Josh Riley Plays With Eggs While American Freedom Is Ripped Apart
Welcome to Josh Riley Watch.
I've been watching, and waiting, to produce this episode, because I wanted to give Congressman Josh Riley a chance to speak up or take some kind of action. Day after day, I've been checking the news, social media, and Riley's congressional web site, hoping to see some kind of reaction.
Now, I can only report this: On the most important issue America faces today, Josh Riley has been silent. Josh Riley has taken no action.
I'm talking about a brazen assault on American democracy by President Donald Trump.
Last weekend, Donald Trump ordered hundreds of men living in the United States to be deported to El Salvador. Trump had paid the government of El Salvador millions of dollars to accept the men as prisoners in its Center for Terrorism Confinement prison, also known by its acronym of CECOT. The prison is immense, confining tens of thousands of people, and is infamous for its horrific conditions, with men stuffed into overcrowded prison cells from which they only allowed to emerge for 30 minutes per day.
The men that Donald Trump sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador were given no due process of law before they were deported. The Trump Administration has refused to provide their names, and has refused to provide any evidence that any of the men were involved in any criminal activity. We don't even know for a fact that the men are, as Donald Trump claims, originally from Venezuela. For all we know, some of the men Donald Trump deported are citizens of the United States of America.
The refusal to provide basic information about the men, and the accusations made against them, is a blatant violation of Habeas Corpus, a principle in American law that is so foundational to justice that it predates the Constitution. US District Judge James Boasberg was attempting to establish due process of law so that accusations against the men could be reviewed. As part of that effort, Judge Boasberg issued a ruling that the men could not be deported from the United States until proper legal proceedings were complete. The judge specifically ordered any deportation flights that were in the air to turn around and return to the United States
Donald Trump purposefully violated the order of Judge Boasberg, and deported the men on flights to El Salvador, refusing to turn the flights back to the United States.
The Trump Administration has justified the deportations as allowed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1789, but the Alien Enemies Act only applies to citizens of countries that are at war with the United States. Venezuela and the United States are not at war with each other. That doesn't matter to Donald Trump. He's ignoring what the law says and just doing whatever he wants.
The Department of Justice, which in an ordinary government would step in to stop the President from breaking the law, is instead providing justifications for Trump's lawbreaking. Justice Department lawyers have made the absurd claim that the President has "absolute and unreviewable" power in matters of national security and foreign policy. Under the Constitution, no part of the government has absolute and unreviewable power, but Donald Trump is acting as if the Constitution does not apply to him, and is claiming the ability to rule as a totalitarian tyrant.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared on behalf of Donald Trump that the order from Judge Boasberg had "no lawful basis", even though every ruling a judge makes in the United States has a lawful basis. The Executive Branch has no authority to unilaterally decide what the lawful basis for any judicial action is. The US Supreme Court, not the President of the United States, has the power to make such decisions.
Border Czar Tom Homan, whose office is within Trump's Department of Homeland Security, declared that the Trump Administration has no intention of obeying legal orders from the Judicial Branch. Homan announced: "We are not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the Left thinks. We are coming."
In additional hearings, lawyers representing Donald Trump have refused to provide Judge Boasberg information about the men now imprisoned in El Salvador, even when he issued direct orders that the information be given to him.
This situation has brought the United States of America into a constitutional crisis. The President of the United States is violating laws passed by the US Congress, and is disobeying legal orders from the Judicial Branch. The Executive Branch is taking for itself powers that the Constitution provides to the two other branches of government.
All of this is being done to deny basic freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights to all people in the United States, whether they are citizens or non-citizens. The right to a fair trial, the right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and protection from unreasonable search and seizure are being taken away.
The right of freedom of speech is being corroded as well.
This week, a scientist working for the French government's National Center for Scientific Research was detained and sent back to France for no other reason than that he had privately sent text messages to professional colleagues that criticized Donald Trump's severe cuts to scientific research. The Trump Administration claimed that criticizing Donald Trump's policies "could be qualified as terrorism".
This is worth remembering whenever you hear politicians refer to "terrorism" or "terrorists": Under the fascist government, terrorism has been redefined to include private criticism of Donald Trump.
