Letter From An American by Heather Cox Richardson

mickeyrat

April 3, 2025 (Thursday)

Trump’s announcement last night that he was placing high tariffs on countries around the world came after the stock market closed, but it drove stock futures dramatically downward. Overseas, global markets also plunged. Today, before the stock market opened, Trump posted on his social media site: “THE OPERATION IS OVER! THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING. THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Fittingly, it was former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who rang the bell opening the stock market today. Giuliani represented Newsmax, the right-wing media channel with ties to Trump. As soon as the market opened, stocks fell straight down. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 1,679 points, falling about 4%, its biggest fall since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in 2020. The S&P 500 fell 274 points, or 4.8%. The Nasdaq Composite fell more than 1,050 points, or almost 6%. The losses wiped out about $2 trillion.

Trump justified the tariffs by declaring that the U.S. is in the midst of a national emergency, but this afternoon he left the White House for a long weekend in Florida, where his private Doral resort outside of Miami is holding the first domestic golf tournament of the season of LIV Golf, which is financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.

Trump’s tariffs are not an economic policy. Tariffs are generally imposed on products, not on nations. By placing them on countries, the White House was able to arrive at its numbers with a nonsensical formula that appears to have been reached by asking AI how to impose tariffs—a suggestion so outlandish that I dismissed when I saw it last night, but economist Paul Krugman today identified it as being a likely possibility. CNBC’s Steve Liesman said: “Nobody ever heard of this formula. Nobody has ever used this formula. So I’m sorry, but the conclusion seems to be the president kind of made this up as he went along....”

Today, former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers posted: “It’s now clear that the [Trump] Administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science. The Trump tariff policy makes little sense EVEN if you believe in protectionist mercantilist economics.”

Editor of The American Prospect David Dayen notes that there is no apparent policy behind the tariffs, no thought, for example, as to whether it is even possible for the U.S. to ramp up the kind of domestic manufacturing Trump claims to want. While Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS, “You’re going to see employment leaping starting today,” in fact, both automaker Stellantis and appliance manufacturer Whirlpool announced layoffs because of the tariffs.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out that building and establishing a new plant in the U.S. will take a minimum of three to five years even if investors are inclined to support one, but Victoria Guida reported in Politico that corporate executives are saying they cannot invest in manufacturing until they can project costs, and Trump is far too unpredictable to enable them to do that with any confidence.  

Dayen writes that Trump’s tariffs are essentially sanctions on the rest of the world. His behavior is, Dayen says, “no different from a mob boss moving into town and sending his thugs to every business on Main Street, roughing up the proprietors and asking for protection money so they don’t get pushed out of business.” Dayen notes that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued last year for using the extraordinary power of the U.S. economy to force other countries to do as the U.S. wants, creating a U.S. sphere of influence through economic pressure.

Extending the comparison to a mob boss, Dayen notes that “protection money” could take many forms: “curbing migration, taking in more U.S. farm exports or weapons systems, reducing industrial capacity in China and forcing more consumption, buying long-dated U.S. debt on the cheap, siding with a war strategy against Iran, literally anything the White House wants.”

Trump’s son Eric appeared to confirm that the tariffs are a shakedown when he posted: “I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with [Trump]. The first to negotiate will win—the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life.…” Foreign affairs journalist David Rothkopf was more graphic: “These aren’t tariffs,” he wrote. “They are a horse’s head in the bed of (almost) every world government and business leader.” Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman suggested that if a government refused to negotiate with Trump, that country’s major companies should deal directly with Trump, exempting that company’s products from tariffs in exchange for a new factory or some other investment Trump wants.

Trump is overturning the past 80 years of global trade cooperation in order to concentrate power in his own hands. Congress began to take down the tariff walls of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when it passed the 1934 Reciprocal Tariff Act enabling the president to lower the high tariff rates Republicans had established with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff. That tariff had worsened the Great Depression. With the turn away from tariff walls and toward international cooperation, global trade has fostered international cooperation and created the rising prosperity of the twentieth century.

“The global economy is fundamentally different today than it was yesterday,” Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney said today. “The system of global trade anchored on the United States…is over. Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over. The 80-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 goods and services is over. While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.”

Ending systems of global free trade dovetails with the idea of getting rid of the international rules-based order created after World War II. After that horrific war, world leaders decided to create a system of international institutions, like the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to provide ways in which countries could protect their sovereignty and work out their differences without going to war.

Trump’s threats against other countries, including Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, are a direct rejection of those principles. That rejection reinforces the Trump regime’s embrace of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which invaded Ukraine first in 2014 and again in 2022 and is trying to justify grabbing Ukrainian territory. Under Trump, the U.S. is siding with Russia rather than Ukraine in this war in a stunning rejection of the institutions and principles that have stabilized the globe since World War II.

Putin is now threatening NATO countries, prompting them to prepare for defense. “We are not at war,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said recently, “but we are certainly not at peace either.”

Some of those advocating tariff walls and forcing our allies to maintain their own defense suggest that creating a U.S. sphere of influence is the best way to counter a rising China, but there is no doubt that the concept of such spheres caters to the worldview of Russian and Chinese leaders. As scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder points out, weakening the U.S. and its allies also benefits Russia by increasing Russia’s power relative to other countries, making it easier to establish the multipolar world Russia wants.

The Trump administration is also undermining post–World War II democracy at home. Last night, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) identified Trump’s tariffs as “a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.” Murphy pointed to Trump’s shakedown of prominent law firms, four of which he has attacked with executive orders. He also pointed to Trump’s attacks on universities, withholding government funding until their administrators bow to MAGA’s ideological demands.  

Sarah D. Wire of USA Today reported that earlier this week the Institute for Museum and Library Studies was effectively closed, and over the past two days the administration told libraries across the country that grants awarded last year have been terminated. Today the administration cut federal grants for arts and humanities across the country: museums, archives, historic sites, educational projects, and so on—all defunded. It also cut this year’s funding for National History Day, a popular history program in schools that is already underway.

On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services slashed jobs and programs in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even as measles continues to spread and two Louisiana infants have died of whooping cough. Today, news broke that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is implementing a hiring freeze even as flash floods and tornadoes just today have killed at least seven people in the Midwest to the mid-South.  

The plan, as Vice President J.D. Vance explained in a 2021 interview, is to destroy the current government, business, educational, cultural, and scientific pillars of the United States in order to replace them with a new system, although there is tension between the Project 2025 wing of MAGA and the technocrats’ wing over whether that new system will be a theocracy or a technocracy. In either case, it will be an authoritarian government in which power and money concentrate in a very few hands.

The administration’s crusade against the state of Maine shows what this looks like. After Maine governor Janet Mills told Trump the state would follow state and federal law rather than bow to his demands, acting Social Security Administration commissioner Leland Dudek canceled contracts permitting Maine parents to apply for Social Security numbers for their newborns from the hospital and for Maine families to report deaths from funeral homes. Told such a change would risk identity theft and wasteful spending, Dudek told the agency to do it anyway in order to punish Mills.  

After an outcry, Dudek backtracked, but yesterday the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced she was freezing federal funds for Maine educational programs. The Trump administration would stand against “a leftist social agenda,” Rollins wrote.

The problem for Republicans is that while the sort of inflammatory language Rollins used has been a staple of the party for decades, the MAGA agenda itself is not popular. Only about 4% of voters who knew about Project 2025 wanted to see it enacted, and billionaire Elon Musk, who runs the “Department of Government Efficiency” that is slashing through government programs, is so unpopular that his support for a candidate in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election actually appeared to have hurt, rather than helped, that candidate.

Now party members have to deal with the fact their president has tanked the economy by enacting what the National Review says is likely the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history. Now countries around the globe are imposing reciprocal tariffs on the U.S. while also negotiating their own trade agreements that cut out the U.S. Those agreements are not only for products like soybeans, but also for weapons, a development the administration is protesting.

Republican members of Congress could stop Trump at any time. In the case of tariffs, they could simply reassert their constitutional power to manage tariffs. If they choose not to and the economy doesn’t recover and thrive as Trump keeps promising, voters can be expected to hold them, as well as him, to account.

Right now Republican leaders appear to be hoping that Trump’s attempt to extort other countries will work and the tariffs will be short lived. But their enthusiasm for that strategy seems to be well under control.

Today, Bill Ackman resorted to defending the tariffs by posting: “Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side you are crazy.”

mickeyrat

April 4, 2025 (Friday)

The stock market rout continued today. As expected, China announced retaliatory tariffs in response to those President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday. Chinese leaders say they will impose a 34% tariff on all U.S. goods imported into China next Thursday. Apparently, Trump did not think China would respond to his tariffs, and tried to sound as if he was still in control of the situation.

Trump is spending a long weekend in Florida, where he is attending the LIV golf tournament at his Doral club. But at 8:25 this morning, he reposted on his social media channel a video in which the narrator claimed that Trump is crashing the markets on purpose. The video claimed that legendary investor Warren Buffet “just said Trump is making the best economic moves he’s seen in over fifty years.” It went on to explain how “the secret game he’s playing” “could make you rich.” Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway quickly denied Buffett had said any such thing as the video claimed. “All such reports are false,” it said. In March, Buffett called tariffs “an act of war, to some degree.”  

Then, about an hour before the U.S. markets opened, Trump posted on his social media channel:  “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED—THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!” About twenty minutes later, he posted: “TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE. THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”

When the markets opened, they plummeted again. During trading today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,231 points, or 5.5%, on top of the 1,679 points it fell yesterday. The S&P 500 fell 5.97% following the 4.84% it lost yesterday. The Nasdaq Composite dropped a further 5.8% after yesterday’s drop of nearly 6%. Oil prices also fell sharply despite the fact that Trump had exempted the U.S. energy industry from tariffs, as traders anticipate lower economic growth and thus less demand for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

Twenty-five minutes before the market closed, Trump posted: “ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!”

After-market trading continued downward.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said today that Trump’s tariffs are “highly likely” to increase inflation and risk throwing people out of work. Economists at JPMorgan now place the odds of global recession at 60% unless the tariffs are ended.

Natalie Allison, Jeff Stein, Cat Zakrzewski, and Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post reported how Trump came to impose the tariffs. After aides from a number of different government agencies came up with options for Trump to review, he decided instead on a different option, one that has drawn ridicule because it is crude and has nothing to do with tariffs at all. He reached the amounts of tariff levies by dividing the trade deficit of each nation (not including services) by the value of its imports and then dividing the final number by 2.

The reporters note that Trump didn’t land on a plan until less than three hours before he announced it, and made his choice with little input from business or foreign leaders. Neither Republican lawmakers nor the president’s team knew what Trump would do. “He’s at the peak of just not giving a f*ck anymore,” a White House official told the reporters. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f*ck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

While right-wing media and Republican lawmakers have worked hard to spin the economic crisis sparked by Trump’s tariffs, Financial Times chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch used charts on social media to show that Americans are not happy. Consumers give Trump’s economic plan the worst ratings of any administration’s economic policy since records began. He has had the same impact on economic uncertainty as the global coronavirus pandemic did. Almost 60% of Americans expect the economy to deteriorate over the next year, and they are very worried about job losses.

Burn-Murdoch noted that despite the attempt of right-wing media to hide the crisis, more than half of Americans have heard unfavorable business news coverage of the government’s policies. While MAGA continues to approve of Trump, he’s rapidly losing support among the rest of the coalition that put him into office.

The administration apparently doesn’t care much more about the law than it does about the reactions to the tariffs that are crashing the economy. Today, U.S. District Court judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to bring back to the United States no later than 11:59 p.m. on April 7 a legal resident it mistakenly sent to a notorious prison for terrorists in El Salvador. On Monday, administration lawyers told the court that the government had swept up Kilmar Abrego Garcia because of an “administrative error” but that it could not bring him back because he was outside the reach of American laws.  

Priscilla Alvarez and Emily R. Condon of CNN note that in a hearing about the case, Xinis said that Abrego Garcia, who was in the U.S. legally and was not charged with any crimes, was arrested last month “without legal basis” and was deported “without justification of legal basis.” “This was an illegal act,” Xinis said. “Congress said you can’t do it, and you did it anyway.”

Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, responded to the judge’s order by calling Xinis a “Marxist judge” who “thinks she’s president of El Salvador.” The White House responded to the judge’s order by saying, “We suggest the Judge contact President Bukele [of El Salvador] because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador.”

Legal analyst Steve Vladeck responded that while a U.S. federal court cannot order the Salvadoran government to release Abrego Garcia, the U.S. government should be able to secure his release. If it can—and in this case it should be able to—the court can order it to do so.

If that were not the case, the administration could simply get rid of anyone it wanted to by sending them to a prison outside the jurisdiction of the United States and then claiming it had no way to get them back.

Tonight, as the economy is in turmoil, Trump is speaking at a $1 million-per-person candlelight fundraising dinner at the Trump Organization's Mar-a-Lago property for the super PAC, MAGA Inc., that supports Trump. By law, MAGA Inc. can’t coordinate with Trump’s campaign organization, so the invitations for the dinner say that Trump is simply a guest speaker and is not asking for donations.

The terrible storms in the middle of the country continue. Authorities have issued flash flood emergencies in parts of Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas, and heavy rains are also expected in Kentucky.

Finally, four soldiers who died when their military vehicle sank in a deep swamp in Lithuania during a training exercise came home to Dover Air Force Base, in Dover, Delaware, today. Their recovery took about 200 U.S., Polish, Estonian, and Lithuanian personnel a week and required drones, search dogs, Navy divers, and ground-penetrating radar, as well as 70 tons of sand and gravel.

