Judge says it’s ‘extremely troubling’ Trump administration cannot tell her location of man it illegally deported
US federal judge Paula Xinis has said it is “extremely troubling” that the Trump administration failed on Friday to comply with a court order to provide details on the status of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom it illegally deported to El Salvador.
Xinis demanded at a hearing that the administration identify the whereabouts of Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador on 15 March.
Xinis repeatedly pressed a government attorney for answers. She said:
I’m not sure what to take from the fact that the supreme court has spoken quite clearly and yet I can’t get an answer today about what you’ve done, if anything, in the past.
Drew Ensign, an attorney with the Department of Justice, repeated what the administration had said in court filings, that it would provide that information by the end of Tuesday, once it evaluated the supreme court ruling.
The administration said in a court filing earlier on Friday that it was “unreasonable and impracticable” to say what its next steps are before they are properly agreed upon and vetted. The filing said:
Foreign affairs cannot operate on judicial timelines, in part because it involves sensitive country-specific considerations wholly inappropriate for judicial review.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in a Friday court filing “the government continues to delay, obfuscate, and flout court orders, while a man’s life and safety is at risk”.
Key events
This is some useful detail from the New York Times (paywall) on the nitty gritty on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
While the supreme court’s ruling appeared at first to be a victory for Abrego Garcia and his family, it contained a line that Trump officials could ultimately use to reiterate their position that they could not be forced to bring him back from El Salvador.
In their decision, the justices never defined what they meant by “facilitate and effectuate” his return, sending that question back to US district judge Paula Xinis to flesh out.
Indeed, the justices cautioned Xinis that when she clarified the steps the White House should take, her decision needed to be made “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”.
In their filing on Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department said they wanted Xinis to issue her clarification before they laid out what the White House planned to do to free Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. They wrote:
It is unreasonable and impracticable for defendants to reveal potential steps before those steps are reviewed, agreed upon, and vetted. Foreign affairs cannot operate on judicial timelines, in part because it involves sensitive country-specific considerations wholly inappropriate for judicial review.
Trump administration defies judge seeking details on plan to return wrongly deported man
The Trump administration has defied a federal judge’s order to provide an explanation for how it intended to bring back to the United States a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador last month, the New York Times (paywall) reports.
In an aggressive two-page filing, Justice Department lawyers told US district judge, Paula Xinis, that she had not given them enough time to work out what they planned to do about Kilmar Abrego Garcia after the supreme court ordered the administration on Thursday to “facilitate” his return to US soil. The department lawyers wrote:
Defendants are unable to provide the information requested by the court on the impracticable deadline set by the court hours after the Supreme Court issued its order.
In light of the insufficient amount of time afforded to review the Supreme Court order, defendants are not in a position where they ‘can’ share any information requested by the court. That is the reality.
The administration’s refusal to comply with Xinis’s directives put it on a collision course with the judge and threatens to erupt into a showdown between the executive and judicial branches.
The administration’s stance heightened the stakes of a hearing, scheduled for Friday afternoon, where Abrego Garcia’s lawyers and lawyers for the Justice Department are set to appear in front of Xinis to discuss how to proceed in the case.
Here is the background to today’s developments in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which highlights the Trump administration’s tensions with federal courts – several have blocked Trump policies and judges have expressed frustration with administration efforts to comply with court orders.
Abrego Garcia’s family sued to challenge the legality of his deportation and on 4 April US district judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. The administration challenged that order at the supreme court, which upheld Xinis’ order but said the term “effectuate” is unclear and may exceed the court’s authority.
The Justice Department in a supreme court filing on 7 April stated that while Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador through “administrative error”, his actual removal from the United States “was not error”. The error, department lawyers wrote, was in removing him specifically to El Salvador despite the deportation protection order.
White House press briefing to start soon
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is about to speak to reporters for the White House press briefing. I’ll bring you any key lines.
