“I can tell you,” my colleague went on, “of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an ‘Aryan’ woman. This was ‘race injury,’ something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom.”
“And the judge?”
“Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That’s how I heard about it.) After the ’44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don’t know.”
–They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer
A federal judge in Tennessee has ordered a delay in the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after his legal team raised concerns that the Salvadoran native could be deported upon release.
His attorneys pointed to an emergency hearing Thursday in Maryland — Abrego Garcia’s home state — where the government said it planned to deport him to a third country as soon as he is released from jail.
–NPR, June 27, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/27/g-s1-74925/abrego-garcia-tennessee-judge-delay-release-deportation
We are forcing our judges to decide whether to falsely hold innocent people in jail or risk putting them in the hands of the federal government which has made it clear they intend to dump their victims in foreign prisons to be abused and forgotten.
Meanwhile, supporters of this behavior are actively working to open camps where the undesirables can be densely packed. One might even say concentrated.
–AP News, June 25, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/florida-alligator-alcatraz-immigration-detention-trump-desantis-cc060aa6528acbd91a87ec1922578146
And the Supreme Court just ruled that executive orders can suspend Constitutional rights indefinitely unless each person affected makes an individual petition to a court to demand their Constitutional rights be upheld which the court then enforces.
Justice Sotomayor warns in response:
No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.
–AP News, June 27, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/birthright-citizenship-immigration-trump-89be4f8457dd69312abc8427d4194cb9
This continues the ongoing attack on Constitutional rights, in particular birthright citizenship. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That text is unambiguous. Born in the United States means citizen of the United States. But right now, that’s no longer true. The Supreme Court says Trump can revoke citizenship from whomever he wants until a court gets around to hearing and ruling on each specific case.
I warned about this in 2018: Proud Nationalist? Seriously?
We are now fully in the “we’re going to take these things away from you” stage of nationalism.
The people cheering it on are assaulting and assassinating their political opponents.
–NPR, June 17, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/17/g-s1-73157/alex-padilla-kristi-noem-los-angeles-immigration-protests-press-conference
–NPR, June 16, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/16/nx-s1-5433748/minnesota-shooting-suspect-vance-boelter-arrested-melissa-hortman-john-hoffman
Our nation is crumbling.
