This Is How We Fall

The Supreme Court greenlit authoritarian impunity—as the loudest voices in media kept calling it a victory.

While the fascist regime cements its power, a disturbing number of legal experts, commentators, and self-styled defenders of democracy are clapping like seals over a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling that green-lit one of the regime’s most lawless acts.

You’ve seen the headlines. “SCOTUS checks Trump.” “A win for due process.” “The Court draws a line.”

Nonsense. Utter, delusional nonsense.

The Court drew no line. It handed the fascist regime a how-to manual: violate a court order, outsource the consequence to a foreign partner, and call it foreign policy. The judiciary will look the other way. With a nod. And a bow.

And yet—pundits declared victory.

Let’s be honest: it’s comforting to believe the system still works. That the courts are quietly holding the line. That even in the chaos, someone, somewhere, is still keeping the fire lit. I understand why people want to believe that—because I wanted to believe it too.

But let’s be clear: it wasn’t because anything was actually won. It was because we’re so desperate for a sign, any sign, that the system still works, that we’ve started mistaking concessions to authoritarianism for acts of resistance. It’s not just embarrassing—it’s dangerous.

Now, for the sake of charitability, let’s say there exists an interpretation of the 9-0 decision under which a good faith Executive—one that values the rule of law and feels genuinely constrained by constitutional limits—might interpret the ruling as an obligation to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

That interpretation isn’t absurd. What’s absurd is pretending this administration has even the faintest proximity to that kind of good faith.

The Supreme Court knew it. Anyone paying attention knew it. And now the regime is doing exactly what it was always going to do: using the Court’s language as a shield while defying the outcome it supposedly respects. They say they’re “facilitating” Garcia’s return while making sure that return never happens. And under this ruling, that’s perfectly fine. As long as the lie is wrapped in the language of diplomacy, the judiciary will defer, defer, and defer again.

Because while pundits quibble over whether “facilitating” is a strong enough verb, the regime is busy building precedent. And the precedent is this: if the fascist government breaks the law, and then labels the fallout “foreign affairs,” the courts will recuse themselves from the Constitution entirely.

That is not a safeguard. That is a surrender.

And let’s be brutally clear: if we keep allowing these fantasies to flourish—this idea that the judiciary is some kind of firebreak protecting us from the blaze—we are not resisting fascism. We are normalizing it. Institutionalizing it. Helping it win.

This article is not about Trump. It’s not about SCOTUS. It’s not even about the law.

It’s about us—and the dangerous illusion that some of our most trusted voices are helping to build.

If we don’t tear that illusion down, fast, there won’t be anything left to save.

The Abrego Garcia Case – What Actually Happened

Let’s drop the euphemisms and lay it out plainly.

Kilmár Armando Abrego Garcia was illegally deported in direct violation of a federal court’s protection order. This wasn’t a technicality. This wasn’t a misunderstanding. An immigration judge had already granted Garcia withholding of removal—meaning that while a formal removal order technically existed, it was legally suspended because the judge concluded that returning him to El Salvador would place his life in danger. Under the law, he could not be deported.

The regime did it anyway.

No process. No reconsideration. Just a black-bag deportation in the dead of night—vanishing a man the courts had ruled must be protected.

And when the district court ordered the administration to reverse course, the Supreme Court intervened—not to enforce the rule of law, but to provide the regime with exactly the legal ambiguity it needed to dodge accountability.

The Court didn’t order the government to bring Garcia back. It didn’t enforce the order. It didn’t even require a specific result. Instead, it instructed the Executive to merely “facilitate” his return—without defining what that meant, or requiring that it succeed.

Here’s what the SCOTUS actually wrote:

“The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’ in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
— SCOTUS Decision, April 10,2025

In immigration law, facilitate is a nothing word. A shrug in legal robes. It signals cooperation while enabling inaction. It says: provide a plane, file a memo, maybe send an email—but under no circumstances be compelled to actually do anything.

