I’m not here to cut the Trump administration any slack or engage in both-sides bullshit, but this is something that has always been true: we treat anyone imprisoned or detained as less than human. The dehumanization begins with something we call “processing” — a word that separates a human from their humanity by making them sound like nothing more than paperwork.

The horrors seen in jails and prisons are often compounded at immigrant detention facilities. While some duty of less-than-minimal care might be extended to imprisoned US citizens, it’s far more often ignored when federal officers believe (mistakenly) that migrants aren’t protected by the Constitution.

The litany of violations stretches back forever. Techdirt doesn’t stretch back quite that far, but let’s take a stroll down memory lane.

From 2022, back when Biden was still in office and people like me were thinking no one would ever elect Trump to office again:

ICE’s ‘Fierce Commitment’ To Ensuring Detainees Are Cared For Properly Includes Inadequate Staffing, Unsanitary Facilities

That’s taken from a report demanding (“Management Alert”) the immediate removal of all detainees from this New Mexico detention center due to numerous violations, including a shortage of 112 employees and no less than 83 cells with “inoperable” sinks and toilets.

Going back further to Trump’s first administration:

Report Shows ICE Almost Never Punishes Contractors Housing Detainees No Matter How Many Violations They Rack Up

In this Inspector General’s report, we learned that only 28 of 106 contractors were provided with the tools needed to meet minimum “performance standards.” We also learned that the $3.9 billion being thrown to private contractors was shored up by absolutely no level of accountability. ICE approved 96% of waivers requested by contractors who failed to meet minimum housing standards for detainees.

While it’s been a persistent problem, things are significantly worse now. The Trump administration is detaining more migrants than ever before. It’s also far more willing to pawn these duties off on private prison contractors who prioritize making money over taking care of the people thrust into their care by Trump’s top bigots.

On top of that, the administration is fighting wars on several litigation fronts in hopes of preventing any form of oversight from slowing its roll towards total migrant annihilation. Everything that was bad before is getting so much worse.

Thanks to the White House Merchant of Death, RFK Jr., measles outbreaks are being reported at detention facilities. Thanks to absolutely every-fucking-body else in the administration, reports of inhumane conditions are somehow still on the rise, even after years of regularly reported inhuman conditions at ICE facilities.

Here’s even more. At a facility where guards were caught setting up suicide “death pools” for inmates, more evidence of deliberate cruelty and inhumane treatment has surfaced. The host of ongoing atrocities is none other than Camp East Montana, comfortably nestled in the heartland of the “who gives a fuck about immigrants” Fifth Circuit: El Paso, Texas.

Here’s the New York Times with the details of more man’s inhumanity to man, as personified by “immigration enforcement” forces of Trump’s second term.

An inspection in February of Camp East Montana in Texas, one of the country’s largest immigration detention centers, found dozens of violations of national standards, including instances that may have exposed detainees to illnesses and uses of force that were not documented, a new report found.

[…]

The inspection, which was carried out by the agency over three days in February and included interviews with 49 detainees, found that there were at least 49 overall “deficiencies” from national standards at the camp. Of all the deficiencies, 22 involved use of force and restraints, and five involved issues related to medical care. 

ICE actually released this inspection report. However, it did make sure names were changed redacted to protect the innocent guilty. While it’s uncharacteristically protective of the inspectors, it also makes sure we may never know which “Creative Corrections” employees helped make this detention center the hell hole it is.

Other censorship by the administration deliberately denies Americans access to the facts. What possible purpose is served here, other than allowing the government to pretend its rights violations were somehow excused by the [redacted] passage of time?

The government not only censored the number of detainee files reviewed, but also the ratio of files in noncompliance. What escapes ICE’s black-boxed attempts to redeem itself is this, which is plenty damning on its own:

[I]nitial classification process and initial housing assignments were not completed within 12 hours of detainees’ admission […]; rather they were completed 14 hours to 25 days after [admission]…

Everything that might show how often (or how frequently) violations occurred has been removed. It’s a deliberate muddying of the statistical waters. Who knows what’s behind the black box? It could mean rights were violated 10% of the time. Or it could mean rights were violated almost every time. But we the people — you know, the ones expected to foot the bill for this bullshit — aren’t allowed to know the actual details of what’s being done in our names.

If the government wants to play it that way, fine. We’ll just assume the worst and dare it to provide evidence to the contrary. And we know it never will. If or when the government decides to unredact this report, it will undoubtedly show us what we’ve always assumed: The administration and its contractors routinely abused detainees and violated their rights because the people in charge made it clear they don’t consider migrants to be humans.

And that makes this news as inevitable as it is deplorable:

So far this year, 14 people have died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, including a Mexican man who was found unresponsive last week at a facility outside Los Angeles, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.

If that seems like a low (or worse, an acceptable) number of deaths, think again:

In 2025, ICE reported 33 total in-custody deaths and in 2024 there were 11.

Deaths in ICE custody tripled under Trump during his first year back in office. If this pace continues, we’ll be looking at 56 in-custody deaths, which would nearly double the same number Trump managed to triple in 2025.