“We consider US soldiers in Lithuania as our own,” the Lithuanian Defense Ministry said after thousands of people joined Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda and other dignitaries in a dignified departure ceremony of the soldiers from Lithuania. “The farewell ceremony once again demonstrated our society's solidarity, respect, and gratitude to the Americans.”

mickeyrat

April 5, 2025 (Saturday)

It’s been quite a week.

On Monday, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) began an epic speech in the Senate calling out the crisis in which the nation finds itself. He finished just over 25 hours later, on Tuesday, setting a new record for the longest Senate speech. In it, he urged Americans to speak up for our democracy and to “be bolder in America with a vision that inspires with hope.”

Shortly after Booker yielded the floor on Tuesday night, election officials in Wisconsin announced the results of an election for a seat on the state supreme court. The candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump and backed by more than $20 million from billionaire Elon Musk lost the race to his opponent, circuit court judge Susan Crawford, by more than ten points.

On Wednesday, April 2, a day that he called “Liberation Day,” President Trump announced unexpectedly high tariffs on goods produced by countries around the world. On Thursday the stock market plummeted. Friday, the plummet continued while Trump was enjoying a long weekend at one of his private golf resorts.

And then today, across the country, millions of people turned out for “Hands Off” protests to demonstrate opposition to the Trump administration, Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” that has been slashing government agencies and employees, and, more generally, attacks on our democracy.

In San Francisco, where Buddy and I joined a protest, what jumped out to me was how many of the signs in the crowd called for the protection of the U.S. Constitution, our institutions, and the government agencies that keep us safe.

Scholars often note that the American Revolution of 250 years ago was a movement not to change the status quo but to protect it. The colonists who became revolutionaries sought to make sure that patterns of self-government established over generations could not be overturned by foreign officials seeking to seize power.

We seem to be at it again....

mickeyrat

April 6, 2025 (Sunday)

After President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements on April 2 wiped $5 trillion dollars from the stock market, the Republican Party is scrambling.

Farmers, who were a part of Trump’s base, are “struck and shocked” by the tariffs, the president of the South Dakota Farmers Union told Lauren Scott of CBC News, saying they will have a “devastating effect.” Rob Copeland, Lauren Hirsch, and Maureen Farrell of the New York Times report that Wall Street leaders who backed Trump are now criticizing him publicly, with one calling for someone to stop him. The size of yesterday’s peaceful protests around the country, less than 100 days into Trump’s term when he should be enjoying a honeymoon, demonstrated growing fury at the administration’s actions.

Yesterday, in the midst of the economic crisis and as millions of protesters gathered across the country, the White House announced that “[t]he President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round tomorrow.” This afternoon, President Donald J. Trump posted a video of himself hitting a golf ball off a tee, perhaps as a demonstration that he is unconcerned about the chaos in the markets.

When Trump administration officials Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett appeared on this morning’s Sunday shows, their attempts to reassure Americans and deflect concerns also sounded out of touch.

Bessent, a billionaire, told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press that the administration is creating a new, more secure economic system and that Americans “who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening.” He went on to suggest that the losses were likely not that significant and would turn out fine in the long term.

Lutnick insisted that the tariffs are about national security and bringing back manufacturing, although the administration has frozen the Inflation Reduction Act funding for the manufacturing President Joe Biden brought to the U.S., overwhelmingly in Republican-dominated districts. Lutnick kept hitting on the MAGA talking point that other countries are ripping the U.S. off, and insisted that the tariffs are here to stay.

On This Week by ABC News, Hassett took the opposite position: that countries are already calling the White House to begin tariff negotiations. Host George Stephanopoulos asked Hassett about the video Trump posted on his social media account claiming that he was crashing the market on purpose, forcing him to say that crashing the economy was not part of Trump’s strategy. Hassett claimed that the tariffs will not cost consumers more and that Trump is “trying to deliver for American workers.”

The tariffs not only have forced administration officials into contradictory positions, but also have brought into the open the rift between old MAGA and billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump’s tariff policy reflects the ideas of his senior counselor on manufacturing and trade, Peter Navarro, a China hawk who invented an “expert” to support his statements in his own books. Musk, who opposes the tariffs, has taken shots at Navarro on his social media platform X. On Saturday, Musk directly contradicted Trump and MAGA when he told a gathering of right-wing Italians that he wants the U.S. and Europe to create a tariff-free zone as well as "more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America." On the Fox News Channel this morning, Navarro retorted that Musk “sells cars” and is just trying to protect his own interests.

Republicans also have to quell fires as the demands of the very different constituencies Trump brought into his coalition to win in 2024 are creating growing anger. A second child has now died of measles in West Texas, and as of this morning, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of opposing vaccines, had continued to call vaccines a personal decision. Although he is not a doctor, he pushed the idea that ingesting Vitamin A helps patients recover from measles. Since his suggestion, a hospital in Texas says it is now treating children whose bodies have toxic levels of Vitamin A.

During the confirmation process for his post, Kennedy seems to have promised Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and a medical doctor, that he would not alter vaccine systems, but since taking office he has made dramatic cuts. Today, Cassidy posted on X, “Everyone should be vaccinated!” and added: “Top health officials should say so unequivocally b/4 another child dies.”  

Evidently feeling the pressure as the measles outbreak spreads, Kennedy this afternoon conceded on X that “[t]he most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.”

Today, Dan Diamond and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post reported that cuts to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have even Republican lawmakers and former Trump officials from his first term worried that the country is at risk of food-related disease outbreaks like the 2022 contamination of infant formula. On April 4, Heather Vogell of ProPublica reported that the Abbott Laboratories factory at the heart of the 2022 crisis continues to use the same unsanitary practices. Employees told her that workers still take shortcuts when cleaning and checking equipment for bacteria as supervisors try to increase production and retaliate against those who complain about problems.

The White House told Diamond and Natanson that cuts to the FDA and other health agencies will make them more “nimble and strategic.” Abbott Laboratories told Vogell that the workers’ assertions were “untrue or misleading” and said it “stands behind the quality and safety of all our products.”
 
Diamond and Natanson note that experts who worked under both Republican and Democratic presidents, as well as former Trump officials and Republican lawmakers are also concerned about cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors atmospheric and ocean systems and predicts weather, and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that responds to disasters. Storms across the South have been wreaking havoc in the past days. Today alone saw deadly weather in Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and Oklahoma; the governors of Tennessee and Kentucky have declared states of emergency.

Reporter James Fallows notes that the U.S. senators from the states hardest hit—Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas—are all Republicans and are all backing Trump and Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is behind the cuts to NOAA and FEMA.

Today, Michael Sainato of The Guardian reported that workers at the Social Security Administration say that cuts to staffing and services along with policy changes have created “complete, utter chaos” at the agency that is threatening to cause a “death spiral.” Acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration Leland Dudek told Sainato that “we are updating our policy to provide better customer service to the country’s most vulnerable populations.”

Late Thursday, Trump fired General Timothy D. Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and of the U.S. Cyber Command, as well as Haugh’s deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, and several staff members from the White House National Security Council. He apparently did so at the recommendation of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. The NSA collects information from overseas computer networks, while Cyber Command engages in both offensive and defensive operations on them.

While Democrats are out front, lawmakers across the political spectrum are concerned about the firings. Senator Angus King (I-ME), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Julian E. Barnes of the New York Times: “Our country is under attack right now in cyberspace, and the president has just removed our top general from the field for no reason at the recommendation of someone who knows nothing about national security or even the job this general does.”

And then there is the crisis over the arrest and rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to prison in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was in the U.S. legally, is married to a U.S. citizen, and is the father of a U.S. citizen. In 2019 a court barred the government from deporting him to El Salvador. On March 31 an official from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the court under oath that Abrego Garcia had been arrested and deported to prison because of an “administrative error.” And yet the government also said it could not get him back because he is no longer in U.S. jurisdiction.

After a hearing on Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States no later than 11:59 p.m. on April 7. The administration immediately filed an emergency motion to stop the order while it appeals her decision. Today, Xinis filed her opinion, which said that “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal…. [H]is detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” And yet administration officials “cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person—migrant and U.S. citizen alike—to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the 'custodian,' and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction.”

Today, Cecilia Vega, Aliza Chasan, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Andy Court, and Annabelle Hanflig of CBS News’s 60 Minutes reported that 75% of the Venezuelans the Trump administration sent to prison in El Salvador “have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.” Another 22% have records for nonviolent crimes like shoplifting or trespassing. A dozen or so are accused of murder, rape, assault, or kidnapping. When the reporters reached out to the Department of Homeland Security about these numbers, a spokesperson said that those without criminal records “are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters, and more; they just don't have a rap sheet in the U.S.”

This utter disregard for the constitutional right to due process is raising alarm among Americans who have noted that when Trump declared an emergency at the southern border on January 20, he ordered the secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security to advise him whether they thought it necessary to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act. That act allows a president during times of civil unrest to use the military against U.S. citizens.

U.S. stock futures plunged again tonight, with Dow Jones Industrial Average futures down 1,250 points, or 3.3%, S&P 500 futures down 3.7%, and Nasdaq futures down 4.6%. And yet Trump is doubling down on tariffs, posting that they are “a beautiful thing to behold…. Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!”

Republican leaders have not silenced the chatter about Trump serving a third term, despite its obvious unconstitutionality, at least in part because they know he is the only person who can turn out MAGA voters. But their calculations appear to be changing. Today, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Sunday that Trump is a “very smart man, and…I wish we could have him for 20 years as our president,” but that “I think he’s going to be finished, probably, after this term.”

mickeyrat

April 7, 2025 (Monday)

Major indexes on the stock market began down more than 3% today when, as Allison Morrow of CNN reported, a rumor that Trump was considering delaying his tariffs by three months sent stocks surging upward by almost 8%. The rumor was unfounded—it appeared to begin from a small account on X—but it indicated how desperate traders are to see an end to President Donald J. Trump’s trade war.

As soon as the rumor was discredited, the market began to fall again, although Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s announcement that he is opening trade negotiations with Japan and looking forward to talks with other countries appeared to reassure some traders that Trump's tariffs will not last. The wild swings made the day one of the most volatile in stock market history.  It ended with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by 349 points and the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite staying relatively flat. Futures for tomorrow are up slightly.

Foreign markets fared badly today, suggesting that the reality of Trump’s tariffs is beginning to sink in. Sam Goldfarb of the Wall Street Journal notes that Hong Kong’s Hang Seng took its biggest dive since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, losing 13%, and that other markets also fell today.

Goldfarb reports that in the U.S., traders are deeply worried about losses but also anxious about missing a rebound if the administration changes its policies. Hence the extreme volatility of the market. Generally, values over 30 are considered indicators of increased risk and uncertainty in the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index, the so-called fear gauge. Today, it spiked to 60.

Business leaders are speaking out publicly against Trump’s tariffs. Today, Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot and a major Republican donor, told the Financial Times: “I don’t understand the goddamn formula.”

Senate Republicans are also starting to push back. Seven Republican senators have now signed onto a bill that would limit Trump’s ability to impose tariffs. The power to levy tariffs belongs to Congress, but Congress has permitted a president to adjust tariffs on an emergency basis. Trump declared an emergency, and it is on that ground that he has upended more than 90 years of global economic policy.

Trump has threatened to veto any such legislation, but he will not need to if Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuse to bring the measure to a vote. Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico report that while  Republicans express concern about the tariffs in private, leaders will stand with the president because they must have the votes of MAGA lawmakers to pass any of their legislative agenda through Congress, and to get that they will need Trump’s support. Others are worried about incurring Trump’s wrath and, with it, a primary challenger.

“People are skittish. They’re all worried about it,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told Carney and Hill. “But they are putting on a stiff upper lip to act as though nothing is happening and hoping it goes away.”

But so far, it does not look as if it’s going to go away. Today the European Commission has announced 25% countertariffs in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs.

Trump’s response to the crisis has been to double down on his tariff plan. This morning he wrote on his social media network that he will impose additional 50% tariffs on China effective on Wednesday unless it drops the retaliatory tariffs it has placed on U.S. products. Rather than backing down, China said it would “fight to the end.”

Today, in a press conference convened in the Oval Office, Trump explained his thinking behind why he has begun a global tariff war. "You know, our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff based. We had no income tax,” he said. “Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea of let’s charge the people of our country, not foreign countries that are ripping off our country, and the country was never, relatively, was never that kind of wealth. We had so much wealth we didn’t know what to do with our money. We had meetings, we had committees, and these committees worked tirelessly to study one subject: we have so much money, what are going to do with it, who are we going to give it to? And I hope we’re going to be in that position again.”

Aside from this complete misreading of American history—Civil War income taxes lasted until 1875, for example, tariffs are paid by consumers, the Panics of 1873 and 1893 devastated the economy, few Americans at the time thought the Gilded Age was a golden age, and I have no clue what he’s referring to with the talk about committees—Trump’s larger motivation is clear: he wants to get rid of income taxes.

Congress passed the 1913 Revenue Act imposing income taxes to shift the cost of supporting the government from ordinary Americans, especially the women who by then made up a significant portion of household consumers, to men of wealth. Tariffs were regressive because they fell disproportionately on working-class Americans through their everyday purchases. Income taxes spread costs more evenly, according to a man’s ability to pay. The switch from tariffs to income taxes helped to break the power of the so-called robber barons, the powerful industrialists who controlled the U.S. economy and government in the late nineteenth century.

To get rid of income taxes, Trump and his Republicans have backed the decimation of the government services that support ordinary Americans.

