curtailing a court’s greatest tool for forcing the government to obey its rulings: the power to enforce contempt findings. It’s unclear whether the bill can pass the House in its current form – it failed in a committee vote Friday – whether the US Senate would preserve the contempt provision or whether courts would uphold it. But the fact that GOP lawmakers are including it shows how much those in power in the nation’s capital are thinking about the consequences of defying judges as the battle between the Trump administration and the courts escalates.

 Republican President Donald Trump raised the stakes again Friday when he attacked the US Supreme Court for its ruling barring his administration from quickly resuming deportations under an 18th-century wartime law: “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” Trump posted on his social media network, Truth Social.

One federal judge has found that members of the administration may be liable for contempt after ignoring his order to turn around planes deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Trump’s administration has scoffed at another judge’s ruling that it “facilitate” the return of a man wrongly deported to El Salvador, even though the Supreme Court upheld that decision. (Jamaica Gleaner)