Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor (prime minister) because his party, the National Socialist Party (Nazi), received more votes in parliamentary elections in 1932. Hitler cynically used the democratic process; he was never a believer in democracy. His dictatorial ambitions were published in Mein Kampf (My Way) in 1925, a clear declaration of his global domination plans. It should have been no surprise when he began dismantling democracy as Chancellor eight years later, in January 1933.
The remarkable speed of this dismantling was aided by economic and political circumstances. Germans suffered in post-WWI inflation which destroyed German currency value, and in the worst years of the Great Depression, 1932 and 33. Politically Germans blamed their woes on the Versailles Treaty ending WWI, which financially penalized Germany for the war. Hitler took advantage of these circumstances. He added Jews and Communists as causes of the economic and political disasters, and he promised to rebuild Germany as a proud, purified, victorious nation.
Hitler had another advantage. In 1922 the Nazi Pary formed the Brown Shirts, a uniformed, armed militia auxiliary to the party. When Hitler became Chancellor there were 4 million enrolled Brown Shirts. They were used to physically intimidate any perceived opponents and critics of the party. The Brown Shirts operated outside the legal system, but the Weimar Republic, the democratic government of Germany, was too weak to stop them. In February 1933 Hitler began using the Brown Shirts and some German police to arrest and imprison political opponents without trial.
Hitler as Chancellor immediately created two alliances that helped him end German democracy. In February 1933 he met with German military leaders, who wanted to rebuild and modernize the military. Hitler promised he would do exactly that if they stood aside while he overthrew the Weimar Republic. In the same month he met with German industry leaders. He told them that a rebuilt military would strengthen German industry and enrich the industrialists.
Hitler quickly followed the alliance-building by neutering the Reichstag, the German legislature in March 1933. Not coincidentally the first concentration camp opened in the same month. Legislators from opposing parties were arrested and imprisoned in the camp. Their absence allowed the Nazi party legislators to propose and pass the Enabling Act, the ‘legal’ document that formally destroyed democracy and established the dictatorship. The act dissolved and outlawed all trade unions and political parties in Germany, except the Nazi party. All state governments within Germany were taken over by Nazi officials. Members of the judiciary who might have challenged the act were intimidated or arrested.
Hitler then drove three final nails into the coffin of democracy. In October 1933 the Nazi-controlled Reichstag passed the Editor’s Law, which placed all German media outlets and journalists under control of the Party. In August 1934 he changed his official title from Chancellor to Der Fuhrer, Supreme Leader. And in that month Hitler required that all military personnel and government workers take a personal oath of loyalty to him, Der Fuhrer, not to a constitution. In a little over s year and a half Hitler destroyed a democracy, and the votes and polls in the 1932-34 time frame showed that the majority of Germans approved of the destruction of their own democracy.
Could a similar trajectory happen in the United States? Of course it could, because any democracy can be overthrown, but it is unlikely.
Hitler’s rise was aided by a special set of circumstances. They were: 1) a large, well-armed gang willing to do his bidding; 2) a police force willing to make unlawful political arrests; 3) a concentration camp system to imprison political opponents and undesirables; 4) a military willing to look the other way while democracy is dismantled; 5) a neutered legislature and an intimidated judiciary; 6) complete control of the media; 7) a very weak democratic national government; 8) very bad economic circumstances; 9) and perhaps most importantly, a population unfamiliar with democracy that willingly accepted the destruction of democracy.
None of these circumstances currently exist in the United States. Perhaps the circumstance closest to reality is the lackadaisical attitude that many current Americans have about democracy. They seem to assume that the hard work of establishing and maintaining democracy was completed in the past, and now we can just coast and enjoy the fruits of their labors. Democracy can only exist if each new generation works to maintain it, because there are always those living in a democracy who wish to destroy it.
By Kadumago – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90395348
On FOX News Wednesday night, Attorney General Pam Bondi continued to lie about the background and status of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, joining the lies spun by Stephen Miller on Monday.
