a tiny slice of mass noncompliance

A tiny slice of the crowd at Seattle City Center on April 05, 2025 … so far back we couldn’t hear the speeches, only the cheers from those who arrived early. Pretty inspiring nonetheless .

‘Tomorrow there'll more of us.’ — Hamilton

Update: I posted this first on Facebook and an old friend commented:

"So sad. Protesting the effort to cut government waste to save important programs like ss..sending back dangerous illegals & so many other critical things after 4 years of not having leadership. Makes no sense. No wonder half of the President’s cabinet is made up of EX-democrats. Wait..the President was once a Dem too! Hahaha."

To which I replied: 

Ah! Thanks for this! It’s clarifying. There’s more to it, but regarding your complaints…

We aren’t protesting the effort to cut government waste, or to save important programs like Social Security, or to hold criminals to account for their lawlessness — we’re protesting the intent to pursue those ends *in ways that violate* the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

We’re protesting actions that are in themselves lawless — taken *without* due process, in violation of the clear statutory requirements that embody equal protection before the law, without exception. 

We want America to be America. I think we’re in the mainstream of history and hope for the future when we demand that the current Administration and Congress act with fidelity to the Constitution.

So, unless you *don’t* want those things, this is a misunderstanding. And I’m sorry we weren’t clearer before.

Of course, there *is* more to it than just this, but if a person's central complaint is as basic as that, I don't see anything wrong in beginning with a basic response. *Maybe* it will lead to more....

Stop right there

From 11 years ago, a powerful reflection on the emotional toll of stop and frisk policies.

http://bit.ly/1gOhARg

Today, my American-born, gainfully-employed, tax paying, God loving friend with brown skin and a latin surname says he no longer leaves home without his passport.

There is a tax on being a brown-skinned person in America.

We have to make it stop.

Clown Car

The clowns in this car claim they can annex Greenland, Panama, Gaza, Canada.

And yet….

The dumbos claim they can’t compel El Salvador (El Salvador!) to return people wrongly transferred and imprisoned there in the last two weeks.

I’m starting to wonder if these chuckleheads can be trusted.*

This is not great, Bozo.

SOURCE

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/an-administrative-error-sends-a-man-to-a-salvadoran-prison/682254/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJYZRFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWvW02Jyt65cC-88kQmW8cp_7s0yK4HNvN7vE2XfWLXwMW3q8W9s3ETYyA_aem_eiNgUXkcgCfmPQypKJHUfA

* Just kidding — their record as court dingleberries was solid before now.

stop it right now.

Federal agents in my country are currently disappearing people without judicial review . I want it stopped.

What are you doing about this, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal . Senator Maria Cantwell . Senator Patty Murray?

Update: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/an-administrative-error-sends-a-man-to-a-salvadoran-prison/682254/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJYZRFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWvW02Jyt65cC-88kQmW8cp_7s0yK4HNvN7vE2XfWLXwMW3q8W9s3ETYyA_aem_eiNgUXkcgCfmPQypKJHUfA

“The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the megaprison where he’s now locked up.

[….]

“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,’’ [the Maryland man’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg] told me. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

banking on it

Finally, somebody speaks up for the banks.

[These people are not on our side.]

[h/t Rolling Stone . https://click.email.rollingstone.com/?qs=1bfa1427e88a15eacb8b57ab73f6d1480c68439e5b507af81c8a774d85f8741ff7805f8f91ec29f2c94f8936d6d592f14ed29f23875a9fe5cf541b67587c47d9]

tomorrow there'll be more of us

Just came across this, in my Facebook feed from seven years ago, that somehow never made its way to this space.  

It's a mashup, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt, of two songs — The Story of Tonight, from Hamilton, and You Will Be Found from Dear Evan Hansen — dedicated to the kids leading the March for Our Lives movement.

In these days, we need — more than ever, maybe, some of us? — a renewed hope that tomorrow there will be more of us, and that goodness and mercy may follow us all the days of our lives.

Cream with your Kafka?

These last couple of months, with the growing number of stories from people in government agencies about how the Department of Government Efficiency is making the federal government “almost comically inefficient” (as Catherine Rampell has it), maybe it's becoming clear why Elon Musk has to work weekends and sleep at the office.

Meanwhile, real people are really suffering needlessly at the hands of shallow-state goofballs who don't know what they're doing (and don't know they don't know what they're doing). 

Arrogance, thy name is Elon. Hubris, thy name is Trump.

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/21/doge-government-efficiency-federal-workers/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/elon-musk-says-doge-staff-are-working-120-hours-a-week/486519

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-21-2025

who is this for?

The United States Department of Agriculture is meant to oversee, coordinate, promote and protect farming and livestock food production, agricultural trade, food safety, natural resources, rural communities and — until this year — worked through supplemental food programs to end hunger in the United States and internationally. 

Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture announced it would cut about $1 billion in  funding that schools and food banks use to buy food directly from local farmers and ranchers. 

Who is this for?

Not farmers and ranchers, who are very much part of the real economy.

Not school kids who learn better if they’re not hungry.

Not food-insecure families in need of food bank assistance for a time.

Does it benefit you in any measurable way?

Does it make America better than it was week before last?

Does your Member of Congress know what you think about this?

Source

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/usda-cancels-local-food-purchasing-food-banks-school-meals/

...then really, who are we?

"If presidents can do whatever they want, including putting people on a plane and sending them to prisons in a foreign country with no due process whatsoever, then really, who are we?"

Joyce Vance . March 16, 2025

Source

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/the-week-ahead-a7d?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web

A day is not a day ... for now

These days, a day is not a day.

This is what your Republican Representative in Congress has done this week: Because the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C.1622) requires that Congress act within a matter of days on challenges to a presidential declaration of national emergency, rather than undertaking their constitional responsibility to examine, debate, and vote on the validity of the current declaration of national emergency under which the sitting US president has performed allegedly unconstitutional and illegal acts, they have, instead, changed the definition of what constitutes one day. 

I'll say it again in a slightly different way: So they do not have to vote on whether a national emergency exists in fact, or whether declaring a state of national emergency is a fictional pretext for violating the Constitution and breaking laws passed by the Congress of the United States and signed into law by US presidents, your Republican Member of Congress has instead voted that a day is not a day. 

Here's the text of the bill behind which Republican Members of Congress are hiding their fecklessness and abrogating their lawful, constitutional duties:

SEC. 4. Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.

Are you OK with this? Does your Member of Congress know what you think?

Sources

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R46567.pdf

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46567

https://rules.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/rules.house.gov/files/documents/bills-119hres_hjres25hr1156hr1968_xml.pdf#page=4 

Liz Trump? Donald Truss?

 Liz Trump? Donald Truss? Liz Truss

It's midday, March 12, 2025: Do you know where your economy is?

you fill in the blank

Saying "[The Ukrainians] brought it on themselves" is like saying "[you fill in the blank]." 

“Very candidly, they brought it on themselves, the Ukrainians,” is what White House Special Envoy, Keith Kellogg said to a visibly shocked U.S Council on Foreign Relations last week, after the U.S. stopped sharing intelligence and military aid with our allies, Ukraine — thus permitting their antagonists, the Russian State, to wage their war of aggression more efficiently.

Q . If you put your thumb on the scale to advantage oppressors, in what meaningful way are you not also an oppressor?

Q . Do you have confidence in what your Member of Congress has to say about this?

Source

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/09/they-brought-it-on-themselves-a-new-low-in-us-ukraine-relations