Israel Palestine Peace

 

SCOTUS Can Let the President Break the Law, But It Can’t Change the Law - Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo)

From Josh Marshall's newsletter today, The Backchannel:

SCOTUS Can Let the President Break the Law, But It Can’t Change the Law

Josh Marshall

April 17, 2025

We are now cranking up another edition of the “will he or won’t he?” Trump song and dance, this time about firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Trump manages to add an additional pungency to these dramas by trying to fire the guy who is actually his own Fed Chair. Biden renominated Powell. But Trump actually gave him the job. Axios just pushed a newsletter update that ran through this drama, first reporting the events of the day and then adding this: “What we’re watching: Federal law and Supreme Court precedent say presidents cannot fire the Fed chair over a policy disagreement.” It then goes on from there. But that’s actually the end of the story. The other possibilities are illegal.

....In a moment like this, and very much like that flight analog, you may not be able to control what’s happening but you need to know what’s happening. The whole conversation ends with that quote above. Anything else is illegal. The Supreme Court might allow Trump to break the law. But that will be what it is — allowing him to break the law. We will collectively have to grapple with that reality. But it will still be illegal. The Court can say up is down, but up will still be up. It is simply not the case that Congress made the law, that Congress understood what the law meant, that it was universally understood what the law meant, but that we now have a Supreme Court which can simply start history from scratch. We might as well say that Moby Dick was a donkey rather than a whale.

And this brings me to a key point. Trump is hungry to walk through this door of lawless autocracy. But it is the conservative legal movement, embodied in the Federalist Society, organized by Leonard Leo and others, who opened the door. They manufactured the fraudulent idea that presidents cannot be constrained by the law. They imported it from abroad, from the degenerate ideologues of autocracy. They did this. They created the current moment in which a renegade President can simply start chainsawing through the legal fabric and do anything he wants and we, the citizens of the country, must wait in anxious expectation to learn which if any of the laws turn out to be real. That’s not how the rule of law works. It’s not a game of Magic Eight Ball, built by design on inherent suspense and uncertainty. It’s nature is its clarity and fixity, especially during arduous times of tumult and fear.

....The core aim of the 1787 Constitution was to create a viable national government with a robust executive power. That represented a significant national course correction from the first years after the overthrow of the monarchy. The question was whether that could be done without creating a tyrant-in-the-making. That was the challenge of writing the document and it was the sales challenge that the newspaper essay campaign (which we now call the Federalist Papers) was meant to answer. We can talk endlessly about whether we’re still in a democracy or whether Trump wants to be or is acting like a dictator. We can debate words such as “fascism” that were unknown before a century ago. But what we are seeing right now is the definition of tyranny, a half-archaic concept the founders of the American Republic were very familiar with. Trump’s rule is both lawless and arbitrary. He has taken the bundle of powers the Constitution provides him to govern and defend the Constitution and turned them to an entirely different and corrupt purpose: using them as weapons to attack the people and institutions he deems his enemies.

This kind of creature is precisely what the core architects of the constitutional order said the document could never be used to create. The President is no King; he is subject to the law. And yet here we are. And it is the fraudulent doctrine of unitary executive authority which is walking before him like a statutory bushwhacker, clearing a path for him through every law and restraint. As I wrote above, this doctrine is based on theories and philosophical principles totally unknown to the architects of the Constitution. It’s legitimacy can only rest on an argument about function. It fails the test totally. The Constitution was sold to the American people, designed to prevent such a creature from emerging from its words and structures. But this doctrine turns out to be that creature’s greatest ally.</>

Senator Lisa Murkowski is a brave woman - "We are all afraid"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/us/politics/lisa-murkowski-trump.html?smid=url-share

Senator Lisa Murkowski, the moderate Alaska Republican who has routinely broken with her party to criticize President Trump, has made a startling admission about the reality of serving in public office at a time when an unbound leader in the Oval Office is bent on retribution against his political foes.

“We are all afraid,” Ms. Murkowski said, speaking at a conference in Anchorage on Monday. After pausing for about five seconds, she acknowledged: “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

Trump's Gestapo is already here - ICE

A short excerpt from a post by Tristan Snell in the Big Picture (Substack).

Last year, I did a series called Decoding Project 2025 — and one of the most jarring Trumpian proposals was, from my point of view, the planned degradation of the existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into an immigration Gestapo to detain undocumented immigrants and deport them without any legal due process.

I was wrong.

It turns out ICE is not a Gestapo for undocumented immigrants.

It is a general Gestapo — a secret national police force not just for undocumented immigrants but for any immigrants, even legal ones with documents, even permanent residents (green card holders), and if Trump has his way, soon, even U.S. citizens.

ICE is arresting and detaining people without alleging that they have committed any crimes at all—holding them without any legal process, without an immigration removal proceeding, without a trial, without an evidentiary hearing, without anything—and then shackling and chaining them into military cargo planes and deporting them for indefinite imprisonment without trial in El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT).

Then the administration lies, falsely claiming that it can do nothing to return anyone who has been sent to CECOT.

Then the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, follows along with the lie, claiming that he is powerless to return anyone to the US.

Meanwhile, the ICE officers try to shrug off any responsibility, claiming that they are just doing what the government tells them to do.

Frankenstein’s monster is running amok, terrorizing people and killing them, and yet everyone involved is throwing up their hands, disingenuously, claiming that they have no power to stop the monstrous Gestapo that Trump has created.

Yet every step of the monster’s creation was premeditated—a completely purposeful crime against humanity.

This is not an accident. This is what they meant to do. They had a blueprint and they are following it.

The question now becomes whether anyone is going to do anything to stop Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, and everyone else involved in these extrajudicial detentions and deportations.

The courts are being defied and flouted, but will they escalate their response to insist that the law be obeyed?

Refusing to be complicit in evil

From Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark, "Inside the Mind of an ICE agent":

I know what it is like to lose your job because you won’t do what powerful people want. I understand how scary that is when you’re middle-aged and have a family to support. I’m not saying it’s easy.

For most people, refusing to be complicit in evil will be the hardest test they are ever given.

2. ICE

Then again, for some people the test seems easy.

Our immigration enforcement officers at ICE have witnessed a sea-change in operations over the last four months. They now routinely detain American citizens in airports and use axes to pry frightened people out of their cars as they wait for their legal representation. Perhaps you have seen this video. 

I am confused about one thing: With this radical change in job description, why aren’t ICE agents quitting their jobs in droves?

Imagine you work in a widget factory. You have no real passion for widgets, but the work is fine. It’s a job.

Then one day you show up to the office and the company is under new management. The owners have decided to transition from making widgets to slaughtering puppies. Your job now is to stand in front of a conveyor belt and kill puppies. It’s kind of a big change.

Would you stay in that new job? Do you think most of your colleagues would stay?

And if they did stay—all of them—would it make you suspect that all those years you were making widgets together, maybe your buddies secretly wished they could be killing puppies instead?

For four months ICE agents have acted in ways that validate the worst caricatures of the agency.

And yet we have not seen a wave of resignations. We have not seen pushback from career employees. We have not seen even off-the-record quotes of concern from ICE officers in the media

I wonder why that is.¹ (Where does the “Abolish ICE” movement go to get its apology?)

There have been books written about this sort of thing. [Link is to Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen].

Harvard's response to the demands of the Trump administration

 

Does the Declaration of Independence remind you of anyone today?

Who does this remind you of? King George III, or someone else today?

From the Declaration of Independence:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.... 

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers... 

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people... 

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: 

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: 

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: 

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses

 

"History will remember this day— when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for"

Peter Baker: “Trump and Vance Berate Zelensky During Testy White House Meeting.”

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday in an explosive televised Oval Office shouting match that ultimately blew up plans to sign a rare minerals deal and signaled a dramatic break in relations between two wartime allies.

In a public confrontation unlike any seen between an American president and foreign leader in modern times, Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance castigated Mr. Zelensky for not being grateful enough for U.S. support in its war with Russia and sought to strong-arm him into making a peace deal on whatever terms the Americans dictated.

With voices raised and tempers flaring, Mr. Trump threatened to abandon Ukraine altogether if Mr. Zelensky did not go along. After journalists were escorted out of the Oval Office, Mr. Trump canceled the rest of the visit, including a planned joint news conference and signing ceremony for the minerals deal. A grim-faced Mr. Zelensky then strode out of the West Wing, climbed into a waiting black sport utility vehicle and departed the White House grounds.

“I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.”

Some other quick reactions (quotes and links from Charlie Sykes' Substack newsletter today).

