Morality Is the Issue

Posted: October 8, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

You’ll be back soon you’ll see
You’ll remember you belong to me
You’ll be back time will tell
You’ll remember that I served you well
Oceans rise, empire fall
We have seen each other through it all
And when push comes to shove
I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love

You’ll be back like before
I’ll fight the fight and win the war
For your love for your grace
And I’ll love you til my dying days
When you’re gone, I’ll go mad
So don’t throw away this thing we had
Cause when push comes to shove
I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love

— Part of the lyrics sung by King George III in the play Hamilton addressing the colonists during the American Revolution

Last week I was concerned about all of the un-American actions underway within the Trump Administration. My fears were not unfounded, and yet, this week promises to be even worse for those of us that believe our Constitutional Republic is worth saving. Like King George, wannabe king Trump is going to send in fully armed troops to remind us, not of his love, but of his quest for power.

It is only Wednesday and we had our Attorney General go before an oversight committee of the Senate and with full flair and drama, give the Senators the middle finger. She was insulting and her message was simple. We in the Trump Administration are in power and we do not care about your silly oversight, we are going to do whatever we want. We have the power. Try and stop us.

Today was the arraignment of the first Trump Director of the FBI. He is being charged in response to a direct order from the President of the United States as part of the president’s Revenge Tour. The case is so flimsy that no career prosecutor would touch it. Trump had to pull in a grossly inexperienced attorney with no background as a prosecutor to pursue the case. Today in the court room it looked like a clown show. And yet, the proceeding will continue, if only to humiliate and harass the former Director.

The extra-judicial murder of civilians in the Caribbean Sea continues. Trump brags about it. To date there is no evidence of any reason to kill people in small boats at sea. Again, it is merely a demonstration of pure power. It puts our military in a precarious position — if indeed it is our military that is carrying out the killings. It could be drones controlled from the U.S. or elsewhere by other federal agencies. Since the administration refuses to come clean, all we know is that our country is violating U.S. and international law.

The government shutdown continues. Whatever one thinks about this or any other shutdowns, the issue about healthcare is real. Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBBA) as the Republicans call it, or the Big Ugly Bill (BUG) as the Democrats call it, the impact on healthcare for over 20 million Americans is on the line. Republicans argue that the Democrats are holding the government “hostage” to give billions of dollars to illegal immigrants. It is a lie to say that undocumented immigrants will get free healthcare if the Democrats have their way. Restoring the cuts to Americans’ healthcare that are in the BBBA does not provide any federal money for undocumented immigrants. There are some limited available health care provisions for immigrants that are here lawfully. Additionally, a few states use state — not federal — funds for some health care for undocumented immigrants. Under U.S. law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, hospitals are required to treat anyone that presents to their Emergency Department with a medical emergency or in labor. Medicaid reimburses the hospital. The BBBA does not change that. However, it does reduce the amount of the reimbursement in states that have adopted expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA — “Obamacare”). That expansion, accepted or rejected by each individual state, helps American citizens to get healthcare they may not otherwise get. It also keeps hospitals and nursing homes open in rural areas of our country.

So, why care? Well, from a moral perspective when we say we care about human beings, it matters. But putting it in terms of dollars and cents, millions of Americans are going to see skyrocketing insurance premiums and some will lose their insurance. More voluntarily will drop their health insurance because they can no longer afford it and they consider themselves healthy, which means other people that want to keep their insurance — basically everyone else with insurance — will see their rates increase as well because the pool of healthy people with insurance will decrease. Much of the increased costs come with the failure to extend tax credits under the ACA which expire at the end of the year. On average, most calculations indicate that with the increase in premiums and the loss of tax credits, the average premium across the U.S. will increase by 136 percent. Some states will see much higher increases such as, for example, in Alaska the average premium will increase by 346 percent. In Mississippi it will be 314 percent. You can also expect your local emergency department to become far more crowded as people skip preventative care because of the lack of insurance and then present when they are in terrible condition. Democrats want to extend the credits, Republicans do not.

Oh by the way, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russ Vought — one of the primary architects of the Project 2025 playbook — wants to fire thousands of furloughed federal employees and has floated a proposal to not give back pay to those furloughed, despite the obligation to do so under a 2019 law enacted by Congress and signed into law by Trump.

