Almost no one, including those who staff President Donald Trump’s administration, seems to understand the core issue.
Of course, that could amount to a misconception on my part. Perhaps Trump’s staffers do understand it and have simply chosen to fight on grounds of optics and expedience. If so, then one could understand the strategy, but it still reflects the shockingly farcical nature of our so-called “republic.”
According to Axios, two senior Trump administration officials have confirmed that a small group of individuals led by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem ensured the successful deportation of approximately 250 Venezuelan gang members by taking swift action before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, appointed by former President Barack Obama, could make a presumptuous and outrageous attempt to halt said deportations.
On Friday night, Trump quietly signed an executive order invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
Then, to stay ahead of any potential court challenge, Miller and Noem quietly “orchestrated” the process by which two planeloads of Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members departed Texas for El Salvador.
On Saturday, Boasberg imperiously presumed to order a halt to the deportations. By then, however, the two planes had already left American airspace.
On the whole, this story contains so many layers of misunderstanding that one hardly knows where to begin.
First, we have the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
Axios called the act a “war-time law.”
Have some federal judges overstepped their authority to stop Trump?
But no war officially took place in 1798.
History students — at least those whose eyes did not gloss over with boredom from standard textbook treatments of the era — might remember something called the Quasi-War, a foolish escapade best characterized as an undeclared naval war between the United States and revolutionary France. With that escapade in mind, President John Adams signed the Alien Enemies Act, which authorized him to deport foreign nationals whom he deemed security threats.
In the context of 1798, I dislike the legislation. In fact, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison regarded it as tyrannical. But that is very much beside the point in our modern context.
For one thing, the “war-time” situation in 2025 does not differ from that of 1798 in any meaningful way. Again, the Founding Fathers never declared war on France either.
Secondly, Section 1 of the Alien Enemies Act referred to “any invasion or predatory incursion.”
Here is the key point: No such invasion occurred in 1798. Hence, Jefferson and Madison had good reason to view the act’s enforcement as tyrannical.
An invasion, however, did occur under the indisputably tyrannical administration of former President Joe Biden. Thus, the Alien Enemies Act has far more applicability to 2025 than to 1798.
So much for the grossly misunderstood historical context.
Second, we have Boasberg’s preternatural arrogance.
“Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States however that is accomplished,” the judge said, per Politico. “Make sure it’s complied with immediately.”
Or else what, Judge Boasberg? How do you propose to enforce your edict?
Boasberg ordered the halt because he wanted more time to consider the legality of Trump’s executive order. That constitutes the core problem here, as we shall see momentarily.
Meanwhile — and here is a third layer of apparent misunderstanding — Trump administration officials seem determined to fight Boasberg not on constitutional principle but on optics and expedience.
“You have Venezuelan gang members … These are bad guys, as the president would say,” one senior White House official remarked, per Axios.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sounded a similar note.
“If the Democrats want to argue in favor of turning a plane full of rapists, murderers, and gangsters back to the United States, that’s a fight we are more than happy to take,” Leavitt told Axios.
Indeed, the optics of deporting rapists and murderers look good for the administration. But they are also beside the point. Either Trump has the constitutional authority to deport those thugs, or he does not.
Likewise, other Trump administration officials have taken the strange position of defending the president’s constitutional powers under Article II while simultaneously looking to the Supreme Court, a product of Article III, to affirm those powers.
“This is headed to the Supreme Court. And we’re going to win,” one senior White House official told Axios.
“It’s the showdown that was always going to happen between the two branches of government,” another senior official — or perhaps the same senior official — also told the outlet.
A showdown? How can a showdown between executive and judicial branches reach a resolution … at the Supreme Court?
Here is the United States Constitution. Readers will search in vain for any mention of the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of the document’s meaning. Courts have usurped that power. It has no place in a republic.
To her credit, Leavitt came closest to understanding the heart of the matter.
“The written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict,” she wrote in a statement, per Axios. “Moreover, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear — federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion.”
She still referred to the Supreme Court, but at least she made the strong “no jurisdiction” argument.
Moreover, one can easily understand why administration officials have adopted the strategy of optics and expedience.
For one thing, no sane person wants illegal immigrant gang members in the United States. Boasberg’s order, therefore, highlights Democrats’ insane support for open borders. That helps Trump in the court of public opinion.
Secondly, a Supreme Court ruling in the administration’s favor would supply the cleanest possible resolution. In that case, those who have abused judicial power in order to prevent an elected president from carrying out constitutional duties — the extent of which he and he alone has the power to interpret — would have nowhere else to turn.
But that is a risky strategy. No one can predict how the Supreme Court might rule, particularly in its present composition.
More importantly, expedience and a clean resolution do not necessarily flow from sound constitutional principles. Better for the Trump administration to deny the courts’ authority altogether than to adopt its present strategy.
Unfortunately, even the lawyers in Trump’s White House have had their perspectives corrupted by legal education. Law school itself imparts its own brand of history, which venerates judges and precedents at the expense of the real history that actually happened — the history that inspired the Constitution’s text. And that text plainly does not grant the power that federal courts now routinely exercise.
In short, where judicial supremacy prevails, a republic cannot exist.
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