A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Buckle Up

A potentially big day ahead in the case of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Following the Supreme Court order last evening directing the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return from an El Salvadoran prison, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland ordered the Trump administration to file a status update by 9:30 a.m. ET today from an official “with personal knowledge” regarding:

1. the current physical location and custodial status of Abrego Garcia;
2. what steps, if any, Defendants have taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s immediate return to the United States; and
3. what additional steps Defendants will take, and when, to facilitate his return.

A short time ago, just before the filing deadline, the Trump DOJ asked for an extension until next Tuesday in a court filing that made little effort to conceal its exasperation with Judge Xinis.

In the meantime, all the parties are due in court at 1 p.m. ET for a status conference that Xinis also called last night. The Trump DOJ asked that to be pushed back until next Wedenday.

As we await Xinis’ response, let’s dive into the Supreme Court order.

The Presumption of Regularity

While the Supreme Court mostly did the right thing in its order last night, it took a helluva long time to get there and still managed to sound like it was pulling teeth to get enough conservative justices on board to form a majority.

The tone of the order was off, leaving it to Justice Sotomayor in her accompanying statement joined by the other two liberal justices to give emotional voice to the outrageousness of the original error in deporting him and in the administration’s non-existent effort to correct its own mistake.

The original deadline for the Trump administration to get moving on the matter was Monday night. The Supreme Court lifted that deadline then took almost three full days to issue its order. Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia has been mistakenly imprisoned in El Salvador since March 15, almost a month now.

The Supreme Court did not spend those three days mustering a full-throated defense of the rule of law or an outraged reprimand of the Trump administration’s slow-rolling of the case. Instead, it issued a strained, tone-deaf order that left open the possibility that some justices might have been content to abandon Abrego Garcia. The order was issued with no noted dissents, but was not labeled unanimous.

The court tossed the Trump administration enough of a bone that Stephen Miller and the Justice Department each managed to trumpet it as a win, a dishonest contention but one the justices brought on themselves.

At base, the Roberts Court continues to treat President Trump and the Justice Department with the traditional levels of deference that have been accorded the chief executive and the government in court. At this point, it requires the embrace of an especially willful blindness to ignore the voluminous examples of that deference being abused for ends that do not serve justice.

For more on the presumption of regularity, some strong on-the-fly analyses by two law professors:

• Alan Z. Rozenshtein: What Happens When Courts Can’t Trust the Executive Branch?
• Steve Vladeck: Abrego Garcia and the Presumption of Regularity

For a less-anguished assessment of the court’s order last night, I’d suggest Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf.

Mahmoud Khalil’s Fate Could Be Decided Today

An immigration judge in Louisiana could rule as soon as today on whether the government has presented sufficient evidence to deport Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. Ahead of the deadline to show its evidence, the Trump administration filed a thin, undated letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that confirms he unilaterally revoked Khalil’s legal status on the basis of Khalil’s political beliefs. The Columbia University graduate remains protected from deportation by a federal court order in New Jersey, where he is challenging his detention and potential deportation on First Amendment grounds.

Trump’s Retribution Scheme Comes Into Sharp Focus

• NYT: Trump Escalates Use of Official Power to Intimidate and Punish His Perceived Foes
• Aaron Blake: Trump crosses the Rubicon on ordering investigations of foes
• Philip Bump: Trump moves to legally enforce 2020 election denialism

Trump Threatens Columbia University With Consent Decree

In a Twilight Zone move, the Trump administration is planning to force Columbia University into a consent decree, which would put the Ivy under the kind of federal court supervision you might be familiar with from cases where public school districts resisted integration or police departments were chronic civil rights violators.

Law Firms Rush To Secure Deals With Trump

Among the major law firms scrambling to strike deals with President Trump to avoid being targeted by his punishing executive orders, according to the WSJ:

• Latham & Watkins
• Simpson Thacher
• Kirkland & Ellis
• A&O Shearman

In typical Trump fashion, he is lording the deals over the heads of the firms who already caved, describing them as paying “me a lot of money in the form of legal fees,” an inaccurate but telling description of what his strong-arming them accomplished.

