ICE, the Felon and Rampant Cruelty in America

As a lover of history I have often wondered what everyday Germans thought and felt in the 1930's as Hitler and his Nazi Party took over the country.  Did they recognize the brutality being done to Jews and opponents of the regime or did they simply look away and focus on their everyday lives, hoping to be spared from being either killed, having their property confiscated, or made to disappear ?  Today, Americans are faced with a similar ongoing display of brutality and dehumanizing of others. While as of now, the brutality and abuses are focused mainly on brown skinned immigrants and undocumented Hispanics, as Hitler's Germany showed, over time the nightmare spread to others not favored by the dictatorial regime. With every passing day, there are more displays of cruelty and treatment of people as if they are subhuman, typically by masked members of ICE, America's answer to the Gestapo.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at but one instance of this horrific treatment of long time residents, in this case done to the father of three U.S. Marines, two still on active duty.  The take away is that if this type of cruelty and brutality continues, in time none of us will be safe.  I had like to believe in the 21st century that America was better than this.  In the age of the Felon and Project 2025, apparently such is not the case.  Here are article highlights:

The four men in jeans and tactical vests labeled Police: U.S. Border Patrol had Narciso Barranco surrounded. Their masks and hats concealed their faces, so that only their eyes were visible. When they’d approached him, he was doing landscape work outside of an IHOP in Santa Ana, California. Frightened, Barranco attempted to run away. By the time a bystander started filming, the agents had caught him and pinned him, face down, on the road. One crouches and begins to pummel him, repeatedly, in the head. You can hear Barranco moaning in pain. Eventually, the masked men drag him to his feet and try to shove him into an SUV. When Barranco resists, one agent takes a rod and wedges it under his neck, attempting to steer him into the vehicle as if prodding livestock.

Barranco is the father of three sons, all of them United States Marines. The eldest brother is a veteran, and the younger men are on active duty. At any moment, the same president who sent an emboldened ICE after their father could also command them into battle. That president [the Felon] has described Latinos as “criminals” and “anchor babies,” but the Barrancos and so many like them, immigrants or the children of immigrants, are not “invading” America; they’re defending it.

In 2015, 12 percent of active-duty service members identified as Hispanic. By 2023, that number had increased to 19.5 percent. In the Marine Corps, the proportion was closer to 28 percent. Latinas are more represented in the military than in the civilian workforce—21 percent of enlisted women compared with 18 percent of working women.

Communities of color have long been targets for military recruitment. When I went to public high school in Brooklyn in the ’90s, recruitment officers used to visit classrooms. The military offers financial stability, a route to college. But for many Latinos, as for other immigrant groups, it offers more: a path to belonging, whether for citizens who have been treated as outsiders in their own nation, or for the undocumented. Immigrants who serve at least a year in any branch of the armed forces can become eligible for naturalized citizenship.

During World War II, approximately 15,000 Mexican nationals fought in American uniforms, many earning citizenship. This was in addition to the 500,000 American Latinos of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent who enlisted and fought for their country, including my own grandfather. He was a decorated member of the 9th Infantry Division who fought in Tunisia, landed in Normandy, and was one of the first American soldiers to make it into Germany. He was proud of his role in history, but also of the lifelong friendships that he, a Puerto Rican man from Brooklyn, had with veterans from across the country.

Hispanic veterans came home to a country where signs were posted in Texas restaurant windows announcing: No Dogs Negroes Mexicans. Like their African American counterparts, many were the victims of redlining that prevented them from buying homes. Latino veterans created the American GI Forum to demand that benefits such as medical care and burial rights be available to Latino as well as white veterans. During the Vietnam War, Latinos were about 5 percent of the U.S. population, but they accounted for an estimated 20 percent of the 60,000 American casualties.

This country has a long history of treating the veterans who have served it shoddily. And yet what’s happening now—as Donald Trump’s agents violently detain some Latinos in the streets as other Latinos serve their country in strikes against Iran—feels extreme.

Johnathan Hernandez, a city councilman in Santa Ana, where Barranco was beaten, describes what’s happening in his community as a kind of war itself. Santa Ana is 77 percent Hispanic. It has become a popular target for ICE. Hernandez told me that he is seeing “a culture of fear, a culture of people not feeling safe, and people feeling under attack.” He said he worked to get the video posted on social media because no one knew who the man in it was, and he hoped that someone in the tight-knit community could identify him. “Because of the fact that these agents are unidentified and they're taking people without due process, it means that you’re leaving very little for a family to be able to put the pieces together and find their loved ones,” he said. A woman saw the video on Instagram and commented that it was her friends’ father.

