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Dictatorship diary
So, let's see... the Trump administration has retaliated against three major law firms for representing clients against him. At Covington & Burling, he yanked the security clearances of individual lawyers and staff who had participated in the Special Counsel investigations of him. At Perkins Coie, which had represented Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, he stripped all lawyers and staff of security clearances, ordered the immediate termination of all government contracts with the firm and with any company represented by the firm, and forbade firm employees from being subsequently hired by the government, from entering US government buildings, and from "engagement" with government officials. The Paul Weiss firm has two lawyers who participated in criminal investigations of Trump, and the company has an official DEI policy, so he did basically the same to them. I think all three law firms have already lost clients as a result. I think all three law firms have sued to block the EO's from going into effect. The Perkins firm hired the firm of Williams & Connolly to manage its lawsuit, and when somebody asked whether Williams & Connolly might be the next target, simply because it was representing Perkins in this case, the Trump administration's lawyers wouldn't rule that out. The message is clear: if you take, or ever took, even one case against Donald Trump or his administration, you and anybody you work with won't be allowed to practice law at all. More briefly: either you're 100% with Trump or you're an enemy of the United States.
Trump always promised that he would deport "criminal illegal aliens", but he hasn't had much luck finding them, so he's been deporting lots of illegal aliens without criminal records. And lots of legal temporary residents, mostly those in the US pending resolution of their asylum claims. In the past week, he's moved on to deporting legal permanent residents, with green cards, with no due process at all. One guy with a green card was arrested in NYC, his green card revoked on the spot, and sent to a prison in Louisiana to await deportation (with no access to his lawyer), because while he was on a student visa at Columbia, he led an anti-Israel protest. A Brown University medical professor with a green card went to Lebanon to visit relatives, and as soon as she returned to the US she was arrested and put on a plane to Paris. Her lawyers had a court order forbidding the Trump administration from deporting her, but immigration officials refused to comply with the court order until her plane had taken off for Paris. The next day, 200-odd Venezuelans in the US (I'm not sure of their immigration statuses; perhaps asylum?) were unilaterally declared to be members of an international terrorist gang and put on planes to El Salvador, where the Trump administration is paying the Salvadoran government to keep them in a Salvadoran prison; a US judge issued a court order forbidding the administration to deport them until their cases could be reviewed, saying specifically that "if the planes are already in the air, turn them around," and the planes (one of which hadn't even taken off yet) proceeded to El Salvador anyway. The judge in the latter case has spent the last three days trying to get information from the administration about exactly when the planes took off so he can decide whether the administration willfully violated his order, and administration lawyers are stonewalling and refusing to provide that information on national-security grounds. Trump has retaliated by demanding the impeachment of the judge in question, and some Republican in Congress has dutifully introduced impeachment charges. In short, the Trump administration has probably willfully violated at least two direct court orders so it can deport people without due process or evidence.
At the rate he's moving, I would guess that within a month he'll be revoking US citizenship so he can deport US citizens. And he will be openly and routinely ignoring any court order he disagrees with.
Meanwhile, also in the last week, Columbia University has had $400M worth of government grants suspended because it didn't crack down harshly enough on anti-Israel demonstrators last year, and Penn State has had $110M worth of government grants suspended because it allowed a trans woman to play on a women's sports team.
And the DOGE shutdowns of government agencies continue. Most recently, DOGE tried to enter the offices of the US Institute for Peace, which isn't even part of the Executive branch at all. Institute staff and lawyers called the DC police to keep them out, DOGE also called the DC police, and apparently the DC police sided with the latter, kicking Institute staff out of the building and letting DOGE staff in to do whatever they wanted.
It's been two months to the day since Trump took office for the second time, and it's looking pretty bleak for democracy and the rule of law. It was a nice run while it lasted.
Trump always promised that he would deport "criminal illegal aliens", but he hasn't had much luck finding them, so he's been deporting lots of illegal aliens without criminal records. And lots of legal temporary residents, mostly those in the US pending resolution of their asylum claims. In the past week, he's moved on to deporting legal permanent residents, with green cards, with no due process at all. One guy with a green card was arrested in NYC, his green card revoked on the spot, and sent to a prison in Louisiana to await deportation (with no access to his lawyer), because while he was on a student visa at Columbia, he led an anti-Israel protest. A Brown University medical professor with a green card went to Lebanon to visit relatives, and as soon as she returned to the US she was arrested and put on a plane to Paris. Her lawyers had a court order forbidding the Trump administration from deporting her, but immigration officials refused to comply with the court order until her plane had taken off for Paris. The next day, 200-odd Venezuelans in the US (I'm not sure of their immigration statuses; perhaps asylum?) were unilaterally declared to be members of an international terrorist gang and put on planes to El Salvador, where the Trump administration is paying the Salvadoran government to keep them in a Salvadoran prison; a US judge issued a court order forbidding the administration to deport them until their cases could be reviewed, saying specifically that "if the planes are already in the air, turn them around," and the planes (one of which hadn't even taken off yet) proceeded to El Salvador anyway. The judge in the latter case has spent the last three days trying to get information from the administration about exactly when the planes took off so he can decide whether the administration willfully violated his order, and administration lawyers are stonewalling and refusing to provide that information on national-security grounds. Trump has retaliated by demanding the impeachment of the judge in question, and some Republican in Congress has dutifully introduced impeachment charges. In short, the Trump administration has probably willfully violated at least two direct court orders so it can deport people without due process or evidence.
At the rate he's moving, I would guess that within a month he'll be revoking US citizenship so he can deport US citizens. And he will be openly and routinely ignoring any court order he disagrees with.
Meanwhile, also in the last week, Columbia University has had $400M worth of government grants suspended because it didn't crack down harshly enough on anti-Israel demonstrators last year, and Penn State has had $110M worth of government grants suspended because it allowed a trans woman to play on a women's sports team.
And the DOGE shutdowns of government agencies continue. Most recently, DOGE tried to enter the offices of the US Institute for Peace, which isn't even part of the Executive branch at all. Institute staff and lawyers called the DC police to keep them out, DOGE also called the DC police, and apparently the DC police sided with the latter, kicking Institute staff out of the building and letting DOGE staff in to do whatever they wanted.
It's been two months to the day since Trump took office for the second time, and it's looking pretty bleak for democracy and the rule of law. It was a nice run while it lasted.
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