Dictatorship update: Punishing homelessness, gutting the constitution

A post here yesterday, The MAGA mindset: Dealing with empathy, discussed techniques MAGA propagandists use to make cruel laws and behaviors acceptable to the public. This is an example of MAGA cruelty in action that the public needs to be tricked into getting used to.

The cruelty and callousness and depth of contempt for the rule of law of djt and MAGA elites cannot easily be understated. We are no longer looking into the abyss of a kleptocratic dictatorship. We are in free fall into it.

Yesterday, djt signed an EO, ENDING CRIME AND DISORDER ON AMERICA’S STREETS. If that EO is really implemented as it says, it will have two major effects. One is shockingly cruel for homeless people. The other is constitutionally devastating for potentially everyone. We will be close to or in a police state.

By this EO, djt intends to put people who "cannot care for themselves" people into "civil commitment" (CC) facilities. The EO cynically claims** that CC is "long-term institutional settings for humane treatment." Before being placed in CC, existing federal law requires states accord homeless people due process in the form of (1) clear and convincing evidence of mental illness and dangerousness, (2) a right to counsel and a judicial hearing, (3) periodic judicial review, and (4) confinement to a facility that imposes the least restrictive treatment environment.

** Most existing CC facilities are centers for holding confined people. They provide little to no mental illness or drug addiction treatment in prison-like conditions. CC typically costs states ~$30,000/year. Most states do not have much money for that. The EO explicitly defunds "harm reduction" and "housing first" programs that have proven effective, but cost more. States will have to pay nearly all of the increased costs. Politically speaking that just won't happen, especially in red states. And, unlike jail terms for criminal convictions, confinement to a CC facility has no definite end. The state can keep people incarcerated in a jail called a "CC facility" as long as it wants and no court can intervene because due process is gone.

This EO blows due process to smithereens by a simple trick. Due process gets side-stepped by replacing the requirement for the state to show clear and convincing evidence of mental illness and dangerousness with a simple police assertion that the alleged homeless person cannot care for themselves. Is this illegal? Yes it unconstitutional. But will the USSC agree that it is unconstitutional? Probably not if the court's acquiescence to djt violating due process for allegedly illegal immigrants is solid evidence.

This does not apply to non-homeless people, right?: Maybe, maybe not. Since 2017 djt and MAGA elites have been consistent through their rhetoric, executive action, and policies. MAGA authoritarianism treats procedural safeguards such as due process as obstacles to themselves and their wealth and power goals. Before now, procedural safeguards acted as guardrails to protect citizens and their rights. That mindset is now gone. Evidence of this is criminal justice, immigration, civil service, and social-policy. Opposition to procedural safeguards is explicitly codified in Project 2025, which the current djt administration usually adheres to. 

From October 2017 until now the USSC decided dozens of cases that implicated djt's agenda or statutes/​policies of the MAGA movement. The court's merits opinions shows a heavy anti-due process tilt. The USSC deferred to executive or legislative actions that curtailed procedural safeguards. It only sporadically intervened to protect due‐process rights. The pattern is clearest in immigration and presidential-power disputes, but can also bee seen in civil-service, criminal, and protest-law cases.

Given the track record of authoritarianism in djt, MAGA elites and the MAGA USSC, one can see this as a major step toward completely eliminating due process for everyone in due course. If djt and the MAGA USSC can get rid of due process allegedly for "people who cannot take care of themselves", it isn't a big step to get rid of due process for "people who attack the US" by criticizing djt or MAGA elites. 

Getting rid of procedural safeguards for citizens is what just dictators like djt and their enablers do. 

Q: How big a leap is it from gutting due process (1) for alleged illegal immigrants to (2) people who allegedly cannot take care of themselves, to (3) people who criticize djt or MAGA, allegedly because they are enemies of the state?

-- End of blog post

-- The following is optional, being in the land of TL/DR

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Pxy's Analysis of procedural safeguards like due process:

Q3: How big a legal leap [is it] for MAGA legal scholars who believe in the unitary executive to go from (a) Trump's EO on ending crime and disorder, which undermines due process for homeless people, i.e., "people who cannot take care of themselves", to (b) getting rid of due process for "people who attack the US" by criticizing djt or MAGA elites? Can erosion of procedural safeguards for allegedly illegal immigrants, and then for people who cannot take care of themselves lead to loss of due process for anyone who criticizes Trump or MAGA because they threaten the state and need to be silenced? Does the progressive loss of due process and other procedural safeguards for targeted groups so far amount to significant evidence that procedural safeguards can eventually be lost for everyone? In view of all relevant evidence so far, does reasoning that we will lose our procedural safeguards under a Trump-MAGA dictatorship amount to irrationality, e.g., unreasonable alarmism or crackpot conspiracy theory? Focus mostly on analysis of existing evidence that this progression is already underway. Consider Trump's vindictiveness and lawsuits against critics.

A3: .... commentary ....

The progression from denying due process to homeless individuals deemed "unable to care for themselves" to targeting political critics who "attack the US" represents not a legal leap but a documented pattern of authoritarian consolidation already underway. For unitary executive theorists aligned with MAGA ideology, this expansion follows a predictable trajectory that scholars studying democratic erosion have identified as a warning sign of broader systemic collapse. 

.... long analysis .... 

Scholars studying authoritarian transitions identify clear patterns in how democratic institutions are dismantled. Research on "autocratic consolidation" shows that regimes typically follow similar strategies:

1. Target vulnerable populations first to establish precedents

2. Expand emergency powers using national security justifications
3. Weaponize legal systems against political opponents
4. Undermine judicial independence through direct defiance
5. Normalize exceptional measures until they become routine

Multiple scholars note that the U.S. is following this exact trajectory.

Conclusion: Not Alarmism, But Pattern Recognition
The progression from denying due process to homeless individuals to targeting political critics represents neither a legal leap nor irrational alarmism. It follows a documented pattern of authoritarian consolidation that scholars have identified across multiple democratic breakdowns. The evidence shows this progression is already underway:

1. Due process protections are being systematically eliminated for vulnerable populations
2. Military force is being used against political protesters
3. Court orders are being routinely violated
4. Civil litigation is being weaponized against media critics
5. Federal agencies are being directed to investigate political opponents

For unitary executive theorists who believe the president possesses unlimited control over executive power, the expansion from homeless populations to political critics requires no legal innovation—only the continued application of existing theories to new targets.

The question is not whether this progression will occur, but whether democratic institutions and civil society can organize effective resistance before the erosion becomes irreversible. 

The MAGA mindset: Dealing with empathy

In the last several weeks several items, e.g., this, discussing or criticizing empathy have popped up. That was unusual. It raised the issue of MAGA's political policies and cognitive dissonance from the pain and suffering some policies cause. Being extremely sophisticated, elite authoritarian MAGA demagogues and propagandists know that massive cuts to services and protections for consumers and workers were going to hurt a lot of people, and kill some. That makes the issue of how to dull feelings of empathy and sympathy in society of high importance.

Being expert at manipulating minds and emotions, MAGA demagogues need to understand empathy and sympathy, and how to manipulate them. To try to avoid TL/DR, this post focuses on empathy.

There are two kinds of empathy. One is primal emotional empathy, a powerful unconscious feeling. The other is conscious cognitive empathy.

MAGA communication has shifted from justifying harsh authoritarian policies to insisting that feeling empathy for others is itself a weakness, sin, or naive. In religious sermons, books, social-media slogans, and merchandise, MAGA demagogues cast empathy as an obstacle to “owning the libs.” Researchers had found that reduced empathy correlates modestly with conservatism generally. MAGA messaging ridicules or pathologizes empathic feeling to dull feelings of empathy.

Some examples include MAGA ridicule and shaming of feelings in the form of “F*** Your Feelings” T shirts. That messaging framed emotion itself as a liability. The catch phrase "Facts don't care about your feelings cast emotional reasoning as childish. That put cold cognition above compassionate judgment. Elon Musk has argued that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy."

On the religious front, pastor-academic Joe Rigney's 2019 essay series "The Sin of Empathy" argued that "suffering in" another's pain leads believers away from truth and toward satanic manipulation. The implication being that liberals are Satan's minions. A 2024 bestseller  by Allie Beth Stuckey, Toxic Empathy, warned Christians that progressives "weaponize compassion" on issues like abortion, food stamp cuts and immigration. One recent article comments that Christian nationalists decided empathy is a sin, despite what the Bible says about the virtues of empathy. Now the concept is mainstream. The argument is that genuine love requires resisting empathy. That has generally made empathy a bad word in most evangelical groups.

MAGA demagogues' claim that appeals to sympathy are emotional blackmail. They argue that border enforcement, budget cuts, anti-abortion laws or anti-trans laws only look cruel because liberals exploit empathy. This messaging equates cognitive empathy with gullibility. The implicit argument is that understanding an opponent’s viewpoint is a moral mistake. It's gullibility to be empathetic, so don't be empathetic! 

Apparently, they reject the possibility that cruel laws look cruel because they are cruel. Clever messaging.

Cognitive dissonance management is needed when MAGA policies cause obvious harm, e.g., kicking people off Medicaid or food stamps. Vilifying empathy allows supporters an easy way to preserve their righteous self-image while feeling little to no cognitive dissonance. Some research indicates that pleasure at out-group pain spikes when leaders signal empathy's irrelevance. Yeah, some people are getting crueler. They just have been tricked by MAGA demagoguery into not knowing it.

