Posts

John Thune’s Flopsweat about Funding Stephen Miller’s Gulag

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.

Share this entry

Remember when Brad Lander Caught Kristi Noem Stealing $80 Million?

It’s perhaps a timely moment to recall that Brad Lander has tangled with Kristi Noem before.

Back when DOGE and DHS clawed back $80 million awarded to New York City to house migrants, Lander was the guy who called them out — and insisted on suing.

New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander said the abrupt decision was an illegal diversion by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency of money used to house asylum-seekers admitted to the U.S. under President Joe Biden.

“President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from New York City’s bank accounts,” Lander said in a statement. “This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.”

Lander’s statement came after the Trump administration claimed the city had received disaster relief funds to house migrants in luxury hotels. Musk posted that his DOGE “discovered” the funding on Monday, calling it “a gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”

The funds were administered by FEMA, a subagency of the Department of Homeland Security. A 2024 report from Lander’s office found that the city paid an average rate of $156 a night for hotel rooms booked through an agreement with the Hotel Association of New York City.

The seizure of funds could result in cuts to city services.

“We can’t recover money we already spent on shelter and services for asylum seekers, so it would require cutting $80 million of some other city expenses,” Lander said.

This happened the very week that Eric Adams was cozying up to Tom Homan — which Dale Ho judged was evidence of a quid pro quo.

Lander took a shot at Mayor Eric Adams for not standing up to Trump, saying that “If instead Mayor Adams continues to be President Trump’s pawn, my Office will request to work in partnership with the New York City Law Department to pursue aggressive legal action.”

Adams said Wednesday that he is in talks with the White House about recovering the money, and that he’s requested an emergency meeting with FEMA to resolve the matter. “The Corporation Counsel is already exploring various litigation options,” he added, in a statement on X.

Adams is scheduled to meet Thursday with Trump border czar Tom Homan, who demanded cooperation from the Democrat during a radio interview Tuesday, saying, “Either he comes to the table or we go around him.”

Adams didn’t insist on getting the money back. On the contrary, Trump’s Administration has continued to steal from New York City.

In fact, the day before Kristi Noem’s goons detained Brad Lander on his third visit accompanying migrants, New York’s lawyers amended their complaint about the theft — to update the Acting FEMA Administrator, to capitalize the words, “Money Grab” (to distinguish it from several other newly alleged harms), to describe the further arbitrary attempts to justify stealing the funds, first by terminating the program six weeks after DOGE took the money, then by launching an onerous investigation.

20. Then, with the purported compliance review apparently uncompleted, FEMA announced on April 1, 2025, that it was terminating SSP entirely. FEMA stated that it was terminating the City’s SSP award for the entirely different reason that the grants “no longer effectuate [] the program goals or agency priorities” (quoting 2 C.F.R. § 200.340(a)(2) (2020)). But the regulation FEMA cited does not permit a federal agency to cancel a grant program funded by Congressional appropriation simply because it has changed its mind and now opposes the program.

21. Not only that. While FEMA’s termination letter provides for a closeout process at the end of which FEMA will determine whether any additional SSP grant funds are owed the City, all SSP funds that were awarded the City and that would have remained available to make any such payment were apparently zeroed out on USASpending.gov more than six weeks earlier.

22. Collectively, these events make plain that Defendants determined to overturn the Congressional appropriation, deny the City SSP funds, and re-take any funds they could find a way to lay their hands on.

The amendment also catches FEMA making false representations to Rhode Island Judge John McConnell and in this lawsuit.

125, Despite Defendants’ representations — to the District Court in Rhode Island on February 11 and, as set forth more fully below, a week later in the Remedy for Noncompliance Letter — that the SSP funds were merely being “paused” or “temporarily” withheld pending a further review, Defendants had elsewhere already recorded the funds as no longer available at all.

The amended suit also describes that — as Trump did with Harvard — FEMA has also launched an onerous investigation into the city, and asks questions similar to the ones demanded of Harvard.

221. Joseph N. Mazzara, Acting General Counsel for defendant DHS, sent City OMB a letter dated June 4, 2025 announcing a “Notice of Investigation and Demand for Records: Shelter and Services Program Grant Awards” (“Notice of Investigation”). Under the guise of investigating the City’s expenditure of SSP funds, the Notice of Investigation sets forth a series of document demands and “interrogatories” that reach far beyond the scope of anything related to the City’s expenditures of federal SSP funds

[snip]

222. The scope of the demand far exceeds anything related to the administration of SSP. For example, the demand seeks, without apparent limitation or connection to immigrants served under SSP:

  • “All documents related to Your compliance with 8 U.S.C. g 1324.”
  • “All documents related to any instructions, guidance, suggestions, or recommendations for aliens to consider” in completing immigration or other government forms or interacting with any federal or state government officials.”
  • “All documents related to Your cooperation with law enforcement (including immigration officials) concerning aliens whom You have encountered'”
  • “All documents related to instructions, guidance, or recommendations, made available to aliens, regarding how to interact with law enforcement.”
  • A list of al “categories of information You have collected about any aliens.”

223. Despite the exceedingly broad scope of the demands, the Notice of Investigation provides just 30 days within which OMB “must produce” the records and information sought.

Admittedly, the lawyers are the ones now driving this fight, not Lander.

But the fight is about money Lander caught Kristi Noem stealing.

Lander’s detention thus bears a third similarity with that of Ras Baraka: both men had sued DHS, both arrests constituted — per Emil Bove’s representations to Dale Ho — election interference, and in both cases, Noem’s goons premeditated the arrest.

This is beginning to look like a pattern.

Share this entry

Why Kristi Noem’s Kidnapping of Brad Lander Failed … Thus Far

In my opinion, three things thwarted Kristi Noem’s attempt to interfere in Brad Lander’s campaign to be NYC’s Mayor by detaining him yesterday:

  • Independent media
  • Solidarity
  • The law

Independent media

I’m increasingly perplexed that when people make lists of prominent Democrats that Noem’s goons have targeted, they leave off David Huerta, the CA SEIU President arrested on a public sidewalk in front of a garment factory where ICE was conducting a search.

I increasingly think the omission may stem from the dearth of video coverage of his arrest — which basically consisted of two ICE guys picking him up and then pushing him down, leading to him knocking his head on the curb (for which he got hospital treatment).

Brad Lander’s detention, by contrast, was quickly covered by independent media present or close by.

I first learned about the detention when The City’s Gwynne Hogan reported it (and posted a shorter version of the above video) in real time. Here’s their story on the detention.

Hell Gate provided updates, including about the protest outside and Lander’s past visits to the courthouse to accompany migrants to court hearings.

