Trump says he is ‘entitled’ to deport people without trials – as it happened (2025)

This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back on Wednesday to pick up the thread. Here are some of the day’s developments:

• Five Democratic lawmakers traveled to Louisiana on Tuesday to meet with Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, two graduate students who were arrested by federal immigration officials over pro-Palestinian activism. Representative Jim McGovern called them “political prisoners”.

• Donald Trump told reporters he was “entitled” to deport migrants without trials.

• Trump brushed off questions about whether he would try to remove the heading of Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, saying: “I don’t want to talk about because I have no intention of firing him”.

• Tesla reported that its first quarter profits were down 71% apparently due to anger at the role of CEO Elon Musk in dismantling the federal government.

• A federal judge ordered the administration to restore the jobs of journalists at Voice of America, calling the shuttering of the congressionally-funded broadcaster “an affront” to Congress.

• Secretary of state Marco Rubio announced a proposed sweeping reorganisation of the US state department as part of what he called an effort to reform it amid criticism from the Trump White House over the execution of US diplomacy.

• The US supreme court appeared inclined to rule in favor of religious parents in Maryland seeking to keep their elementary school children out of certain classes when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters are read.

• Four House Democrats who traveled to El Salvador this week were denied visits with Kilmar Ábrego García, a man who the Trump administration wrongly deported from the United States, Representative Maxwell Frost told reporters.

• The Trump administration was ordered by a federal judge in Colorado to give Venezuelan migrants detained in that state notice 21 days in advance before any deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, and to inform them of their right to challenge their removal.

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• JD Vance described the US-India partnership as the cornerstone of global progress, warning that the 21st century could be “a very dark time for all of humanity” if the two countries fail to cooperate.

Arizona Democrat Yassamin Ansari, back from El Salvador, explained due process to Laura Ingraham, a former supreme court law clerk.

Ansari, who visited El Salvador this week to push for the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, who was wrongly deported by the Trump administration, was asked on Tuesday night by Fox host Laura Ingraham why she made the trip.

“To me, there is nothing more American than due process and the rule of law,” Ansari replied. “The fact that Donald Trump is defying a 9-0 supreme court order that has said very clearly that the United States must facilitate the return of Kilmar Ábrego García is extremely, extremely important and the fact that the president continues to defy that supreme court order.”

Ansari went on to point out to Ingraham, a lawyer who clerked for supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas before her career in television, that “this is also a bipartisan issue”.

“We have had a conservative-leaning supreme court say that he must be returned, a Reagan-appointed judge say that this should be shocking to every American, and also Joe Rogan who has said due process is one of the foundations of our freedom,” Ansari said. “So I want to make sure that the president abides by the law, an actually follows the law.”

Five Democratic lawmakers traveled to Louisiana on Tuesday to meet with Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, two graduate students who were arrested by federal immigration officials over pro-Palestinian activism and remain in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facilities.

The delegation, led by Representative Troy Carter of Louisiana, also included Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking member on the homeland security committee, which has oversight of Ice, and three lawmakers from Massachusetts, where Ozturk was studying: Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern, and Senator Ed Markey.

After the delegation visited Khalil, who was a spokesperson for Gaza solidarity protesters at Columbia University, at a detention facility in Jena, and Ozturk, who co-wrote an opinion article for the student newspaper at Tufts calling on the school to divest from Israel, at a facility in Basile, the lawmakers spoke in a livestream posted on the YouTube channel of Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

“Both of these individuals are political prisoners. They don’t belong here,” McGovern said. “We are hearing from constituents in our districts; we are hearing from people all across the country who are outraged by what is happening. This in not about enforcing the law. This is moving us toward an authoritarian state.”

The delegation was accompanied by Anu Joshi of the ACLU, who pointed out in a Bluesky video filmed on the long drive between the two detention centers: “On purpose, these facilities are super remote, and they’re really hard for lawyers, and family members and friends to get to, to be able to visit their loved ones. Both of our clients in these two facilities are thousands of miles away from their family members, from their lawyers, and that is on purpose.”

“Fifty percent of all people that are in detention in the United States right now are in Louisiana or Texas and most of them are in for-profit facilities,” she added. “This is cruelty by design.”

With new polling showing that she is by far the most popular politician in her home state of New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a video clip on her social media channels on Tuesday in which she heaped scorn on what may be her chief political rival: Fox News.

In the clip, which was taken from her remarks at a “Fight Oligarchy” rally with Bernie Sanders in Folsom, California, last week, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Fox host Jeanine Pirro for suggesting that millions of dollars in social security payments paid to children are an example of waste or fraud.

“I’ve got a notice for you, Jeanine Pirro. Those babies get social security because their parents died,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That’s not a waste. That’s humanity. That’s America. That’s the country that we fight for. Those are the promises we make to one another.”

