Steven Beschloss - How Much Injustice Will Americans Take?

A Saturday Prompt

Steven Beschloss
Apr 26, 2025



Yesterday Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested on charges of obstruction after an immigrant and his lawyer left Dugan’s courtroom through a private exit while federal agents waited outside. FBI Director Kash Patel boasting about his agency’s arrest of the judge. “Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public…Excellent work,” he wrote on X. (The post was subsequently deleted.) Chimed in Attorney General Pam Bondi on Fox News without concern for the evidentiary process, “These judges think they’re above the law. They are not. We will come after you and prosecute you.”

As a Milwaukee County executive put it, this was a “large performative showing of law enforcement officials” and was meant to “instill fear and hostility across our community.” As attorney and democracy advocate Norm Eisen put it, “This is not a crime. A judge has the authority in her courthouse to excuse a defendant for God’s sake.”

I could write more about this, but last night the story broke of three children ages 2, 4 and 7—all U.S. citizens—being taken out of the country without due process. While details are still emerging, the American Civil Liberties Union noted that the “rapid early-morning deportation” involved two mothers (one who is pregnant) and their children, including a two-year-old who suffers from a rare form of metastatic cancer and was removed without needed medication. Reportedly, she and her mother were taken to Honduras and against the father’s wishes and his emergency appeal.

ICE “ignored their own protocols on legal access and protecting children’s rights to enact an expedient deportation they know to be unlawful,” noted Fatima Khan with the Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants. “Not only that, they disappeared these families before any U.S. Court could stand up for its children.”

The arrest of a judge for not facilitating immigration enforcement and the removal (indeed kidnapping and trafficking) of U.S.-born children, represent the escalation of this regime’s lawlessness and inhumanity—part of its expanding commitment to stoke fear, ignore its constitutional obligations and threaten the lives of everyone in America, non-citizen or citizen. It should be noted that these latest transgressions precede the Supreme Court hearing arguments next month on birthright citizenship that seek to undo the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War essentially to give freed slaves legal status but in effect guarantees citizenship to virtually everyone born in the U.S. The speed with which Trump operatives Patel and Bondi took to the public sphere underscores the regime’s desire to accelerate fear and intimidation by creating ugly spectacles.

/snip