What rights do migrants [Or Americans] have?

 

In Maiquetía, Venezuela.  Cristian Hernandez/Associated Press

Immigrants’ rights

This week, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to deport planeloads of Venezuelan migrants. Trump called the ruling a victory, but it came with a catch: The administration’s rationale can still be challenged, and it must ensure that would-be deportees have their day in court. “All nine members of the court agree that judicial review is available,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurrence.

Of all Trump’s actions so far, few have alarmed democracy scholars more than his mass deportations of migrants without a hearing. Why? Experts see a precedent that could undermine the liberties of all Americans.

Your right to due process — your day in court — underpins all of your other rights. If a prosecutor wants to deny you freedom and lock you up, she has to make her case. If a police officer illegally violates your privacy and searches your house to try to prove a crime, a trial can verify if he gathered the evidence legitimately. If Congress passes a law that lets officials arrest you for your political speech or religious beliefs, a court challenge can get the statute overturned.

It turns out that some of the Venezuelan migrants who were packed into planes and shipped to a prison in El Salvador may not be the gang members who officials say they are. That fact could have come out in hearings. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why our constitutional system depends on due process — and what might happen without it.

Getting heard

A state-provided image of Venezuelan migrants in El Salvador.  Agence France-Presse, via El Salvador's Presidency Press

Trump and his allies argue that his deportations last month targeted criminal migrants — specifically, Venezuelans who were not citizens and were part of a gang, Tren de Aragua. But his administration never had to prove those claims in court. A judge never checked the government’s work.

And the government made mistakes. Officials rounded up migrants based on their clothes and tattoos, arguing they were proof of gang membership. A judge would bring skepticism to such claims. Several migrants say the government got it wrong with its crude approach.

One migrant says his tattoo is a crown that merely honors the soccer team Real Madrid. Another, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, had protected legal status. The administration acknowledged it shouldn’t have deported him immediately, and a lower court ordered his return. The Supreme Court has put that order on hold for now.

These cases show the importance of due process. Governments mess up. Sometimes, officials act maliciously and abuse their power. The Constitution has an answer to those problems: A defendant’s day in court forces the state to prove that its actions are justifiable and lawful.

The administration has also made several other unprecedented immigration moves, such as revoking the visas of nearly 300 students without a clear explanation. So far, these cases are following some measure of due process; the students can challenge the decision before they’re deported. But if officials start to ship these students home without a hearing, that would clearly break with the Constitution.

A lack of due process presents a slippery slope: If government officials can say anything, true or not, to justify their actions — as they did with the Venezuelan migrants — what stops them from doing that to an American citizen? If they never have to prove someone is actually who they say he is, they can claim anything and act with impunity against anyone.

Trump’s deportations set a precedent that his opponents could abuse once they’re back in power. Republicans have benefited in recent elections from growing support among Latino voters, including Venezuelans. A Democratic president could cite Trump’s actions to deport so-called MAGAzuelans, claiming they’re also criminals with Tren de Aragua and in the country illegally, all without a court hearing.

Even some of Trump’s backers worry about the slipshod deportations. The podcaster Joe Rogan warned on his show, “You’ve got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting, like, lassoed up and deported and sent to, like, El Salvador prisons.”

The legal arguments

The Trump administration argues that it has the power to ignore due process in these cases. It says the influx of unauthorized immigrants into the United States is an invasion, meaning these migrants are effectively alien enemies. Officials say that the president has special wartime powers, such as those outlined in the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to detain and deport people without trial. They also say that noncitizens, especially those in the country illegally, don’t have the same rights as Americans.

Trump’s critics disagree. The constitutional amendments that enshrine due process rights apply to “persons,” not just citizens. Tellingly, current Supreme Court justices have voiced regret for Japanese internment during World War II, which detained people without due process.

And, generally, migrants have the right to challenge their removal in court, as my colleagues Albert Sun and Miriam Jordan explained.

The Supreme Court’s ruling this week suggests that the justices agree with Trump’s critics — that migrants, even people here illegally, have due process rights. That finding, however, is preliminary. The justices will likely issue a full decision after deportees challenge the law and appellate judges examine the issue. The court’s verdict could set the boundaries of everyone’s due process rights.

