U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of Washington, D.C., ruled that the EPA’s sudden mid-February asset freeze and March 11 termination of legally awarded grants came without a legally required explanation to three coalitions of grant recipients. The groups said the sudden cutoff of funds approved by Congress appeared to be arbitrary, capricious or in violation of federal law and regulations.
Wednesday Reads: Judges Push Back
Posted: March 19, 2025 Filed under: Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, SCOTUS | Tags: Alien Enemies Act, Chief Justice John Roberts, Judge Ana Reyes, Judge James Boasberg, Judge Jesse Furman, Judge Julie Rubin, Judge Maryanne Trump Berry, Judge Tanya Chutkan, Judge Theodore Chuang, Mahmoud Khlil 5 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
The Supreme Court at night
Yesterday, the courts pushed back on Trump and Musk. I’m not convinced that it will stop them, but we’ll find out soon enough. Here’s a brief summary of what happened from David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo: The Day The Federal Courts Stood Tall.
The showdown between President Trump and the federal judiciary came to a head Tuesday in a more dramatic and direct way that Morning Memo had anticipated.
With Trump dangerously but also absurdly calling for the impeachment of the federal judge who ruled against him in the Alien Enemies Act case, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts stirred from his torpor long enough to issue a rare rebuke of the president, though not by name (as Trump himself pointed out). Roberts’ decision to come to the defense of district judges who have been on the front lines of this constitutional battle keeps them from being marooned on an island while their decisions wind their way up through the lengthy appeals process.
“The Chief Justice’s statement now renders the Trump confrontation one with the entire federal judiciary, and not just the lower federal courts,” Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith observed.
What followed over the course of the day was a series of significant court rulings against the Trump administration. While the compressed timing of the rulings was mostly coincidental, the thrust of the decisions all pointed in the same direction: Two months into his second term, President Trump has wildly exceeded his constitutional authority on numerous fronts.
I wish I could say that the combination of the chief justice’s rebuke and the multiple legal setbacks suggests that the federal judiciary is girding for a fight over the rule of law and its own constitutional powers. I hope that’s the case. I want that to be the case. But we need to see appeals courts and the high court itself weighing in on the substance of these cases in the weeks and months to come before we can assess whether the judicial branch will hold the line. There’s no doubt that Trump is itching to coopt the judiciary.
It bears repeating that the courts alone can’t save us from autocracy. But losing the courts entirely would be a devastating blow that would make additional areas of American public and private life vulnerable to Trump’s rampage and would add immeasurably to the future workload of rebuilding what Trump has broken.
For one day, though, the judicial branch stood tall.
Some specifics:
The New York Times: Musk’s Role in Dismantling Aid Agency Likely Violated Constitution, Judge Finds.
Efforts by Elon Musk and his team to permanently shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development likely violated the Constitution “in multiple ways” and robbed Congress of its authority to oversee the dissolution of an agency it created, a federal judge found on Tuesday.
The ruling, by Judge Theodore D. Chuang of U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, appeared to be the first time a judge has moved to rein in Mr. Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency directly. It was based on the finding that Mr. Musk has acted as a U.S. officer without having been properly appointed to that role by President Trump.
Judge Theodore Chuang
Judge Chuang wrote that a group of unnamed aid workers who had sued to stop the demolition of U.S.A.I.D. and its programs was likely to succeed in the lawsuit. He agreed with the workers’ contention that Mr. Musk’s rapid assertion of power over executive agencies was likely in violation of the Constitution’s appointments clause.
The judge also ordered that agency operations be partially restored, though that reprieve is likely to be temporary. He ordered Mr. Musk’s team to reinstate email access to all U.S.A.I.D. employees, including those on paid leave. He also ordered the team to submit a plan for employees to reoccupy a federal office from which they were evicted last month, and he barred Mr. Musk’s team from engaging in any further work “related to the shutdown of U.S.A.I.D.”
Given that most of the agency’s work force and contracts were already terminated, it was not immediately clear what effect the judge’s ruling would have. Only a skeleton crew of workers is still employed by the agency.
And while the order barred Mr. Musk from dealing with the agency personally, it suggested that he or others could continue to do so after receiving “the express authorization of a U.S.A.I.D. official with legal authority to take or approve the action.”
A federal judge has indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members, dealing a major defeat to a controversial policy the president resurrected from his first term.
In a scathing ruling, US District Judge Ana Reyes said the administration cannot enforce the ban — which was set to take effect later this month.
Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote that the ban “is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext. Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact.”
Judge Ana Reyes
“Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed – some risking their lives – to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,” she wrote.
The judge said she was pausing her preliminary injunction until Friday morning to give the administration time to appeal it to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
The ruling came in a case brought by transgender active-duty service members and others hoping to enlist in the military who would be barred from service under the ban. Reyes said they had shown that they would likely succeed on their claim that the ban violated rights afforded to them by the Constitution.
Days after taking office, Trump signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to implement its own policies that say transgender service members are incompatible with military service. The government had argued that continuing to permit trans individuals to serve in the US would negatively affect, among other things, the military’s lethality, readiness and cohesion.
The Washington Post: Judge halts Trump EPA bid to kill $14 billion Biden climate grant fund.
A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily barred President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency from clawing back at least $14 billion in grants issued by the Biden administration for climate and clean-energy projects, saying the EPA had not put forward “credible evidence” of fraud or abuse.
Judge Tanya Chutkan
Climate United Fund, Coalition for Green Capital and Power Forward Communities, which received $7 billion, $5 billion and $2 billion, respectively, sued over the funding freeze. They are among eight recipients awarded more than$20 billion under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program established in President Joe Biden’s signature 2022 climate law more commonly known as the “green bank.”
In a 23-page opinion, Chutkan said the EPA’s actions raised “serious due process concerns” and issued a temporary restraining order barring the grant cutoffs for now. Chutkan did not release funds to the groups but ordered that the money be held as it was in their accounts at Citibank and not clawed back or reused for any other purpose by the EPA while the case moves ahead.
While the agency voiced concerns regarding “program integrity,” “programmatic fraud, waste, and abuse” and “the absence of adequate oversight,” Chutkan wrote, “vague and unsubstantiated assertions of fraud are insufficient.”
Chutkan said she was neither forcing the EPA to “undo” its termination nor making the funds unrecoverable, but ensuring that the government abides by grant laws and regulations, “which serves the public interest.”
The New York Times: Judge Orders Education Dept. to Restore Some Grants to Schools.
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Education Department to restore some federal grants that were terminated as part of the Trump administration’s purge of diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Judge Julie R. Rubin of the Federal District Court for the District of Maryland said in an opinion that the department had acted arbitrarily and illegally when it slashed $600 million in grants that helped place teachers in underserved schools. The judge also ordered the administration to cease future cuts to those grants.
