The Young Turks - Cruel & Unusual

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

A Maryland father was sent to a Salvadoran prison due to an ""administrative error."" GOP lawmakers target anti-Trump rulings. State Department spox blames Hamas for IDF killings of paramedics. Top aides to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been arrested as an investigation into payments from Qatar intensifies." Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All righty, welcome to the young Turks, you crazy, the online news show. Jake, you granite, who's sparing with you guys. Speaking of crazy, Cory Booker in the middle of a giant filibuster, good, bad, somewhere in the middle, we'll discuss. Will we do a 24-hour filibuster?

Maybe. No, no, we won't. Okay, do we- Maybe you will. Have I done a 99-hour filibuster before? I have. That was your problem. Okay, yeah. It's also my solution. All right, so we'll get to Cory Booker and whether that makes sense and what he was fighting for a little bit later in the program in amazing history about filibusters. All right, and Elon Musk, there's an open mutiny against him within the, well, let me retract that, a closed mutiny against him in Republican circles. And it's because of elections happening tonight.

They're actually rooting. The Republicans are rooting to lose their own elections. Friends with deficits. Yeah, it's amazing. So that's an amazing story. But a lot more, apparently, we've sent the wrong guy to a dungeon. Yeah, that story is awful. In fact, we begin with that story.

So let's get right to it. I trust our intelligence agencies and the intelligence individuals that are within the Department of Homeland Security, that the individuals who are there are members in a part of this organization and have, worked with them. And while we were there at that prison, we not only talked about how to identify these members of these terrorist organizations, but what they did, their actions they took, the case files we built on them and how we verified that those individuals should be there in that prison. So you're pretty confident. I am. I am very confident to the fact that those individuals that are there should be there.

You know, they say that confidence is oftentimes a good thing. But in some context, not such a great thing, maybe you should cross your T's, dot your eyes, because Homeland Security Secretary Christine Ome was apparently wrong to trust the intelligence process being used to decide who would be deported to a terrorist detention facility in El Salvador. Because last night, the Trump administration, in a court filing, admitted to mistakenly deporting a man with legal protections because of an administrative error. So let's get into the the details of this story. And there's a lot of talk online. It's hard to cut through all of it to get to the bottom of what's really going on here. But here's what the reality is. Believe it or

not, they are still defending the decision to deport this guy despite admitting to screwing up. But before we get to that, here are the initial details. Here's the context. So the man in question is Kilmar, Brego Garcia. So we actually came to the United States in 2011. at the age of 16 after fleeing gang threats in his home country of El Salvador. Now, he's married to a United States citizen and has a five-year-old child with autism, who is also, of course, a U.S. citizen. Now, he was living in Maryland, and he has absolutely no criminal record. He was living in the United States under protected legal status, protected legal status.

He was not in the country illegally, so it's important to remember that. And he even regularly complied with ICE check-ins. Now, in 2019, officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency tried to deport him. So this is when Trump was still in office in his first term. During those proceedings, they claimed a confidential informant had told them that Abreggo Garcia was a high-ranking member of MS-13, the violent Salvadorian criminal gang, which of course he and his lawyer said was completely false. According to the Atlantic, the gang label stems from a 2019 incident when Garcia and three other men were detained in a Home Depot parking lot by a police detective in Prince George's County, Maryland. During questioning, one of the men told officers that Abrago Garcia was a gang member, but the man offered absolutely no proof, and police said they didn't believe him, filing show. Police did not identify him as a gang member.

Now, he wasn't charged with any crime, but unfortunately got handed over to ICE, who then tried to send him back to El Salvador. Garcia appeared, appealed, I should say, the claims that he was a danger to the community and filed a petition for asylum. He was granted withholding from removal status in October of 2019 by an immigration judge, which protected him from being deported to El Salvador. because of the likelihood that he could be harmed if he returned back to El Salvador where gang members were threatening his life. Now before I get to more of the details here, Jank, I mean, this guy pretty much has gone through hell.

I mean, he gets, you know, accused of being part of a gang. There's no evidence of it. You know, the police say that he wasn't guilty of any kind of crime. He has no criminal record. Long story short, he gets sent over to El Salvador to the Seacot facility anyway. during the second Trump term, and we're about to get to all the details about the denials from Vice President J.D. Vance about this, even though lawyers representing the administration have admitted that this error was in fact made. Okay, so several outrageous facts here. Guys, he was

just trying to escape gangs in El Salvador. Who do you think is in that prison in El Salvador? those same exact gangs. So we might have sent him to his death. It's amazing fact number two. They say, we have no jurisdiction over El Salvador, so we can't get them back. Insane. Insane. Then if we can't get people back from El Salvador, we obviously shouldn't be sending people

to El Salvador. Well, I mean, is it impossible for anyone to make a mistake? The Trump administration, what if the next administration comes in? What a Democratic administration can't make a mistake? But no, let's just send them to a dungeon we can't get them back from. What if you sent the wrong guy? In fact, it's not a what if anymore, they definitely send the wrong guy. And this isn't even talking about the gay hairdresser, that's a different guy, okay?

