MAGA Marco Puts On A SCOTUS-Defying Show For Trump

INSIDE: Abrego Garcia ... Mohsen Mahdawi ... RFK Jr.

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 30: U.S. President Donald Trump listens as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump convened the meeting as reports released today say the U.S. economy contracted 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025, the first negative reading in three years, fueled by a massive surge in imports ahead of the administration's expected tariffs. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

The Hollow Man

During his 15 years on the national political stage, Marco Rubio has never come across as a man with a consolidated moral center or core. It takes a lot for that kind of inner emptiness to stand out in Congress, but Rubio always did. Still, his self-reinvention as MAGA Marco is an incarnation that I could not have imagined when he first ran for the Senate in 2010.

While MAGA Marco remains susceptible to deserving mockery, the newest version of himself is unmistakably dark, sinister, and menacing in ways that aren’t so easily dismissed. To show his MAGA bona fides, Rubio has destroyed USAID, revoked international student visas and green cards, negotiated with El Salvador to use its notorious prison for American citizens, and is now openly defying a Supreme Court order, putting him at the forefront a historic constitutional clash between the executive and judicial branches.

The display Rubio put on during yesterday’s interminable reality TV Cabinet meeting was astonishing to watch. He didn’t just put the Trump administration on a more direct collision course with the Supreme Court in the case of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He did so with contempt for the judicial branch, a cavalier disregard of the rule of law, and a glass-jawed swagger that begs for a court to take him down a few pegs:

If there was any doubt that the Trump administration’s reported move to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release was mere window dressing as it faces possible contempt of court proceedings, Rubio’s cocky defiance erased it. (I have a full rundown of the day’s other developments in the Abrego Garcia case here.)

Nothing about the Trump administration’s conduct since it deported Abrego Garcia on March 15 reflects a good faith effort to correct its mistake. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is no fool; he knows what’s up. A feeble inquiry from Rubio about releasing Garcia is a fig leaf for them both, an effort to paper over the weeks of defiance of court orders in hopes enough justices are willing to look the other way and deem it sufficient compliance.

For more …

• NYT: El Salvador Is Said to Have Spurned U.S. Request for Return of Deported Migrant

• The Guardian: Trump officials contacted El Salvador president about Kilmar Ábrego García

• NYT: Behind Trump’s Deal to Deport Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Most Feared Prison

Who Hurt MAGA Marco?

During Wednesday’s performative Cabinet meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that the administration is trying to negotiate deals with additional countries to use their prisons for mass deportations – but he did so with some of the most toxic language he’s used publicly to date: “Not just El Salvador,” Rubio said. “We are working with other countries to say ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries.'”

Rubio-Targeted Mohsen Mahdawi Set Free

In a strongly worded ruling comparing the current moment to the Red Scare, the Palmer Raids, and the McCarthy period, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford of Vermont ordered the immediate release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University targeted for deportation as part of the Trump administration’s broader retaliation against pro-Palestinian international students who are legally studying in the United States.

“The court also considers the extraordinary setting of this case and others like it. legal residents – not charged with crimes or misconduct – are being arrested and threatened with deportation for stating their views on the political issues of the day,” Crawford wrote.

Mahdawi, who will remain free while his deportation case proceeds, was swept up in Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s unilateral revocation of legal status for some international students, who were given no notice before being taken into custody and scheduled for immediate deportation.

Why Louisiana?

Tulane immigration law professors Laila Hlass and Mary Yanik on why Louisiana has become a center of the detention industrial complex:

Louisiana is notorious for a trifecta of compounding barriers to effectuate the rights of immigrants: conservative courts, scarce access to legal support and horrific detention conditions. The resulting black hole, as civil and human rights groups have called it, threatens to erode America’s rule of law well beyond the immigration legal system.

I first covered the emergence of politically connected private prisons in Louisiana in the mid-90s, driven by mass incarceration policies. It’s a savage irony that criminal justice reform in Louisiana over the past decade opened up more prison space for undocumented detainees.

The Corruption: Paramount Edition

As mediation began yesterday between Donald Trump and CBS News-parent Paramount over his bogus lawsuit objecting to how 60 Minutes edited a 2024 campaign interview with Kamala Harris, the WSJ reports company executives have discussed a settlement in the $15 million to $20 million range.

The Destruction: RFK Jr. Edition

• Wired: HHS Orders Lab Studying Deadly Infectious Diseases to Stop Research

• WSJ: RFK Jr. shifts massive $500 million in funding from next-generation Covid-19 vaccines to research for universal vaccines touted by two new acting Trump appointees.

• Stat News: NIH cancels participation in Safe to Sleep campaign that decreased infant deaths

• WaPo: RFK Jr. will require shift in how new vaccines are tested

Good Catch

The indispensable Chris Geidner points out that the Trump DOJ is using increasingly attenuated language in legal filings to avoid validating the existence of transgender people.

The Retribution: BLM Edition

At least four FBI agents who were photographed kneeling with protestors in DC during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests have been reassigned to positions generally considered demotions, the WaPo reports.

Judge Refuses To Release Alexander Smirnov

A federal judge in California rejected the Trump DOJ’s about-face in the case of Alexander Smirnov and refused to release the former FBI informant who pleaded guilty to lying about the Biden family. The judge’s denial came as the Trump DOJ has said it is reevaluating the case, which was pursued by Hunter Biden Special Counsel David Weiss.

The Trump Economy Quickly Tanks

Driven down by the Trump’s tariffs, the U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of 2025 for the first time since Q1 2022.

Quote Of The Day

“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open.’ Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”–President Donald J. Trump, April 30, 2025

‘It’s An Emergency’

Jason Stanley, the Yale philosophy professor and expert on fascism who is relocating his family to Canada because of the deteriorating political situation in the United States, offers a parting warning: “We seem to be facing the destruction of the United States. I don’t see anyone articulating that this is an attack on what it means to be American, on the very idea of America, and it’s an emergency.”

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