America, Land of the Free (for a while) and Home of the Brazen

   Bukele, Trump, Rubio & Bondi, 

   killing constitutional democracy 

   one executive order at a time… 

“oopsie…”

America, Land of the Free (for a while) and Home of the Brazen

PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!

"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. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order… It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter, 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." 

Very conservative Judge James Wilkinson, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, writing for the very conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, April 17th

I am reminded of the tales of glory and adulation in North Korea over “Outstanding Leader” Km Jong-Un. Local praise relates how “born of heaven” Kim was repeatedly able to shoot holes-in-one as the played golf, how he is the most brilliant man in the nation, perhaps the world, how he is generous and kind – not a word of which is true… but contradict this mythology, and locals (and their entire family!) are instantly transported to one of many “no way out” concentration camps where death often happens as starving victims are used for bayonet practice.

Clearly, Donald Trump was jealous of this deification, as he stated in June of 2018 on Fox & Friends: “He’s the head of a country, and I mean, he’s the strong head, don’t let anyone think anything different… He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” That was a wish expressed in Trump 1.0; by 2025, Trump 2.0 was making that a reality. The news reportage of Trump loyalists singing his praises, his brilliance – as our markets collapsed – was a Kim Jong-un equivalent… in English!

Under the guise of balancing the budget, Trump had appointed self-declared Asperger suffering billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE (a new “Department of Government Efficiency”) to implement Musk’s vision of cutting $2 trillion from federal spending, focusing on waste, corruption and fraud. The promised cuts resulted in roughly 60,000 federal civil servants fired (numbers may be mounting), staffing at the VA and Social Security pared to the bone such that these agencies were no longer able to run their agencies… but the benefits remained intact (many just couldn’t get them for lack of support). As time passed, Musk lowered his target to $1 trillion… and then $150 billion, but somehow the federal budget was increasing. Scratch the surface of that effort, and the Project 2025 goal of replacing the cadre of federal civil servants with absolute Trump loyalists emerged as the real goal. Media, universities, law firms and outspoken credible Trump opponents were next.

As Trump’s tariff-heavy plan for the economy – making enemies out of friends – was tanking the stock market, making US treasuries (which finance our deficit) decreasingly valuable, the fallout was dramatic. Trump believed taking on China was a home run… but then China apparently was not informed that they had to cave like a house of cards.

It wasn’t just retaliatory tariffs that China would use. For example, “The Pentagon discovered Chinese companies are aiding the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen to target American ships - a revelation that comes amid the fallout of President Donald Trump 's trade war… A Chinese satellite company linked to Beijing 's military is helping the rebels with imagery to target US warships and international vessels in the Red Sea, the Financial Times reported.” Daily Mail, April 17th. China’s President Xi Jinping was touring the world seeking to establish a new order for global trade, one that excluded the United States. The EU and Canada likewise did not bow to the Orange, self-proclaimed God.

Trump was failing dramatically, as the Trump-hated Federal Reserve suggested the nation was on a path to stagflation, and prices were sill rising for most ordinary commodities. Still, as the bird flu subsided, at least the price of eggs began to fall. Trump’s MAGA cult dug in, and while his approval numbers sank, most voters said they did not regret their vote. But Trump still needed a distraction over his horrific slam to the economy. And if there were one area where Trump voters were united, it was a loser-lose-all immigration policy. More than a few independents confirmed that was why they voted for him. Legal niceties were lost on a majority of Americans; they didn’t even understand that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which protect the rights of persons and property from arbitrary government actions, added a layer of constitutional substance to keep American residents from the very autocracy Trump was demanding be implemented.

Enter a lawful yet undocumented Salvadoran immigrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was accorded protected status by an immigration court by reason of threats in his native El Salvador by the dreaded MS-13 gang. Married to an American citizen and father to an autistic child, Abrego Garcia was summarily arrested and subject to instantaneous deportation to that notorious Salvadoran gang concentration camp/prison. ICE and the Trump administration, without a shred of credible evidence, claimed that Abrego Garcia’s was himself a member of MS-13.

Abrego Garcia’s removal last month, which the Trump administration described as an ‘administrative error,’ has become a flashpoint in American politics. The fight to bring him home has reached and earned a unanimous decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. As you can see from the above quote, federal appellate courts found that such deportation (and the many such deportations) to be a rather dramatic violation of the Constitution. But an increasing number of stories of Abrego Garcia’s violence and “unequivocal” gang affiliation exploded, almost always without proof. And anyone helping that poor soul was open to MAGA attack: “A conservative watchdog is demanding an ethics probe into [Maryland Democratic] Sen. Chris Van Hollen for allegedly ‘assisting a foreign terrorist organization’ by going to El Salvador to try to help free an accused MS-13 gangbanger.

“The American Accountability Foundation fired off a letter to Senate leaders Thursday [4/17] underscoring the Trump administration’s accusations about Kilmar Abrego Garcia having ties to the barbaric transnational gang and demanding that the Senate refuse to pay for the trip by Van Hollen (D-Md.)… ‘Mr. Abrego-Garcia is essentially an enemy combatant in the ongoing invasion of the United States by transnational gangs,’ AAF President Thomas Jones wrote to the heads of the Senate Ethics Committee and Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) in a letter obtained by The Post.” NY Post. April 17th.

In short, Donald Trump’s harsh and unconstitutional implementation of deportation without trial, even if that effort resulted in defying federal court orders (even of a unanimous Supreme Court), was a distraction that was working. Stories of a plunging economy, severe damage from retaliatory tariffs, soaring prices and federal agencies that could no longer serve retirees, veterans or feed the poor were buried under a deluge of local and international condemnation of deportation without due process, an effort that resulted in several US born citizens being swept up in this purge… were now buried by the press as old news. Trump joyfully deployed federal troops at our southern border to stop the “invasion,” except there was no one there to be stopped. Facts never mattered to Trump, and with the purge of federal agencies and the blind MAGA loyalist willing to spread falsehoods, Trump was smiling. Screw the Constitution.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if our judicial system is unable to stop what they have already determined is unconstitutional arrest and detention, the United States may well be near the end.