"Five-Alarm Fire" Is Not Even Close
TUCSON — A photo gone viral of Donald Trump's cruel new America is sickening. Hooded police brutalize asylum seekers flown to El Salvador in blatant defiance of a federal judge's order by a kleptocrat U.S. president who has crowned himself king.
"Oopsie, too late," Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, the self-proclaimed "world's coolest dictator," posted with an amused emoji when the planes failed to turn around. He is detaining 260 Venezuelans indefinitely under harsh conditions for a price.
Marco Rubio retweeted that on X, Elon Musk's purveyor of hard-right hate. In the 2016 campaign, he reviled Trump and said Vladimir Putin rules Russia like a mafia boss. Now an errand-boy secretary of state, he helps his boss run America in the same way.
In 60 years of reporting abroad, I have never seen such clear and present danger. Today, the world sees a law-defying superpower with the ability to blow a chunk out of the planet and the economic clout to create global penury.
Trump's use of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, meant for wartime, to whip up fear and loathing over a bogus "border emergency" is a small part of it. Aided by hypocrite legislators and armed neo-Nazi nihilists, he is dismantling America at dizzying speed.
At home, cultists support his efforts to cripple Social Security and health care. Their own savings dwindle in market chaos as prices soar. The poorest and sickest suffer most. Essential services vanish to fund trillions in tax cuts for a wealthy few.
Abroad, he is making the world safe for Russian invasions, Chinese dominance, ultra-Zionist suppression of Palestine and more. NATO's next callup could be a defense of Canada or Denmark against U.S. colonial pretentions.
Trump and Musk are halfway through a coup d'etat. One feeds an insatiable, demented ego, seeing himself as a tough, wise monarch. The other, an über-rich Lex Luther with no hint of human empathy, raised in racist South Africa, wants to rule the universe.
Decent citizens, overwhelmed by the unthinkable and confused by divided Democratic factions, watch it all happen like deer blinded by headlights. Or simply tune it all out.
A popular groundswell is growing fast. Polls and focus groups reveal even many Republicans are furious that Trump is doing the opposite of what they expected. Town-hall protests remind lawmakers who pays them and who they are sworn to serve.
Still, this is drop-dead urgent. Big money, voter suppression and computer sabotage imperil free, fair elections — even as early as 2026. It is time to remember Samuel L. Jackson's alarm when the threat was only George W. Bush: "Wake the fuck up."
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Trump's two-hour rant on March 5 before a joint session of Congress — personal grievance, slander of Joe Biden and preposterous lies — made clear how quickly and deeply America has sunk into ignominy.
Al Green, a longtime Democratic congressman from Houston, stood up to protest when Trump claimed a mandate to cut health care to the poor. He was hustled out, and Republicans chanted like schoolkids: "Nah nah nah nah, goodbye."
I thought of a photo from Biden's last State of the Union address. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert stood side-by-side to shout slurs. With bared teeth, they looked exactly like baboons in a game park flinging feces at a Land Rover windshield.
Biden chuckled and let the moment pass. Then he explained how he reversed the Covid hecatomb and collapsed economy Trump left behind to prosperity that the Economist termed "the envy of the world."
Democrats might have filed out behind Green. Why legitimatize a rubberstamp legislature? Only Jasmine Crockett, a promising freshman from Dallas, did. And later, 10 of them joined Republicans in a motion to censure him.
I had just returned from Texas, planning a dispatch titled, "Forget the Alamo; Remember the Liberty Bell." The tolerant state that produced Lyndon Johnson, Gov. Ann Richards and Molly Ivins's cutting satire has taken a sharp right turn.
In earlier days, that fortified old adobe church near the carefully preserved Menger Hotel was a funky tourist stop where parents bought kids Davy Crockett coonskin caps and sugary churros.
Today, the Alamo is a jingoistic monument to revisionist history, bedecked with American flags. A brass plate recalls the last words scrawled on a letter from Col. William Travis as Mexican troops closed in after a bitter, heroic fight:
"I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country - Victory or Death."
Travis's country was an independent Texas resisting Mexico's demand to free its slaves. Now it is the heart of a national drive to enrich private enterprise with vast construction and security forces to repel a post-Trump border crush that waned under Biden.
Gov. Greg Abbott wants federal reimbursement for his $12 billion Operation Lone Star, which exploits desperate migrants and refugees for profit. My last dispatch, from Eagle Pass, delves into detail.
In sum, plenty of goodhearted Texans resist Trump's onslaught. But far too many remain silent, reluctant to stir up heat in neighborhoods or social circles.
At a volunteer hospice, a well-heeled, well-connected woman recoiled when I mentioned the crisis. "I don't watch or listen," she said, before turning away. A father whose 10-year-old son faces a grim future responded the same way.
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Back in Tucson at the Festival of Books, I talked with insider experts and deep-digging journalists who had damning details. Conspiracy theories are difficult to prove and often baseless. But smoke suggests fire. Even paranoiacs have enemies.
What really happened in Pennsylvania when a shot echoed, and Trump clutched at his ear? Why did he wink at Mike Johnson, saying they had a secret making it unnecessary for supporters to cast a vote — then later thank Musk for his computer wizardry?
It doesn't matter. Americans have seen and heard enough already. "Constitutional crisis" is already old news. The question is what to do now.
James Carville says Democrats should sit back and let Republicans collapse under their own overreach. Chuck Schumer advocates old-style politics. America is far beyond either approach.
One Minnesota state senator pushed a bill citing "Trump derangement syndrome." That is, anyone who opposes America's idol is crazy. Hardly a judge of character, he is a father of four who was arrested for soliciting sex with a minor.
No single savior is on the horizon. With so much in play, people might best resist by learning all they can about a few crucial issues from solid sources so they can explain within their own circles how much they matter. It will take patience and persistence.
Domestic issues are plain to see. Heedless "deregulation" allows a greedy few to devastate natural splendor, parks, Native American sacred land, dwindling water supplies, farmland, fisheries and vital resources that belong to coming generations.
But existential threats to human survival are global, beyond Americans' line of sight.
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From the outside looking in, consider what a post-war world that once revered the United States now sees as its personification. Rather than dignified, thoughtful leadership, tweets like these are thumbed out on a truth-free anti-social platform:
“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.”
Vindicative, afflicted with malignant narcissism and delusions of grandeur, he is capable of anything. Despite a jackal-like cunning to sense others' weak spots, he is ignorant of complex world realities.
After Trump's pre-negotiation giveaways to Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, both have doubled down on their onslaughts. Russia now threatens parts of Europe and ex-Soviet Asia. The Middle East faces intensifying war.
Slashed foreign aid enables China to fill the vacuum, gaining influence fast across the world with strict curbs on human rights and free expression.
Musk claims no one will die because of his abrupt dismantling of USAID. Many are already dying. Nicholas Kristof's detailed analysis in the New York Times shows why the death toll is likely to reach into the millions by this time next year.
Those who doubt the looming calamity of climate collapse only need to open their front doors, anywhere, and look around. Trump's focus on immediate profit, with emphasis on fossil fuels, poisons the future of eight billion people, including his own progeny.
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That expulsion to El Salvador says it all. Some of those Venezuelans were hustled onto aircraft because of misinterpreted tattoos, guilty of nothing but crossing a border to apply for asylum in credible fear for their lives according to Geneva conventions.
Others were swept up while awaiting immigration proceedings after applying via the online process that Joe Biden initiated but Trump abruptly shut down. No hearings were held to determine if any were, in fact, deportable criminals.
Trump defies the law with devious doubletalk. He pledges to respect all judges' rulings; his minions do the opposite. After an order to stop flights to El Salvador, Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked if there would be more. "Absolutely," she replied.
Tom Homan, the foul-mouthed "border czar" unconfirmed by the Senate, declared: "We are not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the Left thinks. We're coming."
When District Court Judge James Boasberg demanded due process, Trump told Laura Ingraham on Fox "News":
"Many people have called for his impeachment...I don't know who the judge is, but he's radical left. He was Obama-appointed, and he actually said we shouldn't be able to take criminals, killers, murderers, horrible, the worst people, gang members, gang leaders, that we shouldn't be allowed to take them out of our country."
Chief Justice John Roberts made a rare rebuke, but Trump blew that off. He said Roberts did not name him specifically.
Stephen Miller, Trump's personal junkyard dog, timed the flights to argue they were beyond U.S. airspace and could not be recalled. Andrew Weissmann, a respected ex-general counsel of a formerly competent FBI, said otherwise. Miller sputtered a reply:
“First of all, Andrew Weissmann is an absolute moron. He is a moron, and he is a fool, and he’s a degenerate. Andrew Weissmann has devoted his career to putting innocent Americans in jail, taking away their civil liberties.”
Since 1798, the Alien Enemies Act was used only to intern U.S. citizens from Japan and Germany in World War II, whose families were later given reparations. The attached NBC report sheds detailed light on the travesty.
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Trump may eventually dump Musk for lèse-majesté if the overbearing loose cannon imperils his kingly ambitions. If so, Steve Bannon may be a bigger threat. My skin crawled when Bannon declared his intention to engineer a third Trump term.
In the end, I found two Democratic legislators who best summed up the threat. Neither was widely noticed because of the strategy Bannon calls "flood the zone with shit."
Chris Murphy of Connecticut on the Senate floor gave a 29-minute play-by-play of Trump-Musk depredations in their first six weeks. The combined impact of so many cumulative assaults on American democracy was breath-stopping.
Then days ago, on MSNBC, former Republican party chairman Michael Steele spoke to Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a constitutional scholar and a decent man with a mild manner masking steely resolve.
Only five judges have been impeached in U.S. history for repeated drunkenness or theft, Raskin said, but never for a court ruling. Trump's coopted legislators have already initiated five more, including one against Boasberg.
There is no chance of conviction, Raskin added, but they fire up Trump's base as he undercuts the legislature and the courts to seek unchallenged power for the executive — an end to checks and balances.
The latest move is gutting the Department of Education to leave schooling to the states. Without federal aid for special needs and low-income kids, Republicans can increase private or religious education while dumbing down public schools.
That is a basic approach to despotism. Children whose brains are washed early on tend to grow up believing whatever they are told.
Steele and Raskin ended on a slightly hopeful note. Enough judges, journalists, law firms and all manner of activists are prepared for a long haul. Voters already suffering from Trump's false promises are furious. The Constitution still holds.
But there is no easy fix for American crises that have developed over decades. In the wider world, threats are beyond description. Doing anything helps. Doing nothing is unthinkable.
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Nicholas Kristof on USAID Cuts