This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The crux of the Abrego Garcia controversy is a dispute about who "morally" counts as an American citizen.
The rallying cry of the pro-Abrego Garcia camp is: "If they can do it to him, they can do it to any of us." In other words, they see no meaningful difference between him and a legal US citizen, and so there is no Schelling Fence that can be drawn between the two. On other hand, the pro-Trump camp who wants Abrego Garcia to stay in El Salvador are not at all concerned that they will be next, because in their view citizens and non-citizens are two morally distinct categories.
The slippery slope argument (e.g. Laurence Tribe yesterday, and Justice Sotomayor's concurrence) is that if the government gets its way with Abrego Garcia, there will be no legal obstacle preventing them from treating citizens in the same way.
But the thing is, this is already the case. The US government's treatment of citizens abroad is already effectively unconstrained by the law. The government can negotiate for the release of a citizen imprisoned by another country, but nobody would argue that the government is legally obligated to do this, and it's absurd to imagine a court compelling them to do so, because that effectively makes diplomacy impossible. (The US government must be able to value the citizen's return at less than infinity, or else they lose all negotiating leverage.) On the other hand, the government can drone-strike a citizen abroad without due process, and while that may stir up political pushback here at home, there are effectively no legal repercussions.
This is because, according to the constitutional separation of powers, foreign affairs are a quintessentially "non-justiciable political question". In common parlance this means: If you don't like what the government is doing, the proper way to fix it is through advocacy and the democratic process, not through the court system.
To which the pro-Abrego Garcia camp will gesture around at the crowd of protesters they've assembled, waving "Free Abrego Garcia!" signs, and say "Great, come join us. Here's your sign!"
But of course the pro-Trump immigration hawks see no need to take it up, because even if these protests have no effect, this does not in any way diminish their confidence that if a citizen were to be treated in the same way, then the backlash would be swift, universal, and sufficient to compel the citizen's return - no court order needed. For them, it is simply obvious that the failure of the Abrego Garcia advocacy has no implications whatsoever for the success of the hypothetical advocacy on behalf of a fellow citizen, and this is no cause for cognitive dissonance because citizens and illegal-immigrant non-citizens are two entirely separate categories.
Prior to anything else in the political life of a nation, there must be near-universal agreement on who constitutes the body politic for whose benefit the government exists and to whom they are accountable. If there is factional dispute over this basic question, then morally speaking there is no nation, but multiple distinct nations that happen to find themselves all mixed up in the same land. But I'm sure this is no great surprise.
While removing an illegal who has not been convicted of any crime on a vague suspicion that he might be a gang member, with the full knowledge that he will face a life in prison on your dime under atrocious circumstances is utterly despicable, that is not the full extend of their misconduct.
In his case specifically, they violated a court order to do that. "Accidentally".
This scales much beyond this case. "Oh, we are sorry your honor, we honestly thought that you had authorized that no-knock raid against that (suspected) Tesla-burning terrorist. Anyhow, now he is dead, so there is nothing we can do about that misunderstanding. All's well that ends well, I guess."
Of course, we don't have to worry if Trump would also deport US citizens to the mega prisons, because he has just announced that he would.
Thing is, this is already standard practice. And has been for many years. Second Amendment people have plenty of atrocity stories over ATF raiding the wrong house.
The resemblance is superficial. In this case, one or more people intentionally ignored a court order and can be held liable for that even if some of those involved in the deportation cannot. The planes were forbidden from taking the detained to El Salvador. If there is an example where the ATF is specifically instructed by a court order not to raid someone's house, and they do it anyway, and the recipient of that order is not held in contempt of court, in that case the comparison holds water. Not otherwise.
ATF is only authorized to raid houses that it gets a warrant to raid. ALL the other houses are off limits (subject to a few other exceptions). If they have a warrant that says they can raid 101 Elm Street, and they raid 103 Elm Street by mistake, they have done the same thing as was done here.
Note that in neither case did anyone intentionally ignore a court order, or at least evidence of intentionality has not been presented.
The matter here is that one or more people in the Department of Justice have violated 18 U.S.C. § 401(3) by ignoring a lawful court order, and criminal contempt proceedings are ongoing to determine exactly who in the department is to be held responsible.
The defendants had a responsibility to carry out the court order. There is indeed evidence of intentional disobedience, as I welcome anyone interested in the facts of the matter at hand -- and not irrelevant, separate grievances -- to ascertain in the ruling[1] issued today.
[1]https://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/athena/files/2025/04/16/67ffdc21e4b0cc0115773511.pdf
I see nothing there aside from the District Court throwing a temper tantrum about being overruled. They will be overruled again. The court's complaint is that the Trump administration did not obey its -- unlawful -- order in the time between it being issued and it being vacated. This will not stand on appeal, and the most likely effect of it is to narrow the doctrines upon which it is depending (which would be a good thing -- Walker v. City of Birmingham was a travesty).
The relevant order here is the earlier order for withholding to removal, and there is no evidence the violation of that order was deliberate.
You are wrong. If the Trump administration had not disobeyed the relevant TRO, then there would be no grounds for the contempt filing. The reason he is bringing contempt charges is that the defendants brazenly disobeyed a legal order. This has nothing to do with being overruled: Boasberg has the authority to issue TROs, which can be challenged and dismissed on appeal. Ignoring them is a criminal offense.
If we were to characterize some party as 'throwing a tantrum,' it would be the Trump admin who both 1. got their way on the decision in appeals and 2. called for Boasberg's impeachment, prompting the Chief Justice to make the statement:
No, the real matter here is that someone, likely multiple people, violated 18 U.S.C. § 401.
Yes. That is illegal and the filing is replete with evidence suggesting that it was deliberate. Moreover, the defendants do not even dispute that they did this deliberately.
The long-established blackletter law settled by a case in which the most sympathetic of parties lost, if you knew the first thing about it, is hardly the false pretense suggested by the word 'travesty'. None of the exigencies and circumstances on which the minority's argument was based in that proceeding obtains in this one, in fact it is the opposite. The dissenting opinion grants that the petitioners would have no case at all if
Indeed, the exigencies that obtain in Walker v. City of Birmingham in favor of the petitioners work exactly against the Trump admin in the case at hand:
If the Trump admin respected the authority of the courts and was confident in the constitutionality of their intended deportations, there is no reason why they could not wait for the appeal to resolve in their favor. Had they done this they would be protected from Boasberg's 'tantrum' as you put it, and as a bonus they may have not carried out any improper removals 'by accident.'
Far from being the sole case establishing that Americans are not entitled to ignore court orders, Walker v. City of Birmingham affirms that adherence to court procedure is so fundamental (the lower federal courts having been established in 1789 with exactly the power "to punish by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of said courts, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before the same") that it indeed prevails even in some cases where circumstances make the contemnor's actions urgent. Again, not what we have here. There is no way in which it could have been decided which would have set a precedent for the current US administration's actions in disregarding the judiciary.
The TRO was not a legal order, which is why it was vacated. The District Court insists that the administration was still required to follow its unlawful order, using a precedent that was created to provide a "gotcha" against civil rights protestors. I stand by my characterization of a "temper tantrum".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link