Asha Rangappa
Appearances
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
In all of these contexts, whether it's in these deportations, whether it's in the visa revocations, whether it's even in the tariff context, you hear these buzzwords, foreign affairs, terrorism, national security, national emergency. All of these are arenas that are core executive branch authorities that are given great deference by the courts.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And so when they frame all of these issues in those terms, they're already carving out A huge swath of authority that they can essentially exercise without much oversight. And when you layer the court's absolute immunity ruling from last year on top of that, which, again, protects these core functions from any kind of liability issue.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
There is a large arena in which they can act with impunity if they can move fast enough, as they are in this case.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I wouldn't say that it's not illegal. It means that he's going to be given a lot of deference. He'll be given a lot of deference in terms of factual determinations, for example, factual determinations that we're in a national emergency, perhaps his factual determinations that we're being invaded. or that somebody's actions are intruding on his foreign policy prerogatives.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
All of these things are given great latitude. And this is discretion that's been afforded to the executive branch in all of these contexts so far with delegated authority from Congress. So these are actually Congress's authorities that it has given to the executive branch with the understanding that there might be
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
actual quick decision-making needed by the executive branch in certain circumstances to exercise this kind of authority. It presumes that somebody is going to be acting in the nation's interests and in good faith.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I don't know that in this specific case they can force him to do anything. If he says, look, I talked to President Bukele and he said he can't return them or he won't return them and shrugs his shoulders, which he basically did in this press conference, then there's not much that the court can do in that situation.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
What's interesting to me, Ezra, is that this doesn't really help him in the big picture in terms of the policy. It's in his legal interests to bring Abrego Garcia back and say, look, this is not a big deal. We can correct errors so we can move fast. We can round up all these people and do these summary deportations because if we make mistakes, we can bring them back.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I actually think that would be a stronger legal argument. What's happening here is that this is about a power play. and it's about defiance. So in some ways, the legal interests are working against, I guess, the ego that the administration has. So they might be able to, for example, prohibit further deportations if it becomes clear that this is an irrevocable move and errors can't be corrected.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I think that's true. My only point is yes, I think there would be a downside to bringing someone back. But I think if they were operating in a paradigm where they want to be in compliance with the court, they would do that.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
It's similar. I think that it's more similar to the Bush administration sending people to Guantanamo. So the black sites were instrumental. It was for extracting information that they believed that these detainees had using methods that would be illegal under our law.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I'm not excusing it, but I'm saying that there was a, you know, I think they thought there was going to be some output that they were going to get that would be legal. useful intelligence.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
But in terms of evading actual court authority, what the Bush administration did is that they looked at some World War II precedents that said that enemy combatants who were imprisoned in a location over which the U.S. had no control, that those people did not have the right to petition for habeas corpus. And the Bush administration thought, hey, that's great.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
We can put people in Guantanamo Bay because that's, you know, under the sovereign control of Cuba. And we can basically have this convenient location where we can house all these people. But it will be out of reach of the courts. And this led to a pretty robust jurisprudence after 9-11 where the courts didn't really like getting cut out of the equation necessarily.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And so they began to have these decisions where they said, no, we actually do have the right to look at what you're doing there.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And all of this results, by the way, Ezra, in this irony that Guantanamo detainees who were captured abroad, who never stepped foot on American soil, had the ability to petition for a writ of habeas corpus, due process rights, the ability to contest their enemy combatant status, and were protected by the the Geneva Conventions.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
So what you're seeing now is that people who have literally been here for a decade aren't being afforded those same privileges and rights.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
It's horrifying. And I think the administration, what I think is horrifying here is that they've been very legally savvy, right? Right. Like they understand whatever lawyers have studied this, understand the trajectory of what happened with the Bush administration. And they know, OK, for this to be a constitutional black hole, it has to be completely in another country.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And not just to extract information, but they just need to be sent there and we throw away the key.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Right. I was going to say, I think the only change I would make to what you said is it's not if we can win on this, then we can do everything else. It's if we can defy this, then we're home free.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
In power. And this is the difference, I think, between what the Trump administration is doing and what the Bush administration is doing. The Bush administration didn't want the Supreme Court to end up ruling on something that wasn't going to go its way. So...
