A lot of this comes down to whether or not one believes that womens’ equality depends in some part on separate accommodations for situations where women are particularly vulnerable.
It's almost the inverse, actually.
Or, to rephrase: A lot of this comes down to whether or not one believes that we can reach women's equality by concluding that we cannot actually solve any problems at all. To the extent of being unwilling to stop rape inside _entirely controlled-and-monitored facilities_, so we just have to throw up our hands and make sure that _one_ group doesn't rape women. (Guards raping women, a much larger problem, totally fine. Likewise, other women, totally fine.)
That is the totality of effort: In this one specific case, we are willing to physically stop this very particular sort of rape of some women by a certain specific group.
GO FEMINISM! *raises hands in victory sign* WOO!
Or, new idea: We should not have rape essentially running wild in prison. We should not have male prisoners raping other male prisoners , we should not have male prisoners raping female prisoners, we should not have male guards raping male or female prisoners, we should not have male prisoners raping trans female prisoners, we should not have female prisoners raping other female prisoners, we should not, in fact, have any of that happening at all.
Which is a thing we could trivially do.
Instead, we have built a system where it is happening openly and _encouraged_ by prison staff.
Hey, InMD, I said it to Dark, but did you happen to google v-coding? Do you know what that is? It's when prison guards reward a well-behaving prisoner, or just one that bribes them well, with a trans woman cellmate to rape.
That's completely irrelevant to the point being made here.
Your claim was you didn't think that feminists would like women's sports going away, not some hypothetical 'fairness' argument that _you_ believe but actual feminists do not.
Feminists don't care if there are statistical differences. Feminist theory does not, and never have argued that random things should be 'fair'. I know that's what the _right_ has pretended, for decades, but that's not at all true.
Actual feminists have a lot of things to say on these issues. Here's what, for example, is said about grade schools sports:
Grade school athletics are supposed to be _educational_, not 'a record-defining competition to see who is literally the best'. It is okay and even expected to have differing skill levels. Especially considering that a major factor in ability in grade-school athleticism is literally just 'who is the oldest' and 'who hit their growth spurt first', and when there is that much variation in a single grade, and that sports are often played across grade, it is pointless to pretend girls are weaker, especially since girls usually hit their growth spurt first.
Additionally, sports as provided by grade schools are very weighted towards ones that boys appear to be better at. Almost no one is doing sports programs that girls generally dominate in, like gymnastics. This seems...odd. But there's a reason for that: We have allowed the popularity of sports to be a huge funding source to school, allowing any general societal sexism to dictate what sports exist and demand that teams 'win' instead of just having sports as, again, _education_ and general activities for students, which is what it should be.
To summarize: Claiming that 'girls will not do as well as boys while playing on a mixed-sex team' in _grade school_ fundamentally, and somewhat deliberately, misunderstands why we _have_ sports in grade school. It is not to see which school is 'the best'. It is not to see which individual player is best.
It is because being part of a sport and a team and competing as such is very good experience.
And as for prisons, you _really_ need to talk to some feminists, because most of them have pretty serious problem with the entire carceral system, from top to bottom, especially the level of sexual assault allowed to exist within it.
Within the existing system, feminism generally operates off a harm migration system, where decisions are made about individual prisoners and the risk.
And they have much much more a problem with male guards at women's prisons than trans people. And they also know that v-coding exists, a thing you are about to google and then immediately wish you had not googled.
We have women’s sports and women’s prisons for good reason. I’ve never heard of “feminists” calling for those to be merged.
Then you have never listened to feminists.
Let me explain something that a lot of people get very very wrong about sports: The feminist argument was not that women should get their own team. The feminist argument was that women _should be allowed to play_, period. They were not allowed to play sports in any manner whatsoever before that, and if they were, it was absurdly underfunded segregated dumb games.
The feminist position was, and always has been, that women should be allowed to play with them men. Women's sports do not exist because of feminists. They exist _despite_ feminists. The regulations in Title IX, when it was created in 1972, originally said in 1972: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
You may notice that doesn't say anything about segregating sports. Indeed, the original regulation, as pushed by the national Organization of Women and other feminist groups, would seem to prohibit it. If an educational athletic team does not allow women, it would be illegal.
Which got a lot of female college potential athletes suing, because they wanted access to sports, to play actual real sports with the men, and still were not allowed to play.
So, eventually, these Federal regulations were made into law, in 1975. And an amendment was added: A recipient which operates or sponsors interscholastic, intercollegiate,club or intramural athletics shall provide equal athletic opportunity for members of both sexes. In determining whether equal opportunities are available, the Director will consider, among other factors:... Whether the selection of sports and levels of competition effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of members of both sexes ...
You may notice _that_ doesn't require a separate women's sports either. But it's suddenly moved from allowing access to any 'education program or activity' without consideration of sex to allowing 'equal opportunities' while considering sex. I.e., recreating separate but equal. With a whole bunch of rules about how we would know if something was equal.
This amendment was added by Senator Jacob Javits, a Republican, although a fairly liberal one who did seem to be pretty much in favor of civil rights. It's called the Javits Amendment.
This was not at all what feminism organizations asked for. It wasn't a step forward, it literally undid some of the existing regulation and created an _exception_ to anti-discrimination law. It was a step _backwards_, designed to fix the new and exciting 'problem' of women attempt to try out for college sports and the revenue impact that was perceived to have on sports.
Or just read this: https://lewisbrisbois.com/blog/category/sports-law/fifty-years-of-progress-the-legal-history-of-title-ix
The law has certainly seen its fair share of adversity and backlash, particularly in its application to sport. Immediately following its enactment (and in the years thereafter), Title IX faced an onslaught of challenges, whether through subsequent proposed amendments or through lawsuits challenging its legality and attempting to narrow its scope. In 1974, Senator John Tower proposed the “Tower Amendment,” which sought to exempt revenue-generating sports from Title IX’s reach. When that failed, Senator Jacob Javits submitted an amendment directing HEW to issue regulations providing, “with respect to intercollegiate athletic activities, reasonable provisions considering the nature of particular sports.”
tl;dr - Women's sports under Title IX do not exist to advance feminism, they exist as an _exception_ to the anti-discrimination rules a school would normally be required to follow, the rules that feminists pushed for. At best, they can be considered as a political compromise made 50 years ago when it became clear that collegiate sports were a particular sticking point for the law.
As I've joked serious-seriously, you could write a plausible time-travel story where the concentration of more and wealth in less and less hands, the complicit media refused to explain where the problems are but continue to 'blame literally anyone else, like immigrants', and of course blaming Hillary because she got elected in 2016 results in politics becoming completely broken, or even more broken, by 2020.
