In Historic First, Trump Orders Investigation Of Biden White House
INSIDE: O.C.G. ... James Boasberg ... Ken Paxton
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Another Crossing The Rubicon Moment
In a new executive order, President Trump has unleashed his White House counsel and attorney general to conduct a wide-ranging investigation of his predecessor and the Biden White House staff.
The predicate for the investigation is comical, alleging that “former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.”
But from that launching point, the executive order is quite serious. It calls for two open-ended areas of inquiry that could, if a DOJ investigation follows, keep former Biden staffers tied up in defending themselves for months or years:
(i) whether Biden White House aides conspired to cover up “Biden’s mental and physical health”; and
(ii) “the circumstances surrounding Biden’s supposed execution of numerous executive actions during his final years in office.”
On one level this is all laughable, but it is also an unprecedented targeting of a former president by a subsequent White House with the clear intention of delegitimizing his predecessors official acts – like presidential pardons – to clear the way for declaring them invalid and supplanting them with his own prerogatives.
Trump Administration Returns Improperly Deported Man
In a first, the Trump administration has complied with a court order to return to the United States an improperly deported foreign national.
The gay Guatemalan man, identified in court filings by his initials O.C.G., feared persecution in his home country. The Trump administration abruptly deported him instead to Mexico, where he claimed to have already been raped and targeted for being gay. He ultimately wound up back in Guatemala.
After the Trump administration retracted its initial assertions about O.C.G. in court, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Massachusetts ordered the administration to facilitate his return in a case challenging the legality of third party removals done without notice or hearing. O.C.G. returned aboard a commercial flight and taken into custody, his lawyer said.
The Trump administration’s compliance with Murphy’s order has implications in the handful of other cases where the executive branch is defying, stonewalling, and rejecting court orders to “facilitate” wrongfully deported foreign nationals. Unlike the other deportees, O.C.G. was not in a foreign prison at the time of his return to the U.S.
Boasberg Weighs In On Fate Of AEA Detainees At CECOT
In a significant ruling, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of D.C. granted a preliminary injunction, finding that the Venezuelan nationals removed to the El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act were denied the due process to which they were entitled when they were abruptly flown to the CECOT prison on March 15. Boasberg gave the Trump administration one week to propose a plan for how to “facilitate” giving the detainees a chance to pursue their habeas corpus claims.
Boasberg’s written opinion was complex and somewhat circular; and while it compared their fates to a scene from a Kafka novel, it was not a total victory for the detainees. He ruled that they are not entitled to file habeas claims now because he was not convinced that they are in the “constructive custody” of the United States. But he concluded that their removals without due process violated the Fifth Amendment and that the remedy for that violation is to let them file habeas claims.
It doesn’t appear that the detainees will be freed anytime soon, as Boasberg had previously pondered aloud in court and left the door open in his order for the detainees’ legal challenges to proceed while they remain in custody in El Salvador.
The Trump administration is likely to appeal the preliminary injunction; and this case, which is the primary vehicle for the CECOT AEA detainees, is likely headed ultimately to the Supreme Court.
Trump II Travel Ban: Still Heavily Muslim
President Trump ordered a full travel ban on citizens from 12 countries: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Five of the seven countries from Trump’s original 2017 Muslim ban are on the new list. He imposed new lesser travel restrictions on citizens from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Trump’s Attack On Higher Ed: Ivy League Edition
Harvard: President Trump purported to suspend Harvard University from participating in the student visa program, effectively prohibiting foreign nationals from attending the nation’s most prominent university.
Columbia: The Trump administration claimed Columbia University failed to meet its accreditation standard for allegedly tolerating harassment of Jewish students on campus.
Collusive Lawlessness In Texas
In the course of six hours yesterday, the Trump DOJ and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton colluded with U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor to vitiate a two-decade-old state law that offered undocumented residents discounted in-state college tuition.
In rapid succession, the Trump DOJ filed a suit challenging the law, Paxton filed a joint motion asking the judge to permanently block the law, and the judge issued the order. O’Conner, sits in Wichita Falls, one of the most notorious single-judge divisions, meaning the lawsuit was assured of going to him.
The collusive lawsuit came after the Texas legislature failed to repeal or otherwise amend the in-state tuition law at its recent session. Steve Vladeck has more on the legal hijinks in Texas and what he calls “a stain on the federal courts.”
Big Beautiful Bill: By The Numbers
10.9 million: the number of people it would rob of health insurance coverage
$2.4 trillion: how much it would add to the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years
18,000: the estimated number of preventable deaths among dual Medicare/Medicaid enrollees who would lose their prescription drug subsidy
All The Best People
Meet the 22-year-old Trump’s Team picked to lead the DHS terrorism prevention program.
Hanging Tough
Since President Trump purported to fire her last week, Kim Sajet, the director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, has continued to report to work and carry out her duties, the WaPo reports.
More trump projection! Everything he accuses others of gives him cover for his own misdeeds.
Please continue chronicling the fascism and its cruelty. It may be the only hope.