Elon Musk told Tesla investors he’s scaling back his work at the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, saying the amount of time he spends on the task force will “drop significantly” starting in May. 

As the Trump administration’s cost-cutting initiative, DOGE has slashed tens of thousands of federal jobs in the name of reducing fraud, waste and abuse. But DOGE has also sparked a backlash — and plenty of lawsuits — as critics accuse it of accessing voters’ private data and cutting programs that are vital to many Americans. 

At the same time, Tesla’s sales have taken a hit as the automaker’s vehicles have increasingly become a symbol of the Trump administration, repelling some consumers. The stock has also plunged more than 50% from its most recent high in December, when the shares surged after the presidential election on optimism that Musk’s role advising Mr. Trump would help the EV maker’s bottom line. 

“Starting probably in next month, in May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said on a conference call to discuss Tesla’s earnings. 

But Musk added he plans to continue his involvement with DOGE throughout Mr. Trump’s term, saying he will likely spend one to two days a week on government issues moving forward. “Starting next month, I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla,” he said.

Tesla shares, which have fallen 41% this year, jumped 4% to $247.53 after Musk vowed to scale back his work at DOGE.

Tesla’s first-quarter earnings, announced Tuesday, fell far short of analyst expectations, with revenue tumbling 9% and profit slumping 71%. 

Musk’s leaving DOGE might not heal the wounds that Tesla has suffered due to Musk’s activities, some analysts say.

“Musk’s personal brand has been permanently tarnished by his political activities in the last several months, and exiting DOGE won’t change that,” noted Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge in a Tuesday research note. “On top of all this, the stock remains very expensive.”

Tesla’s issues go beyond politics. The company that once dominated the EV market is now facing fierce competition from U.S. automakers such as Ford to rivals in Europe that are offering new models with advanced technology that is making them real alternatives. 

Earlier this year, Chinese EV maker BYD announced it had developed an electric battery charging system that can fully power up a vehicle within minutes. 

Tariff retaliation from China is also likely to hurt Tesla. The company was forced earlier this month to stop taking orders from mainland customers for two models, its Model S and Model X. It makes the Model Y and Model 3 for the Chinese market at its factory in Shanghai, the Associated Press reported. 

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.

Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador, say the government has failed to provide appropriate responses to a judge’s order for expedited discovery and to her questions about facilitating his return to the U.S. 

In a letter addressed to U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers requested a hearing to be scheduled Wednesday “to address the government’s failure to comply” with Xinis’ order for expedited discovery in the case.

Xinis on Tuesday issued a scathing order denying the Justice Department’s objection to some of the discovery in the case, accusing the department of “continued mischaracterization of the Supreme Court’s Order,” to return Abrego Garcia and writing the “defendants’ objection reflects a willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations.”

Xinis also denied a Justice Deparmtnet claim that it does not need to commit to answering questions brought by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers and can instead claim privilege over the answers.

“For weeks, Defendants have sought refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege, using them as a shield to obstruct discovery and evade compliance with this Court’s orders. Defendants have known, at least since last week, that this Court requires specific legal and factual showings to support any claim of privilege,” Xinis wrote. 

“Yet they have continued to rely on boilerplate assertions. That ends now. If Defendants want to preserve their privilege claims, they must support them with the required detail. Otherwise, they will lose the protections they failed to properly invoke.”

Xinis ordered a speedy fact-finding process after the Trump administration refused to comply with three different court orders, including an order from the Supreme Court, to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. so he can receive due process regarding the Trump administration’s claim that he is an MS-13 gang member.

Last week in court, a Justice Department attorney said that the Trump administration would facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return only if he arrived at a port of entry and continued to dodge questions from Xinis about what, if anything, the Trump administration is doing to return the man.

Xinis said that “every day Mr. Abrego Garcia is detained in CECOT is another date of irreparable harm” and gave both sides two weeks to complete expedited discovery in the case, including sworn depositions from Trump administration officials with first-hand knowledge of the efforts to return him. Depositions are set to be completed on Wednesday.

But attorneys for Abrego Garcia say all of the discovery produced by the Justice Department has been “nothing of substance,” and “consists entirely of public filings from the dockets, copies of Plaintiffs’ own discovery requests and correspondence, and two nonsubstantive cover emails transmitting declarations filed in this case.” Other questions for which Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have sought answers have been “similarly non-responsive,” they wrote.

The plaintiff’s lawyers said that the government “artificially” narrowed Xinis’ order for discovery “to avoid complying with its obligations.” 

“The Government refuses to respond to interrogatories it claims are ‘based on the false premise that the United States can or has been ordered to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,'” Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote, adding that the Justice Department has not provided any information about Abrego Garcia’s detention before April 2, although he has been detained in El Salvador since March 15.

They also argued that the government has asserted privilege “including deliberative process privilege, state secret privilege, and ‘governmental privilege’ without any foundation for doing so.”

Justice Department attorneys countered that they have “put forward a good-faith effort to provide appropriate responses” to Abrego Garcia’s attorneys and added that they plan to file specific privilege claims over information pertaining to Abrego Garcia soon. 

The government also said the administration is “in discussions” with the Salvadoran government to return Abrego Garcia, but “any requirement of a more detailed response by the Defendants would be wholly inappropriate and an invasion of diplomatic discussions.”

One detail of Abrego Garcia’s detention in El Salvador may prompt Xinis to seek more information about what the Trump administration knew — and when — about his transfer from CECOT, the country’s notorious supermax prison, to another detention center.

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who met with Abrego Garcia last week, said he was moved from CECOT on April 9 to another lower-security detention facility in El Salvador.

But in court-mandated, daily status updates ordered by Xinis about Abrego Garcia’s condition and what the administration is doing to return him, four different officials — from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the State Department, and Homeland Security — each stated that Abrego Garcia was being detained at CECOT after that date.

On Monday, the Trump administration confirmed that Abrego Garcia had been moved to a facility in Santa Ana, El Salvador, and reported based on conversations with the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador that he is “in good conditions and in an excellent state of health.”

A town hall hosted by Rep. Byron Donalds turned chaotic Tuesday, with audience members repeatedly interrupting the Florida Republican, leading authorities to remove two people — the latest raucous town hall dominated by protests against President Trump’s administration.

Donalds, a three-term congressman running in next year’s Florida gubernatorial race, was asked a litany of often-testy questions, several of which focused on billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Audience members booed or cheered — and, in some cases, angrily left early — throughout the almost two-hour event at Estero High School in southwest Florida. Donalds occasionally verbally sparred with the protesters.

Two people appeared to be escorted out by the local sheriff’s department after yelling pro-Palestinian sentiments while Donalds answered a question about the Israel-Hamas war. During one incident, Donalds said he would have a protester removed if she kept interrupting. “Let’s have a disagreement. But when you’re going to stand and yell and disrespect everybody in this room because you think you’re being heard, and let’s be clear, you’re not,” he said.

Donalds told reporters after the event he plans on holding more town halls, but he said the interruptions “got out of hand,” calling some of them “rude” and “disrespectful” to other attendees.

“I could kind of tell from the first question or two what kind of night it was going to be. But you know, that’s alright. It’s part of the business,” Donalds told reporters.

The interruptions began quickly. Minutes into the event, a staff member read a pre-submitted question about whether Donalds supports congressional oversight of DOGE. Donalds defended Musk’s cost-cutting efforts and said lawmakers are “letting DOGE complete its work,” leading some audience members to groan and boo — though others appeared to cheer Donalds on.

Donalds was also heckled during questions about immigration, gun control measures, DOGE’s work in the Social Security Administration, tariffs and diversity programs. He broadly defended Trump administration policies, drawing boos in many cases.

The lawmaker pushed back on protesters in some cases, asking them questions about Biden- and Obama-era programs and arguing critics were not being “intellectually honest.” At other points, he encouraged people to “relax” and stop heckling: “You can yell or you can hear,” he said during an exchange about the Social Security Administration. 

