Highlights from April 18, 2025
- Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., provided fresh details about his meeting yesterday with Kilmar Abrego Garcia and said the mistakenly deported man had been traumatized by his imprisonment in El Salvador.
- President Donald Trump said that the U.S. could move on from its involvement in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine if “one of the two parties makes it very difficult.” Trump’s answer comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. could “move on” from its involvement in negotiations to end the war if no progress is made “within a matter of days.”
- Acting IRS Commissioner Gary Shapley is being replaced after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Trump that he was placed at the agency at Elon Musk’s direction without his knowledge, a source familiar with the discussions told NBC News.
More congressional Democrats announce plans to visit El Salvador in support of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore, announced plans today to travel to El Salvador in support of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a former resident of Maryland and Salvadoran native that the Trump administration says was mistakenly sent back to the country despite a court order preventing his deportation.
“A legal U.S. resident has had his due process rights ripped away and is now being held indefinitely in a foreign prison. This is not just one family’s nightmare; it is a constitutional crisis that should outrage every single one of us,” the Oregon congresswoman said in a statement.
Dexter is at least the second congressional Democrats this week to announce plans to travel to El Salvador to advocate for Abrego Garcia.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., said on Wednesday that she will "attempt to visit" Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, framing his deportation as unlawful and emphasizing federal court rulings directing the administration to "facilitate" his return to the United States.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., is so far the only member of Congress that has been able to meet with Abrego Garcia since his removal from the United States. The meeting came after Salvadoran officials repeatedly denied his earlier attempts to speak, either virtually, in person or by phone, to Abrego Garcia.
Attempts by Democrats to plan official congressional delegations to El Salvador have been stymied by Republicans, who have characterized such trips as a "waste" of taxpayer funds.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., denied a request by Reps. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., and Robert Garcia, D-Calif., to “conduct a welfare check” on Abrego Garcia.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., rejected a request made by Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., to visit the El Salvador prison Abrego Garcia was once housed in, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.
Federal judge halts reduction in force at CFPB
A federal judge in Washington has stopped a reduction in force at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, putting a halt to job cuts that employees received yesterday.
“The Reduction in Force announced by Acting Director Vought on or about April 17, 2025 is SUSPENDED and it may NOT be implemented, effectuated, or completed in any way until this Court has ruled on plaintiffs’ motion to enforce the preliminary injunction,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote in an order today.
Jackson said the CFPB was prohibited from discontinuing employees’ access to internal systems. The judge said during the hearing that she has “concerns about whether the agency is now in compliance with the preliminary injunction.”
“It is clear to me that until I have made the determination of whether this [reduction in force] is in compliance with an existing court order, that I have absolute authority to enforce, it’s not going to happen in the meantime. We’re not going to disburse 1,408 people into the universe and have them be unable to communicate with the agency anymore until we have determined whether that is lawful or not,” Jackson said.
Jackson allowed plaintiffs, which include the National Treasury Employees Union, to make five requests for the production of documents to understand whether the government is following court orders. She set a hearing for April 28.
The Trump administration tonight filed its intention to appeal Jackson’s order to the Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit.
Appeals court temporarily pauses Judge Boasberg’s contempt order over deportation flights
The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has temporarily paused U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s contempt order, to allow it more time to consider a full stay pending appeal.
The circuit court's administrative pause comes after Boasberg said he found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt after it defied his order that any planes in flight to El Salvador be redirected back to the U.S. in an emergency hearing last month.
Trump had signed an executive order invoking the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.
Under Boasberg's order, the Trump administration had been advised that it could purge his finding by taking custody of the people who had been deported and providing them hearings to challenge the allegations against them.
Boasberg said that if the Trump administration did not purge his contempt finding, the court would work to identify who was "responsible for the contumacious conduct" and prosecute them.
Tonight's order asked plaintiffs to file a response to the emergency motion by 5 p.m. on Wednesday.
The government's reply is due by noon on April 25.
White House replaces Covid resource page with lab leak website
Anyone who tried to access Covid.gov, a federal website once dedicated to Covid resources, found something drastically different in its place today.
The page now redirects to a White House website suggesting that Covid originated in a research laboratory in Wuhan, China, before infecting humans. This much-debated “lab leak theory” emerged in the early days of the pandemic and has since gained popularity among some right-wing media outlets and conservative politicians.
DOGE staffer's access to the IRS is revoked amid agency shakeup
Days after millions of Americans filed their taxes, the IRS is undergoing internal shakeups related to cuts by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
Gavin Kliger — a key DOGE engineering architect who previously informed USAID employees they had lost access to the agency’s headquarters — has had his entire access to the IRS revoked. Kliger is now locked out of the agency’s buildings and its computer and data systems, according to two sources familiar with IRS operations.
Kliger was overseeing the pending job cuts at the IRS, one source said. Those layoffs began last week, but amid pushback from the Treasury Department, further reductions in force were paused this week.
The pace of IRS job cuts was not approved of by Treasury leadership, sources familiar with the matter said. With the elimination of probationary employees and workers who took the deferred resignation buyout offers, the IRS could be facing — before the job cuts take effect — a reduction of its workforce by nearly one-third.
Kliger and Sam Corcos, another DOGE engineer, were working with the IRS on a “hackathon” event to streamline the agency’s systems, the Treasury Department previously told NBC News. The hackathon was intended to workshop how to more easily share taxpayer data across federal agencies.
The number of IRS officials overseeing the agency’s IT has been reduced from about 100 to three since the beginning of Trump's second term.
Chief Information Officer Rajiv Uppal resigned Monday, on the eve of Tax Day, to be replaced by Kaschit Pandya, who had been working with DOGE as the IRS chief technology officer. Pandya will serve as acting CIO “while leadership finalizes long-term plans for this role,” according to an email from Uppal to IRS staff.
NBC News reported earlier today that Trump is replacing the acting IRS commissioner — who had been appointed at the direction of Musk — at the request of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Legal fight raging over possible imminent deportations to El Salvador
The Department of Homeland Security appeared today to be preparing to send a new group of Venezuelan men from the U.S. to El Salvador and its notorious CECOT prison, even as lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union scrambled in the courts to stop the administration from moving forward.
This afternoon, at least one charter bus rolled up to the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, a town about 200 miles west of Dallas, where the men are being held. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has been hearing a case related to the flights to El Salvador, scheduled an emergency hearing for this evening, which will take place just hours after that bus arrived.
Not long before the emergency hearing was scheduled to begin, ACLU attorneys also asked the Supreme Court to step in. The justices ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration can go ahead with removals like this, but that the people being removed must first be given “reasonable time” to challenge their detentions.
Last night, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt wrote in an emergency overnight court filing that the men at Bluebonnet seemed not to have much time before they would be sent out of the country.
House Democrats condemn Trump's targeting of Smithsonian museums in letter to Vance
Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y., sent a letter to Vice President JD Vance condemning a recent executive order by Trump to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian museums.
In a letter signed by other Democratic members of the House Administration Committee, which oversees the Smithsonian Institution, the lawmakers urged Vance to reject any effort to implement Trump's order and instead “preserve the 175-year tradition of curatorial independence that has come to define the Smithsonian Institution.”
Trump signed an executive order last month that directed Vance to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American” ideology from programs at the Smithsonian Institution, which receives federal funding. The president specifically named the National Museum of African American History and Culture, accusing it of of perpetuating “divisive” and “race-centered” ideas.
Morelle, in the letter, called Trump’s order a “flagrant attempt to erase Black history” and a “cowardly and unpatriotic” attempt to “paper over elements of American history.”
“Unfortunately, we now stand at the brink of seeing the Smithsonian at its worst: shaped solely by the views and ideology of one individual as a means of expanding his political power,” the letter reads.
The Smithsonian Institution was created by Congress in 1846 to serve as an “establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”
It consists of 21 museums, 14 education and research centers and the National Zoo, all maintained by more than 6,500 employees and more than 3,800 onsite volunteers. More than 17 million people visit the collection of museums annually.
House Republicans deny Democrats' request to visit El Salvador as Congressional delegation
Two Republicans who chair House panels have denied Democrats’ requests to visit El Salvador as part of a Congressional delegation. Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., rejected a request made by Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., to visit the El Salvador prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, citing the “waste” of taxpayer funds the delegation would use.
“There is no excuse for Democrats to waste taxpayer dollars visiting and defending a transnational gang member and reported domestic abuser. If Democrats care so much about defending this individual, they can use their own personal credit cards—not taxpayers’ money—to virtue-signal to their radical base,” Green said in a statement.
Ramirez has not made a decision on whether she will travel to El Salvador without a delegation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In a letter to Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., Reps. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., and Robert Garcia, D-Calif., requested authorization for a Congressional delegation to “conduct a welfare check” on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, among others who are being detained at the prison.
Comer denied the request, similarly citing the use of "taxpayer funds."
NBC News has reached out to Frost and Garcia about whether they plan to travel without a delegation.
Venezuelans ask Supreme Court and other judges to block imminent deportations
Lawyers for Venezuelan alleged gang members have asked the Supreme Court to immediately intervene to prevent the Trump administration from deporting them to El Salvador using a wartime law call the Alien Enemies Act.
The request came as part of a multi-pronged approached as the lawyers have filed similar applications with district courts in Washington and Texas and at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The plaintiffs “ask only that this court preserve the status quo so that proposed class members will not be sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador before the American judicial system can afford them due process," the lawyers wrote in the Supreme Court filing.
Maryland senator says Kilmar Abrego Garcia was traumatized in El Salvador after mistaken deportation
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., revealed new details today about his meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who the Trump administration says was mistakenly deported last month.
Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia yesterday after his previous efforts to meet with him were denied by Salvadoran officials.
“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted,” Van Hollen said at a news conference today. “He said he felt very sad about being in a prison because he had not committed any crimes.”
Van Hollen told reporters that Abrego Garcia has “experienced trauma,” and framed his deportation as an “illegal abduction.”