Evening Thoughts

It may be later than you think.

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Evening thoughts

The author is tired, but feels compelled to share one last cry of alarm before the day is done.

The fascists are consolidating their grip on power in the United States at lightning.speed.

Elon Musk, an unabashed fascist and apparent neoNazi, has gained access to our deepest secrets. We have no idea who he is sharing them with.

From all appearances he bears little or no allegiance to the Constitution or the United States.

In the last few days we have witnessed the fascist Trump regime resort to Gestapo and NKVD (Stalinist) tactics, whisking individuals away from their homes and families in the middle of the night and deporting them to El Salvador and its infamous prisons—without a hint of due process of law Indeed, some victims appear to have been deported in flagrant defiance of U.S. federal court orders. A particularly chilling detail is that in many cases the authorities have refused to identify themselves.

As long as an airplane is in U.S. airspace, it is subject to the jurisdiction of federal courts. Indeed, a very strong legal case can be made that a U.S. military aircraft or U.S. charter or U.S. carrier aircraft remains subject to the jurisdiction of a federal court even after it has left U.S. airspace.

I remember when I was working at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) and processing complaints from Argentina. Many complaints described, e.g., when the Argentine authorities pulled up in a Ford Falcon in front of an apartment building, burst into what might have been a 10th floor apartment, placed a black hood over the victim’s head and whisked him away in the middle of the night. Often to be “disappeared”, never to be seen again.

I never imagined at that time that a fascist American government would one day resort to such Gestapo and Stalinist measures as whisking individuals away in the middle of the night,

But it has. The Trump regime has whisked people away in the middle of the night and deported them without the slightest hint of due process of law.

It is much later than we think.

We may in fact have little time to prevent a fascist consolidation of power in the United States.

To be sure, we should resist such unconstitutional actions in the courts, with the greatest vigor and as a matter of utmost urgency. In every case.

If the Trump administration defies court orders, as they appear to have done when they deported Venezuelans to El Salvador in defiance of a court order, we must of course sanction such conduct and hold those responsible for criminal contempt of court.

But that may not be enough.

We may need to put millions of people in the streets and in front of the Supreme Court to restore our Constitution.

House Democrats should be working around the clock on a bill of impeachment, and working tirelessly to convince five Republicans to vote to launch an impeachment investigation.

It may be too late. Let’s hope it isn’t.

While there are many outrages and many issues we can work on, we need to focus on one overarching goal:

The impeachment and removal from office of Donald Trump.

***

James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harv Law School and professor of international law at other universities.

He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.

At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Recent Books by the Author

James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.

James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.

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