Make no mistake: the Trump Administration knew what it was doing when it began breaking the law the moment he was sworn in. They knew that the corrupt Supreme Court would rule in their favor, as much as possible. And here we are:
The Supreme Court tossed on Monday a series of restraining orders that barred the Trump administration from removing people under the Alien Enemies Act, in a 5-4 decision decided largely over whether the case was brought in the right place and form.
The Court held that challenges to removals under the Alien Enemies Act must be brought as habeas corpus petitions. The majority held short of ruling on thornier questions of whether the act applies to those already removed and on the scope of the judiciary’s ability to review challenges to the law.
Justices in the majority did address some of what made the Trump administration’s removals of more than two hundred Venezuelans to an El Salvador labor camp so unprecedented: they were taken out of the country without any review or due process, at a level of extreme haste that almost certainly resulted in people who had no connection to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang against which the Trump administration made a dubious proclamation of enemy invasion, being deported.
The Court mandated that the government provide a minimum opportunity for due process to those slated to be removed under the law. The government must notify detainees that they’re subject to removal, the Court said, with enough time as to allow them to file habeas corpus claims challenging their deportation.
As Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent: “not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal.”
At the HandsOff protest on Saturday, the different speakers were ticking off their wins in court. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing. But the ultimate way this was going to end was 5-4 or 6-3 in the Supreme Court, with a Jesuitical, hair-splitting opinion that Roberts thinks will preserve his legacy while more-or-less doing what Trump wants.
So, in the end the most awful bits of the Trump/Musk lawlessness will be reversed by the courts. But most of it will stand once it gets to the Supremes. The Democrats who think they can stay quiet and let the courts do the work of enforcing the laws they passed in Congress are living in a fantasy world, and John Roberts sent them a message today.
At least one Democrat seems to have finally grasped this:
