Some More News - Even More News: El Salvador Terror Prisons and the GOP’s Inconvenient Due Process Issues

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Hi. On today's episode of Even More News, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan talk about the Trump administration's ridiculous justification for ongoing illegal deportations, DOGE's inability to find any actual Social Security fraud, and Donald Trump's portrait problems.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comProduced by Moana SherrillEdited by Nick MundySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello and welcome back to Slightly More News, the first and only Monday edition of Even More News. We're working on it. Hi, good morning, my name is Katie Stoll. Good morning, Katie. Monday edition of Even More News. We're working on it. Hi, good morning, my name is Katie Stoll. Good morning, Katie. I like that full title. I think that works really well.

Up until, yeah, up until we're working on it, I think we include that. I'm Cody, by the way. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to The News. We just call it The News. Is that confusing to people? It might be, I don't know.

Everything's confusing, so it's fine. Jonathan is also here. Hi, I'm gonna put even more news in the title of the feed until I'm definitively told otherwise. So you guys can call it whatever you want. You probably won't ever be told anything specific, so. Great, then have at it. Fun bit we'll keep doing.

Why don't I start talking about the news? And great. So last week we were talking about the judicial standoff mostly over this immigration or not quite immigration deportation deal. We want to talk more about the specifics of the deportation deal, which are, to not use an SAT word, bad. Trump is ending temporary protected status for a number, a couple hundred thousand Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.

So there's 532,000 people in that group who have been warned to leave the country by April 24th. It's part of this self-deportation thing they're pushing. And Trump is also considering whether to cancel the temporary legal status of 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the US over the last several years. So that's a rough one. And we've also learned more about the conditions in this El Salvadoran prison where suspected Venezuelan gang members and other people-

And others, yeah. It's horrifying. And vaguely others. Jonathan, over the weekend, sent us an article he'd read detailing the specifics of the conditions and it is so ghastly. I get reminding people there's still no evidence that these people are Venezuelan gang members. A lot of these people, you know, appear to have been caught up in this because they were Venezuelan or appeared to be Venezuelan and had tattoos but this this time reporter says it's not all that either he says the intake began

with slaps one young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor he said I'm not a gang member I'm gay I'm a barber I believed him but maybe it's only because he didn't look like what I had expected. He wasn't a tattooed monster I have some issues with this phrasing here When I read that I went, uh, right, but I but the American people have been sold a image of who is being rounded up and Thrown without due process into this Torture prison and it's not what they're saying

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we got to have, you gotta have monstrous enemies no matter what. And so we have solidified that idea and who that is, but apparently we're expanding that definition. Yeah, absolutely stunning lack of justice for people. Horrific reality that we're facing. All of these, the self deportation, there is something so, I mean, all of it's so dystopian.

You've got to basically a month to get your affairs in order and pay for your own ticket. Find housing supposedly somewhere else. Leave your stuff, I guess. Leave your stuff, your family, your job, friends, go to another country, yet you might not have lived in for decades and decades and decades. It's hard. Decades.

It's hard to wrap my mind around the scope of this. I am assuming that a lot of the people watching and listening to this have also seen the variety of different stories coming down the pipeline of people. This couple of 35 years in Southern California who have done everything right, showing up for their check-ins have now been deported and leaving their families behind and have to leave the country. People traveling outside of the United, this is entering in slightly different territory, but I just, I'm on a roll, so I'm gonna say it.

You know, people traveling in Germany, coming back, or England, all over, Canada, coming to the United States with work visas, with whatever, having lived here or just being detained, sent back because of their social media posts. Because they have, what are we talking about? I also understand that I have never, we're paying more attention to this. I don't know how much of this kind of stuff has happened in the past, but I'm gonna venture a guess not much Not like this not like this because I have heard some people say like well

Yeah, it's it's always terrible if you get detained. It's terrible conditions Yeah, that's not an excuse for this being yeah ramped up and like making it. Okay in some capacity. Does that make sense? Well, and yeah, it's normalizing the all the cruelty of it and encouraging it. It's the the ASMR videos of like, this is like it's making it cutesy. It's making it fun. It's making it like an everyday thing. It's the mixing this like soup of like anybody. It could be anybody.