Judge orders Trump lawyers to court after they defy order to detail steps to return wrongly deported man to US
The Trump administration must explain to a federal court without delay what it is doing to facilitate the return of a Maryland resident it illegally deported to El Salvador, a federal judge ordered on Friday.
Reuters reports that US district judge Paula Xinis has set a hearing for 1pm ET, rejecting an administration request to give it until Tuesday afternoon to identify the location of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador on 15 March.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who was living in Maryland and has had a work permit since 2019, was stopped and detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on 12 March and questioned about alleged gang affiliation. He was deported on 15 March on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador that also included alleged Venezuelan gang members.
On Thursday the US supreme court said the Trump administration must take steps to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and detail the steps it has taken and will take to return him to the United States.
The ruling also said the lower court should clarify its order “with due regard for deference” to the executive branch of government.
In response, the White House referred to an earlier Justice Department statement which said activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy.
Xinis asked that the Trump administration explain what has been done to return Abrego Garcia and offer a timeline for returning him to the US. She said its request to delay the hearing to review the four-page supreme court order “blinks at reality”.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in a Friday court filing: “The government continues to delay, obfuscate, and flout court orders, while a man’s life and safety is at risk.”
Iowa Republican governor announces she won’t seek reelection in 2026
In a surprise announcement on Friday, Iowa’s deeply popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds has said she will not seek a third term in office in 2026.
Reynolds has held the position since 2017, when former governor Terry Branstad was appointed US ambassador to China. The state’s first female governor, she was elected to full terms in 2018 and again in 2022.
In a video post on social media, Reynolds said:
This wasn’t an easy decision, because I love this state and I love serving you. But, when my term ends, I will have had the privilege of serving as your governor for almost 10 years.
Reynolds said she is leaving office after years of her family supporting her, saying now “it’s time for me to be there for them”. Her husband, Kevin Reynolds, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2023. In her condition of the state in January, she said his cancer remained in remission.
Reynolds broke neutrality to endorse Ron DeSantis during the presidential campaign, saying she did not believe Trump could win. She told NBC: ““I believe he can’t win. And I believe that Ron can.”
“As a mother and as a grandmother and as an American, I just felt like I couldn’t stand on the sidelines any longer,” she said at the time. “We have too much at stake. Our country is in a world of hurt. The world is a powder keg. And I think it’s just really important that we put the right person in office.”
While in office, Reynolds signed a bill rolling back several of Iowa’s child labor law protections, including how many hours children can work and at what type of establishments. She also signed into state law a ban on school materials about sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms from kindergarten through sixth grade, and a bill prohibiting transgender females from participating in girls high school sports and women’s college athletics.
Trump administration lists thousands of living immigrants as dead in bid to push them to ‘self-deport’
The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their social security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country, two people familiar with the situation have told the Associated Press.
The move will make it much harder for those affected to use banks or other basic services where social security numbers are required.
The Trump administration is moving the immigrants’ names and legally obtained social security numbers to a database that federal officials normally use to track the deceased, according to the two people familiar with the moves and their ramifications. They spoke on condition of anonymity on Thursday night because the plans had not yet been publicly detailed.
Related: US judge allows White House to require noncitizens to register with government
The officials said stripping the immigrants of their social security numbers will cut them off from many financial services and encourage them to “self-deport” and abandon the US for their birth countries.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the 6,000-plus immigrants were chosen. But the Trump White House has targeted people in the country temporarily under Biden-era programs, including more than 900,000 immigrants who entered the US using that administration’s CBP One app.
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revoked the legal status of the immigrants who used that app. They had generally been allowed to remain in the US for two years with work authorization under presidential parole authority during the Biden era, but are now expected to self-deport.
Profits at major US banks beat forecasts in the first quarter as stock trading jumped, but executives on Friday warned of economic turbulence as sweeping tariffs could fuel risks and weigh on economic growth.
