SCOTUS Rules on Deportation Case

Plus: China-U.S. relations heat up, ICE says ideas shouldn't cross borders, sexytime with the computer, and more...

Supreme Court rules on deportation: The Court, in an unsigned order, told the Trump administration that it must "facilitate and effectuate the return" of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from CECOT, the Salvadoran prison he is being held in.

"The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal," reads the order. "On Friday, April 4, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland entered an order directing the Government to 'facilitate and effectuate the return of [Abrego Garcia] to the United States by no later than 11:59 PM on Monday, April 7.'" The order notes that this deadline has already passed (Chief Justice John Roberts had issued an administrative stay to give the Supreme Court time to consider) but that the lower court's "order properly requires the Government to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador." Meanwhile, the "effectuate" part is "unclear" and possibly "exceed[s] the District Court's authority."

"The district court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs," adds the order.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson appended a statement below the unsigned order, adding, "To this day, the Government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia's warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it."

"Instead of hastening to correct its egregious error, the Government dismissed it as an 'oversight,'" the justices add, issuing a strong rebuke of the administration's actions.

Some case background is provided here (and I spoke about this case at some length here, but it's behind a paywall, and nestled among thoughts on motherhood and truth czars and repro tech). The next steps for Abrego Garcia are currently unclear, but this could be considered a bit of a measured opening salvo from the Supreme Court, providing some indication that they will be curbing the Trump administration's worst impulses, in a very careful and considered way. This is checks and balances at its finest—provided the administration adheres.

Xi tries to make new friends: "There are no winners in a tariff war and China is not afraid of oppression, Chinese President Xi Jinping told visiting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday," reports the South China Morning Post. "In a direct appeal to the European Union, said China and the bloc should shoulder their international responsibilities and 'jointly resist unilateral bullying.'" While meeting with the Spanish prime minister on Friday, Xi made a deal that opens up the Chinese market to Spanish pork imports.

Xi is, of course, referring to the trade war that's now underway between China and America. China has placed a 125 percent tariff on all American goods that pass through its ports of entry, starting April 12, while the White House has clarified that our own tariffs on Chinese products now stand at 145 percent. Stocks and bonds continue to face intense turbulence.

After the initial escalations, China has chosen not to raise its own tariffs to the same level (145 percent). "By signaling that China is going to 'ignore,' it allows Trump to claim a small tactical victory that may create space for negotiations," Dylan Loh, assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, told Bloomberg. "They are also telegraphing to the world that they are the adult in the room and will not be led by Trump or simply be reacting to Trump's every move."

"One that goes against the world risks being isolated themselves," added Xi in his remarks earlier today.

We all need a fall guy: "Former hedge fund manager and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—the White House's main conduit to beleaguered financial markets—is now at the helm, with populist Peter Navarro relegated to the sidelines and Wall Street punching bag Howard Lutnick recast into the role of "bad cop," according to three people close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak frankly about internal dynamics," reports Politico. 

ICYMI: Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) breaks down why tariffs are fundamentally wrong, and how they will have terrible effects on the American middle class:

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Scenes from New York: Cops in my illustrious city are looking for a man…who appears to have sexually assaulted a corpse…on an R train. I am begging my local politicians to prioritize subway safety. This is insane.

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QUICK HITS

• Love that this, initially released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), contains IDEAS.

Ideas

— Jessica Pishko (@jesspish.bsky.social) 2025-04-10T16:30:19.763Z

The updated version is…marginally better? But not by much. It's also not clear to me what ICE believes intellectual property to encompass (to the extent that you even accept it as a real thing at all).

ICE enforces 400+ federal laws to ensure public safety and national security.  Our job is to ensure people, money, products and intellectual property. DO NOT enter the U.S. illegally.
????Learn more about our mission: https://t.co/NiwdpaaC7Y pic.twitter.com/skg7LJuZIz

— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) April 10, 2025

• Good read: "The People Who Fall in Love With Chatbots" by Katherine Dee over at Pirate Wires. "I interviewed people who've developed emotional—even sexual—relationships with LLMs," reads the subhed. "They're not as crazy as they seem." More: "AI companionship, in all its manifestations, does not feel entirely new. It is an extension of several long-established traditions of imaginative intimacy: erotic literature, fandom roleplay, sex toy-assisted masturbation, self-shipping communities in fandoms, and even robosexuality, that is, loving technology for the technology itself. It is a tool that exists in a vast, well-established ecosystem of behaviors and motivations." Though I enjoy Dee's thoughtful treatment of this subject, I must admit that my disgust mechanism was rather triggered, and I find myself agreeing with evolutionary biologist Robert Brooks (quoted within) that this is little more than "junk food intimacy", something we've become primed to accept by our landscape full of junk food—junk food short-form content, junk food television and movies, junk food copywriting (you know the type: littered with emojis, as if you can't stomach the sight of actual words) to advertise junk products. "We always seek ourselves in others, human and machine alike," Dee concludes, talking about her own projections onto Claude, and how they mirror her projections onto other people in interpersonal relationships. She's right that digitally-mediated relationships are not wholly different from meatspace ones, and there can be value to the self from having a sounding board—whether real, imagined, or programmed. But the thing that I think really triggers my disgust mechanism is that this strikes me as a perversion of what relationships are all about: Not just tending to the self, but also tending to the other. When a relationship will never ask that of you, what good is it really?
• Honestly, Florida's whole shift toward restoring parental rights—example here, different from yesterday's case involving gender identity—strikes me as both good and politically smart. I'm not sure Democratic activists' approach of trying to allow ever-more third parties (doctors, teachers) to intervene in the parent-child relationship, or trump the parent's decision making, will yield good results.
• "Tesla Inc. stopped taking orders in China for Model S sedans and Model X sport utility vehicles—both of which are imported from the US—after the countries raised tariffs on one another in an escalating trade war," reports Bloomberg.
• I just can't recommend this highly enough: