Sunday Painting: "River Reflection"

Day 110: Shaking Down a Whole State

Day 110 — March 22, 2025

Trump’s leveraging of federal funds for universities and colleges to extort political concessions continued, with Trump withholding tax dollars to Maine schools until he receives a personal apology from the Governor of Maine.

He called Governor Mills’ willingness to speak up against him at a meeting an “unlawful challenge to the Federal Government” for which she must make a “full throated apology.”

The Deportation Nightmare

More details are coming out that many of those whisked away to El Salvador did not have criminal records, and do not appear to have been part of a gang of any sort:

To sum it up, they were flown off to a prison in El Salvador with no due process—treated as “alien enemies” under a law meant for wartime, as if the United States is at war with Venezuela (when we clearly are not). And of course, they are only in that prison now because the Trump administration ignored a court order to send them back.

When the judge questioned the inappropriate use of the Alien Enemies Act, along with advocates, remember that Trump’s spokesperson accused them of supporting “foreign alien terrorists.”

The layers of illegality here are stunning. The propaganda from the government itself right of out of North Korea or the Soviet Union.

There must be accountability for all of it.

___

When I wrote my mass deportation chapter to “2025,” I did so certain that people would be swept up in an incompetent and angry Trump government’s net. I tried to capture the scene from the eyes of a guard in a remote Texas detention center:

“The onset of oppressive heat in the late spring and summer months added a new layer of hell.

And amid a late May surge of arrivals, dozens of mothers screamed at the guards that they were there by mistake. They were American citizens, they insisted, swept up by profiling and bureaucratic snafus. Enough of them told the same story, Jake soon believed them. If you’re deporting 15 million people with no due process, the government’s gonna fuck up sometimes, right? But when he asked Sarge about it in a Friday roll call, he was told here was no way to confirm their status or send them back. “Forget it. If they’re getting off a black bus, there was no mistake.”

Finally, in recent weeks, another problem emerged. The focus of Sarge’s morning tirade.

Kids were escaping.

Things were that bad, Jake explained to his live-in girlfriend, Mary Beth.

So bad that boys as young as eight were leaving their own mothers to escape the hell of the camp. And so bad, boys that young were able to actually get away. They weren’t doing it at night, either. Most were inside after dark, unable to get out, and the tent zone was sealed off and observed closely. These boys were walking away in broad daylight.

So yes, Jake thought as Sarge carried on, I’ve got a fucking clue.

The cause of the escalating nightmare was crystal clear. The sheer number of women and children at the camp overwhelmed any capacity to handle them. And that created an environment that stripped the humanity away from every single person trapped there—women, children and the guards themselves.”

For the full chapter, go HERE.