Trump Brings the War Home [UNLOCKED]

y'all, Rhiannon here with a gift to our beautiful, smart, and powerful listeners.

We are unlocking the premium episode that we released earlier this week so that now it is on the free feed and available to everybody.

This episode is about the militarization of immigration enforcement and the police, about how the Trump administration is incorporating the U.S.

military into this racist and violent kidnappings of our neighbors.

neighbors.

We start with talking about what happened in Los Angeles earlier this summer, and you actually have many of our paid subscribers to thank for us releasing this.

A bunch of people said that they wanted to see this episode unlocked for everyone so that it can be heard by more people and shared widely.

So go off, kings, queens, royalty.

Before I turn it over to the episode, I just want to remind everyone that if you like this episode, you can check out our entire backlog of premium and ad-free episodes by subscribing at patreon.com/slash five fourpod.

Our premium episodes are mostly about more ambitious topics in law and politics, from episodes on propaganda to the legal battles under authoritarianism to what the helly is going on in John Roberts' mind.

These episodes are usually a little longer than our case episodes.

We will talk to an expert sometimes, or a lot of the time, bring in our own extra research.

And Michael usually has at least two rage rants per premium episode.

So check it all out by subscribing for $5 or $10 a month at patreon.com/slash five fourpod, all spelled out.

See ya.

Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects.

On this subscriber-only episode of 5-4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about President Trump's immigration crackdown, specifically as it relates to two ongoing cases in California.

Earlier this summer, masked ICE agents conducted aggressive raids in Los Angeles.

Five men who were picked up by ICE sued the government, claiming that ICE agents had failed to identify themselves or give a reason for their arrests, and that they were denied access to legal counsel.

In response to the raids, protests against ICE erupted in downtown Los Angeles, leading Trump to bypass California Governor Gavin Newsom and deploy the National Guard.

Newsom sued, asserting that Trump had exceeded his authority, but a court of appeals sided with the administration.

Both of these cases are active and might eventually make it to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, this is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court and our burgeoning police state suck.

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have turned our nation cryptically racist like an American Eagle ad.

Yes.

I'm Peter.

I'm here with Rhiannon.

Hey.

And Michael.

Sidney Sweeney can do no wrong, in my opinion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael, a big simp for Sidney Sweeney.

Simp.

I haven't heard that in in a long time.

That's really funny.

I have to say, I don't, it's very hard for me to care about the American Eagle ad where Sidney Sweeney says, like, it's in my genes.

And people are like, oh my God, she's doing Adolf Hitler.

I have good jeans or whatever.

And it's like, I agree that this is distasteful,

but I feel like you're putting a lot.

on the dipshits at American Eagles.

Yeah.

Who I promise you have no real ideology beyond selling their their third-rate ass genes.

Yeah, the pun, the gene pun.

It's the only gene pun you can do.

But

if you want to say it's distasteful, maybe even purposefully winking at like the right,

I would just kind of shrug my shoulders and say, okay, whatever.

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe.

I saw a TikTok that was like,

She says her genes are blue.

And that's a reference to blue bloods and hierarchy and all this like old, I don't know, man.

This is just left-wing green M ⁇ Ms.

I think some of this shit is like,

it's fucking like relax about the M ⁇ M lady's boots or Lola Bunny's tits or whatever.

Like,

or the Sydney Sweeney Gene ad.

Just be like, it's kind of gross.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you obsess over this stuff, you veer into left-wing Black Santa.

It's a little bit too much.

All right.

So today we're talking a little bit about the police state under Trump, and we're going to focus on what happened back in June in Los Angeles.

In June in Los Angeles, there were aggressive ICE raids.

There was community resistance and protest.

And there was escalation by the Trump administration, including the deployment of the National Guard.

At the time, a lot of people were calling on us to do an episode to cover it.

And sometimes we will cover breaking news, but we also don't want to be a podcast that just sees news about what Trump is doing and then says like, oh, holy shit, you guys seeing this?

Yeah.

But now we are a couple months later, and we have a better understanding of what happened on the ground as well as what is happening parallel across the country.

So we are going to talk about what happened in L.A.

And for that, we're going to use the ACLU's lawsuit as our basis.

They sued based on what happened in LA.

We're also going to talk about what we're seeing in other parts of the country and what it all tells us about the police state apparatus that the administration is trying to build.

Yeah, I think what we see out of this lawsuit and others is like a clearer and more detailed picture than what we could see just from news at the time.

And so you get some details, you get some statistics here, you get all in one place what the government announced that they were going to be doing, which is detaining and and trying to deport thousands of people right and what you get i think from the lawsuit as well is a look into one of the ways one of the weapons one of the tactics for confronting the trump administration here it's legal and so you know kind of looking at what the aclu sued over and what initially at the district court level, what the judge is saying so far.

