Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
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/
“In an opinion issued on Wednesday, a federal judge found that the evidence “strongly support[s]” the conclusion that the Trump administration “willfully disobeyed” a March 15 order temporarily barring the removal of suspected Venezuelan gang members as “alien enemies.” James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says the government’s actions “demonstrate a willful disregard” for that order, “sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.””
https://reason.com/2025/04/16/federal-judge-in-deportation-case-finds-probable-cause-to-hold-the-trump-administration-in-contempt/
“President Donald Trump has cracked down on immigration in his second term, deporting undocumented migrants and perhaps citizens next.
In the process, members of Trump’s administration have demonstrated an overt hostility to basic rights of due process.
On March 12, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. Three days later, the government deported him back to El Salvador to be held in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), an overcrowded and dangerous mega-prison where the country’s president offered to warehouse deportees from the U.S.
There is much to oppose in that action, perhaps most of all that Abrego Garcia—who had previously been granted a reprieve from deportation—was denied any semblance of due process when government agents grabbed him up, told him his protected status had been revoked, and shuffled him out of the country, all within the span of a long weekend.
The Trump administration contends Abrego Garcia is not entitled to due process, in part because he is a member of the violent street gang MS-13. “That may be true,” wrote Cato Institute scholar David Post. “The government, however, has provided no evidence, to a grand jury or to a magistrate or to any third party, that it is true.”
Nevertheless, the government is sticking by the claim.”
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“According to an April order by Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court of Maryland, Abrego Garcia immigrated from El Salvador to flee gang violence, settling in Maryland with his brother, a U.S. citizen. After he was arrested in 2019 and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, he told an immigration judge he would be subject to gang retaliation if he was sent back. The judge denied his request for bond and ordered him detained “pending the outcome of his requested relief from deportation,” as Xinis wrote. (By itself, a denial of bond is not indicative that he presents any danger: “The immigration judge is only taking at face value any evidence that the government provides,” said David Bier of the Cato Institute. “It is not assessing its underlying validity at that stage.”)
Later that year, “following a full evidentiary hearing, the [immigration judge] granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal to El Salvador,” which “prohibits [the Department of Homeland Security] from returning an alien to the specific country in which he faces clear probability of persecution,” Xinis added.”
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“Vance’s post is galling for how little he seems to care about due process, the constitutional provision nominally preventing the government from throwing any of us in prison for any reason it wishes. That this seems to reflect the general attitude of the administration in which he serves would be frightening even if not for the fact that its only justification is that it simply doesn’t make mistakes when identifying terrorists and gang members.
“Ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with [former President Joe] Biden’s millions and millions of illegals,” Vance wrote. “And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year?”
This has nothing to do with deporting the undocumented: A judge already adjudicated Abrego Garcia’s case and granted him a reprieve from deportation. If the Trump administration had contrary evidence indicating he should instead be deported, then it should present that evidence in a court of law.
Instead, what evidence has been presented is flimsy, to say the least. “The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York—a place he has never lived,” Xinis wrote. “No evidence before the Court connects Abrego García to MS-13 or any other criminal organization.”
Even what flimsy evidence there is has fallen apart in recent days: That single “vague, uncorroborated allegation” was lodged by Ivan Mendez, a Maryland police officer who arrested Abrego Garcia in 2019. Within days, Mendez was suspended, and would later be indicted, for giving “confidential information” about “an on-going police investigation” to “a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts,” according to the Prince George’s County Police Department.”
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“”When Garcia was arrested he was found with rolls of cash and drugs,” wrote Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “He was arrested with two other members of MS-13” while “wearing what is effectively MS-13’s uniform.””
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“wearing NBA merch is not a crime. And if Abrego Garcia were actually associating with MS-13 members, or if he were abusive to his wife, then these are details that would be extremely pertinent to bring up in a court of law.
Instead, the administration has obfuscated even in the face of judicial action. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court order finding deportees were entitled to due process and instructing the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. The administration even admitted in court filings that Abrego Garcia was deported “because of an administrative error.” (The attorney who filed the brief containing that language was apparently later suspended.)
Nevertheless, the administration insists it has no ability to retrieve Abrego Garcia from the Salvadoran prison where the U.S. government is currently paying $25,000 to house him—what Reason’s Damon Root called “a naked assertion of unchecked power.” In the Oval Office, Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele each claimed they were unable to return the man mistakenly deported and housed in a facility intended for terrorists.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/17/the-trump-administrations-increasing-hostility-to-basic-due-process/
“Attorney General Pam Bondi has decided that instead of working to facilitate the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) as the Supreme Court has ordered, she will instead take to X to release documents from his 2019 arrest, in which a detective claimed he was an MS-13 member.”
