Making America a Police State
We're well on our way to becoming a police state if current administration policies are allowed to continue.
In a police state, a police force, sometimes secretive, is used to suppress freedom, especially the freedom to dissent, in service to an authoritarian government. A modern example of a police state is North Korea. While we're far from that level of oppression, we're moving in that direction.
To wit:
Badar Khan Suri, a legal resident and Georgetown professor, was taken into custody by un-uniformed officers wearing masks and sent to an ICE detention facility. DHS claims Suri was "actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” Suri's attorney denies those claims, but more importantly, that's not illegal. If promoting antisemitism on social media were a crime, a chunk of Trump supporters would also be guilty.
238 migrants were flown to a prison in El Salvador. No charges. No hearing. No trial. No evidence presented. No due process. 60 Minutes cross-referenced the names of the migrants with arrest records, news reports, and court filings. Three out of four of them had no criminal record. 22% had a record of only non-violent offenses. Only about a dozen of the 238 were accused of serious crimes.
The White House admits that at least one of those flown to El Salvador was a mistake, calling it an "administrative error," but has refused to fix the mistake, claiming they don’t have the authority, leaving a man who they know is innocent in a brutal foreign torture prison. Georgetown Law Professor Steve Vladeck points out that the White House argument effectively means "the government could send any of us to a Salvadoran prison without due process, claim that the misstep was a result of 'administrative error,' and thereby wash its hands of any responsibility for what happens next."
ICE agents apprehended a mom and three children, the youngest in third grade. They entered their home without a warrant, claiming that the warrant for a nearby home was valid because their home was in wi-fi range. At least this story has a happy ending you can read about here.
Asylum is a legal process set up by Congress which the executive branch should not be allowed to ignore. Yet, federal law enforcement is apprehending asylum seekers. Watch this video of Elsy Berrios, who has permission to be and work in this country while waiting for her asylum claim to be processed.
Immigration judges should have oversight over asylum claims and deportation cases, but amid a shortage, Trump just fired over two dozen of them, indicating further his intent to continue ignoring the law on these matters.
When Trump was asked if he would be willing to send U.S. citizens to the El Salvadoran prison, he answered, "I love that." "I'd only do according to the law," he added. But what the law says hasn't stopped him before.
Federal officials are now monitoring social media accounts and using tax records which were previously considered private.
Trump is weaponizing the departments of Justice and Homeland Security against his political foes. This week, he directed these departments to investigate Christopher Krebs, Miles Taylor, and the law firm Susman Godfrey. Krebs was a government official who oversaw election security in 2020 but refused to go along with Trump's stolen election lies. Miles Taylor worked at DHS during Trump's first term and became a high profile critic of the administration. Susman Godfrey represented Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against Fox News, a suit that led to Fox paying $787.5 million to Dominion for spreading misinformation about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Our Founders were deeply concerned about the concentration of government power in a single executive. Wisely, they separated power among three different branches to prevent the sort of abuse we are now seeing. It is now up the judicial and legislative branches, with support and pressure from us, the voters, to reassert the authority they have under the Constitution.
We’ve moved in the direction of a police state before. That’s why Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” was written from a Birmingham jail. But as MLK reminded the nation in his “I Have a Dream” speech, we have resources to stop this in our own American heritage and founding documents.
King’s argument is just as relevant today and can be said about our immigrant neighbors when he said,
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
What We’re Watching
What Else We’re Reading
Reuters: “South Sudan cholera patients died walking to clinic after US cut aid, charity says”
Eight people in South Sudan, including five children, died on a three-hour walk to seek medical treatment for cholera after U.S. aid cuts forced local health services to close, the UK-based charity Save the Children said on Wednesday.
The deaths last month are among the first to be directly attributed to cuts imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump after entering office on January 20, which he said were to ensure grants were aligned with his "America First" agenda.
The Guardian: “Trump’s third term trial balloon: how extremist ideas become mainstream”
The scene is the realm of fantasy or, for millions of Americans, the stuff of nightmares. But in the president’s own mind it is apparently not so far-fetched at all. Last weekend he told an interviewer that he is “not joking” about another run and there are “methods” to circumvent the constitution, which limits presidents to two terms.
For longtime Trump watchers it smacked of a familiar playbook of the American right and the Maga movement. Float a trial balloon, no matter how wacky or extreme. Let far-right media figures such as Steve Bannon make the case it’s not so outlandish because, after all, Democrats are worse. Stand by as Republicans in Congress avoid then equivocate then actively endorse. Watch a fringe idea slowly but surely normalised.
“One of the most important lessons of the last decade is the way that ideas have migrated from the fever swamp into the mainstream,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster. “How Steve Bannon will say some crazy thing only to see it become Republican orthodoxy a few years later. We’ve seen that migration of ideas that seem absurd and are perhaps dismissed but develop a constituency.”
Report: “Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became a Meme Aesthetic for Political Violence
The survey revealed several troubling trends. Over half of those who self-identified as left of center (55.2%) reported that if someone murdered Donald Trump, they would be at least somewhat justified (see Figure 1; similar proportions supported murdering Musk and destroying Tesla dealerships). This includes 13% who said this murder would be “Completely Justified.” Similarly, nearly half of those who self-identified as left of center said the murder of Elon Musk would be somewhat justified (or greater), with about 9% saying this is “Completely Justified” (see Figure 3). Over 1/3 of all respondents believe it is at least somewhat acceptable to destroy Tesla dealerships to protest Elon Musk’s involvement in the Presidential administration.
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The Secretary of State just argued (in written form) in a court that we need to be concerned about “expected beliefs” of international students on a visa.
You could add to these examples the many international students who are having their visas suddenly revoked with no notice and no chance of appeal. Some are sent to a detention center in Louisiana in a jurisdiction favorable to the administration and where access to lawyers is made difficult. There are too many stories to list in a comment, but these are also alarming.