The Dog That Didn’t Bark

And the New Substack Landscape

Photo via Unsplash

Friday is often a day for lighter fare in this Substack, including our periodic contest, which promotes fierce competition among our loyal subscribers for the ever-valuable and ever-elusive Talking Feds mug.

We have another contest below where you can match against our roundtable guests, who had to provide their five-words-or-fewer answer under much more constrained circumstances.

But first, a couple of quick reports.

1. There was an important dog-that-didn’t-bark moment in the Abrego-Garcia case on Wednesday. I spoke about it on Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace yesterday, but by its nature, it didn't get a lot of coverage.

After the case came back down to Judge Paula Xinis following the affirmance from the Fourth Circuit — including the ringing opinion by Judge Harvey Wilkinson — and the Supreme Court, Judge Xinis ordered a compressed period of discovery to force the administration to detail what it so far has withheld, particularly the efforts it has made (or hasn't made) to comply with the courts’ orders to facilitate Abrego-Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador.

An extraordinary opinion for the current crisis

An opinion that Judge Xinis issued Tuesday revealed that the administration has continued to stonewall and try to evade its obligations. The opinion was scathing, calling the administration out for bad faith misconduct, willful evasion, and legal twaddle.

It was the sort of opinion that might logically have ended with a finding of contempt. (It’s also the kind of opinion that would send shock waves through a normal Department of Justice, but presumably chastened the current leadership not at all.) Instead, Xinis — who I think is being very careful not to get out in front of the higher courts that will review her orders — directed the administration to supply the answers it was continuing to withhold by Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Then, minutes before the deadline, the administration filed under seal a request for a seven-day stay of the court’s directives, and the plaintiffs filed their own agreement to the request. Judge Xinis granted the stay with no further explanation. So rather than coming down on the administration with a sledgehammer, Judge Xinis stayed her hand and was silent. That was the dog that didn’t bark.

By far the most likely supposition for these sealed maneuvers is that the administration has given concrete assurances that it is going to bring Abrego-Garcia back. Why else would the plaintiffs — who have the administration on the ropes — suddenly accede to a delay with no proffered benefit? Why else would the court — which required the administration to finally follow its orders — quietly back off its own imposed deadline?

The administration has turned cartwheels to avoid complying with its obligation — under not only the Constitution but standards of basic decency — to undo the horrific error that has landed Abrego-Garcia in a hellhole designed for torture. Altering course now would require it to walk back quite a lot of deeds and words — including its insistence of powerlessness to facilitate Abrego-Garcia's return. And it would play as a loss, and a recognition of a higher power in the courts — two outcomes they seem loath to recognize.

On the other hand, they are getting clobbered not just in the federal courts but also in the court of public opinion. Reliable data suggest that congressional call lines are overflowing with protests, and we've seen town halls where the Abrego-Garcia outrage dominated.

And from their selfish standpoint, the administration wants to tell a story of ridding the country of dangerous criminals — even if it means leapfrogging their constitutional responsibilities. But every day that the press and people focus on Abrego-Garcia is another day where the messaging cuts against them.

Indeed, just today we learned of what appears to be two more — and as many as six — people who were deported to El Salvador under circumstances that strained, and more likely flatly violated, the U.S.’s legal obligations. These six include serious criminals and Tren de Aragua members. That in no way justifies ignoring their due process rights, but it's much more the rhetorical ground the administration wants to occupy. On the other hand, it complicates the administration’s calculations if Abrego-Garcia can’t be cabined as a one-off mistake.

So we'll see what the next week brings, but it's very hard to make sense of the sudden hiatus — except if both the court and the plaintiffs anticipate that the administration is going to finally capitulate and do the right thing, at least with respect to one person whom they have admitted was mistakenly deported. That won't entirely change the subject, but it would comply with the rule of holes in the Abrego-Garcia case: when you're in a hole, stop digging.

2. Today really brought home to me that some cool, important stuff is happening on Substack. When I started to write this entry, I stopped to listen to a live discussion on The Contrarian (where I am a founding contributor) between editor Jen Rubin and publisher Norm Eisen about a series of court victories — including ones that Norm contributed to and could explain in real time better than anyone.

Then there was my day on Substack, which included live conversations on the last 24 hours of important developments in the Russia–Ukraine war with none other than former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul — nobody brings more insight and intelligence to the topic. And then I had another live conversation with ace reporter Adam Klasfeld about an important hearing in the AEA battles that he had just attended.

Increasingly, prominent political officials and the country’s leading intellectuals — like McFaul, Paul Krugman, Steve Vladeck, and Heather Cox Richardson — put their best regular work into their Substacks.

Then I happened across a list of the fastest-growing politics Substacks, headed — to nobody’s surprise — by the MeidasTouch Network, which this week also was awarded the Webby’s highest recognition for Podcast of the Year. I regularly do YouTube discussions with them, and those go out to more people than most cable TV shows.
Much of this is new, and in response to a felt need for new advocacy and reporting to respond to the challenges of Trump 2.0. There is developing in this country an independent channel of commentary dedicated to the preservation of democracy. It is filling the breach created by failures of legacy media, and I would argue improving the overall coverage.

Like The Contrarian and MeidasTouch, the Talking Feds Substack is only a few months old. In that short time, all three have posted explosive growth. We’re pretty good at what we do, but it’s our independence that really matters. We write and speak from a common nucleus of great concern for democracy, but otherwise, we each do our best to provide the most important analyses and reporting — and often do it very close on the ground to the developments we’re discussing.

I say we are independent, but that's not really accurate. All of us are underwritten by our readers and subscribers — people who decline the temptation to disengage from political and civic life in difficult, even harrowing times. It's the large and growing contingent of citizens who feel an acute need for accurate information in an age of lies, and constitutional fidelity in an age of lawlessness. In other words, it's you.

It's been a pretty good two weeks — the best stretch among the last 14. Let me end it by thanking you for your engagement, your fighting spirit, and your dedication to democracy. I continue to like our chances to pull out of this mess.

Talk to you later.

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And it’s time for another round of our fan-favorite Five Words or Fewer challenge!

What's the next demand from Donald Trump to Harvard University?

We posed that exact question to Jon Alter, Susan Glasser, and Katie Phang — catch their takes at the 58:00 mark in our latest roundtable episode, CECOT SlingShot (Link here.)

Now it’s your turn. Drop your best five-words-or-fewer answer here for a chance to claim the highly sought-after Talking Feds mug. Let’s see what you’ve got!