Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is Finally Coming Home to Maryland (for Now)

A federal judge has barred ICE from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia should he be released from custody in Tennessee, ordering Wednesday that he be returned to Maryland to “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been before he was wrongly sent to El Salvador,” in accordance with the Supreme Court’s prior ruling.  

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis issued a memorandum prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security from “taking Abrego Garcia into immediate ICE custody in Tennessee.” The judge added that Abrego Garcia must be restored to his ICE Order of Supervision in Baltimore.

The judge also ordered that if the government were to initiate proceedings to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country, as they’d previously threatened to do, they would need to provide 72 business hours’ notice to the plaintiff and his counsel. 

“Defendants have done little to assure the Court that absent intervention, Abrego Garcia’s due process rights will be protected,” she wrote.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys had previously requested a 30-day stay on his release from pretrial detention, claiming that he feared immigration authorities would immediately deport him again. DHS officials confirmed this was their plan but were unable to offer any details as to where they hoped to send him. 

Meanwhile, it seems that after months away from home, Abrego Garcia may finally be headed back to Maryland. 

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Tennessee denied a motion from the government to revoke a magistrate judge’s order for Abrego Garcia’s release Wednesday, ruling that the government had failed to meet the burden to prove Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or danger to the community. The judge said Abrego Garcia could be released on bond with conditions.

Crenshaw found there was evidence that Abrego Garcia had smuggled individuals from the border but not that he was a member of or affiliated with any gang, as the government claims. Crenshaw referred to testimony provided by a Homeland Security agent who said that Abrego Garcia transported Barrio 18 and MS-13 gang members, claiming it “cuts against the already slim evidence demonstrating Abrego is a member of MS-13.”

“For the court to find that Abrego is a member of or in affiliation with MS-13, it would have to make so many inferences from the Government’s proffered evidence in its favor that such conclusion would border on fanciful,” Crenshaw said. 

Well, The Wall Street Journal has confirmed what has been apparent for quite some time: President Donald Trump’s name is in the Epstein files multiple times.

An exclusive Wednesday report in the Journal states that Attorney General Pam Bondi notified the president that his name was in the files back in May. The report directly contradicts Trump’s claim that Bondi told him he was not in the files, which he told reporters last week.

This revelation offers some explanation as to why the Trump administration, after years of promising to release the files, abruptly decided that there was no further work to be done on the matter. It also may explain why the president himself has been so quick to anger and defensiveness in recent days any time the subject of his friendship with the defamed sexual predator has come up. The confirmation of Trump’s presence in the infamous documents comes just as Speaker Mike Johnson ended a legislative session early just to avoid voting on whether to release more files.

All of the internal uproar over this, from FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino going AWOL at work, to Trump calling anyone who is still worried about this code red–level issue a “bad person” can be linked back to the fact that Trump does not want people to know that his name is in the files. If past is prologue, the administration will likely dismiss this report as “fake news” from a biased outlet. But those charges likely won’t stick with an issue of this magnitude. In fact, the president seems to only be driving attention to the story at this point, as each distraction Trump has brought up since he decided to close the case has only led to increased scrutiny from the press—as well as both his most vehement enemies and his most loyal supporters.

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard went full Russian asset Wednesday during a wild White House press briefing. 

Standing behind a White House podium, Gabbard started quoting old Russian intelligence and claimed that Moscow’s foreign intelligence agency SVR was in possession of “high-level DNC emails that detailed evidence of Hillary’s ‘psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.’ And that then-Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers.”

That strange little detail came from the freshly declassified 2020 report by the House Intelligence Committee that Gabbard insists holds evidence that former President Barack Obama committed a so-called “coup” against Donald Trump by alleging Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

According to the report, ahead of Trump’s ascendance to the White House, Obama asked for an Intelligence Community Assessment to “review their work to date” on Russia’s influence campaign. Gabbard claims that issues with the production of that January 2017 report are evidence that the Obama administration plotted to spread a false narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin aspired to see Trump in the White House—a preference that the foreign autocrat readily admitted.  

When asked about it Wednesday, Gabbard could not account for why Trump had not declassified these supposedly damning materials during his first term. 

She was also unable to provide any explanation for why Trump’s secretary of state, former Florida Senator Marco Rubio, had made opposite findings when he spearheaded a 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report. That report found that Putin had directed an “aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election” and had done so with the intent of weakening Clinton’s campaign and seeing Trump elected. 

It’s also probably worth remembering that Trump’s first-term White House was reportedly “awash in speed,” handing out powerful sedatives and stimulants like candy.

It should come as no surprise that Gabbard is already parroting Russian intelligence because it’s exactly the kind of thing that concerned critics of her nomination—and enthused Moscow. 

Gabbard has previously defended Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, claiming that the U.S. had provoked Russian aggression and that Ukraine housed U.S.-funded biolabs that were developing secret bioweapons—a piece of foreign state propaganda that earned her the reputation as a Russian asset. 

Former Virginia Representative Abigail Spanberger sounded the alarm about Gabbard on MSNBC in November, noting that, if confirmed, Gabbard would be responsible for putting together the president’s daily briefings and would likely include Russian propaganda. 

Outgoing Republican Senator Thom Tillis just wants President Trump to “release the damn files” in regard to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased pedophile and Trump’s former friend.

“The promise to release the files during the campaign was either overplayed and we got a nothingburger if the files get released, or it’s something really disturbing and that’s actually an even more compelling reason to release it,” Tillis said at an Axios event on Wednesday.

Tillis, a North Carolinian who has said he will resign at the end of his third term next year, is one of the few Republicans in the Senate who has been consistent on this, as the rest of the party capitulates to Trump and attempts to distract the public by voting against further inquiries into the files’ release.

Tillis also noted that he doesn’t see this issue just going away during Congress’s summer recess, as House Speaker Mike Johnson hopes it will.

“I think the files should be released, let the light of day, let the sun shine through, and that’s the best way to get past it,” Tillis said. “Otherwise, if anybody thinks that this is going to go away because the House left a day early or something, it’s going to be like those zombies in The Walking Dead: Every time you think you’ve killed it, another one is just going to come running out of the closet after you.”

Tillis recently made waves for his spirited opposition to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the senator referred to as a betrayal of Republican promises.

Even Donald Trump’s most sycophantic followers are turning on the president.

Jacob Chansley—better known as the QAnon shaman—denounced the MAGA leader Wednesday morning, responding to a post of Trump’s 2023 mugshot by decrying the president as a “fraud.”

“Fuck this stupid piece of shit,” Chansley wrote in a since-deleted post that accrued more than 34,000 views.

In a follow-up post, Chansley wrote: “Oh yea & Fuck Israel! And Fuck Donald Trump!”

Chansley captured national attention when he stormed through the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an elaborate, horned fur headdress. In the aftermath of the attack, a face-painted Chansley emerged as one of the central figures of the revolt. Once at the Capitol building, Chansley was in the first group of rioters to break inside. Wielding a bullhorn, he worked to “rile up the crowd and demand that lawmakers be brought out,” according to a sentencing memo.

In late 2021, a federal judge sentenced Chansley to 41 months in prison for his role in the January 6 insurrection. But that was undone hours after Trump was inaugurated at the start of this year, when he included Chansley in a clemency order for some 1,600 of his supporters who were involved in the riot.

Trump has held messiah-like status within QAnon’s conspiratorial circle for years thanks to their principal belief that, despite being named and photographed as an associate of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Trump would rid the world of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run the government and media.

In turn, Trump readily welcomed the cockeyed adoration. In 2020, he offered the movement plausible deniability at an executive level—claiming that while he didn’t know much about QAnon, he couldn’t disprove its theories. Just two years later, Trump was regularly circulating bits of the conspiracy on TruthSocial and reposting images of himself wearing Q pins emblazoned with the cult’s messaging, “A Storm Is Coming,” referring to Trump’s supposed final victory, when QAnon supporters expect him to mass-execute his opponents.

QAnon supporters turned out en masse in November to help Trump return to the Oval Office. But Trump’s sudden backpedalling on unearthing records related to the Epstein investigation has left a bitter taste in those supporters’ mouths. Their relationship was further strained when Trump referred to his Epstein-minded allies as “stupid,” “naive,” and “foolish,” accusing them of being “duped” by Democrats who he claimed invented the Epstein “hoax.”

But Trump has a well-documented history with the New York financier. Prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together several times, Trump allegedly penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the pedophile’s 50th birthday, the real estate mogul reportedly flew on Epstein’s jets between Palm Beach and New York at least seven times, and the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

In a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years and referred to him as a “terrific guy.”

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said at the time.

This story has been updated.