DL Open Thread: Friday, April 18, 2025

Kidnapped US Citizen Released From Captivity–In Florida.  Just one more headline I never thought I’d have to write:

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez held his mother in a tight embrace and wept following his release from the Leon County Jail Thursday evening, where the U.S. citizen was held after his arrest for illegally entering Florida as an “unauthorized alien.”

An official with Homeland Security Investigations in Tallahassee took Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old born in Georgia, to a Wendy’s near the jail, where he reunited with his mother after spending more than 24 hours under arrest following a traffic stop in which he was a passenger.

Lopez-Gomez appeared shellshocked and spoke quietly as he discussed what happened when a Florida Highway Patrol trooper pulled over the car he was in on his way to work from Cairo, Georgia, to Tallahassee. The trooper made the traffic stop because the driver was going 78 mph in a 65 mph zone, according to the arrest report.

“I feel fine leaving that place, I felt bad in there. They didn’t give us anything to eat all day yesterday,” he told the Florida Phoenix in Spanish. He added that he had asked the trooper who made the arrest why he was being taken into custody, because he was a U.S. citizen.

His mother, also in Spanish, said the days ahead will be tough for the family and worries that Lopez-Gomez and his sisters will live in fear of deportation despite having been born in the country. She told the Phoenix she planned to sue over her son’s arrest.

Props To Chris Van Hollen.  Were it up to Trump, the Senator would be sharing that cell with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Josh Marshall Nails It.  Again:

Trump is hungry to walk through this door of lawless autocracy. But it is the conservative legal movement, embodied in the Federalist Society, organized by Leonard Leo and others, who opened the door. They manufactured the fraudulent idea that presidents cannot be constrained by the law. They imported it from abroad, from the degenerate ideologues of autocracy. They did this. They created the current moment in which a renegade President can simply start chainsawing through the legal fabric and do anything he wants and we, the citizens of the country, must wait in anxious expectation to learn which if any of the laws turn out to be real. That’s not how the rule of law works. It’s not a game of Magic Eight Ball, built by design on inherent suspense and uncertainty. It’s nature is its clarity and fixity, especially during arduous times of tumult and fear.

Yes, I am fully versed on the theory of purported unitary executive power. It’s a fraud, literally a foreign imposition. It unquestionably fails any test of the ideas of the people who wrote the Constitution as well as the bounds of the text itself. The only other reasonable standard is one of function. And the present moment illustrates with an almost perfect clarity that it fails that test as well, the test of constitutionalism itself since the doctrine’s central feature is to empower and tear away any obstacles that a renegade, lawless president might confront. We’re literally seeing that right now. Anyone who has read the Federalist Papers in their totality knows that somewhere between and third and a half of the essays are very specifically about Donald Trump.

We can talk endlessly about whether we’re still in a democracy or whether Trump wants to be or is acting like a dictator. We can debate words such as “fascism” that were unknown before a century ago. But what we are seeing right now is the definition of tyranny, a half-archaic concept the founders of the American Republic were very familiar with. Trump’s rule is both lawless and arbitrary. He has taken the bundle of powers the Constitution provides him to govern and defend the Constitution and turned them to an entirely different and corrupt purpose: using them as weapons to attack the people and institutions he deems his enemies.

Guess Whose Jobs Are Safe From DOGE.  Betcha you can:

In its most recent buyout announcement, the transportation department did not note that the positions spared supported Musk’s and others’ space operations.

But the fiscal year 2025 transportation department budget reviewed by the Guardian details funding for positions in pipeline management, transportation management, air traffic control and cybersecurity that the document states are critical for commercial space operations, including SpaceX, Starlink and other entities.

Volunteer Firefighters Claim Lynching Stunt Was ‘All A Joke’.  Where are we? Mississippi in the early ’60’s?:

It took more than a year for authorities to learn about an incident in which police say a volunteer firefighter chased a Millville Volunteer Fire Company employee with a noose while another volunteer videoed the incident.

Part of the delay, according to court records, was because the victim, who is Black, didn’t report the incidents because he “just wanted to come to work and do his job and go home.”

A person questioned on April 10 said, “Jay has called him names and has said some concerning things to him.” But the man said he did not want to be part of the investigation and did not want his name involved.

By April 14, Millville’s fire chief and president were made aware of what had occurred.

The following day, Hastings reported to Delaware State Police Troop 4 in Georgetown for an interview.

During the police interview, court documents say, Hastings claimed “it was all a joke” and that the man “was laughing about it.” He also told police it was not a noose Droney was chasing the man with, but a “fireman’s knot.” (Oh.)

“The video clearly showed Jay carrying a noose,” investigators wrote in the court document.

Hastings admitted to videoing the incident but said he didn’t remember who tied the knot and then, according to court documents, began changing his story before telling police he was done talking until he had an attorney.

The men were then charged on April 15. After being arraigned, Droney and Hastings were released on their own recognizance.

What do you want to talk about?