Rule of Law Concept

sorta belaTED DISAMBIG does not show in srch?

SEE RULE OF LAW 2 HABEAS 5 25

see doge coup MUSK DARK $ GOP MOC GILL VAN ORDEN

primary 11 24 trump see admin state

SEE FASCISM 2025 BANNON

SEE STATE OF EXCEPTION = EMERGENCY CRISIS

SEE JUDGE JUDICIARY

SEE ABREGO GARCIA

SEE FOX BAD TRINITY

SEE SUPPORT = TARGET!

abbott other gop govs said disregard scotus on immigration

merri ok

see BS attempts to hijack god term by lawless fascist gop

// law and order code for racism/fascism

only became demonized when courts became a threat to trump

// also weaponization of DOJ BS biden laptop

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sunday show? kirsten asked trump if const guarr due process and he said i do not know i have smart lawyers to figure it out?! 5 25

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AN OCT 2026

Threats against federal judges in the United States have reached record levels this year, with the U.S. Marshals Service investigating more than 500 threats by September — a surge legal observers say reflects rising politicized hostility toward the judiciary.

In an article for the Guardianpublished Sunday, investigative journalist Jason Wilson argued that El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele is seeking to export his authoritarian playbook to the U.S. by calling on President Donald Trump to impeach “corrupt judges.”

Wilson noted that Bukele has made repeated public attacks on the US judiciary — including describing the country as “facing a judicial coup” — and that his latest call was amplified by pro‑MAGA figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk.

He writes that the timing of this intervention is significant, as the U.S. judiciary is already under unprecedented pressure from threats, harassment, and rhetorical assaults tied to the current Trump administration. Wilson cites figures showing hundreds of threats to federal judges in 2025, plus numerous instances of attacks on judges at the local level.

The writer traced Bukele’s tactics back to actions his government took in 2021, when loyalist legislators dismissed constitutional court justices and the attorney general to install allies. He argued that although the U.S. system makes removal of judges difficult, the tactic being tested is not direct removal but delegitimisation and intimidation.

According to Wilson, the Trump administration is using sustained attacks on the judiciary, repeating claims that courts are not co‑equal branches and targeting judges who rule against it, as a tool to discourage judicial review. He warned that consistent threats and undermining of institutional legitimacy may lead judges to hesitate in decisions that conflict with the administration’s agenda, weakening one of democracy’s key checks.

The article quoted Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

"That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in several countries, including by Bukele," the article noted.

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email 6 25 moveon

Here's the news: Federal courts ruled against the Trump administration 96% of the time in May.¹ Yes, 96%!

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Political scientist Adam Bonica describes "the authoritarian script:

Court rules against leader
Attack judges as biased/dangerous
Delegitimize judicial system
Create permission for threats
IF NO MASS RESISTANCE → Purge the courts
IF MASS RESISTANCE → Forced to retreat."²

Bonica warns, "Every authoritarian who successfully destroyed judicial independence did so because civil society failed to unite in time. The key difference? Whether people mobilized."³

moveon

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OMFG

MMA

“It needs to stop.” Ben Shapiro calls out Trump's “skeezy stuff” like the crypto scheme and accepting a plane from Qatar.

05/12/25

### Charlie Kirk: “These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this.”

05/12/25

### Fox’s comically pathetic spin for a foreign government gifting Trump a $400 million plane

05/12/25

Steve Bannon: “Certain members of Congress should be arrested this afternoon for their activities on this situation up in Newark”:}:

:{:{05/12/25}:

May 12, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): This hurtling towards a constitutional crisis, which we are hurtling towards, it must be resolved by the end of June. When the Supreme Court leaves for the summer, they're not back until October. This cannot fester over the summer. This issue, particularly about the deportations.

Something else, I believe certain members of Congress should be arrested this afternoon for their activities on this situation up in Newark. The mayor was already arrested.

I think Stephen Miller, as we started here on the show with Rogan O'Handley, DC Draino, to talk about the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus like President Lincoln did during the Civil War, that this is something that has to be on the table.

I believe that this is going to be even a bigger part of the controversy. I think it's gonna become part of the conversation. I know Stephen Miller and the crack team over there, he's deputy White House counsel — chief of staff for policy, I think Stephen and his team are all over this. Remember Stephen ran America First Law, which is outstanding, did so much of the great work.

This is the convergence of the crises, right? You have the constitutional crisis on the mass deportations and really President Trump's power under Article 2. The judge in San Francisco on Friday said he doesn't have the ability to either cut costs of personnel at 21 separate federal agencies, so the whole Article 2 powers of the president now being challenged by, let's face it, radical Marxist — neo-Marxist, a judicial supremacists in the federal judiciary, it's got to be taken care of.

They asked me at the Financial Times situation on Saturday night, what happens to the Supreme Court's rules? I said, hey, we're going to see at the time. It's that open a question.

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an 5 25 LUTTIG

former GOP judge explains how Trump intends to 'flood the zone' to 'overwhelm' the courts

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AN 5 25

Top White House adviser Stephen Miller recently suggested President Donald Trump is actively considering suspending the writ of habeas corpus to “take care of the illegal immigration problem.”

"The Constitution is clear … that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said. “So that’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

But the Dispatch reports John Yoo, a former clerk to Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, said Miller’s argument “wouldn’t apply to a case of immigration at all.”

The Bush Justice Department lawyer, who drafted several memos in 2002 authorizing the CIA to commit torture at the height of the U.S. war with Iraq, went on to say, “There’s zero chance that that would fly in the courts.”

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Yoo is “not in the least embarrassed by the condemnation of his peers” for his expansionist views on presidential powers, including the right of the White House to commit U.S. adversaries to waterboarding. But he remains confident the courts would not bend on this particular expansionist claim.

However, Miller’s statement may also contain a veiled threat to judges: “A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” Miller said. Later, that statement was followed by the highly publicized arrest of a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge for allegedly interfering with the collection of an immigrant by ICE forces.

In addition, it is a threat potentially wrapped with the insulating layer of a complicit Congress, writes Dispatch Senior Editor John McCormack.

Yoo insists Trump suspending habeas corpus would provide “plausible grounds for impeachment” considering Trump would be arguably arrogating “the powers of another branch at a time when the provision doesn’t even apply.” But the Dispatch reports the reaction from Congressional Republican Party members to Miller’s claim is “muted, at best.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the only Republican senator to forcefully speak out against Miller’s comments, calling it “a terrible idea.” Other GOP Senators declared, “we’d have to find out more,” like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), or “I don’t think so,” like Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

“A lack of enthusiastic support from congressional Republicans is, of course, far from the kind of threat that might actually deter Trump from an unprecedented assault on civil liberties,” the Dispatch writes. “If Trump doesn’t fear the courts or Congress, might anything else constrain him?”

“It also depends on whether other officers of the government choose to obey the president’s order,” Yoo told The Dispatch. “… [D]oes the president really want to raise doubts about the military’s willingness to follow the commander in chief?”

Read the full Dispatch report here.

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an 5 25

Educator Ross Rosenfeld tells The New Republic that Trump is exploiting so-called “emergency” powers to create a permanent dictatorship.

“The office of dictator was created in the early Roman Republic, when it granted a single person — a prominent and trusted citizen — immense power in times of emergency,” writes Rosenfeld.

And of course this power was exploited by the likes of Roman general Sulla, who used that legislative procedure to entrench himself as dictator for life. Julius Caesar later used it to permanently bring an end of the Roman Republic and mire it in a series of dictatorships.

“A couple of millennia later, and half a world away, Donald Trump is taking steps in that direction,” he said, courtesy of complicity and courts.

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Woodrow Wilson was the first president to formally declare a national emergency and use this additional power to prepare the nation for World War I. FDR issued three national emergency proclamations, two related to World War II. Then, in 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA) giving presidents broad emergency powers. It originally included a check on that authority by reining in an emergency declaration through a vote, but the Supreme Court overturned that check in the 1983. Presidents soon made emergency declarations a well-worn tool in the White House toolbox.

Ronald Reagan used the NEA six times during his eight years in office. Bill Clinton used it 18 times. George W. Bush declared an emergency 14 times against foreign entities related to terrorism, as did Barack Obama. But since retaking office, Trump has “declared eight national emergencies in just a few short months.”

“He’s used the NEA to militarize the Southern border against ‘invasion’ and to enact tariffs against the entire world,” writes Rosenfeld. “He declared a national energy emergency, even though no such emergency exists, so that he can push through more fossil fuel permits.”

Trump coupled his NEA “emergencies” with the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to violate the due process rights of undocumented immigrants “and sentence them to a lifetime of detention in El Salvador.” Trump has considered using the 1807 Insurrection Act to use American troops to deal with a "rebellion" within U.S. borders. Presidential advisor even considered suspending habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants, depriving them of any due process rights, in defiance of the Constitution.

Suspending habeas corpus is easier with “a Congress controlled by a feeble, impotent Republican Party,” Rosenfeld said. After all, when the Roman Senate suspended due process procedures for Gaius Gracchus they conveniently “shielded themselves from any responsibility for actions taken during the crisis.”

Rahm Emmanuel once said “Never let a crisis go to waste,” and Rosenfeld says Trump and Miller have exploited “Rahm’s rule” to craft a rule of governance that deliberately creates “a continual state of crisis and turmoil, allowing the president to assume expansive emergency powers.”

“Crises lend themselves to authoritarian rule, and often in the aftermath it’s extraordinarily difficult to return to republican government,” Rosenfeld warns.

But what commonly comes after a dictator is another dictator, and Americans made a mistake in “putting a fascist back in office after his first attempt to overthrow the government."

Read the full TNR report here.

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an 525

President Donald Trump's critics, both left and right, often use the word "unprecedented" to describe his actions. No previous president in U.S. history — not even Richard Nixon — contemplated deporting U.S. citizens to foreign prisons or took aggressive action against law firms for having clients he didn't like.

They typically mean "unprecedented" in the United States, not unprecedented elsewhere.

In an article published by The Atlantic on May 14, Andrew O'Donohue — a political scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts — warns that Trump is employing a legal strategy used by despots in other countries.

"Donald Trump’s attacks on the courts lack recent precedent in the United States," O'Donohue explains, "but they follow a clear pattern seen in backsliding democracies around the world. In many countries, when political leaders challenge the courts, the end result isn't merely a win in a single policy dispute. These attacks have a deeper, more destructive effect: They systematically weaken the courts as a check on the executive's power — opening the door for governments to abuse that power to target opponents and endanger democracy."

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The Harvard political science expert continues, "This fight takes place both inside and, importantly, outside the courtroom, in the arena of the public’s opinion. Even though citizens generally agree that governments should obey court orders, several would-be authoritarians — such as those in Turkey, Mexico, and El Salvador — have managed to defy the courts, while keeping the public on their side.

O'Donohue describes the "pattern" he has "studied" in "democratic backsliding globally" as "court-baiting."

"To understand this dynamic, consider a textbook example from Turkey," O'Donohue writes. "When Turkey’s long-serving leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, first rose to power in 2003, he initially faced powerful constraints from the judiciary. Whereas Erdoğan's party was religiously conservative, Turkey's courts were staunchly secular and issued dozens of decisions during Erdoğan’s first term to limit the government's sway over historically secular state institutions. To take down the judiciary, Erdoğan used the court-baiting playbook."

O'Donohue continues, "He proposed a constitutional amendment perfectly designed to galvanize public support — and trigger a showdown with the judiciary. In Turkey, the courts had repeatedly upheld a ban that prevented Muslim women from wearing the Islamic headscarf at universities in the name of upholding the constitution’s strict commitment to secularism."

Trump, O'Donohue argues, is using the "court-baiting playbook" in a similar fashion to Erdoğan in Turkey — and the goal is an "erosion of checks and balances."

"The experiences of other democracies offer a warning: Court-baiting starts by expanding executive power on a popular issue," O'Donohue writes, "but it can end with an unconstrained executive who destroys the cherished institutions of a free society."

*Andrew O'Donohue's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

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an 525

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller says the White House is “actively” examining suspending habeas corpus, a constitutional protection that supports the right to due process. Critics, including legal experts, reacted strongly, with some noting that this right has only been suspended in the United States four times.

“Well, the Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land—that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller, the architect of Trump’s child and family separation policy during his first term, told reporters on Friday.

“So I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller declared, before attacking the judicial branch.

“Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

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Habeas corpus is a cornerstone of Western democracies, with roots tracing back to the Magna Carta of 1215, which first established the principle that no person could be imprisoned arbitrarily by the king.

Miller, who has no law degree and is not an attorney, went on to give reporters his understanding of constitutional law.

“So,” Miller concluded, “it’s not just the courts aren’t just at war with the executive branch, the courts are at war with these radical judges, with the legislative branch as well, too,” he opined.

“So all of that will inform the choice of the president ultimately makes, yes.”

Critics blasted the extreme suggestion that President Donald Trump has the authority to suspend habeas corpus—Congress does—and that he would attempt to do so when there is no invasion or rebellion, prerequisites mandated by the Constitution.

“Habeas corpus has been suspended only 4 times,” wrote The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake. 1) Civil War 2) When Congress authorized it to combat Ku Klux Klan vigilantism during Reconstruction 3) In the Philippines during a 1905 insurrection 4) In Hawaii after Pearl Harbor.”

“The President lacks the power to suspend habeas corpus under Article II. That power is exclusive to Congress under Article I,” explained civil rights attorney Patrick Jaicomo.

“Too bad he never went to law school and doesn’t understand the law,” remarked Professor of Law Joyce Vance, the well-known MSNBC legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney.

“Suspending habeas corpus,” noted The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki, “would suspend the right for everyone, not just for undocumented people. So what Stephen Miller is saying here is that Trump is thinking about asserting the right to throw Americans in prison while giving them no opportunity to use the courts to get out.”

“The U.S. Constitution guarantees due process to everyone within the United States, not just citizens. They’re inventing a fake ‘invasion’ to call for an emergency and give themselves more power,” added political strategist Max Flugrath, Communications Director at Fair Fight Action.

“Don’t even think about it,” remarked U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA).

The well-known attorney George Conway, saying it “can’t be overstated,” called Miller “deeply, deeply disturbed.”

“Suspending habeas corpus. Let that sink in,” commented The Lincoln Project.

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison described Miller’s threatening remarks as “dictatorial b——.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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NO LNX

A new low even for MAGA – but they're about to go lower

REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

Sabrina Haake, Raw Story May 05, 2025

Last week, Trump held a campaign-style rally on the campus of Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan. To the delight of his MAGA fans, he trotted out the same personal grievances he’s been serving up since 2015.

