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      Trump disdains conservatism. His governing philosophy is absolute power | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump issued his declaration of war against his “enemies within” at the Department of Justice on 14 March. Thus the president launched a constitutional crisis that encompasses not just a group of migrants snatched without due process and transported against federal court orders to a foreign prison, but a wholesale assault on virtually every major institution of American society.“We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government. We will expose, and very much expose, their egregious crimes and severe misconduct,” he pledged. “It’s going to be legendary.”Trump’s speech condensed his mission to its despotic essence. While he distilled his contempt, Trump also marked his disdain for the traditional conservatism of limited government, respect for the law and liberty. He defined his project, built on his executive orders as substitutes for the law, to crown himself with unrestrained powers to intimidate, threaten and even kidnap. His political philosophy is a ruthless quest for absolute power.Trump hailed his appointees for being “so tough” – the enthusiastically compliant attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the irrepressible flunky FBI director, Kash Patel. He attacked lawyers whose firms he would issue executive orders against to eviscerate their work – “really, really bad people”. He claimed Joe Biden and the former attorney general Merrick Garland “tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third-world country”. And he described “people that come into our country” as “stone-cold killers. These are killers like – they make our killers look nice by comparison. They make our killers look nice. These are rough, tough people with the tattoos all over their face.” Trump’s accusations are invariably projections of his own malice that he manufactures into politically pliable paranoia.No staff attorneys within the department were invited to the speech, as people at the justice department told me. The senior lawyers from the Public Integrity Section had already resigned when Trump attempted to coerce them to participate in dropping the prosecution of New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, for corruption in exchange for his support of Trump’s coming roundup and deportation of migrants. After Trump, a convicted felon, concluded by comparing himself to Al Capone, the mafia boss convicted of tax evasion – “the great Alphonse Capone, legendary Scarface, was attacked only a tiny fraction of what Trump was attacked” – Trump’s theme song from his political rallies, YMCA, blared out of the loudspeakers in the department auditorium.The next day, Trump announced his executive order citing the Alien Enemies Act of 1789, a wartime measure, to incarcerate members of the Tren de Aragua gang he asserted were coordinating with the Maduro government of Venezuela to commit “brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human, drug, and weapons trafficking”. (On 20 March, the New York Times reported: “The intelligence community assessment concluded that the gang, Tren de Aragua, was not directed by Venezuela’s government or committing crimes in the United States on its orders, according to the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.”)The 238 men abducted were taken without any due process to a maximum-security prison operated by the Salvadorian strongman Nayib Bukele, who calls himself “the coolest dictator” and whose government is being paid at least $6m in an arrangement with the Trump administration.In a hearing on 24 March before the US court of appeals for the DC circuit, Judge Patricia Millett, criticizing the absence of due process, said: “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.” She asked the deputy assistant attorney general, Drew Ensign, arguing the administration’s case: “What’s factually wrong about what I said?”“Well, your Honor, we certainly dispute the Nazi analogy,” he replied.Trump’s assertion of emergency power under the Alien Enemies Act is more than a bit analogous to the ideas of Carl Schmitt, the chief legal scholar and apologist of the Nazi regime, “crown jurist of the Third Reich”. The falsity, according to the intelligence community, of Trump’s claim about the men underlines the analogy of Trump’s argument to Schmitt’s. “Authority, not truth, produces law,” Schmitt wrote. “Sovereign is he who decides on invocation of the state of emergency.” And then: “Der Ausnahmefall offenbart das Wesen der staatlichen Autorität am klarsten” – “The State of Emergency reveals most clearly the essence of the authority of the state … The exception is thus far more important that the ordinary rule. The normal state of affairs shows nothing; the emergency shows everything; it confirms not only the rule, rather the rule derives strictly from the emergency.”The ACLU filed a lawsuit on 15 March before Chief Judge James Boasberg of the US district court of the District of Columbia to halt the flight to El Salvador. The judge issued an order for the planes to return to the US, but the Trump administration defied it.Trump’s defiance has set in motion a flurry of legal challenges and court cases heard in district courts and circuit courts of appeals, as well as the supreme court. On 7 April, the court ruled that the detainees had the right to due process, which they were denied. On 11 April, the justices unanimously ordered the administration to facilitate the return of one wrongly taken individual, Kilmar Ábrego García, a legal resident of Maryland who was identified by his family and had no criminal record. On 19 April, the court temporarily blocked a new round of deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.CBS’s 60 Minutes reported: “We could not find criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans.” Bloomberg News reported that about 90% had no criminal records.On 14 April, Trump welcomed Bukele to the White House. Trump has turned the Oval Office into his small stage with cabinet secretaries and staff seated on the couches as his chorus. Bukele was dressed in black casual wear, but not admonished, as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy was admonished, for supposedly showing disrespect to Trump by not appearing in a suit and tie.Trump and Bukele played the scene as a buddy movie, kidding each other, but not kidding, about repression. “Mr President,” said Bukele, “you have 350 million people to liberate. But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. That’s the way it works, right?”