Happy Wednesday! After “faking his death” last month, the Duolingo owl debuted a new business venture for April Fools Day, “partnering” with Carnival for a five-year-long Duolingo world cruise. But if you lose your daily Duolingo streak, the “owl will deny you knowledge of eternal peace.” We’re slightly worried about the next Duolingo marketing ploy.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- The body of the fourth and final U.S. soldier to go missing during a tactical training drill in Lithuania last week was recovered Tuesday, U.S. Army Europe and Africa Command announced. Rescue workers—including American, Lithuanian, Polish, and Estonian military personnel—assisted in the seven-day recovery operation. On Monday, the bodies of the other three soldiers were recovered from an armored vehicle, which had been found submerged in a peat bog. The Army identified the three deceased soldiers who were found Monday as Sgt. Jose Duenez Jr. of Joliet, Illinois; Sgt. Edvin F. Franco of Glendale, California; and Pfc. Dante D. Taitano of Dededo, Guam. The identity of the fourth soldier has not yet been released.
- China began large-scale military exercises off the coast of Taiwan on Tuesday, deploying air, naval, and ground forces near the island. Throughout the day, Taiwan’s defense ministry identified at least 71 Chinese warplanes and 13 naval ships off its coast. The drills followed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s visit to the Indo-Pacific last week, during which he vowed to strengthen Washington’s regional alliances as a counterweight to “Chinese military aggression.” The People’s Liberation Army said the drills were intended to serve as a “stern warning and forceful deterrence against ‘Taiwan Independence’ separatist forces,” sharing a video describing Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te as a “parasite.”
- The Treasury Department on Tuesday unveiled sanctions targeting entities and individuals in Iran, China, and the United Arab Emirates whom it says helped procure components for Iran’s drone and ballistic missile programs on behalf of Iranian company Qods Aviation Industries. The sanctions are the latest in President Donald Trump’s revived “maximum pressure” campaign, which seeks in part to pressure Tehran into abandoning its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. They followed Trump’s assertion on Sunday that the Islamic Republic could face secondary tariffs and “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” barring a new nuclear deal with the United States.
- The State Department on Monday imposed sanctions on six Chinese and Hong Kong officials for their efforts to “intimidate, silence, and harass” pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong, including dissidents currently based in the United States. Also on Monday, the State Department released a report detailing how the Chinese government used its 2020 national security law, passed in the wake of Hong Kong’s mass pro-democracy protests, to “undermine the human rights and fundamental freedoms” of the city’s residents.
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Tuesday began widespread firings across the agency, laying off senior officials, scientific researchers, medical experts, and support staff. Additionally, several news outlets reported that some senior leaders had been transferred from HHS to the Indian Health Service agency as part of the restructuring. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week that the agency planned to cut about 10,000 full-time employees from its workforce, which he said would save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year. The layoffs, together with an early retirement program and voluntary separation offers, intend to reduce the agency’s workforce from 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000.
- Democratic governors and attorneys general for 23 states and Washington, D.C., sued Kennedy and the HHS on Tuesday for rescinding $11 billion in federal grants Congress appropriated to states during the COVID-19 pandemic. “These terminations are causing, and will continue to cause, significant and irreparable harm to Plaintiff States,” the 43-page lawsuit stated. The HHS clawed back the grants on the basis that they were “issued for a limited purpose”—to combat the pandemic—and therefore no longer relevant. Meanwhile, the suing states argued that the HHS lacked the authority to pull the funds, alleging the move violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act.
- Nine House Republicans joined Democrats on Tuesday in voting against a rule introduced by GOP Speaker Mike Johnson that sought to block proxy voting for new parents. Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida used a discharge petition signed by 218 House members to bring to the floor a bill that would permit new parents to vote by proxy for three months after having a child. The discharge petition required the bill to be voted on within two days. Johnson’s rule proposal would have blocked Luna’s bill and similar legislation from consideration in this congressional term, but it failed to pass in a 222-206 vote. Following the vote, Johnson suspended legislative activity in the House until next week.
- Wisconsin voters elected Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford, the Democratic Party-endorsed candidate, to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday over the Republican Party-backed candidate, Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, by a 10-point margin. The campaigns raised a total of $98 million, making it the costliest judicial race in U.S. history. Schimel said late Tuesday night he had called Crawford to concede the race.
