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This War Is FAR More Dangerous Than You’re Being Told: COL. Douglas Macgregor
by Yemek Zamanim
Jul 5, 2025



Transcript

I don't think it's a question necessarily of a zone. The real question is why have we taken this position that
Russia is an existential threat to Europe or the United States. I mean
quite frankly anybody who makes that assertion it's evidence-free. If you go back and look at February the
first few days of the intervention then look at what happens from March until
about July or August. The Russians sent in very few forces and several people
said, "Oh, well, look at the Russians. They don't have very many forces, do they? Their army is too small and they
don't seem to be very good." Now, I I don't don't agree with they're not very good. I understand the constraints under
which they operate because Putin took the position, we don't want to kill lots of Ukrainians. These are people just
like us. Uh we don't want to do a lot of property damage. We want we want negotiations. and they he thought
wrongly obviously that he could induce negotiations. Nobody was interested in talking. We don't need to go back over
that ground. But that's the that's the first thing. Is it because Russia doesn't qualify as a pristine liberal
democracy? Well, if that's the standard, then Ukraine fails miserably and is
worse now than it's ever been. Is it because Russia is too corrupt? Well, we've got lots of corruption in lots of
countries, even in our own. This is nonsense. So where is the justification for treating Russia in this way? And
then secondly, what are Russia's legitimate security interest? And I think you've stated
them. They they deserve to have a border area or or neighbors that are not
necessarily postured, organized, and equipped to attack them. That's not unreasonable. And the funny thing is
when all of this began, my friends that I served with at NATO all took the position that
neutrality for Ukraine was a gift to the Russians and to Europe. What a wonderful
thing. A nice open, secure country that is neutral, where we can do business,
where no one is threatened. The Russians feel safe from us. We feel safe from the Russians. What's the problem? But we
know that that was rejected out of hand. And as the ambassador pointed out, there has been no diplomacy. Whatever the
Russians have said, we've dismissed out of hand. When anyone in their right mind would have taken whatever offer was
there and said, "Thank you very much on closer inspection. We see some good things. We need time to study it. In the
meantime, while we study this, we'd also like to arrange talks." And then you do
your horse trading or your discussion privately. There's too much public diplomacy because every congressman,
every president wants to stand there, hurl abuse at the foreign enemy or alleged enemy and somehow or another
think he's going to endear himself to the American public. And here's the news. Most Americans could care less
what happens in Ukraine. That's the sad truth. Well, in light of this uh and because of
Ukraine, uh the president of the United States was in Ukraine and in Poland. Just left a few hours ago actually on
Air Force One. I want to touch upon uh my country, Poland's role in this entire
confilration, which has been very important because during the last 48 hours, we've been hearing a lot of uh
commentary coming from people who are very critical, I myself being one of them, of the current government's
position that Poland is becoming the second proxy uh visa v the war in
Ukraine in the sense that whereas the main thrust of the proxy war which has been acknowledged by all the major
players that it is a proxy war is Ukraine that Poland is lining up to be proxy number two. Uh and in light of
this uh I picked up this quote from the late Edvard Garrick who was the head of
the Polish United Workers Party in the late '7s. So this is a man who dealt with three presidents in essence. Uh
President Nixon, uh President Ford and President Carter towards the end of the 70s. Um he actually hosted President
Nixon in 72 just after uh the visit in China. I think it was two months after in in June in June of 1972. And Garrick
in an interview in 1992 when asked about how newly reborn Poland should deal with
the United States stated the following. I quote, "Believe me, I have talked to three American presidents and I know
that for them we are just pawns on the grand chessboard of world politics.
fairly controversial statement, but I'd like to get uh both of your thoughts, gentlemen, on that perspective in light
of Poland's role in the current proxy war with Russia. Ambassador Freeman,
well, certainly if the war spills out over the Ukrainian borders, Poland is
the most likely place for it to spill out. That is clear. Um, and it is very
appropriate for the government of Poland to be a bit cautious about that. Um, I
think there's an issue, a couple of issues I'd like to uh speak to which which bear on this if I may. Um, one is
geography. Uh, if you're Russian or for that matter a pole, um, you have you are a prisoner
of geography. There's nothing between Moscow and the Pyrenees except planes
that are easily crossed by cavalry or modern equipment. Um there's nothing
between Moscow and Kamchatka except frozen planes. If you're sitting
in Moscow or you're sitting in Warsaw or in Berlin, you don't have any natural
defenses of ge of the geographic nature. And therefore, you have to be concerned
about the orientation and alignment of your neighbors. You know, there have been multiple instances of invasion of
Russia uh both by the Mongols uh by the French, by the Germans and so forth and
so on. So there's a perfectly rational basis for Russian concern about denying
Ukraine to uh to NATO which after all was during
the cold war a defensive alliance but after the cold war mounted several
offensive operations um obviously in the former Yugoslavia
but also in Afghanistan and Libya. So I think um the the concerns u that polls
have and Russians have have a a rational basis uh and and and need to be taken
into account. Uh a second comment is about spheres of influence. Uh rather
than Russia trying to incorporate Ukraine into a Russian sphere of influence, I think it was attempting
strategic denial. it did not want Ukraine incorporated into the US sphere
of influence known as NATO. Um, you know, it and I think that's very clear.
Uh, spheres of influence may be objectionable to us except in the
Western Hemisphere where we have always asserted a sphere of influence. uh but
uh the fact is uh that attempting to deny other countries spheres of influence in a global order that is
increasingly disorderly and multipolar uh is not going to work. Um and uh
therefore uh I think u and I should say by way of advertising there's a new
handbook of diplomacy out in which I have a chapter on spheres of influence
which are a very interesting uh diplomatic tool
not much examined uh so I think the geography uh dictates caution on the part of those
countries that don't have natural geographic defenses and it also dictates caution on the part
of those who would place forces next to them that threaten them. Uh so uh the I
think Poland has is in a very awkward position. It always has been. Uh I'm
delighted as the uh father-in-law of a couple of Polish Americans um that um
that um Poland is back as a great power in Europe
and um but I think it does need to be very cautious in this context.
Doug, your thoughts? Well, the Poles are a charming group of people. They have a wonderful history
but much like Americans have difficulty learning from it. And uh Ambassador
Freeman has pointed to the sing singular reality that however great Poland may be
whatever its aspirations are it is for better or worse wedged between two great
powers really great powers Germany and Russia. Germany and Russia have lots of
reasons to cooperate, but that doesn't mean that Germany or Russia necessarily have any interest in capturing,
conquering, and administering Polish territory. And I think people need to get that through their heads. Uh I see
no evidence that Putin wants anything to do with Western Ukraine. I mean, he he
feels compelled to do what he's done in the east. He may he may ultimately and I think he probably will his forces will
take all of eastern Ukraine as a as a security measure in all probability. But
there's no interest in western Ukraine if you're a Russian. Do you really want to manage lots of Western Ukraines that
hate your guts? That's a very unrewarding exercise. Does do the Russians want to manage polls? Do the
Germans want to manage polls? The answer is no and no. So, let's put this this 19th century imperialist thinking to
bed. Stop talking about Europe as a chessboard. Then, let's ask a couple of
very key questions. I never hear anybody say this. What do the Ukrainians want?
Have they held a referendum in that country? Did everyone stand up and say, "Yes, we want war with Russia." I would
tell you that if you go back to Zalinsk's election when he ran on a peace platform, he was elected
overwhelmingly by the population of Ukraine, including not all but a
substantial portion of Western Ukrainians because they, as well as the Ukrainians in the east, wanted the same
thing. They wanted peace. They didn't want revenge. They didn't want a ravashist war to retake Crimea. They
wanted peace. Peace is essential to prosperity. So I think we could say
safely no one has really addressed that question. What is in the interest of the
people that live in the country? And that applies to Poland. What do the polls want? Has anybody asked them?
You've got a government right now that is extraordinarily hostile to Russia and seems hellbent for some sort of
confrontation. That's catastrophic in my view and it's unnecessary. So what do the polls want? Somewhere
along the line, people have to ask that question and the polls need to answer. So do the Ukrainians. It's a little late
for Ukraine. Tragically, as we know, there may be only 18 to 22 million Ukrainians left in the country at this
point. And everyone who's come out says they will never go back. It's tragic. I don't know that Ukraine will even exist
as a nation state when this is over, regardless of what peace arrangements are made. Who knows? But we don't want
that fate to befall Poland. So, I hope that someone in Poland will stand up and say, "What do the Polish people want?
Let's find out." Maybe they don't like the answer, but I suspect it will be peace and prosperity, not war with
Russia. Indeed, I think we need to if I may come in on this. I think we
need to recognize that one way or another, uh, Ukraine has been
effectively partitioned. um and um that Crimea is not coming back
under any circumstances and the Donbas is uh also I think lost
to uh to to Ukraine. Uh but um we have to ask ourselves a couple of questions.
Uh what will be left of Ukraine? Will it be viable?
Um this gets to the loss of population, the the fact that the major industries are have been in the east. U the fact
that uh huge damage has been done to the country. I think people are dreaming if
they think the uh European Union is going to come up with the money to repair all of that damage. But uh we
don't know whether at the end of this Odessa will be uh you know you have to
get a Russian or or Ukrainian visa to go there. We don't know. And um so one
question is you know when this is over however it ends
you know how do how does the Ukraine survive? That's pretty important to Poland among other countries. The second
question is what sort of European security architecture do we anticipate? Is it one which is
where Russia sits on one side of a DMZ like in Korea and the rest of Europe
sits on the other side? Uh or is it something like what we envvisaged in the
partnership for peace where by the way the the working assumption was that the
Ukrainians would be too smart to want to join NATO because that would be such a
provocation to Russia that would have dire consequences. but that they would
want to become militarily interoperable with NATO through uh the partnership for
peace in case of some contingency. Everybody saw Ukraine as a buffer and a
bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe. And um the fact that it uh it
chose a different course was under urging from successive American presidents is tragic. Now, Joe Biden,
who just visited Warsaw right before this war, said, "I don't do red lines. I
don't respect anybody's red lines." Well, that is pretty foolish. Um, and
we've seen the result of that. We now have people in our government, Victoria
Nuland for example, uh, saying that the war must go on until Ukraine recovers Crimea.
Well, when pigs fly, that will happen.
Uh just in in line of those observations, I think in terms of the
Polish government, u the problem is the uncompromising view in a way is Victoria
Nuland on steroids in a sense because the message coming from both the presidential palace and the government
and the prime minister is that Russia has to be completely defeated. uh an
uncompromising total defeat. And the way they're framing uh the situation is that
if Russia is not defeated, that would mean the end of European civilization, the end of the liberal west and so on
and so on. How they how they arrive at that conclusion is anyone's guess, but
these are things not even you know Jake Sullivan, Anthony Blinkin, Toria Nuland are saying and in essence these are the
people that Poland is hinging our foreign policy directives on. I mean those three people basically uh unless
we you know believe in in in the in the fact or non- fact rather that President Biden has a firm hold on his foreign
policy and his foreign policy team. So the the sort of the strategic uh
implications of what's been going on since February 2022 is the Americans say
one thing and the polls take it to the next level in a way. So we're sort of like the Rottweiler, the American
Rottweiler here in Eastern Europe, being pulled back sometimes by the Americans, as was the case in the first couple of
weeks when we proposed to give those MC29s to Ukraine. But you know, Anthony Blinkin even stepped in as a great way.
That's that's going a little bit too far. We don't want World War II here. Now they're openly talking about it. So
I don't know whether we're having an influence, but it's definitely a negative influence or the tendency is
such that, you know, you radicalize over time. But in light of uh the speech that
President Biden delivered last night in Poland, uh he continues to
mention the world. The world is united against this aggression. Now, obviously,
he seems to forget that the world also includes China, the Middle East, India.
Uh Ambassador Freeman, I'd like to pose this question again to you. uh China and
the Middle East have been positioning themselves or there's this expectation that they might be mediators in a in a
peace proposal. Anthony Blinkin was in Egypt a few weeks ago. They discussed the potential for uh restarting nuclear
arms agreements with the Russians. We have the Russian response already. Actually, we got one yesterday. President Putin has suspended Russian uh
participation in the START treaty. What do you think the Middle East countries
and China can bring to the negotiating table in potentially resolving this uh
this war as soon as possible? India, China, Brazil, other countries in
Africa and Latin America and the Arabs all want a multi-olar
world order. the if Russia is humiliated and weakened
that order will not happen. Uh what we will have is some sort of quasi bipolar
order between China and the United States. Nobody wants that. Therefore,
when we say, you know, that we must weaken and isolate Russia, there is
people in the global south, as it were, outside Europe, beyond the G7, which is
the club of former imperialist powers, all react negatively. That has no appeal
at all. Um, what they want is peace. They want access to Russian and
Ukrainian resources. uh and uh they want Europeans to be uh
able to devote their money to something other than fighting each other. Um then
so uh now um at the end of the week probably on Friday
uh general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xinping will probably uh
deliver a peace proposal. Uh the danger is that that will be rejected out of
hand by the United States and others. simply because it's Chinese. Uh well,
how can a country that quote uh aligns itself with Russia possibly mediate?
Well, the answer is first of all, China has been very careful not to align
itself with Russia, but it has not aligned itself with the United States either. In fact, the Indians are more
pro-Russian than the Chinese. All the polling shows. So this is complicated.
Uh but it is not true that a mediator with a bit of sympathy for one side and
the Chinese do sympathize with the Russian view that they were pushed into this by NATO enlargement and a refusal
by NATO and the United States to negotiate. Uh it is not true that someone with that sympathy cannot
mediate. Um, I helped when I was u in active on active duty in the US foreign
service. I helped to broker the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola.
Um, the independence of Namibia, the withdrawal of a South African forces
from Namibia and an election process in Angola. There was no doubt during those
mediation efforts which were assisted by the UN and others um and in the latter
stages actually by the Soviet Union. There was no doubt where America stood and it was not with Cuba and Angola
uh and yet we succeeded. So, I wouldn't rule this out. Although, I think there
is a danger that if the Chinese feel that uh uh the United States is upping
the ante with Russia and they think they're next, if we do weaken and isolate Russia, will go after them, that
they will indeed do what uh Secretary of State Blink has accused them of with no
evidence whatsoever. They will indeed start to arm the Russians.
Um, and they could, if the Russians have some of the ammunition and equipment
shortages that u British intelligence keeps erroneously asserting they do, uh,
then, uh, the Chinese have the ability to make that up. So, this is a very dangerous moment. Um, the peace
proposal, whatever it is, should not be rejected out of hand. Uh, it should
become the basis for discussion. If the discussion goes nowhere, that's another thing. But if there's no discussion, I
think uh this could be quite perilous. Doug, can Xi Jinping make a successful
intervention here? I think under normal circumstances, he certainly could. Of
course, I'm one of these people that tires of hearing people talk about the Communist Party because there aren't very many communists that I'm aware of
still in China. The place can be described in many other ways. But I think it's important for people to
understand that China's interest is not in waging war. It never has been. It isn't now. Whatever we don't like about
the Chinese, the Chinese are very clear about their principal interest. That's business. And they want to build
prosperity. To build prosperity, to do business, you need stability and peace in Central Asia. And that includes
Ukraine. If you're going to make the one belt, one road work and do business with Europe, you've got to have uh
uninterrupted lines of communication between Europe and China. I mean, that's
Ambassador Freeman pointed to the nature of the landscape. And he's absolutely right. I mean, from the rail standpoint,
even even if you're going to use airship to move across that continent, uh is an
extraordinary achievement if you can do it without warfare. The last time the world saw anything like that was under
the Mongolian Empire. The Mongols controlled it. They imposed discipline and prosperity thrived. Frankly, Mongols
don't usually get credit for that sort of thing, but it nevertheless is true. So my my point is, yeah, I think we
should listen, but we're not very good at listening right now. We we tend to see the world as black and white. We
have these ideological blinders on that essentially compel us to condemn everyone who does not readily submit to
our will, who doesn't want to be part of a system that we obviously dominate thanks to our financial control of the
globe. And we're we're already beginning to witness ddollarization. We're watching the bricks do that. Uh the
world is changing. It is multipolar. We seem to want to freeze this. I, you know, in contrast to Ambassador Freeman,
I'm afraid a lot of people in Washington would welcome the ZMZ uh outcome because that would justify
policies and expenditures and behavior that are completely unnecessary under normal circumstances. So, if you turn
around and say, well, there's no reason to go to war, you're you're going to make a lot of people very unhappy in the
United States. And the other thing is uh on this war topic, it seems to me that a
lot of people in Europe now as well as as in the United States have lost any
sort of understanding of what the word means. It it they think it's something that happens on somebody else's soil
that nothing will touch them. That's not true. And they don't understand the Russian capacity to escalate
horizontally. But again, you know, we we have to get people to back to diplomacy.
That means mutual respect, honoring interests. If you can honor other
people's strategic interests, respect them, work towards mutual prosperity, then you get treaties, then you get
trade arrangements, you get peace. We're nowhere's near that at this point. And I
don't think we're going to get there leadership. Doug McGregor sounds um very European to
me. Um, Americans uh have a way of war in which we demand unconditional
surrender by the enemy and then propose to engage in their moral the enemy's
moral reconstruction. This was the pattern in our civil war. It was what we
tried to do in World War I. It was what we did in World War II and it was
arguably what we did during the Cold War. But most wars end in a negotiation
in which whatever has been achieved on the battlefield uh is reconciled between the two
parties. And I think Doug is absolutely right. Uh we don't understand that
adequately. Um there has nobody has put forward clear war termination
uh strategy. Nobody's even talking about it. It's, you know, we got to go until
President Zilinski can swim on the beaches in the Crimea again. Um, as he
said said he would. Um, the um, we need to I agree. We need to listen. We need
to think, we need to understand that war creates realities that then require
acknowledgement rather than rejection. Uh so um we need
to be setting the basis for a negotiated resolution of this which is in which everybody's going to be with which
everybody's going to be unhappy because nobody's going to get everything they want or even very much of it. Uh but if
the war goes on indefinitely, go back to Doug's mention about Doug
McGregor's mention about transport across Eurasia.
Poland is isolated. You know, that DMZ, if that's what happens,
uh is is going to represent a perpetual threat to Poland. So, what is now a
historical memory of threat could become real again. And and and I
think that would be catastrophic for Europe, for the world, and and we ought
to be thinking more broadly about how to end end this war. So, that isn't what happens.
That is a Can I say one thing? Uh, go ahead. In connection with that, the Europeans who have become accustomed to
working with us and for us and aligning themselves with us have to take a a very
hard look at this business. The United States is in a position from which it cannot easily retreat. As the ambassador
pointed out earlier, uh, presidents and and the leaders here have made, in my
judgment, a lot of outrageous demands and comments. They have insisted on conditions that that will never be met.
That puts us in a position where how can we possibly reach out to the Russians
and lead talks and and reach any sort of amicable solution. The Europeans can do
that. They may have to change some of their leaders that they've currently got. But it's time for the Europeans,
especially the Germans and the French. They're not the only ones. I hope people in Poland will start to think about
this. Certainly the Swedes and the Danes are beginning to think about it. The Italians have. The Austrians must.
Everyone needs to think about their interests as Europeans. What is in the
interest of the European peoples? It certainly isn't an endless war. It is
not some sort of arrangement that transforms Russia into the permanent enemy of quote unquote the West. Far
from it. In fact, we would like to do business with the West. That's my impression of most Europeans. So, we've
got to get this thing over with. They're going to have to take this this whole business and run it. They're going to
have to stand up and say, "Thank you very much, Washington. We appreciate your interests, but those are not our
interests. Our interests are in peace and we're willing to sit down and hammer out a solution. Now, we're a ways from
that, but I wonder once eastern Ukraine is completely under Russian control uh
if that's not going to sober people up. And if it doesn't, I imagine Russian forces approaching the outskirts of Lviv
will because let it let's be very clear, the Russians regard what happens in
Ukraine as an existential matter for them. They're not going to stop halfway and say, "Fine, that's it. That's all we
need today. We're going home. They're going to insist that the threat in Ukraine be removed. That can be removed
very easily. That it is not the Ukrainian people and this regime in in
Kief is not necessarily representative of what Ukrainians everywhere want. So I
think it can be done. The Poles have a role to play in that, but not as our proxy. They have to play a Polish role
within the broader European framework. Let let me let me follow ahead. We're
talking to each other too much probably. But um No, that's perfect. That's the way I wanted to. Go ahead. I don't want
to pick on keep picking on Austria and you know Viner Schnitle with tacos and
but I do think the Austrian state treaty of 1955 stands out as a viable solution
for uh Ukraine. was always there. At the very height of the cold war, the Soviet
Union, the United States, the British and French um removed their forces from
Austria on and Austria agreed to be neutral and stay neutral um not to join
any alliance. Uh and uh and if we were able to do this at the height of the
hysteria of the cold war, why can't we do it now? Um the answer I think lies in
what Doug was talking about, namely um poor leadership, misguided people, um
people with hubris who imagine they can have their way regardless of what the other parties think. Um, and I agree
with him that the solution to this essentially European problem
uh must be worked out primarily by Europeans. I hope my country, the United
States, will support that effort, but I'm not at all
confident we will uh given where attitudes are at the moment.
I'm going to throw this thought out there, gentlemen, because you've provoked this line of thinking. But if
the Europeans were to reassert what sometimes uh Emanuel Mcronone alluded to
and even at the Munich Security Conference of all places uh about European strategic autonomy which
basically other people interpret as by NATO if the Europeans were to reassert
themselves at least the major European players so Germany and France and
possibly Italy Orban is already doing this in a Okay. Uh but wouldn't this
strategic autonomy and moving to reassert European independence mean that uh
it's the Austria's calling? I think I think so to protest. Yes. Would would
would not this mean the dismantling of NATO immediately or over time?
I don't think so. But um u I think NATO is essential for several reasons. um is
essential for Europe because uh it is a means of enabling European cooperation
on common problems. Um a very powerful Germany sitting at the central center of
Europe uh when it's in NATO is not threatening to its neighbors as it has
been in the past. Um and I think the United States and Europe are in a single
geopolitical zone. The United States needs to continue to be involved in Europe. What it doesn't need to do is to
do what Europeans should do for themselves, namely provide an adequate defense.
So, um uh I would myself be in favor of Europeanizing NATO
um and uh and and and moving the United States to the background. Um because um
you know as an American I think um I look at the 20th century and I see Europeans dragging us into wars on
several occasions. World War I, World War II, the Cold War if you will. Um uh
I don't think we want that to happen. So I think we need to keep a hand in and play a balancing role
uh and help Europeans deal with a powerful Germany and with a Russia with
one foot in Europe and one outside. So I think the um uh I think this is uh
a reasonable uh proposition and there's no need for NATO to disappear as such
but it needs to be transformed. Doug, you know, if I could just say, you
know, Europeanizing NATO is something that uh a lot of us thought should have
happened in the 90s instead of what occurred. We weaponized NATO, turned it
into an offensive in instrument. We started with this ridiculous notion, if it's not out of area, it's out of
business. Forgot that the NATO alliance was essentially defensive and designed
to promote stability and prosperity in Europe. uh instead we did all of the wrong
things. Now my concern is that as this war drags on, it will become tougher to
do that because more and more Europeans are going to look not only at each other but Washington and say, you know, we
don't want what you're doing to us. I mean, if they see the Russians cross the
Neper and begin to move west, I think the Europeans are going to look at that and say, "This would never have happened
had Washington been willing to talk to Moscow." So then the question is, if
Washington won't do it, we have to do it. And if we do it, do we really need Washington? See, at this point, I think
there's still a chance for what Ambassador Freeman said. But the longer this goes on, the less likely that
outcome is because let's face it, we have very severe problems here in the United States that we have essentially
ignored for decades. These proverbial chickens are coming home to roost. It's not going to be easy getting out of the
mess we're in. And a lot of Americans are going to say, "Well, listen, you know, we've had it with this. You know,
we we've got to fix our own borders. We've got to fix our own society. We've got to protect ourselves." So I see
forces moving against uh what ambassador Freeman describes
which is in my judgment the desirable outcome. But if this doesn't go does not
stop soon and it drags on then I think uh we're out of business frankly the
status quo is gone. I think one of the issues that fits
perfectly with what was just said is that bombshell report by Sai Hirs from a
few days back because in essence if we were to believe I'm not talking about
the so-called Tom Clansancy technicalities of what SISH wrote you know how the C4 was planted uh the naval
operations and so on and so on but if it turns out that it was in essence the
decision vision of the president of the United States uh using American covert
uh operators and parts of the Navy to destroy a critical piece of infrastructure of a NATO ally. Wouldn't
that mean that the United States basically declared war on Germany?
Ambassador Freeman? Well, I would say that Sahihurish um uh
has a stellar reputation as an investigative reporter beginning with
the exposure of Mi massacre in in Vietnam and um subsequent exposures of
Albu um and and uh I find his report entirely
credible. Whether the details are correct or not um is is as you suggest a
essentially a trivial uh matter. Um it is certainly no means of alliance
management. Um it is coercive uh it is potentially explosive
uh in terms of the relationship with Germany in particular the rest of Europe as well. uh but Germany uh has a central
role in Europe and the idea that you could uh cut off its energy supplies
um in order to make a point a strategic point that has been repeatedly discussed
between the German and American governments and and and and in which German views are very clear.
um and uh and they did not agree with uh um the American efforts to stop
Nordstream. So, you know, to do this is the height of diplomatic ineptitude and
potentially catastrophic. Doug, no. I I agree completely with the
ambassador and I would point out that just as we fail to appreciate Russian
concerns, interests, and feelings, we are not appreciating the impact on
Germany. The German population has not missed this. You're talking about a very educated population that follows the
news and information. They know what's happened and there is a a quiet sense of
rage directed not at Moscow but at Washington growing inside German society
and I think this is unfortunate for us but Ambassador Freeman's exactly right. We we behave badly. Can we recover from
it? I don't know. Again, it's a question of how long does this drag on. The
sooner we get it over with, the less damage it will have done to us. The longer it lasts, the more damage there
is to Europe and to the United States. In my judgment, unnecessary damage to the alliance.
We are in our media completely silent about this. It's not mentioned. It's the
same in Eastern Europe. Very sad commentary on the state of the press in our society.
Um we are um we are prisoners of our own
propaganda. I mean 101 15 years ago would the New
York Times Washington Post be ignoring a story by Sai Hersh? It's it's inconceivable basically but it is we are
where we are. Uh gentlemen last question because uh we did touch upon China we
touched upon multipolarity. Uh, Ambassador Freeman, as you were um you
were the top US diplomat and representative in Riyad uh during Operation Desert Storm, you
know the country very well. And we've noticed that after the 24th of February
2022, not only has, you know, the tone of
relations between the United States and Russia gone totally downhill, but we're seeing other countries typically
considered traditional allies of the United States pivot. Well, maybe not pivot, too strong of a word, but start
moving slowly towards the Russian position. We've heard that Saudi Arabia is interested in joining bricks. Even
Israel with all its clout in the United States and the Israel lobby and the influence it wields has taken a fairly
balanced position um at least until this point uh regarding the war. I mean Naftali Bennett was for a time
considered a mediator and he spilled the beans a few days back by telling uh basically the Israeli audience that it
was the western diplomats to sabotage the peace talks which is another confirmation of what we knew thanks to Fiona Hill and other people before him.
But where do you see is is this a genuine move on the part of Saudi Arabia? Are we seeing a divorce uh a
final divorce between Riad and Washington in terms of a very clear
geopolitical vector uh towards which Saudi Arabia is potentially going
um American dominance of the Middle East which is a phenomenon of the cold war is
essentially over. Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt,
other countries now act on their own interests as they see them without
checking first with the United States. And they don't defer uh to our requests.
If you want a a an example of that, you can look at uh the Israeli reaction to
our criticism of their settlement expansion, which is to, you know, blow us a
a raspberry. Um you can look at the Saudi response to President Biden's
request to do something to lower the price of gas at the pump before the midterm elections. Um and u the fact
that he actually had to go to Riad uh to ask for you know gas can in hand to ask
for relief and got none tells you something. uh what I see happening in
the world at large uh is um the is the
end of the 500 year long European American hegemony uh and the emergence
of independent centers of power that act on their own interests often without any
regard for ours as we define them. Um, and I think uh one of the problems we
have is that we apparently continue to assume that we have the unbridled sway
and the followership that we did during the cold war. Uh but now the um to take
the example of the Saudis, we we were always able to finesse their disagreements with us over the Israel
Palestine issue because we had a common enemy in the Soviet Union and in the
case of the Saudis, atheism, which was one of the main motivators for them to align with us. So that's over. Um and um
uh we're not playing our hand very well in this context in my view.

