Closing summary
A legal dispute over the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century law designed to be used in wartime, to deport Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador is escalating, with some experts warning that the constitutional balance of power between the executive branch and the American court system is coming into question.
This, and other key news of the day:
On Monday, the White House denied violating a federal judge’s order this weekend to halt deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, while also arguing that the judge did not have authority to make that order. The administration had previously celebrated the highly publicized arrival of deportees to El Salvador on social media, while El Salvador’s president posted “Oopsie … too late” alongside an article about the US judge’s order.
Trump’s US border czar said publicly: “I don’t care what the judges think.”
Top Trump administration officials, including attorney general Pam Bondi, spent much of Monday publicly attacking the federal judge on the case, James Boasberg, claiming his rulings were an intrusion into the president’s foreign policy powers. A lawyer for the administration also asked the DC court of appeals to remove Boasberg from the case altogether, saying his rulings were out of line.
When Boasberg ordered a hearing at 5pm to ask a lawyer for the Trump justice department to clarify the timeline of the government’s actions with regard to the deportation flights to El Salvador before and after his order halting the deportations, the administration tried to cancel the hearing at the last minute, arguing they had no further information to provide.
When the judge ordered the hearing to continue, an attorney for the administration refused to provide any details about the flights or their timing, citing national security.
The Trump administration also argued during the hearing that it had in fact complied with Boasberg’s written order halting deportations, and that it did not have to also comply with what Boasberg had told them earlier in a verbal order, that they needed to return any flights of deportees currently in the air to the US for the next stages of the legal dispute. Boasberg called this “a heck of an argument”.
The Trump administration further argued that Boasberg’s order about returning the planes with deportees to the US only had authority while the planes were in US airspace, an assertion Boasberg disputed. (Other legal experts also disputed this.)
The ACLU’s lawyer in the case, Lee Gelernt, said at the hearing: “I think we’re getting very close” to a constitutional crisis.
Boasberg did not make any rulings following the hour-long hearing, but ordered the Trump administration to answer a series of questions about the flights, its invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and the national security issues it had raised, by noon on Tuesday.
Venezuela’s government characterized the transfer of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador as “kidnappings” that it plans to challenge as “crimes against humanity” before the United Nations and other international organizations, the AP reported.
Family members of Venezuelan migrants who have gone missing this weekend told reporters they were concerned for their loved ones. One woman said she had seen her 19-year-old brother among the men photographed being marched into a prison in El Salvador. Several disputed that their family members were gang members and said they believed they had been targeted because of their tattoos.
Trump announced on Truth Social that he was ending secret service protections for Joe Biden’s adult children, Ashley Biden and Hunter Biden.
Trump also said the government would release all of the remaining classified documents related to the assassination of President John F Kennedy on Tuesday, something he had pledged to do during his campaign.
Trump also said Joe Biden’s pardon of January 6 committee lawmakers was “void”, and his press secretary later said, without evidence, that the former president may not have been of sound mind when he gave it.
Meanwhile, the CEO of the non-profit US Institute of Peace said Monday that employees of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” had “broken into our building”, as part of an escalating standoff over the legal status of the Institute and whether Musk has authority over it.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senate minority leader, has reportedly canceled a book tour as he faces protests from members of his own party for providing votes crucial to the passage of a Republican spending bill.
Updated
Timeline of the deportation flights crisis
The Associated Press has made a timeline of Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants in the US to El Salvador this weekend.
The precise timing of these events is currently center of a heated legal battle that experts say risks turning into a constitutional crisis.
Saturday, 15 March
2.16am: Two legal advocacy groups – the ACLU and Democracy Forward – file suit on behalf of five Venezuelans held in immigration detention who fear they’ll be falsely labeled members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and deported under the Alien Enemies Act, which lawyers expect to be invoked soon.
9.40am: Judge James Boasberg issues a temporary restraining order preventing the government from deporting the five plaintiffs. He schedules a 5pm hearing on whether to expand it. The Trump administration swiftly appeals the order.
Roughly 4pm: The White House posts the order invoking the Alien Enemies Act.
5pm: Boasberg convenes a hearing and asks the government attorney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign, if the government plans to deport anyone under Trump’s new proclamation “in the next 24 or 48 hours”. Ensign says he doesn’t know and asks for time to find out, as the ACLU warns planes are apparently about to depart. Boasberg gives Ensign about 40 minutes to find out and recesses the hearing at 5.22pm.
5.26pm: An airplane with the tail number N278GX, believed by activists to be carrying deportees, leaves Harlingen, Texas, near the border with Mexico, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
5.45pm: Another airplane with the tail number N837VA, believed by activists to be carrying deportees, departs Harlingen.
About 5.55pm: Boasberg reconvenes the hearing. Ensign says he still has no specifics. The ACLU again warns that planes are leaving. Boasberg says he has to issue a new order to avoid anyone being immediately deported.
Around 6.45pm: Boasberg tells Ensign: “Inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.” He verbally issues his order, which stands for 14 days, and notes that immigrants protected by it will remain in US custody.
7.26pm: Boasberg’s written order is released.
7.36pm: The plane with the tail number N278GX lands in Honduras.
7.37pm: An airplane with the tail number N630VA, believed by activists to be carrying deportees, departs Harlingen.
8.02pm: The plane with the tail number N837VA lands in El Salvador.
9.46pm: The plane with the tail number N630VA arrives in Honduras.
10.41pm: The plane with the tail number N278GX departs Honduras.
Sunday, 16 March:
1.03am: The plane with the tail number N630VA arrives in El Salvador.
7.46am: El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweets a New York Post headline saying Boasberg had ordered planes turned around and adds “Oopsie … Too late” and a laughing/crying emoji.
8.13am: Bukele tweets footage of the deportees arriving and being processed into his country’s showcase prison.
Updated
The Trump administration claimed to a federal judge on Monday that it did not recall deportation flights of hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members over the weekend despite his specific instructions because that was not expressly included in the formal written order issued afterwards.
The administration also said that even if James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, had included that instruction in his formal order, his authority to compel the planes to return disappeared the moment the planes entered international airspace.
The extraordinary arguments suggested the White House took advantage of its own perceived uncertainty with a federal court order to do as it pleased, testing the limits of the judicial system to hold to account an administration set on circumventing adverse rulings.
An incredulous Boasberg at one stage asked the administration: “Isn’t then the better course to return the planes to the United States and figure out what to do, than say: ‘We don’t care; we’ll do what we want’?”
ACLU lawyer: 'I think we're getting very close' to a constitutional crisis
A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union made a memorable comment during the court hearing earlier today examining whether the Trump administration simply ignored a judge’s order to halt the deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.
Lee Gelernt is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the legal case over Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, which generated an order from US district judge James Boasberg’s telling the government to halt the deportations in question, and return any planes carrying the people being deported to the United States.
