1. There is no evidence besides the Trump administration and Bukele and online right-wingers saying so that he is a gang member. And pardon me but the "evidence" used so far to transport people to Bukele's gulag is risible and worthy of nothing but heaps of contempt. It is going to take a lot to get me to give credence to Trump, Musk, Bondi, Miller, and their enablers in the lying and propaganda-filled right-wing press.
2. There is a specific legal order that he cannot be sent back to El Salvador.
3. He married an American woman, has three special needs kids, and raises them well on a small amount as far as I can tell.
4. There is such a thing as compassion and mercy in justice.
"The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to
terminate the withholding of removal order. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.24(f) (requiring that the government prove “by a preponderance of evidence” that the alien is no longer entitled to a withholding of removal). Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or “mistakenly” deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?"
Now is not the time for being in a mushy middle, it only aides and abets Trump and his goons.
The Fourth Circuit disagrees: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/17/us/trump-news-updates
A federal appeals court has shot down an effort by the Justice Department to stop Judge Paula Xinis from conducting an investigation into whether the Trump administration violated court orders to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from a prison in El Salvador.
In a strongly worded order, a three-judge panel said the government’s request to bar Judge Xinis from opening her inquiry was “both extraordinary and premature.”
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” one of the judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote. “But in this case, it is not hard at all. 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. 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.”
I agree. Trump's basic MO is one of a third rate mafia boss shaking down for extortion money and his primary fanbase seem to be the kind of people that do not understand Scarface was not an instruction manual
The law firm agreements are exactly what you expect: "One reason we know they’re not legally enforceable agreements is that what Trump is threatening is clearly illegal. Indeed, one can go quite a bit further than this, as TPM Reader AK suggests, and say that if the agreements are agreements then the agreements themselves look like bribery. Trump agrees to forego threatened illegal actions in exchange for $100 million or $125 million of services. That amounts to services of great value in exchange for government inaction and, critically, this part of the agreement is with Trump personally, not the U.S. government. It involves causes Trump supports, and this part of the agreement applies “during the Trump Administration and beyond.” So if you follow the purported logic, a 90-year-old ex-President Trump will still have pro bono work credits to assign in retirement.
But it’s also all just smoke and BS.
Almost every part of the agreements are worded in ways that make the purported commitments basically meaninglessness. So for instance, each agreement has the firm agreeing not to do “illegal DEI hiring.” But that’s easy for them to agree to, as far as they’re concerned, because they don’t think whatever DEI or affirmative action hiring they do is illegal. So whatever “illegal DEI hiring” might be, they don’t do it. End of story. And the same applies to pretty much all the other fairness-related commitments.
Even the pro bono work, which now includes “other free legal services,” is a bit less than it appears. I noted above that this part of the agreement appears to be with Trump himself apart from the presidency and continues past the duration of his administration. But the same language means that the notional commitment to either $100 million or $125 million in pro bono work is over an indefinite and actually unlimited period of time. So by the terms of the agreement, Kirkland & Ellis or Cadwalader can run down that commitment over a century. Or two. Any amount of time is okay. Maybe Trump will still be assigning free legal work when he’s 200. I think Ronny Jackson said he’d probably live that long.
My point here isn’t to say these agreements are fine. It’s that they amount to agreements to lie to each other. And everyone else. Except to the firm’s own staff. They get the real story. Or what the management committee believes is the real story. Or anyone else who says the firm has betrayed their principles. They get told the firm didn’t really agree to anything."
The online right is having their are we the baddies moment: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/opinion/dissident-right-trump.html
Nathan Cofnas, a right-wing philosophy professor and self-described “race realist” fixated on group differences in I.Q., wrote on X, “All over the world, almost everyone with more than half a brain is looking at the disaster of Trump (along with Putin, Yoon Suk Yeol, et al.) and drawing the very reasonable conclusion that right-wing, anti-woke parties are incapable of effective governance.” (Yoon Suk Yeol is South Korea’s recently impeached president.)
