Trump is unrestrained

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
          James Madison, Federalist No. 51 

"Use it or lose it."
           Health advice

Trump can govern without restraint.

All presidents push against the limits of their power, but what is happening this year isn't normal. Trump isn't bothering with hypocrisy.  He doesn't need to bother. Congress is consenting to its irrelevancy.

The 1994 election brought a red wave, elevating a new House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, with a big Republican majority. President Bill Clinton had to say: 

I am relevant. The Constitution gives me relevance. A president, especially an activist president, has relevance.

The tables have turned. Now someone may declare that Congress is relevant, but it is a wish, not a description. At key points Congress has itself proven its irrelevancy. 

     -- Trump ignores Congress' role in the Constitutional scheme. Trump uses implausible of pretexts or doesn't even bother with that. This week he invaded Venezuela. The U.S. used warships, warplanes, and uniformed soldiers with guns. They attacked and destroyed military targets and killed Venezuelan soldiers. Trump declared who would then be the government of Venezuela. The implausible pretext is that this was simply an arrest, a law enforcement action. 

     -- Trump imposed tariffs, a tax. Congress has the power to levy taxes. Trump has an implausible pretext: We are in a trade crisis requiring emergency powers. 

     -- Trump deported people and sent them to third-country prisons. His implausible pretext is that the deported people are enemy invaders subject to the War Powers Act.

     -- Trump shut down USAID, a program authorized by Congress. There was no pretext. He just did it. 

     -- Trump ignored Civil Service laws passed by Congress. Again, no pretext here. He just did it.

There was a key moment when Congress had the power to assert its relevance. It failed to do so. In the aftermath of the January 6 riot, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voted against conviction in the impeachment of President Trump. He led a majority of his GOP delegation to do the same. It was a turning point. Memories of the riot were fresh. There was little illusion that President Trump and the rioters were casual tourists and patriots. Trump had not yet sold that story. 

McConnell spoke on the Senate floor to explain his thinking:

American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.

Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president.

They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth – because he was angry he'd lost an election.

Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

The House accused the former president of, quote, "incitement." That is a specific term from the criminal law.

Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.

The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.

And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.

McConnell went on to say that since his disgrace was so obvious, there was no need to convict him. He was already out of office. 

This was a giant mis-calculation. Trump retained the largest megaphone on planet earth, and he was willing and able to create a new account of the events, an account that was pleasant for Republican voters to hear. Don't believe your eyes. Maybe those people with Trump signs hated Trump. Maybe they were all FBI agents. Meanwhile, this Supreme Court decided that a president -- or at least this president -- had blanket immunities and was not restrained by law. Therefore, the only practical way to force a president to obey the laws and Constitution is to impeach and convict him first. That is the final bottom-line restraint: the inability to keep the support of at least 34 members of one's party.

That is current state of checks and balances: the 34 senators test. 

A normal president might show some restraint. He would care about a legacy of patriotism and virtue. They accept the norms of good behavior. But Trump is uniquely ambitious, uniquely willful, uniquely shameless, and he seeks the legacy of glory. The only real restraint on Trump is the popular will. For now at least, Republican voters appear to like a president who demonstrates strength, not prudence. They want greatness. And greatness means being a conqueror, with all the risks that entails.

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Trump is the most consequential president in my lifetime

Trump is changing a century of American policy.

He can do it because enough Americans are OK with the new direction.

The grief comes later.

Reason Magazine

Council on Foreign Relations

Trump is openly changing our economy to a form of state socialism. Left-socialism scares too many people to catch on in America. It looks like redistribution from the haves to have-nots, and people who have something -- a little -- fear losing what they have to undeserving people poorer than themselves. It is a perpetual unfulfilled temptation for the left.

Trump is doing something different: right-socialism. It looks like partnership and gain, not loss, and so far it has not generated an uproar of opposition. Trump demanded 10 percent of Intel. He takes 15 percent of the revenue from our most successful companies (Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices) most important product. He demanded a "golden share" of U.S. Steel, which gives the government a veto on their policies. This week Trump used our military to decapitate Venezuela's government to seize oil, while guaranteeing security for American oil companies that redevelop their oil fields. The invasion wasn't about drugs or democracy; the U.S. has reconfirmed the power of the prior regime by endorsing the regime's vice president and rejecting the opposition leaders who had won the election that Maduro and his vice president claimed. It was about demonstrating hemispheric hegemony and taking resources. "We're going to keep the oil," Trump said. 