Nearly 24 hours after the violent encounter, Barranco’s eldest son, Alejandro, was able to finally make contact with his father, who said he still had not received medical care, and that he was hungry and thirsty. . . . In interviews with news agencies, Alejandro said that he and his brothers “feel hurt; we feel betrayed.” Their father taught them to “respect this country, thank this country, and then that led us to join the Marine Corps and kind of give back to the country and be thankful,” he said.

Alejandro was deployed to Kabul in 2021, when the U.S. was evacuating from Afghanistan.

Had a Marine treated a detainee the way that the Border Patrol agents treated his father, he told MSNBC, it would have been considered a war crime.

Many Latinos are sharing in the Barranco family’s trauma. We are a highly diverse identity group, whose common bonds can feel tenuous at best. Forty-eight percent of the Latinos who voted in the 2024 election chose Trump—and many Latino members of the military, which tends to lean more conservative than the general population, were probably among them. And yet even some of those Trump voters, seeing on a daily basis the violence and haphazard cruelty with which the Trump administration is executing its mass-deportation agenda, must share my terror and anger.

How can any Latinos feel secure if “looking” Hispanic or speaking Spanish or even going to Home Depot puts you at risk? How would you feel if you were deployed half a world away and wondering each day if your mother or father or sister or brother or wife might have been snatched up by ICE?

The psychological toll of ICE raids isn’t borne only by the new immigrants whom Trump calls “invaders,” but also by many of the Americans tasked with protecting us from real foreign threats. In the barracks at Camp Pendleton where the younger Barranco brothers sleep, they must be struggling to focus on their mission while fearing for the safety of their father in the hands of the very government they are sworn to defend.

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Decreased Blogging - Family Cruise No. 3

Over the next week, posting on this blog may be reduced.  Today the husband and I depart on an eight night cruise out of Norfolk on the Carnival Sunshine.  We are taking our daughters and their families - including the five grandchildren - with us.  This will be the third "family cruise" we have done and everyone is excited.  Barry and I love cruises and together we have done over a dozen cruises, a fair number right out of Norfolk (we have another booked for December and another transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2 in slightly less than a year from now).  To us, cruises are a perfect vacation for a multi-generation group: adults get adult time, children get kids time in the amazing "Camp Ocean" on Carnival, and everyone gets time together as well, including during shore excursions.  Best of all, no one has to cook, clean or constantly watch the kids.  Fortunately, we have a friend who will be staying at our home to keep an eye on the place and to water our plants as the high heat continues. A big shout out to her!

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The "Big Beautiful Bill" Will Devastate Many States

A never ending irony is how the modern day GOP has succeeded in using "god, guns, and gays" to dupe the party base and others to continually vote for politicians who enact policies that harm their constituents.  Now, with the Felon's "big beautiful bill" the GOP's reverse Robin Hood policies are on steroids with devastating cuts  to social programs, particularly Medicaid and SNAP benefits all so that more huge tax cuts can be given to the very wealthy.  And even with these draconian cuts that will harm working class Americans and others, the "big beautiful bill" will add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit. One has to ponder, why would a politician willingly do so much harm to many of their constituents in order to benefit the privileged and wealthy few? Yesterday's post linked to a piece that looked at the harm that would be inflicted in Louisiana by the bill, especially cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, but through other cuts as well.  Now, an op-ed in the New York Times by two state legislators from Alaska, one a Republican, looks at the devastating impact that state would suffer and basically begs congressional Republicans to reconsider this harmful bill.  The same story applies across many states some of which are already seeing their agricultural industries  harmed by the Felon's deportation efforts.  Here are highlights from the Times op-ed:

Across the country, state lawmakers like us are bracing as the federal government considers a bill that will throw state budgets into chaos and add red tape that our social service agencies do not have the capacity to administer. If the budget reconciliation bill that passes Congress in anything like its current form, we will be left to deal with the fallout.

The likely impacts from the “Big, Beautiful Bill” are particularly ugly for our home state, Alaska: Nearly 40,000 Alaskans could lose health care coverage, thousands of families will go hungry through loss of benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the shift in costs from the federal government to the state will plunge our budget into a severe deficit, cripple our state economy and make it harder to provide basic services.

In the Alaska Legislature, our State Senate and House are led by a bipartisan governing coalition. Our focus is squarely on the survival of the people we represent.

