I took off this week to come to Gaeltacht — one of the small areas on this wee island in which locals still use Irish on a daily basis — to try to learn more Gaeilge.

It’s a curious place to spend the Fourth of July.

When I decided to come here it meant little more to me than a place I could immerse myself, sort of, for a week. The blurbs said little more than that the school offered both language classes and cultural classes — things like harp playing and weaving and folklore. But being here, it has the feel of one of the Jesuit retreat centers at which my late mother guided retreats: in a stunningly beautiful remote location, where you can hear and often cannot escape from the wind and — on the occasional clear day — see the stars, and a whole rhythm to the day to facilitate a kind of contemplation.

It is a place people come to contemplate Irishness or perhaps to use Irishness as a means to contemplate.

A storyteller who performed the other day spoke about the rhythm of it all: the rhythm of the language, of the music, of the verse, of the dance, of the weaving.

It’s a place where people — Irish people, people who identify as Irish, and people who take meaning from Irishness — come to preserve and participate in those traditions that sustained Irishness during colonization. Both because of that “Saving Civilization” bit (one of Ireland’s founding saints lived here for a bit and, as is true of many places on the coast, there’s an island nearby with an old ruined monastery) and because of the recurring Irish effort to build a nation out of the oral tradition that refused to be stamped out by the British, Irishness serves as a celebrated from-ness, to people far and near, even if (and if we’re honest, partly because) Ireland went through a lot of death and misery to get there.



And so it is here in this beautiful place of from-ness that I look west and contemplate a celebration of the Colonies’ break from the same empire from which Ireland would, eventually, free itself too, free itself in significant part by building on that oral tradition. As cities cancel the celebration of defying Kings because a white man who wants to disappear all the diverse from-ness that Made America Great has started disappearing actual people, I am thinking about how this from-ness in which I’m immersed (sort of), is what my ancestors and those of millions others brought to America to make up an identity called Irish-American. That process of bringing a from-ness to (or, for Native Americans, sustaining it in) America has been replicated in thousands of ways. The part of America that is Great is the one that weaves all that diverse from-ness together into one tapestry.

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The former head of the US Copyright Office has pushed back against arguments from President Donald Trump's team that her dismissal was lawful.

Shira Perlmutter was ousted after the US Copyright Office released a report challenging the limits of the "fair use" defense used by AI companies to justify training their models on copyrighted material.

In a filing [PDF] to support her attempt to obtain a preliminary injunction this week, Perlmutter argued that her removal was unlawful and caused her immediate and irreparable harm. It said that by firing her, the Trump administration threatened her office's ability to function in the manner that Congress intended.

. . .

Perlmutter was expunged from office a few days after Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was also shown the door. Hayden was later replaced by deputy attorney general Todd Blanche and Perlmutter by deputy attorney general Paul Perkins.

In the latest filing this week, Perlmutter's legal team said the administration's claim that it had the power to remove her from an office appointed by the Library of Congress employed a "novel constitutional theory" and "sweeping assertions of power."

The Copyright Office is housed in the Library of Congress, and the librarian oversees the Copyright Office head directly, Perlmutter said. Her filing argued that "neither the law nor common sense requires" that the court should "should stand idly by and do nothing while [the Trump administration] wields unprecedented, and unlawful, authority."

Concentration camps are often compared to prisons, but that comparison is inaccurate. In the United States, inmates arrive in penitentiaries only after they have been convicted of serious crimes, under criminal processes constrained by the US Constitution at all times. Starting with probable cause (which brown skin is not); then arrest (you have the right to remain silent); followed by voluntary pleading (coerced confessions are thrown out); leading to formal trial (bench or jury, defendants’ choice), based only on admissible evidence (hearsay/unsupported opinions are not admissible), Constitutional constraints apply at every juncture. If they falter, appellate courts are watching.

While innocent people assuredly have been wrongly convicted since our penal system was created in the late 1700s, their wrongful convictions were not produced by system design. Before Trump, wrongful, sloppy, or vengeance-driven criminal convictions of the innocent were the product of flawed men, not a flawed system.

People in concentration camps, in contrast, reflect an illegal system. The crucial distinction between prison and concentration camps is that concentration camp detainment is independent of any judicial review; inmates in camps have not been convicted of any crime. Concentration camps are most often used for political reasons, or to incarcerate people whom the governing regime sees as a threat.

A sinful celebration of cruelty

Rounded up under maniacal whims of an autocrat, concentration camp inmates don’t represent the rule of law, they represent an autocrat’s lust for power. This week, Donald Trump, accompanied by grinning ghouls Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis, toured their newest and cruelest toy to date, Alligator Alcatraz, where they laughed in anticipation of the upcoming cruelty.

