GREENBELT, MD — For the first time since he was unlawfully deported to El Salvador in March, Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared in person this afternoon in front of U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland. He is no longer detained by El Salvador, the Justice Department, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But as his lawyer pointed out he remains in a “literal double bind,” with a bracelet on one ankle from his criminal case in Tennessee and an ICE bracelet on the other ankle from his immigration case in Maryland.

I just got a new iPhone. I didn’t need a newer version. But my old one was broken in a way that wasn’t easily fixed. So I submitted myself to the hard wheel of planned obsolescence. I’m always happy for ever-improved image quality. Otherwise, for me, it was just a need for a new, undamaged phone. But this is one of the models which Apple tells you very frequently has their AI bundled into the device. Which I’m told is awesome. Or that’s what they’re telling me. A lot. And my sense generally is that Apple is the least over-the-top of the big techs in this regard.

As I’ve been using the new phone, I’ve noticed that the Apple texting app now takes suggested phrases and completing your words to the next level — as in kind of an absurd level.

It was pretty obvious that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ admission to Vanity Fair that President Trump was engaged in “score settling” was going to make it into a legal filing sooner or later. Now it has.

In a filing overnight, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys cited the Wiles interview as part of their bid to dismiss the indictment against him on vindictive prosecution grounds:

I’ve been under the weather. That partly explains missing two days of posts. But another reason is a feeling of repetition. Everything I see in our politics right now — or at least at the pinnacle where Donald Trump dominates all the visuals and attention — has a feeling of drift, spectacle and fragmentation. Trump’s ballroom epitomizes it — crass, stupid, vulgar, unacceptable and yet ultimately meaningless. It’s the full-size version of having his stacked Kennedy Center board, of which he is the chairman, rename the institution after him. That was, I believe, Wednesday, though the days run together. Then there’s his new hall of presidents, a sick-burn tweet storm embedded on a wall of what remains of the White House. These all have the feeling of a man who is bored, tapped out, losing coherence and energy and who others are trying to keep distracted.