“Blockbuster Trade Announcement.” John Buss @repeat 1968
Good Evening, Sky Dancers!
I was late getting this post started today. I’ve had two doctor’s appointments the last two days, and I’m just exhausted. I guess I have one more test to go next week, and they’re leaving me alone until September. The good news is that I finally got to pick up my new glasses, so I can see clearly now! There is so much news today surrounding habeas corpus and free speech that I can’t believe what I’m seeing live on TV. I’m going to start with this headline from PBS. “WATCH: Stephen Miller says Trump administration is ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus.”
Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, said the administration is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the country illegally.
Watch Miller’s remarks in the video player above.
“The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” he told reporters. “So it’s an option that we’re actively looking at.”
Miller added that “a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
Habeas corpus refers to people’s right to challenge their detention in court.
This, of course, is completely false, but that never matters to any of the Psychopaths surrounding #FARTUS. Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University, writes this at his Substack One First. “148. Suspending Habeas Corpus. In response to adverse rulings in numerous immigration cases, Stephen Miller is raising the specter of suspending habeas. His argument is factually and legally nuts, but it’s worth explaining *why.*”
“I was going to wait until Monday’s regular issue to note the sad news out of the Supreme Court on Friday (that retired Justice David Souter passed away Thursday at the age of 85). But then Stephen Miller went on television Friday afternoon and made some of the most remarkable (and remarkably scary) comments about federal courts that I think we’ve ever heard from a senior White House official. Reacting to a series of high-profile losses in immigration cases this week, Miller raised the specter of President Trump suspending habeas corpus:
Well, the Constitution is clear. And that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So … that’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases. So Congress actually passed what’s called jurisdiction stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.
I know there’s a lot going on, and that Miller says lots of incendiary (and blatantly false) stuff. But this strikes me as raising the temperature to a whole new level—and thus meriting a brief explanation of all of the ways in which this statement is both (1) wrong; and (2) profoundly dangerous. Specifically, it seems worth making five basic points:
First, the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which is in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 is meant to limit the circumstances in which habeas can be foreclosed (Article I, Section 9 includes limits on Congress’s powers)—thereby ensuring that judicial review of detentions are otherwise available. (Note that it’s in the original Constitution—adopted before even the Bill of Rights.) I spent a good chunk of the first half of my career writing about habeas and its history, but the short version is that the Founders were hell-bent on limiting, to the most egregious emergencies, the circumstances in which courts could be cut out of the loop. To casually suggest that habeas might be suspended because courts have ruled against the executive branch in a handful of immigration cases is to turn the Suspension Clause entirely on its head.
Second, Miller is being slippery about the actual text of the Constitution (notwithstanding his claim that it is “clear”). The Suspension Clause does not say habeas can be suspended during any invasion; it says “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” This last part, with my emphasis, is not just window-dressing; again, the whole point is that the default is for judicial review except when there is a specific national security emergency in which judicial review could itself exacerbate the emergency. The emergency itself isn’t enough. Releasing someone like Rümeysa Öztürk from immigration detention poses no threat to public safety—all the more so when the release is predicated on a judicial determination that Ozturk … poses no threat to public safety.
Third, even if the textual triggers for suspending habeas corpus were satisfied, Miller also doesn’t deign to mention that the near-universal consensus is that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus—and that unilateral suspensions by the President are per se unconstitutional. I’ve written before about the Merryman case at the outset of the Civil War, which provides perhaps the strongest possible counterexample: that the President might be able to claim a unilateral suspension power if Congress is out of session (as it was from the outset of the Civil War in 1861 until July 4). Whatever the merits of that argument, it clearly has no applicability at this moment.
Fourth, Miller is wrong, as a matter of fact,about the relationship between Article III courts (our usual federal courts) and immigration cases. It’s true that the Immigration and Nationality Act (especially as amended in 1996 and 2005) includes a series of “jurisdiction-stripping” provisions. But most of those provisions simply channel judicial review in immigration cases into immigration courts (which are part of the executive branch) in the first instance, with appeals to Article III courts. And as the district courts (and Second Circuit) have explained in cases like Khalil and Öztürk, even those provisions don’t categorically preclude any review by Article III courts prior to those appeals.
There’s more at the link. Here’s the bottom line from NBC Newsand Dan Mangam. “Top White House adviser Stephen Miller says ‘we’re actively looking at’ suspending due process for migrants. The “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at,” Miller told reporters outside the White House.” How on earth they keep insisting that immigration is an invasion is beyond me.
Top Trump adviser Stephen Miller told reporters Friday that the administration is “looking at” ways to end due process protections for unauthorized immigrants who are in the country.
“The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at,” Miller said in the White House driveway.
“A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” Miller said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on whether he was referring to a specific group of people who’ve entered the country illegally, or all the people who have. It also did not comment on what he meant by the courts doing “the right thing.”
In his remarks, Miller maintained that the courts don’t have jurisdiction in immigration cases. “The courts aren’t just at war with the executive branch; the courts are at war, these radical rogue judges, with the legislative branch as well too. So all of that will inform the choices the president ultimately makes,” he said.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced frustration about constitutional due process protections slowing down his efforts at mass deportations.
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said in an interview with Kristen Welker that aired Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Welker pointed out the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and that the Supreme Court has long recognized that noncitizens have certain basic rights, but Trump complained that those protections take too much time.
“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said, adding that some of the people the administration wants to deport are “murderers” and “drug dealers.”
Welker then asked if he needs to uphold the Constitution.
“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
A clause in the Constitution says due process protections can be suspended during an invasion: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Trump claimed the U.S. was being invaded back in March, when he invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to send alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to a prison in El Salvador.
What really held me up in writing this by the time I got home was watching ICE thugs rough up an 80-year-old congresswoman and arrest the Mayor of Newark. This is from the AP, which is the news organization that refuses to go along with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which was named 500 years ago. #FARTUS reminds me of some prehuman creature picked up by explorers in some version of the Land Time Forgot. Kristen Noem is the enforcer in just about any movie about a fascist dystopian you’ve ever seen. It’s ICE ICE BABY. “New Jersey mayor arrested at ICE detention center where he was protesting, prosecutor says.” Which century and country do we live in these days?
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested Friday at a federal immigration detention center where he has been protesting its opening this week, a federal prosecutor said.
Alina Habba, interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said on the social platform X that Baraka committed trespass and ignored warnings from Homeland Security personnel to leave Delaney Hall, a detention facility run by private prison operator GEO Group.
Habba said Baraka had “chosen to disregard the law” and added that he was taken into custody.
Baraka, a Democrat who is running to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy, has embraced the fight with the Trump administration over illegal immigration.
He has aggressively pushed back against the construction and opening of the 1,000-bed detention center, arguing that it should not be allowed to open because of building permit issues.
Linda Baraka, the mayor’s wife, accused the federal government of targeting her husband.
“They didn’t arrest anyone else. They didn’t ask anyone else to leave. They wanted to make an example out of the mayor,” she said, adding that she had not been allowed to see him.
A crowd gathered to protest outside the building where Baraka was being held, with many chanting, “Let the mayor go!”
Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, in attempting to enter the facility.
Here’s Insider NJ with a more truthful angle. “Reps. Watson Coleman, McIver, Menendez, Exercise Oversight Authority in Visit to ICE Detention Facility.” I watched the entire event live on MSNBC today. Again, it’s why I was even later than I originally had planned to be today. I was watching and listening to the representatives demand that the masked ICE thugs take their hands off them.
Today, following an inspection of the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey with Reps. LaMonica McIver and Robert Menendez, Jr., Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman released the following statement:
“At around 1pm today, my colleagues Rep. Lamonica McIver and Rep. Rob Menendez, Jr. and I arrived at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark to exercise our oversight authority as Members of Congress.
“Contrary to a press statement put out by DHS we did not “storm” the detention center. The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident.
“Reopening Delaney Hall won’t make us safer and it won’t create an immigration system that is fair and secure for all families.
“Private Prison companies like GEO Group create a perverse incentive to increase incarceration to increase corporate profits. It’s no accident that GEO Group was the first corporation to max out donations to Trump’s Super PAC, to the tune of $500,000 dollars. And they’re being rewarded with huge contracts to imprison immigrants like we’re seeing here at Delaney.
“New Jerseyans don’t want more private prisons just to increase shareholder income at the expense of taxpayers. They want a fair and secure immigration system that reflects our values and respects our Constitution.”
Meanwhile, judges continue to free students arrested by ICE under the weird ass interpretations of Habeas Corpus put forth by Miller. “She was arrested for an op-ed. Now a judge has ordered her freed. Her detention “chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens,” a federal judge said.” This is from VOX’s Andrew Prokop.
A Trump administration spokesperson anonymously claimed in March that “DHS and ICE investigations found Öztürk engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” But to this day they have conspicuously failed to produce any evidence of that — including, when Öztürk filed suit, before a judge.
What did the judge say? Judge William Sessions III ordered Öztürk released “immediately.” Ruling from the bench, he sounded appalled by the Trump administration’s conduct, which he said “chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens.”
He said Öztürk had made “very substantial claims of First Amendment and due process violations,” and that, furthermore, the government had offered “no evidence” about their motivation for detaining her other than the op-ed
Is this case over, then? No. Öztürk was ordered released from detention. But the question of whether the US government can legally revoke her visa remains unresolved. While Sessions sounds very likely to rule in her favor, it’s unclear if conservatives on the Supreme Court will do the same, should the case reach them. Still, this case has been an embarrassment to the Trump administration, and perhaps there’s a faint glimmer of hope they’ll decide to just drop it. Too optimistic? Probably.
As the Trump administration battles to use awartime law to speed deportationsof alleged gang members, it has moved dozens of detained Venezuelans to the one court district in the nation where a federal judge for now has declined to stand in its way.
U.S. District Judge Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee sitting in the Northern District of Texas, refusedlast month to pause removals under the Alien Enemies Act of detainees who the government says are affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang — even as judges in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York and other parts of Texas have done so.
The administration views Hendrix’s district as a “favorable venue,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Tim Macdonald alleged at a recent court hearing in Denver. He and other immigrant advocates say the rush of relocations to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, has forced targeted Venezuelans to contest their removals in a court they see as ideologically aligned with the president.
“What the government was doing,” Macdonald said in the hearing, “was finding Venezuelan men, rounding them up and shipping them to the Northern District of Texas.”
The Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about how many Venezuelan migrants are housed at Bluebonnet. It also would not say how many had been moved there from other facilities in recent weeks or why those transfers were made.
For now, the Supreme Court has indefinitely paused all Alien Enemies Act deportations in Hendrix’s district as it weighs whether migrants there are being given adequate opportunity to challenge their designations as “alien enemies.” The administration does not appear to have deported any migrants under the law from anywhere in the country since it first sent more than 130 Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March.
I want to end with Senator Murphy reading the riot act to Cos-Playing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. It’s really worth watching.
ABC News also had this write-up on the Senate Committee’s visit with her. “Democrats slam DHS secretary as Noem says Abrego Garcia ‘not coming back’ to US. Noem was in front of the Senate testifying on the 2026 DHS budget.”
“Senate Democrats sparred with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday over whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States, as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s spending.