So in 2020, or maybe 2024, a charismatic and extremely intelligent fascist leader gets elected, wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. He does not make anywhere near the same mistakes as Trump, he works tirelessly but competently to erode all safeguards in the system. The constitution is continued to be slowly eroded under the guise of 'terrorism', and 'protestor' is treated functionally the same, and the elections are not even slightly free, but all that happens slowly by the _end_ of his term, not spending an entire term doing nothing because he was managed like a toddler, and then doing a bunch of really dumb stuff instantly in his second term.
And by 2050, the US has managed to competently and slowly oppress a large chunk of the rest of the world...possibly not outright conquering, but via puppet governments and threats.
...and the time travelers ask themselves 'How we derail this?' and look around, and, hey say, Donald Trump (Who in the original timeline tried to become Mayor of NYC under fascism and flamed out spectatularly.) is a giant idiot, what happens if we get Obama to piss him off and run in 2016?
I could argue it does slightly reflect badly on their _competence_, indeed, they admitted they had poor controls over some of that and no real oversight. And created a policy afterward.
But being incompetent in oversight of a specific thing to stop people from stealing from you isn't the same as 'lacks moral authority'. It's not even Harvard 'being bad at their job'...they aren't a body bank, pretending such things existed. They're a school, their job is education, and schools are often pretty bad at security, and often do end up having wake-up calls when people steal from them.
This case is just somewhat icky because of what was stolen, but that doesn't reflect on Harvard's moral authority unless you think it's immoral for Harvard to have bodies at all. (Which would be a distinctly minority view...most people understand why medical school have cadavers.)
JFK Jr. is also going to start trying to control medications and bodily autonomy of autistic people, literally talking about imprisoning them, and is threatening to cut off ADHD medication. Very eugenic-y things.
Also same about trans healthcare, but somehow that's completely unrelated and fine to a bunch of people here. It's surely not the exact same tendency.
Again, you cannot _possible_ believe that 'arrested for standing Hispanically in a Home Depot parking lot', and two people nearby included gang members, can even _possibly_ be an indication of gang membership that would withstand any legal test.
You are not that stupid.
As for the protective order: His wife is literally advocating for his return.
He also was never actually charged with a crime. We do not punish people for having protective orders against them, because _getting a protective order does not require due process_.
If they want to charge him with assault, they can. Of course, it would be a pretty stupid case as the only witness is his wife, who, duh, they can't legally compel to testify against him.
A reminder of where we are: The habeas filings have all followed the Supreme Court’s 5-4 order in Trump v. J.G.G. on April 7 holding that AEA challenges had to be brought in habeas actions — and vacating the prior classwide order, brought under the Administrative Procedure Act, blocking AEA proclamation-based removals nationwide.
As such, a habeas petition was filed by lawyers from the ACLU on behalf of two petitioners and a “putative class” in the Northern District of Texas on April 16. As with the other recent filings, the aim was for this to protect anyone from AEA proclamation-removal within the district. That is the putative, or proposed, class.
I.e., this is the ACLU following along with the nonsense idea that 'The government can rendition these people without a trial as long as they are warned they are going to be renditioned and do not manage to contact a lawyer and get a habaes petition filed fast enough, and no we won't be specific about the time limitation there or whether or not they can even contact a lawyer'.
The ACLU apparently took that as a challenge, and it appears that _enough_ people in the government take issue with this enough to be leaking information and that a flight was imminent from Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas. Today. On Saturday. So they filed a TRO Friday evening, it got appealed up the chain fast enough, and the Supreme Court had to step in at fricking one in the morning.
'We can send individuals off to be tortured with no due process, and no way to ever give them due process, unless, and only unless, some lawyer learns we're going to do that and manages to get a response from the actual literal Supreme Court faster than we can get a plane off the ground.'
Starting to think we need two sorts of open threads. Normal open threads, and threads for 'current legal status of gulag rendition', which keeps changing so fast no one can really write an article on it.
Anyway, hours after _this_ was posted, the Surpreme Court, at one in the morning on a Saturday, issued a blanket TRO saying the administration cannot rendition anyone from the Northern Distract of Texas under the AEA. This, notable, does not have anything to do with Abrego Garcia, it's because the ACLU filed a blanket habeas for _everyone_ who is going to renditioned. (You know, those people who got the forms the other day.)
This is in addition to the one TRO that already existed within the Southern District of Texas stopping the same thing. (Which I think is the one in the article? And also the one that is currently being looked into for contempt because they did not turn the planes around as the judge ordered.)
It is worth pointing out that the Trump Administration is almost out of jurisdiction shopping. This is the jurisdiction _they wanted_ and they can't even get favorable results from it.
It is completely absurd that no one will issue a nation-wide injunction about this.
There’s a drip drip drip of new information that, if not calculated, is unfortunate enough to suspect that it was calculated.
No, they are much too stupid to do that, just like they are much too stupid to bring him back, have a immigration trial, and deport him.
Meanwhile, the fact his rendition (1) to El Salvador was against court order, which has resulted in legal proceeding moving a lot faster than they would have otherwise, so if this was calculated, it was calculated by...idiots, okay, I guess I changed my mind, it certainly could have been calculated by the Trump administration.
1) Again: Not deportation. Deportation results in you being free in the county you are deported to.
There's a specific term for transferring custody of prisoners between governments, and it is not deportation, it's 'rendition'. Extradition is rendition. Prisoners swaps are rendition. (Although those usually result in the person being freed immediately.) The Bush administrations' illegal renditions were renditions.
The difference is important, because deportation is generally considered to be a lot less harm. You're free at the end of it, just...not here. We can use very lax immigration courts for it, we have looser standards and things that are not actually crimes that people are held to, etc.
Whereas rendition results in an imprisoned person at the end, and thus people have a lot more rights. We can deport people for things we could _never_ extradite them for.
No, he was arrested the first time in 2019 with a group of people at a Home Depot, 2 of whom were (apparently) MS 13 members. ... He was legally in the country subject to that order when he was picked up the second time in March, this time loitering outside of an IKEA, and again with a group of people that (apparently) included MS 13 members.
I honestly do not know how to phrase this, because my first five tries were very direct personal attacks, but let me try: It is literally impossible for you to seriously believe 'A bunch of Hispanic undocumented immigrants loitering outside of a Home Depot and an IKEA' is anything over than 'undocumented immigrants looking for work'. And they were almost certainly stranding 'near' each other because _that is where the undocumented workers trying to get hired were standing that day_.
You KNOW this a deliberate misrepresentation of a very common situation. Every American who has ever gone to Home Depot and looked at 'Bunch of Hispanic guys standing over to the side' understands exactly what is going on. That isn't some gang loitering, that isn't some social club, that isn't a group of friends, it's where you go to hire cheap and almost certainly undocumented labor. They might literally have met ten minutes earlier.
But you don't like illegal immigration, so you have decided to pretend it must be something else.
So, yes, that sounds plausible, but also...no. It's not _just_ that.
There are a lot of people who have been greatly injured by the government, or at least think they have. That is not a political position, and it happens to people all over the political spectrum. Sometimes these people become political, and it's somewhat normal. Other times people become radicalized. And that can happen a lot of different ways.