Scott Siskind, who blogs under the pseudonym Scott Alexander, has been an influential figure in Silicon Valley’s revolt against social justice ideology, though he’s never been a Trump supporter. Last week, he asked whether “edgy heterodox centrists” like himself paved the way for Trump by opening the door to once-verboten arguments. In an imaginary Socratic dialogue, he wrote, “We wanted a swift, lean government that stopped strangling innovation and infrastructure. Instead we got chain-saw-style firings, total devastation of state capacity in exactly the way most likely to strangle innovation more than ever, and the worst and dumbest people in the world gloating about how they solved the ‘grift’ of sending lifesaving medications to dying babies......
When liberalism was firmly entrenched, its discontents could treat authoritarian ideas as interesting avant-garde provocations. Authoritarianism in power, however, was always going to be crude and stupid.
Trump’s tariffs have pushed some to the breaking point because they reveal the immediate material cost of that stupidity. The decadent cynics of the new right could dismiss Trump’s lies about the 2020 election as mere hyperbole. It’s harder to be sanguine about a collapse in one’s own net worth and economic prospects. “It kind of made the consequences seem real,” Hanania said of the trade war."
Poe's Law is a harsh mistress: https://bsky.app/profile/virginmedianews.bsky.social/post/3lmrlfegsbo24
A crew of six women, including pop star Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos's fiancé Lauren Sanchez, is set to blast off today on an 11-minute Blue Origin flight.
It marks the first all-female space mission in 60 years — hailed as a breakthrough for gender equality in space tourism.
There is no benefit to trying to cozy up to Trump and Co., example one trillion:
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy tried to cozy up to Trump over Trump's hatred of congestion pricing. Now he is being investigated by Trump's Attorney for the District of New Jersey regarding immigration: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/nyregion/trump-justice-department-habba-immigration.html
In uncut optimism, the media is reporting this as a defeat for the Trump admin and that they have to do something to get him back. They were also unanimous on due process. That is not nothing.
Of course Dear Leader's Press Secretary is telling everyone that Habeas Corpus is not Due Process
Agreed. They could just be trying to kick the can down the road to avoid the Constitutional Crisis they know is coming. District Courts and Courts of Appeal have ordered deportees returned before and the Government has complied even if it drags its feet. Even after the Supreme Court potentially handed the Trump admin a win on TRO's regarding the Alien Enemies Act, two district courts, including a Trump appointed Judge, ruled against the admin on Alien Enemies Act related litigation.
Still, it is not a total defeat for the opposition to Trump.
The bleak reading of the decision is that the Supreme Court is getting ready to neuter the judiciary and render Marbury v. Madison irrelevant.
In which Trump and the Plutocrats admit to insider trading and market manipulation on the record: https://x.com/ArtCandee/status/1910074164272386414?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1910074164272386414%7Ctwgr%5E2f3b5dd9db641ec2849ef5f139a7e4e8bbd45f45%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14995520https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D149955t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20252F042Fsupreme-court-holds-that-the-district-court-can-order-the-return-of-kilmar-armando-abrego-garcia-to-a-pointt_e%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20pointt_d%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20pointt_t%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20points_o%3Ddescversion%3D89d0561b868ad63ec2711e992e8dc338
The Supreme Court upholds the order to return deportee sent to El Salvador, now we might get the Justice Roberts made his decision, now let him enforce it moment: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-upholds-order-facilitate-return-deportee-sent-el-salvador-error-2025-04-10/
LeeEsq pointed out a while ago that this was going to be there path to removal and it has been around forever but rarely, if ever used, the standard for proving this is essentially because the Secretary of State says so according to LeeEsq.
There is going to need to be some major law overhauling when this is all done
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
1. There is no evidence besides the Trump administration and Bukele and online right-wingers saying so that he is a gang member. And pardon me but the "evidence" used so far to transport people to Bukele's gulag is risible and worthy of nothing but heaps of contempt. It is going to take a lot to get me to give credence to Trump, Musk, Bondi, Miller, and their enablers in the lying and propaganda-filled right-wing press.
2. There is a specific legal order that he cannot be sent back to El Salvador.
3. He married an American woman, has three special needs kids, and raises them well on a small amount as far as I can tell.
4. There is such a thing as compassion and mercy in justice.
"The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to
terminate the withholding of removal order. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.24(f) (requiring that the government prove “by a preponderance of evidence” that the alien is no longer entitled to a withholding of removal). Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or “mistakenly” deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?"
Now is not the time for being in a mushy middle, it only aides and abets Trump and his goons.
