The Daily Beast Podcast - Karoline Leavitt’s Cross Necklace Is for Display Purposes Only

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

On this episode of The New Abnormal, co-hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy are convinced that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s signature cross necklace is for display purposes only. ���She violates the ninth commandment about not bearing false witness,” Levy said. Plus, MSNBC analyst and author Eddie Glaude, Jr., discusses how racism became America’s blindspot. Then legal scholar Andy Craig delves into how the Trump administration’s refusal to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia challenges the foundations of U.S law. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Eddie Glaude Jr., MSNBC analyst and author of We Are the Leaders We've Been Looking for, joins us to talk about American denialism confronting the legacy of racism and what's at stake as democracy unravels. Then we'll talk to legal scholar Andy Craig, who will discuss his recent piece for the unpopulist. The right-to-do process is an optional, which details how the government, This refusal to return, Kilmar Abrigo Garcia challenges the foundations of U.S. law. But first, let's have some fun. So this week, we saw some atrocious images coming out of Seacot, the El Salvador facility, where over 200 men who were abducted from the streets of America, summarily deported without due process, one of them who has been made.

making national headlines is Kilmar Abrago Garcia, a man from Maryland, who the State Department has said has committed absolutely no crimes. But we also know that according to 60 minutes, that nearly 75% of those that were picked up have committed absolutely no crimes. And 22% of them have committed non-violent crimes like shoplifting. But my whole thing about Seacot, this El Salvador torture facility is that we need to stop referring to it as a prison because no one ever leaves. There are no lawyers that are permitted to go in there. There are no family members that are permitted to go in there. There are no phone calls that these people are allowed to make. There is no outdoor scheduled time. There are no rules or laws in this place.

And so when Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland went to El Salvador, don't ask me why he was the only Democrat that went there to go knock on the door to be let in he was refused entry but what i am finding andy absolutely fucking disgusting are the republicans who are going on some type of depravity tour and being allowed into this torture facility that we are seeing these horrendous atrocious disgusting pictures coming out of to take photos and what it reminds me of is is when I was in elementary school and high school and learning about the slave trade and then learning about Jim Crow and seeing white people dressed up in their Sunday's best at a lynching and taking photos in front of black bodies dangling from trees. I thought it was depraved then and I thought, oh my God, but the times and what have you. And here we are again and it is obscene.

Yeah, for sure. The other thing it put me in the mind of was Abu Ghraib. That was the quote unquote prison in Iraq where photos came out of U.S. soldiers abusing the prisoners, the detainees. That's what it put me in the mind of when I saw the pictures of the two Republicans, Riley Moore and Jason Smith, in this detention center camp. Whatever you want to call it, I agree with you, Danielle, there's no purpose in calling it a prison. And the very fact that two Republicans were allowed in and then the one Democrat who actually did, as you said, what other Democrats should be doing as well, was not allowed in. I mean, if you need any more proof, which you shouldn't, but if you need any more proof that what's going on here is completely illegal, completely unjustifiable, and that what's going on in this facility is not what we think of when we think of being someone being locked up for a crime. The prison system in America is horrible enough. By no means do I want to slight that.

But this is another level. This is Abu Ghraib. This is Guantanamo Bay. This is let's make people disappear. Let's put people in places and then abuse them. And we're seeing it from our own government. We are seeing the kind of things that we used to, hypocritically or not, that we used to admonish other countries for doing. although that feels like a long, long time ago at this point, doesn't it, Daniel?

It does. First off, we again know that Kilmar Brago-Garcia, his wife, Jennifer Vasquez-Sura, has been on television holding press conferences, talking about the father of her children, her husband, and begging this administration to allow her husband an innocent man to come home. And what I found, so, I mean, I need new words. I need a deeper thesaurus for the shit that came out of Pam Bondi's mouth about this man, the attorney general of the United States, knowing that he is innocent, knowing that there is no criminal record to be found, knowing that the Supreme Court said that you must facilitate the return of this man to the United States, gets on television and says that his children are better off without him.

And I cannot imagine what kind of fucking depraved human being you have to be to say that about a man you do not know. You know nothing about except for the fact that he is innocent. And Addis his wife is pleading because their three children want to know where their father is. And this is what Pam Bondi gets on television to do with a cross around her neck, no less. Yeah, I mean, look, the use of religion, the use of Christianity by the MAGA faithful, by the far right, it's nothing new, but it is so prevalent now. It's to the point where I am not a religious person, but I have a deep respect for religion.

And I read a lot about religion. And listeners of the new abnormal know that I have talked to a ton of people. I've interviewed a ton of people about religion and religiosity. And what these people are doing in the supposed name of their faith is absolutely abhorrent. And she gets up there and she, again, with a cross around her neck, she lies. She violates the Ninth Commandment about not bearing false witness. And she sits up there and says over and over again that Abrago Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. And she takes it a step further.

