The following is a template letter — use (or adapt) if you can:

Dear UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT:

We, the undersigned urge you in the strongest terms not to cave in to the demands of the Trump administration with respect to “remediation” for purported violations of federal civil rights law during the 2024 campus protests against Israeli actions in Gaza. These actions by the Trump administration amount to extortion under the pretense of combatting antisemitism, and a continuation of their campaign to silence dissent and control the free discourse that is enshrined in the Constitution. The Trump extortion ploy against universities is just a part of their broader effort to control speech that has included ideological vetting of exhibits at national parks and at the Smithsonian museums, detention and attempted deportation of individuals voicing opposition to Trump policies, firing of longtime and dedicated civil servants and removing agency data that contradict the Administration’s declared truths, and the defunding and intimidation of media organizations that disseminate facts contrary to Trump’s preferred story-line. This is flatly un-American, and the stuff of tyrants.

It is important to emphasize that we fully support true efforts to fight antisemitism, but find the Trump administration’s use of that pretext cynical and without any credibility. If Trump were truly interested in addressing antisemitism, he would not have entertained known antisemites at his home for dinner, used antisemitic tropes in public on multiple occasions, curtailed or eliminated programs intended to fight far-right extremism, and voiced support for right-wing and antisemitic protesters in Charlottesville Virginia, among other actions. In that spirit, where Jewish or Israeli-American students have in fact been threatened or felt threatened, there are many remedies and actions that can be pursued that do not simultaneously demonize or penalize those peacefully exercising their rights to speak and to protest.  

Moreover, protesting the abhorrent actions of the Netanyahu government in Gaza, where at least 60,000 people have now been killed and where Israel has mounted an enforced starvation campaign, is not in any way antisemitism. Protesting right-wing settler violence against Palestinian residents in the West Bank is not antisemitism. Such protests, in our view, are not only in line with a long tradition of Jewish activism for social justice, but are protests against policies and attitudes that will never bring peace to Israel or security to the Jewish people, in Israel or here in the U.S. Students had, and have, every right to engage in such protests without being accused of antisemitism, and you, as President of this venerable and prestigious university, should not allow the Trump administration to play this dictator’s game. It is wrong. It is cowardly. We must be better than that.

Do not let this university be yet another domino in a concerted campaign to quash the basic rights and freedoms that actually do make America great. That is how autocrats and dictators consolidate power. We entreat you, again, not to submit to this naked power ploy.

Signed (ADD HERE)

TRUMP IS MAKING AMERICA…WHAT? ANYTHING BUT GREAT

Dr. Common Good

Let’s review some of the key actions and decisions by the Trump administration over the past few months. Every single one of these actions has contributed to an America that has trampled its own values, forfeited any claim to world leadership in anything, turned the office of the presidency into a cheap, tin-pot grift, gutted our once-admired institutions of research and learning, and shredded any sense of fairness and justice for Americans at home. To wit:

• The consequences of Trump/Musk’s DOGE and continued cuts is a complete sham, and is a litany of wasteful, wanton destruction, ruining the lives and work of thousands of dedicated American public servants, and the functions of key organizations and agencies that actually did make America great, and that helped other people in need throughout the world (including USAID). As Bill Gates said, speaking of Musk, “the richest man in the world has killed the poorest people in the world.” Trump and his minions have been more than happy to gift the greedy and wealthy, at the cost of taking away basic food aid, health care, help for students with special needs, and many other supports for American people. 

• It could easily be said that Trump is in fact “making China great.” With the elimination of USAID and resulting pullout of the global USAID presence, guess who steps in? China. With the abandonment of a green energy agenda and reversing of support for green energy development provided by the Biden administration, guess who steps in to ramp up their domination of the green energy market? China. And when the vaunted US strength in research and academic institutions is thrown to the wind under the ridiculous logic of “anti-wokeism” or “anti-DEI,” who benefits? China and everyone else.

