What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Bauer]

Trump escalates feud by nuking Mars

[mongers]

I haven't seen or heard the news for the last 3 or 4 days, so has the level of BS coming from WH/congress/trumpistan increased, fallen or continued at self-harm levels?

[Syt]

Kilmar Abrego Garcia has returned to the US ... and has been arrested on human trafficking charges in Tennessee.

https://apnews.com/article/abrego-garcia-justice-department-el-salvador-a547f3a228c92d4e69be799354037c7f

Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to the US, charged with transporting people in the country illegally

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador became a political flashpoint in the Trump administration's stepped-up immigration enforcement, was returned to the United States on Friday to face criminal charges related to what the Trump administration said was a large human smuggling operation that brought immigrants into the country illegally.

His abrupt release from El Salvador closes one chapter and opens another in a saga that yielded a remarkable, months-long standoff between Trump officials and the courts over a deportation that officials initially acknowledged was done in error but then continued to stand behind in apparent defiance of orders by judges to facilitate his return to the U.S.

The development occurred after U.S. officials presented El Salvador President Nayib Bukele with an arrest warrant for federal charges in Tennessee accusing Abrego Garcia of playing a key role in smuggling immigrants into the country for money. He is expected to be prosecuted in the U.S. and, if convicted, will be returned to his home country of El Salvador at the conclusion of the case, officials said Friday.

"This is what American justice looks like," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in announcing Abrego Garcia's return and the unsealing of a grand jury indictment.

Abrego Garcia's attorneys called the case "baseless."

"There's no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy," attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.


Federal Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee, determined that Abrego Garcia will be held in custody until at least next Friday, when there will be an arraignment and detention hearing.

Abrego Garcia appeared in court wearing a short-sleeved, white, button-down shirt. When asked if he understood the charges, he told the judge: "Sí. Lo entiendo." An interpreter then said: "Yes. I understand."

Democrats and immigrant rights group had pressed for Abrego Garcia's release, with several lawmakers — including Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, where Abrego Garcia had lived for years — even traveling to El Salvador to visit him. A federal judge had ordered him to be returned in April and the Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal by directing the government to work to bring him back.

But the news that Abrego Garcia, who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs, was being brought back for the purpose of prosecution was greeted with dismay by his lawyers.

The case also prompted the resignation of a top supervisor in the U.S. attorney's office in Nashville, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.

Ben Schrader, who was chief of the office's criminal division, did not explain the reason for his resignation but posted to social media around the time the indictment was being handed down, saying: "It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I've ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons."

He declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press on Friday.

Abrego Garcia's lawyer calls charges 'preposterous'

"This administration ... instead of simply admitting their mistake, they'll stop at nothing at all, including some of the most preposterous charges imageable," Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

Ama Frimpong, legal director with the group CASA, said Abrego Garcia's family has mixed emotions about his return to the U.S.

"Let him talk to his wife. Let him talk to his children. This family has suffered enough," she said.

Sandoval-Moshenberg said Abrego Garcia is one of the first, if not the first, person released from a notorious prison in El Salvador, though he was later imprisoned at another facility.

"So it's going to be very interesting to hear what he has to say about the way in which he was treated," the attorney said.

The indictment, filed last month and unsealed Friday, lays out a string of allegations that date back to 2016 but are only being disclosed now, nearly three months after Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported and following the Trump administration's repeated claims that he is a criminal.

It accuses him of smuggling throughout the U.S. thousands of people living in the country illegally, including children and members of the violent MS-13 gang, from Central America and abusing women he was transporting. A co-conspirator also alleged that he participated in the killing of a gang member's mother in El Salvador, prosecutors wrote in papers urging the judge to keep him behind bars while he awaits trial.

The indictment does not charge him in connection with that allegation.

"Later, as part of his immigration proceedings in the United States, the defendant claimed he could not return to El Salvador because he was in fear of retribution from the 18th Street gang," the detention memo states.

"While partially true — the defendant, according to the information received by the Government, was in fear of retaliation by the 18th Street gang — the underlying reason for the retaliation was the defendant's own actions in participating in the murder of a rival 18th Street gang member's mother," prosecutors wrote.

The charges stem from a 2022 vehicle stop in which the Tennessee Highway Patrol suspected him of human trafficking. A report released by the Department of Homeland Security in April states that none of the people in the vehicle had luggage, while they listed the same address as Abrego Garcia.

Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, while the officers allowed him to drive on with only a warning about an expired driver's license, according to the DHS report. The report said he was traveling from Texas to Maryland, via Missouri, to bring in people to perform construction work.

