Hope for Incompetence, but Row Furiously

Via X, I got wind of an excellent piece on the Abrego Garcia case by Noah Smith, "The Authoritarian Takeover Attempt Is Here".

Although it does stand on its own in terms of getting readers up to speed on the case, it is no mere rehash.

Smith does well helping readers see the implications of the contempt for due process Trump and his cronies have exhibited, and offers his current forecast of where things are headed:

This should scare you, for a number of reasons.

First, there's the obvious: Trump is going around arresting innocent people, and sending them to foreign torture-dungeons, apparently for the rest of their lives. Bloomberg reports that about 90% of these deportees had no criminal records in the U.S., and most have not been charged with any crime...

Some were arrested simply because they had (non-gang) tattoos. Others didn't even have any tattoos, and were arrested for no apparent reason.

It's not clear why the Trump administration is doing this. Perhaps it's to scare immigrants into leaving the country by making an example of a few. Perhaps it's to simply assert power, or to test the boundaries of what they can get away with. Maybe they've really convinced themselves that all of the people they arrested are gang members. Who knows. But what's clear is that this is brutal and lawless behavior -- the kind of arbitrary arrest and punishment that's common in authoritarian regimes.

The second thing that should scare you is the lawlessness. The Trump administration insists it didn't defy the Supreme Court, arguing that simply removing any barriers to Abrego Garcia's return means that they're complying with the court order to "facilitate" that return. Trump's people have also argued that the courts have no right to interfere in the executive branch's conduct of foreign policy. And on top of that, they've declared that their deal with Bukele is classified.

In practice, the administration is arguing that as soon as they arrest someone and ship them overseas, U.S. courts have no right to order their return -- ever. That means that Trump could grab you, or me, or anyone else off the street and put us on a plane to El Salvador, and then argue that no U.S. court has the right to order us back, because once we're on foreign soil it's the domain of foreign policy. If so, it means that due process and the rule of law in America are effectively dead; the President can simply do anything to anyone, for any reason.

The third reason the Abrego Garcia case should worry you is that the Trump administration probably intends to go much further. Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn't an American citizen, but Trump has stated that he wants to start sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador too. Here are three relevant clips from his meeting with Bukele... [links omitted, bold added]

In one clip, Trump shows his hand regarding the excuse of sending foreign criminals away: "Yeah that includes [Americans], you think they're a special type of people or something."

This is how he speaks of you, whose rights and lives he swore to protect as President a few weeks ago.

Smith correctly notes that this is exactly one of things the Founders enumerated in their reasons for rebelling against England, and goes on to offer his analysis of the political situation.

He closes with his best sense of how it could play out:

Trump 2.0 is still likely to struggle to get big things done, despite having a few more years to prepare. The sad spectacle of the flailing, off-again-on-again tariff announcements seems like pretty clear evidence of incompetence. Trump is more vengeful and far less constrained this time around, but he still may fail to execute the transition to authoritarianism any more effectively than he's executing the transition to autarky. He's not benign, but he's probably not invincible either.

It is upon this thin thread that we must hang our hopes for democracy. [bold added]

The time to begin fighting back in whatever way is available is now.

-- CAV