Donald Trump and Republicans creating terror among innocent immigrants but humanitarian activists are resiting ICE raids

Elizabeth Castillo wasn’t an activist until Immigration and Customs Enforcement started taking away her neighbors.

Echo essay published in The New York Times by Michelle Goldberg

Elizabeth Castillo -They Saw Their Neighbors Taken Away by ICE. Then They Made a Plan.

It all began in June, after Donald Trump directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to sweep Los Angeles, then used scattered violence at protests of ICE’s tactics as a pretext to send in the military. Castillo felt her working-class neighborhood in Pasadena, just outside Los Angeles, was under siege. Six people, she said, were seized at a Winchell’s doughnut shop. Two people were taken when ICE raided her apartment complex.

“It was just chaos,” she said. “And you can see, you can hear, you could feel the fear, the intimidation. You could feel the terror.”

A small woman with long dark hair, Castillo, the American-born daughter of Mexican immigrants, looks younger than her 38 years. She has five children, two of them grown but three still at home. Before the ICE crackdown she’d followed the news and always voted, but her kids and her job in health care administration took up most of her time. “You know, it’s practices here, practices there,” she said. “‘Mom, pick me up.’ ‘Mom, drop me off.’”

But she’s someone who knows firsthand what deportation can do to families. In 2012, she said, when her kids were all under 10, her husband, who was born in Mexico but grew up in the United States, was thrown out of the country. She’d been a full-time student; he was the family’s sole provider. Castillo had to drop out of college and explain to her children why their father could no longer live with them. “I can relate to what it does to a family,” she said. So this summer, when ICE started grabbing people from her community off the streets, she felt she had to act.

At first, Castillo was on her own with a megaphone. When she saw ICE vehicles in the streets she followed them in her car, honking and shouting to warn people that they were coming. 

She started getting up before dawn to patrol her apartment complex. Then she contacted the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which runs a nearby job center. Through them, she was plugged into a citywide network of people who are constantly tracking ICE’s activities.

Among those doing amateur anti-ICE reconnaissance in Los Angeles are people from established nonprofits that work closely with the mayor’s office. Then there are more militant groups that, beyond simply documenting ICE’s operations, try to actively disrupt them.

Ready to warn about ICE raids

“We have people patrolling all over the city starting at 5:30 in the morning,” said Ron Gochez, a high school teacher and spokesman for one of the more radical organizations, Unión del Barrio. When they find agents, he told me, “We get on the megaphone. We denounce the terrorists for being there, and then we inform the community in the immediate area that they are present. And then we say to the people, ‘If you are documented, come out. Come outside. Join us. Help us to defend your neighbor.’”

The widespread raids that have upended life in Los Angeles may soon spread to other cities, especially now that Republicans in

Congress have increased ICE’s budget to $27.7 billion, up from about $8 billion. (That’s more than that of most militaries. 😟😠) “We are a petri dish,” Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles told me. “They’re experimenting with us. If they come and make this stand in Los Angeles, then they can scare all the other cities, just like the universities have been scared, just like the legal firms have been scared.”

Yet if Los Angeles is a testing ground for mass deportation, it’s also a place to see how the resistance is evolving. Though there have been some big anti-Trump marches this year, many of those most horrified by this administration are looking for more immediate, tangible ways to thwart it. The movement against ICE in Los Angeles — one that is starting to take root, in different forms, in cities like New York — is part of a growing shift from symbolic protest to direct action.

It may be no match for the Trumpian leviathan. But it can protect a few people who might otherwise get swept into the black hole of the administration’s deportation machine. And in the most optimistic scenario, it could be a foundation for a new, nationwide opposition movement.

“We have been abandoned by the courts, by the business community,” and, with few exceptions, “by the political class in Washington, D.C.,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-founder of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “All we have are our friends, our allies and ourselves.” One of his group’s slogans is, “Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo.” It means, “Only the people can save the people.”

