A second ruling finds that the government wrongly sent a man to an El Salvador prison under wartime law despite legal protections

A federal judge in Maryland has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of another man who was sent to an El Salvador prison as part of the government’s push to swiftly remove alleged members of a Venezuelan gang.

The man, identified only as Cristian in court documents, was born in Venezuela and came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor. He and others who came to the country as children reached a settlement agreement with the government in November that prohibited their removal while their asylum applications were pending. 

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/trump-administration-must-seek-to-return-another-wrongly-deported-man-judge-rules-ccdfed29

• US judge had ordered that the man remain in Pennsylvania
• Supreme Court ruling halted deportation effort last week
• Transfer shows Trump’s aggressive deportation tactics

President Donald Trump‘s administration moved a Venezuelan man who had worked in construction in Philadelphia to Texas for possible deportation after a federal judge had issued an order blocking his removal from Pennsylvania or the United States, according to court records.

A plane transporting the man took off on April 15 from an airport in the state capital Harrisburg about a half hour after U.S. District Judge Stephanie Haines issued an order temporarily blocking the administration from moving him out of her western Pennsylvania judicial district or the country, Justice Department lawyer Laura Irwin told an April 17 hearing, conducted as a conference call.

https://archive.is/zw6N1

Joe Kasper will continue to support and advise the Pentagon, he said, but as a special government employee.

A former longtime chief of staff to indicted Rep. Duncan Hunter, Kasper was a leading figure in the firings of senior adviser Dan Caldwell, Hegseth deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg. The trio were ousted last week in a leak investigation.

Some officials saw the wave of firings as a bid by Kasper to consolidate power.

“Kasper did not like that those guys had the secretary’s ear,” a person familiar with the dynamic said. “He did not like that they had walk-in and hanging-out privileges in the office. He wanted them out. It was a knife fight.”

It’s a dog-eat-dog world!

Controversial Hegseth chief of staff to leave Pentagon

Joe Kasper will continue to support and advise the Pentagon, he said, but as a special government employee.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/24/hegseth-chief-of-staff-pentagon-leaving-00308721

While Hegseth threatens to have his underlings prosecuted, he can’t keep his own house in order:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had an internet connection that bypassed the Pentagon’s security protocols set up in his office to use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer, two people familiar with the line told The Associated Press.

The existence of the unsecured internet connection is the latest revelation about Hegseth’s use of the unclassified app and raises the possibility that sensitive defense information could have been put at risk of potential hacking or surveillance.

Known as a “dirty” internet line by the IT industry, it connects directly to the public internet where the user’s information and the websites accessed do not have the same security filters or protocols that the Pentagon’s secured connections maintain.

Other Pentagon offices have used them, particularly if there’s a need to monitor information or websites that would otherwise be blocked.

Hegseth had an unsecured internet line set up in his office to connect to Signal, AP sources say

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had an internet connection that bypassed the Pentagon’s security protocols set up in his office to use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer.

https://apnews.com/article/hegseth-signal-chat-dirty-internet-line-6a64707f10ca553eb905e5a70e10bd9d

Trump’s crony & billionaire F’Elon Musk isn’t above looting the treasury by pretending to be a “small” business:

Musk founded Boring in 2017 as a subsidiary of SpaceX. Its raison d’être was rectifying Southern California gridlock via a subterranean transportation network, though it has failed in that regard. In 2018, Musk spun off Boring, making it a privately held company that has largely served to promote his car manufacturer, Tesla. Through the gravity of its founder, carefully staged photo ops, and alleged environmental and labor violations, Boring has maintained media interest throughout its eight years of existence. But it remains the least distinguished of Musk’s companies. It has struggled to generate revenue despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising.

The company, which is based near Austin, Texas, has built just a few miles of commercial tunnels, all of which are located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Its failure to generate substantive business could explain why it would seek federal funding from a White House that has proven to be partial to Musk’s business interests. A senior Trump adviser, Musk also leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the White House’s austerity and parapolitical initiative. Steve Davis, the president of the Boring Company, is reportedly in charge of DOGE’s day-to-day operations.

Musk-owned company says it qualifies for federal contracts reserved for small businesses

Not long after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Elon Musk’s $7 billion tunneling company registered as a small business on a government portal for federal contractors.

https://www.muskwatch.com/p/musk-owned-company-says-it-qualifies

The many contradictions of the vice-president should not distract from his ambition

It was inevitable that memes about JD Vance would surface the moment Pope Francis passed away. “It’s good to see you in better health,” the US vice-president told the pope on Sunday. The pontiff died on Monday.

As Donald Trump’s chief attack dog — though not yet his heir apparent — Vance is a prime target of ridicule on liberal social media. But he is also a master troller himself. Vance knows that the surest path to Maga hearts and Trump’s approval is to enrage liberals. The question is whether he means anything by it.