But there is a very specific category out there created by politics, and that is the far right violence-hole, for lack of a better term. The Proud Boys, the 3%ers, all sorts of internet forums that threat violence as a normal and inevitable outcome. The people who propose 'second amendment remedies', who will happy tell you if anything bad happens to you from the government, you should start attempting to 'overthrow' them.
This is not the only political group that has done this. The Anarchists, for example, historically were really good at it about a century ago. There were all sorts of far left groups running around in the seventies.
But currently there is exactly one group like that.
And before anyone tries to BSDI, I feel I should point at the current political environment, at who the government is currently harming, and that almost all actual political violence that is happening is _still_ being done by the right. If there ever was a time for the actual political violence, it would be against 'send people without trial to foreign gulags', but...nope. And the amount of LGBTQ people throwing bricks at cops for harassing queer people in the bathroom is, sadly, still zero.
That's because most of this country is _extremely_ reluctant to start political violence, and the rest draw the line at some levels of property damage. But there is one very small group of people who are promote it constantly, who promote shooting and killing government officials, and sometimes people who are generally incoherent or apolitical but angry, justified or not, find those groups and latch on to that bit. It doesn't so much matter what _their_ politics are.
As far as I can tell, the Republicans have a “whatabout” for every single “precedent” that the Democrats claim are being set.
There's a thing the left says 'It's always projection'. The right always wants to do very illegal things, so it just builds entire structures that lie and say that is what the left is doing.
So when they do it, they can point at the lies.
Republicans held an entire investigation that deliberately mislead people that an ill-conceived IRS setup that investigated a huge influx of politically-named charities, on _both sides_. Republicans did this by literally ordering investigation into _just_ the charities on the right that were looked into. And by 'looked into', I mean 'Asked a few more questions', not 'rejected', or 'audited', or anything. They just said 'Hey, this preclearance you want us to issue needs a few questions answered'.
And now, we have President Trump openly calling for the IRS to revoke (Not investigate, just outright revoke), the tax exempt status of Harvard explicitly for political reason.
I'm sure this is claimed as an escalation by people _who believe the original lies_, but those lies are, in fact, lies.
Same with 'Bill Clinton might have hypothetically said something about the investigation of Hillary to Loretta Lynch on the tarmac', and how merely the slightly appearance of that required investigation. Do you remember that?
That wasn't even 'a lie', that was just complete nonsense from top to bottom, creating allegations out of thin air.
But now we have...I don't even need to pick an example of how the DOJ works now, where it's basically a direct appendage of the White House instead of having any separation at all.
I'm sure that all started with Democrats, with that meeting on the tarmac, somehow.
Over and over and over, Republicans just outright lied about crap, and the media went along with it, and not only did that help them then, it means, somehow, when Republicans actually wander into outright fascism, it means the Democrats did it first because a speaker got protested at a campus somewhere and that's _sorta_ like the US deporting people for their political views, right?
I’m pretty sure that we’re *ALL* members of the press. When the First Amendment was written, “the press” was just a guy who had one. That’s it.
You might consider yourself a member of the press, but when a private citizen, or even a company, calls a press conference, the press is whoever they want it to be.
We can talk about rights if it's some government agency. Indeed, the Universal Life Church, in addition to ordaining ministers, will give out 'Press Passes' that they say are as good as any newspaper for legally getting access to government press events, although that's very 'three decades ago' as the rules changed as bloggers started issuing their own to themselves.
But that's not what happened here. This appears to have been a private event and thus the people invited are whoever the people holding it want invited.
I have to say, while I am not a Free Speech Abolutist, I am very confused.
I didn't know you could abstractly have press conferences. I always assumed all events that happened in this universe happened at locations that were legally controlled by specific people, and when you gave press conferences you specifically invited members of the press, not general passerbys.
Meanwhile, um...like, if a family member has been accused of a crime, or was the victim of a crime, do not show up to surprise the other person's family members. Like, either way. If you want to reach out for some good reason, after thinking long and hard about it, that's what lawyers are for, or at maximum some sort of impersonal contact they can not engage with, like a phone call, or, better, a letter. Do not show up at their frickin press conference.
I think it's worth reminding people that the Republicans are setting precedent after precedent that would, in their minds, be _absolutely disastrous_ to let Dems have.
They don't expect to ever give up power.
I'm going to be honest here: While I knew this country was going to descend into outright fascism, because I paid attention and _knew_ what Trump had tried to do the last time he was in office, and had been stopped by the 'sane people' around him that he would not have this time...
...but I really did not expect concentration camps in the first three months, or open threats to jail people for dissent.
They're really trying to speed-run this, aren't they?
Meanwhile, David Brooks is still an idiot, and can't resist adding this: Many have allowed themselves to become shrouded in a stifling progressivism that tells half the country: Your voices don’t matter. Through admissions policies that favor rich kids, the elite universities have contributed to a diploma divide. If the same affluent families come out on top generation after generation, then no one should be surprised if the losers flip over the table.
I'm not even particularly a fan of 'progessivism', really, but I'm pretty certain they have been essentially the one meaningful voice _against_ legacy admissions at universities. Or, you know, stopping 'the same affluent families coming out on top generation after generation', via things like, uh, taxes.
It really amazing how good conservatives are at conflating 'The wealth often have very milquetoast liberal-sounding values' with 'This means the left must like the wealthy more than the right'. It's that whole 'teams' thing that people keep blathering about instead of actual policy.
Does messing up on finance paperwork really matter that much?
It matters if it harms someone's else. That's called fraud.
The question is to what extent any of this does.
You may notice that we are still talking about 'unproven things people wrote in blogs' and 'letters that people in the Trump administration wrote', things which, it should be pointed out, have absolutely no requirement to be anywhere near the truth, and are very much hedging that these supposed misstatements 'might' have provided a benefit to her.
Also, it's worth mentioning that mortgage documents from 1984 and even 2000 are extremely outside the status of limitations, so that loan co-signing with her father is fairly irrelevant. (In addition to being a rather obvious mistake because that is utterly irrelevant to getting a loan and no one would do that on purpose.)
I am not sure if what these law firms did is a smart thing. It sorta depends if they can get it in _his_ head as an agreement between equals or near equals. Considering how much Trump has fought lawyers in his life, he might actually see them as a threat and consider them equal enough that he will stop. Maybe?
Yeah, it kinda is interesting that a lot of people have focused on a really specific 'This is being done without a trial' and 'Trump is threatening to expand this to citizens' (Failing to notice that without a trial where you can prove you're a citizen, there's no distinction between citizen and non-citizen.), without noticing the other stuff this violates.
It is a violation of the US Convention against Torture, as the US government itself has decided, and I just pointed out. But those laws are state-level things and it would be, hypothetically, possible to argue people cannot be charged under US law with them. (Just taken to the Hague, but we'd never allow that.)
