Dictators Gonna Dictate

Every day brings a new action by Trump that confirms his intentions to rule as a dictator. And to forestall any suggestions that I am simply regurgitating the "media narrative", here's a link to an article I wrote on January 21, 2025, calling his Day One actions dictatorial. My conclusion is not based on the effect of his actions or the rightness or wrongness of his actions, but the very basis of his actions: unilateral actions without respect to existing law or to the other branches of government. One man rule is the very definition of a dictatorship. 

Trump's Heritage Foundation allies have provided him with a framework of legal gymnastics justifying his rule by fiat, specifically the specious "Unitary Executive Theory", but Trump needs no legal basis for his authoritarianism, it's his default method of governing. His style of leadership derives from two sources: (1) Being the head of a family-owned private business and (2) Being a rich kid. 

We Americans regularly fall for the idea that a successful businessman will make a successful mayor, governor, president etc. I wrote about it here and again here. The main difference between the head of a government and the head of a business is accountability. The owner of a privately owned business answers to no one. He can make decisions that will cause the business to lose all its customers, but no one has the authority to stop him. Even in publicly traded companies, boards of directors usually don't get involved in the day-to-day operations. Trump, after pushing out other family members, inherited his father's business and remolded it in his own image. He made decades of bad decisions, bankrupting multiple businesses, but kept on making them because no one had the power to stop him. The idea that as president he would have to cooperate with Congress, defer to the courts, and work within a system, was entirely foreign to him. If he had been a self-made businessman, that would have been bad enough, but he was a rich kid who never wanted for anything, never had to work a day in his life, and had everything in life handed to him. What could possibly go wrong?

The promulgators of the Unitary Executive claim that the phrase in Article II Section 1 -  "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." means that everything related to how laws are executed, how laws are interpreted, how laws are enforced is under the unquestioned authority of one person: the president. I'm sure that this would surprise the nation's founders, who were very specifically against entrusting supreme power to one individual. In fact, Article II Section 3 states that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"...no exceptions are mentioned. Throughout Article II, virtually all responsibility and authority of the president is contingent upon concurrence of Congress. The Constitution lays out the framework where Congress writes the laws and the president executes the laws. It's true that for a bill to become law the president must agree (by signing it) before it becomes law, but it's the Congress where all laws and policies and budgets originate. A president can suggest, a president can send a proposed budget request to Congress, but it's Congress that writes the rules. 

Something not fully anticipated by the founders was the growth of what right wingers call the administrative state. As the country grew, and especially as government took a greater role in protecting its citizens Congress created regulatory and enforcement agencies. Once Congress passes a law, there has to be some mechanism to determine whether the law is being followed and what to do about it if not. It's fine and good to pass a law requiring workplace safety, but it's the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that writes the regulations defining what that specifically means, enforces the consequences laid down in the law. Congress has created and funded all of these agencies, services and administrations, but they are all technically part of the executive branch. This is where is gets a little muddy. Some of these regulatory agencies were set up to be independent, or at least semi-independent, in order to allow them to do their jobs outside of partisan considerations. The president appoints the head of the agency with Senate approval, who usually has a term that includes multiple presidential terms. Most of these agency heads cannot be replaced without cause. The theory of the Unitary Executive rejects that and posits that the president has authority over every aspect of every government department. Trump, latching on to that theory, has eliminated whole departments, fired thousands of employees, cancelled contracts and neutered whole swaths of Congressionally approved programs...unilaterally. 

The problem with these unilateral actions isn't whether or not they're good ideas...okay, whether or not they're good ideas is relevant, but not germane to whether they're dictatorial. Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors, put these words into the mouth of Sam Vimes, one of my favorite characters. 

“If you did it for a good reason, you'd do it for a bad one. You couldn't say 'We're the good guys' and do bad-guy things.”

It doesn't matter if you believe that the Department of Education should be eliminated, or that there's too many people working for the government, or that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are discriminatory, or if you believe that a trade deficit means we're losing money or tariffs are the best way to balance the budget. It doesn't even matter if Trump is actually right about anything, he is governing by fiat, he is ruling by executive order. What makes it worse is that Congress has abdicated its role out of fear of Trump's ability to end their careers and the Supreme Court has largely acquiesced to his actions. State and local Republicans obey his commands. 

