Rep. Jamie Raskin breaks down why Trump’s latest outrageous abuse of power promotes dictatorship

Hey everybody, it's Jamie Raskin, your top Democrat in the House Judiciary Committee. Look, we're winning every day in court, and don't forget that, because Donald Trump and Elon Musk are lawbreakers. They are breaking the law and violating the Constitution every single day, and the courts are standing up to them, and we've got to stand up for the courts in holding the line for the U.S. Constitution. I'll give you an example of what's going on. They took a plane load of people out of America to El Salvador and said that these were Venezuelan gangbangers, only there were never any hearings about it. There was no due process. But even worse, they violated the law that they claim to be enforcing. The law is the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which says that the president can indeed deport people from the country who are foreign nationals of an enemy state during wartime, or if there's a military invasion. The problem for Donald Trump is the only people who can declare war in America are the Congress of the United States, the House and the Senate. That's what the Constitution says. We've got the power to declare war, not the president of the United States, nor has there been a military invasion by Venezuela of America, at least not one that anybody is aware of. And therefore, he didn't have the right to do it in the first place. So he's violating the law, he's violating the Constitution, and he's also violating the due process rights of these people. If these people are indeed violent gangbangers and drug dealers, prosecute them and then kick them out of the country or send them to prison. But a lot of their families are coming forward saying they've got nothing to do with drugs or gangs. And so how do we know? That's why the two most beautiful words in the English language, as one of my professors once said, are due process, because that's where we sort it out. We see who's really a criminal and who's not a criminal, but we don't just sweep people up off of the street, whether they're citizens or non-citizens, who knows whether they're criminals or not, and not subject them to due process, just kick them out of the country. And that's why a very conservative judge, Judge Boasberg, who first got appointed to the bench by President Bush, absolutely enjoined that and said, bring those people back home. Then that order got violated, compounding all of the initial violations with more lawlessness by not complying with an Article 3 court. So that's where we are in that case. Donald Trump thinks he's got a great case there because everybody hates Venezuelan gangbangers, but we don't know who's even in there. And let the Congress of the United States pass the laws of the United States. Your job, Donald Trump, is to enforce the laws, to take care that the laws are faithfully executed and not trashed and rewritten. Thanks everybody.