In response to the report's release in April, Abrego Garcia's wife said in a statement that he sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites, "so it's entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle. He was not charged with any crime or cited for any wrongdoing."

Immigrant rights advocates vs. the Trump administration
Abrego Garcia's background and personal life have been a source of dispute and contested facts. Immigrant rights advocates have cast his arrest as emblematic of an administration whose deportation policy is haphazard and error-prone, while Trump officials have pointed to prior interactions with police and described him as a gang member who fits the mold they are determined to expel from the country.

Abrego Garcia lived in the U.S. for roughly 14 years, during which he worked construction, got married and was raising three children with disabilities, according to court records. Trump administration officials said he was deported based on a 2019 accusation from Maryland police that he was an MS-13 gang member. Abrego Garcia denied the allegation and was never charged with a crime, his attorneys said.

A U.S. immigration judge subsequently shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he likely faced persecution there by local gangs. The Trump administration deported him there in March, later describing the mistake as "an administrative error" but insisting he was in MS-13.

Even if Abrego Garcia is convicted of the charges announced Friday, the Trump administration would still have to return to a U.S. immigration court if it wanted to deport him to El Salvador, Sandoval-Moshenberg said. He also expects the case in Maryland to continue as the federal judge there considers whether the administration obeyed her orders to return him.

Abrego Garcia's return comes days after the Trump administration complied with a court order to return a Guatemalan man deported to Mexico despite his fears of being harmed there. The man, identified in court papers as O.C.G, was the first person known to have been returned to U.S. custody after deportation since the start of President Donald Trump's second term.

[crazy canuck]

I haven't seen or heard the news for the last 3 or 4 days, so has the level of BS coming from WH/congress/trumpistan increased, fallen or continued at self-harm levels?

Never ending stream

[Valmy]

The irony of the US government charging him with illegal human trafficking.

[mongers]

I haven't seen or heard the news for the last 3 or 4 days, so has the level of BS coming from WH/congress/trumpistan increased, fallen or continued at self-harm levels?

Never ending stream

Thanks CC, I'll tune it out again. 

[Jacob]

I'm glad he is out. That's honestly better than what I expected.

[Tonitrus]

It looks like most of the charges/evidence come from a "co-conspirator".  So they basically they probably found a crook willing to cut a deal to say whatever they want him to say and shift the blame.

[Syt]

SCOTUS rules that DOGE gets access to Social Security data:

https://apnews.com/article/doge-social-security-trump-elon-musk-99f3f281154fe0f91e6a6e612bf8e9ba

Supreme Court allows DOGE team to access Social Security systems with data on millions of Americans

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration two victories Friday in cases involving the Department of Government Efficiency, including giving it access to Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans.

The justices also separately reined in orders seeking transparency at DOGE, the team once led by billionaire Elon Musk.

The court's conservative majority sided with the Trump administration in the first Supreme Court appeals involving DOGE. The three liberal justices dissented in both cases.

The DOGE victories come amid a messy breakup between the president and the world's richest man that started shortly after Musk's departure from the White House and has included threats to cut government contracts and a call for the president to be impeached. The future of DOGE's work isn't clear without Musk at the helm, but both men have previously said that it will continue its efforts.

In one case, the high court halted an order from a judge in Maryland that has restricted the team's access to the Social Security Administration under federal privacy laws.

"We conclude that, under the present circumstances, SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work," the court said in an unsigned order. Conservative lower-court judges have said there's no evidence at this point of DOGE mishandling personal information.

The agency holds sensitive data on nearly everyone in the country, including school records, salary details and medical information.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the court's action creates "grave privacy risks" for millions of Americans by giving "unfettered data access to DOGE regardless — despite its failure to show any need or any interest in complying with existing privacy safeguards, and all before we know for sure whether federal law countenances such access." Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined Jackson's opinion and Justice Elena Kagan said she also would have ruled against the administration.

The Trump administration says DOGE needs the access to carry out its mission of targeting waste in the federal government. Musk had been focused on Social Security as an alleged hotbed of fraud. The entrepreneur has described it as a " Ponzi scheme " and insisted that reducing waste in the program is an important way to cut government spending.

But U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland found that DOGE's efforts at Social Security amounted to a "fishing expedition" based on "little more than suspicion" of fraud, and allowing unfettered access puts Americans' private information at risk.

Her ruling did allow access to anonymous data for staffers who have undergone training and background checks, or wider access for those who have detailed a specific need.

The Trump administration has said DOGE can't work effectively with those restrictions.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer also argued that the ruling is an example of federal judges overstepping their authority and trying to micromanage executive branch agencies.

