The Ugly
According to liberal and conservative judges all the way up to the Supreme Court, Trump’s administration broke the rules of law by deporting Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and must try to fix the mistake
- But Trump and his team are trying to rewrite the truth so that it is a dispute about illegal immigration rather than the rule of law. It is a fight that Trump seems to welcome. His administration could easily have avoided it by simply bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador and following a process that might have resulted in him being deported anyway. Instead, Mr. Trump opted to double down, defying the courts and reverse-engineering a justification for a deportation that his administration initially acknowledged was wrong. (NYT)
US Supreme Court orders the stop of Trump deportations under the Alien Enemies Act
- Legal efforts to block the Trump administration’s push to remove more Venezuelan migrants under a rarely used wartime law moved rapidly Friday in another tense government showdown with the courts.
Lawyers for the migrants asked the Supreme Court to step in on an emergency basis to halt their deportations as reports came that immigration officials began loading the detainees onto buses for deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. - The US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration early Saturday to temporarily halt the deportations of at least 30 alleged Venezuelan gang members who immigration advocates say were at imminent risk of being removed from the country. “The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court,” the order reads.
Trump lashes out at Senator Chris Van Hollenwho visited wrongly deported man in El Salvador (HuffPost)
Why do Trump voters have no regrets? Because the people they hate are getting hurt more
- The stock market is plunging, prices are rising, federal workers are getting laid off, students are being snatched off the street by immigration agents. The US is many things at the moment, but stable is not one of them. So, amid all this turmoil, how are all the Donald Trump voters feeling? Has buyer’s remorse set in? Are they starting to wonder whether voting in a convicted felon as president – a man who has declared bankruptcy six times – might not have been the wisest move?
Not according to the polls.
“I hear all these stories, all these articles, all the Trump voters, they regret what they did back in 2024. I’m here to tell you, uh-uh. Very few of them regret what they did back in 2024,” CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said on Wednesday. (Arwa Mahdawi / The Guardian)
Trump’s Worldwide Trade and Tariff War
Xi Jinping is ghosting Trump
- The global economy hinges on a phone call that hasn’t even been scheduled.
As the Trump administration escalates its trade war, and as China retaliates, the American president and his aides say they are expecting Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, to call.
“I have great respect for President Xi,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting last week. “He’s been a friend of mine for a long period of time, and I think that we’ll end up working out something that’s very good for both countries.”
But Mr. Xi is ghosting Trump. He has flown instead to Southeast Asia this week to meet with leaders there to try to persuade them to stand with China in the trade war. (NYT)
The Fool
Trump denies being played by Putin (meanwhile, everyone else can plainly see that Putin is having his way with Trump)
- Russia launches overnight attack (The Guardian)
The Sloppy
Harvard University received an emailed letter from the Trump administration last Friday that included a series of demands about hiring, admissions and curriculum so onerous that school officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House.
- The university announced its intentions on Monday, setting off a tectonic battle between one of the country’s most prestigious universities and a U.S. president. Then, almost immediately, came a frantic call from a Trump official.
- The April 11 letter from the White House’s task force on antisemitism, this official told Harvard, should not have been sent and was ‘unauthorized.’ (NYT)
The Result
A number of prominent Republicans, including several former members of the first Trump administration, have signed an open letter decrying the president for using his power to punish two former administration officials who criticized him, likening his actions to those of a “royal despot.” (NYT)
Pope Francis snubs JD Vance, sends his No. 2 to give the vice president a lecture on compassion (Daily Beast)
Another weekend. Another weekend of Anti-Trump rallies in New York, Washington and elsewhere across the USA (BBC / AP)
Silicon Valley got Trump completely wrong
- Three months into his presidency, Trump has delivered on many of the so-called tech right’s requests for regulatory relief.
- Yet, to the extent that their faction genuinely cares about maximizing American economic growth, technological progress, and global standing, their investment in Trump has been an utter disaster.
- The president’s decision to put across-the-board tariffs on virtually all imports — and 145% duties on Chinese ones — has already cost many tech investors and founders dearly. Startups reliant on Chinese inputs have found themselves abruptly on the brink of insolvency. Other firms have been forced to cancel their IPOs amid bearish investor sentiment. The tech right hoped Trump’s election would clear the way for a wave of mergers, enabling venture-funded startups to cash out by selling their businesses to Big Tech firms. Yet his tariffs have eroded the value of major US tech companies, sapping their interest and capacity to buy out startups (while his administration’s approach to antitrust enforcement has proven more adversarial than anticipated). (VOX)
The Rest of the Empire Meltdown
Trump’s DOJ Is Going After Medical Journals For Being Too Woke (Forbes)
