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No Bending the Knee Here
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The US Supreme Court today will hear a major constitutional case about birthright citizenship. We shouldn’t be debating this right now. But since the president chose to act with such striking disregard for the law, here we are.
Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
This has been the law for more than 150 years. The amendment overturned the notorious Dred Scott decision, which said that even free Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens. The Supreme Court in 1898 confirmed the 14th Amendment’s plain meaning. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, it ruled that children born here are citizens, even if their parents are not. That principle gave rise to generations of new Americans.
Donald Trump tried to Sharpie this out of the Constitution. A few hours after he took office, he signed an executive order purporting to deny citizenship to the children born here to non-U.S. citizens. Courts immediately ruled against the White House. Last summer, the Supreme Court stopped individual judges from issuing such nationwide orders, but it left open the possibility of class action lawsuits. Hence Trump v. Barbara, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
This is open and shut. Con law for dummies.
Grasping for arguments, Trump’s lawyers landed on this: The 14th Amendment’s “one pervading purpose” was to protect the children of former slaves, not anyone else. That reading puts aside the clear language of the amendment, along with a century and a half of history and tradition. It’s historical fan fiction, designed to appeal to an “originalist” Court.
Historians Martha Jones and Kate Masur, a member of the Brennan Center’s Historians Council, corrected the record in a key amicus brief. “When the Framers wrote birthright citizenship into the Constitution, they were not addressing only the status of former slaves,” they explained. “They were also remedying the eight decades of injustice imposed upon free people born in the United States, among them free Black Americans, including those who had never been enslaved.” What’s more, the historians note, “The Framers well understood that the Amendment’s broad terms would recognize and protect the citizenship status of the children of immigrants.”
One echo throughout history: We’ve seen the arguments against birthright citizenship before, and they were born of nativism and made by racists. In our Countering Originalismhandbook, we call this a “negative precedent.” “Negative,” as in “really ugly.”
Our constitutional rights in 2026 should not just have to rely on the goings-on during the 1860s, when the amendment was drafted. For 150 years, hundreds of thousands of children born in the United States to noncitizen parents have proudly grown up as American citizens.
It’s an open-and-shut case, as I said. So why is this case happening at all?
Because Trump is forcing the issue. And the case offers a depressing window into how the Supreme Court helps drive, ratify, and legitimize extremist arguments. It has fired up an originalist-industrial complex to concoct historical evidence to buttress unjustifiable outcomes.
Trump didn’t dare do this during his first term. But after his “shock and awe” barrage of executive orders at the start of his second term, conservative scholars suddenly had to find it plausible, intriguing, worth a second look. Two top professors, Randy Barnett and Ilan Wurman, suddenly discovered a “puzzle” to solve. “Trump might have a case on birthright citizenship,” they found a way to write.
“A lot of people, when Trump first started talking about it, thought this is crazy,” conservative scholar John Yoo toldThe New York Times. Yoo thought Barnett and Wurman’s argument too, ahem, tortured, and instead made “the originalist case for birthright citizenship.” The vast majority of scholars agree.
I think the Court is highly likely to reaffirm birthright citizenship. But who knows? I thought it likely the Court would allow criminal prosecutions of former presidents, which is similarly anticipated in the Constitution. Here, the case is even clearer, since the law has affected the lives of so many people before now.
The willingness to chuck aside precedent as well as logic is a hallmark of the Roberts Court. This term, we brace for a demolition of the Voting Rights Act, a further grant of vast power to presidents (this time allowing them to command expert federal agencies that were made independent by Congress), and another ruling to undermine campaign finance rules. The Court stood up to block the unilateral imposition of tariffs and has shown some backbone on other emergency powers cases. But overall, bit by bit, it continues its project to remake the country.
As for birthright citizenship, it is one of the crown jewels of the U.S. Constitution. For a century and a half, the nation’s promise was that anyone born here, however humble their circumstances, is an American. Let’s hope the Court upholds that cherished principle. And let’s shake our heads at the fact that it has to.
"Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order," said Ryan Schwank, who blew the whistle last month on a "secretive" ICE memo directing agents to enter homes without judicial warrants.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is "lying to Congress and the American people" and directing new recruits to "violate the Constitution," according to a whistleblower who testified on Capitol Hill Monday.
Ryan Schwank, a former ICE lawyer who worked at the federal government’s law enforcement training academy, stepped down from his post last week after submitting a whistleblower complaint about an agency policy directing agents to enter homes and arrest people without a judge's warrant.
"I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution," Schwank said at a joint forum on ICE's constitutional violations hosted by Senate and House Democrats. "I followed that oath for four-and-a-half years, working side by side with ICE officers. And I followed it when I resigned on February 13, 2026, a little over a week ago, so I could speak to you today."
He had joined ICE in 2021 as a senior lawyer for the agency, tasked with advising agents on immigration laws and the Constitution. In September 2025, amid President Donald Trump's "surge" in recruitment to carry out his "mass deportation" crusade, Schwank became an instructor for new recruits at the ICE Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.
"On my first day," Schwank said, "I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank said he was “instructed to read and return a memo" that claimed ICE agents had this power in the presence of his supervisor. “Before I was shown this memo, my supervisor warned me that two previous ICE instructors had been dismissed because they questioned senior ICE management over the legality of the memo.”
That memo, which was sent to US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials in May, was revealed to the Senate last month through a whistleblower disclosure by Schwank and another official whose identity has not yet been made public.
“The acting ICE director authorized the very conduct that DHS—in 2025 legal training materials—has called ‘the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed’—that is, ‘physical entry of the home’ without consent or a proper warrant,” Schwank said.
His testimony confirms previous reporting from the Associated Press, which found that these orders were distributed in a highly unusual way: DHS officials like Schwank were shown the memo before being required to return it to their supervisors and relay the information verbally to new recruits without showing them the directive.
Under this new directive, the whistleblower report said “newly hired ICE agents—many of whom do not have a law enforcement background—are now being directed to rely solely on” an administrative warrant drafted and signed by an ICE official to enter homes and make arrests.
“No court has ever found that any law enforcement has this type of authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant under such circumstances,” said David Kligerman, the senior vice president and special counsel for Whistleblower Aid, the group that sent the disclosure to Congress.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order—nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” Schwank said on Monday. “I was being shown this memo in secret by a supervisor who made sure that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job. ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution, and they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy.”
Schwank also said that top ICE and DHS officials were deceiving Congress and the public when they claimed that the new officers and agents brought on as part of the agency's hiring spree were receiving the same basic training as in the past, even as agency syllabi showed that their training hours had been slashed by about 40%.
Testifying before Congress earlier this month, ICE's acting director, Todd Lyons, said that while hours have been cut, “The meat of the training was never removed."
"This is a lie,” Schwank said. “ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk. No reasonable person would believe a training program suddenly cut nearly in half could meet the minimum legal requirements.”
The Trump administration has said the reduction of ICE training by more than 240 hours was mostly the result of eliminating Spanish-language classes.
However, according to dozens of pages of internal documents released by Senate Democrats, which were reviewed by the New York Times, the agency's February syllabus had also eliminated classes about the proper use of force, handling the property of detainees, filling out paperwork alleging someone is in the United States without authorization, taking a "victim-centered approach," and "integrity awareness training."
The number of exams agents must take has also been drastically reduced, from 25 in 2021 down to just nine. Some of the exams no longer required are ones on "Judgment Pistol Shooting” and “Determine Removability,” which the Times said was "a reference to how agents decide if people they encounter have legal status in the United States."
Schwank’s testimony comes after immigration agents shot and killed three United States citizens in recent weeks, causing heightened scrutiny of ICE and other DHS agencies. Since Trump's second inauguration on January 20, at least 32 people have been shot by agents, resulting in nine deaths.
In areas where ICE has been surged, such as Minnesota—which was swarmed by around 3,000 agents late last year—numerous instances have been documented of what appear to be uses of unnecessary force, racial profiling, and violations of constitutional rights.
“I am here because I am duty-bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken,” Schwank said. “Deficient training can and will get people killed... It can and will lead to unlawful arrests, violations of constitutional rights, and fundamental loss of public trust in law enforcement.”
Schwank's testimony came as a partial shutdown of DHS entered its second week, after Democrats refused to fund the agency without significant reforms to ICE, including requirements that they obtain judicial warrants and carry out their duties without masks.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who chaired Monday's panel, said he hopes Schwank's testimony will encourage other whistleblowers to come forward.
“We know about the Trump administration’s decimation of training for immigration officers and its secret policy to shred your Constitutional rights because of the brave Americans who are speaking out today,” Blumenthal said. “They are coming to Congress because we have the responsibility to not only bear witness to these crimes, but to do something to make sure they don’t happen again.”
“To anyone else who is repulsed by what you’re seeing or what authorities are asking you to do, please know that you can make a real difference by coming forward," he added. "You’ll meet a moral imperative. Our door is open, we are here for you when you are ready, and we will do everything within our power to protect your rights.”
Do Americans who engage in lawful and peaceful protest enjoy the protection of the United States Constitution? Not any more, the Trump regime says in authorizing the shameless misconduct and lethal violence ICE agents are perpetrating against citizens in Minnesota.
ICE has invaded the state of Minnesota to show America that nothing can restrain Trump’s army of thugs. Not the Constitution. Not the laws which make it a crime to commit assault and murder. Not public opinion. And not thousands of citizens exercising their rights.
Although far from the first instance of ICE brutality, the slaying of Renee Nicole Good shocked the nation as a clear case of murder in cold blood.
The killing was not in “self-defense”—if a car is really hurtling toward you, you don’t pause to take out your gun, aim and shoot, because you know shooting won’t stop the car. You run. Good’s autopsy confirms that it was murder: the fatal bullet was the one fired into the victim’s left temple, when the ICE agent shot through the driver’s side window from alongside the car.
In response to the homicide, President Trump false asserted the agent had been run over, and charged the victim with the “crime” of having been “very, very disrespectful to law enforcement”; the chief of Homeland Security called Good a “domestic terrorist,” supposedly “stalking” ICE (meaning she followed them to observe their conduct); and the Department of Justicelaunched an investigation, not of the killing, but of the victim’s widow.
Meanwhile, the Vice President proclaimed ICE impunity. Speaking of Renee Good’s killer, Vance stated, “That guy’s protected by absolute immunity.”