And this:

The answer is unclear. Vance has gone from being a never-Trumper who saw Trump as “America’s Hitler” to an arch-Trumper who sees his boss as part of God’s plan. That is as dramatic a political conversion as can happen. Rather than search for an intellectual key, Vance’s shift can be put down to ambition. The better question is whether there are any limits to his ambition. Judging by his performance so far, the answer is not really.

What this last paragraph indicates is that we can’t trust J.D. Dunce to be the person that he pretends to be. He’s an opportunist, a weasel, pure and simple!

https://archive.is/fyhWg

Experts say Pentagon chief has endangered secrets of US defense department and given assistance to foreign spies

As more develops about the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his repeated disclosures of sensitive military intelligence in unsecured Signal group chats, there are growing concerns his behavior has weakened the Pentagon in the eyes of its foreign adversaries and made him and his entourage a top espionage target.

Allies, already concerned by Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, have also begun to see the US as an intelligence-sharing liability. There are fears that the mounting firings and leak inquiries in Hegseth’s orbit, along with his inability to manage these internal crises, exposes the entire global US war footing – especially, if a geopolitical and external crisis comes across his desk.

Fears grow that Signal leaks make Pete Hegseth top espionage target

Experts say Pentagon chief has endangered secrets of US defense department and given assistance to foreign spies

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/23/pete-hegseth-pentagon-espionage

A feud between the secretary’s advisers and his chief of staff created backbiting and distrust that has erupted into the open.

When President Donald Trump chose Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary, incoming officials knew they’d need to surround the inexperienced Fox News host with accomplished staff who could handle the nation’s largest bureaucracy. Hegseth would be the show horse, they figured, and others at the top would keep the Pentagon on track.

What happened was the opposite. Hegseth surrounded himself with advisers who quickly turned into vicious rivals for power — whose bitter brawl has now unraveled into revenge power plays, surprise firings, accusations of leaking and embarrassing headlines that are blowing up the Pentagon, distracting from Trump’s agenda and possibly jeopardizing Hegseth’s job.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Just consider that they’re not starting with the finest of people.

The vicious rivalries tearing apart Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon

A feud between the secretary’s advisers and his chief of staff created backbiting and distrust that has erupted into the open.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/22/pentagon-infighting-hegseth-fired-officials-00302709

ActBlue is widely considered one of the pillars of the Democratic Party’s digital ecosystem.

Trump is now trying to sic his politicized Department of Justice on the Democrats’ fund raisers:

President Donald Trump signed an executive memorandum Thursday aimed at investigating ActBlue, the leading Democratic fundraising platform.

The memorandum directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to “investigate allegations regarding the unlawful use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions or foreign contributions to political candidates and committees, and to take appropriate action to enforce the law.”

It specifically names ActBlue as an online fundraising platform being used “to improperly influence American elections.”

Trump takes executive action targeting ActBlue, the main Democratic fundraising platform

ActBlue is widely considered one of the pillars of the Democratic Party’s digital ecosystem.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-expected-sign-memo-targeting-act-blue-rcna202673

Immigration authorities did not have an arrest warrant when agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security said in a court filing this week.

The big picture: Khalil, a leader of Columbia’s pro-Palestinian protests, is a legal U.S. resident who has been in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since last month. His arrest sparked outcry across the U.S.

Zoom in: Government lawyers argue in the filing that DHS was not required to obtain a judicial arrest warrant before taking Khalil, a U.S. green card holder from Syria, into custody on March 8.

• The “officers had exigent circumstances to conduct the warrantless arrest, it is the pattern and practice of DHS to fully process a respondent once in custody,” wrote the lawyers in the document that was originally filed in immigration court Wednesday and submitted to federal court Thursday

• They argued agents had reasons to believe Khalil “would escape before they could obtain a warrant” when they approached him inside the foyer of his apartment building.

• Khalil was eventually served an arrest warrant after being taken into custody and transported to an ICE office in New York.

The other side: The revelation contradicts what agents told Khalil at the time of his arrest and what agents wrote in the arrest report, Khalil’s lawyer said.

• “The government’s admission is astounding, and it is completely outrageous that they tried to assert to the immigration judge – and the world – in their initial filing of the arrest report that there was an arrest warrant when there was none,” said Khalil’s attorney, Marc Van Der Hout, in an emailed statement.

• Van Der Hout called it “egregious conduct by DHS that should require under the law termination of these proceedings.”

Never forget: Cops lie. All. The. Time.

Mahmoud Khalil was arrested without a warrant, DHS lawyers Trump admin lawyers say

The revelation contradicts what agents told Mahmoud Khalil at the time of his arrest, his lawyer said.

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/24/mahmoud-khalil-detained-ice-arrest-warrant