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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 25, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution, Part 1

GOP Budget Would Make It Even Harder to Hold Trump Administration in Contempt

Shawn Musgrave, May 24 2025 [The Intercept]

…The looming showdown over the judiciary’s power to issue contempt orders stems from a single sentence tucked into the thousand-page budget bill, which passed the House of Representatives by a single vote on Thursday.

“This is a slap in the face to the concept of separation of powers,” said a spokesman for Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.).

If enacted, the provision — found on page 544 out of 1,082 — would restrict how federal judges can hold government officials or other litigants in contempt if they defy court-issued injunctions and restraining orders. Contempt is the primary enforcement mechanism available to courts, and in cases around the country judges have weighed whether to issue contempt findings against President Donald Trump’s deputies….

Although this is technically a budget bill, items in it from that wish list include a significant restriction on “the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” as Dean of Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinsky explained in Just Security Monday. “Without the contempt power,” he writes, “judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.”

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

Debating Trump “Ambush” of South African President With “White Genocide’ Lies

Yves Smith, May 22, 2025 [Naked Capitalism]

Trump’s goals were clear. I wrote yesterday that he was pushing the phony “white genocide” narrative to:

Retaliate against South Africa for going to the ICJ regarding the actual genocide in Gaza, to get them to back off more.

Cheapen the public discourse over “genocide” — helping turn it into just another meaningless slur.

Make it seem like Trump is standing up for alleged oppressed white folks, to play to some white working-class voters who don’t perceive that it’s actually — again — for Israel (similar to how they repackaged Palestine protests as an immigration issue).

Push back against BRICS to the extent it’s challenging US establishment dominance, or appears to be doing so.

He lectured him on alleged abuses in South Africa and Ramaphosa was at best doing a diplomatic defense.

Trump orders the government to stop enforcing rules he doesn’t like

Maxine Joselow, Hannah Natanson and Ian Duncan [Washington Post, via downwithtyranny.com 5-19-2025]

At the Transportation Department, enforcement of pipeline safety rules has plunged to unprecedented lows since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Trump recently ordered Energy Department staff to stop enforcing water conservation standards for showerheads and other household appliances. And at one Labor Department division, his appointees have instructed employees to halt most work related to antidiscrimination laws.

Across the government, the Trump administration is trying a new tactic for gutting federal rules and policies that the president dislikes: simply stop enforcing them.

“The conscious effort to slow down enforcement on such a broad scale is something we have never seen in previous administrations,” said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. “It amounts to a dramatic assertion of presidential power and authority.”

This account of the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back application of many laws is based on interviews with more than a dozen federal employees across seven agencies, as well as a review of internal documents and federal data….

In some cases, Trump has personally ordered a halt to enforcement. The president on May 9 signed a memorandum directing the Energy Department “not to enforce” what he called “useless” water conservation standards for home appliances including bathtubs, faucets, showerheads and toilets….

Heather Cox Richardson, May 20, 2025 [Letters from an American]

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the Department of Homeland Security’s budget for fiscal year 2026. When Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) asked her to define “habeas corpus,” Noem’s response indicated she has no understanding of the nation’s fundamental law.

“Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” Noem said. Hassan corrected her: “Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason. Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.”

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 18, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On May 18, 2025

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by Tony Wikrent

The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution

Trump in TROUBLE as Amy Coney Barrett SNAPS at Supreme Court (YouTube video)

[Legal AF, May 16, 2025]

[TW: Leah Litman, Michael Popok and Alex Aronson discuss the Supreme Court hearings on Friday 5-16-2025. This is ostensibly about birthright citizenship, but perhaps the more important issue is whether US District courts can impose injunctions nationwide. I do not recall ever before having linked to a discussion of Supreme Court hearings, but these were extraordinary in showing how (anti)Republicans and conservative are attempting to obliterate two and a half centuries of legal development and reasoning in the USA republic’s experiment in self government. Recall that the (anti)Republicans and conservatives / libertarians repeatedly sought and obtained injunctions to stop implementation of Biden policies they disliked. But now that Democrats and liberals are stopping Trump policies with court injunctions, (anti)Republicans and conservatives / libertarians are arguing that only the Supreme Court can impose nationwide injunctions.

