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Heather Cox Richardson: Trump and Musk Are Destroying the Government

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2025 //
14

Heather Cox Richardson demonstrates the negative effects of Elon Musk’s DOGS, which protected his interests and saved little, if any, money. With Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax plan, the deficit will increase by $4-5 trillion, so Musk’s chainsaw contributed nothing but demoralization and destruction of the federal workforce. She also summarizes the multiple ways in which Trump is sabotaging the rule of law. She includes footnotes, as usual. Subscribe to her blog to see them.

She writes:

In July 2024, according to an article published today by Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey in the New York Times, billionaire Elon Musk texted privately about his concerns that government investigations into his businesses would “take me down.” “I can’t be president,” he wrote, “but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will.”

After appearing on stage with Trump on October 5, Musk texted a person close to him: “I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.” About an hour later, he added: “This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised. “‘Lasers’ from space.”

Musk invested about $290 million in the 2024 election and, when Trump took office, became a fixture in the White House, heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” It set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds, a practice that courts have ruled unconstitutional and Congress expressly prohibited with the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.

Musk vowed that his “Department of Government Efficiency” would cut $2 trillion from the U.S. budget, but he quickly backed off on those numbers. In the end, DOGE claimed savings of $175 billion, but that claim is unverifiable and CNN’s Casey Tolan says it’s probably wrong: less than half of it is backed up with any documentation.

Instead, as CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf reported today, since DOGE cut staffing at the enforcement wing of the Internal Revenue Service, for example, and cut employees at national parks, which also generate revenue, its cuts may well end up costing money. Max Stier, who heads the Partnership for Public Service, suggests DOGE cuts could cost U.S. taxpayers $135 billion because agencies will need to train and hire replacements for the workers DOGE fired. Stier called DOGE’s actions “arson of a public asset.”

Grind and Twohey reported that Musk’s drug consumption during the campaign—they could not speak to his habits in the White House, although he appeared high today at a White House press conference—was “more intense than previously known.” He was a chronic user of ketamine, took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and traveled with a box that held about 20 pills for daily use. Those in frequent contact with him worried about his frequent drug use, erratic behavior, and mood swings. As a government contractor, Musk should receive random drug tests, but Grind and Twohey say he received advance warning of those tests.

It was never clear that Musk’s role at DOGE was legal, and the White House has tried to maintain that he was only an advisor, despite Trump’s February 19 statement, “I signed an order creating [DOGE] and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.” On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that 14 states can proceed with their lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency,” saying the states had adequately supported their argument that “Musk and DOGE’s conduct is ‘unauthorized by any law.’”

Trump posted today on social media: “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific!” In a press conference today, Trump reiterated that Musk “is not really leaving.”

Musk’s time at the helm of DOGE might not have saved taxpayer money, but it has changed the world in other ways. Musk has used his time in the government to end investigations into his companies, score government contracts, and get the government to press countries to accept his Starlink communications network as a condition of tariff negotiations. According to John Hyatt of Forbes, Musk’s association with Trump has made him an estimated $170 billion richer.

The implications of DOGE’s actions for Americans are huge. DOGE operatives are now embedded in the U.S. government, where they are mining Americans’ data to create a master database that can sort and find individuals. Former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper called it “a full-scale redirection of the government’s digital nervous system into the hands of an unelected billionaire.”

Today, Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik of the New York Times reported that Musk put billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir data analysis firm into place across the government, where it launched its product Foundry to organize, analyze, and merge data. Thiel provided the money behind Vice President J.D. Vance’s political career. Wired and CNN had previously reported how the administration was using this merged data to target undocumented immigrants, and now employees are detailing their concerns with how the administration could use their newly merged information against Americans more generally.

Internationally, Musk’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, slashing about 80% of its grants, is killing about 103 people an hour, most of them children. The total so far is about 300,000 people, according to Boston University infectious disease mathematical modeller Dr. Brooke Nichols. Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect reported today that about 1,500 babies a day are born HIV-positive because Musk’s cuts stopped their mothers’ medication.

In the New York Times today, Michelle Goldberg recalls how Musk appeared uninterested in learning what USAID actually did—prevent starvation and provide basic healthcare—and instead called it a “radical-left political psy-op,” and reposted a smear from right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos calling USAID “the most gigantic global terror organization in history.” Goldberg also recalls Musk’s tendency to call people he disdains “NPCs,” or non-player characters, which are characters in role-playing games whose only role is to advance the storyline for the real players.

Aside from DOGE, the focus of Trump’s administration—other than his own cashing in on the presidency—has been on tariffs and immigration. Like the efforts of DOGE, those show a disdain for the law in favor of concentrating power in the executive branch.

During the campaign, Trump fantasized that constructing a high tariff wall around the U.S. would force other countries to fund the national deficit, enabling a Republican Congress to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. In fact, domestic industries and consumers bear the costs of tariffs. Trump’s high tariffs, many of which he imposed by declaring an economic emergency and then using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), created such havoc in the stock and bond markets that he backed off.

Yesterday, Sayantani Ghosh, David Gaffen, and Arpan Varghese of Reuters reported that although most of the highest tariffs have yet to go into effect, Trump’s trade war has cost companies more than $34 billion in lost sales and higher costs.

Trump has changed tariff policies at least 50 times since he took office, and traders have figured out they can buy stocks cheaply when markets plummet after a dramatic tariff announcement, and sell when Trump changes his mind. This has recently given rise to Trump’s nickname “TACO,” for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

This moniker has apparently irritated Trump so much he has taken to social media to defend his abrupt dropping of tariffs on China, saying he did it to “save them” from “grave economic danger,” although in fact, China turned to other trading partners to cushion the blow of U.S. tariffs. Trump went on to suggest China did not live up to what he considered its part of the bargain, and he would no longer be “Mr. NICE GUY!”