And she says that this was a fine. of an immigration court. It absolutely was not. For people who don't know, there was one police detective who said that a confidential informant told him that Abrago Garcia had been a member of MS-MS-13 out of New York. Abrago-Garcia never even lived in New York. There was no other evidence other than this one-guy's statement. And to further make this into the realm of the absurd, this detective who claimed this, couldn't even testify at Abrigo Garcia's immigration hearing because he'd been suspended for leaking confidential information to a sex worker who he was paying for sex. His gang unit said that was the only evidence that they had, I use the word evidence in heavy quotation marks.

There were no reports other than that of Abrigo Garcia being affiliated with MS-13 or any gang. So the idea that she gets up there and lies, like it's nothing to her, which it really, it isn't. It isn't anything to her to lie. And again, as you said, with the cross around her neck, it's just, it's all just disgusting. All of this, like all of this, particularly this administration, just saying F you to the ruling of the Supreme Court to facilitate the return of Kilmar, Brago-Garcia. now the federal judge who initiated the who was overseeing the proceedings around this case, U.S. District Judge James Bosberg, is now in a lengthy ruling this week, says that evidence shows, quote, willful disregard by the administration of his orders back in March that directed officials

to halt the flight of more than 130 Venezuelan migrants to the Seacot. facility in El Salvador without any due process. And he is ready to hold members of the Trump administration in contempt. He's like, this is, we are beyond constitutional crisis. They have crossed the threshold. And this is now the elevation that Judge Bozberg is bringing this to. So if the judge finds that there's contempt, someone is supposed to be fined and or imprisoned. If they simply refuse to pay a fine or to show up to go to prison, what happens? Because I think that's the territory we may find ourselves in very soon. This is about as clear-cut a constitutional crisis as I can remember in my lifetime.

And I was alive for Watergate. And we had Richard Nixon and the famous Saturday Night Massacre where he fired an attorney general who wouldn't act illegally for him. This is such a bigger issue, I think. Good for Judge Bosberg, obviously. But there's the apocryphal Andrew Jackson quote about letting the courts go ahead try to enforce it. I don't remember the exact quote. And he never said it. So it doesn't matter. But I am legitimately wondering if we get to that point of how is this going to be enforced? What is going to happen here? I think that this is going to be a wait and see moment because we have absolutely no idea.

but what we do know is that in less than a hundred days of this presidency, they have absolutely shredded the Constitution. And again, just to remind folks, the courts don't have any type of real law enforcement to back up their rulings. It's not as if they can now, okay, we're going to direct maybe the marshals, I have no idea to go and hold somebody in contempt. But if you decide not to show up, So then what's the recourse? If this gets kicked back up to the Supreme Court, are they going to actually decide on the rule of law and uphold the Constitution? Or are they going to do more of what they did last summer, which is just provide Donald Trump a runway to fascism? I have no idea.

Yeah. And look, the other recourse is impeachment. We do now have one House Democrat who is on the record as saying, that he supports impeachment. That's Michigan's Sri Thannadar, who basically says Donald Trump is not abiding by the Supreme Court ruling. And as a member of Congress, I support impeaching him and then in all caps now. You can say what you want. You can say that, well, it's a Republican majority House. There's no way Donald Trump gets impeached. And that's probably correct because House Republicans have completely abdicated their role as both representatives, and of people who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. But this still needs to be done. All this stuff needs to be done. It needs to be on the record. There is absolutely no reason why every single Democrat in the House should not be on board with this and should not vote for this. There are ways of holding a president's accountable that are written into the Constitution

and into U.S. law. And impeachment is one of them. And the process needs to be followed. And whether it succeeds or not. And like I said, I have absolutely no faith that even one Republican will cross the line and vote for impeachment, let alone the number that would be needed to pull this off. But it needs to be on the record. And all these Republicans need to be on the record as not giving a goddamn about a president who ignores the Supreme Court, who violates the Constitution, who violates the law. All of this needs to be part of the public record. The sad thing is, is that you say this about Democrats needing to show up in unison to vote for this. And how many times over the last several weeks have we watched as Democrats have voted to censure their own people like they did

in the House of Representatives with Representative Al Green following his protests at the joint address? Democrats cited, 10 of them, sided with Republicans to censure him. We had Democrats that voted alongside Republicans with the unnecessary Laken Riley Act, right? We have seen Democrats capitulate, bend the knee, and decide that like, oh, they need to show some type of ability to bipartisanship and working across the aisle. Like, what century are we in right now? This is not your mothers and your grandparents' Republican Party. If we don't act in, coordination right now in lockstep, recognizing that Donald Trump is not acting and functioning as the president of the United States. He is dismantling, systematically dismantling everything that we know,

every institution from the Smithsonian to going after universities, to providing data, to frigging, you know, allegedly to Russia from the IRS and from other places like, I don't know what it's going to take for this party to collectively wake up. It's like we've been having a drip over the last several weeks. Oh, there's Bernie over here and there's AOC and there's Senator Booker and there's Maxwell Frost. But it's like, where's the mass? Where's the unified voice? I really don't know. There's a grassroots operation going on called Operation Anti-King. And you can go to Citizensimpeachment.com to find out more about it. But basically, this group of people has written to, every congressperson, and they are asking, do you support impeaching Donald Trump? They have gotten

