Berlin. Yasemin Acar is a Berlin-based activist who was aboard the Freedom Flotilla’s ship “Madleen”, a mission followed by millions on social media, as the ship tried to break Israel’s siege of Gaza. After attending Berlin’s largest Palestine protest ever last weekend, with over 60,000 protesters hitting the streets, she recounts her experience during the […]
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Zohran Mamdani. (Photo: Bryan Berlin, via Wikimedia Commons) Zohran Mamdani. (Photo: Bryan Berlin, via Wikimedia Commons) Zohran Mamdani. (Photo: Bryan Berlin, via Wikimedia Commons) Zohran Mamdani. (Photo: Bryan Berlin, via Wikimedia Commons) Zohran Mamdani. (Photo: Bryan Berlin, via Wikimedia Commons) Zohran Mamdani. (Photo: Bryan Berlin, via Wikimedia Commons) Zohran Mamdani. (Photo: Bryan Berlin, via Wikimedia […]
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There’s no precise number for how many Palestinians have been starved to death by Israel’s embargo on food entering Gaza. But there is a number for how many Palestinians have been killed trying to keep from starving to death at food distribution sites, many of them by Israeli gun or mortar fire: 549, with 5 […]
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Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex Shuper. Image by Alex […]
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The Pentecost Sunday service had just concluded. We were on the red stone porch outside the entrance to St. David’s Cathedral in the city of that name in South Wales. The clergy greeted us. The canon of the cathedral asked me if I had all my worldly belongings on my back. The sun was shining […]
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June 1 to June 6 Here’s a U.S. senator urging Israel to sink a boat bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza and kill activist Greta Thunberg. This is no idle threat, either. In 2014, Israel attacked the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, killing nine people on board the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, including an American citizen, 18-year-old Furkan […]
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Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay Banks. Image by Clay […]
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In February 1972, Republican Senator Strom Thurmond—or, as Lennon once called him, “Senator Thurmbold, or somebody…”—wrote to Attorney General John N. Mitchell, falsely alleging that Lennon was planning to disrupt the Republican National Convention scheduled for August that year. Thurmond’s allegations made it into an IEC report, available in the CIA archives. Mitchell’s office passed the letter to Commissioner Raymond Farrell of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Shortly thereafter, Lennon’s visa was revoked and the INS initiated deportation proceedings.
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The Biggest Domestic Terror Threat DATELINE, OCCUPIED LOS ANGELES, Undemocratic States of Amerikkka: Spike Lee said, “Violence is as American as apple pie”, and violent political acts are becoming increasingly commonplace and widespread across the USA. In the last year alone, high profile incendiary incidents include apparently targeted acts of violence, including: Two 2024 attempts […]
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The contrast could not be starker. Even with their campuses destroyed by US-supplied aircraft dropping US-supplied bombs, Gaza’s universities are persevering and supporting their students as best they can, under the banner “Education Is Resistance.” Meanwhile, big US universities that have come under a barrage of legal and financial threats for not cracking down hard […]
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Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick Fancher. Image by Nick […]
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Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. Still from The Invisible Doctrine. […]
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+ Two days in Gaza: On Saturday, Israel targeted the home of two International Committee of the Red Cross workers in Khan Younis, killing Ibrahim Eid and Ahmad Abu Hilal. Ahmad worked as a Security Guard at the Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah, while Ibrahim was a Weapon Contamination Officer for the ICRC. On […]
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A person escapes slave labor, torture, rape, and murder, and illegally crosses a border to a land where such crimes are outlawed, to a land where people have the right to work for wages and are protected by the law. Anyone in this “Free Land” who harbors or aides such an escapee is subject to […]
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Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio Bartlett. Image by Gio […]
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WOO-HOO! There’s a new bookstore in Washington Heights – three blocks from where we live! I must qualify my WOO-HOO, however, with the fact that this bookstore is “progressive” in an NPR-ish sort of way, while NPR might define me and my partner more as “communist hardliners.” Laura and I are members of WAWOG — […]
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In this exclusive interview, renowned international law scholar and former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falkengages with educator and journalist Daniel Falcone to examine the moral, political, and historical dimensions of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. The conversation is anchored by a viral social media post from Tam Zandman, a young Israeli who denounced what he […]
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The Trump regime’s approval numbers are sinking. Americans are in the streets protesting the regime’s cruel abuses of power. And Democratic voters are yelling at their party’s leaders to show some backbone. Party operatives are counting on this nationwide backlash to gain them House and Senate majorities in next year’s congressional elections. Many liberals and […]
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The problem with writing about Gaza is that words can’t explain what’s happening in Gaza. Neither can images, even the most gut-wrenching and heartbreaking. Because what needs to be explained is the inexplicable. What needs to be explicated is the silence in the face of horror. Israel has been brazenly upfront about its plans to […]
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Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike Erskine. Image by Mike […]
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The quiet streets of Newton Mearns, on the southern edge of Glasgow in Scotland, aren’t often the scene of industrial tension. But on a damp Tuesday morning in late March, a group of Royal Mail workers gathered behind the local delivery office—low voices, folded arms, and a shared sense that something almost sacred to them […]
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“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2
Where are all those righteous-sounding people in the Western nations that for years have denounced in the media, to politicians, to the world that the human rights of the people of Venezuela needed to be defended from a supposed “authoritarian” government, first of Chávez then of Maduro? Where are they now when the powerful government of the United States, led by a bone fide authoritarian, trashes the human rights of Venezuelans?
Recent USA governments encouraged Venezuelans to leave their country and enabled them to enter the USA. The Trump administration, however, has rounded them up like criminals, accused them of being members of a defunct local Venezuelan criminal gang, denied them a legal hearing or access to defense lawyers, and sent them, for a handsome fee, handcuffed to a most brutal prison in another country, El Salvador. Others are helpless in domestic detention centres. They were taken out of their homes, out of schools, out of their places of work, given no notice, nor any option, nor allowed to give any explanation. Tattoos on their person were enough to convict them as terrorists and criminals. In El Salvador they were imprisoned and beate.
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article
Let there be no mistake: in September 2023 combined forces of the Venezuelan police and military, arrested, disbanded, and eliminated the local thugs called Tren de Aragua. At the same time, the authorities cleaned out Tocorón Prison, in the state of Aragua and re-took control from the gangs. The leaders were captured and those few that escaped had INTERPOL warrants issued against them.
What created this horrific and unjust imprisonment of Venezuelans in El Salvador? The extreme fascist Venezuelan opposition leaders, who live outside the country by choice, committed what is perhaps the worst unpatriotic and immoral crime against their own people. In 2024 Maria Corina Machado, Luis Borges, Leopoldo Lopez, persuaded Ted Cruz that the Venezuelan government had sent members of the (defunct) Tren de Aragua gang to the USA; and furthermore, that the Venezuelan migrants were instruments of that gang. Hence, Trump announced that same false and dangerous lie to the public.
