Good morning. It is April 15th. Today is the day to send your stuff in to what's left of the IRS. It's a cloudy and humid morning in New York City, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news column looks at how Donald Trump's trade war is going. “BEIJING SUSPENDS EXPORTING GOODS WORLD RELIES ON / RARE EARTH PRODUCTS / Escalation Hits Tech and Auto Industries and the Military.” 

The dateline is Ganzhou in Jiangxi province. One more entry on the list of basically anonymous Chinese cities that are bigger than almost anything in the United States by population In this case, the city proper has a population of 2.5 million and the prefecture is just shy of nine million. Anyway, from there, the Times reports, “China has suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, threatening to choke off supplies of components central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies, and military contractors around the world.” The story goes on to say the official crackdown is “part of China's retaliation for President Trump's sharp increase in tariffs that started on April 2nd. On April 4th, the Chinese government ordered restrictions on the export of six heavy rare earth metals, which are refined entirely in China, as well as rare earth magnets, 90 % of which are produced in China. The metals and special magnets made with them can now be shipped out of China only with special export licenses.” But, the story continues, “China has barely started setting up a system for issuing the licenses. That has caused consternation among industry executives that the process could drag on and that current supplies of minerals and products outside of China could run low.”

A trade war bringing down supply chains. Who could possibly have predicted that would happen? 

The second news column is “Harvard Says It Won’t Obey U.S. Demands / Hiring and Admissions Targeted by Trump.” Give them credit. An institution of higher learning finally learned something. After watching Columbia capitulate to the Trump administration and get nothing but even more escalating demands in return, Harvard belatedly but decisively chose another strategy. The Times writes, “Harvard University said on Monday that it had rejected policy changes requested by the Trump administration, becoming the first university to directly refuse to comply with its administration's demands and setting up a showdown between the federal government and the nation's wealthiest university. Other universities have pushed back against the administration's interference in higher education,” the Times writes, “but Harvard's response, which called the Trump administration's demands illegal, marked a major shift in tone for the nation's most influential school, which has been criticized in recent weeks for capitulating to Trump administration pressure.” On Friday, the Trump administration had followed up on an earlier set of demands that it sent Harvard by delivering a more specific and intrusive set, including a demand for government-supervised ideological quota hiring. And Harvard, which had earlier forced out the leadership of its Middle Eastern Studies Center, apparently decided it was time to draw a line. The Times quotes a statement from Harvard's current president, Garber, who replaced Claudine Gay after right-wing activists and the New York Times teamed up to force her out, declaring, “no government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” The online version of the story was updated as events kept happening after the print deadline, so the headline there is now “Trump administration will freeze $2 billion after Harvard refuses demands.” And the new lead is “the Trump administration acted quickly on Monday to punish Harvard University after it refused to comply with a list of demands from the federal government that the school said were unlawful.” 

Next to that, across the top of the front page is a four-column photo of yesterday's smirking Oval Office session with Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Naib Bukele captioned “President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, left, in the Oval Office, said of returning a Maryland man, ‘Of course I’m not going to do it.’” The headline on the story is, “Man Deported In Error Stays, 2 Leaders Vow.” 

“Vow” seems like an oddly dignified way of framing the smarmy evasions that the two used to both profess that it was beyond their power to remove Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the prison where Bukele is holding him, after Trump sent him there, and to return him to the United States as the courts have ordered. 

Inside the paper below the jump for that story is a weirdly deferential account of how the Trump administration presented its case in that session. “Trump aides muddle the facts surrounding a migrant's deportation” is the headline. “Abrupt turnaround after admitting error.” The story is somewhat less squishy than the headline, but is still basically overwhelmed by the challenge of trying to apply any sort of journalistic manners to the spectacle of the most powerful people in the country telling outright defamatory lies in contempt of court as they refuse to take back the unlawful expulsion of someone legally in the United States to a foreign torture prison.

