Obviously I support pressuring the U.S. government to impeach Trump, both for the laws he's breaking and to stop the very real, and very violent fascist agenda he's conducting, but I don't think you can count on a Republican Party that has fully embraced Trump and the fascist American First movement, and is currently surrendering its own powers over things like tariffs to the President, to help anyone do that. They like most of the fascist shit he's doing, and they've seen what the MAGA base does to GOP officials who speak out against Downmarket Mussolini, at least in terms of their career prospects. Mostly then, I'm sharing this article to point out that Trump's strategy of ignoring the courts and daring someone to stop him extends far beyond an injunction to protect the right to even *have* optional diversity programs that, let's be honest, a lot of privileged white Americans really don't care about even though they should.

commondreams.org/news/trump-im…

Trump Ignoring Court Orders Is New Grounds for Impeachment, Says Pro-Democracy Group

"As Free Speech for People detailed in a Wednesday statement, the new administration's recent "oversteps of the judiciary branch include: refusing to release $2 billion in foreign aid in defiance of multiple court orders; refusing to adhere to court orders that prohibit the Office of Management and Budget from implementing a freeze on all federal assistance; and refusing to adhere to a court order requiring U.S. Office of Personnel Management [acting Director] Charles Ezell to testify in person on March 13, 2025, in a lawsuit challenging Ezell and OPM's termination of thousands of employees."

Courtney Hostetler, legal director of the nonprofit, said that "the checks and balances of our three-branch government is a cornerstone of our democracy, created by our country's founders because they were rightfully afraid of how quickly, in the absence of a balanced system, our democracy might become a tyranny."

"Trump has usurped the powers of the legislature and now tramples on the authority of the judiciary," Hostetler continued. "In just one month, he has repeatedly ignored court rulings that have and must restrain his unlawful abuses of power. He, like all presidents, must abide by the rule of law—and because he has not, Congress must adhere to its own obligations to carry out an impeachment investigation."

I write a lot about what the shit Trump says actually means, or what he's *going* to do next, because as a student of Pig Empire history, political economy, and the rise of fascist movements, I know a lot of things about how Trump is operating that for-profit, corporate media seems reluctant to share with you; and I've been right far more often than wrong on this hellride so far. On this subject however, we're no longer talking about likely scenarios. We can acknowledge that Trump absolutely means to ignore any court orders designed to block his fascist agenda and considers himself above the law, because he is doing precisely that already, he's openly saying he can break the law if he wants to as President, and as I'll discuss in a minute when I have time to break out the links, SCOTUS has signaled that they agree with him.

This is it folks, a really-existing, overt fascist dictatorship is here under Downmarket Mussolini and you are watching this nazi bastard assemble his own version of the Nazi Enabling Act, piecemeal, and in real time. The vaunted American system of "checks and balances" in government isn't going to stop him, the courts aren't going to stop him, and I would bet you my whole ass the Republican Party isn't going to stop him either. If we don't want to suddenly wake up five years from now to piles of corpses so big they block out the sun, it's time to start deploying people power, fighting fascism in the streets, and shutting this shit down - or you'll soon be asking yourself why you didn't *do* anything about fascism, before the mass graves were dug.

#Trump #Fascism #USPol #Impeachment #GOP #Courts #ExecutiveOrder #PeoplePower #ResistEverywhere

Unfortunately, despite the mounting evidence that the rule of law isn't even remotely going to stop Trump and his fascist agenda, there will still be a lot of Very Serious PeopleTM who simply refuse to believe their "lyin' eyes." In my experience there is often something about the affluent American liberal mindset that seems to make it impossible for many of them to even engage with the idea that powerful people working together can, and will, ignore the rules for their own benefit if there's nobody capable of enforcing them. Coupled with the fact that they're often high on elitist propaganda about "the madness of crowds," they will state that it's too early to be thinking about rising up to oppose the fascist state, and come up with all sorts of complicated reasons why the rule of law and the Constitution will prevail, even as Trump openly ignores all legal challenges to his authority. Over the past few days alone I've been told that "nobody is above the law," "SCOTUS will stop Trump if he violates the Constitution," and "the president might be immune, but that doesn't mean Trump's flunkeys in government are," for example. While I have neither the time, nor the desire to go over every possible objection folks who're looking for an excuse not to act can come up with, I'm just going to leave a few links here to demonstrate why really-existing, observable reality strongly suggests their faith in the system's ability to hold is almost certainly misplaced.

Here's a 6-3 fascist high Supreme Court of the United States ruling that so long as he's acting as the President, Trump is literally above the law - and then reserving the right for themselves to determine what the hell is and isn't an official act:

brennancenter.org/our-work/ana… & truthout.org/articles/the-supr…

Here's Trump pardoning a bunch of fascists who tried to storm the US capitol as part of an organized coup (or autogolpe if you prefer) to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, despite their convictions in court for those activities:

commondreams.org/news/jan-6-pa… & bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4vjvl… & aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/23/t…

Here's Trump pardoning coup plotters in and around his regime before he left office the first time:

usatoday.com/story/news/politi…

And here's Trump pardoning corrupt friends of his just for shits and giggles:

msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/m…

Naturally, some folks will point out that federal pardons don't circumvent the rulings of state courts, but I think you have to be pretty naïve to suggest that there are a lot of people in state judiciaries eager to go toe to toe with a fascist Trump regime that's already got SCOTUS on its side, and their power to really impede the America First fascist agenda is quite limited in scope anyway. It's all fine and dandy to shout "no one is above the law," but in the really real world we have to acknowledge that it really doesn't matter if Trump is "wrong" when he says he's untouchable, if literally nobody wants to risk it, or is in a position to actually enforce those laws.

All of which is not to say we as a people have to meekly accept a fascist dictatorship because nobody in the American establishment will stop it; just that waiting around for the referee to make Trump start playing by the rules is an extremely shortsighted, objectively terrible idea. All governments, even those that don't make any pretense of being democratic, rule by the consent of the people - it's just a question of how hard you're willing to fight to force them to realize that.

In a story that's not really making many waves in the US media because transphobia, transmisogyny, and hating incarcerated people are all bipartisan establishment positions, the Trump administration is also transferring incarcerated trans women to men's prisons; despite the fact that it's both illegal, and multiple judges have issued restraining orders to prevent the regime from doing so:

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/m…

Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order

"Transgender women incarcerated in the US prison system have been transferred to men’s facilities under Donald Trump’s executive order, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president’s policy, according to civil rights lawyers and accounts from behind bars.

Trump’s day-one “gender ideology” order, one of several sweeping attacks on trans rights, said the attorney general “shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” and that no federal funds go to gender-affirming treatment or procedures for people in custody.

The executive order was quickly challenged in court. In three lawsuits filed on behalf of trans women housed in women’s prisons, federal judges have ruled that the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) cannot withhold their medical treatment and was barred from moving them to men’s facilities. One judge said the plaintiffs had “straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow."

Lawyers fighting Trump’s directive say the court rulings prevented the transfers of 17 trans women who are plaintiffs in the cases, but others not included in the litigation are now facing placements in men’s facilities."

In case you're missing the shell game going on here, the Trump administration is pretending that only the 17 specific trans women mentioned in the cases to block this cruel fuckery are covered, while simply going ahead to target other trans women who are not specifically mentioned in the court orders. Not only is this an abnormal, malicious violation of the spirit of the judge's orders, but it's also literally straight up illegal:

"Prisons are required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea), a longstanding federal law, to screen incarcerated people for sexual assault risk and consider LGBTQ+ status when making housing decisions. Legal experts say Trump’s blanket policy of housing trans women in men’s facilities clearly violates Prea."

This is a hard story to read, because it demonstrates a pattern of pointless, wonton cruelty towards trans women by Trump's Bureau of Prisons; in addition to moving trans women to men only facilities that put them in very real danger, the BOP has also issued *orders* for guards to deadname prisoners and use incorrect pronouns, change their gender markers on official forms, deny requests for gender appropriate clothing, and to allow male guards to pat down trans women prisoners. Furthermore because this administration (and some would say, American society) hates trans women more than they like ice cream, nobody is making any effort here to prevent abuses that would seemingly go even beyond Trump's fascist executive order. There are already reports of male guards "groping" trans women prisoners, prison officials seizing the bras and underwear of trans women prisoners like they were contraband, threats to force detransition incarcerated trans women by denying their hormone therapy, and even one report of a woman who had gender-affirming surgeries before her incarceration, being moved to a men's prison. As one lawyer noted, this "is essentially sanctioning sexual assault in some instances."

Of course, given that trans people represent a microscopic minority inside the U.S. population, and 17 trans women are being protected by temporary restraining orders, only a small number of trans women are subject to what I'd describe as a form of psychological torture and the constant threat of violence; perhaps that's why the US political and media establishment in the "opposition" doesn't care, rather than their well established indifference towards trans lives, if not outright transphobia. I would however argue that the fact that the Trump administration is plowing ahead to target such a small number of trans women demonstrates that this isn't about safety or the rule of law; the cruelty is indeed the point, and a Trump regime that cares little about malnourished children, seniors living check to check on social security, or American workers, is clearly prepared to move heaven and earth to make existence so intolerable for trans women that they simply stop existing.