Reuters has this report:
Equity traders at JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley brought in record revenue as markets boomed early in the year, while Wells Fargo earned more fees from clients. But industry executives said consumers and corporations were becoming more cautious about US president Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which have roiled markets and could spur inflation and tip the economy into recession.
“The first quarter was a pretty good start to the year in terms of trading and even business activity, but what happens in the second quarter is still unknown, including the impact on markets, mergers and acquisitions,” said Brian Mulberry, portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management. “It is going to be a tale of two different quarters.”
While it is too early to understand the full implications of the tariffs, households and businesses were starting to respond to the import levies, executives at the biggest US lenders said.
Richard Partington
In the global fallout from Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement, it appears nowhere is safe. Crashing share prices, a sell-off in bonds and currency chaos erasing trillions of dollars of wealth in a matter of days.
On Friday the dollar fell by more than 1% relative to a basket of other currencies to reach its lowest level in three years, compounding an almost 10% slide since the start of the year. In the space of a week, it has lost about three cents against the pound and four cents against the euro.
Even after the president’s pause – freezing tariffs at 10% on all US imports except those from China for 90 days – markets swung from relief rally to fresh rout, as investors questioned the once unthinkable: could the US dollar be losing its unassailable safe haven status?
“The damage has been done,” said George Saravelos, the head of foreign exchange research at Deutsche Bank. “The market is re-assessing the structural attractiveness of the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency and is undergoing a process of rapid de-dollarisation.”
For the full story, click here:
Chuck Schumer said on Friday that Democrats are “totally united” in response to Donald Trump’s tarrifs.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Senate minority leader said:
“We are totally united, that you don’t see any divisions in the Democrats the way you do with the Republicans.”
He went on to add:
“For instance, when we had our first vote on the budget reconciliation, we had 27 amendments. Every Democrat supported every one of those amendments. We had no defections. They’re beginning to show cracks and defecting because they know embracing Trump is not what the American people want. And we Democrats are showing them that every day.”
Pentagon to end $5.1bn in contracts with companies including Accenture and Deloitte citing ‘Doge findings’
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the termination of several information technology services contracts valued at $5.1bn, including companies such as Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton and Deloitte, Reuters reports citing a Pentagon memo.
The contracts “represent non-essential spending on third party consultants” for services Pentagon employees can perform, Hegseth said in the memo released late on Thursday. “These terminations represent $5.1bn in wasteful spending,” Hegseth said, adding that their termination would result in “nearly $4bn in estimated savings.”
During morning trading in New York shares of Booz Allen Hamilton were down 2.4% to $106.30 and Accenture shares were down 2% to $279.52.
Representatives for Accenture, Deloitte and Booz Allen Hamilton did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
The contracts appeared to be wide-ranging cuts to consulting services for the Navy, the Air Force, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense Health Agency.
In a video posted on X, Hegseth said the contracts were for “ancillary things like consulting and other non-essential services.” He said the services would be brought in-house.
In the memo Hegseth said he was directing the Pentagon’s chief information officer to work over the next 30 days with tech billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called and unofficial “department of government efficiency” to prepare a plan to cut and in-source the Defense Department’s information technology consulting and management services.
Additionally, the memo said the Pentagon would negotiate the “most favorable rates” for cloud computing services.
US law firms quietly scrub DEI references from websites to appease Trump
Sam Levine
Nearly two dozen US law firms have quietly scrubbed references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from their website and revised descriptions of pro-bono work to more closely align with Donald Trump’s priorities, a Guardian review has found, underscoring the Trump administration’s successful campaign of intimidation against the legal profession.
The changes, which have occurred at some of the nation’s most prestigious firms, include eliminating mention of pro-bono immigration work from firm websites and deleting sections entirely related to DEI. In some cases, firms appear to have dropped the word “diversity” from descriptions of their work. In at least one case, a change included revising a quote from firm partners to eliminate mention of diversity and inclusion.
The Guardian contacted all of the firms mentioned in this story. None responded to a request for comment.
