The Supreme Court Just Granted Trump a License to Erase Moral Responsibility

The American people just got a taste of authoritarianism wrapped in judicial robes. In a stunning 6-3 ruling this week, the Supreme Court green-lit the mass deportation of immigrants, not to their home countries but to third nations where they have no legal status, no family, and often no hope.

In her dissent, Justice Sonja Sotomayor, calling the shadow docket ruling “inexcusable,” pointed out how destructive this is to the rule of law (both U.S. and international law largely prohibit this) and to the lives of the people who may be deported without due process:

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.

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.” By rewarding lawlessness, the court once again undermines that foundational principle.

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.

This ruling by six corrupt Republican justices allows Donald Trump or any future president to designate any country they choose as a “safe third country” and deport people there without meaningful review, even if they’ve committed no crime and have a valid asylum claim.

If that sounds familiar, it should. It echoes one of the most cold-blooded decisions made by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime: to locate their extermination camps not within Germany, but in the foreign lands of occupied Poland.

Let’s be clear: Deportation is not genocide. But both decisions—then and now—are grounded in the same logic of moral evasion through geographic displacement.

When regimes want to commit acts that would stir conscience or provoke backlash at home, they find ways to outsource the cruelty.

The decision wasn’t just about deportation. It was about moral laundering, washing the blood off our hands by putting it on someone else’s tarmac.

The Nazi leadership understood that while Germany’s public had been bombarded with antisemitic propaganda for years, they still might balk at the wholesale slaughter of millions of people inside German borders. So they built Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec far away, deep in Poland, where there were no German newspapers, no prying eyes, and no courts to second-guess their machinery of death.

As Raul Hilberg and other Holocaust historians have documented, Nazi leaders like Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich made this decision deliberately to preserve the illusion of “moral cleanliness” at home while carrying out genocide abroad.

Today’s Trump version of this practice is more sanitized, but no less cynical.

By permitting the U.S. government to deport asylum-seekers and noncriminal undocumented immigrants to random third countries—often places they’ve never even set foot in—the Supreme Court has granted the executive branch a license to erase moral responsibility.

As long as the suffering happens somewhere else, we’re told, it’s not our fault. It’s not our soil. Not our responsibility.

That kind of logic is the death of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. As Federal Judge Patricia Millett said of Trump’s deportation of Venezuelan prisoners to a concentration camp in El Salvador, compared with FDR’s actions in WWII, “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.”

A future president with dictatorial ambitions could cite this ruling to round up political dissidents, journalists, or whistleblowers and ship them off to “safe third countries” that are anything but.

The Trump administration argued—and the court’s on-the-take, Republican-appointed majority agreed—that migrants have no right to American judicial processes once they’re transferred elsewhere. In other words, we can dodge our legal obligations under both U.S. and international law simply by putting someone on a plane.

This is the same loophole thinking that allowed George W. Bush’s administration to kidnap terror suspects and ship them to places like Egypt and Syria, where they were tortured out of view. That policy was called “extraordinary rendition.” Today, we might call this new policy extraordinary rejection: a way to deny asylum without confronting its human cost.

And here’s the truly chilling part: Once someone has been deported to a third country, they are functionally outside the U.S. legal system. They can’t sue. They can’t appeal. They may not even survive. And, to Trump’s delight, it’ll all be outside the reach of American courts and U.S. media.

This obscene policy isn’t about safety, it’s about displacement as punishment and the creation of a pseudo-legal infrastructure of indifference to the humanity of the people we’re “processing.”

Whether it’s a camp outside Kraków or a deportation center in Guatemala, the strategy is the same: create a zone of moral invisibility. A legal no-man’s-land where acts that would outrage decent people become routine, because they happen far away, beyond the reach of media, law, and conscience.

That’s not how democracies behave: That’s how authoritarian regimes insulate themselves from dissent.

And like all authoritarian tools, once it exists, it will be used again.

You may think this only affects immigrants. But consider: The legal precedent now exists for the government to forcibly remove someone from U.S. soil and drop them in another country without due process. Today it’s asylum-seekers. Tomorrow, who knows?

A future president with dictatorial ambitions could cite this ruling to round up political dissidents, journalists, or whistleblowers and ship them off to “safe third countries” that are anything but.

You think that’s paranoid? So did people in 1932 Berlin.

The genius of the American system—at least in theory—is that it puts checks on state power. The executive cannot act like a king. The courts must protect the vulnerable. And the public must have visibility into the actions done in our name.

This week, though, the Supreme Court abdicated that role. And in doing so, the six Republicans on the bench handed a dangerous tool to a man most inclined to abuse it.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The decision wasn’t just about deportation. It was about moral laundering, washing the blood off our hands by putting it on someone else’s tarmac.