Russ Vought is literally on a mission from God to remake the United States in his vision of a white Christian nationalist state. His co-ruler behind the Trump throne is Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, another Project 2025 devotee. These two unelected men are the real power in government right now. So let us take a look at Miller.

This week during an interview with CNN, Miller said “Under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, the president has plenary authority.” As I am not an attorney or legal scholar, I had to check what he was actually saying. It turns out that Miller has used that term before, usually in the context that Trump has the unlimited and absolute power to federalize the National Guard and use it as he sees fit. According to the Cornell University Legal Information Institute, plenary authority or power means “power that is wide-ranging, broadly construed, and often limitless for all practical purposes.”  In fact, the law limits the president’s use of the National Guard to narrow circumstances such as a rebellion or invasion. This is why you hear Trump, Miller and the other henchmen in the administration increasingly using the word “insurrection.” This is why Trump and others continue to call Portland Oregon and Chicago Illinois, among others, war zones where domestic terrorists reign supreme. Or as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week at an official briefing, “President Trump will end the radical left reign of terror in Portland once and for all.”

A federal judge, appointed by Trump, stopped the use of the National Guard in Portland for now with a jarring rebuke of the president and his legal standing to send in troops in what is otherwise a peaceful situation with peaceful protesters. So, Miller turned to Chicago. Last week Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and other federal agencies attacked — and I use the word deliberately — an apartment building on the south side of Chicago by rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter at night, using trucks to bring in other officers, breaking down doors, ransacking people’s homes and placing everyone — men, women and little children — in zip tie handcuffs and holding them incommunicado for hours. Many were American citizens. No warrant, probable cause or other emergent crisis was cited as the reason for the raid. (On a side note, why is the CBP operating in Chicago? They are supposed to only have jurisdiction within a “reasonable” distance from our borders. That distance is considered to be 100 miles from borders or coastlines. They consider Lake Michigan to be both a “border” with Canada and a coastline of the U.S.)

As of last night, federalized troops from the Texas National Guard arrived in the Chicago area. They were not requested by the governor or mayor or any other official of the state of Illinois. There was no coordination or advanced information that they were coming. Red states policing blue states by using troops without regard for the citizens living there. This is not America.

Alarm bells should be going off in all of our heads. Trump, Hegseth, Bondi, Miller, Vought and the other Trump minions are out to consolidate their power in any and every way possible. They believe that they have the power to do anything. Anything. If you disagree, then stop them they all but taunt. If you do try to stop them, you are likely be to their next target. This fight is not over. It is, however, coming to a head. Trump and the MAGA crowd know that their policies are unpopular and un-Constitutional. Their goal is to stop any dissent and to control the elections — if indeed they take place. So far the courts have had some success in keeping them in check. I do not expect the MAGA crowd to continue to follow judicial orders. The guardrails that we have depended on in the past are the intelligence community, Department of Justice (DOJ) and the military. Two of those three have already been co-opted. They are working hard on getting the military to bend to their evil plans. So far I have not heard much out of the senior military leadership in reaffirming their loyalty to the Constitution and total disregard for illegal orders.

The Trump crowd is abusing our military and National Guard. Those soldiers from Texas do not want to be in Chicago. They are away from their real jobs and families on a deployment with unclear objectives that they are not trained to do.

It will hit the fan when Miller, oops, I mean Trump, invokes the Insurrection Act of 1807. In their minds, that Act, which would over ride the Posse Comitatus Act which prohibits troops from being used for law enforcement, would give them unlimited power to use the American military against American citizens. The Act does not fully outline or restrict how it can be utilized. Trump will undoubtedly declare that it gives him “plenary authority” to do whatever he wants. Remember in his first term he asked why the military couldn’t just shoot peaceful demonstrators in the legs to get them out of the way.

To me, we are past the “blue” versus “red” or Democrat versus Republican or Liberal versus Conservative or any of the other traditional ways we define policy differences. We are in the gravest danger to our Republic since at least the Civil War. And to me, it is about morality. It is now the moral versus the immoral. Do we treat human beings as we would want to be treated and not as scum or animals as Trump labels them? Do we act as judge, jury and executioner to murder people in small boats in the middle of the ocean or do the rules of the legal system apply? Do we care that millions of Americans are going to die because they no longer can afford basic healthcare or do we do our best to help them? Do we use the scientific method to prevent illness and the spread of disease or do we just wing it on the whims of one man that does not care about anyone else? Do we allow children around the world to die preventable deaths from illness and malnutrition or do we, the greatest nation on earth, help them?

