There Is No "America" Without Birthright Citizenship

Something has bugged the shit out of me about the whole attempt to end birthright citizenship for children born in the US whose parents are visitors or, dear heavens, undocumented migrants. And that's the way those who seek to gut the first section of the 14th Amendment, you know, the one that says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," keep wanting to tie it to what they say is the original intent: to make sure that freed slaves and their children are US citizens. 

Now, I'm not a historian of the Constitution and I'm not gonna give you my sub-Wikipedia summary of what I know about the Reconstruction Amendments or how the 14th Amendment is also a response to the heinous Dred Scott decision, but I can tell you this: if the congressmen and senators debating this in 1866 (it was ratified by the states in 1868) had intended it to only apply to the children of freed slaves, they would have fucking well said so. It's not like this country was shy about segmenting off populations in its founding legal documents. They decided "all persons," not "all those who were once bound to Service" (to use the language of the Three-Fifths Compromise in Article 1). 

The Trump administration's and their ideological fellow fucknuts' argument is, "Well, they meant slaves because that's all they were really thinking about then." It's what Donald Trump himself pissed out over on Truth Toilet: "We didn’t have people pouring into our Country from all over South America, and the rest of the World. It wasn’t even a subject. What we had were the BABIES OF SLAVES." It's what Solicitor General Dean John Sauer said to the Supreme Court this past week: "Our primary contention is that the Citizenship Clause related to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens who weren't even present as a discrete class at that time."

Now that's a motherfucker of a thing to say because if you take that logic with the 14th Amendment, that they couldn't have known about undocumented migrants because we didn't define immigrants as "legal" or "illegal," then how does that fuck with the other amendments? The authors of the Bill of Rights couldn't know that arms would advance to the point that one person with an assault weapon can tear the bodies of a classroom full of children to pieces. They just knew muskets, flintlock pistols, and various bladed things. And almost no one was gonna own a goddamn cannon. What about the First Amendment? Would they have been so keen on a free press and free speech if they knew that giant corporations and ultra-wealthy fucks were going to control the press and that certain points of view wouldn't get heard? A Thomas Paine ain't gonna publish enough pamphlets to overcome the Fox "news" shit wave. Maybe they would have guaranteed equal time or something. Who the fuck knows? 

In other words, it's a bullshit argument that is, as I said, undone by the fact that they could have limited it but they didn't. Indeed, despite the argument over the "subject to the jurisdiction" phrase, which has been ongoing for years on the savagely white nationalist right, the only way to get around the 14th Amendment is to argue that the children of undocumented migrants aren't actually "persons" by some weird and contorted mad legal reasoning, and, you know, I don't put it past these twatmites to pull that kind of shit and for at least Alito and Thomas to agree as they fellate whatever billionaire is funding their next vacation. (By the way, if they take away the humanity for one group, that can pave the way for shitcanning the rest of the first section of the 14th Amendment, which is about how habeas corpus rights are for every person, not just citizens or legal immigrants.)

But what galls me and what ought to gall everyone is this simple idea: the United States is what it is because of immigration and birthright citizenship. The very concept of "America" is that it's always been a mongrel nation pasted together by people from fucking everywhere, man, all, in theory, working towards that mythical "more perfect union." We're the only country in the world that has even attempted to do this. We're an incredibly diverse, and an incredibly inclusive country, and if you don't see that as a strength, then you don't actually understand who the fuck we are. 

And I know, I know, I fucking know that much of this exists in the realm of theory, not practice. I know that, in practice, this country has been dickish and oppressive and violent to every new group that came here (and that's not getting into how we genocided the indigenous population). Fuck, in 1856, the Know Nothing Party accused Democrats of getting Irish and German immigrants naturalized in large numbers so they could vote for James Buchanan (a plainly shitty president, by the way). Fuck, we have the concept of "illegal immigrants" because of a late 19th-century freakout over Chinese immigrants "taking our jobs" or some such shit (or, you know, racism). Hell, in this cursed century, we've seen the mass mistreatment in the United States of people from the Middle East, AAPI people, and the migrants from Central and South America. The vast majority of them are not coming here to fuck anything up or take anyone's jobs. Stephen Miller and his ilk don't believe in this country. We who want immigrants here and welcome them are the ones who do.

That concept is something to strive for. It's worth saying that, yes, we want you to come to this country and we want you to do amazing shit that makes your life better and perhaps the lives of others better and if you have kids here, awesome, they are citizens and they're welcome to the fuckin' party, man. Fucking hell, if I sound like I'm in some kind of punk-ass meltdown over this, it's because one of the few things to be genuinely proud of in this country is that idea, however imperfectly or even badly actualized, that we don't just welcome people from elsewhere, we fucking want you here. And I've seen that lovely idea betrayed over and over in our hysteria over migrants, almost all of whom just wanna come here, do some work, and live their lives, but I've never seen this shit that the Trump administration is trying to do in getting rid of birthright citizenship. We're not a white man's nation. We're not a Christian nation. We haven't been for a long, long time.

As SCOTUSBlog pointed out, during the hearing this week at the Supreme Court, "although the court’s liberal justices were the most outspoken in their belief that Trump’s order [ending birthright citizenship for some migrants] violates the Constitution, there was no support voiced by the other justices for Sauer’s contention that it does not." I'm not holding my breath that the conservatives don't dick the nation over as they have so many times before. But even Brett Kavanaugh was aghast at the logistics of what the Trump administration was asking for. Maybe even they see what we lose when we give up what makes us an actually great country. Or at least one that used to like to pretend it was.

Stop Buying Republican Bullshit on Immigration: There Is No "Invasion"

The red lights flashing the word "pretext" were turned up to 100 in a presidential "proclamation" last week (if by "proclamation," you mean, "a steaming, stinking heap of buzzwords guaranteed to make the yahoos go dick-punching mad with rage"). "Over the last 4 years, the United States has endured a full-scale invasion of aliens entering and remaining in the country illegally, causing a relentless onslaught of crime, vagrancy, violence, and death in countless American communities," it says. This "lawless invasion" has apparently made it harder to get into a hospital or go to school. 

Now, you, being a hopefully rational human or freakishly smart animal, might think, "Umm, isn't crime at historic lows?" And you'd be right. You might then question whether there is a "relentless onslaught" of anything but hard workers who commit crimes at a lower rate than the fucked-up Americans who are accusing them of committing crimes. In fact, even as the numbers of people crossing into this country at the southern border surged to record highs in the post-Covid era in the first couple of years of Joe Biden's presidency, the crime rate dropped, which, frankly, could be used to suggest that crime goes down when more migrants come here (I know that's not the reason, but I'm saying that the bullshit inferences politicians make can go both ways). 

Meanwhile, Republicans are going completely bugfuck insane on deportations and lies about our immigration system. Today, President Trump himself shat into his Truth Toilet, "Our Country has been INVADED by 21,000,000 Illegal Aliens, many of whom are Murderers and Criminals of the Highest Order, and if we aren’t allowed to remove them because of a radicalized and incompetent Court System, the USA will quickly and violently become a CRIME RIDDEN THIRD WORLD NATION, NEVER TO SEE GREATNESS AGAIN." And then he went on to scream about winning the 2024 election and how that lets him do anything he wants, as if that's how the fucking government in this country works.

Meanwhile, the man who is no doubt the infected cockhole creating the racist deportation policy, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who looks like he brags about how he jacks off to videos of starving Palestinian children, makes Trump look like a model of rationality as he screams on various news shows about how much he loves "Americans," which means, you know, "white people." He gave away the game on the rhetoric being used by the White House and the rest of the Nazi right. "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended at a time of invasion," Miller slurped lizardly. "So I would say that’s an action we’re actively looking at." And while the White House insists it's just for undocumented migrants, I mean, come the fuck on. Of course not. Of fucking course not.

See, that's the whole thing about the calculated use of "invasion." It's necessary to say that we are under some kind of coordinated attack in order to unleash the unchecked, unreviewable ability to simply jail, deport, kidnap, or, fuck it, murder anyone who gets in the way of the Christian nationalist takeover of the country, starting with the Alien Enemies Act and getting to martial law. And, no, I don't think I'm overstating it. I think with the arrest of Newark mayor Ras Baraka for trying to find out what the fuck is going on at an ICE facility in his own goddamn city, with the threats to arrest Democratic members of Congress who were there with him, and so much more, including the ongoing effort to disappear non-citizens who say things like "Israel shouldn't murder every Palestinian and take Gaza" (I mean, the war's end would limit Miller's spank bank), but I think with all that, I'm probably not freaking out enough, and I am freaked the fuck out.

What is encouraging about Democrats directly confronting the increasingly lawless actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs and their increasingly brazenly thuggish behavior is that it shows they are finally giving up on trying to stupidly appease Republicans on border policy. Simply put, there is no appeasing them without mass deportations and suspension of constitutional rights. It was stupid when Democrats shifted right with the proposed border deal that Trump got shitcanned last year, and it was stupid when they didn't counter Republican hysteria over every single individual crime committed by an undocumented person. Instead, they leaned into the shift in public opinion on immigration that the fearmongering had achieved and essentially gave credence to the GOP's lies in a moment when they should have said, "No, they are fucking liars." 

