I stood outside at temps around freezing this morning. It turns out that a decade of being a ski team parent and standing in the snow was good training. This is the 5^th time this year that my little family unit attended a protest. It makes me deeply uncomfortable. I never attended a demonstration in my life before this year. I never even wrote to a Congressman until 2019. I like to spend my time alone on the trail, not in crowds that are waving signs. My congressman’s spokesperson says that people are paid to attend these things. Where’s my damn check?

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back with regret. George Saunders sounds this warning in the imagined future of his short story “Love Letter”. A grandfather is writing to his grandson and realizes he should’ve done more:

“I just want to say that history, when it arrives, may not look as you expect, based on the reading of history books. Things in there are always so clear. One knows exactly what one would have done.

Your grandmother and I (and many others) would have had to be more extreme people than we were, during that critical period, to have done whatever it was we should have been doing. And our lives had not prepared us for extremity, to mobilize or to be as focussed and energized as I can see, in retrospect, we would have needed to be. We were not prepared to drop everything in defense of a system that was, to us, like oxygen: used constantly, never noted. We were spoiled, I think I am trying to say. As were those on the other side: willing to tear it all down because they had been so thoroughly nourished by the vacuous plenty in which we all lived, a bountiful condition that allowed people to thrive and opine and swagger around like kings and queens while remaining ignorant of their own history.”

This Republican administration deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia from our country and sent him to a gulag in El Salvador. They shaved his head and put him in prison there. A judge gave an order to stop those deportation flights. This Republican administration blew that off. All of the people on those deportation flights to El Salvador were denied their 5^thAmendment right to due process. If they were given due process, we would’ve learned that Mr. Garcia had a protection order that prevented his deportation to El Salvador since he’d be attacked by gangs there. Yesterday, another judge ordered that he be brought back from El Salvador by April 7th. In that hearing, this Republican administration’s lawyer didn’t know why Mr. Garcia was deported. Oops, I guess. (They use the Oops Defense for a lot of things).

The Republican response to the judge’s order that Mr. Garcia be returned by April 7th was disgusting. This line is ICE-ing on the cake:

In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Xinis should contact President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador "because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador." (Reuters)

What an unbelievably bullshit thing to say.

There are many reasons I attended today’s Hands Off rally. Republicans are trying to sell off our public lands. Republicans continue to gut the VA. Republicans are banning books at the US Naval Academy. Republicans are firing civilian instructors at my alma mater, the US Air Force Academy. Republicans are trying to suppress voting via the SAVE Act, which affects women. Republican leaders conducting warfare via unclassified chat and emojis. Musk dancing on stage with a chainsaw cutting money and personnel allocated by Congress. While they claim to be efficient, the IRS says that Musk’s toadies have actually cost us half a trillion bucks. All of us, including penguins on Heard Island, just got screwed by tariffs.

Here's the kicker though. And it’s the main reason I attended today’s demonstration. Groups of ICE agents are roaming our country with their faces covered (why covered? I thought “we” hated masks.) detaining people and denying them due process, which is a 5^th Amendment right, whether you are a citizen or not. It isn’t just Mr. Garcia. It’s all 300 of those deported alleged Tren de Aragua gang members that were denied due process. Several had no criminal records. But I guess we’ll never know for sure since they were denied a day in court to show they weren’t in a gang. If they can do it to them, they can do it to you. You can scream that you’re an American citizen with no criminal record while they’re shaving your head in El Salvador.

The administration admits they made a mistake. But this statement from the White House makes it clear that they have no interest in accountability. They ignored a court order to stop the deportation. And now they’re ignoring a court order to bring him back. I guess we can invade our NATO ally Greenland, but we can’t get an innocent man back from a country the size of Massachusetts.

They aren’t admitting a mistake. They’re bragging: Get in line or we’re going to send you to a foreign prison.

The turning point is here. Right now. Republicans are ignoring the law. Republicans are ignoring the Constitution. When federal judges tell the executive branch to stop violating the Constitution, this Republican president tells them to fuck off. It turns out that law ENFORCEMENT is the most important part of law and order.

You get a chance right now to prove what you would’ve done in one of those history books. If you do nothing, and you ever asked, “How could they just sit back and do nothing?” well, you have your answer.

In his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder says we should “practice corporeal politics.” He writes, “Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.”

So, today, I participated in a protest. I’ve put my body on the line before, over in Iraq and Afghanistan. I deployed because I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. But I’m retired from the military. I’d rather read books and go skiing and have a nice local beer while petting my dog at my advanced age. But right now, our Constitution is getting gang raped by MAGA Republicans. So, I guess standing in the cold is a small price to pay. I put my skin in the game today. Again.

What’s it going to take for you to put your skin in the game? Do they have to burn the Constitution in front of your eyes?

Call to Action

How about just one for today. I consider this brazen unconstitutional behavior and refusal to follow court orders to be more important than my usual topics.

Call to Action: Stop unlawful ICE detainment of immigrants.