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Dems Go To Bat For Due Process

2025/4/17
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What A Day

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Erin Ryan
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克里斯·范霍伦: 我要强调的是,特朗普总统、我们的司法部长邦迪和美国副总统都在撒谎,他们说奥布雷戈-加西亚……被指控犯有罪行或属于MS-13帮派。这是谎言。我问萨尔瓦多副总统,如果美国和萨尔瓦多都没有证据证明他确实犯了罪,为什么该国还要继续将他关押在被称为CICOT的最高安全监狱中。他的回答是特朗普政府正在……付钱给萨尔瓦多政府,让他们把奥布雷戈-加西亚关押在西科克。付钱给他们。用什么钱?纳税人的钱?嗯,这似乎有点浪费。 Erin Ryan: 白宫发言人卡罗琳·利维特周三在新闻发布会上回应说:没有什么能改变奥布雷戈-加西亚永远不会成为马里兰州父亲的事实。他将永远不会再居住在美国。好吧,我承认很多新闻报道都是这样描述奥布雷戈-加西亚的,卡罗琳,但是……没有什么能改变他是一个父亲,而且他住在马里兰州的事实,因此是马里兰州的父亲。周三早些时候,华盛顿特区的一名联邦法官表示,他发现有充分理由认定特朗普政府官员犯有藐视法庭罪。 里奇·托雷斯: 我们致力于反击。你知道,我提出了一项名为《救援法案》的立法,该法案将对萨尔瓦多等任何国家拒绝释放因违反联邦法院命令而被错误驱逐的人施加惩罚。对民主党人来说,利害攸关。对国家来说,利害攸关。在唐纳德·特朗普所做的一切事情中,没有什么比他对正当程序的正面攻击、对正当程序的战争更糟糕的了。这不仅仅对非公民有影响。特朗普政府可以将任何人贴上非公民帮派成员的标签,在深夜绑架他们,然后将他们交给外国监狱进行折磨。因此,他正在为我们民主的未来树立一个危险的先例。

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The episode begins with a discussion of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man allegedly wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran super prison. Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to advocate for his release, disputing the administration's claims of Garcia's gang affiliation. A federal judge found probable cause to believe Trump administration officials were in contempt of court for deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members to the same prison. Democrats are speaking out, concerned that these actions could set a dangerous precedent.
  • Senator Van Hollen disputes claims Abrego Garcia is a gang member and accuses Trump administration officials of lying.
  • A federal judge is investigating potential criminal contempt related to deportations to the prison where Abrego Garcia is held.
  • Democrats are concerned about the implications of these deportations on due process and potential impact on American citizens.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
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It's Thursday, April 17th. I'm Erin Ryan, in for Jane Koston, and this is What A Day, the show that says, do not die potatoes for Easter. I don't care what the Atlantic Magazine says is okay, or how much eggs cost right now. Do not die potatoes.

On today's show, California sues President Donald Trump over his tariffs and surprise, surprise, Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene made some green of her own off Trump's tariff flip-flop. But first, let's talk about immigration.

On Wednesday, Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to push for the release of Kilmar Obrego-Garcia. He's the Maryland man who the government wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran super prison last month, alleging, despite paper-thin evidence, that he's a member of the gang MS-13.

Van Hollen held a press conference after meeting with El Salvador's vice president. He said the Salvadoran officials denied his request to see or speak with Obrego Garcia. He also forcefully disputed the White House's story about him. I want to emphasize that President Trump and our Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Vice President of the United States are lying when they say that Obrego Garcia is

has been charged with a crime or is part of MS-13. That is a lie. Van Hollen said he asked the Salvadoran vice president why the country was continuing to hold Abrego Garcia in a maximum security prison known as CICOT if neither the U.S. nor El Salvador has evidence he's actually committed a crime. And his answer was that the Trump administration is paying...

El Salvador, the government of El Salvador, to keep him at Seacock. Paying them. Paying them with what money? Taxpayer money? Hmm. Seems like a little bit of a waste.

