Top Items:
Sahil Kapur / NBC News:
Abrego Garcia's deportation case exposes a rift among Democrats over how to take on Trump — As some Democrats vocally push for the release of the man the administration says was mistakenly deported, others have sought to steer clear and focus on high prices and economic issues.
RELATED:
Robert Jimison / New York Times:
Trump Administration Live Updates: Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador — The senator's meeting came after he had been denied access to the wrongly deported man. — Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Thursday night that he had met in San Salvador …
Discussion:
CNN, CBS News, Blaze Media, Axios, New York Post, Politico, The Hill, WUSA, Baltimore Sun and USA Today
Adam Thompson / CBS News:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia meets with Maryland senator in El Salvador, weeks after mistaken deportation — Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen says he has met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who immigration officials say was deported by error, in El Salvador on Thursday, Van Hollen's spokesperson confirmed to CBS News.
Discussion:
New York Post, The Fucking News, MPR News, Al Jazeera, Mediaite, Fox News, UPI, Washington Times, WSVN-TV, The Independent, The Hill and The Daily Wire
Nnamdi Egwuonwu / NBC News:
Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador
Discussion:
The Hill, The Guardian, NBC4 Washington, Twitchy, ABC News, The Dispatch, Raw Story, AMAC, Politico, The Post Millennial, American Greatness, Washington Examiner, CBS News, Reuters, USA Today, The Daily Wire, Baltimore Sun, Lawyers, Guns & Money, The Gateway Pundit, New York Post, WUSA, RedState, New Republic, Grabien, NPR and Letters from an American
Heather Cox Richardson / Letters from an American:
April 17, 2025 — Today, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) posted a picture of himself …
Ailia Zehra / Alternet.org:
‘You caved’: El Salvador president ripped for posting photos from US Senator's meeting
‘You caved’: El Salvador president ripped for posting photos from US Senator's meeting
Discussion:
RedState, Townhall, Sun-Sentinel, Twitchy, Fox News, The Daily Signal, Mediaite, Rolling Stone, WSVN-TV, Reuters, KDFX-TV, The Hill and Grabien
Roger Cohen / New York Times:
Rubio Says U.S. to ‘Move On’ From Ukraine Peace Efforts if No Progress Soon — “If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” the American secretary of state said as he departed meetings in Paris. — The United States will abandon efforts to end the war in Ukraine …
Discussion:
Raw Story, Financial Times, NBC News, Bloomberg, Mediaite, The Kyiv Independent, Reuters and Semafor
RELATED:
Adam Taylor / Washington Post:
Trump ready to ‘move on’ from Ukraine peace talks if no progress, Rubio says — Rubio's remarks appear to reflect the president's frustration with the difficulty of achieving peace in Ukraine after Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion. — PARIS — President Donald Trump is ready to “move on” …
Discussion:
Axios, The National Pulse and Associated Press
Reuters:
US will abandon Ukraine peace push if no progress ‘within a matter of days,’ Rubio says — U.S. President Donald Trump will walk away from trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days unless there are clear signs that a deal can be done, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday.
Graham Smith / NPR:
The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights — The Trump administration is substantially scaling back the State Department's annual reports on international human rights to remove longstanding critiques of abuses such as harsh prison conditions …
David Brooks / New York Times:
What's Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal. — In the beginning there was agony. Under the empires of old, the strong did what they willed and the weak suffered what they must. — But over the centuries, people built the sinews of civilization …
Discussion:
Mediaite, Michael-In-Norfolk, The Guardian, Alternet.org, Raw Story, Eschaton and Politico
RELATED:
Scott Pinsker / PJ Media:
Did the New York Times Just Call for a Communist Revolution?!
Andrew Solender / Axios:
House Democrats fume at David Hogg's plan to oust lawmakers — Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg's plan to spend $20 million to primary older Democratic incumbents in Congress has sparked intense anger from some lawmakers. — Why it matters: House Democrats told Axios that …
Discussion:
So What, HotAir and New Jersey Online
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Ayelet Sheffey / Business Insider:
DOGE is slashing 90% of a federal agency designed to prevent another financial crisis — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau terminated 90% of its staff. — A copy of a terminated notice reviewed by BI said employees will lose access to work systems on Friday night.
Discussion:
Associated Press, Fox Business and The Verge
RELATED:
New York Times:
With Harvard Threat, Trump Tries to Bend the I.R.S. to His Will — Since the post-Nixon era, the Internal Revenue Service has had a degree of independence from the White House. President Trump is seeking to change that. — In the years after President Richard Nixon enlisted …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, The Detroit News, Politico, Deseret News, The Guardian, Washington Times, Associated Press, Alternet.org, The Daily Wire, CBS News, The Hill, ABC News, Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, Washington Examiner, The Independent, Boston Herald, The Harvard Crimson, Bloomberg, Fox News, Washington Post, WBUR and Reuters
RELATED:
Alexander Tin / CBS News:
FDA making plans to end its routine food safety inspections, sources say — The Food and Drug Administration is drawing up plans that would end most of its routine food safety inspections work, multiple federal health officials tell CBS News, and effectively outsource this oversight to state and local authorities.
