I fret that this part of the order...

"The rest of the District Court’s order remains in effect but requires clarification on remand. The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps."

...will lead to more litigation up and down the appellate ladder before the Government will actually do anything to comply with an order. "Oh noes! The District Court exceeded its authority and has failed to show due deference to the Executive Branch! Please give us an administrative stay!" "Stay granted. Expedited briefing schedule herein, decision in three weeks." "Oh noes! The new order after the second remand is vague and unclear! We don't know how to follow the court's order! Please give us an administrative stay!" "Stay granted, Expedited briefing schedule herein, decision in three weeks." "Oh noes! The new order fails to properly defer to us again! Here's a declaration from Secretary Rubio saying we are intruding on his conduct of foreign affairs but not saying why! We need an administrative stay again!" Etc. etc. etc. while this poor guy, presumed innocent of any crime and whose criminal record is free of any blemish, is getting beat up every day in the Salvadoran gulag.

The whole order can be read here:

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25894464/24a949-order.pdf

We now have a very brief description from Secretary of State Rubio of what purportedly makes Mahmoud Khalil deportable:

I am writing to inform you that upon notification from the Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Investigations (DHS/ICE/HSI) on March 7, 2025, I have determined that [REDACTED] and Mahmoud Khalil (DOB:01-JAN-1995;
POB: Algeria), both U.S. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR), are deportable aliens under INA section 237(a)(4)(C). I understand that ICE now intends to initiate removal charges against them, based on assurances from DHS/ICE/HSI.
(SBU) Under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(i), an alien is deportable from the United States if the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that the alien's presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(ii), for cases in which the basis for this determination is the alien's past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful, the Secretary of State must personally determine that the alien's presence or activities would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.
(SBU) Pursuant to these authorities, I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest. These determinations are based on information provided by the DHS/ICE/HSI regarding the participation and roles of [REDACTED] And Khalil in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States. My determination for [REDACTED] is also based on [REDACTED] citations for unlawful activity during these protests. The public actions and continued presence of [REDACTED] and Khalil in the United States undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States. Consistent with E.O. 14150, America First Policy Directive to the Secretary of State, the foreign policy of the United States champions core American interests and American citizens and condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective.

https://apnews.com/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-university-trump-c60738368171289ae43177660def8d34

You read that right: Khalil's "past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful," "have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest," because they "undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States."

Which I interpret to mean Khalil has been critical of the Netanyahu government in Israel and is expected to be critical of it again in the future. Future-thought-crime. Activity which is concededly lawful is now deportable.

I call upon our free speech absolutists to join me in objecting to this.

I am reminded of some social accounts that pop up from time to time glamorizing subsistence farming. There is nothing glamorous about subsistence farming. Essentially all of human history is an effort to get to do things other than subsistence farming.

So too with the factory job. It might be better than subsistence farming, but not all that much. The glamorizing of this, based I think on fiction and some sort of romantic notion that this kind of work is noble and public-spirited, is sort of missing the entire point: whether it's noble or public-spirited, working that sort of job would SUCK. Hollywood imbues the factory worker with nobility because he SUFFERS to provide for his family.

This is the way. While what I can do in my basement isn't QUITE as good as what the movie theater can do, it's pretty damn close, and as you point out, you can occupy basically the entire field of view.

Thanks for the suggestions, Dark Matter.

1. Less broad tariffs on China could be plausibly defensible; however, I'd still be skeptical personally. Free trade is a home setting for me, left over from my youth as a conservative during the Reagan years. These tariffs are going to hurt us more than they do China, they take place simultaneously with an idiotically destructive trade war with our former USMCA partners, and a softer touch with China would be a better idea anyway given that there were already tariffs in place. (Never mind that Trump negotiated the USMCA and I'm old enough to remember when he touted that it would lead to a new golden era of American prosperity; it was, in fact, effectively a rebranding of 2010's-era NAFTA, and again, free trade is my home setting.)

2. Hamas are bad guys and I shed zero tears for them. Israel started the Gaza war with the moral high ground. Netanyahu's government has since forfeited any claim there and that moral territory is now unoccupied. There are no good guys amongst the combatants in the Gaza war. Nevertheless, an honorable peace with Israeli-advantageous terms has been available to Israel for at least half a year now; Netanyahu prefers to be at war because it helps him bolster his domestic political position which in turn helps him avoid personal legal vulnerability. Since even before taking office, Trump has encouraged re-escalation of the war rather than incentivized peace, and that's what has happened.