There is a word for this: socialism. Conservative pundits see it for what it is, socialism in the form of a mafia don's "piece of the action," demanded under compulsion. It is only "free enterprise" as long as the government likes the policies the companies implement. 

The usual voices against socialism -- The Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute, the Claremont Institute, and the Heritage Foundation -- grumble but quietly. They get what they really want, low marginal tax rates, and they don't want to upset the GOP electorate that is compliant with the new socialism and provides the votes to keep this socialism in place.

Trump's is able to tell his story. Right-socialism does not need to own a portion of the national media. National media companies need government approvals to broadcast, to buy and sell assets, or to get the mail delivered. Trump threatens each of these. Trump's innovation is to use government power openly to bring media companies to heel. They are businesses, seeking opportunity and profit, with first priority to stockholders not citizens.

Trump changed American foreign policy. Trump ended the era of a rules-based order. There was pretense and hypocrisy embedded in the notion of the U.S. as a "good citizen" to the world, that shining "beacon on a hill" that President Reagan spoke of. But we positioned ourselves in ideological opposition to undemocratic tyrannies and to aggression across borders. 

The pretense is gone. No more hypocrisy. Big countries dominate small countries in their region. It is the way of the world. Steve Miller said it bluntly to CNN's Jake Tapper this weekend:

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

An independent, Denmark-controlled Greenland now exists only because the U.S. hasn't claimed what is ours to claim. “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller said. What drew guffaws a year ago -- talk of taking Greenland --  is a fait accomplis now. Greenland is ours in all but the name. 

There is a new world order. In this order, the U.S. has its hemisphere. Russia can have as much of Europe and central Asia as it can take. Let European NATO figure out what countries are "West" and what is Russian. Not our problem. China has decades to work out what it wants with the countries in the Western Pacific. Black Africa is no concern to us, filled as it is with "shithole countries." White South Africans are welcome to escape to the U.S. The Middle East isn't figured out yet.

Trump redefined "America First." Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, understood the situation before America's pundit class did. MAGA's notion of America First was not isolation, where we address the problems of America first before we meddle elsewhere. That was her notion of MAGA and America First, and Trump ran on that and sold the idea. She was deceived. She realized that Trump's notion of America First means America-on-top, winner-take-all, and an America that is great because it is a nation that conquers and controls its neighbors. 

Tomorrow, part two: Trump expands executive power.  Congress isn't a co-equal branch of government.

To come: Democrats don't know what they want and they don't dare offer changes that would deal with the very issue of "affordability" that they raise. 

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Trump doesn't want approval. He wants glory.

Why did the U.S. invade and arrest Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro?

    -- Secretary of State Marco Rubio says it was a law-enforcement action. 

    -- Trump says it was a military action. We are taking charge in Venezuela. And Colombia, because it is "very sick, too." And Mexico "had better get their act together." And Cuba "looks like its going down."

Republican are talking about the merits of what Trump did. 

Democrats are talking about process. Trump should have gotten sign-offs.

The jumble of contradictory explanations by the administration for why the U.S. arrested Maduro reveal that the U.S. is making policy on the fly. There is widespread support for the result -- Maduro is no longer leader -- but cautious criticism of the process. It leaves questions: Who is in charge? Who keeps order? What about the oil? What about Columbia?

Trump acted. He understood that his domestic political situation was deteriorating. He was starting to feel like Jonathan Swift's Gulliver, tied down by little men. Pip-squeak congressmen were being disloyal. His chief of staff was blurting out secrets. The Supreme Court was acting independently. Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. People looking at his hand and ankles and closed eyes. Jack Smith testified that Trump was guilty.  People were talking about what comes after Trump.

Truth Social and Trump's tweets are a window into how Trump wants to be known. Trump and a male lion; kings of the jungles. Face stern. Striding forward.

And this one, from the Situation Room. Lips down. Intent. Cruel. The face of a man who does not tolerate failure.

Then this one. Trump in focus. Rubio out of focus.

Trump images show opponents coming to grief. It isn't just that Trump wins. It is that opponents lose and suffer. They are forced to recognize Trump's primacy.