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
When they thought that maybe they did not have the best legal case, they would move the detainee out or they would put them into criminal proceedings to avoid having the question actually answered. Because it's sort of, then they're still sort of acting in some gray zone. The Trump administration is willing to take, as you mentioned, these bad cases.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Bad cases make bad law, especially for the executive branch. Right. But they seem to not care. And I think that is the scary part because it does evince a predisposition to disregarding as we're seeing it happen right now.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I think this is just a consolidation of power. This is arrogating authorities from Congress, which, as I mentioned before, it's already kind of ceding on its own, and now arrogating powers from the judiciary. I mean, effectively what... the Trump administration is doing is actually acting as a quasi-judiciary, right? They're rounding up people and effectively being judge, jury, and executioner.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And they're just saying, look, trust us. We've decided that this person is guilty, that this person is a terrorist, that this person violated the law. So it's a consolidation of power. It's an authoritarian move. And I think the challenge is who's going to stop us? And if they do it fast enough and they can get people into this constitutional black hole, then they win.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I think the power to stop this in any systemic way is with Congress. So the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I mean, this is, you know, this is a delegation of Congress's war powers. They can... What is that act?
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Yeah. The Alien Enemies Act was passed in 1798 during the Quasi-War with France. And it allows the president during a declared war or an invasion by a foreign government... to remove alien enemies of the nation that is the enemy that are 14 years or older and basically remove them. And the idea being that in that kind of situation that people hold their allegiance to their country.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And so there could be people who are spies and saboteurs and in order to protect national security, the executive branch needs to have the ability to very quickly remove people. It has only been invoked three times before this year, in the War of 1812, in World War I and World War II.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
In those contexts, in World War II, for example, people got individualized hearings, at least to determine whether they were, in fact, nationals of the country that was the enemy. But it's now being applied in this immigration context. Trump is claiming that illegal immigration constitutes an invasion, and specifically an invasion by Tren de Aragua. And therefore...
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Men 14 years or older who are members of that group fall under the purview of the Alien Enemies Act and can be removed.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Well, I think the latter, though I think right now they're testing it on this one group because it's something that... Most people wouldn't object to, right? There's gangs coming in. They're dangerous gangs. I mean, Trendaragua is an actual gang. It's a dangerous gang. So is MS-13. Let's apply this war framing here.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And I think the idea is let's see how much we can get away with and then we can push the envelope and keep expanding this group into broader and broader groups. And we've already heard Trump discussing with President Bukele yesterday that, hey, why not include homegrown criminals in this whole thing? So I think that this is... kind of testing the waters to see how they can do it.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
But this is about summary removal. This is how can we get people out of here in as great numbers as possible, as quickly as possible. I think that's the goal. And then they'll start including other people into whatever category they deem as the enemy.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I think sending U.S. citizens abroad to rot in a gulag would be blatantly unconstitutional. There is something called the Non-Detention Act, and it says that no citizen can be imprisoned or otherwise detained except pursuant to an act of Congress.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
So this is the thing. I think the thing is, if it's we just whisk people off, then at that point, it's over. It's game over. And yes, listen, if they can cut the judicial branch out of this, which is what the Bush administration tried to do, if you can't even get your foot in the door to have the executive branch justify
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
the reason that they've designated you as a terrorist, as an enemy, before they ship you out, then absolutely. We're in 1973 Chile. From there to black vans showing up in the middle of the night and rounding you up and you get disappeared.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Listen, our Constitution has one remedy for this, which is impeachment. I mean, this requires political will. It requires a certain consensus that this is unacceptable, that we are beyond the pale, that this is extra-constitutional, that this person is abusing their power, that they are violating their oath, they're violating all kinds of laws.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
But, I mean, I think, to me, the constitutional crisis is not... It is the defiance of the judicial branch, but it is as much Congress's failure to act in this situation, whether it's to step up and claw back some of these delegated authorities, to stop the national emergency that he's using for other things, or to take that final step and say this is a step too far.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I mean, I think we are in impeachment territory right now. These are impeachable offenses. This is a deprivation of rights. In my opinion, what you saw between Trump and Bukele yesterday was a criminal conspiracy to deprive people of their rights. It's an agreement to commit a crime.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
It is a crime to deprive people of their rights under the Constitution or the laws of the United States under color of law. That's exactly what he was saying that he was going to do. We know that he can't be held criminally liable for that. Because he's doing these as official acts, and the Supreme Court has said that those are beyond the purview of Congress to criminalize. What's left?
