Bulwark Takes - Trump Deportations Smacked Down By SCOTUS!

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

The Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration’s push for immediate deportations, allowing a group of immigrants to challenge their removal as a class. Though procedural, the decision marks a meaningful check on Trump’s power, and a rare rebuke, even from justices he appointed. It signals the Court’s resistance to executive overreach and the administration’s threats to defy judicial authority.

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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark here with Andrew Egger, author of our Morning Shots newsletter. We got breaking news from the Supreme Court. They have held that the Trump administration violated the due process rights of Venezuelan migrants last month and its effort to expel them to El Salvador. The SCOTUS had previously blocked the effort to send more migrants to El Salvador, so this is consistent with that. Shout out to our man Mark Joseph Stern, who's given us this

reporting, breaking on blue sky. A couple other things before we get to Edgar here. The Supreme Court did not give a ruling on whether the Trump administration can remove migrants under the Alien Enemies Act at all. they just ruled that the process in which they attempted to do it uh was against the law uh and uh they as i mentioned they continue to block future deportations uh under this act and there is some encouragement that uh they're considered that they have upheld this representing the migrants as an entire class so i do know that some of the that the migrants are the the the Venezuelans that have been disappeared. El Salvador are hopeful that like together, you know, they can get a ruling on their on their treatment and hopefully eventually brought back.

So that is the quickest summary of of what happened. Obviously, we'll have more of a legal analysis with our legal folks. George Conway, I think, is she'll be on later tonight and others. But, Andrew, what's your top take on this? Yeah, I think that's that's basically the gist of it is that, you know, this is a smallish procedural point in the grand scheme of things. You know, essentially they're they're they're kicking something back to a circuit court to re to reconsider under, you know, under slightly different auspices. I'll read here from SCOTUS blog just to give people a sense of like how how fiddly and narrow this this point is. The unsigned majority instructs the Fifth Circuit to address the normal preliminary injunction factors as to the group's underlying habeas claims that the AEA does not authorize their removal as to President Trump's March 14 proclamation.

So you get all that. That's what just happened. I fell asleep halfway through. Yeah, no. So it's a small thing, like technically speaking. But it signifies a few things that are, at least in my opinion, pretty large. One of which is that certainly from the point of view of these people who the Trump administration wants to deport immediately, it's very significant because the circuit court had previously ruled they did not have a jurisdiction to sue the administration to prevent that from happening as a class, as you gestured to before. The Supreme

Court has now thrown that out. The Supreme Court has said, no, there is this jurisdiction to treat these people as a class, and the circuit must consider them on those grounds as it retries. So that's pretty significant. I mean, not each of these individual cases have to be kind of like brought under their own auspices or whatever. Um, the other just kind of bigger, uh, like 20,000 foot thing here is just that it's, it's a pretty big punch back. Uh, it's, it's a brushback pitch from the Supreme court against the Trump administration. In addition to the one that we already saw over the due process stuff, um, the, the, the Trump administration had been gearing up to at least make a lot of noises as though it was going to defy the Supreme Court on on some of these things. But but so far, what we've really seen from them is like this game of chicken where they say, gosh, we really hope the courts don't like, you know, get in our way and do all this bad stuff. And, and, you know, we hope that we hope the courts don't embrace radical leftism. Cause if they did that, we might have to suspend habeas corpus and we

might have to defy the courts and all these sorts of things, but they haven't actually done that much. They did it, you know, a couple of months ago with the original deportations to El Salvador, there was some of that. Um, but, but, but they've kind of hit the brakes and it's kind of been like they're, they're kind of like trying to threaten the the courts um in in the hope of getting better rulings um but when they have not gotten favorable rulings they have not followed through on those threats and so it's good to see the court um even even in this kind of small and procedural way uh apparently standing firm despite that kind of like a nice nice rule of law you got there shame if anything happened to it kind of rhetoric from the administration.

Yeah, a couple of thoughts on that. Before I get to them, we, along with our friend John Lovett over there at Crooked, me and Sarah Longwell are hosting a fundraiser for the legal team that's fighting this fight. So you can go to crooked.com slash events if you want to come to that fundraiser in DC, June 6th around World Pride.

