Back in June, I wondered in print, I don't remember where, if it had
"occurred to anyone that there is a reason why referring to undocumented immigrants as an 'invasion' has become common currency among the bigots? ... Could it possibly be related to the fact that Article One, Section 9, clause 2 of the Constitution reads 'The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion OR INVASION the public safety may require it?'"
At the time, the only reactions I got came down to versions of "don't be paranoid."
Now, between a 5th Circuit judge in August invoking in an immigration case the right of a state to "wage war" against an "invasion," mainstream media reporting that the number of US military forces being sent to the border could reach 10,000, and this EO, I'm feeling less paranoid than prescient.
America is now a “shit-hole” country. We have a criminal, dictator-wannabe, addled president. A draft-dodger as commander-in-chief. A clown show legislature. A corrupt, biased Supreme Court. The corrupt rich & big business bought the election for their enrichment. Fanatics from every faction dictating policy. Flakes & wackos staffing the administration. A gullible, ignorant citizenry. America is now a comedy morphing into a tragedy.
An Attorney General who was paid as a Lobbyist For Private Prisons and 30 plus other companies....surely that's a dystopia novel horror story.... not the United States of America !!! ???
Excellent work, my husband Lance Rosen writes on Substack. You and he should collaborate. With Lance and I were political street organizers for 35 yrs. We know a bit.
Keep up the good work. At this moment it is crucial that there is visible opposition to Mein Project 2025.
I have been looking for other writers to dig into these many executive orders and to provide robust coverage and examination of them. If he's willing to do something like that, I will gladly crosspost on CounterStory Media to amplify his reach! Everyone needs to see this information... it is critical that the truth be exposed right now.
Thank you for writing back. Lance is a political analyst. We both are working on providing people with strategic thinking in order to defeat a global fascist coup.
Hi Melissa! My last name is also Corrigan! I loved this article and all the research that was involved. Its people like you that we need to keep educating others on the dangers ahead of us in this new administration. I am subscribing to your page and found you on Medium as well. I try to keep up with writing my own blogs as well. Thanks again.
Please review your assumption about the American people. The MAGAs are a noisy minority in electoral terms. America voted for Kamala Harris, just like we saw in the rallies, when Trump couldn't fill a school hall. People lined up to vote in motivated numbers, including Republicans voting for Harris. The election was rigged. Just look at this website.
Yes, you hit the nail on the head. I'm working on another piece outlining the road so far & beyond. I'll link to your stuff, as well as others like you who do the research so the rest of us don't have to. Thanks for this.
I pray this isn’t naïveté talking but in this Trump order, as in many others, I predict failure.
Too many of his appointees seem under-qualified to operate a lemonade stand. Where does he find the expertise to develop, staff and run a massively expanded federal law-enforcement agency? Where especially given that Trump’s primary hiring criterion is loyalty to *him* and know-how be damned?
Even if he could, which I doubt, where will the money come from? For all his hype of “invasions,” there’s nothing here analogous to 9/11 for opening up a federal spigot with general assent to spend and spend on national security. The GOP majority in the House is wafer-thin; what programs get butchered or tossed overboard to pay for the Big Bad HSTF?
What programs that benefit red-state constituencies, that conservatives might balk at gutting to pay for such foolishness? The so-called pennywise are now running Congress.
They’ll nod at Trump’s rhetoric when it doesn’t cost anyone anything. Will they continue to nod when they review the budget request?
Will they have time? He can sign executive orders mandating that the Potomac be drained with Dixie cups but that might take a while. So too would creating a balls-out HSTF, and the mid-terms are historically rough on sitting presidents. With a narrow majority of Democrats in the House in 2027, another Trump pronunciamento goes spiraling down the bowl.
And then there’s due process for illegal immigrants; state attorneys general and the ACLU, among others, armed to fight tooth and claw in sympathetic courts; the filibuster, a Republican favorite we’re about to see Democrats embrace; and institutional rivalry among law enforcement agencies that Orange Julius Caesar can’t dissolve with the stroke of a Sharpie.
Especially since, with good reason, the rank and file in the Justice Department tend to hate his guts, and he can expect nothing in the way of an enthusiastic buy-in from the FBI. To the contrary: Every fast one he and his crowd tries to pull will be leaked to anyone with a notepad and a pulpit.
Trump’s MO is of course to be brazen and more brazen still and see what he can get away with. I’d guess he’ll keep yammering about this order without much success, while his true passion is and will remain crookedly enriching himself and his cronies.