The benefits of Medicaid and the SNAP program permeate the entire fabric of the Alaska economy, with one in three Alaskans receiving Medicaid, including more than half of the children. In remote Arctic communities, Medicaid dollars make medical travel possible for residents from the hundreds of roadless villages to the communities where they are able to receive proper medical treatments.

SNAP, which supports 70,000 residents, puts food on the table and is also used to help purchase subsistence gear for essential hunting and fishing. And at a time when many fish runs are collapsing because of climate change and our overburdened agencies are already struggling to get residents their SNAP benefits on time, cutting federal funding for SNAP will have a profound impact here.

The bill being rushed through Congress is based on a one-size-fits-all approach that does not reflect these realities on the ground. Unlike the federal government, most states cannot run a deficit and must balance their budget. If the federal government shifts costs to the states, it generally means we need to cut something else. And while the impacts are particularly difficult for Alaska, our state is not alone. Last year, inflation-adjusted tax revenue fell in 40 states. States with large rural populations are likely to be hit particularly hard.

In order to make up for this cost-shifting legislation, Alaska would need to find in its already stressed budget hundreds of millions of dollars for Medicaid and tens of millions for SNAP. Such cuts could not come at a worse time. We’re already struggling to stabilize our budget amid sharply lower oil revenue and a decade of out-migration. If this bill passes, it will mean less money for road maintenance and snow clearing, larger K-12 class sizes, school closings and defunding of state public safety agencies.

Alaska cannot afford to lose health care funding. Our state is near the top of the list for the highest rates of suicide, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted infections in the nation. It is also severely lacking in adequate behavioral health services. The cuts will only make these problems worse.

Work requirements instituted in Medicaid are untenable for rural Alaska, with many communities facing limited broadband access and job opportunities. Alaskans who lose health care coverage will be forced to delay care until it’s an emergency. In desperation, they will end up in emergency rooms, the most expensive place to receive care, resulting in higher premiums for private sector employers and unworkable finances that will most likely force rural hospitals to close. The reality is that most Alaskans on Medicaid are already working, and these provisions just create more barriers and bureaucracy.

Our U.S. senator, Lisa Murkowski, has clearly articulated the harm these policies will cause. As Alaskans and Americans, we are all praying that she is successful in building a coalition to protect Medicaid and SNAP from these onerous cuts.

We fear that if this bill passes, a village in rural Alaska might lose its one-and-only grocery store because of a drastic decline in SNAP dollars. It might also lose its sole health care clinic or hospital because it cannot sustain its services with decreased Medicaid reimbursements. The reconciliation bill does not take into account the uniqueness of Alaskan lifestyles and geographic remoteness.

Outside of SNAP and Medicaid, we worry about the end of tax credits that helped many workers afford health care through the Affordable Care Act. Eliminating these credits will mean that some families will see their premiums increase by thousands of dollars per month, or be forced to go without health insurance.

To keep up with rising energy costs, our Arctic communities have also relied on innovative renewables to cut costs and reduce dependence on imported diesel fuel for over two decades. Unfortunately, the reconciliation bill ends tax credits for wind and solar, which will drive up the utility bills and make it nearly impossible for Alaskans to achieve independence from foreign energy.

What is the end game here? How does it help anyone to terminate health care coverage for our most vulnerable through red tape or take away food for families who have limited-to-no options for gainful employment?

As long-serving members of the Alaska House of Representatives and the Alaska State Senate, we’ve faced many daunting economic and fiscal challenges, but we’ve never seen federal policy whose impacts are so far-reaching and damaging as what is before us now. Alaska is one of the most amazing places in our country and Congress is risking our way of life to give money to the rich.

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Democrats Should Focus on "Kitchen Table Issues"

Literally for decades now Republicans have relied on appeals to "god, guns and gays" to dupe their constituents into voting against their own economic and welfare interests.   Indeed, a piece in Politico looks at how the GOP "big beautiful bill" would harm the Felon loving state of Louisiana:

Louisiana is poorer, sicker and hungrier than most states, and the deep cuts to Medicaid have a growing number of Republicans in Louisiana worried that Congress and the White House are going too far. They are anxious that rural hospitals whose finances are highly dependent on federal Medicaid funds would face crippling revenue losses and be forced to shut down, depriving all residents of accessible health care. The blowback over Medicaid represents the most significant crack between GOP leaders in Washington and in the states so far in this administration, according to interviews with nearly two dozen Louisiana state leaders.

