El Salvador Set Up Trap for Democratic Senator Trying to Visit Prison

Senator Chris Van Hollen’s attempt to check on the welfare of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported to El Salvador, was rebuffed by the country’s military Thursday. 

The Democratic senator from Maryland traveled to El Salvador Wednesday, meeting with the country’s Vice President Felix Ulloa. The next day, he attempted to visit the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a prison known for human rights abuses, where Abrego Garcia is being held. But less than two miles away from the prison, Van Hollen was stopped at a military checkpoint. 

According to USA Today, which was following Van Hollen’s motorcade, the checkpoint appeared to have been set up deliberately to stop the senator. 

“We were just denied entry into CECOT—the notorious prison in El Salvador where Mr. Abrego Garcia is being illegally held,” Van Hollen posted on X. “We were there for one simple reason: to check on his well-being, which his family and lawyers have not been allowed to do. We won’t stop fighting.”

The Trump administration has refused to do anything to have Abrego Garcia released, even though it has acknowledged in court that he was deported to El Salvador in error. Instead, it has repeatedly called him a gang member and terrorist with no evidence, and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele repeated the same false accusations to reporters in the White House on Monday. 

The refusal to allow Van Hollen into the prison is clearly politically motivated, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been allowed to make propaganda videos in front of its inmates and Republican Representatives Riley Moore and Jason Smith got to tour the prison on Tuesday. Abrego Garcia’s well-being is clearly not a priority for the Trump administration or El Salvador’s government. What did they want to hide from Van Hollen?  

Elon Musk knows which members of Congress detest the courts as much as he does, and he wants to keep them around.

The billionaire gave more than $144,000 to more than two dozen Congress members who support impeaching judges or restricting their power, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. It’s rare to give money to candidates this soon before a midterm election, and an indication that Musk will do everything he can to help the GOP stay in power.

Some House members, such as Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, got the money from Musk almost immediately after introducing legislation to punish various judges. “I just introduced Articles of Impeachment against radical activist Judge James Boasberg,” Gill wrote on X on March 18. “He is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and should be removed from office.” The next day, Musk gave Gill’s committee $6,600, the Post reported.

Musk donated the same amount, which is the upper limit of the per-race maximum, to Senator Chuck Grassley, who introduced legislation to limit judicial powers, and Representative Derrick Van Orden, who introduced a bill to impeach U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer.*

As the Trump administration faces a flurry of lawsuits, Musk is desperately trying to discredit judges who rule against the president. He’s called for the impeachment of judges who tried to block the Department of Government Efficiency’s unlawful dismantling of federal agencies, offered people money to sign a petition against “activist judges,” and made dozens of ludicrous claims against his judicial enemies on social media.

“This is a judicial coup,” Musk posted on X in mid-March, after a judge blocked Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”

Musk’s $144,000 contribution may not seem like much right now, but his financial support for candidates this soon before the 2026 midterm elections is a bad sign for the courts. He’s playing the long game and is doing everything he can to bolster the GOP’s relentless attack on the rule of law for years to come.

* Correction: Grassley did not call for Boasberg’s impeachment.

Donald Trump has a new scheme for making money off of the sweeping tariffs he rapidly imposes, adjusts, and delays, first reported by independent journalist Judd Legum.

Trump Media and Technology Group unveiled a “suite” of thematic “Truth Social-branded Separately Managed Accounts” that it had crafted in collaboration with Yorkville America Equities and Index Technologies Group.

The investment portfolios were organized around the themes of “Faith & Values,” “Liberty & Security,” “Energy Independence,” and “Made in America.”

TMTG CEO Devin Nunes said that the SMAs were designed to meet investors’ demand “to support a wide range of outstanding, non-woke, and innovative companies across key sectors of the U.S. economy.”

It’s not clear what specific assets will be in each portfolio. “Made in America” is likely to contain stocks associated with American manufacturers, while “Liberty & Security” could contain assets for defense contractors and private prisons, which stand to make a killing off of Trump’s massive deportation scheme.

But Trump’s position as a shareholder of TMTG presents a clear conflict of interest, considering the amount of power he has to roil the stock market. Since entering office, Trump has demonstrated the ability to manipulate the value of any particular stock by simply announcing a tariff or exemption, putting him in a particular position of power over his yields from TMTG.

