Our Oregon District 2 representative in congress is apparently not well versed in what the US Constitution says about due process. The 5th Amendment says:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

But when asked about the detention and transportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the concentration camp in El Salvador by Donald Trump (and about court rulings that Abrego Garcia was denied the due process described above in the 5th amendment) Bentz responded to constituents by saying:

Let me be clear: this is not about denying due process to any individual. It is about restoring the constitutional balance between our branches of government and ensuring that immigration enforcement is consistent, accountable, and rooted in the law, not subject to the ideological whims of certain judges.

This reflects Bentz’s misunderstanding of what due process means. Multiple courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States have ruled that Abrego Garcia was denied due process. Bentz flatly misunderstand that it is the courts (and judges) who are given authority in the constitution to determine what is and is not the appropriate interpretation of the law and what is due process. The first sentence of Article III of the constitution states:

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;

Judicial power is reserved for judges and the courts, not for the executive. Trump (and the Republicans who support him) do not like this restraint, but the framers were careful to create a constitution to protect against the tyranny of a unitary executive. Bentz and the other Trump sycophants who whine about Judges either misunderstand the constitution or just don’t care about preventing tyranny.

Project 2025 was crafted by a group of writers who perversely twist the constitution in ways that would appall the framers. Project 2026 will take an originalist view of the constitution and propose policies consistent with with the values of the separation of powers that constrain the executive and prevent tyranny. In addition to supporting candidates in 2026 who support our view of the constitution, we will actively confront candidates like Bentz who willfully misrepresent what makes America great.

The basic difference between what Trump and the Republican Party are pushing for and what progressives and liberals believe in and are pushing for can be summed up as a battle between hate and love. It’s hate that drives Trump to push an agenda that demonizes people who want to see the Israeli military stop killing Palestinian children and other innocent civilians. These protestors are acting with love, and Trump responds with hate. Americans of all parties receive loving healthcare support through the Medicaid program, but elected Republican are proposing cuts to that program so that they can cut the taxes of the wealthiest Americans — that’s a hateful policy. Under Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s new deal, Americans came together to rebuild an economy that had been decimated by the Great Depression — an economic crisis made by policies similar to those being pushed today by Trump and Republicans in congress. One has to ask, why do Trump and his Republican supporters choose policies that will harm so many Americans. How can they claim to love America while enacting policies that demonstrate so much hate for so many American people?

Let’s work together to find ways to restore American empathy. Empathy for our neighbors. Empathy for struggling countries around the world. Empathy for those who are disadvantaged.

Many of Trump’s supporters come from fundamentalist evangelical Christian churches — churches that claim to follow the teachings of Jesus. One of Jesus’ most famous teachings is captured in the Sermon on the Mount which starts with the Beatitudes:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons[a] of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

These are words of love, and guiding principles for people of the Christian faith. Many elected Republicans (like Cliff Bentz, the congressman who represents Oregon District 2) claim to be believers in Jesus. Shouldn’t they be driven by the love Jesus teaches?

David Brooks nails it in his column today in the NY Times. (Gift link) It’s time for collective action.

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.
It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

The charges levied by members of the Continental Congress in 1776 against the King of England, George III, sound like charges that could also be levied today against Donald Trump. Here are those charges, as they are enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. How many do you count that could apply today to Donald Trump?

- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
- He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
- He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
- He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.
- He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
- He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
- He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
- He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
- He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
- For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
- For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
- For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
- For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
- For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
- He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
- He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
- He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
- He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
- He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
- In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

There is a through line from Senator Joseph McCarthy to Donald Trump, and the connector is Roy Cohn. Cohn was McCarthy’s chief counsel during the senator’s anti-communism hearings. Cohn would go on to be a mentor and lawyer for Donald Trump in the 1970s. In his actions as president, Trump is following his mentor Cohn’s playbook and taking on the mantle of McCarthy, using similar strategies and tools that the Wisconsin senator used in his infamous investigations. It was Republican senator, Margaret Chase Smith who called out McCarthy and the weaker Republicans of her time who failed to stand up to him in her famous Declaration of Conscience speech “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny—fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear.”

Chase Smith’s observations should be a clarion call to the Republican Party today, but sadly, the truth seems to be no match for the lies Trump and his sycophants in congress prefer to tell. The crumbling of our independent and critical journalistic infrastructure has given way to a corporate media that cannot or will not hold the administration accountable to previously accepted national norms. Instead of speaking the truth and referring to Trump’s defiance of court orders as lawlessness, reporters split hairs and treat these actions as some sort of legitimate challenge to judges based on which president appointed them. When journalists refer to a judge as an Obama or Biden appointee they undermine public perception of the judicial independence, the implication being that a judge appointed by a Democrat is somehow incapable of judging Trump fairly. Journalists who report this way are “obeying in advance,” assisting Trump in his attack on an impartial judiciary.

The truth here is that the American people are being fed a steady diet of half truths and full blown lies. Terming the illegal transport of Americans to a prison in El Salvador “deportations” (as the Trump administration has persuaded the American press to do) is exactly the kind of smear that Margaret Chase Smith warned of. Bigotry, ignorance, and fear also rear their heads as Trump persuades a willing press to call the men kidnapped and trafficked to remote prisons without due process “violent criminals” and “alien enemies.” We are well into George Orwell territory these days. Orwell’s prediction that this would take place in 1984 was off by a few decades, but in that prescient book he almost perfectly captures the outcome of Trump’s Project 2025:

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
— George Orwell, 1984

What is today’s truth, and who will have the courage to speak it?