Wrong on Principle, Wrong Politically
Liberal pundits are urging Democrats not to talk about Trump’s illegal moves to disappear people to a Salvadoran dungeon. Not only is that wrong on principle, it doesn’t make political sense.
US president Donald Trump welcomes El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 14, 2025. (Roberto Sschmidt / AFP via Getty Images)
The Donald Trump administration is currently in the middle of what might be the gravest federal government overreach seen this century at least, asserting unprecedented repressive powers against even US citizens, defying a Supreme Court order to rectify one of its unlawful deportations, and thumbing its nose at core principles like the rule of law and separation of powers that American democracy was founded on. Challenging this loudly and fiercely should be a basic, commonsense position for anyone who believes in these things, and especially for an opposition party that has spent years screaming that Trump was a dictator in waiting.
Yet the response from a shocking number of voices who should know better is that those appalled by this authoritarian overreach should meekly avoid the issue. They’re acting like the Trump administration is enjoying the kind of broad public support for its radical actions that George W. Bush did after September 11 — even as the record shows this is not remotely the case.
The Power to Disappear
Let’s take stock of what the Trump administration has actually done. The slippery slope Trump’s critics warned about when he started targeting visa holders and even permanent residents with deportation quickly became a landslide when, less than a week later, he invoked the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a notoriously dangerous and abuse-ridden prison in El Salvador, whose self-proclaimed “dictator” he’s paying to keep these people imprisoned.
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