During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia, asked if the Trump administration would comply with the Supreme Court’s decision that the U.S. government must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Noem replied that the government is following the law but didn’t say yes or no.
“What I would tell you is that we are following court order,” Noem shot back. “Your advocacy for a known terrorist is alarming.”
Van Hollen said he isn’t “vouching for the man” but rather due process.
“I suggest that rather than make these statements here, that you and the Trump administration make them in court under oath,” he added.
Van Hollen then accused Noem of a political speech, and Noem said she would suggest Van Hollen is an “advocate” for victims of illegal crime.
Last month, after Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.
No one in this administration appears to be ready to comply with court orders to return Albrego Garcia. I wonder if Chief Justice Roberts has already offered up his balls to #FARTUS. We haven’t heard a peep from him since the court sent out the ultimatum to return Garcia.
So, there is so much here to cover that I’m hoping BB can pick up where I leave off. All of this is illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American. It’s about time someone defangs them all.
What’s on your reading and writing list?
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“Tariff Man doing Tariff Man stuff..” John Buss,@repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Last night, I dreamed I had been to an amusement park where everything spun oddly and fell apart. Guess who followed me around his theme park at one point shoving his hands down my shirt to grab my tits until a nice black lady in a black suit with sun glasses on said “Sir, you really shouldn’t do that.” I pressed an elevator at one point, and some skinny, red-headed white guy in a flannel shirt on the other side of what turned out to be a duo door elevator had the ground pulled out from under him. The ground below him started dropping. All I could do was watch from the other side. There were guys everywhere with stacks of boxes, trying to sell stuff they wouldn’t let you see. All the time #FARTUS just followed me, bragging about each ride that was more dangerous than the next.
I doubt I need a Jungian psychologist to decode all that. A lot of my time was spent trying to get children to get off and get out of here before they were hurt. Oddly enough, I was more fascinated during the dream than anything else. It was a bit like a Salvador Dali show. Maybe some of the celebratory herb wafting from the 4/20 Party at the bar on the corner got into my bedroom. Who knows? I woke up thinking, “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.” I heard a lot of Grateful Dead on Temple’s last walk of the day.
Trump’s 100th day in office officially happens this month on the 30th. So far, not good. This headline in theWashington Post, attached to an op-ed analysis from Dana Milbank, grabbed me. And not by the you know what. “Trump is wrapping up 100 days of historic failure. America has seen ruinous periods, but never when the president was the one knowingly causing the ruin. It will be far worse if Trump tries to illegally remove Fed President Jerome Powell from his post. He’s trying to blame Powell for this mess. I’m not sure who will be dumb enough to take that bait, but I do know that Republicans won’t stand in his way of his lawlessness, as usual.
“By any reasonable measure, President Donald Trump’s first 100 days will be judged an epic failure.
He has been a legislative failure. He has signed only five bills into law, none of them major, making this the worst performance at the start of a new president’s term in more than a century.
He has been an economic failure. On his watch, growth has slowed, consumer and business confidence has cratered, and markets have plunged, along with Americans’ wealth. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that “growth has slowed in the first quarter of this year from last year’s solid pace” and that Trump’s tariffs will result in higher inflation and slower growth.
He has been a foreign-policy failure. He said he would end wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But fighting has resumed in Gaza after the demise of the ceasefire negotiated by his predecessor, and Russia continues to brutalize Ukraine, making a mockery of Trump’s naive overtures to Vladimir Putin.
He has been a failure in the eyes of friends, having launched a trade war against Canada, Mexico, Europe and Japan; enraged Canada with talk of annexation; threatened Greenland and Panama; and cleaved the NATO alliance.
He has been a failure in the eyes of foes, as an emboldened China menaces Taiwan, punches back hard in the trade war and spreads its global influence to fill the vacuum left by Trump’s retreat from the world.
He has been a constitutional failure. His executive actions, brazen in their disregard for the law, have been slapped down more than 80 times already by judges, including those appointed by Republicans. He is flagrantly defying a unanimous Supreme Court, and his appointees are facing contempt proceedings for their abuse of the legal system.
Even his few “successes” amount to less than meets the eye. Border crossings are down from already low levels, but despite all the administration’s bravado, there’s little evidence of an increase in deportations. Hopes for cost-cutting under the U.S. DOGE Service, which Elon Musk originally projected at $1 trillion this year, have been scaled back to just $150 billion — and much of that appears to be based on made-up numbers.
But Trump, whose 100th day in office is April 30, has achieved one thing that is truly remarkable: He has introduced a level of chaos and destruction so high that historians are hard-pressed to find its equal in our history.
And yet, he persists. There’s a long list that follows. Seeing it all in print is disturbing. Zachary Basu has another take posted on AXIOS. “Trump’s United States of Emergency. ”
In his first 100 days, President Trump has declared more national emergencies — more creatively and more aggressively — than any president in modern American history.
Why it matters: Powers originally crafted to give the president flexibility in rare moments of crisis now form the backbone of Trump’s agenda, enabling him to steamroll Congress and govern by unilateral decree through his first three months in office.
Paired with his assault on the judiciary, legal scholars fear Trump is exploiting loosely written statutes to try to upend the constitutional balance of power.
How it works: The president can declare a national emergency at any time, for almost any reason, without needing to prove a specific threat or get approval from Congress.
The National Emergencies Act of 1976, which unlocks more than 120 special statutory powers, originally included a “legislative veto” that gave Congress the ability to terminate an emergency with a simple majority vote.
But in 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that legislative vetoes are unconstitutional — effectively stripping Congress of its original check, and making it far harder to rein in a president’s emergency declarations.
