Sunday Dose of Democracy:

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump official makes bombshell public admission exposing Trump
Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff made a stunning blunder while talking with Tucker Carlson — revealing that in fact, Donald Trump is *not* a good negotiator and it's actually incredibly easy to dupe him. We know you're all just shocked. SHOCKED!

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What the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador experienced
Philip Holsinger, TIME: "In the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process. I was there to document their arrival. The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, 'I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.' I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster. The men were pulled from the buses so fast the guards couldn’t keep pace. Chained at their ankles and wrists, they stumbled and fell, some guards falling to the ground with them. With each fall came a kick, a slap, a shove. The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear. Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again. After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair. They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts."

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Elon Musk drops money bomb on critical state Supreme Court race
WisDems: There’s a must-win state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin on April 1st — and Elon Musk just dropped half a million dollars into attack ads in an attempt to steal back the court for Republicans and put anti-abortion extremist Brad Schimel into power. Wisconsin is one of the most important swing states in the country and the integrity of our future elections is at serious risk if the GOP retakes control of the state’s highest court. Will you make a donation to Wisconsin Democrats and help stop Elon from buying ANOTHER election with his dark money?

Trump v. Boasberg: If this isn’t a constitutional crisis, what is?
Michael Tomasky, The New Republic: "Think we’re not in a constitutional crisis yet? We’re not. We’re in several. One involves Elon Musk and DOGE, barging their way into the United States Institute for Peace, created by Congress under Ronald Reagan, with DOGE staffers apparently ripping the organization’s logo off the wall. DOGE is not an arm of the government. It’s a quasi-private goon squad taking a machete across Washington, D.C., at the personal whims of two men. Any non–ideologically zealous court would toss its actions in five minutes—as indeed at least one already has, with respect to USAID. There’s so much more. The revocation of birthright citizenship. The attempted federal spending freeze. The attempted firings of agency heads. The ordered removal of federal employees with civil service protections. That birthright citizenship order—contravening the plain text of the Constitution—was issued on Donald Trump’s very first day in office. Arguably, the constitutional crisis started right then and there. Since, three different judges have blocked the order. But shocking as all that has been, nothing touches what Trump is trying to do to Judge James Boasberg over those three planes full of alleged Venezuelan gang members. The administration’s latest legal gambit, to invoke the state secrets privilege in an attempt not to have to disclose any information about the detainees or the flights, amounts to an effort by Trump to say that he can take any action against anyone he deems a danger to the state. That’s an attempt at dictatorship. He invoked an ancient (and often criticized) law during non-wartime, which no president has ever done. A federal judge said, Hey, wait a minute and ordered the action ended (that is, he ordered those airplanes turned around). Trump ignored that order; the planes flew on. Now Trump’s attorney general has invoked yet another obscure and controversial law in an effort to shut the judge up. And finally, Trump now demands that Congress impeach the judge because of his refusal to accept the laws of the land. Let us recognize the stakes: Today, it’s noncitizens who are the victims of Trump’s lawlessness. Maybe Trump will stop there. But if this gets to the Supreme Court and a majority there upholds Trump’s position, do we really think Trump won’t at least be sorely tempted to galumph his way through that open door? And if the House votes to impeach Boasberg, do we really think that won’t chill and intimidate other judges? We don’t have to wait for Trump to defy the Supreme Court to think it’s a constitutional crisis. We are in crises, plural, right now. And it’s only been two months."

