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Tortillas And The Constitutional Crisis
The Supreme Court on Saturday halted, briefly or not, Donald Trump's mass deportation effort, or at
Two observations:
(1) One strategy, if Trump ends up losing Scotus (big if), is that he complies, while complaining all the way … brings back the prisoner he illegally deported there––if ‘ordered’ to do so by Scotus (another big if)––immediately commences the necessary legal proceedings to deport him properly (which will/could take time), and milk it all as much as he can.
Americans apparently hate “the illegals,” and don’t necessarily mind their being sent to foreign gulags (I guess), but only if done “properly.” Trump could utilize this all to his advantage, while begrudgingly “complying” with the courts.
(2) The extortion method employed by Barrio 18 reminds me of the politer version used by our own el presidente, against law firms, private citizens, sundry colleges and universities, and state/local officials with whom he’s feuding. Definitely not “the same,” but definitely in the same spirit …
Yeah on point 1), I don’t know if he’s going to be satisfied this time around with anything less than autocratic authority. The idea of anyone “ordering” him to do anything is just anathema to his inflated self image at this point. Can you imagine how insane it would drive him to be compelled, in part by his own three SCOTUS nominees, to have to retrieve this guy and bring him back, even if only for a hearing which, as you noted, would likely take a while? Plus, tortilla guy’s going to be a folk hero for some people now, regardless of whether he’s a gang member or not, and that too will drive Trump nuts. You gotta think SCOTUS knows this, and that’s going to be the big debate over the next four years: Do we corner him and dare him to defy us at the risk that he does and there’s nothing we can do about it, or do we side with him and hope he leaves in 2028 so that we can claim he never defied us? Because I mean, it is a bluff. Everyone knows SCOTUS is a bluff. If he just says “Nope, I’m gonna do what I want to do and if you have a problem with it, you can talk to Pete over at the Pentagon,” then SCOTUS is out of luck, and then we’ve got an overnight dumpster fire.
I think the Federal courts have tools beyond moral suasion, that they have never had to but could use. For example, court could order banks to freeze an agency’s bank accounts, or a telco to cut off an agency’s communications. Would JPM or T obey a federal court order affirmed by the Supreme Court? I think so.
The Maduro regime is a criminal gang? Insert “Trump” for “Maduro” and the statement is just about as accurate. Georgia had it right (re: RICO); a federal version should be the future of Trump and his gang of thugs. Maybe a good future use for Guantanamo (if St. Helena isn’t available)…
Thank you for publishing the Abrego Garcia narrative.
None of my regular news sources (Reuters, Bloomberg, NYT, …) published his backstory, at least that I noticed in my dail reviews of each service.
I was inquiring just the other day among persons I regularly speak with and no one could answer.
Thank you.
Yeah, and I mean, look: That picture Trump posted on TruthSocial of the guy’s hand tattoos — where “MS-13” looks to have been typed onto the picture after the fact — wasn’t, I hope, supposed to be taken as real. Obviously, the letters “M,” “S,” and the numbers “1” and “3” were typed by The White House onto the page.
I think they were trying to say that if you run his actual knuckle tattoos through a gang symbol “translator,” it works out to MS-13, and even if that’s not true, they weren’t tattoos of Cecilia’s tortillas.
I’ve been around a lot of young Central and South American illegal immigrant males, and I can tell you from extensive personal experience that they do tend to be dangerous in one respect or another, if only in the kind of way that, given their backgrounds, nothing scares them other than the prospect of deportation, and only that because it jeopardizes their capacity to send dollars back home. I don’t want to traffic in stereotypes, but what I can say is that you don’t want to make the mistake of thinking you’re some sort of bad ass vis-à-vis these guys, because it’s not going to turn out well, even in contexts where they technically work for you in some capacity where, on paper anyway, you have a monopoly on organizational use of force. They’re a congenial people, I swear they are. They’re a lot of fun, they make fantastic drinking buddies, they can take pretty much any kind of joke in stride and they tend to be very loyal, earnest friends, but my God, if you inadvertently offend their “honor,” or you’re out with them and someone else does, it’s lights out.
All of that to say, I’m not convinced of the liberal media narrative that says this guy was a totally innocent, upstanding, aspiring citizen. Although I haven’t looked into this, my guess is that if he had a social media account, the pictures of himself he posted there bear no resemblance whatsoever to the pictures we saw of him with Van Hollen. However, the point is that he was never charged with, nor convicted, of a crime, let alone a violent or serious crime. In the context of dangerous Latin American illegal immigrants, this guy probably does count as “harmless,” which is to say if you’re going to deport someone illegally, why this guy? And if this guy, then why not other relatively “harmless” illegal immigrants? And if other relatively “harmless” illegal immigrants, why not actually dangerous US citizens? And then down we go on the slippery slope to black vans.