In her remarks, the Bronx-born New York representative also pointed out that Pirro, a former judge, “is from Westchester country, where I went to public school”.

New polling research from Siena College, released on Tuesday, shows that Ocasio-Cortez has a net favorability rating among New York state voters of +14, far outstripping two other New York City natives, the Brooklyn-born Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, who is at -10, and the Queens-born president, Donald Trump, who is at -15.

The same polling also reveals that Ocasio-Cortez has even higher net favorability ratings with Black voters (+37) and Latino voters (+24) in the state, which the MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye suggested could help her do better than the Brooklyn-born Sanders in a Democratic presidential primary.

Whether or not Ocasio-Cortez can use her popularity at home as the foundation for a presidential run, her comments about Pirro, and Trump, at a rally alongside Sanders underscores the sudden centrality of the New York metro area to national politics.

That was made even more plain on Monday, when Trump responded to a plea from Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade to use the power of the federal government to help the Long Island high school he attended keep its Native American mascot. Trump took time out from the financial crisis he ignited with his global tariff war to direct his education secretary, Linda McMahon, to intervene on the side of the Massapequa high school “Chiefs” against the state’s educational authority, which wants to ban Native American mascots and nicknames for public high school sports teams.

Asked by a reporter about comments from the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, that high tariffs on goods from China are unsustainable and there is likely to be a “de-escalation” in the trade war, Trump said: “That’s true.”

“One hundred forty-five percent is very high, and it won’t be that high,” the president added. “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”

On the Tesla earnings call, chief executive Elon Musk just said he will step back from his role leading the Trump administration’s so-called “department of government efficiency” starting May.

Musk’s remarks came as the company reported a massive dip in both profits and revenues in the first quarter of 2025 amid backlash to his role in the White House.

On the investor call, Musk said the the work necessary to get the government’s “financial house in order is mostly done.”

“Starting probably next month, May, my time allocation to Doge will drop significantly,” he said.

That said, he expects to spend one to two days a week continuing to do what he referred to as “critical work” at Doge “for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful.”

Following an emergency order from the supreme court on Saturday blocking his administration from deporting suspected Venezuelan gang members without affording them due process, Donald Trump just told reporters that it is not possible to have trials for all of the people he wants to deport.

Asked by a reporter for the Daily Caller if he is happy with the rate of deportations, Trump thanked her for the question and repeated the baseless claim he has made in the past that foreign nations, including Venezuela and “the Congo”, have “emptied their prisons into the United States” and created an emergency that can only be dealt with by the emergency powers he claims the 1798 Alien Enemies Act affords him.

“We’re getting them out, and I hope we get cooperation from the courts because you know, we have thousands of people that are ready to go out, and you can’s have a trial for all of these people” the president said.

“It wasn’t meant, the system wasn’t meant- and we don’t think there is anything that says … Look, we are getting some very bad people, killers, murderers, drug dealers, really bad people, the mentally ill, the mentally insane, they emptied out insane asylums into our country, we’re getting them out. And a judge can’t say: ‘No, you have to have a trial,’” he continued.

“No, we are going to have a very dangerous country if we are not allowed to do what we are entitled to do,” Trump concluded.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump just brushed off questions about whether he would try to remove the heading of Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. “I don’t want to talk about because I have no intention of firing him,” Trump said.

The prospect of the president compromising the independence of the US financial system by firing the central banker for not cutting interest rates had prompted a downturn in US stocks, bonds and the dollar on Monday.

“This is the perfect time to lower interest rates,” Trump told reporters. But if Powell does not do so, he said, it would not be the end of his time in charge of the central bank.

Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla reported that its first-quarter profits plunged by more than two-thirds amid a backlash that has hurt sales and sent its stock plunging. The Austin, Texas, company told shareholders of Tuesday that quarterly profits fell by 71% to to $409m. That was a sharp decline from profits of $1.4bn for the same quarter in 2024, before the company’s CEO endorsed and campaigned for Donald Trump.

The company also had a 9% drop in revenue year over year in the first quarter of 2025, my colleague Johana Bhuiyan reports. Company sales plummeted in the first three months of the year. The company suffered a 13% drop in sales, making it the company’s worst quarter since 2022.

Analysts attribute the company’s overall difficulties to a number of factors, but ultimately conclude Elon Musk’s role in the White House has caused a branding crisis for Tesla. The company is at a major crossroads, analysts say, that will only be remedied if Musk leaves his role in the so-called “department of government efficiency”, nicknamed Doge, and returns to Tesla as CEO full time.

Musk is scheduled to leave Doge on 30 May, a strict 130-day cap on his service as a special government employee.