Trump is strong and masculine. Other presidents are weak.

An official Department of State image:

Democracies like short wars and quick victories. We dropped bombs. We killed 40 nameless Venezuelans, the uncredited extras in the movie drama of Trump winning. Best of all for Trump, Democrats are talking about self-imposed restraints: He should have consulted with Congress; should have consulted with the U.N.; should obey international law. Democrats dither. Trump acts. Trump, like Alexander the Great, cuts through restraints. This is exactly the image and story Trump wants.

He is criminal. He is corrupt. He groped women and very possibly girls, too. He pardons guilty friends and campaign donors.  He enriches himself and his family.  He ignores the Constitution. He spends money we don't have. He exaggerates and lies. He disrupts markets. He sells out our allies.

So what?  

Americans didn't vote for him because he was good. They voted for him because he was strong. He kicks ass and makes America great. Democracies admire leaders who seek glory. The authors of the Constitution recognized this and attempted to protect the new republic against it. Many lived to see their fears confirmed.

About seven million people died in the Napoleonic Wars, one and a half million of them French. Of the 600,000 French soldiers who marched on Moscow, about 50,000 returned. Napoleon is not remembered as a great villain. He made France proud and feared.  Napoleon is honored in death.

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Easy Sunday: Not so easy today.

The U. S. invaded Venezuela.

Posted in Trump's Truth Social

    -- We did it to protect ourselves from their drugs.

    -- We did it because their leader was a tyrant and we care about the Venezuelan people.

    -- We did it for their oil, oil that is really ours.

    -- We did it to keep order in the hemisphere.

    -- We did it to help Trump look strong.

    -- We did it to distract voters from more Epstein revelations.

Herb Rothschild writes that we did it because bombing other countries is what the USA does.

Herb Rothschild taught English literature at LSU and the University of Houston. He has been active in justice and peace work, first in the Civil Rights movement and later in work to end the nuclear arms race. He helped found the non-profit Ashland.news, for which he writes a weekly column. This column appeared there last June. It is more timely than ever.

Guest Post by Herb Rothschild

So, we bombed another country. That’s what we do.

No other country since WWII has come close to inflicting such carnage

Some decades ago—how many, as you’ll see, is beside the point—I was at a peace demonstration holding a sign that read, STOP THE BOMBING. At its conclusion, I was looking for a place to ditch the sign when a friend said, “Keep it. You’ll need it again.”

We live in a country that keeps bombing people who have no capacity to bomb it in retaliation. Here’s a list of them, almost certainly incomplete, beginning in the 1960s: Vietnamese, Cambodians, East Timorese, Lebanese (naval shelling), Iraqis, Somalians, Bosnians, Haitians, Sudanese, Serbians, Afghanis, Syrians, Libyans, Yemenis, and now Iranians.

You and I could analyze and debate the merits of each of these actions. After all, smarter people than I did just that and approved them. Yet, if we look at them in the aggregate, what can we learn about the United States of America?

We learn that we are indeed the “exceptional nation” so many patriots boast we are. No other country since World War II has come close to inflicting such carnage on so many different peoples.

And we learn that while we are exceptionally good at killing foreigners, we are exceptionally bad at foreign affairs.

In some cases—Vietnam, Afghanistan, East Timor—after years of killing we utterly failed to prevent what would have happened had we not intervened. In other cases—Lebanon, Somalia, Haiti, Sudan, Yemen—we effected no meaningful change, and I suspect Iran will prove a similar case. In Cambodia, where Nixon’s secret bombing opened the way for the Khmer Rouge to take control, we made things far worse than they would have been.

Perhaps we saved more lives than we took when some states of the former Yugoslavia were at each other’s throats. And whether on balance we helped the Iraqis, Syrians and Libyans more than we hurt them is difficult to determine. What we do know is that several hundred thousand Iraqis died during our invasion and occupation.

But another thing we learn from looking at the forest instead of the trees is that, whatever the results of our bombings, ultimately they make little difference to us. For all the talk about how our military protects our freedom, our freedom has never been affected by the outcome of these engagements.

Indeed, we have been unaffected except for a huge increase of our national debt and the deaths of fewer Americans than those who die at home by firearms every three years. A small number of us care about what happened to the people in the countries we attacked, but the vast majority of us care more about the price of eggs.