There has been, to this day, no evidence whatsoever of this supposed conspiracy by the Venezuelan government to send criminals to the USA, nor has the criminality of the migrants who were rounded up been proven in a court of law.
Moreover, “a new U.S. intelligence assessment found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government, contradicting statements by Trump administration officials to justify their invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and deporting Venezuelan migrants” (https://apnews.com/article/trump-deportation-courts-aclu-venezuelan-gang-timeline-43e1deafd66fc1ed4e934ad108ead529)
“Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11
This is how they rounded up the Jewish people in the Third Reich before gassing them. Even Nazi butchers were given the right of a trial and access to lawyers at Nurenburg – but not Venezuelans.
“Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 10
The USA has created a concentration camp in El Salvador: it has paid the dictator Bukele $6 million to incarcerate Venezuelans. They are there simply because of their NATIONALITY. If any other country other than the USA had made this deal, it would have been denounced as human trafficking.
Fortunately, Trump has not been able to quite dismantle the US judicial system, despite having “stacked” courts with his followers. Thus, on April 19th the US Supreme Court, in a surprising act of defiance, temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelans detained in Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a controversial 18th-century military law. The Court has ordered the Trump administration not to expel these migrants held at a detention center “until further order of this court.” The ruling comes just hours after a federal appeals court similarly blocked the US government from moving forward with eliminating temporary legal protection, better known as TPS, for some 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, who are at risk of imminent deportation.
According to the Migration Policy Institute of the USA, Venezuelan migrants are merely 2% of the 47.8 million registered migrants. Clearly, Venezuelans have been targeted for strictly political reasons: it is another canard aimed at trying to depose the legitimate, democratic, Venezuelan government. “…a criminal gang is clearly being used, with its capacity and reach clearly exaggerated, in order to generate the necessary excuses for renewed attacks against Venezuela: sanctions, tariffs and, naturally, the inhuman treatment of migrants. The worst example so far was the deportation of 238 of them to El Salvador.”
Internationally, there has been very little outcry from western nations in defense of the kidnapped Venezuelans. This is disgraceful.
Another example of the lawlessness of the Trump regime is its refusal to comply with the April 10th order of the Supreme Court to obtain the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorean, sent to El Salvador with the Venezuelans, and who the US has admitted was deported in error. “This defiance of a lower court and the Supreme Court is indeed historic and constitute what is correctly referred to as dictatorial action. But if we look around the world at the nations of the collective west, those that claim to be paragons of democratic virtues and condemning other nations for what they call human rights abuses, we see similarly repressive activities.”
Some in the press have falsely claimed that the situation of the migrants somehow favours Nicolas Maduro. Those that think this have no idea firstly, of the public outcry and anguish the people of Venezuela are showing because of their abused compatriots. Secondly, they have no idea of the many initiatives of the government to obtain the return of their citizens. Since 2018 Venezuela has had a program called Return to the Homeland which – free of charge – has flown Venezuelans home from other countries where they migrated to but ended up suffering poverty and abuse. Thousands have returned to Venezuela in these flights and have been received with open arms. Venezuela would send its planes to the US and El Salvador to obtain the return of its citizens were they allowed to do so. President Maduro has said,” if they don’t want them, we do.”
“Do not ask for whom the bells toll, they toll for thee”:
The abuse of human rights of any group or nationality means they are all at risk.
President Trump, in his March 4 State of the Union address, stated:
“And I also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland. We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security. And we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it. But we need it really for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it. We will keep you safe. We will make you rich. And together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before. It’s a very small population, but very, very large piece of land and very, very important for military security.”[1]
“One way or the other, we’re going to get it” sounds like a threat to me. In fact, Trump’s entire statement could have come out of a mob boss’ mouth.
It was delivered coupled with his offer to buy Greenland from Denmark and make it the 51st state (or 52nd if Trump has his way with Canada). Hence, it is in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism, as Trump is determined to take control of the island, thus expanding the U.S. empire.
On Tuesday March 11, one week after Trump’s threat, Greenlanders went to the polls to elect their 31-seat Parliament, one factor in how Greenland is governed. Greenland is currently a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, which controls the island’s foreign policy, defense, and other important aspects of its economy. Denmark provides around 50 percent of the budget for Greenland, providing for schools, social services, and cheap gas. And while polls show that over 85 percent of Greenlanders favor independence from Denmark, Greenlanders are divided on the pace of independence.[2]
Local issues dominated the election in Greenland, but Trump’s rhetoric did have an impact. The pro-business Demokraatit party, which favors a slow path to independence that does not disrupt social services or economic growth, won a surprise victory with 29.9 percent of the votes and will now form a coalition government. The second-place finisher was the ardent pro-independence party Naleraq, with 24.5 percent of the vote. In third place was the former governing party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, with 21.4 percent. [3]
Putting teeth into Trump’s rhetoric, just weeks after the Greenland election: Vice-President Vance, along with his wife, Second Lady Usha Chilukuri Vance; National Security Advisor Chris Waltz; and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright paid a visit to the island. The visit was confined to Pituffik Space base, a U.S. military base in Greenland, in order to avoid protests in Nuuk, the capital and largest city. During his visit, Vance accused Denmark of both underinvesting in the island and failing to provide for its defense.[4]
One consequence of the Vice President’s visit was the firing of the base commander, Col. Susannah Meyers, for allegedly undermining the chain of command and subverting President Trump’s agenda. Her sin—sending an email stating that she disagreed with Vance’s criticisms of Denmark.[5]
Why Greenland and Why Now?
Greenland has a population of approximately 56,500 people. This tiny population inhabits the largest island in the world, with an area of 836,330 square miles, more than a fourth of the area of the lower-48 states. And the Greenlanders are sitting on a treasure trove of oil, mineral wealth, and fisheries. What’s more, Greenland straddles increasingly important Arctic Sea lanes that shorten the distance of shipping routes, and therefore the cost of transporting goods from Europe to Asia. Further, the island is militarily significant because it acts as a barrier between Russia and the U.S.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Greenland has approximately 31.4 billion barrels of oil and natural gas. Extraction of these resources is blocked by the Greenland government, which instituted a moratorium on all oil and gas exploration in 2021, citing the environmental costs to the island. Greenland also has deposits of coal and uranium. In addition, Greenland has vast deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) essential for modern technology, renewable energy, and the military industrial complex.[6] Access to this mineral wealth is not only blocked by the government moratorium: Greenland lacks the infrastructure of ports, roads, and pipelines needed to extract this wealth. Nevertheless, Greenland is an important part the Trump administration’s seeking to secure access to mineral wealth across the globe – a strategy necessary for economic domination.[7]
In early April, China, which the U.S. considers its chief competitor, placed restrictions on the export of rare earth elements (REE) and on REE magnets. The REE are essential to many modern technologies such as lasers, computers, and missiles. Powerful REE magnets are used in auto factories and are essential to jet fighters. Ninety percent of the world’s REE magnets are produced in China.[8] Together, these restrictions, directed at U.S. technology and war industries, could cripple the U.S. military.[9] Should China ban exports of REE and REE magnets completely, the U.S. would be even more desperate to find alternative sources – hence the interest in Greenland.
