The sun is warm. The sky is blue. It’s Spring and the daffodils are out.
There are buds on the trees. The robins are back, making their nests in inconvenient places.
My stocks — the few I have — didn’t pop. They also didn’t crash.
I played tennis, had a grilled cheese, tomato and avocado sandwich at my favorite Chatham, NY restaurant, Fiesta, and napped in the afternoon sun.
I didn’t get crazy that Trump hasn’t brought back the man he mistakenly sent to the hell-hole El Salvador prison — despite a Supreme Court order. Why? Nobody knows. Cruelty? Control? Craziness?
Then I think a little more: Trump’s defiance of a Supreme Court is a step across a huge line.
He’s achieved — in less than 100 days — infinite power. No shackles. No controls. No limits. Full-on dictatorship. He can do whatever he wants.
And that means coming after people who write things about him he may not like — like me.
I have a weekend tennis trip to the Caribbean later this month. Will I be able to get back into the US? Will they find stuff on my phone or laptop they don’t like and send me to that El Salvador prison? And all the money in the world on lawyers won’t get me back.
The El Salvador president said this week it was “preposterous” to think of bringing that innocent, mistaken man back to the U.S. That man is in the prison, without a court hearing. Serving a life sentence because some Trump administration bureaucrat made a stupid mistake.
Could I be the next “mistake?”
Trump is talking about sending naturalized American citizens — like me — to the prison.
ICE now has a quota — 1800 arrests a day. Not trials. Just arrests.
There are no daffodils in that prison.
This morning, the New York Times writes:
China has warned its people to think twice before visiting the United States, citing trade tensions. It also told its students to be careful about studying there and accused two American universities of hacking. And it has vowed to cut down on the number of Hollywood films that can be shown in China. …
The United States, for its part, has revoked some Chinese student and scholar visas, as part of a broader targeting of international students by the Trump administration. While the moves were not directly related to the trade dispute, some conservatives have suggested linking them: Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, posted online last week that it was a “great idea” to expel all Chinese students as retaliation for China hitting back with its own tariffs.
And Thomas Friedman, the Times eminent reporter writes
“I Have Never Been More Afraid for My Country’s Future.”
For his piece, click here.
Nine Steps — Trump’s playbook is Viktor Orbán’s
Robert Reich is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and served as Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997 in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton.
He also has a blog. Here’s key excerpts of his latest:
Friends,
A few days ago I had breakfast with my old friend John Shattuck, who, as president of Central European University in Budapest, saw firsthand how Viktor Orbán took over Hungary’s democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state.
When Trump was elected in 2016, Trump endorsed Orbán, and Orbán started attacking universities — forcing the Central European University out of Hungary.
John believes Trump is emulating Orbán’s playbook. (Steve Bannon once declared that “Orbán was Trump before there was Trump.”)
Orbân’s playbook has 10 parts, according to John:
One: Take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using political threats and intimidation to stamp out all party dissent.
Two: Build your base by appealing to fear and hate, branding immigrants and cultural minorities as dangers to society, and demonizing your opponents as enemies of the people.
Three: Use disinformation and lies to justify what you’re doing.
Four: Use your election victory to claim a sweeping mandate — especially if you don’t win a majority.
Five: Centralize your power by destroying the civil service.
Six: Redefine the rule of law as rule by executive decree. Weaponize the state against all democratic opponents. Demonize anyone who doesn’t support the leader as an “enemy of the people.”
Seven: Eliminate checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society. Target opponents with regulatory penalties like tax audits, educational penalties such as denials of accreditation, political penalties like harassment investigations, physical penalties like withdrawing police protection, and criminal penalties like prosecution.
Eight: Rely on your oligarchs — hugely wealthy business and financial leaders — to supervise the economy and reward them with special access to state resources, tax cuts, and subsidies.
Nine: Ally yourself with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and support his effort to undermine European democracies and attack sovereign countries like Ukraine.
Ten: Get the public to believe that all this is necessary, and that resistance is futile.
….John says that defending democracy should itself be a populist cause. In the Orbán playbook, the national flag was hijacked by the authoritarian leader. John believes that the flag of American democracy must be reclaimed as a symbol of the rule of law, a society built on human rights and freedoms, and international alliances and humanitarian values.
When these soft-power democratic assets are destroyed, a huge void opens up — to be filled by authoritarians like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who are the ultimate political models for Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump. …
Trump won less than 50 percent of the vote in last fall’s election, and his approval rating is well below that in recent polls. ….
For two and a half centuries, Americans have fought to expand the right to vote, to achieve equal protection, to oppose intolerance and political violence, to gain freedom of speech and religion, to guarantee due process of law.
These goals may now seem to be blocked by Trump, but the U.S. is not Germany in the 1930s nor Hungary in 2025. Americans across the country are beginning to resist. John believes American democracy will emerge stronger for our efforts.
Reich’s full blog is here.
Your daily quiz:
How would this décor look differently six months ago?
OK. Who paid for all the “gold?”
You and me.
I walked in the woods and hummed along
Tomorrow, granddaughter Sophie, 10 1/2, stars in her first formal play.
I’ll be in the audience, doing what grandparents do — cry.
— Harry Newton