Today, in the Oval Office press conference, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested where they intend to put government money, promising a defense budget of $1 trillion, a significant jump from the current $892 defense budget. “[W]e have to be strong because you’ve got a lot of bad forces out there now,” Trump said.

Allison McCann, Alexandra Berzon, and Hamed Aleaziz of the New York Times reported today that the administration also intends to spend as much as $45 billion over the next two years on new detention facilities for immigrants. In the last fiscal year, the total amount of federal money allocated to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement was about $3.4 billion. The new facilities will be in private hands and will operate with lower standards and less oversight than current detention facilities.

mickeyrat

April 8, 2025 (Tuesday)

Stocks were up early today as traders put their hopes in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s suggestion that the Trump administration was open to negotiations for lowering Trump’s proposed tariffs. But then U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said there would not be exemptions from the tariffs for individual products or companies, and President Donald J. Trump said he was going forward with 104% tariffs on China, effective at 12:01 am on Wednesday.

Markets fell again. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen by another 320 points, or 0.8%, a 52-week low. The S&P 500 fell 1.6% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.2%.

Rob Copeland, Maureen Farrell, and Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times reported today that over the weekend, Wall Street billionaires tried desperately and unsuccessfully to change Trump’s mind on tariffs. This week they have begun to go public, calling out what they call the “stupidity” of the new measures. These industry leaders, the reporters write, did not expect Trump to place such high tariffs on so many products and are shocked to find themselves outside the corridors of power where the tariff decisions have been made.

Elon Musk is one of the people Trump is ignoring to side with Peter Navarro, his senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. Navarro went to prison for refusing to answer a congressional subpoena for information regarding Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Since Musk poured $290 million into getting Trump elected in 2024 and then burst into the news with his “Department of Government Efficiency,” he has seemed to be in control of the administration. But he has stolen the limelight from Trump, and it appears Trump’s patience with him might be wearing thin.

Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui, Pranshu Verma, and Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post reported today that Musk was among those who worked over the weekend to get Trump to end his new tariffs. When Musk failed to change the president’s mind, he took to social media to attack Navarro personally, saying the trade advisor is “truly a moron,” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Asked about the public fight between two of Trump’s advisors—two of the most powerful men in the world—White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “Boys will be boys.”

Business interests hard hit by the proposed tariffs are less inclined to dismiss the men in the administration as madcap kids. They are certainly not letting Musk shift the blame for the economic crisis off Trump and onto Navarro.

The right-wing New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is backed by billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch, has filed a lawsuit claiming that Trump’s tariffs against China are not permitted under the law. It argues that the president’s claim that he can impose sweeping tariffs by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) is misguided. It notes that the Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to levy tariffs.

With Trump’s extraordinary tariffs now threatening the global economy, some of those who once cheered on his dictatorial impulses are now recalling the checks and balances they were previously willing to undermine.

Today the editors of the right-wing National Review urged Congress to take back the power it has ceded to Trump, calling it “preposterous that a single person could enjoy this much power over…the global economy.” They decried the ”raw chaos” of the last week that has made it impossible for any business to plan for the future.

“What has happened since last Thursday is hard to fathom,” they write. “Based on an ever-shifting series of rationales, characterized by an embarrassing methodology, and punctuated with an extraordinary arrogance toward the country’s constitutional order, the Trump administration has alienated our global allies, discombobulated our domestic businesses, decimated our capital markets, and increased the likelihood of serious recession.” While this should worry all Americans, they write, Republicans in particular should remember that in less than two years, they “will be judged in large part on whether the president who shares their brand has done a good job.”  

“No free man wants to be at the mercy of a king,” they write.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told the Senate yesterday: “I don’t care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat. I don’t want to live under emergency rule. I don’t want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power.”

Adam Cancryn and Myah Ward reported in Politico today that Republican leaders are worried about Trump’s voters abandoning him as prices go up and their savings and jobs disappear. After all, voters elected Trump at least in part because he promised to lower inflation and spur the economy. “It’s a question of what the pain threshold is for the American people and the Republican voters,” one of Trump’s economic advisors told the reporters. “We’ve all lost a lot of money.”

MAGA influencers have begun to talk of the tariffs as a way to make the United States “manly” again, by bringing old-time manufacturing and mining back to the U.S. Writer Rotimi Adeoye today noted MAGA’s glorification of physical labor as a sort of moral purification. Adeoye points out how MAGA performs an identity that fetishizes “rural life, manual labor, and a kind of fake rugged masculinity.” That image—and the tradwife image that complements it—recalls an imagined American past. In reality, the 1960s manufacturing economy MAGA influencers appear to be celebrating depended on high rates of unionization and taxation, and on government investing heavily in infrastructure, including healthcare and education.

Adeoye notes that Trump is marketing the image of a world in which ordinary workers had a shot at prosperity, but his tariffs will not bring that world back.

In a larger sense, Trump’s undermining of the global economy reflects forty years of Republican emphasis on the myth that a true American man is an individual who operates outside the community, needs nothing from the government, and asserts his will by dominating others.

Associated with the American cowboy, that myth became central to the culture of Reagan’s America as a way for Republican politicians to convince voters to support the destruction of federal government programs that benefited them. Over time, those embracing that individualist vision came to dismiss all government policies that promoted social cooperation, whether at home or abroad, replacing that cooperation with the idea that strong men should dominate society, ordering it as they thought best.    

The Trump administration has taken that idea to an extreme, gutting the U.S. government and centering power in the president, while also pulling the U.S. out of the web of international organizations that have stabilized the globe since World War II. In place of that cooperation, the Trump administration wants to invest $1 trillion in the military. It is not just exercising dominance over others, it is reveling in that dominance, especially over the migrants it has sent to prison in El Salvador. It has shown films of them being transported in chains and has displayed caged prisoners behind Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was wearing a $50,000 gold Rolex watch.

Now Trump is demonstrating his power over the global economy, rejecting the conviction of past American leaders that true power and prosperity rest in cooperation. Trump has always seen power as a zero-sum game in which for one party to win, others must lose, so he appears incapable of understanding that global trade does not mean the U.S. is getting “ripped off.” Now he appears unconcerned that other countries could work together against the U.S. and seems to assume they will have to do what he says.

We’ll see.

For his part, Trump appears to be enjoying that he is now undoubtedly the center of attention. Asked to make “dinner remarks” at the National Republican Congressional Committee tonight, he spoke for close to two hours. Discussing the tariffs, he delivered a story with the “sir” marker that indicates the story is false: “These countries are calling us up. Kissing my ass,” he told the audience. “They are dying to make a deal. “Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir. And then I’ll see some rebel Republican, you know, some guy that wants to grandstand, saying: ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations.’ Let me tell you: you don’t negotiate like I negotiate.”

Trump also told the audience that "I really think we're helped a lot by the tariff situation that’s going on, which is a good situation, not a bad. It's great. It’s going to be legendary, you watch. Legendary in a positive way, I have to say. It’s gonna be legendary.”

brianlux

mickeyrat said:

April 8, 2025 (Tuesday)

Stocks were up early today as traders put their hopes in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s suggestion that the Trump administration was open to negotiations for lowering Trump’s proposed tariffs. But then U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said there would not be exemptions from the tariffs for individual products or companies, and President Donald J. Trump said he was going forward with 104% tariffs on China, effective at 12:01 am on Wednesday.

Markets fell again. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen by another 320 points, or 0.8%, a 52-week low. The S&P 500 fell 1.6% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.2%.

Rob Copeland, Maureen Farrell, and Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times reported today that over the weekend, Wall Street billionaires tried desperately and unsuccessfully to change Trump’s mind on tariffs. This week they have begun to go public, calling out what they call the “stupidity” of the new measures. These industry leaders, the reporters write, did not expect Trump to place such high tariffs on so many products and are shocked to find themselves outside the corridors of power where the tariff decisions have been made.

Elon Musk is one of the people Trump is ignoring to side with Peter Navarro, his senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. Navarro went to prison for refusing to answer a congressional subpoena for information regarding Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Since Musk poured $290 million into getting Trump elected in 2024 and then burst into the news with his “Department of Government Efficiency,” he has seemed to be in control of the administration. But he has stolen the limelight from Trump, and it appears Trump’s patience with him might be wearing thin.

Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui, Pranshu Verma, and Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post reported today that Musk was among those who worked over the weekend to get Trump to end his new tariffs. When Musk failed to change the president’s mind, he took to social media to attack Navarro personally, saying the trade advisor is “truly a moron,” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Asked about the public fight between two of Trump’s advisors—two of the most powerful men in the world—White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “Boys will be boys.”

Business interests hard hit by the proposed tariffs are less inclined to dismiss the men in the administration as madcap kids. They are certainly not letting Musk shift the blame for the economic crisis off Trump and onto Navarro.

The right-wing New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is backed by billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch, has filed a lawsuit claiming that Trump’s tariffs against China are not permitted under the law. It argues that the president’s claim that he can impose sweeping tariffs by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) is misguided. It notes that the Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to levy tariffs.

With Trump’s extraordinary tariffs now threatening the global economy, some of those who once cheered on his dictatorial impulses are now recalling the checks and balances they were previously willing to undermine.

Today the editors of the right-wing National Review urged Congress to take back the power it has ceded to Trump, calling it “preposterous that a single person could enjoy this much power over…the global economy.” They decried the ”raw chaos” of the last week that has made it impossible for any business to plan for the future.

“What has happened since last Thursday is hard to fathom,” they write. “Based on an ever-shifting series of rationales, characterized by an embarrassing methodology, and punctuated with an extraordinary arrogance toward the country’s constitutional order, the Trump administration has alienated our global allies, discombobulated our domestic businesses, decimated our capital markets, and increased the likelihood of serious recession.” While this should worry all Americans, they write, Republicans in particular should remember that in less than two years, they “will be judged in large part on whether the president who shares their brand has done a good job.”  

“No free man wants to be at the mercy of a king,” they write.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told the Senate yesterday: “I don’t care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat. I don’t want to live under emergency rule. I don’t want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power.”

Adam Cancryn and Myah Ward reported in Politico today that Republican leaders are worried about Trump’s voters abandoning him as prices go up and their savings and jobs disappear. After all, voters elected Trump at least in part because he promised to lower inflation and spur the economy. “It’s a question of what the pain threshold is for the American people and the Republican voters,” one of Trump’s economic advisors told the reporters. “We’ve all lost a lot of money.”

MAGA influencers have begun to talk of the tariffs as a way to make the United States “manly” again, by bringing old-time manufacturing and mining back to the U.S. Writer Rotimi Adeoye today noted MAGA’s glorification of physical labor as a sort of moral purification. Adeoye points out how MAGA performs an identity that fetishizes “rural life, manual labor, and a kind of fake rugged masculinity.” That image—and the tradwife image that complements it—recalls an imagined American past. In reality, the 1960s manufacturing economy MAGA influencers appear to be celebrating depended on high rates of unionization and taxation, and on government investing heavily in infrastructure, including healthcare and education.

Adeoye notes that Trump is marketing the image of a world in which ordinary workers had a shot at prosperity, but his tariffs will not bring that world back.

In a larger sense, Trump’s undermining of the global economy reflects forty years of Republican emphasis on the myth that a true American man is an individual who operates outside the community, needs nothing from the government, and asserts his will by dominating others.

Associated with the American cowboy, that myth became central to the culture of Reagan’s America as a way for Republican politicians to convince voters to support the destruction of federal government programs that benefited them. Over time, those embracing that individualist vision came to dismiss all government policies that promoted social cooperation, whether at home or abroad, replacing that cooperation with the idea that strong men should dominate society, ordering it as they thought best.    

The Trump administration has taken that idea to an extreme, gutting the U.S. government and centering power in the president, while also pulling the U.S. out of the web of international organizations that have stabilized the globe since World War II. In place of that cooperation, the Trump administration wants to invest $1 trillion in the military. It is not just exercising dominance over others, it is reveling in that dominance, especially over the migrants it has sent to prison in El Salvador. It has shown films of them being transported in chains and has displayed caged prisoners behind Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was wearing a $50,000 gold Rolex watch.

Now Trump is demonstrating his power over the global economy, rejecting the conviction of past American leaders that true power and prosperity rest in cooperation. Trump has always seen power as a zero-sum game in which for one party to win, others must lose, so he appears incapable of understanding that global trade does not mean the U.S. is getting “ripped off.” Now he appears unconcerned that other countries could work together against the U.S. and seems to assume they will have to do what he says.

We’ll see.

For his part, Trump appears to be enjoying that he is now undoubtedly the center of attention. Asked to make “dinner remarks” at the National Republican Congressional Committee tonight, he spoke for close to two hours. Discussing the tariffs, he delivered a story with the “sir” marker that indicates the story is false: “These countries are calling us up. Kissing my ass,” he told the audience. “They are dying to make a deal. “Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir. And then I’ll see some rebel Republican, you know, some guy that wants to grandstand, saying: ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations.’ Let me tell you: you don’t negotiate like I negotiate.”

Trump also told the audience that "I really think we're helped a lot by the tariff situation that’s going on, which is a good situation, not a bad. It's great. It’s going to be legendary, you watch. Legendary in a positive way, I have to say. It’s gonna be legendary.”

As I said elsewhere, if all this is not enough to get the man fired, nothing will be.  It boggles my mind to think all of this nonsense is being tolerated BY ANYONE!  (All caps courtesy of the Idiot in Charge.)

mickeyrat

April 9, 2025 (Wednesday)

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the United States Army at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. Lee’s surrender did not end the war—there were still two major armies in the field—but everyone knew the surrender signaled that the American Civil War was coming to a close.

