John Lowell (3:58)

Thanks, Isaac and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, President Donald Trump's individualized tariffs on US trading partners went into effect at midnight, including a 104% levy on goods from China. China said it is raising its tariffs on U.S. products to 84%. In response, global stock markets continued to fall as tariffs went into effect and the 10 year treasury yield spiked overnight, raising concerns about the bond market. Number two, the Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 to pause an order requiring the Trump administration to rehire more than 16,000 fired probationary employees, finding that the plaintiffs, a group of nine nonprofit organizations, did not have standing to sue and challenge the firings. Number three, the Trump administration froze over $1 billion in funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University amid civil rights investigations into both schools. The investigations center on allegations of anti Semitism and racial discrimination. Number four, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must restore the Associated Press's access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and other spaces for journalists in the White House. The administration had barred the outlet from these spaces over its refusal to recognize the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And number five, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the legal status of migrants who entered the US through the Biden era CBP1 app, which was used to facilitate the legal entry of asylum seekers and ordered them to leave the country immediately. The Supreme Court has lifted a federal judge's order that blocked the Trump administration from using a centuries old wartime law called the Alien Enemies act to deport migrants to El Salvador. On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a 5, 4 decision in Trump v. JGG, lifting a pair of temporary orders from U.S. district Judge James Boasberg blocking the administration from using the Alien Enem act of 1798 to justify deporting alleged non citizen gang members. In an unsigned majority opinion, the Supreme Court did not weigh in on President Trump's application of the Alien Enemies act to foreign born gang members, but specified that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings, provided their challenges are brought in the jurisdiction where they were detained for context. On March 15, the United States government transferred hundreds of alleged non citizen members of the gang's Mara Salvatrucha and Trende Aragua to the Terrorism Confinement center, otherwise known as secot, in El Salvador. President Trump justified their removal by invoking the aea, which gives the President the wartime authority to deport any foreign nationals of an enemy nation, referencing his previous designation of the gangs as foreign terrorist organizations infiltrating the United States. You can check out our coverage of the deportations with a link in today's episode Description Immediately following President Trump's proclamation invoking the law, US District Judge James Boasberg blocked the deportation order under the president's justification. However, two of the flights had already departed and the third flight left shortly after. The Trump administration then filed an emergency appeal of Judge Boasberg's decision, and the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the appeal on Monday. The Supreme Court did not rule directly on the administration's use of the AEA to deport aliens who have entered the country illegally, but it did find that deportees had the right to challenge the orders under habeas corpus, that is, by challenging the legality of their detention. The court also concluded that the potential deportees must challenge the decision in the jurisdiction where they were detained, meaning challenges could be issued in Texas, where the detainees under the initial lawsuit were being held, not Washington, D.C. in the extradition context with respect to transfers of Guantanamo and other wartime detainees, habeas corpus proceedings have long been the appropriate vehicle, justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion. Going back to the English Habeas Corpus act of 1679, if not earlier, habeas corpus has been the proper vehicle for detainees to bring claims seeking to bar their transfers. When this court decides complex and monumental issues, it typically allows the lower courts to address those dissenting matters first, justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent. It then receives full briefing, hears oral argument, deliberates internally, and finally issues a reasoned opinion. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court's three liberal judges in a partial dissent, though she declined to sign on some of the aspects of the opinion, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor's suggestion that the Trump administration was trying to secretly deport people without judicial oversight. Today we'll get into what the right and left are saying about the Supreme Court's decision and then Isaac's take.

Isaac Saul (9:30)

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John Lowell (11:12)

All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right praises the ruling, and many say it vindicates the Trump administration's actions. Some suggest the outcome is not a complete victory for Trump. Others question Justice Barrett's rationale. In her dissent in town hall, Kevin McCullough said Trump was right. Judge James Boasberg, the D.C. district Court's very own champion of anti Trump jurisprudence, had previously blocked Trump's efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act, a law written by John Adams himself, claiming it didn't apply to non state actors like criminal cartels or foreign gangs, to which SCOTUS just said in effect, wrong, Jim McCullough wrote. Lets be crystal clear. This isn't just a Trump win. This is a national security win. This is a common sense win. Scotus ruled that the 1798 Alien Enemies act, still on the books, still valid, and as it turns out, still potent, gives the president broad discretion in terms of conflict to remove foreign nationals deemed dangerous to public safety. Boasberg tried to twist the language, pretending the founders couldn't have imagined a world where non state actors like Ms. 13 or Hezbollah proxies could wa war on American streets. McCullough said. SCOTUS didn't just rule in Trump's favor today, they ruled in America's favor. They upheld the rule of law, the original intent of the Constitution, and the principle that no foreign gang member has the right to remain in the country they seek to destroy. In national review, Andrew C. McCarthy wrote, Supremes uphold due process. It should be strange. Yet it was utterly predictable to find President Trump chirping last night as he had won a great victory after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that his taking aliens who were facing lawful proceedings, loading them onto planes and transferring them to a foreign country's notorious prison, all without notice and an opportunity to be heard in objection to these deportations, profoundly violated the Constitution he has sworn to uphold. McCarthy said the court's unanimity on the important constitutional point is obscured by its 5, 4 divide on procedure, that is the question of where to sue. The nine justices are actually in lockstep on the bottom line that the executive branch must heed the Constitution and afford due process of law to those it dubiously accuses of being alien enemies. The disagreement is that the majority concluded that the aliens must bring their challenges in habeas corpus, which means they must suit in the place where they are being confined, McCarthy wrote. The majority's final word on this procedural disagreement means the aliens have to start over again, inundating a Texas federal court with hundreds of individual habeas claims rather than continuing with a single class action lawsuit in Washington. They will do so, however, with a sharp admonition that the Trump administration, before any further deportations, must give notice to anyone it claims is an alien enemy in reason. Josh Blackmun asked, what exactly did Justice Barrett disagree with the majority about in jjj? Justice Barrett did not write separately to explain which parts of the majority opinion she in fact did disagreed with. As I'll explain it isn't clear to me exactly what Justice Barrett thinks Part 1A of the dissent lays out the history of the Alien enemies Act. Parts 1B and 1C provide the facts and procedural posture of the case. Justice Barrett apparently does not agree with these parts of the dissent, though it is not clear why. Blackmun said part 3B is the only substantive portion of the dissent that Justice Barrett joins. Barrett is not even willing to say the majority is wrong here. She's only willing to go along with troubling and dubious. I take it that Justice Barrett simply isn't sure here and would not reach this holding at this point. But does Justice Barrett disagree about the venue issue? Does she think this case properly belongs in Texas? What would a process formalist originalist do here? I can't tell you because Justice Barrett won't say Blackman RIP early in Justice Barrett's career she told us to read the opinion, yet she writes less than any member of the Court and frequently leaves us guessing what she's actually thinking. Academics have the luxury of not addressing all issues at once, and instead we can deliberately walk through complex matters on our own timelines. Supreme Court Justices do not have that luxury in fast moving litigation. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying. Which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is alarmed by the ruling suggesting it will result in more legally dubious deportations. Some note the justices agreed on many aspects of the case, but left key questions unanswered. Others say the ruling will embolden the Trump administration in slate. Mark Joseph Stern said the ruling couldn't be more ominous. The majority's unsigned, thinly reasoned decision will make it significantly easier for the administration to illegally ship off innocent people to a Salvadoran prison where all their constitutional rights and quite possibly their lives will be snuffed out, stern wrote. The majority opinion purports to be modest, but it constitutes a painful defeat for the plaintiffs. According to the majority, the migrants cannot sue in D.C. where the president and his subordinates are planning and carrying out much of this program. Instead, they must file petitions of habeas corpus in the federal courts, where they are being confined in South Texas. The requirement will sting for two reasons. First, most federal judges in Texas are extremely conservative and are far less likely to safeguard the migrants rights. Even if they do, the government can appeal to the MAGA aligned, far right U.S. court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is all but certain to rule for the government, stern said. Second, the plaintiffs will probably have to file individual habeas petitions, pressing their cases on one by one, so the litigation will become far more laborious and time consuming. How they will gain access to a lawyer is another troubling question. In Bloomberg, Noah Feldman suggested there was no clear winner in the ruling. The most important thing to understand about the court's decision is that it vindicates the rule of law, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized in her dissent. All nine members of this court agree that the detainees must have judicial review. Feldman said the issue on which the justices split 54 was a technical but potentially important one. Could the Venezuelans pursue their claim against deportation in federal court in Washington through a normal lawsuit? Or must they seek review of their actual detention, which under the rules of habeas corpus can only be done in the district where they're being held? Both the majority and dissent agreed that for now, the court would not address the underlying question of whether the deportations are legal. But the majority did drop an ominous hint. The unsigned opinion noted that the act largely precludes judicial review, allowing only review necessary to vindicate due process rights, Feldman wrote. As a matter of law, this sentence does not dictate that the conservatives will ultimately uphold the use of the Alien Enemies Act. Formally speaking, if the law cannot be used to deport people from countries with whom we aren't at war, and if these particular Venezuelans aren't gang members, judicial review would still be necessary to vindicate their due process rights. In his one first newsletter, Steve Vladek wrote about the disturbing myopia of Trump versus jgg. I tend to preach caution before folks read too much into what the Supreme Court does through its rulings on individual emergency applications. But the more I read the court's Monday night ruling in Trump v. JGG, in which a 54 majority vacated a pair of temporary restraining orders entered by Chief Judge Boasberg in the Alien Enemy act case, the more I think this ruling really is a harbinger, and a profoundly alarming one at that, vladek said. To be clear, it's not a sweeping win for the Trump administration. The court did not suggest that what Trump is doing is legal or just as bad that it might not be subject to judicial review. Indeed, the court went out of its way to emphasize that individuals detained under the act are entitled to due process. The court seems willing to hide behind less obvious legal artifices to make it harder for federal courts to actually restrain conduct by the current administration that everyone believes to be unlawful, vladek wrote. There will be judicial review of the Trump administration's use of the Alien Enemy act, and that's a good thing. But the review we end up with will be far more impoverished than what was already unfolding before Chief Judge Boasberg. That review may still suffice in individual cases, but what the Court's ruling completely refuses to engage with, unlike Justice Sotomayor's dissent, which tackles it head on, is how much the Trump administration is attempting to use the Alien Enemy act systematically. Alright, let's head over to Isaac for his take.

