Trump seems determined to spark a constitutional crisis. Will anyone stop him? | Editorial

Donald Trump continues to trample the Constitution with reckless abandon, while sadly most other Republican and Democratic leaders do nothing.

So it was heartening — for a day, at least — to see Chief Justice John Roberts rebuke Trump’s call to impeach a federal judge who issued an order blocking the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants without any due process.

But is Roberts’ pushback too little, too late? After all, he and other conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices helped to create the Frankenstein’s monster in the Oval Office by delaying Trump’s criminal prosecution and issuing a precedent-busting ruling that presidents are largely above the law.

Trump, who was convicted once, impeached twice, and indicted three other times, has taken that ruling to extremes.

He ignored U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg’s order to turn around two flights containing more than 200 Venezuelans who the administration alleges are gang members, and invoked an 18th-century law that allows presidents to deport noncitizens from a country the U.S. is at war with.

But America is not at war, and Trump officials have not disclosed any evidence to show all the deportees belonged to a gang, or if they were afforded any due process — a cherished cornerstone of our legal system that ensures people are accorded a fair hearing.

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Instead, Trump essentially applied extraordinary rendition, shipping the Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador that is notorious for its inhumane treatment of prisoners. In return, Trump paid the Salvadoran government $6 million to take the suspects.

The Central American country is run by a dictator who suspended key civil rights and locked up 85,000 Salvadorans, holding many for years without trial and without their families knowing if they were alive.

For decades, U.S. presidents rightly preached freedom and democracy in such dark corners. Now Trump is getting cozy with dictators and war criminals.

And Trump has made it safe for other world leaders to laugh at the U.S. and its once-respected rule of law. After the judge ordered the planes carrying the Venezuelans turned around, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, mocked the ruling by posting on social media: “Oopsie… Too late.”

By defying the judge’s ruling, Trump has effectively created the constitutional crisis legal experts have long feared. But what comes next? Is anyone going to stop Trump? Or can he just continue to ignore the law?

Other abuses abound.

A Brown University medical professor with a valid U.S. work visa was deported, despite a judge’s order blocking her immediate removal from the country.

Federal prosecutors alleged the professor, a physician who specializes in kidney transplants, had “sympathetic photos and videos” on her cell phone of prominent Hezbollah figures. The professor said she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective.”

A former Columbia University student was arrested, despite being a permanent legal resident and married to a U.S. citizen.

The student, Mahmoud Khalil, has not been charged with any crime, yet he was shipped to an immigration prison in Louisiana and faces deportation for his role in organizing protests on the Columbia campus last year over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. A federal judge temporarily blocked his expulsion.

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Trump claims an obscure provision gives him the power to deport someone if their presence in the country is deemed to “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

But what about the First Amendment right to free speech and peaceful assembly?

Nothing is more American than free speech. But if legal residents are going to get arrested for speaking out, protesting, or offending the dear leader, then no one is safe.

Judges remain the lone safeguard in the system of checks and balances the founders created when they designed the three, coequal branches of government.

A federal judge in Maryland ruled the Trump administration likely violated the Constitution “in multiple ways” when it effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The ruling found only Congress has the authority to dissolve an agency it created. That power, the judge found, is certainly not held by Elon Musk, an unelected and unaccountable adviser, effectively running a made-up agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

If Trump continues to defy judges, and Congress remains pliant, then our constitutional form of government is essentially meaningless. It is not a stretch to wonder if the American dictatorship Trump promised on Day One is becoming a reality.