So yeah, I think in this episode, we're talking about what happened in Los Angeles, the militarization of immigration enforcement, et cetera.

And we're also looking at the legal battle against some of this stuff.

So in early July, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the administration, various officials within the administration.

That lawsuit has now been joined by the city of Los Angeles, and it tells a very specific story of escalation in enforcement that emanates from the top down.

In January, as the administration got started, they gave each ICE field office a daily quota of 75 arrests.

There are 25 field offices across the country.

Obviously, having a quota changes the way that ICE operates, right?

Because now they need to hit that minimum number.

And immediately you see reports of more aggressive tactics than we've seen previously.

Courthouse arrests being the big one.

People showing up for court, you know, which is is doing your diligence to be in this country, and getting detained by ICE.

Very quickly, the administration also attempted to shut down several oversight departments within the Department of Homeland Security, like the Office for Civil Rights and the Citizenship and Immigration Services Omsbudman.

They rescinded internal guidance that restricted raids in sensitive areas like schools and hospitals and churches.

Then in May, Stephen Miller summoned the the heads of the ICE field offices to demand even more arrests.

So they're demanding more arrests simultaneously and just after

basically removing any structural accountability that's at DHS that enforces accountability on ICE.

Also, obviously ratcheting up the number of arrests that they're demanding ICE makes.

Yeah.

So.

Miller says that the agents no longer need to develop vetted target lists, but could aggressively, quote, push the envelope, which is the exact language used in an email.

They ratchet the quota up to 3,000 daily arrests nationwide.

Previously, it had been 75 per office, which is 2,250.

Plus, Miller threatens to fire the office heads in the bottom 10% of arrests across the country.

So the incentives for reckless arrests are sky high at this point, right?

Yeah, people who will lose their job if they're not overseeing the arrest of thousands of people.

Right.

So that's what's happening as we enter into June, right?

So how does this manifest on the ground?

Basically, it manifests in ICE consistently ignoring several key provisions of immigration law.

First, immigration agents generally need a warrant to arrest someone, but they can arrest someone without a warrant if, one, they have probable cause to believe that they're in violation of immigration law, and two, the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.

It seems that ICE has basically been ignoring both of these requirements, right?

There's reason to believe that at least at times they are not establishing probable cause that people are undocumented.

They are simply raiding places where they anticipate undocumented people will be and arresting everyone that fits the racial and ethnic profile.

And then they are also not establishing that these people are flight risks before making arrests.

We essentially know this because many people are arrested without being previously known to ICE and without questioning.

So they would have no way to establish their flight risk, right?

They're not even pretending to establish that these people are a flight risk.

They don't know who they are.

Regulations also require immigration officers to, one, identify themselves as an immigration officer who is authorized to execute an arrest, and two, state that the person is under arrest and the reason for the arrest, at least as soon as it is practical to do so.

We know from video footage and witness statements that this is not happening.

Not only are they not verbally identifying themselves, they're not always identifiable from their attire.

Yeah.

No, they're wearing masks.

You can't see their face.

They're in plain clothes.

They're in plain clothes, plain car.

Right.

DHS has also denied detained people access to counsel.

Attorneys reported being denied access to their clients at detention facilities in LA for days at a time.

They showed up one weekend and there was just a sign-up saying, like, no visitors this weekend.

Very unprecedented for attorneys to encounter that level of obstruction.

Yeah, just as an example, you know, I did criminal defense.

I was a public defender in criminal.

And yes, criminal law and immigration law are a little bit different, but when you're talking about access to counsel, you're actually talking about a constitutional right.

In my experience, practicing in the state of Texas, in rural and in urban jurisdictions, big cities, very, very rural, small cities.

I, as an attorney, could go to the jail 24 hours a day and access my client at any time in any of those places.

Now, that might not be the exact rule everywhere, but just to say, like, this is the most analogous situation in my direct experience.

And that's Texas.

We're not talking about some liberal jurisdiction.

Right.

You have unfettered access.

This is a constitutional right.

You can see your attorney.

The step down in protections and standards is just, it's massive, right?

Like the gap between those two things is, I think, not explainable by just, oh, this is immigration law, so it's different, right?

Right.

So the ACLU lawsuit brings several causes of action.

And this is not exhaustive, but they are alleging Fourth Amendment violations.

Fourth Amendment.

protects against your right against unlawful searches and seizures.

Violation of the immigration statutes and regulations for the arrests without probable cause or a flight risk, failure to identify the reasons for the arrest, denial of access to counsel.

They also have Fifth Amendment claims regarding conditions of confinement because the conditions of people's confinement are unconstitutional.

And in fact, people in LA were being held at a facility that's not meant.

to house people for long periods of time.

It's meant to be this like very brief temporary holding facility.

And they are alleging Fifth Amendment due process violations.

So that is what was brought before a federal judge in early July.

Yeah, lots of constitutional issues, right?

