NEW: Read the resignation letter of three federal prosecutors who'd worked on the Eric Adams case: "Now, the Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington." static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics… [image or embed] — Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) April 22, 2025 at 3:36 PM
The U.S. flag flies above Department of Justice headquarters on Jan. 20, 2024, in Washington. J. David Ake/Getty Images By Cassandra Burke Robertson, Case Western Reserve University In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon tried to fire the Department of Justice prosecutor leading an investigation into the president’s involvement in wiretapping the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. Since then, the DOJ has generally been run as an impartial law enforcement agency, separated from the executive office and partisan politics. Those guardrails are…
Mark Joesph Stern writes: Shortly before 1 a.m. on Saturday, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order halting the Trump administration’s reported efforts to fly Venezuelan migrants to an El Salvador prison before they could challenge their deportation. The court’s late-night intervention is an extraordinary and highly unusual rebuke to the government, one that may well mark a turning point in the majority’s approach to this administration. For months, SCOTUS has given the government every benefit of the doubt, accepting the Justice…
Tom Joscelyn and Ryan Goodman write: As the controversy over the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from Maryland to El Salvador has raged, the Trump administration has sought to focus the public’s attention on Abrego Garcia’s alleged membership in MS-13, a violent international gang. The White House, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) have waged an aggressive information campaign to highlight the allegations. The administration’s strategy is clear: Portray those who criticize the manner in which Abrego Garcia…
Tom Nichols writes: The United States of America is still a free country, and every private citizen has the right to speak to anyone, anywhere in the world, about anything. If the propaganda arm of an avowed enemy of the West calls and invites you to bash your own nation in public, you are free to do so. It might not be the most patriotic or sensible choice, but it’s your privilege. If you also would like to join the…
Donald Moynihan writes: The Internal Revenue Service may be America’s least-loved government agency, but it is one of the most important. Without the taxes the IRS collects, the United States would essentially have no funds for key services and no creditworthiness, and the nation would rapidly grind to a halt. Ensuring that everyone pays their fair share is also a key component of the social contract: If the wealthiest can skip their obligations, that weakens any shared commitment to the…
I went to El Salvador hoping to meet with Kilmar & check on his well-being, and I had the chance to do that last night. Our courts have been clear: this was an ILLEGAL abduction. I’m speaking now about my meeting with Kilmar & our work to bring him home: https://t.co/0tZjVonkUF — Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 18, 2025 Politico reports: Chris Van Hollen has spent nearly a decade as an under-the-radar lawmaker. But the Maryland Democrat, who gave…
The Washington Post reports: Immigrants falsely labeled dead by the Social Security Administration are showing up at field offices with documents proving they are alive, leading staff to reinstate nearly three dozen people over the past week, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. The immigrants who have requested a reversal and been reinstated in Social Security databases include a Haitian asylum seeker and a child, the records show. Some immigrants have shown up with driver’s licenses and work…
The New York Times reports: A federal appeals court in Virginia reaffirmed on Thursday that the White House needed to play a more active role in seeking the release of a Maryland man who was deported last month to a prison in El Salvador, despite a court order expressly forbidding that he be sent there. In a sternly worded ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit expressed exasperation at the Trump administration’s continued…
Norman Ornstein: “Every student of history — of the history of the growth of tyranny — said over and over again: you need immediate resistance. And the strongest resistance from every entity in the society — from the business community, from the education community, the intellectual community, the scientific community, the press community, the elected officials — have to resist. And if you don’t do it right from the start, they will gobble up more territory until it’s too…
The Washington Post reports: Hours before President Donald Trump announced U.S. missile strikes on Syria in response to a chemical attack that killed 90 civilians in April 2017, Ed Martin said on the Russian state television network RT America that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might not be to blame. Instead, Martin told viewers, the situation was “engineered” in Washington “by the people that want war in Syria.” In early 2022, Martin told an interviewer on the same arm of RT’s…
Futurism reports: Tesla has been accused of manipulating the odometers in its cars to avoid repair responsibilities and warranty agreements. As The Street reports, a class-action lawsuit filed in February claims that Tesla has been trying to dodge warranty-related obligations by intentionally overstating the distances its vehicles travel. The plaintiff, a man in California who bought a used 2020 Model Y with 36,772 miles, noticed an “abnormal spike in average daily miles driven” — despite a “consistent driving routine” —…
Roger Parloff reports: In multiple filings, the government has conceded that it wrongfully removed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to a notorious prison for terrorists in El Salvador on March 15. On April 7, accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered—with no recorded dissents—that the government “facilitate” his return. But rather than try to right its wrong, the Trump administration has, for weeks, been resisting bringing him back and downplaying the gravity of its error. Both strategies have hinged on the administration’s dubious…
The New York Times reports: In August 2018, during President Trump’s first term, an Iraqi immigrant named Muneer Subaihani went missing. A refugee who had been living in the United States for nearly 25 years, Mr. Subaihani was among hundreds of Iraqis who had been protected from deportation under a federal court order. His lawyers figured he was still in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he had been placed after he was swept up in an ICE…
Adam Serwer writes: Like most of the men rendered to CECOT, Abrego Garcia has fewer criminal convictions than the current president of the United States. Even the Trump administration acknowledged in federal court that it had deported Abrego Garcia “in error.” This morning, however, Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller claimed on Fox News that the acknowledgment that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported had been made by a “saboteur” in the Department of Justice and that “he was not mistakenly sent to…
Politico reports: Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and a team of defense contractors are pitching the White House on a plan to vastly expand deportations to El Salvador — transporting thousands of immigrants from U.S. holding facilities to a sprawling maximum security prison in Central America. The proposal, exclusively obtained by POLITICO, says it would target “criminal illegal aliens” and would attempt to avoid legal challenges by designating part of the prison — which has drawn accusations of violence and…