Dispatches of alarm and hope, on politics and society, democracy and justice. Because silence is not an option. We may read and write alone, but we drive change together. Confronting the Arrogant LawlessnessSenators Chris Murphy and Patty Murray incisively criticized the illegality and inhumanity of Kristi Noem's Department of Homeland Security. It's a start, but not enough to overcome this cruel regime.
Once again last week, Kristi Noem showcased that she will not be deterred by inconvenient things like justice and laws and human dignity. Homeland Security Secretary Noem—who wrote that she killed her own dog to prove she’s ready to do what’s “difficult, messy and ugly”—was on Capitol Hill Thursday to appear before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. Noem is one of the central figures of Donald Trump’s hateful regime that’s seeking to demolish our constitutional democracy. Under her leadership (that includes her near-daily photo-ops), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is busy robbing citizens and non-citizens of their basic rights and illegally abusing the resources appropriated by Congress to keep them safe and secure. With Trump’s support, she and others are ignoring due process and violating the Constitution. I look forward to the day when a real Justice Department is holding them accountable for their criminality. For now, the fierce articulation and questioning of DHS’s failures and illegalities by Senators Chris Murphy and Patty Murray on Thursday—helping to keep us tethered to reality—are a reason to hope that we’ll get there. But even though we can be encouraged by these Democratic senators’ pointed outrage, I’m also reminded that we have an obligation to confront a fascist regime that is determined to dismantle our democratic system, ignore a climate crisis that endangers us all, and disappear refugees without providing them their constitutional rights. It will take more than outraged elected officials; it will take about 12 million Americans (that’s 3.5 percent of the population, per Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth’s study of effective protest) standing together and demanding a stop to the lawlessness and abuse. That necessity is proven by the continued incarceration of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador’s gulag and Noem’s evidence-free insistence that he is a terrorist and will never be released, even though the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump administration should “facilitate” his return. It’s also proven by Noem’s plan to end the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) endangering the lives of millions of Americans who struggle to cope before and after the devastating impact of extreme weather events; the shutting down of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in March, which included firing most of the 150-person staff and freezing some 600 civil rights abuse investigations; and the daily instances of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the streets or from their homes and pursuing their removal without due process. Allow me to share an extended and vivid statement by Sen. Murphy, ranking member of the Senate’s Homeland Security subcommittee, as he confronted Noem and her department’s flagrant violations and reckless spending. “Your department is out of control,” he began. “You are spending like you don’t have a budget. You are on the verge of running out of money for the fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee.” Connecticut’s Murphy was just warming up:
And what are the consequences of this spending spree focused on the border?
And the senator had this to say about the illegal disappearing of humans:
These are strong and necessary words. But note Noem’s arrogant and hostile response when Murphy directly asked what steps she’s taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release. “Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador and should never have been in this country and will not be coming back to this country,” she told the senator. “There is no scenario where Abrego Garcia will be in the United States again. If he were to come back we would immediately deport him again because he is a terrorist, he’s a human smuggler, and he is a wife beater.” Reflect for a moment on what that portends. The leader of one of the nation’s largest and most powerful departments, who was confirmed for the position by 59 senators including some Democrats, believes it’s in her power to defy the Supreme Court, ignore the Constitution and determine without legal evidence that she knows better what should be done with someone that she and her boss claim is a danger. Today we are talking about undocumented refugees, but how soon will we be talking about a growing number of American citizens who this fascist regime chooses to disappear? We can expect to see more and more of these detentions and removals every day because this regime believes it’s their privilege to pursue this lawless path. The heinous threat by Trump advisor Stephen Miller Friday that they’ll suspend habeas corpus—the right enshrined in the Constitution to legally challenge detention by the government—is all you need to know about their depraved intent. The false reason they’d employ? “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller told reporters. But let me leave you with Sen. Murray’s confrontation with Noem over their freezing or cancelling over $100 billion in FEMA disaster relief and grants approved by Congress—an unconscionable campaign that will increase human suffering and death. Tragically, the predictable impacts will be felt in the coming months as Americans face hurricane season, rising waters and devastating results from climate-induced disasters. Here’s how Washington’s Murray, vice chair of this appropriations subcommittee, addressed it:
Ignoring the question, Noem changed the subject. “Under the Biden administration, illegal aliens were prioritized over American citizens,” she responded. “Now the scales of justice have been leveled, citizens are treated the same.” Pressed by Murray, Noem eventually said, “The grants that you are referencing have been paused and reevaluated to make sure that they are truly being spent in the way to which they were appropriated. Many of these grants were being diverted.” Get it? Let’s cancel FEMA support because all the money is being handed over illegally to support migrants. “Madam Secretary, these funds were passed on a bipartisan basis by members in this Congress,” the senator politely reminded her, adding, “It is not credible that all the recipients—it is not credible that $100 billion is used to break the law—that just cannot be true.” Homeland Security is on track to go broke by July, Sen. Murphy told Noem. That’s two months before the end of the fiscal year. “You may not think that Congress has provided enough money to ICE, but the Constitution and the federal law doesn’t allow you to spend more money than you've been given, or to invent money,” he said. As Congress sorts out the 2026 budget, there is an opportunity for elected officials to push back on the extremes of this department and its reckless leadership. But don’t count on it with a GOP-led legislature kowtowing to a lawless, immunized president. In contrast to major cuts proposed throughout the federal budget, Trump is calling for a ridiculous 65 percent increase for Homeland Security to support mass removals, complete his border wall, and expand the border patrol and customs workforce. We need Democratic leaders like Murphy and Murray to continue speaking out with clarity and outrage. But that won’t be enough to turn the tide, as Murphy himself has said. It will take all of us saying we’ve had enough and proving it with solidarity and mass protest. |
Monday, May 12, 2025
Confronting the Arrogant Lawlessness
My Message to Donald Trump: I'm Not Going Anywhere
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The past several days have been eye-opening — not just for me, but for everyone watching what’s happening in this country. They’re coming after the press for doing what we’re supposed to do: telling the truth. And let me be clear — I’m not afraid. I’m emboldened.