And it is also involuntary servitude. A thing which we do have laws about. That prison has forced labor. Which is involuntary servitude. (The difference between slavery and involuntary servitude is slavery also regards the person as property, whereas involuntary servitude is not and they can hypothetically retain some rights.) And I quote our constitution about involuntary servitude:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
You may notice a key phrase in that sentence, 'duly convicted'. We are very used to prison labor, sorta ignore how horrific it is and how it is, literally, involuntary servitude, and we had to write an exception inside the anti-slavery law to allow it. But...that exception is pretty specific. You have to be duly convicted of a crime.
Now, is this involuntary servitude happening under 'US jurisdiction', which I will point out the amendment makes _very clear_ is not merely 'within the US borders' because it lists both of those things? Yes, they are. Because we have a law saying so: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1596 (That is the slavery/involuntary servitude/human trafficking part of the code.)
18 U.S. Code § 1596 - Additional jurisdiction in certain trafficking offenses
(a) In General.—In addition to any domestic or extra-territorial jurisdiction otherwise provided by law, the courts of the United States have extra-territorial jurisdiction over any offense (or any attempt or conspiracy to commit an offense) under section 1581, 1583, 1584, 1589, 1590, or 1591 if—
(1) an alleged offender is a national of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as those terms are defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101)); or
If you traffic people, and are a US citizen or US national, the US explicitly asserts jurisdiction over the offense and can charge you with a crime even if you do it completely outside the US.
And _that_ makes the 13th amendment apply to all this:
18 U.S. Code § 1590 - Trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor
(a) Whoever knowingly recruits, harbors, transports, provides, or obtains by any means, any person for labor or services in violation of this chapter shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If death results from the violation of this section, or if the violation includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or the attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, the defendant shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or life, or both.
Before anyone tries to get into details if the 13th applies, trying to argue that jurisdiction over a crime is not the same as jurisdiction over where the crime is happening...note that isn't actually important. The law still exists, regardless. It is just as criminal even if the 13th amendment doesn't apply and this behavior could _hypothetically_ be legal.
People in ICE, all of who are presumably US citizens, transported people to a location (Called a prison, but prisons are used for law enforcement purposes. This is more properly called a 'camp'.) where they are going to be forced to work, for free. Without being duly convicted of a crime. That is transporting someone into illegal and unconstitutional involuntary servitude.
Everyone who participated in this should be arrested and charged criminally with hundreds of crime, one for each person.
Yes, we all remember the made-up story that Republicans tried to make happen but the Democrats did not actually do, and yet how you still seem to believe it actually happened.
A lot of people here are focused on the fact this is happening without a trial, which is bad, and not on the fact the US cannot legally send people to a prison in El Salvador _even with a trial_. And I don't mean because of some obscure jurisdiction issues or something. I mean, straight up, if a man killed someone in El Salvador, fled to the US, we caught him, and we agreed with every part of that, we could not legally hand him back. Or, rather, if we tried, we'd fail in the extradition court.
Because we signed the UN Convention Against Torture: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-against-torture-and-other-cruel-inhuman-or-degrading
Article 3
1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
That is a treaty signed by the President and both Houses of Congress, which makes it US law. I know that's not really phrased how US law is, but it really is US law. (Treaties are kinda like the constitution. Parts of them tell the government to enact legislation, like the constitution says 'Make a court system' and this treaty says 'You must outlaw torture under your jurisdiction', which requires a bunch of laws, and other parts, like this, are more akin to the 1st amendment, which merely forbids the government from doing something and hence needs no enabling legislation to function.)
Who do you think the competent authorities would be here? Who do we think should issue determinations about other countries? I would like to propose...the United States State Department! The State Department in 2023 (The most recent report) said this about El Salvador: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/528267_EL-SALVADOR-2023-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and Other Related Abuses
The law prohibited such practices, but there were credible reports that government officials employed them.
Human rights organizations and media outlets reported complaints of abuse United States Department of State • Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and mistreatment of detainees by prison guards. On July 14, a coalition of human rights organizations at an Interamerican Human Rights Commission public audience stated they collectively interviewed more than 100 released detainees, many of whom reported systemic abuse in the prison system, including beatings by guards and the use of electric shocks. The coalition alleged the treatment of prisoners constituted torture.
I could quote some more of the document that lays out specific instances, but it's rather horrible. I don't think I need to document anything else here, I think at this point I just rest my case, the US government itself made it for me. They themselves believe there is a high risk of torture and abuse in Salvadorian prisons.
There's an open question if we can deport someone to El Salvador if we _don't_ think they'll end up in prison, that maybe is okay, but we certainly can't rendition people directly to those prisons!
And once they’ve established they can do it to a legal resident, American citizens won’t be far behind.
Point of order: They've already done this. There are American citizens that they have renditioned to CECOT already. (BTW: The word is REDENTIONED, not deported. Deportation ends with someone being free, just in another country.)
What's that, you say? You haven't heard about that?
If they are renditioned without trial, and without their names being made public, then how the hell would you know?
If your first response is 'The Trump administration would not do that?', first, where have you been, and second, without a trial, nothing is stopping them from doing that 'by accident'.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/story/2018-04-27/ice-held-an-american-man-in-custody-for-1273-days The errors reveal flaws in the way ICE identifies people for deportation, including its reliance on databases that are incomplete and plagued by mistakes. The wrongful arrests also highlight a presumption that pervades U.S. immigration agencies and courts that those born outside the United States are not here legally unless electronic records show otherwise. And when mistakes are not quickly remedied, citizens are forced into an immigration court system where they must fight to prove they should not be removed from the country, often without the help of an attorney.
Hey, you know what we don't have anymore for those people? Those pesky trials.
It is almost certain that at least one person that the Trump administration has renditioned to the torture prison in El Salvador is a US citizen. By 'accident' in the sense they probably didn't intent to do it deliberately, but by blatant reckless negligence, you know, the way ICE has always operated.
Hey, this is a fun article to read, and note he's only in court because he was first detained in 2023 and in the courts already, otherwise he probably would have been shipped out already: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/man-detained-ice-claims-citizenship-rcna198012
Notice the extremely stupid thing being decided here, specifically US law allows minors who are immigrants and their parents become citizens to become citizens, but only if _both_ parents do it, unless the minors are 'out of wedlock', which is just a staggeringly stupid way of understanding things. And the US government already decided he was a citizen, until it decided, years later, he wasn't.
The funniest part of this is the 'UN Conventions on Torture stop of from deporting someone who will probably end up in a Salvadorian prison' that a judge decided is just blithely stated in the article that was written March 27th, 2025, and the article just continues, ignoring the, uh, extremely obvious conclusion about some other news story that fact creates. Really feel like that should make the news more often.
On “Gender Critical: Legally Defining Sex”
It's almost the inverse, actually.