Markets Fall Again. Trump Imposes 104% Tariff on China. Even Billionaire Republicans incl Musk are Getting Restive

Stocks were up early today as traders put their hopes in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s suggestion that the Trump administration was open to negotiations for lowering Trump’s proposed tariffs. But then U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said there would not be exemptions from the tariffs for individual products or companies, and President Donald J. Trump said he was going forward with 104% tariffs on China, effective at 12:01 am on Wednesday.

Markets fell again. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen by another 320 points, or 0.8%, a 52-week low. The S&P 500 fell 1.6% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.2%.

Rob Copeland, Maureen Farrell, and Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times reported today that over the weekend, Wall Street billionaires tried desperately and unsuccessfully to change Trump’s mind on tariffs. This week they have begun to go public, calling out what they call the “stupidity” of the new measures. These industry leaders, the reporters write, did not expect Trump to place such high tariffs on so many products and are shocked to find themselves outside the corridors of power where the tariff decisions have been made.

Elon Musk is one of the people Trump is ignoring to side with Peter Navarro, his senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. Navarro went to prison for refusing to answer a congressional subpoena for information regarding Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Since Musk poured $290 million into getting Trump elected in 2024 and then burst into the news with his “Department of Government Efficiency,” he has seemed to be in control of the administration. But he has stolen the limelight from Trump, and it appears Trump’s patience with him might be wearing thin.

Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui, Pranshu Verma, and Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post reported today that Musk was among those who worked over the weekend to get Trump to end his new tariffs. When Musk failed to change the president’s mind, he took to social media to attack Navarro personally, saying the trade advisor is “truly a moron,” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Asked about the public fight between two of Trump’s advisors—two of the most powerful men in the world—White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “Boys will be boys.”

Business interests hard hit by the proposed tariffs are less inclined to dismiss the men in the administration as madcap kids. They are certainly not letting Musk shift the blame for the economic crisis off Trump and onto Navarro. The right-wing New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is backed by billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch, has filed a lawsuit claiming that Trump’s tariffs against China are not permitted under the law. It argues that the president’s claim that he can impose sweeping tariffs by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) is misguided. It notes that the Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to levy tariffs.

With Trump’s extraordinary tariffs now threatening the global economy, some of those who once cheered on his dictatorial impulses are now recalling the checks and balances they were previously willing to undermine.

Today the editors of the right-wing National Review urged Congress to take back the power it has ceded to Trump, calling it “preposterous that a single person could enjoy this much power over…the global economy.” They decried the ”raw chaos” of the last week that has made it impossible for any business to plan for the future.

“What has happened since last Thursday is hard to fathom,” they write. “Based on an ever-shifting series of rationales, characterized by an embarrassing methodology, and punctuated with an extraordinary arrogance toward the country’s constitutional order, the Trump administration has alienated our global allies, discombobulated our domestic businesses, decimated our capital markets, and increased the likelihood of serious recession.” While this should worry all Americans, they write, Republicans in particular should remember that in less than two years, they “will be judged in large part on whether the president who shares their brand has done a good job.”

“No free man wants to be at the mercy of a king,” they write.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told the Senate yesterday: “I don’t care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat. I don’t want to live under emergency rule. I don’t want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power.”

Adam Cancryn and Myah Ward reported in Politico today that Republican leaders are worried about Trump’s voters abandoning him as prices go up and their savings and jobs disappear. After all, voters elected Trump at least in part because he promised to lower inflation and spur the economy. “It’s a question of what the pain threshold is for the American people and the Republican voters,” one of Trump’s economic advisors told the reporters. “We’ve all lost a lot of money.”

MAGA influencers have begun to talk of the tariffs as a way to make the United States “manly” again, by bringing old-time manufacturing and mining back to the U.S. Writer Rotimi Adeoye today noted MAGA’s glorification of physical labor as a sort of moral purification. Adeoye points out how MAGA performs an identity that fetishizes “rural life, manual labor, and a kind of fake rugged masculinity.” That image—and the tradwife image that complements it—recalls an imagined American past. In reality, the 1960s manufacturing economy MAGA influencers appear to be celebrating depended on high rates of unionization and taxation, and on government investing heavily in infrastructure, including healthcare and education.

Adeoye notes that Trump is marketing the image of a world in which ordinary workers had a shot at prosperity, but his tariffs will not bring that world back.

