Tag Archives: Trump

Process And Progress

At a recent Town Hall in Indiana, Congresswoman Victoria Spartz responded to a citizen’s question/challenge by asserting that “people who break the law aren’t entitled to due process.” Spartz has a long history of ignorance and bizarre behaviors, but this particular example–while undoubtedly endearing her to an unconstitutional administration–reflected her incredible unfitness for public office.

Why is due process an essential component of the rule of law?

David French recently addressed that question in a New York Times essay,

The defense of civil liberties is hard even under the best of circumstances. Thousands of years of human history tell us that we are not naturally inclined to protect the rights of our opponents, much less the rights of people we believe to be violent and dangerous.

That’s why the defense of the Bill of Rights requires both practical and moral arguments. The practical defense is often the most effective: Protect the rights of others that you would like to exercise yourself. After all, one day you might not be in control.

In other words, poison gas is a great weapon until the wind shifts…

French goes on to argue that the best arguments for due process transcend self-interest–that due process guarantees protect “the inherent dignity and worth of every human being.” 

Americans have provided due process even to the nation’s wartime enemies. French quoted a federal judge for the travesty that Nazis had been given better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than people suspected of being members of a Venezuelan gang.

Numerous media outlets have reported on the arrest and rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was accused of gang membership and sent to prison in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was in the U.S. legally, and in 2019 a court had barred the government from deporting him to El Salvador. An official of ICE admitted, under oath, that he’d been deported due to “administrative error,” but claimed the government couldn’t get him back “because he is no longer in U.S. jurisdiction.”

The judge found that “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal…. [H]is detention appears wholly lawless” and “a clear constitutional violation.” 

If the government can simply assert–without the need to provide even flimsy evidence–that anyone they consider offensive or inconvenient is a “criminal,” then no one is safe.

America’s darker history is instructive: those most aware of the danger posed by lack of due process are the people who remember Jim Crow, when Black Americans in the South received less protection than the Nazis referenced by the judge. 

A guest essay in the New York Times made that point graphically. 

There’s something about this moment that is shocking to many in my orbit. Watching a security camera video of a graduate student — from Tufts, my alma mater — who is legally in the country being picked up in broad daylight by masked government agents and hustled into an unmarked car. Witnessing people lose their jobs with no warning or justification. The presumption underlying these attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs that somehow only white men are qualified to do many jobs. Denying lawyers access to federal buildings so they can’t represent their clients properly. Seeing communities from Cincinnati to El Paso live in a state of fear from the police and bands of vigilantes.

“How can this be happening in America?” these people ask. “This is not the country I know, the country of rights and laws and due process.”

Needless to say, these people are almost all white and liberal and are not used to feeling this fear of arbitrary, brutal state authority. But this moment, the one that was explicitly promised by Project 2025 and Donald Trump when he was a candidate, looks a lot like what my grandmother experienced every day for much of her life.

What Indiana’s civically-illiterate Congresswoman fails to understand is that due process for people accused of criminal activities is a foundational concept in the U.S. Constitution. It is a principle of fundamental fairness–a requirement that  government  demonstrate an accused’s guilt with probative evidence before imposing punishment.

Adherence to due process for everyone is what makes social progress possible. It is what protects Americans against the would-be autocrats who want to run roughshod over the individual liberties of those who oppose them. 

Due Process is mentioned twice in the Constitution — in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, both of which prohibit government officials from depriving an individual of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” 

Free speech and due process stand in the way of Project 2025. We need to defend them from MAGA’s ignorance and malevolence. 

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RIP Pax America

It isn’t just the insane tariffs. They are just the coup de grace. As Lawrence Summers posted: the tariffs are to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science. In fact, it is likely that their effects will hasten the fall of our mad would-be king, as plutocrats join the millions of ordinary Americans appalled by the wholesale destruction of American governance and the world order. 

But the larger damage has been done, and it is not remediable.

Perhaps the most accurate–and damning–analysis was from The Bulwark.

We cannot overstate what has just happened. It took just 71 days for Donald Trump to wreck the American economy, mortally wound NATO, and destroy the American-led world order.

He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement.

He did it with the support of a plurality of American voters.

He did not hide his intentions. He campaigned on them. He made them the central thrust of his election. He told Americans that he would betray our allies and give up our leadership position in the world.

And that is exactly what he’s done. The article quoted Canada’s Prime Minister’s sorrowful eulogy.

The global economy is fundamentally different today than it was yesterday. The system of global trade anchored on the United States, that Canada has relied on since the end of the Second World War—a system that, while not perfect, has helped to deliver prosperity for our country for decades—is over.

Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over.

The eighty-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership—when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect, and championed the free and open exchange of good and services—is over.

While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.

So–how did we get here?

Historians will undoubtedly spend decades looking for answers, and there are certainly lots of contributing factors: lack of civic education, an information environment that facilitates confirmation bias, the ballooning gap between the rich and the rest, the arrogance of the tech “bros”. But while all those elements contributed, my own research tells me that the single most consequential support for Trumpism is America’s entrenched racism.

When I use the word racism, I’m not simply referring to anti-Black animus, although that is indeed its most prominent characteristic. I am using that term to include the other persistent, notable bigotries that continue to be prominent elements of American society : anti-Semitism, raging misogyny…the simmering resentment that all too many Americans harbour for anyone they consider “Other.” 

As Trump and Musk have taken their hatchets to the federal government, they have made no effort to hide their major target: those Others. They have moved to expunge DEI, diversity and “woke-ism” from America’s society– “epithets” that are thinly veiled terms for civic equality and equal rights. 

A plurality of our fellow citizens cast their votes for a President and a political party devoted to White Christian supremacy. It’s doubtful that they intended to destroy Pax Americana, but placing America under a regime of know-nothings, bigots and buffoons could hardly have done otherwise. And as the linked article says, “There is no going back.”

If, tomorrow, Donald Trump revoked his entire regime of tariffs, it would not matter. It might temporarily delay some economic pain, but the rest of the world now understands that it must move forward without America.

If, tomorrow, Donald Trump abandoned his quest to annex Greenland and committed himself to the defense of Ukraine and the perpetuation of NATO, it would not matter. The free world now understands that its long-term security plans must be made with the understanding that America is a potential adversary, not an ally.

This realization may be painful for Americans. But we should know that the rest of the world understands us more clearly than we understand ourselves….

The article’s conclusion is depressing–but realistic.

We have a deeply stupid government—from our economically illiterate president to our craven and foolish secretary of state, from the freelancing billionaire dilettante who is gutting American soft power to the vaccine-denying health secretary who is firing as much talent as he can. From the senior economics advisor who thinks comic books are good investments, to the senators who voted to confirm this cabinet of hacks, to the representatives who stumble over themselves justifying each new inane MAGA pronouncement.

But also, we have the government we deserve.

The American age is over. And it ended because the American people were no longer worthy of it.

RIP.

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Will Obvious Insanity Be A Turning Point?

By now, it should be obvious that Trump is not simply stupid and ignorant (two different conditions), although he is both. He is severely mentally ill. He has not simply pursued mistaken policies, he has pursued petty vengeance–when he isn’t pursuing personally profitable grifts.

The clown show Trump calls a “cabinet” has already inflicted major damage on critical aspects of governance: public health, civil liberties, Social Security and more. Now–with the advent of his insane tariffs–he has begun the tanking of an economy that economists agreed was the best in the world at the end of the Biden Administration.

Even before the announcement of the scale of these unbelievably stupid and damaging tariffs, Paul Krugman wrote what any halfway sentient observer already knew: their imposition is a declaration of an all-out trade war that America will lose.

As I said, I don’t know exactly what will be announced later today. One safe prediction, however, is that over the next few days we’ll see many news analyses purporting to explain the thinking behind this radical change in U.S. policy.

Such analyses will be a waste of time, because there’s nothing to explain. I’m not saying that the Trump team’s thinking is unsound. I don’t see any thinking at all.

Krugman focused on two major internal contradictions in Trump’s intended justification.

Here’s the story: Trumpers are claiming that tariffs

1. Won’t increase prices, because foreign producers will absorb the cost

2. Will cause a large shift in U.S. demand away from imports to domestic production

3. Will raise huge amounts of revenue

If you think about it for a minute, you realize that (1) is inconsistent with (2): If prices of imports don’t rise, why would consumers switch to domestically produced goods? At the same time, (2) is inconsistent with (3): If imports drop a lot, tariffs won’t raise a lot of money, because there won’t be much to tax.

So the public story about tariffs doesn’t make any sense. And Trump’s rants about tariffs go beyond nonsense..

Does he really believe that Canada is a major source of fentanyl? Worse, does he believe that fentanyl smugglers pay tariffs?

But is it all a cover for the real, probably sinister agenda of Trump’s tariff push?

No. There isn’t any secret agenda, devised by people who know that the public story is nonsense. How do I know that? Because who, exactly, do you think is devising this secret agenda?