These are major, major, major violations of individuals' constitutional rights.

And as part of this lawsuit, individuals sued, but there are also organizations that sued.

They are legal organizations, the United Farm Workers, a union of, you know, many migrant workers and also citizen workers, also sued based on their membership and how these ICE raids and these detentions were hurting them as well.

So let's talk about what happened in court, at least initially.

This lawsuit gets filed.

And in the very, very initial stages, this is a big lawsuit.

It will take a long time.

One of the first steps is plaintiffs, the people who are suing, ask the court to issue a preliminary injunction, right?

We've talked about this before.

Most recently, we talked about injunctions in the episode, a few episodes ago on Trump v.

Casa.

And we talked about the standards for when judges grant injunctions.

And so remember that an injunction is an order that the defendants stop the harmful behavior, stop the thing that they're doing while the case makes its way through court.

And the test for whether a plaintiff should get an injunction, what it comes down to is in just like a really simplified way, first, there's this question that the judge initially answering, are the plaintiffs likely to succeed on the merits?

Are the claims that they're making about the ways that defendants are harming them, are the claims that they're making about their rights being violated?

Are those claims likely to succeed in the end?

And then second, a judge is considering, like, is an injunction needed to make sure that the plaintiffs don't suffer continued harm that will be irreparable, something that is not going to be able to get fixed.

So the judge needs to order that this behavior stop right now.

Let's get a little bit into the facts that are alleged here in this case.

This lawsuit gets filed in district court for the Central District of California.

The judge is Judge Mame Owusi Mensa Frimpong.

So Judge Frimpong,

we should just say, agrees with the plaintiffs on both of these questions.

They are likely to succeed on the merits, she says, and an injunction is needed to prevent the plaintiffs from suffering irreparable harm from the federal government.

And so, yeah, jumping into like some of the facts and the evidence that she's relying on, this is what she sees and this is how she's ruling.

So there are five individual plaintiffs.

Three of them were arrested together at a bus stop in Pasadena while they were waiting to be picked up for a job.

These men are Pedro Vázquez Perdomo, Carlos Alexander Osorto, Isaac Viegas Molina.

They were approached by multiple armed agents who were masked.

They had weapons.

They did not identify themselves.

They did not have a warrant.

All three men were surrounded.

They were handcuffed, detained, driven to another location where their IDs were checked for the first time, and they were put in a detention facility in the basement of a federal building in LA.

These men filed this lawsuit, joined this lawsuit during their detention from that basement in the federal building in LA.

Then they were denied access to a lawyer during their detention.

The other two individual plaintiffs are Jorge Hernandez Viramontes and Jason Brian Gavidia.

The first of them, Hernandez, was stopped at a car wash where he has worked for 10 years.

And by the way, car wash is basically on the list of places to target similar to like Home Depot parking lots, right?

Yep.

Where the premise is not like, oh, we know that there's someone undocumented there, which is what you realistically need to conduct an arrest if you're ICE.

Instead, it's like, where do undocumented people hang out?

We're just going to go there.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

We're going to talk about the factors that ICE is using to justify these stops and these detentions.

So yeah, Hernandez was at a car wash where he has worked for 10 years.

Gavidia was stopped at a tow yard where he was working on a car.

Both of these men are U.S.

citizens who were nonetheless surrounded, questioned, detained, again, by masked agents who did not identify themselves, despite both men having ID on them, like their real ID, like the driver's license, right?

One of them was put in a car and just driven around until ICE agents verified his citizenship and then he was dropped back off at the car wash, where the same day later on, another group of agents raided the car wash again.

The other man who was at the tow yard, he was surrounded by agents with assault rifles.

He was pushed against a metal gate.

His arms were twisted.

And even though he proved he was a citizen with his real ID, those agents stole his ID.

He never got his ID returned to him.

And so this is what Judge Phrimpong is reviewing and the evidence and the facts on which she is deciding: yes, I'm going to order an injunction.

The federal government has to stop doing this while this case proceeds.

And I just want to say, I think the decision, her order on the preliminary injunction and issuing a temporary restraining order, I recommend people go read it.

It's so refreshing to read a judge's opinion and order that is this frank, that is very clear, explains the law very well, I think, in an accessible way.

And she's just like not taking the bullshit, not at all.

She says, like, the evidence is overwhelming.

And so, remember, she's assessing in issuing the injunction, she is assessing in large part whether the plaintiffs will succeed on the merits later on.

And she says they are really likely to succeed.

They are likely to be able to show that stops are happening that should require at least reasonable suspicion, but no reasonable suspicion has been established.

They are very easily going to be able to show that the stops are actually based on four factors that ICE admits they are using that are impermissible justifications for arrest.

Those include race, those include speaking Spanish, and like Peter said, presence at a particular location or somebody having a particular type of work.

This is what ICE is saying they are using to justify arrests, right?

We're going to Home Depot parking lots.

