Tag Archives: trump

JEWISH CROSS-DENOMINATIONAL STATEMENT AGAINST VIOLENT IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT

22 Thursday Jan 2026

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

January 21, 2026

ואהבתם את-הגר כי-גרים הייתם בארץ מצרים

Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:19)

Adding our voices to millions of others across the United States, leaders of the Reform, Conservative/Masorti, and Reconstructionist Movements of Judaism condemn, in the strongest terms, the violence with which the Department of Homeland Security is enforcing American immigration law—above all, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as in cities and towns across the nation.

Many Americans are deeply disturbed as they see their neighbors targeted for detention and deportation in their homes, at work, at their schools, and at their houses of worship. They are deeply concerned about numerous accounts of the use of intimidating and violent detention tactics, dangerous and unhealthy holding facilities, lack of appropriate warrants or due process, and wrongful apprehension of US citizens or individuals with proper visas based on appearance or language. 

In response, some are taking nonviolent steps to warn and protect their neighbors from this immigration enforcement overreach. The right to protest and speak freely are fundamental American rights, protected by the United States Constitution. Too often, though, nonviolent protest and civil disobedience is being met with violence.

The United States is a nation of laws, and as Americans we expect that our laws will be enforced with clarity and consistency. We are pained by reports and videos indicating that in carrying out their assignment, members of law enforcement are engaging in behavior that escalates confrontation, risking the safety of those suspected of having violated the law, of bystanders and protesters, and their own safety. Candidates for law enforcement must be properly vetted, fully and carefully trained, and held accountable when they do not meet appropriate standards. Such accountability includes investigating complaints fairly, transparently, and impartially, particularly but not only, in cases of officer-involved shootings. To that end, we call on the Department of Justice to investigate the shooting death by an ICE officer of Renee Good, z”l.

Our sages taught that the Book of Deuteronomy’s directive צדק צדק תרדף (Tzedek, tzedek tirdof), “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (16:20), implies that the law must be enforced through a fair process, and that one should pursue justice whether it would be to one’s advantage or to one’s loss.[i]

Immigrants are members of our congregations, our families, and people with whom we interact in our broader communities. American Jews cherish our own families’ immigration stories. We recall that, like many being expelled from America today, we or our ancestors came to this country to escape oppression and find opportunity. That is why so many Jewish congregations, rabbis, cantors, and lay leaders have engaged in a variety of legal actions to protect immigrants in our midst. We grieve an American promise that seems to be no more.

We who lead the North American Reform, Conservative/Masorti, and Reconstructionist Jewish Movements stand with the members and leaders of Jewish communities in Minneapolis—and before that, in the Chicago area and other cities in the United States—who have confronted Immigration and Customs Enforcement nonviolently, legally, but resolutely. We fear that additional communities will need to be prepared to do the same in the months ahead.

We call on President Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to pursue immigration enforcement and their response to protest through just and non-violent means, upholding our nation’s highest values and commitment to due process and the rule of law. 

Rabbi David Lyon, President, Central Conference of American Rabbis
Rabbi Hara Person, Chief Executive, Central Conference of American Rabbis

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President, Union for Reform Judaism
Shelley Niceley Groff, Chair of the North American Board of the Union for Reform Judaism

Cantor Josh Breitzer, President, American Conference of Cantors
Rachel Roth, Chief Operating Officer, American Conference of Cantors

Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, Chief Executive Officer, Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Eliot Meadow, President, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Rabbi Jay Kornsgold, President, Rabbinical Assembly

Cantor Matt Axelrod, Executive Director, Cantors Assembly

Edwin M. Baum, Board Chair, Reconstructing Judaism
Rabbi Deborah Waxman, President and CEO, Reconstructing Judaism

Rabbi Renee Bauer, President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association
Rabbi Megan Doherty, Chief Executive, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association

[i] Ramban on Deuteronomy 16:20.

Why Congress Must Remove DJT From Office

20 Tuesday Jan 2026

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Introductory Note: The historian Heather Cox Richardson spells out why Donald Trump is unfit to be President of the United States (January 20, 2026) and that Congressional Republicans must act before Trump does any more damage to our American democracy and economic stability, NATO, the global institutions that western nations have spent the past 80 years building, and the international world order based upon mutual respect between nations.

“Late last night, Nick Schifrin of PBS NewsHour posted on social media that the staff of the U.S. National Security Council had sent to European ambassadors in Washington a message that President Donald J. Trump had already sent to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway. The message read:

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

Faisal Islam of the BBC voiced the incredulity rippling across social media in the wake of Schifrin’s post, writing: “Even by the standards of the past week, like others, I struggle to comprehend how the below letter on Greenland/Nobel might be real, although it appears to come from the account of a respected PBS journalist… this is what I meant by beyond precedent, parody and reality….” Later, Islam confirmed on live TV that the letter was real and posted on X: “Incredible… the story is actually not a parody.”

International affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted in The Atlantic the childish grammar in the message, and pointed out—again—that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is not the same thing as the Norwegian government, and neither of them is Denmark, a different country. She also noted that Trump did not, in fact, end eight wars, that Greenland has been Danish for centuries, that many “written documents” establish Danish sovereignty there, that Trump has done nothing for NATO, and that European NATO members increased defense spending out of concern over Russia’s increasing threat.

This note, she writes, “should be the last straw.” It proves that “Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize.” Applebaum implored Republicans in Congress “to stop Trump from acting out his fantasy in Greenland and doing permanent damage to American interests.” “They owe it to the American people,” she writes, “and to the world.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s doctor Jonathan Reiner agreed: “This letter, and the fact that the president directed that it be distributed to other European countries, should trigger a bipartisan congressional inquiry into presidential fitness.”

Today three top American Catholic cardinals, Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., and Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, issued a joint statement warning the Trump administration that its military action in Venezuela, threats against Greenland, and cuts to foreign aid risk bringing vast suffering to the world. Nicole Winfield and Giovanna Dell’Orto of the Associated Press reported that the cardinals spoke up after a meeting at the Vatican in which several fellow cardinals expressed alarm about the administration’s actions. Cupich said that when the U.S. can be portrayed as saying “‘might makes right’—that’s a troublesome development. There’s the rule of law that should be followed.”

