Dear America,
For the first eight months of his second term, the courts, the Supreme Court in particular, seemed to give Trump carte blanche with regard to every dubious tactic and strategy he pursued. He was allowed to run amok with deportation of illegal immigrants to the extent that some legal immigrants--like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was granted "withholding of deportation status" by a federal court by virtue of a fear of persecution in El Salvedor deemed credible by the court--were deported anyway, in Abrego Garcia's by what the Trump administration denominated an "administrative error." Though the federal district court involved ordered the Trump administration to "facillitate and effectuate" Abrego Garcio's return to this country, they stalled in the most transparent way until their collective back was against the wall and they had to bring him back, though he was placed under arrest immediately for an alleged crime in Tennessee. He, like others who were pretextually seized and processed for deportation, was eventually ordered released, but the efforts to deport record numbers of illegal immigrants, the record being the point rather than the principle, continued unabated to this day. However, the leeway given the Trump squad seemed to diminish in some vague sense as time passed until recently, despite a spate of legal victories, more and more federal courts began to interdict Trump's peremptory misuses of the law until a federal judge ruled September 2nd that the Trump invocation of the federal statutory law related to deployment of federal troops was illegal and a transgression rather than a clever ruse. While that decision will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, at last a significant number of people with the power to interdict Trump's true purpose are acting against his malfeasance, and that is existentially important.
That is because it wasn't until September 2nd that I first heard someone mention his foreboding about Trump invoking a pretext related to the 2026 mid-term elections as a pretext for nullifying those elections, declaring marshal law and flooding the nation with troops as abetted by his cadre of minions appointed, properly or not, to pivotal executive branch offices to run them to their patron's satisfaction and pleasure. As it turns out, there are enough greedy, prestige hungry MAGA types willing to be suborned into treachery that the sanctity of our democracy is sinking further and further into jeopardy. So the newly emboldened federal judges, some of them even Trump appointees, are key to thwarting the worst laid plans of the aspiring dictator whom a plurality of the American electorate elected...inexplicably...to be our president. Fortunately, he has laid the groundwork for impeachment on several counts: his misuse of federal funds to purloin a jumbo jet purportedly given as a gift to the American government by another autocrat, the Emir of Qatar; his self-dealing in several areas including his ramming through the administrative process regulations of the crypto-currency industry to the benefit of his family in an amount estimated to be about $5 billion; his creation with his sly sons of his own crypto-currency by which to reap the fruits of his presidential dominion over the business; his patronage in appointing government high officers; and visiting his foreign golf-courses using government modes of transportation purportedly in the course of official business to cite but a few. The only questions are will the Supreme Court do the right thing when the occasion--a deliberate Trump transgression like the declaration of marshal law on some flimsy pretext supposedly justified under one prohibitive law or another--arises and require immediate action to avert tyrannical usurpation of executive power, and will the Republican Party eschew submissive collusion with Trump by allowing him to proceed anyway. Just to make the point finer, I think the failure of government institutions to act in such a fashion is what allowed Vladimir Putin...the man that the drunkard former mayor of Moscow and head of the transitional government after the collapse of the Soviet Union deemed appropriate to ascend to power when he, Yeltsin, faded into oblivion...to come to such absolute power.
Now, at least one state governor has alluded to the threat of tyranny that Trump constitutes, and the tone of the news seems to get more apprehensive every day. My hope is that the fear of a Trump autocracy will become as real as the threat and that our government will finally reach the limit of its complicitous Republican acquiescence. Let's hope that with regard to impeachment that the fourth time will be the charm.
Your friend,
Mike
For the first eight months of his second term, the courts, the Supreme Court in particular, seemed to give Trump carte blanche with regard to every dubious tactic and strategy he pursued. He was allowed to run amok with deportation of illegal immigrants to the extent that some legal immigrants--like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was granted "withholding of deportation status" by a federal court by virtue of a fear of persecution in El Salvedor deemed credible by the court--were deported anyway, in Abrego Garcia's by what the Trump administration denominated an "administrative error." Though the federal district court involved ordered the Trump administration to "facillitate and effectuate" Abrego Garcio's return to this country, they stalled in the most transparent way until their collective back was against the wall and they had to bring him back, though he was placed under arrest immediately for an alleged crime in Tennessee. He, like others who were pretextually seized and processed for deportation, was eventually ordered released, but the efforts to deport record numbers of illegal immigrants, the record being the point rather than the principle, continued unabated to this day. However, the leeway given the Trump squad seemed to diminish in some vague sense as time passed until recently, despite a spate of legal victories, more and more federal courts began to interdict Trump's peremptory misuses of the law until a federal judge ruled September 2nd that the Trump invocation of the federal statutory law related to deployment of federal troops was illegal and a transgression rather than a clever ruse. While that decision will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, at last a significant number of people with the power to interdict Trump's true purpose are acting against his malfeasance, and that is existentially important.
That is because it wasn't until September 2nd that I first heard someone mention his foreboding about Trump invoking a pretext related to the 2026 mid-term elections as a pretext for nullifying those elections, declaring marshal law and flooding the nation with troops as abetted by his cadre of minions appointed, properly or not, to pivotal executive branch offices to run them to their patron's satisfaction and pleasure. As it turns out, there are enough greedy, prestige hungry MAGA types willing to be suborned into treachery that the sanctity of our democracy is sinking further and further into jeopardy. So the newly emboldened federal judges, some of them even Trump appointees, are key to thwarting the worst laid plans of the aspiring dictator whom a plurality of the American electorate elected...inexplicably...to be our president. Fortunately, he has laid the groundwork for impeachment on several counts: his misuse of federal funds to purloin a jumbo jet purportedly given as a gift to the American government by another autocrat, the Emir of Qatar; his self-dealing in several areas including his ramming through the administrative process regulations of the crypto-currency industry to the benefit of his family in an amount estimated to be about $5 billion; his creation with his sly sons of his own crypto-currency by which to reap the fruits of his presidential dominion over the business; his patronage in appointing government high officers; and visiting his foreign golf-courses using government modes of transportation purportedly in the course of official business to cite but a few. The only questions are will the Supreme Court do the right thing when the occasion--a deliberate Trump transgression like the declaration of marshal law on some flimsy pretext supposedly justified under one prohibitive law or another--arises and require immediate action to avert tyrannical usurpation of executive power, and will the Republican Party eschew submissive collusion with Trump by allowing him to proceed anyway. Just to make the point finer, I think the failure of government institutions to act in such a fashion is what allowed Vladimir Putin...the man that the drunkard former mayor of Moscow and head of the transitional government after the collapse of the Soviet Union deemed appropriate to ascend to power when he, Yeltsin, faded into oblivion...to come to such absolute power.
Now, at least one state governor has alluded to the threat of tyranny that Trump constitutes, and the tone of the news seems to get more apprehensive every day. My hope is that the fear of a Trump autocracy will become as real as the threat and that our government will finally reach the limit of its complicitous Republican acquiescence. Let's hope that with regard to impeachment that the fourth time will be the charm.
Your friend,
Mike
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