The Supreme Court rules on Trump's deportations.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 14 minutes.

This Friday.

Richard Hanania has become a prominent voice among the “new right.” Vice President JD Vance has called him a “friend,” Elon Musk has elevated his posts, and he was even a contributor to Project 2025’s sections on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He also has a controversial past, having written for years under a pseudonym for several white supremacist publications. In an exclusive interview for this Friday’s members-only edition, Isaac sits down with Hanania to discuss his past, his influence in the 2024 election, and why he’s rethinking his support of Donald Trump.

Quick hits.

1. President Donald Trump’s individualized tariffs on U.S. trading partners went into effect at midnight, including a 104% levy on goods from China. China said it is raising its tariffs on U.S. products to 84% in response. (The tariffs) Global stock markets continued to fall as the tariffs went into effect, and the 10-year Treasury yield spiked overnight, raising concerns about the bond market. (The latest)
2. The Supreme Court voted 7–2 to pause an order requiring the Trump administration to rehire more than 16,000 fired probationary employees, finding that the plaintiffs — a group of nine nonprofit organizations — did not have standing to sue and challenge the firings. (The ruling)
3. The Trump administration froze over $1 billion in funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University amid civil rights investigations into both schools. The investigations center on allegations of antisemitism and racial discrimination. (The freeze)
4. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must restore the Associated Press’s access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other spaces for journalists in the White House press pool. The administration had barred the outlet from these spaces over its refusal to recognize the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. (The ruling)
5. The Department of Homeland Security revoked the legal status of migrants who entered the U.S. through the Biden-era CBP One app, which was used to facilitate the legal entry of asylum seekers, and ordered them to leave the country immediately. (The order)

Today's topic.

The Supreme Court’s deportation ruling. On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a 5–4 decision in Trump v. J.G.G., lifting a pair of temporary orders from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocking the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify deporting alleged noncitizen gang members. In an unsigned majority opinion, the Supreme Court did not weigh in on President Trump’s application of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to foreign-born gang members but specified that “the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings,” provided their challenges are brought in the jurisdiction where they are detained.

Back up: On March 15, the United States government transferred hundreds of alleged noncitizen members of the gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Tren de Aragua (TdA) to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador. President Trump justified their removal by invoking the AEA, which gives the president the wartime authority to deport any foreign nationals of an enemy nation, referencing his previous designation of the gangs as foreign terrorist organizations infiltrating the United States. 

We covered the deportations here. 

Immediately following President Trump’s proclamation invoking the law, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked the deportation order under the president’s justification; however, two of the flights had already departed and the third flight left shortly after. The Trump administration then filed an emergency appeal of Judge Boasberg’s decision, and the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the appeal on Monday.

The Supreme Court did not rule directly on the administration’s use of the AEA to deport aliens who have entered the country illegally, but it did find that deportees had the right to challenge the orders under habeas corpus — that is, by challenging the legality of their detention. The court also concluded that potential deportees must challenge the decision in the jurisdiction where they were detained, meaning challenges could be issued in Texas, where the detainees under the initial lawsuit were being held, not in Washington, D.C. 

“In the extradition context and with respect to transfers of Guantanamo and other wartime detainees, habeas corpus proceedings have long been the appropriate vehicle,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion. “Going back to the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, if not earlier, habeas corpus has been the proper vehicle for detainees to bring claims seeking to bar their transfers.”

“When this Court decides complex and monumental issues, it typically allows the lower courts to address those dissenting matters first,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent. “It then receives full briefing, hears oral argument, deliberates internally, and, finally, issues a reasoned opinion.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices in a partial dissent, though she declined to sign on to some aspects of the opinion, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s suggestion that the Trump administration was trying to secretly deport people without judicial oversight. 

Below, we’ll get into what the right and left are saying about the Supreme Court’s decision. Then, my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right praises the ruling, and many say it vindicates the Trump administration’s actions.
• Some suggest the outcome is not a complete victory for Trump.
• Others question Justice Barrett’s rationale in her dissent. 

In Townhall, Kevin McCullough said “Trump was right.”

