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      Trump Deportation Fight Reaches Supreme Court

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      The Trump administration asked the justices to allow it to use a wartime law to continue deportations of Venezuelans with little or no due process.The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to use a rarely invoked wartime law to continue to deport Venezuelans with little to no due process.The emergency application arrived at the court after a federal appeals court kept in place a temporary block on the deportations. In its application to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the administration argued that the matter was too urgent to wait for the case to wind its way through the lower courts.In the government’s application, acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris said the case presented “fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country.”“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the president,” Ms. Harris wrote. “The Republic cannot afford a different choice.”The case will offer a major early test for how the nation’s highest court will confront President Trump’s aggressive efforts to deport of millions of migrants and his hostile posture toward the courts. Mr. Trump has called for impeaching a lower-court judge who paused his deportations.The case hinges on the legality of an executive order signed by Mr. Trump that invokes the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The order uses the law to target people believed to be Venezuelan gang members in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With No-Confidence Vote, Israeli Cabinet Moves to Fire Attorney General

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      Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, contends the top lawyer sought to undermine him. His critics in Israel call it part of a purge of those he considers disloyal.The Israeli cabinet passed a no-confidence motion on Sunday against the country’s attorney general to begin the process of dismissing her. Critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the move part of his effort to curb the independence of the judiciary and purge officials he considers disloyal.Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have accused the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, of undermining them. The no-confidence vote against her, as well as the cabinet’s approval days before of the firing of Israel’s domestic intelligence chief, has rekindled street protests reminiscent of the upheaval over government plans to overhaul the judiciary before the war with Hamas began in 2023.In a letter addressed to the cabinet on Sunday, Ms. Baharav-Miara said the no-confidence motion was not part of the formal process that would be legally required for her removal. She added that Mr. Netanyahu’s government sought to put itself “above the law, to act without checks and balances, even at the most sensitive of times,” referring among other things to the war in Gaza.Legal experts say firing Ms. Baharav-Miara is likely to be a weekslong process because of longstanding checks meant to protect her role’s independence. Her dismissal would first have to be considered by a special appointments committee that is currently lacking some members and cannot convene until the vacancies are filled.The intelligence official Mr. Netanyahu moved against, Ronen Bar, sent a stinging letter to the government calling the process to fire him illegal and saying that the prime minister’s motives were “fundamentally flawed.”The country’s Supreme Court has frozen Mr. Bar’s dismissal pending a hearing.Mr. Netanyahu says he is strengthening Israeli democracy by curbing what he describes as overreach by unelected officials and giving more power to the elected government. But his opponents see the moves as part of a concerted effort by the prime minister to remove checks on his power and to eject those he views as personally disloyal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Judicial Defiance Is New to the Autocrat Playbook, Experts Say

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      The president’s escalating conflict with federal courts goes beyond what has happened in countries like Hungary and Turkey, where leaders spent years remaking the judiciary.President Trump’s intensifying conflict with the federal courts is unusually aggressive compared with similar disputes in other countries, according to scholars. Unlike leaders who subverted or restructured the courts, Mr. Trump is acting as if judges were already too weak to constrain his power.“Honest to god, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and coauthor of “How Democracies Die” and “Competitive Authoritarianism.”“We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse,” he said. “These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.”There are many examples of autocratic leaders constraining the power of the judiciary by packing courts with compliant judges, or by changing the laws that give them authority, he said. But it is extremely rare for leaders to simply claim the power to disregard or override court orders directly, especially so immediately after taking office.In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has purged thousands of judges from the judiciary as part of a broader effort to consolidate power in his own hands. But that required decades of effort and multiple constitutional changes, Mr. Levitsky said. It only became fully successful after a failed 2016 coup provided a political justification for the purge.In Hungary, Prime Minister Victor Orban packed the constitutional courts with friendly judges and forced hundreds of others into retirement, but did so over a period of years, using constitutional amendments and administrative changes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With Deportations, Trump Steps Closer to Showdown With Judicial Branch

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      The Trump administration moved one large step closer to a constitutional showdown with the judicial branch of government when airplane-loads of Venezuelan detainees deplaned in El Salvador even though a federal judge had ordered that the planes reverse course and return the detainees to the United States.The right-wing president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, bragged that the 238 detainees who had been aboard the aircraft were transferred to a Salvadoran “Terrorism Confinement Center,” where they would be held for at least a year.“Oopsie … Too late,” Mr. Bukele wrote in a social media post on Sunday morning that was recirculated by the White House communications director, Steven Cheung.Around the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in another social media post, thanked Mr. Bukele for a lengthy post detailing the migrants’ incarceration.“This sure looks like contempt of court to me,” said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University. “You can turn around a plane if you want to.”Some details of the government’s actions remained unclear, including the exact time the planes landed. In a Sunday afternoon filing, the Trump administration said the State Department and Homeland Security Department were “promptly notified” of the judge’s written order when it was posted to the electronic docket at 7:26 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. The filing implied that the government had a different legal authority for deporting the Venezuelans besides the one blocked by the judge, which could provide a basis for them to remain in El Salvador while the order is appealed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mixed Messages on Masculinity

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      More from our inbox:Path of DisruptionA Constitutional TestA New World OrderTo the Editor:Re “Republicans Really Do Care More About Masculinity,” by Michael Tesler, John Sides and Colette Marcellin (Opinion guest essay, March 3):Without disparaging women in any way, it is essential that we appreciate the importance of male energy. When young men’s energies are channeled successfully, they launch into vital and honorable actions — fighting our wars, building nations, creating industries, taking responsibility for families and communities, generating new ideas. When those energies are left to stagnate, they find their way into criminality, meanness and self-destruction.An ideal incubator for those energies would be a period of national service, military or civilian, attending to the needs of the community and the country. This would provide opportunities that young men need in order to realize the potential of their intense energy: opportunities for practical training, for purposeful work, for leadership and camaraderie, for pride and self-worth.A national service program could provide hands for millions of tasks that our society needs done. And it could bring people together from all regions and backgrounds, to foster unity across our nation’s great diversity. It would be a great way to cultivate the immense resource of male energy.Ron MeyersNew YorkTo the Editor:Masculinity has its virtues, but its avatar these days is not Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. It is the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.Admirable men control their emotions when the occasion demands self-control. They keep their promises, even when it’s not in their self-interest to do so. They stand up for themselves when treated with disrespect, even if they might suffer consequences. They put their lives and honor on the line to care for those who are weaker and more vulnerable.We saw President Zelensky do all of these in the recent contentious White House meeting with Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The Ukrainian president is a man of honor. In contrast, Mr. Trump displayed all the vices that traditional masculinity is prone to: bullying, childish loss of self-control, a weak reliance on others (Elon Musk’s money, Mr. Vance’s co-bullying) to prop themselves up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justices can find these speeches to Congress to be a trial.

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      Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. makes a point of going to the State of the Union address. But he does not enjoy it, once calling it “a political pep rally.”He was there again on Tuesday, accompanied by Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointed by President Trump; Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by President Barack Obama; and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who retired in 2018.“I’m not sure why we are there,” Chief Justice Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said in 2010, adding: “The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court, according to the requirements of protocol, has to sit there expressionless, I think, is very troubling.”But the chief justice has continued to attend, while other members of the court have long ago stopped going. Justice Clarence Thomas, who has said that he could not abide “the catcalls, the whooping and hollering and under-the-breath comments,” has not gone for more than a decade.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. called the addresses “very political events” and “very awkward,” adding, “We have to sit there like the proverbial potted plant most of the time.”He did speak, sort of, in 2010 in response to President Obama’s criticism of the Citizens United campaign finance decision, then just a few days old. He mouthed the words “not true.” He has not been back since.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Appears Skeptical of Claims That Musk Isn’t Driving DOGE

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      The judge prodded government lawyers for additional clarity on Elon Musk’s role in a case that directly challenges the constitutionality of his operation and his part in the rapid reshaping of government.A federal judge said on Friday that it seemed “factually inaccurate” for the Trump administration to keep insisting that Elon Musk has no formal position in an operation that has led to mass firings of federal workers and the hobbling of the nation’s foreign aid agency.The judge, Theodore D. Chuang of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, prodded government lawyers repeatedly for additional clarity on Mr. Musk’s role in a case that directly challenges the constitutionality of the task force known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or the U.S. DOGE Service.Until this week, government officials had resisted answering inquiries as to who was formally in charge of the task force, except to say that it was not Mr. Musk. (Nor is Mr. Musk among its employees, the government said.) On Tuesday, a White House official said that Amy Gleason, a former health care investment executive, was serving as the acting administrator.On Friday, Joshua E. Gardner, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s civil division, denied that Mr. Musk had any role with the Department of Government Efficiency. This despite Mr. Musk’s clearly driving its initiatives, including an email blasted out last weekend that attempted to require all federal employees to respond with a list of five accomplishments from the previous week. Although the email was sent by the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources arm, Mr. Musk said on Wednesday that he had suggested it and that the president had approved.Judge Chuang asked Mr. Gardner who had led the agency before Ms. Gleason was announced as acting administrator. Mr. Gardner said he had not asked, then immediately corrected himself, saying that he had asked but “was not able to get an answer” beyond that it was not Mr. Musk. The judge said he found it “very suspicious” that the government did not have an answer.The three-hour hearing was the latest in a lawsuit filed in mid-February on behalf of 26 unnamed current and former employees or contractors of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The foreign aid agency, a particular target of Mr. Musk’s, has been rapidly dismantled in the months since Mr. Trump took office. In recent days, Trump administration appointees have fired hundreds of employees who help manage responses to urgent humanitarian crises around the world, leaving the agency’s future in turmoil.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Seeks Prompt Supreme Court Review of His Power to Fire Officials

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      The Trump administration told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that developments in the first case arising from the president’s blitz of executive actions to reach the justices would require prompt action.The court ruled last week that President Trump could not, for now, remove a government lawyer who leads the watchdog agency that protects whistle-blowers. But the court’s order said that it would hold the government’s emergency application “in abeyance” and might soon return to the issue.The ruling noted that a trial judge’s temporary restraining order shielding the lawyer, Hampton Dellinger, was set to expire on Wednesday.Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel.U.S. Office of Special Counsel, via ReutersAfter a hearing on Wednesday, the judge, Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington, extended her order until Saturday to provide time for her to write an opinion in the matter. In a letter to the justices, Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, wrote that developments since they last acted had underscored the need for a prompt resolution.Mr. Dellinger has been busy, she wrote. In his role as the head of the Office of Special Counsel, he filed challenges to the firings of six probationary employees before the Merit Systems Protection Board, which temporarily reinstated them on Tuesday.“In short, a fired special counsel is wielding executive power, over the elected executive’s objection, to halt employment decisions made by other executive agencies,” Mr. Harris wrote. The merit board, moreover, she wrote, “is being led by a chairman who has herself been fired by the president, only to be reinstated by a district court.”All of that means the justices must act soon, Ms. Harris wrote.“The government respectfully asks that this court at a minimum continue to hold the application in abeyance, if the court does not grant it now,” she wrote. “Once the district court issues its final decision, presumably on March 1, it may become necessary for the government to request further relief.” More