DOJ Memo Authorizes Warrantless Searches and Seizures

If one reads the American colonists' many enumerated offenses of George III in the Declaration of Independence among them one finds the lack of due process, denial of trial by jury, warrantless searches, and "transporting beyond the seas  . . .for pretended offenses."  Fast forward 249 years and we see the Felon's regime engaging in the same type of lawlessness that helped fuel the American Revolution: authorizing warrantless searches, people being seized by masked agents, and rendition to de facto overseas concentration camps without due process. A piece in USA Today looks at a Department of Justice authored by Pam Bondi (who I could easily see working at a Nazi death camp) that authorizes warrantless search and seizures.  Here are article highlights:

Trump administration officials directed law enforcement nationwide to pursue suspected gang members into their homes, in some cases without any sort of warrant, according to a copy of the directive exclusively obtained by USA TODAY.

The directive, issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi March 14, provides the first public view of the specific implementation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invoked to deport migrants accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

A day after that announcement, March 15, immigration officials apprehended and flew more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which has been criticized for its harsh and dangerous conditions.

For weeks, news organizations, members of Congress, the courts and advocates have pressed the administration to provide operational details and evidence to support its claims these men are Tren de Aragua members, a newly designated foreign terrorist organization.

Legal experts examined the document that reveals the following: 

• It provides directives to front-line officers apprehending suspected Tren de Aragua members, suggesting officers obtain a warrant of apprehension and removal “as much as practicable.” Those administrative warrants are signed by immigration officers, not judges like criminal warrants.
• Due to a “dynamic nature of law enforcement procedures” officers are free to "apprehend aliens" based on their “reasonable belief” they meet the definitions, the memo states.
• It purports to grant authority for police to enter a suspected "Alien Enemy’s residence" if “circumstances render it impracticable” to first obtain a warrant.

The memo told law enforcement that immigrants deemed "Alien Enemies" are “not entitled to a hearing, appeal or judicial review.”

“That’s really concerning,” said Monique Sherman, an attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network who successfully obtained one of the temporary restraining orders on April 22 to protect 100 people detained in Colorado from removal under the 1798 law.

“The home under all constitutional law is the most sacred place where you have a right to privacy,” Sherman said. “By this standard, spurious allegations of gang affiliation means the government can knock down your door.”

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU's lead counsel in the challenges to uses of the Alien Enemies Act, said the DOJ directives run counter to the constitution's protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

“The administration's unprecedented use of a wartime authority during peacetime was bad enough," Gelernt said. "Now we find out the Justice Department was authorizing officers to ignore the most bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment by authorizing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant."

The documents reveal the Trump administration has authorized every single law enforcement officer in the country, including traffic cops, to engage in immigrant roundups explicitly outside due process,” Shapiro said.

No doubt some will shrug and say this doesn't impact me, so I don't care.  A column in the Chicago Tribune lays out why all of us need to be concerned about this lawlessness, particularly with the Felon stating he'd like to send "home grown criminals" - he, of course would define who is a "criminal" to overseas concentration camps.  Here are excerpts:

Masked guards march the captives in, holding their heads pressed down to waist level. They are forced to kneel while guards shout at them and shave their heads before they are stripped down to shorts. Their overcrowded and squalid cells, meant to hold about 80 men, are often crammed with nearly twice as many. Only two toilets per cell, no privacy and no windows. Constant surveillance. No furniture but tiered metal bunks to share. No sheets, pillows or mattresses. Each cell has only one jug of water for drinking and one bucket for washing.

This place is not a prison, because prisons hold people for punishment after being lawfully convicted of a crime. Rather, it is a concentration camp: a detention facility where people are confined without legal justification or limits. The inmates here are not serving sentences. Tens of thousands have been locked away for good. Some had criminal convictions, but many arrived here without a chance at a legal defense at all.

If this sounds like hell, that’s because it’s supposed to. The whole purpose of El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) is to break men’s spirits and instill fear outside its walls. And this is the hell to which President Donald Trump’s administration has condemned hundreds of U.S. residents.