#Fascism #Trump #PoliceState #TransRights #BureauOfPrisons #Cruelty #SexualAssault #transmisogyny #USPol #PreaAct

In what is undoubtedly yet another "unprecedented" shock to Very Serious PeopleTM insisting the courts will stop the fascist Trump regime, the government just shipped over 250 prisoners to El Salvador (a country not known for its boundless respect for human rights) despite a judge's order forbidding that:

US deports hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members despite court order

bbc.com/news/articles/cp9yv1gn…

"Trump announced on Saturday that he had signed a proclamation declaring that the Tren de Aragua gang was "conducting irregular warfare" against the US and he would deport its members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

That evening, US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington DC ordered a 14-day halt to deportations covered by Trump's proclamation, pending further legal arguments.

After lawyers told him that planes with deportees had already taken off, Judge Boasberg gave a verbal order for the flights to turn back, US media reported, although that directive did not form part of his written ruling.

The written notice appeared in the case docket at 19:25 EDT on Saturday (00:25 GMT on Sunday), the Reuters news agency reports, although it is unclear when the flights carrying the alleged gang members departed from the US.

A senior official in the Trump administration said their legal advisors had determined that the judge's order was invalid because the two planes were over international waters at the time, according to Axios, a political news outlet.

"They were already outside of US airspace," a senior administration official told Axios. "We believe the order is not applicable."

Look, it's not lost on me that most American observers are going to struggle to summon up any sympathy for alleged gang members; although I would like to remind you that given all the other false accusations the Trump regime has made against a variety of people we know are innocent of "supporting terrorism" or "threatening women by existing," you shouldn't be inclined to take Trump and his minions' word for it when they tell you someone is a "gang member" either. What's important here is that the Trump regime is once again openly flouting court orders that impede their fascist agenda regardless of the laws involved here; this time by crassly pretending that they think a judge's order not to ship prisoners to El Salvador is no longer valid because the planes shipping them had left American airspace, as if the law were some kinda game of nazi Simon Says. Maybe you *don't* give a shit about alleged gang members, but if the Trumpenreich can ignore court orders and send these folks to a black hole in El Salvador anyway, they can ignore court orders preventing them from shipping me, you, or anyone you know to a torture box as well.

I mean once you've violated dozens of court orders, what's one more? The Trump regime and Customs and Border Patrol just deported an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brown Univeristy despite A) her having a valid visa, and B) a judge's direct order not to do so without telling him 48 hours in advance:

browndailyherald.com/article/2…

Brown professor, doctor deported despite federal judge’s orders

"After being held by customs officials at Boston Logan International Airport Thursday, Assistant Professor of Medicine Rasha Alawieh has been deported and is now in Lebanon, according to her relative Yara Chehab and court filings reviewed by The Herald.

The deportation took place despite a Friday order from U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin requiring 48 hours’ notice of Alawieh’s removal from Massachusetts.

Legal filings claim she was in possession of a valid H-1B visa that she recently received from the U.S. consulate in Beirut, The Herald previously reported."

A number of media outlets have been adamant about noting that Alawieh, a transplant surgeon who studied in the united states, hasn't been accused of a crime and doesn't have a criminal record, but really I think that's very much besides the point. As far as the Trump regime is concerned, being a brown person in the United States, even legally, is in and of itself a threat to public safety, or national security. It isn't, and has never been about "the law." Which, when coupled with the fact that the imperial presidency puts Trump in charge of pretty much every department that could hold him to account, is probably why he doesn't give a damn about the law or the judges who adjudicate it.

So uh, what stage of "it's not a Constitutional Crisis yet" is it when the ruling fascist party threatens to impeach the judge who ordered them not to deport planeloads of people to a prison in El Salvador, even though they straight up ignored that order?

commondreams.org/news/alien-en…

GOP Congressman Wants to Impeach Judge Behind 'Alien Enemies' Order Trump Defied

"In a post on X—the social media platform owned by Trump's billionaire adviser Elon Musk—Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) shared the New York Post's coverage of the Saturday court order and said, "I'll be filing articles of impeachment against activist Judge James Boasberg this week."

Gill's post garnered support from multiple other Republicans in the House of Representatives as well as Musk, who has endorsed GOP lawmakers' previous efforts to impeach other federal judges who have ruled against his and Trump's agenda.

Boasberg on Saturday issued a nationwide temporary restraining order in response to legal groups challenging Trump's attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for deportations. The judge, who was appointed to the district court in Washington, D.C. by former President Barack Obama, ordered any planes in the air to turn around.

However, "the Trump administration says it ignored a Saturday court order to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members because the flights were over international waters and therefore the ruling didn't apply," Axios reported Sunday, citing two senior officials.

While leading legal groups argue that Trump's attempted use of the law—previously invoked to send thousands of people to internment camps during World War II—is illegal, a senior White House official told Axios: "This is headed to the Supreme Court. And we're going to win."

So, what do you think is more likely? That a judge with no army, no police force, and no branch of government at his disposal can *force* Downmarket Mussolini to obey his orders, or, that a fascist party full of bootlicking sycophant nazis that is currently in control of the entire government, gets enough votes to impeach a judge for doing his job?

I know which one *I* think is more likely, but what I can't figure it out is why you "the law will prevail" folks seem to be getting wrong answer despite all the evidence around you.

As part of my work, I've been watching a fair bit of mainstream cable news recently; your condolences are appreciated in advance. While not all the coverage of the Trump regime's willful violation of judge's orders and the law in general has been horrible, there is a strong tendency to cast what is happening here as a hypothetical future result in a far too credulous way given the available evidence. This isn't even really about whether or not Downmarket Mussolini will get away with ignoring the laws and courts yet either; we're talking about grown adults in our media openly asking if the Trump regime seriously intends to do so, or this is all some grand strategy bluff.

This position is of course preposterous to the point that pretending it's plausible Trump isn't trying to create a "constitutional crisis" and allow his administration to act regardless of courts or the law, borders on open collaboration with a fascist regime. If that position sounds extreme to you, check out this article collecting some of the things official representatives of the Trump administration have said about the regime's already-enacted scheme to ship hundreds of alleged gang members to a slave labor prison in El Salvador despite having presented no evidence the Venezuelan men are gang members, and using a war powers act that's well over 200 years old, despite the fact that we're not at war with Venezuela:

truthout.org/articles/bondi-sa…

"Bondi Says Trump Will Defy Judge, Continue Deportations"

"In a court filing, the ACLU and Democracy Forward accused the administration of a “blatant violation” of the restraining order, as senior Trump administration officials openly dismissed the order. Vice President J.D. Vance bragged about the forced transfers on X, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted a post by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele that mocked the judge’s decision, saying, “Oopsie… Too late,” alongside a laughing emoji."

Okay so that's Vice President JD Vance, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio; let's take a look at what other high-level, official representatives of the Trump administration have to say about the situation and the government's intentions:

US Attorney General Pam Bondi:

“These are foreign terrorists, that the president has identified them, and designated them as such, and we will continue to follow the Alien Enemies Act [AEA].”

“You know, this one federal judge again thinks he can control foreign policy for the entire country, and he cannot.”

WH Deputy Chief of Staff (and noted white supremacist) Steven Miller:

“It is without doubt the most unlawful order a judge has issued in our lifetimes.”

“A district court judge has no authority to direct the national security operations of the executive branch. The president has operated the absolute apex of his constitutional authority,” he continued."

WH press secretary Karoline Leavitt:

"“[F]ederal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion.”

U.S. “border czar” Tom Homan:

“We’re not stopping.”

“I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming.”

Folks, these' aren't fascist YouTubers or Fox News media hosts, these are officially designated representatives and officials in the actual Trump administration. They aren't saying these things as a matter of personal opinion, they are speaking on behalf of the Trump regime in an official capacity, even when they're appearing on Fox. It is blatantly irresponsible for corporate media muppets to pretend this fascist nonsense is all something Trump *might* try to do, just because nobody knows if these nazis are actually going to get away with it. He *is* trying it, the US government under Trump's official position is that the president has the power to ignore laws and courts that interfere with his self-identified mandate to "save America." We can debate whether or not he'll get away with it, but the regime has made its intentions clear and the American people deserve to know that. It's not good enough to report Trump's actions and discuss the potential motivations behind them, while treating what regime officials openly say as a separate story. These things are intimately related and they should be presented as such.

#Fascism #USPol #Trump #Courts #ConstitutionalCrisis #FoxNews #JDVance #MarcoRubio #Media #PamBondi #StevenMiller #KarolineLeavitt #TomHoman

This (24 minute) Majority Report clip features a kind of wide ranging discussion about the Trump regime's constitutional violations and denial of due process for the 200+ Venezuelan migrants the regime flew to a slave labor prison in El Salvador. It's kinda rambly, but I'm including it here primarily because the MR crew features two clips of an administration official, and a media outlet closely aligned with the Trump regime openly admitting to, or arguing for the government's intention to ignore due process rights on purpose.

First Trump's "Border Czar" Tom Homan gives a television interview where he responds to questions about how the regime determined the "deported" migrants were gang members with a garbled version of "just trust us bro," and then responds to a question about the lack of (legally required) due process for the deportations by snarling "Due process? What was Laken Riley’s due process?" and listing other victims of crimes by migrants. However you feel about those cases, this is Homan admitting the regime knows it is violating the constitution, and simply does not care.

