If a trailer’s raison d’être is to get you pumped, The Naked Gun official teaser succeeds beyond all reasonable expectations. I went in with trepidation—Really? Remaking The Naked Gun? Move along, nothing to see here…—but by the time the OJ joke hit, I was locked in. It’s a sequel, not a remake, with Liam Neeson, known for his Very Serious action roles, playing Frank Drebin Jr.—truly inspired casting, much as Leslie Nielsen’s was. I hope Neeson plays it as straight as Nielsen did. Absolutely everything about this movie is absurd, right down to the Leslie Nielsen/Liam Neeson snowclone. I can’t wait.

Charlie Hall at Polygon presents the bigger picture of the impact of the Trump Tariffs on tabletop gaming. It goes well beyond the one (comparatively large) company I noted in my aforelinked piece:

Nearly 20 organizations that Polygon spoke with said that profits will be severely impacted. Many said jobs will be lost, companies shuttered, and games that have been in development for years may simply never come to market.

Tabletop gaming, which includes board games, card games, and role-playing games, has enjoyed a roughly two-decade renaissance brought on in part by crowdfunding. Nevertheless, much of the industry consists of individual creators, sole proprietors, small family businesses, and remote teams of creatives. The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) said Thursday that the impact of these tariffs will be nothing short of a disaster.

People’s livelihoods are at stake.

Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games, under the headline “Tariffs Are Driving Up Game Prices Now”, writes candidly about the challenges her small company will face under the new Trump Tariffs:

On April 5th, a 54% tariff goes into effect on a wide range of goods imported from China. For those of us who create boardgames, this is not just a policy change. It’s a seismic shift.

Placko writes that the company is “actively assessing” the impact of these tariffs on their games, pricing, and future plans, and notes:

We do know that we can’t absorb this kind of cost increase without raising prices. We’ve done our best over the past few years to shield players and retailers from the full brunt of rising freight costs and other increases, but this new tax changes the equation entirely.

Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That’s not a luxury upcharge; it’s survival math.

She then anticipates the question many tariff hawks will have:

Some people ask, “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t.

Placko acknowledges that tariffs can be useful, when implemented intelligently:

Tariffs, when part of a long-term strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing, can be an effective tool. But that only works when there’s a plan to build up the industries needed to take over production. There is no national plan in place to support manufacturing for the types of products we make. This isn’t about steel and semiconductors. This is about paper goods, chipboard, wood tokens, plastic trays, and color-matched ink. These new tariffs are imposing huge costs without providing alternatives, and it’s going to cost American consumers more at every level of the supply chain.

Sadly, we don’t have an administration that thinks long term or strategically.

We usually focus our concern on big companies, but many small businesses will bleed to death as a result of these Trump Tariffs.

Nintendo, in a statement to Polygon (and others):

Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.

By which I presume they mean “We’re probably gonna have to raise the $450 price tag in the U.S.”

Fucking Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, which already seems like a lifetime ago, Nintendo announced its long-anticipated Switch 2. You can read all the details in The Verge, but in short:

• A large, 7.9", 1080p, 120Hz screen
• 4K (upscaled) dock for TV playing
• 256GB internal storage (up from 32GB in the original Switch)
• “Mouse mode” with the (larger) JoyCon 2 controllers
• Custom Nvidia processor

it looks great, and I’d buy it in a heartbeat, even though we hardly use our original Switch, if it was less expensive. And the market didn’t just crash.

Again: Fucking. Donald. Trump.

Brian Tyler Cohen and Glenn Kirschner on The Legal Breakdown illustrate the utterly preposterous and incredibly dangerous state of affairs in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s “mistaken” deportation case:

Cohen: Are you telling me, with all the agreements that we have with El Salvador that allows us to just—without any due process—deport these people to their country… we have no mechanism whatsoever to bring back somebody who is a legal resident, who is there as a result of an administrative error, that we have no mechanism to bring that guy back?

Kirschner: I don’t believe, you don’t believe it, but that is what the attorneys who are in court—not exactly defending this action, because they concede they did not have a legal reason to deport him, a legal basis—they’re also saying “Uh, we just don’t think we have a mechanism to bring him back.”

Cohen later makes this astute observation about Trump’s intentions:

I think this isn’t necessarily about this one specific person, this is about Donald Trump showing his detractors that he is exactly as all-powerful as he perceives himself as being […].

He doesn’t care what person he has to steamroll through in order to get his way, he’s trying to send a message and everybody that gets hurt as a result of that, that’s just collateral damage […] The goal here is the chilling effect this will have […].He’s not looking to bring [Abrego Garcia] back, because the fact that [Abrego Garcia] can be disappeared in an extrajudicial way is the point unto itself. It’s not about this guy, it’s about Trump being able to display his power.

In response to a question from Cohen about what can be done, Kirschner offers one possible solution:

The Trump administration and these ICE agents that engaged in this unconstitutional deportation violated a court order, violated a judge’s protection order saying Mr. Garcia cannot be deported to El Salvador.

One thing the court has available to it is the power of contempt, and if a court wanted to inspire the Trump administration to get a plane down there to El Salvador and bring this man back, the judge could say “I am going to begin to hold everyone in contempt who was part and parcel of this unconstitutional deportation that violated a judicial order.”

I would love to see them all held in contempt. Sadly, enforcement of such sanctions is done via the US Marshals Service, which is under the Executive branch, and while the US Marshals are supposed to legally comply with a judicial order, I expect the president, via his attorney general, to attempt to block any contempt order.

Nick Miroff, at The Atlantic, chronicles this incredibly harrowing tale (Apple News+ link):

The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the megaprison where he’s now locked up.

The case appears to be the first time the Trump administration has admitted to errors when it sent three planeloads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador’s grim “Terrorism Confinement Center” on March 15. Attorneys for several Venezuelan deportees have said that the Trump administration falsely labeled their clients as gang members because of their tattoos. Trump officials have disputed those claims.

But in Monday’s court filing, attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported accidentally. “Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government told the court. Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody.

This story is absolutely terrifying. It’s a constitutional five-alarm fire that should see Americans up in arms and flooding the streets.

In their filing, the US government’s lawyers write:

This Court lacks jurisdiction because Abrego Garcia is not in United States custody.

Writing further:

[…] a person “is held ‘in custody’ by the United States when the United States official charged with his detention has ‘the power to produce him.’”

They’re claiming that no United States official has such power. Rather than apologizing profusely and taking every possible action to rectify the situation, Trump’s lawyers instead argue against the judge’s jurisdiction and the family’s right to petition for redress. The government has effectively professed that once they deport a person—without any due process—there’s nothing the United States can do to reverse course, even after admitting the removal was done in error. That Abrego Garcia—or anyone else—is forever out of their reach. It’s the despotic equivalent of “finders keepers, losers weepers,” or the “Oh no! Anyway” meme, applied to a man’s life.

A week ago Timothy Snyder wrote:

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

The truth is, today, right now, there is absolutely nothing preventing Donald Trump’s regime from snatching you or anyone you know, throwing you or them on a plane to El Salvador, and wiping their hands clean.

Or, as Gillian Branstetter wrote:

No matter your station in life, there is astoundingly little separating you from those men in that cage behind Kristi Noem. No charges, no attorneys, no hearings, no trial. Just conjecture and brute force could be enough to justify completely dehumanizing you, too.

How are we any different from Nazi Germany, or modern-day Russia?

Steven Zeitchik, at The Hollywood Reporter, with the most interesting take I’ve read about Cory Booker’s marathon speech:

You may not have watched anything but the last hour, or few minutes, or even a second of the Democratic senator’s 25-hour, one-sitting (or standing) opus on YouTube or C-SPAN. Trust me then when I tell you the whole thing was the kind of spectacle that should be eligible for an Emmy, so subtle were its layers and so ambitious the performance.