“The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns,” said Trump. “You’ve got to build about five more places.”“Yeah, we got the space,” Bukele said.When the question of Ábrego García was raised by a reporter, Bondi said: “That’s not up to us,” and that it was “up to El Salvador”.“Well, I’m supposed – you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist in the United States, right?” Bukele replied. Trump reassured him: “It’s only CNN.” Bukele called the question “preposterous”.“Well, they’d love to have a criminal released into our country,” said Trump. “These are sick people. Marco, do you have something to say about that?” It was another test of the secretary of state’s sycophancy. Marco Rubio rose to the occasion. “No court in the United States has a right to conduct a foreign policy of the United States,” he said. “It’s that simple. End of story.”Standing behind Rubio, Trump’s most influential aide and the architect of his immigration policy, Stephen Miller, chimed in: “To Marco’s point, the supreme court said exactly what Marco said. That no court has the authority to compel the foreign policy function in the United States. We won a case 9-0. And people like CNN are portraying it as a loss, as usual, because they want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children.”A reporter attempted to point out that the court had in fact ruled it was illegal to deprive the captives of due process. “Well, it’s illegal to, so I just wanted some clarity on it,” he asked. Trump jumped in: “And that’s why nobody watches you anymore. You have no credibility.”On 17 April, the day the supreme court ruled on Ábrego García, Trump said: “I’m not involved in it,” though he had signed the executive order that authorized his kidnapping. Trump was reverting to the tactic of denial, however patently ludicrous, that he had been schooled in originally by Roy Cohn, the Republican power broker and mafia lawyer who had been his private attorney. The Trump administration continues to claim it has no control over the captives in the Salvadorian prison and they cannot be returned.Trump’s disavowal of responsibility made the visit to the prison by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to tape a video on 26 March problematic on several levels. If Trump has no control, then how was Noem allowed the run of the place? If the prisoners were combatants under the Alien Enemies Act, then their status made her appearance a violation of the Geneva convention’s Article 1 that outlaws “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment”, and Article 13 that prohibits “acts of violence or intimidation” and “insults and public curiosity” – that is, using prisoners for propaganda purposes.If Schmitt’s argument is not Trump’s argument, the difference has certainly not confused the judges handling the cases. Boasberg ruled that the Trump administration had acted with “willful disregard” for his order and, while contempt proceedings were paused, threatened to appoint a special prosecutor if the Department of Justice declined to do so.The Maryland federal judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the administration to return Ábrego García, said on 15 April she had seen no evidence of progress. She ruled on 22 April that such stonewalling “reflects a willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations … That ends now.”She also stated: “Defendants must supplement their answer to include all individuals involved as requested in this interrogatory.” That discovery process might range into stranger precincts of Maga depths than imagined. The New Yorker reported on “a Maga salon” at a tech billionaire’s Washington residence to which a Republican lobbyist, Andrew Beck, brought Trace Meyer, self-described as the “Babe Ruth of bitcoin”, where they discussed with state department staffers the “work-in-progress plan” for abducting migrants to El Salvador. The officials had reached “an impasse in the negotiations. Meyer, through his crypto connections, was able to help reopen the conversation.” Add to the discovery list: Beck, Meyer and the state department officials.In denying the Trump administration’s motion for a halt in the Xinis ruling, Judge J Harvie Wilkinson III, of the court of appeals for the fourth circuit, issued a thunderous opinion on 17 April, marking a historic break between principled conservatism and Trump’s regime. Wilkinson is an eminent conservative figure within the judiciary, of an old Virginia family, a clerk to Justice Lewis Powell, and a Ronald Reagan appointee revered in the Federalist Society.“The government,” Wilkinson wrote, “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. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”Wilkinson concluded with a siren call about Trump’s threat. “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning.”Wilkinson has defined the stark conflict headed toward an unstoppable collision. Against Trump’s appropriation of Schmitt’s authoritarian logic, the conservative jurist has thrown down the gauntlet of American constitutional law. Trump’s disdain for that sort of conservatism moves the cases again and again toward the conservative majority of the supreme court, which must decide its allegiance, either like Wilkinson, to the constitution, or instead to Trump’s untrammeled power that would reduce the court itself to a cipher.

