PhilipTheBucket

At any moment, the Supreme Court will issue a decision in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man whom the Trump administration admits itdeported to a notorious Salvadoran mega prison due to “administrative error.” The ruling could pose a make or break moment, not just for the life of Abrego Garcia, but for what kind of country we are going to be.

Less than three months into Trump’s second term, the stakes of litigation over its agenda are extremely high. If the Supreme Court requires the US government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s rapid return to US soil, it will have held the line by requiring that the rule of law governs Trump’s deportation powers. But if the court halts Abrego Garcia’s return, the United States is on track toenter a dark new chapter in which anyone—noncitizens and citizens alike—can be shipped off to foreign prisons with no hope of return. These are the tools of control exercised by authoritarian regimes on other continents. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen here.

“The government could whisk individuals to foreign prisons in violation of court orders and then contend…there is nothing that can be done.”

Abrego Garcia is an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. In 2019, the government attempted to deport him and claimed, on very weak grounds, that he was a member of the MS-13 gang. On appeal, an immigration judge found that he faced “a clear probability of future persecution” if returned to El Salvador. The judge ordered that Abrego Garcia not be removed to El Salvador. The government never appealed. Abrego Garcia is married, raising three children, gainfully employed, and has never had a run-in with the law.

When the Department of Homeland Security picked him up in March and put him on a plane to El Salvador, it did so against the immigration judge’s clear order. The government itself concedes his removal was an “administrative error.” Yet, the government does not want to retrieve him and is fighting a judge’s order to bring him back. Instead, it argues that even if removed in error, the courts have no authority to facilitate a prisoner’s return from abroad. What’s done is done, Trump administration lawyers argue: once you arrive at El Salvador’s brutal labor camp, it’s as if the US government has thrown away the key.

If the Supreme Court accepts the government’s argument, it would destroy Abrego Garcia’s life. But under its logic, untold numbers of other noncitizens and citizens are in jeopardy of permanent and unlawful disappearance. It wouldn’t matter who you are. If the government scoops you off the street and ships you off to another country without providing a chance to make your case in court, there is nothing you, your family, or a judge could do. The president’s power over national security and foreign affairs, the government argues, cannot be impinged, even if it violated an individual’s constitutional rights to deport them. But this logic leads to a license for Trump to disappear anyone, possibly forever.

Constitutional law luminaries Erwin Chemerinsky, Martha Minow, and Laurence Tribe stress the gravity of this case in an amicus brief they submitted to the Supreme Court. If the administration’s argument prevails, they warn, “the Executive Branch would possess a shuddering degree of power—power that the President could wield in extreme and extraordinary ways, including against American citizens that the President simply disfavors.”

A three judge panel from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rebuked the government’s arguments in a ruling that seized on the dystopian powers the government is seeking. “The facts of this case thus present the potential for a disturbing loophole: namely that the government could whisk individuals to foreign prisons in violation of court orders and then contend, invoking its Article II powers, that it is no longer their custodian, and there is nothing that can be done,” Judge James Wilkinson warned in a concurrence. “It takes no small amount of imagination to understand that this is a path of perfect lawlessness, one that courts cannot condone.”

It’s no surprise that Wilkinson’s concurrence found its way into Abrego Garcia’s brief to the Supreme Court; In 2003, Wilkinson authored an opinion granting the federal government the power to indefinitely detain a US citizen without the opportunity to challenge their confinement in court if it designated him an “enemy combatant”—a decision overturned by the Supreme Court. If Wilkinson, a Reagan-appointee who has accorded the government extreme deference in the arena of national security and detention, can see that the Abrego Garcia case is a bridge to “perfect lawlessness,” then perhaps the Supreme Court will as well.

Abrego Garcia’s case was first filed in federal district court in Maryland, where a judge ordered the government to “facilitate and effectuate the return of Plaintiff Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States by no later than 11:59 PM on Monday, April 7, 2025.” The government appealed to the Fourth Circuit. Then, on April 7, before the circuit court had issued a decision, the government appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the highest court to immediately halt the lower court’s order so that the government wouldn’t have to retrieve Abrego Garcia that day. It also asked the high court to fully vacate the district court’s order. After this appeal was filed, the Fourth Circuit released its opinion siding with Abrego Garcia. As Stephanie Thacker, a judge on the appellate court, explained in that opinion, “The irreparable harm in this case is the harm being done to Abrego Garcia every minute he is in El Salvador.”

“It takes no small amount of imagination to understand that this is a path of perfect lawlessness.”

But shortly after that opinion was issued, Chief Justice John Roberts halted the lower court’s order temporarily while the highest court decides whether to grant the administration’s request for a fuller rebuke of the lower court. It is this decision that will indicate whether or not there is a meaningful right to challenge detention before removal to a foreign country or whether that right can be overridden by an alleged “administrative error.”

