Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender 
Weeks have gone by since the Trump administration rushed three planeloads of deportees to an El Salvadorian labor camp. And yet, there are reams of basic questions about what happened to which we do not have answers.
Take the question of the scope of the removals. On March 15, the Trump administration sent three planes to El Salvador. To DC chief judge James Boasberg, government attorneys have said that only the first two planes were used to conduct Alien Enemies Act removals. It’s a key question that underlines how little we still know about what happened: how did the government decide who was subject to deportation without a hearing? Who was put on what plane?
Boasberg provisionally accepted that the first two planes were the ones at issue, but new developments this week poured doubt on whether the third plane was only carrying people who were, as the government suggested, removed via normal, legal means. Kilmer Abrego Garcia, an El Salvador-born Maryland man subject to a 2019 immigration court order barring his removal was placed on the third plane. The Trump administration admitted in a court filing this week that Abrego had been deported due to an administrative error, and said that it had no plans to try to return him to the United States.
The questions here are potentially endless. How could that have happened? Why was the Trump administration rushing? Might it have been, as TPM reporting has suggested, to evade judicial oversight? All of this caused Judge Boasberg to say at a Thursday hearing that he would likely reopen the question of the third plane. “What you were willing to do by trying to do this as quickly as possible and avoid being enjoined by a court, was to risk putting people on those planes who shouldn’t have been on the plane the first place,” Boasberg remarked.
This also raises a thicket of other legal issues. A Maryland federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego from El Salvador by Monday; the government immediately appealed. If the order stands, will the Trump administration move to comply? Abrego (and the other detainees) are not in the custody of the United States. Will Nayyib Bukele comply? Do wardens at the El Salvadorian labor camp keep close tabs on where each detainee is held?
We don’t know, but it all emphasizes the profound lawlessness of the administration’s decision to remove people that day.
— Josh Kovensky
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
- Kate Riga looks at Democrats’ victory in Wisconsin this week and the way in which it informs how the party, which has developed a reputation of complacency, thinks about its post-2024 strategy.
- Emine Yücel has more from Senate Democrats this week as they attempt to raise the alarm about Republicans’ attempt to use a budget gimmick to make portions of the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent with only 50 votes.
- Khaya Himmelman unpacks the Justice Department’s ongoing fixation with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) as it attempts to intimidate her out of publicly criticizing Elon Musk.
Let’s dig in.
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like 2017 — For Better And For Worse
Recent off-year elections have Democrats feeling buoyed, a fairly foreign experience since President Trump’s win in November.
So far, things are feeling pretty thermostatic-y — Democrats are hungry to come out and vote against Trump, even via other races.
But for those critical of Democrats’ recent approach, those howling that the party or at least its leadership needs to be retooled to be competitive at the presidential level again, it presents something of a risk. The party is criticized, often rightly, for its complacency, reluctance to innovate, fear of aggression — all factors that incentivize it to keep on keepin’ on, even if its tactics have proved disastrously fallible. If leadership decides that the pendulum will swing back in its favor again no matter what it does, we’re living in a reality where the Democratic Party changes very little after 2024, besides some lip service to its critics.
Given the demographic trends encapsulated by the last election, that’d be a very risky bet to make.
— Kate Riga
Dems: GOP Tax Cuts Will Be Even More Expensive Than Anticipated
Democrats are pointing to new projections from the Congressional Budget Service that shows the price tag for extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts will be higher than previously estimated.
The new estimate says the tax cuts would all-in-all cost $5.5 trillion, up from the previous estimate of nearly $4 trillion.
“The Republican handouts to billionaires and corporations will come at a staggering cost,” top Democrats on the House and Senate tax and budget committees said in a joint statement on Thursday.
“What Republicans are trying to jam through Congress right now is a level of economic recklessness we’ve never seen before,” they added.
The new numbers come as Senate Republicans are plowing ahead with their plan to utilize an unprecedented “budget gimmick” to make portions of the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent.
The budget resolution text — that Senate GOP leadership put out on Wednesday — suggests Republicans plan to make up their own numbers and cost estimates as a way of shoehorning in the “current policy baseline,” in order to zero out the cost of their tax cuts and claim on paper that the extension will be costless.
The Senate took the initial procedural vote on the budget resolution Thursday night — with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) being the only Republican to vote against the motion to proceed. A vote-a-rama is expected to begin Friday afternoon, which means by the time you’re reading this Senate Republicans could’ve already passed their second budget blueprint.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he wants to push for a vote on the Senate’s resolution as early as next week. But the almost inevitable resistance from hardliners in his conference could easily slow that timeline down.
— Emine Yücel
Trump’s DOJ Is Fixated On Jasmine Crockett
President Trump’s nominee for D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin issued an indirect warning to Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), following a supposed altercation between Crockett and a journalist associated with right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. It’s another pointed example of the Department of Justice specifically going after President Donald Trump’s perceived political enemies or anyone who criticizes the Trump administration.
In a video posted on X, Charles Downs posted the incident between himself and Crockett. In the video, Downs asks Crockett about her remarks during a “TeslaTakedown” conference call, in which she discussed Elon Musk and his recent slashing of the federal workforce and federal spending through his Department of Government Efficiency.
The video ends abruptly, when Crockett appears to move the camera out of her face. But Downs, who published a follow up video on X, described the incident as an “attack.”
“This matter extends beyond a personal dispute between Representative Crockett and myself. It concerns the protection of free speech within the Capitol, as the loss of free speech there would jeopardize its preservation across America,” Downs wrote on X.
As a response to that video, Martin issued a warning to Crockett on X.
“As I’ve said from Day One, no one is above the law,” Martin wrote. “This matter is currently under review by law enforcement authorities. If it is referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, we will follow the proper procedures to determine whether chargers are appropriate.”
Martin has issued similar warnings to other Democratic members of Congress for speech criticizing the Trump administration or the Supreme Court.
The warning follows Attorney General Pom Bondi’s similarly vague warning to Crockett, directing her to “tread very carefully,” after the lawmaker criticized Musk during last month’s “TeslaTakedown” conference call. Bondi issued her warning even though Crockett specifically clarified during the call that she was not calling for violence of any kind and that the protest she was promoting was “nonviolent.”
On Wednesday, Crockett fired back at Bondi during a House Judiciary Committee meeting, saying: “To have her go on Fox News, and to then decide that she wanted to send a threat to me, it was wrong.”
— Khaya Himmelman
