Politics
Defying courts in deportation case, Trump risks a tipping point, experts say
WASHINGTON — It was just the latest example of President Trump, still in the infancy of his second term, appearing to plow through direct orders from a U.S. court. But it was the sharpest moment yet of a federal judge losing patience.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had asked what the administration had done, if anything, to follow a ruling from the highest court in the land, and reached a stark conclusion.
“To date, nothing has been done,” Xinis told the Justice Department lawyer before her Tuesday. “Nothing.”
The Supreme Court had ordered the administration last week to “facilitate” the return of a Maryland resident named Armando Abrego Garcia, whom it had deported to a notorious El Salvador prison despite an earlier court order barring such a move.
The administration had defied that order and made no secret of it. On cable TV, through social media and from the Oval Office, the president and his allies were clear they had no intention to work toward Abrego Garcia’s return.
Still, Xinis’ concluding as much in court added fresh weight to a profound question swirling with increasing intensity in recent days among government officials and watchdogs, constitutional scholars, legal experts and worried members of the public: If the president refuses to abide by court rulings, then is the United States in a constitutional crisis?
If Trump won’t listen to the Supreme Court, is the entire U.S. system of governance — the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, due process under the law — at risk of faltering?
For some, the answer is an affirmative yes — the actions of the administration in the Abrego Garcia case a clear tipping point.
“There is no guarantee that President Trump will abide by his legal and constitutional obligations, and he has already shown a willingness to violate those obligations many times over,” said Jamal Greene, a constitutional law professor at Columbia University.
Others said that the risk is certainly there, but that legal nuance remains in the maneuverings of the Trump administration — enough to imagine a less fraught future in which the administration falls back in line as the courts make their directives in the Abrego Garcia case less ambiguous and harder to skirt using dubious but still barely defensible legal arguments.
Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law School, said the judiciary also still has tools at its disposal to enforce its rulings should Trump and his team continue defying court orders, and especially the Supreme Court.
For example, if a court issues an injunction “saying, ‘You can’t do this,’ ” and the administration does it anyway, the court can hold the administration in contempt. And, the U.S. Marshals Service, the law enforcement arm of the judicial branch, can be called upon to enforce the court’s orders, Weisberg said.
“So there are ways,” he said. “The Supreme Court has tools.”
A deportation with consequences for Trump
Either way, the case raises stark questions for a country already exhausted by a steady stream of unprecedented moves by the Trump administration and a mountain of lawsuits challenging them — on immigration enforcement, federal funding streams to the states, LGBTQ+ rights and school funding, among many issues.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has already sued the Trump administration more than a dozen times and expressed support for litigants suing the administration in at least half a dozen other cases. Other Democratic-led states have joined California in its cases.
Time and time again, courts have blasted the administration for violating the law — sometimes in flagrant ways. And in multiple instances, the administration has defied court instructions to reverse course, judges and litigants against the administration have said.
California has alleged that the administration has failed to unfreeze funding, including under the Federal Emergency Management Agency, despite court orders for it to do so. Associated Press journalists continued to be barred from White House functions after a judge ordered they be allowed back in. The Trump administration balked at another court order that it return immigrants who had been loaded onto a plane for deportation, arguing that the plane was already in the air and out of the judge’s jurisdiction.
Still, the Abrego Garcia case and an Oval Office meeting partially about it between Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Monday have ratcheted up fears of a recalcitrant Trump unafraid of defying the courts when they attempt to check him or his policies.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen and sheet metal worker living in Maryland, had been arrested years ago while looking for work outside of a Home Depot in Maryland. A judge had determined in 2019 that he should not be deported to El Salvador because he would be in danger there from a local gang, allowing him to remain in the country.
However, Abrego Garcia was detained last month on claims by the administration that he is a member of the MS-13 gang, and then deported along with other detainees to a notorious prison in El Salvador. His family, denying the gang allegations, sued in response, alleging that his rights had been violated and that the administration had broken the law and the previous judge’s decision allowing him to remain in the country.
The case moved swiftly up through the courts.
‘Facilitate’ vs. ‘effectuate’?