In a formal appeal to Washington, the state Legislature — controlled by a GOP supermajority — unanimously passed a resolution this month calling for no cuts to Medicaid. More than 1.6 million Louisianans — roughly 35 percent of the state’s population — count on it for health care. Under the House budget bill, which would impose first-ever federal work requirements on Medicaid recipients, up to 158,000 Louisianians are predicted to lose coverage. The Senate’s version of the bill threatens even more low-income residents.

One estimate says a Senate proposal would cost Louisiana more than $326 million to maintain its current nutrition assistance program, which is more than the state sends to the entire University of Louisiana System each year.

Yet, the voters of Louisiana voted overwhelmingly for those now pushing cuts to social programs and Medicaid.  Too often, Democrats allow themselves to be drawn into culture war issues rather than focus on "kitchen table" such as economic issues, quality public education, health care coverage, and the like.  All of this aids Republicans' disingenuous campaigns that in reality typically push reverse Robin Hood policies that aid the very rich while screwing over the working and middle classes.  The huge upset in the New York Democrat mayoral race is based seemingly on Zohran Mamdami's calls to make New York more affordable and to tax the very rich to benefit the many.  Another piece in Politico looks at how Democrats need to focus on everyday kitchen table issues and refuse to be drawn into the culture wars.  Here are highlights:

The leader of the largest PAC dedicated to electing LGBTQ+ people to office says Democrats should talk about “kitchen-table issues,” not gender identity. Evan Low, president and CEO of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, said he has been advising candidates specifically to avoid talking about trans people in sports — a focus of President Donald Trump and a rallying cry for conservatives.

Arguing the issue affects few people, the former Democratic California state lawmaker said in an interview, “This is not a top 1, top 5, top 10 or top 30 issue.”   “We want to talk about kitchen-table issues, not about identity,” Low said. “We are running to serve the people, not to distract on issues that divide.”

Low’s remarks come amid widespread debate within the Democratic Party about how to win back working-class voters following the party’s drubbing in November — and about how much or little to highlight issues of identity. But LGBTQ+ advocates are in Trump’s crosshairs. The Republican president made anti-transgender attacks a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, while the GOP regularly mocks Democrats over the issue.

[T]he need for LGBTQ+ candidates to run pragmatic campaigns has been heightened as Trump leans into cultural wedge issues like banning the use of “nonbinary” or “other” options from federal documents, cutting federal funding to schools that let transgender students play on the sports teams of their gender identity and barring transgender people from serving in the military.

Low said a growing number of successful campaigns are following the “kitchen table” formula, and his organization has numbers to back it up. . . . . the number of openly LGBTQ+ people serving in public office — 1,334 — has nearly tripled since Trump’s first term.

In 2018, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis became the first openly gay candidate to win a governorship. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek followed in 2022. All three are Democrats. . . . . Polis, a former member of Congress, said he’s rarely felt the need to discuss his identity in his runs for governor, instead simply answering questions about his sexuality if people asked. His first statewide campaign in 2018 primarily focused on three policy issues: providing taxpayer-funded preschool and kindergarten, lowering health care costs and expanding renewable energy.

“You answer any questions, and then you move on and talk about what you want to do,” Polis said. “It’s similar to how you deal with your faith. You’re not running just to represent that faith.”

LGBTQ+ candidates’ gains in representation might seem like a paradox considering the harsher climate the community has faced nationally in recent years as large tech companies roll back their diversity programs and Pride festivals once awash in corporate logos struggle to attract sponsors.

There’s California Rep. Robert Garcia, who is gay and a rising star in House Democratic leadership, and New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, the first member who is both Afro-Latino and openly gay. There are now transgender legislators serving in eight statehouses, including in red states like Iowa, Missouri and Montana.

He said much of the recent gains in representation stem from the “Rainbow Wave” of the 2018 midterm elections, when dozens of LGBTQ+ people ran in response to Trump’s first-term win. When many of them succeeded, he said, it showed others it was possible for them to run as out candidates.

Imse said many elected in that wave year ran on issues like education and affordability, noting that a recent Gallup poll showed only 9.3 percent of adults identify as LGBTQ+. “We are not going to win elections by pandering just to the nine percent of voters,” Imse said.

Focusing on everyday issues, he said, helps blunt vitriol against candidates and “really takes away from their opponents’ ability to paint them as radicals who are somehow not fit for leadership roles.” . . . . “‘There was no need to respond to it. If you respond to it, you make it a thing,” she said. “Iowans are fair people. They will give anybody a chance if you speak to them directly.”

