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Things Go Boom When You Attempt to Retcon the Economy

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I keep writing about how Trump keeps retconning what he is doing legally, attempting to alter his explanations for what he’s doing, legally, when a first legal theory runs into trouble. The Trump administration has tried to retcon:

Trump has only accelerated these dizzying gyrations in attempting to explain how Kilmar Abrego Garcia ended up in a prison in El Salvador.

Thus far, Trump has dodged repercussions for this Choose Your Own Adventure lawyering, thanks in part to SCOTUS’ disruption of the Alien Enemies Act class act before Judge James Boasberg before he could hold anyone in contempt. There is a pending contempt request before Judge Paula Xinis in the Abrego Garcia case, but she will need to dot some Is and cross some Ts before she imposes sanctions and even there it would take time to target the sanctions against the people who deserve them.

I first IDed this Administrative retconning in the legal context because in the legal context there are rules about saying one thing and then changing your mind (though actually, I first IDed Trump’s reliance on retconning after the Haitian dogs and cats attack during the election). That is, it matters in a legal context because it may blow a legal case even in a context — such as deportations — where the President has expansive authority. The Supreme Court vastly expanded Trump’s power with the immunity decision, but his DOJ is so feckless it may end up losing anyway because they do something stupid (or at least wildly inconsistent) legally.

That’ll take time, though. Xinis will not rule quickly to avoid giving the government easy cause for reversal, and so won’t deliver the immediate punishment the government deserves.

But Trump has been retconning policies elsewhere, most especially in his rollout of tariffs.

Over the course of the last week, Trump rolled out:

  • Liberation day tariffs on everyone, including penguins, except the axis of authoritarians Trump idolizes
  • A blink
  • Tariffs on China
  • More tariffs on China
  • Still more tariffs on China
  • Even more tariffs on China
  • The Tim Apple exemption
  • A seeming reversal of the Tim Apple exemption

This is the very same policy ineptitude as we see with DOGE and in the legal context, but this time with the world’s biggest economy, and just as importantly, the glue that holds the global economy together.

In the legal context, this fecklessness — and the public retaliation on government lawyers for admitting that they’re being compartmented from real information — results in the gradual erosion of presumption of regularity, the equivalent of a house advantage that lets the government make seemingly unreasonable claims without immediate consequence.

But the presumption of regularity dissolves much more quickly in the financial context.

Justin Wolfers, who doesn’t have a substack but does have TikTok, described how Trump’s attempts to retcon his tariff policy has created two economic crises: the first created by Trump’s tariffs themselves, the second created by the retconning itself.

One of the reasons you saw the markets respond so strongly is there this crisis of confidence. It’s a crisis of confidence in the competence of the Administration. They’ve rolled out tariffs based on formula that make no economic sense. They stick with a plan where they say it’s all about one thing and then they roll it all back and say, you know what? we’ve been lying to you since Sunday when they already decided to change paths. They — tariffs on China yesterday, we were told, were 125% and today they’re 145%. I want you to stick with that for just a moment. You’ve got tariffs between two of the world’s great economic powers and people in the White House couldn’t tell you the correct tariff within 20 percentage points, which would normally be the entire trade war and they forgot whether it was 125 or whether it was 145.

In his substack, Paul Krugman likens the response to the treatment of the US economy like a developing economy.

The obvious explanation is that crazy policies have shaken investors’ faith in America, which has traditionally been viewed as a safe haven.

The topic of how Trump’s policies have messed with the bond markets – including the market for US Treasuries — is too difficult for me to cover today, but here’s more. The key point is that massive tariffs have disrupted the plumbing of the financial system, leading to soaring interest rates on U.S. government debt. That’s abnormal: rising odds of a recession usually lead to falling long-term interest rates, because the prospect of a recession raises the likelihood of future cuts by the Fed, which controls short-term rates. This time, however, rates are spiking, especially for very-long-term instruments like 30-year bonds, shown at the top of this post.

The common thread in currency and bond markets is that, thanks to Trump, dollar assets — traditionally the foundation of the global financial system — are no longer perceived as safe.

The combination of interest rates soaring amid a slump and the currency plunging despite rising interest rates isn’t what we normally expect for advanced countries, let alone the owner of the world’s leading reserve currency. It is, however, what we often see in emerging-market economies. That is, investors have started treating the United States like a third-world economy.

Did I see this coming? No, not really. Unlike the sanewashers, I knew that Trump’s policies would be irresponsible and destructive. However, even I didn’t expect him to destroy credibility accumulated over 80 years in less than three months. But he has.

And even if Trump were to backtrack on everything he’s done, we wouldn’t get the lost credibility back. The whole world, sanewashers aside, now knows that America is run by a mad king, surrounded by enablers, who can’t be trusted to behave rationally.

In court, Trump may have ways of dodging the consequences of getting caught retconning his story.

In the economy, there’s no way to unring the bell — probably not even the replacement of Trump, if that were to happen in the near term.

American financial hegemony has been built on a decades of reliability. That financial hegemony has given the US, and even US consumers, privileges other people don’t have. Importantly, that financial hegemony is the basis for tools — such as sanctions on Russia on Iran — that Trump claims to be threatening if he doesn’t get his way.

Things go boom when you try to retcon your economic explanations.

I alluded to this on Friday’s podcast with Nicole. It was inevitable that bankers and hedgies would have less patience with Trump’s equivocations than judges do, partly because of judicial comity and partly because SCOTUS will go some lengths to protect Trump.

But these are related issues. The utter fecklessness of Trump’s policy logic is consistent between law and the economy (indeed, DOGE occupies the sweet spot between the two of them). That doesn’t mean the bankers will care about all the other damage Elon Musk has been doing to the US. But it means Trump’s claim to omnipotence will start to unravel in ways that may provide opportunities elsewhere, including with Republicans who actually understand the privilege that arises from the US economic hegemony Trump is squandering.

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Troy Edgar Implies We Should Deport Elon Musk

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Most people pointing to this insane interview NPR did with DHS Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar focus on the import it has for Mahmoud Khalil’s case. When pressed repeatedly, Edgar can offer no proof to back his increasingly escalating claims that Khalil didn’t disclose something when he entered the US on a student visa; he just offers the classic troll answer that everything is clear.

Edgar: I think if he would have declared he’s a terrorist, we would have never let him in.

Martin: And what did he engage in that constitutes terrorist activity?

Edgar: I mean, Michel, have you watched it on TV? It’s pretty clear.

Michel: No, it isn’t. Well, explain it to those of us who have not or perhaps others have not. What exactly did you do?

Edgar: Well, I think it’s clear or we wouldn’t be talking about it. I mean, the reality is that if you watch and see what he’s done on the university …

Martin: Do you not know? Are you telling us that you’re not aware?

Edgar: I find it interesting that you’re not aware.

But the interview is far more interesting for the logic Edgar offers for Khalil’s detention as a Green Card holder entitled to more due process, which would suggest even Elon Musk — especially Elon Musk — must be deported under Trump’s Executive Orders, right along with Khalil.

Repeatedly Edgar suggests that the reason they can deport Khalil is because he initially came into the US on a student visa, even though he now has a Green Card. He asserts over and over that because Khalil originally entered on a student visa, it means the Secretary of the State can indefinitely review his status and deport him.

Edgar: Well, like I said, when you apply for a visa, you go through the process to be able to say that you’re here on a student visa, that doesn’t afford you all the rights of coming in and basically going through this process, agitating and supporting Hamas. So, at this point, yeah, the Secretary of State and the State Department maintains the right to revoke the visa, and that’s what they’ve done.

Martin: How did he support Hamas? Exactly what did he do?

Edgar: Well, I think you can see it on TV, right? This is somebody that we’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the Secretary of State can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.

Martin: He’s a permanent resident. He’s not a visa holder. He’s a legal permanent resident. He has the green card, at least he did, until it’s alleged that it was revoked.

If the allegation is that Mr. Khalil organized protests and made speeches after which other people engaged in prohibited activity, or, say, violent activity. Well, Mr. Trump gave a political speech on January 6, 2021, after which some individuals engaged in violent and illegal acts. How is this any different?

Edgar: President Trump’s a citizen and the president of the United States. This is a person that came in under a visa. And again, the secretary of state at any point can take a look and evaluate that visa and decide if they want to revoke it.

Martin: He’s a legal permanent resident. I have to keep insisting on that. He is a legal permanent resident.

So what is the standard? Is any criticism of the Israeli government a deportable offense?

Edgar: Like I said, I think that at this point when he entered into the country on a student visa, at any point we can go through and evaluate what his status is.

Martin: Is any criticism of the United States government a deportable offense?

Edgar: Like I said, if you go through the process and you’re a student and you’re here on a visa and you go through it, at any point …

Martin: Is any criticism of the government a deportable offense?

Edgar: Let me put it this way, Michel, imagine if he came in and filled out the form and said, ‘I want a student visa.’ They asked him, ‘What are you going to do here?’ And he says, ‘I’m going to go and protest.’ We would have never let him into the country. [my emphasis]

Edgar is wrong. This is not actually the basis on which the government claims to be relying to deport Khalil. A document published by WaPo confirms that the government is relying on the Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act as their basis to deport Khalil.

The Secretary of State has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.

On the basis of the foregoing, it is charged that you are subject to removal from the United States pursuant to the following provision(s) of law:

Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, in that the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.

That document relies on the fact that Khalil is not a citizen, as does the law itself.

This document — dated March 9 — was filed the day after Khalil was detained. Like so much else, it could be an attempt to retcon a decision made off inaccurate information — though this Atlantic piece reveals that there was a second, still-unidentified Green Card holder on the same list targeting Khalil.

It turns out Secretary of State Marco Rubio identified a second individual to be deported, and included that person alongside Khalil in a March 7 letter to the Department of Homeland Security. Both were identified in the letter as legal permanent residents, The Atlantic has learned.

Rubio’s letter notified DHS that he had revoked both targets’ visas, setting in motion plans for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest and attempt to deport them, according to a senior DHS official and another U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe how the operation against Khalil took shape.

In addition to the two names in Rubio’s initial letter, the State Department has also sent the names of “one or two” more students whose visas it has revoked, according to the DHS official, who described the first group of names as an opening move, with “more to come.”

The Atlantic also notes a key error in the form, as well as the claim that DHS claims not to know when Khalil first entered the country.

Perhaps there’s some way to reconcile Edgar’s views with all this (or perhaps Edgar, who was sworn in last week, simply missed some of this). But the claimed basis for Khalil’s deportation doesn’t rely on the fact that he first came in on a student visa. It’s that he remains a non-citizen. Though I think Rubio needs to apply two clauses: first, his finding that Khalil presents a foreign policy problem for the US.

(C) Foreign policy
(i) In general
An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.

And also a finding that the fact that he hadn’t broken any laws before he entered the country would still not matter; he’s still a problem for foreign policy.

(ii) Exceptions
The exceptions described in clauses (ii) and (iii) of section 1182(a)(3)(C) of this title shall apply to deportability under clause (i) in the same manner as they apply to inadmissibility under section 1182(a)(3)(C)(i) of this title.

(iii) Exception for other aliens
An alien, not described in clause (ii), shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States under clause (i) because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.

So I think Edgar is wrong on the law and wrong on what DOJ and State are at least claiming went down.

But to understand how problematic this premise is, take Edgar’s claim — that anyone who ever came in on a student visa could always have his status reviewed — and apply them to Elon Musk.

The underlying framework under which Khalil is facing deportation is a claim that Trump is combatting antisemitism. It’s all based on an Executive Order holding that it is the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism … using all available and appropriate legal tools.

Sec. 2. Policy. It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.

The EO is focused exclusively on universities and defines antisemitism in the context of the October 7 attack.

Sec. 3. Additional Measures to Combat Campus Anti-Semitism. (a) Within 60 days of the date of this order, the head of each executive department or agency (agency) shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions within the jurisdiction of that agency, beyond those already implemented under Executive Order 13899, that might be used to curb or combat anti-Semitism, and containing an inventory and analysis of all pending administrative complaints, as of the date of the report, against or involving institutions of higher education alleging civil-rights violations related to or arising from post-October 7, 2023, campus anti-Semitism.

Trump wants every agency to find ways to deport students, and only students, implicitly those who support Palestine. (This is, I suspect, in significant part a Stephen Miller wet dream to use the tools of the Civil Rights movement against tolerance.)

He has done nothing to pursue his policy of combatting antisemitism, such as in DOGE, right there in the White House.

But the Civil Rights Act on which Trump is relying applies to all federal funding. It applies to government advisors. It applies to government contractors. It applies to government advertising or public statements, such as the ones that are being released only on Xitter.

It might even apply to some inauguration festivities.

And key government advisor Elon Musk is not only fostering antisemitism on his social media platform, he’s using his public government platform to adopt antisemitic symbols.

The clause State is using in an attempt to deport Khalil appears right between one targeting actual terrorists (remember that right wing hate groups have been deemed terrorists around the world) and those involved in Nazi genocide.

And yet Trump has no complaint about the former student visa holder Elon Musk using his platforms and government funding to defend the actual Neo-Nazis.

To be clear: Edgar is wrong. It’s not that Khalil entered on a student visa, it’s that he’s not a citizen. Elon was allowed to become a citizen, so is safe from this particular targeted persecution.

But his use of government funding to platform antisemitism should not be.

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It’s Not the Shameless Executive Power Grab in Plain Sight, It’s the Attempt to Retcon It Afterwards

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This, from Steve Vladeck, is a helpful piece on the plight of Mamoud Khalil, the Columbia student detained by ICE the other day whom Trump is trying to deport. As he describes, the case is clearly an attempt to police speech, but (as many things are in a counterterrorism frame) the Trump administration might well offer up some plausible legal justifications to defend their actions.

[A]lthough what the government has done to this point is profoundly disturbing, and is, in my view, unconstitutional retaliation for First Amendment-protected speech, I’m not sure it is as clearly unlawful as a lot of folks online have suggested. And that’s a pretty big problem all by itself.

[snip]

Third, what is the legal basis pursuant to which the government is seeking to remove Khalil?
This brings us to the central “merits” question. What is the exact basis on which Khalil, in the government’s view, is subject to removal from the United States? Suffice it to say, President Trump’s social media post is not exactly specific here, nor has Secretary of State Rubio provided much additional clarity.

For what it’s worth, my best guess (and it is only a guess) is that the government is going to rely upon one or both of two very specific provision of immigration law.

The first, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C), provides that “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” There’s a caveat protecting such a non-citizen from removal “because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States,” but only “unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s [continued presence] would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” Thus, if Secretary Rubio makes (or has made) such a personal determination, that would provide at least an outwardly lawful basis for pursuing Khalil’s removal—so long as Rubio has also made timely notifications of his determinations to the chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations, and House and Senate Judiciary Committees required by 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(C)(iv). (I’ve seen no evidence that he’s done so, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t.)

The second provision is 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(i)(VII), which renders both inadmissible and removable any non-citizen who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” Perhaps the argument is going to be that, insofar as Khalil was involved in organizing pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s campus, he was “endors[ing] or espous[ing]” terrorist activity (to wit, by Hamas).

I know there’s a lot of technical language here. The key point is that it’s at least possible that the government has a non-frivolous case for seeking Khalil’s removal under one or both of these provisions—especially if Secretary Rubio invoked § 1227(a)(4)(C). And insofar as the government is relying upon those provisions to pursue Khalil’s removal, that might bring with it a sufficient statutory basis for his arrest and detention pending his removal proceeding. We’ll see what the government actually says when it files a defense of its behavior before Judge Furman; for present purposes, it seems worth stressing that there may well be a legal basis for its deeply troubling conduct. [my emphasis]

I of course don’t question Vladeck’s legal analysis (some immigration experts were pointing to the same immigration law provisions as well).

I instead want to suggest that with this case, as with several others, it appears that the Trump Administration made a shameless power grab without doing their investigative work first. So what we see going forward may be nothing more than an attempt to retcon it, to change their story after the fact to adjust for new facts.