Quote Of The Day

Adam Unikowsky, a partner at Jenner & Block, on why law firms should fight the Trump executive orders targeting them instead of striking corrupt bargains with the president:

At core, these settlements reflect an attitude of deep cynicism. Cynicism towards the law firm’s own clients—that they would prefer a law firm that is beholden to the government than one that maintains its ability to provide independent, uncompromised advice. And cynicism towards our justice system—that it is so toothless that the law firm would be better off capitulating than suing even if it prevails. We should be optimistic both about the clients we exist to represent and the justice system we are sworn to uphold.

First Purge Then Install The Loyalists

WaPo: “The Justice Department is building a roster of lawyers willing to defend in court the most controversial parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda, firing career attorneys whom leaders view as standing in their way and hiring dozens of political appointees to carry out the president’s agenda.”

Under My Radar …

I wanted to flag a fews things from this week that I had missed:

• A criminal defense lawyer in DC scoffs at acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin and the myriad ways he has made life easer for defense attorneys.
• In a new court filing, the Trump DOJ cryptically said it “intends to review the government’s theory of the case underlying [the] conviction” of Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant who lied about the Biden family’s Ukraine ties and was subsequently prosecuted by Special Counsel David Weiss. It appears to be a potential precursor to dropping the case in which Smirnov pleaded guilty.
• Trump is trying to quietly wrest control of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights by removing Democratic chair Rochelle Garzam, who is fighting the move.
• President Trump issued a memorandum Wednesday that tries to retroactively apply the Supreme Court’s historic Loper Bright decision to repeal existing federal regulations without providing advance notice or going through the traditional public input process.

House GOP Passes Trump’s Big Bill

Despite initial difficulties, President Trump was able to cow the far right in the House GOP conference and Republicans passed the centerpiece of his legislative agenda on a 216-214 party line vote.

Retribution: Greenland Edition

This is all so insane.

After Vice President JD Vance’s controversial, saber-rattling trip last week to a U.S. military installation in Greenland, the base’s commander sent a conciliatory email to everyone on base, which included Greenlanders, Danes, and Canadians, Military.com reported.

After that report, the Pentagon removed Col. Susan Meyers as commander of the 821st Space Base Group.

The Pentagon spokesperson tweeted the Military.com story along with the news that Meyers was being removed from command:

Actions to undermine the chain of command or to subvert President Trump's agenda will not be tolerated at the Department of Defense.

⬇️⬇️ https://t.co/ITFeGw0kUf pic.twitter.com/MO68aje1X2

— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellATSD) April 11, 2025

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A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

‘I Am Your Retribution’ Comes Home To Roost

President Trump issued two new executive orders Wednesday that each target former government officials in his first administration for investigation and retaliation.

Each executive order identifies the former officials – Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor – by name:

• Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship
• Addressing Risks Associated with an Egregious Leaker and Disseminator of Falsehoods

You’ll recognize Krebs as the head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency whom Trump fired after he debunked the bogus claims that the 2020 presidential election was somehow rigged. Taylor was the Department of Homeland Security official who anonymously wrote a deeply critical NYT op-ed in 2018 titled: I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.

The executive orders single out private citizens for punishment, including ordering that they be investigated and that their security clearances be revoked. In Krebs’ case, Trump ordered the attorney general to investigate him, which opens the door to potential criminal prosecution.

It is a daily struggle to convey how abnormal, dangerous, and unprecedented Trump’s depredations are. The White House directing DOJ investigations of anyone in this way is by itself off the charts. The president targeting private individuals with executive orders is unprecedented. Turning the might of the federal government and the bully pulpit against his own former officials is without any corresponding precedent.

All of this – it must be repeated – is being undertaken because of President Trump’s own personal grievances, whims, and perceived slights to his ego and his power. No one is safe from such indiscriminate lawlessness, which itself serves to cow all Americans from confronting or challenging the president’s power.

“I am your retribution,” he promised his supporters in 2023.

The retribution is now.

Trump DOJ Targets American Bar Association

In retaliation against the pre-eminent professional association for lawyers, the Trump Justice Department has barred its attorneys in their official capacities from traveling to or participating in American Bar Association activities. The move was announced in a memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Next In Line: New Law Firm Targeted By Trump

President Trump issued a new executive order targeting the law firm Susman Godfrey, which quickly said it would challenge the move. Unlike Trump’s other executive order targeting law firms, this one was a bit more opaque about his motivations. Susman Godfrey handled Dominion Voting Systems’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News for its involvement in the 2020 election’s Big Lie, which resulted in a $787 million settlement.

