SCOTUS Has No One To Blame But Itself For Alien Enemies Act Mess
INSIDE: Samuel Alito ... Abrego Garcia ... Pete Hegseth
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Wow, What A Weekend
Events have moved so quickly since the last Morning Memo on Friday that I am going to keep today’s installment at a pretty high level of summary, especially since it was a holiday weekend and many of you may only have a vague notion of what transpired.
For those of you like me who kept close tabs despite your other obligations, I’m including links out to deeper analysis and rundowns so that you don’t feel abandoned here.
Let’s get into it.
SCOTUS Blocks Alien Enemies Act Deportations
In an extraordinary order issued in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the Supreme Court intervened to block imminent deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. The order was limited to those detained in the Northern District of Texas, but it was a shot across the bow of the Trump administration about conducting more AEA deportations that don’t give sufficient notice to detainees and attempt to rush them out of the country to a prison in El Salvador.
The order was issued by a 7-2 court majority, with Justice Samuel Alito penning a dissent that was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Supreme Court’s order came after an increasingly frenetic effort by the ACLU to block the AEA deportations Friday. Ultimately a federal judge in Texas and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant relief in the case. In a final act of desperation, the ACLU tried to revive the original AEA case it had filed in DC, but U.S. District Judge James Boasberg demurred, saying that the Supreme Court had already tied his hands in its earlier ruling that case.
Still, Boasberg’s Friday evening hearing by telephone proved important. It put the Justice Department on record that while no flights were expected Friday evening it was reserving the right to resume flights as soon as Saturday. That admission – which Alito in his dissent mischaracterized at best and ignored at worst – confirmed the urgency of the matter and while we can’t know that it drove the Supreme Court to issue such a rare middle of the night order it’s hard to imagine it didn’t play a role.
After the Supreme Court’s late-night intervention, NBC News reported that video showed buses had already been loaded with Venezuelan detainees on Friday and were en route to the airport in Abilene when they were turned around. It’s not clear whether Boasberg’s pointed questioning (even though he declined to rule against the Trump administration) or the pending appeal to the Supreme Court or some other reason is what diverted the buses.
The Supreme Court had largely itself to blame for the flurry of activity and the need to step in after midnight on a holiday weekend. Its earlier decision in the Alien Enemies Act case that Boasberg was presiding over was vague about both the form and timing of the notice to detainees that it required before they could be legally removed. Fair-minded observers expected the Trump administration to seize on those ambiguities and it did.
The Trump administration gave notices in English only that did not explicitly tell detainees how to contest their removals or how much time they had to do so. The administration also seemed to be maneuvering around a district court order blocking AEA deportations in the Southern District of Texas by moving detainees to the Northern District of Texas, a move Boasberg derided as a sign of bad faith.
Expect further guidance from the Supreme Court this week.
Intel Community Undermines Trump’s AEA Premise
WaPo: “The National Intelligence Council, drawing on the acumen of the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies, determined in a secret assessment early this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the United Statesby the prison gang Tren de Aragua, a judgment that contradicts President Donald Trump’s public statements, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Appeals Court Pauses Boasberg’s Contempt Inquiry
A three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that happens to be stacked with two Trump appointees issued an administrative stay of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s inquiry into whether the Trump administration was in criminal contempt of court for defying his order blocking Alien Enemies Act deportations on March 15. The appeals court gave the parties deadlines this week to file briefs in the case.
Pure Defiance
While discovery is scheduled to take place this week in the case of mistakenly deported and wrongfully imprisoned Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the White House tweeted its utter defiance of the courts:
No Insurrection Act Yet?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will not recommend that President Trump invoke the Insurrection Act to control the southern border, CNN reports.
Hegseth Shared Yemen Info In Another Signal Group Chat
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared details of the planned attack in Yemen – including the flight schedules of the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis – in a Signal group chat that included his wife, brother, and personal attorney, the NYT first reported and that other outlets have since also confirmed.
Skeptical Judge Blocks CFPB Layoffs
In a bristling order, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson halted mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while she ascertains whether they violate her restraining order that blocked the dismantling of the agency.
Trump II Clown Show
IRS: The IRS has its third acting commissioner in a week after the Gary Shapley – who made his bones in MAGA world as a “whistleblower” about the Hunter Biden tax investigation –- was canned in a dustup between Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The new acting commissioner is Michael Faulkender, who is the Senate-confirmed deputy Treasury secretary.
State Department: New reporting on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s firing of Peter Marocco, the guy who dismantled USAID, reveals Marocco learned of his termination when he returned to Foggy Bottom from a meeting at the White House and was refused entry to the building because he was no longer an employee there.
FBI: The NYT takes a look at FBI Director Kash Patel’s jet-setting embrace of the limelight that his recent predecessors have mostly shunned.
DOGE Watch
Wired: DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants
WaPo: DOGE begins to freeze health-care payments for extra review
Bloomberg: DOGE eyes D.C.’s National Gallery of Art
Pope Francis Dead At 88
Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, who served as Pope Francis from 2013-2025 and was the first pope from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere, has died at 88, the day after celebrating Easter with the faithful in St. Peter’s Square.
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One of the things I picked up as a litigator and lib is to be untrusting of the Roberts court. Lib-appearing decisions have little landmines — Masterpiece Cakes followed an earlier decision in which one opinion basically said to frame the issue so, on the next try, the proponents could win. (The issue was whether one’s offense with a law on putative religious grounds was a basis to violate the law.)
So here with AARP, I wondered what was behind a sane majority given other recent actions. And I was stumped. I used to believe that Roberts was concerned with appearances, loathing letting people know the game was up, that the Republican majority was cool with party above law. That was his issue with Dobbs for one instance.
But recent actions had me wondering whether Roberts had given up.
But AARP, at the moment, suggests that there’s a majority to at least maintain the idea that due process isn’t as dead as Trump wants it to be.
Of course, getting compliance from Trump & co………
Rest in eternal peace
Pope Francis.