Worse still, the Court wrapped this deference in diplomatic language, insisting that judges must respect the Executive’s exclusive authority over foreign affairs—even, apparently, when that “foreign affair” consists of laundering a constitutional violation through a handshake with a foreign government.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Once the case was remanded to the district court and the judge demanded clarity and compliance, the regime’s legal response played directly into the ambiguity SCOTUS had handed them:

“The Court should deny Plaintiffs’ requests for further relief. The relief sought by Plaintiffs is inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s instruction requiring this Court to respect the President’s Article II authority to manage foreign policy.”
— DOJ Filing, April 14, 2025

Then, just days later, came a grotesque spectacle that could have been ripped from a fascist satire. In the Oval Office, Trump assembled a theater of impunity: Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, and El Salvador’s authoritarian president Nayib Bukele—all grinning, all openly mocking the judiciary, all citing the Supreme Court decision as their shield.

Bondi dismissed the case as a mere paperwork error. Miller called the judge’s order “unlawful” and praised SCOTUS for confirming that “no one can compel the president to retrieve a foreign national.” Bukele laughed it off entirely: “How could I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”

It was surreal. A foreign head of state and the architects of a fascist legal movement, gathered in the White House, gloating over their defiance of the American judiciary.

And they were right to gloat.

Because the Court gave them everything they needed. It told them that as long as a foreign partner plays along, the U.S. government can violate its own courts’ protections, cloak the act in diplomacy, and be legally untouchable.

This wasn’t a check on power.

It was a procedural escape hatch.

The Court told the Executive: break the law at home, outsource the consequences abroad, and the judiciary will recuse itself from the Constitution entirely.

Let’s be honest about what that really was.

It was a collaboration.

Whether the Court intended to aid the regime or simply feared that asserting real authority would expose its own impotence, the effect is the same: the judiciary abandoned the Constitution in favor of preserving the illusion of institutional control.

That’s the precedent now.

The Supreme Court has made clear that in the face of fascist overreach, it will not be the firebreak.

It will be the fog machine—blurring accountability just enough to let the regime walk through the wreckage, laughing.

A Knock at Your Door

Let’s drop the legal theory and procedural haze for a moment. Let’s make this personal.

Imagine this:

Five minutes from now, federal agents under the Trump regime knock on your door. They detain you—or your spouse, or your child—without warning. No charges. No warrant. No explanation. Just a vague assertion that they’re “conducting an investigation.”

Within 24 hours—before you’ve seen a judge, before your lawyer can act—they put that person on a plane and hand them over to a foreign government. El Salvador. Hungary. Doesn’t matter. They’re gone. Outside U.S. jurisdiction. In the custody of a foreign sovereign.

You go to court. You plead your case. And the court agrees: the deportation was unlawful. Your loved one was denied due process. The government acted improperly.

And then what?

Thanks to the “How to Lawfully Abduct and Rendition U.S. Residents” manual provided by the Supreme Court, here’s what happens next:

Nothing.

Because now it’s “foreign affairs.”
Because now your family member is in the hands of a sovereign government.
Because now, according to the Supreme Court, the Executive Branch is only required to facilitate their return—not effectuate it.

There is no enforcement mechanism. No judicial power to compel the foreign sovereign. No legal authority to force the Executive to do anything beyond offering vague, meaningless reassurances. The courts, by their own precedent, are bound to sit on the sidelines and “respect” the sovereignty of the very government holding you or your loved one hostage.

And here's the part they won’t say out loud: none of this depends on immigration status.

It doesn’t matter if the person kidnapped is a citizen or a non-citizen. The legal argument being used—that courts cannot interfere in matters involving custody held by a foreign sovereign, even if that custody was unlawfully attained through what amounts to a government-backed kidnapping—applies equally to you, a U.S. citizen, born and raised.

Now ask yourself: under the current regime, if this happened to your family, how would you get them back?

You wouldn’t.

And if that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, it’s only because it hasn’t knocked… on your door… yet.

The Real Constitutional Crisis Isn’t Coming—It’s Already Here

For years, pundits have warned of a looming constitutional crisis—as if it would arrive with sirens blaring, some final standoff where the Executive defies a court outright and the fate of the Republic teeters on the edge.

