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Atlantic
2 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
Trump's Deportation Goals Are Unrealistic
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In March, President Donald Trump was preparing to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport noncitizens. This use of the law, which was passed in 1798 and previously used to intern Japanese Americans during World War II, was unprecedented, and Emil Bove III, a top Justice Department official, was concerned that it was illegal. To be clear, Bove wasn't troubled that the administration might be breaking the law; rather, according to a new whistleblower complaint, he was concerned that the courts might try to block removals. In that case, 'DOJ would need to consider telling the courts 'fuck you' and ignore any such court order,' Bove said, according to the document. The complaint was made by Erez Reuveni, a fired DOJ lawyer, and first reported by The New York Times this week. The administration says that his allegations are falsehoods from a disgruntled former employee, but this is difficult to credit. A career lawyer, he was promoted by the Trump DOJ but says he was fired after he acknowledged in court that the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia was an administrative error and refused to accuse him of being a terrorist. The complaint details Reuveni's 'attempts over the course of three weeks and affecting three separate cases to secure the government's compliance with court orders, and his resistance to the internal efforts of DOJ and White House leadership to defy them.' It also suggests that Reuveni has emails and texts to back up many of his claims. A top Justice Department official allegedly conspiring to defy court orders would be very dangerous; what makes it darkly amusing, too, is that senators are this week considering Bove's nomination to the federal bench that, according to Reuveni, he wanted to ignore. This led to a sharp exchange in a committee hearing yesterday between Bove and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, two veteran federal prosecutors, in which Bove repeatedly insisted that he did not 'recall' making the comments that Reuveni alleged. 'Did you say anything of that kind in the meeting?' Schiff asked. 'Senator, I have no recollection of saying anything of that kind,' Bove said. 'Wouldn't you recall, Mr. Bove, if you said or suggested during a meeting with Justice Department lawyers maybe they should consider telling the court, 'Fuck you'?' Schiff replied. 'It seems to me that would be something you'd remember—unless that's the kind of thing you say frequently.' Because no Republicans have yet come out against Bove's nomination to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, he's likely to win confirmation. (By way of reminder, Bove got here by serving as one of Trump's personal lawyers in some of his many criminal cases.) This presents the grim parlor question of whether it's better to have Bove in a lifetime appointment on the bench, where his opinions can be appealed, or at the Justice Department, where he's reportedly been a one-man wrecking crew. The allegations against Bove are what my former colleague James Fallows took to describing during the first Trump administration as shocking but not surprising. Trump himself has said repeatedly that he will abide by court orders, but his deputies have been less circumspect, especially Vice President J. D. Vance, who is a lawyer, and the former DOGE leader and current Trump frenemy Elon Musk. Outside observers, including me, have fretted over what will happen if the White House actually crosses the rubicon of defiance. This is arguably beside the point. Even though the Trump administration continues to deny that it has refused to obey court orders, the reality is that it has already done so. Judge James Boasberg said in April that he'd concluded that probable cause existed to find the administration in contempt of court for removing certain Venezuelan immigrants. (An appeals court has temporarily stayed proceedings on the contempt charge.) In another instance, last month, the administration deported a Salvadoran man despite a court order forbidding it, then blamed 'a confluence of administrative errors.' (These errors seem to be a consistent issue for this presidency!) The administration also insisted in a court filing that Abrego Garcia simply could not be returned as ordered, because the United States 'does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.' The DOJ proved that false not long afterward, when it brought Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. to face charges. In a bizarre move this week, the administration sued every federal judge in Maryland—an attempt to evade an order that bans the government from immediately deporting migrants who are challenging their removal. The fights with courts are ironic, because although Trump has fared poorly in lower courts, the Supreme Court has been willing to let him expand his powers once cases reach it. As Reuters reported earlier this month, the justices, using what's known as the ' shadow docket,' have repeatedly granted emergency requests to proceed, pending full consideration. This week, the Court temporarily lifted an order preventing the executive branch from quickly deporting migrants to countries to which they have no ties. The White House has been seeking to send people—including Laotian, Vietnamese, and Filipino nationals—to extremely perilous countries such as Libya and South Sudan. This would be callous and morally abhorrent under any circumstances, but given the notable cases of the Trump administration deporting people who are legally protected, including Abrego Garcia, it is especially terrifying. The desperation to sidestep court restrictions on deportations is evidence of the shortcomings of the White House's plans. Trump aims to remove 1 million people this year, but as my colleague Nick Miroff reported yesterday, ICE statistics show that the agency has carried out only about 125,000 deportations since Trump took office, with roughly half the year gone. But as Reuveni's story suggests, in this administration, to be honest is to risk being fired. Attacking the courts is much easier than admitting that the president's signature promise is unrealistic. Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Today's News The Senate parliamentarian advised rejecting some Medicaid changes that would offset the costs of other key policies in President Donald Trump's tax bill. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran's strike on a U.S. base in Qatar was a 'slap to America's face'; he also warned against further U.S. attacks on Iran. A new Supreme Court decision allows states to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Dispatches Time-Travel Thursdays: Isabel Fattal on how sleeping less became an American value. Evening Read The Blockbuster That Captured a Growing American Rift By Tyler Austin Harper In a cramped, $50-a-month room above a New Jersey furnace-supply company, Peter Benchley set to work on what he once said, half-jokingly, might be 'a Ulysses for the 1970s.' A novel resulted from these efforts, one Benchley considered titling The Edge of Gloom or Infinite Evil before deciding on the less dramatic but more fitting Jaws. Its plot is exquisite in its simplicity. A shark menaces Amity, a fictional, gentrifying East Coast fishing village. Chaos ensues: People are eaten … In June 1975, 50 years ago this month, the movie version of Jaws was released in theaters and became the first-ever summer blockbuster. Though the film retains Benchley's basic storyline—shark eats people; shark dies a bloody death—it turns the book's politics upside down. Watch. Thank God for The Bear. Season 4 of the show (streaming on Hulu) is exactly what it—and we—needed, Sophie Gilbert writes. Lean on me. In everyday life, many people are reluctant to ask for and offer help. But milestones such as weddings lower the barriers to relying on other people, Julie Beck writes. Play our daily crossword.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Manzanar teaches about Japanese American incarceration in the US. That's in jeopardy under Trump
At the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, more than 200 miles (320km) outside Los Angeles, in what feels like the middle of nowhere, is Manzanar national historic site. It marks the place where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during the second world war, crowded into barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers with searchlights, and patrolled by military police. Since then, Manzanar, which now has a museum and reconstructed barracks that visitors can walk through, has been transformed into a popular pilgrimage destination for Japanese Americans to remember and teach others about this history. (Manzanar was one of 10 concentration camps where the US government forcibly relocated and held more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent during the second world war.) But recently, under the direction of the Trump administration, National Park Service (NPS) employees have hung new signs at Manzanar that historians and community advocates say will undermine these public education efforts. The notices encourage visitors to report 'any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features' via a QR code. The signs, which have been posted at all national parks, monuments and historic sites, were displayed in support of Donald Trump's executive order Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. Historians, national park advocates and community leaders say they're alarmed by the move, in what they see as the most recent example of the Trump administration's attempt to 'whitewash' US history. 'Any attempt to constrain or sanitize the stories that are told at Manzanar should concern every American,' said Naomi Ostwald Kawamura, executive director of Densho, an organization that documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were held in concentration camps. 'I'm incredibly disappointed that this is happening in the United States because museums, monuments and memorials are public spaces where we can explore difficult history, confront our past, engage with what's uncomfortable and then be able to imagine the future that we want to collectively share.' Earlier this year, government agencies compiled hundreds of words to be erased from federal recognition such as 'diversity', 'cultural heritage', 'marginalized', 'racial inequality' and 'ethnicity'. 'I think the sign is clearly trying to create a chilling effect in the telling of these stories,' said Dennis Arguelles, the southern California director of the National Parks Conservation Association, which supports national parks and opposes planned changes to alter historical facts. 'These are moments in our history and it's very dangerous for us to try to pretend it didn't happen.' The NPS, which has already been under pressure due to funding cuts, hiring freezes and forced resignations, has a legal mandate to preserve, protect and interpret American history. By posting the new signs across all 433 parks, monuments and historic sites, park visitors can act as government informants, although Arguelles said he has heard anecdotally that people have used the QR code to express support for Manzanar and ask that the administration let park rangers do their jobs. NPS units have been tasked with reviewing all 'inappropriate content' on display by 18 July, and parks will receive direction about what to do with it by 18 August. Arguelles said that fears of public education at Manzanar being stifled are not unfounded. The park service has already stripped the contributions of transgender people from the Stonewall national monument's website. And the US army deleted a webpage dedicated to the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the nation's most decorated military unit, which was composed of thousands of Japanese Americans whose families were forcibly incarcerated by their own government. After public outcry, the page was partially restored. The Trump administration has also threatened funding for colleges and universities offering ethnic studies programs as part of their DEI purge. Cultural institutions such as the Japanese American National Museum that focus on education, culture and storytelling have lost grants (some have since been temporarily restored). Among the cuts was a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that funded a workshop that helped teachers build a curriculum about the history of Japanese incarceration that benefitted roughly 20,000 students a year. 'As a historian, you can see a pendulum swing between a very narrow and exclusive vision of America as a white Christian nation and a more open, multi-ethnic America,' said Duncan Ryūken Williams, director of the University of Southern California's Shinso Ito Center and co-founder of of the Irei Project, which, for the first time, compiled the names of 125,284 people of Japanese ancestry who were unjustly incarcerated during the second world war. 'We're obviously in one part of that spectrum now.' The preservation of this part of Japanese American history is about more than remembering the past. In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act – the very law that served as the basis for some of the arrests and roundups of Japanese Americans during the second world war – against Venezuelan nationals as young as 14 whom the administration claims are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. In cases challenging the executive order, every judge except one has found the Trump administration's use of the act to deport people without due process to be illegal. When the US last invoked the Alien Enemies Act, it began a period of escalation that resulted in the supreme court deferring to unsubstantiated claims from the executive branch, which led to everyday people, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, losing their families, jobs, homes and freedoms. (It wasn't just the Alien Enemies Act; most people of Japanese descent were detained, under the auspices of martial law in Hawaii and otherwise under Executive Order 9066.) Williams said that, like today, the way the Alien Enemies Act was used during the second world war was prejudicial since people of Japanese heritage were seen at the time as being 'unassimilable racially and religiously', recalling racist tropes from the era of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. 