AMNY’s Dean Moses posted this picture, which contrasted the fully masked man conducting the arrest with the violence the  ICE goons were using in their detention of Lander.

Mainstream media (with exceptions like Wired) may not save us. But the diligence of independent outlets could.

NYT has the ability to sustain all that independent journalism. But if you can — especially if you live in New York — you might consider supporting them (recall that The City did a lot of the reporting on Eric Adams’ corruption before bigger outlets picked up the story).

Solidarity

That reporting allowed a group (including Zohran Mamdani and four other Mayoral candidates) to peacefully assemble in front of the courthouse. Eventually, even Kathy Hochul came to the courthouse and accompanied Lander as he was released, calling his arrest “bullshit.”

Hochul announced she’ll provide some state funding for the migrants who’re being targeted as they attend court hearings, the problem that Lander was trying to address.

Lander, after he was released, emphasized that he gets to go home but the man he attempted to accompany today, a man named Edgardo, was in ICE detention.

One important point of all this is the underlying solidarity. This was not Lander’s first visit accompanying people; among the folks respond to his detention were one who had been inspired by his actions to engage as well, and another who had provided an Arabic translator some weeks ago. Contrary to what silly pundits have started to argue, the point is not to get arrested. The point is to create friction for Stephen Miller’s dragnet. The point is to bring visibility and opposition to inhumane treatment.

American Prospect’s story on the arrest focused on that.

It’s not only the courtroom treatment of defendants that’s egregious. So are the living conditions at 26 Federal Plaza. In an interview with the Prospect, Daniel Coates, director of public affairs at Make the Road New York, said that ICE is using the building to hold people for multiple days before transferring them elsewhere, packing them in so tightly that some have no room to sleep except for on the bathroom floor. The rooms are hot because the air-conditioning is inadequate, detainees have “no opportunities to get a change of clothes or clean themselves,” have no access to medical treatment, and cannot maintain their dietary restrictions, said Coates, who spoke at the press conference held after Lander’s detention.

“The space is exploding,” Coates said, “and it’s sort of a black hole there because ICE is refusing entry to members of Congress,” who are supposed to be allowed to oversee such buildings. It’s an open question of “what actually 26 Federal Plaza is being used for,” he said.

The point is not the arrest. The point is to expand solidarity.

The law

I think there were a number of reasons SDNY couldn’t charge Lander, at least not yet:

  • According to one of the journalists there, one of the ICE goons said to another before Lander did anything “do you want to arrest the Comptroller?” Like the Ras Baraka arrest, it was premeditated and had little to do with his own actions.
  • Because media was there, because Moses took that really damning photo, it ensured that there was plenty of footage that would make it viable to rebut a prosecutor’s hypothetical claim that Lander was resisting or (even more outlandish) assaulting them. It’s true that cops can convict on 18 USC 111 charges where someone wrestles with the cop, but here Lander would have a viable argument that this was all about assaulting him.
  • At one point, Lander asked for one of the ICE officers’ badge number but didn’t get it, and both the goons who arrested him were in plain clothes and one was entirely masked. He repeatedly asked to see a judicial warrant (only an administrative warrant is required); but the ICE officer merely waved a paper at him. To sustain an 18 USC 111 case, the government would have to show that these were officers conducting their duty, both they refused to prove that to Lander before they detained him.
  • While Lander did get the law wrong on at least one count (that ICE couldn’t arrest US citizens at all), the law does say that they can only arrest without a warrant in case of a flight risk. There is not a chance in hell that NYC’s current Comptroller and aspiring Mayor would flee, so he could make a good case that the arrest itself was illegal.
  • The problem I laid out yesterday; Emil Bove already told an SDNY judge that Eric Adams merely being prosecuted was election interference. Lander was going to have a very good case that DHS was attempting to help Adams and hurt Lander.

But for both the last two reasons, this may not be over. The NYT quoted a SDNY spox suggesting the government could still charge this, perhaps after the Mayoral race.

A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement that the office was investigating Mr. Lander’s actions, but said nothing about criminal charges. The spokesman, Nicholas Biase, noted that federal law prohibited assaults on law enforcement and other public officials and obstruction of official proceedings.

That doesn’t mean those charges would succeed. It means they might try to avoid the obvious hypocrisy of dismissing charges against one NYC mayoral candidate by waiting to charge another.

Update: I asked SDNY if they had opened an election interference investigation into the people who arrested Lander. Spox Nicholas Biase declined to comment.

Share this entry

Kristi Noem’s Goons Engage in what Emil Bove Calls Election Interference

Update: Lander has been released. He lost a button. The charges were dropped. 

Further update: The key to Lander’s release was the superb, immediate reporting from The City and Hell Gate. If you are so inclined, please consider a donation.

According to a reporter from The City, Federal agents just detained NYC Comptroller Brad Lander as he accompanied someone from an immigration hearing.

This comes after early voting in the Mayoral primary has already started.

Just as importantly, it comes four months after DOJ dismissed a years-long investigation into Eric Adams for alleged foreign influence peddling because of this very primary.

Back in February, the government provided two bases to excuse their bid to dismiss the prosecution against Adams: because being subjected to the prosecution amounted to election interference, and also interfered with his ability to carry out his duties as Mayor.

5. In connection with that determination and directive, the Acting Deputy Attorney General concluded that dismissal is necessary because of appearances of impropriety and risks of interference with the 2025 elections in New York City, which implicate Executive Order 14147, 90 Fed. Reg. 8235. The Acting Deputy Attorney General reached that conclusion based on, among other things, review of a website2 maintained by a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and an op-ed published by that former U.S. Attorney.3

6. In connection with that determination and directive, the Acting Deputy Attorney General also concluded that continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies. See, e.g., Executive Order 14159, 90 Fed. Reg. 8443; Executive Order 14165, 90 Fed. Reg. 8467. The Acting Deputy Attorney General reached that conclusion after learning, among other things, that as a result of these proceedings, Adams has been denied access to sensitive information that the Acting Deputy Attorney General believes is necessary for Adams to govern and to help protect the City.

Judge Dale Ho repeatedly asked Emil Bove about his claim that the long-standing prosecution against Eric Adams constituted election interference (as well as about the claim it interfered with his ability to carry out his duties).

THE COURT: OK. There is also a reference, I think, in the paragraph to interference with the 2025 mayoral election. I have a similar question here, and it’s whether or not that’s a representation about the purpose or the effect of the prosecution or both?

MR. BOVE: I mean, frankly, I think the fact that Mayor Adams is sitting to my left right now is part of the problem. He’s not able to be out running the City and campaigning. I think that is actual interference with the election.

THE COURT: It’s having that effect.

MR. BOVE: Correct. I think the pendency of this motion right now has that effect.

THE COURT: OK.

[snip]

THE COURT: My understanding of that rationale is that it arises from a defendant’s status as a candidate. That it’s because, at least that portion about election interference, I mean, it’s because the defendant in this case is a candidate for office, not because he’s a public official. So, in other words, that rationale could apply to a candidate who’s not a public official?

MR. BOVE: Correct.

THE COURT: And it wouldn’t apply to a public official who’s not a candidate, so an unelected public official or a retiring public official or retired public official wouldn’t apply, the election interference component of what you’re applying to?

MR. BOVE: It applies to candidates. [my emphasis]

“I think that is actual interference with the election,” a (still) top-ranking DOJ official told a Federal judge about a prosecution of one of the candidates in the NYC primary for Mayor.

And then, four months later, Federal agents detained one of his opponents, after the election had already started (to say nothing of interfering with his ability to govern).

By Emil Bove’s standards, Kristi Noem’s goons just violated the law.

Share this entry

Trump Chose to Hunt Law-Abiding Migrants Rather than Right Wing Terrorists Like Vance Boelter.

It will be some time before we learn whether Vance Boelter, the Trump supporter charged with assassinating Melissa Hortman, could have been stopped if Trump hadn’t dismantled efforts to fight terrorists like Boelter.

But we do know that Trump has done real damage to those efforts.

Start with Kristi Noem’s degradation of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, an office trying to prevent attacks like the one Boelter carried out. Noem’s DHS put a 22-year old with no experience and a day job hunting migrants, Thomas Fugate, in charge of the office designed to fight radicalization.

[T]he 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.

The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security role that was expanded to include the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence.

[snip]

The once-bustling office of around 80 employees now has fewer than 20, former staffers say. Grant work stops, then restarts. One senior civil servant was reassigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency via an email that arrived late on a Saturday.

The office’s mission has changed overnight, with a pivot away from focusing on domestic extremism, especially far-right movements. The “terrorism” category that framed the agency’s work for years was abruptly expanded to include drug cartels, part of what DHS staffers call an overarching message that border security is the only mission that matters. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has largely left terrorism prevention to the states.

ProPublica sent DHS a detailed list of questions about Fugate’s position, his lack of national security experience and the future of the department’s prevention work. A senior agency official replied with a statement saying only that Fugate’s CP3 duties were added to his role as an aide in an Immigration & Border Security office.

“Due to his success, he has been temporarily given additional leadership responsibilities in the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships office,” the official wrote in an email. “This is a credit to his work ethic and success on the job.”

[snip]

But Homeland Security’s budget proposal to Congress for the next fiscal year suggests a bleaker future. The department recommended eliminating the threat-prevention grant program, explaining that it “does not align with DHS priorities.”

The FBI — another agency that has worked to prevent terrorism , too, has focused on law-abiding migrants instead of right wing terrorists.

As NBC has been tracking, Trump has ordered a significant number of FBI agents to help chase down law-abiding migrants, shifting some away from counterterrorism.

One of the memos says the goal is to have 2,000 FBI agents across the country working full time on immigration enforcement at any one time.

Given that FBI resources are finite, current and former officials say, a significant increase in immigration enforcement will draw agents away from what have long been top FBI priorities, including counterterrorism, counterespionage, fraud and violent crime.

That shift has only intensified as Stephen Miller struggles to find enough migrants to deport to fulfill the false claims about their numbers he dangled during the election.

FBI field offices around the country have been ordered to assign significantly more agents to immigration enforcement, a dramatic shift in federal law enforcement priorities that will likely siphon resources away from counterterrorism, counterintelligence and fraud investigations, multiple current and former bureau officials told NBC News.

The orders, given in a series of memos and meetings in FBI offices this week, come at a time when the Trump administration is proposing to cut 5% of the FBI’s budget, and as the Justice Department is deprioritizing investigations of certain types of white-collar and corporate crime, according to a memo obtained by NBC News.

[snip]

One federal law enforcement official estimated that the vast majority of agents were uncomfortable with being a part of the immigration operations, saying ICE doesn’t meticulously plan out arrest operations the way that the bureau does.

“This is not what we do, these are bad ideas,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity citing fear of retaliation. “If this was a Democrat administration, I’d be saying this is bad, we shouldn’t be doing this.”

Even as the manhunt continued for the pro-Trump terrorist, even as Minnesota grieves, Trump posted another Truth Social post adopting the language of Nazis and pitting his ICE goons against “Radical Democrat [sic] Politicians,” stoking yet more violence against them.

Stephen Miller and Donald Trump have made a choice: To hunt law-abiding migrants rather than the Trump supporters gunning down Democrats in their homes.

Share this entry

Three Data Points from the Padilla Assault

I want to call out three data points regarding the assault of Senator Alex Padilla yesterday.

First, in media appearances and on this video, Senator Padilla explained that he was in the Federal building for a scheduled briefing on the Federal response in Los Angeles. There was a delay so he asked to go to the presser. As he describes it, a Guard and an FBI Agent escorted him to the presser.

While I was waiting for the briefing, I learned that just down the hall from where I was, Secretary Noem from the Department of Homeland Security was having a press conference, Now Secretary Noem and the Department — we have been calling on and we have been sending letters to since the beginning of the year requesting more information as to what and why they are doing, with little to no response. And so I thought let me go over there, listen in on the press conference, maybe they’re sharing some important information. And while I did that, escorted over there by a National Guardsman and an FBI agent, …

This makes Dan Bongino’s description of the event entirely deceptive.

If the FBI brought him to the presser, it doesn’t matter whether he had his Senate pin. The FBI knew his identity. And yet an FBI agent was involved in the assault on Padilla regardless.

Secondly, in a presser, Gavin Newsom returned to comments about his call, last Friday night, with Donald Trump.

Oh, I would love to share the readout but I revere the office of presidency so I’ll keep it in confidence. He has quite literally made up components of that conversation. Um, he’s been a stone cold liar about what he said we talked about. He never discussed the National Guard, period, full stop. I would love to share with you what we actually talked about. That would send shivers up your spine.

[snip]

We discussed for a nanosecond Los Angeles and he immediately zigged and zagged to seven or eight other topics. Some extraordinarily familiar. And some extraordinarily remarkable considering the world we’re living in.

Again, after a hearing before Charles Breyer on the lawsuit, at which the substance of that call — whether Trump actually raised the Guard — was an issue, Newsom accused Trump of making up components of the conversation and then said the actual content of the call “would send shivers up your spine” but he wasn’t sharing it because “I revere the office of the presidency.”

I don’t doubt that some deference to the Office of the President is one reason Newsom hasn’t told us what Trump said. After all, he no doubt still harbors ambitions to one day occupy that office. The tenor of the lawsuit challenging Trump adopts a sober legal approach, avoiding some things — like Whiskey Pete’s apparent ignorance of basic facts about the deployment (such as whether the Marines would come from Camp Pendleton or, as is the case, Twentynine Palms and when they finished training for the deployment) — that would be great politically but shift the focus away from Trump and onto Hegseth’s incompetence. In the lawsuit (as distinct from his public messaging, including this presser) Newsom has been making a constitutional argument, not a political one.

The government seems to understand it is vulnerable to Newsom’s claim that Trump fabricated parts of the conversation. As I noted, in their response to the lawsuit they relied on an erroneous Fox News report on the timing of the call, not the readout of the call that the White House presumably has.

At approximately 10:23pm PT that night, President Trump called Governor Newsom. The President informed Governor Newsom of the dangers that federal personnel and property were being subjected to and directed him to take action to stop the violence.4

4
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-brings-receipts-he-called-newsom-amid-la-riots-california-gov-claims-wasnt-even-voicemail.amp; see also https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/06/09/watch-governor-newsom-discusses-donald-trumps-mess-inlos-angeles/ (Governor Newsom concurring that the call took place)

They do not include any other source to substantiate the claim that “the President informed Governor Newsom,” and in the hearing yesterday DOJ did not back the specific claims Trump and Steve Cheung made to Fox (though Brett Shumate did claim that something about the call led Trump to conclude the laws were not being executed, one basis DOJ relied on to claim the usurpation was legal).

And so, Newsom hinted at more, but claimed he couldn’t share it — as if threatening to share the real content of the call would damage Trump (or make his depravity clear).

I mean, it’s clear Trump said something. After all, before the call, Trump threatened to cut off all funding to CA (a threat that has not yet manifested, even though it was presented as imminent). After the call, Newsom came out with two messages: Trump is a “Stone cold liar” and “there’s no working with the President. There’s only working for him. And I will never work for Donald Trump.”

I suspect Newsom is daring Trump to make him share the content of the call (and, likely, testing to see what kind of records Trump is willing to show). I suspect Newsom that call is important not just because of what Trump didn’t say, about the Guard deployment, but what he did say before he invaded California.

I suspect Trump tried to make a deal. Trump tried to get Newsom to work for him. And when Newsom refused, Trump invaded.

Which brings me to the last data point. In one clip of the NBC footage from the Padilla assault — which, of course, came just as Kristi Noem claimed she was going to liberate Los Angeles  from government by their duly elected Governor and Mayor — Peter Hamby spied Corey Lewandowski overseeing the aftermath of the assault.

Lewandowski, of course, has a history of assaulting people as he removed them from Trump events.

What gets made of the Padilla assault remains very much contested. Right wing propagandists — from Noem and her staffers to Bongino to members of Congress — are trying to claim that a Latino man obviously couldn’t be assumed to be a Senator elected by 6.6 million Californians, not even if an FBI agent escorted him into that room. That response gives up the game, of course: this was Trump’s racist Administration treating one of the most powerful Latino’s in the country just like they’re treating the day laborers and farmworkers they’re chasing down fields.

But it comes amid a larger context — the context in which Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump are directly combatting whether Trump may be king.

Update: Corrected the timing of Newsom’s comment. It happened after Breyer issued his ruling.

Update: NYT quotes Padilla claiming Lewandowski came running down the hall telling people to let him go.

On the videos, Mr. Padilla appeared stunned but repeatedly said he was a U.S. senator. In an interview hours later, Mr. Padilla said that he had demanded to know why he had been detained and where he was being escorted “when of all people, Corey Lewandowski” — a combative former Trump campaign aide and adviser to Ms. Noem — “comes running down the hall and he starts yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”

Update: In response to James Comer and Clay Higgins’ excitement about targeting Newsom and Karen Bass for investigation, Newsom’s office promises, “some highly unusual communications from the White House” and then, in the next tweet, highlighs Newsom’s comment.

So, yeah, he was hoping someone would force him to turn this over and two of the dumbest members of Congress complied.

Share this entry

No, Trump Voters Did Not Vote for This

A disavowal of Stephen Miller’s immigration crackdown by Ileana Garcia, one of the founders of Latinas for Trump, has generated a lot of attention and some outrage.

Many lefties are criticizing Garcia for perceived denial about who and what she voted for, or for being a dumbass for pretending they didn’t enable this. It’s absolutely true that anyone who voted for Trump voted for the way he deployed bigotry, twice, to win. Garcia owns that.

But she didn’t vote for the specific crackdown that is currently going on. And the distinction matters.

The pushback against Garcia’s comment was largely a response to Miami Herald’s headline. “‘Inhumane:’ Latinas for Trump founder condemns White House immigration crackdown,” or a few paragraphs taken out of context.

Her full statement — as well as that of Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, to which she was responding — is more nuanced than that. Both are complaining about the practice of arresting people as they attend court hearings or routine check-ins as part of adjudication of legal claims. Here’s Garcia’s comment.

[W]hat we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings—in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims.

Salazar explained the point at more length.

Arrests in immigration courts, including people with I-220A and pending asylum cases, the termination of the CHNV program, which has left thousands exposed to deportation, and other similar measures, all jeopardize our duty to due process that every democracy must guarantee.

I remain clear in my position: anyone with a pending asylum case, status-adjustment petition, or similar claim deserves to go through the legal process.

That is, both women (and I presume Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez, with whom Salazar says she’ll be meeting with Kristi Noem after several weeks of seeking a meeting) are primarily complaining that, to ratchet up arrests, ICE is arresting people as they arrive for scheduled meetings that are part of their due process to remain in the US.

This is the tactic that lefties have condemned when it happened to people like Mohsen Mahdawi or Carolina or Gladis Yolanda Chavez Pineda or Carol Hui or VML’s mother, every one of them the subject of local or national attention.

You can argue that these Cuban-Americans are mostly pushing to protect their own communities; Salazar specifically mentioned the parole covering Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants, which Trump recently revoked with SCOTUS approval. You’d be right! Four South Florida politicians are fighting to protect their constituents.

You can argue Garcia should have seen this coming when Trump and JD Vance and Stephen Miller falsely accused Haitian migrants of eating house pets. You’d be right! Of course, that comment targeted Haitians in Ohio, not Cubans in South Florida. Salazar even specifically excluded Haitians from those migrants fleeing the “most brutal regimes in our hemisphere.”

