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
Politics
Mamdani ripped for claiming victory over capitalism after NYC’s multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout
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New York City’s mayor is again under fire after spewing outlandish claims that his socialist policies are to credit for a balanced budget in the Big Apple, just after the city received a multi-billion dollar bailout from the state.
“In January, our administration inherited a $12 billion budget deficit — a fiscal crisis greater than the Great Recession,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a Tuesday post on X announcing that the debt had been cleared.
“We balanced the budget by taxing the rich and making government more efficient,” Mamdani continued. “We did not balance this budget on the backs of working people, and we never will.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a primary-night watch party for NYC Congressional candidate Claire Valdez at 99 Scott Studio on June 23, 2026 in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
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But the real reason the budget it balanced is because the city was handed $1.5 billion by the state of New York in January — funded by working class taxpayers across the state — as part of a multi-year plan to bail out the fiscally-challenged city. In late May, the city received another $4 billion.
Of the combined $8 billion provided to the city’s bailout fund under former Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure and now Mamdani’s mayorship, $5 billion was directly earmarked for the city to address fiscal measures. This includes allowing city government to defer pension contributions to close the budgetary gap.
Mamdani’s claims about socialist policies producing results — and his failure to mention the massive bailouts provided by taxpayer dollars — did not fly on social media.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul holds media availability press conference and makes an announcement on abortion rights at the office on 633 3rd Avenue. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT
“This is a lie,” independent journalist Nick Shirley said in a reply to the mayor.
“You balanced the budget by borrowing billions from the NY state government which pushed back pension payments, so you literally took money from ‘the backs of hardworking people.’ Don’t get it twisted,” he added.
Commentator and journalist Nick Sortor also flamed the mayor over the loan and his classification of the bailout.
“Are you saying New Yorkers can ‘balance their budgets’ by taking out massive credit card loans?” he asked sarcastically.
Independent journalist Nick Shirley sat down for an interview with Riley Gaines as part of the launch of Outkick’s “The Riley Gaines Show.” (OutKick)
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“Mamdani balanced the budget by taking money from Albany, who in turn taxed Rochester and Buffalo” another social media user said. “That’s who is paying for all of Mamdani’s free crap.”
In a press conference earlier in the day, Mamdani claimed victory over capitalism.
“Throughout this process I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: ‘if socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.’”
A man sleeps on the E train, one of the subway lines most utilized by homeless New Yorkers for shelter, in Queens, New York, on Monday, April 7, 2025. (Victor J. Blue for The Washington Post/Getty Images)
After the Republican National Convention (RNC) posted that clip, Mamdani also faced ridicule for that.
“It always looks good at first until the chickens come home to roost,” one person replied.
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“He’ll soon ‘deliver’ bread lines instead,” said another.
Mamdani’s office did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Politics
Commentary: The sad inevitability of Justice Alito’s birthright citizenship dissent
In 1913, Antonino Alati left southern Italy to find a better life in a land where many people regarded him as little better than scum.
He joined millions of his fellow countrymen in the United States, where the press vilified Italians as poor, swarthy, violent Catholics who had too many babies, refused to assimilate and could never possibly be considered “white.”
Politicians were already working to shut the door on them. A congressional report released two years before Alati’s arrival cited southern Italians as evidence that “the new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old.” They came to the U.S., the report asserted, “with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country.”
Alati wouldn’t let bigotry win. He soon sent for his wife and children, including his infant son Salvatore. Alati turned to Alito, Salvatore became Samuel. A generation later, the family had a Supreme Court justice in Samuel A. Alito Jr. — the second Italian American, after Antonin Scalia, to sit on the highest court in the land.
During his 2005 confirmation hearings, Alito praised his father as an “extraordinary man who came to the United States as a young child and overcame many difficulties” to ensure a better life for him and his sister. By then, Italian Americans were established as an essential part of this country’s fabric, from music to politics to food.
It’s the most American of tales — which is why it’s so surprising, yet not, to read Alito’s blistering dissent in the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision rejecting President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.
If there’s one constant in this country besides death and taxes, it’s how quickly descendants of immigrants, and sometimes immigrants themselves, forget how loathed their ethnic group was and how they proved the haters wrong. Too many become uncharitable to the policies that helped them and the immigrants who followed.
But Alito’s stance against birthright citizenship goes beyond just forgetting his roots. His 39-page opinion describes the supposed impact of undocumented migrants on the U.S., using words — “overran,” “soared,” “exploded,” “massive,” “a stream,” “huge” — that read like the same invective used against Italians in his grandfather and father’s time.
The justice channels anti-Italian conspiracies of the past by casting doubt on the national allegiances of the U.S.-born children of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants — the same patriotism test that Italian Americans faced generations ago when xenophobes questioned their Catholicism. Alito claims without evidence that millions of agricultural workers were able to apply for American citizenship after President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty “at least in part because of fraud” — a charge also leveled against Italians who sought to naturalize back in the day.
And so it goes, each passage a jumbled argument dressed up in judicial interpretations largely rejected by his fellow Catholic Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Coney Barrett signed on to the majority opinion that Roberts wrote, and Kavanaugh concurred.
Rev. William Barber II speaks during a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1 while justices heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship.
(Al Drago / Getty Images)
I know how quickly families forget their own immigrant histories. Yet I look at people like Alito and wonder how they ended up thinking the way they do, because I could never imagine doing the same.
My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to parents who fled their home country during the Mexican Revolution, becoming an American citizen by birthright. My father, who crossed the border in the trunk of a Chevy, legalized his status in an era when it was far easier to do so.
Like Alito’s paisanes, my Mexican family was also demonized for supposedly being insufficiently American and posing a threat to national unity. They also sacrificed their own dreams so their children and grandchildren could achieve theirs.
And just like Alito, some members of my family have forgotten our history and support Trump or favor some of his immigration policies, dismissing new arrivals as criminals or lazy. That’s why I will always side with undocumented people and welcome anyone who gives birth in this country with the hope that their newborn finds a better life.
It seems from his dissent that Alito somewhat agrees with me. He posits that millions of Americans who were born in this country to parents without papers “have a strong moral claim to be able to remain in the land where they grew up.” Congress “can and should address their situation,” he writes.
The justice blasts birth tourism, where women from China and other countries travel to the U.S. to have a baby, then return home, benefiting from our generosity and offering nothing in return.
I agree that’s a mockery of what being an American should be and ruins it for people who want to contribute to building a better nation. But Alito throws out the baby with the bathwater by failing to recognize that Trump’s attempt to erase birthright citizenship via executive order is presidential overreach based on bigotry, not rule of law. He’d rather cut up the Constitution to spite something he doesn’t like. Thank God his side lost, yet it’s sad that Trump’s pathetic attempt to define who can be an American went as far as it did.
Alito concludes by stating that the court’s decision to uphold the 14th Amendment is “a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future.”
What new immigrants might inflict on this country is the perpetual worry of immigration restrictionists — and yet history keeps proving them wrong. Alito’s family did; so did mine. Only in these United States can the progeny of people once portrayed as parasites and invaders side with those making the same argument about the latest batch of newcomers.
History will see Alito’s vote for what it is: a forsaking of the promise his family once fulfilled, to support the people who never wanted them here in the first place.
Politics
Socialism goes west as DSA-backed challenger ousts longtime Democrat
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Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., a 30-year incumbent, lost to a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed challenger in a high-profile primary on Tuesday evening.
Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old socialist, defeated DeGette in a Democratic primary for a deep-blue House seat anchored in Denver, according to The Associated Press, scoring a major victory for the socialist left on Tuesday evening.
The DSA had been aiming to cast DeGette’s loss as evidence of its growing momentum after a slate of socialist candidates won Democratic primaries in New York City last week.
“Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West,” the DSA wrote in a social media post last week.
Rep. Diana DeGette speaks during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 10, 2024. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
SOCIALISTS CHEER ‘SHOCKWAVE’ PRIMARY NIGHT AS DSA-BACKED CANDIDATES WIN, ADVANCE ACROSS THE MAP
If elected in November, Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia, will likely join the ranks of the far-left group known as the Squad and become one of a handful of the House chamber’s outspoken socialists.
The millennial challenger was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the anti-incumbent leftist organization Justice Democrats. Controversial socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who has said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel and praised the Chinese Communist Party, also backed Kiros’ insurgent primary run.
DeGette, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sought to win a 16th House term by flexing her leftist bona fides. She argued her seniority on an influential House committee would allow her to push for Medicare-for-All legislation — a longtime priority of the party’s far-left flank.
DeGette, who was endorsed by former CPC Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., also spotlighted her experience as an impeachment manager during Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.
Though DeGette and Kiros shared few policy disagreements, they diverged sharply over Israel and antisemitism. Kiros also sharply criticized DeGette for accepting corporate PAC contributions.
Kiros, a PhD student and lawyer, was fired from a New York firm in 2023 after publishing an open letter, arguing that pro-Palestinian student protesters calling for the elimination of Israel were not antisemitic and appearing to defend Hamas.
Melat Kiros participated in a League of Women Voters Congressional District 1 candidate forum at Montview Presbyterian Church in Denver on May 28, 2026. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post)
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She has also described the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against the Jewish state as the “inevitable consequence of apartheid” and declined to characterize the deadly firebombing of protesters in Boulder last year who were urging the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza as antisemitic.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros told Colorado’s 9News in a recent television interview. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.”
A June 2025 bipartisan resolution condemning the attack as part of a “rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals” won every present lawmaker’s support, except for Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who voted present.
Kiros has also suggested the United States deserved 9/11.
“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” Kiros told 9News when asked if she thought the terror attack was “the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.”
“And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros continued.
DeGette argued that Kiros’ embrace of Piker and her comments about antisemitism and 9/11 were disqualifying.
“I’m shocked and disgusted that Kiros is doubling down on excusing terrorism and the murder of innocent people,” the 30-year incumbent wrote on Facebook earlier this month.
Streamer and creator Hasan Piker speaks at a press conference during day two of Web Summit Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, Canada, on May 13, 2026. (Sam Barnes/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images)
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Colorado’s 1st Congressional District is the most liberal seat in the state and voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris by 56 points in 2024.
The primary fight was further scrambled by University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, also running for DeGette’s seat. Though James did not pose the same threat as Kiros, her vote share could ultimately have swayed the contest.
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