The Dictatorship
Trump’s DOJ often tries to deny reality. Judge Frimpong wasn’t amused.
Los Angeles is a city under attack. Spurred on by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s outrage that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not been deporting enough people, ICE agents have been sweeping through the city, often clad in full military attire like a conquering army. Photographs and videos document ICE’s “arrest first and ask questions later” approach on a daily basis.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong ordered ICE to stop “conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.” She refused to be taken in by the Trump administration’s fog of deception and disinformation. “The federal government agrees: Roving patrols without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment and denying access to lawyers violates the Fifth Amendment,” she wrote. “What the federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening.”
The evidence is clear that they’re looking at race.”
Mohammad Tasjar, attorney for the ACLU of Southern California
Frimpong’s ruling should be required reading for every American. She modeled the kind of resistance that is essential in the face of the administration’s concerted attack on facts, truths and common sense. Her “believe what you see, not what they say” response sets an example for all Americans who wish to resist an authoritarian takeover in this country.
The Courthouse News Service reports that, at a hearing held Thursday, the government wanted the judge to believe “that the ICE raids were sophisticated operations, based on surveillance and information from other law enforcement agencies targeting specific individuals.” According to CNS, lawyers for the Justice Department argued that ICE could “also stop and question other individuals there who they suspected were immigrants without legal status….” That would be acceptable, a DOJ lawyer argued, based on the “totality of the circumstances.”
The government offered these claims against the weight of the evidence and out-of-court statements. In an appearance last week on Fox News, the administration’s border czar Tom Homan included “physical appearance” in the list of things that ICE takes into account during their patrols in Los Angeles. At the Thursday hearing, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that ICE was engaging in racial profiling, targeting members of the Hispanic community and ignoring people of European ancestry who might be in the country illegally. “The evidence is clear that they’re looking at race,” Mohammad Tasjar, an attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, told Frimpong. Even a lawyer for the government acknowledged that “agents can’t put blinders on.”
During the hearing, as The New York Times reported, the judge “was skeptical of the government’s assertions that it was not violating the constitutional rights of people and that agents were stopping immigrants based on ‘the totality of circumstances,’ rather than relying on race.”
That skepticism was reflected in the 52-page opinion the judge handed down one day later. Frimpong wrote that the migrants who filed suit were likely to prevail in their claim that ICE had no legitimate basis to stop and detain most of the people caught up in its military style operations in Los Angeles. She found that the ICE operation constituted a “threatening presence” that left people fearful that they were being “kidnapped.” The judge ordered that, when conducting such operations, the government must stop relying on factors such as race, ethnicity, speaking Spanish, speaking English with an accent, presence at a particular location, or type of work.
This judge’s insistence that reality does in fact matter is particularly important.
Frimpong seemed particularly disturbed by the government’s failure to “acknowledge the existence of roving patrols at all.” As she put it, “the evidence before the Court at this time portrays the reality differently.” She also noted that the government had failed to provide any evidence that what ICE is doing could pass constitutional muster, despite “having nearly a week” to do so.
This judge’s insistence that reality does in fact matter is particularly important in the face of an administration that time and again demands Americans accept whatever it says.
In the immigration context at least, that ploy seems not to be failing. A recent Gallup poll found that 79% of respondents say immigration is “a good thing” for the country versus just 20% who say it is a “bad thing.” Just a year ago, those numbers were 64% and 32% respectively. The percentage of Americans who want to see a decrease in immigration also sharply declined, from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. And 62% of Americans now disapprove of President Trump’s handling of immigration.
Judge Frimpong’s determined refusal to be deceived by the administration’s smoke and mirrors and her rebuke of ICE’s “roving patrols” shows other members of the judiciary — and the rest of the country — that the White House’s rationalizations of its immigration policy deserve not a shred of deference. It should serve as a wake-up call to all of us and a reminder of the damage the administration’s anti-immigrant crusade is doing to our constitutional order.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. The views expressed here do not represent Amherst College.
The Dictatorship
Iran moves to take permanent control of Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping choke point
Iran announced on Thursday that it was drafting a “protocol” that would allow it to “monitor transit” by oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuzthe strategic waterway Tehran has shut downsending oil and gas prices soaring in the U.S. and across the world.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said tanker traffic through the narrow route “should be supervised and coordinated” between Iran and Oman, the two countries that border the strait, according to a translation of a report from Iran’s state news agency cited by CNBC.
“Of course, these requirements will not mean restrictions, but rather to facilitate and ensure safe passage and provide better services to ships that pass through this route,” Gharibabadi said according to the report.
President Donald Trump has suggested that the U.S. may leave it to other countries to end Iran’s de facto blockade of the strait, which it enforces by firing missiles at tankers. Trump has called on European nations to do so, but experts say Europe lacks the military resources to halt Iranian attacks on tankers for the long term.
Iranian and Omani officials did not respond to requests for comment from MS NOW.
For decades, the strait has been an international waterway, controlled by no country, that ships from all nations could transit.
Gregory Brew, a senior Iran and oil analyst at the Eurasia Group, said that if Iran manages to take control of the Strait of Hormuz permanently, it would be a “colossal win” for the country.
“It’s a massive strategic win, given that Iran has demonstrated that it can close the strait,” Brew told MS NOW. “It’s a huge financial win.”
Brew added that if Iran gains long-term control of the straitit would be more powerful than it was before the Trump administration attacked it. Iran’s parliament passed a law to begin charging “tolls” of up to $2 million per ship, which could mean as much as $100 billion in annual revenue — or the equivalent of Iran’s current annual oil export earnings.
