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Author: John Soltesz

How To Destroy the Supreme Court

As I write this, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has just concluded the oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case. The case they are deciding, however, is not about the constitutionality of birthright citizenship but rather whether or not local and regional judges have the authority to issue injunctions that apply nationwide. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, speaking for the Department of Justice (DOJ), argued that they do not. But New Jersey’s Solicitor General, Jeremy Feigenbaum, and attorney Kelsi Corkran, Supreme Court director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law School, both argued that they do.

Buried in the questions and answers between SCOTUS and the Solicitor General is a small aside that I believe is likely to be the most significant issue in the case. It clearly shows what Trump and the DOJ intend to do in the future:

“Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked the solicitor general if, based on the government’s arguments that nationwide injunctions encroach on executive branch powers, the Supreme Court would have the authority to issue a nationwide injunction.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the government’s stance is that the Supreme Court would not have the power to issue such an injunction.” (1)

The Solicitor General’s response is very telling. It says that the Trump administration does not consider the Court as “supreme” in any sense of the word. The implication is that only the Executive Branch has the authority to act on the nation as a whole.

This would, of course, completely negate any Judicial Branch “checks and balances” on the Executive Branch. It would leave Trump free to become the dictator that he wants to be by simply declaring that any actions he takes apply “nationwide.” SCOTUS would be powerless; unable to rule against him.

Trump has always sought to achieve total unconstrained power. The Republican-led House and Senate have shown that they’re more than willing to be mere rubber stamps for Trump (echoing the political structures in other dictatorial countries like North Korea, Russia, and China). The GOP’s cowardice effectively removes all Congressional “checks and balances” on the Executive Branch as well, so much so that it becomes a news headline if a Republican in Congress actually speaks out in opposition to a Trump policy.

I seem to recall an old saying: “death by a thousand cuts.” That is what the United States of America is being subjected to right now. Each individual cut may seem trivial in the context of so many happening at once, but, taken together, they may well cause the death of our Republic.

(1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/15/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-nationwide-injunctions/

The Atrocities Continue

I did not write the following. I only wish I had. I came across it on Quora.com. It was posted as a set of screen shots and the original author was not identified. But I would like to commend whoever wrote this.

“They said they were the law.

They said they had a warrant.

They didn’t have the right house.

They didn’t care.

On Thursday, April 24, 2025, in a quiet neighborhood in Oklahoma City, a U.S. citizen named Marisa and her three daughters were violently pulled from sleep by men claiming to be federal agents. ICE. The FBI. The U.S. Marshals. The names shifted, the threats didn’t. They ordered the family out of bed and out of their home – into the cold morning rain – in their undergarments. Rifles trained. Questions barked. No time to dress. No concern that one of the girls was a minor. No pause to reconsider the name on the warrant that didn’t match anyone who lived there. The family had only just moved in two weeks prior.

The men ransacked the house. They took every phone, every laptop, and the family’s life savings in cash — money they’d carried across the country to start over. When Marisa, drenched and humiliated, begged for her phone back so she could find food for her kids, one of the men looked at her and said, with all the smugness of a man who knows he’ll never be held accountable, “I know it was a little rough this morning.”

And then they left.

No names.

No paperwork.

No receipts.

No apologies.

The FBI says it wasn’t them. The U.S. Marshals say the same. ICE has remained silent. Not a single agency will claim responsibility for the raid. No one will explain why the family was targeted, why their possessions were taken, why their rights were trampled. No one has told Marisa how to get her property back. She doesn’t even know which office to call. Her children, once asleep in what they thought was a safe new home, now live with fear that the men will return.

And while all of this unfolded — while a mother and her daughters were treated like fugitives in their own home — another story broke. A different crisis. One that drew national headlines and an immediate law enforcement response.

Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, had her purse stolen at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. A Gucci bag, reportedly containing $3,000 in cash, medications, apartment keys, and her DHS badge, was snatched from beneath her chair. Within hours, two suspects were arrested. The media ran with it. The system worked.

