‘Alito sounds nervous’: Even notorious Trump enablers are sounding the alarm

USA Today columnist Chris Brennan says it’s not just liberals on the U.S. Supreme Court who are expecting President Donald Trump to kick off a constitutional crisis. One of his most loyal SCOTUS confederates is also having to remind him to follow the law.

“The standard Trump operating procedure for immigration issues during his first three months in office has been to break the law quickly, then complain about people pointing out the law-breaking, then shrug off the judiciary by claiming to have no power to remedy the injustice,” writes Brennan.

Many members of the judiciary enable the president’s behavior by tweaking legal arguments to support whatever endeavor Trump is pushing, and U.S. Supreme court Justice Samuel Alito is one such judge. When the Supreme Court issued an April 19 order halting Trump's efforts to jettison legal U.S. residents under a 200-year-old Alien Enemies Act, Alito was the justice penning a five-page dissent supporting the president’s behavior. Reliable Trump ally Justice Clarence Thomas endorsed the dissent.

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The unsigned order signaled a rare 7-2 split on a conservative court, directing the Trump administration “not to remove" migrants from the country using the Aliens Enemies Act "until further order of this Court."

But while Alito opposed the court’s decision he was careful to tack onto the end of his dissent the words: "Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law."

According to Brennan, he probably felt he had to.

“Trump has been two-timing his conservative allies on the Supreme Court, promising to comply with their rulings (in theory) on immigration matters while openly, flagrantly, not obeying at least one of their rulings (here in the real world),” he writes. “… Alito sounds nervous. His judicial thinking almost always leads him to see things Trump's way. He wouldn't feel a need to tell Trump to follow the law unless he expects Trump not to follow the law.”

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But once an authoritarian regime is “up and running,” Brennan says “it can run down whoever it wants,” and Alito's “small warning about obeying the law at the end of his peevish missive about rushing to rule on immigration matters is a signal, showing us his fear that so often green-lighting Trump's worst impulses might one day render the Supreme Court powerless to constrain him in any significant way.

Read the USA Today story at this link.