Politics
Trump Grows Increasingly Combative in Showdowns With the Courts
The Trump administration’s compliance with court orders started with foot-dragging, moved to semantic gymnastics and has now arrived at the cusp of outright defiance.
Large swaths of President Trump’s agenda have been tied up in court, challenged in scores of lawsuits. The administration has frozen money that the courts have ordered it to spend. It has blocked The Associated Press from the White House press pool despite a court order saying that the news organization be allowed to participate. And it ignored a judge’s instruction to return planes carrying Venezuelan immigrants bound for a notorious prison in El Salvador.
But Exhibit A in what legal scholars say is a deeply worrisome and escalating trend is the administration’s combative response to the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in the case of a Salvadoran immigrant. The administration deported the immigrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to El Salvador despite a 2019 ruling from an immigration judge specifically and directly prohibiting that very thing.
Until recently, none of this was in dispute. “The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal,” the Supreme Court said on Thursday in an unsigned and to all appearances unanimous order.
The justices upheld a part of an order from Judge Paula Xinis of the Federal District Court in Maryland that had required the government to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return. He had by then been held for almost a month in one of the most squalid and dangerous prisons on earth.
The administration’s response has been to quibble, stall and ignore requests for information from Judge Xinis. In an Oval Office meeting on Monday between Mr. Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, both men made plain that they had no intention of returning Mr. Abrego Garcia to the United States.
In remarks in the Oval Office and on television, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, said the administration’s earlier concessions, made by several officials and in a Supreme Court filing, were themselves mistaken, the work of a rogue lawyer. He added that the Supreme Court had unanimously endorsed the administration’s position that judges may not meddle in foreign policy.
Ed Whelan, a conservative legal commentator, said that was a misreading of the ruling.
“The administration is clearly acting in bad faith,” he said. “The Supreme Court and the district court have properly given it the freedom to select the means by which it will undertake to ensure Abrego Garcia’s return. The administration is abusing that freedom by doing basically nothing.”
White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The administration has also responded to court orders blocking its programs in other ways, speaking to audiences outside the courtroom. Mr. Trump and his allies have waged relentless rhetorical attacks on several judges who have ruled against the president, at times calling for their impeachment and at others suggesting that Mr. Trump is not bound by the law.
Assessing whether, when and how much the administration is defying the courts is complicated by a new phenomenon, legal scholars said, pointing to what they called a collapse in the credibility of representations by the Justice Department. These days, its lawyers are sometimes sent to court with no information, sometimes instructed to make arguments that are factually or legally baseless and sometimes punished for being honest.
Defiance, then, may not be a straightforward declaration that the government will not comply with a ruling. It may be an appearance by a hapless lawyer who has or claims to have no information. Or it may be a legal argument so outlandish as to amount to insolence.
Sanford Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas, said the Trump administration had exposed dual fault lines, in the constitutional structure and in the limits of permissible advocacy.
“I would like to think that at least some of the Trump administration’s arguments have crossed that line,” Professor Levinson said, “but, frankly, I don’t really know where the line is.”
Courts generally give government lawyers the benefit of the doubt, presuming that they are acting in good faith even when they make ambitious arguments for a broad conception of executive power.
“We are beyond that point,” said Marin Levy, a law professor at Duke. “It is alarming that we are even having to ask whether the government is failing to comply with court orders.”
Just hours after the Supreme Court ruled in Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case, Judge Xinis asked the government three questions on Thursday night: Where was Mr. Abrego Garcia being held? What steps had the government taken to get him home? And what additional steps did it plan to take?
At first, the administration’s lawyers refused to respond, saying in a court filing on Friday that they needed more time and at a hearing that day that they had no answers to the judge’s questions.
Judge Xinis wrote that they had “failed to comply with this court’s order,” and she called for daily updates, at 5 p.m., a deadline the administration has treated as a suggestion.
On Saturday, an administration official grudgingly acknowledged that “Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.” The official said nothing about what the government was doing to facilitate the prisoner’s return.
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have urged Judge Xinis to consider holding the government in contempt, a question she may consider at a hearing on Tuesday.
Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, said the administration was “certainly close to defiance in the Abrego Garcia case.”
“At the very least,” he said, “they are taking maximal advantage of possible ambiguity in the meaning of ‘facilitate.’ It is not plausible to interpret that term as meaning they need make no real effort.”
In a brief filed on Sunday, the administration argued that the Supreme Court’s requirement that it “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return meant only that it must “remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here.”
That argument, Michael Dorf, a law professor at Cornell, wrote in a blog post, “does not pass the laugh test.”
