Losing My Perspicacity, November 24, 2025

Good morning and Happy Monday! I hope everyone is ready for a holiday week and is looking forward to their Thanksgiving plans, whether that means ordering takeout and watching football, visiting with friends and family, choosing to do absolutely nothing, or some variation of those things.

I’m going to take some time off this week, largely because I hovered on the verge of “sick” for about two weeks before full-on “sick” hit me like a freight train last week. So I’m going to try to spend less time online and more time sleeping this god-awful head cold off. All of that is to say that there will only be LMPs today and tomorrow — I’m taking the rest of the week off.

If you follow me on Bluesky, you may have seen me posting (smack dab in the middle of Bears football, no less) about the most recent filing in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia (KAG) in Tennessee. KAG initially entered the US without documentation, but was granted a deportation stay by an immigration judge in 2019. Then, as part of Donald Trump’s (read: Stephen Miller’s) immigration “crackdown,” KAG was illegally shipped off to a notorious jungle prison in El Salvador, where the US government tried to keep him, even after a judge ordered them to return him to US soil. Since then, KAG has been fighting deportation to various African countries.

In what sure looked like an attempt to find a reason to deport KAG, the federal government charged him with human trafficking in Tennessee.

Given everything the Trump administration has had to say about KAG — he’s a member of the MS-13 gang; he will “never” go free on American soil —  his attorneys wisely filed a Motion to Dismiss the charges against him for vindictive prosecution. Most recently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been doing everything in its power to send KAG to Liberia, even though Costa Rica has agreed to take him, and KAG himself has agreed to be removed to Costa Rica.

Last week, Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing KAG’s deportation case, ordered the federal government to produce the witness, John Cantú, an ICE official, who signed a declaration claiming that Costa Rica would no longer accept KAG, as previously promised. As you can imagine, Xinis wasn’t too pleased when the witness testified that he only put in his affidavit what others told him to.

So, to sum up, the prosecution, who has already been called out by Judge Xinis for being less than transparent with the facts, brought in a witness who signed an affidavit under oath attesting to matters he had no personal knowledge of. And, according to the Washington Post, Costa Rica did not tell anyone (at the State Department or anywhere else) that KAG was no longer welcome. So it’s starting to look a lot like government lawyers lied to the judge.

Because KAG has better lawyers than the Department of Justice currently does, he filed “additional information” in his criminal case (and copied Judge Xinis in his deportation case), using the “misrepresentation” to Judge Xinis as further proof that DHS is willing to do just about anything to get him out of the country. Frankly, that conclusion is getting harder and harder to argue with, especially as DHS is willing to allow a three-time felon to stay in the US in exchange for his testimony against KAG.

This isn’t the first time DHS and its lawyers have been called out for “misrepresentations” to the courts or acting in bad faith. Judge James Boasberg, who was the first federal judge to hear cases challenging the Trump administration’s removals under the Alien Enemies Act, says he is moving ahead with contempt proceedings against Trump officials who authorized flights to land in El Salvador, even after he ordered planes in the air to turn around.

In blocking DHS from sending the National Guard to Portland, ostensibly to help “protect” the local ICE facility from protestors, Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, found “no credible evidence” that ICE was unable to handle the protestors outside the facility, despite testimony from numerous DHS officials to the contrary. In that case, Portland police officers accused ICE and Federal Protective Services (FSP) of making false claims about protestors.

Then, there are the cases that were dismissed in Los Angeles due to “false and misleading statements” made by federal officers:

Perhaps most damning of all, federal judge Sara Ellis, who heard days of testimony from Border Patrol’s Greg Bovino and other DHS officials, spent nearly 100 pages of her preliminary injunction ruling detailing how video and witness testimony contradicted the testimony of DHS witnesses regarding ICE and CBP in Chicago.

And she really didn’t believe Greg Bovino.

For the legal journalists who spend their days reading through legal filings and listening in on court cases, the pattern is hard to miss. And while contempt proceedings are far rarer than most Americans think, it’s hard not to see the DOJ and DHS eventually getting some comeuppance for their behavior. Still, don’t hold your breath and wait for some judge to toss Kristi Noem in jail. That’s not how the system is set up, and some lowly lawyer who is too cowardly to stand up to his superiors is far more likely to absorb judicial wrath, anyway. What would truly be helpful is if federal judges, en masse, started realizing that they can’t take anything DHS/DOJ says at face value, and stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt on issues like discovery compliance and inconsistencies in their pleadings.

An even bigger silver lining to all these lawsuits, however, would be Americans realizing that a witness isn’t automatically credible just because they wear a badge, and remembering that the next time they’re called into jury duty. Some of the behavior we’re currently witnessing at the national level has been going on in local prosecutors’ offices since they came into existence. Just ask your friendly local public defender how surprised they are by any of this.

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I do a lot of legal reporting on Bluesky that only gets summarized or mentioned in passing here, so if you’re into dorky legal news like I am, make sure you’re following me there!

Elsewhere today: MTG takes her money and runs; Elon Musk is hoisted by his own petard; Bill Belichick attended an adult cheerleading competition; and The High Note.

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Let’s get to it.

Go on, take the money and run

Whether it’s Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) apologizing for taking part in the online harassment of her political opponents or Dave Portnoy claiming that Barstool has always had a “pretty good” moral compass, I tend not to believe people who have always been terrible, even when they try to make it sound like they’ve seen the light.

That goes double for MTG. When I heard she was resigning from Congress, I knew there was more to it than her not wanting to be part of the MAGA machine any longer. And sure enough, her fellow congress members spilled the tea.

MTG’s stock trading has been under scrutiny for some time, especially as she racked up profits due to Trump’s tariffs.

So MTG will (supposedly) leave Congress in January, having increased her net worth from $700,000 to $25 million in her four years in Congress. Leopards don’t change their spots, y’all.

Elon Musk steps on a rake again

This story gave me so much joy over the weekend. It turns out that a number of the biggest MAGA accounts on X originate outside the US. And, thanks to Elon’s giant brain, now everyone knows.

Also! Grok is being investigated in France for being a Holocaust denier.

I love this for Elon.

Bill Belichick did what?

Hands down, my favorite story over the last week was Bill Belichick going to a cheerleading competition to root for his girlfriend, an adult cheerleader.

He looks thrilled. Question: Does the adult coed cheerleading team compete against …. children? Because the girls in the image in front of Jordon Hudson look… far younger than her team does. I love this relationship so much. I can’t wait to see what Belichick has to do next.

This is all I can think of.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

I came across this on Instagram the other day, and it made me happy. I hope it does the same for you. The video isn’t great, but it’s worth it.

Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Follow Julie on Bluesky and Instagram so she can get another book contract.