A History of U.S. Intervention
The Inuit people make up over 87 percent of Greenland’s current population. Archeological evidence suggests they arrived on the island at least 3,500 years ago, but as with the evidence for other native peoples we know that this most likely underestimates the date of their arrival. The Norse-Icelandic explorer Erik the Red later established two settlements on the island around 980 CE, giving the island its European name in the hopes of attracting settlers. These European settlements died out or were abandoned in the early 1500s. This did not stop Denmark from claiming the island and asserting control over the native people in 1720.
The U.S. considered buying Greenland from Denmark in 1868, when Secretary of State William Seward (yes—the same Seward who engineered the purchase of Alaska) proposed the purchase of Greenland from Denmark. In 1910 the U.S. again tried to acquire Greenland from Denmark by offering to exchange Greenland for islands in the Philippines, which were then a U.S. colony. This deal also fell through.[10]
U.S. intervention began in earnest with the 1940 German invasion of Denmark. The U.S. took military control of the island to prevent it from falling under German control. Over the course of World War II, tens of thousands of U.S. planes used the island as a stopover on the way to Europe. The weather forecasts from Greenland proved crucial to the success of the D-Day invasion.
After World War II, the island became an important part of the U.S. Cold War against the USSR. The U.S. offered to buy the island again from Denmark for $100 million U.S. dollars. The Danish government rejected the offer. They did, however, sign, in 1951, a treaty giving the U.S. significant rights to station military troops in Greenland. The U.S. constructed the Thule Air Base in northwestern Greenland, which at its peak housed 10,000 U.S. troops. The base still exists, renamed Pituffik Space Base; it’s under the control of U.S. Space Force. The U.S. had also built a second base, which was secret. Located under the Greenland ice cap, about 150 miles from Thule Air Base, it no longer exists but was called Camp Century and powered by a nuclear reactor.[11]
On January 21, 1968, a B-52 from Thule Air Base crashed on the Greenland ice cap carrying four hydrogen bombs. The U.S. tried to clean up as much of the contaminated ice as possible, but one of the bombs is still missing.[12] This missing nuclear weapon could be a major environmental catastrophe should it leak in the melting ice cap. The crash also revealed that during the Cold War with the USSR, the U.S. stationed B-52s and nuclear weapons at Thule Air Base to strike at the USSR. Construction of new U.S. bases in Greenland would be considered crucial to any U.S. plans for nuclear war and would threaten Russia and China.
How might future U.S. intervention play out?
There are several possible scenarios for future U.S. intervention, based on historical precedence.
In the first, the U.S. could invade directly with military, as Trump has threatened. But Greenland is part of Denmark. Both the U.S. and Denmark are members of NATO, whose sole purpose is as a military alliance. NATO countries are obligated to defend any member that is invaded. If the U.S. were to invade Greenland, this would mean one NATO member, Denmark, being invaded by another, the U.S. This would trigger a crisis in NATO.
In a March 13, 2025 meeting at the White House between Trump and Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary-General Rutte told Trump that NATO would not stop a U.S. military intervention in Greenland, essentially giving the U.S. a green light for a possible invasion. [13]
I think of this as the Spanish-American War scenario. In 1898 the U.S. went to war with Spain, at the time a weak and declining colonial power, to seize the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.[14]
In case this seems farfetched, note that the U.S. now has an Arctic division – a division consists of 10,000 and 15,000 troops – specialized in fighting in polar regions. In mid-February the Arctic division, the 11th Airborne, deployed to the Arctic regions of Finland in a training exercise.[15] While part of a NATO exercise aimed at Russia, the training served as a practice run for any potential invasion of Greenland.
The U.S. has a history of invading island nations. The most recent case was the island nation of Grenada in 1983 when a force of fewer than 8,000 U.S. troops seized the tiny island nation of fewer than 100,000 on the pretext of protecting American students during a coup within the government. That invasion was hastily planned and powerfully executed. Still, it took the U.S. less than a week to totally control the island. A U.S. invasion of Greenland will be better planned and will most likely start with the seizure of the international airport in Nuuk, the capital and largest city.
In the second scenario, the U.S. would employ non-military means or soft power. It would encourage independence and then meddle in local politics, cultivating pro-U.S. politicians and parties, and extracting considerable economic and political concessions. These concessions would likely include mining rights and additional military bases. Trump has already started this process and may have found a willing partner in Kuno Fencker. A prominent leader of the second-place Naleraq party, Fencker attended Trump’s inauguration and then toured the White House at Trump’s invitation. Fencker has publicly defended Trump in his podcasts and speeches, saying that Trump is misunderstood. Fencker has been called a traitor by leaders of the other parties. Naleraq wants immediate independence from Denmark and closer ties with the U.S.[16]
This second scenario appears to be the current U.S. strategy. In a bombshell front-page article in The New York Times on April 11, it was reported that the White House, under the leadership of the National Security Council (NSC), is moving “forward on a plan to acquire the island from Denmark.” The NSC has sent directives to multiple arms of the U.S. government, is developing a propaganda plan to persuade Greenlanders to join the U.S., and is considering a direct payment to each Greenlander of $10,000 per year, approximately the same amount of money that Denmark gives to the island for education, healthcare, and other social services.[17] At the same time that President Trump is trying to persuade Greenlanders, he is making his case to the American people.
I think of this as the Panama Scenario because it is similar to what the U.S. did in Panama when it encouraged local elites to break away from Colombia and then extracted significant concessions from the new government, including the right to build and control the Panama Canal Zone and maintain a massive U.S. military presence.[18]
In the third, and least likely, scenario, the U.S, would encourage independence, meddle in the political affairs of Greenland, and encourage U.S. investment in and immigration to the island. The immigrants and pro-U.S. Greenlanders could then demand annexation by the U.S. I think of this as the Hawaii Scenario, because it is similar to what the U.S. did when it annexed the Kingdom of Hawai’i in 1893.[19]
If one of these scenarios plays out, there will be two big losers and one big winner. The losers will be the people of Greenland and the environment of their island nation. The big winner will be U.S. imperialism, more specifically the corporate elite that will pillage the resources of the island for their own profit and power. While standing in solidarity with the rights of the Greenlanders to make their own decisions for their nation and independence, we must also oppose all U.S. intervention and exploitation. We must especially raise our voices against Trump and his efforts to convince the American people that “we” need to acquire the island. Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland, not the U.S. capitalist elite!
German officers of the Ordnungspolizei examining a man’s papers in Nazi-occupied Poland, 1941. Public domain.