When it was first before Xinis, she found that the evidence of Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang affiliation was slim — amounting to a tip from an informant that he’d worn Chicago Bulls apparel associated with the gang — and that the government had wrongfully removed him from the country. Xinis then ordered the Trump administration to both “facilitate” and “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.
The Trump administration appealed that ruling, resulting in a terse unsigned decision by the Supreme Court on Thursday that required the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, but not “effectuate” it.
The high court said the “intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’” was unclear and may exceed the district court’s authority in the matter, and called on Xinis to clarify her directive “with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers claimed the ruling as a victory and a clear directive to that administration that it have him returned to the U.S. The Trump administration, however, claimed a victory as well.
“As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the president to conduct foreign affairs,” a Department of Justice spokesperson said. “By directly noting the deference owed to the executive branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy.”
Xinis followed the Supreme Court’s ruling by issuing another of her own, calling again on the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. That set up the Oval Office meeting Monday, where Trump and Bukele insisted they were not going to bring Abrego Garcia home.
In what some legal observers saw as an absurd twist of logic, Trump administration officials said they would supply the plane to return Abrego Garcia if only El Salvador would allow it, while Bukele said El Salvador could not possibly return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. because doing so would amount to smuggling a terrorist into an allied territory.
“Of course, I’m not going to do it,” he said. “The question is preposterous.”
In the same meeting, Trump said “the homegrowns are next” — a clear insinuation that he wants to send American citizens to Salvadoran prisons next, in clear violation of American law.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, speaks at an April 4 news conference.
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
During Tuesday’s hearing before Xinis, the Trump administration made it clear that it took an extremely narrow view of what facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return requires.
“If Abrego Garcia presents himself at a port of entry, we will facilitate his entry to the United States,” said Drew Ensign, an attorney for the Justice Department. Ensign also submitted a transcript of the Oval Office meeting, suggesting the case had clearly been “raised at the highest level.”
Xinis was unmoved, demanding documentation of the administration’s actions in recent days. Legal experts said the order could set the stage for Xinis to find the Trump administration in contempt of court. And that could raise new questions about the power of the court to hold the administration to account — and whether it has any teeth in the event the administration pushes back.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law, said it’s questionable whether the Justice Department or the U.S. marshals would help to enforce any criminal or civil contempt orders against the administration or any of its actors.
“The question is, do we have the guardrails for our Constitution to survive?” Chemerinsky said. “‘We don’t know’ is the only answer anyone can give. You can play it out, and it’s very frightening.”
If Trump was given a very clear, unambiguous order from the courts and openly declared that the administration would not comply, the country would be in an extremely dangerous position, Chemerinsky said.
And if he won out in that scenario — wasn’t stopped by Congress or the courts or anyone else — “then the president can do anything,” Chemerinsky added. He could violate other constitutional laws and court orders and “literally lock up anybody, any dissident,” without fear of repercussions.
“Of course then the reality is this is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship,” Chemerinsky said.
‘Crisis is here’
Democrats in Congress have been sounding similar alarms, with some arguing that Trump has already crossed the line into authoritarian behavior — and thrust the country into a constitutional crisis.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote in a post to X late Monday: “The constitutional crisis is here.”
The post also included a nearly six-minute video in which Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, attempted to explain the complicated Abrego Garcia case, the administration’s actions in it, and why they put the country in crisis.
“It’s a constitutional crisis because the administration is under a court order to return this wrongfully deported man to the United States. To facilitate his return,” Schiff said. “And far from taking any step to facilitate his return, in that meeting in the White House, Donald Trump essentially told the Supreme Court to pound sand.
“Nowhere in that entire meeting does the president of the United States ask the president of El Salvador to return the man wrongly sent to a maximum security prison in his country,” Schiff said. “It just never happens.”
Schiff said the president, through his actions, had “taken a very determined step toward dictatorship.”
Chemerinsky agreed that the days of wondering whether the U.S. is in a constitutional crisis were over.
He said the U.S. is “clearly in a constitutional crisis” both because of the “quantity of unconstitutional things that have been done” by the Trump administration that show Trump “has no respect for constitutional law,” and because of the extreme actions and recalcitrance of the administration in the Abrego Garcia case in particular.