Despite achieving fewer legislative accomplishments during his first 100 days than any president since the 1950s, Trump told his adoring crowd that he had “accomplished more in three months than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years.”

If aiding the enemy, defying court orders, and taking a chainsaw to federal services are “accomplishments,” then Trump is accomplished indeed.

MAGA delights in Trump’s cruelty

After his usual braggadocio, Trump pivoted to video recordings of abject cruelty. Behind the podium, Trump displayed large screen videos of the inhumane treatment of helpless migrants he deported to El Salvador's notorious gulag, CECOT. He brayed, still without evidence, “The worst of the worst are being sent to a no-nonsense prison in El Salvador… watch this!”

“This” was a series of video clips showing hundreds of men he has imprisoned without due process, without a hearing, and without credible evidence that they committed any crime. “This” was a video showing men brutally bent over, having their heads shaved bare, and forcibly shoved into concentration camp-style cages that sleep 75 to 80. “This” was Trump priming his already violence-prone base into a bloodthirsty frenzy, as they exploded in raucous approval of his inhumanity, thundering, "USA! USA! USA!"

According to an affidavit from the Human Rights Watch, prisoners held in CECOT are denied communication with the outside, and only appear before courts in online hearings, often in groups of several hundred detainees at the same time. The Salvadoran government calls them “terrorists” who “will never leave” the prison.

El Salvador, governed by a man who controls the media and calls himself a “cool” dictator, denies human rights groups access to its prisons, and allows journalists to visit only under highly staged circumstances. In videos produced during these visits, prison authorities brag about men held in completely dark solitary confinement cells.

Trump’s stochastic violence against judges

Trump also used the rally to showcase his continued attack on judges, whom he called “communist radical left judges,” claiming they are trying to ‘seize his power.’ Nodding to the courts’ inability to enforce their own orders, Trump warned the world: “Nothing will stop me.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio concurs. At least week’s cabinet meeting, to which Trump invited the media, each cabinet member tried to out-flatter the next person by praising Trump. Seated to Trump’s right, Rubio announced that questions regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man sent in error to El Salvador — specifically, what steps the White House was taking to facilitate his return — were off limits to the media. “I’ll never tell you that, and you know who else I’ll never tell?” Rubio jeered.

“A judge,” he answered himself, “because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States.”

Due process is not a matter of foreign policy

Vice President J.D. Vance also describes the rule of law with sarcastic bombast. He has slammed critics, including federal judges, for “weeping over the lack of due process.”

The Fifth Amendment protects all persons, not just US citizens. It guarantees that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law;” it does not say, ‘no citizens.’ Trump, Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Vance act as if they’ve never heard of it, despite its storied American history. Trying to assume the role of the courts in deciding what the law is, they keep declaring, falsely, that their abuse of immigrants is about “foreign policy.” It isn’t. It’s about the US Constitution, the lynchpin of democracy, without which we don’t have one.

After the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Trump must facilitate Garcia’s return from El Salvador, Trump took to social media to turn a legal block into a PR strategy. He wrote that he is “being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court…which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela… If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer.”

Revealing his complete ignorance of how legal immigration works, he added, “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do…MAGA!”

It’s as if, despite tanking last year’s border bill just so he could campaign on it, he’s never actually considered that processing immigrants requires paperwork.

VP Vance, who knows better, says it’s up to Trump—and himself— to decide what due process is, and what it requires. “To say the administration must observe “due process” is to beg the question: what process is due is a function of our resources, the public interest, the status of the accused, the proposed punishment, and so many other factors.” No. It isn’t. It’s not up to Vance and Trump’s discretion because the Fifth and 14th Amendments, and well established precedent, mapped out what due process requires — notice, a hearing, and an opportunity to be heard — decades ago.

Trump is a symptom, not a cause

It’s a sick disease of the mind, this urge to oppress others for power, but Trump didn’t invent it. Neither did Hitler, Mao Zedong, or Stalin. It’s been there since we stopped living in tune with the earth, and started living in our heads. It’s our collective fall from grace, a phenomenon worsened exponentially by social media.

Watching our experiment stumble brings deep personal anguish, like watching someone you love destroy themselves. You’d give your own life to help, but they have to save themselves.

A minority of Americans- 23%- approve of what Trump is doing and would loudly cheer “USA!!” at videos of human suffering. These are the same people who used to applaud public lynchings; before that, they salivated at public stonings, witch burnings and Caligula’s public displays of torture. It seems they will always be with us; the only positive is that there are far more of us than there are of them.

ALSO READ: Trump is a troll – but this 'ugly' selfie demands a damning response

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are or have been published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

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Alex Jones: “I think it's way more dangerous Trump saying we're looking to deporting citizens to El Salvador. Now, that's unconstitutional, and that is really bad.” 04/28/25 MMA

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an 5 25 the conv

In the most non-controversial and basic sense, the rule of law means formal legality. The law binds citizens and governments. When it comes to nation states, law is enacted by democratically elected legislatures; legal statutes are openly available and sufficiently clear to follow. State actions can be judicially reviewed for compliance with a constitution.

In its more ambitious conceptualization, the rule of law can also be understood to include substantive human rights and equity. In Canada, The Constitution Act of 1982 references the rule of law in its preamble.

The modern Canadian iteration of the rule of law — which includes substantive ideas about human rights as well as Indigenous treaty rights — is based on liberal ideas shared by many countries, including, historically, the United States. What distinguishes a rule-of-law state from an authoritarian one to a large extent is whether state actions can be judicially reviewed for compliance with a constitution.

Although rule of law scholars debate the parameters of the concept of the rule of law, few would debate that what is happening during U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term presents anything other than a wholesale attack on the rule of law both domestically in the U.S and internationally.

I am a rule of law researcher, educator and lawyer. Since Trump was elected to his first term in 2016, I’ve relied on American scholars, from a variety of disciplines, to understand what is happening.

These include two prominent Yale professors, philosopher Jason Stanley and historian Timothy Snynder, both of whom have recently announced they’re moving to the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

Authoritarian impulse

In their scholarship, Stanley and Snyder have sought to explain the authoritarian impulses of the first Trump administration and how to resist it.

Stanley’s father, a German Jew who fled Germany for America in 1939, carries the remembrance of fascism.

Both Stanley and Snyder explore the similarities between what is occurring in Trump’s America, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China and, equally chillingly, between Trump’s America and Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Even prior to the first Trump presidency, Stanley already asked in his 2015 book, How Propoganda Works, whether the U.S., “the world’s oldest liberal democracy,” might already have become a liberal democracy “in name only?”

Examination of propaganda, rhetoric

In his 2018 book, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Snyder described Trump as a “sado-populist, whose policies were designed to hurt the most vulnerable people of his own electorate.”

Stanley’s focus on propaganda and rhetoric were especially useful for framing the politics of Trump.

Similarly, Snyder’s focus on the similarities between Trump and other authoritarian leaders, through their attachment to extreme illiberal ideologies, helped frame public discourse in the U.S. during the first Trump presidency. “Illiberal” does not imply conservative in opposition to “being liberal” (with the resonance of “leftist”); rather, it denotes a repudiation of liberal democracy, in the words of political scientist Thomas J. Main.

Both Stanley and Snyder are on the public record explaining their decision to immigrate to Canada, on the basis that they can no longer continue their scholarly activities in an American university, even a premier one like Yale.Jason Stanley speaks with Amanpour and Company.

Improper interference

This is an admission by important thinkers that civil society, intellectuals and critical scholars, in particular, are under assault.

It comes as no surprise given other developments. Trump’s executive orders, threats to some university funding and crackdowns on activists and academics — as well as the attempted deportations of those without U.S. citizenship — have used the idea of combatting campus antisemitism as cover for an attack on free expression, academic independence and student activism.

From my perspective as a Jewish person, a post-secondary teacher and as someone with a legal education, all of these developments have hit hard, especially alongside accounts of some of America’s most prestigious law firms caving to improper interference by the Trump administration.

What ‘fascism’ means

In the introduction to his bestselling 2020 book, How Fascism Works, Stanley wrote: “In recent years, multiple countries across the world have been overtaken by a certain kind of far-right nationalism; the list includes Russia, Hungary, Poland, India, Turkey and the United States.”

He explains the choice of the word “fascism” to speak about each of these countries, despite their differences of degree and context:

“I have chosen the label ‘fascism’ for ultra nationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf. As Donald Trump declared in his Republican National Convention speech in July 2016, ‘I am your voice.’”

In his similarly bestselling book, On Tyranny, published in 2017, Snyder wrote: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is not basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”

Now that Trump is back in office, Stanley and Snyder, as well as Snyder’s Yale colleague and spouse, Marie Shore, the celebrated author of The Ukrainian Night, are leaving Yale for Canada with good reason.Author Timothy Snyder speaks about Democracy and the Risk of Tyranny with Public Policy Forum.

Shared mutual concern

While the departure of a handful of prominent academics is hardly a trend, it raises questions about whether there will be an accelerated academic “brain drain”, or more American students in Canada.

As a Canadian, I would like to say America’s loss is our gain, and I wish these scholars well. I am also aware that narratives of flight to Canada as refuge have historically bolstered national myths while obscuring Canadian inequities. My hope is that Canadians will not observe the arrival of U.S. scholars with smugness, but instead with shared concern.

We should not be blind to this unique moment in which Canada is called to revisit why we care about Canada and keep watch on the rule of law. Yet, we must also recognize our own profound historical blind spots.

For example, while an overt threat to sovereignty is new for some Canadians, it is nothing new for Canada’s Indigenous Peoples. Today it’s important to understand the distinctively Canadian importance of Indigenous law to any reaffirmation of the rule of law tradition in Canada in the 21st century.

Too much cynicism might prevent us from acknowledging the importance of these three scholars’ decisions to leave their country and come to ours at this particular time in history. However, my hope is also that we are also inspired by their considerable truth-telling skills to demand Canada also do better.

Jeffrey B. Meyers, Instructor, Legal Studies and Criminology, *Kwantlen Polytechnic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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2 kids one with cancer?

[## Ben Shapiro defends the Trump administration after a judge noted a two-year-old US citizen may have been removed from the country with “no meaningful process” 04/28/25

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1st q to dc draino

an 4 25

With the Trump administration making space in the press briefing room for right-wing podcasters and other conservative "new media" content creators, viewers of briefings since President Donald Trump took office have seen his press secretary field questions about the Ukrainian president's clothing during an Oval Office meeting, compliments about Trump's "fitness plan," and attacks on reporters who have long reported from the White House.

On Monday, the first question of the briefing was derided by one Democratic politician as "absolute insanity," as right-wing commentator and influencer Rogan O'Handley—also known by the handle "DC Draino"—was given the floor to ask whether Trump will suspend the writ of habeas corpus in order to circumvent several judges' rulings and "start shipping out" undocumented immigrants without due process.

"Can you please let us know if and when the Trump administration is planning to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to circumvent these radical judges?" asked O'Handley after accusing federal judges of "thwarting [Trump's] agenda with an unprecedented number of national injunctions."

O'Handley shared some familiar right-wing talking points—saying federal judges have provided "more due process to violent MS-13 and Tren de Aragua illegal aliens than they did for U.S. citizens who peacefully protested on January 6"—as he suggested the administration should abandon the legal principle under which people who are detained are permitted to challenge their imprisonment in court.

"You have got to be kidding me," wrote Sara McGee, a Democrat running for the Texas House of Representatives.

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His question came amid escalating attacks by Republicans and the administration on judges who have ruled against the White House. A Republican congressman said last month that Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. should be impeached for issuing an order against Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to expel hundreds of undocumented immigrants to El Salvador. Last week, the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping a migrant evade arrest by escorting him out of her courtroom.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, noted that O'Handley and press secretary Karoline Leavitt also repeatedly cited at least one statistic that was "completely made up"—that the Biden administration allowed 15 million undocumented immigrants into the United States—as they suggested Trump should take legal steps to force all of them out of the country without the input of the judicial system.

The undocumented population in the U.S. in 2023 was 11.7 million, according to the Center for Migration Studies, down from the peak of 12 million, which was reached in 2008.

"They've been pushing this on the right for about a week now," said Reichlin-Melnick of the push to suspend habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants. "Anyone advocating for suspending the writ of habeas corpus because they don't like due process is spitting on the legacy of those who fought and died for this country and our Constitution."

Leavitt responded to O'Handley's question by saying while she has "not heard such discussions take place... the president and the entire administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies" to continue expelling people from the United States.

Several cases of undocumented immigrants who have been sent to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center have made national headlines in recent weeks, including that of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia; Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old who federal agents acknowledged was not who they were looking for during a raid; and Andry Hernandez Romero, a makeup artist who was accused of being a gang member solely because he had tattoos.

O'Handley's suggestion that the bedrock legal principle be suspended for undocumented immigrants—hundreds of whom have already been forced out of the country without due process—came ahead of Trump's scheduled signing of two new immigration-related executive orders.

One would direct the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to publish a list of sanctuary cities and states—those where local law enforcement are directed not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to arrest undocumented immigrants.

The other, Leavitt said, would "unleash America's law enforcement to pursue criminals." The New York Postreported that the order would be related to providing local police agencies with military equipment and legal support for officers accused of wrongdoing.

Watch the segment below or at this link:

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AN 4 25

Smart, progressive women pose a serious threat to MAGA supremacy. Just ask Elon Musk, who wasted millions of dollars in Wisconsin trying to win a seat on the state Supreme Court for MAGA candidate Brad Schimel, only to watch Susan Crawford clean Schimel’s clock.

From his first presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016, “Lock her up!” has been Donald Trump’s battle cry. Restoring the greatness of a white, male-dominated America apparently requires menacing displays of dominance over women in positions of authority. Who can forget Trump acting like a stalker, invading Clinton’s personal space and looming behind her during a 2016 debate?

On Friday, a few weeks after MAGA lost its bid to disempower the progressive female majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Trump administration sent federal agents to arrest Hannah Dugan at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Trump’s attorney general and the man he chose to lead the FBI gleefully posted pictures of Dugan’s “perp walk” in handcuffs, crowing about this unprecedented assault on the dignity and authority of a judge and the sovereignty of local courts.

On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Dugan. “In order to uphold the public’s confidence in the courts of this state during the pendency of the criminal proceeding against Judge Dugan, we conclude, on our own motion, that it is in the public interest that she be temporarily relieved of her official duties,” the state’s highest court said in a two-page letter ordering Judge Dugan “temporarily prohibited from exercising the powers of a circuit court judge.”

