Trump Lawyer Defies A Judge Over Migrants

For those of you who are new here, I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”

Now, let’s do this!

This morning’s front page story by Alan Feuer and Nolan Kanno-Youngs is about how “the Trump administration on Monday stonewalled a federal judge seeking answers about whether the government had violated his order by deporting more than 200 people over the weekend without due process, escalating a conflict that threatened to become a constitutional crisis.”

I’m watching The Great Escape on YoutubeTV as I type this, by the way, thanks to prompting from yesterday’s front-page story about the Russian army sending 800 soldiers 10 miles through a gas tunnel. The Nazis are portrayed with absolutely remarkably bad acting. The Englishmen and the Americans, by contrast? Well…

Suffice to say that the Trump administration has not been performing with much charisma over recent days. In fact they’re acting a lot more like a bunch of Nazis. It’s time for all of us to summon our inner “Big X.”

There’s an interesting difference between the published newspaper and the online version today. The published paper makes no mention in the first paragraph of the members of a Venezuelan criminal gang amongst the deportees. They don’t feature until page 12 of the published version. Evidently the Trump administration has chosen to include these folks in its efforts to provoke a constitutional crisis because it muddies people’s clear-eyed views about constitutional rights. It’s also muddied the New York Times’s reporting priorities, too, as we can see from the difference in the two versions.

The Trump administration has refused to answer questions in court from a Federal District Judge, “arguing that President Trump had broad authority to remove the immigrants from the united States under an obscure wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act.”

The back-and-forth could lead to “further conflict down the road,” as the reporters delicately put it. The legal battle is “perhaps the most serious flahshpoint” so far “between federal courts” and “an administration that has repeatedly come close to openly refusing to comply with judicial orders.”

You may recall from February that we’re in, roughly, a 6 out of 10 constitutional crisis by my reckoning. Since there’s no official definition of such a thing, it’s mainly judged on feel. I’d say that today we’re in, now, about a 6.5.

It’s not helped by people like Mr. Trump’s border Czar, Thomas D. Homan, saying things like this on television:

Make that, maybe, a 7?

Mr. Homan “defended the administration’s decision to fly more than 200 immigrants to El Salvador over the weekend, including individuals the government identified as members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.”

There’s that criminal gang I mentioned. They sound like charming people.

…and the ideal distraction. Meanwhile the Trump administration lawyer “refused to say anything about the flights, citing ‘national security’,” in court. The Justice Department’s lawyer, Abhishek Kambli, had asked the appeals court sitting over the judge to remove him from the proceedings entirely before the court hearing in an “astonishing move.”

The published version of the story has several differences from the story online, given rapid developments yesterday. Suffice to say the Trump administration has tried to ignore Judge James E. Boasberg’s orders to turn the planes around, citing a variety of arguments including that his written order to stop the deportations came later than a verbal order to do so, and mentioned nothing about turning planes around:

Later in court, Judge Boasberg pushed back on the administration’s argument.

You know stuff is going south in the court system when judges use words like “heckuva.”

Again, the Trump administration is arguing that the President has authority over the courts, which isn’t the way the system is supposed to work. Amazingly, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have spoken up against the move, accusing the Trump administration of “another unlawful and brazen power grab” in proceeding with the deportations.

That’s some serious Big ‘X’ energy!

#Agree.

It seems the Trump administration has been pushing its luck on deportations, and is also pushing the “criminality” of the deportees as justification. But the deportations to El Salvador are just one example of conflicts between the administration and the executive branch.

The question, again, is when is contempt of court a constitutional crisis?

And perhaps the bigger question, given the Democrats’ outspoken statements on the issue, is what do you do when an administration seems not to care about the norms it’s flouting by moving ahead and ignoring the court system, regardless?

I’m going to go back to watching a Hollywood movie because at this point I feel considerably out of my depth in the real world. I would like to see some serious shifts in the right direction on this story over the coming days.

I also forgot to mention that the two other above-the-fold stories on the front page this morning are about a shortage of nuclear scientists vital to national security, thanks to DOGE cuts, and a billionaire philanthropist, Bill Gates, ignoring civil rights concerns related to Indian Leader, Narendra Modi. I’m sure it’s fine, though, right?

Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to. It’s really an honor. Honestly.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.