At a hearing before the Supreme Court last week, a majority of the justices thankfully expressed real skepticism over Donald Trump’s bizarre and clearly illegal effort to utilize an emergency economic powers provision that doesn’t even mention tariffs to institute random tariff rates on pretty much every country in the world, shaking the foundations of the global economy while stripping Congress of its revenue-raising powers.

Is there any congressional authority that Trump and his acolytes won’t want to take for themselves? We know that the answer is no, so the next most important question is: How many of these powers will the legislative body itself and the courts permit Trump to snatch away? He’ll take whatever he can get, but the whole point of our system of three coequal branches is that any one branch cannot just choose to expand its authority, whatever the reason and circumstance.

What Trump is trying to do is to justify why this usurpation is good for the country. It’s not. His wild tariffs have sown economic chaos across the globe, undermined confidence in American markets, raised prices on consumers and threatened entire industries. But even if it were, that’s not really the point; presidents do not get to help themselves to the other branches’ powers as delineated under the Constitution just because they think they can justify it on practical terms.

Solicitor General John Sauer keeps calling the circumstances a “trade deficit emergency,“ but what is the emergency, exactly? Neither he nor anyone else in the executive branch has ever really tried to enunciate what exactly is so harmful to the American public about having nations from which we — and it’s important to remember, this is we cumulatively, including corporations, small businesses and individual American consumers making their own financial decisions — import more than export to.

The implication of this argument is that the ideal position for the United States is to either have a perfectly equal trade relationship or a trade surplus with every other country on the face of the Earth, which is insane and entirely economically unnecessary.

Let’s just lay it out plainly: We are having this discussion because Trump, for whatever reason, has become fixated on the idea that we cannot tolerate trade deficits for reasons that are frankly inscrutable and have no nexus to economic or geopolitical realities.

Everyone from his cabinet to Justice Department attorneys to his subservient GOP leadership in Congress has to pretend that this makes sense, but we certainly do not, and neither do the justices of the Supreme Court. Several lower court judges have already come to the conclusion that this is obviously unlawful, and you really don’t have to even be a lawyer to land in the same place.

Whatever ideological hang-ups have led the Supreme Court in recent years to do away with precedent and make disastrous decisions on the scope of executive power, the right to an abortion and gun regulation, among other things, we imagine that they can at least understand the implications of allowing a president to reorient entire aspects of the global economy on a whim while wrenching away the power of taxation from Congress.

Trump is already talking about how to do an end-run around their decision, which should illustrate just how little he cares about complying with the law.

— The New York Daily News

 

WASHINGTON — Born and raised in Worthington, Tom Sietsema’s home life set him up for success in his career as food critic for The Washington Post.

“I think one thing that sort of prepared me for my future job, unbeknownst to me at the time, was the fact that the kitchen was always this central place for people coming over and getting together,” Sietsema said in an interview. “My mom was a really good cook and a really good entertainer.

“Ours was one of those Midwestern families that sat down to dinner at 5:30 every single night. And my mom would always make a multi-course meal. We always had a salad, we always had a starch and a protein, and often we had dessert.”

Sietsema found the ritual of gathering around the table and breaking bread as a family was a stabilizing and wonderful thing.

“It’s something that I’ve always thought was a really important beginning for me at least,” he said.

That culinary journey has taken him from the best restaurants in the world to dining with those with little to share. Sietsema spent more than 25 years as a food critic at The Post.

In October, he left his position with a good portfolio of stories that he was proud of.

“I also felt like maybe it was time to do something different,” he said. “When The Washington Post announced these (staff) buyouts, I took one because the state of media is changing and I wanted to leave while I was still happy and productive.”

From mops to tops

Sietsema’s first job in journalism was at the Worthington Daily Globe. He was the janitor and would also bundle the newspapers fresh off the printing press to be delivered.

“They had great photographers and great columnists,” he said, “and just to be a small part of that back then was so exciting because I read all those people, and then to work alongside them and see them working was super exciting — even if I was observing them from my water bucket and a mop.”

