Tag: American History

Was There A Successful Slave Revolt In US?

These days there is a war in education and especially history…..the current mad man in the White House is actively trying to rewrite history in support of his lame ass “America First” agenda.

So since I do like my history I want to keep actual facts flowing for as long as I can….who knows if I can continue…..

This portion is about the most successful slave revolt in thew US….known as the Creole Mutiny…

The Creole Mutiny/Creole Rebellion (1841) was an insurrection aboard the brig Creole on 7 November 1841 during which 19 enslaved men (of the 135 men, women, and children held as slaves on board), led by Madison Washington, took the ship by force. The Creole had been sailing from Virginia to the slave markets in New Orleans, but, after its seizure by Washington and his men, it was redirected to the British territory of the Bahamas, where, since Britain had by this time abolished slavery, they were set free.

The Creole Mutiny/Creole Rebellion is considered the most successful slave revolt in US history, but it has been overshadowed by the more widely known Amistad Seizure of 1839 and the famous court case that followed. The Amistad Seizure was the direct inspiration for the Creole Mutiny, as it is well-established that Madison Washington knew the details of that event and was a great admirer of the Amistad rebel leader Sengbe Pieh (better known as Joseph Cinque). Since he already had the paradigm of the Amistad Seizure in mind prior to the Creole setting sail for New Orleans, it is thought that Washington planned his insurrection while still confined in the Virginia slave pens, chose the men he knew he could trust, and, when the right moment presented itself, was prepared to strike.

Although the US government petitioned for the return of the 130 slaves (five decided to remain on board and were later sold as slaves in New Orleans), they were considered free by the British government and established themselves in the Bahamas and Jamaica.

Years later, the United Kingdom financially compensated the United States for the slaves, but this did nothing to quell the outrage of the US government and pro-slavery factions in 1841 who saw the success of the Creole Mutiny – which had depended significantly on Britain upholding their anti-slavery laws – as a direct threat to the institution of slavery in the USA. Like the Amistad Seizure and John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry (1859), the Creole Mutiny further increased tensions between the slave states and free states in the years leading up to the American Civil War.

https://www.worldhistory.org/Creole_Mutiny/

Some things should never be forgotten no matter how much Donny hates them….and we all should know our history not some jacked up bullshit from a bunch of white supremacists.

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I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

Labor Day 2025

I would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Labor Day.

The day set aside for Americans to remember and celebrate labor (but unfortunately it is more about a long weekend for partying and such and less about the plight of the American worker)

As a past labor organizer for the IWW I am always looking at the history of Americans standing up and demanding more recognition of the worker and the services they provide for the society.

I also enjoy my history and the history of labor in our early days is significant and should be remembered….too many for forgotten the struggles of the past to win rights for workers….

This is a re-post of a writing from IST in 2009 about those early days….

Labor Movement–The Early Years

It is good for us to remember the early days and maybe that will help us work on a better future for American labor.

This is a letter written in 1899…..and it makes good points about the day and what it means….

https://wordpress.com/reader/feeds/134452904/posts/5786641240

Now if you are one that takes Labor issues to heart there is protest today all over the country and if you feel like it join in…..there is one near you….

Unions and progressive organizations are planning nearly 1,000 “Workers Over Billionaires” demonstrations across the United States this Labor Day to protest President Donald Trump’s assault on workers’ rights.

The day of national action has been organized by the May Day Strong coalition, which includes labor organizations like the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, and National Union of Healthcare Workers, as well as advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Fairness, Indivisible, Our Revolution, and Public Citizen.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/workers-over-billionaires-protests

Help bring attention to the shoddy treatment of Labor by the president and the soul-less SOBs, the corporations.

In closing a song by John Lennon….it is so true if you listen to the words….

This will be my only post for today for we down here are still in the remembrance of Katrina from 20 years ago.

If you are heading out for some good times with friends and family please be careful and plan ahead if you think that a ‘good time’ will be had….

Enjoy the day and as always…..Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Gilded Age–Second Coming

We know how much I like history and what it can teach us about our future…..so without further ado….

Before we jump into today’s economics we need to step back and take a look at the first Gilded Age….

The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth and industrialization that lasted from the late 1870s until the early 1900s. It was characterized by extreme inequality; the wealthy, including the famous robber barons, experienced high levels of prosperity, while the working classes experienced extreme poverty and labor exploitation.