Judge Julie R. Rubin
The grants fund programs that train and certify teachers to work in struggling districts that otherwise have trouble attracting talent. The programs cited goals that included training a diverse educational work force, and provided training in special education, among other areas.
The department, led by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, argued that the grants trained teachers in “social justice activism” and other “divisive ideologies” and should be eliminated.
A coalition of educator organizations sued to stop the Education Department from terminating the grants. The coalition included groups, such as the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and the National Center for Teacher Residencies, whose members depend on the grants at issue.
The judge found that the loss of the federal dollars would harm students and schools with the fewest resources.
“The harms plaintiffs identify also implicate grave effect on the public: fewer teachers for students in high-need neighborhoods, early childhood education and special education programs,” she wrote. “Moreover, even to the extent defendants assert such an interest in ending D.E.I.-based programs, they have sought to effect change by means the court finds likely violate the law.”
One more from The Guardian today: Judge denies government’s attempt to dismiss Mahmoud Khalil’s challenge to his deportation.
A federal judge has turned down a request from the Trump administration to dismiss Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s challenge to his deportation, and ruled his case should be heard in New Jersey rather than Louisiana, where he is now detained.
Judge Jesse Furman
In his decision, judge Jesse M Furman said that since Khalil’s attorney filed the challenge to his arrest while he was in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention in New Jersey, the case must be heard there. Government lawyers had asked that his petition be considered in Louisiana, where Khalil had been flown to after being arrested by Ice in New York City and then briefly held in New Jersey.
“Given that the District of New Jersey is the one and only district in which Khalil could have filed his Petition when he did, the statutes that govern transfer of civil cases from one federal district court to another dictate that the case be sent there, not to the Western District of Louisiana,” Furman wrote.
He added that “the Court’s March 10, 2025 Order barring the Government from removing him (to which the Government has never raised an objection and which the Government has not asked the Court to lift in the event of transfer) shall similarly remain in effect unless and until the transferee court orders otherwise.”
On the “Alien Enemies” case before Judge James Boesberg, NBC News reports: Trump administration pushes back on judge’s request for answers about deportation flights.
The Justice Department is pushing back against a federal judge’s request for more information about the deportation flights that took off over the weekend after President Donald Trump invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to submit answers to his questions about the timing of the deportation flights and custody handover of deportees, giving the government until noon Wednesday to respond.
Judge James Boasberg
The government submitted a filing Wednesday morning asking for a pause of Boasberg’s order to answer his questions.
“Continuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts and wholly within a sphere of core functions of the Executive Branch is both purposeless and frustrating to the consideration of the actual legal issues at stake in this case,” the DOJ wrote in the filing.
The judge had initially ordered the government to answer his questions surrounding the flights by noon Tuesday. The Justice Department declined to answer some of his questions, saying, “If, however, the Court nevertheless orders the Government to provide additional details, the Court should do so through an in camera and ex parte declaration, in order to protect sensitive information bearing on foreign relations.”
Boasberg agreed and directed DOJ attorneys to submit under seal the answers to his questions about the deportations that were carried out under the terms of a rarely used wartime act by noon Wednesday.
In its response Wednesday, the government blasted the judge for accepting its proposal and suggested he not take any action until an appeals court rules on its request for a stay.
“The Court has now spent more time trying to ferret out information about the Government’s flight schedules and relations with foreign countries than it did in investigating the facts before certifying the class action in this case. That observation reflects how upside-down this case has become, as digressive micromanagement has outweighed consideration of the case’s legal issues,” the DOJ filing said. “The distraction of the specific facts surrounding the movements of an airplane has derailed this case long enough and should end until the Circuit Court has had a chance to weigh in,” it added.
These Trump people are truly evil.
An interesting sidebar to the “Alien Enemies” law dispute from Forbes: Trump’s Sister Declared The Immigration Law He Used Unconstitutional.
In a historical twist, Donald Trump’s sister was the federal judge who ruled unconstitutional the immigration law the Trump administration is using to deport a pro-Palestinian protester. In 1996, U.S. District Judge Maryanne Trump Barry wrote an opinion that declared unconstitutional the part of U.S. immigration law that Donald Trump has promised to continue employing to deport protesters. The current case has captured headlines and will test the Trump administration’s immigration authority….
On March 8, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and pro-Palestinian protester who graduated in December from Columbia University. Controversy over the arrest surrounded the Trump administration using a provision in immigration law that allows for deportation if the Secretary of State believes an alien’s presence or activities “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
In 1995, Secretary of State Warren Christopher used the same authority when attempting to deport Ruiz Massieu to Mexico. As presented by the court documents, the circumstances in that case were quite different from the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil.
In September 1994, Ruiz Massieu’s brother, a prominent member of PRI, Mexico’s ruling party, was assassinated. As Deputy Attorney General, Ruiz Massieu investigated and identified a PRI official, Manuel Munoz Rocha, as the lead conspirator in his brother’s killing. Rocha was protected, first by official immunity and later by disappearing before an interview could be conducted. In late November 1994, Massieu resigned in a public speech and later published a book criticizing the PRI.
After Mexican officials sought his arrest, he entered the United States legally as a visitor (he owned property in Texas) and flew to Spain with a stopover at Newark Airport. In Newark, he was arrested for declaring only $18,000 of the $44,322 in cash with him. While the declaration infraction was later dropped, the Mexican government charged him with crimes “against the administration of justice” and sought his extradition.
“It was then, however, that this case took a turn toward the truly Kafkaesque,” writes U.S. District Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, Donald Trump’s sister. She notes that the Immigration and Naturalization Service took Massieu into custody. “He was ordered to show cause as to why he should not be deported because, the Secretary of State has made a determination that . . . there is reasonable ground to believe your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” (Emphasis added.) In 1996, the provision was Section 241(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act but it was later redesignated Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) due to other changes in the INA. The language in both designations is identical.
More at the Forbes link.
More News links
CNN: Trump says he had ‘very good’ call with Zelensky after speaking to Putin yesterday.
AP: Zelenskyy says Putin’s vow not to hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is ‘at odds with reality.’
Steven Rosenberg at BBC News: Rosenberg: Trump-Putin call seen as victory in Russia.
Jonathan Lemire at The Atlantic: Trump Gets a Taste of Putin’s Tactics. (Gift link)
Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times: Trump Has Gone From Unconstitutional to Anti-Constitutional.
Politico: Hill Republicans already hated the ‘idiotic’ call to impeach judges. Then Trump jumped in.
Jennifer Rubin at The Contrarian: The Constitutional Crisis May be Upon Us.
The New York Times: DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts.
The Washington Post: Trump aides prep new tariffs on imports worth trillions for ‘Liberation Day.
The New York Times: Kennedy’s Alarming Prescription for Bird Flu on Poultry Farms.
The Atlantic: The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: They’re coming for immigrants first. And the Trump administration is signaling that no one else might be safe, either.
Timothy Snyder at “Thinking about…”: The evil at your door. The deportation action as regime change.
Sorry this post isn’t longer. I’m still dealing with a bad cold. I just can’t seem to shake it.
Tuesday Cartoons: Lil X = Damien 2
Posted: March 18, 2025 Filed under: just because 6 Comments
I have to laugh…because that 👆🏼 is sooooo on point!
Some thoughts on this truly epic constitutional crisis we are in…
Here is the actual order from the Judge:
And some actual quotes from the hearing can be found on this thread along with some analysis:
You can read more of the quotes from the hearing here on this thread:
I seriously believe that if any other lawyer and client would have done what was done this weekend, they would have been held in contempt. But as usual the fuck wad gets away with murder. And if you think SCOTUS will save us:
As you read those last two Bluesky post, remember…there are assholes on SCOTUS who would agree with this fascist.
Oh and btw:
Cartoons via Cagle:
In other news:
Need some more comic relief after that…
Let’s end this post with some weird ass shit:
Stay safe…
Mostly Monday Reads: We have a Constitutional Crisis
Posted: March 17, 2025 Filed under: #FARTUS, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, MAGA Assholes, MAGA goes after the Rule of Law, Polycrisis | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, constitutional crisis, Cruel Trumpist Immigration policies, FARTUS, muzzling the press, Trump defies Court Orders, Viktor Orban 5 Comments
” Today, I memorialize Elmo and his new toy.” John Buss, @repeat1988,
@johnbuss.bsky.social
It’s a Grim Day, Sky Dancers!
Last night, after my usual teaching gig, after a few silly games, I decided to doom scroll. I was already following one story and hoping I wasn’t seeing what I was seeing. But, you do have to believe your eyes in this dark age. We no longer have to speculate about Trump defying a Federal Judge’s order. That happened this weekend, and the Secretary of State agreed to it. “Exclusive: How the White House ignored a judge’s order to turn back deportation flights.” This is from Axios. The reporting is from Marc Caputo. I know this is a large quote, but it’s succinct and something we all need to know. There is actually more at the link. You should read it all.
Why it matters: The administration’s decision to defy a federal judge’s order is exceedingly rare and highly controversial.
- “Court order defied. First of many as I’ve been warning and start of true constitutional crisis,” national security attorney Mark S. Zaid, a Trump critic, wrote on X, adding that Trump could ultimately get impeached.
- The White House welcomes that fight. “This is headed to the Supreme Court. And we’re going to win,” a senior White House official told Axios.
- A second administration official said Trump was not defying the judge whose ruling came too late for the planes to change course: “Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders.”
State of play: Trump’s advisers contend U.S. District Judge James Boasberg overstepped his authority by issuing an order that blocked the president from deporting about 250 alleged Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1789.
- The war-time law gives the executive extreme immense power to deport noncitizens without a judicial hearing. But it has been little-used, particularly in peacetime.
- “It’s the showdown that was always going to happen between the two branches of government,” a senior White House official said. “And it seemed that this was pretty clean. You have Venezuelan gang members … These are bad guys, as the president would say.”
How it happened: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller “orchestrated” the process in the West Wing in tandem with Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem. Few outside their teams knew what was happening.
- They didn’t actually set out to defy a court order. “We wanted them on the ground first, before a judge could get the case, but this is how it worked out,” said the official.
The timeline: The president signed the executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act on Friday night, but intentionally did not advertise it. On Saturday morning, word of the order leaked, officials said, prompting a mad scramble to get planes in the air.
- At 2:31 p.m. Saturday, an immigration activist who tracks deportation flights, posted on X that “TWO HIGHLY UNUSUAL ICE flights” were departing from Texas to El Salvador, which had agreed to accept Venezuelan gang members deported from the U.S.
- Hours later, during a court hearing filed by the ACLU., Boasberg ordered a halt to the deportations and said any flights should be turned around mid-air.
- “This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he told the Justice Department, according to the Washington Post.
- At that point, about 6:51 p.m., both flights were off the Yucatan Peninsula, according to flight paths posted on X.
Inside the White House, officials discussed whether to order the planes to turn around. On advice from a team of administration lawyers, the administration pressed ahead.
- “There was a discussion about how far the judge’s ruling can go under the circumstances and over international waters and, on advice of counsel, we proceeded with deporting these thugs,” the senior official said.
- “They were already outside of US airspace. We believe the order is not applicable,” a second senior administration official told Axios.
Yes, but: The Trump administration was already spoiling for a fight over the Alien Enemies Act — one of several fronts on which they believe legal challenges to the president’s authority will only end up strengthening it when the Supreme Court rules in his favor.
Between the lines: Officially, the Trump White House is not denying it ignored the judge’s order, and instead wants to shift the argument to whether it was right to expel alleged members of Tren de Aragua.
- “If the Democrats want to argue in favor of turning a plane full of rapists, murderers, and gangsters back to the United States, that’s a fight we are more than happy to take,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios when asked about the case.
- It’s unclear how many of the roughly 250 Venezuelans were deported under the Alien Enemies Act and how many were kicked out of the U.S. due to other immigration laws.
- It’s also not clear whether all of them were actually gang members.
What they are saying: On Sunday morning, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele posted a video on X hailing the arrival of the Venezuelans in his country. Bukele also mockingly featured an image of a New York Post story about the judge’s order halting the flights.
- “Oopsie … too late,” Bukele wrote on X with a crying-laughing emoji
- U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted the post.
Joyce Vance was on top of the story yesterday morning in her Substack Civil Discourse. This brief begins with the background of the lawsuit filed by the ACLU and Democracy Forward.
The ACLU and Democracy Forward sued the government over its efforts to deport people alleged to be Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members using the Alien Enemies Act. It asked the Judge to enjoin the deportations. The Alien Enemies Act that the government claimed it was operating under is the same law used to put people of Japanese ancestry in camps during World War II. The law, passed in 1798, gives a president, once he issues a public proclamation, wartime authority to arrest and deport citizens of a country engaged in a “declared war” or “invasion or predatory incursion” against the United States.
Federal Judge James Boasberg in the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order to stop deportations under the law while he considered the issues. He ordered planes that were up in the air at the time of his decision to return to the United States. There is some suggestion the government didn’t do that, but there are some technical issues involving what happened and when, like the location and timing of flights, some differences between the Judge’s oral directions in court and the minute order he entered in the record, and when the order became effective. The legal position the government is in isn’t entirely clear yet. It’s *possible* that they didn’t technically violate an order that was in effect.
But, whatever the outcome of the legal argument, the government skipped over the spirit of the ruling and, as lawyers know (see above), you don’t slice that close to violating a court order. You comply with it and then you appeal if you disagree with it. If there’s any doubt, you err on the side of caution.
The government didn’t do that and according to reporting in Axios, there is some indication that they are spoiling for a fight on this issue. Axios also reports, “White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ‘orchestrated’ the process in the West Wing in tandem with Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem. Few outside their teams knew what was happening.” After the plaintiffs learned Saturday afternoon that two ICE flights were flying from Texas to El Salvador, they went to court to ask the Judge for the emergency order. El Salvador, which had agreed to accept Venezuelan gang members deported from the U.S in a for-pay prison situation, is not exactly known as a bastion of human rights. There are good reasons to doubt the legality of the scheme.
This is clearly an impeachable defense. More cases are dealing with illegal deportation and the accompanying violation of rights headed to court, as reported in Politico by Jack Blanchard. Trump believes he’s above the law, and now we’ll see what the US Legal System says about that. That would be everyone but Alito and Thomas, who are clearly on the side of overthrowing the country. “Playbook: The ‘law and order’ presidency.” This is a follow-up on the First Amendment issue of political speech by holders of Green Cards by BB on Saturday.
SEE YOU IN COURT: Donald Trump’s White House is gearing up for the most significant legal showdowns of his second term thus far after dramatically escalating the deportation of foreign nationals this past weekend. In a Massachusetts courtroom this morning, Judge Leo Sorokin will demand answers after Customs and Border officials deported Rasha Alawieh, a 34-year-old Rhode Island-based doctor and reportedly a valid U.S. visa holder, back to Lebanon despite a court order blocking them from doing so. In D.C., an even bigger showdown is brewing after the White House chose to ignore a federal judge’s order that two planeloads of Venezuelan migrants being deported to a brutal El Salvador prison be turned around and flown back to the U.S. The Trump administration vehemently insists it’s not defying the courts — but all that chatter about a “constitutional crisis” is now reaching fever pitch.
First, to Boston … where at a 10 a.m. hearing this morning, Judge Sorokin will quiz government lawyers on the deportation last Friday of Alawieh, a kidney specialist with Brown Medicine. Alawieh flew into Logan Airport on Thursday after visiting family in her native Lebanon. She was detained despite holding a valid H1-B visa, her lawyers say, and on Friday, Judge Sorokin issued a temporary order demanding the courts be given 48 hours’ notice of any deportation attempt. But instead, that night, she was sent back to Lebanon via Paris. The Providence Journal has all the details.
Not happy: Judge Sorokin has ordered the government to explain itself in writing ahead of this morning’s hearing, where he will seek to ascertain both the grounds for Alawieh’s deportation and the reason why his order was not followed. Alawieh’s lawyers say the CBP “willfully” disobeyed the court order and have provided “a detailed and specific timeline in an under-oath affidavit” to support the accusation, Sorokin said, describing these as “serious allegations.”
Right of reply: The CBP issued a statement last night which failed to comment on the specifics of the case, but noted that “arriving aliens bear the burden of establishing admissibility to the United States” and insisted CBP officers “adhere to strict protocols to identify and stop threats.” We should learn a lot more in the next few hours.
Donald Trump just loves to jam up the courts with his law-breaking activities. Tom Mooney reports on the Rhode Island Doctor’s story at the Providence Journal. “Documents shed light on why RI doctor was detained, deported. What we know.” This is this is the second case where Trump’s DOJ willfully ignored a court order.
A federal judge has postponed a hearing to allow U.S. Customs and Border officials to respond to allegations they “willfully” disobeyed his order not to deport a Rhode Island doctor until he could review her case.
Documents filed in federal court ahead of the hearing allege that it was the contents of Dr. Rasha Alawieh’s cellphone that led to her detention, and ultimate deportation, from Logan Airport in Boston.
Federal authorities say in court documents filed in the deportation case of Alawieh, 34, that custom and border officials found “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah leaders on her cell phone.
They also found “various other Hezbollah militants” in the deleted photo folder of her cell phone.
“With the discovery of these photographs and videos CHP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that her true intentions in the United States could not be determined,” the documents allege.
“As such CBP canceled her visa and deemed Dr. Alawieh inadmissible to the United States.”
On Friday U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin, in Massachusetts, issued an order that Alawieh not be deported without giving the court 48 hours notice. That hearing was continued until March 25.
Despite his order, the Brown Medicine kidney doctor and Lebanese citizen departed for Paris Friday evening. Alawieh arrived back in Lebanon Sunday morning, said a friend and colleague
You may read about the story more in-depth at The Guardian. “Brown University professor deported despite judge’s order, defying US court. Rasha Alawieh’s case highlights Donald Trump’s escalating immigration policies and tensions with universities.”
Nonetheless, in clear defiance of Sorokin’s order from Friday, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) put Alawieh on a flight to Paris that presumably was a layover back to Lebanon.
On Sunday, Sorokin said in court documents that CBP had received notice of the court order but “nonetheless thereafter willfully disobeyed the order by sending [Alawieh] out of the United States”. Sorokin ordered the government to respond to the “serious allegations with a legal and factual response” and a description of their version of events by Monday morning, ahead of a scheduled court hearing.
CBP did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. In a comment to Reuters, a CBP spokesperson said that officers “adhere to strict protocols to identify and stop threats” and the burden is on migrants to establish admissibility into the US.
In a statement, a Brown spokesperson said that the university was “seeking to learn more about what has happened, but we need to be careful about sharing information publicly about any individual’s personal circumstances”.
Brown noted that Alawieh had a clinical appointment with the university but was an employee of Brown Medicine, a non-profit that is affiliated with the medical school but is not operated by the university.
On Sunday, after Alawieh’s deportation, Brown sent an email advising international students and faculty members to avoid international travel due to “potential changes in travel restrictions and travel bans”.
Dr George Bayliss, a Brown medical professor who works with Alawieh at the university’s division of kidney disease and hypertension, told the New York Times that the staff “are all outraged”.
“None of us know why this happened,” he said.
Noticing a pattern? I was just on the verge of finishing my Truly Wild Berry and going to sleep when someone sent this FARTUS tweet on Blue Sky. I knew we were no longer in Kansas with this one. The Daily Beast has coverage this morning. “Trump Declares Biden’s J6 Pardons ‘Void’ in Late-Night Truth Social Meltdown. The president claimed that his predecessor’s pardons were void and threatened to investigate lawmakers who blamed him for the deadly Capitol riot.” Janna Branncolini has the lede. I can’t imagine having to read FARTUS TSPs for a living.
President Donald Trump capped off a weekend of golf with a late-night social media rant claiming former President Joe Biden’s pardons for the members of Congress who investigated Trump’s role in the Capitol riot were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER EFFECT.”
“Those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two-year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
In one of Biden’s final acts as president, he preemptively pardoned people whom Trump had identified during the campaign as his “enemies from within,” including members of the House committee that investigated Trump’s role in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building.
During a weekend trip to his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida—which cost taxpayers about $3 million—Trump apparently became fixated on the idea that the pardons might have been signed by an autopen and therefore were not “real.”
Since Harry Truman’s time in office, presidents (including Trump) have used autopens—a machine that replicates the president’s signature—to sign documents, according to Smithsonian magazine. But earlier on Sunday, Trump pinned a meme to his Truth Social account implying the autopen had been the real president during Biden’s term.
“In other words, Joe Biden did not sign [the pardons] but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime,” Trump wrote, without providing any evidence to back up the claim.
In fact, top White House officials debated the pardons for months, both because their scope was unprecedented and because pardons typically carry a tacit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, the AP reported at the time.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden said in a Jan. 20 statement announcing the pardons. “Even when individuals have done nothing wrong—and in fact have done the right thing—and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.”
At the time, House committee leaders Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said they were grateful for the pardons, and that they were being pardoned “not for breaking the law but for upholding it,” according to the AP.
With the release of the J6 adjudicated Felons, who knows what these brain farts might lead to?
So here’s more of today’s Constitutional Shit Storm news. This is from The Atlantic. “Trump’s Attempts to Muzzle the Press Look Familiar. Much of what the U.S. president has done to curb independent media echoes the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán’s playbook.” The author is András Pethő.
When Viktor Orbán gave a speech in 2022 at a Conservative Political Action Conference gathering in Budapest, he shared his secret to amassing power with Donald Trump’s fan base. “We must have our own media,” he told his audience.
As a Hungarian investigative journalist, I have had a firsthand view of how Orbán has built his own media universe while simultaneously placing a stranglehold on the independent press. As I watch from afar what’s happening to the free press in the United States during the first weeks of Trump’s second presidency—the verbal bullying, the legal harassment, the buckling by media owners in the face of threats—it all looks very familiar. The MAGA authorities have learned Orbán’s lessons well.
I saw the roots of Orbán’s media strategy when I first met him for an interview, in 2006. He was in the opposition then but had served as prime minister before and was fighting hard to get back in power. When we met in his office in a hulking century-old building that overlooked the Danube River in Budapest, he was very friendly, even charming. Like Trump, he is the kind of politician who knows how to connect with people when he thinks he has something to gain.
During the interview, his demeanor shifted. I still remember how his face went dark when I pushed on questions that he obviously did not want to answer. It was a tense exchange, but he reverted to his cordial mode when we finished the interview, and I turned off the recorder.
What happened afterwards was less friendly. In Hungary, journalists are expected to send edited interview transcripts to their interviewees. The idea is that if the interviewees think you took something they said out of context, they can ask for changes before publication. But in this case, Orbán’s press team sent back the text with some of his answers entirely deleted and rewritten. When my editors and I told them we wouldn’t accept this, they said they wouldn’t allow the interview to be published.
In the end, we published it without their edits. That was the last time I interviewed Viktor Orbán. And when he returned to power in 2010 after a landslide election victory, he made sure that he would never have to answer uncomfortable questions again.
What follows is a list of laws and actions Orbán took to control the press. It’s long and very interesting. One of the Organizations that FARTUS is after is ProPublica. Here’s their latest on how he’s trying to expand the Constitution to suit himself. “How a Push to Amend the Constitution Could Help Trump Expand Presidential Power.” The analysis is by Pheobe Patrivic from the Wisconsin Watch. Notice how independent journalists are shaking the trees?
A behind-the-scenes legal effort to force Congress to call a convention to amend the Constitution could end up helping President Donald Trump in his push to expand presidential power.
While the convention effort is focused on the national debt, legal experts say it could open the door to other changes, such as limiting who can be a U.S. citizen, allowing the president to overrule Congress’ spending decisions or even making it legal for Trump to run for a third term.
Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica have obtained a draft version of a proposed lawsuit being floated to attorneys general in several states, revealing new details about who’s involved and their efforts to advance legal arguments that liberal and conservative legal scholars alike have criticized, calling them “wild,” “completely illegitimate” and “deeply flawed.”
The endeavor predates Trump’s second term but carries new weight as several members of Trump’s inner circle and House Speaker Mike Johnson have previously expressed support for a convention to limit federal government spending and power.
Article V of the Constitution requires Congress to call a convention to propose and pass amendments if two-thirds of states, or 34, request one. This type of convention has never happened in U.S. history, and a decadeslong effort to advance a so-called balanced budget amendment, which would prohibit the government from running a deficit, has stalled at 28.
Despite that, the lawsuit being circulated claims that Congress must hold a convention now because the states reached the two-thirds threshold in 1979. To get there, these activists count various calls for a convention dating back to the late 1700s. Wisconsin’s petition, for example, was written in 1929 and was an effort to repeal Prohibition. The oldest petition they cite, from New York, predates the Bill of Rights. Some others came on the eve of the Civil War.
“It is absurd, on the face of it, that they could count something that had to do with Prohibition as a call for a constitutional convention in 2025,” said Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin who co-wrote a book critical of convention efforts like this one. “They’re just playing games to try to pretend that the founders of this country wanted you to be able to mix and match resolutions from all different times in American history.”
To avoid the threat of a convention, the legislatures in some states like Colorado and Illinois have passed resolutions withdrawing their petitions. The draft lawsuit says those actions don’t count because “once the Article V bell has been rung, it cannot be unrung.” Nearly half the states the draft counts have rescinded their petitions.
The draft lawsuit is the work of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation, a low-profile nonprofit that has drawn support from balanced budget advocates and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. The group’s chair, David M. Walker, oversaw government accountability as U.S. comptroller general during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. The draft lawsuit is signed by Charles “Chuck” Cooper, a high-powered conservative lawyer in Washington, D.C., who represented Trump’s previous attorney general during the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
All roads eventually lead back to Russia Russia Russia! And, of course, the Propaganda of Fox News. Just to let you know, they’re already doing their thing; here’s the headline and the link. They’re full of nonsense, as usual. “Liberal claim Trump’s causing a constitutional crisis ignores a key reality, Trump opponents who claim this is a constitutional crisis were fine when Biden forgave $400 billion in student loans.” Because violating and ignoring people’s Constitutional rights equals giving fooks a financial break on a Federal Loan program. Right?
Since I’m exhausted today and this will go over 4000 words, I’ll end with this. Judd Legume, an Independent Journalist, writes this at his site Popular Information. I’ve been worried sick about Musk and the Douch boys upending our Social Security Checks, and this one isn’t helping. “EXCLUSIVE: Memo details Trump plan to sabotage the Social Security Administration.” They had already declared one poor man in Seattle dead, and it took him a lot of effort to convince them he wasn’t.
An internal Social Security Administration (SSA) memo, sent on March 13 and obtained by Popular Information, details proposed changes to the claims process that would debilitate the agency, cause significant processing delays, and prevent many Americans from applying for or receiving benefits.
The memo, authored by Acting Deputy SSA Commissioner Doris Diaz, purports to be motivated by a desire to mitigate “fraud risks.”
Elon Musk has pushed several false claims about the nature and scope of Social Security fraud. In a recent interview on Fox Business, Musk suggested that 10% of federal expenditures were related to Social Security fraud. This is false. Social Security fraud does exist, but “improper” Social Security payments amounts to about $9 billion annually — less than 1% of total Social Security benefits paid and 0.1% of the federal budget. Most improper payments are not criminal fraud but the result of beneficiaries or the SSA failing to update records.
The biggest change contemplated by Diaz’s memo is to require “internet identity proofing” for “benefit claims… made over the phone.” When an SSA customer is “unable to utilize the internet ID proofing, customers will be required to visit a field office to provide in-person identity documentation.”
Currently customers can make claims and verify their identity without using the internet or visiting a SSA office. Fraud is extremely rare because there are many safeguards in place. After initiating a call, customers must provide their social security number, date of birth, parents’ names, mother’s maiden name, and date of birth. After the initial teleapplication is completed, the information provided is checked against tax returns, pay stubs, bank statements, and medical information, depending on the nature of the claim. If there are any discrepancies, a customer may need to mail a copy of their birth certificate to the SSA. About 40% of all claims are currently processed over the phone.
Because the SSA serves a large population that is either older or physically disabled, many cannot access the internet. Under the new system, this would force these populations to visit an office to have their claim processed. The Diaz memo estimates it would require 75,000 to 85,000 in-person visitors per week to SSA’s offices to implement the policy.
SSA offices do not currently have the resources to handle an influx of in-person appointments of this size. In 2023, the most recent data available, there were about 119,128 daily visits, on average, to SSA offices. Eight-five thousand more week visits would be a 14% increase. SSA offices no longer accept walk-ins and the wait time for an appointment, even before these changes, averaged over a month.
You may see the Memo along with this analysis at the site.
So, that’s it for me. I don’t celebrate Columbus Day or St Patrick’s Day because they’re both about colonizing and enslaving people. I seriously hope I don’t have to write any more crap about FARTUS wanting us to colonize Panama, Canada, or Greenland. We should dump some of these celebrations for good! Again, I wish the Ides of March would’ve happened when Julius Caesar was in the cradle so we might never have gone down the path to useless empires. These worthless bits of hangover propaganda need to be put to rest.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Sunday Cartoons: Damn You
Posted: March 16, 2025 Filed under: just because 2 Comments
Morning all. I just want to say one about Schumer and the inter Democrats that voted for the funding bill…fuck you!
I guess I am in the minority, I just think the Dems should have stuck together and told the Republicans to sod off.
So, here’s some newsy things:
Cartoons via Cagle:
It looks like one of the chicks is missing:
Update on this chick:
Be safe today. This is an open thread.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: March 15, 2025 Filed under: just because | Tags: Alan Simpson, Columbia University, Donald Trump, government shutdown, House continuing resolution 2025, immigration, Justice Department, Kevin Drum, Ma Yang, Mahmoud Khalil, Rasha Alawieh, travel ban 7 Comments
By Brian Laing
Good Morning!!
After Daknikat’s comprehensive post yesterday, it’s hard to imagine there could be any more news to report on today, but I’ve found a few things.
There were two notable deaths yesterday, pioneering blogger Kevin Drum and former Senator Alan Simpson, half of Simpson-Bowles, who created what came to be known as the “Cat Food Commission.”
The New York Times: Kevin Drum, Influential Early Political Blogger, Dies at 66.
Kevin Drum, who gave up his day job in software marketing to write online about politics, policy and his cats, quickly becoming a key figure in the vanguard of center-left bloggers during the genre’s heyday in the early 2000s, died on March 7. He was 66.
His wife, Marian Drum, announced the death on his website but did not say where he died or cite a cause.
Mr. Drum, who lived in Irvine, Calif., had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and had recently developed pneumonia. He blogged about those personal challenges openly and with the same insight that he brought to issues like health care policy and urban planning.
He spent most of his life in Orange County, Calif., which distinguished him from the majority of early big-name bloggers, many of whom hailed from the Washington-Boston corridor or from academic enclaves.
Mr. Drum began blogging in 2002 and quickly developed a large nationwide following. He helped shape what became known as the liberal blogosphere, populated by a broad amalgam of left-of-center thinkers who emphasized policy debates over political horse races.
His curiosity was broad, and he wrote on a variety of subjects from a variety of perspectives — sometimes casually observational, sometimes rigorously analytical — in a way that set him apart from the assorted camps that defined the blogosphere, including academics, politicos and ideologues.
Four years after that, Mr. Drum moved to Mother Jones, where he wrote not just blog posts but also extensive reported pieces for the magazine.
Most notable was a deep dive in 2013 into the theory that the crime wave of the late 20th century was driven in large part by childhood exposure to lead in gasoline and paint, a key factor in the development of behavioral problems and, in turn, delinquency. As lead was phased out, health outcomes improved and crime rates dropped.
“He was just able to unpack very complicated — particularly economically complicated — stories in an immensely readable way,” said Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of Mother Jones.
The New York Times: Alan K. Simpson, a Folksy Republican Force in the Senate, Dies at 93.
Alan K. Simpson, a plain-spoken former Republican senator from Wyoming who championed immigration reforms and conservative candidates for the Supreme Court while fighting running battles with women’s groups, environmentalists and the press, died on Friday in hospice in Cody, Wyo. He was 93.
He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of a case of frostbite to his left foot that he endured about five years ago and that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.
By Matt Cauley
Folksy, irreverent and sometimes cantankerous, a gaunt, 6-foot-7 beanpole with a ranch hand’s soft drawl, Mr. Simpson was a three-term senator, from 1979 to 1997, whom school children and tourists in the gallery sometimes took for a Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington oddball, especially during his occasional rants against “bug-eyed zealots” and “super-greenies,” as he liked to call environmental lobbyists.
The son of a former Wyoming governor and United States senator, Mr. Simpson had been a hell-raiser as a teenager. He and some friends shot up mailboxes, killed a cow with rifles and set fire to an abandoned federal property. He punched a police officer who arrested him. While no one had been seriously hurt, he faced prison. But he was put on probation for two years and paid restitution….
