The Trump administration is ramping up its feud with the judiciary even as the courts fire back, accusing the executive branch of defying court orders.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Maryland admonished Justice Department lawyers for failing to provide meaningful updates on their effort to secure the return of a man mistakenly deported to El Salvdaor.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in D.C. found probable cause that the administration had willfully disobeyed his order to halt or turn around flights carrying some 200 men to a Salvadoran prison.

The same day, a watchdog group accused Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe of defying a judge’s order to preserve communications in a now-infamous Signal group chat used to share sensitive military information.

And on Friday, another judge paused mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over concerns they ran afoul of her previous order.

Experts say the unusual moves signal an administration willing to be more combative with the courts — and that they raise concerns about whether the dynamic will escalate over the rest of President Trump’s term.

“What you're witnessing is a kind of adversarial stance that is unusual for government lawyers to take,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a former federal prosecutor now teaching legal ethics at New York Law School.

“I do think it's a warning sign, and it's definitely a sign that the administration just has a very different view of legal constraint than prior administrations.”

The administration has also pushed back against the courts in smaller ways, telling judges in various cases that they weren’t authorized to provide information and failing to meet deadlines imposed by the court.

Jessica Roth, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at Cardozo School of Law, called it “an unprecedented stress test on the courts.”

“This is extremely unusual behavior, both from the administration and from the lawyers representing the administration in court, and it's deeply distressing to see the behavior from these Department of Justice lawyers, which is not the norm for how........

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