But that’s not how this ends. That’s not how any of this ends.

There will be no dramatic showdown between branches. No tanks in the streets. No climactic moment where the judiciary bravely resists a tyrant and democracy is saved in a single ruling. That fantasy is for screenwriters.

What we’re living through is far more dangerous—because it’s quiet, procedural, and polite.

Yes, the courts have intervened here and there. Some wrongfully terminated civil servants have been reinstated. A few blatantly illegal actions have been delayed, paused, or mildly redressed. But even those so-called “wins” are only temporary speed bumps. They don’t reverse the trend. They don’t fix what’s already broken. And they don’t restore what’s already been destroyed.

Thousands upon thousands of career public servants remain fired. Entire departments—like Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, the Department of Education, and the EPA—are gutted or are under threat of being gutted. Lifesaving research is frozen. Vaccine infrastructure is collapsing. The FDA is understaffed. The administrative state is being dismantled in plain sight.

Meanwhile, the First Amendment is under daily assault. The regime issues executive orders targeting law firms, universities, and private citizens—punishing them for speech, association, or simply failing to show loyalty. Tariffs, weaponized against the economy, are being implemented with no coherent strategy—destroying supply chains and choking businesses into compliance. And as the Abrego Garcia case makes clear, even Due Process itself is now optional—revocable by deportation and buried under the language of foreign policy.

And the courts? They haven’t stopped it. They haven’t extinguished a single structural threat. They’ve merely clarified process. They’ve rewritten verbs. They’ve issued stay-after-stay-after-stay—turning what should shock us into action into a slow, procedural boil we mistake for normal, until democracy’s cooked through and served as fascism.

In terms of actually halting the regime’s war on democratic governance?

Nothing.

This is the same Supreme Court that recently ruled the President is essentially immune from criminal prosecution for any act he can label “official.” It didn’t just decline to hold him accountable—it rewrote the boundaries of executive power to place him above accountability entirely. Under that doctrine, ordering the military to assassinate political opponents could be immunized—so long as it came with a government letterhead.

This is not judicial independence.
It is the slow-motion coronation of authoritarianism.

The judiciary is not checking fascism.
It is coexisting with it.

And whether that coexistence is driven by ideological sympathy or institutional cowardice no longer matters. Either way, the message is the same: the courts will not save us. They will nod, delay, and defer—until the last protections are procedurally erased.

This is the constitutional crisis.

Not a clash of powers. Not open defiance.
Institutional surrender disguised as balance.

It’s a regime tearing the country apart with paperwork, while the courts issue memoranda about tone.

Let me be clear: there are still lawyers fighting tooth and nail, and judges trying—against the tide—to uphold the rule of law. And their efforts matter. But all they’ve done is buy us time—and time is not the same as safety.

The longer we pretend there’s still a line the judiciary won’t let the regime cross, the more time we waste fighting the wrong fight—one that’s already lost.

If You Believe in This Fight, Help Keep It Alive

Before we get to the rest of this article, I need a quick moment of your time:

This work isn’t backed by corporations. There are no ads, no paywalls, no billionaires funding it.

It’s just one person, fighting like hell to expose the truth and give you the weapons to push back.

If you value this work—if you want this movement to keep growing, keep calling out fascism without fear, and keep fighting for the future we deserve—then I need your support.

Join the fight. Become a supporter. Every contribution keeps this mission alive.

Because silence is surrender. We do not surrender. We are #TheRelentless.

The Pundit Class Is Fighting the Wrong Battle

While the judiciary defers and the regime consolidates, a certain class of political influencers has decided their job is not to confront reality—but to sedate the public.

These aren’t obscure legal theorists in journals no one reads. These are some of the most visible voices in American media: the podcast hosts with millions of subscribers, the YouTubers who posture as truth-tellers, the cable news panelists trotted out nightly to explain what’s “really happening”—some with law degrees, some just fluent in confidence. But across the board, they’re doing the same thing: downplaying danger, spinning procedural scraps into progress, and feeding the public a steady diet of hopium.

They are not just failing to sound the alarm. They are actively muffling it.

