We’ve well established that the AT&T–>Time Warner–>Discovery series of media mergers were some of the dumbest, most pointless “business” exercises ever conceived by the extraction class.
The utterly senseless saga burned through hundreds of billions in debt, saw more than 50,000+ people lose their jobs, killed off numerous popular brands, created oceans of animosity among creatives, and resulted in major brands like CNN and Max becoming arguably dumber and of notably lower quality than when the entire expensive gambit began years earlier.
The brunchlord in charge of much of that dysfunction, Time Warner CEO David Zaslav, has seen absolutely zero accountability for this chaos, and, in fact, has been broadly rewarded with a series of massive compensation packages that in absolutely no way reflect his competency.
“CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels received $17 million (flat with his 2023 compensation), chief revenue and strategy officer Bruce Campbell was at $19.8 million (an 8% increase), global streaming and games CEO and president J.B. Perrette’s compensation was $19.7 million (down 2%) and international president Gerhard Zeiler earned $14.8 million (up more than 11%).”
The purpose here isn’t building a quality product people like or a sustainable business. It’s a “growth for growth’s sake” shell game designed to grab tax cuts and temporarily boost stock valuations with the illusion of functional progress and illusory growth, overseen by incompetents looking to justify wildly disproportionate executive compensation.
I like to play a little game every time Warner Bros Discovery or Zaslav are in the news: try to find one article that mentions the problems caused by mindless media consolidation, or the 50,000 layoffs since these deals started with AT&T’s doomed purchase of Time Warner.
You can’t find it. The very obvious enshittification — and the vast human wreckage caused by this purely extractive, highly performative exercise, almost never warrant a contextual mention. These folks don’t think real world harms are relevant to the story they’re telling themselves.
The first few months of the Trump administration have seen a quick divergence between those who are quick to bend the knee to unconstitutional, authoritarian, censorial demands from Donald Trump, and those with the spine to actually stand up and say “fuck that.”
While it’s important to call out and shame those who cave, it’s equally crucial to highlight institutions willing to take a principled stand. What’s unfolding now at Harvard isn’t just about one university’s funding or academic policies — it’s a critical test case for whether America’s institutions can withstand direct governmental attempts to control speech and thought. The precedent being set will determine whether universities remain independent centers of learning and research, or become extensions of whatever administration holds power. This week, Harvard University has demonstrated what institutional courage looks like in the face of escalating threats from the Trump administration.
Donald Trump’s assault on free speech and the independence of private entities continues apace. The administration has been on something of an authoritarian tour across the country, spanning multiple verticals, in which the main goal appears to simply be to exert as much power as possible, breaking both norms and institutional safeguards with wild abandon.
Trump and his cadre of minions have been playing language games all along in this endeavor, attempting to redefine free speech as only applicable to speech Trump likes, exposing journalists and their sources to danger, punishing university students for exercising their speech rights, and coercing law firms into “good behavior” by withholding security clearances if the firms have or do take any actions the administration doesn’t like.
It’s hard to overstate just how wildly dangerous this all is, nor how infuriating it is to watch so many of these victims bend the knee rather than fight what is undeniably a battle worth waging. What’s at stake is nothing less than the independence of American institutions. The administration is currently using federal education and research grants like the sword of Damocles, insisting that schools fall in line or risk losing government money that powers all kinds of valuable, important research. But as Columbia University recently learned, there is never a “last ask” from a strongman and the sword never rises beyond an inch from the neck. Giving in only propels the next demand. And then the next. And the next.
The Trump administration recently made all kinds of demands of Harvard, a bizarre mix of demands to end diversity in some places, but mandate it in others, while making other demands that would essentially amount to the school caving to Trump. The demands represent an unprecedented level of government interference in a private institution. No more DEI initiatives for admissions or hiring. A requirement that data over such things be shared out freely with the federal government. Punishment for any students or groups deemed by the government to be “antisemitic.” And a overhaul of international admissions such that candidates are to be screened out if they have any “anti-American” viewpoints.
Except then the government also demands a very specific form of DEI: diverse viewpoints in all programs and departments.
After having presented Harvard’s existing diversity efforts as the antithesis of a merit-based approach, it suddenly demands that the university enforce what it terms viewpoint diversity. It never defines what this term means—perhaps alchemy in the chemistry department?But the implications are that it amounts to affirmative action for conservatives. Harvard is directed to “audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.” Any department that fails the audit would be required to start hiring new faculty until it can pass the undefined standards demanded by the feds.
Here again, we see the hypocrisy of the strongman on display. Diversity of thought when it comes to Israel? Banished! Diversity of thought on America’s actions and values? Verboten! Diversity of backgrounds within the student body and faculty itself? Nothing could be worse!