We're going to car washes because we think that's where undocumented people are hanging out.

They're also, Judge Frampong says, very likely to be able to show that their right to an attorney was obstructed.

This is happening, she says, on its face, lots of evidence in their favor.

And so this is why ultimately the injunction is ordered.

So at this point, the federal government, at least in the central district of California, is ordered to stop these ICE raids and these detentions and the obstruction of access to counsel in the way they've been carried out.

Yeah.

And so just so people understand, this will be escalated.

up to the Ninth Circuit.

Yeah.

And then potentially the Supreme Court, where we'll find out whether Sam Alito thinks it's okay to arrest people because they are looking

Hispanic, speaking Spanish, hanging out at a Home Depot.

Why do I feel like we're about

to hear about some real thin technicalities, folks?

Yeah,

so.

I think that's a pretty good overview of like the ICE overreach in Los Angeles.

Of course, this wasn't met quietly by the people of Los Angeles.

And in fact, they almost immediately started protesting this big push by ICE.

Those protests got a little unruly.

At one point, they were at a location where ICE agents were

behind a locked gate at a parking lot.

and protesters used a big commercial dumpster as a battering ram to try to break through the gate.

The next day, people were throwing shit at federal officers and cars, and somebody threw a Molotov cocktail.

A car was burned.

People were not happy, let's just say.

People were not happy with ICE.

And in response, Donald Trump issued an executive order in which he said the protests or acts of violence directly inhibit, to the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States.

And therefore, under this statute 10 USC 12406,

he was taking control of the California National Guard and deputizing them and ordering them to essentially protect ICE, control the protests, protect federal property, and aid in these operations.

I want to pause here just to note that the definition that the administration is using here for rebellion

would

capture any protest that violates a law.

Yeah.

So you don't have a permit for your protest?

Engage in rebellion.

You know, break a curfew or something, engage in rebellion.

You know, there's really no end to how aggressively you could define rebellion if this is what you're using.

Directly inhibit the execution of laws.

Like if you're just kind of

blocking ICE agents, that's rebellion.

Regardless of whether you support the violence or oppose the violence, I think what's important to understand is that it's just being used as a very thin pretext here to call in the National Guard.

That's what's happening here.

Yeah.

So Gavin Newsom in the state of California sue

because they say like, that's our National Guard.

What the fuck do you think you're doing?

You can't, you can't do that.

That gets before Judge Charles Breyer, brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer,

pod favorite.

And Breyer enters a temporary restraining order returning control of the National Guard to the state of California, saying that essentially Trump exceeded his authority and that his determination that there was a rebellion was likely to be unsuccessful or like found, you know, wanting legally, and that the balance of interests and equities favor California, et cetera, et cetera.

The Ninth Circuit stayed that injunction, so essentially then returned control back to the federal government.

They said that the federal government's actually owed a lot of deference on what constitutes a rebellion.

The panel was two Trump appointees and one, I think, Biden appointee.

That has been then called for rehearing en bonk by the full Ninth Circuit, a question that is currently being briefed by the parties and considered by the Ninth Circuit, while the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel, the three judges, are moving on to the the actual merits of the injunction rather than just the initial stay pending appeal.

While, in turn, the district court is moving forward with the trial on whether or not

this is all legal.

So there's three different cases happening at once around this.

There is the trial set for August 11th about whether this is legal.

There is an appeal about a temporary restraining order/slash injunction pending the trial.

And then there's an N Bank hearing with the full Ninth Circuit, possibly about the Ninth Circuit panel's decision to return control of the National Guard to the federal government pending appeal.

That's the goods on the National Guard.

So currently the federal government has it.

That could change at any time.

And the trial for that will start probably just a week after this episode.

This feels like a good time for a break.

And we're back.

This is one of those interesting things where I feel like if you were on the left and appropriately cynical last year,

you might have said, you know, Donald Trump plans to deploy the military domestically, right?

He talks about it.

He is clearly interested in doing this.

He wanted to do it last term and was upset that he didn't.

Right.

The

response to that was either total silence from the media, not interested in talking about or a lot of people who would say, well, you know, not really.

There are legal constraints here.

The posse comitatus act, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

There are federalism concerns.

There's all this stuff that might prevent him from doing this.

All of that gave way very quickly.

There's a little bit of violence in LA, not nothing, but not a ton either.

And that was enough.

That was enough for a court to be like, all right, he can take the California National Guard.

Yeah.

So I don't know, just another sort of like institutional barrier that just

withered into nothing immediately.

Yeah.

And also, I think we should like get into the militarization of immigration enforcement itself,

which is the Trump administration incorporating the use of the military to not just,

you know, quote unquote respond to riots in LA, but to effectuate ICE detentions, ICE raids to support in that, and expanding the detention capacity of the federal government with regard to immigrants.

