Congress is cowed; that’s one supposedly coequal branch of government down. But federal courts are proving more resistant to Donald Trump’s trampling of laws and the Constitution. Now, just two months in office, the president has all but crossed the red line — defying a judge’s order — that for more than two centuries has separated the rule of law in this country from its undoing.
People have parsed the movements of the planes that carried more than 200 Venezuelan migrants from south Texas to El Salvador on Saturday evening, to show they were aloft or took off after a federal judge ordered a halt to the deportations and the return of aircraft en route. They’ve also parsed the president’s denials that he ignored the court, given that in the next breath he falsely claimed that the “radical left” judge — James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia — had no right to tell him what to do.
“I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge,” Trump told Laura Ingraham on Fox News on Tuesday night.
Rogue judge? More projection from a rogue president.
His bit of constitutional malarkey in prime time bookended a Tuesday that started with an unhinged social media rant including this doozy: “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Obediently, a Republican House member filed articles of impeachment against Boasberg. Then the chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr., schooled both the congressman and the president, issuing a rare statement of what should be obvious: “Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
But Trump won’t be educated. Wednesday was just minutes old when he posted on social media that the “lunatic” Boasberg “wants to assume the role of President.”
The parsing can stop. In effect, and denials aside, Trump and his lieutenants defied the law: The Venezuelans are deported and locked in a notorious Salvadoran prison — seen shaved and manhandled in a video that administration officials and supporters delightedly shared. They faced no charges, evidence or legal proceedings to prove that they are, in fact, murderous gangbangers and terrorists as Trump contends (and numerous family members deny). Trump officials also mockingly shared Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s tweet over a news headline about Boasberg’s order to halt the deportations: “Oopsie … too late.”
The constitutional crisis that many feared from a vengeful, re-empowered Trump is here. Even the White House agrees, though its warped definition — “The constitutional crisis is not in the executive branch. It’s in the judiciary branch,” a spokesman said — only underscores the real crisis for the rule of law and the separation of powers.
Chief Justice Roberts should have been more direct, calling out Trump by name for grossly overstepping constitutional bounds and undermining faith in the courts. Perhaps Roberts held back, knowing that the deportation case and others will make their way to his bench, as the White House intends. (“And we’re going to win,” an unnamed senior official chortled to Axios.)
Politically, Trump and his toadies believe they’ve already won. “If the Democrats want to argue in favor of turning a plane full of rapists, murderers and gangsters back to the United States, that’s a fight we are more than happy to take,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt prattled. That calculation could well prove right, given voters’ angst over immigration and support for deportations if the deportees are guilty of crimes beyond entering the country illegally.
The Venezuelan migrants case isn’t Trump’s only challenge to the courts. He’s been picking fights since Jan. 20, seeking to expand his powers by setting himself against an array of unpopular targets, not only alleged criminal migrants but also federal employees, trans Americans and refugees.
The Trump administration tried to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident, until a federal judge intervened to insist on due process; he remains detained. This week, the administration did deport Rhode Island doctor Rasha Alawieh for alleged sympathies toward Hezbollah, claiming its border agents were unaware of a judge’s order blocking the action.
Trump has also targeted three prominent law firms expressly in retribution for their representation of his political enemies — stripping lawyers’ security clearances, barring them from federal buildings and threatening their federal contracts. “We have a lot of law firms that we’re going to be going after,” he told Fox News, heedless of Americans’ fundamental right to counsel.
“It sends little chills down my spine,” said the judge in one firm’s lawsuit. Mine too.
Administration officials are dodging court orders against Elon Musk’s chain-saw massacre of federal workers and of agencies created by law. Trump on Monday threatened action against the “Political Thugs” on the House Jan. 6 committee, speciously declaring that President Biden’s preemptive pardon of some of them was “OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.”
Trump likes to note pejoratively that federal judges, unlike him, are unelected. Not that he’d know, but that is how the founders intended it, to insulate the judiciary from political pressures.
Here’s hoping it works.