The claim is legally baseless, but ICE agents got the message they can brutalize and even summarily execute at will, without consequences. And now, within weeks, ICE agents have committed another murder, this time of Alex Pretti, a citizen who was an ICU nurse, with a burst of bullets in the victim’s back while he lay defenseless on the ground.
Since the Supreme Court approved of ICE stopping individuals based on racial profiling, ICE agents have seized and frequently assaulted individuals simply because they appeared to be Hispanic—or Hmong or Somali or Native American. They are freely employing the same tactics in Minnesota.
Do you carry proof of citizenship with you? Neither do I. But in an echo of Nazi Germany, ICE agents demand to “see your papers,” particularly if you are non-white.
Targeting journalists and citizen observers. An official policy of breaking into homes without a judicial warrant. Detaining children. Handcuffing individuals until they come up with proof of identity. Dragging people out of their cars without probable cause to think they committed a crime. Assault on suspected “illegals.” Attacking nonviolent, peaceful demonstrators with pepper balls, tear gas, rubber bullets. Threatening with guns, shooting at cars, and now, actual murders.
These are the abuses of a conquering army, inflicted upon an occupied nation.
ICE and Border Patrol, the entities now inflicting these wounds on our democracy, are no more law enforcement agencies than was Hitler’s Gestapo. ICE is an unrestrained, racist, violence-craving gang, trying to impose Trump’s will on a state. It should be disbanded.
Hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans have taken to the streets to bravely defy ICE’s intimidation and violence, to insist on their rights under law, and to express solidarity with their neighbors who are ICE victims. And across the nation, many thousands came out in support.
In other places where liberty has been challenged, Americans and our leaders identified with a threatened people. “I am a Berliner,” President John F. Kennedy affirmed at the Berlin Wall in 1963. “I am a Greenlander,” some now say in response to President Trump’s threats to invade an ally’s territory.
The threats and the invasion have come home. If our constitutional rights are not to be erased, we must act with the courage displayed by Minnesotans. “I am a Minnesotan.” So are we all.
Reporting by the Wall Street Journal indicates the active "weaponization" of the agency to target the far-right president's political opponents and groups peacefully organizing against his administration's destruction agenda.
With reporting that President Donald Trump has ordered "sweeping changes" at the Internal Revenue Service, including aiming the agency's criminal-investigative unit at left-leaning nonprofit groups and individual donors, critics are warning of the chilling impacts of the weaponization of state power against the Republican administration's perceived political enemies.
The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, citing various people familiar with the shift in policy, reports that a "senior IRS official involved in the effort" has already created "a list of potential targets" for the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, which is also being installed with more loyal "allies" of the president to administer the new direction.
The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes and are being driven by Gary Shapley, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Shapley has told people that he is going to replace Guy Ficco, the chief of the investigative unit, who has been at the agency for decades, and that Shapley has been putting together a list of donors and groups he believes IRS investigators should look at. Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups, according to a senior IRS official and another person briefed on the list. It couldn’t be determined upon what grounds Shapley would seek to begin such an investigation.
The reporting indicates that the decision to mobilize the IRS-CI for such an effort followed frustration experienced by Trump officials who encountered "obstacles in a separate effort to strip tax-exempt status from certain nonprofits," including universities with whom the president has clashed over student protests and other campus policies.
In recent weeks, various high-level officials in the administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi, have been adamant that there's a network of progressive groups and donors that represent a "violent" faction on the left, which must be dismantled and criminally prosecuted. Still, they have offered little to no evidence about who or what this network is or what criminal conduct they are talking about.
Citing people familiar with the new plan at the IRS, the WSJ reports that "some senior IRS criminal tax attorneys are already voicing concern about the methods of investigators while Trump encourages his administration to target donors and nonprofit groups."
They are not the only ones expressing concern.
"This is using the government to destroy dissent," said Denver Lee Riggleman III, an Air Force veteran and former Democratic congressman from Virginia. "This is textbook authoritarianism."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) responded to the new reporting by warning about the "weaponization" of the IRS by Trump against groups and individuals based on political speech, a clear violation of First Amendment protections and an unlawful use of the agency's enforcement powers.
“Donald Trump believes he’s a king, and he’s determined to wield every agency under his control as a weapon to crush political opposition and silence free speech," said Wyden in a Wednesday night statement.
"The Trump administration will try to legitimize this abuse with legal opinions and procedural lingo, but the implicit threat is that if you give to a progressive cause, they’ll deem you a terrorist and ruin your life," he continued. “Senate Republicans have spent years faking outrage over what they called the weaponization of government. They’ve spent more than a decade moaning about the IRS scrutinizing conservative tax-exempt groups—scrutiny the IRS in fact applied to organizations across the political spectrum."
Now, added Wyden, that "weaponization" the GOP warns about, but which never came to pass with an IRS under Democratic control, "is happening right now in front of their eyes, and unless Republicans stand up and speak out, they’ll be complicit in Trump’s assault on our Constitutional right to free speech.”
Ashley Schapitl, a former Democratic Capitol Hill staffer who served at the US Treasury Department and the US Senate Finance Committee, warned that "the total weaponization of tax enforcement leads down a dark road."
"Needless to say, under normal circumstances," said Schapitl, "political appointees are nowhere near and know nothing about IRS criminal investigations."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, said that directing the IRS to target specific people for political purposes is not just a misuse of the agency, but a criminal act under federal statute.
