The Weekly Sift: Staring at the Wall

Every time I open my phone to read the news, I kind of just stare at the wall for 10 minutes. It's horrifying what they're doing, not only to the trans community, but also to migrants, to communities of color, to so many marginalized communities that are being systematically targeted by the new administration and having protections revoked. It's cartoonishly evil.

- Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk's trans daughter

This week's featured post is "Politics in the Attention Economy".

This week everybody was talking about the rule of law

From the moment Trump took office, the big question has been whether his administration would obey court orders. We may be about to find out. Federal Judge James Boasberg ordered that the planes of Venezuelans being renditioned to El Salvador not take off, or be turned around if they had not yet landed. But prisoners were delivered to El Salvador all the same. Now he's trying to get the government to tell him when exactly the planes took off and landed, and he's being stonewalled. (More about that case below.)

Trump's lawyers are claiming that they didn't violate the court order, but their arguments are flimsy. Jack Goldsmith, the former head of George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel inside the Justice Department, described the lawyers as "playing games that verge on defiance". Goldsmith's article is a good summary of the legal issues in the case.

Openly defying court orders -- especially a Supreme Court order -- is a clear line that would define Trump as an autocrat.

There's a fundamental fact about rights that I don't think most Americans understand. I was writing about it during the Bush administration, when "enemy combatants" were being whisked away into military custody, and it comes up again now: If there is anybody who doesn't have habeas corpus rights, then nobody has rights.

This comes up now because of the alleged Venezuelan gangsters that the Trump administration took off the streets and flew to a prison in El Salvador. Trump's supporters want the debate to be about whether or not these are bad guys, as in "Why are you taking the side of immigrant gangsters who victimize law-abiding American citizens?"

And who knows? Maybe they are bad guys. (Or maybe not.) Maybe we are all safer because they're locked up. But that's not the most important issue here.

Imagine, just for a moment, that somebody scooped you up and put you on a plane to be imprisoned in El Salvador. Probably your first reaction to that suggestion is "That could never happen because I'm an American citizen. They couldn't do that to me."

And you're right: They couldn't do it legally. But what if your name wound up on a list either by mistake or because you have an enemy somewhere inside the Trump administration or because some ICE officer was too enthusiastic about rounding people up? What if you were put on that plane without a hearing, the way the supposed gang members were? When would you have had a chance to offer evidence that you are an American citizen?

If the answer is "never", then yes, they can do it to you. Because who stops them?

Habeas corpus means that anybody who is imprisoned has a right to state their case to somebody who is (1) impartial between the prisoner and his accusers, and (2) has the power to order the prisoner's release.

If there's a loophole in habeas corpus, then anybody -- literally anybody -- can vanish down that hole.

The Homeland Security Department is firing the people who worry about stuff like that: 100 people from three oversight offices have been let go.

“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.“

That's the problem in a nutshell: Inside the Trump administration, human rights like habeas corpus are "bureaucratic hurdles". If the immigration enforcement people want to do something illegal, nobody should slow that operation down.

The administration seems to be obeying court orders to rehire many of the government workers it fired. Some are returning to the job, some have been put on administrative leave, and others are still waiting to hear.

When a probationary worker goes from being fired to being on leave, that may not look like much of a victory. But the bureaucratic fiction behind the firing was that the workers were all fired "for cause", which means they would be ineligible to collect unemployment benefits. So rather than being cut off from all income, they're getting their regular paycheck again.

It's worth pointing out that in the name of "government efficiency", we're paying people to stay home. Also, many of the contracts DOGE has cancelled will eventually have to be paid for. When all is said and done, I wonder if Musk isn't costing taxpayers money rather than saving us money.

Vox' Ian Millhiser says that of the 132 lawsuits against the Trump administration, you should watch two: the ones about impoundment and birthright citizenship.

No competent lawyer, and certainly no reasonable judge, could conclude that Trump’s actions in either case are lawful. There is no serious debate about what the Constitution says about either issue. If the Court rules in favor of Trump in either case, it’s hard to imagine the justices offering any meaningful pushback to anything Trump wants to do.

MAGA folks sometimes claim they have nothing against immigrants, just illegal immigrants. But why then is Trump shutting down avenues for legal immigration? Friday, DHS announced that (as of April 24) it is revoking the legal status of half a million Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came here as part of a Biden-administration humanitarian parole program. Participants had to have US sponsors. They were granted work permits and a two-year parole from deportation.