As he goes on to note, today’s Democrats and Republicans get their policy advice from very different sources: Democrats engage people with credentials and expertise. They still may be wrong, but they’re drawn from pools of folks having recognized expertise. Republicans these days prefer “experts” who are pure hacks–people who can be counted on to support whatever the party says.

Krugman was writing before Trump’s unveiling of his insane tariffs. In the wake of that announcement, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers posted that “The best estimate of the loss from tariff policy is now [close] to $30 trillion or $300,000 per family of four.”  Former Vice-President (and Trump toady) Mike Pence was quoted as saying that “The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history.” Dow futures lost 1200 points. A coalition of 12 countries officially moved to abandon the dollar in favor of local currencies for cross-border trade.

And that was just on day one.

MAGA cultists may not recognize the likely economic devastation, but a majority of American businesspeople do. So do the “profit over patriotism” lawyers who have bent the knee rather than stand up for the rule of law. And so do the economists and related scholars who work for the universities that have cowered and complied in order to retain federal grants.

In barely three months in office, an ignorant and petty madman has done incalculable damage to the rule of law, to the social safety net, to public health, to America’s alliances abroad– and now to a once-flourishing economy.

Increasing numbers of citizens are coming to understand the gravity of these actions. Call me Pollyanna, but I think the tariffs will provide a wake-up call to the cynical plutocrats who have been willing to go along with the mad king–ignoring the incredible damage being done to average Americans– in hopes of profiting from further tax cuts.

There’s an old political adage to the effect that matters have to “hit bottom” before spineless officials will take action. There’s an excellent case to be made that–thanks to our obviously insane Chief Executive–we’re there.

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The Rubber Is Meeting The Road

Paul Weiss, an enormous and influential law firm, and Columbia University, long considered a top-rank institution of higher education, have bent their knees to the bully in the White House. They didn’t offer even token resistance. (Many in the legal community now mockingly refer to the law firm as “Paul Wuss.”)

Their cowardice threatens all Americans.

A recent essay in The Contrarian  quoted Rachel Cohen, a young lawyer who organized a letter of protest against Donald Trump’s unconscionable attacks on lawyers and law firms, and who subsequently resigned from her job at Skadden Arps, which has evidently also bent the knee. (She’s not alone; see The Telegraph, Junior lawyers revolt after bosses bow to Trump ‘intimidation’.)

“Big law has a huge collective action problem,” she said. “[I]t’s because we are so risk averse.”

As the Contrarian notes,

In a real sense, the collective action problem—no one stands up to the MAGA onslaught because no one else is doing it—now permeates much of civil society (including the press, law firms, and universities). Tech barons feel compelled to cough up $1M for Trump’s inauguration because they don’t want to risk being left off the podium. Paul Weiss capitulates for fear other firms will do the same. Faced with oppressive, powerful forces, it is much easier to go along to get along, keep your head down, and not call attention to oneself. (Hence, the entire Republican Party capitulating to Trump.)

At a time when too many Americans measure their worth by comparisons to others’ wealth, status, and influence, the fear of losing something–access to a politician, research grants, social status, or blue ribbon clients–can become paralyzing. “It is called a collective action problem for a reason—it is hard to break the passivity cycle. But that does not mean it is impossible.

The essay suggests changing the incentives. Law firms bending the knee can be ostracized by associates; universities like Columbia should be shunned by students, faculty, and alumni who understand the degree to which compliance undermines intellectual integrity. When institutions face a downside–shaming– for doing the wrong thing, they might be more inclined to stand by their principles.

Meanwhile, other universities can eschew the ground of least resistance. They can pledge to reject attacks on academic freedom. If and when even one prestigious university lays down such a marker, it will cement its own status as a prominent academic institution that leads with integrity. (Also, one or more schools can offer Columbia students the opportunity to transfer, or could agree to hire researchers whose grants were cut. The loss of prestige, students, and top-notch faculty can be a disincentive to cave.)

I would note that incentivising moral/legal behavior is only necessary for institutions lacking the integrity to act on their purported principles without outside pressure.

The Association of American Law Schools has published a blistering letter denouncing Trump’s unprecedented attacks on legal and educational institutions.

Taken together these actions seek to chill criticism, silence those who may seek to hold the executive branch accountable and intimidate lawyers…. The independence of our universities and judiciary, and the ability of lawyers to fully represent their clients, are at the core of our democracy and have long been supported by all Americans, regardless of political party.

The letter called for collective efforts to push back against the Trump bullies, including coordination with alumni, judges, local bar associations, and other schools, and for public and private demonstrations of support for those Trump targets.