"It's a full-blown federal felony crime for anyone in the White House (and all Secretaries but the AG) to order the IRS to target people," said Reichlin-Melnick. "It's not just a crime to DO it, it's a federal crime for an employee not to REPORT such an order to the Treasury Inspector General."
As Trump openly admitted last month, and the WSJ noted in its reporting, the president has ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to identify and target those groups the White House has claimed are fomenting "political violence," but which critics warn is just a vague use of language so Trump can target organizations that protest or organize against his policies.
“Scott will do that," Trump said during a recent cabinet meeting in the White House, referring to the targeting of groups or donors. "That’s easy for Scott."
Our democracy is no longer guaranteed—from Wall Street to the White House, power is slipping into the hands of a few oligarchs at the expense of working people and ordinary families.
For generations, Americans have been taught that the United States is the world’s beacon of democracy. Politicians across the spectrum speak of the nation as a “shining city on a hill,” a place where freedom and the rule of law set the standard for the rest of the world. But the truth is harder to swallow: the U.S. is drifting away from liberal democracy and toward authoritarianism.
A survey of more than 700 political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch in 2020 found that the vast majority believe the U.S. is rapidly moving toward some form of authoritarian rule. Scholars rated American democracy on a scale from zero (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy). After Donald Trump’s first election in November 2016, they gave it a 67. Several weeks into his second term, the score had plunged to 55. Elections, rights, and freedoms are under attack—and America is running out of time to save its democracy. The experts’ warnings are not abstract; they reflect a country where voter suppression, gerrymandering, corporate influence, a compliant Supreme Court, and executive overreach are eroding the foundations of democratic governance. When citizens are uninformed—or choose not to vote—the systems of power tilt toward elites, making it easier for authoritarian forces to consolidate control. Authoritarian forces also thrive on fear—fear of immigrants, political opponents, or anyone deemed an outsider—turning Americans against one another and eroding the inclusive ideals that once defined the nation as a melting pot.
One of the hallmarks of authoritarian systems is the concentration of power in a single office. In the US, the presidency has been steadily amassing authority for decades. Presidents of both parties have expanded executive power—from Woodrow Wilson, who during and after World War I oversaw a massive expansion of federal authority, centralized control over the economy, and signed the Espionage and Sedition Acts to suppress dissent, to more recent administrations. After September 11, 2001, Congress handed the executive branch sweeping powers through the Authorization for Use of Military Force, essentially giving presidents a blank check for war. Since then, presidents have increasingly governed through executive orders and “emergency” declarations, bypassing Congress altogether. Barack Obama further expanded executive authority through extrajudicial drone strikes, targeting individuals abroad without judicial review or due process, demonstrating that executive power can be exercised unilaterally and with limited accountability. Meanwhile, Congress has been paralyzed by polarization and gridlock, leaving lobbyists and corporate donors to fill the vacuum. The Senate’s structure, which gives Wyoming and California the same representation despite a 70-fold population difference, allows minority rule to dominate national policy. Gerrymandering and voter suppression further hollow out electoral accountability. A government that concentrates power in the executive while undermining the voice of ordinary citizens is not functioning as a democracy.
Wake up, America! It’s one thing to recognize the nation’s slide toward authoritarianism and complain about it—it’s another entirely to take action.
Authoritarian governments also justify extraordinary powers in the name of “security.” The U.S. is no exception. The National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs, exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013, revealed a government that watches its citizens on a scale once unthinkable. At home, local police departments increasingly resemble military units, rolling out armored vehicles and tear gas against peaceful protesters. We saw this during Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, and Black Lives Matter uprisings. The deployment of force against citizens exercising their constitutional rights should alarm anyone who values democracy. Yet the normalization of militarized policing has created what philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote as a “state of exception”—where emergency measures become everyday tools of governance.
Yes, Americans still enjoy constitutional rights—but too often these rights exist more on paper than in practice. Free speech? Tell that to whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Snowden, or Reality Winner, who were prosecuted under the Espionage Act for revealing government misconduct. Voting rights? They’ve been under relentless attack, especially since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted protections for minority voters. States have since imposed strict voter ID laws, purged voter rolls, and closed polling places in Black and Latino communities. Even fundamental rights like reproductive freedom are being stripped away. The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, unleashing a wave of state-level abortion bans. Millions of women and people who can become pregnant no longer have control over their own bodies. That’s not democracy; that’s state control of private life.
Another clear sign of authoritarian drift is the domination of politics by wealthy elites. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision, corporations and billionaires have been able to pour unlimited money into elections. Political campaigns are dominated by super PACs and billionaire donors. Our democracy is no longer guaranteed—from Wall Street to the White House, power is slipping into the hands of a few. Political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found in 2014 that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” leaving ordinary voters almost powerless to shape the laws that govern them.
The authoritarian character of the United States cannot be understood solely within its borders. With more than 750 military bases worldwide and a defense budget larger than the next ten nations combined, the United States functions as a global empire. Military interventions—from Iraq to Afghanistan to drone strikes across the Middle East and Africa—have often been launched without meaningful Congressional approval. Empire abroad normalizes authoritarianism at home. Militarized policing, mass surveillance, and a bloated national security state are justified by the logic of “permanent war,” which also benefits defense contractors, private security firms, and other corporate interests that profit from endless conflict. As Hannah Arendt wrote, imperialism abroad often requires repression at home. That warning has become reality.
