Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Sulla broke republican norms in an attempt to make Rome great again, paving the road for Julius and Augustus to later end the Roman Republic.
Sulla had purges, starting with the most vulnerable. People didn’t join together to stop Sulla until it was too late, hoping that Sulla would stop after Sulla was done persecuting other groups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh4LLvpr-7g
“The Trump administration has lost a Venezuelan migrant they deported. His family cannot track him down, and the administration has not given any indication as to where he went. He’s not on lists of people deported to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. He’s not in the Immigration and Customs detainee database. ICE confirms he’s been sent out of the country, but nobody can say where.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/23/this-man-just-disappeared/
“Newly uncovered guidance from the Justice Department claims the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) allows federal law enforcement officers to enter the houses of suspected gang members without a warrant and remove them from the country without any judicial review.”
…
“The Trump administration has refused to disclose many of the operational details of its unprecedented invocation of the 1798 wartime law to send alleged TDA members to a prison in El Salvador under an agreement with that country’s president, Nayib Bukele. The memo is one of the first public glimpses at the Trump administration’s claims that it can identify, pursue, arrest, and deport migrants, unconstrained by the Fourth Amendment or due process.”
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“”The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” Wilkinson warned. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.””
https://reason.com/2025/04/25/justice-department-memo-claims-alien-enemies-act-allows-warrantless-home-searches-and-no-judicial-review/
“What do you do with U.S. citizen children when a noncitizen parent is deported? The Trump administration has so far answered this question by saying, Well, actually, it’s not much of a question at all, hurry up and deport them already, let’s not ask any questions or consult any lawyers.”
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“Doughty, who President Donald Trump appointed, issued an order expressing his fear that the toddler had been deported against her father’s wishes, noting that it is “illegal and unconstitutional” to deport U.S. citizens. “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,” wrote the judge. “Seeking the path of least resistance, the Court called counsel for the Government at 12:19 p.m. CST, so that we could speak with VML’s mother and survey her consent and custodial rights. The Court was independently aware at the time that the plane, tail number N570TA, was above the Gulf of America. The Court was then called back by counsel for the Government at 1:06 p.m. CST, informing the Court that a call with VML’s mother would not be possible, because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras.” A hearing is set for May 16 due to the judge’s “strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.””
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“Two other U.S. citizen children were deported to Honduras with their illegal immigrant mother, denying the 4-year-old child—who has metastatic cancer—access to his medication.
Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, told NBC that the boy with cancer and his 7-year-old sister were detained on Thursday; taken to El Paso, Texas; and flown to Honduras on Friday morning.”
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“the deported mothers not have sufficient access to attorneys or family members to make arrangements for the care of minor children. This runs contra ICE’s own policies, “which mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers—regardless of immigration status—when deportations are being carried out,””
https://reason.com/2025/04/28/deporting-the-cancer-kid/
“Trump administration officials admitted that Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested without a warrant.”
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“The attorneys argued that the Department of Homeland Security wasn’t required to get a warrant because they had reason to believe that Khalil was likely to “escape” before one would be obtained.”
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“Khalil is far from the first legal resident to face deportation for pro-Palestine speech. Last month Rubio said that he had cancelled around 300 student visas. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” Rubio told reporters. “And if we’ve given you a visa and you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away””
https://reason.com/2025/04/28/trump-administration-admits-ice-arrested-mahmoud-khalil-without-a-warrant/
Tariffs are hurting the Chinese economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP3hpt8YAS0
Trump defying a Supreme Court order is a constitutional crisis. The crisis comes to a head with Congress derelict in its duty. The only one with the power to enforce limits on the president’s power is Congress through its power of impeachment and a little bit through passing legislation that restrains the president.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiBggW15jLk
“At the heart of the Trump administration’s position is a naked assertion of unchecked power. Once the federal government has deported someone to the hellish prison in El Salvador, the Trump administration asserts, there is nothing that anyone—especially not a federal judge—can do about it. What is worse, by the administration’s own admission, it does not matter whether the deportee was lawfully removed in the first place or not. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor has accurately observed, “the Government’s argument…implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.” The word for what Sotomayor is describing is despotism.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/15/stephen-miller-egregiously-misrepresented-a-supreme-court-order-while-trump-nodded-along/
“Trump openly signed executive orders—in full view of the press—directing the Department of Justice to criminally investigate two people who publicly disagreed with him. He has also issued numerous orders targeting law firms for representing clients he does not favor, constituting clear shakedown attempts.
If there is anything to be said for the current administration, at least Trump is practicing his corruption out in the open.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/14/trump-flagrantly-targets-political-opponents-in-executive-orders/
“Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says all the migrants whom the Trump administration sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month are “actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters, and more,” even if they “don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.” She adds that “we have a stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process.”
McLaughlin’s idea of due process is notably different from the right that the Supreme Court upheld last week, when it ruled that suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua “are entitled to notice and [an] opportunity to be heard” before they are deported. According to federal officials, the government’s methods are infallible, so there is no need for hearings—a position that is plainly inconsistent with due process as it is ordinarily understood.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/16/trump-says-alleged-gang-members-dont-need-hearings-because-the-government-is-infallible/