American citizens are being routinely caught in Trump’s deportation dragnet, detained, jailed, and threatened with deportation, even a four-year-old with cancer and a pregnant mother who would have given birth to an American citizen. When ICE’s “mistakes” are revealed, usually through the presentation of a birth certificate days after the false arrest, the typical response has been to blame the victims. That’s if they haven’t already been deported.
Take the case of 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, who was detained by Border Patrol outside Tucson on April 8 and held for 10 days in the privately run Florence Correctional Center before being released. Hermosilla, who has a learning disability, told his jailers he was an American citizen. They told him to tell his lawyer. At that point, Jose Hermosillo didn’t have a lawyer. Two days later, Jose told an immigration judge the same thing. Federal prosecutors requested a week-long delay in the case. And Jose, who is the father of a six-month-old American citizen, was held for another seven days until his family could finally present the court with his birth certificate.
After his release, DHS smeared Hermosillo, blaming him for his own arrest and detention. In a post on Twitter (of all places), DHS said: “Hermosillo’s arrest and detention were a direct result of his own actions and statements.” In trying to cover their own cruel blunders, DHS officials alleged “that Jose Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson, Arizona, stating he had ILLEGALLY entered the U.S. and identified himself as a Mexican citizen.”
This was a convenient concoction, a fiction. Hermosilllo hadn’t been in Mexico and he’s not a Mexican citizen. To support their self-serving claim, DHS said Hermossilo signed a transcript of an alleged interview attesting to this version of events. But Hermosilla can’t read or write. He can only scratch out his name, according to his girlfriend.
What really happened is quite different, tragic even. Hermosillo lives in Albuquerque and had traveled to Tucson with his girlfriend to visit her family. While in Tucson, he suffered a seizure and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. He was treated and released, unsure exactly where he was or how to return to his girlfriend.
Hermosilla flagged down what he thought was a police car to ask for directions. It turned out to be Border Patrol. He told the officer he was staying in Tucson but was lost.
The BP officer responded harshly, “You’re not from here. Where are you from?
“New Mexico,” Hermosilla said.
“I don’t believe you,” the BP cop said. “Show me your papers?”
Hermosilla told him he’d left his New Mexico ID at his girlfriend’s family’s place.
“I’m not stupid,” the cop told him. “I know you’re from Mexico.”
Then the cop arrested Hermosilla, told him to sign some papers, and then deposited him in a cell with 15 other men, where he was served cold food and denied his medications for the next 10 days.
“I told them I was a US citizen,” Hermosillo told Arizona PM. “But they don’t listen to me.”
+++
+ On Friday, Federal Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, issued an order saying that DHS had apparently deported a 2-year-old American citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful” process, even though the girl’s father, also a US citizen, fought to keep her in the country.
+ The ACLU reported that on Friday, the New Orleans field office of ICE deported two families with minor children. Three of the children (age 2, 4 and 7) are US citizens. One of the children suffers from a rare form of metastatic cancer. The citizen child was deported without medications or being able to consult with their doctors, even though ICE was fully briefed about the child’s dire medical condition. One of the mothers is pregnant. Both families have lived in the US for many years.
According to the ACLU, “ICE held the families incommunicado, refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them. In one instance, a mother was granted less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsel’s phone number.”
+ Aldo Martinez-Gomez, a US citizen living in California, received a DHS notice on April 11, threatening “criminal prosecution” and fines if he does not depart within seven days, even after he showed them his birth certificate. “Do not attempt to remain in the United States,” the letter warned. “The government will find you.’ Martinez-Gomez: “I’m just trying not to be one of the government’s mistakes.”
+ But wait, the Democrats have a solution for American citizens being “mistakenly” rounded up for deportation.
+ “Show Us Your Papers”…
+ Yglesias is, of course, the Biden whisperer and they followed his right-center advice right off the electoral cliff. That hasn’t stopped Matty from veering even farther right.
+ Since Friedman believes the world is flat, maybe that Waymo will drive him right off the edge…
+ What, pray tell, does a Waymo Democrat do? “Waymo Democrats would do everything Trump is doing maliciously today — but do it productively.” Sorry, I asked.
+++
+ At 8:30 in the morning on Friday, U.S. Marshals entered a county courthouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and arrested trial judge Hannah Dugan on charges that she had obstructed the arrest of a noncitizen. Trump officials, including FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, publicly gloated over her arrest, as did Trump, who posted a photo of the judge wearing a medical mask on his Truth Social feed.
Shockingly (right?), the facts are a little different from what the Trumpites have presented. Flores was in Dugan’s courtroom on another matter, when ICE agents entered and attempted to arrest him without a warrant. Dugan ordered the agents out of her court and told them to contact the supervising judge. Then she escorted Flores and his attorney out the back of the courtroom to a public hallway.
Flores Ruiz was not, as Patel crudely asserts, a “perp.” He hadn’t been accused of “perpetrating” any crime, except that of being in the US without papers. There was no “increased danger” to the public because there was never any “danger” to begin with, except to Flores Ruiz. He was later detained by ICE and jailed without incident. Surely, judges have sovereignty over their own courtrooms and have the authority to demand to see a warrant before an arrest is made inside their chambers.
Of course, this is yet another provocation, pushing the limits of executive power to see how far it reaches. It seems as if Trump is heeding Bukele’s advice at the White House that you need to “get rid of the judges.” In 2021, the Salvadoran despot removed all five judges from the nation’s supreme court and fired its attorney general.
+ In a federal court filing last Thursday, the Trump administration admitted ICE agents did not have a warrant when they detained Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil in March, conceded that it was a warrantless arrest: “We were permitted to arrest him without a warrant, because he gave us reason to think he would escape, namely that he said he was going to walk away if we didn’t have a warrant.”
+ This admission by the Feds contradicts what officers told Khalil and his lawyers at the time of his arrest and in a later arrest report.
+ How Columbia grad student Mohsen Mahdawi was entrapped and kidnapped at his own citizenship hearing: “At his citizenship interview, he signed a pledge to “defend the Constitution.” The official left to go “check” something. Then masked & armed agents came in, shackled Mahdawi, and tried to fly him to Louisiana.”
+ How is it possible to feel any allegiance to the government of a country that does things like this to children who are citizens of the US as a matter of policy? “For months, NPR has been receiving tips about the Detroit-Canada border, immigrants and U.S. citizen children being held without access to legal counsel, because they took a wrong turn on the highway.”
+ After terminating legal support for noncitizen children, the Trump administration is making 4-year-olds represent themselves in immigration court.
+ ICE moved a Venezuelan man who had worked in construction in Philadelphia to Texas for possible deportation after a federal judge had issued an order blocking his removal from Pennsylvania or the United States.
+ Three ICE agents raided a courthouse in Charlottesville in plain clothes without badges, ID or warrants and carted off two men without explanation and dragged them into an unmarked van.
