Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Bogus Charges and Foreign Wars

Welcome to another episode of The Oath in the Office podcast starring Professor Corey Bretschneider. I am his obedient henchman, John Feugelsang, and it's a pleasure to have you with us today on the show. A fascinating conversation with filmmaker Andrew Glazer, and folks, for one brief shining moment. This week, the Constitution briefly cleared its throat and reminded all of us it is still technically employed. A federal judge looked at the Trump DOJ's treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and basically said, you idiots can't deport a guy my mistake and then lie about it in court and then reopen a dead case to punish the guy for noticing. And while all this is happening, courts are still wrestling with whether non citizens possessed the radical socialist luxury known as free speech, which used to be one of America's bigger selling points. Folks, please welcome the star of our show, so constitutional law professor and author of The Oath and the Office, Professor Corey Breschneider.

Hello, sir, Thanks so much, John, And that's such a great frame I mean, we're talking every week about the ongoing struggle between the attempt to protect our rights, to protect our democracy and the assault on those rights by the Trump administration. We'll talk about what's happening here in the United States, and we have a special treat too in that Andrew Glazer is going to talk about his film about the drug war and about America's complicity and the violation of human rights abroad, particularly in Mexico. So it's an amazing episode both about our rights at home and our abuses abroad. And of course those two things are tied together through the office that we're focused on in this podcast, the office of the President of the United States. There's extreme deference paid to the president when he or she is acting abroad, and that's why you often see the kind of human rights abuses, especially tied to the war power or tied to the war on drugs and this. But unfortunately, you know, those abuses abroad are not just limited outside our borders. And so we'll talk about the assaults too on not just free speech, but as our first story will make clear, on due process itself.

Let's talk about it because we actually have a few tiny signs of life from due process this week, and from judicial independence, and from the old fashioned idea that rights aren't supposed to depend on whether the president's having a cranky day. Kill mar Abrego Garcia. We talked about him a lot last year. The judiciary is calling out these bogus charges after the Trump DOJ stopped claiming they could just evade due process. Our listeners will remember, this guy's twenty nine years old from Maryland. He's a citizen of bel Salvador, and the US government mistakenly deported him there and lied about it. So, I mean, Corey, Judge Crenshaw found the prosecution of Garcia for human trafficking was tainted, vindictive, selective, and in violation of the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. Professor how rare is that language coming from a federal judge.

Oh, it was starting to get real pushback, you know.

The just to kind of back up a bit and remind listeners, because, as you said, we have been this is one of those stories that we've been covering and it's so important. The administration is claiming that under the Alien Enemies Act, this was what they originally claimed that they didn't even have to present their case in court that it was really beyond the law and that he could be deported to a gulag in El Salvador and was sent there even though there had been court orders saying do.

Not send this guy, that he was in danger for.

His life if you send him to El Salvador. Now, you know, over time there was pushback by courts, thankfully, that said, you know, we have a right of everyone, of all people to do process and the administration can't just scrap that and treat people however they want.

So what did they do.

They backed up and tried to say, well, he's involved in human trafficking and to bring a case to use the courts. And you know, anybody with common sense see that what was going on was that they were, you know, having failed to deny the constitutional rights that are afforded everyone, the rights of due process that having been stopped there, that they were just trying to make something up and to use a normal legal process. But you know, in the service of something that was just a lie. And now they're being called out for that. You can't just make something up, and in particular, I mean just to get into the nitty gritty please, you know, they had a sort of sham case against him for human trafficking. He had been pulled over, for instance, in the car that had a lot of people, that's not evidence of human trafficking, and had decided not to move forward on those grounds.

That's why they had to deny due process.

So now that they've been blocked off from simply denying his rights, well they're raising this case again, and it looks like the courts are saying, I don't think so, we know what you're up to. This is a kind of selective prosecution. You're sort of manipulating the facts to meet your goal of seeing this guy in prison. Let's get down to brass taxstration is embarrassed and they're trying to cover this up with a.

Lot exactly exactly so, so I mean, I also want to get to just be honest here. I think the bar is so low at this point. Corey in twenty twenty six that the government may not retaliate against you for asserting your constitutional rights now counts as uplifting good news. You realize that, like we're accelerating us as great news that the government can't punish you for asserting your rights. But the court pretty much found that the government reopened this closed case only after Abrego Garcia successfully challenged his illegal deportation. So I guess my question is constitutionally, how dangerous is it if the White House appears to just punish people for asserting their legal rights.

Well, you know, the whole thing is so frightening, the idea that you're using this seventeen ninety eight law to deny somebody the rights of due process, a law that dates back to John Adams assault on democracy, and you're seeing it again here. Now that to begin with is way out there. There was pushback against that by Judge Bosberg and others saying, you know, I don't think so that the lower courts here, you know, and part of this episode will be a celebration of the lower courts pushing back, saying, you know, you need to charge him with a crime. You need to show even if he's not guilty of a crime, you know, you can't just deny him any.

Legal process exactly. So what do they do?

They try to come up with this alternative lie, And yeah, my worry is that, you know, there really is a question about how much of the rule of law, if any, is left that that might have worked in some world that the courts might have, you know, said, well, okay, now at least you're pretending to.

Abide by the rule of law.

And I think it is a real victory that they're you know, calling this out and saying, I don't think so this isn't this isn't legitimate. It's a make believe way of trying to avoid the fact that you're embarrassed. You said something too that I just want to pull forward for listeners. What the court is calling out is what's happening here, which is that the administration is embarrassed because he asserted his rights, as you said, and now what are they trying to do? Deny his rights with a lie? And it looks like that's not working.

So that is you know, I don't.

Want to say democracy saved. You know, we made it, but it's one of these many instances, and this is such an important case because it's really a test case for the wholesale denial of rights. And so as he's starting to win here, you know, I wouldn't say I'm feeling amazing about American democracy, but I'm feeling good.