no comment from 421 of them, no from seven, and they've gotten yes from 11, which is at least something. And I'll just quickly, that includes Ilan Omar, Maxine Waters, Suzanne Bonamichi, Maxine Dexter, Sam LaCardo, Shreith Anadar, who we mentioned earlier and Hank Johnson. This is starting to bubble up, and it's taking on a grassroots aspect, which is great. So again, go to Citizens impeachment.com and you can look and see what your Congresspeople have said to them and you can also sign up to help contact them. That's the action we need. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal academic author MSNBC analyst and the author of, We Are the Leaders We Are The We have been looking for Eddie Glaude Jr. Eddie, you've had some type of days.

Some type of days since you, as I'm going to say this, spoke the absolute and unvarnished truth on MSNBC's deadline White House when talking about the 78 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump. And in what I think is probably, you know, close to three minutes that everyone in the country should watch, you said, look, they chose a felon because they didn't want to vote for a black woman, for an Asian woman. And because you said that very clearly, some called it a rant. I do rants. And they have lots of F bombs and lots of high levels of volume. You did none of that. It was like a very serene and clear monologue. Talk to us about that moment and the subsequent pushback that you have experienced since.

Well, first of all, it's always a delight to talk with you, Danielle. It was a strange moment. I mean, or it has been some strange days. I was making a basic point that 7,8 million people who voted for Donald Trump needed to sit down and examine their motivations for why they would hand the country over to this man. And this was in light of the refusal to execute the return of Brother Garcia from El Salvador. This was in the context of the economic chaos. Why would they hand the country over to this man who, in effect, has thrown the Republican to the trash bin, who shred the Constitution? And Nicole Wallace asked me to say more.

And I said that the motivation, from my vantage point, was basically that they would rather throw the country away than elect a black woman as the president of the United States. And this generated this firestorm. You know, it's almost as if I gave them the excuse to, by them, I mean those people who support Donald Trump, the excuse to claim kind of victim status, that this for them was an example of identity politics gone awry, that I'm just simply a race baiter, you know, it's an old strategy to accuse those who point to the reality of racism as being the racist. And so I found myself, Daniel, overwhelmed by evidence of my claim. To be honest with you, it's been a bit challenging, to put it lightly.

It is the oldest trick in the book. And obviously, you are a scholar. So you know the tricks that white nationalist pull as a way to both claim to be the most powerful and yet to be the victim in the situation that is America. and what do you think that it is about the inability of Trump supporters to look in the mirror? Because what you held up to them was a mirror. Look, examine, reflect on the decisions that you have made that have ended up in this position less than 100 days into this man's administration.

Right. You know, I think it's not just simply the Trump voter, though. I think it's America as such that there is this kind of reluctance to really understand who we are and what we've done. In so many ways, we've yet to discover who we are. And, you know, in this country, telling the truth about what is happening to us, to black people, reveals too much about them. And the moment, so they can't believe, this is Jimmy Baldwin's language.

They can't believe what we're saying. Because to believe what we're saying is to have to confront something about them and what they've conceded to, consented to, rather. And I think this cuts in both directions. So I'm getting it from the maga folk, but I'm also getting it from the folk who claim to be on the left. That it's really about economic realities, that we need to stop talking about identity, politics, and the like. It's a version of the Negro problem, right, as if we were the problem ever. You know, the Negro problem is this phrase, this turn of phrase that allows for the displacement of the challenges of the ugliness of the country onto the shoulders of those who must bear it. And so the problem is identity politics.

Really? Is that the problem? The problem is we can talk about a certain kind of crude and crass deployment of cultural politics. We can do that. But we cannot deny the reality that race intersects with class in this country in a way that must complicate how we talk. about economic realities. And so I get it from both sides. But when I talked about those 78 million, I wasn't talking about the people who decided not to vote. I was talking about the folk who thought that somehow Donald Trump represented a reasonable alternative to Kamala Harris. And that to me makes no sense outside of the history of race in this country. And to me,

for people who deny that, right, oh, they stand in a long tradition of denialism, it seems to me. You know, what I find extraordinary is this idea that having conversations about racism always go into, no, no, no, it's about the economy. It's about the price of eggs. It's about the price of gas. But then explain to me why mind conf is still at the Naval Academy's library, but why why why the cage bird sings by Maya Angelou is not.

