Is this what you voted for?

Perhaps even diehard Trumpers are getting more than they bargained for

Source: Bennett Law Center

A memo from the acting deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice commands attorneys, FBI officials and those in other law-enforcement agencies to scour their files for undocumented people for potential deportation. This includes those involved in crimes who cooperate as well as victims.

The memo from former Trump lawyer Emil Bove says: “The FBI, DEA, ATF, USMS (U.S. Marshals Service), and BOP (Bureau of Prisons) shall review their files for identifying information and/or biometric data relating to non-citizens located illegally in the United States. All such information and data shall be disclosed to DHS, for the sole purpose of facilitating appropriate removals, enforcement actions, and immigration-related investigations and prosecutions …”

Trump-supporters may want to think about that for a moment. Put aside your feelings about illegal border crossings and think about how victims – people who were assaulted, robbed, raped, etc. – may now face deportation just because they reached out to our government for help. They may be targeted because their names appear in government files. Is that humane?

Is this what you voted for?

Source: neaToday, 2016

Trump has already suggested grabbing up schoolchildren and deporting them, presumably after confining them in prisons or camps. An estimated 733,000 children are at risk. Is this not reminiscent of what America did in its most shameful moments in World War II involving Japanese Americans? Is this not reminiscent of what the world’s most horrendous tyrant did in Germany back then against his own citizens?

Already, school districts across the U.S. are planning to resist the orders, with officials potentially facing prosecutions for their protection plans. One example: Colorado state and local education officials have said they will fight attempts to identify and deport undocumented students, including some 4,000 such students in Denver alone.

Is this what you voted for?

Source: UVAToday

Trump believes that by fiat – executive order – he can reverse over a century of law that granted native-born people citizenship, including the 14th Amendment to the
Constitution, ratified in 1868 and upheld by the Supreme Court 30 years later. Thankfully, attorneys general in 22 states, as well as the ACLU and other civil rights groups, have taken to the courts to have this dictatorial action nulled.

Does this action suggest a man who has respect for law? Of course, as a felon with a heavy sexual abuse judgment pending against him and a long history of business fraud and bankruptcy, respect for law is not something in Trump’s makeup.

Is this what you voted for?

Trump plans to remove incentives for electric vehicles, increase fossil-fuel usage and development, and has withdrawn the U.S. from a longstanding international agreement to attack climate change. Think about that when you hear about the ongoing California fires and increased hurricane activity in once-sheltered places such as deep within North Carolina.

Is this what you voted for?

Panama Canal: Source: SeaTradeMaritime News

Trump is considering using the U.S. military to invade a sovereign country, Panama, and occupy its canal. Is this reminiscent of what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine, a country Trump may well abandon to a tyrant?

Is this what you voted for?

Trump and his appointees are threatening to jail journalists they don’t like and to use the U.S. military against protestors who disagree with their policies. Does that mirror tactics used by despots in other countries? Does such muzzling, which already has led to self-censorship at news outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, concern you, even if you might disagree with their viewpoints?

Is this what you voted for?

In an attack on people who see themselves as differing from the usual male-female binary identities, Trump has issued an executive order rolling back protections enshrined in federal practices. Gay and lesbian people are worried they will be targeted next with marriage laws vulnerable. Trump is also attacking programs designed to foster diversity – really to simply respect it — in government and education, as if this will somehow bring us back to a nonexistent straight white 1950s milieu.

Is this what you voted for?

Trump, who won in large part because Americans were alarmed about inflation, plans to implement aggressive tariffs that nearly all economists say will drive up prices for consumers for a broad array of goods. Already, he is hedging on his promises to lower grocery prices.

Is this what you voted for?

Source: NPR

Finally, Trump pardoned nearly all the 1,500-plus insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 after he egged them on. Recall that in addition to threatening to hang Trump’s former vice president, they injured more than 100 police officers, some very seriously, and their actions led to several deaths. Among those given a free pass now were Daniel Rodriguez, who got a 12 ½ year sentence after pleading guilty to tasing a police office, causing a heart attack and traumatic brain injury. After the tasing, Rodriguez boasted to his friends: “Omg I did so much fucking shit right now and got away. Tazzzzed the fuck out of the blue.”

They included the so-called Q-Anon shaman – the guy in the horned animal headdress. On the news of his release, this buffoon posted on X: “NOW I AM GONNA BY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!”

The men Trump pardoned included Julian Khater, a rioter who in the words of Jamie Raskin, a congressman who was under attack that day with others, “repeatedly violently assaulted our officer protecting us in Congress, Officer Brian Sicknick, who then proceeded to have several strokes and died on January the 7th, 2021, the next day.”

Even Trump apologist Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal found this reprehensible and dangerous. She wrote: “… when you pardon virtually everyone who did Jan. 6: You get more Jan. 6ths. When people who commit crimes see that their punishment will be minimal they are encouraged. It was a wicked act. Conservatives are tough on crime because of the pain and disorder it causes. In that case it pained an entire nation. Jan. 6 too shamed us in the eyes of the world. This pardon was not a patriotic act.”

And at least one of the rioters pardoned has rejected the measure. “I’m so disgusted,” 71-year-old Pam Hemphill told Mother Jones. “How could they ever have been released? I mean, they’re the most dangerous criminals, and a lot of them had committed crimes before. I’m just still so disgusted and so angry. And that’s why I won’t take a pardon—because it would be a slap in the face to the Capitol Police, the rule of law, and to our nation.”

Of course, a slap in the face is what Trump is giving many Americans, perhaps including some among the minority of Americans who voted for him. Ask yourself: Is that what you voted for?

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