On the substance of this, you know, look, I think that the lawyers, the folks that I'm speaking to around this fundraiser, who are trying to help their clients that have disappeared, like that ruling that they can be considered as a class is like extremely important. Because there was a deep concern right that that because with a couple of exceptions um a lot of them weren't here legally didn't did not come here through legal means like some of them came here using the cbp1 app right and so they didn't you know you know the technical term of their status but like there were some of them that did come

through the refugee process and were really did have legal status at least one uh but there was concern that like because of their gray legal status that they might not be able to do that and that each of them would have to litigate their circumstances individually which would have been you know very onerous and you know if you're in a fucking prison camp in El Salvador with no contact with your family, you know, every additional legal hoop is dangerous to you. And so I think anything that could relatively expedite this, we've all seen, we've been following the Trump legal news over the past five years that nothing happens quickly here. But anything that could even relatively expedite it, I think, is good news for the plaintiffs. Politically speaking, the fact that it's 7-2 is pretty notable. Not a single Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice has sided with him on any of these cases.

So, Brito Garcia, Venezuelans, El Salvador alien enemies, you know, like the related cases. Kavanaugh, Gorsuch amy coney barrett and i know that amy coney barrett has been you know uh cast out of maga good standing over her rulings benedict arnold of the yeah she's she's like the liz cheney of the court now i guess uh we'll see if she could actually live up to such a high standard um but like cavanaugh gorsuch i mean like this is not you know this is not me you know kind of gay tds riddled msnbc uh personality right that is uh upset that is you know saying that what they did was illegal uh this is the the three supreme court justices that trump put on the high court and i do think that whether or not that carries any weight

with the actual MAGA vote or kind of who cares, like it weakens though, you know, just sort of the posture that we've seen from the spokespeople of the administration, right? Which is just like, oh, this is all these libs who just want to be on the side of the gangsters and they just love gangbangers more than they love Americans. You know, i think it

does weaken that argument when um it is gorsett neil gorsuch that is the one making it absolutely without question we i mean to to whatever extent that argument would have stood up without that i mean it would still have been an insanely foolish it was a pretty weak argument no matter what but you know you're obviously correct yes these are Trump's own three handpicked people, the people that that, you know, he was lauded by all of his people for for having the guts to stick with Brett Kavanaugh all through his hearings and for having the guts are making these cases before feel restrained now. They're all attacking Barrett out there. But not only that, but it's also just really reassuring to see that Thomas and Alito are really out on a limb. And they have been kind of routinely on some of these immigration cases so far. And hopefully that will continue. I mean, we will see. The one kind of frightening thing to consider is like if Trump gets the opportunity to fill any Supreme Court vacancies this time around, we saw we've seen the way that he like learned lessons from like the people he appointed to his first cabinet.

He's like, well, that sucked. Those guys all crossed me when when I really needed them to be in my corner. We're not doing that again. And that's how you got, you know, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi and on and on and on. I'm really, I hope we don't have the opportunity to find out what second term Donald Trump Supreme Court justices will look like, given how his first term ones seem uh seem willing to cross him and i'll tell you who's on the short list for me martha and alito you know get both alitos on there i think it's pretty safe to say that uh the alito spouse that was uh you know uh that raised the upside down american flag yeah i would gladly go around long with donald trump's anti-american efforts to

deny people due process and to send people that were fleeing communism to come to this country looking for freedom to foreign concentration camps without any review. So Martha Ann, maybe an Alita family Supreme Court. Okay. Obviously, we're going to have much more on this. George Conn will be on. We'll be back Monday with any additional kind of legal analysis. Any other final thoughts? Anything else that jumped out at you, Andrew? No. It's some good Friday afternoon news for a change. They've been slipping all the most horrible stuff pretty routinely out here around this time. So yeah, it's good for it. Good. Friday afternoon, happy news dump. Enjoy your weekend, everybody. We'll

be back as more news happens. Make sure to subscribe to the feed, tell your friends, and we'll see you all soon. Peace. Did you know that many products for pregnant women do not have their own clinical trials for safety or efficacy? That's because pregnant women are often excluded from clinical studies. Ritual is aiming to set a new standard with their essential prenatal multivitamin. It's the number one best-selling prenatal and the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy.

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