Explain to me why they wanted to erase Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad from National Park Markers and reinstall Confederate statues that have been taken down. How do they reconcile what is so obvious and want to explain away Nazi-style, hand salutes behind the emblem of the president of the United States on the stage of inauguration and tell us, don't believe our lying eyes. I know, I know that Tony Morrison said that racism is a distraction, that it stops you from doing your work and explaining constantly over and over

again your reason for being. I get that. But the level of gaslight, Eddie, that has consumed this country to meet is staggering. It's staggering. And, you know, most people, will say, you know, to talk about the books being removed from the Naval Academy, to talk about these statues and symbols and the like, that's cultural politics. And they say that as if it's dismissive, you know? And then when you say, well, okay, well, let's think about America first. Let's think about make America great again. Let's think about the history of immigration law that these people are embracing. Let's just go back to the 1920s. Let's go back to the Immigration Act of 1924. Representative Johnson, who was a member of the KKK,

who co-wrote that legislation. Let's talk about the framework of the immigration policy that they're hearkening back to and unpack the deeply racist and anti-Semitic nature of that policy. Oh, no, no, no, no. Is that cultural politics?

Or are we talking about what's driving, right? This insistence that America remain a white republic in this moment. And so I think the gaslighting, let me say it differently, Danielle. I find it enraging that these folk expect us, people like me, to suddenly leave behind, to leave to the

side a host of issues that affect my community, as if we're supposed to just simply stand by silently and allow these folk to do this. And if we call foul, all hell breaks loose. And, you know, Frederick Douglass said this. Listen at this quotation. Frederick Douglass said, in response to people who critiqued him calling out the racism of the Republican and Democratic Party. He said, the serpent may hiss, the crushed worm may turn, the wild beasts may warn the hunter of dangerous pursuit. But you, colored man, must not say that there is even a possibility of danger to the midnight riders and murderers by whom you are slaughtered, lest our saying will be considered as an invitation to a war of races. So you can't even call them out for what they're doing to us.

because to call them out for what they're doing to us somehow exacerbates what they're doing to us. So we're just supposed to sit back and allow it to happen. And if we don't, then somehow we no longer pay attention to economic realities, that we're no longer attentive to class. That's nonsense, it seems to me. And so I find myself trying to, I have a substack coming out today on bitterness, and I'm trying to beat it back. Because, you know, they want us to sit back and allow these,

folk to do this to us, and I refuse. I wonder, one of the things that I have been taking in, following the election, the 92% black women, the reliable base of the Democratic Party, 78% of black men have said, you know what, this is on y'all. You're not going to see us at your marches. We're not going to be there in mass. We're going to be taking care of ourselves, our communities, our families, our families, families, it's time for white people to be on the front lines. And so on April 5th, we saw,

I think it was estimated at 5.2 million people across the country were in the streets. And they were largely white. And white people were on social media talking about the fact that they were surprised. But some were saying they were surprised, but they understood. And others were saying that they were just surprised that it was largely white people that were out. Do you think at all because this is again, this is the fools trap that I fell into following the murder of George Floyd. Is this America's racial awakening? Is this the moment where we really want to, again, look at ourselves, reflect on the history in deep ways, in the ways that the Germans did following the Holocaust so that they would never repeat it? Like there was an education, a systemic education that

was done, that America has never done and has done so much work to deny. We now refer to the enslavement of people as an opportunity for them to learn new skills. That is what Ron DeSantis said in Florida. Is this just another blip on the screen? Or is what Donald Trump and this regime doing, pushing white America to a place where they have never had their government weaponized against them. They have never been the ones to live in constant fear of what could possibly come next. Yeah, I pray that you're right. I think there is a sense in which the American people, large numbers of them, are confronting the fact that the Republic stands on the precipice, that you have these undemocratic forces, organized.

mobilized, funded by billionaires, who are intent on shredding the basic rights, the basic foundation of the Constitution of the country, as it were. So I pray that you're right. But, you know, I've always offered the moral argument, Danielle. And I wonder, and this is a question that I ask myself when I'm in my darkest moments, I wonder if these people would have said anything, if Trump's policies had not touched them. Because there's a kind of selfishness at the root of it all. Because when they were deporting folk, and this was happening during the Obama administration,

so I don't want to just simply put it at the feet of Trumpism, but it has been exaggerated. It's hardened in this moment. You know, when they were attacking DEI and affirmative action and critical race theory, whatever they mean by those phrases, silence. When it was affecting us, we were watching people bend the knee. We were watching folk acquiesce. We were bearing witness to the country, right? Doing what it does. Doing what it did. And then when the policies began to touch them as they shrunk government, as folk were being laid off as veterans associated, you know, as VAs were being impacted as they were talking about Medicaid cuts and Social Security cuts, all of a sudden we start seeing these town hall meetings, you know? And so one wonders if Trump's policies hadn't touched them, would they have said a mumbling word as his hate affected us? Now, that's me and my more cynical moments about this so-called awakening.

I think it's important that we acknowledge that Americans, no matter their motivations, recognize many Americans, recognize that the country stands on a nice edge. And that in itself is a good thing, and rightly so. But let's not overestimate what has been required for this to be expressed, right? I can only say this, Danielle, and I'm not trying to be melodramatic or anything. But what has the country lost over the course of its history and its incessant desire to separate itself from us? What have been the cost? And what are the costs now?

And I think it's incumbent upon those of us who come out of this grand tradition that has got us over, that has got us to this point so far, for us to call it out, as stridently. and as clearly as we can, no matter the blowback. I only have but two minutes left, but I have to ask you this. Do you think Donald Trump was necessary? No. I don't believe that evil is ministerial to good. I can't hold that view.

