What A Day - Trump Gangs Up On The Cartels

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

President Donald Trump was dealt his first major legal blow since returning to the White House when a federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked his executive order to end birthright citizenship for the future children of some immigrants. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, called the order "blatantly unconstitutional." In all of the nonsense this week, one executive order that's received less attention is the administration's move to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Keegan Hamilton, senior editor for legal affairs and criminal justice at the Los Angeles Times, explains the real-world implications of Trump's cartel order.And in headlines: Trump signed an executive order to declassify documents related to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., John F Kennedy, and Robert F Kennedy; the Department of Justice put a hold on all new civil rights cases until further notice, and the Senate advanced Pete Hegseth's nomination to be the next defense secretary despite allegations of sexual misconduct and alcohol abuse.Show Notes:Check out Keegan's work – www.latimes.com/people/keegan-hamiltonSupport victims of the fire – votesaveamerica.com/reliefSubscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Friday, January 24th. I'm Jane Costin, and this is What a Day, the show that is extremely disappointed that John Wick did not get an Oscar nomination. Yes, John Wick came out in 2014. Yes, John Wick is an action movie that contains like 30 words total, but it was still really good so I don't see the problem. On today's show, Trump's Department of Justice puts a hold on new civil rights cases, and this year's Oscar nominations have been revealed. But we start today with a common theme that we'll encounter over and over in the coming

months. Well, probably years. President Donald Trump will issue an order that will be followed by America's judicial system weighing in on said order. And on Thursday, Trump was dealt his first major legal blow tied to the shitstorm of executive orders he signed upon his return to the White House. A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump's order to end birthright citizenship for the future children of some immigrants. Not surprising, given that the century-old right is quite literally written into the

Constitution. In blocking the order for 14 days, Seattle District Judge John Kuhnauer, a Reagan appointee, called Trump's order blatantly unconstitutional. The judge hasn't issued a written order yet, but he reportedly told the federal government's lawyer, quote, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind. Me too. Washington attorney general Nick Brown said that the judge's comments highlighted the seriousness of the case. In order to amend the United States Constitution, there is a pretty well laid out process to

do that. And I think what the order today reinforces is that no one individual, not even the President of the United States, can simply erase what it means to amend the Constitution and the process they're in. The case is one of a few being brought by nearly two dozen states and various civil rights groups. But the Trump administration surely knew it was headed for a legal fight on this one. A spokesperson for the Justice Department said the agency, quote, will vigorously defend Trump's order. In all of the executive orders nonsense, there's one you may have missed. On Monday, Trump declared that drug cartels were to be designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Now, this isn't a new idea. Before Trump considered doing this back in

2019, President Barack Obama also debated adding drug cartels to the Foreign Terrorist Organizations or FTOs list. But he backed down, as did Trump, because of opposition from the Mexican government, which sees a big risk in the terror designation to tourism, the Mexican economy, and to its own sovereignty. But Republicans don't really seem to care much about the Mexican government right now. In fact, Florida Representative Carlos Jimenez told Fox News that it was time for the U.S. to go into Mexico and take the cartels out directly, making a comparison to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Well, listen, we went to war for 15 years when Al Qaeda killed 3,000 Americans. These Mexican cartels are killing hundreds times more than that.

And they're right across the border. And so, yeah, we need to go get them and wipe them off the face of the earth. And how did those wars go? Representative Jimenez. To talk more about Trump's cartel order, I spoke with Keegan Hamilton. He's senior editor for legal affairs and criminal justice at the Los Angeles Times. Keegan, welcome to What a Day. Thanks for having me.