Mr. Simpson had love-hate relationships with the press. Many journalists liked his earthy humor and easy accessibility. But his language could be coarse and his tone contemptuous when he attacked the news media, sometimes singling out reporters by name. He crossed a line when he accused Peter Arnett of CNN of being an enemy “sympathizer” for his reporting from Iraq during the Persian Gulf war, and wrongly accused him of bias in the Vietnam War because he had married a Vietnamese woman.
His political positions sometimes seemed contradictory, or perhaps personal. He supported abortion rights and right-wing nominees to the United States Supreme Court who might overturn Roe v. Wade. And partly out of a friendship forged when he was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, he called on the nation to apologize to Japanese Americans who were interned as potential security risks during World War II.
Read more at the NYT if you’re interested. Frankly, I thought he was a horrible person, but what do I know?
Daknikat covered the Republicans’ horrific continuing resolution yesterday. Of course it pass with Democratic help.
HuffPost: Here Are The Democrats Who Advanced A GOP Bill To Avoid A Government Shutdown.
In the end, nine senators who caucus with Democrats joined with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in voting to advance legislation to avoid a government shutdown, essentially giving up Democratic leverage over President Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.
Their support meant the bill was able to break the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster, 62-38….
“The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” Schumer told The New York Times earlier on Friday, arguing a shutdown would be far too unpredictable.
Internal party critics have said Schumer gave up a rare moment of leverage far too easily, misplaying his hand after an often-fractious House Republican Caucus passed a party-line spending bill with Trump’s blessing.
Schumer suggested he was willing to face withering criticism from moderate House members to angry progressive activists: “I’ll take some of the bullets.”
These nine senators are likely to share in Schumer’s political suffering, though none of them are an obvious target for an immediate primary challenge.
- Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.): The party’s leading contrarian at the moment, Fetterman has repeatedly said he will never vote for a government shutdown under any circumstances. He’s not up for reelection until 2028.
- Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.): Cortez Masto said her vote was not an “easy decision,” but she was refusing to “hand [Trump and Musk] a shutdown where they would have free reign to cause more chaos and harm.” She’s not up for reelection until 2028.
- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the party’s Senate leadership, is up for reelection in 2026 but is widely expected to retire.
- Sen. Angus King (I-Maine): King’s state is heavily reliant on government funds, and he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page giving Musk and Trump power would be a “significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.” King is not up for reelection until 2030.
- Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii): Schatz is known to have leadership ambitions, and taking this vote may show he’s willing to take a political hit for the rest of the caucus. Hawaii is also heavily reliant on federal employees. “Given the number of federal workers in Hawai‘i, mass furloughs would be deeply painful for people across the state,” he said in a statement. Schatz is up for reelection in 2028.
- Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): The Granite State duo are both moderates, and Shaheen is set to retire rather than run for reelection in 2026. Hassan is up for reelection in 2028. “Allowing the federal government to shut down with this President in charge is too dangerous to risk,” Hassan said in a statement.
- Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.): Peters has already announced his plan to retire in 2026. He said a shutdown under Trump would be “catastrophic”
- Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): A close ally of her fellow New Yorker, Gillibrand is also the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle. She’s not up for reelection until 2030.
I thought Schumer had some good arguments; but when we are facing a takeover by a dictator, it seems to me the Democrats should fight tooth and nail.
The Daily Beast: Dem Civil War Erupts With ‘Screaming’ and Primary Threats Behind Closed Doors.
Schumer’s politically dicey decision—ahead of a midnight Friday shutdown deadline—has infuriated Democrats to the point some are suggesting he step aside as leader. He explained on the Senate floor late Friday afternoon that his decision was “a Hobson’s choice,” conjuring images of a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk.
”I believe that allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he said. “The shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and DOGE the keys to the city, the state and the country. And that is a far worse alternative.”
Vintage Lady with White Cat, by Sharyn Bursic
“Next question,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries answered Friday afternoon when a reporter asked if it was time for new leadership in the Senate. Jeffries said House Democrats are “strongly opposed to the partisan funding bill” that Schumer says he now supports.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi repudiated Schumer’s choice earlier in the day, saying, “I salute Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his courageous rejection of this false choice, and I am proud of my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their overwhelming vote against this bill.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Schumer’s “unthinkable” acquiesce was a “betrayal,” adding she was “texting, calling, sending carrier pigeons” to Senate Democrats to beg them to not follow suit.
Democratic lawmakers are so “infuriated” with Schumer that some have spoken to Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, about running against him in a Senate primary race, according to CNN, which noted even “centrists” are “so mad” at Schumer they are “ready to write checks for AOC for Senate” come 2028 when he is up for re-election.
Daknikat wrote quite a bit about the Democrats’ anger yesterday. They were even angrier, if possible, after the bill passed. Schumer should retire anyway. We have to get rid of these old fossils.
Remember the days when the Bush administration was disappearing people they decided were terrorists? It looks like Trump is going to follow a similar playbook. I just hope it doesn’t involve torture. The Trump gang are coming down hard on Columbia and other elite universities about protests against the Israel war on Gaza. As you know, they have basically disappeared former Columbia student and protest leader Mahmood Kahlil.
ABC News: White House allegedly asked for updates on arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil, his attorney says.
Mahmoud Khalil — the pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week — said he overheard federal agents say that the White House was asking for an update on his detention, his attorneys said.
“He was surrounded by many DHS agents, or people he believed to be DHS agents, and he believes that he saw or heard, during a call, one of them say that the White House wants an update on what’s going on,” Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing Khalil, said at a press conference Friday.
“We have every reason to believe, as we allege in the petition, that many people within the executive branch of the government were involved, including the White House,” Sisay said.
Khalil took part in student protests at Columbia University calling for the institution to divest and cut ties with Israel, and he participated in negotiations with university administration.
“His one and only goal was to get Columbia University to divest from its complicity with Israeli government crimes in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Ramzi Kassem, the director of CLEAR, a group representing Khalil….
The Trump administration has claimed that Khalil distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” without providing evidence.
The First Amendment is dead, apparently.
AP: The Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University hid students sought by the US.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University concealed “illegal aliens” on its campus, one of its top officials said Friday, as the Trump administration intensified its campaign to deport foreigners who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school last year.
Agents with the Department of Homeland Security searched two university residences with a warrant Thursday evening. No one was arrested and it was unclear whom the authorities were searching for, but by Friday afternoon U.S. officials had announced developments related to two people they had pursued in connection with the demonstrations.