      This article was amended on 27 April 2025; an earlier version stated that JD Vance admonished Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit to meet Donald Trump. In fact, it was Brian Glenn, a correspondent for Real America’s Voice.

      Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      US supreme court hears challenge to Obamacare free preventive healthcare

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      The US supreme court on Monday heard arguments in a case that could threaten Americans’ access to free preventive healthcare services under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.At issue is the constitutionality of the US preventive services taskforce, which plays a critical role in determining which preventive services health insurers must cover without cost to patients. The 16-member panel of medical experts, appointed by the health secretary without Senate confirmation, has designated dozens of life-saving screenings and treatments as essential preventive care.If the justices uphold the lower court’s ruling, health associations said in a filing, life-saving tests and treatments that have been cost-free would become subject to co-pays and deductibles, deterring many Americans from obtaining them.The case represents the latest in a long series of legal challenges to Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation to reach the nation’s highest court since its passage in 2010. A big critic of the program during his first term, Trump and his administration have now taken over the case after the Biden administration initially filed the appeal.In oral arguments, the justices posed sharp questions over whether the law gives the HHS secretary the appropriate level of supervision over the taskforce, including the power to influence its recommendations and fire members at will, or if the group operates as a largely independent governmental body whose recommendations effectively have the force of law.Jonathan Mitchell, the conservative lawyer representing the plaintiffs who previously represented Trump in ballot access litigation, insisted that taskforce members are “principal officers” because “their preventive care coverage mandates are neither directed nor supervised by the Secretary of Health and Human Services”.Mitchell’s argument hinges on interpreting statutory language requiring the task force to be “independent” and “protected from political pressure”, which he argues is incompatible with secretary oversight: “We don’t see any way that statutory language can be squared with the regime envisioned by the government,” he told the justices.Several justices appeared skeptical of Mitchell’s reading of the statute, with Justice Elena Kagan questioning whether Congress would create a board without specifying who appoints its members: “I mean, it would be an odd statute. I doubt you could find another where Congress has set up a board and … just not said who should appoint.”The taskforce is made up of medical experts who serve four-year terms on a volunteer basis. It reviews medical evidence and public feedback and issues recommendations about which preventive services would be most effective for detecting illnesses earlier or addressing ailments before a patient’s condition worsens.The taskforce has identified dozens of preventive services as having a high or moderate net benefit to patients including screenings to detect diabetes and various types of cancer, statin medications to lower the risk of heart disease and stroke, and interventions to help patients quit smoking or unhealthy alcohol use.The New Orleans-based fifth US circuit court of appeals ruled in 2024 that the taskforce’s structure violates the constitution, as the plaintiffs claimed. The government’s appeal of the fifth circuit’s decision initially was filed by Biden’s administration before being taken up by Trump.Trump’s administration argued in a supreme court brief that the taskforce’s preventive care recommendations cannot become legally binding on insurers without the HHS secretary’s permission.“The secretary can remove them at will, and the threat of removal is the ultimate tool for control over final decisions on recommendations,” justice department lawyers wrote.For this and other reasons, justice department lawyers argued, the taskforce’s members should be seen as so-called “inferior officers”, meaning they can be lawfully appointed by an executive branch department head – like the HHS secretary – and do not require Senate confirmation under the constitution.In a supreme court filing, the plaintiffs argued that the Affordable Care Act has transformed the longstanding taskforce from an advisory body into one that now issues “decrees” to insurers, adding that the HHS secretary has no authority to stop taskforce recommendations from becoming binding law.The taskforce’s lack of supervision, they argued, makes its members “principal officers” who must be presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed under the constitution.Before the case was narrowed to the appointments issue, the lawsuit included a religious objection to being required to cover pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV. They claimed that such drugs “facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity and intravenous drug use”.The fifth circuit’s ruling also rejected the government’s request to remove certain offending words from the Obamacare provision at issue – a process called severing – in order to make that part of the law conform to the constitution. That issue was also part of the appeal before the supreme court.The supreme court’s decision was expected by the end of June. More

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      Amy Klobuchar calls on supreme court to hold Trump officials in contempt

