Jonathan P. Baird

Occasionally a legal case comes along that captures attention both because of the drama of its circumstances and also because of the importance of its issues. Such a case is the arrest and disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian masters degree graduate of Columbia University.

Khalil was arrested in New York in a most disturbing fashion. A squad of four unidentified men waited outside Khalil’s residence in an unmarked vehicle. When Khalil and his American wife who is eight months pregnant showed up, they asked if he was Mahmoud Khalil. They refused to identify themselves and they produced no warrant. One said he was from Homeland Security and said Khalil’s student visa had been revoked.

Khalil’s wife explained that Khalil was a legal permanent resident of the United States. He had a green card. The agents were thrown by that and they retreated to make a phone call. Returning quickly, they then announced Khalil’s green card had been revoked. Normally green cards can only be revoked after notice and a hearing before an immigration judge. That didn’t happen in Khalil’s case.

The agents then disappeared Khalil. First he was driven to New Jersey and then he was flown to Louisiana. ICE was playing a a jurisdiction forum-shopping game, hoping to get the case heard before a kangaroo court judge in the Deep South rather than a New York federal court judge. That way ICE hoped a court with no sympathy for immigrants would fast track Khalil out of the country.

The deportation was not fast tracked because of quick action by Khalil’s lawyers. They immediately filed a habeas corpus petition in New York and the court required that Khalil have access to counsel. The court ruled that Khalil must be allowed to stay in the U.S. while his case was pending.

There has been no allegation that Khalil committed any crime and he has not been charged with committing any crime. Khalil was apprehended because he was a prominent leader of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia last spring. He had served as a negotiator between Columbia administration officials and protesters at the Gaza solidarity encampment.

The seeming offense Khalil committed, according to the Trump administration, was to be “aligned with Hamas”. On social media, President Trump stated he wanted to deport Khalil for participating in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. He said it was the first “of many to come”.

The most common way to deport a green card holder is to prove the holder committed a crime. Because there was no crime, the government is relying on a little-used authority from the Immigration Nationality Act. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Khalil as someone whose activities “aligned with Hamas”. Rubio argued that he has reasonable grounds to believe Khalil’s presence would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the U.S.”.

Essentially, the deportation they desire is based on not liking Khalil’s speech although they have failed to cite with specificity anything he has said they find objectionable. Like so many, Khalil protested Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. He saw himself as a human rights advocate.

Under our First Amendment, no one can be punished for the ideas they express. The Supreme Court has been clear: government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds that idea offensive or objectionable.

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech for both citizens and noncitizens. The government has provided no evidence for the proposition that Khalil is a Hamas supporter or that he is anti-semitic. Opposing Israel’s policies is not the same as antisemitism.

I am Jewish and I am revolted by Israel’s disgraceful conduct in Gaza. The October 7 Hamas attack was criminal but that does not let Israel off the hook for its extreme over-reaction killing over 46,000 people in Gaza since the war started. I hate antisemitism but under the First Amendment even if someone was expressing hateful antisemitic ideas (which Khalil wasn’t) that is protected speech.

The deportation action against Khalil is intended to have a chilling effect to inhibit people and make them afraid to speak up. Trump is opting for a tactic commonly used by dictators. Simply announce and label your enemy is a terrorist. Then you can disappear him and remove him from the country without any due process. This is Trump’s way around the law.

Dictators disappear people. What is worrisome about the Trump administration’s actions with Khalil is their emulation of the disappearance model pioneered by Latin American dictatorships during the Operation Condor dirty wars in the 1970’s-1980’s. In countries like Argentina and Chile, students, artists, intellectuals and leftists were singled out as enemies of the regime. Anyone considered suspicious could be put on a list and disappeared. Thousands were never seen again.

Unidentified goon squads in unmarked cars (like happened with Khalil) cruised the streets, seized those targeted and took them away to secret concentration camps. Thousands ended up drugged and tossed out of helicopters far out in the ocean. Fortunately we are not there yet and hopefully we never will be as courts still function.

These societies were so terrorized it became impossible for a legal system to function. Fear dominated public life. People, including lawyers and judges, did everything to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

The idea of disappearing people as happened in Latin America had Nazi origins under Hitler’s 1941 Night and Fog Decree. Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, who had been Chief of the German High Command and who was hanged at Nuremberg for war crimes described Night and Fog this way: “ The prisoners will disappear without a trace. It will be impossible to glean any information as to where they are or what will be their fate”.

