Fridays in Trumpland: 4.11.2025

Sometimes, Hell Freezes Over

The official portrait of the current Supreme Court.

In the last few months, I’ve been reminding viewers over on my daily broadcast that we never know what’s going to happen.

We may have certain predictors based on history, or political realities, or a certain leader’s psychopathology, but in terms of how the future unfolds, we never really know.

And so it happened that last night, all nine Supreme Court justices crossed President Trump.

There are two of them for whom I never believed, not down even in the depths of my most skilled legal suspicions, that would ever happen.

It happened in perhaps the most important legal case of our moment: the case of the removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a lawfully residing immigrant, from his family and his life, and the conveyance of him to a concentration camp in El Salvador– something even lawyers from Trump’s DOJ have admitted in court was improper and never should have happened.

A photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a backwards tan baseball cap with a soft smile on his face.

Of course, those two DOJ lawyers who admitted that in court are now on administrative leave, because one thing this administration despises maybe even more than our fellow human beings who are immigrants is the truth.

The Supreme Court–again, all nine of them, unanimously– ruled last night that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Mr. Garcia and also must “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

Bluesky has since exploded with debates about how the Trump administration may try to thread the needle of “facilitation,” perhaps by saying it tried but failed, or that El Salvador refused to return him. The lower court will have something to say about that gamesmanship, and we will have to see how that all plays out.

But it’s worth noting that yesterday morning, the US “facilitated” the release of a Russian-American ballerina who had been convicted of treason in Russia. Our Secretary of State, among others, can get folks out of dire conditions when he wants to— even those held in foreign countries at the hands of dictators.

Any excuse that Trump’s administration can’t facilitate the release of a Maryland father from the custody of another dictator should fall on deaf ears— let alone when Kristi Noem has visited the camp where Mr. Garcia is being held for photo ops and content production, plainly demonstrating that Trump’s administration is working in cahoots with the camp’s administrators. Judge Xinis, the lower court judge enforcing Mr. Garcia’s return, is not without power to force this administration to do everything in its power to get him back.

Meanwhile, another judge, Judge Boasberg, is overseeing the case wherein he ordered the plane Mr. Garcia was on turned around in mid-air and was defied. The Supreme Court has now given Judge Boasberg cover to order the administration to return everyone on those planes, as all of them were denied due process before being sent off to a gulag. It’s my hope Judge Boasberg takes this administration to the proverbial woodshed on this.

You never know what’s going to happen.

And sometimes, on days like yesterday, hell freezes over just when it seems everything is going up in flames.

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Like many of you, as the markets rocked and roiled this week, I spent more than a healthy window of time wondering how the future of all of this is going to play out.

I found myself circling back to a concept in Contract Law, that of so-called “Acts of God.”

Contracts sometimes contain what are called “Acts of God” provisions, where a contract can’t be enforced if, say, lightning strikes a production plant and shuts it down so contractual conditions can’t be met, or a tornado destroys a factory.

Even the law recognizes that we can’t always predict the future. And sometimes, Acts of God intervene to change the course of events when we least expect it.

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So what does this mean for all of us as activists, organizers, change agents trying to move the world forward in the face of horror and instability and hatred at home and abroad?

Well, as the great organizer Mariame Kaba has pointed out, if you don’t know what the future holds, then what you do now, in the present, has a chance to create real impact on that future in a positive direction.

And that means that every positive action you take right now could cause a ripple effect that alters the course of human history.

Literally, you never know.

So consider this week what actions you are taking right now to save and change lives. No action is too small, and not all of us can be in the streets. Take care of your neighbors and your community. Step out to protest if you can. Do one thing that makes another person more likely to survive and maybe even to thrive.

Sometimes, one small thing is all it takes.

Sometimes, the future surprises us.

Sometimes, there’s more hope than we thought.

Keep going.

The ending of all of this isn’t written yet.

And anything can happen next.