These days, when Castillo isn’t working, she’s usually in the parking lot of a small, run-down shopping plaza on Orange Grove Boulevard and Garfield Avenue. There, with N.D.L.O.N.’s help, she and a few others who live nearby have set up a sort of command post that they call the community defense corner. They have a canopy tent and literature tables. Each day, volunteers meet there from 6:30 a.m. until around 10 at night. Some of them are new to activism. Others have been protesting Trump since he was first inaugurated. They half-jokingly call Castillo their C.E.O. It stands, she says, for “controllo everything over here.”

The volunteers distribute know-your-rights fliers and pictures of ICE agents and vehicles that have been spotted in the area, along with the number of a hotline to report sightings. “Meet the Clown Squad fascists in your hood,” says one handout. There’s a pile of orange whistles to blow if you see something suspicious, and beaded friendship bracelets with the phone numbers of local immigrant rights groups.

When the volunteers get word of a raid, they rush over to make a commotion. Wearing a custom black “Grupo Auto Defensa” T-shirt, Jesus Simental, a middle-aged man who works delivering industrial equipment, told me, “They don’t want noise, and we bring the thunder.”

In the first Trump presidency, the resistance announced itself with the Women’s March, a gargantuan display of feminist fury at Trump’s improbable victory. No similar spectacle greeted his return. For those who abhor him, Trump’s re-election was devastating, but it wasn’t shocking. He’d won the popular vote, giving him a democratic legitimacy he didn’t have the first time around. The dominant mood in many blue precincts was despair rather than outrage. Organized opposition to Trump seemed, at least to some observers, to be dormant. A Politico headline shortly after the election announced, “The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out.”

While the exhaustion was real, it wasn’t the whole story. Anti-Trump forces may have been quieter than they were before, but they never stopped meeting and planning. As the administration exceeds many of its opponents’ worst fears, they’re becoming more visible.

Resistance in the second Trump term, however, looks a bit different than it did in the first. There’s less focus on big marches and rallies, and more on trying to make a concrete difference, often close to home. Think of the doctors sending abortion medication into states with prohibitions, or the protests in front of Tesla dealerships that helped push down the company’s stock price. “Resistance 2.0 is much more locally grounded and community embedded,” said Dana Fisher, an American University sociologist who studies protest movements.

The shift in tactics derives, in part, from a changing understanding of the crisis we face. During Trump’s first term, the resistance often put its trust in existing institutions. Indivisible, founded by two former Hill staffers, organized people by congressional district and taught them how to lobby their representatives. Some liberals made heroes of establishment figures like Robert Mueller, the special counsel who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Newly awakened citizens showered the Democratic Party and big nonprofits like the A.C.L.U. and Planned Parenthood with donations.

The assumption underlying the resistance then, said Fisher, was “that Trump was a blip,” elected by a freakish confluence of unlucky circumstances. His victory was seen as a mistake that future elections could fix. The resistance, she said, “was all about getting us to 2018, and all about trying to create the capacity to push back using the political system.”

This is, of course, a generalization; there was plenty of civil disobedience and left-wing radicalism during Trump’s first term, especially in the febrile summer of 2020. But looking back from the bleak vantage of 2025, it’s striking how optimistic many people were that some established power in American life — be it Congress, law enforcement, government bureaucrats or the media — could stop Trump from doing his worst.

As such faith has withered, the character of the resistance has changed. “We recognize that in a period of authoritarian breakthrough where there is a very rapid sprint to consolidate power, you cannot focus purely on the formal political avenues of representation,” said Leah Greenberg, one of Indivisible’s founders. “Getting out of this is going to require a symphony of defiance.”

Indivisible is running a campaign called “One Million Rising” aimed at training a million people in strategies of protest, noncooperation and civil disobedience, especially around mass deportation. The emphasis on ICE is in part simply a response to the sheer cruelty of Trump’s immigration regime. Far from prioritizing criminals, ICE, under pressure from Trump’s fanatical deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, seems desperate to round up as many people as possible. That includes people with American spouses and children who’ve been here for decades, those who’ve followed all the rules in seeking asylum, and even those with green cards.