So let's start with the basics. What does designating a cartel a terrorist organization actually mean in legal terms? What does it permit the government to do? Right. So this has been something we've talked about for a long time. And a lot of the things that this designating a cartel as a terrorist organization would do or does things that the government can already do through other means. It basically means that you can throw all kinds of financial sanctions at these organizations. And you can add some criminal charges to the mix basically, which is supporting a terrorist organization, which, as it sounds like, carries a pretty lengthy prison sentence. And that's not really something that U.S. prosecutors have been able to charge cartel members or other organized crime

figures with. They stick to drug charges or something like RICO. — Trump said he wanted to do this back in 2019. How did Mexico respond back then and what has changed with their response now? Right, so this idea has been discussed for a long time, even before Trump, and it keeps coming back to a lot of the downsides that go along with this. One of which is it could have ripple effects for the economies of both the US and Mexico

because it creates a new type of risk for businesses that do anything that might run up against the cartels. Because if they're designated as terrorist organizations and there's some sort of financial transaction, even if they're not necessarily aware of it, after the fact that could become a liability in terms of sanctions or criminal charges for supporting terrorism. No company wants that. And so that new risk could hamper business essentially. What could the domino effects of that be?

Because I'm thinking about how cartels have used American banks for a really long time. Some of those banks have been aware of that as we saw in the early 1980s. And a lot of those banks are still not aware of that. So what could that look like moving forward? I mean a lot of this is going to come down to how it's enforced and selective enforcement of the law. In the most extreme scenario you know a bank like HSBC which years ago got in a lot of trouble for taking money from drug cartels. They could,

in theory, be then charged with supporting a terrorist organization. The people in the bank who were involved in those transactions could face sanctions or terror charges. But in practical terms, like trying to parse realistically how the government and prosecutors might use their resources for this, it comes down to like probably charging more individuals and, you know, entities associated with the cartels, like money laundering businesses with these terror related charges, which again, the government can already pretty much do through existing sanctions laws. There's a law called the Kingpin Act, which gives pretty much more authority than the terrorism sanctions do to go after these cartels. So that's one reason that they haven't done it is they can already do it. This could be a

big deal within the United States itself also. What does such a designation mean for domestic immigration enforcement? Right, so this is another potential ramification of this is that you that people who are entering the country illegally, crossing the border, often have to pay a smuggler or someone permission to get across the border. The reality in a lot of places down there. And if that person is associated with a cartel, which in many cases they are, and the person paying the money knew it, then in theory the prosecutors could say you were supporting a terrorist organization

that would obviously block someone from gaining immigration status and could result in a lengthy prison sentence. What does this mean for the military? Could they and would they attempt to strike at cartels in Mexico and other countries themselves? Which we've seen before. We saw that in Colombia in the 80s and 90s, where military organizations in the CIA were working together to attempt to curtail the power of the Cali cartel and Escobar's Medellin cartel. Now, even in Mexico in recent years, we've seen the US and Mexican authorities work hand

in hand for capture operations of high profile people like El Chapo. That cooperation has gotten a little bit worse in more recent years, but the US still has a large presence in Mexico of federal agents working on counter narcotics operations. And obviously Trump has been saying, one of the things that he intends to do is to like take the fight to the cartels.

What that means specifically, nobody know, one of the things that he intends to do is to like take the fights to the cartels. What that means specifically, nobody knows, right? Is it a drone strike? Is it sending SEAL Team Six to get some kingpin down there? We don't know yet. Designating the cartels as a terrorist organization doesn't really create, as I understand it, I'm not a law expert, but as I understand it doesn't create like legal footing to take some sort of unilateral military action in Mexico, but politically it does offer more cover of, you know, this isn't just a strike against a drug cartel, it's a strike against a terrorist organization. I think the pitch that you could probably expect to hear if or when something like that happens in the coming months or years. Let's back up for a second. We've been fighting the war on drugs since Nixon's presidency,

and it seems like drugs won. The Sinaloa cartel, which is the most powerful in Mexico, has billions of dollars at its disposal and can effectively act as a state actor outside of the state, as we've seen time and time and time again. Mexico has been trying to fight cartels for decades, and it's been at best a stalemate. Are we walking into the equivalent of the war on terror with this designation, entering into military action with no real end point? Yeah, that's one of the big risks is if you take some sort of unilateral military action, whatever it is, that it could have a spiraling effect. The risk matrix goes up significantly. What if the drone strike misses

and hits a town with civilians? How would the Mexican government react to that? Or how would even the cartels react to that? We've seen in other cases, the cartels take extreme action against Mexican military figures who were threatening them. And so that potentially create a risk against tourists in Mexico, theoretically. US diplomatic and law enforcement personnel in Mexico all would face potentially higher levels of risks if the US is launching those sort of unilateral strikes. Now, the argument for designating these cartels as terrorist organizations centers on two main issues.

Drugs, obviously entering the United States, and then the crime that results from drugs entering the United States. My question is, what can this designation do to the demand for drugs? Obviously, this is not affecting the demand for drugs. The underlying cause of why the drug business exists doesn't go away by designating cartels as terrorist organizations.

The best argument that I think can be made in favor of that is that, you know, and this is what the U S why, partly why the U S originally created even the process of designating something as a terror organization is to raise awareness around the world about it and try to convince other countries to aggressively fight back together. You know this arose in response to groups like ISIS and Boko Haram you know in Nigeria when nobody had heard of them until they kidnapped a bunch of people and then designated them as a terror organization creates a new level of awareness about it and and then it does

unlock these ability to file criminal charges and do sanctions and all that. But when it's a drug cartel, it's different, right? This is already a well-known thing and the question at the heart of it really is like, is it a terrorist organization? Are they politically motivated trying to take over governments? You can argue that, yeah, they have infiltrated governments, but it's not as clear as it is with something that is a terror group like those others. Keegan, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me.

That was my conversation with Keegan Hamilton. He's senior editor for legal affairs and criminal justice at the Los Angeles Times. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What A Day is brought to you by Zebiotics Pre-Alcohol.

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Zbiotics is backed with a 100% money-back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash wad and use the code wad at checkout for 15% off. Here's what else we're following today. We have an executive order ordering the declassification of files relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That's a big one, huh?

A lot of people are waiting for this for a long, for years, for decades. President Trump signed more executive orders on Thursday, wanted to classify documents related to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. And everything will be revealed. Was that him signing? It sounded like him using a goddamn coloring book.

Squeaky, squeaky, squeaky, squeaky. Anyway, another was aimed at making the US the world's capital in crypto, whatever that means. Trump also signed some pardons for several anti-abortion protesters who violated federal law in 2020 when they physically blocked patients from entering abortion clinics.

And he pardoned the ex-DC police officers who were found guilty in the death of Karen Hilton Brown, a 20-year-old black man. Hilton Brown died in a car chase with two officers in 2020. They were convicted of conspiring to cover up the incident. One of the officers was found guilty of second-degree murder. Trump said he approved the pardons earlier this week. They were arrested, put in jail for five years because they went after an illegal, and I guess something happened where something went wrong and they arrested the two officers and put them in jail for going after a criminal, a rough criminal by the way.

Hilton Brown had no criminal record in DC and was an American citizen. The Department of Justice has put a hold on all new civil rights cases until further notice. According to internal staff memos circulated on Wednesday, the agency's Civil Rights Division cannot take up any new litigation, which means lawyers in the department can't file any complaints, motions, or even statements of interest. Staffers were also ordered to halt litigation on any consent decrees negotiated under former President Biden. Those are the agreements Biden's DOJ made with local law enforcement to hold them accountable for police brutality and discrimination. The internal memos say that the Trump administration may wish to reconsider them, as in it could potentially undo crucial police

reform initiatives spurred by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The Senate just barely advanced the nomination of Pete Hegseth for defense secretary on Thursday with a 51-49 vote. Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine joined every Democrat and independent senator in opposing Hegseth's nomination. All other Republicans voted in Hegseth's favor. Murkowski said on Twitter that Hegseth's nomination. All other Republicans voted in Hegseth's favor. Murkowski said on Twitter that Hegseth's past behaviors, quote, starkly contrast the values

and discipline expected of service members. The bid to confirm Hegseth comes amid allegations he sexually assaulted a woman and that he has problems with heavy drinking. Hegseth denies the claims, but he did tell the Senate Armed Services Committee that he paid the woman $50,000 as part of a settlement agreement. He also previously stated he doesn't think women should serve in combat roles.