Soldiers and sailors of the United States had defeated the armies and the navy of the Confederate States of America across the country and the seas, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and almost $6 billion. To the northerners celebrating in the streets, it certainly looked like the South’s ideology had been thoroughly discredited.

Southern politicians had led their poorer neighbors to war to advance the idea that some people were better than others and had the right—and the duty—to rule. The Founders of the United States had made a terrible mistake when they declared, “All men are created equal,” southern leaders said. In place of that “fundamentally wrong” idea, they proposed “the great truth” that white men were a “superior race.” And within that superior race, some men were better than others.

Those leaders were the ones who should rule the majority, southern leaders explained. “We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments ‘derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,’” enslaver George Fitzhugh of Virginia wrote in 1857. “All governments must originate in force, and be continued by force.” There were 18,000 people in his county and only 1,200 could vote, he said, “But  we twelve hundred…never asked and never intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we govern.”

But the majority of Americans recognized that if it were permitted to take hold, this ideology would destroy democracy. They fought to defeat the enslavers’ radical new definition of the United States. By the end of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln dated the birth of the nation not to the Constitution, whose protection of property underpinned southern enslavers’ insistence that enslavement was a foundational principle, but to the Declaration of Independence.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The events of April 9 reassured Americans that they had, in fact, saved “the last best hope of earth”: democracy. Writing from Washington, D.C., poet Walt Whitman mused that the very heavens were rejoicing at the triumph of the U.S. military and the return to peace its victory heralded. “Nor earth nor sky ever knew spectacles of superber beauty than some of the nights lately here,” he wrote in Specimen Days. “The western star, Venus, in the earlier hours of evening, has never been so large, so clear; it seems as if it told something, as if it held rapport indulgent with humanity, with us Americans.”

So confident was General Grant in the justice of his people’s cause that he asked only that Lee and his men give their word that they would never again fight against the United States and that they turn over their military arms and artillery. The men could keep their sidearms and their horses because Grant wanted them “to be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter.”

Their victory on the battlefields made northerners think they had made sure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

But their conviction that generosity would bring white southerners around to accepting the equality promised in the Declaration of Independence backfired. After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee took over the presidency and worked hard to restore white supremacy without the old legal structure of enslavement, while white settlers in the West brought their hierarchical ideas with them and imposed them on Indigenous Americans, on Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and on Asians and Pacific Islanders.

With no penalty for their attempt to overthrow democracy, those who thought that white men were better than others began to insist that their cause was just and that they had lost the war only because they had been overpowered. They continued to work to make their ideology the law of the land. That idea inspired the Jim Crow and Juan Crow laws of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the policies that crowded Indigenous Americans onto reservations where disease and malnutrition killed many of them and lack of opportunity pushed the rest into poverty.

In the 1930s, Nazi leaders, lawyers, and judges turned to America’s Jim Crow laws and Indian reservations for inspiration on how to create legal hierarchies that would, at the very least, wall certain populations off from white society. More Americans than we like to believe embraced facism here, too: in February 1939, more than 20,000 people showed up for a “true Americanism” rally held by Nazis at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, featuring a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rallied Americans to oppose fascism by emphasizing the principles that would, he said, provide “the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy: “Equality of opportunity for youth and for others. Jobs for those who can work. Security for those who need it. The ending of special privilege for the few. The preservation of civil liberties for all. The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.” He called for “the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.”

The gulf between the ideals of democracy and the reality of life in the segregated U.S. during and after World War II galvanized Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans to demand equality. They successfully challenged school segregation, racial housing restrictions, state laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and anti-Chinese laws based in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

As the military fought fascism in Europe, schools and churches at home emphasized that democracy depended on acceptance of racial, ethnic, and religious differences. Rallies championed diversity, and government-sponsored films warned Americans not to succumb to fascist propaganda. Posters trumpeted slogans such as “Catholics–Protestants–Jews…Working Side By Side…in War and Peace!” and reminded Americans not to “infect” their children “with racial and religious hate.” In a 1947 radio show, Superman fought a Ku Klux Klan–like gang trying to keep foreign-born players off high school sports teams, and in 1949, comic book artist Wayne Boring portrayed him on a poster urging a group of American schoolchildren to defend their classmates from “un-American” attacks on their race, religion, or ethnicity.

In the 1950s those ideas had produced a “liberal consensus,” shared by most Democrats and Republicans alike. The government should regulate business, provide for basic social welfare, and promote infrastructure: in other words, it should reflect democratic values. But when the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision tied the federal government not just to economic equality for white Americans, but also to civil rights, opponents of the liberal consensus resurrected the same argument former Confederates had used after the Civil War to couch their ideology in economic, rather than racial, rhetoric.

Rejecting the idea of equality, they argued that the government’s effort to protect civil rights was tantamount to socialism because it took tax dollars from hardworking white men to provide benefits for undeserving Black people who wanted a handout. This idea gained momentum after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and gradually came to include people of color and women who demanded equality. In 1980, Ronald Reagan rode the idea that the liberal consensus was simply a way to redistribute wealth to undeserving Americans of color or women—or both, like Reagan’s “welfare queen”—into the White House.

As more than $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1% between 1981 and 2021, Republicans deflected attention from the hollowing out of the middle class by demonizing racial, religious, and gender minorities. By 2012 they were talking of “makers” and “takers,” and by 2016 they were feeding voters ideas and images straight out of the nation’s white supremacist past.   

By 2021 the idea that some people are better than others and have a right to rule—the same ideology that had driven the Confederates—created a mob determined to end American democracy. The rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election believed they were writing a new history of the United States, one that brought to life the hierarchical version of American history claimed by the Confederates before them. On that day, one of the rioters accomplished what the southern troops during the Civil War had never been able to: he carried the Confederate battle flag into the United States Capitol.    

At the end of his life, General Grant recalled the events of April 9, 1865. “What General Lee's feelings were I do not know,” Grant wrote. “[M]y own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter [asking to surrender], were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

mickeyrat

April 10, 2025 (Thursday)

We are on the West Coast and are just now back to the hotel before an early flight tomorrow. I hate to pull a day of news out of the week, but I am going to have to post a picture tonight. I’ll cover today’s events in tomorrow’s letter.

Tonight’s picture is from the Pacific, for a change. I caught this couple looking out at the water from Fort Point National Historic Site under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

mickeyrat

April 11, 2025 (Friday)

On April 4, Trump fired head of U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) and director of the National Security Agency (NSA) General Timothy Haugh, apparently on the recommendation of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who is pitching her new opposition research firm to “vet” candidates for jobs in Trump’s administration.

Former secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall wrote in Newsweek yesterday that the position Haugh held is “one of the most sensitive and powerful jobs in America.” Kendall writes that NSA and CYBERCOM oversee the world’s most sophisticated tools and techniques to penetrate computer systems, monitor communications around the globe, and, if national security requires it, attack those systems. U.S. law drastically curtails how those tools can be used in the U.S. and against American citizens and businesses. Will a Trump loyalist follow those laws? Kendall writes: “Every American should view this development with alarm.”

Just after 2:00 a.m. eastern time this morning, the Senate confirmed Retired Air Force Lieutenant General John Dan Caine, who goes by the nickname “Razin,” for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a vote of 60–25. U.S. law requires the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have served as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the Army, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the Air Force, the commandant of the Marine Corps, or the commander of a unified or specified combatant command.

Although Caine has 34 years of military experience, he did not serve in any of the required positions. The law provides that the president can waive the requirement if “the President determines such action is necessary in the national interest,” and he has apparently done so for Caine. The politicization of the U.S. military by filling it with Trump loyalists is now, as Kendall writes, “indisputable.”

The politicization of data is also indisputable. Billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) claims to be saving Americans money, but the Wall Street Journal reported today that effort has been largely a failure (despite today’s announcement of devastating cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that monitors our weather). But what DOGE is really doing is burrowing into Americans’ data.  

The first people to be targeted by that data collection appear to be undocumented immigrants. Jason Koebler of 404 Media reported on Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been using a database that enables officials to search for people by filtering for “hundreds of different, highly specific categories,” including scars or tattoos, bankruptcy filings, Social Security number, hair color, and race. The system, called Investigative Case Management (ICM), was created by billionaire Peter Thiel’s software company Palantir, which in 2022 signed a $95.9 million contract with the government to develop ICM.

Three Trump officials told Sophia Cai of Politico that DOGE staffers embedded in agencies across the government are expanding government cooperation with immigration officials, using the information they’re gleaning from government databases to facilitate deportation. On Tuesday, DOGE software engineer Aram Moghaddassi sent the first 6,300 names of individuals whose temporary legal status had just been canceled. On the list, which Moghaddassi said covered those on “the terror watch list” or with “F.B.I. criminal records,” were eight minors, including one 13-year-old.

The Social Security Administration worked with the administration to get those people to “self-deport” by adding them to the agency's “death master file.” That file is supposed to track people whose death means they should no longer receive benefits. Adding to it people the administration wants to erase is “financial murder,” former SSA commissioner Martin O’Malley told Alexandra Berzon, Hamed Aleaziz, Nicholas Nehamas, Ryan Mac, and Tara Siegel Bernard of the New York Times. Those people will not be able to use credit cards or banks.

On Tuesday, Acting Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Melanie Krause resigned after the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security agreed to share sensitive taxpayer data with immigration authorities. Undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes, in part to demonstrate their commitment to citizenship, and the government has promised immigrants that it would not use that information for immigration enforcement. Until now, the IRS has protected sensitive taxpayer information.

Rene Marsh and Marshall Cohen of CNN note that “[m]ultiple senior career IRS officials refused to sign the data-sharing agreement with DHS,” which will enable HHS officials to ask the IRS for names and addresses of people they suspect are undocumented, “because of grave concerns about its legality.” Ultimately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signed the agreement with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

Krause was only one of several senior career officials leaving the IRS, raising concerns among those staying that there is no longer a “defense against the potential unlawful use of taxpayer data by the Trump administration.”

Makena Kelly of Wired reported today that for the past three days, DOGE staffers have been working with representatives from Palantir and career engineers from the IRS in a giant “hackathon.” Their goal is to build a system that will be able to access all IRS records, including names, addresses, job data, and Social Security numbers, that can then be compared with data from other agencies.

But the administration’s attempt to automate deportation is riddled with errors. Last night the government sent threatening emails to U.S. citizens, green card holders, and even a Canadian (in Canada) terminating “your parole” and giving them seven days to leave the U.S. One Massachusetts-born immigration lawyer asked on social media: “Does anyone know if you can get Italian citizenship through great-grandparents?”

The government is not keen to correct its errors. On March 15 the government rendered to prison in El Salvador a legal U.S. resident, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom the courts had ordered the U.S. not to send to El Salvador, where his life was in danger. The government has admitted that its arrest and rendition of Abrego Garcia happened because of “administrative error” but now claims—without evidence—that he is a member of the MS-13 gang and that his return to the U.S. would threaten the public. Abrego Garcia says he is not a gang member and notes that he has never been charged with a crime.

On April 4, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. no later than 11:59 pm on April 7. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9–0 decision yesterday, saying the government must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release, but asked the district court to clarify what it meant by “effectuate,” noting that it must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

The Supreme Court also ordered that “the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained what happened next. Judge Xinis ordered the government to file an update by 9:30 a.m. today explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do. She planned an in-person hearing at 1:00 p.m.

The administration made clear it did not intend to comply. It answered that the judge had not given them enough time to answer and suggested that it would delay over the Supreme Court’s instruction that Xinis must show deference to the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs. Xinis gave the government until 11:30 and said she would still hold the hearing. The government submitted its filing at about 12:15, saying that Abrego Garcia is “in the custody of a foreign sovereign,” but at the 1:00 hearing, as Anna Bower of Lawfare reported, the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and that the government had done nothing to get him back. Ensign said he might have answers by next Tuesday. Xinis says they will have to give an update tomorrow.

As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens. Indeed, both President Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have proposed that very thing.

Tonight, Trump signed a memorandum to the secretaries of defense, interior, agriculture, and homeland security calling for a “Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions.” The memorandum creates a military buffer zone along the border so that any migrant crossing would be trespassing on a U.S. military base. This would allow active-duty soldiers to hold migrants until ICE agents take them.

By April 20, the secretaries of defense and homeland security are supposed to report to the president whether they think he should invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to enable him to use the military to aid in mass deportations.

brianlux

mickeyrat said:

April 11, 2025 (Friday)

On April 4, Trump fired head of U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) and director of the National Security Agency (NSA) General Timothy Haugh, apparently on the recommendation of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who is pitching her new opposition research firm to “vet” candidates for jobs in Trump’s administration.

Former secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall wrote in Newsweek yesterday that the position Haugh held is “one of the most sensitive and powerful jobs in America.” Kendall writes that NSA and CYBERCOM oversee the world’s most sophisticated tools and techniques to penetrate computer systems, monitor communications around the globe, and, if national security requires it, attack those systems. U.S. law drastically curtails how those tools can be used in the U.S. and against American citizens and businesses. Will a Trump loyalist follow those laws? Kendall writes: “Every American should view this development with alarm.”

Just after 2:00 a.m. eastern time this morning, the Senate confirmed Retired Air Force Lieutenant General John Dan Caine, who goes by the nickname “Razin,” for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a vote of 60–25. U.S. law requires the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have served as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the Army, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the Air Force, the commandant of the Marine Corps, or the commander of a unified or specified combatant command.