Statements were made. Justice was served. Noem got her purse back.

Marisa is still waiting.

This country protected Kristi Noem’s purse with more urgency than it protected Marisa’s children. It mobilized for luxury leather, but turned its back on a family stripped of dignity, security, and constitutional protection. One woman got swift justice. The other got soaked, robbed, and forgotten.

And make no mistake: this was not a bureaucratic slip-up. This was a test. A flex.

A soft rollout of unchecked power. What happened to Marisa was not just illegal – it was strategic. These were not mistakes. These were messages. That no one is safe. That citizenship means nothing. That the agents of the state can barge in, terrorize a family, take what they want, and vanish – and the country will yawn and move on.

Ask yourself: if Marisa had stood her ground, would she be alive? If her daughter had screamed or resisted, would they be burying her? If this had happened to Kristi Noem’s family, would Congress be holding hearings?

Of course they would. Because in Trump’s America, power protects power. Purses are prioritized. Mothers are expendable.

They took Marisa’s belongings. They left the trauma. And they are betting no one will make noise about it.”

You can read about this incident here:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-citizen-family-traumatized-ice-raid-rcna203700

And So It Has Begun….

Recently in the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/opinion/turkey-istanbul-protests.html), the editorial board described the current political situation in Turkey:

“Turkey, at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, is an important American partner, with the second-largest military in NATO. Yet Turkey has been sliding toward autocracy over the past decade. Mr. Erdogan has changed its Constitution to expand his power, brought the courts under his control, manipulated elections, purged professors, shut down media organizations and arrested journalists and protesters.”
“Last month, Mr. Erdogan took the assault on democracy to a new level. With dissatisfaction with his government growing, it detained his likely opponent in the next presidential election, Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, along with almost 100 of Mr. Imamoglu’s associates on dubious charges. The arrests put Turkey on the path that Russia has traveled over the past two decades, in which a democratically elected leader uses the powers of his office to turn it into an autocracy. ‘This is more than the slow erosion of democracy,’ Mr. Imamoglu wrote from Silivri Prison in these pages. ‘It is the deliberate dismantling of our republic’s institutional foundations.’”

While Donald Trump and his cronies haven’t yet duplicated all of these actions, they are clearly moving in that direction. Recently they have arrested a judge, threatened the country’s largest law firms, deported American citizens (admittedly children but still actual citizens), revoked valid visas, tried to silence whole universities, banned journalists, fired thousands of federal workers, and ignored the law, the courts, and the Constitution. So Mr. Imamoglu’s words regarding “the deliberate dismantling of our republic’s institutional foundations” can also be applied to Trump and his minions.

As Brian Greenspun said in his editorial in the Las Vegas Sun on Sunday (https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/apr/27/please-donald-stop/), “The first move of dictators around the world is to shut down the courts and intimidate the lawyers. The next move is to silence the media. And Trump is doing his best on that score.”

But key questions remain:

  • Will they continue to arrest judges who displease them?
  • If the Supreme Court rules against them, will they obey or ignore?
    • Will they begin arresting the Democratic party leadership and potential opponents?
  • Will they continue deporting people including American citizens?
  • Will they try to change the Constitution?

Trump has already alluded to being President for a third term if not indefinitely. We have learned to our dismay that he does what he says he is going to do and that he believes he is not bound by any rules or laws. So, if he does run again, we can expect a heavily rigged election in 2028.

The challenge for us now is the one that Ben Franklin posed: “A Republic. If you can keep it.” The response to that challenge requires our strong and immediate actions. Make your voice heard. Write to your representatives at all levels of government. Even if they are Democrats and already agree with your point of view, it’s important to let them know where you stand. Talk to other people and raise your concerns.

As with Mr. Erdogan, dissatisfaction with Trump and his administration is growing. He may well follow the Turkish leader’s example and strike out even more forcefully at our institutional foundations.

Hearts as Cold as ICE

According to a recent Washington Post article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/18/immigrant-detention-overcrowding-trump-crackdown/ by Douglas MacMillan), at a crowded Miami detention center, some immigrants are being held in conference rooms with no toilets. The Cibola County prison in New Mexico doesn’t have enough chairs for all the immigrant detainees to eat their meals at a table. And at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, some immigrant women have been forced to sleep on thin mats on the concrete floor because all the beds in the female holding unit are taken.

The Trump administration’s efforts to boost deportations has increased the number of immigrant detainees so quickly that the government is failing to provide basic necessities, including beds and medical care, for some of them. Nearly half the people currently detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection have no criminal charges, federal data show, yet some are being held in conditions that would be unacceptable in high-security prisons. At the same time, the administration has eliminated two oversight bodies that ensured that facilities met health and safety requirements. Also, many of the facilities are nearly at or over their contracted capacities.

In other ICE-cold actions, the Department of Homeland Security denied Mahmoud Khalil permission to attend the birth of his first child, who was delivered at a New York hospital on Monday, according to the New York Times.

Instead, Mr. Khalil experienced the birth by telephone from Jena, La., more than 1,000 miles from the hospital where his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, gave birth to a son. It is unclear when he will be able to see the baby.

Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the Columbia University campus, has been detained in Louisiana for more than a month. On Sunday morning, shortly after Dr. Abdalla went into labor, Mr. Khalil’s lawyers requested a two-week furlough so that he could attend the birth. Less than an hour after they made their request, Melissa Harper, the director of the New Orleans field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, denied it.

Here in Nevada, the Nevada Immigrant Coalition (NIC) reports that there has been a surge in immigration enforcement activities in Las Vegas, with reports of ICE agents (working with other federal law enforcement agencies such as FBI, ATF, and/or US Marshals, among others) often operating in plainclothes and unmarked vehicles.

These actions have occurred at parks, markets, residences, and on the street sometimes during school drop-offs and pick-ups.

”While the full number of individuals detained is still unknown, the impact is clear: Families are being separated without warning and children are being ripped from their loved ones. Our community is living in fear and innocent people are being deported without accountability or justice. These attacks go beyond immigration. This is part of a broader, coordinated effort by this administration to silence dissent – criminalizing advocacy, threatening nonprofits, and targeting communities that dare to speak out. An attack on immigrants is an attack on all of us,” said Bethany Khan, spokeswoman for the Culinary Union and member of the Nevada Immigrant Coalition.

Martha Menéndez, a Nevada immigration attorney and also a member of the Nevada Immigrant Coalition said, “The biggest fear right now in the community is that folks don’t actually know which agencies are being deputized to act as ICE officers and detain Nevadans on ICE orders. Due process is under attack every day, but that doesn’t mean our rights don’t exist – they do, and we strongly encourage people to assert them. Everyone, regardless of status, should be prepared. If you are a legal permanent resident, carry your valid green card. If you have a valid work permit or a court document that shows you have deferred action or another type of protection, carry a copy of it with you. If you’re a U.S. citizen and are worried about being profiled, carry proof of your citizenship, such as a copy of your passport or passport card. Avoid carrying IDs, a passport, or a voter card from another country, as those can be used against you in immigration proceedings. Most importantly, remember that you have the right to remain silent and the right to speak to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions about where you were born or your immigration status until you’ve spoken to an attorney. Stay alert and stay safe.”

Locally, I have not heard of any activities in Mesquite or Moapa Valley. I have asked Erika Castro of NIC by email about this but have not yet received a reply. If you know of any incidents in either place, please post a comment to this blog describing them.

Whether or not you see this happening, it is, and it’s wrong. Consider asking your representatives to try to intervene.

Is Your 401(k) OK?

I don’t know about you, but since “Liberation Day,” thousands of dollars in my 401(k) have been “liberated” as the stock market nosedived. Unfortunately, I’m not one of the select billionaires who was in on Trump’s not-so-secret signal to buy stocks that he posted just hours before announcing the tariff pause that led to a sudden meteoric rise in the market. Of course, after that event, the market resumed its downward trend.