These are the voices who called the 9-0 Abrego Garcia decision a “win” for the “rule of law”—as if the rule of law means anything when the outcome is impunity. The pundits who reassured viewers it was “good that SCOTUS clarified the limits of judicial authority,” while ignoring the fact that the man whose rights were violated is now indefinitely imprisoned abroad, beyond the reach of any meaningful redress. The legal-minded personalities who point to isolated rulings—like the reinstatement of a few civil servants or the temporary halting of a single executive order—and pretend these are signs that the system is holding, even as the institutions those rulings gesture toward are being gutted in full view of the public.

They’re not analyzing reality. They’re performing stability.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Maybe they truly believe that tempering fear is responsible. Maybe they think that admitting the system has failed would cause panic. Maybe they’re simply trying to protect their audiences from despair.

But good intentions don’t excuse delusion. And at this point, delusion is complicity.

Because the fascist regime is not being deterred by these decisions. It is not being chastened. It is not “learning its limits.” It is learning exactly how far it can go—and how many people will keep pretending everything is normal so long as the wheels of procedure keep turning and the rulings arrive with a stamp and a signature.

It is learning that you can vanish someone in defiance of a court order, refuse to bring them back, and then cite a Supreme Court decision as cover—and the people trusted to interpret that ruling for the public will still call it a win.

It is learning that you can dismantle the federal workforce, politicize civil service, weaponize tariffs, and punish speech—and someone will go on television to insist that everything is still ok because we have not yet reached a Constitutional Crisis.

But this is not democracy. This is managed collapse, and their job is now PR.

If you still think the courts are going to stop this, you haven’t been paying attention.

But if you’re out there telling others they will, you’re doing something worse than failing to fight back.

You’re fighting for the wrong side.

The One Fight That Actually Matters Now

If the courts won’t save us—and they won’t—then what?

That’s the question a lot of people are left asking, especially those who’ve been watching this regime escalate for years—all the way back to Trump’s first term. If institutions are compromised and the pundits are lying, the next instinctive answer is: protest. Take to the streets. Raise hell. Show them we’re still here.

It’s an understandable response. It feels right. It feels righteous. And in some ways, it’s necessary. Protest can build solidarity. It can bear witness. It can make us feel less alone in the face of something monstrous.

But protest is not persuasion.

And right now, persuasion is everything.

Because it doesn’t matter how many of us flood the streets—if the regime still maintains enough public support while also holding the levers of power, it will continue to escalate. It will continue to dismantle, punish, and dominate. That’s the reality.

This regime doesn’t need to be loved. It doesn’t need a majority. It just needs enough consent to maintain the illusion of legitimacy while stripping every system down to its authoritarian core.

So the only fight that matters now—the only one that can shift the trajectory—is breaking that consent.

That means taking the fight to the source of their power: their base. Not through shame or mockery, but by exposing the betrayal at the heart of it all. By revealing the ways this regime has failed even those it claims to protect. By puncturing the myth that any of this is being done in their name, for their benefit.

It means identifying the cracks in the coalition—the working-class families being bled dry by tariffs, the veterans losing their healthcare, the parents who can’t get medicine for their kids—and driving wedges right through them.

It means forcing the regime to expend energy defending its own failures, not just attacking its enemies.

Because when enough people start walking away—not necessarily toward us, but away from them—the entire machine starts to falter. They lose the illusion of mandate. They lose the ability to hide behind “the people.” And once that’s gone, even authoritarian power begins to slip.

This is not a protest movement anymore. It’s a campaign of political disruption. Of narrative fracture. Of relentless erosion from within.

And it’s the only fight left that can still be won.

One More Thing Everyone Should Be Doing

There’s one more thing—one critical thing—that every single person worried about this regime should be doing right now.

Assume the SAVE Act will pass.

Assume it already has.

Because even if it doesn’t, the damage will already be done. The fear, the confusion, the barriers—it’s all intentional. The goal is simple: keep people who oppose the regime from voting. And the method is even simpler: drown them in red tape, last-minute ID laws, and bureaucratic sabotage.

