This is the 4th in a series of articles covering Donald Trump's efforts
to end liberal democracy in the United States and replace it with
authoritarian autocracy--a Trumptatorship--and the grim consequences
of that. The others:
Trumptatorship 1: The Crisis
Trumptatorship 2: Of Enemies, Alien & Domestic
Trumptatorship 3: Gangster Government
The last few weeks have seen Donald Trump and his underlings repeatedly tease the idea of illegally renditioning Americans to a torture dungeon in El Salvador, Trump Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has suggested
Trump could suspend habeas corpus--something a president has absolutely
no power to do--if the courts don't allow Trump to proceed with
unconstitutional mass-renditions/deportations. Appearing on NBC's MEET THE PRESS,
Trump was asked by interviewer Kristen Welker, "don't you need to uphold
the Constitution of the United States as president?" Trump's response: "I don't know."
Under the Trumptatorship, that's what we call "days that end in 'y.'"
In their first months in office, newly-elected American presidents tend
to have a great deal of political capital, Americans grant a new
administration a sort of grace period of relatively high approval and it
has become a tradition for each new president to use his first 100 days
to press congress for lots of presidency-defining signature
legislation. In his first administration, Trump signed 24 bills
into law. But since taking office in January, Trump has signed only 5
bills, the fewest of any president in the last 70 years, and the only
substantial one was passed during Joe Biden's presidency.[1] He has lots
of executive orders though--142 in his first 100 days, 161 as of this
writing[2]--and his EOs aren't like any
other president's EOs. As these articles have been
covering, they purport to overturn and rewrite wide swathes of U.S. law,
state and local laws, even the constitution itself, and centralize
unprecedented power in the hands of the chief executive, to officially
declare which political views are acceptable to the government (with
unacceptable views targeted for government suppression), even to
authoritatively (and inaccurately) dictate matters of history, nature , biology and the "culture," as if any of this has anything to do with the legitimate
job of a president (deviations from those dictates also targeted for suppression). His several official Proclamations and Memoranda are
of the same character. Trump's ultimate vision
of America this time around doesn't involve things like
congress or courts, checks or balances, laws, the constitution or a
free,
liberal democratic society. In his first 100 days, Trump focused on
building that vision, a sort of alt-presidency that functions entirely
outside the bounds of the law and the constitution as a reactionary
despotism that destroys the constitutional order that empowered it, one
that seizes
control of the institutions of the civil society, one in which the only
"law" is the whims of the dictator and where the biggest, most unforgivable "crime" is
refusing to submit to them.
 |
| The dictator dictating. |
After spending the entirety of his first presidency weaponizing the
government against those he saw as enemies then 4 years out of office
spent disingenuously whining that the government's lax and belated efforts to
prosecute him for a few of his many crimes amounted to inappropriate
political "weaponization" of the state against he and his cronies,
Trump's first executive order
in January had some things to say about the subject. In outlining its
"purpose," it weaves a laughable fantasy version of the Biden
presidency, and preposterously unearned aggrievement gushes through its
every line but through those fumes, it also uses as premise some alleged
principles:
"The American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions. These actions appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives. Many of these activities appear to be inconsistent with the Constitution and/or the laws of the United States, including those activities directed at parents protesting at school board meetings, Americans who spoke out against the previous administration's actions, and other Americans who were simply exercising constitutionally protected rights.So that kind of thing is bad, right? Well, while the EO was called "Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government," it doesn't actually order it ended. Rather, it orders the agencies of government to review the Biden administration's alleged political "weaponization" and report to him "with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions." In short, while purporting to condemn the practice, it's really just an example of it--the dictator settling scores while consolidating power. In the Trumptatorship, there are no legitimate disagreements, just enemies, and the enemies of the dictator become Enemies Of The State. Using the state to go after such Enemies has been a major focus of the Trump regime and Trump has actually carried out--quite aggressively carried out--the things for which he often mendaciously accused Biden and condemned in that EO.
"The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process. It targeted individuals who voiced opposition to the prior administration's policies with numerous Federal investigations and politically motivated funding revocations, which cost Americans access to needed services."
In the Trumptatorship, Enemies Of The State certainly don't have things like 1st Amendment rights. Trump has always had the fascist's omnivorous utilitarianism when it comes to the rhetoric of discontent and one of the poses he's stricken in recent years has been that of a defender of the 1st Amendment, which he has adopted while, out of the other end of his firehose of falsehoods, regularly spewing calls for extensive restrictions on 1st Amendment freedoms. In another of his first-day orders, "he" (meaning whichever underling wrote it for him) praised the 1st Amendment as "essential to the success of our Republic," an instrument that "enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference." He asserts that his predecessor
"trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans' speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation,' the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government's preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society."He ordered that it would the policy of his administration to "secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech, ensure that no agent of government would facilitate any conduct that would abridge free speech and ensure that no taxpayer resources went to any such project. He called the EO "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship."
Sounds great, in isolation. Presidential, even.
But even for one mercifully unacquainted with Trump, his complete lack of seriousness was there in the order itself, which concludes, "This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person." One of his other first-day executive orders gets down to what his regime is really about, juxtaposing aliens in the U.S. "who intend to commit terrorist attacks" with those who simply hold political views that are protected by the 1st Amendment but that Trump dislikes and calling for government action against both as if they were the same thing. This kind of not-at-all-clever juxtaposition has become standard in the Trumptatorship. Let's call it a Trumpstaposition.[3]
Only days after Trump declared in a speech to congress that "I've stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America," he sent Homeland Security goons to kidnap Mahmoud Khalil, a former student at Columbia University and legal permanent resident, for the "crime" of protesting mass-murder committed in Gaza by the current government of Israel with the support of the United States. Agents abducted Khalil near his apartment complex in New York,[4] where he lives with his wife--an American, who was about to give birth to their first child--and spirited him away to 5 different locations across multiple jurisdictions, a ploy the regime has been using to try to stay ahead of any potential rapid legal countermeasures by its targets. Ultimately, Khalil was warehoused at a detention center in Louisiana, over a thousand miles from his family, friends and his lawyer, and under the legal jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit, the most backwards, "conservative" circuit in the federal judiciary.
Trump took to social media--and charged through the looking-glass--to crow about this.