'Currently, we are seeing people being picked up and detained and moved immediately away from their families,' said Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, one of 60 Asian American organizations that filed an amicus brief supporting the fight against Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act. 'We're hearing reports of even green card holders having been deported without any process, without a hearing. It's really, really disturbing.' She connects the lack of due process many immigrants are experiencing today to what most Japanese Americans experienced during the second world war. 'This is the same playbook,' Kohli said. 'The government suppressed evidence and made false claims to justify incarceration in WWII and today's administration is doing the same thing. They're invoking this law with no evidence.' While it remains to be seen how the courts will rule on the Alien Enemies Act and how the NPS will handle complying with the administration's orders about the content at sites like Manzanar, Japanese American community organizations are determined to teach the lessons of the past to show how quickly civil liberties can be taken away, particularly for communities of color. 'The slogan Make America Great Again is sort of calling back to the past that didn't exist,' said Densho's Kawamura. 'We're going to do our best to protect and safeguard this history so that young people still have access to it even if the federal government itself is making it more difficult for us to do our work.'
Otago Daily Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Censoring signs Trump's attempt to rewrite history
US President Donald Trump has banned "negative" signage at national parks and is asking visitors to snitch on unpatriotic text, reports Jack Dolan, of the Los Angeles Times . In his ongoing war on "woke" culture, United States President Donald Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of "improper partisan ideology" from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites. Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure all of their signage reminds Americans of our "extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing". Those marching orders, which went into effect the week before last, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery and Jim Crow laws. And how they will square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War 2 with an "unmatched record of advancing liberty". At Manzanar National Historic Site, a dusty encampment in the high desert of eastern California, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians were imprisoned during the early 1940s, employees have put up a required notice describing the changes. Like all such notices across the country, it includes a QR code visitors can use to report any signs they see that are "negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasise the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes". An identical sign is up at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, a tribute to the struggle to ensure better wages and safer working conditions for immigrant farm labourers. Such signs are going up across the sprawling system, which includes Fort Sumter National Monument, where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War; Ford's Theater National Historic Site in Washington, DC, where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; and the Martin Luther King jun National Historic Park. So, nothing negative about John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray? In response to an email requesting comment, a National Park Service spokesperson did not address questions about specific parks or monuments, saying only that changes would be made "where appropriate". The whole thing was "flabbergasting," said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association. "These stories may not be flattering to American heritage, but they're an integral part of our history. "If we lose these stories, then we're in danger of repeating some of these mistakes," Arguelles said. Trump titled his March 27 executive order requiring federal sign writers to look on the bright side "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History". He specifically instructed the Interior Department to scrutinise any signs put up since January 2020 — the beginning of the Biden administration — for language that perpetuates "a false reconstruction" of American history. Trump called out signs that "undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light". He specifically cited the National Historical Park in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC as bowing to what he described as the previous administration's zeal to cast "our Nation's unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness" as "inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed". His solution? Order federal employees and historians to rewrite the "revisionist" history with language that exudes patriotism. "It all seems pretty Orwellian," said Kimbrough Moore, a rock climber and Yosemite National Park guide book author. After news of the impending changes began circulating in park circles, he posted on Instagram a sign he saw in the toilet at the Porcupine Flat campground in the middle of the park. Across from the ubiquitous sign in all park bathrooms that says "Please DO NOT put trash in toilets, it is extremely difficult to remove", someone added a placard that reads "Please DO NOT put trash in the White House, it is extremely difficult to remove". Predictably, the post went viral. "Even the pooper can be a venue for resistance," Moore wrote. — TCA
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump bans 'negative' signage at national parks, asks visitors to snitch on unpatriotic text
