Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3d ago
With all the lawsuits against the Trump administration currently ongoing it can be hard to keep up with all the legal developments but I wanted to highlight one that seems particularly strange. We discussed some last week about the case J.G.G. v. Trump, this being the case of Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act. Yesterday the government filed a notice with the court that the government was invoking the state secrets privilege over the questions the court had asked with respect to compliance with this order. What renders this farcical, to me, is that it seems like almost all the information the judge wants is straightforwardly publicly available? A reminder of the judge's questions, taken from Attorney General Pam Bondi's declaration:
(1) what time the planes took off and from where;
(2) what time the planes left U.S. airspace;
(3) what time the planes landed, where they landed, and whether they made more than one stop;
(4) what time aliens subject to the Proclamation were transferred out of U.S. custody;
and (5) how many aliens were aboard the flights based on the Proclamation.
Can we answer (1)? It seems like yes. People have identified what certainly seem like the tail numbers for the flights in question. So much so that the Associated Press and Reuters have reconstructions of the timeline based on flight data. You can even look them up yourself! Here is flight N278GX, for example. You can see in its flight history that it departed Valley International Airport in Harlingten TX at around 4:26 PM CDT, bound for Comayagua International Airport in Honduras. It then departed Comayagua International Airport at 9:41 PM CST and arrived at El Salvador International Airport at 10:05 PM CST. The plane then departed El Salvador International Airport for Valley International Airport at 2:50 AM CST the next day. So we have the answer to (1) and (3) very straightforwardly. (2) can probably be derived with some math and knowing the flight route from Valley International to Comayagua International. The answer to (4), I imagine, can be narrowed to the 5 hour window after the flight arrived in El Salvador and before it departed. The planes in question are both Airbus A320, which have a typical passenger capacity in the 150-200 range which gives us some bounds on (5).
Did I reveal state secrets by making this post? Did the AP or Reuters do so by making their posts? According to the precedent's the government cites in their Notice invoking the privilege public disclosure of the secrets in question does not necessarily defeat the invocation, so it may be that the government does not answer the judge's questions after all.
Anyway, separate from the above the government has until the end of day today to file a brief as to why they should not be sanctioned for violating the court's TRO. Should be an interesting read!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
I feel like the Paul Weiss thing is extra embarrassing because the Perkins Coie TRO was issued two days before the executive order targeting Paul Weiss. Paul Weiss already had a pretty good indication that if they fought the EO they would win and then they decided not to do it anyway!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
Ok, but in this specific case the US government defied a court order to deport people. It is also the government's stated position in that lawsuit that their authority to declare someone a deportable alien enemy under the AEA is unreviewable by a court. "We are allowed to deport anyone we declare a deportable alien under the AEA and no one is allowed to say otherwise" is a recipe for government deportation of American citizens without any due process. They've even got a country lined up to deport them to!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
Given the many unlawful actions the Trump admin has already taken I see no reason to treat his legality concerns as anything more than a fig leaf.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
Well, According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio El Salvadore President Bukele has offered to hold American Citizens. From a BBC article quoting Trump on the deal:
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he would embrace the idea but questioned its legality.
"If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat," he said during an executive order signing ceremony in the Oval Office. "I don't know if we do or not.
"We're looking at that right now, but we could make deals where we'd get these animals out of our country."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
Interesting. I went and tried searching "R.E. Burke" (without the quotes) on all of Bing/Google/Startpage (my default) and all returned stories about the cartoonist.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
I'm having a hard time establishing some of the facts, primarily, what comic works has Becky created. I can't find anything and none of the articles I've looked at link to anything. The closest I saw was that she has an Instagram account. So, is she a comic creator or just someone who lists it as her profession? I have no idea.
I believe her portfolio is here. It helped that a bunch of news articles described her both as "Becky" and "R.E." with the latter being what's on her site.
I think the reason for her deportation is much simpler: the administration's quotas for deportations and arrests are sufficiently high they cannot be filled with criminals alone. It turns out that finding criminal gang members who are here illegally and don't want to be found is hard. Finding otherwise law abiding folks who might have committed technical violations (or for whom pretexts can be manufactured) is much easier!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8d ago
I don't really understand the middle paragraph here. IMLS was created by Congress and is codified in 20 USC Ch 72. It was created in 1996 and re-authorized in 2003, 2010, and 2018. Their funding is also appropriated annually by Congress. What does it mean for a bureaucracy to be expanded with "the consent of the public" if an expansion happening over the course of years by laws passed by the people's elected representatives does not qualify?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8d ago
It is not only citizens that have SSNs, though. Legal Permanent Residents also get one.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9d ago
In terms of feasibility, it's asserted that the process for mass deportations is relatively easy. He uses the analogy of the 2.9 million Americans who fly every day, stating that if even 1% of them were illegal immigrants heading home, the U.S. could deport 10 million people annually.