+ Sulayman Nyang, a soccer coach in Aurora, Colorado, was detained by ICE at the airport—24 hours later, his family still doesn’t know where he is. Nyang has a green card, is married to a U.S. citizen, and is the father of a 3-month-old son. He has no criminal record — a marijuana possession allegation was dismissed in 2009. “Seeing that he’s been in the country for 25 years, we didn’t think there was a problem,” his wife said. “What do you mean, 2009? He hasn’t done anything. Everything has been dismissed… They won’t explain why. They give two different answers.”
+ So ICE isn’t rounding up rapists, murderers and maniacs, but mostly day laborers, who would be paying taxes and contributing to Social Security: “Laborers who arrived at a Home Depot in Pomona on Tuesday morning in hopes of earning a day’s wage were met with uniformed ICE agents who reportedly began rounding up workers in the parking lot. ”
+ Radley Balko, one of the best criminal justice journalists around, is charting the pattern of ICE officers attempting to intimidate immigration lawyers, including one outrageous case where ICE agents showed up at a lawyer’s home to harass him about representing immigrants and cut his wifi to disable his Ring cam from recording the interaction…
+ The Trump administration gratuitously released Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife’s address, resulting in the predictable flood of abuse, threats, and harassment from MAGA goons that’s gotten so extreme she’s had to move to a safer place with her three kids, two of whom are autistic…
+ In its 8-2 ruling last week, the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. They ordered the Trump administration to give people a fair day in court and the chance to file a lawsuit. How did Trump respond? By giving detainees facing deportation only 12 hours to file suit.
+ David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute: “We have a situation where the executive branch intentionally violates the law, evades judicial review for as long as it can, then gets ordered to stop but pretends not to understand that, and keeps violating the law the whole time. It doesn’t matter if they eventually stop…”
+ The Trump administration has been texting college professors to ask if they are Jewish. Barnard College admitted to its staff that it had provided Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with personal contact information for faculty members.The federal government reaching out to our personal cellphones to identify who is Jewish is incredibly sinister,” said Barnard associate professor Debbie Becher, who is Jewish and received the text. Some might recall that IBM helped the Nazis ID Jews in Europe and facilitate their transport out of Warsaw to Auschwitz.
+ The same college (Barnard) that gave Trump the contact info for its faculty tried to use a bomb threat to smear the students the threat targeted!
+ What kind of so-called university disciplines students for writing an op-ed in the school’s newspaper? That would be Columbia, which sanctioned two students, Maryam Alwan and Layla Saliba, for their “alleged participation” in writing a pro-Palestinian editorial (“Recentering Palestine, Reclaiming the Movement“) for the Columbia Spectator in October 2024.
+ Trump’s immigration/deportation policies cut overseas travel by 11.6% in March, putting up to 7900 American jobs at risk. Every 40 international visitors generate one U.S. job.
+ On Wednesday, a federal judge barred the Trump administration from pulling federal funds from places it deems “sanctuary cities,” saying the policy is unconstitutional.
+ Cost of Trump’s original border wall: $11 billion
Number of times it was breached by smugglers in 3 years: 3,200.
+++
+ The lower he sinks, the more whacked out he’s going to get.
+ Trump’s numbers in the latest Reuters poll are even worse: 37% approval, 57% disapproval.
+ Gen Z women emphatically don’t want to be baby mills in the Tradwife Sweatshops envisioned by Trump and Musk…
+ Trump’s net approval rating on immigration (his strongest issue for months) is now -5 and he’s squandered whatever marginal allure he once had with Hispanics: Trump approval/disapproval with Hispanics in new Pew poll: 27% / 72%–a collapse of the 42% support he enjoyed (courtesy of Biden and Harris’ incompetence) in the 2024 election.
Of course, the Democrats are polling even worse than Trump (38% approval rating, five points worse than the Republicans). There’s a reason. Consider Chuck Schumer’s answer to CNN’s Dana Bash on the Democrats’ response to Trump’s threats against Harvard: “We sent him a very strong letter just the other day.”
Bash: “You’ll let us know if you get a response to that letter?”
Trump: Get me a ticket on an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take the fast train
I can’t stay here, I’m running away in fear
Cause Chuckie, he sent me a letter…
+ Or consider this feckless cavilling from another top Democrat…The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner allows Deborah Lipstadt, Biden’s former “antisemitism” envoy, to expose her shameful moral hypocrisy. Chotiner’s interviews with imperious powerbrokers are master classes in how to lead elites into condemning themselves…
+ DOGE staffers allegedly marked four million people as dead in the Social Security database, without having any evidence that these people had died.
+ In yet another blow to Trump and Bessent’s “great encirclement” plan to isolate China, Japan categorically refuses to do any trade deal with the US, detrimental to their relationship with China.
+ Trump on April 23, claiming negotiations with China were ongoing: “Everything is active. Everybody wants to be a part of what we’re doing.”
He Yadong, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce: “There are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States. Any claims about progress… are baseless rumors without factual evidence. If the us truly wants to solve the problem, it should…completely cancel all unilateral tariff measures against China.”
+ Wall Street Journal editorial board: “[the] harsh reality is that China called Mr. Trump’s bluff and seems to have won this round.”
+ One big reason for Trump’s humiliating surrender: In the 3 weeks since the tariffs took effect, ocean container bookings from China to the United States are down over 60% industry-wide.
+ Within two weeks, the Port of Los Angeles, the largest in the US, will experience a 40% drop in cargo ship traffic.
+ Percent of Americans worried about the economy falling into a recession: 53%.
+ S&P Global reports that more US companies declared bankruptcy in the first quarter of 2025 than at any time in the last 15 years.
+ At $4.1 trillion a year, California now boasts the fourth-largest economy in the world, trailing only the USA as a whole, China, and Germany.
+ Millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996, earn 20% less than baby boomers did at their age, per FORTUNE
+ March existing home sales in the US were the weakest since the Great Financial Crisis. At the same time, 42% of mortgage refinance applications are being denied — the highest rejection rate in more than 12 years.
+ The 19 richest households in the US amassed more than $1 trillion in new wealth last year alone. Inequality isn’t the word for the kind of grotesque disparities our economic system generates…
+ According to Gallup,53% of Americans (a record high) now say their financial situation is getting worse. It’s the first time since 2001 that a majority has expressed an economic outlook this gloomy.
+ The National Institute of Health is now prohibiting the awarding of new grants to any institutions that boycott Israeli companies. Boycotts of companies from other countries are perfectly okay.
+ Journal of the American Medical Association on declining vaccination rates in the US for measles: “If current vaccination rates stay the same, the model estimated that the US could see more than 850,000 cases, 170,000 hospitalizations, and 2,500 deaths over the next 25 years. The results appear in the
+ It’s not just rare earth materials. Big pharmaceutical companies now buy one-third of their experimental molecules from Chinese laboratories. Three years ago, this number was 10 percent. Nearly 25% of all early drug development is done in China.
+ “History shows again and again,
How Nature proves the folly of men…”
+ The first quarter of 2025 was the second warmest on record, just a fraction behind last year’s mark. An ominous portent, given that 2024 was super-charged by a strong El Nino event, while 2025 started off with weak La Nina conditions.