But there must be a quota carved out for the kind of thought that the government prefers or there will be punishment. Were we to need a perfect example of thought-policing in the modern era, it appears we have it.
Even entertaining such demands would amount to the takeover of a private educational institution by the federal government. And the research funding that the government is withholding isn’t for pet projects in niche circles. It’s funding for medical breakthroughs, for improving the lives of children. For technology advances that could improve the lives of Americans generally. That’s important, so please understand: the withholding of these federal funds from Harvard isn’t merely a punishment for Harvard, but a punishment for all of us.
Which is exactly what is happening, as the government has frozen billions in funds because Harvard has refused to bow at the altar of Donald Trump.
The university has decided these demands force it to fight, and it’s attacking on two fronts. The first is public-facing; Harvard has turned itshomepageinto a tribute to its researchers and the work they pursue. Although it starts with a huge banner article as shown here, links to 30 individual articles on research fill the entire page. I have a fairly high-resolution screen, and it took hitting page-down nine times to finally reach the bottom, where a handful of links to the rest of the university finally appear. The message is clear: The research that’s under threat matters, and humanity will be worse off if its funding is cut.
Separately, Harvard’slegal response, which it made public today, is basically: nope. After detailing the steps the university has already taken to address antisemitism, it gets to the crux of the issue: “your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court.” The harms these demands are meant to address, the letter alleges, haven’t actually been demonstrated through processes that are required by law.
Even more direct is the letter Harvard’s President, Alan Garber, sent to the Harvard community:
We have informed the administration through our legal counsel thatwe will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.
The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.
Our motto—Veritas, or truth—guides us as we navigate the challenging path ahead. Seeking truth is a journey without end. It requires us to be open to new information and different perspectives, to subject our beliefs to ongoing scrutiny, and to be ready to change our minds. It compels us to take up the difficult work of acknowledging our flaws so that we might realize the full promise of the University, especially when that promise is threatened.
This is a battle worth waging. Columbia’s funding is still on hold, despite its attempts at appeasement. I have no doubt the same would be true if Harvard attempted to do likewise. There will end up being a court battle over this, no doubt. One that will hopefully rise to the level of the Supreme Court and will surface an argument over how and why the Executive Administration should be able to hold for ransom funds allocated by Congress over the demand for the erasure of institutional independence.
The contrast between Columbia and Harvard couldn’t be clearer. As Columbia has shown, if you cave, Trump will still demand more and withhold funds. If you fight, you might still lose, but at least you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing you did the right thing. Plus, it’s contagious. While Columbia quickly caved to Trump’s demands, we’re seeing other universities stand up as well.
Princeton has indicated that it won’t fold. Cornell has sued the Department of Energy over the $1 billion in frozen grants. Stanford’s leadership has expressed support for Harvard as well. Fighting back is contagious and the right thing to do, both for the fundamental academic freedoms that these institutions of higher learning supposedly support, and to show a fascist bully that you won’t comply in advance.
It won’t be easy. Indeed, since Harvard’s pushback on Monday, Trump has made the $2.3 billion funding freeze official, effectively admitting that he is punishing the university for its free expression (which I’m sure will be useful in court). Trump is also musing about removing Harvard’s non-profit tax-exempt status:
That’s Donald Trump posting to his personal social media site:
Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!
Some of us remember when it was a huge scandal — perhaps one of the biggest of all time — when the IRS under Obama investigated a few conservative non-profits to make sure they were obeying the law. I also remember how under the first Trump administration, the IRS was made to apologize to those non-profits and agreed to settle the cases. Yet, here, the very same Trump admin is just nakedly threatening to pull tax exempt status solely on the basis of not kissing up to Trump and his unconstitutional demands.
Equally, some of us also remember the misleading claims during previous administrations about the supposed lack of “free speech” on college campuses and will note how silent those who were screaming the loudest about that are now that Trump is just going door to door from university to university demanding the suppression of speech and punishing universities that oppose him.
This is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the concept of higher learning. It is an attack on the concept of free speech and academic freedom. It is an attack on the important research that universities do that have bettered the lives of millions. It is an attack on American ideals.
Harvard’s stand represents something profound: institutions with resources, prestige, and power using those advantages to protect fundamental principles rather than themselves. In doing so, they remind us what genuine institutional courage looks like. While the courts will eventually weigh in, the immediate battle is being fought in the court of public opinion, where each institution’s response signals to others what’s possible. The cascade of universities now following Harvard’s lead suggests that principled stands — not capitulation — may become the new normal. So, kudos to Harvard and Princeton and Cornell, for doing what Columbia couldn’t be bothered to do. Hopefully more institutions of higher learning take the right lesson from this and recognize now is not the time to fold, but to stand up and do what’s right.
The Trump administration has just claimed an astounding new power: the ability to deport lawful permanent residents based on their “expected beliefs” (including perfectly “lawful” expected beliefs). This isn’t speculation or hyperbole — it’s the explicit thought-police justification Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave in immigration court documents for trying to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and green card holder. This attempted expansion of government authority to police thought should alarm anyone who cares about civil liberties, due process, or the rule of law.
As a reminder, Khalil is a lawful permanent resident (green card holder) in the US and a student at Columbia University in New York. While he was involved in some pro-Palestinian demonstrations, MAGA world has falsely labeled him a “Hamas supporter.” I’ve yet to see any evidence that actually supports that claim, but MAGA isn’t exactly known for accuracy in their accusations. Even worse, when ICE showed up at his student housing to arrest him (in front of his pregnant, US citizen wife), they told him his “visa” was being revoked.
Except he doesn’t have a visa. He holds a green card, which makes him a completely lawful permanent resident in the US. ICE then told him his green card was also revoked, which isn’t something they could actually do. Since then, there’s been a lot of obnoxious game playing by Homeland Security playing “hide the guy we kidnapped,” before dumping him in Louisiana and seeking to deport him.
There are multiple legal proceedings going on with respect to Khalil’s future in the US, with the main one taking place in a federal court in New Jersey. But down in Louisiana there’s a separate legal process in front of an “immigration judge,” which is not an Article III judge or a part of the judiciary at all. Rather it’s someone who works for the DOJ reviewing immigration issues.
For a brief moment last week, it looked like even this DOJ employee was perplexed as to why Khalil had been taken and why the US was trying to deport him. Immigration Judge Jamee Comans ordered DHS to give some reason for why Khalil was detained and why they were trying to deport him.
At a hearing, Judge Jamee Comans gave the federal government 24 hours to turn over its evidence against Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and prominent pro-Palestinian activist, said Marc Van Der Hout, one of Khalil’s attorneys, who attended the hearing.
“The government has not produced a single shred of evidence to date to support any of its allegations or charges in this case including its outrageous position that Mahmoud’s mere presence and activities in this country have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” Van Der Hout said.
The next day, the government finally produced the “evidence” and to say it is underwhelming is quite the understatement. They released a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio with a bunch of vague claims, including that he could single-handedly kick green card holders out of the country based on their “expected beliefs” even if they are perfectly “lawful.”
If you can’t read that screenshot, it says:
Under INA section 237(a) (4) (C)(i), an alien is deportable from the United States if the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that the alien’s presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(ii), for cases in which the basis for this determination is the alien’s past,current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful, the Secretary of State must personally determine that the alien’s presence or activities would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.
This document should forever define Marco Rubio’s legacy. As Secretary of State, he has personally put his name on a legal claim that the government can deport lawful residents based on beliefs they might hold in the future — even if those beliefs would be perfectly legal. This isn’t just standard immigration enforcement overreach — it’s an attempt to establish thought-police powers that would make Orwell blush. And Rubio didn’t just sign off on this theory — he’s actively championing it, apparently seeing no problem with claiming the power to exile people based on what he thinks they might someday believe.
For anyone keeping score at home: when MAGA supporters inevitably start ranting about Democrats wanting to police speech and thought, remember that Rubio’s the one who officially claimed the power to deport legal residents based on “expected beliefs.” That should be carved into his political tombstone.
Also: fuck that fascist bullshit.
The other part of the document claims that it was done based on the “policy” of the US to fight antisemitism and to protect Jews, but fuck that as well. It’s clearly bullshit. This is the same administration that has said the Naval Academy library had to remove books about the Holocaust, while leaving Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf on the shelves. This is the same administration that hired into a top position someone with a long history of blatantly antisemitic conspiracy theories popular in neo-Nazi circles. This administration’s claims of fighting antisemitism appear to be pretty antisemitic itself, using false claims of wanting to “protect” Jews to actually make Jews targets of more hatred.
This isn’t about “a compelling foreign policy interest” by the Secretary State. This is about a fucking insecure coward in the form of Marco Rubio, who has been given power by Donald Trump and is using the position to destroy lives because that’s what insecure fascists do.
Tragically, in this case, that was enough for DOJ employee Judge Jamee Comans, who said that was enough of a justification to bless Khalil’s deportation.
An immigration judge in Louisiana found on Friday that the Trump administration could deport Mahmoud Khalil, granting the government an early victory in its efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on U.S. college campuses.
Again, this is only the first stage in a multi-stage process involving separate federal court proceedings in New Jersey as well, and even in front of the immigration judge the situation isn’t over. Khalil’s lawyers can still argue that he shouldn’t be deported to this same judge (leaving aside the constitutional issues that will show up in the New Jersey case).