But anyway, back in the U.S., the administration continued to dig in. Not that we'd expect anything different. Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt during her press briefing Wednesday. Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again. Okay, I acknowledge that that's how a lot of news articles have been describing Abrego Garcia, Caroline, but...

Nothing will change the fact that he is a father and he was living in Maryland, hence Maryland father. But in the courts, the administration is also facing more pushback over both the Abrego-Garcia case and its hardball immigration tactics more broadly. On yesterday's show, we talked about how a federal judge in Maryland said she wanted to see some receipts from the administration, detailing the ways it's trying to, quote, facilitate Abrego-Garcia's return, as the Supreme Court directed it to last week.

And early Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. said he found probable cause to find Trump administration officials in criminal contempt of court.

This is over whether the administration violated another order, this one barring it from sending alleged Venezuelan gang members to the same prison where Obrego Garcia is currently being held in El Salvador. Because undoubtedly there are more Obrego Garcias who the government has deported. We know at least one, a gay makeup artist from Venezuela who was seeking asylum in part because his sexuality made him a target of gangs.

Here's the hard thing. If you're a Democrat or, to me, a person with like morals and stuff, you think this is wrong and evil. You know it is. You're also aware that the immigration issue has been a third rail for liberals for the last few years. But a lot of Democrats are standing up and speaking out about cases like Abrego-Garcia's and others and saying that what is happening to him could absolutely happen to American citizens.

One of them is New York Democratic Representative Richie Torres, who has introduced a bill to require the U.S. government to act if a court orders the return of someone who has been wrongfully deported. I spoke with Congressman Torres on Wednesday afternoon. Representative Torres, welcome to What A Day. On Wednesday, a federal district judge said there was probable cause to open a criminal contempt inquiry related to his order to stop some deportations to El Salvador back in March.

What's your side of the aisle in the house doing about this?

Look, we're committed to fighting back. You know, I introduced legislation known as the Rescue Act, which would impose consequences on any country like El Salvador that refuses to release someone who's been wrongfully deported in violation of a federal court order. You know, for Democrats, the stakes are high. The stakes are high for the country. Of everything that Donald Trump, there's nothing worse than his frontal assault, his war on due process.

And it has implications far beyond non-citizens. Like the Trump administration can label anyone a non-citizen gang member, abduct them in the dead of night, and then render them onto a foreign prison to be tortured. And so he is setting a dangerous precedent for the future of our democracy. And are you seeing common ground with your GOP colleagues on this?

I suspect that there are Republicans who privately have concerns, but none of them are willing to speak out publicly against Donald Trump. You know, the Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party. It's become a cult of personality. The MAGA movement is organized not around principle, but around personality. It's all about Donald Trump. He can do no wrong. It's religiosity without religion.

Well, on that note, Democrats kind of lost big to that religiosity without religion in November, especially when it came to immigration, migrants and deportation. And a lot's happened since then. And folks in your party have been sorting out who could be deported and when, under what circumstances. Where have you landed on this?

Look, I have no objection to deporting those who genuinely violate either criminal law, immigration law, or both, especially if you pose a public safety risk. But you're entitled to due process. Like, there is no contradiction between border security and due process, or between a rational immigration system and due process. And the Trump administration is attempting to create a contradiction

where none exist. You know, due process is based on the recognition that the government is every bit as corruptible and fallible as human nature itself, right? The government can err, it can abuse its power, it can falsely accuse, and due process is what protects all of us from false accusations and abuses of power on the part of the government. And if we lose due process, as far as I'm concerned, we lose everything,

Let's talk about a specific case, the one over Kilmar Obrego Garcia. He's a migrant who has not been convicted or even charged with a crime, but was still sent to a prison in El Salvador. The administration says, with practically zero evidence, that he's a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13. What does that tell you about how this administration is going about deporting people? Look, Donald Trump claims that he has the authority to label anyone a gang member and then deport them to a foreign prison to be tortured.

And then wash his hands and claim that the courts have no jurisdiction because he's deporting them to a foreign country. Never mind that he's paying the foreign country to detain these people. So he clearly has responsibility. He clearly has leverage.

