"There Is No Rule of Law"
As I attempt to metamorphose from a researcher into someone who disseminates research, I am encountering a thousand large and unexpected challenges. One of these is the difficult question of When to Share. How deep does the research need to be, to be informative? How recent, to be timely? And while I do and probably will continue to wrestle with the tradeoffs, I found the decision around this particular piece to be quite simple. In brief, David Corn, writing in Mother Jones, went to print with the following title:
Trump to the USA: There is no rule of law
David Corn
In case you are unfamiliar, David Corn is the journalist who broke the story on 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's remarks that 47 percent of Americans don’t “take personal responsibility and care for their lives” – perhaps the single largest story of that election. Mother Jones (named after the 19th century labor organizer) is unambiguously on the left, but I've never thought its writing was – shall we say breathless. In other words, there is a sobriety and system to its writing, its research, and its headlines, that always made me feel I was reading the work of professionals. (Should this seem like faint praise, ask me how I feel about other outlets.)
Even Corn's own extremely informative book on the Republican party, titled American Psychosis (for god's sake), didn't end with a call for proletariat revolution. (Which, for the record, I am against – but more on that later.) Instead it ended with the very sad, abrupt, and (to me) profoundly disappointing conclusion that, well, Americans voted for them so ... The End. No plan to field a new generation of electoral contenders, to rebuild the American education system and fight back against a generation that fundamentally misunderstands the function of government – just a man describing the world As It Is.
https://citylights.com/muckraking/amer-psychosis-historical-investigatio-2/
So when Corn, earlier today, released a piece titled "There Is No Rule of Law" – I took note.
The context, as you probably know, is that the United States has extradited a Maryland man to El Salvador, who 1) has no credible legal charges against him, 2) was sent in direct violation of a court order 3) is married to an American citizen and 4) was determined by an immigration judge to be in sufficient danger in El Salvador that whatever happened to him, he should not be sent back there. He is now waiting, in that country, despite those judges, and in prison. And today, Donald Trump made it clear in a conversation with the self-described "dictator" of El Salvador that there is no plan, desire, or intention, to bring him home again. And, that this is now despite a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling that he must be brought back.
Should you have trouble knowing what to do with this fact – for which I would not blame you in the least – it is important to know about Chuck Schumer's recent claim that our democracy was only really in danger when the president ignored a Supreme Court ruling. Which, as of today, is now unambiguously the case. Even his red line has been crossed.
But where, of course, does that leave us.
Without the opportunity to conduct the full depth of research I am used to enjoying – without more than a few hours to reflect upon the facts, such as I know them – and with just a single flash out of the corner of my eye of the dangers of even saying such a thing – I am compelled to believe that urgency is the stronger of the two forces here.
The entire administration must be removed from power.
Not "resisted." Not "stopped." Removed.
I believe it must be done legally, peacefully, and with painstaking care. Using logic supported by long, detailed, and evidence-supported arguments. But removed. Because the weight of that evidence, and those arguments, is now enough to sink the entire country.
When major figures at major outlets can write –
He is signaling that he can use government force in the most egregious manner and no one—no court—can stop him. ... now all of us are threatened.
– then describing the world As It Is is no longer enough. We must describe the world that we are trying to create. And in that world, there is no space for an administration with an undisguised contempt for the United States itself.
What Now
For now, call your legislators, and tell them to bring Kilmar home.
If they ask why, you can tell them it is because we cannot accept the legal logic of the Holocaust.
2/4. The entire practice of the Holocaust of the Jews involved zones of statelessness. It is easier to move people away from law than it is to remove law from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones.
— Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) 2025-04-15T01:13:31.330Z
And if you are waiting for more arguments, or more evidence, then I can only say I don't intend to make you wait much longer. But today, saying it fast felt more important than saying it perfectly.