We're going to like the indiscriminate rounding up of people, which we've talked about, we talked about before the election, and sending them overseas, threatening domestic terrorists, people who key cars and stuff like that to deport these like American citizens to this foreign prison as well. Like there's just all these aspects of it at the same time, all while you have people in the administration and people in the journalism world and punditry sort of just cheering it on or at the very least accepting it.

And in most cases, accepting this fake idea that there is no due process for anybody. If you're a non-citizen or undocumented or any person who's not like a natural born citizen in America to them, the constitution doesn't apply to you, which is absurd and not true and antithetical to even just like this idea of like, well, you know, these are God given rights and we're the best country in the world. And look at all these amazing rights we give people.

But only but only us. Like, wouldn't you want them to apply to everybody when they're in the land that's the greatest land in the world? Isn't that like there's just this dissonance going on with all this stuff. It's very, very frustrating to see. But Tom Homan was asked about due process. Like, do they have any due process at all? And his response was, what was Lake and Riley's due process? Well, victims of crimes don't really get due process in the way we're talking about.

That's not even how words work. The person who killed her got due process. That's what, that's how how that's how it works. But I guess he's arguing like the Constitution's bad and shouldn't have said that if someone commits a crime against Someone who didn't get due process for that crime like it's gibberish to try to it's nonsense what he's saying Yes And that is ultimately what it is most of these people including the president the vice president and all the people around them are just saying well the Constitution shouldn't say that

You don't want it. We don't want it to say that we don't want these we don't want basic rights the right to do process things Like that we don't want that to apply to anybody But honestly probably like not even only of American citizens, but like specific kinds of American citizens. I want to play this clip from Brian Kilmeade on the wonderful morning show Fox and Friends. Oh Like us whose argument is I would say well, it's it's Equally damning as Tom Homan's, but in a different way.

I also think it's not practical to think that we can do due process on 8 million people. No. It's 22 million people here and minimum illegal already just in the last three administrations. And there were some people that got through with Trump's administration. If we're gonna give every these guys a day in court and a lawyer, we can't do it. They don't deserve it. Our system doesn't need to be double burdened. So instead of Tom Homan, like due process is bad, Brian Kilmeade is saying, well, it's

just not practical to do it. It's inconvenient to have due process in the constitution because of what we want to do. And maybe the constitution should have had an asterisk unless it's really tough to do it. It's absurd. This is exactly what we said before the election. It's not practical to do this with due process, which they do deserve. So what's going to happen is that they're gonna round up

a bunch of people indiscriminately and ship them away without this very cruelly. And a bunch of people indiscriminately and ship them away without this very cruelly and a bunch of people who don't deserve it are going to get swept up in that. To that point, Kilmeade, what the fuck are you talking about? And they don't deserve it, is what he said. How do you know? How do you know?

If you're not giving them due process, if you're not giving them their day in court, how do you know they don't deserve it? That's the point. The whole idea of like, we are gonna deport people, but only the criminals. We're going to deport people that shouldn't be here that are violent.

Well, are you gonna give them due process so you can determine who those people are? But this is exactly what we talked about. What makes them a criminal? What exactly is it? What is the crime that means that you need to be deported? Well, it's just the crime of being here. And again, you'll see these lines of argument like,

well, they're doing it wrong. They're not doing it the right way, except that you're deporting people that are doing it the right way. You're deporting people that have done everything right, that are paying taxes again. That's money. That's income for our country. If you want to look at it like that too. So what, uh, what are we talking about here? It's just that

from every angle, this is that they're not white. It's wrong from every angle. It's gross. Um, I can't believe they're all saying it. And so a few people around them are like, that's a good point about due process and how, if we don't give it to them, that's fine, because it's hard to do and they don't deserve it anyway. And I know that because of my racism, I guess, you know, like, it's like baffling some of these,

some of these sentences that they're saying out loud, like, but that doesn're saying out loud. But that doesn't make any sense. Well, and even if you know, even if it's Bin Laden and we got him here, or oh, he doesn't deserve to, it's like, okay, maybe, maybe not. Take it up with the Constitution, man.

I don't know what you want. It says that there's this process for doing things. Aren't you guys in love with this document? It's not a new one that was added. It's one of the original ones. They're in love with it when it comes to gun rights. Yeah, well. Oh yeah, that one is, you know, but fine, like, right?