Here, Comans admitted during the hearing that she was unable to look the larger constitutional issues:
Immigration judges are employees of the executive branch, not the judiciary, and often approve the Homeland Security Department’s deportation efforts. It would be unusual for such a judge, serving the U.S. Attorney General, to grapple with the constitutional questions raised by Mr. Khalil’s case. She would also run the risk of being fired by an administration that has targeted dissenters.
“This court is without jurisdiction to entertain challenges to the validity of this law under the Constitution,” Judge Comans said as she delivered her ruling, apparently reading from a written statement.
She denied Mr. Khalil’s lawyers’ requests that they be allowed to cross-examine or depose Mr. Rubio so that he could elaborate on his claims. “This court is neither inclined or authorized” to compel such testimony, she said.
Khalil himself highlighted the fundamental absurdity of these proceedings in a powerful statement to the court:
“I would like to quote what you said last time, that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness,” he said. “Clearly, what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process. This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family.”
The contrast could not be starker: A student, dragged 1,000 miles from his family, calmly calling out the mockery of due process, while the Secretary of State claims the power to deport people based on what he thinks they might believe in the future.
This case is about far more than just Mahmoud Khalil. It’s about whether we’ll allow the government to claim the power to police thought itself. Marco Rubio has now officially attached his name to one of the most dangerously authoritarian theories of government power we’ve seen: that the state can exile legal residents based on their “expected beliefs.” That should follow him for the rest of his life. He should never live down this cowardly suck-up in pursuit of power.
We need more people in America like Khalil, willing to speak truth to power even at great personal cost, and fewer power-hungry officials ready to torch fundamental civil liberties just to score political points in pursuit of the fascist destruction of the American constitutional and democratic principles.
Away goes more talent. And away goes another obstacle standing in the way of Kristi Noem’s DHS and Donald Trump’s plans to rid this country of as many immigrants as inhumanely possible.
One acting commissioner — one with 38 years experience — has already resigned because of the DHS’s desire to use tax records as a migrant-hunting database. What began as a request for “only” 700,000 records has ballooned to a demand for seven million tax records — a number that would encompass nearly two-thirds of the eleven million immigrants currently living in the United States.
The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is resigning over a deal to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S., according to two people familiar with the decision.
Melanie Krause, who had served as acting head since February, will step down over the new data-sharing document signed Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agreement will allow ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.
Not only have two consecutive acting commissioners resigned over this single, focused effort to turn normally confidential tax records into just another way for the government to inflict pain on migrants who not only have jobs but pay taxes, but the administration’s desire to stock its cabinet shelves with loyalists has resulted in the dismissal of IRS lawyers who expressed their concerns about the legality of this request.
Acting chief counsel William Paul was removed from his role at the agency last month and replaced by Andrew De Mello, an attorney in the chief counsel’s office who is deemed supportive of DOGE, according to two other people familiar with the plans who were also not authorized to speak publicly.
Since there’s no one left at the IRS with the power to sign this agreement, Trump loyalist/Treasury Department secretary/hedge fund billionaire Scott Bessent signed it himself, clearing the way for ICE and other DHS components to raid the IRS for information they can use to identify the horrible criminals who are dutifully paying their taxes year after year.
And yet, ICE continues to pretend catching taxpayers paying taxes is a great way to find undocumented immigrants who are exploiting the system.
Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, told reporters at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix on Tuesday that the agreement will help ICE find people who are collecting benefits they aren’t entitled to and are “kind of hiding in plain sight” using someone else’s identity.
Hilarious. I mean, it would be if it wasn’t so horribly stupid, dangerous, and inhumane. Pulling legit tax records isn’t going to do much to reveal those “hiding in plain sight.” But that’s not even the point, even if that’s the public-facing argument being made by Director Lyons. The real point is to identify and locate any immigrant so the DHS, ICE, and others can use literally any reason to expel them from this country and deposit them anywhere in the world other governments are willing to take them, even if it means imprisoning innocent people in jails filled with truly dangerous criminals.
The IRS is now fully complicit with this atrocity. At least a few career officials have made it clear they’d rather be jobless than be part of Trump’s assault on humanity.
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The Trump administration has settled on a terrifying new legal theory: they can declare anyone a “terrorist,” ship them to an offshore torture camp without due process, and courts can do nothing about it because it’s “foreign affairs.” This isn’t speculation — it’s the actual argument they’re making to justify their “accidental” trafficking of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador’s CECOT facility.
After initially admitting in court this was an “administrative error,” the administration has pivoted to an even more disturbing stance: they meant to do it all along, and they can do it to anyone. And they’ll just fucking lie about everything to pretend this is all perfectly normal and acceptable.
