Poppy | Sunny | Not Guilty | Jail Treatment | Mary Hollifield | Hopland Beauty | PA Agenda | Local Events | Catheter Stories | November 18 | Tourist Guide | AV Beerfest | Bunyan Parade | Yesterday's Catch | Their Business | Peace Vigil | Salmon Closure | Perilous Times | Beer Vibe | Marco Radio | AVA Wallpaper | Mandel Ballad | At Rest | Each Dance | Psychedelic Sixties | Civilization Bah | 4/20 | Giants Blanked | Doggie Bag | Political Flashback | 1963 Boxers | Social Security | Lead Stories | Action Plan | TikTok Horror | Insurrection Act | Court Contempt | CECOT Salvador | USA Perceptions | Viva Kilmar | Easter Sunday | Harvard-Gov Divorce | Le Capitalisme
SLIGHTLY ABOVE AVERAGE temperatures persist through the weekend and into early next week. Breezy northerly winds will develop this afternoon and will increase Sunday. This setup will persist through mid next week before the pattern breaks down. The northerly breezes and bouts of lingering daytime stratus will hold down the coastal temperatures a bit. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Another foggy 48F this Saturday morning on the coast. Try as they may the NWS just can't get the fog to go away, they are saying mostly gone by Monday now. We'll see. How about a chance of rain next Friday ?, we'll see #2.
JURY SAYS IT WAS SELF-DEFENSE
After a day of deliberations, deliberations that included revisiting trial testimony of various witnesses, a Mendocino County Superior Court returned to court Thursday afternoon to announce it had found the trial defendant not guilty of both murder in the second degree and voluntary manslaughter, two different legal characterizations of unlawful homicide.
Clinton Marcus Maxwell, age 48, of Ukiah, had been accused of causing the shooting death of Timothy James Abshire of Redwood Valley in August 2023.
The Abshire family and Mr. Maxwell had adjoining properties off of Webb Ranch Road in Redwood Valley.
The defense presented evidence, including Mr. Maxwell taking the stand and testifying, and then argued during the two-week trial that Mr. Maxwell acted in lawful self-defense.
Under California law, a person who reasonably believes there is an imminent danger of being on the receiving end of bodily injury, who then acts in self-defense on that belief, and uses only the amount of force that a reasonable person would believe necessary to protect against the imminent harm shall be considered not guilty of the unlawful killing of another.
Again, under California law, danger is deemed imminent if, when the person under attack uses force, the danger actually existed or the person under attack reasonably believed it existed. The danger must seem so immediate and present, so that it must be instantly dealt with.
When self-defense is being asserted at trial, the prosecution’s evidence must demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in lawful self-defense. If the prosecution’s evidence does not meet this burden to the satisfaction of the jury, the jury is required to return a not guilty verdict.
The law enforcement agencies that provided investigator testimony and other evidence at trial were the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office and the California Department of Justice Crime Laboratory.
The attorney who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was Assistant District Attorney Scott McMenomey.
Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the two-week trial.
ON-LINE COMMENT: From an earlier press release by the SO, the deceased was trespassing on the shooter’s property and was located “in a remote area of the property on a dirt road” with three bullet wounds to the chest. What was the trespasser up to and what were they doing just before being shot? Was three shots to the chest reasonable force to stop the perceived threat? Because “dead men tell no tales,” we only have the shooter’s version of events, which calls to mind the old adage: “Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.”
Background: https://theava.com/archives/225253#2
MAZIE MALONE:
Re: Proposed use of Measure B funds for the new jail wing…
Ummmmm, what?!
Scaramella: “Antle also suggests that the Board consider using Measure B money to cover some of costs of staffing the new (“mental health”) wing of the jail. There does appear to be Measure B money that was supposed to go to treatment services available. But using it for jail services is a twisted interpretation that is not what the preparers of Measure B told the voters it would be used for.”
Jail is not treatment no matter how you package it!
Every time I drive past the jail, which is daily, I look over at that new building being erected. It is going to be quite nice, no doubt. However, it does not take an entire new building to provide what is necessary to help incarcerated individuals with their Mental Health needs. That’s a new jail!
I mean, holy hell. Most of these people live on the street. They do not care about nice shiny walls and quiet treatment rooms! What they do care about is dignity and being treated compassionately.
You should see some of the psych wards. And if you have I am sorry!
MARY LAURA HOLLIFIELD
Mary Laura Hollifield, age 79, of Caddo Gap, passed away on Thursday, April 17, 2025.
She was born on March 11, 1946, in Hot Springs. She was the daughter of Burnett Price and Ella Miller Price. She is preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Dennis Hollified; her daughter, Denise Baker; and her two brothers, Clovis Price and Jerry Price.
Mary married the love of her life, Dennis, on June 1, 1963. She loved cooking for her family, gardening flowers, and most of all she loved being with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She worked at Alltell, Caddo First National Bank, and Kirby School District. Mary lit up a room wherever she was and will be missed by all who knew and loved her.
She is survived by her son and daughter-in-law, John and Melanie Hollified of Hopper; her four grandchildren and their spouses, Kimberly (Baker) and Jacob Leigh, Kevin and Erika Baker, Emily (Hollifield) and Mitchell Williams, and Jesse Hollifield; her five great-grandchildren, Jerry Leigh, Gus Leigh, Cooper Baker, Kasey Baker, and Tinlee Williams; and many loving nieces, nephews, extended family members, and a host of wonderful friends.
Pallbearers will be Jeff Price, Mike Price, Devin Deaton, Tracy Deaton, Rodney Standridge, and Neal Price.
Visitation will be held an hour prior to services on Saturday, April 19, 2025, from 9:00 AM until 10:00 AM at Smith Family Funeral Home Chapel- Glenwood.
Funeral Services will be held on Saturday, April 19, 2025, at 10:00 AM at Smith Family Funeral Home Chapel- Glenwood with Harold Vaughan officiating.
Interment will be held at Hopper Cemetery.
Guest registry can be found at www.smithfamilycares.com
CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY/LAURA PALME CARR: Help ID this 6-8” beauty? Found near Hopland on a rocky hillside.
DOBBINS TO DOYLE, OVER TO BURKEY, BACK TO KOOGLE, FINALLY TO HANSEN! A TRIPLE PLAY!
Point Arena City Council Agenda - April 22, 2025
Regular Session - 6:00 pm
Council Chambers, 451 School Street
Call To Order & Roll Call
Ii. Approval Of The Agenda
Iii. Mayor’s Reports/Announcements
A) Mendocino County Sheriff Update
B) Point Arena Fire Safe Council
IV. Council Reports — Items in this agenda section are informational or
for scheduling purposes only.
A) City-Related Meetings
B) Council Committee and Commission Reports
- Mendocino Transit Authority
- Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG)
- Economic Development & Finance Corporation (EDFC)
- California League of Cities
- Arena Cove Advisory Committee
- Parks Committee
LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)
A READER WRITES:
The Editor’s catheter stories bring back memories for me! I sure hope you were able to get a stash of catheter bags to have on hand in case such emergency happens again! Anyway, I have been a private caregiver for many years. I do have a background in medical services. I used to work for a surgeon here in Ukiah as a Medical Assistant. I learned a lot! For many years, I had an elderly client who had prostate problems and for the 10 years that I assisted this man at least six of them he was attached to a catheter. Unfortunately, he also had dementia and a girlfriend. He lived at Brookside retirement home in Ukiah. Because of that during the day he had to wear a leg bag and at night the big bag to catch all the urine. I would attend to him every morning and evening to change out to the appropriate bag. One morning I arrived, and there was no bag attached to him. I could not find it. There was no tube hanging out from his penis. I was frantically trying to find the bag and lo and behold, I found it in the trash! So where was the rest of the tube? Then I realized it had been cut. At first I thought he pulled it out, but he had cut it. He found a pair of scissors and cut that sucker! I quickly realized what had happened to the tube and called the urologist for an appointment! I took him in, and when he had cut the tube of the bag at about 3 inches of tubing retracted back inside his penis. They had to numb him up and use some forceps to pull out the tubing! That was crazy. Then I scoured his residence for every single possible tool that could be used to cut — knives, scissors and whatever else I could find and removed it because I was not about to let that happen again!
Of course it was not funny at the time! Now we can laugh about it. The poor guy, he passed in 2020.
PS. The other part of the story which you must know is that if a catheter bag gets full, it is heavy. It has to be emptied. If you have dementia, you’re not going to remember on your own to do that task. When this person lived at Brookside and I saw him all the time I was able to help him accomplish that. However, once he moved to Mountain View assisted living in the memory care unit the care was not that grand! They often would leave the bag full, and as it got full, it would pull down. The weight would be heavy and pull on the penis and believe it or not, this actually caused his penis to fillet down the middle just like someone fillets a fish! Split open the shaft. They were afraid it would eventually split all the way through!! Poor guy. Luckily it it did not do that!
CORRECTION:
Re: ‘Jim Jones In Mendocino County’ … by Bruce Anderson on December 18, 2024: “Another Anniversary of Jim Jones’ mass murder of his black parishioners in Guyana was recorded on November 8th, but if it was noted anywhere I didn’t see it.”
Forgive the focus on what may be a typo, but don’t you want “November 18”?
Ryan McCarthy
OF SEMI-LOCAL INTEREST
Advertising pages from “Bancroft’s Tourist Guide around the Bay (North),” 1871.
(Marshall Newman)
AV BEERFEST 2025 (May 10)
Beer, Glorious Beer
An epic line-up awaits: Russian River, Stumptown, Almanac, and so many more – enough breweries and cideries to satisfy everyone.
A Most Excellent Soundtrack
Get ready to groove with Rising Signs, Blue Luke, the Adam Manus Band, and the Mark Weston Band – good vibes and better tunes all day long.
Fuel For The Journey
Stay fueled with local legends: Fairall’s Farm, Slam Dunk Pizza, Spiro’s Gyros, Dutch Girl Desserts, Reggae Rasta, Curry Xpress, The Alley Grill, and Turtle Island Tacos.
So don your best bathrobe, grab your crew, and let the good times roll.
This Beer Fest really ties the year together.
MENDOCINO COUNTY WAY BACK WHEN (Randy Robbins)
CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, April 18, 2025
NATHANIEL CHITWOOD, 50, Mendocino. Domestic battery, false imprisonment with violence.
ERIC GARCIA, 36, Redwood Valley. Failure to appear.
PATRICK HILBUN, 72, Fort Bragg. DUI with blood alcohol over 0.15% and with priors.
DAVID RUSSELL JR., 33, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear, probation revocation.
TOBIAS WOOD, 31, Ukiah. Destructive device, switchblade in vehicle, disobeying court order, failure to appear.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
If a person wants to identify as a squirrel that is their business. If a trans person wants to identify as a man or a woman that is their business.
