Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Bogus Charges and Foreign Wars

Welcome to another episode of the Oath in the Office podcast starring Professor Corey Bret Schneider. I am his obedient henchman, John Fugelsang, 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 Kilmara Brego 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 possess 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, Constitutional Law Professor and author of the Oath in the Office, Professor Corey Bret Schneider. 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 in 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. It'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 in this case. 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. Kilmahrabrego 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 is 29 years old from Maryland. He's a citizen of El 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? We're starting to get real pushback, you know, 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 due 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 could see that what was going on was that they were, you know, having failed to deny the constitutional rights that 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, you know, they had a sort of sham case against him for human trafficking, he had been pulled over, for instance, in a 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 tax. The administration is embarrassed and they're trying to cover this up with a lie. Exactly. Exactly. I also want to get, just be honest here, I think the bar is so low at this point, Corey, in 2026 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 celebrating this 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 Abrigo 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 the 1798 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 Boseberg 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. 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 of 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 is 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 it. I mean, we still 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 Mahmood Khalil because this was, I mean, great. This guy, we talked about a ton on our show, Syrian-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 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. They really are test cases for the strength of our democracy. In the first case, in the Barago Garcia case, the question is whether or not using this obscure 18th century statute, the government can just take away your due process rights altogether. And there was pushback. And 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. 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 bridging 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 that was a good moment. Now 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 more. Because this is really shady, right? This is really sketchy. Immigration courts are, guess who controls the immigration courts? 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 within the Department of Justice, who is 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 III court system has pushed this back, at least for now, into the hands of the administration. And good luck getting your rights vindicated 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. And 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? This plane is day. I think it says it's just a limit on government. But once you get to that level for all the heroism of the lower courts, including the district court judge here, this Supreme Court, well, it doesn't do fantastically when it comes to the projection of our rights. 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 really small here. But is that roughly right? For now, 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 on these specific cases that really are. Again, test cases for democracy. 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 it's 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. He said publicly anti-Semitism had no place in his movement. He said it more than once. Marco 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 has been living here, he was a leader of the protest movement in Columbia negotiating with the administration. They're saying, we don't like your views. You're out of here. Now, what's the status of the law? 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's where the appeals going now from Khalil and his lawyers. And you know, they're going 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 Clyburn's 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 eviscerate 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 largely eliminated the ability to do that. Now they left a way open, which is that if you could show that what you're doing is resisting intentional discrimination, then OK. 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 has 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 guess. But you know, a theme here 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 freedom 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 1965 Voting Rights Act. It preserved it, but in a particular way and said, you know, if you want to invoke the 1965 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 gerrymandering, 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 eviscerate the Voting Rights Act, but they left a little bit and maybe that little bit was something to work with, especially in the face of, well, let's call it, you know, magus, overt and disgusting form of intentional discrimination. Folks, the guardrails of democracy are hanging on by duct tape and caffeine. Long way they wave. All right, we got it now. It's something, yes, it could be worse than 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 of the Office. If you found yourself asking, can the president really do that? And check out the new season of You Might Be Right, hosted by former Tennessee governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam. Recently featured as a must listen podcast by Spotify, You Might Be Right is the chart-topping politics podcast tackling timely policy conversations with world and U.S. luminaries like Al Gore, Judy Woodruff and more. You'll hear balanced perspectives without the shouting matches found in mainstream news. If you need a place to start, check out their recent episode that poses the question, should a president be able to take control of a state's National Guard to restore order, even if a governor disagrees? It's a thoughtful debate featuring Rosa Brooks, former senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Defense and John Yu, former official with the U.S. Department of Justice to discuss the ability to federalize the National Guard and the unique role the guard plays in times of crisis. And it's well worth the listen. So follow You Might Be Right on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and tell them that I sent you. Hey, it's Cory. If you're like me, you may need to take a break from the 24-hour news cycle to recharge and renew your mind, which is why I recommend listening to How To with Mike Pesca, the longstanding advice show and ambi-nominated best personal growth podcast. Back for a new season with a new host, How To with Mike Pesca finds answers to your most pressing questions. I'm a fan of Mike and you might recognize him from being a recent guest on the Oath in the Office or from his award-winning reporting or from his role as host of the longest-running daily news podcast, The Gist. Each episode of How To follows the curiosity of a listener-invited guest to tackle a real problem with help from world-class experts who actually know what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence. If you've got questions, they find the answers. Follow How To with Mike Pesca on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and tell them I sent you. Welcome back to the Oath in the Office. I'm John Fugelsang, Professor Bretschneider. 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 3 a.m.? No, no, not that bad. Little past midnight. Wow. Thank you very much, Professor. I'm not going to miss this show, John. Talking to you every week gives me hope, gives the listeners 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 20 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 50 to 47 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 ceasefires. 