The United States still holds elections and maintains a written constitution, but appearances are misleading. The US still calls itself a democracy, but in practice, authoritarian forces are calling the shots. What makes American authoritarianism distinctive is its velvet glove: it is not a dictatorship in the classical sense but a regime where democratic symbols cloak undemocratic realities. Its most effective disguise is the illusion of freedom itself—an ideology of free market capitalism that promises choice while consolidating power in the hands of a few. Americans are told they live in the land of opportunity, yet the choices available to them—whether in the marketplace or at the ballot box—are increasingly constrained by corporate monopolies and two political parties beholden to the same economic elites. Recognizing this drift is the first step toward reversing it. Unless structural reforms are undertaken—curbing corporate power, restoring voting rights, protecting civil liberties, and demilitarizing both foreign and domestic policy—the United States risks cementing its place not as the defender of democracy but as an exemplar of its decline.
It is a bitter irony that 66,000 living World War II veterans—who risked everything to fight authoritarianism abroad—now witness the creeping authoritarianism at home and the steady erosion of the freedoms they fought to secure. Their sacrifices are a reminder that democracy is fragile and must be actively defended.
Unless structural reforms are undertaken—curbing corporate power, restoring voting rights, protecting civil liberties, and demilitarizing both foreign and domestic policy—the United States risks cementing its place not as the defender of democracy but as an exemplar of its decline.
Democracy is not self-sustaining. If Americans care about preserving freedom, they must act: vote in every election—from school boards to city councils to state legislatures—and recognize that their power extends beyond the ballot box. As consumers and shareholders, they can choose carefully which corporations they support, amplifying businesses that align with democratic values while withdrawing support from those that undermine them. Citizens can also engage directly with elected officials, starting meaningful discussions to make their voices heard, and volunteer with nonpartisan nonprofit advocacy organizations and watchdog groups that protect the democratic process, civil rights, and corporate and government accountability and transparency. Pushing for structural reforms that rein in executive power and corporate influence, challenging fear-mongering narratives, and defending the rights of marginalized communities are all essential steps to reclaiming and preserving democracy.
We each have a role to play. Wake up, America! It’s one thing to recognize the nation’s slide toward authoritarianism and complain about it—it’s another entirely to take action. Be no bystander; democracy depends on participation. We ignore its demise at our peril.
This is not just about Los Angeles. It is about whether a president can override a state to deploy troops in support of domestic policy. It is about whether dissent is still protected in practice, not just in principle.
The images coming from Los Angeles in June 2025 are not without precedent. But the precedents are not American. They are global, and they are troubling. Military convoys rolling into a city over the objections of its elected leaders. Peaceful protest recast as a public threat. Immigrant communities targeted with sweeping enforcement actions and then blamed for resisting. What unfolded in Los Angeles this summer looked less like the United States of 1992 and more like Beijing in 1989 or Paris under curfew in 1961. These were moments when governments exploited protest as pretext and used the language of order to justify repression. What makes Los Angeles so alarming is not just the imagery of troops on domestic streets, but the quiet dismantling of legal guardrails that once kept that imagery exceptional.
This is not just a story about immigration raids. It is about the redefinition of dissent as rebellion and the deployment of military force to enforce that fiction. For the first time in modern U.S. history, active-duty federal troops were sent into a state not to uphold civil rights or restore public safety, but to enforce domestic policy over the objection of state leaders. There was no invocation of the Insurrection Act. Instead, the Trump administration relied on a lesser-known statute, 10 U.S.C. §12406, and vague assertions of inherent executive power to federalize California’s National Guard and deploy 700 Marines across Los Angeles. Governor Gavin Newsom objected. The Pentagon bypassed him.
For the first time in modern U.S. history, active-duty federal troops were sent into a state not to uphold civil rights or restore public safety, but to enforce domestic policy over the objection of state leaders.
The White House framed the move as necessary to restore order. But there was no large-scale disorder. There were protests, including vigils outside detention centers, marches through working-class neighborhoods, and union leaders acting as legal observers. There were curfew violations and some scattered vandalism. But there was no insurrection. The destabilizing force was not public protest. It was the decision to respond to it with troops.
Defenders of the administration reached quickly for precedent, citing the Rodney King riots in 1992 and the civil rights showdowns of Little Rock and Selma. But these comparisons obscure more than they clarify. In 1992, California’s governor requested help after riots erupted. In 1957 and 1965, Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson used the military to enforce federal court orders and protect constitutional rights that states had refused to uphold. In all of those cases, the goal was the expansion of rights. In Los Angeles in 2025, troops were sent not to defend civil liberties but to suppress protest against their erosion.
If the domestic record fails to explain this moment, the international one does. In Beijing in 1989, peaceful student demonstrators were labeled counterrevolutionaries. Martial law was declared. Troops rolled in. Thousands were killed or disappeared. In the years since, the Chinese state has denied, distorted, and buried the events of Tiananmen Square. The repression was not only physical. It was historical. Dissent itself was erased.