“Judge James Boasberg, the D.C. District Court’s very own champion of anti-Trump jurisprudence, had previously blocked Trump’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act — a law written by John Adams himself — claiming it didn’t apply to non-state actors like criminal cartels or foreign gangs. To which SCOTUS just said, in effect: Wrong, Jim,” McCullough wrote. “Let’s be crystal clear: this isn’t just a Trump win. This is a national security win. This is a common sense win.”

“SCOTUS ruled that the 1798 Alien Enemies Act — still on the books, still valid, and, as it turns out, still potent — gives the president broad discretion in times of conflict to remove foreign nationals deemed dangerous to public safety. Boasberg tried to twist the language, pretending the Founders couldn’t have imagined a world where non-state actors like MS-13 or Hezbollah proxies could wage war on American streets,” McCullough said. “SCOTUS didn’t just rule in Trump’s favor today. They ruled in America’s favor. They upheld the rule of law, the original intent of the Constitution, and the principle that no foreign gang member has the right to remain in the country they seek to destroy.”

In National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy wrote “Supremes uphold due process.”

“It should be strange, yet it was utterly predictable to find President Trump chirping last night as he’d won a great victory after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that his taking aliens who were facing lawful proceedings, loading them onto planes, and transferring them to a foreign country’s notorious prison — all without notice and an opportunity to be heard in objection to these deportations — profoundly violated the Constitution he is sworn to uphold,” McCarthy said. “The Court’s unanimity on the important constitutional point is obscured by its 5–4 divide on procedure — i.e., the question of where to sue.”

“The nine justices are actually in lockstep on the bottom line that the executive branch must heed the Constitution and afford due process of law to those it dubiously accuses of being ‘alien enemies.’ The disagreement is that the majority… concluded that the aliens must bring their challenges in habeas corpus, which means they must sue in the place where they are being confined,” McCarthy wrote. “The majority’s final word on this procedural disagreement means the aliens will have to start over again – inundating a Texas federal court with hundreds of individual habeas claims, rather than continuing with a single class action lawsuit in Washington. They will do so, however, with a sharp admonition that the Trump administration, before any further deportations, must give notice to anyone it claims is an alien enemy.”

In Reason, Josh Blackman asked “what exactly did Justice Barrett disagree with the majority about?”

“In JGG, Justice Barrett did not write separately to explain which parts of the majority opinion she in fact disagreed with. As I'll explain, it isn't clear to me exactly what Justice Barrett thinks. Part I-A of the dissent lays out the history of the Alien Enemies Act. Parts I-B and I-C provide the facts and procedural posture of the case. Justice Barrett apparently does not agree with these parts of the dissent, though it is not clear why,” Blackman said. “Part III-B is the only substantive portion of the dissent that Justice Barrett joins… Barrett is not even willing to say the majority is wrong here. She is only willing to go along with ‘troubling’ and ‘dubious.’

“I take it that Justice Barrett simply isn't sure here, and would not reach this holding at this point. But does Justice Barrett disagree about the venue issue? Does she think this case properly belongs in Texas? What would a process-formalist originalist do here? I can't tell you because Justice Barrett won't say,” Blackman wrote. “Early in Justice Barrett's career, she told us to ‘read the opinion.’ Yet she writes less than any member of the Court, and frequently leaves us guessing what she actually thinks. Academics have the luxury of not addressing all issues at once, and instead we can deliberately walk through complex matters on our own timelines. Supreme Court justices do not have that luxury in fast-moving litigation.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is alarmed by the ruling, suggesting it will result in more legally dubious deportations.
• Some note the justices agreed on many aspects of the case but left key questions unanswered.
• Others say the ruling will embolden the Trump administration.

In Slate, Mark Joseph Stern said the ruling “couldn’t be more ominous.”

“The majority’s unsigned, thinly reasoned decision will make it significantly easier for the administration to illegally ship off innocent people to a Salvadoran prison, where all their constitutional rights—and quite possibly their lives—will be snuffed out,” Stern wrote. “The majority opinion purports to be modest, but it constitutes a painful defeat for the plaintiffs. According to the majority, the migrants cannot sue in D.C., where the president and his subordinates are planning and carrying out much of this program. Instead, they must file petitions for habeas corpus in the federal courts where they are being confined in south Texas.