Here are some ways Trump has been retconning (or attempting to) in the 50 days of this short term already.

  • After Elon Musk made exaggerated claims about NYC’s use of hotels to house migrants paid for by a FEMA grant, Kristi Noem loudly bragged that she had fired the people involved and had clawed back the money involved. In its lawsuit suing to get the money back, NYC disputes the underlying claim that the government had pointed to (that Roosevelt Hotel was being used to support crime and NYC knew it). One of the fired workers, Mary Comans, disputed Noem’s claim about her own firing in one declaration. And now she’s suing not just for her termination, but for the false claims made about her publicly. As that suit was being filed, a top FEMA lawyer was fired, and those involved suspect it had to do with a request that the lawyer make claims about the clawback to give it legal justification.
  • After Elon and others repeatedly claims made in a Project Veritas video about efforts to fund the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund at the end of the Biden Administration, Lee Zeldin bragged that he would claw back that funding, in such a way that may expose him to legal claims. In an attempt to do that, Emil Bove and Ed Martin pressured a senior DC USAO prosecutor, Denise Cheung, to not just freeze the funds, but do so with a claim of probable cause based on the PV video. That led her to quit and release her resignation statement. Only after that, the FBI interviewed the guy in the PV video; according to his attorney, Mark Zaid, he had nothing to do with the disbursements in question. And since then, Ed Martin has been jurisdiction shopping attempting to pursue this case. Zeldin is trying to get the Acting Inspector General to invent justification for this after the fact. One of the entities involved, Climate Fund, has sued the EPA, Zeldin, and Citibank (there will be a hearing on its request for a TRO tomorrow).
  • With a great many DOGE activities (but most obviously with the USAID closure), the government initially claimed that it had stopped funding pursuant to Trump’s first-day Executive Orders, but after providers got Temporary Restraining Orders, the government (as laid out in a series of court declarations by Pete Marocco, in the USAID case) claimed, instead, that everything was shut down pursuant to a contract review involving Marco Rubio. The shutdown of contracts by itself may be totally legal (or at least defensible), but the way they did so raises real questions about whether the government was lying about Rubio’s personal involvement in the review process, and therefore its legality. (I’ll return to this example, and Rubio’s agency — double entendre intended — more generally, in a follow-up.)

With all of these things, like the Khalil detention, there might be some legal argument that it was legal.

But along the way, because the government didn’t have their story straight when they took action, they subsequently took actions that may cause, at the very least, legal friction going forward, if not legal liability themselves. Noem made allegedly false claims about Comans. A FEMA lawyer resigned, potentially available to offer conflicting testimony about what happened. Cheung resigned, loudly, exposing her opinion that Martin didn’t have criminal probable cause to pursue the clawback. Martin jurisdiction shopped. Marocco has made claims in declarations that defy credulity (and even conflict with a tweet Rubio posted yesterday).

More judges have gotten dragged in, with the kinds of fact sets that tend to piss off judges.

In Khalil’s case, there are several details that suggest the Trump Administration may be trying to retcon their basis for detaining him.

First, there were several right wing groups who first doxed and then targeted him. As with the PV video, right wingers are running with allegations regardless of the evidence. Last year after Columbia booted Khalil, they reversed the decision for lack of evidence. A right wing dossier on Khalil doesn’t actually include examples of antisemitism — but it dies invoke Hamas relentlessly. More recently, State has been doing AI searches to target people; thus far, anything this government has done with AI has had ridiculous problem. So there’s good reason to believe there was shitty information that went in the front end of this effort.

Further, it appears that ICE didn’t know that Khalil was a Green Card holder when they came to arrest him. The habeas petition claims that the agents “looked confused” when he provided proof of status.

15. On the evening of March 8, 2025, at approximately 8:30 p.m., [redacted] and his wife were returning to their Columbia University-owned apartment from a friend’s home. When they arrived at their apartment building, [redacted] and his wife were approached by approximately four people who were dressed in plain clothes. All of them entered the lobby of the apartment building.

