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sherrilyn ifill
'Delusional' Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prison for 20 Years... in El Salvador
"If genuine steps are taken to remove U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prisons in El Salvador," said one legal expert, "this removal would violate not only U.S. law but the U.S. Constitution."
Mar 21, 2025
President Donald Trump on Friday morning said anyone caught vandalizing Tesla cars or dealerships would be sent to the notoriously violent prisons of El Salvador for a 20-year sentence, a threat characterized by critics as "delusional" as well as overtly unlawful.
"People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders," Trump stated overnight, adding in all caps: "WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!"
Several hours later, Trump took up the issue again on his TruthSocial platform, saying: "I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!"
"The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."
Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill said the threat, which follows on Trump's highly controversial deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador last week, should not be taken lightly.
"Remember that this is where his discussions with El Salvador began," said Ifill in response to Trump's rantings on Friday. "The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."
The #TeslaTakedown movement has gained steam over recent weeks, with people nationwide angered by Elon Musk's wholesale assault on cherished government agencies and programs. The world's richest man, Musk, has been empowered by Trump to spearhead his invented Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
As Axios reports, in response to the popular anger directed at Tesla, "Trump has put the full weight of the U.S. government behind defending and promoting 'first buddy' Elon Musk's car company, which has seen both its sales and stock price slump."
On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi touted the arrests of three people for alleged acts of vandalism against Tesla, saying, "Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars."
Sending U.S. citizens to a foreign country for imprisonment—even if duly convicted of a crime—is not just insane but would be grossly unconstitutional, as Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a former prosecutor and currently the senior director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program, recently explained.
"It is illegal to expatriate U.S. citizens for a crime," Eisen wrote earlier this month in response to previous threats from the Trump administration to deport people to El Salvador for alleged crimes committed in the United States. "There is no modern precedent for sending U.S. citizens who are convicted of crimes to other countries for punishment, or 'banishment' as it has been formerly called and practiced."
Eisen concluded that it remained "unclear whether the Trump administration is still researching the 'legality' of this proposal or thinking through this scenario with any seriousness. But if genuine steps are taken to remove U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to prisons in El Salvador, this removal would violate not only U.S. law but the U.S. Constitution."
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Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Bid to Impose Racially Rigged Congressional Map
As the Alabama ACLU noted, the state must now create a second district "where Black voters have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice by the 2024 elections."
Sep 26, 2023
In a ruling hailed by civil rights defenders as a "win for Black voters," the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday
declined to intervene in a case in which Alabama Republicans are openly defying a federal court's order to redraw the state's racially gerrymandered congressional map.
Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff in the case, applauded Tuesday's ruling—in which no justices publicly dissented—as a "victory for all Alabamians" and "definitely a really positive step."
The state's Republican policymakers "basically said if you were Black in Alabama, your vote would count for less," Milligan told The Associated Press. "It was our duty and honor to challenge that."
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) described the decision as "another big win for Alabama's Black voters."
Sherrilyn Ifill, the former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), called the ruling "huge."
"I am darned near tearful with pride," she wrote on social media. "It takes so much to litigate these cases—often before hostile courts, with opposition that is unprincipled, and with naysayers all around."
The Brennan Center for Justice's Michael Li said in a statement that "after a string of remarkable victories, Black voters in Alabama are closer than ever to winning relief from discriminatory maps."
A 2022 order by a federal district court ruled that a new congressional map approved by Alabama's GOP-controlled Legislature and Republican Gov. Kay Ivey after the 2020 census diluted Black voting power because it contained just one majority African-American district. The court—which found that the maps violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment—ordered the state to create a new plan with two Black "opportunity districts."
Alabama appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in June ruled 5-4 in Allen v. Milligan—with right-wing Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh surprising many observers by joining their three liberal colleagues in the majority—to affirm the lower court's decision.
In response to Allen v. Milligan, Ivey convened a special legislative session to make a new map, which she approved in July, declaring that state lawmakers know "our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups."
Despite court orders, Alabama Republicans' new congressional map—the Livingston Congressional Plan 3—lacked a second majority Black district. The map's sponsor, state Sen. Steve Livingston (R-8), said U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told him that he was "interested in keeping my majority."
A federal three-judge panel consisting of two appointees of former President Donald Trump and one appointee of former President Ronald Reagan subsequently blocked the new map, writing that "we are deeply troubled that the state enacted a map that the state readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires."
Republican Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen then asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the case again. In a brief, Allen lamented that Alabama "has been maligned as engaging in 'open rebellion'" for defying multiple federal court orders.
The justices' denial on Tuesday allows an effort to replace the rigged map to continue.
On Monday, a special master appointed by the district court submitted three proposals for a new congressional map in Alabama. One of them will be chosen as the state's map for the 2024 elections. A three-judge panel has tentatively scheduled an October 3 hearing to consider the maps.
LDF president and director-counsel Janai Nelson said on social media that "all maps proposed by the special master would allow Black Alabamians the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in two congressional districts in the state."