- Republicans won two special elections in Florida on Tuesday night, regaining House seats that GOP candidates both won by more than 30 points in November 2024 but have since vacated. In Florida’s 1st Congressional District, Jimmy Patronis—a Trump-endorsed candidate who until Monday served as Florida’s chief financial officer—beat the Democrat Gay Valimont by more than 14 points to fill the seat vacated by former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz. In the state’s 6th Congressional District, Randy Fine, a former Florida GOP state senator, also defeated his Democratic opponent, Josh Weil, by 14 points, winning the seat formerly occupied by current National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
Claims of Deportation Errors Pile Up
It’s been a little more than two weeks since President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport hundreds of immigrants to a giant prison complex in El Salvador. Initial scrutiny of the move focused on the president’s legal authority to invoke the act—its power is reserved for times of war—and whether his administration ignored a court order to halt the removals as the deportation planes were in the air.
Reporting also quickly began to suggest that some of the deported individuals were wrongfully identified by the administration as members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) or the international gang MS-13. Although the administration conceded this week that they made a mistake with at least one case, officials—including the vice president—continue to insist that all of the deportees were violent gang members.
In a court filing on Monday, the Trump administration admitted to mistakenly deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador—a mega complex in a country with a grim record of abuse in its prison system. Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran national who came to the U.S. illegally in 2011 after fleeing gang violence in his home country, according to a court filing from his lawyer. In 2019, an immigration judge granted Abrego Garcia a “withholding of removal,” preventing his deportation to El Salvador due to the heightened risk of persecution should he return. “Although ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the Justice Department lawyers noted in the Monday filing.
But despite admitting the error, the administration still maintains that Abrego Garcia is an active MS-13 member. “This individual was an MS-13 gang leader,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday when asked about Abrego Garcia. “This individual was also engaged in human trafficking.”
“If you just saw the headline from the insane failing Atlantic magazine this morning, you would think this individual was father of the year living in Maryland, living a peaceful life, when that couldn’t be further from the truth,” she added, referring to a report by The Atlantic that broke the news of the “administrative error.” Leavitt’s comments echoed statements from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials about intelligence reports on Abrego Garcia’s gang membership, but the administration has not publicly released the evidence to support the claims. Abrego Garcia and his lawyer have strongly contested the government’s characterization of him as a gang member.
On Monday night, Vice President J.D. Vance claimed, incorrectly, that Abrego Garcia “was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here.” While seeking work in a Home Depot parking lot in 2019, Abrego Garcia was picked up by police under suspicion of gang affiliation and subsequently transferred to ICE to be deported. The evidence cited by local police for the suspicion appears thin, but an immigration judge determined it was sufficient to deny Abrego Garcia bond—as did a board subsequently reviewing the judge’s determination. But the judge did not convict him of being a gang member. They simply reviewed the evidence cited by ICE, which immigration case law requires to be considered “inherently trustworthy” unless positively proven otherwise.
No criminal charges were ever brought against Abrego Garcia, and in October 2019, an immigration judge granted him “withholding from removal” protection on the grounds that he’d been fleeing gang threats and would face persecution if he were deported. Abrego Garcia was released from ICE detention after the judge’s order. Before and since his detention, he has had no criminal record beyond some traffic violations. He is married to an American citizen and has a 5-year-old child with her.
But now that he’s in CECOT, the administration has argued in court that there’s no way for his return to be secured.
While Abrego Garcia’s case is the only instance in which the government has publicly admitted a mistake—which the administration maintains it was a clerical, rather than a substantive error—a growing number of stories have emerged from family members and lawyers claiming their loved ones and clients were wrongfully caught up in the deportations. One such case is that of 31-year-old Andry José Hernández Romero, a makeup artist from Venezuela who was deported to CECOT under AEA authority last month.
In 2024, Romero left Venezuela to escape harassment and persecution for his sexual orientation and political criticism of the authoritarian regime of President Nicolás Maduro. He was arrested trying to enter the U.S. illegally and was removed to Mexico. But he subsequently received a CBP One app appointment and passed a preliminary asylum screening test. A U.S. border official determined that Romero demonstrated “credible fear” of persecution, but his tattoos raised concerns among officials that he could be a TdA member.
Consequently, Romero was kept in detention instead of being released to await an immigration court date on his asylum claim. Then, last month, authorities deported Romero to El Salvador without giving notice to his lawyer or offering him the opportunity to rebut the allegation that his tattoos reflected TdA membership.
Philip Holsinger, a photojournalist who documented the arrival of the deportees at the prison, described an encounter with an inmate who may have been Romero in a report for Time: “One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor,” he wrote. “He said, ‘I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.’”
Romero’s tattoos include a snake and a bouquet of flowers on his left arm, as well as crowns on his wrists and the words “Mom” and “Dad.” ICE officials said that the crowns are “consistent with those of a Tren de Aragua member.” But analysts and journalists who cover TdA say there are no identifying tattoos for the gang. The New Yorker spoke with an organizer of a renowned Three Kings Day festival in Romero’s hometown of Capacho, Venezuela. The organizer, who has known Romero from a young age, said the crown tattoos were a tribute to the festival.
Romero is just one of at least several cases in which individuals appeared to have been deported and imprisoned on the basis of tattoos. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted a legal filing over the weekend that included a government document outlining a points rubric that ICE apparently uses to determine whether an individual is a TdA member. The “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” says that individuals who register at least eight points can be considered “validated as a member of Tren de Aragua.” Tattoos “denoting membership/loyalty to TDA” are worth four points. “Dress known to indicate allegiance to TDA” is worth another four points. “The unreliability of the factors on the checklist reinforces why it is essential that these individuals are given due process to contest their inclusion in this unlawful process,” said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt.
When asked by a reporter on Monday about the point system, Leavitt responded: “Shame on you and shame on the mainstream media for trying to cover for these individuals; this is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of American women.”
Meanwhile, the deportation stories have hit home even among allies of the president. “Let’s get the gang members out, everybody agrees, but let’s not [let] innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs,” Joe Rogan said on his podcast this weekend. “How long before that guy can get out? Can we figure out how to get him out? Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they’ve made a horrible mistake and correct it?”
Today’s Must-Read
Donald Trump, Franklin Roosevelt and the Allure of Permanent Power
There is a rhetorical conveyor belt on which Trump’s ideas, or as Vice President J.D. Vance might say, “desires,” are carried out of the shadows of impossibility and into the broad daylight of inevitability. It starts as trolling or a joke, then becomes a bargaining position in service of a real policy issue—the old “seriously but not literally” rope-a-dope—and then the last furlong is carried by an incredulous surprise that anyone would be shocked that he’s doing exactly what he’s been saying all along. From irony to strategy to reality. Greenland is a gag. Greenland is actually about highlighting European security weaknesses. Greenland is deadly serious. So it has gone with the idea of a third Trump term.
Toeing the Company Line
Worth Your Time
- In the Wall Street Journal, Benoit Faucon and Michael M. Phillips wrote of an unlikely and unfortunate career change. “Back in the day, Iyad ag Ghali wrote lyrics for a flamboyant blues-rock band from the heart of the Sahara,” the pair wrote. “The group, Tinariwen, went on to tour the world, win a Grammy and play with the likes of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and U2’s Bono.” But the good times turned out to be short-lived: “Ag Ghali went on to become the leader of one of the most dangerous al Qaeda franchises in the world, banning music in a swath of West Africa the size of Montana and commanding an army of extremists responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Ag Ghali’s gunmen even ambushed Tinariwen band members and abducted the guitar player. ‘I could not believe it,’ said the band’s former manager, Manny Ansar, who went clubbing with ag Ghali in Mali’s capital, Bamako, 30 years ago. ‘It was a huge shock when I saw footage of him walking over corpses.’”
- Last month, the Trump administration moved to end several U.S. government news services for international audiences, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. What purpose do they serve? Writing in National Review, Jay Nordlinger reflected on the broadcasters’ enduring importance for people living under totalitarian regimes. “Our radios are lifelines to people under dictatorship, starved for information, or fed a diet of lies. This is a term people frequently use when talking about the radios: ‘lifelines’—to Cubans, Iranians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and many others.” For example, he wrote, “[Former Soviet Union political prisoner Anatoly Shcharansky] remembers how his father listened to the American radios, though the Soviet government did its best to jam them. … From the radios, the family learned about the outside world — but they also learned about what was happening inside the Soviet Union, Sharansky emphasizes. You could not get that from state media. … ‘If a person is disconnected from the outside world,” says Sharansky, “his independence of thought dries up.’”
Washington Post: [National Security Adviser Mike] Waltz and Staff Used Gmail for Government Communications, Officials Say
A senior Waltz aide used the commercial email service for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict, according to emails reviewed by The Post. While the [National Security Council] official used his Gmail account, his interagency colleagues used government-issued accounts, headers from the email correspondence show.
U.S. Department of Justice: Attorney General Pamela Bondi Directs Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty for Luigi Mangione
Washington Post: Fired Health Workers Were Told to Contact An Employee. She’s Dead.
Some government health employees who were laid off Tuesday were told to contact Anita Pinder with discrimination complaints. But Pinder, who was the director at the Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, died last year.
In the Zeitgeist
We were sad to learn of the death of Val Kilmer at the age of 65 on Tuesday. The iconic actor starred in Tombstone, Top Gun, Real Genius, and The Saint. But we’ll always remember him as one of the most controversial (and arguably underrated) Batmans to grace the big screen.
Let Us Know
What’s your favorite Val Kilmer film and why?
