The loophole that could swallow the U.S. constitution
- sciart0
- Apr 18
- 1 min read
Updated: Apr 19
Excerpt: "Donald Trump’s most frightening power grab was undertaken with an undertone of sinister jocularity. There was no column of tanks in the streets, no burning of the legislature. The president and his partner in despotism, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, were bantering amiably in the Oval Office in front of the press corps, mocking the American court system with evident delight.
Trump’s ploy is almost insultingly simple. He has seized the power to arrest any person and whisk them to Bukele’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, where they will be held indefinitely without trial. Once they are in Bukele’s custody, Trump can deny them the protections of American law. His administration has admitted that one such prisoner, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was sent to El Salvador in error, but insists that it has no recourse.
Trump, who has threatened the territorial integrity of multiple hemispheric neighbors, now claims that requesting the return of a prisoner he paid El Salvador to take would violate that country’s sovereignty.
... “"Ideas have consequences,” the conservative philosopher Richard Weaver wrote in 1948.
The post-liberal right’s ideas about revenge and power are currently the most influential ideas in the world. Their implications need to be taken with deadly seriousness."