Note: As I mentioned at the end of this … I’m going to be out of pocket next week. My goal is to do something I have not done for a decade: to take a week off posting.
isten on spotify (transcripts available)
Listen on Apple (transcripts available)
Increasingly (possibly as an outgrowth of their willingness to serve as data mules for his Truth Social tweets), news outlets treat Donald Trump’s mere act of saying something as news.
There’s an interesting example in the NYT that shows how doing so wildly distorts the workings of what democracy America has left.
On the front page of the NYT digital page there’s a package of stories about the reconciliation bill, which Trump wants to push through by July 4, in part, to keep Stephen Miller’s dragnet running. The top “story” in that package bears the headline, “Trump rallies for signature policy bill as GOP rushes to save it; President Trump’s domestic policy bill faced another hurdle after the Senate parliamentarian said several of its major provisions could not be included.”
If you click on that story, it’s not a dedicated news story. Instead, it’s just the top newsletter page, with stubs for stories on the reconciliation bill, Iran strikes, and deportation. Nevertheless, that page itself also bears the headline, “Trump rallies for his policy bill as GOP works to save it.”
If you click though the reconciliation bill stub, it takes you to this story, in which the Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough — not Trump — is the primary actor.
It’s not until the fifth paragraph of the story that we get the promised “news” about Trump rallying for the bill — and the only newsworthy part of that 73-word passage is that Trump either misstated or lied about what was in the bill.
President Trump worked to rally support for the legislation on Thursday at an event at the White House, praising the “hundreds of things here” to like about the bill.
“It’s so good,” he said, though one item he trumpeted, eliminating taxes on Social Security, was not actually in the bill.
When a reporter shouted out a question about whether Congress could pass the bill by July 4, Mr. Trump replied: “We hope so.”
You could make an entire news story about this: that Trump promised to eliminate taxes on Social Security, but it’s not in the Big Ugly he’s pushing through to codify the things that really matter to him. Instead, Trump will take food from children and medical care from working people so he can pay off the billionaires who got him reelected (something else that’s not in the story). Trump made a promise, and rather than keeping it, he is falsely claiming he’s keeping it.
NYT didn’t do that (though it did publish a story about Republicans who rely on the benefits right wingers are trying to kill), but they did cast him as the lead character in the one event in town where he’s a side player, what might be the only substantive legislation passed this year, if right wingers even can pass it, which is not yet clear (Jake Sherman says John Thune doesn’t have the votes to pass it, yet).
Incidentally, the only mention of a Democrat in the story comes from Bobby Kogan, who provided a price tag for the things right wingers had stuffed into a bill that broke the rules for reconciliation.
If Republicans are forced to remove all the provisions Ms. MacDonough has ruled against, it would eliminate more than $500 billion of the bill’s intended spending cuts, according to a rough analysis by Bobby Kogan, a former Democratic Senate Budget Committee staff member and White House budget official who is now the senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
What doesn’t make any of these stories is that the Parliamentarian’s serial rejection of one after another policy in the Big Ugly came as a result of a lot of work from Democratic staffers who successfully argued that the provisions were extraneous to the bill (see the sections on the Byrd Rule in this post for an explanation of what that means).
Ron Wyden is one of the few people who made this point: he and his staff had to work to make this happen.
This is what Democrats in the Senate have been working on (even giving little-noticed press conferences) during a period when many wailed they were doing nothing: trying, at a minimum, to remove the gratuitously bad things right wingers are trying to jam through on this bill. Among the things Democrats did via Byrd Rule challenges are:
It’s not yet clear what will happen with the Big Ugly. Some House members are calling on Thune to fire the Parliamentarian, or to ignore her. There is a workaround that would blow up the filibuster.
For now, at least, Thune keeps insisting he won’t ignore MacDonough’s rulings (though as Politico notes, that could change if Trump demands it).
At the very least, the success in getting things excluded under the Byrd Rule has made a shitty bill less shitty. It has also created a delay, and any delay creates the outside possibility that the press will start to cover this bill as it should be, an effort to steal from the poor to pay off Trump’s debt to Elon Musk, and with the coverage spook enough Republicans to kill the bill in current form. As Cogan notes, these eliminated cuts also create a bigger financial hole in the bill, one of a few issues that risks killing it altogether.
Yes, the press is covering the drama created because Republicans may not have the votes. Yes, it’s likely Republicans will cave, again, once Trump directly threatens them.
But until that happens, Trump is not the story here.
If you want to tell a story about Trump, make it about the lies he and other right wingers are telling to try to reverse the overwhelming opposition to this bill. Absent that, treat Article I as if they still exist.
Update: Both David Dayen and I were once too optimistic that the Big Ugly wouldn’t get done in the House. But he lays out here, with Whitney Curry Wimbish, why these Byrd Rule rulings could doom the bill.
REPUBLICANS HAVE A BUNCH OF OPTIONS for dealing with this, but all of them have either been ruled out, would make the bill seemingly unpassable, or would need more time than they want to take.
First, Republicans can “cure” the Byrd rule problems by coming up with other language and negotiating with the parliamentarian to insert them back into the bill. The Senate Banking Committee already did this with new language on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Previously the committee completely zeroed out funding for the CFPB by setting an existing “cap” on how much the Federal Reserve can transfer to the agency at 0 percent of total Fed funds. That was thrown out by the parliamentarian. Now, in the new text, the committee has changed that to 6.5 percent.
Senators are reportedly trying to go back with new provider tax language as well.
Republicans would also likely try to squeeze more blood from cuts that have already been allowed to stay, Sanders said. “The big thing hanging over them is specifically the instruction to cut Medicaid,” she said. “Exactly where this could come out of, I feel like they’d probably try to get deeper savings from existing Medicaid savings that are allowed to stay in, which might end up making them more harmful.”
The problem here is that all new text would have to go back to the parliamentarian for more haggling. The parliamentarian did approve a change that would add state cost-sharing (along a slower timeline) to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but as a Hill source explained, the process for the full bill could take weeks, and with each passing day, the bill gets less popular. That is why the White House wants the bill done by July 4. That would be next to impossible under a constant rewrite scenario.
[snip]
The Senate appears eager to just stick a bill in the House’s lap and dare them to vote it down. But that assumes they can get a bill over to the House at all. The buildup of parliamentarian rulings really does threaten the outcome.
One huge problem for Republicans is the debt limit, where something needs to be done to raise the nation’s borrowing cap by as early as August. There is a $5 trillion debt limit increase in the Senate version of the bill. If the impasse on the bill continues, Congress may have to split that out and pass a standalone version, which would almost certainly need Democratic support, where Democrats could dictate terms.
Under the timeline needed to pass the megabill by July 4, votes would need to begin today. There’s almost no chance of that happening. A press officer for Thune did not respond to an email request for information to say whether the Senate is operating under a new timeline.
You don’t want to say that a bill cutting taxes and spending simply cannot pass a Republican Congress. It doesn’t make much sense to say that. But that threat has grown much more real by the day.
Emil Bove presented the appearance of a calm collected guy in his confirmation hearing. And Republicans made especially clear they intend to push through Donald Trump’s defense attorney to be Donald Trump’s Circuit Court Judge in New Jersey, where Trump owns a property implicated in one case Bove defended him on.
For much of the hearing, Bove dodged questions successfully, claiming at times he couldn’t answer because something he did at DOJ was not public, claiming at other times that discussing things that are political — like who won the 2020 election!! — would violate the Judicial Canon.
But at the end, Adam Schiff cornered him. Schiff asked whether he said the “fuck you” comment reported in the Erez Reuveni allegation (which Todd Blanche denied happened).
Bove responded that he could not recall (just as he could not recall how many Jan6 prosecutors he had fired or how many Jan6 criminals had been pardoned). But he didn’t deny he said it. “I certainly emphasized the importance of the upcoming operation.”
Schiff asked that the Committee get the notes of that meeting.
Then Schiff turned to Danielle Sassoon’s allegations about Bove’s demand for a quid pro quo for Eric Adams.
Schiff: Let me ask about notes from another meeting which you’re contesting here, and that is the meeting over the decision to dismiss the case — the corruption case — in New York against the Mayor of New York.According to Ms. Sassoon, the US Attorney at the time, during the meeting with Adams’ attorneys, where, she described, um, Adams’ attorneys repeatedly what amounted to a quid pro quo, that you admonished one of the lawyers in the room to stop taking notes. Is that true?