This will only get worse. The administration is still trying to buy up any warehouses it can to repurpose as detention centers. The workload is being stretched even thinner, leaving private citizens more poorly trained than current ICE officers in charge of the lives and well-being of thousands of detainees. The misery and death will continue. Unfortunately for us, this administration not only welcomes blood on its hands, but revels in it.

Forgive me for this digression. I know it’s usually left to Mike Masnick to lift us up from our collective doldrums when things seem even more hopeless than they did last year. His New Year’s posts are never wrong. There are always silver linings, even if the filigree is more difficult to detect with each passing year.

This isn’t about Mike or silver linings or the as of yet unfulfilled promise of the New Year. This is a post written by a die hard defeatist and cynic who generally views each passing moment with increasing levels of defeatism.

But I’m wrong. Mike is actually right, even if my spirits often pretend they’re anchored to the ground like so many pre-oh-the-humanity German-built dirigibles.

I will tell you why I’m wrong. And it’s embarrassing. I have plenty to say about lots of stuff but I rarely convert my words into action. Recently, however, I did. And it has made all the difference.

At the request of my oldest kid, we attended the recent “No Kings” rally in Sioux Falls. I was clad in my finest Da Share Zone anti-ICE gear:

He was wearing my protest alternate, a Black Sabbath-inspired bit of rhetoric sure to piss off white Christian nationalists:

Suitably suited, we headed to the protest with a friend of mine and his wife.

Long story short, it was life-affirming. It was exactly what anyone who feels they are losing hope needs. I feel I’m pretty good with word stuff, but I think Will Bunch absolutely nailed it in his post-No Kings column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Quoting Marlon Brando’s mantra in The Wild One (“What are you rebelling against? Whaddya got?”), Bunch moves on to quote real people engaged in protests against something both nebulous and evil… and finding solace in being around people just like them.

“You feel less isolated when you see everybody here, and then they feel less isolated,” Nancy Harris, a 62-year-old retired mental-health crisis counselor from Prospect Park, told me over the steady car honks from supportive motorists. “And I think it just motivates people in general…just putting good vibes out into the universe.”

There’s more. Here’s a 75-year-old protester who not only knows what’s at stake, but knows why you should never give up:

“I’ve been going up against the establishment my whole life,” said [John] Coia, speaking for a generation that grew up exercising its all-American right of free speech and, now in old age, is determined to keep using it while they still can. I asked him what was the last straw with Trump that convinced him to join “No Kings.”

“There is no last straw,” he said over the car honks. “It just keeps going. There’s a new straw every day.”

Both of these things can be true.

You can find hope in being with people who share your beliefs. You can also feel the fight is never-ending because the current administration just won’t stop being abjectly evil.

But the first thing is what matters: the government may never stop being evil, no matter who’s currently sitting behind the Resolute Desk. And people who want the government to serve the people and be less evil will always exist. The ebb and flow of these constants may shift the prevailing narrative, but it can’t undermine the actual truth — something Mike highlighted in a recent post about the horrors perpetrated by the administration in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Here’s the quote from the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer that Mike highlighted in a long, must-read post that pointed out everything that’s right about America, even when everything seems to be going wrong:

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone.

This is where we come together. Until recently, I believed that “coming together” was just a meeting of the minds. But that’s just preaching to the converted, which doesn’t really do much, even if my “converted” are objectively better people than the MAGA “converted.”

What really matters is that people are resisting in increasingly large numbers. We often consider the word “community” to be a cliche because that’s how the government uses it (for example, “Intelligence Community”). We view it with the same (healthy!) suspicion as we would statements delivered by company officials claiming they treat employees like “family.”

It never means anything until you’ve actually experienced (firsthand) a good one. “Family” isn’t a compliment if yours sucks. The same can be said for any “community.”

Unlike families, you can choose your community. You don’t have to align yourselves with empty mouths spewing even emptier platitudes. You just need to go out and see for yourself. Sure, I’m my own anecdata in this post. But trust me, if things feel hopeless, all you really need is the company of people who do this day in and day out, despite the table being stacked against them.

I’m sure many (if not nearly all) of you have already had this experience. My greatest regret is that I put it off for so long. No one who truly believes in the cause will care one way or another about your day-to-day devotion. They’ll welcome you and stand beside you. Participation can be its own reward. And you’ll leave feeling more inspired to be the change we need in this world.

I just wish I had done this sooner. The world is ours. Let’s go take it.

Never underestimate the stupidity of law enforcement. When things could just be left alone and everything would turn out OK, officers insist on inserting themselves into the equation, ensuring maximum pain and humiliation for everyone involved.

In this case, a Fairhope, Alabama officer decided he couldn’t simply do nothing when coming across a grandmother at a “No Kings” protest. Here’s how this started, as detailed by Liliana Segura for The Intercept:

In the body camera footage, a police officer parks his black SUV on the grass, a rosary swinging from the rearview mirror. He exits his car, moves briskly past a pair of protesters, and points an accusatory finger at the suspect: a 7-foot-tall inflatable penis holding an American flag.

