We Can Do Hard Things
Will Our Courts Hold? What You Need to Know with Amanda & Jessica Yellin
Thu, 20 Mar 2025
395. Will Our Courts Hold? What You Need to Know with Amanda & Jessica Yellin Award-winning journalist, Jessica Yellin joins Amanda to discuss the ongoing standoff between the Trump administration and the courts, dissecting whether we’re on the brink of a constitutional crisis. Could this reshape the balance of power? And what does it mean for the future of our democracy? -How Trump’s immigration policies are clashing with judicial authority -The fractures and challenges within the Democratic party–and potential solutions -Plus, a rare bipartisan victory in Montana that offers a glimpse of hope Jessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand -- dedicated to helping you manage your “information overload.” She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent. You can follow her on Instagram at Jessica Yellin. And also, to get real time, clear and brilliant reporting, go to substack.com and search for her page newsnotnoise and subscribe there. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
All of these weeks with Jessica Yellen, because we are trying to figure out a way to know what we need to know about the week's news, to really distill it into what is real versus what is chaotic, trying to get our attention, but not really giving us what the real, real is, what the real story is, and then was es wirklich bedeutet am Ende des Tages für uns und was wir damit tun können.
Jessica ist hier für eine Stunde mit uns pro Woche, um uns zu helfen, das zu wissen, damit wir die Hauptgeschichten wissen können und nicht unsere ganzen Nervensysteme auf einem Rollercoaster für den Rest der Woche haben müssen, sondern nur das, was digestiert werden muss.
Jessica Yellen ist die Founderin von News Not Noise, einer pionierenden, Webby-Werbe-Winning-independienten News-Brand, die dir helfen, deine Informationen zu überlaufen. Was brauchen wir jetzt mehr als independente News-Brands und Hilfe mit unserer Informationen-Überlaufe?
Sie ist der ehemalige Chef-White House-Korrespondent für CNN und ein Emmy-, Peabody- und Gracie-Winning-Politiker-Korrespondent. Du kannst sie auf Instagram folgen, Jessica Yellen. and also to get her real-time, clear and brilliant reporting, please do this. Go to substack.com and search for her page, News Not Noise, and subscribe to it there. It's so good. You will not regret it.
Jessica, welcome back to another week of... A lot of news. Hello.
Thank you. How are you? I'm okay. Digestion is a triggering word right now.
I know you've been sick. I'm so sorry. It's happening everywhere, isn't it? You have had a stomach thing. I have a head thing. Forgive us people if we're a little slow on the uptake today. We're having trouble. Bodies are processing what the mind is dealing with.
I know.
I know the body keeps the score. And the score is intense right now. Yes. This has been a big week in the kind of constitutional issues that we've been approaching and talking about generally over this many last weeks. But what is happening this week?
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Chapter 2: What is the current standoff between Trump and the courts?
So as we're speaking, the Trump administration and the courts are in a standoff and we are in a place, I would say, at the doorstep of a constitutional conflict that could become a full blown crisis. We're not necessarily in the crisis yet. So what's happened? I mean, we could look at this through a bunch of lenses. I think the most obvious and overt is what's going on with
Deportations and Trump's immigration policy.
Can you just remind us all what we mean when we say a constitutional conflict or a constitutional crisis? What does that actually mean? Because that is everywhere right now.
So there's a number of ways you could look at it, but fundamentally it's about where the administration is challenging what the constitution clearly states and defying it. And in this case, the way they're trying to defy it is by die Validität der Gerichte, die die Administration richten. Also sagt unsere Verfassung, es gibt drei gleiche Branche. Der Kongress hat die Macht des Körpers.
Der Exekutiv hat die Macht, diese Agenzien zu überwinden und den Militär zu führen. Und dann ist die Judiziarie dieser dritte Branche, die in die Diskussionen hineinweist. Es ist eine Frage von Präzision und Praxis, dass in Amerika die Judiziarie das letzte Wort hat. When there is something unclear and the judges speak, it ends.
And that's always worked because presidents in Congress have followed it. They have listened. The weird thing about our system is the courts are the one branch that have no means of forcing their will. They don't have a military and they don't have power of the purse to take away money. So we all listen to the courts just through our social compacts.
That's part of our agreement in being in society with one another. We choose to follow what the courts say so that our government can continue functioning. What happened this week is in a number of ways we can talk about. It's clear the Trump administration wants to test the power of the courts to expand their own executive authority and essentially run roughshod over judges they don't like.
And I'll just say one more thing, which is in authoritarian governments, as you see governments move from democracies into authoritarianism, One of the key features is this practice of defying courts and or dismissing judges that don't go along with the leader's will.
And we've also seen both Trump and Elon Musk this week and actually for weeks now saying judges they don't like should be impeached.
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Chapter 3: How does Trump's immigration policy create a constitutional issue?
Do they just... not follow it and we all go along with it? Or do they not follow the court's orders and then insert what?
We don't know. Because no president until now has defied the courts in the way we're imagining Trump will. He hasn't quite done that yet. Then if he defies the court, the Supreme Court really, We're in a constitutional crisis because the crisis is there's no controlling rule about who wins in this standoff. And we have to decide.
Obviously, they have the military, the president, you know, so in theory, he could use the military to force his way if anybody tries to stand up to him. We'll see if Congress will stand up to him. Some Republicans have indicated privately they would. We'll see. And then I think, and we can talk about this, it's up to the people. And what will the people do? And will we go in the streets?
Chapter 4: What does a constitutional crisis mean?
Would we use our power and influence to force our government to follow the rule of law? We'll see.
Okay, so this all is coming because of these proceedings around the deportation. So can you walk us through those?
Yeah. So this week, in an escalation of Trump's immigration policy, He's done a number of things, the most sort of dramatic of which was ICE went and rounded up more than 200 people who they say are Venezuelan gang members, but without any due process. They didn't go to court. They didn't have any presentation of evidence. So we don't really know who is who.
In that group, we're starting to hear stories, put them on a flight and sent that flight to a quite terrifying prison in El Salvador. We're paying the strong man of El Salvador six million dollars to use this prison. None of the things that happened there would be allowed in the US. You know, there's no rehabilitation services, no rights afforded to people like it's just a nightmare.
And they presented this glossy video, propaganda video that they released with it of these men being, you know, manhandled, shackled and taken. So what happened is after these guys had been arrested, but before the flights left, a number of opponents took the Trump administration to court. Immigrant rights advocates took the Trump administration to court.
And there was a legal hearing happening while these men were waiting to get on their plane and getting on their plane and before the plane left. So you can imagine the split screen, right? Here are the people waiting to be deported and then the hearings going on. In the hearing, the judge said, I'm paraphrasing, if there are any flights or people about to leave, don't take them.
They may not leave until we resolve this in court. And if there are any planes in the air right now, you're going to have to turn them around and bring them back. You cannot do deportations of people under this specific authority while this hearing is going on. And the specific authority was what? It's called the Enemy Aliens Act.
And it's basically a 1798 law that Trump is activating again to justify deportations. And this law says, first, the deportees are alleged members of a Venezuelan gang. The president says that their presence in the US is an invasion or an incursion.
And because it's an invasion, they fall under something called the Alien Enemies Act, which is connected to the Venezuelan government trying to infiltrate America.
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Chapter 5: How has the Trump administration defied court orders?
This is amazing because that act has never been invoked before. in our country's history during a time where we were not at war, like actively at war.
And in fact, the last time it was invoked was, it's chilling that they chose this because that is an infamous period of our history in which during World War II, that was the act that was invoked to intern Japanese Americans, to put tens of thousands of Japanese Americans in internment camps within the United States during World War II.
And the Trump claim is that we are in a state of war by what they are calling immigrant gang invaders connected to the Venezuelan government. They're constructing this narrative, right, that we don't even know that these people who are deported are
in any gang or even venezuelan or it hasn't been adjudicated in court and already some family members have spoken out saying like one woman said my husband was taken he's a barber he has a tattoo but he's never been in a gang and a number of people come forward disputing the claim that their spouse or loved one was in any way connected to any gang activity and
As if even that is legal justification for what's happened. Keep in mind, even if they're Venezuelan gang members, they've been taken to a prison in El Salvador. Yeah, why is that? Because the Trump administration was able to cut a deal with the strong man who leads that country. And we're paying them six million dollars for use of their jail.