Key Takeaways

  • The Gilded Age was an era of American history that lasted from the late 1870s until the early 1900s. It was characterized by extreme wealth inequality and industrialization.
  • Major changes during the Gilded Age included the movement from agriculture to industry, shifts from rural to urban living, women’s entry into the labor force, and westward migration.
  • Immigration increased during the Gilded Age, while Black populations migrated north and west in pursuit of economic opportunity and land ownership.
  • The life-threatening working conditions and economic devastation of the working classes partly fueled the rapid industrialization and innovation of the Gilded Age.
  • The rise of investigative journalism, progressive ideologies, and organized labor eventually undermined the Gilded Age’s rigid class structures and exploitation.

https://www.investopedia.com/gilded-age-7692919

Does any of that sound familiar….the inequality, the working class suffers, the ‘Robber Barons’…..any of it?

“Trump’s golden age looks an awful lot like a new Gilded Age,” wrote Politico this month, reflecting on the second inauguration of the United States’ president, prominently attended by tech billionaires. The day after that inauguration, historian Beverly Gage “couldn’t stop thinking about the Gilded Age” and its “rapid technological change as well as stark inequality, corporate graft and violent clashes between workers and bosses”.

But what was the Gilded Age – and does the comparison hold up?

The term, which spans the 1870s–1890s, came from an 1873 novel by celebrated satirist Mark Twain, The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day, co-written with journalist and neighbour Charles Dudley Warner. It meant a nation that glittered from its growth and the accumulation of economic power by the extremely wealthy. The title referenced Shakespeare’s King John, in which the Earl of Salisbury states, “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily […] is wasteful and ridiculous excess” (Act IV, scene 2).

Trump himself has cited this era as an aspiration. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept,” Trump said, days after taking office. “It’s fine. It’s OK. But it would have been very much better.”

Experts on the era, however, say he is idealising “a time rife with government and business corruption, social turmoil and inequality”, and “dramatically overestimating” the role of tariffs.

“The most astonishing thing for historians is that nobody in the Gilded Age economy – except for the very rich – wanted to live in the Gilded Age economy,” said Richard White, emeritus professor of history at Stanford University.

early 1870s was full of gilded lilies – a period of wasteful excess, shady dealing in business, and political corruption.

The year 1872 saw a massive scandal over the railroads’ influence in politics, after “a sham construction company”, Crédit Mobilier, had been chartered to build the Union Pacific Railroad “by financing it with unmarketable bonds”.

Representative Oakes Ames of Massachusetts sold the shares at bargain rates to high-ranking House colleagues to secure political clout for the company. While most sold them quickly, representative James Brooks of New York (also a government director for Union Pacific Railroad) profited from a large block of shares.

Ames and Brooks were censured by the House in 1873 for using their political position for financial gain. The Crédit Mobilier Scandal, as it was called, became nationwide news.

The Gilded Age satirised such blatant pursuit of wealth. Its story centred around the members of the fictional Hawkins family, trying to get rich by selling their essentially worthless land in Tennessee under false pretences that misrepresented its value. The novel employs pathos as well as satire. An adopted daughter, Laura Hawkins, kills her married lover. She is tried and acquitted, but before her death, she feels guilty about her past behaviour.

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2010/03/Trump-presidency-compared-gilded-age

Our first Gilded Age was so bad it brought on the Progressive era…..we should be so lucky this time around.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The ‘Bum Blockade’

After Little Donny made his speech about the homeless in DC and ordered the Nat Guard, FBI and who knows who else into DC to curb crime and round-up the homeless….all that silliness made me think back into American history, the Depression to be exact and the policy in and around LA.

The year is 1936….

Beginning on February 3, 1936, the LAPD sent 136 officers to patrol 16 points along California’s 700-mile border with Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. “Veritable Army Corps Formed,” read the February 4 front page of the Los Angeles Times. Working with railroad executives and county sheriffs, these officers stopped trains, vehicles and hitchhikers, turning away those they deemed suspicious. Though Davis claimed the blockade refused entry to around 11,000 people by March 31, historians have since cast doubt on this figure, suggesting the actual total was much lower.

The patrol’s criteria for determining whether someone “belonged in California” was vague and largely up to individual officers’ discretion, writes Lascher in The Golden Fortress. He explains:

Most detainees exhibited some subjective characteristics of poverty, such as piles of weather-beaten luggage teetering atop a rickety jalopy or bindles sagging behind weary men hiking into the state. … Officers tended to wave shiny new Packards through their checkpoints but halted sputtering early-model Fords pulling makeshift trailers and caked with half a continent’s dust.

During the initial stop, officers fingerprinted the potential detainees to check if they had criminal records. Some who didn’t have warrants out for their arrest received the option of turning around and leaving California. Others were sent to “jails that might be little more than makeshift cells in rooms rented at off-season hotels in communities near the checkpoints,” according to Lascher’s book. Before long, the stream of migrants flooding into California had slowed significantly.

“The ‘California, Here I Come’ marching song of penniless wanderers faded away to a faint whisper in Arizona today,” United Press observed on February 6. The previous night, the news agency reported, officers stopped three trains in Yuma, Arizona, detaining 14 “transients.” That same evening, just 20 or so people lingered at a hobo “jungle” in Phoenix that usually hosted nearly 100 overnight guests.

As the Bum Blockade policed California’s border, Davis simultaneously continued to enforce harsh vagrancy laws in Los Angeles itself, searching for “indigents who can be prosecuted as vagabonds,” according to the Los Angeles Times.On February 8, the LAPD arrested 122 people deemed to fit these parameters, many of whom Davis claimed had criminal records.

https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/los-angeles-1936-bum-blockade-targeted-american-migrants-fleeing-hardship-during-the-depression

To learn more about this policy

View at Medium.com

Profiling has been with our law enforcement for a very long time.

Just a little something to think about.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

History Revisionism

We know that Donny and his merry band of idiots have their own version of American history…..and now Donny wants to make sure that history fits his vision of events from our past.

He has ordered the Smithsonian to fall in lie with his perverted vision…..

The Trump administration informed the Smithsonian Institution on Tuesday that it will check its current and planned exhibitions’ displayed wording, websites, and social media “to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals.” A letter from the White House said the museums will have 120 days to make any changes the administration wants, the New York Times reports. The changes could include “replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions,” the letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch says.

The letter provides the first details of the administration’s plan to scrutinize the Smithsonian, per the Washington Post, to ensure adherence to Trump’s goals of removing what he called its “improper ideology” in favor of “truth and sanity.” The Smithsonian released a statement later Tuesday pledging cooperation with the administration and saying its work “is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history.”

A historian called the Trump administration plan an affront to the professionals trained to ensure historically accurate presentations, per the Wall Street Journal. “If those things are taken out of the hands of historians, the public stands to lose a great deal in having reliable and engaging content that tells a whole and complex story of the American past,” said Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association.

This is, as I have said making history fit into the warped ideals of Donny and the mental midgets behind him….

The Wall Street Journal reports on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House is keeping an eye on the Smithsonian Museum to ensure that its exhibits on display for the United States’ 250th anniversary “align with” the president’s personal “interpretation of American history.”

According to the Journal, the administration this week sent a letter to the Smithsonian announcing it was seeking what the paper describes as a “far-reaching review” of its “museum exhibitions, materials and operations” that will include everything from “public-facing exhibition text and online content to internal curatorial processes, exhibition planning, the use of collections and artist grants.”

The goal of the review is to ensure the materials comply with an executive order Trump signed earlier this year that called for “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

(commondreams.org)

Truth and sanity?  Nothing in the Donny led government is about truth and sanity.

This will do more damage than good….denying history or trying to transform into some unrecognizable POS is NOT the way to instill ‘truth and sanity’ into the subject.

A white nationalist vision of American history is one that centers the role of white Americans above all others and, in fact, typically treats the history of the nation and the race as one and the same. For white nationalists, the United States is a nation created and founded by white people, and American history necessarily spurns the contributions of all other groups. The sins of slavery, segregation, and violence are excused as minor blemishes made along a path toward greatness. It was the accomplishments of America’s great white men, we are led to believe, that brought us the prosperity for which we should all be so thankful. To question them—even if they enslaved, raped, and killed for power, expansion, or wealth—would be to question America itself.

