“A Rhode Island doctor who is an assistant professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported to Lebanon even though a judge had issued an order blocking the U.S. visa holder’s immediate removal from the country, according to court papers.
The expulsion of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is set to be the focus of a hearing on Monday before a federal judge in Boston, who on Sunday demanded information on whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection had “willfully” disobeyed his order.”
“Any decision by the administration to defy federal courts would immediately implicate profound constitutional questions about separation of powers that have kept each branch of the government in check for centuries. That’s in large part because it would test the power of courts to enforce rulings that are supposed to be the final word.
The issue reached a fever pitch on over the weekend when the Trump administration deported hundreds of alleged gang members to El Salvador despite a federal judge’s order that the 19th Century Alien Enemies Act could not be used.”
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“Legal experts say there are few options to force compliance with its pronouncements. Judges could hold an agency or official in civil or criminal contempt – but that’s about it.
Fears that the Trump administration might deliberately break into a pattern of not following judicial rulings with which it disagrees were amplified last month when a federal judge in Rhode Island, for the second time, told the Trump administration it can’t cut off grant and loan payments after Democratic-led states complained that the administration wasn’t obeying the judge’s previous court order.”
“The flights suggest the Trump administration may be growing more brazen in its defiance of judicial restraint. The U.S. Constitution established the judiciary as a co-equal and independent branch of government.
Trump has sought to push the boundaries of executive power since taking office in January, cutting spending authorized by Congress, dismantling agencies and firing tens of thousands of federal workers.”
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“On Monday, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said the flights were already in international airspace when the judge’s orders came and that more flights would continue.
“Once you’re outside the border, you know, it is what it is. But they’re in international waters, already on the way south, close to landing. You know what? … We did what we had to do,” he told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” program.
Asked what was next, Homan said: “Another flight, another flight every day.”
“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think,” he added.”
“The repression began in 2018 when Ortega’s regime went after the Catholic Church for mediating between the state and anti-government protesters. Since then, targeted retaliation has grown into a full-scale assault on religious freedom.
“The government initially targeted the Catholic Church because it provided sanctuary to demonstrators, and clergy voiced opposition to the government’s human rights abuses,” reports the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “More recently, the government’s actions have led to full-scale shuttering of the Church’s activities, mass imprisonments, and the targeting of multiple other religious groups.”
Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have accused church leaders of being “agents of evil” engaged in “spiritual terrorism.” They claim the clergy is inciting civil unrest and planning to overthrow the regime.
The consequences for religious groups—Catholics and others—have been devastating. Since 2018, over 1,100 religious entities have been forcibly closed, more than 70 individuals detained for their religious affiliations, and 84 priests forced into exile.
Surveillance and harassment of church leaders have become ubiquitous, with the Ministry of Interior imposing strict controls on religious activities and regulating visits from foreign clergy, according to the ICC. Easter processions, Christmas celebrations, and even cemetery prayers have all been outlawed.”
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“Eighty percent of Nicaraguans identify as Christian, with half being Catholic and 30 percent evangelical. In a country deeply rooted in faith, Ortega’s attack on religion is a calculated effort to suffocate dissent and dismantle spaces of hope and community, tightening his grip on a nation with fewer places left to turn.”
“Multiple lawsuits he’s filed against media operations are “chilling attempts to convert Trump’s complaints about press coverage into causes of action are legally baseless and blatantly unconstitutional,” notes Reason’s Jacob Sullum. He used as an example Trump’s recent social-media post after MSNBC cancelled a TV show: “Fake News is an UNPARDONABLE SIN! The whole corrupt operation is nothing more than an illegal arm of the Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country.”
Trump, who calls the media the “enemy of the people,” is all for a free press as long as it’s parroting his political line. He recently booted the Associated Press—which despite its biases provides mostly nuts-and-bolts reporting—from presidential events after it refused to start calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, following our Chief Mapmaker’s childish edict. This is bullying.
The New York Times reported that the administration “would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential press pool, the small, rotating group of reporters who relay the president’s day-to-day activities to the public.” This is not just an assault on protocol, but a glaring attempt to punish outlets that don’t bend the knee. A California Assembly speaker once denied my reporting team press passes for dubious reasons. It’s hard to do one’s job as a journalist if the government denies you access to its activities.
Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, recently threatened criminal investigations of members of Congress and the media who have criticized Elon Musk and his team of DOGE budget-cutters. It’s preposterous for prosecutors to treat feisty comments as “threats,” which is the justification used by Martin’s office. And, as a letter from various civil-rights groups points out, it is certainly not a crime “to identify individuals openly conducting government work that is of the utmost public concern.”
A Trump executive order relating to anti-Israel protests called on universities to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff.” It’s fine to deport visiting students who engage in violence and law-breaking—but the highly respected and non-ideological rights group, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), argues that this edict “would make universities monitor students’ constitutionally protected speech.”
There are plenty of other examples to belie MAGA’s boast that it champions free-speech absolutism.”
“We’ve studied democratic erosion in countries around the world, and our research has found that the most important bulwark against an elected leader undermining democracy doesn’t come from opposition parties or pro-democracy activists. It comes from the ruling party — and particularly the powerful elites in that party — and their efforts to constrain their own leader.
The danger to democracy is particularly acute in political systems led by parties where leaders wield disproportionate influence relative to the political parties that back them — as is now the case in the Republican Party. Our data on all democratically elected leaders around the globe in the 30 years since the end of the Cold War show that where leaders dominate the parties they lead, the chances of democratic backsliding increase, whether it’s through gradual democratic decay or a rapid collapse.
In the United States, we tend to assume that constitutional checks and balances, including the powers vested in Congress or the Supreme Court, play the central role in constraining a rogue executive and any power grab they might attempt. But we’ve found that institutions can do so only if the members of the president’s party inside those institutions are willing to use their authority in the face of executive abuses or overreach.
The reason that often doesn’t happen is because when a political party becomes dominated by the leader as an individual, party figures view their political fates as directly tied to that of the leader, not to the long-term reputation of the party, and so they are unwilling to push back against the leader’s actions. In these “personalist” political parties, the party elite are even willing to go along with a leader’s abuse of power if they see that doing so is advantageous for keeping their jobs.
The impact affects more than just the political class. When prominent party figures tolerate — or indeed even support — a leader’s anti-democratic actions, it fosters public acceptance of those actions among party supporters, as people take important cues from their elected officials. High levels of polarization and the resulting disdain for the other side only make matters worse, as partisans are willing to accept abuses of power if it means keeping the other side out of office. Indeed, even when there remains a high level of public support for democracy, our research shows that societies can slide down a non-democratic path simply because they don’t want the other side to win.”
“President Donald Trump retaliated Tuesday against a Washington law firm that provided free legal services to special counsel Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who brought two criminal cases against Trump that were dropped after he won last November’s election.
During an Oval Office photo opportunity devoted to a series of executive actions, Trump signed a memorandum suspending the security clearances of lawyers and other personnel at Covington & Burling involved in representing Smith before he resigned from the Justice Department last month.
Trump’s directive also calls for ending all contracts Covington has with the federal government, although a federal spending database doesn’t show any government contracts with the firm.”
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“The directive Trump signed Tuesday is just his latest attempt to use his return to the power of the presidency to punish his perceived enemies. He has rescinded security clearances for former intelligence community officials who signed a letter raising concerns — that ultimately turned out to be false — that Hunter Biden’s hard drive bore the hallmarks of a foreign influence operation. Trump also pulled the clearance for attorney Mark Zaid, a prominent whistleblower attorney who represented the intelligence official who helped trigger Trump’s 2020 impeachment. Trump has also pulled security details for figures who have criticized and publicly opposed him.”
“Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday night granted a respite to the Trump administration as it seeks to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen, despite a judge’s order directing the administration to resume payments immediately.
Roberts’ intervention heads off the possibility of administration officials being held in contempt for failing to comply with the order from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who imposed a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Wednesday for the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion in unpaid invoices from foreign-aid contractors.”
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“Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered the administration on Tuesday to pay the accumulated bills by the end of the day on Wednesday. The judge acted after finding that the Trump administration had essentially flouted earlier orders he issued requiring the State Department to lift a blanket freeze on overseas aid programs.
Rather than take steps to unfreeze that aid, as Ali had directed Feb. 13, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development found new legal rationales to keep it on hold, the judge said.
As a result, Ali gave the administration the midnight Wednesday deadline to send the payments for what officials have estimated is $2 billion-worth of unpaid work completed by aid contractors.”
LC: Basically, the Trump administration flouted the courts, the law, and the separation of powers, and Roberts bailed them out rather than forcing the issue. Under Trump, the U.S. constitutional system is deeply degrading.