So this guy, one of the reasons he was rounded up at Home Depot, by the way, as he was applying for a job, was because he had a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie. Under that standard, how many people can we round up and send out Salvador? I mean, that's beyond, that's even more mental. than the hairdresser's mom and dad tattoos that got him sent to El Salvador. It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy. And remember the clip we showed you in the beginning with Christine, oh, we got this on lockdown.

Oh, our intelligence is top notch. They're barely checking guys, it's all for photo ops, right? And Christine Nome goes down there and does a photo out with a Rolex, et cetera, and wait till you hear about his traffic tickets. Ooh, so there's a lot more madness in this story. There is, but I just want to take a brief moment to reiterate something I've been saying on the show. Look, the Trump administration has had quite a bit of support from the American people in regard to doing these deportations, not the deportations of people who weren't meant to be deported, but obviously of criminals, of gang members, people who are in the country legally. They are going to waste that goodwill by making these errors. And they keep saying, well, we want to get it done. We want to get it done. Let's get them out. Let's get them out. But due process is incredibly important in order to prevent these types of mistakes from happening.

Because if you have a situation in which the executive branch can just unilaterally point to someone and accuse them of anything, and that individual gets no due process, well, what kind of government is that? And yes, even people who are in the country illegally, this guy was not in the country illegally, I want to be clear about that, but even for people who are in the country illegally, if the president or if anyone in the executive branch is going to accuse that individual of being part of a criminal gang, and that is their justification for sending them to a third country like El Salvador to sit in a terrorist facility full of other like

incredibly violent gang members and stuff like that. That is terrible to do without due process, without having a judge look at the facts and adjudicate whether or not that individual is actually guilty of doing or being what the executive branch is claiming here. Yeah, and JD Vance, we'll show you in a minute, lied about due process in a pretty egregious way. But what I wanted to point out is to go along with what Anna is saying, both sides should really agree with us for two different. Well, maybe the same reason, but certainly overlapping. So the left in the middle, of course we don't want to send innocent people

to a prison in Al Salvador. That's nuts. And of course we're in favor of due process. Those are not open questions on the left in the middle. So for the folks on the right, first of all, come on, brothers. I mean, you claim to be in favor of the Constitution. New process should not be an open question for you either. Okay, but to Anna's point, even if you say, I, it, it is an open question. I don't really care too much about due process or what aboutism, Biden did this, Obama, whatever excuses you have, right? Okay, no problem. But then listen to what she's saying. This is going to make the program that you love to deport criminal undocumented gang members unpopular, because everybody's going to hear you're sending the wrong guys.

By the way, that's the same thing that happened to death penalty. The death penalty was relatively popular until we found out that we were executing innocent people, and then it became unpopular. So, okay, if you want your program to be unpopular and you want the criminal gang members to stay here, keep going in this direction. Here's another scenario that I want you guys to think about as you, if anyone who's watching this right now thinks, well, I don't want due process for someone who's in the country illegally, right? Which by the way, our constitution does protect everyone in the country, even if they're not here with, you know, citizen status, they're supposed to get due process. And we should protect that. Now, why do I say we should protect that? Well, I mean, if you guys can recall not too long ago, Steve Bannon accused Elon Musk of being an illegal immigrant. So if Steve Bannon had more power than he currently has and was able to, you know,

get in Donald Trump's ear and convince him to deport Elon Musk to Seacott, right? Actually, literally nothing he can do about it. There's nothing, I mean, Elon Musk, by the way, would deserve his day in court, right? Where he can prove, actually, no, I'm an American citizen, here's the evidence. That's what due process is. But under the system that some, unfortunately, in the country are now rooting for, anyone in the executive branch, anyone in Homeland Security can just point to any individual, accuse them of anything. And without a day in court, even if they're an American citizen,

we're going to send you to El Salvador. Yeah. Is that the country we want to live in? Because I don't want to live in that country. See, that's why it's important for non-citizens to have due process rights. Because if you just call someone a non-citizen and take away their due process, you don't even know if they are a citizen or not. Bannon would say that Musk is not a citizen. Musk, in fact, is a citizen. But once you send them to El Salvador, you can't even get them back. So, I mean, look, we get it. They're not gonna do that to Musk, he's a billionaire, et cetera, right? But they could do it to anyone if you allow them to take away due process for anyone.

And by the way, that's why the Supreme Court has ruled over and over again over the course of hundreds of years that yes, due process and constitutional rights also applied to non-citizens. For example, if you're a non-citizen, you also can't get tortured. You're protected by the Constitution. Exactly. So let's get to the rest of this story. So as I had last mentioned, he was granted withholding from removal status in October of 2019 by an immigration judge because of the likelihood that he could be harmed if he returned to his home country of El Salvador. Now, that ruling specifically meant that he could still be deported in the future, but not to El Salvador where the judge agreed he'd be in danger. But on March 12th, Abrago Garcia had picked up his son after work when ICE officers stopped. the car and incorrectly told him that his protected status had changed despite knowing

that he was that that was not the case. Now officers waited for him or his wife I should say to come to the scene and take care of his son and then they drove him away in handcuffs. Within two days he had been transferred to an ice staging facility in the state of Texas. Then he was sent on a plane to Seacott in El Salvador despite his protection status still being active. Now the Trump administration is actually admitting in a court filing that he was deported because of an administrative error. So let's get to those details. Abrigo Garcia was not on the initial manifest of the deportation flight, but was listed as an alternate, the government attorneys explained. As other detainees were removed from the flight for various reasons,

he moved up the list. The flight manifest did not indicate that he should not be removed, the attorney said. Though through administrative error, Abrigo Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight. But despite this, they told the court that Abrigo Garcia's deportation was carried out in good faith. So the man's wife and his relatives ended up filing a civil suit against the Trump administration last month, asking the government to stop its payments to El Salvador for holding deportees until Abrigo Garcia is returned. Because remember, we're not just sending people to El Salvador to this detention facility. We're also paying El Salvador to do this.

