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- [00:00]
Tim Miller
Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with Andrew Egger, author of our Morning Shots newsletter. We got breaking news from the Supreme Court. They have held that the Trump administration violated the due process rights of Venezuelan migrants last month in its effort to expel them to El Salvador. SCOTUS had previously blocked the effort to send more migrants to El Salvador. So this is consistent with that. Shout out to our man Mark Joseph Stern, who's given us this reporting Breaking on Blue Sky. A couple other things before we get to Edgar here. The Supreme Court did not give a ruling on whether the Trump administration can remove migrants under the Alien Enemies act at all. It's just, they just ruled that the process in which they attempted to do it was against the law. And as I mentioned, they continue to block future deportations under this act. And there is some encouragement that they're consider that they have upheld this representing the migrants as an entire class. So I do know that some of the, that the migrants are the Venezuelans that have been disappeared to El Salvador are hopeful that like, together, you know, they can get a ruling on their, on their treatment and hopefully eventually brought back. So that is the quickest summary of, of what happened. Obviously, we'll have more of a legal analysis with our legal folks, George Conway, I think his show will be on later tonight and others. But Andrew, what's your top take on this?
- [01:22]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, I think that's, that's basically the gist of it is that, you know, this is a smallish procedural point in the grand scheme of things. You know, essentially they're, they're, they're kicking something back to a circuit court to re. To reconsider under, you know, under slightly different auspices. I'll read here from SCOTUS blog just to give people a sense of like, how, how fiddly and narrow this, this point is. The unsigned majority instructs the Fifth Circuit to address the normal preliminary injunction factors as to the group's underlying habeas claims that the AEA does not authorize their removal as to President Trump's March 14th proclamation. So you get all that? That's what, that's what just happened.
- [02:00]
Tim Miller
I fell asleep.
- [02:02]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. No, so it's a small thing like technically speaking, but it signifies a few things that are, at least in my opinion, pretty large. One of which is that certainly from the point of view of these people who the Trump administration wants to deport immediately, it's very significant because the circuit court had previously ruled they did not have a jurisdiction to sue the administration to prevent that from happening as a class, as you gestured to before the, the, the Supreme Court has now thrown that out. The Supreme Court has said no, there is this jurisdiction to treat these, these people as a class and the circuit must consider them on, on those grounds as it retries this. That's pretty significant. I mean, like, like, not, not each of these individual cases have to be kind of like brought under their own auspices or whatever. The other just kind of bigger, like 20,000 foot thing here is just that it's a, it's a pretty big punch back, It's a, it's a brush back pitch from the Supreme Court against the Trump administration. In addition to the one that we already saw over the due process stuff, the Trump administration had been gearing up to at least make a lot of noises as though it was going to defy the Supreme Court on, on some of these things. But, but so far what we've really seen from them is like this game of chicken where they say, gosh, we really hope the courts don't like, you know, get in our way and do all this bad stuff. And, and you know, we hope, we hope the courts don't embrace radical leftism because if they did that, we might have to suspend habeas corpus and we might have to defy the courts and all these sorts of things. But they haven't actually done that much. They did it a couple months ago with the original deportations to El Salvador. There was some of that. But they've kind of hit the brakes and it's kind of been like they're kind of like trying to threaten the courts in the hope of getting better rulings. But when they have not gotten favorable rulings, they have not followed through on those threats. And so it's good to see the court, even in this kind of small and procedural way, apparently still standing firm despite that kind of like nice rule of law you got there. Shame if anything happened to it kind of rhetoric from the administration.
- [04:00]
Tim Miller
Yeah, a couple of thoughts on that before I get to them. We, along with our friend John Lovett over there at Crooked, Me and Sarah Longwell are hosting a fundraiser for the legal team that's fighting this fight. So you can go to crooked.com events if you want to come to that. Fundraiser in D.C. june 6th around world pride on the substance of this. Look, I think that the lawyers, the folks that I'm speaking to around this fundraiser who are trying to help their clients that have disappeared, that ruling that they can be considered as a class is extremely important because There was a deep concern that because with a couple of exceptions, a lot of them weren't here illegally, did not come here through legal means. Some of them came here using the CBP1 app, right? And so they didn't, you know, you know, the technical term of their status. But like, there were some of them that did come through the refugee process and were really did have legal status, at least one. But there was concern that, like, because of their gray legal status, that they might not be able to do that and that each of them would have to litigate their circumstances individually, which would have been, you know, very onerous. And, you know, if you're in a fucking prison camp in El Salvador with no contact with your family, you know, every additional legal hoop is dangerous to you. And so I think anything that could relatively expedite this, we've all seen who've been following the Trump legal news over the past five years that nothing happens quickly here. But anything that could even relatively expedite it, I think is good news for the plaintiffs, politically speaking. The fact that it's 7:2 is pretty notable. Like, not a single Trump appointed Supreme Court justice has sided with him on any of these cases. So Brago, Garcia, the Venezuelans, El Salvador, alien enemies, like the related cases, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett. And I know that Amy Coney Barrett has been cast out of MAGA good standing over her rulings.
- [06:08]
Andrew Egger
The Benedict Arnold of the.
- [06:10]
Tim Miller
Yeah, she's like the Liz Cheney of the court now, I guess, see if she could actually live up to such a high standard. But like Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, I mean, this is not, you know, this is not me, you know, kind of gay, TDS riddled MSNBC personality, right. That is upset, that is, you know, saying that what they did was illegal. This is the three Supreme Court justices that Trump put on the High Court. And I do think that whether or not that carries any weight with the actual MAGA voter kind of, who cares? Like, it weakens though, you know, just sort of the posture that we've seen from, from the spokespeople of the administration, right, which is just like, oh, this is all these libs who just want to be on the side of the gangsters and they just love gang bangers more than they love Americans. You know, I think it does weaken that argument when it is Gorset, Neil Gorsuch, that is the one making it absolutely without question.
- [07:07]
Andrew Egger
I mean, to whatever extent that argument would have stood up without that, I mean, it would still have been an Insanely foolish.
- [07:13]
Tim Miller
It was a pretty weak argument no matter what.
- [07:15]
Andrew Egger
But you know, you're obviously correct as these are Trump's own three hand picked people, the people that, that, you know, he was lauded by all of his people for, for having the guts to stick with Brett Kavanaugh all through his hearings and for having the guts to put forward like a hard charging conservative jurist like Amy Coney Barrett. I mean, like these people have really short memories and they, they have no shame. So it's not like any of the people who are making these cases before, like feel restrained now. You know, they're all, they're all attacking Barrett out there. But, but, but not, not only that, but, but it's also just really reassuring to see that, that, you know, Thomas and Alito are really out on a limb and they have been kind of routinely on some of these, on some of these immigration cases so far. And hopefully that will continue. I mean, we, we'll, we'll see. The one kind of frightening thing to consider is like, if Trump gets the opportunity to fill any Supreme Court vacancies this time around. And we saw, we've seen the way that he like, learned lessons from like the people he appointed to his first cabinet. He's like, well, that sucked. Those guys all crossed me when, when I really needed them to be in my corner. We're not doing that again. And that's how you got, you know, FBI Director Cash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi and, and on and on and on. I'm really, I hope we don't have the opportunity to find out what second term Donald Trump Supreme Court justices will look like given how his first term ones seem, seem willing to cross him.
- [08:41]
Tim Miller
I'll tell you who's on the short list for me. Martha and Alito. You know, get both Alitos on there. I think it's pretty safe to say that the Alito spouse that was, you know, raised the upside down American flag.
- [08:54]
Andrew Egger
Yeah.
- [08:54]
Tim Miller
That would gladly go around long with Donald Trump's anti American efforts to deny people due process and to, you know, send people that were fleeing communism to come to this country looking for freedom to foreign concentration camps without any review. So, Martha Ann, maybe an Alita family Supreme Court. Okay. Obviously we're not much more on this. George Kahn will be on. We'll be back Monday with any additional kind of legal analysis. Any other final thoughts? Anything else that jumped out at you, Andrew?
- [09:20]
Andrew Egger
No, it's some good Friday afternoon news for a change. They've been slipping all the most horrible stuff pretty routinely out here around this time, so. Yeah, it's good for it.
- [09:29]
Tim Miller
Good Friday afternoon. Happy news Dump. Enjoy your weekend, everybody. We'll be back as more news happens. Make sure to subscribe to the feed, tell your friends, and we'll see you all soon. Peace.