In Paris in 1961, Algerian immigrants marched peacefully against a discriminatory curfew. Police responded with overwhelming violence. More than a hundred were killed, many beaten and dumped into the Seine. The government minimized the incident for decades, calling it a minor clash. Only in recent years has the truth surfaced, slowly and incompletely, with no accountability.
In Myanmar in 2017, a stateless Muslim minority, the Rohingya, was framed as a terrorist threat after a small-scale insurgent attack. The state launched what it called a clearance campaign. Entire villages were destroyed. More than 700,000 people were forced into exile. The military denied responsibility and described the operation as a legitimate anti-terror response. The world called it ethnic cleansing. The government called it counterinsurgency.
What these cases share is a structure. A marginalized population asserts its presence, through protest, through migration, through visibility. The state reframes that assertion as rebellion. Force follows. Then comes denial or strategic ambiguity, and often historical erasure. Violence becomes policy. Policy becomes precedent.
What happened in Los Angeles has not reached that level of brutality. But the logic is already in place. Peaceful resistance was framed as a rebellion. The deployment of troops was not a last resort. It was a political maneuver. The administration used the machinery of national defense to discipline domestic opposition, and to do so under legal theories that dissolve long-held constraints on federal power.
Critics may call this comparison alarmist. They argue that America is not China, not Myanmar, not an authoritarian regime. We have elections, courts, and a free press. But the danger is not that the United States has already crossed the threshold into authoritarianism. It is that we are normalizing the tools that allow such a shift to happen incrementally and under cover of law.
Authoritarianism does not begin with the mass suspension of rights. It begins with the narrowing of who those rights apply to. It begins with the quiet reclassification of dissent as danger. It begins with language: radicals, illegals, rebels. It begins with the claim that protest is disorder, and that order must be restored by force if necessary. And it gains ground not only through coercion, but through public fatigue. If the streets are quiet, if the media coverage fades, if the courts stall, the logic settles into the baseline of governance.
That is why this moment matters. The deployment in Los Angeles is not just provocative. It is precedent-setting. It redefines the legal thresholds for domestic military use. It challenges the role of states in checking federal authority. And it reframes protest against government action not as a civic right, but as a federal security risk.
We have seen, around the world, how easily protest can be recast as provocation. How immigrants, minorities, and political dissidents can be treated not as citizens, but as threats. How democratic states can adopt authoritarian tools, first in exceptional cases, then in ordinary ones.
We are not there yet. But we are closer than we think.
This is not just about Los Angeles. It is about whether a president can override a state to deploy troops in support of domestic policy. It is about whether dissent is still protected in practice, not just in principle. It is about whether the line between order and oppression has already begun to blur, and whether we will recognize it in time.
It would be very helpful to American democracy if the media would do its job and focus on the fact that the Garcia case represents a significant defeat for Trump and win for the rule of law.
In a surprise development, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the man living in Maryland illegally deported to El Salvador was returned to the United States to face charges of transporting undocumented migrants. For months, the Trump Administration and the judicial system had been odds over returning Garcia to the United States. The Supreme Court had ruled that the Trump Administration had to “facilitate” Garcia’s return but not “effectuate” it.
It is essential to note that the Trump Administration admitted in court documents that they had inappropriately deported Garcia to El Salvador where he was imprisoned in a notorious maximum security prison. In an oval office meeting in April with Salvadoran President Bukele, Trump made it clear that Garcia would not ever be returning to the United States. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Garcia “is never coming back to our country.”
The standoff between the Trump Administration and the courts led to talks of a constitutional crisis. Indeed, it was hard to see how the impasse would be resolved. Then, without any warning, Garcia was moved from El Salvador to face charges in Tennessee of smuggling undocumented immigrants. Instead of her blanket statement that Garcia would never return to American soil, Bondi now said that “Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. This is what American justice looks like.”
The charges against Garcia are hotly disputed by his attorneys. Democrats on Capitol Hill are also challenging the evidence against Garcia. On CNN, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal commented: “And I’ve heard again and again and again, as a prosecutor, as a United States attorney, federal prosecutor, as well as state attorney general, charges are not evidence. And so far, we’ve seen no evidence.”
Garcia’s return to the United States, even though he faces serious charges, is a real victory for the rule of law. As Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen put it in a statement: “As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights—and the rights of all. The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”
For reasons that escape me, the mainstream media has not pointed out that Garcia’s return to the United States is a huge victory for the rule of law and a defeat for President Trump. Garcia is now in a judicial system facing charges, which will be tested in a court of law. His case will not be adjudicated by the whims of the Trump administration.
Recent events suggest that the Trump team realizes the importance of Garcia’s return to America. Trump is a master of the political counterpunch which distracts the media and public’s attention from the matter at hand. I strongly doubt that Trump would have deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell protests had he not suffered a defeat in the Garcia case. It is, as the New York Times put it, the political fight that President Trump is looking for.
The hard task for Democrats is to respond to Trump’s provocations while keeping the focus on the rights to a fair trial, due process and peaceful protest. It would be very helpful to American democracy if the media would do its job and focus on the fact that the Garcia case represents a major defeat for Trump and a victory for the rule of law.
In an interview with Sen. Peter Welch on Monday, Columbia University student organizer Mohsen Mahdawi described how his arrest by immigration agents earlier this month took place right as he was preparing to answer questions on a citizenship test about the bedrock principles and rights afforded to everyone in the U.S.—particularly freedom of speech.