3. If you're going to accuse DEI advocates of being religious zealots, then I'm one of them. DEI is a good thing and there should be more of it. White people, male people, cisgendered people, heterosexual people, Christian people, and in non-academic settings conservative people face few if any material professional or academic disadvantages, particularly when compared with people from traditionally disempowered and smaller-share demographic groups. I described what the Trump administration has done with equal opportunity laws as "perverse" in the OP, and that was a calculated choice of wording. I can respect that you hold a different opinion and perhaps think what's going on in that arena is good. But I say what Trump's done is deplorable.

Due process is not a cookie you have to earn through your innocence or your charisma. It is a restraint upon the exercise of government and it is the core reason the United States of America exists. If you don't believe me take a read through the Declaration of Independence and see how many of the grievances against King George III had to do with the procedural administration of justice.

Due process includes the right to have a competent lawyer, of your own choosing if you've the means to choose one. Scaring lawyers out of being willing to accept cases by the free agreement between attorneyand client, deterring lawyers from accepting the cause of unpopular litigants, arguing for legally valid positions that are inconvenient to the government -- if you do that, you're opposing the bedrock of America's tradition of law and order. Don't believe me? Ask John Adams, our second President.

A lawless President, a felon, a man who has his entire life shown no respect for nor understanding of the law whatsoever, is hardly behaving out of character by assaulting the rule of law itself. What is disheartening is how many people are going along with it.

Judge Boasberg has appeared fair to me in the handling of the Alien Enemies Act case. I realize Venezuelan gang members are not particularly popular people and I'm amenable to the idea of deporting very bad hombres.

The ask is that the government do this legally, that the government comply with orders of the court in good faith.

That this case should go before a judge who has now experienced the government offering facile, bad-faith interpretations of the law and his own orders in a transparent attempt to evade compliance with the law? Yeah, I think that's a good thing.

Don't pee on the court's leg and tell the judge that it's raining. That's what FRCP 11 is for.

I sometimes see people saying on social media, "The civil war is already upon us; the shooting and the violence have already started." This is wrong. There is violence and vandalism, and it's a bad thing, and you shouldn't contribute to it. No, that is not "submitting in advance." No, that is not "just letting them get away with it." It is not even "not fighting back." It is not giving up on the idea that we can go about our politics in a peaceful and lawful way.

JFK Assassination Mania was not the start of paranoid thinking in American politics. It was, though the milepost of that particular kind of brain rot entering mainstream discussion and even some official actions. (At least, since its submergence after the failure of the aptly-named Know-Nothing Party.)

I sometimes have the fortitude to stick to an appetizer. But, like Andrew, only rarely. Even then, there's often some sharing from other peoples' entrees. I sometimes have the fortitude to stick to an appetizer and a salad or some soup. But again, only rarely.

I AM acquiring more ability to stop halfway through the entree and say "The rest of this is lunch for tomorrow, leave it be, dude." And I'm pretty good at saying no to dessert. Most of the time.

As for P.F. Chang's: wow is that stuff salty.

Were an EO narrowly tailored to prohibit the playing of "Get Out Of My Dreams, Get Into My Car," specifically, on all Federal properties, I would wholeheartedly endorse it, even if it came from the current guy. I'd urge a successor President to leave the EO in place, and urge Congressional ratification of the EO into statutory law.

NO KINGS
NO SLAVES
NO NAZIS

Part of me wants to say bad calls are part of baseball, and this will slow things down, undoing part of the great benefit to the sport that the pitch clock has brought. Part of me -- most of me -- says the calls should be right, and limiting the number of times it happens will be worth it. As depicted it looks pretty fast.

And I'm quite certain that we'll find the strike zone once again moves around a little bit when held up to examination.

There are political forces to spend. There are political forces to oppose taxes. They’re not actually matched against each other in a way that balances the budget.

The people get what they want. Good and hard.

Oh by all the gods they are STILL not letting that go, are they.

I presume the answer is: if we don't start cutting spending now, our ability to spend on anything will eventually be swallowed up by our need to make minimum interest payments on the debt.

I recall my days as a Young Republican, when I made this argument. That was the early 1990's. My own political preferences have changed since then, but the argument has not. OP is right (elsewhere in the thread) that the key number is interest on the debt as a percentage of GDP. FRED has the numbers:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S

You can correlate the ups and downs on the chart with all sorts of things that may affirm your priors or mine, assign the deltas as a delayed response to X or Y event based on X or Y based on your priors. But if you ask me, the table says to me: deficit spending, above a certain threshold, seems to make the number go up about a year later.

Yes: high interest rates. I hope not, but I foresee another wave of depression in real property values. Hopefully it doesn't ripple out into the financial sector as badly as the last one did.