In Monday's court filing administration officials bulked at the request claiming the United States courts did not have jurisdiction to order such actions and saying Abrigo Garcia's plight should not stand in the way of the Trump administration's greater foreign policy goals. Listen, if your greater foreign policy goals mean that you're going to strip people of due process and constitutional rights, your foreign policy goals are going to fall by the wayside. It's not that difficult. There is a process in place. Go through the process to ensure that you're not deporting the wrong people and stories like this don't pop up, which makes the Trump administration look really, really bad.

Now let's talk about the administration's response to all of this. So it seems like the Trump administration's strategy today is to basically keep moving the goalpost and adjust their talking points as they get confronted about the fact that they made a massive mistake here. So John Favro tweeted at Trump officials last night writing, any comment on this? And he tagged Marco Rubio. How about you, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk. You just admitted to accidentally sending an innocent father from Maryland to a torture dungeon in El Salvador and you refuse to do anything about it. Now, this is where Vice President J.D. Vance comes in and I'm really ashamed of how he's handling this. He says, my comment is that according to the court document you apparently didn't read, he was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here.

Okay, that is false. He was fleeing gang violence in El Salvador and received protected status in the United States as a result of that. The court document he's referring to says he was denied bond in 2019 over an informant's claim that he was a member of MS-13, but that is not a conviction, obviously. When reporter Kyle Cheney pointed that out to J.D. Vance, he didn't acknowledge the fact that he was dead wrong about the man being convicted. He remained defiant. Here's what he wrote. Bear with me here. Kyle Cheney, a legal affairs reporter is apparently unable or unwilling to look at the

facts here. In 2019, an immigration judge under the first Trump administration determined that the deported man was in fact a member of the MS-13 gang. He didn't. He also apparently had multiple traffic, he had multiple traffic violations for which he failed to appear in court, a real winner. It is telling that the entire American media is going to run a propaganda operation today, making you think an innocent father of three was apprehended by a gulag. Here are the relevant facts. The man is an illegal immigrant with no right to be in the country. This is me saying it now. False. What he's claiming there is false. An immigration judge determined he was a member of the MS-13 gang, also false, because he is not a citizen,

he does not get a full jury trial by peers. In other words, whatever due process he was entitled to, he received, well, he did receive due process, but you guys deported him anyway. Thereby removing the due process. So when the judge says he's protected, he must, he should stay here. He's got a valid claim and he's married to an American, et cetera, et cetera. If you ignore the judge's ruling, you're ignoring due process. Here's the thing that you've got to know about J.D. Vance. He went to Yale law. Yeah. So it's not like he doesn't know. He knows, right? This is pretty elementary stuff you learn in law school. So he's choosing to lie. That's really interesting. And if you remember with the eating the cats and dogs nonsense during the

election, J.D. Van said, well, I had to do that to propel my agenda. Like, he just flat out admitted it that they were lying about the cats and the dogs to get us to talk about the real problem of immigration. Or you could just talk about the real problem of immigration, which pulled really well for you guys. Exactly. Yeah. So now, instead of getting everybody riled up, again, if you're a right winger, I would argue you should be more mad. One, you should care about the Constitution. But two, like, you had everybody all riled up about the illegal immigrants here who had broken laws and the gangs, et cetera, massively popular for Trump. The border was, you know, getting close to sealed. It was amazing. And so, you know, you agree

or disagree with that? The American people agreed, right? And that's the one thing holding up Trump's polling numbers, because he's now cratering on the economy. Elon Musk is causing him significant damage with blind cuts that people are, that are not popular. But he was doing great on immigration. Now you're flushing it down the toilet with outrageous, clear lies. Like, okay, let's say that J.D. Vance read the first thing wrong, and it's a little embarrassing because he's a, you know, went to Yale law and is the vice president. He shouldn't be saying all this stuff without checking. Remember, he's saying his own administration is wrong. The Trump administration said, no, we made a mistake. I said, we made a mistake. He should be

year and very much like no way man he's he's criminal and he's this and he's that but brother you didn't even check and it you're contradicting yourself your own administration super embarrassing but even then maybe like oh he rushed because they rush everything they're super sloppy etc right but the second tweet when you knew for a hundred percent the one that Anna just read you guys you knew for a hundred percent that you were wrong and he did it anyway exactly and look We went through, and I think to some extent, are still going through this era of rewarding people who refuse to take personal responsibility or any responsibility, where, you know, denials and refusals to apologize are somehow seen as strong and are rewarded.

But I see that culture slowly but surely fading away, and I'm seeing this thirst among the American people for politicians who are willing to admit fault, who are willing to say, you know what, we made a mistake here, we have learned from that mistake, and we're going to change the process to make sure this doesn't happen again. That's way more admirable than whatever this is that J.D. Vance is doing, right? Because I get it. I understand that urge to not want to admit fault. I totally get it. It's human nature. But you should be leading by example. Okay, we're talking about the most powerful people in the country, and the fish rots from the head down, leading by example, taking personal responsibility

and showing that you're going to do things differently so these mistakes don't happen again is way more admirable than what J.D. Vance is doing here. Yeah, and you know you're losing and making stuff up when you have to go to his traffic tickets. Come on, brother. I mean, oh, also I heard unconfirmed reports that he was jaywalking earlier. That's when you know they're making it up. It doesn't matter which side they're on, right? And so, and Anna, let me just double down on on what you said because the media has changed, guys, you're gonna hear me say this a lot because it is what's the cause of it. So in the old days, Fox News would have just repeated what J.D. Van said, they wouldn't have cared at all. They would have just said, oh, yes, of course,

he's undocumented, he's illegal, he's a criminal, he's MS-13. They were just repeated a lie 2,000 times until everyone in the right wing genuinely believed he was MS-13, etc. right? Now there's a lot of shows that go, wow, that's weird. Because remember, they love proving the government wrong. Those guys on the right and the bros and all that stuff. And with COVID and all that, they got all amped up Epstein files, et cetera. They're all sluice now. Sometimes, a lot of times they get it wrong, right? But at least they're trying to solve it. So then they look into the things. And we're going to show J.D. Vance is right? And they look through the papers. It's like, God damn it, he's wrong again. Right? And so is it every show, no way you'll

get that Benny Johnson is coming out there and telling you he's MS 14, a new thing they just discovered, right? So, but now a lot of their own shows are going, that's not true. Why do you keep saying, I thought we were right. Yeah. Why do you keep lying if we're right, right? And they're starting to get mad about that. So that's a wonderful phenomenon. Now back to bad news, I want to just one member here at t.com. Dr. Gansu said, then people wonder why Canadians stop traveling to the USA. You couldn't pay me to set one single tone. in America right now, I wouldn't come within 100 feet of your border. You know, when I read that, I thought, well, Dr. God has a little much, right?

It's, we're fine here. I mean, the real problem is gun control. I mean, you have much higher chance of getting shot here in America than almost any other country. Okay, but then I thought about it, I was like, wait a minute, if you're from Latin America or South America or even Spain or Portugal or Italy or wherever you're from, and God help you if you have tattoos or a Chicago Bulls jersey, and you come, you come come here, what if they, because you're not citizens, right? You're traveling, you've got a visa,

right? You came to check out Las Vegas or New York or something. What if they round you up and send you to El Salvador? Then you can't go back to Italy or Peru or wherever you came from. Not good. That's insane. Yeah. So yeah, that'll hurt tourism, that'll hurt our reputation, that'll hurt everything. This is just bad on every front. Well, as we discuss the importance of due process, the Trump administration, or at least Republicans, I should say, in Congress are looking to undercut the courts. We're going to tell you how when we come back. Don't miss it. Somebody in my group either screwed up or it's a bad signal. That's not supposed to happen. All right, back on TYT, Jank, Anna and Alyssa, who's one of our producers, is in its third anniversary today at TYT.

Okay, and Charles Lloyd, it's his first day anniversary here because he just hit the join button and became one of us. Love it. Thank you, brother. Welcome. Speaking of which one from YouTube member, DeGenerate Dane wrote in already fun, right? He said, oh no, please don't deport me back to Denmark. Okay, and of course the problem is we might not send you to Denmark, we might send you to a dungeon in El Salvador. Yeah, that's, that's, I mean, the guy that we just spoke about in the last segment is from El Salvador, but a lot of these migrants are not from El Salvador. A lot of them were from Venezuela or other countries and they were sent to a third country. But you know, the Trump administration, they're very vigilant about it. Wait, El Salvador or Venezuela or a different country, they don't care, they're just rounding them up.

All right. Well, let's talk about the courts. Let's talk about some of the judges who have stepped in to mitigate some of the executive orders from the Trump administration and how upset some Republicans in Congress are about it. This is one floor below my office in front of Representative Ogle's office. Wanted posters of judges. It says no get Trump judicial activists wanted. And this is the kind of stuff that some of us are asking there to be universal condemnation about. Well, that's certainly something I can agree with. Yesterday, Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern revealed that his fellow lawmaker, Republican Representative Andy Ogles, has a wanted poster with photos of judges outside of his office. Now here's a closer look at the poster in question, and what it features are the judges who decided to rule against some of the executive orders or actions that have been taken

by the Trump administration thus far, either through a temporary block or by striking the executive order down. And while other Republicans aren't going as far as Ogles is, they are looking into ways to essentially kneecap the judicial branch. In fact, Elon Musk just spoke out against judges ruling against Trump today on the five. Let's take a look at what he had to say. All the president is trying to do is implement the will of the people. And they're trying to stop the of the people through judicial trickery. And in fact, in general, there is a huge problem with activists that are actually politicians in judges' robes.

