The dark timeline continues forthwith as the Trump administration explicitly defies the order of a judge, whilst claiming that they’re doing no such thing for reasons including “it doesn’t count because the judge spoke his decision instead of writing it down”. . The story here is that the US deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador without any signs of due process having taken place, no chance to have their cases heard, to appeal the claims that they are violent criminals. Some reportedly claim that they are in fact not event part of the gang that is the supposed motivation for their removal.

We seem to have no sense of what evidence, if any, there is for this. To legally justify this they used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 , a law which is typically intended for and only used during times of war. It was last used in World War 2.

In any case, they were bundled onto a plane. Judge Boasberg found that this is potentially illegal and order the plane to turn back. The Trump administration didn’t like this and simply ignored the order. The folk concerned are now in El Savador’s “notorious mega-jail Cecot” after have being paraded around for the cameras.

Why El Salvador as opposed to, for instance, at least Venezulea? Well, the US has decided to pay El Salvador $6 million to imprison 300 of these people for at least a year. Strong vibes of the disgraceful British Rwanda plan here. Except that the US actually did it, seemingly in contravention of their own law.

I previously knew nothing about El Salvador’s President Bukele, but it seems he’s a wannabe Trumpster/Muskian, having tweeted “Oopsie… Too late” plus a laughing emoji in reaction to the US executive defying the judiciary. The post was proudly shared by the White House’s director of communications,

We await what comes next - and what will happen to the role of the judiciary under this scary new regime. The BBC summarises what was supposed to happen, but didn’t.

This incident has ignited fears that the White House is willing to openly defy a federal court order, setting it on a potential collision course with America’s judicial branch.

In America’s system of government checks and balances, federal courts in the judicial branch have the responsibility of reviewing actions by the president and the government agencies in the executive branch tasked with enacting laws passed by Congress. An order issued by a judge is binding - and noncompliance can result in civil and criminal sanctions.

Moving now to a totally different realm - but still potentially involving actions equally as illegal and contrary to the US constitution -Trump, via the usual weird ransom-note panic-post on his terrible social network, says he’s going to undo the presidential pardons that previous President Biden granted.

The claim here is that they were signed via a computerised pen - where “the individual’s signature is digitally recorded and stored and a robotic arm holding a pen or pencil creates a near-exact replica of the signature on paper” - rather than an actual pen, and that Biden didn’t know anything about them. The latter is ludicrous, the former is irrelevant.

…according to the U.S. Constitution, the President has no such authority to overturn his predecessor’s pardons, especially not based on the type of signature, legal experts say. “The Constitution doesn’t even require that the pardon be written, so the idea that the signature is by autopen rather than by handwritten signature seems not relevant to the constitutionality because Article II just says that the President has the power to pardon,” says Bernadette Meyler, a Stanford Law School professor and constitutional law expert.

The method of signing - autopen - has been used by other US presidents since the days of Truman. The Justice Department, under President George W Bush, has previously explicitly found this to be absolutely fine.