Whether the Trump administration defied that order, and what will happen if the administration refuses to follow legal orders from the judiciary in this or other cases, is currently in question. After a lawyer for the administration refused to provide any details in court today, citing national security concerns, Boasberg has ordered the administration to answer a series of questions about the deportations by noon tomorrow.
ACLU Lee Gelernt to a judge over the Trump admin's response to Judge Boasberg's order:
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) March 17, 2025
"There has been a lot of talk the last couple of weeks about a constitutional crisis. I think we’re getting very close to that."
Updated
Family members of missing Venezuelan migrants wonder if tattoos were a target
More from Reuters on the family members of Venezuelan migrants still searching for answers as they fear their loved ones were flown by the US government to a prison in El Salvador:
Solanyer Sarabia believes she saw her 19-year-old brother, Anyelo, among images shared online of the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador’s mega-prison. His head had been shaved and he was dressed in white prison garb.
Solanyer said an ICE officer told her that her brother was detained because of a tattoo that linked him to Tren de Aragua, a violent gang with Venezuelan prison origins that has spread through the Americas. She said the tattoo depicted a rose and that he had gotten it in a tattoo parlor in Dallas.
“He thought it looked cool, looked nice, it didn’t have any other significance,” she said, stressing that he is not a gang member.
Johanny Sanchez, 22, suspects her husband Franco Caraballo, 26, who was detained in Texas, could now be in El Salvador, but does not know for sure.
Caraballo had multiple tattoos including ones of roses, a clock with this daughter’s birth time, a lion and a shaving razor, said his wife.
“I’ve never seen him without hair, so I haven’t recognized him in the photos,” she said. “I just suspect he’s there because of the tattoos that he has and right now any Venezuelan man with tattoos is assumed to be a gang member”, she added, citing also the fact that he has effectively gone missing.
Sanchez said her husband has never been a member of Tren de Aragua.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the two cases.
Relatives of missing Venezuelan migrants desperate for answers after US deportations
Family members of Venezuelan migrants who suspect their loved ones were sent to El Salvador as part of a rapid US deportation operation over the weekend are struggling to get more information as a fraught legal battle plays out, Reuters reports.
The Trump administration has provided few details so far on the identities of the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador, a move that the Trump administration has said is legally justified using the president’s authority under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
“It’s extremely disturbing that hundreds of people were flown on U.S. government planes to El Salvador and we still have no information on who they are, their attorneys were not notified and families are left excruciatingly in the dark,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, the executive director at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
Advocates have launched a WhatsApp helpline for people searching for family members, while immigration attorneys have tried to locate their clients after they went dark.
Updated
White House removes advisory defining gun violence as a public health issue
The Trump administration has removed former surgeon general Vivek Murthy’s advisory on gun violence as a public health issue from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ website. This move was made to comply with Donald Trump’s executive order to protect second amendment rights, a White House official told the Guardian.
The “firearm violence in America” page, where the advisory had been posted, was filled with data and information about the ripple effects of shootings, the prevalence of firearm suicides and the number of American children and adolescents who have been shot and killed. Now, when someone reaches the site they will be met with a “page not found” message.
Updated
What’s been ordered: more details on the next steps of the deportation flights case
In an escalating battle between the Trump administration’s justice department and the federal judiciary, a Trump administration lawyer refused this evening to answer many questions that US district judge James Boasberg asked about whether the administration had violated his order this weekend demanding that deportation flights be returned to the US.
The Trump administration is arguing that the details of the flights are national security secrets it does not have to disclose, perhaps even to the judge.
Here’s what Boasberg has ordered the Trump administration to do by noon on Tuesday. Note that the judge has made clear that part of this information may be “sealed”, or not available to the public.
…the Government shall file a Notice, which may, if necessary, be sealed in part, setting forth: 1) A sworn declaration that no one on any flight departing the United States after 7:25 p.m. on March 15, 2025, was removed solely on the basis of the Proclamation at issue; 2) A sworn declaration setting forth when the Proclamation at issue was signed, when it was made public, and when it went into effect; 3) The Government’s best estimate of the number of individuals subject to the Proclamation currently remaining in the United States and how many are currently in U.S. custody; and 4) The Government’s position on whether, and in what form, it will provide answers to the Court’s questions regarding the particulars of the flights. Such form could include in camera review or in a classified setting. If the Government takes the position that it will not provide that information to the Court under any circumstances, it must support such position, including with classified authorities if necessary.
It’s worth noting that Boasberg, a federal judge, previously served a seven-year term on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to his official biography. Boasberg was nominated for that role by the current chief justice of the supreme court, John Roberts. That role involves a higher level of security clearance and frequently working with “top secret” and sensitive government information.
Updated
More details on the conflict that led to ‘Doge has broken into our building’
As the CEO of the non-profit US Institute for Peace says that employees of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” have “broken into our building”, Associated Press has more background on what’s happening, and on the dispute over the Institute of Peace’s legal status:
The DOGE workers gained access to the Institute of Peace building after several unsuccessful attempts Monday and after having been turned away on Friday, a senior US Institute of Peace official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
It was not immediately clear what the DOGE staffers were doing or looking for in the nonprofit’s building, which is across the street from the State Department in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.
President Donald Trump targeted the organization and a few others in a 19 February executive order that aims to shrink the size of the federal government. The administration has since moved to fire and cancel programs at some of those organizations.
DOGE has expressed interest in the U.S. Institute of Peace for weeks but has been rebuffed by lawyers who argued that the institute’s status protected it from the kind of reorganization that is occurring in other federal agencies.
On Friday, DOGE members arrived with two FBI agents, who left after the institute’s lawyer told them of USIP’s “private and independent status,” the organization said in a statement.
The US Institute of Peace says on its website that it’s a nonpartisan, independent organization “dedicated to protecting US interests by helping to prevent violent conflicts and broker peace deals abroad.”
The nonprofit says it was created by Congress in 1984 as an “independent nonprofit corporation,“ and it does not meet US Code definitions of “government corporation,” “government-controlled corporation” or “independent establishment.”
Updated
'Doge has broken into our building,' non-profit CEO says
Employees of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” have entered the US Institute of Peace despite protests from the non-profit that it is not part of the executive branch and is instead an independent agency, the Associated Press reports.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Musk’s employees entered the nonprofit “with the help of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department”, citing a phone call with Sophia Lin, a lawyer for the institute.
Per the New York Times: “Lin said that the U.S. Institute for Peace called the D.C. police on the Musk team members in an effort to stop them from trespassing because the institute has control of its own building and the land it sits on. But instead, the D.C. police allowed them to enter and kicked out the institute’s officials.”
We’ll share more information on this situation as it develops.