That somehow the devastation, the loss of life, the devastation of our world is necessary for something good to come out of it. That seems to me to be a rationalization. I don't think he's necessary. I just think he's a reflection. of us. And I think it's important for Americans to understand that if we're going to get finally get out of history's ass pocket. It's extraordinary. I continue to just really appreciate your words, your writings, and your fearlessness in this moment. And maybe, you know, when I say fearlessness, not because there's like an absence of fear, but because you decide to speak anyway. And I think

that that is what the country needs. And so I know that that. that you've taken a lot in the last several days. But again, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your words. And thank you for continuing to hold up a mirror to America. I appreciate you so much for making the time for the new abnormal today. Thank you so much, Danielle.

And you take care of yourself. In a piece written for the unpopulist, my next guest says due process is a right so fundamental that the very concept is inseparable from what it means to have laws and judges. Andy Craig is a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies and writes on topics including election law, democratic theory, American history, and the political philosophy of liberalism. He joins me now. Andy, thanks so much for being here. Hi, Andy. Thanks for having me. And thanks for having a great name. As anyone who knows me knows, I always enjoy an essay that begins by talking about the code of

Hamarabi. So imagine my delight when... and I read your piece, Andy. And you did this for a purpose to show that the concept of due process isn't some newfangled example of wokeism or whatever. So take us through a little of this history of habeas, as you call it. As you note, it goes at least as far back as Hammurabi, the Babylonian king who famously promulgated a law code about 4,000 years ago. Even then, he was merely recodifying or stating something that was already taken for granted that probably stretches back into prehistory, which is that the whole point of if you're going to have courts and judges and laws, is that anybody, at least anybody who's not a slave, has the right to seek a review before a judge, an impartial arbiter, a court of some kind,

if they're going to have their freedom taken from them. Even the ancient Babylonian king would not just, you know, disappear somebody with no opportunity for review. at least, you know, nominally, that was the policy, as it was stated. Of course, you know, we know these things weren't always followed at the time, and there was a long history after that. But still, the basic premise is so fundamental that it's just inherent to, you know, if you're going to have a courts to do anything, this is the thing they do. And this continues throughout history, ancient Rome, as you point out, English common law. And then America's founding fathers enshrine this tradition, this 4,000-year-old tradition, In Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads,

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it, right? So that's the through line. Absolutely. And this goes through, you know, like you said, the fights that Parliament had with Charles I, it goes back to not even just the Magna Carta, but earlier than Magna Carta in English law. And so when they were writing the Constitution, this was something.

that they prioritized even over the Bill of Rights. This was in the Constitution before they amended it to add the Bill of Rights. That's how fundamental they saw it. And that caveat about, you know, in some cases you can't suspend it. We understand that in a literal war zone or the equivalent of that, the courts can't operate. But even then, it has to be done under law. And it has to be, as we got from a later precedent out of the Civil War, it has to mean the courts literally can't function. That's the only circumstance under, you know, there's a war or chaos or something like that, a big natural disaster where, like, judges literally can't meet. Anything short of that, this is a fundamental right that can't be suspended.

So take us to the present now. What's the current state of this concept of due process of habeas corpus? Well, there are developments that decreed over the years that extend this question. core concept beyond just the traditional writ. So we have civil rights laws. We have various statutes creating other causes of action, depending on what the case may be. But they all go to that same core essential concept. We went through this not all that long ago with Guantanamo and what the Bush administration was trying to do. They tried to argue, well, that's overseas. It's technically Cuban territory. This is all foreign policy. The courts can't interfere. And the Supreme Court rejected that. We could have certainly plenty of debates about the military tribunal system they

tried to create as the due process there. But still, there was the fundamental premise that somebody, regardless of where in the world they are, who is being held on the authority and at the direction of the U.S. government, that's reachable by American courts. And you couldn't have it any other way, or else we would see what's being tried now, which is that the government can simply disappear somebody off to some foreign dictator's prison camp and wipe their hands and say it's not our problem anymore. So let's talk about some of the current cases, Kilmar-Obrigo-Garcia. As you point out in your piece, he's not the only person who has been denied due process, but he's sort of become the face of the issue. How has his case become so perfectly emblematic here?

Well, one is that he's not the only one this is true of, but he is a sympathetic, compelling case, and that certainly helped grab the public imagination. He is very obviously, has no credible accusation of being a gang member. He was working as a day laborer doing construction. And, you know, he was interacting with the cops for loitering outside of Home Depot, as I'm sure we've all seen people like that doing, which is not something you typically associate with a narco gang member. Right.

And he has a U.S. citizen wife. He has a U.S. citizen child. He's been, by all accounts, law-abiding hasn't had any legal trouble, and they simply, you know, abducted him and hauled him off. The other thing that's made it legally the kind of strongest case that's come to this confrontation, the quickest, is that Albuio Garcia had a prayer immigration judge ruling, specifically banning the government from sending him to El Salvador. He came to the U.S. as a teenager fleeing gang violence. he credibly showed that he was being threatened with violence and oppression from these gangs back in El Salvador. And so there was a court ruling saying specifically, you are not allowed to send this man to this country. And that's what they did.

