This is an emergency. Please join
and me at 11:30 AM ET on Substack Live as we break this news down. You can click on the link here to join.Mark this day down: April 25, 2025 is the day that the executive branch has seized power from the other two co-equal branches of government.
Moments ago, FBI Director Kash Patel just tweeted out his agency’s arrest of a Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge:
From an earlier story on the incident to which Patel refers:
On April 18, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, attempted to arrest a Mexican citizen after a hearing in Judge Hannah Dugan's courtroom at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.
Sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Dugan directed the ICE agents to Chief Judge Carl Ashley's office. During that time, sources said, Dugan allowed the defendant to leave the courtroom through a side door, down a private hallway and into a public area.
Dugan claimed earlier that ICE agents did not present her with a warrant to arrest Florez-Ruiz. A different judge in Wisconsin claimed that the warrant was “administrative,” rather than “judicial,” which former Wisconsin prosecutor Stephen Kravit noted “wouldn't allow the courtroom to be invaded for purposes of serving a subpoena.”
Flores-Ruiz is accused of three misdemeanor counts of battery stemming from a fight between two roommates.
This is about much more than the ability for ICE to raid courthouses in search of undocumented migrants.
The executive branch is now arresting sitting judges, which are part of the legislative branch — not because a sitting judge happens to have committed a federal crime while off duty but because the judge, in her judicial capacity, made a judgement with which the executive branch disagrees.
This is it, my friends. This is the constitutional coup that many of us warned about in advance of last year’s elections. Kash Patel wrote a children’s book warning about this, for God’s sake. Now, it’s happening.
When Justice John Roberts gave Donald Trump carte blanche to commit a coup in the Trump v. United States decision last year, he should have expected this. First, they will come for the state judges with whom they disagree. Then, they will come for the federal judges. And then one day, it will be Roberts and his Supreme Court colleagues who will get a knock on the door from the FBI when they issue a ruling with which the dictator they created disagrees.
Normally, they would rely on federal marshals to protect them. But federal marshals answer to the executive branch too. Democracy does not die in darkness. It dies in the full light of craven little men bending the knee in advance.
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Further Reading:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A Milwaukee judge is accused of helping a man evade ICE. What do legal experts have to say?
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mexican immigrant sought by ICE is apprehended after hearing before a Milwaukee County judge
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What to know about ICE arrests at the Milwaukee courthouse and the judge under FBI investigation
Impeach Kash Patel!! Congress had better stand the hell up!
What the hell?