That's a view Hegseth has since walked back. On the floor, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said erratic is the one word that describes Trump's pick best. Is this man with a known history of excessive drinking the guy you want at the other end of the phone at 2 a.m. in a crisis, in control of the nuclear codes, who are we kidding? Who are we kidding? Schumer also said this. Of all the people we could have as Secretary of Defense, is Pete Hegseth

really the best one we've got. Come on, you know he is and you know he's not even close. But at least he can do pushups, right? A final vote on Hegseth's confirmation is expected today. Good morning and thank you for joining us for the 97th Oscars Nominations Announcement. Oscar nominations dropped on Thursday. The musical Amelia Perez was the year's most nominated film

with 13 nods, including one for best picture. Anura, Wicked, Conclave, Nickel Boys, and The Substance were some of the other films nominated in the coveted category. And history was made. Sing Sing star Coleman Domingo became the first black actor to receive a best actor nomination two years in a row since Denzel Washington.

And Carla Sofia Gascon became the first out trans person to be nominated for an Oscar for her role in Amelia Perez. Two movies that made the list have been the subject of widespread controversy. Amelia Perez has been heavily criticized for its portrayal of Mexico. The movie's French director has apologized and admitted that he didn't do much research before making the film.

The team behind The Brutalist is also facing backlash for using AI in the movie's post-production process. The film received 10 nominations, including Best Picture. And that's the news. One more thing. It's been a long week. And for a lot of us, it was a long week that reminded us of the long four years that was Trump's first term in office. Heck, the first six months of his first term in office. Remember Anthony Scaramucci, the Bowling Green Massacre, Lordy I Hope There Are Tapes? Yeah. All of that was just the first six months Trump was in office. That's what we have to

look forward to. I'm tired just thinking about it. But you know what I've been noticing? That so much of the joy that Trump's biggest supporters seem to get out of his presidency isn't from anything Trump actually does, but from how we react. It turns out that triggering the libs isn't just a national pastime for Republicans, it's pretty much the only thing they seem to enjoy. So don't give it to them. In fact, don't

give them anything. If Trump wants to go on television every single day, and he does, and rant about how shower heads aren't strong enough anymore, let him. The Trump outrage cycle is built to exhaust you. It is intended to make you stupid and scared, the worst possible combination. And it is made to disincentivize you from acting, whether to counter his worst policies or build new communities or just like live your life. As Steve Bannon once said, the goal is to flood the zone with shit and that mission has been well accomplished. Our job, your job, is to not get swept away by nonsense and renaming gulfs in constant maybe we will maybe we won't

pronouncements about everything from declassifying state secrets to invading Panama. Stay focused on what matters most to you, support your friends and allies, and keep your peace. And that means online too. Your attention is a precious resource. Use it well. If you do, you'll make it through the next few days, weeks, and months. And as a side benefit, it'll make some of the worst people around really annoyed. Before we go, in light of President Trump's recent executive orders, Dan Pfeiffer dives into the state of the polls, unpacks the chaos that got us here, and tackles your Discord questions on the latest episode of Polar Coaster. To access this exclusive subscriber series and more, subscribe now at crooked.com slash friends.

That's all for today. If you liked the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, explain to me why Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross didn't get an Oscar nomination for Challengers, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just about how seriously, how did Challengers not get nominated for best score? It was an actual heater. Like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter.

Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Costin and justice for Trent Reznor. Water Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded in a mix by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Four. Our producer is Michelle Alloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison,

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