On its face, Booker’s speech building an elaborate case against the policies of Donald Trump and Elon Musk was pure political theater — if theater involved a prize for never relying on a chair, food or the bathroom. As he broke Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour, 18-minute mark for longest Senate-floor speech in history, the New Jersey lawmaker spoke from giant loose-leaf binders of facts and read anecdotes off index cards; he thanked the Parliamentarian and gave at least his vocal cords a break by deferring to extended questions (that were more of a comment) from other senators. Booker balanced rousing constitutional ideals with basic economic litmus tests, reappropriating Ronald Reagan’s famous 1980 debate line of, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” as (fittingly for these lightning times), “Are you better off now than you were 71 days ago?”

But what Booker was doing was nothing less than creating a cinematic spectacle, a binge-worthy awards contender in which all 25 hours happened to drop at once. And while the consequences are deadly serious, the techniques came from some of our most popular entertainment. Focus on different through lines of Booker’s performance and you’d experience different arcs; come in at different moments and you’d infer different genres.

Just an amazing voice. Pure, raw, powerful.

Growing up, Marvin’s music was always playing in our home. He is such a part of my musical firmament, I was surprised to realize that I was just 15 when he died, 41 years ago today.

Timothy Snyder:^[1]

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn how from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists. I am delighted to have this special chance now to share the lessons again. I was honored when John, a wise advocate for civil discourse and civic engagement, volunteered to read them aloud.

Lithgow is a stellar choice.

(Apropos, I’ve finally ordered a copy of On Tyranny.)

In a story for WBEZ (signup required; Apple News+ link), Adriana Cardona-Maguigad writes that “attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of have Illinois” accused the federal government of violating immigration law—arrests without probable cause, “making arrests without proper warrants and creating warrants in the field after the arrests,” which allegedly violate something called the Nava Settlement.

The story includes this revelation about one of the arrested people:

[…] Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen […] was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center […]. He was never questioned about his citizenship, and was only released after agents looked at his ID.

“I was born in Chicago, Illinois and am a United States citizen,” Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and social security card. “They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.”

ICE arrested a US citizen—born here!—because, I presume, he “looks like” an immigrant and has “an immigrant’s” last name. No questions, no due process. He was held for ten hours:

He was released after midnight without any way to return home and without documentation of what happened […].

Appallingly, this isn’t the only instance of citizens being detained. Since Trump retook office, ICE agents are allegedly targeting people they presume don’t look or sound American, including Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans and Navajo Nation tribal members.

We’ve officially entered the snatching Americans and legal immigrants off the streets phase of fascism. Next, we’ll be told it’s merely protective custody.

Kaveh Akbar drops a searingly emotional piece for The Nation in reaction to the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk:

This is, more than anything, a plea for principled leftists to rise en masse and not just decry but disrupt a nation helmed by gleeful genocideers. I’m writing frantically, aware my prose is ugly, overearnest, unvetted against worst-faith readers. It’s graceless, unlovely. So am I.

Tonight I want to be understood, not appreciated.

I could quote the piece at length, but to do so would be a disservice to both Akbar and to you.

It’s critical that I share this plea, however:

I want to tell you powerlessness is an alibi. Hopelessness too. I want to ask, what specifically are you going to do? Tomorrow, the next day? What’s your “I am Spartacus” move to protect the more vulnerable, the targeted, the invisibled, the next-on-the-list?

I want to say, it’s your turn now, help. This is us asking you while we still can.

I’ve taken one tiny step: I added the phone number for the San Francisco Immigrant Rapid Response Hotline (415-200-1548) to my contacts, so I’m prepared to act if I see someone being confronted by ICE.

Find the equivalent service in your area and add the number to your phone.

I finally brought myself to watch the video of ICE’s abduction of Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk. It’s even more disturbing than I expected after reading the story because, watching, it looks exactly like a random kidnapping off the streets—plainclothes men and women, with masks, approaching a woman and coercing her into an SUV. It was simply done quietly, with badges and handcuffs, instead of loudly, with guns and chloroform-soaked handkerchiefs.

Opportunistic criminals with two-bit tin badges can now confidently disappear someone off the street, and we’ll simply assume they’re with ICE. 

That ambushing people on the street or at home is tolerated, even applauded by a fraction of Americans—and defended by our government officials, no less—is profoundly alarming. That it’s done in such a casual manner is equally disturbing.

At what point does ICE become indistinguishable from the Gestapo?

Dan Bernstein, writing at (the new-to-me) Sportico:

Starting around the 3:07 p.m. ET first pitch of the game between the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays, fans trying to watch any game on MLB TV via web browser or apps received error messages. The technical problems during one of the biggest days of the season caused backlash on social media, with complaints quickly racking up thousands of likes.

There might be worse days for MLB.TV streaming to experience a massive outage, but Opening Day has got to be right up there. Maybe Game 7 of the World Series with two out in the bottom of the ninth and the winning run at third beats it out.

Maybe.

I was among those affected while trying to watch the Mets vs. Astros game (chosen because MLB’s ridiculous blackout policy prevented me from watching the Giants vs. Reds game—honestly, I’m not sure why I continue to pay $150 a year for the service).

Let’s hope MLB has this fixed for the rest of the season.

The Wall Street Journal ran this story Wednesday evening (Apple News+ link) by Michael R. Gordon, Nancy A. Youssef, and Lindsay Wise, posted at 6:26 pm EDT, under the headline “Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Fallout Grows” and the subhead “Republicans react with concern about new details on posts about weapons used and timing of Yemen attack.”

It reads like the first sharp blows of an upcoming hit piece against Hegseth, presented initially as mostly Democratic criticisms, with a few Republicans tossed in so those criticisms aren’t dismissed out of hand.

The entire piece is filled with jabs and body blows, each one preceded by a slight feint of a defense of Hegseth’s actions before countering with a gut punch of reality.

One example: About his decision to share “specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack” and “that an unnamed target of the strikes was at a ‘known location’”, the WSJ dryly notes:

Such information is normally guarded carefully by the Pentagon before imminent strikes to avoid disclosures that could help adversaries. 

Hegseth’s lack of qualifications for the position is also called out—he’s “never held a senior national security post”—with the paper noting his experience as a “former Army National Guard major and Fox News host” and following up with a comment from “Sen. Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat who flew combat missions in the 1991 Persian Gulf war as a naval aviator,” who dubbed Hegseth “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen.”

Then, WSJ has other chat participants doing their best to distance themselves from Hegseth, basically saying “I didn’t post classified information in the chat.…”

But to me, the real tells about Hegseth’s future come from the various members of the military and security communities—past and present—making their (anonymous) opinions clear:

Several U.S. military officials said the strike information Hegseth included was still classified as secret when he shared it.

And:

Targeting plans and the employment of American forces have long been considered to be highly classified before action is taken because their disclosure can tip off adversaries and provide them with insights on how the U.S. conducts sensitive military operations, former officials and national security experts say.

The WSJ added:

Top national-security officials have access to secure communications on government networks designed for classified discussions about such information.

They then closed thusly:

Earlier this month, the Pentagon sent an advisory to all military personnel warning that a “vulnerability” had been identified in Signal and warned against using it for classified information.

“It borders on incompetence,” Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator and defense secretary during the Obama administration, said of Hegseth’s texts. “It’s certainly reckless.”

It’s tough to run the Department of Defense if the military you’re responsible for doesn’t trust you to keep their secrets and keep them safe.

To me, all of this adds up to Hegseth’s resignation because “the fake news media has made this story a distraction to President Trump’s important agenda to Make America Great Again.”

I expect a WSJ Opinion calling for his resignation within the week, Hegseth’s decision to step away soon after, and reluctant acceptance by Trump, who will undoubtedly cast it as a “witch hunt,” and be followed by the inevitable pardon.

Not too much new in this New York Times annotated version of The Atlantic’s leaked Signal chat, but I sniggered several times at the obvious delight the reporters took in slapping the Trump administration officials. For example, this, from Helene Cooper, on Pete Hegseth’s response to J.D. Vance:

Pete Hegseth: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.

Cooper: Mr. Hegseth is echoing here a Trump-administration critique that the U.S. Navy does more to keep shipping lanes through the Suez Canal open than European naval forces do. Using words like “loathing” and “pathetic” will likely make his next meetings with European counterparts dicey.

“Dicey.” Right.

Axios also has a great compendium of the Trump administration’s repeated denials of any classified information being leaked in that Signal chat:

After Goldberg published a partial version of the texts, withholding key details for national security reasons, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegsethswiftly went into shoot-the-messenger mode. […]

Here’s how those statements match with what we learned in the subsequent Atlantic story.

My favorite:

Ratcliffe in the Senate hearing said he was not “aware” of any “information on weapons packages, targets or timing” that was discussed in the chat. Gabbard concurred.

The texts include a detailed sequencing of the timing of the attacks, to include Hegseth’s to-the-minute breakdown of when F-18s and drones would take off and drop their payloads.

Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, and Shane Harris share the byline on this story detailing exactly what was shared in that now-infamous Signal chat. (Apple News+ link.)

So, about that Signal chat.

I chuckled at the dry acknowledgement that a chat thread is the biggest story of the week.

Much of the text thread reads like first-time managers receiving status updates from their teams and, having no understanding of what it is or means, naively share it, believing it makes them look like they’re “in the loop.”

I also get a distinct vibe (from Pete Hegseth, especially) of “check out what I know! I’m cool now!”

Goldberg and Harris:

On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

It surprises no one that Hegseth (and Mike Waltz, Tulsi Gabbard, and the rest, all the way up to Trump himself) would deny any top-secret national security information was leaked. What’s surprising is those denials would come knowing Goldberg had screenshots of the Signal thread—and that it was already confirmed as legitimate by administration officials.

In my head canon, Goldberg presented the original story as he did, confident the administration would go into full-on denial mode, and claim, as they did, that the material shared was not classified, thus freeing him to post the thread in its entirety:

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

I can’t be sure that releasing the full chat was the plan from the outset, but it must be deeply satisfying to use a person’s (or administration’s) predilection for lying against them.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was added to a Signal thread with 17 high-ranking Trump administration officials, where the group proceeded to discuss what could only be considered top secret information (Apple News+ link):

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

The entire story demonstrates a stunning disregard—willful or otherwise—for even basic operational security procedures among people entrusted with our nation’s most sensitive secrets.

As Goldberg notes:

Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe.

Every Monday, new Apple employees receive a stern lecture about keeping devices and communications secure, and ensuring sensitive information isn’t accidentally leaked to those not authorized to receive it. Literally on Day One. 

At Apple, this level of security malfeasance has cost people their jobs, and in any other administration—or, more precisely, in any Democratic administration—this would be a huge scandal, and people would be fired—and quite possibly prosecuted—for leaking this information. I’m also confident that had Goldberg shared the Signal thread prior to the bombings, he would be arrested and tried for treason.

I doubt the stunningly reckless behavior of these officials will result in even a hand-slap.

(Via Laffy.)

If you listen(ed) to ’90s electronic music, you likely recognize that quote from The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds. The Orb were probably my earliest introduction to electronic music, and this track is one of my favorites.

The track kicks off with this question by an unknown interviewer, who for years was mistakenly thought to be LeVar Burton. Ian Scott finally discovers who really asked this important musical question.

(Via kottke.org.)

Who Asked “What Were the Skies Like When You Were Young?” in “Little Fluffy Clouds?”

Who asked the famous question in the song Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb? TL;DR: it’s music writer Carl Arrington. Read on for more background.…

Ian “polpo” Scott

So many fascinating tidbits about Brooklyn’s layout and history this long-time Brooklynite was unaware of, explained in a wonderfully clear and casual manner by Daniel Steiner:

The story of Brooklyn is the story of a bunch of disparate settlements that grew until they eventually merged together to become “Brooklyn.”