Now Trump is demonstrating his power over the global economy, rejecting the conviction of past American leaders that true power and prosperity rest in cooperation. Trump has always seen power as a zero-sum game in which for one party to win, others must lose, so he appears incapable of understanding that global trade does not mean the U.S. is getting “ripped off.” Now he appears unconcerned that other countries could work together against the U.S. and seems to assume they will have to do what he says.

We’ll see.

For his part, Trump appears to be enjoying that he is now undoubtedly the center of attention. Asked to make “dinner remarks” at the National Republican Congressional Committee tonight, he spoke for close to two hours. Discussing the tariffs, he delivered a story with the “sir” marker that indicates the story is false: “These countries are calling us up. Kissing my ass,” he told the audience. “They are dying to make a deal. “Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir. And then I’ll see some rebel Republican, you know, some guy that wants to grandstand, saying: ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations.’ Let me tell you: you don’t negotiate like I negotiate.”

Latest on Immigration Incl Supreme Court Rulings

In El Salvador. Pool photo by Alex Brandon

The Supreme Court said that the Trump administration could continue using a wartime powers act to deport Venezuelan migrants, for now.

The ruling, however, did not address the merits of the case. Rather, the justices said that the migrants’ lawyers had filed their lawsuit in the wrong court.

The Supreme Court also paused a lower court’s order that had required the U.S. to bring back a Maryland resident whom it had mistakenly deported.

Trump called Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing the challenge to his deportation flights, a “Radical Left Lunatic.” His reputation and his appointment by George W. Bush suggest otherwise. Read about him.

Dow Jones & NASDAQ Keeps Dropping. Does Trump Want to Replace the IRS with Tariffs Like it was 1913?

Major indexes on the stock market began down more than 3% today when, as Allison Morrow of CNN reported, a rumor that Trump was considering delaying his tariffs by three months sent stocks surging upward by almost 8%. The rumor was unfounded—it appeared to begin from a small account on X—but it indicated how desperate traders are to see an end to President Donald J. Trump’s trade war.

As soon as the rumor was discredited, the market began to fall again, although Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s announcement that he is opening trade negotiations with Japan and looking forward to talks with other countries appeared to reassure some traders that Trump's tariffs will not last. The wild swings made the day one of the most volatile in stock market history. It ended with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by 349 points and the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite staying relatively flat. Futures for tomorrow are up slightly.

Foreign markets fared badly today, suggesting that the reality of Trump’s tariffs is beginning to sink in. Sam Goldfarb of the Wall Street Journal notes that Hong Kong’s Hang Seng took its biggest dive since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, losing 13%, and that other markets also fell today.

Goldfarb reports that in the U.S., traders are deeply worried about losses but also anxious about missing a rebound if the administration changes its policies. Hence the extreme volatility of the market. Generally, values over 30 are considered indicators of increased risk and uncertainty in the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index, the so-called fear gauge. Today, it spiked to 60.

Business leaders are speaking out publicly against Trump’s tariffs. Today, Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot and a major Republican donor, told the Financial Times: “I don’t understand the goddamn formula.”

Senate Republicans are also starting to push back. Seven Republican senators have now signed onto a bill that would limit Trump’s ability to impose tariffs. The power to levy tariffs belongs to Congress, but Congress has permitted a president to adjust tariffs on an emergency basis. Trump declared an emergency, and it is on that ground that he has upended more than 90 years of global economic policy.

Trump has threatened to veto any such legislation, but he will not need to if Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuse to bring the measure to a vote. Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico report that while Republicans express concern about the tariffs in private, leaders will stand with the president because they must have the votes of MAGA lawmakers to pass any of their legislative agenda through Congress, and to get that they will need Trump’s support. Others are worried about incurring Trump’s wrath and, with it, a primary challenger.

“People are skittish. They’re all worried about it,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told Carney and Hill. “But they are putting on a stiff upper lip to act as though nothing is happening and hoping it goes away.”

But so far, it does not look as if it’s going to go away. Today the European Commission has announced 25% countertariffs in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs. [But their retaliatory measures are more modest than its initial threats. “Officials are moving slowly and deliberately, avoiding a single sweeping set of retaliatory moves, in hopes of giving the United States time to come to the table to make a deal,” reports the NYT]

Trump’s response to the crisis has been to double down on his tariff plan. This morning he wrote on his social media network that he will impose additional 50% tariffs on China effective on Wednesday unless it drops the retaliatory tariffs it has placed on U.S. products. Rather than backing down, China said it would “fight to the end.”

