We begin today with David A. Graham of The Atlantic and the gravity of the Trump Administration’s defiance of court orders regarding the return of Abrego Garcia from a prison in El Salvador.
American citizens might like to reassure themselves that Abrego Garcia’s case is an outlier involving a Salvadoran citizen; surely they are insulated from such misfortune. But this would be a failure of imagination. First, as I have written, a government that can ignore court rulings in one sphere can ignore them in others, so no one is safe from a lawless government.
Moreover, an American citizen could find themselves in precisely the same vise as Abrego Garcia. During today’s remarks, Trump was asked whether he would be willing to deport American citizens convicted of violent crime to El Salvador. “I’m all for it,” he said. But convictions are overturned all the time. What would happen if an American citizen was found guilty, sent to CECOT, and then had their conviction overturned? We can guess: The White House would insist that they were in Salvadoran custody, beyond the government’s reach. Bukele would shrug and say he had no power to release them.
This MSNBC report by Jen Psaki contained some news of polls about the Trump economy was worth the watch.
While Harvard University’s refusal to surrender to the Trump Administration’s demands garnered many of yesterday’s headlines and a couple of diaries on the wreck list, Matthew Kiviat of The Cornell Daily Sun reports that Cornell University, as a Land-Grant University as well as an Ivy League school, has joined another lawsuit against the administration.
The lawsuit was officially filed by the Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and eight other land grant institutions against the DOE and its secretary, Chris Wright, on Monday. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. [...]
Cornell’s Monday lawsuit announcement follows the Trump administration’s freeze of over $1 billion in funding to Cornell with over 75 stop-work orders issued from the U.S. Department of Defense on April 8. Neither the University nor the Trump administration have publicly announced why the funding cuts were initiated at time of publication.
In the fiscal year 2024, Cornell received more than 110 awards from the DOE, adding up to more than $30 million, where the University was able to recover around $8.5 million in indirect costs, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit explains that the actions of the DOE will significantly impair “Cornell’s ability to conduct DOE-sponsored research during fiscal year 2025.”
Administrators said that the indirect cost cuts will have immediate and significant impacts on the research that is conducted by the University.
Ana Swanson and Tony Romm of The New York Times report that the on/off tariffs are on— again— for chips and pharmaceuticals.
Federal notices put online Monday afternoon said the administration had initiated national security investigations into imports of chips and pharmaceuticals. Mr. Trump has suggested that those investigations could result in tariffs.
The investigations will also cover the machinery used to make semiconductors, products that contain chips and pharmaceutical ingredients. [...]
The new semiconductor and pharmaceutical tariffs would be issued under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the president to impose tariffs to protect U.S. national security.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump hinted that he would soon impose new tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, as he looked to shore up more domestic production.
David Fahrenthold of The New York Times is looking for a $318 million receipt from DOGE.
Here’s what we know: On its website, DOGE lists the contracts it has terminated, and the money it saved by canceling each. But the fourth-largest entry on that list is odd, and actually isn’t a contract at all. It’s a “request for proposal,” issued by the Office of Personnel Management. The office wanted help with human-resources work, and asked contractors to submit bids showing how they would do the job. But it had not yet signed with a vendor or settled on a price.
Despite that uncertainty, DOGE gave itself a very large — and very specific — amount of credit for this cut. It said it saved $318,310,328.30.
Yes, Musk’s team valued it down to the cent.
I have asked O.P.M., DOGE and the White House for a copy of the request, to try to verify that claim. So far, they have all declined to provide it. I looked for it in government databases, but did not see it there.
Patrick Wintour of the Guardian says that Iran plans to resist turning its nuclear stockpile over to another country; one of the conditions the the US desires for an agreement.
Iran is arguing the stockpile, amassed over the past four years, should remain in Iran under the strict supervision of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran sees this as a precaution, or a form of insurance in case a future US administration withdraws from the agreement, as Donald Trump did in 2018 when he rejected the 2015 deal brokered by Barack Obama.
Tehran says that if the stockpile was to leave Iran and the US pulled out of the deal, it would have to start from scratch in enriching uranium to higher purity – effectively punishing Iran for a breach committed by Washington.
Although the bulk of the exchanges in Muscat were held indirectly between the Iranian and US delegations, with Oman acting as the intermediary, direct meetings between Witkoff and Araghchi also took place.
Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, has agreed to host the next round of talks on Saturday in Rome, in a move seen as a political gesture by Trump towards Italy. It also serves to marginalise the main European powers in the Iran negotiations, with Oman continuing to act as the mediator. The US vice-president, JD Vance, will also be in Rome over the Easter weekend.
Finally today...you knew this was coming.
No gold pants to go with that trophy, though. Too bad!
Everyone try to have the best possible day that you can!