Updated
The president of a small US federal agency that invests in businesses in South America and the Caribbean has sued on Monday to block her firing last month by the Trump administration, the Associated Press reports:
After Sara Aviel was fired from the Inter-American Foundation, a Trump appointee declared himself the acting president and laid off almost the entire staff. Since then, the administration has canceled essentially all of the agency’s contracts.
“This wholesale gutting of the IAF by the Government flies in the face of the law,” Aviel said in her suit.
The Trump administration also targeted three other independent federal agencies for closure.
Updated
Venezuelan government calls deportation flights ‘kidnappings’, ‘crimes’
As the courtroom drama over the deportation flights built in the US today, so did international fallout over the deportations, the Associated Press reports:
Venezuela’s government on Monday characterized the transfer of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador as “kidnappings” that it plans to challenge as “crimes against humanity” before the United Nations and other international organizations. It also accused the Central American nation of profiting off the plights of Venezuelan migrants.
“They are not detaining them, they are kidnapping them and expelling them,” Jorge Rodriguez, President Nicolas Maduro’s chief negotiator with the US, told reporters Monday.
Reuters had some additional details on the reaction from Venezuelan officials, some of which we noted earlier today:
Venezuelans deported over the weekend to El Salvador by the United States have been denied due process, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, said on Monday.
Speaking at a press conference, Rodriguez said the people deported were not known to have committed any crimes in the United States or El Salvador, and that Venezuela would do everything it can to have them returned home. The Trump administration says those deported belong to the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has been linked to kidnapping, extortion and contract killings.
Of the more than 600 migrants who have been returned to Venezuela from the United States and Mexico on deportation flights since February, just 16 were facing some sort of judicial process and none were members of the Tren de Aragua, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said on state television.
Updated
Trump revokes Secret Service protection for Hunter and Ashley Biden
Donald Trump is revoking Secret Service protection for former president Joe Biden’s children Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden.
Trump made the announcement in a post on Truth Social, Reuters reports:
“Hunter Biden has had Secret Service protection for an extended period of time, all paid for by the United States Taxpayer,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“Please be advised that, effective immediately, Hunter Biden will no longer receive Secret Service protection. Likewise, Ashley Biden who has 13 agents will be taken off the list,” Trump added.
Trump’s announcement came hours after a reporter asked Trump about Hunter Biden’s Secret Service detail. The president said he had not been aware of it but would look into it.
Updated
Judge incredulous as administration contends verbal court order on deportation isn’t binding – report
Tonight’s high-stakes hearing, in which a Trump administration lawyer was asked whether the Trump administration simply ignored a judge’s order to halt deportation flights, ended around 6pm ET, and the bigger picture analysis of what happened is coming in.
My Guardian colleagues will have more on this soon, but the Associated Press has a quick and useful overview of what happened:
A federal judge on Monday was incredulous at the contention by the Trump administration that his directive to turn around deportation flights wasn’t binding because it was made verbally.
District court Judge James Boasberg made the demand Saturday night as he temporarily halted deportations under wartime powers President Donald Trump had declared minutes earlier under a rarely used 18th century law. But planes were already en route to El Salvador.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit asked Boasberg to determine if the administration violated his order. But an administration lawyer on Monday wouldn’t answer many of the judge’s questions, saying the judge had no right to the information.
Updated
Trump administration officials continue their attacks on deportation flight judge
CNN reports: “White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller today said the White House believes the Supreme Court will back its efforts to deport migrants.”
Earlier today, Miller attacked US district judge James Boasberg, who held a hearing today asking the Trump administration to explain whether it had simply ignored his order to turn around flights attempting to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members by invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798 that is meant to be used during wartime.
Stephen Miller (@stephenm): "A district court judge has no authority to direct the national security operations of the executive branch. The president is operating at the apex of his authority..." pic.twitter.com/aautEE0WDx
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 17, 2025
CSPAN has more on Miller’s comments:
Stephen Miller (@stephenm): "If a district court judge can be involved in the conduct of our foreign policy, under no definition do we have a democracy in this country we no longer have a democracy." pic.twitter.com/Qe6q8U6kT1
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 17, 2025
As we noted earlier, the Trump administration also wrote a letter today asking the United States court of appeals for the District of Columbia to remove Boasberg from the case:
Ensign: "This Court should also immediately reassign this case to another district court judge given the highly unusual and improper procedures—e.g. certification of a class action involving members of a designated foreign terrorist organization" https://t.co/JBTuJeQoRu
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Updated
Justice department must provide more details on deportation flights by noon on Tuesday
A high-stakes hearing over whether the Trump administration simply ignored a judge’s order to turn around its flights deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members has ended, multiple news outlets are reporting.
US district judge James Boasberg said he would not make any rulings today about whether the Trump administration violated his order, but has asked the administration to “tell him by noon on Tuesday exactly what time it believes his order stopping the deportation flights went into effect on Saturday”, the New York Times’ Alan Feuer reports.
Politico’s Kyle Cheney characterized Boasberg as “incredulous” in response to some of the Trump administration lawyer’s arguments that Boasberg’s order had no power outside of US airspace.
The hearing is over. Boasberg was incredulous that DOJ claimed he had no authority to order the plane to turn around just because it crossed out of US airspace — something he said was well-established in many contexts.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 17, 2025
He wants details about whether DOJ openly defied his order…
Updated
Could the Trump administration have responded to an order to turn around its deportation flights by complying with the order, and then taking legal action to appeal or modify it, Judge James Boasberg asks, rather “than say, ‘We don’t care.’”
Adam Klasfeld reporting from the deportation flights hearing just now:
Judge Boasberg presses the DOJ lawyer on what the government could have done with a ruling they believed to be unlawful: appeal or seek to modify it.
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) March 17, 2025
“Isn’t then the better course — to return the planes to the United States and figure out what to do, than say, ‘We don’t care;…
CNN similarly reports that Boasberg has characterized the justice department’s reasoning in response to his order as “‘We don’t care, we’ll do what we want.’”
Updated
Earlier today, an American legal expert said the legal argument the Trump administration is currently making at a court hearing “borders on the absurd”, and that it was also “contrary to well settled constitutional law”.
Michael J Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, told Reuters the Trump administration’s argument about the court order not applying because of the geographical location of the planes at a particular time “borders on the absurd” and was “contrary to well settled constitutional law” holding that federal officials are subject to the constitution no matter where they are.
“A governmental plane on governmental business is not in a law-free zone,” Gerhardt said, adding: “If that is not the case, then the government can simply do anything it apparently wants to do so long as it is not operating any longer on American soil.”
This is an argument that top Trump administration officials are also making publicly, Reuters reported.
“I think there’s a fundamental question to ask here, and that is: how can a judge sitting in Washington DC have jurisdiction over three planes filled of criminals flying over the Gulf of America?” secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Fox News, using the term Trump prefers for the Gulf of Mexico.