Still, last week’s Supreme Court decision gave the administration some room to maneuver, notably in instructing Judge Xinis to clarify her initial ruling “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” The decision added: “For its part, the government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”
The dispute seems certain to return to the justices if the administration sticks to its hard-line approach. Should lower courts order Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return or hold officials in contempt, the administration will surely again ask the Supreme Court to intervene. And if Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers cannot secure his return, they too will seek further help from the justices.
Other disputes have also raised questions about whether the administration is defying the courts. A district court judge in Washington, for instance, ordered the White House to back off from its stated policy of barring The Associated Press from its press pool. But the administration showed no signs of budging.
Last week, Judge Trevor McFadden ruled that the White House had discriminated against the wire service by using access to the president as leverage to compel its journalists to adopt the term “Gulf of America” in their coverage. When the outlet refused, the White House began to turn its reporters away from the pool of journalists who cover the president daily.
Until February, The A.P. and its competitors, such as Reuters and Bloomberg, reliably sent reporters to travel with the president on Air Force One and to cover exclusive events in the Oval Office and the East Room every day a president had scheduled public events.
Recognizing that the administration would most likely challenge his ruling, Judge McFadden put his decision on hold until Sunday, and the government promptly filed its appeal on Thursday. But the stay expired on Monday, and the appeals court did not intervene to keep it in place.
Even so, the administration did not allow either a print journalist or a photographer from The A.P. to be included in the pool to cover Monday’s events, including the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Bukele. The White House’s only acknowledgment of the deadline appeared to be in a filing on Monday asking the appeals court to restore the temporary stay.
The Trump administration has seemingly capitalized on confusion in other cases.
Long after judges ordered the administration to unfreeze funding from contracts and grants disbursed by U.S.A.I.D. and FEMA, contractors and states led by Democrats repeatedly reported that payments were still being held up. Twice in February, judges granted motions to enforce their orders, finding that the administration was dragging its feet.
The gap between lawyerly obstinacy and flat-out defiance seems to shrink by the day, at least in the lower courts. For now, neither the president nor the justices seem eager for the ultimate constitutional confrontation.
“If the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that,” Mr. Trump said on Friday. “I respect the Supreme Court.”
Zach Montague contributed reporting
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FIRST ON FOX: A Senate Republican wants to know the exact cost of a partial government shutdown as GOP and Democratic leaders are at an impasse to keep the government open.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, called on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to provide a detailed report on the sprawling impact that a partial government shutdown could have, including payments throughout the federal government and the possible broader economic impact.
The House GOP passed its short-term funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR) last week, but the bill was later blocked by Senate Democrats. For now, Republicans and Democrats in the upper chamber are at odds on a plan to keep the government open.
And the deadline to fund the government by Sept. 30 is fast-approaching.
TOP HOUSE DEM FIRES BACK AT TRUMP’S ‘UNHINGED’ SHUTDOWN REMARKS AMID COLLAPSE OF GOV FUNDING TALKS
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, called on the Congressional Budget Office to produce a report on the economic impact that a possible government shutdown could have. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Ernst, who chairs the Senate DOGE Caucus named after tech-billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, laid the fault of a potential shutdown on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in her letter to CBO Director Phillip Swagel.
“The same politicians who whined and complained about the Department of Government Efficiency laying off unnecessary bureaucrats just a few months ago are now forcing a government-wide shutdown themselves to expose who is and isn’t an essential employee,” she wrote.
Ernst requested a sweeping economic operational impact analysis from the agency, including how a shutdown could affect back pay costs for furloughed non-essential employees, military pay, congressional pay and the broader economic impact that the government closing could have on the private sector.
TRUMP CANCELS MEETING WITH SCHUMER, JEFFRIES OVER ‘RIDICULOUS DEMANDS’ AS FUNDING DEADLINE LOOMS
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks with reporters outside the Senate Chamber at the Capitol on Sept. 10, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Specifically, she wanted to know how businesses could be impacted by a temporary stoppage of government services, like loans, permits and certifications, and how companies and businesses could recoup losses after a shutdown ended.
She also wanted information on lost efficiencies in the government and the costs that could accrue from unfulfilled procurements or allowing contracts to lapse, and whether the burden of keeping national parks open would fall onto the states or if they’d be shuttered, too.
The CBO did provide an analysis of the cost of the last time the government shuttered in 2019, when Schumer and President Donald Trump were at odds on providing funding to construct a wall at the southern border. That 35-day shutdown was the longest in U.S. history, and no funding for a border wall was granted.