“It’s not innocuous,” Brew said, referring to the protocol announced on Thursday. “Iran has passed legislation and is now claiming to be coordinating with Oman in establishing joint management of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Brew predicted that Oman, which has less oil and wealth than other Gulf nations, may be willing to accept a temporary arrangement that could help end the conflict.
“The Omanis are probably hedging; they’ve always tried to manage their relationship with Iran, and they lose relatively little by cooperating with Iran right now to ease pressure on the strait,” Brew said. “The bigger question is whether they continue to cooperate after the war.”
Ted Singer, a former senior CIA official who oversaw the agency’s operations in the Middle East, said Iranian officials are likely trying to see what they can achieve.
“I wouldn’t see this as a fork in the road,” Singer told MS NOW.
Singer, who served as a CIA station chief in five different countries over a 35-year career, said Iranian officials could be trying to stoke division between gulf countries.
“The Iranians are good at doing more than one thing at a time,” he said. “Why not stake out a maximalist position on tolls, then toss out options to roil the waters?”
The United Arab Emirates, for example, is adamantly opposed to Iran taking control of the strait.
“The Iranians play multi-dimensional chess,” said Singer, now a senior adviser to the Chertoff Group, a security consulting firm run by Michael Chertoff, who served as secretary of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration.
“Try to create division between Oman and the rest of the Gulf countries,” Singer said. “Why not fiddle around with this and see if something sticks?”
David Rohde
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Ian Sherwood is the director of international newsgathering for MS NOW, a former executive editor for NBC News and a former deputy Washington bureau chief for the BBC.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Targeting Iranian infrastructure: “President Trump celebrated the destruction of a bridge near Tehran on Thursday, warning on social media that there was ‘much more to follow.’ The attack on the B1 bridge between Tehran and the nearby city of Karaj killed eight people and wounded 95, according to Fars, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.”
* I don’t think the speech worked: “The price of oil rose sharply and stocks wavered on Thursday after President Trump, in an address from the White House the day before, said the war against Iran was ‘nearing completion’ but failed to offer a concrete timeline and committed to more attacks. In the 19-minute address, Mr. Trump said U.S. forces would hit Iran ‘extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.’”
* Reversing one of Noem’s worst ideas: “Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Wednesday rescinded a rule that DHS expenditures over $100,000 be personally approved by his office, ending a widely criticized policy implemented by his predecessor Kristi Noem that critics said put a particular burden on the Federal Emergency Management Agency ’s work aiding disaster response and recovery.”
* The latest on the ballroom: “Donald Trump’s handpicked National Capital Planning Commission voted Thursday to authorize the president’s plan to erect a gilded 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom in place of the historic East Wing, which was destroyed last fall to make way for the ballroom.”
* Remember when Congress, by constitutional mandate, had the power of the purse? “President Donald Trump said Thursday he will soon sign an order to pay all Department of Homeland Security employees who have gone without paychecks during the record-long partial government shutdown that has reached 48 days.”
* A year after “Liberation Day,” there’s fresh tariff news: “President Donald Trump announced Thursday he will levy tariffs as high as 100 percent on some name-brand pharmaceuticals and is adjusting tariffs on products that contain steel and aluminum, the administration’s first move to expand duties since the Supreme Court dealt his trade agenda a blow in February.”
* The latest from Artemis II: “NASA’s latest update about the Artemis II moon mission shows a breathtaking view of Earth as the Orion capsule with four astronauts on board orbits tens of thousands of miles above. Hitching a ride beyond Earth’s atmosphere atop NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket, the three Americans and one Canadian selected for the mission are preparing to begin heading toward the moon.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
A federal judge is weighing whether the Trump administration can legally build a 250-foot arch just across the Potomac River from the Vietnam and Lincoln memorials, as three veterans who fought in Vietnam have argued the project would violate federal law and permanently alter one of the country’s most sacred landscapes.
Judge Tanya Chutkan declined on Thursday to issue a preliminary injunction, instead asking the parties to report by 5 p.m. on Friday whether they can agree to halt groundbreaking while the case proceeds. If no agreement is reached, she will ask the executive branch to provide supplemental sworn declarations disclosing any awards, grants, contracts, permits or other relevant information related to the arch’s construction.
The suit was brought by three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian, who argued the project would obstruct views of the Vietnam War and Lincoln memorials from Arlington National Cemetery. The plaintiffs contended the planned arch would violate federal laws governing historic sites and monuments, and the White House cannot lawfully proceed without congressional authorization.
The plaintiffs cited Trump’s various Truth Social posts and public statements to support their claim that construction is underway, pointing to design specifications, a target completion date of July 4 and renderings backed by a White House fact sheet. They also argued the National Park Service must sign off on any use of the land before construction begins.
President Donald Trump told reporters in January that his proposed arch “will be the most beautiful in the world,” and is already “being built.” He also shared renderings of the arch on his Truth Social account.
The government’s attorney, Bradley Craigmyle, argued that Trump’s media and social media statements constitute hearsay. Chutkan pushed back sharply, saying Trump’s posts are admissible as statements by a party. Throughout the hearing, Craigmyle argued the project is in the conceptual phase despite the president’s statements.
Today’s hearing comes as the National Capital Planning Commission voted 9-1, with two abstentions, to approve construction for Trump’s 90,000-square foot ballroom at the White House, clearing the final procedural hurdle for the project. Chutkan referenced the ballroom case during the hearing, saying, “If we haven’t had the whole White House ballroom situation, this might be a little more academic than it is now.”
Selena Kuznikov contributed to this article.
Peggy Helman is a desk associate at MS NOW.
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