Take just one thing that Trump, Miller, and the rest of the liars use: the supposed war being waged against this country by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Remember how they supposedly took over the town of Aurora, Colorado? And Fox "news" and its devolved descendant news outlets went berserker over the idea? Yeah, you know how many gang members local cops in Aurora found there? A dozen in a city of nearly 400,000 people. Either the 12 gang members had a fucking nuclear missile or everyone was lying. Oh, and Trump tried to say that the Venezuelan government was sending these highly-trained drug dealers in to overthrow the country. But a leaked intelligence memo said that was fucking bullshit, as if it ever made sense that the estimated 600 Tren de Aragua cartel members in the United States are an actual threat. Yes, I said, "600." You can arrest them, you know, and give them their habeas rights and then incarcerate them, like you would any other fucking criminals found guilty.

I will say it again: There is no invasion. And it's some punk-ass bullshit to act like there is one, like the United States can't handle a handful of criminals.

Last week, Andrea Flores of FWD.us addressed Senate Democrats and told them that it's time to stop ceding the border issue to Republican scare tactics, that being MAGA-lite lost them votes, and that they needed to come up with actual solutions, not just shit like limiting asylum. They need to come up with paths to citizenship, support for due process, and more. That also includes getting funding for immigration courts while opposing funding for the savage actions of ICE. Hopefully, it's a message Democrats take to heart because if you allow that the savages have a point, then you're pretty much a savage yourself.

Hell, I'd start hammering away on the most blatantly racist thing I've seen in a while: the quick approval of refugee status for white fucks from South Africa. That's literal white privilege. The refugee program was shut down for anyone who was a shade darker than eggshell. But, here we are, letting actual apartheid lovers jump the line. That's an easy story to make people appalled.

Donald Trump on Meet the Press: Because Fuck You, America

Today, in his "interview" (if by "interview," you mean, "a psychotic head trip into a soulless abyss") with Kristen "I'm not a reporter, but I play one on TV" Welker on Meet the Press, President Donald Trump repeatedly told the average American to kiss his gargantuan ass. Time and again, offered a chance to provide comfort, reassurance, or any measure of empathy, Trump's answer was, essentially, "Everyone can fucking kiss my gigantic ass. Just plant your lips on it. There's more than enough room for all you suckers and losers."

You might have heard about the moment that he said that children can go fuck themselves. He insisted, repeatedly, creepily, that an 11-year-old "beautiful baby girl" doesn't need to own more shit. "I'm just saying they don't need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five," he said in response to questions about the effect of his tariffs. Later, pressed again on this point, he added, "We don't need to feed the beast." Now, I'm no fan of people being materialist assholes, but what the ever-loving fuck is he talking about? If a Democrat, like, say, Bernie Sanders, had ever said something as remotely anti-capitalist as this, the red feathers would have been tarred on them immediately by the GOP as they screeched about "Marxism" and "Communism" and probably Hunter Biden's laptop because, fuck it, they always do. It's the Benghazi of email servers. 

(And, by the way, 30? 250? Those are pretty precise fucking numbers. I'm betting someone's the dickhead grandpa bitching about all the things his grandkids have.)

Beyond that, look at the absolute disdain wrapped up in what he's saying. "You must do without," Trump's saying. "You must have less so that Elon Musk and I and all our billionaire friends can have more because fuck you. Fuck you for not being a billionaire. Now shut the fuck up before I limit it to two dolls and three pencils." 

That kind of abject hatred of people who have to make do with less than a gold toilet ran through the interview. When Welker brought up prices rising on basic things, like "Tires, strollers, some clothing," Trump found the idea ridiculous. "When you say strollers are going up, what kind of a thing? I'm saying that gasoline is going down. Gasoline is thousands of times more important than a stroller or some place?" Well, yes and no. A lot of people need strollers, which he'd know if he ever took care of a child. And he's lying about gasoline. 

Welker asked Trump if he would consider tariff relief for small businesses, and he scoffed. No, really, he scoffed, "Why do you always mention that. You know, you pick up a couple of little businesses. What about the car business?" Later, he said that he doesn't need to help small businesses because, through the magic of tariffs, they will make more money than they ever have. It's like he realized he said, "I don't give a shit about small business owners. How much money did they ever give me?" and had to throw them the bone of profiting in some undefined future when we have The Greatest Economy Ever.

