A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Abrego Garcia Case May Come To A Head Today
The constitutional clash over Kilmar Abrego Garcia played out on national TV last evening with President Trump acknowledging that he could retrieve the mistakenly deported Salvadoran man from a prison in his home country but won’t do so, despite a Supreme Court mandate:
Host: You could call and get Abrego Garcia back.
Trump: I could
Host: But the Supreme Court has ordered you to facilitate his release.
Trump: I’m not the one making this decision
Host: You’re the president!
— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Trump’s latest remarks came the same day as the Trump administration filed a new secret motion in the Abrego Garcia case. Because the government’s filing was under seal, we do not know what it contained. Here’s what we do know:
- Last week U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis paused the case until 5 p.m. ET today at the joint request of the parties for reasons that remain under seal.
- While we still don’t know why the parties agreed to a delay in the midst of a 14-day discovery sprint, the best guess is that it was intended to give the Trump administration time to work on facilitating Abrego Garcia’s release. It’s unlikely Abrego Garcia’s lawyers or the judge would have agreed to any delay without ironclad assurances of concrete actions being taken.
- The court docket doesn’t indicate whether the Trump administration’s new motion was consented to by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers like the last one was, but Abrego Garcia’s lawyers did not immediately file a response opposing the administration’s new motion, as they have done at earlier points in the case.
With the defiant remarks from President Trump and similar recent comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi, it looks for all the world like we are in the midst of a unprecedented refusal by the executive branch to abide by an order from Supreme Court itself.
And yet … it feels like a few caveats are in order.
I can’t help but think that the President is so out of touch that he could be leading the vicious propaganda campaign against Abrego Garcia even if he was en route back to the U.S. aboard a government plane. Or that Trump and Bondi would continue ranting and raving about Tren de Aragua and the judiciary even as they allowed DHS to return Abrego Garcia to detention in the United States.
It’s a very confused and chaotic situation, and it’s not clear whether today will bring more clarity immediately.
Appeals Court Upholds Alien Enemies Act Ruling
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block last week’s order from a federal judge in Colorado barring deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
Accused Wisconsin Judge Suspended
The latest developments in the case against Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, charged with helping a migrant evade arrest in the courthouse, include:
- The Wisconsin Supreme Court, where the liberals hold a 4-3 majority, suspended Dugan. There were no noted dissents.
- Dugan has amassed a high-caliber defense team that includes conservative legal stars like former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement and former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, a Bush II appointee.
- Former DOJ prosecutor James Pearce offers a cold-eyed analysis of the case against Dugan. It’s more complicated than it may seem on first blush.
What’s Good For The Goose
The Trump administration has been making the law firms it targeted with executive orders play a game of whack-a-mole by insisting that any court order only applies to the specific departments and agencies named in the case. So Perkins Coie amended its complaint to name every single relevant governmental component, stretching the case caption alone to 40 pages.
Keep An Eye On This
Fired DOJ prosecutors – who should have been shielded by civil service protections – are beginning to contest their terminations, including at the beleaguered Merit Systems Protection Board.
No, The Courts Alone Can’t Save Us …
[F]ederal courts, are limited in both power and reach. They are by design slow and reactive. They are not self-starters: They can rule only in cases properly before them, which means there needs to be a party experiencing a particular injury that is continuing or will imminently occur and that the judicial process can remedy. …
Courts typically confront cases raising discrete questions, meaning there’s an atomistic nature to constitutional law and constitutional adjudication. … [T]hey cannot act as roving guarantors of the rule of law.
… But The Courts Are Indispensable
[J]udges are exceeding any expectations, not simply in rejecting the worst of the lawlessness but in actually attempting, with every power available to them, to sweep it back. We keep looking to Democratic Party leadership for fake-it-till-you-make-it energy, but that energy is already coming from the judicial branch. That is a story of tremendous moral courage under real and palpable threats and fear of reprisal.
GAO On Collision Course With Trump White House
The GAO – a legislative watchdog agency outside of the executive branch – is getting the runaround from the Trump White House. In testimony Tuesday, a GAO official said that the agency had opened 39 different investigations into the administration and that the White House Office of Management and Budget and stymied requests for information.
House GOP Is Protecting Pete Hegseth
The House GOP quietly blocked an effort by Armed Services Committee Democrats to compel the Trump administration to provide information on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of private Signal group chats, including one involving his wife, who has taken on an outsize role at the Pentagon.
The Propaganda Is Real And Chilling
Morning Memo tries to walk a fine line between amplifying and alerting you to Trump’s vicious propaganda campaign against undocumented migrants like the Alien Enemies Act detainees and the mistakenly deported Abergo Garcia. But this is what the White House showed at Trump’s official event yesterday in Michigan:
at his rally in Michigan, Trump plays a propaganda video of prisoners having their heads shaved at the Gulag in El Salvador to big cheers from the crowd and “U-S-A!” chants
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 29, 2025 at 6:28 PM
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