Then in a clip featuring two Fox News hosts, one of them (Brian Kilmeade) a close friend of Donald Trump, who proceed to argue first that we should literally amend the US Constitution to remove any rights for migrants and asylum seekers, and then that we should eliminate due process for migrants because "it's not practical" given the vast number of people the Trump regime intends to deport (Kilmeade's math is a little fuzzy on this subject; first he says 8 million, and then he says "there's 22 million people here at minimum, illegal already, just in the last three administrations.") Exasperated, Kilmeade closes by saying "if we are going to give every [one of] these guys a day in court and a lawyer, we can't do it, they don't *deserve it*" (emphasis mine.)

Obviously Fox News isn't (directly) part of the Trump administration, but when the pro-regime news network is repeating the same arguments as regime spokesmen and officials, to justify the constitutional violations that fascist regime is already committing, the intention of that regime to ignore the laws and constitution becomes unarguably obvious.

Majority Report: Trump Border Ghoul Admits They Are Breaking The Law

youtube.com/watch?v=6OyYGuLD3c…

Perhaps consistent with an administration that knows it's breaking the law and violating the constitution under wholly false pretenses, the Trump regime has invoked the “state secrets” privilege to dodge a federal judge's demand for more information about Downmarket Mussolini's fascist clusterfuck operation to ship 250+ migrants it claims, without evidence, are members of a notorious Venezuelan gang, to slave labor prisons in El Salvador:

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/m…

Trump administration claims details of mass deportations are state secrets

"According to a court filing submitted by justice department officials on Monday evening, “no further information will be provided” to the federal court in Washington DC based on the state secrets privilege. The filing said the case deals with Trump’s complete and absolute authority to remove “designated terrorists participating in a state-sponsored invasion of, and predatory incursion into, the United States”.

In response to the Trump administration’s invocation, the federal judge in the case said that if the administration would like to provide more information about the Alien Enemies Act operation, they should do so by 31 March.

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on 15 March to expel Venezuelan immigrants in the US. That day, 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadoran men were placed on planes and sent to El Salvador, where they were then quickly detained in a massive “terrorism” prison run by the Salvadoran government. For over a week, a federal judge has attempted to compel the Trump administration to release information about the operation."

This story can be difficult to get a handle on because we're ultimately talking about multiple instances of unlawfully activity by the government, and the contemptuous, often clearly false arguments the fascist Trump regime is deploying to avoid consequences for, or in this case even having to explain, those unlawful, often baldly unconstitutional activities. The first question, whether or not the regime can invoke an 18th-century wartime law to conduct "deportations" without due process (which would include a hearing before a judge, the presentation of evidence, and legal representation for the accused), has already been answered in the short term. US district judge James Boasberg blocked the regime's invocation of the act and ordered the government to turn any planes carrying migrants around immediately.

As you may have heard, the Trump regime did not obey the judge's order, and then proceeded to play a series of nazi word games to justify why they didn't have to, that were so devoid of respect for both the judge and the law, Boasberg may end up holding Trump officials in contempt of court. The judge then ordered the Trump administration to explain why the government's actions didn't represent an open violation of his court order. All of which brings us to today, where after threatening to impeach Boasberg, repeatedly arguing in the media that the regime either didn't, or had the right to, violate the US Constitution, and petulantly dragging their feet in an act of open defiance, the Pork Reich has announced that they don't intend to provide Boasberg with any more details about the operation because it would expose "state secrets" and harm America's national security.

Although the Trump regime's "throw buckets of bullshit at the wall and see what sticks" approach to defending its fascist activities makes it hard to pin down the administration's justification for invoking its "state secrets" privilege, we do have two major clues to work with. First the government's filing continues to push the fact-free idea that they are acting to oppose a state-sponsored (by Venezuela) invasion by gang members who are also terrorists, and thus imply everything they're doing is part of an actual war; which means their actions are not subject to judicial review due to the President's legally-established wartime authority to defend America. The number of things objectively wrong with, or false about this argument is literally too staggering to unpack here, but let's just be clear that this is absolute fascist fuckery and bullshit. Our second clue comes from the mouth of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

"The rapid expulsion of nearly 300 immigrants came about via a “nonpublic, sensitive, and high stakes negotiation”, secretary of state Marco Rubio said in a separate Monday declaration. The “sensitive” negotiation was likely with the Salvadoran government headed by President Nayib Bukele."

Of course the regime is legally within its rights to invoke its "state secrets" privilege, but that doesn't mean anyone with two braincells to rub together has to believe Trumpworld when it argues that it's fighting a war that doesn't exist, or that telling a court about its activities will damage US relations with El Salvador. These nazis are full of shit.

#Trump #Fascism #ElSalvador #Boasberg #Rubio #MigrantRights #Venezuela #AlienEnemiesAct #Courts

So what's a fascist party to do when they've already said the courts don't have authority over them, they intend to ignore court rulings, and they want to impeach federal judges who won't play fascist Calvinball for them, but the injunctions and restraining orders keep coming anyway? Apparently, if you're noted Christian Nationalist, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, the answer is to threaten to dissolve the courts entirely.

truthout.org/articles/mike-joh…

"Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (Louisiana) suggested on Tuesday that Congress might move to dismantle certain federal courts following at least 15 nationwide injunctions imposed by judges against executive orders issued by President Donald Trump.

“We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court,” Johnson told reporters. “We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act.”

Look, by no means am I saying that I'm *against* taking the fascist Trump regime to court, to try and block as much of their techbro monarchist/fundie/nazi (depends on the moment with these guys) program as possible. What I'm saying however is that waiting around to see if you'll still have human, civil, and political rights after a long protracted legal battle, while the regime continues to install a fascist dicatorship in the meantime, is an incredibly shortsighted plan of action; and yet it seems to be the one much of the liberal establishment is adopting at the moment. This is particularly true when in so much as the regime is willing to acknowledge the authority of courts at all, it's so they can issue an emergency appeal to a 6-3 fascist high Supreme Court that already gave us nonsensical fascist Calvinball rulings like Dobbs, Chevron, and Trump v. United States.

"The Trump administration has attempted to bypass, circumvent, and even dismantle the judiciary in various ways since taking over the White House.

For instance, in response to federal judges restraining or enjoining many of Trump’s executive orders, the administration has increasingly turned to the Supreme Court with emergency appeals to overturn unfavorable rulings. Emergency applications typically request swift judicial intervention, claiming urgency to prevent significant harm or injustice.

“The Trump administration has now filed six emergency applications at #SCOTUS challenging rulings by six different federal district judges spread across five different federal district courts,” Steve Vladeck, author of The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic, said on Bluesky. “Maybe it’s not the judges who are ‘rogue’?”

Given all that, I think waiting on courts that literally cannot enforce their rulings without the backing of security forces wholly controlled by the Trump regime, and might get overruled anyway if guys like Sam Alito can find a amusing way to say Trump is God Emperor now, to start resisting fascism by any means necessary is a catastrophically bad plan; which stands to reason, because this is the same liberal establishment that by and large thought it would be a good idea to help Trump win the 2016 GOP primary contest because he'd be so "easy to beat."

We can have a debate till we're blue in the face about whether or not we're in a Constitutional Crisis yet; but nothing about that debate is going to change the fact that we're clearly in the middle of a fascist takeover by billionaire nazis, Christian Nationalists, and corrupt as fuck winger politicians, even SCOTUS judges, willing to pretend all of this is legal so long as the bribe monies are on time. The time to fight back, in government, in the media, and in the streets, is now. Waiting for the courts to solve the problem isn't a strategy, it's complicity.

#Fascism #Courts #GOP #Media #Dems #corruption #Congress #MikeJohnson #Trump #CivilRights #HumanRights #ResistEverywhere #Antifascism #SCOTUS #ConstitutionalCrisis

I'm getting sick of saying "yes the Trump regime is unquestionably fascist" because at some point, the evidence that they are a bunch of repugnant nazis is so extensive, you have to be willfully ignorant to keep pretending this is still up for debate; as many big media outlets in the US appear to be doing. This story however, brings us to a point where I feel compelled to point out not only that the Trump regime is definitely fascist, but these assclown nazi pigs are also, objectively speaking, evil.

As part of its unconstitutional scheme to traffic migrants, without due process, to a slave labor prison in El Salvador in order to wage a made up war against "gangs" and "Venezuela" apparently, Trump's DHS has admitted they "accidentally" deported a Maryland man, Abrego Garcia, who is A) married to a US citizen B) has a five year old disabled child, and C) had a judge's order *not* to deport him to El Salvador.

archive.ph/ZCWiy

Trump Administration Admits Accidentally Deporting Maryland Father to El Salvador Mega Prison

“Although [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government admitted in response to Abrego Garcia’s complaint.

The government nevertheless argued in its filing that the court can’t order officials to bring Abrego Garcia home because he’s not in U.S. custody. The Trump administration is paying El Salvador to jail him, but the U.S. can’t force El Salvador to return the jailed men, the government claims.

It can only “entreat” or “cajole” its “close ally,” according to the filing.