• Tariffs – Oh, how Trump and his minions lie about this! Once again, tariffs do not take money from the country that is the supposed target. They are extracted from whoever imports anything from that country. So, if I am a manufacturer and I import some of my parts from China, or from Europe, I will pay the tariff, not China or Europe. It is without question a tax on the manufacturers. Part of Trump’s big lie here? He and MAGA claim they are reducing taxes on businesses. Well guess what, it is in fact just a game of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Lower taxes, but raise tariffs. Either way, manufacturers pay more. Ford, for example, just announced that they expected to lose $2 billion in tariff costs – they have already lost $800 million. A second part of Trump’s Big Tariff Lie is that they are meant to penalize countries that have “treated America badly.” That’s a head-shaking fish story! Trump recently placed an additional 40% tariff on Brazil (for a total 50% tariff). Why? Because they had the decency to put former president Jair Bolsonaro on trial for staging an attempted coup after he lost the last election. Trump doesn’t like that, since Bolsonaro was one of his buddies in autocracy, and, well, because Trump himself fomented a coup after he lost in 2020. As is plainly evident, that is about Trump and his whims, not about US trade at all.

• Trump is assaulting science and general truth in a way no American president ever has. In the name of eliminating “woke ideology” he has directed the National Park Service (NPS) to scrub any references to slavery or anything else he deems a less-than-rosy picture of US history at NPS sites. He has even directed the Smithsonian to scrub references to his two impeachments in an exhibit about presidential impeachments. His administration has decimated university research funding, blocked international students, and his HHS head RFK Jr. has fired the expert CDC vaccine advisory panel and is now considering dismissal of the US Preventive Services Task Force. These are non-political, top-level scientific advisory bodies. His EPA, under Lee Zeldin, is seeking to reverse the finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health, which is stunningly ignorant and serves only the short-term interests of oil and gas producers. On August 1, Trump fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because the jobs report that came out this week reflected poorly on Trump’s economy. He then, with absolutely no evidence, accused the Commissioner, a veteran public servant who had served administrations of all parties, of politically manipulating the numbers. All of this is an Orwellian atrocity. And for those who echoed Trump’s allegations of “communist” and “socialist” with respect to Democrats, there is no more communist dictator-like action than to erase truth in favor of ideology, or in favor of self-serving lies.

• Trump and his administration are fully complicit in the horrendous starvation and genocide in Gaza, and the intensified settler violence against innocent Palestinians in the West Bank. His full support of Netanyahu and his right-wing zealot allies is unconscionable, along with his parallel effort to quash any dissent or objections to that policy in the US under the spurious, and cheapened, guise of antisemitism (using a definition of antisemitism that is ambiguous in referring to criticism of Irael as antisemitic). It is also a slap in the face to the long tradition of Jewish social justice and the real efforts to stop antisemitism – which, by the way, Trump does not actually care about, having supported and catered to antisemitic groups and individuals since day one.  

• Especially in this second term, Trump has engaged in corruption at a wild, unprecedented and public level: A few examples: 1) The doling out of pardons to criminals who managed to pay, or have someone pay for the million dollar a plate dinners at Mar a Lago; 2) The creation of a bitcoin scam operation which is essentially a pay to play scheme, using the presidential office to enrich himself – a cryptocurrency auction for an audience with the president; 3) Accepting the gift of a 747 plane from Qatar, in full violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, and stealing more than $900 million from funds intended to repair and upgrade our nation’s aging nuclear missile infrastructure to outfit it for his use – and, yes, it is for his personal use. He will keep that plane after his term, under the fraudulent ownership of the “Trump Library” (What library, one might ask? He does not read, and he does not write); 4) Opening the Executive Branch club in Georgetown, at a price of $500 million for membership, essentially a “pay to play” forum for wealthy individuals who want access to Trump; 5) He is now building a $200 million “ballroom” addition to East Wing, which he claims will be funded only by private money. In return for what? Why not take that money and use it to help with health care and food for the millions who will need it now that Trump’s budget has taken that away?