It's not that Trump was telling Americans, "Let them eat cake." It's that he's telling us all the cake is for him and we can go fuck our selves if we don't like watching him stuff it down his gaping maw. Welker asked him about the price tag for his upcoming celebration of his tiny dick, the military parade he's forcing the armed services to do on his birthday. Like a toddler looking at dump truck toys, he responded that the cost is "Peanuts compared to the value of doing it. We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we're going to celebrate it." Yeah, to the tune of around $45 million. Trump take cake.

"Fuck you, America" was the theme of the interview, just like it's the fuel that's powering this cursed  administration. When Welker asked him, simply, straightforwardly, if he, as president, has to uphold the Constitution, Trump said, "I don't know." So Trump just said something that was so basic, so traitorous, that every American should be calling for his removal from office or the fuckin' guillotine. And he's such a little bitch about everything, constantly saying that shit is up to "the lawyers," as if he's not the goddamn president of the fucked United States. Man up and give an opinion, you dumb motherfucker.

Later in the bullshit interview, he left open whether or not he could run for a third term, which, you know, he can't unless there's an amendment to the Constitution. But he simply can't bring himself to say that he's term-limited because it would slow the fucking grift, like his "Trump 2028" hats. Trump said more legitimately anti-American shit on Meet the Press than Fidel Castro on a rum bender. Fuck, Castro's ghost was probably looking up from Hell thinking, "Oh, I wish I'd thought of that" before being sodomized with a giant lit cigar again.

This post could go on for another couple thousand words about the sheer abundance of ways that Trump demonstrated that he's an evil moron bent on the destruction of the country. But lemme finish with one more giant "Fuck you" to us all. Walking through Trump's whorehouse chic Mar-a-Lago shithole, Welker got Trump to talk about his future plans for his other residence. "We are going to make and build a ballroom, which they’ve wanted for probably a hundred years at the White House. And it’ll be a world-class, beautiful ballroom," he bragged. Now, the East Room has been used for dances and banquets and shit, but Trump wants to build a $100 million expansion to pimp out the joint like the aforementioned brothel. 

Trump says, at first, that he will pay for it. But then he adds a comment that gives the game away: "Yeah, I'm not going to ask the government for money. I'll fund it, and I'm sure we'll have some donations to it. But it's not an inexpensive thing. It'll cost a lot of money." 

He's gonna get a ton of bribe-donations to make his garish, loud, permanent impact on the seat of power. It will be corruption at levels we've never seen before, except for all the times Trump has done it. And no one will do a thing about it because fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck all of us.  

One Tale of How the Trump Administration Hates Americans

We can laugh as Donald Trump bumblefucks us all into oblivion, sleeping at Pope Francis's funeral, saying dumb shit all the time, not understanding what his own administration is doing, just looking like a shabby used car salesman at a lot near the airport in some godforsaken small Midwestern city. God, what an embarrassing buffoon. Meanwhile, Trump's savage minions, with his dullard approval, are regularly doing actual, real world harm, and not just in the huge, Constitution-breaking ways like denial of habeas rights in court or arresting judges. Sometimes, you have to dig a little deeper to see how fucking terrible life is going to be for the next few years, at least, in the devolving United States. 

For instance, in Lowndes County, Alabama, for decades, the mostly Black residents have been dealing with a wastewater issue, as in there is shit in their water and sewage that is emptied into lawns because of lack of "access to municipal sewage or a working septic tank." Yes, in the United States, we have billionaires riding giant dick rockets into the sky so they can play astronaut like deranged children, but we can't build the infrastructure needed so that thousands of people don't have puddles of human shit on their lawns. Residents in Lowndes County have tested positive for hookworm and other shit-related things. Fucking awful. As one commentator pointed out, "There is no greater concentration of hookworm-positive cases anywhere else in the developed world than Lowndes County."

Alabama wasn't doing, well, shit about the shit, so the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden investigated Alabama starting in 2021. The investigation was into whether Alabama, or the Alabama Department of Public Health, was violating the civil rights of the people of Lowndes County and forcing them to live in shit water because they're Black. And guess what they found? After 18 months, "the investigation revealed that ADPH’s enforcement of sanitation laws threatened residents of Lowndes County with criminal penalties and even potential property loss for sanitation conditions they did not have the capacity to alleviate. The investigation also revealed that ADPH engaged in a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with raw sewage. The investigation revealed that despite ADPH’s awareness of the issues and the disproportionate burden and impact placed on Black residents in Lowndes County, it failed to take meaningful actions to remedy these conditions." They found that 80% of residents lacked access to adequate sewage services. Reports in the media prior to 2021 showed children playing near pools of human shit. 