On Wednesday a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs based on the IEEPA are illegal. The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the president, the power to levy tariffs. Trump launched a social media rant in which he attacked the judges, insisted that “it is only because of my successful use of Tariffs that many Trillions of Dollars have already begun pouring into the U.S.A. from other Countries,” and said that he could not wait for Congress to handle tariffs because it would take too long—in fact, most of Congress does not approve of the tariffs—and that following the Constitution “would completely destroy Presidential Power.” “The President of the United States must be allowed to protect America against those that are doing it Economic and Financial harm.”

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit paused that ruling until at least June 9, when both parties will have submitted legal arguments about whether the stay should remain in place as the government appeals the ruling that the tariffs are illegal. White House senior counsel for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro, the key proponent of Trump’s trade war, said: “Even if we lose, we’ll do it another way.”

Today Trump said he will double the tariff on steel imports from 25% to 50%.

The other major focus of the administration has been expelling undocumented immigrants from the U.S. During the 2024 campaign, Trump whipped up support by insisting that former President Joe Biden had permitted criminals to walk into the U.S. and terrorize American citizens. Trump vowed to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and often talked of deporting the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., although his numbers have ranged as high as 21 million without explanation.

The administration has hammered on immigration to promote the idea that it is keeping Americans safe. But its first target of arresting at least 1,200 individuals a day has fallen far short. In Trump’s first 100 days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it arrested an average of about 660 people a day.

On Wednesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who along with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is the face of the administration’s immigration policy, told the Fox News Channel that the administration is now aiming for “a minimum of 3,000 arrests…every day.” Administration officials hope to deport a million people in Trump’s first year in office.

CNN reported yesterday that those officials are putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies to meet that goal. This means that hundreds of FBI agents have been taken off terror threats and espionage cases involving China and Russia to be reassigned to immigration duties. Some FBI offices are offering overtime pay if agents help with “enforcement and removal operations.” Officers from other agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have also been deployed against immigrants in place of their regular duties.

Steven Monacelli of The Barbed Wire noted today that local law enforcement and state troopers have also been diverted to immigration, using a national network of cameras that read license plates. Joseph Cox and Jason Keobler of 404 Media reported yesterday that a Texas sheriff used the same system over the course of a month to look for a woman whom he said had a self-administered abortion, saying her family was worried about her safety.

Their attempt to appear effective has led to very visible arrests and renditions of undocumented migrants to prisons in third countries, especially the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador. The administration has deliberately flouted the right of persons in the United States to due process as guaranteed by the Constitution. The administration has met court orders with delay and obfuscation, as well as by attacking judges and the rule of law.

The administration continues to insist those it has arrested are dangerous criminals who must be deported without delay, but more and more reporting says that many of those expelled from the country had no criminal convictions. Today, ProPublica reported that the Trump administration’s own data shows that officials knew that “the vast majority” of the 238 Venezuelans it sent to CECOT had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. even as it deported them and called them “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters,” and “the worst of the worst.”

ICE has increasingly met quotas by arresting immigrants outside of immigration check-ins and courtrooms: yesterday Dina Arévalo of My San Antonio reported that ICE arrested five immigrants, including three children, outside of an immigration court after a judge had said they were no longer subject to removal proceedings. The officers used zip ties on all five individuals.

At stake is the turn of the United States away from democracy and toward the international right wing. Yesterday the U.S. State Department notified Congress that it intends to use the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to promote “Democracy and Western Values.” On Tuesday a senior advisor for that bureau, Samuel Samson, who graduated from college in 2021, explained that the State Department intends to ally with the European far right to protect “Western civilization” from current democratic governments.

It also plans to turn the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which manages the flow of people into the U.S., into an “Office of Remigration” to “actively facilitate” the “voluntary return of migrants” to other countries and “advance the president’s immigration agenda.”

“Remigration” is a term from the global far right. As Isabela Dias of Mother Jones notes, its proponents call for the “mass expulsion of non–ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism.” Of the congressional report, a person who works closely with the State Department told Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket: “All of it is pretty awful with some pieces that definitely violate existing law and treaties. But institutionalizing neo-Nazi theory as an office in the State Department is the most blatantly horrifying.”

This concept is behind not only the expulsion of undocumented immigrants, but also the purge of foreign scholars and lawful residents. The Supreme Court blessed this purge today when, during the period that litigation is underway, it allowed the administration to end immigration paroles for about 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela admitted under a Biden-era program, instantly making them undocumented and subject to deportation.

The court decided the case on the shadow docket, without briefings or explanation. In a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: “[S]omehow, the Court has now apparently determined…that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.”

Jackson added a crucial observation. The court, she wrote, “allows the Government to do what it wants to do regardless [of the consequences], rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.”

—

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Citizenship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom, Funding, History, Immigration, Musk, Elon, Propaganda, Trump

Federal Judge Restores Visa to Russian Harvard Scientist

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2025 //
13

I wrote a post about this case a week ago. A scientist at Harvard, who left Russia as an anti-war dissenter, was detained at Logan Airport in Boston on her return from France because she had scientific samples that she did not declare. The samples–frog embryos on slides–posed no danger to anyone. She was immediately stripped of her visa, arrested, and sent to Louisiana to await deportation. A federal judge just granted her bail.

I recall that Trump campaigned on a pledge to deport rapists, murderers, “the worst of the worst.” This young woman is a scientist who is working to find the causes of cancer. Why does he want to deport her?

