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Self in Society Roundup 59
Immigration, tariffs, Homer, God, shingles, math, etc.
Copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong
April 13, 2025
Immigration Updates
An Abomination: The Trump administration is snatching nonviolent people (and some violent ones) off the streets and, without due process or much process whatsoever in some cases, shipping them to a foreign torture prison. This obviously is grotesquely immoral; this obviously violates the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. And the Republicans who support this claim to be "pro-family Constitutionalists." In a functional country, these actions already would have resulted in Trump's impeachment and removal from office.
Garcia: Wall Street Journal: "The Supreme Court told the Trump administration to seek the return of a migrant [Kilmar Abrego Garcia] mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran prison, rebuffing government claims that it need do nothing to remedy its error." NBC has more.
Not All Criminals: Bloomberg: "Of 238 migrants—mostly Venezuelan—that officials accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang and expelled to the Central American country [the El Salvador prison] in mid-March, just a small fraction had ever been charged with serious crimes in the US." Of course that doesn't mean the people sent to El Salvador have not committed any crimes or are not members of violent gangs, but the point is we don't know. Expelling people to their home countries is one thing; imprisoning them in a foreign torture prison is quite another.
Kidnapping a Seamstress: Baltimore Banner: "Elsy Noemi Berrios, 52 . . . had worked [as a seamstress] for the past five years. [Her car] was suddenly surrounded by ICE agents, with at least one wearing a face covering. The agents didn't present a warrant, according to [the woman's daughter]. They shouted orders at the mother to get out of the car. . . . After they didn’t, an officer broke her car window, unlocked the door, and removed the mother from the vehicle. . . . [The daughter] and her mother's attorney vehemently deny that Berrios has a connection to gang membership." The point of due process is that letting enforcement agents decide who to target is extremely dangerous, as they will make mistakes and intentionally abuse their power. If the woman has demonstrated ties to a violent gang, then, great, deport her. But the demonstration matters.
Kidnapping a Makeup Artist: New Yorker: "The President has invoked the law to send Venezuelans to prison in El Salvador without due process—and, in many cases, under false pretenses." Apparently one such case involves a makeup artist.
Noem: Kristi Noem is stupid but not so stupid that she cannot also be evil. She said the people sent to the torture-prison in El Salvador, without due process, should remain there "for the rest of their lives."
Horrifying Precedent: Robert Tracinski: "If they can disappear immigrants, eventually they will disappear critics. Without due process, a citizen has no opportunity to prove his legal status or assert his constitutional rights. The Abrego Garcia case is really about whether we have a police state for everyone. Forcing the administration to back down from these claims would be a substantive and essential victory. It would foreclose some of the worst outcomes for the U.S."
Meanness Wrapped in Incompetence: WCVB: "Boston immigration attorney Nicole Micheroni says she was born at Newton Wellesley Hospital, grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts, and was educated at Wellesley College. So, anyone can imagine her surprise when she says she received an emailed letter from the Department of Homeland Security, telling her to self-deport within 7 days."
Tariff Updates
Joke Not a Joke: "I believe Donald Trump was sent by God." / "Why, did God run out of locusts?"
Cowen on Tariffs: Tyler Cowen: "'Liberation Day' Was Even Worse Than Expected . . . perhaps the worst economic own goal I have seen in my lifetime." More Cowen: "The Trump administration has created a new monster—one of unpredictability and erratic behavior. We simply cannot predict with any degree of accuracy what will happen next. . . . [T]his seesawing may plunge the American and perhaps also the global economy into recession."
Rohac on Tariffs: Dalibor Rohac: "Trump's draconian tariffs . . . seek to recreate Russian-style political economy in America. Their purpose is not to bring back manufacturing jobs or raise revenue—nor is it to extract trade and other concessions from US trading partners. Instead, their aim is to assert political control over the world's largest, most dynamic market economy, ensuring that independent economic wealth does not pose a challenge to Trump's hold on political power for the next four years, and potentially beyond."
Lesotho: Derek Thompson: "One of the highest tariff rates, 50 percent, was imposed on the African nation of Lesotho, whose average citizen earns less than $5 a day. . . . The Trump team seems to have calculated each penalty by dividing the U.S. trade deficit with a given country by how much the U.S. imports from it and then doing a rough adjustment. Because Lesotho's citizens are too poor to afford most U.S. exports, while the U.S. imports $237 million in diamonds and other goods from the small landlocked nation, we have reserved close to our highest-possible tariff rate for one of the world's poorest countries. The notion that taxing Lesotho gemstones is necessary for the U.S. to add steel jobs in Ohio is so absurd that I briefly lost consciousness in the middle of writing this sentence."
