There is now an American pope. For what it’s worth. There’s some evidence the new Pope is not a fan of Donald Trump. At least the guy should probably avoid J.D. Vance. Just to be safe.

A bit of good news — the Ed Martin nomination for U.S. attorney for D.C has been pulled. Martin was something of a festering boil in Missouri politics for a lot of years, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has been running editorials with headlines like “Missouri Owes America an Apology” and “Ed Martin’s Toxic Road Show Continues.” Unfortunately they’re all behind a paywall. My aunt has been sending me newspaper clippings. Juicy stuff. Let’s just say the guy is not overly burdened with intelligence, competence, or ethics. See also Greg Sargent, Trump Erupts as Top DOJ Pick Implodes in Huge Blow to MAGA at The New Republic.

However, before we celebrate — there is speculation Trump will choose the wackadoo Fox News host Jeanine Pirro for the job.

In other personnel news — Cameron Hamilton, acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was fired from his job yesterday.

The firing occurred one day after Hamilton told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the nation needs FEMA, which Trump has suggested abolishing or shrinking.

“I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton said at the hearing.

The Atlantic Council, among others, has pointed out that abolishing FEMA would hurt Red states more than Blue ones. Although it wouldn’t be good for Blue states, either.

On to tariff news. After bragging that he has negotiated 200 trade deals, Trump finally announced one. Except it’s not a deal, says Paul Krugman.

The Trump administration is planning to announce its first trade deal today, with Britain. Except it won’t be a deal; more of a “deal.” Reportedly it will mainly be a “framework” for an actual deal that may or may not happen sometime in the future. This is the tariff equivalent of “concepts of a plan” for health care.

In other words, this will be smoke and mirrors, an attempt to persuade the gullible that Trump’s tariffs are actually working. Markets — driven by small investors who seem desperate to believe that the people in charge have some idea what they’re doing — may briefly bounce on the announcement.

Most news outlets will dutifully report there is a “trade deal,” as if one deal with one nation is going to mend the disruption Trump has caused.

Even good writers can be wrong. David Dayan wrote yesterday that Senate Dems “caved” and were preparing to rubber-stamp a Republican crypto bill. But they didn’t. Instead, all Dems, plus Rand Paul and Josh Hawley, voted to keep the bill from being voted on in the Senate.  For now at least. I take it the bill was intended to create a legal framework for cryptocurrency and provided for a little regulation, although surely not so much regulation that it would interfere with the Trump family’s ongoing crypto currency money grab.

But let’s go back to David Dayan, anyway.

As we reported on Monday, a bill called the GENIUS Act would set up a relatively weak regulatory framework for stablecoins, digital assets pegged to the U.S. dollar and used mostly to facilitate crypto trading. It was almost destined for success, as a significant number of crypto-friendly Democrats, boosted by campaign contributions from the industry, were all set to sign on. But then reports about Trump’s family organization launching a stablecoin, and the United Arab Emirates using it in a $2 billion deal to purchase the digital currency exchange Binance started bubbling up. Suddenly, it seemed like terrible politics for Democrats to effectively rubber-stamp Trump’s crypto corruption.

And so nine pro-crypto Democrats vowed to vote against cloture and maintain a filibuster, thus blocking the bill, without changes. Some assumed that asking to address “concerns” was just a pretext to kill the measure. Others thought that the crypto Dems were just searching for a fig leaf they could use to say that their concerns were addressed and the bill could go forward.

It was the latter. 

Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Mark Warner (D-VA) engaged in round-the-clock negotiations with Republicans on the GENIUS Act to get to yes. Earlier on Wednesday, Gallego told MeidasTouch that he wouldn’t let Republicans “jam us and pass bad legislation” without Democratic input. “Don’t try to fuck us on it, that’s not going to happen,” Gallego said. But the language was generally based on trying to get a “good bill” that supposedly protects consumers and investors. Gallego and Warner voted for the initial version of the GENIUS Act in the Senate Banking Committee.

Sens. Gallego and Warner did not respond to requests for comment about the negotiations.

Meanwhile, Democrats engaged in a classic tactic when they want to pass something but the optics are bad: come up with a different bill that will never pass so they can pretend they care. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Jeff Merkley introduced the End Crypto Corruption Act, which would ban the president, vice president, senior officials in the executive branch, members of Congress, and their immediate families from financially benefiting from crypto assets that they issue or endorse, including stablecoins. 