Many of the steps taken by law firms to capitulate to Trump are being tracked in a speradsheet by the Coalition for Justice, an alliance of progressive student organizations at Georgetown law school in Washington DC. About a dozen students are keeping a spreadsheet of how hundreds of firms are responding.
Mari Latibashvili, a second-year law student who is a leader of Coalition for Justice and has been helping with the tracker, said:
The administration’s attacks are so blatantly illegal and unconstitutional that the law firms choosing to comply in advance is really a slap in the face for the legal profession.
It’s them saying that they’re not willing to stand up for these very basic fundamental constitutional rights – the rule of law, legal ethics and just freedom of speech and expression – I think are just fundamental things that we all learn about first year of law school.
‘Warning for everybody’: US attorney Habba investigating New Jersey governor over immigration enforcement policy
The top federal prosecutor in New Jersey says she has launched an investigation into Democratic governor Phil Murphy and state attorney general Matt Platkin over the state’s directive to local law enforcement not to cooperate with federal agent conducting immigration enforcement.
Alina Habba, appointed last month by Donald Trump as the interim US attorney for the state, announced the investigation as “a warning for everybody” on Thursday evening on Fox News.
I want it to be a warning for everybody that I have instructed my office today to open an investigation into Governor Murphy, to open an investigation into Attorney General Platkin.
Both Murphy’s office and Platkin’s office declined to comment.
A partner in a small New Jersey law firm near Trump’s Bedminster golf course, Habba served as a senior adviser for Trump’s political action committee, defended him in court in several civil lawsuits and acted as a spokesperson last year as he volleyed between courtrooms and the campaign trail.
The Associated Press reports that Murphy’s administration has been largely supportive of immigration. Under his tenure, Platkin’s predecessor issued a guideline limiting cooperation between local New Jersey police and immigration officials. A bill that would make the directive state law is pending in the legislature, but hasn’t advanced.
The policy and the pending bill have gotten renewed attention since Trump’s second administration began and immigration officials arrested people in Newark soon after the inauguration. The arrests led immigrant rights advocates to call out “Where’s Governor Murphy?” during a news conference held by Newark’s mayor to deride the immigration enforcement.
US markets slip at the open while Trump says ‘very exciting’ tariff policy ‘doing really well’
Donald Trump has claimed his tariff policy is “doing really well”, calling it “very exciting” for the US and the rest of the world. He posted on his Truth Social platform:
We are doing really well on our TARIFF POLICY. Very exciting for America, and the World!!! It is moving along quickly. DJT
Meanwhile, as of the last few minutes Wall Street is open and amid the escalating trade war US stock are down at the start of trading.
Across the main indexes, the S&P 500 is down 6 points or -0.1% at 5,262 points, the Dow is down 64 points or -0.16% at 39,529 points, while the Nasdaq is down 9 points or -0.06% at 16,377 points.
The US dollar also suffered a further blow as a result of Beijing’s retaliatory 125% tariff announcement earlier, falling to a three-year low.
Democrats call on SEC to investigate trading around Trump’s abrupt tariff pause
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, minority leader Chuck Schumer and colleagues have sent a letter to the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to determine whether Donald Trump, any members of his cabinet, or other donors, insiders, and administration officials engaged in insider trading, market manipulation, or other securities laws violations.
Trump’s dramatic about-face on his trade war shocked investors and led to big rises in stock markets around the world, igniting accusations of market manipulation and insider trading.
Warren wrote on X:
Did President Trump tip off big donors or family to cash in on his tariff chaos? Today with @SenSchumer and Senate Democrats, I officially called for an SEC investigation to find out. Presidents are not kings.
The letter reads:
We urge the SEC to investigate whether the tariff announcements, which caused the market crash and subsequent partial recovery, enriched administration insiders and friends at the expense of the American public and whether any insiders, including the President’s family, had prior knowledge of the tariff pause that they abused to make stock trades ahead of the President’s announcement.
