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Gavin Newsom’s Troll Wars as a Check against “Usurpation or Wanton Tyranny”

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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.

Relentlessly.

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.

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Trump’s Blank Page

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Great fun has been had, not least by me, with Trump’s joint press conference with Keir Starmer yesterday.

It started with Trump boasting that he and “the great Prime Minister of the UK” had signed “a document.”

He opened a folder to show a piece of paper with his Sharpie signature. But he fumbled it. Several other papers fell out of the folder. Starmer bent down to shuffle up the papers together, looking like Trump’s attendant. Trump blamed the wind. Starmer joked that it was a “very important document.” Starmer laughed nervously as the two tried to reassemble the prop. The British Prime Minister bent his head, perhaps understanding the optics of what just happened.

And so we have our trade agreement with the European Union. [Starmer’s awkward smile melted.] And it’s a fair deal for both. Gonna produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income. And we have a lot of, many many other ones coming.

“But you see the level of enthusiasm is very good,” the President claimed in a deadpan.

The video went viral because of the old man’s gaffe. The EU is not the UK. The UK is not the EU. Trump makes intentional taunts (like continuing to call various Canadian leaders “Governor”). But this looked like a real mistake, perhaps elicited by the fluttering paper mishap.

The President of the United States can’t keep the UK and the trade union it abandoned, as part of the same political wave that elected Donald the first time, straight.

The presser — staged before Trump jumped on a plane to either escape the G7 or rush to kibbitz the assassination of Ayatollah Khameni, amid Chinese warnings about escalation — ended with a question about the significance of the purported deal with the UK, whether the UK is protected from tariffs.

The UK is very well protected. You know why? Because I like ’em. That’s why.

Then Trump babbled about what a great job Starmer has done.

He wandered off, promising — as his Administration has done for two months — that he had more deals in the works.

A lot of them. A lot of them.

It was all great theater — or would have been, had the President not fumbled his props and his lines. But as Justin Wolfers noted, that document was a prop. The paper was blank, save that Sharpie signature. So, it appears, were all the other papers. [Update: No, the papers were not blank, just overexposed.]

To be sure, in an Executive Order released by the White House, Trump did, in fact, implement the deal. But that implementation was, in every way, an exercise of Trump’s fragile unilateral authority. At least by appearance, Starmer got no piece of paper guaranteeing the deal. The EO actually defers the adoption of the favorable import rates for British steel and aluminum. And Trump based his authority to implement the deal on the same IEEPA powers that the Court of International Trade has thrown out (currently on appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals).

Blank page. Flubbed lines. Fumbled prop. Repeated assurances of deals that never come. All Starmer has to hold onto is Trump’s proclamation that the UK is “very well protected … because I like ’em,” a personalist assurance perhaps valid only so long as Starmer will pick up Trump’s papers for him.

The entire press conference was a testament to the way in which the aging reality star has become little but.

It came amid one of the biggest flip flops in an Administration defined by such.

On Wednesday — as described by a NYT ticktock of the flip flop — Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins warned Trump, again, that Stephen Miller’s deportation gulag was posing great risk to (Trump-supporting) farmers. On Thursday, Trump posted the incoherent rant that conceded that, “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business,” were finding it “almost impossible to replace” the migrants who had long done the job, even while suggesting, “the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy” — by which Trump means, other migrants — “are applying for those jobs.” We have to protect job security for migrants from other migrants, the rant affirmed.

“[T]op White House officials were caught off guard,” NYT reports, but doesn’t mention Stephen Miller until the next sentence. “Many of Mr. Trump’s top aides, particularly Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, have urged a hard-line approach.”

Brooke Rollins managed to bypass Miller (as Scott Bessent bypassed Peter Navarro and Elon Musk at various times, to get his way). And overnight the policy changed. No more arrests of “noncriminal collaterals” in work site enforcement operations.

The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.

“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.

The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any crime.

It didn’t last.

A botched birthday parade and presumably some quality time with his consigliere later, Trump was promising invasions of Chicago and New York, specifically because (Trump continues to make lawsuits easier than they otherwise could be),

These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State,

Miller’s utilitarian gulag was back on!

NYT got the scoop confirming the first change in policy; WaPo got the scoop reporting the flip flop.

Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.

ICE and HSI field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy Sunday after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal.

Again, WaPo uses a kind of euphemism to convey that when it says, “the White House did not support it,” it means, “Stephen Miller did not.”

Miller, an architect of much of Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, had privately opposed carving out exceptions for certain industries that rely heavily on workers without legal status, according to two people with knowledge of his advocacy in recent days against the measure.

Miller is not just the architect of Trump’s gulag. He’s the guy with a stack of pieces of paper, sometimes blank pages, for Trump to sign, on all manner of policy topic. He is almost certainly the guy who made a number of decisions — like invoking the Alien Enemies Act that Miller had been craving to use for years — that Trump publicly disavowed. He appears to have provided the authority — his interpretation of Trump’s fee fees — for an ill-conceived Houthi attack that accomplished nothing and wasted resources.

Increasingly, it appears that Miller issues the decisions (or countermands the others), all while handing Trump pieces of paper and a Sharpie to make him feel — and, if he doesn’t fumble his papers or his lines — powerful, and give Miller’s assumption of presidential powers the patina of legitimacy. Trump, the reality TV star, is just there for the press conferences.

