Van Hollen says ‘Margarita-gate’ photo was staged by Bukele’s government
Robert Mackey
Speaking to reporters at Dulles airport in Washington on Friday afternoon, the senator Chris Van Hollen just accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Kilmar Ábrego García as they met the night before, to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.
Those photographs were posted on X by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, along with a caption that downplayed the seriousness of the situation by falsely claiming that the senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met on Thursday evening.
But the senator said that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by someone from the Salvadoran government before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Ábrego García had touched them. Van Hollen pointed out that there was visual evidence for this in the photographs: the rims of both glasses were covered in salt or sugar, but it was clear from the images that neither glass had been drunk from, since the rims were undisturbed.
Van Hollen himself shared a photo of the meeting on X taken before the glasses were placed there, in which there were just cups of coffee and glasses of water on the table.
“This is a lesson into the lengths that president Bukele” will go to, Van Hollen said, “to deceive people about what’s going on”.
Bukele’s false assertion that the men sipped margaritas was widely shared by Trump supporters, including by a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the House Republican conference and a correspondent for the pro-Trump outlet Newsmax, who mentioned it in a question to the president on Friday.
When the Newsmax correspondent Mike Carter repeated the false claim that the senator had been pictured “sipping margaritas” with the wrongly deported man, Trump nodded and said, “Yeah”. The president then called the senator who was the victim of the hoax perpetrated by the Salvadoran president “a fake”.
Later in his news conference, Van Hollen added that the Salvadoran government officials “actually wanted to have the meeting by the side of the pool in the hotel”.
“They want to create this appearance that life is just lovely for Kilmar, which, of course, is a big, fat lie”, the senator said.
Key events
Closing summary
We’re closing this blog now. Here’s what happened today:
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Gary Shapley, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, has been ousted after treasury secretary Scott Bessent complained to Donald Trump that Shapley had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk, according to the New York Times. Citing five people with knowledge of ousting, the New York Times reports that Bessent believed that Musk “had done an end run around him” to get Shapley installed, despite the IRS having to report to Bessent’s department.
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Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, Donald Trump said that the US is having good conversations with China amid the ongoing trade war between the two countries. “By the way, we have nice conversations going with China … It’s, like, really very good,” he said. He did not offer additional details, Reuters reports.
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Speaking to reporters at Dulles airport in Washington on Friday afternoon, the senator Chris Van Hollen just accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Kilmar Ábrego García as they met the night before, to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.
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Trump, asked about Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador, says he has “no interest in that prisoner”.
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A federal judge blocked a Trump administration policy banning people from changing gender markers on their passports, and using the letter X to denote non-binary gender. The state department previously froze all applications for passports with “X” sex markers and all changes to gender identity on existing passports in response.
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The American Civil Liberties Union asked the US supreme court to block what the group called the imminent deportation of a new group of Venezuelan men detained in Texas without the judicial review previously ordered by the court. In an emergency Friday court filing, ACLU lawyers said dozens of Venezuelan men held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Bluebonnet detention center in Texas were given notices indicating they were classified as members of the Tren de Aragua gang and would be deported under the Alien Enemies Act, and were told “that the removals are imminent and will happen tonight or tomorrow”.
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Keir Starmer and Donald Trump spoke about UK-US trade talks and Ukraine in a phone call on Friday, according to Downing Street. A statement from a No 10 spokesperson reads: “The leaders began by discussing the ongoing and productive discussions between the UK and US on trade. The Prime Minister reiterated his commitment to free and open trade and the importance of protecting the national interest.”
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Trump and his team will continue to study whether to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, the White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said. “The president and his team will continue to study that matter,” Hassett told reporters at the White House in response to a question.
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The Trump administration has requested records from Harvard University on the money it receives from foreign funding, in the latest step in Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against the university. The education department said it sent a records request from Harvard “after a review of the university’s foreign reports revealed incomplete and inaccurate disclosures”.
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Trump has accepted the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s invitation to pay an official visit to Italy in the “very near future”, a joint statement by the leaders said on Friday. The statement came a day after the two leaders met at the White House in an attempt by Meloni to bridge the gap between the EU and the US amid trade tariff tensions.
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Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” and the Trump administration have spared the jobs of US Department of Transportation employees who provide support services for spacecraft launches by Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Starlink – a revelation that raises a new round of conflict-of-interest questions around Doge. In its most recent buyout announcement, the transportation department did not note that the positions spared supported Musk’s and others’ space operations.
