of the game. (And it wouldn't hurt to spread around a little actual science as well.) Sorry, this has been on my mind.

And we're back. While the "Dems in Disarray" machine runs best on fuel supplied by insiders, the whole BBC article reads like a premise in search of evidence as it goes door to door for quotes from a medley of dissatisfied "rally attendees," politicians in and out of work, the odd professor, and James Fucking Carville. Picking over the bones of recent and not-so-recent disputes, the article never gets around to weighing the substance of the arguments. It's the argument, Stupid.

Perhaps the perfect mixture of snark and toxic sourcing comes from Politico. "‘It’s time for Joe Biden to go away': Democrats are triggered by Biden’s return to the spotlight" reads the headline, and reporter Brakkton Booker has graciously accepted the gift of Joe Biden's appearance on ABC's The View and taken the time to confirm the Dissaray by talking to a writer, a former special assistant to President Biden, and two journalists with a book coming out about "President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again" with the modest title Original Sin.

You know who else Booker managed to dig up? FOUR! COUNT'EM FOUR! different Democratic strategists. One who worked for Bernie Sanders, one who worked for both Biden and VP Harris before the strategist quit, one who worked on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, and one who seems to have worked only for Sen. Raphael Warnock for a couple of years in Georgia. I'm not saying these sources were cherry-picked to support the narrative. I'm just saying. 

One other weird thing. Does anyone out there know the difference between a "strategist" and a "consultant"?

Finally, who is our "Dems in Disarray" champion? The answer may surprise you. We nominate NBC for this thoughtful April 26-27 article by Allan Smith, Alexandra Marquez and Natasha Korecki. It doesn't downplay disagreements among Democrats--over policy differences and leadership preferences, over focus on an economic message or moral/social issues, but the article generally frames the "conversation" as an effort to build something new and responsive to the needs of constituents. It doesn't choose a side or foreclose the possibility that there are more than one right answer.

It includes the voices of several young Democratic leaders and presents the "conversation" as a process of trying to get somewhere rather than a Disarray dead end worthy of a savvy eyeroll. It's our champ precisely because it does the opposite of what you'd expect after reading this headline (emphasis mine):

Democrats want a great new society post-Trump. They just can't agree on what it would look like.

Democrats are increasingly saying that simply unwinding Trump’s policies isn’t enough. But there are still broad disagreements on policy issues and who the next leader should be.

Well, it's a start. Baby steps. 

Thanks for reading. See you soon.

Bring on the Shills

The Narrative Double-Dealers have not stopped lying and they will not stop. It's the way they reshape the world, and that's how they stay alive. If only they could get a little help. 

Bring on the Shills! 

First some good news! We've been lucky (so far) that, at least on the abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the mainstream media have been generally clear-eyed. Here I should insert that I'm not talking about Fox or any of the rest of Rush Limbaugh's evil offspring. I don't know what they do. 

Back to the good news. Corporate mainstream media continue to refer to Trump's actions as lawless and to focus on the fundamental need for due process, aka rule of law. They haven't buckled under the gazillion tons of accumulated lies and, for what it's worth, I think that has been central to polls showing majority support for said "due process" / "rule of law." 

Some refer to this journalistic technique as "reporting the facts" and consider it central to the job. Those people haven't been paying attention. It's rare, and the media's reluctance to shield Trump, Miller & Co and their lawlessness has been notable and mildly encouraging. Corporate mainstream media are in the business of making money. They can be expected to pursue their own financial interests above any theoretical public interest, which they do ferociously.  And they can be expected to hire reporters and writers and news talkers who support that mission or can be convinced to. And they do.

That means mainstream reporters as a species live every day in fear. They are chronically afraid for the future of the industry. They are acutely afraid of losing their access and then their jobs and then their homes and then their kid's private school slot. They are terrified of losing their status as clever Very Important People and getting bounced out of the club. That's a lot to be scared of, and as a result we can almost always expect news talkers to toe the company line, default to conservatism, and make no waves. 

Not a perfect environment for truth to flourish. 

The information ecosphere is full of three-card monte cons, and the media's fear and greed turn them into shills for the narrative Double-Dealers. (There is no better example than this travesty from The Atlantic.) You can read it and witness the debasement first-hand, but take my advice and read this instead, from Steve M. @stevemnomoremister.bsky.social. 

That's why during bumpy periods for the regime when things get a little off-script, life gets awkward for the news folks tasked with keeping the money train on the rails and making sure the narcissistic sociopath-in-chief keeps his clothes on. From tariff whiplash and market slides to Hands Off! to Canada telling Trump No Means No, Trump has been wobbled, and he has especially struggled on immigration as he bellowed and stomped until he turned one of his "strengths" into a real liability. These days, Trump's vincibility is showing.

Lately, Trump has been reduced to "letting the lawyers handle that" and watching hate-troll Stephen Miller write mean tweets and do mean interviews for him. He'll be back. A wounded Trump is a dangerous lunatic. It's also a challenge to the dominant narrative of Trump as colossus, and a perilous and unfamiliar challenge for media as they navigate contradictory narratives. So far, the press has largely defaulted to the truth, with the most notable exception being the Gaza Rule. More on that another time--when I know more and have more courage.

Trump's always been a narcissistic sociopath, but I think his real decline began in March. Yes, the DOGE smash and grab was bubbling and Elon Musk was toxic (whatever happened to that guy?), but for my money, the serious political and cognitive deterioration started with the night flights to San Salvador. Maybe even he can't believe how badly he fucked up and it's driving him crazy. (I know I know... The Supreme Court)

Anyway, this particular rough stretch of road begins with the legal cage match that started as Kilmar Abrego Garcia and more than 200 other prisoners were being disappeared to El Salvador. 

March 15: Judge James Emanuel Boasberg was holding hearings on whether the government could invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport the prisoners. He issued a Temporary Restraining Order but they did it anyway. He was pissed.  

On March 24, Judge Paula Xinis entered the Octagon in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. Then...

March 31 - April 1: There was Senator Cory Booker's filibuster as he quite literally stood against tyranny.  

April 10: Even the Supreme Court took the time to weigh in and wag a finger in the Abrego Garcia case, then firing off a kind of midnight lightning bolt with an Alien Enemies Act order barring our mafia government from--at least for now--doing quite as much depravity as they had on the schedule. Steve Vladeck has a good synopsis here. 

April 12 a few law firms didn't cave and April 14: Harvard pushed back. 

And... Even though both cases have already made a trip to the Supreme Court, litigation continues right up to today in Judge Xinis's court, where they are still wrestling over discovery, and in Judge Boasburg's court where, I think, the judge is still trying to get to the bottom of who sent the prisoners to El Salvador in defiance of his order. In any event, it's been a rough stretch of road, and there's more.

Throw in Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen's courageous, potentially game-changing trip to El Salvador to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia and press for his release, and add in the subsequent trip U.S. Reps. Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Maxine Dexter of Oregon and Robert Garcia of California are taking to maintain pressure and attention on the issue, and lately it's been a little rougher for the Bad Guys and a little-less-terrible for the Good Guys.

Because the regime hasn't got its own way every single minute of every day, news folks have been scrambling for a way to report the blunders and outrages without making the monster mad, and to their credit they have generally reported fairly. But pressure has been building for a market correction.

And you know what that means! That's right! You loved it in the 2000s and you love it now! In fact, your great-grandparents loved it in the thirties!

                                            

It's time once again to play "Dems in Disarray!" the periodic cavalcade of attention junkies and access whores hooking up to savvy each other to orgasm and restore the Natural Order. 

Please come back next week to find out who our champion will be!

Thanks for reading. See you soon.

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.