In a separate ruling Tuesday over challenges to removals to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that every person transferred has the right to meaningfully challenge that removal in court. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers quickly filed a notice with the Supreme Court to remind them that Abrego Garcia had the same right to challenge his removal but was denied it—a constitutional violation that must be remedied. Thus, the Abrego Garcia case is an immediate test of the Supreme Court’s own ruling: Will the right to challenge removal in court be one that can be denied by administrative error—either a genuine error or an alleged one?

It’s important to realize administrative errors are not that uncommon in immigration enforcement. For example, a Government Accountability Office report found that between 2015 and 2020, ICE likely deported 70 US citizens. The government can and does retrieve people from foreign countries after unlawful removal. Moreover, there no reason to believe the Trump administration wouldn’t make the same argument about people it has deliberately removed.

One reason to worry is the government’s response when a federal judge ordered it to turn around the planes taking hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, on the basis that the detainees were not afforded the opportunity to challenge their removal. The government made the decision not to turn the planes around, but instead to continue on to El Salvador, unload the planes, and place the detainees in the care of a foreign country. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, a leader who himself employs authoritarian tactics and illegal confinement to maintain control, mocked the efforts to stop the planes. He posted an article on X about the order to turn the planes around and commented “Oopsie… Too Late” followed by the tears of joy emoji often used to gloat over the suffering of others. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, retweeted him. Dodging a court order wasn’t an error, it was a joke.

“We are not stopping,” border czar Tom Homan said on Fox News two days later. “I don’t care what the judges think.”

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When Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, went looking for someone to head the National Counterterrorism Center, she landed on Joe Kent, a former Green Beret, past CIA officer, and twice-failed MAGA congressional candidate in Washington state, who, as the Associated Press reported, “stands out for the breadth of his ties to a deep-seated extremist fringe.” During his first campaign in 2022, Kent consulted with white nationalist Nick Fuentes on social-media strategy. He also had a member of the Proud Boys on his campaign staff, and he embraced as a supporter and ally Joey Gibson, the leader of Patriot Prayer, a Christian nationalist group.

But his associations with far-right extremists began prior to his attempt to win a congressional seat. In 2020, Kent helped boost the organizing message of a new right-wing paramilitary outfit that called itself the 1st Amendment Praetorian.

On September 20, 2020, Robert Patrick Lewis, a former Green Beret and QAnon supporter, posted a long thread on Twitter (now X) that announced the formation of the group. Lewis declared that a band of “military, law enforcement & intel community veterans” had come together to protect the First Amendment rights of conservatives. He presented a harsh, conspiratorial, and paranoid view, claiming, “There are Marxist & leftist politicians aiming to lock down total control over our populace.” He asserted, “Their tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups such as ANTIFA & BLM demand total subservience to and adulation of their specific view of the world.” And he maintained the “corrupted Main Stream Media does their best to tarnish the reputation and destroy the lives of any public or private citizen who dares step up to them or fight back against their narrative.”

Lewis called on “military, law enforcement or intelligence community” veterans to join 1AP and fight back. In an apparent sign of support, Kent reposted this thread.

Lewis noted that 1AP would be providing security services for right-wing rallies and marches, including those “with a large number of high-profile, conservative VIPs speaking & attending.” For one event, he said he needed veterans to provide “physical security, intelligence/surveillance and to serve as team leaders for small security & intelligence and intelligence cells.” He promised, “we will keep your names confidential and our personnel records & communications will be encrypted.” He added, “This group was formed to protect attendees at President Trump’s campaign rallies.”

Soon after forming 1Ap, Lewis presented it not only as a security service for the right but as an intelligence operation. He told Fox News, “Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they [Antifa] are planning a massive ‘Antifa Tet Offensive,’ bent on destroying the global order they are not beholden to any one party. Their sole purpose is to create havoc, fear, and intimidation.” (No such uprising occurred.) After the election, 1AP claimed it was collecting evidence of fraud. On January 6, as the riot began at the Capitol, Lewis tweeted, “Today is the day the true battles begin.” (He later said he was at the Willard Hotel, not Capitol Hill, that day.)

Lewis’ 1AP did provide security at various events featuring far-right extremists. According to the final report of the House January 6 committee, during a December 12, 2020, rally of pro-Trump election deniers in Washington, DC, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing, anti-government militia, “coordinated” with 1AP “to guard VIPs, including retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne.” (Both Flynn and Byrne were prominent promoters of the crackpot conspiracy theory holding that the 2020 election was stolen form Trump.) Months later, Lewis and 1AP provided security at a QAnon conference in Dallas, where Flynn essentially called for a military coup in the United States.

