Brie-fing: March 19, 2025 (Midday)

How in the world did we go from impeaching a president over a hob-knob to allowing ALL OF THIS?

I find myself shocked at the disagreement over the deportees from Venezuela.

Ma Yang is pictured with her partner of 16 years, Michael Bub. On March 6, Yang, a mother of five, was deported to Laos, a country she has never visited. (Yahoo News)

3:27pm

“This is one of those moments where if any other President in history had done this, it would be a five alarm fire, it would be the only thing anyone was talking about, because it is an incredibly dangerous and frightening sign that Trump is primarily motivated by the desire to punish his enemies…”

- Tommy Vietor, Pod Save America

I’ll be honest, I was listening to this episode at 1.5x speed because it aired yesterday, but I slowed it down to take that quote because I’ve been struck many times by that thought as well; how in the world did we go from impeaching a president over a hob-knob to allowing ALL OF THIS? It’s bad enough that it’s happening, but the extent to which Republicans have put party over oath is simply asinine. Out of this world.

Sorry, got sidetracked… it’s 3:42pm now, and I’ll scroll a couple sites:

• ‘It’s him, it’s him!’ – Mother spots son deported from US in mega-prison footage

  • I’ve railed previously in the archive about the leading headlines used by the right-wing media, so I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the headline here; this is also very much meant to lead you toward a conclusion before you ever click and read. It’s important to remember that it happens on all sides… hell, some of my earlier posts on Substack do it for sure.. but then, I don’t call myself a journalist.

    • Headlines aside, and while they certainly lean left, BBC is widely regarded as factual and credible; this article reports an interview with two Venezuelan mothers who recognized their sons in the famous deportee video. One describes her son as a barber; the other says her son worked in a tortilla factory. Both vehemently deny their sons are gang members.

      • LET US BE CLEAR: To my knowledge, none of this has been proven. You could 100% argue that these mothers might be lying, you could argue that they are biased to favor their sons… so far, all of this is anecdotal. With that said…

Unless the Trump administration can prove they had reasonable evidence these men were actually violent criminals (and this is not the first example, see here, or here, or here)… we did this to innocent people.

Not all of them, surely many indeed are the terrible criminals we’ve heard about; but one failure in this regard is a crime against an innocent person. And since the Trump administration has refused over and over and over and over to prove they’re violent criminals… sorry, I’m inclined to believe the moms in Venezuela… but I wish I didn’t believe them.

If their claims are true, The United States of America no longer operates on the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.” THAT’S why the NGO’s, the unions, other states, and yes, the judges, are pushing back on these actions because it’s their JOB; this is fundamentally anti-American and unconstitutional, in law AND spirit, and it’s unnerving to see how many Americans are pissed.

I also struggle to tolerate any argument from conservatives that non citizens aren’t entitled to due process. NOTE: I concede there is truth to it; our immigration system is so backlogged as it is, I’m not sure we could genuinely afford that for all noncitizens without breaking the system entirely. But, like, can we acknowledge for a moment that THAT’S a failing in an of itself? We don’t have to be proud of it, and we certainly don’t have to mistreat people while we’re denying them due process.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

As respectfully as I can muster… I don’t give a flying f*** about due process right now, because we’re talking about basic human rights.

I WANT MY GOVERNMENT TO PROVE PEOPLE GUILTY BEFORE SHAVING THEIR HEADS AND SHIPPING THEM TO A HIGH-SECURITY PRISON IN CENTRAL AMERICA.

And the fact that somehow, THAT’S a controversial idea today… we’ll, I’ll just say it’s a perfect example of this moment in American history.