And so on. I take it that the vote today was premature; negotiations were ongoing. I also get a sense that the crypto-friendly Democrats may have been spooked by recent news stories of Trump’s blatant corruption, promising top traders of his stupid memecoin access to him and tours of the White House.

Note: Trump really did issue a proclamation calling May 8 World War II Victory Day. Like the Pacific War was just a messy little skirmish that didn’t really matter. I am not celebrating.

Pete Hegseth is in the news again. It’s been discovered that some weeks ago he randomly stopped shipments of weapons to Ukraine that had already been approved, catching even the White House off guard. He’s also decided the Army has too many four-star generals and admirals, and he’s cutting their ranks by 20 percent. But CNN says there are only 37 four-star generals and admirals across the entire military. That really doesn’t seem an excessive number, considering the size of the U.S. military. One wonders if the boy’s hitting the bottle again.

Incompetence abounds. I take it the House has really hit a wall over cutting Medicaid. Yesterday Trump released a budget calling for massive cuts to medical services, but he’s saying benefits won’t be cut. But nobody with any sense thinks he can have his cuts without impairing benefits. He wants women to be having more babies, but Medicaid is paying for more than 40 percent of American births (nearly 50 percent in rural areas). Plus, the economic anxiety his policies are creating aren’t exactly conducive to long-term commitments, like a baby.

Trump wants to bring back coal mining. But he’s also cutting safety regulations in coal mines. Coal mining can be deadly. Before there were regulations, thousands of miners died every year. And then there’s black lung. Trump has cut programs that screened miners for black lung and provided treatment. Miners were stunned.

These guys think Trump will reinstate the program if someone just explains it to him. They still haven’t figured out what he is.

He doesn’t care, and he also doesn’t connect one thing with another. He’s not bright enough to think comprehensively. He wants coal miners to love him, so he promises to bring back coal mining. He wants mine owners to like him, so he cuts regulations. He wants to fund his tax cuts, so let’s cut all these health programs he doesn’t understand. This is not 12-dimensional chess. It’s just stupid.

He keeps saying he has made hundreds of tariff deals, but won’t announce them. But if you listen to these remarks he made today, it’s pretty clear he hasn’t made any deals at all. He thinks he can just set terms, and countries can work with us, or not. But it’s really American consumers are the ones who have to pay the price.

He has no idea what he’s talking about. In his meeting today with Canada’s  Prime Minister Mark Carney, he actually said, “We don’t do much business with Canada from our standpoint. They do a lot of business with us. We’re at like 4%.” Canada is the top buyer of U.S. exports.

I keep reading articles that try to explain “why” Trump is taking this or that destructive position. There is no “why.” He’s an idiot.

There must be at least some Republicans in Congress who realize he is an idiot. Some of them are nearly as dumb as he is, but I don’t think they all are. Some of them must realize how much he’s screwing up. Maybe they think their voters won’t notice.

See also Philip Bump on American’s Least American President.

It may be that the most significant thing that happened today is Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp deciding not to run for the Senate in 2026. This boosts incumbent Jon Ossoff’s chances considerably. The future of this country depends on a Democratic-led House and Senate starting January 2027. I haven’t heard why Kemp decided to not run, but I can speculate that he just plain doesn’t want any part of the mess Congress is now,

Meanwhile, Trump seems to have fully entered Mad King mode. He’s putting a tariff on foreign-made movies. Hollywood filmmakers have no idea how this would work.  He doesn’t know if he has to uphold the Constitution. He doesn’t know anything. And the sanewashing continues.

Here’s a bit of good news.

A federal judge on Monday ordered the North Carolina Board of Elections to certify the Democratic incumbent’s victory in a State Supreme Court race, rejecting a monthslong effort from the Republican challenger to throw out tens of thousands of votes.

I really thought the Republicans were going to get away with stealing this election. But the people prevailed. There will be an appeal, no doubt, so perhaps we shouldn’t celebrate just yet.

More tomorrow.

Public Notice is running a story by Stephen Robinson headlined “Trump’s Brain Is Gone.” It begins,

Donald Trump’s recent interviews with Time and The Atlantic revealed a president who is completely unhinged and incoherent. Sadly, that’s not news. But what stood out is that Trump is consistently confused and disconnected from reality even on issues that are supposedly in his wheelhouse.

