I still love America
Only 1,292 days to go...
Thought for the day in honor of his birthday…
“America is not just a power; it is a promise. It is not enough for our country to be extraordinary in might; it must be exemplary in meaning.”
~ Nelson Rockefeller
Relatives of mine, who live in Europe, were visiting for the 4th of July. They were amazed at how normal everything seemed in Chicago — I think they were expecting to see masked ICE agents running unchecked in the streets. But then again, they were staying on the north side near Lincoln Park and not hanging out in the Pilsen neighborhood.
It’s all perspective, isn’t it? I live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and spent the 4th looking out from my deck feeling incredibly grateful for my life and the way I live. Not too far away, people are hiding in their homes because of the fear of being snatched off the street.
Also on the 4th of July, Trump signed the GOP’s massive tax and funding cuts bill into law in an outdoor ceremony attended by hundreds of supporters and military jets flying over the White House. Based on recent reports and analyses of the Big Beautiful Bill, the annual average funding allocated for U.S. immigration enforcement (ICE), surpasses Israel's recent military budget.
The newly minted law will fund many of Trump’s domestic policies, including his immigration crackdown, resulting in nearly $170 billion to support the administration’s border goals. The final bill allocates $45 billion for immigration detention centers, around $30 billion to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for transportation costs, and to maintain ICE facilities. (Source: Vanity Fair)
And yet, 65% of People Taken by ICE Had No Convictions, 93% No Violent Convictions
ICE’s deportation agenda is not what is being advertised to the American public. New nonpublic data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind. Also, among those with criminal convictions, they are overwhelmingly not the violent offenses that ICE continuously uses to justify its deportation agenda.
We are A Nation of Immigrants.
Why is this happening? It’s hard to comprehend or even understand. These are our neighbors and essential members and contributors to our communities and economy. And yet, apparently over 40% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling immigration. I find that number rather horrifying and actually pretty depressing.
What are they afraid of? There has been an Escalation of Hate.
A policy of cruelty that has permeated our federal government. Just look at the social media posts that our tax dollars paid for:
“I still love America. And yet, with each passing day, my love feels more nostalgic, like the affection you feel for the past incarnation of a friend who, having taken a wrong turn in life, has grown unbecomingly bitter—one that you’re incapable of letting go even though a big part of you feels you probably should.” ~Yascha Mounk
I am trying to remain hopeful and positive. I often reflect on how lucky I am to live where I do and to love where I came from. Though my family goes back to the colonial times, like most folks, they came to this country as immigrants looking for the promise of a better life.
I’m not ready to give up on that promise or, for that matter, my love of America.
Quote of the day…
“What’s really ugly is state-based cruelty in service of right-wing politics. We know the President loves to be a schoolyard bully, but at age 79, it’s time to cut it out. It’s one thing to steal one kid’s lunch money, but his monstrous bill steals lunch money from millions of kids in the SNAP program.”
~ Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD)
Articles I recommend…
The Godfather Presidency: How Donald Trump’s Governing Style Mimics the Mob
Time and again the courts, including the Supreme Court, have told him to desist, though they have no power of enforcement. There has been wreckage all along the way. But he also has achieved something no one else has. He has brought Tammany-Mob rule to the pinnacle of American politics and power. Even the mighty Capone was brought down by the government. Trump, in contrast, has made the executive branch, indeed the three branches of US government, his. And he has done so swiftly, effectively, and in a manner that makes him—to use a Prohibition-era phrase applied to Eliot Ness, the G-man who pursued the country’s most menacing gangsters—for now, at least, untouchable.
As for the fallout from all of this, that’s entirely another matter.
…There is a direct relationship between the existential smallness of the man and how small he tries to make others feel, which is why Donald Trump has spent his entire life on the road to Smurfdom, destined to forever feel, however secretly, small and blue….
