A handful of Seattle police officers who had nothing better to do on January 6, 2021 than support a man whose followers spent the next several hours assaulting cops and committing a number of federal crimes are asking the Supreme Court to prevent having their names disclosed to public records requesters.
Using “John Doe” pseudonyms, they sued over whether the investigation into their activities should be made public. The Washington State Supreme Court ruled in February that they can be identified and that they haven’t shown that public release of their names violates their right to privacy. The state supreme court denied reconsideration earlier this month and lawyers for the four officers submitted a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking that the names remain protected during their legal challenge.
Four officers who attended events in the nation’s capital on the day of an insurrection claimed they are protected under the state’s public records law. They say they did nothing wrong and that revealing their names would violate their privacy.
Two officers (who are married to each other), Caitlin and Alexander Everett have already had their names made public by the Seattle PD. This followed an investigation that found the couple not only attended the “Stop the Steal” rally, but crossed police barriers and stood near the Capitol building. Since both actions violated the law, their names were made public.
The same can’t be said about the remaining four officers, which likely means they’re in the right. The Washington State Supreme Court ruled the names could be released without violating their right to privacy. After all, they’re not only public employees but they attended a public event where anyone could have identified them.
However, that’s not the totality of the equation here. The officers do make some good points in their Supreme Court petition [PDF], chiefly that being a public employee doesn’t mean losing access to your civil liberties.
Although the public is entitled to be informed concerning the workings of its government, and the SPD is entitled to investigate potential wrongdoing on the part of its officers, this entitlement cannot be unlimited and inflated into general power to invade the constitutional privacy rights of individuals. Core components of personal identity, such as political activities, are deeply private and not the proper subject of a public records request. Police officers are entitled to the same constitutional protections as all other Americans, and do not forfeit those rights by merely attending a political rally.
While most of us would certainly prefer cops to be less supportive of someone who clearly has no real respect for the rule of law, the fact that this rally turned into an insurrection doesn’t necessarily make simply attending the rally itself some sort of criminal act.
And as much as I’d like to see every cop who supports convicted felons with autocratic urges named and shamed, that’s not how civil rights work. Attending a rally is political speech, which is one of those things we’re definitely supposed to protect and respect in the United States under the Constitution.
Allowing this order to expose the names of officers who engaged in political speech during their off-hours would allow people and public entities to punish officers who did far better things with their time, like attend rallies in support of LGBTQ+ people or in opposition of government violence. They should be able to do the same things other Americans can. It’s only when they cross the line into lawlessness that they should be subject to public exposure for their actions.
In these cases, nothing has been proven other than attendance. And I don’t think that should be where the bar is set, not if we want public employees to feel comfortable supporting issues and ideas that might make most of their co-workers uncomfortable.
And let’s not mistake my statements here as supportive for burying the names of officers who are accused of misconduct while engaging in their official duties. That’s something else completely. No one can plausibly argue that misconduct (proven or not) is something that’s protected by the Constitution. Even if officers are cleared of wrongdoing, they should not be shielded from public oversight by, you know, actual members of the public. In this case, however, none of this happened while in uniform or while the officers were on the clock. Seattle PD officials may be displeased some officers got that close to an insurrection, but unless they actively engaged in wrongdoing, they did nothing more than waste their First Amendment rights on a demagogue who doesn’t really care about them or their rights.
While I’m sure all of us would like to completely forget about COVID-19, it is simply the case that the virus hasn’t forgotten about us. Gone are the days of the pandemic, of course, so this isn’t meant to fear monger. But the fact is that hundreds of Americans are still dying of this disease every single week, with even more hospitalizations for it as well. The point is that this is still a health issue that healthcare providers, and the public, can benefit from guidance on. Guidance that was, in part, found at www.covid.gov, which earlier this month offered up information on treatments, vaccinations, testing, strategies to avoid infection, and so on.
But now that page is gone. Instead, it redirects to a White House site that appears to be someone’s interpretation of a Donald Trump personal vendetta and conspiracy blog about the origins of the virus and how much Anthony Fauci sucks and just might be the devil.
Navigating to COVID.gov brings up a slick site with rich content that lays out arguments and allegations supporting a lab-based origin of the pandemic and subsequent cover-up by US health officials and Democrats.
While there remains no definitive answer on how the COVID-19 pandemic began, the scientific data available on the topic points to a spillover event from a live wild animal market in Wuhan, China. The scientific community largely sees this as the most likely scenario, given the data so far and knowledge of how previous outbreak viruses originated, including SARS-CoV-1. By contrast, the lab origin hypothesis largely relies on the proximity of a research lab to the first cases, conjecture, and distrust of the Chinese government, which has not been forthcoming with information on the early days of the health crisis. Overall, the question of SARS-CoV-2’s origin has become extremely politicized, as have most other aspects of the pandemic.
Now, I want to be very clear about something: I referred to the lab leak theory as a conspiracy in the title of this post not as a derogatory term, but because that is what is being alleged. The theory is that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that the leak was covered up by any number of individuals, depending on which version of the theory you believe. The fact is that the origin of the disease is not known as a matter of certainty and some number of intelligence groups and others suspect it leaked from a lab. Nobody should really care what I think about matters of healthcare, but I don’t view the theory that this disease may have leaked from a lab particularly unworthy of consideration, if not further study.