The most fervid claims of a Joe Biden autopen scandal pale in comparison.

Trump’s deportation flip flop comes as Wired reported rising numbers of SEC filings describing the business risk from the deportations and WSJ described how Miller’s raids are disrupting businesses; NBC took a closer look at the chaos caused in Omaha during John Ewing’s first week as Mayor when ICE targeted a meat packing plant. Everyone knows this policy is damaging the US but in the face of Miller’s omnipresence and pushback from rabid supporters, Trump is helpless to even selectively protect his buddies.

And it has been simple for foreign leaders to exploit Trump’s increasing feebleness. Before he rushed away from the G-7 yesterday, he served as Vladimir Putin’s propagandist, whining that Russia had been expelled and misrepresenting the reason why. Both before and after that, Trump kept posting away futilely on Truth Social, attempting to look like he had some control — or even influence — over what Bibi Nethanyahu has in store for Iran.

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” Trump boasted on Friday, before taking credit for Israel’s strike. “Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” He went on to claim that Israel was enforcing Trump’s own 60-day deadline (even as the attack preempted Steve Witkoff’s meeting with a now-dead negotiator). “The U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight,” Trump lied in an attempt to warn Iran off retaliating against the US. Trump would negotiate a deal, he whimpered. Iran should have signed the deal (it did — and then Trump reversed it) Trump repeated as he — insanely — called for a city of 10 million to evacuate. Shut up Tucker Carlson, about my reneging on the promise to avoid World War III! Now he’s redefining America First to encompass whatever it is that Israel has in store. “I have not reached out to Iran for “Peace Talks” in any way, shape, or form. This is just more HIGHLY FABRICATED, FAKE NEWS!” tried to disclaim every pursuing a deal, even while his public statements endorse a give-upping from Iran (which may entail the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei) not on the table last week. His most recent post shares a text from Christian Nationalist Mike Huckabee, invoking Harry Truman’s decision to nuke Japan, while promising, “I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s.”

As Trump disavows what Tulsi Gabbard (fresh off releasing a weird propaganda video warning of nuclear annihilation) tells him, he seems to have been persuaded to endorse whatever it is Bibi has planned.

The rest is all an attempt to retcon some appearance of control over what Bibi is doing, an attempt to do so even as his MAGAt base fractures over his participation in this escalating war.

Trump is not alone in being manhandled by Bibi. Joe Biden was equally easy to manipulate — he just made affirmative efforts, with little success, to rein in Bibi’s ambitions. Trump appears to lack even that ability.

And the rest is blank papers waved around to give the illusion of power.

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

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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.

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The Big Ugly: Stephen Miller Uses His War on Home Depot to Invade California

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Yesterday, Trump used the opportunity of a protest against brutal ICE action staged out of Paramount, CA (close to a Home Depot location) to federalize 2,000 California National Guard for force protection — a step towards, but still short of, invoking the Insurrection Act (see Steve Vladeck for a description of what Trump, legally, did; update: and an even more detailed description from Lawfare). Pete Hegseth has also floated sending the Marines to an American city, a suggestion Gavin Newsom called, “deranged.”

It’s all a transparent confrontation used to invade a blue city.

All this comes comes as the hours longshormen at LA ports work have dropped in half due to Trump’s trade war, and some of the workplaces ICE targeted were in the garment district, where actual manufacturing still occurs. In addition, Trump has promised to start cutting Federal grants to California, which led Gavin Newsom to point out that CA is a net donor to Federal taxes.

This was a natural escalation stemming directly from Stephen Miller’s shrill tantrums demanding that ICE focus more on law-abiding undocumented people rather than the criminal aliens he lied about during the election. The escalation comes in the wake of Elon Musk’s meltdown, which might otherwise make passage of Trump’s reconciliation bill funding a massive expansion of Miller’s gulag. It comes as a few libertarians — Tom Massie called for “Realistic border funding” and “No bloat for military industrial complex” in his pitch for a new “skinny” bill — focus on the huge funding for the gulag.

This inital use of federal troops in a blue city should be understood as an effort to build pressure to help pass the bill. It should also be used as an example of the danger of passing the bill — the kind of authoritarianism that Miller intends to wield if the bill does pass.

As Washington Examiner was the first to report (a testament to the kind of people who were pissed about this tantrum), two weeks ago Miller called senior ICE officials to a meeting in DC to berate them that they’re not meeting his impossible quotas for arrests, 3,000 people a day. During the meltdown he had at the meeting, Miller specifically ordered ICE to start staging arrests at Home Depot and 7-Eleven. Miller specifically berated ICE officials because they were focusing on the criminal aliens around which Miller built Trump’s re-election campaign.

ICE’s top 50 field officials were given roughly a week’s notice of an emergency meeting in Washington.

ICE’s 25 Enforcement Removal Operations, or ERO, field office directors and 25 Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, special agents in charge flew into Washington and descended on the agency’s Washington headquarters last Tuesday, May 20. There, they were met by Miller, ICE confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.

One of the ERO officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

“Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest. ‘That’s what Tom Homan says every time he’s on TV: ‘We’re going after criminals,’” the ICE official told Miller, according to the first official.

The protests started in response to two things: Raids on work places and also the detention of a growing number of people without food in the basement of a federal building — the latter of which Representative Jimmy Gomez was protesting most of the day. At an early tiny peaceful protest, ICE assaulted and then arrested SEIU California President, David Huerta, injuring him badly enough to require hospital treatment, during their assault. He remains in custody. The assault-and-arrest bears similarities to the staged confrontation at Delaney Hall and ICE’s invasion of Jerry Nadler’s office in recent weeks.

Huerta’s treatment drew condemnation from Democratic leaders across the country, including LA Mayor Karen Bass.

Multiple Trump authoritarians, including Miller, responded to Bass’ condemnation of the violence ICE was wielding by insisting that “Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.”

From there, the protests against ICE grew, many of them mocking ICE. But ICE and LA Sheriffs (the LAPD deployed, but said it saw no violence) escalated. Nevertheless, protests remain localized (around the ICE facility and at the Federal building).

Numerous Administration keyboard warriors, including Miller, are tying the protest in Los Angeles to his Big Ugly bill, using the very same eliminationist language Trump’s used to kick off an assault on the Capitol.

The through-line here is crystal clear.

Ratchet up raids on peaceful people to hit impossible quotas (ICE came close, but did not meet, Miller’s 3,000 arrest quota on two days last week).

Use protests against that draconian invasion to arrest Democratic leaders and invade a blue city.

Point to the chaos created by Miller’s draconian ICE raids to demand passage of the Big Ugly bill, which will codify and expand precisely that kind of draconian ICE raid.

Create chaos, and then use that chaos to try to codify authoritarian power.

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Trump Muskmageddon Open Thread

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The year of our lord 2025 started with a rabid Musk-Trump supporter self-immolating himself in a Cybertruck parked in front of a Trump casino, trying to send us all a message.

The most interesting development in the burgeoning Civil War between two historical narcissists is that Elon unfollowed both Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk (the latter whom drooled a bit about how wonderful it was Elon decided to platform Nazis after he bought Twitter).

But that’s just one girl’s opinion. Feel free to share yours below!

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Perhaps Stephen Miller (Also) Believes in the Efficacy of a Deportation Gulag as a Tool to Usher in Fascism

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Like me, Greg Sargent continues to focus on the messaging opportunities presented by recent developments in Stephen Miller’s deportation gulag. (In the wake of NYT’s coverage and Sargent’s interview with Carol Hui the other day, Hui has been released from detention.)

This post reacts to this NBC story which, in turn, follows up on the Washington Examiner (!!!) story reporting on Miller’s recent meltdown about the number of deportations. NBC added to the story about Miller’s meltdown by pointing to how Trump has shifted law enforcement’s focus from their day jobs — hunting child sex traffickers, hackers, spies, and terrorists — to instead hunt peaceful undocumented migrants.

It is the latest example of how President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations is reshaping federal law enforcement as officials shift resources toward immigration-related cases — including nonviolent administrative offenses — leaving less time and attention for other types of criminal investigations.

The plan calls for using 3,000 ICE agents, including 1,800 from Homeland Security Investigations, which generally investigates transnational crimes and is not typically involved in arresting noncriminal immigrants; 2,000 Justice Department employees from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration; and 500 employees from Customs and Border Protection. It also includes 250 IRS agents, some of whom may be used to provide information on the whereabouts of immigrants using tax information, while others would have the authority to make arrests, according to the operation plan.

Sargent argues that if Democrats (I would argue, Trump opponents generally) can explain how Trump is making the country less safe to hunt down people like Carol Hui, they’ll grow even more opposed to Miller’s deportation gulag.

It’s a good point — similar to the one I made about the extent to which Miller’s jihad is depriving Americans of cancer cures. There are a bunch of opportunity costs that come with Miller’s deportation gulag, including hunting child sex traffickers and curing cancer. All of them are bad. We need to tell that story.

Along the way to making that point, though, Sargent makes this claim about Miller’s beliefs. Miller believes, Sargent argues, that migrants poison the nation’s blood. He believes hunting down people like Carol Hui is an emergency.

Unlike Miller, that is, majorities are not ideologically hostile to the mere presence of peaceful unauthorized immigrants in this country; they just want the system to work. Yet Miller and Trump see that presence as itself posing a dire public emergency, or even a civilizational one. In this worldview, there can be no desirable pathway to lawful status here for these people, because they inherently represent a public threat—they are “poisoning” the nation’s “blood.” Making them legal wouldn’t change that. It would only make the threat they pose more insidious.

That’s why Miller is capable of tweeting that the House GOP budget bill is the “most essential piece of legislation” in “the entire Western World,” largely because it ramps up deportation resources. To him, saving the “Western World” rides on deporting all those unauthorized people, including all those “moms.”

All this gets at the deeper reason Miller and Trump are shifting extensive law enforcement resources away from serious crimes into deporting noncriminal immigrants: They simply do see the presence of these people as an extraordinarily urgent national emergency, perhaps more urgent than all those other serious crimes.

I want to suggest that Miller’s unrelenting obsession with his deportation gulag may be more than just uncontrolled racism (though I have no doubt it is that, at least).

When you shift law enforcement from the FBI to DHS, you do more than simply shift law enforcement from focusing on child sex traffickers, hackers, spies, and terrorists to focusing on nice ladies like Carol Hui.

