Happy Thursday! Finland, whose capital is currently experiencing below-freezing temperatures expected to last for weeks, was just ranked the world’s happiest country for the eighth consecutive year. Color us skeptical.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Wednesday it had begun targeted ground operations in central and southern Gaza. The maneuvers, aimed at creating a security perimeter between Gaza and Israel, coincided with Israel’s ongoing airstrikes against Hamas targets across the Gaza Strip following the breakdown of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire early Tuesday morning. In a Wednesday video statement addressing Gazans directly, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called for the release of hostages and the removal of Hamas from power. “The Air Force strikes against Hamas terrorists were just the first step,” he said. “Things will become much more difficult, and you will pay the full price.”
- The U.S. military continued its aerial attacks on Houthi sites across Yemen on Wednesday, targeting command centers, training facilities, and weapons stockpiles used by the Iranian-backed militia. Calling on Iran to halt its support for the group in a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump vowed the Houthis would be “completely annihilated” by the bombing campaign that began over the weekend. Meanwhile, the Houthis claimed responsibility for an intercepted ballistic missile launched at Israel early Thursday morning—the second such attack since the end of the ceasefire in Gaza.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday agreed to a proposal in which both Ukraine and Russia would halt attacks on energy infrastructure for 30 days. The White House said the partial ceasefire—which was raised by President Donald Trump during a Wednesday call with Zelensky, the two leaders’ first conversation since their combative Oval Office meeting last month—would mark the “first step” toward a more robust deal to end the war. But it’s unclear when the energy truce would take effect; Zelensky on Wednesday suggested that strikes by both sides would continue until an “appropriate document” outlining the terms is produced. Ceasefire negotiations led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz are scheduled to begin in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday.
- The Pentagon is considering a major reorganization of its command structure, NBC News reported Tuesday, including halting modernization plans for U.S. Forces Japan and relinquishing America’s longtime role as NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, or SACEUR—the military alliance’s top command position. But the changes are likely to face congressional pushback. In a joint statement Wednesday, the respective Republican chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees—Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers—urged the Trump administration against unilaterally altering the military structure. “We will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress,” the lawmakers wrote.
- Justice Department lawyers argued Wednesday that U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg should end his “continued intrusions” into the executive branch’s authority, as the federal judge demanded that the government provide more information about flights that deported Venezuelan nationals from the U.S. in possible defiance of a court order. In a written filing ordered by Boasberg, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office director Brandon Cerna said that two of three planes in question departed the U.S. before Boasberg issued a written order blocking the deportations at 7:25 p.m. on Saturday. The third flight left after the court order, but Cerna argued the removal of its passengers from the U.S. wasn’t based on President Trump’s executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to accelerate deportations—the authority with which Boasberg took issue in his Saturday injunction.
- A federal judge on Tuesday issued an injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the U.S. military, writing that the move violated the Fifth Amendment. “The law does not demand that the Court rubber-stamp illogical judgments based on conjecture,” U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes wrote in an accompanying opinion, rebutting the government’s claim that courts defer to military judgment. In the January executive order declaring that transgender people would be barred from serving in the armed forces, Trump had declared that identifying as a different gender than one’s biological sex conflicted “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
- The environmental activist group Greenpeace must pay $660 million in damages related to its attempts to block the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, a jury in North Dakota decided Wednesday. The judgment came in response to a suit brought by Energy Transfer—a Texas-based company that runs the 1,200-mile pipeline—accusing Greenpeace of trespassing, defamation, and nuisance along with other actions. A representative for Greenpeace, meanwhile, announced plans to appeal the decision, which she said ran afoul of the First Amendment.
- The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday, though indicated it would probably reduce rates later this year. Officials also projected that the U.S. economy would grow 1.7 percent this year, down from its 2.1 percent projection in December. “Uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased,” the Federal Open Market Committee noted in its policy statement. Stocks rallied after the decision. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters Wednesday that Fed officials “really can’t know” if inflation caused by tariffs will be transitory or longer lasting.
A Looming Constitutional Crisis?
We’re two months into President Donald Trump’s second term and nearly as long into the constitutional crisis watch, as the administration’s blitz of executive actions clashes with judges who question their legality.
For now, the White House appears to have stopped short of openly defying courts. But legal analysts argue it has come alarmingly close to crossing that line in recent days, as the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration agenda pits it against judges dubious of the executive branch’s authority to carry out sweeping deportations.