“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,” Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told The Atlantic. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

Holy sweet fuck; let me restate that for clarity. The US govt just admitted, in court, that they unlawfully "deported" a guy who has been working and raising a family peacefully in the US for years while seeking *legal* asylum, despite a judge's order not to, as part of a nazi kabuki theater human trafficking (deportation, requires a hearing before an immigration judge) scheme. Despite this, the regime's lawyers are arguing, simultaneously, that they can't get him back because he's not in US custody, and they aren't obligated to obey a judge's order to return him because US courts don't have jurisdiction over El Salvador.

Wait, it gets better because the U.S. government is *also* arguing that they shouldn't have to do anything to correct this "mistake" because the man isn't in danger, and "even if Abrego Garcia is being wrongfully imprisoned, he hasn’t suffered irreparable harm." This is despite both the 2019 judge's order granted because Garcia was “more likely than not” to face persecution" in his country of origin (El Salvador), *and* a 2023 US State Dept report that "found credible reports that inmates in El Salvador had been electrocuted, tortured, and beaten to death." Finally it should be mentioned that the regime hasn't offered any legal reason (beyond "oopsie") for why it was trying to deport Garcia in the first place, given that even if Trump's bullshit invocation of the Alien Enemies Act walks in court somehow, Garcia isn't Venezuelan, and the state's own filing calls El Salvador a "close ally" - meaning we're not even at *fake* war with them in the Trump regime's own bubble of unreality.

Naturally, if the US wasn't being run by maliciously evil fascists, one might expect some degree of contrition; but that's not how the Pork Reich rolls. Vice President JD Vance took to social media to justify the actions his regime's own lawyers just admitted were a "mistake" by spewing fact-free excuses about MS-13 that had to be corrected multiple times because Vance didn't even read the government's own filing. As the article notes, even Vance's lies about gangs made no sense because ICE's previous case against Garcia (from 2019) was based on the testimony of one anonymous source and fell apart when the state couldn't produce anyone to testify; which is why he was still in the country and granted protected status while he sought asylum.

Folks, this wasn't a mistake; when you purposely ignore all the legal processes designed to prevent "mistakes" like this, we call that criminal negligence. The Trump regime wanted planes full of nonwhite migrants to display like war trophies on prime time TV, and Garcia fit the bill. They didn't care about the law; his skin tone and status as an asylum seeker made him an acceptable target. The cruelty was the point, which is why they don't want to return Garcia even after admitting their "mistake."

#Trump #Fascism #ElSalvador #DHS #ICE #WhiteNationalism #JDVance #AbregoGarcia #Courts #Evil

Sometimes, a relatively simple story will encompass multiple arguments I've been making about the intentions and actions of the fascist Trumpenreich regime all at once. For example, this piece about a federal judge ruling that the Trump administration violated his court order, in order to punish Democrat states by withholding FEMA funding as part of official regime policy to target Sanctuary Cities for reprisal, is pretty much an encapsulation of why the Trump regime is unquestionably a fascist entity, enacting a fascist agenda.

archive.ph/JHyjO

Federal judge reveals 'undisputed evidence' Trump is deliberately sabotaging blue states

"A federal judge ruled today that the Trump administration, including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, violated his court order to unfreeze Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) relief to at least 19 states. The judge says the administration appears to be making a “covert” effort to punish states who oppose Trump’s oppressive immigration practices.

The New Republic reports U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued an injunction in March on behalf of 23 states suing the White House after the administration moved to pause FEMA aid to states. The Obama era judge ruled the hold-up “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.”

The federal reluctance applies only to states with Democratic attorneys general, and McConnell found the Trump administration ignored his March court order, with at least 19 states submitting “undisputed evidence” they were not receiving FEMA funds appropriated by Congress. Hawaii reported that FEMA had yet to respond to its $6 million request and subsequent $500k reimbursement for climate-related wildfires. The state of Oregon, meanwhile, reported that FEMA had yet to respond to a request for $129.4 million in federal funds for wildfires, severe winter storms, flooding, and mudslides."

Let me just make sure you understand what you're reading here. These nazi chucklefucks are ignoring the law and direct judicial orders, to illegally target their perceived political enemies, for not complying with their ethno-nationalist targeting of migrants, under the guise of a made up invasion that purportedly gives the president extraordinary dictatorial powers, in precisely the same way they falsely accused the Biden administration of politicizing FEMA aid last hurricane season, before Trump was elected. No, really; that's what a judge just ruled is definitely happening. This is the kinda shit that would make Goebbels himself blush.

#Fascism #Trump #FEMA #IdeologicalPolicing #GOP #Courts #Law #MigrantRights #Unreality #EveryAccusationIsAConfession

As I've written in the past, it remains unclear if the judiciary branch of the US government is willing to, or for that matter capable of stopping a fascist Trump regime that has to various degrees ignored court orders, argued that courts have no power to stop Der Führer's executive orders, and threatened to remove judges, or even dissolve courts that rule against the regime's authoritarian and often blatantly unconstitutional actions. As yesterday's tepid rulings in support of Trump's torturing of American law to justify fascist repression, by a 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS, makes clear - the regime still has an ace up its sleeve in court battles because it can use the Supreme Court to override all the other courts trying to stop it; assuming of course at least five judges in that body agree.

Despite this "trump" card however, the larger fascist GOP is rapidly beginning to coalesce around the idea that if the courts won't give Downmarket Mussolini what he wants, the solution is to limit the court's authority to rule on Trump's orders, remove judges who aren't ideologically aligned with the fascist regime's (often illegal) activities, or simply dissolve circuit courts that don't give them what they want without too much of a fuss. Why? Well, because they're fascists running a fascist party and they support the overwhelming majority of the Trump agenda; but also, Elon Musk's role as the new kingmaker of Republican politics means they'd much rather get funding from Musk to support the regime, than run against someone funded by Musk in Republican primaries to punish or remove politicians who don't toe the official white nationalist line.

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/a…

Alarm as Republicans in Congress back Trump and Musk’s attacks on US judges

"As Donald Trump and Elon Musk widen their radical attacks on US judges who have stalled some of Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s slashing of federal agencies, they’re gaining backing from top House Republicans and other politicians, including some to whom the tech billionaire made big campaign donations.

The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and judiciary panel chairman Jim Jordan have echoed some of Trump’s attacks on judges, and a judiciary subcommittee hearing on 1 April explored “judicial overreach” and ways to curb judges who have stymied some Trump orders or Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and its draconian cuts to the federal government."

At this point, we're mostly talking about words and committees, but I think it's important to understand that while many in corporate media and the political class are counting on public pressure to force the Republican Party to reign in Trump's most authoritarian instincts and intentions, GOP leaders are wrangling support to make Trump's dictator dreams a reality, regardless of what the courts say. While fundie fascist bootlickers like Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan are the face of these efforts, Musk's immense wealth and control of internal GOP primaries have created a core of support within elected Republicans operating in lockstep with the White House to implode judicial authority over the regime; and that core is growing.

"Despite such fears, many of Trump’s hardcore loyalists in Congress are jumping on board to further fuel Trump’s attacks on judges, while benefiting from Musk’s campaign largesse.

At least seven Republican members, including Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Brandon Gill of Texas, who echoed Trump’s call for impeaching Judge Boasberg, or advocated other “action” against judges who ruled against Trump orders, received checks from Musk for $6,600, the maximum he could donate.

Although Republican leaders have suggested that impeachment of judges won’t happen because they don’t have the votes, their public efforts to bolster Trump’s war on judicial independence has been accelerating, with allies exploring other avenues to curb judges."

I can't predict the future, but if you're asking me whether or not these GOP nazis are serious, I would strongly suggest that both their fascist ideological positions, and the incentive structure to support the regime against the judiciary, created by Musk's money and influence over the party, strongly suggests they are in fact dead serious about this. Is anyone in the opposition establishment even aware of this? Who knows, after all we've collectively spent the past nine or so years asking if Trump and the fascist GOP actually mean the things they say, when they promise to install the fascist regime we're watching them install right now. At this point I've been quoting the wisdom of Maya Angelou for so long I should have her on macro, but that repetition doesn't make her words any less true: "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." The best time to take these nazis seriously was the day Trump came down that escalator; the second best time is now.

#Fascism #Trump #Dictatorship #MikeJohnson #JimJordan #GOP #Courts #MayaAngelou #SCOTUS #ElonMusk

Look, at some point Very Serious PeopleTM in the media and the political class are going to have to accept reality; the fascist GOP is actively and knowingly working to make Trump a literal dictator and they're prepared to deploy any nonsensical lie, rhetorical argument, and instrument of state power to do so. On Wednesday, the House passed a bill that would make it functionally impossible for a single lawsuit to stop even the Trump regime's most blatantly unconstitutional activities, by drastically curtailing the judiciary's power to issue nationwide restraining orders; under the nonsensical argument that ruling against Trump's orders is part of some vast left wing conspiracy to stymie the President's lawful right to um, make America conform to his unhinged authoritarian nonsense, apparently.

truthout.org/articles/house-pa…

House Passes Bill Limiting Judges’ Ability to Place Injunctions on Trump Orders

"Trump has had the most nationwide injunctions placed against him due to his presidential decrees oftentimes flatly violating the law or U.S. Constitution — for example, three federal judges this year alone have placed injunctions on his ability to enforce an executive order to redefine the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.

