‘This is what fascism looks like': Elie Mystal on Trump deporting foreign nationals
Elie Mystal and Mark Zaid join The Weekend to discuss the legal implications of the Trump administration targeting and literally snatching international students off the street.
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2 days ago
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How Trump is using the L.A. protests to send a message to his fans
President Donald Trump does not like protests, but he definitely likes to use them for his own ends. Former Trump aides have been vocal for years that the president thinks protests make the country look weak and, by extension, make him look weak. At the same time, he views cracking down on protests as a way of projecting strength. This familiar dynamic has played out in California over the last few days, as the White House made a show of sending the National Guard and then Marines without a request from the California governor to quell protests over his immigration policies. Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller went even further, calling the protests a "violent insurrection" on social media. It's obvious that Trump has been champing at the bit for a fight like this since returning to the White House. He and his administration believe the public is on their side in this dispute. To them, it's symbolic of everything the president and senior aides think that their supporters hate: undocumented immigrants, urban unrest and Democratic elected officials. On the other side, they see a president using the military to send a message of strength. In his 2022 book, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that Trump was so enraged about protests in the summer of 2020 that he asked in a meeting: 'Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?' Just this past weekend, we had Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in Trump's first term, on "The Weekend" warning that Trump's sending the National Guard was not only 'the single most significant act' of the administration but also likely a pretext to going further and invoking the Insurrection Act, the 1807 law that allows the president to get around the usual restrictions to having the military enforce criminal law within the country. 'We had stopped Donald Trump in 2019 from invoking the Insurrection Act because we and our lawyers didn't think the way he wanted to do it was legal,' Taylor said. 'In fact, I rushed to the White House as he was planning to make the State of the Union address and he wanted to insert a line about how he was invoking the act and deploying the U.S. military on U.S. soil. We felt like that was a dangerous slippery slope.' Taylor believes the White House knew that the reaction in Los Angeles to last week's extensive immigration raids would be 'protests and then they could use the protest as a response to use the Insurrection Act.' That has not happened yet, but Trump has sent signals that he would like to do it. In the president's memo over the weekend, he invoked a little known federal law in Title 10 of the U.S. Code that gives the commander in chief the power to deploy National Guard units if the U.S. is invaded or there is 'rebellion or danger of rebellion,' or if the president is 'unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.' To understand this moment, you also have to understand Trump's love of theatrics. When he hires a Cabinet official, it's important they are loyal but also, just as important, that they look like they are out of 'central casting.' He loves the joint sessions of Congress speeches because of the pomp and circumstance. He fell in love with the idea of a military parade after watching Bastille Day in France. For him, any opportunity to look tough is one he rarely passes up. And being able to give red meat to his base, which is the lifeblood of his presidency? Those are the fights he seeks out. Subscribe to the Project 47 newsletter to receive weekly updates on and expert insight into the key issues and figures defining Trump's second term. This article was originally published on
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2 days ago
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'Milk' screenwriter Dustin Lance Black: Respond to ship renaming order by building coalitions
Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk, says the best way for LGBTQ+ people to react to the Trump administration's order to take Milk's name off a Navy ship is to build coalitions with other marginalized people. Keep up with the latest in + news and politics. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk and directed the Navy to consider renaming the other ships planned for its class, all named for civil rights icons, such as Thurgood Marshall, a crusading lawyer and the first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice; another justice, women's and LGBTQ+ rights champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg; labor leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta; and abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. 'This is one of the oldest plays in the playbook … if they divide, they'll conquer,' Black said Sunday on MSNBC's The Weekend. 'If gay people want to react to this the way Harvey Milk would say to react to this is to understand Harvey's gonna be an icon no matter what Pete does. Now it's time to do what Harvey said to do. He said this is not about ego. … This is about the 'us-es' coming together.' 'He didn't mean just LGBTQ folks,' Black said of Milk, the first out gay person elected to public office in California — a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, serving just a year before his assassination in 1978. 'He was talking about the people who he worked for, who he fought so hard for, like seniors in San Francisco who couldn't afford to live in the home that they had grown up in. About union workers who supported Harvey because Harvey had boycotted Coors beer so union workers could have a living wage to raise their kids. For the folks in Chinatown, he said, let's get those ballots in Mandarin so your vote counts.' - YouTube 'Those of us who feel and know we are treated differently under the law for who we are, we have to come together, we cannot become myopic, we cannot simply focus on our own needs, we have to lock arms and build those coalitions, and sadly right now we find ourselves in a similar position to where we were back in Harvey's time, when those coalitions were fractured,' he added. It's our work not to fall for this nonsense. It's our work right now to lock arms. So if you're a gay person who's pissed off by this, in Pride Month here in Los Angeles, get out on the streets and stand up for our brothers and sisters who are suffering in the Latino community up here right now. Do that. Show up for our brothers and sisters, not just thinking about ourselves. That's what Harvey would do.' Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, who blocked Democratic colleague Adam Schiff's resolution to urge the reversing of the renaming order, claimed the way the ships were named broke with Navy tradition. Budd was 'ill informed, I think at best,' or was 'peddling misinformation,' Black said. Related: Before becoming a politician and activist in San Francisco, Milk served in the Navy and was forced to resign for being gay. He also worked on Wall Street and as a Broadway production associate. Milk excelled in the Navy, as he did at everything he set his mind to, Black noted. He was also among 'countless LGBTQ people who served proudly,' the writer said. Black's mother and stepfather were both in the military, so he grew up around people who had to serve in the closet, he pointed out. 'What it's time for is to recognize that,' he concluded. Last week, Black and Sean Penn, who played Milk in the movie and won the Best Actor Oscar, had blasted Hegseth's order in interviews with The Hollywood Reporter. 'This is yet another move to distract and to fuel the culture wars that create division,' Black told the publication. 'It's meant to get us to react in ways that are self-centered so that we are further distanced from our brothers and sisters in equally important civil rights fights in this country. It's divide and conquer.' Penn emailed the Reporter, saying, 'I've never before seen a Secretary of Defense so aggressively demote himself to the rank of Chief PETTY Officer.' Black added, 'Pete Hegseth does not seem like a smart man, a wise man, a knowledgeable man. He seems small and petty. I would love to introduce him to some LGBTQ folks who are warriors who have had to be warriors our entire life just to live our lives openly as who we are.'
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4 days ago
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Critics Rip ‘Wannabe Dictator' Trump for LA Troop Deployment
Critics of the administration have lined up to bash President Donald Trump as an 'authoritarian' after he sent the National Guard to quash protests in Los Angeles against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 'We have a president who is moving this country rapidly toward authoritarianism,' Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said on CNN Sunday morning. 'This guy wants all of the power. He does not believe in the constitution, he does not believe in the rule of law.' Trump announced Saturday that he was federalizing the California National Guard and deploying 2,000 troops to Los Angeles, where protests against ICE raids erupted this week—a move California Governor Gavin Newsom blasted as 'purposefully inflammatory' and warned would 'only escalate tensions.' The last time a president overrode a governor to seize control of a state's National Guard was in 1965, when former President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights marchers, according to The New York Times. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) branded Trump as a 'wannabe dictator' in a statement, while California Senator Adam Schiff of Los Angeles blasted Trump's deployment of National Guard members as a politically motivated stunt with far-reaching consequences. 'If the Guard is needed to restore peace, the Governor will ask for it. But continuing down this path will erode trust in the National Guard and set a dangerous precedent for unilateral misuse of the Guard across the country,' Schiff said. Former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, who served in the first Trump administration, said Trump's latest move is 'the most significant act you've seen yet in the Trump administration' and puts him one step closer to what Taylor claims he's always wanted to do: 'taking control of national law enforcement.' Speaking on MSNBC's The Weekend, Taylor said that during Trump's first term, 'his own lieutenants were worried he would create a de facto police state if he was going to be deploying the military on U.S. soil.' 'That was our fear, and we are seeing potentially the early innings of that play out in real-time,' he added. The National Guard was last federalized in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush deployed troops to respond to the L.A. riots—at the request of then-Governor Pete Wilson and then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. This time, neither Newsom nor Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass requested federal intervention, and officials from the LAPD and sheriff's department said the demonstrations, despite some flare-ups of violence, were under control, according to The Washington Post. 'Sending federalized guard troops to Southern California, without regard for the authority or approval of local or state officials, is a tactic we associate with authoritarian regimes, not the United States,' said Roman Palomares, president and board chairman of League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights group. 'For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling,' Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and a leading scholar on constitutional law, told the Los Angeles Times. 'It is using the military domestically to stop dissent. It certainly sends a message as to how this administration is going to respond to protests. It is very frightening to see this done,' he said. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt justified the deployment by claiming that 'violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles.' 'These operations are essential to halting and reversing the invasion of illegal criminals into the United States. In the wake of this violence, California's feckless Democrat leaders have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens,' she told the Daily Beast in a statement. 'The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs. These criminals will be arrested and swiftly brought to justice. The Commander-in-Chief will ensure the laws of the United States are executed fully and completely.' Echoing a similar narrative, Trump has attacked Newsom on Truth Social: 'If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can't do their jobs, which everyone knows they can't, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!'
