TRUMP'S BAD ECONOMIC POLL NUMBERS ARE ACTUALLY A REASON FOR DEMOCRATS TO TALK ABOUT OTHER SUBJECTS (updated)

I'm just a schmuck amateur blogger and Matthew Yglesias is one of the Big Brains, but I think he's taking away exactly the wrong lesson from the data he's citing:

Everyone should think about which topics they want to raise the salience of and why. pic.twitter.com/O9wutKoSVR

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 18, 2025

Self-criticism corner: By suggesting it is bad to increase the salience of immigration, I have generated meta-discourse that has only further increased the salience.

No more posts about this from me ever!

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 18, 2025

Yglesias's argument is as follows: Trump's poll numbers on the economy and trade are really bad, much worse than his overall approval rating, so people who want to make him less popular should keep talking about the economy and trade, and stop talking about immigration, because the numbers show that voters like Trump's abductions and deportations.

But the numbers that lead Yglesias to this conclusion can be read in exactly the opposite way: that we're winning the argument on the economy and trade, yet it's not enough to drive Trump's overall poll numbers lower, so we need to go after Trump's strength on immigration and try to lower that number as well.

I'm not sure we can drag Trump's economic numbers any further down, at least in the near future. Yesterday I noted that many of the Trump-voting independents in a recent New York Times focus group have economic anxiety right now but "trust the plan" -- they assume that President Trump is really, really smart and knows exactly what he's doing, and that all of this will work out in the long run. We can try to tell them that it won't work out, but they'll just assume that we're defending the establishment elitists and Trump knows better because he's the world's greatest dealmaker. And then what can we say? We have a pretty good idea what Trumponomics will do in the long run, but until more time passes, we can't prove we're right.

We can see voters splitting on the short-term and long-term impacts of Trump's economic and trade policies in polls. Here are some numbers from a recent CBS poll (apologies for the muddy images; click to enlarge):

In the short term, 75% of poll respondents think Trump's tariffs will increase prices; only 5% think they'll decrease prices. But in the long term, 30% think they'll decrease prices, while 48% think they'll increase prices. In terms of overall economic impact, 65% of respondents think the tariffs will make the economy worse in the long run, but only 42% think they'll make the economy worse in the long run. Only 8% of respondents expect the economy to be better in the short term, but 34% expect it to be better in the long term.

Even the long-term numbers are kind of lousy for Trump, but they're better than his short-term numbers. We simply can't win over the people who expect the plan to work in the long run, because they think Trump is smarter than we are. Also see this result from a March Wall Street Journal poll:

In this poll, 48% of respondents think Trump's policies will "create economic difficulties with very little benefit," and 35% believe they'll "create some economic difficulties in the short run but economic benefits in the long run" (while 13% think they'll just create benefits). The 13% probably can't be won over under any circumstances, and it's unlikely that we can win over the 35% until the economic leopards are actually eating their faces.

Meanwhile, the data analyst who produced the chart Yglesias reproduces above -- G. Elliott Morris, who succeeded Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight -- disagrees with Yglesias and believes it's worth going after Trump on immigration.

... the individual components of Trump's immigration agenda are much less popular than the general ideas of securing the border or deporting undocumented immigrants.

In polls of Trump's immigration policy, voters generally oppose deporting residents who have been in America for more than ~5 years, deporting people where it would separate children from parents, and deporting people who have not been convicted of crimes other than illegal entry.

In a piece titled "Trump's Immigration Agenda Is Not Popular," Morris gives us some specifics:

I keep reading and hearing that, while Trump's net favorability is negative, his approval ratings on immigration are positive. Thanks to @gelliottmorris.com for looking under the hood on this. Turns out Americans *really* don't like Trump's immigration policies.

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— Claire Adida (@claireadida.bsky.social) April 15, 2025 at 11:04 AM

There are some ambiguities in the polling. In the Wall Street Journal poll I cite above, 55% of respondents approve of "deporting illegal immigrants who are suspected foreign gang members to El Salvador without a court hearing to determine whether they belong to a gang"; 43% disapprove. On the other hand, 58% believe that "Donald Trump must comply with federal court rulings that limit his actions or which he disagrees with," while only 37% believe that Trump should refuse to abide by federal court decisions. So if courts block Trump's renditions and express skepticism about whether he's correctly identified gang members, it seems as if there's room for public opinion to change. Contesting Trump's immigration moves involves contesting his characterizations of the abducted. He's obviously lying about many of them, if not all or nearly all of them. Americans want him to deport immigrants who are bad people, but their support for him could change if they don't believe that's what he's doing, and if they see him not merely taking aggressive action but taking aggressive action in defiance of the courts.