• Add to that list the absolute corruption of the judicial system via Attorney General Pam Bondi and her cast of loyal Trump acolytes, who have been using the Justice Department as a personal tool to go after Trump opponents. This is not what the Justice Department is for, and Bondi’s claim to be reversing the “politicization” of the Justice Department under Biden is a cynical fantasy for public consumption by the uninformed. And on top of that, the Trump “Justice Department” has skirted the normal and required Senate approval of US Attorneys by exploiting a loophole. The trick is to put in a loyalist acting US attorney, who does not need Senate confirmation (as acting), then when the legally allowed 120 day term for an acting US attorney is up, make that person the Assistant US attorney. When a new US attorney is nominated by the state courts, Trump fires that one, making the Assistant (and once Trump-loyalist) acting US attorney again. It is pure manipulation and corruption of the system. The confirmation of Emil Bove as a Circuit Court judge is another case – he was Trump’s personal attorney who committed numerous, documented violations of legal practice, and engineered the Mafia-esque deal with New York mayor Eric Adams to let him off the hook for corruption charges if he followed Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Bove also lied, flagrantly, to the Senate Judiciary Committee about these violations, a perjury offense in itself. Finally, Trump moved convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum security prison just days after she spoke with Trump’s Deputy Attorney General and former personal attorney Todd Blanche. She is under a 20-year sentence and was not eligible for such a move. What back-door deal was made here?

• In short order, Trump has laid waste to the critical network of global alliances that has helped keep America safe and strong since at least WWII. He has done this through his outrageous “tariff wars” even to our greatest friends and allies, by threatening to take over Greenland, Panama, and Canada), and by a moral and political reorientation of US support in favor of dictators like Putin, bin Salman, Nicholas Orban, and others, staining whatever claim the US has made to be the world’s strongest supporter of democracy and human rights. This disgraceful pattern is exemplified by Trump’s ignorant and malicious abandonment of Ukraine, which has not changed much even though Trump – for reasons of his own ego – has recently soured on Putin. 

• The thuggish, illegal, and capricious deportation of immigrants using masked shock troops and throwing due process to the wind. Despite Trump’s promised focus on immigrants who committed crimes, more than 70% of those detained have no criminal record at all. Many are legal US residents, who have contributed to this country and paid taxes for years. It is a public show of hatred and intimidation, masterminded by the ugly, power-drunk Stephen Miller, who has demanded that ICE deport 3,000 people a day, and has flooded the media with patently false claims about immigrants as criminals.

I could easily go on, and I will do so in continued posts. But I ask, what about any of this has anything to do with making America great? Trump likes to call everything that paints him as a villain a “hoax.” Well, here you go, folks. The biggest hoax of all is the Trump and MAGA claim to be “making America great.” 

TRUMP THE DUPE, AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR AMERICA

Dr. Common Good

On top of its mounting litany of illegal and authoritarian actions in the US, the Trump administration has shown itself to be a dupe on the world stage, to the peril of Americans and the well-being of our allies.

First, Trump, Vance and company have routinely shown themselves to be utter dupes, and fools, when it comes to Ukraine. What is the explanation for the Trump reversal of American support, in concert with our European allies, for the independence of Ukraine and its resistance to Russian aggression? We need not repeat the details, but on February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, not for any of the flimsy and specious justifications it has floated, but to take control over the country and return it to the Russian orbit. It was aggression, pure and simple, and a threat to Europe and NATO. The Biden administration understood this and took the right steps in galvanizing NATO and supporting Ukraine with weapons – though some would argue with too much restraint. Given the lessons of history, this would seem the obvious conclusion. But no, not for Trump, who has a history of idolizing Putin and his authoritarian ways, along with an appalling ignorance of history and venal, puerile narcissism. Trump turned on Ukraine, acting, against all evidence, as if it was at fault. He, and Vance, thus became chief spokespersons for Putin’s propaganda, and they continue, more or less, to follow this path. Complete dupes and fools.