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
It's a broken power if we no longer have shared values that transcend our partisan affiliation.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Yeah. I mean, but that's the remedy, Ezra. You know, if Trump defies the court, the court has no independent enforcement mechanism.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
We're in like, let's wear sweatpants and stare at the ceiling territory now.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And I think I'm glad that you mentioned the appropriations authority because one thing that remains very unclear in this is where the money is coming from to transport these prisoners. What was that money originally appropriated for? What are the terms of this agreement, by the way? Under the law, there's something called the Case Zablocki Act.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
which requires the executive branch, the Secretary of State, to actually notify Congress of executive agreements that it reaches with foreign nations. So this is something that technically they need to disclose. They're supposed to actually publish it on the Department of State website. But to your point about withholding funds, you know, to go back again to 9-11,
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Congress actually prohibited the use of funds to transfer detainees from Guantanamo to the United States to be tried in criminal courts. So they were just stuck there. So it seems very clear to me that if Congress wanted to, they could prohibit the use of funds to send people to El Salvador.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Yes, absolutely. And I think in a bigger sense, it's reimagining the kind of person we imagine to be in the Oval Office. So you think about like after Watergate, there were all these reforms that were done because all of a sudden we had to reimagine what do you do if you have a president who's going to push all these boundaries? And so we get the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
We get the Independent Council Statute. We get Republicans. restrictions on how tax information can be used by the president, because all of a sudden we had all these examples. I think, frankly, we've known this for a while. These things should have been done. That pendulum should have swung already. But that's, I think, the kind of reckoning that is going to have to happen.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
In terms of you can't grant this much authority to the executive branch. And it's tough because you also don't want to tie the president's hands. The reason that all these authorities are delegated, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that Trump is using to impose the tariffs is really there as a surgical leverage tool if the president needs it. Right.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
We want the president to have something like that if he needs to negotiate something with a with a specific authority. foreign power, that we're facing a specific emergency. But I think we're no longer in that world, as you said. We're in a different world now. And I think Congress has to reckon with that.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And I would add to that, Ezra, that the landscape has changed, right? If you're also looking at two big assumptions that maybe existed back in Nixon and before, which is, A, that the president is not above the law, and B, that Congress would be willing to use its ultimate weapon if it has to, which is impeachment. If both of those are off the table...