We are not becoming a dictatorship, we have been one since January 20, 2025. 

Freedom of Speech

A clip from a speech that Vice President Harris made in 2019 when she was a Senator running for president was making the rounds on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Typically the tweet starts with something along the lines of: "Kamala: I will censor content on X that I don't like", followed by a clip where she doesn't say anything like that. In the clip she is actually saying:

"We'll put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice. We will double the Civil Rights Division and direct law enforcement to counter this extremism. We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy. And if you profit off of hate, if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyber warfare, if you don't police your platforms, we are going to hold you accountable as a community.”

I have not been able to find a text of the full speech, so I don't for sure what the context is for these remarks. It's also unclear what she intends by "hold them accountable". What is clear is that does not mention censoring social media platforms or shutting them down. I can draw some conclusions based on who she is speaking to and what was going on nationally. 

She is addressing the NAACP, a Black advocacy organization, and there had been a number of killings inspired by racial animus that had been abetted by social media posts. She specifically invokes the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. One can infer from her remarks that she is targeting online incitement to violence. I have seen arguments that what she is saying amounts to de facto censorship, if not censorship de jure. Free speech is not absolute. There are laws making certain narrow categories of speech illegal. Two examples are libel (although libel is more of a civil matter) and the previously mentioned incitement to violence. Individuals can be held to account in a court of law, but social media platforms cannot be. Why is that?

Section 230 of the 1934 Communications Act as amended in 1996 states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In other words, a social media platform is not responsible to moderate their content (except for child pornography and bootleg movies) and cannot be held responsible for what gets posted there, like a publisher of a newspaper or the producer of a television or cable program would. Both Trump and former President Biden were in favor of repealing Section 230. Trump was for this mainly (in my opinion) because Twitter (when it was still Twitter) was fact checking his tweets and was allegedly suppressing conservative and Trump-supporting content. I'm not sure what Biden's motivation were. (Side note: it's funny how the Trumpists were up in arms about how Twitter was "censoring" right wing speech, even though it was a private company that had every right to do so and now they're celebrating Musk who is doing similar things to left wing speech [which he categorizes as "propaganda"] because as a private owner he has every right to do so). In the larger context Harris isn't suggesting anything that Trump or Biden haven't already suggested (she's not really suggesting anything, since the clips that were circulating are from five years ago). What she said in that speech, right or wrong, unconstitutional or not, is mainstream, but as usual, her opponents ignore this and brand her words as that of a communist. 

For all the hand wringing and pearl clutching by Harris' opponents, do they ever consider the anti-free speech actions of their avatar, Trump?

• In 2020, after Twitter began appending fact checks to his tweets Trump issued an executive order that effectively re-interprets Section 230 and involves the government in platforms' moderation policies. In other words, Trump did what his supporters allege that Harris' 5-year old words indicate she would do - if their interpretation is correct
• In 2017 Trump publicly mused about changing the libel laws to make it easier for the government to sue media organization. In effect, to give the government a cudgel to prevent criticism of the president
• In 2020 Trump sued Facebook and Twitter for not publishing some of his posts and tweets
• In 2017 Trump halted whistleblower protections
• Trump aides call the press the opposition party
• Trump repeatedly call the mainstream press the enemy of the people
• Trump campaign calls for holding the media accountable (wording sound familiar?) for trying to rig the election
• Trump has sued a pollster in Iowa who incorrectly predicted that Harris would win Iowa's electoral votes
• Trump is sued CBS over how they edited an interview with Harris
• Trump's administration is deporting people, otherwise here legally, for their speech
• Trump has threatened the tax exempt status of universities whose curriculum he doesn't like
• AP has been banned from covering White House press briefings because they continue to use the term "Gulf of Mexico"
• Trump is in the process of dismantling Voice of America
• John Bolton is under investigation after speaking out against Trump, with Chris Christie threatened with the same
• ABC and NBC have been threatened with fines or license revocations because of their coverage of him

There's more, some more overt than others, but Trump's antipathy toward a free press should not be a surprise to anyone. 