The moral aspects of what is now happening cannot be ignored. It is not “just politics.” It is a fight to define who we are as a nation. We have not always gotten it right, but we have made progress over the last 249 years in our quest to “form a more perfect union.”

“NO KINGS DAY” is 18 October.

The Threat To Our Military

Posted: September 5, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Last Tuesday, video was released showing an attack by a U.S. military asset on a small boat reportedly sunk with the loss of all onboard. The location of the attack was not disclosed, but it was claimed that the boat was in international waters after leaving the mainland of Venezuela. Facts surrounding the incident are scarce. There are assertions from the President Bone Spurs Administration that it was an identified narco-terrorist boat filled with illegal drugs headed “eventually” to the U.S. In my career as on officer in the U.S. Navy, I participated in numerous drug operations in the Caribbean Sea.

For decades, the U.S. Navy (USN) and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) have conducted anti-drug operations. They have always been considered law enforcement actions. The USN ships participating would carry USCG detachments onboard because the U.S. military does not do law enforcement. The USCG is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and does have law enforcement capability and authorization. I have seen a lot of boats similar to the one sunk on Tuesday during my days on these operations. Some were carrying drugs. Some were legitimate fishermen. I did not see any, but others are known to carry undocumented migrants trying to sneak into the U.S. Some are innocent civilians traveling about the Caribbean Sea. How do we know that the administration is legitimate in its claims that these were narco-terrorists without positive identification? Normally, the USN ship would stop the vessel — most stopped when asked, or if not, they did when we trained guns on them, but if they did not, accurate gunfire would disable their engines — and the heavily armed USCG detachment would go onboard and search the vessel. If drugs were found, the crew was arrested, the cargo seized and the boat taken over by U.S. military personnel or towed to port. Not every boat we stopped and searched was a drug runner. Most were innocent people undertaking innocent business of their own. It worked.

Unless you ask Secretary of State Marco Rubio. While in Mexico he said “the United States has long, for many, many years, established intelligence that allow us to interdict and stop drug boats. We did that. And it doesn’t work.”  He went on to say “what will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.” Therefore, “instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up. And it’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now.”  Maybe they killed innocent civilians without regard to international law. This is a frightening development if we really delve into it. It contradicts precedent, American values and the law. A secret document signed by the president does not change the law. If a criminal act is discovered, it is handled by law enforcement officials. Not the military. For this administration the words “national security” and “emergency” seem to be thought of as some kind of magic words that allow them to do whatever they want, be it tariffs, immigration, health care or the use of our military in domestic circumstances.

Trump likes to act like the tough guy but really he is quite weak. Just ask XI, Putin and Kim. Whether you believe him to be strong or weak does not matter, he is still expected to follow the law. Trump is consistently creeping ever closer to using the military for his own personal purposes. Under international law he cannot order a bombing attack on a non-threatening vessel in international waters just because he wants to look tough.

Do I sympathize with drug runners or want to see them succeed as Trump and his minions claim of anyone that questions their unlawful actions? No. Of course not. I do, however, believe in the rule of law and the president cannot just make it up as he goes along. Indiscriminately killing people in international waters does not enhance our liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

The Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C — 1385) from 1878 bans the use of the military for law enforcement “except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” So far, none of his actions with active duty forces or the National Guard meet those criteria. While it is a little more complicated for the National Guard — depending on whether they have been nationalized as federal forces by the president or whether they are under the control of the state’s governor — the way that they have been used is not legal. Do not take my word for it, take the word of federal District Judge Charles Breyer who recently ruled that the Trump Administration’s federalization of the National Guard and the use of U.S. Marines in Los Angeles to assist ICE and other federal agencies in arresting undocumented immigrants violated the Act in multiple ways. His decision carefully debunks the three main arguments that the Trump attorneys asserted was within presidential power. Each of their three assertions basically say that the president cannot be held criminally liable because only the Executive Branch can prosecute violations through the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the president controls DOJ therefore the president can act in his own best interests.