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 re-election anymore, and the decency just starts popping 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 1, which creates the Congress, gives it its power. The president under Article 2 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 is acted. Now, you know, presidents for a long time, of course, ignored that. But in the 1970s, in the early 1970s, at the end of Richard Nixon's presidency, as he was getting close to step down, Congress started to reassert that power, realized that the bombing of Cambodia, the incursions that were illegal in arguably the whole war, and there's an argument, of course, about the Gulf of Tomkin, but arguably the whole war, that was really an example of what Arthur Schlesinger 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 legal when it's obviously not. No, somewhere the founders are screaming from their crypts, we wrote this down very clearly. Yeah, this is one of those where it really is clear. It's astonishing, but I guess I have to ask then, since they're getting away with this, constitutional mechanisms still exist, 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 30 or at most 60 days, and then can get an extension, go to Congress and say declare war. Now they can do it in a variety of ways through a resolution that 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. Right. You know, they're not at 51 votes yet in the Senate, but hopefully they will be. You know, realistically, we're going to talk about the next Congress. Right. 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. Well, of course, he's going to make all sorts of arguments, including the fact that there's a ceasefire now, so the 60 days doesn't matter. And will courts get involved? No. The only way to get up to reigning in a president is that Congress starts to assert itself. Okay, but let me ask you, I know it's almost one in the morning in Italy and you're 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? But 35 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's 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 that we've talked a lot about on this podcast with Sheldon Whitehouse with Ted Liu is what once the Democratic Party retakes the Congress, how do you rein things back in? And one thing that I'm just insistent on, we've had a couple of moments like this, the Carter presidency 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 reigned 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 it. And so, I think we've got to look at both parties, look at what presidents of both parties have done, and start to acknowledge that there's something wrong with the setup that enables at least beyond our borders. We haven't legally... Whatever he or she wants. We haven't legally declared war in 85 years, correct? I believe it was December 8th, 1941, 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 have that. I'm just going by this constitution you keep talking about. Yeah, yeah. It almost tells us Congress declares war. Yeah, I guess, ideally, we would return to a moment in which there was a formal declaration of war or not, and that's the idea. There are exceptions. 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, the civil war itself, was illegal. Lincoln said, look, this is a defensive war. He wasn't denying that it was a war, and the court there made an exception. So I would say 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 in that 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 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 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 I don't feel like I'm asking even for what you're talking about, which is probably what the framers meant, but just something. Well, I'm an originalist, Corey. I don't know if you know that about me. Okay, so before we hit the break, can 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 94-year-old former dictator 30 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, it's 94 years old and the DOJ has now charged him over the 1996 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 PowerPoint and saying, gentlemen, this time it'll work. I mean, this seems like pretext for some kind of military involvement. I noticed the same people who always think international law is tyrannic, if it 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 is this indictment? We can't laugh at that for exactly that reason. 30 years later. 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. This is part of how they did it in Venezuela too. They indicted Maduro. They went in and grabbed him. Raul Castro, it's not 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 knows what's in their plan. The resistance that might be generated to his arrest, they might use as a pretext to jump in, something like that. 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. That's what's going on here, a kind of ability of the American state to do whatever it wants. 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 break-in. Their original involvement with the CIA, some of them was involvement in the Bay of Pigs. The organizer of the Bay of Pigs, one of the organizers was also the organizer of the Plummer's unit, the break-ins in the United States. That's Howard Hunt. All of it just feels eerie, this obsession with doing whatever you want, both at home and attacking your enemies at home. Then also, yes, the Bay of Pigs, let's just go and invade a foreign state. Of course, this won't come tied to the last topic with any kind of declaration of war, they'll just do it. It really is an example of why we are again talking about that imperial presidency that we're stuck with at this moment. 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. Italy, and you're talking about the Nixon Library, I'm stuck on that. This is really keeping me up at night, Corey, because I think that we can balance accountability for genuine human rights abuses without turning prosecutions into ideological theater or pretense for war. 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. How does this make us look in the rest of the world that we waited until this guy was 94 because we want to appoint Marco Rubio as viceroy to Cuba? We're getting really deep in this conversation. I'm so sorry, professor. We haven't even mentioned how we've been starving the island. We had a blockade on the island. They don't have gasoline. Things are really dire there. This is another example of the pressure we're putting on this island that our media is not really dwelling on too much. It couldn't agree more. As we talk 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, and at the same time it's literally undermining human rights, being complicit and encouraging human rights violations. That's what our discussion will be about. You see it here too, that this is an indictment. It's about the rule of law, supposedly. Specifically it's about these planes that were shot down during a conflict between the Cuban government and exiles in the United States. The Cuban government's argument was that their airspace was being violated. This was essentially a military decision. The idea that it's being framed simply as the crime 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. Again, the rule of law is the subterfuge. That's the rhetoric. What's really going on is a lawlessness and a disregard for international law, 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. And 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 Fugelsang, Professor Brettschneider. 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 enemy-winning filmmaker Andrew Glazer. It follows the families of 49 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 18-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, Mr. 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 Mexico. This is very much a story that implicates US policy in Mexico and in Latin America that's very much alive right now and 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're 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 that jumped out at me, and I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about this as sort of a weigh in, especially for the themes of this podcast, are the parallels between what happened in Minnesota with ICE and the killing of Alex Pretti 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 terrorist without any kind of information, and the kind of defensiveness that you see of the military intervention and the military's Mexican military 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 streets. 