A Columbia doctoral student from India whose visa was revoked by the Trump administration fled the U.S. on an airliner. And a Palestinian woman who had been arrested during the protests at the university last April was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Newark, New Jersey, on charges that she overstayed an expired visa.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the Justice Department, said it was all part of the president’s “mission to end antisemitism in this country.”
What a bunch of bullshit.
“Just last night, we worked with the Department of Homeland Security to execute search warrants from an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus,” Blanche said. “That investigation is ongoing, and we are also looking at whether Columbia’s handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.”
Blanche didn’t say what evidence agents had of wrongdoing by the university. It was unclear whether he was accusing the school itself of “terrorism crimes” or saying that people involved in the protests had committed such crimes.
Girl with a Cat, by Zakir Ahmedov
The Boston Globe has a scary immigration story today: R.I. doctor prevented from returning to US after visiting her parents in Lebanon.
A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
This is a creepy story from The Guardian: Pro-Israel group says it has ‘deportation list’ and has sent ‘thousands’ of names to Trump officials.
A far-right group that claimed credit for the arrest of a Palestinian activist and permanent US resident who the Trump administration is seeking to deport claims it has submitted “thousands of names” for similar treatment.
Betar US is one of a number of rightwing, pro-Israel groups that are supporting the administration’s efforts to deport international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests, an effort that escalated this week with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who recently completed his graduate studies at Columbia University.
This week, Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was just “the first of many to come”. Betar US quickly claimed credit on social media for providing Khalil’s name to the government.
Betar, which has been labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, said on Monday that it had “been working on deportations and will continue to do so”, and warned that the effort would extend beyond immigrants. “Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month,” the group’s post on X read. (It is very difficult to revoke US citizenship, though Trump has indicated an intention to try.)
The group has compiled a so-called “deportation list” naming individuals it believes are in the US on visas and have participated in pro-Palestinian protests, claiming these individuals “terrorize America”.
A Betar spokesperson, Daniel Levy, said in a statement to the Guardian that Betar submitted “thousands of names” of students and faculty they believe to be on visas from institutions like Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, Syracuse University and others to representatives of the Trump administration.
By Martin Pierce
Here’s another immigration horror story from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee-area woman deported to Laos though she’s never been there, doesn’t speak the language.
A Hmong American woman who has lived in the Milwaukee area since she was 8 months old was deported last week to Laos, a country she has never visited, and says she is stranded in a rooming house surrounded by military guards.
Ma Yang, 37, a mother of five, said she does not speak the Lao language, has no family or friends in the country and that the military is holding all her documents. She was born in Thailand, the daughter of Hmong refugees after the Vietnam War, and she was a legal permanent U.S. resident until she pleaded guilty to taking part in a marijuana trafficking operation.
“The United States sent me back to die,” she said. “I don’t even know where to go. I don’t even know what to do.”
As President Donald Trump pushes the mass deportation of immigrants, Yang believes she is one of the first Hmong Americans to be deported to Laos in recent years. As of November, the U.S. considered Laos an “uncooperative” country that accepted few, if any, deportees. Zero people were deported to Laos in the last fiscal year, according to federal data.
Once she arrived in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on March 6, she said she was questioned by military authorities then sent to a rooming house, where guards did not allow her to leave or contact anyone for five days. She paced in circles around the compound and ate food the guards gave her.
A few days ago, she was taken to buy a cellphone and withdraw cash. She could finally reach out to her partner of 16 years, Michael Bub of South Milwaukee, a U.S. citizen. The military official in charge of her situation — she does not know his rank or title — then said she could leave if she wanted. But she is scared to venture out.
Trump is apparently planning a new travel ban. The New York Times: Draft List for New Travel Ban Proposes Trump Target 43 Countries.
The Trump administration is considering targeting the citizens of as many as 43 countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States that would be broader than the restrictions imposed during President Trump’s first term, according to officials familiar with the matter.
A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said….
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.
Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.
See the full draft list of countries at the link. I can’t reproduce it here.
This is getting too long, but I need to touch on Trump’s speech at the “justice department” yesterday. The speech was supposed to be about fentanyl.
Mary Sauer, Figure with Black Cat
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump vents fury about his criminal cases in extraordinary speech at DoJ.
Taking over the justice department headquarters for what amounted to a political event, Donald Trump railed against the criminal cases he defeated by virtue of returning to the presidency in an extraordinary victory lap the department has perhaps never before seen.
The event was billed as a policy address for the administration to tout its focus on combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but the majority of the president’s freewheeling remarks focused instead on his personal grievances with the department.
Trump spoke from a specially constructed stage in the great hall of the main justice building, backed with blue velvet curtains that underscored the theatrics and symbolism of Trump cementing his control over the justice department, which had tried and failed to hold him to account.
The choice of venue carried additional resonance about how Trump has fully implemented his agenda at the justice department, doing away with the longstanding tradition of independence from partisan politics and instead turning it into an extension of the White House.
The great hall has historically been used for major law enforcement announcements by the justice department and its senior leaders, and when presidents have delivered speeches at the building, the remarks have been of a national security or non-political stripe.
In Trump’s hourlong speech, he repeatedly strayed from his prepared remarks to assail the criminal cases against him, various lawyers and former prosecutors by name and accused the Biden administration of trying to destroy him, declaring Joe Biden the head of a crime family.
“The case against me was bullshit,” Trump said with fury, in the building where the charges were approved.
But he heaped praise on his defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he elevated to in effect run the justice department as the deputy attorney general and the principal associate deputy attorney general respectively, as well as the department’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle….
Trump offered notable praise for the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed his criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents, over decades of legal precedent. Trump claimed criticism of her made her angry, although he also said he had never spoken to her.
“She was brilliant,” Trump said of Cannon, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.”
Liam Reilly at CNN: Trump baselessly accuses news media of ‘illegal’ behavior and corruption in DOJ speech.
President Donald Trump launched some of his harshest attacks yet on the media on Friday, using a speech at the Department of Justice to baselessly accuse outlets including CNN of illegal and corrupt behavior.
In his Friday speech, Trump praised Florida district court Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed in 2020 and who sided with him in January, blocking the DOJ from sharing a report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with members of Congress.
But Trump claimed news publishers had gone after Cannon because of the January ruling, alleging “they do it all the time with judges” and that they “will write whatever these people say,” without offering proof.
“The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and MSDNC, and the fake news, CNN and ABC, CBS and NBC, they’ll write whatever they say,” Trump said. “And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump.”
“It’s totally illegal what they do,” Trump continued, addressing DOJ employees. “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”
While Trump did not immediately clarify who “they” are, he later claimed that CNN and MSNBC are “political arms of the Democrat Party.”
“In my opinion, they’re really corrupt,” Trump said.
He’s doing everything in the dictator’s playbook, folks.
That’s it for me. What’s on your mind today?
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