Trump has always been an ignoramus who masks his intellectual shortcomings with bombast and declarations of his own brilliance, but his rambling nonsensical responses in these latest interviews should set off alarms — especially in light of all the media attention and scrutiny Joe Biden received after his disastrous debate performance or when Special Counsel Robert Hur described him as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

Trump gets graded on his own curve, unfortunately. Robinson goes on to highlight sections of the recent interviews in which Trump, clearly, was untethered from reality. Well, there was more today.

First of all, let us remember that nobody in Trump’s family ever served in the U.S. military, even though Trump’s German grandfather arrived here in bleeping 1885, He fled Germany to avoid military conscription, btw. Second, it’s beyond crass to claim the U.S. alone won the victory. It’s stuff like this that makes people in those other countries dislike us. Third, November 11 is already a national holiday, dumbass. And fourth, bleeping World War II wasn’t over in May 1945. That was just the war in Europe. The War in the Pacific had not ended. The Battle of Okinawa was ongoing on VE Day. I sincerely wish someone would grill the moron to find out if he knows anything at all about the Pacific War.

It’s perhaps odd that we don’t have a national annual commemoration of the end of World War II, which ended for us officially on September 2, 1945, with the surrender ceremony on the U.S.S. Missouri. But it just irks me beyond all tolerance that someone who is inhabiting the office of President of the United States, however incompetently, would have so little knowledge of, or apparent interest in, American history.

PBS television and NPR radio weren’t around when Trump was a child, but maybe if he’d been exposed to some of their programming at a young age he wouldn’t be the sucking black hole of ignorance and tastelessness he is now. Late yesterday he issued an executive order to end all public funding for NPR and PBS. He doesn’t have the constitutional authority to do that, but since when did he ever read the Constitution? Or read anything beyond a third-grade level, especially when there are no pictures?

Back in 2023 Republicans in Congress proposed cutting all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Even before that, in 2021 Ted Cruz had a meltdown because Big Bird told children to not be afraid of the covid vaccine. And before that, Mitt Romney’s proposal to eliminate funding for the CPB in 2012, when he was running for president. Which probably didn’t help him politically. But the Republicans keep trying.

And then this morning Trump went back to declaring he was going to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status, which he also doesn’t have the constitutional authority to do. He’s basically waging war on knowledge and intelligence at this point.

Okay, so now I’m just venting.

Update: Here’s another one. When asked what the Declaration of Independence means, Trump said, “Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.” So he’s never read it and has no idea what’s in it.

Well, here’s a new wrinkle. A federal judge finally came out and said Trump cannot use the Alien Enemies Act to round up and deport immigrants without due process. Even better, the judge who ruled this is a Trump appointee. This is from the New York Times:

A federal judge on Thursday permanently barred the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelans it has deemed to be criminals from the Southern District of Texas, saying that the White House’s use of the statute was illegal.

Well, okay, this ruling only applies to the Southern District of Texas. This district takes in Houston, Galveston, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, and Laredo, plus some places I haven’t heard of. Later in the article it says the ruling only applies to Venezuelan immigrants. But it’s something.

The 36-page ruling by Judge Rodriguez, a President Trump appointee, amounted to a philosophical rejection of the White House’s attempts to transpose the Alien Enemies Act, which was passed in 1798 as the nascent United States was threatened by war with France, into the context of modern-day immigration policy.

Here is a link to the decision; it’s interesting. I’ve only read a bit but I intend to read it all later.

“The court concludes that as a matter of law, the executive branch cannot rely on the A.E.A., based on the proclamation, to detain the named petitioners and the certified class, or to remove them from the country,” Judge Rodriguez wrote.

He also found that the “plain ordinary meaning” of the act’s language, like “invasion” and “predatory incursion,” referred to an attack by “military forces” and did not line up with Mr. Trump’s claims about the activities of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang, in a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

So we are not, in fact, at war with Venezuela.

Lee Gelernt, the A.C.L.U.’s lead lawyer in the cases, praised the ruling by Judge Rodriguez.

“This decision correctly recognized that the president cannot simply declare there’s an invasion and invoke a wartime authority during peacetime,” Mr. Gelernt said. “As the court recognized, Congress never intended this law to be used in this manner.”

And then a bit later …

Early in his decision, Judge Rodriguez rebuffed an argument by the Justice Department that he lacked the authority to even consider the White House’s use of the act, which has only been used three times in U.S. history: during the War of 1812 and during World Wars I and II.