[But it’s even worse: Trump’s former personal attorney, now serving as U.S. Solicitor General, D. John Sauer, actually argued that a court injunction can apply only to the particular case and the particular litigant. (This was the point in the hearings that Justice Amy Coney Barrett sputtered “Really?” with some incredulity.) In other words, according to Sauer, if you want to prevent Trump / Musk / DOGE from disposing of 12,351 workers from an agency, you would need 12,351 injunctions for each of the 12,351 agency workers to protect all of them. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor, pointedly asked Sauer, “You’re talking about the hundreds and thousands of people who weren’t part of the judgment of the court. They would all have to file individual actions?”

Litman, Popok and Aronson also discuss how (anti)Republicans and conservatives / libertarians are pushing for laws and legal decisions that would almost totally restrict the path for class action lawsuits, the only alternative to using court injunctions to legally protect large groups of people. With this, you see the outlines of the legal assault on American law and jurisprudence that has been developed during the past half century in the seminars and conferences by the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, Mercatus Center, and the rest of the apparatus of plutocrat-funded conservatives and libertarian entities.

[As I have argued before, the “left’s” response to this assault on American law and jurisprudence has been crippled by the “left” rejecting the legitimacy of American history and institutions for being based on racism and misogyny. I firmly believe this is the primary reason the doctrines and ideas being developed by conservatives and libertarians were largely ignored for the past half century. The “left” has yet to deal with the question of why the plutocrats are expending so much to reinterpret and change American law and jurisprudence. What was there in place before the plutocratic assault that plutocrats want to obliterate, and the “left” has been ignoring?

[Especially frightening is that “Justices” Thomas and Alito appear to have accepted Sauer’s arguments.]

In Birthright Citizenship Case, Trump DOJ Asks Supreme Court Justices to Make Themselves Irrelevant

Garrett Epps, May 16, 2025 [Washington Monthly]

… Thursday’s argument had two aspects, which appeared and disappeared like the Katzenjammer Kids playing peekaboo throughout the nearly three hours of oral argument. The Court had formally assembled to hear the first: When is it okay for one federal district judge to block a government policy nationwide?

The second was: Has every Congress, every Court, and every administration for the past century and a half read the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause wrong, leaving Donald Trump, on his sole authority, to upend the rule that all babies born in the U.S., except the children of diplomatic families, are citizens at birth?

Though Sauer began his argument by boldly proclaiming the administration’s novel interpretation of the Amendment (it applied, he said, only to the children of free slaves in 1868 and has no effect on the children of immigrants today), he quickly moved to the administration’s real aim in bringing this “emergency docket” application before the Court.

In Sauer’s view, the case was about a broader issue than the permissibility of “universal injunctions” (federal district court orders that block new executive policies nationwide). Article III of the Constitution, which created the federal judiciary and gives it its powers, he argued, does not permit any federal court, at any level, to issue such injunctions.

This raises the question: What if the government loses in the district court—and then loses again in the Court of Appeals? What if it loses in the Supreme Court? What court can order it to stop engaging in behavior that Article III courts have found to violate the Constitution?

Without quite saying so, Sauer let it be known that the answer is: None.

If plaintiffs won in the Supreme Court, he graciously conceded, they could take the judgment to the bank—for themselves, that is. But Sotomayor asked him, once the Court decided the constitutional issue, would its order bind the government to stop the unconstitutional action against anyone?

Well . . . said Sauer . . . Not so much.

The result of such a case, Sauer said, would not be a Supreme Court order binding everyone else, but instead a Supreme Court precedent. And of course, plaintiffs still being injured by a government policy (for example, by being rendered stateless by an executive order) could cite that precedent in their cases. “If there was a decision that violated the precedent of the Court, then the affected plaintiffs could get a separate judgment,” he said.

Responded Sotomayor, “You’re talking about the hundreds and thousands of people who weren’t part of the judgment of the court. They would all have to file individual actions?”

Maybe not, said Sauer—if the case could satisfy “the rigorous criteria of Rule 23,” to be certified as a class action.

But if not, said Sotomayor, “you are claiming that not just the Supreme Court—that both the Supreme Court—and no lower court can stop an executive from universally, from violating those holdings by this Court.”….

If a president can simply wave away that much adverse authority—and then only grudgingly apply his losses in court—then the role of the federal courts will be, from now on, quite different from the one they have played for the past 100 years. American-style judicial review would become something like the Mexican writ of amparo, by which parties can get a judgment blocking an unconstitutional law only as to their individual cases; others in the same situation must go to court to get their own amparo. In the atomized world envisioned by the administration, judicial review might be called the Writ of Sisyphus. No matter how often a court pushes the rock up the hill, it will face the same task over and over if the government so chooses.