[admin]

Civil courage -- following ICE from a safe and lawful distance

https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1 ... _safe_and/

[admin]

Trump LANDS in NEW SCANDAL as His WAR on LA BACKFIRES
by Brian Kabateck and Shant Karnikian
Legal AF
Jul 5, 2025

Attorney's Brian Kabateck and Shant Karnikian expose the explosive federal class action lawsuit revealing how Trump's ICE agents have turned Los Angeles into a constitutional dead zone with 3,000 daily arrest quotas. They break down the shocking allegations of os US citizens detained at gunpoint for walking through parks, workers grabbed at bus stops without warrants, and a woman literally kidnapped while being dropped off at work.



Transcript

We got some breaking news here today out
of Los Angeles where we are. A massive
federal class action has been filed
against the Trump administration.
Christy Gnome, Cash Patel, a bunch of
different heads of different branches
under the Trump administration alleging
widescale militarization of immigration
agents and sweeping ICE raids and
revealing some of the deplorable
conditions in which some of these people
are being held. It alleges that Latino
citizens, day laborers, farm workers
were targeted without any warrant, no
explanation, no questions. I mean, it's
things that we've seen, but this is a
massive lawsuit, very well written, and
this might be a very important step in
trying to seek some justice for these
people. Uh, we're not talking about
racial profiling. We're talking about
fraud, government sponsored kidnappings
and broad daylight and shredding the
Bill of Rights here in Los Angeles. I'm
Sean Carne. It's Brian Kabet. This is
Civil Action on the Legal AF Network.
Brian, tell us a little bit more about
this lawsuit. Right. So, uh, I've got
the lawsuit sitting here in front of me
and I'm going to I'm going to read from
it. I don't think you have to look any
further than paragraph 197 of the of the
lawsuit. White House official Ton
Hullman, who's in charge of ICE, right,
recently maligned Los Angeles as a
sanctuary city and vowed, quote, "We're
going to send a whole boatload of
agents. We're going to swamp the city.
this operation is not going to end.
Every day in LA, we're going to enforce
immigration law. I don't care if they
like it or not. And then Christy Gnome,
when she's not Billy busy trying to kill
her dog, said, "We're going to stay here
and build our operations until we make
sure that we liberate liberate the city
of Los Angeles." And then she told ICE
agents, "Your performance will be judged
every day by how many arrests you, your
teammates, and your office are able to
effectuate. failure is not an option. So
this lawsuit, Sean, I think we should do
this is go through some of the examples
in the lawsuit of the types of conduct
that are occurring here in Los Angeles,
even as we speak. Yeah. And I think one
thing to lay out before we get into that
is that they had an arrest quota of
3,000 arrests per day. That is just
wild. You know, judging someone's job
performance, a law enforcement officials
job performance based on how many people
they arrest. So you let's let's talk
about some of these most egregious
examples that Brian referenced a minute
ago. You had one US citizen who was
detained and cuffed while walking
through a park in Santa Ana held
afterwards. No charges, nothing. Uh
that's an American citizen. That's
someone that has a United States
passport. A citizen of this country. Who
else? Brian, just rattle them off here.
You have a number of people who were
detained while they were waiting at a
bus stop um for work and uh the agents
pointed a taser at them, said stop or
I'll use it. They were pointed guns.
They had no warrant. This is very
important. They had no warrant. They had
no probable cause. They had no
reasonable suspicion. All of those are
required. They simply found three Latino
men sitting on a park bench waiting for
work and they declare that that's
reasonable suspicion enough to stop and
ask them for their papers. There are a
number of cases of US citizens who are
simply in the wrong place at the wrong
time being forced to identify
themselves. There's an example of
someone who's a dual citizen with Mexico
in the United States who's repeatedly
asked for their identification. and they
didn't believe it and still took them
into custody simply because these
people's crime is being brown. Yeah. You
have a young lady here right here in
downtown Los Angeles who was grabbed
while her mother was dropping her off at
work. Agents never asked for ID. Her
mother described it as what looked like
a kidnapping. U no questions, no not
even asking for identification. Just
kind of really wild stuff. And this is a
big serious lawsuit. I think you have,
you know, they talk about you've got
another example here, Jason Brian
Gavida. This is these are all public
records, so I'm not disclosing anything.
Uh on June 12th, he was um he was he
heard someone say immigration agents may
be at the premises. This is a US
citizen. He saw a federal agent step out
and they were carrying handguns and some
of them had military style rifles. They
pointed at him and said, "Stop right
there." Uh they threw him up against a
fence. They asked him, quote, "What
hospital were you born in? They asked
him the same questions. They pushed him
up against a metal gated fence um and
twisted his arm. They took the phone
from him that he had been on, repeatedly
asking him again what hospital he was
born in. He showed him his real ID.
That's the ID you're required to carry
now if you can get on an airplane, but
apparently that's not good enough for
ICE." This makes me incredibly angry.
This is a a wholesale violation of the
United States Constitution, asking
somebody for their papers. Yeah. One of
the other things that it reveals is this
facility right here in downtown LA
called the B18 facility, which is a
short-term holding cell area for for
that immigration officials use. But
they've been putting detainees there for
extended periods of time. It's
underground windowless. No access.
They're not giving people access to
lawyers. They're using sleep deprivation
and other pressure mechanisms to get
people to agree to self-deport. It's it
this is just really wild stuff. This is
just destroying the Constitution. Um and
and this is something that really needs
to be pursued. Well, let's go over again
what the rules are here so that people
clearly understand them. First of all,
um nobody can stop you on the street
just cuz they have to have at a minimum
at the highest standard is a warrant. uh
certainly a warrant to enter private
places, homes, businesses that aren't
open to the public. Um they probable
cause or a at least an articulable
reasonable suspicion. Yeah. And like
we've said before in Los Angeles with
almost 50% of the population Latino, it
is not an articulable reasonable
suspicion simply because you're Latino.
In fact, that is racial profiling.
That's exactly racial profiling. But you
know, the interesting thing about this,
Sean, is that I learned from reading
this lawsuit that um ICE and immigration
here in in Southern California have not
this is not their first trip to the
courthouse, and it's not been just under
the Trump administration. They have been
brought in before. There have been
orders entered against them um for their
behavior in the past. Uh some of those
what we call consent decrees have um
have ended. They dissolved before Trump
became president, but they're back to
the same thing that they've been been at
for a considerable amount of time. Yeah.
What what this lawsuit is asking for,
the sort of relief that it's seeking is
to stop the raids, declare these
practices unconstitutional,
enforce uh federal statutes, you know,
like, you know, and the Constitution,
which require reasonable suspicion,
lawful arrests, access to counsel,
access to someone's lawyer once they're
being detained, and establish some
degree of oversight and accountability
for for the Department of Homeland
Security and ICE uh when they come in
and operate here. I mean, I think this
is an important case. It's not just
about immigration. It's about whether
the Constitution still applies to
federal agents and who whoever decided
it doesn't. I mean, this is just wild.
The these these folks that are being
detained, whether they're documented or
undocumented, have the right to due
process. Due process isn't selective.
You don't get to pick due process
because someone is or isn't in this
country legally. And they're being
deprived of their right to counsel. They
have a right to counsel. The stories in
this lawsuit are are incredible,
including lawyers being um denied access
to their clients. And as you said, this
basement detention facility, um which is
supposed to be temporary, has become
more permanent with people sleeping on
the floors, uh inadequate health care,
inadequate food, inadequate um just
warmth, just basic human needs. Um, and
this is, you know, no surprise when, as
you said, Steven Miller, um, Trump's
number one henchman when it comes to,
uh, all things immigration, has said he
wants 3,000 arrests a day nationally.
Yeah. When they've made their intent
known that they're going to do it
whether people like it or not in Los
Angeles, this is this is just exactly
what they think their their mission is.
If if this is allowed to continue, you
know, it sets a precedent that that
racial profiling, warrantless raids,
just taking people, holding them without
access to a lawyer, without basic basic
necessities is acceptable. You know,
it's just another tool of the federal
government. I mean, it is very dangerous
and this can blow up in everyone's face.
This isn't just something that affects,
you know, one party or another. It
doesn't just affect immigrants or one
group of the population. This can if
this is okay now this can be warped into
so many other things that'll be used
against at political opponents. Where do
you draw the line? This can harm
left and right. This can this can harm
all parties, all levels, all class
levels, too. You know, so it's very
dangerous and this is a big lawsuit and
they're seek seeking a lot of important
relief that I think um is necessary. you
know, this clarity and and a ruling that
this is unconstitutional, I think is
necessary here. Absolutely. And you
know, my final thought on this is we're
we're sitting here with this big
beautiful bill having passed Congress.
And in that bill, and we'll cover this
in another episode, but in that bill,
there are bonuses,
signing bonuses, overtime bonuses,
like hundreds of millions of dollars for
ICE agents. Yeah. So, this
administration is not going to stop on
its own, and it's only the courts that
have the ability and the power to
enforce the Constitution. So, as usual,
Sean, I give you the last thought. I
really want to see how this is going to
shake out. You know, when you have
federal agents that can grab you off the
street, throw you in a van, put you in
an underground cell without a lawyer,
you know, your citizenship won't even
save you. So, that's a real problem.
That's that's authoritarian regime
Gestapo type of stuff. And that's
dangerous. I think what this lawsuit is
trying to fight for is to stop that kind
of behavior. And if the courts don't do
it here, the courts don't step in to do
that. The Constitution is not going to
be able to do that in and of itself. The
courts need to step in. And I hope the
right outcome comes out of this. And
we're going to keep following this
issue. We'll see how it shakes out. I
bet you there's going to be some
important things that happen in the
coming days with this lawsuit. So stay
tuned and and subscribe so you can see
the updates on this. I'm Sean Carren.
This Brian Ketch. This is civil action
on the legal AF network. Can't get your
fill of legal AF? Me neither. That's why
we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every
time we mention something in a hottake,
whether it's a court filing or a oral
argument, come over to the Substack.
You'll find the court filing and the
oral argument there, including a daily
roundup that I do called, wait for it,
Morning AF. What else? All the other
contributors from Legal are there as
well. We got some new reporting. We got
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[Music]

[admin]

Iran says it won’t allow IAEA boss to ‘set foot’ on its soil amidst spying charges
by Rifat Jawaid
Janta Ka Reporter
Jul 6, 2025

In a huge development, a top aide to the Speaker of the Iranian parliament has said that IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi will never be welcome in Iran amidst allegations that he passed sensitive information on Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel. Rifat Jawaid explains the significance of this statement made by Ebrahim Amir Rasouli in light of Iran starting a new chapter of nuclear ambiguity.



Transcript

In a damning development, a top aid to
the speaker of the Iranian parliament
has just announced that Argentina's
Rafael Grosi, the disgraced chief of
international atomic energy agency or
the IAEA, is not welcome in Iran. The
person issuing this threat to GCI is not
an ordinary individual. His name is Amir
Ibrahim Rasuri whose official title
describes him as the adviser to the
speaker of the Iranian parliament. It
was Iranian parliament which had first
voted unanimously to cut off ties with
the IAEA. In the 223 member parliament,
221 members had voted in favor of
breaking the country's cooperation with
the IAEA. While there was not a single
vote against the language used by the
suli is even harsher. He told Lebanon's
al-mayadin TV that Grossi would never be
allowed to set foot in Iran. These are
his words. He said, and I quote, "Iran
will not permit Grossi to set foot on its
soil again." End quote. Rasuli also
issued a stern warning to Tehran's
enemies, urging them to stop using the
language of threats. What's more, he
said that Iran possesses weapons that
will surprise the aggressors and that
the country was fully prepared to
respond immediately to any provocation.
In his words, and I quote, "We are in
our best condition. and if the enemy
makes a foolish move, we are ready to
teach them a harsh lesson from the first
moment." End quote. His comments on
Rafael Grossi is massive. That's because
Grossi has been desperately trying to
reach out to the Iranian foreign
minister requesting him to allow him
entry. He even made a telephone call to
sayyad Abbas Arashi the foreign minister
but only to be told the blunt truth
about the dubious role played by the
IAEA under G's leadership. The aid to
the parliament speaker also said
something that Iranians have been saying
off the record that Grossi played a
direct role in passing sensitive
information on the Iranian nuclear
facilities and scientists associated
with the country's nuclear program to
Israel.
Rasuli said, and I quote, "Gi has
betrayed the AY's trust by sharing
sensitive data, including the names of
our nuclear scientists, with the Zionist
entity." End quote. Lassouli's latest
comments shouldn't surprise anyone who
has been following Iranian politics. His
boss, the Iranian parliament speaker
Muhammad Ber Khalibah had said in no
uncertain terms that his country would
have nothing to do with the IAEA. Watch
this clip from the Iranian parliament
over a week ago when the speaker made a
fiery speech amidst the chance of Allah
Akbar which translates as God is great.
Allahbar.
Allahbar.
Remember,
Israel had successfully assassinated a
series of Iranian nuclear scientists on
the very first night of its illegal
attack on Tehran. According to some
reports, Israeli terrorists killed as
many as 144
14 top Iranian scientists during the
illegal attack on Iran. Breaking news
out of Iran where the country's defense
ministry has just confirmed that one of
Iran's top nuclear scientists is dead,
apparently assassinated. Experts were
quick to hold the IAEA and his
Argentinian chief GCI responsible for
collaborating with the Israeli spy
agency MOSSAD to have Iranian scientists
and general skilled. This was former
weapons inspector Scott Rita. Iran,
which is a signatory to the NPT, has
every right under article 4 to have a
nuclear enrichment program. And one has
to wonder why Raphael Grossi and his
colleagues in the IIA are meeting with
Israel uh which has an illegal uh
undeclared nuclear weapons program is
not a signatory to the NPT. There's no
reason in in that can be articulated
rationally that explains this other than
Grossi has been working with Israel to pass
intelligence to Israel and the United
States about Iran's nuclear programs.
intelligence that was used to target
locations on the ground and to
assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists
to murder Iranian nuclear science. So,
Grossi has the blood of Iran's nuclear
scientists on his hands. I don't see how
he could ever be allowed back uh into
Iran, nor any inspection effort led by
him. he must be replaced and a new
inspection regime um created, one that
has adequate uh you know safeguards put
on it to ensure that whatever data Iran
shares with the IAEA is not passed on to
nations hostile to Iran. Grossi disgraced
and exposed himself and his organization
further by first writing a dubious
assessment report about Iran's nuclear
capabilities and then refusing to
condemn Israel and the US for attacking
nuclear facilities, something which is
illegal under international law. What
exposed him even further was his
subsequent conduct. In the immediate
aftermath of the illegal attacks on Iran
and its nuclear facilities, Grossi spent all
his energy in demanding that he be
allowed to enter Iran urgently. I have
indicated to the respective authorities
my readiness to travel at the earliest
to assess the situation and ensure
safety, security, and
non-proliferation in Iran. And when
that didn't work, he even went to the
extent of diminishing the role of a
country's parliament. He said it on
record that the law passed by a
sovereign country's parliament was
meaningless in front of an international
treaty. Iran uh and I think nobody has
put that in question and I hope nobody
will is is a party to the treaty on the
nonproliferation of nuclear weapons like
more than 190 countries in the world.
So, so that uh implies that they have to
work with the with the agency. So, we
have to go we have been going through
this law that they have uh that the MA
is approved and we see that they are
talking about cooperation on the basis
of of the security and the safety of
their sites. I think that is not
incompatible with the inspection work
that needs to take place. But of course
it's not Rafael Grossi and Margaret Brennan
discussing this that we are going to
solve it. I think we I I have to sit
down with with with Iran and look into
they're not kicking they're not kicking
out your inspectors at this point.
Not not in this sense. I I would not say
that I I am looking with interest and
with some concern what they have
approved. But of course is their law is
their parliament. But you know here
there are legal implications. An
international treaty of course takes
precedence. You cannot invoke a a an
internal law not to abide with an
international treaty. But and he is the
same guy who has had no problem in
Israel not being a signatory to the
nuclear non-proliferation treaty or
the NPT and never allowing IAEA
inspectors and access to its nuclear
program or stockpile. This is where
Grossi's game was up and even Iranians
who in my view have been foolish all
along in trusting this rogue
organization realized that they couldn't
possibly let GCI inflict more harm on
the interest of the Islamic Republic. As
I said earlier, what would be a killer
blow to Grossi and his masters in the US and
Israel is if Iran formally withdraws
from the NPT. Experts say that with the
IAEA removing all its inspectors from
Iran and Tehran embarking on a journey of
nuclear ambiguity, it will be a real
challenge for both Israel and the US to
carry out effective snooping in the
Islamic Republic in the absence of their
eyes and ears. In other words, the IAEA
inspectors.
That's it from me. Thank you very much
for your support of this platform and
our journalism on buy me a coffee.com
and Patreon. If you do think that our
journalism is worth supporting, then you
too should consider becoming part of it.
Details are there in the description of
this video. In the meantime, if you
haven't subscribed to my channel, please
do so because that's one of the many
ways you can support independent
journalism. God bless you all.

[admin]

Part 1 of 2

US Supreme Court drops SHOCKING ruling
by Brian Tyler Cohen
Jul 6, 2025 Brian Tyler Cohen

INTERVIEW - Brian interviews Norm Eisen about a shocking ruling from the US Supreme Court

Department of Homeland Security, et al., Applicants
v.
D.V.D., et al.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.asp ... a1153.html
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 3_2co3.pdf
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 3_l5gm.pdf

Transcript

I'm joined now by the founder of
Democracy Defenders Fund and Obama
ambassador and White House ethics are
Norm Eisen. Norm, thanks so much for
joining me. I want to discuss right now
uh a major situation that's unfolding in
the courts that has to do with both the
US Supreme Court and an emergency motion
that was filed. Can you explain what
just happened? Brian, uh one of the most
tragic events in certainly my 30 plus
years of following the Supreme Court. I
think one that historians will look back
on with her. The Supreme Court or
perhaps I should call them uh John
Roberts MAGA Tribunal allowed the
deportation
of migrants uh from a the United States
to a US military facility in Djibouti on
uh the Horn of Africa to South Sudan
where they face a risk of torture.
Uh nevertheless, the Supreme Court
allowed that third country deportation
there to South Sudan in my view without
proper due process. It's shocking. So in
terms of the emergency motion, can you
explain what the plaintiffs were seeking
to do? This is a case about a group of
eight migrants who um
deportation from the United States to um
our military base in Djibouti where they
were kept in a uh air
conditioned uh cargo
uh holder. I mean it's unbelievable.
This is a case where a judge, Judge
Brian Murphy in the district of
Massachusetts had said, "You can't
deport them."
Nevertheless, the United States did
deport them in defiance of his orders.
went up to the Supreme Court and uh the
Supreme Court uh held uh o over uh
dissents
uh from the uh three democraticapp
appointed minority members of the court.
The Roberts Mega Tribunal said they can
be uh deported, they can be sent abroad.
And then uh the they went back to court
and said, "Wait a minute, the government
is going to send us to South Sudan where
we have uh danger of being tortured."
Uh first they went to a court, a
District of Columbia federal court on an
emergency basis. That judge, Judge Moss,
transferred the case back to Judge Brian
Murphy. And Judge Murphy said, "It's
wrong. I disagree with it, but I have to
follow the Supreme Court." He refused to
stop the deportation. And as a result,
these migrants were sent from Djibouti
where they were on the US military base
to South Sudan, a country violent uh on
the brink of civil war where there's a
risk of torture. experts say there's a
US statute that says you can't send uh
individuals to a country where they're
going to be tortured. Nevertheless, the
Supreme Court, the MAGA tribunal,
refused to stop it. This is the last
straw for this unjust Supreme Court that's acting as
Trump's enablers in this case. Brian,
I'm having a little bit of trouble
understanding how it's
acceptable, or certainly legal, that you
can send somebody to a country that they
didn't come from. I mean, is the
purpose of of deportation to get them
back to where they came, or is it just to
to purge them from the country, and
wherever they land on the map is
acceptable as far as the US government
is concerned? It's sick. It's a
disgrace.

And what the lawyers for these
individuals were arguing was that
it's not enough that there have been
findings that they're subject to
deportation. We now need to have
additional process
for the issue you identify. But
apparently the court is not explaining
the basis why they have
stayed the district court's order.

That said, we do need to have process.
They're at risk of being tortured. The
court blocked that order. Apparently,
they're thinking -- we're guessing here --
apparently they're thinking as well
they've had some process already to
leave the United States, and it's up
to the executive where they go. But my
god, Brian, this is the United States of
America. We're sending these individuals
to a country, South Sudan, violent,
dangerous. They are at risk of torture
there. And it's heinous. It
ranks with the very worst decisions when
you look back at the history of
this Supreme Court. Inhumane, cruel,
unconstitutional,
against the statute. But it must
have some reasoning like that they've
received the minimum amount of process.
It's sick.

And so what do you presume
the Trump administration's goal is by
virtue of doing this? Because clearly
the countries that they're looking for,
these third countries that
they're looking to deport, to
exile, to disappear immigrants who
are in the United States, are
not vacation destinations. I
mean, the places that they're sending
them are not places that I think any of
these immigrants would want to go.
And so, what is the goal for the Trump
administration as far as you know?

They're embarked upon a reign of terror,
and they want to frighten migrants
who are here. They want to broadcast
around the world that the United States
is a dangerous and unjust place. But why
would we want our allies to
see that it's not targeted?
This is a reign of terror that is
offending all decent human beings around
the world. It's not just discouraging
migrants from coming here, it's
frightening away tourism, one of the
major bases for our economy. Look at
the boom in IT, the internet, AI.
It's fueled by innovators and engineers
who come to this country from all over
the world. They're intimidating and
frightening those people. They're
talking about going after migrants
who are lawfully here. They're sweeping
some of them up in this drag net. So,
it's a draconian overreach. It's
grotesque. It's wrong.

Donald Trump is
underwater with the American public on
the immigration issue, which used to be
one of his strongest issues because of
this kind of cruel overreach. And
when he faces voters, I think in
Virginia, where it's been one of the
highest per capita places of these
reckless, and dangerous, and
intentionally wrong policies, in the
2025 elections in New Jersey, and then in
2026, it's going to be a referendum. I
predict it's going to be a thumping loss
at the ballot box for Donald Trump, who's
also so struggling in polls. This is not
what the American people want.

And shame
on the Roberts court. I've written about
the need to reform the court. There are a
number of the justices who are
there illegitimately because of
manipulations in the United States
Senate. And we're going to have to
have wholesale reform because the
MAGA majority on the Robert's court
are enabling Donald Trump's
unconstitutional,
illegal, cruel, and inhumane behavior.

But do you have any concern that in
kind of some backwards way, because this
new one big beautiful bill passed, it
gives a massive amount of money to
ISIS's budget. And so even though
they're kind of carrying out
these draconian plans, even though their
legality is questionable at best,
even though they have a Supreme Court
in their pockets to allow them to
perpetuate this stuff, that we're
actually going to see more and more and
more by virtue of the sheer deluge of
funds that they're going to be getting
as the result of this bill.

I've
spoken about this before, but ICE's
budget, if it was a military, it would
be the 16th biggest military in the
entire world. ICE will have more
funding than Brazil and Israel's
military in total.

Well, the line that
the Supreme Court has drawn is that
before individuals are deported, they're
entitled to due process, notice, and an
opportunity to be heard. Now, once
that minimum has been achieved, Trump
is running amuck sending people to
third countries.

Brian, we need to
surge. Nobody would have thought that
we'd get almost 200 orders stopping
different parts of the Trump's agenda.
200 times. Even this corrupt MAGA
majority on the court has not been able
to intervene in that sheer volume. And
when you called me and asked me if
I'd come on, you said, "Are you
working?" I said, "Yes, I am. I'm
preparing the lawsuits for next week."
So, myself, democracy defenders fund,
the wonderful democracy litigating
organizations that we work with other actors
defending the constitution like the
labor movement.
That's what's made possible.

We have to
double down. And we intend to do it.
We're going to work twice as hard.
Unfortunately,
the collaborators
in the United States Congress, and in the
Supreme Court, Article One and Article 3
MAGA majorities, collaborating with
Article 2, Trump and his cronies in
the executive branch, are going to make a
lot of work for the courts. But we're
just going to keep on going.

And I will
say, I got to be honest about the
threat. I have to be honest about how
corrupt I think this decision is. Don't
take my word for it. Read the minorities
dissents, excoriating
what happened. Really, it's the
first case. Today was a follow on.
It's the first case that's so terribly
broken. Unanimous minority opposition in
in part one.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 3_l5gm.pdf

Today was just part
two of enforcing that.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 3_2co3.pdf

Even against
all that, we've been able to push the
ball forward. Politico has a story this
weekend that, notwithstanding the Supreme
Court's terrible decision in the Cassa
case on nationwide injunctions. We've
just seen a flurry of class actions
and other positive rulings this week in
which the courts and the litigants are
keeping on going.

As you know, we
were on file with a class action about
birthright citizenship within two hours.
I came on your show to announce it that
day that terrible Supreme Court
decision was announced.

The Hill has
gotten steeper. We're just going to run
twice as hard.

Well, of course, for
everybody watching who's looking to help
the efforts of those people like Norm,
like the folks at State Democracy
Defenders who are actually fighting this
stuff on the front lines in the courts
where it matters, I'm going to put the
link to Democracy Defenders Fund right
here on this screen, and also in the post
description of this video. Norm, as
always, thank you for the work you're
doing, and for coming on with me
today.

Back to drafting my next
complaint, Bryan.
[Music]

**************************

Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 1
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 24A1153
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, ET AL. v. D.V.D., ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
[June 23, 2025]
The application for stay presented to JUSTICE JACKSON and by her referred to the Court is granted. The April 18,2025, preliminary injunction of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, case No. 25–cv– 10676, is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of the Court.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach. It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an Immigration Judge found he was likely to face torture there. Then, in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel. An attentive District Court’s timely intervention only narrowly prevented a third set of unlawful removals to Libya.
Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention
2 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied. I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.
I A
Federal law generally permits the Government to deport noncitizens found to be unlawfully in the United States only to countries with which they have a meaningful connection.8 U. S. C. §1231(b). To that end, Congress specified two default options: noncitizens arrested while entering the country must be returned to the country from which they arrived, and nearly everyone else may designate a country of choice. §§1231(b)(1)(A), (b)(2)(A). If these options prove infeasible, Congress specified which possibilities the Executive should attempt next. These alternatives include the noncitizen’s country of citizenship or her former country of residence. §§1231(b)(1)(C), (2)(E).
This case concerns the Government’s ability to conduct what is known as a “third country removal,” meaning a removal to any “country with a government that will accept the alien.” §1231(b)(1)(C)(iv); see §1231(b)(2)(E)(vii). Third-country removals are burdensome for the affected noncitizen, so Congress has sharply limited their use. They are permissible only after the Government tries each and every alternative noted in the statute, and determines they are all “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible.”§§1231(b)(1)(C)(iv), (2)(E)(vii).
Noncitizens facing removal of any sort are entitled under international and domestic law to raise a claim under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, S. Treaty Doc. No. 100–20, 1465 U. N. T. S. 113. Article 3 of the Convention prohibits returning any person “to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 3
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” The United States is a party to the Convention, and in 1998 Congress passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act to implement its commands. The Act provides that “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.” §2242(a), 112Stat. 2681–822, codified as note to 8 U. S. C. §1231. It also directs the Executive to “prescribe regulations to implement” the Convention. §2242(b), 112 Stat. 2681–822. Those regulations provide, among other things, that “[a] removal order . . . shall not be executed in circumstances that would violate Article 3.” 28 CFR §200.1 (2024).
B On February 18, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an internal guidance document directing immigration officers to “review for removal all cases . . . on the non-detained docket” and “determine the viability of removal to a third country.” No. 1:25–cv–10676 (D Mass.), ECF Doc. No. 1–4, p. 2.Just as DHS circulated this new policy, a Guatemalan man known in this litigation as O. C. G. appeared before an Immigration Judge to seek relief from his impending removal to Guatemala. O. C. G. explained that he had previously been forced to flee Guatemala after facing torture and persecution there for his identity as a gay man. See Dkt. 8–4, p. 1; ECF Doc. 1, p. 24. He fled initially to Mexico, he said, but had not found safety there, either: A group of men raped him and locked him in a room until his sister paid them a ransom. ECF Doc. 8–4, at 1. O. C. G. accordingly asked the judge whether he “could be deported to a country other than Mexico or Guatemala.” Ibid. The Immigration
4 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
Judge granted withholding of removal to Guatemala, the only country designated in the order of removal. Id., at 1– 2; see also ECF Doc. 1, p. 25. Because the government had not sought to remove O. C. G. to Mexico, the Immigration Judge did not address his request for protection against removal there. ECF Doc. 8–4, at 1–2; ECF Doc., at 25.
Two days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement escorted O. C. G. out of his cell and put him on a bus to Mexico. ECF Doc No. 8–4, at 2. On the way, they provided him with “oral notice that he would be removed to Mexico.” See ECF Doc. 106–1, p. 3 (Defendants’ Response to Requests for Admission). DHS did not issue a new order of removal designating Mexico, did not reopen the prior proceedings, and did not provide either O. C. G. or his lawyer with advance notice. Id., at 3–4. Mexican authorities promptly deported O. C. G. back to Guatemala, where hewent into hiding. ECF Doc. 1, at 5.
Along with three noncitizens who feared that they, too, would imminently be whisked off to a “third country” without notice, O. C. G. filed this putative class action under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) against DHS, Secretary Noem, and Attorney General Bondi. Plaintiffs alleged that the Government’s apparent policy of removing noncitizens to a third country without notice or the opportunity to file a claim under the Convention violated the immigration laws, the regulations implementing the Convention, and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Among other things, plaintiffs sought temporary and permanent injunctive relief preventing their own removal and the removal of putative class members without adequate notice and a “meaningful opportunity” to present a claim under the Convention. Id., at 37. Plaintiffs also requested that the Government return O. C. G. to the United States.
On March 28, 2025, the District Court entered a temporary restraining order (TRO) as to both the three individual plaintiffs who remained in the United States and a putative
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 5
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
class of all individuals “subject to a final order of removal from the United States to a third country.” ECF Doc. 34,
p. 2. The order prohibited the defendants from removing the plaintiffs and putative class members to a third country without “written notice of the third country” and “a meaningful opportunity . . . to submit an application” for relief under the Convention. Ibid.
C On March 30, DHS issued a second guidance document, which contained a two-step process for executing third-country removals. If a country provides the United States with what DHS believes to be “credible” “assurances that aliens removed from the United States will not be persecuted or tortured,” then (the policy says) DHS may remove the noncitizen to that country without any process. See App. to Application for Stay of Injunction 54a–55a (App.) The Government says this policy permits DHS to change someone’s “deportation country to Honduras . . . at 6:00
a. m., put [them] on a plane, and fl[y them] to Honduras” 15minutes later. ECF Doc. No. 74, p. 12 (Tr. Apr. 10, 2025).
In the absence of credible “assurances” from a foreign country, the policy provides, “DHS will first inform the alien of ” her impending removal. App. 55a. Even so, the policy prohibits officers from providing the noncitizen with an affirmative opportunity to raise her fear of torture. Only one who “states a fear of removal” unprompted will be given a screening interview, which will take place “within 24 hours of referral.” Ibid. Those who cannot establish their eligibility for relief at the screening interview can apparently be deported immediately, without a chance to provide evidence or seek judicial review. See ECF Doc. 74, at 52– 53.
Around the time it adopted this new policy, DHS arrested four putative class members covered by the TRO. As the Government admits, “DHS . . . typically arrests people to
6 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
remove them.” ECF Doc. 101, p. 39 (Tr. Apr. 28, 2025). Indeed, DHS promptly transferred the four arrested class members to Guantanamo Bay. Id., at 29.
Notwithstanding the TRO’s express prohibition on third-country removals without notice or process, on March 31, the Government placed all four class members held in Guantanamo Bay on a Department of Defense flight to El Salvador.1
At a subsequent hearing, an attorney for the Government claimed DHS had not violated the TRO because the Department of Defense had conducted the removals. According to the agreement that governs the relationship between DHS and the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, however, DHS “has legal custody” of noncitizens detained at Guantanamo Bay “and is responsible for the custody of detained aliens for administrative purposes related to immigration law violations.” ECF Doc. 99–1, p. 2. DHS also remains “responsible for the [noncitizens’] physical custody” at Guantanamo Bay, and for any immigration-related“ transfers, releases, and removals.” Id., at 3. By contrast, the Department of Defense merely provides security and logistical support consistent with DHS’s “guidance.” Id., at 4.
The Government was unable to reconcile its representations to this evidence. Nor could it explain “[w]hat authority” the Department had “to effectuate a deportation.” ECF Doc. 101, at 37.
D On April 18, the District Court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification and for a preliminary injunction,
——————
1Other class members may have been removed to El Salvador as well, but the Government declined to respond to four consecutive requests for information from class counsel seeking clarification. See ECF Doc. 101, at 27. This is presently the subject of discovery in the District Court. See ECF Doc. 88.
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 7
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
holding that the plaintiffs had shown the Government’s process for conducting third-party removals likely violated the Due Process Clause. The injunction requires the Government to provide noncitizens with written notice in advance of a third-country removal (as is statutorily required, see infra, at 15), along with a meaningful opportunity to raise a claim under the Convention. ECF Doc. 64, pp. 46–47.
On May 7, plaintiffs’ counsel received news reports “announcing the imminent removal of . . . Laotian, Vietnamese, and Philippine class members . . . to Libya,” again without notice or an opportunity to object. ECF Doc. 89, p. 2. Plaintiffs thus sought emergency relief from the district court. That same day, the court issued an order “clarif[ying]” its preliminary injunction so as to leave no doubt that “the allegedly imminent removals . . . would clearly violate” the preliminary injunction. ECF Doc. 91, pp. 1–2. That order narrowly averted the deportations.
Had the court not acted, 13 class members would have landed in Tripoli in the midst of violence caused by opposition to their arrival. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later averred in a sworn affidavit that “Libya’s Government of National Unity (GNU) publicly rejected the use of Libyan territory for accepting deportees,” as did “rival authorities based in Benghazi.” App. 71a. Indeed (he explained) the “public reports of potential migration removals to Libya” had caused such unrest that “GNU-aligned forces took action against the two largest armed groups in the Libyan capital on May 12–13, sparking the most serious street fighting in Tripoli since 2022.” Ibid. Contemporary news reports confirm these armed clashes. See, e.g., Armed Clashes Erupt in Libya’s Tripoli After Reported Killing of Armed Group Leader, Reuters, May 12, 2025.
Less than two weeks later, plaintiffs’ counsel received reports of plans for yet more unannounced third-country removals, this time to South Sudan. ECF Doc. 111. At an
8 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
emergency hearing, Government lawyers confirmed that several class members were indeed en route to South Sudan after having received less than 24 hours’ notice of their impending deportations. By the time of the hearing, “DHS be-lieve[d] that the plane [could not] be turned around,” but was unwilling to share its location. ECF Doc. 126, pp. 10, 17 (Tr. May 20, 2025). Attorneys for the government also could not confirm whether “the pilot of the plane and the staff onboard” were aware of the District Court’s preliminary injunction prohibiting the removals. Id., at 16–17.
More details emerged the next day. At approximately
5:45 on the evening of May 19, DHS provided six inmates of an immigration detention facility with a document indicating that they would be removed to South Sudan. See ECF Doc. 145, p. 11 (Tr. May 21, 2025). At 9:35 a.m. the next morning, DHS removed them from their cells and put them on a flight. Id., at 16. Short of the noncitizens “yelling at any of the jailers that they were afraid to go to South Sudan” (as the District Court put it), id., at 13, DHS did not offer the noncitizens an opportunity to assert a claim under the Convention.2
The District Court found that DHS had “unquestionably” violated its order. Id., at 12. Nonetheless, at the Government’s request, the court permitted the Government to provide the requisite process in South Sudan, and it did not order the class members’ return to the United States. See id., at 21, 86, 96.
Meanwhile, discovery proceeded on the status of O. C. G., the Guatemalan man with whom this case began. The Government had previously attested that, before O. C. G.’s removal, an officer had asked him whether he was afraid of
——————
2Notably, days before the plaintiffs filed this suit, the administration “ordered the departure of non-emergency U. S. Government employees from South Sudan,” due to risks posed by “armed conflict” and “fighting between various political and ethnic groups.” Dept. of State, South Sudan Travel Advisory (Mar. 8, 2025).
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 9
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
returning to Mexico, and O. C. G. had responded that he was not. On the eve of that officer’s deposition, however, the Government submitted an “errata sheet” admitting the information had been false. See ECF Doc. 103–1, p. 2; ECF Doc. 105, pp. 2–3. Because O. C. G. had been removed to Mexico without notice or an opportunity to file a claim under the Convention, the District Court ordered the Government to facilitate his return. The Government eventually agreed to comply with that order. See ECF Doc. 143.
The Government has appealed the merits of the preliminary injunction to the First Circuit, where briefing is ongoing. Pending that appeal, it seeks permission to continue its practice of conducting third-country removals without notice. Both the District Court and the First Circuit denied that request. The Government now asks this Court for an emergency stay of the preliminary injunction.
II This Court “will grant a stay pending appeal only under extraordinary circumstances,” Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto, Co., 463 U. S. 1315, 1316 (1983) (Blackmun, J., in chambers), especially where two lower courts have already denied such relief, Packwood v. Senate Select Comm. on Ethics, 510 U. S. 1319, 1320 (1994) (Rehnquist, C. J., inchambers). Ordinarily, the Court considers the likelihood of irreparable harm to the applicant absent emergency intervention, the applicant’s likelihood of success on the merits of an appeal to this Court, and the equities. See Hollingsworth v. Perry, 558 U. S. 183, 190 (2010) (per curiam);see also Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 434 (2009).
A
“[B]egin with the basic proposition that all orders and judgments of courts must be complied with promptly.” Maness v. Meyers, 419 U. S. 449, 458 (1975). This Court often reiterates that “‘[a] stay is not a matter of right,’” but “an exercise of judicial discretion.” Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc.
10 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
v. FCC, 316 U. S. 4, 10 (1942); see also Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U. S. 7, 24 (2008). That is so because stays are equitable remedies, which courts may (but need not) grant in order to resolve ongoing emergencies and “‘clear away all intermediate obstructions against complete justice.’” Hipp v. Babin, 19 How. 271, 274 (1857).
For centuries, courts have “close[d] the doors” of equity to those “tainted with inequitableness or bad faith relative tothe matter in which [they] see[k] relief.” Precision Instrument Mfg. Co. v. Automotive Maintenance Machinery Co., 324 U. S. 806, 814 (1945); see generally T. Anenson, Announcing the “Clean Hands” Doctrine, 51 U. C. D. L. Rev,1827 (2018) (reviewing this doctrine’s long history). That principle, “rooted in the historical concept of [the] court o fequity as a vehicle for affirmatively enforcing the requirements of conscience and good faith,” ensures that courts do not become “‘abettor[s] of inequity.’” Precision Instrument, 324 U. S., at 814.
Here, in violation of an unambiguous TRO, the Government flew four noncitizens to Guantanamo Bay, and from there deported them to El Salvador. Then, in violation of the very preliminary injunction from which it now seeks relief, the Government removed six class members to South Sudan with less than 16 hours’ notice and no opportunity to be heard. The Government’s assertion that these deportations could be reconciled with the injunction is wholly without merit. Notice at 5:45 p.m. for a 9:35 a.m. deportation, provided to a detainee without access to an attorney, plainly does not “‘affor[d]’” that noncitizen with “‘a reasonable time’” to seek relief. A. A. R. P. v. Trump, 605 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (per curiam) (slip op., at 4).
Even if the Government’s overnight notice had been adequate, moreover, DHS also did not provide the required “meaningful opportunity . . . to raise a fear of return” under the Convention. ECF Doc. 64, at 46. The affected class
11 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
members lacked any opportunity to research South Sudan, to determine whether they would face risks of torture or death there, or to speak to anyone about their concerns. Instead, they were left in their cells overnight with no chance to raise a claim and deported the next morning.
The Government thus openly flouted two court orders, including the one from which it now seeks relief. Even if the orders in question had been mistaken, the Government had a duty to obey them until they were “‘reversed by orderly and proper proceedings.’” Maness, 419 U. S., at 459 (quoting United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 293 (1947)). That principle is a bedrock of the rule of law. The Government’s misconduct threatens it to its core.
So too does this Court’s decision to grant the Government equitable relief. This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last. See Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam). Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.
B In light of the Government’s flagrantly unlawful conduct, today’s decision might suggest the Government faces extraordinary harms. Yet even that is not the case. Rather, following a recent trend, the Court appears to give no serious consideration to the irreparable harm factor. See, e.g., id., at ___ (slip op., at ___); SSA v. AFSCME, 605 U. S. ___ (2025). Without a showing that a stay is necessary to avoid irreparable harm, however, this Court’s midstream intervention is inexcusable. See, e.g., Hollingsworth, 558 U. S., at 190. Besides the facially absurd contention that the Executive is “irreparabl[y]” harmed any time a court orders it temporarily to refrain from doing something it would like to do, see Application for Stay of Injunction 37, the Government
12 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
has identified no irreparable harm from the challenged preliminary injunction. Instead, the Government locates the source of its injury in the District Court’s efforts to provide relief to the class members in South Sudan. Id., at 37–39. That argument is misguided. First, the District Court’s remedial orders are not properly before this Court because the Government has not appealed them, nor sought a stay pending a forthcoming appeal. Second, the court adopted the narrowest possible remedy, allowing the Government itself to choose whether it would return the class members to the United States or provide them with process where they are held. Finally, the Government is in every respect responsible for any resulting harms. Had it complied with the preliminary injunction, no followup orders would have been necessary, nor would the Government have faced a “sudden need . . . to detain criminal aliens” abroad. Id., at
39. It does not face such “need” today, as it can return the noncitizens it wrongfully removed at any time. No litigant, not even the Government, may “satisfy the irreparable harm requirement if the harm complained of is self-inflicted.” 11A C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure §2948.1 (3d ed. 2013); Bennett v. Isagenix Int’l, LLC, 118 F. 4th 1120, 1129–1130 (CA9 2024).
For their part, the plaintiffs in this case face extraordinary harms from even a temporary grant of relief to the Government. A. A. R. P. v. Trump, 605 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (recognizing detainees’ interests against removal are “particularly weighty”). The Government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard. The episodes of noncompliance in this very case illustrate the risks. Thirteen noncitizens narrowly escaped being the target of extraordinary violence in Libya; O. C. G. spent months in hiding in Guatemala; others face release in South Sudan, which the State Department says is in the midst of “‘armed conflict’” between
13 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
“‘ethnic groups.’” N. 2, supra. Only the District Court’s careful attention to this case prevented worse outcomes. Yet today the Court obstructs those proceedings, exposing thousands to the risk of torture or death.
III On the merits of its appeal, the Government principally raises a bevy of jurisdictional objections. Given its conduct in these proceedings, the Government’s posture resembles that of the arsonist who calls 911 to report firefighters for violating a local noise ordinance. In any event, the Government has not established a likelihood of success on any of its arguments.
A The Government points to six separate provisions that, it says, deprived the District Court of jurisdiction to hear this dispute. See Application for Stay of Injunction 4–6, 19–28.The Government’s core objection is this: By way of a series of complicated immigration-law provisions, Congress sought to consolidate all of an individual’s objections to an order of removal into a single petition for review. See 8
U. S. C. §§1252(a)(4), (5), (b)(9), §1231 note. Ultimately, the Government says, the plaintiffs in this case object to their removal. So, they should bring their challenges in a petition for review of an order of removal. Yet the Government also claims that it need not issue or reopen any orders of removal before deporting someone to a third country. That is part of the problem plaintiffs seek to remedy: Without an applicable order of removal, they have no way to raise their claims under the Convention. In the end, then, the Government’s view is that the only way to challenge its refusal to provide orders of removal is to appeal those (nonexistent) orders. That is absurd. Nothing in the Government’s cited provisions bars the plaintiffs from bringing a challenge to
14 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
the Government’s no-notice removals directly in federal district court.
Only one jurisdictional objection remains with any force. Under §1252(f )(1), “no court (other than the Supreme Court) shall have jurisdiction or authority to enjoin or restrain the operation” of certain provisions in the immigration laws, except on an individual basis. Section 1231(b),the provision governing third-country removals, is one of those provisions. As a consequence, courts may not grant “classwide injunctive relief ” to enjoin the “operation” of §1231(b). Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525 U. S. 471, 481 (1999).
As an initial matter, §1252(f )(1) undisputedly does not affect the District Court’s authority to grant relief to the individual plaintiffs here; it affects only the classwide injunction. Thus, even if the Government is correct that classwide relief was impermissible here, it plainly remains obligated to comply with orders enjoining its conduct with respect to individual plaintiffs.
As for the propriety of classwide relief, it is difficult to say whether the District Court’s injunction enjoined the “operation” of §1231(b). Certainly, the Government is not enjoined from executing third-country removals. The court has only barred the Government from executing such removals without notice, pursuant to the DHS policy, which(the court found) deprives noncitizens of their statutory and due process rights. This Court has indicated that courts “may enjoin the unlawful operation” of laws “not specified in §1252(f )(1) even if that injunction has some collateral effect on the operation of a covered provision.” Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, 596 U. S. 543, 553, n. 4 (2022) (emphasis deleted). So §1252(f )(1) would bar classwide relief here only if the Government’s no-process policy were central to the “operation” of §1231(b) and not merely “collateral” to it. Ibid., n. 4. At a minimum, that presents a difficult question this Court should not decide without briefing, argument, or
15 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
time for reflection.
Even if the Government could establish that its enjoined actions (of providing no notice or process) are integral to the “operation” of §1231(b), that in turn would raise a “‘seriousconstitutional question.’” Webster v. Doe, 486 U. S. 592, 603 (1988). That is because, as the Government reads it, §1252(f )(1) threatens to nullify plaintiffs’ procedural due process rights entirely. Recall that the Government claims it may remove noncitizens in the space of 15 minutes. See supra, at 4. Such noncitizens cannot practicably file individual lawsuits to vindicate their due process rights. After all, they will not know of the need to file a claim until they are on a bus or plane out of the country. Nor will their counsel, whom the Government refuses to notify. The Government can hardly expect every deportable noncitizen to file a pre-emptive lawsuit. Thus, if §1252(f )(1) precludes class-wide vindication of the right to notice and due process under these circumstances, then it effectively nullifies those rights.
Whether Congress can nullify a due process right by way of a jurisdiction-stripping provision is a difficult question. See Webster, 486 U. S., at 603 (citing Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U. S. 667, 681, n. 12 (1986)). The Government has not attempted to show that it is likely to succeed on that issue.
B That leaves, finally, the merits of plaintiffs’ underlying APA and due process claims. Begin with the statutory and regulatory scheme governing removal. In the Government’s view, once a noncitizen has been found removable, she can effectively be removed anywhere at any time. That view would render meaningless the countless statutory and regulatory provisions providing for notice and a hearing. See, e.g., 8 U. S. C. §1229(a)(1) (“In removal proceedings under section 1229a . . . written notice . . . shall be given . . .
16 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
to the alien or to the alien’s counsel of record”); 8 CFR§1240.10(f ) (2024) (in removal hearing, the Immigration Judge “shall . . . identify for the record a country, or countries in the alternative, to which the alien’s removal may be made”); §241.8(e) (when a removal order is reinstated after a noncitizen illegally reenters the country, noncitizen who “expresses a fear of returning to the country designated in that order” must be given an interview (emphasis added));8 U. S. C. §§1228(b)(1)–(3) (noncitizens determined removable due to felony conviction must be given notice under §1229(a) and 14 days “to apply for judicial review”); 8 CFR§238.1(b)(2) (requiring notice to noncitizens removable due to felony convictions).
The Government asserts that it need only comply with these provisions once, for the first removal proceeding, and can disregard them afterwards. The consequence of that view is that what happens in removal proceedings simply does not matter. The Government could designate any location in its initial order, lose before the immigration judge, decline to appeal, and promptly thereafter deport the noncitizen to a country of the Government’s choosing. Indeed, that is precisely what happened in O. C. G.’s case.
Where did the Government find the authority to disregard Congress’s carefully calibrated scheme of immigration laws? It does not argue the third-country removal statute provides it. See Application for Stay of Injunction 13. Instead, the Government simply falls back on the Executive’s implied authority in this field. Yet “the President must comply with legislation regulating or restricting the transfer of detainees” even in “wartime.” Kiyemba v. Obama, 561
F. 3d 509, 517 (CADC 2009) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). It is a “‘cardinal principle of statutory construction,’” moreover, that statutes should be construed so that “‘no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant.’” TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U. S. 19, 31 (2001). Here the Government construes the statute’s lack of “a particular
17 Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
process for carrying out” third-country removals, Application for Stay of Injunction 13, as conveying near-unlimited power to the Executive, rendering the remaining statutory scheme “‘void . . . or insignificant.’” TRW, 534 U. S., at 31. To make this claim is to ignore the clear statutory command that notice and a hearing must be provided. See supra, at
15. The Government cannot show a likelihood of success on plaintiffs’ statutory and regulatory claims, nor can it defend the lawfulness of its no-notice removals.
Turning to the constitutional claim, this Court has repeatedly affirmed that “ ‘the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law’ in the context of removal proceedings.” J. G. G., 604 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3); A. A. R. P., 605 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3). Due process includes reasonable notice and an opportunity to be heard. Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306, 314 (1950). Of course the Government cannot avoid its obligation to provide due process “in the context of removal proceedings,” J. G. G., 604 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3), by skipping such proceedings entirely and simply whisking noncitizens off the street and onto busses or planes out of the country.
It is axiomatic, moreover, that when Congress enacts a statutory entitlement, basic procedural due process protections attach. Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 332 (1976). Congress expressly provided noncitizens with the right not to be removed to a country where they are likely to be tortured or killed. See 8 U. S. C. §1231 note. As this Court has explained, the “‘right to be heard before being condemned to suffer grievous loss of any kind . . . is a principle basic to our society.’” Mathews, 424 U. S., at 333 (quoting Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341
U. S. 123, 168 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring)). Being deprived of the right not to be deported to a country likely to torture or kill you plainly counts. Thus, plaintiffs have aright to be heard.
18 DHS v. D.V.D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
The Government barely disputes these basic principles. Instead, it obfuscates the issue by asserting that some (perhaps “many”) members of the class should be treated as if they never entered the United States. Application for Stay of Injunction 33–34. Yet even if that were true as to some class members, it could show at most that the class might be too broadly defined, not that the Government is likely to succeed on the constitutional merits.
Similarly, the Government relies on precedent about the wartime transfer of detainees to assert that the Executive’s determination that “a country will not torture a person on his removal” is “conclusive.” Id., at 29 (citing Munaf v. Geren, 553 U. S. 674 (2008) and Kiyemba, 561 F. 3d 509).Yet the immigration laws provide for judicial review of “factual challenges to” orders denying relief under the Convention, Nasrallah v. Barr, 590 U. S. 573, 581 (2020), so plainly the Executive’s determinations are not “conclusive” here. In any event, the plaintiffs in this case do not challenge any executive determination. There is no evidence in this case that the Government ever did determine that the countries it designated (Libya, El Salvador, and South Sudan) “w[ould] not torture” the plaintiffs. Application for Stay of Injunction 29. Plaintiffs merely seek access to notice and process, so that, in the event the Executive makes a determination in their case, they learn about it in time to seek an immigration judge’s review. The Fifth Amendment unambiguously guarantees that right.
* * * The Due Process Clause represents “the principle that ours is a government of laws, not of men, and that we submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules.” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 646 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring). By rewarding lawlessness, the Court once again undermines that foundational principle. Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 19
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
violence in far flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled. That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable. Respectfully, but regretfully, I dissent.