While blatantly improper orders like those have been blocked, Trump loyalists have errantly claimed that so-called “activist judges” on the left have chosen to stymie the president’s agenda for political reasons — ignoring the fact that right-wing judges (including some Trump himself picked) have also issued injunctions against the president.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa (California) authored a bill entitled the “No Rogue Rulings Act,” which would restrict judges’ rulings to only apply to the litigants directly included in the lawsuit — under the bill’s terms, only a plaintiff could receive relief from a judgment against a presidential administration, even if the underlying reason for that judgment is that the law or order at issue is unconstitutional and shouldn’t be enforced on anyone."

Okay, let's start with the good news; although the bill passed on a party lines vote in the House, it still has to make its way through the Senate and unless Chuck Schumer has another brain tumor for breakfast, that seems highly unlikely to happen. Given the level of collaboration Democrat Senators have already engaged in while (not really) opposing the Trump regime, I can't guarantee anything, but here's to hoping the opposition party realizes what a monumentally bad idea it would be to upend "hundreds of years of judicial case law and precedent" and allow Trump to essentially force everyone victimized by even his most unconstitutional orders, to seek remedy separately in the courts. If you want to understand just how bad this would be for our civil rights, consider the three current injunctions preventing Downmarket Mussolini from ending birthright citizenship and how folks whose only "crime" is being born in the US to parents who aren't citizens, would have to seek legal remedy under these new rules; not only are all of them unlikely to be able to bring a suit in federal court, but just processing all of those cases would take decades, and in the meantime Trump would be free to treat those victimized by his executive order as if his word was law.

Even if the bill doesn't pass the Senate however, I think it's pretty instructional to look at the overarching theme of the fascist GOP's arguments for running it through the House. To justify the bill, House Republicans have constructed a vast conspiracy theory, whereby even conservative judges who disagree with Trump are working with an undefined "radical left" to undermine the country; this is "if you're not with us, you're against" us logic and as author Jason Stanley noted in his excellent book, How Fascism Works, fascism functions by transforming everything into the politics of "us versus them." And what pray tell is their evidence for this conspiracy theory? The fact that Trump, who is actively trying to transform the United States into an autocratic fascist dictatorship, has seen his orders subject to a record number of injunctions and court orders preventing him from, um, breaking the law and violating the constitution? As at least one House Dem noted, it probably makes sense that Trump's agenda has been targeted by the most nationwide court orders because Trump has tried to violate the constitution more than probably any other president in American history.

“If it seems like an incredible number of cases to lose in less than 100 days, recall that Trump is engaged in a record number of illegal actions at a breathtaking velocity never seen before in U.S. history,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) said."

My friends, it's fascism, and the fascist GOP party is willingly installing a fascist dictator; there's nothing accidental or "misguided" about it.

#Fascism #Trump #GOP #Courts #HouseGOP #Authoritarianism #FascistLaws #Judges

Speaking of the important legal principle that is "because I said so," Trump's Border Czar and noted Fury Road villain Tom Homan recently responded to questions about who determines if a person targeted for deportation is in a gang and how do they do so, with almost literally - "just trust us bro."

truthout.org/articles/trump-bo…

Trump Border Czar: ICE’s Word Is Enough to Prove Someone’s a Gang Member

"Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s so-called “border czar,” has said that nothing more than the word of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent is needed to prove that a noncitizen living in the U.S. is a gang member, and thus subject to deportation.

Trump signed an executive order earlier this year asserting his right to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport immigrants living in the U.S. if they are deemed by the administration to be violent gang members. Hundreds of migrants have been deported on that basis, even though an analysis by CBS News found that nearly three-quarters of the people sent to a prison in El Salvador had no criminal record at all.

Those who have been deported have largely been denied their due process rights, which would have allowed them to argue against being indiscriminately labeled as a gang member by the administration.

In an interview with Axios that was published on Tuesday, Homan appeared to dismiss those concerns, claiming, without evidence, that even those with no criminal history are members of violent gangs."

My favorite Trump regime stories are the ones where you can tell the government is lying, but even if they weren't their excuses wouldn't matter anyway.

Homan wants us to believe that ICE is doing "deep dive" investigative work into whether or not migrants targeted as part of a human trafficking scheme to ship people to a slave labor prison in El Salvador, are members of a gang; which would be pretty implausible if you looked at how fast they're finding and deporting people, but becomes almost laughable when the regime is openly admitting it just deported an innocent man who had a judge's order protecting him from deportation a little over a week ago. I'm sure there were a crack squads of Gestapo investigators working around the clock on making sure these were gang members when they deported *checks notes* the soccer player with a Real Madrid tattoo, and the guy with an autistic brother and an autism acceptance movement tattoo as well; gimme a break. The entire line of argument was also rendered irrelevant however when Homan admitted, in the same interview, that it's just vibes:

"But ultimately, he said, if an ICE agent suspected someone of being in a gang, that was all the evidence needed.

“ICE is the principal arbiter” in making these determinations, Homan said."

Of course, all of this ignores that no matter how objectionable we may find gangs in our society, it's not actually illegal to be in a gang - which will be news to racist police officers all over the country, but isn't to the District Attorneys who prosecute actual crimes. Furthermore, let us remember that these human trafficking flights (people are being kidnapped, transported to a slave labor prison, and money is changing hands) are themselves being justified by a wholly made up invasion, by a gang with reportedly less than a thousand people in the United States, that is sekretly a terrorist arm of the Venezuelan government pretty much entirely because Trump said so in an executive order; nothing about this fascist shitshow is based on facts, evidence, or reality.

#Fascism #TomHoman #Trump #ElSalvador #HumanTrafficking #ICE #DHS #AlienEnemiesAct #FakeWar #TrenDeAragua #CECOT #MassDeportations #AbregoGarcia #JerceReyesBarrios #BorderCzar #NeriJoséAlvaradoBorges #Gestapo

To all the folks who told me "its' not a constitutional crisis yet," "you can't call them nazis," or "it is not yet time to rise up and resist" by grinding the gears of the machine to a halt with our bodies if necessary, my only question is - what now?

Citing the president's absolute power over “foreign relations," the Trump regime has announced that it has no obligation, nor intention to return Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man trafficked to a Salvadoran slave labor prison by "mistake," despite multiple court orders and a 9-0 SCOTUS ruling instructing them to do so.

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/a…

Trump DoJ says not legally bound to return man wrongly deported to El Salvador

"The comments came a day after the Trump administration claimed it is not legally obligated to secure the return of the man, Kilmar Abrego García,, despite the US supreme court ruling that the administration should “facilitate” bringing him back.

Lawyers for the justice department argued in court filings on Sunday that asking El Salvador to return Abrego García from a notorious mega-prison should be considered “foreign relations”, and was therefore outside the scope of the courts.

The filing said “the federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” adding: “That is the ‘exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration acknowledged that Abrego García, an immigrant from El Salvador who was living in Maryland with protected status, was deported to a prison in El Salvador on 15 March as a result of an “administrative error”. In 2019 an immigration judge had prohibited the federal government from deporting him."

Folks, we are through the looking glass now and if you can't see that it's one and truly fascism, that's because you don't know what the word means. Apologists will claim that we are still not yet in a "constitutional crisis" because of the regime's paper thin excuse that they're interpreting the SCOTUS ruling to mean all they had to do is remove "domestic" barriers to Garcia's return, while claiming they have no authority to effect the return of a man they're literally paying the government of El Salvador to house in a prison famous for torture and forced labor. This is at best, wish-casting and codswallop of course, because the regime is openly broadcasting its intention to flout the Supreme Court's ruling *while* Trump meets with Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador at the White House; these fascist mutherfuckers just said "let them enforce it" while trolling the shit out of every judge in America. Just examine some of the comments from Bukele and Trump regime officials for yourself:

“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it,” says Bukele. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”

“The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court. And no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States,” Marco Rubio adds."

“The [supreme court] ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador’s sole discretion was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time,” Stephen Miller says.

"No version of this legally ends with him ever living here because he is a citizen of El Salvador."

"In 2019 two courts ruled that he was a member of MS13 and he was illegally in our country. Right now, it was additional paperwork had needed to be done. That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him – that’s not up to us. The supreme court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him, we would ‘facilitate’ it, meaning provide a plane." - US Attorney General, Pam Bondi.

During that same meeting with Bukele, Trump once again admitted that he also wants to pay to send American "criminals" to a slave labor prison in El Salvador his regime is simultaneously arguing that the US government has no requirement, power, or authority to return prisoners from, even under court order. Need I remind you that this is the same administration currently saying in public that a wide variety of protestors are actually domestic fucking terrorists? Please understand that if the Trump regime can successfully argue that it can keep a man they already admitted should not have been deported, in a Salvadoran prison despite the law, and a direct SCOTUS order, because once they've sent him there its a matter of foreign policy and jurisdictional authority, then there is absolutely nothing stopping them from sending ANYONE to Cecot and claiming it's too late to undo this. The regime is now attempting to legalize disappearing its perceived enemies; full stop.

