No. of Recommendations: 2
The people of Minneapolis are showing the way. It’s time for governors to step up and confront the federal implementation of fascism directly by asserting state authority over the instruments of state power—the police and state national guard units.
Which doesn't work to fight fascism or totalitarianism. It works to push back on policies you think are terrible within a functioning democratic system, where protests and the independent autonomy of State sovereign governments exists as a separate check on federal power.
What's happened in Minnesota is a rebuke against the idea that the Administration is in a place where they're willing (or able) to step across the hard lines between democracy and authoritarianism.
Many state constitutions include habeas corpus provisions. Governors should begin using state law enforcement agencies to protect and defend citizens habeas corpus rights in the face of their violation by agents of the federal government. Arrest ICE agents for violating state laws, including the infringements against habeas corpus. Let the feds sue the states in federal court and wait for the slow cogs of judicial authority to work themselves out. In the meantime, state governments would be acting to protect their citizens from the abuse of federal authority.
That wouldn't work. State habeus protections aren't applicable to federal detention.
Nor is there any reason to think that's necessary. The federal courts are still issuing plenty of writs under federal habeus petition, and the Administration is still recognizing the authority of the federal courts to do that and complying. Fitfully, dragging their feet, sometimes requiring lots of punitive sanctions to force them to do it....but ultimately complying. Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia ultimately was brought into a federal court. Mahmoud Khalil was eventually released from detention.
The time for concrete action is now, not ten months from now when we wake up and realize it’s too late.
Sure. No one disagrees. Organize! Protest! File legal challenges! Be prepared to push back on Election Day issues! That necessity in no way means that every imagined authoritarian scenario is plausible, or even that it should be taken seriously.
