Page B2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 30 September 2026
As it ran on the front
On September 18th, the pattern was already in the paperwork. The Washington Examiner was counting the deals stacking up country by country. That was the setup.
Five days later, on the night of September 23rd, a Wednesday, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston pulled the plug. It dissolved the stay that had let those flights continue, putting back into force a lower court order requiring notice, and a chance to say why a destination might mean persecution or torture, before anyone boarded a plane.…
…(cont) The administration didn't wait long to respond. By Thursday the 24th, Attorney General Todd Blanche was already vowing an appeal to the Supreme Court, and the Department of Homeland Security had its own request filed the same day, asking the justices to let the removals resume while the underlying fight continued.
Five days after that request, on Tuesday, the justices said yes. The order came unsigned, one page, six votes to three — Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissenting — and it let the government's practice restart immediately while pushing the legal question down the calendar to oral arguments in December. The question set for that argument is narrower than the human rights concerns United Nations experts have been raising: whether a federal district court in Massachusetts had jurisdiction to hear the case at all, and whether it had authority to order relief covering a whole class of people rather than one name at a time.
December is on the calendar. The removals are not waiting for it.
“They signed the removal deals all summer, got told to stop by an appeals court, and five days later the Supreme Court let them start right back up before anybody's ruled it's even legal — that's the whole trick, run the program first, argue about legality after the plane's already landed. December's marked on the calendar, but the guy on that flight doesn't get a continuance while you wait for the hearing.”
“Look, this is routine docket management, the Court just granted a stay pending appeal, that's not a ruling on the merits — well, they did let removals to countries where people have no ties resume immediately without touching the notice question, but that's not really relevant, the point is the process is working exactly as designed. Did I say "as designed"? A one-page unsigned order isn't exactly a design document, is it.”
The receipts
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportations, for NowThe court also announced it would hear arguments in December on the legality of the Trump administration policy to swiftly deport immigrants to countries not their own.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own, even as United Nations experts warned that the policy is putting deportees at heightened risk of human rights violations. In a one-page order , the justices—who did not rule on…
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
Supreme Court allows rapid deportations to 3rd countries, agrees to hear caseThe Trump administration can continue deporting migrants to third countries without prior notice after the Supreme Court paused a lower court order blocking the policy.
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
SCOTUS Overturns Blockade On Trump’s Third-Country DeportationsThe U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday once again shut down a lower court blockade against a key component of President Trump’s deportation agenda. The vote was 6-3, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent.
· Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow third-country deportations to resume from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Todd Blanche vows Supreme Court appeal after court blocks third-country deportations from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Trump’s deportation strategy increasingly includes flying illegal immigrants to ‘third countries’ from the morgue, 18 Sep 2026
· Trump Is Laying the Groundwork for the Mass Deportation of Migrant Children from the morgue, 21 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.