The Visionary of Trump 2.0: Russell Vought is advancing a radical ideological project decades in the making.

McKay Coppins, May 16, 2025 [The Atlantic, via ownwithtyranny.com]

…Vought’s critics have warned that elements of his agenda— for example, unilaterally cutting off funding for congressionally established agencies such as USAID— are eroding checks and balances and pushing the country toward a constitutional crisis. But in interviews over the past several weeks, some of his allies told me that’s the whole point. The kind of revolutionary upending of the constitutional order that Vought envisions won’t happen without deliberate fights with Congress and the judiciary, they told me. If a crisis is coming, it’s because Vought is courting one.

Bannon told me that mainstream Republicans have long complained about runaway federal bureaucracy but have never had the stomach to take on the problem directly. Vought, by contrast, is strategically forcing confrontations with the other branches of government. “What Russ represents, and what the Romneys and McConnells don’t understand, is that the old politics is over,” he said. “There’s no compromise here. One side is going to win, one side is going to lose, so let’s get it on.”

… Vought himself has written that we are living in a “post-Constitutional time.” Progressives, he argues, have so thoroughly “perverted” the Founders’ vision by filling the ranks of government with unaccountable technocrats that undoing the damage will require a “radical” plan of attack. “The Right needs to throw off the precedents and legal paradigms that have wrongly developed over the last two hundred years,” he wrote in an essay for The American Mind, a journal published by the Claremont Institute.

What exactly would such an approach look like in practice? Mike Davis, a Republican lawyer and a friend of Vought’s who helped steer judicial nominations in Trump’s first term, told me that he expects an escalating series of standoffs between the Trump administration and the judicial branch. He went so far as to say that if the Supreme Court issues a decision that constrains Trump’s executive power in a way the administration sees as unconstitutional, the president will have to defy it. “The reptiles will never drain the swamp,” Davis told me. “It’s going to take bold actions.”

The End of Rule of Law in America

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 11, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On May 11, 2025

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Congressman Casten: Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law Is Causing Capital Flight Out of U.S. by Foreign Investors

Pam Martens and Russ Martens, May 5, 2025 [Wall Street on Parade]

Last Wednesday, Congressman Sean Casten, Democrat of Illinois, stated the following in an open meeting of the House Financial Services Committee:

“For the first time in my memory, foreign investors are not only fleeing U.S. equities but are fleeing U.S. Treasuries. I met with banks last week – banks under our jurisdiction – who said that the international community is putting a risk premium on investments in the United States because of regulatory risk and because they question whether the rule of law that they depend on to execute contracts in the United States will be executed as it will be in European markets where that capital is running to.

“So, if you need to tell yourself before you go to bed that you’re a deficit buster, fine, but just acknowledge you’re lying. This is not about deficit busting. This is about making rich people richer, and that’s it.”

Has Asia just taken a step away from the US dollar?

Alice Li, 7 May 2025 [South China Morning Post]

Asia’s largest economies have broken new ground by approving an emergency financing tool using the yuan and other local currencies

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 4, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On May 4, 2025

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 4, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

Judges Who Rule Against Trump Become Target of New MAGA War

Malcolm Ferguson, May 2, 2025 [The New Republic]

At least 11 federal judges and their families have been threatened and harassed since they ruled against President Trump on issues of deportations, federal funding, and his war on “wokeness.”

The judges, under anonymity, told Reuters that they had received multiple intimidating calls and emails to their homes and offices. Some have been subject to the disturbing “pizza box” method, in which antagonists will anonymously send a pizza to the home of a judge or their relatives just to show that they know where they live.

This is only compounded by the countless attacks and doxxing attempts that people like Laura Loomer and Elon Musk have made on X. When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled against Trump’s illegal deportation of 137 men under the Alien Enemies Act in March, Loomer and Musk shared photos of his daughter, while their army of keyboard warriors called for the execution or arrest of Boasberg and the rest of his family. Loomer did the same to Judge John McConnell after he blocked Trump from freezing education grants, posting a picture of his daughter who had worked for the Education Department. Loomer’s post conveniently omitted that McConnell’s daughter left the department before Trump was even inaugurated….

