by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

The Courier’s First Amendment special (publishing September 26) has lately been a top of mind concern.

How could it not be? We’ve seen so many Constitutionally provocative headlines recently, such as, “L.A. Unified student detained by immigration agents as district prepares increased safety measures.” And that EdSource headline actually downplays just how disturbing the August 11 incident was, when more of those masked, unidentified thugs the media calls “immigration agents” drew their weapons on a 15-year-old student, pulled him from his family’s car outside Arleta High School, and handcuffed him. This is just one of hundreds of similar cases of Trump’s secret police operating outside the bounds of the Constitution, unchecked, with extreme cruelty, all of which Attorney General Pam Bondi recently claimed before Congress to know nothing about, and racists in his administration like Stephen Miller applaud.

I wrote about this July 11 (“Protest is patriotic: celebrating Independence Day in Claremont”). Days earlier, Trump’s masked immigration goons had made a big dumb show of themselves at Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park, “sweeping through on horseback and patrolling the streets around it in military Humvees wearing full combat gear and carrying automatic weapons.” This seemed outrageous, and it was. But since then Trump’s cosplay gestapo has only become more brazen, brutal, and thuggish, ramping up its kidnappings — what else can we call them when “officers” carry no identification (or in most cases, warrants), and refuse to identify the branch of law enforcement they represent? — and stoking ever-increasing fear in our communities.

As I wrote last month, it’s only a matter of time before one of these “agents” shoots and kills a bystander or “suspect.” They came close Saturday, when immigration “agents” were caught on camera in San Bernardino breaking the window of a car, then opening fire on the “suspects” inside. Just last week, Carlos Roberto Montoya, a 52-year-old man from Guatemala, was struck by a car and killed in Monrovia while trying to evade a group of “agents” on foot.

Remember last year, when law and order types were up in arms over students wearing masks while protesting American schools’ and corporations’ economic complicity in the genocide in Gaza? Conveniently, many of those same folks have decided it’s perfectly fine for Trump’s secret police to conceal their identities. “I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line and their family on the line because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons on June 2.

Apparently, in the alternate reality of 2025, masks are OK, but only for certain kinds of people.

“… from now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why???” Trump wrote June 7 on Truth Social, describing “Radical Left protests” (and affording them proper noun status, no less) in one of his typically idiotic all caps posts, while at the same time making every sane American’s argument for requiring his masked secret police to be held accountable in the same manner.

The hypocrisy knows no bounds with these people.

Remember his supporters’ obsession with Trump “upholding the Constitution”? Well, just like due process, that’s old news. Asked on “Meet the Press” in May whether he took an oath to uphold the Constitution — spoiler: he did — Trump said “I don’t know.”

Well, we know.

Democrats’ response to all this insanity has been to hold periodic theatrical press conferences and craft several strongly worded letters to the manager. Most, save a handful of reliable firebrands, have hidden from cameras, apparently clinging to Michelle Obama’s now wildly archaic “we go high” philosophy.

Thankfully, it appears a meaningful response is beginning to coalesce right here in California. Governor Gavin Newsom is getting down in the gutter with Trump, trolling him by aping his own ridiculous barrage of misspellings-laden, all caps social media posts. Even Fox “news” has taken notice, reporting breathlessly on Newsom’s antics.

Though it admittedly leaves a bitter taste to have to resort to Trump’s own childish and tawdry tactics, by all reports the gambit his hit a nerve, to the point that even his most distinguished supporters have rushed to defend him: noted political commentator Kid Rock clapped back on X this week with a choice middle school insult from 1993: “The only support Gavin Newscum will ever get out of me is from DEEZ NUTZ.”

Yep. That’s where we’re at.

Please keep it up, Gov. Newsom. Though you’re certainly not without your blind spots (your poor record on homelessness comes to mind), we thank you for standing up to this onslaught of cruelty, incivility, and childishness with … more of the same. It certainly isn’t pretty, but at least you’re doing something.

Still standing

Readers may recall my July 25 column, “Searching for home in Tehachapi,” wherein my kids and I drove up to the high desert town to look for the home my grandfather built in the mid-1970s.

On Sunday, we headed back up to Tehachapi. But this time — thanks to some clever Google Maps detective work by my cousin Chris — we were armed with a crucial piece of information: an address.

We pulled into town about noon. Good ol’ Waze led us off the two-lane country road onto a quite rutted dirt path, and after a few minutes, there it was.

The home, I am happy to report, is still standing, albeit worse for wear.

I was filled nostalgic joy and, to my surprise, melancholy. The small creek that ran through the property was dry. The barn looked near collapse, as did the house’s balcony. The once verdant, well-kempt grounds were mostly barren, the grove of fruit trees gone, the chicken coop no longer standing. The paint was peeling, and a rusty snow shovel leaned against the front porch. Photos were snapped. A couple souvenir rocks were appropriated.

Things change. I know it’s the only thing we can rely on. Still, seeing that house — once filled with family, almost all of them gone now — in such disrepair was disheartening. I thought about the hard work my grandfather put in grading the sloped lot, trenching the plumbing, electrical, and sewer groundwork, pouring the foundation, framing, finishing, and painting the place. It took him years of weekend work, and now it is sitting in decay.

I was a little gloomy as we made our way up the familiar dirt road and back onto the two-lane blacktop. The kids, sensing it, said they were happy to have seen the house. “It’s still there,” they said. “That’s pretty cool.” And they were right; that’s pretty cool.