Amicus | The Forgotten Lawsuits Targeting Trump’s Worst Abuses
From Slate Race and Identity by Slate Podcasts
December 20, 2025 · 1h 3m
About this episode
Dahlia Lithwick interviews ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt about the legal battles stemming from the Trump administration's controversial actions regarding migrant men.
In mid-March of 2025, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt and his colleagues started hearing that the Trump administration might attempt a flagrantly lawless publicity stunt, involving migrant men, secret flights to El Salvador, a notorious gulag, and a total disregard for due process. Despite getting word that something was about to happen, and rushing into a Saturday night hearing, and then securing a TRO from DC judge James Boasberg, Lee and his colleagues were unable to prevent more than 250 men from being renditioned from Texas to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador. The legal cases spawned by the dramatic events of March 15th 2025 haven’t gone away, indeed they are reaching crucial milestones in the courts, raising foundational questions about the abuse of statutes and what it means to defy court orders. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt who is litigating these cases, to discuss the very high stakes of a set of cases that may have fallen off your radar in the shuffle. How these cases play out will dictate much of what happens for the rest of Trump’s term in office by answering democracy-defining questions such as whether the antiquated and…
People in this episode
Guest: Lee Gelernt
Topics covered
- Trump administration
- ACLU
- legal cases
- due process
- Alien Enemies Act
Keywords
- rendition
- court orders
- TRO
- litigation
- democracy
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Amicus
Places: Texas, America, El Salvador, DC
More episodes of Slate Race and Identity
- ICYMI | Side-Eyeing at H Mart · December 20, 2025 · 47 min
- What Next | Why Antisemitism Is Everywhere · December 18, 2025 · 30 min
- Amicus | One Amendment Explains It All · December 13, 2025 · 1h 7m
- Death, Sex & Money | What Hearing Aids and Anger Management Still Miss · December 9, 2025 · 1h 5m
- What Next: It’s the Alt-Right’s GOP Now · December 8, 2025 · 25 min
- ICYMI | “Danish Deception” or Danish Delusion? · December 3, 2025 · 51 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Slate Race and Identity podcast page.