Like so many Trump actions, this order is needlessly cruel. These people did nothing wrong, trusted US government promises, and made plans accordingly. Many of them presumably have jobs and leases. Trump could have just waited for their two-year paroles expire. But no, they have a month to leave the country.

Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik described "the imperial boomerang effect":

[T]echniques developed to repress colonised territories and peoples will, in time, inevitably be deployed at home. Repressive policing, methods of detention and controlling dissent, forcing humans to produce goods and services for overlords in the metropolis, or even mass enslavement and killing: all “boomerang” back into that metropolis. First, they are used against those who are seen as inferior; then, they are deployed even against those citizens with full rights and privileges if they dare to question authority. In short, the remote other eventually becomes the intimate familiar.

and Social Security

Since my wife made more money in her career than I did, I am eligible for higher Social Security benefits as her survivor than on my own employment record. The system is swamped because the SSA is understaffed, so I had to spend a lot of time on hold when I applied over the phone in February. But at least I was home and able to do other things while I waited.

Thank God I got that done before the new rules kicked in:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) says it will no longer allow beneficiaries and those applying for Social Security to confirm their identity over the phone and will instead require that they do so online or in person at a local office to complete the application process.

Simultaneously, SSA is closing local offices and firing staff.

In 2023 about 119,000 people visited local Social Security offices daily to get help or receive services. The SSA announced plans last month to reduce its workforce by 12 percent, from about 57,000 employees to 50,000, and multiple offices have been closed in recent weeks, according to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the office established by President Donald Trump to slash federal spending. ... SSA staffing was already near a 50-year low when the agency initiated the planned reductions.

The Popular Information blog draws the obvious conclusion:

The combination of fewer workers, fewer offices, and a massive increase in the demand for in-person services could sabotage the Social Security system — effectively denying many Americans the benefits they are due.

According to MAGA propaganda, Democrats are out of touch with ordinary Americans. Well, listen to this: Billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggests that the best way to find fraudsters in the Social Security system would be to just not send out checks some month.

Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who is 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She'd think something got messed up, and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.

Elon [Musk] knows this by heart. Anyone who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find a fraudster is to stop payments and listen. Because whoever screams is the one stealing!

Before Social Security, elderly Americans were more likely than any other age group to be living in poverty. (Elderly and disabled poverty are the most hopeless kinds, because your earning prospects are so low.) Now they are the least likely to be poor. That's what Social Security has meant to America.

But if you're a billionaire like Lutnick, or a centi-billionaire like Musk, you find it hard to imagine that a check not arriving some month might mean that you don't get to eat, or that you might care enough about not eating that you might complain. Those are the kind of people who are running our country now.

and sabotaging the US tourism industry

Becky Burke from Wales was on a backpacking trip across North America when she was arrested by ICE and held for 19 days. Then she was taken to an airport in leg irons and sent home to the UK. Her crime? She did housework in exchange for a free room, which apparently broke the no-employment condition of her tourist visa.

How many tourist dollars does the US lose every time there's a story like this?

Similar stories are being told by Germans.

Here's another story, this time from a Canadian: Nathan Kalman-Lamb, a sociology professor at the University of New Brunswick. Having previously been denied entry to the US, he went through the bureaucratic steps necessary to be assured of admittance, which included an interview with someone from the State Department. This time he was detained for three hours and thoroughly searched, causing him to miss his flight.

Both times, Kalman-Lamb was coming to the US to promote his new book The End of College Football. Exploitation of college athletes has been his special focus in recent years.

Kalman-Lamb's crime seems to be having opinions about Palestine and Israel. He signed a statement supporting a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at the University of Toronto (where he is an alum) and is a supporter of the movement to divest from Israel. (He has also written articles whose titles include words like gender and intersectionality.) His opinions have caused him to be fingered by the pro-Israel website Canary Mission as "pro-Hamas" and "antisemitic".

Kalman-Lamb posted Friday:

Well, I have successfully made it in (and now, thank god, out) of the United States. Idk if/when I will be back—which is sad, because I love US folks.

Tourism has been a major industry in the US. Expect it to crater this year. The US is becoming known as a risky place to travel.

and you also might be interested in ...

I think Jon Ossoff has the right Democratic message in this one-and-a-half minute clip.

RFK Jr.'s war on vaccines has begun:

National Institutes of Health officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications, two researchers said, in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research. ... The mRNA technology is under study at the NIH for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, including flu and AIDS, and also cancer. It was deployed in the development of covid-19 vaccines credited with saving 3 million lives in the U.S. alone — an accomplishment President Donald Trump bragged about in his first term.