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
then we're in a whole new landscape and we have to accommodate that reality.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I'm glad that you mentioned that the FBI operates in the shadows. I mean, it does have this national security piece, which is literally in the shadows. But also the nature of investigation is that a lot of it happens before it ever gets to a court. And I think what most people don't realize is the FBI does not operate under a legislative charter.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
It doesn't have laws, I mean, apart from the Constitution, that govern how that investigative power can be used. It is governed by something called attorney general guidelines, which are issued by the attorney general.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And these create the standards that you need to meet before you can initiate an investigation, what kinds of investigative techniques you can use for different kinds of investigations, what kind of approvals you need, etc., etc. Those can be changed, rescinded, not adhered to, all internally, and we would not know. One thing that we can do is look at what is actually happening or not happening.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
So, for example, after Signalgate, that is the kind of thing that the FBI would normally have done an investigation or the Department of Justice would have the attorney general would have appointed a special counsel at least to look into it. We saw Merrick Garland do this with Joe Biden's possession of classified information or mishandling of it. Right. That didn't happen. Right.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
We have recently seen an executive order targeting Chris Krebs, who was the head of CISA, and demanding that— Can you say what CISA is? CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. It's under DHS. It was created in 2018, and it oversees election security.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And Chris Krebs, who was the first director, was one of the people who was very vocal in the 2020 election that the election was secure. you know, reassuring people that our elections were proceeding properly, which obviously undercut the claims that they were rigged. But Trump has ordered DOJ to do an investigation.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Again, this kind of tells me, unless there's evidence that I just don't know, that the attorney general guidelines are in the dustbin. I mean, they can't possibly be following those to create an unsubstantiated investigation. An analyst who is working on the Russia investigation has been placed on lead. That was somebody who was mentioned in Kash Patel's book on his enemies list.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
So it is telling me that this is not an agency that is working the way that it did when I was there, just based on some of these outward things. And that can be very dangerous because there is a lot the FBI can do.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
They can do a lot. There is a long runway from when an investigation is started to when it might get a judicial check of some kind. So just as an example, they can surveil you physically. I mean, just as an intimidation tactic. We'll talk about black vans, right? They can park in front of your house and just watch you all the time.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
They can go interview people that you're working with and not make it clear what they're investigating. And that creates a lot of suspicion around you. They can go through your trash. They can find out all the numbers that you're calling. They can get your financial transactional data and find out how and where you're spending your money.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
All of those things they can do without having to show probable cause to a court. And that in and of itself, I think the danger is not so much you'll be charged with a crime and, you know, that is specious, is that you actually will never be charged. It will be a Hoover type of operation where it's
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
either done surreptitiously, as you said, to gather information and then to weaponize that, or as simply a way to harass you, to intimidate you, to make it expensive for you, that you have to hire a lawyer and you have to figure out what is going on. All of those things can happen, and it's why the attorney general guidelines are there.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
You know, if you listen to Kash Patel and Pam Bondi very carefully in their confirmation hearings, they said, we're going to follow the law.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Well, the law... to them is Article 2. It's the unitary executive theory. It's this idea that if the president does it, it's legal in terms of law enforcement, in terms of taking care that the law be faithfully executed. So there aren't guardrails. I mean, in their interpretation of the law, the president's will is essentially their command.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
It becomes a weapon. It's important to understand that this idea of using power for leverage actually dovetails very nicely with the unitary executive theory, which doesn't see any independence between law enforcement and the president.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
So it's this idea that the president... in his singular person, embodies all of the executive power. Everyone under him, all the inferior officers under him are essentially expressions of that power.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
This is really about being able to hire and fire everyone in the executive branch, but it's been extended to this idea that the president can control investigations because he is the chief law enforcement officer. You know, there's nothing in Article 2 of the Constitution that actually says that there has to be any independence. I mean, the Attorney General and FBI is not mentioned there either.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Basically, the unitary executive theory would support President Nixon's maxim that if the president does it, it's legal.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
No, and you're more of a political analyst than I am. But my sense is there may be one other potential restraint is that even if this administration doesn't care about the court of law, they do seem to care about the court of public opinion.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