And they did it bundling him off in a matter of hours to try to evade judicial review of it. They have straight up admitted that this was a quote unquote mistake, an administrative error. I hate to sound naive, but it's like, doesn't that mean he's got to come back? You would think? Part of what's so, I mean, it's Kafkaesque, it reminds the plot of the movie Brazil, Terry Gillum's 1980 or five movie, where it's literally it's a typo on the typewriter that sends some man to get tortured to death. That was supposed to be farcical satire, not the reality of how the U.S. government operates. But a lot of what they're doing is they're trying to play cute with this.

The administration and Buceli are both kind of pointing the finger at the other and saying he's being held on the authority of the other. And the reality is this is a kind of contract prison arrangement. Mel Salvador has not accused him of breaking any of all. They have no Salvador in law basis for keeping him in Seacot, this terrible prison camp. It's effectively like when one state might have prison overcrowding and so sends a prisoner contracts to send prisoners to a neighboring state's prisons. That happens. But that doesn't mean the state that sends. sentence them and controls their custody isn't still legally accountable for them. So we've seen

this come up in the other case where Judge Boasberg has moved forward with criminal contempt proceedings against the government. And he says, your opportunity to purge this contempt, as it's called, to come into compliance effectively, is to admit these people are not, you know, purely in Salvador in custody and you have nothing to do with it anymore, that if you said they should be returned or released or whatever the case may be, that El Salvador would do so. And Bucaly has been very careful for all his bluster to not actually deny that. His official line is we're holding these people under our agreement with the United States. And so it's just not factually true that the government has no power over these people's fate.

And another thing that strikes me is they keep referring to Abrago Garcia as a terrorist, which, as you point out, there's no evidence. of. But for purposes of this discussion, it wouldn't matter if they did have evidence of that. If he were a terrorist, he would still deserve due process, wouldn't he? Absolutely. They literally provided no process here, which means as several, not just the lawyers in the case, but some of the judges have pointed out on the circuit court and Justice Sotomayor at the Supreme Court. Under this logic, they could bundle off perfectly innocent U.S. citizens. They could grab political opponents off the streets, ship them off to El Salvador, admit openly this was illegal, and then say, well,

there's nothing we can do about it. That's the sham pretense of it. And if they can do that, it's not even an accusation. To say it's a, like, even that is giving it almost too much credit. They're not accusing people of anything. It's you're off to this place where you have no hope of being released potentially for the rest of your life, where it's notoriously brutal, where you're beyond the reach of American law and American courts and all of our process. I mean, even terrorists, even criminals have a right to due process. That's the whole point. If somebody who is accused of that kind of thing doesn't have due process, right,

then neither do you, because that's the process we go through to determine if somebody is actually guilty of breaking a law and should be imprisoned or given a sentence or whatever the case may be. So I'm curious, does due process also apply to people who are here on visas like the tough student, Ramesa Ozturk, who was kidnapped off the street by ICE agents for the crime of co-authoring an op-ed. Absolutely. The due process clauses in the Constitution in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment specifically say any person has the right to due process. It's not just citizens, because there's parts of the Constitution that refer to citizens when it's talking about citizens, like who can be president or the privileges or immunities clause refers to citizenship. But they knew the difference

between those two words. When they said any person, they meant any person. They meant person. When Marco Rubio or whoever says, no, we're revoking this person's visa, can they not do that on a whim for no reason? Do they have to, you know, show cause? There are laws that govern this, and it's admittedly, there's a lot of vague precedents, some of them stretching back to kind of the Red Scare McCarthyism era about exactly what are the rights of non-citizens when it comes to like First Amendment rights, the free speech angle here, or the rights to exactly what is the constitutionally guaranteed minimum of process, basically, because the government does have a very wide hand on immigration in ways that it would not on most other issues. But it's not zero.

There is still a right to do process, particularly for somebody who is, like some of these people have been here on green cards, lawful permanent residence, the step just short of being a citizen. They have a lot of statutory rights. And the law they're invoking here that Rubio is using to, on a whim, yank these people's visas and have them arrested without notice. They're not even given an opportunity to leave the country, which is how that would normally go, requires him to find that they're a threat somehow to the United States foreign policy,

make a determination. And this was had in mind things like, you know, like when the Shah of, Iran came here after the revolution. And so you've got a foreign head of state or some political opposition leader who's in exile that entangles U.S. foreign policy in a way we might need to care about. It's fundamental that you can't just use that kind of authority in a way that's a sham, that's a pretext. There has to be some ability to challenge the finding. And in these cases, it's just obviously nonsense. It's bad faith. Right. So I want to go back to the wording of Article one, Section 9 of the Constitution, which I read earlier not to show off my copy-pasting skills,

but for an actual reason. So it says the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. Is this one of the reasons that Trump and his cronies talk about immigration as an invasion? Because in their minds, they then can suspend habeas because, hey, we're being invaded. That is part of it. And there's another part of the Constitution. that also refers to invasion and the guarantee clause of Article 4 that they've tried to invoke here. They have not explicitly said we're suspending habeas corpus. There is the law and the legal procedure to do that.