Administration officials have repeatedly claimed that the people they’ve sent here are criminals and terrorists but provided no evidence of this. About 90% had no criminal record at all. Only a few had any record or charge of a violent crime. They were rounded up on whims, based on suspect tattoos or clothing, and given no opportunity to defend against these allegations before being condemned to this hell for life.

If you think you’re safe from this overreach because you haven’t broken the law, neither had most of these men. If you think you’re safe because you’re not an “illegal immigrant,” many of these men weren’t, either. If you think you’re safe because you’re a “homegrown” American citizen, that is cold comfort today, because Trump urged President Nayib Bukele to build more prisons since “ homegrowns are next.” Beware: It’s a common play for authoritarians to hone tools of oppression against unpopular populations before they roll them out against anyone they wish.

This is Trump’s war on due process, which is a fancy legal term for our constitutional right to not be arbitrarily deprived of life, liberty and property. This means we — not just citizens, but everyone in America — are entitled to an opportunity to defend ourselves in a court of law before the government locks us away. If the government can bestow any punishment or fate upon anyone it chooses by simply calling that person a terrorist, it could happen to any of us. If it can disappear that person to captivity in a foreign country and then claim no power or authority to bring that person back, none of us is safe. Only the guarantee of due process gives us an opportunity to defend ourselves. If there is no remedy for Abrego Garcia, with no case made against him to justify that fate, any of us could be next.

Our nation has seen this kind of abuse of power before, and it was such a grave threat that it made the list of grievances in our Declaration of Independence against King George III in 1776: for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretend offenses.

If we hope to remain free, we should treat these offenses against our freedom with no less urgency than our Founding Fathers did.

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The Trump Regime's War on Children

For decades the Republican Party has claimed to the party of "family values".  In addition, at times the false claim is made that the GOP seeks to "protect children."  In reality, in the GOP and certainly under the Felon's regime and past Republican presidents, so-called family values translates to seeking to impose far right Christian and Christofascist dogma on all Americans.  As for protecting children, other than manufacturing a supposed threat to children by drag queens and by extension gays in general - the real threat to children is from pastors and youth ministers as by almost daily stories of sexual abuse - the reality is that the GOP agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy and seeking to pay for even further massive tax cuts by slashing spending on programs that actually assist families and children documents that the true welfare of children is nowhere on the GOP radar. (a piece at Politico highlights how disability and aging services are also being shuttered under DOGE).  The hypocrisy is underscored by the Felon's statement that increasing taxes on the super wealthy - those who have more money than they can ever spend - would be "disruptive" while leaving children without health care and even basic nutrition is just fine.  A piece at ProPublica looks at the Felon's regime's war on children:

The clear-cutting across the federal government under President Donald Trump has been dramatic, with mass terminations, the suspension of decades-old programs and the neutering of entire agencies. But this spectacle has obscured a series of moves by the administration that could profoundly harm some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S.: children.

Consider: The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely.

The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.

“Everyone’s been talking about what the Trump administration and DOGE have been doing, but no one seems to be talking about how, in a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” said Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children. He added that “the one cabinet agency that they’re fully decimating is the kid one,” referring to Trump’s goal of shuttering the Department of Education. Already, some 2,000 staffers there have lost or left their jobs.

The impact of these cuts will be felt far beyond Washington, rippling out to thousands of state and local agencies serving children nationwide.

The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has canceled $660 million in promised grants to farm-to-school programs, which had been providing fresh meat and produce to school cafeterias while supporting small farmers.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency’s secretary, has dismissed all of the staff that had distributed $1.7 billion annually in Social Services Block Grant money, which many states have long depended on to be able to run their child welfare, foster care and adoption systems. . . . Head Start will be especially affected in the wake of Kennedy’s mass firings of Office of Head Start regional staff and news that the president’s draft budget proposes eliminating funding for the program altogether. That would leave one million working-class parents who rely on Head Start not only for pre-K education but also for child care, particularly in rural areas, with nowhere to send their kids during the day. . . . . they’re being directed to a new “Defend the Spend” DOGE website asking them to “justify” each item, even though the spending has already been appropriated by Congress and audited by nonpartisan civil servants.

Next on the chopping block, it appears, is Medicaid, which serves children in greater numbers than any other age group. If Republicans in Congress go through with the cuts they’ve been discussing, and Trump signs those cuts into law, kids from lower- and middle-class families across the U.S. will lose access to health care at their schools, in foster care, for their disabilities or for cancer treatment.

Programs that serve kids have historically fared the worst when those in power are looking for ways to cut the budget. That’s in part because kids can’t vote, and they typically don’t belong to political organizations. International aid groups, another constituency devastated by Trump’s policy agenda, also can’t say that they represent many U.S. voters.

In the wake of the regional office cuts, local child services program directors have no idea who in the federal government to call when they have urgent concerns, many told ProPublica. “No one knows anything,” said one state child support director, asking not to be named in order to speak candidly about the administration’s actions. “We have no idea who will be auditing us.”

“I never anticipated that programs and services and opportunities for young people wouldn’t be funded at all by the federal government,” Ryan said, adding that local children’s organizations likely can’t go to states, whose budgets are already underwater, to make up the funding gap. “When you look at this alongside what they’re doing at HHS and the Department of Education and to Medicaid, it’s undercutting every single effort that we have to serve kids.”

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Trump's Tariffs Mirror Those of Hitler

Some say that comparisons of the Felon and Adolph Hitler are overblown or even hysterical, yet watching the Felon's efforts to undermine the rule of law, endless lies, attacks of the media outlets and individuals that publish and speak the truth, and willingness to abrogate civil rights, bear uncanny similarities with the actions and policies of Hitler in the early 1930's.  Add in Hitler's claims to justify seizing parts of neighboring nations (the need for resources and space) which sound like the Felon's demands that Denmark hand over Greenland to America and the parallels become even more stark.  Lastly the Felon's tariffs and trade war track those of Hitler - he argued Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. . . . “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans - who like the Felon had inherited a recovering economy.  Like what Americans now face, Hitler's tariffs raised prices and sparked a trade war.   The last parallel is the Felon's appointment of cabinet secretaries and others who are first loyal to him, with actual competence and expertise falling by the way side.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at Hitler's tariffs which are so much like what Americans now face:

From almost the moment Adolf Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany, tariffs were at the top of his government’s economic agenda. . . . . Hitler had what one might call a diffident, occasionally felonious disregard for financial matters. He owed 400,000 reichsmarks in back taxes. His understanding of economics was primitive. “You have inflation only if you want it,” Hitler once said. “Inflation is a lack of discipline. I will see to it that prices remain stable. I have my S.A. for that.” (The S.A., or Brownshirts, were the original paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party.) Hitler held Jews responsible for most of Germany’s financial woes.

Hitler relied on Gottfried Feder, the National Socialist Party’s long-serving chief economist, to develop the specifics of an economic program. Feder had helped concoct the strange brew of socialism and fanatical nationalism in the original 25-point program of this putative “workers’ party.” In May 1932, Feder outlined what would become the first Nazi economic plan. High on Feder’s agenda for a Hitler economy were tariffs.

“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition.” . . . . Feder’s tariffs fit into Hitler’s larger vision for “liberating” the German people from the shackles of a globalized world order.

The crash of 1929 had plunged Germany, along with much of the rest of the world, into an abyss. Markets collapsed. Factories were idled. Unemployment soared. In the early 1930s, one out of three German workers was unemployed. But Hitler had inherited a recovering economy: In December 1932, the German Institute for Economic Research reported that the crisis had been “significantly overcome”; by the time Hitler was appointed chancellor, in January 1933, the economy was on the mend.

Thus Hitler’s main economic task as chancellor was not to mess things up. The German stock market had rallied on news of his coming to power. . . . . But rumors of potential tariffs and the abrogation of international agreements, along with Hitler’s challenges to the constitutional order, sent alarm bells clanging. The conservative Centre Party warned Hitler against “unconstitutional, economically harmful, socially reactionary and currency endangering experiments.”

If one were to “strangle” trade through tariffs, it would endanger German industrial production—which, in turn, would inflict severe self-harm on the German economy, and lead to increased unemployment. “Exporting German goods provides three million workers with jobs,” Hamm wrote. The last thing Germany’s recovering but still-fragile economy needed was a trade war. Hamm urged Hitler to exercise “greatest caution” in his tariff policies.