Several other academics, including both students and professors, have been detained or deported from the United States as punishment for their political opinions. One graduate student was deported for having stayed in the United States for just three days longer than her visa permitted, even though she had already applied for, and been granted, an additional visa.
Donald Trump said that he would deport the "worst of the worst", terrible criminals. Scientists and university students are not the worst of the worst. Their presence is an academic and cultural asset for the United States. With every passing day, we hear more stories of the Trump Administration targeting perfectly fine people as a part of its efforts to supposedly "strengthen the border".
Every member of Congress has the responsibility to stand up to these fascist attacks against American democracy. It's a part of their job as elected representatives of the American people.
Congressman Josh Riley, however, has some special responsibility when it comes to the constitutional crisis over Donald Trump's dramatic declarations of dictatorial powers related to the border and immigration. For some time, Josh Riley has been repeating Trump's dishonest claims that the the United States is suffering from some kind of "border crisis" involving dangerous foreigners roaming America's streets.
Josh Riley has told anecdotes about a foreigner who he says had been accused of crimes in another country, walking the streets of a community in New York's 19th congressional district. Riley's warnings about this dangerous foreigner don't stop to consider the fact that the person in this anecdote is not accused of having committed any crime in the United States. Likewise, Congressman Riley has repeatedly glossed over the distinction between allegations of crime and conviction of a crime, speaking as if a mere accusation establishes a person's status as a dangerous criminal who cannot be tolerated. Furthermore, Riley has engaged in the demagogue's rhetoric of suggesting that an anecdote about one dangerous person is credible evidence of a threat that spans our entire society, justifying new laws and government powers that threaten the constitutional freedoms of us all.
It seems like a long time ago now, but it was just two months ago that Congressman Josh Riley voted for the Laken Riley Act, fascist legislation that fed into the xenophobic slurs of anti-foreigner hatred that Donald Trump is now using to persecute people who have never even been accused of a crime. Josh Riley has never apologized for that vote, and has repeatedly spoken in dishonest ways about the new law, in order to excuse his role in assisting Donald Trump's seizure of fascist power.
If he wants to regain the trust of Ithaca voters, Josh Riley has some reckoning to do about his use of dishonest border conspiracy theories of the kind you'll hear about on Fox News or Donald Trump's social media network.
The truth is that before Donald Trump regained his place in the White House in January, there was no border crisis. By the end of Joe Biden's term in office, border crossings were lower than they were at the end of Donald Trump's first term in office. So why has Josh Riley spent so much time talking about needing to make the border stronger.
Yes, there is a border crisis, but it's not the one that Donald Trump and Josh Riley keep talking about. The real border crisis is the use of conspiracy theories about border security to take away the generations-old system of constitutional freedoms that Americans once took for granted. Wildly inflated stories about Venezuelan gangs hoaxes about Haitians eating dogs and cats are being used as a cover for attacks against America's democracy.
Every time we hear a politician talk about The Border, the fear that they encourage is connected to a fascist solution, a militarization of our country, a constitutional liberty compromised, a vulnerable minority scapegoated.
Let's talk honestly about The Border. When you hear the phrase "The Border", you think of a thin line where Mexico meets the United States. That's not the real Border. The real Border is a 100 mile-wide zone that surrounds the entire country, and not just its land borders, but its coastlines as well. This includes the shoreline of Lake Ontario.
If you live in New York's 19th congressional district, the chances are that you live in The Border. Ithaca, New York is in the Border Zone. So is Cortland. Only a small portion of the district over in the Hudson Valley is outside the Border Zone.
The Border Zone, where you live, is a place where federal government agents have been granted extraordinary powers to violate Americans' right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, which is supposed to be guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Right now, not far to the north of New York's 19th congressional district, there are Immigration Police checkpoints on roads where cars are stopped and ICE agents engage in racial profiling of drivers and their families, where they're taking into custody anyone who looks like they might be Hispanic, or from the Caribbean, or someone who sounds like they were born in a foreign country.
This is being done under the claim that the federal government has probable cause to search every car in Upstate New York for foreigners, because there is some kind of "invasion" of the United States that is a national emergency. This pretext is a lie. The United States is not being invaded by anybody. There is no emergency.