"I wanted to become a citizen of this country because I believe in the principles of this country," Mahdawi told the Vermont Democratic senator during a visit to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center where he has been held for more than a week. "The most important rights [are in] the Bill of Rights, which includes free speech on the top of these rights, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, freedom of having religion or not having religion at all."
Welch visited Mahdawi as Columbia students chained themselves to a fence at the Ivy League school, demanding his release along with that of Mahmoud Khalil, another leader of pro-Palestinian campus protests who was detained last month and is being held at a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana with the Trump administration pursuing his deportation.
Mahdawi, a green-card holder for the past 10 years, arrived at an immigration office in Colchester, Vermont last week to finalize his application to become a naturalized citizen—only to be handcuffed and arrested by armed, plainclothes federal agents wearing masks.
Welch noted in his talk with Mahdawi that Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a memo that as a student speaking out against Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza and the West Bank, Mahdawi could "potentially undermine" the Middle East peace process. Mahdawi is one of several student activists who have been detained for protesting in solidarity with Palestine, and hundreds have had their visas revoked as the Trump administration claims to be fighting antisemitism.
On Friday, a federal judge in Georgia's Northern District ordered ICE to restore the legal status of 133 of the students who had had their F-1 visas revoked.
"The Constitution protects everyone on American soil, so the Trump administration cannot ignore due process to unjustifiably threaten students with the loss of immigration status, and arrest and deportation," said Akiva Freidlin, senior staff attorney at the ACLU-Georgia, which had filed a lawsuit over the visa revocations.
Rubio also invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act in the administration's effort to deport Khalil; a provision within the law allows the government to initiate the deportation of lawful permanent residents by claiming they threaten U.S. foreign policy.
"Basically, he is describing being anti-war as antisemitic," said Mahdawi. "How could that be possible when my partners, most of my partners at Columbia's campus and beyond, are Jews and Israelis. My work has been centered on peacemaking, and all I am doing, I am being a human."
Posting a video of his talk with Mohsen on social media, Welch urged Americans to "listen to his message" of empathy, which the organizer said extends to Jewish people in the U.S. and Israel.
"My empathy," he said, "extends beyond the Palestinian people... And my hope and my dream is to see this conflict, if one might say, to see an end to the war, an end to the killing, to see a peaceful resolution between Palestinians and Israelis."
"How could this be a threat to anybody except the war machine that is feeding this?" said Mahdawi.
Mahdawi urged his supporters "to continue working for the democracy of this country and for humanity," and said, "The war must stop."
"As a result of your strong grassroots organizing, you have defeated the wealthiest person on earth," said Sen. Bernie Sanders to the state's voters after the Supreme Court race was called. "You have set an example for the rest of the country."
The battle over a seat on the WisconsinSupreme Court was settled decisively on Tuesday night as the Democratic favorite Susan Crawford dispatched with far-right favorite Brad Schimel, a candidate backed by tens of millions of dollars in outside money and corporate interests, including an estimated $20 million or more from President Donald Trump sycophant and world's wealthiest individual Elon Musk.
As of this writing, Crawford, a Dane County Judge, was enjoying "an unexpectedly easy" win with 55.5% of the vote compared to the 44.5% received by Schimel, the state's former Republican attorney general. Numerous decision desks called the race in her favor shortly after polls closed, and the returns were clear.
"Thank you," Crawford said in a victory speech from the city of Madison shortly after 9:30 pm local time. "Alright, Wisconsin—we did it!"
Crawford said she had just received a concession phone call from Schimel—describing him as "gracious" in defeat—as she thanked the people of Wisconsin for delivering a hard-fought victory in what has been documented as the "most expensive judicial race ever" in U.S. history.
"Tonight, the grassroots have risen up to defeat Musk and the MAGA authoritarianism he's funding."
"Thank you for trusting me to serve you on the Wisconsin Supreme Court," she told the audience of supporters and national television cameras. "I'm so grateful to have earned the trust and support of voters across this great state." She explained that she got into this race—like how she had spent her life—"to do what's right, to protect the rights and fundamental freedoms of all Wisconites."
Crediting her career success to the values learned in the small Wisconsin town of Chippewa Falls—"where people watched out for each other" and people respected the ability to "tell right from wrong"—Crawford said that growing up she never imagined she would ultimately "be taking on the richest man in the world" in a political fight that has gained national attention and was widely seen as a political referendum on the first two months of the Trump administration's policies.
The battle, she said, was "over justice in Wisconsin—and we won!"
Musk has become a key factor in the race over recent weeks by spending millions of his own money backing Schimel. One gimmick he used over the recent weekend was handing out $1 million checks to people, according to critics, to purchase their support and vote.
Progressive lawmakers were among those chiming in with applause Tuesday night.
" Elon Musk spent MILLIONS to defeat Susan Crawford in Wisconsin—and it was an epic fail," declared Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) after announcing her victory. "Voters saw through his schemes, and our country is better off for it. Thank you, Wisconsinites."
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Our Revolution, was among those celebrating Crawford's win as an apparent rebuke to Musk and President Trump. "Despite pouring over $20 million into this race—including handing out million-dollar checks to voters—the world's wealthiest man has failed to secure a conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court," said Geevarghese. "Crawford's victory is a decisive win for protecting abortion access and workers' rights in Wisconsin. It also serves as a crucial safeguard against Donald Trump's ongoing attempts to subvert American democracy and erode judicial independence."