“We are watching one of the wildest things a nation-state has ever done,” journalist Garrett Graff wrote: “A superpower is [dying by] suicide because the [Republican] Congress is too cowardly to stand up to the Mad King. This is one of the wildest moments in all of geopolitics ever.”

In just a year since his second inauguration, Trump has torn apart the work that took almost a century of struggle and painstaking negotiations from the world’s best diplomats to build. Since World War II, generations of world leaders, often led by the United States, created an international order designed to prevent future world wars. They worked out rules to defend peoples and nations from the aggressions of neighboring countries, and tried to guarantee that global trade, bolstered by freedom of the seas, would create a rising standard of living that would weaken the ability of demagogues to create loyal followings.

In August 1941, four months before the U.S. entered World War II, U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill and their advisors laid out principles for an international system that could prevent future world wars. In a document called the Atlantic Charter, they agreed that countries should not invade each other and therefore the world should work toward disarmament, and that international cooperation and trade thanks to freedom of the seas would help to knit the world together with rising prosperity and human rights.

The war killed about 36.5 million Europeans, 19 million of them civilians, and left many of those who had survived homeless or living in refugee camps. In its wake, in 1945, representatives of the 47 countries that made up the Allies in World War II, along with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and newly liberated Denmark and Argentina, formed the United Nations as a key part of an international order based on rules on which nations agreed, rather than the idea that might makes right, which had twice in just over twenty years brought wars that involved the globe.

Four years later, many of those same nations came together to resist Soviet aggression, prevent the revival of European militarism, and guarantee international cooperation across the Atlantic Ocean. France, the U.K., Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg formed a defensive military alliance with the U.S., Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland to make up the twelve original signatories to the North Atlantic Treaty. In it, the countries that made up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reaffirmed “their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments” and their determination “to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.”

They vowed that any attack on one of the signatories would be considered an attack on all, thus deterring war by promising strong retaliation. This system of collective defense has stabilized the world for 75 years. Thirty-two countries are now members, sharing intelligence, training, tactics, equipment, and agreements for use of airspace and bases. In 2024, NATO countries reaffirmed their commitment and said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had “gravely undermined global security.”

And therein lies the rub. The post–World War II rules-based international order prevents authoritarians from grabbing land and resources that belong to other countries. But Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, for example, is eager to dismantle NATO and complete his grab of Ukraine’s eastern industrial regions.

Trump has taken the side of rising autocrats and taken aim at the rules-based international order with his insistence that the U.S. must control the Western Hemisphere. In service to that plan, he has propped up Argentina’s right-wing president Javier Milei and endorsed right-wing Honduran president Nasry Asfura, helping his election by pardoning former president Juan Orlando Hernández, a leading member of Asfura’s political party, who was serving 45 years in prison in the U.S. for drug trafficking. Trump ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and seized control of much of Venezuela’s oil, the profits of which are going to an account in Qatar that Trump himself controls.

This week, Trump has launched a direct assault on the international order that has stabilized the world since 1945. He is trying to form his own “Board of Peace,” apparently to replace the United Nations. A draft charter for that institution gives Trump the presidency, the right to choose his successor, veto power over any actions, and control of the $1 billion fee permanent members are required to pay. In a letter to prospective members, Trump boasted that the Board of Peace is “the most impressive and consequential Board ever assembled,” and that “there has never been anything like it!” Those on it would, he said, “lead by example, and brilliantly invest in a secure and prosperous future for generations to come.”

The Kremlin says Putin, whose war on Ukraine has now lasted almost four years and who has been shunned from international organizations since his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, has received an invitation to that Board of Peace. So has Putin’s closest ally, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who Ivana Kottasová and Anna Chernova of CNN note has been called “Europe’s last dictator.” Also invited are Hungary’s prime minister and Putin ally Viktor Orbán as well as Javier Milei.

And now Trump is announcing to our allies that he has the right to seize another country.

Trump’s increasing frenzy is likely coming at least in part from increasing pressure over the fact the Department of Justice is now a full month past the date it was required by law to release all of the Epstein files. Another investigation will be in the news as well, as former special counsel Jack Smith testifies publicly later this week about Trump’s role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Smith told the House Judiciary Committee in December that he believed a jury would have found Trump guilty on four felony counts related to his actions.

Smith knows what happened, and Trump knows that Smith knows what happened.

Trump’s fury over the Nobel Peace Prize last night was likely fueled as well by the national celebration today of an American who did receive that prize: the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. The Nobel Prize Committee awarded King the prize in 1964 for his nonviolent struggle for civil rights for the Black population in the U.S. He accepted it “with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind,” affirming what now seems like a prescient rebuke to a president sixty years later, saying that “what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up.”

Trump did not acknowledge Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year.

While the walls are clearly closing in on Trump’s ability to see beyond himself, he and his loyalists are being egged on in their demand for the seizure of Greenland by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is publicly calling for a return to a might-makes-right world. On Sean Hannity’s show on the Fox News Channel today, Miller ignored the strength of NATO in maintaining global security as he insisted only the U.S. could protect Greenland.

He also ignored the crucial fact that the rules-based international order has been instrumental in increasing U.S.—as well as global—prosperity since 1945. With his claim that “American dollars, American treasure, American blood, American ingenuity is what keeps Europe safe and the free world safe,” Miller is erasing the genius of the generations before us. It is not the U.S. that has kept the world safe and kept standards of living rising: it is our alliances and the cooperation of the strongest nations in the world, working together, to prevent wannabe dictators from dividing the world among themselves.

Miller is not an elected official. Appointed by Trump and with a reasonable expectation that Trump will pardon him for any crimes he commits, Miller is insulated both from the rule of law and, crucially, from the will of voters. The Republican congress members Applebaum called on to stop Trump are not similarly insulated. Tonight Danish troops—the same troops who stood shoulder to shoulder with U.S. troops in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021—arrived in Greenland to defend the island from the United States of America.”