So back in May, DHS asked for 20,000 National Guard members to assist ICE in like day-to-day operations, night raids, quote-unquote rural interdictions.

They were asking National Guard members to start guarding ICE detention facilities.

And the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, obviously approved a lot of National Guard members already to assist in states like Florida, Louisiana, Texas.

And

back just a week ago, I think, this NPR report quoted a U.S.

official speaking on condition of anonymity, saying that hundreds more National Guards troops are expected to be called up to assist in immigration operations, ICE.

operations in Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

And then the expansion of military bases.

The Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, approved DHS making moves to expand military bases, to use military bases, two of them, one in New Jersey and one in Indiana, to do immigration detention, to be an immigration detention facility.

It is proposed that a thousand people at each of those military bases can be detained, in addition to a proposal to double the capacity for immigration detention at Guantanamo.

That would bring up immigration detention at Guantanamo Bay to 400 people.

And again, in that same NPR report, NPR reported that DHS currently has 57,000 people in ICE detention and only 41,000 beds so you know with this like militarization thing the incorporation of the military against our civilian population you're almost seeing this conceptual collapse between immigration and military concerns on the right, where you have like an executive order saying, hey, we're being invaded by a Venezuelan gang, using military language to describe immigration, right?

And that allows for them to call upon military resources.

Very sort of like classic fascist and pseudo-fascist politics where they are, you know, clamoring.

to utilize the military.

As much as Trump talks about the frivolousness of foreign wars and wanting to wind down foreign wars, there's still this unquenchable appetite on the right to utilize the military, to do violence.

And so you see a lot of the animus that was once targeted towards Afghanistan and Iraq just directed at immigrants domestically, and they call upon the same military resources to respond.

Yeah.

And to that point, according to a report from the Intercept,

A third of the entire southern border is now fully militarized in the form of four what are called national defense areas or NDAs for short.

Each NDA extends from a pre-existing military base and is

a few hundred to several hundred miles of terrain that the military patrols for migrants to detain and then hold and hand over to ICE.

The West Texas NDA, which is around El Paso, is an extension of Fort Bliss, the Army's Fort Bliss, which is also where they are currently, at the time of this recording, accepting bids to build a camp that will hold up to, I think, 30,000 migrants the last time I checked.

These NDAs and other enforcement actions have,

by some estimates, deployed over 20,000 troops domestically.

So 20,000 troops, in addition to the troops in la

in addition to as we've mentioned in previous episodes the military conducting some of the flights to secote to el salvador so involved in the actual deportation process itself to that end you know they also are discussing deploying 2 000 military personnel to ICE bases to help staff those bases.

And And Florida has proposed deputizing their National Guard judge advocate generals to be immigration judges.

Yeah, these are JAG officers.

I'm sure some listeners have heard of this, but basically Trump just a week or two ago, like gave the green light to Governor DeSantis in Florida to deputize JAG officers in the National Guard to serve as immigration judges.

at the detention facility in that fucked up Everglades detention facility plan, right?

JAG officers, they typically represent members of the armed forces in military legal matters.

These are lawyers in the military for military legal issues.

They prosecute court martials.

They are defense counsel in court martials.

They're judges in court martials.

They advise their seniors on the legality of certain things.

Right.

There's like one really weird person at each law school who's going to be a JAG lawyer.

Yes, who says, I'm going going to be a JAG lawyer.

That's right.

And now, importantly, we have not said that they act as immigration judges.

There really is no precedent for this, for the use of JAG officers to act as immigration judges in immigration court.

It's plainly illegal based on multiple federal laws that bar federal troops, that bar the military from civilian law enforcement or executing civilian laws, right?

So in general, like federal troops cannot, according to the law, they can't run courts, not civilian courts, which is what immigration courts are.

It's for civilians.

I'd mentioned that just like on a practical level, they have no understanding of immigration law beyond what you or I have.

It's wildly easy.

Yes.

Forget expertise.

They don't have any pre-existing knowledge of it, period.

Yeah.

And so this law professor who is actually former Air Force JAG said in this report, oh, I recommend, and maybe we can put some links to the articles that we're referencing in the show notes, but I'm really recommending that listeners go read a report in Mother Jones by Samantha Michaels from July 9th.

It's called Experts Question the Legality of Deploying National Guard Officers as Immigration Judges.

She really goes into very accessible detail about like the legality, actually illegality of using JAG officers in this way.

But she interviews this law professor who is former Air Force JAG, who says, quote, the use of military courts to hear civilian cases is the essential component of martial law right if you are using federal troops jag in this case jag officers to do civilian cases to run them to adjudicate them right that's what martial law is right that's the military doing the law right not not martial law in some sort of like abstract way where like they're oh they're they're really cracking down on protests.

It's like martial law, but like martial law in like the literal technical sense.

Right.

Yes, yes, in the legal sense.

Yeah.

Like you could be detained by a troop and put before a troop who will decide whether you get to stay in the country.

