• Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador Wednesday to push for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who the U.S. government wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran super prison last month. While the administration continues to dig in on its allegations the Salvadoran national was a gang member, courts are also showing their willingness to challenge the White House’s claims. On Wednesday, a federal judge found probable cause to find Trump Administration officials in criminal contempt of court over sending Venezuelans to the same maximum security prison in El Salvador where Abrego Garcia is currently being held. New York Congressman Ritchie Torres talks about why it’s important for Democrats to speak up about these cases.
• And in headlines: California sued the Trump administration over the president’s heavy tariffs, the Department of Justice sued Maine for allowing trans girls to compete in school sports that align with their gender identity, and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene laughed off some financial scrutiny.

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TRANSCRIPT

Erin Ryan: It’s Thursday, April 17th. I’m Erin Ryan, in for Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that says do not dye potatoes for Easter. I don’t care what the Atlantic Magazine says is okay, or how much eggs cost right now. Do not dye potatoes. [music break] On today’s show, California sues President Donald Trump over his tariffs and, surprise surprise, Georgia rep Marjorie Taylor Greene made some green of her own off Trump’s tariff flip-flop. But first, let’s talk about immigration. On Wednesday, Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to push for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He’s the Maryland man who the government wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran super prison last month, alleging, despite paper-thin evidence, that he’s a member of the gang MS-13. Van Hollen held a press conference after meeting with El Salvador’s vice president. He said the Salvadoran officials denied his request to see or speak with Abrego Garcia. He also forcefully disputed the White House’s story about him. 

[clip of Senator Chris Van Hollen] I want to emphasize that President Trump and our Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and the Vice President of the United States are lying when they say that Abrego Garcia has been charged with a crime or is part of MS-13. That is a lie. 

Erin Ryan: Van Hollen said he asked the Salvadoran vice president why the country was continuing to hold Abrego Garcia in a maximum-security prison known as CECOT if neither the U.S. nor El Salvador has evidence he’s actually committed a crime. 

[clip of Senator Chris Van Hollen] And his answer was that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador, the government of El Salvador, to keep him at CECOT. 

Erin Ryan: Paying them, paying them with what money? Taxpayer money? Hmm, seems like a little bit of a waste. But anyway, back in the U.S., the administration continued to dig in. Not that we’d expect anything different. Here’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during her press briefing Wednesday. 

[clip of Karoline Leavitt] Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again. 

Erin Ryan: Okay, I acknowledge that that’s how a lot of news articles have been describing Abrego Garcia, Karoline, but nothing will change the fact that he is a father and he was living in Maryland, hence Maryland father. But in the courts, the administration is also facing more pushback over both the Abrego Garcia case and its hardball immigration tactics more broadly. On yesterday’s show, we talked about how a federal judge in Maryland said she wanted to see some receipts from the administration. Detailing the ways it’s trying to, quote, “facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return,” as the Supreme Court directed it to last week. And early Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., said he found probable cause to find Trump administration officials in criminal contempt of court. This is over whether the administration violated another order, this one barring it from sending alleged Venezuelan gang members to the same prison where Abrego Garcia is currently being held in El Salvador. Because undoubtedly there are more Abrego Garcias who the government has deported. We know at least one, a gay makeup artist from Venezuela who was seeking asylum, in part because his sexuality made him a target of gangs. Here’s the hard thing. If you’re a Democrat, or to me, a person with like morals and stuff, you think this is wrong and evil. You know it is. You’re also aware that the immigration issue has been a third rail for liberals for the last few years. But a lot of Democrats are standing up and speaking out about cases like Abrego Garcia’s and others. And saying that what is happening to him could absolutely happen to American citizens. One of them is New York Democratic Representative Richie Torres, who has introduced a bill to require the U.S. Government to act if a court orders the return of someone who has been wrongfully deported. I spoke with Congressman Torres on Wednesday afternoon. Representative Torres, welcome to What a Day. On Wednesday, a federal district judge said there was probable cause to open a criminal contempt inquiry related to his order to stop some deportations to El Salvador back in March. What’s your side of the aisle in the house doing about this? 