HONESTLY
Enjoying a fabulous sunny day in Washington, D.C., about to head over to the Peace Vigil (across the street from the White House). It is agreed at the vigil that stronger statements in regard to global climate destabilization need to be made. In the midst of the American society’s meltdown, it is comprehended that Divine Intervention is needed in addition to social activism. Moreso, a brand new civilization based on the sacred heart center in each one of us is the ultimate answer. Please make note of the fact that the present dark phase of Kali Yuga continues to segue into the Satya Yuga, or age of truth and light. On an individual basis, please remain comfortable resting in your own svarupa, or heart chakra, which ensures sahaja samadhi avastha, or the continuous superconscious state.
Nota bene: I am available for spiritually based direct action. Feel free to contact me.
Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
SALMON AND WATER GROUPS RESPOND TO CLOSURE OF CALIFORNIA COMMERCIAL SALMON FISHING FOR THIRD YEAR
by Dan Bacher
PERILOUS TIMES?
by Jim Shields
History tells us that one of the few times somebody actually successfully brought corporate monopolies to heel, it was President Teddy Roosevelt.
At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the ol’ Roughrider rode roughshod over John D. Rockefeller in the Standard Oil antitrust case that defined — for a while anyway — just how big and powerful one company should be. Since then, anti-trust action has become a quaint, nearly extinct governmental power seldom exercised to prevent the rigging of the marketplace. After all, the global marketplace requires global-sized “competitors.” And Globalism finds Republicans and Democrats joined at the hip in their rabid support for a new world order where workers, small business operators, and the middle class are all listed on the economic extinction list.
At one time, anti-trust legislation and enforcement was one of the main planks in the platforms of both political parties. U.S. anti-trust law is found in the Big Three of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Clayton Antitrust Act.
Today we live in a world dominated by folks known as One-Percenters who preside over an economic system called Globalism.
In fact, currently our country has the world’s wealthiest man apparently sharing the helm of the government with the President of the United States.
There’s an old saying about the more things change, the more everything remains the same.
It’s another way to say we’re just running in place.
What in the hell is going on?
Isn’t it amazing? Just back in the early to mid-1900s, we had people in public office who understood how government should work. TR was a Republican, his cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a Democrat. They both set this country back on course in perilous economic times. Times that were certainly as perilous then as they are now.
It can be argued that TR and then FDR, 30 years later, saved capitalism from self-destruction. The former broke up the monopolies that were strangling the country’s life breath; the latter glued back together the shattered pieces of a country depressed in spirit and economy, and later would lead the nation to victory in a world war.
It’s been said that FDR lifted himself from a wheelchair to lift a nation from its knees.
One of my boyhood idols was Bill Bradley, a celebrated collegiate and professional basketball player and former Rhodes scholar, who once had been hailed as an emerging star in the Democratic Party who twice ran for President.
First elected to the Senate in 1978, he emerged as the leader on a major issue only a few times—most notably in shaping the 1986 tax reform bill. In his first two terms, he tended to focus on one issue at a time—whether it was tax policy or relations with the former Soviet Union. After almost losing his seat in 1990, however, he broadened his strategy to encompass more issues—most notably race relations and the economic troubles of the middle class and the poor.
In 1996, he denounced politics in America as “broken,” then announced he would step down at the end of his third term in 1997.
“We live in a time when, on a basic level, politics is broken,” Bradley explained. “In growing numbers, people have lost faith in the political process and don’t see how it can help their threatened circumstances.”
He went onto say, “The political debate has settled into two familiar ruts. The Republicans are infatuated with the ‘magic’ of the private sector and reflexively criticize government as the enemy of freedom, and the Democrats distrust the market, preach government as the answer to our problems and prefer the bureaucrat they know to the consumer they can’t control.”
Republican Teddy Roosevelt summed it up succinctly:
“…Our government, national and state, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks today … The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.”
It kind of makes you both sad and angry that politics are now so damn broke.
Maybe what is needed today is not a reform of government.
Maybe all we need to do is to return to a government that was reformed a long time ago.
That would qualify nowadays as a welcome revolution.
(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)
BILL KIMBERLIN
I took this photo of the bridge below Sea Cliff and on the small popular beach there. Like all progress this bridge was adamantly opposed at the time it was built, much like the current Smart Train that so far runs from Larkspur Landing to Windsor.
The chief engineer of the G.G. bridge was Joseph Strauss. In order to get the permission of the S.F. Board of Supervisors, Strauss told his secretary to deliver a paper bag of cash, every month to each of the board members. The rest is our history. Always deliver cash, because as a bank robber I once interviewed said, “Cash has no memory, unlike every other form of payment.”
Beer Fest returns to Boonville on May 10th, and this year, the vibe is strong. Grab your tickets now – $60 in advance or $70 at the gate (if we don’t sell out first – and we usually do, man).
MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all night tonight on KNYO and KAKX!
Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight’s (Friday night’s) MOTA show is 5pm or so. If that’s too soon, send it any time after that and I’ll read it next Friday.
Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.
Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week’s MOTA show. By Saturday night I’ll put up the recording of tonight’s show. You’ll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:
The prosthetic hand’s power supply is inside it. It’s controlled wirelessly. So she can take it off and have it crawl somewhere by itself and do things for her, like Thing. I love this. Watch the video. https://boingboing.net/2025/04/18/teens-new-bionic-hands-can-literally-go-on-solo-missions.html
The Shoplifter. https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-shoplifter.html
And Begin the Beguine. In startling stereo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCYGyg1H56s
Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
GOOD FRIDAY BALLAD
by Fred Gardner
(A day late and a dollar short… Written in ‘72 or ‘73, when $100/week what I and most of my friends were making.)
Her name was Shelly Mandel, her age was twenty-three
A clerk typist working for the state
in Alameda County, Department of Health
A hundred a week was her fate
And God forbid some morning she’s late
.
Now early in the fall comes the day the Jews atone,
The high Holy Day, Yom Kippur
And Shelly observed it in her own way at home
Till by evening she felt more secure
(and since everything’s relative, pure)
.
But Shelly wondered why should the state dock a Jew
When taking off Good Friday is okay
But Reagan just shrugged: getting pushy, aren’t you?
You’re gonna have to sue for your pay
Go away, little girl, go away
.
Two lawyers were found, they sounded real smart
A credit to Shelly’s own race
And Judge Robert Bostick also looked the part
A Superior smirk on his face
As he handed down his ruling in the case
.
All should get paid the same holidays
Good Friday the gentiles will get none
The lawyers responded with words of self-praise
Announcing to the press they had won
What a wonderful job we have done!
.
But Shelly Mandel is out a day’s pay
And thousands more will be deprived
Justice hasn’t changed since Good Friday
And y’all know how Jesus survived
While black-robed magistrates thrived
.
When you go to court you should know the deck is stacked
They’ll uphold the hundred-dollar week
And if we ever want to get Shelly’s twenty back
We’ll have to find a better technique
And y’ all know of what I don’t speak
.
Last verse should now be
.
When you go to court, know the deck is stacked
They’ll uphold five hundred a week
And if we ever want to get Shelly paid back
We’ll have to find a better technique
And y’all know of what I don’t speak.
I WAS STANDING outside the wood-frame community hall of the newly built St. Johns Woods housing project in Portland, Oregon, on a Saturday summer eve, 1943. It pulsed, glowed, and wailed like a huge jellyfish — there was a dance going on. Most of the people who had come to live in St. Johns Woods were working in the shipyards, but there were a few servicemen home on leave, and a lot of teenagers from the high school. Most of them were from the Midwest or the South. I was from farther north, up by Puget Sound, and had never heard people speak southern before. I hung around and finally got up my nerve to go in and listen to the live band play swing and jitterbug. At some point they were playing the Andrews Sisters song “Drinking Rum and Coca Cola.” A girl from St. Johns high school saw me. I was a smallish 13-year-old freshman and she was a large gentle woman of a girl who (for what reason I’ll never know) relentlessly drew me out on the floor and got me to dance with her.
I had no social confidence or experience. My usual pastimes were watching the migratory waterfowl in the sloughs along the Columbia River or sewing moccasins. The war and its new jobs had brought my family off the farm and into the city. I was first exhilarated and then terrified: as I reached around this half-known girl — taller than I — I could feel her full breasts against my ribs. My hand settled into the unfamiliar triangle at the base of her broad back and I smelled her sweet and physical odor. I was almost overpowered by the intuition of sexuality, womanliness, the differences of bodies. I had never danced before, never held a woman. I could barely get my breath. She simply kept me moving, swinging, swaying, with infinite patience, and as I got my breath back I knew I was, now, dancing. I exulted then, knowing I could do it. It was “our era, our dance, our song.” I didn’t dance with her again, she was soon gone with an older boy. But she had given me entry to the dance, and I had with astonishing luck passed a barrier of fear and trembling before the warmth of a grown woman. I had been in on adult society and its moment.
Each dance and its music belong to a time and place. It can be borrowed elsewhere, or later in time, but it will never be in its moment again. When these little cultural blooms are past, they become ethnic or nostalgic, but never quite fully present — manifesting the web of their original connections and meanings — again.
— Gary Snyder, "Tawny Grammar"
“OUT THERE, all around them to the last fringes of occupancy, were Toobfreex at play in the video universe, the tropic isle, the Long Branch Saloon, the Starship Enterprise, Hawaiian crime fantasies, cute kids in make-believe living rooms with invisible audiences to laugh at everything they did, baseball highlights, Vietnam footage, helicopter gunships and firefights, and midnight jokes, and talking celebrities, and a slave girl in a bottle, and Arnold the pig, and here was Doc, on the natch, caught in a low-level bummer he couldn’t find a way out of, about how the Psychedelic Sixties, this little parenthesis of light, might close after all, and all be lost, taken back into darkness … how a certain hand might reach terribly out of darkness and reclaim the time, easy as taking a joint from a doper and stubbing it out for good.”
― Thomas Pynchon, ‘Inherent Vice’
THE RISE AND FALL OF A SAN FRANCISCO PARTY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
How Sublime, a mysterious dancing hippy in Oakland and a legendary SF party turned April 20 into an international party
by Lester Black
Debby Goldsberry was nervous. It was the afternoon of April 20, 1997, and she was helping organize San Francisco’s first 4/20 weed party, a benefit for the Cannabis Action Network, or CAN. The organizers didn’t know if anyone would show up at Maritime Hall, yet when Goldbserry scanned the parking lot, she saw hundreds of people waiting to get in.
“Once we opened the door, it was free for all, just the freest experience we could have,” Goldsberry recently told SFGATE. “We were completely unprepared with what was about to happen for the 4/20 phenomenon. It was great, it was literally a legendary party.”
The inaugural event raged for 12 hours from 4:20 p.m. to 4:20 a.m. and is still reverberating across global culture. Today, the date is synonymous with marijuana’s highest holiday, but at the time, hardly anyone had made that connection. This largely forgotten SF party was so successful it ran for six years and helped make April 20 the international stoner holiday now celebrated by millions every year.
