Trump’s ‘act first and fight the courts’ policy faces first major test

[UPDATE: Chief justice John Roberts has lifted the midnight deadline today and asked lawyers to present written arguments by 5:00pm tomorrow (Tuesday).

The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily paused a court-imposed midnight deadline to return to the US a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, agreeing to a request from President Donald Trump that will give the justices more time to consider the case.

Chief Justice John Roberts granted the “administrative stay,” a move that will extend the deadline until the court hands down a more fulsome decision in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported on March 15.

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It is clear that Trump thinks that the president can do anything they want, the laws and norms of democracy be damned. He takes any action that he likes and then fights any challenges vigorously in the courts. He has been sued many times and lost in the lower courts but refuses to reverse the action, instead taking it to the next level of the Appeals Courts. So far, none of these cases have made it to the Supreme Court. The key question is what he will do if even that body, so friendly to him, rules against him.

Today we are going to see what happens in the case of a Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was deported to El Salvador and is being held there in a maximum security prison.

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Trump plays dominance games with the world economy

In discussing Trump’s presidency, I though that one of the few things that he cared about, other than his own business interests, was the stock market. It looks like I was wrong. His imposition of drastic tariffs on pretty much all countries have tanked stock markets worldwide and led to fears of a recession. Even he must have known that this would happen and yet he went ahead anyway, raising the question: Why?

One answer is that he thinks that the tariffs will raise enormous amounts of new revenue, enough to pay for the tax cuts for the rich. Of course, since the costs of the tariffs will be borne by the importers of goods who will pass it on to consumers in the form of higher prices, this is just another typical reverse Robin Hood plan by Republicans, taking from the poor and giving to the rich, a policy much favored by the oligarchy. The higher costs paid by most people will be more than what they will receive in the form of small tax cuts, but that inconvenient fact will be omitted while Trump brags about the tax cuts.

But I have to think that there is more at play here, that the tariffs are really a power play. A clue to what might be going on can be seen in some comments he made.
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Why is RFK Jr going to this funeral?

A second child has died in Texas, reportedly due to measles.

The US health and human services department confirmed the death to NBC late Saturday, though the agency insisted exactly why the child died remained under investigation. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the eight-year-old girl had died from “measles pulmonary failure” early Thursday at a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, citing records obtained by the outlet.

It marked the second time a child with measles – which is easily preventable through vaccination – had died since 26 February. The first was a six-year-old girl – also hospitalized in Lubbock – whose parents had not had her vaccinated.

NBC and Axios reported that the Trump administration health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, was expected to attend the funeral of the second child, with the service scheduled for Sunday.

If the cause of death is still under investigation by the department of HHS, the department run by antivaxxer RFK Jr. , why is he going to the funeral? To urge people to vaccinate their children? That seems unlikely given his past. What it suggests that he and the HHS know that she did die of measles and that he is trying to shield himself from the fallout of yet another needless death caused by his promotion of anti-vaccine propaganda.

I hope the mourners give him a piece of their mind, though if the parents of the dead child are vaccine deniers, they may not want to acknowledge their complicity in this senseless tragedy. The family belongs to the same Mennonite religious community to which the first child belonged. The parents of the first child stand by their decision not to vaccinate.

There is no convincing people when their beliefs are a combination of religious dogmatism and anti-science ignorance, even when it leads to a horrendous personal tragedy. When that dangerous combination is supported by high government officials like RFK Jr., then we are in real trouble.

The fierce intensity of small town politics

Carmel-by-the-Sea is very small upscale town near where I live, where Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt own homes and rich people own vacation homes. It is a quirky place that has some very strange laws that derive from its early history when it was incorporated in 1916 as a place for artists of various kinds.

One of the many quirks is that the houses have no street numbers, a topic I wrote about a few years ago, looking into the history of that issue. Currently homes are identified by specifying ““Lincoln Street 3 southeast of Fifth Avenue” or other formulations. Any measure to introduce street number arouses fierce opposition from some residents, even though they seem to be in the minority.
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The bizarro world of Trumpian economics

Trump has released his big tariffs plan and most observers are stunned, not just by the size and scope of the tariffs ,but also by the bizarre reasoning that has been given for the numbers

It is clear from the reasoning given for the sizes of the tariffs that Trump sees things in very simplistic terms. He thinks that the US should have a trade surplus with every other country and that if it has a deficit, that must be because those countries are engaging in unfair trade and should be punished accordingly. That is how he arrived at his tariff numbers.
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Wisconsin and Florida elections

There were three major elections yesterday, two for congressional seats in Florida and one for a state supreme court justice in Wisconsin. The Florida seats were vacated by the resignations of Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz. Gaetz, a controversial figure accused of having sex with underage girls as well as using drugs, did not resign because of that but because, incredibly, Trump had nominated him for the position of attorney general. But when even some Republicans viewed his nomination unfavorably, he withdrew it.

Waltz resigned because Trump appointed him as national security advisor, where he has recently been criticized for allegedly including the editor of The Atlantic magazine in a high-security chat group over the unsecured commercial channel Signal. It turned out that this was not the only unsecured group chat Waltz had created to discuss sensitive information, having created 20 more on Signal. He seems sloppy and incompetent to say the least.
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The myth of universal body standards

When you go to a doctor, whether for a routine checkup or because of a specific concern, you will usually undergo a series of tests that will give values for a variety of biological markers. Your measures will then be compared with standard benchmarks to see if you fall outside the norm, and if you do, that will be perceived as a problem to be addressed. Implicit in this methodology is that there is a ‘universal patient’ whose biometric markers represent the norm that everyone should aspire to. But where do these norms come from? How valid are they? To what extent should they be used to diagnose and treat people?

