Courage is not the absence of fear

I should, perhaps, be too embarrassed by my high-strung overreaction to share this story. (I mean, what was I gonna do if it had been agents of the state—fight them all off like Neo in The Matrix Reloaded? I don’t know kung-fu.) But I’m not embarrassed, because I’m thinking of what Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, said to his assembled students after Mamoud Khalil’s kidnapping by the Trump administration: “Nobody can protect you… these are dangerous times.”

I’m sharing the story to remind people that it’s okay to be afraid. I’m afraid, perhaps unreasonably so. And yet, courage is not the absence of fear; courage is doing what we have to do, what we know we must do, in spite of the fear.

• Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has ordered New York City to stop its congestion pricing policy by today, Friday, March 21. New York will not. Let’s see what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real.
• A midwife in Texas was arrested on “felony abortion” charges. This, of course, is the future Sam Alito wants.
• The case concerning the illegal abduction of Columbia student activist Mamoud Khalil has been moved from New York to New Jersey. Khalil was kidnapped from his apartment in Manhattan earlier this month, but federal officials moved him to Jersey before his lawyers could file a complaint (and then the government moved him to Louisiana). Moving prisoners around to avoid judicial oversight is a classic tactic used by authoritarian regimes.
• The chief justice of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Diane Sykes, is taking “senior status” in October. It’s a semi-retirement option that allows Trump to appoint her successor. The Seventh Circuit covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, and the Republicans currently hold a 6-5 majority on the court. Sykes is an extremist Republican, so giving up her seat so Trump can replace her doesn’t change the balance of power. But it does mean the Republicans will be able to hold onto their power.
• Trump is in open defiance of court orders. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern tell us that if the courts don’t defend themselves now, the rule of law becomes an official joke.

• Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer should resign. Jeet Heer explains why, without cursing, which is not something I’m able to do right now. Democrats in the House are also getting on board with pushing Schumer out. Democrats who are insufficiently committed to fighting autocracy have no place in leadership.
• David Klion explains that Columbia University’s refusal to defend itself will lead to Trump attacking the entire apparatus of higher education.
• The fascism we’ve been fearing is not on the way—it’s here. Michael Harriot explains that if you look at any reasonable definition of fascism, we are already living under it, courtesy of the Trump/Musk regime.
• In The Nation, Laura Jedeed puts Mamoud Khalil’s kidnapping in the context of that fascism, arguing that he’s the first political activist of the Trump era to be disappeared.
• Only 14 House Democrats signed a letter demanding Khalil’s release. The Nation’s John Nichols asks why. I mean, I think I know why: Most Democrats would rather see Khalil illegally arrested and held as a political prisoner than risk saying anything that could be seen as supporting the human rights of Palestinians. But if Democrats have some other reason for their cowardice, I’d love to hear it.

• This week, the Supreme Court gave its blessing to reinstituting the practice of gassing prisoners to death. The court, by a vote of 5-4, declined to hear an appeal from Jessie Hoffman Jr., who was set to be put to death in Louisiana; not long after, he was killed by suffocation from nitrogen gas funnelled through a mask.

  The practice of gassing people to death was used in the U.S. most prevalently in the early part of the 20th Century, but the method fell out of favor once the literal Nazis started copying us. Only 11 prisoners have been executed by gas since 1976. In 2021, the state of Arizona proposed using gas after being unable to obtain drugs used for lethal injection, but they were dissuaded when it became public that their proposal involved using the same deadly cocktail used by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

  In 2024, Alabama came up with the new gassing method of forcing people condemned to die to inhale pure nitrogen through a mask. They then executed Kenneth Smith under that protocol. (Alabama claimed it was “painless” but it took 22 minutes, and witnesses claimed they saw Smith convulsing and gasping during the killing.)

  The Alabama case didn’t make it to the Supreme Court, but this Louisiana case did. While the majority of the court did not explain why they approved this method of death, Neil Gorsuch joined the three liberal judges in dissent. Hoffman’s attorneys had argued that the gas method prevented him from engaging in “meditative breathing” as he was being executed, and Gorsuch would have remanded the case back to the lower court to decide whether the method would have interfered with Hoffman’s religious freedom. Gorsuch is generally the Supreme Court justice most in favor of killing people by any means necessary, so the fact that he balked should tell you just how awful this method of killing really is. For those still on the fence about gassing, veterinarians no longer recommend nitrogen gas for euthanizing pets. The procedure is thought to be too cruel for animals.

• Sometimes, I think I was put on this earth for the sole purpose of reminding people that John Roberts is a punk and not your friend. I do so, here, again. Still, no matter how many times I expose Roberts for what he is, there is always some liberal institutionalist who thinks that Roberts is on the side of justice. At least I’ll always have a job.
• Trump went to the Department of Justice to threaten his political enemies with illegal prosecutions. I’ve explained what he’s doing, and explained that nobody should be surprised. Tyrants always co-opt the law and make opposing them “illegal.”
• The resegregation of America continues apace. This time, it comes in the form of an executive order that removed anti-segregation language from government contracting requirements. It sounds as bad as it is, and I explain that this particular racist rule change has been done specifically to benefit Elon Musk.

• It’s March Madness. The men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments are underway. Back before I had children, when I had hopes and dreams and spare time and disposable income, I used to really follow college basketball. Now, all I can do is root against the team with the most white starters, just like my father did before me.

  But there is one March bracket I can participate in with an expert’s knowledge: Michael Harriot’s “Greatest Oppressor of All Time” tournament. Some of the choices were easy for me: between the Federalist Society and the FBI, I know which one I’ve spent my career opposing. But others, like the matchup between Chris Rufo and Ed Blum, really made me think. Blum is responsible for ending affirmative action, but Rufo redefined terms like “critical race theory” and “DEI” to give white folks a way to say the n-word that other whites would find socially acceptable. One could not succeed without the other, so who is the greater white supremacist? Please feel free to hop on and make your own choices. I’m legitimately interested in who wins this contest.

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