Liz Cheney:

“Generations of American patriots, from our revolution onward, have fought for the principles Zelenskyy is risking his life to defend. But today, Donald Trump and JD Vance attacked Zelenskyy and pressured him to surrender the freedom of his people to the KGB war criminal who invaded Ukraine. History will remember this day— when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for.”

Tom Nichols:

Friday, February 28, 2025, will go into the history books as one of the grimmest days in American diplomacy, the beginning of a long-term disaster every American, every U.S. ally, and anyone who cares about the future of democracy will have to endure. With the White House’s betrayal of Ukraine capping a month of authoritarian chaos in America, Putin, along with other dictators around the world, can finally look at Trump with confidence and think: one of us.

Michael Weiss:

Increasingly obvious they invited him to Washington to humiliate him. This is theatre for the benefit of their base and of course a suddenly very happy man in Moscow.

Susan Glasser:

If there are any illusions about what side Trump is on between Russia and Ukraine, this should dispel them.

Damon Linker:

That event in the Oval Office is going to send shock waves across the world -- far more so than Vance's Munich speech. We're the most powerful country on the planet, and we are Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde from admin to admin. Today Mr. Hyde made his full debut.

Gregg Nunziata:

I’m hard-pressed to think of a more disgraceful and damaging performance by a U.S. President on the world stage than what we just witnessed in the Oval Office.

Mark Hertling:

Some have disappointed, some had bad policy, some made big mistakes. But I’ve never in my life been ashamed of American leaders. Until today.

David French:

This is utterly shameful. This is Vladimir Putin's best outcome. The U.S. is placing pressure on a free nation fighting for its life while giving aid and comfort to an authoritarian thug.

Mona Charen:

We are a completely different country from what we were 2 months ago. Bully. Aggressor. Putin suck-up. Betrayer of allies. Rude. Crude. Dishonest. The most dishonorable display by an American president in our lifetimes.

Shiri Bibas was not returned with the bodies of her two sons today

It seems there is no end to evil. 

This morning (between 9:00-10:00 am Israel time, between 2:00-3:00 am east coast US time, Hamas handed over four coffins to the International Committee of the Red Cross - supposedly containing the bodies of Shiri Bibas, her two sons, Kfir and Ariel, and Oded Lipfschitz. 

But this was not a quiet handover - no, Hamas put on a spectacle, placing the coffins on a stage with a grotesque caricature of Benjamin Netanyahu on a sheet behind them, and a masked Hamas terrorist giving a speech with music in the background. The crowd around the stage and the ICRC included armed terrorists with green headbands and civilians - children and women among the men. Some of them took photos or videos of the scene with their cellphones, as if this was a play or a movie.

I watched some of it on a livestream from several different news organizations, including Reuters and AP (I don't know whose cameras were actually there).

But it turns out that Shiri Bibas was not one of them. The IDF was not able to identify the body.

From the Times of Israel today, after Hamas returned four coffins to Israel this morning.

IDF: Remains of Kfir and Ariel Bibas ID’d, 3rd body sent by Hamas isn’t their mom Shiri

By Lazar Berman

The military informs the Bibas family that the bodies of Ariel and Kfir Bibas have been identified after their remains were given to Israel by Hamas on Thursday.

However, the third body at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute was not that of their mother, Shiri Bibas, says the Israel Defense Forces. Specialists at Abu Kabir were not able to identify the body.

The authorities, using forensic evidence and intelligence, assess that the two young boys were ‘”brutally murdered” by terrorists in November 2023, says the IDF. Ariel was 4-years-old and Kfir was 10-months-old when they were murdered.

“This is a very serious violation by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is required by the agreement to return four dead hostages,” says the IDF. “We demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all of our hostages.”

“We share the deep sorrow of the Bibas family at this difficult time and will continue to make every effort to return Shiri and all the hostages home as soon as possible,” says the IDF.

Trans people were at Stonewall!

Among the many evil things the Trump administration has already done only in his first month in office (hard to believe!) is their attempt to erase trans people from American life and memory. One thing they did was to try and erase the role of trans people in the Stonewall rebellion that began the modern gay liberation movement (as it was first called). From a letter of protest written by scholars of the movement:

On February 13, 2025, the National Park Service, following an executive order issued by the Trump administration on January 20, 2025, “to recognize [only] two sexes, male and female [that] are not changeable,” removed references to transgender people from the web pages of the National Stonewall Monument in lower Manhattan. Later, the word “queer” and the letter “Q” were also removed.