Isaac Saul (20:34)

All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying. Which brings us to my take. So let me start with all the good things about this ruling. First, and most importantly, the Supreme Court has emphasized, indeed underlined, the government's obligation to grant unauthorized migrants due process. It was an odd spectacle to see President Trump celebrating victory, even as the Court was emphatic that he has wantonly violated the Constitution. This is the same point Andrew C. McCarthy is making under what the right is saying. All nine justices made it clear. While they were divided on the proper procedure for legal challenges to the administration's deportations, they unanimously agreed that the Executive Branch must afford due process to anyone accused of being an alien enemy. This was a major relief to me, and after I wrote about the importance of due process last week, I'm glad to see that the Court, despite its ideological diversity, unanimously shares my view. Justice Kavanaugh put it this way, quote Importantly, as the Court stresses, the Court's disagreement with the dissenters is not over whether the detainees receive judicial review of their transfers, all nine members of the Court agree that judicial review is available. The only question is where that judicial review should occur. This decision has practical consequences, too. It means that before any future deportations, the Trump administration must give anyone it claims is an alien enemy notice, which would allow the accused to file a habeas corpus petition wherever they are being confined. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, to the extent the government removes even one individual without affording him notice and a meaningful opportunity to file and pursue habeas relief if it does so in direct contravention of an edict by the United States Supreme Court. To me, this is the most meaningful part of this entire narrow, uncharacteristically short, four page ruling. The Supreme Court is unanimous that Trump violated the constitutional rights of the people he deported to El Salvador, and it is protecting the legal pathway they have to challenge the orders. Already, two of the Venezuelan migrants have sued. In light of the Court's ruling, on the other hand, the bad news is, well, not great. For starters, the Court did not consider Trump's use of the Alien Enemies act to justify the deportations, meaning that this ruling only gives a temporary procedural win that allows the administration to dress it up as a monumental victory, at least for now. The Supreme Court has provided no immediate relief for the people already deported to El Salvador under this act. And the administration can easily sell to the public the idea that everything they've done so far has been above board and legal, which it hasn't been. Furthermore, the Supreme Court determined that the correct way for litigants to challenge these deportations is through habeas corpus proceedings rather than the Administrative Procedure Act. There is a lot of technical legalese here, and legal experts are very divided in their view on that ruling. But the upshot is that migrants will have to individually challenge their deportations where they were detained, rather than suing against the order itself as a group in a D.C. courtroom. The Texas detention centers where these deportees were initially held are overseen by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a slew of conservative federal judges are likely to give the administration what they want, at least initially. Justice Sotomayor called out this potential outcome explicitly in her dissent. She said, quote, the government may well prefer to defend against 300 or more individual habeas petitions rather than all at once in D.C. court, especially because the government can transfer detainees to particular locations in an attempt to secure a more hospitable judicial forum. Taken together, this makes the court's ruling both relieving and incredibly frustrating. It is saying plainly that the deported migrants have had their constitutional rights violated, but making any challenge to rectify that violation as difficult, onerous, and unlikely to succeed as possible. Remember, lawyers for the Venezuelan nationalists have argued in court filings that many, perhaps most, of the men sent to this prison in March were not actually members of tda. We should want the legal defense pathways for the accused to be as broad, fair, and navigable as they can be. Imagine coming back from a trip to find you are issued an erroneous parking ticket, but are told you have to fight it in person by flying across the country to file an appeal you know is going to be initially rejected, even though it's well understood you never should have gotten the ticket in the first place. Except, instead of fighting a parking ticket at home, you're actually sitting in a prison in El Salvador with no way to get out. Now, we'll have to see how individual cases play out in the Fifth Circuit and how far judges there are willing to go to approve the Trump administration's actions. The courts move slowly, and Trump is moving fast. So if you're like me and interested in seeing people actually have their constitutional rights afforded before being shipped off to this prison, then the ruling is a decidedly mixed bag. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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Isaac Saul (26:42)

