This weekend in Trump's effort to make fascism happen

The Trump administration tried to illegally send children to Guatemala as troops walked aimlessly around Dupont Circle. And, for paid subscribers: Closing my tabs.

On Monday morning, shouts of “Free DC” echoed up 14th Street, as runners, joggers, walkers, and community members sick of the Trump administration’s embarrassing effort to use our city to buttress President Donald Trump’s strongman fantasies ended their run-march at U Street — across 14th Street from where the now-infamous Subway-throwing incident took place.

The Labor Day “Free DC” revelry — like prosecutors’ failure to get a grand jury to issue an indictment over the sandwich-throwing — was a stark reminder of whose city this actually is.

It came two days after, on a calm holiday weekend Saturday afternoon, I happened upon at least 16 federalized troops carrying weapons on the southern side of Dupont Circle.

There was, to be clear, no reason for them to be there. There was nothing going on of note, aside from the D.C. residents who stayed in the city this holiday weekend going about their day.

This is the sort of pointless show Trump is ordering people who signed up to serve the country to engage in across Washington, D.C.

Of course, this domestic deployment — along with the other federal law enforcement agencies — is not without purpose. It is an effort to create fear. At other times — and especially in other parts of Washington — it is also an effort to cause harm to immigrants, to those who are homeless, and to whoever else the feds want to trouble.

It is simply a different action aimed at making Trump’s fascism happen. In turn, it is essential to remember that so much of that is accomplished through propaganda. This is, for what it’s worth, why I push back so often against just accepting Trump’s language. His saying something doesn’t make it so. Explaining what he has legal authority to do, and pushing back when he and his minions inevitably overstep, is key.

As I watched the troops in Dupont doing nothing, the Trump administration was planning — as reported initially by CNN — to put in motion one of its most horrifying actions yet.

According to a lawsuit filed in the early hours of Sunday morning, lawyers with the National Immigration Law Center stated, Trump administration officials were, at that moment, “imminently planning to illegally transfer Plaintiffs to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture, against their best interests.“

In the lawsuit, NILC lawyers alleged the effort would violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, as well as equal protection and due process constitutional guarantees.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan soon thereafter began a marathon-length day of holding the administration accountable both to the law and, importantly, to the court.

Within hours, at 4:22 a.m., Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, granted plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order blocking the effort to send any of the named plaintiffs out of the country. She also scheduled a hearing for 3:00 p.m. on the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification — to protect all of the children who would be subjected to this latest horror.

Hours later, Sooknanan filed an order on the docket stating that the court had “received notification that putative class members are in the process of being removed from the United States.” As such — and likely recalling the Trump administration’s actions regarding the Alien Enemies Act proclamation flights on March 15 — she moved the 3:00 p.m. hearing forward to 12:30 p.m.

At that hearing, covered excellently by Lawfare’s Anna Bower, Sooknanan challenged the government’s claim that this was a family reunification effort, citing plaintiffs’ declarations. As Bower reported:

In one, the child says that her parents [in Guatemala] recently received a strange call from someone with the US government, telling them that he or she would be deported with a larger group of people. "Since my parents told me this news, I feel terrible," the declarant says.

Before the hearing even came to a close, Sooknanan made clear she was extending a TRO to cover the entire putative class. The same Justice Department lawyer who had argued in the March 15 hearing before Chief Judge James Boasberg, Drew Ensign, was before Sooknanan on Sunday.

Sooknanan appeared to be very well aware of that fact in court.

By 1:05 p.m., Ensign had been asked about and had told the court that, per Bower’s summary, “all of the planes are on the ground — one of them might have taken off and turned around. He's not sure. His understanding is that if that's the case, plane has returned.”

After discussion, Bower reported that Sooknanan was “crafting her TRO to ensure that the children aren't removed until briefing is complete and she can rule” on the preliminary injunction request. “I do not want there to be any ambiguity about what I am ordering or what the government is to do down the road, she says,” Bower reported.

Under the TRO, which covers “all Guatemalan unaccompanied minors in Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement custody as of 1:02 AM on August 31, 2025, the time of the filing of the Complaint, who are not subject to an executable final order of removal,“ the Trump administration had to stop any effort to remove them from America for the next 14 days.

That was not the end of it, though.

As the evening wore on — after the Justice Department failed to file an ordered status report at 4:00 p.m. on whether every child had been deplaned and returned to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement — Ensign ultimately filed five status reports in response to successive orders from Sooknanan that DOJ continue filing status reports until all of the children involved in the class were back with ORR, which came Monday morning.

The case — this new anti-immigrant effort from the Trump administration — is by no means over.

The plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction is due Tuesday, under a schedule set forth by Sooknanan on Sunday evening, with oral arguments set for 2:00 p.m. September 10 — in time for her to issue a ruling before the 14-day TRO expires. (If needs be, she likely would extend the TRO for another 14 days or until she issues her order on the preliminary injunction request.)

And, at that point, the administration could seek an appeal.

This was a dark moment in a year full of them. As Sunday’s hearing drew to a close, Sooknanan made clear the stakes — and cause — of the hearing:

“That’s why we’re here.”

But — thanks to quick-acting lawyers, the clients who trusted them, and a judge who took action and followed through on it — the children remain in America today.

Perhaps it was the awareness of the horror of the administration’s efforts on Sunday — and the fact that fighting back had stopped them — that Monday’s 14th and U “Free DC” revelry felt extra powerful to me.

As I moved forward with my day and saw another patrol of troops doing a whole lot of nothing in Dupont, the scene took on a different, more pitiful view.

This might be a part of Trump’s effort at fascism, but it’s also just horribly embarrassing for anyone involved with it — especially when you compare how they present themselves …

… with reality.

The outcome of this moment is not yet clear. Institutions — as I and many others have written — are failing us all around us. Real harm is being caused daily. More harm will come before this is over.

But, fighting back matters. And many are doing so. It works — both in fact, as to specific outcomes, and also to dismantle their propaganda of fear.

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Closing my tabs

For those who don’t what this is, it’s my effort to give a little thank you to paid subscribers. “Closing my tabs” is, literally, me looking through the stories and cases open — the tabs open — on my computer and sharing with you all some of those I was unable to cover during the week but that I nonetheless want to let you know that I have on my radar. Oftentimes, they are issues that will eventually find their way back into the newsletter as a case discussed moves forward or something new happens that provides me with a reason to cover the story more in depth.

This Monday, these are the tabs I am closing: