VIDEO OF THE DAY: Obama official goes nuclear on Trump
Brian Tyler Cohen sits down with former Obama speechwriter turned podcast icon Jon Favreau to discuss Trump's appalling deportation policies — and he does NOT hold back.
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Hello, John Roberts. America’s D-Day is coming. Whatcha gonna do?
Michael Tomasky, The New Republic: "As we approach the 100-day mark of Trump 2.0, we see, Lord knows, much to worry about. But one reassuring development has been that, by and large, the judicial branch has stood tough against the administration’s lawlessness. Federal judges James Boasberg and Paula Xinis are early heroes of the second Trump regime. I’m old enough to remember when the name J. Harvie Wilkinson III made me shake. He was elevated to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, was affiliated with the Federalist Society, and he always, on lists of possible Supreme Court nominees, occupied one of the hard-right slots. But now Wilkinson too has become a voice of sanity, writing the three-judge ruling handed down Thursday night that rebuked the Trump administration in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. The ruling is unequivocal and, as we shall see, went out of its way to alert Americans to the constitutional threat the administration poses. But it does something more important: It returns the spotlight to the Supreme Court, and specifically to Chief Justice John Roberts, pressuring them to stand up to this madness. And so, one of the key controversies roiling our democracy, from this case to others, is this: What will Roberts do? Now the court will be compelled to take a stronger stand. Can the nation’s highest court possibly allow this situation to continue? The government of the United States admits Abrego Garcia was deported by mistake and then says it’s powerless to return him, that only El Salvador can do that; and El Salvador says it’s powerless to return him, that only the United States can. If the court’s six conservative justices have any shred of dignity and respect for the role they’re supposed to play in this democracy, they cannot let this stand. It’s a fundamental issue. There remain only political questions, the chief one being: What feat of originalist–unitary executive legerdemain will the court’s conservatives perform to jam the square peg of Trump’s goals into the round holes of the United States Constitution? Whether they will do so is up to Roberts. Once upon a quaint old time, the chief justice would cajole his colleagues into consensus on matters of historical import. Earl Warren made sure that the ruling on Brown v. Board was 9–0, because he wanted the country to see that the court was united on this great historical question of segregation versus integration. One doubts 9–0 is possible on these major cases today, with these two guys hanging around. But Roberts at least should have the power to steer a majority to uphold the ideas that words mean what they say and that this is not a nation of one-man rule. Roberts’s name will live in history, either alongside brave jurists like Boasberg and Xinis or in infamy, alongside Roger Taney and, well, Clarence Thomas."
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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?
Wrong on principle, wrong politically
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin: "The Donald Trump administration is currently in the middle of what might be the gravest federal government overreach seen this century at least, asserting unprecedented repressive powers against even US citizens, defying a Supreme Court order to rectify one of its unlawful deportations, and thumbing its nose at core principles like the rule of law and separation of powers that American democracy was founded on. Challenging this loudly and fiercely should be a basic, commonsense position for anyone who believes in these things, and especially for an opposition party that has spent years screaming that Trump was a dictator in waiting. Yet the response from a shocking number of voices who should know better is that those appalled by this authoritarian overreach should meekly avoid the issue. They’re acting like the Trump administration is enjoying the kind of broad public support for its radical actions that George W. Bush did after September 11 — even as the record shows this is not remotely the case. The administration is now all but outright refusing to abide by a unanimous Supreme Court decision ordering it to bring one of the men back, and two judges are weighing holding Trump officials in criminal contempt for ignoring the courts. Meanwhile, the president was caught saying, and has since officially confirmed, that he is now trying to find a legal rationale to do this to not just immigrants but American citizens, as El Salvador’s leader works to double the size of the prison at Trump’s urging. This should all be deeply disturbing, whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or independent, conservative, centrist, liberal, or socialist. Which is why it’s stunning to find commentators urging people not to criticize or talk about any of this. Trump was “setting a trap for the Democrats, and like usual we’re falling for it,” one House Democrat told Axios anonymously, complaining that “rather than talking about the tariff policy and the economy . . . the thing where his numbers are tanking, we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser.” On Twitter/X, CNN commentator Chris Cillizza made a similar “case for why Democrats should *not* keep talking so much about Kilmar Abrego García,” one of the men disappeared in El Salvador, asking readers to think about “which issue is better, politically, for Democrats: Immigration or tariffs?” “Everyone should think about which topics they want to raise the salience of and why,” tweeted influential liberal pundit Matthew Yglesias, paired with a chart showing immigration to be Trump’s strongest issue. This is mistaken on multiple levels. On principle, it’s not an exaggeration to say that if the administration’s actions here are allowed to stand, both Trump and any future president will have the power to banish anyone they want to a foreign torture dungeon, US citizens included. This is by almost anyone’s standards a major and very dangerous overreach. You cannot say you’re deathly afraid for democracy and the Constitution, then turn around and demand silence about the president flouting court orders and asserting the right to disappear whomever he wants. So there is no real argument that anyone alarmed by or opposed to what is happening should stay quiet as Trump takes far more extreme and unconstitutional measures than Bush did, while in a far more precarious political position to do it. If you feel the need to speak out against this, you’re on solid ground — morally and politically."