#Fascism #Trump #ElSalvador #ICE #CECOT #AbregoGarcía #DHS #NayibBukele #SCOTUS #ConstiutionalCrisis

I think a lot of Americans have trouble wrapping their heads around the concept of fascism for a variety of reasons; some intrinsic to fascism itself, and some that are products of the external environment we're all raised in. Part of the problem is that fascism isn't really an ideology, so much as a reactionary recipe for the accumulation of power; which allows fascist movements to spring out of a wide variety of political struggles, and assume a wide variety of early forms - before more or less coalescing into the same old nazi shit once they reach power. It also probably doesn't help that we live in a propaganda model environment that actively encourages a narrow understanding of what fascism is so as to avoid the populace ever connecting it with American anti-communism, predatory capitalism, and free market fundamentalist ideology; but that's a much larger discussion for another day.

I've spent many years of my life studying fascism and fascist movements, so I can assure you that the Trump regime you're watching is fascist, but at the end of the day if you don't really understand what that means or aren't able to see the ways this Christian Nationalist movement are (poorly) trying to hide their fascist intentions, that isn't going to help you much. For you folks, I'd like to share this eleven minute informative video published on The Humanist Report that talks about the kidnapping and trafficking of Abrego Garcia, and why it signals the regime's intention to establish what is essentially an authoritarian dictatorship. The key here however, is that the host talks about the events in the context of "state terror" using analysis from a historian of fascism: Timothy Synder.

While I might quibble with Mike's assertion that oligarchic America was merely a "flawed" liberal democracy before Trump's second inauguration, the framework of "state terror" articulated here is simple and useful; particularly for folks who're still learning about fascism. Pay close attention to the parts about inverting the justice system to escape the law, rather than applying it, and the three forms it takes - the leader principle, the state of exception, and the zone of statelessness.

Expert on Fascism Has a CHILLING Warning About What Comes Next

youtube.com/watch?v=w1TGlDB5uB…

"Timothy Snyder, a historian and author of ‘On Tyranny,’ recently announced his decision to leave America due to rising authoritarianism. He also reacted to Trump’s defiance of the Supreme Court by warning that it marks the beginning of a new era of “state terror” in the United States, where the government coerces people through the selective enforcement of laws and by repudiating former legal norms. In this video we’ll breakdown his warning about this phase we’re entering in and discuss what it means for Americans."

#Fascism #Trump #YouTube #MikeFigueredo #Authoritarianism #TheHumanistReport #TimothySnyder #StateTerror #AbregoGarcia #Law

In an act of profound petulance and cruelty that is very reminiscent of the Bush regime's attempts to silence critics of the War on Terror, Trump's Gestapo has literally doxed Abrego Garcia's family for their father's crime of uh, being wrongfully trafficked to a torture prison in El Salvador by mistake, apparently.

commondreams.org/news/el-salva…

Abrego Garcia Family Flees to Safe House After Trump DHS Posts Home Address on Social Media

"The Trump administration has not only sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran megaprison due to an "administrative error" and so far refused to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return to the United States, but also shared on social media the home address of his family in Maryland, forcing them to relocate.

The news that Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and her children were "moved to a safe house by supporters" after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X a 2021 order of protection petition that Vasquez Sura filed but soon abandoned was reported early Tuesday by The Washington Post.

"I don't feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions," said Vasquez Sura. "So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I'm scared for my kids."

At this point we've all heard "the cruelty is the point" enough times that it's become a catchphrase, but I am consistently stunned by the Trump regime's ability to find new and more appalling ways to lower the bar for pettiness and a lack of human decency. There is absolutely no way you're ever going to convince me DHS and the White House didn't just expose Garcia's wife and children to the ire of Trump's white nationalist base on purpose, and I think the lack of comment from the regime makes it clear that I'm right about that.

As I've mentioned before, the problem with nearly every Trump administration authoritarian operation is that they're all a Russian nesting doll of fascist fuckery that start out wrong on the merits, and just get more outrageous and disconnected from reality as the situation evolves. The regime had no legal authority to traffic any of the men it sent to CECOT to a foreign torture prison for what appear to be mostly the civil violation of being in America without documentation; full stop. It doesn't matter if they're in a gang, even though most of them apparently weren't. It doesn't matter if they're guilty of a criminal offense, even though most of them apparently weren't. And it doesn't matter if they were husband of the year, even though every family member that has come forward have all demanded the return of their loved ones. Deportation is a legal process that requires the government to prove they have a valid reason to remove a person from the country, and the defendant gets a chance to argue against that evidence. Whatever happened here, kidnapping brown men with tattoos to then traffic them to a torture prison in El Salvador, they weren't deportations and they weren't legal.

The kidnapping, trafficking and continued detention of Abrego Garcia however is even more outrageous and appalling because the government has already admitted multiple times in court that it was a mistake that never should have happened, even by the twisted fascist logic the regime is using to justify the rest of the "deportations." Now after getting waxed multiple times in court, including a 6-3 fascist high Supreme Court that sits three Trump-appointed judges, and a grotesque attempt to provoke a constitutional crisis over the matter, the regime is petulantly refusing to return Garcia to the United States and seeking retribution for the indignity of being told they can't do this fascist bullshit, by terrorizing Garcia's wife and children.

I'm a prison abolitionist myself, but if we're going to have prisons whether I like them or not, then let me be the first to say Stephen Miller, Karoline Leavitt, and literally all the mutherfuckers in Trump's DHS, should be in fucking prison right now. This is outrageous and the word Nixonian doesn't do the fascist fuckery on display here enough justice.

#Fascism #Trump #AbregoGarcia #ConstitutionalCrisis #DHS #ICE #StephenMiller #KarolineLeavitt #StateTerror

Honestly my friends, I'm running out of new ways to say that the Trump administration are a bunch of lawless fascists whose maximalist views on power put them in direct opposition to a US constitution and American legal tradition that is on the whole, extremely friendly to the exercise of executive power. There appears to be no article of law, no regulation, no rule they won't violate in their objectively nazi quest to create a white ethnostate; at this point I half expect the Trump regime to try to find a workaround to the rarely-remembered Third Amendment so they can force every American family to quarter an ICE agent in their home.

If you think I'm being hyperbolic, keep in mind that I'm only going off the information the Trump regime writes down in its own internal memos. Take for example this Department of Justice guideline arguing that ICE has the legal authority to conduct warrantless home invasions in search of "suspected" Venezuelan gang members, because Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act as a kind of Uno-reverso card to every piece of civil rights legislation in US history.

commondreams.org/news/ice-warr…

DOJ Memo Shows Trump Admin Ordered ICE to Conduct Warrantless Home Invasions

"Lee Gelernt, the ACLU's lead counsel in cases challenging use of the AEA, told USA Today: "The administration's unprecedented use of a wartime authority during peacetime was bad enough. Now we find out the Justice Department was authorizing officers to ignore the most bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment by authorizing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant."

Monique Sherman, an attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, expressed alarm over the DOJ memo.

"The home under all constitutional law is the most sacred place where you have a right to privacy," Sherman told USA Today. "By this standard, spurious allegations of gang affiliation means the government can knock down your door."

As Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck said, "There's no Alien Enemies Act exception to the Fourth Amendment."

As I've indicated elsewhere, I'm not a lawyer; but as someone who has spent many years studying fascism, authoritarianism, and police states, I'm pretty sure you don't issue a Department of Justice order like that unless you *intend* to use ICE to start going house to house in American communities; and once a fascist government has granted itself the power to do that, it really doesn't matter why they claim they're doing so anymore. This is quite literally the beginnings of the dystopian police state winger prepper reactionaries are always going on about, and in anything resembling a functioning democracy US Attorney General Pam Bondi would be arrested immediately for even signing it. As both the article and your middle school civics class note, absolutely none of this is legal no matter what ancient laws Trump tries to invoke and the DoJ is basically telling ICE to ignore the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, "because we say so."

The question then remains, does the Trump regime even care if the fascist bullshit they're doing is legal? Even under a Calvinball winger interpretation of US law? Signals on that front are so far mixed; on one hand the regime continues arguing its nonsensical theories in court, but on the other hand they stand in violation of several court orders already and are for example, making no effort to bring Abrego Garcia home from a torture prison in El Salvador, despite a 9-0 SCOTUS ruling that they must do so.

On some level I imagine that ICE goons might ignore a DoJ order that tells them to violate the Constitution, but the reason Trump has always used ICE as his personal Gestapo gives me pause. The agency self-selects for nativists who don't mind authoritarian repression or violence, and Trump's vast power over immigration matters as president, means ICE is largely his to control - at least through a Department of Homeland Security the regime has stacked full of white nationalists and fascist freaks. In other words, I don't really know what happens if and when the Trump regime orders ICE to go for the full V for Vendetta experience; but it probably isn't good, and I'm not keen on finding out if Der Leader's private Gestapo cares about the Constitution at all.

I'm not a psychic, but it is increasingly becoming clear to me that the fascist Trump administration knows it cannot accomplish its goals without a loyal, empowered, and ideologically aligned force of police state thugs. The fact that they're casting about the margins of the US legal system to empower ICE to be that army of goons, tells you they have plans to use that power. For what? I don't know, but authoritarian police state powers to enter American homes to fight a made up war against "gangs," have far more potential uses to a fascist regime than just mass deportations.