Ritchie Torres: Look, we’re committed to fighting back. You know, I introduced legislation known as the Rescue Act, which would impose consequences on any country like El Salvador that refuses to release someone who’s been wrongfully deported in violation of a federal court order. You know for Democrats, the stakes are high. The stakes are high for the country. Of everything that Donald Trump, there’s nothing worse than his frontal assault, his war on due process. And it has implications far beyond non-citizens. Like the Trump administration can label anyone a non-citizen gang member, abduct them in the dead of night, and then render them onto a foreign prison to be tortured. And so he is setting a dangerous precedent for the future of our democracy. 

Erin Ryan: Mm-hmm. And are you seeing common ground with your GOP colleagues on this? 

Ritchie Torres: I suspect that there are Republicans who privately have concerns, but none of them are willing to speak out publicly against Donald Trump. You know the Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party. It’s become a cult of personality. The MAGA movement is organized not around principle, but around personality. It’s all about Donald Trump, he can do no wrong. It’s religiosity without religion. 

Erin Ryan: Well, on that note, Democrats kind of lost big to that religiosity without religion in November, especially when it came to immigration, migrants, and deportation. And a lot’s happened since then, and folks in your party have been sorting out who could be deported and when, under what circumstances. Where have you landed on this? 

Ritchie Torres: Look, I have no objection to deporting those who genuinely violate either criminal law, immigration law, or both, especially if you pose a public safety risk. But you’re entitled to due process. Like there is no contradiction between border security and due process or between a rational immigration system and due process. And the Trump administration is attempting to create a contradiction where none exist. You know, due process is based on the recognition that the government is every bit as corruptible and fallible as human nature itself, right? The government can err, it can abuse its power, it can falsely accuse, and due process is what protects all of us from false accusations and abuses of power on the part on the part of the government. And if we lose due process, as far as I’m concerned, we lose everything. 

Erin Ryan: Let’s talk about a specific case, the one over Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He’s a migrant who has not been convicted or even charged with a crime, but was still sent to a prison in El Salvador. The administration says with practically zero evidence that he’s a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13. What does that tell you about how this administration is going about deporting people? 

Ritchie Torres: Look, Donald Trump claims that he has the authority to label anyone a gang member and then deport them to a foreign prison to be tortured and then wash his hands and claim that the courts have no jurisdiction because he’s deporting them to a foreign country. Never mind that he’s paying the foreign country to detain these people. So he clearly has responsibility, he clearly has leverage. But we’re entering dangerously unchartered territory. For me, the lesson learned from the Trump presidency is that Congress historically has passed too many laws that have ceded too much power to the executive. You know we should repeal the Alien Enemies Act, which has enabled Trump to deport hundreds of people without due process, without the slightest semblance of due process. We should repel the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which has enabled Trump to set tariff rates that have destabilized the global economy. The U.S. Constitution envisions a system of congressional supremacy. Right. There are three co-equal branches of government, but Congress is the first among equals. We are Article 1 branch and we should return power back where it belongs, which is in Congress. 

Erin Ryan: But to do that right now, you would need Republican buy-in, just because of the makeup of both chambers. That seems pretty unlikely, so what can you do right now? 

Ritchie Torres: Look, we have to throw the kitchen sink, whether it’s mobilization on the streets, uh, legislation in the halls of Congress, uh even a discharge petition, uh and litigation in court. Um, obviously there are limits to what we can do when we’re in the minority, but I’m convinced that the momentum is on our side. I mean, Donald Trump is uniquely unpopular as president. Like he’s the only president since 1937, whose approval rating is underwater in the early months of his administration. So Democrats are well positioned to take back the House, to make Hakeem Jeffries the next speaker, and to restore some measure of checks and balances. But I have no faith that the modern Republican party is going to stand up to Trump because he’s their lord and savior. 