On social media, Kent has often boosted posts from Lewis. At one point each complimented the other for a podcast appearance. When Kent ran for Congress, Lewis expressed his support for him on social media. In a 2022 Telegram post, Lewis said that he knew Kent “personally” and “wish I could personally vote for him.” In January, 1AP posted on Telegram that there were “mumblings” that Kent could be appointed to lead the National Counterterrorism Center and that this “would be a very good thing. I could not support this more strongly.”

Mother Jones sent Kent, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Center a list of questions about Kent’s support for 1AP and his relationship with Lewis. Neither Kent nor the agencies responded.

Kent has an established record as an extremist and promoter of conspiracy theories. During his 2022 run, he called for charging Dr. Anthony Fauci with murder to hold him “accountable” for the “scam that is Covid.” He promoted Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him. He backed the idea the January 6 riot was orchestrated by the Deep State to discredit Trump and his supporters. He referred to the J6 rioters as “political prisoners.” He pushed the notion that billionaire Bill Gates was seeking to “control the food supply” and “control housing” to force people to “live in the pod eat the bugs.”

Like Gabbard, Kent has no experience in leading a large intelligence organization. (After serving in the Army, he was a field operative for the CIA for a short time.) Both Kent and Gabbard were on the infamous Signalgate chat. As head of the NCTC, Kent will have the responsibility for monitoring and preventing both foreign and domestic terrorism. But his past as a conspiracy theorist and his association with far-right extremists raise questions about his analytical abilities and his capacity to assess threats of domestic terrorism that arise from the right. His association with 1AP and Lewis is just one more reason to wonder about his judgment.

As President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders Tuesday aimed at keeping coal power alive in the United States, he repeatedly blamed his predecessor, Democrats, and environmental regulations for the industry’s dramatic contraction over the past two decades.

But across the country, state and local officials and electric grid operators have been confronting a factor in coal’s demise that is not easily addressed with the stroke of a pen: its cost.

For example, Maryland’s only remaining coal generating station, Talen Energy’s 1.3-gigawatt Brandon Shores plant, will be staying open beyond its previously planned June 1 shutdown, under a deal that regional grid operator PJM brokered earlier this year with the company, state officials, and the Sierra Club.

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On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at “protecting” American energy from “state overreach.” The move, some energy experts say, is a legally dubious federal overstep designed to undermine the rights of states and local authorities to combat climate change.

The order claims “many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.”

It specifically points to Blue-state policies like Vermont’s Superfund rules, which require fossil fuel companies to pay for damage to the climate, and California’s cap-and-trade program as examples of efforts to “dictate national energy policy.” In Section 2 of the order, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify state laws or policies “burdening” access to “domestic energy resources that “are or may be…unconstitutional, preempted by Federal law, or otherwise unenforceable.”

What might some of those state laws be? According to the executive order, that could include any effort to address “climate change,” support “environmental justice,” or reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions, among others.

That’s not the end of it. The order also directs the attorney general to “expeditiously” take action to “stop the enforcement of State laws and continuation of civil actions” determined to be illegal.

It’s unclear whether this will stand up in court. Michael Gerrard, the faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told E&E News that the executive order is “toothless” and that Trump “has no authority on his own to nullify state laws.” Journalist David Roberts, who runs the clean energy newsletter Volts called the order on Bluesky, “wildly, unambiguously unconstitutional” and “dictator shit.”

Others on social media noted the president’s contradiction of traditionally conservative values. As climate reporter and Drilled podcast host Amy Westervelt put it on Bluesky, “States rights! But only when the states agree with us[.]”Climate scientist and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributing author Zeke Hausfather posted, “So much for federalism…” And Tulane environmental studies professor Joshua Basseches wrote, “Federal overreach has historically been a crusade of the Right, but these times are wild and different.”

This new White House executive order says that the US Attorney General is going to prevent states from implementing democratically passed laws regarding climate change and clean energy. It scarcely needs stating at this point that this is wildly, unambiguously unconstitutional. Dictator shit.

— David Roberts (@volts.wtf) 2025-04-09T05:42:55.516Z

Earlier this year, elected officials from 18 towns and counties devastated by Hurricane Helene gathered outside the Madison County courthouse in Marshall, North Carolina. Standing in a street still stained with the mud left behind when the French River overran its banks, they called for swifter state and federal help rebuilding their communities.

Everyone stood in the chill of a late January day because the first floor of the courthouse, built in 1907, remains empty, everything inside having been washed away in the flood. The county’s judicial affairs are conducted in temporary offices as local leaders wrangle state and federal funding to rebuild. Local officials hope to restore the historic downtown, and its most critical public buildings, without changing too much about it. They, like most of the people impacted by Hurricane Helene’s rampage in September, don’t doubt another flood is coming. But they are also hesitant to move out of its way.

“When you talk about what was flooded and moving it, it would be everything, and that’s just not realistic,” said Forrest Gillium, the town administrator. “We’re not going to give up on our town.”

