'We’re not stopping': How Trump's Cabinet is fundamentally different this time around

After a federal judge pressed the Trump administration to provide evidence by 5 pm today about whether the White House had violated the court’s order in deporting migrants with little to no due process, so-called border czar Tom Homan said that the flights would continue regardless. “We’re not stopping,” he said. “I don’t care what the judges think.”

In our system, judges don’t just “think.” They have the final say, unless their rulings are appealed to the Supreme Court, in which case the high court’s majority has the final final say.

Yesterday, it became apparent that Trump’s Justice Department shares Homan’s odd view of our judicial system. DOJ lawyers filed papers telling the judge that the administration would not provide any further information about the deportation flights, and that the court should vacate the hearing.

Last night, speaking on Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized the judge, saying “What he’s done is an intrusion on the president’s authority.”

What’s going on here?

A very dangerous game.

On Sunday night, Trump told reporters that a federal judge in California who ordered the administration to rehire thousands of fired probationary workers was “putting himself in the position of the president of the United States, who was elected by close to 80 million votes.”

Excuse me? In our system of government, courts pass judgment on actions of a president and the executive branch. Courts don’t put themselves in the “position” of a president. They act as the Constitution empowers them to act — as a co-equal branch of government.

If the executive branch doesn’t agree with what a lower-court judge decides, it can appeal to a higher court and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

Trump isn’t the only one to make this unconstitutional claim. In early February, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” It was an odd statement coming from someone who has studied at one of America’s preeminent law schools — and it was logically absurd, since it’s up to judges (and eventually the Supreme Court’s justices) to determine a president’s “legitimate power.”

Let’s be clear. Trump has openly violated numerous laws and constitutional provisions — such as ending birthright citizenship; giving associates of Elon Musk’s government-slashing effort access to a sensitive Treasury Department system; transferring transgender female inmates to male prisons; placing thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development employees on leave; and effectively dismantling USAID and folding it into the State Department.

In response, federal judges have temporarily barred a slew of Trump orders from taking effect.

But not until yesterday has Trump or his regime blatantly refused to follow a judge’s order.

What happens when this or another lower-court ruling goes to the Supreme Court, and the high court rules against Trump?

Vance has said that if this occurs, Trump should “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

Never mind that the quote attributed to Jackson is, as one scholar has noted, “probably apocryphal.” It’s heard more and more from Trump appointees these days, as exemplified by Homan’s remark this morning and this afternoon’s Justice Department filing.

Trump’s appointments in his second term are having the opposite effect of his first-term appointees. In his first term, they restrained him somewhat. Recall that the Justice Department’s top brass threatened to resign en masse if he appointed as attorney general the one assistant attorney general who was prepared to sell his soul to Trump and say the 2020 election was stolen from him.

This time, his appointees are magnifying his worst instincts. Rather than act as guardrails, they are egging Trump on.

Many people wonder if we’re in a “constitutional crisis.” Definitions of that phrase vary considerably, as do opinions about whether we’re in one now.

My worry is that Trump is surrounded by extremist anti-democracy nihilists, including his vice president, who are encouraging him to defy the Supreme Court.

If and when he does, we’ll be in a constitutional crisis that should cause every American to take to the streets.

NOW READ: Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.