With no apologies to Trump apologists...
Trump's seeking unfathomable vengeance against every person, institution, organization, government entity, judge, lawyer/law firm, media outlet, company, nonprofit, university, immigrant, foreign government officials, etc. that disagreed with him or failed to provide unfettered loyalty to him is a clear threat to our constitutional right to free speech and to speak in opposition without penalty.
His thumbing at judges orders, the rule of law and due process is further evidence of movement toward dictatorial power. That the GOP and select judges are not standing in his way is undermining the checks and balances our founding fathers counted on to sustain our democracy and all such persons should be shamed and more for enabling him.
Living in fear of our country's future is now legitimatized. The irreparable damage to our country's democracy, credibility, reputation and standing in the world will take our lifetimes and much more to restore, if ever again. How anyone could support him and his administration at this point is a true wonderment. No one is immune from the danger he brings to all of us.
Just another dangerous log on the fire:
'Homegrowns are next': Trump hopes to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad
President Trump says his administration is actively exploring a proposal to detain U.S. citizens and send them to prisons in El Salvador....
....El Salvador is already holding hundreds of people in a maximum-security prison. They were flown from the U.S. in recent weeks after being detained for allegedly lacking legal status or having gang affiliations.
Critics say many of those individuals were deported with limited or no due process, some in defiance of court orders by U.S. judges....
...The proposal has drawn condemnation from some legal scholars, who said it would represent an unprecedented encroachment on the civil liberties of U.S. citizens.
"It's obviously unconstitutional, obviously illegal. There's no authority in any U.S. law to deport U.S. citizens and certainly not to imprison them in a foreign country," said David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C.
"The problem of course is [Trump] already has illegally deported hundreds of people by just not giving the courts an opportunity to stop him," Bier added. "I think that's the real fear, now that he is going to try to evade judicial review of deportations of U.S. citizens."...
...But numerous legal scholars contacted by NPR described the policy idea as crossing a bright line in the U.S. government's treatment of American citizens....
...Some judges and legal scholars are clearly concerned that the Trump administration could move forward with the proposal despite legal and constitutional barriers.
In a statement released last week, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Trump administration's legal arguments around deportation cases suggest the U.S. government already believes it "could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene."
Speaking last week with NPR, Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University professor emeritus of constitutional law, offered a similar warning:
"What that means is that literally any of us, whether we are from Venezuela or were born in the United States, whether we are immigrants or not, whether we are citizens or not, any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped by masked agents of the United States government who don't tell us why they're picking us up, perhaps never to be seen again because we're located somewhere in a dungeon, a prison cell, rotting away, whether it's in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world," Tribe said...
...But some legal experts interviewed for this story said deporting Americans to serve prison time in foreign countries would cross an alarming new line, effectively stripping U.S. citizens of constitutional and legal protections...
...Bier, of the Cato Institute, said he has been "shocked" by the lack of pushback against Trump's proposal from Republican leaders and members of the conservative legal movement.
"It's unthinkable. It's absolutely a reflection of where Donald Trump has taken the Republican Party and the conservative movement," he said.
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366178/trump-deport-jail-u-s-citizens-homegrowns-el-salvador
And another...
Former cybersecurity agency chief Chris Krebs leaves SentinelOne after Trump targets him in executive order
A week ago, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chief Chris Krebs, and calling on the government to suspend the security clearances of any entities with whom he’s associated. The order specifically named SentinelOne
, Krebs’ employer.
On Wednesday, Krebs announced his resignation from SentinelOne, a cybersecurity company with a $5.6 billion market cap. While Krebs said the choice was his alone, his swift departure is the latest example of the effect Trump is having on the private sector when it comes to pressuring people and institutions that he personally dislikes...
....Krebs served as the first CISA director from 2018 until he was fired in November 2020 after declaring that the presidential election, which Democrat Joe Biden won, was “the most secure in American history.” CISA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
In his executive order on April 9, which took the extraordinary approach of going after a specific individual, Trump called Krebs a “bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.”
“Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic,” the order said. “Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”
Trump directed the attorney general, director of national intelligence and “all other relevant agencies” to suspend “any active security clearances held by individuals at entities associated with Krebs, including SentinelOne, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”...
...The demands on SentinelOne resemble campaigns that President Trump has waged against law firms and universities that he’s tried to strongarm into making significant changes in how they operate or else lose government contracts or funding....
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/16/former-cisa-chief-krebs-leaves-sentinelone-after-trump-exec-order.html
Echoes of Nazi Germany:First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
This quote is attributed to the prominent German pastor Martin Niemöller. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a poem.
After World War II, Niemöller openly spoke about his own early complicity in Nazism and his eventual change of heart. His powerful words about guilt and responsibility still resonate today.
