American Acceptionalism
Two authoritarians walk into an Oval Office. No, that’s not the set up for a joke. It’s reality playing out right in front of our eyes. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that a man mistakenly sent from America to a famously abusive El Salvadorian prison should be returned. The worst case scenario was that the Trump administration would make believe that the decision was out of their hands and pretend to leave the decision up to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. And here we are. Bukele told reporters he would not return Kilmar Abrego Garcia. “How can I return him to the United States? Like if I smuggle him into the United States? … Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.” Trump then turned to Bukele and said of the assembled reporters: “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country. These are sick people.” NBC: President of El Salvador says he won’t return mistakenly deported man to US.
+ Look at these two in the Oval Office. This is what American has become. American Exceptionalism has turned into America Acceptionalism: We’re all getting a wake-up call about how much Americans are willing to accept. And we’re likely to soon find out how much this Supreme Court is willing to accept from a defiant ruler whom they’ve already granted immunity.
+ “The Roberts Court will now have to decide whether to side with the Constitution or with a lawless president asserting the power to disappear people at will. This is not a power that any person, much less an American president, is meant to have.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Constitutional Crisis Is Here.
+ Heather Cox Richardson: “Make no mistake: as Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error either because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens.”
+ Surely she’s exaggerating… Oh wait. Trump Reveals He Asked A.G. to Look Into Deporting U.S. Citizens.
+ “Before press came in — but while live feed was running on Bukele’s feed — Trump said to him: ‘home-growns are next … You’re gonna need to build about 5 more places.'” The reaction in the room? Laughter.
+ A reminder: “The majority of the more than 200 immigrants he’s already sent to El Salvador were not murderers or drug dealers. They were ordinary people without criminal records, victim to the Trump administration’s baseless lies about their pasts.”
+ WaPo: No evidence linking Tufts student to antisemitism or terrorism, State Dept. office found. “An internal memo, prepared days before Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE agents, raises doubts about the Trump administration’s claims that she supports Hamas.”
+ Over the weekend, the US deported 10 more alleged gang members to El Salvador. How will we know for sure they’re gang members without due process? The same way we’ll know if American citizens sent to foreign prisons without due process are really guilty of something. We won’t.