It’s a perplexing decision. It didn’t arise from any complaint; the Court acted on its own. And Dugan had already been relieved of her duties while she focuses on her defense by the chief judge in Milwaukee, who assigned her calendar to other judges to cover.

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Worse, the suspension gives the impression that the federal charges against Dugan are indeed serious. But that impression is not supported by the only evidence the government has produced.

The justification for Dugan’s arrest, laid out in a federal criminal complaint, is that she impeded federal law enforcement agents when she objected to ICE disrupting her court’s proceedings and ushered the man they came to arrest out a side door. The defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who was appearing before Dugan on a misdemeanor battery charge unrelated to his immigration status, exited into the public hallway where the agents were waiting for him. Then they followed him outside and made their arrest — unimpeded.

Fox News claimed Dugan concealed Flores-Ruiz in a jury room. But that assertion is contradicted by the sworn testimony in the government’s own criminal complaint.

The complaint features breathlessly sexist descriptions of Dugan appearing “visibly angry” and “walking quickly,” as if that were evidence of wrongdoing. But any actual wrongdoing is hard to pinpoint.

“Whatever you think of the actual conduct the complaint alleges,” says Dean Strang, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a long-time Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, “there is a real question about whether there’s even arguably any federal crime here.”

The government’s behavior, meanwhile, is “extraordinarily atypical,” for a nonviolent, nondrug charge involving someone who is not a flight risk, says Strang.

The handcuffs, the public arrest at Dugan’s workplace, the media circus — none of it was normal, or justified. Then Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel began posting pictures of Dugan in handcuffs on social media to brag about it.

“So what is it they are trying to do?” asks Strang. His conclusion: “Humiliate and terrify, not just her but every other judge in the country.”

The bigger issue here, beyond an unprecedented, public display of dominance and intimidation by the Trump administration, is that, in turning federal law enforcement into an arm of his personal, vengeance-themed reality show, Trump is running roughshod over the constitutional principle of federalism, which respects the sovereignty of the states, the integrity of the courts and public safety. Scaring defendants, witnesses and victims away from making court appearances makes it harder to administer justice and makes all of us less safe.

But you’d never know that to listen to Republican state officials, who are championing federal agents barging into courts, schools and churches, forgetting everything they ever said about local control and states’ rights. In a letter released Tuesday, Assembly Republicans led by Speaker Robin Vos sent a letter to Gov. Tony Evers, declaring “our caucus believes it is imperative that our laws reflect the need for local law enforcement to comply with these efforts.”

Republicans accuse Evers of issuing guidance to state officials that impedes federal ICE raids.

“Unfortunately, recent events in Milwaukee have underscored the importance for our state to legislate and enforce compliance with federal immigration law,” their letter declares, citing Dugan’s arrest.

The Republicans demand that Evers rescind guidance telling state agencies that they need not answer questions, hand over files, or allow ICE to enter non-public areas without a warrant.

Capitulating to an administration that has admitted to deporting U.S. citizens and defied court orders to effect the return of a man it admits was mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran prison is a terrible idea. Big law firms that agreed to drop clients and offer free legal work to appease the Trump administration have eroded trust in the law. Authoritarian undermining of our legal system is a grave danger.

The least the most timid among us can do is insist that the federal government follow the law before caving in. That’s what Dugan did, when she asked if the agents who came to her courtroom to arrest Flores-Ruiz had a judicial warrant. They did not. Nor do they have proof that Dugan herself broke any laws.

The last thing we need right now is more capitulation to MAGA bullying. Stand strong.

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Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

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NO LNX

Only one thing is going to stand in Trump's way — and he knows it

Thom Hartmann April 28, 2025

It didn’t happen in some shadowy back alley or under the cover of night.

It happened in broad daylight — in the heart of an American courthouse.

Federal agents, acting without even the decency of a signed warrant, stormed into Judge Hannah Dugan’s courtroom on Friday morning and dragged her away like a common criminal. No warning. No legal process. No respect for the law she had spent a lifetime upholding.

But they made sure the cameras were there, so America could see what they were doing. Because this was not about justice. This was about terror.

This was a warning shot aimed directly at the beating heart of America’s judiciary:

“Fall in line — or you’re next.”

In that moment, the world’s oldest democracy lurched closer to the edge of authoritarian rule. In that moment, America became a little less free — and a lot more like the nightmare Vladimir Putin always hoped we’d become.

The FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan last Friday without even having a legal arrest warrant; this is as outrageous and police-state illegal as an administration can get.

And Pam Bondi’s performance Friday — after her federal agents swarm-raided this county judge — wasn’t staged for the general public.

The real audience was a very small, select group: America’s judges.

Their message is very simple: “P--- us off, judges, and you could end up in prison, too.”

Trump has already pacified the Article I branch of government — Congress — and now he’s in the process of pacifying the Article III branch, the Judiciary.

There are only 3 branches to our government: cowing both Congress and the nation’s Judiciary will leave only the president in charge of the entire country under all circumstances in all ways.

Nothing and nobody else will be able to stop him, short of a military coup (and he’s already decapitated the senior leadership of the military) or unending demonstrations in the streets (demonstrators who may soon face live ammunition).

That is called dictatorship. Real dictatorship. Vladimir Putin-style dictatorship where you are punished for the smallest deviation from orthodoxy and can find yourself in prison or sued into bankruptcy if you dare speak out in public.

It appears more and more every day that Putin is Trump’s mentor, if not his handler. Trump is doing everything he can, with help from a South African billionaire, to destroy the historic American infrastructure (which has been an example for the world for 250 years) and turn us into the newest member of the dictators club, joining Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Hungary, North Korea, and the rest of the fascist and authoritarian world.

To get there, now that they’ve pacified every single Republican member of Congress (most recently, Don Bacon criticized Trump’s schizophrenic tariffs; a day later he started talking about retiring), they only have to seize control of the Judiciary, and then nothing except We The People will stand in their way.

Nothing. Will. Stand. In. Trump’s. Way. Except We The People. And he knows it.

Look at the striking parallels between Putin’s strategies and Trump’s actions:

From installing Trump’s loyalists in the military and the federal police agencies of the Department of Justice and FBI, to his open threats against freedom of the press, to the GOP’s efforts to rig elections and purge voters, Trump’s subversion of US democracy looks eerily familiar.

He’s taking pages directly from the autocrat’s handbook.

Trump has openly quoted and praised autocrats like Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, who has presented his leadership in speeches to the GOP and CPAC as a model of an “illiberal” state.

Trump’s not hiding his admiration for dictators; he’s flaunting it. And now he’s putting the final stages of their script into action.

Trump’s movement toward authoritarianism follows “a known playbook. It’s unfolded in many other countries,” as journalist Anne Applebaum notes. “These are democratically elected leaders who characterize themselves or describe themselves as deserving of no opposition. So I am the true Hungarian, or I am the only real American.”

In a mere matter of weeks into his presidency, Applebaum says, Trump and his allies “have managed to push America into that space somewhere between (no longer) democracy and full-scale autocracy.”

The speed is shocking, but it shouldn’t be surprising. It only took Hitler 53 days to completely end democracy in Germany. Others, like Lukashenko, Orbán, Putin, Mussolini, Duterte, El-Sisi, and Erdoğan took longer (none longer than two years), but you could argue that Trump has been working at this project for 9 years now.

Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, who studies how democracies slip into authoritarianism, warns that we’re heading toward what experts call “competitive authoritarianism”: regimes that “constitutionally continue to be democracies” with regular elections and legal opposition, but where “systematic abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.”

Make no mistake about what’s happening: Trump and his allies are methodically working through a four-step process to establish complete autocratic control, which will turn America into a one-man dictatorship.

Terrorize Congress: Trump’s already largely succeeded here. Republican lawmakers now march in lockstep with his agenda, afraid to oppose him even when their consciences scream otherwise. The V-Dem Institute already warns that Trump’s actions are “extremely worrying” for American democracy.

Terrorize the Media: Trump has, as The Washington Post writes, “relentlessly attacked the free press, another pillar that allows democracies to stand above authoritarian regimes,” as political scientists have noted. “He has echoed the worst dictators in history, calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people.’” With help from Elon Musk and other billionaires, he’s creating a media and social media environment where truth itself is under assault. And last week his administration threatened to arrest journalists and charge them with treason, an offense for which they could be executed.

Terrorize Judges and Lawyers: What we witnessed Friday with the raid on a county judge and the arrest of a retired judge earlier in the week is just the beginning. The final step in this process will be intimidating the Supreme Court, and if Trump’s minions can first terrorize the entire federal judiciary, it will be much easier to terrorize members of the Court itself, just like Putin and Orbán have done. This follows dangerous cracks in democracy’s pillars that experts have been warning about.

Terrorize Citizens: Once the above institutions are captured and there’s no more Constitutional opposition to Trump, the final phase begins: crushing individual dissent through fear, persecution, and potentially violence. This is the playbook Malcolm Nance detailed in his work analyzing Putin’s strategies to undermine American democracy and has already started against immigrants and student visa holders. If history tells us anything, American citizens will be next.

Most of this is already in place; time is running out fast.

Trump and his fellow fascists know their time is running out because elections are coming in a handful of months and their popularity is already crashing. They are at maximum power right now, and it is already beginning to decline.

This is another reason why they are pushing so hard to frighten judges, so they can implement the final destruction of any Constitutionally-based opposition to Trump’s one-man rule.

If Trump can consolidate authoritarian rule as quickly as some other historical dictators did, the complete (albeit hopefully temporary) end of American democracy could happen very rapidly, possibly even in the next few weeks or months. The window for action is closing fast.

But there’s still hope, because we’re still We The People. As long as our protest movement continues to grow and demand a stop to the damage Trump and Musk are doing to our democratic republic, we may be able to slow or even stop this anti-American cabal and reclaim our republic.

Our protesting in the streets and reaching out to legislators may encourage resistance within the media and courts, and might even inspire a handful of Republicans to stand against this wannabe dictator.

When democratic institutions fail, the last line of defense has always been citizens willing to take to the streets. Ukraine provides the most powerful recent example of how a determined populace can rescue democracy from Russian-inspired authoritarianism.

During Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests in 2014, over half a million people joined demonstrations in Kyiv to defend democracy against creeping authoritarianism. Those protests ultimately ended Viktor Yanukovych’s Russia-backed puppet regime (and kicked out its Russian-funded American advisor, Paul Manafort, who later became Trump’s 2016 campaign manager) and became known as the Revolution of Dignity.

Ukrainians stood firm in the streets despite violence and intimidation, and their courage changed history.

Ukraine’s later Orange Revolution similarly empowered ordinary citizens to engage in mass protests, with some lasting continously more than two weeks. This peaceful revolution successfully defended Ukraine’s democratic aspirations against Russian influence and showed the world that people power can overcome autocratic manipulation.

Putin fears democracy, particularly at his doorstep like in Ukraine and the Baltic states. He knows that democracy is contagious, and any spread near Russia, he believes, poses an existential threat to his autocratic rule. That’s why he invaded Ukraine, and that’s why he spent millions on social media trolls to support Trump’s election and his assault on our democratic institutions.

As Ukrainian historian Hanna Perekhoda warns, “If we let Russian authoritarians win, it will mean that the authoritarian forces also in our countries, in the U.S., for example, will grow stronger.”

If this assault on the Courts (and the implied intimidation of all judges including those on the Supreme Court) succeeds, and the media continues to bow down, the only thing left will be us in the streets.

The time for half-measures, “very strong letters,” and polite political disagreement has passed. We are watching in real-time as our 250-year experiment in democracy is being dismantled by a would-be dictator taking his cues from — or, at least, modeling his presidency on — Vladimir Putin.

This is not hyperbole. This is not partisan exaggeration. This is the stark reality facing our nation today. Fascism and dictatorship are at our doorstep.

Just last week, it was reported that Trump has now deported three American citizens, including a child taking cancer therapy.

Not content to just pull student visas and ask them to leave the country, Trump’s goons have been imprisoning students for writing OpEd articles for weeks. And now they’re show-arresting judges.

The arrest of Judge Dugan is not an isolated incident; it’s part a broader strategy to intimidate the judiciary and consolidate power.

When judges are arrested for upholding the principles of due process, the very foundation of democracy is at risk. This moment demands vigilance and action from all who value the rule of law.

The preservation of our democratic institutions depends on our collective response to such unprecedented challenges.

Buckle up, America. Democracy itself is on the line, and if the courts fall, we’ll be its last defenders.

NOW READ: Behind the 60-year Republican plot to destroy American democracy

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new rep

4 25

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller gave an outrageous ultimatum during a rant attacking U.S. federal judges for upholding the rule of law in the face of Donald Trump’s mass deportations.

During an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity Wednesday, Miller railed against federal judges who told Trump that he couldn’t suspend due process in order to deport undocumented immigrants who the government alleged are members of foreign gangs.

“This is the choice facing every American: Either we all side, and get behind President Trump to remove these terrorists from our communities, or we let a rogue, radical left judiciary shut down the machinery of our national security apparatus,” Miller ranted.

Of course, the supposedly “rogue” judiciary is one that acts as a system of checks and balances on the executive branch, and the purported “radical left” lean simply refers to the courts’ independence from Trump’s abhorrent immigration agenda. Miller likes to pretend that he doesn’t understand what due process is, putting him at odds with the courts charged with upholding that, and other rights.

The Supreme Court has ordered the U.S. government to comply with a federal court order to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador due to an admitted “administrative error.” On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the return of another immigrant whose deportation to El Salvador violated a previous court settlement.

Earlier this week, Miller argued that birthright citizenship also presented a threat to national security, claiming that it had been “used by foreign governments to conduct espionage against the United States.” He provided no evidence for this claim but used it to defend Trump’s executive order upending the right outlined in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court is expected to weigh the president’s bid to curtail birthright citizenship in May.

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an 4 25

Legal analysts continue to express concerns over President Donald Trump's defiance of the Supreme Court regarding the deportations carried out by the administration, which have been criticized for lacking due process.

In an article for The Atlanticpublished Friday, journalist Adam Serwer wrote that the Trump administration thinks it possesses a dictator’s prerogative to disappear people off the street and spirit them to CECOT, and that the Supreme Court has not done enough to stop him.

