STATE SECRETS: The Justice Department has resorted to twisted logic to defend the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant under legal protection sent to prison in El Salvador. 

  DOJ lawyer Jonathan Guynn said at a hearing in Federal District Court in Maryland yesterday that while Abrego Garcia’s expulsion was a mistake, it was not illegal or an act of government misconduct. “Not to split hairs with your honor, but he was removed lawfully,” Guynn said.

  Abrego Garcia was neither convicted nor accused of a crime and he was under a court order of protection from being deported. His case has become a focus in the battle between the courts and the Trump administration. It gets down to a question of whether Trump and his lieutenants will follow the law court orders.

  More than a month ago the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” bringing Abrego Garcia back to the US. Trump said he won’t do it and the Justice Department is stonewalling.

  Judge Paula Xinis has pressed for details about efforts to retrieve Abrego Garcia and Justice lawyers have claimed that would amount to revealing state secrets.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

— Moody’s credit rating service downgraded US government debt in an evaluation that will cost the federal government more money to borrow money. All three major credit rating services have now downgraded US debt as Republicans in Congress move toward tax cuts that could increase the national debt. 

   Fitch downgraded the US in 2023, and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country way back in 2011.Moody’s said that both Democrats and Republicans have failed to curb the debt.

— As the Trump administration follows through on threats to eliminate $2.7 billion worth of funding, hundreds of researchers at Harvard Medical School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health received emails this week telling them that funding is eliminated for a range of research projects including breast cancer and the impact of nutrition on fertility. 

“It feels like the academic equivalent of nuclear war,” Dr. Michael Barnett, at the school of public health told NPR. “Nukes have been launched and there’s just increasingly complete devastation.”

— A June 14 parade planned to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the US Army that coincides with President Trump’s 79^th birthday could cost $45 million.

ELDERLY: A four-minute audio clip of Joe Biden being interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Hur released by the news outlet Axios reveals a president who was stumbling and forgetful. The clip adds to recent reports that Biden’s team covered for a president with failing intellect.

  When asked about where he had kept secret documents he was consulting for a book, Biden trailed off on a meandering answer about running for president, forgetting when Donald Trump was sworn in, and how much he loved his late son Beau. In the clip released, he never answered where he kept the documents. 

THE WAR ROOM: Representatives of  Russia and Ukraine spoke face to face this week in Turkey for the first time this week since the start of their three-year war but seem to have made no progress in coming to peace. They did agree to exchange 1,000 prisoners from each side and to submit detailed ceasefire proposals.

  Only hours later a Russian drone attack hit a Ukrainian shuttle bus, killing nine people.

HOOP DREAMS: The New York Knicks crushed last year’s champion Boston Celtics 119-81 to advance to the NBA conference finals for the first time since 2000.

THE OBIT PAGE:  Joe Don Baker, the physically imposing actor who rose to fame as the crusading Southern sheriff who administered justice with a hand carved bat in the 1973 movie “Waking Tall,”  died on May 7^th at age 89.

  The movie was  about a Tennessee man who moves back to his hometown to find it overrun by illegal gambling, prostitution, and moonshiners. Released in the era of Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” and Tom Laughlin’s “Billy Jack,”  the movie lionized a man who broke the law to enforce it.

  The low budget flick was adored by big city film critics. Made for about $500,000, it grossed $40 million.

THE SPIN RACK:  Ten New Orleans prison inmates escaped early yesterday by removing a toilet and cutting a rectangular hole through a wall. One of them scrawled on the wall before departing that it was, “To easy LOL.” His spelling, not ours. One inmate was captured hiding in the French Quarter. —  Train engineers for New Jersey Transit went on strike yesterday leaving commuters scrambling to get to work in New York. In some cases riders had to shell out $70 to Amtrak for a 17-minute ride into the city. — A brain dead pregnant woman in Georgia is being kept alive to carry her baby to term in order to comply with the state’s ban on abortions.  — The largest pre-Civil War mansion in all of the American South at Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, Louisiana burned to the ground yesterday, It was built nearly 200 years ago. The 53,000 square foot mansion had been a museum since the 1980s.

BELOW THE FOLD: The Secret Service yesterday questioned former FBI Director James Comey about his online posting of an arrangement of seashells on a beach that spelled out “8647.” The service took that as a possible death threat to President Trump, the 47^th president. “86” means “thrown out,” like thrown out of a bar, but it has also evolved to mean “kill.”

  Trump said about Comey in an interview with Fox News that, “He’s a dirty cop, he’s a dirty cop. And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency, but I’m going to let them make that decision.”

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