As the New York Times has noted:
Trump administration lawyers have determined that an 18th-century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant, according to people familiar with internal discussions.
The disclosure reflects the Trump administration's aggressive view of presidential power, including setting aside a key provision of the Fourth Amendment that requires a court order to search someone's home.
The same wartime-only law called the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which Trump has claimed permits him to expel Venezuelans without following due process, is now apparently to be sued to permit authorities to enter US homes without warrants.
For the 227 years since that Act was passed, no one thought it did away with the need for warrants in the USA. Now, Trump's lawyers think it does, totally undermining US human rights in the process, which is no doubt their aim.
Either US legal history is right, or Trump is. Both cannot be. The balance of probabilities - given that Trump is already in a deep battle with the Courts over his first use of this Act, which a Federal judge has decried as illegal - is that Trump is in the wrong.
But then, he's also wrong about education, where he is planning to close down the Federal Education Department without the approval of Congress, which he cannot do, and closing down all social security payments in the USA, which he is threatening to do unless usk can have access to all the personal details of every person being paid a benefit in the USA, including all retireees, even though Musk and his team have been unable to present a single reason to Court as to why they need this data for legitimate purposes. In both cases, large numbers of his own supporters would be hit hardest, and it seems he just does not care.
This is government gone beyond rogue now. This is government by evil. When governments cease to care about the consequences of their actions, that is what it becomes.
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“government by evil”
That’s an interesting phrase, and probably enough to prevent you getting across a USA international border, and maybe enough to qualify you for a week or two’s full board in a USA detention centre, should you try.
You are right of course. I’ve felt for quite a long time that politics had crossed a moral threshold, to a point where “wrong, incompetent, stupid, selfish, boneheaded, unfair etc etc” became something more sinister, something I also would call “evil”.
“Evil” has been creeping up on the levers of power for years (To parody an old cartoon, “I tawt I saw a pwesident a-cweepin’ up on me!”) but now it has the Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House under its control and really BAD things are happening across the whole spectrum of life in the USA.
I have to confess that first of all, “evil” got hold of much of American Christianity – and as a follower of Jesus, it grieves me to say that, even though I saw it happening years ago as the religious right grew in power, taking over whole sectors of the churches and I spoke and taught and preached against it within my own tiny sphere of influence here, and still do.
So, bear my confession in mind as I ask, what has caused this capitulation to, not just wrong-headed politics, or incompetent economics, but to EVIL?
It’s an important question, because the same thing is beginning to happen over here in UK and in Europe, but with religion playing much less of a part in UK/Europe (although godless politicians are trying their best to recruit their perverted ideas about “Christian” values to their nasty militias).
I look in vain for a clear moral challenge to the current cruelty. There is NO morally unambiguous public challenge to greed, selfishness, corruption, inequality, injustice, authoritarianism, within either the governing party or the opposition. Oh yes, there may be the rumble of concern from a slowly awakening group of middle class liberals in the media, worried about their privilege but we appear to be collectively morally incapacitated. So well said Richard and others here who share your moral outrage.
If “religion” could protect against this EVIL, then America, which is still a very religious country, would be immune. Clearly that is not the case, and as a person of faith I have no illusions about “religion”.
But I do believe that at least part of what is needed at the moment, in addition to the practical matters of communication, organisation, political reform, public debate, blogging, & education about economics, is a willingness to name EVIL as EVIL. To say, clearly and unambiguously, this is WRONG, and that silence is complicity. That allowing it to continue involves real culpability, real guilt, call it SIN if you want, I do.
MPs and Peers, won’t like being called evil. They think of themselves as respectable. It’s time we called them out.
Ordinary people, our neighbours, friends and colleagues, do have a moral sense of right and wrong. But it has become unfashionable. We’ve been bamboozled by culture wars and wokeness arguments, so that we are scared to use moral language to condemn real evil, it’s been all used up on condemning “difference”.
I’m comfortable with diversity and difference. But I am intolerant of wickedness and evil, whether that evil is done by someone who is white orange, black, gay, straight, neuro-anything, male, female, resident, immigrant, foreigner, even if they are Scottish(!).
Calling evil what it is generally causes offence. I don’t care any more, because I am offended myself by the moral filth that passes for politics nowadays. Let’s hear it for compassion honesty, telling the truth, fairness, justice, loving my neighbour, forgiveness and a lot of other old-fashioned virtues.
Thank you for using the word evil.
KUTGW!
Thanks
If you contrast the dilly-dallying of Labour in the UK with how Trump and the Far- Right set about their tasks, you cannot fault Trump (and even the previous Tory government) in their application to the evils they have done.
What we need is the same application from the Left or something new, in the application to something better. And I mean the same application.
I have some good friends in USA whom I was hoping to visit possibly even this summer. However seeing the arbitrary detention of citizens from all sorts of places on spurious grounds has stopped me even thinking about it.
I worry for them too. One has a trans daughter and lives in Texas and other friends are Iraqi living in SC.
Trump is like the stereotypical evangelical pastor that preaches one thing and does another.
Everything that he accuses someone else of, particularly wrongly, look for how he demonstrates those exact failings.