You Already Knew He’s The WORST President Ever— Did You Also Know He’s The Most Blatantly Corrupt?

Howie Klein, April 26, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]

…On Thursday, Drew Harwell and Jeremy Merrill reported that shady characters have poured tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s meme coin since he advertised on Wednesday that top purchasers could join him for an “intimate private dinner” next month. “The holders of 27 crypto wallets have each acquired more than 100,000 $TRUMP coins, stakes worth about a million dollars each, since noon on Wednesday, when the team announced that the 220 top coin holders would be rewarded with a ‘night to remember’ on May 22 at the president’s Trump National Golf Club outside Washington. Crypto wallets are generally anonymous, making it challenging to identify who the purchasers were.”

They also advertised something so blatantly illegal that they partially removed it, no doubt at the insistence of White House lawyers: an offer of a tour of the White House for the 25 top $TRUMP coins purchasers. Now they’re just offering a tour but with no indication of what. This idea of offering direct presidential access to those who pay into a project benefiting the Trump personal bottom line would be enough to get him impeached if House Republicans weren’t so wedded to enabling his criminality. Not one House Republican has spoken out about this.

Harwell and Merrill wrote that “the biggest buyer acquired 2 million coins worth about $24 million.” That’s a substantial bribe, especially coming from a criminal in China who desperately needs a pardon from Trump. “Taken together, the 27 wallets acquired more than 8 million $TRUMP coins, worth about $100 million as of Thursday afternoon…

Politicians Almost Never Seek Meaningful Accountability When It Comes To Other Politicians

Howie Klein, May 2, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, was even stronger on the same particular crime: “Never before in American history have foreign governments, as well as people and corporations under investigation, so overtly and directly funneled vast sums to the president of the United States and his family. This is far more than is captured by the term ‘conflict of interest.’ It is foreign policy for sale and justice for sale. And, as one of the executives in the deal said, ‘it is only the beginning.’ With a president who has no regard for the basic norms of propriety, ethics, the law or the U.S. Constitution, the question is: Will the U.S. Congress permit this mockery of the American people? Or will it insist on the most minimal baseline standards, so that foreign governments cannot send money directly to the president and his family?”

How Trump Accidentally Sabotaged His Own Case Against Abrego Garcia

Greg Sargent, May 3, 2025 [The New Republic]

He has now said it right out in the open—not once but twice. In two major interviews, President Donald Trump openly declared that he has the power to bring the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States. And on both occasions, Trump said straight out that he is not doing so because administration lawyers have told him he doesn’t have to—or that he shouldn’t.

This has been widely seen as an admission that Trump is defying the Supreme Court, which has directed the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. Yes, it is that. But these two moments are also their own story. They offer a unique glimpse into the deep rot of bad faith infesting Trump and Stephen Miller’s broader project to expand the president’s removal powers into something extraordinarily vast and entirely unaccountable….

Public Records Wreckers: The consequences of gutting FOIA offices are both obvious and unknowable.

Will Royce, Andrea Beaty, May 1, 2025 [The American Prospect]

Ten months ago, Roman Jankowski sent dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), among other agencies. He was one-third of a three-man fishing expedition spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and the Daily Caller to dig up dirt on civil servants, particularly if they were the type to use phrases like “climate equity” or “voting.” ….

Today, Jankowski oversees FOIA compliance for DHS as its chief FOIA officer. His agency receives more public records requests than any other by a wide margin. And instead of gumming up FOIA administration from the outside, Jankowski now works for an administration that is attacking FOIA by firing many of the federal employees who respond to those requests, precisely what his records requests sought to facilitate….

While the administration staunchly refuses to be “maximally transparent,” groups like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are trying to get answers. CREW is currently suing the Trump administration for refusing to comply with its FOIA requests on DOGE’s activities. To prop up their argument that DOGE and Musk aren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the administration has claimed that Musk doesn’t work for DOGE—despite Trump’s personal posts and a basic comprehension of daily news contradicting that idea—and that the roughly 100 operatives under Musk’s direction are not acting independently from the office of the president.