But Hitler made no effort to reassure the markets, insisting that the tariffs were necessary and that he needed time to fix the ruined country his predecessors had left him. . . . . Hitler provided scant details as to how this was to be accomplished. . . . . But although the average voter may not have cared about the details of the Hitler economy, the markets did. The initial surge in stocks that greeted Hitler’s appointment halted then dipped and flattened amid the political and economic uncertainty of Hitler’s chaotic first weeks as chancellor.

Hans Joachim von Rohr, who worked at the Reich’s nutrition ministry, went on national radio to explain the logic of Hitler’s tariff strategy. “The products that Germany lacks must be made more expensive; then farmers will produce them in sufficient quantities,” Rohr explained. “And if foreign competition is kept at bay by tariffs and the like, city residents will prefer domestic production.” . . . . Hitler’s proposed “national economy,” with its self-defeating tariff policies, would plunge the country into a “severe crisis” that could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that was even before any damage wreaked by retaliatory tariffs.

The Hitler tariffs, announced on Friday, February 10, 1933, stunned observers. “The dimension of the tariff increases have in fact exceeded all expectations,” the Vossische Zeitung wrote disapprovingly, proclaiming the moment a “fork in the road” for the German economy. It appeared that Europe’s largest and most industrialized nation would suddenly be returning “to the furrow and the plow.” The New York Times saw this for what it was: “a trade war” against its European neighbors.

The primary targets of the Hitler tariffs—the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands—were outraged by the sudden suspension of favored-nation trading status on virtually all agricultural products, as well as on textiles, with tariffs in some cases rising 500 percent. With its livestock essentially banished from the German market, Denmark, for example, was facing substantial losses. Farmers panicked. The Danes and Swedes threatened “retaliatory measures,” as did the Dutch, who warned the Germans that the countermeasures would be felt as “palpable blows” to German industrial exports. That proved to be true.

In his address, Hitler declared that the entire country needed to be rebuilt after years of mismanagement by previous governments. He spoke of the “sheer madness” of international obligations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, of the need to restore “life, liberty, and happiness” to the German people, of the need for “cleansing” the bureaucracy, public life, culture, the population, “every aspect of our life.” His tariff regime, he implied, would help restore the pride and honor of German self-reliance.

Hitler did not refer specifically to the trade war he had launched that afternoon, just as he did not mention the rearmament plans he had discussed with his cabinet the previous day. “Billions of reichsmarks are needed for rearmament,” Hitler had told his ministers in that meeting. “The future of Germany depends solely and exclusively on the rebuilding of the army.” Hitler’s trade war with his neighbors would prove to be but a prelude to his shooting war with the world.

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The Face Plant President

When the Felon was sworn into office on January 20, 2025, America's economy was overall strong, the stock market was near record highs, and inflation was cooling.  A mere 90 days later, prices are up, consumer confidence has plummeted, the stock market has fallen roughly 6000 points, safety regulations and consumer protection regulations slash, decades long allies have been alienated, and foreign tourism is dropping like a stone.  All of this has happened not due to external events or natural disasters but instead due to the actions of one individual, the Felon, and his minions who are ransacking and shuttering federal agencies, have ignited a worldwide trade war (a future post will compare the Felon's tariffs with those of Hitler), and caused America and the dollar to lose their luster as a safe place to invest.  Despite this, much of the MAGA base remains loyal, thrilled at "owning the libs" while congressional Republicans cower in fear that they may be the Felon's next target in a social media post.  America's adversaries are smiling widely and former friends and allies shake their heads in both disbelief and dismay.  A column in the New York Times looks at all the self-inflicted damage done by one malignant narcissist.  Here are excerpts: 

Harold Macmillan, the midcentury British prime minister, supposedly said that what statesmen feared most were “events, dear boy, events.” Misfortunes happen: a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a foreign crisis. Political leaders are judged by how adroitly or incompetently they handle the unexpected.

Luckily, the Trump administration hasn’t yet had such misfortunes. Its only misfortune — and therefore everyone else’s — is itself.

