Thursday, November 19, 2020
Dreams
— Walt Whitman, The SleepersI dream in my dreams all the dreams of the other dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers.
It was poetic justice. It is, of course, hard to think of something poetic and the trump in the same thought, but that is what it was-the election and the judge’s ruling.
The election, although as of this writing giving us a result not yet acknowledged by the trump, has conclusively established that in less than two months the trump, though permitted to continue living in the United States, and his dreams for reelection notwithstanding, will no longer be permitted to live in the White House. Effective at noon on January 20, 2020, legal occupancy of the White House will be given to Joe Biden and his family and the trump will have to move into one of the many properties that he owns. Although they are very expensive properties, they do not offer the status the White House does, and for that reason the trump has been unwilling to admit that he has to move out on January 20, 2021. Given his preferences, as his reluctance to concede has made clear, he would really like to be able to continue watching television in the White House, which is one of the things he has done for many hours that has made being the White House occupant fun for him. That will no longer be possible. He will have to move whether he wants to or not. And therein, the poetic justice.
Two weeks after the electorate told the trump to get out of the White House within 2 ½ months, a federal judge told DACA recipients, known as “dreamers,” that they will not be forced to leave the United States, the country in which many of them have lived since early childhood.
The trump and his minions have been trying to kick DACA recipients out of the country since the movers finished moving the trump stuff into the White House. DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, was created by the trump’s predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama. Under the DACA program, young immigrants who have been living in the United States since childhood without legal permission to do so, were protected from deportation and could apply for work permits. In order to qualify, the person hoping to obtain relief under the Act had to have been under 31 years of age on June 15, 2012, the effective date of the program. In addition, someone seeking protection from deportation under the program had to have lived in the United States continuously since June 15, 2007. The DACA program was very important to those whom it impacted and was a target of the trump’s dislike of those who, like his wife, entered the country as immigrants.
Throughout the time the trump has lived in the White House, the trump’s efforts to end the DACA program have been unending. His efforts have not gone unchallenged by those favoring the program, with the result that his efforts have ended up being rebuffed by the United States Supreme Court as well as lower courts repeatedly. And herewith, poetic justice.
Just 10 days after the trump learned that his lease on the White House would not be extended beyond January 20, 2021 a federal court ruled that the trump efforts to reduce the number of DACA recipients in the country was invalid.
It started most recently, (although there were earlier court cases) when in June 2020 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the trump could not immediately move forward with his plan to end the DACA program. That decision produced an audible sigh of relief from the more than 650,000 dreamers who feared that their status would be terminated, and they would be subject to immediate deportation. Of course the trump is not one to give up easily. Following the Supreme Court decision, the lackey whom he installed as acting Homeland Security Secretary, aptly named Wolf, took it upon himself to again attack the DACA immigrants only to find himself beaten down by Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern district of New York. Judge Garaufis said the Wolf’s actions to narrow the DACA rules in order to reduce the number of immigrants to whom it applied, were unlawful since the Wolf had not been properly appointed to the position from which he issued the order. The order was, accordingly, invalid. And herewith, poetic justice.
In less than 10 days after the electorate ordered the trump to turn over the keys of the White House to the Bidens on January 20, 2021, Dreamers were given another reprieve from the trump efforts to get them out of the country. President Elect Biden’s administration will be able to offer them the protection the program was originally intended to give them without fear of mindless trumpian deportation. The only sound louder than their sigh of relief is the sigh of relief of the world that the trump has been dethroned.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
The trump and the FED
Possession is eleven points in the law.
— Colley Cibber, Woman’s Wit (1697)
There is an elephant in the closet that in just two months will almost certainly appear and, herewith, an answer as to how it can be dealt with, together with a description of a possible procedural problem inherent in the solution.
As this is written, the trump’s Republican minions who are not encumbered by convictions of any sort, have mostly refused to contradict the trump’s insistence that he has won the election, fearing such admissions would incur his wrath. By their subservience, they have helped the trump take steps that make this the first transition from one administration to another that was deliberately made difficult by the outgoing administration.
Pursuant to the Presidential Transition Act that was signed in 1963, the administrator of the General Services Administration is supposed to take all the necessary steps to enable the new administration to smoothly transition into running the government. That includes signing the necessary documents to give the incoming administration access to government officials, office space, equipment, and millions of dollars, all to help insure a smooth transition. When the transition from the Bush to the Obama administration was made, for example, at one in the morning on the day following the election, the Bush transition director notified the incoming Obama transition director that he had signed all the necessary documents to enable the Obama administration to begin its work.
Unsurprisingly, that has not happened with the trump since he, at this writing, remains in the delusional state in which he has dwelt for the last four years. He proclaims himself the winner of the recent election, a proclamation that his subservient supporters do not dare contradict. How that plays out, only time will tell. Here, however, is a question that to the knowledge of the writer has not yet been addressed but is one that must be answered as we eagerly await the arrival of January 20th. What happens if the trump continues to insist on January 20th that he is the president of the United States and refuses to leave the White House?
The answer to that question will come, surprisingly, not from the United States Supreme Court or any other federal court. It will come from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in a Forcible Entry and Detainer (FED) action. If, on January 20, 2020, the trump has not moved from the White House, and refuses to do so, the United States can bring an FED action in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia ordinance that governs FED actions provides that when a person “detains possession of real property . . .after his right to possession has ceased. . . the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, on complaint under oath. . . may issue a summons in English and Spanish to the party complained of to appear and show cause why judgment should not be given against him for the restitution of possession.” Following a trial the ordinance provides that if “it appears that the plaintiff (the United States government in our example) is entitled to the possession of the premises, judgment and execution for the possession shall be awarded in his favor, with costs. . . .”
Although President Biden and his family are entitled to move into the White House immediately following his inauguration, the superior court must issue a writ of execution that is enforced by the U.S. Marshals Service and the trump must have a minimum of three weeks’ notice of the eviction date. As a result the trumps will be able to stay in the White House for three weeks before the writ of execution is enforced even though President Biden has been sworn into office.
A question to which this writer does not know the answer, is whether, since the trump must be given three weeks’ notice of the eviction date, can the FED action be started on December 30th so that the three week period would then end on January 20th? . That would be the most efficient way to deal with this since the U.S. Marshalls could empty the trump belongings out of the White House while the trump is attending the inauguration (or pouting in the Oval Office) and the White House would be ready to welcome the Bidens upon the conclusion of that event. The difficulty with that, however, is that on December 30th the summons could not assert that the trump had detained “possession of [the White House] without right or after his right to possession has ceased” since the trump’s right to live in the White House doesn’t come to an end until 12 noon on January 20. I leave the problem of finding an answer to that question to the United States attorney’s office.
Irrespective of the answer to that question, all would agree that for the Superior Court for the District of Columbia to be the court that makes the final determination that the trump is no longer the president of the United States and, therefore, no longer entitled to live in the White House, would be a fitting end to a uniquely undistinguished tenure.
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Fauci and the trump
Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold.
— Navarre Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968)
It is hard to know how the trump will impart important information to his acolytes now that the campaign rallies have come to a merciful end. Both they and we have grown accustomed to surprising revelations being made by the trump at those rallies, revelations that provide information that might otherwise not have been imparted to his devoted followers, as well as to the rest of us.
We have, over the course of the trump tenure, grown accustomed to the dispensation of medical advice, prognosis, and explanation from the trump. A recent event, however, showed that the trump is, when the occasion warrants, willing to take advice from those who, on the surface at least, are completely lacking in any sort of qualification that would cause them to be in a position to render advice to the trump. But first things first. The October surprise.
The October Surprise pertained to the increasing number of deaths in the United States from the coronavirus even though, as the trump has repeatedly explained, “we have rounded the corner.” Because of the ignorance of the coronavirus (which lacks the cognitive skills of both the trump and its detractors,) it didn’t see the corner coming and completely missed the turn. The unfortunate consequence of the missed turn was that the number of people it is affecting has grown rather than, as the trump has repeatedly proclaimed at his rallies, shrunk.
The foregoing was not the most startling trump revelation. An even more astonishing revelation was imparted by the trump, appropriately, one day before Halloween. That was when the trump explained to his adoring followers that the spread of the virus had nothing to do with the left’s attribution of that phenomenon to the trump’s incompetence. The spread of the virus, explained the trump, was attributable to the avarice of the very medical professionals most people believed had been devoting their lives to preserving the lives of Covid victims rather than increasing their personal wealth. Here’s how he said it works.
The government pays a premium of 20% for the care of Medicare patients with Covid. Speaking at the October 30 rally the trump said: Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. . .. Our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, “I’m sorry, but you know everybody dies of COVID.” And it is that incentive, said the trump, that causes them to fraudulently attribute the death of their patients to Covid when filling out death certificates, even when the death was unrelated to the virus. That of course, caused people to believe that the number of deaths attributable to the virus was increasing when, in fact, it was not.
All of the foregoing was not the most striking bit of news that we learned from the last trump rallies. What we learned is that the trump was accepting medical advice from his devoted followers even though it had not been solicited by the trump. The willingness of the trump to accept that advice became apparent at the post-midnight rally that took place at the Miami Opa-Locke airport in the early morning hours of November 2, 2020. The campaign itself was taking place after midnight in violation of the curfew imposed by Miami-Dade county on gatherings after midnight. The applicable ordinance states that it was enacted because it was “necessary to safeguard life and health as parties and gatherings late at night have the potential to spread Covid-19.”
The most notable thing about the gathering, however, was not the trump defiance of the curfew. It was the fact that it became the vehicle for the trump to receive and accept a bit of medical advice from a most unusual source-the enthusiastic mob that was in attendance and had, mysteriously, acquired some knowledge about controlling the virus that it imparted to the trump. Apparently spontaneously (or so it appeared to the outside observer) the crowd began chanting in unison: “Fire Fauci, fire Fauci.” What the trump had not ever publicly done before this rally, was to accept medical advice from laymen. The trump listened quietly to the chanting for a few seconds and then let the crowd know that he had heard their medical advice and might, indeed, even heed it. In response to the crowd’s chanting he said in a confidential way that only the trump can assume when addressing a crowd of thousands: “Don’t tell anybody but let me wait until a little bit after the election. I appreciate the advice. I appreciate it.” His reaction might have come as a surprise to some, but for those accustomed to looking at sources from which the trump routinely takes his medical advice, a promise from him to heed the advice of a howling mob came as no surprise.
As this is written one can only hope that that may prove to be one of the last times the trump is in a position to assure an uninformed group of people that he will follow their advice with respect to governance of the United States.