The big picture: Since then, presidents have largely relied on “norms” and “self-restraint” to avoid abusing emergency powers for non-crises, says Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program.
That precedent was broken in 2019, Goitein argues, when Trump declared a national emergency in order to bypass Congress and access billions of dollars in funding for a border wall.
President Biden stretched his authority as well, drawing criticism in 2022 for citing the COVID-19 national emergency to unilaterally forgive student loan debt.
But Trump’s second-term actions have plunged the U.S. firmly into uncharted territory — redrawing the limits of executive power in real time, and fueling fears of a permanent emergency state.
Zoom in: Trump’s justification for his tariffs cites the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which can be invokedonlyif the U.S. faces an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to its national security, foreign policy, or economy.
According to the White House, America’s decades-old trading relationships — including with tiny countries and uninhabited islands — qualify as such threats.
As a result, a 1977 law originally designed to target hostile foreign powers — and never before used to impose tariffs — is now being deployed to rewrite the global economic order.
There’s much to look forward to as we lurch towards the midterms. Little Marco Rubio is sure fucking up the state department. All you need to do is see a cabinet meeting. His face is telling. He looks like the only one who knows he’s going to hell. This is from NPR as reported by Graham Smith. “The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights.” What fresh hell is this lil Marco?
The Trump administration is substantially scaling back the State Department’s annual reports on international human rights to remove longstanding critiques of abuses such as harsh prison conditions, government corruption and restrictions on participation in the political process, NPR has learned.
Despite decades of precedent, the reports, which are meant to inform congressional decisions on foreign aid allocations and security assistance, will no longer call governments out for such things as denying freedom of movement and peaceful assembly. They won’t condemn retaining political prisoners without due process or restrictions on “free and fair elections.”
Forcibly returning a refugee or asylum-seeker to a home country where they may face torture or persecution will no longer be highlighted, nor will serious harassment of human rights organizations.
According to an editing memo and other documents obtained by NPR, State Department employees are directed to “streamline” the reports by stripping them down to only that which is legally required. The memo says the changes aim to align the reports with current U.S. policy and “recently issued Executive Orders.”
Officially called “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” the annual documents are required, by statute, to be a “full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights.”
Human rights defenders say the cuts amount to an American retreat from its position as the world’s human rights watchdog.
“What this is, is a signal that the United States is no longer going to [pressure] other countries to uphold those rights that guarantee civic and political freedoms — the ability to speak, to express yourself, to gather, to protest, to organize,” said Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International, USA.
A spokesperson for the State Department declined to comment on the memo or the human rights reports. NPR confirmed the memo’s authenticity with two sources close to the process.
There is some good news on the front of Trump’s kidnapping and disappearing people to El Salvador. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) managed to get a meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, as was his goal. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, writing at her Substack, gives us some perspective.
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.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen confirmed Thursday night that he has met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man whom the Trump administration said it mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March.
“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,” Van Hollen, D-Md., wrote on X.
Images of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia were first posted online by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has rebuffed calls to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.
Bukele said on X after the meeting that Abrego Garcia will remain in El Salvador’s custody “now that he’s been confirmed healthy.”
President Donald Trump lashed out at Van Hollen Friday morning in a post on Truth Social, saying the Democratic senator “looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention.”
At an Oval Office meeting with Trump on Monday, Bukele argued that he didn’t “have the power to return him to the United States.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the same day that the United States would provide a plane for Abrego Garcia to travel back to the country should El Salvador allow his release, framing the decision as being solely in Bukele’s hands.
In a statement Thursday night, the White House called Van Hollen’s efforts in support of Abrego Garcia “disgusting” and said Trump will “continue to stand on the side of law-abiding Americans.”
Trump threats to Fed Chair Powell scare the shit out of me. I am totally with Senator Elizabeth Warren on this statement. “Markets will ‘crash’ if Trump can fire Fed’s Powell, Elizabeth Warren warns.” You can listen to her interview at this link. Nobel Prize-winning Economist Dr. Paul Krugman explains the dangers of a “Trumpified Fed” at his Substack today. “Why You Should Fear a Trumpified Fed. Don’t give an abuser power that’s easy to abuse. He even starts with the holy grail of economics charts from FRED. The Fed is a significant source of economic data. I spent hours as a new grad student in 1978 in the basement of the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a huge accounting pad and pencil in the Federal Documents area, writing down months of data to type onto punch cards with some code ordering up a graph that I had to wait hours for as I watched a huge printer spit out green bar paper. Now it’s just a few clicks of a mouse button to get the same data from FRED.
Sometimes the Federal Reserve has extraordinary power over the economy.
Consider what happened from 1982 to 1984. For most of 1982 the U.S. economy was in grim shape. Employment had plunged, especially in manufacturing. The unemployment rate hit 10.8 percent in December (it was 4.2 percent last month.) And economic pain helped Democrats make major gains in the 1982 midterms.
But everything was about to change, thanks to the Fed. In the summer of 1982 the Fed decided to ease monetary policy. Interest rates plunged, and about 6 months later the economy began a stunning rebound, growing 4.6 percent in 1983 and 7.2 percent in 1984. Ronald Reagan claimed credit for “Morning in America,” but actually it was the Fed that did it.
This episode illustrates the Fed’s power — power that must be insulated from abuse by politicians, especially politicians like Donald Trump.
Over the past few days Trump has been demanding that the Fed cut interest rates and calling for the Fed chairman’s “termination.” It’s worth looking at what he posted on Truth Social to get a sense of how, to use the technical term, batshit crazy he is on this subject:
And we really, really don’t want someone that crazy dictating monetary policy.