“Is anybody finding this informative?” Donalds asked the crowd at one point, drawing a mixture of cheers and jeers. “60-40? That’ll work.”

Donalds is seeking to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. A staunch Trump ally, the congressman earned the president’s endorsement in February, before Donalds formally launched his gubernatorial campaign.

Monday’s event was the latest congressional town hall to get chaotic. Members of both parties have faced adversarial crowds in recent weeks, with protesters often pushing back against Mr. Trump and Musk. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was repeatedly interrupted by protests at a meeting in the Georgia Republican’s home district last Tuesday, with police arresting three demonstrators — two of whom were tased at the scene. That same evening, a town hall hosted by Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, was also derailed by angry constituents.

Some lawmakers have shied away from hosting in-person events, in some cases shifting to virtual meetings with voters instead. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, suggested last month GOP lawmakers should reconsider in-person town halls, saying members of his caucus should communicate with their constituents but “there are other avenues to do it than just going in to try to give the other side sound bites.”

Donalds said last month he plans to continue holding town halls, brushing off plans to protest the events in an interview with Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

“Quite frankly, I don’t care what they do,” Donalds said. “I would tell any Democrat that wants to come out there and astroturf my town hall, bring it, because we’re going to talk the truth. We’re going to talk about what’s really going on. I’m not afraid of you.”

President Trump said Tuesday he has “no intention of firing” Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, one day after the president called Powell a “major loser” and publicly lobbied the central bank chief to lower interest rates at a faster clip.

When asked by reporters in the Oval Office if he has any plans to fire Powell, Mr. Trump said he “never did” and claimed “the press runs away with things” — though he once again pressed Powell to cut interest rates, which remain elevated after the Fed hiked rates to quell inflation.

“This is a perfect time to lower interest rates,” Mr. Trump said. “If he doesn’t, is it the end? No, it’s not. But it would be good timing.”

Last week, Mr. Trump argued in a social media post that Powell is “always TOO LATE AND WRONG,” and said his “termination cannot come fast enough,” drawing speculation that the president could try to oust Powell before his four-year term ends next year.

Powell has led the Fed since 2018, after Mr. Trump initially nominated him for the job. Former President Joe Biden nominated Powell for a second term, bringing his time atop the central bank to at least May 2026.

It’s not clear if Mr. Trump has the power to fire Powell. According to federal law and past legal precedent, members of the Federal Reserve board — which includes the chair — can only be removed from their jobs before their terms expire “for cause.” However, the Trump administration has argued it has the legal right to fire members of other independent federal agencies, setting up a court fight over the issue that could have broad consequences.

The administration will “study” whether it has the right to fire Powell, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told reporters last week.

For his part, Powell said last year he will not step down if Mr. Trump asks him to leave his job. 

This is a breaking story. It will be updated.

A federal judge in Denver has granted a temporary restraining order barring the removal of migrants from the district of Colorado under the Alien Enemies Act.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network argued during a hearing on Monday that two men from Venezuela were in imminent danger of being deported to a prison in El Salvador. Further, the lawyers for the migrants said that 11 men from Colorado have already been sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT — among the hundreds of migrants sent to the supermax prison by the Trump administration.

“We are thankful that the Court put a stop to the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to disappear Colorado residents to a Salvadoran mega-prison,” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director. “Due process is fundamental to the rule of law in this country, and the government has shown a rampant disregard for this essential civil right. The Trump administration’s desire to evade due process is a threat to all of us. We will continue to fight to permanently stop the government from disappearing people to foreign prisons without due process and in violation of the law. Not one more person should face this nightmare scenario.”

CBS News Colorado has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.

The terms of the Colorado restraining order expire on May 6.

In a ruling on April 7, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that “AEA detainees must receive notice… that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in proper venue before such removal occurs.”

The high court’s order did not indicate the terms of “reasonable” notice, so it was debated in court on Monday.