Nevertheless, Trump’s promise to deport millions was premised on deporting immigrants with no legal basis to be in the US, not those who are abiding by a legal process to stay (of which Florida must have a disproportionate number).

No person voted for that because that’s not what Trump ran on (though Miller and JD did call the Haitians illegal, which should have been the tip-off).

And even if Garcia and Salazar were making a more general comment — that Stephen Miller’s focus on longterm migrants, rather than just criminal aliens (both women use somewhat ambiguous language here, with Garcia using the term “criminal aliens” and Salazar referring to “criminal[s] here illegally”) — they’d have some basis for their argument.

I contemplated reposting this entire post, from Day 8 of Trump 2.0, to address this issue. But the record shows that:

  • During a key part of the campaign, Trump, Miller, and Republican members of Congress claimed there were hundreds of thousands of aliens known to have committed a crime wandering the streets; it was based on a misrepresentation of DHS’s tracker of aliens anywhere in the US, the vast majority of whom are in prison either awaiting trial or serving a sentence. Those were the people Trump promised to deport; he just lied about how many of them there were.
  • Miller built another part of his campaign on a lie about Tren de Aragua, and when the Intelligence Community debunked that lie both before and after he relied on it in an attempt to bypass due process, he lied some more. Those were the Venezuelan criminals Miller made up who would be covered by the CHNV parole cited by Salazar.
  • Within a week of inauguration, as experts began to predict the inevitable outcome of Miller’s ICE quotas (then half of what he has since ratcheted them up to) — that ICE would focus on easy targets who were not known criminals rather than hunting down the far rarer criminal alien Miller lied about during the campaign — Miller started redefining the term “criminal alien” to encompass the easier, peaceful targets his quotas would inevitably target. CATO (currently one of Miller’s favorite targets) reported that this focus on numbers rather than criminals would have the effect of drawing law enforcement away from the most dangerous people.

Those are the people — long-term US residents not known to have violated any law — whom Miller has redefined into the criminal aliens about which he lied during the campaign.

You can absolutely hold politicians like Garcia and Salazar responsible for helping to elect Trump, for enabling his grotesque assault on migrants who don’t happen to be Cuban.

But it is nevertheless the case that Miller got Trump elected promising to round up a bunch of people he portrayed as violent criminals, and has since redefined the term “criminal alien” to justify going after people in the US even if they are pursuing a legal claim of asylum.

Garcia and Salazar let themselves buy into a lie, but it was a lie. A series of lies. All designed to move the goalposts to encompass people that South Florida politicians rightly treat as part of their community.

And even if you think Garcia and Salazar let themselves buy into the bigotry, for the moment, who cares? You’ve got powerful Republicans calling out Trump’s lies, with Garcia targeting Stephen Miller and his quotas by name.

One of the most important things that we could achieve, in the short term, to discredit Trump’s ICE crackdown (and with it, Trump’s military invasion of Los Angeles) is to point out that Trump didn’t run on deporting people who were pursuing legal status in the US, and he strongly implied that his promise of mass deportations was a promise to deport actual criminals (about the numbers of which Trump and Miller lied), not long-term US residents who had put down roots. One of the most important things we need the public to understand is that the events in Los Angeles were incited by Miller’s impossible quotas for arrests, 3,000 a day, quotas that from the start were guaranteed to shift ICE’s focus away from dangerous people and onto mothers working at the local waffle restaurant. Even if the only thing such pushback achieves is to end the practice of arresting people when they show up for scheduled check-ins, it would do a lot to keep families together, it eliminate one of the most egregious practices.

Prominent Republicans want to — correctly — blame Stephen Miller for the chaos that has erupted.

Don’t get in their way! At this point, any pushback on Miller’s gulag, any focus on him and his lies, is welcome.

We will not make it through this unless we exploit every single break that Republicans make with Trump. We will not make it through this unless we convince a significant number of Trump voters to push back or better yet disavow their vote.

Only if we do make it through this do we have time for recriminations against the people who allowed themselves to believe a lie.

Share this entry

Kristi Noem Combats Claimed Antisemitism by Trying to Deport 61 Israeli Students, and Other Tales of Harvard Derangement

Donald Trump is making American troops — and Americans generally — less safe from biohazards as part of his attempt to destroy Harvard University.

Among the details included in Harvard’s motion for summary judgement submitted yesterday in the university’s lawsuit challenging Trump’s effort to defund the university (there are two lawsuits — the one regarding Trump’s campaign to retaliate because Harvard refused to cede its independence, and the one responding to Kristi Noem’s denial of visa for Harvard students) is a description of how Pete Hegseth’s agency cut off DOD grants without informing DARPA that the “top performing team” on an effort to detect and deploy countermeasures to biohazards had been arbitrarily and immediately cut off.

The motion quotes the effort DARPA’s director of contracting made to reverse the cuts, to no avail.

Harvard is currently the top performing team on the AMPHORA program. Inadequate knowledge of the biological threat landscape poses grave and immediate harm to national security. Development of critical technologies that enables bio surveillance and biocollection in austere, field forward locations bolsters national security and warfighter safety and lethality by enabling medical countermeasure development to new and emerging threats and provides biological threat intelligence to the deployed warfighter. This technology is significantly outpacing the state-of-the art and provides a novel leap-ahead capability to the force. Harvard’s effort is at a pivotal juncture in Phase 1 as they are just starting the microfluidic experiments that will give first indications of whether the program goal is achievable. They are also a critical integrator of multiple technologies that enable this effort and could not be readily reproduced.

Pete Hegseth just did what Trump told him to do — cut off Harvard — with no consideration of how it undermines his claimed effort to make military more lethal.

National security took a back seat to Trump’s maniacal effort to get Harvard to bow down to his demand to turn the country’s most storied institution of higher learning into a bureaucracy replicating MAGAt ideology.

Harvard’s motion mentions — and a declaration from Harvard’s Vice Provost for Research, John Shaw, lists far more — of the other benefits to American taxpayers that Trump arbitrarily took away. As a breast cancer survivor, I would personally benefit from a $7 million grant supporting research “to find and describe early changes in breast tissue in women that may be at a higher risk of breast cancer.” As someone who lost a parent to Parkinson’s, I might personally benefit from efforts to “identify[] numerous modifiable risk factors for Parkinson’s disease.” We all would benefit from a $2 million effort to better understand resistance to antibiotics awarded by the (second) Trump administration.

Gone.

All of those benefits and many more have been stolen from taxpayers who’ve already sunk billions into this research.