Erin Ryan: I’ve seen this on my TikTok FYP. I’m sure you’ve seen on social media. I feel like the conservative line is, well, he’s playing chess and we’re playing checkers. So take this with a grain of salt. But are you concerned that Democrats are playing into the administration’s hands right now by highlighting the Abrego Garcia case? 

Ritchie Torres: Well, first, fighting for due process is the right thing to do. Like I’m in favor of free speech not because it polls well, but because it’s a matter of principle. So not everything has to be reduced to a political calculation. There are some issues that are so important that it transcends politics. Habeus corpus, due process are among them. But the polling would tell a different story. I mean, Donald Trump is self-destructing in real time. Since his inauguration, we’ve seen the destruction of $11 trillion in wealth. His tariffs are deeply unpopular. His trust on issues with the American people is declining rapidly, uh so the momentum is clearly on the Democratic side, largely because Donald Trump is self-destructing. He’s his own worst enemy. 

Erin Ryan: Representative Ritchie Torres, thank you for being here. Thank you for the conversation and keep doing the hard work. 

Ritchie Torres: Absolutely. Take care. 

Erin Ryan: That was my conversation with New York Democratic Congressman Richie Torres, who represents the Bronx. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five star review on Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Erin Ryan: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Rob Bonta] Trump may claim he’s a great businessman, but Trump’s tariffs are truly terrible for business. And they’re breaking the law. 

Erin Ryan: California is suing the Trump administration over the president’s heavy tariffs on U.S. Trading partners. Democratic State Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the suit at a press conference Wednesday alongside Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. The governor emphasized that Trump’s trade war has hit California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, especially hard. 

[clip of Gavin Newsom] This is recklessness at another level. The geopolitical impacts are outsized. The trade impacts are out-sized, not just the economic. 

Erin Ryan: The White House has justified the president’s steep and unilateral use of tariffs on pretty much every country by declaring a national emergency on trade. That allowed him to unlock special powers to sidestep Congress and impose his sweeping tariffs earlier this month. California’s lawsuit argues everything that’s happened since the neck-breaking whiplash from Trump’s constantly changing trade policy poses a bigger threat to the economy, and that the president does not have the power to do what he’s doing. He needs congressional approval to levy tariffs. California’s suit comes as the economy is flashing major warning signs in the wake of Trump’s tariff palooza. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday it’s now, quote, “highly likely that Trump’s trade policy will worsen inflation and push prices up.” Here he is speaking to reporters in Chicago. 

[clip of Jerome Powell] The level of tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated and the same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth. 

Erin Ryan: Powell added that unemployment rates could rise, too. Oh, and while Powell was speaking, the stock market fell again. And speaking of states that have a beef with the White House, the Department of Justice is suing the state of Maine for allowing trans girls to compete in school sports that align with their gender identity. This is all because the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, said she would not comply with an executive order Trump signed earlier this year to, quote, “keep men out of women’s sports.” Back in February, Mills and President Trump shared a moment about this at the White House. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports. So you better comply because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding. 

[clip of Janet Mills] See you in court. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Every state– good, I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics. 

Erin Ryan: You better do it, or you’re gonna wish you did it. You better do it. Okay, well, let’s talk about it in court. Yeah, you better go to court. Yeah, I’ll see you there. Great comebacks, guy. The DOJ lawsuit alleges that Maine discriminates against women and girls, but also endangers them by refusing to ban trans athletes from school sports. And when I say trans athletes, I mean it’s barely plural. I mean two. Two out of tens of thousands of high school athletes in Maine’s public school system. Two. Ugh, Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged this when she announced the lawsuit. 

[clip of Attorney General Pam Bondi] I don’t care if it’s one, I don’t care if its two, I don’t care it’s a hundred. It’s going to stop and it’s going to stop in every single state. 