In her order, Judge Charlotte Sweeney wrote that individuals subject to deportation under the AEA must receive 21 days’ notice, be informed of the right to judicial review, and consult with an attorney. Such notice must also be written in a language the individual understands.

In March, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, allowing the executive branch to detain or deport noncitizens it deems “dangerous,” particularly those administration officials allege are part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Last month, the administration used the law to send more than 200 people to a prison in El Salvador. 

The last time the Act was invoked was during World War II, when Japanese Americans were interned at Camp Amache in Colorado.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced a “reorganization” of the State Department, with plans to make staffing cuts and consolidate domestic offices. 

The cuts aren’t happening immediately, but a senior State Department official told reporters that Rubio’s announcement sets forth a road map for future cuts, and Congress has been notified to set the process in motion. The senior official said State Department undersecretaries for the various bureaus must in about 30 days present a plan on how they will eliminate positions. 

Rubio reposted “X” posts in which Free Press journalists said the move would entail closing 132 offices, moving 137 offices elsewhere, and directing undersecretaries to reduce personnel by anywhere between 15-17%. Another senior State Department official told reporters on Tuesday that the personnel reduction would be 22%.

Among the agency offices to be cut, according to an “X” post Rubio reposted, are those intended to further human rights, advance democracy overseas, counter extremism, and prevent war crimes. Asked during Tuesday’s departmental press briefing about the department’s office of Global Criminal Justice, which plays a role in investigating war crimes and is missing from the proposed “reorganization” chart, Pentagon spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that just “because it’s now folded into another larger bureau, doesn’t mean that it’s gone or we don’t care.”

Rubio called the State Department in its current form “bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition.” 

“Over the past 15 years, the department’s footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared,” Rubio said in a statement. “But far from seeing a return on investment, taxpayers have seen less effective and efficient diplomacy. The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests.”

“That is why today I am announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the Department into the 21st Century,” Rubio continued. “This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies. Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist.”

The senior State Department official who briefed reporters stressed this is a “purely domestic plan” that “does not have anything to do with any foreign missions.”

“That’s not to say that there won’t be subsequent decisions on foreign missions, but that’s not what this is,” the official said. 

According to Rubio’s notification to Congress, the State Department would formally assume responsibility for remaining humanitarian assistance programming, and most remaining USAID functions would be absorbed by the State Department. 

The senior State Department official said these changes are an “attempt to go back to the traditional roots of the State Department, which are the primacy of the regional bureaus and of our foreign missions.” 

The changes to the State Department come amid the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter most of USAID. 

The National Institutes of Health is amassing private medical records from a number of federal and commercial databases to give to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new effort to study autism, the NIH’s top official said Monday.

The new data will allow external researchers picked for Kennedy’s autism studies to study “comprehensive” patient data with “broad coverage” of the U.S. population for the first time, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said.

“The idea of the platform is that the existing data resources are often fragmented and difficult to obtain. The NIH itself will often pay multiple times for the same data resource. Even data resources that are within the federal government are difficult to obtain,” he said in a presentation to the agency’s advisers. 

Medication records from pharmacy chains, lab testing and genomics data from patients treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, claims from private insurers and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers will all be linked together, he said. 

The NIH is also now in talks with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to broaden agreements governing access to their data, Bhattacharya said. 

In addition, a new disease registry is being launched to track Americans with autism, which will be integrated into the data. Advocacy groups and experts have called out Kennedy for describing autism as a “preventable disease,” which they say is stigmatizing and unfounded.

Between 10 and 20 outside groups of researchers will be given grant funding and access to the records to produce Kennedy’s autism studies. Bhattacharya did not give details on how they would be chosen, but said their selection would be “run through normal NIH processes.”

Bhattacharya said the research they will back using the data will be “the highest quality proposals” that will range “from basic science to epidemiological approaches, to other more applied approaches” to treat and manage autism. He also acknowledged autism’s wide variation in how it affects people.