Which is entirely besides the damned point. The government site was meant to be a resource for healthcare providers and the public to help stay informed and combat this ongoing disease. There was no reason to do away with that guidance. If the current Trump administration, with its brand new and very incompetent head of HHS, RFK Jr., wanted to alter some of the guidance on the site, they were free to do so. This is something else, repurposing a tool for the public into Trump’s personal vendetta machine.
It’s not just a problem for those looking for information of the kind that used to be on the site. The other issue here is that the redirected site makes some very bold, very big claims about COVID-19. I’m not going to go through them one by one, nor am I going to attempt to debunk any of the claims. I would suggest only that you look at it through the eyes of someone looking for science or healthcare and is instead met with claims about both that are neither. Here is just one statement made near the top of the page:
By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.
By nearly all measures of science, a statement like that is completely antithetical to science. I don’t even need to go try to uncover the source of the statement to know one simple thing: that isn’t how scientists talk.
There have been more than enough actions taken in recent years that have promoted distrust of medicine, of science, and of experts. Actions like the above serve only to supercharge all of that distrust, further politicizing something that ought have no bearing in politics.
And, really, all that will do is spur on the next healthcare crises. Which, as we’ve been discussing, might already be beginning.
The narrative during Trump’s first term is that he was going after the “worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants. But ICE and other DHS components ran out of actual dangerous criminals pretty quickly, largely because immigrants tend to be more law-abiding than regular US citizens.
Trump’s return to office came coupled with promises to deport more people than this nation ever has in its history, something aided and abetted by the president’s decision to revive the Alien Enemies Act — something best known for caging hundreds of thousands of immigrants (most of them Japanese) during the Second World War.
Towards the end of March, US citizen Julio Noriega was arrested and held overnight in an ICE detention facility just because he looked like an immigrant. Noriega wasn’t an anomaly, but at least he got to go home after just one night. ICE and far too many helpful local cops have been kidnapping people off the street, telling them their visas have been revoked. Some of these people appear to have been removed solely because they’ve engaged in protected speech this administration doesn’t like.
The still-ongoing horror of that is what’s happening to Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia makes it clear this administration isn’t even willing to fix the mistakes it has admitted it has made. Though it changed its story later, the DOJ first stated Abrego Garcia had been arrested, deported, and caged in an El Salvadoran maximum security prison accidentally.
The new narrative is that Abrego Garcia is actually an MS-13 gang member, despite the DOJ’s previous admissions in court. And the US government still refuses to bring Abrego Garcia back to the US, preferring to extend his ordeal simply because it can.
With every ICE agent and cooperative police force (federal or local) being ordered to continue this mass assault on due process, more US citizens are being treated like illegal immigrants just because no one with any powers gives a single fuck what happens to innocent people that happen to be a bit browner than the blond, blue-eyed folks they seem to prefer.
Here’s one recent event that shows the administration just wants to rid this nation of foreign-looking people, rather than expel actual threats to public safety or national security (two of the listed excuses for resurrecting the Alien Enemies Act).
19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, who is visiting Tucson from Albuquerque, says he was lost and walking near the Border Patrol headquarters when an agent arrested him for illegally entering the country. Hermosillo was not carrying identification.
Court documents say a Border Patrol agent arrested Hermosillo “at or near Nogales, Arizona, without proper immigration documents” and that Hermosillo admitted to illegally entering the U.S.
Hermosillo and his girlfriend, who have a 9-month-old child together, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and are visiting family in Tucson. He says he has never been to Nogales.
Now, there are going to be people rolling into the comments with their bad faith arguments about “who doesn’t carry their ID on them at all times.” Fuck that. This isn’t a “papers, please” nation. At least, it’s not supposed to be. We’re supposed to be able to freely move about without having to prove our nationality if we’re not, you know, actually crossing a border.
As for the Border Patrol statement, it’s obviously a lie the agent never thought he’d be caught making. It’s unlikely Hermosillo “admitted” to being in the country illegally. If any such “admission” was made, it was under duress. Furthermore, Hermosillo is a US citizen, which means he couldn’t have produced “proper immigration documents” no matter how many times this officer demanded to see them. If he’d had the documentation with him, he could have shown he was a US citizen, but a state ID or driver’s license is not an “immigration document.” It’s proof of citizenship.
He was immediately released after his family provided the judge with his identifying info. But if his relatives hadn’t acted as quickly as they did to locate him, chances are he’d already be on a bus on the way to plane that would fly him to some foreign country he’d never lived in, much less visited.
A U.S.-born American citizen was being detained at the request of immigration authorities Thursday despite an advocate showing his U.S. birth certificate in court and a county judge finding no reason for him to be considered an “illegal alien” who illegally entered Florida.
Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, 20, was arrested Thursday evening by Florida Highway Patrol and charged under a state immigration law that has been temporarily blocked since early this month. Details of Gomez-Lopez’s arrest and detention were first reported by the Florida Phoenix news site.
Lopez-Gomez never “illegally entered” Florida. There’s a new state law in Florida that allows the state to add state criminal charges for “illegal entry” into the state, but this US citizen was in a car driving from Georgia that managed to run into a bunch of badge-wearing thugs who used the new law to turn him over to ICE.
This move allowed the local cops to prevent a US citizen from being released from an ICE detention center, despite showing proof of citizenship to a county judge. The judge said the paperwork was legit, but it was out of her hands because Lopez-Garcia was now in federal custody. ICE held him for two days before releasing him, and likely only did so because people were advocating on his behalf.