Before graduating from Worthington High School in 1979, Sietsema spent his junior year as an exchange student in Worthington’s sister city — Crailsheim, Germany. The experience broadened his horizons and pushed him to explore the bigger world, taking him from the small town of Worthington to the nation’s capital.

“While I was in college (at Georgetown University), I had a couple internships that changed my life,” he said. “I worked for ABC News for ‘Good Morning America’ as an intern, and then I worked for Chicago Sun-Times as an intern, too, for the White House Bureau chief.”

While at the Georgetown University, Sietsema took the first journalism class offered — taught by an investigative reporter from The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, Sietsema was working at a pizzeria and was saving up his tip money to go to restaurants recommended in The Washington Post.

He started as food critic in 2000, and began spending 40 hours a week in restaurants.

“Every restaurant that I actually devoted a whole review to was based on three or four visits,” he said. “By the time I sat down to write about a restaurant, I would have eaten pretty much the whole menu. And I would have gone on a slow night and a busy night. I would have gone for dinners, I would have sat at the bar, I would have eaten a couple lunches or brunches so it was really fair to the restaurant that way. Because you can imagine if you go on a Monday and it’s slow and the dishwasher is broken, that would be a very different experience than having a full restaurant on a Saturday with lots of noise and full staff and everything working full tilt.”

In his 25 years at The Washington Post, Sietsema wrote more than 1,200 full restaurant reviews and about 50 dining guides, which took months to produce.

A fall dining guide would be something like the 40 or 50 best restaurants, and Sietsema would have to eat at around 70 restaurants to come up with his favorites.

“The fall dining guide never came out until October, but I started eating in earnest in late May and June,” he said. “And I was always looking for heavier dishes too because it came out in October. So, I wasn’t eating softshell crabs and watermelon salads. I was trying to find things that were haunches of meat and that sort of thing. I won’t have to worry about that anymore because I can just eat whatever I want. But at the peak I was eating about 10 meals out a week and The Post paid for all of that. And as you know it’s gotten really expensive to eat out and we have a lot of restaurants.”

Week in and week out, Sietsema would cover the food scene in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. He would also go to food hot spots such as San Francisco and New York, and traveled to China, London and Peru.

Politics and sausage

A memorable moment for Sietsema was when he covered the 2016 election, analyzing the lead candidates at the time: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

“I interviewed family and friends and looked at menus that they had eaten. I looked at video of them eating. I queried people who knew about their tastes. And so I did food political profiles on all three people,” Sietsema said. “That was great because all of them were old enough and, in the case of Hillary Clinton, I could go through the archives and see how her taste evolved from first lady of Arkansas to first lady of the country and then going into the Senate and becoming an ambassador.

“And with Trump, too, … he is not what I would call a good eater. I learned a lot about those people simply by what, how they ate and how they viewed breaking bread with people.”

Sietsema said the most cooperating candidate was Sanders and his family. They would send him real-time photos of Sunday dinners in Vermont, waving at the camera and sharing everything that was in their refrigerator.

“I didn’t have quite that access with the Clintons or the Trumps, but Bernie was super helpful in that respect,” Sietsema said.

Going undercover

Another story he was proud to do involved the dining room at the Central Intelligence Agency in McLean, Virginia.

“What was fascinating about that is that you have to have a reservation to get in. It’s cash only. They don’t take credit cards because so many of the people eating there are undercover that they can’t use their real names,” he said. “I went with about eight people from the CIA so I got to try a cross-section of dishes … I was impressed with how good the food was for a government institution.”

He had someone with him at all times while he was there, and he was even assigned a CIA photographer because he wasn’t allowed to bring his own. He also could not have any electronics on him, so wrote all of his notes with a pen and paper.

In the job as a food critic, many disguises are used. From toupees to facial hair, and fake teeth to different glasses, Sietsema has taken on the form of many, including as an undercover dishwasher to explore restaurants. It was that undercover aspect that made his tablemates at the CIA laugh.

