The Daily Populous Tuesday April 15th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by thebulwark.com and submitted by 2a_lib

Quick note: Tomorrow I’ll be doing a Substack Live with Paul Krugman at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. It’ll be here.

I think the conversation is likely to be quite good. I hope you’ll mark it on your calendar.

And if you have questions you want me to ask him, leave them in the comments below.

Update: Moments before this was sent Trump met with Bukele.

Trump reiterated that he had no power to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Bukele said he had no intention of returning him.

And then Trump did something extraordinary: He claimed that the Supreme Court had ruled 9–0 in his favor on the case and that the Court’s decision meant only that the U.S. government would have to provide a plane if Bukele chose to return Abrego Garcia.

So Trump not only refuses to comply with the Roberts ruling, but he has now completely mischaracterized it.

What will the Supreme Court do in response? That’s the question we’re working through today. So let’s dig in.

A great deal of our near-term future depends on John Roberts’s state of mind.

On Friday, my buddy Ben Wittes wrote about the formalist delusions of our legal system. Ben asked:

My question is why Judge Xinis—or the six conservative justices—would trust any representation the government makes . . . at this point. Consider that the Justice Department placed the last attorney who answered Judge Xinis’s questions candidly on administrative leave—and removed his boss too, for good measure—for the crime. Attorney General Pam Bondi even went on national television to denounce him for alleged failure to advocate zealously for his client agency. . . . Given that Judge Xinis knows what happens to a Justice Department lawyer who behaves as an officer of the court during the Trump administration, why should she assume that the government’s current filings are meeting those standards?

Yes, indeed. The Department of Justice has made it clear that officers of the court under its employ must place loyalty to Donald Trump over loyalty to the truth, the law, and the interests of justice. If they do not, then they will be fired.

In such a system, how can the courts trust anything the government asserts, unless it comes backed by independent evidence?

But that’s not the real question.

The real question is: Does the chief justice understand this state of affairs? Or is he blind to reality?

iKangaeru on April 14th, 2025 at 17:52 UTC »

Never forget that right now Republicans have the numbers to impeach Trump in the House and convict him in the Senate. They are complicit with everything he does. The GOP is his co-conspirator in the demise of American democracy.

no_kids-and-3_money on April 14th, 2025 at 17:48 UTC »

I’m scared of the answer to this.

The administration is already lying about this. Stephen Miller is giving interviews to the media claiming they celebrated the Supreme Court decision because it was a 9-0 win in their favor.

reddittorbrigade on April 14th, 2025 at 17:43 UTC »

Donald Trump must be impeached and removed from office if we want to save our country.

It is the only way.

Not following the SC decision is one of the very strong grounds for impeachment.