A federal prosecutor sent a letter to a medical journal editor probing whether the publication was “partisan” according a report by MedPage Today.
Per MedPage:
Edward R. Martin Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, sent a list of questions to CHEST Editor-in-Chief Peter Mazzone, MD, MPH, of the Cleveland Clinic, asking how the journal handles “misinformation” and “competing viewpoints,” among other things.
MedPage Today has learned that at least two other journals have received similar letters.
“It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” the letter stated.
The letter to CHEST was first posted on X by Eric Reinhart of Chicago.
The probe fits with the Trump administration’s broader actions targeting independent medical research. The administration has tried to undercut research it deems to biased, including scientific studies it believes are forwarding “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”. In February, it also moved to block a crucial step in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) process for funding medical research.
Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is building a master databased to surveil immigrants, according to a report by Wired.
Per Wired’s Makena Kelly and Vittoria Elliott:
Operatives from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) are building a master database at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that could track and surveil undocumented immigrants, two sources with direct knowledge tell WIRED.
DOGE is knitting together immigration databases from across DHS and uploading data from outside agencies including the Social Security Administration (SSA), as well as voting records, sources say. This, experts tell WIRED, could create a system that could later be searched to identify and surveil immigrants.
Privacy advocates and lawmakers have raised alarm that Doge employees have accessed the sensitive data of US citizens and immigrants. Earlier this month, a court filing revealed that a member of Doge had gained access to a government system that contains the personal data of unaccompanied immigrant children.
The database, called the Unaccompanied Alien Children portal (UAC), contains extremely detailed information about thousands of minors who enter the United States alone, including individual children’s mental health and therapy records, as well as immigration records, photos and addresses of their family members.
ACLU urges US supreme court to block ‘imminent’ deportations of Venezuelans
Robert Mackey
The American Civil Liberties Union asked the US supreme court to block what the group called the imminent deportation of a new group of Venezuelan men detained in Texas without the judicial review previously ordered by the court.
In an emergency Friday court filing, ACLU lawyers said dozens of Venezuelan men held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Bluebonnet detention center in Texas were given notices indicating they were classified as members of the Tren de Aragua gang and would be deported under the Alien Enemies Act, and were told “that the removals are imminent and will happen tonight or tomorrow”.
The ACLU has already sued to block deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of two Venezuelans held in the Texas detention center and is asking a judge to issue an order barring removals of any immigrants in the region under the law.
In the new emergency filing, the ACLU warned immigration authorities were accusing other Venezuelan men held there of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang that would make them subject to deportation.
The supreme court has allowed deportations under the 1798 law, but ruled unanimously they could proceed only if those about to be removed had a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.
The ACLU said a number of the men in Texas had already been loaded on a bus and urged the court to rule before they could be deported.
A federal judge has blocked a Trump administration policy banning people from changing gender markers on their passports, and using the letter X to denote non-binary gender.
Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating that government-issued identification documents exclusively use “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female”. The state department froze all applications for passports with “X” sex markers and all changes to gender identity on existing passports in response.
The US district judge Julia Kobick, who was appointed by Joe Biden, sided with the American Civil Liberties Union’s motion for a preliminary injunction.
“The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick wrote. “That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”
A federal judge ordered that Rümeysa Öztürk – a Tufts University PhD student who was ambushed and detained by immigration authorities near her home in Massachusetts and shuttled through three states before landing in a Louisiana detention facility – be brought to Vermont for a 1 May hearing.
An immigration judge denied bond for Öztürk, saying she was both a “flight risk” and a “danger to the community”, according to the petition filed by her legal team. Lawyers had asked for her release after she suffered at least six asthma attacks since being apprehended and complained of inadequate medical care. During one incident, Öztürk testified, a nurse forcibly removed her hijab.
The US district judge William Sessions on Friday said he would hear out Öztürk’s request for release, saying she “has presented viable and serious habeas claims which warrant urgent review”.
Öztürk has argued she was wrongly detained after co-authoring a campus newspaper op-ed about Gaza.
Rachel Leingang
Donald Trump on Friday said his administration is implementing a move that will allow far more firings of federal employees and will make significantly more roles into politically appointed positions beholden to the president.
The office of personnel management (OPM) on Friday published a new rule that invokes “Schedule F”, a prior attempt to reclassify wide swaths of federal workers not as civic service roles with protections regardless of who’s in power – but as political appointees who can be hired or fired based on their allegiances to the president.
“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” Trump wrote on Friday on his Truth Social platform. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”
The president previously issued an executive order on his first day in office that reclassified a host of federal workers.
The policy unveiled on Friday is one Trump first sought late in his first presidency. But Joe Biden overturned it after defeating him in the 2020 election. The idea aligns with a major plank of Project 2025, the conservative policy manifesto, which calls for a federal government more beholden to the executive branch to drive out a supposed “deep state” that stood in Trump’s way before he won his second presidency.
Most federal government employees serve in roles that are not politically appointed. About 4,000 employees are in roles appointed based on who is in power. Friday’s move would expand that by about 50,000 people, prior estimates have shown.
Van Hollen says ‘Margarita-gate’ photo was staged by Bukele’s government
Robert Mackey
Speaking to reporters at Dulles airport in Washington on Friday afternoon, the senator Chris Van Hollen just accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Kilmar Ábrego García as they met the night before, to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.
Those photographs were posted on X by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, along with a caption that downplayed the seriousness of the situation by falsely claiming that the senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met on Thursday evening.
But the senator said that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by someone from the Salvadoran government before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Ábrego García had touched them. Van Hollen pointed out that there was visual evidence for this in the photographs: the rims of both glasses were covered in salt or sugar, but it was clear from the images that neither glass had been drunk from, since the rims were undisturbed.
Van Hollen himself shared a photo of the meeting on X taken before the glasses were placed there, in which there were just cups of coffee and glasses of water on the table.
“This is a lesson into the lengths that president Bukele” will go to, Van Hollen said, “to deceive people about what’s going on”.
Bukele’s false assertion that the men sipped margaritas was widely shared by Trump supporters, including by a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the House Republican conference and a correspondent for the pro-Trump outlet Newsmax, who mentioned it in a question to the president on Friday.
When the Newsmax correspondent Mike Carter repeated the false claim that the senator had been pictured “sipping margaritas” with the wrongly deported man, Trump nodded and said, “Yeah”. The president then called the senator who was the victim of the hoax perpetrated by the Salvadoran president “a fake”.
Later in his news conference, Van Hollen added that the Salvadoran government officials “actually wanted to have the meeting by the side of the pool in the hotel”.
“They want to create this appearance that life is just lovely for Kilmar, which, of course, is a big, fat lie”, the senator said.
Denied, detained, deported: the most high-profile cases in Trump’s immigration crackdown
Joanna Walters
Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration has set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting asylum seekers and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.
Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.
Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.
The US representative Pramila Jayapal decried the move to remove even more immigrants and send them to El Salvador’s notorious prison for alleged gang members.
“SCOTUS ruled that Trump had to give people adequate notice before deporting them. Yet today, there are reports that he’s deporting 177 immigrants with under 24 hours’ notice—not enough time to assert due process. We cannot stand by as this admin continues to disappear people,” she wrote.
Senator Chris Van Hollen speaks live about meeting Kilmar Ábrego García
At the airport in Washington, the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen is currently describing his meeting with Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador on Thursday.
Here is the live video from the senator’s YouTube channel.
Lawyers say Venezuelans have been given 24 hours notice of deportation
In an emergency motion, lawyers for Venezuelan nationals in the US are raising alarm that their clients have been given 24 hours of notice that they will be removed from the US.
The filing is part of a larger case from the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Forward and the ACLU of the District of Columbia challenging the Trump administration over the president’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to remove immigrants in the US.
The filing indicates that the government is planning a fresh wave of deportations to El Salvador’s mega-prison, Cecot, where more than 275 immigrants have already been sent. The lawyers are asking for an immediate restraining order mandating that the government give people at least 30 days notice of removals.
In their court filing, lawyers say clients received a document Friday from immigration officials, titled “Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act”.
It reads: “You have been determined to be … a member of Tren de Aragua.”
“You have been determined to be an Alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States … This is not a removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the notice reads.
Interim summary
Here’s a look at where things stand:
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Gary Shapley, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, has been ousted after treasury secretary Scott Bessent complained to Donald Trump that Shapley had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk, according to the New York Times. Citing five people with knowledge of ousting, the New York Times reports that Bessent believed that Musk “had done an end run around him” to get Shapley installed, despite the IRS having to report to Bessent’s department.
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Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, Donald Trump said that the US is having good conversations with China amid the ongoing trade war between the two countries. “By the way, we have nice conversations going with China … It’s, like, really very good,” he said. He did not offer additional details, Reuters reports.
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Trump, asked about Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador, says he has “no interest in that prisoner”.
