NEWS

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

With all of the coverage yesterday of the heated arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor, one order of the Court was likely overlooked. It appears that elderly Americans will not be deported as Alien Elderly Americans. At the request of the A.A.R.P., the Court agreed to change the name of A.A.R.P. v. Trump to W.M.M. v. Trump. 

The case is a pending class action lawsuit seeking the protection of alleged Venezuelan gang members facing deportation under (more…)

A Southern California mayor is facing a wave of outrage after doubling down on a proposal to eliminate his city's homeless population by giving them "all the fentanyl they want" and calling for a federal "purge."

Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris suggested giving the homeless fentanyl to fix the unhoused crisis. AP

"What I want to do is give them free fentanyl," said Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris, a Republican who has led the high desert city since (more…)

Authored by Greg Collard and James Rushmore via Racket News,

Following Trump 2.0 is a difficult task. There has been no calm in President Trump’s first three months. He even generated controversy on Easter Sunday (then again, so did Joe Biden last year when he proclaimed it Transgender Day of Visibility).

Illustration by Daniel Medina/Racket News

Besides Trump’s Happy Easter social media post, there was also news Sunday regarding his much-maligned secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.

Call it Signalgate 2.0. The New York Times reports that his wife, brother (a Pentagon employee), and personal lawyer were part of a Signal group chat that Hegseth initiated about the March 15 attack on the Houthis. The sources are “four people with knowledge of the chat.” From the Times:

The Times had an update on Tuesday — this time from “an official and a person familiar with the conversations” — with a report that the attack plans Hegseth texted on Signal “came from U.S. Central Command through a secure, government system designed for sending classified information.”

Trump doesn’t seem to care. He called it a waste of time to address the Signalgate controversy and added:

“He’s doing a great job — ask the Houthis how he’s doing.”

U.S. attacks against the Houthis have killed about 120 people. The latest, last Thursday, killed 74.

As for Hegseth, he pulled out a version of the same playbook he used last month when Signalgate 1.0 broke. He noted the media’s culpability in pushing the Russia hoax, and also blamed recently-fired staffers.

National Security Adviser Michael Waltz formed the first Signal group chat that included The Atlantic’s editor, but Hegseth has also been heavily criticized for texting specific attack plans on the messenger service.

The White House maintains that nothing in that group chat was classified (National Security Director Tulsi Gabbard called the texts “candid and sensitive”) but that did not calm the concerns of people like Sarah Streyder of the military families group Secure Families Initiative. She told Newsweek:

Here’s a look back at many of the highlights — or, depending on your point of view, lowlights — and multitude of controversies in the first three months of Trump 2.0.

Deportations

The most high-profile deportation case has been that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was legally in the U.S. since 2019. However, in the words of a Justice Department attorney, an “administrative error” resulted in him being deported to El Salvador.

Still, the Trump administration is arguing against his return because it claims Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang — which he denies — and says it has no control over what El Salvador does.

The Trump administration has refused to follow court orders to do what it can to return Abrego to the U.S., prompting concerns of a constitutional crisis. The federal judge in the case made clear in an order Tuesday that the administration has also failed to adequately respond to discovery requests from Abrego Garcia’s attorneys. Judge Paula Xinis granted that request to find out what’s been done to try to get him back to the U.S. She writes in her latest order:

Xinis set a deadline for 6 p.m. today for the government to provide all requested material.

You can read Racket’s detailed timeline, which includes court records, on the first month of the case here.

Meanwhile, the Abrego Garcia case has become especially politicized in the last week. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and four members of the House of Representatives have flown to El Salvador in the hopes of facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return, and the Department of Homeland Security posted on X documents (more…)