“We’re comparing our little strategies and one of them said our jobs are a lot alike,” Sietsema said. “And I think that’s true. If you’re a restaurant critic and they know who you are, you can get a different waiter, you can sit in a prettier part of the dining room, they can be out of certain dishes that they’re not particularly proud to be serving that day. A lot of things can go on to change your experience and I always wanted to eat in the same way that a regular diner would who is paying his or her hard earned money for a meal away from home.”

Miriam’s Kitchen

After eating at thousands and thousands of restaurants, Sietsema said one place he remembers most fondly is Miriam’s Kitchen in Washington, D.C.

“I stood in line at a homeless shelter that was known for its food, and this is right around COVID time, and so I stood in line, no one knew who I was,” he said. “And I was served this delicious, restaurant quality food, hot coffee, and they treated everyone as if they were guests in a restaurant, even though it was a homeless shelter.”

There were real chefs cooking the food from scratch, not using cans or boxes. They would even make vegetarian dishes for those with dietary preferences. The homeless shelter still exists today and “does a great job of feeding the homeless community,” Sietsema said.

Another memorable experience was in India. After getting tired of eating in fancy restaurants and hotels, he asked a taxi driver where he and his friends like to eat.

“He took me to this kebab joint outside the city — far from all the hotels and everything,” he said. “There was this … little shack on the road and they were grilling meat over a charcoal oven and to the side was this cook who was chopping peppers and onions on a tree stump. Was I a little worried about getting sick? A little bit. But I was really curious to try what a lot of the people could afford to eat there versus expensive food in tourist hotels.”

“Yes, there’ve been fabulous, expensive places around the world, but those two come to mind as places that I will never forget,” he added.

Other highlights from his career include speaking at the Blair House, a federal government office across the street from the White House; watching fireworks from Hillary Clinton’s office at a Fourth of July party at the State Department and producing an online dining chat with his readers every Wednesday.

“I got to talk to people all over the world,” he said about his dining chats. “It was the most important thing I did every week because it created a community — a food community — and I wanted it to be non-political. I wanted it to be sort of a safe place where people could come with their food questions. And I did that for 26 years almost. So people would look to me for etiquette advice and dining advice and how to resolve disputes and then I got to know them, they got to know me.”

Restaurant recommendations

Among his dining advice is trying the sniff test at an unfamiliar restaurant.

“Does it smell like real food is being cooked? Do you smell spices? Do you smell onions? Do you smell beef if it’s a barbecue place?” he said. “I think it’s really important for you as the diner to go into a place with a good attitude. Go in with a smile on your face and your positive energy can’t help but be picked up by the staff.”

Sietsema said because restaurants are part of the hospitality industry, a lot of people take advantage of that.

“They think, ‘Oh, it’s my birthday, I get a free cake.’ When have you ever gone to a dentist and they decide to give you a free cleaning because it’s your birthday?” he said. “Where did that ever start?”

Other advice includes leaving the restaurant once you’ve paid.

“The only way restaurants make money is when people are seated and ordering things,” Sietsema said.

With his quarter-century tenure at The Post behind him, Sietsma would like to create a lifestyle newsletter that involves restaurants, traveling and a weekly recipe.

“I love traveling so much,” he said. “What my partner and I would like to do is, like after a year or so, maybe rent different parts of the world, just see what Cambodia is like, just to see what Berlin, Germany is like, just to see what New York City is like. We only have so much time on this planet and I want to see more of it and do it sort of at my own speed.”

But he doesn’t see himself spending all of his time dining out.

“I look forward to reacquainting myself with my kitchen and cooking some more,” he said. “I like having more control over what I eat.”

Something he’s already started doing is hosting Lamburger Nights, where he brings six random people from different walks of life over to his home for dinner.

When he visits home in Worthington, Sietsema said his favorite places to eat are now gone — Michael’s and the popcorn wagon that would show up at Chautauqua Park and elsewhere.