Discussion:
Reuters, Alternet.org, Mock Paper Scissors, Lawyers, Guns & Money and bluebelly, sun, serpentine
Andrew Chung / Reuters:
US Supreme Court to hear Trump bid to enforce birthright citizenship order — The U.S. Supreme Court said on Thursday it will hear arguments next month over Donald Trump's bid to broadly enforce his executive order to restrict automatic birthright citizenship, a key pillar …
Discussion:
NPR, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Executive Functions, The Daily Wire, SCOTUSblog, Just Security, Associated Press, USA Today, CBS News, Raw Story, Breitbart, Daily Mail, New York Times, Axios, The Independent, ZeroHedge News, Fox News, KDFX-TV, Bloomberg, Deseret News, Scripps News, Washington Examiner and New Jersey Office …
RELATED:
Suzanne Gamboa / NBC News:
U.S.-born American citizen under ICE hold in Florida after driving from Georgia — Juan Carlos Gomez-Lopez is being held even though a county judge found his birth certificate “authentic” and said there wasn't reason to consider him an “illegal alien.” — A U.S.-born American citizen …
Discussion:
The Hill, Inside Higher Ed, New Republic, Orlando Sentinel, KDFX-TV, KRDO, The Independent and Adventus
RELATED:
Jessica Schulberg / HuffPost:
U.S.-Born Citizen Arrested As ‘Unauthorized Alien’
U.S.-Born Citizen Arrested As ‘Unauthorized Alien’
Discussion:
Scripps News and Raw Story
Suzy Khimm / NBC News:
A deadly E. coli outbreak hit 15 states, but the FDA chose not to publicize it — The outbreak linked to romaine lettuce killed one person and sickened at least 88 more, including a 9-year-old boy who nearly died of kidney failure. — An E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce ripped across 15 states …
Discussion:
Rolling Stone, New York Daily News, Esquire and The Independent
Joe Walsh / CBS News:
RFK assassination files being released by Trump administration — Washington — The Trump administration said Friday that it has started releasing the first tranche of records on Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 assassination, which will contain roughly 10,000 pages of previously classified records.
Discussion:
Bloomberg, National Archives, Daily Mail, The Daily Caller and The Independent
Molly White / Citation Needed:
Trump's newest grift: Building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators — Listen to me read this post here (not an AI-generated voice!), subscribe to the feed in your podcast app, or download the recording for later. — In an unprecedented abuse of presidential power …
Tara Suter / The Hill:
Gwen Walz on RFK Jr. comments: People with autism ‘contribute more to this nation than this man ever will’ — Minnesota's first lady, Gwen Walz, slammed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert. F Kennedy Jr. over comments he made about autism on Wednesday.
RELATED:
Julia Métraux / Mother Jones:
RFK Jr. Says There Are No Autistic Poets. We Asked an Autistic Poet.
RFK Jr. Says There Are No Autistic Poets. We Asked an Autistic Poet.
Discussion:
Washington Post, Boston Herald, ANMLY, Scientific American, Metro.co.uk, Axios and Variety
Zachary Basu / Axios:
Trump's United States of Emergency — In his first 100 days, President Trump has declared more national emergencies — more creatively and more aggressively — than any president in modern American history. — Why it matters: Powers originally crafted to give the president flexibility …
Discussion:
Al Jazeera
Alec MacGillis / ProPublica:
Trump's War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More — More children ages 1 to 4 die of drowning than any other cause of death. Nearly a quarter of adults received mental health treatment in 2023, an increase of 3.4 million from the prior year.
Bernard Condon / Associated Press:
Strange sell-off in the dollar raises the specter of investors losing trust in the US under Trump — Among the threats tariffs pose to the U.S. economy, none may be as strange as the sell-off in the dollar. Currencies rise and fall all the time because of inflation fears, central bank moves and other factors.
Discussion:
Washington Examiner, Financial Times and The Economist
Washington Post:
DOGE begins to freeze health-care payments for extra review — DOGE is putting new curbs on billions of dollars in federal grants, requiring officials to manually review and approve payments that were previously routine. — The U.S. DOGE Service is putting new curbs on billions of dollars …
Washington Post:
Travel to the U.S. from almost everywhere is falling under Trump — Charts show the scale of a steep drop in visitors from key countries and regions after President Donald Trump returned to office. — Overseas travel to the United States has declined sharply since President Donald Trump returned to office.
Washington Post:
U.S. intelligence contradicts Trump's justification for mass deportations — The determination is the most comprehensive assessment to date undercutting the president's rationale for deporting suspected gang members without due process. — The National Intelligence Council …
Discussion:
Persuasion, Associated Press, IJR and emptywheel
Jon Gambrell / Associated Press:
US strikes on a Yemeni oil port kill 74 people, Houthis say, in deadliest attack of Trump campaign — U.S. airstrikes targeting an oil port held by Yemen's Houthi rebels killed 74 people and wounded 171 others, the group said Friday, marking the single-deadliest known attack under President Donald Trump's …
Zach Schonfeld / The Hill:
Appeals court won't lift order to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia's return in blistering opinion — The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday declined to lift a judge's order that the Trump administration “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, admonishing the Justice Department in the ruling.
Discussion:
Politico, Reason, Associated Press, NPR, Law Dork, Breitbart, Raw Story, KRQE NEWS 13, Rolling Stone, The Gateway Pundit, Blaze Media, New York Post, New Republic, USA Today, WUSA, The Independent and CBS News
G. Elliott Morris / Strength In Numbers:
Chart of the week: Trump is losing voters on the economy — Inflation got Donald Trump elected in 2024. Now, his ratings on economic issues are at their lowest point ever, even worse than during COVID-19 — The numbers on the economy are basically unanimous and relatively straightforward …
Discussion:
Rochester Democrat … and The Economist
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
SCOTUS Can Let the President Break the Law; They Can't Change It … We are now cranking up another edition of the “will he or won't he” Trump song and dance, this time about firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Trump manages to add an additional pungency to these dramas by trying to fire the guy who is actually his own Fed Chair.
Jem Bartholomew / The Guardian:
'I don't want to give money to this America': tourists' fears of US travel under Trump — With US visits down 11.6% in March compared with last year, people share their views and experiences on the US border — Last year, while Joe Biden was US president, Jenny and her husband booked a trip to Boston for June 2025.

