Now the Trump team is arresting people simply for expressing opinions the administration doesn’t like.
Robert Reich, 11 Mar 2025: The Trump regime will arrest some of you in the middle of the night because you spoke your mind.
I’m incredibly freaked out about the regime grabbing people from their homes who are legally in the United States, with permanent status — not just visas permitting them to work or study here but green cards — and then whisking them away to prison because they’ve engaged in constitutionally protected speech that the regime doesn’t like.
You think I’m exaggerating? This is exactly what happened to Mahmoud Khalil on Saturday night. Khalil, who graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December, has a green card. His wife, who is eight months pregnant, is an American citizen.
Immigration agents appeared at his apartment building and told him he was being detained. He now appears to be in a detention facility in Louisiana.
Khalil did nothing illegal. He has not been charged with a crime. He expressed his political point of view — peacefully, non-violently, non-threateningly. That’s supposed to be permitted — dare I say even encouraged? — in a democracy.
So why is he in jail?
And Trump promises “This is the first arrest of many to come.”
The Atlantic, Adam Serwer, 11 Mar 2025: Mahmoud Khalil’s Detention Is a Trial Run, subitled “The pro-Palestine student was arrested without due process for exercising his right to free speech. He will not be the last.”
The federal government has provided no evidence that Mahmoud Khalil has committed a criminal offense, and yet on Saturday night, he was taken by agents of the state from his home and renditioned to a detention facility where neither his pregnant wife nor his lawyer have had access to him.
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And remember that list of forbidden words that I posted in my 28 Feb post? Today’s NY Times has the list, or a similar list. The article was on the front page of today’s paper.
NY Times, posted 7 Mar 2025, in print today 11 Mar 2025: These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration
This is classic Orwellian authoritarianism. Forbid certain words, so that certain subjects can no longer to talked about. I note that the words “gay” and “homosexual” are not included; they’re weren’t on the earlier list posted.
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Are all of Trump’s appointees this stupid?
The Daily Beast, 11 Mar 2025: Trump Cabinet Member Has Baffling Explanation for Surging Egg Prices
via JMG: USDA Sec: Egg Prices Are High Due To “Easter Season”
It’s 40 days until Easter.
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And
JMG, 11 Mar 2025: State TV Host Blames Biden For Stock Market Plunge
By state TV Joe means Fox News. How long do you think Trump and Fox can get away with blaming Biden for everything?
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Here is today’s Heather Cox Richardson post. She’s the historian taking a wide, wise view of what happens every day, in the context of all that’s gone before.
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 10 Mar 2025: March 10, 2025 (writing late last night)
Today the stock market plunged.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 prominent companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges fell by 890 points, more than 2%. The S&P 500, which tracks the stocks of 500 of the largest companies listed in the U.S., fell by 2.7%. The Nasdaq Composite, which tracks tech stocks, fell by 4%. Shares of Elon Musk’s Tesla closed down more than 15%, dropping more than 45% this year. Tonight, as the Asian markets opened on the other side of the world, the slide continued.
According to MarketWatch, this is the worst start to a presidential term since 2009, when the country was in the subprime mortgage crisis. Trump did not inherit an economy mired in crisis, of course; he inherited what was, at the time, the strongest economy in the world. That booming economy is no more: Goldman is now predicting higher inflation and slower growth than it had previously forecast, while its forecast for Europe is now stronger than it had been.
Trump says over and over again that the economy was great under his previous administration, and terrible under Biden. He’s making things up. The experts (like Paul Krugman) say otherwise. That many people feel differently is a psychological issue, and a political challenge.
Trump has always been a dodgy salesman more than anything, telling supporters what they want to hear. He insisted that the strong economy under former president Joe Biden was, in fact, a disaster that only he could fix. In October, Trump told attendees at a rally: “We will begin a new era of soaring incomes. Skyrocketing wealth. Millions and millions of new jobs and a booming middle class. We are going to boom like we’ve never boomed before.”
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Quick posts.
JMG, 10 Mar 2025: Trump Admin To Claim Climate Change Is Beneficial
This seems to be part of the Trump administration platform: climate change good! Recession good! Stock market plunge good!
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The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, 5 Mar 2025: The Rise of the Brutal American, subtitled “This is how the bad guys act.”
Americans are now the bad guys.
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Paul Krugman, 10 Mar 2025: The Paranoid Style in MAGA Policy, subtitled “We basically have government by QAnon”
I note this especially for this chart:
The US is regressing toward the other nations that are not liberal, and do not value international cooperation.
We’re doomed.
And my provisional conclusion, yet again, is that these political shifts are unnoticed by most of the population. As long as they are not personally bothered.
