Justice Department Memo Claims Alien Enemies Act Allows Warrantless Home Searches and No Judicial Review

“Newly uncovered guidance from the Justice Department claims the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) allows federal law enforcement officers to enter the houses of suspected gang members without a warrant and remove them from the country without any judicial review.”

“The Trump administration has refused to disclose many of the operational details of its unprecedented invocation of the 1798 wartime law to send alleged TDA members to a prison in El Salvador under an agreement with that country’s president, Nayib Bukele. The memo is one of the first public glimpses at the Trump administration’s claims that it can identify, pursue, arrest, and deport migrants, unconstrained by the Fourth Amendment or due process.”

“”The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” Wilkinson warned. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.””

https://reason.com/2025/04/25/justice-department-memo-claims-alien-enemies-act-allows-warrantless-home-searches-and-no-judicial-review/

Another American ally just issued an economic warning because of the trade war

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/another-american-ally-just-issued-an-economic-warning-because-of-the-trade-war/ar-AA1DYW80?ocid=msedgntp&pc=NMTS&cvid=02be7e06916845d1b25fd667f10f3f71&ei=11

Deporting the Cancer Kid

“What do you do with U.S. citizen children when a noncitizen parent is deported? The Trump administration has so far answered this question by saying, Well, actually, it’s not much of a question at all, hurry up and deport them already, let’s not ask any questions or consult any lawyers.”

“Doughty, who President Donald Trump appointed, issued an order expressing his fear that the toddler had been deported against her father’s wishes, noting that it is “illegal and unconstitutional” to deport U.S. citizens. “The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the Court doesn’t know that,” wrote the judge. “Seeking the path of least resistance, the Court called counsel for the Government at 12:19 p.m. CST, so that we could speak with VML’s mother and survey her consent and custodial rights. The Court was independently aware at the time that the plane, tail number N570TA, was above the Gulf of America. The Court was then called back by counsel for the Government at 1:06 p.m. CST, informing the Court that a call with VML’s mother would not be possible, because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras.” A hearing is set for May 16 due to the judge’s “strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.””

“Two other U.S. citizen children were deported to Honduras with their illegal immigrant mother, denying the 4-year-old child—who has metastatic cancer—access to his medication.
Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, told NBC that the boy with cancer and his 7-year-old sister were detained on Thursday; taken to El Paso, Texas; and flown to Honduras on Friday morning.”

“the deported mothers not have sufficient access to attorneys or family members to make arrangements for the care of minor children. This runs contra ICE’s own policies, “which mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers—regardless of immigration status—when deportations are being carried out,””

https://reason.com/2025/04/28/deporting-the-cancer-kid/

Trump Administration Admits ICE Arrested Mahmoud Khalil Without a Warrant

“Trump administration officials admitted that Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested without a warrant.”

“The attorneys argued that the Department of Homeland Security wasn’t required to get a warrant because they had reason to believe that Khalil was likely to “escape” before one would be obtained.”

“Khalil is far from the first legal resident to face deportation for pro-Palestine speech. Last month Rubio said that he had cancelled around 300 student visas. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” Rubio told reporters. “And if we’ve given you a visa and you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away””

https://reason.com/2025/04/28/trump-administration-admits-ice-arrested-mahmoud-khalil-without-a-warrant/

Are US Ports Empty and What Impact Does the Tariff Have on Global Shipping?

Tariffs’ effects on costs and shipping have a multi-month delay due the time it takes to ship and businesses stocking up on goods before the tariffs.

The tariffs are very costly, and the unpredictability causes chaos and inefficiencies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33kfpNiiAmo

U.S. Navy Accidentally Throws $64 Million Jet Overboard Off the Coast of Yemen

“While trying to escape from a Yemeni missile and drone attack, the U.S.S. Harry Truman veered so hard that a F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter jet fell from the aircraft carrier into the Red Sea, the U.S. Navy informed CNN. None of the crew were harmed, except for a sailor who suffered “minor injuries,” according to the Navy’s statement.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/29/u-s-navy-accidentally-throws-64-million-jet-overboard-off-the-coast-of-yemen/

Trump’s 100-Day Energy Policy Scorecard: Disrupted Markets and Slowed Investment

“Trump’s trade war has also damped the market outlook for nuclear power. While not an energy source that has received as much attention from the president as coal, oil, and natural gas, the Trump administration has dispersed federal financing to a nuclear power plant restart in Michigan. Looming tariffs are forcing Hyundai, one of the project’s construction partners, to look to domestic manufacturers. “Tariffs will have an influence on the total price,” a spokesperson for Hyundai told Bloomberg.

Nearly $8 billion worth of other clean energy projects were canceled or downsized in the first quarter of 2025 because of Trump’s tariffs and federal funding freezes. The Commerce Department recently slapped duties as high as 3,521 percent on Asian solar imports after a yearslong trade investigation. While the announcement may benefit domestic manufacturers, it is sure to slow down the deployment of solar panels in the United States.

Trump promised to unleash American energy. However, the president’s heavy-handed, protectionist approach to trade and domestic production in his first 100 days could end up setting American energy back.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/29/trumps-100-day-energy-policy-scorecard-disrupted-markets-and-slowed-investment/

Trump’s Tariffs Usurp the Legislature’s Tax Power

“The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” Yet Trump has announced a dizzying array of “duties,” including punitive tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, a 25 percent tax on imported cars and car parts, tariffs on Chinese goods as high as 145 percent, and a 10 percent general tax on imports that may rise further based on supposedly “reciprocal” rates that make no sense.

These levies amount to the largest tax hike since 1993 and raise tariffs more than the notorious Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which deepened the Great Depression by setting off a trade war. The main authority that Trump cites for these far-reaching, commerce-disrupting, price-boosting tariffs is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that says nothing about tariffs.

The IEEPA—which was designed to constrain, not expand, the president’s powers—authorizes economic sanctions in response to “any unusual and extraordinary threat” to “the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States” after the president “declares a national emergency.” Although the law has been on the books for nearly half a century, no president until Trump has ever invoked it to impose a general tariff.

There are good reasons for that. The IEEPA mentions restrictions on transactions involving foreign-owned assets, but it never refers to taxes, tariffs, or any of their synonyms.”

“The shortcut that Trump chose is inconsistent with the IEEPA in another crucial way. To justify his tariffs, he has cited two supposed “emergencies”: the influx of illicit fentanyl, which goes back a decade or more, and ongoing bilateral trade deficits, which Trump himself has been decrying since the 1980s.
Neither of those constitutes the sort of “unusual and extraordinary threat” that Congress contemplated. “A statute grounded in emergency cannot be stretched to support open-ended policymaking,” Calabresi et al. say, “especially where the alleged threat is neither imminent nor novel.”

Trump’s interpretation of the IEEPA amounts to an assault on the separation of powers. “If decades-old trade deficits now qualify as an ’emergency,'” Calabresi et al. warn, “then any President could invoke IEEPA at will to bypass Congress on matters of taxation, commerce, and industrial policy.”

That result, the brief argues, violates the “major questions” doctrine, which says any assertion of executive power involving matters of “vast political and economic consequence” must be based on “unmistakable legislative authority.” It also violates the “nondelegation” doctrine, which says Congress cannot surrender its legislative powers.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/30/trumps-tariffs-usurp-the-legislatures-tax-power/