"
He doesn't belong in El Salvador
"
1. Van Hollen managed to meet with Garcia in a hotel. Bukele and/ Trump are frightened.
2. David Brooks used his column to call for an uprising/Aux Armes, Citoyens
"
In response to the 4th Circuit, Pam Bondi promoted Garcia to being an MS13 gang leader. They have unlimited supplies of chutzpah and mendacity.
"
Notice how it only becomes a white wing cause celeb when a white person is allegedly attacked by a non-white person or undocumented immigrant.
"
The Fourth Circuit disagrees: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/17/us/trump-news-updates
A federal appeals court has shot down an effort by the Justice Department to stop Judge Paula Xinis from conducting an investigation into whether the Trump administration violated court orders to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from a prison in El Salvador.
In a strongly worded order, a three-judge panel said the government’s request to bar Judge Xinis from opening her inquiry was “both extraordinary and premature.”
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” one of the judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote. “But in this case, it is not hard at all. 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. 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.”
"
I agree. Trump's basic MO is one of a third rate mafia boss shaking down for extortion money and his primary fanbase seem to be the kind of people that do not understand Scarface was not an instruction manual
"
Oh yes, the notoriously straight-laced New York Post.
"
Bend the knee and find your face covered in sh+t
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/law-firms-deals-trump.html
"
The law firm agreements are exactly what you expect: "One reason we know they’re not legally enforceable agreements is that what Trump is threatening is clearly illegal. Indeed, one can go quite a bit further than this, as TPM Reader AK suggests, and say that if the agreements are agreements then the agreements themselves look like bribery. Trump agrees to forego threatened illegal actions in exchange for $100 million or $125 million of services. That amounts to services of great value in exchange for government inaction and, critically, this part of the agreement is with Trump personally, not the U.S. government. It involves causes Trump supports, and this part of the agreement applies “during the Trump Administration and beyond.” So if you follow the purported logic, a 90-year-old ex-President Trump will still have pro bono work credits to assign in retirement.
But it’s also all just smoke and BS.
Almost every part of the agreements are worded in ways that make the purported commitments basically meaninglessness. So for instance, each agreement has the firm agreeing not to do “illegal DEI hiring.” But that’s easy for them to agree to, as far as they’re concerned, because they don’t think whatever DEI or affirmative action hiring they do is illegal. So whatever “illegal DEI hiring” might be, they don’t do it. End of story. And the same applies to pretty much all the other fairness-related commitments.
Even the pro bono work, which now includes “other free legal services,” is a bit less than it appears. I noted above that this part of the agreement appears to be with Trump himself apart from the presidency and continues past the duration of his administration. But the same language means that the notional commitment to either $100 million or $125 million in pro bono work is over an indefinite and actually unlimited period of time. So by the terms of the agreement, Kirkland & Ellis or Cadwalader can run down that commitment over a century. Or two. Any amount of time is okay. Maybe Trump will still be assigning free legal work when he’s 200. I think Ronny Jackson said he’d probably live that long.
My point here isn’t to say these agreements are fine. It’s that they amount to agreements to lie to each other. And everyone else. Except to the firm’s own staff. They get the real story. Or what the management committee believes is the real story. Or anyone else who says the firm has betrayed their principles. They get told the firm didn’t really agree to anything."
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/whats-really-in-the-white-house-law-firm-agreements
"
Columbia University seems to be developing a spine again: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/nyregion/columbia-trump-president-response.html
"
Trump is "completely underwater" & has broken his own record with the lowest net approval at this point among independents (-22 pts).
His economic net approval with indies at this pt is so low (-29 pts) it has "no historical analogy".
Most indies (66%) oppose the new tariffs-Harry Enten on CNN
"
The online right is having their are we the baddies moment: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/opinion/dissident-right-trump.html
Nathan Cofnas, a right-wing philosophy professor and self-described “race realist” fixated on group differences in I.Q., wrote on X, “All over the world, almost everyone with more than half a brain is looking at the disaster of Trump (along with Putin, Yoon Suk Yeol, et al.) and drawing the very reasonable conclusion that right-wing, anti-woke parties are incapable of effective governance.” (Yoon Suk Yeol is South Korea’s recently impeached president.)
