I have a long history with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I’ve been in and out of the USA since I was a little girl. We have filled out countless forms for passports, and many times more those forms telling what we are bringing back into the country. The only time I ever had a problem with ICE was on returning from one of our African trips when I was bringing in wildebeest jerky from South Africa. I laugh now, it was me and a lot of African nationals shunted off. They were opening suitcases full of vegetables they were bringing back for family, and I was told my package of jerky was illegal in the United States. AdventureMan was annoyed with me, and I was ashamed I didn’t know. But they let me off with a mild scolding about infecting disease free animal life in the USA. I’ve never forgotten.
I’ve never minded the tiresome lines for immigration, always manned by sturdy, polite young people wanting to know where we’ve been and how did we like our trip; they were doing their job and they had been trained how to deal with people. In all my times going through those lines, I never saw any kind of incident.
They had a mission.
With the new administration, that mission changed, enlarged. They were given different, even SECRET orders, orders that encouraged them to commit the sorts of acts we saw in Minnesota. It always looked to me like those acts, committed on US Citizens, committed on resident citizens, smacked of incitement to violence. Why else would these customs and immigration officers be asked to violate the US Constitution in pursuing their mission?
I applaud those stoic and humor-filled Minnesotans who protested with restraint, who did not invite violent responses. Even if the Department of Justice will not cooperate in the investigations you are conducting into the murders of Minneapolis citizens, you are gathering witness from street cameras and witnesses against the illegal actions, and the lies and accusations, unjust, of the ICE officials and the Department of Justice. I applaud the restraint that forestalled any illusion of reason for a “national emergency” and activation of a military presence. The militaristic costumes of the immigration and customs officials did not fool nor intimadate you. Your patient, evidence based investigations will be embarrassment enough to those who thought to prevail by intimidation and brutality.
So we have to look at why the ICE men and women sent by our leader to Democratic states felt so empowered to misbehave?
Many ICE hirees have law enforcement backgrounds. Many of them have served in the armed forces. They know the basics. They know the law. They must have had second thoughts, many of them, while conducting these unrestrained acts of violence characterized as arrests of “rapists, thieves and the mentally ill,” as they arrested family men, women – and children, with no criminal records.
As well as knowing the law, and the legal use of power, those who are Christian would know Christ’s admonition to love our neighbor as ourself. Those who are Jewish would know the Old Testament verses about welcoming the stranger. Those who were raised without religion might be familiar with Spiderman, who teaches us that with great power comes great responsibility.
These $50K hires are as expendable as Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem. Once they have served their purpose, they can be scapegoated for excessive zeal in pursuit of the mission, or charged with murder while their superiors, who put the secret policies into effect, escape blame and punishment.
Again, I applaud the Minnesotans, who with restraint, humor, and humanity, protected the weakest, the families and children, while EFFECTIVELY resisting the provocation they faced. Well done, Minnesota!
And lets take a minute to grieve the effects of the violence upon those who inflicted it, mere pawns in a greater game of thrones.
Our leader announced a speech to the nation, which turned out to be nothing but repeats of “Truth” social posts and comments previously made. A boring, disjointed 19 minutes of nothing credible. Credibility is stating a mission and following through. Chaos is changing the mission and its achievements every ten minutes or so. If you don’t believe me, watch the stock market.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain, The Great Oz and his handlers are changing how our democracy operates. The failed military officer, Pete Hegseth is examining and removing African Americans, females, and especially African American Females from promotion lists. He is firing the top general who questions his judgement in toying with a time honored system where the military chooses its leaders based on performance and leadership abilities, not their gender nor their color.
Does Hegseth understand demographics? Does he understand that military recruitment is problematic these days days, that the pool of recruits has shrunk dramatically? Does he understand that brawn no longer wins wars, but fighter planes, drones, new ideas and weapon development are fighting a new kind of war, where every gender and color contributes the the nuances of creative strategies available to a commander in chief who genuinely understands how to function in the fog of war?