In October 2019, an immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador because of a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution, according to his case. He was released, and ICE did not appeal (emphasis added).
There is no evidence that he has been in a gang. There is no evidence that he is a terrorist, as the President of El Salvador claimed without evidence Monday; Bondi repeated that claim today. In fact, “Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime
, in the United States or El Salvador,” unlike the President.
Bondi is escalating the rhetoric against Abrego Garcia, who she calls “one of the top MS-13 members” and “a terrorist”
Abrego Garcia joined more than 200 other men that the Trump Administration has shipped to an El Salvadorian concentration camp. The US is (probably illegally) paying that country a reported $6,000,000
to house men illegally trafficked: rendition without due process.
Yet on Monday, Stephen Miller claimed that the Supreme Court decided 9-0 in the Administration’s favor. “[I]t was a 9-0 [ruling], in our favor
against the district court ruling,” Miller falsely claimed. His was a direct response to a question from President Trump.
Wednesday the Department of Justice acknowledged the
“government’s prior clear and unequivocal notice to the Court regarding how the government will facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return within the contours of existing law and regulation.” And then had no update to report.
AP
(“Despite a court order, White House bars AP from Oval Office event“):
Despite a court order, a reporter and photographer from The Associated Press were barred from an Oval Office news conference on Monday with President Donald Trump and his counterpart from El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.
Last week’s federal court decision forbidding the Trump administration from punishing the AP for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico was to take effect Monday. The administration is appealing the decision and arguing with the news outlet over whether it needs to change anything until those appeals are exhausted.
Needless to say, if the executive branch can pick and choose which judicial rulings to obey, our system of checks and balances is all but meaningless. Especially when they’re simultaneously routinely ignoring acts of Congress, including appropriations bills.
The Atlantic‘s Adam Server
concludes, “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here.”
Since last week’s Supreme Court directive, Trump officials have harped on a line stating that the lower court should clarify its “directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” Officials including Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have interpreted that to mean that they do not have to follow the order at all. During the Oval Office meeting, Rubio chimed in to say
that “no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States.”
In other words, the administration is following the Supreme Court’s ruling by ignoring it completely.
This rhetorical game the administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while Bukele pretends he doesn’t have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court—and for the rule of law. The administration is maintaining that it has the power
to send armed agents of the state to grab someone off the street and then, without a shred of due process, deport them to a Gulag in a foreign country and leave them there forever. The crucial point here is that the administration’s logic means that it could do the same to American citizens—after all, if deporting someone under a protective order to a Gulag without so much as a hearing is a “foreign policy” matter with which no court may interfere, then the citizenship of the condemned person doesn’t matter.
Trump is already contemplating the possibility of deporting citizens. Aside from numerous public statements
to that effect, Trump told Bukele
, in an exchange posted on Bukele’s X feed, “Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places.” Loud laughter filled the Oval Office.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a statement joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson accompanying the Supreme Court’s order last week, which was issued with no public dissents, “The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.” More broadly, this matter is no longer just about deportations or undocumented immigrants. The Trump administration’s defiance of a Supreme Court order is a new step into presidential lawlessness, in that it suggests that the administration will not abide by any court orders it does not feel like complying with.
In “Trump Dares the Supreme Court to Do Something,” Serwer’s colleague, David A. Graham
, adds:
American citizens might like to reassure themselves that Abrego Garcia’s case is an outlier involving a Salvadoran citizen; surely they are insulated from such misfortune. But this would be a failure of imagination. First, as I have written
, a government that can ignore court rulings in one sphere can ignore them in others, so no one is safe from a lawless government.
Moreover, an American citizen could find themselves in precisely the same vise as Abrego Garcia. During today’s remarks, Trump was asked whether he would be willing to deport American citizens convicted of violent crime to El Salvador. “I’m all for it,” he said. But convictions are overturned all the time. What would happen if an American citizen was found guilty, sent to CECOT, and then had their conviction overturned? We can guess: The White House would insist that they were in Salvadoran custody, beyond the government’s reach. Bukele would shrug and say he had no power to release them.
[…]
If Abrego Garcia stays in El Salvador—Bondi’s claim that the matter is in Bukele’s hands makes it effectively impossible for the Justice Department to comply—the case will surely end up back before the Supreme Court. In their brief, unsigned order
about Abrego Garcia last week, the Supreme Court justices seemed to be trying to say as little as possible, and today’s press conference showed how happy the White House has been to take advantage of their brevity and ambiguity. If the Court is unwilling to be more direct, it will surrender any power to act as a check on the other branches of government, thereby allowing authoritarianism.
In an 1832 standoff with the Supreme Court, President Andrew Jackson—a hero of Trump’s—is apocryphally supposed to have said that Chief Justice John Marshall “has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” The quote is famous but fictional; less well known is the fact that Jackson did, ultimately, comply with the Court. So have all of his successors. Trump is on the brink of breaking that precedent. If he succeeds, he will have broken the bonds of the Constitution as well.
It’s like a game of three-card monte. Trump says it’s all up to Bukele. Bukele says it’s all up to Trump. And under card number three, a federal judge has to somehow protect all of our rights not to be disappeared into a foreign gulag.
So how does a reasonable federal judge respond to such committedly proud lawlessness and lying?
It’s a hard question.
And Judge Xinis has certain significant handicaps in undertaking a confrontation with the president. The first is that she doesn’t, in fact, control the foreign policy apparatus of the United States. Our embassy in San Salvador represents Trump, not her. Our State Department does too. When the Salvadoran president meets with the American administration, he talks to Trump, not the judge. And when he gets asked whether he will send Abrego Garcia back, he’s sitting next to Trump. He’s not in Judge Xinis’s court.
[…]
The second problem for the judge is that it is not clear how far the judge can go and still have the backing of the Supreme Court. The court ruled unanimously
that she was within her power to order the executive to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and that the administration “should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps” to get Abrego Garcia back.
But it also said that the judge needs to proceed “with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” How will the Supreme Court understand what that “due regard” looks like and what information the administration “can” share concerning the steps it is or isn’t taking on Abrego Garcia’s behalf? That’s unclear. So the judge doesn’t know how much latitude she has here to be aggressive with officials who are playing hardball with her.
Third, Judge Xinis will have to think hard about whether and how she can enforce whatever orders she issues. Normally, court orders are enforced by the threat of civil contempt, which can result in fines or incarceration of recalcitrant subjects. But this is a tricky tool to use when the executive branch—or its officials—are the contemnors.
After all, it is the executive branch that locks people up and presumably won’t do so to its own officials effectuating presidential will. And fines can be reimbursed.
This is, to say the least, not the system of government depicted on Schoolhouse Rock.
In fairness, the circus aspect still holds true.
This installment would need to be capped entirely:
Lack of investment and vision has dogged UK industry, while China has literally forged ahead
The fate of incoming Labour business and industry secretaries seems to be to launch emergency rescue packages for industries that would otherwise face imminent closure.
Witness Jonathan Reynolds at last Saturday’s extraordinary parliamentary recall
arguing for the legal right to take over the running of British Steel from its Chinese owner, Jingye, in order to save up to 3,500 jobs and Britain’s strategic capacity to make steel. And witness Tony Benn, in 1974, offering a financial lifeline to 3,000 workers forming a cooperative to save motorcycle manufacture at the failed BSA plant in Meriden, near Coventry.
Dozens of officers in a small-town New York police department near the Canadian border
have been fined for allegedly taking part in an unauthorized labor strike during a snowy stretch this winter.
The union described the fines as retaliation and an abuse of power that denied the officers due process.
One of the officers says the allegations aren’t true. He went to work, participated in on-duty training and even made a drunken driving stop during a span when it snowed “every day.”
“They’re upset that we didn’t make them enough money and meet their perceived ticket quota,” said Andy Thompson, a Tonawanda Police
officer and the president of the department’s union, the Tonawanda Police Club.
Tonawanda Police Chief James Stauffiger, whom the union is asking town residents to oust, said Thompson’s allegations are “without merit.”
“I stand behind the charges filed against the union
with the Public Employees Relations Board and the individual officers,” he told Fox News Digital. “The process needs to unfold fairly and thoroughly.”
Thompson is among the nearly 50 officers accused of going on strike without authorization for one hour a day over a nine-day stretch and has had two hours of pay docked for each of those days, according to a letter he received that was signed by Tonawanda Town Supervisor Joe Emminger.
“We didn’t strike. We showed up to work every day. We did our jobs every day,” Thompson told Fox News Digital. “We didn’t write enough tickets, and we didn’t put enough money in the town’s coffers. And they decided they’re going to fine each officer.”
Ticket quotas are illegal under New York law, he noted, and workplace retaliation can be, too.
Between late January into February, the town got so much snowfall it ran out of road salt, and there was an increase in police calls. Officers were also required to spend 16 hours doing mandatory training with new department-issued guns, all during a staffing shortage after seven officers retired or left at the start of the new year, Thompson told Fox News Digital.
This year, Tonawanda Police has issued 123 tickets, according to a filing with New York’s
Public Employment Relations Board. Between 2021 and 2024, the department issued between 439 and 653 over the same period. Town leaders alleged in the document that the decrease is the result of officers striking without permission in violation of the state’s civil service laws.
“It’s unheard of,” said Mike O’Meara, the president of the Police Conference of New York, the state’s largest police union. “They’re making this up as they go along.”
He called the town’s labor complaint against Tonawanda officers “unprecedented,” as well as the fines, which are double the hourly wage of officers for each hour they were allegedly striking.
“It may be somewhat unprecedented to claim that a reduction in the issuance of traffic tickets constitutes a strike,” said Jerry Cutler, author of “Legal Guide to Human Resources” and a Columbia University lecturer. “However, the critical issue from a legal standpoint is whether the employees have abstained from performing their duties in the normal manner.”
Experts say that, feud aside, it boils down to whoever has more convincing evidence.
“A reduction in ticket volume may point to a concerted effort to interfere with the employer’s operations, in which case the action would likely be found to constitute an unlawful strike,” Cutler told Fox News Digital. “Alternatively, the evidence may suggest some legitimate reason for the reduced ticket volume – or that this is not an apt means of comparison – which would lead to a finding that the law has not been violated.”
Department leaders say officers went on strike to protest disciplinary measures taken against Tonawanda Officer Bikramjit Singh, a U.S. Army
veteran accused of mishandling evidence while investigating a potential drug deal.
“He had his body camera on. He opens this water bottle. There’s a bag in there,” Thompson said. “He looks at the bag. … He says it’s garbage. He wraps it up in his glove, and he disposes of it.”
However, a suspected drug dealer
and suspected drug user later told police there were drugs in the bag, and department officials moved to have Singh fired for throwing it out, Thompson said. The alleged drugs were never recovered, but Singh wound up resigning since being fired could have cost him his law enforcement certifications, Thompson said.
Tensions were already simmering between the rank-and-file and Stauffiger, an Emminger appointee who they accuse of unfairly forcing Singh out and withholding paperwork that would allow him to find new employment in law enforcement in another department.
Stauffiger, a 30-year member of the department, was appointed chief five years ago as part of an effort to eradicate corruption from the department. Thompson, too, represents new leadership, having been president of the union for just over a year.
“There’s no due process, and this whole thing was done between the supervisor and the law firm that represents the town, who also donates large amounts of money to the town supervisors’ campaign and the Town of Tonawanda Democratic Party’s campaigns
,” Thompson said, citing public records. “So, it’s more of a witch hunt than anything.”
Emminger did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the town’s law firm.
Thompson believes the allegations mark the first time the state’s civil service law has been used to punish police officers for failing to meet “quotas” after he says the town lost money due to a decrease in traffic citations issued during the snowfall.
“This is going to end up being case law by the time this is all over,” Thompson said. “This has never been done to a police union before.”
The union has launched a public campaign urging residents to demand that local leaders remove Stauffiger, who they accuse of retaliation and harassment and withholding “basic gear,” including winter coats.
According to the union, during the time officers were allegedly on strike, the department still made seven drunken driving arrests
, issued more than 300 tickets and responded to nearly 2,000 more calls for service than the same period a year earlier with 14 fewer officers.
“The real losers are town residents,” O’Meara told Fox News Digital. “They’re saying, ‘Make sure you tag the residents of this town.’”
If gastropods are lucky, another cheap and unlovable source of age-defying secretions will come along soon
Apologies. As a reasonably attentive student of generational divides, I’m still late to one of the most dramatic divergences yet: the normalisation of snail slime.
At some point, maybe around the time I stopped believing in face cream miracles, smearing on snail mucus, in serums or lotions, was hailed by newcomers to Korean-made skin products as transformative, almost immediately. Its most cherished effect being, as an industry spokeswoman told British Vogue
in 2023, “a radiant youthful glow”. Today, thanks more to rhapsodising influencers than age-defying evidence, the slime phenomenon persists, gathers converts and withstands objections from snail supporters, who do not, sadly, seem that numerous. What snails need now, perhaps more than any other animal, is celebrity allies, supposing there are any willing to sacrifice the magical power of slime.
Written by Rolling Stone senior politics writer Tim Dickinson, the commentary begins with the following:
“A new study models the impact of the implosion of U.S.-funded disease treatment and prevention in the developing world — and suggests that Elon Musk and Marco Rubio will go down as among history’s greatest monsters if funding and effective administration are not restored. In short: Tens of millions will die, millions of them children.”
Pardon me for playing Donald Trump’s Advocate . . .
. . . or is that Devil’s Advocate? Meh. It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other . . .
. . .but do death certificates from places outside the USA ever list the cause of death as being a lack of money from the U.S. government?
Also, where does the U.S. Constitution say that the job of the U.S. government is to take care of people who aren’t U.S. citizens and who live outside of the USA?
Seriously, just what legally obligates the U.S. government to do that?
The last time that I checked, nothing is preventing private charities from taking care of said people.
Indeed, since June of 1987, I have been using a private charity to sponsor children who aren’t U.S. citizens and who live outside of the USA.
So, instead of using other Americans’ tax dollars for charity, I have been using my own money.
If the Trump Administration is violating the law by not using tax dollars the way that Congress requires, then one may have a legal argument against Elon Musk and Marco Rubio.
However, it is a stretch at best to call these men “monsters” because non-Americans outside of the USA die from natural causes that the men did not create. Even people opposed to the Trump Administration’s existence can figure that out.
Again, exactly what, if anything, requires the USA to rescue the entire World from the harshness of Nature?
Can anyone cite a legal requirement?
Now this may strike some viewers as harsh, but Life itself is harsh. Denying that bit of reality doesn’t make one morally superior. Neither does insisting that the U.S. government MUST rescue everyone in the World from whatever Nature dishes out.
Granted, Dickenson’s commentary is just that, a commentary, not a news report. Still, his commentary uses emotionally-laden language to claim that the Trump Administration will be killing non-Americans living outside the USA if U.S. tax dollars aren’t spent to rescue those people from natural phenomena.
To the best of this blogger’s knowledge, the U.S. government is in the same legal position as Batman at the end of the 2005 film Batman Begins. In one scene, Batman tells the villain Ra’s al Ghul, “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you.”
Again, I am approaching this issue from strictly a constitutional and legal perspective. I am neither an attorney nor a constitutional scholar. I really do not know what is legally required of the U.S. government when it comes to foreign charity, which is why I am asking these questions.