As a former lawyer and academic, I found the immediate, craven surrender of Paul Weiss and Columbia incredibly depressing.  A law firm unwilling to defend the rule of law has shamed itself; a University (especially one with an ample endowment, like Columbia) that sells its integrity for a grant betrays the central purpose of academia.

If I were in the market for legal services, I would not employ a law firm that has shown itself unwilling to defend itself. If I was once again seeking an academic position, I would avoid any university unwilling to defend academic freedom.

Several law firms attacked by Trump (Covington and Burling, Perkins Coie, Jenner and Block, and most recently, Wilmer Hale) have refused to fold, unlike Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps. At this juncture, I was able to find only five universities that have publicly spoken out against Trump’s vendetta. The president of Wesleyan, Michael Roth, was first and loudest; he’s been joined by presidents of Mount Holyoke, Delta College in Michigan, Trinity Community College in Washington DC, and Princeton.

Their ranks must increase. The rubber has hit the road.

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What The Fire Hose Obscures…

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of what has aptly been called the “firehose” of unconstitutional, illegal and profoundly stupid actions being taken by Trump and DOGE is the public’s corresponding inability to understand it all–to keep track of the assaults on the multiple responsibilities of government, and to recognize the immensity of the harms being done.

It’s all too easy to focus on the pettiness and bigotries–the erasures of the contributions of Blacks and women from official websites, the withdrawal of Secret Service protections from those on Trump’s extensive “enemies” list, the threats to law firms that represent people on that list…etc. etc. But while we are appalled by the lack of backbone being demonstrated by many of those targets (and all of the Republicans in Congress), we are missing less reported actions that are wreaking incalculable harms.

Last Sunday, the New York Times reported on one of those actions.

In a climate-controlled bunker in an unremarkable building in rural Aberdeen, Idaho, there are shelves upon shelves of meticulously labeled boxes of seed. This vault is home to many of the United States’ more than 62,000 genetically unique lines of wheat, collected over the past 127 years from around the world.

Though dormant, these seeds are alive. But unless they are continually cared for and periodically replanted, the lines will die, along with the millenniums of evolutionary history that they embody.

Since its establishment in 1898, the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Plant Germplasm System and the scientists who support it have systematically gathered and maintained the agricultural plant species that undergird our food system in vast collections such as the one in Aberdeen. The collections represent a towering achievement of foresight that food security depends on the availability of diverse plant genetic resources.

In mid-February, Trump administration officials at what has been labeled the Department of Government Efficiency fired some of the highly trained people who do this work. A court order has reinstated them, but it’s unclear when they will be allowed to resume their work. In the meantime, uncertainty around additional staffing and budget cuts, as well as the future of the collections themselves, reigns.

As the article notes, America’s food system relies on our ability to respond to the next plant disease or other emergent threat, and this little-known agency is essential to our preparedness. Across 22 stations maintained nationwide, 300 scientists maintain more than 600,000 genetic lines of more than 200 crop species.

The collections of some crops, like wheat, are in the form of seeds. But others, like apples (2,664 lines), must be maintained as living plants in the open field. The scientists who care for them must follow strict requirements for sustaining genetic purity so they can provide healthy viable seeds or plants to the tens of thousands of researchers and others who request them each year.

The article compares this activity to a survivalist cache. It represents a safeguard against all future challenges to growing the food we need. (You’d think a man with 13 children might care about the future of those children, if not the rest of the human race, but apparently not.)

Moving fast and breaking things may work in some sectors. But the disruptions underway threaten irreversible losses of crop genetic diversity. Such losses directly undermine the United States’ ability to ensure continued food security and dietary diversity amid challenges to our agricultural systems.

The word “irreversible” is chilling–and therein lies the challenge we face.

It isn’t just the fact that Americans have installed a collection of clowns and buffoons–in both the Oval Office and Congress– who lack any ability to govern, or even understand the purpose of government.  It isn’t their ham-handed efforts to erase evidence of diversity–much of which will be countered by  Internet sources. It isn’t even the mean-spiritedness of their attacks on disfavored “Others” (as one participant at a Town Hall put it, “what kind of people are only happy when they are hurting someone else?”). It’s the immense and irreversible damage that is being done, and the fact that the assaults are so widespread that we can’t keep track of them.

We can recover from the economic damage being done, although not without considerable pain as prices increase, tourism vanishes, and working Americans have fewer jobs and less disposable income. We will mourn the unnecessary deaths from vaccine misinformation, termination of medical research and drastic cuts to Medicaid, but the nation will survive those losses.

It’s the irreversible damage being done–to our international alliances, to food safety, to America’s promise of liberty and civi equality, and to who knows what else–that will forever mark this horrible juncture in our national story.

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