The Nazis did it. So did the Bush administration. Now Trump’s backers on the court have opened the door once more.

History doesn’t repeat, but, as Mark Twain said, it rhymes. And if we’re not careful, we may soon find that rhyme turning into a full verse we’ve heard before.

Trump’s Lawless Attack on Harvard Is Like None Before

This month, our firm filed a friend of the court brief in the Harvard case on behalf of 18 former government officials who were responsible for enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law the Trump administration relies on to justify termination of billions of dollars in federal funding to the university. The signatories to the brief are senior career and non-career appointees who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations from the 1970’s to January of this year.

One of those former officials is David Tatel, a highly respected retired judge who served as director of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) under President Jimmy Carter, and later as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often called the nation’s second highest court. Judge Tatel discusses his experience overseeing Title VI enforcement in the brief. It illustrates just how lawless, destructive, and dangerous President Donald Trump’s vendetta against Harvard has become—and how different it is from any Title VI enforcement action that has gone before.

Title VI requires institutions that receive federal funds to follow civil rights laws. Institutions that discriminate can lose their funds, but it is an option of last resort.

Rather than conducting a proper investigation with detailed findings, engaging in good-faith negotiations, and allowing Harvard an opportunity to defend itself, Trump moved immediately to the nuclear option that hurts everyone.

Before funds are cut, the government must conduct a proper investigation to determine if discrimination exists and the law has been violated; it must make genuine, good faith efforts to work with the fund recipient to secure voluntary compliance; and where settlement is unsuccessful, the recipient must have a chance to present its case in court.

These constraints are written into Title VI and the regulations federal agencies must follow. They protect the interests of universities like Harvard, but more important, they maintain the delivery of services to the ultimate beneficiaries of federal programs as much as possible. In the case of Harvard, those beneficiaries include not just its students and faculty, but millions around the world who benefit from advances in science, medicine, and technology that flow from Harvard’s research programs and facilities.

Judge Tatel refers to fund termination as the nuclear option: “it is like dropping an atom bomb—everyone gets hurt.”

In his time enforcing Title VI, Tatel faced egregious violations of civil rights laws by school districts and universities, involving refusals to comply with court desegregation orders, and the firing of Black teachers.

Tatel recalls traveling to remote school districts in Texas and Arkansas, meeting with school superintendents to learn about their issues and work out agreements. He did the same with the city of Chicago, taking months to investigate concerns and negotiate over how to achieve voluntary compliance with a desegregation plan that would serve the interests of students, the city, and the federal government.

Universities were no different. Tatel carefully negotiated agreements with the public university systems of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Virginia to remove the vestiges of racially dual education systems in those five states.

The University of North Carolina took longer, but Tatel and his boss, HEW Secretary Joseph Califano, stayed with it for years, meeting repeatedly with the UNC president and North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt to craft an acceptable plan. Ultimately an agreement was worked out by the Reagan administration.

The approach to Title VI enforcement Judge Tatel followed and that is mandated by the statute has worked time and again. As a result, the termination of funds has been rare. Thousands of Title VI complaints have been filed during the decades Tatel and the signatories to the brief oversaw enforcement. They are aware of none that has resulted in fund termination since 1982.

Contrast this with way Trump has pursued alleged Title VI concerns with Harvard. After receiving notification of the government’s allegations of antisemitism on campus in February, Harvard explained the reforms it had undertaken and said it was open to exploring further reforms. Trump responded with an unprecedented and unconstitutional demand, requiring Harvard to submit to government control of the viewpoints expressed on campus. When Harvard refused to cede control of its teaching, community and governance, Trump moved within hours to terminate all federal funding.

The consequences to Harvard are dire. The cuts affect billions of dollars in funding that support medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and national security. Harvard filed suit in court, challenging the fund termination as unconstitutional retaliation for exercising its First Amendment rights and its right to defend itself.

Trump responded by doubling down, ordering the Department of Homeland Security to revoke Harvard’s certification to host the 7,000 international students currently enrolled at Harvard. Harvard filed a second suit to protect these students, and Trump retaliated yet again, issuing a new Executive Order directing the State Department to take actions designed to prevent new international students coming to Harvard from entering the country.

Nothing could be further from the process mandated by Title VI for resolving allegations of discrimination, or the process successfully followed by past administrations and those charged with enforcing Title VI. Rather than conducting a proper investigation with detailed findings, engaging in good-faith negotiations, and allowing Harvard an opportunity to defend itself, Trump moved immediately to the nuclear option that hurts everyone.

What explains this blatantly lawless conduct? In my view the answer is clear.