We mentioned some of this in our story yesterday about Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele’s shameful and dark press conference in the Oval Office, in which both of them denied the ability to bring Garcia back to the US (with Pam Bondi falsely claiming that the only thing the Supreme Court told them to do was send a plane if Bukele chose to release him, and Bukele bizarrely claiming that he couldn’t return Garcia because it would require “smuggling a terrorist” into the US, none of which is true).
The implications here are fucking terrifying. The administration is essentially arguing that once they declare someone a “terrorist” — based on “evidence” as flimsy as wearing a Chicago Bulls hat — they can disappear that person to an offshore torture facility with no due process and no judicial oversight. And they’re making this argument while simultaneously giving the middle finger to both a district court and the Supreme Court.
This authoritarian power grab became crystal clear when Trump advisor Stephen Miller started spewing his laughably false claim that the Supreme Court ruling about Garcia was actually a win for the administration. He’d been practicing this bullshit all morning in multiple media appearances, including a surprisingly contentious interview on Fox News.
Stephen Miller claims on Fox News that returning the Maryland father who was wrongly deported to El Salvador would constitute a "kidnapping" and "invasion of El Salvador's sovereignty.""He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador," Miller lies. "This was the right person sent to the right place."
So, I want to correct that. I hate to do it, Bill. I have to correct you on every single thing you just said, because it was all wrong.
First, we won the Supreme Court case, clearly, 9-0. A District Court judge said unconscionably that the president and his administration have to go into El Salvador and extradite one of their citizens, a Salvadoran citizen, so that would be kidnapping. We have to kidnap an El Salvador citizen against the will of his government and fly him back to America. Which would be an unimaginable invasion of El Salvador sovereignty.
Again, this is bullshit. Bukele is claiming that he’d have to “smuggle” Garcia back to the US, while the US is claiming it would have to “kidnap” him? Do they just think everyone is fucking stupid? The US and El Salvador have a written agreement (which is already pretty unconscionable) that El Salvador will house prisoners sent from America at CECOT for $20k/year per prisoner, but according to the Associated Press, the agreement states that the US has discretion on the “long-term disposition” of the prisoners.
In other words, there’s a literal contract that says the US can get these prisoners back. No kidnapping required. No smuggling needed. Just a phone call between Trump and Bukele to arrange the transfer and obey the Supreme Court. Or, hell, they could have done it at yesterday’s meeting.
Speaking of the Supreme Court, Miller lied about that as well. First, he ignores that the Fourth Circuit, including famed conservative judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, insisted that of coursethe district court can order the US to fix a mistake like illegally trafficking someone to a foreign torture camp, ignoring a protection order against sending him to El Salvador.
Having skipped over the Fourth Circuit’s clear ruling, Miller then proceeds to completely misrepresent what the Supreme Court actually said. His claims about “winning” the case are more than just wrong — they’re a deliberate attempt to gaslight the public about a ruling that directly ordered the administration to attempt fix its “mistake”:
So we appealed to the Supreme Court and it said clearly no District Court can compel the president to exercise his Article II foreign powers in any way whatsoever. DOJ called me after the Supreme Court ruling and said: ‘This is amazing we won the case 9-0, we are in excellent standing here.’
So this has been portrayed wrong for 72-hours in the media. They said the most a court can ever compel you to do is facilitate return, which would basically mean if El Salvador voluntarily sends him back we wouldn’t block him in the airport, we would put him back in ICE detention and then he would be deported back to El Salvador or somewhere else.
The Supreme Court said that’s the most the government can be expected to do. So, we won the case, handily. The misreporting on this has been atrocious.
This is also a lie. A flat-out lie. One just needs to read the Supreme Court ruling, which clearly states that the US should work to get him released from the torture camp, not just help him fly back to the US:
The orderproperly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvadorand to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.
Two important bits here: first, the Supreme Court makes it clear that the “facilitation” is more than a flight back to the US, but is to seek to get him released from custody in El Salvador. Second, the Supreme Court says directly that Garcia has been “improperly sent to El Salvador.”
But the administration wasn’t done lying. Miller then rolled out an even more audacious claim: that sending Garcia to CECOT wasn’t a mistake at all, despite their own lawyers admitting exactly that in court. Here’s Miller testing this latest bit of revisionist history on Fox News:
He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador. He’s an illegal alien from El Salvador. In 2019 he was ordered deported. He has a final removal order from the United States. These are things that no one disputes. Where is he from? El Salvador. Where is he a resident and citizen of? El Salvador. Is he here illegally? Yes. Does he have a deportation order? Yes.
A DOJ Lawyer, who has been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat, put into a filing, incorrectly, that this was a mistaken removal. It was not. It was the right person sent to the right place.
This is gaslighting taken to new heights. Not only is Miller lying about the “mistake” their own lawyers admitted to, he’s inventing a conspiracy theory about a “saboteur” DOJ lawyer with zero evidence. Miller admits that there was a withholding order on Garcia, barring him from being deported to El Salvador. But Miller claims that once Trump declared MS-13 to be a terrorist organization, that magically dissolved the withholding order, because (he claims) Garcia was a member of that terrorist organization. Fox’s host, Bill Hemmer, who tries to get a word in throughout all this finally asks Miller if he really believes Garcia is an MS-13 member, to which Miller misrepresents things again:
Yes. But here is the thing, Bill. Yes, not only am I convinced of it, not only is El Salvador convinced of it, Bill, he is an illegal alien from El Salvador with a deportation order! So, his only options in life, Bill, his only options in life, are to be deported to El Salvador or to be deported to some other country. That’s it. He has a deportation order!
So Bill, you tell me what country should we deport him to? Tell me? Tell me, please, tell me.
The truth completely demolishes these claims. Immigration expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick has put together a useful timeline that exposes the MS-13 allegations as a complete fabrication based on nothing more than a hat and an anonymous tip.
But there’s even more to it than this. The claims that Miller and Bondi made, that “two courts” declared him to be a member of MS-13, are extremely misleading. Looking over the filings in his immigration court hearings does not even remotely support the claim that he’s some sort of violent gang member. Indeed, the report details how his family was targeted by another gang, Barrio 18, because his family ran a somewhat successful pupusa making business out of their home in San Salvador. Barrio 18 kept demanding more and more extortion payouts. When the family was unable to pay the amount demanded, the gang said they would harm Abrego’s older brother, Cesar.
Rather than being an MS-13 member, court records show Garcia’s family desperately tried to keep him away from gangs. When he was just 12 years old, after his brother fled gang threats, Barrio 18 started targeting young Abrego, and the family went out of its way to protect him:
After Cesar left, the gang started recruiting the Respondent. They told Cecilia that she would not have to pay rent any mote if she let him join the gang. [The mother refused to let this happen. The gang then threatened to kill the Respondent, When the Respondent was around 12-years old, the gang came to the home again, telling Cecilia that they would take him because she wasn’t paying money from the family’s pupusa business. The Respondent’s father prevented the gang from taking the Respondent that day by paying the gang all of the money that they wanted. During the days, the gang would watch the Respondent when he went back and forth to school. The members of the gangs all had many tattoos and always carried weapons.
Eventually, the family had enough and moved from Los Nogales to the 10″ of October neighborhood. This town was about 10 minutes away, by car, from Los Nogales. Shortly after the family moved, members of Barrio 18 from Nogales went to the 10″ of October and let their fellow gang members know that the family had moved to that neighborhood: Barrio 18 members visited the house demanding the rent money from the pupusa business again. They went to the house twice threatening to rape and kill the Respondent’s two sisters and threatening the Respondent. The Respondent’s parents were so fearful that they kept the Respondent inside the home as much as possible. Finally, the family decided they had to close the pupusa business and move to another area, Los Andes, about a 15 minute drive from their last residence. Even at this new location, the family kept the Respondent indoors most of the time because of the threats on his life. After four months of living in fear, the Respondent’s parents sent the Respondent to the U.S.
This is the reality the Trump administration is trying to erase: a 12-year-old kid whose family shut down their legitimate business and moved multiple times to protect him from gangs. When that wasn’t enough, they sent him and his brother to the US specifically to keep them away from gang life. And now Miller wants to brand him a terrorist based on… wearing a Bulls hat.
The technical reason Garcia didn’t get asylum? He filed for it too late. He missed the one-year filing deadline after arriving in the US. Yes, the Trump administration is using a paperwork technicality — one that applied to a 12-year-old kid who was fleeing death threats — to justify sending him to a torture camp for the rest of his life.
Despite denying asylum on this technicality, the court still granted him a protection order, recognizing the very real risk to his life if returned to El Salvador. And while Miller keeps touting that an immigration judge “accepted” a police report claiming MS-13 ties, he conveniently leaves out that this was only considered for a bond determination, not as evidence of actual gang membership.
Even then, the Government’s “evidence” of any connection between Abrego Garcia and MS-13 was thin, to say the least. The Government’s claim was based on (1) Abrego Garcia “wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie,” and (2) “a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York—a place he has never lived.”
However, the administration has now taken Stephen Miller’s mythmaking about Garcia being a dangerous “terrorist” member of MS-13 and run with it.
First, DHS put out a nonsense “ICYMI” statement claiming, without evidence, that Garcia is absolutely an MS-13 member and was properly deported to El Salvador:
“I think this illegal alien is exactly where he belongs—home in El Salvador. He was in our country illegally, he is from El Salvador, was born in El Salvador, and, oh, the media forgot to mention: He is a MS-13 gang member. The media would love for you to believe that this is a media darling, that he is just a Maryland father. Osama Bin Laden was also a father, and yet, he was not a good guy, and they actually are both terrorists. He should be in this El Salvador prison, a prison for terrorists, and I hope he will remain there.”
Yes, you read that right. DHS is comparing a man whose only “evidence” of gang ties is wearing a Bulls hat to the mastermind of 9/11. This isn’t just dishonest — it’s deranged. And it gets worse.
Not to be outdone in the fabrication department, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem piled on with her own set of completely made-up claims about Garcia:
“This was just one of those examples of an individual that is a MS-13 gang member, multiple charges and encounters with the individuals here, trafficking in his background, was found with other MS-13 gang members—very dangerous person, and what the liberal left and fake news are doing to turn him into a media darling is sickening,”
Every single word of this is a lie, as the Fourth Circuit explicitly found in its ruling:
Indeed, such a fact cannot be gleaned from this record, which shows that Abrego Garcia has no criminal history, in this country or anywhere else, and that Abrego Garcia is a gainfully employed family man who lives a law abiding and productive life. Tellingly, the Government “abandon[ed]” its position that Abrego Garcia was “a danger to the community” at the hearing before the district court.
With all these lies now firmly established as their official narrative — that Garcia is definitely MS-13 (despite zero evidence), that sending him to El Salvador was totally intentional (despite admitting in court it was a mistake), and that the Supreme Court didn’t really order his return (despite explicitly doing so) — the administration finally filed its third “status report” with the district court. The filing, submitted an hour after the deadline, doubles down on every single one of these fabrications. It falsely claims the immigration court found Garcia to be MS-13 and argues that Trump’s terrorist designation of MS-13 somehow retroactively voided Garcia’s protection order, despite never making such an argument to an immigration court.
The filing then descends into pure absurdity, simultaneously arguing that the US can’t possibly retrieve Garcia because that would require “kidnapping” him, as Miller has been claiming:
DHS does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.
…while quoting Bukele’s equally nonsensical claim that he can’t return Garcia because that would be “smuggling” a “terrorist”:
I understand that, in response to a question regarding Abrego Garcia, President Bukele said, “I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”
It is quite something to have, in the same document, and just two paragraphs separated from each other, both arguments that (1) the US seeking to get Garcia back would amount to “forcibly extracting” him and (2) that Bukele returning Garcia to the US would amount to “smuggling a terrorist.”
Remember: no one has asked the US to “forcibly extract” Garcia, nor has anyone suggested Bukele needs to “smuggle” him. There’s literally a contract between the two countries governing these transfers. This isn’t about law or sovereignty — it’s about the Trump administration inventing increasingly absurd excuses to keep an innocent man in a torture camp, all to maintain their strongman facade. It’s pathetic men playacting at being tough guys by terrorizing the powerless.
The implications of what’s happening here cannot be overstated. The administration isn’t just defying both a district court and the Supreme Court — they’re establishing a terrifying new precedent: that they can unilaterally declare anyone a “terrorist,” ship them to an offshore torture facility, and then claim US courts are powerless to intervene because it’s now a “foreign affairs” issue.
Under this definition, as multiple people pointed out, the US government can literally grab anyone off the street, put them on a helicopter, and once they reach international waters, they can do whatever they want to them, and no court could ever intervene.
The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.
CECOT fits this definition perfectly. The only twist is that Trump has placed these concentration camps in another country, creating a paper-thin legal fiction that lets the administration claim that once they’ve disappeared someone across the border, American courts suddenly lose all jurisdiction because it’s now just “foreign affairs” under executive control.
You know those lessons about the Holocaust that ask “what would you have done?” That question is no longer hypothetical. The Trump administration is actively building a network of offshore concentration camps and arguing they can disappear anyone into them without due process — and that US courts are powerless to stop them because of “foreign sovereignty.”
The hypocrisy here is staggering. This is the same administration that regularly threatens to violate other nations’ sovereignty — claiming it will annex Canada as “the 51st state” and repeatedly threatening to seize Greenland. But suddenly they’re deeply concerned about El Salvador’s sovereignty when asked to retrieve someone under a contract that explicitly gives the US control over prisoner transfers?
And what happened to Trump, the self-proclaimed “master dealmaker”? The man who claims he can negotiate anything can’t manage a simple prisoner transfer with his ally Bukele? The truth is painfully obvious: they don’t want to bring Garcia back. They want to establish the precedent that they can disappear anyone they want.
The reality is inescapable: this isn’t about law, sovereignty, or national security. The Trump administration, with Stephen Miller as its architect, is deliberately constructing a system of offshore concentration camps and inventing increasingly absurd legal theories to justify them. Why? Because they want the power to disappear people without accountability or oversight.