About I mean, we still live a bit of time when the government can deport somebody in error, and then if you challenge that error publicly, they will aggressively prosecute you. I mean, the judge did say that there's an absence of evidence of actual vindictiveness the government failed to rebut the presumption of vindictiveness. And I had never heard that expression before, but wow, presumption of vindictiveness sums up my entire feelings towards this administration at this point, professor, I do want to ask you about Mahmoud Khalil, because this was, I mean great, this guy we talked about a ton on our showan born pro Palestinian activist. He was a student at Columbia University at an expectant father. He just appealed to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court opened the door for the government to detain and deport him, and the Court of Appeals also sided with the federal government, determining that immigration court was the best place for him to argue his case rather than federal court, and he appealed that. So, I mean, his attorneys are saying, essentially, tell me if I'm following this, professor, that the government is claiming non citizens don't have meaningful First Amendment of protections. Right, that's what this is. I mean, has the Supreme Court recognized free speech protection for non citizens who are here legally. I kind of thought you taught me a while back that this is about what governments can't do to you, not what you can't do.

Yeah, I mean the same way.

I'll just tie the two cases together, and they're both cases that we've talked extensively about, and that's why we'll continue to update people on what's happening. There really are test cases for the strength of our democracy. In the first case, in the Bregio Garcia case, the question is whether or not, using this obscure eighteenth century statute, the government can just take away your doe process rights altogether. And there was pushback, and you know, we're rightly I don't know about celebrating, but certainly giving kudos to the courts for pushing back on the administration here. Now here's another story, you know, and it's why this push and pull is going on. A district court judge did heroically say, look just what you said, John, that the First Amendment applies here, not just to citizens. It's not what the text says. It talks about Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, and that isn't a limit on the protection just of the rights of citizens. It's a limit on government, regardless of who is being attacked. And so you know, that was a good moment. Now you know, these cases are subject to appeal. The government this time fought back, and so far it looks like they're winning.

Now how are they winning.

They're saying that this judge really wasn't the right place, the district court judge in New Jersey wasn't the right venue, the right place to consider this question at this time, and instead we've got to wait until the matter gets worked through immigration courts.

Let me just break this down a little.

Least, because this is this is really, this is shady, right, this is really.

Say, immigration courts are you know, guests who controls the immigration courts? They are not that I hesitate to even call them courts because we think of a court as a judge. Immigration judges are within the executive branch. Who is the executive branch controlled by the within the Department of Justice. There's the Department of Justice controlled by we know that's Donald Trump. So what unfortunately has happened here is that a court of appeals, not within the administration, within the court court system. The Article three court system has pushed this back, at least for now, into the hands of the administration. And you know, good luck getting your rights of indicated with this administration. It's not the end of the story. Eventually we might get to the Supreme Court.

And that's what Khalil's lawyers are saying.

Yeah, and you know the question you asked is eventually, I think going to be answered by the Supreme Court. Does the First Amendment apply only to citizens or is it a limit on government? As plain as day, I think it says it's just a limit on government. But you know, once you get to that level, for all the heroism of the lower courts, including the district court judge here, this Supreme Court, well, you know, it doesn't do fantastically when it comes to the production.

Oh really, when it comes to human rights and individual liberties, this particular Supreme Court. So Corey, let me just get this right because I want to get off of this topic because it hurts my brain. But they're both arguing that the government of the United States under the Constitution can crush free speech if you're not a citizen. But it seems like they're also saying that immigration law can override the Constitution.

You know, I'm getting this right.

I mean, my brain is brain small here, but is that? Is that roughly right?

For now?

That's you know, we're we're tracing these cases, We're following them closely. And one of the great things about this podcast is that we can go in depth, you know, on these specific cases that really are again test cases for democracies. So right, so, right now, where things stand, the Supreme Court of the United States hasn't definitively said no to the administration. This district Court judge did try to say no, But the administration is saying, if you're not a citizen, no free speech rights.

It's that simple.

And they're claiming essentially that his protest activity, and of course they're lying about things that he said. They're accusing him of anti Semitism. I have been looking. I have not seen any evidence of Khalil's anti Semitism.

But the bottom publicly antisemitism at no place in his movement. He said it more than once. Mark Rubio lied about this guy.

Yeah, this administration cannot be trusted. Really on anything. And you know, but here's what they're saying in open court that if you're not a citizen, no free speech rights, and we have the right if we don't like we think that his views, essentially, his opinions, his speech is adverse to the public policy interests of this administration, that we can throw him out of the country, even though he's a permanent resident and you know, has been living here. He was a leader of the protest movement in Colombia negotiating with the administration. They're saying, we don't like your views, you're out of here. Now, what's the state status of the law? You know, I've said very strongly what I think the law says. But so far the judge who's agreed with me in this matter, has his opinion is for now been pushed aside. This has been thrown back into quote unquote immigration courts, which are really within the executive branch, and they haven't said definitively that's it. He's going to be thrown out of the country. There's a possibility that that could happen, that he's going to be deported. And really what we're going to wait, I think for is in the final analysis for the Supreme Court to get involved, and that that's where the appeals going now.

From Khalil and his lawyers.

And you know, they're to have to answer that question once and for all, because you know, it's not that the Supreme Court doesn't have the power to review this. They can, and I think there's a good chance they will, and they've got to answer that question. Is the administration right when they say non citizens have no free speech rights? You know on the law. No, but you know, we've got to be honest. This court can do all sorts of things.

Well, Corey, before the break, we also, as we are all sitting here in shock from what has happened to the Voting Rights Act, and it seems to have just been reduced to a I don't know what a coaster for billionaires. Democracy actually punched back a couple of times this week. We just saw a federal court telling Alabama their congressional map was totally racially discriminatory and illegal. And then South Carolina Republicans, I think, just realized, wait a second, we already controlled the state. Why are we trying so hard? And they shocked the world by choosing not to pass the new map designed to vaporize the state's lone majority black district that was Jim Cliburn seat. They were going to just get rid of his entire district, and to their credit, they realized, wow, even we don't need to be that dickish.