Does he think the United States government has, by itself, the capacity to replicate 1% of all intra-country flight capacity? To multiple different countries around the world? To do this every day for a year? I am skeptical.
More importantly, the US already has a giant list of people set to be deported: the Department of Justice currently has 1.5 million final deportation orders, meaning there are over 1.5 million illegal immigrants who have already been through the necessary administrative process and could be immediately deported if apprehended.
I feel like "if apprehended" is doing a ton of work. Is this a case where ICE already knows where these people are and needs to pick them up? Or does it need to go find them too? That may not be a trivial step!
Further, the government is apparently releasing 90% of the illegal immigrants it arrests and many of those released fail to attend their hearings, and a large percentage do not comply with final deportation orders.
Is the author under the impression there are ICE facilities with the capacity to hold millions of people just standing around empty? What is the alternative to release in the case where you physically cannot hold someone?
This entire charade is absurd, of course. The executive branch is arguing with the executive branch about whether the executive branch can enforce the law!
This argument is what is absurd. I am under the impression it is common for executive agencies to consult with, say, the DoJ or in-house lawyers about whether some course of action is lawful. The way our system does not work is "I am the executive branch, therefore everything I do is legal." It is totally normal and understandable for particular executive agencies to be unsure about whether doing something is lawful and consult with a more expert agency or entity about whether it is.
He also thinks that immigration judges can make decisions a lot faster. There are approximately 700 immigration judges now, but if that were scaled down to about 100 super efficient judges who can process up to 80 cases a day, you'd meet a goal of 3,000 deportations per day, resulting in clearing about 6 million immigration cases after four years.
As @Lizzardspawn says the notion that a judge is making an individualized and informed decision about whether someone is a legitimate asylum seeker in 6 minutes (assuming an 8hr work day) is farcical. Just dispense with the hearings altogether.
If such plans were to be implemented, they would face serious legal challenges, but would Trump abide by whatever rulings the courts, including the Supreme Court, hand down? Thanks to Trump v. United States, the president now has broad immunity for powers granted under Article II, which include commanding the military, issuing pardons, vetoing legislation, overseeing foreign relations, and managing immigration. It is obvious from the first two months that the administration believes that the president has broad Article II powers; it is reasonable to think that expedited removal of millions of people from the country, even those with pending asylum claim, is a power that the administration believes it has and that such actions are immune from prosecution, which would mean they can proceed in the face of injunctions issued by federal courts.
Let's be clear, Trump v. United States stands for the proposition that the president is immune to certain kinds of criminal prosecution for certain kinds of actions. There is no implication that it extends to other executive branch officials nor that the president or those officials are immune from other kinds of sanction by the courts.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
The United States was occupying Germany through May 1949. Anyway it cannot be that no determinations under the act are reviewable. If it is un-reviewable whether someone the president purports to deport is an enemy alien then the law authorizes the president to deport United States citizens! A plainly unconstitutional outcome.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
I don't understand what the "founders" have to do with anything. We are not interpreting some obscure or abstract constitutional provision. The Alien Enemies Act is a statute passed by the Fifth Congress of the United States in 1798. It uses the words "government" and "nation." If Congress wanted it to mean something else they have had over 200 years to change it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
I think that is easily distinguishable. The United States is definitely not in a state of "declared war" with Venezuela (or any other government or foreign nation) the way it was with Germany in 1948.
A potentially more interesting case is the recent deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. A US district court ordered that the deportations not proceed for 14 days while it hears arguments about the legality of the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, but that order may have been issued after the gang members had already left US soil. I assume they will try to deport more people under the Act and that these cases will go up to the Supreme Court as well.
Courtlistener docket is here. Alien Enemies Act is codified as 50 USC Chapter 3. Trump's Executive order is here.
On the basis of the evidence so far (which I think is just what is in the EO itself) I am skeptical that the actions of Tren de Aragua satisfy the statutory requirement of being an "invasion or predatory incursion" that is "perpetrated" by a "foreign nation or government." There's a hearing scheduled for an hour or so from now and I will be pretty surprised if it does not end in the beginning of contempt proceedings for some officials. Just Security has an article with a pretty detailed timeline.
ETA:
Trump announced in a post last night that he was considering voiding the last minute preemptive Biden pardons of Fauci, members of January 6 House committee, and others, because an "autopen" was used to sign the pardons. Presidential authority to grant pardons is very broad, and apparently autopen has been used by prior presidents; looks like a losing case if it goes before the Supreme Court.