If Harris' 5-year old speech is indicative of her current policy position and it means censorship, of course I'm concerned, (1) I don't believe that's the most logical, reasonable inference to be made and (2) Trump has already engaged in more direct anti-free speech actions.

Trump's actions in his first 100 days have clearly indicated his intention to rule in an authoritarian manner. On his first day he declared that the 100 year old understanding of the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship to anyone who was born here was overturned, revealing his contempt for the Constitution. He has decided that due process is no longer a thing if you aren't a citizen, despite it being provided in the 5th and 14th amendments, with the 4th amendment, securing us from unwarranted searches and seizures next on the chopping block. 

But hey, Harris wanted accountability for Twitter, so we had to vote for Trump.

Anti-Trump Propaganda?

Recently I wrote a trio of articles on the ongoing cultishness of Trump supporters, their weird affinity for authoritarianism and how just plain stupid they are. A conversation I had recently with a Trump supporter inspired me to write about what they consider reliable and trustworthy sources of information. It's not new information that Trump has done his best to undermine any media that doesn't cheerlead for him, and that Trumpists derive their opinions from sources with a pro-Trump bias, but I was surprised at how, in some cases, major issues just don't hit their radar. 

The conversation in question involved Trump's authoritarian and dictatorial words and actions since he was re-elected. As an example, I referred to Trump's attempt to nullify part of the actual Constitution, Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, by fiat, i.e. executive order. I have heard plenty of anti-immigrants rhetoric arguments against the concept of birthright citizenship; I have heard numerous barstool legal scholars maintaining that it only applied to freed slaves, but was shocked that this person had not so much as heard about this. To clarify, this person is not apolitical, he likes to think he stays up to date on current events, and often expresses opinions about world events, but he had no idea what I was talking about. 

As the conversation progressed (and I'm using the word "progressed" very loosely, only as it pertains to the passage of time and not to quality) he referred to the "anti-Trump propaganda in the legacy media" (legacy is used as a synonym for mainstream here). I'm very aware that Trumpists believe that most of what we view as the mainstream media has a liberal bias, and that they often repeat a "statistic" claiming the 92% of Trump coverage is negative. This statistic, in this case inflated to 98%, came up in our discussion. Let's divert from my friend's view of the media for a moment and look at where that "92%" figure comes from.

Media Research Center, the organization that came up with the 92% negative rating for media coverage of Trump. Its mission is, according to their website, to “prove—through sound scientific research—that liberal bias in the media exists and undermines traditional American values…MRC’s sole mission is to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media.” Hardly unbiased. They have started with a conclusion have gone about seeking facts that back up their assertion. Their presumably biased "analysis" is the basis of virtually every mention that you will ever see about anti-Trump media bias. The bottom line is that any claim of a statistical basis for a claim of anti-Trump or pro-liberal media bias is itself biased. 

One mainstream news source that I regularly read is the New York Times, which is regularly excoriated by Trump and his minions as virulently anti-Trump and has been criticized even pre-Trump as having a liberal bias. However, a typical Times piece about Trump will simply report what he said or did. The article might also include analysis of the consequences or benefits of the policy as well as statements by his spokesperson or by the opposition. In other words, complete and detailed reporting. The same standards applied to previous presidents and presidential candidates. Of course I'm talking about news articles and not opinion or editorial pieces. I wrote an article that included the difference between news and opinion last year. Trump and the Trumpists believe that news coverage of him should include effusive praise for his "accomplishments" and serve as cheerleading for his policies. If it doesn't, they call it negative. 

As my conversation with my Trumpist friend continued, I asked him to show me a recent example of anti-Trump propaganda in the mainstream media, pretty confident that I could demonstrate that whatever he came up with was simply "reporting". This was his response:

"there's so much out there that the mere question is comical these days my friend. You have Russiagate, the Hunter Biden Laptop Russian Disinformation, The Steele Dossier, the Very Fine People On Both Sides, making fun of a disabled reporter, calling our Military suckers and losers, just to list a few right off the top of my head. These, and many more have been thoroughly exposed and debunked. A simple AI or grok questioning/research will provide all the information you're requesting."

