A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Lament For Our Time
If you had told me in 2005 that 20 years hence federal appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III would be writing a paean to our lost liberties and freedoms under a Republican president, I may have politely suggested you seek some help.
On what planet does a man on the President George W. Bush’s short list to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist end up as a forlorn voice lamenting the erosion of the rule of law and the collapse of the constitutional order? A planet on which Donald Trump is twice elected president.
The headline news yesterday was that Wilkinson authored a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals order rejecting the Trump administration’s attempt to stall, block, and avoid U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’ order that it facilitate the return of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has been wrongfully imprisoned in El Salvador since March 15.
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that
Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear,” Wilkinson writes of the government’s abandonment of due process. In that sense it was a win for Abrego Garcia and the rule of law.
But a close reading of Wilkinson’s order suggests that he sees this case as the final chance to arrest a precipitous decline into tyranny. He practically pleads for restraint from Trump and those around him:
It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.
In the barely seven-page order, Wilkinson places the Abrego Garcia case and the current clash between the executive and judicial branches in historical context, citing the Federalist Papers and President Eisenhower’s decision to deploy federal troops to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in 1957.
But it is Wilkinson’s ominous warnings of what may lie ahead that tighten the muscles and focuses the mind:
- “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”
- “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?”
- “Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both.”
- “The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.”
The whole order is worth your time.
The Deportation-Big Data Industrial Complex
A leak from inside Palantir to 404 Media shows the high tech surveillance company is assisting ICE with locating migrants targeted for deportation.
In possibly related news: Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who is now serving as de facto chief of staff to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, told DHS officials to give Palantir additional work after he organized a tour for Noem of a Palantir facility, the WSJ reports:
Weeks after the tour, the company co-founded by Peter Thiel would get an additional $29.9 million from the agency under an existing contract—specifically to deploy its powerful software for immigration “targeting and enforcement” and “self-deportation tracking,” records show.
Lewandowski has no formal position at DHS but “he has used his close relationship with Noem to wield power” in his role as a “special government employee,” the WSJ noted.
The Deportation-Higher Ed Industrial Complex
At least 10 of Florida’s public universities have struck agreements with ICE authorizing campus police to question and detain undocumented immigrants, Inside Higher Ed reports.
Trump Retaliates Against Harvard
After Harvard refused to capitulate to President Trump’s demands, the administration is now threatening to block the school from enrolling international students unless it hands over detailed records about the student body.
Trump’s Newest Target: Nonprofit Orgs
On the heels of threatening to yank Harvard’s tax-exempt status, President Trump threatened to target the tax-exempt status of other nonprofit organizations with whom his disagrees, singling out Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for his ire.
Ed Martin Is At It Again … In A New Realm
Acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, who incidentally has been less than forthcoming with the Senate Judiciary Committee as it considers his nomination to the permanent position, has sent one of his series of highly inappropriate, abusive, and threatening letters of inquiry to a peer-reviewed medical journal:
The Trump regime is now using US Attorneys to intimidate academic journals by sending them letters demanding they explain how they ensure ‘viewpoint diversity.’ Journal editors should be public about this and coordinate to refuse to comply with these fascist tactics. pic.twitter.com/I8O2TMQsvR
— Eric Reinhart (@_Eric_Reinhart) April 17, 2025
For Your Radar …
- EAC: TPM’s Kate Riga reports from court in DC, where an increasingly frustrated federal judge called out the Election Assistance Commission for beginning to implement President Trump’s executive order on elections even though the administration denied it had done anything yet.
- CFPB: U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of D.C. has scheduled a hearing this morning on whether mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau violate her preliminary injunction that essentially kept the Trump administration from shuttering the agency.
- SSA: U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander has issued a preliminary injunction blocking DOGE from accessing the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans stored by the Social Security Administration.
Fun Read
Brian Beutler: Don’t Let Soft Donald Trump Redefine Masculinity And The Meaning Of Work
Quote Of The Day
TPM’s Josh Marshall:
We can talk endlessly about whether we’re still in a democracy or whether Trump wants to be or is acting like a dictator. We can debate words such as “fascism” that were unknown before a century ago. But what we are seeing right now is the definition of tyranny, a half-archaic concept the founders of the American Republic were very familiar with. Trump’s rule is both lawless and arbitrary. He has taken the bundle of powers the Constitution provides him to govern and defend the Constitution and turned them to an entirely different and corrupt purpose: using them as weapons to attack the people and institutions he deems his enemies.
‘We Are All Afraid’
In the course of describing her experience of the current Trump II moment, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) makes an extraordinary admission:
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R): “We are all afraid…I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.”
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.bsky.social) April 17, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