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      Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off.“I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold,” Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union, adding “but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”Klobuchar said the US supreme court should hold Trump administration officials in contempt if they continue to ignore a court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador, the Maryland resident the government admitted in court it had deported by mistake.Klobuchar said the court could appoint a special prosecutor, independent of Trump’s Department of Justice, to uphold the rule of law and charge any officials who are responsible for Ábrego García’s deportation, or have refused to facilitate his return.The senator’s comments came hours after supreme court released justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion on the court’s decision to block the Trump administration from deporting more Venezuelans held in north Texas’s Bluebonnet detention center .In his dissent, Alito criticized the decision of the seven-member majority, saying the court had acted “literally in the middle of the night” and without sufficient explanation. The “unprecedented” relief was “hastily and prematurely granted”, Alito added.Alito, whose dissent was joined by fellow conservative justice Clarence Thomas, said there was “dubious factual support” for granting the request in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union to block deportations of accused gang members that the administration contends are legal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.The majority did not provide a detailed explanation for the order released early on Saturday, only that the administration should not to remove Venezuelans held in the “until further order of this court”.The court has said previously that deportations under the 1798 law can only proceed if those scheduled to be removed are offered a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlito further wrote that both “the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law”, but it was not clear whether the supreme court had jurisdiction until legal avenues had been pursued through lower courts. He also objected to the fact that and the justices had not had the chance to hear the government’s side.“The only papers before this Court were those submitted by the applicants,” Alito wrote. “The Court had not ordered or received a response by the Government regarding either the applicants’ factual allegations or any of the legal issues presented by the application. And the Court did not have the benefit of a Government response filed in any of the lower courts either,” Alito said.In his dissent, Alito said the applicants had not shown they were in “imminent danger of removal”.“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order,” Alito wrote.“I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate”, Alito added. More

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      Denied, detained, deported: the most high-profile cases in Trump’s immigration crackdown

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      Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration has set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting asylum seekers and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.Students and academics hunted and ‘disappeared’In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) teams suddenly began arresting and detaining foreign-born students and academics on visas or green cards. In most cases the government has cited their roles in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attack. Claims that they “support Hamas” are invoked as justification for wanting to deport them, even though they have not been charged with any crimes. Those taken include:Mahmoud KhalilA recent graduate student of Columbia University in New York, Mahmoud Khalil, 30, is a Palestinian green card holder who was a leader during protests last year. He was arrested in front of his pregnant wife and has been in a detention center in Louisiana since mid-March.View image in fullscreenThe government is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases like Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally-protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. A far-right group has claimed credit for flagging his and others’ names for scrutiny by the authorities.Rümeysa ÖztürkView image in fullscreenUS immigration officials wearing masks and hoodies encircled and grabbed the Tufts University PhD student in a suburb of Boston and bustled her into an unmarked car, shown in onlooker video. Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish national on a visa, had co-written an op-ed in the student newspaper, criticizing Tufts’ response to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and Palestinians. She was rushed into detention in Louisiana in apparent defiance of a court order. Öztürk, 30, says she has been neglected and abused there in “unsafe and inhumane conditions”.Mohsen MahdawiView image in fullscreenMahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University, was apprehended by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, on 14 April, according to his lawyers and a video of the incident, first reported by the Intercept.He was prominent in the protests at Columbia last year. During his apprehension he was put into an unmarked car outside a federal office where he was attending an interview to become a naturalized US citizen, his lawyer said.Yunseo ChungView image in fullscreenAnother student at Columbia, Chung, 21, sued the Trump administration for trying to deport her, and has gone into hiding. She is a pro-Palestinian campaigner and was arrested by the New York police in March while protesting against the university’s punishments of student activists, as first reported by the New York Times. She said a government official told her lawyer they want to remove her from the country and her residency status was being revoked. Chung was born in South Korea and has been in the US since she was seven.Alireza DoroudiView image in fullscreenThe Democrats on campus group at the University of Alabama said of the arrest of Doroudi, an Iranian studying mechanical engineering: “Donald Trump, Tom Homan [Trump’s “border czar”], and Ice have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community.”Less is known about the federal government’s claims against Doroudi but it is understood he was taken to the same Ice processing center in Jena, Louisiana, where Khalil is behind bars, NBC reported.Badar Khan SuriView image in fullscreenMore than 370 alumni of Washington DC-based Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).The authorities revoked his student visa, alleging the citizen of India’s father-in-law was an adviser to Hamas officials more than a decade ago – and claiming he was “deportable” because of his posts on social media in support of Palestine. He was taken to Louisiana and then detention in Texas and was given court dates in May.Kseniia PetrovaThe Harvard Medical School research scientist was stopped at Boston’s Logan airport by US authorities on her way back from France in February, over what appeared to be an irregularity in customs paperwork related to frog embryo samples. She was told her visa was being revoked and she was being deported to her native Russia.When Petrova, 30, said she feared political persecution there because she had criticized the invasion of Ukraine, she was taken away and also ended up in an overcrowded detention facility in Louisiana.Student visas revokedMore than 1,300 international students from at least 200 colleges across the US have had their “legal status changed” by the state department, including the revoking of visas, between mid-March and mid-April, Inside Higher Education has reported. The specialist publication called it “an explosion of visa terminations”.The schools and students have been given little information, but secretary of state Marco Rubio has lambasted protesters and campus activists as “lunatics”. Some have been cited for pro-Palestinian views, others concluded they must have been targeted because of minor crimes or offenses, such as a speeding ticket. Some can find no specific reason why their visa would be revoked. Many are from India and China, the Associated Press reported, and panic is setting in on campuses.High-profile cases include:Felipe Zapata VelásquezView image in fullscreenThe family of University of Florida student Felipe Zapata Velásquez, 27, said he is “undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process” in his native Colombia after police arrested him in Gainesville in March for traffic offenses and turned him over to Ice. He agreed to be deported, to avoid lengthy detention and legal battles. Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost accused authorities of “kidnapping” Velásquez.Momodou TaalTaal, a dual citizen of Britain and Gambia, was pursuing a PhD at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center, and was an outspoken activist on the Ivy League campus. He was suspended last year for his role in anti-Zionist protests. He sued the Trump administration over labeling foreign student protesters anti-Semitic and was told to surrender to immigration officials. He has since left the country.Deported by (admitted) mistakeKilmar Ábrego GarcíaView image in fullscreenThe Salvadoran man was deported to El Salvador by mistake, which the Trump administration admitted. But then it essentially defied a US supreme court order to “facilitate” his return to his home and family in Maryland from a brutal mega-prison in the central American country. Ábrego García was undocumented but had protected status against being deported to El Salvador. He was flown there anyway, without a hearing. The administration accuses him of being a violent gangster and has abandoned him, infuriating a federal judge and prompting warnings of a constitutional crisis. He has not been charged with any crimes but was swept up with hundreds of Venezuelans also deported there. Sheet metalworkers union chief Michael Coleman described Ábrego García as an “apprentice working hard to pursue the American dream” and said he was not a gang member. Trump said he was eyeing Salvadoran prisons for US citizens.Deported to a third country, without due processThe US deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to the mega-prison in El Salvador without so much as a hearing in mid-March despite an infuriated federal judge trying to halt the flights, then blocking others. Donald Trump took extraordinary action to avoid due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a law meant only to be used in wartime, prompting court challenges led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). John Roberts, the US chief justice, rebuked the president when he threatened the judge. The justices, by a majority, did not stop Trump from using the AEA but the bench unanimously reaffirmed the right to due process and said individuals must be able to bring habeas corpus challenges.Most of the men are reportedly not violent criminals or members of violent gangs, as the Trump administration asserts, according to a New York Times investigation.Many appear to have been accused of being members of the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua partly on the basis of their tattoos, with their families speaking out, including:Andry José Hernández Romeroskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenHernández, a 31-year-old makeup artist and hairdresser, entered California last year to attend an asylum appointment, telling the authorities he was under threat in Venezuela as a gay man. But he was detained and accused of being in Tren de Aragua because of his tattoos, then suddenly deported under Trump, deemed a “security threat”.Jerce Reyes BarriosThe former professional footballer, 36, has been accused of gang membership by the Department of Homeland Security, seemingly because of his tattoos, including one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “dios”.“He chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” his lawyer, Linette Tobin, said, adding that her client fled Venezuela after protesting the government and being tortured.Francisco Javier García CasiqueView image in fullscreenRelatives were shocked when they spotted Francisco Javier García Casique, 24, in a propaganda video from El Salvador showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody there. He is a barber in his home town of Maracay and is completely innocent of gang involvement, the family said, adding that Francisco and his brother Sebastián have matching tattoos quoting the Bible.Migrants seeking asylum removed to PanamaA US military plane took off from California in February carrying more than 100 immigrants from countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan, dumping them in Panama. They were shackled and deported to a third country because their nations of origin refuse to accept them back from the US. Shocking scenes unfolded of the people locked in a hotel in Panama City, signaling and writing on the windows pleading for help.The people, including children, were then moved and held at a facility deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia. They were later reportedly freed and were seeking asylum from other countries, their futures uncertain. One of those deported from the US was:Artemis GhasemzadehView image in fullscreenGhasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, wrote “Help us” in lipstick on a window of the hotel in Panama City, as a desperate way of alerting New York Times reporters on the street to her and fellow detainees’ plight. She had thought that, especially as a convert from Islam to Christianity who faces danger in Iran as a result, that she would be offered freedom in the US, she told the newspaper while still in custody.Americans questioned and threatenedAmir MakledView image in fullscreenMakled, a Detroit-born attorney, was questioned at the airport on returning from vacation. He was flagged to a terrorism response team, kept behind and pressured to hand over his phone, then give up some of its contents. The Lebanese American represents a pro-Palestinian student protester who was arrested at the University of Michigan. Experts said the incident was evidence of a weakening of fourth amendment constitutional protections at the border against “unreasonable search and seizure”.Nicole MicheroniView image in fullscreenThis Massachusetts immigration lawyer, a US-born American citizen, spoke out after receiving an email from the Trump administration telling her “it is time for you to leave the United States”. She said it was “probably, hopefully, sent to me in error. But it’s a little concerning these are going out to US citizens.” She told NBC she thought it was a scare tactic.Visitors detainedJasmine Mooney, CanadaView image in fullscreenCanadian Jasmine Mooney was shackled and ended up in Ice detention in the US for two weeks over an alleged work visa irregularity while on one of her frequent visits to California. She spoke out about the harsh conditions and the information black hole and how outraged she was that so many other detainees she met, who helped her, are stranded without access to the kind of resources that ultimately got her out.Rebecca Burke, UKView image in fullscreenThe British graphic artist was stopped at the border when she headed from Seattle to Canada as a backpacker and, because of a visa mix-up, she became one of 32,809 people to be arrested by Ice during the first 50 days of Trump’s presidency. Almost three weeks of grueling detention conditions later, she smuggled out her poignant drawings of fellow detainees when she was released.Jessica Brösche, GermanyThe German tourist and tattoo artist, 29, from Berlin was detained by US immigration authorities and deported back to Germany after spending more than six weeks in US detention, including what she described as eight days in solitary confinement. Her family compared her ordeal to “a horror film”.Fabian Schmidt, GermanyView image in fullscreenThe 34-year-old German national and US green card holder was apprehended and allegedly “violently interrogated” by US border officials as he was returning to New Hampshire from a trip to Luxembourg. His family said he was held for hours at Boston’s Logan airport, stripped naked and put in a cold shower, then later deprived of food and medicine, and collapsed. His case is being investigated and as of mid-April he was in Ice detention in Rhode Island.Sent back‘Jonathan’A man with a US work visa provided his anonymous account to the Guardian of being denied entry into the US after a trip to his native Australia to scatter his sister’s ashes. He was pulled aside on arrival in Houston, Texas, and accused, variously, of selling drugs and having improper paperwork. After being detained for over a day he was put on a flight back to Australia even though he has worked on the US east coast for five years, where he lived with his girlfriend.Denied entry – for criticizing Trump?Alvin Gibbs, Marc Carrey and Stefan Häublein of band UK SubsView image in fullscreenMembers of the punk rock band UK Subs said they were denied entry and detained in the US on their way to play a gig in Los Angeles, after being questioned about visas. Bassist Alvin Gibbs said: “I can’t help but wonder whether my frequent, and less than flattering, public comments regarding their president [Trump] and his administration played a role.” He and the two band mates were kept in harsh conditions for 24 hours then deported back to the UK.French scientistA French scientist, who has not been publicly named, was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, according to a French government minister. The researcher was on his way to a conference in Texas.“Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values ​​that we will continue to proudly uphold,” Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Le Monde. More

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      Finally, the Trump regime has met its match | Robert Reich

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      It was bound to happen.Encouraged by the ease with which many big US institutions caved in to their demands, the Trump regime – that is, the small cadre of bottom-feeding fanatics around Donald Trump (JD Vance, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller and RFK Jr) along with the child king himself – have overreached.They’ve dared China, Harvard and the supreme court to blink.But guess what? They’ve met their matches. None of them has blinked – and they won’t.China not only refused to back down when the Trump regime threatened it with huge tariffs, but also retaliated with huge tariffs of its own, plus a freeze on the export of rare-earth elements that the US’s high-tech and defense industries depend on.Harvard also pointedly defied the regime, issuing a clear rebuke to its attempt to interfere with academic freedom.The supreme court – in a rare unanimous decision – ordered Trump to facilitate the return of a legal US resident wrongly deported to a dangerous prison in El Salvador, without any criminal charges.But the White House was defiant. On Monday, both Trump officials and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said they could not return Kilmar Ábrego García.