But Khalil is anti-Hamas, has repeatedly condemned antisemitism and it's precisely because
he protested the slaughter of innocent people that Trump is trying to
deport him. If the observer not sufficiently churched in American public
affairs finds all of this inexplicably incongruous--as much so as
Trump, who has long cultivated
support from the ugly white nationalist subculture, leaving untouched
that part of his base that is the home of violent antisemitism in the
U.S. while representing himself as a crusader against
antisemitism[5]--the Rosetta Stone is that all Trump actually means by
"pro-Hamas", "supporting terrorism", "antisemitism", "pro-Jihadist" and
other such phrases is opposition to the gruesome mass-murder carried out
by the far-right Israeli regime of Benjamin Netanyahu,[6] an
international fugitive wanted in the Hague for crimes against humanity.[7] The very crimes Trump is trying to deport Khalil for opposing.[8]
A legal permanent resident can only have his green card pulled for things like committing crimes, but the Trump regime didn't even accuse Khalil, who has no criminal record, of having done anything illegal. Rather, it has asserted it can go around federal law on such residents and deport Khalil for speech fully protected by the 1st Amendment because of--you'll love this part--a section of an antisemitic McCarthy-era law. The McCarran-Walter Act, better known as the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), was designed to, among other things, exclude Jewish Holocaust survivors from the U.S. under the pretext that they were "subversives." The regime is citing a section of it that allows for the exclusion/deportation of foreigners from the U.S. on ideological grounds, despite that portion of the law having been largely repealed decades ago and the constitutionality of what remains being extremely dubious. The revised version says an alien isn't deportable
Rubio writes "I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in the United States [Khalil being one of them] would have potentially serious foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest" because of their participation in "antisemitic protests and disruptive activities." Khalil has condemned and rejected antisemitism[10]--again, by "antisemitic protests," the regime simply means any opposition to the atrocities of the Israeli government and U.S. support for it--and any "disruptive activities," real or, as here, imagined, are completely irrelevant.
The aliens' "public action and continued presence," Rubio asserts, "undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States." Even if the latter was true, rather than merely libelous, it wouldn't be any sort of "foreign policy interest" and would be irrelevant, and the letter provides no evidence whatsoever of anything Khalil has ever actually said or done that was antisemitic or threatened Jewish students, much less how anything he's ever said or done would have "serious foreign policy consequences" or undermine any foreign policy interest, compelling or otherwise.[11]
Rubio's larger "logic" that Khalil should be deported because "condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective" subordinates the 1st Amendment itself to, in this case, made-up foreign policy interests fabricated specifically for that purpose, and--pay attention here--applies with equal force to Americans as to aliens.
Having nothing more with which to hit Khalil than his 1st-Amendment-protected speech, the regime continued its defamation campaign against him.[12] The limited jurisdiction of the immigration court--such courts are employees of the executive branch, not part of the judiciary--didn't allow it to consider the matter beyond the Rubio declaration, so Khalil's substantive 1st Amendment/due process lawsuit against the regime will be heard in a federal court in New Jersey, which has jurisdiction over the habeas petition rapidly filed by his lawyer after his abduction (and while the regime was still moving him around to try to avoid such action).
The abduction of Khalil was, indeed, just the first of "many to come."
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish-born Ph.D student attending Tuft's University on a student visa, was kidnapped on a public street in Massachusetts by 6 masked ICE goons, stuffed into an unmarked black vehicle then transferred around to 5 different locations before being deposited in a facility in Basile, Louisiana. Her "crime": she was one of 4 co-authors of an editorial in a student newspaper arguing that, because of the ongoing mass-murder campaign by Israel, the university shouldn't just dismiss a student resolution to divest from companies with ties to that country. This was characterized by a DHS spokesman as her having, in the words of a PBS report, "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group." PBS noted that "the department did not provide evidence of that support," and the editorial, which never even so much as mentions Hamas, is her only known pro-Palestinian activism. The Washington Post reported that in a memo produced by the State Department prior to Öztürk's abduction,
Mohsen Mahdawi, who is pursuing a master's degree at Columbia University, has been a legal permanent U.S. resident for a decade and is working toward becoming a U.S. citizen. ICE goons arrested him while he was attending his naturalization interview, one of the final steps in that process. His "crime," as with the others: opposition to Netanyahu's butchery in Gaza. DHS planned to put Mahdawi through the usual jurisdiction-hopping shenanigans but some very quick work by Mahdawi's lawyer preventing him from being removed from his home state of Vermont. On 30 April, Judge Geoffrey Crawford released Mahdawi on bail. The regime's response was the usual. As recounted by the New York Times,
The stories are many and all variants on the same theme. Since its revision--nearly 4 decades ago--the portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act being cited by the Trump gang as its pretext for this has never been invoked based solely on lawful, constitutionally-protected speech and activities. In only a matter of weeks, Trump has invoked it in that way hundreds of times, an ongoing war on the constitution aimed at crushing these Enemies Of The State. As March crept to a close, CNN reported,
Our own loss of fundamental freedom makes for quite the spectacle too. The world sends its young students to be educated in the U.S., the alleged bastion of free expression, only to see them Gestapo'd for merely exercising that freedom while an execrable menagerie of screeching idiots who represents the repressive regime responsible goes on television raving about how going to school in the U.S. is a "privilege" and tells the world its children are terrorists and hate-mongers who deserve such mistreatment.
If the Trumptatorship is allowed to establish itself, they're not the only ones in for it; all of us will be.
In another front in this same war, Trump is already targeting our ability to resist Trumptatorship. One of those critical freedoms enshrined in the 1st Amendment is the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances but in February, Trump began issuing a series of executive orders targeting law firms because they'd represented clients in causes Trump disliked--often representing clients suing the Trump regime itself. The firm Jenner & Block is representing clients currently suing the regime for illegally freezing EPA grant money, for illegally freezing funding to healthcare providers if they perform gender transition treatments and, as Reuters puts it, are part of the legal team "representing immigrant-rights groups challenging Trump's efforts to curb asylum rights." Wilmer. Cutler. Pickering. Hale and Dorr--WilmerHale--has been representing clients suing the regime over Trump's mass-firing of inspectors general. And so on.
As inappropriate as they are unprecedented, these EOs attributed the causes these law firms have undertaken on behalf of their clients, which, in the Trumptatorship's typical Slander Mode, they grotesquely misrepresent, to the firms themselves. Firms stand condemned for working with "activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification."[15] They're roasted for engaging in "obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends." Representing clients challenging draconian anti-immigration practices is characterized as "the obstruction of efforts to prevent illegal aliens from committing horrific crimes and trafficking deadly drugs within our borders." Taking on clients challenging laws intended to restrict voting rights is presented as "supporting efforts designed to enable noncitizens to vote." And so on. The grievances Trump's ghostwriters have levied against the firms are for political differences with Trump--for their speech.
