WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump spent much of last week railing against the courts. The courts, in turn, spent it ruling against him.<\/p>\n
While Trump made history as the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court, where he stared down justices as they questioned his bid to end birthright citizenship, quieter courtrooms across the country were challenging his agenda.<\/p>\n
The challenges came in on immigration, on his White House ballroom project, on his own liability in the run-up to Jan. 6.<\/p>\n
\u201cDumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!\u201d he wrote on Truth Social on Monday.<\/p>\n
By Friday, judges had served him loss after loss, each finding the administration had taken executive authority too far, too fast. <\/p>\n
Immigration rulings<\/p>\n
On immigration, the keystone of Trump\u2019s policy platform, he faced a number of setbacks.<\/p>\n
On Monday, a federal judge in California took a step that would allow a class-action lawsuit against the administration\u2019s handling of certain asylum claims. The case concerns thousands of asylum seekers who had made appointments with immigration officials by using a Biden administration phone app called CBP One.<\/p>\n
In many cases, migrants from around the world had waited months in Mexico for their turn to speak with border agents after securing appointments through the app.<\/p>\n
Those appointments were suddenly canceled after Trump took office. The judge certified those asylum seekers as a class that can challenge the administration\u2019s action in court.<\/p>\n
In a similar case, a federal judge in Boston ruled Tuesday that the administration had unlawfully terminated the temporary legal status of as many as 900,000 immigrants who entered the country after using the phone app. Tens of thousands of those told by the administration to leave the U.S. \u201cimmediately\u201d have since left or been deported.<\/p>\n
It was an awful week for Donald Trump. It\u2019s not that the courts are anti-Trump. In fact, he wins a lot.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Adam Winkler, constitutional law professor <\/p>\n
The judge ordered the administration to reinstate the legal status and work authorization of those remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s ruling is a clear rejection of an administration that has tried to erase lawful status for hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button,\u201d said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a legal organization that represented the migrants.<\/p>\n
Sanctuary laws<\/p>\n
Also Tuesday, a federal judge threw out<\/a> a Justice Department lawsuit that accused Denver and Colorado of interfering with immigration enforcement and claimed that the city and state\u2019s \u201csanctuary\u201d laws<\/a> violated the Constitution.<\/p>\n The ruling found that the federal government had not shown it could override state and local decisions about how to use their own resources. The Constitution, the judge said, does not let Washington commandeer local governments.<\/p>\n \u201cColorado gets to make a choice: How will our law enforcement operate in Colorado. The federal government, they don\u2019t get to make that choice for us,\u201d Colorado Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser said.<\/p>\n Birthright citizenship<\/p>\n The next day, the Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical<\/a> of Trump\u2019s claim that birthright citizenship doesn\u2019t apply to babies born in the U.S. to parents who are here unlawfully or temporarily.<\/p>\n Conservative and liberal judges alike questioned the arguments of Solicitor Gen. John Sauer, who represented the administration, saying he relied on \u201csome pretty obscure sources,\u201d including precedents that dated back to Roman law. <\/p>\n Trump, sitting feet from the proceedings<\/a>, left the Supreme Court building halfway through. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow \u2018Birthright\u2019 Citizenship!\u201d he wrote shortly after departing. <\/p>\n Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University professor who studies immigration enforcement, wrote on Substack<\/a> after the Supreme Court hearing that, on immigration policy, there is always a gap between what an administration says it will do and what the government can actually deliver. That gap, he argued, is particularly evident in the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cThe White House has built its political identity around the promise of mass deportation, and the rhetoric has been relentless: record arrests, expanded detention, military flights, the spectacle of enforcement as governance,\u201d Kocher wrote. <\/p>\n \u201cBut over the past several days,\u201d he added, \u201cdevelopments from multiple fronts suggests that the operational foundations of the mass deportation campaign are more fragile than the administration would like anyone to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n Defying judicial orders<\/p>\n In some cases, the Trump administration has been undeterred by judicial orders to stop certain practices. In a March ruling <\/a>unsealed Thursday<\/a>, a federal judge found that Border Patrol agents had continued making illegal arrests in California\u2019s Central Valley without reasonable suspicion.<\/p>\n The government\u2019s explanations for the arrests, wrote Judge Jennifer Thurston in Fresno, \u201crely on unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations about the relationship between a person\u2019s apparent status as a day laborer and their immigration status.\u201d<\/p>\n White House ballroom<\/p>\n Trump had kicked the week off March 29 by touting his 90,000-square-foot ballroom project, showing designs to reporters on Air Force One.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019ll be the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world,\u201d he said. Two days later, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered a temporary halt<\/a> to construction. <\/p>\n Leon stated that the president is the \u201csteward\u201d of the White House, not its \u201cowner,\u201d and ruled that he cannot proceed with such a massive structural change without express authorization from Congress.<\/p>\n In response, Trump raged on Truth Social: \u201cIn the Ballroom case, the Judge said we have to get Congressional approval. He is WRONG! Congressional approval has never been given on anything, in these circumstances, big or small, having to do with construction at the White House.\u201d <\/p>\n His administration filed a motion<\/a> Friday to block the judge\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n Jan 6. liability<\/p>\n On the same day, a judge ruled that Trump remains personally liable in a civil lawsuit tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, allowing those claims to move forward.<\/p>\n It is among the most consequential legal threats he faces. <\/p>\n Trump entered the presidency on the heels of a major Supreme Court win that found former presidents have criminal and civil immunity for official acts during their term.<\/p>\n But Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta deemed Trump\u2019s Jan. 6 speech \u2014 in which he directed supporters to march to the Capitol and \u201cfight like hell\u201d \u2014 was a political act, not a presidential one, and therefore not shielded by immunity<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump has not shown that the speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties. The content of the ellipse speech confirms that it is not covered by official-acts immunity,\u201d Mehta wrote.<\/p>\n