And yet, with few exceptions (an important one is a NYT story, cited in the motion, describing how the cuts will disrupt efforts to prevent veteran suicides and otherwise improve healthcare for veterans) this is not how the story of Trump’s emotional tantrum against Harvard is being told.

Harvard Digs In for Battle, but Trump’s Blows Are Landing,” WSJ described a boxing match when reporting the visa ban for Harvard students.

Why is Trump going after Harvard?” WaPo promised to answer, instead explaining, “Here’s how the attacks have escalated,” even while treating wrestling booster Linda McMahon’s claimed pretense of fighting antisemitism in good faith. Their timeline missed several important details that show up in Harvard’s own timeline (submitted with the motion for summary judgement): notably:

  • Harvard did a bunch of things to address antisemitism on campus
  • Plans announced by Task Force on Antisemitism Senior Counsel, Leo Terrell, way back on October 24, 2024, to defund Harvard
  • The Trump Administration’s persistent disinterest in the things Harvard had done to address antisemitism
  • The Trump Administration’s persistent silence about any single instance of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus — the kind of due process to which Harvard would respond on Title VI

Having not presented the pretext of antisemitism as such, WaPo doesn’t ask how revoking the visas all foreign students at Harvard, including those of 61 Israeli students, combats antisemitism.

Politico similarly glosses the significance of all this in what is mostly a process story of Trump’s efforts to “brainstorm new Harvard measures.” Trump is seeking to “bring the storied institution to heel.” The Administration will need to “get more creative to keep squeezing the school.” When it contemplates the “Trump administration’s broader efforts to reshape not just American government but the institutions that have long surrounded it,” Politico did not mention how that effort included an ignorant effort to defund Politico subscriptions, to say nothing of Trump’s other assaults on the press.

NYT has been reporting a series of “escalations.” “[T]he administration appeared eager to escalate one of its civil investigations into a criminal inquiry,” Mike Schmidt and Michael Bender described a manufactured outrage that would backfire if it were criminally charged. The fight escalated, Mike Schmidt said in an interview. This was a sharp escalation, NYT set up another Schmidt interview. Cutting off visas was a major escalation, Schmidt and Michael Bender described. “Trump Administration Escalates Harvard Feud With New Justice Dept. Investigation,” another headline blared. Mike Schmidt, who always seems to reinforce Trump’s power, keeps insisting that, “Harvard Has No Way Out,” without thinking through what that would mean for the US, if true.

Schmidt apparently can’t imagine a political setback so significant — a backlash from taxpayers about the value Trump took from them, a value that Schmidt doesn’t consider — that Trump would realize he has to fund Harvard research just like he has to keep Air Traffic Controllers on the job.

Politico, at least, quotes one of several administration sources describing that the mere futility of Trump’s efforts when public opinion swung to Harvard when Trump revoked the student visas (it made no mention that that included visas for Israelis).

“We’re fighting a losing battle,” one of the administration officials said, acknowledging that the university has the narrative upper hand when it comes to the effort to revoke Harvard’s student visas. “We’ve taken one of the most evil institutions and made them the victim.”

But there remains no question about the way Trump has deliberately hurt Americans — not just elite Americans whose kids go to Harvard, or poorer Americans, whose Harvard tuition foreign students subsidize, but the Americans who benefit from the cancer cures and biohazard warnings and ways to combat antibiotic resistance.

Dan Drezner, from his perch just down the road from Harvard at Tufts, argues that Schmidt’s pessimism about Harvard is all wrong, that Harvard is winning this battle.

Over the weekend, however, some news stories have come out that reinforce a few points about how these attacks are going.

  • The administration has already shot its wad in going after Harvard and has very little left in its cupboard.
  • This anti-Harvard jihad is not going exactly as planned, either legally or politically.
  • The Trump White House has now reached the same point in its dealing with Harvard that it previously reached in its trade negotiations with multiple countries: desperate for a victory that may never come.

This is not to say that Trump is not wreaking carnage. He’s wreaking a tremendous amount of carnage. What he is not doing, however, is winning.

Part of Drezner’s optimism is that academics, both within Harvard and across the institutions, have discovered collective action.

What Klein’s story omits is that after a stumbling start at collective action, the administration’s actions have galvanized a lot of universities to talk to each other about response strategies. The fundamental lesson to be learned from Trump’s actions to date is that no matter how a university responds, Trump will be coming after them anyway. That comes through loud and clear in all the coverage. And if university leadership knows this, they will choose standing their ground over backing down every day of the week.

From my own limited view of how higher education is responding, I see discussions about how to respond to further pressure from the Trump administration. I also see that none of the response strategies on the table include “cut a deal.”

Where I depart from Drezner’s optimism, and concede Schmidt has a point, is that unless this senseless battle imposes a cost on Trump, Harvard will ultimately lose, American taxpayers will ultimately lose the sunk costs in research and jobs that Trump decided to take away. Because until those resisting Trump — from the lawyers to the universities to the local nonprofits and yes even the media outlets — actually win the underlying battle, Trump remains in a position to take away those cancer cures.

And that — not Wharton grad Trump’s claim of Harvard snobbery and not the billionaire’s concerns about elitism and sure as fuck not a concern about antisemitism — is why Trump keeps doubling down.

Harvard has the means and the facts to win the legal cases before it. Without even telling the story of the cancer cures Trump took away, Harvard also has the means to look like less of an asshole than Trump.

But that’s a different thing from turning Harvard’s fight — and the collective action that has arisen — into a political win.

This is not about universities. Or — as I tried to visualize last week — universities are not what people think they are. Universities do a lot of the same kind of things Elon Musk does, but with nowhere near the grift, corruption, and — yes — the antisemitism.

This is not a boxing match, a wrestling match, or a series of escalations.

This is about a broader fight for civil society.

Perhaps journalists, from their very privileged position within civil society, will be the last to figure this out, to understand that all those escalations against Harvard are really inseparable from the — thus far — more successful escalations against the press.

But what is going on is a two-bit dictator is willing to take things away from the American people all so he can lord over an entity that dared stand up to him.

Share this entry

Why Did Donald Trump Free Someone He Purports To Be a Dangerous Terrorist?

Donald Trump, Nayib Bukele, and Kristi Noem love to make fascist spectacle.

They did it with the video showing the arrival of hundreds of people Trump sent to Bukele’s concentration camp. Noem did it with her visit to the camp. And they did it with the planned theater yesterday, including the staged hot mic moment where Trump told Bukele he wanted to send “homegrowns” to the concentration camp at CECOT.

They do it because fascist spectacle inspires fear. They do it because fascist spectacle goes viral, including with the help of data mules who purport to oppose its content.

They do it because it short circuits rational thought, overwhelming such rational thought with emotion.

The effect of yesterday’s fascist spectacle led virtually everyone to focus on a detail that won’t help the immediate fight before us — Trump’s interest in deporting “homegrowns,” an interest he has stated openly over and over, starting during campaign — rather than on details that might help Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and in the process help to prevent similar treatment of other migrants and, ultimately, American citizens.

Few people raised any of the questions posed by Trump’s latest attempt to retcon a legal case he already blew. Let’s start with the big one:

Why did Trump free someone, Abrego Garcia, whom Stephen Miller insists is a dangerous terrorist?

The latest theory about Abrego Garcia — one DOJ first rolled out at the Fourth Circuit — is that when the Trump Administration designated MS-13 a foreign terrorist organization earlier this year, it meant Abrego Garcia was no longer eligible for the withholding of removal granted to him in 2019.

It is true that an immigration judge concluded six years ago that Abrego Garcia should not be returned to El Salvador, given his claims about threats from a different gang. Final Removal Order 7–10. That conclusion was dubious then (and increasingly so now). But it has become totally untenable, given the Secretary of State’s designation of MS-13 as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February. 90 Fed. Reg. at 10030–31.

As a result of that designation, and Abrego Garcia’s membership in that terrorist organization, he would no longer be eligible for withholding relief under the federal immigration laws. 8 U.S.C. §§ 1231(b)(3)(B)(iv); 1227(a)(4)(B). And as even Plaintiffs admit, the Government had available a procedural mechanism under governing regulations to reopen the immigration judge’s prior order, and terminate its withholding protection. See Reply 8. To be sure, the Government did not avail itself of that procedure in this case. But through the lens of the public interest, the district court’s stunning injunction does not fit that error. A mistake of process does not warrant the unprecedented remedy ordered—one that demands the return of a foreign terrorist from the foreign sovereign that agreed to take him.

Before this claim, DOJ barely mentioned two earlier rulings from 2019 (one two) asserting Abrego Garcia could not be released because of hearsay ties to MS-13, relying instead on procedural arguments. In a footnote, Judge Xinis ruled that DOJ did not rely on it before her.

Defendants did not assert—at any point prior to or during the April 4, 2025, hearing—that Abrego Garcia was an “enemy combatant,” an “alien enemy” under the Alien Enemies Act, 50 U.S.C. § 21, or removable based on MS13’s recent designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under 8 U.S.C. § 1189. Invoking such theories for the first time on appeal cannot cure the failure to present them before this Court. In any event, Defendants have offered no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or to any terrorist activity. And vague allegations of gang association alone do not supersede the express protections afforded under the INA, including 8 U.S.C. §§ 1231(b)(3)(A), 1229a, and 1229b.

As Judge Stephanie Thacker noted in the Fourth Circuit opinion denying a stay the government thereby could not raise it before her.

Finally, I turn to the Government’s assertion that the public interest favors a stay because Abrego Garicia is a “prominent” member of MS-13 and is therefore “no longer eligible for withholding relief.” Mot. for Stay at 14–15. Whatever the merits of the 2019 determination of the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) regarding Abrego Garcia’s connection to MS-13,8 the Government presented “[n]o evidence” to the district court to “connect[] Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any other criminal organization.” Dis.t Ct. Op. at 22 n.19; see also id. at 2 n.2 (“Invoking such theories for the first time on appeal cannot cure the failure to present them before this Court.”). Indeed, such a fact cannot be gleaned from this record, which shows that Abrego Garcia has no criminal history, in this country or anywhere else, and that Abrego Garcia is a gainfully employed family man who lives a law abiding and productive life. Tellingly, the Government “abandon[ed]” its position that Abrego Garcia was “a danger to the community” at the hearing before the district court. Dist. Ct. Op. at 22 n.19. The balance of equities must tip in the movant’s favor based on the record before the issuing court. An unsupported — and then abandoned — assertion that Abrego Garcia was a member of a gang, does not tip the scales in favor of removal in violation of this Administration’s own9 withholding order. If the Government wanted to prove to the district court that Abrego Garcia was a “prominent” member of MS-13, it has had ample opportunity to do so but has not — nor has it even bothered to try.

The Government’s argument that there is a public interest in removing members of “violent transnational gangs” from this country is no doubt true, but it does nothing to help the Government’s cause here. As noted, the Government has made no effort to demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is, in fact, a member of any gang, nor did the Government avail itself of the “procedural mechanism under governing regulations to reopen the immigration judge’s prior order[] and terminate its withholding protection.” Mot. for Stay at 16–17. The Government may not rely on its own failure to circumvent its own ruling that Abrego Garcia could not be removed to El Salvador.

8 Even then, the Government’s “evidence” of any connection between Abrego Garcia and MS-13 was thin, to say the least. The Government’s claim was based on (1) Abrego Garcia “wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie,” and (2) “a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York—a place he has never lived.” S.A. 146 n.5; Mot. for Stay Add. at 10–11.

9 Of note, the IJ’s 2019 decision, which granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal to El Salvador pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A) because he faced threats to his life from an El Salvadoran gang that had targeted him and his family, was during President Trump’s 2016–2020 term in office. That decision became final on November 9, 2019, and was not appealed by this Administration.

But let’s take this retcon on its face. Stephen Miller has now decided, with no evidence provided, that Abrego Garcia is a “prominent” leader of MS-13, a gang on which DOJ focused closely for the entirety of the first Trump Administration. Miller says that Abrego Garcia is a danger to the community. Miller keeps screeching about terrorism.

If what Miller is saying now is true, it means that Trump released a dangerous criminal back in 2019. Why did Trump leave this man on the street to do dangerous things like raising three American citizen children for six years?

Update: Roger Parloff has a good summary of the flimsy case that Abrego Garcia has ties to MS-13.

Why is Trump so weak that he can’t make requests of the dictator of a small country?

Next consider Pam Bondi’s claim that, notwithstanding public reports that the detainees are just being held in CECOT for a year, notwithstanding Kristi Noem’s visit to the concentration camp, notwithstanding that the government just sent another ten people down there, the government is helpless to get Abrego Garcia back.

What does this say about Trump’s weakness as a President?

What kind of weak ass man can’t even make a request of a small Central American nation?

How does Trump think he’ll negotiate with Xi Jinping if he can’t even make a simple request of Bukele?

Will Stephen Miller send adjudged terrorists like Stewart Rhodes and Joe Biggs to Bukele’s concentration camp? Will Miller send DC US Attorney Ed Martin there, for palling around with adjudged terrorist Kelly Meggs, the same kind of associational ties used to send at least one of the men on the flights on March 15 to CECOT?