The reason we don’t want politicians in direct control of monetary policy is that it’s so easy to use. After all, what does it mean to “ease” monetary policy? It’s an incredibly frictionless process. Normally the Federal Open Market Committee tells the New York Fed to buy U.S. government debt from private banks, which it does with money conjured out of thin air. There’s no need to pass legislation, place bids with contractors, deal with any of the hassles usually associated with changes in government policy. Basically the Fed can create an economic boom with a phone call.
It’s obvious that this kind of power could be abused by an irresponsible leader who wants to preside over an economic boom and doesn’t want to hear about the risks. This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. Consider what happened in Turkey, whose Trump-like president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, recently arrested the leader of the opposition. When the global post-Covid inflation shock hit, Erdogan embraced crank economic theories. He forced Turkey’s central bank, its equivalent of the Fed, to cut interest rates in the belief, contrary to standard economics, that doing so would reduce, not increase inflation. You can see the results in the chart at the top of this post.
How can we guard against that kind of policy irresponsibility? After the stagflation of the 1970s many countries delegated monetary policy to technocrats at independent central banks. Can the technocrats get it wrong? Of course they can and often have. But they’re less likely to engage in wishful thinking and motivated reasoning than typical politicians, let alone politicians like Trump.
What makes Trump’s attempt to bully the Fed especially ominous is the fact that the Fed will soon have to cope with the stagflationary crisis Trump has created. Trump’s massive tariff increase will lead to a major inflationary shock:
I’ve been using that “s” word for a while now. If Krugman uses it, run for the hills.
So, this is running long, so I’ll quit with this. I hope your weekend is peaceful. We’re gearing up for Jazz Fest, so I have a few more weeks of Ugly American Tourists in the hood, and then it might get more normal since Trump is decimating the tourist industry.
U.S. tourism has dropped with visits from other countries down as much as 11% in March, while more Americans are moving outside of the country to places like Canada. NBC News’ Liz Kreutz talks to USC Hospitality and Tourism Professor Hicham Jaddoud on the drop.
Maybe those disruptive Airbnb’s will be used for the people who live here. I can only hope.
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In her first interview as second lady, Usha Vance revealed that her husband, Vice President JD Vance, is extremely lonely in his new position.
To no one’s surprise, social media had a field day. From sarcasm to scathing political criticism, the internet did not hold back.
Usha Vance said JD Vance is “very lonely” as Vice President, attributing this to long working hours and little communication, as per a report by BuzzFeed.
Her words created a social media storm, with online reactions varying from dark humor to brutally harsh, with scant sympathy for his loneliness.
She told the Times that because her husband is so busy, they now communicate primarily via text these days. “I don’t know that he’s asking me for advice so much as it can be a very lonely, lonely world not to share with someone.”
JD Vance was a huge hit on the internet! What people are saying is as follows, as per a report by BuzzFeed.
Responses from Reddit threads:
“Has he tried visiting a furniture store?”—u/parkerplotkin
“Did he say thank you to his friends?”—u/GenosseGeneral
“They weren’t wearing suits, so.”—u/Dosanaya
“Poor JD Vance, oh no. While attempting to remove the benefits that they paid into and dismissing numerous Americans, he is profiting from the same taxpayers that he is disparaging. His children will attend the private, pricey schools that his wealthy friends have been urging taxpayers to fund. Is JD Vance feeling lonely, though? Whoa, that’s really sad.”
Others criticized him for making money off taxpayers while pushing to take away benefits and firing many Americans. Some even suggested that JD could quit and be less lonely, urging Vance to shame the rest of the world for being a complete sell-out.”
“He can give up, which will make him feel less alone.” Usha Eff and her collusion. You embarrass the others by being a total sell-out. —u/eastwestjewels
“Is leaving the country permanently and resigning from your elected position the answer to male loneliness?”—u/500owls
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 29, 2025
“US Vice President JD Vance will visit India from 21 to 24 April, marking his first official trip to the country since taking office. He will be joined by his wife Usha Vance and their three children — Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel — as part of a broader diplomatic tour that also includes a stop in Italy.
The visit underscores growing US interest in consolidating its relationship with India amid shifting global alliances and economic realignments. A statement from his office confirmed meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said the discussions will focus on shared economic and geopolitical priorities.”
T Bogg has this bit of news on Raw Story. “‘Uppity’ J.D. Vance flattened for new screed defying the Supreme Court.”
Vice President J.D. Vance was raked over the coals on Wednesday morning for a series of social media posts on X on Tuesday where he continued to defend the Donald Trump administration for wrongfully shipping a Maryland man to El Salvador despite an admonition from the Supreme Court.
With the battle over the deportation and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia at a notorious Salvadoran prison camp reaching the point where even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board is stepping in and deploring the lack of due process, Vance has doubled down and blown off concerns.
In a long post on X, Vance argued, “To say the administration must observe ‘due process’ is to beg the question: what process is due is a function of our resources, the public interest, the status of the accused, the proposed punishment, and so many other factors. To put it in concrete terms, imposing the death penalty on an American citizen requires more legal process than deporting an illegal alien to their country of origin.”
He then added, “Here’s a useful test: ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden’s millions and millions of illegals. And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year?”
So, let’s not leave out his latest embarrassing moment. This is from ABC News. “Vice President JD Vance fumbles Ohio State football team’s national championship trophy.” This guy can’t get anything right.
Vice President JD Vance fumbled The Ohio State University football team’s national championship trophy during a celebration at the White House on Monday.
President Donald Trump hosted the Buckeyes after they won the College Football Playoff National Championship against the University of Notre Dame in January.
When Vance went to pick up the football-shaped trophy off a table at the end of the event, the 24-karat gold, bronze and stainless steel trophy nearly toppled over behind him before two players caught it. The base dropped to the ground to gasps from the crowd.