So Alabama and Lowndes County entered into an agreement with the DOJ and HHS in 2023 to finally fucking help the people there. To reiterate: The state of Alabama agreed to the terms of the agreement to take care of the shit water problem. It was an environmental justice victory.

And, of course, the whole thing was canceled by Donald Trump and his racist cockscabs. If you're wondering if they did it in the cuntiest way possible, well, you know the answer to that question. Here's what an Assistant Attorney General in the ironically named "Office of Civil Rights" at the Trump DOJ said: "The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens...President Trump made it clear: Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria." 

You'd think that making it so Americans don't live in actual human shit would be a general "justice" thing. But Black people don't have that right, even if they are the ones living in the worst circumstance and most in need of immediate action.

The state health officer in Alabama said they still want to go through with all the changes to the sewage systems and new septic tanks, but the projects depend on funding from the American Rescue Plan. He doesn't know if the funding of the program will continue. Why should he? The brute awfulness of Trump's war on Americans pretty much demands that he rescind any funds previously budgeted to help people who aren't rich dickheads. 

See, this is the problem with people saying things like "Well, fuck Alabama for voting for Trump." We only do that (and, yeah, I've been guilty of it when I've felt pissy) because of the bullshit anomaly of the electoral college, which forces us to think of the national electorate by state instead of as a nation. Over 68% of the voters in Lowndes County went to Harris. They very much did not vote for this. 

The whole situation is just the violent absurdity of claiming anything that is related to non-white people is done merely because of diversity, equity, and inclusion ideas. How the fuck is making it so that Americans don't have shit in the water wrong on any level or for any reason? If you have a problem with that, then you are the problem. As Rep. Terri Sewell, the congresswoman from the district, said, "This agreement had nothing to do with DEI. It was about addressing a public health crisis that has forced generations of children and families to endure the health hazards of living in proximity to raw sewage, as the DOJ itself documented. By terminating it, the Trump Administration has put its blatant disregard for the health of my constituents on full display.”

Sure, sure, you can pull out a megaphone and scream, "DEI!" and then smile as if you've accomplished  something. But all you've done is reveal that you hate Americans, especially non-white Americans, and you don't give a fuck who knows or how it hurts them. Until this administration is gone, the shit will keep flowing through our systems.

How the Fuck Do Some Democrats Not Get That Due Process Is the Fight?

You keep hearing this shit from some Democrats, often unnamed: the denial of due process for and the United States government's kidnapping of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is some kind of crafty "distraction" that Donald Trump and Republicans have conjured up. Just this morning, on CNN's State of Dana Bash's Concerned Face, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, after stating that what happened to Abrego Garcia is fucked up, said, "They're doing it because they want to distract people from the fact that our economy is in a tailspin thanks to them, their tariffs, the fact that you have got businesses that are looking at closing down or not investing, that costs are up, chaos is up, corruption is up, and the market is down."

And she added, "So, for the most cynical reasons, this is the case they have picked to not obey the law. Maybe one -- they will. All of a sudden, they will just send him back. Or maybe they will be held in contempt. I think it's really important for people to realize they're following the law in other cases. They have just decided not to follow the law with this guy."

Except she's completely fucking wrong. They're not "following the law" in other cases, and it's very much not just "this guy." Every single man who was sent to El Salvador was denied due process for removal from the country. In fact, it was so much not only "this guy" that the Supreme Court stepped in to say, "Whoa, whoa, motherfuckers. You can't send another planeload of people to another country without giving them their day in court." So I honestly don't know what the fuck Klobuchar is talking about. 

That aside, I can't begin to comprehend where the fuck this hesitation to jump into the fight on Abrego Garcia and the rule of law is coming from. Perhaps they fear that some magical thing will show up that proves Abrego Garcia is a human-trafficking leader of a terrorist gang and not an apprentice sheet metal worker raising three American kids with his American wife. But he would still have the right to due process, so what the fuck?

There's a strain of Democrats so devoted to making the battle over tariffs the main thrust of an attack on Trump and the Republican Party that they actually seem to believe that the White House cannily created this situation with the alleged "criminals" and "terrorists" they rounded up and shipped off to a hell hole in order to intentionally distract from the tariff madness. They can't see that what really happened is that Trump bumblefucked into a situation where his deluded cabal of moronic goons and dim, drooling racists stepped on their dicks repeatedly, shit the legal bed, and now are trying to hide that they bruised their dicks themselves.

