Many things have happened. Here are some of the things. This is the morning memo of TPM. Register For the e-mail version.
Two months and count
We have arrived two months since Kilmar Abrego Garcia was removed from his United States, despite an immigration judge order, and sent to a prison in El Salvador. Two months of incarceration for an expulsion that the Trump administration admits was an error, and two months of federal courts of Stonewalling by the Trump administration, which refuses to try to facilitate the release of Abrego Garcia despite an old Supreme Court order to do so.
In an late night’s file before a Federal Court of Maryland, the Doj Trump continued to tell the courts to beat the sand, in so many words, rather than to disclose the details of what he has done and what he plans to do to facilitate his release. The Doj Trump is not as explicit as that; It is more slippery and he continues to assert that he respected all the orders of the court. But the result of the increase in tenuous state secrets claims to thwart the discovery in the case is more stonewall and delay, according to the lawyers of Abrego Garcia:
“The fact that the government has repeatedly published information – in the testimonies of the congress, public interviews and publications on social networks – on Abrego Garcia and its reluctance to facilitate its return confirms that the response to the requested discovery would not endanger national security.
This last part is the key.
Contrary to the normal discovery, the American district judge Paula Xinis uses this process to smoke if the administration should be held by the court to challenge the judicial orders several times. Stonewalling The discovery phase is part of the same global model of contemptuous behavior, although the last conduct is masked in a veneer of an argument to probably avoid sanctions.
The last series of documents – including the declaration of the Secretary of State Marco Rubio which is the basis of the complaint of the secrets of the State – are either sealed or partly expared, we therefore still have no complete view of the factual foundations for the invocation of the privilege of state secrets. The severity of the request for privilege of state secrets is colored by the late invocation of the administration in the previous case of the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act to DC, where the American district judge James Boasberg was incredulous that he could apply to these deportations.
Cut in the heart of the Cecot material
I generally do not charge you by reading entire legal deposits, but this short new ACLU deposit in the Alien Enemies Act case before the American district judge James Boasberg at DC Cup at the heart of the question of whether the Trump administration has the constructive custody of migrants transferred to El Salvador prisons.
Boasberg already seems quite convinced that there is a constructive guard, but he wants limited discoveries to help establish a clear factual base, probably to strengthen his decision as he appeals.
It is only the proposed discovery that ACLU wants to make on behalf of the people still incarcerated in Salvador; This is not new factual information. But the precision of the questions and their implications clearly frame the problem:
Just in case it is not clear, the case in front of Boasberg is currently the most viable legal vehicle to obtain the return of the Venezuelan nationals expelled on March 15 without regular procedure under the law on extraterrestrial enemies.
Miscellany immigration case
- In a case outside the Northern Texas District, the Ministry of Justice Trump asks the Supreme Court to allow it to reproduce Venezuelan nationals for reasons other than the Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies.
- “A federal judge ordered the release of a former student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Friday, arguing that detention seemed to have” almost been triggered exclusively “by the militant Zionist Betar group,” reports The Forward.
- In one case in the western district of Louisiana involving allegations according to which a 2 -year -old American citizen was expelled in Honduras with his non -citizen mother, the family rejected their prosecution for reasons that remain troubled, reports ABC News.
For your radar …
All the investigations of the Doj Trump are not intrinsically suspicious, but it is certain that carry a surveillance:
- The Ministry of Justice is currently investigating a cessation of the Tennessee traffic in 2022 involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia and gave immunity limited to the owner of the vehicle he was driving, a criminal sentenced in an Alabama prison with which the investigators recently spoke, reports ABC News. Difficult not to see this as part of the largest defamation campaign led by the White House against the Deporative Trato Abrego Garcia.
- The Ministry of Justice will investigate a development of housing provided in Texas which would have a mosque at its center, announced Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). The proposed project aroused an Islamophobic reaction among the high -level elected Republicans of the State.
- “If there was never a case of a paragraph of selective proceedings, the investigation of the Ministry of Justice on the Prosecutor General of New York Letitia James seems to be this,” writes James Zirin.
But why?
I am always perplexed on the reason why the Trump administration is obsessed with the Library of Congress and the Office of American Rights – and especially why the Deputy Prosecutor General Todd Blanche is now the interim librarian of the Congress and bringing a multitude of officials from the Doj with him. Some of them were blocked yesterday from entry into the loc office.
There are partial answers to why, but they don’t really compensate for a coherent whole. Yes, the former librarian was a black woman. Yes, the chief of the Copyright Office had just issued a warning on AI and copyright. Yes, Blanche is confirmed in the Senate so that he can serve as an acting civil servant, which explains a lot of double pussy roles that Trump administration officials play.
Although these responses explain particular elements of this episode, they do not offer a global theory of the case. Stay listening.
Threatened judges
The disturbing discreet threat of unlined pizza deliveries at the home of federal judges and family members continued, reports the WAPO. DC Judge Circuit Court of Appeals, J. Michelle Childs, says that she has received seven anonymous pizza deliveries so far. Adding to the threat: “In recent weeks, orders have been placed on behalf of the son of the American district judge, Esther Salas, Daniel Anderl, who was shot in the New Jersey family home in 2020 by a lawyer who pretended to be a delivery man.”
Air Force One Lite
Following my deeper concerns concerning the technical feasibility of the modernization of a Lux Qatari 747 so that Trump can use them as Force One by later this year, I do not find any report that suggests that it is almost possible.
“But the modernization of the 13 -year -old plane with a current Air Force, One, would take years of work and billions of dollars, according to current and old officials,” reports the Wapo. “Such a task would be impossible to accomplish before Trump leaves his duties.”
But for a full look at the many strata of inanity here, from corruption to the threat of security to practical limitations, there is no one better than Garrett Graff. It is perfectly in his wheelhouse.
Resumption of the watch
- Politico: RFK Jr., DOGE has legally destroyed the offices required at HHS
- WAPO: Trump hidden ways, Doge stops certain parts of the US government
- WSJ: Omb director Russ Vought takes up the Doge Agenda
Lede of the day
Nyt: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health, published photos on Sunday by himself and his grandchildren swimming in a contaminated Washington stream where swimming is not authorized because it is used for sewer runoff.”
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