Trump is not interested in resolving allegations of discrimination, any more than he is interested in determining if the allegations have merit in the first instance. His motives are retaliatory and punitive. They are designed to assert control over America’s oldest, wealthiest, and most prestigious university—a powerful institution he has concluded is not aligned with his political ideology.

He is determined to make an example of Harvard so that other universities and institutions with money and power will do his bidding.

We are now well down a path toward authoritarianism. The importance of the battle between Trump and Harvard cannot be overstated. It will determine more than the future of academic freedom in America. It may well determine the future of our democracy.

Mamdani Shows Us How to Defeat Trump's MAGA Vision

Zohran Mamdani just beat Andrew Cuomo in NYC's mayoral primary by doing something Democrats forgot how to do: acknowledging reality and promising to build our way out of it.

Too few people can afford to live in America anymore. We've given up on the idea that hard work gets you anywhere. We're buying lottery tickets and praying we got into Bitcoin at the right time because that's the only path to stability we can see.

I co-founded Justice Democrats. I was AOC's Communications Director. I've watched the fire die out from Bernie to AOC to Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. I've seen movements and moments that seemed poised to take back our democracy and our economy for the people slow to a crawl. Partly because our leaders were too trusting of the Democratic party. They thought we were all on the same team.

We aren't. We never were.

It's time for a full court press on the party. It's time to reshape it in the image of a better FDR. Take it over from the inside. Primary every corporate Democrat who thinks extraction is an economic policy. We need a new party—not a third party, but a Democratic party willing to clean house—starting with those who forgot how to build.

The party establishment can't just steal Mamdani's message. They've spent 30 years telling us why we can't build things, why we can't have universal healthcare, why we can't afford what every other developed country has. If Chuck Schumer suddenly started talking like Mamdani tomorrow, everyone would know he's full of shit.

So they'll do what they always do. They'll join Republicans in calling him too radical, too far left. They'll wring their hands about needing to appeal to the "center."

The center ain't what they think it is. It's swing voters who went from Obama to Trump and they want change, not compromise. They want someone to acknowledge that the system is broken and promise to fix it. They want a plan that makes sense.

Only 22% of Americans believe government can improve their lives. Twenty-two percent. That's what happens when both parties spend 40 years making sure that public options aren't functional. They make sure we can't build our own housing, transit, childcare, or healthcare system. They made sure the public can't build anything except tax breaks for billionaires.

Democrats tell us it's complicated. Republicans tell us it's immigrants' fault. Working families are taking on credit card debt to buy groceries. Teachers are driving Uber at night. Parents are choosing between daycare and rent.

We've accepted that this is just how it is. That America doesn't build things anymore. That the best we can hope for is tweaking a broken system around the edges.

Mamdani just showed Democrats how to call bullshit on all of that.

He won by acknowledging what everyone already knows—life has become unaffordable—and saying we're going to build our way out of it. Housing that teachers can afford. Transit that actually works. Childcare centers so parents don't have to choose between working and raising their kids. And that the ultra wealthy are going to pay their fair share.

He hasn't even been elected yet. But he's shown Democrats how to stop lying about the problem.

Stop explaining why we can't. Start acknowledging what's broken. Then provide the solution. Talk about it relentlessly with excitement and enthusiasm.

The establishment endorsed Cuomo—a sexual predator who spent his career making life worse for working people—because he represents their vision: pretend everything's fine, blame messaging when voters don't believe you.

Bill Clinton, Bloomberg, Clyburn, Torres—they all backed the predator over the builder. Because predators don't threaten their business model. Someone who acknowledges reality does.

Wall Street is terrified of Mamdani because public building kills private extraction. Every public housing unit is one less rent check for Blackstone. Every public childcare center is one less profit center for private equity. Every public transit line that works means fewer Uber rides, fewer car loans, fewer opportunities to bleed working people dry.

Wall Street doesn't build anymore. They buy what exists, jack up prices, and extract until there's nothing left. Our economy runs on extraction now. Healthcare alone will suck up $75 trillion over the next decade—not to make us healthier, but to transfer wealth upward. Housing, childcare, education—they're all cash vacuums.

Mamdani's promising to build public alternatives. That scares the shit out of them. He's proving you can win by admitting what everyone already knows. You can say "housing is unaffordable and we're going to build more of it" instead of lecturing people about market dynamics.

Now someone wins by saying we can build the things people need? Their business model collapses. Democrats have spent 30 years helping corporations privatize everything—from healthcare to housing to transit. They've turned basic needs into profit centers for Wall Street.

Young people assume they'll never own homes. Parents quit jobs because childcare costs more than they earn. Families crowd into apartments they can't afford while Democrats lecture us about GDP growth.