16. When the people approached and his wife, they asked, “Are you [redacted]? When [redacted] answered in the affirmative, the men identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) and that they have to take into custody. The agents told [redacted]’s wife to go up to her apartment, and that if she would not leave they threatened to arrest her, too.

17. [redacted]’s wife retrieved s immigration documents to show the agent that is a lawful
permanent resident. She handed the documents to the agent, who was talking to someone on the
phone. The agent looked confused when he saw the documents and said, “He has a green card.”
[redacted]’s wife heard the agent repeat that they were being ordered to bring in anyways.

[snip]

Attorney Greer identified herself as s attorney and asked who she was speaking with. The agent identified himself as Special Agent Elvin Hernandez of Homeland Security. Attorney Greer asked if Agent Hernandez had a warrant, and he answered in the affirmative, stating that [redacted]’s student visa had been revoked by the U.S. Department of State and therefore they were detaining him. Attorney Greer advised Agent Hernandez that is a lawful permanent resident and has the right to due process. Agent Hernandez responded that the Department of State had revoked [redacted]’s green card, too, and that he would be brought in front of an immigration judge. The agent stated that he would be taking to 26 Federal Plaza.

19. The agents then handcuffed and brought him outside where there were multiple vehicles
waiting. [redacted]’s wife asked for the names of the agents, their contact information, and how to
reach them to follow up on her husband’s detention, but they only advised her that would be
taken to 26 Federal Plaza, and otherwise refused to speak with her. They left her no business card
or any information at all as to how to find out where her husband will be taken, on what grounds,
or who she can contact. [my emphasis]

If the backup to the warrant to detain Khalil was premised on him being a student visa holder (this Tweet targeting Khalil directly asks Rubio to strip his visa), then it’s almost impossible that Marco Rubio would have done the concerted review that stripping him of his Green Card would require (much less the notice to Congress, which Vladeck laid out above), just as it’s “implausible” that Rubio really reviewed the USAID contracts that got shut down.

That is, the ICE agent’s representation that State had stripped Khalil’s visa when they detained him may not yet have been true, whatever else State tries going forward.

Finally, while it is normal for ICE to whisk people off to Louisiana like they did Khalil and normal for it to take a day or so to show up in the system (meaning, he wasn’t specifically disappeared, but rather, America’s detention systems work in this Kafkaesque way normally), the current record suggests that ICE moved Khalil after his attorneys had submitted the habeas petition. As Vladeck notes, that should help Khalil to retain the jurisdiction in SDNY, before Jesse Fruman and in the Second rather than Fifth Circuits.

Kahlil is currently being held in Jena, Louisiana—which is in the Alexandria Division of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana (and, as importantly, the Fifth Circuit). It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the government tried to argue that the New York federal courts lack jurisdiction over Kahlil’s petition—because they lack jurisdiction over his “immediate custodian,” i.e., the head of the ICE detention facility in Jena. Indeed, this is the exact argument on which the Bush administration prevailed in the Supreme Court in the Jose Padilla case in 2004—when a U.S. citizen detained in South Carolina as an “enemy combatant” sought to challenge his detention in Manhattan, which is where he had last been before he was transferred to military custody.

But there are two potential grounds on which Padilla can be distinguished. First, in Padilla, the habeas petition wasn’t filed until after Padilla had been physically removed from the Southern District of New York. Here, Khalil’s lawyers have represented that they filed before he was transferred to Louisiana (at 4:40 a.m., no less!). If that’s true (and there’s no reason to believe that it isn’t), that would make this a very different case. After all, a different line of Supreme Court precedent provides that the federal government can’t defeat jurisdiction in a habeas case by transferring the petitioner after the petition is filed.

But it also raised questions about whether ICE was trying to whisk him away to defeat the legal proceeding that was pending as soon as that petition was filed.

There’s that old adage, which seems inoperative since Nixon, that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. With Trump and under expansive authorities of Article II, it often looks like it’s not the initial power grab that might create legal problems. It’s the attempt to retcon that power grab after it becomes clear the facts were not what Trump or others believed when the Administration took action.