I have oversimplified what is considered an elegant and air tight decision, but given that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) said that presidents are immune from prosecution when acting in an official capacity, none of us should rest easy. If the SCOTUS overrules the lower courts, Katie bar the door. It is open season on all of us.

The military has a proud tradition of pledging loyalty to the Constitution and not to any individual, including the president acting as Commander-in-Chief. They are bound to obey lawful orders from their superiors, but Trump is coming right up to the line. We will see if he crosses over.

There is no one in his administration that will pull him back. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is incompetent. He only does what he is told. And now he and the president want to rename the Department of Defense (DOD) the Department of War. There is a long history behind it — the Department of War was the Army until post World War II reforms. It and the Department of the Navy were cabinet positions, there was no Air Force. The National Security act of 1947 realigned the Defense Establishment. An act of Congress in 1949 created the title Department of Defense. They want to rename it because that is what it was during World Wars I and II. Ahhh. The good ol’ days. It would take an act of Congress to officially change it, but like everything else, Trump plans to issue an Executive Order (E.O.) allowing the use of the name, even if he is not officially changing it. In other words, a rebranding effort.

We have already seen that Trump will do whatever he wants. I think we are only beginning to understand how lawless his behavior already is and how much further he is ready, willing and able to go if he wants it. Remember that he fired the leaders of the Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and multiple other senior officers including the Judge Advocate General (JAG) in each of the services. Recently, Hegseth reassigned six hundred (!) other military lawyers to assist DOJ as immigration judges. (Recall that this administration fired or forced into early retirement over 100 immigration judges when they took over.) Who is left to advise leaders as to the legality of the military decisions that are being made?

Already our due process rights are in danger as masked, unidentified men are disappearing people off the streets of our country as I type. They are sent on their way to who knows where. What should we expect if the president can indiscriminately use the military for law enforcement purposes? Why not drone strikes inside the U.S.? Why not use the military to take care of criminal gangs? When that happens we are finished as a democracy. Stick a fork in it, we’re done.

In 2020 there was a draft E.O. ordering the military to seize all voting machines. Ultimately Trump backed down and did not sign it — mainly because senior military and civilian leaders told him it was illegal. Now there is no one in place that would stop him. It may happen in the future because he already says results from voting machines are not valid. What if he declares voting machines to be counter to U.S. national security interests because he thinks that they can be manipulated by foreign powers? (They cannot be manipulated.) Does he execute his E.O. and have the military seize the machines or does he just declare the results invalid?

I fear for our men and women in uniform and the pressure that will increasingly come their way in Trump’s endless pursuit of his own interests. Where are the senior uniformed military leaders? Are they okay with this? Afraid of being fired? If so, I am ashamed for them.

It’s Starting

Posted: June 10, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“I tasted a little tear gas — tasted like fascism.”

An unidentified protester in Los Angeles in a street interview on CBS on 8 June 2025.

Starting last Friday, protests in Los Angeles have continued in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions to apprehend undocumented immigrants. The protests started small, but have grown in reaction to the federal government’s response to the unrest. It seems that Trump (aka TACO — Trump Always Chickens Out, a name given to him in an article about tariffs in the Financial Times) seized upon this development to embrace his attempts to try and show how tough he is. His poll numbers and national support are dropping sharply in all areas except immigration. Therefore, he wants to make immigration his central focus in order to drown out all the criticism of all of the other parts of his agenda that are failing.

While it is true that playing to his base is one of his main motivators, it is not all that he is doing, nor is it the most important. We as a nation are on the brink of losing our democracy to an autocratic regime that has no patience for criticism and is willing to take extreme measures to achieve their goals.

It is extremely ironic, not to mention hypocritical, that a man that is a convicted felon, adjudicated sexual offender and well known draft dodger (“bone spurs”) who pardoned over 1500 people that brutally attacked law enforcement officers in an insurrection designed to keep him in power after he lost an election, is now screaming about law and order and pushing for the harshest punishments for anyone that even bumps into a law enforcement official. The leaders of the Trump regime are immune to feelings of hypocrisy and shame.