“Now, I would say my favorite place to go is my mom’s kitchen and her tuna salad, which she always makes in a big Tupperware bucket and which I could eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner because I’m her son and it’s delicious and I’m off duty,” he said.

While it was a lot of work, Sietsema found a lot of joy in his job, and he owed it to his upbringing.

“It’s just been the best,” he said. “I’m so proud to be from Minnesota and from Worthington specifically. I think I had great teachers. I had role models throughout the community. I had great parents, a loving family and all the building blocks.”

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — U.S. government attorneys say they have cleared all the hurdles needed to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia and are asking a federal judge to dissolve an order blocking his deportation.

Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation to his home country of El Salvador earlier this year has helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. His attorneys claim the administration is now manipulating the immigration system in order to punish him for successfully challenging that deportation.

A motion from the government filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland late on Friday says officials have received assurances from Liberia that Abrego Garcia would not face persecution or torture there. Further, it says an immigration officer heard Abrego Garcia’s claims that he feared deportation to the West African nation, but ruled against him.

His attorneys argue in a separate Friday filing that Abrego Garcia has already designated Costa Rica as a country where he is willing to be deported. They claim the government now must send him there. The fact that officials continue to pursue deportation to other countries is evidence that the process is retaliatory and violates due process protections, they argue.

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Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, finding he faced danger there. But in March, he was deported to El Salvador anyway in what a government attorney later said was an administrative error. Facing pressure from the courts, the administration brought him back to the U.S. in June but has since been pursuing his deportation to a third country.

Much of Abrego Garcia’s argument against his deportation to Liberia hinges on due process claims. The government tries to tear down those claims, arguing that his due process rights are not the same as a U.S. citizen’s. Because he entered the country illegally, he should be treated the same as someone who just crossed the border, they argue.

Meanwhile, his attorneys argue that “’aliens who have established connections in this country’ have greater due process rights than ’an alien at the threshold of initial entry’,” citing a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case.

As part of his due process rights, his attorneys also say he is entitled to have an immigration judge review the immigration officer’s determination that Abrego Garcia is unlikely to be persecuted or tortured in Liberia. They argue the officer should have considered the fact that Liberia could re-deport Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. And they say the Liberian government has only agreed to accept him on a temporary basis.

Government attorneys say they have assurances from Liberia that the Secretary of State deems sufficient. The court cannot second-guess that conclusion because that would mean intervening in foreign diplomacy, the domain of the executive branch, they argue.

“This Court should therefore dissolve its preliminary injunction and permit Petitioner to be removed to Liberia,” they state.

Separately, Abrego Garcia faces human smuggling charges in federal court in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty and asked the judge to dismiss the case, claiming the charges are the result of “selective or vindictive prosecution.” A hearing on that motion is set for December 8.

Spend enough time along the shores of Lake Superior and it won’t be long before there’s some reminder of what happened “when the gales of November came early.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest and most famous of the estimated 6,500 ships that have gone down in the Great Lakes. But the

Fitzgerald is remembered while the others are forgotten, thanks in large part to Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting 1976 folk ballad that became a surprise hit.

The Fitzgerald, a 730-foot long freighter named after a Milwaukee insurance company executive, went down in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975. All 29 men on board died.

A crew and good captain well-seasoned

The Fitz, as it’s still affectionately called, was the largest ship on the Great Lakes when it launched in 1958 and kept that title until 1971.

On its final voyage, the Fitzgerald departed Superior, Wisconsin, on Nov. 9, 1975, carrying 26,000 tons of iron ore along a familiar route to Zug Island in Detroit.

Oliver “Buck” Champeau, 41, was making his first trip on “The Mighty Fitz.”

The U.S. Marine veteran and experienced seaman was drawn by the higher pay that time of year due to increased risk, recalled daughter Debbie Gomez-Felder, who was 17 at the time.

“It was an honor to be on the Fitzgerald,” Gomez-Felder said, speaking in her home outside of Milwaukee adorned with images of her dad and paintings of the famous ship.

Most of the crew members were born and lived in states that border the Great Lakes — Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota.