#Trump #Fascism #Migrants #MassDeportations #ICE #DoJ #PamBondi #FourthAmendment #USConsitution #PoliceState

Hey, someone finally worked up the courage to ask Downmarket Mussolini a real question. In a contentious ABC interview Trump openly admitted what we all know but much of our media and political establishment is pretending was in question; the Klepto Kaiser *can* get Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from a torture prison in El Salvador with a mere phone call, he just doesn't want to and he's hiding behind his lawyers to get away with trafficking an innocent man to a foreign concentration camp.

archive.ph/Q8lQT

Trump’s Tirade at Reporter Wrecks His Own Case Against Abrego Garcia

"In the interview, ABC News’s Terry Moran pointed out that Trump has the power to pick up the phone, call El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, and with the “power of the presidency” get Bukele to release him.

“I could,” Trump replied. “If he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.”

At the most basic level, this destroys one of the Trump administration’s central arguments for leaving Abrego Garcia to rot in an El Salvadoran gulag. Administration officials say they have no power to compel Bukele to release him, because it would intrude on Salvadoran sovereignty to dictate that country’s treatment of one of its own.

But Trump just admitted that if he called Bukele and asked him to do this, his fellow dictator would in fact comply. This wrecks the fake distinction upon which Trump has hung his whole argument—the one between compelling Bukele to release Abrego Garcia and merely requesting that Bukele do so."

I've never been a fan of Sargent's writing either, so I'll save you the click through - as the author notes Trump also said a number of other very revealing things when the ABC reporter went in harder:

- when Moran pointed out that Trump's own answer meant he was violating a Supreme Court Order, Der Leader shifted the blame to his lawyers. As Sargent points out, this isn't an adequate answer because that means either Trump's lawyers are running the country, or he's *knowingly* violating multiple court orders.

- when pressed on the government's argument that Garcia is an MS-13 gang member, Trump said that the Maryland man had "MS-13" tattooed across his knuckles. As the reporter pointed out, Garcia does not; he has a leaf, a smiley face, a cross. and a skull, which the government labeled as meaning "MS-13" in a photo Trump himself displayed for news cameras, despite the fact that experts who study the gang have never seen those symbols associated with MS 13.

- after Moran told Trump the government had digitally altered the picture of Garcia's hand tattoos, Der Leader tossed his spaghetti. In an exchange that I think says a lot about how Trump sees the media's role in covering his presidency, the president snapped "Terry, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. I picked you. But you're not being very nice."

I don't think it's time to break out the commemorative "All the President's Men" glasses just yet, but it is nice to see a mainstream corporate media outlet get into the weeds a little bit when Trump is openly lying into a camera, and you can definitely see why the White House is trying to stack the press pool full of Fox reporters, Newsmax hosts, and fascist Youtubers. Unravelling the regime's enforced unreality and governance by conspiracy theory is frightfully easy if you get to ask Trump any follow up questions.

In terms of the substance of what Trump said however, yeah I think he just hung himself on camera; for whatever that's even worth given the lawless behavior of the Trumpenreich regime. Trump could bring Garcia back, he just doesn't want to because he says Garcia is a "gang member" even though the government hasn't proven that, and won't ever be able to prove that in court.

"The evidence for Abrego Garcia’s alleged MS-13 ties is extremely thin. It’s largely based on the testimony of a Maryland cop who was suspended soon after and indicted for serious professional misconduct involving the sharing of confidential information with a sex worker. He pleaded guilty and was removed from the force.

The MS-13 claim isn’t just a vile smear. The idea that Abrego Garcia poses a severe public safety threat is the foundation for the administration’s entire rationale for not bringing him back and attempting to remove him again via lawful channels. Note that Trump suggested to Moran that if Abrego Garcia were not a gang member, Trump would bring him back.

So the administration should have to answer for the fact that the whole basis for not doing so is largely the finding of one disgraced cop. Yet neither Trump nor any senior administration officials have ever been questioned on this point."

Yes.

#Fascism #Trump #Media #ICE #DHS #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #Bukele #SCOTUS #TerryMoran #ConstitutionalCrisis #ABCNews #Kidnapping #PoliceState

So given that everything else about the Trump regime's plot to traffic over 250 migrants to a forever torture prison in El Salvador without due process under the guise of fighting an "invasion" by a "narco-terrorist" gang turned out to be a lie, illegal, or straight up fascist fuckery, would it surprise you at all to learn that US intelligence agencies do *not* think Tren de Aragua is working with the government of Venezuela to invade the United States? Yeah, me neither; but the fact that the Trump regime knowingly just made up the so-called "invasion" fundamentally undercuts their entire argument for invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which in turn means they have no legal basis whatsoever for all the fascist repression and unconstitutional criminality they've engaged in here.

commondreams.org/news/trump-ve…

'They Just Made Sh*t Up': Declassified Spy Memo Undercuts Trump Pretext for Deportations to El Salvador

"A memo released Monday by the Trump administration in response to a Freedom of Information Act request confirmed that U.S. intelligence agencies never agreed with President Donald Trump's claim in March that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the criminal gang Tren de Aragua—an assertion that was used to justify sending hundreds of migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison.

The document said that "while Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States."

As in several previous cases it's important to understand that the regime's lies and illegal manipulations of US law are being exposed by their own internal memos; this isn't a political attack or about motivated reasoning because the Trump administration itself wrote down that they knew Trump was lying, or at least that US intelligence didn't agree with his assessment of Tren de Aragua as an arm of the Venezuelan government. The regime tries to cover that up with vague nonsense about FBI intelligence but one of these groups is paid to monitor the activities of foreign governments the US is actively sanctioning, and one of them gets paid to convince unstable people they're secretly in ISIS to justify an ongoing counterterrorism program that's worth billions of dollars in funding; so I'll let you decide for yourself which of these two groups is more likely to know what they're talking about here. In other words, folks arguing that Trump was governing by fascist conspiracy theory and the regime literally made up a fake war to do white nationalist mass deportations, were completely, and totally correct; full stop.

"So you mean kidnapping folks off the streets and sending them to a foreign gulag was not justified by our own intelligence?" said the Arkansas Justice Project. "They just made shit up to dog whistle their base. The AEA argument was never legitimate and they knew it all along."

Frankly I do understand the temptation to scoff "so, what; we already knew that" in response to this news. But I need folks to realize that while it may have been obvious to anyone paying attention that the regime literally made up a whole invasion to justify their fascist mass deportation theater operation, the entire US establishment has more or less been pretending that it's somehow *possible* Trump is right about Tren de Aragua working for Venezuela to undermine American national security. As the article notes, until very recently not one judge has questioned the underlying logic of Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act or its debunked claims that Tren de Argua is an arm of the Venezuelan government. While the regime has received a modicum more pushback in the media, without direct confirmation that Trump is definitely (instead of just obviously) lying, news outlets have been reluctant to push back when the regime claims they're fighting a narco-terrorist invasion to justify their fascist repression and criminality. Will that change now that we've caught the regime lying through their own memos? Who knows, but it probably won't hurt.

The big picture analysis here is that Trump hacked the imperial presidency and an American war machine already in largely bipartisan agreement that Venezuela represents an "enemy" of the United States, to do his fascist mass depuration schemes. The machine couldn't, or didn't want to see that Trump was obviously lying, because lying about Venezuela and portraying Nicolás Maduro as a international supervillain is already such a normalized part of American foreign policy that pushing back on Trump would undermine the American imperial project. With the declassification of this memo however, the fig leaf has been shredded and the US establishment is going to have choose between imperialism and preventing a fascist takeover in America.

#Trump #Fascism #TrenDeAragua #Venezuela #CECOT #MassDeportations #Imperialism #ElSalvador #ICE #DHS #PoliceState #WhiteNationalism

Because the Pork Reich is maniacally dedicated to ensuring I never have a calm Friday evening again, Trump's unofficial minister of blatantly nazi shit, Stephen Miller, just threatened to suspend the writ of habeas corpus unless courts start ruling in favor of Trump's mass deportation schemes, during a press briefing in front of the White House.

cnbc.com/2025/05/09/trump-depo…

Trump administration ‘looking at’ suspending habeas corpus for migrants, Stephen Miller says

"White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said Friday that the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus — the constitutional right to challenge in court the legality of a person’s detention by the government — for migrants.

Miller’s comment came in response to a White House reporter who asked about President Donald Trump entertaining the idea of suspending the writ to deal with the problem of illegal immigration into the United States.

Asked when that might happen, Miller responded: “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion.”

“So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” he said."

Let me start by saying that I am consistently surprised at how much mind-blowingly disingenuous fascist bullshit noted hate-goblin Stephen Miller is capable of cramming into a few short sentences. What Miller is arguing by implication here, is that Trump can use the absolutely fake "invasion" he's trying to use to justify invoking the Alien and Enemies Act, a justification that has already been called into question in one court with more likely to follow, to also justify suspending the legal right to challenge your detention by authorizes, in a court of law. In what is not at all a coincidence, a number of the "deportation" (read: kidnapping) cases the Trump regime keeps losing in court, including those against foreign anti-genocide student protestors, revolve around the violation of the writ of habeas corpus. Furthermore, while Miller is clearly threatening this clear act of authoritarian bullshit in regards to the regime's various plots to mass deport migrants, the fact of the matter is there's only one writ of habeas corpus; if Trump can suspend it to traffic migrants to foreign torture prisons, he'll be suspending the right to challenge state detention for everybody so long as the "invasion" the regime completely made up, remains "ongoing." In other words, migrant or otherwise, this how you start herding people who won't obey a fascist dictator into American prisons or concentration camps.