It goes on to highlight that the US president posted it was “a great time to buy” on social media just hours before abruptly pausing his tariff impositions for most countries. The timing of his posts and subsequent huge share jumps has sparked accusations of market manipulation.
Before pausing the tariffs that threw markets into disarray, President Trump appears to have previewed his plans to do so on Truth Social: at 9:37 am, he announced, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.” His official announcement of the tariff pause came roughly 4 hours later at 1:18 pm.
(In my colleague Lauren Almeida’s story from yesterday, she noted: “Trump does not usually sign off his post with his initials. Those letters happen to be the same as the ticker for Trump Media & Technology Group, the business that controls Truth Social, whose stock shot up by 22% on Wednesday.”)
The senators’ letter also asked how Trump administration cuts to the SEC might impact the agency’s ability to respond to large-scale market events and pursue enforcement actions. They have requested answers by 25 April.
Yesterday I reported that Democratic senators Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego (who are also signatories to this letter) are demanding that the Office of Government Ethics investigate potential conflicts of interest and insider trading of White House and executive branch officials who may have been privy to Trump’s 90-day pause on steep tariffs.
You can follow all the latest from the markets on our business blog:
Helen Davidson
China raises US tariffs to 125% as Xi invites EU to team up against Trump ‘bullying’
China has raised its tariffs on US products to 125% in the latest salvo of the trade dispute with Washington, just hours after Xi Jinping said there were “no winners in a tariff war”.
Xi made the comments during a meeting with the Spanish prime minister in which he invited the EU to work with China to resist “bullying”, part of an apparent campaign to shore up other trading partners.
The Chinese commerce ministry announced on Friday it was raising the 84% tariffs on all US imports to 125%, again saying that China was ready to “fight to the end”. The statement also suggested it may be Beijing’s last move in the tit-for-tat tariff rises as “at the current tariff level, there is no market acceptance for US goods exported to China”.
“If the US continues to impose tariffs on Chinese goods exported to the US, China will ignore it,” it said, flagging that there were other countermeasures to come.
Some markets continued to tumble on Friday, as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, described the US president’s 90-day tariff pause – which sets most tariffs at 10% until July – as “fragile”.
Asian indices followed Wall Street lower on Friday, with Japan’s Nikkei down nearly 5% and Hong Kong stocks heading towards the biggest weekly decline since 2008. Oil prices were also expected to drop for a second consecutive week.
Chinese officials have been canvassing other trading partners about how to deal with the US tariffs, after the country was excluded from Donald Trump’s 90-day pause of the steepest global tariffs. Instead the US president made consecutive increases to duties on Chinese imports, which are now 145%.
Gabrielle Canon
California’s $59bn agriculture industry reels under Trump’s wavering tariffs
California’s $59bn agricultural industry is bracing for disruption as Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to spike tensions and trigger economic turmoil with China – one of the state’s biggest buyers.
California is the country’s breadbasket, supplying roughly one-third of US vegetables and 75% of its fruits and nuts. But it also exports much of its produce – close to $24bn worth in 2022. This means farmers in the state could lose out significantly as China imposes retaliatory tariffs on American goods.
The threat of another prolonged trade war has contributed to growing uncertainty in an industry where decisions often have to be made long before harvests or sales. It’s difficult for producers to decide to cull or keep dairy cows from their herds, rip plants tended to for years from the soil or pluck trellises of grapevines from their pastures.
Already grappling with extreme weather events that have damaged or destroyed crops and water restrictions that added challenges, a spate of Trump policies – including attacks on agricultural research, a funding freeze of billions from the US Department of Agriculture, and crackdowns on migrant workers – have left farmers reeling.
Zachary Williams, sales director for Stewart & Jasper Orchards in Newman, California, said:
The uncertainty is probably more of a problem than the tariff itself. Uncertainty about whether there will be, or won’t be, is a little harder to plan around.