The New York Times reported:

A federal judge on Wednesday said she would grant bail to Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist employed by Harvard University, in an immigration case stemming from Ms. Petrova’s failure to declare scientific samples she was carrying into the country.

“There does not seem to be either a factual or legal basis for the immigration officer’s actions” in stripping Ms. Petrova of her visa on Feb. 16, Christina Reiss, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Vermont, said in a court hearing.

The judge said the available evidence suggested that the samples Ms. Petrova carried into the country were “wholly non-hazardous, non-toxic, non-living, and posed a threat to no one.” She also said that “Ms. Petrova’s life and well-being are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” as the government has said it intends to do.

Unlike other high-profile deportation cases involving academics, Ms. Petrova’s began with a customs violation. Returning to Boston from a vacation in France, she agreed to carry back samples of frog embryos from an affiliate laboratory at the request of her supervisor at Harvard Medical School.

When the samples were discovered during an inspection of Ms. Petrova’s baggage at Logan Airport, the customs official canceled her visa on the spot and started deportation proceedings. She was transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where she remained for more than three months.

“This is kind of a circular process, because it was the government that revoked her visa,” Judge Reiss said on Wednesday. “And it’s essentially saying, ‘We revoked your visa, now you have no documentation and now we’re going to place you in removal proceedings.’” 

She concluded that “what happened in this case was extraordinary and novel,” and that if she did not take action in the case “there will be no determination” that Ms. Petrova’s constitutional rights had been violated.

“Bail is necessary to make the habeas remedy effective in this case,” she said.

However, it is unclear when the government will allow Ms. Petrova’s release on bail, or whether it will pursue its plan to deport her to Russia. The case has attracted high-level attention from officials in the Trump administration, who took an unusual step earlier this month, after Judge Reiss indicated she planned to release Ms. Petrova.

Hours after that hearing, the Department of Justice unsealed felony smuggling charges against Ms. Petrova based on her failure to declare the scientific samples, and Ms. Petrova was arrested and transferred to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in Louisiana, where she remains. 

Ms. Petrova’s next opportunity for release will come after she is transferred to Massachusetts to face the smuggling charges. But the government also issued a detainer on immigration charges, raising the possibility that, if a judge grants her bail in the criminal case, the government could ask ICE to detain her once again.

Judge Reiss asked Jeffrey M. Hartman, the attorney representing the Department of Justice at the bail hearing, whether that would happen. 

He said he did not think so, citing the recent releases of Mohsen Mahdawi, a student organizer at Columbia University, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University.

“My understanding of the Ozturk and Mahdawi cases is that the government has not re-detained those noncitizens, and I would expect the government to adhere to the same course of action,” Mr. Hartman said. 

Ms. Petrova, 31, the graduate of an elite Russian physics and technology institute, was recruited in 2023 to work at a laboratory at Harvard Medical School studying the earliest stages of cell development. The Kirschner Lab, where she worked, is exploring ways to repair damage to cells that lead to diseases like cancer.

Ms. Petrova has admitted that she failed to declare the samples. Her lawyer has argued that this would ordinarily be treated as a minor infraction, punishable with a fine. 

When Ms. Petrova told the customs officer that she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest if she returned there, she was transferred to ICE custody to wait for an asylum hearing, a process that can take months or years.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Immigration, Science

NYC: ICE Snatches High School Student Who Entered Legally

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2025 //
18

Michael Elden-Rooney wrote in Chalkbeat about the arrest and detention of a public high school student in New York City, which has spurred protests on the student’s behalf. He was attending a school for students learning English. His earnings after school were devoted to helping his mother and two younger siblings move out of a shelter and into an apartment. He entered the country legally. Mayor Eric Adams, who is indebted to Trump for pardoning him, has remained silent.

The campaign pushing for the release of a Bronx high school student arrested by immigration authorities last week continued to escalate with a new legal petition challenging the validity of his detention.

Attorneys for Dylan, 20, a native of Venezuela, made several moves Thursday they hope will slow, and ultimately stymie, the government’s efforts to fast-track his deportation following his arrest last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents after a routine court date.

Dylan is the first known current New York City public school student to be detained by immigration authorities in President Donald Trump’s second term. In the days following Chalkbeat’s Monday report on Dylan’s arrest, his case has become national news and galvanized local efforts to oppose Trump’s immigration policies, including a rally Thursday on the steps of the city’s Education Department headquarters in lower Manhattan.

Dylan’s attorneys from the New York Legal Assistance Group, or NYLAG, filed a “habeas corpus” petition late Thursday night in federal court in Western Pennsylvania, where Dylan is being held, arguing that immigration officials violated his due process rights by preventing him from making full use of the court system. They assert that Dylan is ineligible for “expedited” deportation because he had legal permission to enter the country under a Biden-era humanitarian program.

Dylan’s arrest was part of a nationwide enforcement blitz where government lawyers move to dismiss migrants’ immigration cases, allowing authorities to arrest them on the spot and thrust them into a fast-tracked deportation process with fewer legal protections.

Officials from the Department of Homeland security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new legal petition. They previously criticized former President Joseph Biden’s policy allowing migrants like Dylan to enter the country and said “ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been.”

For the first week of his detention, Dylan’s lawyers could not reach him because he was shuttled so rapidly between four different states, according to a NYLAG spokesperson and his mother, Raiza, whose last name is being withheld at her request to avoid retaliation.

His lawyers finally managed to make contact Wednesday morning — just in time to prepare him for an interview with an asylum officer about whether he has a “credible fear” of returning to Venezuela — a hurdle Dylan must clear to avoid immediate deportation.