I'll add this: mainstream Democrats like Yglesias want the party to be hyper-cautious and limit its rhetoric to as few issues as possible. They seem to believe that voters can't think about more than one issue at a time. Meanwhile, Trumpworld talks about tariffs and Greenland and DEI and the "Gulf of America" and universities and pro-Palestine foreign nationals at universities and alleged immigrant gang members from Latin America and many other subjects, and voters seem able to process it all. Democrats are hemming themselves in -- something they seem to love doing -- if they continually say they mustn't or can't or shouldn't. They should exercise a certain amount of caution, but much less than Matthew Yglesias recommends.

*****

UPDATE: Look who's not afraid to defend due process for immigrants.

Joe Rogan explains to his audience why due process is important and quotes Ben Franklin — "it is better 100 guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer.” He argues against shipping people to a prison in El Salvador without trial because we think they’re gang members.

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— Dare Obasanjo (@carnage4life.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 6:50 AM

TRUMP'S TARIFF RHETORIC ISN'T JUST A CON, IT'S A LONG CON

I've had to adjust my thinking about how much damage Donald Trump has to do to America before his less-committed supporters decide he's a bad president. I don't think they're sticking with him simply because they voted for him and can't bear the thought that their vote was wrong -- how many swing-voting Americans really have that much of an emotional investment in their vote? I think it's more likely that their belief that he'd quickly make the country better has been replaced by a belief that he'll make the country better someday, even though things look bad now, and everyone just needs to be patient.

In other words, he's replaced the con of his campaign (I'll make everything better on Day One) with a long con (Just stay invested -- the payoff is coming, I swear, and it'll be a big one).

I'm saying this after reading the latest New York Times focus group involving thirteen independent voters who chose Trump in 2024. When they're prompted, "Fill in the blank for me: I feel 'blank' about the way the country is going these days," seven express discomfort ("Bad," "Pessimistic," "Hopeless," "Frustrated," "Worried," "Confused," "Lied to"). Two others are neutral ("Curious," "Faithful"). Three are "Hopeful." One is "Cautiously optimistic." Yet not one of them regrets voting for Trump.

They were interview on April 8, just before the mega-tariffs were scheduled to take effect, then partly rolled back. They weren't loving the tariffs. Diana, who was "Hopeful," said,

I work in finance. I think in the short term, it’s a shot in the foot.

But then she added:

But I think in the long term, it may be a great thing for the country. So I’m hopeful that this will improve our economy and manufacturing.

Angela, who was "Faithful," said:

I feel like there’s a plan that’s been implemented. I’m just trusting the process.

Only four of the thirteen believed things in the country would be better in the next six months. Three thought they'd be worse. Five thought they'd be "basically the same." But, some of them said, that's okay! I guess they took all of Trump's promises of an instant economic Golden Age seriously but not literally, and now they'd accepted the con man's assurance that the apparent short-term failure of The Plan isn't a sign that's it's failing, it's a sign that it's succeeding, and they just need to stick with Trump.

Steven ("Curious"):

There’s a lot of policy movement right now. It’s a lot — break things now, fix it later. And sometimes that’s the best kind of leader. Sometimes it’s not. I don’t think six months is long enough to reconcile what needs to happen. So I think it’s probably going to be 12 months and beyond before we see any meaningful change that might come from what’s going on today.

Walter ("Cautiously optimistic") repeated his assessment:

I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic. But it is going to take a while for all these policies to shake out and take effect. So maybe a six-month horizon isn’t quite long enough.

Neil ("Hopeful") said:

The whole point of having tariffs is to even out the playing field. I want the Ford plants in Mexico shut down and all those jobs brought over here. How long is it going to take Ford to build an entire building to bring those plants up? It’s not going to be overnight or even a couple of months. It’s going to take a while, probably a couple of years.

He was asked, "Would that still feel short term for you?" His reply:

We’ve been taken advantage of by the entire planet since after World War II. So it takes as long as it takes. It’s for the good of the country. If whatever happens happens, that’s what it is.

When I was young, Republicans' imagined American Golden Era was the 1950s. For many people that wasn't true, but for millions it actually was, though for many reasons Republicans would never acknowledge (strong unions, very progessive taxation, significant government investment in education, housing, and infrastructure). But now Trump says that the period when America had its broadest and most prosperous middle class was hell on earth. And these folks believe it. They believe we've been miserable for eighty years, and that was after the Great Depression and World War II. So of course Trump can't fix everything overnight if it's been awful for at least a century!

Thus the con becomes a long con.

A couple of years from now, in all likelihood, things will still be bad, and these people may well perceive them as bad -- but if Trump keeps pumping out the rhetoric of his long economic con, while continuing to tighten the screws on anyone who opposes him, he (or at least the regime he's building) could have the staying power of Viktor Orban's regime in Hungary. As The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum notes, Orban remains in power despite a terrible economy:

Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row.

Trump needs to keep the long con going until his opponents can't topple him. To prevent this, we need to fight him on every possible front until we peel off as many soft supporters as possible. But that's going to be difficult, because the con will keep many of them waiting for the big payoff for a long time.

SMART-ASS NAYIB BUKELE IS PLAYING EXCLUSIVELY TO TRUMP'S BASE

I don't know what happens next in the case of immigrants abducted from U.S. soil and sent to a torture prison overseen by President Trump's smug, sociopathic errand boy, Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele. Bukele at first refused to allow Senator Chris Van Hollen to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of Maryland until his abduction by Trump's thugs, but yesterday Bukele relented. The Bulwark's Andrew Egger thinks Van Hollen threw Bukele off stride:

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s trip yesterday to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia plainly wrongfooted Bukele, who first denied Van Hollen an opportunity to meet with the wrongfully deported man, then reversed himself and tried to sully their meeting with some hamfisted propaganda, directing an aide to place “glasses with cherries and salted rims” on the table “in an attempt to stage the photo.”

Yes, that's real. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Bukele, in a social media post, even crowed that “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’” was “now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” But according to a person familiar with the situation, a Bukele aide placed the two glasses with cherries and salted rims on the table in front of Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Abrego Garcia in the middle of their meeting in an attempt to stage the photo.

Here's Bukele's tweet with the staged photos:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!🍹 pic.twitter.com/r6VWc6Fjtn

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 18, 2025

Those aren't very convincing margaritas.

Why would Bukele relent and allow Van Hollen to see Abrego Garcia? When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did a photo op in front of shirtless, tattooed prisoners last month at CECOT, the prison where Abrego Garcia is being held, The Bulwark's Jonathan Last wrote:

The use of prisoners for propaganda purposes is as old as war itself. But there are a few recent examples you may recall. ISIS made extensive use of videos and pictures of imprisonment and execution. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese alternated their approach. Sometimes they used American POWs as props to suggest that all was well in their camps and that prisoners were being treated properly. (They were not.) Other times, they used images of American prisoners as tools to spread fear. They would parade captured American soldiers before mobs and display them at press conferences.

The goal is always the same, though: To use prisoners’ bodies as weapons of political war and to do so against their will.

This is what evil, illiberal regimes do.

Bukele is sending conflicting messages, like the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. But he's always controlling the message.

However, it's my sense that the current messaging is aimed at Americans who get 100% of their news from right-wing sources. That's a healthy portion of the country, but it's not all of us. To those people, Abrego Garcia is not only an unquestionably bad person and not only a gang member, he's one of the key members of the gang he's accused of joining.

Bondi is escalating the rhetoric against Abrego Garcia, who she calls "one of the top MS-13 members" and "a terrorist"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 16, 2025 at 9:15 PM

Before his abduction, Abrego Garcia worked full time as a sheet metal apprentice. How many "top" gang members are you aware of who need to work a forty-hour day job?

The Times reports that on Wednesday afternoon White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt

was joined in the briefing room by Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland resident who was brutally murdered in 2023 by an immigrant from El Salvador. The administration has pointed to Ms. Morin’s death as an example to justify its stance on immigration, though statistics show immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born citizens to commit crimes.

The White House used your tax dollars to post a tweet with two photos, one showing Trump meeting Patty Morin and the other showing Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia.

We are not the same. pic.twitter.com/yTUoSXmCBa

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 18, 2025

You may object that while Rachel Morin was murdered by a Salvadoran, it was a Salvadoran other than Abrego Garcia. But in the MAGA/Fox News Extended Universe, all Salvadoran men are alike, all are murderers and MS-13 members and terrorists.

But when the Trumpers put this propaganda out, I think they forget that the immigrant horror stories that make up a disproportionate percentage of Fox News programming simply aren't front of mind for most Americans the way they are for Fox viewers.

And as for that word "terrorist": The Trumpers love to use it because it adds an extra layer of fear. They also use it because the fiction on which they're basing their detention drive includes the notion that Latin American governments are deliberately sending border crossers to America as an act of war. I hope you're sitting down for this: They're lying about that. The Washington Post reports:

The National Intelligence Council, drawing on the acumen of the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies, determined in a secret assessment early this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the United States by the prison gang Tren de Aragua, a judgment that contradicts President Donald Trump’s public statements, according to people familiar with the matter.

The determination is the U.S. government’s most comprehensive assessment to date undercutting Trump’s rationale for deporting suspected gang members without due process under the Alien Enemies Act, [a] 1798 law....

The intelligence product found that although there are some low-level contacts between the Maduro government and Tren de Aragua, or TdA, the gang does not operate at the direction of Venezuela’s leader.

And, of course, Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn't from Venezuela, or accused of being a member of Tren de Aragua -- he's from El Salvador and is accused of being a member of MS-13. But they know all those Latin Americans and Latin American gangs look alike to Fox viewers, the same way they know that their base can't distinguish Abrego Garcia and Rachel Morin's murderer.

So Fox viewers look at Abrego Garcia at that table with Senator Van Hollen and see a scary terrorist gang memnber. They have no idea that what the rest of us know about him includes the fact that the administration itself said he was abducted and deported due to an "administrative error." Members of the Trump regime would love to wipe out everyone's memory of that inconvenient truth the way they've banished knowldge of it in the minds of their own fans. So they pretend it's fake news:

The White House just posted this on X.

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— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 11:26 AM

Abrego Garcia isn't a perfect person. His wife did get an order of protection against him in 2021, though she now says the two have worked through their problems. But the larger point is that he should stay in the country or be expelled based on evidence and a formal process for assessing that evidence.

I think we need more Chris Van Hollens. Van Hollen and other Democrats should continue demanding to see the prison itself -- if Bukele is so proud of it, why won't he show it off? Polls show that Americans have sympathy even for immigrants living illegally in America as long as they're working and playing by the rules otherwise. Democrats in Congress should demand due process for the gay makeup artist and the abductee with the autism tattoo honoring his brother, and others.

And to the Democrats who fear this is a bad issue, I'd say that Democrats can do this and demand border security. Just make the processes fair and aboveboard. And it's not a "distraction" from the economy, as Gavin Newsom and others believe -- in their reactions to Trump's throw-everything-at-the-wall approach, Americans have demonstrated that they can respond to more than one issue at the same time.

AMERICANS ARE CAPABLE OF THINKING ABOUT ISSUES OTHER THAN MONEY, APPARENTLY

Navigator Research is a public opinion research firm that's aligned with the Democratic Party, so perhaps we should take its latest survey with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, the survey makes clear that voters are not comfortable with President Trump's assaults on the rule of law. If that's true, it contradicts what Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, James Carville, and other old-fashioned Democrats fervently believe: that only the economy matters to voters.

The survey tells us:

Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Americans say that Donald Trump believes he is above the law, including majorities of independents (65 percent) and non-MAGA Republicans (51 percent)....

Driving their concerns: that Trump let Elon Musk and DOGE access the personal health and financial data of tens of millions of Americans, that Trump has violated multiple court rulings, and that Trump is attempting to close federal departments and agencies. Two-thirds find each of these concerning, including majorities of both Democrats and independents.