In recent months viral videos have shown ICE agents breaking car windows, throwing people to the ground, and ripping parents away from their kids. Human Rights Watch has reported on the degrading treatment of immigrants in federal detention; at one Florida facility, men described being forced to eat “like dogs” with their hands shackled behind their backs. Venezuelan migrants sent by the United States to a megaprison in El Salvador have reportedly faced even worse conditions; Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist later freed as part of a prisoner exchange, described being tortured and sexually assaulted by guards.

Yet the campaign against ICE isn’t only about immigrants, because to many on the left, the agency is understood as the tip of the authoritarian spear. Trump and those close to him, after all, are openly fantasizing about stripping Americans of citizenship or sending them to the same El Salvador gulag that held Hernández Romero. Americans are being forced to acclimate to the once-unthinkable sight of masked men, wearing civilian clothes and refusing to show identification, grabbing people off the streets and throwing them in the back of vehicles. There have been reports of ICE assaulting and detaining U.S. citizens. 

At a Home Depot in Hollywood last month, agents reportedly tackled an American photographer who was recording a raid; he was held for more than 24 hours. (He’s now seeking $1 million in damages.)

“They have made a calculation that they can get away with a bunch of things as long as it’s framed as immigration enforcement,” said Greenberg. “That will then allow them to ratchet up authoritarian conditions for the rest of us.”

With ICE increasingly seen as the front line of a growing police state, people all over the country are looking for ways to stand up to it. In New York, ICE arrests seem to be concentrated in immigration courts, where agents have been snatching people after their asylum hearings, even when judges ask them to come back for further proceedings. Activists, in turn, are showing up at the courts to try to provide whatever support to immigrants they can. They hand out fliers — languages include Spanish, French, Urdu, Punjabi and Mandarin — informing immigrants of the few rights they have. They collect emergency contacts and immigration ID numbers so that when people are arrested, someone can inform their loved ones and track them through the detention system.

When the hearings are over, the volunteers try, often in vain, to escort the immigrants past intimidating groups of masked, armed ICE agents to the elevators and onto the street. That’s what New York City’s comptroller, Brad Lander, was doing when he was arrested in June.

A week after that arrest, Lander was back in immigration court with his wife and daughter. After shouting ICE agents took the husband of a very pregnant woman from Ecuador, Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, spent an hour consoling her, then connected her to an immigrant rights nonprofit. When a woman from Liberia collapsed, panicked and sobbing, after hours of watching other immigrants being dragged away, Lander’s daughter held her baby girl.

The Liberian woman said she had a lawyer, but he didn’t show up, so Lander found one in the building to accompany her to her hearing. It’s hard to say if that’s the reason the woman was able to walk out of the court freely; at least to outsiders, there’s very little rhyme or reason as to who gets detained. “It’s like an awful game of roulette,” said Lander.

At a news conference later that day, Lander confessed to feeling he hadn’t done enough, and called on other New Yorkers to come to the courts, bear witness, and maybe engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. “We have to find ways to gum up the works of this hideous system,” he said.

Because ICE’s efforts in New York have largely revolved around the courts, that hideous system has been hidden from much of the public. It’s more conspicuous in Los Angeles, where Trump has treated the entire city like a hostile colony to be subdued.

This month, armed ICE agents backed by National Guard troops, some on horseback or in armored vehicles, stormed into the city’s MacArthur Park, forcing kids at a nearby summer camp to shelter inside. Bass was livid, but the administration made clear that she had little authority. “I don’t work for Karen Bass,” the Border Patrol chief, Gregory Bovino, told Fox News. “Better get used to us now, because this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”

Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told Fox News that roving ICE patrols had the right to stop people because of what they look like. “They don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” he said, based on “their location, their occupation, their physical appearance.” On July 11, a judge issued a temporary restraining order enjoining such racial profiling, but a widespread sense of dread and anxiety remained, especially in immigrant strongholds. With frightened people staying inside, several Angelenos told me that the eerie emptiness in their neighborhoods reminded them of the pandemic.

