When Immigration Enforcement Becomes a Weapon of Political Revenge

GELFAND’S WORLD - On Monday morning, federal agents raided and searched the Washington D.C. home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, violating a long-standing tradition in the federal government of avoiding legal attacks on congressional candidates in the immediate weeks prior to an election. Law professor and author Paul Campos summarizes the attack as “sparkling authoritarianism.”

Besides the obvious partisan slant, there are a couple of observations we might make. The first is that Donald Trump is still angry and still likes to complain about the raid on his Mar a Lago home, although the circumstances are different: Trump had numerous top-secret documents that – as a private citizen – he did not have the right to hold. Trump and his cronies continue to attempt turnabout against Democrats who supported the investigation of the former/current president in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot. Trump appointees have weaponized the Department of Justice against Democrats, even as they like to pretend that Democrats did it first. To repeat the old line, every Trump accusation is actually an admission.

The other aspect of this raid is that the Trump administration continues to be run as if all those right-wing fantasies (e.g.: Omar married her brother to assist him in his immigration problems) were real.

If there is anything that is being weaponized, it is the misuse of federal authority in the guise of immigration enforcement on our nation’s streets. I’m reminded of all those movie scenes in which some 1940s German citizen has to plead to the police that “My papers are in order!” Isn’t that what’s happening in our country as ICE continues to grab people off the streets? Is it a country and a system we want?

The Diesel Dump: Is it Real and Would it Actually Help?

The announcement by the Trump administration that it has a deal with Russia to buy a few hundred thousand tons of diesel fuel sounds like a breakthrough, but then you look into the details and it fades into vaporware. The issues include the number of days of U.S. usage this would provide, whether the claim is even true, and the massive violation of simple morality that any such deal would mean.

As multiple sources have explained, Donald Trump made the announcement on his private social media site. The administration’s claim immediately met resistance from a bipartisan group of six U.S. senators, who argued that allowing the Russians to make money on fuel sales was a violation of law and would undermine Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

What has been missing in most analysis of the alleged deal is how little fuel this would actually be. Depending on how you do the calculation, 300,000 tons of diesel would be enough to serve U.S. interests for a couple or three days. That’s because we use well over a hundred million gallons of diesel each day in the transportation sector alone. There’s a bit of math involved in converting tons to gallons (I’ll spare you the details) but a short google search for the conversion factors is all you need.

But it may also be the right moment to remind people that Ukraine was minding its business when it was attacked and invaded, that the Russian Federation continues to kill Ukrainian civilians by the hundreds, that it continues to occupy Ukrainian territory, and that it continues to conscript its own citizens into the deadly war where they are sacrificed in “meat grinder” attacks on Ukrainian fortifications. All of it is wrong and senselessly cruel. But in the face of this aggression, our president supports Putin, calls for the ouster of Ukraine’s president, and continues to resist giving Ukraine the military and economic support it needs.

It’s interesting and a bit heartening that at least some Republicans support Ukraine in its efforts to survive in post-Soviet Europe.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])