They may not have to. FEMA is no longer enforcing rules, first adopted during the Obama administration, that required many federally funded construction projects to adopt strict siting and building standards to reduce the risk of future flooding. The rules were withdrawn by the first Trump administration and then re-implemented by executive order under Biden. Now, they’ve been withdrawn by Trump for the second time.

The change eases regulations dictating things like the elevation and floodproofing of water systems, fire stations, and other critical buildings and infrastructure built with federal dollars. Ultimately, the rules were intended to save taxpayers money in the long run. Many other federal, state, and local guidelines still apply to the programs that help homeowners and businesses rebuild. Still, FEMA said rolling back the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard will speed up recovery.

“Stopping implementation will reduce the total timeline to rebuild in disaster-impacted communities and eliminate additional costs previously required to adhere to these strict requirements,” the agency said in a statement released March 25.

President Trump rescinded the standard through an executive order on Jan 20. It required federal agencies to evaluate the impact of climate change on future flood risk and weather patterns to determine whether 500- and 100-year floodplains could shift and, if so, consider that before committing taxpayer money to rebuilding. The guideline required building critical facilities like fire stations and hospitals 3 feet above the floodplain elevation, and all other projects receiving federal funding at least 2 feet above it, said Chad Berginnis, who leads the Association of State Floodplain Managers. The idea was to locate these projects so they were beyond areas vulnerable to flooding or design them to withstand it if they could not be moved.

Easing the standard comes even as communities across the United States experience unprecedented, and often repeated, flooding. Homeowners and businesses in Florida, along the Mississippi River, and throughout central Appalachia have endured the exhausting cycle of losing everything and rebuilding it, only to see it wash away again. The Federal Flood Risk Management Standard was meant to break that cycle and ensure everything rebuilt with taxpayer money isn’t destroyed when the next inundation hits.

“Why on Earth would the federal government want it to be rebuilt to a lower standard and waste our money so that when the flood hits if it gets destroyed again, we’re spending yet more money to rebuild it?” Berginnis said.

Last fall, federal climate scientists found that climate change increases the likelihood of extreme and dangerous rainfall of the sort Helene brought to the southeast. Such events will be as much as 15 to 25 percent more likely if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius. With more extreme rainfall come challenges for infrastructure that was designed for a less extreme climate.

“You’re going to have storm sewers overwhelmed. You’re going to have basins that were designed to hold a certain kind of flood that don’t do it anymore,” Berginnis said. “You’re going to have bridges that no longer can pass through that water like it used to. You have all of this infrastructure that’s designed for an older event.”

The National Resources Defense Council said the Obama-era standard was developed “because it is no longer safe or adequate to build for the flood risks of the past” and with the rollback, “the federal government is setting up public infrastructure to be damaged by flooding and wasting taxpayer dollars.”

Officials across western North Carolina have expressed frustration with the pace of rebuilding while acknowledging that they don’t want to endure the same problems over and over again.

Canton, North Carolina continues recovering from its third major flood in 20 years. “Everything that flooded in 2004, flooded in ’21. Everything that flooded in ‘21, flooded in 2024,” Mayor Zeb Smathers said. Stategies like new river gauges and emergency warning systems, coupled with land buyouts, have helped mitigate the threat. However, mitigation brings its own risk. The town has seen its tax base dwindle as people who lost their homes moved on after accepting buyouts or deciding that rebuilding was too much effort. When it comes to public buildings, Smathers struggles with the idea of moving something like the school, which has seen its football field flooded in each storm. He feels it is more cost-effective to rebuild than to move, and saves energy and hassle, too.

“I don’t think it’s a one size fits all situation,” he said. “But in the mountains, we’re limited on land and where we can go.”

Much of downtown Canton lies in a floodplain next to the Pigeon River. Smathers wants more flexibility from FEMA and greater trust in local decisions rather than more rules about where and how to build.

Though local governments fronted some of the cost of rebuilding according to FFRMS standards, much of that required work has been federally subsidized.

Josh Harrold, the town manager of Black Mountain, said the Obama-era rules weren’t onerous. Helene decimated the town’s water system, municipal building, and numerous buildings and homes. “We know this is going to happen again,” he said. “No one knows what that’s going to be like, but we are taking the approach of, we just don’t want to build it back exactly like it was. We want to build it back differently.”

Harrold and other officials said they don’t yet know how Trump’s order rescinding the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard will impact reconstruction. And it comes as some municipalities adopt and refine stricter floodplain rebuilding rules of their own. In January, Asheville adopted city ordinance amendments to comply with the rebuilding requirements set forth by the National Flood Insurance Program. It is not clear what Trump’s order might mean for that. City officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Berginnis said communities may not see immediate results from this change – but the effects will be felt in the future if leaders bypass the added protection it required: “Everything that gets rebuilt using federal funds will be less safe when the next flood comes.”