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Judge calls mistaken deportation of Maryland man a ‘grievous error’

(NYT) — The Trump administration committed a “grievous error” that “shocks the conscience” by inadvertently deporting a Salvadoran migrant to a notorious prison last month and then declaring there was little it could do to bring him back, a federal judge in Maryland said Sunday.

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The strongly worded order by Judge Paula Xinis served two purposes: It offered a more detailed explanation of a brief ruling she issued Friday, demanding that the White House bring the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, back to the United States by the end of Monday. And it rejected a request by the Justice Department to pause the order as a federal appeals court considered its validity.

Over 22 pages, Xinis took Trump officials to task for deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on March 15 in violation of a previous court order that allowed him to stay in the United States. Administration officials then argued that neither they nor she as the judge overseeing the case had any power to retrieve him from the prison.

“As defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” Xinis wrote. “Having confessed grievous error, the defendants now argue that this court lacks the power to hear this case, and they lack the power to order Abrego Garcia’s return.”

Moreover, Xinis questioned the administration’s underlying claims that Abrego Garcia, 29, was a member of a violent transnational street gang, MS-13, which officials recently designated as a terrorist organization. The judge described those claims as being based on “a singular unsubstantiated allegation.”

Republicans want to make the Trump tax cuts last forever

WASHINGTON (NYT) — When Republicans cut taxes in the past, they did so temporarily, bowing to budget rules that limited how much they could add to the federal deficit. They gambled that Democrats would eventually vote to continue the cuts.

With this year’s tax cut, though, many Republicans no longer want to take that risk.

Senate Republicans approved a budget outline Saturday that opens the door to locking in the Trump tax cuts indefinitely without Democratic support.

Actually doing so would require Republicans to upend Senate procedures that have long governed what lawmakers can accomplish along party lines. That dramatic change could invite Democrats to take major new steps of their own when they next control the chamber.

Senate Republicans believe that the Trump tax cuts are worth it. The party first passed the cuts in 2017, lowering individual income rates for most people, expanding the standard deduction and slashing corporate taxes.

Many of the tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year.

Most legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, a threshold that means even the party that controls the chamber cannot always pass the policies it wants. But lawmakers only need a simple majority to pass fiscal policy through a special procedure called budget reconciliation.

One of the most important rules of reconciliation has long been that bills using the procedure cannot force the government to borrow more money in the long term.