It’s The Stupidity, Stupid!

The due process required for deportations under Trump's Alien Enemies Act proclamation is much greater than due process for ordinary deportations. Any detainee facing deportation under AEA proclamation should be able to (1) challenge the lawfulness of the proclamation, and (2)…

— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) May 17, 2025

If Trump administration were serious about deporting as many illegal aliens as possible, it would be doing everything it could to improve and expedite the ordinary deportation processes, not wasting its time on probably illegal Alien Enemies Act proclamation that would apply to…

— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) May 17, 2025

If Trump administration were serious about deporting as many illegal aliens as possible, it would be doing everything it could to improve and expedite the ordinary deportation processes, not wasting its time on probably illegal Alien Enemies Act proclamation that would apply to 1/10,000 of the illegal aliens, all of whom could be deported through other means. It's almost as if it's looking for excuses for failure and scapegoats to blame.

First: assumes facts not in evidence. Trump’s DOJ fired  more than 30 immigration judges, either because they weren’t ruling the way he liked, or because he wanted to gum up the system to pressure Art. II judges to ditch due process and just DEPORT!

The answer is: probably both and a little bit of neither.

Trump also gets rid of lawyers who don’t tell him what he wants to hear. So he’s left with spam Bondi and Alina Habba and Janine Pirro. And mostly Stephen Miller, who plays at being judge, jury, and the whole damned Supreme Court, all in one. But he’s not even a lawyer.

Second: Trump is failure personified. He doesn’t have to look for excuses to fail: that’s hard-wired into the program. If the measure of success was Trump falling out of a boat, he’d miss the water. He’s the beneficiary of a system that supports kleptocracy, venality, and cruelty.

The very proof he doesn’t know what he’s doing is the analysis that recognizes the failure, but can’t come to the logical conclusion: Trump is a very stupid man who, in redux, has surrounded himself with very stupid people.