Now, Trump and company have bombed Iran. Why? Iran posed no imminent threat to the US, a conclusion reached by our own intelligence services. Yet with no evidence, Trump dismissed those conclusions and just asserted that they were a threat anyway. Without being privy to all the possible intelligence on this matter, it very much appears that Trump, once again, is a dupe – and this time he is yanking the US into a potential war or at least a lengthy period of retaliation. This time, Trump is a dupe for Israel’s Netanyahu, who initiated the attacks on Iran several weeks ago, and very much wanted to rope in the US so that he could make use of the US “bunker buster” bombs to hit Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. Israel does not have those weapons. So, he played on Trump’s childish need to appear tough, and Trump has willingly complied, with no plan, no forethought, and utterly without Congressional notification or consent, continuing his pattern of violating the Constitution and the democratic process. Trump is an easy mark for such manipulation. It could also be argued that Netanyahu himself is using the Iran attacks to divert attention from condemnation of his disastrous policies in Gaza and his green light to violent right-wing settlers in the West Bank, who have significantly increased their attacks and land grabs against Palestinians. Simultaneously, the attacks on Iran divert attention from the threats he faces from his own corruption trials and internal opposition. It’s an old game. Netanyahu has been itching to attack Iran for many years, and there is no apparent evidence that Iran was at a more critical threat-point now than it has been in recent years.

History thus repeats itself. The selfish motives of leaders have and will generate conflict and war, and it is the broader populations who suffer the consequences.

As a democratic country, will we allow ourselves to be duped by the pure selfishness and vanity of Trump, who could care less about the broader consequences as long as his twisted personal needs are met?      

REFLECTIONS ON THE VIETNAM WAR ANNIVERSARY AND TODAY’S POLITICAL DIVIDE

Dr. Common Good

This 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War is a reminder of at least two streams of social sentiment that form what must be seen as key to the retrograde animus fueling MAGA politics.

First, since it is the anniversary, let’s look at the Vietnam War and its aftermath, still reverberating in the national consciousness. Most historical accounts are consistent in documenting the bipolar, Cold War worldview, and all the fears and hubris that implies, as underlying the initial framing of the Vietnam conflict as primarily another case of the Communist world pursuing its aim of global domination wherever a weak spot appeared. This was the raison d’ȇtre for George Kennan’s doctrine of containment. After the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, the Greek civil war in the late 1940s, the rise of communist parties in Italy and France, the Korean War, a series of anti-colonialist wars in Algeria and elsewhere in Africa, and the McCarthy era in the U.S, then came France’s defeat in Vietnam and the perceived likelihood that Vietnam was next on the target list. Without France there, the political leadership in the U.S. largely agreed that it was up to us in our assumed position as leader of the free world to stop that advance. But as U.S. involvement increased, along with the use of heavy bombing and more traditional heavy-force tactics, so did frustration that the North Vietnamese and Vietcong were not knuckling under. Casualties mounted. Political opposition grew, infused with an increasing belief that we were in the wrong, that we were bludgeoning the Vietnamese for just wanting to free themselves from Western colonial domination. The aims of U.S. involvement became muddled, resulting in a patchwork of policies and constraints on how the U.S. should prosecute the war – constraints that were often violated, as in the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos. The political divide erupted in riots and protests, sometimes met with violence. The right chafed and fumed at the constraints imposed on U.S. power, while the left railed against the abuses of U.S. power and human rights. And in 1975, the U.S. pulled out in what many on the right have viewed ever since as a humiliation caused or at least exacerbated by liberal/leftist politics.    

Second is the reaction among conservatives against government involvement in the basic support and protection of individual rights and well-being that began with the New Deal, then continued through Johnson’s Great Society programs, the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the environmental movements, and Supreme Court rulings on desegregation (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, and many others), right to counsel (Gideon v. Wainright, 1963), reproductive rights (Griswold v. Connecticut,1965, Roe V. Wade, 1973) and the separation of church and state (Engel v. Vitale, 1962), among others, all of which questioned and contested assumptions about racial and gender hierarchies, the unfettered exploitation of natural resources, family composition and life, the dominance of Protestant Christianity as the sole moral and social determinant of values, and even what a good life should look like. To some on the right, these represented doubts about America itself and about its core values. And to some of the most extreme among the right, these constituted a continuation of attacks against a romanticized, ante-bellum (pre–Civil War) pattern of life.