Updated
Another issue for the deportation flights: a court order’s validity outside of US airspace
The Trump justice department is also arguing that the judge’s order to turn around the deportation flights did not apply once the planes were in international air space. As my colleague Hugo Lowell reports, Judge James Boasberg is not particularly impressed with this argument:
Boasberg is unimpressed with DOJ's 2nd argument that the planes were in international airspace anyway. "The problem is the equitable power of United States courts is not so limited...equity is extra-territorial...it's not a question that the plane was or was not in US airspace"
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
The Trump administration is arguing that once the planes are in international airspace, US courts no longer have jurisdiction over them.
DOJ says they believe the court lost jurisdiction the moment the planes were outside of US airspace. "What we have said is that when they have been physically removed, the statue is complete and the court has lost jurisdiction."
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Boasberg flatly denies that the powers of a court order over US officials end based on geographical territory.
DOJ: "When an operation crosses into international territory, there are other powers at play beyond the Alien Enemies Act"
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Boasberg: "I think my equitable powers are pretty clear that they do not lapse at the airspace's edge. My equtiable powers do not lapse at that point."
Updated
‘Heck of a stretch’: deportation hearing focuses on judge’s oral versus written orders
The standoff between the Trump administration and the judiciary hinges in part over the Trump administration’s argument that it had to comply only with Judge James Boasberg’s written order that the deportation flights needed to be turned around, not the order he made aloud at a hearing.
Per my colleague Hugo Lowell:
DOJ says they think they complied with written order. They say Boasberg only said the planes needed to be turned around in oral statements at the hearing, and not in the written order, and "oral statements are not injunctions"
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Boasberg responded by calling the Trump administration’s attempt to differentiate between his oral and written arguments “a heck of a stretch”.
Boasberg is unimpressed: "You felt that you could disregard it because it wasn't in the written order. That's your first argument? The idea that because my written order was pithier so it could be disregarded, that's one heck of a stretch I think"
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Updated
Trump admin lawyer cites national security in refusal to answer deportation questions
As my colleague Hugo Lowell is reporting, the Trump administration’s lawyer is arguing in a high-stakes hearing that he cannot provide any answers to a judge’s question about the timing and number of deportation flights because of national security reasons.
Judge James Boasberg has called the hearing to determine if the administration continued with the deportation flights this week in violation of a court order.
DOJ says they will not provide answers about the flights -- when they took off and how many -- even to the judge, on national security grounds. Are the answers classified? Boasberg asks. DOJ needs to make a showing to say they won't tell even him
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Boasberg has responded that the Trump administration needs to provide more information in order to demonstrate that the information requested is classified, citing a key 1953 case.
Boasberg tells DOJ: "If what you're saying is it's classified and you can't tell me, then you're going to need to make a good showing. For example, in the state secrets case of US v Reynolds ... even then, you would have to make a showing to me"
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
The 5pm ET hearing over whether the Trump administration deported people in violation of a judge’s order has begun.
My colleague Hugo Lowell reports that the judge has opened with an explanation that the goal of the hearing is fact-finding on whether the Trump administration complied with his order temporarily barring certain deportations.
Chief Judge James Boasberg says today's hearing is fact-finding on government's compliance with his temporary restraining orders barring deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members. He's not planning to issue any rulings
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Abhishek Kambli, a lawyer for the justice department, has initially refused to provide more details in response to the judge’s questions, The New York Times’ Alan Feuer and my colleague both report.
DOJ lawyer says he's not liberty or authorized to disclose any info on how many deportation flights went ahead. Says no planes took off after the judge's written order came down
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Updated
Amid an escalating standoff today between Trump’s justice department and the judiciary that threatens to become a full constitutional crisis, Donald Trump has announced he will release the remaining classified files related to the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy, the Associated Press reports:
While at the Kennedy Center, Trump told reporters his administration will release 80,000 files on Tuesday, though it’s not clear how many of those are among the millions of documents that have already been made public.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said to reporters.
He also said he doesn’t believe anything will be redacted from the files.
“I said, ‘Just don’t redact. You can’t redact,’” he said.
Updated
Trump's justice department seeks removal of judge presiding over case on deportation flights
As my colleague Hugo Lowell reports, the Trump administration is now seeking to remove Judge James Boasberg from the deportation flights case, a further escalation in what legal experts are calling a “potential constitutional clash between Trump and judiciary”.
New: The Trump admin is asking the DC Circuit to kick Chief US district judge James Boasberg off the deportations case, complaining that he improperly turned it into a class action suit and that they cannot "and will not" be forced to answer nat sec questions at today's hearing
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
DOJ DAAG Drew Ensign: "The Government cannot—and will not—be forced to answer sensitive questions of national security and foreign relations in a rushed posture without orderly briefing... Answering them, especially on the proposed timetable, is flagrantly improper"
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Ensign: "This Court should also immediately reassign this case to another district court judge given the highly unusual and improper procedures—e.g. certification of a class action involving members of a designated foreign terrorist organization" https://t.co/JBTuJeQoRu
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 17, 2025
Updated
Judge denies Trump administration's motion to cancel hearing on deportation flights
US district judge James Boasberg has denied the Trump administration’s legal filing this afternoon asking cancel a planned 5pm hearing in which he has asked the administration’s lawyers to explain why his Saturday order temporarily blocking the deportation flights had apparently been ignored.
The Trump administration’s Monday filing, which argued that the hearing should be cancelled, said that the administration’s lawyers had no further information that they were authorized to share, and described cancelling the hearing as a way to “de-escalate the grave incursions on Executive Branch authority that have already arisen”.
The New York Times characterized the filing as a “brazen display of defiance”.
Several legal experts interviewed by Reuters have described the deportation flights as a direct challenge to the judicial branch’s independence, setting up a potential constitutional clash between the executive branch and the American judiciary.
Updated
Trump admin calls judge's oral order blocking deportation flights 'not enforceable'
Lawyers for the administration of Donald Trump argued that a judge’s oral order blocking the deportation of more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members was “not enforceable”, according to a court filing on Monday, Reuters reports.
In the filing, the Trump administration also argued that a 5pm hearing on the dispute today should be cancelled, because “plaintiffs cannot use these proceedings to interfere with the President’s national-security and foreign-affairs authority, and the Court lacks jurisdiction to do so.”
The New York Times characterized the Trump administration’s filing as a “brazen display of defiance”, noting that “the Justice Department had filed papers less than two hours before the 5 p.m. hearing was to be held,” in which district judge James E Boasberg was demanding an explanation from the Trump administration about why his Saturday order order temporarily blocking the deportation flights had apparently been ignored.