Trying to imagine the logistics of how this plays out. Trump's DOJ presumably charges one or more pardoned individuals with a crime within the scope of the pardon. They move to dismiss (or equivalent) on the basis they were pardoned. DOJ claims the pardons are not valid. Defendants produce whatever constitute the official pardon documents, various presidential announcements of the pardons etc. DOJ's rebuttal is ???. What could possibly go in the blank such that a court would permit the prosecution to move forward? I am confident that a court is not going to permit an investigation into a President's state of mind to try and determine a pardon's validity.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
I mean, it's obviously (3) right? Trump is in the Epstein flight logs and address book. In 2002 in a New York Magazine profile of Epstein, Trump described him:
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
There's also the Fox and Friends clip from last year, where Trump is gung ho about declassifying the JFK files but very cagey about releasing the Epstein files, insisting there's some "phony" stuff in there. Add to that Trump's own history with younger women. Of course, Epstein's "suicide" was also in federal custody in 2019. Who was President in 2019?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
14d ago
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
17d ago
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
22d ago
Nothing in the OP mentions taxes at all, including getting rid of them for tariffs. In any case it is very unclear to me why tariffs are a better source of revenue than corporate income taxes are. The net change in corporate expenditures also seems quite ambiguous. If you are a company that does not do much importing then yes, sure, removing corporate taxes for tariffs may be a subsidy. But if you are a company that does a lot of importing tariffs may be even worse than a corporate income tax, in terms of your costs.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
22d ago
I think this post conflates different policies and their impacts. Tariffs, for example, do not lower the price of domestically produced goods for international consumers. That is, if the United States imposes a tariff on steel that does not make US-produced steel cheaper for international steel buyers. It makes internationally-produced steel more expensive for US steel consumers. Government subsidy of US steel production may lower prices for international consumers but that's not what a tariff is. Both articles you link to (Noah Smith and Asia Times) are specifically about industry subsidization, not tariffs. The two policies operate differently and there is no reason to conflate them like this.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
22d ago
I'm aware this is common practice at the supreme court but I think that practice is quite bad. It's also totally contradictory with any theory of constitutional interpretation other than a "living constitution" one.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23d ago
Personally I find the "we've always done it this way" pretty compelling.
Set aside for a moment the question of what the 14th amendment means, who it grants citizenship to. Whatever it means, that meaning is not open to change by executive order. If the 14th amendment granted (or not) citizenship to some group of people it did so whether or not Trump ever signed his executive order. Then either:
1. The understanding of the 14th amendment that's prevailed for the last century and change is correct. In which case Trump's executive order is unconstitutional. OR
2. The meaning of the 14th amendment implied by Trump's executive order is correct. In which case there is some unknown population (probably numbering at least millions) of people who the government has been treating like citizens (voting, passports) but aren't and never have been.
The Trump EO tries to sidestep the problems in (2) by purporting to be prospective only but that's not how the constitution works!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23d ago
I think it is most likely about the southern border. The problem with trying to use control of the federal government to bootstrap one-party rule, and especially cancel elections, is that almost none of the infrastructure for carrying out federal elections is under the control of the federal government. In practice "cancel elections" looks something like "send the military/federal LEOs to arrest state officials." I am very skeptical there exist sufficient willing participants in those groups to be able to carry it out. I suspect any attempt to do so would make the George Floyd protests look extremely tame by comparison. To the extent there is a plan to fuck with the 2028 elections I expect it is to attempt Eastman's plan again and have Vance purport to unilaterally declare certain electors invalid.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
28d ago
It is simply not true that the President can fire any government employee he wants in whatever manner he wants. There is a whole subchapter in the United States Code for statutes that prescribe procedures that need to be followed to fire people. Approximately none of which DOGE or Trump have followed.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
29d ago
My understanding is the children of lower ranked diplomatic personnel are covered. Their children do get birthright citizenship. Here is a CIS article from 2024 complaining about the practice:
The differences between OFM’s blue list and white list are rooted in international practices and law, codified in the Vienna conventions on diplomatic and consular protections.
Under the Vienna conventions, “blue-list” diplomats, as direct representatives of their foreign governments, receive the highest privileges and immunities in the host country; in particular, they are shielded from arrest. “White-list” administrative staff and consular officials also enjoy considerable privileges and immunities, but have fewer arrest protections.
So, when it comes to matters of diplomat babies born in our country, State Department applies an expansive—and unjustified—interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s jus soli citizenship clause: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Thus, according to the State Department, blue-list babies, born in the U.S. to parents with greater privilege and immunities are not “subject to the jurisdiction,” of this country and therefore not automatically American citizens. But somehow white-list offspring, with comparatively less arrest protection, are “subject to the jurisdiction” and the babies are entitled to a U.S. passport.
Maybe it shouldn't work that way, the article I linked certainly argues in that direction, but it seems current practice is otherwise.
What catches my eye in that filing is that one of the men so deported was actually Nicaraguan. Venezuelan women could be subject to deportation under the AEA and Trump's proclamation (though apparently not to El Salvador), but no Nicaraguan would be. These are the people the Trump administration argues have no right to have any kind of hearing or due process before they are deported under the AEA, even if they legally can't be apparently.
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