* Trump let Elon Musk and DOGE access the personal health and financial data of tens of millions of Americans: 66 percent concerning, 53 percent “very” concerning,

* Trump has violated multiple court rulings: 65 percent concerning, 51 percent “very” concerning, and;

* Trump is attempting to close federal departments and agencies like the Department of Education, even though those departments and agencies can only be shut down by acts of Congress: 64 percent concerning, 51 percent “very” concerning....

Nearly 60 percent say each of these poses a threat to democracy, with almost half saying these actions pose a severe threat to democracy.

Respondents also believe Trump's threat to pursue a third term poses a threat to democracy -- 48% say it's a "severe" threat and 60% overall think it's a threat.

I don't want to overstate the importance of this. The respondents are expressing these opinions because they've been asked questions. That doesn't mean that they think about these subjects a lot. I'm sure economic issues are much more important to them.

But the results suggest that regular reminders of Trump's abuses would find a receptive audience in the public. I don't agree with the Carvillean conventional wisdom that Democrats need to focus their attention on one or two issues because the public can't process more than that and other issues are Trumpian "distractions." It appears that everything Trump is doing is dead serious, and if Trump and Republicans are able to focus the public's attention on multiple issues, why can't Democrats?

So it's good to have Senator Chris Van Hollen in El Salvador reminding voters about Trump's flouting of court orders in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, with other Democrats likely to follow. It's good to talk about the possibility that Trump will try to stay in power past January 2029. The public has opinions on these subjects even if many elected Democrats are hesitant to talk about them. If every Democrat highlighted these very unpopular aspects of Trumpism, it could further damage his overall popularity. And morally, speaking out against authoritarianism is obviously the right thing to do.

I'm sure there was never a time when the American public said that the #1 issue in America was the security of overseas diplomatic outposts or the email practices of government officials. But Republicans relentlessly attacked Hillary Clinton on Benghazi and her private email server, and succeeded in damaging her approval ratings. Democratic should treat Trump the same way. Attack him with whatever is at hand. It's good for the Democrats, and fighting the administration's lawlessness is good for America.

EVEN UNDER FASCISM, PERSONNEL IS POLICY

Many of us feel the way Garrett Graff feels.

I have to say that the unraveling of American democracy has proceeded far faster than I thought it would: I always assumed concentration camps for Donald Trump’s enemies was somewhere at the end of the road toward American authoritarianism....

But I never imagined that not even three months into the administration we’d already be negotiating and debating the precise legal fig leaf necessary for masked state agents to sweep everyday Americans off the streets and disappear them to specially designed torture gulags in Central America without due process for indefinite (and nearly surely permanent) detention.

And yet here we are.

Why is this policy being implemented so quickly and ruthlessly?

I keep thinking about an old politcal adage: Personnel is policy. It's used by people on the right and the left as a shorthand way of saying that if you have certain policy goals, you should appoint people to key positions who share those goals and are capable of successfully implementing them.

Our current fascist presidency has a number of policy goals, which it's implementing with varying degrees of success. I assume that the totalitarian crackdown on immigrants is happening quickly because it's the work of Stephen Miller, who's young (39) and tireless in addition to being smart and sociopathic. I think he knew from the start how much pain he wanted to inflict and the specific ways he could inflict it. We know he hates Latin American immigrants, but he also has ties to the groups that are outing pro-Palestinian protestors.

Source also confirmed to me Stephen Miller is close to the groups behind Canary Mission and Betar. This is from 2018, about the board of the nonprofit believed to operate Canary Mission in Israel.

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— Jacqueline Sweet (@jsweetli.bsky.social) April 14, 2025 at 8:45 AM

(The Forward article is here.)

Miller is a creature of right-wing media -- he's a frequent Fox guest who began calling into right-wing radio shows when he was a teenager, and soon became an on-air guest -- which might explain why the Trump regime's immigration approach has featured so many conscience-shocking stunts. (ICE is actually deporting fewer people this year than the Biden administration had deported by this time last year.) Miller is good at getting on television and good at extreme cruelty -- and that's how the Trump regime's immigration policy has evolved. Miller also came from a liberal family and grew up right-wing in a liberal community, so I imagine he'll be deeply involved in the renditioning of U.S. citizens, which he'll regard as revenge against a class of enemies he's hated since his schooldays.