Speaking of advocates… the DHS claims this is just a clerical error, but I have my doubts. It seems more like deliberate intimidation under a thin veneer of plausible deniability:
When Massachusetts resident Nicole Micheroni received an email on Friday from the federal government telling her to leave the country, she was baffled.
“At first I thought it was for a client, but I looked really closely and the only name on the email was mine,” said Micheroni. “So it said my parole status had been terminated and I should leave the country within seven days.”
But the 40-year-old is a U.S. citizen, born in Newton and raised in Sharon.
“Probably, hopefully, sent to me in error,” she said. “But it’s a little concerning these are going out to U.S. citizens.”
Nichole Micheroni is an immigration attorney. The letter sent to her told her that her permission to remain in the country had been revoked and strongly suggested she “self-deport.” When confronted about this threatening email, the DHS said CBP (Customs and Border Protection) used “known email addresses of the alien” to send out these self-deportation orders. If the target of the email had listed their attorney’s email address as a contact, then the CBP sent the threat to an “unintended recipient.”
Even if it’s only an error, it’s far from harmless. First, there’s real reason to believe the DHS and its components are willing to do whatever it takes to limit opposition to their mass deportation programs, even if it means “mistakenly” ordering immigration lawyers to self-deport.
Second, if it is only an error, it’s inexcusable. When you’re in the business of depriving people of rights and liberty (even with lawful actions), it’s of extreme importance to get all of your facts straight before taking action. Sooner or later, these threats become shows of force, and there’s little reason to believe any ICE/CBP officer armed with little more than a warrant full of boilerplate and an email address would think twice before arresting, jailing, and — if things move fast enough — expelling US citizens. After all, they don’t care about the facts. And they can always ask for forgiveness later — something they’re sure to earn from federal courts because it’s all but impossible to win a civil rights lawsuit against a federal officer.
With all of this going for them, the enforcers of immigration law aren’t going to care much who gets caught in the crossfire. Neither will the bigots backing this president, both on Capitol Hill and inside voting booths. But being on the fence about this won’t get you any comfort here. This is nothing but evil wrapping itself in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “national security.” Giving this a pass because you think residing in a country illegally is worse for the nation than eliminating due process, trampling on constitutional rights, ignoring federal court rulings, and excising whatever’s left of your conscience just means you’re no better than the people currently in power.
Last week, we wrote about Harvard showing a bit of institutional courage in telling the Trump administration to fuck off with its demands that the university fire certain professors, change its curriculum, and allow government oversight of campus activities. In response, Trump escalated things, as he tends to do, cutting off over $2 billion in promised funds and saying that Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status:
The IRS quickly got to work exploring just such a possibility, never mind that it’s a literal crime for the executive branch to weaponize the IRS to target any individual or entity.
For what it’s worth, there was a weird moment over the weekend when Trump officials tried to argue that the overly aggressive letter they sent Harvard was sent by accident:
It is unclear what prompted the letter to be sent last Friday. Its content was authentic, the three people said, but there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled. Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely, according to the three people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions. Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.
The article claimed that the administration had actually been working with Harvard officials and seemed confident that a deal could be reached (i.e., Harvard was open to capitulating) when they sent this aggressive letter, leading to Harvard’s aggressive response. Yet another sign of administrative competence.
Either way, as you’d expect, Harvard has access to some lawyers, and on Monday they sued the administration seeking an end to all this bullshit (not quite the technical legal terms, but, close enough).
Defendants’ actions are unlawful. The First Amendment does not permit the Government to “interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance,” Moody v. NetChoice, 603 U.S. 707, 741 (2024), nor may the Government “rely[] on the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion . . . to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech,” Nat’l Rifle Ass’n v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 189 (2024) (citation omitted). The Government’s attempt to coerce and control Harvard disregards these fundamental First Amendment principles, which safeguard Harvard’s “academic freedom.” Asociacion de Educacion Privada de P.R., Inc. v. Garcia-Padilla, 490 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 2007). A threat such as this to a university’s academic freedom strikes an equal blow to the research conducted and resulting advancements made on its campus.
The Government’s actions flout not just the First Amendment, but also federal laws and regulations. The Government has expressly invoked the protections against discrimination contained in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a basis for its actions. Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus. But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts, the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical, scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to do with antisemitism and Title VI compliance. Moreover, Congress in Title VI set forth detailed procedures that the Government “shall” satisfy before revoking federal funding based on discrimination concerns. 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-1. Those procedures effectuate Congress’s desire that “termination of or refusal to grant or to continue” federal financial assistance be a remedy of last resort. Id. The Government made no effort to follow those procedures—nor the procedures provided for in Defendants’ own agency regulations—before freezing Harvard’s federal funding.
These fatal procedural shortcomings are compounded by the arbitrary and capricious nature of Defendants’ abrupt and indiscriminate decision. Even before the freeze, the Government had threatened to terminate up to $8.7 billion in federal funding not just to Harvard, but also to preeminent Boston hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. These hospitals are independent corporate entities with their own boards of directors or trustees and their own separate officers, leadership, and management. They are not under Harvard’s control. The hospitals have no control over Harvard’s enforcement of Title VI requirements, and vice versa. These hospitals have their own tax identification numbers, endowments, and accounts. And they seek and receive federal financial assistance directly from federal agencies, not through Harvard.
There’s more, but it’s a good, strong complaint.
What makes Harvard’s position particularly strong is how neatly it fits into recent Supreme Court precedent that we’ve discussed quite a bit on Techdirt. The complaint cites both Moody v. NetChoice and NRA v. Vullo, where the Court made clear that the government can’t use threats or actual coercion to pressure private entities into changing their speech or expression. Trump’s hamfisted attempts to dictate Harvard’s policies is just the latest in a long list of attacks on free expression from this administration.
It’s worth noting they have a ton of lawyers on the complaint, and their strategy is telling. The team includes Quinn Emanuel’s co-managing partner Bill Burck who was in George W. Bush’s White House (Quinn, notably, is also where Elon Musk’s favorite lawyer, Alex Spiro works). There are also lawyers from Ropes & Gray and King & Spalding. That’s three of the biggest “big law” firms all on the same filing. The King & Spalding lawyer is Robert Hur. If his name sounds familiar, he was the “special counsel” Merrick Garland appointed to investigate Joe Biden’s classified documents retention, and is known as a “Republican super lawyer.”
There are a bunch of other lawyers as well, including the named partners from the relatively new, boutique law firm Lehotsky Keller. While newer and smaller, Lehotsky Keller has been working on a number of high profile cases and are considered super well connected in the Republican world, with each of the named partners having roles in Republican politics (Keller, for example, was Solicitor General in Texas under Greg Abbott).
This isn’t just legal representation — it’s a political statement. Harvard has assembled a big list of big-name lawyers, many of them with strong Republican credentials, effectively telling Trump: “Even your own people think this is unconstitutional overreach.” It’s a move that makes it harder for the administration to dismiss the case as partisan politics (though it certainly won’t stop that argument from the true believer MAGA cultists).
The next phase will be critical. While the administration may continue pressuring Harvard, early court victories could decisively demonstrate the unconstitutionality of Trump’s attacks on academic institutions. Though some universities might still follow Columbia’s shameful example and capitulate, Harvard’s principled stand could embolden others to resist.
When the courts ultimately vindicate Harvard’s position — and they will — it will serve as more than just an institutional victory. It will reaffirm a fundamental constitutional principle: that no president, regardless of their political agenda or institutional threats, can leverage federal funding to override First Amendment protections. This reminder comes at a crucial moment, even if Trump and his allies rage against or attempt to circumvent these inevitable rulings.
We used to be above this. We used to make fun of the in-fighting occurring in autocratic nations. We used to mock the sycophancy of government officials who spent most of their time jockeying for the position of loyalest loyalist, something that usually came packaged with an inordinate amount of backstabbing. We used to think this could only happen in other countries, ones run by dictators, most of them Communist.
Now, we’re indistinguishable from our enemies of the Cold War days (or China, pretty much every day), at least in terms of the upper administration levels. While DOGE goes about gutting the government and Trump violently vacillates on pretty much every big issue, every high-level official’s job is on the line.
The IRS burnt through two acting commissioners in less than two months as Kristi Noem’s DHS pressed for access to millions of immigrants’ tax records. 38-year IRS veteran Doug O’Donnell retired, rather than cave in to the DHS’s initial demand for only 700,000 tax records. His more Trump-friendly replacement, Melanie Krause, similarly resigned when this demand ballooned to seven million tax records.
The pace of replacement has accelerated. The head of the Treasury Department, Scott Bessent, feels he’s the only one allowed to elevate people to the IRS commissioner position, despite Elon Musk and DOGE apparently being given the same power by Donald Trump himself.
It’s Trump loyalist-on-Trump loyalist action, something that’s absolutely sure to return some form of stability to the federal government, as the New York Times reports.
President Trump has replaced the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service after his appointment just days earlier set off a power struggle between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the billionaire Elon Musk, five people with knowledge of the change said Friday.
Mr. Bessent’s deputy, Michael Faulkender, will be the new acting leader, replacing Gary Shapley, the Treasury Department confirmed on Friday. Mr. Faulkender will be the third acting leader of the agency this week.
Mr. Bessent had complained to Mr. Trump this week that Mr. Musk had done an end run around him to get Mr. Shapley installed as the interim head of the I.R.S...
Just let all the pettiness of this waft over you. Two previous commissioners exited because they disagreed with sharing tax filing data with the DHS. That’s at least a principled stand. The IRS is now on its third commissioner in one week because the head of the Treasury Department complained to his boss that another Trump acolyte has stepped on his administrative toes by moving someone into a slot that now seems incapable of being staffed for more than a few weeks at a time.
The feud between Mr. Musk and Mr. Bessent went public late Thursday night, when Mr. Musk amplified a social media post from the far-right researcher Laura Loomer accusing Mr. Bessent of colluding with a “Trump hater.”
“Troubling,” Mr. Musk wrote about Mr. Bessent’s meeting John Hope Bryant, the chief executive of the nonprofit Operation HOPE. Mr. Bryant is working on a financial literacy effort with Treasury officials.
Ms. Loomer had called that meeting a “vetting failure.”
Ms. Loomer helped push out several officials from the National Security Council earlier this month, after first attacking some of them online and then meeting with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office and presenting him with a list of those she deemed disloyal.