. . .

With the passage of Trump's death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States.

Concentration camps are sites of tempting slave labor. Among many other aims, the Soviets used concentration camp labor to build canals and work mines. The Nazi German concentration camp system followed a capitalist version of the same logic: it drew in businesses with the prospect of inexpensive labor.

We know this and have no excuse not to act.

What happens next in the U.S.? Workers who are presented as "undocumented" will be taken to the camps. Perhaps they will work in the camps themselves, as slaves to government projects. But more likely they will be offered to American companies on special terms: a one-time payment to the government, for example, with no need for wages or benefits. In the simplest version, and perhaps the most likely, detained people will be offered back to the companies for which they were just working. Their stay in the concentration camp will be presented as a purge or a legalization for which companies should be grateful. Trump has already said that this is the idea, calling it "owner responsibility."

We should remember what drew I.G Farben into Auschwitz: profit. But there are of course precedents for extreme exploitation in American history, including but not limited to the history of chattel slavery. And slavery is not entirely illegal in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment allows slavery if only as punishment for a crime. The people described as "undocumented" or "denaturalized" (and other categories sure to be invented soon) are portrayed as criminals.

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Jonathan Chait’s old friend grew indignant when Chait referred to Donald Trump as an authoritarian. Trump had not cancelled elections or sent brownshirts into the street, etc., right?

No, but with his ICE goons, Trump bypasses any reluctance from Pentagon professionals about deploying troops against civilians. Since DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has tricked out ICE as soldiers, it’s like deploying soldiers without that bothersome Uniform Code of Military Justice or the restrictions of Posse Comitatus.

But I digress.

People like his friend, Chait writes,

… fail to see the administration’s slow-moving efforts to break down the norms and institutional barriers that otherwise inhibit the ruling party from asphyxiating its opposition. Political scientists who study democracy have a term that clarifies the phenomenon: democratic backsliding. Backslide far enough, and you end up in something called “competitive authoritarianism.”

We’d still have elections, but they’d be meaningless.

Chait cites six events from one day this week that suggest that the backslide is accelerating. They range from threatening to deport New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani because he doesn’t like him, to threatening to sue CNN over a story he doesn’t like, to musing about using his office to punish Elon Musk financially over their virtual slap fight.

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Sound familiar?



Miller is Jewish which makes this all the more grotesque.

. . .(Much clipped - please read full piece)

Here is the full amended complaint from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers. It details the circumstances of the case, the lies the Trump regime has told alleging gang affiliations and whatnot, lies for which the government has zero evidence. It accounts for his encounters with immigration authorities. Etc. The whole thing. On page 20, line 110, it gets into what happened in El Salvador.

We’re going to excerpt a lot without much comment, because Kilmar’s story deserves to stand on its own.

You’re about to read some things, steel yourself.

116. Plaintiff Abrego Garcia reports that he was subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival at CECOT, including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture. […]

120. Upon arrival at CECOT, the detainees were greeted by a prison official who stated, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.” Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster. His head was shaved with a zero razor, and he was frog-marched to cell 15, being struck with wooden batons along the way. By the following day, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body.

121. In Cell 15, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia and 20 other Salvadorans were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion. During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself. The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.

122. After approximately one week at CECOT, prison director Osiris Luna and other officials separated the 21 Salvadorans who had arrived together. Twelve individuals with visible gang-related tattoos were moved to another cell, while Plaintiff Abrego Garcia remained with eight others who, like him, upon information and belief had no gang affiliations or tattoos.

123. As reflected by his segregation, the Salvadoran authorities recognized that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was not affiliated with any gang and, at around this time, prison officials explicitly acknowledged that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him “your tattoos are fine.”

124. While at CECOT, prison officials repeatedly told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that they would transfer him to the cells containing gang members who, they assured him, would “tear” him apart.

125. Indeed, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia repeatedly observed prisoners in nearby cells who he understood to be gang members violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel. Screams from nearby cells would similarly ring out throughout the night without any response from prison guards on personnel.

126. During his first two weeks at CECOT, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia suffered a significant deterioration in his physical condition and lost approximately 31 pounds (dropping from approximately 215 pounds to 184 pounds).

There’s more worth reading in the filing, should you be interested. All the lies Trump told about their inability to get Kilmar back, and more.

This is what the Salvadoran officials at CECOT did to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, at the behest and upon the requests of the sick, vile, criminal, evil, Hitlerian Trump regime.

It’s important to read, so that we all may know exactly what evils the Nazi Trump regime is subjecting people to, people who are innocent, people whose worst “crime” was to try to find a better life in the United States, who were naive enough to believe they might be allowed to find it.

. . .

