DOJ Memo Authorizes Warrantless Searches and Seizures

If one reads the American colonists' many enumerated offenses of George III in the Declaration of Independence among them one finds the lack of due process, denial of trial by jury, warrantless searches, and "transporting beyond the seas  . . .for pretended offenses."  Fast forward 249 years and we see the Felon's regime engaging in the same type of lawlessness that helped fuel the American Revolution: authorizing warrantless searches, people being seized by masked agents, and rendition to de facto overseas concentration camps without due process. A piece in USA Today looks at a Department of Justice authored by Pam Bondi (who I could easily see working at a Nazi death camp) that authorizes warrantless search and seizures.  Here are article highlights:

Trump administration officials directed law enforcement nationwide to pursue suspected gang members into their homes, in some cases without any sort of warrant, according to a copy of the directive exclusively obtained by USA TODAY.

The directive, issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi March 14, provides the first public view of the specific implementation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invoked to deport migrants accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

A day after that announcement, March 15, immigration officials apprehended and flew more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which has been criticized for its harsh and dangerous conditions.

For weeks, news organizations, members of Congress, the courts and advocates have pressed the administration to provide operational details and evidence to support its claims these men are Tren de Aragua members, a newly designated foreign terrorist organization.

Legal experts examined the document that reveals the following: 

• It provides directives to front-line officers apprehending suspected Tren de Aragua members, suggesting officers obtain a warrant of apprehension and removal “as much as practicable.” Those administrative warrants are signed by immigration officers, not judges like criminal warrants.
• Due to a “dynamic nature of law enforcement procedures” officers are free to "apprehend aliens" based on their “reasonable belief” they meet the definitions, the memo states.
• It purports to grant authority for police to enter a suspected "Alien Enemy’s residence" if “circumstances render it impracticable” to first obtain a warrant.

The memo told law enforcement that immigrants deemed "Alien Enemies" are “not entitled to a hearing, appeal or judicial review.”

“That’s really concerning,” said Monique Sherman, an attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network who successfully obtained one of the temporary restraining orders on April 22 to protect 100 people detained in Colorado from removal under the 1798 law.

“The home under all constitutional law is the most sacred place where you have a right to privacy,” Sherman said. “By this standard, spurious allegations of gang affiliation means the government can knock down your door.”

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU's lead counsel in the challenges to uses of the Alien Enemies Act, said the DOJ directives run counter to the constitution's protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

“The administration's unprecedented use of a wartime authority during peacetime was bad enough," Gelernt said. "Now we find out the Justice Department was authorizing officers to ignore the most bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment by authorizing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant."

The documents reveal the Trump administration has authorized every single law enforcement officer in the country, including traffic cops, to engage in immigrant roundups explicitly outside due process,” Shapiro said.

No doubt some will shrug and say this doesn't impact me, so I don't care.  A column in the Chicago Tribune lays out why all of us need to be concerned about this lawlessness, particularly with the Felon stating he'd like to send "home grown criminals" - he, of course would define who is a "criminal" to overseas concentration camps.  Here are excerpts:

Masked guards march the captives in, holding their heads pressed down to waist level. They are forced to kneel while guards shout at them and shave their heads before they are stripped down to shorts. Their overcrowded and squalid cells, meant to hold about 80 men, are often crammed with nearly twice as many. Only two toilets per cell, no privacy and no windows. Constant surveillance. No furniture but tiered metal bunks to share. No sheets, pillows or mattresses. Each cell has only one jug of water for drinking and one bucket for washing.

This place is not a prison, because prisons hold people for punishment after being lawfully convicted of a crime. Rather, it is a concentration camp: a detention facility where people are confined without legal justification or limits. The inmates here are not serving sentences. Tens of thousands have been locked away for good. Some had criminal convictions, but many arrived here without a chance at a legal defense at all.

If this sounds like hell, that’s because it’s supposed to. The whole purpose of El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) is to break men’s spirits and instill fear outside its walls. And this is the hell to which President Donald Trump’s administration has condemned hundreds of U.S. residents.

Administration officials have repeatedly claimed that the people they’ve sent here are criminals and terrorists but provided no evidence of this. About 90% had no criminal record at all. Only a few had any record or charge of a violent crime. They were rounded up on whims, based on suspect tattoos or clothing, and given no opportunity to defend against these allegations before being condemned to this hell for life.

If you think you’re safe from this overreach because you haven’t broken the law, neither had most of these men. If you think you’re safe because you’re not an “illegal immigrant,” many of these men weren’t, either. If you think you’re safe because you’re a “homegrown” American citizen, that is cold comfort today, because Trump urged President Nayib Bukele to build more prisons since “ homegrowns are next.” Beware: It’s a common play for authoritarians to hone tools of oppression against unpopular populations before they roll them out against anyone they wish.