+ According to a new study by researchers at Dartmouth College published last week in “Nature”, emissions from 111 fossil fuel companies have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, the study finds. These five generated the most harm.
+ Only three years ago, China imported three times as many cars as it exported. This year, it’s exporting more than it’s importing.
+ UNICEF has warned that the water crisis in Gaza has reached “critical levels,” with only one in 10 people able to access clean drinking water.
+++
+ Lemkin Institute on Genocide Prevention’s warning about RKF, Jr’s Autism Registry:
The Lemkin Institute urges the American people, especially the scientific community, to take an unwavering stand against any sort of registry of autistic people (or any other group). We also urge Americans to push back hard against violations of privacy and limits on disabled people’s rights to life, inclusion, and respect. Americans must reject the idea that the state should be able to trample these fundamental rights whenever it feels a certain group is a threat to “national strength” or is becoming too costly, as RFK Jr. has made clear he views autistic people to be.
+ Meanwhile, RFK, Jr. has fired the HHS staffers who ran “a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on so babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The office overseeing the enforcement of child support payments nationally has been hollowed out.”
+ Public Citizen: “Donations to Trump’s inauguration from corporations facing federal investigations/lawsuits: $50 million (one third of corporate inauguration donations).
+ “President Trump will have an ‘intimate private dinner’ with top 220 buyers of his crypto memecoin at his DC-area golf club, the issuers of the token said on their website. The coin skyrocketed on the news, at one point up 49%…” This is like the Clinton/Gore Koffee Klatches, except those were to sell off face time with the president and vice president for political donations. This money is going right into Trump’s own pockets. Like the genocide in Gaza, the political corruption here is taking place right out in the open. They even advertise the opportunity to take part…
+ If the purchaser/influence-seeker were domestic, they would have used Binance.USA.
+ The value of Trumpcoin increased by over 80% after Trump’s announcement.
+ The Fox Business Network reported that Trump’s team privately alerted Wall Street executives to the state of its trade deal negotiations, giving them inside knowledge to help them profit off the swings in the market. Martha Stewart went to prison for less, MUCH less.
+ The Trump regime is now using U.S. attorneys to intimidate academic journals by sending them letters demanding they explain how they ensure “viewpoint diversity.”
+ According to the FBI, Americans aged 60 and older reported losing almost $3 billion to crypto scams last year. In total, Americans reported being bilked out of around $9.3 billion via crypto, out of a total of $16.6 billion in reported losses to financial scams that year.
+ Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School on Trump’s threats against Harvard, including terminating federal grants and banning visas for foreign students:
“What’s at stake is the presence of independent centers of thought in a free society. Ultimately, this is an attempt by the administration to bring Harvard, as the world’s most prominent private university, under its control. If you read the [Trump] letter carefully, they were basically wanting to have control over who got hired, control over what got taught, control over the content of the curriculum, control over admissions, in a variety of different ways. At which point the university is no longer independent. It has to get up every morning, say to itself: ‘Gee, what does the president think of what we’re doing here?’ And that means you don’t have independent thought.”
+ NYPD officers attended a training session informing them that Palestinian symbols like the watermelon and the keffiyeh, as well as phrases such as “settler colonialism” and “all eyes on Rafah,” were antisemitic. Apparently, being born Palestinian is an antisemitic act. “All eyes on Rafah,” of course, stemmed from Biden’s warning to Israel that a full-scale invasion of the city was a “red line” that would trigger a ban on offensive weapons sales to Israel. Israel destroyed the 2,000-year-old city, anyway. Now, to even mention it is evidence of anti-semitism.
+ Why does the Defense Department need a $1 trillion budget next year? Pete Hegseth has ordered the construction of a make-up studio inside the Pentagon.
+ All these tough MAGA guys need their own beauticians: Trump gets his face with orange paint, Vance has his eyes done up in kohl and Hegseth needs to get prettified in his own make-up room. The Trump cabinet is being to look like an over-the-hill glam rock band.
+ Speaking of Trump cabinet members demanding their own make-up rooms, it sure looks like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told his stylist to give him “the Full Rumsfeld.”
+ Bessent: “I intend to make an all-out push to make Americans financially literate.”
= Be careful what you ask for, Secretary Bessent. When the French became “financially literate” (236 years and counting before the Americans), it didn’t turn out so well for the Ancien Régime…
+ France’s Jean-Luc Melenchon: “The only reason Trump won is that there is no left in the United States.”
+ Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: “The government can and will collect defaulted federal student loan debt by withholding tax refunds, federal pensions, and even their wages.” Imagine Trump’s bankers doing the same to him!
+ Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock claims that anyone who opposes his bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico hates America. “I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the people opposed to this are the same people that hate America.”
Netanyahu to the Pope: “We have a natural bond. We know Jesus. He was here in our land. He spoke Hebrew.”
The Hippie Pope: “He spoke Aramaic.”
+ After attending a Mar-a-Lago soiree with top Republicans, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the fanatical Kahanist and ethnic cleanser who, as a young man, cheered the assassination of Rabin, said: “They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed.”
+++
+ There are “rules” to Columbus Day? Rule 1: Make the Genoan mercenary for Spain an Italian! Rule 2: Pretend the Genoan mercenary “discovered” “America”, which had been discovered 30,000 years earlier by the ancestors of the people living there, over a much more treacherous route! Rule 3: Ignore the fact that the Genoan mercenary had no idea where in the world he was. Rule 4: Elide from the “celebration” any troublesome mention of the Genoan mercenary’s rape, slaughter, infection and plunder of the people living on the Islands the wind and ocean currents thrust his ships upon…
+ A vicious new bill in the Texas legislature would criminalize transporting youth younger than 18, or funding their transportation, out of state to access abortion without written parental consent, with up to 20 years in prison.
+ America needs babies, consent be damned!
Indiana State Sen. Gary Byrne (R) amended a sex education bill to remove requirements to teach consent.
STATE REP. ANDREA HUNLEY (D): “What groups were consulted in the removal of the section about consent?”
BYRNE: “Nobody came to me. This is a decision that I made not to have it in there.”
Speaking of the legislature of my home state, Benjamin Balthatzar tells me that it has exerted DeSantis-like power over the state’s leading university: “Indiana state legislature just staged a hostile takeover of IU, functionally eliminating tenure, promising to close smaller (hum) majors, taking over the IU board, and cutting the IU budget. This is so bleak.”
+ Sen. Patty Murray: “I was denied permission to host a roundtable at the Puget Sound VA to hear from women veterans about their health care. I have NEVER been outright denied from having open & honest conversations with VA—until this administration.”
+ As Freud (or, was it, Groucho Marx?) said, sometimes a flagpole is only a flagpole. But probably not this time…
+ Travis Akers: “Since hiring Kristina Wong from Breitbart News as the Secretary of the Navy Communications Director this week, the Secretary of the Navy’s Twitter account has twice posted the incorrect date of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, ‘a date which will live in infamy.’”