Dictatorship update: Federal agency collapse

Federal agencies are in full blown collapse. Yesterday, the USSC issued another shadow docket ruling that allows djt to illegally fire the three Democratic commissioners on the Consumer Products Safety Commission. Current law requires the president to show cause for firing, e.g., fraud or professional negligence. That agency is now completely powerless to do anything about unsafe consumer products, new or old. Other recent USSC shadow docket rulings that allow djt to illegally fire independent agency employees have stripped away protections from workers (National Labor Relations Board gutted), consumers (Consumer Finance Protection bureau gutted) and federal elections (Federal elections Commission gutted). Gutting of the FEC leaves federal election laws no longer enforceable. 

In a different line of attack on federal agencies, djt's pro-pollution MAGA elites will gut the Environmental Protection Agency by getting rid of its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The MAGA plan is simple. The EPA will rescind a 2009 declaration known as the “endangerment finding,” which scientifically established that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane endanger human lives. Rejecting that science leaves the EPA powerless to deal with global warming. Some of fallout will affect auto and power plant emissions. For autos, the MAGA thugs behind this kleptocratic move argue that that imposing climate regulations on automakers poses the real harm to human health because it would lead to higher prices and reduced consumer choice. 

In addition to gutting EPA power to regulate, the MAGA thugs running the EPA plan to completely stop its climate science research and climate protection efforts. The agency is now charged with fostering carbon polluting activities and blocking green energy efforts, e.g., MAGA elites have blocked $20 billion in green energy spending. For the environment, MAGA’s overall strategy, which was laid out in Project 2025, is to (i) promote the use of fossil fuels, (ii) reduce or eliminate environmental regulations and green energy development, and (iii) stop federal climate research. MAGA will also eliminate air quality monitoring, particularly near industrial sites where it is most needed.

One can clearly see the authoritarian and kleptocratic goals of djt and his MAGA wealth and power political movement. Essentially all MAGA efforts are aimed at (1) deprotecting and disempowering major aspects of the public interest such as consumers, workers, the environment and government functions that protect all of that, and (2) transferring wealth and power from the public interest to wealthy and/or powerful individuals, groups or special interests that cooperate with elite MAGA players. We have a very corrupt pay-to-play system where cooperative special interests pay authoritarian MAGA elites, especially djt, for our wealth and power. 

In essence, djt and MAGA elites are selling us out piece by piece to the highest special interest bidders.

Qs: Is it reasonable to claim that what is happening mostly boils down to democracy and the public interest vs. kleptocracy and authoritarianism (a djt dictatorship with some oligarchy and Christian nationalist theocracy)? Or, do we need to see more evidence that djt and MAGA are authoritarian kleptocrats seeking power and wealth by generally opposing and taking power and wealth from the public interest and its federal protections? 

The US Population is Aging

 And what that will mean for the future generation who will have to find ways to support an aging population...........

The number of Americans ages 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years, reaching 80 million in 2040. The number of adults ages 85 and older, the group most often needing help with basic personal care, will nearly quadruple between 2000 and 2040.

The nation is aging. By 2040, about one in five Americans will be age 65 or older, up from about one in eight in 2000. Because younger people are much more likely than older people to work and pay taxes that finance Social Security, Medicare, and all other public-sector activities, population aging could strain government budgets.

The number of workers sharing the cost of supporting Social Security beneficiaries will soon plummet unless future employment patterns change dramatically. The latest Social Security Administration projections indicate that there will be 2.1 workers per Social Security beneficiary in 2040, down from 3.7 in 1970.

Improvements in life expectancy have also propelled the increase in the older population. Between 1900 and 1960, life expectancy at birth increased from 51 years to 74 years for men and from 58 years to 80 years for women, primarily through reductions in infant, childhood, and early adult mortality. Longevity gains since 1960, fueled by declining death rates at older ages, have been slower, especially for women. Life expectancy's future course is uncertain but could grow dramatically. Some experts claim that half of girls born today will live until age 100 (Vaupel 2000).

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/program-retirement-policy/projects/data-warehouse/what-future-holds/us-population-aging

This phenomenon is NOT unique to the US and what is missing in the above analysis is suggestions on how an aging population and longer life spans can be dealt with. Especially in an era where immigration is being discouraged and birth rates among WHITE populations is sharply declining. 

I would imagine ANY suggestion on how to tackle this future nightmare will be met with resistance. Raise taxes? Not on my dime will be the response. Raise the retirement age? Any political party in any country suggesting this will be in for a nightmare. And quirky ideas like Trump offering kids $1000 in an account for the future  will not work, as it doesn't help struggling families in the here and now. 

A sharp increase in immigration from overpopulated countries would be another suggestion, but the US and other Western nations are actually now going the other way and restricting who can enter their countries and by what numbers. 

So, what we are left with is a growing problem with no workable solutions that will fly with the general populace. THERE IS THE RUB - any solution for tackling this problem would require a massive change in taxation and having seniors work longer and/or a sharp increase in immigrant populations. 

Unless anyone else has any suggestions?