You don't think they do. Because I think... Mass protest, unpopularity, bad polls. I could potentially—and also the framing of things. For example, the idea that Trump can't bring back a person from El Salvador and Gulag, you know, from this country— Suggests a lot of weakness.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And, you know, so I think there are ways to frame things in ways that put the administration on the defensive in terms of the popular narrative.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I trust your assessment. I do think that it is an assumption.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Yeah. And, you know, I think what you're pointing out is it's always a loyalty test.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
the ritual humiliation, the wanting people to bend the knee. But I do think for that reason, it's that much more important to have the acts of resistance, right? Like what Harvard is doing now is absolutely even changing their website. You know, the law firms that are stepping up. I do think the protests, and if it gets to the point of we need to have our Tiananmen Square moment,
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
then maybe that's what it needs to happen. I mean, we're kind of, you know, sometimes the egregious things are what wake people up.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
The Insurrection Act allows the president to use the military for domestic law enforcement. So essentially, we would see military personnel in the street, potentially arresting people or doing other law enforcement type activities, which I think normally the military has tried to not operate in that way domestically.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I think that's right. I just think that, as you mentioned, exercising all of those pockets of power regularly and systematically from now until the midterms. I mean, waiting until the midterms to me.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I agree with you. I mean, if we're here 500 days in, I don't know where we're going to be.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Right. Yeah. Listen, power is freely given. I mean, all of these authoritarians, this is what Timothy Snyder says, right, that power is usually given to them and people obey in advance. And I think that it is important. It seems to me that We're definitely there in the red zone, but I think we're still early enough that there's still a lot that we can do.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And just to go back to the Chilean example, just because I was a Latin American studies person, you know, this is a country that 17 years in extricated itself, right? You can always come out. It just gets harder and harder, I think, as you mentioned with this poem. And so the time to do it is now. And I think there is a complacency that the courts are going to save us.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And the courts have a role and they are, I think, mostly holding their institutional role here, but they're not going to save us. The other institutions, and I mean, not just the co-equal branches, but yes, Congress, as you mentioned, businesses, the legal profession, universities, all the press, all the institutions have to be robust and the people at this stage.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Well, I mean, I'm not holding my breath for Mark Zuckerberg to take a stand on anything. But to go back to the Democrats and the people wanting them to do things that they don't have the power to do fair enough. But this is also an information war. And to bring this back to Obrego Garcia, there are certain stories that can cut through the noise. Mm-hmm. And that can be the only story.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I mean, Republicans are actually really good at this. They get a message. They're very good at distilling it into something very simple. They repeat it and they repeat it and they repeat it. You know, Trump is a master information warrior, in my opinion. Yeah. Learn from that. And this should be the story, I think, because it's something that people get for exactly the reason that you mentioned.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
I think people do understand, like, if the government can stop this guy who's been here for 10 years, get him out of a car, put him on a plane to El Salvador and wash their hands of him, that's us.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
They have put a face on their lawlessness. And that is an opportunity to get people to wake up. And I think there are people who, I mean, I think even Jon Stewart said, yeah, you got me. I was not taking this seriously. And now I am. And I think there are people who will at this point.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Three books I'd recommend. I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last fall, and I got a book called The Burning by Tim Madigan about the Tulsa race massacre, which was very eye-opening and... astonishing that I did not learn that in history. I recently read Ben Mesrick's Breaking Twitter, which is basically how Musk broke Twitter, but it is an interesting playbook that you are seeing replicated now.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
So it was a good insight into his mind. And then Jason Stanley's Erasing History, How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, which is very prescient in terms of what the Trump administration is trying to do to universities right now.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Well, I think this is why a lot of analysts are now saying we're officially in a constitutional crisis. So the normal recourse here would be to hold the administration in contempt. They can fine specific officials. If it were you and me and we were held in contempt, I mean, the ultimate penalty might be that we could be jailed.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
But I doubt that that's something that would ultimately happen to anyone in the administration. But that would be within the power of the court as well.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
And ultimately, the executive branch has the enforcement power. Trump maintains control over all of the enforcement agencies, including the Marshals Service. And so even if this goes all the way back up to the Supreme Court and you then have this face-off between the judiciary and the executive branch, it's not clear to me exactly why.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
What can be done to enforce an order ultimately, which kind of leaves the Trump administration with a trump card, no pun intended.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
Well, first, Stephen Miller's interpretation of what the Supreme Court said is not entirely accurate. The Supreme Court did mention the deference that's given to the executive branch in foreign affairs, but it did uphold the lower court's order saying, that the administration facilitate the return.
The Ezra Klein Show
The Emergency Is Here
They can't tell him what to do in terms of the negotiations and the dealings with the foreign power, but they need to do everything in their power to make it easier for this person to return. But I think to zoom out, this is by design.