The Everything, Everywhere All at Once presidency

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling lifting the order blocking the deportation of accused members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a significant legal victory for the Trump administration. More importantly, it’s also a policy vindication for those within this White House whose approach to government upon their return to Washington was to do everything, everywhere, all at once.

The legal victory itself was hailed by every prominent member of the President’s deportation team, with Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing she’d redouble her efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declaring that all those here illegally must “LEAVE NOW” and Stephen Miller practically ebullient in his interview last night with Sean Hannity.

“This was a huge, I mean a monumental victory for President Trump, the biggest legal win of this administration so far. A total embarrassment for crazy Judge Boasberg, who’s been trying to force this president to bring foreign alien terrorists back on American soil,” he said on Fox News’s Hannity, referring to the judge who blocked Trump’s use of the law. “This is a monumental, colossal victory – for the rule of law, for the Constitution, for our founding generation.”

The actual text of the decision, however, is also certain to be the basis for future challenges in these deportation efforts, as Josh Blackman notes. Justices agreed that while the Alien Enemies Act does allow for the Trump administration’s action, those deported must “receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal” and “the notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” The debate about how much notice and what constitutes a reasonable time will be adjudicated next.

Taken in full, though, this is a very big ruling for the team around Trump – including Miller – who had faith in a theory about the 1798 AEA that no president has attempted: that by classifying these criminal organizations as essentially the military extension of another nation, it could aggressively target members for deportation just by order of the President. Not even done with the 100 days of his second presidency, Trump and his administration have believed in the power of moving faster than their opposition can keep up. They want to tee up novel legal theories about the power of the presidency to test this Supreme Court immediately, not to wait for cases to wind their way through the legal blockades thrown up by the left.

It’s enough to make heads spin not just in America, but all around the world. And it gives no signs of stopping. If in Trump’s first term he was oftentimes the lumbering T-Rex, lone lord of the jungle, this time around he has a bunch of velociraptors running around causing havoc at his behest. The question is whether it gets to be too much for the American appetite for change to bear – especially in the economic space, where moving fast can break things people depend on in their daily lives.