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Federal agents guard outside of a federal building and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in downtown Los Angeles as demonstrations continue after a series of immigration raids began last Friday on June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles, California.
Getty Images, Spencer Platt
ICE Policy Challenged in Court for Blocking Congressional Oversight of Detention Centers
Oct 08, 2025
In a constitutional democracy, congressional oversight is not a courtesy—it is a cornerstone of the separation of powers enshrined in our founding documents.
Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) has filed an amicus brief in Neguse v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that ICE’s policy restricting unannounced visits by members of Congress “directly violates federal law.” Twelve lawmakers brought this suit to challenge ICE’s new requirement that elected officials provide seven days’ notice before visiting detention facilities—an edict that undermines transparency and shields executive agencies from scrutiny.
At the plaintiffs’ request, LDAD’s brief focuses on two constitutional pillars: standing and appropriations law. The denial of access harms individual members of Congress by violating a statutory right unique to their office.
Moreover, the fact that the provision guaranteeing unannounced access appears in an appropriations bill does not diminish its legal force. As Mitt Regan, McDevitt Professor of Jurisprudence at Georgetown Law and principal author of the brief, stated: “Federal law explicitly protects Members of Congress’ right to unannounced oversight visits. ICE’s policy violates both the letter and spirit of that law.”
The Trump administration’s argument for restricting unannounced visits by members of Congress to ICE facilities centers on operational control and security concerns. Some of their reasoning includes:
- Operational Disruption: ICE claims that unannounced visits can interfere with facility operations, including detainee processing, legal proceedings, and staff duties.
- Security Protocols: The administration argues that prior notice allows ICE to ensure safety for both visitors and detainees, citing concerns about crowd control and potential confrontations.
- Discretionary Authority: Under the new guidelines, ICE asserts “sole and unreviewable discretion” to deny, cancel, or reschedule visits for any reason, including “operational concerns” or if deemed “appropriate” by facility managers.
- Distinction Between Facilities: DHS claims that while federal law allows unannounced visits to detention centers, it does not apply to ICE field offices—despite the fact that immigrants are often detained there before transfer.
However, critics, including Rep. Bennie Thompson, argue this policy violates federal law, which explicitly allows members of Congress to conduct oversight visits without prior notice to any DHS facility used to “detain or otherwise house aliens.” Furthermore, the policy has led to multiple incidents where Democratic lawmakers were denied entry or arrested during attempted oversight visits, fueling accusations that the administration is trying to avoid scrutiny of detention conditions.
Despite the administration's claims, the case seems clear. Congress has both the legal authority and the moral obligation to inspect detention centers, especially those housing vulnerable populations. Federal law prohibits DHS from using appropriated funds to block or delay such visits. By ignoring this mandate, ICE not only violates statutory law but also erodes the separation of powers that sustains our democracy.
LDAD’s defense of congressional oversight is part of a broader initiative led by Professor Julie Goldscheid and former Judge Rosalyn Richter, who have been sounding the alarm about the administration’s executive edicts and their alignment with Project 2025—the authoritarian blueprint advanced by the Heritage Foundation. In her recent Fulcrum column, “Project 2025 in Action: Sounding the Alarm for Democracy,” Professor Goldscheid warned:
“Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has systematically taken steps to implement Project 2025… These actions touch on virtually every aspect of public and private life, leaving many Americans across the country overwhelmed, confused, exhausted, and frightened.”
She also offered a powerful call to action:
“Each of us can take steps to support—and perfect—our democracy… The value of the right to speak freely, to celebrate dissent even when uncomfortable, to have a say in our government, to live free from surveillance and the threat of unwarranted punishment, demands no less.”
LDAD was founded to galvanize lawyers in defense of the rule of law amid unprecedented threats to democratic governance. Their mission is nonpartisan and rooted in the belief that legal professionals have a unique responsibility to:
- Uphold democratic and legal principles consistent with their ethical obligations
- Demand accountability from lawyers and public officials
- Call out attacks on legal norms and advocate for redress
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Getty Images, SvetaZi
How Billionaires Are Rewriting History and Democracy
Oct 08, 2025
In the Gilded Age of the millionaire, wealth signified ownership. The titans of old built railroads, monopolized oil, and bought their indulgences in yachts, mansions, and eventually, sports teams. A franchise was the crown jewel: a visible, glamorous token of success. But that era is over. Today’s billionaires, those who tower, not with millions but with unimaginable billions, find sports teams and other baubles beneath them. For this new aristocracy, the true prize is authorship of History (with a capital “H”) itself.
Once you pass a certain threshold of wealth, it seems, mere possessions no longer thrill. At the billionaire’s scale, you wake up in the morning searching for something grand enough to justify your own existence, something commensurate with your supposed singularly historical importance. To buy a team or build another mansion is routine, played, trite. To reshape the very framework of society—now that is a worthy stimulus. That is the game. And increasingly, billionaires are playing it.