Updated
The day so far
The Trump administration is facing a backlash for flying undocumented migrants suspected of being part of a Venezuelan gang out of the country, despite a judge’s order to halt the deportation while court proceedings play out. At her briefing today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the removals a “counter-terrorism operation” and argued they had technically complied with the judge’s instructions at the time they were delivered. Advocacy groups representing some of the deportees disagreed, saying they were “extremely concerned” that the White House had defied the court’s orders. A hearing scheduled for 5pm may reveal more. Donald Trump busied himself with sending threats to Iran and visiting the Kennedy Center, where he promised to make Washington DC “great again”.
Here’s what else has happened today:
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senate minority leader, has reportedly canceled a book tour as he faces protests for providing votes crucial to the passage of a Republican spending bill.
Trump said Joe Biden’s pardon of January 6 committee lawmakers was “void”, and Leavitt later said, without evidence, that the former president may not have been of sound mind when he gave it.
The director of Project 2025 is very happy with the Trump administration’s decisions so far.
Reporters who traveled with Donald Trump to the Kennedy Center did not get to see much of him.
They were taken out of a room where he was speaking shortly after arriving there, though they did get to hear the president describe his interest in the cultural venue in the context of his desire to improve the capital city.
“We’re going to make our capital great again, just like we’re going to make our country great again,” Trump said.
The president’s return to the capital has been accompanied by a markedly different vibe from his first term, with city authorities moving to acquiesce to demands from the White House and its allies. Here’s more about that:
Venezuela has hit back at accusations made by the Trump administration against the 250 undocumented migrants deported to El Salvador, Reuters reports.
The White House has described the group as “terrorists” that were affiliated with Tren de Aragua, a gang based in Venezuela. Reuters reports that Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s national assembly and ally of president Nicolás Maduro, says those detained in El Salvador have been denied due process, and his government has no evidence that they are criminals. Here’s more:
The lawmaker added during a press conference that the people deported under a Trump administration claim that they belong to the Tren de Aragua gang are not known to have committed any crimes in the United States or El Salvador, and that Venezuela will do everything it can to have them returned home.
…
Rodríguez also said that he will ask the government of President Nicolas Maduro to issue a warning for Venezuelans not to travel to the United States, because it is not a safe place, and he urged Venezuelans who have migrated there to return.
“We will do everything we have to do so that our compatriots will return home, we will send all the planes we have to send to any part of the world,” he stated.
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Donald Trump has arrived at the Kennedy Center, the Washington DC-based cultural venue that he essentially took over after being sworn in.
He plans to tour the center and preside over a board meeting, days after JD Vance went to see a National Symphony Orchestra concert there, and was booed. Here’s more on his administration’s foray into the performing arts:
During last year’s presidential campaign, Democrats attacked Donald Trump as planning to implement Project 2025, a rightwing blueprint to remake America’s government. Trump responded by saying that he knows nothing about the plan, but the former director of Project 2025 now says he is very pleased with the Trump administration’s moves so far. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:
The director of Project 2025, a rightwing plan to dismantle the federal government which Democrats warned about last year and forced Donald Trump to attempt to disown it, said Trump’s actions in power were proving “way beyond my wildest dreams”.
Paul Dans was director of Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation, the hard-right group which has produced such policy plans for more than 40 years.
Project 2025 alarmed progressives with its advocacy of slashing government staffing and budgets and attacking protections for LGBTQ+ Americans; efforts to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion throughout government; attempts to tackle the climate crisis; and more.
Democratic attacks proved effective enough for Trump to claim he had “nothing to do” with the project. In July, as the Trump campaign scrambled to limit damage, Dans was forced out of his Heritage role.
Now, with Trump back in power, the president and his chief donor and ally, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, have mounted an assault on the federal government that has already led to thousands of firings, a bonfire of climate regulations, attacks on DEI initiatives real and imagined and much more.
“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans told Politico. “It’s not going to be the easiest road to hoe going forward. The deep state is going to get its breath back here, but the way that they’ve been able to move and kind of upset the orthodoxy, and at the same time really capture the imagination of the people, I think portends a great four years.”
Top Senate Democrat Schumer cancels book tour amid backlash to spending fight – report
Last week was a rough one for Democrats in Congress. The bad times began when Republicans moved ahead with a bill to authorize more government funding ahead of a Friday shutdown deadline, leaving the minority party, which objected to funding cuts in the legislation, in a pickle as to what to do.
House Democrats objected to the measure almost unanimously, but the real question was how Democratic senators would react, given that the bill needed at least eight of their votes to pass. Much of the caucus wanted to reject the legislation, but minority leader Chuck Schumer unexpectedly threw his support behind the measure, luring just enough Democrats for it to pass.
Schumer’s decision enraged many in his party, to the point that he is now the target of protests by liberal activists who believe he needlessly sacrificed leverage he could have used to stand up to the Trump administration. The New York Times reports that Schumer has opted to cancel a public speaking tour to promote a new book, citing “security concerns”:
Mr. Schumer was scheduled to participate in promotional events in Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, as well as a few stops in California, for his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning.” Many Democratic activists, desperate for their leaders to stand up to President Trump, have been staging protests outside of Mr. Schumer’s Brooklyn home and calling for his resignation. Online, they have been organizing protests for every stop on his book tour.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Schumer said that the tour was being rescheduled because of “security concerns.” But the move was immediately criticized by both the right and the left, who accused Mr. Schumer of being unwilling to face a restive public.
“We hope other Democratic senators continue meeting with their constituents and demand that their leadership fight with backbone,” Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in a statement.
Since voting on Friday for the stopgap bill, Mr. Schumer has been defending his decision to stave off a government shutdown, which he has said was the less devastating of two bad options that Senate Democrats were presented with. “I’ll take some of the bullets,” Mr. Schumer said of the vitriol directed at him.
“There is no off-ramp,” for a government shutdown, Mr. Schumer said in an interview Friday from his office just off the Senate floor. “The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” he said, referring to Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting team, the Department of Government Efficiency.
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Donald Trump is scheduled to speak with Russia’s Vladimir Putin tomorrow, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to share details of what the two leaders will discuss.
“I won’t get ahead of those negotiations, but I can say we are on the 10th yard line of peace, and we’ve never been closer to a peace deal than we are in this moment,” Leavitt told reporters.
Here’s more on what’s expected from the call, and what it may mean for Ukraine:
Asked about Donald Trump’s contention earlier today that Joe Biden’s pardons of January 6 committee members were invalid, press secretary Karoline Leavitt argued that the former president may not have been of sound mind when he approved the order.
“The president was begging the question that I think a lot of journalists in this room should be asking, about whether or not the former president of the United States, who I think we can all finally agree, was cognitively impaired,” Leavitt said
“The president was raising the point that did the president even know about these pardons? Was his illegal signature used without his consent or knowledge?”