They haven't invoked that yet. But yeah, no, they are trying to run with this idea that illegal immigration is the same thing as an invasion. And that fails on kind of the basic words mean something level. An invasion means an army, occupying territory, attacking us. and immigration, even illegal immigration, nobody at the time these relevant provisions were written and all the way through the modern meeting of these words, that is not what counts as an invasion. Any more than, you know, you speed going down the street in the middle of a city, you might be breaking the law, but you're not invading that city.

And so this is another example of where they're trying to shoehorn things in a way that kind of maintains the pretense of legality, but it's indefensible on the actual text of the Constitution and the relevant laws. Yeah, and I was struck by something you wrote. Many people, myself included, have been calling what we're going through right now a constitutional crisis. And you say that that's an accurate description, but you also say it actually understates it. What's worse than a constitutional crisis? There are lots of ways in which you can have a constitutional crisis, which is where the rules of the organic structure of the government kind of come into conflict.

And so, you know, something has to give. And so there are lots of cases where that can happen. Not always is a matter of ill will on either side. But what we're dealing with here is more fundamental than that. It's not the Constitution. It's the very idea of law itself. I mean, there's countries, you know, the UK famously doesn't have a written constitution,

but they have lowercase C constitutional rules, including this habeas corpus and the personal liberty rights that it broadly protects. So this is not, oh, the president is acting unconstitutionally because lots of presidents, arguably most presidents have at one point or another done something that was probably unconstitutional. But no president has ever sort of this kind of raw absolutism power. I mean, this is the kind of thing that heads of state only have in pure absolute monarchies or totalitarian dictatorships. This is the tatse moa.

There is no limit on the state's coercive power outside of his personal whim. You brought this up earlier, but Trump has been floating the idea of applying these standards or lack of standards to American citizens and actually shipping U.S. citizens to overseas prison camps, detention camps.

With the understanding that this obviously shouldn't be happening at all, citizen or not. Does American citizenship make a difference here? Is it more difficult to do this to American citizens than to people who reside here but aren't quote unquote Americans? Right. Well, there are definitely some legal rights. I mean, as an American citizen, you have the right to reside in the United States, to not be expelled or banished. That's not a punishment that, you know, that exists in American law. It never has. If you're a citizen, you have the right to be here, even if you're prison. You have the right to still be in the country. But what they're doing now, there's no leap from

what they're doing now to potentially doing it to citizens. If a U.S. citizen had been among these people, they ship to El Salvador or in the next batch, they would have had no opportunity to say, hey, you've got it wrong. I'm a citizen. Look, I've got my birth certificate. And on top of that is how they're also pushing to where a birth certificate alone isn't even proof of citizenship, because they're trying to nullify birthright citizenship. And so then it becomes this dystopian nightmare of, you know, how can you trace your legal status of your parents when you were born in the United States, which is not at all what the Constitution says. So there would be some additional kind of violations on top of it, but there's nothing standing between what they're doing now and doing

that. So basically, once they've decided to act unconstitutionally and illegally, they can do it to anyone. Right. Because their claimed position here is once we've sent somebody to El Salvador, it's totally up to them if they want to hold them under Salvadoran law or whatever, which is not what's really going on. But that logic applies to U.S. citizens the same way as it would to Salvadoran or third party nationals. So just lastly, what's the remedy for this? What are the potential penalties the government can face? Because it seems like the courts are out there kind of saying, hey, you can't do this, and the administration is saying, you can't stop us. Well, we are barreling very quickly towards courts using their contempt powers, which is an

extraordinary thing to have to do against the government itself. Wouldn't be entirely unprecedented. But we sometimes talk about cases like Andrew Jackson with Indian removal or Lincoln during the Civil War, which is a fight over habeas corpus. But it's actually the case that never in American history has an administration that's blatantly and directly defied not just a court order compelling it directly to do something, but a court order that was upheld unanimously by the circuit appeal and then 9-0 by the Supreme Court. So we're seeing in one of these other cases, which is moving forward, Judge Bosberg's case,

actually talking about criminal contempt and potentially appointing a prosecutor to prosecute these government officials potentially ordering them to go to prison, to jail. But at the end of the day, if you have an executive branch that is so completely lawless and just refuses to be bound by any law, any court order, the courts are limited in how much they can do about that. And the ultimate solution is supposed to be impeachment. A president who does this is within the core of what impeachment is a remedy for. And so obviously, there's the reality of the politics in Congress and everything and the fact that even most Democrats aren't willing to. to talk about impeachment yet. If we get that far to where the courts are, you know, ordering contempt sanctions, fines, people jailed, people to be prosecuted under this process, and the administration simply refuses to do it, refuses to allow these people, you know, at that point, you're into the standoff of whose orders do the men with guns follow. I mean, that goes to kind of the core fracturing of the state's monopoly on force. And at that point, it is a,

a political crisis in a way that can ultimately only be resolved by the political branches, because the courts at the end of the day don't have any armies or divisions under their command. Scary stuff. Andy Craig, thank you so much for joining us and explaining all this. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Got to be here. Andy Levy.

Danielle Moody. Andy, how are you closing out this atrocious week with your fuck-that-guy? My fuck-that-guy goes to Major League. League Baseball for Jackie Robinson Day. What I mean by that is my fuck that guy is not for having a Jackie Robinson Day, which is a very, very good thing for people who aren't baseball fans. Every player in the major leagues on Jackie Robinson Day wears the number 42 on their uniform, which was Jackie's number. And they do not wear their own name on the back of the jersey. There's no name. So it's all in honor of Jackie Robinson. But what Major League Baseball has done

is edit. It's Jackie Robinson Day announcement. In 2024, and I'm going to cite Parker Malloy here in her excellent newsletter of the present age, the 2024 line was, Major League Baseball aims to educate all fans about Jackie Robinson, his life's accomplishments and legacy, while spearheading initiatives that support communities and meaningfully address diversity and inclusion at all levels of our sport. That was 2024. 2024. 2025 simply reads, Major League Baseball aims to educate all fans about Jackie Robinson, his life's accomplishments and legacy, while communicating his message at all levels of the sports. So they took out spearheading initiatives that support communities and meaningfully addressed diversity and inclusion. And they did this, you know, you can pick a reason.

Did they do this out of cowardice because of Donald Trump and his administration going after DEI initiatives? and they were afraid to use the words diversity and inclusion. I'm assuming that is the reason they did it, but it's shameful. It's absolutely shameful. And I was watching on Jackie Robinson today, I was watching the Mets game, and I knew about what MLB had done. And I was like, it was so nice to see the Mets broadcast team spent a lot of time talking about Jackie Robinson.

And they talked about his exploits on the field, you know, which were Hall of Fame, caliber. but they also talked about what it meant for him to be the first black player in the MLB. And all the racist shit he took from fans, from fellow players, etc. They talked about how meaningful this was to decades later, the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s. They talked about his participation in those movements. They talked about Martin Luther King saying what an inspiration. he was for the civil rights movement. They talked about all of this, and I was so happy to see them do that because it was in such stark contrast to what Major League Baseball itself as an organization is doing here.

This whitewashing of history, literally, is always bad, and it's always shameful. And to see Major League Baseball join in on this is disgraceful. So Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of Baseball, and everyone else around you, fuck those guys. The desire to erase one of the most extraordinary feats in sports by a black man and erase what he experienced, how he was able to persevere the relentless racism and discrimination to become one of the greatest baseball players is a fucking disgrace. They should be embarrassed and they should be fucking shamed for what it is that they have done. You want to talk about, oh, we're going to, we're here to educate everybody. No, you're not. You're here to whitewash. And that is

despicable. Fuck those guys. Yeah. And look, I don't think it's a stretch to say that if this current administration had been in power back then, Jackie Robinson probably wouldn't have been allowed to play in Major League Baseball. Danielle, close us out. Just like in general? Just in general. Just put an end to this. Who's your fuck that guy? Look, I believe that actually this person has been on fuck that guy before. I don't think it's their inauguration into the halls of fuckery.

But let me tell you, Lisa Murkowski, Senator Lisa Murkowski, found herself, I'll say this, in an interview, in her home state of Alaska, with an Alaskan nonprofit, where, Andy, she said this. It's quite a statement, but we are in a time and place where I certainly have not been here before. And I'll tell you, I'm often very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real and that's not right. Lisa Murkowski is an old, rich, cis, hetero, white woman. I honestly can't think about someone with more privilege in this moment whom people elected to use your voice to be a check on what has become an assault, an all out assault on our democracy, on our constitution, on law and order. And to have the audacity when real people are being kidnapped from the streets of this country,

for writing op-eds, for exercising what should be their right to protest. When real people are hiding out and not going to work for fear of being picked up by ice, when real people are being made to be targets and criminalized like the trans community, speak up and speak out, and they have their lives at stake to risk, And this fucking woman says that, oh, we're scared of retaliation from the very constituents that you emboldened by your inaction over the last fucking nine years under Trumpism. And you think what? By offering that statement that we're supposed to feel bad for you for having fed this monster and now you're afraid it's going to turn on you? I am so absolutely sick and disgusted by these Republicans.

I'm so sick and disgusted because they enabled this. They created this. They allow Donald Trump to grow in power and force and enable mobs of people to attack our capital building. And now when you have the responsibility to stand up, you are afraid to do so because of retaliation, miss me with your bullshit. So for that reason and so many others clutching Pearl fucking moments that this woman has had throughout her decades of quote unquote service, fuck her and fuck those guys.

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