This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

President Donald Trump is flirting with a major escalation of his authoritarian rule,

and it concerns his deportation of dozens of migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. A lot is happening right now. A federal judge has blocked the deportations and Trump and his allies are demanding the judge's impeachment,

but this has Republicans privately in a major panic because they know they won't have the votes to impeach

the judge. Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that the Trump administration has

violated the judge's order. And on top of all that, Trump's Attorney General went on Fox News

and strongly suggested that the deportations might continue even in defiance of the court.

We think the story here is that the decision has effectively been made. They're going full

authoritarian, and it's only a matter of when, not if. Today we're going to try to unravel all of this

with Liz Die, a legal writer who has a good new piece for the public notice substack about just how

lawless this particular case has truly gotten. Liz, thanks for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

Okay, let's just bring everybody up to speed.

A few days ago, Trump deported dozens of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798,

claiming they were gang members.

A court blocked this because, you know, we're not actually at war or under invasion

by a foreign power. But the planes continued on to El Salvador anyway. The migrants are in prison

there, apparently in violation of the judge's order. Liz, where are we on all this right now? Can you

sum it up? I can. So I think this is one of the most interesting and upsetting cases that we've seen out of the

Trump administration this second go-around. It's really a terrifying confluence of both Trump's

authoritarian impulses and his willingness to take on the courts. Where we are now is that Trump has

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