Five Big News Stories You Missed During Trump’s Tariffs Whiplash
While President Donald Trump threw the economy into mayhem this week with his tumultuous back-and-forth tariff scheme, plenty of chaos ensued in other realms.
Here are five news stories you may have missed amid the tariff fiasco:
1. The total number of international students who have had their visas revoked has reached 600 since Trump took office, according to new data released by Inside Higher Ed. That’s more than double the estimate provided by Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month. Some students lost their visas for their connections to pro-Palestinian activism, while others had theirs revoked for minor crimes, like Felipe Zapata Velázquez, a University of Florida student from Colombia who was deported after being stopped by immigration agents at a traffic stop.
2. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration fired hundreds of workers—again. Hundreds of probationary NOAA employees were laid off in February, then reinstated following a court order. On Thursday, the probationary employees received an email informing them of their re-termination. Their firing is to be part of a larger attack on climate and weather research from the Trump administration, as it moves forward with plans to gut NOAA’s budget entirely, CNN reported Friday.
3. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Trump to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to his birth country of El Salvador last month due to an “administrative error.” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis previously ordered the White House to “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States by April 7, but Chief Justice Roberts paused Xinis’s order.
While the high court ruled the Trump administration had “no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison,” it did not require Abrego Garcia’s return, nor did it provide a deadline for the lower court’s order.
4. Measles cases reached new heights. As of Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded more than 700 cases across 25 states, marking the third-largest measles outbreak of the twenty-first century. Nearly three-quarters of the country’s cases have been recorded in Texas, which has seen 541 cases alone, the majority of which were among unvaccinated people.
After the death of an 8-year-old girl, the second measles death of an unvaccinated Texas minor, longtime vaccine skeptic and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. finally admitted the measles vaccine is necessary to stop the spread.
5. Israeli Defense Forces murdered an American teenager in the West Bank. The family of 14-year-old Amir Rabee was outraged to learn of the death of their son, who was killed after Israeli soldiers opened fire at three people “who were endangering drivers by hurling rocks at a highway in the village of Turmus Ayya,” NPR reported. Rabee’s family wants answers.
The White House is trying to use semantics to dodge the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that it has to help return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States from El Salvador.
At a press conference Friday, Newsmax’s Mike Carter asked press secretary Karoline Leavitt about Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s coming visit to the White House on Monday and whether Trump wanted Bukele to bring Abrego Garcia with him. Leavitt’s response was not encouraging.
“The Supreme Court made their ruling last night very clear that it’s the administration’s responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return,” Leavitt replied.
Reporter: The president of El Salvador coming to the white house Monday, does Trump want him to bring Abrego Garcia with him?
Leavitt: The supreme court made they are really very clear it is the administration's responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the… pic.twitter.com/bu5JEZtEh9
It’s true that the high court ruled the Trump administration must abide by a lower court ruling to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia. But focusing on this language ignores the bigger point that both courts ruled against the administration.
The government was barred from returning Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador due to his life being in danger from gangs, before ICE chose to deport him anyway. Administration officials continue to insist that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 gang member but failed to provide any evidence to that effect, as earlier court rulings had found. Abrego Garcia does not have a criminal record and is married to a U.S. citizen and the father of a child with autism.
But none of this matters to the Trump administration, which refuses to acknowledge that the legal system can do anything about its mass deportation efforts. They continue to drag their feet even in the face of the country’s highest court, controlled by conservatives that Trump himself appointed. Can anything compel this White House to respect and follow the law?
Next on the White House’s chopping block: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Trump administration is planning to close “all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices,” © New Republic
