Axios PM

April 14, 2025
Good Monday afternoon. Today's newsletter, edited by Sam Baker, is 591 words, a 2-min. read. Thanks to Carolyn DiPaolo for copy editing.
1 big thing: Deportation defiance

The White House isn't lifting a finger to get Kilmar Abrego Garcia out of a notorious Salvadorian prison, despite courts' orders to do so.
- The Justice Department has conceded in court documents that Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador due to an "administrative error." The Supreme Court said last week that the U.S. must "facilitate" his release.
✈️ That simply means that if El Salvador asks to send him back, the U.S. has to help, administration officials argued today — not that the U.S. has to do anything proactive to rectify its error.
- "If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in the Oval Office.
🇸🇻 El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, said he's not asking.
- "The question is preposterous," Bukele said at the White House today. "How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States."
💡 Zoom out: The two leaders have created a circular logic in which no one has the ability to do what the Supreme Court said must be done.
- The Justice Department is also arguing in legal filings that courts don't have the power to dictate specific steps to the executive branch. So, effectively, no one can initiate this process.
💬 President Trump said during his appearance with Bukele that he'd be open to sending U.S. citizens to the same Salvadorian prison.
2. 🎓 Harvard defies Trump

Harvard won't accept the Trump administration's demands for a sweeping ideological crackdown on both students and faculty — putting billions in federal funding at risk.
- "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," Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in an open letter today.
📚 Federal officials had demanded that Harvard "audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity," and overhaul its admissions and hiring process to remove any diversity considerations.
- They also said Harvard must reject international students "hostile to American values and institutions ... including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism," ban some student clubs and sideline faculty who are "more committed to activism than scholarship."
The demands came in conjunction with an investigation into roughly $9 billion in federal funding.
3. Catch me up

- 🚀 Lauren Sánchez, Amanda Nguyen, Katy Perry, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe and Kerianne Flynn (pictured above, clockwise from left) returned safely from a brief flight into space today. The 10-minute journey led by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' commercial space company, had the first all-woman space crew in U.S. history. Go deeper.
- 🦾 Nvidia said it'll begin making AI supercomputers solely in the U.S. The company said it has commissioned more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing space in Arizona and Texas to make the products, which power AI-dedicated data centers. Read the release.
- 🇺🇦 President Trump again accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of starting the war with Russia, saying: "You don't start a war with someone 20 times your size, and then hope people give you some missiles." Go deeper.
4. 🎵 1 for the road: A "Hamilton" original returns

Leslie Odom, Jr., one of the original "Hamilton" cast members, is coming back to reprise his role as Aaron Burr for the show's 10th anniversary.
- His limited run will last from Sept. 9-Nov. 23.
📬 Please invite your friends to join PM.
Sign up for Axios PM