Tuesday's ruling follows the Supreme Court's June decision to allow the redrawing of Louisiana's racially gerrymandered congressional map—a move that will add a second majority-Black district in the Southern state where 1 in 3 residents are African-American.
The ruling also comes amid a battle over Florida's congressional map, drawn by the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—a 2024 presidential candidate—and approved last year by the state's GOP-controlled Legislature. Earlier this month, a state judge ruled that the redistricting plan is an unconstitutional dilution of Black voters' ability to vote for the legislator of their choice and ordered the map redrawn.
The case will now head to the Florida Supreme Court, where a majority of justices are DeSantis appointees.
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'Wrong and Frightening': Alito Claims Congress Can't Regulate SCOTUS
"What a surprise, guy who is supposed to enforce checks and balances thinks checks shouldn't apply to him," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Jul 28, 2023
While conservative Justice Samuel Alito's new Wall Street Journalinterview covered various topics, one that provoked intense ire on Friday was his suggestion that federal lawmakers don't have the power to regulate the U.S. Supreme Court.
For a series of Journal opinion pieces—the first was published in April—Alito spent four hours speaking on the record with David B. Rivkin Jr., an attorney who currently has a case before the high court, and James Taranto, the newspaper's editorial features editor.
The latest piece comes after ProPublica revealed in June that Alito took a previously undisclosed 2008 fishing trip to Alaska on a private jet belonging to hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, an excursion organized by Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo.
ProPublica's reporting prompted Alito to defend himself last month with his own Journal opinion piece and his vacation was among the mounting ethics concerns regarding justices that led Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee last week to advance Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's (D-R.I.) Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act without any GOP support.
Pointing to the panel's vote, Rivkin and Taranto wrote Friday:
Justice Alito says he voluntarily follows disclosure statutes that apply to lower court judges and executive branch officials; so do the other justices. But he notes that "Congress did not create the Supreme Court"—the Constitution did. "I know this is a controversial view, but I'm willing to say it," he says. "No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period."
Do the other justices agree? "I don't know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don’t think I should say. But I think it is something we have all thought about."
"This is wrong and frightening," declared Sherrilyn Ifill former president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund. "Justice Alito—and I'm certain not only Justice Alito—believes that the Supreme Court is a branch of our [government] that is unchecked and unaccountable, and unreachable by the power of Congress."
Ifill was among many legal experts and lawmakers who took issue with Alito's remarks, with many citing the U.S. Constitution.
"Article III, Section 2 would like to have a word," tweeted Congressman Sean Casten (D-Ill.). That part of the Constitution states: "In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make."
Georgetown University Law Center professor Josh Chafetz highlighted that section of the Constitution and three others about the law-making power of Congress, appropriations for the judicial branch, and the ability of federal lawmakers to impeach judges.
"Alito's unethical grift is matched only by his arrogance," said attorney and former judge Bob Vance. "BTW, he's wrong. The Congress has the power of the purse, controlling funds allocated to the federal judiciary. It can also alter the size of the Supreme Court, which it has done in the past."
U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) addressed the justice directly, writing: "Dear Justice Alito: You're on the Supreme Court in part because Congress expanded the court to nine justices. Congress can impeach justices and can in many cases strip the court of jurisdiction. Congress has always regulated you and will continue to do so. You are not above the law."
Indivisible co-executive director Leah Greenberg tweeted that "it's been clear for a while that Alito does not believe that he's accountable to the legislative branch or the American people for his behavior but it's nonetheless shocking that he would say this out loud."
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) suggested Alito's comments could have consequences, saying that "this seems escalatory, and nudges even reluctant court watchers and skeptics of statutory reforms towards doing something. I mean, this is a fancy way of telling everyone to pound sand because he's untouchable."
Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser pointed out that "this is hardly the worst thing about Sammy Alito. But, for the record, Article III judges are not supposed to issue advisory opinions on constitutional questions that are not presented to them in case or controversy that their court properly has jurisdiction over."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who earlier this month sounded the alarm about "a dangerous creep toward authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court," also took aim at Alito on Friday.
"What a surprise, guy who is supposed to enforce checks and balances thinks checks shouldn't apply to him. Too bad!" she said. "Corruption and abuse of power must be stopped, no matter the source. In fact, the court should be *most* subject to scrutiny, [because] it is unelected and life-appointed."
"Alito's next opinion piece in the WSJ is about to be 'I am a little king, actually. The Constitution doesn’t explicitly say I'm not,'" the congresswoman added. "And it'd be boosted by some billionaire who secretly thinks voting rights should only belong to landed gentry."
Other critics called out Rivkin, who not only co-authored the pair of Journal pieces but also represents appellants in the tax case Moore v. United States, which the court has agreed to hear in its upcoming session.
Additionally, as Whitehouse noted, "the lawyer who 'wrote' this is also the lawyer blocking our investigation into Leonard Leo's Supreme Court freebies."
According to the senator, that "shows how small and shallow the pool of operatives is around this captured court—same folks keep popping up wearing new hats."
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