One thing Los Angeles has going for it, however, is a deep, established immigrant rights ecosystem. These groups, said Bass, “have prepared for this type of stuff in the past, though not as massive, not as egregious as this.” Indeed, she told me her office relies on activist networks to keep abreast of ICE activity in the city. “That’s how I learn about where raids are happening,” she said. “It’s not like we’re notified of anything.”

It’s a jarring statement about the relative impotence of city government, but also a testament to what an important role the activists are playing.

Since Castillo and her neighbors started their community defense corner, a few others have popped up around Pasadena, including outside a Home Depot on East Walnut Street. The stores have become a central site in the battle over mass deportations; day laborers often gather there to look for work, making Home Depots a common target for ICE. In response, groups of activists have, as they put it, “adopted” Home Depot locations, showing up in shifts to look out for immigration agents. On East Walnut Street, several of the day laborers told me they feel safer with the activists around. “There’s fear, but now we feel protected,” said one, knowing there will at least be a warning if ICE arrives.

While the community defense corner on East Walnut Street operates every day, extra people show up on Wednesdays, part of a weekly demonstration organized by a local librarian. Several of the protesters, mostly middle-aged and older women, told me they were part of local Indivisible chapters.

Alvarado, from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, was grateful for their presence. “The way we view it is that you stop fascism, you stop authoritarianism by protecting those that are at the end of the whip,” he said. “If you want to protect democracy, you protect the most vulnerable. That’s what we want people from all walks of life to understand. That’s why it’s beautiful to see the soccer moms, the teachers, getting it.”

Recently, said Alvarado, a woman from Van Nuys, a neighborhood about a half-hour away, visited the community defense corner on East Walnut Street, with plans to start something similar in her own area. He expects the model to spread further. In late October or early November, N.D.L.O.N. is planning a conference in Los Angeles to train people from all over the country in its strategies.

“Los Angeles was used as an experiment, and we want to share the things that we’ve done right, the things that we’ve done wrong,” he said. With ICE’s new cash infusion, said Alvarado, he expects similar crackdowns all over the country. People “need to know what to do, how to resist, how to fight back,” he said. “Peacefully, lawfully, orderly, but resist.”

There is, of course, only so much such resistance can accomplish in the face of a heavily armed, spectacularly well-funded and politically powerful deportation machine. More than 2,000 immigrants have been arrested in Los Angeles over the past month. Gochez, from Unión del Barrio, believes many more would have been taken without the work of groups like his, but there’s no way to quantify it.

Clearly, however, it matters that people are watching what ICE is doing. As Alvarado points out, a major reason public opinion is turning against Trump’s mass deportation campaign is the viral videos showing what it looks like in practice. Activist groups train people to record ICE activities wherever they see them, helping to capture both arrests and agents’ aggression toward civilian observers. “Men in masks, wearing civilian clothes, pulling guns against people who are exercising their rights while filming, that’s exactly what Americans don’t like to see,” he said.

Alvarado is a citizen now, but he grew up in El Salvador, fleeing the civil war with his brother when he was 22. The sight of masked men taking people away to sites unknown feels to him familiar. “This is a word I don’t take lightly, but people talk about disappearances,” he said of the situation in Los Angeles. “For now, it’s a stretch, I will say, but that’s how it starts. No right to due process. People just snatch you and put you in the vans. It’s something I’ve seen, and I know where that leads.”

To fight what’s coming, he believes, people will have to depend on each other. “Not by being violent and responding with more violence, but by building community and understanding,” he said.

If nothing else, neighbors banding together to weather an emergency is an antidote to helplessness and isolation. The three people volunteering at Orange Grove and Garfield when I was there — Castillo, Simental and Karen Skelly, who works as a personal and administrative assistant — hadn’t known one another before June. Now, said Simental, they’re intertwined like shoelaces: “We just all tied up together.” As we spoke, people kept walking up to take signs, fliers or bracelets, or just to say thank you. Passing drivers honked in appreciation. Simental told me about a local man who checks with him to make sure the coast is clear before he goes to the laundromat or the market.