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“These documents had already been publicly available, if you cared to look through the prior court proceedings. The Gang Field Interview Sheet, drafted up by Ivan Mendez, then an officer with the Prince George’s County Police Department, says Abrego Garcia was arrested with purported MS-13 members in a Home Depot parking lot, that he was wearing clothing that they believe to be affiliated with MS-13 (“a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations” which “officers know such clothing to be indicative of the Hispanic gang culture”), and that a confidential informant said he was part of MS-13.
Interestingly, reporting by The New Republic notes that Mendez was suspended the next month for “providing information to a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts.” (“The information he provided focused on an on-going police investigation,” per the county’s news release.)
Information has also come out about Abrego Garcia allegedly beating his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, stemming from a protection order she filed against him in 2021: “At this point, I am afraid to be close to him,” she wrote in the protection order. “I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he [has] left me.” She cites specific examples from August 2020 and November 2020 in which he was violent toward her. Vasquez Sura told CNN that “she sought a civil protective order in 2021 after a disagreement with Abrego Garcia” and that “she had survived a previous relationship that included domestic violence.” She says she did not appear at a court hearing and pursue the matter further: “We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling.””
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” the administration keeps implying that you cannot both support due process for Abrego Garcia and have empathy for the victims of violence from illegal immigrants.”
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“The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. The administration continues to demur on this front, instead choosing to release, via X…the protective order Vasquez Sura filed”
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“most people are neither angels nor demons, and even very bad and violent people—if that is what Abrego Garcia is—deserve due process. The punishment for wifebeating in Maryland, or entering the country illegally, is not indefinite confinement in a Salvadoran prison. He has not just been deported, he has been locked up in CECOT. (“A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world,” writes The New York Times’ Ezra Klein. “It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador’s so-called justice minister, is a coffin.”)”
https://reason.com/2025/04/17/cecot-forever/
“North Carolina’s top court cleared the way for some voters’ ballots in a contested state Supreme Court race to be tossed months after the election, opening a path for Republican Jefferson Griffin to potentially overturn an apparent narrow loss.
However, the extraordinary decision from the Republican-controlled court — which drew angry rebukes from Democrats and a sitting GOP justice in the state — still may see more litigation in federal court.”
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“Griffin argued three categories of votes should be tossed: Voters who were registered to vote with incomplete voter registration data; military and overseas voters who did not meet the state’s voter ID requirements; and overseas voters who have never lived in the state or expressed an intent to do so, a small category of voters who are generally family members of expats or service members.
Tossing out wide swaths of ballots after the election would be a near-unprecedented decision that voting rights groups, Democrats and even some Republicans condemned as violating voters’ due process rights and changing the rules of an election after it has already been run.”
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“The state’s high court ruled Friday that most of those ballots — coming from roughly 60,000 voters with incomplete registration data, which could include missing driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers — should still be counted for this election, placing the blame on the state board of elections.
But the court’s order has the latter two categories of voters at risk. The court ruled that military and overseas voters who didn’t meet the identification requirement must prove their identity within 30 days — known as a “cure process” — or their votes could be invalidated, while affirming the lower court order that “never residents” ballots, which amount to a couple hundred votes, should be disqualified.
Friday’s majority decision elicited scathing dissents from two of the court’s justices — Anita Earls, the lone Democrat who participated in the case, and Republican Justice Richard Dietz.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/11/north-carolina-supreme-court-ballots-tossed-00008327
“the administration’s maneuvering appears to represent a concerted effort to evade longstanding American law by intentionally sending people to a legal black hole with no process, no rights and no recourse.”
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“”the U.S. is labeling people ‘enemies’ with little or no process, and then shipping them offshore””
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/11/deportations-el-salvador-guantanamo-00285623
“Basically all major colleges and universities are tax-exempt organizations, and the government revoking that status over policy disagreements would be unprecedented. The U.S. tax code also grants exemptions to a wide swath of organizations, including charities, religious institutions — and even some political organizations.
But Republicans have taken aim at the Ivy League through the tax code in the past.
Congress imposed a 1.4 percent tax on high-dollar university endowments, like Harvard’s, in 2017 and Republicans may expand the levy in the tax package they are currently assembling.
Trump’s threats follow his administration pulling over $2.2 billion of Harvard’s federal funding in response to the university announcing it would not comply with a list of demands to curb what the White House views as antisemitism on campus.
Educational institutions can lose their tax-exempt status if found to be participating in activities related to political campaigning for or against candidates, or substantial amounts of lobbying by the Internal Revenue Service. There is no public evidence of Harvard violating IRS rules.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/15/harvard-trump-tax-exempt-00290534