Goldsberry’s party was itself a product of decades of happenstance connections, set in motion by some 1970s high school hijinks in Marin County, and propelled forward by legions of Deadheads and a mysterious hippie dancing through an Oakland parking lot. In an even stranger twist, CAN’s 1997 4/20 party likely wouldn’t be remembered today if Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell hadn’t died of an overdose in San Francisco a year earlier.
All of these factors came together to shift the folklore of 420 from a secret code word between stoners to a public display of cannabis use in defiance of prohibition, helping legalize weed — and throwing a killer party in the process.
It all started in San Rafael
Many theories have been put forward as to the real origins of 420, from it being a police call sign to a reference to Bob Dylan lyrics, but popular use of the term actually started with a group of high school friends in Marin County, although exactly which group of friends invented the phrase is a matter of bitter disagreement.
One group, who call themselves the Waldos, say that 420 became a nickname for pot because they met at 4:20 p.m. in front of San Rafael High School to search for a secret pot farm. Their story is good enough for the Associated Press and the Oxford English Dictionary.
A rival group in the same town known as the Beebs say the Waldos’ story is “a bunch of bulls—t,”, and that 420 became a code word for pot after an afternoon smoking session when one of the group saw the clock strike 4:20 p.m. and said, “We should load some bongs.” These two camps have spent years fighting this fight.
No matter the story behind it, at first, 420 simply meant the time of day to smoke pot, not the date in April. But by 1974, people had begun observing the April date, as well. The first 4/20 party took place on Mount Tamalpais, where a few dozen people wearing “light ‘hippie clothing’ … and some playing congas!” met on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, according to an email to SFGATE signed “the Waldos.”
“There weren’t massive amounts of people up there and not all assembled at one place,” the email said. “Rather it was smaller pods of 3-8 people celebrating, spaced about 15 to 30 yards apart. … People were celebrating but kind of mellow--peacefully and rather quietly in the clean mountain air … A lot of them had jugs of wine.”
Steven Hager, a former editor at High Times, said in an email to SFGATE that this original party was shut down after a short time. “It was legendary among high school students in Marin for a few years, but never attracted that many, perhaps a few dozen,” he wrote. However, he and other people in the nascent legalization movement heard about the 420 call sign, and used it to unite underground pot smokers.
“Upon learning about the code, I immediately began using it as a tool for legalization. Watching the sunset across the ocean from a high ridge seemed Pythagorean and evidence of spiritual use,” Hager said.
Meanwhile, the term also took root in the growing Grateful Dead community, spreading across the world as the band’s pot-smoking fans used it to jubilantly declare their love of marijuana. By the late 1980s, 420 had fully worked its way into the counterculture, showing up, for example, in classified ads for roommates asking that applicants be “420 friendly,” and 4:20 p.m. (and 4:20 a.m. for the especially devout) was recognized as the perfect time to get high.
‘Even more grand than getting baked at 4:20’
By the early 1990s, cannabis use was plummeting as the American government waged a full-scale assault against all drugs. Ronald Reagan’s administration had spent the 1980s using the American military to wage a war against pot growers in Northern California, and mainstream society widely looked down upon pot smokers.
California, however, was home to a growing movement to fight against cannabis prohibition. Berkeley-based CAN, Goldsberry’s organization, was one of the primary groups arguing for the legalization of hemp and medical marijuana. Part of the group’s work involved following the Grateful Dead and setting up booths at shows, where they would turn the already-converted into full-on cannabis activists.
CAN members were set up outside a Dead show at the Oakland Coliseum on Dec. 28, 1990, when they saw a hippie in tie-dye “just dancing merrily through the Grateful Dead parking lot” handing out a flyer advertising a 4/20 party on Mount Tamalpais, Goldsberry said. The flyer likely started one of the most persistent 420 myths, mistakenly saying the number was “the police code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress.” There’s no evidence this is true, but the flyer also proposed a change in what the code should mean:
“Now, there’s something even more grand than getting baked at 4:20. We’re talking about the day of celebration, the real time to get high, the grand master of all holidays: 4/20, or April 20. This is when you must get the day off work or school. We are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420 in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpias,” the flyer said, typo and all.
This fundamental shift — that 420 should go from a secret code to a call to openly smoke pot in public — was immediately appealing to CAN organizers, so they copied the flyer for a May 1991 High Times story.
It took a few years, but 4/20 parties slowly started to take off. In 1995, cannabis fans in Vancouver, British Columbia, organized a celebration in a public park that attracted a few hundred people. Goldsberry said she heard of students at UC Boulder organizing a major smoking session on their campus. And then in 1997, Goldsberry and her fellow CAN organizers decided to throw their own 4/20 party in San Francisco — a fateful event that would get a tragic boost from a beloved California band.
‘This is freaking crazy!’
A year before the party, in May 1996, Bradley Nowell, the lead singer of ska band Sublime, was found dead in a San Francisco motel from a heroin overdose. It happened the afternoon before the band was set to play a sold-out show at Maritime Hall, a now-defunct venue in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. Sublime was on the verge of releasing its self-titled third album, which would go on to quickly sell 5 million copies and catapult the band into superstardom. The band’s songs were suddenly in heavy radio rotation across the entire country, yet the surviving members didn’t want to play under the Sublime name again, instead performing as the Long Beach Dub Allstars.
Michael “Migs” Happoldt, one of the original guitarists for Sublime and a member of the Allstars, said the band decided to play CAN’s 1997 4/20 show as a gift to their San Francisco fans.
“In our eyes it was a makeup show to the city,” he said. “Of course, we were down for the weed part of it, but [promoting 420] really wasn’t our thing.”
It was only the third show the Allstars had played since Nowell died, and the news that the former members of Sublime were coming back to San Francisco quickly spread. A show listing in the April 18, 1997, Santa Cruz Sentinel for the “4-20 Hemp Festival” at the Maritime Hall said fans could “celebrate the green stuff with Long Beach Dub Allstars (formerly Sublime), Salmon, Zuba, Natural Fonzie and others in a benefit for the Cannabis Action Network.”
The show was a massive hit. Six hundred people were waiting to get in the building as soon as the doors opened at 4 p.m., Goldsberry said. Inside, there was music, but also a hemp cafe and a hemp expo to help celebrate the disparaged plant. People were smoking anywhere they wanted to — Happoldt said that even for his weed-loving band, it was a night of many firsts, including his first time smoking cannabis kief and seeing people drink THC tinctures — and the venue’s owners couldn’t stop the party.
“I’ve never been yelled at by anyone as bad as the owner of the venue that first year, who said, ‘This is freaking crazy!’” Goldsberry said, adding, “It was such a joyful thing, it was a true moment of freedom many of us never experienced because of the war on drugs. It was 420 full circle. We all came together and created a space for ourselves.”
“There’s no way to forget that show, that was all time,” Happoldt said. It was also a rejuvenating moment for the band, still reeling from Nowell’s tragic death. He said they weren’t even planning on touring until after they saw the sold-out show go wild for their music.
“The fact that 3,000 people wanted to see what our stupid asses were up to was amazing. The response in that crowd and that city made us rethink the whole thing, like maybe people need to hear more from us. We weren’t feeling that. What we were getting was like, ‘without Brad you’re nothing,’ but when the real people spoke, it was a f—king different story,” Happoldt said.
‘Its legacy absolutely continues’
The Maritime Hall management’s total shock at the unstoppable 12-hour party eventually settled down, and CAN kept their 4/20 event running for the following six years. But once the hall closed down for unrelated reasons, the party ended; CAN couldn’t find a receptive venue. By that time, 420 had completed its transition from a secret phrase to the dictionary definition for the stoner’s highest holiday.
“‘Four-twenty’ — once an obscure Bay Area term for pot — is showing up nationally in the ads and business names of concert promoters, travel agencies, even high-tech companies,” reads an April 20, 2002, story in the Modesto Bee that references events scheduled across the Bay Area, including CAN’s 6th annual 420 Hempfest, “an ad hoc smoke-in on Mount Tamalpais in suburban Marin County and a ‘420’ night at a Mission District bar.”
The 2002 newspaper story doesn’t mention anything about Hippie Hill, the iconic grassy meadow in Golden Gate Park that has been a magnet for counterculture for decades. It wasn’t until 2003, after CAN’s party ended, that people started congregating there on April 20, according to Goldsberry. An April 21, 2005, story in the Oakland Tribune said “hundreds” of people were gathering on the hill to celebrate the stoner holiday.
Hippie Hill would eventually come to be the capital of Bay Area pot parties, with tens of thousands of people heading to the park by 2016, the same year California voters legalized recreational cannabis. It eventually became trash-filled chaos hated by many of its neighbors, so in 2017, organizers attempted to turn it into an official city-sanctioned party, with concert programming and even the legal sale of weed. Social distancing mandates during the pandemic derailed that party, and organizers have since been unable to raise enough money to host the official party, which requires expensive permits, as the California cannabis industry sputters. Organizers canceled last year’s party, as well as this year’s official party.
But even without an official city-sanctioned event, the legend of 420 and its significance to stoners everywhere continues.
“The events come and go, but the date and its legacy absolutely continues,” Goldbserry said.
“When I was in college, I took a class on folklore and how it’s transmitted through the culture and I never imagined that I would be able to see something like this happen, where culture is changed through communication, human gathering and putting some crazy ideas down on a piece of paper,” Goldsberry said.
Goldsberry credits that dancing hippie in Oakland, who passed out flyers for the Mount Tamalpais party, for making April 20 into an international holiday, though she still has no idea who that tie-dyed Deadhead was.
“That’s the remaining mystery on 420 — who made that flyer?” Goldsberry said.
LOGAN WEBB’S GEM goes for naught as Giants are blanked by Angels
by Susan Slusser
ANAHEIM — Logan Webb stacked up strikeout after strikeout Friday, including getting Mike Trout three times.
That was not enough, though, with zero response from the San Francisco Giants’ hitters to help him out. The Angels used a two-out, double-happy burst in the second inning to take the opener of a three-game series 2-0, and the Giants flat squandered Webb’s best outing of his five to date.
“It sucks when we don’t give our pitchers support,” third baseman Matt Chapman said. “It seems like he goes out there and gives us an opportunity to win in every game and tonight there’s two balls that maybe get through the infield that we feel like we should make the play on and it’s still a 0-0 ballgame, with Logan pitching his butt off. We missed an opportunity for sure.”
Webb K’d a career-high-tying 12, five of them looking, his changeup and sinker a devastating combo, and he said it was the best his changeup has felt in a year and a half. “I’m super excited about the changeup,” he said.
“Next-level stuff from him,” manager Bob Melvin said.
Webb didn’t walk a batter and he allowed just one earned run to become the fourth Giants pitcher to have 10 or more strikeouts and no walks four times (the others: Madison Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum and Juan Marichal). He’s also the first pitcher in Giants history to record 12 or more strikeouts, zero walks and take the loss. Gaylord Perry did the same but with 11 strikeouts on June 30, 1970, against the Padres.