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Part 2 of 2

Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 1
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 24A1153
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, ET AL. v.
D. V. D., ET AL.
ON MOTION FOR CLARIFICATION
[July 3, 2025]
On April 18, 2025, the District Court for the District of Massachusetts preliminarily enjoined the Government from removing “any alien” to a “country not explicitly provided for on the alien’s order of removal” without following certain procedures designed to enable the alien to seek relief under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT),Dec. 10, 1984, S. Treaty Doc. No. 100−20, 1465 U. N. T. S.
113. No. 25−cv−10676, ECF Doc. 64, pp. 46−47. The District Court later found that the Government had violated that injunction by failing to provide six class members a “meaningful opportunity” to assert CAT claims before such removal. ECF Doc. 118, p. 1. On May 21, the District Court issued an “order on remedy,” directing the Government to follow specified procedures with respect to those individuals, tailored to the circumstances. ECF Doc. 119. The Government sought a stay of the April 18 injunction before our Court.
On June 23, we stayed the April 18 preliminary injunction pending disposition of any appeal and petition for writ of certiorari. Later that day, however, the District Court issued a minute order stating that the May 21 remedial order “remain[ed] in full force and effect,” “notwithstanding” our stay of the preliminary injunction. ECF Doc. 176. The only authority it cited was the dissent from the stay order.
The Government has moved for “an order clarifying” our
2 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY v. D. V. D.
stay. Motion for Clarification. It argues that the stay of the April 18 preliminary injunction divests the May 21 remedial order of enforceability. Respondents argue that the District Court correctly understood the May 21 order to remain in effect—despite our stay of the preliminary injunction it purported to enforce—because the May 21 order effectively operates as a remedy for civil contempt.
The motion for clarification is granted. Our June 23 order stayed the April 18 preliminary injunction in full. The May 21 remedial order cannot now be used to enforce an injunction that our stay rendered unenforceable. See Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 428 (2009) (explaining that a reviewing court’s stay order “divest[s]” the district court “order of enforceability”). Even if we accepted respondents’ characterization of the May 21 order, such a remedy would serve to “coerce” the Government into “compliance” and would be unenforceable given our stay of the underlying injunction. United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 303 (1947); see id., at 295 (“The right to remedial relief falls with an injunction which events prove was erroneously issued and a fortiori when the injunction or restraining order was beyond the jurisdiction of the court.” (citations and footnote omitted)).
Despite the dissent’s provocative language, see post, at 6 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.), a claim that a lower court has failed to give effect to an order of this Court is properly addressed here. General Atomic Co. v. Felter, 436 U. S. 493, 497 (1978) (per curiam) (“A litigant who . . . has obtained judgment in this Court after a lengthy process of litigation, involving several layers of courts, should not be required to go through that entire process again to obtain execution of the judgment of this Court.”); see United States v. Fossatt, 21 How. 445, 446 (1859). “Assuming as we do” that the District Court will now conform its order to our previous stay and cease enforcing the April 18 injunction through the May 21 remedial order, we have no occasion to reach the
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 3
Government’s other requests for relief. Cf. Deen v. Hickman, 358 U. S. 57, 58 (1958) (per curiam). If the Government wishes to seek additional relief in aid of the execution of our mandate, it may do so through mandamus. See In re Sanford Fork & Tool Co., 160 U. S. 247, 255 (1895) (explaining that any matter “disposed of by” decree of this Court must be carried “into execution, according to the mandate,” by the courts below).
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Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 1
KAGAN, J., concurring
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 24A1153
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, ET AL. v.
D. V. D., ET AL.
ON MOTION FOR CLARIFICATION
[July 3, 2025]
JUSTICE KAGAN, concurring.
I voted to deny the Government’s previous stay application in this case, and I continue to believe that this Court should not have stayed the District Court’s April 18 order enjoining the Government from deporting non-citizens to third countries without notice or a meaningful opportunity to be heard. See DHS v. D. V. D., 606 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2025) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 9–18). But a majority of this Court saw things differently, and I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed. See United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 294–295 (1947); Worden v. Searls, 121 U. S. 14, 24–26 (1887). Because continued enforcement of the District Court’s May 21, 2025 order would do just that, I vote to grant the Government’s motion for clarification.
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_________________
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 1
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 24A1153
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, ET AL. v.
D. V. D., ET AL.
ON MOTION FOR CLARIFICATION
[July 3, 2025]
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE JACKSON joins, dissenting.
The United States may not deport noncitizens to a country where they are likely to be tortured or killed. International and domestic law guarantee that basic human right. In this case, the Government seeks to nullify it by deporting noncitizens to potentially dangerous countries without notice or the opportunity to assert a fear of torture. Because the Fifth Amendment, immigration law, federal regulations, and this Court’s precedent unambiguously prohibit such no-notice deportations, see DHS v. D. V. D., 606 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2025) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 15–18), a Federal District Court issued a classwide preliminary injunction barring the Government from removing noncitizens without notice and adequate process.
The Government appealed, and pending its appeal repeatedly violated the District Court’s order. See id., at ___– ___ (slip op., at 2–9). Meanwhile, the Government sought an emergency stay of the injunction from this Court. In its briefing, the Government took a kitchen-sink approach, arguing that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to grant classwide injunctive relief, that it also lacked jurisdiction over individual plaintiffs’ claims under the Due Process Clause, and that the plaintiffs were not entitled to notice ora hearing before their removal. Without citing any of these arguments, or indeed providing any legal justification, this
2 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY v. D. V. D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
Court granted the Government its requested stay.
Now, the Government returns for more. At issue in its latest filing is a month-old remedial order, which the District Court issued after the Government attempted illegally to deport eight class members to South Sudan. The remedial order required the Government to provide those noncitizens, whom it is currently holding in Djibouti, with the process to which the Constitution and federal law entitled them: adequate notice and an opportunity to be heard. No. 25–cv–10676 (D Mass., May 21, 2025) ECF Doc. 119. Following this Court’s unreasoned stay of the original preliminary injunction, the District Court issued a minute order explaining that its remedial order (which the Government did not appeal, and whose validity this Court therefore did not consider) remained in effect. ECF Doc. 176. Rather than complying with the remedial order, the Government immediately returned to this Court, purporting to seek “clarification” of the stay.
What the Government wants to do, concretely, is send the eight noncitizens it illegally removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be turned over to the local authorities without regard for the likelihood that they will face torture or death. Because “‘the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law’ in the context of removal proceedings,” Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (per curiam) (slip op., at 3), the Government’s no-notice removals are undoubtedly illegal, see D. V. D., 606 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 15–18)(SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting). In simple terms, the Government requests that the Court remove an obstacle to its achieving those unlawful ends. That obstacle, again, is the District Court’s remedial order, which it issued to resolve the Government’s violations of the preliminary injunction this Court later stayed. The Government now asks this Court to hold that the stay invalidated the remedial order.
In substance, of course, the Government’s new request for
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 3
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
relief has nothing to do with clarification, so this Court has no business considering its merits now. The Court’s Rules make plain where the Government should have pressed its argument about the nature and validity of the remedial order: before the lower courts. See this Court’s Rule 23(3) (“Except in the most extraordinary circumstances, an application for a stay will not be entertained unless the relief requested was first sought in the appropriate court or courts below”); cf. A. A. R. P. v. Trump, 604 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (ALITO, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 3) (emphasizing need to comply with Rule 23, and criticizing this Court for granting relief when it was “doubtful” that the applicants’ request to the lower courts had been adequate). The Government undisputedly did not comply with that Rule.
Litigants may alternatively seek an “extraordinary writ,” such as an injunction, even without complying with Rule
23. See this Court’s Rule 20(1). Yet that relief is available only if it would “aid . . . the Court’s appellate jurisdiction.” Ibid. Far from maintaining our jurisdiction, vacating the District Court’s remedial order risks doing the opposite: destroying jurisdiction over the noncitizens the Government intends to deport without notice or process. The Government thus plainly cannot satisfy Rule 20’s requirements, either. Finally, even the majority does not believe that the Government is entitled to mandamus relief.
Although Members of today’s majority have previously insisted that “this Court should follow established procedures” when granting emergency relief, A. A. R. P., 604
U. S., at ____ (ALITO, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 5), the Court now ignores its Rules to grant the Government its desired “clarification” immediately. The majority suggests(relying on an argument the Government did not make) that a remedy for civil contempt is not enforceable when the
4 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY v. D. V. D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
underlying injunction has been stayed.1 Ante, at 2. Perhaps that should be the rule, but the question appears to be a matter of first impression in this Court. In support of its view, the majority cites a single line of dictum in United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258 (1947), which says that the right to remedial relief for civil contempt “falls with an injunction which events prove was erroneously issued.” Id., at 295. “Preliminary injunctions, however, do not conclusively resolve legal disputes,” and neither do temporary stay orders. See Lackey v. Stinnie, 604 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (slip op., at 6). Accordingly, this Court’s stay certainly did not “prove” that the District Court’s injunction was “erroneously issued.” Mine Workers, 330 U. S., at 295.2
Given that the majority can muster no more than a sentence of 80-year-old dictum in support of today’s holding, the District Court can hardly be faulted for reaching a contrary conclusion. The District Court, moreover, had only moments to decide the question, for (unlike this Court) it
——————
1To be clear, even the majority today does not dispute that “[v]iolations of an order are punishable as criminal contempt even though the order is set aside on appeal, . . . or though the basic action has become moot.” United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 294 (1947) (citing Worden
v. Searls, 121 U. S. 14 (1887), and Gompers v. Bucks Stove & Range Co., 221 U. S. 418 (1911)). Civil contempt orders in turn “may . . . be employed for either or both of two purposes: to coerce the defendant into compliance with the court’s order, and to compensate the complainant for losses sustained.” 330 U. S., at 303–304. The majority appears to construe the District Court’s order as serving the former purpose. See ante, at 2.
2 After first adopting the Government’s characterization of its request as one for “clarification,” see ante, at 1–2, the majority later appears to justify its premature intervention by treating it as a request for mandamus relief, see ante, at 2 (“[A] claim that a lower court has failed to give effect to an order of this Court is properly addressed here”). Even the majority, however, does not believe that mandamus relief is warranted. Its reliance on General Atomic Co. v. Felter, 436 U. S. 493 (1978) explains why. There, a District Court disobeyed a clear instruction “specifically addressed” in this Court’s opinion. Id., at 496. Here, this Court did not see fit to provide the District Court with any instructions.
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 5
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
realized that the lives and safety of eight noncitizens were at stake. Any suggestion that the District Court failed to carry “‘into execution’” this Court’s mandate (which said no more than that the Government’s application was “granted”) is patently inappropriate. Cf. ante, at 3. That the Government accuses the District Court, whose orders it has consistently ignored, of “unprecedented defiance,” is more extraordinary still. Motion for Clarification 1. Even now, the Government seeks to defy this Court’s clear holdings that it must afford noncitizens with due process of law before removing them.
In the end, the majority ignores the Court’s Rules for seeking emergency relief and creates new law on civil contempt, all to allow the Government to circumvent the appellate process with respect to an order it continues to defy. In so doing, the Court focuses on dictum in Mine Workers at the cost of discarding that case’s central message: “‘An injunction duly issuing out of a court of general jurisdiction . . . and served upon persons made parties therein . . . must be obeyed by them however erroneous the action of the court may be.’” 330 U. S., at 293–294.
For all that, moreover, the majority does not actually clarify its prior decision. The majority says it expects “that the District Court will now conform its order to our previous stay,” ante, at 2, but it refuses to explain what such conformity would involve. As a result, today’s order not only excuses (once again) the Government’s undisguised contempt for the Judiciary; it also leaves the District Court without any guidance about how this litigation should proceed. The District Court cannot adjudicate plaintiffs’ serious due process claims on their merits without ensuring, byway of injunctive relief, its jurisdiction over the case. Yet this Court refuses to explain what injunctive relief, if any, it believes the District Court can issue.
Perhaps the majority hopes that, in light of its content-less stay order, the District Court will simply give up on
6 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY v. D. V. D.
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
adjudicating this case. But if this Court wishes to permit the Government to flout the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Due Process Clause, it cannot avoid accountability for that lawlessness by tasking the lower courts with inventing a rationale. The Court’s continued refusal to justify its extraordinary decisions in this case, even as it faults lower courts for failing properly to divine their import, is indefensible.
* * * “In a democracy, power implies responsibility. The greater the power that defies law the less tolerant can this Court be of defiance. As the Nation’s ultimate judicial tribunal, this Court, beyond any other organ of society, is the trustee of law and charged with the duty of securing obedience to it.” Mine Workers, 330 U. S., at 312 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment). This Court continues to invert those principles. Today’s order clarifies only one thing: Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial. Respectfully, I dissent.