"The Roberts Court has sought to avoid direct confrontation with the Trump administration, but the administration’s insistence that it possesses a dictator’s prerogative to disappear people off the street and spirit them to CECOT has drawn the reluctant justices in," he wrote, in the article titled "The Supreme Court’s ‘Selective Proceduralism’ Would Suffocate the Constitution."

Serwer noted that on April 7, the justices released an order indicating that the administration was prohibited from deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act, an outdated law from the 18th century, without ensuring due process. Although four justices disagreed about permitting the administration to proceed with deportations, all nine justices endorsed the principle of some level of due process for the detainees. While the act only permits the deportation of foreign nationals, the legal rationale put forth by the administration could potentially allow Donald Trump to mistakenly deport American citizens to El Salvador without making any attempts to bring them back.

ALSO READ:Supreme Court at severe disadvantage in dealing with Trump's 'shocking' behavior: expert

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"[Justice Sameul] Alito complains that the Court rushed its judgment, acting as though there were some sort of emergency, when in fact there was a genuine emergency, and the rushing was entirely justified," Serwer wrote in the article.

"The administration has also flouted a Supreme Court order telling it to 'facilitate' the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident under a protective order who was sent to CECOT 'in error.' Alito and Thomas must be aware that Abrego Garcia remains confined and that both Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Trump have pretended not to have the power to release him, joking about it in front of cameras in the Oval Office," the writer said.

"Selective proceduralism is probably unavoidable given ideological disagreements among the justices, but under these circumstances it takes on a sinister cast, a pantomime of the rule of law that acquiesces to Trump’s assertion of dictatorial powers inconsistent with the Constitution or with basic principles of due process and civil rights. It facilitates authoritarianism while pretending that laws still matter. If the Trump administration can get away with violating the Constitution because it knows the courts will be too slow to prevent it, then those constitutional rights simply no longer exist," he added.

ALSO READ:Supreme Court's unanimous decision against Trump reveals an important detail

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AN 4 25

Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, got into a heated argument on Friday with political podcaster Jon Favreau, who served as an advisor to former President Barack Obama.

In response to a post by Favreau on the social platform X, Miller said, "Jon: your contribution to this world will have been shilling for an Administration that mass imported illegal alien rapists, terrorists and murderers to prey on innocent Americans. Are you incapable of remorse?"

Favreau responded to the Trump aide with a similar question. "Stephen: are you incapable of being honest?" he wrote.

ALSO READ:'What on Earth?' GOP Senate chiefs of staff left puzzled by Stephen Miller’s 'arrogant' presentation

"Stop defying the courts. Stop defying Trump judges. Stop violating the Constitution. Stop disappearing people to foreign prisons. Deport who you want by following the law. Your performative hysteria isn’t doing your boss any favors," Favreau continued.

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The original post of Favero to which Miller had responded was a reaction to Miller's earlier postin which he accused "the corporate media" of "waging an information warfare campaign against deportation."

The Trump administration's recent deportations have been criticized and many legal experts say they don't follow due process.

"The top agenda item of the corrupt ruling class in this country is to nullify the election result and enshrine mass migration," Miller wrote in his post.

ALSO READ:'Desperate': Ex-White House staffer rips Miller for saying J6ers were denied 'due process'

Several commentators have raised alarms over the Trump administration's refusal to comply with recent court orders regarding deportations.

Earlier this month, former United States attorney Joyce Vance saidthe Trump administration's wrongful deportationof a Maryland man to El Salvador isn't a foreign policy issue, where the president has some "latitude," but a violation of due process.

"The fight we are about to have is whether or not the president can strip people — citizens or not — of fundamental constitutional rights," she said during an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday.

Vance said the Trump administration has unwittingly put a face on its mass deportation, which is that of a dad of three kids with special needs, and who his wife wants back home for Easter celebrations in their own household. "That I think is not what this administration anticipated," she said.

ALSO READ:'Don’t you see what’s happening?' Experts call Trump’s latest moves 'full blown fascism'

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mma

As Trump ignores order to return Abrego Garcia, right-wing media falsely claim undocumented immigrants have no due process rights

Sean Hannity: “If you're in the country illegally, you don't get due process”

Written by Payton Armstrong & Jack Wheatley

Published 04/23/25

Right-wing media personalities have dismissed the importance of due process rights in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a Maryland resident with protected legal status who the government has admitted was wrongfully deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error” — claiming that “it would literally take 1,000 years to give 10 million illegal immigrants one hour each of ‘due process,’” and lamenting that “if every MS-13 member goes through their own hearing, we'll never get these guys out of here.” Others have claimed that “if you're in the country illegally, you don't get due process,” and said that noncitizens “do not have due process under the law like U.S. citizens do.”

The Trump administration has removed hundreds of immigrants without due process including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the government admitted was deported due to “administrative error”

President Donald Trump has flown hundreds of undocumented immigrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act without court hearings and due process. After the administration sent 238 immigrants to CECOT, a Salvadoran megaprison that is notorious for human rights abuses, the White House and right-wing media repeatedly painted the migrants as dangerous “criminals.” A CBS News investigation “found that an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.” ABC News, [3/26/25; CBS News, 4/6/25; Media Matters, 4/1/25]

- The Department of Justice admitted in court filings that Abrego Garcia was wrongfully deported and subsequently imprisoned in El Salvador due to an “administrative error,” but the Trump administration has been resisting a court order requiring the government “facilitate” his return.U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has ordered at least four officials to give sworn testimony about the administration’s refusal to comply with her order that it facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. The New York Times, [4/1/25; Politico, 4/15/25]

- Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) met with Abrego Garcia last week after initially being denied, and he has since “accused the Trump administration of ‘outright defying’ court orders” to return him to the United States. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has backtracked from initial government admissions that Abrego Garcia was erroneously deported, asserting on Fox News that “we did not make a mistake.” A report that described him as an MS-13 member — based in part on wearing a “Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie” that police claimed was “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture” — was later revealed to have been authored by a now-fired Maryland officer who was suspended for misconduct “just days after the March 2019 encounter at a Home Depot in Hyattsville where Abrego Garcia was flagged as a potential MS-13 gang member.” The New York Times, [4/20/25; BBC, 4/20/25; Twitter/X, 4/21/25; BBC, 4/17/25; USA Today, 4/17/25]

- Due process is a fundamental right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution for both citizens and noncitizens to ensure people in America are given fair legal proceedings and protected from arbitrary government decisions.Conservative and liberal Supreme Court justices alike have affirmed this right for noncitizens. When asked in 2014 whether undocumented people have rights guaranteed under the Constitution, the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said, “Anybody who’s present in the United States has protections under the United States Constitution.” CNN, [4/1/25; PBS, 6/25/18]

- Right-wing media figures have previously praised Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for creating CECOT and urged the creation of similar prisons in the United States.American conservative media personalities have showered praise on Bukele’s imprisonment of alleged drug dealers in CECOT. The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles declared, “We need to learn from El Salvador, never thought I would say that sentence, but we in the United States need to follow the lead of the government of El Salvador.” Media Matters, [3/7/23]

### Right-wing media have dismissed Abrego Garcia’s right to due process, including by claiming that it would take too long

Fox News host Jesse Watters said that it’s “common sense” to deny due process to Abrego Garcia and other people being sent to the Salvadoran prison.He claimed that “if every MS-13 member goes through their own hearing, we'll never get these guys out of here.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [4/16/25]

- Referencing Abrego Garcia, Fox’s Jeanine Pirro dismissed the need for due process.Pirro said that there were “legitimate reasons to get this guy out of here,” adding, “It's not about due process. It's about them being incapable of empathizing for American citizens.” Fox News, *The Five*, [4/16/25]

- Right-wing pundit Kurt Schlichter claimed that Democrats “don’t want due process. They want the criminals here.”Schlichter referred to Garcia as a “criminal scumbag” who “had already been found by a judge to be a member of MS 13, a holding that was up held on appeal.” Twitter/X, [4/16/25]

- In response to a post suggesting that Abrego Garcia “should have been deported, just not in defiance of a judge’s order and not to a prison in El Salvador,” Fox News digital columnist David Marcus posted, “It would literally take 1,000 years to give 10 million illegal immigrants one hour each of ‘due process.’” Twitter/X, [4/16/25]

- Right-wing host Vince Conglianese read a statement about Abrego Garcia’s due process rights being denied and declared, “Is this not infuriating to listen to this garbage — these lectures, from these liars? People are lying directly to your face about what is going on.” Rumble, *Vince*, [4/21/25]

### Right-wing media have made broad claims that undocumented immigrants do not have the same due process rights as American citizens

Fox’s Liz Peek: “I'm so sick of hearing about due process for people who are in our country illegally. They're not citizens. They do not have the due process afforded American citizens.”Guest Kenny Polcari added, “The whole due process thing goes -- for me -- goes right out the window. You're not an American citizen, so you're not entitled to due process when you've come here illegally and you've broken our laws and you've — as violent as he is.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [4/21/25]

- On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity claimed, “If you're in the country illegally, you don't get due process.” Premiere Radio Network, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [4/10/25]

- Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty stated that undocumented immigrants “do not have the same rights as U.S. citizens. They do not have due process under the law like U.S. citizens do.”Echoing the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, Finnerty then complained to viewers that Democrats “have decided that these people who have nothing to do with America because they are not American are more important than you, to the point that the White House under Joe Biden tried to replace you and your vote with them.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [4/10/25; Media Matters, 1/12/24]

- The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo wrote that due process is “used as a legalistic motte for the open borders/pathological empathy bailey.” He added that Abrego Garcia “is a criminal who should not be in America, whatever process is required to get him out.” Twitter/X, [4/16/25]

- Right-wing commentator Mike Crispi claimed that “there’s no ‘due process’ when you’re an ILLEGAL ALIEN.” He added, “Stepping on our land does not afford you constitutional rights. You’re found. You get kicked out. Period.” Twitter/X, [4/15/25]

- Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade suggested that due process rights for undocumented immigrants be done away with because “it’s not practical.”Kilmeade said that “it's not practical to think that we can do due process on 8 million people. … There's 22 million people here at minimum, illegal already, just in the last three administrations. And there are some people that got through with Trump's administration.” He added, “If we are going to give ever these guys a day in court and a lawyer, we can't do it, they don't deserve it. Our system doesn't need to be double-burdened.” The Independent, [3/24/25]

- Far-right influencer Jack Posobiec wrote: “Yeah I support due process. Illegals are all due to be processed by ICE.”Twitter/X, [4/15/25]

- Right-wing figure Mike Cernovich: “The due process illegal immigrants are entitled to is to be removed in one piece, uninjured, and that’s historical generosity without precedent in all of humanity.” Twitter/X, [4/20/25]

- Radio host Bill Mitchell: “I've never understood why if you are in this country illegally, you are afforded due process in our system.”He continued, “You're here illegally. You violated our constitution coming here and clearly have no respect for it. So why should that same Constitution protect you?” Twitter/X, [4/19/25]

- Conservative commentator Julie Kelly claimed, “This is not about due process or habeas—this is a coordinated effort to keep illegals in this country and sabotaging the will of the American people who elected the president to solve the illegal immigration crisis.” Twitter/X, [4/18/25]

- On Fox News’Gutfeld!, podcaster Michael Malice said “the issue that they’re trying to talk about due process — are we going to pretend that there aren’t plenty of American citizens who shouldn’t be deported to El Salvador as well?” He added: “If you watch the corporate press, you would think that any of us at any moment are at an option of being deported from the country. But we’re forgetting that everyone was just imprisoned in their own homes for quite some time four years ago, and there was no due process there.” Fox News, *Gutfeld!*, [4/19/25]

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RWW

04/23/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Khaya Himmelman @ Talking Points Memo: Trump’s DOJ Is Taking Cues From MAGA Influencers And Conspiracy Theorists

President Trump’s nominee for D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, and Donald Trump’s Department of Justice more broadly, are taking cues from right-wing influencers — allowing some of the loudest media figures on the right to influence significant decisions, including who gets fired from the DOJ and who and what gets investigated.

Media Matters: Cigar company founder Michael Knowles asks Trump for a tariff exemption

Knowles: “Anyone listening right now in the admin, a great little carve out would be for all of the patriotic Americans who have been oppressed for too long, who work in the premium cigar industry, and for all of the premium cigar smokers.”

Alex Griffing @ Mediaite: MAGA Influencer Tells Steve Bannon Trump ‘Will Have No Choice’ But to Suspend Habeas Corpus

Former Trump White House advisor turned podcaster, Steve Bannon, spoke to another MAGA influencer on Tuesday, who argued that President Donald Trump will eventually have to suspend habeas corpus in order to facilitate mass deportations.

Judd Legum @ Popular Information: U.S. citizen wrongly detained by Border Patrol says government account is false

Jose Hermosillo was held in a detention facility for undocumented immigrants for 10 days.

Amanda Lewellyn @ Vox: How Trump is rewriting American history

Yale professor David W. Blight explains why Trump is far from the first to try to rewrite the record.

Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Bondi launches dubious ‘Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias’ in U.S. government

Trump administration officials could be focused on “anti-religion bias” within the government, but they’re instead focused only on “anti-Christian bias.”

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an 4 25

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ENFORCER

an 4 25

A report published in The Washington Post on Thursday revealed tech billionaire Elon Musk funnelled substantial funds in late March to support Republican Congress members who backed legislation aimed at impeaching judges or limiting their authority. The report cites new filings, indicating this effort aligns with his campaign to penalize judges who make rulings unfavorable to the Trump administration.

"The spending,which totaled $144,400 in support of nearly two dozen members of Congress, was disclosed Tuesdayin filings to the Federal Election Commission.While the amount is a fraction of the millions he shelled out for Republican candidates before the November election, the spending so early in the 2026 midterm cycle further cements the billionaire’s long-term involvement in GOP politics despite a decisive loss for his preferred candidate in this month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race," The Post reported.

The filings from the principal campaign committees of the members provide only a limited view of Musk's political expenditures during the first quarter of 2025, per The Post. Additional funding channels managed by Musk, such as his America PAC, are not obligated to submit reports until the end of July.

ALSO READ:Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice says future colleague was 'bought and paid for' by Dems

In several instances, Musk's contributions were reportedly made right after House members introduced or supported legislation aimed at specific judges.

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Reps. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are among the lawmakers who received donations from Musk after introducing steps to limit judges' powers.

Earlier this month — when liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford defeated conservative Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, despite Musk spending tens of millions of dollars to back Schimel — the billionaire faced heavy criticism.

But despite this loss in Wisconsin, Musk intends to continue making efforts to support GOP candidates, per the Post.