Pressed at her briefing on whether the Trump White House had evidence that Biden was not aware of what he was signing, Leavitt replied:
You’re a reporter. You should find out.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a preview of the argument that Trump administration lawyers will make in court today, saying that all planes carrying alleged deportees had departed by the time they received a written order to stop them from federal judge James Boasberg.
But evidence has emerged that Boasberg verbally told administration lawyers not to let the planes leave before they departed, and to order any in the air to turn back. Asked about that, Leavitt suggested that verbal instructions for a judge are less binding than written ones.
“All of the planes subject to the written order of this judge departed US soil,” Leavitt said, before addressing the discrepancy:
There’s actually questions about whether a verbal order carries the same weight … as a written order, and our lawyers are determined to ask and answer those questions in court.
White House says 'confident' it will prevail in court challenges to deportation under Alien Enemies Act
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt further rejected claims that the Trump administration illegally deported 250 immigrants suspected of belonging to a Venezuelan gang.
“This administration acted within the confines of the law, again, within the president’s constitutional authority and under the authority granted to him under the Alien Enemies Act. We are quite confident in that, and we are wholly confident that we are going to win this case in court,” Leavitt said.
She also said that, despite reports to the contrary, the planes carrying the deportees had already left when a federal judge ordered them not to depart, and to turn back if they already had:
All of the planes that were subject to the written order, the judge’s written order, took off before the order was entered in the courtroom on Saturday, and the administration will, of course, be happily answering all of those questions that the judge poses in court later today.
White House describes deportations of suspected Venezuelan gang member as 'counter-terrorism operation'
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave the Trump administration’s version of events of the controversial deportation of undocumented immigrants suspected of belonging to a Venezuelan gang, describing it as “a counter-terrorism operation”.
The deportation appeared to fly in the face of a federal judge’s order that the migrants not be removed from the United States while he considered the legality invoking the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport them.
“President Trump signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act regarding the invasion of the United States by the foreign terrorist organization, Tren de Aragua,” Leavitt said at a press briefing. “At the president’s direction, the Department of Homeland Security carried out a counter-terrorism operation deporting nearly 200 violent Tren de Aragua terrorists, which will save countless American lives.”
In response to a question on why deportation planes were not turned around despite a judge’s orders to do so, Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan told reporters on Monday:
“The plane was already over international waters with a plane full of terrorists and significant public safety threats … The president did exactly the right thing.”
Homan went on to add:
“We removed terrorists. That should be a celebration in this country.”
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Democratic senators including Alex Padilla, Dick Durbin, Peter Welch and Cory Booker have released a statement on Donald Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which they argue is targeting immigrants without due process.
Together, the senators said:
“Let’s be clear: we are not at war, and immigrants are not invading our country. Furthermore, courts determine whether people have broken the law – not a president acting alone, and not immigration agents picking and choosing who gets imprisoned or deported.”
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Small-town USA is facing a “significant risk” that the Trump administration is going to abandon key elements of a $42.45bn Biden-era plan to connect rural communities to high-speed internet so that Elon Musk can get even richer, a top departing commerce department official warned in an email.
Evan Feinman, who headed up the so-called Bead program for the last three years, urged governors across the country to lobby their congressional delations in Washington to stop the Trump administration from implementing plans he said could have “deeply negative outcomes” for American homes and businesses.
“Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” Feinman said.
A copy of the email, which was first reported by Politico, was seen by the Guardian.
For the full story, click here:
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The Trump administration sent 250 people, who were mainly Venezuelan and alleged to be gang members, to El Salvador, where the government has opened its prisons to deportees from the United States.
Human Rights Watch warns that conditions in the prisons are dangerous and inhumane:
Detainees in El Salvador’s prison system are cut off from the outside world and denied any meaningful legal recourse. While [president Nayib] Bukele publicizes his prisons as “the best in the world,” the reality is very different. We have interviewed people released from these prisons and dozens who have relatives in jail. One after the other, we received and verified accounts of dismal detention conditions, torture and death.
One of the people we spoke with was an 18-year-old construction worker who said that police beat prison newcomers with batons for an hour. He said that when he denied being a gang member, they sent him to a dark basement cell with 320 detainees, where prison guards and other detainees beat him every day. One guard beat him so severely once, he said, that it broke a rib.
He said the cell was so crowded that detainees had to sleep on the floor or standing, an allegation we hear frequently, in a prison system where 108,000 detainees—1.7 percent of El Salvador’s population—are crammed into spaces meant for 70,000. The U.S. State Department itself has described these conditions as “life-threatening.”
Like many others, the former detainee said that prisons were filthy and disease-ridden. While the Salvadoran government has denied Human Rights Watch access to their prisons, doctors who visited detention sites told us that tuberculosis, fungal infections, scabies, severe malnutrition and chronic digestive issues were common.
El Salvador’s criminal justice system has a history of jailing US deportees, which has made their gang violence problem worse:
Sending people into such conditions would not only make the U.S. government complicit in violations of human rights, it would also repeat past mistakes. MS13 and Barrio 18, the brutal gangs that until recently terrorized neighborhoods across El Salvador, were born in part from deportations by the U.S. and from El Salvador’s harsh law enforcement practices. Deportations from the U.S. in the 1990s, during the Clinton administration, allowed these gangs to expand.
Mass arrests in the 2000s, which the Salvadoran government characterized as a way to curb the gangs, instead gave gang leaders the time and proximity to strengthen their internal structures in prison and a dehumanized population to recruit from. More U.S. deportations to El Salvador during the 2000s built upon this rotten foundation. Salvadoran authorities often assumed that people deported from the U.S. were members of criminal organizations and subjected many to arrests, torture, beatings, sexual assault, disappearances and killings.
Trump threatens Iran after wave of attacks on Houthis
After ordering a wave of military strikes against leaders of the Houthis in Yemen over the weekend, Donald Trump says he will in the future retaliate against Iran for any further attacks by the group.
Iran has long supported the Houthis, who have stepped up attacks on commercial vessels off Yemen’s waters in retaliation for Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Here’s what the president wrote on Truth Social:
Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN. Any further attack or retaliation by the “Houthis” will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there. Iran has played “the innocent victim” of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control. They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, “Intelligence.” Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!
Rallies in Yemen following the US attacks have brought tens of thousands of people out on to the streets. We have a live blog covering the reaction, and you can read it here:
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Judge orders Trump administration to explain if they defied his court order by deporting migrants
Federal judge James Boasberg has scheduled a 5pm hearing for the Trump administration to explain if they defied his order not to deport undocumented immigrants suspected of belonging to a Venezuelan gang.
Planes carrying the migrants arrived in El Salvador after Boasberg’s order, and attorneys for some of those deported have argued that it appears the administration willingly defied his instruction that they turn back or refrain from departing the United States. Top administration officials said they disagreed with Boasberg’s order, with some reportedly arguing that it did not apply to the aircraft because they were in international airspace when it was handed down.
