"What makes for a concentration camp as opposed to a prison? Max Burns turned to this entry in the Holocaust Encyclopedia for a definition: 'What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.'”

~ Joyce Vance

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism #Holocaust
/2

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/the-supreme-court-got-it-badly-wrong

"That’s what’s happening in El Salvador. ...

If there were a map that showed democracy slipping into dictatorship, we would be at the spot marked 'You are here.' We shouldn’t sugarcoat the danger."

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism #Holocaust
/3

"The entire practice of the Holocaust of the Jews involved zones of statelessness. It is easier to move people away from law than it is to remove law from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones."

~ Timothy Snyder

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism #Holocaust
/4

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xl3w4e5jxslqeaglaqit2ql3/post/3lmsvkbq6bs2g

"This is the authoritarian ratchet.

If Trump can, in defiance of the Supreme Court, arbitrarily 'disappear' non-citizens in El Salvador, anyone else could be next — including journalists who report on his administration."

~ Freedom of the Press Foundation

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/5

https://bsky.app/profile/freedom.press/post/3lms2ujd2oc2t

"This rhetorical game the administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while Bukele pretends he doesn’t have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court—and for the rule of law."

~ Adam Serwer

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/6

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/bukele-trump-court-order/682432/?gift=_ZIU2b-u6NxEmt_0j2INZkFfMhbxeqA9KKZRzniQU08&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

"The administration is maintaining that it has the power to send armed agents of the state to grab someone off the street and then, without a shred of due process, deport them to a Gulag in a foreign country and leave them there forever. The crucial point here is that the administration’s logic means that it could do the same to American citizens."

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/7

"Only four months into his term, and Trump is molding the American presidency into something ever closer to the grinning dictator seated next to him in the Oval Office Monday."

~ Kate Riga

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/8

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/just-another-lawless-monday

"The president sat there with Nayib Bukele, the Dollar Store jefe who runs El Salvador and they both mocked the continued plight of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the innocent Marylander who was trafficked by this country into a hellhole in that country, and who the Supreme Court has (mildly) ordered the government to get back."

~ Charles Pierce

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/9

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a64479935/illegal-deporation-kilmar-armando-abrego-garcia/

"The two penny-ante dictators found the idea of releasing Abrego Garcia amusing, and the Supreme Court's order even more so."

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/10

"At least a dozen members of Congress, all Democrats, have written to the Trump administration with pointed questions about constituents and other citizens whom immigration agents have questioned, detained and even held at gunpoint. In one letter, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded a list of every citizen detained during the new administration.

None has received an answer."

~ Nicole Foy

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt
/11

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-ice-immigration-detained-americans-congress-questions-unanswered

"While it is completely outrageous and startling that Rubio as Secretary of State would enter into a contract to render people in United States to this hellhole without due process, in the sense of, if you knew that Marco Rubio had deep ties to the for-profit private prison industry in the U.S., it might not surprise you as much."

~ Nadine Smith

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #Rubio #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/12

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/tuesday-convo-nadine-smith-and-lisa

"Trump 'crossed the Rubicon' long ago—but the media has somehow forgotten or minimized prior actions by Trump that qualify as a 'constitutional crises.' ...

I do not mean to minimize what happened in the Oval Office on Monday."

~ Robert B. Hubbell

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #Rubio #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/13

https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/call-it-by-its-name-a-coup-redux

"But what happened on Monday is merely the next logical step in an ongoing coup—and our failure to call it such at every opportunity allows it to fester and spread, even as tens of millions of Americans look away or are frightened by the chaos inflicted by Trump's wholesale assault on the federal government."

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #Rubio #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism #MediaFail #media
/14

"If you didn’t know better you would think 'polarization' descended from on high, a plague for which no one party is responsible. This deliberate obfuscation of our political situation suits the corporate media’s obsession with moral equivalence and contrived balance."

~ Jennifer Rubin

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #Rubio #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism #MediaFail #media
/15

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/words-and-phrases-we-can-do-without

"The central feature in the U.S.—a cult of personality in which the erratic, chaotic, and unhinged leader runs roughshod over its people—has nothing to do with Democrats. We cannot blame the small 'd' democrats (or the large 'D' ones either) for extremism or intransigence simply for insisting their fellow countrymen recognize objective reality and respect democratic norms."

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #Rubio #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism #MediaFail #media
/16

"This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror, and it has to be identified as such to be stopped."

~ Timothy Snyder

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #Rubio #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator #authoritarianism
/17

https://snyder.substack.com/p/state-terror

"This is not incarceration; it is liquidation.

Incarceration is a penal act. It is controlled by laws. There are well-understood mechanisms governing the length of terms, applications for parole, processes for release.

Liquidation is a political act. It is arbitrary, opaque, and unappealable. There are no controlling laws or processes. There is only power."

~ Jonathan V. Last

#Trump #Bukele #AbregoGarcia #Rubio #ElSalvador #SupremeCourt #dictator
/18

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bring-him-home