I think you are right regarding G. That ship has sailed. Best to let that go. M., per your explanation, does not lack proper paperwork but did know, all the while, that G. was lacking it, yes? And did nothing about that? Am not suggesting, of course, that she should have. But, putting ourselves into “their” heads (the heads of the loyalists)—as I think, these days, it is prudent to try to do—we might ask: Why didn’t M. (again, according to them, to their way of thinking) do what she “should” have done, by letting someone in authority know about G.? Since being here is “a privilege and not a right.” Are we or are we not (as I have grown sick of hearing) “a nation of laws”?

Even as they change the laws constantly to suit their own beliefs!

Believe me, I am as disgusted as you are with all of this.

But the world, in my (ancient) experience, sometimes moves off in a certain direction and, having moved, being so large and inscrutable, cannot be recalled to its previous, better state, and so, in this current situation, it behooves us, I would say, to think as they think, as well as we can manage, to avoid as much unpleasantness and future harm as possible.

Of course, you were writing, really, to ask about J. Yes, am still in touch with the lawyer you mentioned. Don’t honestly feel he would be much help. At this point. In his prime, he was, yes, a prince of a guy striding into a courthouse, but he is not now the man he once was. He opposed, perhaps too energetically, the DOJ review/ouster of sitting judges and endured much abuse in the press and his property was defaced and he was briefly detained and these days, from what I have heard, is mostly just puttering around his yard, keeping his views very much to himself.

Where is J. now? Do you know? State facility or fed? That may matter. I expect “they” (loyalists) would (with the power of the courts now behind them) say that although J. is a citizen, she forfeited certain rights and privileges by declining to offer the requested info on G. & M. You may recall R. & K., friends of ours, who gave you, for your fifth (sixth?) birthday, that bronze Lincoln bank? They are loyalists, still in touch, and that is the sort of logic they follow. A guy over in Aptos Village befriended a fellow at their gym and they would take runs together and so forth, and the first guy, after declining to comment on what he knew of his new friend’s voting past, suddenly found he could no longer register his work vehicle (he was a florist, so this proved problematic). R. & K.’s take on this: a person is “no patriot” if he refuses to answer a “simple question” from his “own homeland government.”