Politics
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April 21, 2025
The Maryland senator put a wedge between Trump and Salvadoran dictator Bukele and confirmed Democrats find out how to discover their spines.
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Senator Van Hollen takes questions at Dulles Worldwide Airport upon his return from El Salvador, the place he met wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia on April 18.
(Pete Kiehart / The Washington Submit through Getty Pictures)
On Sunday, Senator Chris Van Hollen conquered all 5 morning speak exhibits. He was by far essentially the most coveted visitor after his return from El Salvador, the place he stood down the nation’s despot and secured a gathering with the illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Van Hollen delivered love from Abrego Garcia’s household and his rising legion of advocates and proved that the 29-year-old father is alive and secure—a minimum of for now.
In the meantime, on Monday, congressional Democrats started their “week of motion” round the price of dwelling, which acquired a point out within the Politico Playbook—and hardly wherever else.
“This week, we’ll be having a ‘value of dwelling’ week of motion, and we’ve to proceed to speak to the American folks about our plans,” Home minority chief Hakeem Jeffries instructed ABC Information. “We acknowledge that housing prices are too excessive, grocery prices are too excessive, utility prices are too excessive, childcare prices are too excessive, insurance coverage prices are too excessive. America is just too costly.”
Whereas Democrats have complained that there’s nothing they will do for these deported from US soil to Trump’s gulag, Van Hollen proved them unsuitable. However don’t count on to see Jeffries doing “the complete Ginsburg”—DC-speak for showing on all 5 Sunday information applications, named for William Ginsburg, Monica Lewinsky’s lawyer, the primary particular person to perform the feat.
Present Problem
There you could have the Democratic Occasion within the fascist age of Donald Trump. Van Hollen, Senators Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders, Representatives Jamie Raskin and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, and a handful of others are targeted on the constitutional disaster we’re struggling via. A lot of the remainder of the get together’s leaders, if we are able to name them that, are dithering over the worth of eggs.
Will Van Hollen’s braveness show contagious? It already has. As I write, 4 Democratic representatives—Maxwell Frost, Robert Garcia, Yassamin Ansari, and Maxine Dexter—have adopted him to San Salvador. However Van Hollen delivered greater than inspiration. Not solely did the Maryland senator journey to El Salvador; he defied the nation’s leaders, who denied him a gathering with Abrego Garcia, after which tried to journey to the infamous CECOT mega-prison on his personal. He was stopped three kilometers away by the navy. However later he was instructed the federal government would carry the detainee to his resort.
Right here’s the place the story will get creepy. El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, the self-proclaimed world’s “coolest dictator,” confirmed off his cartoonish cruelty by dressing Abrego Garcia within the comfortable clothes of a vacationer, attempting to seat the boys by the resort pool (Van Hollen refused), and delivering them fruity cocktails.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘dying camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen within the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” Bukele wrote on X, with a tropical drink emoji.
Van Hollen shot again: “I imply, it is a man who’s been in CECOT. This man has been detained. They need to create this look that life was simply pretty for Kilmar, which, in fact, is a giant fats lie,” he mentioned on ABC Information’s This Week.
In actual fact, Van Hollen discovered that the detainee had been transferred to a different, much less infamous jail, and that circumstances there are considerably higher. “He instructed me concerning the trauma he had been experiencing, each when it comes to the kidnapping and the truth that he was initially despatched to CECOT,” the senator mentioned. He additionally revealed that Abrego Garcia hadn’t heard from his household or his legal professionals and knew nothing concerning the rising motion to free him, which heartened him.
After his return from El Salvador, Van Hollen declared flatly that the USA is in a “constitutional disaster.” Different US senators are having a tougher time saying these phrases. Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, who has usually been robust on these points, insisted we weren’t fairly there. “I imagine so long as these courts maintain, and the constituents maintain, and the Congress begins standing up, our democracy will maintain,” Klobuchar instructed CNN’s State of the Union, including, “however Donald Trump is attempting to drag us down into the sewer of a disaster.”
I’m with Van Hollen, however there was a glimmer of hope Friday night time as courts wrangled over the deportations. ICE buses of Venezuelan males driving to a flight to El Salvador rotated and went again to Texas’s Bluebonnet jail. Across the identical time, after midnight, the Supreme Court docket dominated that, a minimum of for now, the federal government can’t use the Alien Enemies Act to ship the boys it captured in another country.
“The federal government is directed to not take away any member of the putative class of detainees from the USA till additional order of this courtroom,” the courtroom dominated 7–2. In his dissent, a flustered Samuel Alito insisted“We had no good purpose to assume that, beneath the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was crucial or acceptable.” I suppose Alito didn’t know concerning the buses of Venezuelans whose deportation orders acquired reversed.
All of those authorized battles had been roiling earlier than Van Hollen landed on Friday, however there’s no query that he put his foot down on the facet of justice. And possibly he tilted the scales on behalf of these detained with out due course of. Perhaps he stiffened the spines of his colleagues. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who appears to be like to be present process an excessive political makeover as he hobnobs with righties like Steve Bannon on his new podcast, referred to as Van Hollen’s go to to Abrego Garcia “the distraction of the day.” Van Hollen had a fast reply: “I don’t assume it’s ever unsuitable to face up for the Structure,” he instructed NBC’s Meet The Press, including, “I feel Individuals are uninterested in elected officers or politicians who’re all finger-to-the-wind. Anyone who can’t rise up for the Structure and the best of due course of doesn’t deserve to steer.”
The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows every week.
Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economic system and arrange yet one more constitutional disaster at dwelling. Plainclothes officers proceed to abduct college college students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown overseas to a mega jail towards the orders of the courts. And Signalgate guarantees to be the primary of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence on the core of the American empire.
At a time when elite universities, highly effective regulation companies, and influential media retailers are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is extra decided than ever earlier than to carry the highly effective to account.
In simply the final month, we’ve printed reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to different nations, uncovered the administration’s attraction to obscure legal guidelines to hold out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of courageous pupil activists focused by universities.
We additionally proceed to inform the tales of those that battle again towards Trump and Musk, whether or not on the streets in rising protest actions, on the town halls throughout the nation, or in important state elections—like Wisconsin’s latest state Supreme Court docket race—that present a mannequin for resisting Trumpism and show that Musk can’t purchase our democracy.
That is the journalism that issues in 2025. However we are able to’t do that with out you. As a reader-supported publication, we depend on the assist of beneficiant donors. Please, assist make our important unbiased journalism potential with a donation in the present day.
In solidarity,
The Editors
The Nation
Joan Walsh
Joan Walsh, a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Present and the creator of What’s the Matter With White Folks? Discovering Our Method within the Subsequent America. Her new guide (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Company Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Shield Revenue, Energy and Wealth In America.
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