Webb’s teammates never got a man past second, and didn’t get past first from the fourth inning on, collecting just four hits and three walks while striking out eight times. Onetime Giants starter Tyler Anderson went six scoreless innings and induced seven flyballs while lowering his ERA to 2.08.
The Giants were shut out for the third time in 20 games, and they also might have incurred another loss, with Casey Schmitt likely to go on the IL on Saturday, the first transaction the team will have made since the Opening Day roster was set. Melvin said that Schmitt strained his left oblique in the batting cage before the game. Brett Wisely is probably the best bet to replace him.
After Webb opened the second with two strikeouts, Nolan Schanuel and Zach Neto hit back-to-back doubles, but even then, Webb might have gotten out with just one run allowed. Kyren Paris, who played at Freedom-Oakley, hit a grounder right between Chapman and shortstop Willy Adames, and Adames looked ready to corral it when Chapman darted in front of him and the ball hit off the heel of his glove, sending in Neto.
“When I look at it, it’s probably a little bit far further than I thought,” Chapman said of watching the video of the bouncer. “I think if I was to do it over again, I probably wouldn’t have taken it. I don’t want to be under-aggressive, but I also don’t want to make a super hard play when Willy has an easier play.”
The damage might have been more if Paris had not been trying to steal second on Jo Adell’s drive to right; second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald helped with a little deke at the bag as Paris went in headfirst, and by the time he got up and got chugging again, Paris couldn’t score on the double.
LaMonte Wade Jr. wound up playing first and batting ninth against Anderson, a lefty who’s actually better against right-handed hitters; entering the evening he was holding right-handers to an .075 average, which is why Mike Yastrzemski got the start in right over Luis Matos.
Wade is among those who’ve gotten off to particularly slow starts; after going 0-for-3 Friday, he’s batting .096. He’s been doing lots of extra work with the team’s hitting coaches and, Wade said before the game, “I’m just trying to put the barrel on the ball. It’s frustrating whenever you have these kinds of things.”
Also hitless Friday were Adames (.185) and catcher Patrick Bailey (.170).
The interleague series, which resumes Saturday evening with a nice contrasting matchup between young Giants starter Landen Roupp and veteran Kyle Hendricks, is also notable on the executive level: This is the first time San Francisco general manager Zack Minasian’s team is facing the club his older brother Perry runs.
“I don’t know if they’re going to sit together,” Melvin said with a smile. “I think they’re pretty competitive.”
(sfchronicle.com)
DOGGIE BAG
“I had dinner with Mickey one night,” Costas said. “It was in January in New York, and it was really cold. We were walking back to the Regency, where we both were staying, and I had noticed that Mickey had asked for a doggie bag for his dinner in the restaurant--which was sort of strange. Anyway, he asks me to take a walk with him. Now this wasn’t the kind of night where you wanted to take a stroll, but I went along, over to Madison Avenue, where he knew this homeless guy who was in a cardboard box. He knocks on the cardboard and suddenly this guy pops up his head. He looks frightened--and frightening--not knowing who’s there, and suddenly when he sees us, the guy’s face softens. He says, ‘Oh, hi, Mick.’ And Mantle hands him his dinner. It was clear to me he had done this many times before.
“Did it mean that Mickey was the greatest humanitarian in the world? No--just that that was part of him, just as an hour later he could have been drunk in a bar and told some very nice autograph-seeker to go f_k himself.”
Mantle’s drinking, and his remorse and fear over its many consequences--for his wife Merlyn, his four sons, and himself--hounded him. All through the period when he reemerged as a hero, he had wild anxiety attacks during which he would hyperventilate and shake. In 1985, while making a personal appearance in Portland, Maine, Mantle began suffering blinding headaches.
(via Bob Costas)
POLITICAL FLASHBACK
by Fred Gardner
The removal of 381 books from the US Naval Academy Nimitz library last week was flashback-inducing for your correspondent.
When Sen. Joseph McCarthy was at the peak of his power in March, 1953, Dashiell Hammett was subpoenaed to appear before his Subcommittee. McCarthy's pretext for grilling Hammett and other writers alleged to have CP affiliations, was that libraries maintained overseas by the US State Department purchased their books.
I was 11 years old and wide awake. I knew who Dashiell Hammett was because in 1951 he and a man named Alpheus Hunton had been sent to prison for refusing to co-operate with federal investigators trying to find four Communist Party leaders who had jumped bail. (My mother knew Alpheus Hunton through the Teachers Union. One of my deepest memories is the sweet cherry smell of his pipe tobacco.) I remember a picture of Hunton in the New York Times, handcuffed to Hammett. I remember my parents discussing the story, but I was more interested in the National League pennant race, which the Dodgers were running away with.
Eleven CP leaders had been charged with advocating the violent overthrow of the US government in violation of the the Smith Act. They were prosecuted in Federal Court in Manhattan by a young US Attorney named Roy Cohn, with Judge Harold Medina presiding. In late 1949 they were all found guilty, fined $10,000 and sentenced to five-year prison terms. Because the US Supreme Court had yet to rule on the Constitutionality of the Smith Act, the CPers were granted bail (on appeal, after being denied by Judge Medina). Money for this purpose had been raised by an entity called the Civil Rights Congress from more than 400 donors. Hammett and Hunton were trustees of the bail fund. In July, 1951, when the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of the Smith Act, four of the CP leaders jumped bail. The trustees were subpoenaed and ordered to produce their account books. They refused. They cited the Fifth Amendment, but the judge ruled that it didn't apply because the trustees would not be incriminated by revealing the donors' names. Hammett and Hutton were found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to six months in federal prison. (The system was still segregated and they would do time at separate prisons in Virginia.) The Treasury Department then put a $100,629.02 lien against Hammett for back taxes. Lillian Hellman would be his main source of support in the years ahead.
Hammett's confrontation with Joe McCarthy (and his second with Roy Cohn, who had become subcommittee's counsel) took place on March 26, 1953. Excepts follow.
Cohn: You are the author of a number of rather well-known detective stories. Is that correct?
Hammett: That is right.
Cohn: In adition to that you have written, I think in your earlier period, on some social issues. Is that correct?
Well, I have written short stories that may have –you know, it is impossible to write anything without taking some sort of stand on social issues.
Cohn: I may state, Mr. Chairman, that some 300 of Mr. Hammett's books are in use in the Information Service today, located in, I believe, some 73 information centers. I am sorry, 300 copies, 18 books. You haven't written 300 books, is that right?
Hammett: That is a lot of books.
Cohn: Now Mr. Hammett when did you write your first published book?
Hammett: The first book was Red Harvest. It was published in 1929. I think I wrote it in 1927, either 1927 or 1928.
Cohn: At the time you wrote that book, were you a member of the Communist Party?
Hammett: I decline to answer, on the grounds that an answer may tend to incriminate me, relying on my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States...
Cohn: Mr. Hammett, is it a fact that you recently served a term in prison for contempt of court?
Hammett: Yes.
Cohn: And from what did that arise?
Hammett: From declining to answer whether or not I was a trustee of the bail bond fund of the Civil Rights Congress...
Cohn: Now, you said it was for a refusal to answer. The fact is you were a trustee of the bail fund of the Civil Rights Congress. Is that right?
Hammett: That was the question that I went to jail for not answering, yes...
McCarthy: Have you ever engaged in espionage against the United States?
Hammett: No.
McCarthy: Have you ever engaged in sabotage.
Hammett: No.
.McCarthy: Would you think that American communism would be a good system to adopt in this country?
Hammett: I will have to decline to answer that, on the grounds that an answer may tend to incriminate me. Because, I mean, that can't be answered "yes" or "no."
McCarthy: You could not answer "yes" or "no," whether you think communism is superior to our form of government?
Hammett: You see, I don't understand. Theoretical communism is no form of government. You know, there is no government. And I actually don't know, and I couldn't without –even in the end, I doubt if I could give a definite answer.
McCarthy: Would you favor the adoption of communism in this country?
Hammett: You mean now?
McCarthy: Yes.
Hammett: No.
McCarthy: You would not?
Hammett: For one thing, it would seem to me impractical, if most people didn't want it.
McClellan (a rightwing Senator from Arkansas): Are you not voluntarily, now, by taking refuge in the fifth amendment to the constitution, committing an act of voluntary self incrimination before the bar of public opinion, and do you not know that?
Hammett: I do not think that is so, sir, and if it is so, unfortunately, or fortunately for me in those circumstances, the bar of public opinion did not did not send me to jail for six months...
McCarthy: Then we are free to judge according to our observations and conclusions based on your refusal to answer and your demeanor on the stand.
Hammett: Is that a question, sir?
McCarthy: Mr. Hammett if you were spending, as we are, over $100 million a year on an information program allegedly for the purpose of fighting communism, and if you were in charge of that program to fight communism, would you purchase the works of some 75 communist authors and distribute their works throughout the world, placing our official stamp of approval upon those works? Or would you rather not answer that question?
Hammett: Well, I think – of course I don't know– if I were fighting communism, I don't think I would do it by giving people any books at all.
McCarthy couldn't help but snicker for a split second, according to Lillian Hellman, who was in the hearing room. She said it was the first time anybody had ever really hit him with a counterpunch.
C.P. Trussel's account of the hearing in the NY Times noted another famous writer's capitulation to McCarthy: "Langston Hughes, poet and essayist of New York... said he would like to see his books found in the overseas libraries replaced by ones he had written since 1950."
Trussel also reported that "Roy M. Cohn, chief subcommittee counsel, and David Schine, principal consultant of the group, volunteered that copies of books by Owen Lattimore, Johns Hopkins University Professor and long a target of Mr. McCarthy in his claim of Communist infiltration of the State Department, were in overseas information centers." (Cohn and Schine, his boy toy, had visited Paris and Rome at taxpayer expense to confirm the offensive presence of Lattimore's "Ordeal by Slander.")
"Senator McCarthy directed the subcommittee staff to call on Scott McLeod, the State Department’s new head of loyalty and security-risk investigations and files, to determine who selected books by alleged Communist authors for these overseas libraries and why."
The same kind of witch hunts are going on today, and as an accusation, "DEI" casts a wider net than "Communist," which was specific. In many towns and cities, it will take courage for librarians to order a book like "James" by Percival Everett, masterpiece though it might be.
THE PLOT TO KILL SOCIAL SECURITY
by Jim Hightower
How ironic: The most inefficient bureaucracy in government turns out to be Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”
That could be humorous, except that DOGE — a creature of the right-wing Project 2025 — has been devastating to millions of people. And it’s about to get worse. Elon Musk — the flighty überrich autocrat put in charge of “efficiency” by his buddy Trump — is now going after the Social Security deposits of 73 million senior citizens.
