He Has Transported Us Beyond Seas to Be Tried for Pretended Offences

Oh, to return to the days when I didn't know who the president/dictator of El Salvador is.

If the way the BBC News Hour covered the Trump/Bukele love fest is any indication of mainstream media coverage, it will be bad. The Rolling Stone's headlines should speak for any fair-minded person and therefore how media should be summarizing it: "Why Trump and His Admin Are Publicly Mocking the Supreme Court" and "Trump and Bukele Bond Over Human Rights Abuses in Oval Office Meeting."

David Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social ran a thread on BlueSky listing the Declaration of Independence's bill of grievances against George III, starting with: "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences." (Although in this case, there isn't even a trial.)

It was bracing/depressing/not shocking enough to see how many of the grievances already apply to the Trump administration.

Here's some of the news and reaction to our Constitutional crisis as filtered through my BlueSky feed. All quotes are from the attributed source.

___

Before the press came in [for the Trump/Bukele press event] — but while live feed was running on Bukele’s feed — Trump said to him: “home-growns are next.… You’re gonna need to build about 5 more places.”
Danielle Kurtzleben @titonka.bsky.social

The president told a Central American dictator to build five more massive slave labor camps to hold US citizens.
southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social

How long, in minutes, would it have taken the GOP to introduce articles of impeachment against Clinton, Obama, or Biden if they had said they were going to ship American citizens to a prison in El Salvador? 15? Less?
Max Kennerly

The administration that called Canada “the 51st state” and said “we’re going to get” Greenland is suddenly cowed by sovereignty.
Carl Quintanilla

The president is conducting a press event with the primary purpose of flouting the decisions of the courts and the letter and spirit of U.S. law. It is a press event to celebrate the Constitutional crisis and serial violation of human rights he has set in motion.
David Rothkopf

Every official presiding over this and nodding their approval deserves to end their days behind bars.
Mark Harris

Ah the kind of Making America Great again where the president of El Salvador wipes his ass with the flag and the constitution in the Oval Office, got it
Tom Scocca

I don't really have anything especially profound to say, but yeah man this is it. They won't obey even the most milquetoast SCOTUS orders and are talking about sending US citizens to foreign gulags. It's happened here.
William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social

El Salvador is a contractor providing the United States with a paid service. The idea that we couldn’t get anyone they’re holding back with the snap of a finger just by asking is so ludicrous on its face, it seems less like a real excuse and more like a test of how much shit the courts will eat.
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social

bloomberg: ~90% of deported migrants to el salvador had no criminal record:


ian bremmer

when you have a 90% failure rate at whatever you're doing, you should stop, or be stopped
BuffaloJon

“Like most of the men rendered to CECOT, Abrego Garcia has fewer criminal convictions than the current president of the United States.” –Adam Serwer
Evan McMurry

Looks like Trump will be kidnapping and imprisoning American-born citizens, y’all. We are quite literally losing our democracy. What are you doing to fight for your freedoms?
Mary Wood @maryrosewood.bsky.social

I'm home-grown.
@pattho.bsky.social

Seems like a good day to remind everyone that Auschwitz — a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps — was not located in Nazi Germany either.
Andrea Junker @strandjunker.com

the only way kidnapping and illegally detaining lawful permanent residents (or citizens!) in foreign concentration camps "plays out" is we all live our lives under fascism or the fascists are jailed and many of them executed. that's it. read a fuckin book.
Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social

a way to figure out that whatever your negative predictions for this administration were, the reality is currently worse is that after Trump did genuine horrifying thing of shipping the human beings to Gitmo, they thought “hmm, too expensive” and then just went all in on the more brutal foreign option
Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social

"the state can just summarily imprison someone without filing charges or holding a trial" doesn't just overturn democracy it overturns 1000 years of common law, like throwing out the entire legal system entirely and saying all people in America are the state's property.
mtsw

NO ONE should be sent to El Salvador, you baby-brained losers. My God.
Prisonculture

__

Update: Here's another good headline, from Mike Masnick at TechDirt: Trump & Bukele Plot US Citizen Detention in Salvadoran Torture Camps, While Defying Supreme Court via Gibberish Responses to Reporters.