Put these two together, and you have two powerful sources of resentment and revanchism – against the restraints imposed on the exercise of U.S. power in the world as something akin to a divine right or manifest destiny, and against the political forces that disrupted an idyllic picture of American life in the 1950s and early 1960s that was (and still is) essentialized as white, Christian, and typically suburban or rural. This idyllic picture, of course, was never valid for African Americans and other peoples of color who were subjugated to Jim Crow laws and countless other brutalities and constraints. It was never valid for poor whites in the Appalachians, and never truly valid for most American women, among others. Anyone driving across the country in the early 1960s could have seen that. But if you look at the “culture-war” today, these same beliefs drive the anti-DEI, anti-woke, pro American power aims of MAGA, and the longstanding resentment against those – vaguely portrayed as woke, liberal, Eastern, elite, etc. – who have kept “real America” down and bastardized its raw essence. Globalism and internationalism are seen the same way, as constraints imposed by “weak” or elitist European political structures on the free exercise of Americanness. Trump and his cronies (yes, that is what they are) pull on, twist and provoke that well of resentment every day, no matter the damage it does to the country and our relations with the world, no matter how ridiculous and ignorant are the labels used (e.g., “communist” judges). Worse, the most vociferous MAGA devotees are clearly willing to shred the Constitution to regain that imagined America, even if it requires an authoritarian dictator to do so.

This is a divide that will not be mitigated by a recourse to standard political shibboleths. The question is how to meet, resist, and/or defuse this pernicious wave and preserve that which is in fact unique and admirable about the American experiment.   

THE GAZA WAR, ISRAELI SETTLERS ON THE WEST BANK AND FREE SPEECH

Dr Common Good

This will be a short post.

Let me make it clear. Opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza and the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is not antisemitism. This distortion needs to stop, and the unjustified, malicious, political and cynical suppression of anyone who voices that opinion needs to stop.

We can all agree that Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack was heinous and unforgivable. But the mass killing of 50,000 Gazans, which does not even include the larger number maimed and otherwise damaged, cannot in any way be characterized as just retribution, or as representing any conceivable military strategy to eliminate Hamas. It is a stain on Israel that will reverberate for generations. There is also little doubt that among the far right in Israel the Gaza War and the increase in militant settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank are part and parcel of a longstanding policy aim of Palestinian removal. This will only increase anti-Israel sentiment and Palestinian militancy.

I will put it this way, as I have before. It is entirely consistent to support long-term security and peace in Israel and to condemn what Netanyahu and his government has done, and to condemn the unrestrained violence of settlers – because these actions will never lead to peace and security.

So, to you who label as antisemitic people and groups who condemn these Israeli actions, you are falsely using the charge of antisemitism to shut down free speech and justified moral outrage. Shame on you. It is cynical, and undermines the real efforts needed to combat true antisemitism.

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CUTTING PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH MEANS CUTTING AMERICA DOWN

Dr. Common Good

I have been doing social and public health research for more than 30 years, and have never seen anything like the mindless, ill-informed, and yes, malicious cutting of grant and other public health funding that is occurring now. It is important for the public to read the language that is in these grant termination notices, and to understand the appalling and dangerous consequences of the mindset that is revealed. Here is what these letters say:

“This award no longer effectuates agency priorities. Research programs based primarily on artificial and non- scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness. Worse, so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans. Therefore, it is the policy of NIH not to prioritize such research programs.”

Let’s just take a look at some of this language:

“Amorphous equity objectives” – At least since the 1985 report of then-Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Margaret Heckler (the seminal “Heckler Report”) documenting the extensive and significant differences in health outcomes between African-American and white Americans, trying to understand and rectify these and other disparities in health have been primary goals for HHS activities, and a central tenet of the Healthy People national planning documents that come out every decade (the most recent being Healthy People 2030). There is nothing “amorphous” about this, and no one who has the slightest shred of knowledge could possibly make such a statement. Since the Heckler Report, a large body of research has documented a broad range of health disparities. For example: In 2022 (from the Kaiser Family Foundation 2024 report), infant mortality rates for African American women (10.9/1000) and American Indian/Alaska Native women (9.1/1000) were more than twice the rates for than they were for white/non-Hispanic women (4.5/1000); maternal mortality rates are also higher for American Indian/Alaska Native and African American women than for other groups; the total diabetes percentages for Asian non-Hispanics, Hispanics, and African Americans was significantly higher than for whites (from CDC National Diabetes Report, 2024); and white rural Americans fare much worse than their urban counterparts on a number of health outcomes (Efird & Griffith, 2025). Substantial research, over many years, has also documented the preventable, unequal conditions that underlie many of these disparities, which is the basis for the concept of health inequities. These conditions include lack of access to health insurance, poverty and associated stressors, discriminatory treatment in health care, unequal exposure to environmental pollutants, poor housing conditions, and others.  