The alleged crime? Unclear. There’s no sound at first, only the silent spectacle of a person in a penis suit turning toward a cop with a stance that says, “Who, me?” A handmade sign comes into view in the person’s right hand. It reads “No Dick Tator.”

You can see the whole thing for yourself here:

It’s really an amazing recording. It includes several high points, including cops trying to stuff a person who’s inside an inflatable penis into the back of a cop car before deciding it might be easier to separate the person and the costume… before struggling to fit the costume itself into the trunk of a cop car. It also includes superbly stupid things like this:

Fairhope Police Cpl. Andrew Babb was less amused.

“I’m serious as a heart attack,” he tells Gamble when the audio begins to play on the 14-minute body camera video. “I’m not gonna sit here and argue with you.”

He demands to know how she could possibly justify such an obscene display: “I would like to hear how you would explain to my children what you’re supposed to be.”

Every easily-offended, would-be censor has the same go-to for complaining about stuff they don’t like: “how would I explain that to my children?” I don’t know, man. They’re your kids. Take any approach you want, including ignoring the question. It’s not on the rest of the world to make sure you never have to have an uncomfortable conversation with your kids. If you can’t figure it out, maybe you shouldn’t be in the business of raising kids, much less in the business of enforcing laws.

There are also plenty of far less funny moments, like the fact that three cops decided to get involved in pinning 62-year-old Renea Gamble to the ground for the crime of… well, that was all pretty much undecided at the point the officers decided to enforce their will with their power.

Corporal Andrew Babb obviously didn’t know the law, but that wasn’t going to stop him.

“I said, ‘That’s not freedom of speech,’” Babb continues. “‘This is a family town and being dressed like that is not going to be tolerated.’”

A. It actually is freedom of speech.

B. Every town is a “family town,” unless you happen to live in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Everything about the arrest is a non-starter. And yet, local prosecutors — propelled forward by supportive local government officials — are still trying to pin criminal charges on Renea Gamble. Mayor Sherry Sullivan claimed the costume was an “obscene display” which would “not be tolerated in Fairhope.” City Council president Jack Burrell claimed the costume “violated community standards” Neither assertion is true, which means neither statement can support an arrest, much less the bringing of criminal charges.

Some of the initial enthusiasm for punishing Gamble was stifled when her arrest went viral, resulting in a nationwide discussion of this ridiculous situation. But apparently the town thinks it’s now safe to proceed with saddling Gamble with a criminal record.

Rather than dropping the case, the city attorney slapped Gamble with additional charges earlier this year: disturbing the peace and giving a false name to law enforcement. Her trial, first set to take place months ago, has been delayed multiple times. It is now set for April 15.

The “peace” wasn’t disturbed until Officer Babb decided he was going to take Gamble’s costume personally. And “giving a false name to law enforcement” is really stretching things when all Gamble did was sarcastically respond “Auntie Fa” when officers demanded her name after stripping her of her inflatable penis.

So, the case continues, which is only going to bring more embarrassment to town leaders and law enforcement officials. The backlash that greeted the arrest will return, which means the arresting officer may want to consider employment elsewhere. Hopefully, this will all end with the town cutting a check to Gamble for violating her rights.

Until then, Gamble is going to keep on doing what she does:

Gamble has tried to keep a low profile since her arrest. At the No Kings protest last week, though, the “No Dick Tator” sign appeared in the hands of a masked woman who wore dark sunglasses and a bandana over her face.

It was Gamble, again wearing an inflatable costume.

She was dressed as an eggplant.

People who view dissent as a threat, if not inherently unlawful, cannot ever hope to win. Acts like this only embolden those already involved in dissent and attract others to join the cause. They may have the power, but the people have the inflatable genitals and the will to use them.

The courts keep pounding the nails home. What this government is engaged in is illegal, on multiple levels. If you subtract the pro-MAGA Fifth Circuit and 6/9ths of the Supreme Court, you have a judicial quorum that says rights are still rights, despite this administration’s claims otherwise.

DHS has issued memos claiming (without facts or law in evidence) that officers can arrest people and enter homes without signed judicial warrants. This has always been false. And it’s not edging any closer to the truth no matter what this administration might say in Truth Social posts and/or court filings.

The administration is losing repeatedly in its bigoted war on non-whites. But it never accepts obvious defeat. It always heads back to court, full of steam and bullshit. And, in most cases, its losses are even more obvious the second time around.

A federal judge in California found on Wednesday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials had violated a previous order regarding warrantless arrests, and ordered agents operating in her judicial district to fully document their reasons for making any future stops.

The judge, Jennifer L. Thurston of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of California, had previously found that immigration operations in Kern County, Calif., appeared to have been based on racial profiling, with agents making arrests when people they stopped could not produce proof of citizenship on the spot. Last year, she restricted the agency from continuing to carry out random immigration sweeps in the region, citing a “pattern and practice of agents performing detentive stops without reasonable suspicion.”

On Wednesday, Judge Thurston found that border agents appeared to have violated that order when they carried out an immigration sweep last year in a Home Depot parking lot in Sacramento.

