People sometimes need a jarring reminder of how far down the path Trump administration is going toward authoritarian assertions of power

A sign: John Yoo, architect of torture memos and maximal presidential powers, sharply rebukes President Trump and DOJ actions on 4 grounds @npr.org interview:

• There's no state of war


• It's anathema to post 9/11 Constitutional rules to deny due process to people apprehended on American soil


• Attacks on judges and talk of disobeying judicial orders


• It's illegal to send migrants to be tortured in El Salvadorian prisons

The U.S. has sent people it has detained — people it calls terrorists — to a prison overseas — indefinitely. This is true in 2025, after the Trump administration deported at least 261 foreign nationals to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.And it was also true two decades ago, following the attacks of Sept. 11, after the U.S. government began to house captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the military prison at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.During the George W. Bush administration, John Yoo wrote the legal justification for the treatment of Guantanamo detainees, now widely referred to as "the torture memos."Yoo argues that there are key legal differences between what the Bush administration did – and what the Trump administration is attempting in El Salvador.

(npr.org)