Trump is out there insisting that he is the greatest president since George Washington—and maybe greater than Washington, too. Eisenhower, who at the apex of his military career outranked George Washington, knew that he would lie in state after his death and insisted that he did so in his regular army uniform, in an $80 standard-issue soldier’s coffin, with a minimum of decoration rather than the full Nork-style fruit salad. (Specifically, only his Army and Navy distinguished-service medals and the Legion of Merit.) Who doubts that Donald Trump will be entombed in whatever Tutankhamun would have dreamed up if he’d had Liberace to consult?
The American Revolution Was a Really Big Deal
The birth of the United States of America was not merely the most important geopolitical event since the fall of Rome, or the most important intentional political event ever (Rome’s fall wasn’t exactly a planned-out exercise). It was the signature catalyst for the real-world realization of various Enlightenment principles like democracy, human rights, free speech, and representative government. The unfolding success of that experiment over the subsequent two-and-a-half centuries—with America becoming the single most influential and powerful country in the world—lends even more weight to the momentousness of the American Founding. And it certainly ranks among the most consequential events in all of human history, political and non-political alike.
…Tragically, Trump’s enormously corrupting influence on American society has turned out to extend beyond the ranks of his most ardent supporters. The transformation of the left and the mainstream—of equal concern to me, if only because these are the milieus which once constituted “my” America, the part of the country in which I felt at ease and at home—has in some ways been just as striking…
As a card-carrying expert who taught international relations for more than three decades, I can affirm the president’s assertion that we do, in fact, live in a nasty world. But as a patriotic American, I have a bit more trouble with the idea that the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China are just two bad kids on the playground.
The Republican Fever Must Break
In today’s Republican Party, voting your conscience is essentially disqualifying…
….the party under President Trump. Any deviation from his dictates is treated as apostasy. It’s no longer about ideas or governing philosophies. It’s about personal allegiance to a single man, whose positions can shift by the day...
…absolute fealty to President Trump — something that often requires toeing a constantly shifting line and frequently leads away from responsible governance…
…the deeper concern isn’t about any single congressional race or even the balance of power in the Senate — it’s about the long-term health of our political institutions. As senators like Thom Tillis step aside, the chamber grows ever more polarized. There are fewer and fewer members willing to reach across the aisle, take tough votes or engage in the quiet, unglamorous work of real legislating.
Temporary status to be removed from roughly 80,000 Hondurans, Nicaraguans after 25 years in US
The Trump administration is ending the temporary status for nearly 80,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans that has allowed them to live and work in the U.S. for a quarter of a century after a devastating hurricane hit Central America, according to federal government notices — a move that comes as the White House pushes to make more immigrants in the U.S. eligible for deportation…Temporary Protected Status is a temporary protection that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people of various nationalities who are in the United States, which prevents them from being deported and allows them to work. The Trump administration has aggressively been seeking to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal.
A Vermont dairy farm was raided.
The owner of the farm declined to comment. But Brett Stokes, a lawyer representing the detained workers, said the raid sent shock waves through the entire Northeast agriculture industry.
“These strong-arm tactics that we’re seeing and these increases in enforcement, whether legal or not, all play a role in stoking fear in the community,” said Stokes, director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
That fear remains given the mixed messages coming from the White House. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the U.S. illegally, last month paused arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels. But less than a week later, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said worksite enforcement would continue.
An increasing share of American adults are going hungry
More Americans are going hungry, per new data from Morning Consult. It's a shocking data point for the wealthiest country in the world, and comes at a time when the stock market is hitting record highs and President Trump just signed a bill slashing food benefits. The rise is like a slow-moving train wreck, says John Leer, chief economist at Morning Consult. "There's such a disconnect now between record highs on Wall Street and elevated levels of food insecurity." The share of adults who tell Morning Consult in monthly surveys that they sometimes or often don't have enough to eat — or are food insecure — has been creeping up over the past several years. In May, 15.6% of adults were food insecure, almost double the rate in 2021. At that time Congress had beefed up SNAP benefits and expanded the Child Tax Credit driving down poverty rates, and giving people more money for food. The rate appears higher than pre-pandemic levels.
As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas
Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.
Texas officials appeared to blame the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But former Weather Service officials said the forecasts were as good as could be expected, given the enormous levels of rainfall and the storm’s unusually abrupt escalation.
The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said — the loss of experienced people who would typically have helped communicate with local authorities in the hours after flash flood warnings were issued overnight.
(an article from May’s Scientific America: How Trump’s National Weather Service Cuts Could Cost Lives)
Texas floods reveal limitations of disaster forecasting under climate crisis
Though it’s unclear to what extent staffing shortages across the NWS complicated the advance notice that local officials had of an impending flooding disaster, it’s clear that this was a complex, compound tragedy of a type that climate warming is making more frequent.
Rainfall intensity in central Texas has been trending upward for decades, and this week’s rains were enhanced by the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which made landfall in northern Mexico last week. Barry’s circulation pulled record amounts of atmospheric moisture up to central Texas from the near-record warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Turmoil, worry swirl over cuts to key federal agencies as hurricane season begins
Experts are alarmed over the large-scale staff reductions, travel and training restrictions and grant cut-offs since President Donald Trump took office at both the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which prepares for and responds to hurricanes, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which tracks and forecasts them.
“My nightmare is a major catastrophic storm hitting an area that is reeling from the impact of all of this nonsense from the Trump administration and people will die. And that could happen in Florida, that could happen in Texas, that could happen in South Carolina,” said Susan Cutter, the director of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.
The Biggest Coverup of the American Revolution
…Surely, we are old enough now—nearly a quarter of millennium—to handle the self-evident truths of our beginnings….
Russia Is Driving Europe’s Remilitarization, Not Trump
Europeans had grown alarmed about the potential military threat from Russia, whose forces persistently violate European airspace, territorial waters and cyber boundaries. More to the point, Russia’s military spending has exploded in recent years. Analysts are convinced the war in Ukraine is not the only explanation.
Russian defense spending jumped 42 percent last year to $166 billion, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, making it higher in purchasing price parity—$462 billion—than the spending of all European countries combined.
…it should not be surprising that a man who built a career on scams, cons, grifts, and swindles has fundamentally reoriented the US government’s approach to corruption. It isn’t just that Trump has ramped up his own personal self-dealing (though he most certainly has), or that his administration is tolerant of conflicts of interest in other officials (though it is). Just as important, Trump is enacting a sweeping set of policy changes that will make it more likely that Americans will themselves be the victims of all kinds of scams…
Trump lies so much that the media has just stopped covering it. Don’t have a list handy?
Use this one:
Trump has not made trade deals with “200 countries,” partly because there aren't that many countries on the planet. But mostly because he's full of sh*t.
Trump’s missile strikes did not “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear sites. And yes, there are pictures to prove it.
The war in Ukraine was not “ended on day one.” And no, Trump was not “being sarcastic” when he said that. That’s why he publicly made the pledge 53 times.
Grocery prices are not “way down.” In fact, they’re up.
Medicaid is not protected (just look at Trump’s Murder Bill for this one).
The wall is not completed. In fact, it’s not even halfway done. And Mexico is not paying for it.
Trump’s first full month back in office did not have the lowest number of illegal border crossings in American history. Has he ever read a history book?
Trump’s military parade did not have 250,000 attendees. We’re not even sure it had 10,000.
Trump did not successfully negotiate a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. And if he did, it only lasted two hours.
Trump’s approval rating is not “higher than any president at this point.” It’s at 37%.
These are ten of our favorites. But believe us, there are thousands more.
(source: The Lincoln Project)
Trump is a terrible loser. This is known. But, as we also know, he is also a craptacularly ungracious winner. And so we got this: “Trump Kicks Off Celebration of America by Declaring His Hatred for Democrats”
Taking to the lectern behind thick bulletproof glass in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday, Trump immediately started firing off political potshots. “They wouldn’t vote only because they hate Trump, but I hate them, too, you know?” …
“I really do. I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country.”
Exit take: Once upon a time (and many of you will simply have to take my word for it), we had presidents who at least pretended to represent all Americans and tried to unite the country, if only briefly. Good times.
What I am watching…
not far from where I live….
What I read every day…