Let there be no doubt. Violence, looting, destruction of property are all crimes and people should be held accountable for any form of criminal activity, whatever “heroic” actions they may think that they are taking. However, the vast majority of the protesters are acting peacefully, if forcefully, to express their dissatisfaction and fears for their safety and the safety of their family, friends and neighbors. California is the fifth largest economy in the world — all by itself. Los Angeles is the biggest city in the state. It has a diverse, well integrated economy that relies on immigrants in every aspect of social and economic activity. It is a majority-minority city — meaning white people comprise less than half of the population. Estimates put the number of undocumented immigrants in the greater Los Angeles area as being about a million people. ICE and other Trump regime members claim that they are only going after hardened criminals. Yet another lie. Finding and arresting hardened criminals is difficult, time consuming and expensive. When Trump’s deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller (a white nativist) tells the ICE and other federal law enforcement officials that they must arrest 3,000 people a day or else they are fired (the bottom ten percent of field offices each month), those officials are going to go for the easy pickings. Day workers outside of Home Depot. Construction sites. People coming in for their immigration hearings or other appointments in accordance with our laws and their asylum or citizenship requests. As I and many others pointed out before Trump took office, many people now in the administration were saying that anyone that is here illegally is breaking the law and therefore is a criminal. We should not be surprised. They told us what they were going to do but no one believed them. That is what is happening in Los Angeles. ICE raided the parking lot of a Home Depot scooping up day workers and then raided the garment district. That is how the protests started.

According to NBC news, and other sources, Mr. Miller already directed 5,000 federal law enforcement officers to augment ICE and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) efforts to round up immigrants. This includes FBI agents, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) personnel, U.S. Marshalls and many other agencies. First, none of those officers have been trained to apprehend immigrants. Second, their reassignment creates huge gaps in our ability to conduct anti-gang investigations, break up drug cartels, provide counter-intelligence and generally keep our country safe and secure. Instead we are arresting moms and high school kids and other long term, law abiding, tax paying members of our society. Their only focus is on immigration and looking “tough.”

Which brings us back to what I am afraid is really going on. The protests in Los Angeles and the sporadic violence that broke out was ably and effectively controlled and monitored by the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office. They are trained, equipped and expert in handling protests bigger than what was happening in the beginning. They did not need outside help, and if they did, there were thousands of other area law enforcement officers available to help them under mutual aid agreements that most counties and cities have with jurisdictions in their areas.

Instead, the president mobilized two thousand National Guard troops. The desired result was achieved. Instead of calming things down — which any right minded leader would have as their objective — it exacerbated the situation and tensions increased. In my view, Trump was hoping for exactly what happened. Things got worse. When they got worse, his lackey in the Pentagon decided to send in a battalion from the U.S. Marine Corps base in Twenty-nine Palms California (about 700 Marines). Why do that? First, local law enforcement officials said that they could handle it. Second, 2,000 National Guard troops were there. Third, the California National Guard has about 18,000 members. If those on the ground needed help why not mobilize more National Guard personnel? He did it for many reasons — political, precedent, court tests and because Trump thinks that the U.S. military is his personal armed force. (He loves to play with “his” toys. There is a massive display of military power on tap for Saturday 14 June. It is the Army’s 250th birthday (happy birthday soldier!) and coincidentally Trumps 79th birthday. Washington DC is already closing down and Reagan National Airport will be closed during the parade. Totally disruptive. I will only note that the Navy (October) and Marine Corps (November) are also celebrating their 250th birthdays this year. No parades are scheduled.)

Here is why I think Trump and his henchmen and women are purposely escalating this situation. It is a dress rehearsal for bigger and better (in their minds) use of the military under the Insurrection Act of 1807, essentially martial law. Immigration enforcement is a political winner for this administration. It is also a fig leaf for trampling on the Constitution. It is no coincidence that Trump’s foray into this test case took place in California, a deeply blue state with a powerful governor that Trump happens to hate. If he can get away with it there, then he can go after other blue states that anger him (watch out Maine.)

California Governor Gavin Newsom did not request that the National Guard be activated and sent to Los Angeles. The president did so on his own, the first time since 1965 that a president has done so. (In that instance President Lyndon Baines Johnson activated the Alabama Guard to protect peaceful civil rights protesters being harassed and beaten by Alabama law enforcement officers. What a turn around today.) Of course in those 60 years the National Guard has been called out in a variety of circumstances, but always only upon request from the state’s governor.

