Welcome to the weekend edition of the Editorial Board! I’m your host, John Stoehr. Before I get to what I published recently, a few words about one of the themes of our times that’s lying beneath Signalgate.

That theme is sadism.

It’s the point. 

First, consider that US Attorney General Pam Bondi has suggested that there will be no investigation of the nation’s highest-ranking national security officials inviting a journalist to a discussion of highly classified military operations on an unsecured messaging platform.

Then consider that a longtime employee of the US Department of Homeland Security “inadvertently sent unclassified details of an upcoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation to a journalist in late January,” according to a report by NBC News.

Days later, the employee was placed on leave pending an investigation, the officials said. She was asked to take a polygraph test and surrender her personal cellphone, which she declined. She was then notified that the agency intends to revoke her security clearance, the officials said, which could keep her from working in the homeland security space again.

This is a pretty clear picture of unequal treatment before the law. As my senator, Chris Murphy, told MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle, on the subject of Signalgate, but not on the DHS employee who’s being investigated: “There has to be criminal investigations as well here. If the criminal code doesn’t apply to powerful people, if it only applies to people without power, then we don’t have rule of law in this country.”

Takeaway: we don’t have rule of law in this country.

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Bondi also said many of the federal judges who have ruled against the Trump regime need to be removed. “These judges obviously cannot be impartial,” she told Laura Ingraham. “They cannot be objective.”

In response, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin told an MSNBC panel: “Look at how sick that is. Basically anybody who has rendered any ruling they disapprove of they think should be removed from the bench. Any lawyer who has ever represented a party adverse to them they think should be cleared out of the way. That is in naked opposition to the rule of law. … They believed that if they disagree with someone or something, that person should be rendered illegal.”

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Put these comments together for an inhumane takeaway: Not only do we not have rule of law in the country, the law we do have is the law of power, which means that anyone who does not have power is illegal. 

This, however, isn’t the sadistic part. 

On Wednesday, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem made a video of herself standing in front of a cage full of nearly naked alleged gang members in El Salvador. The regime sent them there without due process under the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 statute invoked only in wartime, in defiance of a federal court order. There are media reports suggesting some were deported simply because they had tattoos.

“If you come to our country illegally,” Kristi Noem said in the video, “this is one of the consequences you can face. First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted, but know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

Andrew Sullivan had the righteous man’s reply: “These wannabe fascists publicly delight and revel in their acts of domination in a manner that even despotic regimes avoid. For the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, to posture in front of a third-world gulag, with a $50,000 Rolex on her wrist, in order to scare any brown person with a tattoo in the US, is an exercise in authoritarian pornography. It is fascistic in its essence.”

True, but it’s also sadistic.

Think about it. It’s not enough to create conditions in which the mighty are infallible by dint of being mighty. It’s also not enough to create conditions in which the weak are not only illegal by dint of being weak, but also immoral – dirty, impure, debased, degenerate, mongrelized.

These are not enough, because the question remains for the mighty: what do we do about those who are, by their very existence, “crimes against the American people.” Logically, they must be punished, and on seeing justice done, the mighty can take great pleasure in witnessing well-deserved suffering for the sin of poisoning America’s blood. 

In short, it’s sadism. 

And it’s the point.

To be sure, sending a couple hundred men to a torture prison in Central America, regardless of legal status, is extraordinary, even for this regime. You might think I’m exaggerating a bit about sadism.

But sadism comes in many forms. For instance, nonstop lying. More than anything else, that has been the dominant tone of Signalgate.

In this, see former FBI director James Comey. “Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from,” he said. “Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.”

“Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts or delusions,” Comey wrote in 2019. “I have felt it — this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room. … To stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values.” 

“And then you are lost,” he said. “He has eaten your soul.”

And to Trump, it tastes good.

Before I get to recent postings, a reminder:

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HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED LAST WEEK

March 21, 2025
Now’s the time for the Democrats to demoralize Trump voters
Think of it as a humanitarian effort.

March 22, 2025
Will the Democrats choose to be the good guys?
The weekend edition of the Editorial Board.

March 24, 2025
Elite Dems who betrayed Biden face possible ‘tea party’ revolt
They don’t want to talk about what they did.

March 25, 2025
There’s no such thing as a scandal under autocratic rule.
“But her emails” might be the last one.

March 26, 2025
The crisis of national security is loyalty to Trump
In his world, incompetence is a no vice.

March 27, 2025
In war plan, Trump was awol
That’s why they’re lying.

March 28, 2025
How to encourage a Trump voter to give up hope on voting
Remind them the president is treating them like everyone else.