Well, you know, I don't know in the end, if this goes to the Supreme Court what they'll say. I don't want to take away from what they did in this Louisiana case.

They really did avis rate the Voting Rights Act.

They made it very hard to show that the attempt to resist the dilution of black voting power through districts in which there are a majority of minority voters. It largely eliminated the ability to do that. Now, they left a way open, which is that if you could show that what you know, what you're doing is resisting intentional discrimination, then okay. And it seems like in this Alabama case that the lower court here, this isn't the Supreme Court yet, of course, but the Court is said, yeah, that there is intentional discrimination. So you know, they're trying to work within the very narrow limits that the Supreme Court is set. In the end, what's going to happen you know, it's anybody's guest, but you know it took a theme or that we're working, which is that you know there is a give and take, there is a pushback. The Supreme Court often disappoints us, sometimes they don't. But into the void is stepped intermediate courts and district courts and courts of appeals.

But the Supreme Court didn't go out and say you can discriminate. They said, just don't discriminate by don't gerrymander by race, do it by ideology. Feel the free to cheat as much as you want that way. And yet a lower court is now saying, well, you did cheat then, because the Supreme Court never gave you license to discriminate.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great way to put it.

I'll say it again, just to clarify, the Supreme Court didn't get rid of the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act. It preserved it, but in a particular way and said, you know, if you want to invoke the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act, if you want to show that people are being denied the right to vote based on race, it has to be intentional discrimination that we're talking about.

So that doesn't you know, that's not nothing. It's very hard to show.

But when you have actions as blatant as what's happening in so many of these states, actions of intentional discrimination, courts can call it out. They can say, you know, we're not blind, and you can call it, you know, party partisan jerrymandering, say this isn't about race.

All you want that you're colorblind.

If you're really engaged in discrimination, we can identify and call it out.

And the Supreme Court did leave that open. And so you know, I don't want.

To get too rosy about this. With the Voting Rights case Louisiana case, the Supreme Court really did avis errate the Voting Rights Tact, but they left a little bit and maybe that's a little bit something to work with, especially in the face of well, let's call it, you know, maga's overt and disgusting form of intentional discrimination.

Folks, the guardrails of democracy are hanging on by duct tape and caffeine launay. They wave, all right, we got to know it's something. Yes, it could be worse at it just might well be. We got to take a quick break back in just a moment, and let's talk about the fact that Congress suddenly remembered they have power over war. This is the Oath in the Office. Welcome back to the Oath in the Office. I'm John Fugel, Sang Professor Britch Nighter. I am very excited to welcome Andrew Glazer in the next act, the director of the very powerful drug war documentary Spring of the Vanishing. I'm equally excited to tell the folks that you are such a professional. Because I had to fly today. Corey Bretschneider is joining us to record live from Italy. At what time is it there? It's three in the morning, right, it's three am?

No, No, not that bad little past midnight.

Wow, thank you very much.

You know I'm not going to miss this show.

John. Talking to you every week gives me hope, gives the lessoner's hope, and I'm happy to do this show at midnight or anytime.

Really.

Well, Hey, if you enjoy doing this show with me, then my work as a charming sociopath is complete. Okay, I want to talk about I think this is good news. I don't know anymore. What is but after twenty years of Congress treating the Constitution like the terms and conditions over the iPhone update that they're never going to read. The Senate seems to have finally remembered they technically have authority over war.

Corey.

Democrats have unsuccessfully been reintroducing all these measures since the assault on Iran began in the end of February, and the Senate, in a vote of fifty to forty seven, has now taken up a measure that could end the war in Iran. That would be the same war where we keep bombing them during cease fires. A few Republican senators have now joined Democrats to try to stop the escalation, including Senator Bill Cassidy, who apparently Corey discovered separation of powers the moment he discovered that voters separated him from his job. I mean, it is amazing how this constitutional courage shows up once the donors can't primary anymore, isn't.

It, Corey.

Well, it's like, you know, you're not running for reelection anymore, and the decency just starts popping it out. And I think when you have a president, if you've been part of Congress and you're watching a president just walk all over your powers, really declare war. And just to return to the theme, for listeners. The Congress has the power to declare war according to the Constitution. It says it in Article one, which creates the Congress gives it its power. The president under Article two is commander in chief, but that doesn't include the power to initiate a war. And in fact, the British King had the ability under the unwritten British Constitution, as they talk about it, to both initiate and carry out wars. And the Framers looked at that and they're like, that is way too powerful. We're going to divide these powers up, give the initiation power to Congress and give the power to carry out war to the president once Congress has acted. Now, you know, presidents for a long time, of course ignored that. But in the nineteen seventies and the early nineteen seventies, at the end of Richard Nixon's presidency, as he was getting close to step down.

The Congress start to reassert that power.

Realize that the bombing of Camp, the incursions that were illegal, and arguably the whole war. There's an argument, of course about the Gulf of Tompkin, but arguably the whole war that was really an example of what Arthur's Lessener called the imperial presidency using basically the power of the president as a kind of dictator, initiating war, carrying it out, violating civil liberties abroad, violating them at home.

That's really the theme of today's show.

We're going to talk about with Andrew Glazer, the violation of civil liberties abroad with the encouragement of the American government. But you know, the war power is really the core of all this. So to see at least a discussion and a recognition of members of the president's own party that this is dangerous, that this is how you walk right into dictatorship. It's not the end of the story, but it's at least something. And you know, I'm glad that the Democrats keep pushing back on this idea that this war is somehow legally it's not.

No Somewhere the founders are screaming from their crypts. We wrote this down very clearly.