But I’m not alone. Gallup reports that 65 percent of people in its middle-income category — making $40,000 to $100,000 — own stocks, either directly or through their retirement plans. Nevertheless, investment strategists told USA TODAY that the recent dip is no reason for Americans with retirement accounts such as 401(k)s to panic, no matter what stage they’re at in life:

“The people who would be hurt by (the stock market dip) are the emotional ones who are likely to do something irrational,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at investment research and analytics firm CFRA Research. “That could be somebody at any age.”

Stovall also said younger Americans should stay the course with their investments and make sure to take advantage of the “free money” their company may be offering through a 401(k) match. If able, now may be the time to look into boosting their monthly contribution. At minimum, Stovall said they should aim to invest enough to receive the maximum match from their company.

For Americans nearing retirement, Stovall said there is likely still plenty of time to make up for lost ground from the most recent dip, especially since the stock market tends to bounce back quickly.

A historical analysis from CFRA shows that so long as the stock market doesn’t fall 20% or more and enter bear market territory, it takes on average four months to recover from a correction.

“Don’t let your emotions become your portfolio’s worst enemy,” Stovall said. “The only way to lose money is by selling what is down.”

Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at financial services firm Carson Group, added that older Americans should, ideally, have a more diversified portfolio that’s able to weather selloffs.

“For someone closer to retirement, diversification is your friend,” Detrick said. “To have some gold, to have some bonds, to have some cash, to have some stocks … that should be what they’re thinking about right now.”

For me personally, I am already retired so the best I can do is to keep my 401(k) diversified. I still watch the market with great concern since I do have some stock funds in my portfolio. Also, the market is one indicator of the overall economic health of the country. As I write this on April 17, the Dow Jones average is down again over 500 points.

Trump, Musk and their cronies don’t have to care about losing thousands or even tens of thousands in market fluctuations but to those of us on more limited incomes, losses like that can be disastrous.

Rep. Horsford Demands Accountability Against Trump’s Potential Market Manipulation

Congressman Steven Horsford and Congresswoman Terri Sewell, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, were joined by 131 Congressional Democrats in sending a letter today demanding accountability for the Trump Administration’s dramatic reversal of tariffs planned for 57 countries yesterday just hours after President Trump posted on social media that “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!”

Trump’s decision to pause tariffs predictably led the U.S. stock market to rally significantly, raising the specter of market manipulation for anyone who invested in the market as a result of Trump’s message.

Horsford and Sewell’s letter, which is addressed to the President, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the U.S. Department of Treasury, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, requests key details within 15 days that would clarify if market manipulation was a factor, and provide insights into the planning involved in the policy reversal. Specifically, the letter requests:

  1. 1. A timeline of deliberations regarding the tariffs;
  2. 2. Any documentation or correspondence shared with the White House or Executive Office of the President regarding the timing of the tariffs, and a list of who was informed about tariff plan changes;
  3. 3. Any communications between the USTR and financial institutions, private investors, or public relations personnel in the 72 hours before and after the April 9th announcement;
  4. 4. A description of the role the Department of Commerce played in coordinating tariff policy;
  5. 5. A description of the role the Department of the Treasury played in the interagency process leading up to the April 9th delay announcement;
  6. 6. Information about any securities purchased or sold by the President, Chair of the SEC, or any Cabinet Member between when reciprocal tariffs were announced on April 2nd through April 10th – including a description, purchase price, and/or sale price of each security.

Notably, the pause came as his Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, was in the midst of testimony to the House Ways & Means Committee in support of Trump’s tariffs. Greer had already spent four hours defending and promoting the tariffs when his staffer showed him Trump’s social media post reversing the policy. That moment of public humiliation led to a fiery exchange between Greer and Rep. Horsford about the president’s motives.