Although Caine has 34 years of military experience, he did not serve in any of the required positions. The law provides that the president can waive the requirement if “the President determines such action is necessary in the national interest,” and he has apparently done so for Caine. The politicization of the U.S. military by filling it with Trump loyalists is now, as Kendall writes, “indisputable.”

The politicization of data is also indisputable. Billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) claims to be saving Americans money, but the Wall Street Journal reported today that effort has been largely a failure (despite today’s announcement of devastating cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that monitors our weather). But what DOGE is really doing is burrowing into Americans’ data.  

The first people to be targeted by that data collection appear to be undocumented immigrants. Jason Koebler of 404 Media reported on Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been using a database that enables officials to search for people by filtering for “hundreds of different, highly specific categories,” including scars or tattoos, bankruptcy filings, Social Security number, hair color, and race. The system, called Investigative Case Management (ICM), was created by billionaire Peter Thiel’s software company Palantir, which in 2022 signed a $95.9 million contract with the government to develop ICM.

Three Trump officials told Sophia Cai of Politico that DOGE staffers embedded in agencies across the government are expanding government cooperation with immigration officials, using the information they’re gleaning from government databases to facilitate deportation. On Tuesday, DOGE software engineer Aram Moghaddassi sent the first 6,300 names of individuals whose temporary legal status had just been canceled. On the list, which Moghaddassi said covered those on “the terror watch list” or with “F.B.I. criminal records,” were eight minors, including one 13-year-old.

The Social Security Administration worked with the administration to get those people to “self-deport” by adding them to the agency's “death master file.” That file is supposed to track people whose death means they should no longer receive benefits. Adding to it people the administration wants to erase is “financial murder,” former SSA commissioner Martin O’Malley told Alexandra Berzon, Hamed Aleaziz, Nicholas Nehamas, Ryan Mac, and Tara Siegel Bernard of the New York Times. Those people will not be able to use credit cards or banks.

On Tuesday, Acting Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Melanie Krause resigned after the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security agreed to share sensitive taxpayer data with immigration authorities. Undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes, in part to demonstrate their commitment to citizenship, and the government has promised immigrants that it would not use that information for immigration enforcement. Until now, the IRS has protected sensitive taxpayer information.

Rene Marsh and Marshall Cohen of CNN note that “[m]ultiple senior career IRS officials refused to sign the data-sharing agreement with DHS,” which will enable HHS officials to ask the IRS for names and addresses of people they suspect are undocumented, “because of grave concerns about its legality.” Ultimately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signed the agreement with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

Krause was only one of several senior career officials leaving the IRS, raising concerns among those staying that there is no longer a “defense against the potential unlawful use of taxpayer data by the Trump administration.”

Makena Kelly of Wired reported today that for the past three days, DOGE staffers have been working with representatives from Palantir and career engineers from the IRS in a giant “hackathon.” Their goal is to build a system that will be able to access all IRS records, including names, addresses, job data, and Social Security numbers, that can then be compared with data from other agencies.

But the administration’s attempt to automate deportation is riddled with errors. Last night the government sent threatening emails to U.S. citizens, green card holders, and even a Canadian (in Canada) terminating “your parole” and giving them seven days to leave the U.S. One Massachusetts-born immigration lawyer asked on social media: “Does anyone know if you can get Italian citizenship through great-grandparents?”

The government is not keen to correct its errors. On March 15 the government rendered to prison in El Salvador a legal U.S. resident, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom the courts had ordered the U.S. not to send to El Salvador, where his life was in danger. The government has admitted that its arrest and rendition of Abrego Garcia happened because of “administrative error” but now claims—without evidence—that he is a member of the MS-13 gang and that his return to the U.S. would threaten the public. Abrego Garcia says he is not a gang member and notes that he has never been charged with a crime.

On April 4, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. no later than 11:59 pm on April 7. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9–0 decision yesterday, saying the government must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release, but asked the district court to clarify what it meant by “effectuate,” noting that it must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

The Supreme Court also ordered that “the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained what happened next. Judge Xinis ordered the government to file an update by 9:30 a.m. today explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do. She planned an in-person hearing at 1:00 p.m.

The administration made clear it did not intend to comply. It answered that the judge had not given them enough time to answer and suggested that it would delay over the Supreme Court’s instruction that Xinis must show deference to the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs. Xinis gave the government until 11:30 and said she would still hold the hearing. The government submitted its filing at about 12:15, saying that Abrego Garcia is “in the custody of a foreign sovereign,” but at the 1:00 hearing, as Anna Bower of Lawfare reported, the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and that the government had done nothing to get him back. Ensign said he might have answers by next Tuesday. Xinis says they will have to give an update tomorrow.

As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens. Indeed, both President Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have proposed that very thing.

Tonight, Trump signed a memorandum to the secretaries of defense, interior, agriculture, and homeland security calling for a “Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions.” The memorandum creates a military buffer zone along the border so that any migrant crossing would be trespassing on a U.S. military base. This would allow active-duty soldiers to hold migrants until ICE agents take them.

By April 20, the secretaries of defense and homeland security are supposed to report to the president whether they think he should invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to enable him to use the military to aid in mass deportations.

That, for me, is the most depressing Heather letter yet that I've read. 

mickeyrat

April 12, 2025 (Saturday)

It was just 20 days ago—on March 24—that editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg reported that the most senior members of the Trump administration discussed a military strike on the Houthis in Yemen on an unsecure commercial messaging app and that they included him on the chat.

Their Signal chat, which Goldberg published later in response to the administration’s insistence that there was nothing classified in the chat, showed that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had posted precise details of the munitions and planes involved in the strikes. It showed that neither President Donald Trump nor the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—a Biden appointee—was on the chat, and that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller apparently made the decision to strike based on his interpretation of what President Donald Trump wanted. In violation of the Presidential Records Act, the app was set to delete the messages. There was apparently no larger strategy or diplomatic plan other than to strike, and participants greeted news of the collapse of an apartment building into which a Houthi leader had allegedly walked with emojis of fists, fire, and a U.S. flag.

This extraordinary lapse in national security protections would normally have defined an administration and caused a number of resignations, but the White House called the case “closed” on March 31. And there was more: On April 2, Dasha Burns of Politico reported that the team working with national security advisor Mike Waltz regularly used the unsecure Signal app to communicate about issues involving Ukraine, China, Gaza, the Middle East, the U.S., and Europe. The officials to whom Burns spoke said they had personal knowledge of at least 20 such chats.

That story has been almost completely driven out of the news by President Donald Trump’s tariff machinations since April 2. On that day, after teasing the idea of what he called “Liberation Day,” Trump announced that at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, April 9, he would be imposing a 10% tariff on all imports to the United States, with significantly higher rates on countries he claims engage in unfair trade practices. By the next day it had been established that his team, led by trade advisor Peter Navarro, arrived at the tariff rates with a nonsensical formula that simply took the U.S. trade deficit with a country, divided it by the value of that country’s exports to the U.S., and cut the resulting number in half.

For the next week, the stock market plummeted, jumping only with rumors that Trump would back off on the tariffs, while economists and financial analysts revised the chances of inflation and recession upward, and economic growth downward. News coming out of the White House was contradictory: one advisor would say that Trump would not negotiate over tariffs and they were here to stay, while another would say he intended to negotiate and they were just starting points.

Meanwhile, as predicted, other countries began to put tariffs on goods from the United States or pause exports, and global markets fell. Americans from business leaders to small business owners to consumers and wage workers called out the “stupidity” of Trump’s trade war. Others noted that the tariffs appeared to be intended as a shakedown as countries or businesses who offered Trump the right price could get exemptions.

As trillions of dollars in stock values evaporated, Trump insisted the tariffs were here to stay. “I know what the hell I’m doing,” Trump told Republicans on Tuesday, April 8. He boasted that global leaders were “kissing my ass.” On Wednesday, April 9, at 9:33 a.m, he posted: “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!” At 9:37, he posted “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”

But, as Tyler Pager, Maggie Haberman, Ana Swanson, and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times reported, Trump’s team, led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, was worried about setting off a financial panic that could not be stopped. Driving their concern was a broad sell-off of U.S. government bonds, which in the past investors had seen as a safe haven during times of market turmoil, and the rise in popularity of the government bonds of other countries.

Former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers noted that global financial markets were backing away from U.S. assets. Fund manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management George Cipolloni told Bernard Condon and Stan Choe of the Associated Press: “The fear is the U.S. is losing its standing as the safe haven. Our bond market is the biggest and most stable in the world, but when you add instability, bad things can happen.”

On April 8, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer defended Trump’s tariffs to the Senate Finance Committee. He was offering similar testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee at 1:18 p.m. when a social media post from Trump pulled the rug out from under him. Trump paused most of the highest tariffs for 90 days and instituted an across-the-board tariff of 10% in their place. But, perhaps unwilling to look weak, he announced that he was raising tariffs on goods from China to 125% effective immediately, “[b]ased on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets.”

With Trump’s tariff pause, stocks jumped upward in one of the biggest single-day gains since World War II. Hedge fund manager Spencer Hakimian posted a graph showing that Nasdaq call volume—bets that stock values would rise—spiked minutes before Trump’s announcement. He commented: “Not a good look at all.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) reposted Hakimian’s post and added: “Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now. I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor. Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things. It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.”

David Smith of The Guardian noted that the juxtaposition of Trump golfing, dining with donors, and meeting with race car drivers even as economic chaos tanked people’s retirement accounts prompted accusations that he has lost touch with reality. A widely circulated video that appears to be Trump bragging to NASCAR drivers visiting the White House that investor Charles Schwab made $2.5 billion on Wednesday and that another investor made $900 million has fed anger at Trump’s economic chaos. On Friday the University of Michigan released its well-respected consumer-sentiment index, showing that consumer sentiment about the economy and personal finances fell for the fourth straight month, dropping 11% from March. Consumers from all political affiliations fear recession, inflation, and unemployment.

This level of consumer sentiment is the second lowest since the index began in 1952. Chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics Samuel Tombs told the Wall Street Journal’s Harriet Torry: “Consumers have spiraled from anxious to petrified.” James Knightley, the chief international economist at the multinational banking and financial services company ING, noted that consumers appear to blame Trump for their concerns. While in January 44% of respondents told researchers that the government was doing a poor job of managing inflation and unemployment, now 67% say so.

The change happened so quickly that White House officials could not tell reporters what the actual tariff rates were for different countries. When more information was available, Kevin Schaul of the Washington Post noted that Trump’s new tariff levies had actually increased tariffs rather than lowered them because he had dropped rates only on goods from countries that don’t export much to the U.S. He had raised them significantly—not just to 125% but to 145%—on China, a major trading partner.

On Friday, China imposed 125% tariffs on goods from the U.S. A spokesperson for the Chinese Finance Ministry said that Trump’s tariff machinations “will become a joke in the history of the world economy.” At 9:20 a.m. President Trump posted: “We are doing really well on our TARIFF POLICY.  Very exciting for America, and the World!!! It is moving along quickly.  DJT.” The new tariffs had badly threatened Apple Inc., and at 10:36 p.m. the U.S. Customs and Border Protection posted a notice that various electronics, including smartphone and computer monitors, are exempt from the tariffs.

When economist Justin Wolfers commented: “I just want to tip my hat to the crack team of White House economists who were able to discover—in just a few short days—that the U.S. is dependent on China for smartphones, computers and semiconductors.” Dr. Soumya Rangarajan noted that “a basic medicine we use 1000x per day in the hospital, heparin, is also dependent on China, and people will die without it.” As Sabrina Malhi of the Washington Post explained, about 12 million people hospitalized in the U.S. need heparin every year, and it is only one of the many medications that will be affected by Trump’s tariffs on goods from China.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted that a “[g]ood way to see the current tariffs, as of literally today, is no tariffs on high value add manufactured goods marketed to middle and upper middle classes. Massive tariffs for cheap consumer items” that benefit those lower on the economic ladder.

While the damage from the tariffs both to the domestic and global economy, as well as the USA’s standing in the world, is not yet clear—all the chaos has been about the prospect of Trump’s high tariff rates, not their actual effect—Trump appears to be trying to downplay that story in favor of demonstrating his power.

As the tariff saga played out on Wednesday, Trump signed a memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies informing them that they no longer need to let the public know when they get rid of regulations that they determine are obviously unlawful. Kate Riga of Talking Points Memo notes that “unlawful” appears to mean anything Trump doesn’t like.

In a breathtaking violation of the Constitution, on Wednesday Trump also went after two individuals: Christopher Krebs and Miles Taylor. Trump appointed Krebs to head the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), where in 2020 Krebs assured the American people that the presidential election had not been stolen. Trump now claims Krebs thus censored the speech of Trump loyalists.

As a Department of Homeland Security staffer, Taylor wrote an op-ed under the pseudonym “Anonymous” saying that members of the first Trump administration were pushing back against the president’s policies. Taylor later wrote a book about his time in the White House that Trump claims was “designed to sow chaos and distrust in Government” and thus “could properly be characterized as treasonous and as possibly violating the Espionage Act.” A grand jury believed Trump himself violated the Espionage Act by retaining classified documents.  

Trump stripped security clearances from Krebs and Taylor and also from their employers. He ordered government officials to investigate the two men and to recommend “appropriate remedial or preventative actions to be taken to protect America’s interests.” Employees at CISA told Kevin Collier of NBC News they were disheartened by the attack on Krebs and noted that staffing cuts at CISA had “already severely degraded our capacity to defend critical infrastructure.”

mickeyrat

April 13, 2025 (Sunday)

This evening, lawyers for the Department of Justice told a federal court that the administration does not believe it has a legal obligation to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States, despite a court order to do so.   