The opinion [PDF] doesn’t cut corners or grant Trump’s DOJ more respect than it has earned. (It’s running in the red at the moment.) Multiple people who were arrested following a “targeted” operation, that saws mostly involved federal officers waiting in a Home Depot parking lot in hopes of rounding up day laborers, sued the government. The government has already lost once. This order clearly explains why the government is losing twice. Pretending conjecture is the same thing as established facts does nothing more than inform the court that you suck at your job.

The surveillance two days earlier somewhat contributes to understanding the statistical relationship, revealing that on one prior occasion, two out of a group of 20 individuals gathered in that location were noncitizens (roughly 10%). Yet, that statistic, which leaves the remaining 90% of the group unclassified, does little to dispel the concern that seeking work as a day laborer may be “[a] characteristic common to both legal and illegal immigrants.” See Manzo-Jurado, 457 F.3d at 937. Nor does it demonstrate that the Home Depot parking lot is used “predominantly” by noncitizens seeking day labor work.33 See id. at 936. Rather, the present record reveals little more than that the Home Depot parking lot is “a location . . . frequented by illegal immigrants, but also by many legal residents, [which] is not significantly probative to an assessment of reasonable suspicion.”

Yep. Fuck your “Kavanaugh stops.” Probable cause has never been “wow, they look kinda Mexican.” Hanging around places where you have a [checks government’s claims in support of its actions] 10% chance of catching illegal immigrants isn’t “probable.” It’s an inadvertent admission that you might be wrong 90% of the time.

The upshot of the ruling is this: The government needs to provide individualized reasonable suspicion, if not actual probable cause, to arrest migrants in California. The court does grant some concessions this DOJ definitely hasn’t earned, but at least it adds some guardrails:

The Court declines to preclude Defendants from using “boilerplate” when documenting stops and/or arrests pursuant to the PI Order and this clarification. However, Defendants are cautioned that copy and paste language may give rise to an inference that an individualized assessment was not made.

In short, if the government wants to claim its anti-migrant arrests are supported by reasonable suspicion and/or probable cause, it needs to show its work. And if the only work it can show has been cribbed from other cases, it should expect its overtures to be rejected by the court.

While this may not seem like much, it is at least worth the paper it’s printed on. The Trump administration seems incapable of flooding the zone at this point. It ran out of energy (and personnel) barely over a year into its unexpected resurrection. The DOJ no longer has enough lawyers to do everything the administration demands of it, much less press the dubious “but I’m a king tho” assertions Trump seems to feel it should be doing day in and day out.

Running a fast-break offense and a bet-you-miss defense only works until it doesn’t. The courts are delivering a counter-flood and the DOJ doesn’t have enough loyalists left to overpower the full-court press. The administration is headed towards an institutional collapse because whatever can be considered the “center” of this whirlpool of bigoted fuckwits will never hold. We’ll take every win we can get until we can finally celebrate the demise of a president who seems to think he’s the King George incarnation that makes his voter base so erect it will vote against its own interests.

Leave it to the president that makes us nostalgic for Nixon-era corruption to claim that a law Nixon made necessary is no longer a law.

The Presidential Records Act was summoned into existence by Nixon’s resignation and his subsequent efforts to destroy records generated by his office as he was fumbling his way towards impeachment. It’s only fitting that the only president to challenge this law is someone who makes Nixon’s corruption look semi-competent.

No one was asking — at least outside of the White House — for the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to weigh in on this law. But weigh in it did, tipping the scale heavily towards “Let Trump do whatever he wants,” despite Supreme Court precedent to the contrary. (h/t Jamal Greene)

The OLC issued this opinion [PDF] last Thursday. It basically says Trump isn’t obligated to turn over records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) following his second term as president. Presumably, the opinion is also retroactive, which would prevent NARA from continuing to demand records from his first presidency — something that has led to a lot of the litigation Trump engaged in following his 2020 loss, much of which is quoted by the DOJ OLC in support of elevating Trump above the law yet again.

I’m sure the Supreme Court — the one “stacked” by Trump himself — has inured itself Trump’s steady stream of verbal abuse at this point. But I’m pretty sure the OLC telling the Supreme Court its own precedent is invalid isn’t going to win the DOJ any friends when it comes time to defend this legal opinion in court.

Nonetheless, that’s what the OLC does here. Repeatedly.

Nixon v. Administrator is not only distinguishable. It was also wrong in concluding that the PRMPA’s “regulation of the disposition of Presidential materials within the Executive Branch” was not “a violation of the principle of separation of powers.”

[…]

Nixon v. Administrator was also mistaken in reasoning that the PRMPA was not “unduly disruptive of the Executive Branch” […]

[…]

Nixon v. Administrator was wrong to suggest that the executive privilege provisions of the PRMPA avoided separation of powers concerns, and those concerns apply even more strongly to the PRA.

That’s the sort of thing that only a true Trump acolyte could write. That acolyte would be T. Elliot Glaser, assistant attorney general, who was previously best know for this:

In 2020, Gaiser worked as legal counsel for Donald Trump‘s 2020 presidential campaign.^[14] White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany testified before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack that she considered him an expert on constitutional law. Gaiser worked on election litigation after the 2020 presidential election and produced a speech that rejected the results of the election. According to McEnany, the speech appeared similar to one Trump later delivered, and Gaiser “mentioned in passing” the theory that vice president Mike Pence could refuse to recognize electors from certain states.^[4]

It’s great to know that yet another election denier is in a federal position of power, especially with mid-term elections only months away. Prior to this, Gaiser clerked for three federal judges: Edith Jones, Neomi Rao, and (of course) Justice Samuel Alito.

Expecting Gaiser to do anything else but propel forward the administration’s presidents-are-kings-actually theory of executive power is delusional. So is Gaiser’s opinion, which simply says everything prior to this legal memo — including Supreme Court precedent regarding a law that’s nearly 50 years old — is wrong.

Either the administration is certain there will never be another regime change or it’s too stupid to realize Democratic Party presidents will have access to the same theory of power being pushed here, which is going to make them look like idiots when it’s being used against them. Neither option is preferable, and there’s a good chance it’s a 50/50 blend of both.

The silver lining is that this isn’t enforceable in any way. But it will have immediate negative effects. It will make freeing up documents from Trump’s term more difficult. And it will keep NARA from attempting to archive anything its does manage to obtain until the (completely illegitimate) legal questions are settled.

You’re never safe when you’re working for Trump. That much was obvious in Trump’s first term, when he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and FBI Director James Comey. They were all fired for the same reason: failing to be completely loyal to Trump.

This time around even die-hard MAGA loyalists are being fired. DHS head Kristi Noem was dismissed from her position, despite being the enthusiastic figurehead of anti-migrant cruelty Trump definitely wanted in that position. Now, she’s cooling her heels and watching the dust settle on her political hopes as the doesn’t-sound-made-up-at-all “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas.”

Less than a month later, another head has rolled. This time it’s Pam Bondi, who’s getting fired for failing to do the impossible while still remaining fiercely loyal to the Trump’s lost causes.

In recent weeks, Ms. Bondi tried to shore up her position by moving more aggressively against investigative targets singled out by Mr. Trump, including the former Obama official John O. Brennan and a former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, whom the president has accused of lying about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, according to officials briefed on the effort.

It is not entirely clear if any specific action or event finally tipped the balance for Mr. Trump, who had been reluctant to fire senior officials to avoid reprising the chaotic turnstile personnel turnover of his first administration.

But with the dismissal of Ms. Noem and now Ms. Bondi, that might be changing. His calculus appears to have shifted after the quick confirmation of Markwayne Mullin as Ms. Noem’s replacement.

Bondi’s head may have been destined for the chopping block months ago, when Trump (in what appeared to be a personal message accidentally posted on main) berated Bondi for not doing all the impossible stuff he wanted done right now, like engaging in vindictive prosecutions that were (1) obviously vindictive, and (2) didn’t have enough evidence to support the hallucinatory charges dreamed up by Trump and his DOJ enablers.

Nothing has improved since then. Lots of prosecutors have left the DOJ, refusing to engage in Trump’s overt politicization of the department. Others have been dismissed for the same reason. A handful of handpicked prosecutors have been sidelined by judges because they were never formally appointed. And grand juries are frequently refusing to buy what the government’s selling, terminating prosecutions before they can even get off the ground.

Not that we should expect anything better (or more ethical) from her replacement. Todd Blanche is a true Trump loyalist. But he’s taking over a DOJ that’s short on experience, long on MAGA loyalty, and whose reputation has been completely destroyed by this administration and its actions.

The stuff Bondi failed to get done will continue to not happen. Anyone stepping into this position should know it’s only going to be temporary. The president who thinks he’s a king will continue to see courts stifle his worst impulses. Changing the name on the letterhead isn’t suddenly going to make vindictive, politically motivated prosecutions any more legal or feasible.

But I don’t have any sympathy for anyone being shit-canned for failing to satisfy the whims of a megalomaniac who thinks he’s a king, rather than a temporarily elevated politician. They’re far more than merely complicit. They’re fully supportive of destroying America and its institutions to usher in a new age of white Christian nationalism. So, fuck ’em. They got what they deserved.

Before we get into this, let’s set the scene a little:

The latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 20-26, 2026, finds that most White evangelicals (69%) approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president. And a majority (58%) say they support all or most of his plans and policies.

Let that sink in for a bit. The operative term here is probably “white,” but Trump has been embraced by the evangelical community, despite his being about as far removed from the ideals of Christianity as their arch-nemesis, trans people the Devil. (And let’s not forget I’m talking about the ideals, which are often preached but rarely practiced.)

Here’s how Trump handled Easter morning, one of the holiest (no pun intended) holidays observed by the people most likely to support him no matter what:

In Trump’s own words, at 5:03 am on Easter Sunday:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Now, I have to admit that when I first read this, I thought Trump was announcing some new celebration of US infrastructure before derailing his own train of thought. But it’s definitely not that.

It’s the other thing… which turns out to be Trump announcing planned war crimes. Again.