As this suggests, the EOs ubiquitously employ language that describe the firms as Enemies Of The State. For taking on these disfavored cases--that is, doing their jobs in the constitutional scheme--they're said to engage in "conduct detrimental to critical American interests"; to take "actions that threaten public safety and national security, limit constitutional freedoms, degrade the quality of American elections" and "undermine bedrock American principles"; to "threaten the national security." They "undermine justice and the interests of the United States" and "democratic elections, the integrity of our courts, and honest law enforcement."
All of the firms targeted in EOs have some connection to people who have investigated Trump. Covington & Burling is attacked for taking on, as a client, Jack Smith, who formerly worked as special counsel during the latter portion of the Biden administration, investigating and prosecuting Trump. Perkins Coie represented the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, when she ran against Trump, then represented clients who challenged Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election after he lost.[16] Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (Paul Weiss) is kicked around because a partner in the firm had previously worked with special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Washington D.C. Attorney General against the pro-Trump terrorists who carried out the 6 Jan. assault on the U.S. Capitol. WilmerHale is scourged because Mueller worked for the firm in the past. Trump calls the Mueller investigation "one of the most partisan investigations in American history," one that "epitomizes the weaponization of government"--an investigation that, in the real world, was carried out entirely by the 1st Trump administration. "This weaponization of the justice system must not be rewarded, let alone condoned," raves Trump, in sentiment echoed throughout these EOs.
Readers will have to decide if it's sentiment offered with a complete lack of self-awareness or in the absence of sufficient minimal decency to feel shame. Trump's EOs order the blanket suspension of the security clearances of anyone who holds one and works for these firms. The firms are not only barred from receiving any federal contracts but anyone who has employed these firms to represent them in any matter is barred from getting federal contracts as well. Trump orders the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate the firms' hiring practices--something Trump has no legal authority whatsoever to do.[17] Agencies of the government are barred from hiring current or former employees of these firms without obtaining a multi-part waiver. Employees of the law firms are barred from government buildings--courthouses--and government employees are barred from interacting with them. With no hint of constitutionally-mandated due process, Trump's EOs amount to a death penalty for the targeted firms, federal government retaliation for the "crimes" of representing clients attempting to petition the government for a redress of grievances, taking positions on political issues--speech--that the dictator dislikes, for challenging the dictator and his dictatorial policies. Not just aiming to neutralize these specific firms by blocking them from challenging his regime but warning off any law firm from representing clients challenging the regime.
Trump has blatantly used these EOs as a shakedown. Extortion. Systematized in this way, a protection racket by a gangster government. Paul Weiss and 8 others who were threatened by the Trump regime with similar action rolled over, turning over partial control of their firms to the Trumptatorship in exchange for Trump foregoing such actions against them. In exchange for Trump reversing his EO, Paul Weiss agreed to
Four of the firms targeted by Trump have gone to court to challenge the EOs. All four swiftly obtained restraining orders blocking the administration from acting on the EOs. The Trumptatorship went into court and asserted that, by its concept of government, the courts couldn't even review, much less rule on, these actions. As of this writing, three of the four suits--those by Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale--have already been resolved at the district court level, resulting in summary judgments in favor of the firms that permanently enjoin the Trumptatorship from enforcing any part of its EOs targeting them. The rulings are often quite eloquent in their defense of constitutional principles and authored by judges who seem to be in disbelief by what the regime was attempting. It's a heartening result but--as with so many of these things--no confidence can be placed in either the judiciary, with the present toxic majority at the Supreme Court atop it, upholding it in the event of appeals actions or the regime abiding by the courts if the courts uphold the rulings against it.
These actions are only a part of a broader campaign by the Trumptatorship against lawyers who oppose it, or, more to the point, lawyers who represent Americans who sue the regime in opposition to its actions. On 22 March, Trump issued a Memoranda condemning what it called "grossly unethical misconduct" by lawyers and law firms, which, it asserted, is "far too common." It gives away the game, saying it aims to address "baseless partisan attacks" by lawyers. Actual misconduct, as opposed to merely opposing the Trumptatorship, is the jurisdiction of the judiciary and of the various state bars, not the executive, and the document orders the Attorney General to seek sanctions and disciplinary action against attorneys "who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States or in matters before executive departments and agencies of the United States"--opposing the Trumptatorship--but then, getting to the real point, it says lawyers who are so targeted will face executive-branch actions mirroring those directed against the large law firms. It orders the AG to review cases against the federal government for the past 8 years, so as to get in those who opposed Trump during his first administration. The document, of course, says nothing about any of the grossly unethical conduct by the lawyers employed by the Trump regime, who, at the direction of their superiors, have, in the last few months, routinely lied to and misled federal judges, defied court orders and are now subject to multiple pending investigations for criminal contempt.
The law firms are only one institution the Trumptatorship has tried to take over (earlier articles in this run have covered others, and the next will probably be about still more of them). They have the resources to provide strong representation to Americans against the Trumptatorship juggernaut while the other branches of government still stand and the regime, having not yet consolidated sufficient power to entirely disregard them, still pretends to care they exist.
As bad as it is, what I've been describing in this piece is how things begin, not how they end. Alongside occasionally lip-servicing respect for some of the constitutional protections addressed here, Trump is in the process of ending them, setting the precedent for endless encroachments against them until they're undone, showing great enthusiasm for the task. When they're gone, they won't just be gone for foreign students and wealthy law-firms. While it's exactly what some think they want, most Americans are not down with a Trumptatorship (and most of those who think they want it will only realize they don't when it's too late). But if you don't want it, you have to fight it, because Trump isn't taking any rest-breaks here.
It can't be strongly enough stressed that the other institutions of the government, which are supposed to resist this sort of thing, cannot, as presently constituted, be relied upon to either protect you or to prevent this. Congress is in the sway of Republicans who, instead of asserting that institution's prerogatives or doing anything to stand up for the Constitution or the rule of law, have been trying, all along, to grant even more power to the dictator. While Trump has amassed a loss-record in the courts that is staggering, the Supreme Court, with its current monstrous majority, stands poised to rubber-stamp most of what Trump wants to do to you. In this situation, having the other branches line up behind Trump is the worst possible outcome; it would mean there was nothing left to save. But even if congress and the Supreme Court doesn't go whole-hog on the Trumptatorship, the damage they can do--and are already beginning to do--by going along with it can be fatal to the American project. That's where we are.