That's fine. A bunch of us on the left have issues with guns, but it's like, take it up with the Constitution. If we had the two thirds here and there, we would maybe change it and we can't and that's what... That's democracy. And then people who are very much against gun, you know, shouldn't be able to own any gun will say overturn the second or repeal the second amendment. These people aren't saying repeal the fourth.

I'm sorry. I think we can do process is fourth. But like they're not saying repeal it. They're saying, well, these people don't deserve it, but we're going to keep it in place. Like if I were to be arrested, obviously saying repeal it. They're saying well these people don't deserve it But we're gonna keep it in place like if I were to be arrested obviously you get it Like if I you know or me or my wife or brother or anything we don't deserve that stuff I also want to point out that a lot of what Trump is doing in his administration is very unpopular and This stuff isn't and I think I. There's a couple reasons for it. I think, I don't think people have a full idea of what's going on and they're not allowed

to interview these people and you would have to confront the fact that like, oh, this isn't what's in my mind as a gang member who also like, unless they've committed a crime, you can't just arrest someone. Maybe if they're designated a terrorist organization, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Terrorist organization, there we go. Exactly. But you will read articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post where they interview Democrats, not even elected officials, just ordinary libs who will say, we really screwed up on this immigration issue.

If we had addressed it the way Republicans are addressing it, maybe things would be different. I just get so frustrated. If only we'd done more pre-fascism. Look, Biden wasn't the most effective president and everything. He deported just as many people as Donald Trump first term. He worked to expand legal pathways, which before this election, I did hear a lot of conservatives talking about,

like, I'm pro immigration, I just want them to do it the right way. Well, you're not paying attention to the ways that we're trying to make that an effective pipeline for people, a way for people to actually legally come here. Because it's so complicated, people are trying to do whatever they can, taking their best shot at how do they get here. Because it's so complicated, people are trying to do whatever they can, taking their best shot at how do they get here. And anyway, I'm rambling, but just coming back

to this, it's just nobody understands what's actually happening. Nobody understands the effort that's been put in to try to mitigate this, but they're just turning to the cruelty now because look who's in charge. Real quick, Fifth Amendment, our producer Moana, corrected me as you are right to do. So thank you. Just clarification. Thank you, Moana. So in addition to the end of all the protective status, the IRS is trying to come to a deal

with the Trump administration that runs it to allow IRS data to be mined for potentially undocumented immigrants. Sounds real bad. Which would be a huge betrayal of what we have told immigrants for decades, which is pay your taxes. This is all part of this fair system. It's not going to be held against you. It's not going to be used to deport you.

And of course, it just means America going back on its word to its own citizens, to countries around the world. Who's going to, let's say all this, let's say Trump's gone and things go back to normal. Who's going to trust the United States ever again? Like for anything, like every every single thing that we've purported to be, it's like, but actually not really. Which, you know, that's true in a lot of cases. It's like what you're saying was like we this current state of things is like, no, never mind, nevermind, nevermind, nevermind, nevermind, nevermind, and. Even the myth of America has eroded at this point, I think. And yeah, you can't, you cannot trust us. Definitely not with this administration, but maybe not with any of them. There's an interesting thing I've seen seen and this is maybe just sort of my

brain focusing too much on this like word, but like I've seen a lot of Pieces describing these changes as deals Yes, the Nears deal with ice to share addresses of suspected undocumented immigrants. There's a lot of stuff like that about these agencies and making deals with the administration that I just don't feel... It's like the language that was used in the past about decisions made or these kinds of agreements or changes in policy. Part of the deal.

That's an interesting point. Yeah. There's nothing to say about it, I guess. It just seems like. Noting that. It's yeah, there's something there. Obviously, art of the deal stuff. It's more of this government as a business shit.

Yeah. Like sort of lending Trump this sort of like aesthetic and language that he wants. I think that's a good point, Cody. And also something to watch. Something to watch is also just interesting where it like also kind of implies like, I guess we got to make a deal. We're like there are all these agencies who are like, we don't want to do this. This is how things are run.