Department lawyers have consistently maintained that even judges have no power to intrude on the president’s decisions in matters of foreign policy. And while Judge Rodriguez acknowledged that the Alien Enemies Act gives the president “broad powers,” he also said that judges still have the ability to determine whether presidents were using the law correctly.

Judges certainly do have the authority to say whether a presidential administration is violating the Constitution. And since when is detaining immigrants or anybody else on our soil and deporting them to who knows where a matter of “foreign policy”? Y’all are doin’ this stuff here, dudes. The only foreign government involved, so far, is that of El Salvador, and that’s only because the administration is paying El Salvador to warehouse people. This is not about “foreign policy.” What nonsense.

The result of this is that unless and until Judge Rodriquez is reversed on appeal, Trump can’t detain and deport people from the southern district of Texas under authority of the Alien Enemies Act. And while that’s kind of limited, I understand this is the first court ruling that directly addressed the plain fact that Trump’s interpretation and use of the AEA is bonkers.

In another development today, it’s reported that Michael Waltz is no longer the national security advisor. He is now the official scapegoat for the Signal Chat scandal. Trump is still standing by Pete Hegseth, possibly because Trump doesn’t want to admit Hegseth was a stupid choice for the job of Secretary of Defense. If you count Trump’s first term, Waltz is Trump’s fifth national security advisor. At least he lasted longer than Michael Flynn (January 20, 2017–February 13, 2017).

But, hey — just now, the Washington Post reported that Trump is appointing Waltz as ambassador to the UN. So he’s not good enough to be national security advisor, so let’s park him in the UN where no one will notice?

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he plans to nominate Michael Waltz as U.N. ambassador, hours after reports emerged that he would be replacing Waltz in his current position as national security adviser. Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as national security adviser on an interim basis while continuing to lead the State Department.

Yeah, like the Secretary of State isn’t that busy, I guess.

What a bunch of amateurs. So pathetic.

Since I don’t have a car, I spent much of yesterday either riding on or waiting for buses to get to a phone repair shop. Which I finally did, and as the proprietor was testing the battery,  which was fine, the phone came back to life. So now the phone is working again, no charge for the fix, but what an exhausting hassle. And Mercury is not in retrograde; I checked.

Okay, so where was I? Much of the news over the past few days has been about Trump’s falling poll numbers. He’s not just historically unpopular; with the exception of “border security” his “policies” are underwater as well. The majority do not like his handling of the economy, or of immigrants, or anything else. Yet  he’s not getting the message. Jennifer Rubin writes that Trump is doubling down rather than backing off.

Whether it is court decisions, nominees, or taxing everyday American consumers, Trump seems so wedded to boneheaded ideas that he might continue insisting on upping the ante rather than cutting his losses. In doing so, he will likely wipe out a table of Republicans who have stood by him but will soon have to stand for reelection.

It’s becoming increasingly easy to understand how he bankrupted all those casinos.

Josh Marshall writes that Trump has already lost.

I see the signs all around. He’s doubling down on things people don’t like. He’s fomenting a growing political backlash. The more signs we see of the limits of Trump’s power, the more people show signs of bucking that power. All power is unitary. We see signs of it everywhere. You simply cannot impose an autocracy if a clear majority of the country opposes what you are trying to do at the outset, when you are trying to do it.

They are now reacting to initial resistance by doubling down on things that are not popular. They appear to be upset that they’ve managed to have fewer deportations during Trump’s first hundred days in office than Biden had in his last hundred. Now they’re going to crack down on local officials and are threatening more indictments of judges and other officials who get in their way.

Good luck getting 12 jurors to convict any of these people. 

Nobody is saying that the administration is going to collapse soon. It’s going to be a couple of months before the effects of the tariffs hit the retail stores, and consumers.

We still don’t know what’s going to happen to Medicaid. The last I heard, the Republicans in the House were considering ending the federal subsidy (which covers about 90 percent of the cost) and telling the states they can keep Medicaid if they can fund it themselves. It doesn’t seem to occur to any of these people that it’s the Red states that will cancel it immediately. But these often are the states, especially the rural ones, that need Medicaid the most, to keep hospitals open and their larger percentages of poor people from losing all access to medical care.  Cutting Medicaid will be economically devastating to large (and very Red) parts of the country. Are Republican politicians collectively trying to shoot themselves in the foot?