ALSO READ:'Wakeup call' for Republicans as special election results send warning signs to Trump

One specific target of Musk's efforts has been Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who has made several rulings unfavorable to the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, Boasberg cited a “willful disregard" and found probable cause that the Trump administration could be held in criminal contempt of court after officials defied his order to not remove Venezuelan migrants from the country based on a centuries-old wartime law.

Boasberg, first appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, said he would launch proceedings to determine whether to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt.

ALSO READ:'Stolen': Elon Musk boosts conspiracy about Wisconsin election results

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Jeanine Pirro dismisses the need for due process for people in America being sent to an El Salvador prison

04/16/25

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mma

Jesse Watters says it's “common sense” to deny due process to people being sent to an El Salvador prison

04/16/25

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AN 4 25

'I refuse to care': Fox host says he 'can live with' Trump imprisoning innocent people

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04/14/2025

Kyle Mantyla RWW

Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Trump leans into the idea of sending American criminals to a Salvadoran prison

Trump has spent months talking about deporting American criminals. The White House has said it’s a real idea. Maybe we should take the threat seriously.

Hannah Allam @ ProPublica: American Rendition: Rümeysa Öztürk’s Journey From Ph.D. Scholar to Trump Target Languishing in Louisiana Cell

Rümeysa Öztürk’s arrest and detention reveal what President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign looks like on the street level.

Jonathan Mahler @ The New York Times Magazine: How the G.O.P. Fell in Love With Putin’s Russia

What explains the Trump administration’s radical reversal toward Moscow?

David Gilmour @ Mediaite: Trump Demands FCC Punish ‘CBS Fake News’ for ‘Out Of Control’ 60 Minutes: ‘They Should Pay a Big Price’

President Donald Trump launched a new attack on 60 Minutes, this time demanding regulatory retribution over recent segments on Ukraine and Greenland — calling on “highly respected” FCC chair Brendan Carr to “impose the maximum fines and punishment” possible on “out of control” network CBS.

Alex Galbraith @ Salon: "He's going to have a third term": Bannon tells Maher Trump is sticking around in 2028

Bannon's comments come after Trump shared he's "not joking" about an unconstitutional third-term.

Will Neal @ The Daily Beast: DOJ Wants to Give Capitol Rioters a Refund for Damage They Caused

Court documents filed this week suggest some insurrectionists could receive a check for their troubles.

Warren Throckmorton @ Telling Jefferson Lies: Mike Johnson's False Jefferson Prayer: The Rest of the Stor

On January 3, 2025, Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson was re-elected to be Speaker of the House. In his acceptance speech, he quoted a prayer that he said Thomas Jefferson said every day during his presidency and every day of his life thereafter. There is a problem with this story. The prayer was written 56 years after Jefferson died. Jefferson never said the prayer even one day of his life.

John Fea @ The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Expect to see more David Barton in the coming year

This past week David and Tim were invited to the White House as part of a team planning special faith focused events for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Melody Schreiber @ The New Republic: Measles Is Spreading, and RFK Jr. Is Praising Quacks

Last week, an 8-year-old girl became the second child and the third person to die of measles in the current outbreak. But it was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, who dominated the news cycle.

Phil Williams @ News Channel 5: Men behind Tennessee's Christian nationalist settlement: 'This country belongs to Jesus,' not the Jews

Andrew Isker compares Jews to "foster children," who cannot be trusted with the family credit card. C.Jay Engel argues Jews "have largely operated at odds with the Old American way of life."

Christine Fernando @ The Associated Press: An emboldened anti-abortion faction wants women who have abortions to face criminal charges

As Kristan Hawkins, president of the national anti-abortion group Students for Life, tours college campuses, she has grown accustomed to counterprotests from abortion rights activists. But more recently, fellow abortion opponents, who call themselves abortion abolitionists, are showing up to her booths with signs, often screaming “baby killer” at her while she speaks with students. Hawkins has had to send alerts to donors asking them to help pay for increased security.

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wh visit an 4 25

Backing up the Trump administration, the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, says he has no intention or ability to return an unlawfully removed Maryland legal resident, Kilmar Abrego García, to the United States. Abrego García was wrongly deported to a notorious maximum security “mega-prison” for terrorists in El Salvador.

“How can I return him to the United States?” President Bukele said to reporters on Monday, during a meeting with President Donald Trump and his top officials in the Oval Office, as reported by The Washington Post. “I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court in an apparent unanimous opinion ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego García to the United States.

Minutes before President Bukele’s remarks, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, on-camera in the Oval Office, delivered what is being called an “outrageous misinterpretation” of the Supreme Court’s opinion, which was quickly condemned.

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“I promise you, if he was your neighbor, you would move right away,” Miller, who was the architect of the first Trump administration’s child separation policy, told reporters.

“What was the ruling in the Supreme Court, Steve, was it nine to nothing?” President Trump interjected.

“Yes, it was a 9-0, in our favor,” Miller wrongly claimed. “against the district court ruling, saying that no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy function of the United States.”

“As Pam said,” Miller continued, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi, “the ruling solely stated that if this individual—at El Salvador’s sole discretion—was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time.”

“No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here, because he is a citizen of El Salvador,” Miller claimed, before pointing reporters to Bukele.

“That is the president of El Salvador. Your questions about it per the court can only be directed to him,” said Miller.

Attorney Michael Kasdan responded to Miller’s remarks: “We have reached the point where the White House openly lies on television about what a unanimous Supreme Court ruling against them says. The stuff of dystopian novels.”

“This is a blatant lie. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 AGAINST Trump,” wrote the progressive nonprofit People For the American Way.

“This is deeply Orwellian. The Court ruled against the Trump administration 9-0,” observed the MeidasTouch Network.

Conservative legal activist and political commentator Ed Whelan, who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, weighed in.

“Outrageous misrepresentation of Supreme Court ruling,” Whelan declared, serving up a somewhat technical legal analysis. “The unanimous Court ruled that the district-court order ‘properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.’ Yes, the Court also stated that the “intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’ in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority,” and it told the district court to ‘clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.’ But: (1) ‘due regard’ doesn’t mean that the district court couldn’t give any teeth to ‘effectuate’; (2) in any event, the district court dropped ‘effectuate’ from its revised order, so this is all irrelevant. Duty to ‘facilitate’ continues.”

Commenting on the video, immigration attorney Allen Orr Jr. Esq. wrote: “When you tell yourself the story you want to believe even when it is fiction.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

an 4 25

President Donald Trump's misrepresentation of the Supreme Court ruling on Kilmar Abrego Garcia — falsely claiming that the court ruled 9-0 in the administration's favor — has raised concerns among some analysts, who are calling it a "constitutional crisis."

During a press conference alongside El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump claimed that the Supreme Court had ruled 9–0 in his favor and that the ruling in the case meant that the U.S. government would have to provide a plane only if the Salvadoran president chose to return Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongfully deported to an infamous Salvadoran prison.

“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked by reporters if he would help return the man, adding that returning him would be akin to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States.”

ALSO READ:'I’m not asking for state secrets': Judge gives Trump ultimatum on wrongfully deported man

According to some political commentators, the president is openly defying the judiciary and some have warned that this development poses a risk to the credibility of the 2026 midterm elections.

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David Frum, a writer at The Atlantic said in a post on the social platform X: "Trump defying a 9-0 Supreme Court decision is the reason I say 'if we still have free and fair elections in the United States' when I talk about 2026 midterms."

Editor in chief MeidasTouch Ron Filpkowski saidthis was "another court order that Trump is now openly defying."

"Republicans in Congress assured us repeatedly that Trump would never defy a court order. It is obvious that he simply doesn’t care though after the Supreme Court gave him immunity," he added.

ALSO READ:Supreme Court unanimously rules against Trump in case of wrongfully deported man

Author Hold Meyerson wrote in an article for the American Prospect that Garcia's case is "the first that presents Trump with the clear choice of obeying a Supreme Court order or flouting it."

"So far he's opting for the latter, bolstered by the administration's most powerful adviser," Meyerson added.

Democratic strategist Mike Nellis said he doesn't use that term lightly, "but Trump outright refusing the Supreme Court’s order to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an *actual* constitutional crisis."

Political activist Don Winslow wrote, BREAKING RIGHT NOW! THEY ARE NOT GOING TO BRING ABREGO GARCIA HOME. This is Donald Trump defying the SupremeCourt."

ALSO READ:'Vance is lying': VP blasted for 'arguing with people on social media' to defend 'administrative error'

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mojo

The Real Reason El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele Cozied Up to Trump

Reveal

US and El Salvador Celebrate Their Refusal to Return Man Wrongly Deported to “Gulag”

Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias

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like fucking herpes pvtization

an 4 25

Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and defense contractors are aiming to cash in on deportations to a Central American prison/holding facility.

Prince — the brother of President Donald Trump's former education secretary, Betsy DeVos — hopes his proposal can skirt U.S. immigration laws by designating a section of a sprawling El Salvadoran prison as American territory, Politico reported. Proposed new language claiming “transferring a prisoner to such a facility would not be an Extradition nor a Deportation” raises the specter of deporting U.S. citizens to offsite facilities because "deportation" may only qualify as a "transfer." Politico's Dasha Burns and Myah Ward noted that Prince's proposal "could be a precursor to deporting U.S. citizens" even though the facility is initially only for holding undocumented immigrants.

Trump has already floated plans to deport U.S. citizens.

READ MORE: 'Could be the last one standing': Trump aims to 'illegally remove' head of bipartisan board

The facility, which has already drawn accusations of violence and overcrowding from human rights groups, could receive thousands more immigrants from facilities in the U.S. There is no word on how accessible the expanded Central American prison would be to immigrant defense attorneys and affected families, however.

It is unclear how seriously the White House is considering Prince’s plan.

A shooting incident in Nisour Square left 17 Iraqi citizens dead, allegedly at the hands of four Blackwater guards, nearly two decades ago. Intense government investigations, scrutiny, private security reform and criminal charges ensued. In 2014, an American jury found the Blackwater guards guilty of various criminal charges, from murder to weapons offenses.

Trump pardoned Blackwater contractors jailed for the massacre in 2020.

READ MORE: Outrage as video of Trump bragging about enriching his billionaire pals emerges

The facility is pitched as a holding pen for “criminal illegal aliens,” but the administration has made it clear that the only criminality necessary for arrest and deportation to an offsite prison is being on U.S. soil.

“[B]ecause they illegally broke our nation’s laws, and, therefore, they are criminals, as far as this administration goes,” said Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in January.

Most immigrants swept up within the last two months do not have criminal records in the United States.

Read the full POLITICO article at this link.

READ MORE: 'Punched the bully in the face': How some Republicans found courage to take on Trump

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note it always expands

an 4 25

Legal experts pounced President Donald Trump’s proposal of sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to international prisons.

The Washington Post reports Trump openly mulled the possibility of off-siting U.S. citizens to foreign prisons on Air Force One, saying “we have some horrible criminals, American grown, born.” He added that he’s “all for” sending them to prisons in El Salvador, where he has already detained some Venezuelan migrants to public outcry.

After protestors attacked Tesla dealerships, vehicles and charging stations over controversial figure and Trump adviser Elon Musk, Trump hoped protestors would “get 20 year jail sentences … in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

Trump conceded on Sunday that, “I don’t know what the law says on that.”

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The law doesn’t smile on it, according to University of California Professor and immigration scholar Davis Gabriel J. Chin.

Such a proposal is “the equivalent of sending political opponents to the Gulag in the Soviet Union era,” Chin told Washington Post reporters in an email.

The paper reports that U.S. citizen cannot legally be deported or denied entry to the United States. The suggestion “does not seem very realistic,” said Jean Reisz, an associate professor of law who co-directs the University of Southern California Gould School of Law Immigration Clinic, said Trump’s suggestion “does not seem very realistic.”

Even U.S. citizens who have traveled overseas to fight with terrorist organizations against U.S. interests, such as the Islamic State must be allowed to return, said Reisz. The government can detain them and charge them with crimes and even incarcerate them upon conviction, but U.S. officials are not permitted to deny them reentry to the U.S.”

Read the full Washington Post article at this link (subscription required).

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an 4 25

Attorney General Pam Bondi just made a significant escalation in the feud between President Donald Trump's administration and the federal judiciary — and she's hoping to enlist the Supreme Court to the White House's side.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Bondi made it clear she didn't appreciate having to abide by a lower court order in a memorandum sent to various heads of federal agencies. The memo was written as part of an order from U.S. District Judge John D. Bates (an appointee of former President George W. Bush) instructing Bondi and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to tell agencies they were prohibited from implementing parts of an executive order Trump handed down targeting the law firm Jenner & Block.

In Trump's initial executive order, he prohibited the firm's attorneys from entering government buildings (a virtual impossibility for lawyers who practice in Washington D.C.), stripped attorneys of security clearances and imposed various other sanctions. The Janner & Block executive order is part of a pattern of other related orders explicitly targeting law firms that worked for Trump's political opponents.

The attorney general didn't mince words for the "unelected" judge who authored the decision, which she said "invaded the policy-making and free speech prerogatives of the executive branch." She also notably expressed hope that the Supreme Court would step in and explicitly allow the administration to sidestep lower courts.

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"Local district judges lack this authority, and the Supreme Court should swiftly constrain these judges’ blatant overstepping of the judicial power," Bondi wrote.

While some law firms cut deals with the administration in order to roll back his orders, other firms — like Janner & Block — sued to prevent the orders from going into effect. Janner & Block was one of three firms that found success in their litigation against the White House. WilmerHale and Perkins Coie were also targeted and successfully fought back in the courts.

Bondi's memo comes as the Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to ignore orders from federal judges striking down Trump's policies and enlist the High Court in its fight. When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the return of an immigrant the administration admitted was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, the administration appealed to the Supreme Court. The 6-3 conservative supermajority halted the deadline imposed by Boasberg to bring the man back to the United States, and allowed the administration to continue deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

NOW READ:Donald Trump's new policies are 'stupid' — according to stupidity researchers

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

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4 25 politico

by Adam Cancryn, Maggie Miller, James Romoser and Kyle Cheney

04/09/2025

President Donald Trump is targeting two former first-term appointees over their criticism of his actions, stripping their security clearances and opening federal probes of their tenures.

The directives that Trump signed on Wednesday order the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs, who ran Trump’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and former senior Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor.

The two critics are the latest to be swept up in Trump’s expansive retribution campaign, where he’s sought to use federal powers in unprecedented ways to punish political opponents, law firms, universities and others that he believes have wronged him.