Vance went on to hold the trophy separate from the base.
Though the Pentagram-designed piece appeared to break, the trophy and base are two separate pieces so that the 26.5 inch-tall, 35-pound trophy can be hoisted in the air. The 12-inch-tall base weighs about 30 pounds.
That’s not seriously as bad, though, as the ongoing constitutional crisis of Trump’s DOJ. He’s breaking our Constitutional Democracy by refusing court orders to bring Garcia home, putting Judge Paula Xinis in a difficult place. Will she put them in contempt of court or rely on SCOTUS to deal with them. This is from Politico. “Judge launches inquiry into Trump administration’s refusal to seek return of wrongly deported man, “To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said.”
A federal judge ordered an “intense” two-week inquiry into the Trump administration’s refusal to seek the return of a man who was wrongly deported from Maryland to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
“To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said at a court hearing Tuesday.
Xinis’ order sets up a high-stakes sprint that may force senior Trump administration officials to testify under oath about their response to court orders requiring them to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Each day that passes, the judge noted, is another day Abrego Garcia spends improperly detained in a maximum security mega-prison.
“We’re going to move. There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding,” the judge said. “There are no business hours while we do this. … Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments. I’m usually pretty good about things like that in my court, but not this time. So, I expect all hands on deck.”
Xinis’ inquiry is the latest chapter in an escalating clash between the executive and judicial branches over Abrego Garcia’s illegal deportation last month. Xinis previously ordered the administration to “facilitate” his release from the custody of El Salvador, and the Supreme Court upheld that directive last week.
Liz Dye of Public Noticeputs it this way. “SCOTUS puts constitutional crisis in America’s Easter basket. Instead of a chocolate bunny, we get the president openly defying a court order.”
If Chief Justice John Roberts hoped to save the judiciary by burning it down, he badly miscalculated. Just a week after the Supreme Court’s five male conservatives kicked the legs out from under a respected trial judge to save the Trump administration from the consequences of defying a court order, we are back on the precipice of a disastrous constitutional crisis.
Perhaps the justices aimed to protect the judiciary by swerving to avoid a head-on collision with the executive. Maybe they hoped that President Trump would take the win and trim his dictatorial sails. But this is Dr. Strangelove, not Speed, and no amount of vague harrumphing by the high Court was ever going to persuade Major Kong to stand down.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s fecklessness, the judiciary is now squarely back on a collision course with a Trump-shaped iceberg. But this time, instead of planeloads of faceless migrants, the case involves just one man: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a husband and father from Maryland, whom the government deported to a Salvadoran torture prison despite a court order barring just that.
The first confrontation involved planeloads of migrants deported pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a statute associated with some of the most sordid chapters in American history, including Japanese internment. The law empowers the president to deport foreign citizens in times of war, and so Trump simply declared that Venezuela has invaded the US by dispatching members of the Tren de Aragua gang as shock troops, and began rounding up Venezuelan immigrants more or less at random.
The fact that we are patently not at war didn’t matter to the Supreme Court. Nor did the revelation that 90 percent of the men deported had zero criminal record. In a hastily drafted order, the five conservative justices rebuffed a challenge to the AEA deportations, airily suggesting that anyone fearful of being deported should just file an individual habeas corpus petition … from a detention cell, in the few hours between when they’re informed they’re being moved and when they’re hustled onto a plane and cast into a windowless dungeon with no access to counsel.
This had the desired effect of heading off a confrontation between Judge James Boasberg and the government, which flatly refused to explain why it deported the men after the judge ordered them not to. But along the way the Supreme Court did require the administration to give some process to AEA deportees.
“AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act,” the majority wrote. “The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”
Even this appears to have been too big an ask for the Trump administration, which refused to commit to giving AEA deportees even 24 hours notice before shipping them to a Salvadoran gulag.
There’s more at the link. ProPublica has this scathing article. “Congress Has Demanded Answers to ICE Detaining Americans. The Administration Has Responded With Silence. Amid increasing reports that U.S. citizens have been caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet, a dozen members of Congress have written to the government with pointed questions. None has received a reply.” The analysis is provided by Nicole Foy.
Just a week into President Donald Trump’s second term, Rep. Adriano Espaillat began to see reports of Puerto Ricans and others being questioned and arrested by immigration agents.
So Espaillat, a New York Democrat, did what members of Congress often do: He wrote to the administration and demanded answers. That was more than 10 weeks ago. Espaillat has not received a response.
His experience appears to be common.
At least a dozen members of Congress, all Democrats, have written to the Trump administration with pointed questions about constituents and other citizens whom immigration agents have questioned, detained and even held at gunpoint. In one letter, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded a list of every citizen detained during the new administration.
None has received an answer.
“What we are clearly seeing is that with this administration, they are not responding to congressional inquiries,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat.
Leger Fernández and others wrote to Trump and the Department of Homeland Security on Jan. 28 after receiving complaints from constituents and tribal nations that federal agents were pressing tribal citizens in New Mexico for their immigration status, raising concerns about racial profiling.
The congresswoman and others say the lack of response is part of a broader pattern in which the administration has been moving to sideline Congress and its constitutional power to investigate the executive branch.
“That is a big concern on a level beyond what ICE is doing,” Leger Fernández said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a branch of DHS. “This administration does not seem to recognize the power and authority and responsibility” of Congress.
Norman Ornstein, a longtime congressional observer at the American Enterprise Institute, said prior administrations’ lack of responsiveness has frustrated lawmakers too. But he’s never seen one so thoroughly brush off Congress.
“What’s clear now is that the message from Donald Trump and his minions is: ‘You don’t have to respond to these people, whether they are ours or not,’” Ornstein said, referring to Republicans and Democrats. “That’s not usual. Nothing about this is usual.”
