DUE PROCESS: Maryland Sen. Senator Chris Van Hollen met yesterday in a hotel lobby with  Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident wrongfully deported to prison in El Salvador last month. 

  Van Hollen, a Democratic a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, shared a photo of the two men speaking yesterday evening. Abrego Garcia was dressed in civilian clothes, not a prison uniform and here was no immediate explanation of the setting or conversation.

  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt expressed outrage over the meeting, sticking to the administration line that Abrego Garcia is a gang member even though he has never been convicted or even charged with a crime. Van Hollen said, “My whole argument is we have a court where the whole purpose of having a hearing was for people to present their evidence.”

  Asked whether he would move for Abrego Garcia’s return, President Trump said, “Well, I’m not involved.”

 Against this backdrop, a three judge panel of the federal appeals court in Virginia expressed exasperation and outrage with the Trump administration for refusing to do anything to recover a Abrego Garcia.

  “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the panel. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

  The decision goes on to say that, “This should be shocking, not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: 

— Speaking of exasperation, the President continued his attacks yesterday on federal reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who on Wednesday warned that Trump’s trade tariffs are likely to cause inflation, slow economic growth, and unemployment.

  Trump posted on his Truth Social yesterday that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”

  The Federal reserve is an independent agency and Powell’s term as chairmen ends next May. Trump can’t fire him but nevertheless said yesterday, “If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me.”

— The Supreme Court announced that it will hear arguments on May 15^th regarding President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. Trump’s order that would end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreign residents remains on hold at least until the court considers the issue.

  Citizenship at birth in the US is enshrined in the 14^th amendment to the Constitution and Trump attempted to get rid of it with a stroke of his Sharpie.

— The Trump administration says it will try to sell the headquarters building of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and relocate the agency as part of cost cutting. The Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in Washington is reported to need more than $500 million in deferred maintenance and modernization needs, and costs more than $56 million a year to run.

— The death of two camp Pendleton Marines in a vehicle accident at the southern border has put the spotlight on the Trump administration’s use of the military to enforce immigration. President Trump declared a 60-foot wide by 700-mile strip of land from California to New Mexico to be a military base, allowing soldiers to patrol and enforce immigration. The base does not have a dining hall.

  Under normal circumstances it is illegal for troops to be used for domestic law enforcement.

— Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia graduate student now detained by ICE in Louisiana, wrote to the Washington Post that, “During Friday’s hearing, the government asserted on behalf of Secretary of State Marco Rubio that my beliefs, statements and associations compromise its ‘compelling’ foreign policy interests. Like the thousands of students that I advocated with at Columbia — including Muslim, Jewish and Christian friends — I believe in the innate equality of all human beings. I believe in human dignity. I believe in the right of my people to look at the blue sky and not fear an impending missile.”

  He wrote, “Why should protesting Israel’s indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocent Palestinians result in the erosion of my constitutional rights?”

— Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski admitted her trepidations about the Trump presidency during an appearance in Anchorage on Monday. Murkowski, a moderate Republican who has routinely criticized President Trump, made a startling admission about serving in public office with a President bent on political retribution. “We are all afraid,” Murkowski said and then, “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: A young man armed with a rifle and a pistol shot and killed two people and wounded six yesterday at Florida State University in Tallahassee. The suspect, an FSU student identified as 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner, was wounded by police gunfire. He’s the son of a local Leon County sheriff’s deputy.

THE SPIN RACK:  The Eli Lilly drug company says it is developing a daily weight loss pill that may work as well as the expensive injectable drugs Mounjaro and Ozempic — The Lamar Consolidated School District in the Houston area has removed the Virginia state flag from its learning materials because the flag features the Roman goddess Virtus with a bare left breast. On the flag Virtus is conquering tyranny over the Latin slogan “Sic Semper Tyrannus,” thus ever to tyrants.

BELOW THE FOLD:  One of the latest controversies in America is over people dying potatoes for Easter rather than expensive eggs. But if you do it, use light-skinned potatoes.

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