The 29-year-old Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. about 2011 when he was 16 to escape threats from a gang that was terrorizing his family. He settled in Maryland with his older brother, a U.S. citizen, and lived there until in 2019 he was picked up by police as he waited at a Home Depot to be picked up for work as a day laborer. Police transferred him to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After a hearing, an immigration judge rejected his claim for asylum but said he could not be sent back to El Salvador, finding it credible that the Barrio 18 gang had been “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”    

Ever since, Abrego Garcia has checked in annually with ICE as directed. He lives with his wife and their three children, and has never been charged with any crime. The Department of Homeland Security issued him a work permit, and he joined a union, working full time as a sheet metal apprentice.    

On March 12, ICE agents pulled his car over, told his wife to come pick up their disabled son, and incarcerated Abrego Garcia, pressing him to say he was a member of MS-13. On March 15 the government rendered Abrego Garcia to the infamous CECOT prison for terrorists in El Salvador, alleged to be the site of human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial killings. The U.S. government is paying El Salvador $6 million a year to incarcerate the individuals it sends there.

On March 24, Abrego Garcia’s family sued the administration over his removal.    

On March 31 the government admitted that its arrest and rendition of Abrego Garcia happened because of “administrative error” but said he couldn’t be brought back because, in El Salvador, he is outside the jurisdiction of the United States. It also accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang and said that bringing him back to the U.S. would threaten the public.   

On April 4, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. no later than 11:59 pm on April 7.    

In her opinion, filed April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that “[a]lthough the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal.…. [H]is detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” And yet administration officials “cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person—migrant and U.S. citizen alike—to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the 'custodian,' and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction.”    

The administration had already appealed her April 4 order to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9–0 decision on Thursday, April 10, requiring the Trump administration “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,” but asking the district court to clarify what it meant by “effectuate,” that release, noting that it must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”   

The Supreme Court also ordered that “the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.” Judge Xinis ordered the government to file an update by 9:30 a.m. on April 11 explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do. She planned an in-person hearing at 1:00 p.m.   

But the administration evidently does not intend to comply. On April 11, the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and ignored her order to provide information about what the government was doing to bring him back. Saturday, it said Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in CECOT. Today, it said it had no new information about him, but said that Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for the immigration judge’s order not to send him to El Salvador “because of his membership in MS-13 which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization.”    

There is still no evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.    

Today, administration lawyers used the Supreme Court’s warning that the court must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs” to lay out a chilling argument. They ignored the Supreme Court’s agreement that the government must get Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador, as well as the court’s requirement that the administration explain what it’s doing to make that happen.

Instead, the lawyers argued that because Abrego Garcia is now outside the country, any attempt to get him back would intrude on the president’s power to conduct foreign affairs. Similarly, they argue that the president cannot be ordered to do anything but remove domestic obstacles from Abrego Garcia’s return. Because Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, is currently in the U.S. for a visit with Trump, they suggest they will not share any more updates about Abrego Garcia and the court should not ask for them because it would intrude on “sensitive” foreign policy issues.   

Let’s be very clear about exactly what’s happening here: President Donald J. Trump is claiming the power to ignore the due process of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, declare someone is a criminal, kidnap them, send them to prison in a third country, and then claim that there is no way to get that person back.    

All people in the United States are entitled to due process, but Trump and his officers have tried to convince Americans that noncitizens are not. They have also pushed the idea that those they are offshoring are criminals, but a Bloomberg investigation showed that of the 238 men sent to CECOT in the first group, only five of them had been charged with or convicted of felony assault or gun violations. Three had been charged with misdemeanors like petty theft. Two were charged with human smuggling. In any case, in the U.S., criminals are entitled to due process.

Make no mistake: as Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error either because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens.    

Trump has said he would “love” to do exactly that, and would even be “honored” to, and Bukele has been offering to hold U.S. citizens. Dasha Burns and Myah Ward of Politico reported Friday that former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is pitching a plan to expand renditions to El Salvador to at least 100,000 criminal offenders from U.S. prisons and to avoid legal challenges by making part of CECOT American territory, then leasing it back to El Salvador to run.     

When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says, “The president's idea for American citizens to potentially be deported, these would be heinous violent criminals who have broken our nation's laws repeatedly," remember that just days ago, Trump suggested that a former government employee was guilty of treason for writing a book about his time in the first Trump administration that Trump claimed was “designed to sow chaos and distrust” in the government.

Here’s the thing: Once you give up the idea that we are all equal before the law and have the right to due process, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that some people have more rights than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality before the law with the idea that some people have no rights, you have granted your approval to the idea of an authoritarian government. At that point, all you can do is to hope that the dictator and his henchmen overlook you.

At least some people understand this. The president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey, received a standing ovation when he said to a room full of his fellow union workers: “We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue. We’re the building trades, the backbone of America. You want to build a $5 billion data center? Want more six-figure careers with health care, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk, you call us!... And yeah, that means all of us. All of us. Including our brother [International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers] apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand to be returned to us and his family now! Bring him home!”

mickeyrat

April 14, 2025 (Monday)

Today, U.S. president Donald J. Trump met in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, along with a number of Cabinet members and White House staff, who answered questions for the press. The meeting appeared to be as staged as Trump’s February meeting with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, designed to send a message. At the meeting, Trump and Bukele, who is clearly doing Trump’s bidding, announced they would not bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home, defying the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bukele was livestreaming the event on his official X account and wearing a lapel microphone as he and Trump walked into the Oval Office, so Trump’s pre-meeting private comments were audible in the video Bukele posted. “We want to do homegrown criminals next…. The homegrowns.” Trump told Bukele. “You gotta build about five more places.” Bukele appeared to answer, “Yeah, we’ve got space.” “All right,” Trump replied.

Rather than being appalled, the people in the room—including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Attorney General Pam Bondi—erupted in laughter.

At the meeting, it was clear that Trump’s team has cooked up a plan to leave Abrego Garcia without legal recourse to his freedom, a plan that looks much like Trump’s past abuses of the legal system. The White House says the U.S. has no jurisdiction over El Salvador, while Bukele says he has no authority to release a “terrorist” into the U.S. (Abrego Garcia maintains a full-time job, is married to a U.S. citizen, has three children, and has never been charged or convicted of anything.) No one can make Trump arrange for Abrego Garcia’s release, the administration says, because the Constitution gives the president control over foreign affairs.

Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel noted that “all the people who should be submitting sworn declarations before [U.S. District Court] Judge Paula Xinis made comments not burdened by oaths or the risk of contempt, rehearsed comments for the cameras.” They falsely claimed that a court had ruled Abrego Garcia was a terrorist, and insisted the whole case was about the president’s power to control foreign affairs.

As NPR’s Steven Inskeep put it: “If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?”

On April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for [Abrego Garcia’s] arrest, detention, or removal.… Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” The Supreme Court agreed with Xinis that Abrego Garcia had been illegally removed from the U.S. and must be returned, but warned the judge to be careful of the president’s power over foreign affairs.

At the Oval Office meeting, when Trump asked what the Supreme Court ruled, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller said it had ruled “9–0…in our favor,” claiming “the Supreme Court said that the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed 9–0 unanimously.” Legal analyst Chris Geidner of Law Dork called Miller’s statement “disgusting, lying propaganda.”

He also noted that when the administration filed its required declaration about Abrego Garcia’s case today, it included a link to the Oval Office meeting, thus submitting Miller’s lies about its decision directly to the Supreme Court. Geidner wished the administration's lawyers: “Good luck there…!”

Legal analyst Harry Litman of Talking Feds wrote: “What we all just witnessed had all the earmarks of a criminal conspiracy to deprive Abrego-Garcia of his constitutional rights, as well as an impeachable offense. The fraud scheme was a phony agreement engineered by the US to have Bukele say he lacks power to return Abrego Garcia and he won't do it.”

As Adam Serwer wrote today in The Atlantic, The “rhetorical game the administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while Bukele pretends he doesn’t have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court—and for the rule of law.”

Serwer notes that if the administration actually thought there was enough evidence to convict these men, it could have let the U.S. legal process play out. But Geidner of Law Dork noted that Trump’s declaration this morning that he wanted to deport “homegrown criminals” suggests that the plan all along has been to be able to get rid of U.S. citizens by creating a “Schroedinger’s box” where anyone can be sent but where once they are there the U.S. cannot get them back because they are “in the custody of a foreign sovereign.”

“If they can get Abrego Garcia out of the box,” Geidner writes, “the plan does not work.”  

On August 12, 2024, in a discussion on billionaire Elon Musk’s X of what Trump insisted were caravans coming across the southern border of the U.S., Trump told Musk that other countries were doing something “brilliant” by sending streams of people out of their country. “You know the caravans are coming in and…who’s doing this are the heads of the countries. And you would be doing it and so would I, and everyone would say ‘oh what a terrible thing to say.’”

He continued: “The fact is, it’s brilliant for them because they're taking all of their bad people, really bad people and—I hate to say this—the reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they’re also taking their nonproductive people. Now these aren’t people that will kill you…but these are people that are nonproductive. They are just not productive, I mean, for whatever reason. They’re not workers or they don’t want to work, or whatever, and these  countries are getting rid of nonproductive people in the caravans…and they’re also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people….”

Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder explained the larger picture: “On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.” He compared it to the Nazis’ practice of pushing Jews into statelessness because “[i]t is easier to move people away from law than it is to move law away from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones.”  

Yesterday, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) requested a meeting with Bukele today “to discuss the illegal detention of my constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.” He said that he would travel to El Salvador this week if Abrego Garcia “is not home by midweek.”

Judge Xinis has set the next hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case for tomorrow, April 15, at 4:00 p.m.

Today, Dauphin County Magisterial District Judge Dale Klein denied bail for Cody Balmer, the 38-year-old man charged in connection with the arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro on April 13, saying he is a danger to the community. Balmer allegedly set alight beer bottles full of gasoline in the same room in the governor's mansion where, just hours before, the family had held a Passover meal. Shapiro and his wife Lori, their four children, and another family were asleep in the house. Emergency personnel rescued the people and pets, but the historic mansion sustained significant damage.

Balmer said he has a high-school education. He is currently unemployed, does not have any income or savings, and has been living with his parents. Balmer was charged with assault in 2023, allegedly punching both his wife (from whom he is now separated) and their 13-year-old son in the face during an argument. He was due in court this week. His mother says he has mental health issues.

Balmer said he “harbor[ed] hatred” for Governor Shapiro and would have beaten him with a hammer if he had found him.

Governor Shapiro called it “an attack not just on our family, but on the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania…. This type of violence is not okay. This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society. And I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another, or one particular person or another. It is not okay and it has to stop. We have to be better than this. We have a responsibility to all be better.”

mickeyrat

April 15, 2025 (Tuesday)

A large crowd of protesters calling for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the Trump administration sent to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador, milled around the courthouse this afternoon where U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis held a hearing on the case.

Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Ben Wittes of Lawfare watched the hearing and explained that Judge Xinis is now building the evidence to determine whether individuals in the administration have acted in contempt of court. The court ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S., as well as to give updates on what they are doing to make that return happen. To date, Judge Xinis said, “what the record shows is nothing has been done.” She dismissed the administration lawyer’s argument that yesterday’s Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele was part of the effort to “facilitate” the case.

As Bower said, we all know what’s going on, but it’s impossible right now to know which individual is responsible for the stonewalling. For that matter, Bower added, those speaking for the administration usually deny personal knowledge of the case, simply saying they have been made aware of the facts they are representing. Judge Xinis called for two weeks of fact finding to determine if the Trump regime is following her orders that it facilitate his return. The judge told Abrego Garcia’s lawyers that they may conduct four depositions and apply for two more, make up to 15 document requests, and up to 15 interrogatories (these are lists of written questions that must be answered under oath and in writing).

Xinis noted that “every day Mr. Garcia is detained in CECOT is a day of irreparable harm.”

Bower added that the Trump regime is likely drawing this out in part because it permits them to showcase the one part of their agenda that is still polling well. The staged meeting with Bukele enabled officials to get widespread media coverage for the straight-up lie that Abrego Garcia has been found to be a member of the MS-13 gang. As Greg Sargent reported today in the New Republic, this story came from a police officer who, just weeks later, was suspended for “providing information to a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts.”

The Oval Office event also enabled White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller both to lie that the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision against the administration was actually in favor of it, and to rerun the litany of heinous crimes he associates with immigrants. The attention to the case has also gotten Miller airtime on news shows, where he repeats those lies.

The administration needs the immigration issue to play to its base, but it’s actually not clear that Americans like Miller’s approach to immigrants. Data journalist G. Elliott Morris noted today in Strength in Numbers that while polls say Americans generally like Trump’s approach to immigration—a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll said 49% were in favor—they hate the specifics.

The same Reuters/Ipsos poll says that 82% of Americans, including 68% of Republicans, think “the president should obey federal court rulings even if he disagrees with them.” Only 40% think he “should keep deporting people despite a court order to stop,” although 76% of Republicans think he should violate a court order.

The questions specifically about immigration are even starker. Trump promised during the campaign that he would deport undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes, and people like that plan by an 81-point margin. But according to Morris’s crunching of polls on the subject, U.S. adults oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who have lived more than 10 years in the U.S. by a 37-point margin. They oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens by a 36-point margin. By an 18-point margin, they oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who have broken no laws in the U.S. other than immigration laws.  

The more visible Abrego Garcia’s case becomes, coupled as it is with the idea that it is a precursor to sending U.S. citizens to CECOT, the less likely it is to be popular. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) got an earful from his constituents on the topic. “Are you going to bring that guy back from El Salvador?” one man asked, to applause and calls of “Yeah!” from around the room. When Grassley said no, because that wasn’t a power of Congress, the man replied: “The Supreme Court said to bring him back!” and others chimed in, “They’re defying the Constitution.” “Trump don’t care,” the first man said. “If I get an order to pay a ticket for $1,200 and I just say no, does that stand up? Because he’s got an order from the Supreme Court, and he just said no! He just said ‘Screw it!’” “It’s wrong,” someone in the crowd said. The first man concluded: “I’m pissed.”

This evening, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) noted that “[f]ollowing his abduction and unlawful deportation, U.S. federal courts have ordered the safe return of my constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. It should be a priority of the U.S. government to secure his safe release, which is why tomorrow I am traveling to El Salvador…to visit Kilmar and check on his wellbeing and to hold constructive conversations with government officials around his release. We must urgently continue working to return Kilmar safely home to Maryland.”

Trump’s losing ground on his other major selling point in the 2024 election: that he would improve the economy. He promised to bring prices down “on Day One,” but backed off on that almost immediately. Then an utterly chaotic trade war, tariffs on and off and on again, and a dramatic drop in the bond market as well as the stock market suggesting that the U.S. is losing its status as a safe haven made April an economic disaster. JPMorgan said this week that Trump’s tariffs mean that he is “on track to deliver one of the largest US tax hikes on record,” taxes that will fall on poorer Americans rather than the wealthy and corporations.

Under Biden, Vietnam and the U.S. had strengthened economic ties, but yesterday, China and Vietnam signed dozens of cooperation agreements to combat disruptions caused by Trump's trade war. Today, Chinese officials stopped accepting Boeing jets or U.S. airline parts. China has also stopped accepting U.S. beef, turning instead to Australia. U.S. beef exports to China have been worth $2.5 billion annually.  Last Thursday, Gustaf Kilander of The Independent reported that “fund managers quietly fear Trump doesn’t have a tariff plan and that he ‘might be insane.’”

Meetings in Washington this week did little to calm the situation. Jordan Erb of Bloomberg reported that Maros Sefcovic, the trade chief for the European Union, left yesterday’s trade meeting in Washington unclear about what the U.S. even wants. Erb notes: “The uncertainty around Trump’s chaotic tactics, replete with delays, retreats, new threats and sudden exceptions and trial balloons, hasn’t helped.”

Trump also promised he would end Russia’s war on Ukraine immediately. But it has become obvious that Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is using Trump’s desperation to deliver a peace deal to strike harder at Ukraine. Just after a visit to Moscow by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff last week, the Russians struck the Ukrainian city of Sumy during Palm Sunday celebrations, killing at least 35 people and injuring another 119, including children. European leaders called the attack a war crime, Trump said it was likely a “mistake.”

After Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said in a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night that U.S. officials are echoing Russian disinformation, Trump called for CBS, the channel on which 60 Minutes appears, to lose its license.

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. refused to support a statement by the Group of Seven (G7), an informal group of seven of the countries with the world’s most advanced economies, condemning the Sumy attack. The U.S. said it wouldn’t condemn the mass killing of civilians because it is “working to preserve the space to negotiate peace.”

One of Trump’s key attacks on the Biden administration before the election was his lie that it had shortchanged the North Carolina victims of the devastating Hurricane Helene by sending money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to undocumented immigrants, likely to buy their votes (it is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections). In fact, the Biden administration and FEMA had been in the state since the start and approved FEMA’s reimbursement for 100% of disaster relief, particularly emergency protective services and the removal of debris, renewable after six months.

Trump won North Carolina by more than 3 points, but on Saturday the Trump administration denied North Carolina’s application for that extension. “The need in western North Carolina remains immense—people need debris removed, homes rebuilt, and roads restored,” North Carolina governor Josh Stein said. “I am extremely disappointed and urge the President to reconsider FEMA’s bad decision, even for 90 days. Six months later, the people of western North Carolina are working hard to get back on their feet; they need FEMA to help them get the job done.”

Trump’s approval ratings are dropping steadily, with even Republican pollsters showing him “underwater,” meaning that more people disapprove of his presidency than approve of it.

Part of Trump’s fight with the Supreme Court is an attempt to demonstrate dominance as his numbers drop, but institutions, as well as the courts, are standing up to him. With Trump having won concessions from Columbia University and then announced those concessions were only the beginning of his demands, other universities are banding together to defend education, academic freedom, and freedom of speech.

On Monday, Harvard University took a stand against the administration’s demand to regulate the “intellectual and civil rights conditions” at Harvard, including its governance, admissions, programs, and extracurricular activities, in exchange for the continuation of $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and a $60 million contract. Harvard is the country’s oldest university, founded in 1636, and in 2024 had an endowment of more than $53 billion.

In a letter noting that the administration’s demands undercut the First Amendment and the university’s legal rights, Harvard’s lawyers wrote: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government. Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle…. Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”

But Harvard didn’t stop there. It turned its website into a defense of the medical research funded by the federal grants Trump is threatening to withhold. It explains the advances Harvard researchers have made in cancer research, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, obesity and diabetes, infectious diseases, and organs and transplantation. It highlights the researchers, shows labs, and presents readable essays on different scientific breakthroughs.

As the administration slashes through the government with charges of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” Harvard’s president Alan Garber has made a stand on what he calls “the promise of higher education.”

“Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere,” he wrote. “All of us share a stake in safeguarding that freedom. We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity—and with faith in the enduring promise that America’s colleges and universities hold for our country and our world.”

mickeyrat

April 16, 2025 (Wednesday)

In El Salvador today, authorities denied Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) a meeting or a phone call with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man the Trump regime sent by “administrative error” to the terrorist prison CECOT. Abrego Garcia is Van Hollen’s constituent, and the senator promised his family to try to get him released. That Salvadoran officials cannot or will not produce him raises concerns about his well-being.

Senator Van Hollen had hoped to meet with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, but met instead with Vice President Félix Ulloa. Ulloa at first told Van Hollen there had not been enough time to arrange a meeting with Abrego Garcia, but when the senator offered to come back next week, Ulloa allowed as how a meeting might not be possible at all.

Van Hollen reported that when he asked Ulloa why El Salvador was continuing to imprison Abrego Garcia when it had no evidence that he was a gang member, Ulloa answered that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador to hold him.

Evidently, President Donald Trump thinks what he is doing to Abrego Garcia and the optics of CECOT play well to his base. Jordain Carney and Nicholas Wu of Politico reported today that the White House has “heavily encouraged” Republican lawmakers to lean into the idea of Abrego Garcia—who has no criminal record—as an example of the dangerous criminals they insist Democrats want to bring to the U.S. Yesterday, out of the blue and with absolutely no evidence, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that Abrego Garcia engaged in human trafficking.

At least a dozen Republicans have followed the president’s lead. Congressional reporter Craig Caplan reported that yesterday, House Ways and Means committee chair Jason Smith (R-MO) led a delegation of Republican House members to tour CECOT. The delegation included representatives Ron Estes (KS), Kevin Hern (OK), Mike Kennedy (UT), Carol Miller (WV), Riley Moore (WV), and Claudia Tenney (NY). At least some of the representatives had photographs taken of them in CECOT, standing in front of the caged men.

The delegation also met with U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador William Duncan, who posted on social media that “[t]he delegation is visiting the country to strengthen bilateral ties and discuss initiatives that promote economic development and mutual cooperation.”

Two days ago, Bukele posted a picture of himself and Trump with their arms around each other with the comment: “Friends.” Ron Filipkowski of MeidasNews wrote: “We traded Europe for a guy that builds concentration camps for profit.”

Trump is likely pushing his narrative about criminal undocumented immigrants—although Bloomberg has reported that 90% of the men he has sent to El Salvador have no criminal record—in part because that rendition is stirring up opposition. In addition to popular protests, judges are pushing back.

Today, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued an opinion saying that the administration’s “hurried removal” of the men to El Salvador after Boasberg had issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting them from doing so, demonstrated “a wilful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.”

“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders—especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” Boasberg wrote. Quoting Chief Justice John Marshall, who laid down the foundations of much of America law, Boasberg wrote: “To permit such officials to freely ‘annul the judgments of the courts of the United States’ would not just ‘destroy the rights acquired under those judgments’; it would make ‘a solemn mockery’ of ‘the constitution itself.’”

If the government decides not to try to repair its contempt, Boasberg says the court will use declarations, hearings, or depositions to identify the individuals responsible for making the judgment to ignore the court. Then he will ask the government to prosecute the contempt, but if—as is likely—it refuses, Boasberg says he will appoint a private prosecutor to move the case along. As legal analyst Joyce White Vance puts it: “These cases are about making sure that, American citizen or not, criminal or not, peoples’ right to have the day in court that the Constitution guarantees them is honored. That’s all. But it’s everything.”

Trump is also likely playing to his base because Americans are terribly concerned about what’s happening to the economy on his watch.

Stocks fell again today after Trump’s administration said it would put limits on chip sales to China and after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell told the Economic Club of Chicago that Trump’s tariffs will have “significantly larger than anticipated…economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 700 points or 1.73%, the S&P 500 fell 2.24%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.07%.

Danielle Kaye of the New York Times reports on a recent Bank of America survey that shows global investors have dumped a record amount of U.S. stocks in the past two months. Trump insists that the U.S. has been bringing in $2 billion a day in tariffs, some of which he claims comes from his new levies, but, in fact, Lori Ann LaRocco of CNBC reported today that U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the U.S. is taking in only $250 million a day.

Leila Fadel of NPR reports that China used to buy more than half the U.S. crop of soybeans and now soybean farmers are gravely concerned they’re going to lose that market. At the same time, we are heading in the prime months for the U.S. tourism industry, and Bloomberg reports that a worst-case scenario by the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates that the U.S. could lose almost $90 billion as foreign tourists stay away from the U.S. and boycott American products.  

So Trump is hitting his MAGA themes hard.

Today he escalated his attacks on Maine governor Janet Mills. Trump has demanded that Mills prohibit transgender girls in the public schools from participating in girls’ sports. Mills, who was Maine’s attorney general before she became governor, maintains she is bound by the 2021 state law that explicitly protects against discrimination on the basis of gender identity. As Jeremy Roebuck and Joanna Slater of the Washington Post note, Mills has said that law is “worthy of debate” but that Trump cannot change it by decree.

On February 21, Trump threatened to withhold federal education funding for Maine unless Mills promised to comply with his ban. When she reiterated that “I’m complying with state and federal laws,” and that “We’re going to follow the law,” he warned: “You’d better comply because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding.” Mills answered: “See you in court.”

Since then, the administration has attacked the state, opening investigations, cutting and then restoring Social Security Administration contracts, and taunting Mills on social media. On Friday the Department of Education said it would pull all federal funding for education in Maine unless the state agreed to ban the state’s two transgender girls from playing on girls sports teams. Today the Justice Department sued Maine’s Department of Education, and Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to pull past funding retroactively.

Mills said the administration is trying “to pressure the State of Maine to ignore the Constitution and abandon the rule of law.” “For nearly two months, Maine has endured recriminations from the Federal government that have targeted hungry school kids, hardworking fishermen, senior citizens, new parents, and countless Maine people,” Mills said. “We have been subject to politically motivated investigations that opened and closed without discussion, leaving little doubt that their outcomes were predetermined. Let today serve as warning to all states: Maine might be among the first to draw the ire of the Federal government in this way, but we will not be the last.”

Trump is also keeping his attack on Harvard in the news. Yesterday, after Harvard defied the regime’s attempt to take over the school, Trump posted “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Today, Evan Perez, Alayna Treene, and Marshall Cohen of CNN reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is planning to take away Harvard University’s tax-exempt status. Law professor Sam Brunson noted that this is illegal. “In 1998,” he wrote, “Congress explicitly provided that the President could not, directly or indirectly, request that the IRS start or end an audit or other investigation of a taxpayer.” Brunson also noted that the move was “dumb.” “Unless Trump has super-secret information, Harvard hasn't done anything to violate its tax-exempt status.” Brunson added: “there's not a single competent attorney left in the Administration.”   

The Wall Street Journal editorial board helpfully noted that the Supreme Court “has repeatedly held that the government may not use federal benefits or funds to coerce parties to surrender their constitutional rights. This is what the Administration is doing” with its demands on Harvard.

Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark reposted a clip of then-senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) on the Fox News Channel when a right-wing group falsely alleged the IRS was targeting them. "This is about whether we have functional constitutional government in this country,” Vance told host Laura Ingraham. “If the IRS can go after you because of what you think or what you believe or what you do, we'd no longer live in a free country.“

mickeyrat

video with angus king....

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16RNE2QDAv/

mickeyrat

April 17, 2025 (Thursday)

Today, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) posted a picture of himself with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whom the Trump administration says it sent to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador through “administrative error” but can’t get back, and wrote: “I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.”

While the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, apparently tried to stage a photo that would make it look as if the two men were enjoying a cocktail together, it seems clear that backing down and giving Senator Van Hollen access to Abrego Garcia is a significant shift from Bukele’s previous scorn for those trying to address the crisis of a man legally in the U.S. having been sent to prison in El Salvador without due process.

Bukele might be reassessing the distribution of power in the U.S.