Quote Of The Day

“Big Law continues to bend the knee to President Trump because they know they were wrong, and he looks forward to putting their pro bono legal concessions toward implementing his America First agenda.”–White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, saying the quiet part out loud while undermining both the already-shaky legal defense of Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms and the flimsy rationale offered by law firms that cut deals to avoid being targeted

Trump Targets State Climate Laws

One of the most maddening things about America’s descent into lawlessness is that it comes at the exact moment collective action is most needed to address the threat of climate change. But it’s not like the two things are happening in parallel. This week alone Trump has boosted coal and targeted state climate laws. I’m dubious that he can lawfully do much to rein in states, but the message is clear.

At the dawn of the Trump era, I tended to see Trumpism as the final death spasm of majority white rule in America. A decade in, the MAGA era feels more like the death rattle of the carbon-based economy. In either case, they both clinging fiercely to their privileges and prerogatives.

Purged Probationary Workers Lose Again

A day after the Supreme Court blocked the reinstatement of purged probationary workers in the federal government in a California case, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals followed suit in a Maryland case.

Death Knell For Indy Agencies?

The Trump administration is trying to skip the appeals court and fast-track to the Supreme Court its effort to rewrite existing law on independent agencies and bring them more firmly under control. The vehicle for the urgent request for the Supreme Court to reverse its own 90-year-old precedent comes in the combined case of the firing of members of the NLRB and MSPB.

DOGE Watch

• NYT: Elon Musk’s DOGE is leading an effort to link government databases, alarming privacy and security experts.
• Wired: US DOGE Service Agreement With Department of Labor Shows $1.3 Million Fee—and Details Its Mission
• WaPo: Trump sends DOGE to review the Navy.
• Wired: The GAO is auditing DOGE.

Sheer Madness

I would caution against taking at face value the slew of news stories this morning that purport to make sense of President Trump’s abrupt climbdown from the maximal version of his disastrous tariffs. The journalistic imperative to write stories with beginnings, middles, and ends poorly serves readers in circumstances like these where the emperor has no clothes and everyone from White House officials to Wall Street financiers are exposed as trying to pretend otherwise. By definition, there is no “making sense” of the senseless. Two additional points:

• I would recommend this piece on how the maximal version of Trump’s tariffs were making the global financial system – more that just the equity markets – wobble in dangerous and unusual ways.
• The comedown yesterday still leaves significant and deeply damaging tariffs in place that continue to pose a significant threat to global trade, economic growth, and prosperity.

We’re not nearly out of the woods yet on this madness.

Crash And Burn: House GOP Edition

The dysfunctional House GOP – where the impulse to out-crazy one another continues – failed to come to agreement on the centerpiece of President Trump’s legislative agenda, forcing Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to scrap a planned vote last evening. They’ll try again today.

‘A Multidimensional Approach’

In his latest podcast episode, my old colleague Greg Sargent presses hard on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to reconcile Democrats’ kitchen table political messaging with the lawlessness of the Trump II presidency.

Alien Enemies Act Cases Are Alive Again

Federal judges in Texas and New York temporarily blocked continuing deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, but only in limited geographical areas. Since the Supreme Court’s decision earlier in the week overturning U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s nationwide injunction, there has been no similar nationwide bar to the deportation – though the high court did require notice and hearing before any other deportations could occur.

Related: For the deeply curious, LawFare has a deep dive on the Alien Enemies Act litigation. I would particularly recommend the section on whether Boasberg’s contempt of court proceedings against the Trump administration for violating his order blocking deportations survived the Supreme Court’s decision that he didn’t have jurisdiction to issue the order.

Keep An Eye On This Weirdness

The Trump DOJ moved to drop a brand-new criminal case against an El Salvadoran man they’d accused of being a major leader of the brutal Central American gang MS-13. Instead of prosecuting the man, the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to deport him immediately. But the government has offered no explanation publicly for the sudden change in its approach to the case.

The 2020 Election Ain’t Over Yet For Newsmax

A state judge in Delaware has ruled against Newsmax in the $1 billion defamation lawsuit against it by Dominion Voting Systems. The judge found that Newsmax published Big Lie-related falsities about the voting machine company in the 2020 election cycle, but ruled that whether it did so with actual malice would be up to a jury to decide. Trial is scheduled to begin April 28.

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