No specific article was referenced, just a recycling of the pro-Trump position that what we heard with our own ears and saw with our own eyes wasn't what we really heard or saw. I'm surprised he didn't bring up "injecting bleach", which was supposedly debunked because he said "disinfectant" and not "bleach". I wrote an article about debunking last year, covering some of the things he brought up. I further responded that I knew how to Google, but was looking for specific evidence of the anti-Trump propaganda he believed existed, rather than vague assertions. What's ironic is that The New York Times, as well as other media with a supposedly liberal bias, is regularly criticized by "The Left" for including opinion pieces that support some Trump policies or even that report on Trump evenhandedly. 

All of this is in line with the cultishness of most of Trump's support. They have bought into his criticism of mainstream news sources as "fake news". They have "decided" that anything in the mainstream media is biased at the very least, and probably simply lies. As an alternative their go-to news sources are podcasts, blogs and Twitter. To be fair, you can find factual, unbiased, information anywhere, but most of these right wing, pro-Trump sites are merely opinions about actual news, and don't have the resources to do any investigative reporting, or access to the people who set policy in this country. 

Like any cult, they have limited their sources of information to those approved by the cult leader. 

Checking the Facts

The other day I saw someone refer to "so-called fact checkers". In other words, the fact checkers weren't really checking facts, they were just another part of "the media", spreading their "fake news". I'm sure that it's no surprise that most Americans no longer view "the mainstream media" as a credible source of information. The proliferation of alternative news sources has only accelerated that trend. But is the information in mainstream media actually unreliable?  

There are fundamental things that most people do not understand about "news". The first thing is that not all of what you see on television news, or in a newspaper, is "news". Most media sources' content is roughly divided between "news" and "opinion". The "news" is what we might colloquially think of as "just the fact ma'am" - a strict, no frills recounting of what happened. The opinion side of a media outlet would include what "what happened" means, it would include an interpretation of events and speculation regarding the consequences of what happened. It's easy to point to a newspaper's editorial that you vehemently disagree with and extend your negative opinion to the news section, your confidence in the paper's accuracy undermined by your opinions being in opposition. You can think that the New York Times is full of it for stating that Trump was unfit to be president back in 2016, sure that the were unequivocally wrong about his qualifications while their reporting about his borderline illegal business dealings was beyond reproach and 100% accurate. Despite this widespread distrust in the media, traditional newspaper and television media's news (and I include conservative-leaning outlets like Fox in this group) is fairly accurate. What drives the lack of confidence in that accurate reporting is the overwhelming emphasis that is put on the opinion side of the business. Viewers of (for example) CNN or Fox News spend more of their viewing time listening to "hosts" who are doing nothing but giving their opinion, and in some cases, not giving their actual opinion but repeating back what they think their viewers want to hear. 

Another misunderstood fundamental is bias. Everybody has biases. Everybody is biased to some extent. https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart But the question is, how does that bias affect the news, the "what's happening" side of the media? An obvious sign of bias is the facts that a media outlet chooses to publish. A newspaper with a liberal bias may choose to run stories about White police officers shooting unarmed Black men and not examples of White officers acting with restraint and politeness when dealing with Black citizens while a conservative newspaper might emphasize the reverse. In general you would expect the stories that are published to support that newspaper's overall biases. To determine whether a medium's bias swamps its journalistic integrity you have to look at what else is being reported. To extend my example, it's really not "news" for a police officer to be acting with professionalism, politeness and respect - that's their job. But does the newspaper also provide context? Are their stories about the statistics related to police shootings? Are we provided with enough information to form an opinion about whether what they're reporting are isolated incidents or evidence of a systemic problem? The answer to that will tell you whether your news source can be trusted to provide you with accurate information. 

What about fact checkers? The attack, mostly from former President Trump and his supporters, on mainstream media, characterizing it as Fake News, eventually extended to the legions of fact checkers. Fact checkers are a very narrow slice of "presenters of facts" who focus on the veracity (or lack of it) in public statements by politicians (or at least mainly politicians). Like mainstream media, and really, everybody, they have their own biases that sometimes guides who and what they check for factuality. Those who support politicians whose inaccuracies have been called out by fact checkers will reflexively refuse to believe the facts that fact checkers check, apparently for no other reason than that they disagree with them. What I have observed with most fact checkers is that they don't merely claim that a targeted politicians is wrong about something, they provide evidence to back it up. For example, Trump repeatedly claimed in his speeches that he "got Veterans'' Choice". Fact Checker Daniel Dale just as repeatedly pointed out that that the Veterans' Choice bill had been proposed by the late Senator John McCain and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2012, four years before Trump was elected. He presented evidence that could be easily cross checked for accuracy. Trump also regularly claimed to have completed building "The Wall" (most of it) - fact checkers often posted links to government websites (during Trump's presidency) that showed a small number of miles of new barriers had been constructed. Most fact checkers are not simply saying "nuh-uh" but are presenting a checkable documentary trail that can easily be verified. 