A president ordering investigations of specific individuals whom he considers to be his political enemies is a remarkable breach of the traditional wall of separation between the White House and the Justice Department. Under that norm of separation, criminal investigations are supposed to be insulated from political pressure, but Trump has repeatedly scorned the notion of DOJ independence. Making Wednesday’s action even more remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, is that Trump used the formal power of executive orders to effectively brand two individuals as subjects of criminal investigations.

Krebs, who was the administration’s top cybersecurity official responsible for election security, wasfired by Trump via tweet after he had asserted shortly after President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 that “in every case of which we are aware, these claims [of fraud] either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” He had also authorized a joint statementby CISA and other stakeholder groups that said the election was secure and that there was no indication of votes being changed or stolen, which angered Trump.

He was also akey witness for the Jan. 6 select committee, describing his efforts to secure the 2020 election and rebut conspiracy theories about the election and shore up voters’ confidence in the results. In his interview, he lamented that Republican leaders had catered to the false notion that the election was stolen, creating a “self-reinforcing cycle” of doubt. “Republican officials, senior officials, including the former President, lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election,” he told the panel.

The order signed by Trump labeled Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.” As he signed the order on Wednesday stripping Krebs’ security clearance and opening an investigation into his activities, Trump repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged.”

“It was proven by so many different ways in so many different forms,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out about this guy too, because this guy is a wise guy.”

Krebs is currently the chief intelligence and public policy officer at cybersecurity company SentinelOne. The order signed by Trump also takes aim at his current colleagues, suspending any security clearances held by individuals at SentinelOne who work with Krebs.

A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to request for comment.

In another move stemming from Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, the president on Wednesday signed a separate order imposing new limits on the law firm Susman Godfrey. The firm represented voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and other Trump associates who falsely claimed the election was rigged.

Taylor authored a high-profile anonymous op-ed in 2018 that criticized Trump and offered a scathing firsthand account of his decision-making. He later authored a book portraying the chaos inside the Trump White House, before revealing his identity and endorsing then-candidate Biden in the days before the 2020 election.

Trump on Wednesday called Taylor a “traitor,” even as he insisted that the former DHS chief of staff played a minimal role in his first administration.

“I barely remember him. Somebody that went out and wrote a book and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies,” Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday. “I think he’s guilty of treason.”

Taylor left the Trump administration in 2019. On Wednesday, Taylor said Trump’s decision to target him was a sign the country was headed down “a dark path.”

“I said this would happen,”he posted on X. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”

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an 4 25

MAGA media outlets like Newsmax TV, One America News (OAN) and Breitbart News are full of relentless cheerleading for President Donald Trump's second term. On those outlets, Trump is often praised for, MAGA pundits claim, getting a lot done at breakneck speed.

But Trump's policies are by no means universally loved on the right. Liberal-leaning MSNBC features plenty of Never Trump conservatives, The Bulwark is a bastion of right-wing Trump-bashing, and The Lincoln Project continues to crank out anti-Trump videos.

The conservative website The Dispatch offers in-depth analysis of Trump's second term in an editorial published on April 10, attacking Trump on everything from the economy to foreign policy.

"Donald Trump has literally made America — and Americans — poorer, bringing the United States to the brink of a recession in recent weeks by threatening to unilaterally impose one of the most regressive tax hikes in U.S. history," The Dispatch laments. "He's momentarily been talked into standing down, but an economic environment in which the whims of one famously mercurial man can upend the international trade system and wipe out trillions of dollars in stock market value is not one conducive to sustained growth."

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The Dispatch continues, "For the next 90 days — and really, for the remainder of Trump's term — decision-makers at businesses across the country and the world will be forced to speculate: Are the president's tariffs merely a negotiating tool, or an effort to fundamentally remake the global economy? Even key White House officials seem not to know."

The Dispatch stresses, however, that the "financial volatility of recent days is just one symptom of a broader, more deliberate descent."

"Decline doesn't solely mean impoverishment; it means degeneration, to sink backward and down," The Dispatch argues. "And that is what the United States' current leadership class is choosing for this country by willfully dismantling the free-market system, abandoning America's role as a global leader, and degrading the separation of powers and rule of law."

The Dispatch adds, "Even worse, it is doing so based on a suite of false assumptions: that Americans are weak, unable to compete in an open market, and incapable of responding to any incentives or exhortations more high-minded than rank self-interest or partisan contempt."

The editorial, headlined "Slouching Towards Tyranny," also lambasts Trump for failing to respect "the rule of law."

"Nowhere is the evidence of the new right's willful decline more obvious than in its rejection of fidelity to the rule of law and the Constitution," The Dispatch warns. "As the Trump Administration ignores due process, encroaches upon press freedom, and subverts the independence of the judiciary — all central pillars of self-government — top executive branch officials and Republican members of Congress turn a blind eye, or cheer it on."

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CBS News reporting on immigrants deported to foreign megaprison blows up Fox’s “worst of the worst” spin

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 04/07/25

Fox News’ stable of pro-Trump propagandists have assured their viewers that the president was justified in deporting hundreds of immigrants to an El Salvadoran prison notorious for abuse because the deportees were “the most dangerous illegals” and “the worst of the worst.”

They credulously adopted the administration’s talking points, even as family members of deportees came forward to say that they were not criminals. But when CBS News actually did the legwork, its reporters found that the overwhelming majority of deportees had no record of committing violent crimes.

CBS obtained the names of 238 Venezuelan immigrants the Trump administration had claimed were members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang and deported last month under a rarely used wartime authority for imprisonment in El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center. The network “cross referenced that [list] with domestic and international court filings, news reports and arrest records whenever we could find them” and “found that an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.”

From Sunday’s report:

At least 22% of the men on the list have criminal records here in the United States or abroad. The vast majority are for non-violent offenses like theft, shoplifting and trespassing. About a dozen are accused of murder, rape, assault and kidnapping.

For 3% of those deported, it is unclear whether a criminal record exists.

But we could not find criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans - 179 men- now sitting in prison.

Those facts stand in sharp contrast to the claims of the administration — and those of the Fox personalities who regurgitated its talking points to their viewers -- used to push back on critics who pointed out that some had been sent in error to a brutal foreign megaprison.

Citation

Fox News screenshots

Fox host Laura Ingraham said that the deportees were “the most dangerous illegals.”

On The Five, Jesse Watters called them “illegal alien gangbangers,” while Greg Gutfeld described them as “the criminal element” and “thugs.”

Contributor Lisa Kennedy Montgomery alleged that they were “people who want to hurt, maim, and kill innocent Americans.”

Anchor Sandra Smith and contributor Liz Peek both called them “the worst of the worst.”

Fox & Friends’ Ainsley Earhardt said they were “alleged gang members” who “did something wrong,” while for Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, they were “terrorist-like people.”

For some, like Fox & Friends co-hosts Lawrence Jones and Brian Kilmeade, the purportedly obvious criminality of the deportees justified removing them from the country without due process.

All of them, apparently eager to believe whatever they were told, were willing to accept the administration’s claims without scrutiny. Their response likely emboldened Trump, who on Sunday endorsed the idea that American citizens could also be sent to the El Salvadoran prison.

And don’t expect Fox figures to change their tune following the CBS report — as of Monday morning, they were still uncritically adopting the administration’s spin.

### Fox keeps calling migrants sent to El Salvador prison “criminals” and “terrorists” despite reporting that several deportees were likely falsely accused

04/01/25 1:11 PM EDT

### How Fox is handling reports that the Trump administration may have erroneously sent people to a foreign torture prison

04/01/25 1:24 PM EDT

### Right-wing media have decided undocumented migrants don't have the right to due process under the law

03/28/25

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an 4 25

A federal court judge on Sunday declared the Trump administration's refusal to return a man they sent to an El Salvadoran prison in "error" as "totally lawless" behavior and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to repatriate the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, within 24 hours.

In a 22-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis doubled down on an order issued Friday, which Department of Justice lawyers representing the administration said was an affront to his executive authority.

"This was an illegal act," Xinis said of DHS Secretary Krisi Noem's attack on Abrego Garcia's rights, including his deportation and imprisonment.

"Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of [immigration law]," the decision states.

Once imprisoned in El Salvador, the order continues, "U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors."

Trump's DOJ appealed Friday's order to 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Virginia, but that court has not yet ruled on the request to stay the order from Xinis, which says Abrego Garcia should be returned to the United States no later than Monday.

---

AN NO LNX

Wake up: In Trump’s America, you are no longer guaranteed your rights or your freedom

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attends the National Governors Association (NGA) dinner and reception hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. First Lady Melania Trump in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 22, 2025.

Thom Hartmann March 20, 2025

Imagine stepping off a plane in the United States, fully expecting to enter the country without issue, only to be surrounded by armed agents, handcuffed, and thrown into a freezing detention center. No trial. No lawyer. No contact with the outside world.

In Trump’s America, you are no longer guaranteed your rights or freedom—because now, it takes nothing more than an ICE agent’s “suspicion” to make you disappear.

This isn’t a mistake. It’s part of an expanding system of cruelty, where ICE—once an agency tasked with immigration enforcement—is now operating like an unchecked police force, targeting legal residents, visitors, and even US citizens with impunity.

They have become—since the days when Trump sent them here into Portland without ID to kidnap citizens off the streets and torment them in 2020—the Führer’s private police force. His very own “protection squads” or Schutzstaffel.

People who follow every rule, complete all the required paperwork, and obey every regulation are still finding themselves locked away, held in horrific conditions, and stripped of their rights—all based on the whims of an agent who doesn’t even need evidence to justify an arrest.

A U.S. citizen from Chicago was among 22 people recently subjected to unlawful arrests and detention by ICE. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that during Trump’s first term, immigration authorities asked to hold approximately 600 likely citizens and actually deported about 70 likely citizens.

But now, in part because of the Laken Riley Act, it’s getting worse. Forty-two Democrats in the House and fourteen in the Senate voted to pass this execrable GOP bill last month; it was named after a young woman murdered by an undocumented alien whose story was relentlessly promoted by Fox “News” and other rightwing hate media.

That law, recently signed by Trump, says that ICE now has the authority to detain anybody — anybody — for an indefinite period of time — no time limit whatsoever — if an ICE agent simply says that he or she “suspects” the person is in the country illegally or without documentation.

Did you think, “It can’t happen here”?

Wake up: Trump has already begun putting it into effect, although our media seem curiously silent about its application.

Fabian Schmidt, a German-born engineer, has lived in the United States for nearly two decades, legally working, paying taxes, and contributing to his community. None of that mattered when he returned home from a trip abroad. As soon as he landed at Logan Airport in Boston, ICE agents pulled him aside. His green card renewal was “flagged” for some unknown reason—no explanation, no opportunity to clarify, just a red mark in a government system.

That was all it took. ICE stripped him of his clothes, subjected him to hours of aggressive questioning, and locked him in a detention center. They threw him into an ice-cold shower and left him shivering on the concrete floor, humiliated and terrified.

For days, his mother, Astrid, desperately tried to find him. She called ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and any agency that might give her an answer. They either ignored her or outright lied, claiming they had no record of her son. When she finally learned where he was, Fabian was barely holding himself together. “They treat us like animals,” he told her.

And why was he there? Because of a supposed “bureaucratic error.” ICE used a minor paperwork issue as an excuse to detain a legal resident of the United States without due process, a tactic that’s becoming frighteningly common.

For Jessica Brösche, a German tattoo artist, her visit to the United States was supposed to be brief—just a trip to see friends and enjoy the country. She had a valid passport, a return ticket, and legal permission to enter under the Visa Waiver Program. Yet, ICE decided that she might try to work while visiting, a baseless assumption that required no proof and no justification.

Just “suspicion.” That was enough to detain her indefinitely.

Once inside, the nightmare deepened. They threw her into a cell with no bed and no access to legal assistance. For eight straight days, they kept her in solitary confinement. The lights never dimmed, and the sounds of other detainees screaming in despair echoed through the walls. She started hallucinating, her grip on reality slipping. Desperate to feel something, anything real, she punched the walls until her knuckles bled.

Meanwhile, her best friend, Amelia, searched frantically for her. ICE refused to confirm her location or even acknowledge that they had detained her. No charges, no trial, no legal recourse—just silence.

Jessica’s case isn’t unique. People who follow all immigration rules are being detained under vague suspicions, often disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole. And once they’re inside the system, their rights mean nothing.

Consider Jasmine Mooney, the actor who starred in the American Pie franchise and a Canadian businesswoman who played by the rules. She secured a job offer, completed all visa paperwork, and followed every U.S. immigration law to the letter. But that didn’t stop ICE from shackling her, chaining her wrists, ankles, and waist as if she were a violent offender.

For days, she was trapped in a brutal private, for-profit detention facility, laying on the bare floor with nothing but a crinkled foil sheet for warmth. Then, in the dead of night, ICE dragged her from her cell, bound her in chains again, and forced her onto a bus with dozens of other women. They drove for hours, denying them food, water, or bathroom breaks. By the time she arrived at another facility, she had been awake for 24 hours and was too weak to stand.

To this day, ICE refuses to explain why she was detained. And why would they? They don’t have to. The agency operates with absolute power, detaining people for as long as they want, answering to no one.

Moody tells her horrifying story to The Guardian, writing:

“I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet. …

“There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.”

These aren’t isolated cases. ICE has transformed itself into an authoritarian force that detains people indefinitely on suspicion alone. No evidence? No trial? No problem.

And the for-profit prison industry that’s holding many if not most of them has no incentive to help these people; the more they detail and the longer they stay, the more money the prison companies make (which they then share as campaign donations with Republican politicians).

ICE agents don’t need proof. They only need the power to act—and Trump has given it to them.

And, while these three cases from the last few weeks have leaked into the press, it’s possible there are dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of others. And if there aren’t now, there probably will be soon.

Canadians — and people all over the world — have to be reconsidering ever visiting or even passing through the United States.

We have become one of those dangerous, lawless nations you see movies about where the biggest threat isn’t the criminal element but are the guys in uniform who can do anything they want to you, any time they want, with no fear of consequences.

Meanwhile, these agents of the Trump administration are turning their focus on American citizens who have offended them.

ProPublica documented yesterday how a 21-year-old US citizen born in Philadelphia was dragged off to detention; a 10-year-old American citizen girl was deported, interrupting her chemo for brain cancer; and an estimated 600 US citizens were detained during Trump’s first term.