With sincerity, OP, I would like a bit of insight into something you wrote. "I am philosophically against tax increases as a general principle." Which one of these statements is the closest to what you meant by that:

A) I will never support a tax increase under any circumstances or for any reason, period full stop; or
B) I will only support a tax increase under extraordinary circumstances such that I cannot conceive of them realistically manifesting in the foreseeable future; or
C) Although some circumstances might justify a tax increase in the future, those circumstances are not present now; or
D) Even if someone were to present a strong argument that raising taxes would produce a net benefit to the economy, backed by overwhelming evidence, I would nevertheless reject the proposal because it is simply impossible that such arguments and evidence exist even if I couldn't immediately think of a critique; or
E) My default preferred policy is to not raise taxes, and even if someone were to present a strong, evidence-backed argument for why we would generally benefit by raising them, I would only go along with it if the evidence for the proposal were overwhelming, and even then I would still be pretty grumpy about it.

I'm just looking to understand better what you wrote, because it would help me understand your overall argument for why spending cuts have to happen rather than tax hikes. I do not intend to offer any sort of argument for raising taxes. In fact, as I write, I do not intend to further comment on your response beyond thanking you for making it.

That still would be cutting benefits, reaching its goal by reducing the number of recipients as opposed to by reducing the amount of money being paid.

But you are right, it's something that could be done, if there is the political will to do it.

The objective that Trump and Musk have articulated is one that can be lawfully pursued, and if it's true that the American people are really fed up, then there is the political will out there to propel pursuit of those objective through Congress. If the people really want spending cuts, they'll get them, good and hard.

It's entirely reasonable to ask that these spending cuts be pursued in a lawful way. Which means they be done by Congress. That's not an ask that puts this goal out of reach. Republicans control the White House and both Houses of Congress, and in Congress they enjoy a degree of party unity and direct control by the President that Democrats could only dream of in even their best recent political times.

If spending cuts can't make it through Congress under those political conditions, that gives lie to the postulate that there really is sufficient political will for making spending cuts -- at least, when those cuts are actually articulated rather than referred to in broad sweeping terms. And, if it's true as you suggest that the American people are fed up, this might not turn out to be true!

Whether or not that's true, doing this in the lawful way, the Constitutional way, ought not be controversial to anyone. Putting something like entitlement cuts through the political process of Congress is as small-d democratic an ask as can be made.

About 40% of Americans thought Trump dispensed reasonable medical advice when he said people should put disinfectant into their bloodstreams.

Beyond parody. Not even The Onion would have come up with this.

If there is one fixed star of Donald Trump’s second term, it is revenge on those he believes wronged him.

We shall find that this is a piss-poor ideology upon which to base the formulation of public policy.

I don't know about you, but my social media posts are full of metaphors and memes including the theme of touching hot stoves. Grabbing those stoves with both hands. Pulling off their underwear and then sitting on said hot stoves. Intentionally face-planting on the burners.

It's a change of pace from the FAFO and leopards-eating-faces memes, I guess.

As always, the people who realize that their own economic interests are being sacrificed to their own pain, and that they actually voted for this to happen to them, is quite small. There's a lot of silence where the "Wait, I didn't vote for this!" seems like it ought to be. We got some of it with people who had been promised different kinds of jobs and medical care and found those promises retracted.

Maybe we'll get more of it when red-hat-wearing parents find their special needs kids' IDEA plans disrupted. (Which I hope you all will join me in deploring should that actually happen. That's not a good place for schadenfreude to land.)

I credit it to the power of cognitive dissonance, the extend of the human mind's ability to rationalize the beneficence of one's own actions and statements.

First, when does responsibility for something shift from Biden to Trump? Is there some benchmark event that needs to occur? (Other than "the price of eggs falls below X.") Some objective amount of time? That's a serious question even if I admit that, yes, of course, making a fuss over the price of eggs is not a particularly serious indicator of Trump's performance.

Second, it's a fact that Trump said to voters, “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” and the opposite has happened. Now, of course, you and I, being serious and judicious people, knew that was ridiculous bullshit all along. But I think you'll agree with me that there are a lot of people who are not so sophisticated as you or I, less able to separate the sober promises from the bullshit.

Or, it seems, to realize that Governor Walz was entirely correct to label Trump a "bullshit artist," because experience is proving out that one after another, the promises Trump made were either not serious, beyond his ability to deliver, or (as we are likely to soon discover with just-announced-today tariffs on our two largest trading partners) counterproductive for their intended purposes.

America has chosen poorly and that has been graphically demonstrated daily for the past ten days and I expect will be so for the next 1,541. So hopefully in the future our voters will disregard your advice, and vote Democratic.