This isn't what we usually do. But the government, not a business. The deal was made. You got to, you know, you got to honor the deal. Well, it's going to not just hurt our standing or our reputation around the world, but it's going to hit our economy as well because usually in the summer, a lot of people from around the world come here to go to New York or go to Disney World. And they probably don't want to do that anymore in case Customs and Border Protection or ICE

doesn't like the look of them and then they could be detained. Or their social media. I mean, yeah, there's been travel advisories issued against coming to America from. Or like you're saying, yeah, social media. Many places. I mean, more and more people are, yeah,

getting detained for just pro-Palestinian sentiment on their social media. So, just don't post and don't go anywhere, I guess. Yeah. I mean, if you're an academic coming here for a conference, they will go through your papers, your social media to see what kind of academic you are. They don't like academics at all. No, yeah.

It doesn't matter what kind. And the biggest decline in tourism is coming from, of course, our neighbor Canada, who not only, like with other countries, might be afraid to come here at the moment, but also they're really pissed at us, I would argue, with good cause. People from Canada would come here a lot because you can do that on a road trip. It's not as expensive to come here as it is to go to Paris But Paris seems a lot more appealing than little more welcoming or Washington DC and going through

That terrifying process. Yeah I was reading this article this morning In the Washington Post why Doge is struggling to find fraud in social security. It's all about how the Social Security Administration already had auditors and there's no reason to think that Musk and his Doge boys going in there would have been able to find something that they didn't and less than 1% of Social Security money being sent out was thought to be improper, not that it's fraud, that it was clerical errors or people moved and stuff like that.

And so now I'm thinking, I used to think like, oh yeah, there's probably a lot of fraud in social security and auditors could find that. And now I think there's way less government fraud than I even thought before because they're spending so much time and money going into it and can't find anything. They want to so badly. They really wanna find fraud specifically in social security to put-

To which on? To clarify their hypothesis that actually like all welfare is just a rife with fraud and waste and we should get rid of it. And if they are struggling to find that, that is perhaps telling. It's pretty telling. Or maybe they're just incompetent and bad. Maybe they're idiots and should be doing it.

Or it could be a combination of all these things. Yeah. Did you see the Commerce Secretary? I don't know if I could find this clip really quick. Howard Lutnick talking to Chamath and David Friedberg. Yes, oh I've heard clips of it. And he's so wrong, so much. All right, let me see if I can find it.

He said wrong things left and right. Well, we wait for this clip since we're talking about this dumb piece of shit. I remember the thing that happened before the election. Elon's pack is offering Wisconsin voters $100 for this activist judge petition, I believe it is. Oh, he's back at it, his old tricks. Yeah, I worked before. Just pay people and they'll sign your thing. Still don't understand why that was legal in the first place with the election. Time will still tell.

Will it? Well, I know there's some litigation bubbling about it. But things take a long time. And if you win the Supreme Court case in Wisconsin, maybe it won't matter there, right? Right. If the bribery works. I think it's Mark Bankston, I think, who did a lot of the Alex Jones lawsuit for Sandy Hook and a lot of the recent suits going after Musk for like defamation, calling that guy a Nazi when he wasn't and so on and so forth. But probably he'll get

away with it because that's just who we're at. I did find the Lutnik clip. It's short. This is your commerce secretary who I believe is a billionaire? Yep. Yes. Yes. At least $1 billion. Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month.

My mother-in-law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She'd think something got messed up and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling and complaining. What is this supposed to be evidence of? Oh, mic drops, sir. You, good point.

First of all, fraudsters are the loudest to complain. So like Elon Musk and Donald Trump are fraudsters like the loudest of complaints so like Elon Musk and Donald Trump are fraudsters you say like the loudest obnoxious people in the world complaining constantly About the portrait of him you don't like you know exactly But okay, I believe him when he says that his Mother-in-law I believe I believe that the mother-in-law of a billionaire won't complain about not getting their social security check for a month. That is a believable claim from our commerce secretary.

We'll see what's happening with social security, how this unfolds, but just the sheer fact of shuttering offices, limiting access online. People are literally not going to be able to go and access or file a complaint or talk to someone about where their money is. There's gonna be people that depend on this money with zero recourse, waiting not a month, many months.

Who knows, God knows. And there will be a lot of seniors thrust into poverty immediately. Exactly, because they depend upon this. And that's just the promise that they were given. That they would have this money. Keeps what, two thirds of the elderly out of poverty? Just also like, only a month?