And that needs to stop. It's undermining the integrity, the reality and the perception of the integrity of the legal system of the United States. And these fake judges should be ashamed of themselves. They are just pretending to be judges, but they are not, they're making the law instead of implementing the law. It's wrong. So he's arguing, well, these judges are going against the will of the people. And so as a result, what we're going to kneecap the judicial branch? And, you know, it's interesting because I hear

a lot about the tyranny of the majority from Republicans oftentimes and how it's important to keep the electoral college in place because, you know, you want representation in the less populated states in our union. Look, you need judges to. to adjudicate whether or not the executive branch or Congress is carrying out their duties while abiding by what the constitution and what the rule of law entails. And if you want to kneecap that in order to create a kinglike scenario within the executive branch, you're advocating for something that goes against this country and what this country is supposed to be. Yeah, so a little bit later, I'm gonna tell you how much I despise activist judges.

And so if anybody was going to agree with Elon Musk, if he was making a good point, it would be me in that regard. And I'm going to point out some democratic hypocrisy on this issue. There's two solid a piece of hypocrisy here. But I want Musk is saying, well, brother, okay, so you're saying they're unelected. But a lot of judges are unelected. So does that mean we shouldn't have judges? That doesn't make any sense at all.

Elon Musk is unelected. Yeah, you're unelected, totally and utterly. And you didn't go through any system other than. I gave Trump $288 million for his campaign. So please spare me the unelected crap, okay? So but more importantly, why do we need judges? Because of due process, oops, we sent two wrong people to El Salvador because we didn't give them two process.

Number two, when you say, hey, Congress appropriated this money, but I don't want to spend it, well, that's unconstitutional. And so that's what you need the courts to adjudicate. Well, should you spend it or shouldn't you spend it? Who has the legal authority to adjudicate that? But judges, they're the only ones who have that. If you ask Congress, Congress is going to say they're right. If you have some executive branch, they're going to say they're right.

That's why you need courts. I mean, they're really making us defend our entire system of government and our constitution. And the fact that a judiciary should exist. You know who doesn't want a judiciary? People who want to be lawless and want to be tyrants. And I'll give you one last one. When you fire people, we have to know why you fire them. There's a lot of laws around that.

They might be in a union. I know you hate unions, but they do protect people's jobs. That money might have been appropriated. There's a lot of, for example, if Elon wanted to come. come in and say, so what? It's my company or it's now, it's now my country since I'm the number one donor, okay? Even in his own company, he couldn't do that. Because what if he fired someone because they wouldn't sleep with him? That would be illegal and who would adjudicate that? A judge would. So this whole thing of like, we don't need no stinking judges is 100% an argument

for tyranny. And what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So you want to open up a situation in which you weaken the courts and solidify even more power in the executive branch, Trump's not the only one who's going to benefit from that. Democrat can come in. Democrat can abuse their power as well without having to worry about the courts that have been weakened by the previous administration. Just think about that. So let's get to the details in regard to what members of Congress are trying to do here because Republicans have tried different schemes that haven't really worked out for them. And now they're trying something new. So in his second turn, term, Trump has issued 107 executive orders, thus far at least. And according to the Washington

Post, that's more than any other president in the last four decades. Now, many of those orders have been challenged in the court. So the Trump administration has been hit with about 150 lawsuits so far. And judges have put 40 blocks on Trump's agenda, including but not limited to, firing federal workers, blocking federal grant money, ending birthright citizenship, and banning transgender troops from the military. Those are just some examples. Now, Trump has insisted that his administration will comply with court orders, but he has also called for federal judges blocking his agenda to be impeached. That doesn't happen, okay? Judges don't get impeached because you don't like their ruling. A judge, in fact, has never been impeached for their

rulings. And it seems that some Republicans also don't want to open that Pandora's box to their credit. So hardline Trump supporters in Congress crafted legislation to impeach U.S. District Court Judge James E. Bozberg and other judges who had ruled against the President. House GOP leadership worked to tamp down that push to their credit. However, saying it is a political non-starter given opposition among some Republicans and the two-third Senate majority required to remove a judge. Now, some House Republicans are considering defunding federal courts, which I mean, it's amazing to, like, it's just amazing to me how whenever it's convenient, people want to defund certain things, right? But they want to, you know, they've brought that

up. Let's defund the federal courts. But that might not make it through the Senate either. In fact, Republican Senator John Kennedy, Republican Senator said this, I'm not going to support defunding an independent and equal branch of government, and I'm not going to support impeaching a federal judge unless you can prove to me that he or she has committed a crime or misdemeanor. Not a big fan of Senator Kennedy, but I give him major props for that. He's absolutely right in his stance here. And that's why congressional Republicans have turned to the idea of banning nationwide injunctions. So I'm gonna pause here and go to Jank to explain what an injunction is.

Yeah, so before I get to that, just real quick, if you are defund the courts, that's actually a step higher than defunding the police because you're defunding the law. Like if there are no courts, how do we put anybody in prison? Do we just say, oh, the executive branch is now king and they can put anyone they like in prison and there are no courts to check them? What kind of lunatic conversation are we having when we're talking about defunding the court system? Okay, that's the current lunatic conversation in Congress. So if you're a right winger and you scoffed at all the Democrats saying that Republicans were going to be fascist or authoritarian and they weren't.

aren't gonna listen to the courts. Again, you should be way more angry than we are because you just, they're proving Joe Biden right, Kamala Harris right, they're proving every Democrat right, they're proving MSNBC right, by saying, oh yeah, let's defund law. Who cares about courts? That's crazy, that's nuts.

