“Lawyers for the men say that as soon as they reached Ghana, they were informed that they would be quickly transferred to their home countries, even though they had won protection from U.S. immigration courts from being returned to their homes for fear of persecution or torture.
…
“For over three decades, through five presidential administrations, this country has adhered to its obligations to treat refugees humanely and to comply with the Constitutional requirement of due process, which is afforded to all persons present in this country, regardless of their citizenship status. In recent months, the government has embarked upon a series of deportations which signal a drastic change of course,” Chutkan wrote.”
“Using military personnel for domestic law enforcement is dangerous and fraught, and any political leader who does it should be held strictly accountable for the consequences. Given the absence of any real need for militarized law enforcement in Chicago, it would be a grave abuse of power for the president to send any troops there on a law-enforcement pretext — as it was when he mobilized the National Guard for law enforcement in Washington, D.C. But for more than one reason, that mobilization in D.C. is easier to defend constitutionally than sending the Texas National Guard to Chicago would be. Justifiably or not, constitutional law treats all of D.C. as an exception to the McCulloch principle: The people of D.C. are, as a general matter, subject to a lawmaking authority — Congress — that they play no part in electing. (That’s why some D.C. license plates bear the protest slogan, “Taxation Without Representation.”) But regardless of whether that exception is justified in D.C., it has absolutely no application in Illinois. Like Nebraskans and Pennsylvanians and Kansans, Illinoisians are constitutionally entitled to be constituents of whatever body governs them.
Any military force is likely to behave with less restraint toward a population to which its leaders are not responsible than toward a population to which its leaders must answer democratically. If the Texas National Guard behaves poorly in Chicago, the locals have no electoral mechanism for holding Texas authorities to account. The governor of Texas never appears on any ballot in Illinois. He has nothing to fear, politically, from the people his National Guard will police. Surely a militarization at the hands of a non-responsible power is no less tyrannical, and no more constitutional, than a tax imposed by one.”
“Interviews with more than a dozen technology executives over the past week revealed that the Trump administration’s announcements of government stakes in companies such as Intel have had a chilling effect, with executives now filtering many decisions through the prism of how the White House might respond.”
The Kirk shooter so far seems to have no connections to anti-facist groups. “right wing” violence kills far more people than “left wing”. Of course, most left wing people and most right wing people have nothing to do with any of this violence.
Designating drug gangs and then domestic organizations as “terrorist” organizations could lead to persecuting political opponents not because they are somehow funding, or a part of, a terrorist organization, but because they are political opponents.
“Vice President J.D. Vance was almost incredulous when a reporter asked him what “legal authority” the Trump administration used to blow up an alleged drug boat off the coast of Venezuela with a drone on Tuesday. “There are people who are bringing—literal terrorists—who are bringing deadly drugs into our country,” Vance said.
Why are they “literal terrorists”? Because the administration said so. President Donald Trump declared just after taking office that he would be designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations. One of them was Tren de Aragua, the organization accused of sending out the drug boat. (The administration tends to play fast and loose with labeling things Tren de Aragua; for all its criminal activities, the gang is not known to smuggle cocaine.) After the drone strike, multiple cabinet officials made sure to use the phrase “narco-terrorist organization.”
…
A terrorist can be anyone the White House declares: an American journalist, a suspected drug smuggler, or another government. The only requirement seems to be that the terrorist is located outside of U.S. soil.
…
Deploying uniformed troops against street crime, flying (unarmed) Predator drones over protesters, blowing up suspected smugglers instead of arresting them—these images are breaking down the political distinction between the “battlefield” and the “homefront.” Last week, U.S. Border Patrol agents were photographed training with mortars during live-fire exercises in Alaska. Since when do American police need artillery?”
“if tariffs are linked to prosperity, it’s an inverse relationship, according to a recent report on America’s declining economic freedom for Canada’s Fraser Institute. The authors, Robert A. Lawson of Southern Methodist University and Fraser’s own Matthew D. Mitchell, write: “High-tariff countries are generally low-income countries while low-tariff countries are generally high-income countries. In the high-tariff countries, average GDP per capita is just $9,703 per year,” while “in low-tariff countries, it is $43,502 per year.”
In 2023, the U.S. had an average tariff rate of 3.3 percent, which put us in the company of such countries as Singapore and Hong Kong (zero percent each), Brunei (0.5 percent), Israel (1.3 percent), New Zealand (1.9 percent), Australia (2.4 percent), and Iceland (3.3 percent). This year’s tariff shift has been marked by wild fluctuations. But the average tariff rate on April 15 was 28 percent and is now around 19 percent. That puts the U.S. amongst the likes of Zimbabwe (18 percent), Chad (18.1 percent), Republic of the Congo (18.1 percent), Algeria (18.9 percent), and Egypt (19 percent).”
“Monday night on his ABC talk show, Jimmy Kimmel said something dumb about Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college in Utah last week. Two days later, ABC, which is owned by Disney, announced that it was “indefinitely” suspending the comedian’s show.
Maybe the Disney executives who made that decision—CEO Robert A. Iger and Dana Walden, who oversees the company’s television division—were simply reacting to public outrage at Kimmel’s remarks. But the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was announced several hours after Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), suggested that TV stations might be fined or lose their licenses for broadcasting the show. That constitutionally dubious threat shows how the FCC can abuse its regulatory powers to suppress speech that offends President Donald Trump and his allies…
If the First Amendment means anything, it means that federal bureaucrats may not punish private companies for giving a forum to politically disfavored speakers.”