The Cemetery of the Living

From secret deportation flights to dismantled peace vigils, Trump’s regime is rewriting the First Amendment in shackles and silence.

Good morning! America woke up this morning to find that cruelty, impunity, and a dash of delusion are still the ruling principles of government. As The New Yorker meticulously documented in a searing exposé, the skies over Texas and the cells of El Salvador tell the story: Venezuelan migrants shackled, beaten, and disappeared under Trump’s revival of the Alien Enemies Act. Tattoos and sneakers became grounds for exile, due process was swapped for a point system, and hundreds of people vanished into a Salvadoran prison nicknamed “the cemetery of the living.” When an appeals court finally ruled the whole stunt unlawful, the White House answered with a Caribbean explosion, literally blowing up a boat and declaring its passengers “terrorists.” The Pentagon reportedly ignored its own lawyers about the illegality of blowing up civilian boats in international waters.

On the domestic front, the assault on public health continues, this time disguised as “guidance.” Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s watchful, conspiratorial eye, the CDC’s vaccine advisers voted to yank back the MMRV shot for kids under four. Never mind that the change increases the odds children won’t complete their shots at all, science has been replaced by vibes and panelists who admit they don’t even fully understand what they’re voting on. It’s governance by Dunning-Kruger, with a public health crisis as the price of admission.

Meanwhile, the Senate turned “advice and consent” into “pass and pray,” detonating its own rules to confirm forty-eight Trump nominees in one gulp. Kimberly Guilfoyle is off to Greece, Callista Gingrich to Switzerland, and a cast of loyalists fills the diplomatic dance card. The logic is clear: competence is negotiable, loyalty is not. What better way to project American strength abroad than to send Trump’s extended family reunion as our emissaries?

As if that weren’t enough, Congress is staggering toward a shutdown with healthcare as the sticking point. Democrats are demanding renewal of ACA subsidies that millions depend on, while Republicans insist keeping people insured is a “partisan poison pill.” Mike Johnson is dangling his thin majority over the abyss, and Trump is cheerleading from Truth Social, framing it all as a test of loyalty. In other words, your ability to see a doctor is now a bargaining chip in the same poker game where the chips are always our lives.

And then there’s Lafayette Square, where Trump finally accomplished what Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush again, Obama, and Biden never dared: he tore down the White House Peace Vigil. After forty-four years of standing as a quiet rebuke to nuclear madness and endless wars, it was reduced to rubble because the president didn’t like the look of a blue tarp. Federal officers carted off signs and supplies under the cover of “beautification,” leaving behind only a handful of stewards clutching cardboard First Amendments. If you want to see what authoritarianism looks like in miniature, picture a Park Service truck hauling off the Bill of Rights because the boss wanted a cleaner view.

On the foreign stage, Trump’s nostalgia for lost empires is colliding with reality. He’s been muttering for months about clawing back Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, as if it were a hotel deal gone bad. Standing next to Keir Starmer, he announced, “We’re trying to get it back,” imagining it as a hub to spy on China and mine rare earths. The Taliban, unimpressed, told him to stuff it. They expelled the U.S. once, and they’re not about to hand the keys back now. Even his own analysts admit his fixation is less strategy than wounded ego, a refusal to accept that America’s longest war ended not with a bang but with an unceremonious flight out of Bagram in the dark. The Taliban, of all people, are now the ones reminding him the door is closed.

And while Trump rages against wind turbines and guts renewable energy, the Pacific Ocean is running a fever. The infamous “blob” of overheated seawater has returned, except this time it stretches five thousand miles from Japan to California. It’s already reshaping weather, killing seabirds, and threatening fisheries. Scientists call it the fingerprint of climate change; Trump calls it a hoax and insists coal is the future. The ocean, unfortunately, isn’t listening.

So here we are: migrants disappeared into foreign jails, vaccines sabotaged, kakistrophic Senate confirmations rubber-stamped, healthcare turned into a hostage crisis, a 44-year peace vigil bulldozed for aesthetics, the Taliban lecturing Trump on sovereignty, and an ocean literally screaming for us to change course. The through-line couldn’t be clearer: cruelty, vanity, and denial are the governing creed, and if the peace vigil can be dismantled, so can the very idea of a government that serves its people.

I’ll admit, my love of research has dragged me down some very dark rabbit holes lately. Following the threads of cruelty, corruption, and casual authoritarianism isn’t exactly a cheerful pastime. Some days it feels like staring too long into a funhouse mirror that only reflects back the ugliest parts of our national character. But I keep reminding myself: composure matters. If I can hold steady, there’s a story worth telling here, one that cuts to the core of what we’re losing. The dismantling of a peace vigil, the silencing of comedians, the deportation flights in the dead of night, these are not just anecdotes. They are a pattern. And that pattern is about the slow suffocation of the First Amendment under the Trump regime. That’s the piece I have to finish, however grim the material, because if we stop naming what’s happening, then the silence becomes the story.