Over and over, Trump 2.0 has taken aggressive steps based off bullshit, much of it coming from Elon or other far right propagandists. And over and over, Trump’s top people keep creating problems for themselves as they try to adjust the (legal) narrative to match their evolving understanding of the facts.

So as we go forward with discussions about Khalil, don’t necessarily assume that legal justifications that the government could have used were yet the legal justifications they may argue going forward.

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Stephen Miller Makes a Case to Defund or Deport Elon Musk

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Over the weekend, ICE arrested one of the people involved in Columbia’s pro-Palestinian protests, Mahmoud Khalil. It appears that they first stopped him with the intent of arresting him on a claim his student visa had been canceled; but even after they confirmed he was a Green Card holder, they detained him anyway.

On Saturday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers detained Mahmoud Khalil – a recent Columbia University graduate who helped lead the Gaza solidarity encampment – at his New York City home, an apartment building owned by the school, says advocates.

According to the advocates, at around 8:30 PM, Khalil and his wife – who is eight months pregnant – had just unlocked the door to their building when two plainclothes DHS agents pushed inside behind them. The agents allegedly did not identify themselves at first, instead asking for Khalil’s identity before detaining him.

The agents proceeded to tell Khalil’s wife that if she did not leave her husband and go to their apartment, they would arrest her too. The agents claimed that the State Department had revoked Khalil’s student visa, with one agent presenting what he claimed was a warrant on his cell phone. But Khalil, according to advocates, has a green card. Khalil’s wife went to their apartment to get the green card.

“He has a green card,” an agent apparently said on the phone, confused by the matter. But then after a moment, the agent claimed that the State Department had “revoked that too.”

Meanwhile, Khalil had been on the phone with his attorney, Amy Greer who was trying to intervene, asking why he was being detained, if they had a warrant, and explaining that Khalil was a green card holder. The attorney had circled back to demanding to see a warrant when the agents apparently instead hung up the phone.

Khalil was initially detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in downtown New York, pending an appearance before an immigration judge. Greer said they now do not know his precise whereabouts. They were initially told he was sent to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. But when his wife tried to visit him, she was told he wasn’t there. They have received reports that he may be transferred as far away as Louisiana.

This feels like another bone-headed move — like the firing of FEMA workers who were dutifully helping try to claw back funds already granted to NYC and the attempted investigation of an EPA worker who didn’t do what a Project Veritas video suggested — which the Administration will engage in further corruption to try to defend, making it and the authoritarianism far worse.

People will be fired.

Explanations will be ret-coned.

And either they’ll have to let Khalil free or — more likely — the Trump Administration will attempt to find cause, possibly criminal charges, to attempt to hold him longer (he has, indeed, been located in Jena, Louisiana). Trump will rely heavily on War on Terror precedents that allow the Executive to scream “terror” and with that detain even Green Card holders.

As we wait for better answers about what happened to Khalil, right wingers have taken to Xitter to wave their dicks around.

Newly elected right wing Congressman Brandon Gill, for example, suggested that “maybe we shouldn’t tolerate foreigners seizing control of US academic buildings (while including a screen cap that said Khalil was not in the group that occupied the building).

Gill is calling for the government to take action against foreigners seizing academic buildings even as South African immigrant Elon Musk takes over Department of Education, doing far more damage than protestors did.

And Stephen Miller insisted that the US would send any foreigners sympathizing with terrorism home.

Of course, one of Miller’s chief allies, Elon Musk, routinely platforms people sympathizing with far right terrorism — indeed, he played a direct role in ginning up riots in the UK and elsewhere.

The basis of this crackdown are two executive orders, admittedly focused on schools rather than government contractors, using Title VI funding as a means to dictate what otherwise First Amendment protected entities enjoy. (Note that Khalil’s arrest is inconsistent with Trump’s decision to strip $400 million in funds from Columbia, which would suggest the university, not Khalil did something wrong.)

But it nevertheless remains true that, to the extent that Xitter is protected speech (it is! just like university campuses!), Trump’s EO envisions intervening when government contractors don’t do enough to combat antisemitism.

And compared to Columbia, Elon Musk has been downright solicitous of antisemitism.

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