So, no, Gov. Gavin Newsom, it's not "the distraction of the day. The art of distraction," as he said. It's not "a mistake to focus Democratic opposition on border and immigration," as one of those anonymous "operatives" told NBC News. In fact, it's not even about the border and immigration, and that's why it's a winning fucking subject.

Let me make this as clear as possible: People don't fucking understand the tariff situation. They just don't. Until prices start climbing and as soon as there are shortages of shit in the stores, most people won't get it. And, frankly, it's pretty goddamn complicated to explain. Yes, polls show that voters are concerned and believe it will hurt the economy, but until it does in a more obvious way than it has so far, they won't get it. And then, absolutely, go ape shit, Democrats. 

But you know what most Americans do understand on a gut level? Denying someone their constitutionally-guaranteed due process rights. We're talking a country where half the shit that everyone watches is some variation on Law and Order or true crime, all of which are about putting someone through the criminal justice system and getting a conviction or proving their innocence. Hell, when it comes to due process for legal immigrants, including those here on visas, the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans, are for them receiving a fair trial. A majority also supports due process for undocumented migrants, so, yeah, people do get this.

It's basic shit for Americans. We were all raised on pop culture of one sort or another that showed evil dictators or kings or queens condemning people without trial (Game of Thrones, anyone?). If this nation of historical idiots knows anything about this country, it's the Declaration of Independence, with its list of offenses against the people of this land committed by the British king, many of which Trump is literally committing or promising to commit again. You can see the discomfort in the face of Republican members of Congress, even some of Trump's most loyal ball-lickers, when they're asked about the disregard for due process and especially no due process followed by imprisonment in another country. Most everyone knows that's fucked up, but Trump is arguing in court and in the media that he should be allowed to disappear whoever the fuck he wants whenever the fuck he wants. 

Man, if a meatloaf like Joe Rogan understands how fucked up it is, then everyone gets it.

Trump and the ghoulish, sadistic Stephen Miller contingent want to pretend that this is about immigration and crime. But it very much isn't. It's about consolidating power in the president so that he can be a king or a tyrant or a supervillain or some such bullshit. It's about getting away with it with non-citizens so that he can unleash it on citizens, and that's so fucking easy to comprehend that it's a rhetorical gimme for Democrats.

Sure, keep up the attack on tariffs. But if Democrats take a stand on the principle that everyone, even Donald fucking Trump, even an immigrant with real (not photoshopped) MS-13 tattoos that also say, "I want to rape and murder you," even you and me, deserves due process, deserves to be able to defend themselves in court, deserves the things that have been the very foundation of not just this country, but of modern civilization, then people will get it. And, not for nothing, but they also get it if Trump defies the Supreme Court or, really, any court, and they don't fucking like it.

The party needs to unite around leaders like Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who went to El Salvador, met with Abrego Garcia, and came back to tell every fucking network today, including Fox, that we are supposed to guarantee constitutional rights, not strip them away at the whim of a mad king. And, for good measure, Van Hollen dick-punched Gavin Newsom by saying, "I think Americans are tired of elected officials or politicians who are all finger to the wind… Anybody who can’t stand up for the Constitution and the right of due process doesn’t deserve to lead." Fuck yeah. 

The Release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is the Issue We All Need to Rally Behind

After he was granted permission in 2019 to stay in the United States by an immigration judge due to the fact that he faced a genuine threat of being killed in his native El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia got work as a sheet metal apprentice in Maryland and joined the Local 100 of SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, a union with nearly a quarter-million members. Abrego Garcia was making a life for himself in this country, supporting his wife and three kids, including a 5 year-old with autism who is unable to speak. But on March 12, despite never having been charged with a crime, Abrego Garcia was picked up by ICE and shipped off to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, the notoriously deadly prison in El Salvador, which is likely filled with members of Barrio 18, the gang that harassed and threatened him and his family. The federal government claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, although that's based on one shitty informant and no evidence, and they also admit that he shouldn't have been kidnapped off the streets of Baltimore and trafficked to CECOT. It was "an administrative error," said lawyers for our skeevy government.

You might know most of this. You might also know that the US Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, said that the Trump administration had to, at the very least, facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia  with a timeline to be decided by a district court. Judge Paula Xinis quickly demanded that the White House provide daily updates on its efforts bring back Abrego Garcia, and, in its inimitably dickish way, the State Department said, "Yeah, sorry, he's in El Salvador now. We can't do shit." Again, you might know all of this because it's frankly one of the most frightening, extreme, and enraging things ever done by any president ever. I'll get to the implications of what the Trump administration said in a sec, but, at the most basic level, this was a blatantly illegal act, denying due process, which is what would have prevented the mistake. 

But even more instructive has been the reaction from Abrego Garcia's union, SMART: they are fucking pissed off about Abrego Garcia. The union held a rally on April 4 in support of Abrego Garcia and his family. SMART General President Michael Coleman, in a statement, tied Abrego Garcia directly to the rights of workers and to what is supposed to be the promise of this country: "In his pursuit of the life promised by the American dream, Brother Kilmar was literally helping to build this great country. What did he get in return? Arrest and deportation to a nation whose prisons face outcry from human rights organizations. SMART condemns his treatment in the strongest possible terms, and we demand his rightful return." Coleman has called on government to give Abrego Garcia his due process rights, and the union has a GoFundMe for Abrego Garcia and his family. The statement on the fundraiser says, "The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable."

At a gathering of the leadership and delegates of the North America Building Trades Unions, which SMART is a part of, the president of that organization of 3 million members, Sean McGarvey, loudly and angrily said that the union "means all of us. All of us. Including our brother, SMART Apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand be returned to us and his family now!" He slapped his hand on the lectern for emphasis, yelling, "Bring him home!" as the gathered audience of mostly older and middle-aged white men stood up and applauded and cheered. 

You got that? One of the biggest union groups in the country has made opposition to Abrego Garcia's kidnapping (and that's what it needs to be called because that's sure as shit what it was) a rallying point, and it's invited its millions of members to join in. Because that's what you do fucking well do: you stand up to the assholes who are abusing your fellow human beings. 

There's a lot to say about the clusterfuck of evil, incompetence, insanity, and brutality involved in the crimes the American government has committed against Abrego Garcia, up to and including the ignoring of the clear orders of the Supreme Court and the district court by the Trump administration. There's a lot to say about how grimly ludicrous it is that no one will just say, "Oh, shit. Our bad" and bring him back, which would lend some minor bit of credibility to the entire cruel exercise of totalitarian power. There's a lot to say about the entire savage exercise of essentially sentencing migrants to prison with no due process and sending them to a place where they will have no rights and then saying, "Ah, well. They now are only El Salvador's problem" (and that goes for all the ones who are allegedly Venezuelan gang members -prove it, motherfuckers). There's so much more to say in general; I'll just add that there's also one hell of a story to be written about how some of our prisons in the United States are as bad as CECOT.

But if you were in an opposition party or a group of resisters to the fascist fuckery eating this nation alive, I'd be centering Abrego Garcia's imprisonment as a single thing worth uniting to rally over. It's one of those stories that is easy to comprehend, easy to be on the right side of, and easy to come up with what you want to happen: ICE kidnapped a father of American kids and husband of an American wife who was here in the country legally, lied about who he was, and sent him to prison without charge or trial to the country where violent assholes want him dead. Then they admitted they made a mistake and refuse to correct it. And all we want is for him to come home. There. It's fucking easy. You can get a few hundred thousand union workers pissed off about it, too. To their credit, Democratic lawmakers are speaking out, but we need more, much, much more.

Every cause looks for the incident that lights the fuse on the metaphorical explosives that will make the movement erupt into an unstoppable force. This is the kind of shit that is so egregious, so blatantly awful, so clearly unlawful, and so obviously arrogant that it'll piss off people even beyond the usual cadre of marchers and clever sign creators. Again, the president of a major coalition of unions is ready to go to the wall about it. SMART keeps posting about Abrego Garcia. The fuse is there. Light that fucker.

Hell, use the refusal by Donald Trump to pick up the fucking phone and telling the government of El Salvador, who we're paying to keep our hostages, to send him home as a sign of Trump's weakness. Mr. Art of the Deal can't get a deal on this? Or is Trump just the bitch boy of dictators? Or maybe Garcia was treated so awfully not just in CECOT but while in the custody of the United States that they can't allow him to be able to tell just how much we're abusing innocent people in our fast slide into authoritarianism.

Maybe rallying for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia won't light that fuse. Maybe it won't accomplish anything beyond getting him back to this family. But, goddamn, that's a pretty big victory. And it points to how we can fight back against these vicious motherfuckers intent on ripping up everything this country ever pretended to stand for. 