This is one of the facility is clear.

It's astonishing. But I guess I have to ask, then, since they're getting away with this, what constitutional mechanisms still exists, Professor, to stop a very determined president doing military escalation. If the executive branch really wants it. What guardrails do we still have.

Well, we have this law in place, the War Powers Act, and it's pretty clear that the President of the United States, if he wants to engage in a legal war, has to within thirty or at most sixty days, then can get an extension, go to Congress and say declare war. Now, they can do it in a variety of ways through resolution. It doesn't have to be necessarily a formal declaration. But nothing like that has occurred here. There's been no debate, and so what members of Congress are doing is saying, you know, pull it back. There's another provision of the War Powers Act that talks about the ability of a vote to just simply legally demand the return of any forces outside of the theater of war. And you know, that's what they're doing here. I think that they would have the ability, even if they have declared war to pull back. That's a complicated issue, but to me, the straightforward thing that they're saying is very clearly, we did not declare war, and there is no authority in the first place to go out and carry out this war. And you know, they're not at fifty one votes yet. In the Senate, but hopefully they will be. You know, realistically, we're going to talk about the next Congress. I think that should be the first vote that we see in the next Congress is a vote to make it very clear that there's been no authorization of war, and yeah, that the president has to cease all operations. Of course, he's going to make all sorts of arguments, including the fact that there's a ceasefire now so the sixty days doesn't matter, and well, courts get involved now. But a first step to reigning in a president is that Congress starts to assert itself.

Okay, but let me asky. I know it's almost one in the morning in Italy and getting ready to go out now, but I got to ask you. I mean, this makes me think of this curse on America. Ever since Bush Senior had a really quick, easy war to restore the dictator of Kuwait, right a thirty five years ago, we had Operation Desert Storm, and ever since then, except for the two major conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems like we've had so much low level warfare from democratic and Republican presidents alike that it sort of normalized this whole emergency executive power in the American psyche. I mean, we're just really used to presidents having their little wars that don't have tons of ground troops.

Yeah.

One thing you know that we've talked a lot about on this podcast with Sheldon Whitehouse with Ted lu is what once the Democratic Party retakes the Congress, how do you rain things back in? And one thing that I'm just insistent on, We've had a couple of moments like this the quarter presidents.

He was one of them where presidents really acknowledged that.

The power of the executive branch had gotten out of control, that it had to be rained in. And it really is both parties I think that have contributed to this imperial presidency.

And that isn't just a.

Matter of illegal action abroad, illegal war, but the civil liberties abuses that can come from him. And so you know, I think we've got to look at both parties, look at what presidents of both parties have done, and start to acknowledge that, you know, there's something wrong with the setup that enables at least beyond our borders.

We haven't legally ever, hear she wants, we haven't legally declared war in eighty five years, correct, I believe it was December eighth, nineteen forty one, was the last time this country legally declared war?

Yeah?

Again, I mean, I think you could probably argue that authorizations of force themselves don't have to formally be declarations of war.

But we don't have anything like that here. We don't even I'm just.

You keep talking about it. Yeah, yeah, tells us Congress to Claire's war.

Yeah. I guess.

You know, ideally we'd return to a moment in which there was a formal declaration of war or not.

And that's the idea.

There are exceptions, you know, you could have defensive actions, for instance, that presidents engage in. And there's a famous case involving Lincoln where there was an accusation that the Union's involvement in the Civil War itself was illegal, and Lincoln said, look, this is a defensive war.

It wasn't denying that it was a war, and the court there made an exception.

So I would say, you know, there are instances in which you can engage in military action defensively. There are some actions that I think don't amount to war. I think that's true, But we're at the point now where we're so far beyond that we're engaged in a certainly an Iran case, in what has to be understood as a war, an aggressive war that was initiated by one person that that's clearly illegal. So don't you know, I don't demand that we go back to a time in which there are formal declarations of war that was true, I think close to the founding and you know where Congress had to debate that they could debate something short of it. We could also acknowledge that there are instances of defensive action short of war. But what we can't allow anymore are the kind of extensive involvements of the kind that we're having in Iran without any debate, without any Congressional action.

And so you know, I'm not actually I don't feel like I'm asking even.

For what you know, what you're talking about, which is probably what the Framers meant, just something.

Well, you know, I'm an originalist, Corey. I don't know if you know that about being Okay, So before we hit the break and I talk about what might be the wackiest story of the week, except for the fact that it might be completely related to the President's ability to declare little wars when he feels like it. I want to laugh at this story, except I'm too terrified because I know what might be behind it.

Corey.

Nothing says rule of law to me like indicting a ninety four year old former dictator thirty years later while half of this country is terrified, we're going to have to sell bone marrow for gas money. Can we talk about Raul Castro. Man's ninety four years old and the DOJ has now charged him over the nineteen ninety six shooting down of civilian planes, which is evil and horrific. But boy, this timing scares me for very Cold War reasons, because I can already visualize Marco Rubio dusting off a bay of pigs power point and saying, gentlemen, this time it'll work. I mean, this seems like pretext for some kind of military involvement. And I noticed the same people who always think international law is tyranny it if applies to us, they're huge fans of military accountability when it involves a communist. What do you make of this? How significant and strange Jesus indictment thirty years later?

Like?

How weird is this to you?

I think Marco Rubio really does have his eyes set on regime change in Cuba. Of course, we saw them in Venezuela swoop in and take out a sitting president and bring him to the United States, so we know that they're willing to do it. I think part of why they're trying to wind down the war in Iran is so that they can turn their attention to Cuba. And you know, this is part of how they did it in Venezuela two they indicted Maduro, they went in and grabbed him. Raul Castro, it's on the same thing. He's not the current president of Cuba. But the fact that they're using this as a way of starting to.

Put pressure on Cuba. Who knows what's in their plan.