According to Robert Jimison of the New York Times, who traveled to El Salvador with Senator Van Hollen, when a reporter asked President Donald Trump if he would move to return Abrego Garcia to the United States, Trump answered: “Well, I’m not involved. You’ll have to speak to the lawyers, the [Department of Justice].”

Today a federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to stop Judge Paula Xinis’s order that it “take all available steps” to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. “as soon as possible.” Conservative Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wrote the order. Notably, it began with a compliment to Judge Xinis. “[W]e shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision,” he wrote.

Then Wilkinson turned his focus on the Trump administration. “It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” he wrote. “But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process.” The court noted that if the government is so sure of its position, then it should be confident in presenting its facts to a court of law.

Echoing the liberal justices on the Supreme Court, Wilkinson wrote: “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” He noted the reports that the administration is talking about doing just that.

“And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present,” he wrote, “and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning.”

After Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s warning yesterday that Trump’s tariffs will have “significantly larger than anticipated…economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth,” and his statement that the Fed would not cut interest rates immediately as it assesses the situation, Trump today began attacking Powell. Trump wrote on his social media site that Powell is “always TOO LATE AND WRONG.” His missive concluded: “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”

Firing Powell would inject yet more chaos into the economy, and the White House told reporters that Trump’s post “should not be seen as a threat to fire Powell.” Hedge fund founder Spencer Hakimian posted: “Cleanup of orange vomit on Aisle 3.”

There seems to be a change in the air.  

Three days ago, on April 14, Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times wrote that the vibe is shifting against the right. Yesterday, former neocon and now fervent Trump critic and editor of The Bulwark Bill Kristol posted a photo of plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Officers kidnapping Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, and commented: “Where does the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement go to get its apology.”

Today, in the New York Times, conservative David Brooks called for all those resisting what he called “a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men” to work together. He called for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” that would first stop Trump and then create “a long-term vision of a fairer society that is not just hard on Trump, but hard on the causes of Trumpism—one that offers a positive vision.”

Brooks is hardly the first to suggest that “this is what America needs right now.” But a conservative like Brooks not only arguing that “Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life,” but then quoting Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto to call for resistance to those shackles—“We have nothing to lose but our chains”—signals that a shift is underway.

That shift has apparently swept in New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who is generally a good barometer of the way today’s non-MAGA Republicans are thinking. In an interview today, he said: “[M]y feelings about not only Trump, but the administration, are falling like a boulder going into the Mariana Trench. So the memory of things that this administration has done, of which I approve, is drowning in the number of things that are, in my view, reckless, stupid, awful, un-American, hateful and bad—not just for the country, but also for the conservative movement.”

Stephens identified Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance’s bullying of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office as the event that turned him away from Trump. “America should never treat an ally that way, certainly not one who is bravely fighting a common enemy,” he said. Stephens also noted the meeting had “delighted” Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, who is now “emboldened…to press the war harder.”

We have been in a similar moment of shifting coalitions before.

In the 1850s, elite southern enslavers organized to take over the government and create an oligarchy that would make enslavement national. Northerners hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to southern leaders’ slow accumulation of power and were shocked when Congress bowed to them and in 1854 passed a law that overturned the Missouri Compromise that had kept slavery out of the West. The establishment of slavery in the West would mean new slave states there would work with the southern slave states to outvote the North in Congress, and it would only be a question of time until they made slavery national. Soon, the Slave Power would own the country.

Northerners of all parties who disagreed with each other over issues of immigration, finance, and internal improvements—and even over the institution of slavery—came together to stand against the end of American democracy.

Four years later, in 1858, Democrat Stephen Douglas complained that those coming together to oppose the Democrats were a ragtag coalition whose members didn’t agree on much at all. Abraham Lincoln, who by then was speaking for the new party coalescing around that coalition, replied that Douglas “should remember that he took us by surprise—astounded us—by this measure. We were thunderstruck and stunned; and we reeled and fell in utter confusion. But we rose each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach—a scythe—a pitchfork—a chopping axe, or a butcher's cleaver. We struck in the direction of the sound; and we are rapidly closing in upon him. He must not think to divert us from our purpose, by showing us that our drill, our dress, and our weapons, are not entirely perfect and uniform. When the storm shall be past, he shall find us still Americans; no less devoted to the continued Union and prosperity of the country than heretofore.”

mickeyrat

April 18, 2025 (Friday)

Tonight I had the extraordinary privilege of speaking at the anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns in Boston’s Old North Church, which happened 250 years ago tonight. Here’s what I said:

Two hundred and fifty years ago, in April 1775, Boston was on edge. Seven thousand residents of the town shared these streets with more than 13,000 British soldiers and their families. The two groups coexisted uneasily.

Two years before, the British government had closed the port of Boston and flooded the town with soldiers to try to put down what they saw as a rebellion amongst the townspeople. Ocean trade stopped, businesses failed, and work in the city got harder and harder to find. As soldiers stepped off ships from England onto the wharves, half of the civilian population moved away. Those who stayed resented the soldiers, some of whom quit the army and took badly needed jobs away from locals.

Boston became increasingly cut off from the surrounding towns, for it was almost an island, lying between the Charles River and Boston Harbor. And the townspeople were under occupation. Soldiers, dressed in the red coats that inspired locals to insult them by calling them “lobsterbacks,” monitored their movements and controlled traffic in and out of the town over Boston Neck, which was the only land bridge from Boston to the mainland and so narrow at high tide it could accommodate only four horses abreast.  

Boston was a small town of wooden buildings crowded together under at least eight towering church steeples, for Boston was still a religious town. Most of the people who lived there knew each other at least by sight, and many had grown up together. And yet, in April 1775, tensions were high.

Boston was the heart of colonial resistance to the policies of the British government, but it was not united in that opposition. While the town had more of the people who called themselves Patriots than other colonies did—maybe 30 to 40 percent—at least 15% of the people in town were still fiercely loyal to the King and his government. Those who were neither Patriots nor Loyalists just kept their heads down, hoping the growing political crisis would go away and leave them unscathed.

It was hard for people to fathom that the country had come to such division. Only a dozen years before, at the end of the French and Indian War, Bostonians looked forward to a happy future in the British empire. British authorities had spent time and money protecting the colonies, and colonists saw themselves as valued members of the empire. They expected to prosper as they moved to the rich lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and their ships plied the oceans to expand the colonies’ trade with other countries.

That euphoria faded fast.

Almost as soon as the French and Indian War was over, to prevent colonists from stirring up another expensive struggle with Indigenous Americans, King George III prohibited the colonists from crossing the Appalachian Mountains. Then, to pay for the war just past, the king’s ministers pushed through Parliament a number of revenue laws.

In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring the payment of a tax on all printed material—from newspapers and legal documents to playing cards. It would hit virtually everyone in the North American colonies. Knowing that local juries would acquit their fellow colonists who violated the revenue acts, Parliament took away the right to civil trials and declared that suspects would be tried before admiralty courts overseen by British military officers. Then Parliament required colonials to pay the expenses for the room and board of British troops who would be stationed in the colonies, a law known as the Quartering Act.

But what Parliament saw as a way to raise money to pay for an expensive war—one that had benefited the colonists, after all—colonial leaders saw as an abuse of power. The British government had regulated trade in the empire for more than a century. But now, for the first time, the British government had placed a direct tax on the colonists without their consent. Then it had taken away the right to a trial by jury, and now it was forcing colonists to pay for a military to police them.

Far more than money was at stake. The fight over the Stamp Act tapped into a struggle that had been going on in England for more than a century over a profound question of human governance: Could the king be checked by the people?

This was a question the colonists were perhaps uniquely qualified to answer. While the North American colonies were governed officially by the British crown, the distance between England and the colonies meant that colonial assemblies often had to make rules on the ground. Those assemblies controlled the power of the purse, which gave them the upper hand over royal officials, who had to await orders from England that often took months to arrive. This chaotic system enabled the colonists to carve out a new approach to politics even while they were living in the British empire.

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mickeyrat

Friday part 2

Colonists naturally began to grasp that the exercise of power was not the province of a divinely ordained leader, but something temporary that depended on local residents’ willingness to support the men who were exercising that power.   

The Stamp Act threatened to overturn that longstanding system, replacing it with tyranny.

When news of the Stamp Act arrived in Boston, a group of dock hands, sailors, and workers took to the streets, calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. They warned colonists that their rights as Englishmen were under attack. One of the Sons of Liberty was a talented silversmith named Paul Revere. He turned the story of the colonists’ loss of their liberty into engravings. Distributed as posters, Revere’s images would help spread the idea that colonists were losing their liberties.

The Sons of Liberty was generally a catch-all title for those causing trouble over the new taxes, so that protesters could remain anonymous, but prominent colonists joined them and at least partly directed their actions. Lawyer John Adams recognized that the Sons of Liberty were changing the political equation. He wrote that gatherings of the Sons of Liberty “tinge the Minds of the People, they impregnate them with the sentiments of Liberty. They render the People fond of their Leaders in the Cause, and averse and bitter against all opposers.”

John Adams’s cousin Samuel Adams, who was deeply involved with the Sons of Liberty, recognized that building a coalition in defense of liberty within the British system required conversation and cooperation. As clerk of the Massachusetts legislature, he was responsible for corresponding with other colonial legislatures. Across the colonies, the Sons of Liberty began writing to like-minded friends, informing them about local events, asking after their circumstances, organizing.

They spurred people to action. By 1766, the Stamp Act was costing more to enforce than it was producing in revenue, and Parliament agreed to end it. But it explicitly claimed “full power and authority to make laws and statutes...to bind the colonies and people of America...in all cases whatsoever.” It imposed new revenue measures.

News of new taxes reached Boston in late 1767. The Massachusetts legislature promptly circulated a letter to the other colonies opposing taxation without representation and standing firm on the colonists’ right to equality in the British empire. The Sons of Liberty and their associates called for boycotts on taxed goods and broke into the warehouses of those they suspected weren’t complying, while women demonstrated their sympathy for the rights of colonists by producing their own cloth and drinking coffee rather than relying on tea.

British officials worried that colonists in Boston were on the edge of revolt, and they sent troops to restore order. But the troops’ presence did not calm the town. Instead, fights erupted between locals and the British regulars.

Finally, in March 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd of angry men and boys harassing them. They wounded six and killed five, including Crispus Attucks, a Black man who became the first to die in the attack. Paul Revere turned the altercation into the “Boston Massacre.” His instantly famous engraving showed soldiers in red coats smiling as they shot at colonists, “Like fierce Barbarians grinning o’er their Prey; Approve the Carnage, and enjoy the Day.”

Parliament promptly removed the British troops to an island in Boston Harbor and got rid of all but one of the new taxes. They left the one on tea, keeping the issue of taxation without representation on the table. Then, in May 1773, Parliament gave the East India Tea Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies. By lowering the cost of tea in the colonies, it meant to convince people to buy the taxed tea, thus establishing Parliament’s right to impose a tax on the colonies.

In Boston, local leaders posted a citizen guard on Griffin’s Wharf at the harbor to make sure tea could not be unloaded. On December 16, 1773, men dressed as Indigenous Americans boarded three merchant ships. They broke open 342 chests of tea and dumped the valuable leaves overboard.

Parliament closed the port of Boston, stripped the colony of its charter, flooded soldiers back into the town, and demanded payment for the tea. Colonists promptly organized the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and took control of the colony. The provincial congress met in Concord, where it stockpiled supplies and weapons, and called for towns to create “minute men” who could fight at a moment’s notice.

British officials were determined to end what they saw as a rebellion. In April, they ordered military governor General Thomas Gage to arrest colonial leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who had left Boston to take shelter with one of Hancock’s relatives in the nearby town of Lexington. From there, they could seize the military supplies at Concord. British officials hoped that seizing both the men and the munitions would end the crisis.

But about 30 of the Sons of Liberty, including Paul Revere, had been watching the soldiers and gathering intelligence. They met in secret at the Green Dragon Tavern to share what they knew, each of them swearing on the Bible that they would not give away the group’s secrets. They had been patrolling the streets at night and saw at midnight on Saturday night, April 15, the day before Easter Sunday, that the general was shifting his troops. They knew the soldiers were going to move. But they didn’t know if the soldiers would leave Boston by way of the narrow Boston Neck or row across the harbor to Charlestown. That mattered because if the townspeople in Lexington and Concord were going to be warned that the troops were on their way, messengers from Boston would have to be able to avoid the columns of soldiers.

The Sons of Liberty had a plan. Paul Revere knew Boston well—he had been born there. As a teenager, he had been among the first young men who had signed up to ring the bells in the steeple of the Old North Church. The team of bell-ringers operated from a small room in the tower, and from there, a person could climb sets of narrow stairs and then ladders into the steeple. Anyone who lived in Boston or the surrounding area knew well that the steeple towered over every other building in Boston.

On Easter Sunday, after the secret watchers had noticed the troop movement, Revere traveled to Lexington to visit Adams and Hancock. On the way home through Charlestown, he had told friends “that if the British went out by Water, we would shew two Lanthorns in the North Church Steeple; & if by Land, one, as a Signal.” Armed with that knowledge, messengers could avoid the troops and raise the alarm along the roads to Lexington and Concord.

The plan was dangerous. The Old North Church was Anglican, Church of England, and about a third of the people who worshipped there were Loyalists. General Thomas Gage himself worshiped there. But so did Revere’s childhood friend John Pulling Jr., who had become a wealthy sea captain and was a vestryman, responsible for the church’s finances. Like Revere, Pulling was a Son of Liberty. So was the church’s relatively poor caretaker, or sexton, Robert Newman. They would help.

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