They noted in their report:

“In Utah, agents pulled over and detained a 20-year-old American after he honked at them. In New Mexico, a member of the Mescalero Apache nation more than two hours from the border was questioned by agents who demanded to see their passport. Earlier this month, a Trump voter in Virginia was pulled over and handcuffed by gun-wielding immigration agents. …

“The government does not release figures on citizens who have been held by immigration authorities. Neither Border Patrol nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles interior immigration enforcement, would provide numbers to ProPublica on how many Americans have been mistakenly detained.”

“Mistakenly”? Like the people “detained” Portland in 2020?

Worse, ICE and Trump’s lawyers are actively defying court orders that might restrain them.

High-ranking ICE officials have made it clear they don’t care what judges say, what laws dictate, or even what the Constitution requires. As Tom Homan, Trump’s “Border Czar,” told Fox “News”:

“We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming.’

When a federal court ordered them to halt a mass deportation flight last week, ICE ignored the ruling and sent over 250 immigrants—mostly asylum seekers—back into danger. According to Reuters, many are not even remotely affiliated with a Venezuelan gang:

“Anyelo had told his sister on Friday night that he would be deported to Venezuela, she said in a phone interview with Reuters from Texas.

“Solanyer said her brother had been detained on January 31 after an appointment at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. He had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally with Solanyer and another sister in November 2023 and had been released to pursue a claim for asylum.

“Solanyer said an ICE officer told her that her brother was detained because of a tattoo that linked him to Tren de Aragua, a violent gang with Venezuelan prison origins that has spread through the Americas. She said the tattoo depicted a rose and that he had gotten it in a tattoo parlor in Dallas.

“‘He thought it looked cool, looked nice, it didn't have any other significance,’ she said, stressing that he is not a gang member.”

As FPWellman notes on the excellent On Democracy Substack newsletter, also quoting Reuters:

“Johanny Sanchez, 22, suspects her husband Franco Caraballo, 26, who was detained in Texas, could now be in El Salvador, but does not know for sure.

“Caraballo had multiple tattoos including ones of roses, a clock with this daughter’s birth time, a lion and a shaving razor, said his wife.

“‘I’ve never seen him without hair, so I haven't recognized him in the photos,’ she said. ‘I just suspect he’s there because of the tattoos that he has and right now any Venezuelan man with tattoos is assumed to be a gang member,’ she added, citing also the fact that he has effectively gone missing.

“Sanchez said her husband has never been a member of Tren de Aragua.”

But all of these young men were forbidden the right to hear their charges, face their accusers, hire an attorney, plead before a judge or jury, or enjoy the speedy trial that our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee to “every person” within the United States, citizen or not. They were simply arrested and sent to a foreign hellhole to be tortured at your and my expense.

The Trump administration apparently doesn’t have any intention of following the Constitution and 240+ years of the rule of law. Instead, they’re going full dictator.

And they’re proud of it.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ridiculing the judge’s order to stop the illegal, no-due-process deportation flights to El Salvador, retweeted “Oopsie … Too late,” with a smirking emoji.

A president who can deport anyone, even in defiance of a judge’s order, is a president who can arrest anyone. ICE is no longer just violating human rights—it is dismantling the American legal system itself with the explicit approval of nearly every Republican and forty-six weak-kneed Democrats in Congress.

This is no longer about immigration. It’s about control. About unrestrained police power. How long will it be before Trump reprises his sending ICE into cities to kidnap and terrorize US citizen protestors like he did five years ago?

A judge stopped him then; today, it appears, he’ll just laugh at any order a judge issues.

If this continues, the question isn’t who the ICE “protection squads” and other federal police agencies will target next—it’s who will be left to stop them.

---

AN 3 25

President Donald Trump and some of his close allies, including billionaire Tesla/SpaceX/X.com leader Elon Musk, are calling for the impeachment of federal judges who are blocking his executive orders. And one of their main targets is U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who temporarily blocked the Trump Administration's deportations of Venezuelan nationals for alleged associations with the violent Tren de Aragua gang.

Critics of the deportations are arguing that the nationals were being deported to El Salvador without due process, and that some of them may have been wrongly accused of associating with Tren de Aragua.

One of those critics is attorney Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward.

, Perryman laid out some civil liberties concerns that the deportations are raising. Perryman came on after former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance, who told MSNBC's Ana Cabrera that Trump and his allies are exercising "minimal compliance with" Boasberg's order.

Perryman brought up the due process concerns,, "The government continues to believe that it's above the law and to operate in secrecy in this case. So we are continuing…. to obtain information. But what we haven't seen, of course, is anything — and this is, I think, what every American in this country should be concerned about — the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is an attempt to summarily remove people from this country without any process at all. And so, we have been submitting information from concerned family members who believe that people may have been removed from this country who are not actually members of. gangs or had no basis for being removed, but have been removed from the country without any process at all."

The, "That is the real problem here. And then, the doubly concerning problem, and something that should concern every American, is the way in which the government has been operating in this case, suggesting at times that there is a question as to whether it has to follow a district court order from a federal judge. And so, we believe this is a highly concerning situation."

Perryman argued that the Trump Administration is not operating "in good faith."

, "We will be holding the government accountable to the law as is required in this case…. There is a lot of highly politicized rhetoric coming out of the White House. But this is a president that has invoked an act that has only been invoked three times in the nation's history."

---

AHA DOH MODERATION BUFFER

MUSK IS IRON MAN DIRTY HARRY MEL GIBSON LETHAL WEAPON ROGUE COP NOT BY THE BOOK BUT GETS RESULTS/JUSTICE EFFECTIVE VIA FORCE?

AN 2 25

According to the Washington Post, as many as 200,000 federal workers may be fired because of efforts by the Trump Administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to greatly downsize the United States' federal government. And the criticism of their efforts is coming not only from Democrats, but also, from voices on the right.

Former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pennsylvania), during a February 17 appearance on MSNBC, slammed Trump and DOGE for carrying out mass government layoffs in a "haphazard" way. And the next morning, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough (a Never Trump conservative and ex-GOP congressman) argued that while government "waste" needs to be reduced and the U.S. needs to balance its federal budget, the Trump Administration and DOGE are recklessly jeopardizing "food safety" and "air safety."

The Guardian's George Monbiot also fears that Trump's second term could trigger some type of major crisis.

In a February 18 opinion column, Monbiot lays out a variety of frightening scenarios and offers some tips for surviving a worst-case scenario.

"Though we might find it hard to imagine," Monbiot warns, "we cannot now rule it out: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The degradation of federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk could trigger a series of converging and compounding crises, leading to social, financial and industrial failure…. A financial crisis in the U.S. would immediately become a global crisis."

Monbiot continues, "But the hazards extend much further. Musk, calling for a 'wholesale removal of regulations,' sends his child soldiers to attack government departments stabilizing the entire U.S. system. Regulations, though endlessly maligned by corporate and oligarchic propaganda, are all that protect us from multiple disasters. In its initial impacts, deregulation is class war, hitting the poorest and the middle classes at the behest of the rich. As the effects proliferate, it becomes an assault on everyone's wellbeing."

The columnist warns that undermining regulatory government agencies could make everything from a pandemic to "future climate disasters" worse.

"As Trump rips down environmental protections and trashes federal responsiveness," Monbiot explains, "the impacts will spiral. They could include non-linear shocks to either the insurance sector or homeowners, escalating into U.S.-wide economic and social crisis. If, or when, another pandemic strikes, which could involve a pathogen more transmissible and even more deadly than COVID-19 — which has so far killed 1.2 million people in the U.S. — it will hit a nation whose defenses have been stood down."

Monbiot urges Americans — as well as residents of the U.K., where The Guardian is published — by doing a lot of networking.

"So, though there is no substitute for effective government, we must seek to create our own backup systems," the Guardian columnist advises. "Start with this principle: don't face your fears alone. Make friends, meet your neighbors, set up support networks, help those who are struggling. Since the dawn of humankind, those with robust social networks have been more resilient than those without. Yes, we also — and urgently — need national and global action, brokered by governments. But it's beginning to look as if no one has our backs. Prepare for the worst."

*George Monbiot's full Guardian column is available at this link.

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an 3 25

Trump, much to the frustration of Democrats, returned to Washington on January 20 with GOP majorities in both branches of the Congress. But they're small majorities.

In the U.S. Senate, Republicans have a 53-47 majority — which is large enough to get Trump's most controversial nominees confirmed, but not enough to overcome the 60-vote demand of the filibuster. Nor is it enough to get a "guilty" vote in an impeachment.

Trump and some of his allies, including billionaire Tesla/SpaceX/X.com leader Elon Musk, are calling for the impeachment of federal judges who are blocking, at least temporarily, some of the president's executive orders. But if federal judges were to be indicted on articles on impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans wouldn't have enough votes for a "guilty" verdict in the U.S. Senate.

According to Politico reporters Meredith Lee Hill, Hailey Fuchs and Jordain Carney, however, GOP lawmakers are thinking about ways to attack federal judges other than impeachment.

"Top Republicans are likely to put at least one bill, California Rep. Darrell Issa’s 'No Rogue Rulings Act,' on the floor in early April, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss scheduling plans," the journalists explain in an article published on March 21. "The legislation would crack down on the ability of lower-court judges to issue far-reaching injunctions. That is seen by Speaker Mike Johnson and other House Republican leaders as a viable outlet as they sort out the way forward on the judicial impeachments that have been endorsed by Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk. A spokesperson for Johnson said the speaker and the Judiciary Committee are reviewing 'all available options.… to address this urgent matter.'"

Hill, Fuchs and Carney continued, "House Republicans have filed impeachment resolutions targeting four district judges, including one this week targeting the jurist who sought to block Trump's effort to deport alleged gang members to El Salvador.… But there is widespread recognition inside the House GOP that impeachments — besides being costly in time and political capital — do not have the votes to succeed given Republicans' narrow majority. That has prompted GOP hardliners to back-channel with Trump allies on alternatives they could push across the House floor."

House Republicans, according to the Politico journalists, "are also discussing one-off resolutions condemning recent judicial rulings against Trump."

"House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan's team has privately advised that members' offices are free to share their opinions on legislative strategy around the courts but that Jordan himself intends to stick to a more vague approach, saying everything is on the table, according to one Republican Hill aide," Hill, Fuchs and Carney explain. "There is, however, a particular interest in restricting the authority of federal district judges to hand down nationwide injunctions, according to four Republicans familiar with the matter."

*Read the full Politico article at this link.

===

an 2 25

During a confirmation hearing for nominees chosen for high-profile posts within the Department of Justice, two of President Donald Trump's appointees wouldn't rule out disobeying federal court orders.

NBC News reported Wednesday that both Aaron Reitz and Dean John Sauer (who have been nominated as assistant attorney general and solicitor general, respectively) suggested to senators that they may ignore a ruling from a federal judge that they disagree with. While neither Reitz — who is chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — or Sauer outright said they would ignore a ruling, both gave cagey answers and notably didn't once definitively say that they would always abide by judges' decisions.

Sauer in particular hinted that he could disregard future orders, in citing two maligned Supreme Court cases: *Korematsu v. United States* and *Dred Scott v. Sandford*. In the Korematsu decision handed down in 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the government had the right to detain Japanese Americans in remote prison camps. In the 1857 Dred Scott case, the Court ruled that slaves did not have the same protections as citizens and lacked standing to sue in court. Both decisions have been widely regarded as some of the worst in the Supreme Court's history.

"I just wonder whether some historians might think we’d be better off if it [Korematsu] hadn’t been followed," Sauer told Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) during the hearing.

While Democrats and Republicans on the committee were typically divided in their support of Trump's nominees, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) agreed with Democrats who were concerned about the possibility of DOJ officials disregarding the federal judiciary. NBC reported that Kennedy took a veiled jab at former President Joe Biden's administration in his warning to Reitz and Sauer that they shouldn't entertain the idea of disobeying federal judges. He noted that the federal bench relies on its "legitimacy" as it doesn't have an "army" at the ready to enforce its orders.

“Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court. Ever. Now, you can disagree with it. Within the bounds of legal ethics you can criticize it. You can appeal it, or you can resign,” Kennedy said. “For four years, I have watched people in this town — not all, not, not everybody — but many try to undermine the legitimacy of the federal judiciary and it triggered each and every time my gag reflex."

Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance opined that the Trump administration was being unfairly treated by federal judges striking down some of his executive actions, like his order attempting to repeal birthright citizenship (which is guaranteed by the Constitution) and his order freezing federal funds already appropriated by Congress from being disbursed. But the administration appears to already be flouting the latter order, as some nonprofits have said they still can't access federal grant money that had already been approved.

Click here to read NBC's report in full.

===

mma

### Megyn Kelly: “The Trump administration is not going to have a choice” but to ignore the courts

02/13/25

### Megyn Kelly calls Obama-appointed federal judges “absolute idiots” who were hired because of their “DEI profile”

02/13/25

---

sparked by

an 1 24

Republican lawmakers have recently "crossed a new threshold: by suggesting that it’s okay to disregard the Supreme Court," according to a Monday, January 29 analysis by Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake.

"The party that once prided itself as the law-and-order side has leaped headlong into highly speculative theories about the 'weaponization' of the justice system, spurred by former president Donald Trump," Blake notes.

The political reporter points to comments from two Republican lawmakers — US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt — over the last week, in which they encouraged states to ignore court rulings that don't align with their political agendas.

"After the Supreme Court ruled last week that federal authorities can remove razor wire that Texas put on the U.S.-Mexico border," Blake reports, Roy wrote via X/Twitter, “Texas should ignore it.” Days later, Stitt during a CNN interview said, "We all agree that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. And if the Supreme Court gets something wrong — for example, if they tried to ban and say that we didn’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms — I think the Constitution supersedes somebody in Washington, D.C., telling us, you know."

Blake emphasizes "these kinds of comments certainly lay the rhetorical groundwork for a pretty unthinkable future clash — especially given they come from a party that has demonstrated increasingly little regard for the current application of the rule of law."

Noting that "despite the claims of some on the left, what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is doing right now doesn’t violate what the Supreme Court ruled," the Post reporter writes, "The court overturned a ruling that said the federal government couldn’t remove the razor wire, effectively allowing it to do so; Abbott has signaled he’ll continue to have the National Guard lay the wire, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has rejected the Biden administration’s request for full access to the area."

Blake adds, "Roy’s and Stitt’s comments, then, take this debate quite a bit further. In some ways, it’s a logical extension of the emerging Republican argument about state sovereignty. Anticipating a federal-vs.-state clash, Republicans have taken to arguing that Texas has the authority to defend itself from those crossing the border illegally."

