Authoritarian Creep(s) [TEASER]

Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects.

On this subscriber-only episode of 5-4,

Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about the latest horrors coming out of the Trump administration.

Suppression of free speech, attacks on federal judges, and an ongoing campaign of mass deportation without due process.

Nearly 300 Venezuelans are in El Salvador tonight after being deported from the United States without a hearing under a rarely used 18th century law and despite a federal judge's order blocking the move.

An administration official claiming many are members of the Venezuelan gang Trend de Aragua, but they gave no evidence for how they determined the migrants are connected to the gang.

Already, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on its use of an 18th century law to deport nearly 300 Venezuelans to El Salvador.

As you'll hear, many more of the legal battles Trump has provoked will likely reach the court in the coming months and years.

5-4 will be here to dissect and analyze every last one.

Well, depending on how many there are.

This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have weakened our civil liberties, like a Department of Defense group chat, weakening our national security.

Oops.

I'm Peter.

I'm here with Michael.

Hey, everybody.

And Rhiannon.

Hello.

They have the same OPSEC that we do

with some of our group chats.

Worse.

Worse.

Worse because they're inviting journalists who work for the Atlantic.

And one hard and fast rule of our group chat is no one who works for the Atlantic is allowed.

Certainly not Jeffrey Goldberg.

Yeah.

Hell no.

Hell no.

You won't catch me.

fucking dead with Jeffrey Goldberg in my group.

In the group chat with Jeffrey Goldberg.

That's the difference between me and Pete Hegseth.

All right.

So we promised everyone that we'd be checking in from time to time on the Trump administration.

And here we are again.

The first couple of months were sort of narratively defined by Doge's rampage through the federal government and the resulting constitutional crisis, which of course is still ongoing.

Yes.

But we are starting to see a sort of second phase, at least narratively, where the shape of Trump's mass deportation campaign is starting to crystallize.

So we are going to talk about that today with a related discussion about the administration's attack on free speech.

We are sort of seeing the different modes of authoritarianism play out, right?

We've seen Trump seizing power away from the other branches of government.

And now we are seeing crackdowns on disfavored populations, starting with the most politically vulnerable.

And that is immigrants.

Yeah, this is this all goes back to consolidation of power in the executive, it seems, with this Trump administration.

And I know we did promise, and I'm happy to do these kind of check-ins with the shenanigans happening with the Trump administration, but we're a Supreme Court podcast and really a lot of this is like preview for Supreme Court cases.

Oh, yeah.

As a lot of this stuff makes its way through the legal system.

So we're still a Supreme Court podcast.

I think the way to think about a lot of this stuff is that the Supreme Court, they're rubbing their hands together mischievously looking at all of this, right?

They're going to uphold some of it.

They're going to strike some of it down.

Either way, they're excited.

This rules if you're a power-hungry little rat in a robe.

Yeah.

Because you get to decide a bunch of things that you never thought you would in America, America, right?

Right.

It's exciting.

It's exciting for the judicial fascists among us.

So let's sort of frame this up.

Hey, folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe.

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