In your face: The brutal aesthetics of MAGA
Inae Oh, Mother Jones: "In the early morning hours of January 28, as dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrived in New York to round up undocumented immigrants, a shimmering Kristi Noem appeared in the Bronx. She wore a bulletproof vest and a baseball cap, but also dramatic makeup and hair coiled to show off a set of pearl earrings. Noem is one of several figures—a few men, but mostly women—in President Donald Trump’s orbit to undergo striking physical transformations as the boundaries that once delineated celebrity and political power fully disintegrate. The resulting look has since sparked satirical backlash online, with critics mocking “conservative girl makeup.” But the most jarring aesthetic in this burgeoning MAGA stagecraft is the unbridled embrace of face-altering procedures: plastic surgery, veneers, and injectables like Botox and fillers. Although plastic surgery and injectables are enjoyed far beyond conservative circles, what distinguishes Mar-a-Lago face from what you and I might contemplate getting done on an especially self-flagellating day is the aggressive, overt nature with which MAGA-ites seem to pursue it. 'Over the top, overdone, ridiculous,' is how one New York plastic surgeon I spoke with described it. But for the MAGA-verse, today’s tweaks seem intended to signal membership with Trump, a man notoriously obsessed with the literal pageantry of beauty, and his broader efforts to force strict gender norms onto the electorate. The aesthetic is, like Trump’s politics, ridiculously blunt...Any empathy one might have for those who apparently feel a need to conform to Mar-a-Lago face instantly evaporates when power is wielded for the shocking cruelty we now see before us: mass deportations, but make it sexy. Noem in a cowboy hat threatening 'economic pain' upon other nations. Inhumanity as ASMR. Each features a callous energy that courses through. In the same way their aesthetics build on conservative notions of gender, ultimately producing such garishness, Trump builds on old American ideals—empire and capitalism—and turbocharges them into the nightmare before us."

Wells Fargo is plotting to privatize the Post Office
Paul Prescod, Jacobin: "Fueled by Donald Trump’s billionaire cabinet and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) anti-government crusade, privatizers are on the prowl. The first month of Trump 2.0 has been a bonanza of unabashed scamming and self-dealing by the country’s wealthy elite. The administration has sent a clear signal to profiteers: now’s your chance to get in on the action. For decades, the Right has drooled at the thought of privatizing the United States Postal Service (USPS). Now it’s working to make that dream a reality. In December, Trump indicated that he was considering placing USPS under the Department of Commerce. Just recently, Louis DeJoy, the Trump-appointed postmaster general, agreed to partner with DOGE to get the ball rolling. Major financial institutions are giddy at the prospect. Last month, Wells Fargo released a memo outlining political pathways to achieve postal privatization and the various opportunities for profit. Their plan is clear: sell off the most profitable parts, raise prices, and decimate the unionized workforce. The scheme represents an attack on the very foundations of this popular universal public service. Wells Fargo envisions a postal service where the mail is kept as a taxpayer-funded government entity while the package and parcel components, which are more profitable, are 'sold or IPOed.' In order for the new private company to earn a decent profit, 'USPS would need to raise prices by ~30-140% across its product line.' A privatized postal system would also take aim at the Universal Service Obligation, which requires mail to be delivered to every address six days a week. Such dedication to equitable service 'would be a challenge for a third-party operator to profitably move mail and packages,' the memo complains. This move would also put pressure on the proposed mail-only service, which would likely be financially hobbled, to downgrade from six-day delivery as well. With surprising candor, the memo admits that privatization will cause 'less job security amid inevitable loss of union protections, loss of pension benefits, higher healthcare costs and employee/wage restructuring.' With post offices in every zip code, it’s not surprising that Wells Fargo is also looking at real estate as a major source of profit. The company estimates the real estate value for the USPS to be as much as $88 billion. This includes “smaller post office facilities” Wells Fargo would love to sell off or lease. These post offices serve as critical pieces of public infrastructure, especially in small towns and rural areas. Wells Fargo is smart enough to know that the main xxxxxxs of opposition to privatization are the major postal unions. Referencing the Great Postal Strike of 1970, the memo’s authors fear the prospect of 'employees jointly striking and causing material damage' to the economy as a whole. Instead of privatization, the postal service should be expanded to perform services like postal banking, copying documents, wrapping holiday presents, and more. Financial institutions like Wells Fargo want to turn an essential public service into another moneymaking machine and destroy unionized workers in the process. If the Wells Fargo memo is any indication, the silver lining is that they know we have the power to stop them.'

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Deb Haaland vows to protect us from Trump and his billionaire allies
Deb Haaland for Governor: Deb Haaland has fiercely fought for justice and delivered results for working people throughout her life, be it as an organizer, from the halls of Congress, or as Secretary of the Department of the Interior. She will always refuse to sit idly by while Trump and his un-elected billionaire allies unleash chaos across the country and give polluters free rein to destroy our pristine wilderness. We can help Deb fight back against Trump by electing her to the governor’s office in New Mexico. Will you chip in to help this fierce public servant answer the call to service once again?