Okay, so now the injunctions. So an injunction is just a court saying, hold on, you can't do that. First we have to adjudicate it and then we'll lift the injunction after we have a ruling saying you can or can't do that, right? And now that could be on a simple local matter or now they're doing it on a nationwide matters. Why? Because they're being forced into it. This didn't happen that often before. George W. Bush only had six injunction national injunctions during his term.

Obama had 12, Biden at 14. Trump had 64 in his first term and he's well on his way to passing that record. Now, why? Because he keeps doing things that aren't even close. illegal. So for when he says, oh, you know what, I'm going to take away birthright citizenship, even though it's in the Constitution. The court doesn't have a choice. You can't say, oh, okay, I'll give you an injunction in Rhode Island, but I don't care if you do it in the other 49 states. Yeah, exactly. Right? So they're forced into it. Now, I'll give you one of the teasers here, the Democrats are huge hypocrites on this. They were also against national injunctions when Biden was getting the national injunctions from

judges. But I'll come back to that when I talk about activist judges. So in regard to what Republicans in Congress are trying to do here with the injunctions, let's go to Senator Chuck Grassley, who wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal explaining why he wrote a bill that would ban the nationwide injunctions. It reads, under my bill, lower courts could no longer block legitimate executive action. Well, how do you determine if it's legitimate executive action? Wouldn't the judges determine if it's legitimate executive action? But let me continue, legitimate executive action by issuing orders to non-parties to the lawsuit. The bill would also make temporary restraining orders against the government immediately

appealable to make sure that prudence wins out over rash decisions handed down in the heat of a political moment. Now Grassley called on Democrats to support his bill stating that 240 Democratic lawmakers including senators Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin in 2023 submitted a friend of the court brief warning of the perilous consequences resulting from a district judge's move to block the abortion pill Mitha Pristone. So what he's specifically referring to is Democratic Senator Maisie Hirono introducing a bill in 23 that would render the U.S. district court in D.C. the only court in the country that could implement a nationwide injunction.

So this also goes to what you were saying, Jank, about the hypocrisy of the Democrats. And this is a point that I was trying to make earlier in the show. Again, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. When you think that weakening the courts is going to benefit your party and your party alone, you're making a big mistake because your party's not always going to be the one in charge. Yeah, so number one, okay, let me explain why I hate activist, judges and justices. on Citizens United alone, that's a good enough claim for it, right?

I can get into many other decisions. But Lewis Powell in his 1971 memo that I explained in justice is coming, literally called for the right wing to create, he said it, literally, activist judges. He's like, well, we, because we're not winning in a democracy and corporations are hated and they're serving the consumers too much and the citizens too much. So we need activist judges to say that the corporations should be allowed to rule the country. So their number one way that they wound up doing that with Lewis Powell actually being the deciding vote in a couple of these cases in the 1970s was they said money is speech. Speech is protected so you can spend unlimited money in politics.

That is not in the Constitution at all. They made up both of those things. They made up three things. One was earlier. Corporations are human beings, not in the Constitution, activist judges, okay, justices. that money is speech and that you have an unlimited right to give money to politicians. All three are totally utterly made up by corporate-backed activist justices. So I despise activism in, and I've been conservative legally for a long, long time.

We've talked about that in different parts, okay? So, and by the way, as you might have known, if you watch Young Turks for a long time, that's why I was also against Roe v. I love it as legislation, but courts invented trimesters in the Constitution. That's my opinion. Okay, so now you turn to the Democrats and they go, okay, well, since activist judges are bad, and when they're blocking Biden's agenda, let's get rid of nationwide injunctions. But again, that doesn't make any sense. If the president is doing an executive order that applies to the whole country, by definition, you have to have it

apply to the whole country. So I can't stand the way the parties are so hypocritical when they're in charge versus the other guys in charge. Now what leg does Dick Durbin or any of these other guys have to stand on when they literally were pushing just like a minute ago, literally a couple of months ago, the idea of we should end nationwide injunctions for these judges. So that's an attack on the judiciary itself. It's not a way to clean up the activist judges.

It's not a way to fix the system. It's an attack on the system itself. And last one, Democrats also wanted to stack the court, if you remember, the Supreme Court. And I was totally against it. And people at the time were like, why, why are you against it? No, because if we pack it, they pack it. And then it gets into nonsense.

A lot of judges. Can you imagine? Yeah, like 500 Supreme Court justices. If they had done that, which again, it's such a bad idea. And I understand the temptation to do it, but don't give into that temptation. I told Democrats then and I'm telling Republicans now. Because if they've done it from 9 to 15, right, in an effort to say, now the Republicans would have to go to 21 justices or 25 justices.

This is so dumb. So do not open doors that are unconstitutional or a bad idea. It would be job creators, though. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, we're going to check in on what's going down in Gaza. So stick around for that and more. All right, back on TYT, Jank Anna and Sistram 1 just joined by hitting the join bottom below. You guys are awesome, appreciate you.