Various versions of this story exist. For decades, the most pervasive version of this mythology lived in the American South. From practically the day after the Civil War, white Southerners crafted a white nationalist morality tale—in popular culture, veterans’ organizations, and the Lost Cause ideology—of lazy Black slaves with generous white masters who in the 1860s did their best to fight off a war of “Northern Aggression” that threatened white Southern freedom. For most of the twentieth century, this story was advanced by groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or UDC—activists who dedicated much of their lives to celebrating white Confederate heritage. They published textbooks, erected monuments, and led public ceremonies honoring the legacy of the Southern white men who tried to destroy the United States.

https://newrepublic.com/article/198384/trump-white-nationalist-vision-future-history

Remake history in HIS image will do nothing to save the nation from imminent destruction.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Operation Wetback

With all the problems in LA with Trump’s immigration so-called round-up….I thought I would do some research and found that it is nothing new.

But in case you are oblivious to the situation in LA….

The tensions in Los Angeles over the city’s protests of immigration raids may play out in the courts as well as on the streets. California Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted Sunday night that he will sue President Trump over the president’s decision to deploy the National Guard. The governor essentially accused the president of manufacturing a crisis.

  • “Donald Trump is putting fuel on this fire,” wrote Newsom. “Commandeering a state’s National Guard without consulting the Governor of that state is illegal and immoral.” Regarding Homeland Security Director Tom Homan’s threat to arrest the governor, Newsom responded, “That kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go,” per NBC News.
  • Trump on Sunday rebuffed Newsom’s request in a phone call to withdraw the National Guard and promised to have “troops everywhere.” The president and his team cast the confrontation in stark terms, with aide Stephen Miller writing that “this is a fight to save civilization.”
  • The war of words played out amid the third straight day of protests Sunday in Los Angeles over the White House’s immigration raids. Police declared all of downtown Los Angeles an unlawful assembly area, a precursor to possible arrests, per CNN. Officers used flash-bangs, rubber bullets, and tear gas to break up protests at various locations, and many dispersed as evening fell.
  • While most protesters were peaceful, some who were blocking the southbound lane of Freeway 101 threw objects at responding police, including chunks of concrete, rocks, and even electric scooters, per the AP, while others set self-driving cars on fire. Officers had to take cover beneath an overpass. The AP reports several dozen arrests were made through the weekend.

That was just a short recap and not the meat of this post….

As much as Donny would have you believe that he is doping something that has been done never in the US…..as usual nothing about the orange man is original.

The year is 1954…..Ike is the president (another Republican)…..that’s right time for the old professor to drop some of his favorite subject history.

Operation Wetback was a U.S. immigration law enforcement program conducted during 1954 that resulted in the mass deportation to Mexico of as many as 1.3 million Mexicans who had entered the country illegally. Even though the deportation was originally requested by the government of Mexico to prevent much-needed Mexican farm laborers from working in the United States, Operation Wetback evolved into an issue that strained diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

At the time, Mexican laborers were permitted to legally enter the U.S. temporarily for seasonal farm work under the Bracero program, a World War II agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. Operation Wetback was launched partly in response to problems caused by abuses of the Bracero program and the American public’s anger over the inability of the U.S. Border Patrol to reduce the number of seasonal Mexican farm workers illegally living permanently in the United States.

Mexico’s longstanding policy of discouraging its citizens from migrating to the United States turned around in the early 1900s when Mexican President Porfirio Díaz along with other Mexican government officials realized that the country’s abundant and cheap labor force was its greatest asset and the key to stimulating its struggling economy. Conveniently for Díaz, the United States and its booming agricultural industry created a ready and eager market for Mexican labor.

During the 1920s, over 60,000 Mexican farm workers would temporarily enter the U.S. legally every year. Over the same period, however, more than 100,000 Mexican farm workers per-year entered the U.S. illegally, with many not returning to Mexico. As its own agribusiness started to suffer due to the growing shortage of field labor, Mexico began pressuring the United States to enforce its immigration laws and return its workers. At the same time, America’s large-scale farms and agribusinesses were recruiting ever-more illegal Mexican workers to meet their growing need for year-round labor. From the 1920s until the onset of World War II, the majority of field workers on American farms, especially in the Southwestern states, were Mexican nationals—most of whom had crossed the border illegally.

