MIKEY SMITH: 7 unhinged things Donald Trump did in 24 hours as judge gives chilling warning

A standoff with America's judiciary was always going to be a feature of Donald Trump's second term in office.

Not sure anyone expected it to escalate so quickly - within the first 100 days - but the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has hastened Trump's first potentially existential clash with judges.

A senior Judge has written a scorching opinion - not only taking aim at Trump over the man his administration illegally deported, dumped in an El Salvador torture prison and then shrugged when it was asked to do something about it - but at his entire attitude towards the rule of law.

And it came with a chilling warning for the future of America.

Here's that - and a few more unhinged things the Trump administration did in the last 24 hours.

The Trump administration 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", a senior judge wrote in an opinion for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday.

The administration had lodged an appeal to an order from a judge to "take all available steps" to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US "as soon as possible."

Mr Abrego Garcia is being held in a torture prison in El Salvador, after the administration "accidentally" - and illegally - deported him there.

And today, 4th circuit judge James Harvey Wilkinson III, a conservative appointed by Ronald Reagan who has sat on the bench for 41 years, issued the most scorching rebuke not only of Trump's attempts to swerve any responsibility for returning Mr Abrego Garcia - but of his administration's apparent disregard for the rule of law and due process.

I recommend you read the whole thing - it's beautifully written.

He says the administration's insistence that nothing can be done to return Mr Abrego Garcia, "should be shocking not only to judges but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."

He says that whether a man is a terrorist or gang member, he is still entitled to due process - and that if the government is confident of its position, it has nothing to fear from giving him a day in court.

The administration has argued that the Supreme Court's ruling that they should "facilitate" Mr Abrego Garcia's release and return to the US only obliges them to make a plane available if El Salvador chooses to set him free.

Judge Wilkinson disagrees.

""Facilitate" is an active verb," he writes.

"It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear...."Facilitation" does not permit the admittedly erroneous deportation of an individual to the one country's prisons that the withholding order forbids and, further, to do so in disregard of a court order that the government not so subtly spurns. "Facilitation" does not sanction the abrogation of habeas corpus (the legal review of whether imprisonment is lawful) through the transfer of custody to foreign detention centers in the manner attempted here.

"Allowing all this would "facilitate" foreign detention more than it would domestic return.

"It would reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood."

Judge Wilkinson then goes on to ask some of the same questions we asked in our preamble to yesterday's roundup - what next?

"If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?

"And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?"

These are not mere hypotheticals - they are both things that Trump has suggested he wants to do, or is actively doing.

He makes an astute reference to Eisenhower enacting the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate schools "with all deliberate speed", despite his personal disagreement with the ruling - Eisenhower himself led a huge programme of mass deportations while President.

And in the end he gives a chilling warning that if Trump keeps "grinding" against the courts, both he and the judiciary will be diminished.

"The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions" he writes. "The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph."

He adds: "We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time."

Yikes.

Judge Wilkinson's hope may have been misplaced, because shortly before the decision was published, Trump said the following in the Oval Office: "I did it last time, and they undid it. That's why we have to stay president for a long time."

And what hugely important policy is he talking about? What is so momentous that he's insisting he has to defy the constitution and stay in office beyond what the law allows?

Fishing rights in Samoa.

There's a theory that Trump doesn't understand the difference between political asylum and insane asylums.

And that's why the President repeatedly claims - bafflingly - that other countries send people from insane asylums to the US. He's just got confused when someone has told him that many migrants are seeking asylum.

Anyway, that's an aside. Yesterday, while subjecting Italian PM Giorgia Meloni to a similar immigration rant in the Oval Office, Trump might have let slip that he doesn't know what "The Congo" is.

"People that were in jail for horrible - you know," he said. "They release jails from all over the world and release them.

"Not just South America. The Congo in Africa. Many many people come from the Congo. I don't know what that is, but they came from the Congo."

Asked about the shooting at Florida State University which left two dead, Trump said no changes to gun laws were needed.

"Look, I'm a big advocate of the second amendment," he said, referring to the constitutional amendment that guarantees the right of a "well organised militia" to bear arms, which at the time of writing would have topped out at smoothbore muskets and flintlock pistols.

He added: "These things are terrible but the gun doesn't do the shooting, the people do."

As we know, Trump is deep in a row with Harvard University.

He's threatened to take away their tax-exempt status over the row on Truth Social before - but last night he did it in the Oval Office too.

He also referred - presumably - to Claudine Gray, the former President of Harvard, the first black president in the University's history, as "that woman, that horrendous president that ruined the image of Harvard, maybe permanently."

"I've looked at a lot having to do with it," he said...before, perhaps wisely, backtracking furiously. "I'm not involved with it, it's handled by lawyers, I read about it just like you did...but tax exempt status, that's a privilege, and it's being abused by a lot more than Harvard."

Then there's CREW.

CREW is an ethics watchdog organisation - a charitable non-profit that investigates and takes legal action against corrupt politicians.

As such, it does a lot of business with Donald Trump.

But he's going to prove them wrong, right? He's going to respond to their actions by proving he's a stand-up guy, an ethical president that respects the rule of law and the common good. Right?

No, obviously not. Asked if he was looking to revoke tax exempt status from any other groups, he brought up CREW, saying "the only charity they have is going after Donald Trump. So we're looking at that."

For the record, it's a federal crime, punishable by up to five years in Prison for the President, Vice President or any White House employee to "request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the IRS to conduct ... an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer."

"I don't hold Zelensky responsible," Trump said when asked about the Ukraine war.

"But I'm not exactly thrilled with the fact that the war started....so I'm not happy with him. And I'm not happy with anyone involved."

He added: "I spoke to President Putin about it a lot. I was the apple of his eye, but there's no way he would have ever gone in if I were president. Now I'm trying to get him to stop."

On Zelensky, he added: "If you're smart, you don't get involved in wars ... I wouldn't say he's done the greatest job. I'm not a big fan. I really am. I'm not a big fan."

More than 1,000 international students have had their visas or legal status revoked in recent weeks, and several have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, arguing the government denied them due process when it suddenly took away their permission to be in the US.

At least 1,024 students at 160 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records.

Visas can be canceled for a number of reasons, but colleges say some students are being singled out over infractions as minor as traffic violations, including some long in the past. In some cases, students say it's unclear why they were targeted.

“The timing and uniformity of these terminations leave little question that DHS has adopted a nationwide policy, whether written or not, of mass termination of student (legal) status,” ACLU of Michigan attorneys wrote in a lawsuit on behalf of students at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan.