The Atlantic: Trump Dares the Supreme Court to Do Something
Source: The Atlantic
Trump Dares the Supreme Court to Do Something
David A. Graham
Mon, April 14, 2025 at 4:57 PM EDT 5 min read
Donald Trump took one step closer to openly defying an order from the Supreme Court today—effectively daring the justices to defend the law or pack up and go home.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has emerged as a confederate of Trump’s, accepting planes full of Venezuelan citizens removed from the United States. Last month, the U.S. government deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man living in Maryland with protected legal status. As The Atlantic first reported, the Trump administration acknowledged in court that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was “an administrative error”; last week the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the executive branch to “facilitate” his return to the United States.
Since then, the Justice Department has dragged its feet. It has filed required reports to a district court judge late, and has refused to say what it’s doing to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States. But whether this was defiance or merely delay was unclear until today. In an Oval Office press conference this afternoon, the White House revealed that the answer is defiance—at least for now. Both the U.S. and El Salvador are pretending that they have no power to do anything about Abrego Garcia, a performance of smirking, depraved, and wholly unconvincing absurdity.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that Abrego Garcia “was illegally in our country,” despite her own department’s earlier admission of error. The Trump administration also alleged that he’s a gang member, based on a dubious 2019 accusation, but has provided no evidence. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” Bondi said, adding that if Bukele wanted to send him home, America would provide a plane.
Yet Bukele was just as insistent that he was powerless ...
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