A White House spokesperson denied that the administration has been circumventing Congress or its oversight. “Passage of the continuing resolution that kept our government open and commonsense legislation like the Laken Riley Act are indicative of how closely the Trump administration is working with Congress,” said Kush Desai in a statement.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Trump administration failed to take “one extra step of paperwork” before it mistakenly deported a Maryland man, adding that nonetheless Kilmar Abrego Garcia is “not coming back to our country.”
The comments were the latest example of officials under President Trump digging in despite a Supreme Court order requiring them to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
Bondi also repeated numerous claims about Abrego Garcia’s ties to MS-13 that his family has denied and for which there is a conflicting court record.
“He is not coming back to our country. President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story,” she told reporters at a press conference Wednesday, referring to the Salvadorian leader. “If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back. There was no situation ever where he was going to stay in this country. None, none.”
Bondi has previously argued the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate his return meant only that the government would need to supply a plane if El Salvador chooses to return him.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national who fled the country as a teenager to escape gang violence, was protected from deportation by an immigration judge in 2019. The gang Barrio 18 threatened to kill him when trying to extract money from his mother’s pupusa business.
The court record shows numerous issues with the government’s assertion he is a gang member.
The DOJ is now the enforcer for Trump’s Mafia State. They might as well erase the Justice from the name.
I have one thing I need to rant about. I don’t know if I should call it the Space Bunny Adventure or Space Barbies. The women on the Blue Origin Mission deserve all the backlash it was given. This did not empower women. We have actual women astronauts. We do not need to see 11 women in slinky ‘flight suits’ performing cute space cone exit ploys. Amanda Hunt, who writes for the New York Times, stated this. “One Giant Stunt for Womankind. Blue Origin’s all-female flight proves that women are now free to enjoy capitalism’s most extravagant spoils alongside rich men.”
“Though women remain severely underrepresented in the aerospace field worldwide, they do regularly escape the Earth’s atmosphere. More than 100 have gone to space since Sally Ride became the first American woman to do so in 1983. If an all-women spaceflight were chartered by, say, NASA, it might represent the culmination of many decades of serious investment in female astronauts. (In 2019, NASA was embarrassingly forced to scuttle an all-women spacewalk when it realized it did not have enough suits that fit them.) An all-women Blue Origin spaceflight signifies only that several women have amassed the social capital to be friends with Lauren Sánchez.
Blue Origin is one of several private spaceflight companies — among them Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures and SpaceX — now offering rich people and their friends access to space. Its New Shepard rocket is self-piloting, and the six women had no technical duties on the flight. Though two participants had some aerospace experience (Bowe worked for NASA, and Nguyen interned there), Sánchez has said she picked them all because they are “storytellers” who could step off the flight and promote their experiences through journalism, film and song. To Blue Origin, their value lies expressly in their amateurism. Kristin Fisher, a journalist and the daughter of the NASA astronaut Anna Lee Fisher, who joined the livestream, called the flight’s roster “so refreshing.” In the early days of human spaceflight, astronauts “were all white male military test pilots, and they had to have ‘the right stuff.’ You could never talk about nerves, or being nervous, or your feelings,” Fisher said. “But now, in 2025, it is the right stuff.”
Sánchez arranged for her favorite fashion designers to craft the mission’s suits, leveraging it into yet another branding opportunity. Souvenirs of the flight sold on Blue Origin’s website feature a kind of yassified shuttle patch design. It includes a shooting-star microphone representing King, an exploding firework representing Perry and a fly representing Sánchez’s 2024 children’s book about the adventures of a dyslexic insect. Each woman was encouraged to use her four minutes of weightlessness to practice a different in-flight activity tailored to her interests. Nguyen planned to use them to conduct two vanishingly brief science experiments, one of them related to menstruation, while Perry pledged to “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”
The message is that a little girl can grow up to be whatever she wishes: a rocket scientist or a pop star, a television journalist or a billionaire’s fiancée who is empowered to pursue her various ambitions and whims in the face of tremendous costs. In each case, she stands to win a free trip to space. She can have it all, including a family back on Earth. “Guess what?” Sánchez told Elle. “Moms go to space.” (Fisher, the first mother in space, went there in 1984.)
The whole thing reminds me of the advice Sheryl Sandberg passed on to women in “Lean In,” her memoir of scaling the corporate ladder in the technology industry. When Eric Schmidt, then the chief executive of Google, offered Sandberg a position that did not align with her own professional goals, he told her: “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.” It is the proximity to power that matters, not the goal of the mission itself.
So, WTF are they riding? Phallic Veneraton anyone?
This is from the Daily Mail, as reported by Daniel Matthews. “Female NFL reporter rips Katy Perry and Co over ’embarrassing’ Blue Origin space mission.”
Pop star Perry was part of an all-female crew – alongside the likes of Lauren Sanchez and journalist Gayle King – that made an 11-minute trip into orbit on Jeff Bezos‘ rocket.
Perry took a daisy into space – in honor of her daughter – and was seen kissing the ground after touching down back on earth. The singer said she felt ‘super connected to life’ and ‘so connected to love’.
The event was hailed by some as a landmark moment but NFL Network reporter Slater hit out at the stunt on social media.
‘The whole thing was embarrassing. So many smart women who worked their whole life to go to space and did the work,’ she wrote.
‘She (Perry) took a daisy and promoted a set list for her new album. If she really cared? Give your spot up to a young girl in the NASA program.’
Slater added: ‘Guess it’s ok for everyone just to care more about themselves and personal motivations these days. Very on brand (with) our culture shift.’
The NFL Network reporter – a self-confessed ‘sci fi geek’ admitted she would ‘love’ the chance to go into space.
But she claimed she ‘would absolutely give my seat up to a woman who has been passed over time and time again by NASA’.
Slater also took aim at how Perry and Co looked when heading into space.
‘I don’t think they truly appreciated the magnitude of the moment. With exception of former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe who absolutely deserved a shot at that flight the bs (bulls***) hair makeup and fits really annoyed me,’ she continued.
‘(It) just felt disrespectful to cosplay as an astronaut in full hair and a curated fit… I cringe thinking what (pioneering female astronaut) Sunita Williams had to think about it all.
‘I also understand why they sent them to promote “space tourism” but yeah the self promotion was so dumb.’
One more from The Guardian. This is written by Moira Donegan. “The Blue Origin flight showcased the utter defeat of American feminism. The trip leaned on a vision of women’s empowerment that is light on substance and heavy on a childlike, girlish silliness ”
But the flight, and its grim promotional cycle, might be most depressing for what it reveals about the utter defeat of American feminism. Sánchez, the organizer of the flight, has touted the all-female crew as a win for women. But she herself is a woman in a deeply antifeminist model. It is not her rocket company that took her and her friends to the edge of space; it’s her male fiance’s. And it is no virtue of her character that put her inside the rocket – not her capacity, not her intellect and not her hard work – but merely her relationship with a man. (The fact that the rocket itself looks so phallic does not help to lessen the flight’s message that the surest way for women to raise themselves in the world is to attach themselves to a man.)
There are at least two women on the mission who can be credited as serious persons: Aisha Bowe, an aerospace engineer, and Amanda Nguyen, a civil rights entrepreneur whose past work with Nasa makes her something closer to an actual astronaut. But most of the crew’s self-presentation and promotion of the flight has leaned heavily on a vision of women’s empowerment that is light on substance and heavy on a childlike, girlish silliness that insults women by cavalierly linking their gender with superficiality, vanity and unseriousness.
In an interview with Elle, the crew members paid lip service to the importance of women, and particularly women of color, in Stem. (The Trump administration has forced Nasa to close some offices in order to comply with its ban on the diversity, equity and inclusion programs that would recruit such candidates.) But mostly, they seemed interested in talking about their makeup and hair. “Space is going to finally be glam,” Katy Perry said, bizarrely. “Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”
“Who would not get glam before the flight?!” asked Sánchez, who evidently can’t imagine that women might prioritize anything else. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule.” Bowe, too, joined in, saying that she had gone to extreme lengths to make sure that she would be, of all things, well coiffed for the experience. “I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good,” she said. “I took it for a dry run.”
It is not misogynist to say that these women do not have their priorities in order. Rather, it is misogynist of them to so forcefully associate womanhood with cosmetics and looks, rather than with any of the more noble and human aspirations to which space travel might acquaint them – curiosity, inquiry, discovery, exploration, a sense of their own mortality, an apprehension of the divine. These women, who have placed themselves as representatives for all women with their promotion of the flight – positioning themselves as aspirational models of femininity – have presented a profoundly antifeminist vision of what womankind’s future is: dependent on men, confined to triviality, and deeply, deeply silly.
Is this the future that awaits women in Donald Trump’s America: one where the only way to achievement is through sexual desirability, the only way to status as an ornamental attachment on a man who really counts, the only subject on which we are qualified to speak is whether lash extensions will stay in place? If this is the future, count me out. On the other hand, the notion of being launched off of such a grim and sexist Earth is looking more and more appealing.
That’s all, folks!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
This, of course, is completely false, but that never matters to any of the Psychopaths surrounding 
There’s more at the link. Here’s the bottom line from 
What really held me up in writing this by the time I got home was watching ICE thugs rough up an 80-year-old congresswoman and arrest the Mayor of Newark. This is from the AP, which is the news organization that refuses to go along with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which was named 500 years ago. 
So if you want the laughable and extremely sad headline today from our GOOBERment, here it is from Homeland Security. 
Films of her release from the Louisiana ICE Detention Center have been shown on all the news stations today. Meanwhile, WAPO reports that 
Trump’s 100th day in office officially happens this month on the 30th. So far, not good. 
And yet, he persists. There’s a long list that follows. Seeing it all in print is disturbing. Zachary Basu has another take posted on 
There’s much to look forward to as we lurch towards the midterms. Little Marco Rubio is sure fucking up the state department. All you need to do is see a cabinet meeting. His face is telling. He looks like the only one who knows he’s going to hell. This is from NPR as reported by Graham Smith. 
There is some good news on the front of Trump’s kidnapping and disappearing people to El Salvador. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) managed to get a meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, as was his goal. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, writing at her 
Trump threats to Fed Chair Powell scare the shit out of me. I am totally with Senator Elizabeth Warren on this statement. 
So, let’s not leave out his latest embarrassing moment. 
That’s not seriously as bad, though, as the ongoing constitutional crisis of Trump’s DOJ. He’s breaking our Constitutional Democracy by refusing court orders to bring Garcia home, putting Judge Paula Xinis in a difficult place. Will she put them in contempt of court or rely on SCOTUS to deal with them. This is from 
Liz Dye of
There’s more at the link. 
It is obvious they are kidnapping and disappearing people like we’re a mafia state. And they’re holding their ground because 
I have one thing I need to rant about. I don’t know if I should call it the Space Bunny Adventure or Space Barbies. The women on the Blue Origin Mission deserve all the backlash it was given. This did not empower women. We have actual women astronauts. We do not need to see 11 women in slinky ‘flight suits’ performing cute space cone exit ploys. Amanda Hunt, who writes for the 
One more from 
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