“It could get worse, but that doesn’t minimize that we’re in one now,” he said.
Chemerinsky said it was clearly illegal under U.S. law for the administration to defy a court order and send a person to a notorious El Salvador prison without due process. And the administration’s claim now that it cannot bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. because he is under the control of a foreign government simply “has to be wrong” in a land of laws, he said.
“It’s nothing less than a claim of the power to put any human being in a foreign prison,” he said. “That’s the authority to create a gulag.”
President Trump has promoted a chain of newly rebranded gas stations across the Philadelphia area with lower gas prices. The New York Times has not been able to get detailed information about who is behind the stations. The Trump administration says it did not fund or subsidize the company.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Kelley Paul is no stranger to the American political scene. As the wife of Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and the daughter-in-law of longtime former Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), she has seen her fair share of the campaign trail, emerging as a powerful surrogate during her husband’s 2016 presidential run.
She is also an accomplished writer, speaker, and public relations professional. As America ushers in its 250th anniversary, Paul saw the perfect opportunity to branch out into the world of children’s literature. Recently she sat down with Fox News Digital in Las Vegas at Freedom Fest to discuss her new book, “Good Night, Young American.”
Kelley Paul is the wife of Sen. Rand Paul and author of two books. (Courtesy Kelley Paul)
Paul credits her family for giving her the inspiration for the new project:
“I have to give a lot of credit to my daughter-in-law, Kate. She and our son were over for dinner last summer with our grandson, who was only six months old at the time. And Kate was like, you know, we need more patriotic books for babies. She wasn’t really happy with a lot of the book options she was seeing. And that night at dinner, we kind of played around with some ideas. And I came up with ‘Good Night Young American.’ And a year later, here it is.”
EXCLUSIVE: RAND AND KELLEY PAUL OPEN UP ABOUT 2016 RACE
“Good Night, Young American,” recommended for children ages 4–8, takes kids on a visually and thematically engaging journey through early and colonial history.
“Well, our revolutionary history is such a great adventure, right? So when I came up with the concept that my little boy would start out on the 4th of July with his parents, asking, what is it all about? I knew we’d be celebrating the 250th. Kids ask, what are we really celebrating?
And his dad describes the Declaration of Independence to him in the signing. So I tried to think what is going to appeal to children in this great adventure of our revolution. So when he falls asleep that night, he’s in the crow’s nest of the Mayflower. He is a pilgrim, he’s a colonist, and then he makes friends with all the great revolutionary heroes that we know. So he makes friends with Sam Adams, he joins the Sons of Liberty, he meets at the Green Dragon. This is so exciting for children, right?
It’s visual stuff. He makes friends with Ben Franklin, and he’s flying the kite. Dramatically rides on the midnight ride with Paul Revere. He and his dog, his little dog, are with him for all the adventures. And of course, he crosses the Delaware with George Washington. And I wanted to make the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the writing of it something that was dynamic and exciting visually. So I have him swinging on the Liberty Bell when the declaration is signed.”
Paul worked closely with the illustrator, Marika Monesi, to bring the events of America’s founding to life in an engaging and visually appealing way for children.
The Liberty Bell, originally saved from the British by Lynnport farmer Frederick Leaser, sits in its Philadelphia shrine. (iStock)
“She really captured the excitement on the little boy’s face, his personality, but I worked very close with her,” Paul said. “I wanted there to be a lot of movement, a lot of dynamic images. So, for example, with the Liberty Bell, for kids, a bunch of men standing around writing a document…I wanted to bring it to life. So I said, let’s have him running up to the top of the bell tower in Philadelphia at Freedom Hall and swinging on the Liberty Bell. And she was just such a great artist. With the George Washington scenes, he’s crossing the Delaware because that, again, is so visual. I wanted drive home to children the incredible bravery and courage of our founders, how cold and miserable and hard that war was.
“Also, I love the illustration that she did of the King of England reading the Declaration of Independence. I have to give my husband Rand a little credit there. On the first couple of drafts that she did, Rand was like, ‘He needs to be fatter. King George was famously fat!’ So it was a lot of fun. It was very collaborative.”
KELLEY PAUL ‘EXHAUSTED AND ANGRY’ THAT THOSE WHO HARASSED HER AND HER HUSBAND FACE NO CHARGES
Part of Paul’s motivation for the book was related to the teaching of American history today, and the controversies therein:
“I do think that we’ve gotten away from really celebrating our founders and our heroes. What they were doing in 1776 was incredibly radical, if you think about it. At that time, everyone accepted the divine right of kings. Everyone accepted hereditary rule. And our founders took Enlightenment ideas from John Locke and philosophers, and they turned it into the framework for a government. The idea of self-government and that our rights come from our Creator, that we have inalienable rights that are given to us by God and not from a king. Those were radical ideas of the time.
Historians say an early draft of the Declaration of Independence offered new insight into how Thomas Jefferson refined the nation’s founding document. (Stock Montage/Stock Montage/Getty Images)
I like to say our founders were the first civil rights heroes, the first civil libertarians. And I think our education system has gotten away from that. They don’t view them in the time that they existed, and suddenly now everything is oppressor versus oppressed narrative. And they are labeled more like colonizers or enslavers, and that’s the only view that they’re looked at, and not as human beings who sacrificed their very lives to write the Declaration of Independence, to form this country…it was an incredible, bold, and courageous act, but it was also an act of moral courage and philosophical courage.”
Ultimately, Paul hopes that her books will stimulate the natural curiosity of America’s youth to learn more about their rich history:
Participants carry the City of Cumberland’s “America 250” parade banner down Baltimore Street during the America 250 parade in downtown Cumberland, Maryland, on June 27, 2026. Spectators line both sides of the street as American and Maryland flags lead the procession. (Fox News Digital/ David Marcus)
“Well, I hope that my books, especially with America’s 250, will spark a lot of questions and that they will give a framework for parents to talk to their kids about the founding of this country. And I hope children from a very, very young age will come away with this idea that they are a part of America’s story, that they as Americans can take pride in the heroism of our revolutionary founders. That as Americans, this is all of our story. So that’s really my goal with the books.”
One of the biggest challenges Paul faced was taking big ideas that may be hard for a four or five-year-old to grasp, like the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and distilling them down into an accessible format for kids:
“Well, I try to use language that kids could understand, and very much use simple terms. But if you think about it, it is simple. Our rights come from God. And when he makes friends with Thomas Jefferson, he says, Thomas Jefferson has written this amazing document that says that we can all be free to live our lives the way we choose, and no government can take our rights to, you know, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness away from us.
He also talks about James Madison and the Bill of Rights and the most important right is freedom of speech. That is that no government can tell you what to say or what not to say.”
Rand Paul, who famously puts Constitutional principles front and center in the public square, also played a key role in the book’s thematic development.
Kelley Paul and her husband Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul. (Courtesy Kelley Paul)
“Rand has been incredibly supportive. I’m just so grateful and blessed to have had an amazing, now 36-year marriage to Rand Paul. And he was very involved. He would read over the drafts and gave me a lot of, like I said, good advice about things in history that he thought I should include.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
And I’m also just very grateful to be the daughter-in-law of Ron Paul. And so, I wanted these books to be there for our little grandson who I call ‘my favorite little American’ and help him from an early age be educated in the legacy that, the Paul family has in this country.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump dismissed all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission this week, his latest move to assert control over national elections in the final months before midterm voting.
The White House defended the move as justified by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the president greater authority to reshape independent government agencies, including by replacing appointed leaders.
Democrats and some independent elections experts blasted it as politically motivated, counter to the interests of voters and foolhardy with the November election so close.
“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections.
Padilla alleged the dismissals are an attempt by Trump “to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure.”
A White House official framed the dismissals in starkly different terms, saying the departing commissioners were “not totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.” It did not say when the president planned to appoint new commissioners.
The four-member commission was created by Congress in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act to help states improve their voting systems and voter access. By law, no more than two commissioners may belong to the same political party.
Historically, it has provided voluntary guidance and best practices for voting systems, and served as a sort of clearinghouse for election performance around the country — so that states and localities can learn from one another.
Since 2018, the panel has also disbursed more than $1 billion in election security grants, according to a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Those grants are then used to protect IT systems from foreign and domestic cyberattacks, update voting systems, ensure the accuracy of voter rolls and protect the integrity of ballots after they are cast.
Without leadership, the panel cannot take any official action until new members are nominated and confirmed by the Senate.
Benjamin W. Hovland, one of the Democratic commissioners removed by Trump, told NBC News that taking away a key federal agency designed to help state and local election administrators will have a negative effect on already strained elections officials.
“When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen,” he said.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, in a statement to The Times, said Trump was “injecting unnecessary chaos, confusion and instability into the very systems that Americans rely on to make their voices heard,” but that California “will not be intimidated or deterred” from maintaining elections “in which everyone can fairly and securely participate.”
California Atty. Gen Rob Bonta — whose office has already blocked federal agencies from implementing most of Trump’s election orders in court — called Trump’s firings “deeply troubling,” and said his office “will continue to closely monitor any efforts to weaken our democracy and fight back with every tool at our disposal.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X that “Newsom’s election protection efforts become more important by the day” — a reference to his recent push for state legislation that would make it a felony in California for anyone to seize ballots before a vote has been certified.
Newsom had said Thursday that Trump’s efforts to seize control over elections represented a “five-alarm fire” that must be confronted.
Trump’s dismantling of the commission comes as he wages a much broader campaign to rewrite voting rules. He has sought to place new restrictions on mail ballots, to tighten voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements for voters, to subject state voter rolls to federal oversight and purges, and to assert federal control over how and whether the U.S. Postal Service delivers mail ballots.
Much of that agenda, pushed through executive orders and other administrative actions, has been stymied by the courts, while stalling out in Congress, where it lacks support.
Whether Trump’s move to dismantle and reconstitute the commission will prove an effective path to instituting his election agenda remains unclear, experts said.
David Becker, the executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the election commission has always had a “very limited mandate,” can’t dictate policy to the states and has no law enforcement powers — meaning Trump’s dismissals will have little real effect on elections.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, wrote that Trump could try to illegally direct the commission to “do his bidding” by amending the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship — though that would also have limited effect and would be challenged in court.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trump’s firing of the commissioners was part of a broader effort by the president to “sow distrust in our voting system so he can contest the results if they are not to his liking.”
Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said California has “the most robust standards” for elections in the country, which won’t change with the removal of the commissioners.
Still, she said word of the firings rocketed around a conference of county elections officials in San Diego on Thursday — with some wondering whether the dismissals would threaten federal election funding, and others lamenting the loss of the ousted commissioners’ deep experience.
Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said in a statement to The Times that “any sudden change to the support structure for elections in the middle of an election cycle is concerning,” but that California “has a strong local and state foundation for election administration and voting systems support, and that will minimize any potential disruption caused by this action.”
In recent months, Trump has leveraged federal agencies to overhaul the nation’s voting rules in ways no previous president has attempted.
He has repeatedly pressured Republican lawmakers to pass a federal law that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, show identification when casting a ballot and force states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.
Republican leaders have said the proposed SAVE America Act does not have enough votes to pass in the Senate. The GOP resistance has angered Trump, who on Friday said he was refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill in protest.
The housing bill, which Trump called a “big yawn” last month, was to become law at midnight Friday without Trump’s signature.
-
New Hampshire1 minute agoMan From Northwood Arrested On Driving Under The Influence Charge: Concord Police Log
-
New Jersey3 minutes agoNJ firefighter dies after crash responding to fire call
-
New Mexico14 minutes agoIsolated storm chances continue for parts of New Mexico this weekend
-
North Carolina16 minutes agoA 4-year-old boy’s simple habit of waving to his neighbors transformed his North Carolina community
-
North Dakota21 minutes agoWest Fargo attorney named to North Dakota Ethics Commission
-
Ohio29 minutes agoStruggling Ohio county seeks funds to care for 16 kids rescued from squalor and prosecute their family
-
Oklahoma32 minutes agoMartha Lillard, last US polio patient using iron lung, dies at 78 in Oklahoma
-
Oregon37 minutes agoGreater Idaho effort seeks federal help as Oregon lawmakers keep border plan stalled