[admin]

INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT RITTER: One giant grift is a Musk gift
by George Galloway
Jul 6, 2025 #MOATS #ScottRitter #ElonMusk

Long time Republican Scott Ritter says, 'We need a change.' And Musk's new party is 'the change we need'. Targeting swing seats the key



Transcript

Do I need to introduce Scott Ritter to
you? He's a man that knows more, has
forgotten more about war and the
politics of war than virtually anybody
alive. He is our most popular guest,
always on the mother of all talk shows,
and he certainly will always be welcome
here by me. Scott Ritter, former marine
intelligence officer. Uh tell us uh if
you will before we get on to your areas
of absolute specialtity. What do you
make of Elon Musk's uh new party? I'm
thrilled to death. Um look, I I'm a
longtime Republican. I Reagan
Republican. I've watched the Republican
party um you know just become something
that's unrecognizable under George W.
Bush. um and you know saw Donald Trump
um make a move to transform it. Um his
first term of course was not
transformative.
I I I guess I uh out of an abundance of
hope and wishful thinking believed that
his second term would be the revolution
that he promised. And um it just turns
out it's just one giant grift. He is the
same as he's always been. It was a
knowable fact that um you know that I
overlooked. Um
and we need a change and I think that um
what Elon Musk is proposing this third
party is the change we need. America
can't accept a continuation of the
uniarty duality that has corrupted our
our country for these many past decades.
He uh quoting uh Sunzu
uh clearly intends to concentrate uh
overwhelming force at one particular
point or set of points on the electoral
battlefield. In other words, uh he's not
going to scatter gun uh his political
efforts over the entire country, but
concentrate on what you might call swing
states. Is that wise? And is that your
understanding of what he intends to do?
It's my understanding of what he intends
to do. And taking a look at the failure
of third party movements historically in
the United States that have tried to
challenge
uh the existing elites across the entire
spectrum of politics um and have failed.
Uh I think you know his his approach to
pick some swing states and get just
enough seats to become uh the swing
vote. Um and now you have you know
there's a lot of talk u you know I spoke
with Dennis Cusinich a man who I have
deep admire admiration for uh former
congressman from the state of Ohio for
mayor of Cleveland. um and he was
running for office as an independent and
uh in cle in Ohio and he said look with
the house as close as it is one
independent vote uh now make that that
could spell the difference makes you
almost the most powerful person in
Congress. Could you imagine having 10 to
12 votes in the House of
Representatives? Uh, and if you took
those 10 to 12 votes and put them on an
issue, that issue wins the leverage that
you now have. The same thing in a in a
Senate that is
as close to 50/50 as it can get. Uh,
having two or three senators, um, this
is brilliance on the part of Elon Musk.
And um once you can establish that
leverage um then you can show the
American people that there is the
possibility of change and you can begin
to grow. So rather than shooting for the
moon, you take you know you you
accomplish um a task that will be
meaningful. I mean, if he can accomplish
this, if he truly can get a a purple
party to challenge the red and the blue,
um this this could be that which is
necessary to fix America because right
now the the dual party system has broken
America. I mean, we just 37 trillion in
debt. We're up to 42 trillion
automatically because of some stupid
bill that violates every promise the
president made on the campaign trail.
We need a third party. I remember
saying, Scott, I think you probably
remember it too, uh, when uh, Tony Blair
expelled me from the Labor Party over
the Iraq war. I remember saying, and I
rolled my ars, as I was saying it, that
Tony Blair will ru the day that he did
this. And I'm glad to say I did make him
ru it uh, not twice, but three times.
Um, Donald Trump will ru the day uh that
he for no real good reason fell out with
Elon Musk, won't he? I believe so. But I
also believe in retrospect that this
falling out was inevitable. Elon Musk is
a man who he and I don't agree on
everything. I think you've made the same
the same comment. Um, I will forever
embrace Elon Musk as a defender of free
speech. Um, and I also respect the fact
that Elon Musk,
um, more than any American politician
I've met recently or know, uh, is a man
of character, um, a man of substance.
And when the president brought him in to
make these changes to look for fraud and
abuse uh, in the government, Elon Musk
did this job. And now the president's
been shown to be a liar, a grifter, um a
user, uh and he turned his back. He he
got what he needed from Elon Musk, the
political headlines, and then he
discarded Elon Musk. And uh Elon Musk
has every right to uh to take umbrage at
this. The American public should
definitely take umbrage at this. And
Donald Trump will ru the day. I can't
roll my arms like you, but he will ru
the day that he uh that he jettisoned
Elon Musk. I hung out with uh with Elon
Musk's father in Moscow and uh with due
account for uh the fact that a father
and son, you know, it's a close
relationship. Uh he did say one thing
and he said it more than once and if it
turns out to be accurate will change a
lot of things. He said that Musk hates
lying. In fact, an excess of veracity uh
has often been the cause of great
trouble and strife uh for him and that
uh he discovered that Trump and his
circle were just as big a set of liars
than Biden and Harris and their circle.
If true, that'll be a big breakthrough,
won't it? Absolutely. I think um that's
one thing that Elon Musk and I have uh
in common is um an overadherence to the
truth. Um it does get you in trouble a
lot because uh the world is not black
and white and um many people operate in
different shades of gray and for
somebody who embraces veracity, embraces
the truth, that shade of gray can
oftenimes be a difficult place to
operate. Um and politicians succeed by
being able to operate in that gray uh
without violating um ex to an extreme
fashion, you know, issues of integrity.
Uh Elon Musk will never be a politician
for that reason because he uh he is he
appears to be a man who says what he
means and you know means what he says.
And uh this is a good thing. America
needs more of this. You know, the legend
of Americans, and I say legend because I
understand it's not the the the whole
truth and nothing but the truth, but the
legend of Americans are that we are
people uh maybe simple compared to the
uh complexity of Europe. Um but we're
people that stood our ground, looked you
in the eye, put out our hand, and when
we shook your hand, that was a contract.
That's what I grew up on. I mean, to
this day, I tell people that signature
on a piece of paper doesn't mean as much
to me as a handshake. If I look you in
the eye and I shake your hand, that's my
word to you that it will get done or I
will die trying. And I think Elon Musk
is that kind of guy. And um we need more
of that in America. I mean, this is this
is what this is our foundational
principles. And um I'm you know, like I
said, I'm not the I I can't say that I I
worship you. I don't worship anybody
except my wife. Um but u yeah I can't I
can't find fault with a man who um
believes in telling the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. That's
never a bad thing. Amen to that. Uh
let's turn to uh the war or rather the
wars. Can I get your take first of all,
Scott, on the news which is coming out
until I came on air. Uh there were
several anxious uh statements from the
British that uh a a a ship which I
presume therefore to be British has been
uh punctured in the Red Sea by the Yemen
people's army, the Ansaralah.
uh it would appear uh that it came under
attack that the Yemenes at least say
that it was bound for Israel. Uh and
twinned with that the astonishing fact
that from this poor desert republic
uh astonishingly levels of accuracy uh
of ballistic and now hypersonic missiles
are being fired and landing right on
Bengurian airport. What what is this
Yemen? Has it been visited by uh aliens
that are uh super proficient in the arts
of war? What is it that makes the
Yemenes so incredibly
tenacious, brave, and accurate in their
fire? George, when I was a weapons
inspector in Iraq, um the first thing
that I had to come to grips with was
that the Iraqis were some of the finest
scientists in the world. uh that they
had been educated in European schools,
European universities. Um and you know
these these weren't simple Bedawin
tribesmen who simp who put on a suit um
and were out of place. These were
cultured intellectuals of the highest
order. And the next thing I learned is
that the Iraqis in many ways look to the
Yemen for guidance on certain technical
issues. Um, for instance, the Yemen had
the SS21 Tochka missile. Um, the Iraqis
borrowed a missile, SS21 from the
Yemenes to reverse engineer it and were
in coordination with the Yemenes about,
you know, the complexities of guidance
and control. And this is in the 1990s,
early 1990s. Um, wow. And it always
struck me. I I'm like, wait a minute,
this is Yemen.
These guys wear sandals and they have,
you know, they wear they wear, you know,
dish rags around their heads. And I
mean, I'm being very racist right now,
but a knife a knife, they have the
curved knife, you know, and it's a cool
it's a cool looking knife, but I mean,
come on, man. Um, you know, this is the
modern world we're talking about. And
the Iraqis whenever they spoke of the
Emin always spoke in the highest degree,
not only about their technical
proficiencies, but and I'll give another
war story. We were trying to get during
the Gulf War, we were trying to get the
Saudis to um redeploy troops to the
Kuwaiti border. After all, Iraq invaded
Kuwait. And we were concerned about the
Saudis moving down into the eastern uh
provinces. And we're like, why aren't
you moving your forces? And the Saudis
said, "We ain't moving any forces off
the Yemen border. Those guys are crazy.
And if they come over the border, they
could take Riad." Um, and I'm like,
"Wait a minute. These are just guys who
wear sandals and wear dish rags and they
got a knife. Why are you worried about
them? The Yemen have been um
misunderstood by the West forever. Um
you know,
yes, they wear sandals, yes, they wear
dish rags, and yes, they have an a cool
night, but that's cultural
traditional things. They also have PhDs.
They also are engineers of the highest
order. um they they know how to run a
modern society. If you've been to the
city of SA, you'll see it as a modern
functioning city as is many other places
in Yemen. Um and when it comes to their
defense, you know, they had incorporated
some of the most sophisticated weaponry
of their day and they knew how to use
it. They're experts in its use. And when
it came time to modifying the um the you
know weapons that they had, these Scud
missiles that they had, converting them
into longer range missiles with greater
capabilities, um not only were they
capable of doing this on their own, uh
but when provided the opportunity to
receive assistance from Iran were able
to rapidly assimilate the complexities
of the engineering the Iranians were
speaking of and adapt it to their
indigenous manufacturing base which is
quite sophisticated. Um, and so anybody
who has studied Yemen and studied Yemen
engineering and their military industry,
it would not come as a surprise that
these uh fantastic scientists and
engineers were able to build these
weapons. Um, but for people who continue
to be bound by the prejudice of their
ignorance, um, you wake up one morning
to find a Yemeni missile puncturing your
ship in the Red Sea, wondering how the
hell this happened.
Yeah, they also speak the purest Arabic
and are said to be the purest in faith
matters also. Uh, Yemen is a very
special place indeed. Uh let's uh go to
the Holy Land next. Uh the uh chief of
staff of the Israeli army uh is said to
have had a big shouting match with
Netanyahu this week. He said to
Netanyahu, "We cannot govern uh 2
million people in the Gaza Strip. Uh
who's going to govern them?" uh and uh
Netanyahu said the state of Israel uh
will govern them. Now get ahead and uh
obey your orders. Then I started looking
at recent videos of the guerilla
fighting which is continuing in the
ruins of uh Gaza. I mean it would not
have been out of place in Stalenrad
uh house to house uh fighting and the
the superior armed Israeli occupiers
were getting one hell of a pounding from
not in sandals but in sneakers uh these
young uh fellows who are ready to die to
plant uh an IED under a halftrack under
a tank uh and uh shoot anything that
moves coming out of it. Uh the Israelis
are not doing well in Gaza militarily,
never mind in public relations around
the world. Would you say
the Israelis are losing militarily and
in public relations around the world?
This is a
a an abject disaster for Israel. I mean,
even the 12-day war with Iran, which is
supposed to, you know, show Israel's uh
military supremacy over Iran has failed.
Um, the the censorship of Israel can't
hide the fact that the Iranians dealt
serious blows uh to the Israelis. It was
the Israelis, after all, who begged for
this ceasefire. And now we have Gaza.
You know, I don't want to say I told you
so, but one of the first articles I
wrote about uh a prolonged conflict with
Gaza uh in Gaza by the Israelis, I said,
"Look,
the Hamas Hamas is luring Israel into a
piece of terrain. Israel will have the
ability to destroy the buildings, but
when that happens, you will get
Stalenrad on the surface combined with
Eoima on the bottom. If you know the
battle of Ioima, how the Japanese dug
tunnels in the Mount Serbachi then below
and it haunted the Marines as they
advanced. The Japanese would come up out
of the ground behind the Marines
sometimes in the Marines foxholes, pull
the Marines down and kill them. Yes, the
Marines were able to uh defeat that
because they didn't have Stalingrad on
top of that. They had black volcanic
sand. But now you combine stalenrad on
the top with the tunnels on the bottom.
Um, and Israel will never defeat this,
ever defeat this. Not as long as there
are Hamas fighters ready and prepared to
give their lives in the struggle. And
this is what we see. Uh, we saw in the
first um, you know, was it 11 15 months
of fighting? um I think 15 months um the
when the Hamas came out from the
tunnels,
this wasn't a bunch of rag tag guys who,
you know, just gotten their butts
kicked. This was a proud army. They
strong, uniformed, disciplined. Um I
mean, yes, in the north, when some of
the when the northern brigades came out
intact, they looked a little haggarded
because they had been fighting the
fight. I mean, but they weren't
defeated. They were, you know, resolute
and and the Israelis on the other hand
are a broken army. I mean they Gaza has
changed them. Even with, you know,
amongst the true believers in Israel,
uh, within the IDF, they acknowledge
that Gaza has destroyed them morally.
They are finished. They are done. They
are committing murder on a scale.
There's not even a pretense anymore.
They just straight up say, "We're
killing civilians. We're shooting into
the civilians to establish our presence.
We're murdering the civilians just to
shape the, you know, the the the the
psychological will. This is a war crime
every day. I mean, and this is another
thing that I said. I said, "Sadly, we're
going to get to the point where the
world just wakes up and it's normal to
see 147 dead Palestinian children and we
just go, "Oh, another day." I mean, this
should shock us to death. I mean, we had
a flood in Texas and tragically, you
know, a couple dozen young children have
lost their lives, swept away by the
waters, and a nation is in mourning.
Well, my God, what about the dozens that
are killed every day in Gaza by American
bombs dropped by an American ally
working on the political instructions of
an American president? Where's the
outrage? Where's the shock? There is
none. I mean, this is a sad state of
affairs that we're in. But the bottom
line is the Hamas fighters know. They
know who's killing the children. They
know who's to blame. And they will never
surrender. Never surrender. I don't know
how many times Donald Trump has to say,
"We're going to get rid of Hamas."
You're not going to get rid of Hamas,
Donald Trump. You don't have what it
takes to get rid of Hamas. Hamas is
there in the ground, and you can't get
them out. And the Israeli chief of staff
knows that. And Benjamin Netanyahu is
going to have to learn that the hard
way. I've kept you a long time, but if
you'll forgive me, one last question,
Scott. Uh the biggest angelada of them
all, though all of those have been big
ones. Uh what on earth is happening with
the American administration in Ukraine?
Little Zalinski said today that he just
had his best ever call with Donald
Trump.
Yet the day before uh him, Trump and
Putin uh seemed to get on famously in
another very long phone call. How do you
make sense of what the Americans are
doing or see as their goal in the
Ukraine conflict? You know, earlier we
talked about Elon Musk and how he was a
stickler for veracity, for truth. Um
what we're seeing at play here is the
byproduct of an administration that
stands for nothing. Nothing whatsoever.
Um and what we're also seeing is that uh
President Trump uh cannot get the better
of President Putin. That President Putin
is a very sage man, a very wise man who
um will not yield at all. He doesn't
give President Trump any leverage at all
on the issue of Ukraine. He is just
straightforward. These are our demands.
this is what we're going to do. Um, and
Trump can't take him off that stance.
Um, but Trump also understands that
there has
to be better relations with Russia. So,
he is capable of pursuing better
relations. And yet on Ukraine, he
doesn't know how to admit defeat. See,
Donald Trump is incapable. He's such a
narcissist, such an egoomaniac that it's
impossible for him to say, "Yeah, we
need to cut our losses." I mean, what?
Who among us hasn't at some point in
time in their life gotten in deep into a
problem or something and said, "Ah, this
ain't going right. This this is this is
wrong. We got to, you know, we got to
cut. We got to go. We got to we got to
reset." Donald Trump can't do that
because his ego won't let him. And so,
what we're going to do now is uh we're
going to use words to salve the wounds
of Zalinski. We're going to use words to
salve the wounds of our NATO allies, but
we can't back it up with anything. The
president is promising Patriot missile
batteries and Patriot missiles that
don't exist. Um, that we don't have to
deliver. uh he's making promises to
Europe of American support if Europe
bankrupts itself by committing to a 5%
GDP increase of their defense spending
under not recognizing and I don't think
many people do that 2.5% GDP defense
sometimes is the equivalent of the
entire government budget of some of
these nations and to go to five means
that that's all you're spending your
money on a GDP is not a reflection of
the budget It's a reflection of the
gross domestic product. Um,
Trump
is we're in for a very ugly period
because it's only going to get worse.
Just like as you know as a man of
integrity, as you've watched politicians
lie throughout their lives, and I've
watched people lie throughout their
lives, you just dig the hole deeper.
Your lies just dig the hole deeper, make
the problem more difficult to solve. In
the end, the only solution that's going
out going to come from Ukraine is the
Russian solution. Um, which Putin has
said will take as long as it needs to
take. He's under no uh timeline, no
political timeline. Whereas, you know,
uh, Trump and everybody else, they are
operating on political timelines. Each
one of them is looking at a ticking
clock of their political fate uh, as it
ticks down to their demise if they don't
change something and they don't have the
courage to say we were wrong in Ukraine.
And as you have pointed out over and
over again, the people that are going to
pay the price are the Ukrainian people
whose lives will continue to be
squandered in this ridiculous game of,
you know, American hegemony, uh,
European relevance. Um, you know, I
don't know if you saw the news, the the
Russians this last week, no matter how
many times the the the Western media is
going to spin lies. Uh, the Russians
lost the lowest number of soldiers in
the war in the last week, meaning and
they killed more Ukrainians than ever
before. 156 Russians, I believe, lost
their lives. That's tragic. You know,
these were numbers that broke America's
back during the uh Vietnam War. We
bringing home 200 dead boys a week and
uh it broke us. So it's painful for the
Russians. They lost 156. They killed
1,200 and something. That's a kill ratio
that can't be sustained by the
Ukrainians, but it's one that the West
appears to be willing to let continue so
that Donald Trump's ego can be uh you
know, stroked. As Shakira said, Scott,
hips don't lie, and neither do Black
Rockck investors. And they have cut and
run uh because they've discovered that
Black Rockck were claiming ownership
rights to resources that are now and
forever more uh under the feet of the
Russian army. Uh so that too is a very
telling uh inflection point, isn't it?
Absolutely. and and these investors. I I
can't say I've worked with Black Rockck,
but I remember um back in 1998, 1999
when I first resigned and my name was uh
everywhere. I was um brought in as a
consultant by global hedge funds and
global investment companies of a similar
sort and they wanted my geopolitical
analysis so that they could make these
kind of investment decisions. Um and
they
they play to win and they have the
ability to leverage a lot of influence
through money through investments etc.
And you know for them to walk away from
an investment of the sort that they've
made in Ukraine uh is indicative of
their conclusion that this situation
cannot be reversed because normally you
know they can play the long game. So
they could say, "Okay, we're going to
hold on to this for 20 years." Um, and
and it'll reverse in 20 years. We'll
just take the losses, you know, they
whatever ledger magic they do. But for
them to walk away now means that this
will never change. That as you said, it
is now and forever part of mother Russia
and there's nothing that's going to
change that. And that is the biggest
tell of them all.