In his ongoing war on "woke,' President Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of 'improper partisan ideology' from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites. Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure that all of their signage reminds Americans of our 'extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.' Those marching orders, which went into effect late last week, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery and Jim Crow laws. And how they'll square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War II with an 'unmatched record of advancing liberty.' At Manzanar National Historic Site, a dusty encampment in the high desert of eastern California, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians were imprisoned during the early 1940s, employees put up a required notice describing the changes last week. Like all such notices across the country, it includes a QR code visitors can use to report any signs they see that are 'negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes." An identical sign is up at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, a tribute to the struggle to ensure better wages and safer working conditions for immigrant farm laborers. Such signs are going up across the sprawling system, which includes Fort Sumter National Monument, where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War; Ford's Theater National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park. So, nothing negative about John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray? In response to an email requesting comment, a National Park Service spokesperson did not address questions about specific parks or monuments, saying only that changes would be made "where appropriate." The whole thing is "flabbergasting,' said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. 'These stories may not be flattering to American heritage, but they're an integral part of our history. 'If we lose these stories, then we're in danger of repeating some of these mistakes,' Arguelles said. Trump titled his March 27 executive order requiring federal sign writers to look on the bright side 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.' He specifically instructed the Interior Department to scrutinize any signs put up since January 2020 — the beginning of the Biden administration — for language that perpetuates 'a false reconstruction' of American history. Trump called out signs that 'undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.' He specifically cited the National Historical Park in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., as bowing to what he described as the previous administration's zeal to cast 'our Nation's unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness' as 'inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.' His solution? Order federal employees and historians to rewrite the "revisionist" history with language that exudes "patriotism." 'It all seems pretty Orwellian,' said Kimbrough Moore, a rock climber and Yosemite National Park guide book author. After news of the impending changes began circulating in park circles, he posted on Instagram a sign he saw in the toilet at the Porcupine Flat campground in the middle of the park. Across from the ubiquitous sign in all park bathrooms that says, 'Please DO NOT put trash in toilets, it is extremely difficult to remove,' someone added a placard that reads, 'Please DO NOT put trash in the White House. It is extremely difficult to remove.' Predictably, the post went viral, proving what would-be censors have known for centuries: Policing language is a messy business and can be hard to control in a free society. 'Even the pooper can be a venue for resistance,' Moore wrote. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Miami Herald
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Trump bans ‘negative' signage at national parks, asks visitors to snitch on unpatriotic text
In his ongoing war on "woke," President Donald Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of "improper partisan ideology" from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites. Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure that all of their signage reminds Americans of our "extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing." Those marching orders, which went into effect late last week, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery and Jim Crow laws. And how they'll square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War II with an "unmatched record of advancing liberty." At Manzanar National Historic Site, a dusty encampment in the high desert of eastern California, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians were imprisoned during the early 1940s, employees put up a required notice describing the changes last week. Like all such notices across the country, it includes a QR code visitors can use to report any signs they see that are "negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes". An identical sign is up at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, a tribute to the struggle to ensure better wages and safer working conditions for immigrant farm laborers. Such signs are going up across the sprawling system, which includes Fort Sumter National Monument, where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War; Ford's Theater National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park. So, nothing negative about John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray? In response to an email requesting comment, a National Park Service spokesperson did not address questions about specific parks or monuments, saying only that changes would be made "where appropriate." The whole thing is "flabbergasting," said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. "These stories may not be flattering to American heritage, but they're an integral part of our history. "If we lose these stories, then we're in danger of repeating some of these mistakes," Arguelles said. Trump titled his March 27 executive order requiring federal sign writers to look on the bright side "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." He specifically instructed the Interior Department to scrutinize any signs put up since January 2020 - the beginning of the Biden administration - for language that perpetuates "a false reconstruction" of American history. Trump called out signs that "undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light." He specifically cited the National Historical Park in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., as bowing to what he described as the previous administration's zeal to cast "our Nation's unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness" as "inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed." His solution? Order federal employees and historians to rewrite the "revisionist" history with language that exudes patriotism. "It all seems pretty Orwellian," said Kimbrough Moore, a rock climber and Yosemite National Park guide book author. After news of the impending changes began circulating in park circles, he posted on Instagram a sign he saw in the toilet at the Porcupine Flat campground in the middle of the park. Across from the ubiquitous sign in all park bathrooms that says, "Please DO NOT put trash in toilets, it is extremely difficult to remove," someone added a placard that reads, "Please DO NOT put trash in the White House. It is extremely difficult to remove." Predictably, the post went viral, proving what would-be censors have known for centuries: Policing language is a messy business and can be hard to control in a free society. "Even the pooper can be a venue for resistance," Moore wrote. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