Are you sure? Are you sure it's only gonna be a month? Like this idea of like- That's also, I think it's also like if it had paused for a month, it's fine. Why do you think it's going to be paused for a month anyway? Why only a month? Like, what do you you can't be late on your payments to people on anything, on work done. Social Security specifically isn't.

It is all these payments go out and they have. They have for decades and decades and decades. Never missed one? Never missed one. It is one of the most efficient programs we have. Despite like, oh no, the code is old. We need to fix these things. But the payments go out.

That's what happens. And the fact that they're doing all these things to tinker with it to make it more difficult, which again we've talked about before. You take a service and you make it worse so that you can privatize it eventually. People get upset because it stops working as well. And then you can push the idea that, well, if the government wasn't involved, then it wouldn't be a problem. It's all part of what's going on. It's just frustrating to see them continue in all avenues and all industries and all respects.

And if you're mad at the guy who's doing it, you are either a domestic terrorist or you're being so mean to a wonderful, upstanding American company. He didn't do anything. What has he ever done? I heard him say that he has never done anything bad So why are you mad at him? I've never called a guy a pedophile for no reason or like at all Probably probably um The list could go on but we're not gonna We don't that's a good example like it's just like, but yeah, you do. Even like, I've never done anything evil.

Okay. Said his child who's alive is dead. Disagree, yeah. Hard disagree. But what adult man has been like, I've never done anything wrong. What? If you become the richest person in the world though,

you believe that. You're like, everything I've ever done has worked out for me. It's just also, sorry, What if you become the richest person in the world though you believe it It's just also sorry, this is neither here nor there such an incredibly childish thing to say because literally everybody in the world Has done I know I know but I just think it's so Remarkably childish and stunted. It's such a tell about somebody to be like, I've never done anything wrong.

Are you a human being? Big gamer moment for him. Yeah, and we also have verifiable proof of things that you've done that are objectively wrong, but okay, sir. Is there something fun we can? Chat about before we say good day for today. I mean we can talk about the portrait It's funny that Donald Trump is mad about the portrait of him the portrait that is bad. I'm gonna be honest I in my opinion this is it's not bad. It's just like that's not very good

He's just looks like Jiminy click. I don't need to body shame or be mean, but like how could a portrait of him be good, you know? Sure, it just makes him, it makes him look dopey and he likes to, he likes his like Churchill photo, you know, he likes to be, I'm the serious man, but he looks like a dope. Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the

state capitol, put up by the governor along with all other presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before. The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older. In any event, I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one. But many people from Colorado have called and written to complain. I doubt that.

In fact, they are actually angry about it. I am speaking on their behalf to the radical left governor Jared Polis, who is extremely weak on crime, in particular with respect to Trendy Aragwa, which practically took over Aurora, parentheses, don't worry, we saved it to take it down. Jared should be ashamed of himself. His tweets are so long, man. So bad. Like, go back to 280 or something. Yeah, this is not good for you. I just found the portrait and it is bad.

It is really bad. It's really bad. And I'll be honest, it doesn't quite look like him, but that's fine. I mean, that's like he's got mumps or something. Yeah. I mean, right. Yeah. A little bit. I mean, whether it's intentional or not, you have now strides and affected the portrait. I never would have seen this portrait. And that's hanging in the Colorado state capitol? Who gives a shit, dude? There's this recent article in the Atlantic from Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic who

says that the Trump administration accidentally texted him the plans to strike in Yemen. Hegseth just fucking texted him, like like here are the plans, which is interesting. How did Jeffrey Goldberg get on that group chat? That's a wild turn of events. Maybe it wasn't an accident, maybe this is all 3D chess. It's just an interesting thing to keep an eye on with the administration and also the Atlantic. A lot to keep an eye on.

There's a lot, you know what? I'm not gonna get into it now. There's a lot to keep an eye on there's a lot You know what I'm not gonna get into it now. There's a lot to keep an eye on folks. Keep those eyes open full eyes clear hearts touchdown We're going to finals hopefully won't lose mmm I mean if you lose once it negates the thing don't lose. Mm. That classic catchphrase. I mean, if you lose once, it negates the thing. Don't lose.

All right. Thanks, guys. You're welcome. This has been real. It has. Real nice, real fun. Real nice, real fun. Great way to start the week off.

Real news, yeah. We will see you all here again on Friday. That's a promise. That's a fact. And you know what else? What? We love you very much! Much, I guess. It's Monday.