When my older daughter was a baby, she was exceptionally chubby. But as she approached her first birthday, she rapidly became skinny, so much so that people had difficulty recognizing the infant in the photograph of her that was on the sideboard (taken at around six months) with the toddler now running around the house. In the regular doctor’s visits, her weight was always on the very low end of the standardized height-weight charts. But her pediatrician, who was an older man, did not seem concerned and so neither were we.
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Blog comments policy

At the beginning of every month, I will repost my comments policy for those who started visiting this site the previous month.

As long time readers know, I used to moderate the comments with a very light hand, assuming that mature adults would know how to behave in a public space. It took outright hate speech targeting marginalized groups to cause me to ban people, and that happened very rarely. But I got increasingly irritated by the tedious and hostile exchanges among a few commenters that tended to fill up the comment thread with repeated posts about petty or off-topic issues. We sometimes had absurdly repetitive exchanges seemingly based on the childish belief that having the last word means that you have won the argument or with increasingly angry posts sprinkled with puerile justifications like “They started it!”

So here is one rule: No one will be able to make more than three comments in response to any blog post. Violation of that rule will result in banning.

But I also want to address a couple of deeper concerns for which a solution cannot be quantified but will require me to exercise my judgment.

The main other issue is the hostility that is sometimes expressed, often triggered by the most trivial of things. An email sent to me privately by a long-time lurker brought home to me how people might be hesitant to join in the conversation here, even if they have something to say, out of fear that something that they write, however well-intentioned, will be seized upon and responded to in a hostile manner by some of the most egregious offenders.

It is well known that the comments sections on the internet can be a cesspool. I had hoped that the people who come to this site would be different, leading to more mature exchanges. But I was clearly too sanguine. People should remember that this is a blog, not a journal or magazine. There are no copy editors, proof readers, and fact checkers. In such a casual atmosphere, people (and that includes me) will often inadvertently be less than precise or accurate in what they say and people should respond appropriately. If the error is trivial but the meaning is clear, the error should be ignored. If the meaning is not clear, clarification can be politely asked for. If it is a genuine error, a correction can be politely made. This courteous behavior should be obvious but clearly it isn’t for some people. So here is another rule: If I think people are being consistently rude or condescending or insulting (and I do not mean just abusive language but also the tone), I will ban the person.

For me, and I suspect for the other bloggers on this network, the rewards of blogging lie in creating space for a community of people to exchange ideas and views on a variety of topics. But that is pleasurable only if people post comments that are polite and respectful towards others, even while disagreeing. Some time ago, I wrote a post that a good philosophy of life is “Don’t be a jerk”. That would be a good rule to keep in mind when posting comments as well. There is absolutely no call for anyone to be rude or sneering or condescending towards others. Almost all the commenters on this blog contribute positively and it is a pleasure to read their contributions and interact with them. It is a very few who think that a sneering, condescending, or abrasively argumentative tone is appropriate. My patience has been worn thin by some of their comments in the past. So here is the third rule: If I think, for any reason whatsoever, that someone is behaving like a jerk, I will ban them. I am in no mood to argue about this. I will not make any public announcement about who is banned. They will simply find that they can no longer post comments.

So I would suggest that in future commenters think carefully before they post anything, taking into account what they say and how often they say something. They should try to put themselves in the shoes of the person they are arguing with and think about how they might feel if their comment had been directed at them. They should also think about how their comments might look to others. It surprises me that people do not realize how badly this kind of behavior reflects on themselves.

Readers may have noticed that there are no ads on any of the blogs on this network. Nobody is making any money at all. In fact, it is a money sink and PZ Myers pays for the costs of the servers out of his Patreon account that you can contribute to if you would like to support the network. The bloggers here blog because they want to create spaces for conversations on issues that they care about. ‘Clicks’ have no monetary value. That means that I do not care how many people come to the site.

I realize that these guidelines are somewhat vague. So a good rule of thumb would be: If in doubt as to whether to post something because it might violate these boundaries, that is a good sign to not post it. I will be the sole judge of whether the boundary has been crossed.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I have zero tolerance for people who try to find ways to subvert the guidelines such as, for example, skirting the three comment limit by continuing it on another thread. I also reserve the right to make exceptions to the rules at any time, if I feel it is warranted. These decisions will be solely mine and will be final. There will be no discussion, debate, or appeal. If anyone objects because they think that I am being arbitrary, they are of course free to leave and never return.

TV review: The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram

On March 15, 2019, a man walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand during Friday prayers and killed 51 people and injured 89 others. He live-streamed the first attack. The. following month on April 27, another man walked into a synagogue in San Diego during Passover and started shooting, killing one woman and injuring three others. On October 12, 2022, yet another man shot and killed two people and injured another outside a gay bar in Bratislava, Slovakia. In each case the person was caught and the authorities concluded that they were so-called ‘lone wolf’ attacks in that the perpetrator acted alone.
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Top health officials resign over Kennedy’s misinformation and lies

[UPDATE: ProPublica reports that “Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered staff this week not to release their experts’ assessment that found the risk of catching measles is high in areas near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging”. That has all the signs of Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism.]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent years peddling crank theories about vaccines and yet the Republicans in the Senate approved of his nomination to be the head of the department of Health and Human Services, the cabinet office that oversees almost all the agencies that deal with public health, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

During his hearings he claimed that he was not a vaccine skeptic but anyone who has followed his career knows that he was being disingenuous at best, if not outright lying. And sure enough, top career people in those agencies are quitting, with one of them Dr. Peter Marks, pointing to Kennedy’s misinformation and lies as the reason.
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