Trump now claims he’s upset with Putin. He told NBC listeners he was: "...very angry, pissed off, when... when Putin started getting into Zelensky's credibility, because that's not going in the right location." Considering he's been doing exactly the same for weeks, I think it's far more likely Putin has told Trump not to be so openly pro-Russia, to give a bit more credibility to the whole charade. The president also said he wasn't joking about running for a third term and hinted there are ways around the Constitution, saying: “There are methods which you could do it.” I believe he would try that in a heartbeat.
However, this morning I want to focus on something else and this is Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller. He has the menacing looks of someone who could easily play the evil mastermind in a James Bond movie. Millers is the man behind many if not all of the insane Executive Orders that the president has been issuing like confetti and which are regularly bring successfully challenged in courts across America. He is probably behind the use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport hundreds of Venezuelans to a harsh prison in El Salvador.
I don't believe for one second that Trump reads or understands what he's signing. He just likes putting his moniker on official documents in front of the TV cameras. It makes him feel important and gives the impression of power. But in reality it's Miller who pulls the strings.
Miller has invoked the AEA and is now desperately trying to convince himself and others that America is at war with Venezuela, a conflict which is the only thing that would justify the AEA. Take a look at this tweet:
The fundamental error in how immigration is being discussed in the courts and media is pretending that what happened to us over the last four years is a routine civil enforcement matter.NO.We were invaded and occupied. Entire neighborhoods were conquered.Entire towns were…— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) March 29, 2025
To read this is to put the USA in the same position as Ukraine, which actually has been "invaded and occupied"; "entire neighborhoods conquered" and "entire towns subjugated." The notion that the Venezuelan authorities have despatched an army of men to do the same to America is laughable.
A court has already applied a temporary restraining order (TRO) which the Washington DC appeals court has ruled can remain in place until April 12th.
Miller goes on: "If every foreign trespasser gets to have their own federal trial prior to removal then there is no liberation. There is no restoration. The invasion will be made complete."
What he's suggesting is that the deportees, their lawyers and the courts must simply accept the word of a few border control agents that these men are illegal aliens and can be summarily detained and deported with no one knowing who they are or even where they are.
One judge at the appeals court actually said: "Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here." Think about that. America had declared war on Germany in 1941 and even members of Hitler's political party were afforded more rights under due process than these poor Venezuelans some, perhaps most, of which are entirely innocent of any criminality but now imprisoned in El Salvador..
Article 4, Section 4 of the US Constitution that Miller relies on says this:
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."
There has been no invasion, no war with Venezuela and the courts will soon throw it all out. Millers final comments that, "invading armies and foreign trespassers will be expelled, cartels will be smashed and liberation will be achieved" sounds like the end of a speech by Hitler in one of his Nuremberg rallies. It is really terrifying that someone right up close to the US President could even think such things.
The battle lines are being drawn between two of the three pillars of the Constitution while the third, the legislature, sits idly by doing nothing.
Lawyers
Senior partners at the law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters have published an op-ed in the New York Times which is a call to arms for all American law firms following Trumps attack on the ones he believes have helped those who have challenged him personally in the past, as I pointed out on Saturday. It is well worth a read:
"Our firm stands with Perkins Coie and all firms and lawyers who fight against this president’s lawless executive actions. That’s why we’ve called on other firms to join us in submitting a friend of the court brief in support of Perkins Coie."
They ask:
"If lawyers and law firms won’t stand up for the rule of law, who will?"
It will be an irony if lawyers, the very people he has relied on over decades to keep him out of jail are the ones that finally bring him down.