If you knew the girl who was going to do JAG at my law school, the idea of being judged by her,

my God.

Yeah.

So again, this is the immigration removal machine at work gaining steam, processing more and more cases, more and more bodies.

And the Trump administration, what you see here is incorporating the military into these operations to expand that machine's capacity.

Right.

And it's worth noting that in that same plan, the plan that the state of Florida submitted to the Trump administration, suggesting the JAGS, they also said that they have identified several more locations that could serve as new camps in addition to the one in the Everglades.

I won't be calling it its stupid name because I think it's base and disgusting.

But the Everglades detention facility holds 5,000 people.

They claim that, you know, in the span of like two to three days, three to four days each, they could set up several more 10,000 person detention centers.

They claim that they can do it in accordance with ICE's minimum standards for detention facilities, but urge the administration to relax those because, you know, why meet meet those if you don't have to?

They also want to deputize all 47,000 state law enforcement officers to conduct immigration enforcement.

So,

yeah, I think that's a good

way to transition to what I want to talk about next, which is, you know, there is this political scientist in the early 1900s named Ernst Frankl, German Jew who fled Nazi Germany in the late 30s, social democrat, all-around good guy by most accounts that I've read.

He wrote an important book on the structure of the Nazi state, which he called the dual state.

The terms he used, which I'm not going to use because I think they're maybe a little too overly academic, but are the normative state and the prerogative state.

The normative state is the one governed by by laws.

It's what you see when you watch Law and Order Special Victims Unit, right?

Everybody follows the rules.

Justice prevails.

You have rights.

The prerogative state, on the other hand, you are subject to arbitrary violence.

The state can do whatever it wants to you.

It is what you read about.

when you read about the Warsaw Ghetto.

It is what you see when you go to the Holocaust Museum.

And the idea is that these exist in parallel.

You're in one state, but you can fall into the other at any time.

The numbers in the Holocaust are, I think, really good illustration that, like, so many people died, millions of people died.

But in the early 30s, the population of Germany was something like 65 million people.

So especially early on, the fraction of people

subject to this lower standard, the prerogative state, this lawless track in the dual track system was very small.

And for everybody else, life went on normally.

They went to work, they did their thing, and you know, they maybe read a report that something bad was happening, but they didn't think much of it.

And

that's what's being built right now.

That is how to think about what we're discussing here, the militarization of domestic law enforcement, the building of camps, the deputizing of local law enforcement and JAGs, the extreme abuses of ICE and the lowering of standards and the suspension of due process.

All of that is the creation of this prerogative state.

I said I wasn't going to use this term, but I can't help it.

And it's small right now.

Gaza is small.

Yeah.

The borders don't feel porous.

I think most people who listen to this probably don't feel like they're in serious risk of being rounded up by ICE in the next week.

But, you know,

the first camp in Nazi Germany was established two or three months in, and the final solution wasn't adopted for 11 years, right?

And in between were a thousand,

5,000 tiny little steps.

getting you from that first point to that last point.

And we are well past that first point here.

And the steps are being taken like over and over and over.

And the only question is how big the prerogative state gets and how porous the borders are between the two

before

everybody starts being a little uncertain when they see a Humvee fucking rolling down the street.

right?

When they see someone in fatigues, where you decide, maybe you're not just going to go out today because you heard that there are troops in downtown.

Maybe you're not going to vote in this election because you heard there are going to be troops at the polling stations.

Where we are now to there is not nearly as far as you think.

Right.

And I think it's worth noting that for decades now, people have been talking about the militarization of police, and this is its natural endpoint.

There's been a broad political consensus for decades to provide exorbitant funding to police at every level of government.

State and local police budgets have been ballooning for at least 50 years.

Federal military budgets have also ballooned, which is relevant because, one, you can call upon those forces to do domestic policing like we're seeing now.

And two, state and local police have access to surplus military equipment and have for about 35 years now, which is a big part of why so many local police have

fucking armored trucks and and assault rifles and tactical gear and shit right their day-to-day jobs are almost entirely responding to minor disputes and concerns occasionally more serious issues involving violence but that's very rare for police it's a relatively safe job so why the fuck do they need armored trucks and assault rifles right the only possible use for it is to quell mass unrest, to turn those guns on popular movements.

And it feels like it was always headed here.

And it reflects a sort of like two-pronged approach where the military starts to look more like police and police start to look more like the military.

And we've seen police start to look more like the military for many, many years.

And

if I could add to that, the standard politically moderate Democratic Party line on police has always been like,

Yeah, we might need some reform, but policing is essential and we need to make sure it's well funded, right?

And people like policing.

So if we don't fund it, we're going to make people angry and they're going to move away from the Democratic Party.

I think that calculus is wrong as a matter of public safety.

I don't think police budgets make us safer.

But even if you assume that it was correct, what it fails to consider is that police are a right-wing political entity.