And so there’s little chance that our conduct will change. We must stage periodic displays of our might to justify our huge annual expenditures on the military and to give the young men in their pickup trucks some reason to be proud of a country where their chances of thriving diminish year by year.

One way we could do better is if we returned the authority to initiate combat operations to Congress, which is where the U.S. Constitution vests it. Then, the decisions will depend less on considerations of domestic politics, which repeatedly have entered into presidential calculations, and on the mental state of the president.

Lyndon Johnson sent U.S. troops into the Dominican Republic in 1965 to quell an uprising against the military junta that had overthrown the elected government three years before. His motive, he said privately, was that he didn’t want the voting public to think he had allowed another Cuba to establish itself in the Caribbean. “I sure don’t want to wake up . . . and find out Castro’s in charge.” The uprising wasn’t led by Communists, nor was the government that briefly ruled, but no matter.

Similarly, domestic political optics largely dictated the way Richard Nixon conducted the war in Vietnam, which he knew could not end in victory. He just didn’t want to be blamed for a defeat. And Bill Clinton bombed the only pharmaceutical plant in Sudan because he felt public pressure to do something after the terrorist attacks on three U.S. embassies in east Africa. Based on one soil sample, the administration claimed that the plant was producing precursors for chemical weapons, a claim that was thoroughly discredited. The only verifiable result was that Sudanese died from lack of antibiotics.

As for Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, The New York Times published a piece on June 22 about how he reached it. “Mr. Trump had spent the early months of his administration warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel against a strike on Iran. But by the morning of Friday, June 13, hours after the first Israeli attacks, Mr. Trump had changed his tune. He marveled to advisers about what he said was a brilliant Israeli military operation.” Netanyahu finally succeeded in dragging us into war with Iran, primarily, it seems, because Trump wanted to share some of the glory.

In 1973, Congress reaffirmed its Constitutional authority by passing the War Powers Act. But it hasn’t used it to stop presidents from sending our armed forces into combat without Congressional approval. Prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, there was a debate and vote in Congress, although the Bush administration had made it clear that it wouldn’t be bound by Congressional action. As it was, both houses voted to approve the invasion, with all three subsequent Democratic nominees for the presidency—Kerry, Clinton and Biden—voting for war.

Congress did much better in 2020, when resolutions requiring Trump to get Congressional authority to attack Iran passed both the house and senate with some Republican votes. The senate, however, failed to muster sufficient votes to override Trump’s veto of the resolutions, which he called “very insulting.”

Following our latest bombing, some members of Congress, including both Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, again have asserted Constitutional authority, and there are resolutions in both chambers—S. J. Res. 59 and H. Con. Res. 38—to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran because their use wasn’t authorized by Congress. By the time you read this, both resolutions will probably have been voted on, and probably both will fail. Republicans won’t want to directly repudiate their leader on so high profile an issue.

Into the foreseeable future I’ll hold onto my sign.

 

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The Supreme Court will save Trump from himself.

The Supreme Court is protecting Trump by beginning to say "No."

Trump has a well-deserved reputation for high-handed overreach. It worries voters.

Polls by Pew, Gallup, and Quinnipiac have the same message:

  -- about 79 percent of independents say Trump has gone too far outside our system of checks and balances. 

  -- about 78 percent of voters support congressional oversight to hold the executive branch accountable. 

-- about 56 percent say a president should not be able to impose unilateral tariffs.

--  about 86 percent of independents and 65 percent of Republicans said members of Congress should represent their constituents rather than agree with the president.

The Supreme Court's 6-3 Republican-appointed majority added to the image of Trump as unchecked. They reversed precedent on abortion. They made Trump immune from prosecution. They slow-walked cases that put him in legal jeopardy. Trump bragged that he had a compliant Supreme Court.

Voters in mid-cycle elections traditionally rein in a president by reducing or reversing his congressional majorities -- that well-known "thermostatic oscillation" phenomenon. Democratic strategists are talking about a blue wave. 

The Supreme Court's six-person majority supports a Republican policy agenda, which means supporting Trump when they can. Trump is a troublesome team captain. They are empowering an executive who openly insults the judiciary, but he is a Republican carrying out a Republican agenda. Trump saying that the Supreme Court owes him obedience complicates their task of looking neutral while running interference for him. We have the conservative court that voters chose, and they are acting on their beliefs.

They appear to have gotten more strategic about how they carry out their agenda. They see the 2026 election peril for Republicans. I wrote about the reversal by Brett Kavanaugh two days ago, him now saying that ICE cannot detain and carry out its rough-up deportation theater on people solely on the basis of their being Hispanic. A "Kavanaugh stop" wasn't just bad for Brett Kavanaugh's reputation; it was bad for a Republican Party that is winning Hispanic votes.

The Supreme Court voted this week to stop Trump from deploying national guard troops in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland.  Voters thought it excessive and over-reach. Trump wasn't getting the message, but the Supreme Court did.

I expect the Supreme Court to save Trump from himself on birthright citizenship. Republicans want to stop the "browning" of America, but a change would be a conspicuous reversal of precedent. It would would not affect solely immigrants and mixed-status families. It would be a contentious mess to administer for states and hospitals, since the child's status would be contingent on the legal status of the parents, which is subject to change by presidential decree, is hard to substantiate, and is subject to contention long after the infant's birth. 

I also expect the Supreme Court to stop -- or at least highly restrict -- Trump's unilateral tariff-making. Most tariffs are disruptive and bad for business. They will trigger inflation or a recession, and voters hate both.

Democrats will celebrate Court setbacks for Trump, but this is a mixed blessing for them. Trump and MAGA aren't stopped by court decisions. The Trump wave dies when it is rejected at the ballot box. Trump is politically strongest when he is free of congressional restraint because a GOP majority is obedient. That is what he has. Trump is free to do almost anything he wants, except when he is blocked from doing unpopular things. A Supreme Court that sometimes says "No" preserves an illusion that a strong system of checks and balances is in place. The reality is a president who can do anything he wants except when he does something flagrantly foolish and unpopular. 

The Supreme Court is the wrong branch to advise and consent on policy, but they are the ones stepping up. They aren't stopping Trump or protecting the Constitution. They are a political branch, protecting Trump's popularity from his own worst instincts.

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Would-a, could-a, should-a

     “Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.”
           Ancient saying

I could have been fabulously wealthy. I had every opportunity.

You also.

I don't reflect on the new year in a spirit of remorse. Quite the opposite. I have had extraordinary good fortune, starting with having been born healthy in the USA in 1949 to a happy, stable, middle-class family in Southern Oregon. I didn't get polio. I didn't get drafted into the war in Vietnam. And my generation got to enjoy the greatest music of all time.

Part of what buoys my mood is the realization that I had great opportunities presented to me on a silver platter. I don't feel jealous of the Walton or Trump children. I had my chance.

Boomers in my age cohort -- born in 1949 -- were about age 50 in the year 2000, putting us in the full tide of adulthood. It was a particularly prosperous time in America. Many of us had money to invest. The stock market was high and the U.S. was paying down the national debt rapidly at this point in Bill Clinton's presidency. 

I-Mac, circa 2000

$3.2 million. I was familiar with Apple computers throughout the 1990s. The company's stock was readily purchasable as a reasonable, prudent investment. A $10,000 investment in Apple at the beginning of year 2000, not counting the 26 years of dividends, would now be valued at $3,200,000.

$8.7 million. I became aware of Netflix about the time it went public in 2002. I rented movies from them. A $10,000 investment, again not counting dividends, would be valued today at $8,700,000.

$21 million. NVIDIA would have been a bit more aggressive a purchase for me. The company was not widely known, but I was, after all, an investment advisor with access to investment research and could have known about the company.  A $10,000 investment  would be valued today at $21,000,000.

$18 billion. Bitcoin did not exist to buy in the year 2000, but it was available to buy for five cents per coin in 2010.  A $10,000 investment in 2010 would be priced at about $18 billion today.

To be realistic about missed opportunities, I would not have bought $10,000 of Bitcoin. I consider it a fraudulent investment, something with a price but no real value. I liken it to other collectables, like stamps or rare coins, and therefore derivative of other wealth made from owning assets with value. (If a person owns a profitable widget factory, and wants to spend a million dollars on a misprinted stamp with Grover Cleveland's face on it, he can do so. And maybe he can sell it later to someone else who will pay two million, making it a profitable exchange for him. But as I figure it, the wealth came from selling widgets. Without the wealth, there would be no price for the stamp.)