“This requirement will sting for two reasons. First, most federal judges in Texas are extremely conservative and are far less likely to safeguard the migrants’ rights; even if they do, the government can appeal to the MAGA-aligned, far-right U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which is all but certain to rule for the government,” Stern said. “Second, the plaintiffs will probably have to file individual habeas petitions, pressing their cases one by one... So the litigation will become far more laborious and time-consuming. (How they will gain access to a lawyer is another troubling question.)”

In Bloomberg, Noah Feldman suggested there was “no clear winner” in the ruling.

“The most important thing to understand about the court’s decision is that it vindicates the rule of law. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized in her dissent, ‘all nine Members of this court agree’ that the detainees must have judicial review,” Feldman said. “The issue on which the justices split 5-4 was a technical but potentially important one: could the Venezuelans pursue their claim against deportation in federal court in Washington through a normal lawsuit, or must they seek review of their actual detention, which under the rules of habeas corpus can only be done in the district where they are being held.”

“Both the majority and dissent agreed that for now, the court would not address the underlying question of whether the deportations are legal. But the majority did drop an ominous hint. The unsigned opinion noted that the act ‘largely precludes judicial review,’ allowing only review ‘necessary to vindicate due process rights,’” Feldman wrote. “As a matter of law, this sentence does not dictate that the conservatives will ultimately uphold the use of the Alien Enemies Act. Formally speaking, if the law cannot be used to deport people from countries with whom we aren’t at war; and if these particular Venezuelans aren’t gang members, judicial review would still be necessary to vindicate their due process rights.”

In his One First newsletter, Steve Vladeck wrote about “the disturbing myopia of Trump v. J.G.G.”

“I tend to preach caution before folks read too much into what the Supreme Court does through its rulings on individual emergency applications… But the more I read the Court’s Monday night ruling in Trump v. J.G.G., in which a 5-4 majority vacated a pair of temporary restraining orders entered by Chief Judge Boasberg in the Alien Enemy Act case, the more I think that this ruling really is a harbinger, and a profoundly alarming one, at that,” Vladeck said. “To be clear, it’s not a sweeping win for the Trump administration; the Court did not suggest that what Trump is doing is legal, or, just as bad, that it might not be subject to judicial review. Indeed, the Court went out of its way to emphasize that individuals detained under the Act are entitled to due process.”

The court “seems willing to hide behind less-than-obvious legal artifices to make it harder for federal courts to actually restrain conduct by the current administration that everyone believes to be unlawful,” Vladeck wrote. “There will be judicial review of the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemy Act, and that’s a good thing. But the review we end up with will be far more impoverished than what was already unfolding before Chief Judge Boasberg. That review may still suffice in individual cases, but what the Court’s ruling completely refuses to engage with (unlike Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, which tackles it head-on) is how much the Trump administration is attempting to use the Alien Enemy Act systemically.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• The Supreme Court’s consensus on the need for due process is a very good thing.
• I’m still concerned that they offered only one pathway for people to challenge these deportation orders.
• We should all want innocent people to be able to fight for their rights, and hopefully Fifth Circuit courts will uphold legitimate challenges.

Let me start with the good things about this ruling.

First, and most importantly, the Supreme Court has emphasized — indeed, underlined — the government’s obligation to grant unauthorized migrants due process. It was an odd spectacle to see President Trump celebrating “victory” even after the court made it clear he was wantonly violating the Constitution.  

This is the same point Andrew C. McCarthy is making (under “What the right is saying”). All nine justices made it clear that, while they were divided on the proper procedure for legal challenges to the administration’s deportations, they unanimously agreed that the executive branch must afford due process to anyone accused of being an “alien enemy.” This was a major relief to me, and after I wrote about the importance of due process last week, I am glad to see that the court — despite its ideological diversity — unanimously shares my view.

