Trump Admin Tells Power-Drunk Judge To Pound Sand… Invokes Legal Doctrine

With literally dozens of obstructionist cases trying to throw sand in the gears of the Trump agenda, some judges have been more than happy to play along… law and precedent be damned.

In some cases they look to be getting away with it. Others, are fuming because they didn’t get their ducks in a row soon enough to thwart the plans of Trump’s administration. The most famous example of the is the planeload of Tran De Aragua (a designated terrorist organization) members shipped off to El Salvadore.

They were long since out of American airspace before the judge made his ruling, and had been accepted into El Salvadore’s custody before that ruling had been put in writing.

The judge (who, to this writer’s eye, bears a striking resemblance to the villain in Who Framed Roger Rabbit) was seething in the court cases that followed. He made sweeping demands about the details of any future such flights… demand that look an AWFUL lot like meaningless roadblocks to keep the Trump admin from deporting illegal aliens already deemed dangerous to the public. Individual hearings before they are deported, sworn statements that could reveal methods and sources leading to the arrests of deportees, and legal justification of the exercise of a Executive function that has long since been ruled to be beyond the scope of judicial review.

Yesterday, Trump hit back, telling the judge to pound sand. He has no jurisdiction here.

They invoked State Secrets Privilege, of which the opening lines say, “The Executive Branch hereby notified the Court that no further information will be provided in response to the Court’s March 18, 2025 mintue order based on the state secrets privilege and the concurrently filed declarations of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security.

This is a case about the President’s plenary authority derived from Article II and the mandate of the electorate…

They continued by referencing intrusions into the separation of powers and resultant harms to the Executive branch… including national security and diplomacy issues.

The plane landed in El Salvatore before the written order was given, and that is all the court needs to know in its fact-finding.

The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland has been all over this like a dog on a bone.

Thread here.

Here is the ruling from earlier in the day where the judge refused to vacate the TRO.

While the 60-vote requirement in the senate blocks many available congressional remedies for situations where a judge goes rogue (as, arguably, has happened here), the State Secret Privilege option may be a response for which the judge has no recourse.

If there’s a rabbit to be pulled out the the hat by the Trump obstructionists, we can be pretty confident that all of the lefty lawyers are crowd-sourcing options and obscure laws this judge could draw on to ‘stick it’ to Trump on this issue.

Otherwise, it could be game, set, and match.