Scott Siskind, who blogs under the pseudonym Scott Alexander, has been an influential figure in Silicon Valley’s revolt against social justice ideology, though he’s never been a Trump supporter. Last week, he asked whether “edgy heterodox centrists” like himself paved the way for Trump by opening the door to once-verboten arguments. In an imaginary Socratic dialogue, he wrote, “We wanted a swift, lean government that stopped strangling innovation and infrastructure. Instead we got chain-saw-style firings, total devastation of state capacity in exactly the way most likely to strangle innovation more than ever, and the worst and dumbest people in the world gloating about how they solved the ‘grift’ of sending lifesaving medications to dying babies......
When liberalism was firmly entrenched, its discontents could treat authoritarian ideas as interesting avant-garde provocations. Authoritarianism in power, however, was always going to be crude and stupid.
Trump’s tariffs have pushed some to the breaking point because they reveal the immediate material cost of that stupidity. The decadent cynics of the new right could dismiss Trump’s lies about the 2020 election as mere hyperbole. It’s harder to be sanguine about a collapse in one’s own net worth and economic prospects. “It kind of made the consequences seem real,” Hanania said of the trade war."
"
Poe's Law is a harsh mistress: https://bsky.app/profile/virginmedianews.bsky.social/post/3lmrlfegsbo24
A crew of six women, including pop star Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos's fiancé Lauren Sanchez, is set to blast off today on an 11-minute Blue Origin flight.
It marks the first all-female space mission in 60 years — hailed as a breakthrough for gender equality in space tourism.
"
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sefgphqp2xqwh2hawaixykwz/post/3lms4dic6mk2l?ref_src=embed&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F2025%252F04%252Fan-elite-institution-finally-understands-the-shot
Harvard fights back
"
The Bukele presser is going about as horribly as one can imagine
"
He is also almost certainly not going to win.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/7/2025”
There is no benefit to trying to cozy up to Trump and Co., example one trillion:
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy tried to cozy up to Trump over Trump's hatred of congestion pricing. Now he is being investigated by Trump's Attorney for the District of New Jersey regarding immigration: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/nyregion/trump-justice-department-habba-immigration.html
"
And he has more available but this was expected.
"
In uncut optimism, the media is reporting this as a defeat for the Trump admin and that they have to do something to get him back. They were also unanimous on due process. That is not nothing.
Of course Dear Leader's Press Secretary is telling everyone that Habeas Corpus is not Due Process
"
Agreed. They could just be trying to kick the can down the road to avoid the Constitutional Crisis they know is coming. District Courts and Courts of Appeal have ordered deportees returned before and the Government has complied even if it drags its feet. Even after the Supreme Court potentially handed the Trump admin a win on TRO's regarding the Alien Enemies Act, two district courts, including a Trump appointed Judge, ruled against the admin on Alien Enemies Act related litigation.
Still, it is not a total defeat for the opposition to Trump.
The bleak reading of the decision is that the Supreme Court is getting ready to neuter the judiciary and render Marbury v. Madison irrelevant.
"
In which Trump and the Plutocrats admit to insider trading and market manipulation on the record: https://x.com/ArtCandee/status/1910074164272386414?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1910074164272386414%7Ctwgr%5E2f3b5dd9db641ec2849ef5f139a7e4e8bbd45f45%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14995520https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D149955t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20252F042Fsupreme-court-holds-that-the-district-court-can-order-the-return-of-kilmar-armando-abrego-garcia-to-a-pointt_e%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20pointt_d%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20pointt_t%3DSupreme20Court20holds20that20the20District20Court20can20order20the20return20of20Kilmar20Armando20Abrego20Garcia2C20to20a20points_o%3Ddescversion%3D89d0561b868ad63ec2711e992e8dc338
"
The Supreme Court upholds the order to return deportee sent to El Salvador, now we might get the Justice Roberts made his decision, now let him enforce it moment: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-upholds-order-facilitate-return-deportee-sent-el-salvador-error-2025-04-10/
"
LeeEsq pointed out a while ago that this was going to be there path to removal and it has been around forever but rarely, if ever used, the standard for proving this is essentially because the Secretary of State says so according to LeeEsq.
There is going to need to be some major law overhauling when this is all done
"
https://deanblundell.substack.com/p/trump-is-now-mandating-his-cabinetloyalist
Trump makes his cabinet wear pins with his face on them
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.