Arbitrary Power: Anne Applebaum: "This is what arbitrary, absolute power looks like. And this is why the men who wrote the Constitution never wanted anyone to have it."
Dem Failure: Catherine Rampell: " Both Trump and his Democratic critics have supported broad tariffs on our allies and on random consumer goods. . . . How did Democrats back themselves into this corner? Partly they're pandering to pro-tariff constituencies (i.e., unions, once reliable Democratic allies). Populist, anti-'neoliberal' think tanks have also overtaken the party. . . . That's how you end up with Democratic leaders embracing such quackery as 'greedflation' and price controls."
Capital Flight: Noah Smith: "When Trump took office, one dollar could buy you about 0.97 euros. Today, it can buy you only 0.88 euros. The dollar is absolutely plunging. . . . Trump's tariff announcements . . . caused a lot of volatility in markets, which caused a lot of Wall Street traders' bets to blow up. That meant the traders had to raise cash in order to pay back loans they had taken out in order to make those bets. And the easiest way to raise cash quickly is to sell Treasury bonds. So this was probably part of what was going on. But this doesn't explain the fall in the dollar. Normally, when Treasuries get sold off, people park their money in cash, instead of moving it overseas. This time, a bunch of investors actually pulled their money out of America entirely. In other words, for the first time in many decades, the U.S. has experienced capital flight. And if it continues, the consequences for the U.S. economy could be absolutely dire."
Manufacturing: Alex Tabarrok: "The US is a manufacturing powerhouse. . . . As a share of total employment, employment in manufacturing is on a long-term, slow, secular trend down. This . . . is primarily a reflection of automation. . . . A substantial majority of US imports are for intermediate goods like capital goods, industrial supplies and raw materials that are used to produce other goods including manufacturing exports! Tariffs, therefore, often make it more costly to manufacture domestically."
Quick Takes
Homer: Daniel Mendelsohn has out a really interesting essay on Homer. He discusses Homer's pervasive influence on Western literature, the historical roots of the epics, and the ways the poems developed (as near as people can tell). Mendelsohn also has out yet another version of Odyssey. I haven't check out Mendelsohn's text; I still have Emily Wilson's version queued up. Interestingly, in 2023 Mendelsohn commented on Wilson's version, defending it against certain criticisms.
Sandefur on God and the Declaration: In a brief talk, Timothy Sandefur explains why the Declaration of Independence is a fundamentally secular document, even though it mentions "nature's God" and a "Creator." He says, "The Declaration is written from a perspective of 18th Century natural religion, a highly rational approach to religious questions that shuns such things as miracles, or magic, or mysticism, or the supernatural. . . . The Greek and Roman philosophical influence on the Declaration . . . was every bit as profound, if not more so, than the Christian influence on the Declaration. . . . The Declaration . . . makes a claim that is drawn from nature—not supernatural, but natural rights."
Shingles and Dementia: Women's Health: The shingles vaccine "may actually lower your risk of developing dementia. 'There's also some lab evidence that shingles can lead to the formation of beta-amyloid, which are a factor in Alzheimer's disease,' says Amesh A. Adalja."
Comic Panic: Parker Molloy: The moral panic once came for comic books. "Then let us commit them to the fire," one boy said, starting with Superman.
Marginal Revolution University: Its products now are used in a quarter of U.S. high schools!
Transgender Athletes: John Oliver has a well-researched and reasonable overview. The upshot: Yes, there are reasons to restrict competition of transgender women with other women in some elite sports, but not much reason to restrict competition in many contexts, including children before puberty.
Math in Alabama: Students in Alabama returned to school earlier during the pandemic, and Alabama teachers also have started to use more manipulatives such as counting beads and fraction wheels. Scores have improved. NPR has the story. But we do not need to choose between manipulatives and algorithms, as the story suggests; we need both. I spent a lot of time with my child counting with blocks to visually show how place-value works, but, after he got that, he moved on to the usual algorithm for adding. We used the same approach for multiplication and fractions. And he's quite good at math.