There we go, Trump is going to ignore the Supreme Court, America is officially a dictatorship.

COLLINS: You said that if SCOTUS said someone needed to be returned you would abide by that. You said that on Air Force One just a few days ago

TRUMP: Why don't you just say, 'isn't it wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country?' That's why nobody watches you anymore.

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 14 April 2025 at 17:04

COLLINS: Can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return Garcia?

BUKELE: How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous

TRUMP: These are sick people

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 14 April 2025 at 17:02

Rubio: "No court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 14 April 2025 at 17:04

Remember when Trump's team committed a massive security fuck up that has now been swept under the rug and nobody is talking about it anymore, the media has moved on and nobody was punished? That's how him defying the Supreme Court will go I bet. America is a failed state. The checks and balances were actually in fact, non-existent.

Trump says he'd like to deport US citizens to El Salvador: "I'd like to go a step further. I don't know what the laws are, we always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways... I'd like to include them in the group of people to get out of the country"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 14 April 2025 at 17:09

HEMMER: Will Mahmoud Khalil be deported?

STEPHEN MILLER: Yes he will, as will anyone who preaches hate for America.

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 14 April 2025 at 14:34

Nazi America. El Salvador will be America's Auschwitz where they send innocent people to die meanwhile being critical of Israel already gets you deported, next step will be deporting anyone critical of Trump. They're already blocking people from entering who are critical of Trump.

Absolutely terrifying for Americans that Trump can deport an innocent man without due process then refuse to bring him back, ignore multiple courts orders, ignore the Supreme Court. If he gets away with this then he can literally deport anyone he wants. Nobody will be safe. 

Here's Trump saying to Bukele that "homegrown criminals are next" and talking about how El Salvador will need to build "about five more places."

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— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) 14 April 2025 at 17:31

What are they even supposed to do with the "criminals" in El Salvador? Will they just put them in those huge jails until they die or what will happen with them after they can leave the jail? And many will obviously be real criminals so will they all run around in that small country in some years?

And the only people who will really profit from that money is the president and some of his mates.

One of the biggest mistakes the Founding Fathers made was separation of executive and legislative powers. The President should have been made firmly subordinate to Congress. Honestly, the President should have acted only as head of state and commander-in-chief in times of war. The Speaker of the House should have been designated as head of government. Removing a bad president should also have been a matter simply of the House calling a no-confidence vote, rather than an elaborate impeachment process that requires 67 percent of the Senate to agree to a conviction, or perhaps the trial should have been conducted by the Supreme Court. South Korea had the same problem with Yoon, but they ultimately managed to drag the impeachment process across the finish line and get him out of office. 

But, it is what it is, I guess. 

At best, the El Salvador prison will be like Robben's Island, where Mandela was kept in detention for 18 years. 

At worst, Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen.

Trump seems to want to treat North and South America as the American Empire, and Bukele seems happy to be his loyal vassal. 

Trump repeats threat of attack on Iran

The US president has been asked whether a potential response to any Iranian push for a nuclear weapon would include a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Of course it does,” Trump said.

Iran and the US held talks over the weekend, but Trump expressed some impatience at the pace of the talks before the next round this coming weekend.

“I think they’re tapping us along,” Trump said. “These are radicalised people, and they cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

The radicalized people are the Maga supporters. There's no appetite for war in Iran, Iran isn't posing any threat to the US. It's Netanyahu that wants the US to attack Iran to get rid of the last bit of resistance worth a damn to his genocidal expansionist policies.

Netanyahu would love to be able to freely bomb Iran like he does Lebanon, Syria and threatening to bomb Iraq as well, Trump doing it for him in Yemen.



Palestinian student arrested in US faces deportation to West Bank: Report

Another Palestinian student at Columbia University has been arrested by US immigration services over involvement in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, The Intercept reports.

Mohsen K Mahdawi, a permanent resident who was applying for US citizenship, is facing removal, days after an immigration judge ruled that the deportation case against another Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, could proceed.

“Mohsen Mahdawi was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity,” his lawyer, Luna Droubi, said in a statement to The Intercept. “He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech.”

The lawyer challenged the legality of Mahdawi’s detention, and alleged that the government was violating his statutory and due process rights by punishing him for speech related to Palestine and Israel.

The Trump administration is seeking to deport many students across the country, based on allegations of anti-Semitism and alignment with Hamas, without providing any evidence to back its claims.

“The fight for freedom of Palestine and the fight against anti-Semitism go hand-in-hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Mahdawi told CBS News in November 2023.

Deportation to a war zone no less. No doubt he'll end up in one of the Israeli torture camps.

Harvard refuses to comply with Trump’s rules on ‘anti-Semitism’, risks funding cut

Harvard University has said it will not comply with a list of demands from the Trump administration that purport to crack down on anti-Semitism and civil rights violations, putting $9bn of federal grants and contracts on the line.

University president Alan Garber said in a letter that the institution would “not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights”.

The statement comes days after the Trump administration warned Harvard that it must comply with an updated and expanded list of demands if it intends to “maintain [its] financial relationship with the federal government”.

The institution was required to “‘audit’ the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to ‘reduc[e] the power’ of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views”, Garber said.

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” he continued. “No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The Trump administration has sought to crack down on pro-Palestinian speech at US universities after widespread campus protests in opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza over the past 18 months.

New polls show Trump's favorability dropping and journalists talk about it as if it still means something. Trump will be president for as long as he is alive.

Detained Columbia student witnessed Israeli violence growing up in the West Bank

US authorities detained Columbia University student activist Mohsen Mahdawi while he was attending an interview to become a US citizen. Mahdawi, who grew up as in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, and was studying philosophy, spoke to our colleagues at AJ+ last year about his involvement in student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.

He says he remembers seeing the Israeli army “blasting into our home” when he was five years old, “coming to arrest my uncles.”

“When I was 11 years old, my uncle Thayer, he was assassinated on the hands of the Israeli army,” Mahdawi said.

“When I was 12 years old, they killed seven Palestinians from the refugee camp in the middle of the night. I collected their body parts with my own hands … no child should experience this.”

_{Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi is arrested by immigration authorities in Colchester, Vermont, on Monday, April 14}

No guarantee US will heed court order halting Mohsen Mahdawi’s deportation: Analyst

There is no guarantee that Trump administration officials will listen to or abide by a court order preventing authorities from deporting Mohsen Mahdawi before his arrest can be reviewed, a legal scholar says.

Mahdawi is a green card holder who had protested against the war in Gaza as a Columbia University student.

He was arrested on Monday when he appeared for an interview at a Vermont immigration office that was intended to finalise his US citizenship.

Speaking to Al Jazeera earlier, Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, says Mahdawi’s future remains uncertain, despite his lawyers quickly asking the courts to stop his removal from the jurisdiction and a temporary restraining order issued to prevent his deportation.

“We do not know, as of right now, to the best of my knowledge, whether or not the deportation is proceeding and whether or not the administration is actually going to listen to the court order,” Finkelstein said.


_{Jewish activists and allies take part in a Passover Seder outside ICE headquarters in New York City on Monday}

MIT president says students losing visas is causing alarm

In a letter to the MIT community, Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has expressed concerns about the consequences of “unexpected visa revocations”.

Kornbluth said nine MIT students, recent graduates and postdoctorates have had their “visas and immigration status unexpectedly revoked” since April 4. She said the revocations were causing alarm at the “possibility of future actions”.

She also warned the uncertainty could “make it less likely that top talent from around the world will come to the US” and “damage American competitiveness and scientific leadership for years to come”.

Kornbluth’s statement came shortly after Harvard became the first US university to reject Trump administration demands related to pro-Palestinian campus protests.



I wonder how long until my birth country starts 'exporting' students from my old university. Germany is already trying to deport 4 students.

Police break up Pro-Palestinian student protest in Amsterdam



Student protesters hold protest signs showing the covers of books about Palestine at a protest at the University of Amsterdam on Monday. The students had renamed a building ‘Dr Sirin Al-Attar House’, in honour of a Palestinian doctor killed in Gaza.