Or, to rephrase: A lot of this comes down to whether or not one believes that we can reach women's equality by concluding that we cannot actually solve any problems at all. To the extent of being unwilling to stop rape inside _entirely controlled-and-monitored facilities_, so we just have to throw up our hands and make sure that _one_ group doesn't rape women. (Guards raping women, a much larger problem, totally fine. Likewise, other women, totally fine.)
That is the totality of effort: In this one specific case, we are willing to physically stop this very particular sort of rape of some women by a certain specific group.
GO FEMINISM! *raises hands in victory sign* WOO!
Or, new idea: We should not have rape essentially running wild in prison. We should not have male prisoners raping other male prisoners , we should not have male prisoners raping female prisoners, we should not have male guards raping male or female prisoners, we should not have male prisoners raping trans female prisoners, we should not have female prisoners raping other female prisoners, we should not, in fact, have any of that happening at all.
Which is a thing we could trivially do.
Instead, we have built a system where it is happening openly and _encouraged_ by prison staff.
Hey, InMD, I said it to Dark, but did you happen to google v-coding? Do you know what that is? It's when prison guards reward a well-behaving prisoner, or just one that bribes them well, with a trans woman cellmate to rape.
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That's completely irrelevant to the point being made here.
Your claim was you didn't think that feminists would like women's sports going away, not some hypothetical 'fairness' argument that _you_ believe but actual feminists do not.
Feminists don't care if there are statistical differences. Feminist theory does not, and never have argued that random things should be 'fair'. I know that's what the _right_ has pretended, for decades, but that's not at all true.
Actual feminists have a lot of things to say on these issues. Here's what, for example, is said about grade schools sports:
Grade school athletics are supposed to be _educational_, not 'a record-defining competition to see who is literally the best'. It is okay and even expected to have differing skill levels. Especially considering that a major factor in ability in grade-school athleticism is literally just 'who is the oldest' and 'who hit their growth spurt first', and when there is that much variation in a single grade, and that sports are often played across grade, it is pointless to pretend girls are weaker, especially since girls usually hit their growth spurt first.
Additionally, sports as provided by grade schools are very weighted towards ones that boys appear to be better at. Almost no one is doing sports programs that girls generally dominate in, like gymnastics. This seems...odd. But there's a reason for that: We have allowed the popularity of sports to be a huge funding source to school, allowing any general societal sexism to dictate what sports exist and demand that teams 'win' instead of just having sports as, again, _education_ and general activities for students, which is what it should be.
To summarize: Claiming that 'girls will not do as well as boys while playing on a mixed-sex team' in _grade school_ fundamentally, and somewhat deliberately, misunderstands why we _have_ sports in grade school. It is not to see which school is 'the best'. It is not to see which individual player is best.
It is because being part of a sport and a team and competing as such is very good experience.
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And as for prisons, you _really_ need to talk to some feminists, because most of them have pretty serious problem with the entire carceral system, from top to bottom, especially the level of sexual assault allowed to exist within it.
Within the existing system, feminism generally operates off a harm migration system, where decisions are made about individual prisoners and the risk.
And they have much much more a problem with male guards at women's prisons than trans people. And they also know that v-coding exists, a thing you are about to google and then immediately wish you had not googled.
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Then you have never listened to feminists.
Let me explain something that a lot of people get very very wrong about sports: The feminist argument was not that women should get their own team. The feminist argument was that women _should be allowed to play_, period. They were not allowed to play sports in any manner whatsoever before that, and if they were, it was absurdly underfunded segregated dumb games.
The feminist position was, and always has been, that women should be allowed to play with them men. Women's sports do not exist because of feminists. They exist _despite_ feminists. The regulations in Title IX, when it was created in 1972, originally said in 1972: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
You may notice that doesn't say anything about segregating sports. Indeed, the original regulation, as pushed by the national Organization of Women and other feminist groups, would seem to prohibit it. If an educational athletic team does not allow women, it would be illegal.
Which got a lot of female college potential athletes suing, because they wanted access to sports, to play actual real sports with the men, and still were not allowed to play.
So, eventually, these Federal regulations were made into law, in 1975. And an amendment was added: A recipient which operates or sponsors interscholastic, intercollegiate,club or intramural athletics shall provide equal athletic opportunity for members of both sexes. In determining whether equal opportunities are available, the Director will consider, among other factors:... Whether the selection of sports and levels of competition effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of members of both sexes ...
You may notice _that_ doesn't require a separate women's sports either. But it's suddenly moved from allowing access to any 'education program or activity' without consideration of sex to allowing 'equal opportunities' while considering sex. I.e., recreating separate but equal. With a whole bunch of rules about how we would know if something was equal.
This amendment was added by Senator Jacob Javits, a Republican, although a fairly liberal one who did seem to be pretty much in favor of civil rights. It's called the Javits Amendment.
This was not at all what feminism organizations asked for. It wasn't a step forward, it literally undid some of the existing regulation and created an _exception_ to anti-discrimination law. It was a step _backwards_, designed to fix the new and exciting 'problem' of women attempt to try out for college sports and the revenue impact that was perceived to have on sports.
Or just read this: https://lewisbrisbois.com/blog/category/sports-law/fifty-years-of-progress-the-legal-history-of-title-ix
The law has certainly seen its fair share of adversity and backlash, particularly in its application to sport. Immediately following its enactment (and in the years thereafter), Title IX faced an onslaught of challenges, whether through subsequent proposed amendments or through lawsuits challenging its legality and attempting to narrow its scope. In 1974, Senator John Tower proposed the “Tower Amendment,” which sought to exempt revenue-generating sports from Title IX’s reach. When that failed, Senator Jacob Javits submitted an amendment directing HEW to issue regulations providing, “with respect to intercollegiate athletic activities, reasonable provisions considering the nature of particular sports.”
tl;dr - Women's sports under Title IX do not exist to advance feminism, they exist as an _exception_ to the anti-discrimination rules a school would normally be required to follow, the rules that feminists pushed for. At best, they can be considered as a political compromise made 50 years ago when it became clear that collegiate sports were a particular sticking point for the law.
On “US Department of Education Announces that it is Restarting Loan Collection”
As I've joked serious-seriously, you could write a plausible time-travel story where the concentration of more and wealth in less and less hands, the complicit media refused to explain where the problems are but continue to 'blame literally anyone else, like immigrants', and of course blaming Hillary because she got elected in 2016 results in politics becoming completely broken, or even more broken, by 2020.
So in 2020, or maybe 2024, a charismatic and extremely intelligent fascist leader gets elected, wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. He does not make anywhere near the same mistakes as Trump, he works tirelessly but competently to erode all safeguards in the system. The constitution is continued to be slowly eroded under the guise of 'terrorism', and 'protestor' is treated functionally the same, and the elections are not even slightly free, but all that happens slowly by the _end_ of his term, not spending an entire term doing nothing because he was managed like a toddler, and then doing a bunch of really dumb stuff instantly in his second term.