Erin Ryan: Why is it that every time I see her speak, I think that she’s about to call the police on a child with a lemonade stand. The lawsuit is Trump’s latest attempt to punish Mills and the state of Maine. His Department of Agriculture tried to cancel millions in grants to the University of Maine last month. Also, the Social Security Administration canceled some big state contracts. Those contracts were reinstated, and Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek said he regretted terminating them. But I’d take his apology with a grain of salt. The Washington Post reported that just a week before that, Dudek wrote an email where he called Mills a, quote, “petulant child.” The Trump administration has reportedly asked the IRS to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status. CNN broke the story. Trump floated the idea of revoking Harvard’s status in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. He said the school should be taxed as a political entity because it refused to meet his demands to fight what he called anti-Semitism on campus. The White House froze more than $2 billion in federal funding to Harvard over its rebuke. We’re putting this together on Wednesday night. Neither the IRS nor Harvard have said anything else about this before we put it to bed. But on the upside, this is a great opportunity for people who went to Harvard to remind everybody else that they went to Harvard. And while we’re on the subject of the IRS, the Trump administration plans to nix a free electronic program that lets taxpayers file directly with the agency, because under the Trump administration, we’re just making everything a bigger pain in the ass. That’s according to anonymous sources that spoke with the Associated Press. Direct file gives people in 25 states a free and easy way to file taxes, so long as they don’t claim rental or other kinds of non-wage income. It should come as zero shock that the Trump administration wants to end the program. After all, swaths of Republican lawmakers asked him to cut the program back in December. They claimed it was government overreach, and then DOGE took aim at it in February. It’s government overreach for the government to let you file things to the government without having to pay? What? The GOP fought such a service for decades, with help from private tax prep companies like TurboTax. I mean, you don’t want to pay taxes anyway, so why pay to file if you can do it for free. If you live in one of those 25 states, you can still use the service this season, but after that, you’ll have to pour one out for direct file. 

[clip of unnamed person] There’s been a lot of coverage on stocks of buys that you made in the days before and the day of the announcement that these tarriffs were being paused. Was there anything that you knew ahead of time, or can you at least respond to the criticism that’s been published? 

[clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene] You know, I think that criticism is laughable. President Trump has been talking about tariffs for decades. 

Erin Ryan: This is Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green laughing off some financial scrutiny. Over what? Greene recently disclosed she purchased anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock. No immediate issue there, but she bought them one day before President Trump announced he was pausing most of his global tariffs. And then she did it again that same day. Of course, the market was flailing from all the trade chaos. According to disclosures made to the House, Greene also sold between $50,000 and $100,000 dollars in treasury bills. To be fair, Trump did yell at his Truth Social followers that, quote, “this is a great time to buy,” you know, just hours before he paused the tariffs. Greene told reporters Tuesday that she had no prior knowledge of Trump’s flip flop. 

[clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene] I have a fiduciary agreement with my portfolio manager, I don’t place my buys and sells. That’s something that the portfolio manager does for me and he did a great job. Guess what he did? He bought the dip and that’s what anybody that has any financial sense does when they know the market is going to be going down. That was obvious to everyone. 

Erin Ryan: Guess what he did. He bought the dip. Sounds like me defending a man who went to the grocery store and only bought three of the 10 things he was supposed to buy. Democrats in Congress are asking for an investigation into Trump’s back-and-forth on tariffs and whether his reversals violated securities laws. Members of Congress are required to report their stock trades, so we might hear more about this soon. And that’s the news. [music break]. 

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Erin Ryan: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a nice review, find something better to dye than a potato, and tell your friends to listen. And if you are into reading, and not just about how if you cut up your dyed potatoes and put the potato in the ground, you could have more potatoes to hoard when groceries get even more expensive, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Erin Ryan, and that’s what we call buying the dip, and that’s what anybody that has any financial sense does. [music break]

Jane Coaston: What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Shauna Lee, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, and Greg Walters. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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