Good morning. It is June 24th. It is primary election day in New York City. It is brutally crushingly hot out there, on the way to a forecast high of a hundred. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Erez Reuveni, the lawyer who was fired from Donald Trump's Justice Department for accurately telling a judge in court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia had been deported to El Salvador by mistake, filed a whistleblower complaint with the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department Inspector General, not about his own firing, but about the conduct of Trump's personal lawyer turned Deputy Attorney General, Emile Bove, whose nomination hearings for a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals are supposed to begin tomorrow. The whistleblower report apparently describes Bove as the driving force behind the Trump administration's intentional violation of judicial orders as it hastily shipped immigrants out of the country. The New York Times, which got a copy of the whistleblower report, writes, “A senior official in the Deputy Attorney General's office spoke bluntly about the administration's plans. He informed his subordinates that Mr. Trump would soon invoke the Alien Enemies Act in order to rapidly fly a group of immigrants out of the country that weekend. Two other officials in that office, James McHenry and Paul Perkins, were in attendance, as well as Mr. Reuveni's supervisors, Drew Ensign and August Flentje. F-L-E-N-T-J-E, according to the whistleblower document. Mr. Bove stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what, according to Mr. Reuveni's account. Mr. Bove then broached the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated. Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts, fuck you, and ignore any such order, according to the account. Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.” The Times continues, “Mr. Reuveni and others were quickly ushered out of the room, the account says.” It continues, “notwithstanding Bove's directive, Mr. Reuveni left the meeting understanding the DOJ would tell DHS to follow all court orders.” That impression turned out to be very much not accurate. Further along in the story, the Times writes, “Mr. Reuveni's account describes three instances in which senior Justice Department officials engaged in wrongdoing by ignoring court orders, presenting legal arguments with no basis in law, misrepresenting facts to the courts, and directing him in one instance to misstate facts in violation of his legal and ethical duties as an officer of the court. One of those cases,” the Times writes “involved the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act on March 15th to justify flying more than 100 Venezuelans the administration declared were gang members to CECOT, the El Salvador mega prison. At a hastily convened hearing that day, a federal district judge in Washington, James Boasberg, asked Mr. Ensign if any deportations or removals were imminent in the next 24 or 48 hours, prompting Mr. Ensign to respond, ‘I don't know the answer to that question.’ That answer, according to Mr. Reuveni's account, was false. Ensign had been present in the previous day's meeting when email above A stated clearly that one or more planes containing individuals subject to the AEA would be taking off over the weekend no matter what, the account states.”

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court yesterday, in a decision that was not accompanied by any explanatory opinion at all, except a horrified dissent by the three liberal judges, gave its blessing to the administration's intentional violation of court orders in deportation cases. The Times put that story below the fold on the front page of today's print edition. “Justices Allow Deportations to Third Nations” is the headline. “The Supreme Court on Monday,” the Times writes, “allowed the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their own, pausing a federal judge's ruling that said they must first be given a chance to show that they would face the risk of torture and clearing the way for the administration to send men held at an American military base in Djibouti to South Sudan. The order gave no reasons and said the judge's ruling would remain paused while the government pursues an appeal and after that, until the Supreme Court acts. The court's three liberal members issued a long dissent.” After the jump, the story gets into the dissent, written by Sonia Sotomayor. “‘Congress expressly provided noncitizens with the right not to be removed to a country where they are likely to be tortured or killed,’ Justice Sotomayor wrote, adding that the Supreme Court has long held that people must be given a chance to explain why they should not face ‘grievous loss.’” The story continues, “‘Being deprived of the right not to be deported to a country likely to torture or kill you plainly counts’ as such a loss,” she added. “Thus, plaintiffs have a right to be heard. Justice Sotomayor,” the story continues, “wrote that the majority had endorsed lawlessness. ‘The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard.’” 

The top of page one is taken up with a full-width, single-level headline. “ISRAEL AND IRAN SAID TO REACH CEASE-FIRE / Path to Deal Opened After Tehran’s Restrained Strike on U.S. Base.” The story begins “Qatar intervened on behalf of the Trump administration and persuaded Iran to agree to a cease-fire with Israel, according to three diplomats briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. The truce came after Iran fired missiles on Monday at a U.S. Army base in Qatar in a limited attack.” 

That was what they put the newspaper to bed with, an essentially coherent news story describing an event that multiple official-sounding sources described as having happened. What followed after the print deadline was a barrage of unhinged posts from Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, as he signed each one in all caps, and apparently also outside the discourse space and in the world, at least minor barrages of missiles and bombs between the two countries who had just had this ceasefire announced on their behalf. Despite the president of the United States having posted in all caps, “the ceasefire is now in effect. Please do not violate it.” And also having posted “Israel is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home while doing a plane wave to Iran. Nobody will be hurt. The ceasefire is in effect.” Reuters reports that this morning Trump told reporters “I didn't like the fact that Israel unloaded right after we made the deal. They didn't have to unload. And I didn't like the fact that the retaliation was very strong.” CNN reports that Trump also said, you know what, we're just gonna go to the actual audio of the president of the United States here.

“You know what, we have, we basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand that?”

A big morning for newsworthy cuss words from the executive branch. I guess the job here on this podcast is to try to make sense of the news, but I gotta confess, I’m whipped. I know the potential smoldering fuse of World War III is a heck of a thing to throw up one's hands about, but it seems pretty clear that the people doing the war also have no idea what's really going on. I never really expected that the defining feature of the apocalypse would be how unbearably frivolous it all was. But it's time to turn the air conditioner back on. So that is the news. Thank you for listening.

If you are a registered voter in New York City and you have not yet voted, please hydrate yourself. Put some ice cubes inside your hat and go vote against Andrew Cuomo. Otherwise, keep your exertions to a minimum and take care of yourselves. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You the listeners, keep us going with your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Continue sending those along if you can. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.