Batshittery, purges, and apartheid money-wielding interlopes. What a country, as ex-pat Russian comedians used to say.
What’s even more enjoyable (in a gallows humor sort of way… I mean, these people are destroying the government from the inside) is that this sets up a showdown Donald Trump won’t be able to avoid. Does he want Musk to take control of staffing, since he’s supposedly in the “efficiency” business? Or would he rather mollify appointed heads of federal agencies, since they’ll likely be there longer than Musk himself, who’s probably going to go back to private sector well before Trump’s second presidential term has concluded? Or does he want to entertain whatever half-formed notion falls out of Loomer’s mouth the next time she drops by the Oval Office?
However that part of the equations turns out, the bottom line is still the same: this administration will purge anyone who isn’t immediately and wholly loyal. It will generate tons of departmental churn to ensure that this happens. And it will definitely create a talent exodus that will harm the federal system for years to come. When this happens, those loyal to Trump will simply claim the failures they created are failures of the system itself. In the meantime, we’ll have to take what pleasure we can from watching those most enthralled by Trump devour each other to get their tongues up a little higher on the boot they’ll be licking for at least the next four years.
On Tuesday, the White House effectively eliminated the Associated Press from the White House press pool, changing the rules to basically bar the wire service entirely. This is even after (or perhaps in response to) a Trump-appointed judge ruling that the White House was clearly violating the First Amendment in excluding the AP from various press conferences. This isn’t a huge surprise, because last week there were reports that the White House was still excluding AP reporters… and then directly censoring press pool reports that mentioned this and other embarrassing facts.
I’m old enough to remember when there was ostensibly widespread concern with the Biden administration for supposedly (though not actually) ordering social media companies to “censor” conservative viewpoints on social media. The reality, of course, was very different as even the conservative Supreme Court clearly acknowledged just last year.
Since his second inauguration, the Trump administration has launched what may be the most aggressive, censorial attack on free speech in modern American history. While previous administrations have occasionally targeted specific speakers or types of speech, this administration is waging an unprecedented, multi-front war on nearly all forms of expression they disagree with. What makes this especially striking is that it’s happening in an era when First Amendment protections are supposedly at their strongest, and with an administration that keeps wrapping itself in the flag of free speech. And yet… here we are.
As noted, a Trump-appointed judge called out the administration’s discrimination against the Associated Press for failing to use Donald Trump’s preferred proper name for the Gulf of Mexico.
Last week, Oliver Darcy was the first to call out two troubling developments related to this: First, the White House was ignoring the ruling and still blocking the AP from certain access. Indeed, what Darcy had found is that the pool reporter on duty, Joseph Morton, the Washington correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, had written in the pool report the following:
“A reporter and photographer with The Associated Press were turned away from joining the pool.”
So why are we hearing this from Darcy instead of Morton?
It was likely that sentence, which came after a judge had ordered the administration to restore the AP’s access, that irked the White House. That specific pool report from Morton, I’ve learned, was never distributed by the White House to news outlets subscribed to its pool report mailing list — a notable omission and a clear break from precedent.
It also wasn’t the first time this week that the White House chose to censor the pool. On Monday, Philip Wegmann, a reporter for RealClearPolitics, filed a pool report noting that a scheduled press conference between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been “cancelled” and was “no longer taking place.” That report, too, was never sent out by the White House.
The selective distribution has raised alarm among some members of the White House Correspondents’ Association, particularly as the Trump White House seeks to exert a firmer grip over the press corps. Traditionally, pool reporters file dispatches about the president’s movements and remarks that are then distributed by the White House to the wider media ecosystem. Now, it appears the White House is withholding reports it doesn’t like — choosing not to distribute pool reports that contain information it finds inconvenient or unflattering.
It’s worth recalling that Matt Taibbi said that the Biden administration’s mere suggestions about vaccine misinformation were “a grave threat to people of all political persuasions” and claimed the “news media became an arm of a State-sponsored, thought-policing system.”
So where’s his outrage now? This is the White House literally punishing media for not repeating propaganda and editing press reports to hide unflattering information. I may just be a simple country tech/law blogger, but this seems like a far graver threat to press freedom and a much clearer example of state-sponsored thought-policing.
So, you’d expect Taibbi to be up in arms, but somehow, he’s still talking about how Joe Biden (apparently) lied about everything. Apparently, this literal suppression of speech doesn’t merit much of a mention. Ah well.
In any normal moment in US history, a White House directly editing press pool reports while defying a federal judge’s order about press access would be an earth-shattering scandal about government censorship. It would lead every newspaper and dominate cable news coverage for weeks. And yet, somehow, it’s barely cracking the top twenty stories of the Trump administration’s attacks on fundamental rights.
While I don’t expect Taibbi and his cohort to ever acknowledge how badly they misrepresented research on disinformation as “censorship,” you might think the mainstream media — which spent years amplifying that false narrative (or even just accepting the MAGA world’s false framing) — would at least speak up when faced with actual government censorship aimed directly at them.
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
Those words came not from a liberal jurist or a civil liberties activist, but from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and one of the most respected conservative jurists in America. In a blistering opinion released yesterday, Wilkinson laid bare what’s at stake in the Abrego Garcia case: nothing less than the rule of law itself.
