A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
This Plays Very Different Now
Way back in early February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to ship migrants — and American citizens and legal residents — to Salvadoran jails.
Rubio’s trip was widely reported at the time, and he publicly hailed the agreement that he reached with Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele as “the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world.”
But somehow between the chaotic early days of the Trump administration when Rubio was on his five-nation Central American tour and the presidential proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act in mid-March, the agreement that Rubio struck with Bukele has become isolated from the main court action over deportation flights, mistaken removals, and Trump’s constitutional clash with the judicial branch.
As TPM’s Josh Kovensky has reported, the preparation for the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act began soon after Inauguration Day and continued under the radar right up until the flights from Texas to El Salvador on March 15. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has chastised the administration for engaging in an end-run around judicial review and has found probable cause that still-unknown officials engaged in criminal contempt of court for not abiding by his order blocking the Alien Enemies Act deportations.
But the plan to use El Salvador prisons as a dumping ground for deported migrants wasn’t secret or under the radar initially at all. Here is a portion of Rubio’s Feb 3. press conference in El Salvador:
Two weeks ago, President Trump’s favorable response to the suggestion from Bukele that he could house convicted U.S. citizens and legal residents in his notorious prisons set off a firestorm. But two months earlier, Rubio had touted that offer publicly as part of announcing his agreement with Bukele. “And, he’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentences in the United States even though they’re U.S. citizens or legal residents,” Rubio said at the time.
The precise terms of the agreement between the Trump administration and El Salvador remains publicly unknown. The AP obtained a memo that seemed to memorialize at least some aspects of the agreement, and the judge in Abrego Garcia’s case noted that memo in one of her opinions. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have asked the Trump administration for that memo in discovery along with copies of any “agreement, arrangement, or understanding between the governments of the United States and El Salvador to confine in El Salvador individuals of any nationality who were removed or deported from the United States.”
The Trump DOJ in a filing today objected in part to that discovery request, citing among other things the state secrets privilege. It is not clear what, if any, documents the Trump administration has provided in response to that request.
In general, the descriptions I’ve seen in court of the extensive planning to invoke the AEA don’t stretch as far back as Rubio’s personal trip to the region the first week of February. It’s a key marker in the ongoing saga which has now reached the Supreme Court. I don’t know how the high court considers the AEA and Abrego Garcia cases without reckoning with the fact that America’s top diplomat struck a deal with El Salvador that included an offer to accept rendered U.S. citizens and legal residents into Salvadoran detention facilities. Such a deal would be in clear violation of U.S. law, but it was part and parcel of the arrangement that set us down the road to the current constitutional clash.
Convicted Felon Declares Due Process Impossible
"We cannot give everyone a trial," says the president of these United States.
— Jose Pagliery (@josepagliery.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 5:54 PM
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A Rush To File In All 94 Federal Judicial Districts
Among the many unfortunate consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to take the Alien Enemies Act case away from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of D.C. was that it ended the nationwide injunction against AEA deportations and has forced the ACLU to contend with filing cases in all 94 federal judicial districts to make sure all detainees under the act are covered.
Quote Of The Day
“I would call it a grinding machine. We are in this machine, and it doesn’t care if you have a visa, a green card, or any particular story. … It just keeps going.”–Russian-born Harvard scientist Kseniia Petrova, who remains detained at ICE’s Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, after being arrested at Boston’s Logan airport in mid-February while trying to re-enter the country
Targeting The Investigators: Ed Martin Edition
Acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin has targeted a former DOJ prosecutor who worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team with one of his notorious “letters of inquiry after request.”
The existence of the April 14 letter to Aaron Zelinsky – who prosecuted Roger Stone, among others, before leaving the Justice Department in January – first emerged in right-wing media, so it hasn’t gotten as much attention as some of Martin’s other missives. But, as Mother Jones has reported, it’s a particularly unhinged letter even for Martin that lifts a paragraph in its entirety from a 2020 article in John Solomon’s right-wing Just The News.