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RFK’s claims about people with autism offer a sinister insight into how Trumpism sees us all
John Harris, The Guardian: "In the recent past, Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that Donald Trump is 'a terrible human being' and 'probably a sociopath.' But in the US’s new age of irrationalism and chaos, these two men are now of one voice, pursuing a strand of Trumpist politics that sometimes feels strangely overlooked. With Trump once again in the White House and Kennedy ensconced as his health and human services secretary, what they are jointly leading is becoming clearer by the day: a war on science and knowledge that aims to replace them with the modern superstitions of conspiracy theory. But if you want to really understand the Trump regime’s monstrousness, consider where Kennedy and a gang of acolytes are heading on an issue that goes to the heart of millions of lives: autism. Autism, he said, 'destroys' families; today’s autistic children 'will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.' Those comments have rightly triggered a huge backlash. But what has been rather lacking is a broader critique of Kennedy’s ideas, and how they go deep into aspects of the US’s culture and politics. Kennedy’s pronouncements are not only about what causes autism; they also reflect an age-old perception of autism as an aberration, and many autistic people as “ineducable” and beyond help. This surely blurs into populists’ loathing of modern ideas about human difference: once you have declared war on diversity, an attack on the idea of neurodiversity will not be far away. It also chimes with one of the new right’s most pernicious elements: its constant insistence that everything is actually much simpler than it looks. Which brings me to something it feels painful to have to write. Autism denotes a fantastically complicated set of human traits and qualities, but that does not make them any less real. It presents with and without learning disabilities, and can be synonymous with skills and talents. Its causes (if that is even the right word) are largely genetic, although careful research is focused on how those heritable aspects might sometimes – sometimes– intersect with factors during pregnancy, and with parental age. And obviously, those characterisations barely scratch the surface, which is some indication of the absurdity of Kennedy’s position, and how dangerous it is. Which brings me to something it feels painful to have to write. Autism denotes a fantastically complicated set of human traits and qualities, but that does not make them any less real. It presents with and without learning disabilities, and can be synonymous with skills and talents. Its causes (if that is even the right word) are largely genetic, although careful research is focused on how those heritable aspects might sometimes – sometimes– intersect with factors during pregnancy, and with parental age. And obviously, those characterisations barely scratch the surface, which is some indication of the absurdity of Kennedy’s position, and how dangerous it is. The American tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes shows the future we now have to avoid, and the kind of people we may have to fight, who will not just be arrogant and inhumane, but set on taking us back to a failed past: terrible human beings, you might call them."
There are many threats to humanity. A low birth rate isn’t one of them.
Samuel Miller McDonald, Current Affairs: "Far-right authoritarian pundits and political actors, from Matt Walsh to Elon Musk, all seem to have gotten the same memo instructing them to fixate on 'low' fertility and birth rates. Musk has claimed that 'population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming' and that it will lead to 'mass extinction.' But is this panic about low fertility driving human population collapse supported by any evidence? Precisely how the falling birth rate of a single species (humans) would lead to 'mass extinction,' in Musk’s words, is unclear. Whatever Musk may mean by this, experts say he is wrong. The human population has never been higher than it is today in all of history, and it will be higher tomorrow. And this increase has come on rapidly: the world’s human population was just around 6.1 billion in the year 2000, and it's already reached a little over 8.2 billion today. What’s going on here? Are these ostensibly rational and educated commentators, whether authoritarian, liberal, or egalitarian, all suffering from the same mass delusion, tricking themselves into thinking there’s a scarcity of human beings? Or is there a more rational explanation: could they actually be bound by shared ideological commitments? Oligarchs are desperate to maintain an army of slaves and soldiers—slaves to serve them, soldiers to protect them from threats internal and external. Self-proclaimed “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh recently posted online that young people foregoing procreation because they don’t have sufficient financial resources are “cop[ping] out.” Because, he argues, much poorer people throughout history have been capable of having children, young people in the U.S. should as well, regardless of their finances. First, just because younger people are having fewer kids now, that doesn’t mean they never will. But the bigger problem with Walsh’s argument is that it only makes sense if you care about the quantity of human life more than the quality of human life. Sure, it is technically low cost to impregnate someone. But in the U.S., providing a stable, healthy, safe, and enriching upbringing for a child has become increasingly difficult due to rising costs of living, stagnant wages, and disinvestment in public goods and services. When someone is making a choice about whether to have a child, they ought to be anticipating loving that child and wanting the best for them. Walsh doesn’t care about this: he is a rich guy who sits around spouting his opinion for lots of money. He sees your children as occupying the lower classes; he sees them as the slaves who will wait on him and his class or the soldiers who will protect them. He is fine with your children living miserable lives, as long as they fulfill these roles. There are a couple of other important motivations behind this birth rate panic. One is racial: most of those who champion higher birth rates tend not to extend that advocacy to non-white people. Another motivation relates to gender. As Mussolini demonstrated, engineering fertility is a way of controlling women, getting them out of the labor market and tied to domestic servitude. Many of the pundits calling for increasing the birth rate are also those who advocate for a “trad” lifestyle in which women are financially dependent on their spouses and are unable to do anything but domestic labor. Whether delusion or propaganda or both, 'demographic collapse' is a false problem. If the quantity of human life does one day stop growing and actually starts to decrease, it is likely that, in many places, if history is any guide, the quality of human life will be fine and could even increase with it. Perhaps more importantly today, the quality and quantity of non-human forms of life—which, unlike Musk’s mass-human-extinction lie, are in a state of actual mass extinction—would receive a vital respite. More forms of life would have more good opportunities to exist. As with many other issues, if the right wing’s greatest fears were to come true, it would almost certainly be fine for everybody… except, maybe, a few oligarchs."
Food for thought
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