“If the CDC is anything, it is supposed to be the chief agency that detects, controls, and eliminates infectious diseases. HIV is just such a communicable microbe. The CDC estimates 31,800 Americans were infected with it in 2022, the year in which the latest data are available. The CDC also estimates that “approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S. have HIV. About 13 percent of them don’t know it and need testing.”
Oddly, efforts to cut back on the CDC’s programs aimed at reducing HIV infections stand in contradiction to President Donald Trump’s own Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. (EHE) initiative that he announced during his 2019 State of the Union address. Trump’s original EHE goal was to end the HIV epidemic in the United States by 2030. The EHE initiative boosted preventative strategies including increased HIV testing and the promotion of effective new pre-exposure prophylaxis medications. Thanks in part to the EHE, the rate of HIV infections is down 19 percent since 2016.
The Trump administration’s ultimate plans with respect to the CDC’s HIV prevention division are not yet public, but some reporting suggests that at least some of its programs may be shifted to the Health Resources and Services Administration. As KFF, a health care policy nonprofit, observes, the agency’s primary focus has historically been the delivery of medical care, not implementing preventive strategies.”
“Until Trump took office in January, the AEA had been invoked only three times in 226 years: during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. All of those situations fell into the “declared war” category. The AEA has never previously been invoked in response to a putative “invasion or predatory incursion” outside the context of a declared war. That is the threat Trump cites to justify peremptorily deporting suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.”
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“Trump does not claim to be at war with Venezuela. Nor does he claim that the Venezuelan government has mounted an “invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” And a criminal organization, even one that has corrupted or “infiltrated” a foreign government, is not a “hostile nation or government” as those terms are ordinarily understood.
Nor does Trump’s understanding of “invasion or predatory incursion” make sense in the context of the AEA. “As the Supreme Court and past presidents have acknowledged, the Alien Enemies Act is a wartime authority enacted and implemented under the war power,” Katherine Yon Ebright, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice who specializes in national security issues, explained last fall. “When the Fifth Congress passed the law and the Wilson administration defended it in court during World War I, they did so on the understanding that noncitizens with connections to a foreign belligerent could be ‘treated as prisoners of war’ under the ‘rules of war under the law of nations.’ In the Constitution and other late-1700s statutes, the term invasion is used literally, typically to refer to large-scale attacks. The term predatory incursion is also used literally in writings of that period to refer to slightly smaller attacks like the 1781 Raid on Richmond led by American defector Benedict Arnold.””
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“”There is a lot of law about what constitutes a foreign government,” Gelernt told Boasberg. “And I don’t think the United States recognizes [Tren de Aragua] as a foreign government. They recognize Venezuela as a foreign government. I think that’s the
historic understanding of the statute.”
Gerlent also questioned the government’s definition of “invasion or predatory incursion”: “We think the Court certainly can review whether immigration constitutes some kind of invasion….We know of no historical precedent that would suggest that straight migration or noncitizens coming and committing crimes constitutes an invasion within the meaning of the statute or the Constitution.””
“Does it matter that Khalil is not a U.S. citizen? In the 1945 case Bridges v. Wixon, the Supreme Court held that “freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.” That case involved a longtime legal resident from Australia who was deemed deportable based on the allegation that he had been affiliated with the Communist Party.
“Once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders,” Justice Frank Murphy wrote in a concurring opinion. “Such rights include those protected by the First and the Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens.””
“The Trump administration announced Friday that it would end a program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to live and work in the United States. Established under President Joe Biden, the initiative offered legal status and work authorization to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) who passed security screenings and secured U.S.-based financial sponsors.
Over 500,000 migrants used the program to come to the U.S. legally—suggesting that many people will choose an accessible legal pathway over illegal entry. Getting rid of the CHNV program eliminates that choice for future migrants and penalizes those who came to the country “the right way.””
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“With CHNV benefits set to expire on March 25, many of the program’s half-million beneficiaries could soon find themselves living and working in the U.S. illegally.”