Today Heather Cox Richardson alerts us to another slight of hand, the kind of small change the controllers hope will go unnoticed: The challenge of ACCOUNTABILITY and how it impedes a sitting President. She quotes the following, and it quite takes my breath away:
Yesterday Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, of the Office of Legal Counsel, published an opinion for the White House that claims the Presidential Records Act, which requires that presidents keep records of their official business and turn them over at the end of their term, is unconstitutional. Gaiser clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
“The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II. The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose,” the memo reads. “For these reasons, the PRA is unconstitutional, and the President need not further comply with its dictates.”
(taking a moment to catch my breath)
We burden our elected president with the requirement that we know what he does and why he is doing it?
How can anyone believe this lunacy? Any person in a position of responsibility has to answer to his polity! Elected politicians all the more. He answers to us, the voters.
Our leader has a lot to answer for. We can’t trust anything he says, from minute to minute. Our treasury has been declared insolvent. He is sending our children off to war with unclear orders and insufficient leadership.
He has hired a confederacy of ignorant, greedy sycophants. He has gutted our diplomatic service. He has gutted Consumer Oversight. He has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. He has corrupted the Department of Education.
He is terrified he cannot win and is attempting to take over national elections. Meanwhile, he is bankrupting our country with garish monuments and wars we never agreed to fight.
He is subjecting women to outdated standards and taken away their rights to make decisions for their own bodies.
He is corrupting our social system, taking medical care away from those who need it most, and callously neglecting the veterans who have served our country so loyally.
He has made agreements with other countries that we only learn about by accidental comments.
This can’t go on. Give us Accountability. Oversight. Congressional Approval. Fair and Free Elections. Constitutional Restraints!
From Robert Reich’s post of March 29, Trump’s ratings continue to tank. The relevance? Most presidents get a bump with a war, people tend to back their leader. Then again, when most country leaders start a war, they consult with allies, and give their population a clue about what is about to happen and why. Failing to do that results in lack of enthusiasm by former friends, treated rudely, and a population treated as irrelevant to the needs and goals of the leader.
Meanwhile, Trump’s polls continue to tank. In the new Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 36 percent approve of his performance while 62 percent disapprove, a new record low for Trump. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, 38 percent approve of him; 56 percent disapprove. Even the latest Fox News poll shows Trump approval at only 41 percent; disapproval at 59 percent; and fully 58 percent of Americans opposing U.S. military action in Iran.
As an American, I’ve lived in a lot of countries, often countries that controlled news coverage and punished those who reported news the leaders found embarrassing.
Many experienced people found ways around it. They phrased their reports carefully, leaving the reader to read behind the lines.
It’s not what you expect in a Democratic Republic. It’s not what I expect in the United States of America, where the very first amendment to our Constitution verified our right to have our own opinions and our freedom to state them (given that they were not, of course, a threat against someone else, or shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre.)
And now the elected leader of the United States is trying to control any negative reporting about his War, a war that surprised his own country, his own people. A War which has not been supported by Congress, which has the right to declare War. As billions go up, literally, in smoke, or down in flames, Trump and Hegseth want the FCC to pull the broadcasting license of anyone reporting the events that are really happening. Trump has a long history of calling reality “false news” and claiming his big fat lies are truth. Like his endless whining about the election he lost to Joe Biden by more than 8 million votes. And he claims it was a fraudulent loss, a rigged election.
How on earth could that ever be a secret if it were to have happened? Crazy, delusional, whoppers!
And now he wants people whose reputations are on the line, newsmakers, journalists, photographers, soldiers, sailors – people who can see what is happening with their own eyes, hear the blasts and report the damages, and hold those accountable for their actions – he wants them to toe the party line? He wants the TRUTH to be what he pretends it is?
George Orwell got it right, he just got the year wrong. With this administration, we no longer have guarantees of personal privacy. We no longer have guarantees guaranteed by our Constitution. The Police are no longer our friends.