But wait, hasn’t Trump himself promised (loudly and often) that he would not ax this essential retirement program? Yes… but Elon is his “gotcha.”
Rather than an honest kill, Musk is strangling the program with bureaucratic red tape. Claiming to be cutting waste, he’s eliminating 7,000 people who administer the program, shouting, “Bureaucratic excess!”
Except, Social Security is actually a renowned model of government efficiency, spending less than 1 percent of its revenue on administration. So by whacking the people who do the work, Musk is actually whacking the people who are due to receive their earned benefits.
For example, he’s decreed that the public can no longer apply for benefits or resolve questions by phone. Instead, they must now travel in person to some distant Social Security office. But the staff there has also been decimated, so people who’ve come from afar are told to go back home and call for an appointment — a call that will often not be answered.
What’s at work here is a Musk-Trump ploy to wreck Social Security’s remarkable record of efficiency. Their intent is to make the service so bad that they can then let profiteering corporations privatize your retirement. Don’t let them.
LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT
Supreme Court Blocks Venezuelans’ Deportations Under Wartime Law, for Now
Defying the Law and the Courts, Trump Seeks to Shift the Focus
Appeals Court Pauses Contempt Proposal Over Deportation Flights
Maryland Deportee Told Senator He Had Been in Isolation in El Salvador Prison
Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard
Losing International Students Could Devastate Many U.S. Colleges
AN ACTUAL PLAN TO TAKE ACTION
If any of you are feeling as I do, horrified, angry, depressed, and railroaded, that we, the majority of this country, have no plan to fight back against the crimes being committed against our country, our way of life and our liberties, then you might want to read the following article. It doesn’t have any answers nor does it sugar coat, but it does lay out the direction we need to take to combat what the other side has so carefully plotted for many years and is now carrying out. This is combat and we need the tools to engage. The “law” is not working. We are the majority but our power is too diffuse. It needs to be concentrated. The universities, the law firms and the many nonprofits constantly begging us for donations must band together to form the leadership we need to direct the use of our skills. This article lays out what needs doing. (Nikki Auschnitt)
KEY DATE APPROACHES FOR TRUMP TO INVOKE INSURRECTION ACT
by Brett Wagner & J. Holmes Armstead
Throughout his time as president and his decade on the national political stage, Donald Trump has blasted through the norms and guardrails that have preserved and protected our democratic experiment from people like him for the better part of 250 years.
The next norm to fall may be that of civilian rule after an invocation of martial law.
On Jan. 20, Trump issued an executive order tasking the secretaries of the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to submit a joint report, within 90 days, recommending “whether to invoke the Insurrection Act.” The deadline for that report is Sunday.
Since issuing his executive order, Trump has installed a combative Fox News host with a short resume and a long history of fealty to Trumpism as his secretary of defense. He also replaced the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with a Conservative Political Action Conference darling who endeared himself to Trump by wearing a MAGA hat. And he fired the top judge advocate generals for the Army, Navy and Air Force — the top uniformed lawyers responsible for reviewing the orders from the commander in chief and defense secretary to determine whether they’re legal. Trump’s defense secretary explained this action was taken preemptively to prevent the JAGs from blocking “orders that are given by a commander in chief.” Clearing the way, among other things, for the White House to begin consolidating federal law enforcement under military leadership. The secretary of the Army, for example, in a move consistent with preparing for martial law, was just placed in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives with surprisingly little pushback.
Let’s be clear what this adds up to: The man who promised to “declare martial law on day 1” has wasted no time taking actions designed to subvert the military to meet this end.
Yet despite Trump’s fondness for blasting through norms, there is one norm upon which his apparent plan and political survival depend: The military recognizing him as their commander in chief and obeying his orders.
That norm is no more carved in stone than any other.
Say Trump were to declare martial law. The commander in chief could then be removed by the military, like any commanding officer, for his crimes, especially when issuing an order that is itself a crime. The applicable authority is in Army Regulation 600-20, which addresses command functions and the command that focuses on causes for removal. Sufficient cause should be evident and overwhelming, such as issuing unlawful orders or acting outside of constitutional authority.
Here’s one scenario of how that might play out:
The president signs an executive order declaring martial law. A large and mostly peaceful protest breaks out in a major metropolitan area. The president then pressures the governor of that state, as happened in California during the Rodney King riots, and immediately federalizes the National Guard, ordering troops and tanks into the streets, supported by military forces. The rules of engagement are established for this operation, where any resistance to military authority can be met with deadly force.
Under these rules, commanders in the field authorize “shoot to kill” orders against presumed rioters. The next day, several unarmed protesters are shot and killed by National Guard troops when they fail to immediately disperse. Lawyers for the National Guard move quickly to arrest the service members involved and charge them with unlawful use of force. The president responds by ordering the release of those service members, and the lawyers involved are “relieved of their current assignment.”
In response, two battalion commanders of National Guard units on the scene resign in protest, refusing to obey on the grounds that they’ve been given unlawful orders.
Back in Washington, the executive officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff refuses to convey additional orders continuing martial law from the White House — and further notifies the forces that illegal orders have been issued, and that the president has acted ultra vires (i.e. “beyond his authority”) to his constitutional executive powers by issuing unlawful orders. The executive officer then proceeds to the White House with the provost marshal of the Military District of Washington, accompanied by military police officers, where they arrest the president and the vice president for violating their oaths of office.
We are now at an unprecedented moment in American government. What happens next?
Does the speaker of the House automatically assume the office of the presidency?
No. The constitutional line of succession has been superseded by martial law.
Once Trump declared martial law — or more accurately, “military law” — the president suspended civil government and assumed powers as commander in chief of the United States. Hence, the president, now commander in chief, and his second-in-command, Vance, come under the auspices of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Once arrested, Trump and Vance can be held incommunicado as “dangerous to good order and discipline,” but with their constitutional rights as citizens intact until such a time as a military commission can be constituted to conduct a trial.
With civil government suspended by the now-former president — and the military’s top three JAGs previously removed — military government, counseled by upward of 7,000 remaining members of the JAG Corps, assumes the responsibility for maintaining civil order.
Under this scenario, one question will undoubtedly be on everyone’s minds:
“When, and how, do we get back to civil government?”
It could be until 2026 before that process begins.
Ideally, the two major parties would select their presidential nominees and their two standard-bearers would stand shoulder to shoulder with our military as the fireworks light the sky. But considering the divisive nature of the politics that brought us to this moment (not to mention the civil unrest which may follow the arrest of MAGA’s cult leader), 2026 might seem a little pie in the sky.
It might be helpful, therefore — should our military be forced to step in — that we remind ourselves (and often) that our country has survived one Civil War, and that this — Thank God! — was not that.
Still, our country would be in one hell of a mess, and it would take us years to dig our way out.
Admittedly, these ruminations from a pair of retired military professors barely scratch the surface of the potential scenarios in play should Trump declare martial law. It is our fervent prayer that our speculative exercise serves to discourage the president from using the Insurrection Act in the first place; to educate the general public about martial law and what may loom ahead and to initiate a conversation inside the military itself.
We should all reflect, at this late hour, on former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley’s final remarks to the troops upon retiring:
“We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea of America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
Semper fi.
(Brett Wagner, now retired, served as professor of national security decision making for the U.S. Naval War College and adjunct fellow at the Center for International and Strategic Studies. J. Holmes Armstead, now retired, served as professor of Strategy and International Law at the U.S. Naval War College and as a judge advocate general, inspector general and civil affairs officer in the U.S. Army, Army Reserves and National Guard.)
WHAT IS THE TERRORISM CONFINEMENT CENTER?
by Annie Correal
The Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which lies about an hour outside of San Salvador, the capital, opened in 2023. It was originally meant to be a low-security rehabilitation site (built in part with U.S. funds), but was transformed into Mr. Bukele’s signature “megaprison“ — an emblem of his crackdown on gangs.
It is a sprawling compound with eight hulking cell blocks — each can hold around 3,000 prisoners. Inside, the prison appears orderly and clean to the point of sterility; and it has sophisticated surveillance and other equipment, according to videos and the accounts of people who have been inside.
The prison has become well known because of highly stylized videos and photos from inside posted by the government on social media. They show thousands of tattooed prisoners forced into submission. It now also holds nearly 300 Venezuelan and Salvadoran deportees accused by the U.S. administration of having ties to the criminal gangs Tren de Aragua and MS-13 and sent to El Salvador in the last month.
As part of its gang crackdown, Mr. Bukele declared a state of emergency in 2022 that suspended normal due process rights and ordered mass arrests. Since then, around 85,000 people have been detained, human rights groups say. The country’s other jails and prisons teem with people who in some cases are being held without trial, according to the groups.
CECOT holds convicted inmates, according to Salvadoran officials and the rights groups. Life sentences and capital punishment are forbidden in El Salvador, but some inmates in CECOT have been handed sentences amounting to hundreds of years, and so will never get out alive.
What are the conditions in the prison?
Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, visited CECOT last month, and told The Wall Street Journal that the detainees “have mattresses; they have full meals.” She also said, “They receive time for exercise and are getting medical checks on a regular basis.”
This may be the case for detainees sent from the United States, but not for CECOT’s other inmates, according to interviews with human rights experts and several journalists who have been inside the complex.
Those men are held for more than 23 hours a day in cells with only metal bunks, where they can be seen from above by guards who patrol on catwalks. They have no mattresses or sheets. Forbidden to use utensils, they eat paltry meals — tortillas, rice, beans, instant pasta — with their hands.
They are released from their cells for half-hour a day for exercises or biblical study indoors, according to prison officials. They don’t have access to books and cannot receive mail. Some inmates appear extremely thin, according to some videos made by journalists or YouTube creators.
Mr. Bukele has suggested he would double the number of people kept in every cell to expand the prison’s capacity to 40,000 from about 20,000.
Extreme isolation, and ‘a huge silence.’
Part of what makes CECOT unlike other prisons is the extreme isolation in which its inmates are kept, denied even virtual visits and blocked from access to lawyers, according to rights groups.
Steven Dudley, an expert on El Salvador and director of InSight Crime, a nonprofit and media organization focused on organized crime in Latin America, said: “You are set apart in a space without due process and you are completely incommunicado from your legal defense, your family and any access to any sort of constitutional or legal reprieve.”
He added, “It is the Salvadoran version of going to Siberia.”
Lucas Menget, a French journalist and filmmaker, called it a “tropical gulag.” He visited CECOT in order to make a TV documentary for ARTE, a European public service channel, the week before the United States sent the first flights of detainees in March as part of President Trump’s deportation campaign.
r. Menget said the silence of the inmates was the most disturbing thing.
“I thought that it would be very noisy like in every other jail in the world,” he said. “When we arrived inside, it was a huge silence. Nobody’s talking.”
All media gets the same view.
Journalists and officials permitted inside CECOT are given the same tour, videos show. They are often allowed to talk to an English-speaking inmate, alias “Psycho,” who shares his story of joining a gang as a child in the United States and expresses regret for a life of crime.