So much has been obvious again this week, thanks to two stories that are, at their core, the same. First, there was the revelation that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had shared sensitive details of the military strike on Yemen with his wife, brother and personal lawyer on yet another Signal group chat. That was followed by an essay in Politico from a former close aide to Hegseth, John Ullyot, describing a “full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon” — a meltdown that included the firing of three of the department’s top officials.

Then there was a market rout and a dollar plunge, thanks to President Trump’s unseemly and unhinged attacks on Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman. Powell’s sin was to have the audacity to describe the probable effects of the president’s tariffs: namely, that they’ll cause prices to go up and growth to slow down. This sent Trump into a rage, complete with White House threats to examine whether Powell can be fired — a potential assault on central bank independence worthy of the worst economic days of Argentina.

Both cases are about adult supervision: the absence of it in the first instance, the presence of it in the other and the president’s strong preference for the former. Why? Probably for the same reason that tin-pot dictators elevate incompetent toadies to top security posts: They are more dependent and less of a threat. The last thing Trump wants at the Pentagon is another Jim Mattis, secure enough in himself to be willing to resign on principle.

The same goes for other departments of government.

An adult secretary of state would never have allowed his department to be gutted in its first weeks by an unofficial official (Elon Musk) from a so-called department (DOGE) by unaccountable teenage employees with nicknames like Big Balls. But Marco Rubio has a moniker with a very different meaning, Little Marco. He’ll do as he’s told right until he’s fired

Whether from cowardice or hubris, they prefer to risk global economic chaos than the displeasure of their boss.

As for Trump, his goal is to extract maximum loyalty and inspire maximum loathing, each feeding the other. It’s a method of control: The more reckless he gets, the more he forces his minions to abase themselves to defend him.

When the president completed his extraordinary political comeback in November, he was at the summit of his political power. He has eroded it every day since. With Matt Gaetz as his first choice for attorney general. With the needlessly bruising confirmation fights over the absurd choices of Hegseth, Robert Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard. With making an enemy of Canada. With JD Vance’s grotesque outreach to the German far right. With the Oval Office abuse of Volodymyr Zelensky. With the helter-skelter tariff regime. With threats of conquest that antagonize historic allies for no plausible benefit. With dubious arrests and lawless deportations that can make heroes of unsympathetic individuals. And now with threats to the basic economic order that sent gold soaring to a record high of $3,500 an ounce and the Dow on track to its worst April since the late Hoover administration.

Democrats wondering how to oppose Trump most effectively might consider the following. Drop the dictator comparisons. Rehearse the above facts. Promise normality and offer plans to regain it. And remember that no matter how malignant he may be, there’s no better opponent than a face-plant president stumbling over his untied laces.

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Trump's Dangerous Attempted Cultural Revolution

Much of the far right in America, particularly the so-called "conservative Christians," hate knowledge, science and experts because objective reality and modern knowledge challenge their Bronze Age fairy tale beliefs.  Moreover, they believe in personal freedom and religious freedom only for themselves - everyone else must conform to their archaic and typically hate based beliefs.   Those who do not conform or who are perceived as looking down on the ignorance and bigotry - or god forbid  see them for the knuckle dragging hypocrites that they are - must be punished.  This mindset also motivates much of MAGA world that despises experts, expertise and knowledge because these people and knowledge highlight how wrong they are in fact. Their cult leader, the Felon, fully embraces this hatred for any one and anything that exposes his lack of intellectual and economic acuity and as we are witnessing seeks revenge on anyone who fails to grovel sufficiently before him.  This goes far beyond tender egos of white "Christian" nationalist who feel threatened by diversity, equity and inclusion because in their zero sum world, if someone else prospers, they feel they have been deprived of what was rightfully theirs.   Project 2025, which the Felon is steadily implementing is permeated with this hate and resentment and seeks to return America to the 1950's when white men were supreme.  A piece by an economist looks at this dangerous effort to turn back time:

I’m in Lisbon, speaking at a conference the Banco de Portugal is holding to commemorate the revolution that brought democracy to Portugal 50 years ago. I worked at the Bank in 1976 and have been a friend of Portugal ever since. And while Portugal has faced many challenges since the Carnation Revolution, all in all its democracy has flourished.