The House also is talking about work requirements for receiving Medicaid. This has been done in some states; it usually just adds a lot of administrative cost and hassle and doesn’t save the state any money. I’m not sure what percentage of Medicaid recipients are either seniors or children, but it’s probably a lot.

Not surprisingly the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter. Not surprisingly, Trump blamed Joe Biden.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Trump posted to his Truth Social platform after the economic news dropped, and markets braced to open lower.

“I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers.

“Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

But most economists are telling us there is no way the economy will get better as long as Trump refuses to completely change course. It’s probably not too late to salvage a decent economy out of the mess, but Trump is unlikely to let that happen.

So there we are.

Worth reading: Jamelle Bouie, The New Deal Is a Stinging Rebuke to Trump and Trumpism.

Update: Josh Marshall is calling out House Republicans on the Medicaid cuts.

What we haven’t had until recently is good data for how many constituents House moderates are ready to axe. But now the Center for American Progress has mushed together budget and census data to show the number of people who lose coverage by district with each option.

So let’s start with one of my favorites: New York Republican Mike Lawler (NY-17). Under the $880 billion proposal, 42,000 of Lawler’s constituents lose their health care coverage. Under the Obamacare cuts, the number who lose their health care is 25,300. It’s fewer but … more than 25,000 of his constituents lose their health care. It’s even wilder when you look at Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11) just south on Staten Island. Under the big slash, 79,000 of her constituents lose their health care coverage. That’s more than 10% of the people in her district. Under the kinder, gentler slash that Politico says the moderates want, the number is 58,800. Ummm okay, only 8%.

Lemme throw in one more detail. Speaker Mike Johnson? 88,000 lose coverage under the big slash — and 59,800 under the kinder, gentler slash.

Lawler is my congressman. Awhile back he was running Facebook ads promising to not touch Medicaid. I knew he’d cave; the only question was how much.

The good news is that my laptop is back. Thank you so much to everyone who helped me through the technocrisis!

The bad news is that for some reason my phone died. It turned black and won’t turn on. I charged it this morning, so it can’t be out of juice. I need to do password recovery and they all want to do two-step verifications by sending a code to my phone. So in some cases even when I know the password I still can’t get into a lot of things, which is going to slow me down a lot. But at least I was able to get into The Mahablog.

And right now I’m kind of exhausted, but I may post something later.

GOAL REACHED! I can now spring my laptop out of jail, hopefully no later than tomorrow. Thanks everybody!

***

Help! I don’t know if anyone is still checking back here, but the laptop is still in the shop. I finally got a repair estimate of $500, which is for data recovery and a new hard drive. After I made some choking sounds the techie offered to look for a refurbished hard drive that would be cheaper.. Anyway if I can scrape up the money I may be able to get it back Saturday. Some of you already donated ( see donation links on the top right-hand column, home page) and I appreciate that very much. With some difficulty I also set up a go fund me page. The link below should go to it.

https://gofund.me/9dff09fe

My laptop decided to stop working today and is now at a repair shop. Wish me luck. I am laboriously tapping this post out with one finger on my Kindle. But it is too aggravating to write much this way. It’s also not letting me add a title. So  Mahablog is temporarily out of order, Do keep commenting, though. I hope to be back in business by Monday if not tomorrow. If anyone wishes to donate toward repairs — and I don’t know what this will  cost yet — the donate buttons on the right should work.

So much is happening at once, and I regret I can only focus on one issue at a time without being overwhelmed. So here we go — the constitutional impasse between Trump and the courts is getting more intense. For example, this just happened:

D.C. Chief Judge James Boasberg has found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for defying his order last month to turn planes around that were removing people to El Salvador under an Alien Enemies Act invocation.

In a Wednesday order, Boasberg gave the government a deadline of April 23 either to comply with his initial order and thereby purge the contempt or, alternatively, identify members of the administration who should be subject to individual sanctions for their role.

In doing so, Boasberg seems to be leveraging the threat of criminal contempt of court to secure the return of the more than 100 Venezuelan nationals imprisoned in El Salvador for the last month without due process.

“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” the opinion reads.

And U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has launched an inquiry into the Trump administration’s refusal to seek the return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Regarding the case of Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration is digging in its heels and refusing to budge in spite of the Supreme Court decision that more or less said Abrego Garcia must be retrieved. Our so-called “attorney general” flat-out said, “He is not coming back to our country. President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story.” See also Trump Admin’s New Defense For Accidentally Sending Abrego Garcia To Salvadoran Torture Camp: We Meant To Do That at Techdirt.

