Trump 2028

Plus: AEA deportations, Glenn Greenwald on civil liberties under Trump, and more...

Trolling or actual issue? For just $50, you can own a "Trump 2028" hat, courtesy of the Trump Organization's online store. "The future looks bright!" reads the product description. "Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat."

President Donald Trump (born in 1946, and getting up there in the years) being elected to a third term in 2028 would be a violation of the 22nd Amendment.

"A lot of people would like me to do that," Trump told NBC earlier this year. "But, I mean, I basically tell them, we have a long way to go, you know, it's very early in the administration." Steve Bannon has also planted seeds along the same lines.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had these aspirations too, prior to the 22nd Amendment's passage in 1951, yet his fourth term ended with his death in April 1945, just three months into it. Given that we're still recovering from FDR's 12 years of government and executive power expansion, and given that it would be a huge violation of the Constitution, I don't think Trump seeking another term would be appropriate at all. But is there harm in joking about it?

Team Trump loves both their trolling and retaining some plausible deniability via jokes. Putting a Trump hotel up in the Gaza Strip: joke or real idea for a peace process? Building five more Terrorism Confinement Centers (CECOT) and sending "homegrown" criminals off to Uncle Nayib Bukele in El Salvador: friendly chit-chat or legitimate concept? Third term hat: fashion statement or an idea they're working to seed? Your mileage may vary, but I don't love this joke, personally.

ACLU tries to get Venezuelan deportees back to U.S. soil: Early today, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—an organization with great roots that has, in recent years, strayed awfully far from its mission—filed a new version of the lawsuit they brought against the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) on March 15. This lawsuit, instead of trying to make it so groups of Venezuelans cannot be deported under the AEA, seeks to bring back the roughly 140 Venezuelan nationals who were already deported to El Salvador last month under the act.

The ACLU won its earlier suit, with Judge James E. Boasberg rebuking the administration, ordering it to stop using the AEA to send planes of Venezuelans to El Salvador, and to turn around flights that were already in the air (an order the administration claimed it could not comply with). The Boasberg-Trump showdown is ongoing, but the new ACLU suit seeks to essentially undo the initial act by the Trump administration.

The New York Times describes both the procedural question at play—"whether the Trump administration has provided migrants whom officials have asserted are subject to removal under the law with sufficient time and opportunity to challenge their deportations in court"—and the substantive one—"whether the White House should be allowed to use the act at all against the Venezuelan migrants." Does the in-migration of Venezuelans actually constitute an invasion by a hostile nation? Because that's what the AEA is meant to be used for, and this sure looks like a stretched use of that act.

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Scenes from New York: Yesterday, the Department of Transportation (DOT) said it had axed several of the federal attorneys tasked with defending it in a lawsuit over New York City's congestion pricing program, saying they harmed the DOT's case.

"There is considerable litigation risk in defending [Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's] February 19, 2025 decision [to attempt to revoke congestion pricing authorization] against [the Metropolitan Transit Authority's] claims…that the decision was contrary to law, pretextual, procedurally arbitrary and capricious, and violated due process," wrote three of the assistant U.S. Attorneys tasked with…defending Duffy's case in a private memo that they accidentally filed in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday. "It is unlikely that Judge [Lewis] Liman or further courts of review will accept the argument that [congestion pricing] was not a statutorily authorized 'value pricing' pilot under [the relevant law]," the memo continues.

"The 11-page letter instead suggested that the department could build a stronger case if it sought to terminate the federal government's approval of the tolling program 'as a matter of changed agency priorities,' rather than stick with the previous tactic of questioning the legality of the toll," notes The New York Times.

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QUICK HITS

• On the use of the word "terrorist," the parallels between this era and the war on terror, and how alarmed we should really be:

One of my favorite things about Glenn Greenwald is that he's not afflicted by Trump derangement syndrome (TDS); he's a straight shooter with real principles and a thorough understanding of the law. He defends the civil liberties of the most vile and the most sympathetic alike. The full episode is worth your time.

• "President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Thursday targeting ActBlue, the Democratic Party's main fundraising platform—taking aim at one of the key pillars of the financial infrastructure for Democratic candidates," reports CNN. "A fact sheet about the memo said it directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch an investigation into online fundraising platforms with the goal of cracking down on illegal 'straw donors'—or those who make donations in the name of others—and foreign contributions in US elections."
• Yesterday, some people amusingly interpreted my criticism of a certain pundit/COVID-19 revisionist as praise, which it was decidedly not. (The take that the "liberal elite" were huge advocates for school reopening is…not at all how I—or millions of others—remember it.)

My favorite thing about Matt Yglesias is where he is a millionaire pundit who confidently & smugly tries to rewrite history and then he gets completely pwned by my favorite internet rando pic.twitter.com/PlUYQfQG9t

— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) April 24, 2025

• Good forecasting of what might happen once we fully feel the effect of tariffs, and a great explanation of how the lags in the global supply chain work:

The White House has put itself and the country in a bad situation but doesn't realize it yet.

Around April 10th China to USA trade shut down.

It takes ~30 days for containers to go from China to LA.

45 to Houston by sea, 45 to Chicago by train.

55 to New York by sea.

That… pic.twitter.com/8vnGDMWCpt

— molson ????⚙️ (@Molson_Hart) April 24, 2025

• "The idea that the internet carries a scythe is familiar—think of Blockbuster Video, the pay phone and other early victims of the digital transition," writes Ross Douthat, our Just Asking Questions guest for next week. "But the scale of the potential extinction still isn't adequately appreciated."
• Yes:

WSJ is exactly right: using the IRS to target nonprofits because of their views or speech will very quickly come back to haunt the people cheering it on today pic.twitter.com/jC9wFBp9Dr

— Carolyn Iodice (@CarolynIodice) April 23, 2025