$60 million

$1.8 billion. I would not buy $10,000 worth of something I thought was worthless, in 2010 or now. But in 2010 I might have been open to throwing away money on a totally crazy, stupid investment idea, digital tokens, as a $1,000 flier, if someone had pitched it to me. I might have treated it like buying an ugly painting at a charity auction to help a good cause, or perhaps on a bit of self-indulgence, like spending the extra $1,000 to fly United's Economy Plus on a cross-country trip, with two extra inches of legroom, rather than economy, which is my normal practice. I would figure that I could sell the worthless investment for a loss in a year and take the tax deduction. That $1,000 flier would be worth $1.8 billion now and I could easily afford a Gulfstream jet. Could-a, would-a, should-a.

I have never bought any amount of Bitcoin. 

Sometimes we know the opportunities we have missed. We don't know some of the tragedies we have avoided: the oncoming car that swerved over the center line a minute after we passed each other, or the blood clot that stays attached to an artery wall and does not break free. Those missed events are out there, too.

I think the world is pretty messed up, and there lots of things that are wrong and could get a lot worse, but I don't have regrets over what I don't have financially. I had every opportunity. 

We all did.

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Happy New Year: a tiny piece of good news.

Shame is not dead.

Shame lost power as a motivator in public life in this era of Trump. Maybe it is regaining influence.  

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn't like what the term "Kavanaugh stop" was doing to his reputation.

Democrats are reluctant to admit it, but Trump has been extraordinarily successful as a change agent. He has changed settled American policy in multiple areas, running roughshod over entrenched institutions and processes. He exemplified the Nike slogan: "Just do it." His superpower is his lack of shame. Trump reveals that the most important checks and balances are not the formal structure of our constitutional system. They are our norms, our handshake agreements, our supposed shared consensus on what is true and reasonable and fair. Trump makes up his own facts. He doesn't bother with hypocrisy. 

If a president said we were at war, said we were under armed invasion, said we had a trade crisis, said Portland was a war zone burning up in flames, then he could claim emergency powers to do what he wants. He showed he could get away with this. Pretense drives a hole through supposed limits on a president's power. 

The most corrosive effect of this shamelessness is that a shared agreement on reality is revealed as weakness, something feckless Democrats and RINO turncoats like Liz Cheney or Mike Pence care about. Rules don't matter. Just assert something is true and dare people to prove otherwise.  Pretense is truth. He won the 2020 election by a landslide. He never had government documents at Mar-a-Lago.

The U.S Supreme Court majority shared in that zeitgeist. Pretense was good enough. In that context, the Supreme Court ruled that ICE agents could use signals of ethnicity -- skin color, Spanish language -- and call that probable cause to detain people, inquire about their immigration status, rough them up, and put them in jail. The pretense was that the stop would be brief and unobtrusive, and that this was consistent with due process and equal protection of the laws. A person could call it a narrow and limited license to investigate, and potentially Constitutional, but in the wink-wink reality of enforcement under current policy, it was a license to round up and arrest Hispanic-looking people on sight. Rough justice, with some conspicuous cruelty, was policy, advancing the optics of self-deportation. 

The blanket authorization for arrests of Hispanics created the term "Kavanaugh stops." Justice Kavanaugh's name entered mainstream discourse along with "Miranda warnings," the "Heimlich maneuver," and "Lou Gehrig's disease." A "Kavanaugh stop" was a thing. It was a license to profile Hispanics and presume illegality.

In the current Trump might-makes-right zeitgeist, I think some administration officials would welcome the name. Had they been named "Noem stops" after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, it might have been a point of pride for her. She might proudly claim that we aren't letting squeamish goody-goodies hide behind the Constitution and tell us not to protect our country by making Hispanics prove they aren't guilty of something.

But not Brett Kavanaugh. He is a Supreme Court justice, in a role supposedly devoted to truth and justice. He wants this cleaned up. He wrote a footnote in a case this week saying that "race and ethnicity" are NOT to be considerations when officers make immigration stops. It contradicts what he wrote in the prior case. I consider this a good portent for the new year. He does not want to be known for empowering cynical use of police power, branded under his name. He doesn't trust this administration not to embarrass him and further sully his reputation. He is be ashamed to be associated with what is going on and what might come next.

That is a good sign. Happy New Year.

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