Next, let’s take Trump at his word that he wants to send “homegrowns” to CECOT.

Should Stewart Rhodes and Joe Biggs — both adjudged to be terrorists, both radicalized in the United States — both be packing their bags for the concentration camp? If Ed Martin has been palling around with adjudged terrorist Kelly Meggs — the same kind of associational guilt used to send at least one of the Venezuelans in the March 15 flight — should he worry about packing his bags?

Will Stephen Miller send his terrorists to the concentration camp?

Is Miller using the designation of terrorism just as a way to criminalize brown people, or will he send terrorists from his own tribe to the concentration camp?

Why is Stephen Miller terrified of — why does he want you to be terrified of — loving fathers? 

Miller has been accusing journalists who describe the contributions Abrego Garcia has made as a loving father to three American citizen children of lying, because journalists refuse to repeat his bleated accusations of terrorism with no evidence. Miller and Pam Bondi are working hard to get people to dumbly adopt their accusations.

But why is Miller so afraid of journalists describing Abrego Garcia as what he is, a father from Maryland?

Why does Pam Bondi keep destroying the careers of DOJ attorneys because they tell the truth?

When DOJ decided to retcon this case, they scapegoated the lawyer from whom they had withheld any sound legal basis, Erez Reuvani, along with his supervisor, both of whom were put on leave.

This, in spite of the fact that Drew Ensign called Reuveni “top notched” when he promoted him just weeks earlier.

In a March 21 email announcing Mr. Reuveni’s promotion to acting deputy director of the department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, his boss, Drew C. Ensign, lauded him for working on cases filed against sanctuary cities accused of defying federal immigration laws, and for generally helping to expand the department’s litigation activities.

“I want to thank those who submitted interest for the acting positions — we had outstanding choices, which helps go to show the excellent caliber of our team,” Mr. Ensign wrote.

Mr. Ensign has been handling a separate immigration case, one in which he has been defending the Trump administration’s use of a rarely invoked wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily deport scores of Venezuelan migrants accused of belonging to the street gang Tren de Aragua.

As DOJ has provided increasingly contemptuous updates to Judge Xinis, the AUSA who had appeared before her, Tarra DeShields, has backed off vouching for the arguments DOJ has made, instead listing her involvement as “fil[ing]” updates.

Finally, Ensign filed a notice of appearance and, apparently, took on this dogshit argument himself, as he did the Alien Enemies Act before Judge Boasberg.

Obviously, even committed immigration lawyers are unwilling to make these arguments. How many career attorneys will Pam Bondi chase away while floating these arguments?? How many careers will she destroy because the actions of the Trump administration have no defense in the law?

Has Bondi’s DOJ lost all presumption of regularity?

And the whole process of admitting fault, suspending the person who (along with several others) told that truth, and then inventing new theories after the fact has to start destroying the entire concept of presumption of regularity for DOJ.

Even before DeShields started getting cold feet, even before Stephen Miller started disclaiming the error that everyone has admitted, Ben Wittes raised this question: At what point are judges entitled to demand proof from DOJ lawyers for their claims?

Will Xinis demand that DOJ document their new theory that Trump’s terrorist designations retroactively make judge’s orders disappear?

Would Marco Rubio deport his own grandfather to a concentration camp if Stephen Miller told him to?

Abrego Garcia’s story — of a man who came to the US to seek a better life without proper paperwork, but who was allowed to stay and build a life — is not all that different from the story of Marco Rubio’s own grandfather, who was almost denied entry in part because of suspicions he had communist sympathies and even then only allowed to stay as a parolee.

It had been almost three years since he had last set foot in the United States, and he no longer had the proper credentials to enter. They told him he could stay for the time being, but if he wanted to avoid deportation, he would have to plead his case.

“I always thought of being here in the United States as a resident, living permanently here,” the slight 62-year-old grandfather, speaking through an interpreter, said at a hearing five weeks later. He said that he had previously returned to Cuba because he did not want to be a burden on his family in the United States, but that the Cuban government had grown too oppressive and he feared what might happen if he stayed.

The immigration officer was unmoved. He did not see an exiled family man — just someone who had no visa, worked for the Castro government and could pose a security risk.

“It is ordered that the applicant be excluded and deported from the United States,” he said matter-of-factly, according to an audio recording of the proceedings stored by the National Archives. He stopped to ask if Mr. Garcia understood.

“Yes, I do,” Mr. Garcia said plaintively.

That easily could have been the end of his American story. But someone in the immigration office on Biscayne Boulevard that day — the paperwork does not make clear exactly who or why — had a change of heart. Mr. Garcia was granted status as a parolee, a gray area of the law that meant he would not get a green card but could remain in the United States.

[snip]

Despite Mr. Garcia’s insistence that he was fleeing oppression, immigration officials raised suspicions that he might harbor communist sympathies, the records reveal. That charge, had they pursued it, could have led to a conclusion that he was a national security threat. (Details of Mr. Garcia’s immigration odyssey were reported in 2012 by Manuel Roig-Franzia in his book “The Rise of Marco Rubio.”)

In an interview, Mr. Rubio acknowledged that some would see a conflict between the stricter immigration and refugee policies he supports and his grandfather’s experience. Immigration records also show that other members of Mr. Rubio’s family — two aunts and an uncle — were admitted as refugees.

But Mr. Rubio said the difference between then and now is how much more sophisticated foreign infiltrators like the Islamic State have become, and how dangerous they are.

“I recognize that’s a valid point,” the senator said, “But what you didn’t have was a widespread effort on behalf of Fidel Castro to infiltrate into the United States killers who were going to detonate weapons and kill people.”

Last month, Trump announced the cessation of various parole programs, including a recent one including Cubans, effective on April 24. Which means, within days, Cubans could be among the Hispanic migrants that Stephen Miller packages up to send to Bukele’s concentration camp.

How many Cubans will Marco Rubio send away to a concentration camp? How many lives like Rubio’s own will the Secretary of State doom with his enthusiasm to send send loving fathers to concentration camps?

For too long Trump’s lefty opponents (liberals and progressives and those further left; anti-Trump Republicans are, in my opinion, actually far better at this) have largely failed to make Trump’s fascism a political problem. And while lawyers have done a great job of humanizing their clients — including Abrego Garcia — in public opinion, the rest of it, the contradictions and confessions of pathetic weakness, has largely gone unmentioned.

Do not abdicate making Abrego Garcia a political, as well as a legal, case. Do not get distracted by the fascist spectacle from using the fragile story rolled out yesterday against Trump. The stakes in this moment are too high.

Share this entry