In addition to a drop in sales, a 50% dip in share prices, existing Tesla owners are looking to sell their vehicles in droves, Teslas have been vandalized across the country and in response to ongoing protests of the automaker, the Vancouver International Auto show removed the electronic carmaker from its March lineup. The company also recalled 46,000 Cybertrucks – nearly all that had been sold.

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In his ruling ordering the Trump administration to re-hire Voice of America journalists and resume broadcasts to provide a “reliable and authoritative source of news” to listeners in countries without press freedom, Royce Lamberth, a district court judge appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, said the executive branch’s “unwillingness to expend funds in accordance with the congressional appropriations laws is a direct affront to the power of the legislative branch”.

“Congress possesses the ‘power of the purse’,” Lamberth wrote. “Here,” he added, citing a previous court ruling, “the defendants’ termination of grants to the Networks and shutting down VOA ‘potentially run roughshod over a “bulwark of the Constitution’” by interfering with Congress’s appropriation of federal funds’.”

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Donald Trump’s administration to halt its efforts to shut down government-funded radio broadcasts of Voice of America, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

US district judge Royce Lamberth, who is overseeing six lawsuits from employees and contractors affected by the shutdown of US Agency for Global Media, ordered the Trump administration to “take all necessary steps” to restore employees and contractors to their positions and resume broadcasts. USAGM placed more than 1,000 employees on leave after abruptly shutting down the broadcasts in March.

Congress has funded and authorized the broadcasts to provide an “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” source of news in other nations, according to Lamberth’s opinion.

Pete Hegseth took to the airwaves to hit back against the latest set of bombshell allegations that he shared sensitive military operations – including launch times of fighter jets, bomb drop timings and missile launches – in a Signal group chat with over a dozen people, including his wife and brother. It has since emerged that at least some of that information shared by the defense secretary came from a top general’s secure messages. Speaking on Fox News this morning, the embattled defense secretary deflected, blaming fired Pentagon officials for orchestrating leaks against the Trump administration. He added that evidence from an internal investigation would eventually be handed over to the justice department and “those people will be prosecuted if necessary”. The White House ignored the fact that a lot of criticism of Hegseth is coming from conservatives, and instead doubled down on the suggestion that the leaks were politically motivated and part of a wider “smear campaign” against Hegseth. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt maintained the defense secretary was “doing a tremendous job” and has Trump’s full support. Meanwhile, Democrats – and one House Republican – have called for Hegseth’s resignation for “gross negligence” and calling him “a threat to national security”.

Elsewhere:

• Secretary of state Marco Rubio announced a proposed sweeping reorganisation of the US state department as part of what he called an effort to reform it amid criticism from the Trump White House over the execution of US diplomacy. The reorganisation will close a number of overseas missions, reduce staff and minimize offices dedicated to promoting liberal values in a stated goal to subsume them to regional bureaus.

• The US supreme court appeared inclined to rule in favor of religious parents in Maryland seeking to keep their elementary school children out of certain classes when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters are read. Many of the justices in the supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, seemed receptive to the claims by the parents that the lack of opt-outs burdens their religious beliefs. But the court’s three liberal justices raised concerns about how far opt-outs for students could go beyond storybooks in public schools, offering examples of subjects such as evolution, interfaith marriage or women working outside the home that might come up in classes. A ruling is expected in June.

• Four House Democrats who traveled to El Salvador this week were denied visits with Kilmar Ábrego García, a man who the Trump administration wrongly deported from the United States, congressman Maxwell Frost told reporters. The Florida lawmaker added that he saw no sign that the US embassy was taking steps to repatriate him, despite judges saying the government should do so.

• Donald Trump’s administration has been ordered by a federal judge in Colorado to give Venezuelan migrants detained in that state notice 21 days in advance before any deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, and to inform them of their right to challenge their removal. In a written ruling maintaining a temporary block within Colorado on deportations under the rarely invoked wartime law, US district judge Charlotte Sweeney said the administration must tell the migrants in a language they understand that they have the right to consult a lawyer. She also expressed skepticism that the 24 hours notice that the administration had pledged to provide would satisfy the US supreme court’s 7 April order requiring migrants be given the opportunity to challenge their removals in court.

• JD Vance described the US-India partnership as the cornerstone of global progress, warning that the 21st century could be “a very dark time for all of humanity” if the two countries fail to cooperate. In the keynote policy speech of his four-day visit to India, the US vice-president also contrasted the country’s “incredible” potential with a “self-loathing” west. Vance said US and Indian negotiators had finalized “terms of reference” for a bilateral trade agreement that Delhi is urgently seeking, in hopes that it will allow the country to dodge steep tariff increases announced by Trump.