The Democracy Index

Joyce Vance, Joshua Kolb, Lily Conway, and Bri Murphy, May 02, 2025

This week, the Trump DOJ was dealt two significant blows by two Republican-appointed district court judges. On Thursday in Texas, Trump-appointee Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., ruled that the Trump Administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act—a 1798 law that allows the government to detain and deport noncitizens from the country during wartime—was improper and unlawful. Rodriguez, Jr., ruled that Trump’s proclamation “exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”

Earlier in the week, Judge Royce Lamberth of the District of Columbia, who was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan, lambasted the Trump Administration, preventing Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from being decimated and ruling that “It is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary and capricious actions than the Defendants’ actions here.” Lamberth then took an extraordinary step back from the particulars of the case to strongly defend the independence of the judiciary in our constitutional system, writing: “By enjoining the defendants’ efforts to dismantle the plaintiff networks, actions which I perceive to be contrary to the law, I am humbly fulfilling my small part in this very constitutional paradigm—a framework that has propelled the U.S. to heights of greatness, liberty and prosperity unparalleled in the history of the world for nearly 250 years. If our nation is to thrive for another 250 years, each co-equal branch of government must be willing to courageously exert the authority entrusted to it by our Founders.”

Beyond the judiciary, institutions that bent the knee to Trump faced setbacks while those that held resolutely against intimidation were rewarded. Notably, Microsoft, one of the largest companies in the world, dropped the law firm Simpson Thacher—among the shops that caved and made a deal with the Trump White House—and signed up Jenner Block, one of the three law firms that challenged Trump’s Executive Order in court. The cowardly firms that acquiesced cited, as their prime justification, their obligation to their clients to maintain good relations with the government. That was always a false choice, but it was also foolhardy in the long run—after all, what client wants a lawyer who will be intimidated by its bad-faith adversary?

That is indeed courageous, a fact that can be quantified. In the law firms’ litigation against the Trump Administration, hundreds of firms banded together to sign an amicus brief defending their colleagues and decrying the president’s Executive Order. The first amicus brief a couple weeks ago, supporting Perkins Coie’s lawsuit, secured about five hundred firms; this week, another amicus brief in the Jenner Block suit garnered around eight hundred signatories.

~~Men~~ DOGEbags at Work

‘There’s Never Been a More Blatant Corporate Incursion Into the Public Sector Than DOGE’

[FAIR, via Naked Capitalism 05-02-2025]

Jeff Hauser is the executive director of the Revolving Door Project:

“We, in general, track corporate influence in politics, with a particular focus on the executive branch. And there has never been a more blatant corporate incursion into the public sector than DOGE, which reflects the privatization of our domestic policy, and increasingly our foreign policy as well, by people who are not even bothering to give up any of their private sector ties, and actually join the government for a few years—which we’re not fans of; we believe in career civil servants. But these people aren’t even doing that much. They’re just continuing to run, say, Tesla and SpaceX while running large swaths of the government, and never having been put before the Senate for nomination.”

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 27, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On April 27, 2025

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by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

Prepared to Return Abrego Garcia—Until Trump Intervened

Malcolm Ferguson, April 25, 2025 [The New Republic]

Some officials in the Trump administration tried to bring back Kilmar Abregoa Garcia just days after he was deported, but the president shut them down.

Since Abrego Garcia was unlawfully deported last month due to an administrative error, the White House has vehemently maintained that it will not try to return him to the United States. But a report in The Atlantic Friday revealed that in the days after Abrego Garcia’s deportation, some officials did in fact try to bring him home.

A lawsuit from Abrego Garcia’s family reportedly “sparked urgent conversations among attorneys at the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security,” and concern about the lack of evidence behind Trump’s claims that Abrego Garcia was part of MS-13, sources told The Atlantic.

The officials floated plans for the father of three’s return and sought ways to protect his safety while he was detained in El Salvador’s notorious megaprison, CECOT. But at the same time, backlash against the administration’s response (or lack thereof) took off, prompting the White House to change course entirely. Abrego Garcia’s case was no longer an “administrative error” but now the justified deportation of a “foreign terrorist” and MS-13 member—an evidenceless story Trump is now using to defend his unlawful deportation efforts as a whole.

“Abrego Garcia’s deportation became far more than just the case of one man; it developed into a measure of whether Donald Trump’s administration can send people—citizens or not—to foreign prisons without due process,” The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff wrote.