The plaintiffs say it's a narrow order that's urgently needed to protect personal information.

An appeals court previously refused to immediately to lift the block on DOGE access, though it split along ideological lines. Conservative judges in the minority said there's no evidence that the team has done any "targeted snooping" or exposed personal information.

The lawsuit was originally filed by a group of labor unions and retirees represented by the group Democracy Forward. It's one of more than two dozen lawsuits filed over DOGE's work, which has included deep cuts at federal agencies and large-scale layoffs.

The plaintiffs called the high court's order "a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people. Elon Musk may have left Washington, D.C., but his impact continues to harm millions of people."

Liz Huston, a spokesperson for the White House, applauded the order. "The Supreme Court allowing the Trump Administration to carry out commonsense efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and modernize government information systems is a huge victory for the rule of law."

The nation's court system has been ground zero for pushback to President Donald Trump's sweeping conservative agenda, with hundreds of lawsuits filed challenging policies on everything from immigration to education to mass layoffs of federal workers.

In the other DOGE order handed down Friday, the justices extended a pause on orders that would require the team to publicly disclose information about its operations, as part of a lawsuit filed by a government watchdog group.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington argues that DOGE, which has been central to Trump's push to remake the government, is a federal agency and must be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

But the Trump administration says DOGE is just a presidential advisory body aimed at government cost-cutting, which would make it exempt from requests for documents under FOIA.

The justices did not decide that issue Friday, but the conservative majority held that U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled too broadly in ordering documents be turned over to CREW.

[viper37]

Newsom floats withholding federal taxes as Trump threatens California 

His comments came amid reports Trump is weighing "large-scale" funding cancellations for the Golden State.
 

SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday suggested California consider withholding tens of billions in annual federal tax dollars amid reports Donald Trump is preparing funding cuts targeting the state.
Newsom's suggestion came after CNN reported the president was considering a "full termination" of federal grant funding for California's universities.
"Californians pay the bills for the federal government. We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back," the Democratic governor said in an X post Friday afternoon, referencing a recent analysis from the Rockefeller Institute that California contributed about $83 billion more in federal taxes in 2022 than it received back from Washington.

"Maybe it's time to cut that off," he added.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai, asked to comment on Newsom's post, threw cold water on mass funding cuts but blasted California for what he said were "lunatic anti-energy, soft-on-crime, pro-child mutilation, and pro-sanctuary policies."

"The Trump administration is committed to ending this nightmare and restoring the California Dream," Desai said in a statement. "No final decisions, however, on any potential future action by the Administration have been made, and any discussion suggesting otherwise should be considered pure speculation."

Trump has wielded federal funding as leverage to push its politics on California before. The president last month threatened to choke off the state's cash flow if a transgender athlete participated in a state girls' track meet.

Newsom's biting suggestion comes as the governor escalates his anti-Trump rhetoric, even as he asks the White House for economic assistance. Newsom in early May blamed tariffs for ripping $16 billion from California's state budget, but has at the same time sought federal disaster relief for the recent Los Angeles wildfires and privately consulted Trump officials about ways to bolster the state's flagging film industry.


Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas also floated withholding federal taxes Friday in a post on the social media site Bluesky shortly before Newsom raised the issue. He dismissed the rumored grant cancellations as "unconstitutional and vindictive."

"We're the nation's economic engine and the largest donor state, and deserve our fair share," Rivas wrote. "I'll use every legal and constitutional tool available to defend CA — we must look at every option, including withholding federal taxes."

State Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire similarly vowed to defend California from "this President's illegal and unprecedented attack on our state" in an X post Friday, but he stopped short of suggesting the state should withhold federal taxes.

State leaders have tried to starve Trump's Washington of tax revenues before; in 2017, then-Senate President Kevin de León proposed a state tax credit scheme that would have allowed residents to sidestep a federal tax hike targeting California.

Two New York mayoral candidates, former state Assemblymember Michael Blake and current state Sen. Jessica Ramos, similary suggested withholding the city's federal tax dollars during a Democratic primary debate Wednesday evening.

[HVC]

Time to reintegrate with Mexico 

[Valmy]

Time to reintegrate with Mexico 

Finally, Baha and Alta California can be reunited.

[viper37]

...and Trump deployed the California National Guard, bypassing the governor, the crush the protesters.

[HVC]

Time to call in the state guard to protect against the national guard. What could go wrong? 

[Valmy]

Time to call in the state guard to protect against the national guard. What could go wrong? 

The National Guard is the State Guard.