The Saturday that Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., was assigned the case challenging Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, he was not dressed for the occasion. The case had been filed alongside an urgent motion to prevent the deportation of five people their lawyers feared would soon be disappeared to El Salvador. At an emergency hearing conducted on Zoom that evening, convened to figure out whether judicial intervention was needed to prevent any wrongful deportations, Boasberg had to apologize to everyone present. “I went away for the weekend and brought with me neither a robe nor tie nor appropriate shirt, so thank you all for being appropriately attired and hope you will forgive my casual ones,” he said.

By the end of the hearing, which was adjourned for about an hour so the government could figure out if any planes carrying migrants had departed, Boasberg made up his mind. “I am prepared to rule,” he said, before proceeding to issue a pair of orders preventing anyone covered by the proclamation from being deported. It was followed by this directive: “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.” He left the details up to the government. “However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”

The Trump administration didn’t comply. And in the weeks since, Boasberg and the Justice Department have been in a standoff, with the judge demanding an explanation for why his orders weren’t followed, and the government claiming that once the planes were in the air, there was nothing to be done. “No court has the power to compel the President to return them, and there is no sound basis to read the Court’s minute order as requiring that unprecedented step,” the department wrote last week. On Thursday, Boasberg will hold yet another hearing to get to the bottom of things and potentially determine if holding the government in contempt is warranted.

How Boasberg rules there, and how the administration responds, will be the first true test of whether the constitutional order that Trump has spent every day of his second term attacking will hold. At a moment when people the nation over are being abducted off the streets or receiving notice that their days here are numbered, without a semblance of even an opportunity to be heard, how Boasberg holds the government to our most basic shared commitments may yet set the tone for the next four years.

Trump has called the judge a “radical left lunatic,” a “troublemaker,” and an “agitator,” to name but a few descriptors the president has used in one of his many Truth Social posts complaining about judges who don’t rule as he would like. Boasberg, who has kept a steady hand over every proceeding and........

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