We need to take a semi-breather today. It is only plausible to work so many 20-hour days in a row, and the Q&A takes the most time of any of the weekly posts. If overwork leads to some sort of illness, that will wipe out considerably more content than will be lost today.

Tomorrow, we are going to have a joint questions and letters post. There will be 10 serious questions, 10 fun questions, and the letters. Note, incidentally, that we can ALWAYS use more fun/non-politics questions at questions@electoral-vote.com.

We are not, as you can see, canceling the entire Saturday posting. There was some news yesterday worthy of at least some mention.

Fascism Watch, Part I: They Are Now Arresting Judges

Let us begin here by noting that we do not use the word "fascism" lightly, and we certainly do not deploy it for dramatic effect or to advance a particular agenda (unless that agenda is "fascism is bad"). In fact, you can go back into our past postings and find instances of us resisting the label and writing that the Trump movement did not quite qualify, in our view. But these days, with Donald Trump in power again, and with him being surrounded by people who are, on average, far more fanatical than the folks in Trump v1.0, the rubicon has been crossed.

We will also add, as long as we are on the subject, that we tend to doubt that Trump could give a credible definition of "fascism" or that he has a broad plan for implementing a fascist-style regime. He just goes on instinct, and his instincts just happen to be Mussoliniesque or Hitlerian (Note: we did not know this until we looked it up, but both of those adjectives are well-enough-established so as to appear in the OED). Meanwhile, the President is surrounded by people who do know what fascism is, and do have a broad plan, and know that they can either manipulate him into implementing it or can freelance and get away with it.

We say this as prelude to the big news of the day, which involves Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. He is accused, by the state of Wisconsin, of domestic violence. He is accused, by the federal government, of being in the United States illegally and of having already been deported previously. And so, officials from the FBI and from ICE showed up to arrest Flores-Ruiz while he was being tried inMilwaukee County Circuit Court on the domestic violence charge. The feds explained themselves by saying that it is easier and safer to arrest people in court because they have already been screened for weapons.

The judge overseeing the case is Hannah Dugan. She did not take kindly to the presence of the federal officials in her courthouse, seeing it as an infringement on her authority. She also took the position that the feds are not really concerned about this one particular person, and were just looking to make a high-profile arrest. It is also the case that when one matter is being adjudicated (e.g., the domestic violence charge), other governmental entities tend to defer their claims. After all, if Flores-Ruiz is arrested in open court, or even if he's arrested outside the courtroom and his trial in Wisconsin is delayed, then the jury pool is tainted and you have a surefire mistrial.

Under these circumstances, Dugan decided to escort Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer through a different door than the main door; the one that is used by jury members. Since it apparently did not occur to federal law enforcement officials that if you are staking out a building with multiple doors, you should probably watch—you know—all of them, they were unable to nab Flores-Ruiz. And so, a furious Kash Patel, director of the FBI, ordered that Dugan be arrested, which she was at 8:30 a.m. yesterday.

When it comes to "who is right" and "who is wrong" here, we presume readers can reach their own conclusions based on this recounting of the facts. Our view, for what it is worth, is that this is one of those gray-area situations that, really, form the basis for most court cases (cases that are black-and-white slam dunks tend to be resolved with a settlement or a plea bargain). Dugan has a point that it's her courtroom—and, by extension, her right to decide how people enter and exit. The feds have a point that they were exercising their authority legally, and that Dugan took steps to subvert them. Nobody's completely right here, and nobody's completely wrong, would be our take.

What we ARE sure of is that the Trump administration does not give two sh**s about Flores-Ruiz or about Dugan. This is absolutely political theater. Initially, it was political theater designed to show that the Trump administration is being "tough" on undocumented immigrants. Then, it evolved into an opportunity to perform some political theater designed to show judges that if they are going to defy the Trump administration, they better not step out of line in ANY way, no matter how trivial, or they are at risk of getting pinched. Dugan is not a federal judge, but the message is meant for the benefit of federal judges nonetheless.

And that's where the headline comes from. An independent judiciary is critical to holding leaders accountable, especially if the legislature has become the leader's puppet (see Enabling Act of 1933; 119th Congress). So, if a leader does not want to be accountable, then they have to silence the judges. You know, by doing things like arresting them if they get out of line.

While we are confident that is the thought process in the White House (and also at the J. Edgar Hoover Building), we also doubt it will work. There are many things that are true of the type of people who become federal judges, and among those are: (1) they know the law very well, and (2) they are not folks you can intimidate. So, if Donald Trump and Kash Patel think they can silence unfriendly judges (and they, even the Trump appointees, are pretty much ALL unfriendly these days), they are in for an unpleasant surprise. (Z)

Fascism Watch, Part II: The Administration Surrenders on Foreign Students

And here is the companion to the above item, one that illustrates: (1) the importance of an independent judiciary, (2) that the federal judges ARE NOT backing down and (3) that the Trump administration tends to make rash, knee-jerk decisions.

At the start of this month, the Trump administration deleted the records of a whole bunch of international students from a key federal immigration database, because these folks had an "encounter" of some sort with law enforcement (almost invariably NOT resulting in a conviction, usually not even resulting in an arrest). This act, which was certainly illegal, was clearly intended to convert these individuals' status into "illegal." After all, if you're not in the database, you're not documented, and if you're not documented, you are not supposed to be in the country.

We have absolutely no doubt that whoever was behind this (Stephen Miller?) saw a two-fer: lash out at those mamby-pamby pinko-commie universities, and lash out at those brown-skinned immigrants. In some cases, it was a three-fer, since many of the foreign students are also Muslim. You can practically see Miller, or someone like him, calling up Elon Musk to brag about being so efficient.

The problem is that foreign-born students were an unbelievably stupid target, for a number of reasons. First, as Harvard is demonstrating right now, universities have access to lots of money and lots of lawyers. And faculty and students both would rebel if their administrations did not rise to the defense of those students who had been targeted. Second, as we have pointed out a few times, it is generally very expensive to come to the U.S. for grad school. That means that many (perhaps most) students who do it also have money—enough to hire a lawyer, certainly. Third, as you might have noticed, the best universities in the country are not all located in areas covered by the Fifth Circuit. They are located in many, many federal judicial circuits, and disproportionately in the circuits that lean left. For example, the Ninth Circuit alone covers Stanford, CalTech, UCLA, Berkeley, USC, UCSD, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCSB and the University of Washington, all of them ranked in the top 50 schools in the nation by US News (and in the order they are listed here). That meant that the ensuing lawsuits were going to end up before many, many different federal judges, with few or none who were going to be friendly to the administration's position.

As a result of all of these factors, the lawsuits came fast and furious, and by the bushel. It's not entirely clear when the Trump administration updated the database, but April 2 is a good guess, since universities began to discover the problem on April 3 and 4. Within 3 weeks of that (i.e., by April 23), there were over 100 lawsuits while multiple dozens of judges issued more than 50 restraining orders between them. And so yesterday, faced with this disastrous wall of resistance, the administration surrendered, and said it would reverse the new policy and would restore the affected students to the new database.

Why did Team Trump decide to change course like this? It is certainly possible that they looked at the situation, and the inevitable string of losses, and decided to cut bait. That said, this administration is often happy to fight Quixotic battles on Uncle Sam's dime, because even a loss "owns the libs," as far as much of the base is concerned.

A better—or, at least, more precise—answer is suggested by some new polling this week, particularly the latest from AP-NORC. Their numbers make clear that Republican voters are overwhelmingly happy as clams with the administration's approach to immigration, with 84% approving and 15% disapproving. However, Democrats are livid, with 16% approving and 82% disapproving and, critically, independent voters are not far behind the Democrats, with 37% approving and 64% disapproving. As a result of this, overall approval for the Trump administration's immigration policy, across all political stripes, is just 46% approval, with 53% disapproval. And this is the White House's strongest issue, with Trump doing much better on it than on, say, the economy (36% approval).

Anyhow, Polling 101 teaches that if the numbers say you've gone too far, then you probably need to go less far. And so, in the context of the polling, it is not too surprising that the White House would dial back an anti-immigration initiative that is particularly extreme, and particularly likely to generate lots and lots of bad headlines. (Z)

The "George Santos" Saga Comes to an End... Maybe

Yesterday, one of the odder sagas in American political history reached its conclusion, as former representative "George Santos" was sentenced to a little over 7 years in prison for wire fraud and identity theft committed during his various campaigns for office.

Needless to say, politicians on the take are not all that unusual. What made Santos particularly notable and/or memorable was the bizarre web of lies he told in service of both his grifts and his public image. As it turns out, he was not independently wealthy, nor was he a former trader at Goldman Sachs, nor was he Jewish, nor was his mother a victim of the 9/11 attacks, nor was he the holder of a BA from Baruch College or an MBA from NYU, nor was he a former volleyball star. The only fabulist representative of recent vintage to rival Santos in the Pinocchio department is Jim Traficant, but at least he had the good sense to tell his tales before the Internet made it trivially easy to verify wild claims.

We wrote a lot about Santos while he was still in Congress. That is not because we like to write sensational, gossipy items, because we don't. It was because: (1) back when Santos was in Congress, as now, the Republican margin was thin, and the presence/absence of one vote mattered a lot and (2) many Republicans (dishonestly) defended Santos as a victim of the media/the deep state/the DNC/yadda yadda yadda. That said, on the latter point, it was instructive that the Republicans in New York State all dropped him like a bad habit. Those Republicans answer to (mostly) moderate voters, including many who may have been hurt by Santos' lies.

We have hardly written about Santos since he left Congress because, again, he is no longer relevant. That said, given that we watched him so closely back when he was a representative, we thought we should at least mention the closing chapter of this particular, sordid epic. At least, we think it's the closing chapter. Santos is trying very hard to get a pardon from Donald Trump, and he might just get it. Trump normally pardons people who can do something for him—or to him—and Santos can do neither. However, Trump also sometimes pardons people to send a message along the lines of "The justice system is very unfair to Republicans." There was one like that this week, as the President gave a pardon to Michele Fiore, the "Lady Trump" who was convicted of stealing funds meant for a memorial to two police officers who died in the line of duty. So, it's possible there will be a Trump-authored postscript to the Santos saga at some point. (Z)

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