On Saturday, Trump issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798, a rarely used wartime authority that allows the executive to remove “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects” of a country or government at war with the U.S. or engaged in “invasion or predatory incursion,” provided the individuals are not younger than 14 or naturalized citizens. In his proclamation, Trump claimed the law applied to members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which he said had become a “hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States.”
Based partly on invoked AEA authority and partly on regular migrant removal processes, the administration deported several hundred immigrants—whom it said belonged to the Venezuelan gang—to El Salvador on three separate flights that left Harlingen, Texas, Saturday evening. Before the flights took off, progressive legal advocacy groups filed a lawsuit early Saturday on behalf of five Venezuelan nationals held in detention. The suit, which was filed based on the expectation that the AEA would soon be invoked, cited the risk that the plaintiffs could be mistaken for Tren de Aragua members and deported without due process. U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order in the case later Saturday morning, ordering the government to not deport the five immigrants.
Boasberg convened a hearing later on Saturday afternoon and asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer representing the government whether the administration planned to imminently deport anyone under the AEA proclamation. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said he didn’t know. Boasberg then gave Ensign 40 minutes to determine if there were planned deportations. The hearing reconvened at 5:55 p.m., at which point, two deportation flights had already departed from Texas en route to El Salvador, according to data from flight trackers. A little less than an hour later, Boasberg issued a verbal order to Ensign: “Inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.”
The judge followed up the verbal order with a written order, released at 7:25 p.m., to halt any deportation flights of any individuals based on the proclamation, not just the original five plaintiffs. The written order did not reiterate the verbal directive to turn around any mid-flight planes. About 10 minutes later, the third plane departed from Texas. The two earlier planes were not turned around. The first flight arrived in El Salvador Saturday night, while the second and third arrived early Sunday after brief stops in Honduras.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele posted a screenshot of a New York Post article about Boasberg’s order on Sunday morning with the comment: “Oopsie … Too late 😂.” He followed up by posting a video montage of the deportees being processed at the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison for gang members opened in 2023 to support the mass arrests involved in Bukele’s crime crackdown (in 2022, he placed the country under a state of emergency that has yet to be lifted). Bukele said the U.S. had agreed to pay the country a fee to hold 238 Tren de Aragua members, as well as 23 members of the international MS-13 gang whom he said were also transported to the prison.
The legal questions are, given how quickly the deportations and court proceedings unfolded, did the administration defy a court order by not turning the planes around or did the order come too late for the administration to comply? Boasberg held a hearing Monday to assess what he described as the “possible defiance” of his order by the administration. DOJ attorney Abhishek Kambl said the administration complied with Boasberg’s written order, which did not include the directive to turn the flights around. “Oral statements are not injunctions and the written orders always supersede whatever may have been stated in the record,” Kambli said. He also argued that even if the written order had included the directive to return the planes, the judge’s jurisdiction over the issue ended as soon as the planes left American airspace.
Boasberg seemed highly skeptical of both arguments. “You felt that you could disregard it because it wasn’t in the written order,” he said. “That’s your first argument? The idea that because my written order was pithier so it could be disregarded, that’s one heck of a stretch I think.” He added that his jurisdiction applies to U.S. officials directing the planes even if they’ve left American airspace. The Trump administration also argued the individuals on the third flight were deported under removal authority separate from the AEA proclamation, and consequently not subject to the restraining order. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday 261 people were deported on the flights but only 137 were deported under AEA, and that the remainder were Venezuelans and MS-13 gang members deported under regular immigration removal proceedings.
To get a better picture of whether his order was flouted, Boasberg has requested that the government share additional details, including when the flights left U.S. airspace and when the deportees left U.S. custody. But DOJ lawyers have stonewalled so far, saying they can’t reveal details about the flights due to national security concerns. Boasberg pointed out the national security claims appear to be inconsistent with the public promotion of some of the details of the deportations by Trump officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The judge gave the administration an extension until noon today to respond to his request for details.
“It certainly looks to me like they essentially didn’t fully comply, and they did that deliberately,” Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, told TMD. “Now, they’re looking for ways to weasel out of it.”
At a minimum, it appears the expedited deportations may have been an effort by the administration to short-circuit any judicial interference. “To me, this is at least an example of the administration doing something to try to skirt judicial review, which is not itself a constitutional crisis, though it can be evidence of one,” our own Sarah Isgur said on Advisory Opinions.
As Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard Law School and former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Council in the Bush Administration, wrote Tuesday: “The AEA episode, which is very far from over, represents a significant ratcheting up of the administration’s practice of reading judicial orders narrowly or to be ambiguous; claiming alternate sources of authority for action; and slow-walking compliance by citing logistical and resource challenges.”
The court scrutiny thus far has focused on the administration’s compliance with the restraining orders, but the merits of Trump’s invocation of the AEA authority will be examined in a separate hearing to be held on Friday. And legal scholars view the president’s justifications for using the power as shaky at best. “Up until Trump, the Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three times in all American history: the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, in all of which cases, it was totally unquestionable that there actually was a war,” Somin said. “On the other hand, the situation with Tren de Aragua or with the southern border in general, the idea that that’s an invasion or that it’s a state of war is, frankly, ridiculous and stupid.”
Outside of the courtroom, administration officials have publicly attacked Judge Boasberg, mincing no words about their disregard for the judiciary. Trump on Tuesday called for Boasberg—whom he deemed a “troublemaker and agitator”—to be impeached, drawing a rare public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a statement Tuesday.
“We’re not stopping,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said Monday. “I don’t care what the judges think.” Stephen Miller, the president’s Homeland Security adviser and deputy chief of staff, claimed the court has no authority whatsoever to review the president’s AEA actions. Attorney General Pam Bondi, meanwhile, described Boasberg’s injunctions as “another outrageous judicial power grab by an activist judge.”
But the administration has stopped short of openly defying a court order. “They’re trying to obfuscate, which means they’re at least so far not yet willing to openly say, ‘We don’t have to obey these orders, we don’t want to,’” Somin said. “They have not said things like that in formal filings before courts, but their public rhetoric certainly is verging towards the idea that they don’t have to comply.”
Today’s Must-Read
The Fake False Dilemmas of Early Parenting
Toeing the Company Line
- Last call to sign up for the TMD March Madness pool and fill out your bracket! To join nearly 1,200 of your fellow readers (so far), just click here (you will need a free ESPN account) and select “Join Group.” The password is “TMD2K25!” and your bracket must be submitted by 12:15 p.m. ET on Thursday. If you want to be eligible for prizes—including a year of premium Dispatch membership, TMD merch, and more—fill out this form so we can connect you with your ESPN entry.
- In a similar vein, Round 1 voting is now live for our inaugural March Madness Dispawtch Bracket that will determine the best quadruped featured in Jonah’s G-File over the past year. Oh, who are we kidding—they’re all the best!
- We’re thrilled to announce that Jesse Singal, Emily Oster, and Charles Fain Lehman are joining The Dispatch as contributing writers. Expect to read and hear more from them in the coming months—but you can start with their various pieces on the site today!
Cheap Talk on Cheap Stuff
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Funding With Strings Attached Risks Strangling Academic Freedom
Columbia University Has the Free Speech Problem, Not the Trump Administration
J.D. Vance Secures an Inside Lane to 2028
On the Baltic Front
Do You Have ‘Parental Rights’?
Worth Your Time
- Writing for The Atlantic, Annie Lowrey examined how the market for credit cards has become a reverse Robin Hood, as poor Americans with bad credit subsidize bonuses for wealthier cardholders. “High costs are weighing down working-class families, while driving big rewards to rich ones. Over the past few decades, the credit-card market has quietly transformed into two credit-card markets: one offering generous benefits to wealthy Americans, the other offering expensive debt to the poor, with the latter subsidizing the former. While balances are compounding at the highest average APR in decades, a brutal 21.5 percent, the haves are not just pulling away from the have-nots. The people swiping their cards to pay for food and gas are also paying for wealthy cardholders’ upgrades to business class,” she wrote. “A strong economy with a brutal cost-of-living crisis is a great economy for the credit-card industry, it turns out. The average balance carried over month-to-month has risen; interest rates have risen; and card issuers have pushed their APRs far beyond prime rates. As a result, the revenue credit-card firms make from interest payments has ballooned from $76 billion in 2020 to $170 billion in 2024, and rewards cards have gotten more rewarding.”
Presented Without Comment
Defense One: China is Practicing ‘Dogfighting’ in Space, Space Force Says
Also Presented Without Comment
Los Angeles Times: Jackie Robinson’s Army Story Restored to Defense Department Site After Removal in DEI Purge
In the Zeitgeist
Charley Crockett, a Texas-born country singer-songwriter, released his new album Lonesome Drifter on Friday. Our favorite song from the record has to be this cover of George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning.”
Let Us Know
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