Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia | The Excerpt
On Friday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Sen. Chris Van Hollen met Thursday with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. But the wrongly deported Maryland man remains in custody. The U.S. will abandon Ukraine peace efforts if no progress is made soon, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Police allege the son of a local sheriff's deputy opened fire at Florida State University. President Donald Trump lashes out at Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Trump predicts trade deals with China and the EU. Plus, he floats a plan to nix the federal income tax and replace revenue with money from tariffs. Paste BN Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe puts in context the Supreme Court's move to weigh in on Trump plans to restrict birthright citizenship.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, April 18th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, Senator Chris Van Hollen has met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. Plus we have the latest from a shooting at Florida State University, and the Supreme Court will weigh in on Trump's plans to restrict birthright citizenship.
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Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said he has met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month. The Senator posted on X an image of himself in El Salvador with Abrego Garcia dressed in a collared shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap. The meeting came a day after the Senator was denied access to the notorious prison for gang members where he has been held. Moments before the lawmaker posted a message, an image, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted three additional photos from the meeting. He quipped that the two were sharing a margarita.
The meeting appeared to occur at the hotel Van Hollen had been staying at in San Salvador. Van Hollen's office declined to release additional information and indicated the Senator would hold a news briefing later today. Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vazquez Sura said she only knew where her husband had been taken based on news photos of men with their heads down, being led through the notorious CECOT prison. She recognized her husband's scars and tattoos. She said in a statement to Paste BN after the Senator's meeting, that the efforts of her family and community in fighting for justice are being heard.
Earlier in the day I had spoken with our own national correspondent Will Carless, who was in El Salvador following the senator's motorcade when it was stopped by armed guards at a military checkpoint less than two miles from the prison. The checkpoint appeared to be set up specifically to keep him from reaching the prison. Despite the senator eventually being allowed to meet with Abrego Garcia, he remains in El Salvador in custody as of early this morning. President Nayib Bukele posted that he would remain in custody. In a statement after the meeting, White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai repeated the unproven accusation that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. The Supreme Court has directed the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return after Washington acknowledged he was deported because of an administrative error.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals turned down an effort yesterday by the Justice Department to slow down the process of facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The court's three-judge panel unanimously declined to suspend the upcoming sworn testimony by Trump administration officials on the matter. You can stay with this developing story throughout the day on usatoday.com.
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The US will walk away from trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days unless there are clear signs that a deal can be done, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio said earlier today. His warning came amid signs of some progress in US talks with Ukraine. Trump said yesterday he expected to sign a deal with Kyiv next week that would give the US access to Ukraine's minerals. An attempt to sign a minerals pact earlier this year fell apart after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's clash with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office. Rubio made his comments in Paris after meeting with European and Ukrainian leaders. Today's Paris talks marked the first substantive high-level and in-person talks on Trump's peace push that have included European powers. Trump promised during his campaign to end the war in Ukraine within his first 24 hours in the White House. He shifted that on taking office to April or May.
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Police say the son of a local sheriff's deputy opened fire at Florida State University yesterday, killing two people and injuring six others. The alleged gunman started firing near the student union just before noon, striking multiple people and triggering a campus-wide lockdown as students ran for cover, according to FSU's, police chief. Officials say campus police shot the suspect who did not respond to commands. Two people who were not students were pronounced dead at the scene, and six people were being treated at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare, the hospital said in a statement, where they're listed in fair condition. Authorities said the gunman was taken into custody and transported to a hospital. At the scene, investigators recovered a handgun that belonged to the suspect's mother, a longtime deputy with the Leon County Sheriff's Office.
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President Donald Trump slammed Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, saying his termination cannot come fast enough. Trump's comments came after Powell's remarks to the Economic Club of Chicago earlier this week, when the Fed chair appointed during Trump's first term said that unemployment is likely to go up as the economy slows in all likelihood, and inflation is likely to go up as tariffs find their way. He also said that some part of those tariffs come to be paid by the public. Powell suggested the Fed could face a conflict, a challenging scenario, he called it, between meeting its goals of low inflation and a sturdy economy and job market.
President Trump says his administration is in trade talks with China, and he's confident they can reach an agreement as soon as next month. He says he expects to reach trade agreements with China and the European Union soon, with the latter coming before the end of a 90-day pause on tit-for-tat tariffs between the trading partners. Trump made his latest tariff comments during a luncheon at the White House with Italy's Prime Minister. His administration has said that more than 75 nations have sought to make new trade agreements with the US since he announced his reciprocal tariff plan in early April. At least 15 have submitted proposals according to the White House.
Meanwhile, Trump is floating an idea to dramatically reshape how the country does its finances by using the revenue raised through his tariff policies as a replacement for the federal income tax. He told Fox Noticias in an interview broadcast earlier this week that there is a chance that the money from tariffs could be so great that it would replace the income tax. You can read more about that with a link in today's show notes.
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The Supreme Court will weigh in on President Trump's plans to restrict birthright citizenship. I spoke with Paste BN's Supreme Court correspondent Maureen Groppe to learn more. Hello, Maureen.
Maureen Groppe:
Hey, how are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good, good. Thanks for hopping on. So big news here. What did the high court elect to take on?
Maureen Groppe:
They said that they will hear oral arguments on the Trump administration's effort to limit birthright citizenship. That is the guarantee that babies that are born in the United States become citizens automatically regardless of their parents' status.
Taylor Wilson:
How did we get to this point? What have we seen on the state level or in lower courts?
Maureen Groppe:
Well, when the President announced that he was going to impose limits on birthright citizenship, that was immediately challenged in multiple places around the country, and the judges who heard this quickly said that the law is not on the President's side, and issued what's called an injunction that prevented the administration from moving forward with this policy while the challenge goes through the longer legal process of being fully challenged.
Taylor Wilson:
What have attorneys for immigrant rights group said about birthright citizenship, Maureen, and what does the Trump administration argue on this point?
Maureen Groppe:
Well, the Trump administration maintains that the right was intended to help formerly enslaved people after the Emancipation Proclamation, and it doesn't cover children of people who entered the country without proper authorization. He has maintained that the Supreme Court will ultimately back him up on this, but the speed and strength by which judges around the country, including some of those who've been appointed by Republican presidents, that they push back on this really makes it a tough row for him at the Supreme Court. The attorneys for those who are fighting Trump's position say that there's been a settled interpretation of the citizenship clause for more than a hundred years. That what Trump wants to do violates both the plain text of the Constitution, common law history, and Supreme Court precedent.
Taylor Wilson:
This is notably the first challenge to the new administration's policies that the justices have taken up for public discussion. Maureen, what might be the broader implications of a ruling from them one way or the other?
Maureen Groppe:
Well, everyone's trying to read the tea leaves to see how the Supreme Court is going to side generally with all these huge changes that the Trump administration is trying to do that have generated dozens more than 150 lawsuits. Right now, these court cases take a while to move up through the system. There have been a few cases that have gone to the court on an emergency basis where the Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to limit holds or things that the lower courts have done while these challenges are being played out, and the court has been issuing fairly short paper orders in response to those.
But this is the first time that the court is going to, in their open court, have both sides stand up and make oral arguments about their case, and the justices will get to ask them questions, and we'll get a sense then of how the Supreme Court is leaning on this case. This is one that the Trump administration always knew that it was going to have to, if they wanted to do this, they were going to have to get the Supreme Court on their side because of how big a change it is. This is a reach for them, and we will get a sense in May of whether they're likely to prevail.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Now, counting down to that May 15th date for the oral arguments. Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for Paste BN. Thanks, Maureen.
Maureen Groppe:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our Executive Producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.