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GOP Pollster: Republicans Are Wrong on Ending Same Sex Marriage

Evangelicals comprise 23% of the U. S. population with more that half living in the South and 55% being 50 years of age or older (Republicans make up only 28% of the population while Independents make up 43% and Democrats are at 28%).  Meanwhile, 29 percent of the U. S. population espouses no religious affiliation. Yet, the white "Christian" nationalists behind Project 2025 want to inflict the beliefs of this declining minority of the population on the nation as a whole. These architects of Project 2025, want to restore white male privilege, undermine women's rights, reverse LGBT rights, and I suspect, if they could, bring back Jim Crow laws. Sadly, far too many Republicans are only too willing to prostitute themselves to this hate and bigotry driven minority rather than face a a potential primary challenge.  A guest column in the New York Times by a Republican pollster argues that Republicans pandering to Christofascists and supportive of ending same sex marriage have it wrong and are misreading the American public's views and support for same sex marriage, especially among younger voters who will increasing come to dominate the voting public.   Here in Virginia the GOP extremist gubernatorial candidate is ignoring the reality of the situation with her desire to end same sex marriage.  These are column highlights:

Almost 10 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage would be legal across the country. Today, sensing a political shift toward socially conservative policy, Republican policymakers in states from Michigan to Tennessee have begun proposing bills that would roll back same-sex marriage.

These lawmakers may discover to their dismay that they have the politics of the issue quite wrong. Though the cultural winds have shifted on many issues, Republican voters are not clamoring for an unraveling of same-sex marriage rights. Republican voters have objected to socially progressive policies that they believe incur a cost to themselves or others, but the experience over the past decade with legal same-sex marriage has persuaded many in the party that it is nothing to be feared.

Polls of American voters generally show support for same-sex marriage rising over the past three decades, both before and after the Obergefell decision. A whopping 68 percent of Americans said they supported legal recognition of same-sex marriages, according to a Gallup poll from last month. Younger voters, a demographic courted by Donald Trump in his recent presidential campaign, are typically the most supportive of gay rights; indeed, some of those who voted for the first time in 2024 may have scarce memory of a time when same-sex marriage was not the law of the land.

Among Republicans, the story is admittedly more complicated. There has been a backsliding of support for same-sex marriage among Republicans in recent years, but surveys differ on whether this is a blip or a full-fledged reversal. While Gallup shows a 14-point decline in support among Republicans for same-sex marriage since 2022, my surveys have shown Republican support for legal same-sex marriage bouncing back above its pre-2022 levels, from 40 percent in 2022 to 43 percent in 2023 to 48 percent in 2024.

There are two main lines of argument that seem to resonate most strongly with Republicans on preserving same-sex marriage: Live and let live, and leave well enough alone.

Republicans remain very open to the idea that the government should not be in the business of meddling with or punishing people because they are gay or lesbian. In polling I conducted with a coalition of Republican pollsters on behalf of Centerline Liberties and Project Right Side, published Friday morning, roughly 78 percent of Republicans surveyed said that “what two consenting adults do in their personal lives is none of my business — and it shouldn’t be the government’s either.” Government is already “too big and intrusive” was a convincing argument in support of legal same-sex marriage, according to the survey.

Republican voters seem to have made a distinction between the “L.G.B.” and the “T.” They continue to strongly oppose things like the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports — a topic on which a majority of Americans agree with them. However, when it comes to same-sex marriage, people appear to feel little or no imposition on the lives of others. Same-sex couples can live and thrive in communities side by side with heterosexual married couples harmoniously. Live and let live.

But even setting aside the arguments in favor of same-sex marriage on the merits, there are legal and political considerations that even more skeptical Republicans understand.

The reality is that there is little political passion or momentum on the side of opposition to legal same-sex marriage. It has been in place for a decade (or longer in states that embraced it before Obergefell). Families have been established, and gains have been made that people will be loath to give up. As millennials and Generation Z voters become a larger slice of the electorate, the political viability of opposing same-sex marriage will continue to evaporate. Republicans will recognize that this is an issue where trying to undo what has been done would be a losing strategy.

Many survey respondents in my recent polling mentioned personal interactions with same-sex married couples in their lives to explain their support for same-sex marriage, using words like “love” and “family.”

Republican policymakers should not misread the moment. Both as a matter of political prudence and as a matter of embracing personal freedom, when it comes to same-sex marriage Americans should be allowed to live and let live.

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