As for non-legal incentives, I consider it wrong to cite any religious texts or religious beliefs when insisting that the U.S. government provide foreign charity. Doing so would violate separation of Religion and State. It would be hypocrisy to do that while claiming to support the U.S. Constitution.
Besides, I do not know of any religious texts which require the U.S. government to provide foreign charity. I know of religious texts that require charity from private citizens who believe a certain way, but those texts do not pertain to any modern civil government.
In contrast, I see a reason to reconsider how much the U.S. government spends on foreign charity. At the time of this post’s writing, the U.S. National Debt exceeded $36 TRILLION. In the long run, that debt is harmful to U.S. citizens.
Should such harm be permitted in order for the U.S. government be generous to non-Americans living outside the USA?
Should Peter be robbed of tax dollars in order to be generous to Paul?
As I said before, Americans can give their own money to support charities that provide assistance to non-Americans living outside the USA. However, the fact that they CAN doesn’t mean that they WILL. It is way easier to be generous with other people’s tax dollars than it is to be generous with one’s own money.
Regarding public charity, the Israelites of antiquity had a system for providing for the physical needs of the poorest among them. This system is mentioned in the Tanakh (Old Testament) Book of Devarim (Deuteronomy):
This verse says that the Israelites were to give their tithes directly to people who were the physically poorest* people in their communities. By doing so, the Israelites were ensuring that the physically poorest* people would have enough physical food to stay alive and healthy.
According to the Tanakh, Elohim (G-d) mandated that charity system for the ancient Israelites to participate in. By doing so, Elohim demonstrated his compassion for the physically poorest* of people whether they be Israelites or be non-Israelites.
Sure, the Tanakh does not forbid modern civil governments from using other people’s tax dollars for charity.
Neither does the New Testament if you are a Christian.
As far as I know, neither does the Book of Mormon if you are a Mormon, nor the Quran if you are a Muslim.
Yet, what personal compassion is demonstrated by relying on the government’s use of other people’s tax dollars to provide charity? None that I know of.
*I keep saying “physically poorest” because I once heard a Southern Baptist pastor claim that the Tanakh (Old Testament) was talking about the spiritually poor, not the physically poor. Granted, the pastor was wrong, but nobody in his church (mine at the time) dared to question his teachings because he had an honorary Doctorate of Divinity. Thus, he was called “Dr. ___________” by everyone, as if his honorary title made him infallible.
An unpopular government and floundering official opposition creates fertile territory for Reform
For his next trick, perhaps Comrade Farage will belt out all the verses of The Red Flag and tell us that his favourite book is The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Brother Nigel has popped up on the government’s left flank by demanding the immediate nationalisation
of the steel industry. He’s also expressed a solidarity with trades unionists hitherto undetected in this longtime admirer of Margaret Thatcher.
At an event at a working men’s club in one of the more deprived wards of County Durham, the old fraud even claimed
to have a personal affinity with steelworkers because he used to be in the “metals business” himself. This was a disingenuous reference to his time as a trader at the London Metal Exchange, which involved long lunches in the City fuelled with copious quantities of port. Or maybe he was thinking of his gig as a paid “brand ambassador
” for a firm that deals in gold bullion.
The once fearless, now formulaic, satirical show is on its way from the US. Can it bring back the fun?
What makes good satire? The answer might vary depending on who you ask. What is more unifying, however, is what doesn’t. Most would agree it’s things like punching down, cheap jokes, obviousness or, worst of all, failing to actually be funny.
We saw a unique combination of all of the above last weekend, when the American live sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL)
attempted to parody the hit HBO series The White Lotus
, setting it among current White House staff. Alongside middling caricatures of Donald Trump and the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the pre-recorded skit portrayed the English actor Aimee Lou Wood, who has a gap between her teeth, and her character from the show, Chelsea, as uncharacteristically stupid, with bulging eyes and buck teeth.
