ANGELO LYNN

Vermont’s governor finally broke his silence on just one of the many unlawful actions undertaken by President Donald Trump since returning to power on January 20, 2025. During the past two months, Trump has assaulted the nation’s constitution by superseding the powers of Congress, sending the country into a constitutional crisis by ignoring court orders (including from the U.S. Supreme Court), jailing people who have a legal right to be in the country without due process, shutting down agencies and firing hundreds of thousands of staff illegally, disrupting and withholding billions of dollars on a wide variety of national priorities that were already approved by the former Congress (including FEMA aid for states recovering from devastating wind storms and floods), just to name a few of the wrong-headed directives this president has unleashed — often with glee — on the nation.

While demonstrations have been gathering steam around the country, and dozens of governors have assailed Trump’s illegal moves, Vermont’s Gov. Phil Scott has been mostly mum. Even when thousands of Vermonters gathered in Montpelier for the Hands-Off event last week, Scott was a no-show, even as Vermont’s congressional delegation, the state’s lieutenant governor and many others were there to speak out in protest of Trump’s illegal actions. (See Rep. Larry Satcowitz’s op-ed this week.)

But this week, Scott finally sided with a majority of Americans when he expressed caution (not outrage, but at least caution) that the president was straying into dangerous waters by revoking citizenship rights without due process.

The incident that triggered the governor’s response was the arrest of Moshen Mahdawi in Colchester. Mahdawi was detained by Homeland Security agents when he went to an immigration services center in Colchester to take what was the final step in the long process of becoming a naturalized citizen. Mahdawi moved to Vermont from the West Bank in 2014 and has been a legal permanent resident, or green card holder, since 2015. The officers were not in uniform and wore masks when they arrested him.

Many Vermonters witnessed the arrest in shock and with disgust at what America has become under Trump.

“Yesterday, Vermonters witnessed the arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi, a foreign national with legal status to be in the United States of America,” wrote Gov. Scott. “That legal status, the Bill of Rights, and Constitution of the United States all grant him, and all people, fundamental rights – including due process.

“Facts matter.  If there is evidence that Mahdawi is a threat to the security of our nation, or Vermont, the federal government should make this information known, immediately. Probable cause based on real evidence is the only justification to deny someone their liberty, so if the federal government cannot produce that evidence, Mr. Mahdawi should be released,” said the governor’s statement.

“What cannot be justified,” Scott added, “is how this action was undertaken. Law enforcement officers in this country should not operate in the shadows or hide behind masks. The power of the executive branch of the federal government is immense, but it is not infinite, and it is not absolute.”

While the statement was milquetoast and did not chastise Trump and the government for acting as a third-rate dictatorship, it at least expressed the state’s discontent.

Vermont’s congressional delegation was far more forceful.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, demanded the release of Mr. Mahdawi, a Palestinian student from Columbia University, saying: “This is immoral, inhumane, and illegal. Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.”

Congressmember Becca Balint released a statement that put Trump’s action on par with Hitler’s infamous arrests by his Brownshirts, or Storm Troopers, who were a paramilitary organization that played a crucial role in Hitler’s rise to power. The Brownshirts engaged in violence and intimidation to suppress political opponents and build Nazi support among their followers who worshipped Hitler like many MAGA followers worship Trump.

“This should terrify every single person living in this country, regardless of your citizenship status,” said Balint. “This is Trump creating his own army of brownshirts right here in our country.”

Balint’s comment is doubly important because of Trump’s increasing use of suspect police tactics that reflect those of dictatorships — not a nation based on the rule of law.

In another case connected to the state, Tufts University student Rümeysa Oztürk was snatched off the street by plain-clothes officers near her home in Summerville, Mass., just two weeks ago. She was abruptly cuffed, put in a police car, and transferred briefly to Vermont before being flown to Louisiana where she has been imprisoned in an ICE facility. All the while, no charges have been filed against her. Vermont District Judge William Sessions heard arguments in the case this Monday. The student’s attorneys have asked the judge to have her released on bail as her case proceeds, or if not that, to have her held in custody in Vermont instead of Louisiana.

The government has contested both requests, arguing that it seeks to revoke her student visa and deport her out of the country. Her alleged crime? She co-authored an op-ed piece in the campus newspaper criticizing the university for not doing more to speak out against Israel’s invasion of Gaza. For that act of free speech, she was kidnapped by law enforcement officers and imprisoned.

In another less abusive example (so far), Trump’s immigration officials have taken preliminary action against four students connected with Middlebury College that may result in their deportation. (See our lead story on Page 1A.) It’s a new tactic the administration has been deploying, in that the State Department has the legal right to revoke a student visa at any time, even though such rights have rarely been used. That’s because both Republican and Democrat parties have always believed the nation was stronger when the best and brightest foreign students chose to come to America to study.

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Such personal assaults by this administration must be a line too far for all Americans. It’s one thing to have a brutal policy to round up and deport immigrants who are in this country illegally. It’s another to act as if all immigrants, most of whom are here legally, are a threat to the country and should be rounded up by undercover thugs and deported.

In these ways and others, Trump has become a modern-day Benedict Arnold — doing more to undermine the nation’s laws, foreign policy, and global economic supremacy in two months than our most ardent opponents have been able to do in two centuries.

Even conservatives are taken aback. “You’ve got to be scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons,” said Joe Rogan on his popular podcast, adding the case of the Maryland man mistakenly sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration was “horrific.” Added rightwing commentator Ann Coulter: “There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the First Amendment?”

Does she really have to ask, or did she couch that question so meekly because she too is afraid of Trump’s retribution?

Angelo Lynn