Bove: I don’t believe I instructed that attorney to stop taking notes. I did remark on the fact that he was taking extensive notes. Yes.
Schiff: Why did it concern you that he was taking notes of the meeting?
Bove: Because at that point of the meeting, we were discussing who was responsible for media leaks and I was making the point that only prosecutors had created an extensive record that could support detailed leaks.
Schiff: And you were concerned, were you, that information about this, this, potential quid pro quo might become public? Was that the concern?
Bove: I’ve explained that there was no quid pro quo.
Schiff; Will you provide the notes of that meeting, which you, according to the US Attorney, instructed be collected a the end of the meeting?
Bove: I think a member of my staff may have given that instruction outside my presence. And I defer to the Committee and the Executive Branch on records requests and how they should be handled.
Pam Bondi had, by that point, joined Todd Blanche in overseeing the confirmation hearing for their hatchet man. So Schiff asked that the Committee (Ashley Moody was in the chair) request Bondi and Blanche to make those notes available.
Moody refused.
So Bove dodged that moment, sort of.
But in doing so, Bove confirmed something more substantive from the Reuveni complaint.
Reuveni describes that on March 29, as he was struggling to communicate the scope of an injunction to DHS in the DVD case (the one SCOTUS ruled on Monday), he was affirmatively instructed to stop putting guidance into writing.
Separately, Mr. Reuveni contacted Ensign by phone, who informed him that the head of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations had been given “verbal” notice of the injunction, but again, no written guidance had been disseminated to the agency. Sometime after this call, during the mid-to-late afternoon, Ensign informed Mr. Reuveni by phone that it would be advisable to stop sending emails with many recipients, including Percival, concerning the injunction compliance guidance.41
[snip]
Thereafter, Mr. Reuveni spoke twice with Ensign on the phone between approximately 11:00 a.m. and noon, during which time Ensign told Mr. Reuveni that “leadership” had concluded and directed that no injunction compliance guidance would be issued. Ensign also again told Mr. Reuveni that he should no longer contact DHS asking about guidance.42 Mr. Reuveni informed Ensign that plaintiffs’ counsel had notified OIL attorneys that their class member clients were being or had been prepared for removal, and without further information this appeared to be a violation ofthe injunction. Ensign made comments to the effect that he agreed with Mr. Reuveni, acknowledged the decisions were not ideal and would make it harder to win cases, and stated that he was not a decision maker in these circumstances.
41 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13).
42 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13). [my emphasis]
Two days later, he got the same instruction, this time explicitly on Bove’s orders.
On April 1, Mr. Reuveni was again told to stop asking questions. Mr. Reuveni received phone call from Acting AAG Roth in which Roth relayed that Bove was very unhappy that Mr. Reuveni had contacted counsel at various agencies to ascertain whether DOJ had violated court order Roth conveyed that Mr. Reuveni should stop emailing agency counsel on the matter to instead communicate by phone only where possible.46 Mr. Reuveni understood this instruction to be based on leadership’s aim to avoid generating written material subject to disclosure through FOIA.
46 The Department of Justice’s implementation of restrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302 b 13). [my emphasis]
The same thing happened on following days in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case: He was specifically asked to stop putting things — most notably, his questions about whether there was any basis for claims that KAG had ties to MS-13 — in writing.
DOJ leadership never did. Instead, on several occasions on April 2 and 3 through both phone calls and email, Mr. Reuveni was directed by McHenry, through Roth and Ensign, to cease making requests of DHS and DOS, to stop asking for facts supporting any possible defense ofthe case, that no “asks” of El Salvador of any sort should be made, and to rest on threshold jurisdictional arguments at the hearing.48
48 The Department ofJustice’s implementation ofrestrictions on communications may be in violation of 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(13).
This refusal to send out an order about an injunction is also how DOJ dealt with the first injunctions on the attacks on law firms.
Sure: Absent the paper trail being in the hands of the Committee, Bove claims not to remember any of this.
But he confirmed something consistent with Reuveni’s complaint.
He doesn’t like paper trails of his criminal conspiracies.
A lifetime ago in the history of Stephen Miller’s dragnet (that is, Monday) I contemplated writing a post on how Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes’ opinion — finding that DOJ was not entitled even to a hearing at which to argue in favor of detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia pre-trial. but even if they were, that argument would fail — might influence his lawsuit in Maryland.
I got distracted with other things.
And now, it’ll be a dramatically different post. A bunch of things have happened in the interim, including:
As it is, there are two key details from Holmes’ opinion that may have resonance both in KAG’s criminal case and the lawsuit.
She begins her opinion by noting that KAG is accused of human smuggling, not human trafficking.
To be clear, the offenses of which Abrego is charged are human smuggling, not human trafficking. Although “smuggling” and “trafficking” were sometimes used interchangeably during the detention hearing, there is a distinct difference between the two under the law. They are not transposable. According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) Policy Manual:
Federal law distinguishes between the crimes of human smuggling and human trafficking. Trafficking is a crime committed against a person regardless of the person’s immigration status or the crossing of a transnational border, while smuggling is a crime committed against a country’s immigration laws and involves the willful movement of a person across a country’s border.
A person may voluntarily consent to be smuggled. In contrast, an act of trafficking must involve both a particular means, such as the use of force, fraud, or coercion, and a particular purpose, such as subjection to involuntary servitude or a commercial sex act.
USCIS POLICY MANUAL, Difference Between Trafficking and Smuggling, Vol. 3, Pt. B, Ch. 2, § B.7, https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-3-part-b-chapter-2. The Cornerstone Report,7 a quarterly bulletin highlighting key issues related to investigations by ICE Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), also explains the difference between human trafficking and human smuggling:
Human trafficking and human smuggling are often confused. The two crimes are very different and it is critical to understand the difference between the two.
Human trafficking involves exploiting men, women, or children for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation.
Human smuggling involves the provision of a service—typically, transportation or fraudulent documents—to an individual who voluntarily seeks to gain illegal entry into a foreign country.
The Cornerstone Report, Human Trafficking vs Human Smuggling, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Summer 2017, p.1. As the report states: “Smuggling is transportation-based. Trafficking is exploitation-based.” Id. “These are not interchangeable terms.” Id. [emphasis original]
The distinction matters for a key issue in the opinion, that even if there were minors present in a van KAG drove, that doesn’t necessarily make them victims of the crime.
Nevertheless, Holmes only returns to the issue of trafficking once more in her opinion, when pointing out that if the government had evidence of human trafficking, she hopes that DOJ would charge it.
The Court supposes – or at least hopes – that if children are victimized as part of their undocumented entry into this country, the government would pursue appropriate human trafficking charges against the human traffickers.
She makes a similar aside in her discussion of MS-13. KAG’s alleged gang membership is not charged. The only reason it was pertinent to a detention decision is in how it might substantiate a risk of obstruction. As Holmes laid out, the evidence that KAG actually was a member of MS-13 was weak hearsay.
The government’s evidence that Abrego is a member of MS-13 consists of general statements, all double hearsay, from two cooperating witnesses: the second male cooperator and N.V. Those statements are, however, directly inconsistent with statements by the first cooperator.
[snip]
Contrary to the statements of the second cooperator and NV, the first male cooperator told Special Agent Joseph that, in ten years of acquaintance with Abrego, there were no signs or markings, including tattoos, indicating that Abrego is an MS-13 member. This statement specifically repudiates any outward indicia that Abrego belongs to MS-13, in stark contrast to the non-specific second cooperator’s and N.V.’s feelings that Abrego may belong to MS-13. Given these conflicting statements, the government’s evidence of Abrego’s alleged gang membership is simply insufficient.
But even if KAG were a member of MS-13, that would only be relevant to the detention determination if he were trying to intimidate people because of that gang membership. And the vague allegations don’t get there, she says at the end of that passage.
Here, the government’s evidence of hearsay testimony of a cooperating witness’s general feeling of intimidation without any description of specific language used or actions taken by Abrego is not enough to establish by a preponderance that Abrego poses a serious risk of obstructing justice within the meaning of § 3142(f)(2)(B). 25
25 Given the volume of resources committed to the government’s investigation of Abrego since April 2025, according to Special Agent Joseph, the Court supposes that if timely, more specific, concrete evidence exists of Abrego’s alleged MS-13 gang membership or a consistent pattern of intentional conduct designed to threaten or intimidate specific individuals, the government would have offered that evidence at the detention hearing.