“Everyone is protecting each other right now, and we can see it, we can feel it,” said Castillo. “I don’t know — we feel like the sheriffs in town.”

Message to Republicans in Maine- Do not allow these horrific Trumpziism cuts harming innocent people!

Excellent article published in the local Topsham, Maine newsletter:
Trump's Unconstitutional Chaos.

Published in "Topsham Maine Local Scoop" an electronic newsletter.  The Topsham Democratic Committee offers this newsletter to help busy residents easily get factual news about what’s going on in Topsham town government and with state news that will affect Topsham. We hope to encourage civic participation.

Trump's incompetent team and its Musk-o-vites would have us believe that if Trumpzi decrees a policy in an Executive Order, his technocrats can enter the nation’s personnel and payment systems and shut them down, even though they were established by Congress according to law. By entering the data systems at the payment level, they have obtained access to all our personal data, Social Security numbers, bank data, tax data and who knows what else.

We live by the rule of law, not by the impulses of tech billionaires who wouldn’t know a Head Start Center if they tripped over it. Congress has the Constitutional power of the purse (Article I, Sections 7, 8 U.S. Constitution) and the President’s job is to “take care that the laws are faithfully executed.” (Article II, Sec. 3, U.S. Constitution.) We do not elect a king.

More than 40 lawsuits have challenged Trump’s actions and he has been enjoined from many of his unlawful actions. Yet it appears his team sometimes ignore court orders.

What does all this mean for a community like Topsham, Maine? Consider our vulnerability if funds are suddenly shut off to programs like these:

• Heating Assistance (LIHEAP)
• WIC (Women Infants and Children's program)
• Head Start for preschool children (One Maine Head Start provider who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation had to use a line of credit to pay employees due to the freeze).❗
• Domestic Violence shelters, receiving funding under the federal Violence Against Women Act.
• Meals on Wheels
• School lunch program
• Mental health crisis hotline
• Solar energy and energy efficiency projects
• Transportation and infrastructure projects

If Republicans want to bow down and "knee jerk respond" kowtow to Trump and damage the people in their states, then let them take public votes as the Constitution requires. 

In our American democratic process, we have a right for our representatives in Congress to be heard, to be accountable, and to have their vote matter. They are the lawmakers. No “special employees” (aka Musk a South African immigrant) should be rampaging through our payment systems and agencies, stopping funds authorized by law and firing the staff that make those programs work.

Thanks to the State and Schools for Protecting Children Vulnerable to Trump’s Attacks.

Trump has been attacking transgender youth and immigrants, dehumanizing them and cruelly portraying them. This has a particular impact on schools. Attacks on the LGBTQ community and the immigrant community are part of an authoritarian playbook worldwide.

We applaud the Maine Department of Education (MDOE) for clearly stating that Maine will not discriminate against LGBTQ youth in our schools in violation of the Maine Human Rights Act. In spite of Maine Republican push-back, the MDOE points out that “every student deserves a safe and equitable school environment.” 

In attacking immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security recently rescinded protection from ICE raids of sensitive areas like churches, hospitals and schools. These must be safe places for everyone, especially families with children. Maine School Administrative District 75 (MSAD 75) Superintendent Heidi O’Leary assured parents that their children’s privacy under the law (FERPA) will be protected. 

We agree. ICE agents should not be entering schools without a judicially obtained warrant and proper advance notice to parents. No child should be exposed to intimidation or arrest, nor should they have to witness it.

For immigrants, help to know your rights is here: https://ilapmaine.org/know-your-rights.
For students, including LGBTQ students, help to know your rights is here: Know Your Rights: Students' Rights | ACLU of Maine.

Kudos to Topsham Protesters who objected to Republican Recognition of Pardoned January 6th Attacker.