[admin]

EU Parliament Erupts as Clare Daly Labels Ukraine War a NATO Proxy Conflict
APT
Jul 2, 2025 #euparliament #ukrainewar #apt

Former Irish MEP Clare Daly returns to the European Parliament and delivers a searing critique of the EU’s crackdown on dissent. In this explosive speech, Daly defends her past remarks that the war in Ukraine is a “NATO proxy war” and that EU sanctions are punishing European citizens more than Russia.

Daly questions the very foundations of free speech in modern Europe, warning that the labeling of dissent as “propaganda” is silencing critical voices and suppressing democratic debate.



Transcript

And now it is a good time to introduce
Clare Daly. Uh it is not necessary
because everybody in this house already
knows Clare Daly. She is from Ireland,
a campaigner, activist, trade unionist
who served uh uh as a local consularor
from 2000 and then as a national MEP in
Ireland from 2010. uh and uh she already
had a a formidable uh reputation of an
opposition legislator uh winning many
policy victories uh and taking the Irish
government to account during uh COVID
and during uh the past tenure in
parliament. Uh you uh held European
bureaucracy to account with a great
success and I hope you will tell us more
about uh the uh nice or less nice things
which happen here in Europe. Thank you
Clare.
Well, thanks very much uh I suppose
first and foremost to everybody for
being here. some old faces, some new.
But uh a special thanks to Andre for
organizing and for Fidius for being here
because we meet at a very dangerous
juncture in world history when very few
people at European leadership level
either in member states or here in these
European Union bodies understand the
scale of the repression which is
undermined and ongoing at the moment.
let alone are prepared to do anything
about it. So, we are extremely grateful
to Andre for organizing this event and
we're very lucky that he is here and I
give it up for Andre
in this building a couple of weeks ago
downstairs the Irish commissioner the
main man Michael McGrazy's name he's
responsible for rule of law in the
European Union and he addressed the
pleenary session of the European
Parliament and he told MEPs on that
today that democracy is the founding
value of the European Union together
with respect for rule of law and
fundamental rights. He told them that
freedom of expression, freedom of
assembly and association, and the right
to participate in democratic life are
enshrined in EU treaties, the charter of
fundamental rights of the European
Union, EU legislation and common
constitutional traditions of member
states. And he then went on and told
them that citizens should be able to
form their own opinions in a public
space where there is access to reliable
information from a plurality of sources
with different views can which can be
expressed where political discussions
can be confronted and where it's
possible to disagree with one another.
Powerful stuff indeed. Who in hell would
disagree with that? But it's so brazenly
out of touch with reality that I think
many people would have found themselves
scratching their head and going, "Where
is this utopia that he's talking about?"
And none more so than myself and my
colleague, former MEP Mick Wallace,
who's also here today, who know the
commissioner well. Uh, and we knew him
from our time in the Irish Parliament.
And he never stood out then as a
crusader for democracy. In fact, he was
a member of successive governments which
were entirely actually undemocratic
uh in their nature. and his newfound
interest in democracy actually was, you
know, kind of particularly
uncharacteristic
until you looked at the title of the
debate that he was introducing and it
was called the Hungarian government's
drift to Russian style repression,
legislative threats to freedom of
expression and democratic participation.
In other words, in layman's terms, this
is the ongoing standoff between the
centrist parties which have ruled Europe
for decades now who call themselves
liberal and the so-called illiberal
regimes on the other hand led by
Hungary's president Victor Orban. And
then McGrath's words make sense because
the real reason why the EU leadership
stands so staunchly in defending free
speech in Hungary is that it's speech
that they agree with. And it's an
entirely different matter if you have
speech which they don't agree with. And
that is the context of the European
Union's disinformation policy. It's the
fundamental point that people have to
understand. It has nothing to do with
democracy. It's a tactic that they use
for people they don't like. And first
and foremost and most importantly, it is
to clamp down on disscent on those who
would have the audacity to challenge
those people who are in power. And so we
have this fable of the EU's official
platform for its dis disinformation
obsession that our democracies are under
attack from malign foreign actors who
want to spread disinformation to
undermine our societies and our
governments to influence our elections
to put us all against each other and
break down our unity. And to stand up to
this terrible threat, we have to defend
our democracy by cracking down on
disinformation and promoting unity in
the European Union. It's absolute and
utter nonsense from start to finish. Of
course, foreign interference exists. Of
course, states have the right to defend
themselves from outside influence,
seeking to undermine them for the
benefit of themselves. But Russian bots
didn't sway European elections. Their
outcomes were very firmly determined by
domestic matters. Look at we all know
that all states do propaganda. But what
I found when I was a member of the inga
committee, which was the committee on
foreign interference in all democratic
processes in the European Union,
including disinformation, which I was
the coordinator on the left group for
for three very long years, I can tell
you. But from my experience on that
committee, the problem wasn't propaganda
that actually came from external sources
or foreign governments. The problem was
narratives domestically that they didn't
agree with. And I suppose I have to be
honest now and confess at this stage
that I would say that, wouldn't I?
Because I'm actually a Russian
propagandist, believe it or not,
according to a Ukrainian uh hit list or
whatever. And the two reasons why I'm a
Russian propagandist is I said two
things. One, that the war in Ukraine was
a NATO proxy war. and the second that
the people of Europe were suffering more
than the Russian economy from the
sanctions that Europe had imposed on
Russia. Now, I happen to stand over both
of those things still. Um, but rather
than engage with me on the content of
those issues, on the fact that
Stalenberg came in here and told us that
NATO provoked the war, on the porizing
reality for European citizens crushed
under the cost of living issue, rather
than discussing those issues with me and
taking responsibility as the European
leaders who brought them in, it's much
easier to smear me as a Russian agent or
a Russian propagandists. And that is
what the European Union's disinformation
policy is designed to do, to silence
anyone who questions their narrative,
the official narrative. And to do that,
they even have a toolkit to whip us into
line to suppress certain kinds of speech
and to manage the kinds of information
that are allowed to circulate in our
society. So if you question their co
policy, you're an antivaxer. If you
criticize Israel's genocide, you're
anti-Semitic. And if you argue for peace
in the war in Ukraine, well then you're
a a Kremlin stoogge or something like
that. Uh that's basically what's going
on here. And how the European Union is
going to deal with that disinformation
comes under the defense of democracy
package they used to call it when I was
here. I mean, did you ever like it's
just pathetic. It's even been rebranded
worse now. It's the European Democracy
Shield. I mean, where do these people
get off and the committee is even called
the European Democracy Shield Committee
and you literally could not make this uh
stuff up. And the whole basis of it is
is that ideas are now dangerous and they
pose a fundamental threat to our
democracy. Allegedly, the public sphere,
the media, social media, where our
society learns about itself and public
opinion is shaped. This is now a
battleground. Words and ideas are
weapons. And the European liberals are
here to save us from that, to defend us
from these outrageous attacks. And let's
be honest about it. Despite that fact
that this has accelerated massively
since Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
there has always been a program of
repression by the European political
establishment. And up until now, the
toolkit has been kind of a soft form of
repression really. They had a number of
tactics. You can read about them in the
inger report, which is the report of the
old committee that I was on. But the
approach at that time was kind of to do
stuff like uh drown out dissenting
narratives with propaganda in support of
the official EU narrative. Now when we
do it, it's not propaganda, of course.
It's called strategic communications
because we're the good guys, but that
was what they used to do there. Then
they sought to co-opt social media
platforms to derank narratives they
don't like. And then they've pumped
funding into these so-called
factchecking organizations to police uh
online discourse. Now, we warned about
this. They even toyed with the idea of
making contradicting government
governance a crime. Did you ever? They
had to back away from that one because
that would be even a little bit too uh
far to go and you'd have to bring in
legislation and a court case to deal
with that. And this is where the
European Union 17 set of sanctions come
in comes into play because what you have
here is sanctions targeting
disinformation. Hybrid sanctions they
call them. The first package was in
December. We've had two more since then.
and our great high representative lauded
these sanctions under the guide when she
said and she sternly vowed that those
who enable Russia face severe
consequences. So the EU foreign
ministers brought in a list of sanctions
on 21 individuals and six um entities
who were responsible for hybrid activity
including disinformation. Now what was
this disinformation and who were these
people? Well, this is where it gets
interesting because this is Russian
disinformation. Now, a few of them were
actually Russians, but there was also a
German blogger, an EU citizen who was
sanctioned. And there was a Turkish
citizen who was a valid EU resident who
was also uh sanctioned. He lives in
Germany. And let's look at this case for
a minute. And I hope I'm not laboring
it, but we have time here and we have to
use it to really spell out what is going
on in this so-called European Union of
democracy in action as we took our
pictures outside this sign outside of
here because in that case we have a
person who's been subjected to an asset
freeze and a travel ban on the basis
that he was systematically spreading
information which the EU you said was
false. Now, we don't know what that
information was because nobody got to
see it. But they said he disseminated
the narratives of Hamas, but again, what
narratives they were, we don't know.
They said he created discord discord and
that he provided pro Palestinian
protesters who are described as
anti-Israel riers with an exclusive
media platform. Now, think about this.
This sounds like the type of action that
millions of European Union citizens
agree with, trying to force their
governments to end complicity with the
genocide in Gaza. In fact, many people
believe there should be a lot more
discord created in Europe to deal with
this. But even if you don't agree with
that, you have to ask yourself the
question, how in God's name is any of
this linked with Russia? That's a tough
one to sort of. Well, I'll tell you the
answer to that one cuz they have it.
Seemingly pro Palestinian action
undermines the stability and security of
the European Union or one or more of its
member states. And sure, that's what the
Russians are all about. We all know
that. So therefore, pro Palestinian
activity is supporting Russia and you
can be sanctioned. Now, I'm not being
flippant about this. This is the actual
reality of this. I don't know the facts
of the case. Nobody does because it
hasn't been published. But what it looks
like is a person who was involved,
nothing to do with Russia, who was
documenting German police crackdown on
Palestinian protests and in retaliation,
the German authorities slap them with an
EU sanction. And if it can happen to
them today, it can happen to you
tomorrow. It is almost unbelievable. But
you have to get on that page to realize
the seriousness of what is at stake
here. Now, in democracies, we're
supposed to have a rule of law, don't
we? God almighty, you hear about it off
and on in this place. You think it was
uh their bread and butter, but that
means if you want to punish somebody,
you have to charge them with a crime.
You have to that crime has to be defined
in law. Once you charge them, due
process has to come in. You they have
the right to know the charges against
them. They have a right to see the
evidence. They have a right to a trial
in an open court. A right to defend
themselves. A right to free speech that
they can use there. And then the state
can only impose a sanction when they've
carefully considered all of those things
beyond reasonable doubt. Not anymore.
That's gone now. Depriving people of
their rights based on rumors and
innuendo is exactly what these hybrid
sanction packages are about. It's as
simple as that. I wouldn't normally be
in the habit of quoting Politico, but
you're luck. We'll break a habit soon as
we're here. Um, when they even saw some
of the dossier, and they said one of the
packets that had somebody sanctioned was
10 open-source links with varying
degrees of reliability. Another was
nine, another was four. Articles in
publications like the Financial Times
and Reuters were heavily relied on. um
badly translated probably AI translated
articles from Russian and Ukrainian
sources. One was a lifestyle magazine
affiliated with the Russian government,
but it generally talked about cookery
rather than actually news and all this
sort of stuff. There was even a woman
who was sanctioned for performing a
concert in Crimea. I kid you not. I
mean, this wouldn't pass muster in a
classroom, not to mind a courtroom, but
this is what's been talked about as
evidence in the European Union. uh
evidence of Russian interference, no
oversight. Civil servants draw up a list
which is on the advice of the commission
and member states and then 27 EU foreign
ministers go behind a closed door and
vote to sanction you or not. And if
you're targeted by an EU sanction, you
don't hear the charges against you. You
don't get a a trial. You don't get a
right to defense. You basically the
first thing you find out about this is a
letter coming in your door telling you
that your bank accounts have been frozen
and that you're banned from entering or
leaving the country. And the the guy who
was sanctioned in Germany, I'm just
going to briefly read his account of
that because sometimes we bandandy words
around here about things like sanctions
and they seem a bit depersonalized.
Well, what does that actually mean to a
real person? Well, this guy explained it
and he said, "I haven't been charged
with anything. I haven't stood trial. I
haven't been found guilty of any crime.
I'd no chance to defend myself. But the
EU sanctioned me for my pro Palestinian
journalism and stripped me of my rights.
I'm not allowed to buy food. I'm not
allowed to buy medicine for my children.
I'm not allowed to pay for my lawyer.
I'm not allowed to leave the country I
live in. I'm not allowed to enter the
country I live in. I'm not allowed to
get a job. I'm not allowed to make
payments. I'm not allowed to receive
payments. I'm not allowed to pay my
rent. Every single time for every single
case, I have to submit a file and ask
permission. And then I have to wait
several days for approval. And in case
any of you are feeling a bit sorry for
him and think that you might send him a
few bob just to help him out, well, I'd
be very careful about that because you
too could then be sanctioned for the
crime of circumventing a sanction from
the European Union and you could find
yourself on a sanctioned list as well.
Now this kind of sounds like tinpot sort
of stuff but this is democracy now in
the European Union and it is the new
repression as Andrew calls it because we
have hybrid sanctions against EU
citizens for exercising the very rights
that Michael McGra audited in these
place buildings a number of weeks ago
has been enshrined in our constitutions
here. So what we see is in their
so-called battle between democracy and
authoritarianism, the European Union is
becoming incredibly authoritarian in
their actions. It is an absolute
abomination. And every foreign minister
who sat in that room and voted for those
sanctions should be called to account by
the members in this house. And I really
would urge MEPs who are here present to
contact Michael McGra and to make that
point. There really has to be a
concerted effort and we'll probably deal
with it in the Q&A in a minute and I
know because I was there before him in
the previous committee. I'd imagine life
is very difficult for Vidius on the
European Democracy Shield Committee. But
this has to be made an issue there. It
has to be made an issue in the Civil
Liberties Committee. And I really think
members here should coordinate their
work in that in terms of how it's going
to be raised over the next period. I
think there's also a need for a really
serious joint effort for members to take
legal advice and to look into whether
this is something that could be taken to
the court of justice on the basis to the
general threat to all EU citizens rights
which exist from this. Now obviously the
problem with that is impunity. There's
limits to what procedural challenges can
achieve. But if there's no push back on
this, which is why this meeting is so
important, then they're going to go
further. There has to be broad political
support built to challenge what's
happening here. You got to go from this
and organize in your home countries to
talk about this. You've got to speak in
your communities and tell people what's
going on. and that it's a threat to them
and it's going to get worse. Honestly,
there is really a very small window left
to do anything and it's crucial that we
organize to do something before that
window closes. So, in conclusion, this
is not just about speech. It's really
about the fundamental right of
expression, the most fundamental right
we have and tool we have as citizens. We
have to be able to challenge our
governments to change their policies.
But that's what's in the firing line now
from all of this stuff. You mightn't
care about whether someone was silenced
for pro Palestinian speech or whatever.
That's not really important. You don't
have to agree with the issues there, but
you have to recognize the danger of
what's going on here. Because if it's
them today, it's you tomorrow. And
tomorrow is already here. When I was on
the inga committee for those three
years, every single thing they didn't
like, they called it Russian
interference or Chinese interference or
Iranian interference. Didn't matter who
it was. So it was anything. Catalan
independence movement, Russian
interference. The peace movement,
Russian interference. Euroritical
politics, you name it. Whatever it was,
that's the name of the game here. So if
you care about the ability to do
opposition politics in Europe, you have
to care about this issue. And that's
what this meeting here is about. It's a
platform to begin to expose that because
the first task in changing something is
understanding that it's broken and
giving information about that. And
that's what we're doing here. And that's
why this is important. But it's not
enough on its own. We've got to go from
here. get the message out and organize
for the right to hold our governments
and our leadership in into account and
not be conned by the speurious ideas
that what's happening in our societies
and the very valid criticism that our
citizens have is somehow the product of
infiltration from out out external
sources. So I leave you with that. Let's
go out there and take them on because
literally our right to survive is at
stake here.
[Applause]

[admin]

Trump dealt SURPRISE LOSS in court
by Brian Tyler Cohen
Jul 7, 2025

Legal Breakdown episode 553: ‪@GlennKirschner2‬ discusses Trump's loss in court.