This is Trump’s war on due process, which is a fancy legal term for our constitutional right to not be arbitrarily deprived of life, liberty and property. This means we — not just citizens, but everyone in America — are entitled to an opportunity to defend ourselves in a court of law before the government locks us away. If the government can bestow any punishment or fate upon anyone it chooses by simply calling that person a terrorist, it could happen to any of us. If it can disappear that person to captivity in a foreign country and then claim no power or authority to bring that person back, none of us is safe. Only the guarantee of due process gives us an opportunity to defend ourselves. If there is no remedy for Abrego Garcia, with no case made against him to justify that fate, any of us could be next.

Our nation has seen this kind of abuse of power before, and it was such a grave threat that it made the list of grievances in our Declaration of Independence against King George III in 1776: for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretend offenses.

If we hope to remain free, we should treat these offenses against our freedom with no less urgency than our Founding Fathers did.

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The Trump Regime's War on Children

For decades the Republican Party has claimed to the party of "family values".  In addition, at times the false claim is made that the GOP seeks to "protect children."  In reality, in the GOP and certainly under the Felon's regime and past Republican presidents, so-called family values translates to seeking to impose far right Christian and Christofascist dogma on all Americans.  As for protecting children, other than manufacturing a supposed threat to children by drag queens and by extension gays in general - the real threat to children is from pastors and youth ministers as by almost daily stories of sexual abuse - the reality is that the GOP agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy and seeking to pay for even further massive tax cuts by slashing spending on programs that actually assist families and children documents that the true welfare of children is nowhere on the GOP radar. (a piece at Politico highlights how disability and aging services are also being shuttered under DOGE).  The hypocrisy is underscored by the Felon's statement that increasing taxes on the super wealthy - those who have more money than they can ever spend - would be "disruptive" while leaving children without health care and even basic nutrition is just fine.  A piece at ProPublica looks at the Felon's regime's war on children:

The clear-cutting across the federal government under President Donald Trump has been dramatic, with mass terminations, the suspension of decades-old programs and the neutering of entire agencies. But this spectacle has obscured a series of moves by the administration that could profoundly harm some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S.: children.

Consider: The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely.

The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.

“Everyone’s been talking about what the Trump administration and DOGE have been doing, but no one seems to be talking about how, in a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” said Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children. He added that “the one cabinet agency that they’re fully decimating is the kid one,” referring to Trump’s goal of shuttering the Department of Education. Already, some 2,000 staffers there have lost or left their jobs.

The impact of these cuts will be felt far beyond Washington, rippling out to thousands of state and local agencies serving children nationwide.

The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has canceled $660 million in promised grants to farm-to-school programs, which had been providing fresh meat and produce to school cafeterias while supporting small farmers.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency’s secretary, has dismissed all of the staff that had distributed $1.7 billion annually in Social Services Block Grant money, which many states have long depended on to be able to run their child welfare, foster care and adoption systems. . . . Head Start will be especially affected in the wake of Kennedy’s mass firings of Office of Head Start regional staff and news that the president’s draft budget proposes eliminating funding for the program altogether. That would leave one million working-class parents who rely on Head Start not only for pre-K education but also for child care, particularly in rural areas, with nowhere to send their kids during the day. . . . . they’re being directed to a new “Defend the Spend” DOGE website asking them to “justify” each item, even though the spending has already been appropriated by Congress and audited by nonpartisan civil servants.

Next on the chopping block, it appears, is Medicaid, which serves children in greater numbers than any other age group. If Republicans in Congress go through with the cuts they’ve been discussing, and Trump signs those cuts into law, kids from lower- and middle-class families across the U.S. will lose access to health care at their schools, in foster care, for their disabilities or for cancer treatment.

Programs that serve kids have historically fared the worst when those in power are looking for ways to cut the budget. That’s in part because kids can’t vote, and they typically don’t belong to political organizations. International aid groups, another constituency devastated by Trump’s policy agenda, also can’t say that they represent many U.S. voters.

In the wake of the regional office cuts, local child services program directors have no idea who in the federal government to call when they have urgent concerns, many told ProPublica. “No one knows anything,” said one state child support director, asking not to be named in order to speak candidly about the administration’s actions. “We have no idea who will be auditing us.”

“I never anticipated that programs and services and opportunities for young people wouldn’t be funded at all by the federal government,” Ryan said, adding that local children’s organizations likely can’t go to states, whose budgets are already underwater, to make up the funding gap. “When you look at this alongside what they’re doing at HHS and the Department of Education and to Medicaid, it’s undercutting every single effort that we have to serve kids.”