I am not a Constitutional expert nor any kind of attorney, so I will not get into all of the U.S. codes covering the use of the military domestically. In brief, it is legal for the president to call up the National Guard and to deploy the Marines. However, under the law, they are only to be used for force protection (guarding buildings and the like) and support services (logistics, communications, transportation, and so on). Under a U.S. law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, federal military personnel cannot be used for civilian law enforcement purposes. (Ironically, if the governor had mobilized the Guard, they could be used in that way, but since now that they are federal military forces, they cannot.) I will vouch for the fact that the Marines being sent in have had absolutely no training in crowd dispersal, riot control or any other element of dealing with protesters, unless one or two were previously law enforcement officials. Probably the first time they had ever held a baton and shield in crowd control formation like the pictures show, was yesterday. What could go wrong? This is not the Marine’s mission. They are only there to show how “tough” the Trump regime can be. Some might say cruel, but then we know that when it comes to this administration, fear and cruelty is the point. One prays that an anxious young Marine or excited young protester doesn’t do anything stupid. It could all go down hill fast. Some of us remember what happened at Kent State University in Ohio when National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed war protesters in 1970.

Language is important, precision is important, especially when it comes to the law. Trump and his cohorts are aggressively using the word “insurrection” in their barrage of comments about the evil people of Los Angeles. They are not insurrectionists, of course. No one is trying to overthrow the government. However, there are several reasons for that. One, perhaps the least important, is an attempt to change the narrative and re-write history concerning the attack on the Capitol building on 6 January 2021. Those were insurrectionists, but Trump and the MAGA crowd want you to think otherwise which is why they continue to call them “patriots” — as if Trump even knows what that word means.

Second, the provisions of the Posse Comitatus Act allow for the military to be used in law enforcement under the provisions of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Remember that Trump wanted to invoke that law during the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. He wanted to direct the military to shoot protesters in the legs. The then Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (CJCS) refused to implement his requests and true to his TACO form, he backed down. Thankfully. Who is there now telling him that what he has in mind is wrong? No one. SECDEF Pete (DUI Hire) Hegseth certainly will not. DHS Secretary Kristi (ICE Barbie) Noem certainly will not. Attorney General Pam (Police State Barbie) Bondi certainly will not. I don’t know about the current CJCS but I am worried that we have heard nothing from any source as to any mitigating recommendations senior uniformed officials are making. Crickets so far. Trump’s senior civilian officials seem to be competing amongst themselves to see who can impress the boss the most with their cruel and demeaning behavior.

Immigration is a legitimate issue. The system has been broken for a long time. In 2024 there was a legitimate bi-partisan effort in Congress to try and untangle the mess in a fair, but practical way. Trump killed it during his campaign because he thought that it was his best issue to win re-election. It appears he was right. Now he can use it as a handy tool anytime anything else goes wrong in his administration. Think of all the things that he was going to change/solve/fix in his first 24 hours/month/100 days. None of them happened. But with actions such as he is taking in California, and pretty much around the country, he can say he is doing what the electorate wanted by cracking down on undocumented immigrants. He has a winning political issue and the enablers in his administration, the Project 2025 crowd, have a willing enforcer to Make America White Again.

Only about ten percent of his term has gone by. Stand by for what is coming. This is just the start.

Immigration — MAGA Style

Posted: April 6, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals.'”

“On day one, we will terminate every open border policy of the Biden Administration and begin the largest deportation in American history starting with all of the criminals pouring in. Our local police will tell us where they are.”

— Donald J. Trump, Green Bay Wisconsin on 2 April 2024 referring to immigrants

Unfortunately, by now we are, perhaps too much so, used to the vile rhetoric of the presumed Republican nominee for president. The problem is, it is not just rhetoric. He and his minions that will populate the cabinet of a second Trump Administration are serious about doing exactly what he says. It is not rhetoric, it is a plan of action. Stephen Miller, Trump’s former senior adviser in the first administration, is in line to assume another senior position in a second term and will support Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and push harsh immigration policies to end what he calls “the equity cult.” For those that think such talk is an exaggeration or a fiction created by the media, may I recommend some light reading in the form of the Project 2025 900 page policy book Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. Chapter Five addresses immigration and other Department of Homeland Security issues. As a reminder, Project 2025, under the leadership of the Heritage Foundation, lays out the “Playbook”, policy, personnel, and training for a MAGA take over of the federal government. It is no joke. In 2016, Trump and his supporters were ill-prepared to lead and did not have a deep group of supporters to place in key government positions. It will be different if there is a second time around.

Immigration is a legitimate issue. Democrats agree that measures must be adopted to ease tensions on the border and to better handle the influx of peoples from around the world. They even worked with Republicans to come up with, according to both Democrats and Republicans, the most comprehensive immigration reform measure in the U.S. in at least forty years. Trump said no and his MAGA acolytes shut it down. They are not interested in solving the problem, merely exploiting it as a campaign issue. They have their own plan.

When Trump and his loyal henchmen talk about “the largest deportation in American history” what do they really mean? He and his future government officials look to the 1954 U.S. government deportation effort known as Operation Wetback as their guiding light. That is not the slang term for it, that is the official name of the operation. One can already tell that if a racial slur is involved, it is probably not going to be an easygoing methodology for returning immigrants to their native lands. To date, it is the largest deportation effort in U.S. history involving as many as 1.2 million people (the exact number is unclear as some people were deported more than once). The intent was to remove Mexican immigrants from the U.S. through wide-scale roundups of people, many of whom legally entered the U.S. and some who were actually U.S. citizens, and loading them on buses, trains, planes and ships to unceremoniously dump them in Mexico — often in areas totally unfamiliar to those being deported. It is a lot easier to do this if one believes that Mexicans are “not humans, they’re animals.” At the time of Operation Wetback, Mexicans were portrayed as “dirty, disease-bearing and irresponsible” here to “steal jobs” from Americans. Sound familiar?

The genesis of the operation is a bit complicated. During World War II, the U.S. suffered from a labor shortage as our citizens joined the military and worked in war production factories to stave off fascism. In 1942, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to implement the U.S.-Mexico Farm Labor Program also known as Operation Bracero. In exchange for guaranteed wages and humane treatment, farm workers were legally allowed into the country on temporary visas. Between 1942 and 1964 an estimated 4.2 Mexican workers entered the country legally to work in the Operation. Unfortunately, but still the norm today, some employers did not want to pay the agreed upon (higher) wages under the program, especially in Texas. Conversely, the Mexican government did not want their laborers working in Texas due to the deep discrimination against, and ill-treatment of, Mexican citizens, so Texas was not included in the Bracero program. (Most of the legal workers went to California.) However, Texas did import significant numbers of Mexican workers — illegally and at significantly lower wages — to which the federal and state governments turned a blind eye for many years. (The undocumented immigrants were said to have swum across the Rio Grande, thus the derogatory term “wetbacks” which came to be used as a racial epithet for any Latino worker.)

By 1953 the economic aspects of Texas farmers paying their workers substantially less than those in other states created an unfair advantage. Besides, many Americans were tired of being “over run” by Mexican immigrants whether they were legal or not. Initially the plan called for the National Guard to be used to conduct massive round ups of people (also what Stephen Miller wants to do in 2025). President Eisenhower rejected that plan citing the Posse Comitatus Act which precludes the military from civil law enforcement. In 1954, the Border Patrol under Harlon B. Carter and the Immigration and Naturalization Service under General Joseph Swing used their own agents in military style raids to sweep farms and factories and other locations employing the workers. Many were kept in the desert in wire fenced “concentration camps” while awaiting deportation. Some had their heads shaved — supposedly for hygiene purposes but really to humiliate those in captivity. Lives were uprooted, families separated and some Mexican workers died under the conditions they suffered after being rounded up and held awaiting deportation.

This is the model that MAGA Republicans promise to emulate — nay, exceed — as they promise to round up “the animals” and conduct the “largest deportation in American history.” When asked in a 2016 CNN interview if he thought that Operation Wetback was a “shameful chapter in American history” Trump replied that “some people do, some people think it was a very effective chapter. It was very successful, everyone said. So, I mean, that’s the way it is.” It most emphatically should not be the way it is.