The Trump administration has settled on a terrifying new legal theory: they can declare anyone a “terrorist,” ship them to an offshore torture camp without due process, and courts can do nothing about it because it’s “foreign affairs.” This isn’t speculation — it’s the actual argument they’re making to justify their “accidental” trafficking of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador’s CECOT facility.

After initially admitting in court this was an “administrative error,” the administration has pivoted to an even more disturbing stance: they meant to do it all along, and they can do it to anyone. And they’ll just fucking lie about everything to pretend this is all perfectly normal and acceptable.

Well, yeah, pretty much. “Homegrowns are next” to go to El Salvador, Trump said just the other day. He thinks can declare anyone a violent criminal and make them disappear, without that pesky due process thing. In Abrego Garcia’s case the MAGAts are continuing to insist he’s a gang member, criminal, and terrorist, even though they have no evidence. See Greg Sargent, Trump’s Case Against Man Deported in “Error” Just Took Another Big Hit at The New Republic. And see also The Trump Admin’s Lies About Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Debunked at Rolling Stone. The bit of hearsay evidence that Abrego Garcia was a gang member has been thoroughly discredited, and he has no criminal record in either the U.S. or El Salvador. And he certainly hasn’t been connected to terrorism.

Jamelle Bouie at the New York Times:

The Trump administration believes it can send anyone it wants, without due process or future legal recourse, to rot in a foreign prison.  …

…More than a constitutional crisis, this is a fundamentally tyrannical assertion of illegitimate power. To claim the authority to remand any American, citizen or otherwise, to a distant prison beyond the reach of any legal remedy is to violate centuries of Anglo-American legal tradition and shatter the very foundations of constitutional government in the United States. It is to reduce the citizens of a republic to the subjects of a king. It is, in the language of the American revolutionaries, to enslave the people to a singular, arbitrary will. It is not for nothing that among the accusations listed in the Declaration of Independence is the charge that the king is guilty of “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences.”

The president’s rendition program constitutes a profound assault on American freedom as understood for the whole of this nation’s history. 

Do read the whole thing. It’s very powerful.

At Wapo, Philip Bump has an in-depth look at what Trump is actually doing regarding migrants, as opposed to what he says he is doing. As I wrote in an earlier post, Trump swore he would  immediately deport tens of millions of illegal and dangerous migrants as soon as he was back in office. He quickly learned that’s a thing easier said than done. Most of what Trump has been doing is about making a show of deporting any migrants he can get his hands on, preferably those that disagree with him. If any genuine criminals are being deported also, it’s probably accidental. Philip Bump writes,

The simple fact is that criminal immigrants are not as pervasive in the United States as Trump insisted on the campaign trail. (As though to emphasize that point, the Justice Department recently removed a link to a study demonstrating that immigrants were less likely to commit crimes than native-born U.S. residents.) Partly because of that, the administration’s high-profile effort to target the purported immigrant threat as a staggering success relies on a tried-and-true Trump tactic: using unverified, false or decontextualized datapoints as rhetorical anecdotes. …

… So, instead of (perhaps unflattering) verifiable data, we often just get anecdata, numbers from Trump and other officials aimed at reinforcing the idea that immigrants are being expelled from the United States at a staggering clip. Sometimes, those numbers are presented with dubious charts. Sometimes, they’re just thrown into conversations. Always, they are backstopped with videos, photos and other images showing how the administration is cracking down. The presentation from the White House is one of unrelenting strength — a presentation that appears to be a Potemkin one.

Bump pulls together as much data as is available to see exactly what Trump is doing, as opposed to what he is saying. Some of this data is from Tom Cartwright, a retired executive who has taken up the mission of tracking ICE flights. That’s an interesting story in itself. The point is that Trump is falling way short of his boasts, making him nearly frantic to round up as many bodies as he can (preferably in front of cameras) and send them where they can’t come back to sue him.

And if he’s allowed to get away with this, he’s not going to stop at immigrants.

Update: Sen. Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador today but was unable to see Abrego Garcia. He spoke to the Vice President of El Salvador and was told, as I believe we all know, that El Salvador has a contract with the government of the U.S. to keep prisoners. Which suggests that Trump could just ask El Salvador to give Abrego Garcia back, maybe paying El Salvador to pay their administrative expenses, or whatever.