The interview took place early Thursday morning, with no advance notice to Dylan’s lawyers. They were only able to get a lawyer patched into the interview after Raiza alerted them shortly before, according to one of the attorneys….

“Dylan’s arrest and ongoing detention cause him enormous and continued harm,” the filing alleges. “He has been ripped away from his high school studies, his work, and his mother and young siblings who rely on him.” The full-time student at ELLIS Prep, which caters to older newly arrived immigrants, has also been working part-time as a delivery worker, helping his mom and two younger siblings move out of a shelter and into their own apartment. 

His attorneys argue that Dylan’s arrest and detention have curtailed his ability to access the court system — a violation of the due process rights guaranteed to anyone in the U.S., regardless of immigration status. In addition to his asylum claim, Dylan is applying for Special Immigration Juvenile Status, a type of legal protection for youth under 21 who can’t be reunited with both parents (his father passed away years ago), according to the petition.

Dylan was scheduled to have a hearing in family court for that case Friday morning but was unlikely to be able to attend from detention — endangering his case, according to his attorneys.

The lawyers argue that Dylan was never eligible for “expedited removal” in the first place, since the procedure is not meant for people who were “admitted or paroled” into the country like Dylan was, according to federal immigration law.

Adding to the urgency of the situation is the fact that Dylan is facing severe gastrointestinal issues that doctors were still trying to diagnose when he was detained. “These specialists are currently in the process of assessing whether Dylan’s symptoms are the result of cancer or [Crohn’s] disease,” and recommended an “immediate in-person follow up appointment,” the filing states...

Meanwhile, Dylan’s case has continued to pick up public attention. An online fundraiser that launched Wednesday to help Dylan’s mom with expenses related to his legal case and caring for her two younger children had collected more than $27,000 by Friday morning.

And hundreds of supporters — including elected officials and city schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos — rallied outside of the Education Department’s downtown Manhattan headquarters calling for his release.

Chants of “Free Dylan” echoed through the crowd of teachers union members, immigration advocates, students, and anti-Trump protesters.

“Dylan is a student, a worker, and part of our community. He did everything right, and still, ICE tore him away from his life and family in New York,” U.S. Rep. Nydia Velasquez said in a statement, the second federal elected official to publicly challenge Dylan’s detention.

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, New York City

Where Did Trump Get the Nutty Idea of Reopening Alcatraz?

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2025 //
12

Have you visited Alcatraz? It’s a fun way to spend time in San Francisco. You take a boat ride with other tourists and get a guided visit around the infamous prison. It sits on a 22-acre island known as “The Rock.” To describe Alcatraz as dilapidated would be an understatement. You learn about the notorious gangsters who were locked up there (including Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly), about the many efforts by prisoners to escape, and you see the tiny, grim cells they lived in. Then you visit the gift shop for souvenirs and books about Alcatraz.

While it’s often said that no one ever escaped Alcatraz, despite many attempts, three men built a raft and took off undetected in 1962: Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers. They were never seen again, so authorities think they must have drowned. But it’s likely they made it to the mainland and started new lives. No one knows.

Trump announced that he wants to reopen Alcatraz because it is time to get tough on hardened criminals. He said he was reacting to the madness of judges ruling that criminals were entitled to due process. This was impossible, he said, because he wanted to toss out millions of criminals, and there are not enough judges to give due process to so many criminals.

At its height, Alvarez housed fewer than 350 prisoners.

Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic thinks he found out why Trump suddenly discovered Alcatraz as a solution. He saw a movie about Alcatraz!

Ferguson writes in The New Republic

President Trump may have gotten his half-brained idea to reopen and expand the infamous Alcatraz prison from a movie that aired on WLRN this past weekend. 

“REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” the president wrote on Truth Social Sunday evening. 

“I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” he continued. “We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally. The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”  

A Bluesky user provided some more details on this seemingly random announcement. 

“I may have context for this! Last night WPBT in Palm Beach broadcast the 1979 Clint Eastwood film ‘Escape from Alcatraz,’” they wrote. Trump was in Palm Beach on the night in question. 

Trump potentially making major policy decisions based on the last movie he watched is bleak but unsurprising. Alcatraz is a dilapidated full-time museum off the coast of San Francisco that closed in the 1960s because it was too expensive to operate and many of the buildings were falling apart. Getting it back to a full-time jail would be incredibly costly and labor intensive. 

“Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction,” California Representative Nancy Pelosi wrote on X. “The President’s proposal is not a serious one.”

Rachel Maddow had a different theory about why Trump suddenly wanted to revive Alcatraz. She thinks he purposely distracts the public and the media. Toss out a shiny object for people and the media to get excited about, and it distracts them from serious policy failures. Alcatraz is bread & circus for the rubes, like the proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Better to have them talk about something silly than to talk about Pete Hegseth’s latest mess at the Pentagon or RFK Jr.’s relentless war against modern science.

Categories Fake News, Immigration, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The New Pope’s Clash with MAGA

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2025 //
11

Heather Cox Richardson recounts the important exchanges between the new Pope, Leo XIV, and JD Vance, on the subject of immigrants. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, described Catholic doctrine and was quickly rebuffed at the time both by Pope Francis and by the future Pope. So, JD Vance has the dubious distinction of being rebuffed by two Popes!

She writes:

Today, on the second day of the papal conclave, the cardinal electors—133 members of the College of Cardinals who were under the age of 80 when Pope Francis died on April 21—elected a new pope. They chose 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago, thus making him the first pope chosen from the United States. But he spent much of his ministry in Peru and became a citizen of Peru in 2015, making him the first pope from Peru, as well.

