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On August 8, in a two-to-one decision, a Trump-dominated federal appeals court blocked a district court’s criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration for disappearing people to El Salvador in apparent violation of a lower court’s temporary injunction.

“The district court’s order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,” Trump appointee D.C. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in his concurring opinion. “And it implicates an unsettled issue whether the judiciary may impose criminal contempt for violating injunctions entered without jurisdiction.”

In addition to Katsas, the three-judge panel includes Neomi Rao, an appointee of Trump, and Cornelia Pillard, a Barack Obama appointee, who dissented.

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“The rule of law depends on obedience to judicial orders,” Pillard wrote in her dissenting opinion. “Our system of courts cannot long endure if disappointed litigants defy court orders with impunity rather than legally challenge them. That is why willful disobedience of a court order is punishable as criminal contempt.”

In March, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — which had last been used to justify the........

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