We've been trained to see poverty as inevitable. To see suffering as complicated. To see solutions as impossible.

Mamdani showed Democrats a different way. Admit that life has gotten harder. Acknowledge that work doesn't pay. Stop pretending the game isn't rigged. Then promise to build the things that make life livable.

Public building doesn't kill capitalism—it saves it from itself. When government builds housing, private developers have to compete. When we build public childcare, private centers can't charge whatever they want. But healthcare? Build public hospitals and clinics, and suddenly private insurers can't extract $75 trillion while people die rationing insulin. That's how you restart real competition. That's how you force corporations to actually create value instead of just extracting it.

Build the things people need to live. Not tax credits. Not market solutions. Not complicated programs that take three years to maybe help some people.

Mamdani won because he's the first Democrat in years to talk about the affordability crisis like someone who's actually tried to pay rent.

Americans aren't stupid. We know when we're being fed bullshit. We know when politicians are pretending our problems don't exist. We know when they're lying about why rent costs $3,000 a month or why insulin costs $600. We've just stopped expecting anyone to acknowledge reality, let alone fix it. We've accepted that politicians are liars and they will keep explaining why suffering is actually prosperity if you squint right.

The lottery tickets and crypto gambling show we've given up on the normal paths working. We need a party willing to admit those paths are broken before we'll believe they can be fixed.

What really terrifies them is if Mamdani succeeds in NYC, it spreads. Other cities start asking why they can't build public housing. Other states wonder why they can't have public childcare. The entire extraction economy—$75 trillion in healthcare alone, trillions more in housing, education, childcare—starts to crack. Every public option is a private profit center destroyed. Every successful public project is proof that we don't need them.

Mamdani hasn't even been elected yet. But he's shown us how to stop lying about what needs fixing. He's shown that you can win by promising to build for everyone, not just donors.

The movement's next job is to help Mamdani actually build—to prove the model works. Then we replicate it. Primaries in NYC, NYS, the US House and Senate. Every corporate Democrat who backs extraction over building needs a challenger who can build. Every AIPAC-purchased politician needs a challenger. Then maybe we can win in Texas and Tennessee and West Virginia. Then maybe people will believe the words we say.

If you still believe in this party, prove it. Help us take it back.

This isn't about purity. It's about survival. Either we build our way out of this mess or we keep managing the collapse until there's nothing left to manage.

Democrats need to learn from this. Or get sent home. We're building anyway.

Trump Attacks Leading Export Sector: Tourism and Universities

Six Quick Thoughts on First Quarter GDP Report

Trump’s Attack on NIH Will Mean Fewer Drugs and Likely More Expensive Ones

Looking at What People Do, Not What They Say

The Deportation Drive: Trump Promised Millions of Dangerous Criminals

Jose Antonio Vargas on What We Get Wrong About Immigration Reform

Parents Push Back Against the Trump Administration's Latest Attack on Working Families

Read Detained Activist Mahmoud Khalil’s Letter to His Son

What the Marriage Equality Backlash Taught Me About the Fight for Trans Rights

13 “Woke” Books Banned in DOD Schools

Examining Whether Trump Had the Constitutional Authority to Attack Iran

In the aftermath of President Donald Trump's decision to bomb three of Iran's nuclear facilities, numerous Democrats claimed the president's actions were unconstitutional and a violation of the War Powers Resolution. It is a contentious and hotly debated issue not only in Congress but also in academia.

The post Examining Whether Trump Had the Constitutional Authority to Attack Iran appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Iranian Nuclear Program Damaged, Not ‘Obliterated’ by U.S. Attack

The bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 21 by American B-2 aircraft damaged the sites and set back Iran's nuclear enrichment program, but didn't completely destroy the sites or Iran's nuclear capabilities, according to experts we spoke with and a classified U.S. intelligence report released on June 24.

The post Iranian Nuclear Program Damaged, Not ‘Obliterated’ by U.S. Attack appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Trump Exaggerates Tariff Revenue

Treasury Department data show that revenue from tariffs on imported foreign goods increased substantially in April and May, setting monthly records. But the total is less than half the figure President Donald Trump has cited. At least twice this month, the president has wrongly claimed that the U.S. “brought in $88 billion” from tariffs in "two months."

The post Trump Exaggerates Tariff Revenue appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Candidíase – Conheça as causas, sintomas e tratamentos

Cirurgia Plástica não tem idade

Com que roupa eu vou? Dicas de qual roupa usar

Cuidados com a pele – Aprenda a fazer limpeza de pele caseira

Visão embaçada e distorcida nem sempre é miopia: fique atento aos sinais do ceratocone