Both sides have threatened and hit civilian targets like oil fields and desalination plants critical for drinking water. Iran’s U.N. mission on social media called Trump’s threat “clear evidence of intent to commit war crime.”

Iran’s military joint command warned of stepped-up retaliatory attacks on regional oil and civilian infrastructure if the U.S. and Israel attack such targets there, according to state television.

The laws of armed conflict allow attacks on civilian infrastructure only if the military advantage outweighs the civilian harm, legal scholars say. It’s considered a high bar to clear, and causing excessive suffering to civilians can constitute a war crime.

While it looks like both sides in this war are willing to strike civilian infrastructure, the United States should be trying to take the high road (the one without war crimes). And if it can’t be bothered to do that, the administration should — at the very least — try to keep the president from publicly saying we’re going to commit war crimes.

But, alas, there’s no one willing to stop him. Pete Hegseth is definitely relishing his unearned role as the Secretary of Defense (“Back to the Stone Age.”) And he appears to be firing anyone who disagrees with things like drone-killing people in international waters and, you know, engaging in war crimes.

Both Trump and Hegseth have publicly claimed they’re doing God’s work by going to war with Iran, something that has been echoed by the same demographic detailed in the Pew Research survey.

Shamefully, they won’t see a drop in support despite Trump threatening war crimes, dropping an F-bomb, and promising to send people halfway around the world to hell, as if he were a god himself. And that’s a damning indictment of an entire segment of Americans who choose to treat their religion as a weapon and want the world to be remade in their own image — something they often accuse Muslims of doing. The irony is lost on them, along with the man they’ve chosen to treat as God’s appointed leader.

We’ve had a lot of low points as a nation, but usually we’ve at least tried to improve. That’s no longer the case. We’re under the rule of people who debase and abuse the nation they claim to love. Happy Fuckin’ Easter, you crazy bastards. Welcome to Hell.

The Supreme Court’s latest recap of its relative inactivity (Trump administration “emergency” appeals aside) has delivered yet more evidence of this court’s indifference to rights violations committed by the government. Other cases involving alleged rights violations that should have — at the very least — been handed over to jury for further consideration were tacitly blessed by the top court in the land by its refusal to grant certori.

This one — involving the retaliatory arrest of an independent journalists by cops who didn’t like her reporting — is yet another miscarriage of justice by a Supreme Court whose majority simply won’t take cases that might force it to hold the government accountable for its actions.

This case has bounced up and down the judicial ladder for more than a half-decade. Laredo, Texas native/independent journalist Priscilla Villarreal has been live streaming and reporting via Facebook under the name “Lagordiloca” for several years. Laredo PD officers don’t like her because she asks them questions they don’t like answering and films them when they’re performing traffic stops and arrests.

After Villarreal published information about a Border Patrol officer who had committed suicide, the Laredo PD worked with local prosecutors to have her arrested. All Villarreal had done was ask a PD employee to confirm information she’d already obtained. The PD responded by opening an internal investigation to oust the employee that had responded to Villarreal’s queries. Then it decided the only way for justice to be done was to arrest the person who had merely received confirmation (via a law enforcement employee) she already had in her possession.

Prosecutors claimed Villarreal’s acquisition and publication of this information violated a state law forbidding people from profiting from “misuse of official information.” To support this claim, the prosecutors claimed Facebook clicks were a form of “profit.” To date, no other citizen has ever been prosecuted under this law that was clearly written to prevent government employees from profiting from information only government employees might have access to.

The local judge immediately tossed the bullshit charges immediately after they were presented to her in court. Somehow, the district court managed to look past the obvious First Amendment violations to give the officers immunity. The Fifth Circuit’s first pass reversed this, with Judge Ho making it clear there’s no way any reasonable officer would have thought arresting a journalist simply for asking questions didn’t violate the Constitution.

This is not just an obvious constitutional infringement—it’s hard to imagine a more textbook violation of the First Amendment.

Then things got weird. A couple of judges in the minority thought this shouldn’t stand and started making noise. The Fifth Circuit agreed to an en banc hearing and reissued this opinion with a new dissent written by Chief Judge Priscilla Richman, along with some additional commentary by Judge Ho about how far removed from sanity Richman’s dissent was.

Two years later, it handed down its second take. And the majority somehow came to the conclusion that it’s okay to engage in retaliatory arrests as long as you can find any criminal statute at all to support the arrest. According to Judge Jones, Villarreal should have either limited herself to official channels or challenged the law itself in court, rather than ask a government employee to verify information Villarreal already possessed.

This was appealed. Eight months later, the Supreme Court sent it back down to the Fifth Circuit for yet another pass, instructing it to apply the Trevino standard. That standard is fairly simple: if a law is rarely, if ever, enforced but somehow shows up conveniently to do the cops’ dirty work when they want to retaliate against a person they don’t like, there’s a good chance this selective application is an established violation of rights. In this case, prosecutors had never used this law to charge anyone ever.

The Fifth Circuit’s third pass — again written by Judge Edith Jones — said the Trevino factor just didn’t matter. If the law was on the books (even if it had never been enforced), it was justification enough for the arrest. And even if that arrest violated the Constitution, the officers should still be given qualified immunity because how could they have known that arresting the only person ever charged with this crime in its 23 years of existence might somehow be unconstitutionally retaliatory?