You can see the exchange here: https://youtu.be/h5wMPDuio78

The Terrorists Are Here

The video is chilling. A 30-year old woman standing on the sidewalk is approached by a man dressed in dark clothing. He accosts her as five other men descend on her. They have no identifying clothing nor do they present badges or other ID. Some of them are even wearing masks to hide their identity. They vaguely claim to be the police. Without any explanation, they handcuff her and force her into an unmarked car. She is then driven away without the opportunity to contact anyone. (https://apnews.com/article/tufts-student-detained-massachusetts-immigration-6c3978da98a8d0f39ab311e092ffd892)

If you had seen this video a year ago or even six months ago, you might have thought this was taking place in some third-world country, perhaps Venezuela or Iran. Or you might have guessed it was in China or North Korea. Then you might have thought, “It can’t happen here.”

But it can happen here and, in fact, already has. This outrage against a Tufts University PhD student took place in broad daylight on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. The video conjures up images of totalitarian states where secret police abuse their country’s populace in order to spread fear throughout the nation.

If this video doesn’t absolutely terrify you, it should. Unfortunately, if it does terrify you, that is exactly the reaction that Trump and his minions want. The primary weapons of a cowardly bully are fear and intimidation. And Trump knows well how to wield those tools.

Our only choice is to stand together to right the wrongs being committed in our country. We must work to ensure that Trump and his enablers in the Republican party don’t destroy our Constitution and lead the U.S.A. down the path of dictatorship.

Hold On To Your Wallets

It’s difficult to predict the impacts of the latest raises in tariffs since economic projections are often little more than guesses. And there are those who, for political reasons, will simply make up numbers and throw them around as if they were facts. But there are legitimate organizations that use scientific approaches to make projections such as the Yale University Budget Lab.

This organization recently published a document entitled “Where We Stand: The Fiscal, Economic, and Distributional Effects of All U.S. Tariffs Enacted in 2025 Through April 2” (https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/where-we-stand-fiscal-economic-and-distributional-effects-all-us-tariffs-enacted-2025-through-april). The document explains the results and methodologies they used. It presents the effects of the April 2 tariff announcement separately from any earlier tariffs imposed in 2025 and then combines them.

Some of the key findings are as follows:

  1. 1. Tariffs are a regressive tax, especially in the short-run. This means that tariffs burden households at the bottom of the income ladder more than those at the top as a share of income.
  1. 2. The April 2nd action is the equivalent of a rise in the effective US tariff rate of 11 ½ percentage points. The average effective US tariff rate after incorporating all 2025 tariffs is now 22 ½%, the highest since 1909.
  1. 3. The price level from all 2025 tariffs rises by 2.3% in the short-run, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $3,800 in 2024 dollars. Annual losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution are $1,700.
  1. 4. The price level from the April 2nd announcement alone rises by 1.3% in the short run, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $2,100 in 2024 dollars. Annual losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution are $980 under the April 2nd policy alone.
  1. 5. Both the April 2nd tariffs themselves and all 2025 actions to date have disproportionately affected clothing and textiles. Apparel prices rise 8% from the April 2nd action alone and 17% from all US tariffs.
  1. 6. Food prices are also disproportionately affected, rising 1.6% from the April 2nd policy and 2.8% from all 2025 tariff actions. Fresh produce rises 2.2% and 4.0%, respectively.
  1. 7. Motor vehicle prices are largely untouched by the April 2nd announcement but rise by 8.4% under all tariff action to date, the equivalent of an additional $4,000 to the price of an average 2024 new car.

Another legitimate source, the Tax Foundation, has reported that a 10 percent tariff would increase taxes on US households by $1,253 on average, and a 20 percent tariff would increase taxes on US households by $2,045 on average (https://taxfoundation.org/blog/trump-tariffs-revenue-estimates/).

Our Representative, Steven Horsford, also made similar points in a recent press release. He said,

“A tariff is a tax – Donald Trump owns these taxes; he owns the harm they’re inflicting; he owns the financial instability he’s sowing for Nevadans and people across the country. Trump campaigned on lowering costs for Nevadans and people across the country – instead, he’s intentionally making everyday goods more expensive. That’s wrong.”

He then went on to say, “No president in American history has taxed the American people this much, this fast, and this recklessly.”