This case isn’t just about saving Garcia from a torture camp — though that alone should be enough. It’s about preventing the creation of an American gulag archipelago, where anyone the administration declares “dangerous” can vanish forever beyond the reach of US courts. The fact that they’re building this system using such obvious lies and contradictions doesn’t make it less dangerous — it makes it more so. It shows they don’t even feel the need to make their excuses plausible anymore.
Judge Xinis now faces a stark choice: accept these transparent fabrications and help establish a precedent for extra-judicial disappearances, or stand firm against this assault on basic constitutional rights. History is watching.
Back in March Trump illegally fired the Federal Trade Commission’s two Democratic Commissioners. With a captured Supreme Court and a 3-2 agency majority, Trumpism could have already done whatever it wanted at the FTC, so firing the two Democratic Commissioners was just scorched Earth; like applying napalm on the site of a nuclear strike. Real sociopath shit.
With everything going on, the firings were about a four hour news cycle. But the two fired Commissioners (Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya) sued Trump, noting (quite correctly) that the firings were illegal under the precedent of Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 Supreme Court case stating FTC commissioners can only be fired for clear cause. Not for simply… existing.
Meador’s appointment now gives Republicans a 3-0 majority at the FTC, and Republicans are busy trying to pretend this isn’t all illegal, authoritarian dogshit. With the help of mainstream DC gossip rags like Axios, whose coverage is just as feckless and normalizing of the firings as you might expect.
Now begins the next stage in the pseudo-populist performance.
You might recall that during election season, the promise was that the Trump FTC would “continue the antitrust enforcement legacy of Lina Khan.” Pseudo-populist fascists like JD Vance and Josh Hawley, propped up by contrarian Twitter trolls like Matt Stoller, pretended the Trump FTC would be tough on corporate power. Fascism, bigotry, and corruption, you see, was going to be really good for theplebs.
There were constant refrains about how the GOP, a party that has never seen a monopoly it hasn’t been keen to coddle and mindlessly and dangerously deregulate (see: telecom, energy, airlines, banking, insurance, marketing) was “serious about antitrust reform now.”
Of course that was all a lie, propped up by lazy news outlets and a rotating cast of useful idiots. The GOP harassed tech companies because it wanted them to coddle Republicans and back off the moderation of race-baiting right wing propaganda, a cornerstone of power for a party whose policies (kissing billionaire ass, polluting rivers) aren’t popular enough with the public to truly stand on their merits.
These fake claims that Trumpism cares about “antitrust reform” and corporate power persist, but they operate simultaneously within a Trump administration and Supreme Court that’s busy taking an absolute hatchet to all remaining regulatory independence and corporate oversight. In this way, they get to have their cake and eat it too; pretend to be populist reformers, while fast-tracking corruption.
They get to claim to support Lina Khan’s antitrust ideas in the pages of our broken press, while simultaneously shitting all over them and dismantling all cogent federal regulatory autonomy. With authoritarians all logic is reversed. Corruption and oligarch coddling is “popular populist reform.” Semi-functional oversight is “radical mismanagement.” Corrupt authoritarianism is the reasonablecure:
“House Commerce Committee leaders said the all-Republican FTC will end the “partisan mismanagement” allegedly seen under the Biden-era FTC and then-Chair Lina Khan. “In the last administration, the FTC abandoned its rich bipartisan tradition and historical mission, in favor of a radical agenda and partisan mismanagement,” said a statement issued by Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). “The Commission needs to return to protecting Americans from bad actors and preserving competition in the marketplace.”
But again, Trumpism is decimating the federal government’s ability to meaningfully hold corporate power to account. While simultaneously dismantling federal labor protections, consumer protection standards, and public safety. This isn’t really even a debate. The entire claim that Trumpism has any interest in “reining in corporate power” or beefing up antitrust reform is a lie.
Meador, like Stoller and others before him, is just the latest useful idiot brought in to sell it.
The FTC is, of course, pursuing five different antirust cases against major leading technology companies, most of which were started by Lina Khan, with trials expected to start in the coming months. The Meta case began this week. Those cases will persist, but primarily as a way to perpetuate the lies outlined above and extract even more concessions from the increasingly invertebrate brunchlords of Silicon Valley, something that will likely become more apparent in the “remedy” phase.
The goal won’t be meaningfully challenging corporate power, it will be using antitrust inquiries to further bully tech executives into feckless compliance with the authoritarian mission. Contrary to claims by some useful idiots, that mission has nothing to do with protecting markets or consumers, and everything to do with ushering in a new golden age of unaccountable corruption.
If you think authoritarians give two fleeting shits about “antitrust reform” or “reining in corporate power” you’re either an absolute rube or part of the con. The hour is getting late for any pretense that any of this is motivated by a good faith interest in healthy markets or the public welfare. And authoritarians are going to just keep pushing until they meet something other than soft pudding in opposition.