Some things are a matter of opinion. The best way to deal with the effects of climate change is a matter of opinion; whether there is climate change isn't. That we had a worldwide pandemic starting in 2020 is not a matter of opinion - the best way to minimize death and illness is. What we are lacking (in my opinion!) is not a lack of facts in the media, but a lack of understanding by the electorate of the difference between fact and opinion.

Life After Trump

"...people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” – Hebrews 9:27

Who knows if there's anything to this, but there's been speculation lately about Trump's health. From his swollen ankles to the wounds on his hands to his weird talk about going to heaven, there are signs that he is seriously ill. Some people believe that the current state of the nation, as we slide deeper and deeper into authoritarianism, dictatorship and fascism, is completely due to Trump, and that his death would result in some sort of national "reset". 

I wouldn't hold my breath.

There are several strands interweaving in our national tapestry that are contributing to the current state of affairs:

• Trump and his cultish hold on much of the electorate
• Behind the scenes actors such as the architects of Project 2025 who have thought through how to turn theory into operational reality
• The ongoing Republican efforts to retain power by disenfranchising portions of the voting public
• The Supreme Court majority that appears to agree with extreme right wing interpretations of the law

The Project 2025 authors are the brains behind much of what is going on in the federal government right now. Kevin Roberts and The Heritage Foundation have spent years documenting what they believed the federal government should look like and how it should be run. They have not trafficked in vague ideas and catchy slogans, but in concrete plans to remake the government. Their over all goals and ideology can be summarized as:

• Dismantling the "Administrative State", by which they mean eliminating the ability of regulatory agencies to effectively execute and enforce the laws creating them. 
• The President is the head of a "unitary executive" branch of government. This means that the president is the only authority regarding what any agency of the federal government can do.  This includes whether that agency can exist, despite any laws to the contrary. 
• Stricter immigration policies
• Government policy should be oriented toward traditional conservative Christian values, aka Christian Nationalism

Some of these views are concrete such as the unitary executive and dismantling regulatory agencies, while Christian Nationalism is more implied than spelled out. Officially Project 2025 was not connected to the Trump campaign, nor has it been overtly adopted by the administration. However, Project 2025 was virtually indistinguishable from Agenda 47, Trump official campaign platform, and several Heritage Foundation members are now ensconced in the administration. Who do you think is writing all those executive orders?

How would the Project 2025 influence be different if Trump died and Vice President Vance became president? (Or any post-Trump Republican president)

Hallmarks of Trump's leadership style include his utter ignorance of how things work, his lack of desire to learn how things work, his childish need for adulation, his laziness when it comes to the hard work required of the job, his tendency to take things personally and seek retribution when wronged and his buffoonish public persona. I have no doubt that a more restrained right wing president would have gotten more of the conservative agenda accomplished in the last half year than Trump did, simply because there wouldn't have been the daily distractions of the crazy utterances from Trump himself every day. For example, I imagine that the dismantling of the federal work force would have been undertaken in an organized, methodical fashion, rather than the clown show put on by Musk and DOGE. We would have barely noticed the Department of Education being eliminated and there would be no silly renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. paving over the Rose Garden, or gilding the Oval Office. There would be no daily announcements of ridiculous tariffs or tiffs with his "enemies" on social media. All the truly horrible things would still be enacted, but we probably wouldn't realize that they were happening. 