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Russian asylum seekers were once allowed to remain temporarily in the United States while their case was being considered. That’s no longer the case, the Guardian’s Sofia Sorochinskaia reports:
For most of the four years of Joe Biden was in office, citizens of Russia and other post-Soviet states seeking asylum in the US were generally released into the country while they awaited hearings on their claim in immigration court.
But since last summer, many have been detained upon entering the US, and some of them have been held for more than a year, lawyers, activists and detainees say. Some children have been separated from their parents.
“My Russian clients tell me, ‘Now our prison is 80% Russian, the remaining 20% are from rotating nationalities who stay for a while,’” said immigration attorney Julia Nikolaev, who has been advocating for detainees’ rights alongside representatives of the Russian opposition. “Only Russians and a few other post-Soviet nationals remain in detention until their final hearings.”
Alexei Demin, a 62-year-old former naval officer from Moscow, was detained in July of last year.
In the last 20 years, Demin rarely missed an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in the Russian capital. He had become concerned almost immediately after Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power, he said. For years, he criticized Putin’s regime on Facebook, and he was detained twice at protests. Still, he never imagined that he would end up fleeing his homeland for fear that Putin’s regime would imprison him. Or that he would end up imprisoned in the US.
Politico has more details about Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) rationale for deporting Rasha Alawieh, a doctor and kidney specialist who was sent to Lebanon despite having a valid US visa.
CBP agents at Boston Logan international airport say Alawieh was found with images of Hezbollah leaders, and acknowledged attending the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Alawieh’s case raised concern because it appeared she was deported in violation of a court order that required a judge be given notice before she was removed from the country.
Here’s more:
Federal authorities say they deported a Lebanese doctor holding an American visa last week after finding “sympathetic photos and videos” of prominent Hezbollah figures in the deleted items folder of her cell phone.
Rasha Alawieh, a physician specializing in kidney transplants and professor at Brown University, also told Customs and Border Protection agents that while visiting Lebanon last month she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and supported him “from a religious perspective” but not a political one.
“CBP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that her true intentions in the United States could not be determined,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Sady wrote in a filing to the court.
The claims in court filings submitted Monday by Justice Department lawyers are the first public explanation of why Alawieh, 34, was deported Friday despite holding a U.S. visa typically issued to foreigners with special skills for a job that an employer claims difficulty finding American candidates to fill.
The assertions about Alawieh’s affinity for Hezbollah came shortly before a federal judge was scheduled to hold a hearing Monday on whether the government defied an order he issued Friday requiring that she not be deported without advance notice to the court. U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin postponed the hearing Monday morning just before it was to begin. He gave the government another week to submit further information about what happened with Alawieh.
CBP would never intentionally defy a court order, the government said.
CBP official John Wallace said in a sworn declaration filed with the court that CBP officials at Boston’s Logan Airport hadn’t received formal notification of the court order through official channels before Alawieh was put on an Air France flight bound for Paris Friday night.
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Rights groups say 'extremely concerned' government may have violated court order in deporting Venezuelans
Democracy Forward and the American Civil Liberties Union, who are representing a group of Venezuelans that Donald Trump ordered deported under the Alien Enemies Act, told a federal judge they fear that the government violated his order to keep the migrants in the country while he weighs their case.
In a motion filed today, the two rights groups point to evidence that the government allowed planes carrying alleged gang members, most of whom are from Venezuela, to depart for or continue flying to Central American countries even after federal judge James Boasberg said they should turn back.
“Plaintiffs remain extremely concerned that, regardless of which time is used, the government may have violated the Court’s command,” attorneys for the two groups wrote. They continued:
The government states that “some gang members subject to removal under the Proclamation had already been removed from United States territory under the Proclamation before the issuance of this Court’s second order … That phrasing strongly suggests that the government has chosen to treat this Court’s Order as applying only to individuals still on U.S. soil or on flights that had yet to clear U.S. airspace as of 7:26pm (the time of the written order). If that is how the government proceeded, it was a blatant violation of the Court’s Order.
Boasberg is expected to this morning further consider the case in Washington DC federal court.
A major legal showdown is brewing over Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members, most of whom are from Venezuela. The law, among the oldest in the United States, has not been used since the second world war, but Trump has argued it is necessary and likened stopping the flow of undocumented immigrants to fighting a war. Here’s more about the act, from the Associated Press:
Donald Trump on Saturday invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since the second world war, granting himself sweeping powers under a centuries-old law to deport people associated with a Venezuelan gang. Hours later, a federal judge halted deportations under the US president’s order.
The act is a sweeping wartime authority that allows noncitizens to be deported without being given the opportunity to go before an immigration or federal court judge.
Trump’s proclamation on Saturday identified Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang as an invading force. US district judge James Boasberg blocked anyone from being deported under the proclamation for two weeks and scheduled a Friday hearing to consider arguments.
The justice department says that Rasha Alawieh, a kidney specialist working in Rhode Island who was deported to Lebanon despite having a US visa, had “sympathetic” photos and videos of Hezbollah leaders on her phone, according to Politico.
Alawieh’s deportation raised concerns because a judge had required 48 hours’ notice before being sent out of the country, and because she was detained despite having a valid visa and a job in the United States. Her lawyers have alleged that Customs and Border Protection ignored that order, and Massachusetts federal judge Leo Sorokin is expected to consider the matter this morning.
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Donald Trump was also asked about his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members, most of whom are from Venezuela.
A reporter noted that the act had only previously been used during wartime, prompting the president to argue that the United States was at war right now.
“This is a time of war,” Trump said, before repeating his argument that Joe Biden purposefully allowed undocumented immigrants into the country.
“It’s an invasion, and these are criminals, many, many criminals.”
In addition to his hardline enforcement of immigration laws, Donald Trump told reporters that he expects the supreme court to weigh in on his attempt to fire all probationary federal employees.
Last week, two federal judges ruled that many of those let go should be reinstated.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous, absolutely. It’s a judge that’s putting himself in the position of the president of the United States that was elected by close to 80 million votes,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One, referring to one of two rulings.
“It’s a very dangerous thing for our country. I would expect that we’re going to have to get a decision from the supreme court.”
A look back at the court’s order:
Trump attacks Biden's pardon of January 6 committee members
Donald Trump, once again posting on social media in the early morning hours, said Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons of lawmakers on the January 6 committee are invalid because the outgoing president did not sign them personally.
Trump said Biden signed the order by Autopen, as presidents often do, but in this case, it’s invalid. From his Truth Social account:
The “Pardons” that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!