Look closely at the moves of men like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and others. Their empires extend, not just over products and markets but over political culture, public institutions, and even national policy. They cast themselves as visionaries, masters of grand strategies invisible to ordinary eyes. They fund initiatives that fracture public life, manipulate information ecosystems, and bend governments toward serving private rather than public interests. Their reward is not merely financial return but the intoxicating sense of power that comes from steering the destiny of millions.
Hence, nothing startling or puzzling in their fascination with transhumanism, for instance, or radical life extension, or the technological pursuit of immortality. Many of the same figures who bankroll think tanks and media platforms also invest heavily in longevity biotech, cryonics, brain-computer interfaces, and artificial general intelligence (AGI) research. Their interest is not only speculative engineering; it is existential. For some, the quest for radically extended life or the ability to preserve or upload consciousness promises a literal escape hatch from mortality—a way to make their projects and preferences persist beyond a single lifespan. For others, belief in a coming “singularity” and the transformative power of AGI supplies both a metaphysical narrative and a practical tool: If intelligence can be engineered and amplified, then so too can social order. This fusion of immortalist yearning and techno-utopianism explains why investments in AI, neural interfaces, and longevity industries sit comfortably alongside their type of political interventions: Both are attempts to institutionalize control over the future, to render one’s will durable across time and bodies.
The strategies vary in method but not in essence. One path has been the evisceration of the working class through globalization. By financing the offshoring of jobs, billionaires restructured the global economy in ways that hollowed out American towns while enriching multinational corporations. The move was not simply about lowering costs. It was a restructuring of social power—weakening organized labor, disempowering the industrial base, and leaving workers in constant insecurity. A diminished working class is easier to control.
Another path has been through culture and media. Billionaires have poured money into think tanks, foundations, and media platforms, not simply to influence policy but to shape what can even be discussed in the first place. When the world’s wealthiest individuals own the megaphones, the boundaries of acceptable debate unsurprisingly shrink to what suits their interests. What we see is not merely ownership of companies but ownership of discourse; the power to decide which ideas circulate and which die in obscurity.
Still, another strategy involves direct policy warfare. For decades, billionaire-backed movements have sought to dismantle the social safety net, shrinking the welfare state until it can barely function. Ostensibly, this is done in the name of efficiency, but the effect is brutally clear: Millions forced into precarity, vulnerable populations left exposed, and minorities disproportionately harmed. Such policies don’t happen by accident; they are engineered through lobbying, campaign financing, and strategic political donations. The result is a polity where the government serves private profit more than public welfare.
At the same time, billionaires have fueled divisions that weaken democratic solidarity. The stoking of identity-based conflicts—pitting groups against one another over cultural issues—distracts from the consolidation of economic power at the top. Immigration, terrorism, and crime are hyped, not because they are unmanageable threats but because fear justifies surveillance, militarization, and new tools of control. By the time the public realizes what has happened, the state has been repurposed into a security apparatus that protects, not citizens but capital.
This is not to suggest that billionaires meet in secret to plot each of these moves together. Instead, it is to point out that they meet openly and plot and strategize and tell us exactly what they plan to do in glittering gatherings, such as the Bilderberg Meetings, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Milken Institute Global Conference, etc. Because, after all, History and the Future are theirs to design, and democracy is merely a clay to be molded here and there by their collective strategic genius.
The danger is not only that this distorts democracy but that it erodes the very principle of democratic agency. When a handful of individuals hold the power to rewire economies, manipulate debates, and reshape policies at will, ordinary citizens are reduced to spectators. Political life becomes a contest, not of ideas but of bankrolls. The myth that all citizens have equal say in democracy collapses under the sheer gravitational pull of billionaire ambition.
Defenders will say this is just philanthropy or “visionary leadership,” that great fortunes bring with them great “responsibility.” But responsibility without accountability is not democracy—it is monarchy by another name. When billionaires intervene in climate policy, education, or even space exploration, their priorities may align with the public good for a time, but what happens when they don’t? Who checks them? Who votes them out?
If democracy is to mean anything, it cannot allow its destiny to be the playground of a few titans seeking meaning through stimulation. The ownership of History must remain collective, not private. That requires reining in billionaire power by imagining a whole new way of doing politics and government that renders the oceans of money that billionaires control null currency in the arena of democratic decision making.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.Keep ReadingShow less
Echoing Serling’s To Serve Man, Edward Saltzberg reveals how modern authoritarianism uses language, fear, and media control to erode democracy from within.