If we are honest, we must acknowledge the lack of information we have about what the Trump Administration is doing now as far as rounding up immigrants, disappearing them into camps and deporting them. President Trump and his henchmen like Stephen Miller do not want us to know what they are doing. They just announced they are using the Alien Enemies Act, a zombie law, to allow for summary deportations.

Unlike in Latin America during the dirty wars, citizens and noncitizens in America still have some protection from courts but the Trump administration appears to have every intention to shred the constitution as they are doing in the Khalil case. Our situation is hardly reassuring. Whether you are Republican, Democratic or independent, all of us are threatened now by a regime of soulless nihilists who care only about their money. If Khalil can be deported, no one is safe.

I took these photos when I was on the Nation civil rights trip. They were all from the area around the Edmund Pettus Bridge. There are memorials around the bridge. March 7 was the 60th anniversary of the March from Selma to Montgomery.

Last Sunday morning, on March 2, my dog Shady died suddenly and unexpectedly. He was eleven. He had not been sick. He wolfed down his breakfast, then threw it all up, pooped in the house (very unlike him) and then had trouble getting up. He managed to go outside to pee but he was definitely out of sorts and he cried and whimpered a little. Within an hour, he was gone. I remain in a state of disbelief that Shady is no longer with us.

People often said he was the biggest golden retriever they had ever seen, He weighed over 120 pounds but he wasn’t fat, just very large-boned with beautiful body lines. As my friends Sally and Kim have said, Shady was a gentle giant. He was a big presence in my not-so-big house.

It is funny because when I picked him out of a large litter, he was the runt. There was no way to predict his eventual size. At the same time he was so big, he was a scaredy-cat. He hated to go over his head in water. He rarely wandered off too far.

When I would take him out at night, he sometimes didn’t like to go past my mailbox. He was tuned into sounds and smells that were way beyond me. He would freeze and be immobile and unmovable. He wanted back in the house. I always figured there was some animal lurking in the dark that I could not detect. We do live in a very rural place with woods all around.

Shady was extremely stubborn. He had a mind of his own and occasionally he would take off. There is a two mile loop near my house we call the Dingle and one time we were walking it, Shady took off into the woods and would not come back. I yelled quite a bit and then returned home. No Shady. It was starting to get dark and I was getting worried. Around dusk, a neighbor who lives about a mile away called me and he said Shady was there. I drove right over and when I arrived, Shady bolted and jumped in my car so fast. I guess he was scared too.

He was a chow hound and kind of an omnivore. He was one of those dogs who would eat so fast you would want him to slow down but it was impossible. He was not part of the slow food movement. He loved treats and I admit I loved to spoil him. Donuts were his thing, especially apple cider donuts.

He had a way of spreading out around the house. When he slurped water, he left a big trail. He was a perpetual shedding machine who with his long hair lived to destroy vacuum cleaners. Golden retriever hairballs seemed to inhabit every corner of my home. My car also featured golden retriever hair and there was no dog-free zone there. Dog truly was my co-pilot.

Shady loved toys. Of all the toys he ever got, he liked this little toy duck we named Ms. Quacky best. He proudly would carry Ms. Quacky around in his mouth as he pranced around being King Dog. My younger dog, Blue, also loved Ms. Quacky. The two of them had a competition about who would get control of Ms. Quacky. That competition never stopped

Of all the things we did together, I think hiking mountains was Shady’s favorite. He would run ahead and come back. Usually he didn’t go too far ahead. One time when my friend Steve and I hiked a back trail on Mt. Chocurua, he took off ahead up the trail and was gone for almost an hour until we caught up with him. There were other dogs in a party ahead that were more interesting than us.

He was the friendliest of dogs. I was always proud of Shady’s good nature because he was so friendly to everyone, dogs and people. It was like he expected to be loved . He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Sometimes he would jump up on people which was not always appreciated but it was out of enthusiasm.

One great thing about living in the country is all the back roads and trails where you can roam and mostly get away from cars. I guess I am paranoid about cars. I once lost a dog when I lived in Berlin NH who was struck by a hit-and-run driver. I have been determined to never have that experience again.

You have to be careful, though, about hunters. Shady did not like gunshots. It was a primal thing for him. One thing about living in North Wilmot, gunshots are always going off. He hated fireworks too. With those noises he would freeze and he would not want to walk outside. Sometimes, I would take him home if he was too freaked out.