“Antithetical to scientific inquiry” – Really? What could this possibly mean? The differences in health outcomes I just referred to are exactly what scientific inquiry should focus on. To serve the American public, and to improve the lives of Americans, we should want to know why such disparities exist and do our best to correct them so that the American ideal of liberty and justice for all is fully realized. It is difficult to understand why or how anyone came up with the idea that such inquiries are antithetical to science.

“Do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness” – This is simply nonsensical, if not madness. All research that helps understand the health and well-being of people in the United States and across the world by nature increases our understanding of living systems. Are we not “living systems”? This research has provided major, indeed historic contributions to advancing health, lengthening life and reducing illness, and most certainly provided immense returns on investment. There is not enough room in ten thousand pages like this one to document this, but a few examples should provide a clue – just think, for example, of the antiretroviral drugs that turned the tide of the once-fatal HIV/AIDS pandemic, the several COVID-19 vaccines that saved Americans and people all over the world from the ravages of that pandemic, or the mass prevention campaigns that contributed to the dramatic reduction in smoking here in the U.S., along with its associated cancers. All of these efforts were based on scientific research. What then could the author(s) of this sentence possibly have meant?

Finally, there is the wildly irrational obsession with the concocted spectre of “so-called DEI.” If the real-world data show dramatic differences between the health of one population group and others – whether those groups differ by racial categorization, ethnic background, gender, or geography (i.e., rural vs. urban) it is incumbent upon us as servants of the public good to know what is going on. There is nothing sinister involved. There is no “agenda” other than to improve the lives of all people. In fact, the opposite is true. Those who keep hammering the public with the “DEI boogeyman” are in fact using distortion and lies as an excuse to pursue an agenda of denial, to ignore the social differences that do exist and thus do nothing about them.  

These alarming and destructive funding cuts are harmful to the well-being of Americans and all peoples of the world, and they devastate the American research infrastructure that has heretofore been the envy of the world. It is light years from anything that “makes America great,” and is a fast track to making America an economic, social and intellectual backwater, and significantly weaker for it. The intentions and motivations represented in the language of these termination letters are purely ideological, and patently malicious. It is a gratuitous insult to the thousands of research professionals who have dedicated their time and their careers to making life better for others.

Shame on you, Trump administration. The American people need to know the damage you are inflicting.

THE PURE CRUELTY OF THE TRUMP/MAGA DESTRUCTION-FEST

Dr. Common Good

What is it that drives the vile cruelty of the Trump/Musk/MAGA horde? Really. So much that is just shockingly inhuman, unnecessary, and very little that has anything to do with increasing government efficiency. It is a sociopathic rampage. Just consider the following examples:

• The deportation of Venezuelans to a Salvadoran gang prison, with no notice to families or loved ones, no due process of law, and no justification, under the false pretext of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Armed ICE officers, storming into houses at any time, even late at night, yanking away anyone suspected of being associated with the Tren de Aragua gang, with no evidence whatsoever. It could be that someone simply has a tattoo. They are being taken to El Salvador’s infamous “Center for the Confinement of Terrorism” (CECOT) under a paid outsourcing agreement. CECOT is a mega-prison designated for the most serious gang members under the harsh regime of President Nayib Bukele. No visitors are allowed, no prisoners are even allowed outdoors. There is often no communication allowed, so loved ones have no idea what is going on. Imagine your brother, son, husband or whomever being snatched like that in the night. This is what happened under former dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, what happens in Russia, what happened in Assad’s Syria, what has happened in countless dictatorships throughout history. It is the “disappearance” redux. This is not the US as we knew it.

