Pretext And Provocation, With Little Pretense
The worst of the worst?
The worst, likely, is yet to come.
The administration’s surge of more federal agents to what has been described as a “military occupation” of Minneapolis, under the pretext of an immigration crackdown while connecting activity in the state to alleged fraud, has inevitably only prompted greater resistance among local citizens.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz posted that “What’s happening in MN defies belief. News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos & disruption & trauma the federal govt is raining down... This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of MN.”
With legal efforts under way to attempt to reverse what local officials have called a “federal invasion”, Donald Trump has in turn threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act and deploy troops to the state.
Susan Glasser at The New Yorker describes the Minnesota war zone as “Trump’s most Trumpian accomplishment.”
“I found it hard not to think of all the dark fantasies about America that Trump has trafficked in over the years. Next Tuesday will mark one year since he returned to office. Trump may have started out by trash-talking America; now he is simply trashing it. Minnesota is his legacy. It is American carnage made real.”
And whatever happens next will have profound resonance and impossible-to-ignore implications with the nation entering a midterm election year. As Joyce Vance wrote this week, “In the time of Trump, “Don’t take the bait” is a rule that’s almost as important as “Do not obey in advance.”
“This is now about far more than Minnesota. This is about all of us. “Don’t take the bait” doesn’t mean that the threat isn’t serious, because it obviously is. This is about being smart as we head into the midterm elections. Nothing has the potential to discourage people from voting like the risk of being pulled out of their car by armed men as they head to their polling places, as ICE did earlier this week to a woman who was on her way to a doctor’s appointment. If Trump deploys the military while voting is underway, the damage could be significant. Donald Trump is well aware of that, and we need to be too.
In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, Trump had this to say: “It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms.” He boasted that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” We’ve moved on from claiming he won an election he lost to saying elections are unnecessary. This is a president unfettered by laws, norms, and even the oath he swore to uphold the Constitution. So let’s be prepared. And don’t take the bait.”
Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez write at The Washington Post that for the upcoming election campaign, emergency powers take on a new significance as part of an ongoing atmosphere of chaos.
“Trump cast this year’s elections in existential terms in a speech to House Republicans this month, telling them that Democrats would impeach him if they win a majority. He teased the notion of canceling the elections but said he wouldn’t because he’d be accused of being a dictator if he did.
“Trump can’t cancel elections and he lacks the authority to carry out some of his most far-reaching plans because local and state officials oversee elections, rather than the federal government. Trump has already ignored those constraints and signaled he will continue to do so, which means courts will probably have to determine what rules are in place for the midterm elections.”
Nonetheless, as NPR reports, local election officials are preparing for possible federal interference in the upcoming elections.
After CNN’s Jake Tapper confronted Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem over the contrast between Trump’s pardon of January 6th rioters and the behavior of ICE agents in Minnesota, it emerged that the nation’s biggest law enforcement agency is in the middle of a “wartime” recruiting blitz, targeting, among others, gamers, UFC fans and gun enthusiasts.
And, as Eric Levitz writes at Vox, the administration “can’t stop winking at white nationalists”.
“..One might think the White House would be bending over backward to make the goals of its immigration policy appear as benign as possible: If you want to persuade voters to accept ICE’s radical methods, you’d presumably want to assure them that it has mainstream objectives.
“Instead, the administration opted to associate its immigration agenda with a Nazi slogan.”
A number of senior federal prosecutors resigned over the handling of the investigation into last week’s killing of Renee Nicolle Good. The head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, reportedly told her staff that she would not consider looking into whether the ICE agent involved had violated federal law.
The president himself, meanwhile, had something to say about civil rights. The New York Times called his statement “a blunt distillation of his administration’s racial politics, which rest on the belief that white people have become the real victims of discrimination in America.”
The irony isn’t lost, of course, that Trump has been encouraging Iranians to “keep protesting” while he is crushing protest in his own country. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote this week that there is fast becoming no distinction between President Trump’s domestic and foreign policies (at least as far as they can be described as “policy” rather than “whim”) with the common goal of intimidating through a display of power.
Reich concluded:
“Trump is putting America on a war footing because war is good for him as it is for all dictators. War confers emergency powers. It justifies ignoring the niceties of elections. It allows dictators to imprison and intimidate opponents and enemies. It enables them to create their own personal slush funds. It distracts the public from other things (remember Jeffrey Epstein?).
“War gives dictators like Trump more power and more wealth. Period.”
But Minnesota will be the big story for some time yet, and local media have risen to the task – the Minnesota Star Tribune’s coverage has been comprehensive, knowledgeable and empathetic to its community. Other outlets, perhaps, not so much.
