Category: Uncategorized Page 1 of 97

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.

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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.

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

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?

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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.

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts!

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]

Rep. Jaimie Raskin’s request for you to file FOIA with DOGE

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]

The Biggest Scandal of the Second Trump Term Isn’t “Signalgate”

Alex Shephard, March 28, 2025 [The New Republic]

The national security chat debacle certainly merits attention. But the Trump administration is now blatantly disappearing students and others who are in the country legally…. Masked agents snatching legal residents off the streets and disappearing them—not so long ago, this would be unthinkable in the United States. Now it is not only a regular occurrence but something that the Trump administration boasts about….

By removing the authors of innocuous op-eds, Rubio seems to believe that he can surgically smother the opinions they were expressing. At the same time, this purge allows the administration to systematically attack higher education. Already, the administration has used student protests to attack a number of colleges and universities and to withhold hundreds of millions in federal funding from several. Allegations of antisemitism—and a list of demands that are more or less impossible to fully meet—are being used as a Trojan horse to withhold funding and to attack other sources of revenue. Many schools rely heavily on foreign students, who often pay full tuition. The Trump administration’s crackdown, even if it were to somehow stop today, has already seriously jeopardized that. Who would send their child to study in America in such a climate? Especially knowing their child could be swept off the street and flown to a detention facility?

What Will It Take?

Joyce Vance, March 26, 2025 [Civil Discourse]

Why use Signal in the first place when American leaders have some of the most secure communications technology in the world available to them? Is it just for convenience? If so, that’s sloppy, and they should be committing to do better, not arguing over whether the information was classified or not. (But if it looks like a duck…)

The truth is that by going to Signal, they avoided leaving a paper trail. No annoying records that could be unearthed down the road. Remember Trump’s first impeachment? It came about in large part because after the call where he threatened Ukraine’s president with withholding security aid if he wouldn’t announce his country was investigating Joe Biden for financial misconduct, records of the call were buried inside a classified information system where they didn’t belong. That was what got the ball rolling. It was about trying to hide records of an official call that everyone knew was wrong.

As far as we know at this point, there was nothing improper about the attack on the Houthis. So why were high-ranking members of the Trump administration communicating off the books? How pervasive is the practice, and who knows/authorizes it? We are a government of the people. Transparency isn’t optional. There are rules about public records that have to be followed, and this president who likes to operate in secret and at the margins of our laws has frequently tried to skirt them.

The Next American Constitution

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by Tony Wikrent

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]

Iran-Contra Paved the Way for Trump to Defy Democratic Norms

Sam Lebovic, March 7, 2025 [Bloomberg]

… In The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy (The University of North Carolina Press, March 4), Alan McPherson argues convincingly that Iran-Contra should be plotted not as a minor sideshow in the Cold War’s final act, nor as a case study in flawed national-security policymaking, but as a key moment in the collapse of democratic norms.

McPherson was inspired to return to the improvised, personalized diplomacy of the affair while watching the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019. But his argument has become even more compelling in the first weeks of Trump 2.0. In McPherson’s telling, Iran-Contra was an assault on democratic governance by an extremist executive branch. The results — corruption, deception, willful illegality, lack of accountability — are starting to look familiar….

Defying Congress and the law required operating in secrecy, which also meant sidelining the federal bureaucracy. Policy was conducted instead by a small cluster of officials close to the White House, who delegated key tasks to a coterie of allies who weren’t elected, some of whom weren’t even really part of the government. McPherson is particularly good at highlighting the corruption that flourished in such a freewheeling environment. Weapons sales to Iran were managed by a small firm known, appropriately, as “The Enterprise” — operating for profit, its owners marked up the price of the missiles and decided to pay themselves millions of dollars in commission….

This was all part of a radical revision of the role of the presidency. Lawyers in the Reagan administration embraced what is known as the Unitary Executive Theory — a reading of the Constitution in which the president has sole and complete authority over the executive branch. That meant sidelining Congress and ending the independence of the bureaucracy. Edwin Meese, Reagan’s second attorney general — who would resign in 1988 amid corruption allegations — believed “the entire system of independent agencies may be unconstitutional.” Iran-Contra was a perfect illustration of the theory in practice: Congress could be ignored, and policy would run through the White House….

…In a 1992 article in The Nation, playwright Steve Tesich saw Iran-Contra as a prime instance of what he dubbed a newly emerging “post-truth” society: “President Reagan perceived correctly that the public really didn’t want to know the truth. So he lied to us, but he didn’t have to work hard at it.” The title of the piece was “A Government of Lies.”….

But McPherson is right to suggest that Iran-Contra is prologue to our present. The scandals presented an opportunity to send a clear signal that democracy had no tolerance for this kind of politics. The opposite happened. In 1992 Ted Draper, author of one of the first comprehensive histories of the scandals, concluded that “if ever the constitutional democracy of the United States is overthrown, we now have a better idea of how this is likely to be done.” Indeed, Iran-Contra taught politicians lessons — that one could find much room for maneuvers in the inner workings of the government, that the law was flexible, that there would be no consequences if you pushed the envelope or lied about what you were doing.

During the first Trump administration, when Stephen Miller’s immigration policy proposals hit obstacles in federal court, rumors would circulate about his plans to dust off arcane presidential powers. Government lawyers were wary of overreach; officials in the West Wing and at the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes snicker….

Miller’s approach is different this time. He has unleashed an everything-at-once policy storm modeled after the MAGA guru Stephen K. Bannon’s “flood the zone” formula. Drawing on policy ideas worked up in conservative think tanks during the four years between Trump’s terms, Miller’s plan has been to fire off so many different proposals that some inevitably find a friendly court ruling, three administration officials told us….

Three months after leaving the White House, in April 2021, Miller co-founded a Trump-aligned think tank, the America First Legal Foundation, that he fashioned as a right-wing counter to the American Civil Liberties Union. The group’s lawyers filed scores of lawsuits against the Biden administration and U.S. companies. They also provided legal firepower to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other Republican officials launching state-level immigration crackdowns….

President Donald Trump continued his retaliatory spree against major law firms on Friday, signing an executive order targeting New York firm Paul, Weiss days after a judge ruled that major parts of a similar order were unconstitutional.

Trump’s new order seeks to suspend the security clearances of attorneys with the firm and limit their access to government buildings, ability to get federal jobs and receive money from federal contracts….

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