Alas, democracy in my own nation is now under dire threat. 

Donald Trump has been treated very, very badly. At least that’s what he says all the time, and there’s no reason to doubt that it’s how he feels. Hardly a day goes by without an outburst . . . .

Above all, he clearly feels rage toward people who, he imagines, think they’re smarter or better than him.

And he and the movement he leads, composed of people possessed by similar rage, are seeking retribution. Retribution against whom? Yes, they hate wokeness. But three months in, it’s obvious that the MAGA types want revenge not just on their political opponents but on everyone they consider elites — a group that, as they see it, doesn’t include billionaires, but does include college professors, scientists and experts of any kind.

It took no time at all for the Trumpists to move from trying to purge government agencies of DEI to trying to control the content of medical journals.

Don’t try to sanewash what’s happening. It’s evil, but it isn’t calculated evil. That is, it’s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It’s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge.

If you want a model for what’s happening to America, think of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. . . . Once you’ve seen the parallel between what MAGA is trying to do and China’s Cultural Revolution, the similarities are everywhere. Maoists sent schoolteachers to do farm labor; Trumpists are talking about putting civil servants to work in factories.

The Cultural Revolution was, of course, a huge disaster for China. It inflicted vast suffering on its targets and also devastated the economy. But the Maoists didn’t care. Revenge was their priority, never mind the effects on GDP.

The Trumpists are surely the same. Their rampage will, if unchecked, have dire economic consequences. Right now we’re all focused on tariff madness, but undermining higher education and crippling scientific research will eventually have even bigger costs. But don’t expect them to care, or even to acknowledge what’s happening. Trump has already declared that the inflation everyone can see with their own eyes is fake news.

There is, however, one big difference between Chairman Mao in 1966 and President Trump in 2025: Trump probably — probably — doesn’t have the cards.

Until a couple of weeks ago, as one institution after another capitulated to Trump’s demands, it was hard to avoid the sickening feeling that American civil society would fold without a fight. But as I said, Trump and his movement are driven by visceral urges, not strategy. And right now it looks as if they overreached.

In different ways, the rendition of innocent people to gulags in El Salvador — don’t call it deportation — and the assault on Harvard seem to have stiffened spines. And the catastrophe of Trump’s economic policy has alienated businesspeople who would otherwise have served as his useful idiots.

America as we know it may yet perish. But at this point we seem to have a chance.

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Pope Francis Dies at 88

Like I suspect most of the world, I was shocked at the news that Pope Francis had died this morning.  Having been raised Roman Catholic, I have very conflicted feelings towards the Church that instilled so much guilt and self-hate in me for decades and which still does not fully accept LGBT individuals.  Indeed, it took a couple years of therapy for he to let go of the poison I had been taught in terms of my sexual orientation. Sadly, much of the Church hierarchy continues to prefer to cling to a handful of  bible passages, many the work of ignorant and uneducated authors, while ignoring the science that confirms that sexual orientation is not a choice and that homosexuality is naturally occurring.  While Francis lessened the stigma towards gays, there was much more that he could have done to end the bigotry and  embrace of ignorance that defines the Church's attitude towards gays.  Now, of course, the big question is who will be his successor and will that individual embrace reactionary positions or continue to make the Church more inclusive and welcoming.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Francis' sometimes contradictory reign. Here are a few highlights:

Pope Francis, who rose from modest means in Argentina to become the first Jesuit and Latin American pontiff, who clashed bitterly with traditionalists in his push for a more inclusive Roman Catholic Church, and who spoke out tirelessly for migrants, the marginalized and the health of the planet, died on Monday at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. He was 88.

The pope’s death was announced by the Vatican in a statement on X, a day after Francis appeared in his wheelchair to bless the faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday.

Throughout his 12-year papacy, Francis was a change agent, having inherited a Vatican in disarray in 2013 after the stunning resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, a standard-bearer of Roman Catholic conservatism.

Francis steadily steered the church in another direction, restocking its leadership with a diverse array of bishops who shared his pastoral, welcoming approach as he sought to open up the church. Many rank-and-file Catholics approved, believing that the church had become inward-looking and distant from ordinary people.