Trump Makes Alarming Confession on Wrongly Deported Immigrant

Malcolm Ferguson, April 25, 2025 [The New Republic]

Donald Trump is openly admitting his defiance of the Supreme Court on Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 20, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On April 20, 2025

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by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

Trump is Opening The Enemies Briefcase: Congress Paved the Way

Andrew Cockburn, April 19, 2025 [Spoils of War]

We can’t say we weren’t warned. The emergency powers Trump has invoked to impose the largest tariffs in a hundred years, fast track energy and mineral production, and militarize federal lands on portions of the southern border were at least on the public record, authorized by Congress in The National Emergencies Act of 1976. The act permitted a president to unleash 150 statutory powers by declaring a national emergency. Legislators thought they had curbed the possibility of untrameled presidential power by adding the proviso of a “legislative veto” giving Congress the ability to terminate an emergency with a simple majority vote. But in 1983 the supreme court nixed that with a ruling, INS v. Chadha, that declared legislative vetoes unconstitutional. Trump’s first term deployment of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, passed by Congress in 1975, to build his border wall excited comment and alarm, but no effective action to stop him.

But in March, 2020, Trump cryptically remarked “I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about.” He was referring to “presidential emergency action documents,” or PEADs, orders that authorize a broad range of mortal assaults on our civil liberties. Kept in a locked safe at the department of justice, these documents, in the words of a rare official description, outline how to “implement extraordinary presidential authority in response to extraordinary situations”

These instruments of dictatorship have not only never been authorized by Congress, they have remained almost totally secret. Elizabeth Goitein, senior director for liberty and security at the Brennan Center, is one of the few to investigate this momentous issue. As she told me when I first covered this topic in Harper’s Magazine, “This really is one of the best-kept secrets in Washington, but though the PEADs are secret from the American public, they’re not secret from the White House and from the executive branch. And the fact that none of them has ever been leaked is really quite extraordinary.”

Thanks to Goitein’s sleuthing, we know that in the past, PEADs have enabled the following: ….

American Concentration Camps

Chris Hedges, April 16, 2025

Those who build concentration camps build societies of fear. They issue relentless warnings of mortal danger, whether from immigrants, Muslims, traitors, criminals or terrorists. Fear spreads slowly, like a sulfurous gas, until it infects all social interactions and induces paralysis. It takes time. In the first years of the Third Reich, the Nazis operated ten camps with about 10,000 inmates. But once they managed to crush all competing centers of power — labor unions, political parties, an independent press, universities and the Catholic and Protestant churches — the concentration camp system exploded. By 1939, when World War II broke out, the Nazis were running over 100 concentration camps with some one million inmates. Death camps followed.

Those that create these camps give them wide publicity. They are designed to intimidate. Their brutality is their selling point….

‘Open Enemy of the Constitution’: JD Vance Ripped for Defending End of Due Process

Jake Johnson, April 16, 2025 [CommonDreams]

In his post on X, Vance—who has a law degree from Yale University—placed due process in scare quotes and claimed that “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,” not the U.S. Constitution.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 13, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On April 13, 2025

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by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship U.S. Citizens to El Salvador

Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng, Andrew Perez, April 12, 2025 [Rolling Stone]

Trump said last weekend he would “love” to send American criminals there — and would even be “honored” to, depending on “what the law says.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed this week that the president has discussed this idea privately, too, adding he would only do this “if it’s legal.” ….

The Trump administration is indeed discussing this idea behind the scenes, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Rolling Stone. In their most serious form, these conversations have revolved around attempting to denaturalize American citizens and deport them to other countries, including El Salvador….

Shortly after stepping back into office, Trump personally directed at least one lawyer working in his administration to look into deporting American citizens via denaturalization processes, telling aides that it is a “good idea” for certain cases, according to one of the sources, who is a Trump appointee. In one of his many Day One executive orders, Trump instructed his administration to move on cases described in a federal statute regarding “revocation of naturalization.”….

Several of Trump’s most important advisers, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, continue to internally advocate for mass-denaturalization initiatives that they believe were squandered in Trump’s first stint in the Oval Office.

For instance, the sources add, Trump administration officials have discussed possibly denaturalizing and deporting activists and other individuals whom they label as having committed so-called “fraud” on their applications for citizenship by subsequently supporting what Team Trump decides are “pro-terrorist” causes or groups — similar to the specious arguments they’ve made to justify stripping pro-Palestine student activists of their green cards or visas.