The president believes the truth is what he says it is and that the rights of the people are those he says they have. How have we allowed this to happen?
He CREATES situations, or makes them up, and then creates an oppressive measure to deal with it – look at what ICE, once respectable, has become. An entity protecting our entry points has become a gang of thugs who operate outside the law. When courts rule against them, they ignore the rulings.
When Trump looks at the polls and sees that he cannot win an election, he creates the “SAVE” act to deter, discourage and delete voter’s rights. Both ICE and “SAVE” address problems which do not exist, other than as avenues to giving this monster greater and greater power to feed his endless greed.
Do not listen to this man. Do not believe a word he says. Look, instead, at his actions. He fires the watchdogs. He fires those who would limit his power. He is what he always has been, a fraud, a con man, a liar, and altogether a very flawed man. He piles up wealth by making agreements that fill his pockets, his family’s pockets, and his cronies’. He bullies those who stand up to him. This is not a man of strong character; this is a human wrecking ball.
I don’t think I ever met an Iranian woman I didn’t like.
The Iranian women I met – it seemed to me – were all gorgeous. They were educated, and they liked to read books and if you ever want to have a great conversation, look for the Iranian woman. I survived many a stuffy reception, finding intelligent women and talking books, or customs, or history.
So I shudder as I see our forces gathering for a potential strike on Iran.
I get it. Iranian men are smart too, I used to run into them in college, always talking engineering, as in huge national engineering projects, and, way above my head, nuclear physics. They are smart, creative, and great problem solvers.
Here is what makes me laugh. I don’t think the Iranian nuclear threat is the problem. I think Iran is too much like the USA.
Iran has a strong, unpopular leader who is particularly tough on uppity women (do you see where this is going?) and has an economy which is slowly tanking. Iran wants the population to be COMPLIANT and does not like civil protest. Iran is hard on student protestors, but especially hard on non-compliant women.
Our equally unpopular leader, equally chaotic, arbitrary, and cruel, envies the Ayatollah’s theocratic autonomy. Theocracy in Iran has all the power; they can jail people with impunity. They kill protestors with impunity. Not only are they the LAW, but they are above the law.
So how is that working out for Iran? Not so great. It hasn’t worked out so great since the overthrow of the Shah. When people don’t have a voice in how the country are run, they aren’t happy, and unhappy people have ways of resisting, and sabotaging the oppressive regime.
I think that all this massing of power and threatening to invade Iran is a distraction from our own orange leader’s problems with leading. After one year of his leadership, jobs are declining, people cannot afford health care, colleges are afraid to teach critical thinking skills, and we have poorly trained goons and thugs with carte blanche to invade people’s houses, shove demonstrators around, and to kill with impunity. Or at least that is how I see it. I have seen no accountability for the killing of Renee Good or Jonathan Pretti in Minneapolis, nor for the homicides in the “detention centers” which are like huge cattle corrals.
And to what point? As long as the Iranians are increasingly unhappy with their own leader, their leadership has big problems. When the leadership can point their finger at an impending danger caused by an encroaching bully, it rallies the people to the national cause.
Oh, but the power and the might makes the heart beat faster, and what a perfect opportunity to play with all our ships and planes and the great glory of it all, you know, like what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh wait! Another similarity! Our leader uses emergency powers because of an ALIEN INVASION! The Rule of Law no longer applies! We are overrun by our roofers! Our gardeners and landscapers! Our waiters! Our housekeepers! Our fruit and vegetable pickers! Our meat packers! Our teacher assistants! Our janitors! Our nursing home care-givers! Our teachers and professors! Our potential citizens, tempest-tossed, waiting by the Golden Door (posted on our Statue of Liberty, welcoming our fore-fathers to this country).