After some early stumbles, he took strong steps to address a clerical sex abuse crisis that had become an existential threat to the church. He adopted new rules to hold top religious leaders, including bishops, accountable if they committed sexual abuse or covered it up, though he did not impose the level of transparency or civil reporting obligations that many advocates demanded.

In his final years, slowed by a bad knee, intestinal surgery and respiratory ailments that sapped his breath and voice, Francis used a cane and then a wheelchair, seemingly a diminished figure. But that was a misleading impression. He continued to travel widely, focusing on exploited and war-torn parts of Africa, where he excoriated modern-day colonizers and sought peace in South Sudan.

Conservative Catholics accused him of diluting church teachings and never stopped rallying against him. Simmering dissent periodically exploded into view in almost medieval fashion, with talk of schisms and heresy.

But Francis also disappointed many liberals, who hoped that he might introduce progressive policies. His openness to frank discussion gave oxygen to debates about long-taboo subjects, including priestly celibacy, communion for divorced and remarried people, and greater roles for women in the church. While he opened doors to talking about such issues, he tended to balk at making major decisions.

“We are often chained like Peter in the prison of habit,” he said of the church in 2022 in a speech in St. Peter’s Basilica. “Scared by change and tied to the chain of our customs.”

His Christmas speeches to Vatican leaders became reliably blunt lectures about a church weighed down by clericalism — the notion that the “peacock priest” and “airport bishop,” who drop in when convenient, see themselves as superior to their flock and had become out of touch. Clericalism, he contended, lay at the heart of many of the church’s ills, including the child sexual abuse crisis.

On other issues, Francis could make it difficult to understand where he stood. He rejected same-sex marriage yet called on priests to be welcoming to people in nontraditional relationships, such as gay men and lesbians, single parents and unmarried couples who live together.

He supported civil unions for gay couples but approved a Vatican decision to bar priests from blessing them — a decision he later said he regretted, and then reversed.

He called the criminalization of homosexuality “unjust,” but also backed the Vatican’s opposition to a proposed Italian law extending protections to L.G.B.T.Q. people. And when Germany’s bishops overwhelmingly voted to bless gay couples in 2023, the Vatican cracked down with the pope’s approval.

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The Felon: America’s Mad King

Bridgerton fans have seen in the series how as George III became increasingly mentally ill and detached from reality, Queen Charlotte and George III's ministers effective took control of the government and during the last nine years of his reign, his son, the prince of Wales (later George IV) served as regent.  Fast forward to 2025 in America and we are witnessing a mad would be monarchy who frighteningly is surrounded by yes men, third rate cabinet members, and sycophants who only serve to enable the madness and detachment from objective reality, where non-stop lies and untruths and efforts to gaslight the American populace are the daily norm. Much of the MAGA base, feeling empowered to exhibit their worse hatreds and prejudices and "owning the libs", for now continue to cheer on the madness - but what happens when prices rise and the GOP makes devastating cuts to Medicaid upon which many MAGA voters rely is an open question.  Another open question is whether the U.S. Supreme Court will side with the U.S. Constitution and uphold rights to due process and freedom of speech or allow the madness and authoritarianism to continue. A piece in The Atlantic by a former Republican looks at where America finds itself caught in madness, incompetence and outright cruelty. Here age excerpts:

Last Monday [a week ago], Donald Trump, seeking to fortify public support for his massive, across-the-board tariffs, posted: “The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO. Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!).”

By Wednesday, Trump had caved. His witless, incoherent, and incompetently executed policies—his administration had imposed tariffs on an Australian territory that is home to no people but to many penguins—created a financial panic that risked devastating the American economy and triggering a global recession. Trillions of dollars of stock-market value evaporated in a matter of days.

A man who has spent most of his life, and much of his presidency, gaslighting the public ran into the brick wall of reality. Misinformation, disinformation, bullying, and nasty social-media posts proved ineffective. Stock and bond markets weren’t intimidated by the threats of the aging president.  Trump fought reality, and reality won.