Which elicits a similar footnote as she made regarding trafficking: “If you had evidence of these things that might implicate the detention determination,” she seems to be saying about both trafficking and KAG’s alleged MS-13 membership, “you surely would mention it.”
As noted, those asides did have a role in the opinion (if not as big a one as the page-long discussion about the smuggling/trafficking distinction would seem to suggest).
But they’re important for another reason.
Holmes is basically noting that the government presented no evidence of two claims that top Administration officials, including Trump himself along with Pam Bondi, made repeatedly. The government didn’t share the doctored photo claiming KAG’s knuckles came coded for MS-13. The government presented no evidence that KAG was the threat Pam Bondi claimed he was.
The discrepancy between what the government said publicly and what they actually charged will presumably be the subject of a selective prosecution motion, as well as a slew of other efforts to preserve KAG’s right to a fair trial.
But the disjunct between what top Trump officials said publicly and what they’re willing to say in response to KAG’s lawsuit are a central prong of his motion for discovery sanctions in the lawsuit, which argues that the government is simply not cooperating with his ability to discover what happened regarding his detention. An exhibit, described as “a non-exhaustive list” of the public things that government officials said about KAG, quotes 21 allegations that KAG engaged in human trafficking and 60 claiming he was MS-13. As one example, it cites this screed from Stephen Miller in a press conference on May 1, at least a week after the grand jury already started investigating KAG.
There has been even more evidence that has been made public about [Abrego Garcia’s] violient [sic], repeated threats and assaults against his spouse, someone who had repeated documented human trafficking and human smuggling offenses, somebody that has extensively documented membership in MS-13, a terrorist organization, and of course someone [who] had MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles. This is a person who is a clear and present danger to the safety of the American people and it is a sad reflection on the state of our media and many of the outlets represented in this room that you incessantly try to shill for this MS-13 terrorist.
The filing compares public officials’ refusal to cooperate in discovery, their bogus privilege invocations, and depositions designed to obfuscate with this NY story (included as an exhibit as well), which describes emailed conversations about what to do with KAG that should be subject to the discovery order.
They use the article — for example — to argue that one of the people who did sit for a deposition, DHS Acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara, “may have given untruthful testimony.”
More recently, credible press reports suggest that Mazzara—DHS’s Acting General Counsel—may have given untruthful testimony. At the deposition, Mazzara was asked whether he knew by April 12 [redacted]. He ultimately answered: [redacted] ECF No. 129-9 Tr. 76:9–13. When pressed about whether anyone at DHS [redacted] Mazzara claimed he had [redacted] Id. Tr. 155:10–7. According to the New York Times, however, Mazzara “told his colleagues that [DHS Secretary] Kristi Noem . . . had taken steps to seek Mr. Abrego Garcia’s segregation from other inmates, including members of Barrio 18.” See Ex. C. The report cites specific emails from Mazzara on or around March 28 in which he noted, “We’re also trying to keep him where he is.” Id. On March 30, James Percival, another custodian from whom Plaintiffs have received no documents,12 admitted that Abrego Garcia’s removal was “an administrative error,” but added: “(Not that we should say [so] publicly).” Id.
Another heavily redacted passage suggests that, based on how and when he was charged, DOJ lied about what Pam Bondi knew when.
The filing also compares what Noem and Bondi testified to Congress versus what the timeline of the criminal investigation shows actually happened.
That NYT article describes several conversations, involving but not limited to Erez Reuveni, about ways to fix the error of deporting KAG without endangering the deportation of the 200 other men that day. Reuveni was actually trying to mitigate the risk that the KAG case would endanger the larger argument about the Alien Enemies Act; as described, at least, he was trying to protect the decision to send 200 people to torture under the AEA.
As Mr. Reuveni pointed out to the group, the case potentially “jeopardizes many far more important initiatives of the current administration.” If the government fought and lost, it could have legal repercussions, not least of which for the nearly 140 Venezuelans who were sent to the same facility under the authority of a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
That was where things stood two weeks ago, when KAG’s lawyers were asking for sanctions because of the secrets DOJ is hiding.
Yesterday — the day before Emil Bove’s confirmation hearing to become a Circuit Court Judge — Reuveni submitted a whistleblower declaration to DOJ’s Inspector General, the Acting Special Counsel (who happens to be Trade Rep Jamieson Greer), and the leaders of House and Senate Judiciary Committees, which NYT was the first to report. As part of the complaint, Reuveni claims the public explanation Todd Blanche gave for why he was put on leave — because he was not zealously advocating for his client — is not the real reason. He says he was fired because he refused to implement commands to ignore court orders.
Since April 2025 it has been widely reported that according to DOJ sources Mr. Reuveni was put on administrative leave by DOJ for allegations offailure to follow directive from his superiors failure to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States and for arguing against Homeland Security and the State Department” when he truthfully represented to the court that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal was in error.² These statements by Attorney General Pamela Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche are false and misleading Indeed it has since been reported that prior to the April hearing Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security and Trump appointee James Percival conceded that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal was an administrative error (Not that we should say publicly.)
Nevertheless White House officials have publicly disparaged Mr. Reuveni to justify their refusal to comply with the Constitution and with court orders.4 White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller falsely stated, “The only mistake that was made is lawyer put an incorrect line in legal filing,” and labeled Mr. Reuveni “saboteur, a Democrat.” 5 Referring to Mr. Reuveni, President Trump stated, “Well the lawyer that said it was mistake was here long time was not appointed by us—should not have said that should not have said that.”6
He cites more than the quote that Emil Bove said that they might have to tell courts “fuck you.” Reuveni claimed he defied three illegal orders:
Reuveni’s description of the third illegal order describes how Drew Ensign responded when press headlines misrepresented Reuveni’s mere adoption of ICE’s admission that KAG was deported in error. Ensign scolded Reuveni twice, the second time, in response to a prompt from the White House.
A few minutes after the hearing, Mr. Reuveni went from the courtroom to the U.S. Attorney’s office space in the court building. The press had been present at the hearing, and bythe time he was leaving the courtroom, Mr. Reuveni had already received multiple text messages sharing news headlines about his statements to the court. Mr. Reuveni also received an email from Ensign directing Mr. Reuveni to call him, which Mr. Reuveni did. On that call, Ensign asked Mr. Reuveni – for the first time – why Mr. Reuveni had not argued that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a terrorist and that therefore his withholding ofremoval order was invalid. Mr. Reuveni told Ensign words to the effect of, “I understand you’ve seen the headlines, but read the transcript, I did not say the things the headlines say that I said.”
Ensign asked Mr. Reuveni why he did not argue that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a member of a terrorist organization or that being a member of such organization meant Mr. Abrego Garcia’s protection from removal to El Salvador was nullified. Mr. Reuveni told Ensign he did not make those arguments because: 1 ) those were not arguments in the government’s briefs, which Ensign had reviewed; 2) there was no evidence in the record to support the arguments; and 3) the laws governing withholding of removal do not support a theory that declaring someone a member of a terrorist organization retroactively nullifies a grant of withholding relief. Ensign had little reaction but called again a few minutes later asking similar questions and informing Mr. Reuveni that these inquiries were prompted by the White House. Mr. Reuveni again repeated the same concerns he had on the first call. [my emphasis]
Reuveni describes his repeated objections to an appeal claiming that KAG was MS-13 and therefore a terrorist. Hours after he refused to claim he was, Blanche put him on administrative leave.
Flentje told Mr. Reuveni that he should sign the brief, and that he had signed up for the responsibility to do so when he accepted the Deputy position. Mr. Reuveni responded, “I didn’t sign up to lie. ” Ultimately, someone else signed that brief, making arguments contrary to law, which was filed at 1:41 a.m. on April 5.
Less than seven hours later, Mr. Reuveni was placed on administrative leave for alleged “failure to follow a directive from your superiors; failure to zealously advocate on behalf ofthe United States; and engaging in conduct prejudicial to your client.” The letter signed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche placing Mr. Reuveni on administrative leave was leaked to the press and reported that same day.51
Erez Reuveni claims that he was placed on leave (and ultimately fired) because he refused to lie and say there was evidence that KAG was an MS-13 member and therefore a terrorist.
The press focus on Reuveni’s complaint has been, justifiably given his confirmation schedule, on Emil Bove. Todd Blanche’s name appears just five times in the complaint, three times in association with a letter to him, the other two for his public claims about why Reuveni was fired. And Blanche’s name doesn’t appear at all in the appendix of public false claims top Trump officials have made about KAG.
But immediately after the NYT published its story, Blanche implicated himself personally, claiming to be at the meeting about the CECOT deportations and declaring taht public reporting of something newsworthy, “should not be tolerated.”
The New York Times article describes falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and then leaked to the press in violation of ethical obligations. The claims about Department of Justice leadership and the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General are utterly false which is likely why the author gave the Department of Justice 15 minutes this morning to respond (they wrote that we did not “immediately respond with a comment”) before releasing this garbage. Note that [1] not a single individual except the disgruntled former employee agrees with the statements cavalierly printed by this purported news outlet. [2] I was at the meeting described in the article and at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed. This is disgusting journalism. Planting a false hit piece the day before a confirmation hearing is something we have come to expect from the media, but it does not mean it should be tolerated.
Blanche’s claim that he was at that meeting conflicts with Reuveni’s; the whistleblower claims Bove was the senior DOJ official present.
That same day, following news reports that the President intended to sign a presidential proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), Mr. Reuveni was summoned to a meeting by Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG) of OIL, Drew Ensign. At the meeting were Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General (PADAG) Emil Bove, Counselor to the Deputy Attorney General James McHenry, Associate Deputy Attorney General (ADAG) Paul Perkins, DAAG Ensign, Acting Director for OIL and Mr. Reuveni’s direct supervisor, August Flentje, and other OIL attorneys. [my emphasis]
That said, there’s a logical problem with Blanche’s claim. He clearly claims to have checked the story of the people who were in the meeting, marked with a [1] above. And then claims he was at the meeting, marked with a [2]. Those are the claims of a guy who has manufactured a cover story. Which — in light of the phone traffic documented by Reuveni that responded to his own emails — looks pretty suspect.
Remember: One of the very first public things Todd Blanche did as DAG was to launch a witch hunt into NYT’s source debunking Trump’s claims in the Alien Enemies Act. Then, when Pam Bondi reversed the media protections put into place by Merrick Garland, she cited that story as well. The seniormost officials at DOJ are using the Department to hunt down evidence of their own complicity in human rights violations. And Blanche’s intemperate response to Reuveni’s allegations looks to be more of the same.
Sadly, I don’t think the Reuveni allegations will have much impact on the Bove nomination. Right wingers in the Senate are all too happy to sanction Trump’s unprecedented corruption, as their confirmation of Blanche himself (to say nothing of Kash Patel) makes clear. I doubt that will change with Bove.
But it’s different for criminal defendants. By virtue of being criminally charged, rather than just suing for release, KAG can make a claim to need all of the conflicting stories about how top DOJ officials relayed demands and repeated false claims from people like Stephen Miller.
Perhaps that explains DOJ’s purported concern that if KAG is released pretrial, DHS might just deport him.
Nevertheless, a release of the Defendant into ICE custody poses potentially irreparable problems for the prosecution in this case and, therefore, for the public at large whose interests the Government serves. Should this Court not order a stay, and the Defendant is moved to ICE custody and deported from the United States, the prosecution would lose the meaningful opportunity to try its case. This would be irreparable harm to the public. How fast the Defendant could or would be deported remains to be seen. In candor with the Court, such a potential deportation of the Defendant would not be instantaneous. How fast such proceedings could move are difficult to predict. Yet, these immigration proceedings exist as real, potential, substantial and irreparable harm to the United States.
DOJ has made its problems so much worse by refusing to do the right thing with KAG and the CECOT deportees.
And because they’ve charged KAG, that may actually finally backfire.
Update: In the DVD case (the one in which SCOTUS ruled on Monday), plaintiffs are asking to file a surreply describing Reuveni’s allegations.
Just yesterday, a former high-level official with the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation filed a protected whistleblower claim alleging that in this very case, highlevel Department of Justice officials conspired to violate the district court’s temporary restraining order (TRO). The disclosure describes, in painstaking detail, efforts to feign ambiguity in an unambiguous order, failing to disseminate the fact and terms of the injunction, and purposefully failing to respond to Plaintiffs’ inquiries. See Protected Whistleblower Disclosure of Erez Reuveni Regarding Violation of Laws, Rules & Regulations, Abuse of Authority, and Substantial and Specific Danger to Health and Safety at the Department of Justice at 16-21, https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25982155/file-5344.pdf.1
Amid all the warmongering last week, there was an interesting head fake in the Senate.
On Tuesday, JD Vance went to a Senate lunch (rather than the Situation Room meeting on Iran) at which he told them the deadline for passing was the August recess — starting August 4.
On Wednesday, Susie Wiles went for a very short visit to the Senate to order them to get the whole thing done by July 4.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is encouraging Congress to get the “big, beautiful bill” to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.
Wiles told GOP senators at a closed-door lunch that the Independence Day deadline still holds as far as Trump is concerned, according to a person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting.
I started to write a long post (piggybacking on this one) about how the various timelines — the legal responses to Trump’s abuses and the economic impact of his disastrous policy choices — might make it harder to codify key parts of his abuses in law with the Big Ugly reconciliation bill. I was going to lay out how recent developments (this was so long ago I surmised that Trump’s Iran warmongering might cause him some political headaches and now … here we are, Trump talking regime change in the wake of an inconclusive illegal strike) might exacerbate the way his legislative agenda might be Overtaken By Events.
That post got Overtaken By Events.
The punch line of my original post was going to be an argument that Wiles was pushing the Senate to hurry up not because impending financial doom might make passing the Big Ugly harder, nor because the debt ceiling is approaching.
Rather, Kristi Noem is burning through cash.
President Trump’s immigration crackdown is burning through cash so quickly that the agency charged with arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out of money next month.
Why it matters: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is already $1 billionover budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year. That’s alarmed lawmakers in both parties — and raised the possibility of Trump clawing funds from agencies to feed ICE.
- Lawmakers say ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is at risk of violating U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.
- That’s added urgency to calls for Congress to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which could direct an extra $75 billion or so to ICE over the next five years.
- It’s also led some lawmakers to accuse DHS and ICE of wasting money. “Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the DHS appropriations subcommittee.
Zoom in: ICE’s funding crisis is being fueled by Trump’s team demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace ICE is still trying to reach.
This creates the possibility for a slew of legal challenges to Stephen Miller’s dragnet, both from those targeted in it challenging the legality of spending money to target them in the first place, but also from opponents who can start suing Trump for breaking the law by spending money that was not appropriated.
The dragnet is at somewhat-imminent risk of becoming an illegal use of funds.
And that comes as a few Republicans — most loudly, Rand Paul, who was bypassed as Chair for the Senate language on homeland security funding — start raising questions about why we need to blow so much money if Miller has already shut down the border.
Sen. Rand Paul is a frequent thorn in GOP leadership’s side. But his recent break over border security funding in President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” has top Republicans pushing the bounds of institutional norms to rein him in.
Senior Republicans have sidelined the Kentucky Republican, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in their talks with the White House over policies under the panel’s purview.
Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told POLITICO he has taken over as the lead negotiator around how to shepherd through tens of billions of dollars for border wall construction and related infrastructure in the GOP megabill. Meanwhile, a Senate Republican aide said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) — who heads the relevant Homeland Security subcommittee — will be the point person for negotiating the bill’s government affairs provisions.
With every other committee chair helping manage negotiations for their panels’ portions of the massive tax and spending package, cutting Paul out is unprecedented. But Paul proposed funding border security at a fraction of what the administration requested and the House passed in its bill.
I’ve long been tracking conflict among Republicans over the financial parts of the Big Ugly. But even as Trump’s polling turns south on Miller’s gulag, the huge funding package for it is creating some headaches for the must-pass reconciliation bill.
In an op-ed in Fox News today (accompanied by live Fox News pressure), John Thune gives up the game.
He argues that Republicans have to get the bill done by July 4 — Susie Wiles’ deadline, not JD’s. And his argument focuses primarily on the immigration funding (but also Golden Dome, which Mark Kelly recently exposed as an impossible boondoggle).
In large part, this bill is the culmination of President Trump’s campaign promises and the promises that Republican senators have made to our voters. Chief among them is keeping the American people safe through strong border security and a military strong enough to deter threats and conflicts around the world before they begin.
President Trump has achieved remarkable success in ending the Biden border crisis and removing the criminal illegal aliens that President Biden let walk into our country – but it hasn’t been cheap, and the administration has told us that resources are running out. This bill will fully fund the border wall and President Trump’s successful policies for the entirety of his presidency, removing any possibility that Democrats will hold those resources hostage to try to increase other government spending.
This same principle also applies to defense funding. Recent conflicts around the world should make clear the need to have a modern and lethal fighting force that can keep the American people safe. This means smart, generational investments like President Trump’s Golden Dome for America to defend against advanced drones, missiles, and hypersonics, as well as prioritizing building new ships and unmanned vehicles.
A nation cannot prosper unless it is secure, and with our borders and defense capabilities bolstered, the next key pillar of this bill is creating prosperity in America.
[snip]
Senators have worked to develop this bill for well over a year now. Now it is time to act. Border resources are drying up. National security needs have never been more apparent. And with each passing day, we move closer to reaching both our nation’s debt limit and the largest-ever tax increase on the American people.
Senators return to Washington today and we will remain here until this bill is passed. We know that Democrats will fearmonger and misrepresent our efforts, and we expect them to drag this debate long into the night with unrelated issues. However, I am confident we will get this bill across the finish line. [my emphasis]
It may not be just the burn rate of Noem’s spending spree.
That is, Noem is blowing through cash and the result of it is horrible images of American citizens being assaulted by masked goons. Noem is blowing through cash and businessmen in all sorts of industries are discovering that their businesses will suffer. Noem is blowing through cash and everyone is talking about how terrible the consequences of Miller’s demand for 3,000 bodies a day is.
Noem is blowing through cash and the issue of immigration is becoming a liability, not Trump’s biggest advantage.
And so Thune will attempt to do Susie Wiles’ bidding to get the dragnet funded before it’s too late.
The magistrate judge who presided over a detention hearing for Kilmar Abrego Garcia (KAG) last week, Barbara Holmes, has ruled that the government is not entitled to further review of his detention, but even if they were, they would not meet the standard under the Bail Reform Act to keep him jailed pre-trial.
The takeaway of her ruling is that the government’s attempt to claim the alleged presence of minors in the van he drove made his alleged crime — transporting undocumented migrants — serious enough to merit detention failed. The evidence didn’t pass the sniff test.
But the ruling is important because it documents just how shitty the case against KAG is, which (as far as I saw), just Adam Klasfeld and Katelyn Polantz attempted to do before this.
There were two main problems with the evidence. First, the evidence that one of the guys in the van KAG was driving through Tennessee when he was stopped back in November 2022 was a minor is based on hearsay after hearsay.
The TN State Trooper who stopped KAG passed around a piece of paper and asked everyone in the van to write down their name and date of birth. The government introduced this part of the roster, claiming it showed that one guy was born in 2007, and so would have been 15 at the time. That was the primary basis of their claim that KAG’s alleged crime involved a minor.
But the direct witness to that would be the guy in question, and the government hasn’t tracked him down.
The next most direct witness would have been the Trooper, who (Holmes noted) could have described whether he thought that guy looked young. But for some unstated reason, the government didn’t call him as a witness. Instead, everything came in through the government’s sole witness, whom Holmes describes as ICE HSI Special Agent Peter Joseph.
Note, I’ve seen other people say Joseph is an FBI Agent; if he really is HSI, it would make another of these politicized cases that don’t involve the FBI. Thus far, the sole exception is the Hannah Dugan case.
The Trooper’s own body cam got purged; what was presented was his partner’s. And while that body cam footage corroborates the hearsay claim that the Trooper got the roster, it doesn’t capture the guys filling it out.
While the body camera footage – which is itself hearsay – includes the passing around of a piece of paper among the vehicle occupants at the direction of a THP trooper on the scene, the detail of the roster is visible only briefly in the body camera footage.
The Trooper claims that he photographed the passports and saw no entry stamps. But those photos can’t be found. And the body cam footage that exists doesn’t show him taking photos.
However, even though the photograph of the roster was produced, the photographs of the passports cannot be located, according to Special Agent Joseph’s testimony. 17
17 According to Special Agent Joseph, THP Trooper Foster also stated he is almost 100% certain that none of the vehicle occupants’ passports had stamps from port of entry. However, the body camera footage, which the Court fully reviewed, does not show THP Trooper Foster taking any passport photographs or even that he was provided with passports. The Court recognizes that the footage is not from THP Trooper Foster’s body camera. The footage does, however, appear to show THP Trooper Foster’s entire interaction with the vehicle occupants.
And all that’s before you look at the number, which (KAG’s lawyers pointed out in the hearing) looks like it could have been overwritten, and even if it weren’t, Holmes observes, 1s and 7s are numbers that can be confused.
So Holmes found that that allegation was not credible enough to win the government a further detention hearing.
The other primary claims about KAG go through three familially-related cooperating witnesses. As I noted when I unpacked the indictment, this entire case rests on their credibility.
As Holmes described it, this was double (or triple) hearsay testimony of three witnesses all of whom hope to remain in the country, two of whom are felons the government will or already has freed. And the testimony of those guys as to whether KAG brought his special needs kids with him is not remotely credible just as a matter of logistics.
Special Agent Joseph testified that the first and second (male) cooperators testified or stated in interviews that Abrego typically took his children with him on trips during which he was allegedly smuggling undocumented people from one place to another. The first female cooperator testified to also having knowledge of this alleged conduct. Importantly, each cooperating witness upon whose statements the government’s argument for detention rests stands to gain something from their testimony in this case.
The first cooperator, who provided interview statements and grand jury testimony, has two prior felony convictions, has previously been deported five times, and was released early from a 30-month federal prison sentence for human smuggling as part of his cooperation in this case. He is the purported domestic leader of the human smuggling organization in which Abrego is accused of participating. He has been granted deferred action on deportation in exchange for his testimony. Special Agent Joseph acknowledged on cross-examination that the first cooperator will likely be granted work release as part of the conditions of the halfway house in which he currently resides following his early release from prison.
The second cooperator is also an avowed member of the human smuggling organization and is presently in custody charged with a federal crime for which he hopes to be released in exchange for his cooperating grand jury testimony. He has also been previously deported and has requested deferred action on deportation in exchange for his cooperation. The second cooperator is a closely related family member of the first cooperator.
The first female cooperator is also closely related to the first and second male cooperators. She testified before a federal grand jury in Texas about the investigation of Abrego and has requested deferred action on deportation in exchange for her cooperation. Special Agent Joseph did not personally interview this first female cooperator.
The Court gives little weight to this hearsay testimony – double hearsay through Special Agent Joseph’s testimony – of the first male cooperator, a two-time, previously-deported felon, and acknowledged ringleader of a human smuggling operation, who has now obtained for himself an early release from federal prison and delay of a sixth deportation by providing information to the government. Nor do the hearsay statements of the second male cooperator on this issue fare any better, as his requested release from jail and delay of another deportation depends on providing information the government finds useful. Even without discounting the weight of the testimony of the first and second male cooperators for the multiple layers of hearsay, their testimony and statements defy common sense.
Both male cooperators stated that, other than three or four trips total without his children, Abrego typically took his children with him during the alleged smuggling trips from Maryland to Houston and back, some 2,900 miles round-trip, as often as three or four times per week. The sheer number of hours that would be required to maintain this schedule, which would consistently be more than 120 hours per week of driving time, approach physical impossibility. For that additional reason, the Court finds that the statements of the first and second male cooperators are not reliable to establish that this case “involves a minor victim.”
The problems with these guys’ testimony goes further still. The claims that KAG at one point transported guns goes through them — which raises the question why the repeat felon has never been charged for having them.
The first cooperator, the leader of the human smuggling operation, in a changed statement from his initial interview, stated that he was a collector and buyer and seller of guns, that he would regularly give guns to his drivers, and that he gave one or two to Abrego, who took them back to Maryland during transports.29 The second cooperator made similar statements about witnessing Abrego purchase and transport guns.
If truthful, these circumstances are concerning. However, the reliability of the evidence is questionable, which detracts from the weight it will be given. The first cooperator only provided this information in a second interview, described in Special Agent Joseph’s testimony as “different or evolved” from the first interview. Further, there is no other evidence of Abrego possessing firearms.
29 The first cooperator’s admitted prior criminal history at least suggests that he might be prohibited from possessing firearms. If so, it is unclear whether the first cooperator is receiving immunity from prosecution or some other concession for this information.
Worse still, the first guy — the repeat felon — debunked the second guy’s claim that KAG was an MS-13 member.
Contrary to the statements of the second cooperator and NV, the first male cooperator told Special Agent Joseph that, in ten years of acquaintance with Abrego, there were no signs or markings, including tattoos, indicating that Abrego is an MS-13 member. This statement specifically repudiates any outward indicia that Abrego belongs to MS-13, in stark contrast to the non-specific second cooperator’s and N.V.’s feelings that Abrego may belong to MS-13.
Your star witness, Attorney General Bondi, says the President is a liar.
In a footnote, Holmes basically says, “this is all you’ve got on this gang claim?”
25 Given the volume of resources committed to the government’s investigation of Abrego since April 2025, according to Special Agent Joseph, the Court supposes that if timely, more specific, concrete evidence exists of Abrego’s alleged MS-13 gang membership or a consistent pattern of intentional conduct designed to threaten or intimidate specific individuals, the government would have offered that evidence at the detention hearing.
Perhaps she also saw that ABC interview?
The one other witness (who has been paid for her cooperation in the past) implicating KAG with MS-13 membership, offered a vague, unsworn description from five years ago, when she was a teenager, and. her family has ties to 18 Barrio gang, the gang against which KAG was found to have credible fear of retaliation in his immigration proceedings.
Some of this evidence would get stronger at trial, where all these avowed human smugglers would have to testify under oath themselves.
But you still have the patently obvious case where Pam Bondi’s DOJ is larding on benefits for the kind of people that Stephen Miller likes to disappear to CECOT, and they’re doing so primarily so they can send KAG to CECOT instead of them.
Pam Bondi went on TV and talked about how dangerous all this is (accusing him of human trafficking, with which Hughes notes, he was not charged), implicating that KAG was grooming children but she was prosecuting and convicting them.
These facts demonstrate Abrego Garcia is a danger to our community.
[snip]
Co-conspirators allege that and we were clear to say that he is charged with, it’s not, only very serious charges of smuggling. And again, there were children involved in that. Human trafficking, not only in our country but in our world is very, very real. It’s very dangerous. And as you saw recently in Virginia, the arrest we made of the MS-13 member, unrelated to this, we learned at that press conference, that’s where they bring young children into our country and they start grooming them at middle school age to become MS-13, full-fledged members commit violent crimes throughout our country. It is highly organized, it is very dangerous, and they are living throughout our country. But no more because they are being arrested. They are being prosecuted and being convicted and deported when appropriate.
Except not her star witnesses, whose testimony conflicts, and who were the guys allegedly directing KAG to do what he did.
Pam Bondi is going to free those guys into the United States — maybe even let them stay.
Does Stephen Miller know about this? Because this is the kind of thing he accuses Democratic politicians of doing, threatening to arrest them for doing so.
The government has already appealed this decision, and everyone involved admits KAG may simply be snapped up in immigration detention if he is freed. But for now, a judge has debunked much of the inflated claims DOJ made.
Trump has been [cough] gunning for the US international order since long before he was inaugurated.
The reasons why are important. He has a zero sum game approach to everything, and so treats alliances and all soft power as rip-offs. That resentment, at the core of Trump’s personality, is one of many things Vladimir Putin exploited to make Trump hate his military alliances. And as the US legal system had the audacity to subject him to it, Trump developed a need to destroy rule of law. That he can restore his self-illusion of business prowess by extorting bribes on an industrial scale is just gravy.
And so he came into power with the intent of destroying several — but not all — prongs to US hegemony, the prongs that lowered the cost of sustaining America’s dominant role in the world even as China threatens it: US alliances, US soft power, and a claim to US exceptionalism.
He’s still got the unsurpassed military. America’s tech platforms remain the dominant communications network of the world and, with that, its attendant ease of spying. For the moment — but possibly only for the moment — the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, which permits the US to fund everything else and coerce compliance in more subtle ways.
But, partly out of psychological fragility, Trump has chosen to destroy several key tools that made exercising US power easier and cheaper. He has forgone hegemony in the search of dominance. Trump’s military parade failed to give him the psychological fulfillment he sought, and so Bibi Netanyahu was able to sell him on an illegal invasion of Iran that would fill that need.
Yesterday’s strike on Iran dealt at least the symbolic death blow to the Western world order put into place after World War II to prevent follow-on catastrophes. Trump already launched a structural attack on the institution that would hold him accountable alongside Putin and Bibi Netanyahu for war crimes; the NYT finally matched Quinn’s post on the attack on the ICC yesterday (using both the digital hegemony the US still maintains but also the financial hegemony is may piss away). Trump intends to do the same to much of the UN as well.
By refusing to alert Democratic lawmakers of the attack — by violating not just the War Powers Act (which has become a three decade habit) but also the National Security Act — Trump launched this war as an attack on democracy, both on the Democratic Party as the legitimate opposition but also on Congress as a coequal brach of power, as much as on Iran.
While I haven’t read it all, what I have read makes me think the academic and popular literature on democratic backsliding never considers for what happens when a significant power, much less a hegemon, backslides. Two models we’ve adopted to measure Trump’s rush to eliminate American democracy — Orbán’s Hungary and Putin’s Russia — both bear important lessons (not least because Orbán and Putin have both facilitated Trump’s return and instructed his policy approach). But both men exploited a moment of weakness in their country, whereas Trump is in the process of deliberately pissing away much of America’s strength to carry out his goals, many of which are personal glorification as much as successful authoritarianism.
Trump cares more about the feeling of domination than he does about success for anyone but himself and loyal allies, much less than the country as a whole. And that psychological craving for the feeling of domination is what Bibi played to — in the wake of Trump’s flaccid military parade and the contrasting joy of the No Kings protests — to get him to join a war of choice against Iran. Trump was manipulated to use dominance rather than hegemony against Iran in part because his other efforts to obtain full capitulation — from law firms, from Harvard, from California, from China — have failed.
Stephen Miller, too, seems to know how to trigger Trump’s psychological need for domination, even while Miller’s administrative ineptitude creates surface area for attack in the larger effort to pursue authoritarianism.
Partly as a result, that craving for domination has led Trump to fuck the US economy: with Miller’s gulag, with his own trade war, with his attacks on US scientific and medical dominance. And this is where the backsliding analysis misses, in my opinion.
We have no idea what will come from Trump’s stupid and illegal decision to join Bibi’s attack on Iran. This is not Iraq 2.0 for a bunch of reasons, starting with the fact that Bush and Cheney attempted to limit civilian casualties whereas Bibi, with Trump’s blessing, is already pursuing the annihilation of Palestinians, and so we must consider whether similar annihilation is in the works in Iran.
This is not Iraq 2.0 because, even though Bush 2 was unable to match the diplomatic commitment to an Iraq War that Bush 1 achieved, W was still able to persuade allies to join the effort. While it seems exceedingly likely that some European allies will join or at least tacitly sanction this invasion, they’ll do so knowing their relationship has become one of coercion. They’ll know that Trump will sell out any contribution like he and JD Vance and Pete Hegseth love to attack the Danes for their sacrifices in the Afghan war.
This is not Iraq 2.0 because, whereas Cheney used that war to expand and perfect US surveillance, Trump is largely ignoring external surveillance, relying instead on lies from Bibi, preparing instead to vastly expand its focus internally.
This is not Iraq 2.0 because during Iraq 1.0 the US was a largely uncontested hegemon, whereas Trump has not only destroyed the tools by which the US persuades rather than coerces cooperation, he has a psychological need to seek only coerced capitulation. Absent that — in the face of pushback on Ukraine, on his trade war, and on democracy itself — he became and becomes vulnerable to cooptation by people like Bibi. Trump left a G-7 that refused to capitulate to him and sprinted headlong into Bibi’s warm embrace.
We don’t know how Trump’s attack on Iran will affect efforts to combat his authoritarianism internally. He will definitely use it as a justification to increase crackdowns on dissent, but he’s already deploying emergencies to do that, and given the many ways Trump violated the law to launch this attack, it’s unclear how much more amenable courts will be to treat this one as real. Before the attack, key factions of his base — including true opponents of war, Russian useful idiots, unconstrained antisemites, and what few real libertarians are left in the US — spoke out against the operation. Many are already falling into line, but it’s unclear whether that will last if things go badly from here. And those outside Trump’s base and outside the Fox News bubble at least thus far oppose this intervention. Trump will be attempting to sell this war without laying any groundwork for it, even as the things that were making him increasingly unpopular — the ICE raids — will not go away or grow less visible.
But what we do know is the international order has just been dismantled and whatever advantages the US military and dragnet give it, Trump is limiting the value of those advantages by weakening the US economy and possibly US financial hegemony even as China will want to respond to this attack.
Attacking Iran will exacerbate the effect of Trump’s attacks on the US economy, domestically. And it will therefore increase China’s leverage over us — and increase the import of the leverage over rare metals in this confrontation. And that’s before China uses this opportunity to extend its own hegemony, which it was already doing.
At every stage, Trump and Miller have pursued things that an aspiring dictator in a declining state might do to stave off further decline. But those very same acts from a country with what had been the best economy in the world, currency hegemony, and unsurpassed scientific know-how have the opposite effect. They make the aspiring dictator weaker, first externally and then, as a result, internally.
Which is to say that Trump’s choice to swap global hegemony for attempted dominance may undermine his pursuit of dominance both at home and abroad.
WSJ published a curious profile of Stephen Miller at 9PM on Friday night.
Bylined by accomplished Trump-whisperer Josh Dawsey, first, and accomplished journalist Rebecca Balhaus, second, it runs over 1800-words — a considerable journalistic investment.
It tells us a number of things we already know. “Stephen Miller wanted to keep the planes in the air—and that is where they stayed,” the lede implies, but does not confirm, that Miller was the one who ordered DHS to defy Judge Boasberg’s order not to deport migrants to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act, a topic currently being contested in discovery in that lawsuit.
“He has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed,” it notes, without commenting on the typos and fabrications that permeate the orders. He’s the guy — again, we already knew this — who launched jihads against institutions that an extremist like him would view as liberal. “He has been responsible for the administration’s broadsides against universities, law firms and even museums.”
The article doesn’t include Miller’s native California in that particular sentence, though over 30 paragraphs later, it describes him claiming to know what is good for — what WSJ seemingly paraphrases as — California’s own “citizens,” always a loaded word when you’re discussing Stephen Miller.
Miller, who grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., said large swaths of Los Angeles were engaged in a “rebellion,” according to people present.
Los Angeles had become like Cancún, he said—it was fine to visit, but not good for its own citizens. To conclude the event, Leavitt told the crowd that Miller needed to return to his work of deportations.
WSJ’s description of his possibly unlawful role in invading his home state appears just five paragraphs after confirming he was the guy who targeted universities and law firms, linking to the WSJ story that remains the best report on Miller’s demands for more bodies, though neither of the journalists bylined on this story had a byline on the other one.
His orders to increase arrests regardless of migrants’ criminal histories set off days of protests in Los Angeles. Miller coordinated the federal government’s response, giving orders to agencies including the Pentagon, when Trump sent in the Marines and the National Guard, according to officials familiar with the matter.
And that paragraph fingering Miller for the invasion of California immediately follows a paragraph that describes that he “suggested” using the Alien Enemies Act but stops short of confirming that he’s the guy who made the declaration, even though Trump himself disclaimed doing so.
Miller, who isn’t a lawyer, is the official who first suggested using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, which the Justice Department pursued. He also privately, then publicly, floated suspending habeas corpus, or the right for prisoners to challenge their detention in court, which the administration hasn’t tried. That prompted pushback from other senior White House and Justice Department officials.
WSJ includes the observation that Miller’s call to suspend habeas corpus “prompted pushback from other senior White House and Justice Department officials” and that “the administration hasn’t tried” that legal move in a different paragraph than one that claims, “There are some limits to his influence.” The paragraph that purports to describe the limits to his influence includes just one thing he didn’t get (an effort to kill the Meta antitrust case) but also includes one thing he did, at least so far (a reversal of the decision to limit deportations).
There are some limits to his influence. He was supportive of Meta’s push to settle its antitrust case, which fell flat. Trump last week signaled concerns that the administration’s deportation policies were too aggressive, calling for a pause in some deportations that he has since rolled back. Trump, asked how Miller’s directives on deportations squared with his own, declined to put distance between the two of them. “We have a great understanding,” Trump said.
There are few hints as to how Miller wields power. His office is steps from the Oval Office — again, we knew that — and “some posts at cabinet agencies have been described by administration officials as reporting directly to Miller, effectively bypassing cabinet secretaries,” that must include Homeland Security, which would be pertinent to mention given that one of the dishiest tidbits in the whole article is that in Trump’s first term, Trump refused to give Miller a leadership role at Homeland Security. “Trump declined, according to a former administration official, telling aides he thought Miller wasn’t leader material.”
The article describes Miller’s success pushing for a travel ban in the first Administration and notes he expanded the list to twelve this time around. But it doesn’t mention that a leaked cable disclosing that Trump is considering expanding that list to 36 countries, including most of Africa, a leak that has been broadly replicated in a way that indicates real pushback.
The article alludes to “Several White House staffers” who observe that Miller always adopts the most extreme legal posture and, in the same sentence, describes that that extreme posture has led even SCOTUS to rebuke the Administration. But the only person described — quoted even! — as drawing the obvious conclusion, that Miller fucked up, is a Trump opponent. “‘I think the administration has miscalculated and overstepped,’ said Skye Perryman, who leads Democracy Forward, an organization that has repeatedly sued Trump.”
That’s one of just a few direct quotes in the 1800-word piece (the others are from Trump, from Karoline Leavitt, and from Miller himself). Indeed, everything about this article couches where it comes from. It chooses not to list how many Republicans contributed to the story. In some cases, passive constructions like, “have been described by administration officials,” obscures whether WSJ learned what it reports directly from those administration officials, or heard them second-hand.
A different article might have noted that if Miller really is issuing some of these orders, such as to deploy Marines to invade Los Angeles, it means entire operations are wildly unconstitutional. He’s not the President. Only the President can invoke the Alien Enemies Act or usurp California’s National Guard, even if Miller typed up the error-riddled Executive Orders that effected the commands. Amid Trump’s squawks about a Joe Biden autopen scandal, even Trump has confessed he doesn’t understand what he has signed.
A different article might have described how Miller used Trump’s vulnerability in the wake of being shot at to make racism the central plank of the campaign and now the Administration (though it does describe how Miller overrode Tony Fabrizio’s advice to do so).
A different article might have called Miller something besides an “immigration hawk.”
This is not that article, however.
This is an article published by a Murdoch rag at 9PM on a Friday night — the sweet spot where you publish news someone wants to bury — recording some uncertain number of Republicans who, in the face of declining poll numbers on immigration (but even in an article that described “concerns that the administration’s deportation policies were too aggressive,” saying nothing about the damage Miller’s jihad is doing to the economy, much less that entire states are on the verge of losing their harvests) have ever so delicately started to blame Miller: for the court losses, for the backlash, for the unsolicited calls likened to, “a grandmother who wouldn’t stop talking and said his calls were akin to listening to a podcast.”
The first real break in the cowered omertà about Stephen Miller’s role and plans was that Washington Examiner piece fleshing out Axios’ scoop about Miller’s demands for 3,000 bodies a day, which was followed by NBC, then the aforementioned superb WSJ story. Right wingers want to talk about Stephen Miller’s responsibility for the chaos (and economic destruction) in California and elsewhere. And while there have been far more useful profiles explaining how he accrued power and where his pathologies come from, this profile of hushed complaints seems like something else. A test to see whether opposition to Miller can succeed.
It may even be something more. NYT reports that, even as it scored several court victories, Harvard sought a meeting to negotiate detente with the Trump White House, one about which both Linda McMahon and Trump have been more optimistic than Harvard. NYT doesn’t mention that Trump needs a deal with higher ed, in part, because Trump needs a deal with China, and protection for Chinese students would be part of any deal.
Meanwhile, we’re 11 days short of DOJ’s deadline to appeal the first order reversing Miller’s attack on law firms, and there’s no sign yet they will appeal. That effort only succeeded in driving key lawyers away from firms that buckled to Trump.
And yesterday, again, Trump hinted that he’s struggling to find some way out of the damage Miller’s immigration jihad has done.
