Trumpwatch 2.0

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AP:
An immigration judge rules that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported. His lawyers are expected to appeal.

MarketWatch:
U.S. stocks end sharply higher to end tumultuous week on Wall Street.

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Politico:
Military contractors are pitching the White House on an unprecedented prison plan for detained immigrants.

Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and a team of defense contractors are pitching the White House on a plan to vastly expand deportations to El Salvador — transporting thousands of immigrants from U.S. holding facilities to a sprawling maximum security prison in Central America.

The proposal, exclusively obtained by POLITICO, says it would target “criminal illegal aliens” and would attempt to skirt U.S. immigration laws by designating part of the prison — which has drawn accusations of violence and overcrowding from human rights groups — as American territory.

It’s unclear how seriously the White House is considering the plan by Prince, who has drawn scrutiny for his firm’s role in a deadly massacre in Iraq two decades ago. But it would give Prince’s group an unprecedented and potentially highly lucrative role in an expanded version of a transnational operation that has elicited its own web of controversies, in part because it has swept up immigrants who do not have criminal records in the United States.

[Matt]

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/busin ... 044566007/

[Matt]

Gross: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/ ... 050264007/

[Honeyman]

https://bsky.app/profile/pagk786.bsky.s ... hiane2qs26

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AP:
Iran says “indirect talks” have begun with a U.S. envoy over Tehrans rapidly advancing nuclear program.

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AP:
The Trump Administration says some electronics like smartphones and laptops will be excluded from “reciprocal” tariffs.

[Matt]

These people are despicable: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/ ... 062756007/

[MegaHertz]

These people are despicable: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/ ... 062756007/

I miss our right wing friends coming in here and defending this shit. Especially when they couldn't and would revert to "he's doing what a majority of Americans voted him in for. Promise made, Promise kept. Joe Biden. Obama."

[TC Talks]

They were all losers, and the fact that one worked in Christian Radio tells you all you need to know about their character.

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ABC:
President Trump “remains in excellent health”, according to the results of his annual physical, White House physician says.

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Politico on the Administrations latest flouting of court orders surrounding the illegally deported Maryland man. Now they say they’ll change his status to let him back in if El Salvador lets him go but they won’t intervene.

The Trump administration insisted Sunday that it has no legal obligation to arrange for the return of a Maryland man illegally deported from the United States, arguing that a Supreme Court ruling last week only requires officials to admit him into the country if he makes it back from a high-security prison in El Salvador.

Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that they don’t interpret the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling — that the administration “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release — as obligating the administration to do anything more than adjust his immigration status to admit him if El Salvador’s government chooses to release him.

With El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele set to meet President Donald Trump Monday, DOJ attorneys argued the courts have no power to require the administration to engage with the Salvadoran government to reach a diplomatic solution. They contend such a potential order would amount to a violation of the separation of powers and an intrusion into what they allege is unfettered presidential power to conduct foreign relations.
“All of those requested orders involve interactions with a foreign sovereign — and potential violations of that sovereignty,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in a seven-page submission to U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. “[A] federal court cannot compel the Executive Branch to engage in any mandated act of diplomacy or incursion upon the sovereignty of another nation.”

The administration’s position suggests officials do not view the Supreme Court’s order as compelling them to seek Abrego Garcia’s return. The Salvadoran native entered the country illegally around 2011 and had been living in Maryland. The Trump administration has admitted it deported him to El Salvador in violation of a 2019 immigration court order barring his deportation to that country. Though Abrego Garcia was denied asylum, a judge found he could not be sent to his home country because of a legitimate fear of persecution by a local gang.

The administration continued Sunday to flout a Friday order from Xinis to deliver “daily updates” to the court describing its efforts to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. Sunday’s update from Evan Katz, the assistant director of removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the administration had “no updates” for the judge. A day earlier, in a similarly threadbare update, the administration turned to Michael Kozak, the State Department’s senior bureau official in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, who said Abrego Garcia was still alive in El Salvador’s CECOT prison.

The administration is also bucking demands from Abrego Garcia’s attorneys that officials detail the arrangement to ship hundreds of foreign nationals to a notorious prison in El Salvador. One of the Sunday filings insists those details are classified and could be subject to attorney-client and state secrets privileges.

“It would be inappropriate for this Court to hastily order production of these sensitive documents,” Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign wrote.

The administration also said it would resist efforts by Xinis to demand testimony from officials about their thinking on Abrego Garcia’s potential return, saying such disclosures “could interfere with ongoing diplomatic discussions — particularly in the context of President Bukele’s ongoing trip to the United States.”

Still, the administration’s narrow view of its obligations under the Supreme Court’s ruling appears to up the stakes of a hearing Xinis has scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to assess the steps officials are taking to arrange for Abrego Garcia’s return.

[Chrocket87]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... nsion.html

Judging by his social media posts, I’m sure he was inspired by those “pro-Hamas” protests, right?

[Circle Seven]

Dollar Tree raised prices quite a while ago. Basically it's the Dollar Twenty Five Tree now.

Seemed to me it would of been a good idea to round it up to where, after taxes, it came out to an even $2.

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Politico:
In a meeting with Trump, El Salvador’s President refused to return a man the U.S. illegally deported. Pam Bondi also insisted “that it’s not up to us”.

Imagine that. They really did use the “you and what army?” Bullet on this trivial issue. I thought for sure they would save it for impoundment or something big like that and just let this guy come back.