I think running free everyday was and is essential for my dogs. Maybe we overdomesticate our animals and they need dog-time when they can run in the woods, even if not for that long. They thrive on that and tend to be more settled after running around.

I named Shady after the former Philadelphia Eagles running back, Lesean “Shady” McCoy. That Shady had great moves.It was disconcerting when that Shady got traded to the Buffalo Bills when my Shady was still young. I wanted Shady to be on the Eagles! That trade was one of Chip Kelly’s worst moves.

During Covid, working at home, Shady and Blue were my constant companions and they helped me cope with the social isolation and helped to get me through. It did make me think more about the human-dog relationship. Dogs fill a gap. Their unconditional loyalty surpasses human loyalty. Maybe part of why humans love dogs so much is that their love and devotion is undivided. It is rare to get that same level of affection from our fellow humans.

Shady was a little atypical for the breed. He had no interest in retrieving. He wasn’t the type of dog who would run repeatedly and get a tennis ball you threw 100 times. For whatever reason, he wasn’t into that.

There are a couple shout-outs connected to Shady that I need to offer. My friend and neighbor Wendy Lavallee is a dog person extraordinaire. For almost Shady’s entire life, Wendy helped me, took Shady and Blue and cared for them while I was at work. Any time I had to leave town, she generously would keep my pups and care for them. Wendy has her own dog care business and my dogs could not have been in better hands. Wendy has a magical connection with dogs.

I also need to thank my union, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE). Our union negotiated a great collective bargaining agreement featuring telework rights which allowed more time to work from home. Needless to say, my dogs loved it (as did I). As a federal worker, that now is threatened. If we lose that and have to return to the office full time, I don’t know how I could explain it to Blue.

We had a bunch of nicknames for Shady: the Shademeister, Mr. Shady, Shady Boy, Big Puppy and Shade. He was my Dog Emeritus.The dog had an amazing ability to make people happy. He had a radiant spirit. His passing is a reminder of the importance of loving and telling your love because you never know what will happen next. I don’t know why Shady died and it happened so fast. I totally did not expect that.

I saw a dog quote that I like: “Dogs are not our whole life but they make our lives whole”. I was privileged to have Shady in my life. You could not ask for a better friend.

Everyday since the onset of the second Trump administration Americans who care about civil rights have suffered a barrage of blows aimed at turning back the clock and reversing all gains that have been made in the struggle against racism since the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education. There are almost too many items to list but I will mention some important ones:

– Trump’s challenge to the 14th amendment and birthright citizenship
– Trump overturning LBJ’s Executive Order 11226 which sought to end racial discrimination by the federal government in contracting
– the Executive Order banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts not only from federal government hiring and practices but also from state and local programs receiving federal dollars
– the Executive Order requiring schools teach “patriotic education” and banning accurate teaching in K-12 schools of the history of racism
– the purge of competent, experienced and capable black and female military leaders who were accused of “being woke”
– the reversal of seven earlier Executive Orders designed to combat environmental racism
– Trump firing two Equal Opportunity commissioners who were confirmed by the Senate to serve set terms, leaving the EEOC without a quorum so the agency can’t take votes on policy or enforcement of civil rights laws
– renaming military bases after traitorous Confederate generals, segregationists and enslavers
– co-President Musk’s racist and xenophobic attack on a federal judge of color, Amir Ali, who has ruled against DOGE

It is easy to treat each shocker as an isolated, individual event. The problem with that approach is that it fails to delineate patterns. There is no effort to place events in a historical context or to connect how individual occurrences tie together.

Donald Trump, his administration and the MAGA movement are trying to roll back America’s commitment to the value of equality. This struggle has been ongoing since our nation’s founding. The two greatest American sins are slavery and the genocide against Native Americans. From the very start of the nation, our commitment to multi-racial democracy was opposed by an alternative set of illiberal values rooted in racism.

The fight has always fundamentally been about white supremacy and whether America would maintain that hateful tradition. Our history has a ping pong-like quality where that struggle has gone back and forth with gains followed by reversals.

The Civil War was fought to end the slave system that dehumanized African Americans, denied them the right to vote and brutalized them through terrorist acts of violence. Even though the Union forces won the Civil War, the Reconstruction period that followed was short-lived. Particularly after federal troops pulled out of the South in 1876, the racist forces again prevailed.

From around 1890-1940, all the positive civil rights gains that happened in the aftermath of the Civil War were wiped away. White southerners called for Redemption – the return of white supremacy and restoration of the old, pre-Civil War order.

The historian W.E. B. DuBois described the era as one where “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward slavery”. The KKK and white racists in the South enforced a form of racial fascism where black people were racially segregated and frozen into a status of subjugation. Over 4000 lynchings reinforced racist rule. These social relations remained the norm until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s-1960’s.

The Brown v Board of Education decision ushered in a period of advance in the struggle against segregation. Our society started to recognize its legacy of voter suppression and discrimination in every area of life, including housing, employment, education and health care. Barriers like the denial of the right to serve on a jury, have an interracial marriage, swim at a racially segregated beach, eat at a restaurant, travel on a bus or stay in a hotel disappeared.

There was undeniable improvement in the economic well-being of many people of color and that was complemented by increased representation in elected political office.

Unfortunately, that success stands threatened as we hover on the cusp of a new period of backwardness. The many actions I outlined show that the coalition of illiberal forces organized around the Trump administration and MAGA are actively working to restore white supremacy. In our era, they wear suits instead of Klan robes.

Their patriotic history is a fairy tale based on suppressing black history. America hasn’t acknowledged the depth of racist poison undergirding our institutions and our way of life, We have not done well in many areas like fair housing, employment discrimination, mass incarceration, racial hate crimes, police violence, and unequal public education. Adam Serwer calls what is going on now the “Great Resegregation”, the restoration of America’s traditional hierarchies of race and gender.

The Trump side has argued that efforts to end discrimination are themselves a form of discrimination. They indulge the fantasy racism is over, maintaining that we should all be color-blind. Colorblindness rhetoric is about the idea of solving our race problem by ignoring it. It is a convenient way to head off public discussion of racism.

I believe that the current onslaught against DEI is a cover to justify the rollback of civil rights. It is code. The intended message is support for white supremacy. Conservatives don’t usually publicly use the N-word now. They talk about DEI causing plane crashes and black immigrants eating dogs and cats. That way they can be racist and have plausible deniability.

Many white people still mistakenly believe racism serves their interest but it is the billionaire class that is hogging the money and screwing over black and white workers. Racism remains the billionaires’ most effective divide and conquer tool. The civil rights movement advanced the economic and political rights of all working people and white people have benefited when racism is beaten back.

We have come too far and learned too much to go back.

The first month of the Trump presidency has featured the much-discussed “flood the zone” strategy. Conducted at a breakneck pace, the multi-pronged campaign has been an effort to overwhelm the public to make resistance seem futile. Courts cannot keep up with the onslaught of events. No one can.

Trump’s plan is to discourage opposition by making it seem like peoples’ movements and courts cannot stop an irresistible tide that is moving very quickly on many fronts. I believe the plan was in place before Trump took the oath of office. It is Project 2025 jet-propelled by the Musk squad.

President Trump’s social media tweeted out a line from Napoleon Bonaparte: “He who saves the country does not violate any law”. This was the Napoleon who declared himself Emperor of France in 1804. At almost the same time, the White House social media also sent out a picture of Trump wearing a crown. On his social media, Truth Social, it was proclaimed “Long live the King”.

Whether this was supposed to be a joke or just owning the libs, I don’t think the deeper strategy behind Trump’s actions are being appreciated. I will offer a big picture perspective on how I see the Trump end-game. He does not want to leave the presidency during his lifetime. This is his most lucrative scam yet. He wants to be a dictator or a king ruling over the serfs whose role is to praise him.

Relying on an extreme version of the unitary executive theory giving the President absolute power, Trump seeks to turn back the clock to a gilded age before the New Deal. In that era imperialist great powers carved up the world as they colonized the Third World. Trump wants a return to the heyday of U.S. imperialism where might made right. Emulating Putin, he wants to maximize his personal fortune so he can be a legitimate billionaire instead of a fake one. He doesn’t want to have to worry about going to jail, ever.

The billionaire posse around him at the Inauguration was a tipoff. They plan to serve each others’ interests to insure they receive their precious tax cut. Could someone explain why tax cheats like Trump and the other billionaires deserve a further tax cut? So many of them never have paid their fair share of taxes in the first place. What a staggering display of greed! No doubt they will throw a few crumbs at the masses. They will pretend they are “pro-worker’ as long as it doesn’t interfere with their raking-in billions.