The Gestapo Tactics of ICE – A First-Hand Account

16 Friday Jan 2026

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

The following is a Facebook Post by Carin Mrotz, Senior Advisor at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. My colleague, Rabbi Jill Jacob, posted it on her Facebook Page.

What is happening in the Twin Cities of Minnesota is unprecedented in the United States in most of our lifetimes. Our support for the citizens of that city needs to be expressed peacefully by all Americans.

Here is Carin Mrotz’s post:

“A post for my friends and family outside of Minneapolis – There is a lot of misinformation flying around and I want to share my perspective if it’s useful or compelling or helps cut through the clickbait and profiteering.

Over the past several weeks, thousands of ICE agents have been deployed to the Twin Cities and more are expected this week. There are currently more ICE agents than local law enforcement in the metro area. In some places they are visiting businesses that are likely to employ or serve immigrants looking for people to arrest. In some places they are camping out in cars on highway exit ramps and pulling over drivers they believe look like they could be immigrants. In neighborhoods like mine that are primarily residential with few business corridors, they are staging targeted raids of homes. But they mix it up; yesterday they were driving around the neighborhood and a neighbor reported that an agent pulled over and asked her husband, who was out walking the dog, if he was a US citizen.

Yesterday morning I received a text in my neighborhood group chat that more than a dozen agents were staging outside of a house a few blocks away, legal observers were needed. I put on boots and drove over to a home near our middle school and found the street full of SUVs and men in militarized but not standardized gear with big “POLICE” labels all over them. These men were carrying big guns. Several of my friends had already been maced and one of the agents was spraying mace into a crowd of observers as casually as a dad might spray his lawn with a hose in the summer. The agents brandished their guns at us a warning, or a threat, maybe both. Neighbors stood on the front lawns and blew whistles or banged on drums and asked to see the agents’ warrant. ICE is not supposed to be able to enter a home without a judicial warrant, which is a warrant signed by a judge. If you are a law and order person, that might mean something to you.

Yesterday, after a few minutes of arguing with neighbors, 10-15 agents mustered and broke down the door of the single family home. They entered and after a few minutes, they re-emerged with a tall Black man in a tee shirt, shorts, an unzipped hoodie, and rubber slides. They led him to their vehicle. It was about 15 degrees out. His wife stood on the front lawn, begging to know why they took him. Behind her the front door stood broken, offering no security to a house full of family members,
including children.

Several of us observers asked to see the warrant, and I took a picture. I will not share it out of concern for the man’s privacy, but it was an administrative warrant, signed by an ice agent, not a judge. If it matters to you that residents follow the law in engaging with our occupying agents, this should matter to you. If you are a law and order person, you might consider that what I witnessed was an abduction, not an arrest.

Across the Twin Cities, raids like this continued all day. On the Southside, ICE agents surrounded a legal observer in her vehicle, broke the windows, and dragged her and her passenger out of the car and detained them. Everyone I know knows someone who has either had a relative (or multiple relatives) taken or has been a witness to one of these abductions. The pace of the operations has been relentless, manic, and the agents are acting with remarkable brutality. Yesterday, as one of my neighbors attended to another who’d been sprayed with mace, pouring clean water in her eyes on the icy sidewalk in below freezing temps, her mother stood nearby on the phone with MPD, asking them to send someone to help. I don’t know if their decision not to was strategic or just simply about capacity, no local law enforcement has been present at any of the operations I’ve witnessed.

If you are someone who believes that you should absolutely just do whatever law enforcement tells you to do and you will be safe and respected, I would ask if you’ve ever had big guns drawn on you by someone yelling orders at you, those orders sometimes conflicting and unclear; and what if they were also spraying you with chemical irritants in 15 degree weather. If someone maced you for blowing a whistle at them, how confident are you in their ability to calmly follow procedure and not shoot you? This summer, our House Speaker Emerita and her husband were murdered in their home by someone impersonating a police officer. How confident are you that you could make sense of the meanings and markings of a uniform under stress? If armed men filled your street and broke down your neighbor’s door without a warrant, how confident are you that you could stay calm? These are questions we are asking ourselves constantly.

I have a lot of opinions about why this is happening, why Minnesota has been targeted and why our elected leaders are making the decisions they are and what will happen next, but this post is primarily to level set and let you know what’s going on. Because I also want you to know how we are responding.

First, I want to say that my experiences are those of a white professional who is not at risk for deportation. Immigrants and people afraid of being mistaken for immigrants are having a different set of experiences. ICE has been putting detainees on planes and sending them to places like Texas before their families can even hire lawyers or find out where their loved ones have been taken. People are afraid and avoiding leaving their homes, even to get groceries. After ICE tear-gassed parents and school staff at a local high school last week, our public schools closed and have now re-opened with hybrid learning so that parents who are afraid to send their kids to school have an option.

Neighbors are organizing to protect and care for each other. We observe and document raids. We show up at schools at drop-off and pickup time, we pick up groceries for those who are staying home. Some of the muscle memory of the neighborhood watches we formed during the uprising 5 and a-half years ago has reengaged. The Twin Cities is connected and resilient and pissed off and will continue to protect each other.

That is the important thing to know right now: Our cities are under occupation and we are being attacked by our federal government. And we are tenacious and we love each other and we will continue to protect each other. We will continue to blow whistles and bang pots and pans to alert our neighbors that ICE is nearby. We will continue to argue with them and waste their time knowing that someone else will have 15 more minutes to get away. We will continue to share videos of them slipping and falling on their asses on the icy walks and we will laugh hard at them. We have legal tools to fight them and we also have our long history of organizing and resistance.” 

If the Trump Administration isn’t Fascist, I don’t know what is

11 Sunday Jan 2026

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

The American historian Heather Cox Richardson offers a characterization of Fascism in her “Letters From An American” substack. She writes that the events carried out by President Trump and key leaders in his administration during the past year make it “clear that officials in the Trump Administration have fully embraced the same fascism that underpinned the Nazi government that American soldiers were fighting 80 years ago.” (see her January 10, 2026 posting)

That is, obviously, a serious indictment. However, after reading the following with in mind the actions Trump and company have taken, Professor Richardson’s description of fascism as it relates to the MAGA movement is not an exaggeration.

If you have family and/or friends who support Donald Trump, for whatever reason, please consider sharing the following with them and, if they acknowledge what is happening in this country and consequently break away from the Trump camp, your effort would be worthwhile.

Professor Cox Richardson posted on January 9, 2026:

“Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

—

Notes:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks

War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

PS – Ezra Klein spoke with Masha Gessen, the Russian-born NY Times Opinion columnist on January 10 on The Ezra Klein Show on the theme of “Venezuela, Renee Good and Trump’s ‘Assault on Hope.’” It is worth hearing as it relates to the above.

MURDER IN COLD BLOOD – SAY HER NAME “RENEE GOOD” – by Dan Rather

09 Friday Jan 2026

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Introductory Note:

Dan Rather said it as clearly as anyone can in his following Substack “Steady.” In the last 2 days, social media has been filled with the visual evidence that an ICE agent murdered Renee Good. The only way for us Americans to have any hope of stopping the outrageous policies of the Trump Administration’s ICE military force and the corrupt lying leadership of Trump including Kristi Noem and VP Vance, is to peacefully resist and say the names of the innocent victims out-loud-all-the-time-all-at-once.

RENEE GOOD – May her memory be a blessing and may she never be forgotten.

Here is Dan Rather

“This is not right. Not justifiable. Not who we are as Americans. Full stop.

The act of violence by a federal officer that killed an unarmed American is an unimaginable horror and a national atrocity.

Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent on her way home from dropping off her first grader at school. Video from three different angles shows Good driving onto a street full of protesters and agents near her Minneapolis home. One can then see Good maneuvering her car at the command of several agents.

According to eyewitnesses, two agents were yelling at her simultaneously and at cross purposes to turn around, back up, stop, and get out of the car. She rolled down her window to hear and speak with them.

Moments before the shooting, she was inching her car forward. An agent, who was standing on the left side of the car, raised his gun and shot Good at point-blank range. A doctor in the crowd offered to help Good. The agent would not let him, saying, “I don’t care.”

Good was a poet and stay-at-home mom who was born and raised in Colorado. She has been described as a devoted Christian who was not politically active, according to her ex-husband’s father. Her social media accounts appear to bear this out.

Once again, the president and his lackeys are asking Americans not to believe what they see with their own eyes.

Rather than console the family or condemn the violence, he orchestrated a fiction to cover up ICE’s criminality, abuse of power, and the failures of his draconian deportation policies.

Trump claims the ICE agent acted in self-defense and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called Good a domestic terrorist who weaponized her car to target the agents. While die-hard Trumpsters might gobble that up like it’s Thanksgiving dinner, the real story can be seen on the video taken by multiple bystanders.

ICE stokes fear and heightens tensions rather than de-escalating them. Since Trump took office last January, four people have been killed and five injured by ICE agents in 15 shootings. Though there is clear evidence that the agent who killed Good did not act in self-defense, it is unlikely even he will see the inside of a courtroom, never mind a prison cell.

The agent who killed Good was identified by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He is an Iraq War veteran who has been with ICE since at least 2016. The agent was previously injured in a traffic incident while seizing an undocumented man who was later convicted of dragging the agent with his car. This doesn’t justify what happened. At all.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration guru, who is not a lawyer, maintains ICE agents are untouchable. “You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop or obstruct you is committing a felony,” he said on Fox. This is patently false in America — always has been and always should be.

Though Minneapolis’s mayor and Minnesota’s governor vowed to seek justice for Good, Trump & Co. made sure they were unable to. The FBI announced on Thursday morning that it would be handling the investigation alone, boxing out the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Historically, the agencies work together.

The BCA said in a statement that the U.S. attorney’s office “had reversed course: the investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.”

With no independent investigation and a Justice Department in the president’s pocket, the agent who killed Good may not even get a slap on the wrist.

Unless we demand it.

Renee Good’s death will not be in vain. It has already drawn needed attention to a rogue president and agency acting with impunity. She could be any mother, in any city, at any time. She could be any one of us. It is time to draw the line in the sand. And to say her name while doing it.”

Living with Uncertainty and Doubt in this Era of Increasing Autocracy

23 Sunday Nov 2025

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

To say we are living in a confusing, destabilizing, polarizing, and dangerous era is stating the obvious. In thinking back over the past thirty years, I offer an expanded list of events that I believe contributed to bringing us to this inflection moment in American history, mostly negative events (sorry to say), but many positive ones too (I have not included foreign happenings except for those that have affected directly the United States and the stability of our nation).  

The positive events:

  • The election of the first African American president of the United States;
  • The recovery from the 2008-9 economic crisis;
  • The normalization of LGBTQ rights;
  • The passage of the Affordable Care Act;
  • The Iran Nuclear deal;
  • The largest march in American history for women’s rights following the installation of Donald Trump as President on January 21, 2017;
  • The galvanizing of the Me-Too and Black Lives Matter movements;
  • The passage of climate change legislation and the international Paris Climate Accord;
  • The nomination of the first woman of a major political party for president of the United States and the installation of the first woman and person of color as vice-president in US history;
  • The multiple and successful law suits brought against unconstitutional and illegal actions taken by the Trump Administration;
  • The end of the Gaza War and the return of the Israeli hostages;
  • The November elections in New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and California;
  • The “No Kings” march.

The negative events:

  • The 9/11/2001 terrorist attack;
  • The Afghan and Iraqi wars in which 7000 Americans, 200,000 Afghanis, and 600,000 Iraqis were killed during the United States’ longest wars against Al Qaida and extremist Muslim terrorists;
  • The 2008-9 US economic meltdown, mortgage crisis, and bank failures;
  • The rulings of the Roberts’ Supreme Court that have compromised American democracy including Citizens United, the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, the discarding of key elements of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the gutting of affirmative action in college decisions, the expansion of gun rights, the granting of presidential immunity, and the MAGA assault on voting rights;
  • Multiple mass shootings in cities across the country;
  • Increasing income inequality, the accumulation of massive wealth of the top one percent, regressive tax policies, and the exploding federal debt;
  • The rise of social media (for better and worse) reflecting negative and positive human impulses;
  • The spread of opinion-laced “information” through media bubbles and the diminishing viability of   classic news sources (e.g. newspapers, network evening news broadcasts, etc.);
  • The rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement;
  • The multiple indictments and double-impeachment of a sitting American president;
  • The Covid plague and death of 1.2 million Americans;
  • The violent rebellion against the legitimate election of a president on January 6, 2021 led by the sitting president who refused to accept his electoral defeat;
  • Russia’s aggression and nearly four-year war against Ukraine;
  • The Hamas invasion of Israel and the murder of 1200 Israelis and foreign workers on October 7, 2023, the taking of 250 hostages, and the ensuing 2-year Israel-Hamas war resulting in the death of more than one thousand Israeli soldiers and tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians;
  • The dramatic rise in antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israel hatred on the far political right and far political left;
  • The rise in racism, misogyny, homophobia, and Islamophobia;
  • Trump’s pardoning of all those tried and sentenced for violence and sedition against the United States on January 6, 2021;
  • The return of Trump 2.0 in the 2024 presidential election that has brought a systematic attack on American democracy and norms, the Constitution, media, the Justice and Defense departments, most federal agencies, American foreign aid, the State Department, EPA, HHS, the American military and intelligence services, the human rights of immigrants and peoples of color, the killing of people without due process in international waters based on the assertion that they are narco-terrorists, the threat of ICE and the use of the military in cities and states, Trump’s weaponizing of the Justice Department against his political critics and enemies, and Trump’s call for the execution of six members of Congress (all distinguished military veterans and intelligence officers) who cut a video telling service members not to follow illegal orders;
  • Trump’s cancellation of the Iran Deal, Biden’s Climate Change legislation, and the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord;
  • The attack from the far political right-wing on the Judeo-Christian ethic;
  • The normalization of white Christian nationalist supremacy in the US;
  • The massive grift and enrichment of the President, his family and wealthy friends in the amount of billions of dollars in an ongoing violation of the US Constitution’s Emolument clause.

Like so many of you, I have responded with disgust, anger, anxiety, exhaustion, and despair at the plethora of bad news, the cruelty, inhumanity, indecency, and ongoing assault against the US Constitution and American democratic norms that permeates our politics and culture in these days. I have asked myself why millions of Americans and their congressional representatives accept without protest the developing autocracy of Donald Trump who has in these first ten months of his second presidency done so much damage to American democracy and our democratic traditions.

I am reminded of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats’ (1865-1939) famous poem The Second Coming that he wrote in 1919 shortly after the First World War ended and as the Irish War of Independence began. The poem was inspired by that era’s turmoil, chaos and societal collapse (not unlike our own times):

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, / And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

It seems to me that there are two primary motivating needs of tens of millions of Americans who have supported or acquiesced to Trump’s growing autocracy and immorality. In times of flux and chaos, people crave, on the one hand, certainty, and on the other a sense of security with like-minded culturally similar others.

My childhood Rabbi Leonard Beerman (1921-2014) offered a profound bit of wisdom, as he always did, long ago when he wrote:

“I live with uncertainty and doubt. But what I have learned is that doubt may be the most civilizing force we have available to us, for it is doubt that protects us from the arrogance of utter rightness, from the barbarism of blind loyalties, all of which threaten the human possibility.”

The writer Kathryn Schultz (b. 1954) explains in her book Being Wrong why certainty is so appealing to so many:

“The simplest truth about certainty is that it feels good. It gives us the comforting illusion that our environment is stable and knowable, and that therefore we are safe within it. Just as important, it makes us feel informed, intelligent, and powerful…Uncertainty leaves us stranded in a universe that is too big, too open, too ill-defined…Where certainty reassures us with answers, doubt confronts us with questions, not only about our future but also about our past: about the decisions we made, the beliefs we held, the people and groups to whom we offered our allegiance, the very way we lived our lives…the unconsulting fact [is] that …we can’t shield ourselves and our loved ones from error, accident, and disaster…our attraction to certainty is best understood as an aversion to uncertainty.” (p. 169)

That is where autocrats step in. They claim certainty about everything, contrary to what the French philosopher Charles Bernard Renouvier (1815-1903) poignantly said: “Properly speaking, there is no certainty; there are only people who are certain.”

Of course, there are always options, some are better and some are worse, but it’s upon us, an informed citizenry, to understand the advantages and disadvantages of each based upon the facts, science, reason, human rights, and the principles of equality, justice, compassion, empathy, and peace.  

As elections begin to appear on the political horizon, it’s important for us all to consider what constitutes great leadership. As concisely as I can characterize it, great leadership requires not just vision and high moral rectitude, but the love of truth and a sacred commitment to further the common good. There are times when all leaders must stand up against the crowd, take a political risk knowing that they can lose everything, power, position, and the respect of their followers. Great leaders, however, bear the responsibility to act on behalf of the best interests of the public and to set a high moral standard for themselves and their colleagues.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his superb book that I highly recommend, Lessons in Leadership – A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2015) put it simply: “To lead is to serve. Greatness is humility.” (p. 190)

As the election season begins in the United States, and would-be leaders announce their candidacies, polls rejecting the Trump administration’s positions on virtually all the issues of concern to American voters, along with the millions who turned out to march on “No Kings Day,” and the important work of so many American lawyers and judges who have advocated for and ruled on behalf of American constitutional and state law and against autocratic over-reach, ought to give us a measure of hope and remind us how much agency we still have.

In electing candidates worthy of our support as servant-leaders, we can reverse the anti-democratic actions and trends that have plagued the United States in recent decades, and begin to restore American democracy despite the horrific damage that has been done.

Go to a No Kings Rally

17 Friday Oct 2025

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

I am 75 years old. The last time I attended a massive march was in 1987 in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the right of Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel or to the United States. Before that I was a frequent public protester against American involvement against the Vietnam War and in civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s. Since then, after serving as a congregational rabbi for more than 40 years, my social justice activism has been expressed in the context of my community’s activism and in my writings. But, I will be at one of Los Angeles’ No Kings Rallies with my children and grandchildren this weekend because my outrage at what Trump is doing to innocent Americans and to our democracy needs outward expression.

The only actions that are now making a difference and protecting our democracy are the many court cases and judges who are rejecting in rulings Trump’s illegal executive orders. Also, we have to be grateful to the many Democratic state governors who are courageously resisting Trump in their states and the Democratic Congressional Representatives and Senators who are doing everything they can to resist the malignancies of Trump.

The only action we American citizens can take before the mid-term election that might begin to persuade Trump and his sycophantic Congress and the many voters who voted for Trump in the 2024 election but who are now appalled by his excesses and immorality is to participate in non-violent demonstrations throughout the country and support financially candidates for election in the mid-terms whose values align with our own.

I am at once excited and anxious to participate in a No Kings Rally this weekend. I’m not anxious for my own safety, but on account of my fear that Trump’s minions will be sent deliberately in plain clothes to violently disrupt peaceful demonstrations and give Trump the excuse he wants to send more federal soldiers into “blue cities and states” to quell what he characterizes as “anti-American traitors.”

I urge everyone to attend one of these rallies. If more than ten million Americans turn out, which I heard is one goal of the organizers, we will be furthering the movement to take back our democracy in the mid-terms and to break through the “ice” of the MAGA movement.

No matter what the provocations we might encounter, everyone who attends these rallies must remain absolutely non-violent.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker Tells it Like it Is

26 Tuesday Aug 2025

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

I am posting what the historian Heather Cox Richardson reported on August 26 in her Substack (worth subscribing) from a powerful speech delivered by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker on August 25 in Chicago that everyone ought to read, assuming you had not heard or read it already:

Calling Chicago, Illinois, a “a disaster” and “a killing field,” Trump referred to Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker as “a slob.” Trump complained that Pritzker had said Trump was infringing on American freedom and called Trump a dictator. Trump went on: “A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what’s happening to our cities, and then you send in troops instead of being praised, they’re saying you’re trying to take over the Republic. These people are sick.”

This afternoon, standing flanked by leaders from business, law enforcement, faith communities, education, local communities, and politics at the Chicago waterfront near the Trump Tower there, Governor Pritzker responded to the news that Trump is planning to send troops to Chicago.

He began by saying: “I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in the city and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.”

He acknowledged that “[o]ver the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against. And it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal, it is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”

Pritzker noted that neither his office nor that of Chicago’s mayor had received any communications from the White House. “We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did. We read a story in the Washington Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor or the police?”

“Let me answer that question,” he said. “This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection.”

Pritzker noted that every major American city deals with crime, but that the rate of violent crime is actually higher in Republican-dominated states and cities than in those run by Democrats. Illinois, he said, had “hired more police and given them more funding. We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stops, and high-capacity magazines” and “invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs.” Those actions have cut violent crime down dramatically. Pritzker pointed out that “thirteen of the top twenty cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top ten states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.”

If Trump were serious about combatting crime, Pritzker asked, why did he, along with congressional Republicans, cut more than $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants? “Trump,” Pritzker said, “is defunding the police.”

Then Pritzker turned to the larger national story. “To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country,” he said, “I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president’s actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.”

Pritzker continued: “Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, ‘Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?’ Instead, I say, ‘Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.’”

The governor called out the president for his willingness to drag National Guard personnel from their homes and communities to be used as political props. They are not trained to serve as law enforcement, he said, and did not “sign up for the National Guard to fight crime.” “It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the guard, to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.”

Pritzker said he hoped that Trump would “reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city’s sovereignty” and that “rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days.”

But if not, he urged Chicagoans to protest peacefully and to remember that most members of the military and the National Guard stationed in Chicago would be there unwillingly. He asked protesters to “remember that they can be court martialed, and their lives ruined, if they resist deployment.” He suggested protesters should look to members of the faith community for guidance on how to mobilize.

Then Pritzker turned to a warning. “To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your national guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people,” he said, “cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.”

He went on: “The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.”

“Finally,” he said, “to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching, and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now. And eventually, the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually.

“If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Humbly, I would add, it doesn’t bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.”

The Abuse of Power in This Era

08 Tuesday Jul 2025

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

The Judeo-Christian tradition, upon which the United States was founded, promoted the notion of “covenantal politics” as a means to create an ideal society based upon human rights and dignity, equality and opportunity, justice and respect, accountability and responsibility, forgiveness and reconciliation, personal growth and freedom, all based in the principle articulated in the book Genesis that the human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the Image of God, thereby affirming infinite worth and dignity in every woman, man and child.

In this era of Donald Trump, the question before us is the same question that has always challenged Americans since our nation’s founding: What is political power for? Is it to sate the personal ambition of a politician, or is it to nurture a covenantal America in which politics is the means to further a more just and inclusive nation? If politics is only about ambition and power, then power renders as irrelevant morality and conscience, and it elevates amorality, illegality, sedition, insurrection, violence, and murder.

I know I’m not alone in my disgust and feeling of foreboding about what is happening to American democracy and the spirit of fair play and common decency under the aggressive disregard for human dignity under Donald Trump. Yes, there are still many good people and servant-leaders in every arena of our society committed to the well-being of others. We are watching now, for example, how many good people are doing everything possible to save victims of this horrendous flooding in Texas. And there are many among our political, business and educational leadership, religious and social justice activists, jurists, legal scholars and advocates, journalists and writers, entertainment and sports luminaries actively fighting for what I describe above as our nation’s “covenantal politics.” Certainly, not all is lost yet and mid-term elections will surely come and the vast majority of Americans who now disapprove of Trump’s aggressive disregard for human rights and the fundamental needs of most Americans will have an opportunity to vote against him and his minions.

I have been thinking a great deal about the use and abuse of power since Trump became President again, as he wields it like every common dictator does around the world, for his own purposes and interests. Note the column one story in this past Sunday’s New York Times (July 6, 2025) that describes in detail how Trump’s financial fortunes dramatically reversed since becoming the Republican candidate for President a second time and then winning the presidency again. He was on the verge of financial ruin (hardly a successful businessman he), but now has monetized the presidency to such an extent that he has turned his losses into massive wealth and power. His is a disgusting display of corruption the likes of which America has not seen in the presidency in our nearly 250 years of existence and that no one in his party even talks about much less does anything about.

As I have thought about power, here are a few quotations that offer additional insight and its character and purpose:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ―Lord Acton, English Catholic historian (1834-1902)

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” ―Aung San Suu Kyi (Burmese Politician and diplomat, b. 1945)

“It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible.” ―David Brin, American author (b. 1950)

“The true measure of a man is how he uses his power.” ―Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Winner (1929-1968)

“With great power comes great responsibility.” ―Voltaire, French Enlightenment author (1694-1778)

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ―Alice Walker, American writer (b. 1944)

“The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no [person] living with power to endanger the public liberty.” ―President John Adams (1735-1826)

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ―George Orwell, British writer (1903-1950)

“Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.” ―Mahatma Gandhi, Indian philosopher and non-violent champion (1869-1948)

The Case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia – An outrage if ever there is one!

04 Friday Jul 2025

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

I am not a lawyer, so I rely on the expertise of legal scholars who are able to communicate clearly to the public what is at stake in cases in which the United State’s government’s actions defy the US Constitution and the law.

I am posting here Joyce Vance’s “Civil Discourse” missive (worth subscribing) because the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, when understood, ought to outrage anyone who cares about American democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, the truth and common decency.

Joyce Vance is an American lawyer who served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was one of the first five U.S. attorneys, and the first female U.S. attorney, nominated by President Barack Obama.

Ms. Vance describes in detail the case against Mr. Garcia and the cruel treatment he has received deliberately by the Trump Administration and by Donald Trump himself.

Ms. Vance concludes:

“This case, which has brought issues of due process and the prospect of the executive branch of government ignoring orders issued by the judiciary to the forefront of Americans’ minds, will stand as one of the most important cases in American history.”  

I urge you to read the entire post below as it not only paints a terrible legal picture, but a horrendous moral one.

I have felt outrage, along with so many millions of Americans, about Mr. Garcia’s treatment since this case first became a national story months ago. Now that he has been returned to the United States and is being charged with federal crimes as a cover to whitewash what Trump and his minions have done to him and the rule of law, we know much more about what actually happened to Mr. Garcia in El Salvador and what the Trump Administration is capable of doing to any one of us.

Here is Ms. Vance’s report today – July 4, 2025

The Civil Case:

On March 24, 2025, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife filed a civil lawsuit on his behalf in federal district court in Maryland. The defendants included Attorney General Pamela Bondi, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Trump administration had just deported Venezuelans it claimed were gang members to El Salvador, although ultimately it came to light that significant numbers of them weren’t. The Trump administration violated a district court’s order that the men not be turned over to El Salvador, which was ultimately reversed by the Supreme Court.

It’s not unusual for plaintiffs in civil cases to amend their initial complaint as new information comes to light. On Wednesday, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, Abrego Garcia’s wife, asked the court for permission to do so.

She explained that “the Government filed a motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ Complaint as moot, arguing that because it had returned Abrego Garcia to the United States, Plaintiffs have received all the relief they sought.” She wanted to amend her complaint to “clarify that the relief they seek remains live, notwithstanding Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.” Three new items are included in the amended complaint:

  • “The proposed Amended Complaint details the Government’s defiance of court orders after this Court granted preliminary injunctive relief.”
  • “[E]vidence that emerged in a June 2025 whistleblower disclosure from former DOJ official Erez Reuveni, who was previously counsel for the Government in this case. The new allegations include government officials internally acknowledging that Abrego Garcia’s removal was an “administrative error” while simultaneously working to prevent his return and to make post-hoc justifications. These revelations provide evidence of deliberate misconduct that was unavailable when the original Complaint was filed.”
  • “Abrego Garcia’s first-hand account of torture and mistreatment at CECOT, as well as developments regarding his return to the United States and the Government’s stated plan to remove him again.”

The proposed amended complaint, which is attached to the motion for permission to file it, contains predictable but still shocking revelations about conditions at CECOT. The conditions, as alleged, are more like a concentration camp than a prison in the United States, and there is little doubt that if established, the allegations made about those conditions would run afoul of the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Although the government has maintained that once delivered to El Salvador, these men are no longer in U.S. custody, that argument is paper-thin, or at least it should be, since the U.S. government is paying El Salvador to house these men. The allegations made by Abrego Garcia will likely play prominently in litigation over this issue.

The new allegations in the amended complaint include the following:

“Upon arrival at CECOT, the detainees were greeted by a prison official who stated, ‘Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.’ Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster. His head was shaved with a zero razor, and he was frog-marched to cell 15, being struck with wooden batons along the way. By the following day, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body.

In Cell 15, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia and 20 other Salvadorans were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion. During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself. The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.”

And although the complaint alleges that El Salvadoran prison officials acknowledged that Abrego wasn’t a gang member, they threatened him with physical harm at the hands of gang members in the prison:

“As reflected by his segregation, the Salvadoran authorities recognized that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was not affiliated with any gang and, at around this time, prison officials explicitly acknowledged that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine.’

While at CECOT, prison officials repeatedly told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that they would transfer him to the cells containing gang members who, they assured him, would ‘tear’ him apart.

