Harvard has a serious law school, but they got some big names in private practice to rep on this litigation. That’s probably a good move for them.

It’s more like the Pope clung on to life just for the opportunity to insult JD Vance. Once that was accomplished, there was no additional reason to stick around.

As long as it’s a federal court holding them in contempt, Trump can just pardon them.

Criminal contempt has this problem, but civil contempt is not pardonable, because there is no crime to pardon.

Judge Boasberg is trying to proceed with criminal contempt on the “turn the planes around” order. Whatever happens there, it is unlikely to end in convictions that stick.

Judge Xinis is proceeding towards civil contempt. If she finds someone in willful contempt, she can imprison them until they choose to comply. And the evidence standard in civil contempt is “clear and convincing,” not “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The infamous immunity ruling gives the President a lot of immunity from criminal prosecution.

But besides that, there’s an older precedent in civil litigation that no judge can write an injunction directly against the President in the performance of his official duties. So all of these TROs and injunctions, including the Friday SC order, either do not apply to the President himself, or they are illegally broad*.

Under this theory of law, the President could theoretically arrest and deport all the people he wants with no judicial intervention – just as long he does all the arrests by himself, and flies the planes by himself, etc. In reality, the fat man is always going to have underlings doing the stuff for him, and they do not have this immunity from civil injunctions.

*This is one of the points raised in Alito’s dissent: the SC order applies to “the Government”, without saying whether the President is included or not.

The “margaritas” were staged props and also inexplicably garnished with cherries.

The thing where the judge orders summary jail time is reserved for contempt “a facie curiae”, meaning “in the face of the court”. That’s for blatant disrespect or disruption in the courtroom in front of the judge.

So far, Drew Ensign has managed to refrain from anything as directed as that. So he hasn’t been jailed.

It is my understanding based on official reporting from our Embassy in San Salvador that Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador. He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.

• Michael G. Kozak. US State Dept. April 12, 2025.

Edit: you can track the Maryland court docket here.

The government represented that he was alive in a court filing on Friday or Saturday (I forget which).

Which they failed to do yesterday.

The judge demanded daily status updates on 3 questions. The filing yesterday only responded to question #1*, and completely ignored #2 and 3.

*Additionally, the response to #1 only relayed publicly available information, when the judge specifically ordered an affidavit from someone with personal knowledge of the matter.

In the 1830s they were doing that shit in the southeast: Georgia, Carolinas, Alabama, and so on. They didn’t really get going clearing the “west” until after the war and into the twentieth century. Geronimo surrendered for the last time in the 1880s, and he died in 1909 as a POW at Ft. Sill. Oklahoma had gained statehood only two years before, in 1907.

So anything that NASA produces alone with public money is for the public by default ?

Anything that NASA civil servants produce and publish is in the public domain by default. NASA can spend public money on contracts that don’t result in public domain information.

In this case, if NASA spends public money to buy (license) a commercially available compiler from PGI, that compiler doesn’t magically become open source just because NASA is a paying customer.

Works, reports, and software that NASA produces itself are “works of the United States”, so they are in the public domain by law.

However, not everything NASA does is a published work, such as the classified GPS encryption modules on the shuttle or private medical conferences with ISS crewmembers. Additionally, a lot of stuff is actually done by contractors, such as SpaceX or Boeing, and those may or may not be required by contract to release various amounts of data to the public.

I did a quick Google search, and I was unable to find anything contemporary where NASA is maintaining or developing an in house Fortran compiler.

Yeah. All by himself too; did not refer to the rest of the court. And his order appeared after the plaintiff filed the response that was requested.

If they managed to get Bukele to make such a statement, and they got it into the district court record, I would guess that Xinis would back off and not press contempt.

If I had to predict the supreme court on this pending appeal, I’m going with 7-2 to deny the stay, with Thomas and Alito dissenting.

This case is moving so fast because the DOJ career lawyer basically conceded the government’s entire case at the hearing last week. The normal rule is that you can’t introduce evidence and arguments on appeal if you didn’t raise them at the district court. The government is now furiously trying to bypass that in these appeals.

So I think some of the conservative justices will be upset with that, and they will also not want to concede power from the courts to the executive branch. They want that power for themselves.

This shit is going down today. There are three possibilities:

1. Supreme Court grants a stay, ignoring the rule of law, and hastening the slide to authoritarianism.
2. No stay, and the government hustles to get this man back to the US by midnight tonight. I’d guess it’s like 6-8 hours of flying just to get to El Salvador and back, so the clock is really ticking on this option.
3. No stay, and the deadline expires. The government will clearly be in continuous and ongoing contempt of court.

If they don’t get a stay and they make some kind of half hearted “bad man Bukele won’t cooperate” argument, I don’t think Xinis will buy that, and they’ll be back to #3.

Unfortunately, it seems that way unless we can find another rock headed this way.

They downgraded it again after taking more observations.

This exact judge previously shot down an attempt to obtain Trump’s tax returns.

It’s like he must be looking at something besides the caption to decide these cases. I wonder what that could be?? So mysterious.

Yes. I too would like to unsubscribe from the Baker Mayfield school of international relations.

The Act itself requires a Presidential proclamation before the powers can be invoked.