The Trump as Cult Leader strand is still important though. As incompetent as he is at actual governing there is no one out there who can take his place at campaigning. The whole MAGA "movement" is all about personal fealty to Trump himself and only peripherally to any coherent ideology. We have seen time and time again how a position supposedly so important to the base get abandoned because Trump changed his mind. Like the "it's the economy" crowd no longer concerned about rising grocery prices. Even when there appeared to be a rebellion, like when many from the QAnon portion of his base appeared to turn against him, it seems to wind down and they're back to hanging on Trump's every word. Sure, there are some among the Trump cult who would never vote for a Democrat because they believe the propaganda that Democrats are all pedophilic communist gun grabbers, but you might see some moderate Republicans speaking up again when the fear of having their careers torpedoed by Trump's ire fades away. Republican voters might actually start thinking about their choices. 

But even absent Trump and The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, Republicans are conservatives at heart and aren't really opposed to the goals of Project 2025. Due mainly Trump's influence over the last ten years, the bulk of Republican office holders have been right wing extremists, and often White Christian Nationalists. The extreme right wing has taken control of most state Republican parties. Despite their rhetoric claiming to represent the majority of Americans, and despite the electoral failures of the Democratic Party nationally, Republicans know that their influence is waning. If they believed that their star was rising there wouldn't be a need to engage in the numerous anti-democratic maneuvers designed to discourage or outright disenfranchise those most likely to vote against them. A truly democratic society would set things up so that more people could vote, not make it more difficult to register or to get to the polls. Here are a few examples from a previous article where Republicans have ignored the will of the people:

• Wisconsin voters elected a Democrat as governor. Before he could take office, the Republican legislature voted to strip the governor of many of his powers
• North Carolina did the same thing
• The Democratic North Carolina governor vetoed a budget that the legislature with a Republican majority submitted, but they didn't have enough votes to override. They waited until the entire Democratic caucus was at a 9-11 memorial and voted to  override the veto, since the 2/3 override threshold wasn't 2/3 of the entire legislature, but 2/3 of those present
• Several states, including my own state of Nebraska, voted to expand Medicaid coverage. The Republican governor has instructed state agencies to delay implementation and to throw up roadblocks to prevent people from actually utilizing it
• The same Nebraska governor, when faced with Republican legislators (in a ostensibly non-partisan legislature) who did not vote with him, he bankrolled primary challenges to those "disloyal" Republicans. 
• Lincoln Nebraska Republicans bankrolled a ballot initiative to term limit a Democratic mayor who had already announced that he was running for another term
• In Maine, South Dakota, Nevada and Oklahoma citizen ballot initiatives were overturned by the Republican governors and the legislatures
• In Florida, a ballot initiative restored voting rights to convicted felons who had served their sentences. The Republican governor and legislature instituted roadblocks that would prevent most from actually being able to vote (this was overturned by the courts)
• Let's not forget voter suppression laws. They require identification, and then close DMV's and other places where ID can be secured. 
• Just this past year in Nebraska, the supposedly nonpartisan legislature, which has a filibuster-proof Republican majority, overturned, delayed, slow-walked or watered down several initiatives passed by the people

The Republicans simply don't care what the majority wants. And in order to stay in power they will suppress the vote and gerrymander their way to permanent majorities. Texas Republicans have escalated the gerrymander game by redistricting halfway through a census period. Gerrymandering doesn't affect presidential elections (except in Nebraska and Maine) but a permanent Republican House majority will neuter any hypothetical Democratic president. 

Finally, there's the Supreme Court. District and Appellate federal courts have done a wonderful job slowing down some of Trump's dictatorial actions, yet when the appeals make it to the Supreme Court, the 6-3 majority has been very friendly to Trump's agenda. Thomas and Alito will be 78 and 76 respectively at the end of Trump's term, while the rest of them are in their 50's and 60's. A Democrat would need to be elected president, Thomas and Alito would have to die and we'd have to hope the Senate would either be in Democratic hands or not pull a McConnell if in Republican hands before we would see any change in the court's makeup. The current majority seems very sympathetic to right wing goals unless egregiously unconstitutional. 

The bottom line is that things may not get any better if Trump keels over and dies tomorrow. At the very least the Democrats would need to gain a majority in the House (the Senate seems out of reach for the foreseeable future) and moderate Republicans will need to come out of hiding. 