Indeed, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia repeatedly observed prisoners in nearby cells who he understood to be gang members violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel. Screams from nearby cells would similarly ring out throughout the night without any response from prison guards on personnel.

During his first two weeks at CECOT, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia suffered a significant deterioration in his physical condition and lost approximately 31 pounds (dropping from approximately 215 pounds to 184 pounds).”

During a conference call with District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland, the government acknowledged it intended to deport Abrego Garcia again, this time to a third country. That would not violate the withholding order that prevented them from sending him to Venezuela. The government’s lawyer represented that it didn’t have imminent plans for deportation, but Abrego Garcia’s lawyers told the court, “We have concerns that the government may try to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia quickly over the weekend, something like that.” They asked for an emergency order that would bring him to Maryland if he were released in Tennessee, where he is facing the criminal charges the government filed against him when they returned him from El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia remains in federal custody in Tennessee while the Magistrate Judge considers whether to release him—she previously ruled he was entitled to release, but she was concerned about the deportation issue.

Judge Xinis set a July 7 court hearing in Maryland to discuss the emergency request and other matters. Today, she rejected the government’s request to delay the hearing to a later date.

The same week Abrego Garcia’s wife filed her original complaint, Defendant Kristi Noem traveled to El Salvador to “visit” CECOT prison. She posed for this photo in front of a cell full of prisoners.

A report from the CATO Institute suggests that although the government claims all of the men it sent to Venezuela are “illegal aliens,” in 50 of the 90 cases where they were able to identify how the men entered the United States, the men said that they entered the U.S. legally, with government permission, at an official border crossing point.”

The Criminal Case

The government attempted to save face when it returned Abrego Garcia from El Salvador by filing criminal charges against him involving the transportation of people who were known to be present in the U.S. without legal immigration status. Comments made by government officials went far beyond the facts alleged in the indictment—a clear violation of DOJ policy—in describing his conduct and claiming he was a serious violent criminal who, among other things, had sexually assaulted women.

Last week, there were reports that the government’s key witness, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, likely the owner of the car Abrego Garcia was driving during the incident he was charged with, was a three-time convicted felon. The deal the government cut with him allowed his early released early from federal prison to a halfway house in exchange for his cooperation in the case.

An official with Homeland Security Investigations, part of ICE, testified Hernandez Reyes would have been deported but for his cooperation with the government. The Washington Post reported that he said in court that the government “is also likely to give him a work permit.”

In the meantime, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have asked District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. in Tennessee to enforce local rules that prohibit the Trump administration from making “extensive and inflammatory extrajudicial comments about Mr. Abrego that are likely to prejudice his right to a fair trial.” The motion continues, “These comments continued unabated—if anything they ramped up—since his indictment in this District, making clear the government’s intent to engage in a ‘trial by newspaper.’”

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers raise four points of concern in their pleading:

  • “[T]he government has relentlessly attacked Mr. Abrego’s character and reputation in dozens of public statements … Many of the government’s statements have been highly prejudicial and serve no justifiable law enforcement purpose—and reflect nothing more than the lengths the government will go to in its efforts to paint Mr. Abrego as a dangerous criminal to deflect from its mistake.”
  • “[T]he government has expressed opinions about Mr. Abrego’s guilt and the evidence in this case in ways that go far beyond the limited disclosures permitted” by local rules of court.
  • “[T]he government’s statements have been contaminated with irrelevant and false claims that the DOJ ‘knows or reasonably should know are likely to be inadmissible as evidence in a trial or that would, if disclosed, create a substantial risk of prejudicing an impartial trial.”” As an example, they offer that, “at a press conference announcing these charges, Attorney General Bondi recounted allegations from unreliable alleged coconspirators that Mr. Abrego ‘abused undocumented alien females,’ ‘trafficked firearms and narcotics,’ ‘solicited nude photographs and videos of a minor,’ and ‘played a role in the murder of a rival gang member’s mother.’” They also objected to what they call unsubstantiated claims that Abrego Garcia is Mr. Abrego is a “wife beater” and “domestic abuser.” They conclude that “These assertions are not only irrelevant and inflammatory, but also based entirely on inadmissible hearsay.”
  • “[S]ince the indictment was unsealed, the government has made nearly three dozen statements about the fact that it has charged Mr. Abrego with a crime, without reference to the presumption of innocence.”

In a normal administration, an Assistant United States Attorney who did any of these things would most likely be seriously sanctioned by internal DOJ disciplinary mechanisms. But here, the concern is about the Attorney General of the United States and other high-ranking officials. We are no longer surprised by much, but we should reclaim our ability to be shocked by the truly outrageous. Because that’s exactly what this is.

It is the job of defense lawyers to put the government on its back foot. But they’ve made the claims in this case knowing that they will be thoroughly tested. In their motion, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers ask the court for a very simple sanction: they want him to “issue an order directing the parties to comply with Local Criminal Rule 2.01,” the local rule that prohibits these out-of-court statements. This afternoon, Judge Crenshaw directed both sides to stop making public statements about the case. It’s not clear from his two-sentence ruling, “Motion (69) is GRANTED. All counsel are expected to comply with the Local Rules of this Court,” whether the order extends to DHS employees in addition to DOJ employees, which Abrego Garcia’s lawyers requested.

Despite this limited action, the motion was a strategic one that hints at the kind of arguments that will be used to argue a guilty verdict, if the government obtains one, should be reversed because the jury pool was tainted by the government’s own statements to the public. The motion also recites that, “The Vice President, a Yale Law School graduate, went so far as to flatly lie about Mr. Abrego, calling him a ‘convicted MS-13 gang member,’ notwithstanding that Mr. Abrego in fact has never been convicted of any crime at all.” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers are busy making a record.

This case, which has brought issues of due process and the prospect of the executive branch of government ignoring orders issued by the judiciary to the forefront of Americans’ minds, will stand as one of the most important cases in American history. We don’t yet know how it will end. It is a very dangerous moment for our democracy, one we should all pay close attention to. Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse. Your support, and your paid subscriptions help me devote the time and resources necessary to this work.