Furthermore, the rest of Miller's comments make it clear that the regime is at least threatening to usurp the American judiciary, unless they start giving Trump favorable rulings in cases against his mass deportation efforts.

"Miller said that Congress had stripped federal courts of jurisdiction over immigration cases with the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“The courts aren’t just at war with the executive branch, the courts are at war, these radical rogue judges, with the legislative branch as well,” Miller said.

“So all of that will inform the choices the president ultimately makes.”

While it is indeed true that numerous American laws and statues give the President far too much authority over all immigration matters, Miller is openly lying when he implies federal courts have no jurisdiction over immigration cases; and even if he were correct, the right to due process comes from the US Constitution and is granted to everyone in the United States, citizen or otherwise. Miller knows this, he just doesn't fucking care and is prepared to drum up a fascist conspiracy about radical left wing judges (including Trump appointees) to justify imploding the rule of law if it can get him closer to his precious white ethnostate.

Needless to say, absolutely none of this is based on reality or is strictly-speaking, legal. Unfortunately, sending Stephen Miller out to threaten the writ of habeas corpus to leverage cooperation from a judicial branch consistently ruling that Trump's mass deportation schemes are illegal, or based on fascist conspiracy theories that have no foundation in reality, signals that the regime is growing tired of caring about the rule of law entirely. If Trump gets away with this, either through suspending habeas corpus or bullying judges into legitimizing his illegal mass deportation efforts, the framework Miller is using here will remain in place for as long as Trump wants it to; certainly long enough to start rounding up his political opposition and anyone else the regime doesn't like.

#Fascism #StephenMiller #Courts #CivilRights #USConstitution #HabeasCorpus #Dictatorship #ICE #DHS #MassDeporations #PoliceState #IdeoligicalPolicing #WhiteNationalism #USPol #Judiciary

Last Friday, we talked a little bit about Stephen Miller trotting out onto the White House lawn out of seemingly nowhere to threaten the judiciary and folks who oppose the regime's fascist mass deportation schemes, with the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus; which means your right to challenge your detention in court. As I pointed out then, what Miller was proposing effectively, was enacting yet another emergency power based on a made up invasion that's already been rejected by (3 now) judges in court, to indefinitely cage or imprison anyone they want for any reason they want; this is of course because if you have no right to challenge your detention in court, it literally does not matter why the government says they're holding you - they just can. Of course Miller couched this in language that both threatened judges and implied this authority would be used to round up and deport migrants, but the power Trump's unofficial minister of nazism was proposing here could and likely would be used to target virtually anyone who opposes the regime and its fascist agenda.

As I also pointed out however, Miller's threat would be heinously illegal; the fascist administration would be effectively suspending the constitution, and the power to do that traditionally does not reside with the office of the President for very good reasons. There is only one time in US History where a President suspended the writ of habeas corpus on his own, and that president was literally Abe Lincoln during the actual fucking civil war. Furthermore, the situation was understood to be so extraordinary and potentially dangerous, that Congress got together after the fact and legitimized Lincoln's play; the other three times the government has suspended “The Great Writ” all required congressional authorization. All of which is of course to say nothing of the fact that doing so *requires* a threat to public safety that necessitates even considering suspending the writ in the first place; no such threat exists here obviously, Miller and Der Leader are simply upset that judges have insisted the government respect the due process rights of migrants.

Of course, I can tell you all this, but I am not a lawyer or a professor of law. So to make the point abundantly clear, I'd like to share this Truthout Article by Marjorie Cohn, who is in fact a law professor, to explain all the ways this is definitely illegal fascist bullshit.

truthout.org/articles/stephen-…

Stephen Miller’s Argument for Suspending Habeas Corpus Is Legal Garbage

“A suspension [of habeas corpus] is temporary, but the power it confers is extraordinary,” Barrett and Katyal wrote in their National Constitution Center article. “When a suspension is in effect, the president, typically acting through subordinates, can imprison people indefinitely without any judicial check.”

It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump will stop at nothing to impose his will – the commands of the Constitution notwithstanding. On May 4, Trump refused to say on “Meet the Press” that he was bound by the Due Process Clause of the Constitution.

For now, federal judges are serving as speed bumps in Trump’s cruel and illegal war on migrants. Trump has packed the Supreme Court with radical right-wingers who may well overturn some of those lower court rulings. But Trump has already defied the high court’s ruling that his administration facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. We can only hope that the “justices” on the high court maintain their reverence for the Constitution, even though the president does not."

I know that legal language makes a lot of people's eyes glaze over, but I strongly encourage you to just read the whole article because it does a very good job of explaining precisely how illegal and authoritarian Miller's proposal to suspend the writ of habeas corpus actually is. The gist of it however is that president Trump doesn't have the power to suspend the writ without Congressional authorization, there absolutely is no invasion to justify doing so, and Miller is openly lying when he says that the Immigration and Nationality Act strips judiciary oversight and appellate review for the regime's mass deportation activities.

Of course as the author (and many others) point out, the illegality of their activities has only marginally stopped Trump so far; the regime is currently ignoring multiple court orders and the President is openly declaring that he's not sure if he has an obligation to uphold the US Constitution in media interviews; despite the fact that upholding the Constitution is one of the things all Presidents swear to do on live TV while being inaugurated. Miller was certainly trying to cow American judges to ram through Trump's mass deportation project, but we've seen the pattern of this regime transforming fascist musings into enforced reality far too many times to believe he's not being serious.

#Fascism #Trump #StephenMiller #Law #HabeasCorpus #USPol #GOP

The more things change, the more they stay the same apparently. Back when I had a little less gray in my hair, one of the many horrifying scandals to come out of the Bush Administration during the War on Terror/9-11/Iraq War era, involved the suppression of intelligence and intelligence officials who refused to support the Bush-Cheney administration's position that Iraq had, or was on the verge of acquiring, weapons of mass destruction. This mattered because although the Bush government employed a "throw a plate of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" method of manufacturing consent to invade Iraq, the central portion of their legal and diplomatic argument, revolved around the admin's repeated assertion that US Intelligence had actionable information that Saddam Hussein had WMD's or was about to finish building them. Of course, the entire thing turned out to be a lie; Iraq didn't have WMDs, the intelligence supporting the lie was nonexistent, and warmongers who supported the war crafted a narrative that "bad intelligence" had lead Bush-Cheney to ruin. The fact that even that was a lie, wouldn't come out until later; as it turns out US Intelligence had actively told the White House that they *didn't* think Iraq had or was capable of producing WMDs, and the administration had ignored, sidelined, and removed anyone in the intel community who told them so. That story was of course small potatoes compared to the original story about "bad intelligence" and to this day many informed observers still believe the spies told lies and the White House was "duped."

I mention this now of course because Trump's Director of National Intelligence, noted fake peacenik, Islamophobe, and cult member Tulsi Gabbard, just fired two high ranking intelligence officials, and moved the National Intelligence Council under her direct supervision. Why? Well it sure does look like it's because a FOIA request turned up a NIC memo confirming that US intelligence disagreed with Trump's fascist propaganda arguing that the gang Tren de Aragua were working for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; a central pillar of the Trump regime's argument that they have a right to deploy the Alien Enemies Act to do fascist mass deportations and a bunch of other authoritarian buillshit.

commondreams.org/news/tulsi-ga…

Gabbard Fires Intel Officials After Memo Counters Trump Lies About Migrants Sent to El Salvador Prison

"While an ODNI spokesperson told The Hill that "the director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community," critics framed the firings as "the DEFINITION of politicizing intelligence."

"I am concerned about the apparent removal of senior leadership at the National Intelligence Council without any explanation except vague accusations made in the media," Congressman Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Washington Post. "Absent evidence to justify the firings, the workforce can only conclude that their jobs are contingent on producing analysis that is aligned with the president's agenda, rather than truthful and apolitical."

The NIC leaders were fired after last week's release of an NIC memo confirming that U.S. intelligence agencies never agreed with Trump's claim that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. The April 7 document states that "while Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States."

Look, I'm not going to ask readers to offer up sympathy for creepy American spymasters; this is a country that engages in offensive espionage, political and social subversion, and activities we would call terrorism if someone we didn't like were doing them, so there are no good guys in this story. With that having been said however, we're looking at clear evidence that the Trump regime itself absolutely knows their fascist "invasion" arguments, on which much of their paper-thin legal justification for doing a host of blatantly unconstitutional activities, are complete bullshit; and they're prepared to politically punish Trump's own intelligence agencies for not agreeing to lie for them. This is, or should be, a major scandal on par with Bush's Iraq War lies; and yet curiously the focus in the media seems to be how bad it is to train your intelligence agencies to not tell you bad news the president doesn't want to hear.

Obviously, I knew Trump's invasion was a lie, and you knew Trump's invasion was a lie. But now the whole world knows Trump's invasion is a lie and we have the documents and statements to prove it; so why is anyone pretending this isn't just fascism?

#Fascism #TulsiGabbard #Trump #DNI #USIntelligence #CIA #TrenDeAragua #Invasion #FakeWar #AlienEnemiesAct #Bush #IraqWar #Propaganda #ConspiracyTheories #IdeologicalPolicing