There is not any immigration checkpoint in Ithaca right now, but ICE agents have been granted the authority to create one, if they want to. They could require all the cars traveling through the city on Route 13 to be searched by federal agents with the power to put anyone who isn't carrying an immigration visa and passport into prison, perhaps flying them down to that concentration camp that's been set up down in El Salvador, with no opportunity to talk to a lawyer, much less to be seen by a judge.
This week, federal agents have been seen in Ithaca again. They've been observed scouring the campus of Cornell University. The word is that they're searching for Momodou Taal, a university student who has made Donald Trump angry by filing a lawsuit requesting that the legal rights of foreign students at universities like Cornell be respected. This is the kind of person that the US federal government now classifies as a "terrorist".
It's true that Momodou Taal doesn't an Anglo name like John Smith, but he is living in the congressional district that Josh Riley is supposed to be representing in Washington DC. Momodou Taal doesn't have the right to vote, but he has the right to the protection of the Bill of Rights and every other part of the Constitution of the United States of America. For that matter, Cornell University has the right to expect that Josh Riley is looking out for its interests. Cornell is a major source of economic strength in New York's 19th congressional district, not just because it employs a huge number of people living in Tompkins County, but because Cornell supports farmers across the 19th district, and across New York State, through its cooperative extension network.
So what is Congressman Riley doing for Momodou Taal? What is Josh Riley doing to keep Cornell University from being torn apart by the fascists in Donald Trump's Executive Branch?
I've been waiting for Josh Riley to do something, to say something, to take any action at all to defend all those people in Ithaca who donated to him, volunteered for him, and turned out to vote for him last year.
As of this evening, Josh Riley hasn't done a single thing to defend the 19th district, to defend Ithaca, from the consequences of the fascist propaganda about The Border that he has so eagerly spread for the sake of political advantage.
So what has Representative Josh Riley been doing, instead of defending our democracy from Donald Trump?
Josh Riley has been working with Republicans in Congress to introduce H.R. 2222, the Lowering Egg Prices Act.
Hey, we all want to see egg prices get lower, don't we?
Actually, egg prices are already falling back down, after the peak of the bird flu crisis. Nationwide, egg prices are down from a peak nationwide average of $8.17 per dozen earlier this month to a current nationwide average price of $3.31 per dozen.
So, now, after the crisis in egg price inflation has already passed, Congressman Josh Riley is coming in with legislation to deal with the problem. We're getting the Lowering Egg Prices Act after egg prices are already lower.
You know what? That's okay. It's always a good idea to try to keep egg prices low, given reasonable measures that don't create other problems.
The real problem with H.R. 2222 is that it won't create a meaningful impact on egg prices. That's not my personal opinion. It's the professional opinion of Dennis Brothers, an agricultural economist at Auburn University down in Alabama. https://southernagtoday.org/2025/03/04/can-broiler-eggs-help-table-egg-prices/
Josh Riley's bill, H.R. 2222, would allow more eggs to come on the market, from facilities that produce eggs and incubate them to then sell chicks to chicken farms that raise birds for meat. H.R. 2222 would only allow these eggs to be sold "as liquid egg products" that are then processed into other foods that are typically sanitized through cooking or other procedures, because the eggs at these facilities are kept at higher temperatures that can allow for the growth of salmonella.
Josh Riley's bill will relieve some market pressure on eggs suppliers that could send some additional eggs to grocery stores, but only a little. Dennis Brothers calculates that measures like what is included in Josh Riley's bill would increase the supply of eggs by only 0.4 percent. That's not enough of an increase in supply to bring prices down in a significant way. What H.R. 2222 will do is provide a little bit of an additional source of income for a few chick supplier businesses. That's hardly a big turn-around for the Upstate New York economy.
Instead of confronting the fascist attacks on American democracy by Donald Trump, Josh Riley is focusing on an egg price crisis that is already fading, proposing legislation that won't actually bring egg prices down.
Real people in New York's 19th congressional district are suffering under Donald Trump's fascist border policies. This is no time to be fiddling around with ineffectual agricultural bills.
Congressman Riley, I understand that it's easier to tinker around eggs, but this is no time for politicians who choose the easy thing to do over the right thing to do.
We need Josh Riley to do the right thing. Come clean, Mr. Riley. Start talking honestly about the real border crisis - the use of fascist scaremongering to destroy American democracy from within.
Our neighbors are being taken away. These are your constituents, Congressman Riley.