[For now, most world leaders are trying to bargain their way out of the sweeping new American tariffs. Just two of the 20 largest exporters to the United States have countered them with new tariffs of their own.  

How major trade partners are responding

Status	Trading partner	New tariff	Exports to U.S.	Note
Possible retaliation	European Union	+20%	$606 bil.	Preparing to retaliate with wide-ranging levies this week, even as officials also offer concessions and seek to negotiate.
No retaliation	Mexico	+25%*	$506 bil.	Faces 25 percent tariffs on some imports, but was exempted from the latest round.
Retaliated	China	+34%	$439 bil.	Matched new tariffs by levying an extra 34 percent duty on U.S. imports.
Retaliated	Canada	+25%*	$413 bil.	Imposed retaliatory tariffs against a number of U.S. goods as it faces duties on some Canadian goods.
Trying to negotiate	Japan	+24%	$148 bil.	Has few options to retaliate, and depends on U.S. military commitments.
Offered concessions	Vietnam	+46%	$137 bil.	Offered to reduce tariffs on U.S. imports to zero.
Trying to negotiate	South Korea	+26%	$132 bil.	Sending its trade minister to Washington for talks.
Offered concessions	Taiwan	+32%	$116 bil.	Offering zero tariffs as a starting point for discussion.
Offered concessions	India	+27%	$87 bil.	Approved a few concessions in March, like reducing tariffs on bourbon, but has since been relatively silent.
Trying to negotiate	United Kingdom	+10%	$68 bil.	Seeking discussions, while drawing up a list of U.S. products it could potentially hit with retaliatory tariffs.
Trying to negotiate	Switzerland	+32%	$63 bil.	“Switzerland cannot comprehend” the tariff calculations, its president said — but officials say they will not retaliate.
Offered concessions	Thailand	+37%	$63 bil.	Offered to increase imports of energy, aircraft and farm products from the United States
Trying to negotiate	Malaysia	+24%	$53 bil.	Seeking engagement with the United States, while calling on Asian nations to organize a collective response.
Trying to negotiate	Singapore	+10%	$43 bil.	Officials said they would try to understand U.S. areas of concern.
Trying to negotiate	Brazil	+10%	$42 bil.	Brazil’s president said that the country would try to reach an agreement but that it is preparing possible retaliatory measures.
Offered concessions	Indonesia	+32%	$28 bil.	Offered to buy more U.S. products such as cotton, wheat, oil and gas.
Offered concessions	Israel	+17%	$22 bil.	Israel had sought to avert the higher rate by voiding duties on American products — seemingly to no avail.
Trying to negotiate	Colombia	+10%	$18 bil.	Colombia’s president said he would respond to tariffs only if they harm job creation in the country.
Trying to negotiate	Turkey	+10%	$17 bil.	The trade minister said his country hoped to get the additional tariff lifted.
Trying to negotiate	Australia	+10%	$17 bil.	The tariffs have “no basis in logic,” the prime minister said. But he said Australia would not retaliate.

The New York Times]

Today, in a press conference convened in the Oval Office, Trump explained his thinking behind why he has begun a global tariff war. "You know, our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff based. We had no income tax,” he said. “Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea of let’s charge the people of our country, not foreign countries that are ripping off our country, and the country was never, relatively, was never that kind of wealth. We had so much wealth we didn’t know what to do with our money. We had meetings, we had committees, and these committees worked tirelessly to study one subject: we have so much money, what are going to do with it, who are we going to give it to? And I hope we’re going to be in that position again.”

Aside from this complete misreading of American history—Civil War income taxes lasted until 1875, for example, tariffs are paid by consumers, the Panics of 1873 and 1893 devastated the economy, few Americans at the time thought the Gilded Age was a golden age, and I have no clue what he’s referring to with the talk about committees—Trump’s larger motivation is clear: he wants to get rid of income taxes.

Congress passed the 1913 Revenue Act imposing income taxes to shift the cost of supporting the government from ordinary Americans, especially the women who by then made up a significant portion of household consumers, to men of wealth. Tariffs were regressive because they fell disproportionately on working-class Americans through their everyday purchases. Income taxes spread costs more evenly, according to a man’s ability to pay. The switch from tariffs to income taxes helped to break the power of the so-called robber barons, the powerful industrialists who controlled the U.S. economy and government in the late nineteenth century.

