Law, Power, and Justice

Immigration and Government as a Weapon

Sunday 9 February 2025

MSNBC

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION USING EXECUTIVE ORDERS AS WEAPONS

Lawyers working with Norm Eisen (as well as Andrew Weissmann and Mark Zaid) have had their security clearances revoked by Trump overnight. 

(Note: The security clearances were also removed from Antony Blinken, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Jake Sullivan, and Lisa Monaco.)

The Eisen lawyers had won a substantial victory in court last week when DOGE and Musk were prevented from having access to Treasury information.

Simone (on Weekend) notes that in these cases the judges have been on the phone with federal workers at the agencies asking whether the DOGE people had been walked out of the building.  There is that level of supervision.  (Note: It is good that judges are doing this since one of the major problems now is who will enforce judicial orders.  Andrew Weissmann texted yesterday that he made the Trump people aware that they were obligated by law to show, in one case, the judge proof that they had complied.  Check this.)

Eisen also won in a suit demanding that DOJ not release the names of 6,000 FBI agents who worked on cases related to Jan. 6. 

Eisen says that, according to the Post, Trump was stewing over the court decisions and came up with the security clearances as a way to get back. 

Had the emergency order not gone into effect.  Trump, Musk nor DOGE can have access to payment information, tax returns, personal information.  One of the ways they could use this information is to target their business adversaries.    

Michael Steele (Weekend) asks if we are facing lawsuit after lawsuit to try to contain the Trump Administration.  Eisen says that his lawsuits are part of an organized strategy to counter authoritarianism.

Eisen notes that Poland, Brazil, and the Czech Republic ousted autocratic machines.  We are going to have to do that.   We cannot go the way of Turkey or Hungary. 

We are seeing peaceful protests for the first time.

IMMIGRATION: FAMILY DETENTION

Reporting from NBC is that the administration is going ahead with plans to construct facilities to once again house families before deportation.  They have issued notifications to private prison companies that they are accepting bids to build facilities specifically for holding families.

Tom Homan, the “Border Czar,” remarked in an interview with 60 Minutes: You can keep from separating families by deporting them all together.

He’s talking about the American citizens going along with those who are not here legally. (Note: One of the ways the Trump Administration plans to get people out of the country without conflict is self-deportation.  Legal citizens decide to leave with their illegal families.)

LIFE

Our youngest cat, Pooper, came and got me in the study and complained until I came back to the bedroom to work with him. He likes me in the bedroom.