LOYALTY TRUMPS LAW
DHS VS The Constitution
I’ve written and erased countless opening sentences for this post. Nothing I say about the killing of Alex Pretti will match the grace and impact of his family’s statement asking us to get the truth out about what happened to their son. It’s the least we can do as the Trump administration smears him with lies so despicable and false that editorial boards spanning from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal have called them out. We’re somewhere growing frightfully familiar, reaching into the darkness searching for the light. It’s there. I see it in the videos filmed by Americans risking their lives to exercise their First Amendment rights and show us what’s happening in their communities. We all saw it as an ICU nurse used his final moment to pick someone up.
The concern that what we’re witnessing may also be a spark that could ignite something worse remains very real. In these moments, hope can feel reduced to a wish that habituation isn’t inevitable. Who will we be when normalization itself becomes normalized? Like many things we think will never happen to us, it does. Conversations about Alex Pretti are replacing those about Renee Good. Not because she matters less, but because the news cycle rolls on and carries our attention with it. The Columbine shooting dominated cable news for nearly two weeks. Over the years, as mass shootings became more prevalent, coverage shrank to a day, then hours. Unless it’s a slow news day, they’re just a blip now. Likewise, in the last year alone, we’ve gone from masked, militarized agents in the streets assaulting and detaining without due process, to citizens being gunned down with executive-sanctioned impunity.
Think back a couple of years. Had a masked officer pummeled a woman and then pepper-sprayed her and an observer trying to help her up, it would have been an outrage. Don’t Tread On Me flags would’ve vigorously waved. Headlines would have been made. Yet how many people got that treatment just today? The bar of newsworthiness is being raised from assault to execution. Let’s not forget that both Good and Pretti were shot less than a mile from where George Floyd was killed. It’s understandable for Black Americans to follow their sympathies regarding recent events with a gaze that says, “Welcome to the club.”
Scroll by scroll, we’re staring into our hands and watching America fragment as it stumbles down a hall of mirrors and smoke. The swift, coordinated lies and cover-up from this administration are making even a diehard Orwell fan like me, who is doing his damndest not to conjure him, call them Orwellian. In the last year, we’ve seen the almighty dollar granted even greater weight to tip the scales of justice. The federal government’s response to what’s happened in Minnesota is an attempt to further partition a dual state. Are you living in the normative state, operating by rules and regulations, or are you in the prerogative state, where laws are arbitrary, and violence goes unchecked by law? Every citizen old enough to vote has lived under presidents from both parties. If we’re in a democracy where either party can hold power, no one should want the rule of law diminished to the executive’s preference of red or blue. But clearly some do. They’re telling us what they think about law and democracy. We should listen.
The same people who long claimed gun ownership is not the problem are now saying owning a gun was the problem for Pretti. The administration spent the entire weekend spreading the false notion that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to people at protests, even if the gun is holstered and the owner has a permit to carry. FBI Director Kash Patel stared blankly into a TV camera and doubled down on Kristi Noem’s position that “Nobody who wants to be peaceful shows up to a protest with a firearm...” Considering the abundance of photos of Trump supporters carrying guns at protests, the hero worship for Kyle Rittenhouse by the Trump family and right-wing media, and the Presidential pardon of John Banuelos (among others), who fired his gun into the air during the January 6th assault on the Capitol, does that mean none of them were peaceful? Do they deserve to be killed? What about the teachers Trump said should arm themselves in schools? Is that a good place for guns? Guns have been a favorite right-wing prop in everything from political ads to Christmas cards. Is pointing out the hypocrisy just air guitar stripped of all its pageantry and joy?
All officers and employees of Homeland Security (DHS), including CBP and ICE agents, are required to sign the Standard Form 61 (SF-61), taking an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Their authority as law enforcement is based on the American people’s trust that they take that oath seriously. When Trump, Vance, Miller, Noem, and Bovino all publicly state that ICE and CBP officers have immunity to violate citizens’ 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment rights, they’re not just saying SF-61 no longer matters; they’re saying the Constitution no longer matters. If that’s the case, what does “law” even mean? Can we reasonably call them “law enforcement?” Perhaps loyalty enforcement is more fitting.
Galloway made a good point recently that someone with political media reach should loudly remind everyone that the statute of limitations on murder is never—and this phase will end eventually.