As I've said before, we don't need some return to pre-Trump "normalcy"; that was the noxious environment that produced Trump and MAGA in the first place. We need something better, and you can build something better. But the threat right now is existential. If Trump succeeds, there won't be anything to build or any way to build it, or anything but a squalid dictatorship over which you will have no meaningful say. Even if he doesn't get his grand Trumptatorship, what he does get, without massive resistance, won't be recognizable as the United States of America. You can't rely on things to fix themselves this time; Trump is gutting the checks and balances. If you don't want this, if you want that Something Better, you have to get involved.
--j.
---
[1] Of them, three just repealed regulatory rules promulgated by federal agencies during Joe Biden's presidency, one was just a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown, and the only one of great significance was the awful Laken Riley Act, passed under Biden but held up by congressional Republicans so that Trump could take credit for signing it. It will be a black mark against everyone involved in passing it until the courts strike it down.
[2] Franklin Roosevelt was noted for issuing a lot of EOs; Trump blew past FDR's first-100-day total (99) in only 64 days and kept on trucking. By the end of a hundred days, he'd issued 142, which is more than the total of first-100-day EOs issued by his 6 predecessors combined.
[3] The EO says "the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles"--language Trump ubiquitously uses to describe the views of his domestic political opponents--"and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security." Continuing that juxtaposition--that Trumpstaposition--it even tries to incorporate Trump's pose as a defender of 1st Amendment protections while attacking those protections, calling on his regime's officials to offer recommendations
[4] Agents who had been surveilling Khalil approached him and told him his student visa was being revoked. But Khalil isn't present on a student visa--he's a legal permanent resident with a green card. When the ICE goons were informed of this, they said it had been revoked too. They claimed to have a warrant for his arrest. When, over the phone, Khalil's lawyer said she needed to see that warrant, the ICE agent simply hung up. It later turned out the ICE goons were lying and had no warrant of any kind.
[5] On 14 May, ProPublica identified multiple individuals "with close ties to antisemitic extremists" who are currently serving as officials in the Trump regime itself.
[6] Trump has long parroted the long-running far-right press fantasy version of alleged college campus "antisemitism" during the Israeli government's campaign of mass-murder in Gaza whereby every protest of that slaughter is slapped with that label, with an extensive accompanying mythology to be used as a cudgel against dissent and institutions of higher learning. In January, Trump issued an executive order stating, "It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously," but it's focused on--and lost in--that fantasy and refuses to acknowledge that constitutionally-protected protest of that murder campaign and its U.S. backing even exists. The "fact"-sheet released with that order is an even more explicit--but more to the actual point--trip to Looney-Tunes-ville, ranting against "leftist, anti-American colleges and universities," which, it says, "have been infested with radicalism like never before" and asserting that
[7] Netanyahu is also being prosecuted in Israel itself for bribery, corruption and other charges.
[8] Further clarifying all of this--if any further clarification is needed--Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court for its actions against Netanyahu and even declared the matter a national emergency!
[9] The statue also requires that, if the Sec. of State makes such a determination, he has to submit it to the chairmen of the relevant congressional committees along with the "reasons for the determination." As of this writing, Rubio doesn't appear to have done so.
[10] In reporting on the campus protests back in April 2024, CNN talked to Khalil.
[11] After the fact (and as if acknowledging the legal "case" against Khalil was weak), the regime began arguing that Khalil had lied on his green-card application regarding past employment; NBC News did a deep dive into that "evidence" and showed it to be nonsense, sourced to inaccurate "reporting" in far-right tabloids.
[12] Rubio posted an AP story on the case on X, with the text, "We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported." The Department of Homeland Security posted that "Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization." White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt raved,
[13] In a Nov. 2023 article about a pro-Palestinian rally organized by Jewish Voice For Peace, the Columbia Spectator reports, that an unidentified bystander began "screaming antisemitic and anti-black statements, then attempted to instigate fights with numerous students. Mahdawi was present and confronted the fellow.
[15] Even while posing as a crusader against antisemitism, Trump can't resist wallowing in the far-right's antisemitic Puppet Master tropes in invoking Soros.
[16] Between presidencies, Trump filed an alleged civil RICO suit in Florida against a large number of political enemies, real and perceived, and Perkins Coie was among them. It ended with the court dismissing it as "a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose," failing to even state a triable case. The judge was so offended he fined Trump and his attorney Alina Habba nearly $1 million. Now, the same fantasy grievances that led to that suit were resurrected in Trump's EO targeting the firm.
[17] As the New York Times outlined, "Under federal law, an [EEOC] investigation can be opened either after the commission receives a complaint of discrimination from an individual or at the request of [an EEOC] commissioner. But in any case, the investigation is supposed to begin as a confidential process until a lawsuit is filed." A president can't order them.
A legal permanent resident can only have his green card pulled for things like committing crimes, but the Trump regime didn't even accuse Khalil, who has no criminal record, of having done anything illegal. Rather, it has asserted it can go around federal law on such residents and deport Khalil for speech fully protected by the 1st Amendment because of--you'll love this part--a section of an antisemitic McCarthy-era law. The McCarran-Walter Act, better known as the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), was designed to, among other things, exclude Jewish Holocaust survivors from the U.S. under the pretext that they were "subversives." The regime is citing a section of it that allows for the exclusion/deportation of foreigners from the U.S. on ideological grounds, despite that portion of the law having been largely repealed decades ago and the constitutionality of what remains being extremely dubious. The revised version says an alien isn't deportable
"because of the alien's past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien's admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest."The immigration judge hearing Khalil's case had to threaten to release Khalil and close the case to get the regime to produce such a determination, which, undated, was probably created only at that point and to satisfy that demand.[9] It amounted to an hilariously empty, padded page-and-a-half letter in which, in lieu of any evidence of anything, Trump's Sec. of State Marco Rubio just wallowed in the Trumptatorship's favorite pastime: defamation.
Rubio writes "I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in the United States [Khalil being one of them] would have potentially serious foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest" because of their participation in "antisemitic protests and disruptive activities." Khalil has condemned and rejected antisemitism[10]--again, by "antisemitic protests," the regime simply means any opposition to the atrocities of the Israeli government and U.S. support for it--and any "disruptive activities," real or, as here, imagined, are completely irrelevant.
The aliens' "public action and continued presence," Rubio asserts, "undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States." Even if the latter was true, rather than merely libelous, it wouldn't be any sort of "foreign policy interest" and would be irrelevant, and the letter provides no evidence whatsoever of anything Khalil has ever actually said or done that was antisemitic or threatened Jewish students, much less how anything he's ever said or done would have "serious foreign policy consequences" or undermine any foreign policy interest, compelling or otherwise.[11]
Rubio's larger "logic" that Khalil should be deported because "condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective" subordinates the 1st Amendment itself to, in this case, made-up foreign policy interests fabricated specifically for that purpose, and--pay attention here--applies with equal force to Americans as to aliens.
Having nothing more with which to hit Khalil than his 1st-Amendment-protected speech, the regime continued its defamation campaign against him.[12] The limited jurisdiction of the immigration court--such courts are employees of the executive branch, not part of the judiciary--didn't allow it to consider the matter beyond the Rubio declaration, so Khalil's substantive 1st Amendment/due process lawsuit against the regime will be heard in a federal court in New Jersey, which has jurisdiction over the habeas petition rapidly filed by his lawyer after his abduction (and while the regime was still moving him around to try to avoid such action).
The abduction of Khalil was, indeed, just the first of "many to come."
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish-born Ph.D student attending Tuft's University on a student visa, was kidnapped on a public street in Massachusetts by 6 masked ICE goons, stuffed into an unmarked black vehicle then transferred around to 5 different locations before being deposited in a facility in Basile, Louisiana. Her "crime": she was one of 4 co-authors of an editorial in a student newspaper arguing that, because of the ongoing mass-murder campaign by Israel, the university shouldn't just dismiss a student resolution to divest from companies with ties to that country. This was characterized by a DHS spokesman as her having, in the words of a PBS report, "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group." PBS noted that "the department did not provide evidence of that support," and the editorial, which never even so much as mentions Hamas, is her only known pro-Palestinian activism. The Washington Post reported that in a memo produced by the State Department prior to Öztürk's abduction,
"the State Department determined that the Trump administration had not produced any evidence showing that she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization, as the government has alleged."Swift work by Öztürk's lawyer has ensured she'll stay in the U.S. until her case is finished. Over two months after Öztürk was kidnapped, the Trump regime has produced no evidence whatsoever against her, except that editorial.
Mohsen Mahdawi, who is pursuing a master's degree at Columbia University, has been a legal permanent U.S. resident for a decade and is working toward becoming a U.S. citizen. ICE goons arrested him while he was attending his naturalization interview, one of the final steps in that process. His "crime," as with the others: opposition to Netanyahu's butchery in Gaza. DHS planned to put Mahdawi through the usual jurisdiction-hopping shenanigans but some very quick work by Mahdawi's lawyer preventing him from being removed from his home state of Vermont. On 30 April, Judge Geoffrey Crawford released Mahdawi on bail. The regime's response was the usual. As recounted by the New York Times,
"Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, denounced Judge Crawford’s decision in a post on social media.Mahdawi is a Buddhist who preaches non-violence, has no criminal history and is an anti-antisemite.[13]
"'When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked and you should not be in this country,' Ms. McLaughlin said, without offering any evidence to support her accusations."
The stories are many and all variants on the same theme. Since its revision--nearly 4 decades ago--the portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act being cited by the Trump gang as its pretext for this has never been invoked based solely on lawful, constitutionally-protected speech and activities. In only a matter of weeks, Trump has invoked it in that way hundreds of times, an ongoing war on the constitution aimed at crushing these Enemies Of The State. As March crept to a close, CNN reported,
"Around the country, scholars have been picked up, in some cases by masked immigration agents, and held in detention centers, sometimes a thousand miles from their homes with little warning and often with few details about why they were being detained.That the Secretary of State is spending his time doing this certainly helps explain the present state of U.S. foreign affairs. In these matters, the regime has standardized the kind of Gestapo tactics I've described, showing up in plainclothes in unmarked vehicles, wearing masks and whisking away its victims for speaking thoughts the regime finds intolerable.[14]
"'It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,' Rubio said at a news conference in Guyana, where he was meeting with leaders."
Our own loss of fundamental freedom makes for quite the spectacle too. The world sends its young students to be educated in the U.S., the alleged bastion of free expression, only to see them Gestapo'd for merely exercising that freedom while an execrable menagerie of screeching idiots who represents the repressive regime responsible goes on television raving about how going to school in the U.S. is a "privilege" and tells the world its children are terrorists and hate-mongers who deserve such mistreatment.
If the Trumptatorship is allowed to establish itself, they're not the only ones in for it; all of us will be.
In another front in this same war, Trump is already targeting our ability to resist Trumptatorship. One of those critical freedoms enshrined in the 1st Amendment is the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances but in February, Trump began issuing a series of executive orders targeting law firms because they'd represented clients in causes Trump disliked--often representing clients suing the Trump regime itself. The firm Jenner & Block is representing clients currently suing the regime for illegally freezing EPA grant money, for illegally freezing funding to healthcare providers if they perform gender transition treatments and, as Reuters puts it, are part of the legal team "representing immigrant-rights groups challenging Trump's efforts to curb asylum rights." Wilmer. Cutler. Pickering. Hale and Dorr--WilmerHale--has been representing clients suing the regime over Trump's mass-firing of inspectors general. And so on.
As inappropriate as they are unprecedented, these EOs attributed the causes these law firms have undertaken on behalf of their clients, which, in the Trumptatorship's typical Slander Mode, they grotesquely misrepresent, to the firms themselves. Firms stand condemned for working with "activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification."[15] They're roasted for engaging in "obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends." Representing clients challenging draconian anti-immigration practices is characterized as "the obstruction of efforts to prevent illegal aliens from committing horrific crimes and trafficking deadly drugs within our borders." Taking on clients challenging laws intended to restrict voting rights is presented as "supporting efforts designed to enable noncitizens to vote." And so on. The grievances Trump's ghostwriters have levied against the firms are for political differences with Trump--for their speech.
As this suggests, the EOs ubiquitously employ language that describe the firms as Enemies Of The State. For taking on these disfavored cases--that is, doing their jobs in the constitutional scheme--they're said to engage in "conduct detrimental to critical American interests"; to take "actions that threaten public safety and national security, limit constitutional freedoms, degrade the quality of American elections" and "undermine bedrock American principles"; to "threaten the national security." They "undermine justice and the interests of the United States" and "democratic elections, the integrity of our courts, and honest law enforcement."