WE’RE FEWER THAN 90 DAYS into Trump’s second term; many more collisions between the president and the real world will come. So what can we expect, based on what we’ve witnessed?

We won’t see qualities from Trump that we haven’t seen before, but we will see them in a more extreme version. He is more impulsive, more vindictive, and more anarchic than in his first term. “He’s at the peak of just not giving a f--- anymore,” a White House official familiar with Trump’s thinking told The Washington Post. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f---. He’s going to do what he’s going to do.”

Trump is America’s Mad King.

Compounding the problem is that the president has surrounded himself with men and women who are utterly loyal to him, unwilling to challenge him, and certainly unable to contain him. . . . On top of that, this is an administration filled with third-rate intellects, conspiracy theorists, and misfits. They aren’t qualified to manage Oak Hill, Alabama, or Monowi, Nebraska, let alone the federal government. Their combination of maliciousness and incompetence has produced enormous, dangerous, and in some cases lethal disruptions. Some examples:

• The formula Trump used to calculate his tariffs was not just ill-advised but nonsensical as well.
• In his mania to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion content, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave orders so vague that the Defense Department flagged photos of the Enola Gay for deletion from all websites and social-media posts. (The B-29 bomber that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was named after the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay Tibbets. One wit on social media said, “Enola Gay will henceforth be known as Enola Straight.”)
• Another order by Hegseth led to the removal of Maya Angelou’s memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from the U.S. Naval Academy’s library but left copies of Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf, on the bookshelves.
• In an appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy and the lead negotiator tasked with ending the war in Ukraine, was not only effusive in his praise of Russia’s totalitarian leader, Vladimir Putin, but even repeated Kremlin propaganda . . . 

  The Department of Health and Human Services, which is run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, hired a discredited vaccine skeptic to study whether vaccines cause autism. 

  Amid a measles resurgence in the United States, Kennedy is also making unsupported and misleading claims. ProPublica reported that leaders at the CDC ordered staff not to release its assessment linking the spread to areas where many are unvaccinated.

• The National Institutes of Health, the global leader in biomedical research, is getting irreparably damaged by dramatic and reckless cuts being made by people who have no knowledge of the agencies they are gutting.
• Also being decimated is PEPFAR, the global AIDS initiative started by President George W. Bush in 2003, which has saved more than 25 million lives; until the Trump era, it enjoyed strong bipartisan support. PEPFAR is estimated to save 1.6 million lives each year.

This kind of malicious incompetence is evident in almost everything Trump and those in his administration touch. You can be sure, too, that there are many more similar acts of ineptitude we don’t yet know about. And Trump still has more than 1,350 days to go.

THE SECOND TRUMP PRESIDENCY, more even than the first, will be defined by Trump’s authoritarian desires and his ineptitude. It might be that the latter impedes the former; ruthless efficiency can help in the dismantling of democratic institutions, but having an administration filled with freaks and fools can impede that effort and catalyze public disaffection and even resistance.

We’re already seeing that reflected in a handful of election results, in mass protests across the country, in focus groups and public-opinion polls, and in the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index, which provides a snapshot of the U.S. economy’s health. Early this month, we learned that index had hit its second-lowest reading since 1952, dragged down by fears of higher prices and unemployment. Expectations for inflation hit the highest level in 44 years.

But here’s the danger: Vindictive narcissists like Trump hold grudges and harbor resentments, blame everything on someone else, and weaponize information. They have a mean, even sadistic, side, belittling others to feel better about themselves and using, abusing, and discarding people.

So as the second Trump administration careens from one failure to another, as unhappiness with the president rises, as events and reality refuse to bend to his will, he will become darker and crueler and more unstable. His advisers, all of whom are afraid to stand up to him, will enable him. And the MAGA movement, more cult-like than ever, more walled off from reality than ever, will stay with him until the end.

Trump is hardly invincible, and many millions of Americans will not give up without a fight. My hope and expectation is that they will prevail, that America will prevail, but it will come at quite a cost. It didn’t have to be this way. There are 77,302,580 co-authors of this catastrophe. They have left a crimson stain on this Republic.

While I worry about children in MAGA households (for numerous reasons), I hope the adults truly feel some suffering.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty