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Category: Law

Trump wants the Supreme Court to let him have black sites where migrants have no constitutional rights

Trump wants the Supreme Court to let him have black sites where migrants have no constitutional rights

Mark Joseph Stern writes: The Trump administration inadvertently revealed on Monday that it is attempting to trap Venezuelan migrants in a catch-22 that would effectively block them from challenging their deportation and detention in an El Salvador prison. In a court filing, the government acknowledged that it had deported at least one migrant to El Salvador due to an “administrative error”—but argued that the individual had no right to contest his imprisonment because he is in the custody of a “foreign sovereign.” This…

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The Great Grovel: How Trump is forcing elite institutions to bend to his will

The Great Grovel: How Trump is forcing elite institutions to bend to his will

Politico reports: One after another, a parade of the wealthiest and most elite institutions in American life since last November have found themselves confronted by unprecedented demands from President Donald Trump and his team of retribution-seekers. One after another, these establishment pillars have met these demands with the same response: capitulation and compliance. The details are varied but two themes are consistent. The first is an effort — far more organized and disciplined than any precedent from Trump’s first term…

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Trump’s latest executive order on elections is a sham — and a warning

Trump’s latest executive order on elections is a sham — and a warning

Marc Elias writes: The greatest threat to Donald Trump’s authoritarian dream is not the courts — it is free and fair elections. While the courts can stand in the way of his twisted vision for America, they can never completely halt it. Trump knows this. Trump operates on the assumption that there will be no political check on his power. His plan to subvert democracy depends on the subservience of a Republican-controlled Congress. His worst nightmare is a scenario in…

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Venezuelans sent to El Salvador’s most infamous prison: ‘You’re here because of your tattoos’

Venezuelans sent to El Salvador’s most infamous prison: ‘You’re here because of your tattoos’

Mother Jones reports: On Friday, March 14, Arturo Suárez Trejo called his wife, Nathali Sánchez, from an immigration detention center in Texas. Suárez, a 33-year-old native of Caracas, Venezuela, explained that his deportation flight had been delayed. He told his wife he would be home soon. Suárez did not want to go back to Venezuela. Still, there was at least a silver lining: In December, Sánchez had given birth to their daughter, Nahiara. Suárez would finally have a chance to…

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After spending more than a quarter of his days in office playing golf, Trump considers a third term

After spending more than a quarter of his days in office playing golf, Trump considers a third term

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump said Sunday that “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends in early 2029. “There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News. He also said “it is far too early to think about it.” The 22nd Amendment, added to…

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The disappearing of Rumeysa Ozturk is state-sponsored terrorism

The disappearing of Rumeysa Ozturk is state-sponsored terrorism

Will Bunch writes: You’ve probably seen something like this before — but only in a movie, and only in a film that was seeking to capture the horrors of daily life under Joseph Stalin at the peak of his 1930s purges across the USSR, or maybe a Gestapo thriller set in Nazi Germany. At 5:30 p.m. on a spring day on an urban residential street, a young woman in a bright white coat, hijab, and sneakers, engrossed in her mobile…

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Top Senate Republican challenges Trump’s bid to withhold spending

Top Senate Republican challenges Trump’s bid to withhold spending

The New York Times reports: A top Senate Republican on Thursday accused President Trump of illegally refusing to spend $2.9 billion approved by Congress, teaming with Democrats in an early salvo in the simmering struggle between Congress and the White House over which has the ultimate power over federal spending. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, initiated a letter to the White House, signed by Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the panel’s senior…

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Double standards: DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding reporter to group email

Double standards: DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding reporter to group email

NBC News reports: A federal worker accidentally includes a journalist on a detailed message in advance of a government operation. While that sounds like the case of The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief being added to a group Signal chat by Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed military attack plans in Yemen, it’s not. It’s what happened to a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee who told colleagues she inadvertently sent unclassified details of an…

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Trump administration claims it has power to send anyone to a foreign prison — without hearings or evidence

Trump administration claims it has power to send anyone to a foreign prison — without hearings or evidence

HuffPost reports: The Trump administration is building a case in court for its ability to send people in the United States to an overseas detention camp — and then refuse to bring them home even if they’re innocent. In a new court filing Tuesday night, the administration referred to a group of Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers it moved from the U.S. to an infamous Salvadoran prison — a gay makeup artist and a professional soccer player reportedly among them…

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DOGE staffer, ‘Big Balls’, provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show

DOGE staffer, ‘Big Balls’, provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show

Reuters reports: The best-known member of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters. Edward Coristine is among the most visible members of the DOGE effort that has been given sweeping access to official networks as it attempts to radically downsize the U.S. government. Past reporting had focused on his youth – he is…

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U.S. to revoke legal status of more than a half-million migrants, urges them to self deport

U.S. to revoke legal status of more than a half-million migrants, urges them to self deport

CBS News reports: The Trump administration will be revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of Latin American and Haitian migrants welcomed into the U.S. under a Biden-era sponsorship process, urging them to self-deport or face arrest and removal by deportation agents. The termination of their work permits and deportation protections under an immigration authority known as parole will take effect in late April, 30 days after March 25, according to a notice posted by the federal government. The…

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Trump won’t win the war against the courts

Trump won’t win the war against the courts

Judge J. Michael Luttig writes: Judge Boasberg doesn’t want to assume the role of president; the president wants to assume the role of judge. At a hearing on Friday, in a further development in this showdown between the president and the judiciary, Judge Boasberg expressed skepticism about the administration’s use of a wartime statute to deport immigrants without a hearing to challenge whether they were gang members, as the government has asserted. “The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome…

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Trump administration tries to use post hoc justification for detaining Mahmoud Khalil

Trump administration tries to use post hoc justification for detaining Mahmoud Khalil

The New York Times reports: When Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead pro-Palestinian demonstrations while a Columbia University student, was detained this month, the Trump administration argued he should be deported to help prevent the spread of antisemitism, invoking a rarely used law. Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident who is being detained in Louisiana, quickly responded that the administration was retaliating against their client for his constitutionally protected speech criticizing Israel and promoting Palestinian rights. Last week, the…

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Trump decree aimed at lawyers everywhere strikes a menacing tone

Trump decree aimed at lawyers everywhere strikes a menacing tone

The New York Times reports: President Trump broadened his campaign of retaliation against lawyers he dislikes with a new memorandum that threatens to use government power to punish any law firms that, in his view, unfairly challenge his administration. The memorandum directs the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States” or in matters that come before federal agencies. Mr….

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Legal community shaken by a powerful law firm’s decision to capitulate to Trump’s demands

Legal community shaken by a powerful law firm’s decision to capitulate to Trump’s demands

The New York Times reports: Since President Trump’s first term, Brad S. Karp, the chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, championed himself as a bulwark against what he saw as an unlawful and unpredictable presidency. Mr. Karp, who has a long history of fund-raising for Democrats, sought to unite major law firms in “a call to arms” to fight Mr. Trump in court on issues like his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their…

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Chaos and disruption are central to Trump’s objective

Chaos and disruption are central to Trump’s objective

Stephen I. Vladeck writes: For all of the judicial interventions we’ve seen in the first eight weeks of the new Trump administration, alarmingly little has changed on the ground. Much of the unlawfully frozen federal money is still frozen; many of the unlawfully fired federal workers are still out of work. Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate and green card holder arrested March 8 in New York on exceptionally tenuous legal grounds, remains in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana. The…

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