All of the firms targeted in EOs have some connection to people who have investigated Trump. Covington & Burling is attacked for taking on, as a client, Jack Smith, who formerly worked as special counsel during the latter portion of the Biden administration, investigating and prosecuting Trump. Perkins Coie represented the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, when she ran against Trump, then represented clients who challenged Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election after he lost.[16] Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (Paul Weiss) is kicked around because a partner in the firm had previously worked with special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Washington D.C. Attorney General against the pro-Trump terrorists who carried out the 6 Jan. assault on the U.S. Capitol. WilmerHale is scourged because Mueller worked for the firm in the past. Trump calls the Mueller investigation "one of the most partisan investigations in American history," one that "epitomizes the weaponization of government"--an investigation that, in the real world, was carried out entirely by the 1st Trump administration. "This weaponization of the justice system must not be rewarded, let alone condoned," raves Trump, in sentiment echoed throughout these EOs.
Readers will have to decide if it's sentiment offered with a complete lack of self-awareness or in the absence of sufficient minimal decency to feel shame. Trump's EOs order the blanket suspension of the security clearances of anyone who holds one and works for these firms. The firms are not only barred from receiving any federal contracts but anyone who has employed these firms to represent them in any matter is barred from getting federal contracts as well. Trump orders the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate the firms' hiring practices--something Trump has no legal authority whatsoever to do.[17] Agencies of the government are barred from hiring current or former employees of these firms without obtaining a multi-part waiver. Employees of the law firms are barred from government buildings--courthouses--and government employees are barred from interacting with them. With no hint of constitutionally-mandated due process, Trump's EOs amount to a death penalty for the targeted firms, federal government retaliation for the "crimes" of representing clients attempting to petition the government for a redress of grievances, taking positions on political issues--speech--that the dictator dislikes, for challenging the dictator and his dictatorial policies. Not just aiming to neutralize these specific firms by blocking them from challenging his regime but warning off any law firm from representing clients challenging the regime.
Trump has blatantly used these EOs as a shakedown. Extortion. Systematized in this way, a protection racket by a gangster government. Paul Weiss and 8 others who were threatened by the Trump regime with similar action rolled over, turning over partial control of their firms to the Trumptatorship in exchange for Trump foregoing such actions against them. In exchange for Trump reversing his EO, Paul Weiss agreed to
"adopting a policy of political neutrality with respect to client selection and attorney hiring; taking on a wide range of pro bono matters representing the full political spectrum; committing to merit-based hiring, promotion, and retention, instead of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' policies"...all as determined by the Trump regime.The firm also agreed to provide the regime with $40 million in pro bono legal services. So far, the 9 firms that gave in to Trump have collectively pledged nearly $1 billion in pro bono work for Trump's regime. One will struggle in vain to find any provision of the U.S,. Constitution or the laws adopted under it that empowers, authorizes, condones or allows the president to seize control of private law firms or any precedent for any president even attempting to do so--this is strictly the work of would-be dictators. Offering or accepting a thing of value in exchange for an official act, on the other hand, is, in in U.S. law, the definition of bribery, one of the criminal offenses the constitution specifically enumerates as grounds for impeachment and removal. Trump is doing this openly.
Four of the firms targeted by Trump have gone to court to challenge the EOs. All four swiftly obtained restraining orders blocking the administration from acting on the EOs. The Trumptatorship went into court and asserted that, by its concept of government, the courts couldn't even review, much less rule on, these actions. As of this writing, three of the four suits--those by Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale--have already been resolved at the district court level, resulting in summary judgments in favor of the firms that permanently enjoin the Trumptatorship from enforcing any part of its EOs targeting them. The rulings are often quite eloquent in their defense of constitutional principles and authored by judges who seem to be in disbelief by what the regime was attempting. It's a heartening result but--as with so many of these things--no confidence can be placed in either the judiciary, with the present toxic majority at the Supreme Court atop it, upholding it in the event of appeals actions or the regime abiding by the courts if the courts uphold the rulings against it.
These actions are only a part of a broader campaign by the Trumptatorship against lawyers who oppose it, or, more to the point, lawyers who represent Americans who sue the regime in opposition to its actions. On 22 March, Trump issued a Memoranda condemning what it called "grossly unethical misconduct" by lawyers and law firms, which, it asserted, is "far too common." It gives away the game, saying it aims to address "baseless partisan attacks" by lawyers. Actual misconduct, as opposed to merely opposing the Trumptatorship, is the jurisdiction of the judiciary and of the various state bars, not the executive, and the document orders the Attorney General to seek sanctions and disciplinary action against attorneys "who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States or in matters before executive departments and agencies of the United States"--opposing the Trumptatorship--but then, getting to the real point, it says lawyers who are so targeted will face executive-branch actions mirroring those directed against the large law firms. It orders the AG to review cases against the federal government for the past 8 years, so as to get in those who opposed Trump during his first administration. The document, of course, says nothing about any of the grossly unethical conduct by the lawyers employed by the Trump regime, who, at the direction of their superiors, have, in the last few months, routinely lied to and misled federal judges, defied court orders and are now subject to multiple pending investigations for criminal contempt.
The law firms are only one institution the Trumptatorship has tried to take over (earlier articles in this run have covered others, and the next will probably be about still more of them). They have the resources to provide strong representation to Americans against the Trumptatorship juggernaut while the other branches of government still stand and the regime, having not yet consolidated sufficient power to entirely disregard them, still pretends to care they exist.
As bad as it is, what I've been describing in this piece is how things begin, not how they end. Alongside occasionally lip-servicing respect for some of the constitutional protections addressed here, Trump is in the process of ending them, setting the precedent for endless encroachments against them until they're undone, showing great enthusiasm for the task. When they're gone, they won't just be gone for foreign students and wealthy law-firms. While it's exactly what some think they want, most Americans are not down with a Trumptatorship (and most of those who think they want it will only realize they don't when it's too late). But if you don't want it, you have to fight it, because Trump isn't taking any rest-breaks here.