And this guy brags about how they have these like fancy new jails. It's just space. He's a real estate guy. He found real estate in El Salvador in a prison.
So they are in court. The judge says, turn the planes around or don't let the planes leave. Then what happens?
So this much is in some dispute, but based on independent records that journalists have been able to find about flights, there were three flights. It seems that so during the court hearing, the judge says, don't take anyone and basically asks, what's the status of these flights? Where is everybody? What's going on? And they say, you know what? I don't know.
The lawyer for the government's like, I need a break to find out. Okay, let's take a break in the court hearing. So they break. They come back, I think like an hour later. In that break, two of the planes take off. Die Flugzeuge fliegen in die Luft. Sie kommen zurück aus dem Abbruch und gehen zurück ins Gerichtssitz. Und mehr passiert.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential outcomes of this legal conflict?
Yes, and let's ladder up to the next argument, which helps people understand what they're really doing, which is Stephen Miller, who has been kind of behind the scenes until now, but he is sort of the legal, one of the legal minds behind Trump's immigration policy and his more extreme attacks on our system.
He's said that this district court judge, this federal judge, has no authority to tell the president what to do when it comes to the president making commander-in-chief decisions, when it comes to the president making a decision about our national security or federal policy. No district judge should be weighing in on the authority of the great leader, President Trump.
And what they're fundamentally doing here is creating a case in which they can challenge the authority of the courts and sort of try to refashion how we function in this country, what our democracy is, to sort of push down the power of the courts and make the president more of a monarch king.
And in doing this, they've said that they want it to go to the Supreme Court and they expect that the court will side with them, meaning the monarch king White House.
And it's brilliant, actually. It's a brilliant strategy because on the face of it, this is an issue about should these people be deported or not. But then when you come up 10,000 feet, you're like, oh no, this is a case about whether... the executive branch can overrule the judicial branch.
And this is a brilliant case to make if you want to start that precedent as an executive branch, because who is going to argue that that supposed gang members from another country should have a right to stay in this country, right?
It's a very smart test case, because if you're trying to paint some liberal judge who is trying to give more rights to foreign national gang members than the American safety or whatever, you can see how politically this is a smart case. But then when you come up 10,000 feet, you're like, that's not what this case is about. This case is about
die Balance der Macht zwischen der judicialen Branche und der exekutiven Branche.
Das ist die wirklich schreckliche Partie. Du hast es genutzt. Und du kannst Interviews über die News finden und in den Medien von Menschen, regelmäßigen Amerikanern, die sagen, ja, ich will diese Gang-Mitglieder aus dem Land. Gut für Trump, das zu tun. Oder du findest sogar Moderaten, die sagen, ich mag nicht viel, was Trump tut, aber ich bin froh, dass er das tut.
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Chapter 7: How might the Supreme Court influence this situation?
Now, we should add that Venezuelan gang members or alleged gang members are not the only people who are falling under this sort of extrajudicial dragnet for deportation. Several pro-Palestine activists were also removed from the US. One is a woman whom the Trump administration says, this is, I'm just quoting this, self-deported is their language.
There's a Brown University professor and kidney transplant specialist with a valid visa who was deported on Friday. And they justify this by saying that they found sympathetic photos and videos of Hezbollah militants on one of So all these things are test cases. I think both to test the judiciary and see how the courts will rule and also to see how the public responds and how Congress responds.
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On Fire, the official Survivor podcast with me, Jeff Probst, every Wednesday after the show, wherever you get your podcasts.
So what is the current status? We are recording this on Wednesday around noon. What is the status of that case? What is the next? The court said, don't deport them. The administration deported them. The court said, hey, looks like you deported them. And then the administration said, yes, we did do that. And we had a right to. What's the next step? How does this come to a head from here?
So the Trump administration, as we're recording this, is refusing to comply with the district judge's order to provide more information about the flights, who's on them, when they left, etc., Their language is he's beating a dead horse. That's not a legal claim. So this is going to get appealed and it will eventually end up before the Supreme Court. My guess is quite quickly.
We have to see how the court rules. One early sign is that as this whole process was underway, Trump tweeted or truth socials, whatever you want to call it, that the judge in the case should be impeached. And, you know, Elon Musk has been ranting about impeachments and replacing all judges for months.
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