The dismantling of the government is being executed by Elon Musk, cruelly and with mixed success. Musk is good at moving fast and breaking things. He's also good at assembling teams that force their way into systems and take control of them. Musk likes mass layoffs conducted without much forethought, so that's what we're getting. One way he's less competent than Miller is that he's happy to be the story. Miller, for all his TV time, never acts as if he's anything but a loyal Trump subordinate. Musk likes to be the star. He's much more visible, so he's easy to blame when the regime is, for instance, laying off nuclear inspectors.

And then there's tariff policy. This is the most poorly implemented of the regime's policies because the president has assigned the job of constructing the policy to one man: himself. Trump is lazy, stupid, and arrogant. He's utterly incapable of executing a successful trade policy. We're lucky that the markets scared the bejeezus out of him and compelled him to pull back on the tariffs somewhat, although the ones that remain are still bad.

I encounter many people on social media who say that they wake up every day hoping to learn that Trump has died overnight. I don't share that sentiment. I think the death of Trump would lead to a J.D. Vance presidency that's exactly as cruel and vicious as Trump's, but without Trump's trade incompetence. I think that trade incompetence is the aspect of the Trump presidency that's most likely to lead to widespread public disapproval. I think a Vance presidency would be exactly as fascist as Trump's, but would lack this Achilles' heel. A Vance who gives us Trumpism minus tariffmania could rule for decades in a post-democratic America. So I guess I'm grateful that Trump hasn't done any delegating on tariffs.

FASCISM GOES MASK OFF, AND EVEN JAMES CARVILLE KNOWS THAT JAMES CARVILLE IS WRONG

The rule of law in America has been on life support for weeks, but it's dead now.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said Monday that he does not plan to return a Maryland man whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported to his country....

“How can I return him to the United States?” Bukele said in an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, responding to a reporter’s question. “I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”

Please note that the Trump regime and Bukele are getting away with this in part because they continually assert that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a gangster, a "terrorist," or, as the Department of Homeland Security puts it, a "terrorist gang member." (One of the corrosive things the regime has done to language is to conflate gang membership and terrorism, as if they're the same thing. The Trumpers do this only because they believe it doubles the fear factor in the reptile portion of their listeners' brains, not because they believe gang members are terrorists.)

Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime in America. An informant has claimed that he was attached to a branch of the MS-13 gang in New York, where he's never lived, but the claim has never had a full hearing in court, and it depends largely on the fact that Abrego Garcia wore Chicago Bulls clothing. Members of the Trump regime now say he's a terrifyingly evil person, but they previously asserted that his deportation was an "administrative error."

The Supreme Court and a lower court have ordered the Trump regime to take steps to get Abrego Garcia back, but after the administration insisted that the president had no leverage over the client state of El Salvador, Trump humiliated the courts by showing the world what BFFs he and El Salvador's president are.

Friends 🇺🇸🤝🏼🇸🇻 pic.twitter.com/tMJHMf7pT4

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 14, 2025

Message: You know how I said I couldn't demand that Bukele return this prisoner? Fuck you -- I could! We're best buds! But I won't! What are you going to do about it?

And:

President Donald Trump on Monday suggested his administration could send U.S. citizens who commit violent crimes to El Salvador, telling Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele that the "homegrowns are next" and urging him to build more prisons to house them.

Trump brought up the idea ‒ which he's discussed previously ‒ to Bukele in the Oval Office before reporters entered the room for a bilateral meeting. The exchange was captured in a livestream video published on the X account of Bukele's office.

"Homegrown criminals are next," Trump said to Bukele. "I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You've got to build about five more places."

Trump to Bukele: "Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 14, 2025 at 12:50 PM

Trump is no longer threatening to torch the Constitution. He's done it. The whole thing is ashes now.

We're left to speculate on what horror comes next:

The next step for Trump is to send a US citizen convicted of something like child murder and rape to CECOT in El Salvador. It'll set the precedent to send citizens there while neutralizing outrage over it because of the heinous nature of their crimes. Then it'll any felony and then protestors.

— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 14, 2025 at 7:55 PM

I think Trump will send a US citizen to the El Salvador concentration camp before the end of the month. Once protests pick up in the summer, that'll be the next escalation to send organizers there. We're heading down a truly dark path.

— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 14, 2025 at 7:59 PM

Maybe the first citizen to be renditioned will be this guy:

An Albuquerque man was arrested on Monday in connection with the fire bombings of the Republican Party of New Mexico’s headquarters in March and a Tesla dealership in February, attacks that the federal authorities have designated as “domestic terrorism.”

The suspect, Jamison Wagner, 40, had parked his white Hyundai sedan at both locations before the arson attacks and then drove away, according to security and traffic camera images released by the Justice Department.

That would be the first step in criminalizing dissent. Or maybe they'll pick a peaceful protester -- perhaps someone who marched and chanted at a Tesla dealership but did nothing unlawful. That would be a quick way of saying that no regime opponent is safe.

I know -- I'm doom-spiraling, and that's bad. Some people are fighting back -- Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen plans to travel to El Salvador this week to seek Abrego Garcia's release. Stuart Stevens, the former Republican strategist, is proposing a way for Democrats in the states to push back:

"What do you do with criminals? You arrest them," Stevens said. "So this is criminal activity."

He then added, "And I think the state attorney generals in these states where this is occurring should treat it like what it is. It's kidnaping. It's human trafficking. They should file charges and arrest the people that are involved with this."

I hope this happens. Abrego Garcia was arrested in Maryland. Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested in Massachusetts. Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in New York. Mohsen Mahdawi was just arrested in Vermont. Will there be a time when blue states will criminalize arrests that lead to lawless detentions? Might states eventually try to block flights that take detainees out of their jurisdiction and into lawless red America, Guantanamo, or El Salvador?

I'm glad Van Hollen is taking a stand. I'm glad Stevens is speaking out. But there should be more than a few small acts of resistance. There should have been massive spontaneous demonstrations yesterday. There should be huge banner headlines in the press -- as I type this, yesterday's developments aren't even the lead story at the websites of The New York Times or The Washington Post.

*****

While Trump and Bukele were meeting, the Times was promoting a James Carville op-ed that was obsolete almost immediately after publication. Carville no longer believes that Democrats should do nothing to oppose Trump and the Republicans, but he argues in the op-ed that they should talk exclusively about the economy -- and it's all Democrats' fault that his earlier genius plan didn't work:

In February I wrote a piece calling on my party’s leaders to play dead, allowing the Republicans to punch themselves out and crumble beneath their own weight. But many Democrats indulged Mr. Trump’s lunacy or allowed themselves to become the story over the government funding and shutdown debate, while the president continued his campaign of chaos and distraction. Now, Democrats have an opportunity to allow the Republicans to edge closer to collapse as the party in full control of Washington — let’s please not become the story again and get in their way.

Carville goes on to recommend some reasonable steps for Democrats: Talk about persistently high prices and cratering 401(k)s, talk about the local economic impact of Trumponomics. The problem is, otherwise timid Democrats like Chuck Schumer have been talking about these things, and disapproval of Trump on the economy and inflation now exceeds approval by double digits. But Trump's overall approval rating is still only a couple of points lower than his disapproval rating. The economy clearly isn't the only issue on voters' minds.

But Carville's op-ed says that Democrats should pay no attention to other issues:

This can only be done if we avoid the distractions — whether it’s Mr. Trump’s third-term talk or Democratic infighting on social issues — and instead focus on the economic foundations that matter to Americans most.

However, within hours of the op-ed's publication, Carville was conceding that other issues matter.

Last night, he was interviewed by CNN's John Berman.



For the first several minutes of the interview, Carville rehashed the op-ed's arguments. Then Berman asked about the Bukele meeting -- and Carville admitted that it's not always the economy, stupid:

CARVILLE: So let me get this straight. This guy was here legally. There are a lot of people here that -- illegal that really contribute to our workforce, our productivity. He was doing nothing wrong. He was in a parking lot.

He had a child -- child's in the backseat. He was sent to El Salvador. The district court said he has to come back. The appeals court said he had to come back. The Supreme Court said he had to come back....

And so the administration said, we're just not going to bring him back.

Well, that is the very essence of a constitutional crisis.

No shit, James.

... this is -- this is not something that's a minor thing, where you just ignore a court order.

And this tinhorn coming in here in the White House and them refusing to pay attention to a legitimate order issued by American courts, this is not going to end well, unless somebody gets this guy back in this country where he belongs. And he's done nothing to be in a -- in a prison anywhere. And it's a -- it's a real shame.

