from the chaotic-evil dept
The beatings will apparently continue, whether or not morale improves. The Trump Administration’s latest move from far-right towards open fascism involves, unsurprisingly, the gutting of more government components tasked with ensuring the federal government doesn’t treat civil rights like privileges only afforded to those who can afford them… or anyone else willing to lick the boot heel currently pressed against their face.
The Trump administration shut down three watchdog agencies in the Department of Homeland Security on Friday, gutting the offices responsible for conducting oversight of President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The cuts affect the civil rights branch of D.H.S. and two ombudsman offices: one overseeing immigration detention and another responsible for scrutinizing the administration’s legal immigration policies, according to five current and former government officials. More than 100 people at the civil rights office alone are losing their jobs.
This just makes sense, at least in Trumpian terms. The administration is already all but daring the federal court system to stop it — something that came to a head when a bunch of people were deported to El Salvador despite being ordered to cease deportations by a federal court. Since then, the administration and its DOJ lawyers have argued — among other things — that some flights were in “international waters” when the order was issued and therefore not subject to US court orders (extremely laughable but also extremely evil) and that even if the judge blocked the last flight that took off, he failed to put it in writing (similarly laughable/evil).
The DOJ’s questionable assertions in court were backed by Trump’s calls to impeach the judge handling the case, something that actually managed to push Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to temporarily set aside his personal “conservative views” to remind the president that the proper response to an injunction Trump doesn’t agree with is the appellate courts, not batshit crazy demands that judges be put of out business.
This is just more of the same for Trump, DOGE, and his army of sycophants in Congress. By the end of January — less than 10 days after he was sworn back into office — Trump had shut down the DOJ’s civil rights division, which is pretty much the last thing standing between US citizens and abusive police departments around the nation.
While it’s clear to everyone (and that includes Trump supporters, despite their bad faith deflections) the real reason for this shutdown of oversight is to keep anyone from looking too closely at this administration’s immigrant expulsions, federal spokespeople continue to claim this is just about eliminating inefficiency from the federal government under Elon Musk’s DOGE.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the decision was meant to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.”
Odd how all the “inefficiencies” being identified by DOGE just happen to be things Trump doesn’t like, rather than a cross-section of multiple departments and directives that might be redundant or of limited utility.
No one believes anything the Trump administration is saying in defense of eliminating anything that might protect the rights of all citizens, rather than just the citizens Trump and his congressional fanbois like. But this administration operates wholly without shame. And now it’s pushing forward with its plan to operate without any form of internal oversight. The almost-nonexistent pushback from Democrats has been ineffectual at best, and disgustingly subservient at worst. This nation is being taken down from the inside. Trying to pretend this can be undone following the next election assumes there’s going to be another presidential election, which isn’t something I’d be willing to put my money on given how things are going now.
Filed Under: civil rights, dhs, doge, fema, immigration, kristi noem, trisha mclaughlin