So far, Trump has, in effect, outsourced his presidency to Elon Musk. He doesn’t appear to be that interested in the job of President. While he plays golf (10 outings in 33 days) he leaves the dirty work to Musk who allegedly is fighting corruption in the Deep State. The idea that a convicted felon like Trump who has an extensive record of cheating his contractors cares about fighting corruption is laughable. One of his first acts was firing Inspector Generals.

Musk’s main role has been to fire federal employees, particularly probationary ones. This is part of deconstructing the administrative state. The firings have been done in the most callous disrespectful way imaginable. Federal workers receive anonymous, cowardly emails that often accuse them of poor job performance even though there is no record of poor job performance. Often the workers have had excellent performance records. The firings are in contravention of federal law and without any good cause.

In bullying fashion, Trump/Musk apparently believe he can bulldoze federal statutes and regulations which have mandated job protections. The arrogant way Trump treated Gov Janet Mills of Maine showed how full of himself he is right now. He believes he is the law.

Federal programs are intricate and complex and they take time to learn and understand. The idea that Musk’s twenty-somethings will blow in and discover big fraud is an illusion. Musk is playing a smoke and mirrors game. There is fraud and waste in the government but these kids are not going to find it in 15 minutes. The chance that they understand anything about the programs they are savaging is next to nil. Here the truth matters not at all. The image is everything which is why you have Musk on stage at CPAC with a chainsaw.

Musk’s entire DOGE enterprise is lawless from top to bottom. DOGE is not authorized by Congress. Its authority rests on the thin reed of an Executive Order. Trump says DOGE is an extension of his limitless Article II power under the Constitution but no court has yet given Trump the type of Article II power he craves.

The United States was created in opposition to a monarchy. Separation of powers and the three branches of government were created so the U.S. would never degenerate into a monarchy. Rule by non-stop issuance of Executive Orders could not be a more shaky legal ground. Trump is hollowing out the legislative and judicial branches so all power rests with him.

DOGE has zero transparency. We don’t know who they are or what they are doing but like good serfs we are supposed to shut up and let them do whatever. We are supposed to ignore Musk’s obvious conflicts of interest. If Trump’s maximalist program is like Putin or Orban, very bad trends of worsening income inequality, lower life expectancy and shrinking of democracy are likely.

The racism and sexism of the Trump presidency must also be called out. It is clear they are trying to rehabilitate racism and sexism in service of white and male supremacy. The obsession with DEI is a fig leaf: they are trying to roll back all civil rights gains made since the 1960’s. Renaming military bases after Confederate generals is a good indication of the reactionary mindset as is the dangerous hate they have directed against LGBTQ people. Trans people are such a small number and they have used them as a group to hate on.

Prepare for a post-constitutional government with white men once again large and in charge. Expect rule by fear with civil rights stripped away and perceived political enemies prosecuted. Say good-bye to abortion rights in all states as well as an end to gay marriage. Toxic masculinity will be the rule and there will be a resurgence of violence against women. No fault divorce will start disappearing in the states and there will be an effort to repeal womens’ right to vote. Patriotic education will mean Americans will be indoctrinated into a fraudulent history that whitewashes our national sins.

Whether this is our future depends on whether the American people resist. There is still time.

Great turnout in Concord on a freezing cold day! And Leonard Peltier is free!

As a secular Jew, I would not pretend to any great knowledge of Jewish theology. I was bar mitzvahed and confirmed in the reform Jewish tradition a long time ago. However, there are some parts of Jewish thought that are so central to the tradition that they are inarguably Jewish.

Judaism emphasizes treating strangers with kindness and compassion. Obviously that is something that has often not happened in the Jewish world like everyplace else but the aspiration and practice have to do with the treatment Jews received in Egypt in ancient times. In the book of Deuteronomy, there is this famous passage: “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. Passover is about welcoming the stranger.

That message about the stranger is central to a Jewish perspective on mass deportations of immigrants and their incarceration in concentration camps. More than many groups, Jewish historical experience has a repetitive aspect where we have been forced to flee or have been subject to expulsion and mass deportation. Being scapegoated, Jews have been herded into ghettos and forced into concentration camps.

I know when I hear of the Trump administration’s plans to deport millions and to build camps for them to be held, including at Guantanamo, it evokes Jewish history because our people have been subject to that same viciousness.

While most would immediately conjure up World War 2, there are earlier parallels. In the early 20th century, immigration to the United States became a hot issue. In 1911, Congress issued a comprehensive study known as the Dillingham Commission Report. It concluded that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, many of them Italians and Jews, posed a threat to American culture and well-being.

Just as has happened now, a climate of extreme intolerance, nativism and xenophobia developed in the United States. Antisemitism reached new levels of acceptance. In her book, America for Americans, the historian Erika Lee describes it:

“Manhattan upper-class elite barred Jews from the most exclusive gentlemen’s clubs, resorts and private schools. Discontented farmers in the Midwest and South who formed a new political party known as the populists blamed Jews, whom they believed controlled the nation’s banks, for their economic suffering. Both Protestant and Catholic religious leaders promoted antisemitic stereotypes of Jews as Christ killers and as dishonest and greedy businessmen. Eugenicists argued that Jews were irredeemable and biologically inassimilable. The KKK actively promoted Jewish conspiracy theories and charged that they were congenitally incapable of virtue or patriotism.”

The exact same scapegoating that happened to Jews in the early 20th century is going on with those categorized as “illegal immigrants” today. Trump falsely says other countries are emptying out their jails and asylums. Instead of any effort to understand why so many people have sought to enter the United States, immigrants are unfairly slandered and fast-tracked for mass deportation.

Trump has suspended all refugee admissions. He is ending protected status for hundreds of thousands and he wants to deport millions who are not serious or violent criminals. Many have lived in the US peacefully for over 15 years. Trump is treating all immigrants, including legal and undocumented immigrants, as well as refugees and asylum seekers, as threats to the United States.

So many of the immigrants from Central America are coming because it became unsafe and impossible to live in their home countries. The U.S.-financed wars in Central America created crises of livability in their countries. We have seen the results in the greatly increased numbers coming to the Southern border since 2014, especially children and families.

Really since the 1980’s, many people who came from places like El Salvador and Guatemala had entirely legitimate asylum claims as civil wars forced people to leave. These were wars the U.S. played a major role in perpetrating by financing brutal military regimes.

As a Jewish person, I see immigrants as often fleeing for their lives much in the way Jews tried to escape the Nazi death machine. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 formalized the unwelcoming of Jews in the U.S.. That law mandated tiny entry quotas to America while the Nazi terror ramped up. The United States could have saved millions of European Jews from the death camps but the Jew hating in America prevented that.

The extent of the antisemitism at that time remains under-appreciated just as xenophobia is today. It was not just the spewings of Father Coughlin or Henry Ford. Antisemitism kept escalating. Both Britain and the U.S. closed their door to Jewish arrivals. Even after two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust, in 1947, 250,000 Jews in Western Europe remained in Displaced Persons Camps. No one would take them.

Part of the argument used against allowing more immigration of Jews in the 1920’s-1930’s was that Americans would be displaced from jobs. The argument had some legs because of the Great Depression but the same argument is used now against immigrants. The truth is that we need more people to fill jobs that there are not enough Americans to do.

The mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps was the ultimate horror but Trump is following in that cruel tradition sending immigrants to Guantanamo. He signed an Executive Order about it. Guantanamo has been the site of torture and indefinite detention without charge or trial. It is a law-free zone, outside the United States’ legal protections. What could go wrong? The script writes itself.

Stephen Miller, a Jewish person, is the architect of Trump’s mass deportation/concentration camp scheme. One biographer titled his book “Hatemonger”. There is a Yiddish word , shanda, which perfectly describes Miller. The word means “shame”. “terrible embarrassment”, and “disgrace”.

As a kid, I remember these words on the wall of my temple: “Justice, justice shall you pursue”. It should be clear that mass deportations and concentration camps have nothing to do with justice. They are the opposite.

Many years ago, there was a very popular film thriller, Seven Days in May, based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey. The movie told the story of a military coup in the United States where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs turned against the President. During my lifetime, coups have been run by militaries. There were the Brazilian generals in 1964, Gen. Suharto’s coup in Indonesia in 1965 and Gen. Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973. We don’t tend to think of coups outside a military context.

What we are seeing now from Trump and Musk is a different kind of coup. Operating entirely outside law, the coup plotters have tried to capture the computer and payment system of the United States. By doing that, they effectively hold the nation captive. The strategy is to move quickly on many fronts and to break things.They are trying for a fait accompli where their actions dictate irreversible results regardless of what courts might later do.

They say they are combatting fraud and abuse but they have not gone through any legal channels authorized by federal law. Instead they bypass all norms and focus on declaring jobs are eliminated. This is what they have done with US AID which Musk says is in the wood chipper. Meanwhile Musk’s team gains access to enormous data including the personal and private information of millions of Americans who are either taxpayers or federal benefit recipients which people widely thought was secure and protected.

Data is power and there is no doubt this information could be of enormous value to Musk’s business operations. For all we know he may already have downloaded Americans’ data onto his personal servers and computer network.

Because the law moves slowly, Musk’s hope is to destroy institutions before there can be a reaction. As of this writing on February 9, courts are beginning to respond to both job loss at US AID and the monkeying-around inside the Treasury Department.

So we have the world’s richest man, an unaccountable private citizen and a questionable security risk, who is a major defense contractor, making unilateral decisions unvetted by anyone. Clearly, he is not calling Trump to ask permission for his actions. We have only the vaguest notion of what Musk and his band of juvenile tech bros are doing. There have been no hearings or public debate about someone, anyone, gaining access to the federal payments system.

No legal process gave Musk the authority he is exercising. His actions are a smash-and-grab. It must be pointed out that only Congress has the spending power under Article I of the Constitution.

Whether the issue is special education, consumer protection, air traffic control, food safety, environmental pollution or myriad other areas, federal laws have been in place for a long time and are protections for the public. Musk belittles federal workers but without these workers, many more people would die or be seriously injured. About the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) , Musk just tweeted “RIP”. That followed a tweet saying “delete” CFPB. He will make it “DOA”. He is entirely out of control.

Anyone who thinks Musk would care about consumer protection is out of their mind. Musk is not just anti-consumer protection, his thinking is post-constitutional and post-ethics..

Wired Magazine has reported that Musk’s team has not just “read-only” access but actual administrative privileges to the entire payment system and they have been re-writing code on it. On Twitter/X, Musk himself has said that “the DOGE team is rapidly shutting down certain “illegal payments””.

Musk has no authority to decide what is illegal. We don’t know if he is stealing money, compromising national security, gaining future financial advantage or retaliating against his enemies. He is trying to re-design the entire U.S. government with Trump’s seeming blessing. Musk blessed Trump with $300 million.

Because Musk is a major defense contractor with billions in government contracts, he is in a conflict of interest position. He got Trump to fire the head of FAA after his rocket company was fined.

He has been tweeting hateful posts about US AID. It is not clear why he hates it so much, maybe because it helps poor people and promotes democracy, Musk, with Trump’s apparent agreement, fired 97% of the agency, cutting its global workforce of more than 10,000 to 294 employees. You will not see Musk cutting any Musk businesses to save money.

As is the case with many federal workers, US AID workers are unionized. Musk and Trump could not be more anti-worker and anti-union. They try to rip up collective bargaining agreements like they are confetti. Their hatred of the federal workforce extends across-the-board. Trump’s pick to head the OMB, Russell Vought, has said he wants federal workers “traumatized”.

Not surprisingly, unions representing US AID workers are suing the Trump administration. Public Citizen and Democracy Forward lawyers, acting on behalf of the AID workers, stress that not a single one of the Administrations’s actions received Congressional approval.

If Musk can get away with decimating US AID, expect that to be a road map for what they will do to other federal agencies. They are not cutting with a scalpel, more like a meat cleaver. Many lawsuits have been filed by a wide array of actors to stop Musk and DOGE.

It was telling that Musk stated he would re-hire the 25 year old DOGE employee who resigned for having a viciously racist social media account. The individual had posted: “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool”. That post, which Musk never repudiated, speaks volumes.

Musk and Trump are trying to rehabilitate racism and white supremacy. Musk’s nazi salute was no accident. He has been actively supporting the neo-nazi party in Germany.

One big question is how the Trump administration will respond when courts reverse their illegal and unconstitutional actions firing people and invading privacy. Will they respect court orders or disregard them? Blowing off court orders would reflect an absolute constitutional collapse, opting for fascism.

Congress should be standing up for its own power as a separate branch of government because Trump and Musk are usurping power from that branch to the Executive. The Republican Party has disgraced and humiliated itself by collaborating with the coup. They are pretending what is happening is some kind of normalcy but they are promoting congressional impotence. No doubt many Republicans are afraid MAGA thugs would turn on them if they spoke out.

In a case about birthright citizenship, a Reagan federal court appointee, Judge John Coughenour, made a statement that is equally applicable here:

“It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain.”

The months ahead will determine if there is any rule of law left in the United States.