These are not the criminals and rapists our toddler-in-chief tells us he is saving us from; over 90% of those violently arrested and detained are NOT criminals, just people who will work hard to try to provide their family with a living wage and a roof over their heads, and enough food. Many are documented, going through the system. The system is failing them, and failing us, as a country. We are a nation of immigrants.
Like the Ayatollah, our leader seeks total control, including “protecting” our elections – protecting us from voting against him and his politics of hatred, inequality, and humiliation.
Do you think there is a long-term strategy in all this? Do you believe in the Board of Peace as a functional institute? Do you see anything here that is truly in the national interest of the citizens of the United States of America? All I see is a dance of chaos, self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement, vanity, and a grab for all the power.
It’s not often a courtroom is packed with joyful people. And only for this one significant celebration are cameras allowed – even encouraged – in the courtroom. The difference in atmosphere is palpable.
Yesterday, 33 people from a variety of nations took their oath to be responsible American citizens. There were moments when their was no sound, no noise at all, in the courtroom; the silence was a salute to the importance of the event, and respect for the moment.
Judge Collier managed to be both solemn and celebratory, lauding the diversity of the group and the importance of their choice to be US citizens. He, and other, congratulated the applicants for “earning” their citizenship by learning our history, customs and language, and appreciating it’s rewards even more than those of us who are citizens by birth and heritage.
David Stafford, our long time Supervisor of Elections, now the right-hand man to Pensacola’s Mayor Reeves, gave a moving and motivating speech about the gift of citizenship, its rewards, and the great responsibility each citizen has to sign up to vote – and to vote.
My friends, you receive my frustrated rants and my frequent musings. Today, I share with you a day full of pure joy. A packed courtroom, for all the right reasons; official speeches, short, pithy, and full of positivity and possibilities, and people who fully believe in the Rule of Law, Equality, Diversity as a strength, and the great inclusionary current of neighborly brotherhood that connects people in the United States of America.
I am haunted by memories of our Janus-like leader telling people while running for the office of President that if we voted for him, we would never have to vote again. What could he have meant by that? Aren’t elections part of what we value as a Democracy?
I am troubled by a leader who insists that what we saw with our own eyes on January 6th, that the thugs beating policemen, breaking and entering the Congress, chasing down Mike Pence with a noose was NOT an insurrection, not at all what he was going for when he told followers to “Fight Like Hell!” or we would have no Democracy. This leader who said he would be with them, and scurried back to the white house to watch events unfold on his Presidential television. He didn’t call off these hooligans and goons until HOURS after the violence began.
He PARDONED these thugs who invaded the Congress. He now calls it a “Day of Love.” Like we can’t see with our own eyes?
Just in time for Black History Month, he continues to dismantle exhibitions exploring the relationship between the enslaved and the enslavers. If it makes white people uncomfortable, isn’t that appropriate? Is slavery something we want to return to? And who, exactly do we enslave. Like are camera bearing Democrats candidates for the new underclass?
Armed with Whistles and Phone Cameras
J.D. Vance tells us to “lower the temperature” and help the ICE forces. J.D. Vance, you are talking to Minnesotans! You are talking to the descendants of Norwegians, the very nationality our orange leader wants to come to the USA! You are talking to people who have peacefully incorporated people from many nations, welcomed them! YOU created a spurious policy, based on a poorly made video by a social influencer. Yes, there was a child care scandal, and the people charged were not Somali but US citizens! YOU are creating the rise is heated emotions, and those you are shooting are armed with whistles and phone cameras!
Who has a history of creating violent insurrections? Who has sent unwelcome storm troopers into Minnesota? Who is poking Minnesota officials? Who is creating the problem and like every school boy bully, blaming the victim – “You started it!”
Go HOME, ICE. You are not welcome, you are not needed. You are invading the homes of US CITIZENS without a warrant, and laughing! You are shouting “Boo HOO!” to witnesses when you shoot a non-violent demonstrator 10 times! 10 Times! If that isn’t excessive force, what is?
I applaud the citizens of Minneapolis who are standing against this villainy and this bullying. I applaud their self-restraint and their persistence. I applaud Portland, Oregon for utilizing the legal system to lower the temperature and resist the pressure to give the radical bullying thugs any opportunity to raise the stakes.
Self restraint and Persistence while we activate the legal system is our only hope if we want to continue to have free and safe elections, and I believe that is what this is all really about.
It started during COVID. Politicians and their Administrations stopped publicizing statistics when the stats revealed their government was doing little or nothing to prevent spread of disease. Now, under the cover of cost reductions and eliminating fraud they are gutting the agencies that maintain the statistics and restricting publications of what few statistics are being gathered. Fortunately, private institutions and individuals are watching, keeping track, and doing their best to keep a vulnerable population informed.
Today in the Lectionary readings, we come to the Gospel and one of my all time favorite verses and personal life guide. If you claim to follow Jesus, there are some basics. You have to follow the old Jewish traditions of loving God with all your heart, and loving your neighbor as yourself. You have to take care of the poor, the widowed (the single mother), the mentally ill, the children. You have to welcome the stranger, for we were strangers in Egypt.
Our national policies today are taking away medical benefits from our poorest citizens, are rolling back protections against pollution and contamination of air and water and even the foods we eat. The callousness of it all appalls me. Spiritually, we pay a price. As a country, I believe we will survive, but it will take a while to undo the damage that is being done, day by day.
As a cold warrior, I am horrified, but that is not a spiritual thing 🙂
Matthew 25:31-46
31 ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me.”41Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” 44Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” 45Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” 46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’
New Report: ACLU Membership More Than Quadrupled Since Trump’s Election
Thanks to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has more than quadrupled its membership, according to an article in The New York Times.
Before Trump’s election the group had just 400,000 members and most of its actions were out of the public eye. But now, after 15 months of the Trump presidency, the membership is over 1.8 million and it has become one of the most active and visible opponents of Trump’s agenda.
Donations to the nonprofit group have also increased exponentially. The ACLU’s executive director, Anthony Romero, said that the organization has raised over $120 million since the 2016 presidential election. Before that watershed election, he said, donations had been in the range of just $3 million to $5 million annually.
Romero said that concerns over Trump’s attack on constitutional rights and civil liberties have brought a whole new generation of political activists into their group. “Until Trump most of our support came from people who have been with us since we challenged Nixon,” Romero told the Times. “Now we’re kind of cool. Cool’s not a word generally associated with us.”
The surge in membership, coupled with the massive increase in contributions, has for the first time given the ACLU all the resources it needs to fight Trump and other administration officials in court and elsewhere. They have been involved in more than 100 legal actions against Trump administration policies, including the White House’sseries of travel bans on the citizens of several Muslim-majority nations, which happened shortly after he took office.
According to Romero, his group has over 170 times taken what he calls “Trump-related legal actions” since he became president. This number includes the filing of 83 lawsuits, Romero said.
As the Trump administration steps up its attacks on refugees and asylum seekers, the ACLU has been filing class action lawsuits and also seeking injunctions to attempt to make the government stop separating families and incarcerating children. In some cases they have already been successful, and they are continuing to fight for the legal rights of people who may have been illegally detained and deprived of due process.
The large increase in ACLU membership is a good sign for American democracy. It shows that many Americans not only disapprove of Donald Trump’s policies and actions but are willing to support the fight against them. Ultimately this may be what saves our country from becoming a dictatorship and what preserves and protects the Constitution of the United States of America.
I’m one of those people. I used to think the ACLU was extreme, that was until I saw them first to man the tables offering free legal advice to incoming passengers the night Trump implemented his first travel ban. I sent my first check. I was asked why I had joined, and I told them because they are now our front line against thugs with no moral values, oppressors of the poor, led by a heartless, selfish, man who must be reined in. They sent me a sweet little ACLU pin, which I don’t dare wear in Pensacola.
Here There and Everywhere 