The captain, 63-year-old Ernest M. McSorley, intended to retire after the 1975 season. He was known for his ability to navigate storms on the Great Lakes, but the one that hit on Nov. 10 was unlike any he had encountered.

When the waves turn the minutes to hours

McSorley chose a northerly route across Lake Superior to be protected by highlands along the Canadian shore. Gale warnings were issued the night of Nov. 9. Those worsened to storm warnings in the early morning of Nov. 10.

The crew of the nearby Arthur Anderson, which was trailing the Fitz, reported waves as high as 25 feet. The first mate radioed McSorley, who reported that the Fitz had been damaged by the storm.

“We are holding our own,” McSorley said. That was the last message received from anyone aboard.

Gomez-Felder said she was called out of class the following day and told to go home immediately. Her mom told her that the Fitzgerald was missing.

“I was banging on the church doors at St. Michael’s Church, our home church where I grew up, wanting answers from one of the priests as to how could this happen,” Gomez-Felder said. “I didn’t understand it.”

And all that remains is the faces and the names

There are many theories as to what caused the Fitzgerald to sink so rapidly without a distress call, but the exact reason remains unknown.

Even without an answer, the wreck spurred many “incredible” safety improvements, said Frederick Stonehouse, whose 1977 book “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was the first of dozens written about the tragedy.

Whereas a similar-sized ship would be lost on the lakes every six or seven years before the Fitzgerald, none has gone down since then, he said.

“Every sailor on the Great Lakes that’s sailing today owes a great deal of debt of gratitude to the Fitzgerald,” said Stonehouse, who taught Great Lakes maritime history at Northern Michigan University, located on the shores of Lake Superior.

The Fitzgerald still sits at the bottom of Lake Superior, submerged in 535 feet of water, about 17 miles (27.36 kilometers) north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan. No bodies have been recovered.

The wreck is protected as a grave site under Canadian law, a status that family members including Gomez-Felder lobbied for. Unauthorized dives or artifact retrieval are barred.
Gomez-Felder said she wants the wreck — and the bodies entombed within — to remain undisturbed.

The legend lives on

Events around the Great Lakes each year remember the men killed and reunite their family members, and organizers say the 50th anniversary has driven public interest to a new peak.

The Great Lakes Historical Museum in Whitefish Point plans a public event on Nov. 10. A separate ceremony only for the crew’s families will be livestreamed. The Edmund Fitzgerald’s bell, retrieved in 1995 at the request of crew family members, is housed there as a permanent memorial.

Bruce Lynn, executive director of the Great Lake Shipwreck Historical Society, said the museum is on track to see its busiest year ever on the 50th anniversary.

“When we remember the Fitzgerald, I like to think that at the same time we’re remembering all those other shipwrecks,” he said.

The wreck is also remembered in Detroit at the Mariners’ Church, where Rector Richard Ingalls rang its bell 29 times in honor of the crew after receiving word in the predawn hours of Nov. 11, 1975, that the Fitzgerald had sunk.

The tolling bell helped spread the word of what had happened and was memorialized by Lightfoot when he sang “the church bell chimed til it rang twenty-nine times.”

In 2023, after Lightfoot died, they rang the bell a 30th time. The bell will also be rung 30 times this year on the anniversary, with the final toll representing all sailors lost on the Great Lakes.
‘Fellas, it’s been good to know ya’

On this 50th anniversary, Gomez-Felder said she wants people to remember the Fitzgerald crew’s loved ones.

“It took me a little while to recognize he’s not coming back,” Gomez-Felder said of her father. “He’s not going to be here for my wedding, he is not going to see me graduate, he isn’t going to walk me down the aisle. He has gone.”

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She has been comforted by traveling to Whitefish Point each year to be with other families and, for the past 30 years, ringing the Fitzgerald’s bell in memory of her father and the others who died.

“That was the closest thing to my dad,” she said. “That’s the soul of the ship.”
___
Associated Press reporter Isabella Volmert contributed to this report from Lansing, Michigan.