“the White House is reportedly confronting a very different reality: one in which Trump’s trade war leaves many Americans worse off, with farmers likely to be hit the hardest.”
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“Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters last week that the White House has asked her to “have some programs in place that would potentially mitigate any economic catastrophes that could happen to some of our farmers” as a result of a trade war.”
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“The time to work that out might be running short. Trump has promised to ramp up his trade war with Mexico and Canada in early April, and the administration also plans to start slapping so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on imports from other countries on April 2. As the various trade wars escalate, farmers are likely to be on the front lines—because American agricultural exports are an easy target for retaliatory tariffs from other countries.”
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“That’s exactly what happened during Trump’s first term, when his trade war with China caused American farmers to lose a sizable chunk of one of their largest export markets. When farmers complained about it, the Trump administration provided a $28 billion bailout via a New Deal–era program at the Department of Agriculture.
Some of that is already happening. In response to tariffs imposed by Trump in February, China slapped new tariffs on a wide range of American farm exports, including beef, chicken, corn, cotton, dairy, fruits, pork, soybeans, and various vegetables. Both Canada and Mexico have indicated that they plan to retaliate against American tariffs with new levies targeting American agricultural goods.”
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“That’s the nasty thing about trade wars. Not only do they harm manufacturers and consumers seeking to buy raw materials and finished goods from abroad, but they also harm domestic producers (like farmers) who lose access to foreign markets and therefore earn less money. Tariffs hurt Americans who want to eat avocados from Mexico, and Americans growing soybeans to sell there. There are a lot more losers than winners—and that’s before taxpayers get put on the hook for bailouts.
There should be no taxpayer-funded bailouts for American farmers who get burned by Trump’s trade wars. If the White House is concerned about the consequences that higher tariffs will have on American agriculture, there is an easy solution: Don’t impose them.”
“There are many excellent reasons why Boasberg should not be impeached, including the fact that Boasberg’s judgment against Trump is both persuasive and well-grounded in the law. Trump may claim that he has the unilateral authority to deport alleged criminal aliens without due process. But the administration’s arguments in support of that sweeping claim fail to pass muster on multiple counts.
Under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, “whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government,” the president may direct the “removal” of “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized.”
Trump invoked that law in his March 15 proclamation ordering the “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal” of alleged members of the street gang Tren de Aragua, who are allegedly “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States…in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela.”
Except there is no “declared war” between the United States and Venezuela. And while Trump and his allies have certainly promoted the idea of a rhetorical “invasion” of the U.S. by unlawfully present aliens, that is merely a talking point. Such rhetoric does not alter the plain text of the Alien Enemies Act, which refers to military invasions by a “foreign nation or government.” As James Madison explained in his “Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts,” published on January 7, 1800, “invasion is an operation of war.” The alleged crimes of the alleged members of a nonstate street gang do not magically become “an operation of war” just because the president says so in the hopes of unlocking extra powers.
Speaking of James Madison, he said that the role of the judiciary was to stand as “an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” That description is probably as good of an explanation as any for why Trump, just like Roosevelt before him, is so eager to stop the courts from doing their job.”
“But less than 1 percent of Social Security’s payments in recent years were determined to be improper – often the result of an accidental oversight or change in benefit status, according to a report last year by the agency’s inspector general. That works out to about $9 billion a year, and more than two-thirds of the mistaken payments were eventually clawed back. Another agency audit, which looked only at payments to retired workers, survivors and people with disabilities, found fraud was listed as the cause behind just 3 percent of improper benefit payments.”
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“The degree of scrutiny by Social Security’s IG can be intense. One report issued by the office earlier this month found that a partner agency in Mississippi had incorrectly made a $14 payment because of a data-entry error.
Social Security’s inspector general was fired in the first days of the Trump administration, along with top internal investigators at 16 other government agencies. Although the office has continued to operate, it is expected to lose up to 20 percent of its staff because of budget cuts, Rose said.”
“President Donald Trump has reached a peace deal with a prominent law firm, agreeing to lift a punitive executive order in exchange for concessions that include an agreement to do pro bono work on behalf of conservative causes.”