You also shift from a law enforcement that must meet increasing evidentiary standards — first probable cause and then beyond a reasonable doubt — to jail people, to one that has a far more lower threshold, one that affords the claims of the Executive great deference. And even in that context, Miller keeps looking for ways to lower the burden of law enforcement still lower; that’s the reason he pursued his Alien Enemies Act project: because he believes and wants Judges to get no review of such deportations. Next up, Miller wants to eliminate habeas corpus, such that the Executive could detain anyone with no judicial review.

Shifting from the FBI, which must adhere to written rules developed over decades in the wake of past abuses, to DHS, frees you from a great many strictures on how you investigate people. (This would be one effect of making ICE a bigger law enforcement agency than FBI.)

Shifting from FBI to DHS shifts you from a legalized culture to thug culture.

And Stephen Miller has never hid that he wants to apply this abusive law enforcement approach to US citizens to. He’s just not sure how he’ll get there.

Miller explicitly wants to be able to jail and deport people — and he has swept up legal aliens and even American citizens — without any review. That’s the goal. False inflammatory claims about immigration is the means.

I would suggest that Miller’s fondness for deportation gulags is about more than racism (though, again, it is definitely about racism). Miller’s false claims about immigrants are the means he plans to use to lower or eliminate the legal protections that all people in America — citizen and migrant alike — have against abusive Executive power.

Stephen Miller both believes in white supremacy but also that the United States should eliminate due process for all enemies of Donald Trump.

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Hard Lines on Legal Capitulation

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To succeed, authoritarians must weaken or co-opt civil society, those spheres of society via which people form social ties independent of government.

That’s what Trump has been trying to do with his attacks on universities, the press, and non-governmental organizations, among other targets.

Businesses — small and large — are an important subset of civil society, both because so much local, national, and international power is concentrated there, but also because corporations often favor certain trappings of authoritarianism, particularly if it comes (as Trump’s does) with a promise to let corporations commit crimes.

Businesses are often the easiest corners of civil society for budding authoritarians to co-opt.

Trump has attempted to co-opt businesses by trading thinly-disguised bribes for favorable government assistance, whether in the form of closing investigations into illegal business practices, approval for consolidation, or massive government contracts. These bribes have a lasting value for Trump, because they serve to corrupt businesses as an ongoing process, locking in a commitment to succeed not by competition, but by tribute. Businesses that buy into Trump’s corrupt quid pro quo will have a difficult time ever freeing themselves from it.

This has been a particularly useful tool with media corporations. While ABC continues to do important journalism in the wake of Disney’s capitulation, there’s a tacit understanding that Trump can repeat his coercion if future reporting really bothers him, and CBS has all but sacrificed its journalistic independence in advance of the expected Paramount settlement. WaPo’s plight in the face of Jeff Bezos’ obeisance to Trump is even more stark.

This dynamic is one reason why right wing opposition to Trump’s tariffs is so important: the tariffs are so destructive that at least some right wingers were and are willing to confront Trump publicly on them (and the rest of the business community is no doubt cheering silently from cowardly perches in executive suites).

And this dynamic is why I find WSJ’s report on the evolving response to Trump’s attempt to cow Big Law so interesting.

The entire piece presents a curious narrative arc, describing the stories that capitulating firms tell themselves to excuse their choice.

At Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, managing partner Pat Quinn grew emotional when he announced to fellow partners that their firm—the oldest in New York—had reached a deal for peace with the Trump administration. Days later, in a firmwide meeting, Quinn said Cadwalader’s leadership had strongly considered fighting the Trump administration but ultimately elected to reach a deal out of a sense of duty to the firm and its clients, according to people familiar with his remarks.

[snip]

Firms that struck deals hoped to find solidarity in numbers. The country’s largest firm, Kirkland & Ellis, which had about $9 billion in revenue last year, lobbied its peers to sign deals.

Some of this may be denial or cowardice. The WSJ specifically notes that Paul Weiss’ Brad Karp, who serves as a kind of villain in the piece, is “a longtime Democratic donor.” Given its longstanding right wing political posture, Kirkland’s pitch for solidarity in capitulation might be a corrupt bid to support authoritarianism.

As in all of these stories, GOP firm Jones Day is not mentioned.

The story contrasts that capitulation from Paul Weiss and Kirkland and others with examples of general counsels — Citadel appears in a splashy lede, and Oracle, Microsoft, McDonalds, and Morgan Stanley are named among ten or eleven other companies — that are specifically seeking out law firms that stood up to Trump, because they view that as indication that they’ll take a hard line in negotiations for their business.

At least 11 big companies are moving work away from law firms that settled with the administration or are giving—or intend to give—more business to firms that have been targeted but refused to strike deals, according to general counsels at those companies and other people familiar with those decisions.

Among them are technology giant Oracle, investment bank Morgan Stanley, an airline and a pharmaceutical company. Microsoft expressed reservations about working with a firm that struck a deal, and another such firm stopped representing McDonald’s in a case a few months before a scheduled trial.

In interviews, general counsels expressed concern about whether they could trust law firms that struck deals to fight for them in court and in negotiating big deals if they weren’t willing to stand up for themselves against Trump. The general counsel of a manufacturer of medical supplies said that if firms facing White House pressure “don’t have a hard line,” they don’t have any line at all.