The report, published in January 2019, found that the shutdown saw roughly $18 billion in federal spending delayed, which led to a dip in that year’s first quarter gross domestic product of $8 billion. The report noted roughly $3 billion of that would not be recovered.
THUNE SLAMS DEMOCRATS’ ‘COLD-BLOODED PARTISAN’ TACTICS AS FUNDING DEADLINE NEARS
President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One in Arizona after arriving for the memorial service for political activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium, on Sept. 21, 2025 in Glendale, Arizona. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
It also found that federal workers who received delayed payments and private businesses were the hardest hit.
“Some of those private-sector entities will never recoup that lost income,” the report stated.
It remains unclear whether Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Schumer can strike a deal. After Trump canceled a planned meeting Tuesday with Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., both Democrats blamed the president for the looming shutdown.
However, Democrats’ asking price for a short-term funding extension is too high for Republicans.
They want permanent extensions to Affordable Care Act subsidies, a full repeal of the “big, beautiful bill”s health care title, which includes the $50 billion rural hospital fund, and a clawback of the canceled funding for NPR and PBS.
“Once again, Donald Trump has shown the American people he is not up to the job,” Schumer said. “It’s a very simple job: sit down and negotiate with the Democratic leaders and come to an agreement, but he just ain’t up to it. He runs away before the negotiations even begin.”
As one way to keep tabs on President Trump’s state of mind, I’m on his email fundraising lists. Lately his 79-year-old mind has seemed to be on his mortality.
“I want to try and get to heaven” has been the subject line on roughly a half-dozen Trump emails since mid-August. Oddly, one arrived earlier this month on the same day that the commander in chief separately posted on social media a meme of himself as “Apocalypse Now” character Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, satisfyingly surveying the hellish conflagration that his helicopters had wreaked, not on Vietnam but on Chicago. “Chipocalypse” was Trump’s warning to the next U.S. city that he might militarize.
Mixed messages, to be sure.
The president hasn’t limited his celestial contemplations to online outlets. “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he told the hosts of “Fox & Friends” in August, by way of explaining his (failed) effort to bring peace to Ukraine. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well.”
Well, Mr. President, here’s some advice: I don’t think you’ll get to heaven by wishing that many of your fellow citizens go to hell.
The disconnect between Trump’s dreams of eternal reward and his earthly avenging — against Democrat-run cities, political rivals, late-show hosts and other celebrity critics, universities, law firms, cultural institutions, TV networks and newspapers, liberal groups and donors, government employees, insufficiently loyal allies and even harmless protesters at a Washington restaurant — was rarely so evident as it was at the Christian revival that was Sunday’s memorial for the slain MAGA activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz.
Mere minutes after Erika Kirk, Kirk’s widow and successor as head of the conservative group Turning Point USA, had tearfully forgiven her husband’s accused killer, the president explicitly contradicted her with a message of hate toward his own enemies, and his continued determination to exact revenge.
Erika Kirk spoke of “Charlie’s mission” of engaging his critics and working “to save young men just like the one who took his life.” She recalled the crucified Christ absolving his executioners on Calvary, then emotionally added: “That young man. I forgive him.”
“I forgive him because it was what Christ did and what Charlie would do,” she said to applause. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer, we know from the Gospel, is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”
Then it was Trump’s turn.
Just one minute in, he called the 22-year-old suspect “a radicalized cold-blooded monster.” And throughout, despite investigators’ belief that the man acted alone, Trump reiterated for the umpteenth time since Kirk’s death that “radical left lunatics” — his phrase for Democrats — actually were responsible and that the Justice Department would round up those complicit for retribution.
Trump acknowledged that Charlie Kirk probably wouldn’t agree with his approach: “He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.” Then Teleprompter Trump went off script, reverting to real Trump and ad-libbing: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” He spat the word “hate” with venom. And he got applause, just as Erika Kirk had for a very different message.
Jesus counseled “turn the other cheek” to rebuke those who harm us. Trump boasts that he always punches back. “If someone screws you, screw them back 10 times harder,” he once said. Love your enemies, as Christ commanded in his Sermon on the Mount? Nah. You heard Trump in Arizona: “I hate my opponent.”
Trump might have some explaining to do when he seeks admittance at the pearly gates.
The Bible’s words aside, a president is supposed to be the comforter in chief after a tragedy and a uniter when divisions rend the American fabric. Think of President Clinton, whose oratory bridged partisan fissures after antigovernment domestic terrorists bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, and of President George W. Bush, who visited a mosque in Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in a healing gesture intended to blunt rising anti-Muslim reactions. (Later, of course, Bush would cleave the nation by invading Iraq based on a lie about its complicity.)
Trump, by contrast, is the inciter in chief. Just hours after Kirk’s death on Sept. 10, and before a suspect was in custody, he addressed the nation, blaming “radical left political violence.” He has repeated that indictment nearly every day since, though the FBI has reported for years — including during his first term — that domestic right-wing violence is the greater threat. “We have to beat the hell out of them,” Trump told reporters. When even one of his friends on “Fox & Friends” noted radicals are on the right as well, Trump replied: “I couldn’t care less. … The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible.”
All of this vituperation and vengeance suggests a big “what if”: What if Trump were more like Charlie Kirk? To ask is not to gloss over Kirk’s controversial utterances against Black Americans, gay and transgender Americans and others, but he did respectfully deal with those who disagreed with him — as he was doing when he was shot.
What if Trump, since 2016, had sincerely tried to broaden his political reach, as presidential nominees and presidents of each party historically did, to embrace his opponents and to compromise with them? What if he governed for all Americans and not just his MAGA voters? He might well have enacted bipartisan laws of the sort that Trump 1.0 promised on immigration, gun safety, infrastructure and more. In general we’d all be better off, less polarized.
And with a more magnanimous approach like that, Trump just might have a better chance at getting into heaven.
Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
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This is cobbled together from speaking to multiple sources on both sides of the Capitol.
The House is now aiming to vote Thursday on the “clean” interim spending bill which would fund the government through November 27. But Republicans must first get the bill through the House. Several senior House Republican sources said that they were still talking to the “usual suspects.” Republicans can only lose two votes pass a bill on their own. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) expressed confidence he could hold all of his Democrats together and oppose the bill. Jeffries said that will be the focus of a Democratic Caucus on Thursday.
TRUMP PRESSURES REPUBLICANS TO PASS A CONTINUING RESOLUTION TO AVERT A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
It is also still not a done deal that the House would move on Thursday. This could slip to Friday.
There is now the distinct possibility of a weekend session in the Senate, potentially Saturday.
Here’s why:
If the House approves the government funding package, this must go through two rounds of “cloture” to break a filibuster. That needs 60 yeas. It is advantageous to Senate Republicans to have the House approve the bill Thursday. If so, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) can file cloture to set up a test vote on Saturday. By rule, the Senate cannot take that test vote without an “intervening day.”
SCOOP: GOP RAMPS UP SHUTDOWN FIGHT, TARGETS 25 VULNERABLE DEMOCRATS IN NEW AD BLITZ
To wit:
Let’s say the House theoretically approves the bill on Thursday. Thune gets the bill on Thursday and files cloture to cut off debate and break a filibuster. Friday is the “intervening day.” That tees up a procedural vote just to get onto the bill (needing 60 yeas) on Saturday in the Senate.
A split image of President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune. ((Left) REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst, (Right) REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)
But if the House votes (and passes) the CR on Friday, none of this can happen until Sunday.
There’s the rub:
Multiple Senate Republicans want to attend Charlie Kirk’s funeral in Arizona on Sunday.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., right, joined by Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., center left, leads a vigil to honor conservative activist Charlie Kirk who was shot and killed at an event in Utah last week, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
So, a Saturday scenario is much better for the GOP.
Why not wait until Monday, you may ask?
GOP LAWMAKERS CLASH OVER STRATEGY TO AVERT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN CRISIS
Well, the Senate is scheduled to be out for Rosh Hashanah next week. Same with the House. Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown Monday and runs through nightfall Wednesday. So the Senate could punt and deal with next Thursday. However, the Senate also needs to take another procedural vote down the road if it could ever get 60 yeas (more on that in a moment) to finish the bill. So it may be helpful to do this sooner rather than later.
That said, one senior Senate GOP source suggested to Fox that the Senate could remain in session through Rosh Hashanah to deal with the procedural steps. That could be interpreted as a direct sleight to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the highest-ranking Jewish figure in American political history.
Former Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.V., wanted Republicans to win the Senate in 2024 to halt Democrats from getting rid of the Senate filibuster. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
Keep in mind, the government is funded through 11:59:59 pm et on September 30. So they have time. But the period is collapsed because of the scheduled recess next week.
Regardless, the Senate needs 60 yeas to break a filibuster. Republicans only have 53 votes in the Senate. 52 if Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) opposes an interim spending bill.
This is why Republicans are trying to blame a potential shutdown on the Democrats. And Democrats are saying they need something (likely a renewal of Obamacare subsidies) in exchange for their votes.
And there will likely be a lot more drama between now and the end of the month.
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