Right, that is it for my take. Which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from an anonymous reader in Washington, D.C. who said, I really appreciate your efforts at a balanced newsletter. You said that there are five events that will tell you whether there is a constitutional crisis or a danger to democr. You stated that one has already been transgressed. When all five signals are transgressed, won't it be too late to defend the rule of law? Okay, so this question, by the way, is in reference to an answer I gave in a mailbag from March 14 responding to a reader who asked what I think the Trump administration undermining democracy would actually look like. I detailed five things I'm keeping an eye out for. Quickly. I'll just recap them. The DOJ or FBI prosecuting Democrats without cause. The administration using the military against peaceful protesters, the erosion or end of fair elections. Democrats completely folding to Trump or genuinely restricting free speech. Of those five, I noted that the last one is already happening, with the Associated Press being removed from the White House press pool and protesters in the country on legal student visas being rounded up by ICE and deported. If all five are violated, then yes, at that point tangles sounding an alarm would be too late and pointless. But there are two points I'd like to make to that first of all, I don't think it's our job to declare the end of democracy. We are reporting the news day to day and we will raise serious concerns when it feels warranted. Number two, we are already covering all of these things as they happen. We are writing about and criticizing leadership changes at the FBI. We're writing about and criticizing Democrats for failing to act as an opposition party. And we're certainly critical of rulings from the court like today's that make it harder to legally challenge government actions that trample on individual rights. At the same time, it's important to continue to provide perspective. Wisconsin and Florida just had special elections which went off fairly whose results were not suspicious and that indicated Democrats electoral strength in a swing state. The Justice Department and FBI have not been investigating Democrats without cause. And even in areas where we've raised red flags, we aren't ringing loud alarm bells. The government is cracking down on student protesters, but some of those deportations are being checked by the courts and millions of people peaceful protested the government this weekend without President Trump setting the military on them. Democrats have not done much to slow down the Trump administration so far, but they remain an active opposition party and have recently introduced bipartisan legislation in Congress directly challenging President Trump's terrorists. And even the free speech infringements are getting pushback, as we saw on Tuesday, with a court ruling that the Associated Press must be reinstated to the White House press pool. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace.

John Lowell (29:34)

Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. On Monday, President Trump ordered a new review of Japanese steel manufacturer Nippon Steel's bid to acquire U.S. steel, a $14.9 billion offer that former President Joe Biden blocked in January. Trump's directive asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to assess the deal and submit a recommendation within 45 days on whether the measures agreed to by Nippon and US Steel are sufficient to mitigate any national security risks. The president had previously opposed the deal but recently appeared willing to reconsider it during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. CNBC has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of US Adults who support and oppose respectively deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador without letting them challenge the deportation in court is 26% and 61%, according to a March April 2025 YouGov poll. The percentage of Democrats who support and oppose respectively deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador without a court challenge is 5% and 89%. The percentage of independents who support and oppose respectively deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador without a court challenge is 22% and 62%. The percentage of Republicans who support and oppose, respectively, deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador without a challenge is 52% and 34%. The percentage of cases in the Supreme Court's 2020 and 2021 terms, respectively, in which Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted with her Republican appointed colleagues is 70% and 73%, according to Newsweek. The percentage of cases in the court's 2022 term that Justice Barrett voted with her Republican appointed colleagues is 56%. The percentage of court cases in 2020, 2021, 2022 and the 2023 terms, respectively, that Justice Barrett voted with the majority is 91%, 90%, 91% and 92%. And Barrett's Martin Quinn score for the court's 2023-2024 term is 68, the fourth most conservative score among the and last but not least, our have a nice day story. On January 9, a Texas state trooper was patrolling the Dallas North Tollway when he saw smoke rising from the site of an accident. Speeding to the scene, Trooper Cody Durham ran to aid the injured driver in the burning car. Durham was able to rescue the driver, carrying him as far from the fire as possible to receive medical attention. We're all humans, durham said, adding that helping people in danger was just part of the job. The New York Post has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, Please go to retangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day. Peace.

Isaac Saul (33:02)

Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit.

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