Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration moved one large step closer to a constitutional showdown with the judicial branch of government when airplane-loads of Venezuelan detainees deplaned in El Salvador even though a federal judge had ordered that the planes reverse course and return the detainees to the United States. The right-wing president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, bragged that the 238 detainees who had been aboard the aircraft were transferred to a Salvadoran “Terrorism Confinement Center,” where…

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Timothy Snyder writes: Individuals associated with the federal government have, in defiance of a court order and without a trial or any form of due process, deported hundreds of people from the territory of the United States to El Salvador, where they will be held indefinitely in a concentration camp. 1. This violated fundamental rights enumerated in the Constitution. Everyone in the United States has the right to a fair trial with due process of law. People who say things…

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By Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch This story was originally published by ProPublica 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…

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Deporting Mahmoud Khalil would be a free speech nightmare. In fact, it already is. @NoahRFeldman breaks down why pic.twitter.com/jQwd85z3F4 — Bloomberg Opinion (@opinion) March 12, 2025 Noah Feldman writes: The Trump administration came into office claiming to stand for free speech. Yet the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who led pro-Palestinian student protests at Columbia University, has dealt a serious blow to the First Amendment. Going back to 1941, the Supreme Court has held that…

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Axios reports: 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…

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The New York Times reports: A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported from the United States, even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion, according to her lawyer and court papers. Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, a Lebanese citizen who had traveled to Lebanon last month to visit relatives, was detained on Thursday when she returned to the United States, according to a court complaint filed by…

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David Noll writes: One of the most alarming developments in the second Trump administration is agencies’ apparent defiance of court orders barring them from implementing illegal executive orders. As agencies including the State Department have ignored, evaded or slow-walked judicial decrees, courts have issued increasingly stronger warnings that compliance with their orders is not optional, and litigants have urged them to hold the responsible government officials in contempt of court. Yet the prospect of holding executive branch officials in contempt…

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The New York Times reports: President Trump on Friday opened a third attack against a private law firm, restricting the business activities of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison just days after a federal judge ruled such measures appeared to violate the Constitution. The president signed an executive order to suspend security clearances held by people at the firm, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest. The order also seeks to sharply limit Paul,…

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Politico reports: President Donald Trump on Friday walked into the Department of Justice and labeled his courtroom opponents “scum,” judges “corrupt” and the prosecutors who investigated him “deranged.” With the DOJ logo directly behind him, Trump called for his legal tormentors to be sent to prison. “These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” the president said in a rambling speech that lasted more than an hour. “The people who did this to us should go to jail.”…

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Government Executive reports: The Trump administration must reinstate to their jobs federal employees it has fired in the last month at six large departments after a judge on Thursday called the terminations unlawful. The reinstatements are to take immediate effect, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for Northern California said when issuing his preliminary injunction from the bench, and agencies were directed not to make any excuse for delaying the rehirings. Roughly 24,000 federal employees in their probationary…

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  By A.C. Thompson, ProPublica and FRONTLINE, James Bandler, ProPublica, and Lukáš Diko, Investigative Center of Jan Kuciak This story was originally published by ProPublica The teen entered the chat with a friendly greeting. “Hello lads,” he typed. “Sup,” came a reply, along with a graphic that read “KILL JEWS.” Another poster shared a GIF of Adolf Hitler shaking hands with Benito Mussolini. Someone else added a short video of a gay pride flag being set on fire. Eventually, the…

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The New York Times reports: House Republican leaders on Tuesday quietly moved to shield their members from having to vote on whether to end President Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, tucking language into a procedural measure that effectively removed their chamber’s ability to undo the levies. The maneuver was a tacit acknowledgment of how politically toxic the issue had become for their party, and another example of how the all-Republican Congress is ceding its power to the executive…

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The New York Times reports: A judge on Wednesday is expected to scrutinize the constitutional issues at play in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and permanent legal resident who was arrested over the weekend and taken to a Louisiana detention center. The judge, Jesse Furman, has ordered the government not to remove Mr. Khalil from the United States while his case is pending. Mr. Khalil, who has Palestinian heritage, was a leader of demonstrations against…

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Michelle Goldberg writes: On Saturday, immigration agents showed at the apartment building of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of last year’s pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, and told him his student visa had been revoked and that he was being detained. Khalil is married to an American, and his lawyer, speaking to the agents by phone, informed them that he had a green card, but they said that had been revoked as well. He was taken away, and as of this…

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Vox reports: President Donald Trump is going after a pair of major law firms — and attacking the First Amendment in the process. Trump issued an executive order on Thursday that took aim at Perkins Coie, a law firm that represented Hillary Clinton when she ran against Trump in 2016. Notably, Perkins Coie hired a research firm that produced the infamous “Steele dossier,” which alleged the president colluded with Russia to steal the election. Trump’s order aims to strip the…

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