“Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. to appear in court on Friday, more than two months after being deported to a prison in El Salvador, the country of his birth. No matter how the trial shakes out, it’s just the latest example of the Trump administration playing fast and loose with both the facts and the law.”
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“Xinis “order[ed] that [the administration] return Abrego Garcia to the United States.” The Supreme Court intervened, staying Xinis’ order but otherwise affirming its finding to “facilitate…the return of [Abrego Garcia] to the United States by no later than 11:59 PM on Monday, April 7.”
But the administration refused, illogically claiming it had no right to do so. During an Oval Office meeting in April, both Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele mocked the idea of returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said. In a legal filing that same day, DHS acting general counsel Joseph Mazzarra said the department “does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”
“He is not coming back to our country,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News. “President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story.”
So, the news on Friday that Abrego Garcia was coming back—and at the Department of Justice’s direction, no less—was a bit stunning.”
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“even though the indictment could very well just be retroactive justification for deporting someone in violation of numerous court orders, it remains the case that a court of law is the ideal place to adjudicate allegations against Abrego Garcia—not unsourced allegations delivered in press conferences and on social media.”
““It’s been completely destructive to our lives,” Taylor said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine, adding that he and his family have faced increased security threats because of Trump’s order. “I don’t want to go out there and say this order achieved the president’s objective of destroying my personal life, but the reality is that I had to step away from work because I couldn’t do the work that I did anymore with this blacklisting in Washington.””
“Tiananmen Square is a vast space in the center of Beijing with monumental, communist-era buildings along two sides and the mausoleum of Mao Zedong, who founded the communist era in 1949, on the south end.
University students occupied this symbolically important site in the spring of 1989. Their calls for freedoms divided the party leadership. The decision to send in troops marked a decisive turning point in the evolution of modern China, keeping the party firmly in control as it loosened economic restrictions.”
“After President Donald Trump began penalizing major law firms that had offended him in one way or another last February, nine of them chose to surrender rather than fight. They agreed to humiliating concessions that included pro bono work, totaling nearly $1 billion, for causes favored by the president. But several firms stood their ground, arguing that Trump’s executive orders targeting them violated the First Amendment and undermined the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.”
Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security doesn’t know basic things about rights and abilities granted to Americans in the Constitution. She reaches for any bullshit she can to justify illegally expanding Trump’s power.
Many people living in the early days of an authoritarian government didn’t realize they were in an authoritarian country. Democracy often slips away over time, rather than ending in one dramatic coup.
Trump repeatedly acts corruptly, and our institutions are not working properly to stop it.
The Congress should investigate and possibly impeach for such corruption, but the Speaker of the House dismisses it as false claims while saying that what the Biden crime family did was worse, even though those allegations are misleading bullshit.
JD Vance takes to Twitter to make false claims while advocating for taking away immigrants’ due process rights.
The right to due process is for all people on American soil. It doesn’t mean people suspected of being illegal immigrants get a full jury trial, but there is some appropriate process to decrease the possibility of penalizing, deporting, or sending them to a dictator who may kill them for opposing the authoritarian regime.
“The writ of habeas corpus, a right deeply rooted in English common law and recognized by the U.S. Constitution, allows people nabbed by the government to challenge their detention in court. That complicates President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Last month, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that foreign nationals who allegedly are subject to immediate deportation as “alien enemies” have a right to contest that designation by filing habeas petitions.”
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“Although President Donald Trump views unauthorized immigration as an “invasion,” judges have been appropriately skeptical of that description. And while Trump might believe judicial review in this context is inconsistent with “the public safety,” that assessment is likewise controversial. Finally, the power to suspend habeas corpus has long been understood as belonging to Congress, not the president.”
“A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s sweeping layoffs at several agencies, including HHS, saying that cooperation of the legislative branch is required for large-scale reorganizations.
Kennedy eliminated thousands of jobs in early April, paralyzing programs across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and particularly in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, that monitored health threats, researched cures and investigated everything from toxic fumes in fire stations to outbreaks of gonorrhea.
The layoffs at NIOSH have halted the National Firefighter Cancer Registry, Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program, Health Hazard Evaluation Program, Respirator Approval Program and Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program. All are required by law, but their government websites explain they are no longer operating because of the layoffs.
“If the law requires you, the executive, to do this work, you have, in a back door way, thumbed your nose at Congress by firing the people who are actually necessary to get that work done,” said Max Stier, the president and CEO of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, whose mission is supporting the federal workforce. “The executive branch is supposed to execute — the name says it all. It doesn’t have the right to determine where money is spent and how much money is spent. ”
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told POLITICO that “critical initiatives under NIOSH will remain intact.””
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“while the administration has pledged that “essential services…will remain fully intact and uninterrupted,” and have repeatedly claimed that core programs will transfer to the yet-to-be-created Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA, interviews with staff and public notices on the CDC’s website show that the programs are no longer operational.”