…

During these immigration enforcement “sweeps,” many Mexican Americans—often based solely on their physical appearance—were detained by INS agents and forced to prove their American citizenship. INS agents would only accept birth certificates, which few people carry with them, as proof of citizenship. Over the course of Operation Wetback, an undetermined number of Mexican Americas who were unable to produce birth certificates quickly enough were wrongly deported.

(read the entire article and learn something for god’s sake)

https://www.thoughtco.com/operation-wetback-4174984

You see there is very little going on right now that is something new….

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Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Two Hundred And Fifty Years Of History

We are about the experience a year long celebration of our history from the DoI to situations of today and as a political historian I think it is essential that we look at that history and see where stuff went wrong and how we could avoid any further degradation of the system we have working today.

WE will look at our history by decade….it will be quicker and more simply understood for those that have a hard time keeping up….

Dividing history into decades is an arbitrary but sometimes very useful way of trying to understand the arcs and significance of events. Trying to identify any single event as crucial to the understanding of a given decade may be even more arbitrary. It is certainly subjective. Nevertheless, that attempt can at the very least be a catalyst for discussion. What follows is an attempt to identify decade-defining moments in the history of the United States since the country’s inception.

1770s: Declaration of Independence (1776)

The centrality of the Declaration of Independence (1776) to the developments of the 1770s is self-evident. From the Boston Tea Party to the “shot heard round the world,” Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River, and the Valley Forge winter, the American Revolution’s pursuit of liberty was made meaningful by the founding document of the great American experiment in democracy.

1780s: Constitution of the United States of America (1787)

With the war won, independence secured, and the Articles of Confederation proving inadequate, the Founding Fathers laid down the law by which the new country would be governed in the elegantly crafted Constitution, which, depending on one’s perspective, was meant either to evolve to meet changing circumstances or to be strictly interpreted to adhere to the Founders’ “original intent.”

1790s: Whiskey Rebellion (1794)

As the new country began finding its feet, U.S. President George Washington sent troops to western Pennsylvania in 1794 to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, an uprising by citizens who refused to pay a liquor tax that had been imposed by Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton to raise money for the national debt and to assert the power of the national government. Federalists cheered the triumph of national authority, while members of Thomas Jefferson’s Republican (later Democratic-Republican) Party were appalled by what they saw as government overreach. More than two centuries later, the names and faces have changed, but the story is ongoing.

Learn on!

https://www.britannica.com/story/25-decade-defining-events-in-us-history

That should give readers a working knowledge of our history and the difficulties we faced by decade….

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

As we enter into the holiday weekend I hope everyone will rejoice with care and as always…..Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Mississippi Reinvents Slavery

Another trip down memory lane, history to be exact, for my state of Mississippi.

A state that still tries to deny the effects of slavery.

There is a common myth that Mississippi fought in the Civil War over taxation…….but in their statement of session tells a different story (and the true reason why)….in their own words….

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

But do not take my word for it….read the actual document for yourself….

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

Here when I was in school you could not graduate if you had not taken Mississippi history….but that course left a whole lot out of the class….like the Republic of West Florida, Free State of Jones, and the ‘Black Codes’…..

“Black Codes?  Yep it was Mississippi’s way of trying to reinvent slavery….

On November 25, 1865, Mississippi created the first of the Black Codes. Designed to re-create slavery in all but name, this signified the white South’s massive resistance to the freeing of their labor force and the lengths to which it would go to tie workers to a place under white control.

Remember, the point of slavery was labor. If anything, we don’t talk about this enough. Yes of course it was racist, but the whole reason was to have a permanent labor force. Whites would do anything to create that labor force. And they did, engaging in crimes against humanity for hundreds of years. They had no intention of letting the end of technical slavery get in the way of labor control.

The impact of slavery’s end is hard to overestimate. But the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves immediately, and the ratification of the 13th Amendment did not take place until well after the war’s end. The federal government was woefully unprepared, both in manpower and ideas, for ensuring that the rights of ex-slaves were respected after the war. Sure, slavery might be technically dead as of April 14, 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, but was the US military there to enforce freedom on the plantations? Largely, no.

