From U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes’s 18 feb 2026 ruling in Lazaro Maldonado Bautista et al. v. Ernesto Santacruz Jr et al. (see. e.g., Reuters)
The US is supposed to be a nation of laws grounded, ultimately, in the Constitution. The government has been taken over by a group of people who don’t just break laws — they’re aggressively and systematically violating the most basic Constitutional principles, procedures, and protections. So how should the nation address this group? Normal judicial procedure isn’t enough, because — again — they aren’t merely breaking this or that law, they’re deliberately demolishing the foundations of law itself. You can define this group however you like — maybe Trump, maybe his family, maybe a few members of his Cabinet, maybe ICE, maybe DOGE, maybe some oligarchy, it doesn’t matter. What matters is this: If you acknowledge (1) that such a group exists, and (2) that their actions transcend simple law-breaking to become a form of activity far more dangerous, how should the nation address this group?