“I recognize, of course, that autism, there’s a range of manifestations ranging from highly functioning children to children that are quite severely disabled. And of course the research will account very carefully for that,” he said.

While the selected researchers will be able to access and study the private medical data, Bhattacharya said they will not be able to download it. He promised “state of the art protections” to protect confidentiality.

By bringing the data into one place, he said it could give health agencies a window into “real-time health monitoring” on Americans for studying other health problems too.

“What we’re proposing is a transformative real- world data initiative, which aims to provide a robust and secure computational data platform for chronic disease and autism research,” he said. 

They are planning a “rapid timeline” to launch the autism research using this data, he said, but did not give specifics on when it would start or how long the studies would take. Kennedy last week appeared to walk back his earlier prediction that they would have all the answers to autism’s causes by September.

“We will have some of the answers by September, but it’s going to be an evolving process,” he said, speaking with reporters.

Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday is set to consider Maryland parents’ challenge to their local school board’s policy that denies them the ability to opt their elementary school-age children out of instruction featuring storybooks that address gender identity and sexual orientation.

At issue in the court fight between a group of families and the Montgomery County Board of Education is whether public schools unconstitutionally infringe parents’ First Amendment right to exercise their religion freely when they require children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality that violate the families’ religious beliefs.

“What’s at stake is the long-recognized parental right in our law and traditions for parents to direct the religious education and upbringing of their children,” said Michael O’Brien, a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “The government cannot substantially interfere with that by compelling instruction on sensitive sexuality and gender-identity issues that strike at the heart of parental decision-making authority on matters of core religious importance.”

Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow for parental opt-outs or require opt-ins before students participate in sex education. Montgomery County, home to Maryland’s largest public school system with more than 160,000 students, also had an opt-out policy for parents with religious objections to classroom instruction or activities so long as the requests did not become “too frequent or burdensome,” according to court papers.

After Maryland enacted rules seeking to promote “educational equity,” the Montgomery County Education Board introduced “LGBTQ-inclusive” storybooks for elementary school students into its English Language Arts curriculum. The district said it supplemented its language arts books with a handful of stories “in order to better represent all Montgomery County families.” Among the five books incorporated, which are at issue in the case, were “Born Ready,” about a transgender elementary-aged child, and “Prince & Knight,” about a prince who falls in with and marries a knight.

The board adopted the lessons in 2022, but allowed parents to opt their children out of reading and instruction involving the storybooks. But in March 2023, the Montgomery County school board announced that families would no longer receive advanced notice of when the books would be read and would not be able to have their kids excused from the instruction.

The board said in court filings that the opt-outs had become “unworkable,” as some schools had high numbers of absences, and all faced “substantial hurdles” in using the books while honoring opt-out requests, as teachers would have to manage the removal of excused students from class and plan alternative activities for them.

That decision, however, sparked backlash within the community — more than 1,000 parents signed a petition that called on the board to restore the notice and opt-outs, and dozens protested the books at board meetings as violating their religious beliefs. The school board then revised its Religious Diversity Guidelines to limit the circumstances when students can be excused to noncurricular activities or free-time events that conflict with their family’s religious practices.

A group of three families filed a lawsuit against the Montgomery County Board of Education, arguing that denial of the notice and opt-outs violated their right to exercise their religion freely under the First Amendment because it overrode their freedom to direct the religious upbringing of their children. The families — who are Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox  — sought a preliminary injunction that would’ve required the school board to provide advance notice and the chance to opt their children out of instruction that involved the books.

But a federal district judge in Maryland denied the request, finding that the no-opt-out policy did not burden the families’ religious exercise. The parents’ inability to excuse their children from instruction with the storybooks doesn’t coerce them into violating their religious beliefs, the court found, as they can still teach their kids about their convictions regarding sexuality, marriage and gender.

A divided panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit also found that there was no burden on the families’ free exercise of religion because there was no evidence they were compelled to change their religious beliefs or conduct.