• The arrest and deportation of legal residents and scholars, like Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University and Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, with no criminal charge, just unsupported allegations of terrorist ties or expressing views in support of Palestinian rights. Again, the same brutal pattern – armed ICE agents, arresting people in their homes, without due process. These individuals are taken to a prison in Louisiana, again, often without access to communication. This is not the US as we knew it.

• Musk’s DOGE bullies are forcibly entering even non-government nonprofits like the US Institute of Peace and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (which receives a tiny amount of funding from the US government), to gut them or shut them down. Why? There is no, absolutely no justification related to efficiency or fraud. These actions are brazen and illegal. It is more of the same cruel, petty crusade to decimate any person or institution that does not fit under the MAGA authoritarian diktat. This is not the US as we knew it.

• Funding is being threatened and cut for so many government services that provide support for Americans who need help, including those on Medicare, children who only get meals through school lunch programs, students with disabilities, and veterans, to name a few.  

These and many other similar actions are taken with a certain public relish, a certain vengeful desire to inflict harm on those outside the MAGA orbit. It is a twisted revenge-fest fed and nurtured by the sociopathic victim fantasies of Trump, Musk, and what can only be described as the cult of MAGA. It is way beyond anything associated with traditional political parties or positions. It is not the US as we, or the world, knew it.    

STEPHEN MILLER’S UGLY IGNORANCE

Dr. Common Good

In a CNN interview on Monday March 17, Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller, an anti-immigrant rant personified, claimed that Trump’s recent deportation of Venezuelan immigrants using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act was not subject to judicial review. That law has only been used three times in the history of the U.S., and only in wartime. Over the weekend, U.S. District Court judge James Boasberg granted a temporary injunction against these deportations using that act, as it was only intended for wartime use and would open the door for detention and deportation of illegal or even legal immigrants without due process, a basic right. Trump ignored that injunction and deported the immigrants anyway. Miller fumed and flatly stated that the courts have no right to question or block acts that are within “executive authority.”

That is a five-alarm statement, and a blatant fallacy.

Basic constitutional law, and a foundational principle maintaining the separation of powers that was established in 1803 in the landmark Marbury vs. Madison Supreme Court decision, holds that federal courts indeed have the power to examine the constitutionality of legislative and executive actions. That is the principle of judicial review. It exists to guard against executive or legislative actions that undermine individual rights and democratic principles.  Again, this is basic American government.

So, are Stephen Miller and Trump rejecting that constitutional principle? Or are they just ignorant of essential American history and the nature of American government? Or do they simply not care, because they are bent on implementing an authoritarian version of executive power that is unprecedented in American history and which challenges the very nature of our system of government? Dr. Common Good argues that all three of the above are true.  

On top of that, equating the presence of gangs in the U.S. to an invasion, an act of war, is ridiculous, a “trumped up” justification — to use a phrase, and a pun that has taken on new meaning since Trump became president the first time. Who is the “country” or armed power that is invading? A brief look at MS-13, one of the gangs that has been included within the “invasion” rhetoric, tells a very different story. MS-13 was founded in Los Angeles (that’s right, here in the U.S.) for protection by Salvadorans fleeing the Central American civil wars in the 1980s — wars in which the U.S. was significantly involved. The gang was later exported back to El Salvador via deportations that resulted from changes in immigration policy, becoming established and growing amidst urban poverty in that country, and simultaneously expanding in the U.S. So, regardless of their criminality, MS-13 is domestic gang, not an invading force. Tren de Aragua, often mentioned in the news as a focus for deportations, is a gang that emerged in Venezuelan prisons in the early 2020s, and then began to expand into the U.S., and to other countries, as a result of the Venezuelan refugee crisis and migration. Again, criminal they may be, but they are not an invading force. This is the United States of America, still governed by basic constitutional principles. 

Clearly, none of these facts matter to the Trump clique of authoritarians. Following a pattern common to dictators, they are using crises of various kinds to justify decimation of our current system of government and the rights that go with it.

As I have said multiple times, continuation of the American project demands that we collectively put a stop to this travesty.