This part of the letter explains the rebellion:

As scholars who study the history and politics of sexuality and gender, we write to testify that these changes are not supported by the historical record concerning the events that the monument commemorates.

The National Stonewall Monument commemorates an important event in the history of LGBTQ+ activism. During a six-day conflict that began at a New York City tavern called the Stonewall Inn in the summer of 1969, commonly referred to as the Stonewall riots, LGBTQ+ New Yorkers resisted systematic harassment and mistreatment by police in a series of clashes that continued in Greenwich Village for several days. The Stonewall Inn’s patrons and the participants in the subsequent uprising were predominantly young New Yorkers who defied dominant sexual and gender norms. Some understood themselves as gay or lesbian or queer, and some lived part or all of the time as members of a sex other than the one assigned to them at birth. Some called themselves “drag queens” and “crossdressers,” others “transvestite” or “transsexual,” and still others used ambiguous terms that could describe both sexuality and variation in gender expression. The rioters at Stonewall varied in their class background, their racial and ethnic identity, and in words they used to describe themselves. This range and complexity of variation in gender expression and sexuality were common in the gay liberation, lesbian feminist, and trans movements of the period, which were characterized (like all social movements) by some disagreements and debates about language as well as shared visions of liberation.

Diversity in both sexuality and gender expression, forms of human variation often inextricably related to one another, are empirically verifiable parts of the historical record, even as the terms different societies use and the particular meanings of those terms change over time. Neither “transgender” nor “queer” were commonly used as terms of identity in 1969, but “transvestite,” “transsexual,” and other terms were, including by people at the Stonewall Inn and the protests that followed. Notable examples included Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, influential activists who were assigned male at birth but lived for periods of their adult lives as women.

Participants in the Stonewall riots challenged both mistreatment based on the kinds of sexual partners they sought and mistreatment based on how they performed gender in everyday life. Efforts to address both forms of oppression were part of the riots in 1969 and the civil rights struggle that followed. Any accurate account of the Stonewall Riots and the subsequent fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights must recognize the full range of people who joined the battle and the full scope of the oppression they faced. The actions of the National Park Service reduce these events to a story that is only about sexual orientation, but that interpretation lacks basis in historical fact and distorts the legacy of this important event in American history.

"With burning anxiety"

 

"Solidarity in Struggle: Black and Palestinian Resistance" - a shameful discussion in Ithaca on February 1, 2025

The Southside Community Center in Ithaca is hosting a panel discussion on "Solidarity in Struggle: Black and Palestinian Resistance," on February 1. One of the speakers is Russell Rickford, a professor at Cornell University whose first response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 250 more was that he was "exhilarated"!

This is some of what he said at a rally on the Ithaca Commons on Sunday, October 15, just a week after the massacre (text is from the Cornell Daily Sun article on the rally):

“Hamas has challenged the monopoly of violence. And in those first few hours, even as horrific acts were being carried out, many of which we would not learn about until later, there are many Gazans of good will, many Palestinians of conscience, who abhor violence, as do you, as do I. Who abhor the targeting of civilians, as do you, as do I,” Rickford said during the rally. “Who were able to breathe, they were able to breathe for the first time in years. It was exhilarating. It was energizing. And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated.”

He added: “What has Hamas done? Hamas has shifted the balance of power. Hamas has punctured the illusion of invincibility. That’s what they have done. You don’t have to be a Hamas supporter to recognize that,” Rickford said. “Hamas has changed the terms of the debate. Israeli officials are right — nothing will be the same again.”

Russell Rickford was exhilarated by murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. By the time he made that speech, we already knew about the about the "horrific acts" that he pretends to condemn by saying that he "abhor[s] violence." Those of us paying attention, like I was, knew about them already on October 7, because we were following the reports from Israel. For him, "Hamas has changed the terms of the debate" - and he commends them for it.

Another speaker is Momodou Taal, a graduate student at Cornell. He was one of the leaders of the Cornell Coalition for Mutual Liberation group, which was one of the main organizers of the Cornell protests last year and this year. He has spoken out in support of "armed resistance."

This is a quote from a speech he made on campus in early February, 2024 (text from Cornell Daily Sun).

