Can I be honest with y’all? Break the fourth wall a little? These categories I use for these weekly updates are starting to feel a little silly now that every other headline is about the ways in which the White House is pushing us further away from democracy with its actions on issues like immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, etc.

How do I sum up this past week? In the topline of toplines: President Donald Trump is trying to close the Department of Education (insert Child Left Behind meme), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deported a kidney transplant doctor to Lebanon, and the Trump administration is defying court orders. And the Democratic Party is proving to be largely useless through it all.

Nevertheless, I persist. I guess. Let’s get into it.

Anti-democratic actions

• Trump issued an executive order aimed at dismantling the Department of Education (DOE). Legally, the administration cannot completely close the agency because it was created via a congressional act, but as we know, this administration infamously doesn’t particularly seem to care about the law.
• Trump and his “special government employee,” Elon Musk, are pushing to impeach Judge James Boasberg after Boasberg ordered deportation flights to Venezuela to halt, the Hill reported. Boasberg has demanded the DOJ answer as to whether it defied his orders, per NPR.
• Boasberg signaled that he could be inclined to hold the Justice Department in contempt over its apparent violation of his court order. The White House said its deportations didn’t violate Boasberg’s orders, the New York Times reported.
• Trump’s vocal pressure to impeach Boasberg earned a rare statement from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said that for more than 200 years, “it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
• Trump claimed that former President Joe Biden’s pardons are “null and void” because they were signed via autopen, which the New York Times reported is typically not a controversial move.

Immigration

• The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act—which was passed in 1798—to deport people they accused of being in a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador, in defiance of a court order halting the deportations. I can’t emphasize enough that this law was passed barely 20 years after the country adopted the Declaration of Independence.
• Next week, the Trump administration will decide whether to defund legal services for unaccompanied migrant children, Prism reported.
• The DHS deported Dr. Rasha Alawieh—a Brown University professor, transplant nephrologist, and valid visa-holder—to Lebanon, accusing her of “openly supporting” a deceased Hezbollah leader, according to the New York Times.
• Just weeks after detaining Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a Gambian Cornell University student to surrender, the New York Times reported. The student, Momodou Taal, helped lead pro-Palestine protests at Cornell.

LGBTQ+ rights

• The Department of Veterans Affairs stripped transgender veterans of gender-affirming care protections, reversing Directive 1341, in an internal memo that NPR first reported. After NPR’s report, VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz denied the change.
• A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to ban transgender people from the military, the New York Times reported.
• The Trump administration said it plans to pause $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its policies on transgender athletes.

DEI and civil rights

• The DOE announced it is investigating more than 50 universities over racial discrimination (against white and Asian students) as part of the administration’s anti-DEI campaign. Quick, sincere question: If the DOE no longer exists, do these investigations also no longer exist?
• A federal judge ordered the DOE to restore federal grants that helped place teachers in underserved schools.
• As an apparent part of the Trump administration’s DEI purge, the Department of Defense wiped several articles mentioning Navajo Code Talkers, Axios first reported.

Health and science

• A federal judge ruled that Trump and Musk’s efforts to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) “likely violated the United States Constitution” and ordered the administration to reinstate the agency’s systems, NBC News reported.
• Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. floated the idea of allowing the bird flu—which is killing chickens and contributing to the country’s egg shortage—to spread unchecked. While farms are not under his purview, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has voiced support for the idea, the New York Times reported.