In other words, the story portrays a very real spectrum of response to Trump’s threat, but a spectrum that may be shifting towards resistance to Trump.

Which is why two anecdotes at the end of the 1,900-word story are of such interest.

WSJ describes the role of Sullivan & Cromwell’s Robert Giuffra, in the seemingly conflicted role of representing Trump on two appeals at the same time as he negotiated Paul Weiss’ epic capitulation. Purportedly in an effort to tamp down objections to his role within the firm, Giuffra outsourced his own agency to judges who would block the attacks. These attacks on law firms are “likely unconstitutional,” he reportedly explained, but leave that for the judges to determine (this is precisely the stance that Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins has adopted towards Trump’s usurpation of her role).

At Sullivan & Cromwell, some lawyers have bristled at the role that co-chair Robert Giuffra played in facilitating a deal for Trump to drop an executive order against rival firm Paul Weiss. Giuffra, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, participated by phone in an Oval Office discussion with the Paul Weiss leader, who was there to work out a deal.

Giuffra is representing Trump in two New York appeals—one of them a challenge to his conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case. Giuffra told his partners that taking on the cases would give the firm strong ties to the new administration.

Trying to quell discontent within his own firm, Giuffra told partners at an April meeting that he believed the orders were likely unconstitutional and would be blocked by judges, and that he hoped the White House would stop issuing them, according to people familiar with his remarks. White House aides said they weren’t aware of his opposition.

The story is full of anonymous sourcing, hiding even the identity of at least six companies that are moving business to the targeted firms. Some, but not all, of that can be attributed to protecting privileged relationships. The rest is likely testament that even the companies seeking out firms willing to stand up to Trump want to avoid antagonizing the president. Hilariously, though, WSJ informed the White House of Giuffra’s opposition to these attacks, which may undermine the stated purpose — securing strong ties to the White House — of his role in these negotiations, and may heighten the discomfort with his role at Sullivan & Cromwell.

Which is how we arrive at the final two paragraphs of the story.

The second-to-last paragraph attributes the logic and authorship of the Executive Orders to Stephen Miller, where so much of Trump’s authoritarianism arises.

Trump remains interested in the orders, and deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and his allies want to keep the threats of more executive orders on the table because they think it dissuades the best lawyers from representing critics of the administration. Miller has repeatedly complained that some of the country’s top lawyers took on lawsuits against the Trump administration in the first term, which he and other Trump advisers view as stymying the agenda of a democratically elected president.

The White House’s appetite for a fight with the legal industry appears to have waned. There hasn’t been a new executive order since early April.

Miller (who started an NGO designed to fight liberal policies, especially those of Joe Biden) complained when top lawyers fought Trump in the first term, which WSJ credulously parrots amounts to thwarting a democratically-elected President.

And so, WSJ describes, Miller and “his allies” (although both Ryan Barber and Josh Dawsey are bylined on this report, it doesn’t mention their past scoop about Boris Epshteyn’s role in brokering the capitulation deals) want to keep alive the threat of such orders, which have been soundly rejected by Obama appointee Beryl Howell and George W Bush appointees John Bates and Richard Leon. They want to sustain that threat because they imagine that it’ll dissuade precisely the lawyers who are finding it is good for business to show you’ll take a hard line to defend yourself.

That may true in some cases, at least for politically exposed entities, as WaPo describes. Corporations will find legal representation, but migrants and trans people may have a harder time doing so.

In spite of the described ongoing commitment to this attack from Miller (and “his allies”), WSJ ends this remarkable story with the observation that Trump has not issued any new such orders. It doesn’t mention that, 31 days of a 60-day appeal window after Howell’s ruling later, Trump has also not (yet) appealed any of the judges’ orders rejecting these EOs, not even the part — the part stripping security clearances — most ripe for appeal.

Perhaps they’re waiting for the fourth case, Susman Godfrey’s challenge currently pending before Biden appointee Judge Loren AliKhan. Or perhaps people smarter about the law than Miller (and unnamed allies like Epshteyn) may have noticed that these orders risk undermining Executive authority and create an acute ongoing legal risk, particularly if Democrats were to win one or both houses of Congress at midterms.

In rejecting these orders, all three judges pointed to Trump’s flipflop on the Paul Weiss order to adopt a maximal ruling against Trump.

Leon did so in adopting WilmerHale’s request to treat the entire order, including the security clearance restriction, as a unified whole:

The President’s treatment of the Paul Weiss Order underscores the unified nature of the Order. The Paul Weiss Order largely tracks the WilmerHale Order, with a Background section and similar operative provisions. See generally Paul Weiss Order. When Paul Weiss struck a deal with the President, he rescinded the Paul Weiss Order in full, citing the firm’s “remarkable change of course.” Compl. ¶¶ 102–03; Paul Weiss Rescission Order. The President’s treatment of the Paul Weiss Order shows that he “intended” these Executive Orders “to stand or fall as a whole.” See Minn. v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians, 526 U.S. 172, 173 (1999) (finding that an Executive Order was designed “to stand or fall as a whole” because it “embodied a single, coherent policy”).

