ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Oopsy (ph), too late - that post on X from the president of El Salvador got retweeted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the weekend with a laugh/crying emoji over a headline about a judge's ruling. The judge had ordered the Trump administration not to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador. The White House invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up deportation of people the president claims belong to a gang. So oopsy, too late, as in, we can't comply with your order, judge.
And that whole episode came after a Brown University physician in the United States on an H-1B visa from Lebanon was sent back, even though a federal judge issued an order that she appear at an in-person hearing on Monday today. In a court filing today, lawyers for the government said U.S. Customs and Border patrol officers said they didn't learn of the judge's order until after the doctor was sent back. The administration insists it is not defying court orders. Many legal experts are dubious.
Last month, I asked University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost whether Trump's earlier battles with the judicial system had created a constitutional crisis, and she told me, not yet.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
AMANDA FROST: As of today, at this moment, the executive branch has not taken the position that it can violate court orders or that it does not need to comply with court orders. So as long as we remain in a system in which the executive follows or at least states that it has to follow what a court says, I have hope that the system will hold.
SHAPIRO: Well, in light of everything that just happened, is the system still holding? Amanda Frost is with us again. It's good to have you back.
FROST: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: We just heard what your benchmark was last month. After the events of this weekend, where would you say we are?
FROST: I would say that we are dangerously close to crossing that line that we discussed about a month ago. The administration continues to say that it is not refusing to comply with court orders, but we have seen it behave in disingenuous ways in terms of ignoring what courts have told it to do. And so I'm extremely worried.
SHAPIRO: I want to dig into that behaving disingenuously because not to make light of a serious situation, but I think about, like, two kids in the back seat of a car, and one kid says, I am not putting my hand over the line that you told me not to cross. And if any reasonable observer would say, actually, you are, does it matter that the annoying brother is saying, no, I'm not?
FROST: Well, I think it does matter in this context because I think there is a difference in kind if an administration says, we no longer have to do what a court tells us to do. And this administration has yet to say that. Nonetheless, I think it is extremely disturbing that this administration is playing so fast and loose with the courts.
SHAPIRO: I keep thinking about that oopsy, too late post on X, which suggests that, perhaps deliberately, the administration is operating in a way that is hard for courts to keep up with. And there are other examples. Last week, there was a hearing before a federal judge in Maryland about layoffs of government workers, and a government lawyer said he didn't know whether anyone in government could say how many probationary workers had been fired. In this Venezuelan case, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act without providing the courts much time at all to stop these planes of migrants that were heading for El Salvador. How do behaviors - how do actions like that impact the judicial branch's ability to do its job?
FROST: Well, there's no question but that the courts are extremely busy at the moment. But courts are used to dealing with issues on emergency bases. And I would say, the branch of government that is most suffering from the flood-the-zone approach is the executive branch itself. Its filings are sloppy, filled with inaccuracies. It doesn't have the information it needs to inform judges about what's happening. It is failing in its role before the courts, and we're seeing the result, which is they're losing most of these cases.
SHAPIRO: If I could summarize your view as the clock ticks ever closer to midnight, but we aren't quite there yet, do you have a sense of how widespread that view is? Like, do your colleagues say you're being naively optimistic or Pollyanna-ish (ph), or are your views pretty mainstream at this point?
FROST: I would say I've heard a variety of perspectives. Some people think we are deep into constitutional crisis already. Others think we need to wait before we make such a declaration, and I guess I'm in that latter camp. And part of the reason for that is, our nation has weathered storms before, and we have pulled through. I mean, one example, of course, is Bush versus Gore. That was an extraordinary legal decision deciding a razor-thin election in a way that many people didn't like, and the nation took a deep breath and followed the law. My fear is that that isn't occurring this time.
SHAPIRO: Amanda Frost is a professor of law at the University of Virginia Law School. Thank you for talking with us once again.
FROST: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR鈥檚 programming is the audio record.
