Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. March 19, 2025 |
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US President Donald Trump is at odds with the judiciary again, stoking the most intense fears yet that America will descend into a constitutional crisis. Some say we're already there.
The fears are familiar. Last month, as courts froze or blocked some of Trump's early executive actions—revoking birthright citizenship, pausing congressionally appropriated spending, etc.—Vice President JD Vance tweeted that judges don't have the power to restrict "legitimate" executive power. That comment prompted a debate over whether the Trump administration would openly defy a court order and plunge the US into a constitutional crisis.
Such fears have resurfaced and intensified over the Trump administration's deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador (which is willing to imprison them), possibly in defiance of a judge's order. The timeline is complicated, but the White House has denied working in defiance of a federal judge who ordered the administration to stop carrying out deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Trump invoked the law last week in an executive order claiming the US is under invasion by a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. New York Times analysis suggests the deportation flights in question had not yet landed in El Salvador when the judge issued his order. The ACLU and a pro-democracy group, Democracy Forward, had sued to contest Trump's use of the law. The groups' lawyers argue the government may have defied the court.
Other elements of the saga were even more concerning. Trump took to social media to complain about "Crooked" judges and argue this one "should be IMPEACHED!!!" Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement rebuking Trump, noting that "[f]or more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose." As Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog notes, this marks the second time Roberts has brushed Trump back; the first came in 2018, when Roberts took issue with Trump's characterization of an "Obama judge."
On the substance of the legal matter, Harvard law professor and Bloomberg Opinion columnist Noah Feldman writes that Trump's use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act is questionable to begin with. For a president to use these national-security driven powers, "there has to actually be a declared war or a real or threatened invasion," Feldman writes. On the question of defying courts, Feldman writes: "For now, it's a good thing that the Trump administration is not claiming any inherent right to violate a judicial order. Doing so explicitly could lead to a constitutional crisis. What we need now is for the federal courts to see through the Trump administration's doubtful legal arguments, not defer to an executive determination that black is white." At least some Trump critics say the constitutional crisis has arrived. On the Slate podcast Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick, host Lithwick and Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern argue the administration has crossed the line of defiance.
At the digital magazine Persuasion, former special counsel to President Barack Obama and former US Ambassador to Australia Jeff Bleich paints a different but also disturbing picture. As Trump rails against the courts, he "is determined to gain control over" them, Bleich argues. "The Trump administration itself engineered the mountain of federal injunctions that now impede his actions … [T]he administration's strategy is to create a crisis of 'obstructionist' courts" with which it can feud politically. "Trump's most likely path will not be outright defiance of courts," Bleich predicts. "[I]t will be to change the courts in the same way that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orban have, and as [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu would like to—using their nations' own constitutional process to bring the courts to heel. … For this he needs Congress," which has the power to impeach judges and "vast control over federal courts" including their budgets, Bleich writes. |
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In his call with Trump yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin avoided saying an outright "no" to the 30-day ceasefire plan offered by the US and approved by Ukraine, writes The New York Times' Paul Sonne. But "one thing was unmistakable: The Russian leader hadn't retreated from his maximalist aims in Ukraine and so far has conceded little. Much of what Mr. Putin agreed to during the call—including a limited 30-day halt on energy infrastructure strikes by both sides, a prisoner exchange and talks about security in the Black Sea … were goals that the Kremlin has pursued and seen as advantageous in the past."
After Trump promised (and failed) to end Russia's war on Ukraine in a day, questions have lingered over how the US president might respond if Putin refuses his push for peace or violates a ceasefire. Already, after Kyiv and Moscow agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure, each country accused the other of violations overnight. Trump spoke with Zelensky by phone today; both sides characterized the discussion as positive. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board agrees that Putin has effectively denied Trump's entreaties and stuck to his own larger demands, including that Ukraine not join NATO or be armed by the West. At the German public outlet Deutsche Welle, Riga, Latvia, bureau chief Juri Rescheto sees Putin following a playbook to manipulate Trump. Putin's "game has three rules," Rescheto says. "First, agreeing with the US president on small, insignificant compromises. [On Tuesday], this compromise was clearly to refrain from firing on energy [targets]. The second rule is to delay the negotiations. For this, Putin sets additional conditions such as restricting mobilization in Ukraine and stopping [foreign] arms deliveries [to Ukraine]." In Tuesday's call with Trump, Putin linked a 30-day ceasefire agreement to those conditions. Rescheto continues: "And the third rule is [to highlight] certain information that underlines the special nature of the relationship between Trump and Putin. This time it was the fact that … that it was [purportedly] the longest conversation between the two [countries'] presidents since 1991 and that the two had agreed that Russian and American ice-hockey stars should play together as [a] sign of a special relationship between the two heads of state."
The White House has been "hopelessly bluffed" by the Kremlin, CNN's Nick Paton Walsh argues. "They asked for a 30-day, frontline-wide ceasefire, without conditions. On Tuesday, they got … a relatively small prisoner swap, hockey matches, more talks, and … a month-long mutual pause on attacks against 'energy infrastructure.' … Trump felt he could either persuade, coax, or outsmart Putin. He has yet to do any of that. He has palpably lost in their first direct diplomatic face-off. For millions of Ukrainians his next choice defines their lives. Does he lose interest, apply pressure, or again provide concessions? It is a dizzying prospect." |
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Trump Goes After Pro-Palestinian Activists |
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Mahmoud Khalil and a Fight Over Speech and Immigration |
The Trump administration has sparked fear and controversy by detaining Columbia University graduate and US green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who had been involved in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. As the administration seeks to revoke Khalil's green card, citing the executive branch's prerogative to administer immigration matters, The Guardian's Sam Levine writes that Khalil's court-blocked deportation is setting up a major battle over the First Amendment's free-speech protection, as Khalil says he has been singled out and punished for his political speech. Trump said Khalil's arrest is the first "of many to come." International students at Columbia are worried about possible deportation, The Guardian's Jazzmin Jiwa writes.
Exploring Khalil's case in The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: "If the Trump Administration comes out on the wrong side of this fight, it will be because defending free speech remains a politically lucid and powerful principle. During the Biden Administration, Republicans repeatedly claimed that conservatives were the victims of censorship. Now they seem especially eager to influence the flow of speech and ideas. … Even the ostensibly anti-waste DOGE, as Veronique de Rugy noted in the libertarian magazine Reason, 'seems mostly animated by rooting out leftist culture politics and its practitioners in Washington.' Further, Trump and his political allies have been casually conflating speech that they don't like with violence. House Speaker Mike Johnson called Khalil 'an aspiring young terrorist.'" Khalil's lawyers have pointed out that he has not been accused of any crime. |
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