About 70 demonstrators gathered outside of Day Hall on Friday afternoon to protest the Student Assembly’s 16-4 rejection of Resolution 51, which called on Cornell to end partnerships with and suspected investments in arms companies — such as Boeing and Raytheon — that provide weapons to Israel.

“We don’t take our cue from some bullsh*t Student Assembly at Cornell,” said Momodou Taal, grad, who led chants throughout the event. “We take our cue from the armed resistance in Palestine. We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea,” he continued, garnering some cheers from the crowd.

Ceasefire? Return of the hostages?

I feel tremendously embittered. The war between Israel and Hamas has gone on for fifteen months since October 7, 2023. The Israeli hostages are still rotting in the tunnels in the hands of Hamas guards who abuse them physically and sexually. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza have been killed, and Gaza is full of rubble where homes and schools and businesses used to be.

"Light at the end of the tunnel"
Today's "Daily Postcard" from the Israel artist Shoshke (Zeev) Engelmayer,
depicting Israel hostages in the tunnels with a tiny flower of hope blooming. 
Link to his Facebook page with this image. 

Apparently Israel has finally agreed to the ceasefire with Hamas, as of a few hours ago, but the security cabinet will only vote on it on Saturday night, according to the Times of Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu the coward is still trying to keep the criminal Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir in the cabinet (he actually is a convicted criminal - look it up). This means that the hostages who were supposed to be released on Sunday will be released instead on Monday. If Netanyahu and the government ministers truly cared about the lives of the hostages they would have agreed to a ceasefire many months ago. 

Happy Eighth Day of Hanukkah!

This year Hanukkah extended over two secular years - into January 1 and 2, 2025. A few years ago the first day of Hanukkah was on Thanksgiving - so it is a moveable feast, as a friend of mine said today when we talked.

Links to a couple of interesting articles about Hanukkah from the Torah.com website -

Chanukah: The Greek Influence of Martyrdom.

On Chanukah we celebrate the miraculous military victories of the “few over the many,” and of Jewish culture over Greek. Ironically, however, Chanukah has also bequeathed to us a new genre of Jewish literature, one that has been in frequent use ever since: Greek-style stories of bravery in defeat and dying for the cause.

Megillat Antiochus: The Biblical Chanukah Scroll 

The medieval Scroll of Antiochus does more than enrich Chanukah with details. It models the holiday after Purim by telling the story in the biblical language and idiom of Daniel, Ezra, and Esther.

For a minor Jewish festival with no biblical command or account as its origin, Chanukah plays a major role in the Jewish yearly cycle. It includes a highly visible formal ritual —the lighting of the chanukiah/menorah—its own liturgy, folk practices like spinning the dreidel and eating latkes, jelly donuts, and chocolate coins, and the singing of catchy tunes. For many diasporic Jews, Chanukah is the Jewish answer to Christmas while, for many Israelis, it provides an opportunity to reflect upon Jewish military might. 

What does Chanukah celebrate? The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees present the earliest and most comprehensive versions of the story, but as they were not accorded canonical status by Jews, they were soon lost to Jewish tradition—though preserved by Christians in the Apocrypha. In contrast to Purim, whose story is told in the biblical book of Esther, traditional Jews for millennia relied mostly on bits and pieces preserved in the Chanukah liturgy, the Talmud, rabbinic midrash, and collective memory. Thus, most Jews throughout the ages were aware of some form of persecution, Judah Maccabee, a hard-fought war won, and something about a miracle involving oil. 

To fill this gap, an author living in the mid to late first millennium C.E. composed the Megillat Antiochus (The Scroll of Antiochus; also known as “The Greek Scroll” and “The Scroll of the House of the Hasmoneans”), which presents itself as the narrative explaining the events leading up to Chanukah. The author has little direct access to more historical sources like 1 and 2 Maccabees, and he uses biblical and rabbinic ones as well as his own expansions and Jewish collective memory to tell the story.

Megillat Antiochus was written in something akin to Late Jewish Literary Aramaic, yet, at the same time, anyone familiar with Biblical (i.e., imperial) Aramaic would sense that the text wishes to give a feel as if it were composed in that dialect, by deploying words and forms that characterize Biblical Aramaic but were no longer used in later Aramaic dialects. In addition, it copies, draws on, riffs upon, and develops the language and narrative style of Daniel, Ezra, and the book of Esther to enrich and inform its overarching narrative.