The families asked the Supreme Court to review that decision, and the high court in January agreed to do so. The Trump administration is backing the parents in the case, arguing that the board burdened parents’ religious exercise by forcing them to choose between violating their religious beliefs or forgoing public education.

In filings with the high court, lawyers for the parents also said that Montgomery County is presenting them with an “impossible” choice.

The parents, they said, “must subject their children to instruction intended to disrupt their religious beliefs or forgo the benefits of a public education at the sizeable cost of either paying for private school, homeschooling, or facing government fines and penalties.”

Additionally, they argued that suspending the notice and opt-outs created “topsy-turvy categorizations” in which a 14-year-old can be excused from instruction on gender and sexuality during sex education, but a 4-year-old has to sit through similar instruction as part of the English Language Arts curriculum. 

The families also said that at least one member of the board demonstrated religious hostility toward them, claiming they likened them to “white supremacists” and “xenophobes.”

O’Brien, the lawyer for Becket, which is representing the families, said Montgomery County’s policy is unique because of how “extreme” it is. While it may be an outlier, he said an important ramification of a decision in favor of the parents is it would “breath life into the already established principle that parents do, indeed, have a fundamental right under the Free Exercise Clause to direct the religious upbringing of their children.”

“The state can’t substantially interfere with that, including in public schools and including in children as young as 3 and 4,” he said.

But the school system said that its teachers were expressly forbidden from using the books to pressure students to change their religious beliefs, and argued that while it tried to accommodate parents’ requests to opt their children out of the instruction, doing so eventually became “unworkably disruptive.”

Lawyers for the school district also argued that exposure to content that parents object to on religious grounds is not the same as impermissibly coercing students to disavow their religious practices.

The parents, they said, didn’t put forward any evidence that their children were penalized for their religious beliefs, were asked to affirm views contrary to their faith, or were prohibited from engaging in religious practice.

The school board also warned that accepting the parents’ argument that the no-opt-out policy burdened their religious exercise could have harmful effects for public education as a whole.

“Crediting petitioners’ burden theory would not only contravene constitutional text, history, and precedent, but also — as courts have long recognized — ‘leave public education in shreds’ by entitling parents to pick and choose which aspects of the curriculum will be taught to their children,” they wrote in court papers.

The American Civil Liberties Union also said that under the parents’ assertions, public school families could request exemptions from an array of curricular requirements because of their religious beliefs, including objecting to lessons on major historical figures who are LGBTQ.

“In sum, requiring public schools to exempt students from secular instruction that they or their parents may find objectionable for religious reasons could throw public schools into disarray, effectively 4 forcing them to tailor their educational materials to align with the religious beliefs of individual students and/or their parents,” ACLU lawyers wrote in a filing.

A decision from the Supreme Court is expected by early July.

The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on April 20, 2025.

WEIJIA JIANG: And we turn now to Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen. Senator, thank you so much for joining us this morning. You’re just back from El Salvador, and I want to pick up where we left off with Camilo, because the White House is using these new details to build its case that Abrego Garcia should stay where he is and not come back to the U.S. Your response? 

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, Weijia it’s good to be with you and these- his case is, of course, separate than the case of the Venezuelans that you were talking about earlier.  

WEIJIA JIANG: Yes. 

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: And in Abrego Garcia’s case, the Trump administration admitted in federal court that he’d been wrongfully abducted and sent to a prison in El Salvador. But rather than fixing the problem, as the Supreme Court has said, in terms of his need to be- use their efforts to to facilitate his release, they reprimanded the lawyer who made that case. So, they need to bring him home. Now, with respect to these other facts. I say, put up or shut up in court, as you just heard in your last conversation, they have not done that and I do want to just read one sentence from the federal district court who said, and I quote, “that the administration has presented no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13, or to any other terrorist activity,” unquote. Go to court, stop tweeting and put up or shut up in front of the judges.

WEIJIA JIANG: You bring that up because that is why the administration says that they have deported Abrego Garcia. And you have previously said that when you talk to him, he was not informed about why he was deported or detained. Did you tell him why the administration says they did what they did? 

SEN. VAN HOLLEN: I did not go over all the facts of his case, other than to say that the courts of the United States had determined that he had been wrongfully detained and deported. He has no news of his case. He did tell me that when he was taken to the Baltimore detention facility, he wanted to make one phone call to let people know exactly what was happening in terms of his detention there, and he was not able to make it. He did not know at that time that they were going to send him back to El Salvador, where, as you say, a federal immigration judge had- had prohibited, prohibited the administration from sending him. 

WEIJIA JIANG: You also said that you did not directly ask Abrego Garcia whether he is a member of MS-13, which, of course, the Trump administration has designated as a terrorist group. I wonder why because that is all we are hearing from the White House and you know, he hasn’t been able to speak for himself. So did you ask him? 

SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Well, I know his answer. His answer he has made repeatedly, including in court, which is that he is not. I was not there to litigate all the details of his case. I was there to make sure that he was still alive and check on his health. That’s what I promised his wife and family that I would try to do, and that is what I did. 

WEIJIA JIANG: Since he was deported, there have been a lot of questions about his welfare and where exactly he is and you broke the news that he is no longer at CECOT, the maximum security prison, but rather transferred. Do you know why he was transferred and how long he’ll stay at this less restrictive prison? 

SEN. VAN HOLLEN: I don’t know why he was transferred. I mean, CECOT was a traumatizing experience, as was being sort of abducted from the United States illegally, without knowing why. He did say that he felt threatened by other prisoners at CECOT, not those who were in his immediate cell, but taunts from others. So he is now at a place in Santa Ana, and I believe I was the first to learn that he had been transferred.

WEIJIA JIANG: I want to show our viewers some pictures that the president of El Salvador, Bukele, showing you and Abrego Garcia sitting around what appears to be margaritas. You have blamed him for trying to deceive people with props. After he posted those images, he also posted, quote, “I love chess.” Do you have any concerns that the Salvadoran government used you as a pawn to make their point that Abrego Garcia is doing well and that he should stay where he is? 

SEN. VAN HOLLEN: No, in fact, the El Salvadoran government tried really hard not to let me see him, but I think they realized that that was not a good look at the end of the day. I had press conferences in El Salvador with local press and made the point that El Salvador was violating international law by not allowing anyone to reach him, not his wife, not his lawyers, nobody. They realized that was a bad look. So I’m glad I met him, that was the purpose of my visit. They go to great lengths to deceive people, and that’s what you saw, because they got these government guys, essentially told the waiters to bring these drinks that appear to look like margaritas to the table. No one touched them. I can go into the details about how their whole scheme was set up, but the reality is, if you look at the photos when I first sat down, and the ones at the end, you can see that that was all staged. They’re trying to create the impression that you know this is a guy in paradise when, in fact, he’s been in one of the most notorious prisons in the world.

WEIJIA JIANG: Well, the Trump administration has made abundantly clear that they have no intention of bringing him back to the United States. And in fact, the- the official White House account posted a picture that says exactly that based on their own edits. Is it fair to say that Abrego Garcia will remain in El Salvador as long as Trump is president, or unless Trump changes his mind?

SEN. VAN HOLLEN: No, because the Supreme Court of the United States and the other courts have said that the administration has to facilitate his return. As of right now, they are in defiance of that court order. They’re not doing anything. I want to be really clear, this is not a case about just one man whose constitutional rights are being ignored and disrespected. Because when you trample on the constitutional rights of one man, as the courts have all said is happening in this case, you threaten the constitutional rights of every American. I would think that conservatives and libertarians would recoil at the idea that someone has lost his liberty without due process. That’s my focus. My focus is not on one man. It’s on making sure one man’s rights are secured so that we can uphold the rule of law.

WEIJIA JIANG: Senator Van Hollen, thank you. We hope to see you back soon and Happy Easter. 

SEN. VAN  HOLLEN: Thank you. 

WEIJIA JIANG: Face the Nation will be back in one minute. Stay with us.