…

The Black Codes thus intended to trap Black labor in place. The plantation elite’s top goal immediately upon emancipation was to corral Black labor, whose core goal was to avoid the plantation labor system, preferably replacing it with small farms they owned. The Black Codes intended to prevent this. Building upon the slave codes regulating Black behavior, and especially Black movement, before the war, the Black Codes were the South’s statement to the North that the end of the war did not mean the end of white supremacy. Black people would have to show a written contract of employment at the start of each year, ensuring they were laboring for a white employer. At the core of the Mississippi code and copied around the South was the vagrancy provision. “Vagrancy” was a term long used in the United States to crack down on workers not doing what employers or the police wanted them to do. In this case, it meant not working for a white person. Decades later, a vagrancy charge was a great way for authorities to imprison union organizers.

Mississippi did not allow Black people to rent land for themselves. Rather, all Black people in rural areas were required to labor for a white under one-year contracts. They did not have the option to quit working for that white person. If a Black person in the countryside was found not working for a white person, the state would contract that worker out to a private landowner and receive a portion of their wages. If a Black person could not pay high taxes levied on them by the state, they would be charged with vagrancy and the same process would result. As during slavery, any white person could legally arrest any Black person.

https://www.wonkette.com/p/that-time-mississippi-reinvented

You see the Emancipation Proclamation may have freed the slaves in word but not so much in deed.

Some of these ‘Black Codes’ hung around until the 1980s and there are still some that refuse to believe that slavery was all that bad to this day.

Few are taught these parts of the state’s history and that is truly sad.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The ‘Exclusion’ Of Immigrants

This is right time for the Old Professor to drop a bit of history on you that tries to enlighten the reader to the history that is all too forgotten.

Little Donny is deporting people at an alarming right all in an effort to keep the loyal in line with his brand of ignorance…..so far this year…Within the span of 100 days, the results of this sweeping and sustained set of actions, touching nearly every corner of the U.S. immigration system, have yielded some quick results. U.S. Border Patrol encounters of irregularly arriving migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border plunged to 7,000 in March—the fewest since at least 2000, when the government started publishing monthly apprehension numbers—after the administration declared an “invasion,” sent 10,000 troops to the border, and effectively barred access to asylum there.

All these deportations is a first for a president, right?

Not even close.

Just another misguided attempt to appear as if he truly cares about this country.

Before I go on maybe it would be a good spot to drop some history about the ‘law’ that the Trumpites are using to justify these deportation….even though the justification for these deportations is the ancient act from the 18th century….about here would be a good time to explain the “Act” for the history impaired….

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation. The law permits the president to target these immigrants without a hearing and based only on their country of birth or citizenship. Although the law was enacted to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime, it can be — and has been — wielded against immigrants who have done nothing wrong, have evinced no signs of disloyalty, and are lawfully present in the United States. It is an overbroad authority that may violate constitutional rights in wartime and is subject to abuse in peacetime.

… but the mass deportations occurred in the beginning of the middle 19th century and the Chinese immigrants.

The United States’ current deportation process traces its roots to the late 19th century as the nation moved to exercise federal control of immigration.

The impetus for this shift was anti-Chinese racism, which reached a fever pitch during this period, culminating in the passage of laws that restricted Chinese immigration.

The influx of Chinese immigrants to the West Coast during the mid-to-late 19th century, initially fueled by the California Gold Rush, spurred the rise of an influential nativist movement that accused Chinese immigrants of stealing jobs. It also claimed that they posed a cultural threat to American society due to their racial otherness.

The Geary Act of 1892 required Chinese living in the U.S to register with the federal government or face deportation.

The Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of these statutes in 1893 in the case of Fong Yue Ting v. United States. Three plaintiffs claimed that anti-Chinese legislation was discriminatory, violated constitutional protections prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure, and contravened due process and equal protection guarantees.

The Supreme Court affirmed the Geary Act’s deportation procedures, formulating a novel legal precept known as the plenary power doctrine that remains a key tenet of U.S. immigration law today.

https://theconversation.com/from-the-chinese-exclusion-act-to-pro-palestinian-activists-the-evolution-of-politically-motivated-deportations-254683

Is Donny’s use of ‘Act’ legal by Executive Order?  Damn good question!

… no court has expressly interpreted “invasion” in the context of the AEA, the definition of “invasion” in the constitutional sense has received recent judicial and scholarly attention. Early last year, Texas tried to make the immigration-as-invasion argument in two cases, United States v. Texas and United States v. Abbott, the former of which dealt most directly with the claim. There, a district court—after providing one of the most comprehensive analyses of “invasion” in the State War Clause—enjoined the enforcement of Texas law that established state criminal liability for immigration law violations. Although the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ultimately stayed the injunction, it was “not persuaded” by Texas’s immigration-as-invasion argument. The case is still pending. In light of interpretative uncertainty, recourse might also be had to interpretations of the president’s unilateral authority to use force to repel attacks or invasions.

(there is more legal wrangling going on)

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/can-trump-invoke-the-alien-enemies-act

This will be a sticky situation for only recently a Trump appointed judge rules against Donny’s move on Venezuelans.

A federal judge on Thursday barred the Trump administration from deporting any Venezuelans from South Texas under an 18th-century wartime law and said President Trump’s invocation of it was “unlawful.” US District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is the first judge to rule that the Alien Enemies Act cannot be used against people the administration claims are gang members invading the United States, the AP reports.

  • “Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States,” wrote Rodriguez, who was nominated by Trump in 2018. But, the judge said, “the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation … is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”
  • Rodriguez’s ruling is significant because it is the first formal permanent injunction against the administration using the AEA and contends the president is misusing the law, the AP reports. “Congress never meant for this law to be used in this manner,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case, in response to the ruling.
  • If the administration appeals, it would go first to the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts. The Supreme Court has already weighed in once on the issue of deportations under the AEA. The justices held that migrants alleged to be gang members must be given “reasonable time” to contest their removal from the country. The court has not specified the length of time

This whole debacle will be interesting to watch….and I will watch.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Not Much Change Since Jefferson

I have heard some call the election of 2024 a sea change in American history…..it was very interesting election but nothing was a sea change….not much was different than any other election in our history.

Let’s step back 200 years to the election of 1800….Jefferson vs Adams….

The most extreme accusations Democrats and Republicans hurl at one another today would be familiar to the Founding Fathers.

In fact, the election of 1800 alone featured almost everything that’s made Donald Trump’s three presidential contests a wild ride.

Accusations of foreign interference?

Check—John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the candidates in 1800, each thought the other was subservient to a foreign power.

The French Revolution divided Americans as bitterly as any foreign-policy crisis today.

Jefferson’s Republican Party, which is actually the ancestor of today’s Democratic Party, thought Adams and his Federalist Party were monarchists and traitors to the American Revolution because they were pro-British and anti-French.

The Federalists thought Jefferson’s pro-French party was as radical as France’s own revolutionaries: The phrase “godless communists” didn’t exist yet, but Federalists perceived Jeffersonians as atheists who would abolish private property if they got the chance.

Federalists were anti-democratic, said Republicans.

Republicans were against the Constitution, Federalists shot back.

Each side fervently believed the other was “illiberal” and in league with foreign regimes antithetical to America’s principles.

Immigration was a red-hot issue then as well and tied to fears of anti-American influences from abroad.

Under President Adams, Congress raised the number of years a foreigner would have to live in the United States before being naturalized as a citizen.

The Federalist-controlled Congress also gave the president broad powers to deport immigrants—or “aliens,” as they were then called.

How Politics Hasn’t Changed Since Jefferson

You see BS from both sides….same as today….

And the fact that the government is controlled by plutocrats has not change since day one of the republic.

Plutocracy?

Plutocracy is a government controlled exclusively by the wealthy, either directly or indirectly. A plutocracy effectively allows only the wealthy to rule. This can then result in policies exclusively designed to assist the wealthy.

Plutocracy doesn’t have to be a purposeful, overt format for government. Instead, it can be created through the allowance of access to certain programs and educational resources only to the wealthy, thereby making it so that the wealthy hold more sway. The concern of inadvertently creating a plutocracy is that the regulatory focus will be narrow and concentrated on the goals of the wealthy, creating even more income and asset-based inequality.

In a plutocracy, access to political power is limited and requires one either to possess wealth or to have the support of the wealthy by being willing to serve their interests. This may be a matter of official rules and restrictions that explicitly require that a person have some specified level of economic affluence in order to exercise political authority, such as voting or holding public office. However, plutocracy more often arises informally and is implicitly embodied in constitutional, legal, or regulatory measures that create barriers to participation in politics and political life that can be met only through the possession or expenditure of significant wealth.

And this incoming administration will be the most plutocratic of all….and that is saying something….considering all our presidents have had wealth on their side….

Somethings never change….history can teach us that.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”