+++
I’m a H.O.O.D, low-life scum, that’s what they say about me…
“Who are the oppressors but the nobility and gentry, and who are oppressed, if not the yeoman, the farmer, the tradesman and the like? .. Have you not chosen oppressors to redeem you from oppression? . . . It is naturally inbred in the major part of the nobility and gentry . . . to judge the poor but fools, and themselves wise, and therefore when you the commonalty calleth a Parliament they are confident such must be chosen that are the noblest and richest . . . Your slavery is their liberty, your poverty is their prosperity . . . Peace is their ruin . . . by war they are enriched . . . Peace is their war, peace is their poverty.”
– Lawrence Clarkson, A General Charge of Impeachment of High Treason, 1647
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Life as inventive sequence has a particular character, a certain quality of brilliance that beggars comparison with our busy busy world of responsibility and performance. –Roy Wagner It’s strange how things sometimes come together. Looking for something else, I found an article I wrote with the South Sudanese poet Taban lo Liyong, in Catalan 21 […]
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Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has been hard at work rounding up innocent people for deportation, citing bogus, pretextual reasons related to alleged ties to drug cartels and terrorist organizations. Naturally, Trump does not want these claims tested in the courts—his Department of Justice has brushed off federal judges’ orders and fired lawyers […]
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At 3:52 AM on March 23, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society received word of casualties from an Israeli attack in the Al-Hashashin area outside of Rafah and dispatched an ambulance to the scene. Five minutes later, the dispatch office lost contact with the crew. At 4:39, another ambulance was sent to search for the […]
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Almost exactly 30 years ago, Canadian Bacon depicted a U.S. president picking on his neighbor to the north to boost his sagging approval ratings. Starring Alan Alda, John Candy, and Rhea Perlman, the film was supposed to be a comedy. Director Michael Moore was trying to satirize the U.S. penchant for invading other countries. Taking that notion to its absurd limit, Moore chose to depict a skirmish with Canada.
Ah, the good old days, when you could laugh about such things.
Marx once wrote, with regard to the return of a Bonaparte, that “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Obviously, Marx couldn’t have anticipated the rise of Donald Trump, who has made a political career of turning Marx on his head by transforming farce into tragedy. Just compare his first term (hah-hah!) to his second term (uh-oh!).
When it comes to Canada, Trump hasn’t yet sent the U.S. army across the border. But don’t rule it out—or the more likely possibility that he’ll dispatch military forces to Mexico to battle narcotraffickers (or stop Central American migrants in their tracks).
In the meantime, Trump has managed to use his beloved tariffs to disrupt economic relations with both Canada and Mexico. Amid boycotts of U.S. products and a steep decline in tourists heading south, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that the U.S.-Canadian relationship, “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over.”
Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, while talking tough on Mexican sovereignty, has taken a different tack by negotiating mano a mano with Trump. But disputes over water, drugs, and migrants nevertheless are pushing relations to a breaking point. Trump has already rushed U.S. troops to take control of land near the southern border. It wouldn’t take much for him to push them over the line.
The trade agreement that replaced NAFTA and that Trump himself touted so much when he signed it into law in 2020 is coming up for revision. It’s hard not to anticipate that the rancor Trump has stirred up to the north and south will doom this effort before it even begins.
Perhaps like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Trump sees North America as a model that needs disruption. But usually such entrepreneurs have an alternative in their back pockets to substitute for the supposedly flawed status quo—Uber replacing taxis, say, or iPhones superseding flip phones.
What alternative could Trump possibly be proposing for North America?
Spheres of Influence
It’s popular in some circles to imagine that Donald Trump is a geopolitical strategist. Here, too, it’s a case of farce being overtaken by tragedy. Trump a foreign policy expert? What a joke. Oh, wait, it’s actually worse than that…
Consider, for instance, the notion that Trump is executing a “reverse Kissinger” with his policy toward Russia. Half a century ago, Richard Nixon, guided by his advisor Henry Kissinger, executed a rapprochement with China to put pressure on the Soviet Union. Today, according to this fanciful theory, Trump is pushing a détente with Russia in order to put pressure on China.
There’s no such hidden calculus in Trump’s wooing of Putin. The two leaders share ideological obsessions—love of territorial expansion and autocratic control, hatred of liberals and “woke” constituencies—and Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine by any means necessary. China occupies a different part of his mind: an economic competitor with little to no ideological overlap.
Now let’s consider another attempt to impose geopolitical sense on an otherwise disparate set of administration policies: that Trump wants to reestablish an older world order based on spheres of influence.
According to this notion, Trump would be happy to allow China to preside over an Asia-Pacific sphere. Russia would then administer the territory of the former Soviet Union. Europe would have to give up on Ukraine but it would get in return North Africa and perhaps all points south. Israel, as a kind of representative of Europe, would divide up the Middle East with the Saudis.
And the United States would reign supreme in North America—plus, according to the Monroe Doctrine, all of Latin America. Throw in Greenland and Trump would be looking to make the Americas great again.
Such a division of the world might well appeal to Trump’s business mentality, with countries substituting for corporate empires that control clearly demarcated markets.
But Trump is not withdrawing the United States from the Pacific theater any time soon. His administration is doubling down on its containment of China—through alliances, expansion of Pacific bases, and increased Pentagon spending. Perhaps he’s willing to tolerate Chinese control over the territory it claims, including Taiwan. But even that is not clear, given recent U.S.-Philippine combat drills in the South China Sea and the sanctions slapped on Hong Kong officials for facilitating the suppression of that territory’s democracy movement. Moreover, he hasn’t given up on other parts of the world—Ukraine, Africa—where he wants what’s underneath the ground.
Trump’s tariffs point to a different strategy, not spheres of influence so much as anti-globalization, pure and simple. Trump is suspicious of any international effort that puts the United States at a table of equals, and he’s deaf to the reality that the United States was always first among equals when it came to globalization. Trump doesn’t like the UN, the IMF, the ICC. He doesn’t like the nervous system of economic globalization with its multilateral trade deals and regulatory superstructure. He much prefers bilateral relations where the United States can throw its weight around and intimidate weaker countries. He despises the EU because its gives smaller nations like Denmark the power to stand up to the United States.
Which brings us back to North America.
The Tariffs that Divide
Tariffs against Mexico and Canada don’t make any economic sense. It’s not just that they piss off friends, boost prices at home, and fail to raise the revenue that Trump fantasizes about.
It’s the nature of the economic relationship between the countries that render these tariffs self-defeating.
Consider the example of medical devices. Mexico is the third largest exporter of medical instruments in the world, and it sends nearly $12 billion worth of these instruments to the United States. Tariffs on these imports will raise the costs for U.S. hospitals and, by extension, the patients in these hospitals.
