New York City Comptroller Brad Lander Arrested
Lander is the second Democratic elected official recently put in handcuffs for questioning the Trump-Noem thuggery.
Over the last ten days or so, one Democratic US Senator, Alex Padilla of California, was removed from a room and handcuffed for trying to ask a member of Trump’s cabinet a question, and the New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was manhandled and arrested for the crime of demanding to see a warrant. The warrant was never produced. Between those two events a Democratic lawmaker in the state of Minnesota was shot and killed by a anti-choice zealot.
The arrests of both Padilla and Lander are particularly galling for, in addition to all the obvious reasons, the optics. Specifically, if you closely look at both videos you will see the smug looks on the faces of the Trump and Noem’s brownshirts. Those were the looks of people who know that very powerful people have given them permission to do essentially whatever they want with with complete impunity. Landers repeatedly asking for a warrant while being ignored by the agents speaks to this directly. In other words, these brownshirts know they don't have to show the people any stinking badges.
While there is no legitimate legal, moral or ethical explanation for the treatment of either Senator Padilla or Comptroller Lander, there is a very clear political one. The message from the Trump administration is that if we can go after these powerful people then we can go after you. It is a message meant to make all of us afraid.
For reasons that remain inexplicable to me, Donald Trump, despite, his toxic political views a aside, being a bloated, cowardly, petty, petulant, lazy, unfocused manchild, commands extreme loyalty and admiration from a cadre of thuggish supporters. We see this in the confidence and righteousness on the faces of the people arresting duly elected officials for exercising their constitutional rights and in fact fulfilling their oath of office. This is what we are up against.
Lander's arrest comes in a broader context. First, it cannot be ignored that Lander is running for mayor. Some might suggest him going down to the courthouse or even trying to get arrested, was some kind of a stunt. It wasn't a stunt, because this was not the first time Lander had done this. I know from discussions with Lander that these are views he holds very deeply. Moreover, when an elected official shows up to witness injustice and to prevent it, that is never a stunt. It is exactly what our representatives should be doing. Lander is the kind of mayor New York, and every city, needs.
This arrest also occurs in the aftermath of events in Los Angeles where Trump’s Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and others sought to portray an overwhelmingly peaceful demonstration as a violent one and where Noem said the Trump regime wanted to liberate the city from its elected officials.
In that context the arrest of Lander is part of a broader effort to make sure that there is no political power anywhere in the United states that is not loyal to Donald Trump. During the first Trump administration our federalism helped keep some of the worst of Trump’s policies at bay. The regime is now trying to ensure that federalism no longer stops them.
Second, there is an irony here because Lander is Jewish and the Trump administration has fetishized fighting antisemitism and used it as an excuse for many of its worst authoritarian excesses. I have been in synagogues and have participated in various Jewish rituals with Lander and know he takes his Judaism seriously, and is far more religious than I am, although that does not takes much. Apparently this is how we fight antisemitism in America-by arresting Jewish elected officials for standing up for what many of us believe are deeply Jewish values.
In five short months Trump and the thuggish fascists around him have turned the United States into a country where people are grabbed off the street, elected officials are put in handcuffs for daring to question the administration, heroic Americans are erased from history because they were non-white, non-straight or non-male, bigotry and cruelty to immigrants and trans people has become official policy, and the president's family the president himself and many of the people around him have stolen sums money that are so enormous as to be difficult to imagine.
Many of us saw this coming, not because we have great political acumen or insight, but because during the four years when Joe Biden was in the White House, Trump and the people around him were very clear about what they would do if they ever got back in power. We know who these people are and what they want to do because they have told us those things over and over again.
It is hard to believe that only two or three months ago we were assured by earnest Democratic politicians that as soon as the price of eggs went up everything would magically be okay. I hope that the last two weeks or so have shown even the most complicit of Democratic leaders and media elites exactly who this administration is. However, I also fear that the capacity for the comfortable political and media elites who oppose Trump but don't want to rock the boat too much for self deception is bottomless.