Transcript

You're watching the legal breakdown.
Glenn, we've got a surprise ruling in
court today that pours some cold water
on Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill
that was just passed. Can you explain
what happened? Yeah, Brian. A federal
judge just issued a TTRO, a temporary
restraining order for 14 days blocking a
part of the so-called, you know, big,
beautiful, ugly bill that was just
signed into law by Donald Trump in
recent days. Specifically in the bill,
there is a one-year freeze on all
Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood.
Although they don't use the term Planned
Parenthood in the legislation, clearly
that was the target of this one-year
freeze because it's, you know, um health
organizations that primarily uh perform
abortion or provide abortion related
services. So listen, they are trying to
freeze out Planned Parenthood. So suit
was brought saying, "Look, this violates
equal protection of the law. This is
basically a backodor approach to try to
ban abortions." They say that more than
a million Medicaid recipients get health
care services from Planned Parenthood.
And they make a point to say, listen,
it's not just abortions. They they do
cancer screenings. They treat sexually
transmitted diseases. There are lots of
reasons that Medicaid money should
continue to go to support these kind of
services. And they basically say, "Look,
you're discriminating. You're trying to
just de facto shut down Planned
Parenthood. This is another way to try
to defund Planned Parenthood." and they
persuaded a federal judge that at least
there should be a temporary restraining
order for 14 days while the judge
considers whether she should extend
that, maybe make it a preliminary
injunction, which can last much longer
than a temporary restraining order.
You know, Glenn, the the ultimate
hypocrisy here is that all of these
Republicans claim that when ROW was
overturned that they wanted these
decisions to be left up to the states.
the states can determine where they want
to allocate their funding. And if they
choose to allocate their funding to
Planned Parenthood, then that's their
prerogative to be able to do so. And
yet, once again, we have these
Republicans who have decided that in
fact, they have no interest in leaving
it all up to the states. They want to be
able to dictate what happens at the
highest levels of government all the way
down to the most local levels of
government. Yeah, hypocrisy is not
really a thing in the Republican party
or as far as the you know six justice
majority of the Supreme Court is
concerned. But you know this will do
real harm not only to literally
thousands of Planned Parenthood
organizations but to the many people the
more than a million people who use
Medicaid to you know get some of these
health related services. So, you know,
it's really a lose-lose proposition. And
the only ones who win, I guess, are the,
you know, kind of radical ideologues who
seem forever to want to be the ones who
make women's reproductive health
decisions for them,
right? What about the issue that that
the Supreme Court ruled that courts
can't issue temporary restraining orders
or nationwide injunctions that apply to
the whole country when we have a
situation with Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthoods are of course around
the entire country. So does that fall
into that category or because Planned
Parenthood is a a unique entity? Yes,
they might have branches everywhere, but
they are a specific entity. They're
still allowed you're still allowed to
have judges who can issue temporary
restraining orders as it relates to this
entity. Brian, that's a great question
and I think the answer is not easy, not
intuitive, and not even settled given
the the very recent ruling by the
Supreme Court basically outlawing
nationwide preliminary injunctions. But
let's work through it. First of all,
this is not a preliminary injunction.
This is a temporary restraining order,
which is a very short duration. indeed
so short that you can't typically even
appeal um a judge's decision to enter a
temporary restraining order. But the
other thing is, you know, the temporary
restraining order um that was at issue
there had to do with executive branch
power. It had to do with a um an attempt
by Donald Trump to unconstitutionally
revoke the constitutional guarantee of
birthright citizenship. This doesn't
have anything to do with executive
power. This is really heartland federal
judiciary stuff. What I mean by that is
they, you know, the judge looked at a
brand new federal statute that was just
passed and just signed into law and
deemed that some portion of it violates
potentially the constitution and the
rights of the plaintiffs who sought this
brief temporary restraining order. while
the issue gets more fully fleshed out.
So, you know, there are a couple of
different ways to see how, you know,
this temporary restraining order might
not really run a foul of the Supreme
Court's recent ruling saying, you know
what, no more nationwide injunctions. Of
course, even that ruling, Brian, courts
have been finding ways to work around it
legitimately and indeed in ways that the
Supreme Court opinion itself suggested
were still available options like class
action lawsuits and deciding issues
based on the Administrative Procedure
Act and ruling that something that the
government did um was unlawful and and
there should be a stop put to it. So,
it's a great question. It's a question
that I don't think we have an available
answer to yet given that the Supreme
Court's ruling is so new.
Okay. Well, look, the the issue that
we're focused on here is whether or not
Planned Parenthood will be defunded by
virtue of this provision in Trump's big
beautiful bill. Based on what you read
in the ruling, does what the plaintiffs
brought forward here seem to be a strong
enough case that it would be able to
survive scrutiny beyond just this
temporary restraining order that it
would be able to survive scrutiny on the
merits in this trial court and the
appellet court and the Supreme Court?
Yeah, you know, it's a great question,
but let me first say when you say I've
read the ruling, I indeed have read the
ruling and it's about a page and a half.
There is no analysis. It is simply um
saying that the judge believes that this
brief temporary restraining order should
be put in place for 14 days and she
directs that you know um members of the
executive branch, the Trump
administration be notified within I
think 72 hours that the Medicaid money
may not stop flowing to Planned
Parenthood. But we don't have an
analysis yet. We'll probably learn more
in the coming days. But here's the
thing, you know, this really feels like
legislation that purports to to be one
thing, but is really disguising its true
intentions. And I did read about some of
the arguments that Planned Parenthood
made when they were applying for this
TTRO. They said, "Look, this is a
backdoor way to ban abortion, which is
now something that has gone back to the
states." They say this is really
violating Planned Parenthood's right to
equal protection of the laws because
even though they don't use the the name
of the organization, it is clear and
it's clear that they've been wanting to
defund Planned Parenthood. Well, you
know what? Our government can't be in
the business of passing laws that
specifically target a disfavored
business that is not only not doing
anything unlawful, but is providing
important medical services, including
reproductive health care to the American
people. So, you know, I think they have
some really good what I would call
equitable arguments that make a lot of
sense to me. The question will become,
do those arguments win the day on sort
of the lawfulness and the
constitutionality
front? And I think we really need to
await more complete briefing and perhaps
some more court hearings before um
before that landscape becomes a little
bit more clear. Do you have any concern
that because we've seen this happen
before that even though there is legally
allocated funds to an organization like
Planned Parenthood and even though it's
the prerogative of the legislative
branch to be able to allocate those
funds and if a judge says that you can't
block the lawful allocation of those
funds, is there any concern that the
executive branch that Donald Trump will
try to impound these funds anyway and
prevent uh legally allocated funding
from going to these organizations that
to your exact point may just be
disfavored by the Republican party.
Brian, I would be surprised if Donald
Trump didn't attempt something like this
because when you even raise that, my
mind immediately goes to Donald Trump
improperly leveraging congressionally
appropriated funds that were supposed to
go where? To Ukraine to help President
Silinski fight against the unlawful
Russian aggression. Congress had already
allocated those funds for that purpose.
Donald Trump had no right to grab hold
of them, figuratively, put them in his
back pocket, and say, "I know you want
this money, and I know you're entitled
to it, but I want a favor, though, I
want you to jin up a bogus investigation
into my political opponent." If he was
willing to do that, you know, why would
he not do it all over again perhaps in
this arena,
right? And and I think it's just a
matter of time before he actually tries
to do that. It's funny because they'll
they'll try to go through the courts to
give themselves a veneer of legitimacy,
like, "Okay, we're pro we're following
the proper channels." But if and when
they get a ruling that doesn't satisfy
them, they'll just be like, "Screw it.
We'll just do whatever we want anyway."
And so, if they get a ruling they like,
then they'll follow the courts and they
can say, "Look, we went through the
proper channels. And if they get a
ruling they don't like, they'll say,
"You know what? The courts are
illegitimate. We have the angry
Democratic judges who are helping the
Biden administration and the Obama
administration and we shouldn't listen
to those people anyway. So, we'll just
do whatever we want to do. And of
course, none of these other Republican
lackeyis in the legislative branch or
even at the Supreme Court are going to
say anything uh if and when they do
that. But look, as
but here's the good news, Brian. We're
going to know pretty quickly whether the
Medicaid funds were frozen or whether
they thought out and they kept going to
Planned Parenthood because I can
guarantee that will very quickly become
not only apparent to Planned Parenthood
if the Medicaid funds have been stopped.
But that will be a matter of
supplementing, you know, the court
filings and we're all going to hear
about that, I would suspect, in the
coming days.
Well, we'll keep an eye on that. For
those who are watching, if you want to
follow along with this case and any
other legal cases, please make sure to
subscribe. That's the best way to
support our work. It is completely free
to subscribe to both of our channels.
So, if you're not yet subscribed, go
ahead and do that. Again, the links are
right here on the screen and also in the
post description of this video. I'm
Brian Teller Cohen
and I'm Glenn Kersner.
You're watching the Legal Breakdown.
[Music]

[admin]

Judge In Abrego Garcia Case Says Trump and DOJ Are Creating "Chaos"!
by Glenn Kirschner
Jul 7, 2025

In a hearing on Monday in Abrego Garcia's deportation case, the presiding judge, Paula Xinis, said that the often contradictory statements made by DOJ lawyers was like "nailing jello to the wall." The judge also said, "It's chaos, and it's chaos that can be avoided."

DOJ was trying to convince the judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Abrego Garcia for his unlawful and unconstitutional deportation. Not only did the judge refuse to dismiss the case, but she ordered DOJ lawyers to have Department of Homeland Security officials testify on Thursday about what they intend to do to Abrego Garcia.



Transcript

So friends, in a court hearing on Monday
in Abrego Garcia's deportation case, the
presiding judge, Judge Paula's
said that trying to get a straight
answer out of Donald Trump's DOJ lawyers
was like quote nailing jello to the
wall.
Judge Xinis also went on to tell those
lawyers that they are quote creating
chaos.
Let's talk about that because justice
matters.
[Music]
Hey all, Glen Kirschner here. So friends,
these third rate DOJ lawyers that Pam
Bondi is sending into court are an
absolute embarrassment to the Department
of Justice and to the American people.
And the presiding judge in Abrego
Garcia's deportation case in Maryland,
Judge Paula Senis, pulled no punches in
a court hearing on Monday.
Let's start with the new reporting. This
from Reuters
headline, US judge rules Abrego Garcia's
challenge to wrongful deportation
can proceed.
And that article begins, a US judge
ruled on Monday that Kilmar Abrego's
legal challenge to his wrongful
deportation to El Salvador can continue
despite the decision by Donald Trump's
administration to bring him back to the
United States to face criminal charges.
Maryland-based US District Judge
Paulinis
found that there were ongoing issues to
resolve in the case, including whether
the Trump administration fully complied
with prior orders to facilitate Abrego's
return and allow his immigration case to
be handled as though he had not been
improperly deported. Judge Senesis
during Monday's hearing expressed
frustration over the Trump
administration's handling of the case,
particularly the uncertainty over a
potential second deportation.
A federal judge overseeing Abrego's
criminal case ordered last month that
Abrego be released. But the Trump
administration has said it plans to
immediately take him into immigration
custody and bring new deportation
proceedings. And this from the judge,
quote, "It's chaos and it's chaos that
can be avoided." Seen said on Monday.
Judge Cenis ordered US officials to
testify on Thursday about the Trump
administration's plans for Abrego if
he's released from criminal custody.
Abrego sued in Maryland federal court to
challenge his deportation to El Salvador
and is now seeking to revise the lawsuit
following his return to the United
States. Abrego's lawyers have asked that
he be returned to Maryland and be given
an opportunity to challenge any future
deportation. In rejecting the Trump
administration's bid to end to dismiss
the civil lawsuit, Senesis found there
was a risk that Abrago could be
improperly deported again.
And here's the judge addressing the DOJ
lawyers. quote, "For three months, your
clients, meaning DHS officials, Trump
administration officials, Trump himself,
your clients told the world they weren't
going to do anything to bring him back."
Senes told a Justice Department lawyer,
"Am I really supposed to ignore all
that?"
And friends, just to build a little bit
on that Reuters reporting, here's some
of the reporting by Politico
headline. Like nailing jello to a wall,
judge scolds DOJ for shifting positions
on Abrago deportations.
And that article begins, "A federal
judge grew frustrated Monday over the
Trump administration's shifting claims
about its handling of Kilar Abrego
Garcia's illegal deportation to El
Salvador and whether it the government,
the Trump administration plans to deport
him again before a criminal case against
him is resolved." US District Judge Paul
Asinis said getting certain answers from
the administration was like nailing
jello- to a wall and ordered the Justice
Department to produce a witness from the
Department of Homeland Security on
Thursday to testify about its the
government's designs for Abrego.
Now friends, just to be clear, today's
court hearing involved DOJ's attempt to
get Judge Cenis to dismiss to throw out
Abrego Garcia's lawsuit that he brought
against Christome, DHS, and others for
being illegally and unconstitutionally
deported to El Salvador and stuffed into
a terrorist prison.
And not only did Judge Senise refuse to
dismiss the case, she ordered DHS
officials to appear in her courtroom on
Thursday and testify under oath about
what in the hell they intend to do to
Abrego Garcia next.
So friends, let's finish with this
because in advance of this hearing,
these third rate DOJ lawyers filed a
ninepage brief setting out their
arguments regarding, you know, why the
judge should just go ahead and dismiss
this lawsuit that was brought against
Christine Gnome and company. It's in the
case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia
atall and others plaintiffs versus
Christy Noem, Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security at all
defendants. And it is the defendants
meaning the Trump administration's reply
in support of defendants motion to
dismiss as moot. And friends, in the
first few pages of this brief, these DOJ
lawyers just sort of repeat the same
thing over and over again like a mantra.
This court must dismiss under rule 12B1.
The court must dismiss plaintiff's
complaint. This case is moot and should
be dismissed.
And friends, essentially in this brief,
they're arguing to the judge that, you
know, look, judge, there's no need to
continue this lawsuit. I mean, you know,
eventually we brought Abrago Garcia
back, so why don't you just go ahead and
dismiss this lawsuit? It's all moot.
It's all water under the bridge. No
harm, no foul. Well, first of all,
there's plenty of harm. And it's
certainly a foul when you illegally and
unconstitutionally
deport somebody to a prison in El
Salvador. El Salvador being a country
that an immigration judge previously
ordered, Abrego Garcia could not be
deported to.
But then here is my favorite part of
this DOJ brief. They say, well, the
government, meaning the Trump
administration, has corrected its own
mistake. And they say it was a one-off
mistake that the government, the Trump
administration conceded was an
administrative error that the court
ordered the government, the Trump
administration to remedy and that the
government has now remedied.
How do you like that tone, friends?
Look, judge, this was a oneoff mistake.
You know, it's like they're talking
about a basketball player missing a free
throw. said, "Judge, this was a one-off.
No big deal. No harm, no foul." Yeah, it
is a foul, and there's plenty of harm.
But then they actually go on to say
this.
They say presuming that the government,
the Trump administration would would
ever do this again, would remove Abrago
Garcia to El Salvador, presuming that we
would ever do such a thing again,
defies logic.
Let that settle, friends.
These DOJ lawyers, presumably with a
straight face, tell the judge, "Judge,
judge, the notion that we would ever do
something like this again,
violate Abrego Garcia's rights, deprive
him of his due process, guarantee of
notice and opportunity to be heard,
just, you know, assuming we would do
this again to him or any other
immigrant.
defies logic.
No,
it comports
with logic based on what we've seen from
this runaway, lawless president and his
administration. Of course, they're going
to continue to violate the rights of the
Abrego Garcas of the world. So no, it
doesn't defy logic. It comports with
both logic and with our lived experience
for the past six or seven months. But
the good news is Judge Cenees was having
none of it because what is abundantly
clear from every moment Judge Cenees has
presided over the Abrego Garcia
deportation case. What's clear is that
to Judge Xinis
like to us
justice
matters.
Friends, as always, please stay safe,
please stay tuned, and I look forward to
talking with you all again tomorrow.
[Music]