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Keir Starmer and Donald Trump spoke about UK-US trade talks and Ukraine in a phone call on Friday, according to Downing Street. A statement from a No 10 spokesperson reads: “The leaders began by discussing the ongoing and productive discussions between the UK and US on trade. The Prime Minister reiterated his commitment to free and open trade and the importance of protecting the national interest.”
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Donald Trump and his team will continue to study whether to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, the White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said. “The president and his team will continue to study that matter,” Hassett told reporters at the White House in response to a question.
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The Trump administration has requested records from Harvard University on the money it receives from foreign funding, in the latest step in Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against the university. The education department said it sent a records request from Harvard “after a review of the university’s foreign reports revealed incomplete and inaccurate disclosures”.
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Donald Trump has accepted the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s invitation to pay an official visit to Italy in the “very near future”, a joint statement by the leaders said on Friday. The statement came a day after the two leaders met at the White House in an attempt by Meloni to bridge the gap between the EU and the US amid trade tariff tensions.
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Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” and the Trump administration have spared the jobs of US Department of Transportation employees who provide support services for spacecraft launches by Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Starlink – a revelation that raises a new round of conflict-of-interest questions around Doge. In its most recent buyout announcement, the transportation department did not note that the positions spared supported Musk’s and others’ space operations.
Wife of Kilmar Ábrego García expresses relief to learn he is alive
From the Guardian’s Edward Helmore and Léonie Chao-Fong and agencies:
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man the Trump administration has admitted it mistakenly deported to El Salvador, on Friday expressed relief to learn he is alive after a Democratic US senator managed to meet with him.
“It was very overwhelming – the most important thing for me, my children, his mom, brothers was to see him alive, and we saw him alive,” Vasquez Sura told ABC in an interview.
The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen revealed on Thursday evening that he had met with Ábrego García at the maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as Cecot, where the autocratic regime holds prisoners without due process. Ábrego García was arrested by immigration agents in Maryland, where he lives and works with his family.
He had been afforded a federal protection order against deportation to El Salvador, which the Trump administration ignored last month when it flew him and more than 200 Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador without warning or a court hearing, in a move that has fallen foul of judges in the US right up to the supreme court.
For the full story, click here:
The White House has released a list of the various activities scheduled for Easter celebrations next Monday.
Part of the celebrations, which will be helmed by first lady Melania Trump, include:
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Be Best Military Card Writing Station, encouraging children to send messages of gratitude to American troops.
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Be Best Hopscotch, for the most energetic young guests.
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Space Exploration Experience, courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).
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Hen to Home Activity, courtesy of the American Egg Board.
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Garden Café for Tasty Treats, courtesy of the American Egg Board.
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Play Garden, courtesy of the Toy Association.
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Bloom Bar and Carrot Planting, courtesy of the International Fresh Produce Association.
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Easter Candy Distribution, courtesy of the National Confectioners Association.
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Reading Nook, courtesy of Amazon.
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Family Photo Opportunity Celebrating Reading, courtesy of Amazon.
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Bunny Hop Stage, courtesy of YouTube.
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AI-Powered Experience and Photo Opportunity, courtesy of Meta.
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Ringing of the Bell Photo Opportunity, courtesy of the New York Stock Exchange.
The children’s celebrations next week come amid Donald Trump’s widespread immigration crackdowns across the country that include efforts by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport unaccompanied immigrant children, as Reuters reported in February.
Additionally, as part of sweeping budget cuts across the federal government, the Trump administration is reported to have cut funding last month to a legal program that provides representation for unaccompanied immigrant children.
Donald Trump has said the US will ‘take a pass’ on a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine if ‘parties make it difficult’.
The US president made the comments to reporters during the swearing-in ceremony for Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
IRS acting commissioner ousted – report
Gary Shapley, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, has been ousted after treasury secretary Scott Bessent complained to Donald Trump that Shapley had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk, according to the New York Times.
Citing five people with knowledge of ousting, the New York Times reports that Bessent believed that Musk “had done an end run around him” to get Shapley installed, despite the IRS having to report to Bessent’s department.
The Times further reports that Musk’s so-called “department of goverment efficiency” encouraged Shapley’s appointment through White House channels without consulting Bessent, according to the sources who spoke to the outlet.
The next acting head of the IRS is expected to be the deputy treasury secretary, Michael Faulkender, the Times reported.
He would hold the role until the president’s nominee for the permanent role, former Missouri congressman Billy Long, if approved by the Senate, takes over.