“Some of President Trump's top aides on Monday, the story says, misstated several key facts involving the deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador last month, blatantly contradicting other members of the administration who have maintained for weeks that his expulsion was an administrative error.” The main liar here was Stephen Miller. The Times writes, “after Mr. Abrego Garcia's family sued the government seeking his return, several Trump administration officials, including the United States Solicitor General, made a rare admission. The White House had made a mistake when it deported Mr. Abrego-Garcia. But on Monday, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump's top domestic policy advisor, abruptly changed course. He declared on Fox News that Mr. Abrego Garcia had not, in fact, been wrongfully deported. ‘He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador,’ Mr. Miller said, adding, ‘this was the right person sent to the right place.’ The sudden turnabout,” the Times writes, “was remarkable not only because Mr. Miller, who is not a lawyer, contradicted previous assertions by some within the administration, but also because he appeared to go against the findings of the Supreme Court.” The story goes on to note that Miller tried to present the consensus position of the administration, that the removal was a mistake, as the work of a lone lawyer who was a “saboteur.” And then Attorney General Pam Bondi lied in the Oval Office about the foundations of the claim that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, or as the Times put it, “Ms. Bondi’s statement was a bit misleading. To be clear,” the Times added, “Mr. Abrego-Garcia has never been charged with, let alone convicted of, being a member of a gang. But during his deportation proceedings, some evidence was introduced that he belonged to MS-13, and judges decided it was enough to keep him in custody while the matter was resolved. But,” the story goes on, “other judges have found the same evidence to be lacking.” One of them wrote, “the evidence against Abrego-Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13's Western clique in New York, a place he has never lived.” 

Back on page one, the final story above the fold is “Tracking Data Makes Migrants ‘Easy Pickings’ / U.S. Contractor’s Tech
Has Led to Arrests, Aid Groups Say.” The story begins with what is now a very familiar sort of story. “After a Honduran immigrant arrived in the United States in 2022,” the Times writes, “officials ordered him to use a government issued app as part of an immigration surveillance program.” The story explains that he would use the app to check in at least once a week. “In February, “the story says, “he received a message, report to an immigration office so the tracking technology could be updated. When he arrived, federal agents were waiting. They handcuffed him and put him on a vehicle bound for a detention center where he has been ever since.”

This is part of a sort of archipelago of atrocity stories running through the paper about the Trump administration using what used to be the routine workings of the immigration system as weapons against immigrants. Here, the surveillance technology is provided by the Geo Group, the company best known for its private prison business, “which branched out” the Times writes, “into remote surveillance of immigrants, especially during the Biden administration. The idea,” the Times writes, “was that remote surveillance of immigrants facing removal proceedings would reduce the burdens on already packed detention centers, relieve ICE officers of grunt work, and save money.” And now turns out it's useful for hunting them down. Salute to whoever in the production process stuck a pull quote into the story. “‘The GEO group was built for this unique moment,’ George Zoley, its founder, said.” Fact check, true.

Then on page A15, the story is, After following rules, thousands of migrants are told, ‘leave immediately.’” Here, people who signed up for the CBP-1 app designed to help the government manage border entries are now being notified that their legal status has been revoked. “The termination notices,” the Times writes, “which started being delivered electronically last week, were more indication that migrants who followed the rules set by the last administration may be among the most vulnerable now as President Trump seeks to make good on his campaign promise of mass deportation.” The story also notes that this is so indiscriminate that, “in a twist, at least 10 immigration lawyers, most of whom are US citizens, said that they too had received the notices urging them to depart the country, possibly because of a glitch linking their email addresses to the immigration documents of their clients.” 

And then on page A20, the headline is, “Activist is held before meeting on citizenship.” 

“Mohsen Madhawi, an organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year at Columbia University,” the Times writes, “was detained by immigration officials on Monday after arriving for an appointment in Vermont that he thought was a step toward becoming a U.S. citizen, as lawyers said.” Most of the Times story is focused on the fact that here is yet another case of a Columbia protester who is not accused of having broken any laws and who, in this case, the Times writes, “took a step back from student organizing in March 2024 before the establishment of encampments on campus and the takeover of a campus building, Hamilton Hall. In interviews at the time,” the Times writes, “he said this was driven in part by his immigration status and his beliefs as a practicing Buddhist.” Nevertheless, the anti-Palestinian vigilante forces targeted him. The feds appeared to have complied with them, and the Times writes, “representatives for Columbia failed to comment, citing federal student privacy regulations.” 

The Intercept, which broke the story, wrote, “even before his friend and fellow Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities, Mahdawi asked university administrators to help him find a safe place to live so he would not be taken by ICE agents, according to emails reviewed by the intercept. The school did nothing in response, Madhawi said. The Intercept story also goes deeper than the Times into exactly how it was that he was apprehended, which is that he was specifically invited to come in and take the test to become a U.S. citizen, which he had been waiting to take. And instead of being given the test, he was seized. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Socca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Keep sending those along if you are able. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.