It looks like yet another political use of the criminal justice system by the Trump administration, and yet another dent in U.S. democracy.
“The federal officer who arrested the mayor of New Jersey’s largest city outside an immigration detention center in May suggested that he was making the arrest at the direction of the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Todd Blanche, according to law enforcement body camera footage described in a new court filing.
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Witness accounts and other video footage taken that day showed the mayor had been allowed inside a gated area by a guard, stood there peacefully for the better part of an hour and left the gated area when federal agents threatened him with arrest. That day, Rep. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) told POLITICO that he’d witnessed an agent inside the gated area talking on the phone with someone who told the agent to arrest Baraka, who by the time of the call was outside the gate. McIver gave a similar account in a press conference at the time.
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Less than two weeks later, federal prosecutors dropped a trespassing charge against Baraka. But a federal judge chided the effort to charge him in the first place. Magistrate Judge André M. Espinosa called it an “embarrassing retraction” that “suggests a failure to adequately investigate, to carefully gather facts and to thoughtfully consider the implications of your actions before wielding your immense power.””
Trump and his supporters had spread falsehoods and exaggerated that Democrats were using the justice system against Trump, then Trump gets into power and straightforwardly uses the justice system to prosecute Democrats. This hypocrisy is one of the many reasons Trump is damaging U.S. democracy and basic justice in the USA.
“The world’s supply of chocolate depends on the global trade of cocoa beans, which are grown exclusively in equatorial climates across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The United States produces more chocolate than any other country in the world, but there would be no American chocolate-making businesses, large or small, without imports.
A lot of American manufacturing is like that too: U.S.-based businesses rely on imported raw materials when making everything from candy bars to new cars. Policies that make those inputs more expensive or difficult to obtain—policies such as the Trump administration’s tariffs—are leaving a bitter taste.
Chocolatiers, in particular, say trade barriers are a recipe for higher prices, lower quality, less innovation, and smaller profits. Doesn’t sound very sweet, does it?”
“Trump’s contention that Mexico and Canada could “easily solve” the drug trafficking problem was equally dubious. For more than a century, politicians have been promising to “stop the flow” of illegal drugs, and they have never come close to achieving that goal—not for lack of trying, but because the economics of prohibition doom all such efforts.
Prohibition allows traffickers to earn a hefty risk premium that provides a strong incentive to find ways around any barriers that governments manage to erect. Drugs can be produced in many different places, and they can be smuggled into the country in a wide variety of ways. Any serious effort to prevent drugs from entering the United States would entail intolerable disruption of travel and trade, and it still would not succeed. That challenge is magnified in the case of a highly potent drug like fentanyl because large numbers of doses can be transported in small packages that are hard to detect.
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Since Canada accounts for only a tiny percentage of fentanyl entering the United States, “flood” seems like an exaggeration. In any case, it is not clear what would qualify as “adequate steps” or “satisfactory resources” as far as Trump is concerned. Taking Trump at his word, there is no such thing, because there is nothing that Canada or Mexico can do that will be sufficient to achieve the impossible goal of stopping illegal drugs from entering the United States.”
The Trump administration made a potentially good deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan wants a corridor to its territory that is separated by Armenia. Armenia would consider such a corridor an infringement of its sovereignty. Both sides agreed to let the U.S. and private companies manage the corridor while it remains Armenian territory.
Gavin Newsom tweets in a manner that mirrors Trump’s tweets; Fox News calls it childish for a governor to tweet in such a way while not similarly criticizing the president of the United States. Ridiculous hypocrisy.
Trump administration ruins an FBI agent’s career because he’s friends with the wrong guy. Every other agent now has to worry that if they do something that bothers Trump, even something that is legal and legitimate!, they might lose their job.
This is not the way to retain the best employees for our government! Nor how a democratic country operates.
Trump removes people with great experience for bad reasons, then puts in shills he thinks are loyal. The remaining underlings see that the way to keep their jobs is to shut up, and do what they’re told, even if the shills at the top don’t know what they’re doing.