Visitors are shown a solitary-confinement cell, where, prison officials say, detainees can be kept for up to 15 days in complete darkness with only a small air hole.
The Salvadoran government has recently given access to CECOT to young influencers, YouTubers (like the host of “How to Survive,” a channel with nearly two million subscribers) and right-wing media outlets.
Mr. Menget, the French filmmaker, says he believes his crew was allowed in because he was exploring the “Bukele model,” in light of the Salvadoran president’s growing popularity among members of the European right.
‘High risk of abuse.’
Deaths and physical abuse in CECOT remain undocumented because of a lack of access to inmates or anyone who has been released, said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.
But, she added, “Based on the torture and mistreatment we have documented in other prisons in El Salvador, we have every reason to believe that people sent to CECOT are at high risk of abuse.”
The U.S. government itself spotlighted atrocities in El Salvador’s prisons in 2023.
At El Salvador’s two dozen other jails, rights groups have documented systematic torture, forced confessions and what Noah Bullock, the executive director of the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal, calls “the intentional denial of access to basic necessities like food, water, health care, hygiene.”
“The physical abuse combined with that systematic denial of basic necessities, according to our research,” Mr. Bullock said, “has caused the deaths of at least 368 people. We think that it’s probably many more.”
He added: “CECOT is sold as a facility whose very design is cruelty, right? Like the whole prison itself is designed to reduce human life to not dying — but likely the conditions in the other prisons are worse.”
(NY Times)
KILMAR FOR PRESIDENT!
by James Kunstler
“Autistic people contribute every day to our nation’s greatness.” —Senator Elizabeth Warren
So, you wonder why Democrats are so anxious to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the USA. Is it to lead the national ticket in 2028? Who else have they got? Pete Buttigieg doesn’t have half of Kilmar’s charisma. AOC is just pretending to be Sandy-from-the-block — and everybody knows it. Who else best represents the party’s newest constituency: the undocumented (people unfairly deprived of documents by a cruel and careless bureaucracy)? Who best represents the Democratic Party’s number one policy goal: diversity fosterization! Kilmar, of course! Viva Kilmar!
It’s also pretty obvious by his recent actions, that Judge “Jeb” Boasberg is angling to be Kilmar’s running mate in ‘28. Perfect! He could fulfil the traditional role of vice-president by doing nothing for four years, which is exactly what people of non-color should do in the Democratic Party’s new national order. (Haven’t they already done enough?) Boasberg could set an example for the rest of America’s dwindling color-deficient population: quit hogging all the action, stop collecting all those dividends and annuities, step aside and give the other a chance at the American Dream!
Did you happen to notice how enterprising Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been since he boldly breached the border in 2011, fleeing persecution from the vicious gangs of his native El Salvador? Running a one-man jobs program, he crossed the country countless times indefatigably from Maryland to California in his mobile office — the legendary KAG SUV — seeking employment opportunities for young women of color otherwise condemned to clean hotel rooms and labor in senior care facilities filled with abusive people of non-color clinging pointlessly to life only to oppress their caretakers with never-ending demands for medication and extra portions of Jello.
Kilmar’s gritty organization, Mara Salvatrucha-13, has been among the Democratic Party’s most effective NGOs in a greater galaxy of justice-seeking ventures marshaled under the USAID umbrella — recently vandalized by Elon Musk’s DOGE band of pillaging oligarchs. MS-13, for short, was beloved among the undocumented for its fund-raising abilities, its networking expertise, and its relentless search for the missing documents the undocumented have been searching for lo these many decades — rumored to be concealed in a vast underground complex in the Catoctin Mountains of Frederick County, MD. (More white peoples’ mischief!)
Thus, it came to pass that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Maryland Dad-of-the-Year, was cruelly snatched from an MS-13 board meeting last month and transported without benefit of due process to the Salvadorean hell-hole known as CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo). And so, his Senator, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled this week to Central America on his one-man rescue mission. The Senator claimed he was detained miles from the gate of CECOT, and yet we have this photograph of Mr. Van Hollen meeting with Kilmar (and an unidentified aide) over Margaritas and pupusas at a cantina in the nearby town of Tecoluca. Asked to comment on the photo, El Savador’s Presidente, Nayib Bukele, declared: “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camp’ & ‘torture!’ Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody,” Mr. Bukele added.
Oh, so you say Señor Presidente! But not if “Jeb” Boasberg can help it. The dauntless super-judge has ordered Kilmar to be returned the USA pronto expressimo, or else he, the judge, is laying criminal contempt charges on the entire West Wing staff of Donald Trump’s White House. They will go to jail just like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, two capos regime of Trump’s MAGA gang, did last year for the insolence of refusing to testify in Congress. Only, they will get life-without-parole! Lessons to be learned, ye miserable color-deficient, oppressors!
Alas, the DC federal district court is a bit short of enforcement officers, so Judge “Jeb” has enlisted the Harvard rowing crew to bring Kilmar back home. Kilmar will take the coxswain’s place in the racing shell as the crew rows up the Pacific Coast to their planned landing spot at Las Olas, CA, just south of San Diego. Joy will reign in Wokeville.
Having displayed such pluck at diplomacy, unnamed sources say Senator Van Hollen is under consideration for Secretary of State when Kilmar wins the 2028 election. Up until now, we’d been hoping for Senator Adam Schiff to fill that spot, but he has his hands full fighting the influence of the Soviet Union on the Trump cabinet. Looking forward, though, to the bold prosecutor, New York AG Letitia ‘Tish” James, moving into the top spot at DOJ, if her term for mortgage fraud ends before Jan-20, 2029. The Democratic Party — such bright prospects! Forward together, with Kilmar and company! Documents for all, at long last!
Michael Arturo
This week I did some digging—not opinion pieces, not partisan rants, just raw numbers and the bureaucratic language behind them. What I found was this: In 2024, the Biden administration deported 3,706 people labeled as “suspected or convicted gang members.” That’s not conjecture—that’s straight from the Department of Homeland Security. And yet somehow, this mass removal didn’t generate a whisper from the mainstream press. No headlines. No think pieces. No somber profiles on NPR.
So I kept digging, trying to understand what “suspected” meant. Who was doing the suspecting? What was the threshold? Was there evidence, or just vibes?
Turns out, it wasn’t much different than how gang affiliations were “identified” under Trump. Tattoos. Neighborhoods. Associations. A traffic stop where the passenger looked nervous. A Facebook post. Nothing that would hold up in court. Nothing that involves a jury or a judge or even a clear accusation. Just a label. Stamped. Processed. Deported.
And here’s where it gets Orwellian. Under Biden, there were no names released. No mugshots. No profiles. No gang names even mentioned. Just numbers—clean, faceless numbers. Like they were vanishing data rows instead of people, it was “border enforcement” by spreadsheet. No story, no resistance. And because it was wrapped in technocratic language and not Trump’s Twitter feed, the media let it slide.
Compare that to what happened when Trump named names. When he put a face, a label, a life on someone—Kilmar Abrego Garcia, for example—the media went into full-on martyr mode. Senator Chris Van Hollen is now at the airport with a carry-on bag full of due process arguments, ready to fly to El Salvador and bring Kilmar back to his family. A restraining order filed by Kilmar’s wife in 2021? Not mentioned. Doesn’t fit the arc.
THE HARVARD-GOVERNMENT DIVORCE IS THE FEEL-GOOD STORY OF THE AGES
When a couple that should never have been together finally breaks up, it’s a happy thing
by Matt Taibbi
From the New York Times editorial board:
Harvard refused on Monday to submit to the Trump administration’s quest to command and control America’s higher education system… “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” [president Alan Garber] wrote in a public letter… With these words, Harvard became the first university to officially resist the administration’s abusive intimidation.
Harvard’s bold decision to risk an un-subsidized future with a mere $53 billion in reserve is a feel-good story everyone can cheer. The federal government and corrupt higher education have finally decided to divorce, and it’s a beautiful thing.
The Trump administration’s war on universities has been conducted with its signature Japanese-monster-movie approach, full of smashed infrastructure, rivers of screaming civilians, and battle scenes so spellbinding, questions of right and wrong go out the window. You can try to weigh the administration’s law-flouting (see below) against the universities’ appalling sense of entitlement, but I suspect many Americans will abandon sides and just cheer the spectacle of intractably self-regarding freaks joined in aerial combat over the Constitution. Harvard vs. the Trump-Monster should have been the next entry in the Shin Godzilla series, now it’s here.
It’s especially welcome if the battle has a happy ending, which looks likely as of week’s end. It took a bizarre series of events to bring us here.
The prelude to the Trump-Harvard battle was the administration’s siege of Columbia, taken with little struggle. The Manhattan Ivy’s capitulation over $400 million in federal funding was seen by many as an outrage, particularly since the deal included a provision to put the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies departments under “academic receivership” for a “minimum” of five years.
The ACLU, suddenly rediscovering its love for campus speech freedom, railed that putting whole areas of study in a federal penalty box was a comical violation of civil liberties. They cited the 1957 case Sweezy v. New Hampshire, a cornerstone academic freedom case that helped drive a stake through the McCarthy era. In it, the New Hampshire Attorney General investigated a professor, Paul Sweezy, for being an alleged “subversive person.” Sweezy was suspected of being a communist who taught that socialism was inevitable in America, and of co-editing an article saying that though violence was undesirable, it was “less to be deplored when used by the Soviet Union than by capitalist countries.” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote:
“When weighed against the grave harm resulting from governmental intrusion into the intellectual life of a university, such justification for compelling a witness to discuss the contents of his lecture appears grossly inadequate. Particularly is this so where the witness has sworn that neither in the lecture nor at any other time did he ever advocate overthrowing the Government by force and violence.”
The issues in 1957 and now are not that different. The high court then was right to conclude there’s more damage in putting the state in charge of reviewing academic speech than there is in allowing instruction that some might conclude to be not just anti-American, but threatening. In the context of the time that was a hard decision, but the right one. In this sense the ACLU and other traditional speech defenders are probably right that the Trump-Columbia deal constituted a “stunning intrusion.”
Less convincing were commenters like historian Joan Scott, who said Trump’s actions were “unheard of” and “even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done.” Coverage consistently ignored the fact that Columbia has been a poster child for decades-long assault by most all universities on academic freedom, as well as a serial violator of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which requires that public funds not be spent “in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes or results in racial [color or national origin] discrimination.”
It would be nice if the NYCLU acknowledged that Columbia’s record is replete with moronic civil liberties offenses. It’s deplatformed with gusto, allowed or encouraged “heckler’s veto” shutdowns of events, and institutionalized compelled-speech “diversity statements” as part of its admissions process (including instructions on what to write, like “When did your privilege result in different treatment than others?”). It has the same problems with the use of race in admissions that Harvard tried to defend and lost at the Supreme Court, and its DEI programs still infect the curriculum with iron race doctrine. The School of Social Work to this day proudly waving the banner of the “PROP or “Power, Race, Oppression, and Privilege” framework,” which makes the department’s “guiding principle” the idea that “anti-Black racism and white supremacy are endemic in our systems and institutions.”
