There is a lot more to worry about each week

Best economy in the world just three months ago

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There's a lot to worry about these days.

Tariffs may make goods more expensive and your 401k less valuable.

Social Security staff is being cut and offices closed leading to concerns whether seniors will get their checks each month.

Instead of addressing climate change, the current administration intent on making it worse.

Funding for scientific research is being gutted and research on new drugs and cures derailed.

It's a wonder any of us can sleep at night.

But here is what scares me even more.

The government is ignoring the rule of law and due process and removing people from the country who have not only done nothing wrong, but post no danger to anyone.

A Columbia University student was taken from his pregnant wife and is being detained in Louisiana for organizing pro-Palestine protests.

A Tufts University student was picked up off the street and taken away for signing an opinion piece in the student newspaper.

Two former Trump administration officials are being investigated by the Department of Justice at the orders of the president for speaking out against Donald Trump and his policies during his first term.

Then, there is Liz Oyer's story.

In a week of nonstop news, you might have missed it.

Liz Oyer was a clemency attorney for the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden.

You are never going to hear much about clemency attorneys - if any of us knew there was such a thing - because they vet candidates for a pardon.

You might remember the recent news story where six members of the Justice Department were fired on at the advice of a Trump acquaintance and conspiracy theorist named Laura Loomer. She reportedly told Trump these six individuals - one of who was Oyer - were not being loyal to Trump.

Oyer not only lost her job, but when she was contacted by Democrats in the U.S. Senate to testify about why she was fired, the Department of Justice sent armed U.S. Marshalls to inform her it was against the law for her to testify.

"I was in the car with my husband and my parents... when I got the news that the officers were on their way to my house where my teenage child was home alone," Oyer testified. "Fortunately, due to the grace of a very decent person who understood how upsetting this would be to my family, I was able to confirm receipt of the letter to an email address, and the deputies were called off."

So what was the secret information that U.S. Marshalls wanted to make sure she did not share? Our national security was apparently at risk if she told my she declined to recommend restoring gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, a supporter of President Trump.

You can't make this stuff up.

Sen. Adam Schiff called sending marshals to deliver a letter and effort to "intimidate and silence."

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said it was a move "ripped straight from the gangster playbook."

The Department of Justice letter spelled out to Oyer that testifying was against the law.

Oyer's lawyer, Michael Bromwich said any argument that Oyer could not testify was "baseless" and she was entitled to legal protections for whistleblowers.

Oyer said during her testimony last week, "I will not be bullied into concealing the ongoing corruiption and abuse of power at the Department of Justice."

Sadley, it appears others are willing to be bullied and are doing the dirty work of the Trump administration to keep their jobs.

Crazy tariff policies made us all a little poorer last week, but compromising the Department of Justice strikes at the heart of what American stands for.

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Even more frightening

Legal scholar Lawrence Tribe wrote this is in a New York Times opinion piece this week:

"Of all the lawless acts by the Trump administration in its first two and a half months, none are more frightening than its dumping of human beings who have not had their day in court into an infamous maximum-security prison in El Salvador — and then contending that no federal court has the authority to right these brazen wrongs.

In an astounding brief filed in the Supreme Court on Monday, the solicitor general of the United States argued that even when the government concedes that it has mistakenly deported someone to El Salvador and had him imprisoned there, the federal courts are powerless to do anything about it. The Supreme Court must immediately and emphatically reject this unwarranted claim of unlimited power to deprive people of their liberty without due process."

That's what no rule of law looks like. Who can defend that?

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Economy on Jan. 6

At the beginning of January I saw a statement made about the current state of the economy. I thought it might be important so I saved it:

"President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”

That was three months ago.

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Chilling press

Some student journalists have begun "retracting their names from published articles amid intensifying repression by the Trump administration targeting students," The Guardian's Anvee Bhutani reported this week.

Some writers are asking that past articles in support of Palestine be removed from websites due to fears of reprisal from the current administration.

National media groups have begun sending out guidance to student publications.

"I have been working at the Student Press Law Center for more than three decades, and I am now warning student journalists about things I have never had to tell them before," SPLC senior legal counsel Mike Hiestand told Bhutani. "Student speech that is, or should be, fully protected by the law is now being weaponized by the U.S. government and student media must adapt to continue to fully report on their communities."

This is chilling.

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Money rolls in

North Country Public Radio is reporting that Democratic Congressional candidate Blake Gendebien says he’s raised more than $3 million in the first quarter of 2025 while continuing to hold town halls throughout the region as he prepares to run for the 21st Congressional District seat sometime in the future.

"I am very close to the middle and I’m not going to apologize for being a moderate leader," Gendebien said at a Plattsburgh town hall meeting. "I’m not going to apologize for wanting to work on things that we can actually get done. And that’s the secret to winning rural America back."

Gendebien said he believes there still may be a special election this year.

"I do think there’s a good chance of her (Stefanik) resigning in the middle of summer sometime and then having a special election this fall, absolutely," he said.

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Overdraft fees back

The Biden administration implemented a rule that limited the overdraft fees by banks to just $5 a month last year.

It's the type of consumer reform that is every popular.

Yet, the House of Representatives vote 217-211 to overturn that rule and let banks do what they want.

Rep. Elise Stefanik voted with the rest of the Republicans to kill the limitations on banks. The Biden administration estimated the rule would save consumers billions of dollars.

The Associated Press report said that Republicans argued that that the “disastrous” regulation forced banks to stop offering overdraft protection altogether and made it harder for Americans to access credit.

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Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.