Miller’s jihads have, increasingly, created problems to solve. Which may explain why wary sources are happy to unpack old stories about how Trump once recognized Miller is not leader material.
I’m not complaining that WSJ dedicated 1800-words to describing the centrality of Stephen Miller to the biggest abuses of the Trump second term (and many of the first). It is of acute import to understand how the man’s pathologies endanger the country and the world.
I’m simply observing that this profile, published at 9PM on a Friday night, says as much in how it is told as in anything that it tells.
The Ninth Circuit — a panel of two Trump judges, Mark Bennett and Eric Miller, and one Biden one, Jennifer Sung — has unanimously overturned Judge Charles Breyer’s order enjoining Trump from using the National Guard to protect Federal personnel and property from anti-ICE protests. The decision affirms the court’s jurisdiction to review Trump’s decision (and holds out the possibility that things may change — for example, in how Trump is using the military or the urgency with which California needs its firefighting Guardsmen — that could change the outcome). But for now, Trump continues his invasion of California with the blessing of the Circuit Court.
The judges had all, including Sung, telegraphed at the hearing earlier this week that they would do so . Moreover, the decision itself is unsurprising; a number of legal commentators warned that Governor Newsom was likely to lose this case.
That’s partly because of an 1827 case, Martin v. Mott, that said even if the President abused such decision, the remedy was political. Here’s how the Ninth invoked it for to hold that it must give Trump deference on this decision.
[W]e are not writing on a blank slate. The history of Congress’s statutory delegations of its calling forth power, and a line of cases beginning with Martin v. Mott, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 19 (1827), interpreting those delegations,strongly suggest that our review of the President’s determinations in this context is especially deferential.
[snip]
The Court further explained that although the power delegated to the President under the Milita Act is “susceptible of abuse,” the “remedy for this” is political: “in addition to the high qualities which the Executive must be presumed to possess, of public virtue, and honest devotion to the public interests,” it is “the frequency of elections, and the watchfulness of the representatives of the nation” that “carry with them all the checks which can be useful to guard against usurpation or wanton tyranny.”
Jack Goldsmith has been pointing to the import of that passage all week.
This won’t be the end of things. In its assessment of the harm, the court noted that violations of the Posse Comitatus Act were not before it (the state is now arguing it in their motion for a preliminary injunction), nor was an emergency (like a wildfire) for which California could claim it had immediate need of the Guardsmen. Having affirmed its authority to rule, Newsom might fare better at such a time. And in any case the state has added a slew of new facts below in its motion for a preliminary injunction.
But in the meantime, we would do well to take that lesson from Martin to heart: Politics remains a remedy. Not just a remedy, a necessary part of winning on this issue and on defeating fascism more generally.
And, increasingly, it’s a winning issue. Polls show — even a Fox News poll that has Trump screaming — that Trump is losing the battle to make this dragnet popular.
Certainly Newsom has been focused on that.
There’s been so much else going on, I’ve seen no focused commentary on the media campaign Newsom has been pursuing, even as he attempted to block the invasion in courts. Newsom has been conducting the kind of media campaign that the most realistic assessments of last year’s election loss say Democrats need to learn to do (admittedly, Newsom already took steps in this direction when he started a podcast).
Newsom’s prime time speech last week — widely applauded by those whining about so much else — has drawn a lot of attention.
Newsom repeated much of that same content in a column published at Fox, taking his argument to Trump’s base.
Over the past two weeks, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids around Southern California. They jumped out of unmarked vans, indiscriminately grabbing people off the street, chasing people in agricultural fields. A woman, 9 months pregnant, was arrested in LA; she had to be hospitalized after being released. A family with three children, including a three-year-old, was held for two days in an office basement without sufficient food or water.
Several people taken in the raids were deported the same day they were arrested, raising serious due process concerns. U.S. citizens have been harassed and detained. And we know that ICE is increasingly detaining thousands of people with no other criminal charges or convictions: Those arrested with no other criminal charges or convictions rose from about 860 in January to 7,800 this month – a more than 800% increase. Meanwhile, those arrested and detained with criminal charges or convictions rose at the much lower rate of 91%. Trump is lying about focusing on “the worst of the worst.”
While California is no stranger to immigration enforcement, what we’re seeing is a dangerous ploy for headlines by an administration that believes in cruelty and intimidation. Instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and border security – a strategy both parties have long supported – the Trump administration is pushing mass deportations, targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk, in order to meet quotas.
He started a Substack the other day, describing it as an effort to “flood the zone and continue to cut through the right wing disinformation machine.”
He has done interviews with (best as I can tall, all male) influencers in his emergency response room over and over.
But the response by which I’ve been most fascinated is his trolling on Xitter — the import of which I discussed with LOLGOP earlier this week.
Between his personal account and a press account, Newsom has been supplementing more serious messaging with both important political points and trolling.
The former focuses on the stature of California’s economy, the role migrants play in it, and the likely risk of Trump stealing California’s full-time Guard firefighters. In the likely event something will go catastrophically wrong — whether via economic collapse or natural disaster — thanks to Trump’s jihad against migrants, Newsom has made the case that Trump is responsible, in advance.
Some of that includes building pressure against Republicans applauding Trump’s invasion.
Newsom has long called out the higher crime rates under right wingers. He has called out Mike Johnson, Jason Smith, Tommy Tuberville, Markwayne Mullin, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders for their states’ higher murder rate than California.
The trolling mocks Trump’s aides, including Kristi Noem, Pete Hegeseth, Steven Cheung, and Karoline Leavitt, as when he contrasted how the Guard were left without a place to stay when while Whiskey Pete boasted about going to a ballgame.
But Newsom has focused his closest attention Stephen Miller.
Newsom has been mocking Stephen Miller’s total control over the Administration.
That builds on a number of personal spats with Miller directly, as when Newsom raised Trump’s pardon of Jan6ers to debunk claims anyone but him supports insurrectionists.
And when he called out how Miller is undermining efforts to disrupt fentanyl trafficking.
The personal focus on Miller extends to Newsom’s Press Office account, which has been calling out Miller’s bullshit.
Correcting Miller on the legal posture of sanctuary cities.
Pushing back on Miller’s complaints about Sanctuary cities.
Newsom’s Press Office has pushed other peoples’ memes.
And pushing a TikTok video of Miller’s early racism.
But the trolling from the Press Office itself gets more creative. I’ve already mentioned the sustained play on Star Wars.
And pop culture references, like Lord of the Rings.
The Press Office has found many ways to call Miller Voldemort.
Amid Trump’s flip flops on whether to exclude farmworkers from the raids, the Press Office account has adopted right wing styled memes.
And as Newsom also is, the Press Office account is mocking Trump’s capitulation to Miller on targeting farmworkers.
Also tracking Miller’s ability to override Donny.
As I discussed with LOLGOP, this trolling is structured in a productive way. Not only does it play on Trump’s own weakness (in recent days, rebranding Trump’s MAGA with that weakness), but it sets Miller up as the easy fall guy when shit starts hitting the fan. It does a lot of fact-checking, but frames this battle as much about ego and dick-wagging — the currency of the far right — as rational persuasion.
Stephen Miller’s gulag is not even backed by everyone in the Trump Administration. And that’s before the full effects of it — in higher housing costs, empty produce sections, and restaurant closures — are being felt. And Newsom has been making this about him, an easy target in the same way Musk is.
There are two ways to get the Guard restored to California: A legal win. Or making it a big enough political liability that Trump relents. Newsom is actually pursuing both.
There are problems with Newsom’s efforts. As mentioned, his outreach has been a veritable sausage fest, with a focus almost exclusively on outreach to male influencers. Sure. Trump won with the young male vote and young men are the ones pushing the disinformation. But there has to be a role for outreach to women.
I really wish Newsom had picked some other platform than Substack, which platforms Nazis.
And obviously, Newsom needs to replicate some of this on Bluesky, which Newsom has ignored since he got a personal account; his official account is staid. Newsom just got a Bluesky Press account, which replicates some of the trolling from Xitter, but thus far the trolling of Miller — which would be most important to go viral — has not shown up there.
But everyone needs to approach these battles using all three tools we have: legal, legislative, and political.
You don’t have to like Newsom to recognize that this trolling attempts the kind of messaging Democrats need to do more of. Indeed, his dickish personality and the long-standing bad blood with Trump may make this more effective.