“Insurrection is not Patriotism” said one of the signs of the protesters at the Topsham Baptist Church that hosted the Republican event recognizing the pardoned January 6th former felon Mathew Brackley. The protesters couldn’t have been more right. Our State Representative Rafael Macias was right to join the protesters in support.

What were Republicans thinking? Brackley not only joined an attack on the Capitol where approximately 140 police officers were injured. He was part of a violent attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power – the heart of our democracy. Yet, Republicans, sadly, celebrate him.

Yes, Brackley regrets “pushing past police officers,” but let’s be clear. He joined a riotous crowd that had broken past barriers and police officers to enter the Capitol he knew was off limits. Then, with a mob behind him shouting obscenities, they were blocked by two police. Brackley asked where Nancy Pelosi was. The police ordered him to go back. Instead, he turned to the crowd behind him, yelled “let’s go!”, physically pushed aside the police, and led the crowd toward the Senate Chambers - Chambers just vacated for fear of the mob. Brackley’s mob was then met with a larger line of police officers in riot gear who tried to hold the line as the crowd pushed and swore at them. Tear gas deployed by police eventually caused their retreat. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison. (See, District of Columbia | Maine Man Sentenced for Assaulting Law Enforcement During Jan. 6 Capitol Breach | United States Department of Justice.)

Brackley, who apparently believes that the 2020, election was actually stolen, is an example of the violence that lies and propaganda can cause. 

In a sad way, he too is a victim of this propaganda. Apparently no one told him that Trump's team lost 60 lawsuits trying to perpetuate the lie that the election was stolen. (See https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsuits-regarding-2020-elections.) Why? Because in court you need at least some facts and evidence - not wild media accusations and doctored videos.

By celebrating him, Republicans perpetuate the propagandistic lies and promote the violence. This is not the Maine Republican Party the Democrats once knew. We once had a Republican party who we could debate with on policy, sometimes reaching compromise. But now this Republican party has morphed into something different and dangerous. It promotes damaging lies, undermines the democratic process itself, whips up members to violence using false information, and promotes people (however contrite) who attacked police officers in an effort to overthrow our democratic republic.

Please, Maine Republicans, don’t go further down this road. We beg of our Republican neighbors, who care about roads, schools, children, communities and, yes, democracy too, do not fall victim to this cult propaganda like Brackley did. Don’t ignore real facts, the Constitution and the nation’s laws.

Call Senator Angus King, Senator Susan Collins, and Representative Chellie Pingree and ask them to oppose cuts to Medicaid and any Medicaid Work requirements. In Sagadahoc County 21.5% of people get their health coverage from Medicaid: 33% of children, 18% of non-senior adults, and 20% of seniors who usually combine it with Medicare. (Georgetown Center for Children and Families, 2/6/25). Republicans, in their budget process propose major cuts, possibly by block granting the program so it will be cut, then dwindle over time, cutting the matching funds given to states, or imposing work requirements. 

Of course,

 most people on Medicaid already work if they do not have caretaking responsibilities or disabilities that present a barrier to the workforce. (KFF, 2/4/25). The work requirement achieves two things: to falsely cast people getting this health coverage as lazy and to cut thousands off because of the difficulty complying with the work reporting requirements. (When Arkansas implemented a work requirement in the first Trump Administration, 18,000 people lost coverage in less than a year, with terrible consequences. It had no positive effects in helping people find jobs. Health Affairs, Sept. 2020.)

Maine Resists: No Kings Rally, President’s Day, February 17, 2025, 12:00 - 4:00 at the State House in Augusta. Masks encouraged. Organized by Maine Resists. 

See them on Facebook and on Bluesky @maineresists.

(Also check out social media Resistance)

Spending Blackout, From Midnight Thursday February 27th until Midnight Friday the 28th. Protest with your wallet. Do not spend at large stores like Target, Amazon, or Home Depot. Independent local shops are fine.

New Hampshire Union Leader - now the public knows what Michael Wolff saw

"..leaking their insider gossip for the sake of the greater good."

