The Trump administration admits that it mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, yet he’s still languishing in a notorious mega-prison. “District Court Judge Paula Xinis came down hard on the Department of Justice…[citing] the Supreme Court’s 9–0 decision finding that the Trump administration had to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States,” Joan Walsh explains this week. But as always, Trump believes he’s above the law and is instead shifting blame onto someone else—El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. Walsh calls the claim that the Trump administration couldn’t get Abrego Garcia “the worst kayfabe ever.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s deportation spree threatens college students and faculty. “It’s important to acknowledge the unprecedented nature of what we’re living through,” Saree Makdisi writes of Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian activists. “This moment has been compared to McCarthyism,” he argues, but the difference here is that “not one of the students being pursued or detained today is accused of criticizing the United States or its system of government.”
While these abuses of power might not deter Trump’s base, hopefully his corrupt tariffs will. While we shouldn’t conflate Trump’s dangerous and corrupt tariffs with tariffs themselves, columnist Zephyr Teachout writes, we must see the president’s trade policy for what it is: “a devastating blow to America, akin to the Covid-19 pandemic in [its] scope.”
Two works—a new film, The Shrouds, and a career-spanning monograph by the film critic Violet Lucca—present a more sanguine image of the master of body horror.