It can't be strongly enough stressed that the other institutions of the government, which are supposed to resist this sort of thing, cannot, as presently constituted, be relied upon to either protect you or to prevent this. Congress is in the sway of Republicans who, instead of asserting that institution's prerogatives or doing anything to stand up for the Constitution or the rule of law, have been trying, all along, to grant even more power to the dictator. While Trump has amassed a loss-record in the courts that is staggering, the Supreme Court, with its current monstrous majority, stands poised to rubber-stamp most of what Trump wants to do to you. In this situation, having the other branches line up behind Trump is the worst possible outcome; it would mean there was nothing left to save. But even if congress and the Supreme Court doesn't go whole-hog on the Trumptatorship, the damage they can do--and are already beginning to do--by going along with it can be fatal to the American project. That's where we are.
As I've said before, we don't need some return to pre-Trump "normalcy"; that was the noxious environment that produced Trump and MAGA in the first place. We need something better, and you can build something better. But the threat right now is existential. If Trump succeeds, there won't be anything to build or any way to build it, or anything but a squalid dictatorship over which you will have no meaningful say. Even if he doesn't get his grand Trumptatorship, what he does get, without massive resistance, won't be recognizable as the United States of America. You can't rely on things to fix themselves this time; Trump is gutting the checks and balances. If you don't want this, if you want that Something Better, you have to get involved.
--j.
---
[1] Of them, three just repealed regulatory rules promulgated by federal agencies during Joe Biden's presidency, one was just a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown, and the only one of great significance was the awful Laken Riley Act, passed under Biden but held up by congressional Republicans so that Trump could take credit for signing it. It will be a black mark against everyone involved in passing it until the courts strike it down.
[2] Franklin Roosevelt was noted for issuing a lot of EOs; Trump blew past FDR's first-100-day total (99) in only 64 days and kept on trucking. By the end of a hundred days, he'd issued 142, which is more than the total of first-100-day EOs issued by his 6 predecessors combined.
[3] The EO says "the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles"--language Trump ubiquitously uses to describe the views of his domestic political opponents--"and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security." Continuing that juxtaposition--that Trumpstaposition--it even tries to incorporate Trump's pose as a defender of 1st Amendment protections while attacking those protections, calling on his regime's officials to offer recommendations
"to protect the American people from the actions of foreign nationals who have undermined or seek to undermine the fundamental constitutional rights of the American people, including, but not limited to, our Citizens' rights to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment, who preach or call for sectarian violence, the overthrow or replacement of the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands, or who provide aid, advocacy, or support for foreign terrorists."That's how you call for ending fundamental constitutional protections in the name of those protections. Just call it "culture"; the rest is easy.
[4] Agents who had been surveilling Khalil approached him and told him his student visa was being revoked. But Khalil isn't present on a student visa--he's a legal permanent resident with a green card. When the ICE goons were informed of this, they said it had been revoked too. They claimed to have a warrant for his arrest. When, over the phone, Khalil's lawyer said she needed to see that warrant, the ICE agent simply hung up. It later turned out the ICE goons were lying and had no warrant of any kind.
[5] On 14 May, ProPublica identified multiple individuals "with close ties to antisemitic extremists" who are currently serving as officials in the Trump regime itself.
[6] Trump has long parroted the long-running far-right press fantasy version of alleged college campus "antisemitism" during the Israeli government's campaign of mass-murder in Gaza whereby every protest of that slaughter is slapped with that label, with an extensive accompanying mythology to be used as a cudgel against dissent and institutions of higher learning. In January, Trump issued an executive order stating, "It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously," but it's focused on--and lost in--that fantasy and refuses to acknowledge that constitutionally-protected protest of that murder campaign and its U.S. backing even exists. The "fact"-sheet released with that order is an even more explicit--but more to the actual point--trip to Looney-Tunes-ville, ranting against "leftist, anti-American colleges and universities," which, it says, "have been infested with radicalism like never before" and asserting that
"Immediately after the jihadist terrorist attacks against the people of Israel on October 7, 2023, pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals began a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America."It characterizes protest of Israeli violence as "pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation" and "pro-jihadist protests" by "Hamas sympathizers" and promises to "quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses."
[7] Netanyahu is also being prosecuted in Israel itself for bribery, corruption and other charges.
[8] Further clarifying all of this--if any further clarification is needed--Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court for its actions against Netanyahu and even declared the matter a national emergency!
[9] The statue also requires that, if the Sec. of State makes such a determination, he has to submit it to the chairmen of the relevant congressional committees along with the "reasons for the determination." As of this writing, Rubio doesn't appear to have done so.
[10] In reporting on the campus protests back in April 2024, CNN talked to Khalil.
"'I would say that the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinians and the Jewish people are intertwined. They go hand in hand. Anti-Semitism and any form of racism has no place on campus and in this movement,' Khalil said, noting that some members of Columbia’s encampment are Jewish and held Passover seders earlier this week..."He added that Jewish students "are an integral part of this movement."
[11] After the fact (and as if acknowledging the legal "case" against Khalil was weak), the regime began arguing that Khalil had lied on his green-card application regarding past employment; NBC News did a deep dive into that "evidence" and showed it to be nonsense, sourced to inaccurate "reporting" in far-right tabloids.
[12] Rubio posted an AP story on the case on X, with the text, "We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported." The Department of Homeland Security posted that "Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization." White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt raved,
"Mahmoud Khalil was an individual who was given the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation's finest universities and colleges, uh, and he took advantage of that opportunity, of that privilege by siding with terrorists, Hamas terrorists who have killed innocent men, women and children. This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted, uh, college campaign classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, flyers with the logo of Hamas."Note the weasel-wording. The regime has no evidence that Khalil did any of that, so it's strictly guilt by association. Someone at some rally Khalil may have attended may have handed out some flyers, something over which he has absolutely no control, and that makes him pro-Hamas. Khalil's Jewish classmates have come to his defense on this. One relates how, in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of 7 Oct., 2023, "Mahmoud condemned the violent, hateful act by Hamas terrorists and expressed grief for the immediate loss of life and continued impact on the communities." Later, he writes,
"I saw Mahmoud... harassed by other students, asking him if he supported Hamas. Mahmoud would not raise his voice or respond with aggression, but instead simply answer the question by condemning Hamas and all forms of violent extremism... [H]e never wavered in his denouncement of all forms of violent extremism, including the actions of Hamas on October 7th.""Mahmoud has protected Jewish students at Columbia like myself more than the university ever has," wrote another.
[13] In a Nov. 2023 article about a pro-Palestinian rally organized by Jewish Voice For Peace, the Columbia Spectator reports, that an unidentified bystander began "screaming antisemitic and anti-black statements, then attempted to instigate fights with numerous students. Mahdawi was present and confronted the fellow.
