33 Comments
User's avatar
Ashley Archuleta's avatar

Thanks for this piece, Gabe. I appreciate your acknowledgement that Trump's team is openly mocking judicial rulings, even if it's up to technical questioning on whether the ruling was followed (it seems pretty clear to me that it wasn't). The Trump admin's constant questioning of judicial orders already puts us into a deeply precarious spot - I fear we'll only continue to move the goal posts as long as Trump's supporters continue to back him.

Expand full comment
Kirsten's avatar

Gabe, thanks for the careful breakdown of what's happening! I appreciate your research and writing. I've come to depend on your newsletter for clear reporting!

Expand full comment
Michael Kupperburg's avatar

I await the Judges ruling. Does he charge the lawyers for not showing up? Does he charge them for flaunting the law. Does he fine them? If he gets seriously enough upset, could he send their names to the ABA or some similar forum for them to be disbarred? Just how far he goes will tell to some extent where this goes.

Expand full comment
Fletcher Bolsover's avatar

Does it make any common sense for one judge's ruling apply to the entire nation???

Expand full comment
Michael Kupperburg's avatar

Good question.

Have long thought that the Judge's decision, should be limited to at the most the Court of Appeals jurisdiction, in which their judgeship lies. That way their Court of Appeals, could always either remove it, allow it, or extend it to a nationwide injunction or other stay. That would require at least three judges and perhaps an embank of the entire Court of Appeals to form a final judgement, prior to it going to the Supreme Court.

It could also be limited to the jurisdiction of the particular district judge. These are thoughts that are possible but yet to be decided on by the courts, especially the Supreme Court.

Expand full comment
Fletcher Bolsover's avatar

Thanks for your comment Michael. My son is a CA lawyer and I have asked him for his take on this issue.

Expand full comment
Michael Kupperburg's avatar

Would be interested in they are anything close to each. While am not a lawyer, for a short time was a paralegal, which is way below where a junior lawyer would be. Thank you for your reply as well as your question.

Expand full comment
Carol's avatar

As a person who is on the fringes of understanding everything that is currently going on....... What happens if we enter into the realm of Constitutional Crisis? Who decides? Then what happens? It certainly appears that Trump/Musk will continue to do what they want and anyone opposed are ignored. Even if the court says to do/not do something they still go forward with what they want. So are we a half a step away from him having total rule?

Expand full comment
Libby Thompson's avatar

The question isn't if there will be a Constitutional crisis but when. The Administration has been teeing it up since January. Its actions to date and this weekend amount to more than mere non-compliance, or even wilful non-compliance with judicial order. More like premeditated intentional non-compliance. This weekend's events had to have been researched and planned well in advance of their execution. (I imagine Bondi sending her minions to the law library with orders to "find me some ancient statue without a lot of case law"). Timing had to be particularly important to raise issues regarding logistics and locations of flights, etc.

Anyway, the challenge now is to anticipate what misinterpreted power Trump will improperly invoke to achieve his next illegal purpose. Will that be The One?

BTW, Thoughts on the deportation of Prof. Alawieh?

Expand full comment
Barbara Fox's avatar

Also, is there a precedent for Trump to undo Biden presidential pardons. ?

Expand full comment
Fletcher Bolsover's avatar

The Biden pardons were not signed by him. Anyone in his administration could have used the signature "machine" to pardon anyone they chose to "forgive".

Expand full comment
Barbara Fox's avatar

Nevermind

Expand full comment
Megan Bowles's avatar

Hi Gabe, … the information we have so far strongly suggests that the Trump administration opted to ignore the judge’s order, either because they thought it was excessive or because the planes had already left U.S. airspace. (Even though one of the flights believed to be carrying Venezuelans under the proclamation did not leave U.S. airspace until after the order was issued.)

Gabe, I appreciate your work very much. I wonder that you venture to describe the thoughts of the Trump administration as being either one or the other of two thoughts. They may justify their actions with those arguments, but they may be thinking other things about it.

Expand full comment
chrisattack's avatar

Lots of prior EOs related to invasions, national states of emergency, etc. and the use of "pursuant to other authorities" will ultimately remove this from being a constitutional crisis. The big question: Is this yet another hill Ds have chosen to die on? Venezuelan thugs?

Expand full comment
Neil Hansen's avatar

The Bill of Rights is not supposed to apply only to popular groups.

Expand full comment
Barbara Fox's avatar

What happened to due process.

Expand full comment
Tim Brosnahan's avatar

Hi Gabe

Stalin once famously said ""The Pope! How many divisions has he got?" If the courts ultimately say that Trump/Musk and Co are doing things that are illegal "how many law enforcement officials" do the courts have? I'm only half joking -- With seemingly the entire government in thrall to Trump/Musk who would enforce court orders? We may soon have to face up to that question.

Expand full comment
Rosemary Ford's avatar

It is common for judges to stay their orders allowing the disappointed party to appeal. There is no evidence that any of these deportees were put in physical jeopardy or could not be returned to status quo ante or even be afforded whatever process they were due in El Salvador. With Trump, there always appears to be an inclination to ratchet up the issue.

Expand full comment
Fletcher Bolsover's avatar

Exactly - the ratchet tightens for anything Trump says/does/suggests over the past ten years.

Expand full comment
David G's avatar

When Biden continued student loan forgiveness after the Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional, wasn’t that a constitutional crisis?

Expand full comment
David G's avatar

I think you are grabbing at straws. There is no constitutional crisis, Trump is acting within his bounds as President and chief law enforcement officer of the United States. Activist judges are trying to stop him. It will eventually be decided one way or another by the Supreme Court. Very insightful analysis 😊

Expand full comment
David G's avatar

I’m sorry, there is no constitutional crisis

Expand full comment
Jennifer Zeni's avatar

I have been having a lot of trouble finding reliable information about whether trans women are still being moved to men's prisons, despite the court orders saying that they can't be, but wouldn't that have already moved us past your "constitutional crisis" point? Regardless of the exact timing on this case, it seems we are already there... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/07/transgender-women-prison-trump

Expand full comment
Gabe Fleisher's avatar

Hi Jennifer — I would want to do more research on the specific case before making a flat determination, but just from reading the article you sent, it sounds like the headline (while technically correct) is somewhat misleading. As the article says: “Lawyers fighting Trump’s directive say the court rulings prevented the transfers of 17 trans women who are plaintiffs in the cases, but others not included in the litigation are now facing placements in men’s facilities.”

That would suggest that, while the headline is technically right that transfers are taking place “despite rulings against Trump’s order” in other cases, they are *not* taking place despite rulings that specifically implicate the inmates in question. This is actually adjacent to a question that will likely come up in the case I discussed today: the judge’s written order appears to apply to all Venezuelans under the proclamation as a class, but the oral order is less clear. The Trump admin underlined that none of the five plaintiffs themselves were removed, which suggests they may try to argue that the oral order only applied to those five, not to the entire class (just as the rulings in the transgender inmates case appear to apply only to specific plaintiffs, at least according to the Guardian).

Expand full comment
Jennifer Zeni's avatar

This is true in both cases... having to go through a court case for every single person affected by any of Trump's orders seems like a process that is going to have us running out of lawyers and judges pretty soon though... it feels like there should be a better way to handle this, though I haven't figured out what it is...

Expand full comment
Billy Youngblood's avatar

With respect, any definition of the term “constitutional crisis” which can, even hypothetically, hinge meaningfully on the timings of flight paths is too cautiously pragmatic to be useful as a descriptor of the abrogation of the constitutional order.

Expand full comment
Gabe Fleisher's avatar

I respectfully disagree. Obviously anyone can have their own definition — there isn’t an objective one — but I wrote mine out early specifically so I could be held to it and test events against it. And since my definition hinged on executive branch compliance with a judicial order, the key question here is finding out whether the executive branch did, indeed, comply with the order. Depending on the case, that could hinge on any number of factors that, on their own, sound mundane, but in the context of the case either prove or disprove compliance: the time a pot of money was sent out, the time someone was arrested, etc. In this case, it’s the time certain flights took off and landed, and who was on them and why. If that sounds overly legalistic, that’s on purpose: we are dealing with the law here, after all, and that requires full information on the order of events before making any certain determinations.

Expand full comment
Gabe Fleisher's avatar

And, in my opinion, anyone calling something a constitutional crisis when referring to a specific incident *without full information* about the incident (no matter the definition they use) is being much too flippant about a serious question. It’s precisely because a potential threat to the constitutional order is such a serious matter that getting your facts straight, instead of making assertions without evidence, is all the more important.

Expand full comment
Melissa's avatar

Thank you for continuing to point this out.

Expand full comment
Kasumii's avatar

I think you’re splitting hairs on this one Gabe.

Expand full comment
Neil Hansen's avatar

Splitting hairs?

Expand full comment