Court denies DoJ appeal of judge’s order requiring it to ‘facilitate’ return of Kilmar Ábrego García
A federal appeals court has rejected an effort by the justice department to halt a judge’s investigation into whether the Trump administration violated court orders to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador.
In its order on Thursday, the court said the Trump administration’s request to bar US district judge Paula Xinis from opening her inquiry was “both extraordinary and premature”.
We shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the supreme court’s recent decision,” the order states.
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all,” it continues.
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.
Key events
The Washington DC headquarters for the Department of Housing and Urban Development may soon be up for sale.
More than a month after the Trump Administration announced it would sell “non-core” federal properties, officials announced Thursday that the HUD building had been added to a list for “accelerated disposition” according to a press release from the General Services Administration.
In the announcement, the GSA said that the building faces “$500 million in deferred maintenance and modernization needs and costs the American taxpayer more than $56 million in yearly rent and operations expenditures. In addition, with every member of HUD staff at its headquarters, the Weaver Building is at half of its total occupancy.”
Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing United Healthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, was federally indicted Thursday.
Mangione is also facing state charges in NY in connection with Thompson’s killing. The maximum punishment for the state charges is life in prison.
“The president’s directive was very clear: We are to seek the death penalty when possible,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News Sunday earlier this month. Bondi also said in a press release that she directed federal prosecutors to bring the case in an effort to “carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again”.
The federal grand jury returned a four-count indictment, which also includes two counts of stalking and a firearms count.
Mangione, a 26-year-old who was widely championed online after being arrested for the crime, maintains his innocence in the shooting.
Lauren Gambino
Donald Trump on Thursday extended a government-wide federal hiring freeze that was set to expire this weekend.
According to the memo signed by Trump, “no Federal civilian position that is presently vacant may be filled, and no new position may be created.” Positions in the armed forces or related to immigration enforcement or national security are exempt.
Trump first implemented the freeze via a presidential memo on his first day in office, and was due to expire on Sunday. It now extends until 15 July. The initial order helped set the stage for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to slash federal employees and services.
In total, more than 260,000 employees have been fired, taken early retirement, have been targeted for termination or have accepted buyouts, according to a Reuters count.
Trump considers revoking more tax exemptions
As the president makes moves to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status following the universities rejection of the administration’s demands, Trump is now considering using the strategy to target other nonprofit organizations that don’t align with his priorities.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump said environmental groups and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (Crew) were now being considered, the Associated Press reports.
From AP:
His remarks come as conversations have been swirling among advocacy and civil society groups about Trump’s campaign of retribution turning to them. CREW has been tracking the administration’s actions and sued over its firing of federal workers.
“It’s supposed to be a charitable organization,” Trump said of Crew. “The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump. So we’re looking at that. We’re looking at a lot of things.”
Trump appears to have changed his mind on taking the US through a lengthy trade war. After weeks of strong rhetoric, the president told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday that he thought trade deals could be finished in the “next three or four weeks”.
From the Associated Press:
That timeline would be ambitious, as Trump’s tariffs have sent nations scrambling to Washington. Yet it’s still unclear what he wants, and he still seems committed to imposing tariffs.
Trump has indicated that tariff rates can change, but he said his biggest limitation is that “there’s only so many hours in the day.”
The president’s timeline was about making a deal with China and “everybody.”
Trump signs orders opening protected waters to commercial fishing
Trump targeted protected areas of the Pacific with two orders Thursday, in a move he claims increases competitiveness of the commercial fishing.
In a proclamation, he removed fishing regulations in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, an area known to have “some of the most pristine coral reef ecosystems in the Pacific Ocean,” according to a description from NOAA Fisheries. The incredibly biodiverse area supports a range of marine mammals, seabirds, and “vegetation not found anywhere else in the world,” including many threatened and endangered species.
“President Trump believes that removing unnecessary restrictions on American fishermen will strengthen the U.S. economy, support local communities, and restore fairness to an industry disadvantaged by overregulation and foreign competition,” a fact sheet on the order said.
The other order, which specifically focuses on American seafood competitiveness, directs the Secretary of Commerce to “consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries,” and the National Marine Fisheries Service to expand permit programs. The order also calls for officials to review all marine national monuments to “assess opening them to commercial fishing”.
In their unanimous opinion issued today, a US appeals court warned the Trump administration that battles against the judiciary could undermine public confidence, Reuters reported.
Part of the fourth US circuit court of appeals, the three-judge panel said the executive branch and the courts were “grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both.”
The strongly worded unanimous opinion came as the panel denied Trump’s appeal to stop an order from a federal judge who is seeking more detail on whether the administration took any steps to return Kilmar Ábrego García, a request the court said was “shocking”.
“We yet cling to the hope that it is not naive to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos,” wrote US circuit judge J Harvie Wilkinson, who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan. “This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”
Summary of the day so far
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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly planning to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status in what would be a probably illegal move amid Donald Trump’s concerted attack on the independence of US institutions of higher education. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said late on Wednesday that Harvard would lose its ability to enrol foreign students if it did not meet demands the Trump administration demands to share information on some visa holders.