Now that we’re caught up, this is how it ends for Priscilla Villarreal:

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

There’s a dissent written by Justice Sotomayor that’s even lengthier than my preamble. It’s worth reading, though, and it starts with this admonishment of the majority’s refusal to write this obvious wrong:

It should be obvious that this arrest violated the First Amendment. Yet the Fifth Circuit held that the officials were entitled to qualified immunity, and now Villarreal is left without a remedy. The Court today makes a grave error by declining to hear this case.

The nation’s top court has decided the Laredo PD and local prosecutors can walk away cleanly from a series of extremely obvious rights violations. And in doing so, it emboldens them (and others) to engage in future retaliatory arrests of journalists they don’t like.

The Supreme Court majority is apparently willing to pretend rights don’t exist when it’s convenient to do so, just like the officers whose actions it tacitly blesses with this particular inaction. Sotomayor drills down on this, rubbing the majority’s nose in its deliberate dismissal of constitutional rights:

[T]he Fifth Circuit found that the officials reasonably believed that they had probable cause to arrest Villarreal for violating §39.06(c). Id., at 385–390. Not so. Just like an individual cannot be convicted of a crime for engaging in First Amendment activity, it is axiomatic that a probable cause determination cannot be based on such protected activity either.

[…]

It necessarily follows that when an arrest is based on protected First Amendment activity, that activity cannot constitute probable cause and support adverse police action. All reasonable officers know this.

[…]

Here, it is hard to conceive of a more obvious constitutional violation than arresting a journalist who, in searching for corroboration, simply asks a government source for information. That is the essence of many journalists’ jobs. The arrest does not somehow become reasonable, and constitutional, merely because an unconstitutional application of a statute authorizes it.

All we have is the dissent. All Villarreal has is knowledge Laredo PD officers and local prosecutors will be digging through the state statutes to find something else to charge her with the next time her reporting pisses them off. The Supreme Court issued a short, clear instruction to the Fifth Circuit, telling it to apply a specific legal standard. Instead, the Fifth Circuit — led by the consistently awful Judge Edith Jones – sidestepped this instruction on its way towards granting the officers qualified immunity. And that deliberate refusal to engage with the Supreme Court’s specific instructions has now been ignored by the same court that strongly hinted the Fifth Circuit got this wrong. It’s a shrug that lets the general public know exactly where it stands: at the bottom of the national organization chart with no layers of protection between them and government officials who seek to do them harm.

This may not be an actual “Wyden siren,” but it still has his name attached to it. What’s being said here isn’t nearly as ominous as this single sentence he sent to CIA leadership earlier this year:

I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities.

Few people are capable of saying so much with so little. This one runs a bit longer, but it has implications that likely run deeper than the surface level issue raised by Wyden and others in a recent letter to Trump’s (satire is dead) Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Here are the details, as reported by Dell Cameron for Wired:

In a letter sent Thursday to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the lawmakers say that because VPNs obscure a user’s true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law.

Several federal agencies, including the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission, have recommended that consumers use VPNs to protect their privacy. But following that advice may inadvertently cost Americans the very protections they’re seeking.

The letter was signed by members of the Democratic Party’s progressive flank: Senators Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Edward Markey, and Alex Padilla, along with Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Sara Jacobs.

That’s alarming. It’s also a conundrum. VPN use (often required for remote logins to corporate systems) is a great way to secure connections that are otherwise insecure, like those made originating from people’s homes (to log into their work stuff) or utilizing public Wi-Fi. There are also more off-the-book uses, like circumventing regional content limitations or just ensuring your internet activity can’t be tied to your physical location.

The trade-off depends on the threat you’re trying to mitigate. It’s kind of like the trade-off in cell phone security. Using biometrics markers to unlock your phone might be the best option if what you’re mainly concerned with is theft of your device. A thief might be able to guess a password, but they won’t be able to duplicate an iris or a fingerprint.

But if the threat you’re more worried about is this government, you’ll want the passcode. Courts have generally found that fingerprints and eyeballs aren’t “testimonial,” so if you’re worried about being compelled to unlock your device, the Fifth Amendment tends to favor passwords, at least as far as the courts are concerned.

It’s almost the same thing here. VPNs might protect you against garden-variety criminals, but the intentional commingling of origin/destination points by VPNs could turn purely domestic communications into “foreign” communications the NSA can legally intercept (and the FBI, somewhat less-legally can dip into at will).

That’s the substance of the letter sent to Gabbard, in which the legislators ask the DNI to issue public guidance on VPN usage that makes it clear that doing so might subject users to (somewhat inadvertent) domestic surveillance:

Americans reportedly spend billions of dollars each year on commercial VPN services, many of which are offered by foreign-headquartered companies using servers located overseas. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, VPNs have the potential to be vulnerable to surveillance by foreign adversaries. While Americans should be warned of these risks, they should also be told if these VPN services, which are advertised as a privacy protection, including by elements of the federal government, could, in fact, negatively impact their rights against U.S. government surveillance. To that end, we urge you to be more transparent with the American public about whether the use of VPNs can impact their privacy with regard to U.S. government surveillance, and clarify what, if anything, American consumers can do to ensure they receive the privacy protections they are entitled to under the law and Constitution.

I wouldn’t expect a response from ODNI. I mean, I wouldn’t expect one in any case, but I especially don’t expect Tulsi Gabbard to respond to a letter sent by a handful of Democratic Party members.

A warning would be nice, but even an Intelligence Community overseen by competent professionals, rather than loyalists and Fox News commentators would be hard-pressed to present a solution. To be fair, this letter isn’t asking for a fix, but rather telling the Director of National Intelligence to inform the public of the risks of VPN usage, including increasing their odds of being swept up in NSA dragnets.

Certainly the NSA isn’t concerned about “incidental collection.” It’s never been too concerned about its consistent “incidental” collection of US persons’ communications and data in the past and this isn’t going to budge the needle, especially since it means the NSA would have to do more work to filter out domestic communications and the FBI would be less than thrilled with any efforts made to deny it access to communications it doesn’t have the legal right to obtain on its own.

Since the government won’t do this, it’s up to the general public, starting with everyone sharing the contents of this letter with others. VPNs can still offer considerable security benefits. But everyone needs to know that domestic surveillance is one of the possible side effects of utilizing this tech.

Trump’s do everything all at once approach to immigration enforcement is starting to go off the rails. Trump’s plainly stated hatred of “shithole countries” and their inhabitants manifested in early wins for his bigoted “remove the brown people” programs. Then Stephen Miller (the man who answers the “what if a lightbulb had eyebrows and was also a white nationalist” question no one asked) showed up and amped things up. 3,000 arrests per day! he screamed into the void. (The void did not respond to our request for comment before press time.)

A lot of wrenches approached the anti-migrant works and immediately threw themselves into it. First, ICE didn’t have enough officers to staff a surge. No problem, said the administration. Here’s $50,000 and almost no training to get you started! Here’s several (more!) billion dollars to keep it going! Here’s everyone we actually can’t spare from multiple federal agencies!

Bang! Into the blue cities they went, kidnapping and murdering their way towards Miller’s arrest quota. All well and good but at the end of the day, you’ve still got to have some lawyers left to fight the lawsuits these surges generated, as well as to handle challenges against detentions, removals, and direct flights to foreign torture prisons.

Well, the Trump administration no longer has enough lawyers left to do its dirty work. Whoever hasn’t been purged for not being loyal enough or exited ahead of the purges has been asked to clean up a mess with extremely limited amounts of resources and manpower. To make things worse, Trump’s handpicked prosecutors keep being kicked out of court because Trump bypassed the appointment process essential to them remaining employed.

Then there’s the self-inflicted reputational damage Trump’s DOJ has done. The government, for the most part, is no longer granted the presumption of good faith. Courts across the land are not only aware this government isn’t acting in good faith, but they’re refusing to pretend it is, no matter how much copy-pasted boilerplate appears in DOJ filings.

Hundreds of adverse rulings have already been handed down. Hundreds more are on the horizon, especially now that the DOJ has admitted pretty much every arrest that took place in an immigration court was illegal.

It all adds up to the long tail of “flooding the zone.” If you can’t bail water fast enough, you’re going to drown. Here’s how this is working out for the DOJ now, as reported by Kyle Cheney for Politico:

In dozens of cases over the past several weeks, Justice Department lawyers have declined to push back on detainees’ claims that they’re owed a chance to make a case for their release. In those cases, the administration has simply agreed to provide a bond hearing, or even outright release, telling judges that officials “do not have an opposition argument to present” or saying they couldn’t cobble together enough information to mount a defense.

[…]

The new phenomenon is the latest manifestation of the extraordinary strain that the administration’s mass deportation effort — compounded by the mass detention of people who have lived for years without incident in the U.S. interior — has exacted on the justice system.

While ICE bathes in newly awarded billions, the problems its efforts have created are being attended to by a skeleton crew that can’t keep up with Trump’s rights-violating fire hose. That’s created some pretty gaudy numbers, which certainly isn’t a compliment.

Federal judges have ruled more than 7,000 times in recent months that ICE has illegally locked people up without — at the very least — a chance to prove they can live safely in the community.

That’s a lot. This administration is setting judicial records that hopefully will never be broken. It’s not just the government losing cases on the merits. Many of these losses are the result of the DOJ simply being unable to respond at all to legal challenges by people ICE has arrested, detained, or deported.

If there’s a silver lining in this bigoted war on non-white people, it’s everything listed above. Trump’s administration may be evil and stupid in equal measures, but those aspects are being held in check by its inability or unwillingness to anticipate the natural side effects of sending wave after wave of masked goons into cities to kidnap anyone who looks a little bit foreign. The administration is a defective centrifuge that edges closer to disintegration with every rotation. What remains to be seen is who’s going to get hit with the majority of the shrapnel when it finally falls apart. We can only hope it’s the people that started it spinning in the first place.