While the resounding defeat of Schimel by voters will be "viewed as a critical referendum on Trump and Musk’s dangerous, lawless agenda," he added, the amount of money spent during the race "also stands as a stark warning about the deep corruption within our broken campaign finance system. With spending exceeding $100 million, this election has become the most expensive state Supreme Court race in U.S. history, with billionaire donations flooding in on both sides."
"Tonight, the grassroots have risen up to defeat Musk and the MAGA authoritarianism he's funding," Geevarghese said. "But the fight to eliminate dark money from our political system is far from over. Continued inaction poses an urgent, looming threat to our democracy and way of life."
American Bridge, a research and rapid response group with close ties to the Democratic Party, feasted on Schimel's loss by deriding the GOP favorite as the "biggest loser in Wisconsin history."
"Wisconsinites have spoken, and together their votes decided that Wisconsin needs leaders who will protect our freedoms while rejecting the politics of fear and division."
Schimel, said the group's spokesperson Monica Venzke, "clearly can’t take a hint, but hopefully this time it sticks—Wisconsin wants nothing to do with him. Not even his out-of-state billionaire supporter could buy him this one. Imagine spending over $18 million and still losing."
According to Venzke, the defeat of Schimel despite the tens of millions spent by corporate forces "is just a preview of how voters are rejecting Trump's agenda of folding to billionaires. Republicans around the country have a choice: stand up to Trump, or lose."
Lucy Ripp, communications director for Better Wisconsin Together, which represents progressives' concerns in the state, also credited the work of the state's grassroots, which she suggested was a model for people nationwide.
"Wisconsinites have spoken, and together their votes decided that Wisconsin needs leaders who will protect our freedoms while rejecting the politics of fear and division," said Ripp. "Wisconsin voters chose common sense, progress, and freedom over a radical, right-wing partisan agenda that thrives on dividing our communities and leaving working families behind in service of billionaires and special interests."
"By maintaining a strong progressive majority, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will continue as a first line of defense in protecting Wisconsinites' constitutional rights and freedoms," added Ripp, "and a vital check on the Trump and Musk agenda amid the barrage of threats to our rights and livelihoods coming down from the White House."
As of this writing, neither Trump nor Musk had acknowledged Crawford's victory over Schimel on their main social media channels—though each celebrated the approval of a controversial and "regressive" voter I.D. law in the state. To some critics, their twin silence on the Supreme Court race felt like quite a loud statement.
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident
arrested earlier this month and slated for deportation by immigration authorities over his pro-Palestine activism, should be heard in New Jersey—not Louisiana as sought by the Trump administration—and reaffirmed an order blocking his expulsion from the country pending the outcome of his legal challenge.
Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found that since Khalil was detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in New Jersey when he lodged a legal challenge to his detention, his case should be transferred to the Garden State. Last week, Furman—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—issued and then
extended an order temporarily barring Khalil's deportation.
"This is a first step, but we need to continue to demand justice for Mahmoud," Khalil's wife, Noor Abdalla, who is eight months pregnant,
said in response to Wednesday's ruling. "His unlawful and unjust detention cannot stand. We will not stop fighting until he is home with me."
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against Israel's annihilation of Gaza. He was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes DHS officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana.
Accused of no crime and widely considered a political prisoner, Khalil was targeted following U.S. President Donald Trump's
issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations. The Trump administration has also invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a member of Khalil's legal team,
said Wednesday that "the government transferred Mr. Khalil to a remote private prison in Louisiana hours after his arrest and the filing of his original habeas petition—an intentional and retaliatory attempt to silence his speech in support of Palestinian rights and interfere with the jurisdiction of the New York and New Jersey courts."
"Mr. Khalil should be free and home with his wife awaiting the birth of their first child, and we will continue to do everything possible to make that happen," Sisay added.
ACLU senior staff attorney Brett Max Kaufman, who also represents Khalil, said that "this is just the beginning, but it is a moment to celebrate."
"The court's ruling sends a critical message to courts across the country, who are sure to face similar unprecedented challenges to their authority in the days that come, that the judiciary must not shy from its constitutional role," he continued. "And no judicial role is more important than acting as a check on executive abuses the Trump administration has made the defining feature of its first 60 days."
"After this first step, we will eagerly and aggressively seek to get Mahmoud out, bring him home, and then defend his and others' right to speak freely about Palestine or any other issue without fear of detention and deportation," Kaufman added.
Another lawyer for Khalil, Amy Greer, said: "We are ready to fight just as hard for Mr. Khalil in the district of New Jersey. He was taken by plainclothes federal agents, transferred in the middle of the night across state lines, and has been detained for over a week now, all because of his advocacy for Palestinian freedom. We will not stop working until Mr. Khalil is home with his wife."
Democracy defenders have
warned that Khalil's arrest—which sparked protests across the nation—is a blatant violation of constitutionally protected free speech rights and a sign of advancing authoritarianism. Trump vowed last week that Khalil was "the first arrest of many to come."
On Tuesday, Khalil released a
letter calling himself a "political prisoner." He called his arrest and detention "a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza," and "part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent" from which no one is immune.