"After the incident, Mahdawi walked to Low Steps and grabbed the megaphone to address the crowd at the demonstration.[14] The completely inappropriate Secret Police-style character of these interactions, repeated constantly for months now, isn't just Trumptatorship messaging to Enemies Of The State but seems deliberately intended to provoke some sort of desperate, violent response from the victim, who correctly perceives they're being kidnapped, as a bloody-shirt rationale for continuing the program. Weeks after I initially wrote this note, these tactics have led to the current protests of ICE's activities by Southern California residents.
"Mahdawi directly denounced the individual, saying, 'Shame on the person who called [for] "death to Jews,"' which broke out into chants of 'shame on you' from the demonstrators... Mahdawi ended his speech by acknowledging and appreciating the solidarity of 'Jewish brothers and sisters who stand with us here today.' Referring to the antisemitic incident, he further condemned the individual, saying 'you don’t represent us.'"
[15] Even while posing as a crusader against antisemitism, Trump can't resist wallowing in the far-right's antisemitic Puppet Master tropes in invoking Soros.
[16] Between presidencies, Trump filed an alleged civil RICO suit in Florida against a large number of political enemies, real and perceived, and Perkins Coie was among them. It ended with the court dismissing it as "a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose," failing to even state a triable case. The judge was so offended he fined Trump and his attorney Alina Habba nearly $1 million. Now, the same fantasy grievances that led to that suit were resurrected in Trump's EO targeting the firm.
[17] As the New York Times outlined, "Under federal law, an [EEOC] investigation can be opened either after the commission receives a complaint of discrimination from an individual or at the request of [an EEOC] commissioner. But in any case, the investigation is supposed to begin as a confidential process until a lawsuit is filed." A president can't order them.
* * *
UPDATE (16 June, 2025) - On 11 June, District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey granted Mahmoud Khalil a preliminary injunction, ruling that Khalil can't be deported or even detained based on Marco Rubio's absurd declaration. As usual, the regime argued that under its notion of government, the court couldn't even hear the case and as usual, the court rejected this. Khalil's lawyers argued that if the court let stand the Rubio declaration, their client's reputation would be destroyed, his entire planned career in international relations derailed and free speech chilled; the regime didn't even contest any of this. Judge Farbiarz held that Khalil's challenge to the constitutionality of what was being done to him re:the Rubio declaration was likely to succeed.
The court gave the regime time to appeal and make the argument that it was detaining Khalil based on the also-ridiculous claim that Khalil had omitted information from his application when applying for permanent residence status. The regime had introduced that charge in transparently bad faith over a week after Khalil had already been abducted and in his ruling, Farbiarz cast extreme doubt on this as a rationale anyway, noting that those facing such an accusation are practically never detained. The regime failed to offer any appeal, so Khalil's lawyers requested he be released and instead of simply granting this, Farbiarz gave the government opportunity to respond, then backed off from his earlier ruling, allowing the regime to continue to detain Khalil based on the phony application charge.
* * *
UPDATE (17 June, 2025) - The American Bar Association has just filed a lawsuit against the Trump regime for its targeting of law firms. Running 85 pages, the suit properly contextualizes the regime's actions:
"[Trump's attacks on the law firms are] not isolated events, but one component of a broader, deliberate policy designed to intimidate and coerce law firms and lawyers to refrain from challenging the President or his Administration in court, or from even speaking publicly in support of policies or causes that the President does not like."It understands what's at stake:
"Using the powers of the Executive Branch to target private citizens and private firms for destruction is unprecedented, and bad enough regardless of the President’s motives. But the Administration's Law Firm Intimidation Policy is uniquely destructive because of the critical role that its targets--lawyers--fulfill in our constitutional system... Without skilled lawyers to bring and argue cases--and to do so by advancing the interests of their clients without fear of reprisal from the government--the judiciary cannot function as a meaningful check on executive overreach."The ABA shows great optimism in believing that meaningful elections will ever be allowed to happen again but the org outlines what would happen in a world in which there were meaningful elections and in which Trump's actions are allowed to stand:
"The longer the Law Firm Intimidation Policy--and the resulting coercion and submission--persists, the more it will be normalized in our legal system. Whoever wins the next election will be free to squelch dissent based on policy disagreements. There is no limiting principle: The next Administration might threaten adverse Executive Branch actions against any lawyer or law firm that dares to represent an oil company, or a gun manufacturer, or the Federalist Society or Fox News."The lawsuit offers 6 counts against the regime, the first 5 being various violations of the 1st Amendment. "The Law Firm Intimidation Policy is unlawful," it reads.
"Our Constitution does not vest the Executive Branch with the power to point to individual lawyers or law firms, declare by executive fiat that their work or their internal policies are 'against the national interest' or otherwise illegal or improper, and direct (or threaten) executive action against that lawyer or law firm. Exercising such power--and threatening to do so--violates the First Amendment and purports to exercise power that the President does not have."The 6th count deals with "Ultra Vires Presidential Action - Separation of Powers." It notes that no aspect of Trump's actions against the firms have been authorized by either congress or the constitution--the only sources of a president's power to issue executive orders--and that congress has, in fact, specifically prohibited such actions, providing a long list of statutes and species of statutes that Trump's attacks on law firms have violated. It also notes that Trump's actions usurp the power of the courts to discipline attorneys who appear before them and are, functionally, a bill of attainder, which the constitution explicitly forbids. Collectively, the items in the 6th count illustrates how Trump is running what I've called an "alt-presidency," operating entirely outside the bounds of the constitutional order.
The lawsuit extensively quotes Trump and his underlings, who, by their public pronouncements, have buried themselves. Reading through it, something that stuck out at me was their repeated Orwellian claims that their actions--the actions of the government--against these law firms--private law firms, who control no aspect of the government--were aimed at beating back the "weaponization" of government.
The ABA asks that Trump's actions be declared unconstitutional and that the regime be enjoined from enforcing them or from bringing misconduct proceedings against the ABA or its members "based on the individual's law firm or organizational affiliation, or based on the identity of the individual's or individual's law firm's client representations."
The lawsuit outlines the chilling effect Trump's actions have already had and notes that "the ABA itself is also experiencing the effects, as it has had to forgo litigation against the Administration because counsel who previously were willing to take on such work are no longer willing to do so." So the ABA is being represented here by Susman Godfrey, one of the firms targeted by Trump with an EO.