The median police officer, and I'm using police broadly because it applies to ICE too, the median police officer and the median police department are well to the right of the median citizen.

And so what you've done now over time is fund a right-wing political operation with public funds.

Not only do they have powerful unions and other like independent organizations that can pull politics to the right on behalf of police, but they are now both capable and willing to be a Gestapo force for right-wing authoritarians.

That is what you have created by capitulating to police over the last 50 years.

Yeah, and in terms of the public safety question, you know, like police, you know, like let's we can call them like law enforcement agents at whatever level, including ICE.

And to be honest, including when troops are used domestically against civilians, like they're all, we'll call them all fucking cops for this conversation, right?

But especially in this question or this issue of the militarization, especially of local police forces, on the public safety question, who is more safe

because the police have a tank?

Like, you have to think, like,

what purpose would there be?

And who does it make safe that

bum fuck wherever police department has a tank, has helicopters, has helicopters from which weapons can be deployed?

Who, like, like, actually,

for a domestic police force, rural, urban, whatever, you know, what are these weapons for?

Who would they be used against?

This is also like the militarization of a law enforcement body against who?

Against civilians.

It's against us that they're given all of these weapons and all of this discretion and all of this power for violence, you know?

And so the question of like public safety and, oh, they're here to keep us safe.

And frankly, yeah, the National Guard is here to stop riots from happening so that people don't get hurt, whatever it is.

I mean, this this is, it's on its face inaccurate.

It's on its face actually a lie.

It inherently excludes a portion of the population and they get to choose what that portion is.

Yes, exactly.

Right.

A portion of the population for whom these weapons and this militarization is going to be targeted.

I think this is a problem of

a sort of a one-way ratchet with Democrats where, and there's political science, actually recent political science backing this up, that when you adopt like the opposing party's frames on something like crime or immigration,

all it does is convince the voting public that they're right about the problem

and therefore probably right about the solution.

And it just pulls the debate to the right.

Democrats haven't really reaped any electoral benefits for moving right on immigration, for moving right on crime.

They're still like battling, you know, Obama was the deporter-in-chief and Biden deported even more than him.

And Kamala said she would be worse than Trump on immigration, harsher than Trump.

Right.

Right.

Like, I know this has been rehashed, but like, and what do they say about them?

That they support open borders.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You're not getting any political benefit.

Right.

The people who want more immigration hate you because they tend to know that you are

inhibiting it.

And the people who don't hate you because they don't know what you're doing.

They don't know that you're actually deporting people.

They are taking their cues from the right.

Yeah.

So it's not a political necessity, right?

Like,

this was not a fait accompli.

We did not have to arrive at this situation.

It was the combination of a number of decisions by a lot of people in media, in both parties, among business elites, to just basically demagogue vulnerable groups for political points.

And now here we are where you have to literally be seriously discussing the timeline of Nazi Germany to understand where we are, because nobody's had the fucking balls to stand up and just be like,

actually,

New York City is wildly safe.

Crime is at historic lows, and it's much safer than living in rural North Carolina

by the numbers.

And also you're a pussy, which should be our message.

It should be, our message should be, you're a pussy.

You're a fucking coward.

Yeah, fucking nut up, you loser, you baby.

Immigration is good.

The fucking thing on the statue of liberty says, give us your tired and you're poor and you're hungry, because we welcome immigrants.

It makes us strong.

It makes us great.

25 years of being afraid to say those things, longer on crime.

Yeah, this is kind of the abysmal state of affairs that our political leaders, elected officials, have put us in.

But there is hope.

We talked a little bit about the legal fight against what happened in LA, for example.

And there are many such cases, many such important lawsuits being filed, many such legal fights happening right now across the country, which are important.

And then a good reminder, though, that like the law is one tool.

We have that tool, that weapon to wield to fight for our causes and like fight for our humanity.

And there are other tools too.

And you saw this in Los Angeles as well.

So I'm talking about things like community defense.

So in Los Angeles, when these raids started, a massive coalition of immigrant rights and immigration justice organizations primarily came together and started to really kind of operationalize and teach and facilitate and support community defense efforts against these raids and against this ICE violence in their communities.

So what you saw was tons of people getting trained on how to observe, do essentially like ICE watch, like how to identify like, oh, actually, that's an ICE vehicle in my neighborhood or outside my workplace.

What to note down, what to observe, starting hotlines and community forums where that information can be shared, training people on rapid response.

If ICE is raiding a workplace, a home, you know, what have you, having teams who can show up and protect community members, training people on DRS even, training people on confronting militarized law enforcement in the streets of your community.

And I think people probably saw lots of really inspiring videos of community members, regular people.

These are regular people.

These are people not with some sort of like background and special skill set other than like a belief in humanity and dignity, right?

Regular people protecting their neighbors, their community members from these ice raids, you know, wielding knowledge and power in numbers, saying, no, you have to identify yourself.

