This encapsulates the loose thoughts I've been trying to elaborate in the blog about ways forward for the federal government.  Doesn't, however, provide a path from where we are to where we want to be.

The NYT on the detained tourists I've been writing about: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/world/europe/german-tourists-detained-deported.html.  Better late than never.  The German woman is now back in Germany, but the Welsh tourist is still in detention, AFAIK.  I called the UK Embassy in San Francisco, but they are unable to give out information on British nationals due to privacy constraints.  I called the ICE number for verification of detention, but the voicemail system I was directed to was full and not accepting more messages.

Update on the update: the letter I sent to the Welsh woman in detention in Tacoma was returned with the words "Not Here" handwritten on the envelope.  Looks like she was released to return home after three weeks in a cell.

If you don't have a US passport, you should not travel to the US at present.  Detention is cruel and unpleasant, and for an indeterminate length of time.  This warning should be posted as a travel advisory on other countries' government web sites.

I really appreciate M. Gessen's work.  I find her particularly clarifying, and thinking about that this morning I think the reason is that, unlike most of the other columnists I read or listen to, she has had experience of what's happening and time to think it through, and as a result she can see a little further into the future than most.  Rather than a "can you believe they did this yesterday" or "this thing they did today will have all sorts of consequences we can't even begin to anticipate" kind of approach, she can credibly say "look at the bigger picture, this is the process that's unfolding, this is what to look for next, this is where we're going."

I bought one of their books during Trump I, "Surviving Autocracy", and it introduced me to the term "the autocratic attempt" and Trump as failing at the time to progress beyond the attempt.  It seems only fair in the US that we gave the guy a second chance …

This post is prompted by their latest NYT column that simply lays out what the current situation is for trans people in the US and around the world and how it's changed with this administration.  Much of the column patiently explains the consequences for different specific individuals, both in the US and abroad, highlighting specific consequences that have happened that I hadn't thought about.

The last portion of the column is the kicker; Gessen refuses to follow the easy rhetorical device of trying to convince the reader that next they'll come for us, a device which would transform  the column into an appeal for self-interest, but just effectively says "this is what's happening, this is why it's happening, you are morally obligated to care about it".

gotta go out for a walk.  Meanwhile: I've been trying to figure out how to characterize Trump.  I've been somewhat persuaded by Ezra Klein's characterization as a sort of mafia don, running on tribute and loyalty, but he just doesn't seem that clever.  I used to think of him more as an ignorant buffoon who, once he got to be President, had accomplished what he wanted.  I'm tending back to that thinking after reading Surowiecki's review of Michael Wolff's latest.  It sounds right-er.

https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-strategic-poverty-of-shutdown

In particular, this quote:

• What's particularly frustrating is that this isn't a matter of partisan politics—it's about whether we maintain a constitutional system at all. There are principled conservatives who recognize the danger of an executive unbound by law. There are institutional actors across the political spectrum who understand what's at stake. A genuinely strategic opposition would have built bridges to these allies rather than retreating into partisan frameworks that limit rather than expand the possibilities for effective resistance.

resonates with me: as I've expressed earlier, we need _our_ guys in Congress to talk to their colleagues and get them to understand that giving up their constitutional authority has created a power vacuum that's being occupied by a mafia don.  They might agree with some of the ends, but they must disagree with the means.  Demonizing Republicans (both those that mistakenly voted for Trump and are horrified at the result, and those in Congress who are being cowed by their leadership) is not the way forward.

Thinking about Dave Winer led me back to this post about the London COVID memorial wall.  Turns out this was a grass-roots action.  I was back in London over Christmas, picked up a book by a group called Led By Donkeys (!) and turned to a random page, and the chapter was describing the process they went through to make that wall.  They spent a bunch of time figuring out what and where (opposite Parliament, so they couldn't ignore it), and then how to do it stealthily in such a way that it wouldn't be shut down by the authorities over the weeks that it'd take to complete.

They donned official looking hi-viz vests and made signs in official-looking fonts saying things like "National COVID Memorial Wall" that they glued on the wall prior to starting, and men-at-work hoardings that they put all over that section of the walkway.  The cops didn't pay them any mind until they were already well into it, and the media had started to cover it.  Eventually, leading from behind, politicians used it as a backdrop for press conferences.

Dave Winer asks that bloggers respond to his post on The Writers' Web.  In re-reading it, the tenet that resonates most with me is "Open, for real".  One of the reasons I've been blogging so long is for the reasons he describes there: using small components loosely joined that can be replaced as appropriate, and formats that are long-lived because they're simple, to maintain something that I use for most of my adult life.

'Course, I'm a software guy, so I was forced to come to that realization over time in my professional life.  It took me a few years to understand the tradeoff between the simplicity of an all-in-one tool and the flexibility of a set of small interconnected tools, and get off the Microsoft bandwagon where the tradeoff for making everything relatively simple was to lock me into a non-standard development process that was driven ever faster by the thousands of developers they had in-house.  I remember realizing that I was having to charge people to replace perfectly functional software after a few years with rewrites because the underlying MS-based toolset had been discontinued and I couldn't just replace or extend any small part.  The solution was to move to the open-source environment: Linux, gcc, simple text tools like wiki, blog, markdown, HTML, ANSI SQL, PNG.  Self-hosting collaborative tools, so they couldn't be altered or removed.  Paths to migrate any data from one simple format to another, should it be required.

For the same reason, I host a blog server on a generic hosting service and post my thoughts there.  I have no interest in being widely read, nor do I want to find all this text removed or edited because whatever service I had mistakenly chosen to use as a publisher decided not to let it remain.  I think most of the non-technical people I know choose to use the all-in-one product because of the low bar to entry, and I applaud Dave for trying to replicate that with his Tech for Poets series, but it's still harder to use collections of tools together than one big tool, built by a big company that has to see a return.

Incidentally, I see WordLand as a great addition to this collection of small tools.  I've used WordPress because I can self-host it, it requires a minimal amount of maintenance and it used to have a low overhead for posting new stuff.  But at some point the ambitions grew, and it evolved from the straightforward journalling system it had been into a Content Management System and simply pushing content onto my blog became onerous.  So I didn't post as much.  Now, with WordLand, it's simple again, and as a result I'm posting many more items.

I keep a blog mostly to note down thoughts and links to which I'd like to return and which I occasionally want to share.  Not every writing system is for publication.  Not every system is for serving advertising, nor for engaging in tit-for-tat argument.  Sometimes you want to just dash off a thought, sometimes you want to write an essay.  It's a web, not a monoculture.

AFAIK, this woman is still in custody in a jail in Tacoma.   I haven't had any luck trying to contact the author of the article I saw, and through them the woman's parents.  I found a likely mail address for the prison, but the official people finder that the federal government provides to find people in their facilities doesn't show her anywhere.

I've sent mail to Ms Burke directly in care of the facility to offer help: visit, contact her parents, find a lawyer, bring her something she needs.  I think she urgently needs legal representation, so I filed an application with the local branch of the ACLU on her behalf as well, but haven't heard from them.

Her parents must be pulling their hair out.

Here's another European tourist detained indefinitely, confirmed by UK officials:

https://bsky.app/profile/jenniferlcroft.bsky.social/post/3ljxjdhfv4s22

Becky Burke was on a 4-month holiday in Mexico, the US and Canada.  She stayed with a host family in Portland, then travelled to the Vancouver border for a stay with another family in Canada.  The Canadians refused entry, claiming doing chores for the host family constituted illegally working.  When they returned her to the US side, ICE arrested her and shipped her to Tacoma, where she's been detained ever since the end of February.

US law specifies that no-one may be detained more than 48 hours in the normal course of events, and are guaranteed legal representation.  Once again, where's the ACLU?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80y3yx1jdyo for the BBC take on this.  Immigration says they first offer the arrestee the option of returning to their home country; Ms Burke wanted to return to her home country; what's going on?

At this point, do not come to the US unless you have a US passport. You may be detained for any reason, and detention may be indefinite.

Heard this morning about the legal resident Palestinian picked up and imprisoned by ICE for his pro-Palestine work during the protests at Columbia University last year.  The pretext is working with a known terrorist organization, Hamas, which is on its face bogus; the protest was against the Israeli response, not for the Hamas atrocities preceding it.  Where is free speech, where is having to prove a case of collusion or support?  We understand: the administration is determined to use state violence against regular people, to promote fear and reinforce the instinct to stay in line, while they execute on their corrupt agenda. That should mean we make a loud and public case against it when we see it.

This has got to be right in the ACLU wheelhouse, but as I noted before, no way to contact them electronically, no news on their site showing they are aware of the situation (same for the previous case I mentioned, btw).  Columbia admin should be all over this, too, with the cooperation of the ACLU and most significantly with Senator and Leader of the Loyal Opposition Chuck Schumer, within whose district this action was carried out and who, by virtue of his being Jewish, can legitimately make the free speech point without being accused of partisanship.  Hold a hearing in Congress, or on the steps outside! Invoke habeas corpus! Make the thugs prove their case!

UPDATE: I got a call back from a volunteer two days later.  He assured me they were on the case, urged me to keep on top of what was happening by monitoring their news feed, and said they'd been really busy trying to stay on top of all the requests that were coming in.  Good.