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Trump's Tariffs Mirror Those of Hitler

Some say that comparisons of the Felon and Adolph Hitler are overblown or even hysterical, yet watching the Felon's efforts to undermine the rule of law, endless lies, attacks of the media outlets and individuals that publish and speak the truth, and willingness to abrogate civil rights, bear uncanny similarities with the actions and policies of Hitler in the early 1930's.  Add in Hitler's claims to justify seizing parts of neighboring nations (the need for resources and space) which sound like the Felon's demands that Denmark hand over Greenland to America and the parallels become even more stark.  Lastly the Felon's tariffs and trade war track those of Hitler - he argued Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. . . . “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans - who like the Felon had inherited a recovering economy.  Like what Americans now face, Hitler's tariffs raised prices and sparked a trade war.   The last parallel is the Felon's appointment of cabinet secretaries and others who are first loyal to him, with actual competence and expertise falling by the way side.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at Hitler's tariffs which are so much like what Americans now face:

From almost the moment Adolf Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany, tariffs were at the top of his government’s economic agenda. . . . . Hitler had what one might call a diffident, occasionally felonious disregard for financial matters. He owed 400,000 reichsmarks in back taxes. His understanding of economics was primitive. “You have inflation only if you want it,” Hitler once said. “Inflation is a lack of discipline. I will see to it that prices remain stable. I have my S.A. for that.” (The S.A., or Brownshirts, were the original paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party.) Hitler held Jews responsible for most of Germany’s financial woes.

Hitler relied on Gottfried Feder, the National Socialist Party’s long-serving chief economist, to develop the specifics of an economic program. Feder had helped concoct the strange brew of socialism and fanatical nationalism in the original 25-point program of this putative “workers’ party.” In May 1932, Feder outlined what would become the first Nazi economic plan. High on Feder’s agenda for a Hitler economy were tariffs.

“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition.” . . . . Feder’s tariffs fit into Hitler’s larger vision for “liberating” the German people from the shackles of a globalized world order.

The crash of 1929 had plunged Germany, along with much of the rest of the world, into an abyss. Markets collapsed. Factories were idled. Unemployment soared. In the early 1930s, one out of three German workers was unemployed. But Hitler had inherited a recovering economy: In December 1932, the German Institute for Economic Research reported that the crisis had been “significantly overcome”; by the time Hitler was appointed chancellor, in January 1933, the economy was on the mend.

Thus Hitler’s main economic task as chancellor was not to mess things up. The German stock market had rallied on news of his coming to power. . . . . But rumors of potential tariffs and the abrogation of international agreements, along with Hitler’s challenges to the constitutional order, sent alarm bells clanging. The conservative Centre Party warned Hitler against “unconstitutional, economically harmful, socially reactionary and currency endangering experiments.”

If one were to “strangle” trade through tariffs, it would endanger German industrial production—which, in turn, would inflict severe self-harm on the German economy, and lead to increased unemployment. “Exporting German goods provides three million workers with jobs,” Hamm wrote. The last thing Germany’s recovering but still-fragile economy needed was a trade war. Hamm urged Hitler to exercise “greatest caution” in his tariff policies.

But Hitler made no effort to reassure the markets, insisting that the tariffs were necessary and that he needed time to fix the ruined country his predecessors had left him. . . . . Hitler provided scant details as to how this was to be accomplished. . . . . But although the average voter may not have cared about the details of the Hitler economy, the markets did. The initial surge in stocks that greeted Hitler’s appointment halted then dipped and flattened amid the political and economic uncertainty of Hitler’s chaotic first weeks as chancellor.

Hans Joachim von Rohr, who worked at the Reich’s nutrition ministry, went on national radio to explain the logic of Hitler’s tariff strategy. “The products that Germany lacks must be made more expensive; then farmers will produce them in sufficient quantities,” Rohr explained. “And if foreign competition is kept at bay by tariffs and the like, city residents will prefer domestic production.” . . . . Hitler’s proposed “national economy,” with its self-defeating tariff policies, would plunge the country into a “severe crisis” that could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that was even before any damage wreaked by retaliatory tariffs.

The Hitler tariffs, announced on Friday, February 10, 1933, stunned observers. “The dimension of the tariff increases have in fact exceeded all expectations,” the Vossische Zeitung wrote disapprovingly, proclaiming the moment a “fork in the road” for the German economy. It appeared that Europe’s largest and most industrialized nation would suddenly be returning “to the furrow and the plow.” The New York Times saw this for what it was: “a trade war” against its European neighbors.

The primary targets of the Hitler tariffs—the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands—were outraged by the sudden suspension of favored-nation trading status on virtually all agricultural products, as well as on textiles, with tariffs in some cases rising 500 percent. With its livestock essentially banished from the German market, Denmark, for example, was facing substantial losses. Farmers panicked. The Danes and Swedes threatened “retaliatory measures,” as did the Dutch, who warned the Germans that the countermeasures would be felt as “palpable blows” to German industrial exports. That proved to be true.