To Serve Man—2025 Edition
Oct 08, 2025
In March 1962, Rod Serling introduced a Twilight Zone episode that feels prophetic today. "To Serve Man" begins with nine-foot aliens landing at the United Nations, promising to end war and famine. They offer boundless energy and peace. Unlike the menacing invaders of 1950s sci-fi, these Kanamits present themselves as benefactors with serene expressions and soothing words.
The promises appear real. Wars cease. Deserts bloom into gardens. Crop yields soar. People line up eagerly at the Kanamits' embassy to volunteer for trips to the aliens' paradise planet—a world without hunger, conflict, or want.
But back at the UN, translators keep working on the aliens' mysterious book. The meaning comes only in fragments. Meanwhile, protagonist Michael Chambers grows comfortable with the idea of boarding one of the ships. If hunger is solved and peace secured, why not see what else the Kanamits have to offer?
The suspense builds as he walks up the ramp. Just then, his colleague runs forward in panic. She has cracked more of the book's text. Her voice is urgent as guards push Chambers aboard: "Don't go! The book—To Serve Man—it's a cookbook!"
The final image shows Chambers trapped in a cell, speaking directly to the audience from aboard the alien vessel. He tells us that sooner or later, we'll all be on the menu.
The Hidden vs. The Visible
Serling, a World War II paratrooper, used science fiction because network censors blocked his scripts about lynching and war. As he said, "I found that it was all right to have Martians say things Democrats and Republicans could never say." The Kanamits needed everyone to believe their lie about benevolent service.
Today's authoritarianism works differently. It operates multiple cookbooks simultaneously: sanitized bureaucratic language for institutions, protective messaging for supporters, and open intimidation for opponents. The Kanamits needed universal deception. This administration has discovered something more efficient—and more chilling: you don't need to fool everyone when you can convince enough people they're the chefs, not the meal.
When Government Pressure Works
Consider what happened to Jimmy Kimmel. After he mocked the political response to Charlie Kirk's assassination, FCC Chair Brendan Carr didn't work behind closed doors. He went on podcasts and threatened Disney's broadcast licenses publicly. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr declared. "These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."
Within hours, major station owners Nexstar and Sinclair announced they would no longer air Kimmel's show. Disney, facing the loss of crucial broadcast licenses worth billions, caved immediately. The show went dark that same night. PEN America called it "government-instigated censorship." Even Republican senators like Rand Paul condemned it as "absolutely inappropriate." But it worked—the threat was public, immediate, and devastatingly effective.
Troops in the Streets
The administration declared a "crime emergency" in Washington, D.C., deploying 800 National Guard troops to patrol the capital's streets like an occupying force. The move came after a single incident involving a government worker, but the response was overwhelming: armed soldiers in fatigues manning checkpoints, conducting searches, and establishing what the administration called "protective perimeters."
In Los Angeles, the deployment was even more dramatic: 4,000 Guard members and 700 Marines swept into neighborhoods during immigration raids. Residents watched through windows as military vehicles rolled down residential streets and troops in body armor set up operations. The administration framed it as protecting federal agents, but a federal judge saw through the euphemisms.
The judge's ruling was scathing: the administration had "systematically used armed soldiers" whose "identity was often obscured by protective armor" to "demonstrate a military presence" and conduct law enforcement activities. This violated the 19th-century Posse Comitatus Act, which explicitly bars the military from policing American citizens. The judge wrote that such conduct amounted to "creating a national police force with the President as its chief."
Just this week, a new executive order took the normalization further. Federal agencies must now "question and interrogate" individuals engaged in political violence regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions before any plea agreements. The order describes this as part of a "comprehensive strategy to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle" domestic terrorism networks.
But strip away the sanitized language, and this is expanded interrogation authority—the power to extract information about political associations before defendants can even consider plea deals. It's presented as "Countering Domestic Terrorism," another cookbook that frames broad investigative powers as protective service for the American people.
The Democratic Test
In Serling's episode, the turning point comes when the translator finally reads beyond the title. Until then, "To Serve Man" was enough to calm suspicion. Only a full translation revealed the cookbook's true purpose.
Democracy depends on such translators—journalists who track how laws work in practice, watchdog groups that expose how "reforms" harm people, and courts that check whether emergency powers match legal boundaries. Without them, promises of service go untested.
The Kanamits needed to hide their cookbook because they required universal compliance. Modern authoritarianism operates in plain sight because it needs only selective permission. Some resist, some look away, and some board willingly, convinced they'll be dining, not being served.
Leaders will always promise they've come to serve. Our job is to translate what that really means—before we board the ship.
Edward Saltzberg is the Executive Director of the Security and Sustainability Forum and the author of The Stability Brief, with over 40 years of experience in civic leadership.Keep ReadingShow less
As the Trump administration redefines “Warrior Ethos,” U.S. military leaders face a crucial test: defend democracy or follow unlawful orders.
Getty Images, Liudmila Chernetska
Warrior Ethos or Rule of Law? The Military’s Defining Moment
Oct 08, 2025
Does Secretary Hegseth’s extraordinary summoning of hundreds of U.S. command generals and admirals to a Sept. 30 meeting and the repugnant reinstatement of Medals of Honor to 20 participants in the infamous 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre—in which 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children were killed—foreshadow the imposition of a twisted approach to U.S. “Warrior Ethos”? Should military leaders accept an ethos that ignores the rule of law?
Active duty and retired officers must trumpet a resounding: NO, that is not acceptable. And, we civilians must realize the stakes and join them.
This issue is crucial as President Trump is sending National Guard troops with authorization to use “Full Force, if necessary” to what he characterized as Oregon’s “War ravaged Portland.” That, along with deployments to Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Memphis, is part of an attempt to normalize the use of troops against the desires of mayors, governors, and citizens. Yet, no U.S. city is in a state of war or insurrection. Such deployments subvert U.S. traditions and undermine confidence in a nonpolitical military. And, they are outright dangerous.
Also ominous, the illegal use of military force is being normalized in the Caribbean through the sinking of four boats under the false claim of warfighting. A flotilla of eight U.S. warships is gathering off Venezuela, among reports of possible attacks on that country. That, too, carries broad implications at home and abroad.
The “Warrior Ethos” depicted on the U.S. Army website says: always place the mission first; never accept defeat; never quit; never leave a fallen comrade. Such principles for those serving courageously and honorably in the U.S. military are to be cemented in the context of the law of war and broader legal norms. That bonding is fundamental in distinguishing between just using force and aggression. Reading even the first few pages of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Student Handout, the “Introduction to the Law of War/Rules of Engagement” makes that clear as a bell. The other basic military sources are also clear on this.
The bonding of warrior ethos and the rule of law is essential to avoid troops from following illegal orders and avoiding disgraceful, horrendous actions like the My Lai Massacre in the Vietnam War, the Wounded Knee Massacre, or the National Guard killing students at Kent State and Jackson State in 1970. It is not an academic issue that bonding safeguards the proud service of our military and public safety.
Consider this scenario. Orders from the president: Blow that boat to smithereens. Why? Because intelligence says it carries illegal drugs and is run by “narcoterrorists” who are under the direction of a foreign country’s president. Those facts are not publicly established, and the latter assertion is dubious according to reputable sources. A White House spokesperson says the actions are legal under the laws of war.
BUT, the United States is not at war with any country. So, those laws do not apply. Even under those laws, people on the boats do not fit the definition of “combatants.” Lethal force is not a military necessity in this situation. The boats did not fire at U.S. ships or planes, nor are they attempting to seize U.S. land; so, the sinking is not self-defense. The circumstances fail to meet even the Marine Student Handbook description of the rules of engagement.
The scenario makes the president judge and jury, whose orders are equal to pulling the trigger, and the Supreme Court, in Trump v. United States, gave presidents immunity for official acts. The military, however, is not excused for following illegal orders. Most members of the military know that they should not implement unlawful orders, but they are not experts in the laws of war.
The Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, however, includes such experts who are to provide legal advice to commanders. The top uniformed JAG officers for the army, navy, and air force were dismissed earlier this year, enfeebling commanders' abilities to weigh the legalities of orders. The Corps will be further weakened by the transfer of 600 JAG Corps officers to immigration court duty. Debilitating the JAG Corps as norms against domestic deployment of troops are being broken, and dubious military strikes are ordered, is another glaring warning sign.
The U.S. recently blowing up four boats in the Caribbean violates international law, pure and simple. I am not an expert, but I taught law school courses that covered the law of war, and experts like those at the Atlantic Council agree with my analysis. If such actions are said by President Trump or Secretary Hegseth to be part of “warrior ethos”—if the assembled generals and admirals are told that even by implication—it is time to slam on the military brakes.
The Trump administration removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of naval operations, the Air Force chief of staff, the commandant of the Coast Guard, and other top general officers. Plus, Hegseth has ordered that 20% of four-star generals and admirals and 10% of other general officers will be dismissed, and there will be demotions as top positions are eliminated in reorganizations.
Those factors place pressure on military leaders to accept this administration's approach to their rebranded Department of War (though only Congress can officially change the name). The administration’s widespread disregard of constitutional and legal provisions—whether in ignoring Congress’s power of the purse, politicizing the Department of Justice, usurping the state’s powers on elections, attacking judicial independence, and much more—is also directed at the military, whether deployed domestically or overseas.
The military’s oath swears members to defend the Constitution and to obey orders according to the Military Code of Justice. That requires adherence to the rule of law. If democracy and the rule of law are to survive in this country, the military has to hold that line. Domestic tranquility and international peace depend on it, as does the safety of military personnel.
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