But is it a "distraction," James? Should Democrats ignore it? Berman asks Carville about this as if it's just a matter of political posturing, and Carville, to his credit, says it's serious:

BERMAN: ... do you think the administration would rather have that fight than more focus on tariffs and wild swings in the markets?

CARVILLE: Well, you know, sometimes you got to -- you got to fight on two fronts. And you can fight on an economic front, but also this is such an egregious trespass of justice that you just can't say, well, we'll just repair to the higher ground and talk about egg prices and forget about this guy, well, I'm not for that.

I don't -- I think what's happened here is a -- is really offense against the nation. It's offense against the Constitution. It's offense against order. You just can't let this go.

I'm sorry, it might not be the most politically productive thing in the world, but sometimes you got to just get a backbone and take a stand.

Thank you, James. Thank you for admitting that it's wrong to ignore every non-economic aspect of this regime. Now I wish you'd go all the way and admit that your entire approach to this question is wrong and that Democrats need to treat this as a five-alarm fire for America as a free country.

WE NEED DEMOCRATS WHO AREN'T AFRAID OF TRUMP'S GOOD POLL NUMBERS ON IMMIGRATION

Remember this chilling moment of American fascism?



The Washington Post reports that the stated reason for this arrest was a lie:

Days before masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk to deport her, the State Department determined that the Trump administration had not produced any evidence showing that she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization, as the government has alleged.

The finding, contained in a March memo that was described to The Washington Post, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have sufficient grounds for revoking Ozturk’s visa under an authority empowering the top U.S. diplomat to safeguard the foreign policy interests of the United States.

... the State Department found that while Ozturk had protested Tufts’ relationship with Israel, neither DHS nor ICE nor Homeland Security investigations produced any evidence showing that Ozturk has engaged in antisemitic activity or made public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization, according to U.S. government employees briefed on the State Department’s memo.

But top Democrats don't want to make noise about Ozturk's case, or the case of Mahmoud Khalil and other legal residents who expressed opposition to the Israeli war in Gaza in a peaceful manner.

I get this. It's an article of faith in American politics that the public is pro-Israel. But that's no longer true. Last week, Pew reported this survey result:

... the public’s views of Israel have turned more negative over the past three years. More than half of U.S. adults (53%) now express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 42% in March 2022 – before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip....

Americans’ confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also remains relatively low (32%), according to the new survey.

And Gallup polling reveals a significant decline in support for Israel:

According to Gallup, 76% of Democrats, 53% of independents, and even 41% of Republicans support the creation of an independent Palestinian state. So there's no good reason for Democrats to be fearful on this issue.

Leading Democrats also seem afraid to speak out on behalf of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has been falsely accused of gang activities and renditioned to a torture prison in El Salvador. I understand why: While President Trump's poll numbers on the economy and inflation are terrible, he gets positive ratings on immigration.

There's no question that Americans have moved rightward on immigration, but most of America still doesn't share MAGA views on the subject. In a recent Wall Street Journal poll, 53% of respondents responded favorably to a "Detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants" policy; 45% disapproved. However, the numbers dropped to 33% approval and 63% disapproval for a policy described as "Detain and deport undocumented immigrants even if they have lived in the U.S. for 10 or more years, pay taxes on earnings, and have no criminal record."

We see something very similar in a recent Pew poll:

Many Americans who appear to share MAGA's immigration absolutism are clearly open to the idea that some targeted immigrants are decent people who don't deserve punishment.

In the two cases I've mentioned, Democrats should champion the rule of law, but "rule of law" is an abstraction. Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Rumeysa Ozturk are real people who have been brutalized by an administration that's not broadly popular and is widely perceived as reckless and uninterested in minimizing harm to innocent people. Democrats should take advantage of that skepticism.

Trump's poll numbers are bad, but they could be a lot worse. I think they'd be worse if prominent Democrats had the courage to take a page from the playbook of George W. Bush's chief strategist Karl Rove, who believed in attacking an opponent's strengths. In 2004, Republicans went after John Kerry's military record. Now, Democrats should try to chip away at Trump's good numbers on immigration. In the process, they'd be fighting for the rule of law, and for human decency.