There’s the kind of evil that actively gains pleasure from the harm caused to others. In his attacks on opponents and celebration of their losses, he demonstrates that. There’s also the kind that is just callous to the suffering of others, choosing naked self-interest, and In having no care for the millions whose livelihoods he’s destroying, he demonstrates that, too.
He is a narcissist, a psychopath, a sadist and a deeply deluded man.
Every accusation is a confession. Trump’s former spiritual advisor accused of “lewd acts”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/13/robert-morris-trump-megachurch-pastor-charged
I’m hearing about Trump critics having issues with TikTok. The TikTok CEO was at the Trump inauguration. I’m not sure how long platforms like YouTube will hold out. Maybe the fact they are making money from both sides will keep them honest. Money and evil feel like the same thing sometimes. There’s never enough of it available when you want to do good.
Dear Richard, Goodness gracious me! I have to admit I did briefly wonder this morning if the closure of Heathrow was down to Trump & Co – I don’t think he likes UK much these days, nor does Musk. The evil axis.
I’m sorry to burden you with this, but there’s another Warren Zevon song that seems to cover it so well. Mr Bad Example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DkpS1oXBQI
https://genius.com/Warren-zevon-mr-bad-example-lyrics
[Verse 1]
I started as an altar boy workin’ at the church
Learnin’ all my holy moves, doing some research
Which led me to a cash box labeled “Children’s Fund”
I’d leave the change and tuck the bills inside my cummerbund
[Verse 2]
I got a part-time job at my father’s carpet store
Layin’ tackless strippin’ and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture and took it to Spokane
And auctioned off every last Naugahyde divan
[Verse 3]
I’m very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule tryin’ to fit them in
I’m proud to be a glutton and I don’t have time for sloth
I’m greedy and I’m angry and I don’t care who I cross
[Chorus]
I’m Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time and I don’t care who gets hurt
I’m Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I’ll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy
[Verse 4]
Of course, I went to law school and took a law degree
And counseled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen and fewer still are called
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[Verse 5]
Then on to Monte Carlo to play chemin de fer
I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair
I put my last few francs down on a prostitute
Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute
[Verse 6]
Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig
And headed for the airport and the midnight flight, you dig?
And fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide
Lookin’ through the want ads sippin’ Fosters in the shade
[Verse 7]
I opened up an agency somewhere down the line
To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines
But I attached their wages and took a whoppin’ cut
And whisked away their workman’s comp and pauperized the lot
[Chorus]
I’m Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time and I don’t care who gets hurt
I’m Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I’ll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy
[Verse 8]
I bought a first-class ticket on Malaysian Air
And landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear
I’m thinkin’ of retiring from all my dirty deals
I’ll see you in the next life, wake me up for meals
I hope this is not off topic – Mango has a weak character & it was deformed further by the people (e.g. Roy Cohn) who he associated with. He is evil in the sense that he hates people that disagree with him and reacts without thinking. He has never led a “normal” life. I agree with Mr Burton’s comments.
His counterpart, Putin, is evil via his KGB training. I’d like to use this comment to bring to readers attention a very very brave man – who faced evil (USSR) and still faces evil (Putin) and will die in jail for his beliefs:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/21/soviet-era-dissident-alexander-skobov-draconian-jail-sentence-russia-anti-war-views
Thanks
@Mike Parr. Weeping. That’s so totally horrifying. But thank you for the link. There’s no end to the evil of these ghastly people. Though how can we even think of them as “people”? They have no humanity, that’s for sure. It’s really important that people know what they’re doing. Thank you again for the link. Best wishes to you from Liverpool.
Oh, they are people alright. That’s what shames them, they are people who have abandoned their essential humanity. People who have been dying inside for quite some time.
People who have become weak, and small.
People who have become pathetic, and dysfunctional.
With every cruel atrocity they get smaller, shallower, and more superficial.
Their image is one of sophistication and strength.
The shallow reality is one of decomposition, decay, dissolution and disintegration. They are rotting from deep inside, hatred gnaws at their guts, and eats away at their hearts.
They have nothing left except their money, and that cannot buy them any of the things they really need. There IS an end to their folly and they may self-destruct sooner than we think. They compete with each other in an atmosphere of hatred, rivalry, fear, and mistrust. They are deeply unhappy, and deservedly so.
When remembering the punitive 16 year sentence handed to Skobov, don’t forget the five year sentences handed out by a British court recently for “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”.
https://apnews.com/article/britain-climate-protesters-record-prison-sentences-7b8b7e56a4611ccfdf4896edf9ea2c67
We aren’t that far behind Russia. Every compliant Labour MP and Minister who fails to protest is complicit.
It’s an unfortunate fact of politics that governments are always reluctant to repeal authoritarian laws that suppress the public’s right to protest, even though they may well have opposed the said laws when in opposition. It seems they discover when they get into government that those laws are actually rather convenient, as it saves them having to make a case for their policies against those who protest, and that it’s easier to demonise opposition and get on with what they want to do regardless.
It takes a brave and principled party to say, in govt, “we support the right of the public to protest against us”. I see little evidence of such bravery at present.
Agreed