What’s left of the US Department of Education told state education agencies across the nation Monday that they can’t have some $6.8 billion in funding they’d been expecting to be released on Tuesday as part of the normal budgeting process. The funds were passed by Congress in March as part of the continuing resolution that kept the government open, but just because Congress makes appropriations doesn’t mean Donald Trump has to release them, because Russ Vought told him the Constitution no longer applies to him. By law, the funds were supposed to be released on July 1, but again, laws are but playthings for Great Leader, who am the Law.

As Education Week explains, American school districts and state school agencies had foolishly gotten into the habit of thinking things remained somewhat normal after the Ascension to the Throne of Mad King Donald.

Thousands of school districts and dozens of states that had banked on those funds to cover staff salaries, vendor contracts, curriculum materials, technology tools, and other priorities will now have to consider slashing student services—including some mandated by federal law—or tapping other funding sources if the federal money doesn’t show up on time or at all.

We believe the operative cliché here is from former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, regarding the Medicaid cuts in the Senate’s version of the Big Murder Bill: “They’ll get over it.” Not like they have much choice, because this is Donald Trump’s country now, and not even the courts are allowed to tell him what to do anymore. At least, not in time for summer programs schools had already budgeted for.

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During the Biden administration, there was a years-long debate on the left about whether or how Donald Trump should be prosecuted. On the one hand were people like Ankush Khardori, Elie Mystal, and myself, who argued that Trump must be held accountable, ideally for his attempted putsch on January 6, but by any other possible case that could be drummed up if not. On the other were people like Elie Honig, Lawrence Lessig, Samuel Moyn, and Jonathan Chait, who argued that any legal action against Trump must be handled with extreme diligence and the smallest hint of political persecution must be avoided.

The latter camp largely won out. Biden appointed a milquetoast moderate, Merrick Garland, as attorney general, and as The New York Times and Washington Post reported in detail, he initially refused to prosecute Trump on his globally televised sedition and insurrection, instead attempting a traditional organized crime roll-up that went nowhere and ate up months. It wasn’t until the January 6th Committee made Garland look like an idiot that he finally got moving in November 2022—eighteen months after Biden took office—and it was special counsel Jack Smith who actually put the cases together, relatively quickly. These years of delay allowed Trump’s cronies on the Supreme Court to successfully delay the resulting trials out past the 2024 election.

When Trump repeatedly refused to return classified documents he had stolen from the National Archives, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago only with extreme reluctance, and did not arrest him. When the Colorado Supreme Court threw him off the 2024 ballot in that state, the national Supreme Court quickly put him back on.

In short, the American law enforcement apparatus, egged on by many prominent liberal and lefty academics and commentators, bent over backwards to provide the appearance of due process—which is to say that Trump got to get away with outrageous things no other defendant would have, like refusing FBI requests during a legal search, or repeatedly violating a judge’s order not to attack the judge’s daughter on social media. (Needless to say, this is the opposite of due process: It is letting a powerful person violate the rules.)

We now see the results of granting Trump his second, third, and 50th legal chances: He is attempting to turn the United States into a fascist dictatorship. Immigrants and other enemies of the regime are being kidnapped off the street by ICE goons with no due process, and stuffed into concentration camps Trump is opening around the country, like the Alligator Auschwitz in Florida, or sent to slave labor camps in foreign countries. Already, people are starting to die in the cramped and unsanitary conditions. Senate Republicans just passed a bill that, among other things, would balloon the ICE and deportation budget up to $175 billion—giving it more money than the Marines or indeed any military save that of China and the U.S., and giving Trump his own gestapo. Now Trump is openly threatening to strip people of their citizenship and deport them, including Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who recently won New York’s Democratic mayoral primary.

. . .

Desperate for some inspiration, I decided to reread the entire Declaration of Independence. We know it as an aspirational document (“We hold these truths…”). We understand it as a repudiation of tyranny (“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”). It is both those things, but it is also a compendium of complaints, a description of an autocrat’s offenses against a free people. And that was the part I found strangely relevant to our times.

. . . (Clipped specific citations from the Constitution)

Though our bill of particulars against Trump bears some resemblance to the Declaration’s list of grievances, it might be useful to include a few of Trump’s more recent offenses:

He has waged war without the authorization of Congress.

He has used his office to enrich himself and corrupt commerce.

He has attempted to quash states’ laws and practices (e.g., California’s air quality standards, sanctuary cities’ prohibitions on cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

He has threatened the free press.

He has weaponized the administration of justice against his enemies and released felons who staged an insurrection.

He has installed incompetent, ignorant, and morally compromised people in high office.

He has vowed to strip his political opponents’ citizenship.

He has attempted to usurp the power of the purse.

I could go on.

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