And by 2050, the US has managed to competently and slowly oppress a large chunk of the rest of the world...possibly not outright conquering, but via puppet governments and threats.
...and the time travelers ask themselves 'How we derail this?' and look around, and, hey say, Donald Trump (Who in the original timeline tried to become Mayor of NYC under fascism and flamed out spectatularly.) is a giant idiot, what happens if we get Obama to piss him off and run in 2016?
This might be the good timeline, people.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
I could argue it does slightly reflect badly on their _competence_, indeed, they admitted they had poor controls over some of that and no real oversight. And created a policy afterward.
But being incompetent in oversight of a specific thing to stop people from stealing from you isn't the same as 'lacks moral authority'. It's not even Harvard 'being bad at their job'...they aren't a body bank, pretending such things existed. They're a school, their job is education, and schools are often pretty bad at security, and often do end up having wake-up calls when people steal from them.
This case is just somewhat icky because of what was stolen, but that doesn't reflect on Harvard's moral authority unless you think it's immoral for Harvard to have bodies at all. (Which would be a distinctly minority view...most people understand why medical school have cadavers.)
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JFK Jr. is also going to start trying to control medications and bodily autonomy of autistic people, literally talking about imprisoning them, and is threatening to cut off ADHD medication. Very eugenic-y things.
Also same about trans healthcare, but somehow that's completely unrelated and fine to a bunch of people here. It's surely not the exact same tendency.
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..the guy stole bodies _from_ Harvard, sold them to others, and was fired for doing so when Harvard learned of it.
What a weird thing to think harms Harvard's moral authority.
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Personally, I don't think the US should go up against the Pentagon, I hear the military they control is the best in the world.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
Again, you cannot _possible_ believe that 'arrested for standing Hispanically in a Home Depot parking lot', and two people nearby included gang members, can even _possibly_ be an indication of gang membership that would withstand any legal test.
You are not that stupid.
As for the protective order: His wife is literally advocating for his return.
He also was never actually charged with a crime. We do not punish people for having protective orders against them, because _getting a protective order does not require due process_.
If they want to charge him with assault, they can. Of course, it would be a pretty stupid case as the only witness is his wife, who, duh, they can't legally compel to testify against him.
On “4th Circuit Court on Abrego Garcia: Read It For Yourself”
A reminder of where we are:
The habeas filings have all followed the Supreme Court’s 5-4 order in Trump v. J.G.G. on April 7 holding that AEA challenges had to be brought in habeas actions — and vacating the prior classwide order, brought under the Administrative Procedure Act, blocking AEA proclamation-based removals nationwide.
As such, a habeas petition was filed by lawyers from the ACLU on behalf of two petitioners and a “putative class” in the Northern District of Texas on April 16. As with the other recent filings, the aim was for this to protect anyone from AEA proclamation-removal within the district. That is the putative, or proposed, class.
I.e., this is the ACLU following along with the nonsense idea that 'The government can rendition these people without a trial as long as they are warned they are going to be renditioned and do not manage to contact a lawyer and get a habaes petition filed fast enough, and no we won't be specific about the time limitation there or whether or not they can even contact a lawyer'.
The ACLU apparently took that as a challenge, and it appears that _enough_ people in the government take issue with this enough to be leaking information and that a flight was imminent from Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas. Today. On Saturday. So they filed a TRO Friday evening, it got appealed up the chain fast enough, and the Supreme Court had to step in at fricking one in the morning.
'We can send individuals off to be tortured with no due process, and no way to ever give them due process, unless, and only unless, some lawyer learns we're going to do that and manages to get a response from the actual literal Supreme Court faster than we can get a plane off the ground.'
...and yet the ACLU pulled it off.
This is an INSANE way to run a legal system.
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Starting to think we need two sorts of open threads. Normal open threads, and threads for 'current legal status of gulag rendition', which keeps changing so fast no one can really write an article on it.
Anyway, hours after _this_ was posted, the Surpreme Court, at one in the morning on a Saturday, issued a blanket TRO saying the administration cannot rendition anyone from the Northern Distract of Texas under the AEA. This, notable, does not have anything to do with Abrego Garcia, it's because the ACLU filed a blanket habeas for _everyone_ who is going to renditioned. (You know, those people who got the forms the other day.)
https://www.lawdork.com/p/supreme-court-aea-april-late-night-order
This is in addition to the one TRO that already existed within the Southern District of Texas stopping the same thing. (Which I think is the one in the article? And also the one that is currently being looked into for contempt because they did not turn the planes around as the judge ordered.)
It is worth pointing out that the Trump Administration is almost out of jurisdiction shopping. This is the jurisdiction _they wanted_ and they can't even get favorable results from it.
It is completely absurd that no one will issue a nation-wide injunction about this.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
There’s a drip drip drip of new information that, if not calculated, is unfortunate enough to suspect that it was calculated.
No, they are much too stupid to do that, just like they are much too stupid to bring him back, have a immigration trial, and deport him.
Meanwhile, the fact his rendition (1) to El Salvador was against court order, which has resulted in legal proceeding moving a lot faster than they would have otherwise, so if this was calculated, it was calculated by...idiots, okay, I guess I changed my mind, it certainly could have been calculated by the Trump administration.
1) Again: Not deportation. Deportation results in you being free in the county you are deported to.
There's a specific term for transferring custody of prisoners between governments, and it is not deportation, it's 'rendition'. Extradition is rendition. Prisoners swaps are rendition. (Although those usually result in the person being freed immediately.) The Bush administrations' illegal renditions were renditions.
The difference is important, because deportation is generally considered to be a lot less harm. You're free at the end of it, just...not here. We can use very lax immigration courts for it, we have looser standards and things that are not actually crimes that people are held to, etc.
Whereas rendition results in an imprisoned person at the end, and thus people have a lot more rights. We can deport people for things we could _never_ extradite them for.
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No, he was arrested the first time in 2019 with a group of people at a Home Depot, 2 of whom were (apparently) MS 13 members. ... He was legally in the country subject to that order when he was picked up the second time in March, this time loitering outside of an IKEA, and again with a group of people that (apparently) included MS 13 members.
I honestly do not know how to phrase this, because my first five tries were very direct personal attacks, but let me try: It is literally impossible for you to seriously believe 'A bunch of Hispanic undocumented immigrants loitering outside of a Home Depot and an IKEA' is anything over than 'undocumented immigrants looking for work'. And they were almost certainly stranding 'near' each other because _that is where the undocumented workers trying to get hired were standing that day_.
You KNOW this a deliberate misrepresentation of a very common situation. Every American who has ever gone to Home Depot and looked at 'Bunch of Hispanic guys standing over to the side' understands exactly what is going on. That isn't some gang loitering, that isn't some social club, that isn't a group of friends, it's where you go to hire cheap and almost certainly undocumented labor. They might literally have met ten minutes earlier.
But you don't like illegal immigration, so you have decided to pretend it must be something else.