Right, I'm hoping the same thing. Another aspect is simply the rhetoric of it all. Get these radical ideas into the national discourse, pushing said discourse even further to the right. At first blush, 'detention centers' sounds crazy and inflammatory. After it's been in the news cycles for a while, and given the ol' GOP spin through the right-wing media outlets, it may sound more and more normalized. Part of my concern in this flurry of EO's, along with the lack of sufficient time for experts to comb through each and every one, is the overall rhetoric pushing even more right and normalizing non-normal shit.
Your concerns are valid. His approach has consistently been to throw a truckload of it at the wall and see what sticks. What was that? What’s next? Who can keep track?
But his opposition has had years to prepare for what might pile up and what else he might start flinging. I’m not sure what parts of it (if many) come as anything like a surprise.
He’s spent an adult lifetime double-dealing and transgressing and challenging those he’s wronged to take him to court.
A lot of what he’s been spewing is more of the same, except now he’s doing a nation’s business and his adversaries are better equipped. And they’re the ones who matter, not some cracked court of public opinion buying his bullshit about the delta smelt while Southern California burns.
What helps that opposition is that he’s unhinged; a Reagan appointee insulted Trump’s lawyers out of court when their boss tried to unwrite birthright citizenship from the Constitution.
The judge all but said fuck you and the brokeback presidential horse you rode in on.
I was giving what I could to Democrats in the months leading up to the election. They keep asking in text messages but I’m now giving what I can to the American Civil Liberties Union.
I don’t know if the HSTF will get on any docket — but many of the battles that matter for the next two to four years will be won or lost at the bench, while CNN and Fox drone in the background.
I stopped reading when it went into detail about non government employees being targeted. I was named after my great aunt who was killed in the camps along with most of her brothers and sisters. My bubbe was lucky enough to escape on a boat to Canada after being turned away in the US. There is something very wrong with the US education system that we have reached this point.
This was the most important piece about the new police State apparatus that I have read. We are all in big trouble.
He also pardoned 1500 loyalists (brownshirts)
donOLD Really don’t give a fuck about the officers protecting the place. Slaps America now ameriKKKa
The Fourth Reich it’s pretty funny how seven white rich motherfuckers can just get everybody fighting their war for them.
Like putin 500,000 dead for him?
Hell yes
Good point
Back in June, I wondered in print, I don't remember where, if it had
"occurred to anyone that there is a reason why referring to undocumented immigrants as an 'invasion' has become common currency among the bigots? ... Could it possibly be related to the fact that Article One, Section 9, clause 2 of the Constitution reads 'The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion OR INVASION the public safety may require it?'"
At the time, the only reactions I got came down to versions of "don't be paranoid."
Now, between a 5th Circuit judge in August invoking in an immigration case the right of a state to "wage war" against an "invasion," mainstream media reporting that the number of US military forces being sent to the border could reach 10,000, and this EO, I'm feeling less paranoid than prescient.
America is now a “shit-hole” country. We have a criminal, dictator-wannabe, addled president. A draft-dodger as commander-in-chief. A clown show legislature. A corrupt, biased Supreme Court. The corrupt rich & big business bought the election for their enrichment. Fanatics from every faction dictating policy. Flakes & wackos staffing the administration. A gullible, ignorant citizenry. America is now a comedy morphing into a tragedy.
An Attorney General who was paid as a Lobbyist For Private Prisons and 30 plus other companies....surely that's a dystopia novel horror story.... not the United States of America !!! ???
Beautifully written. Sadly. Ty
Excellent work, my husband Lance Rosen writes on Substack. You and he should collaborate. With Lance and I were political street organizers for 35 yrs. We know a bit.
Keep up the good work. At this moment it is crucial that there is visible opposition to Mein Project 2025.
Take care. mzr
I have been looking for other writers to dig into these many executive orders and to provide robust coverage and examination of them. If he's willing to do something like that, I will gladly crosspost on CounterStory Media to amplify his reach! Everyone needs to see this information... it is critical that the truth be exposed right now.
Thank you for writing back. Lance is a political analyst. We both are working on providing people with strategic thinking in order to defeat a global fascist coup.
Keep up good work. Sincerely mzr (my initials)
Hi Melissa! My last name is also Corrigan! I loved this article and all the research that was involved. Its people like you that we need to keep educating others on the dangers ahead of us in this new administration. I am subscribing to your page and found you on Medium as well. I try to keep up with writing my own blogs as well. Thanks again.