New popes choose a papal name to signify the direction of their papacy, and Prevost has chosen to be known as Pope Leo XIV. This is an important nod to Pope Leo XIII, who led the church from 1878 to 1903 and was the father of modern Catholic social teaching. He called for the church to address social and economic issues, and emphasized the dignity of individuals, the common good, community, and taking care of marginalized individuals.

In the midst of the Gilded Age, Leo XIII defended the rights of workers and said that the church had not just the duty to speak about justice and fairness, but also the responsibility to make sure that such equities were accomplished. In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, translated as “Of New Things,” Leo XIII rejected both socialism and unregulated capitalism, and called for the state to protect the rights of individuals.

Prevost’s choice of the name Leo invokes the principles of both Leo XIII and his predecessor, Pope Francis. In his own lifetime he has aligned himself with many of Francis’s social reforms, and his election appears to be a rejection of hard-line right-wing Catholics in the U.S. and elsewhere who have used their religion to support far-right politics.

In the U.S., Vice-President J.D. Vance is one of those hard-line right-wing Catholics. Shortly after taking office in January, Vance began to talk of the concept of ordo amoris, or “order of love,” articulated by Catholic St. Augustine, claiming it justified the MAGA emphasis on family and tribalism and suggesting it justified the mass expulsion of migrants.

Vance told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel, “[Y]ou love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.” When right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec, who is Catholic, posted Vance’s interview approvingly, Vance added: “Just google ‘ordo amoris.’ Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense.”

On February 10, Pope Francis responded in a letter to American bishops. He corrected Vance’s assertion as a false interpretation of Catholic theology. “Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity,” he wrote. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups…. The true ordo amoristhat must be promoted is that which we discover by…meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

“[W]orrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth,” Pope Francis wrote. He acknowledged “the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival,” but defended the fundamental dignity of every human being and the fundamental rights of migrants, noting that the “rightly formed conscience” would disagree with any program that “identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.” He continued: “I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”

The next day, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, who said he was “a lifelong Catholic,” told reporters at the White House, “I’ve got harsh words for the Pope…. He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us.”

Cardinal Prevost was close to Pope Francis, and during this controversy he posted on X after Vance’s assertion but before Pope Francis’s answer: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” After the pope published his letter, Prevost reposted it with the comment: “Pope Francis’ letter, JD Vance’s ‘ordo amoris’ and what the Gospel asks of all of us on immigration.”

On April 14, Prevost reposted: “As Trump & [Salvadoran president Nayib] Bukele use Oval to [laugh at] Feds’ illicit deportation of a US resident [Kilmar Abrego Garcia], once an undoc[ument]ed Salvadorean himself, [Bishop Evelio Menjivar] asks, ‘Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?’”

The new Pope Leo XIV greeted the world today in Italian and Spanish as he thanked Pope Francis and the other cardinals, and called for the church to “be a missionary Church, building bridges, dialogue, always open to receiving with open arms for everyone…, open to all, to all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love…, especially to those who are suffering.”

As an American-born pope in the model of Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV might be able to appeal to American far-right Catholics and bring them back into the fold. But today, MAGAs responded to the new pope with fury. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who is close to Trump, called Pope Leo “another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.” Influencer Charlie Kirk suggested he was an “[o]pen borders globalist installed to counter Trump.”

In the U.S., President Donald Trump, who said he would like to be pope and then posted a picture of himself dressed as a pope on May 2, prompting an angry backlash against those who thought it was disrespectful, posted on social media that the election of the first pope from the United States was “a Great Honor for our Country” and that he looks forward to meeting him. ‘It will be a very meaningful moment!” he added.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Immigration, Religion, Vance, J.D.

Rob Curran: ICE Is Taking Away Our Neighbors

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2025 //
8

Rob Curran writes about finance and other topics for Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and other major publications. This article appeared in The Dallas Morning News.

Curran writes:

Neri Alvarado Borges was working for Latin Market Venezuelan Treats, which has locations in Far North Dallas and Lewisville, before he was deported to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento Contra del Terrorismo last month.(Alvarado family / Courtesy)

****

The Trump administration has couched its aggressive ramp-up of deportations as an action to root out criminals. But signs are quickly emerging that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency is scooping up hardworking North Texas migrants with little or no criminal past in its “crackdown.”

Last week, editorial columnist Robert Wilonsky chronicled the case of Neri Alvarado Borges, a young Lewisville resident with a jigsaw-ribbon tattoo associated with autism awareness he wore in honor of his autistic little brother. Did Alvarado look like a hardened criminal to you?

In February, the Venezuelan citizen was seized by ICE officers outside his apartment, and eventually taken to an El Salvadoran prison with suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. If he ever gets out, Alvarado’s trauma will be lifelong.

Paul Hunker is a Dallas immigration attorney and former chief counsel of the Dallas office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Since the Trump administration took power, Hunker has been shocked by the profile of clients who come to him for help fighting deportation proceedings, he told me. These clients typically do not have criminal histories, Hunker said. They are hardworking members of the community, longtime residents. There’s a brief police encounter, a routine traffic stop, and they land in ICE custody.

“The model is detain-and-deport,” Hunker said. “The focus [in my time] was people who were a threat to their community, national-security threats and recent entrants. … Now they’re just going after everybody, even if they’ve been here for 20 years, with family ties. It doesn’t matter.”

