Extraordinary times call for extraordinary and strong language. President Trump’s plan to have migrants — and potentially U.S. citizens — rounded up, flown to El Salvador, and confined there in a maximum security facility that specializes in indefinite detention meets that bar. However, even when news coverage and criticism has acknowledged Trump’s vision is almost certainly illegal and unquestionably dangerous, it has often used fairly normal terminology and referred to the flights as deportations to a “prison.” That is not what is happening. President Trump is sending people to the camps.
Language matters. Please read this TPM post for context re the increasingly fascist Trump regime's grotesque human-rights abuses as it kidnaps people off our streets and sends them to El Salvador. It is an eye-opener.
In my case, I realized that I've been making the common mistake of calling the slave-labor-and-torture facility in El Salvador a "prison." In fact, the correct expression is "U.S.-supported concentration camp" or "U.S.-supported gulag." What's going on – and what's plainly in store if no one puts a stop to it – is right out of the 1930s.
I will use the more accurate language going forward. I urge you to do likewise. If we don't call things what they are, we are misleading others.
Next in line for concentration camps: "homegrown" Americans
President Trump says his administration is actively exploring a proposal to detain U.S. citizens and send them to prisons in El Salvador. Speaking Monday, minutes before a press briefing alongside El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, Trump could be heard embracing the concept. "The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You've got to build about five more places," Trump said to Bukele, an apparent reference to prison space that would be needed in El Salvador to house U.S. citizens.
So now it's official, as NPR reports here: The Trump regime is planning to (not "exploring") kidnap American citizens and ship them off to the concentration camps. This is a five-alarm fire for democracy, the Constitution, and America's place in the world.
Our major journalism outlets – including NPR, to some extent, though it's improving – are still treating it as just another story. That's disheartening. I suppose we'll have to wait until "mainstream media" reporters and editors, – or maybe bosses – start getting abducted and sent to gulags before Big Journalism gets the gravity of it.
The Supreme Court has yet to deliver a definitive ruling requiring Trump to obey the law. The high court’s emergency stays have put on hold lower-court rulings requiring Trump to reinstate NLRB and Merit Systems Protections Board officials who were illegally fired; to reverse more than 16,000 arbitrary firings of probationary workers by six agencies; and to reinstate more than $65 million in Education Department grants that funded diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In that last case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, called it “beyond puzzling that a majority of the Justices conceive of the Government’s application as an emergency.”
The Roberts court is corrupt. To anyone who's been paying even a small amount of attention over the past several years, this is obvious. Its deliberate refusal to hold the Trump regime to account is only the latest evidence.
But remember, Roberts was all too eager last year to grant presidents – at least ones named Trump – immunity from prosecution for crimes committed in office. This regime has been on a nonstop crime spree from the first day, and Trump's personal corruption (see the item below) is more blatant than ever.
We're on the knife edge of dictatorship. If John Roberts cares at all about judicial power, he has only a small amount of time to show it.
All corruption, all the time in Trump world
Trump will profit from these accounts in two ways. First, TMTG will invest a portion of its cash reserves in accounts. Secondly, as the majority shareholder in TMTG, Trump will benefit from the fees generated by these accounts. The performance of the underlying assets held in these accounts will determine both TMTG's return on its cash reserves and interest from outside investors. But Trump, as President, will also be able to significantly influence the performance of these assets through tariffs and other policies. It is a jaw-dropping conflict of interest for actively managed investment accounts to be marketed under the president's name through a company that is majority-owned by the president.
The epic corruption in Trump's orbit – himself, his family, his apparatchiks, his business associates, et al – is unprecedented. No presidency in American history comes even close to the level of sleaze.
As this article notes, Dear Leader's plans to profit from his regime are comprehensive, and he'll be getting lots of help from people who want a piece of that pie.
I should note that this is just one more example, and not even the most egregious. Maybe major news organizations will pick up on this reporting. Maybe they won't. They certainly don't seem all that interested in the topic except on rare occasions.
I also note that the American public, which certainly understands in a broad sense that the president and his coterie are sleazy, doesn't have a good feel for just how deep and wide the corruption goes. That is because our journalism organizations have made no attempt to show how deep and wide it goes. They cover Trump world corruption as if each example was a brush fire – and they miss most of the brush fires in any case. What they never, ever do is notice, and tell the American people, that the entire forest is ablaze. When it comes to providing the vital context, Big Journalism is – as usual – AWOL.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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Hunter Walker
Robert Kuttner