And both Howell…

While the Paul, Weiss Revocation Order summarized that firm’s agreement to, inter alia, “adopt[] a policy of political neutrality with respect to client selection and attorney hiring; tak[e] on a wide range of pro bono matters representing the full political spectrum; commit[] to merit-based hiring, promotion, and retention . . .; dedicat[e] the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services during [President Trump’s] term in office . . .; and other similar initiatives,” none of these agreedupon policy or practice changes appear to explain or address how any national security concerns sufficient to warrant the Paul, Weiss EO could have changed so rapidly. Id. § 1, 90 Fed. Reg. at 13685. The speed of the reversal and the rationale provided in the Paul, Weiss Revocation Order, which focused only on agreements to advance policy initiatives of the Trump Administration, see id., further support the conclusion that national security considerations are not a plausible explanation for Section 2.

[snip]

The fact that Paul, Weiss quickly negotiated a deal, including an agreement to provide “the equivalent of $40 million” in free legal work, rather than face the potential injuries of the similar Executive Order targeting that firm, see Paul, Weiss Revocation Order, 90 Fed. Reg. at 13685, demonstrates the coercive power of such targeting by the Trump Administration.

… And Bates did so to reach the normally unassailable presidential authority to govern security clearances:

And if any doubt remains as to the sincerity of the invocation of national security, take a look at the Paul Weiss saga. Paul Weiss’s executive order imposed the same tailored process on its employees’ security clearances. See First Paul Weiss E.O. § 2. What it took to escape that process—denouncing a former partner, changing client selection and hiring practices, and pledging pro bono work to the President’s liking—had not even a glancing relationship to national security.

Put simply, this blunderbuss of an order does not engage in the sort of “legitimate consideration of speech,” Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 668 (2012), that might sometimes be necessary to keep classified information in safe hands. Rather than ensuring that national secrets remain with those who will keep them, Section 2’s process “seek[s] to leverage” the Executive’s control over security clearances as a way to change speech. See Agency for Int’l Dev. v. All. for Open Soc’y Int’l, 570 U.S. 205, 214–15 (2013). Section 2, in other words, is about using another lever in the President’s arsenal to extinguish speech he dislikes. Cf. id. at 218 (“This case is not about the Government’s ability to enlist the assistance of those with whom it already agrees. It is about compelling a grant recipient to adopt a particular belief as a condition of funding.”). The First Amendment forbids that sort of speech manipulation by the government, even in an arguably national security-related setting.

These judges — particularly Howell, with her description of coercion — are describing bribery, of that thinly veiled quid pro quo used with direct payments now laid bare in the quick flip flop with Paul Weiss. The risk that Trump’s flipflop on Paul Weiss could be used to prove bribery, and the risk it poses to law firms going forward, was predicted in an amicus from ethics professors.

None of that, mind you, appears in the WSJ story.

WSJ is describing something simpler: the value proposition in hiring a law firm willing to stand up to a bully.

It’s just one response among many, even among many from corporations. But that value proposition has had the effect of getting key corporations to defend civil society.

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Flying Bribery Palaces and the End of the Western Order

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I am the rare person who thinks Trump’s authoritarian push has not, yet, gone as far as it might as quickly as I imagined.

I think that for two primary reasons. First, I expected far more violence than we’ve seen, both from jack-booted thugs and from Trump’s terrorists. While ICE has definitely done horrible things and wielded unnecessary violence, they have thus far limited their targets to people who are or look like they are migrants or those who’ve defended migrants’ due process. It doesn’t make what they’ve done right. It makes that violence an entrée.

That may change if Trump’s budget authorizing 20,000 more immigration cops–which should be viewed as a wholesale shift in the United States from law enforcement to policing–gets passed by the Senate. That may change as Trump and Stephen Miller continue to gin up violence targeting judges. That may change as Trump’s rubes begin to lose their livelihoods and need someone besides Trump to blame. But thus far, Trump has not wielded the kind of violence he has tested in the past.

The other thing I expected to happen more quickly was a solidification of an alliance with the great authoritarians of the world — the Middle Eastern autocrats who had been bribing Trump in plain sight throughout the Biden term, Russia, which had partnered with those same autocrats in Putin’s effort to destroy the United States, and eventually China. Such an alliance would leave Europe — already undermined by the Orbanist project — as the rump defender of once dominant Western ideals.

My concern about such a plight is more than my own parochial interest, living within that rump world protecting human rights and democracy.

If Trump joins such an alliance, it would turn all the tools the US has used to uphold a tainted version of the Western order for most of a century against itself, in precisely the same way Trump has turned the strengths that Made America Great — immigration, diversity, debate, science — against the United States.

When I wrote a post on the “terrifying complexity of tech oligarch obeisance to Trump,” I was thinking of the US power wielded through US tech giants, in the form of spying, platforming and promoting violent and fascist speech, and serving as the digital infrastructure for the world’s commerce and communication. I was imagining what Quinn described, where Trump wielded US power over Microsoft to cut off an ICC prosecutor targeting Israel and Russia, Karim Khan. I was imagining the tools once used against people the US called terrorists, now targeting human rights defenders as if they were terrorists.

It’s not just the Internet. So long as the dollar remains the reserve currency, it’s banking too, which Trump also used to debank Khan.

Trump has used the tools the US used to use against terrorism and dictators to instead make a prosecutor of war crimes a person non-grata. He has made it a crime to uphold human rights.

The reports of Khan’s targeting came out while Trump was in his triumphant Middle East tour, where oligarchs who want the ability to chop up journalists with bone saws with impunity feted Trump’s return and threw more bribery at him. Trump brought many of the tech oligarchs who had earlier bowed in obeisance, which turned it into an orgy of oligarchy. While there, Trump handed away American tech advantage on AI. While there, Trump assured the men who chop up journalists that he, that America, wouldn’t tell them what to do anymore. That was the message of his triumph. Probably Trump will, probably he did, share the intelligence that went into chopping up a WaPo journalist, but that didn’t stop WaPo’s owner Jeff Bezos from following along like a puppy.

And through it all, even Trump’s supporters criticized Trump’s plans to accept a flying bribery palace from Qatar, an expensive sign of how goddamned easy it was to purchase Trump with a bit of gilt.

But Trump has no self-control in the face of a shiny bribe, so he accepted it with no consideration of the symbolic and national security implications of doing so.

Trump is an insanely easy mark for ruthless autocrats bearing bribes.

Most commentators have been measuring Trump’s authoritarian project in terms of Orbán’s model, and they’re not wrong. That’s what Project 2025 had in mind. But Trump already went far beyond Project 2025 in key areas, starting with the gutting of USAID, including the projects Republicans favor, a move that likely eliminated good will to the US in areas threatened by authoritarianism.

But Trump seems to be pursuing an additive model, one adopting the excess of the Gulf. There was a video (I’m still looking for it again) of the end of a receiving line with Trump and — I think — Mohammed bin Zayed. Stephen Miller was last in line and whichever Sheikh it was shook Miller’s hand and then didn’t let go, embracing him, engaging in an extended discussion with him. There were smiles everywhere. (Update: From SteveBev, here’s that video.)

The project is larger than Orbán’s. Orbán’s was just a package to sell it to the Christian nationalists.

And Trump came back from the Gulf, determined to flaunt his flying bribery palace from Qatar, on the verge of ending sanctions on Russia having achieved absolutely nothing in the way of peace concessions to excuse it, even while 80 Senators support more sanctions on Russia. In recent days Trump has done several things (besides accepting the flying bribery palace).

He has floated draconian 50% tariffs for the EU. If imposed, they would treat the EU as a greater adversary to the US than China (which is exactly how Trump’s aides treated the EU when thinking of their short-lived campaign against the Houthis). He is complaining about more than trade. He is also complaining about non-monetary barriers — the kinds of rules that make EU life safer and more civilized than in the US — and lawsuits of the sort that impose limits on American tech.

And, under the same kind of dereliction Marco Rubio brought to dismantling USAID, Trump is now dismantling the NSC so as to eliminate the possibility that actual experts will advise him against stupid policies. Axios provided the propaganda version, but FT provides the best explanation of the import.

“By whittling down the NSC staff to almost nothing, you kneecap the US government’s ability to generate foreign policy options, or to potentially act as a brake on Trump’s preferences. All that remains is presidential power.”

That would be dangerous enough if Trump were smart, sophisticated, or fully cognizant.

He’s not.

As such, he remains suggestible to whoever is in his office, starting with Stephen Miller (who’ll expand his portfolio with this move), but undoubtedly including whatever dictator can get him on his phone, those autocrats bearing bribes.

Admittedly, Trump’s complete reversal of sanctions on Syria will provide the country needed relief. It’ll also help his Gulf buddies consolidate power.

We should expect to see more instances where Trump takes sudden actions that empower authoritarianism. And as he proceeds, he will look for ways to start chipping away at democracy where it remains.

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DOJ Reportedly Will Pay Ashli Babbitt’s Estate $5 Million; Claims to Have Charged LaMonica McIver

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One thing even good reporting on Stephen Miller’s attempt to deport hundreds of Venezuelans under Miller’s nested false claims that they are members of Tren de Aragua and that Tren de Aragua is a terrorist group directed by the Venezuelan government to invade the United States misses is that Miller is doing it to aid in false equivalences.

Both Miller and Trump propagandist Mike Davis illustrated this the other day.

Davis falsely claimed that the Supreme Court, in ruling against Trump’s attempt to render detainees over Easter weekend, provided habeas in just 24 hours. But, Davis claimed, it took the same court 30,000 hours to “provide relief” to Jan6ers “persecuted by Biden,” by which he meant those who were prosecuted under 18 USC 1512(c)(2).

Ultimately SCOTUS narrowed the application of the law to those who corruptly tampered with evidence involved in a proceeding. Almost everyone charged with obstruction premeditated their effort to disrupt the vote certification, to deny Joe Biden his victory and his supporters their right to have their vote counted.

Miller called these people who attacked democracy, “innocent Americans.” He, like Davis, called the Venezuelans “terrorists.”

CATO’s David Bier released a report yesterday showing that 50 of the men already sent to to Nayib Bukele’s concentration camp were not only not proven to be terrorists, but had been admitted into the United States legally. Most were detained because of their tattoos.

These legal immigrants include a temporary visa holder and four men who were authorized to travel through the US refugee program. The government vetted these refugees abroad and concluded that they would face persecution, letting them resettle in the United States. The other 45 legal immigrants scheduled appointments using the CBP One app, through which they were permitted to seek entry. Among those with appointments, 24 were paroled into the United States, where they could live and work legally for up to two years, while the other 21 were detained at the port of entry.

[snip]

These people came to the United States with advanced US government permission, were vetted and screened before arrival, violated no US immigration law, and the US government turned around and “disappeared” them without due process to a foreign prison. It is paying the Salvadoran government to continue to keep them incarcerated.

[snip]

Most, at least 42, were labeled as gang members primarily based on their tattoos, which Venezuelan gangs do not use to identify members and are not reliable indicators of gang membership. According to court documents, DHS created a checklist to determine that heavily weights “dressing” like a gang member, using “gang signs,” and, most critically, tattoos. No criminal conviction, arrest, or even witness testimony is required.

DHS’s images of “TdA tattoos” include the Jordan logo, an AK-47, a train, a crown, “hijos,” “HJ,” a star, a clock, and a gas mask. But as the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin Melnick has shown, all of these supposed TdA tattoos were not taken from Venezuelan gang members but rather stolen by DHS from social media accounts that have nothing to do with TdA or Venezuela. For instance, DHS obtained its TdA “Jordan” from a Michael Jordan fan account in the United States. It pulled its AK-47 tattoo from a Turkish tattoo artist.

Because these men were denied due process, the public had no opportunity to obtain a real accounting of any evidence against them.

By comparison, those charged with obstructing the vote count for January 6 were arrested on criminal complaints sworn out to a judge, given initial hearings, and convicted via a trial or confession. They got due process.

Stephen Miller called them innocent, even those who admitted to willfully attempting to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s win.

Monday, SCOTUS lifted the stay on a Temporary Postponement of Kristi Noem’s efforts to deport Venezuelans from whom Trump withdrew Temporary Protected Status. Those with individual challenges can continue their challenges but Trump can move forward with deportations.

As part of the same effort to decriminalize January 6, DOJ has agreed to pay Ashli Babbitt’s estate almost $5 million to settle a wrongful death claim related to Babbitt’s invasion of the Speaker’s Lobby where Congress was trying to escape an armed mob.

The Trump administration has agreed to pay just under $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit that Ashli Babbitt’s family filed over her shooting by an officer during the U.S. Capitol riot, according to a person with knowledge of the settlement. The person insisted on anonymity to discuss with The Associated Press terms of a settlement that have not been made public.

The settlement would resolve the $30 million federal lawsuit that Babbitt’s estate filed last year in Washington, D.C. On Jan. 6, 2021, a Capitol police officer shot Babbitt as she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby.

The officer who shot her was cleared of wrongdoing by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which concluded that he acted in self-defense and in the defense of members of Congress. The Capitol Police also cleared the officer.

This is Trump’s goal, Stephen Miller’s goal; it is how Miller got Trump elected. Trump has always claimed investigations into himself and his mob were unjust, but his own investigations into Joe Biden’s kid and before that Hillary Clinton was a hunt for corruption.

Trump’s power rests on claiming up is down, attacks on the US are noble and the defense of rule of law is a crime, accountability for anyone on his team is unjust.

Finally, today, Alina Habba announced on Xitter (nothing appears to be filed yet) that she is dismissing the petty trespassing case against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka “for the sake of moving forward” — or, more likely, because video evidence shows that when he was asked to leave Delaney Hall, he did so, and only after that was he arrested. But in the same statement, Habba announced she was has charged Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, who was shoved while she was objecting to the arrest of Newark’s mayor, which right wingers describe as an attempt to body slam the cops arresting Baraka. McIver is being charged with the same assault charge used against hundreds of Jan6ers who have since been pardoned for their crimes.

Habba claims she,

persistently made efforts to address these issues without bringing criminal charges and [has] given Representative McIver every opportunity to come to a resolution, but she has unfortunately declined.

Uh huh. McIver probably declined to do what CBS is about to, to falsely admit guilt when there is none. In a statement, McIver called the charges political.

McIver, D-10th Dist., called the charges filed by Habba, an appointee and former lawyer for President Donald Trump “purely political.”

“Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district,” McIver said in a statement. “We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short.

“Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka. The charges against me are purely political—they mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight.”

The charge comes amid a WaPo report that Pam Bondi is (was?) considering eliminating the requirement that investigations into Members of Congress and other public officlas involve DOJ’s Public Integrity Division. The Division would have, in this case, warned DOJ officials that in past cases (most notably with people like Scott Perry and Jim Jordan) DOJ determined charges for such actions might violate separation of powers.

Trump not only doesn’t care about things like that, infringing on Congress’ powers is the point.

As I said to Nicole Sandler Friday, Trump was always going to find a way to charge a Member of Congress, just like he found a way to charge a judge. Habba has done so here where McIver has a clear immunity claim, and has done so as someone who clearly has conflicts. Habba’s statement lacks DOJ’s boilerplate comment asserting that charges are just allegations. And the siren in her tweet will add to any claim McIver makes that this violates due process.

Sure, Habba claims she tried to avoid this. But the entire scene at Delaney Hall was designed to elicit such confrontation, to create nesting legal attacks out of which Stephen Miller can spin his lies.

These developments are all of a piece. They are all an effort — one Trump has been pursuing for a decade — to replace rule of law with rule of mob.

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