Notices by Sean Casten (seancasten@mastodon.social)

To understand why this is straight up fascism, just ask yourself what protection you would have - as a law-abiding American citizen - if the President alleged that you were a criminal and an illegal immigrant and deported you to a prison in El Salvador. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/us/politics/trump-undocumented-immigrants-trials-deportation.html

Because you cannot assert that someone is doing something "illegally" in such a country unless that person has the right to present evidence, have access to counsel and defend themselves in court BEFORE such assertion carries with it the full force of law.

The truth is, it doesn't take a particularly sophisticated knowledge of the law to understand why a country based on rule of law must afford equal protection under that law to everyone inside our borders, regardless of their immigration status.

And that of course applies equally to immigrants who are here as DREAMers or asylum seekers under Temporary Protected Status. Both are technically "illegal" but are here with the understanding that if they go through a legal process and commit no crimes they can secure legal status.

If answer is that couldn't happen to you because you're a law-abiding citizen, then clarify where you would have the opportunity to make that case in the absence of due process?

He is asserting that he alone has the right to allege that someone "illegal" and a criminal, serve as their judge and sentence them with no checks. That is fundamentally fascist. It is also a plain violation of the 5th, 8th and 14th amendments.

Trump knows this as well as anyone. He is a 34-time convicted felon but he's been accused of a lot more crimes than that. He walks free among us today because he had access to due process in the trial and sentencing phase.

The Senate has complicity for confirming these folks. But ultimately, this is exactly what you'd expect if you put a convicted felon in the White House, protected by a Supreme Court that says he can't be prosecuted for his "official acts", bent on revenge and unwilling to do the reading.

None of this had to happen. Trump inherited an economy that was growing with low unemployment, rapidly falling inflation and attracting lots of capital. He literally could have done NOTHING and taken credit for the trend line.

Smart, patriotic people with strong spines and strong character who see the big picture don't want to work in this White House. All Trump has are idiots (Navarro, Hegseth), kooks (Gabbard, RFK Jr), fellow fascists (Miller, Musk) and cowards (Rubio, Bessent).

Because none of us are perfect. All of us have wanted to do something dumb at some point in our lives. To the extent we didn't, it's because we had people around us who could see around corners we didn't anticipate, had skills that offset our weaknesses and had our trust. Trump has none of that.

Did he break it intentionally? Was he provoked by a US adversary who knew how to provoke his fragile, easily manipulable ego? Is he just dumb? I'd suggest that none of those answers really matter. The more damning indictment is of the people who surround him.

And it's not just the tariffs. It's the daily inconsistency. Firing financial regulators who oversee market stability. Picking juvenile fights with the Fed. Illegally terminating laws that attracted capital to the US (IRA, CHIPS, etc). Attacking the rule of law itself.

Businesses don't like that uncertainty. I met with folks yesterday who said that their capital partners are now demanding higher equity cushions for US-domiciled projects to hedge that risk. That's the kind of thing that happens in 3rd world countries, and Trump has brought it here.

Last November, I was part of a bipartisan delegation to Europe, meeting with financial leaders in Brussels, London and Frankfurt. Everyone we met was envious of the depth of US capital markets and economic outlook. Trump has destroyed both. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/22/trump-tariffs-imf-global-economy/

Hegseth has only been SecDef for 87 days. During which he has generated two major intel leaks, converted current multiple staff into "disgruntled former employees" and behaved so incompetently that those employees felt compelled to leak his failures to the press.

"The emperor appeared to be unclothed today, and given my past record of praise for his couture, the fault must lie with his current stylist."

This is the kind of sentence you write if you experience mild discomfort from your prior career choices but have not had been able to emotionally process the fact that you might have totally misread your prior employer's qualifications. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/20/pentagon-chaos-ullyot-hegseth-00205594

Everything he touches he destroys. We will not start to recover until we take the car keys away from the baby. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/04/18/us-tourism-travel-trump/

Trump's understanding of capitalism is that if you do dumb stuff that loses money eventually your dad shows up and buys a bunch of casino chips to bail you out. That's not the way the economy works though. As the coal industry knows all too well... https://planetdetroit.org/2025/04/trump-targets-state-climate-laws/