But we're entering dangerously uncharted territory. For me, the lesson learned from the Trump presidency is that Congress historically has passed too many laws that have ceded too much power to the executive. We should repeal the Alien Enemies Act, which has enabled Trump to deport hundreds of people without due process, without the slightest semblance of due process.

we should repeal the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which has enabled Trump to set tariff rates that have destabilized the global economy. The U.S. Constitution envisions a system of congressional supremacy.

There are three co-equal branches of government, but Congress is the first among equals. We are Article I branch, and we should return power back where it belongs, which is in Congress. But to do that right now, you would need Republican buy-in just because of the makeup of both chambers. That seems pretty unlikely. So what can you do right now?

Look, we have to throw the kitchen sink, whether it's mobilization on the streets, legislation in the halls of Congress, even a discharge petition and litigation in court. Obviously, there are limits to what we can do when we're in the minority, but I'm convinced that the momentum is on our side. I mean, Donald Trump is uniquely unpopular as president. Like he's the only president since 1937 president.

whose approval rating is underwater in the early months of his administration. So Democrats are well positioned to take back the House, to make Hakeem Jeffries the next speaker, and to restore some measure of checks and balances. But I have no faith that the modern Republican Party is going to stand up to Trump because he's their lord and savior.

I've seen this on my TikTok FYP. I'm sure you've seen this on social media. I feel like the conservative line is, well, he's playing chess and we're playing checkers. So take this with a grain of salt. But are you concerned that Democrats are playing into the administration's hands right now by highlighting the Abrego Garcia case? First, fighting for due process is the right thing to do. Like I'm in favor of free speech, not because it polls well, but because it's a matter of principle. So not everything has to be reduced to a political calculation.

There are some issues that are so important that it transcends politics. Hapius corpus, due process are among them. But the polling would tell a different story. I mean, Donald Trump is self-destructing in real time. Since his inauguration, we've seen the destruction of $11 trillion in wealth. His tariffs are deeply unpopular. His trust on issues with the American people is declining rapidly. So the momentum is clearly on the Democratic side, largely because Donald Trump is self-destructing. He's his own worst enemy.

Representative Richie Torres, thank you for being here. Thank you for the conversation and keep doing the hard work. Absolutely. Take care. That was my conversation with New York Democratic Congressman Richie Torres, who represents the Bronx. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads.

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Here's what else we're following today. Trump may claim he's a great businessman, but Trump's tariffs are truly terrible for business and they're breaking the law.

California is suing the Trump administration over the president's heavy tariffs on U.S. trading partners. Democratic State Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the suit at a press conference Wednesday alongside Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. The governor emphasized that Trump's trade war has hit California, the world's fifth-largest economy, especially hard. This is recklessness at another level. The geopolitical impacts are outsized. The trade impacts are outsized, not just the economic.

The White House has justified the president's steep and unilateral use of tariffs on pretty much every country by declaring a national emergency on trade. That allowed him to unlock special powers to sidestep Congress and impose his sweeping tariffs earlier this month. California's lawsuit argues everything that's happened since, the neck-breaking whiplash from Trump's constantly changing trade policy, poses a bigger threat to the economy, and that the president does not have the power to do what he's doing. He needs congressional approval to levy tariffs. California's

California's suit comes as the economy is flashing major warning signs in the wake of Trump's tariff palooza. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday it's now, quote, highly likely that Trump's trade policy will worsen inflation and push prices up. Here he is speaking to reporters in Chicago. The level of tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated, and the same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.

Powell added that unemployment rates could rise, too. Oh, and while Powell was speaking, the stock market fell. Again. And speaking of states that have a beef with the White House, the Department of Justice is suing the state of Maine for allowing trans girls to compete in school sports that align with their gender identity. This is all because the state's Democratic governor, Janet Mills, said she would not comply with an executive order Trump signed earlier this year to, quote, keep men out of women's sports.

Back in February, Mills and President Trump shared a moment about this at the White House. Your population doesn't want men playing in women's sports. So you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any federal funding. Every state. Good. I'll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor because I don't think you'll be in elected politics.

You better do it or you're going to wish you did it. You better do it. Okay, well, let's talk about it in court. Yeah, you better go to court. Yeah, I'll see you there. Great comebacks, guy. The DOJ lawsuit alleges that Maine discriminates against women and girls, but also endangers them by refusing to ban trans athletes from school sports. And when I say trans athletes, I mean it's barely plural. I mean two. Two trans.

out of tens of thousands of high school athletes in Maine's public school system. Two. Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged this when she announced the lawsuit. I don't care if it's one. I don't care if it's two. I don't care if it's 100. It's going to stop and it's going to stop in every single state. Why is it that every time I see her speak, I think that she's about to call the police on a child with a lemonade stand?

The lawsuit is Trump's latest attempt to punish Mills and the state of Maine. His Department of Agriculture tried to cancel millions in grants to the University of Maine last month. Also, the Social Security Administration canceled some big state contracts. Those contracts were reinstated, and Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek said he regretted terminating them. But I'd take his apology with a grain of salt. The Washington Post reported that just a week before that, Dudek wrote an email where he called Mills a, quote, petulant child.

The Trump administration has reportedly asked the IRS to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status. CNN broke the story. Trump floated the idea of revoking Harvard's status in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. He said the school should be taxed as a political entity because it refused to meet his demands to fight what he called anti-Semitism on campus. The White House froze more than $2 billion in federal funding to Harvard over its rebuke.

We're putting this together on Wednesday night. Neither the IRS nor Harvard have said anything else about this before we put it to bed. But on the upside, this is a great opportunity for people who went to Harvard to remind everybody else that they went to Harvard.

And while we're on the subject of the IRS, the Trump administration plans to nix a free electronic program that lets taxpayers file directly with the agency because under the Trump administration, we're just making everything a bigger pain in the ass. That's according to anonymous sources that spoke with the Associated Press. Direct file gives people in 25 states a free and easy way to file taxes so long as they don't claim rental or other kinds of non-wage income. You should

It should come as zero shock that the Trump administration wants to end the program. After all, swaths of Republican lawmakers asked him to cut the program back in December. They claimed it was government overreach, and then Doge took aim at it in February. It's government overreach for the government to let you file things to the government without having to pay? What?

The GOP fought such a service for decades with help from private tax prep companies like TurboTax. I mean, you don't want to pay taxes anyway, so why pay to file if you can do it for free? If you live in one of those 25 states, you can still use the service this season. But after that, you'll have to pour one out for direct file.

There's been a lot of coverage on stocks, the buys that you made, and these foreign, the announcement that it's tariffs are being paused. Was there anything that you knew ahead of time? Can you at least respond to the criticism that's been published? You know, I think that criticism is laughable. President Trump has been talking about tariffs for decades.

This is Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene laughing off some financial scrutiny. Over what? Greene recently disclosed she purchased anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stocks. No immediate issue there, but she bought them one day before President Trump announced he was pausing most of his global tariffs. And then she did it again that same day. Of course, the market was flailing from all the trade chaos.

According to disclosures made to the House, Greene also sold between $50,000 and $100,000 in Treasury bills. To be fair, Trump did yell at his Truth Social followers that, quote, this is a great time to buy, you know, just hours before he paused the tariffs. Greene told reporters Tuesday that she had no prior knowledge of Trump's flip-flop.

Guess what he did? He bought the dip. Sounds like me defending a man who went to the grocery store and only bought three of the ten things he was supposed to buy.

Democrats in Congress are asking for an investigation into Trump's back and forth on tariffs and whether his reversals violated securities laws. Members of Congress are required to report their stock trades, so we might hear more about this soon. And that's the news.

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That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a nice review, find something better to dye than a potato, and tell your friends to listen. And if you are into reading and not just about how if you cut up your dyed potatoes and put the potato in the ground, you can have more potatoes to hoard when groceries get even more expensive, like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan, and that's what we call buying the dip. And that's what anybody that has any financial sense does.

What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fore. Our producer is Michelle Aloy. We had production help today from Shauna Lee, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, and Greg Walters. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrian Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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