On “Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s Residence Attacked, Suspect Arrested”
So, yes, that sounds plausible, but also...no. It's not _just_ that.
There are a lot of people who have been greatly injured by the government, or at least think they have. That is not a political position, and it happens to people all over the political spectrum. Sometimes these people become political, and it's somewhat normal. Other times people become radicalized. And that can happen a lot of different ways.
But there is a very specific category out there created by politics, and that is the far right violence-hole, for lack of a better term. The Proud Boys, the 3%ers, all sorts of internet forums that threat violence as a normal and inevitable outcome. The people who propose 'second amendment remedies', who will happy tell you if anything bad happens to you from the government, you should start attempting to 'overthrow' them.
This is not the only political group that has done this. The Anarchists, for example, historically were really good at it about a century ago. There were all sorts of far left groups running around in the seventies.
But currently there is exactly one group like that.
And before anyone tries to BSDI, I feel I should point at the current political environment, at who the government is currently harming, and that almost all actual political violence that is happening is _still_ being done by the right. If there ever was a time for the actual political violence, it would be against 'send people without trial to foreign gulags', but...nope. And the amount of LGBTQ people throwing bricks at cops for harassing queer people in the bathroom is, sadly, still zero.
That's because most of this country is _extremely_ reluctant to start political violence, and the rest draw the line at some levels of property damage. But there is one very small group of people who are promote it constantly, who promote shooting and killing government officials, and sometimes people who are generally incoherent or apolitical but angry, justified or not, find those groups and latch on to that bit. It doesn't so much matter what _their_ politics are.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
There's a thing the left says 'It's always projection'. The right always wants to do very illegal things, so it just builds entire structures that lie and say that is what the left is doing.
So when they do it, they can point at the lies.
Republicans held an entire investigation that deliberately mislead people that an ill-conceived IRS setup that investigated a huge influx of politically-named charities, on _both sides_. Republicans did this by literally ordering investigation into _just_ the charities on the right that were looked into. And by 'looked into', I mean 'Asked a few more questions', not 'rejected', or 'audited', or anything. They just said 'Hey, this preclearance you want us to issue needs a few questions answered'.
And now, we have President Trump openly calling for the IRS to revoke (Not investigate, just outright revoke), the tax exempt status of Harvard explicitly for political reason.
I'm sure this is claimed as an escalation by people _who believe the original lies_, but those lies are, in fact, lies.
Same with 'Bill Clinton might have hypothetically said something about the investigation of Hillary to Loretta Lynch on the tarmac', and how merely the slightly appearance of that required investigation. Do you remember that?
That wasn't even 'a lie', that was just complete nonsense from top to bottom, creating allegations out of thin air.
But now we have...I don't even need to pick an example of how the DOJ works now, where it's basically a direct appendage of the White House instead of having any separation at all.
I'm sure that all started with Democrats, with that meeting on the tarmac, somehow.
Over and over and over, Republicans just outright lied about crap, and the media went along with it, and not only did that help them then, it means, somehow, when Republicans actually wander into outright fascism, it means the Democrats did it first because a speaker got protested at a campus somewhere and that's _sorta_ like the US deporting people for their political views, right?
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I’m pretty sure that we’re *ALL* members of the press. When the First Amendment was written, “the press” was just a guy who had one. That’s it.
You might consider yourself a member of the press, but when a private citizen, or even a company, calls a press conference, the press is whoever they want it to be.
We can talk about rights if it's some government agency. Indeed, the Universal Life Church, in addition to ordaining ministers, will give out 'Press Passes' that they say are as good as any newspaper for legally getting access to government press events, although that's very 'three decades ago' as the rules changed as bloggers started issuing their own to themselves.
But that's not what happened here. This appears to have been a private event and thus the people invited are whoever the people holding it want invited.
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I have to say, while I am not a Free Speech Abolutist, I am very confused.
I didn't know you could abstractly have press conferences. I always assumed all events that happened in this universe happened at locations that were legally controlled by specific people, and when you gave press conferences you specifically invited members of the press, not general passerbys.
Meanwhile, um...like, if a family member has been accused of a crime, or was the victim of a crime, do not show up to surprise the other person's family members. Like, either way. If you want to reach out for some good reason, after thinking long and hard about it, that's what lawyers are for, or at maximum some sort of impersonal contact they can not engage with, like a phone call, or, better, a letter. Do not show up at their frickin press conference.
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I think it's worth reminding people that the Republicans are setting precedent after precedent that would, in their minds, be _absolutely disastrous_ to let Dems have.
They don't expect to ever give up power.
I'm going to be honest here: While I knew this country was going to descend into outright fascism, because I paid attention and _knew_ what Trump had tried to do the last time he was in office, and had been stopped by the 'sane people' around him that he would not have this time...
...but I really did not expect concentration camps in the first three months, or open threats to jail people for dissent.
They're really trying to speed-run this, aren't they?
Meanwhile, David Brooks is still an idiot, and can't resist adding this: Many have allowed themselves to become shrouded in a stifling progressivism that tells half the country: Your voices don’t matter. Through admissions policies that favor rich kids, the elite universities have contributed to a diploma divide. If the same affluent families come out on top generation after generation, then no one should be surprised if the losers flip over the table.
I'm not even particularly a fan of 'progessivism', really, but I'm pretty certain they have been essentially the one meaningful voice _against_ legacy admissions at universities. Or, you know, stopping 'the same affluent families coming out on top generation after generation', via things like, uh, taxes.
It really amazing how good conservatives are at conflating 'The wealth often have very milquetoast liberal-sounding values' with 'This means the left must like the wealthy more than the right'. It's that whole 'teams' thing that people keep blathering about instead of actual policy.
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It matters if it harms someone's else. That's called fraud.
The question is to what extent any of this does.
You may notice that we are still talking about 'unproven things people wrote in blogs' and 'letters that people in the Trump administration wrote', things which, it should be pointed out, have absolutely no requirement to be anywhere near the truth, and are very much hedging that these supposed misstatements 'might' have provided a benefit to her.
Also, it's worth mentioning that mortgage documents from 1984 and even 2000 are extremely outside the status of limitations, so that loan co-signing with her father is fairly irrelevant. (In addition to being a rather obvious mistake because that is utterly irrelevant to getting a loan and no one would do that on purpose.)
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I am not sure if what these law firms did is a smart thing. It sorta depends if they can get it in _his_ head as an agreement between equals or near equals. Considering how much Trump has fought lawyers in his life, he might actually see them as a threat and consider them equal enough that he will stop. Maybe?
Well, that was answered quickly:
https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/04/law-firms-sold-their-souls-to-trump-now-hes-rubbing-their-noses-in-it.html
On “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
Yeah, it kinda is interesting that a lot of people have focused on a really specific 'This is being done without a trial' and 'Trump is threatening to expand this to citizens' (Failing to notice that without a trial where you can prove you're a citizen, there's no distinction between citizen and non-citizen.), without noticing the other stuff this violates.