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A US appeals court denied the Trump administration’s request for a stay of Judge Paula Xinis’ order in the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador. The court described the administration’s request as “shocking”.
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Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, reportedly plans to travel to El Salvador, as Democrats seek to pressure the Trump administration to return Ábrego García. Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen, who traveled to El Salvador this week, said he attempted to drive to the prison where his Maryland constituent is being held, but was stopped by the military at a checkpoint.
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Donald Trump condemned the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for not lowering US interest rates, and expressed a wish for him to be gone from his role. Trump claimed Powell would resign if he asked him to. Powell himself has said that he would not resign if asked to do so by the president.
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Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said Trump had accepted her invitation for an official trip to Rome, as the pair met in Washington in an attempt by Meloni to bridge the gap between the EU and US amid trade tariff tensions.
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The supreme court said it will hear arguments next month over Trump’s bid to broadly enforce his executive order to restrict automatic birthright citizenship. The court will hear arguments in the case set on 15 May.
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Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish PhD student and former Fulbright scholar detained after co-authoring a campus newspaper op-ed about Gaza has been denied bond by an immigration judge.
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Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called on the justice department to investigate whether the arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home qualifies as a federal hate crime.
House oversight committee launch investigation into Harvard University
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, and Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican leadership, have launched an investigation into Harvard University, accusing the university of a “lack of compliance with civil rights laws”.
In a letter on Thursday, Comer and Stefanik directed Harvard to provide documents relating to hiring, admissions and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The congressional inquiry follows Harvard’s refusal to comply with demands from the Trump administration.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said.
Musk’s rocket and satellite company is partnering with the software maker Palantir and the drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of Golden Dome, the sources said, which has drawn significant interest from the technology sector’s burgeoning base of defense startups.
All three companies were founded by entrepreneurs who have been major political supporters of Trump.
Here’s more on the order from a US appeals court denying the justice department’s request to suspend Judge Paula Xinis’s investigation into whether the Trump administration complied with an order to return Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador.
A three-judge panel from the 4th US circuit court of appeals unanimously refused to suspend Xinis’s decision to order sworn testimony by Trump administration officials to determine if they complied with her instruction to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return.
The panel said the administration’s claim that it could not do anything to free Ábrego García and return him to the US “should be shocking”.
It comes after the justice department appealed after Xinis on Tuesday ordered sworn testimony by at least four officials who work for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
The executive and judicial branches of the federal government “come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both,” the judges wrote in their order today. “This is a losing proposition all around.
The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions.
A Massachusetts family is demanding answers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), complaining its agents smashed a car window with a large hammer and detained a man whom they say had applied for asylum.
A lawyer for the family also claims agents were not looking for the man in the car, Juan Francisco Mendez, when they grabbed him on Monday in New Bedford while he was driving to a dental appointment. He is now believed to have been taken into Ice detention.
The lawyer, Ondine Galvez-Sniffin, told the Associated Press in an interview that the agents claimed they were looking for another man with a different name before they dragged Mendez and his wife out of the car.
Court denies DoJ appeal of judge’s order requiring it to ‘facilitate’ return of Kilmar Ábrego García
A federal appeals court has rejected an effort by the justice department to halt a judge’s investigation into whether the Trump administration violated court orders to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador.
In its order on Thursday, the court said the Trump administration’s request to bar US district judge Paula Xinis from opening her inquiry was “both extraordinary and premature”.
We shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the supreme court’s recent decision,” the order states.
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all,” it continues.
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.
Supreme court to hear arguments on Trump plan to end birthright citizenship next month
The supreme court said it will hear arguments next month over Donald Trump’s bid to restrict automatic birthright citizenship.
The justices, in an unsigned order, did not immediately act on a request by Trump’s administration to narrow the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued by federal judges in Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland that halted his 20 January order while the matter is litigated.
Instead, the court deferred any decision on that request until it hears arguments in the case set for 15 May.
Democratic senator says he was denied entry to El Salvador prison holding Ábrego García
Chris Stein
Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen said he attempted to drive to the prison where his Maryland constituent Kilmar Ábrego García is being held, but was stopped by the military at a checkpoint.
Ábrego García was deported to his home country last month due to what the Trump administration has admitted was an “administrative error”. The supreme court has ordered the government to “facilitate” his return to the United States, but Donald Trump has refused to do so.
Van Hollen arrived in El Salvador yesterday intending to meet Ábrego García and report on his well-being to his family. The senator met with vice-president Félix Ulloa, who refused his request to see the deportee in person, or speak to him on the phone.
The senator said he attempted today to drive to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), where Ábrego García is being held.
Van Hollen said in a video filmed on the side of a road:
I understand we’re about three kilometers now from Cecot, and as you can see, they’re letting other cars go by, but they stopped us because they’re under orders not to allow us to proceed to check on the well being of Kilmar Ábrego García.
You can watch it here. Here’s more on Van Hollen’s attempt to visit Ábrego García.
Trump said he had been “fully briefed” on the mass shooting at Florida State University, which has reportedly resulted in multiple casualties.
“It’s a horrible thing. It’s horrible that things like this take place,” he said.