In his address, Hitler declared that the entire country needed to be rebuilt after years of mismanagement by previous governments. He spoke of the “sheer madness” of international obligations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, of the need to restore “life, liberty, and happiness” to the German people, of the need for “cleansing” the bureaucracy, public life, culture, the population, “every aspect of our life.” His tariff regime, he implied, would help restore the pride and honor of German self-reliance.

Hitler did not refer specifically to the trade war he had launched that afternoon, just as he did not mention the rearmament plans he had discussed with his cabinet the previous day. “Billions of reichsmarks are needed for rearmament,” Hitler had told his ministers in that meeting. “The future of Germany depends solely and exclusively on the rebuilding of the army.” Hitler’s trade war with his neighbors would prove to be but a prelude to his shooting war with the world.

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The Face Plant President

When the Felon was sworn into office on January 20, 2025, America's economy was overall strong, the stock market was near record highs, and inflation was cooling.  A mere 90 days later, prices are up, consumer confidence has plummeted, the stock market has fallen roughly 6000 points, safety regulations and consumer protection regulations slash, decades long allies have been alienated, and foreign tourism is dropping like a stone.  All of this has happened not due to external events or natural disasters but instead due to the actions of one individual, the Felon, and his minions who are ransacking and shuttering federal agencies, have ignited a worldwide trade war (a future post will compare the Felon's tariffs with those of Hitler), and caused America and the dollar to lose their luster as a safe place to invest.  Despite this, much of the MAGA base remains loyal, thrilled at "owning the libs" while congressional Republicans cower in fear that they may be the Felon's next target in a social media post.  America's adversaries are smiling widely and former friends and allies shake their heads in both disbelief and dismay.  A column in the New York Times looks at all the self-inflicted damage done by one malignant narcissist.  Here are excerpts: 

Harold Macmillan, the midcentury British prime minister, supposedly said that what statesmen feared most were “events, dear boy, events.” Misfortunes happen: a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a foreign crisis. Political leaders are judged by how adroitly or incompetently they handle the unexpected.

Luckily, the Trump administration hasn’t yet had such misfortunes. Its only misfortune — and therefore everyone else’s — is itself.

So much has been obvious again this week, thanks to two stories that are, at their core, the same. First, there was the revelation that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had shared sensitive details of the military strike on Yemen with his wife, brother and personal lawyer on yet another Signal group chat. That was followed by an essay in Politico from a former close aide to Hegseth, John Ullyot, describing a “full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon” — a meltdown that included the firing of three of the department’s top officials.

Then there was a market rout and a dollar plunge, thanks to President Trump’s unseemly and unhinged attacks on Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman. Powell’s sin was to have the audacity to describe the probable effects of the president’s tariffs: namely, that they’ll cause prices to go up and growth to slow down. This sent Trump into a rage, complete with White House threats to examine whether Powell can be fired — a potential assault on central bank independence worthy of the worst economic days of Argentina.

Both cases are about adult supervision: the absence of it in the first instance, the presence of it in the other and the president’s strong preference for the former. Why? Probably for the same reason that tin-pot dictators elevate incompetent toadies to top security posts: They are more dependent and less of a threat. The last thing Trump wants at the Pentagon is another Jim Mattis, secure enough in himself to be willing to resign on principle.

The same goes for other departments of government.

An adult secretary of state would never have allowed his department to be gutted in its first weeks by an unofficial official (Elon Musk) from a so-called department (DOGE) by unaccountable teenage employees with nicknames like Big Balls. But Marco Rubio has a moniker with a very different meaning, Little Marco. He’ll do as he’s told right until he’s fired

Whether from cowardice or hubris, they prefer to risk global economic chaos than the displeasure of their boss.

As for Trump, his goal is to extract maximum loyalty and inspire maximum loathing, each feeding the other. It’s a method of control: The more reckless he gets, the more he forces his minions to abase themselves to defend him.

When the president completed his extraordinary political comeback in November, he was at the summit of his political power. He has eroded it every day since. With Matt Gaetz as his first choice for attorney general. With the needlessly bruising confirmation fights over the absurd choices of Hegseth, Robert Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard. With making an enemy of Canada. With JD Vance’s grotesque outreach to the German far right. With the Oval Office abuse of Volodymyr Zelensky. With the helter-skelter tariff regime. With threats of conquest that antagonize historic allies for no plausible benefit. With dubious arrests and lawless deportations that can make heroes of unsympathetic individuals. And now with threats to the basic economic order that sent gold soaring to a record high of $3,500 an ounce and the Dow on track to its worst April since the late Hoover administration.

Democrats wondering how to oppose Trump most effectively might consider the following. Drop the dictator comparisons. Rehearse the above facts. Promise normality and offer plans to regain it. And remember that no matter how malignant he may be, there’s no better opponent than a face-plant president stumbling over his untied laces.