It is a violation of the US Convention against Torture, as the US government itself has decided, and I just pointed out. But those laws are state-level things and it would be, hypothetically, possible to argue people cannot be charged under US law with them. (Just taken to the Hague, but we'd never allow that.)
And it is also involuntary servitude. A thing which we do have laws about. That prison has forced labor. Which is involuntary servitude. (The difference between slavery and involuntary servitude is slavery also regards the person as property, whereas involuntary servitude is not and they can hypothetically retain some rights.) And I quote our constitution about involuntary servitude:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
You may notice a key phrase in that sentence, 'duly convicted'. We are very used to prison labor, sorta ignore how horrific it is and how it is, literally, involuntary servitude, and we had to write an exception inside the anti-slavery law to allow it. But...that exception is pretty specific. You have to be duly convicted of a crime.
Now, is this involuntary servitude happening under 'US jurisdiction', which I will point out the amendment makes _very clear_ is not merely 'within the US borders' because it lists both of those things? Yes, they are. Because we have a law saying so: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1596 (That is the slavery/involuntary servitude/human trafficking part of the code.)
18 U.S. Code § 1596 - Additional jurisdiction in certain trafficking offenses
(a) In General.—In addition to any domestic or extra-territorial jurisdiction otherwise provided by law, the courts of the United States have extra-territorial jurisdiction over any offense (or any attempt or conspiracy to commit an offense) under section 1581, 1583, 1584, 1589, 1590, or 1591 if—
(1) an alleged offender is a national of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as those terms are defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101)); or
If you traffic people, and are a US citizen or US national, the US explicitly asserts jurisdiction over the offense and can charge you with a crime even if you do it completely outside the US.
And _that_ makes the 13th amendment apply to all this:
18 U.S. Code § 1590 - Trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor
(a) Whoever knowingly recruits, harbors, transports, provides, or obtains by any means, any person for labor or services in violation of this chapter shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If death results from the violation of this section, or if the violation includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or the attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, the defendant shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or life, or both.
Before anyone tries to get into details if the 13th applies, trying to argue that jurisdiction over a crime is not the same as jurisdiction over where the crime is happening...note that isn't actually important. The law still exists, regardless. It is just as criminal even if the 13th amendment doesn't apply and this behavior could _hypothetically_ be legal.
People in ICE, all of who are presumably US citizens, transported people to a location (Called a prison, but prisons are used for law enforcement purposes. This is more properly called a 'camp'.) where they are going to be forced to work, for free. Without being duly convicted of a crime. That is transporting someone into illegal and unconstitutional involuntary servitude.
Everyone who participated in this should be arrested and charged criminally with hundreds of crime, one for each person.
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Yes, we all remember the made-up story that Republicans tried to make happen but the Democrats did not actually do, and yet how you still seem to believe it actually happened.
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A lot of people here are focused on the fact this is happening without a trial, which is bad, and not on the fact the US cannot legally send people to a prison in El Salvador _even with a trial_. And I don't mean because of some obscure jurisdiction issues or something. I mean, straight up, if a man killed someone in El Salvador, fled to the US, we caught him, and we agreed with every part of that, we could not legally hand him back. Or, rather, if we tried, we'd fail in the extradition court.
Because we signed the UN Convention Against Torture: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-against-torture-and-other-cruel-inhuman-or-degrading
Article 3
1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
That is a treaty signed by the President and both Houses of Congress, which makes it US law. I know that's not really phrased how US law is, but it really is US law. (Treaties are kinda like the constitution. Parts of them tell the government to enact legislation, like the constitution says 'Make a court system' and this treaty says 'You must outlaw torture under your jurisdiction', which requires a bunch of laws, and other parts, like this, are more akin to the 1st amendment, which merely forbids the government from doing something and hence needs no enabling legislation to function.)
Who do you think the competent authorities would be here? Who do we think should issue determinations about other countries? I would like to propose...the United States State Department! The State Department in 2023 (The most recent report) said this about El Salvador: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/528267_EL-SALVADOR-2023-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and Other Related Abuses
The law prohibited such practices, but there were credible reports that government officials employed them.
Human rights organizations and media outlets reported complaints of abuse United States Department of State • Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and mistreatment of detainees by prison guards. On July 14, a coalition of human rights organizations at an Interamerican Human Rights Commission public audience stated they collectively interviewed more than 100 released detainees, many of whom reported systemic abuse in the prison system, including beatings by guards and the use of electric shocks. The coalition alleged the treatment of prisoners constituted torture.
I could quote some more of the document that lays out specific instances, but it's rather horrible. I don't think I need to document anything else here, I think at this point I just rest my case, the US government itself made it for me. They themselves believe there is a high risk of torture and abuse in Salvadorian prisons.
There's an open question if we can deport someone to El Salvador if we _don't_ think they'll end up in prison, that maybe is okay, but we certainly can't rendition people directly to those prisons!
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Point of order: They've already done this. There are American citizens that they have renditioned to CECOT already. (BTW: The word is REDENTIONED, not deported. Deportation ends with someone being free, just in another country.)
What's that, you say? You haven't heard about that?
If they are renditioned without trial, and without their names being made public, then how the hell would you know?
If your first response is 'The Trump administration would not do that?', first, where have you been, and second, without a trial, nothing is stopping them from doing that 'by accident'.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/story/2018-04-27/ice-held-an-american-man-in-custody-for-1273-days
The errors reveal flaws in the way ICE identifies people for deportation, including its reliance on databases that are incomplete and plagued by mistakes. The wrongful arrests also highlight a presumption that pervades U.S. immigration agencies and courts that those born outside the United States are not here legally unless electronic records show otherwise. And when mistakes are not quickly remedied, citizens are forced into an immigration court system where they must fight to prove they should not be removed from the country, often without the help of an attorney.
Hey, you know what we don't have anymore for those people? Those pesky trials.
It is almost certain that at least one person that the Trump administration has renditioned to the torture prison in El Salvador is a US citizen. By 'accident' in the sense they probably didn't intent to do it deliberately, but by blatant reckless negligence, you know, the way ICE has always operated.
Hey, this is a fun article to read, and note he's only in court because he was first detained in 2023 and in the courts already, otherwise he probably would have been shipped out already: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/man-detained-ice-claims-citizenship-rcna198012
Notice the extremely stupid thing being decided here, specifically US law allows minors who are immigrants and their parents become citizens to become citizens, but only if _both_ parents do it, unless the minors are 'out of wedlock', which is just a staggeringly stupid way of understanding things. And the US government already decided he was a citizen, until it decided, years later, he wasn't.
The funniest part of this is the 'UN Conventions on Torture stop of from deporting someone who will probably end up in a Salvadorian prison' that a judge decided is just blithely stated in the article that was written March 27th, 2025, and the article just continues, ignoring the, uh, extremely obvious conclusion about some other news story that fact creates. Really feel like that should make the news more often.