Justice Kavanaugh put it this way (emphasis mine): “Importantly, as the Court stresses, the Court’s disagreement with the dissenters is not over whether the detainees receive judicial review of their transfers — all nine Members of the Court agree that judicial review is available. The only question is where that judicial review should occur.”

This decision has a practical consequence, too. It means that before any future deportations, the Trump administration must give anyone it claims is an alien enemy notice, which would allow the accused to file a habeas corpus petition wherever they are being confined. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “To the extent the Government removes even one individual without affording him notice and a meaningful opportunity to file and pursue habeas relief, it does so in direct contravention of an edict by the United States Supreme Court.”

To me, this highlights the most meaningful part of this entire narrow, succinct ruling: The Supreme Court is unanimous that Trump violated the Constitutional rights of the people he deported to El Salvador, and it is protecting the legal pathway they have to challenge the orders. Already, two of the Venezuelan migrants have sued in light of the court’s ruling. 

The bad news is, well, not great. For starters, the court did not consider Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportations, meaning that this ruling only gives a temporary procedural win the administration can dress up as a monumental victory. At least for now, the Supreme Court has provided no immediate relief for the people already deported to El Salvador under this act, so the administration can easily sell to the public the idea that everything they’ve done so far has been above board and legal (which it hasn’t been).

Furthermore, the Supreme Court determined that the correct way for litigants to challenge these deportations is through habeas corpus proceedings rather than the Administrative Procedure Act. There is a lot of technical legalese here (and legal experts are very divided in their view on that ruling), but the upshot is that migrants will have to individually challenge their deportations where they were detained, rather than suing against the order itself as a group in a D.C. courtroom. My preference would be to allow this case to move forward in D.C., but only because my preferred outcome is that these deportees have more avenues to issue legal challenges — the technical procedural questions at play in that decision are genuinely hard to follow (which I think is why they have left the court divided). 

Regardless, the reality now is that many of the detention centers where these deportees were initially held are in Texas or Louisiana, which means their challenges would be filed there and eventually end up in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That circuit is home to a slew of conservative federal judges who are likely to give the administration what it wants (until those decisions are appealed again)., a potential outcomeJustice Sotomayor called out explicitly in her dissent:

“The Government may well prefer to defend against ‘300 or more individual habeas petitions,’” rather than all at once in a D.C. court, she said, “es­pecially… because the Government can transfer detainees to particular locations in an attempt to secure a more hos­pitable judicial forum.”

Taken together, this makes the court’s ruling both relieving and incredibly frustrating. It is saying plainly that the deported migrants have had their constitutional rights violated, but makes any challenge to rectify that violation as difficult, onerous, and unlikely to succeed as possible. Remember, lawyers for the Venezuelan nationals have argued in court filings that “many (perhaps most) of the men” sent to this prison in March “were not actually members of” TdA. We should want the legal defense pathways for the accused to be as broad, fair, and navigable as they can be. 

Imagine coming back from a trip to find you were issued an erroneous parking ticket, but are told there is no way to fight it. You make a public appeal for an opportunity to defend yourself, and are informed that this is the due process afforded to you: You can only fight it in person by flying across the country to file an appeal you know is likely to be rejected. Except instead of fighting a parking ticket, you’re actually sitting in a prison in El Salvador with no way to get out. 

Now, we’ll have to see how individual cases play out in the Fifth Circuit, and how far judges there are willing to go to approve the Trump administration’s actions. The courts move slowly and Trump is moving fast, so if you’re like me and interested in seeing people actually have their constitutional rights afforded before being shipped off to CECOT, then this ruling is a decidedly mixed bag.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: I really appreciate your efforts at a balanced newsletter. You said there are 5 events that will tell you when there is a constitutional crisis or a danger to democracy? You stated that one has already been transgressed. When all five signals are transgressed, won’t it be too late to defend the rule of law?

— Anonymous from Washington, D.C.

Isaac Saul, Executive Editor: That’s a reference to an answer I gave in our March 14 mailbag edition, responding to a reader who asked what I think the Trump administration undermining democracy would actually look like. I detailed five things: The DOJ or FBI prosecuting Democrats without cause, the administration using the military against peaceful protestors, eroding or ending fair elections, Democrats completely folding to Trump, or actions that have a chilling effect on free speech. Of those five, I noted that the last one is already happening — with the Associated Press being removed from the White House press pool and protestors in the country on legal student visas being rounded up by ICE and deported.