To get rid of income taxes, Trump and his Republicans have backed the decimation of the government services that support ordinary Americans.

Today, in the Oval Office press conference, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested where they intend to put government money, promising a defense budget of $1 trillion, a significant jump from the current $892 defense budget. “[W]e have to be strong because you’ve got a lot of bad forces out there now,” Trump said.

Allison McCann, Alexandra Berzon, and Hamed Aleaziz of the New York Times reported today that the administration also intends to spend as much as $45 billion over the next two years on new detention facilities for immigrants. In the last fiscal year, the total amount of federal money allocated to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement was about $3.4 billion. The new facilities will be in private hands and will operate with lower standards and less oversight than current detention facilities.

Alex Ovechkin passes Wayne Gretzky as NHL all-time goals leader with No. 895

By Sean Gentille


ELMONT, N.Y. — For the 895th time in his NHL career, Alex Ovechkin scored a goal, then celebrated with his teammates.

Nobody in the history of professional hockey has been better at either.

The Washington Capitals superstar, a once-in-a-lifetime fusion of incomprehensible skill, uncommon consistency and unrestrained joy, broke Wayne Gretzky’s career record for goals on Sunday at UBS Arena.

Ovechkin scored on the power play 7:26 into the second period to cut Washington’s deficit to 2-1. Ovechkin beat Islanders goalie Ilya Sorokin on a shot from the top of the left circle after a pass from Tom Wilson, and then, as the crowd went wild, Ovechkin dove to the ice and slid toward center ice before rising and being mobbed by teammates.

After the post-goal celebration slowed, and Ovechkin was congratulated by members of both teams, carpets were rolled out for a ceremony that included Ovechkin’s wife, his two sons and his mother, plus Gretzky, commissioner Gary Bettman and others.

“What a day, huh?” said Ovechkin, who focused on thanking his teammates and family during brief comments. “We did it, boys. It’s history.”

Demonstrators took to the streets in cities and towns across the U.S. to protest Trump. Also More Trump News

Demonstrators took to the streets in cities and towns across the U.S. to protest Trump.


They came out in defense of national parks and small businesses, public education and health care for veterans, abortion rights and fair elections. They marched against tariffs and oligarchs, dark money and fascism, the deportation of legal immigrants and the Department of Government Efficiency.

Demonstrators had no shortage of causes as they gathered in towns and cities across the country on Saturday to protest President Trump’s agenda. Rallies were planned in all 50 states, and images posted on social media showed dense crowds in places as diverse as St. Augustine, Fla.; Salt Lake City and rainy Frankfort, Ky.

While crowd sizes are difficult to estimate, organizers said that more than 600,000 people had signed up to participate and that events also took place in U.S. territories and a dozen locations across the globe.

On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the protest stretched for nearly 20 blocks. In Chicago, thousands flooded Daley Plaza and adjacent streets, while, in the nation’s capital, tens of thousands surrounded the Washington Monument. In Atlanta, the police estimated the crowd marching to the gold-domed statehouse at over 20,000.

Mr. Trump, who was playing golf in Florida on Saturday, appeared to be largely ignoring the protests. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


The Department of Justice building in Washington. Sarah Silbiger for The New York Times

The Trump administration suspended a senior Justice Department immigration lawyer after he questioned the decision to deport a Maryland man to El Salvador.

President Trump’s firing of the head of the National Security Agency, on the advice of Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, has rattled some lawmakers.

The ousting of the N.S.A. chief is one of several moves that have eroded U.S. cyberdefenses at a moment of rising danger.

Trump administration officials have fired workers for the main American aid agency who were sent to Myanmar after the deadly earthquake there.

Trump Tariffs

Trump’s tariffs will wound global free trade, but the blow may not be fatal: Other countries could find a way to maintain the system without the U.S., Mark Landler writes.

Vietnam, a manufacturing destination for U.S. brands, faces a potentially devastating 46 percent tariff. Its leader is asking Trump for a delay.

Trump’s political strength is built on the economy. If it sinks, he could drag Republicans down with him, Nate Cohn writes.