Trump "Accomplishments" - Part II

There's no doubt in my mind that we're in the early, or even mid stages of a dictatorship. I've discussed that conclusion on many occasions. As someone who believes that democracy is not only important, but is the bedrock upon which our nation is built, the many undemocratic actions that Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party have undertaken have taken a wrecking ball to our democratic institutions. I often hear his supporters minimize this incipient authoritarianism, justifying it by claiming that "he gets things done". 

But does he? If the illegal and unconstitutional actions had been accomplished legally, would they still be considered as having contributed to the greater good? 

If they didn't care how he did it, how many families he broke up, how many laws he broke, would a Trump supporter consider that Trump was fulfilling his campaign promise of closing the border? Probably they would. 

One of the reasons that it appears that Trump has solved the problem of illegal immigration is that Trump says he has solved the problem of illegal immigration. He throws around statistics that are suspect and often compares apples to oranges. For example, early in his second term he compared the total number of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) encounters for one week of Biden's term with the average daily numbers for a week early in his own term. Figures that you seldom see are the comparison of the average number illegal crossings that Biden inherited from Trump's first term with the number that Trump inherited from Biden. Trump walked into a much better scenario than Biden did. Trump also tends to take credit for the actions of others. While it is true that Biden's action on border security came late in his term, and only after tremendous pressure, what we are seeing now is a continuation of the downward trend that began under Biden. 

One of the metrics that CBP uses is the number of encounters per month. (An "encounter" is an attempt by someone to enter the country, whether they were allowed in for various reasons or immediately turned back) Using CBP's own numbers from the official gov't website, the numbers of encounters are indeed down. Using the encounters at the Southwest border only, the highest number was in December 2023, with 245,000 encounters. (The data that I saw only went back as far as October 2023, the beginning of the previous fiscal year) The average for the next five months, however, was around 127,500 per month. In June 2024, after changes put in place by the Biden administration, the number was only 82,000. The next five month average was 42,500, with January, Biden's last month, seeing 28,200 encounters. The encounters for February - May, the only months where statistics are available, lists an average of 7,400 with no material change up or down. 

One thing is immediately obvious and a second not so obvious in these statistics. Despite extremely high numbers of encounters during the Biden administration, the numbers were beginning to trend downward halfway through 2024 when changes were made to the way illegal entry was handled and the trend slightly accelerated (compare January was 60% of December, while February was only 27% of January) once Trump was back in office. What is not evident in these numbers is how asylum applications were reported. The Trump administration counts all encounters as illegal, even if there is an asylum claim. They are retroactively counting asylum seekers during Biden's term as illegal, even though they were granted legal permission to remain in the U.S. until their cases could be heard. This makes Biden's numbers look worse than they actually are with respect to illegal immigration.  

While it's clear that illegal immigration through the southern border is a fraction of what it had been at its peak, what's not clear is why. People who are fleeing poverty and gang violence can be pretty tenacious about getting out of those situations. We haven't increased the number of Border Patrol agents (although the Army and National Guard are patrolling sections of the border) and we haven't yet built Trump's Wall. It's possible that potential illegal immigrants have checked out the political situation here and have decided that it isn't worth the risk. In that case it isn't that the border is more secure, it's just that the millions facing starvation and death think coming here is a worse deal for them. Or maybe the coyotes are just getting more creative. But what happens if one day things get so bad in their home countries that they all think it's worth the risk? The Border Patrol will still be the same size as it was in 2024 and we're back where we started. Personally I think it's suspicious that illegal crossings are supposedly down when one of the main avenues of legal entry, asylum claims, have been virtually eliminated. I would think that cutting off a legal way to come here would increase illegal attempts. Me, I don't trust the numbers; we know from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that Trump only believes numbers that are favorable to him. As soon as they start looking bad Trump will fire Noem or whoever tracks that information. 

From what I can tell asylum seekers who are turned back are tracked separately from illegal crossings. However, Trump and his people have made no secret that they think asylum claims are a big scam, with those applying for it just parroting the right words in order to bring their drug import business into the U.S. But it's perfectly legal to apply for asylum; denying virtually all cases without due process has nothing to do with controlling illegal immigration, but with ending immigration period. (At least the brown kind) Would Trumpists see this as an accomplishment? No doubt they would. Because it's not just about illegal immigration, if it was, there would be a push for an expanded immigration court system, and a streamlined system for vetting and processing people. But the Trumpists see immigration as diluting the blood of "real" Americans. 