Trump profits directly from TMTG in two key ways, Legum explained in his newsletter Public Notice. “First, TMTG will invest a portion of its cash reserves in accounts. Secondly, as the majority shareholder in TMTG, Trump will benefit from the fees generated by these accounts. The performance of the underlying assets held in these accounts will determine both TMTG’s return on its cash reserves and interest from outside investors,” he wrote.

Through TMTG’s actively managed investment accounts, Trump would be able to directly financially benefit simply by announcing or rescinding a policy. For example, Apple stock sank when Trump announced his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy on April 2 and continued to drop as he escalated tariffs on Chinese goods to the triple digits. But when the administration announced that there would be an exemption applied to electronic devices on April 11, Apple stock began to improve.

Trump has been accused of obvious market manipulation after he instructed his followers that it was a “great time to buy” just hours before announcing a 90-day pause on his “reciprocal tariff” policy. He even bragged about how much money he made for his billionaire buddies who came to visit him in the White House.

The head of the FCC, Brandon Carr, attacked NBC’s parent company, Comcast, in an X post over its coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration has repeatedly accused of being a violent gang member despite admitting in court that he was accidentally deported to El Salvador. 

In his post, Carr repeated Trump’s accusations—which have not been proven in court—and insinuated that Comcast was violating federal law, taking aim at its broadcast licensing and accusing the company of “news distortion.” 

His statement also quoted a different post from Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung decrying the lack of media coverage for an alleged victim of murder by a totally different immigrant, as the Trump administration seeks to conflate the two stories. 

Carr’s attack seems to be threatening a news network with penalties for coverage he doesn’t like, a disturbing attack on freedom of the press from a government official who is supposed to be protecting the constitutional right. In fact, with no trace of irony, Carr’s previous X post praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio for “smashing the censorship cartel and restoring free speech rights to Americans.”

The entire Trump administration has been hell-bent on defying a Supreme Court order and refusing to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. They’ve compared him to Osama bin Laden and tried to paint him as an abusive husband, a claim that his U.S. citizen wife has rebutted. On Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed to have new evidence against Abrego Garcia—but it was nothing more than a rehash of the hearsay Trump officials were already citing.  

For his part, Carr has been attacking Comcast and NBC for weeks, announcing an investigation into Comcast’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices just weeks into Trump’s presidency. And he has the full blessing of Trump, who is pushing his own vendettas against media outlets such as CBS News at the moment. 

But if Carr and Trump want the news to stop attacking their disregard of a Supreme Court order, attacking the media won’t help. The quickest way to get the news to stop focusing on Abrego Garcia is to do the right thing and return him to the U.S.

The man in charge of U.S. counterterrorism said that anybody against Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan is technically committing a felony by “aiding and abetting” terrorism.

“There’s a line that divides us. Do you love America, or do you hate America?” Trump’s Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka said in an interview with the far-right news outlet Newsmax Wednesday night.

“And we have people who love America, like the president, like his Cabinet, like the directors of his agencies who want to protect Americans,” he continued. “And then there is the other side that is on the side of the cartel members, the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists.

“You have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute,” Gorka said, absurdly equating opposing unlawful deportations with terrorism.

Ignoring court orders, as Trump has now done multiple times while carrying out his deportation efforts, is also “a crime in federal statute.” Last month, he ignored U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order to halt the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, the majority of whom have no criminal record. On Wednesday, Boasberg said there is a high probability Trump could face criminal contempt charges for his refusal to comply.

Disregarding the law once again, the White House is also refusing to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador because of an “administrative error”—despite the Supreme Court ordering the government to “facilitate” his return. Abrego Garcia is now being held at CECOT, a megaprison in El Salvador notorious for human rights abuses.

Even though it already admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a mistake, the Trump administration has doubled down on unbacked and harmful claims the father of three is an MS-13 gang member, “human trafficker,” and “violent criminal.”

“The question is solved.… Number one, this individual is a foreign national who came here illegally. So that’s your first two strikes,” Gorka said of Abrego Garcia Wednesday, insisting that his removal was a national security issue. “Then we find out he’s a member of an organization that we recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization. So, three strikes, and you’re out.”

There is no evidence connecting Abrego Garcia to MS-13, human trafficking, or violent crime, and he was granted “withholding of removal status” by a judge in 2019, yet another court order Trump disobeyed to deport an innocent man.