Steiner’s YouTube style is like visiting with your best bud as he recounts his latest fascinating discovery over a cup of chamomile. I could watch him talk about maps for hours, which is great, because he also has explainers for Manhattan’s grid, and the maps of Staten Island, Las Vegas, London, and his latest, Los Angeles (plus several more).

If you’re of a certain age and grew up watching Sesame Street, you count to twelve to a funky, jazzy, surprisingly complex tune (sung by The Pointer Sisters) that accompanies a trippy pinball animation, aka “Pinball Number Count”. Charles Cornell, who analyzes and explains musical concepts on YouTube, uses music theory to break down the tune’s odd time signature and unexpectedly intricate melody. The deeper Cornell dives into the song, the crazier it seems that this masterpiece of music was written for a children’s television show. It certainly made it memorable—it manages to live rent-free in my head, 40-plus years on!

(Watch all 11 versions—yes, 2 through 12; there is no 1.)

Jasmine Mooney writes in The Guardian about her harrowing experience being locked up in a series of ICE facilities after her visas were revoked:

I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them, looking like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.

For two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no one answered our questions.

Stories about the inhumane conditions in these detention facilities mainly seem to make the news when it’s someone who “doesn’t belong there,” but the conditions are awful for everyone. It’s imperative that we continue to bring attention to this issue. I’m glad Mooney was willing to speak out and use her personal privilege.

To put things into perspective: I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks.

Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.

I can’t imagine having no way to reach someone who can help you, whether in the US or your home country, because you don’t have their telephone number or email address. It’s a nightmare—and there’s no incentive for the facilities to resolve things:

The reality became clear: Ice detention isn't just a bureaucratic nightmare. It's a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.

Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It's a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560mfrom Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.

If Donald Trump and Elon Musk were truly serious about cutting wasteful government spending, they’d abolish ICE.

Which I’m sure is next, right after “cancel Starlink contracts”.

Because rueful laughter is still laughter.

A brief follow-up from my last link: Garrett Bucks, in his preface to that piece, wrote:

We have wished (appropriately) for bravery from our media, from elected Democrats, from public officials in general. However fair those wishes are, they come with a risk: that we miss the opportunity to be the lonely voice for justice in our own community, the person who makes it a little easier for a second and third and fourth lonely voice to start perking up by our side.

That idea—one lonely voice making it easier for others to perk up—stirred something in me and I started to hum, an indistinguishable tune at first. Only after hitting publish did it coalesce into something recognizable.

I was in my eighth grade choir—this would be 1982, 1983—and one of the songs we performed, and which has clearly stuck with me all these years, was Barry Manilow’s One Voice:

If only one voice would start it on its own

We need just one voice facing the unknown

And then that one voice would never be alone

It takes that one voice

(Complete lyrics.)

The parallels with Bucks’ phrase teased this forty-plus-year-old memory from the depths of my subconscious.

It’s a beautiful song, and a beautiful sentiment.

Garrett Bucks on the importance of taking small, seemingly insufficient actions:

Why? Because others will see you do them, and it will make it easier for them to take their own (slightly less lonely but equally beautiful) action by your side.

From February, but still (maybe even more) relevant today.

Here’s the first one:

The next time you read an article about how USAID or the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau or the Department of Education is being attacked, remember that no matter how impactful the agency, movements don’t coalesce around acronyms—they are always about empathy for each other. Take a few minutes to research a specific program administered by those agencies that help people, and ring the alarm for everybody you know. Stop saying “Trump and Musk are the worst” and practice saying things like “Trump and Musk are sentencing millions of AIDS patients to death” or “Trump and Musk want credit card companies to rip us off” or “Trump and Musk just cut mental health and math tutoring resources for your kids’ school.”

I’m working to do better at this when I rant on Mastodon. And I’ll try to do a few of the remaining 29, despite many of them giving me, as Bucks puts it, “anxiety about putting [myself] out there.”