This is why the lack of due process as undocumented immigrants, as well as non-citizens who are here legally, are rounded up and sent to Salvadoran prisons, or to countries with which they have no ties, doesn't bother them. They're willing to turn aside as the promise to prioritize ejecting violent criminals is forgotten and otherwise law abiding asylum seekers, green card holders and those under temporary protect status are arrested at immigration hearings or at appointments to renew their green card. They consider the ICE raids an "accomplishment" even though it's not really what Trump said he would do. 

To the Trump Cult the ends justify the means.

Trump "Accomplishments" Part I

Trump "Accomplishments" Part III

Trump "Accomplishments" Part IV

Trump "Accomplishments" Part V

Gerrymandering Today

The naked power grab that is happening in Texas is only the most recent example of Republicans attempting to retain power whether or not there is popular support for them or their policies. 

Gerrymandering is not illegal on a national level. There is no federal law that sets standards for how election district boundaries are to be drawn. The Supreme Court has ruled that gerrymandering with the purpose of disenfranchising racial groups is illegal, but that it's outside of its authority to rule on partisan gerrymandering. Some states have set their own guidelines for how districts will be set up, many with "independent" or bipartisan commissions created for the job. 

What gerrymandering doesn't do: it has no effect on presidential elections. The undemocratic features of the Electoral College are a whole 'nother issue, but other than in Nebraska and Maine, how Congressional districts boundaries are drawn have no effect on how electoral votes are allocated. (After the last census, Nebraska Republicans attempted to gerrymander District 2, which frequently elects Democrats, by dividing the majority Democratic City of Omaha between Districts 1 and 2, effectively eliminating the potential for one electoral vote going to a Democrat. More recently they tried to revert to a winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes, which would have accomplished the same thing). 

Gerrymandering on the Congressional level affects the party balance of the House of Representatives. Since the Republican-Democratic split has been so tight recently, the Republicans are looking for any advantage in order to retain their majority. But the effects of gerrymandering don't start with Congressional maps, but with how state legislative maps are drawn. The process always begins with a Republican majority, however slight, in a state legislature. Once they have that majority, if it's a state where the legislature draws the district maps, then they are free to gerrymander so that a slight majority turns into a large majority or even a super- or veto-proof majority. A veto-proof majority is important because in some of these states the governor and other statewide elected officers are Democrats. Wisconsin is a prime example. The electorate is very evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, even though the legislature is overwhelmingly Republican. They failed to achieve a supermajority but still work to frustrate the plans of the Democratic governor. (Several states that had an outgoing Republican being replaced by a Democrat as governor passed last-minute legislation limiting or reducing the governor's authority)

Texas is a state that votes around 53% Republican in statewide elections, so the Governor, Attorney General and both Senators are all Republicans. I have no argument against that. The majority wins; no problem. The problem, even before the current redistricting, is that instead of having a slight majority in the Congressional delegation, the Republicans had around two thirds of the House seats, or a 2 -1 advantage. The latest redistricting will theoretically increase that advantage to three quarters of the seats, or a 3 - 1 advantage, simply by moving around some boundaries. What makes this particularly egregious is that it's being done, not as a result of population changes after a decennial census, but after only four years, at the behest of the president.  

California is taking steps to neutralize Texas' action by doing their own redistricting. California is unique already in that primaries are open and the two top vote getters advance to the general election, even if both are of the same party. Currently of California's 52 House seats, all but nine are Democrats, so I don't know how much more they can do. California generally votes for Democrats in statewide elections by just under 60%, so it's reasonable to assume that California is already gerrymandered. Other states will need to step up. 

In a perfect world there would be a standard method of drawing district boundaries. This New York Times article has some ideas, but I doubt we're close to a universal solution. The problem with gerrymandering isn't simply that one party is able to illegitimately keep  power, but that large percentages of the electorate are disenfranchised. The Electoral College method of electing presidents already does that, accelerated partisan gerrymandering is just going to make a bad situation worse. 

The Texas situation is an isolated case. Republicans have been acting to make it harder for people to vote via a variety of methods for years.