Furthermore, he emphasizes "we’re getting into dicey territory here. The Supreme Court is the institution we charge with interpreting our Constitution; we now have a sitting U.S. governor and a congressman suggesting it’s okay to ignore what the court says if you have a different interpretation."

*Blake's full analysis can be read here.

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===

11 7 24 thom

Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off. And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires. It all has to do with something called the administrative state.

While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy. A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.}:

:{For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.

A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others. A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.}:

Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago: > “Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”

But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every*Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies;none*of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon). We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snydernotes: > “Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs. > >

“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time. And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs. > > “The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked. And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many. Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”

Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law. Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added: > “Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”

We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc. But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.

Even whenChevronwas still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started*before*Covidcame along. Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign). The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.

Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash. Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.

A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.

:{:{ So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression. It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled. It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs. Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed. }:

===

FASHY

September 25, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): Let's not forget, there is a story to be told about January 6th. It's -- days before it, Trump met with senior Pentagon officials with a directive to protect property and people, and -- including using the National Guard, and it was ignored. This is a contradiction of the DOD IG report, so people need to know that. If you're going to ask questions about that, you know -- the whole commission was designed for this election. It was all designed for this. And they've squeezed the juice out of this lemon. Now it's time to squeeze the commission. Put those jerks behind bars.

===

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an 9 24

Critics of former President Donald Trump have been debating the shape that authoritarianism would take in the United States if Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in November and the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 agenda is carried out.

Some critics have predicted that Trump would embrace the fascist model favored by Gen. Francisco Franco in Spain, Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Alberto Stroessner in Paraguay. But other critics have argued that Trump 2.0 would favor a more subtle brand of authoritarianism along the lines of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's so-called "illiberal democracy" in Hungary — where checks and balances have been greatly eroded but technically, voting rights still exist.

In a podcast discussion for The Atlantic's "Autocracy in America" series, hosts Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev stress that capturing the courts is one of the ways in which authoritarians undermine democracy and advance their agenda.

"In a democracy," Applebaum explains, "we have something called rule of law, and that means that the law exists independent of politics. There are lawyers. There are courts. There are prosecutors, who at least, in theory — they are trying to legitimately find out who's broken the law, who's guilty, who's not guilty…. whereas in a dictatorship, that’s not what the law is for. The law is not to find out what happened. It’s not to establish the truth. It's not to find out who's guilty and who's not guilty. The law is to pursue politics by a different means."

Applebaum warned thatdemocracy can be eroded by "the politicization of the courts." And Pomerantsev agreed, telling her, "What I find so worrying in America is that people actually feel, already, that the justice system is politicized."

Pomerantsev continued, "They already feel that there's a red justice system in one place and a blue justice system in the other. And when people talk about the dangers of democracy being eroded in America — when I hear that from so many Americans — that's when I get really worried because if you can't get anything above politics, that's a very, very dangerous place."

Applebaum added that in "nondemocratic systems," the law "is about punishing political enemies with absurd cases" and "about justices not thinking about themselves as justices but as bureaucrats trying to climb a greasy pole."

*Listen to The Atlantic's full podcast at this link.

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Jesse Watters attacks “DEI” jurors in Trump hush money trial

05/29/24

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mma

trump legal cases' judges, prosecutors have been attacked by right-wing media and threatened by the public

WRITTEN BY JACK WINSTANLEY & GIDEON TAAFFE

PUBLISHED 05/30/24

In addition to death threats, swatting attempts, and envelopes full of white powder, many of the judges and prosecutors involved in former President Donald Trump's various legal battles have also faced abuse from right-wing media figures. These public servants have been demonized as politically motivated, corrupt, and unethical, and in several cases right-wing media have attacked judges' families as well.

## Threats against public officials are increasing amid Trump's attacks on his political and legal opponents

- The New York Times recently reported that political violence and threats against public officials have been on the rise since 2020. The Times noted Trump's role in this trend, writing, “The former president has long used personal attacks as a strategy to intimidate his adversaries. He has turned that tactic on the judges and prosecutors involved in his various legal cases, all of whom have subsequently been threatened.” The New York Times, [5/19/24]

## Special counsel Jack Smith

Special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed to oversee two investigations into Trump — one related to his retention of classified documents, and another into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election — was subjected to an attempted swatting raid alongside other threats since his appointment. Smith has been repeatedly targeted by both Trump and his right-wing media sympathizers. They hit Smith with personal attacks and made misleading claims about the cases he is presenting against the former president.

- In August, Fox News’ Mark Levin attacked Smith, saying, “This guy is sleazy, he's destroying our republic, he's destroyed our electoral system.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [8/3/23]

- On Newsmax, Trump official Peter Navarro said Trump must order a future attorney general to prosecute Jack Smith for “seditious conspiracy.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [8/1/23]

- While ranting against Trump’s various indictments, Levin stated that “Jack the Ripper Smith, his ass should be dragged in front of a committee in Congress whether he likes it or not.” Additionally, he stated that Smith’s “family is bloated with Obama Democrats.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [3/30/23]

- Fox host Laura Ingraham said, “AG Garland and his prosecutorial hitman Jack Smith are doing more damage to America than any group of Capitol rioters ever could.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/7/23]

## District Attorney Fani Willis

At least two people have been charged with making threats against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis while she has been prosecuting Trump for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. Trump and right-wing media figures have frequently targeted Willis, saying that she is “corrupt” and that her case against Trump is politically motivated.

- While discussing Trump’s indictment in Georgia, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich stated on Hannity, “I think what you're seeing tonight is one tree in a forest and I think we are drifting towards the greatest constitutional crisis since the 1850s and the rise of secession and the Civil War.” He suggested that the indictments against Trump are “a desperate last-ditch effort by a corrupt machine to destroy their most dangerous opponent, in a way which … breaks the Constitution, destroys the rule of law.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [8/14/23].

- Right-wing podcaster Tim Pool responded to a post claiming that the “Fulton County DA went insane” with the comment “Civil war.” He later posted, “The only path forward is escalation. Either Trump is a cult leader trying to overthrow the US Or Democrats are engaged in seditious conspiracy to steal power.” Twitter/X, [8/15/23, 8/15/23]

- Fox host Mark Levin said of the indictment brought forward by Willis: “Stalin would be proud. I'm sure Putin’s proud." He called the indictment “the motions of justice,” compared it to the actions of “autocratic regimes,” and said Willis has “been doing a number of outrageous things.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [8/14/23]

## District Attorney Alvin Bragg

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who is currently prosecuting Trump for allegedly making hush money payments to a porn star in an effort to influence the 2016 election — has been repeatedly targeted with death threats. Bragg’s office has been “inundated with racist emails” and letters since he indicted Trump, including one death threat that was mailed to his office along with a white powder. Both Trump and right-wing media figures have lobbed extreme attacks against Bragg, who they have repeatedly claimed is a “Soros-backed” district attorney.

- Fox host Greg Gutfeld claimed Alvin Bragg “has more blood on his hands than the Wuhan market.” Gutfeld also claimed that Bragg “is reinventing it [the justice system] as a prosecution arm for the hard left, which should be pretty chilling to everybody because no one is safe if he can do this.” Fox News, *The Five*, [3/22/23]

- Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller claimed that Bragg’s case showed that “we are now living in a post-Constitution, post-truth era where progressive, Soros-backed prosecutors will decide for themselves who is free and who is not.” While appearing on the now-defunct Tucker Carlson Tonight, Miller warned, “If we allow our legal system to become weaponized in this way, then all of our freedoms exist solely on the sufferance of whichever prosecutor is in charge wherever we live.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [3/23/23]

- On his radio show, Fox's Mark Levin stated, “Alvin Bragg should wind up in prison. He's interfering with this election.” Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [4/4/24]

## Judge Juan Merchan

Judge Juan Merchan is presiding over Trump’s hush money trial. Both Merchan and his family have been the target of threats, which has resulted in the judge taking measures to protect himself and his family. Conservative media have defended Trump’s smears against Merchan’s daughter and have amplified the former president’s attacks.

- Trump ally and far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer said Trump wouldn’t need to attack Merchan’s daughter if the judge’s family members “were ethical and they stopped posting about Trump going to jail.” She then downplayed the attacks, adding, “They're so overdramatic, these people.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [3/28/24]

- Fox host Laura Ingraham claimed that it “sure looks like an apparent conflict of interest that the judge’s daughter has” while calling Trump’s trial a “fraud.” Her guest, former Trump impeachment defense lawyer David Schoen, added, “The appearance of impropriety is clear, so he should recuse himself for that reason.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [4/2/24]

- War Room co-host Natalie Winters accused Merchan of conspiring with progressive donor George Soros and the Brennan Center to wage “lawfare” against Trump, citing Merchan’s daughter’s company ties with Democrats and progressive organizations. Winters also claimed that the organization run by Merchan’s daughter worked for a “Chinese Communist Party influence group behind Confucius Institutes - hotbeds of propaganda and espionage banned by Trump.” Twitter/X, [5/14/24, 5/13/24]

- On Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, attorney Jonna Spilbor speculated about whether people had “filed complaints with the committee on judicial conduct complaining about the fact that he should have recused himself.” Spilbor also asserted that “people who are not fans of Donald Trump should be looking at this prosecution and saying to themselves, ‘This scares me, because if they can do it to him, they can do it to me, my husband, my wife, my brother, sister, anybody.’” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [5/13/24]

- :{Real America’s Voice host Wayne Allyn Root wrote that Merchan would “wind up in Guantanamo for life for TREASON.” He also called the trial a “rigged communist show trial run by [a] communist judge” and added, “I'll be the one clapping as they take him away in leg irons.” Twitter/X, [4/30/24]

Judge Tanya Chutkan}:

Judge Tanya Chutkan was appointed to oversee Trump’s election interference case and now has faced multiple instances of harassment. Chutkan has reportedly received threatening phone calls and was seemingly the victim of a swatting attempt. The justice has been a target of right-wing media’s vitriol, which has included calls for her to recuse herself from Trump’s case.

- Fox’s Mark Levin called Chutkan “a whack job.” He then asked his audience, “Do you think Trump will get a fair shot with her? Of course not.” He added, “The system is really truly rigged.” Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [8/2/23]

- On WABC’s now-discontinued Chat with the Mayor, host and alleged Trump co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani called Chutkan “the most inhumane sentencer on the court for January 6 people” and said she is “hardly … going to be balanced in this case.” He went on to claim, “This is the Soviet Union, Red China, or Nazi Germany. That judge should recuse herself if she has any ethics.” Rolling Stone, [8/1/23; WABC, Chat with the Mayor, 8/2/23; The New York Times, 5/10/24]

- On Newsmax, former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka said Trump’s case “is their attempt to steal 2024” and called Chutkan “the worst January 6 judge possible.” He cited Chutkan’s role in ruling to convict January 6 rioters, saying, “This is a political hit job, nothing else.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [8/1/23]

- On Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime, a graphic depicted Chutkan as “the Obama Punisher.” Host Jesse Watters described her as “an Obama donor, nicknamed ‘the Punisher’ for how harsh she’s been with January 6 defendants.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [8/2/23]

## Judge Arthur Engoron

While presiding over Trump’s civil fraud trial, Judge Arthur Engoron and his clerk, Allison Greenfield, reportedly were “bombarded” with death threats and antisemitic attacks. In one instance, an individual paid a website for private information about Engoron, which law enforcement said “confirmed intentions to follow through with the threats” if Engoron did not “cease action” against Trump. Trump himself had shared calls for a “citizens arrest” of Engoron and District Attorney Letitia James.

- On his War Room podcast, Steve Bannon called Engoron a “crazy Nazi judge.” Bannon also insinuated that Engoron would go after other Trump allies, stating to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, “They’re trying to bankrupt him [Trump], they’re trying to bankrupt you.” Media Matters, [1/30/24]

- Infowars' Alex Jones called Engoron a “virulent anti-free speech guy” and a “kook” and a “political operative.” Jones went on to claim that Engoron would be “rewarded as the Democrats continue to have dictatorship — they’ll make this guy a Supreme Court Justice.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show*, [11/10/23]

- On her Rumble livestream, Laura Loomer justified the attacks against Engoron and his family, saying that “Trump wouldn't need to attack the members of these, the family members of these judges if they actually were ethical.” She singled out Engoron’s wife and added that the outrage over Trump’s repeated attacks against Engoron was “overdramatic.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [3/28/24]

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Johnson demands all Trump prosecutions cease, vows to use Congress 'in every possible way' - Alternet.org

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red tie brigade incl maga mike at hush money trial trashing judge and ct system

2x?

an 5 24

Trump has long used the social media platform Truth Social to criticize anyone he views as an enemy, or a threat to his reputation.

Ahead of the start of his New York hush money trial on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, the MAGA hopeful urged his supporters to turn out in droves to protest the case against him.

A few days later, on April 23, the former president wrote via Truth Social that presiding Judge Juan Merchan is a "'highly conflicted' overseer of a 'kangaroo court.'"

Per a Thursday USA Today report, Trump's "rhetoric is inspiring widespread calls for violence."

MAGA fans "swiftly replied to his post with a blitz of attacks on Merchan," according to the report, and "the comments soon turned ugly," as some devoted Trump supporters "called for Merchan and other judges hearing cases against Trump to be killed."

One social media user wrote, "Treason is a hangable offense."

Another said, "They should all be executed."

USA Today reports:

In a review of commenters’ posts on three pro-Trump websites, including the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Reuters documented more than 150 posts since March 1 that called for physical violence against the judges handling three of his highest-profile cases – two state judges in Manhattan and one in Georgia overseeing a criminal case in which Trump is accused* of illegally seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

The newspaper also notes:

The Gateway Pundit, a website influential in the pro-Trump community, is also a frequent venue for Trump-inspired violent rhetoric. 'These judges and lawyers should HANG for perpetuating these fraud cases,' a commenter wrote on April 16, suggesting the executions would be '*an example for future generations of judges and lawyers.'

READ MORE:['Ready to start another insurrection’: Gaetz support for Trump echoes Proud Boys order

Former New York Police Department Director of Intelligence Mitchell Silber, according to the report, "compared the Trump supporters now calling for violence against judges to the Capitol rioters who believed they were following Trump’s 'marching orders' on Jan. 6, 2021."

Silber emphasized, "This is just the 2023-2024 iteration of that phenomenon. Articulating these ideas is the first step along the pathway of mobilizing to violence."

USA Today's full report is available[here

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