Trump Just Defied the Supreme Court. What Is John Roberts Going to Do About It?

Quick note: Tomorrow I’ll be doing a Substack Live with Paul Krugman at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. It’ll be here.

JVL + Krugman. Tuesday. 12:30.

I think the conversation is likely to be quite good. I hope you’ll mark it on your calendar.

And if you have questions you want me to ask him, leave them in the comments below.

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1. Checking the Time

Update: Moments before this was sent Trump met with Bukele.

Trump reiterated that he had no power to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Bukele said he had no intention of returning Bukele.

And then Trump did something extraordinary: He claimed that the Supreme Court had ruled 9–0 in his favor on the case and that the Court’s decision meant only that the U.S. government would have to provide a plane if Bukele chose to return Abrego Garcia.

So Trump not only refuses to comply with the Roberts ruling, but he has now completely mischaracterized it.

What will the Supreme Court do in response? That’s the question we’re working through today. So let’s dig in.
—JVL

A great deal of our near-term future depends on John Roberts’s state of mind.

On Friday, my buddy Ben Wittes wrote about the formalist delusions of our legal system. Ben asked:

My question is why Judge Xinis—or the six conservative justices—would trust any representation the government makes . . . at this point.

Consider that the Justice Department placed the last attorney who answered Judge Xinis’s questions candidly on administrative leave—and removed his boss too, for good measure—for the crime. Attorney General Pam Bondi even went on national television to denounce him for alleged failure to advocate zealously for his client agency. . . .

Given that Judge Xinis knows what happens to a Justice Department lawyer who behaves as an officer of the court during the Trump administration, why should she assume that the government’s current filings are meeting those standards?

Yes, indeed. The Department of Justice has made it clear that officers of the court under its employ must place loyalty to Donald Trump over loyalty to the truth, the law, and the interests of justice. If they do not, then they will be fired.

In such a system, how can the courts trust anything the government asserts, unless it comes backed by independent evidence?

But that’s not the real question.

The real question is: Does the chief justice understand this state of affairs? Or is he blind to reality?

The answer matters quite a bit...