What triggered this extraordinary rebuke? The government “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.” For weeks now, the Trump administration has played a dangerous constitutional game with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was illegally trafficked to a Salvadoran prison despite a court order explicitly barring his deportation. When three separate courts — including the Supreme Court — ordered them to facilitate his return, administration officials mocked the very idea they could help and have since defied judicial commands with increasingly brazen contempt.
Over the last few days they ratcheted up the rhetoric, falsely claiming that (1) he wasn’t just a member of MS-13 but a “top” member who was also somehow “a terrorist,” (something for which multiple Article III courts have said there is no evidence to support) that (2) he was “arrested with rolls of cash and drugs” when he was simply wearing a sweatshirt that had an image with cash on it and someone else who was arrested with him had a small bag of weed in a pocket (3) that he was engaged in “human trafficking” (just completely made up bullshit).
In her statement to CNN, Vasquez Sura said she sought a civil protective order in 2021 after a disagreement with Abrego Garcia. Vasquez Sura noted she had survived a previous relationship that included domestic violence. She did not appear at a court hearing and the matter did not proceed.
“Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process,” she said in the statement. “We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling. Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect.”
“That is not a justification for ICE’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation,” she added. “Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him and demand justice for him.”
Of course, even if all the smears against Garcia were true, none of it justifies violating the legal order that prevented him from being deported to El Salvador without any due process. That’s all that matters.
And if being accused of domestic violence means you deserve to be sent to a concentration camp with no due process, this administration is going to run out of people working for it very, very soon, because so many of them have faced similar accusations at one time or another.
It’s the standard Fox News playbook: when confronted with a victim of government overreach, pull out the “he’s no angel” template and fill in whatever blanks you can, evidence be damned. But no matter how many accusations they hurl, the fundamental fact remains unchanged: Abrego Garcia has never been convicted of a crime, and the U.S. legal system had explicitly barred him from being sent to El Salvador, let alone to a concentration camp.
But why let pesky facts get in the way of a good character assassination?
Which brings us back to Judge Wilkinson’s extraordinary opinion. After Judge Xinis scolded the DOJ for ignoring her order, the administration appealed yet again to the Fourth Circuit, where the panel had already rebuked them once. This time, Judge Wilkinson — a Reagan appointee once considered for the Supreme Court under George W. Bush — decided enough was enough.
Wilkinson is a famously right-wing Republican judge. He also, somewhat famously, is quite often willing to bless executive government overreach. Hell, he authored the (later overturned!) opinion that it was okay for the US government to seize and lock up an American citizen at Guantanamo with no charges or due process when he was found fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.
As Wilkinson points out, no matter what the administration accuses him of, in the US he still deserves due process:
The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.24(f) (requiring that the government prove “by a preponderance of evidence” that the alien is no longer entitled to a withholding of removal). Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or “mistakenly” deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?
He also completely dismantles the claim made by Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi that the Supreme Court’s decision allows the White House to do nothing. That’s just bullshit:
The Supreme Court’s decision does not, however, allow the government to do essentially nothing. It requires the government “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” Abrego Garcia, supra, slip op. at 2. “Facilitate” is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear. See Abrego Garcia, supra, slip op. at 2 (“[T]he Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”). The plain and active meaning of the word cannot be diluted by its constriction, as the government would have it, to a narrow term of art. We are not bound in this context by a definition crafted by an administrative agency and contained in a mere policy directive. Cf. Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 400 (2024); Christensen v. Harris Cnty., 529 U.S. 576, 587 (2000). Thus, the government’s argument that all it must do is “remove any domestic barriers to [Abrego Garcia’s] return,” Mot. for Stay at 2, is not well taken in light of the Supreme Court’s command that the government facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.
From there, Wilkinson makes abundantly clear he knows that the Trump administration is playing games. He notes that they’re obviously frustrated with the rulings against them, but that does not give them the ability to simply ignore those rulings. He talks about the separation of powers, and how the judiciary clearly has the power to tell the executive branch when it is violating the laws or the Constitution. And he warns of what will happen if the Trump White House decides it can just ignore the courts:
Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.
And he closes with a clear statement directed at the White House that going down the road they clearly wish to go down will do great damage to the concept of America:
It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.
When a renowned conservative jurist — one who previously ruled it was legal to detain American citizens without charges at Guantanamo — warns a Republican president that he is threatening to destroy the rule of law and wreck “the American ethos,” that’s more than a legal opinion. It’s a desperate attempt to pull the country back from the brink.
As if to immediately test Wilkinson’s warning about the “public perception of lawlessness,” the very same day brought a stunning development that would expose the administration’s claims as hollow. Despite earlier being denied, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen was suddenly given the opportunity to meet with Abrego Garcia, proving that he was still alive and accessible (and allowing him to learn that many people are fighting for his basic rights).
I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.
The timing couldn’t have been more revealing. On the same day a federal judge warned the administration about a constitutional crisis over its claim that accessing Garcia was impossible, a U.S. Senator managed to do exactly that.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who had previously denied he even had the ability to release Garcia, posted some images of Garcia and Van Hollen meeting, though (of course) with a snarky bit of commentary, very much giving off “I’m not mad at all” vibes:
The claim that they were “sipping margaritas” was revealed to be completely staged nonsense, as apparently Bukele aids showed up with the props solely for the misleading photoshoot:
Mr. Bukele, in a social media post, even crowed that “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’” was “now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” But according to a person familiar with the situation,a Bukele aide placed the two glasses with cherries and salted rims on the table in front of Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Abrego Garcia in the middle of their meeting in an attempt to stage the photo.
It’s also pretty clear that the government gave Garcia fresh clothes (different from every other photograph of anyone in CECOT) as well as a baseball cap to cover up the shaved head that the guards at CECOT give to every prisoner sent into the concentration camp.
Bukele later posted, “I love chess,” pretending that this was all a strategic move, rather than one that makes him look incredibly weak. Bukele caved here, as the pressure on him has been increasing, and even he has to realize he’s losing this battle massively. Bukele tried to recover by then posting that Garcia “gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”
But now he’s revealed that he absolutely can produce Garcia when a US government official shows up asking for him.
Even leaving aside the basic “what crime was he convicted of in which court” question that should accompany him “staying in El Salvador’s custody,” the fact of this meeting completely undermines the claims made by both Bukele and the Trump White House regarding their supposed inability to return Garcia to the United States.
If anyone was playing chess here, it appears those on the side of due process and rule of law have a much stronger position. They’ve shown that it is entirely possible for Bukele to produce Garcia, especially under political pressure from the United States. That bodes poorly for the Trump administration that earlier in the day had filed yet another “status report” in Judge Xinis’ court again failing to abide by her order and again professing that its hands were tied.
The meeting exposes a damning reality: for all of Trump’s boasts about being the ultimate dealmaker, a Democratic Senator accomplished what his administration claimed was impossible. The administration’s entire defense — that they had no ability to access Garcia — collapsed in an embarrassing instant.
Judge Wilkinson’s ruling called back to President Eisenhower, who was willing to set aside his “personal opinions” to abide by the laws of the United States, as defined by the courts.
It is in this atmosphere that we are reminded of President Eisenhower’s sage example. Putting his “personal opinions” aside, President Eisenhower honored his “inescapable” duty to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education II to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed.” Address by the President of the United States, Delivered from his Office at the White House 1-2 (Sept. 24, 1957); 349 U.S. 294, 301 (1955). This great man expressed his unflagging belief that “[t]he very basis of our individual rights and freedoms is the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and [e]nsure the carrying out of the decisions of the Federal Courts.” Id. at 3. Indeed, in our late Executive’s own words, “[u]nless the President did so, anarchy would result.”
With Van Hollen’s visit, we now have definitive proof of what Judge Wilkinson suggested: it is absolutely possible for the US to secure access to Abrego Garcia. The district court, the appeals court, and the Supreme Court have all said — unanimously — that the White House must take affirmative steps to facilitate Garcia’s return to face the basic due process owed to everyone under our Constitution.
We now stand at that precise precipice Eisenhower warned about. Will the Trump administration continue defying the courts, pushing us toward what Eisenhower called “anarchy”? Or will the rule of law prevail?
The coming days will reveal whether this administration recognizes what Judge Wilkinson called its “unique chance to vindicate” the rule of law “while there is still time.” But with each passing day of defiance, the damage to our constitutional order grows deeper.
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 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.
In a stunning White House appearance that should alarm anyone who cares about constitutional rights, democracy, the rule of law or anything of the sort, Donald Trump and Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele openly defied a Supreme Court order while discussing plans to expand El Salvador’s notorious detention system to imprison US citizens without due process. The meeting, which came just days after Trump admitted the US could retrieve Abrego Garcia from unlawful detention in El Salvador, devolved into the two leaders joking about imprisoning anyone while promoting a chilling vision of “liberation through incarceration.”
We had just posted our last article about how Donald Trump has admitted he could order Abrego Garcia returned to the US (as the Supreme Court has directly instructed the Trump admin to do) before meeting with Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele. We wondered if reporters would ask both Bukele and Trump about this, and they did. The answers are beyond stupid.
When a reporter asked Trump about his earlier comments saying that if the Supreme Court said to return Garcia to the US then the US government should follow through and have Garcia returned, Trump scolded the reporter:
Why don’t you just say, ‘isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’ Why can’t you just say that? Why do yo go over and over and that’s why nobody watches you anymore. You know you have no credibility.
Literally, all the reporter did was ask him about his on-the-record comments from three days ago.
As for the specific question about returning Garcia, Trump passed the question (after also mocking the news station the reporter worked for) to Attorney General Pam Bondi who was there:
Bondi on Garcia: "That's up for El Salvador if they want to return him. That's not up to us."
Bondi responded with a series of false claims about both Garcia and what the Supreme Court actually ordered. Let’s break down each lie.
First, Bondi claimed:
First, and foremost, he was illegally in our country. He had been illegally in our country. And in 2019 two courts, an immigration court and an appellate immigration court ruled that he was a member of MS-13 and he was illegally in our country. Right now, it was a paperwork… it was additional paperwork had needed to be done.
This is demonstrably false. As the Fourth Circuit noted with regards to Garcia, not only has the government presented no evidence that Garcia is a member of MS-13, but they actually abandoned this claim in court.
Finally, I turn to the Government’s assertion that the public interest favors a stay because Abrego Garicia is a “prominent” member of MS-13 and is therefore “no longer eligible for withholding relief.” …. Whatever the merits of the 2019 determination of the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) regarding Abrego Garcia’s connection to MS-13,the Government presented “[n]o evidence” to the district court to “connect[] Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any other criminal organization.”… Indeed, such a fact cannot be gleaned from this record, which shows thatAbrego 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.… The balance of equities must tip in the movant’s favor based on the record before the issuing court. An unsupported — and then abandoned — assertion that Abrego Garcia was a member of a gang, does not tip the scales in favor of removal in violation of this Administration’s own withholding order
The Fourth Circuit further noted:
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.”
But Bondi wasn’t done with the lies. She also claimed:
That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us. The Supreme Court ruled, President, that if El Salvador wants to return… this is international matters, foreign affairs… if they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning: provide a plane.
That’s false. As we noted earlier today, the Supreme Court’s ruling directly says that the administration should “facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” For Bondi to claim this means that if El Salvador “wants” to send him back they can send a plane is simply untrue.
A reporter then asked Bukele the same question, leading to an even dumber response:
COLLINS: Can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return Garcia?BUKELE: How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterousTRUMP: These are sick people
Bukele: Are you suggesting I smuggle a terrorist into the United States, right? How can I smuggle… how can I return him to the United States? Like… I smuggle him into the United States, what would you do? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.
Reporter: But you could release him in El Salvador?
Bukele: Yeah, but I’m not going to release him. I mean I’m not very fond of releasing terrorists in our country. I mean we just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western hemisphere and you want us to go back, releasing criminals, so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? No. [Laughs] That’s not going to happen.
Trump: [points to reporters] Well, they would love to have criminals released into our country. They would love it. They’re sick. [Points to reporters again] These are sick people.
Again, all of this is nonsense. Garcia is not a terrorist or a criminal. Again, the Fourth Circuit ruling made that clear. Second, there’s no “smuggling” involved. Literally seconds before this exchange, Bondi claimed (incorrectly as a matter of law) that the only thing the Supreme Court ordered them to do was to send a plane if Bukele agreed to release Garcia. So, literally the whole repetitive thing about “smuggling a terrorist into the US” is wrong on both key points: it’s not a terrorist and it wouldn’t be smuggling.
Bukele’s tangent about the “murder capital of the world” is also nonsense. Again, no one has said that Garcia has murdered anyone. Or that he’s violent. Or a criminal. Indeed, the US government had admitted that he’s lived a non-violent, non-criminal life in the US for many years.
All of this is framing basic due process rights as a threat to public safety, a rhetorical trick that autocrats have used throughout history to justify extrajudicial detention. No one should be falling for it here.
As for Trump saying the US media would love it if criminals were released into the US, I should remind you that the person who did the biggest mass release of criminals into the US was Donald Trump when he pardoned all of the convicted January 6th Capitol insurrectionists.
So, let’s be clear about this, because what happened in the White House today is absolute bullshit. The Supreme Court ordered the US government to see what could be done about getting Garcia back, acknowledging (as the US government had originally done, though they’re now trying to retcon in something else) that the government was forbidden by law from sending Garcia to El Salvador.
The US government has a contract with El Salvador that explicitly calls out that the US gets the “decision” on those prisoners’ “disposition.” Thus, the US can easily tell El Salvador to send Garcia back. Bukele’s false claims about “smuggling a terrorist” into the US are unrelated to the issue at hand. Both of them are lying in pursuit of building modern concentration and torture camps.
But the most chilling revelations came from an unguarded moment before the official White House stream began. In footage captured by Bukele’s team, Trump can be heard urging the construction of five more CECOT-style camps, specifically mentioning his desire to send “homegrown” — meaning US citizens — to these facilities:
Trump to Bukele: "Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough."
When reporters later pressed him on this point, Trump didn’t back down. Instead, he openly endorsed the idea of sending US citizens to Salvadoran torture hellholes:
REPORTER: You mentioned you're open to deporting individuals that aren't foreign aliens but aren't criminal to El Salvador. Does that include US citizens?TRUMP: If they are criminals and hit people with baseball bats, if they rape 87 year old women, yeah. Yeah. That includes them. I'm all for it.
Trump’s sudden concern about “criminals that rape women” rings particularly hollow coming from someone who famously boasted about sexually assaulting women and who was found liable for sexual assault. But the exchange got even more chilling when Bukele introduced his Orwellian concept of “liberation through imprisonment,” which had Trump practically giddy with excitement.
Bukele: They say that we imprisoned thousands. I say we liberated millions […] to liberate that many you have to imprison some.Under Bukele, more than 2% of El Salvador's population is now incarcerated without due process, the highest proportional incarceration rate in the world.
Bukele: Sometimes they say that we imprisoned thousands. I like to say that we liberated millions.
Trump [leaning in and looking excited]: That’s very good!
[Everyone laughs]
Trump: Who gave him that line? You think I can use it? [Laughs]
Bukele: In fact, Mr. President, you have 350 million to liberate. But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. [shrugs] That’s just the way it works.
Let’s be absolutely clear about what we witnessed today: A foreign dictator stood in the White House and openly suggested that the path to “liberating” 350 million Americans requires imprisoning those deemed problematic — with the obvious implication (given how things have gone so far) being that this should happen without charges, without trials, without due process. And the President of the United States not only agreed, but was enthusiastic about adopting this framework of authoritarian repression.
If you don’t see all of this as one of the darkest days in American history, in which the President is openly embracing disappearing people without due process in the name of “liberty,” you are a part of the problem. Fascism has risen in America, and it is being aided by a foreign dictator whom Trump admires.