The pardons of the House lawmakers who investigated the attack on the Capitol were one of Biden’s final actions in office, and came after months of threats from Trump to investigate them:
Donald Trump may be all in on tariffs, but the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani reports that many Americans are not, including a sizable number of Republicans:
Americans are increasingly concerned about Donald Trump’s bid to overhaul the US economy with sweeping tariffs on foreign goods, according to an exclusive poll for the Guardian, despite the US president’s efforts to downplay the risks of his strategy.
“Have no fear, we will WIN everything!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday, claiming that tariffs were already “pouring money” into the country.
But fears are growing. When given a list of issues including inflation, healthcare and immigration, 72% of Americans said they are concerned about tariffs.
The survey was conducted by the Harris Poll in early March. When it conducted the same survey in mid-January, 61% of those polled said tariffs were a concern.
A lot has changed since then. Since returning to the White House, Trump has pushed for tariffs against many of the US’s key trading partners. He tacked on an extra 20% tariff on Chinese imports and hiked tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.
White House set for legal showdowns over Trump's controversial deportation orders
The Trump administration is facing a number of legal battles after controversial deportations led to court orders and accusations of defying the judiciary.
In Massachusetts this morning, judge Leo Sorokin will demand answers regarding the deportation of Dr Rasha Alawieh, a 34-year-old Rhode Island-based kidney specialist.
Alawieh, who was reportedly holding a valid US visa, was sent back to Lebanon on Friday, despite a court order requiring 48 hours’ notice before any deportation. Her legal team claims Customs and Border Protection wilfully ignored the judge’s directive, Politico reported.
Judge Sorokin, who issued the temporary order on Thursday, has asked for an explanation in today’s hearing, calling the allegations of contempt “serious”. Alawieh’s attorneys have provided a detailed timeline supporting their claims, which could lead to further legal repercussions.
Meanwhile, in Washington DC, a federal judge has accused the White House of disregarding his order to halt the deportation of two planeloads of Venezuelans to an El Salvador prison.
The deportations are part of Trump’s wider crackdown on foreign nationals, which included invoking the rarely used Alien Enemies Act, a move last implemented as part of wartime measures.
Despite the court order, the White House insisted that the flights had already left US airspace by the time it was issued, a position that legal experts are querying. Both cases now appear headed for the supreme court.
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The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address.
On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message. The URL was also changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.
Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor by then president Richard Nixon in 1970, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base.
According to the West Virginia military hall of fame, Rogers was the highest-ranking African American to receive the medal. After his death in 1990, Rogers’s remains were buried at the Arlington national cemetery in Washington DC, and in 1999 a bridge in Fayette county, where Rogers was born, was renamed the Charles C Rogers Bridge.
Trump says no exemptions on US steel and aluminum tariffs
President Donald Trump said he has no intention of creating exemptions on steel and aluminum tariffs and said reciprocal and sectoral tariffs will be imposed on 2 April.
Last month, Trump raised tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum to a flat 25%, without exemptions or exceptions, in a move that was designed to help US industry while contributing to an escalating trade war, Reuters reported.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said reciprocal duties on US trading partners would come alongside auto duties.
“In certain cases, both,” Trump said when asked if he would be imposing sectoral and reciprocal tariffs on 2 April. “They charge us, and we charge them. Then, in addition to that, on autos, on steel, on aluminum, we’re going to have some additional,” he said.
Trump has said previously that he would impose reciprocal tariffs on US friends and foes alike at the beginning of April.
Updated
US deports 250 alleged gang members to El Salvador despite court ruling to halt flights
The US deported more than 250 mainly Venezuelan alleged gang members to El Salvador despite a US judge’s ruling to halt the flights on Saturday after Donald Trump controversially invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law meant only to be used in wartime.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said 238 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and 23 members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 had arrived and were in custody as part of a deal under which the US will pay the Central American country to hold them in its 40,000-person capacity “terrorism confinement centre”.
The confirmation came hours after a US federal judge expanded his ruling temporarily blocking the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority that allows the president broad leeway on policy and executive action to speed up mass deportations.
The White House said the judge had no authority to block the deportation.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft ... full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from US soil,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
She said the court had “no lawful basis”.
The US district judge James Boasberg had attempted to halt the deportations for all individuals deemed eligible for removal under Trump’s proclamation, which was issued on Friday. Boasberg also ordered deportation flights already in the air to return to the US.
“Oopsie … Too late,” Bukele posted online, followed by a laughing emoji.
Soon after Bukele’s statement, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, thanked El Salvador’s leader.
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Trump to attend Kennedy Center for board meeting after Vance booed by audience
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with news that president Donald Trump will visit the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Monday after ousting its leadership, taking over as chair, and seeking to put his stamp on the renowned arts institution.
Trump will preside over a Kennedy Center board meeting in his new role on Monday afternoon, Reuters reported.
“We have to straighten it out,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One after spending the weekend in Florida, referring to an arts organization that has enjoyed bipartisan support for decades.
Last month Trump became chair of the Kennedy Center and fired its longtime president, Deborah Rutter. He installed his former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, as interim president.
Vice-president JD Vance and his wife, Usha, who is now a member of the board, attended a recent performance at the Kennedy Center. After they entered the theater, the crowd booed.
In other news:
President Donald Trump has said he has no intention of creating exemptions on steel and aluminum tariffs and said reciprocal and sectoral tariffs will be imposed on 2 April. Last month, Trump raised tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum to a flat 25%, without exemptions or exceptions, in a move that was designed to help US industry while contributing to an escalating trade war, Reuters reported. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said reciprocal duties on US trading partners would come alongside auto duties.
As Trump and Putin prepare to speak, there have been concerns that the settlement being pushed for by the Trump administration would look a lot like an outright Russian victory, at the expense of Ukraine and its allies in Europe. Trump and Putin last week set off further alarm bells in Kyiv by exchanging friendly words, as the new US administration cosies up to Moscow while attacking Ukraine with threatening language and the withdrawal of some military support.
For weeks, Donald Trump and Republicans have insisted that social security, Medicaid or Medicare would not “be touched”. Now Musk has suggested the programs would be a primary target.
The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address. On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message. The URL was also changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.
Federal employees in a little-known office dedicated to tech and consulting services were at work on the afternoon of 3 February when Elon Musk tweeted about their agency for the first time. “That group has been deleted,” Musk wrote.
Trump’s administration is being accused by activists of a quid pro quo as it attempts to fast-track a controversial fossil fuel pipeline proposal in Michigan that would in part be built by a donor with deep financial ties to the president.
Trump’s second term is more direct, determined and intentional, and includes the cultural equivalent of precision airstrikes against the mostly liberal residents of Washington DC, the Guardian’s David Smith writes.
Trump on Saturday invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since the second world war, granting himself sweeping powers under a centuries-old law to deport people associated with a Venezuelan gang. Hours later, a federal judge halted deportations under the US president’s order. What is the Alien Enemies Act and can Trump use it to deport gang members?