You have not identified yourself.

And so you cannot take this person.

Saying, no, we're just going to be in a circle around this person or this family or around this business and you can't get around us.

Or literally, right?

Like confronting with lots of different tactics, those agents, especially I saw a lot of videos of like shit getting thrown at their cars and them like running away like fucking pussies.

They made me so happy.

So fucking cowards.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this community defense, the tactics, the weapons that are at our disposal, the tools that are at our disposal are very great and very powerful.

And, you know, we're not just stuck with filing lawsuits.

Yeah.

It was interesting to watch NLA because it was so organic, right?

These weren't like activists who were going down to meet ICE and they all had prior training necessarily, right?

This is sort of like the community learning on the fly how to shut down ICE.

It was interesting to watch from that perspective.

This is like a tangent, but it is really fascinating to me how like as police have militarized, they appear to be more cowardly than ever before.

Like watching ICE just get chased out when they have actual armored trucks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like assault rifles and shit.

I don't want to make our listeners think that like instigating violence against ICE or any other police like will result in them retreating necessarily, right?

That's not advice that we're giving here on five to four.

They are incredibly violent and have the backing of the state if they choose to go down that road.

But I just think it's almost like psychologically fascinating that they are so cowardly.

What losers they are.

Yeah.

We were talking about the growth of police budgets and their access to military surplus and the way that they sort of present themselves as deserving of those budgets, but also our respect because they put themselves in danger.

And yet they do not.

They actively choose to avoid danger very consistently.

Uvalde is the classic example and everyone knows about it, but it remains the best example because if they won't put themselves at risk to protect children from being murdered, then obviously they are not going to put themselves at risk for the community period.

Right, right.

The violence they're trained to do, actually, the violence they know how to do is actually to be wielded on the community and against the community.

And actually, they don't fucking know how to keep us safe.

It's not actually something they're trained for.

So, the police have armored vehicles, but you can't trust or rely on them to protect your child from being shot at school.

So, again, it just goes back to what are those tools for then?

Right.

Or even and even to, you know, to solve a murder, right?

I mean, like their clearance rates have gone down over the last several decades.

Even like just the sort of basic fundamentals of what you were taught that policing is have started to fade away.

Right.

And instead, it's become a persistent show of force in every community across the country on behalf of the state to some degree, but also on behalf of themselves.

Yeah.

In a lot of places, they're just a gang.

Yeah, just a

state-affiliated gang showing force in every city in the country.

I think that's a better way to understand many police departments than as like a protector of your community.

That's why when I'm president, I'm going to use the Trendinaragua precedent to declare Texas an enemy state

and finally get Rhiannon out of here.

Narru, that's me.

All the rural cops, an associated gang, and send them off to see COPE.

Goodbye.

No.

Well, I will say, you know, when you look at like Project 2025, one of their big strategies was just identifying social and cultural and economic sources of liberal power and then attacking them with the force of the state.

Right.

That's why they're going after higher education.

It would be wise for Democrats to, at the very least, understand

police.

at the state, local, and federal level as a political opponent rather than something that could be brought into the fold or cozied up to in some way, because they are your political opponents in practice.

And it might be harder to go at them than it is to go at Harvard or something, but you still need to understand that they are your political enemy.

All right, folks, next week, McMahon v.

New York, shadow docket case from just a couple of weeks ago about the hollowing out of the Department of Education.

Bye-bye, Department of Ed.

I know that you you guys all liked getting educated, but you can't do it anymore unless you're listening to 5-4.

That's right.

Follow us on social media at 5-4Pod.

Thank you for subscribing to our Patreon.

You are our true and loyal friends.

It is not parasocial.

I've said it before.

I will continue to say it.

That's true.

Thank you for supporting us.

Rhiannon, of course, needs your help because without the Department of Education, it is likely that she will lose loan forgiveness and then she will have to pay back what I last heard is $2.5 million in student loans.

Not quite, but it feels like it might as well be.

Don't worry, we're going to get you there.

All right, folks.

If you haven't bought our new merch, go by4pond.com/slash/merch.

It's good.

Check it out.

We'll see you next week.

Bye.

Bye, everybody.

5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects.

This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto.

Leon Nafat provides editorial support.

Our website was designed by Peter Murphy.

Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at ChipsNY.

And our theme song is by Spatial Relations.

If you're not a Patreon member, you're not hearing every episode.

To get exclusive Patreon-only episodes, discounts on merch, access to our Slack community, and more, join at patreon.com/slash five four pod.

This is my hot take about Sidney Sweeney.

It's like, I like the level of controversy that surrounds her is something that befits the hottest person in the world.

And I'm not saying she's not hot.

I'm just saying I'm not seeing all that.

Oh, disagree.

Disagree.

You know what?

Put that in the episode.

I want people to hear this.