Ah, but guess what: those devices made in Mexico are heavily dependent on U.S. microchips. And the CHIPS Act under the Biden administration sought to tighten that relationship in order to reduce dependence on semiconductors produced in Asia. So, imposing tariffs on Mexican manufacturers will also penalize American companies that produce components for those medical devices. That means the disappearance of U.S. jobs and the U.S. competitive edge in high-tech exports. And that’s only one industry.
The same perverse economic logic applies to U.S. car manufacturing, since there is no such thing as a completely American-made car. About 40 percent of car parts are made overseas, with Mexico supplying last year about 42 percent of those parts and Canada 10 percent. Trump, apparently unaware of the reality of supply chains, stepped back recently to consider a temporary waiver on tariffs for car parts to help Detroit make the transition to U.S.-made parts. But why would anyone make those huge investments into car-part manufacturing plants in the United States if a future president—or the ever-mercurial Trump himself—might change economic policy and strand those assets?
So, forget about the advantages of creating a North American market that relies on comparative advantages (more hydroelectric power in Canada, a longer growing season in Mexico). Trump sees a trade deficit and believes that the country is ripping off the United States. (Wait, didn’t he go to the Wharton School? Did he skip Econ 101?)
Yes, there are problems with globalization, from a race to the bottom around labor and environmental standards to the ridiculous carbon emissions associated with the modern equivalent of sending coals to Newcastle. But Trump’s tariffs are not designed to address any of these defects.
Instead, Trump’s moves will simply reorient global trade around the United States, just like it’s a huge, stupid rock in the middle of a river. At the moment, fully three-quarters of Canadian and Mexican exports go the United States (and around a third of U.S. exports go to Canada and Mexico). Despite the convenience of exporting to a neighbor, Canada and Mexico are going to start looking elsewhere to sell their products. Other countries—China, Germany—are going to reap the advantages of Trump’s economic idiocy.
The Future of North America
Canada is not going to become the fifty-first American state. Even if Canadians favored such a move—and 80 percent strongly oppose it—the Republican Party would ultimately vote to keep Canada out. Republicans don’t even want to make Washington DC a state, for fear of adding two more Democrats to the Senate. They’re obviously not going to welcome all those left-of-center Canadians into the U.S. Congress.
Instead, Trump is pushing Canada further away. It will move closer to Europe. Despite current trade tensions with China, it might mend fences and form a stronger economic bond there as well.
U.S. relations with Mexico may also go south, very quickly. The Trump administration has been considering drone strikesagainst Mexican drug cartels. Although the two countries are coordinating surveillance of these cartels, Trump is reserving the right to strike unilaterally. “We reject any form of intervention or interference,” Claudia Sheinbaum has responded.
Ordinarily, the three countries would handle their disputes—the economic ones at least—through the revision of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the replacement of NAFTA that Trump himself supported. But Trump’s unilateral actions throw into question whether the USMCA will survive. The U.S. president might well threaten to withdraw from the agreement if Mexico and Canada don’t make future concessions, especially around keeping China out of their markets. Trump might aim for two bilateral treaties instead.
Bullying, alas, does often produce results. Trump can strong-arm weaker parties—Colombia, Columbia University—into making agreements. But that only works in the short term. Over time, the weak find stronger allies so that they can eventually stand up to the bullying.
China and the European Union are patiently watching Trump’s destruction of North America. Sure, they’ll suffer some collateral damage. But the opportunities that Trump’s disruptions are producing will turn Liberation Day for America into a Christmas bonanza for everyone else.
We are Harvard Law students who have read the lengthy and comprehensive list of demands on our Harvard University by your staff. They are assuredly designed to turn this institution of higher education, older than the U.S.A., into a fiefdom under your iron rule. As modest students of medieval history, we see that your demands provide a status for the peasants – the students, the vassals – the faculty, but no one for the role of the Lord of the Manor.
It is obvious that you want to become the LORD OF THE MANOR. We have a proposal. There is no more exalted status at Harvard than that of the law professors. They are the best and brightest law professors in the land; if you doubt that, just ask them. They are specialists in knowledge of the law. However, they are not specialists in the seriously destabilizing arena of lawlessness.
Quite candidly, we believe and can document that you are the world’s expert on lawlessness – its range, depth, rewards and modes of escape from accountability. For some unfathomable reason, you have been far too modest about your unparalleled knowledge in this fast-expanding area of immune business and political activity. We make this claim after reading your statements – about twenty of them – where you explicitly declare your superior knowledge over all in such subjects as “trade,” “technology,” “drones,” “construction,” “devaluation,” “banks,” – “renewables,” “polls” and even “the power of Facebook.” (See the book, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” by Mark Green and Ralph Nader, 2020).
Missing from your expansive proclamations of expertise is the subject of LAWLESSNESS. Having engaged in over 3000 lawsuits and having been sued under tort law and indicted under criminal law, you have demonstrated an escapist skill that even seasoned attorneys find breathtaking. No sheriff has ever caught you. Only one prosecutor has ever convicted you. E. Jean Carroll won two civil tort cases with damages that are still on appeal.
One of your remarkable tactics is interminable stalling of the legal process. Another is how you can personally and continually attack in public, with tough language, the judges and other judicial personnel with complete impunity. As we know from our studies, such vituperative language in the United Kingdom would have landed you in contempt of court and a jail term.
Now, therefore, here is our proposal to fill the position of LORD OF THE MANOR, without impinging on your Day Job as president of the United States. With your permission, we will approach our Dean and request that he appoint you as a VISITING FULL PROFESSOR OF LAW CONDUCTING THE FIRST AND ONLY COURSE IN LAWLESSNESS – its nature, function and strategies of escape from the long arm of the rule of law. It would be the largest class in Harvard Law School history, overflowing our largest auditorium, AUSTIN HALL.
YOU would provide, effortlessly from your extraordinary memory, empirical information never before revealed and analyzed.
Your self-awareness is exceptional, having said in 2019 – “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President,” and having openly wished that you could be King. To understand the rule of law better, it is necessary to understand the outlaws. This is especially true for you, Mr. President because you once declared, “I know more about courts than any human being on earth.”
Going deeper, you are eminently qualified to lecture us on regions of lawlessness abroad and how you think one should try to establish peaceful and law-abiding governance. The Middle East comes to mind. By enlisting the law school’s reservoir of scholarship on these conflicts you could establish yourself as a Nobel-Prize worthy implementor of a profound peaceful PRO-SEMITISM between Arab and Jewish Semites. Just envision your going to Norway to receive the coveted Award that your detractors could never believe was remotely possible.
We anticipate your affirmative response and understand fully if a condition of your acceptance is that the course be taught by Zoom from the Oval Office. Should you wish to have your lectures streamed to a wider audience, the Law School has all the requisite facilities.
Just your exalted title “Honorable visiting Professor of Law, Donald J. Trump” along with your presiding over the White House will anoint you as the LORD OF THE MANOR. You would be addressed by all members of the Harvard University community as “MY LIEGE.”