If all five are violated, then yes — at that point, Tangle sounding an alarm would be too late and pointless. But there are two points I’d like to make: 1) I don’t think it’s our job to declare the end of democracy; we are reporting the news day to day, and will raise serious concerns when it feels warranted, and readers should keep an eye on any incremental threats to our system (not wait for some declaration). 2) We are already covering all of these things as they happen. We’re writing about and criticizing leadership changes at the FBI, we’re writing about and criticizing Democrats for failing to act as an opposition party, and we’re certainly critical of rulings from the court (like today’s) that make it hard to legally challenge government actions that trample on individual rights.

At the same time, it’s important to continue to provide perspective. Wisconsin and Florida just held special elections, which went off fairly, whose results were not suspicious, and that indicated Democrats’ electoral strength in a swing state. Trump’s Justice Department and FBI haven't been targeting Democrats. 

And even in areas where we’ve raised red flags, we aren’t ringing loud alarm bells. The government is cracking down on student protestors, but some of those deportations are being checked by the courts, and millions of people peacefully protested the government this weekend without President Trump setting the military on them. Democrats have not done much to slow down the Trump administration, but they remain an active opposition party and have recently introduced bipartisan legislation in Congress directly challenging President Trump’s tariffs. And even the free-speech infringements are getting pushback, as we saw on Tuesday with a court ruling that the Associated Press must be reinstated to the White House press pool.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

On Monday, President Trump ordered a new review of Japanese steel manufacturer Nippon Steel’s bid to acquire U.S. Steel, a $14.9 billion offer that former President Joe Biden blocked in January. Trump’s directive asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to assess the deal and submit a recommendation within 45 days on whether the measures agreed to by Nippon and U.S. Steel “are sufficient to mitigate any national security risks.” The president has previously opposed the deal, but recently appeared willing to reconsider it during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. CNBC has the story.

Numbers.

• 26% and 61%. The percentage of U.S. adults who support and oppose, respectively, deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador without letting them challenge the deportation in court, according to a March/April 2025 YouGov poll. 
• 5% and 89%. The percentage of Democrats who support and oppose, respectively, deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador without a court challenge.
• 22% and 62%. The percentage of independents who support and oppose, respectively, deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador without a court challenge.
• 52% and 34%. The percentage of Republicans who support and oppose, respectively, deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador without a court challenge.
• 70% and 73%. The percentage of cases in the Supreme Court’s 2020 and 2021 terms, respectively, in which Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted with her Republican-appointed colleagues, according to Newsweek. 
• 56%. The percentage of cases in the court’s 2022 term that Justice Barrett voted with her Republican-appointed colleagues. 
• 91%, 90%, 91%, and 92%. The percentage of court cases in the 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 terms, respectively, that Justice Barrett voted with the majority. 
• 0.68. Barrett’s Martin-Quinn score for the court’s 2023-24 term, the fourth-most conservative score among the nine justices. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered then-candidate Donald Trump announcing his abortion position.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the Supreme court pausing a deadline to repatriate a man who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador.
• Nothing to do with politics: Galapagos tortoises at the Philadelphia Zoo become parents at nearly 100 years old.
• Yesterday’s survey: 3,222 readers answered our survey on layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with 61% supporting some HHS reforms but opposing these cuts. “The HHS cuts, like all the other DOGE cuts, are penny wise and dollar foolish. The downstream economic losses and inefficiency being created will far outweigh the upfront ‘savings,’” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

On January 9, a Texas state trooper was patrolling the Dallas North Tollway when he saw smoke rising from the site of an accident. Speeding to the scene, Trooper Cody Durham ran to aid the injured driver in the burning car. Durham was able to rescue the driver, carrying him as far from the fire as possible to receive medical attention. “We’re all humans,” Durham said, adding that helping people in danger was just part of his job. The New York Post has the story.

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