I’ve received thousands of messages of support in the last 48 hours. While MAGA figures have openly called for my arrest and prosecution, you’ve stood with me. You’ve subscribed. You’ve messaged. You’ve made videos. That means everything — and it tells me we’re not alone in this fight.
So here’s my message to the President:
I’m not scared of you.
I will continue to report the news. I will continue to speak the truth. I will not be silenced or intimidated. You can try to criminalize journalism, but you cannot kill facts. You cannot crush a free press.
To everyone watching:
I’m not backing down.
I’m not going anywhere.
They won’t win — not now, not ever.
The Week Ahead
This week, on Thursday, the Supreme Court hears oral argument in the birthright citizenship case. But not exactly, because the issue on the table isn’t whether Trump can undo the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States; it’s about a technical issue, one we’ve encountered before. The issue is whether a district judge can issue an injunction that takes effect nationwide, or whether their decision is only applicable within their judicial district, or even limited just to the parties in front of them. The Court consolidated three cases from the lower courts and will hear them together:
“Years of experience have shown that the Executive Branch cannot properly perform its functions if any judge anywhere can enjoin every presidential action everywhere,” then acting-Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in three nearly identical briefs used to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the matters that stem from courts in Maryland, Washington, and Massachusetts. But if we’re being honest, that hasn’t always been the conservative view of the matter, like when it was Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, who was repeatedly selected to hear anti-abortion cases because he sits in what is known as a one-judge division, and they were almost sure to get him if they filed there. And liberals have also forum shopped for districts where they believed they were more likely to get a friendly judge. The issue here is a legal one that should transcend politics, one that is about legal principles and drawing lines as opposed to a results-oriented ruling that says nationwide injunctions are okay so long as whoever is making the decisions is happy with the outcome. It’s far less likely we will get—or at least we shouldn’t—an all-or-nothing rule that says nationwide injunctions are always permitted or, conversely, never permitted. The difficult task in front of the Supreme Court is the line-drawing exercise. It’s one that has been brewing for some time, which makes it all the more interesting that the Court agreed to let it come to a head and hear the issue in the context of this case. That’s because this is one of the strongest contexts imaginable for arguing in favor of permitting nationwide injunctions. Otherwise, there would be a patchwork quilt of citizenship creation, depending on the state in which a person was born. Managing that situation would be, as we say in the south, a hot mess. Of course, with this Supreme Court, it’s never a good idea to read too much into which cases they take off of the shadow docket. But as lawyers like to say, bad facts make bad law, and the facts here demonstrate the problematic consequences if a federal judge can’t enter an injunction to freeze the status quo in place while litigation proceeds. I’ll be listening to Thursday’s argument with great interest. We get a sense of what Solicitor General John Sauer is arguing, as we often do, from the outline he provides us in his table of contents. It kicks back to the central theme of this administration, the accumulation of all power in the hands of the president. The brief itself is modest in length, just over 20 pages.
If you want to review Trump’s day one executive order that started all of this in advance of oral argument on Thursday, it’s this one: “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” On Friday, there will be an important hearing in one of the deportation cases, VML v Harper, this one before Chief Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee, in the Western District of Louisiana. Interestingly, as a state prosecutor, he litigated habeas cases, giving him some familiarity with the topic at issue here. VML is a two-year-old American citizen who was detained by ICE with her mother and sister during a routine check-in on April 22. ICE has claimed the mother agreed to take her with her when she was deported, but VML’s custodian has brought a habeas petition seeking to release her from unlawful detention. (Habeas corpus literally means “bring me the body” or “you should have the body,” and is a writ used to obtain release of a person who is unlawfully in custody.) Judge Doughty had this to say in his order setting the hearing in regards to the government’s claim about the mother’s wishes: “The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her … But the Court doesn’t know that.” He set the hearing “In the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.” Judge Doughty explains in his order that he placed a call to government lawyers after VML’s lawyer filed for an injunction so he could “speak with VML’s mother and survey her consent and custodial rights.” He explained that he “was independently aware at the time that the plane, tail number N570TA, was above the Gulf of America.” He relates that the government’s lawyers informed him that “a call with VML’s mother would not be possible, because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras.” The Judge doesn’t seem particularly happy with the government going into the hearing. Finally this week, we await Trump’s promised replacement of Ed Martin, who flirted with Nazis and January 6 defendants, as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin will move over to a judge in Main Justice. His replacement as Interim U.S. Attorney is TV Judge and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. Pirro is a former Westchester County, New York, DA, but hasn’t been in law enforcement for 20 years. The only tweet I’ve ever had pinned on Twitter reads, “The first time President Obama met with his US Attorneys, he told us, ‘I appointed you but you don’t serve me. You serve the American people. And I expect you to act with independence & integrity.’ None of us ever forgot that.” U.S. Attorneys have to set aside any considerations outside of the facts and the law when they assess the matters before them. They aren’t the president’s lawyers; they don’t advocate for his causes or his personal interests. Pirro’s track record of supporting Trump’s outrageous claims of fraud after the 2020 election suggests she can’t, or to be more precise, won’t, do that. She was a TV Judge. The people in Washington, D.C., deserve a real-life U.S. Attorney. Monday night at 6 p.m. ET, I’ll be on Substack Live with my former U.S. Attorney colleague and current podcast co-host Preet Bharara to talk about what real U.S. Attorneys do. I hope you’ll join us! We’re in this together, Joyce |
The new pope is latest sign that the world rejects Trumpism
The new pope is latest sign that the world rejects TrumpismFrom Vatican City to Canada, Trump increasingly represents everything people of goodwill oppose.
🌊 With corporate outlets obeying in advance, supporting independent political media is more important right now than ever. PN is possible thanks to paid subscribers. If you aren’t one already, please click the button below and become one to support our work. 🌊 Last week, following the death of Pope Francis, Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost was named pope by his peers at the Vatican. He took the name Pope Leo XIV — widely seen as a reference to Pope Leo XIII, a pontiff remembered for his reforming spirit and for his encyclical on the rights of workers. The new Pope Leo also shares Francis’s commitment to the rights of migrants. Like Francis, he has criticized the Trump administration in general and JD Vance in particular for their cruel anti-immigration policies. In short, the new pope, like the old pope, does not support MAGA’s christofascist nationalism. MAGA, confronted with the fact that they do not control everything or everyone, responded in their usual fashion — by wailing and gnashing their teeth. Trump’s former chief strategist, gutter propagandist Steve Bannon, said “it is shocking to me that a guy could be selected to be the pope that had the twitter feed and the statements he's had against American senior politicians.” Conspiracy theorist and Trump intimate Laura Loomer shouted on social media that Leo was a “WOKE MARXIST POPE.” Rabid Trump supporter and former crypto CEO Ryan Selkis accused Leo of “suicidal empathy” and of being an “American who mostly posts en español.” Popes are, of course, not generally disqualified for criticizing American political figures. Nor are they disqualified for demonstrating empathy or speaking Spanish. Still, the Vatican had to know that selecting an American, reform-minded, pro-immigrant pope would be perceived by Trump and his followers as a rebuke.
Trump is currently the leading exponent of dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric, and of Christian fascism, in the world. He underlined his view of Christianity as an adjunct to his own personal power after Francis’s death when the official White House account tweeted out an AI image of Trump robed as the new pope. (Catholics were not amused.) It doesn’t seem like an accident that the Vatican has chosen a pope who embodies and extols a very different vision of Christianity than the one currently prevailing at the White House. Leo’s first homily pointedly referenced the Biblical phrase “a city set on a hill” — a phrase Ronald Reagan used to refer to America, but which the pope reads as a reference to the Church. Nor is the Vatican alone. Trump’s uniquely clumsy illiberalism makes him a perfect foil for opponents of fascism across the globe. His vacuous, bellowing American nationalism appeals to at least some in the US. But for everyone who isn’t in the US, it just feels like bullying — and there is a powerful incentive to affirm one’s own independence and legitimacy by standing up to it. Trump vs. the worldThe Vatican is not a democracy and its decisions are reached in private. Cardinals also have incentives to deny that Trump influenced them one way or the other (and sure enough, at least one has denied it). The dynamics of global anti-Trumpism, however, have been clear in a couple of important liberal electoral victories in countries that historically have been US allies. The recent Canadian national election is the first, and clearest, example of the anti-Trump backlash. Before Trump’s election in November, the Canadian Conservative Party looked ready to cruise to victory on a global wave of anti incumbent sentiment and exhaustion with almost ten years of Liberal Party rule under Justin Trudeau. In some polls the Conservatives were up by as much as 27 points. But then Trump won. He immediately began threatening Canada with annexation, putting in place high tariffs and claiming that to avoid them Canada needed to become “the 51st state.”
Suddenly, Conservatives, with their links to and sympathy with the American right, became identified with an attack on Canada’s sovereignty, while the Liberals became the party of Canadian patriotism. Trump made sure no one missed that dynamic when he endorsed Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on the day of the election (April 28) in a social media post that again called for Canada to become the 51st state. Poilievre rebuked Trump, but the damage was done. Liberal Mark Carney won the election handily. His first speech repudiated Trump by name. Meanwhile, Poilievre embarrassingly lost his own seat in Parliament. A similar dynamic played out in the recent Australian election. Trump has not directly threatened Australia. But his bizarre, aggressive tariff regime had made him the enemy of basically every country in the world. That means that any party cozying up to Trumpy right-wing anti-immigrant fash-adjacent politics is associated with toxic Americanism. The right-wing Liberal party in Australia looked set to take advantage of anti-incumbent sentiment and cruise to victory until (and you may have heard this before) Trump got elected, started throwing tantrums, and — ta da! Labor leader Anthony Albanese won a second term as prime minister, while Liberal leader Peter Dutton couldn’t even hold his own seat. “Our government will choose the Australian way, because we are proud of who we are and all that we have built together in this country,” Albanese said in his victory speech. That was a not very subtle suggestion that the right-wing Dutton was choosing the American, Trump way instead. A note from Aaron: Working with fantastic contributors like Noah takes resources. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please sign up to support our work. Germany has not had an election since Trump’s victory last November, but its leaders have also shown clearly that they think anti-Trumpism is good politics. The German government recently classified the far right, neo-Nazi AfD party as extremist, which gives the government additional powers to surveil the group. The Trump administration, of course, rushed to defend German neo-Nazis. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attacked the German decision, praising the AfD’s racist anti-immigrant stance as opposition to “the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies.” Germany was not cowed, though. Instead, the German foreign minister responded directly to Rubio, pointing out that the decision on extremist status is made by independent courts, and that “we have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped.” No doubt the German government looks at Canada and Australia and concludes that electorally, the surest path to victory right now is getting the Trump administration to declare you an enemy. Global opposition mattersTrump’s unfailing ability to make everyone his enemy benefits liberals in Canada, Australia, and Germany, who are trying to fight their own right wing because they don’t want to end up like us — a quasi-fascist state racing towards economic disaster and human rights atrocities. But Trump’s global weakness also has repercussions at home. In the first place, any model of resistance — any sign that Trump is not all powerful — helps build more resistance. Trump threatened Canada with annexation, and Canada responded not by folding, but by thoroughly repudiating him. Vance and Rubio tried to bully Germany, and Germany told them to crawl back into their bunker and stay there. Trump claims he’s making America stronger; he insists no one can defy him. But here are people defying him, and they seem better off for it, not worse. It makes him look weak — and people are a lot more comfortable defying a president who seems weak than one who seems strong.
Global opposition also has concrete benefits for the anti-Trump coalition. A Canada that defines itself in opposition to the Trump regime is a Canada that’s going to continue to welcome people who need to escape from Trumpism. That includes LGBT refugees. It also includes people like philosopher and antifascist academic Jason Stanley, who recently left Yale for the University of Toronto. Trump’s mockery of the Catholic Church, and the Church’s appointment of an American pope unacceptable to MAGA, may also erode an important part of Trump’s coalition. White Catholic voters are a reliable Republican constituency, and last year Hispanic Catholics — who lean Democratic — shifted towards the GOP by a few points. But if MAGA and Trump continue to frame the new pope as an enemy (which seems pretty likely) they may well end up alienating some of their own allies. Trump losing abroad is not the same as Trump losing at home, and neither Pope Leo nor Mark Carney nor anyone else can save the US from what its own voters have done to it. But we all live in the same world, and what happens abroad does affect what happens here. Any pushback against Trump is helpful and hopeful. Maybe if enough people elsewhere vote to reject Trumpism, we finally will too. That’s it for todayWe’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s newsletter, please support our work by signing up. Paid subscribers make Public Notice possible. |
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