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When court warns Trump to stop, it's time to worry

By: Chris Brennan
USA Today

..... The most predictable guessing game in Washington, D.C., in the first three months of Donald Trump's second presidency has focused on not if he will spark a constitutional crisis, but when.
..... Democrats led the way with that questioning, joined by Republicans repulsed by Trump's penchant for trampling the U.S. constitution whenever it obstructs his ambitions to punish and persecute people he perceives as his enemies.
..... But I think we can learn more by observing the behavior of Trump's most predictable enablers - Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, for instance - while trying to gauge how close we are to a constitutional crisis.
..... Our system of government is built on the concept of coequal branches of government keeping each other in check. so why did Altio feel compelled recently to remind the president that he must follow the law?
..... Trump has been two-timing his conservative allies on the Supreme Court, promising to comply with their ruling (in theory) on mitigation matters while openly, flagrantly, disobeying at least one of their rulings (here in the real world).
..... Alito sounds nervous. his judicial thinking almost always leads him to see things Trump's way He wouldn't feel a need to tell Trump to follow the law unless he expects Trump not to follow the law.
..... The Supreme Court in an April 19 [2025] order pressed pause on Trump's efforts to oust from America suspected Venezuelan gang members using the alien Enemies Act, a law that dates to the earlier days of this country and has been invoked only three times, and only when the country was at war.
..... That very short ruling, issued early on a Saturday morning, noted that a challenge to those deportations was pending in a lower court and told Trump's administration it "is directed to not remove" migrants form the country using the Aliens Enemies Act "until further offer of this court."
..... That order was unsigned but appeared to signal a seven-to-two split on the issue on the court, where conservative justices hold a super-majority. Alito penned a five-page dissent that was endorsed by Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, another notorious Trump enables.
..... Alito sure seemed peeved to be working on a weekend and repeatedly questioned why his colleagues acted at all, calling that "hastily and prematurely granted unprecedented emergency relief."
..... Here, Alito is playing dumb. and he's pretty convincing about it.
..... The American Civil Liberties Union, which asked the Supreme Court to intervene, had noted in out filings that the migrants had been loaded on buses after being told they would be deportees. NBC News obtained video of a law enforcement caravan headed to a Texas airport and then turning around.
..... The standard Trump operating procedure for mitigation issues during his first three months in office has been to break the law quickly, then complain about people pointing out the law-braking, then shrug off the judiciary by claiming to have no power to remedy the injustice.
..... Alito knows all that. That;s why he tacked onto the end of his dissent these words: "Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law."
..... He wouldn't need to say that if we could expect Trump to follow the law. Altio here, by saying Trump has to abide by the court's pause on deportation, is acknowledging the very real possibility that he will not do that.

Trump insisted he can't give immigration due process

..... Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted as much when a majority of her colleagues on April 7 [2025] allowed Trump to resume depredations, punting to a lower court the question of whether he can use the Alien Enemies Act. the majority also aid the migrants should have a chance to contest those deportations.
..... Sotomayor, in a written dissent to allowing the deportations to resume, accused Trump of using "covert operations to skirt" oversight form Congress and the legal; requirement to give the migrants due process to file legal challenges.
..... Trump wants to illegally hustle migrants swiftly out of the country, claim victory, and then wash his hands of any responsibility. and he really doesn't like it when the courts slow him down,
..... "My team is fantastic, doing an incredible job, however, they are being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court, which I have great respect for," Trump wrote in an April 21 [2025] social media post that praised Alito and accused the judiciary of being :intimidated by the radical Left."
..... Trump, in his post, declared that he couldn't possibly give migrants due process before deporting them. he expressed that a full two weeks after, a majority of the Supreme Court wrote on April 7 [2025] that the migrants must have due process.

Is it a constitutional crisis yet?

..... Trump's enables live by a very specific code: Any harm he causes is well deserved, as long as it never touches the lives of the enablers. Look to Congress, to the Trump allies, always eager to give him what he wants, until it starts causing pain for their constituents and political strife for their careers.
..... But here's the problem with enabling an all-powerful president how wants to trample Congress and the judiciary as he walks all over the U.S. constitution - why would he care about your concerns after you gave him all the power?
..... Once an authoritarian regime is up and running, it can run down whoever it wants. Altio's small warning about obeying the law at the end of his peevish missive about rushing to rule on immigration matters is a signal, showing us he fear that so often green-lighting Trump's worst impulses might one day render the Supreme Court powerless to constrain him in any significant way.

..... Follow USA Today columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ChrisBrennan.

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