It’s difficult to overstate how far outside the bounds of normal DOJ practice Martin’s missives have been. This one is especially egregious because it targets a former DOJ prosecutor and contains an additional twist: It cc’d the managing partner and chair of the law firm where Zelinsky now works. Ed Martin is going to let your employer know he’s coming after you.
Harvard Sues To Block Trump’s Attacks
Unlike Columbia University, Harvard has come out swinging against the Trump administration’s freeze of its federal funding and related attacks on its independence. The nearly 400-year-old university filed a wide-ranging six-count lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration in federal court in Massachusetts, alleging multiple violations of the First Amendment and other constitutional and statutory provisions. The university isn’t seeking money damages but rather declaratory judgment and injunctive relief to block the Trump administration’s funding freeze and other intrusions on the university.
Trump’s Next Civil Society Target: NGOs
Non-governmental organizations have already been decimated by moves like the dismantling of USAID, but President Trump’s threat to revoke the tax-exempt status of NGOs based on viewpoints he deems unacceptable represents the crossing of a new threshold. A new round of executive orders pegged to today’s Earth Day are reportedly in the works that would target environmental nonprofits.
America, You Are Running Out Of Time
The Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance talks to people who have experienced the descent into authoritarianism:
The chorus of people who have lived through democratic ruin will all tell you the same thing: Do not make the mistake of assuming you still have time. Put another way: You think you can wait and see, and keep democracy intact? Wanna bet? Those who have seen democracy wrecked in their home country are sometimes derided as overly pessimistic—and it’s understandable that they’d have a sense of inevitability about the dangers of autocracy. But that gloomy worldview does not make their warnings any less credible: Unless Trump’s power is checked, and soon, things will get much worse very quickly. When people lose their freedoms, it can take a generation or more to claw them back—and that’s if you’re lucky.
What You Can Do
It’s the question I’ve gotten more than any other since Jan. 20: What can I do?
Protect Democracy has produced a guide of 29 concrete action items for your consideration.
Didn’t See This Coming
Six men have been charged criminally in the February incident in which a woman was dragged from a Republican town hall in Idaho.
Going Great For Hegseth
A sampling of the morning’s headlines after the revelation that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spilled the tea on the Yemen attack in a second group chat on Signal:
- WSJ: Trump Stands by Hegseth After Phone Call About Newly Revealed Signal Chat
- Politico: Hegseth could ‘implode on his own’ even as Trump sticks by him
- WaPo: Pete Hegseth, isolated and defiant, has Trump’s backing for now
- NYT: Under Hegseth, Chaos Prevails at the Pentagon
A Circular Maze From Which There Is No Escape
After federal courts upheld President Trump’s firing of the U.S. special counsel, he installed an acting official in the watchdog role who has now rejected the complaints of some 2,000 probationary workers claiming they were improperly fired, breaking the enforcement mechanism created by Congress. The upshot is that if the President fires the person charged with holding him accountable for improper terminations, then there’s no recourse for improperly fired federal workers in this realm.
Obamacare Under Threat Again
- Strange bedfellows: The Trump administration defended the Affordable Care Act before the Supreme Court yesterday, as TPM’s Kate Riga reports, and a majority of the justices seemed inclined to preserve Obamacare’s coverage mandates.
- A million here, a million there: The invaluable Jonathan Cohn on the GOP’s effort to eliminate Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion:
And it’s not like [Mike] Johnson or his supporters are proposing an alternative way of covering all these people. Some would find their way to other forms of coverage, but the rest would end up uninsured. And while it’s tough to predict these sorts of things accurately, the number of newly uninsured would likely reach well into the millions and could easily exceed 10 million.
‘Seek It Till You Find’
Morning Memo is a little groggy this morning after seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at The Anthem in DC last night. A great show with a heavy dose of their newest album:
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