Trump administration argues judge order blocking deportation flights ‘not enforceable’ in new court filing – live

As my colleague Hugo Lowell reports, the Trump administration is now seeking to remove Judge James Boasberg from the deportation flights case, a further escalation in what legal experts are calling a “potential constitutional clash between Trump and judiciary”.

US district judge James Boasberg has denied the Trump administration’s legal filing this afternoon asking cancel a planned 5pm hearing in which he has asked the administration’s lawyers to explain why his Saturday order temporarily blocking the deportation flights had apparently been ignored.

The Trump administration’s Monday filing, which argued that the hearing should be cancelled, said that the administration’s lawyers had no further information that they were authorized to share, and described cancelling the hearing as a way to “de-escalate the grave incursions on Executive Branch authority that have already arisen”.

The New York Times characterized the filing as a “brazen display of defiance”.

Several legal experts interviewed by Reuters have described the deportation flights as a direct challenge to the judicial branch’s independence, setting up a potential constitutional clash between the executive branch and the American judiciary.

Lawyers for the administration of Donald Trump argued that a judge’s oral order blocking the deportation of more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members was “not enforceable”, according to a court filing on Monday, Reuters reports.

In the filing, the Trump administration also argued that a 5pm hearing on the dispute today should be cancelled, because “plaintiffs cannot use these proceedings to interfere with the President’s national-security and foreign-affairs authority, and the Court lacks jurisdiction to do so.”

The New York Times characterized the Trump administration’s filing as a “brazen display of defiance”, noting that “the Justice Department had filed papers less than two hours before the 5 p.m. hearing was to be held,” in which district judge James E Boasberg was demanding an explanation from the Trump administration about why his Saturday order order temporarily blocking the deportation flights had apparently been ignored.

The Trump administration is facing a backlash for flying undocumented migrants suspected of being part of a Venezuelan gang out of the country, despite a judge’s order to halt the deportation while court proceedings play out. At her briefing today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the removals a “counter-terrorism operation” and argued they had technically complied with the judge’s instructions at the time they were delivered. Advocacy groups representing some of the deportees disagreed, saying they were “extremely concerned” that the White House had defied the court’s orders. A hearing scheduled for 5pm may reveal more. Donald Trump busied himself with sending threats to Iran and visiting the Kennedy Center, where he promised to make Washington DC “great again”.

Here’s what else has happened today:

• Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senate minority leader, has reportedly canceled a book tour as he faces protests for providing votes crucial to the passage of a Republican spending bill.

• Trump said Joe Biden’s pardon of January 6 committee lawmakers was “void”, and Leavitt later said, without evidence, that the former president may not have been of sound mind when he gave it.

• The director of Project 2025 is very happy with the Trump administration’s decisions so far.

Reporters who traveled with Donald Trump to the Kennedy Center did not get to see much of him.

They were taken out of a room where he was speaking shortly after arriving there, though they did get to hear the president describe his interest in the cultural venue in the context of his desire to improve the capital city.

“We’re going to make our capital great again, just like we’re going to make our country great again,” Trump said.

The president’s return to the capital has been accompanied by a markedly different vibe from his first term, with city authorities moving to acquiesce to demands from the White House and its allies. Here’s more about that:

Venezuela has hit back at accusations made by the Trump administration against the 250 undocumented migrants deported to El Salvador, Reuters reports.

The White House has described the group as “terrorists” that were affiliated with Tren de Aragua, a gang based in Venezuela. Reuters reports that Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s national assembly and ally of president Nicolás Maduro, says those detained in El Salvador have been denied due process, and his government has no evidence that they are criminals. Here’s more:

The lawmaker added during a press conference that the people deported under a Trump administration claim that they belong to the Tren de Aragua gang are not known to have committed any crimes in the United States or El Salvador, and that Venezuela will do everything it can to have them returned home.

…

Rodríguez also said that he will ask the government of President Nicolas Maduro to issue a warning for Venezuelans not to travel to the United States, because it is not a safe place, and he urged Venezuelans who have migrated there to return.

“We will do everything we have to do so that our compatriots will return home, we will send all the planes we have to send to any part of the world,” he stated.

Donald Trump has arrived at the Kennedy Center, the Washington DC-based cultural venue that he essentially took over after being sworn in.

He plans to tour the center and preside over a board meeting, days after JD Vance went to see a National Symphony Orchestra concert there, and was booed. Here’s more on his administration’s foray into the performing arts:

During last year’s presidential campaign, Democrats attacked Donald Trump as planning to implement Project 2025, a rightwing blueprint to remake America’s government. Trump responded by saying that he knows nothing about the plan, but the former director of Project 2025 now says he is very pleased with the Trump administration’s moves so far. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:

The director of Project 2025, a rightwing plan to dismantle the federal government which Democrats warned about last year and forced Donald Trump to attempt to disown it, said Trump’s actions in power were proving “way beyond my wildest dreams”.

Paul Dans was director of Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation, the hard-right group which has produced such policy plans for more than 40 years.

Project 2025 alarmed progressives with its advocacy of slashing government staffing and budgets and attacking protections for LGBTQ+ Americans; efforts to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion throughout government; attempts to tackle the climate crisis; and more.

Democratic attacks proved effective enough for Trump to claim he had “nothing to do” with the project. In July, as the Trump campaign scrambled to limit damage, Dans was forced out of his Heritage role.

Now, with Trump back in power, the president and his chief donor and ally, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, have mounted an assault on the federal government that has already led to thousands of firings, a bonfire of climate regulations, attacks on DEI initiatives real and imagined and much more.

“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans told Politico. “It’s not going to be the easiest road to hoe going forward. The deep state is going to get its breath back here, but the way that they’ve been able to move and kind of upset the orthodoxy, and at the same time really capture the imagination of the people, I think portends a great four years.”

Last week was a rough one for Democrats in Congress. The bad times began when Republicans moved ahead with a bill to authorize more government funding ahead of a Friday shutdown deadline, leaving the minority party, which objected to funding cuts in the legislation, in a pickle as to what to do.

House Democrats objected to the measure almost unanimously, but the real question was how Democratic senators would react, given that the bill needed at least eight of their votes to pass. Much of the caucus wanted to reject the legislation, but minority leader Chuck Schumer unexpectedly threw his support behind the measure, luring just enough Democrats for it to pass.

Schumer’s decision enraged many in his party, to the point that he is now the target of protests by liberal activists who believe he needlessly sacrificed leverage he could have used to stand up to the Trump administration. The New York Times reports that Schumer has opted to cancel a public speaking tour to promote a new book, citing “security concerns”:

Mr. Schumer was scheduled to participate in promotional events in Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, as well as a few stops in California, for his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning.” Many Democratic activists, desperate for their leaders to stand up to President Trump, have been staging protests outside of Mr. Schumer’s Brooklyn home and calling for his resignation. Online, they have been organizing protests for every stop on his book tour.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Schumer said that the tour was being rescheduled because of “security concerns.” But the move was immediately criticized by both the right and the left, who accused Mr. Schumer of being unwilling to face a restive public.

“We hope other Democratic senators continue meeting with their constituents and demand that their leadership fight with backbone,” Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in a statement.

Since voting on Friday for the stopgap bill, Mr. Schumer has been defending his decision to stave off a government shutdown, which he has said was the less devastating of two bad options that Senate Democrats were presented with. “I’ll take some of the bullets,” Mr. Schumer said of the vitriol directed at him.

“There is no off-ramp,” for a government shutdown, Mr. Schumer said in an interview Friday from his office just off the Senate floor. “The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” he said, referring to Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting team, the Department of Government Efficiency.

Donald Trump is scheduled to speak with Russia’s Vladimir Putin tomorrow, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to share details of what the two leaders will discuss.

“I won’t get ahead of those negotiations, but I can say we are on the 10th yard line of peace, and we’ve never been closer to a peace deal than we are in this moment,” Leavitt told reporters.

Here’s more on what’s expected from the call, and what it may mean for Ukraine:

Asked about Donald Trump’s contention earlier today that Joe Biden’s pardons of January 6 committee members were invalid, press secretary Karoline Leavitt argued that the former president may not have been of sound mind when he approved the order.

“The president was begging the question that I think a lot of journalists in this room should be asking, about whether or not the former president of the United States, who I think we can all finally agree, was cognitively impaired,” Leavitt said

“The president was raising the point that did the president even know about these pardons? Was his illegal signature used without his consent or knowledge?”

Pressed at her briefing on whether the Trump White House had evidence that Biden was not aware of what he was signing, Leavitt replied:

You’re a reporter. You should find out.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a preview of the argument that Trump administration lawyers will make in court today, saying that all planes carrying alleged deportees had departed by the time they received a written order to stop them from federal judge James Boasberg.

But evidence has emerged that Boasberg verbally told administration lawyers not to let the planes leave before they departed, and to order any in the air to turn back. Asked about that, Leavitt suggested that verbal instructions for a judge are less binding than written ones.

“All of the planes subject to the written order of this judge departed US soil,” Leavitt said, before addressing the discrepancy:

There’s actually questions about whether a verbal order carries the same weight … as a written order, and our lawyers are determined to ask and answer those questions in court.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt further rejected claims that the Trump administration illegally deported 250 immigrants suspected of belonging to a Venezuelan gang.

“This administration acted within the confines of the law, again, within the president’s constitutional authority and under the authority granted to him under the Alien Enemies Act. We are quite confident in that, and we are wholly confident that we are going to win this case in court,” Leavitt said.

She also said that, despite reports to the contrary, the planes carrying the deportees had already left when a federal judge ordered them not to depart, and to turn back if they already had:

All of the planes that were subject to the written order, the judge’s written order, took off before the order was entered in the courtroom on Saturday, and the administration will, of course, be happily answering all of those questions that the judge poses in court later today.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave the Trump administration’s version of events of the controversial deportation of undocumented immigrants suspected of belonging to a Venezuelan gang, describing it as “a counter-terrorism operation”.

The deportation appeared to fly in the face of a federal judge’s order that the migrants not be removed from the United States while he considered the legality invoking the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport them.

“President Trump signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act regarding the invasion of the United States by the foreign terrorist organization, Tren de Aragua,” Leavitt said at a press briefing. “At the president’s direction, the Department of Homeland Security carried out a counter-terrorism operation deporting nearly 200 violent Tren de Aragua terrorists, which will save countless American lives.”