"Beltway insiders — are more in touch with the real Washington"- Jonah Goldberg in the New Hampshire Union Leader

"Beltway denizens have heard similar things (reported in Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury"), in conversations with administration and Hill staffers and reporters or seen them with their own eyes —for a very long time."

Always nice to read a reasonable point of view published in the conservative New Hampshire Union Leader.  This Jonah Goldberg column explains what Americans already know - the Michael Wolff book "Fire and Fury" just reported the news.  In fact, Wolff didn't create the news, but he told the world what he saw and heard.  No surprises but validation about Donald Trump's lack of competency to lead the US and the free world.  

And the New Hampshire Union Leader published this column on the opinion page. Good job!

“FISHERMEN, sharpen your hooks, bring out the cheese balls and grease your bicycles. Soon there’s going to be trout fishing inside the Beltway.”

That’s the first recorded use of the phrase “inside the Beltway,” meaning — in this instance — the physical realm within the I-495 ring road that surrounds Washington. It appeared in a 1977 story about stocking the Anacostia River with trout, in the Washington Post, the official Beltway paper.

It wasn’t until 1983 that the term became reliably figurative, signifying, according to William Safire, “of interest to tea-leaf readers of Washington goings-on but strictly a yawner to the World Out There.”

Since then, the term has grown more sinister, suggestive of elitism and even — shudder! — globalism. 

In his “60 Minutes” interview with Charlie Rose (since then, memory-holed for his sexual transgressions), then-White House strategist Steve Bannon repeated a common populist talking point. “Let’s talk about the swamp. The swamp is a business model. … It’s a donor-consultant K Street lobbyist-politician — seven of the nine...wealthiest counties in America ring Washington, D.C.”

That’s (MaineWriter- "more than") a bit misleading. 

There are far richer enclaves than the suburbs around D.C. 

Indeed, the idea that, say, Virginia’s Loudon County has more fat cats than, say, Greenwich or Silicon Valley is silly. But that caricature does help advance the claim that D.C. is out of touch with “real America.”

There’s some truth to that. But the flip side to D.C. “elites” — Beltway insiders — being out of touch with real America is that they’re more in touch with the real Washington. They keep up with the gossip that pervades their swampy surroundings. 

Shouldn’t we all be happy that at least some people know what’s going on?

“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd recently said that he wasn’t surprised by the quotes in Michael Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury.” He was shocked they were on the record. 

The point being that while some of the actual quotes and anecdotes in Wolff’s book may not be reliable according to a high journalistic standard (or, in a few instances, any standard,) Beltway denizens have heard similar things in conversations with administration and Hill staffers and reporters — or seen them with their own eyes — for a very long time.

There’s a rough analogy between Hollywood and D.C. (or, really, any “elite” institution and D.C.)

As a matter of fact, the sexual mis-behavior of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, et. al. was well known among Hollywood bigwigs long before the New York Times spilled the beans. The change came when everyone else found out and celebrities started acting like French collaborators, suddenly desperate to claim they had really been members of the resistance all along.

Similarly, insiders knew what Wolff had to tell, before he told the world. The difference is that in Trump’s D.C., unlike in Weinstein’s Hollywood, few want to keep the “open secrets” secret. 

Beltway insiders have been doing everything they can to reveal the underlying reality, admittedly sometimes cutting corners and waxing a bit overzealous in the process.

One cause of the zealotry is the Trump administration’s insistence that the President is a stable genius with a savant-like grasp on policy detail. Worse, the President’s need for flattery and his base’s intense defensiveness combine to make public sycophancy the only reliable proof of loyalty. This dynamic encourages Republicans — and some conservative commentators — to be especially fawning in public, yet brutally honest when speaking off the record.

The public doesn’t hear congressmen, senators, or talk show hosts venting their frustrations but, inside the Beltway, the disconnect between the talking points and the talkers is well-known. 

Moreover, little by little, the reality of the disconnect makes its way to the broader public.

After la guerre, we’ll see how many passengers on the Trump train stick to their talking points and how many claim to have been members of la resistance all along, leaking their insider gossip for the sake of the greater good.

Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Senior Editor of National Review

Trump to Russia- a Twitter algorithm

Regardless if all, a part or any of this Twitter post is true, the fact is all of the intelligence about the data origins can be proven or disproved if Donald Trump releases his tax returns. 

What is Trump hiding?

It's amazingly easy to learn a lot, in just a little bit of space allowed on Twitter. One Twitterzin posted a screen shot algorithm to give succinct summary about how Donald Trump is financially "Shanghaied" by Russia. In other words, Trump can't get out of the mess he's in, because he's conscripted by Putin, to pay what's owed.

It's amazing what 140 characters and a JPG screen shot image can teach, in just 5 minutes of reading.  It will take longer than that time to post this blog - a reprint of a Twitter message but it was copied from the feed #Resistance.com

If you want to know why (Donald Trump) is protecting Russia, here's why- "Here Goes", says the Twitterzin:

Trump owes Blackstone/Bayrock group $560 million dollars (one of his largest debtors and the primary reason he won't reveal his tax returns.) Obviously, any claims about Donald Trump’s net worth, income or debt can’t be verified because Trump hasn’t released his tax returns. But, let's let this Twitterzin speak.....

Moreover, Blackstone is owned by Russian billionaires, who owe their position to Vladimir Putin and have made their fortunes from work with the Russian government. Other companies that borrowed from Blackstone claimed that owing money to them is like owing the Russian mob; and while you owe them, they expect favors.

In fact, the Russian economy is faltering under the weight of over-dependence on raw materials which have plummeted in recent years and the Russian economy is unable to pay debts (I'm wondering if the high cost of the failed Sochi Olympic games had anything to do with this debt? Just askin'?) 

Russia has an impetus to influence the US election to ensure the per barrel oil prices are above $65; but they are currently hovering around $50 (and Saudi are currently selling for even $39!).

Russia can't affordably get at 80 percent of it's oil reserves, and reduce its per barrel cost to compete with the global competition, especially with the Iranian sanctions being lifted and more supply will be on the market. Russia will find another competitor in the market when Iran starts selling its oil and this will push Russia further down on the list of suppliers. Putin wants to influence Donald Trump to re-impose the Iran sanctions, so he can eliminate this competitor from the global oil market. Apparently, Donald Trump spoke of ending the deals which would cause oil sales sanctions to be reimposed, which would then make Russian oil more competitive.

(Now, here's the part of this Twitter screen shot that I truly believe is the most credible!)

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
CEO of Exxon

Rex Tillerson (Trump's Secretary of State) is head of Exxon Mobil Oil, which is in possession of patented technology that could help Vladimir Putin to extract 45 percent more oil, at a significant cost savings to Russia, thereby helping Putin to put money in the Russian coffers; money that's needed to help reconstitute its military, and to finally be able to afford to mass produce the new and improved systems that it had invented before the Russian economy had slowed down so much. 

Putin can't get access to these new cost saving technologies OR outside oil field development money, because of US sanctions on Russia, enacted as a result of the active military involvement in the Ukrainian civil war.

Look for Donald Trump to end sanctions on Russia and to back out of the Iranian nuclear deal, to help Russia rebuild its economy, strengthen Putin and make Rex Tillerson and Donald Trump even richer, thus allowing Trump to satisfy his creditors at Blackstone.

With Trump's fabricated hatred of NATO and the United Nations, the Russian military reconstituted, the threat to Baltic states is real. Russia retaking their access to the Baltic Sea from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and threatening the shipping of millions of cubic feet of natural gas to lower Europe from Scandinavia, (would allow Russia to make a good case for its oil and gas being piped into Eastern  Europe- I don't really understand the end of this thought as it was posted; but the general gist is that Putin wants to expand Russia's borders to control Eastern and Central Europe for lots of reasons.)  


Maine Writer postscript: This international intrigue contributes to a very dicey international situation, one that I'm convinced Donald Trump is incapable of handling; because there are too much of his own self interest and personal debt at stake, in the outcome.