It took just a couple of days after Donald Trump’s inauguration for a judge to issue an injunction blocking one of his executive orders. From that moment, the floodgates were opened. Since January, federal judges — almost all of them appointed by Democrats — have issued four dozen rulings that blocked or limited some aspect of the Trump administration’s agenda. That’s not an exaggeration; in just two months, there have been nearly 50 rulings by federal judges that restrict what the Executive Branch is trying to do. We’ve discussed many of these rulings before, and how obviously absurd they are.
In one case, a judge ruled that the Trump administration can’t even fire its own probationary employees. Another ruling required that the White House update federal websites to restore promotional content about child castration in the name of “gender affirming care.” In other words, according to federal judges, Trump effectively has no power whatsoever. He can’t manage his personnel. He can’t even manage a website.
At this point, it’s impossible for any serious person to deny that these judges are going out of their way to interfere with every aspect of executive authority. They are ignoring the fact that, under our Constitution, the Executive Branch is a co-equal branch of government. And they’re doing it to provoke what the media likes to call a “constitutional crisis.” The judges intend to assume the powers of the Executive Branch for themselves — and they won’t stop until the Trump administration is forced to ignore the courts, which is exactly what Andrew Jackson, who happens to be one of Donald Trump’s favorite presidents, did nearly two centuries ago. As drastic as it may seem under normal circumstances, other than impeachment, this is the only “check” against a rogue judiciary that exists in our system of checks and balances.
Over the weekend, for the first time, a judge finally crossed the red line and pushed the Trump administration to exercise this remedy, or at least something very close to it. On Saturday night, an Obama-appointed federal judge in Washington D.C. named James Boasberg attempted to block the White House from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport members of the Venezuelan terrorist gang Tren De Aragua, which seized entire apartment buildings in Colorado last year.
That law allows the president of the United States to declare an invasion and to deport invaders without waiting for an immigration hearing. Trump declared that Tren De Aragua has been invading this country for some time, so he ordered several members of the gang to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act. But just hours after Trump made that proclamation, Judge Boasberg attempted to overrule him. Following a brief hearing, the judge stated that, “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. Make sure it’s complied with immediately.”
Judges have already assumed the role of web designers. Now it appears that they fashion themselves air traffic controllers too.
WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show
As Boasberg said those words on Saturday evening, two planes carrying these Venezuelan gang members and terrorists were on their way from Texas, bound for El Salvador. They had taken off around 2:30 pm. Flight-tracking databases appear to show that these planes were very close to their destinations, flying off the Yucatan Peninsula at around 6:51 pm, when the judge issued his order commanding the planes to turn around. But they didn’t do so. They proceeded as scheduled to El Salvador. Axios is reporting that the White House intentionally ignored the judge’s order because the planes were over international waters, and the White House determined that the judge had no jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the White House press secretary disputes that characterization, because the order itself was unlawful. Essentially she’s saying there was nothing to ignore. From the press secretary: “The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory.”
In other words, the White House determined that Judge Boasberg does not have the jurisdiction he claimed to have. So they did not return the planes to the United States, as he commanded.
Regardless of how you frame it, this is a giant, unambiguous warning sign to every federal judge in this country. They’ve just been told by the White House, in no uncertain terms, that their rulings do not create policy. Whatever a judge might say, his rulings do not always have to be carried out. These judges expect to be given the benefit of the doubt every time. If they issue a probably unlawful ruling, they expect that the ruling will be followed anyway, and then after the fact we’ll figure out if it was unlawful or not. So if they decree suddenly that Trump can no longer play golf, or that he has to stop eating his steaks well done, Trump just has to do as they say, under the assumption that it must be lawful because they said it. But even though I would actually agree with that second ruling, this is not how it works. Trump does not have to, and now it seems is not going to, comply with rulings that the judges have no authority to issue to begin with. That’s the message here.
That’s also the message that the president of El Salvador wants to communicate. Within hours of the planes touching down, Nayib Bukele mocked the judge’s ruling. He wrote, “Oopsie… Too late.” Incidentally, marking the first time that the word “oopise” has ever been used in a diplomatic communication. Then he added that the United States had also deported nearly two dozen MS-13 members to El Salvador. In total, according to Fox, 137 aliens were deported on Saturday under the Alien Enemies Act. 101 were removed via regular immigration proceedings, 21 were MS-13 members, and two were MS-13 ringleaders. Their crimes include the sexual abuse of children, kidnapping, and robbery. This is how these criminals were received in their home country of El Salvador:
Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center, for a period of one year (renewable).
The United States will pay a very low fee for them,… pic.twitter.com/tfsi8cgpD6
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 16, 2025
This is how a country that’s serious about its own national security receives a plane full of terrorists and gang members. They don’t put them up in a fancy hotel and offer them free legal services, like they do in New York. They meet them with a full military convoy and then throw them in the highest-security prison they have.
There are good reasons for ignoring this judge’s ruling on the merits. Actions like his also set up a genuine crisis over the legitimacy of the judiciary in this country. But before we get into that, it needs to be noted that, even if the judge had some legal basis for blocking these deportations — which he didn’t — it would still be outrageous for him to order “Con Air” to turn around and head back to the United States. And pretty much everyone recognizes that. From a public relations perspective, you couldn’t script a worse hill to die on than the right of Venezuelan gangsters and terrorists to be flown back into this country after they’ve already been deported. The Democrats pretend to be big fans of democracy. Well what do you think would happen if we put this up for a vote? What if a national poll was conducted: “Should a plane full of Venezuelan gangsters and child rapists be returned to the United States?” How many “yeses” do you think we get? What’s the final score? 95% no, 5% yes? Would the yeses even make it to 5%?
But this is what Democrats and their judges stand for, at this point. At this rate, they’re going to be telling Trump he has to open the asylums and, say, import thousands of Haitian cannibals into small towns in this country. They’re going from one obvious losing issue to another, and then they’re wondering why they can’t win a single swing state.
At the risk of stating the obvious, Judges do not have the authority to direct the movements of the federal aircraft when they’re carrying out missions related to national security, especially when those planes have already left the country. This is an argument that the Trump administration made in its emergency appeal to the D.C. appeals court on Saturday night. As the Trump DOJ put it: “If this [temporary restraining order] were allowed to stand, district courts would have license to enjoin virtually any urgent national-security action just upon receipt of a complaint. District courts might next [block] drone strikes, sensitive intelligence operations, or terrorist captures or extraditions.”
Separately, the White House press secretary made a similar point. She said, “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. A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”
This isn’t an unprecedented decision for a White House to make. During the Vietnam War, an anti-war judge on the Supreme Court named William Douglas issued a ruling blocking the military from bombing Cambodia. Within around six hours, the full Court reversed that injunction. But in that intervening period, the bombing did not stop. The Pentagon simply continued its attack during those six hours, as if the ruling had never happened. And of course that makes sense, because the ruling was completely and utterly insane. It was an obvious infringement on inherent presidential powers.
And it’s the same reason why these planes weren’t turned around before they landed in El Salvador on Saturday night. If the White House had allowed a single judge to control the movement of the government’s aircraft overseas, then the Executive Branch would have no authority left. But the even bigger problem with the judge’s ruling, when you zoom out a bit, is that he’s not simply trying to take control of the government’s planes. He’s also trying to block the president’s ability — which is clearly established under Article 2 of the Constitution — to conduct foreign affairs and keep the country safe from foreign invaders.
MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+
This gets back to the negotiations that the Trump administration has been conducting with El Salvador. There’s a rare combination of innovation and basic common sense at work here. The Trump administration is paying El Salvador about $6 million to imprison around 300 of these gang members, after we deport them from the United States. This is a deal that El Salvador has clearly been very happy with, because it’s a lot of money for them, relatively speaking. And in exchange for paying them $6 million, we don’t have hundreds of gang members taking over our apartment buildings and murdering people in broad daylight. This is a win-win. It’s exactly the kind of deal that the president is supposed to engage in, using his Article 2 powers. And no judge can strip the president of those powers. That’s because the judiciary is not in charge of foreign affairs. The president is.
This is the strongest argument for rejecting this particular judge’s ruling, along with dozens of other rulings that have been made against the Trump administration in the past two months. Regardless of whatever Congress or the judiciary says — about how the president can fire federal employees, or what content needs to appear on government’s websites, or whatever — the fact remains that the Constitution is a higher authority than any law passed by Congress, or any ruling by a judge. When acts of Congress or rulings by judges are used to interfere with the inherent power of the president, then they are invalid.
In this particular case, though, Trump isn’t even being contradicted by any act of Congress. Instead he’s following the rules that Congress established with the Alien Enemies Act, which became law all the way back in 1798. That law allows the president to expedite deportations when, “any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.”
The Trump DOJ maintains that Tren de Aragua is acting as an agent of Venezuela, to the point that Tren de Aragua is basically “indistinguishable” from the country’s official government. And they are clearly “invading” our country, because they’re entering without permission and with the intention to cause harm. Therefore, whether you’re looking for a justification under an act of Congress, or from the president’s inherent authorities under the Constitution, the deportations of these Venezuelan gang members was clearly lawful.
El Salvador Presidency / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images
And by the way — not that it’s the biggest point here — but Judge Boasberg didn’t actually rule that the deportations were unlawful. He didn’t even get that far. Instead, he issued an emergency preliminary restraining order in a matter of minutes, on the theory that the gang members would suffer “irreparable harm” unless he paused the deportations immediately. This whole theory of “irreparable harm” is something the Supreme Court needs to take a very close look at, because it’s the way all of these judges are justifying their various insane power grabs over national policy. In reality, the only “irreparable harm” that’s being done in this scenario is the damage that these judges are doing to the rule of law and to the democratic principles that we hear so much about. These rulings have a lot of people wondering why we bother with elections, if a random Obama judge in Washington gets to pretend he’s actually the president. And with every decision like this, that question becomes more and more valid.
Of course, Democrats will always be able to find an unelected judge in some Left-wing city to rule against the Trump administration That’s why there will be many more confrontations like this one, until either the judges are ignored completely, or the Supreme Court steps in and ends the practice of individual federal judges dictating policy for the entire country. In the meantime, what happened on Saturday night is the clearest indication yet that the Trump administration is going to fight to make sure Americans get what they voted for. No other president would think to pay El Salvador millions of dollars to house these violent gang members, much less use a law passed in the late 18th century to expedite deportations. But that’s exactly what the Trump administration has just done. And as a result, regardless of what judges appointed by Barack Obama might rule, it’s all but certain that a lot more terrorists and gang members are about to be kicked out of this country.
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[[{“value”:”
It took just a couple of days after Donald Trump’s inauguration for a judge to issue an injunction blocking one of his executive orders. From that moment, the floodgates were opened. Since January, federal judges — almost all of them appointed by Democrats — have issued four dozen rulings that blocked or limited some aspect of the Trump administration’s agenda. That’s not an exaggeration; in just two months, there have been nearly 50 rulings by federal judges that restrict what the Executive Branch is trying to do. We’ve discussed many of these rulings before, and how obviously absurd they are.
In one case, a judge ruled that the Trump administration can’t even fire its own probationary employees. Another ruling required that the White House update federal websites to restore promotional content about child castration in the name of “gender affirming care.” In other words, according to federal judges, Trump effectively has no power whatsoever. He can’t manage his personnel. He can’t even manage a website.
At this point, it’s impossible for any serious person to deny that these judges are going out of their way to interfere with every aspect of executive authority. They are ignoring the fact that, under our Constitution, the Executive Branch is a co-equal branch of government. And they’re doing it to provoke what the media likes to call a “constitutional crisis.” The judges intend to assume the powers of the Executive Branch for themselves — and they won’t stop until the Trump administration is forced to ignore the courts, which is exactly what Andrew Jackson, who happens to be one of Donald Trump’s favorite presidents, did nearly two centuries ago. As drastic as it may seem under normal circumstances, other than impeachment, this is the only “check” against a rogue judiciary that exists in our system of checks and balances.
Over the weekend, for the first time, a judge finally crossed the red line and pushed the Trump administration to exercise this remedy, or at least something very close to it. On Saturday night, an Obama-appointed federal judge in Washington D.C. named James Boasberg attempted to block the White House from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport members of the Venezuelan terrorist gang Tren De Aragua, which seized entire apartment buildings in Colorado last year.
That law allows the president of the United States to declare an invasion and to deport invaders without waiting for an immigration hearing. Trump declared that Tren De Aragua has been invading this country for some time, so he ordered several members of the gang to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act. But just hours after Trump made that proclamation, Judge Boasberg attempted to overrule him. Following a brief hearing, the judge stated that, “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. Make sure it’s complied with immediately.”
Judges have already assumed the role of web designers. Now it appears that they fashion themselves air traffic controllers too.
WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show
As Boasberg said those words on Saturday evening, two planes carrying these Venezuelan gang members and terrorists were on their way from Texas, bound for El Salvador. They had taken off around 2:30 pm. Flight-tracking databases appear to show that these planes were very close to their destinations, flying off the Yucatan Peninsula at around 6:51 pm, when the judge issued his order commanding the planes to turn around. But they didn’t do so. They proceeded as scheduled to El Salvador. Axios is reporting that the White House intentionally ignored the judge’s order because the planes were over international waters, and the White House determined that the judge had no jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the White House press secretary disputes that characterization, because the order itself was unlawful. Essentially she’s saying there was nothing to ignore. From the press secretary: “The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory.”
In other words, the White House determined that Judge Boasberg does not have the jurisdiction he claimed to have. So they did not return the planes to the United States, as he commanded.
Regardless of how you frame it, this is a giant, unambiguous warning sign to every federal judge in this country. They’ve just been told by the White House, in no uncertain terms, that their rulings do not create policy. Whatever a judge might say, his rulings do not always have to be carried out. These judges expect to be given the benefit of the doubt every time. If they issue a probably unlawful ruling, they expect that the ruling will be followed anyway, and then after the fact we’ll figure out if it was unlawful or not. So if they decree suddenly that Trump can no longer play golf, or that he has to stop eating his steaks well done, Trump just has to do as they say, under the assumption that it must be lawful because they said it. But even though I would actually agree with that second ruling, this is not how it works. Trump does not have to, and now it seems is not going to, comply with rulings that the judges have no authority to issue to begin with. That’s the message here.
That’s also the message that the president of El Salvador wants to communicate. Within hours of the planes touching down, Nayib Bukele mocked the judge’s ruling. He wrote, “Oopsie… Too late.” Incidentally, marking the first time that the word “oopise” has ever been used in a diplomatic communication. Then he added that the United States had also deported nearly two dozen MS-13 members to El Salvador. In total, according to Fox, 137 aliens were deported on Saturday under the Alien Enemies Act. 101 were removed via regular immigration proceedings, 21 were MS-13 members, and two were MS-13 ringleaders. Their crimes include the sexual abuse of children, kidnapping, and robbery. This is how these criminals were received in their home country of El Salvador:
Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center, for a period of one year (renewable).
The United States will pay a very low fee for them,… pic.twitter.com/tfsi8cgpD6
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 16, 2025
This is how a country that’s serious about its own national security receives a plane full of terrorists and gang members. They don’t put them up in a fancy hotel and offer them free legal services, like they do in New York. They meet them with a full military convoy and then throw them in the highest-security prison they have.
There are good reasons for ignoring this judge’s ruling on the merits. Actions like his also set up a genuine crisis over the legitimacy of the judiciary in this country. But before we get into that, it needs to be noted that, even if the judge had some legal basis for blocking these deportations — which he didn’t — it would still be outrageous for him to order “Con Air” to turn around and head back to the United States. And pretty much everyone recognizes that. From a public relations perspective, you couldn’t script a worse hill to die on than the right of Venezuelan gangsters and terrorists to be flown back into this country after they’ve already been deported. The Democrats pretend to be big fans of democracy. Well what do you think would happen if we put this up for a vote? What if a national poll was conducted: “Should a plane full of Venezuelan gangsters and child rapists be returned to the United States?” How many “yeses” do you think we get? What’s the final score? 95% no, 5% yes? Would the yeses even make it to 5%?
But this is what Democrats and their judges stand for, at this point. At this rate, they’re going to be telling Trump he has to open the asylums and, say, import thousands of Haitian cannibals into small towns in this country. They’re going from one obvious losing issue to another, and then they’re wondering why they can’t win a single swing state.
At the risk of stating the obvious, Judges do not have the authority to direct the movements of the federal aircraft when they’re carrying out missions related to national security, especially when those planes have already left the country. This is an argument that the Trump administration made in its emergency appeal to the D.C. appeals court on Saturday night. As the Trump DOJ put it: “If this [temporary restraining order] were allowed to stand, district courts would have license to enjoin virtually any urgent national-security action just upon receipt of a complaint. District courts might next [block] drone strikes, sensitive intelligence operations, or terrorist captures or extraditions.”
Separately, the White House press secretary made a similar point. She said, “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. A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”
This isn’t an unprecedented decision for a White House to make. During the Vietnam War, an anti-war judge on the Supreme Court named William Douglas issued a ruling blocking the military from bombing Cambodia. Within around six hours, the full Court reversed that injunction. But in that intervening period, the bombing did not stop. The Pentagon simply continued its attack during those six hours, as if the ruling had never happened. And of course that makes sense, because the ruling was completely and utterly insane. It was an obvious infringement on inherent presidential powers.
And it’s the same reason why these planes weren’t turned around before they landed in El Salvador on Saturday night. If the White House had allowed a single judge to control the movement of the government’s aircraft overseas, then the Executive Branch would have no authority left. But the even bigger problem with the judge’s ruling, when you zoom out a bit, is that he’s not simply trying to take control of the government’s planes. He’s also trying to block the president’s ability — which is clearly established under Article 2 of the Constitution — to conduct foreign affairs and keep the country safe from foreign invaders.
MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+
This gets back to the negotiations that the Trump administration has been conducting with El Salvador. There’s a rare combination of innovation and basic common sense at work here. The Trump administration is paying El Salvador about $6 million to imprison around 300 of these gang members, after we deport them from the United States. This is a deal that El Salvador has clearly been very happy with, because it’s a lot of money for them, relatively speaking. And in exchange for paying them $6 million, we don’t have hundreds of gang members taking over our apartment buildings and murdering people in broad daylight. This is a win-win. It’s exactly the kind of deal that the president is supposed to engage in, using his Article 2 powers. And no judge can strip the president of those powers. That’s because the judiciary is not in charge of foreign affairs. The president is.
This is the strongest argument for rejecting this particular judge’s ruling, along with dozens of other rulings that have been made against the Trump administration in the past two months. Regardless of whatever Congress or the judiciary says — about how the president can fire federal employees, or what content needs to appear on government’s websites, or whatever — the fact remains that the Constitution is a higher authority than any law passed by Congress, or any ruling by a judge. When acts of Congress or rulings by judges are used to interfere with the inherent power of the president, then they are invalid.
In this particular case, though, Trump isn’t even being contradicted by any act of Congress. Instead he’s following the rules that Congress established with the Alien Enemies Act, which became law all the way back in 1798. That law allows the president to expedite deportations when, “any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.”
The Trump DOJ maintains that Tren de Aragua is acting as an agent of Venezuela, to the point that Tren de Aragua is basically “indistinguishable” from the country’s official government. And they are clearly “invading” our country, because they’re entering without permission and with the intention to cause harm. Therefore, whether you’re looking for a justification under an act of Congress, or from the president’s inherent authorities under the Constitution, the deportations of these Venezuelan gang members was clearly lawful.
El Salvador Presidency / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images
And by the way — not that it’s the biggest point here — but Judge Boasberg didn’t actually rule that the deportations were unlawful. He didn’t even get that far. Instead, he issued an emergency preliminary restraining order in a matter of minutes, on the theory that the gang members would suffer “irreparable harm” unless he paused the deportations immediately. This whole theory of “irreparable harm” is something the Supreme Court needs to take a very close look at, because it’s the way all of these judges are justifying their various insane power grabs over national policy. In reality, the only “irreparable harm” that’s being done in this scenario is the damage that these judges are doing to the rule of law and to the democratic principles that we hear so much about. These rulings have a lot of people wondering why we bother with elections, if a random Obama judge in Washington gets to pretend he’s actually the president. And with every decision like this, that question becomes more and more valid.
Of course, Democrats will always be able to find an unelected judge in some Left-wing city to rule against the Trump administration That’s why there will be many more confrontations like this one, until either the judges are ignored completely, or the Supreme Court steps in and ends the practice of individual federal judges dictating policy for the entire country. In the meantime, what happened on Saturday night is the clearest indication yet that the Trump administration is going to fight to make sure Americans get what they voted for. No other president would think to pay El Salvador millions of dollars to house these violent gang members, much less use a law passed in the late 18th century to expedite deportations. But that’s exactly what the Trump administration has just done. And as a result, regardless of what judges appointed by Barack Obama might rule, it’s all but certain that a lot more terrorists and gang members are about to be kicked out of this country.
“}]]