ICE’s remit has changed drastically, and that change threatens to drag us all into something akin to a police state. ICE, and before it the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s enforcement arm, traditionally worked with the border patrol, focused on preventing undocumented migrants crossing the border. Apprehending a migrant in the act of an irregular border crossing is a vital part of rule-keeping, and something that has happened throughout U.S. history. Dragging family men out of their cars, throwing them into detention centers and kicking them out of the country is something ICE has never done. Until now.

That’s what appears to be happening to Jesus Ramos, of Lewisville. He, like me, is a green-card holder. Now, he’s facing deportation, allegedly because of nonviolent offenses in his past which have already been adjudicated. Ramos is on probation for simple assault and intent to possess drugs, according to reporting from NBC5.

He may have some substance-abuse problems, but Ramos is not a hardened criminal. Most families have members who go through similar struggles.

There are other stories. In Cedar Park in January, a young Venezuelan man with no criminal record was apprehended by ICE, according to an NPR story which withheld his name. Immigration officers told his family that the 18-year-old had appeared in an online video with guns and drugs, but they couldn’t produce the video for the family or for NPR.

ICE is still targeting serious offenders as the agency has always done since it launched in 2003, according to Hunker. But, as these cases and many of Hunker’s cases illustrate, ICE has new targets, too. And they are targets that we all know well.

ICE is targeting the people who climb on our roofs after hailstorms to fix the shingles. ICE is targeting the people who clean our houses and mind our children. What happens the next time your house-cleaner or your handyman drives home after a few too many?

That’s when the thorny moral question arises, the one your grandchildren may ask you: What did you do when dear, dear Nanny Gloria was swept up by burly officers and thrown in a cell?

What could you do? You will say. You were just one person.

“Tell your congressmen, ‘We don’t want this police state,’” said Hunker, who worked for ICE and its predecessor for more than 20 years. “‘Let ICE focus on people that are dangerous, and don’t try to deport those people who have their lives here.’”

I was reared in Ireland where memories of 1930s Central Europe were fresh. We are not there, yet or hopefully ever, but 20th-century history is no longer an abstract lesson. 

My grandmother met some of the young people brought to London in the Kindertransport operation that evacuated Jewish children from Central Europe before World War II. She inspired my mother with a compassion for displaced families, and an animus for state authorities who displaced those families because of their outsider status. 

It is all too easy, my mother taught me, to turn a blind eye to the state’s mistreatment of vulnerable outsiders. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Houston. I saw an ICE officer cruising around a strip mall in her patrol SUV, and felt a familiar chill. As a reporter with interest in the subject, I wanted to ask the officer why she was there, who she was looking for. But I turned my back, and moved on.

In Ireland, looking on from across the ocean, we contrasted Europe’s 20th-century dystopia with Reagan’s America, a land where hard work and enterprise counted for more than paperwork. Kids a few years ahead of us in school escaped to New York and Chicago from recession-wracked Ireland. A few won green-card lotteries. Most fudged the paperwork for a few years. Nobody shook them down. They were allowed to build skyscrapers, restaurant chains and plumbing empires, and sort the paperwork out later.

Now their children run emergency rooms, law offices and trading floors all over this nation.

That’s the story of immigration in modern America. The authorities have always sought to facilitate the inclusion of hardworking immigrants, rather than seeking to exclude and detain people for paperwork reasons.

The Trump administration continues to insist it is only targeting migrants with a criminal past. ICE’s broad interpretation of those criteria is what troubles me. Who’s to say that today’s deportation for DUI won’t be tomorrow’s deportation for a traffic violation, or for having the wrong surname?

Or writing a newspaper column critical of the regime. My green card is soon up for renewal. I sometimes fear it will be revoked by the thin-skinned Trump government.

But I must be able to look my children in the eye, and so I must speak up for Neri Alvarado and for Jesus Ramos and an unnamed Venezuelan 18-year-old.

Someone has to.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, Texas, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Trump and the Death of Our Ideals

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2025 //
2

Thom Hartmann sums up what Trump is: a malignant narcissist intent on destroying every shred of our democracy and our ideals. we knew from his first term that he was a liar and a fraud. Yet here he is, acting with even more rage, vengeance, and destruction than before.

Let us not forget that Trump is enabled by the Republican Party. By their slim majorities in Congress. They have meekly watched as he terminated departments and agencies authorized by Congress. They have quietly given the power of the purse to Trump and Musk. They have watched as he turned himself into an emperor and made them useless. They could stop him. But they haven and they won’t.

He writes:

The Trump administration just gutted Meals on Wheels.

Seriously. Meals on Wheels!

Donald Trump didn’t just “disrupt” America; he detonated it. Like a political Chernobyl, he poisoned the very soil of our democratic republic, leaving behind a toxic cloud of cruelty, corruption, and chaos that will radiate through generations if we don’t contain it now.

He didn’t merely bring darkness; he cultivated it. He made it fashionable. He turned cruelty into currency and made ignorance a political virtue.

This man, a grotesque cocktail of malignant narcissism and petty vengeance, ripped the mask off American decency and showed the world our ugliest face. He caged children. Caged. Children. He laughed off their cries while his ghoulish acolytes used “Where are the children?” as a punchline for their next QAnon rally.

He welcomed white supremacists with winks and dog whistles, calling them “very fine people,” while spitting venom at Black athletes who dared kneel in peaceful protest.

He invited fascism to dinner and served it on gold-plated Trump steaks. He made lying the lingua franca of the right, burning truth to the ground like a carnival barker selling snake oil from a flaming soapbox.

And let’s not forget the blood on his hands: 1,193,165 dead from COVID by the time he left office, 400,000 of them unnecessarily, dismissed as nothing more than “a flu,” while he admitted — on tape — that he knew it was airborne and knew it was lethal. His apathy was homicidal, his incompetence catastrophic.

He tried to overthrow a fair election. He summoned a violent mob. He watched them beat cops with American flags and screamed “Fight like hell!” while cowering in the White House, delighting in the destruction like Nero fiddling as Rome burned.

And now, like some grotesque twist on historical fascism, Trump’s regime is quietly disappearing even legal U.S. residents — snatched off the streets by ICE and dumped into El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, a dystopian nightmare of concrete and cruelty.

One such man, Kilmar Ábrego García, had legal status and a home in Maryland. But Trump’s agents defied a federal court order and deported him anyway, vanishing him into a foreign hellhole so brutal it defies comprehension.

This isn’t policy: it’s a purge. A test run for authoritarian exile. And if Trump’s not stopped by Congress, the courts, or We The People in the streets, it won’t end there.

But somehow, he’s still here, waddling across the political stage like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of authoritarianism, bloated with power, empty of soul, and reeking of spray tan and sulfur.

Donald Trump didn’t just bring darkness: he’s a goddamn black hole, a gravity-well of cruelty sucking the light out of everything he touches.
This is a man who desecrates everything good.
Empathy? He mocks it. Truth? He slanders it. Democracy? He’d bulldoze it for a golf course.
And if we let him continue, he won’t just end democracy — he’ll make damn sure it never rises again.

So the question is: are we awake yet?

Or will we let this orange-faced death-cult leader finish the job he started, grinning over the corpse of the America we once believed in?

Now is not the time to kneel: it’s the time to rise. Stay loud, stay vigilant, and show up. Every protest, every march, every call to DC, every raised voice chips away at the darkness.

Democracy isn’t a spectator sport: it’s a fight, and we damn well better show up for it.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Ignorance, Immigration, Injustice, Lies, Racism, Shame, Stupid, Trump

Why is Trump Going to the Funeral of a Pope He Didn’t Like?

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2025 //
12

Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe asked why Trump and Melania are attending the funeral of Pope Francis, since the two men disagreed about almost everything. He thinks it is Trump’s way of consoling his Catholic base. The Pope and Trump exchanged harsh words. The Pope was a man of faith who called on the faithful to welcome immigrants. Trump hates immigrants. The Pope called for mercy and compassion. All Trump can give is hatred and vitriol.

Cullen writes:

There’s a great scene in “The Godfather,” when all the other Mafia bosses attend Don Corleone’s funeral.

Ostensibly, the Godfather’s rivals are there to show respect, but there’s the unmistakable reality they are not mourning a death so much as relishing an opportunity.

The image of Donald Trump sitting near the body of Pope Francis conjures the image of Don Barzini nodding to Corleone’s family as he calculates in his head how many of Corleone’s soldiers and contacts he can peel off now that the Godfather is dead.

Why, on God’s green earth, would Donald Trump deign to attend Pope Francis’ funeral? To show respect? To mingle with other world leaders? To get his mug on television?

Pope Francis was arguably Trump’s highest-profile critic, especially when it came to the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants.

In the aftermath of the pope’s death, Trump was uncharacteristically gracious, posting on social media that Pope Francis was “a very good man.”

Trump called that very good man “disgraceful” in 2016 after the pope dismissed Trump’s proposal to build a wall between the US and Mexico. The pope said that anyone who only thinks about building walls instead of bridges “is not Christian.”

Trump, whose base includes millions of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, hit back, saying, “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”

For all the kind words he showered on the pope in the immediate aftermath of the pope’s death, it’s hard to imagine Trump disagreed with the less than charitable assessment offered by Roger Stone, the Trump advisor who avoided 40 months in prison after Trump commuted his sentence for lying to Congress to protect Trump. 

Stone, displaying the compassion of a viper, said this of the pope: “His papacy was never legitimate and his teachings regularly violated both the Bible and church dogma. I rather think it’s warm where he is right now.”

So gracious.

But, give Stone this much: at least he was honest.

Trump’s platitudes ring hollow indeed. But the death of Pope Francis offers Trump and MAGA Catholics the prospect, however unlikely, of replacing a progressive voice in the Vatican with someone more ideologically in tune with the more conservative voices within the church in the US.

At the very least, Trump has to be hoping the next pope isn’t as withering a critic as Francis was.

Nearly 60 percent of US Catholics voted for Trump last November, according to exit polls.Another survey put the figure at 54 percent. 

Either way, Trump, who describes himself as a non-denominational Christian, won the Catholic vote, decisively. The pope’s criticism of Trump when it came to the environment, the poor and especially immigration doesn’t appear to have dissuaded the majority of American Catholics from voting for Trump.

Catholics comprise more than one third of Trump’s cabinet.

The 9-member US Supreme Court that has been deferential to Trump’s unprecedented claims and exercise of executive power is comprised of six Catholics, only one of whom, Sonia Sotomayor, is liberal and regularly rules against Trump. (You could argue there are six conservative “Catholics” justices, given that Justice Neil Gorsuch, now an Episcopalian, was raised and educated as a Catholic, and voted with the five other conservative Catholic justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.) 

Thomas Groome, a professor of theology at Boston College, acknowledges that conservative Catholics in the US have been a boon to Trump, and suspects Trump show of respect to Pope Francis and the institution is keeping with his transactional approach to pretty much everything: that the conclave of cardinals who will elect a new pope will reward Trump with someone who thinks more like him.

Highly unlikely, says Groome.

“Francis appointed about two-thirds of the cardinals who will select his successor,” Groome said. “Trump may be hoping he’ll get a reactionary, a right-wing pope. But I don’t think that will happen.”

