FREE SPEECH: In a blow to the Trump administration, a Tufts University foreign student detained by Immigration and Customs enforcement because she co-wrote an op-ed piece critical of Israel was released yesterday on orders from a federal judge who said the detention of Rumeysa Ozturk could potentially chill “the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”

  Judge William K. Sessions III in Vermont said, “Her continued detention cannot stand.”

  Ozturk’s release was delayed for a while because federal authorities wanted to fit her with an ankle monitor until Sessions issued a second order that she was “not subject to any travel restrictions.”

  Masked agents on March 25^th detained Ozturk on the street outside her Somerville, Massachusetts home. Her family, friends and lawyer didn’t know where she was for 24 hours until she was revealed to be held in a Louisiana facility.

  Ozturk’s lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, asked; “When did speaking up against oppression become a crime?” Khanbabai asked. “When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?” 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

— The Trump administration is looking at suspending the constitutional standard of habeas corpus, the right of immigrants to challenge deportation in court, according to Stephen Miller, the architect of immigration policy.

  Miller told reporters that habeas “could be suspended in time of invasion.” The Trump administration is claiming the illegal immigration is an invasion.

  Habeas corpus is Latin for “have the body.” In the legal sense, it means you have a right to due process and a hearing about your detention. Article I of the Constitution says writs of habeas corpus “shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

— Newark, New Jersey mayor Ras Baraka was arrested yesterday and charged with trespassing as he protested the opening of a 1,000-bed federal detention center. Witnesses said Baraka was arrested as he tried to join three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation in attempting to enter the facility. Baraka was released at about 8pm.

— Ahead of trade talks with China this weekend in Switzerland, President Trump posted on his Truth Social feed that, “80% Tariff on China seems right.” Trump set the import tariff on Chinese goods at an onerous145 percent in April, threatening to leave shelves empty in big box stores, jack up car prices, and even killing small businesses that have their goods and parts made in China.

  Figures released yesterday show that imports from China fell 20 percent from a year ago.

  The initial negotiations between the two countries will be led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice Premier and economic tsar, He Lifeng.

— This week the President nominated for surgeon general Casey Means, a wellness influencer and vaccine skeptic with an expired medical license. Echoing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., she promotes unhealthy diet as a root cause of illness and chronic disease. She shares Kennedy’s disapproval of petroleum-based food dyes and ultra-processed foods. 

  Means has written that, “There is growing evidence that the total burden of the current extreme and growing vaccine schedule is causing health declines in vulnerable children” 

  Even so, Means is already being criticized in Kennedy circles as being insufficiently opposed to vaccines.

— The Department of Agriculture is demanding that states hand over personal data of food assistance recipients, including Social Security numbers, addresses and, in at least one state, citizenship status, NPR reports.

— Trump fired Carla Hayden, the head of the Library of Congress. “There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. 

— The President fired the three Democrats on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

— Trump has installed in the Oval Office a small statue of himself defiantly raising his fist after being winged by a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania.

TAKE FLIGHT: An air traffic control facility that guides planes at Newark Liberty Airport yesterday had a second radar outage in less than two weeks. The radar screens went blank for 90 seconds just as they did on April 28^th. 

  After that first outage, several controllers at what is one of the country’s busiest airports took time off to calm their nerves.

THE OBIT PAGE: Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who disappointed conservatives when he drifted from the right wing to the left during his years on the court, died in New Hampshire at age 85.

  His critics accused Souter of hiding his true leanings during his confirmation hearings but he cast himself as a conservative who believed that not everything the Constitution intends is explicitly written in the text. 

  Souter was a quiet and private man who never married. He surprised Washington when he retired at the early age of 69, leaving an opening for President Barack Obama to appoint Justice Sonia Sotomayor, now one of only three liberals on the court. 

THE SPIN RACK: India and Pakistan are hinting that they may de-escalate their current conflict. — A man who shot the cook in a Holyoke , Massachusetts bar for putting bacon in his sandwich was sentenced to 20 years in prison. — Kosmos-482, a Soviet spacecraft launched to land on Venus in 1972, returned to Earth and splashed into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Indonesia. 

BELOW THE FOLD: An 8-year-old boy in Lexington, Kentucky was delivered 50,600 Dum Dums lollipops at a cost of $4,200 that he accidentally ordered online. Amazon refused to take the candy back because it was food.

  Eventually after the local news got onto the story Amazon relented and refunded the boy’s mother saying they worked with her “to turn a sticky situation into something sweet.”  They still didn’t take back the candy and the mother is giving it away. 

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