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The original was posted on /r/keep_track by /u/rusticgorilla on 2025-07-07 10:50:17+00:00.
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June 2025 marked a turning point of America’s descent into fascism: secret police are grabbing people off the street, the military is performing civilian law enforcement functions in Los Angeles, Florida’s governor built a concentration camp in the Everglades, our institutions are folding before our eyes, and the Supreme Court handcuffed the judiciary’s ability to safeguard our constitutional rights. To cap it all off, Republicans in Congress began July by taking food and healthcare away from the poorest Americans in order to provide tax cuts for the rich, triple ICE’s annual enforcement budget, and more than triple ICE’s annual detention budget.
These actions are not without precedent. Dachau began as a detention center for “enemies” of the Nazi party; our immigration detention centers hold people Trump has declared to be “alien enemies.” The Gestapo was an average police force in Prussia before they began disappearing people to concentration camps. And while Hitler established special courts to achieve his political goals, Republicans appointed fascism-enabling judges to the existing high court to remove all barriers to Trump’s consolidation of power. We have been here before.
LOS ANGELES
Background: A week after White House advisor Stephen Miller ordered ICE to arrest 3,000 people per day, masked immigration agents—made up of ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Homeland Security Investigation (HSI), FBI, ATF, and DEA personnel—descended upon Los Angeles to indiscriminately kidnap anyone they believed to be undocumented. The first major raids occurred on June 6 in the Fashion District and the parking lot of a Westlake Home Depot. Protests ramped up over the weekend, leading Trump to deploy the California National Guard to Los Angeles without Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval. He later mobilized 700 U.S. Marines in the city to protect federal property and personnel.
June 10: California filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration from using “the federalized California National Guard and active duty Marines for law enforcement purposes on the streets of a civilian city.”
June 11: CBP confirmed it has been flying Predator drones and Black Hawk helicopters over the Los Angeles protests in support of ICE.
June 12: Judge Charles Breyer, a Clinton appointee, ruled that Trump unlawfully federalized the National Guard and ordered control returned to Gov. Newsom.
June 13: U.S. Marines carried out the first known detention of a civilian—a Black army veteran who crossed a yellow tape boundary near the Wilshire Federal Building on his way to a Veterans Affairs appointment.
June 16: A coalition of press rights organizations sued the Los Angeles Police Department over excessive force used against journalists while covering protests.
June 17: A three judge panel of the 9th Circuit, made up of two Trump appointees and a Biden appointee, reversed Judge Breyer’s order, concluding that “protestors’ interference with the ability of federal officers to execute the laws” (by throwing objects at ICE officers and Federal Protective Service officers) allows Trump to federalize the National Guard.
June 23: California asked Judge Breyer to permit limited discovery into whether Trump’s use of the National Guard and the Marines violates the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law that bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement.
June 24: 315 National Guard personnel were deployed to assist the DEA in executing a federal search warrant as part of an investigation into three large marijuana growth operations in the eastern Coachella Valley region. Given that there were no protests in the area, it appears that the use of the Guard for this function both violates Trump’s own memorandum activating the Guard and the Posse Comitatus Act.
June 25: Judge Breyer granted California’s request for discovery, ordering that depositions are to be concluded by July 11 and briefings are to be filed by July 15.
SUPREME COURT
On June 23, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court issued an unexplained shadow docket ruling that allows the Trump administration to rapidly deport immigrants to third countries with which they have no connection. The order lifted a universal injunction issued in April by District Judge Brian Murphy that required the government to provide notice and opportunity to apply for protection from removal to a third country—specifically, a minimum of 15 days to demonstrate that removal to that country will “likely result in their persecution, torture, and/or death.”
- The Trump administration blatantly defied Judge Murphy’s injunction in May by attempting to deport eight migrants to South Sudan with less than 24 hours’ notice. Murphy intervened, resulting in the U.S. diverting the plane to a military base in Djibouti, where they were held for more than a month.
- July update: The Supreme Court held that Judge Murphy could not enforce his remedial order requiring due process for the eight men (Justices Sotomayor and Jackson dissented). On the night of July 4, the group of immigrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam, and South Sudan were transferred to South Sudan by the U.S. government. It is unclear what will happen to them.
On June 27, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court issued a ruling barring the use of universal or nationwide injunctions to limit executive orders. The opinion, which came in response to three nationwide injunctions that blocked Trump’s executive order terminating birthright citizenship, allows lower courts to provide relief in other forms—like class actions and claims under the Administrative Procedure Act.
- Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, also noted that universal injunctions could be permitted if necessary to grant “complete relief to the plaintiffs before the court.” An example of this scenario is when a coalition of states sued the federal government over the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. The courts could not order one census for the plaintiffs and a separate census for the remaining states; to be complete, the remedy (an injunction) had to apply to all states.
As Justice Sotomayor wrote for the dissent, these alternative avenues for relief are “inadequate” and “cumbersome,” creating a system where “constitutional guarantees [are] meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit.”
Justice Jackson, in a separate dissent, warned of the destruction of the rule of law in America:
Stated simply, what it means to have a system of government that is bounded by law is that everyone is constrained by the law, no exceptions. And for that to actually happen, courts must have the power to order everyone (including the …
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