In a separate and disturbing development this week, FBI agents raided the home of a Washington Post reporter apparently in connection with “leaked” classified documents. The Post’s executive editor Matt Murray told his staff that “this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.”
See Also:
January 6 Riot ‘Doesn’t Happen Without Trump’
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“Acting”
Wednesday’s war powers vote, which would have limited Trump’s actions in Venezuela, was defeated 51-50 in the Senate on a casting vote by JD Vance after pressure from the president on Republican waverers.
Meanwhile the administration proudly announced the first $500million deal for Venezuelan oil and promptly sent the proceeds to a bank in, er, Qatar, of course…
With this president, everything is performative and there has rarely been anything as theatrically ego-boosting for him as the visit to the White House on Thursday of Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, who “presented” Trump with the Nobel Prize medal she won last year.
The Nobel Committee issued a statement that “A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel peace prize laureate cannot.” That will hardly matter to 47.
But in this alternative universe where comedy is commentary, The Simpsons, as is often the case, were way ahead of their time…
See Also:
The Only Restraint Is ‘My Own Morality’
Welcome Back My Friends, To The Show That Never Ends (From July)
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Fed Up
As if Donald Trump’s America didn’t already appear to be heading down the path to banana republic-ism, the president’s vendetta against Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell spilled over into an investigation and potential legal fight that Thomas Friedman in the New York Times warned – without any sign of hyperbole – “paves the road to constitutional ruin.”
“It is not a secret how we got to this point. With every passing week, Trump breaks a norm, tests a law or enters a new conflict without proper consultation with Congress or respect for the Constitution. And when Republicans – they are the only lawmakers with the majority power to stop him – gave in to nominations of people totally unfit for cabinet positions, looked the other way at shady Trump pardons and gave a free pass to his financial enrichment while serving in office, it was the beginning of a slippery slope of normalizing his excesses.
“That slope has now reached a depth that emboldened Trump enough to actually try to destroy the independence of the Federal Reserve.”
As other central bankers rallied to his defence, Powell himself coolly responded:
Jonathan Chait, writing at The Atlantic, believes Trump’s gambit “is more likely to fail than it is to succeed” but warns that
“When a respected public servant is being accused of wasting taxpayer dollars and lying to Congress by a president whose extravagant White House renovation has already doubled in cost in just three months, and whose inexhaustible capacity for lies has essentially broken every fact-checking medium, one almost wonders if the criminal allegation was chosen for its absurdity, to demonstrate that Donald Trump can make the law mean whatever he wants it to.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court again declined to rule this week on the legality of Trump’s emergency basis for his global tariffs, a test of both the scope of the president’s authority and the court’s willingness to check it.
The president has warned of a “complete mess” in the economy if the tariffs were to be struck down, but really, in classic Calvin Coolidge mode, how could anyone tell?
See Also:
The Sound Exercise of Lawful Authority (From April)
‘You Can’t Spell Tariffs Without FFS’ (From July)
Shooting The Messenger (From August)
Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn (From April)
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When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not think how wildly out of whack things in the political world would become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for “normality”.
As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.
The two links in the above paragraphs change with each weekly column – all the pieces are definitely worth reading. So far, they’ve been:
“Normality”
Donald Trump Suggests Re-naming NFL in ‘Football vs Soccer’ Debate, by Tom Gotti, in Sports Illustrated.
The State of Venezuelan Baseball is Strong, by Antonio Matheus, in Caracas Chronicles.
In a Year of Violent Tumult, the Sports World was Silent, by Dave Zirin, in The Nation.
Palm Beach Frozen Iguanas to make Class A baseball debut in 2026, in The Palm Beach Post.
Sports are an ideal home for Trump’s singular brand of ego stroking, by Andrew Lawrence in The Irish Times.
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“What might come after”
Rebuilding America After Trump, by Pete Buttigieg, in The New York Times.
What Comes After Trump’s Age of Monsters? by CJ Polychroniou and Alexandra Boutri, in Common Dreams.
What will happen once Trump leaves office? It’s not good, by Dace Potas in USA Today.
Trumpism After Trump – The Future of the Right by Gladden Pappin and David Leonhardt, in The New York Times.
What comes after Trump? Turning Point USA endorses Vance amid party discord, by The Associated Press.
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During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post midweek and a politics wrap at weekends. As you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other.
You can find a full States of Play archive here.
I’m back to a roughly once-a-week post now throughout the off-season, when I’m hoping to feature some more Q&A write-ups and produce some new content for the site.
Let me know what you’ve enjoyed or what you haven’t? And if you think you might like to take part and talk about your memories of baseball and politics, drop me a line?
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