According to these sources, Trump administration attorneys and some senior appointees have also discussed potential legal justifications and technicalities they can exploit for denaturalizing citizens who are accused or convicted of certain crimes, especially if the Justice Department or other offices deems their offenses to be gang-related….

Mike Davis, a close Trump ally and a fixture among the MAGA legal elite, tells Rolling Stone, “I have advocated very publicly that if you are a current Hamas supporter and you were naturalized within the last 10 years, the Justice Department should move forward with denaturalization proceedings to get them the hell out of our country. Denaturalization has been on the books for a very long time. If you lie on your citizenship application, denaturalization is a consequence.”

When asked if there is any precedent in the last several decades for this kind of crackdown effort, he replies: “I hope this is groundbreaking. I hope Trump and his team are trail blazers on this. Hamas supporters can go to hell and in the meantime they need to get the hell out of our country.”

Trump’s Horrifying Removal of Man in “Error” Takes an Even Darker Turn

Greg Sargent, April 12, 2025 [The New Republic]

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a simple directive to the U.S. government. Or it would have been simple, anyway, if President Donald Trump weren’t engaged in such rampant lawlessness. The high court said the administration should be prepared to say what steps it has taken to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the Maryland man whom the government itself admits was deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in “error.”

The government still hasn’t answered that basic question. On Friday, the administration refused to honor a judicial order—delivered by a lower court in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling—to provide a response to it….

All along, the administration has had the option of moving to return Abrego Garcia to the United States and then trying again to deport him via conventional legal processes—which, ironically enough, could result in his removal anyway, in a more lawful manner.

Why hasn’t the government taken that simple step? That question is the bigger, darker one underlying this whole saga….

It’s not hard to guess at the administration’s motives here. Bringing Abrego Garcia back to U.S. soil—and then arguing he should again be removed to El Salvador—is a case the administration might lose. Or if the administration sought to remove him to a third country, that would allow Abrego Garcia to challenge that effort.

Either path would unleash an even bigger media spectacle. It would mean more coverage of Abrego Garcia’s marriage to a U.S. citizen and the couple’s autistic child. It would mean more attention to his longtime ties to a local Maryland community—he’s lived there 14 years, after initially entering illegally in 2011—even as the administration redoubled removal efforts.

It would also mean more pressure on the administration to present actual evidence of the claim that he’s a gang member. Vice President JD Vance and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have worked themselves up into paroxysms of phony outrage in making this charge. Why don’t they want it reexamined within lawful channels?

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 6, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

On April 6, 2025

Comments

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 6, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Crossing the U.S. Border? Here’s How to Protect Yourself

Nikita Mazurov, Matt Sledge, March 29, 2025 [The Intercept]

Searches of phones and other electronics are on the rise for those entering the U.S. Take these steps to help secure your devices.

Managing Unexpected ICE Visits: Best Practices for Employers

March 19, 2025 [IndustryWeek]

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

No Person Shall Be Deprived…

John Ganz, April 02, 2025 [Unpopular Front]

On Monday, the Trump administration admitted that it had deported a Maryland man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error” to El Salvador where he was thrown in the nightmarish CECOT prison. In 2019, Abrego Garcia received protected legal status from an immigration judge who determined he could be tortured if he was returned to his home country. He was denounced by a secret informant as a member of MS-13, a characterization Abrego Garcia denies and local police in Maryland did not believe. But, of course, the entire regime is lying and claiming that Abrego Garcia was a “convicted” gang member. What they are really saying is, “We can declare people unprotected by the law and deport them by fiat.”

But now that Abrego Garcia is no longer in U.S. custody, the government says there’s nothing they can do — and technically they are right: A petition for habeas corpus, a Constitutionally-defined process where the imprisoning jurisdiction to produce justification of detention, only applies to someone who is held under U.S. authority. This is where I strongly suspect that this was not an “error” as such, but part of a deliberate policy experiment. What this regime is attempting to do is to find a way around habeas corpus protections: You spirit someone across the border quickly before their lawyer can file a petition, dump them somewhere—say, a concentration camp run by a friendly client state—and then say, “oopsie, no more habeas for them.” ….

How Donald Gets the Constitution All Wrong

Tom Hall, April 2, 2025 [La Progressive]

The recent deportations of “enemy aliens” from countries with whom we are not at war, and countries which have not invaded us, ignored the actual language of the law which the Donald’s lawyers pretend justify his Orders….