But because the timing does seem that might.

Be generated to his arrest, they might use as a pretext to jump in something like that. And you know, this all goes to We've been talking about the rule of law at home and its relationship to human rights abuses and abuses of the rule of law abroad, and that's what's going on here, a kind of ability of the American state to do whatever it wants.

I've got it.

I'm going to go to history a little bit, because, as you know, I've been spending time in the Nixon Library and the archives and reading about those who are arrested and the Watergate breaking. They're reach involvement with the CIA. Some of them was involvement in the Bay of Pigs, and the organizer of the Bay of Pigs, one of the organizers was also the organizer of the plumbers unit the break ins in the United States, and that's Howard Hunt. And you know, all of it just feels eerie, this sort of a kind of obsession with doing whatever you want, both at home and attacking your enemies at home, and then also yes, the Bay of Pigs.

You know, let's just go and invade a foreign state.

And of course this won't come to tie to the last topic with any kind of declaration of war.

They'll just do it.

And it really is an example of why we are again talking about that imperial presidency that we're stuck with at this moment.

Okay, first of all, I just want to say, you are the only man living in Italy right now who has spoken fondly of his time at the Nixon Library. Good god man, you're in Italy and you're talking about the Nixon Library that I'm stuck on that. But this is this is really keeping me up at night, Corey, because I mean, I think that we can balance accountability for genuine human rights abuses without turning prosecutions into like ideological theater or pretense for war. I mean, actions like this really seem to strengthen all the claims of other governments that our institutions are jokes and just instruments of political pressure for one guy, Like how does this make us look in the rest of the world that we waited till this guy was ninety four because we want to appoint Marco Rubio as viceroy to Cuba.

Well, we're getting really deep in this conversation.

I'm sorry, professor. We have even mentioned how we've been starving the island. I mean, we had a blockade on the island. They don't have gasoline, Like, things are really dire there. And this is another example of the pressure we're putting on this island that our media is not really dwelling on too much.

You know, I couldn't agree more.

And as we talked to Andrew Glazer in the next discussion, we're going to go so much more in depth into the ways that America claims to be supporting abroad the rule of law law, and at the same time is literally undermining it, really undermining human rights, being complicit and encouraging human rights violations. That's what our discussion will be about. And you see it here too, that you know, this is an indictment. It's about the rule of law, supposedly, you know, specifically, it's about these planes that were shot down during a conflict between the Cuban government and exiles in the United States, and the Cuban government's argument.

Was that their airspace was being violated. This was essentially, you know, a military decision.

Now the idea that was being framed simply as a kind of crime. You know, it looks like it's an assertion of the rule of law. But what's really going on, if we just pull back from all these details, is it's an attempt to use the rule of law as a subterfuge to engage in yet another attack on a foreign government, an illegal one if they invade. Because there is no congressional debate about this. And you know, again, the rule of law is the subterfuge. That's the rhetoric, and what's really going on is a kind of lawlessness and disregard for international laws certainly, and as we'll talk about in the next discussion, for human rights more.

Generally, and of course, what always happens, Professor, when law and order talk becomes deeply entangled with nationalism and militarism.

We already know.

Let's take a quick break at when we come back, I am so excited to bring you our conversation with Andrew Glazer and talk about the amazing essential documentary Spring of the Vanishing. Don't go away. Welcome back to the Oath in the office. I'm John Fugel, saying Professor Bretschneider, I am very excited to welcome this next guest to talk about a really important film that every American deserves to know about and the members of Congress should be forced to know about. Spring of the Vanishing is an incredible new documentary from Emmy winning filmmaker Andrew Glazer, and it follows the family so forty nine people who disappeared in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, after a US trained Mexican military unit launched a really brutal anti cartel operation and at the center is an eighteen year old young man, a US born teenager, Jorge Dominguez, and his disappearance exposes the human cost of this militarized, never ending war on drugs. What a pleasure to welcome Andrew Glazer to the podcast. Hello sir, Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for making this film, Corey. This is a devastating movie, and it follows this young man's mother, as you know, and other relatives of missing people and their search for justice and accountability from both the US and Mexico. And I think that's the most powerful part of this film, mister Glazer, is that our American government is very much at the center of this atrocity that leads to a missing American teenager.

Absolutely, I mean, I think one of the things that we were trying to make clear, both with the subjects of our film and people we were sharing it with, was that this is not another story about what was mexi Ago. This is very much a story that implicates US policy in Mexico and in Latin America that's very much alive right now in the news to some degree in recent weeks and months with our current President Donald Trump.

One thing Andrew that I want to ask you about, you know, because it really leaps out at you as you watch this powerful film, and we were talking about this with our producer Wendy as well. Is the parallels with what's happening in the United States. You have an example of what should be law enforcement issues that are being handled by a military and what that results in the film shows us very closely and clearly is a total disregard for human rights, for civil liberties because the military is trained in war, not in policing. And the parallels anyway, they jumped out at me, and I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about this as sort of a way in especially for the themes of this podcast, are the parallels between what happened in Minnesota with Ice and the killing of Alex Pretty and the total disregard for his civil liberties, including of course the immediate reaction that you know, this was of course justified that this was some sort of terrorists without any kind of information, and the kind of defensiveness that you see of the military intervention and the militaries, Mexican militaries as the film shows and argues, disregard of civil liberties and even basic rights against murder. So do you see those parallels and tell us about them.

