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The Roberts Court created this monster and needs to fix it [1]
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Date: 2025-03-23
By now it is obvious to anyone outside the Fox News bubble that the Trump administration disobeyed a direct order from a federal judge.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a barely known wartime law from 1798, to deport Venezuelan immigrants to an El Salvador labor prison. The judge had ordered the administration to hold off until he could review the use of the ancient law, but Trump deported them anyway. History books will regard March 15 as the day American democracy retreated, not with a bang but with a whimper and a side order of snark.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, with characteristic cluelessness about her own vapidity, wrote on X that a “single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrying foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”
Leavitt, who was a communications intern in Trump 1.0, is not a lawyer. That didn’t diminish her absurdly strident legal opinion that, “as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear — federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of foreign affairs… and his core Article II powers to repel a declared invasion.” Wrong again. Laughably wrong. The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear, since Marbury v. Madison (in 1803), that it is up to the Courts- not Trump or his spokes child- to determine what the law is.
The Supreme Court created this monster
Trump capped off the whole affair by demanding Judge Boasberg’s impeachment, posting on Truth Social that, “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President… This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”
Trump isn’t just defying Judge Boasberg’s orders, which itself represents a Constitutional crisis. He is also trying to weaken the legal profession, by trying to put law firms who challenge his unlawful actions out of business.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, checking the monster he created when he gave Trump the absolute power of criminal immunity, intervened in the matter issuing a rare semi-rebuke telling Trump that, “For more than two centuries,” the normal appellate review process has not included judicial impeachments.
A senior White House official said the deportations case “is headed to the Supreme Court. And we're going to win." To ponder their certainty is to fall into a long dark rabbit hole dug by the corruption of Alito and Thomas.
The Supreme Court should try to correct its mistake
When a president manufactures a fake “invasion” under the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law from 1798, to justify his unconstitutional actions, he is declaring that the law does not apply to him. It's a continuation of Trump TV’s lowest common denominator recklessness that will, sooner or later, lead to bloodshed as Trump expands his definition of ‘invasion’ to any conduct, speech, or person he doesn’t like.
Here’s some free legal advice to non-gang Venezuelans caught up in Trump’s nightmare: Amend your complaint. File in state court. Get a state prosecutor to allege specific grounds supporting criminal liability against Trump, to give the Roberts court an opportunity to delimit its immunity ruling. Identify specific acts Trump has taken to harm you that cannot be construed as core executive functions. This will prompt Roberts to list some conduct that is—and conversely that can never be—a core executive function, to diffuse Trump’s notion that he can get away with murder. Hint: trying to impeach a federal judge is not, and can never be, a core executive function. Encouraging MAGA to murder a federal judge is not, and can never be, a core executive function. Lying to American citizens about a foreign invasion is not, and can never be, a core executive function.
Trump, who is clearly laying tracks to stay in office past his expiration date, may disregard that opinion as well, but at least the nation will understand Trump’s lawlessness in plainer terms.
Anyone who still supports Trump’s lawlessness is suffering from an impairment. (Hey Speaker Johnson, are you aware that addiction to power causes chemical changes in the brain, just like heroin addiction?)
Democracy dies quickly without the rule of law. When there is nothing to constrain them, flawed, corrupt strongmen with the most money seize control of all resources, and they stay in power by force. We are dangerously close to that tipping point, and every single American needs to be on alert as they take to the streets in protest.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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