A scientist at a biomedical research center in Philadelphia wrote to a colleague, in an email reviewed by KFF Health News, that a project officer at NIH had “flagged our pending grant as having an mRNA vaccine component.”

“It’s still unclear whether mRNA vaccine grants will be canceled,” the scientist added.

In some ways RFK Jr. is worse than an ideologue; he's a crank, the kind of amateur who thinks he's smarter than the consensus of the scientific community. Anti-scientific ideas get into his head and no amount of evidence will get them out.

He has already cancelled research into vaccine hesitancy, i.e., public resistance to being vaccinated. It may cost countless lives every year and allow the resurgence of previously eradicated diseases like measles, which now has more than 300 cases in Texas alone. But to him it's not a public health problem. Worse from his point of view, research would probably attribute much of the problem to disinformation-spreaders like Kennedy himself.

On the subject of cranks, I like this exchange from the 1967 version of Bedazzled.

Stanley Moon: You're a nutcase! You're a bleedin' nutcase!
George Spiggott: They said the same of Jesus Christ, Freud, and Galileo.
Stanley Moon: They said it of a lot of nutcases too.

The Guardian examines vaccine hesitancy in one American city: Sarasota.

I'll let a WaPo editorial sum up the situation in Gaza:

In Gaza, a ceasefire deal that came into effect when Trump took office — and for which he took full credit — has effectively collapsed. With Israel and Hamas at a stalemate over whether to extend the ceasefire or move on to fresh talks on ending the conflict, Netanyahu has resumed a full-scale bombing of the enclave. More than 400 Palestinians were killed and hundreds of others were injured on Tuesday, one of the deadliest days of the war.

The official death toll in Gaza is now over 50,000.

The NYT documented the losses of the Abu Naser family, four generations of which lived in a single five-story apartment building in Gaza. 132 of them died in a single Israeli attack. The entire neighborhood is now rubble.

At a time when DOGE is cancelling many government contracts, Elon Musk's businesses are in line to get much bigger contracts than they've ever had before.

The dismantling of the Department of Education has begun.

Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan jailed his most serious challenger in the next elections. Protesters across the country were met with substantial police violence. Over 1000 protesters have been arrested.

The day before, Saturday, Trump’s chief negotiator Steve Witkoff said this to Tucker Carlson:

the President had a great conversation with Erdogan a couple of days ago. Really transformational, I would describe it. I think it’s been underreported, to tell you the truth. ... I think the President has a relationship with Erdogan and that’s going to be important. And there’s some good coming – just a lot of good, positive news coming out of Turkey right now as a result of that conversation. So I think you’ll see that in the reporting in the coming days.

I have to wonder if part of the conversation was "Go ahead. Crack down on the opposition." Or if the current unrest is part of the "good news" Witkoff was expecting.

Witkoff's comments about Ukraine are also striking. Up front, he grants most of what Putin wants: Russia will get the parts of Ukraine it currently occupies. Ukraine will not join NATO. What Ukraine will get out of this deal is left vague. And he takes seriously the referendums Russia held in the occupied Ukrainian provinces, as if those were fair elections:

They’re Russian speaking. There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.

He also promises to back down any time Putin threatens nuclear war, even if it means not getting a "fair deal" for Ukraine.

And while I think we have to get a fair deal for Ukraine, we cannot allow that country to drag us into World War Three.

And he completely ignores Putin's rhetoric about Ukraine being an illegitimate country that has always been part of Russia.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think the Russians want to march across Europe?

STEVE WITKOFF: 100% not.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why would they want that? I wouldn’t want those countries. Like, why would they.

STEVE WITKOFF: First of all, why would they want to absorb Ukraine? For what purpose, exactly? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine. That would be like occupying Gaza. Why do the Israelis really want to occupy Gaza for the rest of their lives? They don’t. They want stability there they don’t want to deal with. But the Russians also have what they want. They’ve gotten—they’ve reclaimed these five regions. They have Crimea, and they’ve gotten what they want. So why do they need more?

I don't know. After Chamberlain gave Hitler the Sudetenland at Munich, why did he need the rest of Czechoslovakia?

And the idea that Putin doesn't want to reclaim dominance over Warsaw Pact countries like Estonia and Poland, what does Witkoff base that on? And "I wouldn't want those countries"? How do Polish-Americans feel about that?

Trump is using the power of government to extort concessions from non-government institutions: Columbia University and a major law firm are the latest trophies for Trump's mantle. This is the Orban model from Hungary.