Please review your assumption about the American people. The MAGAs are a noisy minority in electoral terms. America voted for Kamala Harris, just like we saw in the rallies, when Trump couldn't fill a school hall. People lined up to vote in motivated numbers, including Republicans voting for Harris. The election was rigged. Just look at this website.
https://electiontruthalliance.org/about-us
His face makes me puke
Yes, you hit the nail on the head. I'm working on another piece outlining the road so far & beyond. I'll link to your stuff, as well as others like you who do the research so the rest of us don't have to. Thanks for this.
I pray this isn’t naïveté talking but in this Trump order, as in many others, I predict failure.
Too many of his appointees seem under-qualified to operate a lemonade stand. Where does he find the expertise to develop, staff and run a massively expanded federal law-enforcement agency? Where especially given that Trump’s primary hiring criterion is loyalty to *him* and know-how be damned?
Even if he could, which I doubt, where will the money come from? For all his hype of “invasions,” there’s nothing here analogous to 9/11 for opening up a federal spigot with general assent to spend and spend on national security. The GOP majority in the House is wafer-thin; what programs get butchered or tossed overboard to pay for the Big Bad HSTF?
What programs that benefit red-state constituencies, that conservatives might balk at gutting to pay for such foolishness? The so-called pennywise are now running Congress.
They’ll nod at Trump’s rhetoric when it doesn’t cost anyone anything. Will they continue to nod when they review the budget request?
Will they have time? He can sign executive orders mandating that the Potomac be drained with Dixie cups but that might take a while. So too would creating a balls-out HSTF, and the mid-terms are historically rough on sitting presidents. With a narrow majority of Democrats in the House in 2027, another Trump pronunciamento goes spiraling down the bowl.
And then there’s due process for illegal immigrants; state attorneys general and the ACLU, among others, armed to fight tooth and claw in sympathetic courts; the filibuster, a Republican favorite we’re about to see Democrats embrace; and institutional rivalry among law enforcement agencies that Orange Julius Caesar can’t dissolve with the stroke of a Sharpie.
Especially since, with good reason, the rank and file in the Justice Department tend to hate his guts, and he can expect nothing in the way of an enthusiastic buy-in from the FBI. To the contrary: Every fast one he and his crowd tries to pull will be leaked to anyone with a notepad and a pulpit.
Trump’s MO is of course to be brazen and more brazen still and see what he can get away with. I’d guess he’ll keep yammering about this order without much success, while his true passion is and will remain crookedly enriching himself and his cronies.
Right, I'm hoping the same thing. Another aspect is simply the rhetoric of it all. Get these radical ideas into the national discourse, pushing said discourse even further to the right. At first blush, 'detention centers' sounds crazy and inflammatory. After it's been in the news cycles for a while, and given the ol' GOP spin through the right-wing media outlets, it may sound more and more normalized. Part of my concern in this flurry of EO's, along with the lack of sufficient time for experts to comb through each and every one, is the overall rhetoric pushing even more right and normalizing non-normal shit.
Your concerns are valid. His approach has consistently been to throw a truckload of it at the wall and see what sticks. What was that? What’s next? Who can keep track?
But his opposition has had years to prepare for what might pile up and what else he might start flinging. I’m not sure what parts of it (if many) come as anything like a surprise.
He’s spent an adult lifetime double-dealing and transgressing and challenging those he’s wronged to take him to court.
A lot of what he’s been spewing is more of the same, except now he’s doing a nation’s business and his adversaries are better equipped. And they’re the ones who matter, not some cracked court of public opinion buying his bullshit about the delta smelt while Southern California burns.
What helps that opposition is that he’s unhinged; a Reagan appointee insulted Trump’s lawyers out of court when their boss tried to unwrite birthright citizenship from the Constitution.
The judge all but said fuck you and the brokeback presidential horse you rode in on.
I was giving what I could to Democrats in the months leading up to the election. They keep asking in text messages but I’m now giving what I can to the American Civil Liberties Union.
I don’t know if the HSTF will get on any docket — but many of the battles that matter for the next two to four years will be won or lost at the bench, while CNN and Fox drone in the background.
Under qualified is the strategy.
I stopped reading when it went into detail about non government employees being targeted. I was named after my great aunt who was killed in the camps along with most of her brothers and sisters. My bubbe was lucky enough to escape on a boat to Canada after being turned away in the US. There is something very wrong with the US education system that we have reached this point.
Trump is a Fascist!!!
Thank you for your words, Melissa. I truly get that they were difficult to write. Thank you that much more!
Wow. Looks like world war three will be fought on American soil to free America.