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 Nuevo 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, Nuevo 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 2006, 2007. 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 Nuevo Laredo to pacify the cartel and they didn't investigate, they didn't arrest, they didn't do stains and buy and bust. They went in and killed and to put a highlight on it, John, you mentioned 49 people. That's actually the low end of the cases that we know about. We documented 49, 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. The 49 people were all innocent. These were not extraditionally killed criminals. These were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe looked the wrong way and the kid Jorge Dominguez 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 Nuevo 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 12 year old kids who were killed who were clearly not sophisticated gangsters. So innocent people were killed. The film opens with Jorge'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 in your experience making the film. How do people psychologically begin to survive that kind of disappearance? So interestingly enough, the mother of Jorge Dominguez vacillates between speaking of him in 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 that the families get to visit or experience. So it really to answer your question, what would you do if your if your child went missing? I mean, it's the only thing you can do. And these were people who were 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 us, particularly the women, the wives and the mothers of the missing have taken a really 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 of people that often these women will find remains that are not their child's just randomly find remains of other people who were buried in 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, Corey, I just I have to ask. I mean, did 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 was lots of collateral damage and that involves ordinary people who, you know, this Jorge 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 in 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 Colombia. And this goes back. It's almost as if the kind of lessons that we thought we would have learned in the Cold War massacres and the support of right wing militaries. And and 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 military don't have a lot of constraints. Yeah, 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 Dominguez 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, Dramon de Ramos, who is 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 leverage that suspicion into something that will really affect his life and 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 sort of denturing on your question, Corey, but to get to it, this unit, they're called in 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 of the Americas trained some of Latin America's worst despots. That's the guys who were leading the right wing militias or military death squads in Central America and El Salvador and 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 equals 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 15th, the day my film was released, there are officials in the US government who don't want to believe Ramon Del Ramos or want to discredit him. Yeah. 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 Laredo. That's the subject of my film. They're the guys who caught El Chapo. So they're really loved by the DEA. They're effective at killing 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, 1997, the Lehi laws. They were laws sponsored by former Senator Patrick Lehi 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 Lehi 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 consulate. They rely on local intelligence services and quote unquote, credible human rights workers and press. Well, there's no press critically covering normal area anymore. They were killed in the 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 U.N. 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 a 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 American 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 U.S. I mean, how much of this is a Trump story? And aside from going back to the 1970s 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 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 North Laredo is one of the safest cities in America. Same with El 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 Road 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. Sure. Let's put it with guns unless it's Eric Holder doing it. Yeah. Yes. And ironically, of course, the cartels 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 Nuevo Laredo, which is an offshoot of the Zetas has its roots at the school of the America slash Winsack. 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 in Nuevo Laredo and the state of Tomolipas. So there's a lot of 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 governments fear 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 Sinaloa 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 180,000 from 2007. 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, no, that's people who have been moved, who moved to another zip code and, you know, that number is inflated. So I'm sure her survival, her political survival, because politics are very much intertwined with the cartels there, but also her physical survival. And the 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 to face the same risks or 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 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 Columbia in Columbia, 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 have made the immigration concern and conflating it with the drug cartels. 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, any time in the last couple of decades, but it feels so prescient with all we're facing right now. Thank you. Andy, before we sign 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 detour, 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 could 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 Duterte in the Philippines, it's a huge parallel. And he's someone who at the time was somewhat fetishized by President Trump as someone who could get the job done. And the 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 Vigilantes 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 tape. 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, Duterte is facing war crimes or crimes in the international courts. But Mexico, I don't know if they're going to have the same accountability. And 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 30 of the Marines who were allegedly implicated. And then a few days later, all but seven were released. And I got wind 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 Duterte 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, the 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 Earth in the office. Thanks so much for having me. It was really fun talking to you guys. Mr. Glazer, 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 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-L-A-Z-E-R. 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. It's a it's a huge help. And thank you both. Thank you. Thanks, Andy. We got to go. Professor Bret Schneider, what is the best way for our listeners to follow you and keep up with your brilliance together? Lonely six days of the week. Well, 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 podcast. You can find me on Blue Sky as Democracy Prof. And we have a sub stack, the Oath in the Office sub stack. 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 Obrero 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 this with you every week. And I think it gives us and 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 and protecting our democracy. Corey, I want to thank you. And more importantly, my parole 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 at all the brilliant people who put this podcast together. My God, the ratings for this thing, Corey, people love it. My 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 Sirius XM Progress 127. If you don't have Sirius XM, it's called the John Fuglesing podcast five days a week. And my book is called Separation of Church and Hate. Professor Brecht Schneider, thank you once again. We'll see you guys next time on The Oath and The Office.