“I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care.” That’s what President Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan told a Fox and Friends host on March 17 when asked “what’s next” for immigration enforcement. These comments came just two days after the White House may have defied a federal judge’s order for the administration to turn around planes deporting people the administration claimed were unlawfully present Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. 

Homan’s comments may represent the administration’s most outright defiance of judges to date, which is perhaps why he tried to walk them back the following week by saying “I don’t care what that judge thinks as far as this case.” Homan was referring to Judge James E. Boasberg, who was confirmed by the Senate 96-0 and is the current chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. President Trump has called for Judge Boasberg’s impeachment based on dubious claims of conflicts of interest. Despite Homan’s suggestion that the administration’s disregard for “what the judges think” is limited to Judge Boasberg, other White House actions and comments by officials indicate this is part of a broader pattern of flouting the rule of law and testing our judicial process.

On February 8, Elon Musk reposted a post on X implying that DOGE should defy a court order blocking its access to Treasury Department records and early the next morning said that the judge in the case should be impeached. On February 10, a federal judge in Rhode Island said that the Trump administration failed to comply with the “plain text” of his January ruling that the administration unfreeze billions of dollars in federal grants. 

On March 13, a federal judge ordered several federal agencies to “immediately” offer reinstatement to fired probationary employees. In response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the ruling “absurd” and “unconstitutional,” arguing that the judge was abusing the entire power of the judiciary. Back in 2021, Vice President JD Vance seemed to lay the groundwork for a president defying a similar court order, saying that Trump should fire “every civil servant in the administrative state” and, falsely quoting Andrew Jackson, that, “when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” When asked in March 2024 if it was true that he thought the president should openly defy the Supreme Court if they tried to stop him from summarily firing a significant number of federal employees, Vance answered “Yup.”

The executive branch has allies in Congress in its apparent efforts to sideline the courts:  On March 25, 2025, Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Congress might try to eliminate specific courts (he later clarified that his comments were not intended as a direct threat but to convey Congress’s “broad scope of authority over the courts”). Republican Representative Brandon Gill has also introduced a resolution to impeach Judge Boasberg. These actions, coupled with President Trump’s statement on Truth Social that judges should be impeached, prompted a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said in a statement: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

Some Republicans have pushed back on these efforts, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggesting that the appeals process, not impeachment, is the appropriate response to court orders the government disagrees with and Senator Thom Tillis calling the impeachment effort an “unmitigated waste of time.”

The Trump administration’s seeming defiance of court orders, as well as the apparent efforts of congressional Republicans to undermine the separation of powers and the judiciary’s power to check the executive branch, could have vast implications for the lives of everyday Americans. 

By not immediately suspending and turning around the deportation flights headed to El Salvador following the U.S. District Court’s unambiguous order, the Trump administration seems to be claiming that it has authority to arbitrarily refuse to comply with court orders and, in the process, withhold the right to due process from whomever it wishes. 

This is a slippery slope. Left unchecked, the current administration could, under the guise of immigration enforcement, effectively deny even American citizens their constitutional right to due process under the law by simply claiming that a citizen was arrested and deported too quickly and that the administration was therefore unable to comply with a court ruling given the fast paced environment in which they were operating. 

It also seems unlikely that the government would restrict its flirtation with court defiance to those orders regarding immigration and deportation. If not held accountable by both the courts and the public for apparent attempts to defy court orders when it comes to immigration, we may see the Trump administration try to disregard other court orders that run contrary to its policy goals. We could potentially see court order defiance on issues such as reproductive rights, preservation of government records, the unlawful removal of governmental officials conducting independent oversight, suppressing free speech and political opposition and more. 

The mere question of whether the administration is complying with court orders is testing our constitutional order, and will have ripple effects for years and decades to come. If the Trump administration defies court orders, then the judicial branch and the public must hold them accountable.

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