“Of course, I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked. Trump sat by his side with a smile on his face. The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, joined in the cruel imitation of justice: “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him.”What’s next?I suspect the testosterone-poisoned lackeys around King Trump are urging him to hit back even harder, escalating their confrontations with China, Harvard and the supreme court. They view these showdowns as ultimate tests of the regime’s strength.Think of it – they must be telling themselves and their boss – what prizes! If they defeat China, they have brought the world’s other economic powerhouse to its knees!If they defeat Harvard University, they have been victorious over the world’s intellectual powerhouse!skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf they defeat the supreme court, they have conquered the entire US government!Win these battles and no one will ever again doubt the power and resolve of the Trump regime!Hopefully, Trump is smarter than this. He knows these three institutions will not back down. They are rich and powerful enough to defy Trump’s escalating threats and demands. They cannot and will not cower.If Trump escalates his wars against them, they’ll become even stronger in the eyes of their supporters and constituents, and much of the world.The American people will see that Trump is actually a blowhard with no real power at all.So if he’s smart, Trump will try to de-escalate these three conflicts.He’s already hinted at an off-ramp with China. He will probably find some way to claim that Harvard has capitulated to his demands. He will avoid a showdown with the supreme court.But keep a watch on these three. They are Trump’s most formidable foes. If he doesn’t understand this and instead succumbs to the urges of his power-crazed lackeys, the Trump regime’s days will in effect be over before it even completes the first hundred of them.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Judge rebukes Trump officials for not securing return of wrongly deported man

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      A federal judge sharply rebuked the Trump administration and scolded officials on Tuesday for taking no steps to secure the return of a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, as the US supreme court had ordered in a contentious ruling last week.The US district judge Paula Xinis said that Donald Trump’s news conference with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, where the leaders joked that Kilmar Ábrego García would not be released, did not count as compliance.“To date nothing has been done,” Xinis said, a day after senior Trump officials also mounted an effort to sidestep the supreme court decision by offering increasingly strained readings of the order to claim they were powerless to bring back Ábrego García.The judge ultimately said she would require the administration to produce details under oath about its attempts to return Ábrego García to US soil in two weeks, an unusually expeditious timeline for discovery that indicated how she intends to move with the case.At issue at the hearing in federal district court in Maryland was the administration’s narrow reading of the supreme court order that compelled it to “facilitate” the return of Ábrego García, who was supposed to have been shielded from being sent to El Salvador.The administration had earlier conceded Ábrego García’s deportation was an administrative error. But it has since taken the position that it is powerless to bring him back beyond removing domestic obstacles, and that courts lack the constitutional power to dictate the president to do more.The lead lawyer for the administration, Drew Ensign, also said in legal filings before the hearing that even if Ábrego García were returned to the US, the justice department would deport him to a different country or move to terminate the order blocking his removal to El Salvador.But the judge rejected the administration’s narrow reading of “facilitate”, noting the plain meaning of the word meant officials needed to secure Ábrego García’s release – and that US immigration and customs enforcement had previously taken a number of positions on its meaning.“Your characterization is not bound in fact,” Xinis said. “I need facts.”The administration argued it had sought to comply with the supreme court’s order when Trump addressed the case and Bukele questioned whether he was supposed to smuggle Ábrego García across the border – which Ensign argued showed the matter had been raised at the “highest levels”.The judge appeared unimpressed by the argument. “It’s not a direct response,” Xinis said. “Nor is the quip about smuggling someone into the US. If you were removing domestic barriers, there would be no smuggling, right? Two misguided ships passing in the night.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe judge told Ábrego García’s lawyers to prepare by Wednesday their questions for the administration about what steps it had taken. She said they could depose up to six officials, including Robert Cerna, a top official at Ice, and Joseph Mazarra, the acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security.“Cancel vacation,” Xinis told Ensign. “Cancel appointments. I’m usually pretty good about this in my courtroom, but not this time.”After the hearing, Ábrego García’s lawyer Rina Gandhi called the hearing a win but added they were not yet done. “We have not brought Kilmar home,” she told reporters, “but we will be able to question those involved and get information and evidence as required.”She also accused the administration of acting in bad faith. “This case is about the government unlawfully – and admitting to unlawfully – removing a gentleman from this country, from his home, his family, his children, and taking no actions to fix them as ordered by the supreme court,” Gandhi said. More

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      US supreme court blocks ruling that 16,000 fired federal workers must be rehired

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      The US supreme court has handed Donald Trump a reprieve from a judge’s ruling that his administration must rehire 16,000 probationary workers fired in its purge of the federal bureaucracy.A day after ruling in the White House’s favor to allow the continued deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, the court gave the White House a less clear-cut victory in halting the order by a California court that dismissed workers from six government agencies must be rehired.The court struck down by a 7-2 majority last month’s ruling by US district court judge William Alsup because non-profit groups who had sued on behalf of the fired workers had no legal standing.It did not rule on the firings themselves, which affected probationary workers in the Pentagon, the treasury, and the departments of energy, agriculture, interior and veterans affairs.“The district court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case,” the unsigned ruling read. “But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing. This order does not address the claims of the other plaintiffs, which did not form the basis of the district court’s preliminary injunction.”Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.The victory, though limited, is likely to embolden the Trump administration in the belief that the spate of legal reverses it has faced since taking office can be eventually overturned in the supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, due largely to three rightwing judges Trump nominated to the bench during his first presidency.The extent of Tuesday’s victory was qualified by the fact that it does not affect a separate order by a judge in Maryland applying to the same agencies plus several others. Judge James Bredar of the Maryland federal district court ordered the administration to reinstate workers in response to a case brought by 19 states and the government of Washington DC.In the California ruling, the court heard how staff were informed by a templated email from the office of personnel management that they were losing their jobs for performance-related reasons. “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the email said.While accepting that workforce reductions were acceptable if carried out “correctly under the law”, Alsup said workers had been fired for bogus reasons.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee, and say it was based on performance, when they know good and well, that’s a lie,” he said.In filings to the supreme court, the acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, argued that Alsup had exceeded his powers.“The court’s extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers, arrogating to a single district court the executive branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines,” she wrote. “That is no way to run a government. This court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought.” More

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      US supreme court allows Trump administration to freeze teacher-training grants

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      The US supreme court is letting the Trump administration temporarily freeze $65m in teacher-training grants that would promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in a 5-4 decision.The decision came down on Friday afternoon, with five of the court’s conservatives – Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh – in the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented.In the unsigned opinion, the court said that the states made it clear “that they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running”, but the Trump administration had a strong case that it would not be able to reclaim any of the funds spent while the lower court’s order remained in place.The cuts to more than 100 programs had been temporarily blocked by a federal judge in Boston, who found that they were already affecting training programs aimed at addressing a nationwide teacher shortage. The federal appeals court in Boston turned away an appeal from the administration to allow them to resume.The emergency appeal is among several the high court is considering in which the justice department argues that lower-court judges have improperly obstructed Donald Trump’s agenda.Friday’s order was the first time in three attempts that the nation’s highest court gave the administration what it wanted on an emergency basis.US district judge Myong Joun issued a temporary restraining order sought by eight Democratic-led states that argued the cuts were probably driven by efforts from Trump’s administration to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.The Republican president also has signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of the education department, and his administration has already started overhauling much of its work, including cutting dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful.The two programs at issue – the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development – provide more than $600m in grants for teacher preparation programs, often in subject areas such as math, science and special education, the states have argued. They said data has shown the programs had led to increased teacher retention rates and ensured that educators remain in the profession beyond five years.Despite Joun’s finding that the programs already were being affected, the high court’s conservative majority wrote that the states can keep the programs running with their own money for now. By contrast, the majority said in an unsigned opinion, the federal government probably wouldn’t be able to recover the cash if it ultimately wins the lawsuit.
      Kagan wrote in dissent that there was no reason for the court’s emergency intervention.“Nowhere in its papers does the Government defend the legality of canceling the education grants at issue here,” Kagan wrote.In a separate opinion, Brown Jackson wrote: “It is beyond puzzling that a majority of Justices conceive of the government’s application as an emergency.”
      The administration halted the programs without notice in February. Joun, an appointee of Democratic president Joe Biden, found that the cancellations probably violated a federal law that requires a clear explanation.The appellate panel that rejected the administration’s request for a stay also was made up of judges appointed by Democrats.California is leading the ongoing lawsuit, joined by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin.Boston public schools have already had to fire several full-time employees due to the loss of grant funding, and the College of New Jersey has also canceled the rest of its teacher-residency program. California State University has ended support for two dozen students in a similar program, and eliminated financial assistance for 50 incoming students. More