Trump is openly defying court orders. When will elected Republicans care? | Opinion
There has to be a point where Republican leadership will demand Trump follow the law. Disobeying federal judges and calling for their impeachment isn't that point, apparently.
The Trump administration’s brazen contempt for the courts reached a new peak over the weekend, in which officials seemingly ignored an order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to turn around two deportation flights and then refused to answer questions in court Monday.
All that before President Donald Trump on Tuesday apparently called for the judge to be impeached in a Truth Social post so egregious that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement defending the judicial.
At least some of the deportees on the flights in question were likely members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump has designated as a terrorist organization. Still, there are serious legal questions on whether the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 can be invoked in this case.
The Trump administration is trying to bypass both due process and the courts. While plenty of conservative commentators are speaking out, elected Republicans are quiet while Trump flirts with a constitutional crisis.
Trump is ignoring court rulings. Why aren't Republicans worried?
The legal question at the center of the case is whether the Trump administration is justified in using a statute intended for wartime that allows the president to bypass court proceedings in the deportations.
Other commentators have theorized that all of this was by design, in that the Trump administration purposefully rushed these flights to happen on a Saturday, which would make it more difficult for legal challengers to get a hearing in front of a judge.
Moreso, in the time it took for such a challenge to go through the proper channels, the planes were already almost at their destinations, capping off Trump’s deportations blitz, following through before any due process could be followed.
Trump-appointed "border czar" Tom Homan claims that the order to turn flights around was unenforceable because the planes were over international waters, but his rhetoric indicates that he is openly acting in defiance of judges who are hindering his ability to deport on command.
“We’re not stopping,” Homan said Monday. “I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks.”
Will anybody care what judges think? Will Republican lawmakers?
Trump administration is outright refusing to be accountable
Not only did the Trump administration openly defy a federal judge’s order, but his Justice Department has now refused to answer questions during a hearing with Judge Boasberg on the ignored order.
Now, Trump is calling for the impeachment of the judge. I could write paragraphs on why impeachment is not the response to disagreement with a judge, but thankfully, Chief Justice Roberts wrote a rare statement against such action.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said.
Members of the Supreme Court have a strong tolerance for judicial disrespect before they feel the need to comment publicly, but Trump has struck a nerve this week, and Roberts felt the need to comment publicly.
Will Republican leaders?
Trump pushing boundaries of judicial checks on the president
Trump and his allies are pushing the boundaries of judicial oversight of the executive, and Americans should be worried about where this path leads.
The MAGA movement has not been shy about their contempt for judges, all the way up to Trump himself.
The open contempt for the judiciary stems from Trump’s first term, in which the judicial branch stifled his record-setting use of executive orders, hindering his ability to impose his agenda without Congress.
Now, in his second term, the same thing is happening, but Trump is more willing to take an adversarial position without traditional conservatives like Sen. Mitch McConnell advising him against doing so.
Trump and his cronies seem fully set on making sure judges don’t stop them or even slow them down. All while pretty much all elected Republicans are silent while he does so. Congress has refused to speak out against Trump's push into lawlessness thus far, and I'm not sure what the breaking point will be for them to admit what they know is wrong. Because what they're doing is wrong.
Even in the case of deporting gang members, due process matters. It ensures that mistakes were not made and that the government is not simply using alleged gang affiliation as a false pretense to deport. Utilizing the Alien Enemies Act eliminates that, and it's unclear whether its application is even proper in this case.
It's also unclear whether there would be any repercussions, or even criticism, from Republicans if Trump began ignoring other court decisions he didn't like. For now, the Republican Party is allowing the ends to justify the means, even if the ends and the means are potentially unlawful.
Pretty much all conservatives in this country, including myself, are in favor of action on illegal immigration, particularly related to gang activity. The difference is between those of us who will not allow the process to be thrown to the wind in the interest of swift unilateral action. The legal process still matters, even if abandoning it is in the name of a "good" action.
Even if you don’t think those suspected of gang affiliations deserve due process, it is a problem in itself that the Trump administration is blatantly ignoring court orders. Those who do not respect the ability of judges to halt executive action pending review have no respect for the checks on executive power that the judicial branch has.
The judiciary is meant to decipher the law, and there are processes through which that happens. If the Trump administration ignores rulings that allow those processes to play out, he is undermining the separation of powers.
Americans should worry about the brazen disregard for judicial rulings coming out of the Trump administration. Each time Republicans allow Trump to get away with such actions, it only emboldens him to take them further and further.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for Paste BN and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.