So, yes, fight the SAVE Act. Protest it. Expose it. Challenge it in court.

But in the meantime?
Act like it’s law.

Start now. Help everyone you know gather the documents they’ll need to vote under these new restrictions—passports, birth certificates, tribal IDs, whatever your state may require. Don’t wait for confirmation. Don’t wait for implementation. Don’t give them the win of catching us flat-footed.

They’re not going to make it easy. They’re counting on people giving up.

Don’t.

If we can’t stop them from rigging the system, we sure as hell can stop them from winning with it. If they raise the barrier, we climb it—together, loudly, and relentlessly.

So make it personal. Start with your friends, your family, your neighbors. Ask them if they’re registered. Ask them if they have ID. Help them figure out what they need. Drive them to the damn DMV if you have to.

Because this isn’t just about persuasion anymore. It’s about outmaneuvering a regime that knows it can’t win fairly—and is betting everything on stopping us from showing up.

We don’t give them that win.
Not now. Not ever.

No More Delusions, No More Excuses

Let’s put it plainly.

The courts are not going to save us. They are not going to restore the rule of law. They are not going to stop this regime. They’ve already shown us exactly what they’re willing to do: redefine obligations as suggestions, redefine violations as foreign policy, and redefine impunity as constitutional restraint.

And no amount of performative outrage from commentators will change that—especially not the ones still selling illusions of procedural heroism while fascism marches forward in broad daylight.

We are not “waiting” for a constitutional crisis. We are living through one. It just doesn’t look like the movies. It looks like Abrego Garcia—a man illegally deported, then left to rot in a foreign prison while a unanimous Supreme Court gives the regime cover. It looks like agencies gutted, rights rewritten, dissent punished, and power consolidated—one ruling, one waiver, one delay at a time.

So no, we don’t need more optimism. We don’t need more threads explaining how “technically” the system still works. And we sure as hell don’t need one more pundit calling a defeat a victory because the language was narrow or the decision came dressed in robes instead of jackboots.

What we need is to stop lying to ourselves. To stop waiting for institutions to act as if the law still binds the powerful. To stop assuming that anything short of mass public defection will make a difference.

And that starts with this question:
What are you actually doing to shift public opinion?

How many conversations have you had with someone outside your political bubble this week?

How many times have you engaged—online or in person—with someone who still supports this regime, or who hasn’t yet realized what they’re backing?

How many friends, family members, coworkers, or neighbors have you challenged—not with moral superiority, but with truth they can’t ignore?

If confrontation isn’t your thing, that’s fine. But then: what have you done to support and organize the people who aren’t afraid to have those conversations? Are you amplifying their work? Backing their efforts? Giving them cover and backup and reach?

And here’s one more: How many people have you helped make sure they’ll be able to vote if the SAVE Act passes?
Have you checked in with friends to make sure they have the right ID? Have you helped them figure out how to get it? Have you shared the resources they need—or physically shown up to help?

Because if we’re not doing that—if we’re not actively in the business of persuasion, disruption, or preparation—then what are we doing besides spectating?

The fight now is not to be loud. It’s not to be right. It’s to be effective.

This is not about catharsis. This is about survival. And the only weapon we have left is turning public opinion against this regime—piece by piece, one conversation at a time, one vote at a time, one crack in their coalition at a time.

If you have a platform, use it to discredit the regime—not just attack it, but fracture it. If you have reach, use it. If you don’t, help someone who does.

Because the clock isn’t ticking. The clock has already struck.

And anyone still clinging to the fantasy that the courts will pull us back from the brink isn’t just wasting time.

They’re helping us fall.

Join the Fight, Amplify the Truth

Because silence is surrender. We never surrender. We are #TheRelentless.

Sources

• Supreme Court of the United States: SCOTUS Ruling in Noem v. Abrego Garcia (April 10, 2025)

• U.S. Department of Justice: Defendants’ Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Additional Relief (April 14, 2025)

• Wall Street Journal: El Salvador’s Bukele Says He Can’t Return Mistakenly Deported Man | WSJ News (Video)