I'm gonna read two real quick super chats from Dan Haley here, because it's relevant to what we discussed in this first hour so far. Unhappy with the president on many things right now, economy, he gets a pass, took Reagan three years to recover from Carter, but need to use far more strategic or to prevent these people from being deported. The Iran thing, Israel, ridiculous. And Dan continues in the second chat. By the way, right wing populist three times Trump voter,

if you don't remember me, all my friends are too. We all feel this way. So there you have it. I know that for some folks, no matter how much the right wing, the middle, the independence, et cetera, say, yeah, we're questioning Trump. Some say no, they're not questioning Trump.

No, they're not questioning Trump, it's all a lie, it's all a mirage. But it isn't, it's real, Dan is a real person. And Dan, thank you for having an open mind. We disagree on a lot of things, but I like that you're holding your own side accountable as we do too. Yeah, and thank you for watching, knowing that we're, you know, pretty left wing on pretty much every issue. What I want to do more than anything is get back to a place where Americans can come together,

regardless of who they voted for, and understand each other. be okay with political disagreements here and there, but also understanding what's right is right, what's wrong is wrong, and what reigns supreme are constitutional rights. Yeah, totally. All right, let's get to our next story. Let's talk a little bit about what happened with medics in Gaza. The UN's humanitarian affairs office has said that 15 paramedics, civil defense, and a UN worker were killed, in their words, one by one by the IDF. they have dug bodies up, they said, in the shallow grave that have been gathered up.

I can tell you that for too long, Hamas has abused civilian infrastructure, cynically using it to shield themselves. Hamas's actions have caused humanitarian to be caught in the crossfire. At what point are people going to get sick and tired of that lame excuse of Hamas was using them as human shields? Now, that was State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, immediately deflecting when asked about the 15 dead Palestinian paramedics that were found in a shallow mass grave. And when Bruce was pressed on her answer, she doubled down even more. But there's specifically a question on any, it's a question about accounting and accountability given that may have been the use of U.S. weapons.

So it's a question about the State Department rather than Hamas. Is there any action? Well, every single thing that is happening in Gaza is happening because of Hamas. Every single dynamic. I'll say again, I've said it, I think, in every briefing. All of this could stop in a moment if Hamas returned all the hostages and the hostage bodies they are still holding and put down its weapons. Yes, Hamas is responsible for the IDF bombing every hospital, every university, every refugee camp,

killing hundreds of journalists, killing hundreds of doctors, medics, striking humanitarian aid trucks as Palestinians desperately try to get their hands on food and water. I mean, yeah, it's all Hamas using innocent people as human shields, right? It was Hamas that convinced the IDF, the IDF to shoot children in the head, snipers shot children in the head. That's according to American doctors on the ground in Gaza who kept seeing children with gunshot wounds in their heads coming to the hospital. I'm sick of it. It's so shameful that our country is aiding and abetting this. shameful. I'm embarrassed by it. I feel a lot of shame for it.

Jenk, go ahead. Yeah, so in a minute, we're gonna tell you about how Netanyahu's up on corruption charges involving maybe people that work with them taking money from Qatar, but it's okay, Hamas made them do it because Hamas is the excuse for everything Israel does now. In this case, they say human shields, wait, what does human shields have to do with you shot and murdered the medics? Hamas wasn't anywhere near them. That's why this is an issue. If you'd killed Hamas, it wouldn't be an issue. Hamas was nowhere near that. them and you murdered them and they were medics.

So okay, under this rubric, well, everything in Gaza is Hamas's fault. So we could just go in and boom, execute people and go, Mahamas made me do it. And in fact, to Anna's point, they kind of are. The American doctors coming back and saying an extraordinary number of kids under the age of five with head shots from snipers from hundreds of yards away. They're not human shields, they're taking them out with head shots. But, oh, it's all Hamas's fault. Why do you think they didn't do the very last part of the ceasefire deal where they were actually going to get all the hostages back?

You think that was an accident? No, if they got all the hostages back, they couldn't blame everything on Hamas and they'd have no reason to keep murdering and slaughtering in Gaza. The real reason they're doing it is because they want to take the land. And they're not hiding it. They have maps of greater Israel. They talk about it openly out. They're going to take all that land.

The hostages is a giant piece of propaganda for Israel. For Israel, that's why they didn't do the last part of the season. But you might have thought, oh, well, that's to be fair. I mean, of course, the Israeli State Department is going to do Israeli propaganda. But that was the US State Department. Now, look, I know what everybody's thinking. There is no difference between the US State Department and the Israeli State Department. You've never seen in your lifetime the US State Department say, Israel's wrong and we condemn them.

Even when they murder Americans, which had done a number of times now in the occupied territories recently, have you even heard the U.S. State Department even mildly complain? They'll be like a press release. Oh, it's unfortunate that American citizen was killed. But I'm sure it was Hamas's fault, even though Israel sometimes literally again, sniper shots from hundreds of yards away, headshot. Okay. So it's super embarrassing that we serve another country. And literally everyone knows it.

And in fact, even the Israel supporters now online are bragging about it going, yeah, that's right. What are you going to do about it? Cry harder. Ha ha, we run this place. It's beyond shameful. So the IDF has confirmed that they did in fact open fire on the paramedics vehicle, but claimed that it was unmarked and was advancing suspiciously. That's what they claim. Now, the Palestinian Red Crescent alleges that both of the vehicle,

were in fact marked as humanitarian personnel. And the workers within the vehicle also were clearly marked just like the journalists who have the press vests on are clearly marked as journalists, but they get killed anyway. Now, of the 15 dead paramedics, or medics, I should say, eight were from the Palestinian Red Crescent, six were from Gaza's civil defense emergency unit, and one was a staffer from UNRWA. Now, according to the UN, the teams were killed one by one on March 23rd as they went to retrieve casualties in Rafa. The IDF said an initial assessment determined that the troops killed a Hamas operative named Mohamed Amin Shobaki and eight other militants. However, none of the dead staffers from the Red Crescent and Civil Defense had that name.

and no other bodies were reported found at the site. The IDF did not immediately respond to requests for names of the other alleged militants killed or for comment on how the emergency workers came to be buried in that shallow grave. Yeah, look, again, the whole world knows they're lying. They can't point to a single Hamas member there, but they think it doesn't matter. We can do the most outrageous lie. And they're right. And we'll get this U.S. State Department and the U.S. president and every political

in America to repeat that lie for us. Yeah, they're right. And by the way, we think the right wing in America is mindless. So we'll just get them to be our robots. And they'll go out there. If Trump says it and his State Department says it, like dogs, they'll go out there and say, of course, Israel should be able to slaughter anyone

and we should write them a blank check. I think they're going to find out that that's not going to last too much longer. But we'll find out, maybe, you know, because Nan Yahoo already knows about the American left. He's now starting to say they're like radical Islamists. So we're about to be terrorists. When the right wing turns on Israel, you'll also be terrorists because Israel runs this place.

While the idea of continues its rampage in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing some problems domestically. So yesterday two of his aides were arrested in connection to get a load of this, improper payments with the country of Qatar. Now, here's what we know, according to the judge overseeing the case. The judge writes that in the period under investigation, an American lobbying company called the Third Circle, owned by lobbyist J. Footlich, formed a direct connection with Netanyahu aide Jonathan Urich in order to put a positive spin on Doha's role as a facilitator in the hostage deal negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The judge adds that Qatar, also wanted Urich to spread negative messaging about Egypt's role in the negotiations as part of

efforts to improve Qatar's image on the issue. Now, there's an Israeli businessman by the name of Gil Berger, and he's also involved in all of this. Last week, he told Israel's public broadcaster that he transferred money to the other Netanyahu aid by the name of Eli Feldstein on behalf of a U.S. lobbyist working for Qatar. Last year, Feldstein was charged with and arrested for leaking classified information to foreign news outlets. Now Netanyahu was summoned to court to testify in his aides case. However, Netanyahu is not a suspect himself.

So in a video statement released after what he said was an hour of testimony, Netanyahu accused Israeli police of seeking to topple his right-wing government. So Netanyahu is currently attempting to replace Ronan Barr, who's the head of the Israeli Shinbet, and Shinbet is overseeing the Qatar case alongside Israeli police. Netanyahu, who's also, by the way, facing numerous corruption charges, is also trying to replace Israel's attorney general. So protests or protesters have taken to the streets of Israel, accusing the prime minister of undermining Israel's democracy.

Yeah, so look, there's two different issues here. is what the hell did they do with Qatar? Because they funneled money to Hamas through Qatar. I thought Hamas was the devil and Hamas made you do everything. So why did you finance them all these years? Or was it super convenient for the right wing in Israel to say, oh look at terrible Hamas. We must destroy everything in Gaza and take all that land because of Hamas who we funneled all this money to and supported. Oh, interesting.

And now when we're about to find out what your aides did, and by the way, maybe even taking money for them. because there's bribery and money laundering, et cetera, charges in there. All of a sudden, you want to fire the attorney general and the head of Shenbet. Okay, so now we're going to find out, like we are in Turkey and to some degree here in America, does Israel have a democracy that remains? Because if you let him remove the attorney general and the head of the police, basically, you're saying it's lawless, just like Erdogan removing his top political opponent, Putin did it earlier, etc. Here in America, we're fighting Trump saying ignoring the courts.

So I don't think Israel is a democracy in the first place because they occupy five and a half million other people. It doesn't count if you don't let other people you occupy vote. But within Israel, they had a couple of good things. They had a good functioning press that would challenge the government frequently. They have good protests. People go on the streets and fight for what they believe in. There's things of praise inside there, right? It's democracy light.

Yeah, it's it's kind of democracy. But if you take away anyone investigating the executive branch, in this case, Netanyahu, you don't have a democracy left. So we'll see, is Israel in favor of becoming an authoritarian government, not just for the Palestinians, but for the Jewish citizens as well, or if they're going to fight back against that and Yahoo. Only time we'll tell. Well, when we come back from the break, we'll talk a little bit about how one Democratic senator is fighting back against Donald Trump. Is it effective? Are we in favor of it? we're going to have to find out when you come back.