Groome said he was more concerned about Trump’s reaction when the president realizes that, following Vatican protocol, he won’t get the best seat in the house at St. Peter’s Basilica.

“My understanding is he’s been assigned to sit in the third row,” Groome said. “He’s not going to like that.”

Still, gripped by Christian charity, and influenced by an enduring belief in redemption, Groome holds onto the remote, infinitesimal chance Donald Trump could, on the way to Rome, have a Road to Damascus conversion, that some of Pope Francis’ empathy could somehow rub off on him.

“St. Paul fell off his horse,” Groome said. “Maybe Donald Trump will, too.”

Categories Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Immigration, Love, Religion, Trump

Immigration Service Will Screen Social Media Accounts for Anti-Semitism: Deport Elon!

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2025 //
8

NPR reported that the Trump administration would review the social media accounts of immigrants to exclude anyone who is anti-Semitic.

As a Jew, it makes me sick to see the Trump administration use “anti-Semitism” as a reason to vilify anyone, be it a university or an immigrant.

Trump’s minions include numerous openly anti-Semitic allies. He’s gotten support from David Duke, Richard Spencer, Nick Fuentes, and Kanye West, all of whom have expressed anti-Semitic views. He should reprimand all the Nazi-loving guys who carry Nazi symbols and chant “The Jews will not replace us.”

And then there’s Elon Musk, who twice gave the Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration Right hand on heart, then thrust straight out. Elon re-opened Twitter to expressions of anti-Senitism and racism.

I support the First Amendment and oppose efforts to limit free speech.

But I hate hypocrisy. If Trump intends to use anti-Semitism as a reason to scour social media accounts, he should deport his anti-Semitic friends.

Categories Bigotry, Freedom of Speech, Hypocrisy, Immigration, Trump

Allison Gill: Did the Supreme Court Waffle on the Return of the Unjustly Imprisoned Man from Maryland?

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2025 //
5

ICE swept up a Maryland man and deported him to the infamous prison in El Salvador for terrorists and hardened criminals. But Abrego Garcia was not a terrorist or a gang member. The Trump administration admitted that his arrest and detention was an “administrative error” but claimed that he could not be returned because he was no longer in U.S. jurisdiction. The lower federal courts ordered the administration to bring him back. The Trump administration objected–unwilling to bring home an innocent victim of their error–and the case went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court released a unanimous ruling that seemed to favor the return of Abrego Garcia.

Allison Gill took a close look at the decision and finds many opportunities in its decision to keep Mr. Garcia imprisoned.

She wrote:

It appears to be a victory – that the Supreme Court “unanimously” agrees that the government must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia – the Maryland father that was disappeared to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador on a government-admitted “administrative error.” 

But the Supreme Court did the wrong thing here by even bothering to weigh in.

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Do you remember in the immunity ruling, when the Supreme Court sent the case back down to Judge Chutkan after they made their “rule for the ages?” They shoved their robes where they didn’t belong because they should have just denied Trump’s application. Remanding it back to the District Court left the door open for Judge Chutkan’s clarification on official acts to be appealed again – all the way back up to the Supreme Court if necessary – so that the supremes could once again have final say over what the lower court had decided. It also had the added bonus of tacking at least another year of delay onto the case – provided the Supreme Court would have let the case live after the second go-round.

In the Abrego Garcia case, the liberal justices say they would have denied Trump’s application outright, leaving the lower court order in place:

Because every factor governing requests for equitable relief manifestly weighs against the Government, Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 426 (2009), I would have declined to intervene in this litigation and denied the application in full. (Statement of Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson join.)

Technically, the ruling is unanimous because the three liberal justices ultimately agree with the court’s ruling, but by intervening instead of denying the application outright, the Supreme Court is asking the District Court to clarify it’s ruling “with due regard” to Trump: 

The rest of the District Court’s order remains in effect but requires clarification on remand.The 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. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.

The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. I mean, you could park a truck in that sentence. It might as well say “Hey District Court, go ahead and give it a shot but don’t cross the blurry lines we aren’t going to draw and don’t break the secret rules which we aren’t going to tell you about. See you in a month!” 

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They were super vague on their instructions to the lower court in the immunity ruling, too: virtually guaranteeing the case would come before them again. Remember Footnote 3? It was about as clear as mud:

“[a] prosecutor may point to the public record to show the fact that the President performed the official act. And the prosecutor may admit evidence of what the President allegedly demanded, received, accepted, or agreed to receive or accept in return for being influenced in the performance of the act. … What the prosecutor may not do, however, is admit testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing the official act itself. Allowing that sort of evidence would invite the jury to inspect the President’s motivations for his official actions and to second-guess their propriety. As we have explained, such inspection would be “highly intrusive” and would “ ‘seriously cripple’ ” the President’s exercise of his official duties. … And such second-guessing would threaten the independence or effectiveness of the Executive.”

And just as with the immunity ruling, the Supreme Court will likely get another review of whatever the court orders the Trump administration to do to return Abrego Garcia. Because I’m pretty sure that the government isn’t going to want to do what the lower court tells it to, nor will it be forthcoming with the steps it’s taking to comply with court orders. The Trump administration will say “The Supreme Court told you to have deference for how we conduct foreign affairs. You’re not deferencing enough.”

So yes, it’s awesome that the Supreme Court didn’t outright abandon Abrego Garcia, but now we’re going to potentially drag out the remedy – while a man is wrongfully imprisoned in a gulag – and give the Supremes another at-bat when things don’t go smoothly. The high court should have outright denied the application, just as they should have done in the immunity case. 

Just my two cents. 

~AG

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Fake, Immigration, Justice, Trump
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