…We are told that the Donald is “relying on” the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. But has anyone told you what those acts actually say, and provide for legally?

The 1798 Congress was the 5^th Congress since the ratification of the Constitution and formation of the new government. Many of the men (it was all men) who drafted and ratified the Constitution were still alive and knew what they had meant by ratifying the Constitution. In the spring and summer of 1798, they passed three laws dealing wth aliens (www.archives.gov-1798 Aliens Acts). They knew what aliens were, and they knew what the powers of Congress, the Presidency and the Courts were.

The first law, Signed by President John Adams, on June 25, 1798, provided that the President could order an alien expelled from the United States, if the President believed the alien was dangerous to, or had committed crimes against the nation. Section I of the act provides that the President’s Order had to be served the alien with an order telling him to get out of the USA, and setting a reasonable time for the alien to do so. The same section provided for aliens to have an opportunity to present a case against removal, and apply for permission to stay. The alien was allowed to “prove…by evidence” that he did not pose a risk. The same section also provided that an alien who had been ordered deported, but had not left, could be imprisoned and permanently barred from citizenship “on conviction” of such a charge.

Missing from this first section of the act was any authority for the President to abduct people from their homes, college campuses or sidewalks and deport them without any hearing, trial or conviction….

PATRICK LAWRENCE: American Freefall

[Consortium News, via Naked Capitalism 04-03-2025]

The extent to which the U.S. has embarked on a departure from reality is only a question for empires in their waning decades.

Trump makes history by pardoning a corporation

[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 04-02-2025]

Criminal Corporations Are Not People, But Trump Just Pardoned One Anyway

Brett Wilkins, April 03, 2025 [CommonDreams]

With Detention of Beloved Farmworker Organizer, ICE Comes for the Labor Movement

[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 04-03-2025]

The Great Grovel: How Trump forced elite institutions to bend to his will

John F. Harris and POLITICO Staff, via Naked Capitalism 04-02-2025]

Trump’s Attacks on Press Freedom Are Paving the Way for Authoritarianism

[Vanity Fair, via Naked Capitalism 03-30-2025]

Trump Executive Order Calls for End of Paper Checks for Taxpayer and Government Payments by Sept. 30; Industry Official Snort About Deadline; What About User Payment Charges?

via Naked Capitalism 03-31-2025]

Resistance

Perkins Coie gets 500 lawfirms and 300 retired judges to help battle Trump

Bill Addis, April 5, 2025 [DailyKos]

Over 500 law firms have filed an amicus brief (PDF) in support of Perkins Coie’s case against the U.S. Department of Justice, the named defendants, et. al..

The firms signing on take up 12 pages of the 24 page brief, filed on Friday. As evidence, it lists Trump’s executive orders against WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Paul Weiss, and the specific suspension of security clearance and contracts at Covington & Burling.

The lead law firm filing the brief is Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP….

Big Law Is Winning in Court—Now Is Not the Time to Fold

John Relman, April 06, 2025 [Common Dreams]

The law firms fighting back against Trump’s executive orders are winning, and those cutting deals with the White House are suffering irreparable damage behind the scenes.

If the Chamber of Commerce is Listening . . .

Gerard N. Magliocca, May 31, 2019 [reposted 04-05-2025 at Balkanization.blogspot]

…The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which is the statutory authority cited by the President, grants two types of authority. One gives the President the power to freeze the assets of foreign nationals and/or foreign governments. The other gives the President the power to suspend commerce (or types of commerce) with another nation. Nothing in the Act suggests that the President is given the power to levy tariffs on another nation. Indeed, there are many reasons to doubt that such a power exists.

First, Congress has delegated tariff authority in other statutes that do not apply here. For instance, the President can (and has) imposed tariffs on China in response to unfair trade practices based on clear statutory authority. The lack of such an express delegation in the IEEPA implies no tariff authority.

Second, there appears to be no precedent for a President using the IEEPA to impose tariffs. (I say appears because I cannot find an example. If there is one, then I would like to know.)
Third, there is no indication from the legislative history of the IEEPA that Congress intended to give the President the authority to raise tariffs.

Fourth, there is no judicial authority for the President’s proposed tariffs. Moreover, the Supreme Court’s careful analysis of the IEEPA in Dames & Moore v. Regan is considerably narrower than the President’s view….

In conclusion, the proposed Mexican tariffs are illegal. Interested parties should prepare to file suit.