Absolutely, both, you know, in the way you described it, but also just in sort of the practicalities. The Mexican military, like the US military, is not trained to do police activity. What is the difference between what police and military do. A good cop knows who the good guys or bad guys are. They are part of the community, they're on the street, they might be from the area. This particular unit of the Mexican military was the kind of shock troops, special forces, guys who were trained to kill and they're armed and trained and provided intelligence by the US to do that. So when they came in to Novl Laredo, very few, if any of them, were from the area. It's an extremely dangerous part of Mexico, and Mexico has some very dangerous places, but at times Novl Laredo has been one of the most dangerous places on the planet. And that was during the kind of peak of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in twenty two thousand and six thousand and seven, So that gives you some perspective. So it is a dangerous place, and they dropped these heavily armed, heavily trained, highly trained, lethal forces into Nova Laredo to pacify the cartel. And they didn't investigate, they didn't arrest, they didn't do stings and buy and bus.

They went in and killed.

And to put a highlight on it, John, you mentioned forty nine people. That's actually the low end of the cases that we know about. We documented forty nine, but there were probably at least three times as many as that people who didn't dare to come forward and make complaints, So that's a very real problem. People were all innocent. These were not extra judicially killed criminals. These were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe looked the wrong way. And the kid, Jorge Domingos, who's sort of central to our film was from Texas, and we suspect he was picked up because his mom lived in a fairly nice neighborhood in NorVa Laredo, and as a Mexican American kid from Texas, he kind of dressed with baggy jeans and a shaved head that kind of suggested cholo and gangbanger.

He was not. He was a good kid.

And there were two other twelve year old kids who were killed, who were clearly not sophisticated gangsters, so innocent people were killed.

The film opens with Porge's mother describing the moment her son vanished, and one of the most haunting aspects of the film really is how ordinary these families were. These people were not activists. These were ordinary people who became activists because the state gave them no choice. And it really captures this unbearable uncertainty, these families searching for years without answers. I'm curious and your experience making the film, how do people psychologically begin to survive that kind of disappearance.

So interestingly enough, the mother of Jorge do Mingez vacillates between speaking of him and the present and past tense, so sometimes she doesn't even acknowledge that he is dead, although all.

Evidence points to that.

Part of the evil of making people disappear is that there's not that closure and burial.

Site that the families get to visit or experience.

So it really to answer your question, what would you do if your child went missing? I mean, it's the only thing you can do. And these were people who are sort of jostled out of their day to day existence of you know, These aren't wealthy people. These are working people, and they have, particularly the women, the wives and the mothers of the missing, have taken a real huge role in finding justice, and in this case they did. But there's you know, even in the New York Times this week, there's been stories about mothers elsewhere in the country in Mexico who were seeking their children's remains, and they're very they're very active part of it. There's an interesting law in Mexico where the federal prosecutors actually enable and bring the women out to look to be part of the search for the bodies. So it's really it's really an emotionally wrenching experience. And on top of that, it is so commonplace the disappearance of people that often these women will find remains that are not their child, just randomly fine remains of other people who were buried in these.

These mass graves and locations outside of town.

So it's really a horrible experience that these these mothers and wives have to have to go through.

I'm really curious. I'm sorry, Corea. I mean, to the making of the film, did talking to these family members, did you hear anything that fundamentally changed your understanding of what we call the war on drugs.

Absolutely, I mean there is lots of collateral damage, and that it involves ordinary people who you know, this Jr. Hi Dominguez, the kid who was featured in our film, was helping his mom get some water for their construction crew and he left the house and disappeared and was never seen again. So these aren't people who are sort of flirting with criminal lives.

These are ordinary people.

And the drug war which is very focused by the US and incentivizing military involvement in Latin America and the drug war, and that includes Mexico of course, but we've seen what's been going on in Ecuador and the bombing of the so called drug boats and in Colombia off the coast of Columbia, and this goes back. It's almost as if the kind of lessons that we thought we would have learned and in the Cold War massacres and the support of right wing militaries and does you would have thought that we would have learned the lessons of that and that kind of blunt instrument and support and the unintended consequences of giving arms and training, lethal training to militaries in places where.

The militaries don't have a lot of constraints. Yep.

I did want to follow up on that Andrew to ask about the complicity of the US, and that's of course a big part of the film. This isn't just a story about a tragedy that happened in Mexico or an abusive government or an overly militaristic response by the Mexican government. It's about the US involvement. So tell us how is the United States involved in this story and what are the details there?

So to start with kind of the involvement on the ground. When the mother of Jorge Domingez went to the US consulate in Nuevo Laredo, which is what you're supposed to do when an American goes missing, and her son was an American teenager, and they told her they couldn't help. And when she asked why, she didn't get a clear answer. She met with the FBI, which has a presence there. She crossed the border one day to meet with them, and they told her the same thing. They blamed it on the cartel, and that includes the consul general at the time, a guy.

Named Philip Linderman.

He constantly was blaming it on the cartel and the local human rights defender who organized these wives and mothers. He said that the human rights defender was in the pocket of the cartel and that these wives and mothers who were missing loved ones were.

Paid crisis actors.

And that actually culminated in the day that my film was released, the US Treasury sanctioned this human rights defender, Drummond Ramos, who's featured in our film, for alleged ties to the cartel and for allegedly hiring these crisis actors. So it wasn't just a suspicion on their part. They actually leveraged that suspicion to something that will really affect his life and the credibility of his case, which he's been deemed very credible by international human rights organizations including Amnesty International, the United Nations, and ultimately, in the case that we looked at the military, the Mexican military, for the first time I think in Mexico's history, apologized for these human rights abuses. So there was no question ultimately that this guy, this human rights defender, and the case he was building was accurate. It was just a lot of attempts to discredit him. Of course, I'm sorry of dancing on your question, Corey, But to get to it, this unit, they're called no Base. They're the special forces of the Mexican Navy, at least their commanders, and some of them got training at a place in Fort Benning called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, and that used to be called the School of the Americas. And during the Cold War.

During the Cold.

War, School the Americas trained some of Latin America's worst despots, see guys who were leading the right wing militias or military death squads in Central America and El Salvador in Guatemala. Manuel Noriega famously trained there. Pinochet his apparatus got training there. So it has a long dark history. And when I draw the line between the lessons that we didn't learn from Cold War interventions in Latin America and to the drug war, it's not a dotted line. It's a pretty continuous line. And that's what's something we wanted to point out in the film.

But I mean, this is why the film is so important, because Americans hear things like fight the cartels, and we are groomed to assume that more military force equels more safety, right we don't think about what happens when soldiers trained for combat are used for domestic policing. And your film suggests these killings weren't just corruption, it wasn't just rogue violence. But this was the very predictable result of militarizing policing.

Absolutely, and to this day.

I mean, given the sanctions that were dropped on April fifteenth, the day my film was released. They're officials in the US government who.

Don't want to believe Raymondo Ramos or want to.

Discredit him because there are things that could be done to stop the funding of this lethal military unit. And I should mention this military unit in Mexico that was implicated in the massacre in Nuevo Loreedo that's the subject of my film.

They're the guys who.

Caught al Chopo, So they're really loved by the DEA. They're effective at healing bad guys or capturing bad guys. What they're not so effective at is what you said, John, that they're not great. In fact, they're very bad police because they kill a lot of innocent people. And there are laws in place that have been in place since I think nineteen ninety seven. The Leahy Laws. There were laws sponsored by former Senator Patrick Lahey that give the State Department and Department of Defense the ability to cut off funding for militaries that are implicated in human rights abuses, which this one clearly was. But that hasn't happened here and why. We talked to the former administrator of the Layy Laws for the State Department, and he says that it depends on the information they get. They're not on the ground investigating these claims, but they rely on the consul that they rely on local intelligence services and quote unquote credible human rights workers and press. Well, there's no press critically covering nobilarity anymore. They were killed into silence in the bad days of the early days of the drug war. The human rights defender that had compiled reports that were good enough for the UN and ultimately for the Mexican military itself to concede that they had done something awful, they did not deem him credible because the Consul General had accused him of being a fraud a leader of its disinformation campaign. And I believe those accusations are what ultimately led to the sanctions that were dropped last month.

Yes, I wanted to ask about that through line that you interesting through line and disturbing one that you drew from America's support for right wing dictators in Latin America, for instance, for Pinochet, and the story that you're telling here and the militarization of Latin American societies at the behest in part.

At least of the US.

I mean, how much of this is a Trump story and aside from going back to the nineteen seventies, and how much of it is a story of the American government's militarization of Latin America generally. You know, I just don't know, So I was interested in that, given the through line that you're drawing, is it a Trump story or is it a story of militarization and the United States more generally.

It's a good question because it's both and Trump in recent weeks. I don't know that it was as much of a fixation of his in his first administration. The border certainly was, and I think he animated a lot of voters by evoking this threat of spillover from the chaotic northern Mexican border, which is not true Laredo, Texas, which is directly across the Rio Grande from noither. Laredo is one of the safest cities in America.

Same with al Paso.

It's you know, this kind of spillover threat is manufactured, but it is very much a story that begins in the Cold War, which preceded Trump by decades. But he's been fixated on the quote unquote don Roe doctrine in recent months. And I think because of what you said, John, I mean, it sounds it sounds like it makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of bad guys, heavily armed bad guys right across the border. It's scary. The cops are corrupt, so let's get the military there.

Yeah, and sure, let's flood it with guns, unless it's Sarah Calder doing it.

Yeah.

Yes.

And ironically, of course, the cart are armed by our guns as well, that come from straw purchases right across the border where it's very easy to buy guns. And you know, to circle back to something even more ironic is it's been reported, and I can't confirm this, that the cartel that is based in neuivl Loredo, which is an offshoot of the Zetas, has its roots at the School of the America slash wind sech It started. The Zetas cartel started with highly trained Mexican military forces that were trained for counter narcotics operations, and then they defected to the Gulf cartel where they were the sort of shock troops and security for them, and then they splintered off and became one of the most deadly cartels in Mexican history and in noibl Loredo and the state of Tamilipas. So there's a lot of muddiness and irony kind of mixed into it.

Well, I just want to ask, I mean, my ultimate question is, after all the years you spent on this story, these stories, I mean, what do you now believe gov men' sphere most cartels or citizens demanding accountability? What is scarier to political leaders?

That's a great question, and it's we're seeing this play out right now with the current President of Mexico because some of her close friends were just indicted, including the governor of Sinaloa, and that is unprecedented, and he was indicted for ties to the Sineloa cartel. So that is what's happening right now is kind of at the crux of that. And she's also been very much in denial and belittling and countering the numbers have disappeared in Mexico and the activists who have been trying to get accountability. I think the toll of the unaccounted for disappearances is one hundred and eighty thousands from two thousand and seven.

That's a huge number of people.

And the UN, a UN committee came out with that number and said it's probably even higher, and she said, oh no, no, no, that's people who have been moved, who moved to another zip. And you know that numbers inflated. So I'm sure her survival, our political survival, because politics are very much intertwined with the cartels there, but also our physical survival, and this physical survival of a lot of politicians there is dependent on not being killed by the cartels. But these women, primarily the wives and the mothers of the missing, have the courage. I face the same risks for more, many more risks, and they go out there every day and are protesting and going right to the presidential palace in Mexico City, and they're out on the street, and they're out in the ranches where a lot of these bodies are buried.

That are owned by the cartels.

So I think the fear is coming from all angles and everyone is kind of feeling it acutely in Mexico.

So Mexican politicians fear the cartels, but American politicians, I think more fear citizens demanding accountability.

Yes, and they know that. I think Americans fear the cartels, and they can leverage that for I mean, we have spent huge amounts of money both in the Plan Colombia, in Colombia arming Colombian military to fight the cartels, and in Mexico there was kind of a sequel to that called the Merida Initiative, which in part led to a lot of these troops that are implicated in my film to the human rights violations they committed.

They were trained and armed at the same place.

So I think there is a legitimate fear of the cartels, maybe somewhat in the United States, but that's also used, I think well to get people to support arms and training for these militaries and border enforcement, and also to vote for someone who stokes that fear, which is Trump and a lot of other people in office right now who you know, have made the immigration concern and conflating it with the drug cartels, that's a big thing, and they're not really that conflated at all.

Indeed, that's why this film is just so important. And I mean, I guess it would have come at the right time anytime in the last couple of decades, but it feels so prescient with all we're facing right now.

Thank you, Andy, Before we sign on off on this amazing and extremely important discussion, to ask you about the connections to broaden out also by asking you about some of.

The connections to other things that you've seen in the rest of the world.

Of course, we've been friends for a very long time, and I followed your work for a very long time.

And one of the things.

That struck me as a parallel to this film is when you work for The New York Times. Of course, you covered Toque Turte and in the name of cracking down on drugs and crime, the violence, really political violence at the behest of the state that went on there. So can you talk a little bit about that work and any parallels that you see with what's happening here. Our podcast, of course is focused on authoritarianism at home but also abroad, and that seems to me to connect this story and other really important stories about authoritarian violence.

Yeah, so President Utte in the Philippines, it's a huge parallel, and he's someone who at the time was somewhat fetishized by President Trump as.

Someone you could get the job done.

Job in his case was death squads of suspected drug traffickers and suspected in quotes, because anyone who had a dispute with their neighbor over a woman, over property, or noise, you could say, hey, he's dealing math out of his basement, and it wouldn't take much for these death squads, who were either police or Filipino military or sort of neighborhood villagilantes who had a license, could come in and kill them and they would leave them in the streets. So it was very similar in that ordinary people were inevitably getting swept up, and there was this culture and fog of complete fear in Manila and across the country where neighborhoods would just have bodies turn up and the cops would almost make fun of them by saying they were trying to flee, and the bodies were wrapped in duct tapes, so clearly they had been already captured and killed and wrapped in duct tape before they were fleeing, but no one had the power to say anything. And fortunately, right now Turte's facing war crimes or crimes in the international courts. But Mexico, I don't know if they're going to have the same accountability. In the case of our film, as I mentioned, the military actually apologized for this massacre. They came to the public square and spoke to the wives and the mothers of the missing and admitted culpability. And they arrested thirty of the Marines who were allegedly implicated, and then a few days later all but seven were released. And I got winned that a few weeks ago the other seven were released and none are going to face any kind of justice at all.

So that's the.

Parallel, I guess, is the impunity, the lack of justice, and the ordinary people who were swept up in this authoritarian furor. And what's also interesting is these people, at least in the Philippines, they elected du Tertue on the platform of him taking on this drug war.

So there's this, I would argue, a parallel to.

The current administration in America, where the people who are most unlikely to be served and most likely to be hurt by the authoritarian are initially seduced by their pronouncements of easy problem solving with always brutality, and it makes sense when your life is chaotic to want some sort of easy resolution.

Well, I'll say you know, this podcast is all about accountability.

Accountability for Donald Trump.

Accountability for his minions, and accountability for authoritarians around the world who abuse human rights. And although accountability sometimes feels far off, I feel like the first step to accountability is transparency and that's what this film does so well. It tells a story that wouldn't have been told, it tells it in graphic detail with evidence, and you can watch what we're hearing about.

So I urge listeners to check it out.

And I really want to thank you Andrew Glazer for making Spring of the Vanishing and for joining us on the Oath in the Office.

Thanks so much for having me. It was really fun talking to you guys.

Mister Glazier. I want to thank you as well for making the film and for joining us. What's the best way for our listeners to follow you and keep up with your work and Spring of the Vanishing.

Thanks so Spring of the Vanishing can be rented, streamed on Prime Video and Apple TV. My Twitter handle is at Andrew Glazer g Lazer. I'm not super active on social media, but I will try to be more and fill people in on developments in this story which is ongoing.

And of course we'll also link to the video in the show notes.

Thank you so much for being so generous with your time.

No, thank you for your interest. I really appreciate it. This is a huge help, and thank you both.

Thank you.

Thanks Andy, we got to go.

Professor Brett Sneider, what is the best way for our listeners to follow you and keep up with your brilliance together lonely six days of the week.

Say, if you enjoyed this discussion, you should subscribe, of course, and you can watch us on YouTube or listen to us wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me on Blue Sky as Democracy prof and we have a substack, the Oath and the Office substack. And I'll just say a final word about the whole episode, which was you know, one thing that we're doing every week is talking about the danger to democracy that this president is posing, and today I think we really dug into that idea of the Imperial Presidency, that there is a connection between our human rights abuses abroad of the kind that we had in this amazing discussion with Andrew Glazer and the abuses that we're seeing at home in the Braio Garcia case and the other cases as well that we're talking about that are both threatening free speech for non citizens but also attacking voting rights at home. It's really part of a piece, and you know, it's worrying, it's upsetting, but it's such a pleasure John to be able to unpack all of this with you every week, and I think it gives usome the our listeners some sanity to get a grasp on what's happening, to be honest about it. But also that's part of the process of seeing hope in protecting our democracy.

Corey, I want to thank you, and more importantly, my prole officer wants to thank you. This has been a very good experience for me overall and has kept me from relapsing in many ways. I also want to thank Wendy and Beowulf Fit all the brilliant people who put this podcast together. My God, the ratings for this thing, Corey. People love it.

Folks.

Please keep giving us reviews and sharing it and talking it up. We are so glad to be here. You can hear me five nights a week on Serious XM Progress one twenty seven. If you don't have Serious XM, it's called the John FUGELSINGH Podcast five days a week. And my book is called Separation of Church and Hate. Professor Breschneider thank you once again. We'll see you guys next time on the oath on the office