Speech codes are issued in a variety of forms. A Barnard circular even missed the irony of a George Carlin routine, announcing “the following words cannot appear on any posted information at Barnard: shit, piss, suck, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, cocksucker and tits.” These practices and more led to Columbia in 2022 being named the worst campus in the country for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), getting the country’s sole “abysmal” rating. Ironically, Harvard would soon earn a worse review.
After October 7th, 2023, in a heated and difficult situation, the school made bad decisions. A lot of schools responded to this situation in ways less than ordeal (Cooper Union administrators won themselves a fat Title VI suit after a horrific “Jewish students locked in a library“ ordeal), and Columbia seemed to admit to such issues in its early communications. Unfortunately, both parties want to blur lines: the Trump administration seems anxious to define some things that are clearly legal protests as antisemitism and/or discrimination, while schools like Columbia are content to acknowledge “legitimate concerns” without specifying where it crossed a line.
“Part of the problem is that it’s to everybody’s advantage, or they believe it’s to their advantage, to not be specific about problems they’re seeing, or to nix things that could actually be Title VI violations,” says FIRE attorney Robert Shipley.
The Trump administration would have been right to simply demand that Columbia cut the recent shit (and all the other shit). These things are usually resolved on the sly. As Shipley’s colleague Tyler Coward noted, “Historically no higher ed institution has ever lost all its federal funding, which is the consequence for violating Title VI.” But Trump is a different animal. He’s dragging these dramas in the open, making the Ivies dance for their federal crumbs in the most humiliating conceivable manner, like Joe Pesci shooting at the feet of Michael “No, I thought you said, ‘I’m alright Spider’” Imperioli in Goodfellas.
Columbia’s rapid surrender led the administration to expect the same from a bigger target in Cambridge. On April 4th, the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services as well as the General Services Administration sent Harvard University a letter deriding DEI programs as teaching “crude race and identity stereotypes.” They threatened to cut funds if “all efforts” were not made to “shutter such programs.”
Five days later, Dean of Students Thomas G. Dunne gave a cheery interview to the Harvard Crimson, explaining little would change. The Dean’s office, he said, was “operating in the [DEI] arena right now with the same plans that we had at the start of the year.” Programs like the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations and the Office of BGLTQ Student Life would continue, because as Dunne said, “those are… open to all students.” Dunne apparently believed that just by explaining that anyone can download Harvard’s safe space decals, participate in its Gender-Inclusive Housing program, or visit its Queer-Affirming Chaplains office, he could soften the administration’s boner for crushing DEI.
As a preppie who didn’t whiff admission I freeely admit to lingering envy, but it’s a fact that Harvard is misunderstood. It’s home to some of our smartest, but far more of our dumbest. For every student who makes it on genius, a hundred arrive by other channels. These idiots run the country. What binds them is an aura of oblivious up-your-own-assness unique to Harvard (and maybe Yale). Six Harvard grads jargonizing over beers about the flaws of earth’s more vulgar environs will remind you of shipwrecked space aliens guffawing at this primitive planet, while overconfidently awaiting an intergalactic tow.
Like Columbia, Harvard became a monoculture. FIRE two years ago gave them the lowest score ever in its Free Speech rankings, a survey in which they had to round up to 0.00 out of 100 from its true score of -10.69. The school was also the defendant in the Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College Supreme Court case, which put a generation of more or less open racial discrimination by college admissions departments on trial. The ruling against Harvard, which included devastating lines like, “Respondents’ assertion that race is never a negative factor in their admissions programs cannot withstand scrutiny,” put the whole higher ed sector under a cloud of huge potential liability, surely adding to the administration’s belief that it holds leverage over schools.
Nonetheless, according to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard and Trump were making progress toward an agreement through late last week. Both sides, the paper claimed, “wanted to see a [ban on masked protesters] and a winding down of diversity, equity and inclusion in admissions and faculty hiring.” The administration’s newly formed Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism “believed Harvard would concede, just as Columbia had.”
Each side underestimated the other. Harvard apparently believed it would be able to snow the Trump camp and keep its DEI structure by making a few “lawyerly” changes. The administration, I’m told, was shocked by Harvard’s attitude and flipped out when it realized the school didn’t plan to implement serious reforms. Instead of closing the deal, the Trump administration sent Harvard President Alan Garber a five-page “not so fast” letter full of new demands. On the surface, the requirements for “merit-based admissions reform,” “merit-based hiring reform,” and a new emphasis on “viewpoint diversity” sounded reasonable.
A closer look revealed a letter seemingly written by professional humorists out to bust Harvard’s chops. Asking the school to lessen emphasis on political activism in admissions is one thing, but demanding Harvard “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence” is something else. Same with the requirement that the school “commission an external party” to track the existence of viewpoint diversity in “every teaching unit,” an ongoing audit to make sure that “each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.” Harvard responded with its version of a firmly-worded FU letter, cutting itself off from the federal teat.
The document is hilarious. First, Harvard spent a paragraph admitting it had problems with “bias” and “ideological diversity” and “fostering open inquiry,” but made changes, such that “as a result, Harvard is in a very different place today from where it was a year ago.” Then it declared the list of demands presented (a virtually exact satirical mirror of programs Harvard itself imposed over the years) “invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court.” Finally, it dismounted into a plaintive paragraph denouncing restrictions on its unique ability to awesomize earth:
“No less objectionable is the condition, first made explicit in the letter of March 31, 2025, that Harvard accede to these terms or risk the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding critical to vital research and innovation that has saved and improved lives and allowed Harvard to play a central role in making our country’s scientific, medical, and other research communities the standard-bearers for the world…”
The school is already presenting this decision as a sacrifice on par with that of soldiers at Stalingrad or survivors of the Bataan Death March. Someday, maybe this weekend, Harvard will build a statue to its bravery, perhaps depicting president Garber on a horse, or crossing the Delaware garbed in a $53 billion blanket. The New York Times today ran an article explaining “small donors” are helping Harvard make up the $2.26 billion, in a story I’m guessing is meant to be an inspiring rebuke to Trump supporters, even though “Harvard’s Stand Against Trump Is Helping It Raise More Money“ will probably sound like a win to most taxpayers.
The Trump administration did not take kindly to Harvard’s “We protest!” letter. Trump quickly threatened the school’s tax-exempt status via a furious Truth Social post. The president blasted Harvard’s ideological “sickness,” declaring: “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
My first thought reading was, “Can he do that?” The answer seems to be hell no. “Yeah, not a hard one,” is how one attorney put it, pointing to federal law prohibiting the executive from pressuring the I.R.S. Other attorneys were less sure. Either way, administration officials scrambled after Trump’s post to tell papers like the New York Times that any I.R.S. decision about Harvard would be made, a fig leaf seemingly not intended to hold in place. This White House is not much for the fig leaf. It wants you to see the thing behind it, even when that hurts them legally.
My second question was, “Why does Harvard still have tax-exempt status?” The Times quoted a former I.R.S. commissioner, John Koskinen, who said the “chance of getting the I.R.S. to actually revoke the 501(c)(3) status of a major university is almost nonexistent.” As the I.R.S. puts it, 501(c)(3) institutions are “commonly referred to as charitable organizations.” So, Harvard is tax-exempt because it’s a charitable organization. What must it do to retain that status? The I.R.S. explains:
“The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.”
Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation put out a helpful background document in 2012 explaining that a 501(c)(3) might be “a primary or secondary school, a college, or a professional or trade school,” or “a museum, zoo, planetarium, symphony orchestra, or other similar organization” that is “beneficial to the community.”
I’m all for it, but the tax code wasn’t designed to exempt a zoo that charges $82,866 a ticket, earns $4.5 billion a year in investment income, holds $64 billion in net assets, and has admissions offices that annually emit ker-ching! noises audible on Irish beaches. Harvard has become a grossly commercial operation, one that would sell alumni farts in VE RI TAS jars if its leaders thought they had a market.
The school is a de facto business that earns billions with near-zero market exposure, thanks to bottomless subsidies and technical non-profit status. It can offer customers endless government-backed financing for tuition while keeping as a side business a monstrous tax-exempt hedge fund, donations to which are also deductible.
That’s good news for the private equity sector, beneficiary of 39% of Harvard’s endowment allocations. Think of the absurdity: we’ve arranged things so that wealthy shitheads (the Times mentioned GameStop villain and Citadel chief Ken Griffin) can choose to add to Harvard’s $20.9 billion investment in the leveraged buyout industry instead of paying taxes. Ask a former employee of PetSmart or KB Toys how they feel about one of the country’s biggest sources of takeover ammo growing tax-free under the guise of a “charitable organization.”
The NFL once had a similarly absurd 501(c)(6) tax exemption, but for a small part of its business only. In 2015 it voluntarily rushed back to paying taxes once it became clear the $44 million salary of Spam-brained Commissioner Roger Goodell would become a public issue if it balked. With Harvard, salaries for presidents like Claudine Gay (roughly $900,000) and Lawrence Bacow ($1,333,866) get headlines, but the real cheddar has always gone to the Harvard Management Company staff, which manages the school’s (virtually failure-proof) endowment.
“The employer of Roger Goodell (r) quickly abandoned tax-exempt status for fear of bad publicty Will the former employer of Claudine Gay (l) do the same?”
In the last disclosure, salaries of six, seven, eight, and nine million dollars were earned by an HMC team that went on to produce returns the Crimson categorized as “disappointing.” This is $50+ million subsidized dollars spent on a team that collectively would have lost to an S&P index fund:
As podcast partner Walter Kirn noted, a big part of the Harvard business model is welcoming in big numbers foreign students who pay full freight. These students collectively aren’t a subsidy, exactly; more a huge guaranteed revenue stream dependent upon good standing with the state. Now Trump is going after Harvard’s Student Exchange and Visitor Program (SEVP) certification, striking at the school’s customer base. This will be portrayed as xenophobic and tied to the administration’s deportation policies, but almost certainly it’s more about cutting the school’s financial supply lines in political battle. Can Harvard survive if it has to pay taxes and stop playing White Lotus for cash-rich foreigners?
Mainstream coverage has been unanimous in declaring Trump’s demands to Harvard to be illegal or unconstitutional. The lawyers I spoke to, including several who can’t stand Trump, weren’t as sure. “The second part of this is more fraught than you think,” is how one put it. In particular, a case called Bob Jones University v. United States may create serious wiggle room for the administration to “run wild” on Harvard and other schools if they want, as she put it.
