I went to Breads Unlimited yesterday and bought a challah for Friday night and some hamentaschen for Purim. The bakery has a special on apple pies for Pi Day, Irish soda bread for St. Patrick’s Day, even cookies shaped like Easter bunnies. I looked for the Ramadan specials, but they were nowhere to be seen.

We had dinner last night at daughter Hannah’s house. The DC public schools were closed Thursday and Friday for teacher conferences, and 9 year old Joan was embarrassed to be thinking that she had school the next day, forgetting she was on a four day weekend.

But I am with her, totally confused as to what today is. On a 2 week vacation, days merge into each other. We got back on a Wednesday afternoon, went to the nightly minyan for Edie’s mother’s yahrzeit, and the next night back to the synagogue for Purim, after having our 4 year old grandson at our house all day since he had no school.

I woke up this morning, thinking of all of yesterday’s news, and my reaction was: wow, they sure did a lot yesterday, considering it was Sunday. Will Ivever straighten out?

A lot did happen yesterday. Unsurprisingly,  nothing good resulted, at least as of yet, from negotiations to end the wars in the Middle East or Ukraine. Trump, who promised peace in His time, has pretty much left Israel out of Middle East talks and Ukraine out of Ukraine talks. He has also kept any experienced American diplomats out of those conversations. So far, things are worse, not better. Surprise!

Then, there was a court decision in Trump’s favor, saying that He could shut down DEI offices. I don’t find that surprising, as neither the Constitution nor, to my knowledge,  any statute require a DEI office. But, and I haven’t heard any details about the decision, there still needs to be compliance with Civil Rights laws and the 14th Amendment. And with Trump’s base being White Christian Nationalist, there is an assumption that the 14th Amendment will be lost in the weeds, and the definition of discrimination will be turned on its head. The best example, perhaps, being the dropping of the case against the petrochemical company in Louisiana because the pollution victims are Black and a claim that the basis for the case was DEI. As I said yesterday, “Yes, you read that right.”

In the meantime, Trump spoke yesterday at the Department of Justice. He apparently spoke for an hour. I saw only a short clip, showing Him making a few misguided statements to the repeated applause of the DOJ audience, which really surprised me. I then learned it was an invitation-only DOJ crowd. Any dissenters could dissent somewhere else.

The speech was highly political, even though Trump and Bondi promised no politics at DOJ. That was not surprising. Trump declared Himself the country’s chief law enforcement officer,  I understand and set out a list of nefarious tasks He wanted to see accomplished.

Perhaps the worst thing He did yesterday was to take away security clearances from the lawyers at Paul, Weiss, another major law firm. He had just been raked over the coals by a federal court for doing this to lawyers at Perkins Couie. Told he could not do this in no uncertain terms, He went right ahead and did it again. This may be the first real indication that He will simply ignore court rulings He doesn’t like.

Our country is being upended by a man who believes in power and not in law. It is as simple as that. The goal of MAGA is greatness as defined as untamed power externally and internally. What could be more un-American?

I do not think He will succeed in the long run. Dictators tend to wind up on the ash heap, destroyed without pity. Their place in history is far from glorified.

We don’t yet know how this will happen. But, Mr. Trump, you should beware the Ides of March