Democrats Have Stories to Tell (and Cory Booker Helped to Show How To Tell Them)

Mostly, what you've heard about Cory Booker's marathon floor speech in the Senate that started Monday evening and didn't end until over 25 hours later is that it was the longest speech in the history of the chamber and that he called out President Donald Trump and Republicans for their bullshit. But one of the key things that Booker did was make a case for the necessity of Democrats and Democratic policies by telling the stories of some of the people who have written to him about what they're going through. These include people who say that Medicaid saved their lives like a veteran who needs mental health treatment or the mother of an adult son with Down syndrome who gets all kinds of help from government programs that are on the chopping block. He read a letter from the head of an association of rural hospitals about how those will be decimated and have to shut down if Medicaid cuts go through. He read a letter from a researcher about the effects of gutting the NIH. So many stories. 

Booker was saying that Democrats have stories to tell. Republicans get out there and ghoulishly parade victims of violence committed by undocumented migrants and act like that's the only thing that the government should give a damn about. The most effective Democratic ad of the 2024 election cycle involved women who were hurt by the savage abortion laws. Tell the fucking stories. 

But there are so many other stories that Democrats need to tell, big stories about who we are as a country, a good many of them political, and they shouldn't shy away from getting that narrative out there.

Take, for instance, Trump and his fucknut cabal insisting that shit is being done because of some mandate by the American people due to his election. That's only part of the story, though. They elected Trump to be in charge of one area of the government. And while, yes, the House and Senate have majorities of deranged Republicans who climb over each other to demonstrate how they can lick Trump's taint better than other Republicans, it's not just Republicans who were elected. Democrats have a story to tell about how they were elected, too, and how those Democratic representatives and senators have a mandate to defend their constituents. They have a story to tell about the role of Congress and how Republicans are abdicating that role. And this is not to mention that 23 states, which have the majority of the population, are led by Democrats. They have mandates. The point is that it's fucking absurd for Trump's lackeys to constantly say that everyone, every elected official, every member of the media, every judge, hell, every American needs to knuckle under Trump's tiny thumb because he won an election. Yeah, that gives you a third of the levers of power, bitch. 

There are so many stories that Democrats can tell. They can talk to the country about how the United States is simply not in any emergencies that would require Trump to use emergency powers. They can tell the story of how the flow of migrants into the country has never reached a crisis stage that requires deporting people on visas for protesting. They tell the story about how the economy was, in fact, doing amazingly well and that the new tariffs (or just call them "sales taxes") are not a response to any-fucking-thing at all. They can tell stories of how diversity strengthens the country and that inclusion means special needs and disabled people being treated with the respect they deserve.  Yes, the left and center need their own media ecosystem to contrast with the firehose of flaming shit from the right's media meat grinder. But stop letting Republicans be the only people whose stories matter. Don't respond to their stories. Tell your own. Give people new stories. And tell the stories of migrants, the supposed "good ones" that Trump wasn't going to go after, and of small businesses and of families who have special needs kids, all of whom are being tossed in the Trump/Musk shitpile. 

And, fucking hell, give people hope by telling them the story about how we can return to normal, how it's not supposed to be like this. The way to do that is to tell the story about how Republicans fucked this country in two short months and that every day they are left in office is going to make it take longer and longer just to get back to where we were on January 19. Jesus, that was what the protests this Saturday were about: just let us fucking live our fucking lives like we were, not in whatever fucked up, cynical, nihilistic, destructive way is being forced on us for no fucking reason. 

I'm not saying Democrats haven't done any of this kind of storytelling. Kamala Harris did a lot of this kind of thing when campaigning, especially the idea of ending chaos. That was a start. Some, like AOC, are doing it now, and we need more. I keep saying to Democrats: stop playing on the Republicans' home field. Stop being the visiting team in your own country. 

Getting back to Cory Booker, I saw him at the Hands Off protest I went to in New Jersey. Unlike his reasonable and emotional marathon speech, this was Booker fired up, raging with a growl in his voice about how fucked things are. He was bringing us into the story he was telling. He said, "When they come after immigrants, when they come after our gay kids, when they come after our healthcare for those who are struggling, we all have to stand up and say, 'They’re coming after me. They’re coming after us.'"

Tell the fucking stories. Tell the stories that inspire. Tell the stories that enrage. Tell the stories that get us into the streets more and more. We have the American story, in all its fucked up horrors and glorious triumphs. Own it all and tell it all or there's not going to be any story left but the comforting lies and sinister hatred that we are bombarded with now.

(Note: Yes, you are very smart to point out that Booker votes to fund Israel's war on Palestine. Yes, that sucks. We still need him. You still need him. Suck it up and stop fucking acting like Democrats are the same as Republicans, you dumb fucks.)