The 1983 Bob Jones case the Supreme Court upheld the denial of tax-exempt status to the religious school on the basis that it prohibited interracial dating. Chief Justice Warren Burger, noting that “the purpose of a charitable trust may not be illegal or violate established public policy,” wrote the majority opinion upholding an IRS decision to revoke the school’s exempt status. The Treasury in 1970 said it could no longer “legally justify allowing tax-exempt status [under § 501(c)(3)] to private schools which practice racial discrimination.”
Some will scoff at the notion that instituting admissions policies that went beyond legal affirmative action and clearly discriminated against (for starters) Asian students is equivalent to the Bob Jones policy. Students for Fair Admissions however certainly describes such admissions policies as racially discriminatory, and therefore may give the Trump administration a hammer in negotiations.
The use of the IRS to threaten is another matter. Other presidents have used the Treasury to go after political opponents and been ripped for it. If it turns out that’s what’s going on in this case, “I would hope that there would be a similar adverse reaction to Trump’s attempts to deploy the income tax system in his war against Harvard,” said former ACLU director Nadine Strossen. However, even Strossen isn’t certain Trump’s “Truth” by itself is a violation, and other attorneys say the larger issue may be whether cases like Bob Jones allow the IRS to involve itself in the affairs of publicly supported universities.
All this is secondary to the possibility that a system of broad-scale subsidies to hedge funds masquerading as schools might be coming to an end, which brings us to the chief conundrum of the Trump administration.
For decades the United States has been transforming into a public-private blob of intertwined, bureaucratic unaccountability. The phenomenon is observable in every direction, from a finance sector insulated by an implied bailout to subsidized mass dysfunction in trade, health care, national security, and other sectors. The problem has been described by corporate lobbyists fed up with “big government” and by left-leaning writers like Chris Hedges, whose Death of the Liberal Class chronicled the dangers of liberalizing NGOs losing independence as they’re swallowed into a larger whole. Even Democratic speechwriters have conceded of late that it’s become difficult to defend the Gordian Knot that American society has become.
Harvard is the ultimate example of an institution that’s become more bureaucracy than university, where subsidies have reduced once-mighty brains to a mush of arrogant entitlement. It could use time in the wilderness. Other schools like Columbia could, too. If they find they can still thrive in the free market as censorious imbecilic monocultures, good for them! If not, maybe they’ll rediscover the virtues of academic inquiry. Trying to force that epiphany by presidential fatwa seems a bad idea. Could we be lucky enough to see academia walk the plank voluntarily?
(racket.news)
to Laura Carr…is your pretty native plant a Sickle Leaf Onion?
aka scytheleaf onion
Anyone not alarmed by the Insurrection Act report is part of the threat. Beware protestors today. Beware of agents provocateurs…
Re Bird and Beckett bathroom shot: I’ve always wanted to appear on bathroom walls. Success!
( that’s a great bookstore, often with live jazz included).
Ps:
London Financial Times, Apr. 19:
Editor:
I recently re-read The Great Gatsby for the first time in decades and find Sarah Churchwell’s parallels with our modern Tech and Maga elite to be right on the, er, money (The Weekend Essay, Life & Arts, April 5). But beyond that, I was also struck by this brief passage at the beginning of the novel, an exchange between the main characters as they gathered for drinks in an oceanfront mansion:
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man Goddard?…. Well, it’s a fine book and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved…. It’s up to us who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
I’ve heard the same sentiments expressed by Trump supporters, by people who are unlikely to recognize that F. Scott Fitzgerald was mocking such casual ignorant racism, and probably didn’t have to invent such dialogue but was likely quoting from people he knew. Sadly, the anti-immigrant fear-mongering of reactionary politicians, even though a century has passed, too often still appeals.
Steve Heilig, USA
Laura Carr, Google says Portuguese Squill or Scytheleaf Onion aka California wild onion.
Good morning,
Really? Reduced this population by 38% in the prior 7 years? From 2010-2017? What? How? … 🤔?
Definitely need a functioning facility, but Why on earth call it a behavioral health wing? Mental illness no matter what you think is not a behavioral issue. It is an illness behavior is secondary.
If the outside structure and resources were provided effectively and adequately, you would see a lot less mental illness in the jail.
I cannot get over that supposed 38% reduction. Give me a break. Because we all know that has increased tremendously.
Often people are arrested in the midst of a Serious Mental Crisis. There is no discernment via LE (some officers better than others) to ones condition they always assume drugs first! If it were approached more knowledgeably they could have less MI cases in the jail!
Physical Plant and Functional Needs
In order to better understand and identify deficiencies in the Mendocino
County Jail, the August 2015 Jail Needs Assessment Study analyzed the changing inmate populations and their needs relative to safety, efficiency, programming, treatment,
and services. The following are the Key Findings from the Needs Assessment.
Mentally Ill Inmates – The mentally ill inmates on psychotropic medications
over the last seven years make up 22 percent of the population. They are being housed
in scattered locations throughout the facility, making it challenging for mental health staff
to treat them in a comprehensive and focused manner. Because of competing programs
(showers, visiting etc.), it is very difficult for staff to ensure all legal requirements are satisfied.
This is our most difficult population to manage. The Sheriffs’ Office, our justice partners, and the Mental Health Department have taken this problem head on. We have implemented diversion programs that have helped reduce this population by 38 percent over the last seven years.
New jail application from 2017 (8 years ago)!
https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Mendocino-County-SB-844-Application.pdf
mm 💕
Excellent AVA edition today–the pieces on Social Security and the Insurrection Act are timely and important, as well as others on the general lawlessness at hand.
And Gary Snyder, one of my favorites–what a sweet remembrance of his first dance, at age 13, unmanly and unformed, with an older woman who generously gave him a fine gift–his first lesson in dancing with a woman.
Nobody is trying to reign in Social Security, including Trump, and that’s the problem. Instead we are all riding on a ship going full speed ahead with a future of either sinking or running aground.
For future reference, “rein.” Not “reigh.”
For future reference, “rein.” Not “reigh.”
mn
If that’s the best you got, you ain’t got much…
Laz
My comment was on language usage. Nothing more.
We could play with this same issue in a slightly different way–We should strive at last to “rain on their parade”– that of the very well-off and exceedingly rich. They are taking more than their share, way more than any sane person should grasp for or think they need…. Higher taxes would be the “rain.” They would all be fine for sure, might even come to feel better about themselves, that they’d actually helped those who have less and were suffering….
Huh?
Aw, George, we’ ve said this all before–The real answer to this really important issue is: Progressive tax rates–once commonly done, and common sense for the common good–now fallen by the wayside. Re-institute progressive tax rates–that is, make the well-off and especially the very rich PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE for the common good. Said another way– rein in the rich as they get wealthy on all our backs. Make them share with others who are less grasping and greedy, but in need of life’s necessities. Greed, even in America, has its limits.
There is not enough tax money out there, and besides, taxpayers can flee.
Not true–There is plenty of money if taxes are set fairly, with the rich no longer getting their huge breaks, due to constant lobbying for benefits far beyond what is fair-sharing, far beyond what they deserve. The law should also not let them flee, that’s just another way to avoid helping the country they are earning their money in. The rich have been scheming for decades now, and they have succeeded–time to turn- back their efforts so that all can benefit fairly. Way past time. Your excuses here for the rich don’t cut it.
In the book, “The Dawn Of Everything” by Graeber, and Wengrow the three freedoms are presented:
“(1) the freedom to move away or relocate from one’s surroundings; (2) the freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others; and (3) the freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones. ” I would prefer to call these rights, and not freedoms. Freedom means taking responsibility for yourself. That said, Graeber, and Wengrow “freedoms” applies to people believing they are being over taxed and choose to leave, and disobey.
What is fair to one is unfair to another. There are also plenty to vilify and blame. “The Rich” who scheme, and the “lazy” who scheme as well. What we have is a very large bi-partisan club called the Social Security Fantasy Club that represent a majority of Americans. There is the raise taxes on the rich, but not on me chapter, the we can grow out of if chapter, the let’s ignore it chapter, the we can raise tariffs and cut other other government programs to pay for it chapter, we can borrow our way out of it chapter, the I don’t care, the government promised me chapter, and the it’s not really a problem chapter.
Obfuscation is the gist of your message, George. “Freedom means taking responsibility for yourself.” “What is fair to one is unfair to another.” “There are also plenty to vilify and blame.” These are unfocused generalities–platitudes, really– that serve only to confuse and mystify. They prevent us from solving the real problems of society, with focused, efficacious actions based on facts and needs. Our nation is a rich nation. For the common good —in fairness— adequate funds for a basic support system for the aging, in medical care and finances, should be supported on and on.
Social Security is one of the humane answers we’ve chosen to help prevent impoverishment of the aging. We are fortunate that an earlier American generation saw that need clearly and acted, setting-up a system that has worked well for decades. Most countries lack such a system, and the aging suffer for that lack. We do need from time to time, to adjust the system to sustain it, as changes occur in our society.
Now is one of those times. The aging of the baby boomers is one temporary strain on the system, as is the fact that people are living longer. The upper limit of $176,100 income for SS taxation is a huge constraint for continued SS support. Clearly, this limit needs to be raised. The tax is not that large, at 6.2% for both employee and employer. For those earning incomes at the current upper limit and more, $6 out of every $100 is hardly a burden. But it takes political will, a vision of human need and morality, and a sense among us all to share burdens and costs. And for the very fortunate among us, the wealthy and the very rich, to choose not to be hogs at the trough.
+1
Note of local interest. Gary Snyder’s sister Thea worked as a counselor in the late 1950s at my parents’ summer camp near Philo, El Rancho Navarro. She already had been a model and went on to become a marriage counselor, pilot, writer and artist.
For Anthea Corinne Snyder Lowry
1932-2002
She was on the Marin County Grand Jury, heading to a meeting, south of Petaluma on the 101. The pickup ahead of her lost a grassmower off the back. She pulled onto the shoulder, and walked right out into the lane to take it off. That had always been her way. Struck by a speedy car, an instant death.
White egrets standing there
always standing there
there at the crossing
on the Petaluma River.
Gary Snyder, 2004
Marshall and Steve, thank you both. what a remembrance that little poem is.
Almost Fringe Festival Point Arena
–at the Lighthouse
https://youtu.be/dNUsuLMCME0?si=0zGyOpUarJ_aaQIr
–in town
https://youtu.be/MOolw4wpHgQ?si=Z1VdeqObhcChVFqu
New business, The Record
https://youtu.be/0bMgONFxY2E?si=dj7DZOEgB9fE2aIM
Almost Fringe Festival in full swing
https://youtu.be/aGUA-9722NY?si=E5WAa0rsMAbSgymh
Urban myths are entertaining, but the real origin of the use of “420” as a reference to marijuana was CA Senate Bill 420, the Medical Marijuana Program Act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Senate_Bill_420
A disgusting new low from Kunstler today. He’s just a really vile person.
Agreed. I really don’t understand why the AVA publishes his crap. It’s all diarrhea from a hateful mouth.
Bruce includes Kunstler to keep your blood pressure up.